31 July 20
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30 July 20
Charles Pierce | Jim Jordan's Paranoid Stupidity Let the God-Kings of Tech Off the Hook
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "The Masters of the Online Universe - Twitter Jack excepted - beamed into a House subcommittee on Wednesday in what was ostensibly a hearing on the antitrust implications of the corporate behemoths they run. This was a noble and healthy enterprise."
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Ray Williams bought this land just north of the small town of Dumont, in Butler County, Iowa. (photo: Dan Charles/NPR)
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "The Masters of the Online Universe - Twitter Jack excepted - beamed into a House subcommittee on Wednesday in what was ostensibly a hearing on the antitrust implications of the corporate behemoths they run. This was a noble and healthy enterprise."
READ MORE
Ray Williams bought this land just north of the small town of Dumont, in Butler County, Iowa. (photo: Dan Charles/NPR)
Dan Charles, NPR
Charles writes: "For a glimpse of what could happen to a trillion dollars worth of American farmland, meet Ray Williams."
President Donald Trump arrives to speak to the press ahead of a briefing of the Coronavirus Task Force at the White House on July 22. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty)
No, Trump Can't Delay the Election
Ian Millhiser, Vox
Millhiser writes: "President Trump, facing cratering poll numbers and the likelihood of an embarrassing defeat in November, suggested the country should 'Delay the Election' due to false fears of voter fraud."
resident Trump, facing cratering poll numbers and the likelihood of an embarrassing defeat in November, suggested the country should “Delay the Election” due to false fears of voter fraud:
Funeral for Rep. John Lewis. (photo: AP)
Ian Millhiser, Vox
Millhiser writes: "President Trump, facing cratering poll numbers and the likelihood of an embarrassing defeat in November, suggested the country should 'Delay the Election' due to false fears of voter fraud."
The law is very clear about this.
resident Trump, facing cratering poll numbers and the likelihood of an embarrassing defeat in November, suggested the country should “Delay the Election” due to false fears of voter fraud:
Let’s deal first with Trump’s claim that “Universal Mail-In Voting” will somehow lead to inaccurate or fraudulent results. There is no evidence whatsoever supporting this claim.
Universal mail-in voting refers to a practice where states automatically mail a ballot to all registered voters within the state — a ballot that can then be cast by mail or returned in-person to various polling sites. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, seven states — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington — are vote-by-mail states.
Vote-by-mail is not a new practice. Oregon became the first state to adopt this practice in 2000. Since then, the state has provided over 100 million mail-in ballots to voters since 2000. It has only documented 12 cases of fraud.
In 2018, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, a Trump appointee spoke to Colorado election officials and effusively praised the vote-by-mail state as a model of safe and secure elections. “We’d love to continue to use you as an example of what other states can adopt,” Trump’s homeland security secretary told the Colorado election officials at the time.
So Trump isn’t simply using false fears to justify delaying the November election — he’s using false fears that his own administration rejected as recently as two years ago.
This brings us to the question of whether Trump can actually delay, or even cancel, the election. The short answer to this question is “no.”
A trio of federal laws set Election Day for presidential electors, senators, and US representatives as “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.” If Republicans want to change this law, they would need to go through the Democratic House.
The 20th Amendment, moreover, provides that “the terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January.” Thus, even if the election were somehow canceled, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s terms would still expire as scheduled — although, as explained below, the question of who would succeed them is devilishly complicated.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the November election is safe. Republican state governors and legislatures may still manipulate their own election rules to give an advantage to Trump. But Trump does not have the lawful power to delay or cancel an election.
Who gets to decide when an election is held?
There are different sets of rules for congressional elections and presidential elections.
For congressional elections, the Constitution provides that “the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.” This means that both Congress and state lawmakers have control over when a congressional election is held, but Congress has the final word if there’s a disagreement.
Congress has set the date of House and Senate elections for “the Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November.” Neither Trump nor any state official has the power to alter this date. Only a subsequent act of Congress could do so.
The picture for presidential elections is slightly more complicated. A federal statute does provide that “the electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November,” so states must choose members of the Electoral College on the same day as a congressional election takes place.
That said, there is technically no constitutional requirement that a state must hold an election to choose members of the Electoral College. The Constitution provides that “each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” So a state legislature could theoretically decide to select presidential electors out of a hat. More worrisome, a legislature controlled by one party could potentially appoint loyal members of that party directly to the Electoral College.
Yet while state lawmakers theoretically have this power, the idea that presidents are chosen by popular election is now so ingrained into our culture that it is highly unlikely any state legislature would try to appoint electors directly. By 1832, every US state except South Carolina used a popular election to choose members of the Electoral College. South Carolina came around in the 1860s.
Moreover, once a state decides to hold an election to choose members of the Electoral College, all voters must be afforded equal status. As the Supreme Court explained in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), “once the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Additionally, even if a state did decide to appoint electors directly, that would require the state to enact a law changing its method of selecting members of the Electoral College. Several crucial swing states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, have Democratic governors who could veto such legislation.
All of which is a long way of saying that the risk that an election will be outright canceled — or that a state may try to take the power to remove President Trump away from its people — is exceedingly low.
Okay, but if the election is canceled, what happens then?
Let’s presume, for just a moment, that the election does not happen as scheduled, for whatever reason. Who does that leave in charge? It turns out that the answer to this question is surprisingly complicated, and it may turn on whether at least one state manages to name individuals to the Electoral College.
Buckle up. This is about to get really deep into the constitutional weeds.
The 12th Amendment provides that after the members of the Electoral College are chosen, those electors shall meet and cast their ballots, and “the person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.”
It’s unclear what happens if only some states hold the presidential election as scheduled, while others fail to appoint electors at all, but the 12th Amendment’s text (“a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed”) suggests that the total number of electors needed to choose a president declines if some states do not appoint anyone to the Electoral College. If only 100 electors are appointed, 51 electoral votes could potentially be enough to choose a president.
Needless to say, this quirk of the Constitution’s text gives every state an incentive to hold their election. If a bloc of red states delays the election, while blue states do not, Republicans could effectively forfeit the Electoral College vote.
But let’s say that no one wins a majority of the electors. If that happens, the power to choose a president falls to the House — but with a twist. If the House is called upon to choose a president, it must choose one of the three candidates who received the most electoral votes. Moreover, each state’s congressional delegation has only one vote, and “a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.”
While Democrats have a substantial majority in the US House as a whole, Republicans control a majority of the House seats in 26 states — just enough to choose a president. That said, this number could easily change. In many states, one party controls only one or two seats more than the other. If a handful of House members are incapacitated due to coronavirus, that could potentially alter the outcome of a House vote to choose the president.
Now let’s shift gears to a scenario where no members of the Electoral College are appointed. In this scenario, the House cannot choose a president because the 12th Amendment requires it to choose from among the three candidates who receive the most electoral votes.
Under the 20th Amendment, “the terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d [sic] day of January.” So, if no one is elected to replace these officials, Trump and Pence cease to be elected officials the minute their terms expire on January 20. Members of the House serve two-year terms, so all members of the House will cease to be representatives on January 3; one-third of senators’ terms also expire on that date.
Ordinarily, if the presidency and vice presidency are both vacant at the same time, the office falls to the speaker of the House. But if there is no election, there will be no speaker when Trump and Pence’s terms expire because all House seats will become vacant on January 3.
If there is no president, vice president, or speaker, the next official in line is the president pro tempore of the Senate, a largely ceremonial position that is traditionally held by the most senior member of the majority party. Right now that is Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
But wait! Recall that the terms of many senators also expire on January 3. As it turns out, 23 seats held by Republicans and only 12 seats held by Democrats are up for election this year, so if no election is held, Democrats will have a majority in the Senate once these seats become vacant. Which would mean that Senate Democrats would be able to choose a new president pro tempore. If they follow the tradition of choosing the most senior member of their caucus, that would place Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) next in line for the presidency.
Things actually get even more complicated from here. The 17th Amendment permits state governors to name temporary senators to vacant seats, but not all states allow their governors to do so. It’s also not immediately clear who would be the governor of many states if no election takes place in 2020, because much of the line of succession in those states could be rendered vacant as well.
In any event, if you’ve read this far, your eyes are probably glazing over by now. The quirks of presidential succession provide fodder for constitutional lawyers to chew over, but, at the end of the day, the federal government’s power flows from the consent of the people. We allow our leaders to govern because we trust that they’ve been selected in a constitutionally valid process. And we trust that process because it is, at least, vaguely comprehensible.
If someone starts calling themselves “president” because they were chosen by a subset of a Senate that is missing a third of its members, a likely outcome is civil unrest — especially in a nation that is already on edge because of the extraordinary measures needed to check the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the exceedingly unlikely event that the 2020 election is canceled, the result isn’t likely to be an extended term for President Trump. The most likely result is chaos.
READ MOREFuneral for Rep. John Lewis. (photo: AP)
Three Former Presidents - Obama, Bush, Clinton - Pay Tribute to Civil Rights Icon John Lewis
John Wagner and Paul Kane, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Three former presidents - Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton - are paying tribute to the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis at his funeral Thursday at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta."
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A business closing in California. (photo: Getty)
John Wagner and Paul Kane, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Three former presidents - Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton - are paying tribute to the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis at his funeral Thursday at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta."
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A business closing in California. (photo: Getty)
US Economy Suffers Worst Quarter Since the Second World War as GDP Shrinks by 32.9%
Dominic Rushe, Guardian UK
Rushe writes: "The US economy shrank by an annual rate of 32.9% between April and June, its sharpest contraction since the second world war, government figures revealed on Thursday, as more signs emerged of the coronavirus pandemic's heavy toll on the country's economy."
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Dominic Rushe, Guardian UK
Rushe writes: "The US economy shrank by an annual rate of 32.9% between April and June, its sharpest contraction since the second world war, government figures revealed on Thursday, as more signs emerged of the coronavirus pandemic's heavy toll on the country's economy."
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Sen. Mitch McConnell. (photo: Getty)
In GOP Plan, You Can't Sue Your Employers for Giving You COVID - but They Can Sue You
Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times
Hiltzik writes: "If you were looking for evidence that Republicans in Congress have no sympathy for workers facing illness or worse from the coronavirus pandemic, look past the party's proposal to cut unemployment benefits."
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Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times
Hiltzik writes: "If you were looking for evidence that Republicans in Congress have no sympathy for workers facing illness or worse from the coronavirus pandemic, look past the party's proposal to cut unemployment benefits."
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Datu Dande Dinyan in the fields outside the village in the Tamasco region of Mindanao Island, the Philippines. (photo: Guardian UK)
'Criminalizing' Dissent, Martial Law Fuel Attacks on Philippine Environmental Defenders
Leilani Chavez, Mongabay
Chavez writes: "Forty-three land and environmental defenders were killed in the Philippines in 2019, according to a new report from the watchdog group Global Witness. The tally marks out the Philippines as the most dangerous country in Asia and the second most dangerous in the world for those taking a stand against environmental destruction."
Leilani Chavez, Mongabay
Chavez writes: "Forty-three land and environmental defenders were killed in the Philippines in 2019, according to a new report from the watchdog group Global Witness. The tally marks out the Philippines as the most dangerous country in Asia and the second most dangerous in the world for those taking a stand against environmental destruction."
- Attacks on environmental and land defenders in the Philippines have escalated under President Rodrigo Duterte, with at least 43 deaths in 2019, watchdog group Global Witness says in its latest report.
- It recorded a total of 119 defender deaths in the Philippines since Duterte took office in mid-2016.
- Martial law in Mindanao, which was only lifted last December, combined with Duterte’s counterinsurgency campaigns and wide-scale anti-drug war, exacerbated the threats against defenders, local groups say.
- A plurality of the casualties in the global tally are in mining and agribusiness; the Philippines registered the most number of deaths in both sectors, the report says.
According to the group, the criminalization of environmental and land defenders under the mantle of anti-terrorism policies imposed by President Rodrigo Duterte contributed to the attacks in the Philippines in 2019.
“[The Philippines] has been consistently named as one of the worst places in Asia for attacks against defenders,” the report says. “The relentless vilification of defenders by the government and widespread impunity for their attackers may well be driving the increase.”
The Philippines has been frequently listed among top countries considered dangerous for environmental and land defenders in Global Witness’s annual reports, and this year is no exception.
In 2016, the watchdog recorded 28 environmental and land defender deaths in the Philippines, a figure that rose to 48 deaths in 2017 — regarded as the bloodiest year on record in the Philippines and the highest number ever documented in an Asian country, Global Witness said.
In 2018, 30 deaths were recorded in the country, which put it in the top spot in the global rankings. Casualties for that year include nine sugarcane farmers, including four women and two children, who were shot by a group of unidentified gunmen after tilling a contested plot of land in the central Philippines.
Since Duterte took office in June 2016, Global Witness has listed a total of 119 killings of environmental and land defenders; this is double the combined tallies of recorded killings under his predecessors. For 2019, Global Witness reported 43 deadly attacks on environmental and land defenders in the Philippines, placing it behind only Colombia with 64 cases.
The attacks have been linked to Duterte’s counterinsurgency policies, including the declaration of martial law in Mindanao to squash a group of ISIS sympathizers who briefly took over the city of Marawi in 2017. The campaign to retake the city lasted five months, until October 2017, but Duterte only lifted martial law in December 2019, after extending it three times in a span of two years.
“Martial law ended in Mindanao without abuses by the civilian sector, by the police, by the military,” the president said in his fifth state of the nation address on July 27. Human rights groups, however, say otherwise, accusing martial law of breaching the civil and political rights of more than 800,000 people, including environmental and land defenders.
Among those people were eight Indigenous peoples farmers fighting against a coffee plantation in Tamasco, South Cotabato. They were killed by the military in December 2017. Mindanao accounted for a third of those killed in 2018 and two-thirds of those killed in 2017, Global Witness said.
In 2019, Datu Kaylo Bontolan, a Talaingod-Manobo chieftain, was killed in Mindanao during a military aerial bombardment.
“Many indigenous communities living in highly militarised regions say they are often the target of attacks and are being silenced, in a process of criminalisation that appears to goes hand in hand with protecting private interests,” the Global Witness report says. “Disturbingly, almost half of the documented murders under Duterte’s government were linked to armed forces or paramilitary groups.”
The attacks on Indigenous groups in Mindanao, on the pretext that they were sympathizers of the outlawed New People’s Army, continued until 2019, when Duterte threatened to bomb lumad or Indigenous schools. (He eventually forced shut 100 of the schools this year.)
“2019 is the year he attacked lumad schools,” says Jaybee Garganera of Alyansa Tigil Mina, a coalition of anti-mining groups. “It’s the year that we saw aggressive mining corporations and plantations entering indigenous lands because the regulatory hindrances disappeared [because of martial law].”
Global Witness recorded 50 defenders deaths worldwide linked to the mining or extractives sector; the Philippines had the highest number of deaths linked to those sectors in 2019. Ninety percent of attacks linked to agribusiness and plantations in Asia happened in the Philippines, the report says.
The figures, Garganera says, reflect Duterte’s “very low understanding” of the roots of these conflicts. The strongman’s military approach to counterinsurgency, in general, is captured in his whole-of-the-nation approach, which Garganera says endangers Indigenous defenders resisting the entry of large-scale corporations and agribusiness ventures into their ancestral lands.
“Martial law in Mindanao created more tension and displaced Indigenous peoples in their own lands,” Garganera says. “Suddenly, they cannot go to their fields, they cannot go down the mountains because they will be required to show their IDs — 90% of lumads do not have IDs. These limitations during martial law have been the root of resentment from many Indigenous people there.”
Outside Mindanao, attacks on defenders have been exacerbated by Duterte’s wide-scale war on drugs, which has claimed more than 6,000 lives, and a culture of impunity that paints activists and dissenters as sympathizers of the NPA. On Negros Island, a series of counterinsurgency campaigns beginning in 2017 has led to the deaths and arrests of farmers, peasant group leaders, activists and civilians.
“In the Philippines, individual activists and environmental organisations have been accused of being rebels or communist sympathisers — a practice commonly known as ‘red-tagging,’” the report says. “Inflammatory calls by Duterte’s government to kill activists deemed to be ‘obstructing justice’, as well as his direct threats to bomb indigenous schools puts defenders at much greater risk of attacks.”
Last year, Global Witness released a country-specific report detailing the role of businesses and development banks, as well as Duterte’s “aggressive rhetoric” in fueling attacks against environmental and land defenders in the Philippines. “The President’s aggressive rhetoric against defenders, coupled with the climate of violence and impunity fostered by his drugs war, has only made things worse,” said Ben Leather from Global Witness.
Duterte’s office, however, has dismissed this, saying last year that it considers Global Witness “a purveyor of falsity and a subservient machinery for political propaganda.” “There is nothing new to its sham assertion which mimics the recurring chants of the usual derogators of PRRD (President Rodrigo Roa Duterte),” Salvador Panelo, a spokesman for the presidential palace, said in a briefing last September.
Local human rights and environmental groups say these attacks will continue throughout Duterte’s remaining years in office as he enforces a militaristic approach in his administration’s COVID-19 pandemic response and after signing into law the contentious Anti-Terrorism Law earlier this month. Last December, Duterte also overturned mining permits previously suspended for environmental violations, laying the groundwork for an even fiercer battle for land and the environment.
“The President has a twisted notion of what human rights is,” Garganera says. “This shrinking space … for lumads, activists, dissenters are a result of this radical misunderstanding. We haven’t had any chief executive who had this twisted understanding of human rights. It’s the first time that we experienced this hostility from the executive department and the military.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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