10 August 20
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How the Final Stretch of Biden's VP Search Is Playing Out
Gabriel Debenedetti, New York Magazine
Debenedetti writes: "The women who might become Joe Biden's running mate entered their final week in contention without much of an idea of what that week would look like."
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President Trump signs executive actions regarding coronavirus economic relief during a news conference in Bedminster, N.J., on Saturday. A number of lawmakers are criticizing the measures' substance and constitutionality. (photo: Jim Watson /AFP/Getty Images)
Democrats Slam Trump's Executive Actions, Critiquing Both Substance and Legality
Rachel Treisman, NPR
Treisman writes: "Democrats on Sunday slammed President Trump's executive actions aimed at providing economic relief during the coronavirus pandemic, saying the measures are both ineffective and unconstitutional."
Trump signed three memoranda and one executive order at his Bedminster, N.J., golf resort on Saturday amid stalled negotiations with Congress over a new COVID-19 relief package.
The measures would extend some federal unemployment benefits, continue the suspension of student loan repayment, defer payroll tax collection for many workers, and task federal officials with reviewing "resources that may be used to prevent evictions and foreclosures."
Some lawmakers and experts are voicing concerns about the president's moves to control federal spending, which is a power reserved for Congress.
Andrew Rudalevige, chair of the Department of Government and Legal Studies at Bowdoin College, told NPR on Saturday that the unemployment benefits measure is particularly controversial because it is "really using appropriated funds by Congress in ways that Congress might not have intended."
Trump calls for using billions of unused dollars from the Department of Homeland Security's Disaster Relief Fund for the unemployment payments.
Rudalevige added that he expects legal challenges to move "fairly rapidly," citing the specific measures regarding unemployment appropriations and the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare.
"The president can defer the payroll tax, but he can't forgive it," Rudalevige said. "He talked about terminating the tax [if he wins reelection], but that would certainly require a law to do that. So I think you will see pushback here."
Pushback from lawmakers was swift, and mounted over the weekend. Mostly it came from Democrats, but from some conservatives too.
"Our Constitution doesn't authorize the president to act as king whenever Congress doesn't legislate," said Libertarian-leaning Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, who left the Republican Party last year to become an independent.
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska wrote in a statement that Trump does not have the power to "unilaterally rewrite the payroll tax law."
"The pen-and-phone theory of executive lawmaking is unconstitutional slop," he said.
But several members of the Trump administration defended the president's actions on Sunday.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow responded to Sasse's comments about the payroll tax deferral on ABC's This Week. "I appreciate those things, maybe we're going to go to court on them," Kudlow said. "We're going to go ahead with our actions anyway. Our counsel's office, the Treasury Department believes it has the authority to temporarily suspend tax collections, so we're banking on that."
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said all of the actions cleared the administration's Office of Legal Counsel. He warned against potential challengers.
"If Democrats want to challenge us in court and hold up unemployment benefits to those hard-working Americans that are out of a job because of COVID, they're going to have a lot of explaining to do," Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday.
Rudalevige told NPR that it is "conceivable" that Congress itself could have standing to sue over the question of unemployment appropriations, and noted that the House sued then-President Barack Obama over spending on the Affordable Care Act.
In an appearance on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called Trump's executive actions unconstitutional but sidestepped a question about whether she would sue to block them.
"My constitutional advisers tell me they're absurdly unconstitutional, and that's a parallel thing," Pelosi said. "Right now the focus, the priority, has to be on ... meeting the needs of the American people."
In response to a question about whether a future stimulus package would make the executive actions null and void, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told NBC's Meet the Press that there would be no need for the president to act if Congress could come to an agreement.
"The Lord and the Founding Fathers created executive orders because of partisan bickering and divided government," he said.
Several GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, praised the president for taking action but said they would prefer a congressional agreement, with Alexander calling on Democrats to "stop blocking commonsense proposals."
Democratic leaders also called for a return to negotiations, saying the president's measures fall short.
In a joint statement issued Saturday evening, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the executive actions "unworkable, weak and narrow."
They said the measures will cut families' unemployment benefits from the recently expired $600-a-week benefits, exacerbate states' budget crises, and endanger seniors' Social Security and Medicare. And they said Trump's actions ignore important issues like increasing testing, reopening schools and safeguarding elections.
The leaders urged Republicans to "return to the table, meet us halfway and work together to deliver immediate relief to the American people."
Talks on Capitol Hill to reach a new COVID-19 relief bill have stalled, with Republicans and Democrats still trillions of dollars apart after weeks of negotiations.
Schumer said on ABC's This Week that Democrats had been willing to compromise on their $3.4 trillion bill, with Pelosi suggesting to White House negotiators that Democrats go down $1 trillion and Republicans go up $1 trillion.
"They said absolutely not," Schumer said. "I said to them, 'This means it's your way or the highway?' And they basically said yes. That is not the way to create a deal."
Both Schumer and Pelosi reiterated on Sunday that they hope talks will resume.
Mnuchin told Fox that Democrats refuse to negotiate on state and local aid and enhanced unemployment benefits, but that on almost every other issue "we've come to an agreement."
'It should worry us that the "border" - and the extra-constitutional powers it brings - is increasingly everywhere.' (photo: José Luis González/Reuters)
Border Agents Are Allowed to Operate 100 Miles Inside the US. That Should Worry Us.
Todd Miller, Guardian UK
Miller writes: "If you were under the notion that America's borders are our international boundary lines with Mexico and Canada, think again."
Americans learned that the hard way when “Trump troops” were let loose on the streets in Portland, assaulting protesters and pulling people out of their cars. These agents in military camouflage without insignia include the Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit (Bortac), which usually operates on the US-Mexico border
Border agents have long had something close to extra-constitutional powers. In the 1950s, Washington decided that a reasonable distance from the border for enforcement purposes was 100 miles – creating what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has dubbed a “constitution-free zone”.
At that time Congress made that decision, the border patrol was less than 1,000 agents. The force has since grown dramatically. Today there are 21,000 border patrol agents. Most of that growth is relatively recent: the number of agents more than quintupled from 1994 to the present day. The agency’s budget has also grown massively: since 1980 US government budgets for border and immigration enforcement have increased 6,000%.
Approximately 200 million Americans, or about two-thirds of the US population, reside within 100 miles of the border. This means that millions of Americans are within the patrol’s enforcement areas and subject to a permanent state of legal exception by armed agents and intrusive surveillance technology. This includes major cities such as San Diego, Tucson, El Paso, Buffalo and Detroit. Coastal areas such as Portland, Chicago, New York and Washington DC are also included in this zone, where agents are permitted to regularly search and seize based on “reasonable suspicion”.
“We are exempt from the fourth amendment,” a Customs and Border Protection official once told me.
In other words, agents been doing for decades what they were shown to be doing in Portland the last few weeks. They can snatch people in the middle of the desert, pull them out of their cars at checkpoints, or right off the street. They can interrogate, arrest and detain anyone at any time in these “border zones”.
On top of this, Bortac, Customs and Border Protection and the patrol have long been doing operations outside of their “traditional roles”. Since 9/11, for example, they have done perimeter surveillance operations at Super Bowls, which have included pulling undocumented people from nearby Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains.
Bortac was formed in 1984 as a special forces unit to quell unrest in immigration prisons. In 1992, it was deployed with other federal forces to Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. Bortac agents were involved in the custodial seizure of Elián González in 2000, and the manhunt for inmates who escaped from Danemora prison in 2015. More recently, Bortac joined up with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in a show of force against undocumented people in sanctuary cities.
CBP and the border patrol have also had presence at other protests, including the Standing Rock Dakota Access pipeline blockade, counter-demonstrations at Trump’s 2017 inauguration, and the Black Lives Matter protests that have swept across the country in response to the murder of George Floyd. This includes sending a drone over Minneapolis, deploying agents in Washington DC, and of course, Portland. According to the Trump administration there is more to come and they will be sending these forces to several cities around the US.
And if these examples aren’t enough to illustrate the pervasiveness of the US border enforcement apparatus, CBP and particularly Bortac have also been deployed to Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kenya and Haiti, among other places, as part of the US push to extend its border around the globe. Since 9/11, in particular, the border patrol has become a veritable “national security” police force with counter-terrorism as a priority mission.
As these special forces extend into the country and across the world, the underlying question becomes: just where is the US border? The “border” is much more than just a line between two countries. It is a racialized border between elites and the working class, and between the government and dissidents wherever they are located.
On Friday, Border Patrol agents, including members of BORTAC, raided a No More Deaths humanitarian aid camp in Arivaca, Arizona, arresting more than three dozen border crossers receiving medical care. They also confiscated the phones of the No More Deaths volunteers in the camp. The 24-vehicle raid was led by an armored Bearcat personnel carrier, as if at war.
This should deeply trouble us. So should the fact that the “border” – and the extra-constitutional powers it brings – is increasingly everywhere.
Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf speaks during a press conference on the actions taken by Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security agents in Portland during continued protests at the US Customs and Border Patrol headquarters on July 21, 2020 in Washington, DC. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Former Clients of Trump's Homeland Security Chief Chad Wolf Received Millions in Department Contracts
Brian Schwartz, CNBC News
Schwartz writes: "Several former lobbying clients of Chad Wolf, now the acting secretary of Homeland Security, have received millions of dollars worth of government contracts while he has held senior positions within the department."
Wolf, who became the acting chief of the department late last year, was a lobbyist for over a decade at Wexler & Walker before he took leadership roles with DHS under President Donald Trump. Wolf served as the acting chief of staff at the Transportation Security Administration in 2017 and later became the chief of staff for former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Since then, several of Wolf’s former clients reaped a total of at least $160 million in contracts from DHS, according to a CNBC analysis of the public filings.
A DHS spokesman told CNBC that Wolf has no involvement with any government contracts.
“Acting Secretary Wolf has had zero involvement in DHS contract awards, including contracts won by his former clients. He leaves those matters to the career professionals in the DHS Chief Procurement Office,” the agency spokesman said.
After joining TSA, Wolf recused himself from DHS matters that involved his former clients. He has maintained that recusal throughout his tenure at the department.
Still, Democrats pounced on the revelation, arguing that it marks the latest example of how the Trump administration acts against the president’s own promise of “draining the swamp.”
“Donald Trump and Chad Wolf’s flagrant conflicts of interest screw taxpayers over while rewarding their crony friends and special interests. When voters sent Trump to Washington, they thought he would ‘drain the swamp,’” Kyle Morse, a spokesman at Democratic super PAC American Bridge, told CNBC.
Trump signed an executive order in 2017 that banned former lobbyists and lawyers from taking part in government matters linked to their previous clients for the first two years of their tenure in the administration. Some Trump officials, however, have been given waivers to that rule. Wolf’s name is not on the public waiver list that was issued in April of this year. A list created by ProPublica showing Trump aides who signed the ethics waiver also does not include Wolf.
Workers sprayed disinfectant at the Saint Exupery primary school in Cannes, France, on Tuesday. (photo: Eric Gaillard/Reuters)
Why Are Child Care Programs Open When Schools Are Not?
Elliot Haspel, The New York Times
Haspel writes: "As more public schools are moving to remote learning, child care programs and after-school providers in major cities are taking in more children of families who cannot work remotely."
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A guard escorts an immigrant detainee from his cell back into the general population at the Adelanto Detention Facility on Nov. 15, 2013, in Adelanto, California. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
There's Been a Major Increase in the Use of Force Against Immigrants at ICE Detention Centers During the Pandemic
Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed
Aleaziz writes: "Jail guards pepper-sprayed the unit as immigrants lay down on the ground, screaming and coughing. The officers shot pepper ball rounds that ricocheted off jail tables, broken pieces striking a detainee's eye. Fumes lingered in the air and made it hard for the detainees to breathe."
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Climate change rally. (photo: Ollie Millington/Getty Images)
COVID-19 Canceled Mass Protests. Here's What Youth Climate Activists Are Doing Instead.
Lauren Aratani, Guardian UK
Aratani writes: "For young climate activists in the United States, staying home because of the pandemic does not mean staying silent, with plans gathering pace across the country to make their voices heard in November's elections."
It has been nearly a year since an estimated 6 million people across the world joined the youth-led global climate strikes on September 20.
In the United States, students from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., skipped school to voice their frustration over the slow response to the climate crisis by elected leaders, and Greta Thunberg told a cheering crowd in New York City “this is only the beginning.”
But in the 10 months since the historic protests, the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the United States, making meeting and organizing in person hazardous. Climate strikes, including a major three-day mass protest that was planned for Earth Day 2020 in April, have been canceled.
But networks of youth climate activists have been regrouping, with a new focus on election campaigning with phone banks, social media, and friend-to-friend organizing, according to interviews with organizers.
The stakes could not be higher for young people, according to 23-year-old Aracely Jimenez-Hudis, the deputy communications director of the Sunrise Movement, a leading youth advocacy group on the climate.
“We are a generation that was really born into crises,” said Jimenez-Hudis. “We don’t have some golden age that we can look back on and feel that there is any kind of resonance with a call to normalcy because our normal has always been endless wars, has always been police brutality.”
Youth voter turnout during the 2016 elections was disappointing, with just 46 percent of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 going out to vote, compared to 70 percent of the oldest voters, 70 and over.
Then in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, youth movements began building campaigns and gaining visibility, with climate change growing as a key issue, driven in part by the burgeoning Sunrise Movement, which was founded in 2017.
In preparation for the 2018 midterm elections, the Sunrise Movement began training young activists to canvass for candidates who were proponents of renewable energy and publicly confront incumbents who take money from the fossil fuel industry. When the 2018 midterms came around, 20 percent more young Americans ages 18 to 29 went out to vote compared to the last midterms in 2014, and Democrats won the House.
The group has more recently been pushing Democratic leaders to embrace the Green New Deal, a bold carbon-neutral plan for the economy championed by progressive Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Backing the policy was initially seen as too radical by many Democrats, but it has now been embraced more widely by members of the party. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, recently unveiled a climate and jobs plan that mirrors some of the aggressiveness of the Green New Deal, though some activists believe he is not tough enough on fossil fuel industries.
With the pandemic, Jimenez-Hudis said, the Sunrise Movement has shifted its electoral strategy to focus entirely on phone banking and friend-to-friend organizing — encouraging people to talk to their friends and relatives directly about the candidates they support.
“We still have lots of work to do to make sure that we get the right Democrats on the ballot, the right Green New Deal champions on the ballot for the election in November just up and down the ticket,” Jimenez-Hudis said.
The organization credits its phone banking volunteers for helping Jamaal Bowman, a former teacher who ousted a longtime congressman in New York, win his election and for tightening the race of Charles Booker, a Democrat in Kentucky who was hoping to run against the Republican senator Mitch McConnell.
Aligning racial justice and climate fights
In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in May, the Sunrise Movement has also made efforts to streamline its focus toward racism and police brutality, encouraging members to attend protests and speak out about the intersection of racial justice and climate activism. The organization recently started its #WideAwake campaign, encouraging local activists to protest outside the homes of elected officials. On Juneteenth, a local Sunrise chapter coordinated such a protest outside the home of Senator McConnell, demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed in her home by police in Louisville, Kentucky.
Recent months have helped some young climate activists see that the same systemic changes needed to address climate change are in line with the ones that will bring racial justice, escalating the need for elected officials who will bring those changes.
Rose Strauss, a 20-year-old former organizer with the Sunrise Movement, said her time with the organization helped her understand the gravity of the 2020 election. She dropped out of college so she could dedicate all her time to the election and canvass for Senator Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire.
Once it became clear that Sanders was not going to win the nomination, Strauss and a few fellow activists began to dedicate their efforts to starting a new initiative called the Down Ballot Disruption Project. The program, held entirely over Zoom, aims to teach young people how to canvass for candidates in their local elections and how to build a community around their activism, especially on social media.
Young people can “change this election in massive ways. The only arena right now, because we can’t go and canvass outside, is social media. That’s where we know how to do stuff,” Strauss said. “We really need to make sure that the politicians who get elected this cycle are going to be the ones that are really caring about our futures.”
For activists with Zero Hour, the climate justice organization that coordinated a youth climate march in Washington, D.C., in summer 2018, the focus for the 2020 election is less on getting individual candidates elected but broadly teaching young activists how to encourage their communities to get out to vote and educate them about the Green New Deal.
The organization, along with the National Children’s Campaign, launched the #Vote4OurFuture campaign in July, targeting youth activists in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Grand Rapids and Detroit in Michigan, two swing states. The campaign was originally scheduled to be a bus tour in March, but coronavirus forced the organizations to change course. Now, the campaign is all about hosting virtual events like roundtables and webinars focusing on what the Green New Deal could look like in specific communities.
“We want climate change to be a top priority on people’s minds when they’re going to the polls in November because of the way it will impact people of color and people living in those cities,” said Zanagee Artis, the 20-year-old co-founder and deputy director of digital advocacy for Zero Hour.
While climate advocacy during the pandemic has largely been on video chats and social media, young activists are eager to get back on the streets. Fridays for Future, the global organization founded by Greta Thunberg, plans on holding a global climate strike on September 25. Local chapters are working on what the protest will look like in their areas to accommodate local COVID-19 conditions.
Spencer Berg, a 17-year-old organizer with Fridays for Future NYC, said organizers are still working out the logistics of what the protest will look like, but the overall message of the demonstration will be to advocate for a “green recovery” and ensure that New York City continues to uphold its commitments to fighting climate change.
While the pandemic has left devastation across the city and in many other places in the United States, activists are hopeful that coronavirus can provide parallels to climate change and show how a single crisis can affect everyone.
Coronavirus has “inspired a lot of people because it has shown us that the government can act quickly and efficiently to quell a crisis,” Berg said. “That’s what this is: It’s a climate crisis. A lot of politicians say we can’t afford to do that, we don’t have enough time for this, but coronavirus showed us that we can have complete systematic change if we need to.”
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