23 February 20
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23 February 20
Adam Schiff | How to Protect Democracy From Lawless Presidents Like Trump
Adam Schiff, Los Angeles Times
Schiff writes: "The impeachment trial of President Trump has ended, but the threat to our democracy continues. In the short time since the trial concluded, the president has proven that the House managers' warning to senators that he will never change was prescient."
Adam Schiff, Los Angeles Times
Schiff writes: "The impeachment trial of President Trump has ended, but the threat to our democracy continues. In the short time since the trial concluded, the president has proven that the House managers' warning to senators that he will never change was prescient."
President Trump’s actions demonstrate the need to develop and pass legislative reforms to safeguard the checks and balances of our democracy. Building new guardrails to defend against authoritarian-minded presidents must now be a top priority for Congress.
Within days of the Senate vote, Trump began to exact revenge against officials who complied with lawful subpoenas and told the truth to Congress. He had a security escort remove Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated combat veteran, from the White House’s National Security Council, along with his twin brother, who served as an ethics attorney.
The president’s vengeance against civil servants is disturbing enough, but it occurred alongside an even greater danger that has come into sharper focus this week: the politicization and potential weaponization of the Department of Justice.
Trump insists he has the absolute right to direct the actions of the department. His efforts to obstruct investigations into his own misconduct and that of his associates — firing FBI Director James B. Comey, seeking to fire Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and much more — are well documented. And now, the president has found his Roy Cohn in Atty. Gen. William Barr, who has shown himself willing to be the president’s political fixer and do his bidding at the expense of the department’s independence.
The severity of the threat to our democracy was made plain last week in a succession of troubling actions by the Justice Department.
Last Monday, the department recommended that Roger Stone, the president’s longtime political advisor and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster,” be sentenced according to standard federal guidelines for the serious crimes he committed. Mr. Stone was convicted last year on seven charges related to lying to Congress about his dealings with the president and WikiLeaks — the platform publishing Russian hacked emails beneficial to the Trump campaign — and witness tampering.
Late that same evening, the president tweeted in outrage, calling the recommendation “a miscarriage of justice.” The next morning, at Barr’s urging, the department reversed course and recommended a more lenient sentence, using language so unusual for the DOJ that it looked like it could have been written by Stone himself.
Barr claims he had planned to intervene in the case before reading the president’s tweet, but he does not deny his personal involvement. It is exceedingly rare for attorneys general to overrule the sentencing recommendation of their career prosecutors. Doing so in a case involving the president’s own wrongdoing may be unprecedented.
As a result, the career prosecutors on the case demonstrated something in short supply in the White House but abundant among public servants — moral courage. One by one, they withdrew from the case, and one resigned altogether.
By the end of the week, reports emerged that Barr had ordered the review of other “politically sensitive” criminal cases, including that of President Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators to cover up the nature of his own interactions with the Russians. This follows yet another Barr-ordered review intended to sow doubt about intelligence community findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help then-candidate Trump, and a nearly successful effort to cover up the whistleblower complaint that ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.
These interventions by Barr to benefit the president have profound implications for the rule of law and our democracy. With a willing attorney general and compliant congressional Republicans, Trump is attempting to utilize the instruments of justice for his political benefit, something that would give him immense power to punish and harass his political opponents and protect his friends.
We cannot let that succeed.
Institutions are only as strong as the people who protect them. Public servants, at personal cost, stepped forward in the impeachment inquiry and in the wake of the Stone sentencing reversal. Judges have also demonstrated a vital independence from this lawless president.
Congress must also do its part through vigorous oversight, and also by enacting a new set of reforms to prevent presidential abuses akin to those passed after Watergate. Work on these is already underway.
The president has continually taken advantage of the slow judicial review process to delay oversight of his administration. In response, Congress should enact legislation to expedite judicial review of congressional subpoenas, an idea House Republicans favored unanimously under President Obama.
There is also a clear need to legislate a stronger firewall between the Department of Justice and the White House, one secured by more than regulations or norms. One first step was introduced by my fellow House impeachment manager, Hakeem Jeffries, to require logging and disclosure of White House contacts with DOJ. But more will be required to prevent an unethical president from initiating or interfering in cases that involve the president’s enemies, allies or family members.
Along these lines, I have introduced legislation to constrain abuse of the pardon power. President Trump has repeatedly dangled pardons to his associates as they face federal criminal investigations. The bill would ensure that, in the event the president issues a pardon in a case related to him or his family members, the complete investigative files would be provided to Congress to ensure he could not obtain the corrupt benefit of covering up his own misconduct.
Some of these reforms may not become law while Trump remains in office, but that must not stop us from getting started. The future of our democracy depends on it.
Greta Thunberg with her mother, opera singer Malena Ernman, in Stockholm. (photo: Malin Hoelstad/SvD/TT/PA Media)
Greta Thunberg's Mother: 'She Was Slowly Disappearing Into Some Kind of Darkness'
Malena Ernman, Guardian UK
Ernman writes: "Greta was 11, had just started fifth grade, and was not doing well. She cried at night when she should be sleeping. She cried on her way to school. She cried in her classes and during her breaks, and the teachers called home almost every day."
READ MORE
Malena Ernman, Guardian UK
Ernman writes: "Greta was 11, had just started fifth grade, and was not doing well. She cried at night when she should be sleeping. She cried on her way to school. She cried in her classes and during her breaks, and the teachers called home almost every day."
READ MORE
Eyal Weizman, the founder of Forensic Architecture, in his investigatory group's studio at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2016. (photo: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)
Homeland Security Algorithm Revokes US Visa of War Crimes Investigator Eyal Weizman
Robert Mackey, The Intercept
Mackey writes:"Eyal Weizman, an Israeli-born British architect who uses visual analysis to investigate war crimes and other forms of state violence, was barred from traveling to the United States this week for an exhibition of his work after being identified as a security risk by an algorithm used by the Department of Homeland Security."
Robert Mackey, The Intercept
Mackey writes:"Eyal Weizman, an Israeli-born British architect who uses visual analysis to investigate war crimes and other forms of state violence, was barred from traveling to the United States this week for an exhibition of his work after being identified as a security risk by an algorithm used by the Department of Homeland Security."
EXCERPT:
Weizman, a professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, where his human rights research agency Forensic Architecture is based, frequently travels to the U.S. to lecture and exhibit work. Last year, Forensic Architecture was selected to take part in the Whitney Biennial and produced an investigation — in collaboration with Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras — of how a Whitney board member profited from the manufacture of tear gas used against civilians in a dozen countries, including at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Despite his exclusion from the U.S. Weizman explained that, in conjunction with the exhibition of Forensic Architecture investigations in Miami, his group plans to train local activists to apply its techniques to investigate “human rights violations in the Homestead detention center in Florida … where migrant children have been held in what activists describe as ‘regimented, austere, and inhumane conditions.'”
The ban on Weizman’s travel was denounced on Thursday by Margaret Huang, the executive director of Amnesty International USA. “Stopping Eyal Weizman from entering the United States does a grave disservice to human rights documentation efforts,” Huang said in a statement. “It would be ludicrous to suggest that Eyal Weizman poses a security threat, and it’s an embarrassment for the U.S. to bar him.”
“Invoking the results of an algorithm cannot disguise the spurious nature of this visa decision, and, in fact, it heightens our concerns about how the decision was taken,” Huang added. “This is ideological exclusion via algorithm, a troubling indicator of the bias and irrationality of the high-tech security state.”
Images from Tulsa's Greenwood District, 1921. (photo: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis/Getty Images)
Oklahoma Will Require Its Schools to Teach the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921
Zak Cheney-Rice, New York Magazine
Cheney-Rice writes: "Oklahoma's Education Department is adding the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to its curriculum for the first time, in what doubles as a contingency to stop the tragedy's centennial from devolving into a pile-on of the state's failure to fully reckon with the tragedy."
Zak Cheney-Rice, New York Magazine
Cheney-Rice writes: "Oklahoma's Education Department is adding the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to its curriculum for the first time, in what doubles as a contingency to stop the tragedy's centennial from devolving into a pile-on of the state's failure to fully reckon with the tragedy."
EXCERPT:
It’s also not the only related effort. Last year, Tulsa mayor G.T. Bynum, a Republican, had a team of scientists and forensic anthropologists investigate a structural anomaly in the Oaklawn Cemetery, located a few blocks from Tulsa’s Greenwood District, which was known colloquially in the early 20th century as “Black Wall Street.” The anomaly was first discovered in the late 1990s and seemed to indicate the presence of a mass grave. “We owe it to the community to determine if there are mass graves in our city,” Bynum said, according to the Washington Post. “We owe it to the victims and their family members.” Earlier this month, officials agreed to permit “limited excavations” in the cemetery to determine whether the anomaly contains the bodies of people killed in 1921. They clarified that there are no current plans to exhume the researchers’ findings. Taken in tandem, the curricular overhaul and mass-grave search seem to comprise an overdue deference on the part of local officials to an event whose magnitude and devastation had long been underappreciated.
The broad strokes of what happened in Tulsa in 1921 are perhaps more widely known today than ever before, owing in part to a fictionalized depiction of the tragedy in HBO’s Watchmen series. It commenced on May 31 of that year, when rumors circulated that a black man named Dick Rowland had sexually assaulted a white woman, Sarah Page, in an elevator. The allegations catalyzed what’s widely understood as a broader set of interracial resentments — namely those of Tulsa’s white residents toward the black denizens of Greenwood, a thriving business district marked by an unusual concentration of black wealth. Whites lay siege to the area, cordoning off its borders so that black people had trouble evacuating and shooting those they’d trapped. They set fire to around 40 blocks of homes and businesses, torching buildings from the ground while using airplanes to firebomb Greenwood from the sky. Forty-eight hours later, more than 300 black people were dead and 10,000 more were left homeless.
Nash Kitchens, 7, attended a training on how to administer Narcan at the Public Library in Elizabethton, Tenn., on January 15. (photo: Mike Belleme/NYT)
'Open, Insert, Squirt.' In This Town, Children Are Taught to Administer Narcan
Dan Levin, The New York Times
Levin writes: "'It's just like a little squirt gun," she told the group of children, before passing around the small plastic device for them to hold and squeeze.'"
READ MORE
Dan Levin, The New York Times
Levin writes: "'It's just like a little squirt gun," she told the group of children, before passing around the small plastic device for them to hold and squeeze.'"
READ MORE
Thousands of Dominicans demonstrated in the 'Plaza de la Bandera' to protest against the Central Electoral Board (JCE), in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on Feb., 22, 2020. (photo: EFE)
Protests for Transparent Elections Continue in Dominican Republic Amid Voting Suspension
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Citizens of the Dominican Republic, participated Saturday in a national 'cacerolazo' to demand transparent elections after the municipal elections on Feb., 16 were suspended due to problems in electronic voting, four hours after the elections began."
READ MORE
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Citizens of the Dominican Republic, participated Saturday in a national 'cacerolazo' to demand transparent elections after the municipal elections on Feb., 16 were suspended due to problems in electronic voting, four hours after the elections began."
READ MORE
A cow stands in a barn at the Lake Breeze Dairy farm in Malone, Wisconsin. (photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
'America's Dairyland': Wisconsin's Dairy Farmers See Bleak Future
Dominic Rushe, Guardian UK
Rushe writes: "Wisconsin still styles itself the dairy state. Car number plates come with the slogan 'America's Dairyland.' Last year it was also the state with the highest number of farming bankruptcies - 57, its highest total in a decade."
Dominic Rushe, Guardian UK
Rushe writes: "Wisconsin still styles itself the dairy state. Car number plates come with the slogan 'America's Dairyland.' Last year it was also the state with the highest number of farming bankruptcies - 57, its highest total in a decade."
EXCERPTS:
The decline is fundamentally changing Wisconsin’s rural landscape as schools and small businesses collapse taking the rural communities that supported them with them. Wisconsin is an avatar of a wider problem in the dairy industry. America’s largest milk producer, Dean Foods, filed for bankruptcy last November. Borden, founded in 1857, filed for bankruptcy in January.
The milk industry’s woes have been a long time in the making and no single factor accounts for them. Collapsing prices, the rise of mega farms in warmer states such as Texas and Arizona, the increasingly international trade in dry milk products like whey protein, Trump’s tariffs, the fluctuations in international trade and shifting consumer habits have all played a part.
America is not drinking as much milk as it once did but the popular narrative that milk alternatives are killing dairy doesn’t hold up. The percentage of milk sales lost to plant “milks” is small compared with other drinks – bottled water in particular – that have already taken a share and milk still outsells plant-based imitators by a margin of more than 11 to 1. And the US is still buying cheese, butter, yogurt, milk powders in infant formula and protein in bars and shakes.
“There was a period in 2013 when China panicked and started to buy every drop of milk on the planet,” says Peter Vitaliano, chief economist at the National Milk Producers Federation. “We had milk prices that dairy farmers would tell their children about.”
The buying spree followed the melamine crisis when Chinese producers had been adulterating milk, baby formula and other foods with melamine, a chemical that is toxic in large quantities, to increase their apparent protein content.
US milk producers started oversupplying milk. Smaller farms like those in Wisconsin produce more of their own feed than the huge players so for a while they were at an advantage. But when China got its milk industry back on track and feed prices came down, the advantage vanished and the collapse started in earnest. “It was particularly brutal on the smaller operations,” says Vitaliano. “That pressure is, unfortunately, likely to continue.”
Goodman made the shift to organic in 2014 and for a while it worked. Organic fits his values; the back of the car outside his home carries an old Occupy “We Are the 99%” sticker and one for Elizabeth Warren. But organic prices collapsed as vast industrial-style dairies in Texas and other warm states with 10,000 or more cows flooded the market with cheap milk. Competing with confinement dairies – “concentrated animal feeding operations” as they are curdlingly known – was impossible.
The huge farms were shipping organic milk from Texas into Wisconsin for a lower price than Goodman was getting paid. “You know, you can’t compete with that,” he says.
For those less fortunate, life can look bleak. “I know of some farmers that have committed suicide,” says Kyle. “They were third or fourth generation and now the farm ends with them and they feel that terrible burden of, you know, it was on my watch that this fell apart,” he says. “I could see where it gets very overwhelming.”
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