theguardian--2020-08-08--Doctors and medical students across the US push to register patients to vote

An emergency room doctor in Boston is assembling thousands of voter registration kits for distribution at hospitals and doctors ’ offices .
Later this month , students at Harvard and Yale medical schools are planning a contest to see which of the Ivy League rivals can register the most voters .
And a medical student in Rhode Island has launched an effort to get emergency ballots into the hands of patients who find themselves unexpectedly in the hospital around election day .
Amid the dual public health crises of Covid-19 and racism , some in the medical community are prescribing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hospitals , doctors and healthcare institutions across the country this month are committing to efforts to engage Americans in the election process as part of Civic Health Month , a nationwide campaign that kicked off 1 August .
Hospital networks in Arizona , Kansas , Missouri , Pennsylvania , North Carolina , Wisconsin and elsewhere are among more than 60 institutions participating , along with thousands of individual physicians .
Benjamin Ruxin , a Stanford University graduate student who heads the campaign , said the coronavirus pandemic underscores the importance of ensuring everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the challenging times ahead .
Voter registration rates are down almost 70 % in some states this election cycle because the traditional ways of registering voters have been curtailed by the pandemic , including DMVs and in-person registration drives , he said .
Vulnerable patients ‘ have to be involved in politics ’ Alister Martin , an emergency room doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston , said he founded VotER to provide medical professionals voter registration resources after years of seeing patients struggling from the health consequences of poverty , drug @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We ’ ve been trained to solve these really complex health problems , but not everything we see can be treated with a prescription , ” he said .
“ The healthcare system does not work for vulnerable people – full stop .
We have to help them get involved in the political process if we hope to change any of this.
” The sheer number of organizations and the range of efforts being proposed during the month-long campaign shows that the medical community is increasingly shedding its reticence at civic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medical student at Brown University in Providence , Rhode Island .
Where prior generations may have seen the voter registration and other nonpartisan election work as outside their purview or too overtly political , newer medical professionals see civic engagement as a crucial part of “ treating the whole patient , ” she said .
Wong founded Patient Voting to get doctors and other hospital staff to commit to helping patients request , cast and submit emergency ballots when the time comes .
The nearly three-year-old organization ’ s website is also a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s emergency ballot process .
Another effort , called Med Out the Vote , is focused on getting medical students registered to vote and encouraging them to organize voter registration efforts on campus where possible .
Jonathan Kusner , a Harvard Medical School student who co-chairs the effort , said students at dozens of institutions have expressed interest , with a number looking to host head-to-head voter registration competitions against rival schools .
Medical students at the University of North Carolina recently bested their counterparts at Duke in a three-day contest that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voter registrations and requests for mail ballots , he said .
Harvard and Yale students are planning a similar competition , as are those at Penn State and Ohio State .
Martin , meanwhile , said VotER is struggling to keep up with more than 15,000 orders for its “ Healthy Democracy Kits , ” which include a badge and lanyard that doctors and other hospital staff can wear while on the job .
The badges have a QR code that , when scanned by a person ’ s smartphone , will take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that can guide them through the voter registration process and send them reminders about election deadlines .
A helpline is also available to field any questions , he said .
“ We ’ re underwater and trying to get out these kits as fast as we can , ” Martin said .
“ It ’ s a good problem to have , but at the same time , I wish this wasn ’ t something that had to be done .
Being able to vote should be automatic for all citizens .
”

An emergency room doctor in Boston is assembling thousands of voter registration kits for distribution at hospitals and doctors’ offices.
Later this month, students at Harvard and Yale medical schools are planning a contest to see which of the Ivy League rivals can register the most voters.
And a medical student in Rhode Island has launched an effort to get emergency ballots into the hands of patients who find themselves unexpectedly in the hospital around election day.
Amid the dual public health crises of Covid-19 and racism, some in the medical community are prescribing a somewhat nontraditional remedy: voting.
Hospitals, doctors and healthcare institutions across the country this month are committing to efforts to engage Americans in the election process as part of Civic Health Month, a nationwide campaign that kicked off 1 August.
Hospital networks in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin and elsewhere are among more than 60 institutions participating, along with thousands of individual physicians.
Benjamin Ruxin, a Stanford University graduate student who heads the campaign, said the coronavirus pandemic underscores the importance of ensuring everyone can vote and help shape healthcare policy for the challenging times ahead.
Voter registration rates are down almost 70% in some states this election cycle because the traditional ways of registering voters have been curtailed by the pandemic, including DMVs and in-person registration drives, he said.
Vulnerable patients ‘have to be involved in politics’
Alister Martin, an emergency room doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said he founded VotER to provide medical professionals voter registration resources after years of seeing patients struggling from the health consequences of poverty, drug addiction, homelessness and other social ills.
“We’ve been trained to solve these really complex health problems, but not everything we see can be treated with a prescription,” he said. “The healthcare system does not work for vulnerable people – full stop. We have to help them get involved in the political process if we hope to change any of this.”
The sheer number of organizations and the range of efforts being proposed during the month-long campaign shows that the medical community is increasingly shedding its reticence at civic engagement, said Kelly Wong, a medical student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Alister Martin, an emergency room doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, poses outside the hospital, in Boston Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP
Where prior generations may have seen the voter registration and other nonpartisan election work as outside their purview or too overtly political, newer medical professionals see civic engagement as a crucial part of “treating the whole patient,” she said.
Wong founded Patient Voting to get doctors and other hospital staff to commit to helping patients request, cast and submit emergency ballots when the time comes. The nearly three-year-old organization’s website is also a repository of verified information about every state’s emergency ballot process.
Another effort, called Med Out the Vote, is focused on getting medical students registered to vote and encouraging them to organize voter registration efforts on campus where possible.
Jonathan Kusner, a Harvard Medical School student who co-chairs the effort, said students at dozens of institutions have expressed interest, with a number looking to host head-to-head voter registration competitions against rival schools.
Medical students at the University of North Carolina recently bested their counterparts at Duke in a three-day contest that resulted in more than 500 total new voter registrations and requests for mail ballots, he said. Harvard and Yale students are planning a similar competition, as are those at Penn State and Ohio State.
Martin, meanwhile, said VotER is struggling to keep up with more than 15,000 orders for its “Healthy Democracy Kits,” which include a badge and lanyard that doctors and other hospital staff can wear while on the job.
The badges have a QR code that, when scanned by a person’s smartphone, will take them to TurboVote, an online tool that can guide them through the voter registration process and send them reminders about election deadlines. A helpline is also available to field any questions, he said.
“We’re underwater and trying to get out these kits as fast as we can,” Martin said. “It’s a good problem to have, but at the same time, I wish this wasn’t something that had to be done. Being able to vote should be automatic for all citizens.”


theguardian--2020-08-08--Trumpism has taken over: but what happens to the Republican Party if Trump loses?

“ Whither Trumpism ?
” said one .
“ What will a post-Trump GOP look like ?
” asked another .
“ Republicans prep for leadership battle if Trump goes down , ” said a third .
“ On the trail : the first signs of a post-Trump GOP , ” offered a fourth .
Anyone who remembers the 2016 presidential election knows it is too soon to write Donald Trump ’ s political obituary , but a recent crop of headlines illuminate a growing angst over the fate of the Republican party if , as polls currently suggest , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Republican politicians are jostling for position with an eye on 2024 .
Never Trump activists are hoping to purge his brand of nativist demagoguery from the party .
Authors and commentators are pondering whether a post-Trump Republican party should resemble the pre-Trump one or if it needs to start over .
Peggy Noonan , a columnist for the Wall Street Journal , asked : “ Where did Donald Trump come from ?
Where is the GOP going ?
Should the whole thing be burned down ?
” Bret Stephens , a columnist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that if Trump loses , “ the future of the party will be up for grabs .
It ’ s time to start thinking about who can grab it , who should , and who will.
” The debate has been fueled by hints Trump ’ s current iron grip on the party might weaken .
Republican leaders roundly rejected his idea of postponing the election because of the coronavirus pandemic .
In negotiations over the latest economic stimulus package , they brushed aside his proposals for a payroll tax cut and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Senate majority leader , signaled to vulnerable Republican senators in tough election races that they can distance themselves from Trump if they deem it necessary , according to CNN .
But the prognostications remain guarded for two reasons .
First , the election is far from over .
Although Trump faces the headwinds of the pandemic , mass unemployment and historically weak poll numbers , he still has time to spring surprises against his opponent Joe Biden in this most unpredictable of campaigns .
Second , the end of Trump would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Nine in 10 Republicans still approve of the job he is doing as president , according to Gallup .
A SurveyMonkey poll for Axios last December showed Republican voters ’ favourite picks for 2024 led by Mike Pence , with Trump ’ s son Donald Trump Jr in second place , followed by Nikki Haley , Ivanka Trump , Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo .
It may be too late to put the Trump genie back in the bottle .
That is the view of Stuart Stevens , one of the party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose contribution to the burgeoning literature on its identity crisis is It Was All a Lie : How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump .
“ He is the Republican party .
There ’ s not even like an opposition government in exile .
There ’ s no De Gaulle ; there ’ s just Vichy France .
The party is the party that endorses Roy Moore [ US senate candidate in Alabama accused of sexual misconduct ] and attacks John Bolton [ former national security adviser ] .
What we saw as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out to be a dominant gene , ” Stevens said .
Stevens continued : “ If you ever really want to get depressed , go read George Bush ’ s 2000 acceptance speech at the convention .
It reads like a document from a lost civilisation .
Who are these people ?
It ’ s like the Mayans .
It ’ s all about humility and sacrifice and honor and service.
” In a recent interview with the Guardian , the Democratic strategist Paul Begala argued that a crushing defeat for Trump would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and revivify , just as Democrats did after three clarifying defeats in 1980 , 1984 and 1988 .
But Stevens believes it will take more than one election .
“ Trumpism itself has been deeply unleashed in the party and I think history tells us , darkly , that when a major party legitimizes hate , which the Republican party has , it ’ s very difficult to get it undone , ” he said .
“ It takes time , often a lot of blood.
” Republicans ’ core base – older @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cycle as America ’ s demographics diversify , while Trump has alienated many suburban voters .
“ The party has no desire to change .
The only thing that will make the party want to change is utter fear .
That ’ s never very convincing to voters because they see it as transparent .
So I think we ’ re in for a period of centre-left government , ” Stevens said .
The pandemic has provided a national stage for moderate Republican state governors such as Charlie Baker of Massachusetts , Larry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vermont , all leaders of traditionally Democratic states and therefore seen as having potential crossover appeal .
John Kasich , the former Ohio governor who ran in 2016 , could mount another bid in 2024 , seeking to cast Trump as an aberration that should never have happened .
But they are likely to face an uphill struggle against loyalists – potentially Senators Ted Cruz , Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley or even the Fox News host Tucker Carlson – claiming to be Trump ’ s true heir .
Haley , the ex-governor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ex-ambassador to the UN , has been careful to distance herself from the president at some moments and hug his base at others .
An internal struggle may prove cathartic .
Michael Steele , former chairman of the Republican National Committee , said : “ You ’ re going to have a lot of Trumpers putting a Don Jr or a Tom Cotton forward and you ’ re going to have a lot of other folks putting a Kasich or Larry Hogan or whoever else may emerge in that space .
“ So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ahead .
We ’ re going to go through it and we have to go through it .
It may mean the splintering of the party .
It may mean the formation of something else .
We don ’ t know exactly how Republicans will reassess and value what Republicanism is.
” Tensions have played out recently on Capitol Hill , where a third of the House ’ s 198 Republican members have been elected since 2016 , most following Trump ’ s agenda .
Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming , daughter of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supports Trump on some issues but has criticized him on foreign policy and the pandemic , prompting calls for her to resign as the No 3 House Republican .
Michael Steel , a former aide to John Boehner when he was House speaker , suggested that this offers a preview of how pro-Trump Republicans will seek to rationalise election defeat : by scapegoating factions of the party that were insufficiently loyal .
“ They need to be able to blame anyone and anything other than President Trump himself , so they are creating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being stabbed in the back by a fifth column of disloyal Republicans rather than by his own words and actions , ” Steel wrote in the Dispatch , a conservative website .
Cheney is seen as defending at least some traditional Republican shibboleths abandoned by Trump , such as fiscal responsibility and a hawkish stance towards Russia and other adversaries .
Challengers to the president ’ s “ America first ” legacy might also soften the party ’ s positions on the climate crisis , immigration and trade .
But they would need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump would still have Twitter , Fox News and the Make America Great Again movement at his disposal for heckling .
Thomas Patterson , a professor at Harvard University ’ s Kennedy School of Government , argues that the party is caught in five traps of its own making , which Trump has only deepened : a steady movement to the right ; demographic change ; influence by rightwing media blunting its ability to govern ; big tax cuts that created a split between its working-class supporters and marketplace conservatives ; a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Patterson , author of a new book , Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself ?
, believes it will be a long road back .
“ If you look at what happened in 2018 , the Republicans took quite a drubbing in the midterm election , and there was no lesson learned , ” he said .
“ The way rightwing media spun it was the reason Republicans lost is because too many of them tried to move toward the centre .
“ Even if they take a real beating in 2020 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to take two or three of those beatings .
They can talk all they want about reinvention but , as long as the primary nominating process keeps coughing up these conservatives , it ’ s going to be really hard for them to make the change .
“ When you ask , who are the moderate leaders who are going to be in the vanguard of that change that have credibility with the base and elsewhere , boy , that ’ s a really short list .
They pretty well wiped themselves clean @ @ @ @ @ @

“Whither Trumpism?” said one. “What will a post-Trump GOP look like?” asked another. “Republicans prep for leadership battle if Trump goes down,” said a third. “On the trail: the first signs of a post-Trump GOP,” offered a fourth.
Anyone who remembers the 2016 presidential election knows it is too soon to write Donald Trump’s political obituary, but a recent crop of headlines illuminate a growing angst over the fate of the Republican party if, as polls currently suggest, he goes down to defeat in November.
Republican politicians are jostling for position with an eye on 2024. Never Trump activists are hoping to purge his brand of nativist demagoguery from the party. Authors and commentators are pondering whether a post-Trump Republican party should resemble the pre-Trump one or if it needs to start over.
Peggy Noonan, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, asked: “Where did Donald Trump come from? Where is the GOP going? Should the whole thing be burned down? ” Bret Stephens, a columnist at the New York Times, noted that if Trump loses, “the future of the party will be up for grabs. It’s time to start thinking about who can grab it, who should, and who will.”
The debate has been fueled by hints Trump’s current iron grip on the party might weaken. Republican leaders roundly rejected his idea of postponing the election because of the coronavirus pandemic. In negotiations over the latest economic stimulus package, they brushed aside his proposals for a payroll tax cut and a new FBI building.
Meanwhile Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, signaled to vulnerable Republican senators in tough election races that they can distance themselves from Trump if they deem it necessary, according to CNN.
But the prognostications remain guarded for two reasons. First, the election is far from over. Although Trump faces the headwinds of the pandemic, mass unemployment and historically weak poll numbers, he still has time to spring surprises against his opponent Joe Biden in this most unpredictable of campaigns.
Second, the end of Trump would not necessarily mean the end of Trumpism. Nine in 10 Republicans still approve of the job he is doing as president, according to Gallup. A SurveyMonkey poll for Axios last December showed Republican voters’ favourite picks for 2024 led by Mike Pence, with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr in second place, followed by Nikki Haley, Ivanka Trump, Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo.
It may be too late to put the Trump genie back in the bottle. That is the view of Stuart Stevens, one of the party’s most successful campaign strategists, whose contribution to the burgeoning literature on its identity crisis is It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.
Supporters of Donald Trump listen to him speak during his arrival at Burke Lakefront airport in Cleveland, Ohio, on 6 August. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters
“He is the Republican party. There’s not even like an opposition government in exile. There’s no De Gaulle; there’s just Vichy France. The party is the party that endorses Roy Moore [US senate candidate in Alabama accused of sexual misconduct] and attacks John Bolton [former national security adviser]. What we saw as a recessive gene in the party turned out to be a dominant gene,” Stevens said.
Stevens continued: “If you ever really want to get depressed, go read George Bush’s 2000 acceptance speech at the convention. It reads like a document from a lost civilisation. Who are these people? It’s like the Mayans. It’s all about humility and sacrifice and honor and service.”
In a recent interview with the Guardian, the Democratic strategist Paul Begala argued that a crushing defeat for Trump would be a catalyst for Republicans to reassess and revivify, just as Democrats did after three clarifying defeats in 1980, 1984 and 1988. But Stevens believes it will take more than one election.
Trumpism itself has been deeply unleashed in the party Paul Begala
“Trumpism itself has been deeply unleashed in the party and I think history tells us, darkly, that when a major party legitimizes hate, which the Republican party has, it’s very difficult to get it undone,” he said. “It takes time, often a lot of blood.”
Republicans’ core base – older white men – shrinks with every election cycle as America’s demographics diversify, while Trump has alienated many suburban voters. “The party has no desire to change. The only thing that will make the party want to change is utter fear. That’s never very convincing to voters because they see it as transparent. So I think we’re in for a period of centre-left government,” Stevens said.
The pandemic has provided a national stage for moderate Republican state governors such as Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Larry Hogan of Maryland and Phil Scott of Vermont, all leaders of traditionally Democratic states and therefore seen as having potential crossover appeal. John Kasich, the former Ohio governor who ran in 2016, could mount another bid in 2024, seeking to cast Trump as an aberration that should never have happened.
But they are likely to face an uphill struggle against loyalists – potentially Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley or even the Fox News host Tucker Carlson – claiming to be Trump’s true heir. Haley, the ex-governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ex-ambassador to the UN, has been careful to distance herself from the president at some moments and hug his base at others.
We don’t know exactly how Republicans will reassess and value what Republicanism is Michael Steele
An internal struggle may prove cathartic. Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “You’re going to have a lot of Trumpers putting a Don Jr or a Tom Cotton forward and you’re going to have a lot of other folks putting a Kasich or Larry Hogan or whoever else may emerge in that space.
“So that’s the battle that lies ahead. We’re going to go through it and we have to go through it. It may mean the splintering of the party. It may mean the formation of something else. We don’t know exactly how Republicans will reassess and value what Republicanism is.”
Tensions have played out recently on Capitol Hill, where a third of the House’s 198 Republican members have been elected since 2016, most following Trump’s agenda. Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney, strongly supports Trump on some issues but has criticized him on foreign policy and the pandemic, prompting calls for her to resign as the No 3 House Republican.
Michael Steel, a former aide to John Boehner when he was House speaker, suggested that this offers a preview of how pro-Trump Republicans will seek to rationalise election defeat: by scapegoating factions of the party that were insufficiently loyal. “They need to be able to blame anyone and anything other than President Trump himself, so they are creating a straw man argument that he is being stabbed in the back by a fifth column of disloyal Republicans rather than by his own words and actions,” Steel wrote in the Dispatch, a conservative website.
Liz Cheney speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on 14 January. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock
Cheney is seen as defending at least some traditional Republican shibboleths abandoned by Trump, such as fiscal responsibility and a hawkish stance towards Russia and other adversaries. Challengers to the president’s “America first” legacy might also soften the party’s positions on the climate crisis, immigration and trade.
But they would need a thick skin: even in defeat, Trump would still have Twitter, Fox News and the Make America Great Again movement at his disposal for heckling.
Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, argues that the party is caught in five traps of its own making, which Trump has only deepened: a steady movement to the right; demographic change; influence by rightwing media blunting its ability to govern; big tax cuts that created a split between its working-class supporters and marketplace conservatives; a disregard for democratic norms and institutions.
Patterson, author of a new book, Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself?, believes it will be a long road back. “If you look at what happened in 2018, the Republicans took quite a drubbing in the midterm election, and there was no lesson learned,” he said. “The way rightwing media spun it was the reason Republicans lost is because too many of them tried to move toward the centre.
“Even if they take a real beating in 2020, I think it’s probably going to take two or three of those beatings. They can talk all they want about reinvention but, as long as the primary nominating process keeps coughing up these conservatives, it’s going to be really hard for them to make the change.
“When you ask, who are the moderate leaders who are going to be in the vanguard of that change that have credibility with the base and elsewhere, boy, that’s a really short list. They pretty well wiped themselves clean of the moderate leadership.”


theguardian--2020-08-08--'People are ready to see Black women lead': US sees wave of progressive victories by people of color

Progressive Democrats are enjoying a wave of victories in federal primaries across the country with some especially notable triumphs for Black activist candidates .
Those successes , candidates and strategists say , are due to a mixture of broad energy from the Black Lives Matter movement , failure of conventional policy remedies to meet the moment and a rock-solid infrastructure of progressive organizations .
The latest victory came in Missouri on the same night the state voted to expand Medicaid – a longtime liberal goal .
Cori Bush , a liberal activist and registered nurse , defeated the 10-term congressman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A few days later Marquita Bradshaw , an environmental justice activist , became the first Black woman to win the Democratic party ’ s nomination in Tennessee .
In the process of Bradshaw ’ s surprise victory she defeated James Mackler , the preferred candidate of Senate Democrats ’ national campaign arm .
Both candidates ran on positions familiar to the progressive community : racial justice , Medicare for All and environmental justice .
The victories by the candidates , both Black women , are the latest in a strong of upsets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ People are ready to see Black women lead , ” Bush said in an interview on Friday .
“ Ready for there to be parity , for more women to be going into Congress.
” In New York , the progressive favorite Jamaal Bowman ousted 16-term congressman Eliot Engel , the chairman of the House foreign affairs committee .
The Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib , a member of the informal group of progressive firebrands known as “ the Squad ” , also survived a contentious primary fight with another local Democrat .
All @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the spate of losses the progressive wing of the Democratic party has suffered over the last year , including the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders ’ crushing defeat in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary after a brief period of being the frontrunner .
The victories are also much-needed comfort for the progressive wing , which will probably have complaints with whoever former vice-president Joe Biden picks as his running mate .
Bush said her victory was driven by an enhanced interest in candidates with progressive policy prescriptions in a time of economic crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ healthcare concerns .
“ Covid-19 hit us and hit us hard and we were ill-prepared for it , ” Bush said .
“ People were able to see , with me for instance , I ’ ve been preaching Medicare for All since 2016 .
People didn ’ t understand it back then but when Covid-19 hit people started to see it.
” The implications of these victories was summed up in the subject line of a Bowman campaign fundraising email : “ The Squad keeps getting bigger.
” “ That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Capitol Hill , ” Bush said .
“ We want to go in and make the Squad even bigger .
The Squad that ’ s in Congress , that are members , as well as the Squad that are not members … We ’ re all like-minded to see our communities change and wanting to do it now.
” “ If there are areas where we have people who are just not producing for their communities and their communities are crying out for help and they ’ re not getting it , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community , then hopefully someone will step up to run , ” Bush said , adding she would probably be happy to help them .
Maya Rupert , the former campaign manager for Democrat Julián Castro ’ s presidential campaign , predicted a wave of progressives would come into Congress through this election cycle .
“ I think there are going to be a lot more people that are coming in governing in a way that is undeniably and unapologetically progressive , ” Rupert said .
Victories haven ’ t come so easily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years .
But that ’ s changed because of the major crises of the moment as the country is roiled by a long-overdue reckoning on racism , triggered by protests against police mistreatment of Black Americans .
“ I think the environment is being largely driven by conversations on race .
And I think increasingly that is through the lens of economics as well , ” the veteran Democratic strategist Brandon Davis said .
“ It ’ s broadly defined .
I think increasingly that is through the lends of economics as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the extent these candidates are leaning into these issues , they ’ re finding more traction.
” The lead-up to 2020 has been marked by a wave of outside groups boosting progressive candidates .
Some of those groups enhanced their infrastructure while others emerged with very specific missions .
Marie Newman , a liberal favorite who ousted a longtime conservative Democratic congressman in Illinois ’ s third district congressional primary earlier this year , said “ there has been a dramatic level of lifting up of these groups on every level .
Organizing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ working hard and awakening.
” A group called Fight Corporate Monopolies has taken aim at the Massachusetts congressman Richard Neal , the chairman of the powerful ways and means committee , over Neal receiving support from the Blackstone Group , a private investment management company .
The group also backed Bush in Missouri .
Other more general organizations like the Justice Democrats helped propel Bowman to victory .
Progressives argue that these victories and any more to come this cycle are showing the broader Democratic party that their positions are effective in campaigns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remaining humps for the progressive agenda is to demonstrate to the rest of the Democratic party that our approach is good for general election politics , ” said Faiz Shakir , who is a consultant with Fight Corporate Monopolies and served as Sanders ’ 2020 presidential campaign manager .
Monica Klein , a Democratic strategist known for her work advising liberal candidates , said the coronavirus pandemic as well as the resulting economic downturn has pushed more voters to consider candidates with progressive policy positions .
“ I think from a nationwide public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both Republicans and establishment Democrats to the growing Black Lives Matter protests , more and more Americans are getting frustrated with the status quo , whether that is Republicans in Washington or establishment Democrats who are not providing bold enough solutions to the crises that we ’ re facing , ” Klein said .
There are still more contests to come though which dangle the prospect of further wins .
In Massachusetts , political newcomer Ihssane Leckey is running in a crowded race to replace Congressman Joe Kennedy .
Leckey , a former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US from Morocco at 20 and identifies as a democratic socialist , is running to help “ change the face of Congress ” .
“ These victories are a sign of hope in our country , that the people still have the power to change the course of our nation , away from fascism and into an inclusive democracy.
” She said the common thread between the string of recent progressive victories is that the candidates share the “ lived experiences of the most vulnerable constituents in their districts ” .
Leckey , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ race who struggled through periods of poverty before becoming the first in her family to graduate from college , is running on a “ justice agenda ” which supports Medicare for All , a Green New Deal and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency .
She said the coronavirus pandemic had exposed the need for sweeping economic and social reform , and had helped change the minds of some voters in her district who may have supported these policies but did not understand their urgency .
“ These are the issues of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ People were feeling the sting , even when they had a little more comfort before the pandemic .
Now we ’ re here to ensure relief for everyone , and especially the most vulnerable .
”

Daniel Strauss and Lauren Gambino in Washington

Progressive Democrats are enjoying a wave of victories in federal primaries across the country with some especially notable triumphs for Black activist candidates.
Those successes, candidates and strategists say, are due to a mixture of broad energy from the Black Lives Matter movement, failure of conventional policy remedies to meet the moment and a rock-solid infrastructure of progressive organizations.
The latest victory came in Missouri on the same night the state voted to expand Medicaid – a longtime liberal goal. Cori Bush, a liberal activist and registered nurse, defeated the 10-term congressman William Lacy Clay in the Democratic primary.
A few days later Marquita Bradshaw, an environmental justice activist, became the first Black woman to win the Democratic party’s nomination in Tennessee. In the process of Bradshaw’s surprise victory she defeated James Mackler, the preferred candidate of Senate Democrats’ national campaign arm.
Both candidates ran on positions familiar to the progressive community: racial justice, Medicare for All and environmental justice. The victories by the candidates, both Black women, are the latest in a strong of upsets liberals have enjoyed this year.
Marquita Bradshaw speaks in front of city hall in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, on 7 July. Photograph: Max Gersh/AP
“People are ready to see Black women lead,” Bush said in an interview on Friday. “Ready for there to be parity, for more women to be going into Congress.”
In New York, the progressive favorite Jamaal Bowman ousted 16-term congressman Eliot Engel, the chairman of the House foreign affairs committee. The Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a member of the informal group of progressive firebrands known as “the Squad”, also survived a contentious primary fight with another local Democrat.
All together the victories mark a dramatic shift from the spate of losses the progressive wing of the Democratic party has suffered over the last year, including the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ crushing defeat in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary after a brief period of being the frontrunner.
The victories are also much-needed comfort for the progressive wing, which will probably have complaints with whoever former vice-president Joe Biden picks as his running mate.
Jamaal Bowman speaks at a watch party in New York on 23 June. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters
Bush said her victory was driven by an enhanced interest in candidates with progressive policy prescriptions in a time of economic crisis, an ongoing pandemic, and global healthcare concerns.
“Covid-19 hit us and hit us hard and we were ill-prepared for it,” Bush said. “People were able to see, with me for instance, I’ve been preaching Medicare for All since 2016. People didn’t understand it back then but when Covid-19 hit people started to see it.”
The implications of these victories was summed up in the subject line of a Bowman campaign fundraising email: “The Squad keeps getting bigger.”
“That’s exactly what we’ll see on Capitol Hill,” Bush said. “We want to go in and make the Squad even bigger. The Squad that’s in Congress, that are members, as well as the Squad that are not members … We’re all like-minded to see our communities change and wanting to do it now.”
Bush offered a warning to other incumbent Democrats.
“If there are areas where we have people who are just not producing for their communities and their communities are crying out for help and they’re not getting it, which was what was happening here in our community, then hopefully someone will step up to run,” Bush said, adding she would probably be happy to help them.
Maya Rupert, the former campaign manager for Democrat Julián Castro’s presidential campaign, predicted a wave of progressives would come into Congress through this election cycle.
“I think there are going to be a lot more people that are coming in governing in a way that is undeniably and unapologetically progressive,” Rupert said.
Cori Bush, left, hugs her daughter prior to giving her victory speech in St Louis, Missouri, on 4 August. Photograph: Michael B Thomas/Getty Images
Victories haven’t come so easily for progressive Democrats in the past few years. But that’s changed because of the major crises of the moment as the country is roiled by a long-overdue reckoning on racism, triggered by protests against police mistreatment of Black Americans.
“I think the environment is being largely driven by conversations on race. And I think increasingly that is through the lens of economics as well,” the veteran Democratic strategist Brandon Davis said. “It’s broadly defined. I think increasingly that is through the lends of economics as well. It’s broadly defined to the extent these candidates are leaning into these issues, they’re finding more traction.”
The lead-up to 2020 has been marked by a wave of outside groups boosting progressive candidates. Some of those groups enhanced their infrastructure while others emerged with very specific missions.
Marie Newman, a liberal favorite who ousted a longtime conservative Democratic congressman in Illinois’s third district congressional primary earlier this year, said “there has been a dramatic level of lifting up of these groups on every level. Organizing. Grassroots. People in every neighborhood working hard and awakening.”
I think there are going to be a lot more people that are coming in governing in a way that is undeniably and unapologetically progressive Maya Rupert
A group called Fight Corporate Monopolies has taken aim at the Massachusetts congressman Richard Neal, the chairman of the powerful ways and means committee, over Neal receiving support from the Blackstone Group, a private investment management company. The group also backed Bush in Missouri. Other more general organizations like the Justice Democrats helped propel Bowman to victory.
Progressives argue that these victories and any more to come this cycle are showing the broader Democratic party that their positions are effective in campaigns.
“One of the biggest final remaining humps for the progressive agenda is to demonstrate to the rest of the Democratic party that our approach is good for general election politics,” said Faiz Shakir, who is a consultant with Fight Corporate Monopolies and served as Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign manager.
Monica Klein, a Democratic strategist known for her work advising liberal candidates, said the coronavirus pandemic as well as the resulting economic downturn has pushed more voters to consider candidates with progressive policy positions.
“I think from a nationwide public health crisis that has been mishandled from both Republicans and establishment Democrats to the growing Black Lives Matter protests, more and more Americans are getting frustrated with the status quo, whether that is Republicans in Washington or establishment Democrats who are not providing bold enough solutions to the crises that we’re facing,” Klein said.
There are still more contests to come though which dangle the prospect of further wins.
In Massachusetts, political newcomer Ihssane Leckey is running in a crowded race to replace Congressman Joe Kennedy. Leckey, a former Wall Street regulator who immigrated to the US from Morocco at 20 and identifies as a democratic socialist, is running to help “change the face of Congress”.
These victories are a sign of hope in our country, that the people still have the power to change the course of our nation Ihssane Leckey
“These victories are a sign of hope in our country, that the people still have the power to change the course of our nation, away from fascism and into an inclusive democracy.”
She said the common thread between the string of recent progressive victories is that the candidates share the “lived experiences of the most vulnerable constituents in their districts”.
Leckey, the lone woman of color in the race who struggled through periods of poverty before becoming the first in her family to graduate from college, is running on a “justice agenda” which supports Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
She said the coronavirus pandemic had exposed the need for sweeping economic and social reform, and had helped change the minds of some voters in her district who may have supported these policies but did not understand their urgency.
“These are the issues of our time,” she said. “People were feeling the sting, even when they had a little more comfort before the pandemic. Now we’re here to ensure relief for everyone, and especially the most vulnerable.”


theguardian--2020-08-08--Cori Bush has proved progressives are gaining strength – and that gives me hope | Arwa Mahdawi

The Squad is only getting stronger Cori Bush used to be homeless – now she ’ s on her way to the House of Representatives .
On Tuesday the nurse , pastor and Black Lives Matters activist defeated the powerful long-term incumbent William Lacy Clay , a centrist , in Missouri ’ s Democratic primary election .
As Bush ’ s district is heavily Democratic , the progressive activist is almost guaranteed to win in November , and will become the first black woman to represent Missouri in Congress .
When Bush won a very strange thing happened to me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It has been hard to feel hopeful about politics lately .
The pandemic has accelerated already unconscionable inequality : billionaires have seen their wealth surge while the poor get poorer .
The inequality we ’ re seeing now , of course , is nothing compared with the hell that the climate crisis will unleash .
And yet the Democratic establishment doesn ’ t seem to see the urgency of the moment .
They keep telling progressives to calm down and carry on with business as usual ; that incrementalism rather than bold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you must water down your progressive views if you want to connect with the American voter .
Bush refused to do that .
She refused to water down her views on defunding the police ; she refused to cater to corporate interests ; and she refused to be cowed by underhand attacks .
When Clay criticized Bush for being sympathetic towards the non-violent Boycott , Divest , and Sanctions ( BDS ) movement , which seeks to pressure Israel to comply with international law , she did not back down .
“ Cori @ @ @ @ @ @ @ BDS movement , and she stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people , just as they have stood in solidarity with Black Americans fighting for their own lives , ” her campaign said days before the election .
Clay , who is part of a half-century political dynasty , levelled a number of disgusting personal attacks against Bush .
His campaign circulated a mailer stating that Bush had failed to pay taxes four times , been evicted three times and had her nursing license suspended .
But Bush ’ s personal history is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We need politicians who understand what it ’ s like to live paycheck to paycheck and get caught up in a cycle of predatory loans .
We need politicians who understand what it ’ s like to get into debt working for a nursing degree only to then have your license suspended because you couldn ’ t afford to pay state taxes .
( Bush ’ s nursing license was restored after she made her necessary payments . )
We need politicians who understand the urgency of the moment and are fighting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corporate interests .
“ Tonight , Missouri ’ s first has decided that an incremental approach isn ’ t going to work any longer , ” Bush declared at a victory party .
“ We decided that we the people have the answers , and we will lead from the frontlines.
” Bush ’ s victory wasn ’ t the only win American progressives have had lately .
In July Jamaal Bowman , a former teacher , ousted 16-term Eliot Engel , a committed centrist , in New York .
And this week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a landslide , in what was supposed to be a close primary .
“ Headlines said I was the most vulnerable member of the Squad , ” Tlaib tweeted .
“ My community responded last night and said our Squad is big .
It includes all who believe we must show up for each other and prioritize people over profits .
It ’ s here to stay , and it ’ s only getting bigger.
” For far too long centrists have sneeringly considered leftwing voices part of a bothersome fringe rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for example , has dismissed the progressive congresswomen known as the Squad as “ like , five people ” .
But , as is becoming increasingly clear , it ’ s a lot more than five people .
“ Progressives are on the move ” , Bernie Sanders tweeted on Wednesday .
“ Don ’ t let anyone fool you … we are transforming American politics .
The political revolution is gaining more and more support.
” Let ’ s hope the establishment is paying attention .
Rendle ’ s appointment brings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 500 firms to 38 , an all time high .
While women are often made CEOs when a company is going through a tough time ( a phenomenon known as the “ glass cliff ” ) , Rendle is taking up the mantle as sales of Clorox soar amid the pandemic .
Yet another example of how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives rent-free inside Trump ’ s empty head .
Experienced doctors are leaving the profession early because they are struggling with menopause symptoms and getting no support from their management or peers , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found .
A significant number of women surveyed said they would be “ ridiculed ” if they spoke about the menopause and worried bringing it up would damage their career .
Study measuring the attractiveness of women with endometriosis has been retracted I thought this was an Onion article when I first saw it .
Alas it is all too real .
It took seven years for the “ study ” to be removed .
The US air force now allows women to wear pants Until now women in the air force have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during formal ceremonies .
A cat that was detained at a high security prison in Sri Lanka on suspicion of smuggling drugs to inmates has reportedly escaped .
Police reckon the cat had been trained by the same cartel that once used an eagle to smuggle drugs and had hoped the sneaky feline would lead them to the purrpetrators .

Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday.
The Squad is only getting stronger
Cori Bush used to be homeless – now she’s on her way to the House of Representatives.
On Tuesday the nurse, pastor and Black Lives Matters activist defeated the powerful long-term incumbent William Lacy Clay, a centrist, in Missouri’s Democratic primary election. As Bush’s district is heavily Democratic, the progressive activist is almost guaranteed to win in November, and will become the first black woman to represent Missouri in Congress.
When Bush won a very strange thing happened to me: I felt a glimmer of hope. It has been hard to feel hopeful about politics lately. The pandemic has accelerated already unconscionable inequality: billionaires have seen their wealth surge while the poor get poorer. The inequality we’re seeing now, of course, is nothing compared with the hell that the climate crisis will unleash. And yet the Democratic establishment doesn’t seem to see the urgency of the moment. They keep telling progressives to calm down and carry on with business as usual; that incrementalism rather than bold ideas are the way forward. That you must water down your progressive views if you want to connect with the American voter.
Bush refused to do that. She refused to water down her views on defunding the police; she refused to cater to corporate interests; and she refused to be cowed by underhand attacks. When Clay criticized Bush for being sympathetic towards the non-violent Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to pressure Israel to comply with international law, she did not back down. “Cori Bush has always been sympathetic to the BDS movement, and she stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people, just as they have stood in solidarity with Black Americans fighting for their own lives,” her campaign said days before the election.
Clay, who is part of a half-century political dynasty, levelled a number of disgusting personal attacks against Bush. His campaign circulated a mailer stating that Bush had failed to pay taxes four times, been evicted three times and had her nursing license suspended. But Bush’s personal history is exactly why we need her in politics. We need politicians who understand what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck and get caught up in a cycle of predatory loans. We need politicians who understand what it’s like to get into debt working for a nursing degree only to then have your license suspended because you couldn’t afford to pay state taxes. (Bush’s nursing license was restored after she made her necessary payments.) We need politicians who understand the urgency of the moment and are fighting for people’s lives, not corporate interests.
“Tonight, Missouri’s first has decided that an incremental approach isn’t going to work any longer,” Bush declared at a victory party. “We decided that we the people have the answers, and we will lead from the frontlines.”
Bush’s victory wasn’t the only win American progressives have had lately. In July Jamaal Bowman, a former teacher, ousted 16-term Eliot Engel, a committed centrist, in New York. And this week congresswoman Rashida Tlaib beat her centrist opponent by a landslide, in what was supposed to be a close primary. “Headlines said I was the most vulnerable member of the Squad,” Tlaib tweeted. “My community responded last night and said our Squad is big. It includes all who believe we must show up for each other and prioritize people over profits. It’s here to stay, and it’s only getting bigger.”
For far too long centrists have sneeringly considered leftwing voices part of a bothersome fringe rather than a growing movement. Nancy Pelosi, for example, has dismissed the progressive congresswomen known as the Squad as “like, five people”. But, as is becoming increasingly clear, it’s a lot more than five people. “Progressives are on the move”, Bernie Sanders tweeted on Wednesday. “Don’t let anyone fool you … we are transforming American politics. The political revolution is gaining more and more support.” Let’s hope the establishment is paying attention.
Lisa Rendle named Clorox’s first female CEO
Rendle’s appointment brings the total number of women running Fortune 500 firms to 38, an all time high. While women are often made CEOs when a company is going through a tough time (a phenomenon known as the “glass cliff”), Rendle is taking up the mantle as sales of Clorox soar amid the pandemic.
Trump calls AOC ‘real beauty’ who ‘knows nothing’ about economy
Yet another example of how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives rent-free inside Trump’s empty head.
Female doctors in menopause retiring early due to sexism
Experienced doctors are leaving the profession early because they are struggling with menopause symptoms and getting no support from their management or peers, a study by the British Medical Association has found. A significant number of women surveyed said they would be “ridiculed” if they spoke about the menopause and worried bringing it up would damage their career.
Study measuring the attractiveness of women with endometriosis has been retracted
I thought this was an Onion article when I first saw it. Alas it is all too real. It took seven years for the “study” to be removed.
Nigeria’s first lesbian feature film goes online
LGBT Africans are growing “increasingly vocal and visible”, Reuters reports.
The US air force now allows women to wear pants
Until now women in the air force have only been able to wear floor-length skirts during formal ceremonies.
The week in paw-triarchy: drug smuggling cat escapes prison
A cat that was detained at a high security prison in Sri Lanka on suspicion of smuggling drugs to inmates has reportedly escaped. Police reckon the cat had been trained by the same cartel that once used an eagle to smuggle drugs and had hoped the sneaky feline would lead them to the purrpetrators.


theguardian--2020-08-08--Border agents are allowed to operate 100 miles inside the US. That should worry us | Todd Miller

If you were under the notion that America ’ s borders are our international boundary lines with Mexico and Canada , think again .
The US government ’ s notion of “ borders ” has long been much more legally expansive than most people realize ; the “ border ” is increasingly everywhere .
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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – and the extra-constitutional powers it brings – is increasingly everywhere .
• None Todd Miller is the author of Empire of Borders : The Expansion of the US Border Around the World and Border Patrol Nation : Dispatches From the Front Lines of Homeland Security .
He resides in Tucson , Arizona

If you were under the notion that America’s borders are our international boundary lines with Mexico and Canada, think again. The US government’s notion of “borders” has long been much more legally expansive than most people realize; the “border” is increasingly everywhere.
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. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has criticized this as an attempt to create a “constitution-free zone”, though the organization emphasizes that constitutional protections apply everywhere in the US, regardless of proximity to the border.
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
“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.


Brent Scowcroft obituary

Despite his long and influential career in the conduct of the US ’ s international affairs , Brent Scowcroft , who has died aged 95 , attracted little personal attention to himself .
This low profile was surprising enough in 1975 when , as national security adviser in the Gerald Ford administration , he organised the US ’ s evacuation from Saigon , the event that marked the end of the Vietnam war .
More remarkably , he remained as much in the shadows when recalled to the same job by the White House of George HW Bush 14 years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caught on the hop by the fall of the Berlin Wall , by the implosion of the Soviet Union , and by Saddam Hussein ’ s attack on Kuwait .
Yet he effectively superseded James Baker , the secretary of state , as manager of US foreign policy during this crucial period of modern history .
His undiminished standing with Bush Sr was reinforced in 1998 when he was credited as co-author of the president ’ s memoir A World Transformed , in which Baker ’ s role in US policy was barely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the highest levels of government came when he served as military assistant to Richard Nixon in 1972 , at the time of the president ’ s visits to China and the Soviet Union .
Nixon ’ s national security adviser , Henry Kissinger , chose Scowcroft as his deputy when Alexander Haig went on to a senior army post at the start of the following year .
Kissinger was then heavily engaged in the frantic shuttle diplomacy that preceded the Vietnam peace talks , becoming secretary of state as well from September 1973 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the running of the national security council .
Among other responsibilities , he regularly conducted the president ’ s daily intelligence briefing and , in the turmoil of the Watergate crisis and Ford ’ s succession to the presidency , Scowcroft became the obvious successor to Kissinger when he stepped down from the security side of his post in 1975 .
Much of the new security adviser ’ s time was inevitably taken up with the humiliating end to America ’ s involvement in Vietnam but he was also closely involved in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limitation treaty , eventually signed three years later by President Jimmy Carter but refused ratification by the US Senate .
Scowcroft sat out the Carter years ( 1977-81 ) as a private consultant , going on to serve as vice-chair of Kissinger Associates ( 1982-89 ) .
Since the Republican right viewed the arms reductions specified under Salt II as a sellout to the Soviet Union , he was also initially ignored by the Ronald Reagan administration .
But Reagan ’ s increasingly tangled strategic policy , highlighted by its failure to find @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MX missile , brought Scowcroft back into play in 1983 as chair of a special presidential commission on strategic weapons .
The commission ’ s report pleased no one but it confirmed Scowcroft in his view that the arrival of the MIRV – the multiple independent re-entry vehicle warheads that had been installed on the MX and made it capable of striking 10 separate locations – was dangerously destabilising .
He thought it might also undermine the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty .
He strongly advocated the development of a single-warhead replacement for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deployed in 1961 , and Congress duly authorised the project .
Scowcroft ’ s final duty for the Reagan administration was to serve on the Tower commission that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal , in which weapons illegally sold to Tehran helped fund the US ’ s equally illegal effort to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua .
Though the national security adviser , Admiral John Poindexter , resigned and his assistant , Colonel Oliver North , was sacked , Scowcroft argued there was no need for drastic reform of the NSC .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ faulty , ” he commented , “ it was that the structure was not used.
” When Bush Sr took over the White House in 1989 he brought Scowcroft back as head of the NSC .
The administration ’ s immediate preoccupations were first with the president ’ s visit to China and then with his plan for major superpower force reductions in Europe – a response to Mikhail Gorbachev ’ s offer the previous month to withdraw 10,000 Soviet tanks and 500,000 troops .
The Chinese visit was notable for its failure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the army brutally attacked Chinese students in Tiananmen Square after they had soured Gorbachev ’ s visit to Beijing , there was no more than a subdued response from the White House ( though it later emerged that Scowcroft was secretly sent to China “ to underscore US shock and concern ” ) .
Meanwhile , Scowcroft felt that Gorbachev was sufficiently bogged down in the domestic problems of perestroika that he could be ignored for the time being and he seemed to extend this blinkered view to the accelerating pressure for change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the new climate had come when Solidarity candidates swept the board in the first free Polish elections .
In spite of this , Scowcroft seemed totally to underestimate the significance of the parallel demonstrations in East Germany and the mass flight of its citizens into Hungary and Czechoslovakia .
When the demoralised and disorganised Erich Honecker regime eventually caved in on 9 November to announce the permanent opening of the Berlin Wall , Scowcroft ’ s intelligence failure was encapsulated in Bush Sr ’ s bizarre comment that : “ We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we are not trying to give anybody a hard time.
” In spite of this embarrassing episode Scowcroft continued to believe that , though Gorbachev had been loudly booed by the May Day throngs in Red Square and Boris Yeltsin had been elected chair of the Russian Supreme Soviet , the general situation in the Soviet Union would remain stable .
Then came Iraq ’ s invasion of Kuwait .
Scowcroft admitted he had dismissed Iraqi bellicosity as “ part of a policy of bluster ” and this misjudgment provoked the crisis that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Helsinki summit meeting with Gorbachev .
Having secured Soviet support for retaliatory action , Scowcroft and his staff became totally engrossed in preparations for the Desert Storm campaign .
Then the unification of Germany and the aftermath of the allied victory in Kuwait induced a euphoric state into which the steady crumbling of the Soviet empire , not only in the Baltic but in other non-Russian republics , barely impinged .
Scowcroft ’ s attention was largely on the technicalities of the strategic arms reduction treaty , designed to cut Soviet and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ensuing 20 years .
Bush Sr and Gorbachev signed Start I at the end of July 1991 : three weeks later outraged hardliners in the Soviet military and KGB , who echoed America ’ s rightwing Republicans in seeing any arms reductions as a sell-out to the enemy , mounted their attempted coup .
The White House had been given no clue of what was in the offing .
Fortunately it turned out to be a ludicrous bungle but , in its aftermath , the Soviet Union was formally dissolved in September and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later , in his State of the Union address , Bush Sr cancelled the Midgetman missile , stopped further production of the B-2 bomber and of the country ’ s most modern missile warhead and limited its advanced cruise missile arsenal .
However , when Bush Sr ’ s inept domestic policies cost him the November election Scowcroft ’ s days were , of course , also numbered .
But there was one last shot in the locker .
Just before Bush Sr handed over to Bill Clinton , he met Yeltsin to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Scowcroft had done so much to devise .
It specified the elimination of all MIRV land-based missiles within a decade .
These accumulated moves to reduce nuclear instability will probably be Scowcroft ’ s most enduring legacy .
Born in Ogden , Utah , Brent was the son of James Scowcroft , who ran a wholesale grocery business , and his wife , Lucille ( nee Ballantyne ) .
When he graduated from the US military academy at West Point , New York , in 1947 , he had a conventional forces career @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Air Force pilot , he was seriously injured a few months later while landing a faulty plane .
The accident had an unsettling effect on him and for the next two decades he repeatedly changed the course of his life .
Initially he opted for staff jobs in the air force , but then enrolled at Columbia University to study international relations .
Armed with his Columbia master ’ s ( 1953 ) , and already a specialist in Slavic languages , he returned to West Point to teach Russian history .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s assistant air attache in Belgrade , and moved again two years later to head the political science department at the US Air Academy in Colorado .
After a brief period at the Air Force ’ s Washington headquarters and a further teaching stint at the National War College he gained a Columbia doctorate ( 1967 ) and finally settled into the politico-military environment in which he was able to prosper .
His first move was to the Pentagon in 1968 when , at the age of 43 , he joined its international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through a succession of increasingly senior positions .
In 1971 , having by then risen to colonel , he was assigned to the White House to fill the highly sensitive role of Nixon ’ s military assistant .
On the eve of Nixon ’ s historic visit to China he was naturally assigned to the American delegation .
Unexpectedly he found he was the highest-ranking US military officer to have arrived in Beijing since the 1949 revolution and his work during the visit secured his promotion to brigadier-general .
That and his fluent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organise the president ’ s visit to Moscow , where , in 1972 , the idea of reciprocal reductions of US and Soviet forces in central Europe was first mooted .
From then on the promotion of arms reductions became Scowcroft ’ s continuing theme .
Once his full-time official involvement had come to an end , in 1994 he started his own international business advisory consultancy , the Scowcroft Group .
Thereafter he maintained the same discreet approach and moderate tone , his one very public intervention coming in 2002 as President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war in Iraq .
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece , Scowcroft advised against attacking Saddam , pointing to scant evidence of links to al-Qaida or 9/11 , and the risk that the US might “ seriously jeopardise , if not destroy , the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken ” .
But the son was not deterred by what his father ’ s adviser had to say .
His founding of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security in 2012 as part of the Atlantic Council thinktank served to assert his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cold war to an end .
In 1951 he married Marian Horner ; she died in 1995 .
He is survived by their daughter , Karen , and a granddaughter .

Despite his long and influential career in the conduct of the US’s international affairs, Brent Scowcroft, who has died aged 95, attracted little personal attention to himself. This low profile was surprising enough in 1975 when, as national security adviser in the Gerald Ford administration, he organised the US’s evacuation from Saigon, the event that marked the end of the Vietnam war.
More remarkably, he remained as much in the shadows when recalled to the same job by the White House of George HW Bush 14 years later. During that stint he was caught on the hop by the fall of the Berlin Wall, by the implosion of the Soviet Union, and by Saddam Hussein’s attack on Kuwait.
Yet he effectively superseded James Baker, the secretary of state, as manager of US foreign policy during this crucial period of modern history. His undiminished standing with Bush Sr was reinforced in 1998 when he was credited as co-author of the president’s memoir A World Transformed, in which Baker’s role in US policy was barely acknowledged.
Scowcroft, right, with Henry Kissinger, left, and Gerald Ford in 1974. Photograph: Charles Tasnadi/AP
Scowcroft’s entry to the highest levels of government came when he served as military assistant to Richard Nixon in 1972, at the time of the president’s visits to China and the Soviet Union. Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, chose Scowcroft as his deputy when Alexander Haig went on to a senior army post at the start of the following year.
Kissinger was then heavily engaged in the frantic shuttle diplomacy that preceded the Vietnam peace talks, becoming secretary of state as well from September 1973, so Scowcroft took over much of the running of the national security council.
Among other responsibilities, he regularly conducted the president’s daily intelligence briefing and, in the turmoil of the Watergate crisis and Ford’s succession to the presidency, Scowcroft became the obvious successor to Kissinger when he stepped down from the security side of his post in 1975.
Much of the new security adviser’s time was inevitably taken up with the humiliating end to America’s involvement in Vietnam but he was also closely involved in the preparation of the Salt II nuclear arms limitation treaty, eventually signed three years later by President Jimmy Carter but refused ratification by the US Senate.
Brent Scowcroft, right, with President HW Bush in 1991. Photograph: Barry Thumma/AP
Scowcroft sat out the Carter years (1977-81) as a private consultant, going on to serve as vice-chair of Kissinger Associates (1982-89). Since the Republican right viewed the arms reductions specified under Salt II as a sellout to the Soviet Union, he was also initially ignored by the Ronald Reagan administration.
But Reagan’s increasingly tangled strategic policy, highlighted by its failure to find a credible way of deploying the multi-warheaded MX missile, brought Scowcroft back into play in 1983 as chair of a special presidential commission on strategic weapons.
The commission’s report pleased no one but it confirmed Scowcroft in his view that the arrival of the MIRV – the multiple independent re-entry vehicle warheads that had been installed on the MX and made it capable of striking 10 separate locations – was dangerously destabilising. He thought it might also undermine the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. He strongly advocated the development of a single-warhead replacement for the ageing fleet of Minuteman missiles, first deployed in 1961, and Congress duly authorised the project.
Scowcroft’s final duty for the Reagan administration was to serve on the Tower commission that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal, in which weapons illegally sold to Tehran helped fund the US’s equally illegal effort to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Though the national security adviser, Admiral John Poindexter, resigned and his assistant, Colonel Oliver North, was sacked, Scowcroft argued there was no need for drastic reform of the NSC. “It was not that the structure was faulty,” he commented, “it was that the structure was not used.”
When Bush Sr took over the White House in 1989 he brought Scowcroft back as head of the NSC. The administration’s immediate preoccupations were first with the president’s visit to China and then with his plan for major superpower force reductions in Europe – a response to Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer the previous month to withdraw 10,000 Soviet tanks and 500,000 troops.
The Chinese visit was notable for its failure to mention human rights and, when the army brutally attacked Chinese students in Tiananmen Square after they had soured Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing, there was no more than a subdued response from the White House (though it later emerged that Scowcroft was secretly sent to China “to underscore US shock and concern”).
Meanwhile, Scowcroft felt that Gorbachev was sufficiently bogged down in the domestic problems of perestroika that he could be ignored for the time being and he seemed to extend this blinkered view to the accelerating pressure for change in eastern Europe.
The first indication of the new climate had come when Solidarity candidates swept the board in the first free Polish elections. In spite of this, Scowcroft seemed totally to underestimate the significance of the parallel demonstrations in East Germany and the mass flight of its citizens into Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
When the demoralised and disorganised Erich Honecker regime eventually caved in on 9 November to announce the permanent opening of the Berlin Wall, Scowcroft’s intelligence failure was encapsulated in Bush Sr’s bizarre comment that: “We’re handling it in a way where we are not trying to give anybody a hard time.”
In spite of this embarrassing episode Scowcroft continued to believe that, though Gorbachev had been loudly booed by the May Day throngs in Red Square and Boris Yeltsin had been elected chair of the Russian Supreme Soviet, the general situation in the Soviet Union would remain stable.
Then came Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Scowcroft admitted he had dismissed Iraqi bellicosity as “part of a policy of bluster” and this misjudgment provoked the crisis that took up much of Bush Sr’s Helsinki summit meeting with Gorbachev. Having secured Soviet support for retaliatory action, Scowcroft and his staff became totally engrossed in preparations for the Desert Storm campaign.
Then the unification of Germany and the aftermath of the allied victory in Kuwait induced a euphoric state into which the steady crumbling of the Soviet empire, not only in the Baltic but in other non-Russian republics, barely impinged. Scowcroft’s attention was largely on the technicalities of the strategic arms reduction treaty, designed to cut Soviet and US nuclear weapons by half over the ensuing 20 years.
Bush Sr and Gorbachev signed Start I at the end of July 1991: three weeks later outraged hardliners in the Soviet military and KGB, who echoed America’s rightwing Republicans in seeing any arms reductions as a sell-out to the enemy, mounted their attempted coup. The White House had been given no clue of what was in the offing. Fortunately it turned out to be a ludicrous bungle but, in its aftermath, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved in September and Gorbachev resigned on 25 December.
Days later, in his State of the Union address, Bush Sr cancelled the Midgetman missile, stopped further production of the B-2 bomber and of the country’s most modern missile warhead and limited its advanced cruise missile arsenal. However, when Bush Sr’s inept domestic policies cost him the November election Scowcroft’s days were, of course, also numbered.
But there was one last shot in the locker. Just before Bush Sr handed over to Bill Clinton, he met Yeltsin to sign the Start II treaty, which Scowcroft had done so much to devise. It specified the elimination of all MIRV land-based missiles within a decade. These accumulated moves to reduce nuclear instability will probably be Scowcroft’s most enduring legacy.
Born in Ogden, Utah, Brent was the son of James Scowcroft, who ran a wholesale grocery business, and his wife, Lucille (nee Ballantyne). When he graduated from the US military academy at West Point, New York, in 1947, he had a conventional forces career in mind. Commissioned as an US Air Force pilot, he was seriously injured a few months later while landing a faulty plane. The accident had an unsettling effect on him and for the next two decades he repeatedly changed the course of his life.
Initially he opted for staff jobs in the air force, but then enrolled at Columbia University to study international relations. Armed with his Columbia master’s (1953), and already a specialist in Slavic languages, he returned to West Point to teach Russian history. In 1959 he became the American embassy’s assistant air attache in Belgrade, and moved again two years later to head the political science department at the US Air Academy in Colorado.
After a brief period at the Air Force’s Washington headquarters and a further teaching stint at the National War College he gained a Columbia doctorate (1967) and finally settled into the politico-military environment in which he was able to prosper.
His first move was to the Pentagon in 1968 when, at the age of 43, he joined its international security staff and worked his way rapidly through a succession of increasingly senior positions. In 1971, having by then risen to colonel, he was assigned to the White House to fill the highly sensitive role of Nixon’s military assistant.
On the eve of Nixon’s historic visit to China he was naturally assigned to the American delegation. Unexpectedly he found he was the highest-ranking US military officer to have arrived in Beijing since the 1949 revolution and his work during the visit secured his promotion to brigadier-general.
That and his fluent Russian made him a natural choice to organise the president’s visit to Moscow, where, in 1972, the idea of reciprocal reductions of US and Soviet forces in central Europe was first mooted. From then on the promotion of arms reductions became Scowcroft’s continuing theme.
Once his full-time official involvement had come to an end, in 1994 he started his own international business advisory consultancy, the Scowcroft Group. Thereafter he maintained the same discreet approach and moderate tone, his one very public intervention coming in 2002 as President George W Bush was preparing for further war in Iraq.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Scowcroft advised against attacking Saddam, pointing to scant evidence of links to al-Qaida or 9/11, and the risk that the US might “seriously jeopardise, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken”. But the son was not deterred by what his father’s adviser had to say.
His founding of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security in 2012 as part of the Atlantic Council thinktank served to assert his belief in the alliances that had brought the cold war to an end.
In 1951 he married Marian Horner; she died in 1995. He is survived by their daughter, Karen, and a granddaughter.


theguardian--2020-08-09--Big oil remembers 'friend' Trump with millions in campaign funds

In mid-June the oil pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren hosted a fundraising bash at his palatial Dallas , Texas , home that drew the presence of Donald Trump and raised $ 10m for the US president ’ s campaign coffers .
Warren ’ s fundraising gusher for Trump occurred after he and his wife had donated a hefty $ 1.7m since 2019 to Trump Victory , a fundraising vehicle for Trump ’ s re-election and the Republican National Committee , according to the non-partisan Open Secrets group .
All this campaign largesse comes after Warren ’ s company Energy Transfer notched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office , winning regulatory approval to move ahead with the controversial and legally embattled Dakota Access pipeline .
The Dallas billionaire ’ s ties with Trump were boosted when Trump in 2017 tapped Rick Perry to be energy secretary ; a former Texas governor , Perry sat on the board of an Energy Transfer subsidiary before his energy post , and afterwards in early 2020 joined another Energy Transfer board .
Warren ’ s fundraising skills , personal checks and access to top officials , underscore how fossil fuel billionaires and other energy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oklahoma , have opened their wallets wide and raised cash to re-elect Trump , after three-plus years of enjoying Trump ’ s sweeping energy deregulation and tax cuts .
Since Trump took office his favorite Super Pac , America First Action , has raked in millions of fossil fuel dollars .
The Super Pac has received $ 1m from the shale oil billionaire Harold Hamm and his company Continental Resources , and another $ 1m from the coal mogul Robert Murray , who runs the eponymous Murray Energy , according to Open Secrets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in $ 500,000 from the coal billionaire Joe Craft of Alliance Resource Partners , $ 750,000 from the Texas oilman Syed Javaid Anwar of Midland Energy , and $ 500,000 from John Catsimatidis , a top investor in United Refining Co , as Open Secrets and news reports show .
Moreover , Trump tried to reassure his fossil fuel friends of his support in early April when the pandemic was causing them economic pain .
Trump huddled at the White House with a select group of industry moguls including Hamm , Warren and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ideas for new federal relief .
Afterwards , Trump pledged he would “ make funds available to these very important companies ” .
Like Warren and Hamm , Hildebrand has given big bucks to help Trump .
Hildebrand , who runs the Hilcorp Oil , and his wife have given $ 775,000 to the Trump campaign and allied committees since 2017 , campaign records show .
Energy analysts see ample reasons why fossil fuel honchos have been staunch Trump donors .
“ The fossil fuel industry and its leaders will continue to support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he can to continue fossil fuel dominance of the American energy sector , ” said David Bookbinder , the general counsel for the non-partisan Niskanen Center , which has advocated for more alternative fuels .
To be sure , were the presumptive Democratic nominee , Joe Biden , to win the presidency it would be a sharp break with Trump ’ s pro-fossil fuels agenda .
Biden has endorsed a $ 2tn green energy plan and has indicated he would roll back many of Trump ’ s regulatory breaks for fossil fuel companies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate agreement of 2015 that aims to fight global warming by curbing fossil fuel emissions more aggressively .
But Trump , who has called manmade climate change a “ hoax ” , denounced the accord as a “ total disaster ” for US competitiveness and withdrew the US from the agreement effective 4 November , the day after the election .
Biden has pledged that if he is elected , the US would rejoin .
Little wonder that Trump Victory , the joint fundraising committee of Trump ’ s campaign and the RNC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fossil fuel donors in 2019-2020 , while its counterpart Biden Victory has raised a meager $ 40,465 from fossil fuel donors in the same period , according to Open Secrets .
Still , Biden ’ s consistent lead in recent national polls coupled with Trump ’ s fears of losing any more ground to the challenger have kept him pressing fossil fuel allies for more funds , and reassuring them with new initiatives .
On 29 July , Trump returned to Texas for more fundraisers in the fracking stronghold of Odessa which reportedly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Trump Victory .
Trump ’ s visit also showcased his oil industry bona fides by visiting and getting a photo op with two CEOs at a leading fracking company , Double Eagle Energy Oil Rig , in Midland where he enthused there were “ a lot of big beautiful rights behind me ” .
Trump ’ s latest Texas swing underscored its status as a must-win state that went heavily for Trump in 2016 but where some recent polls have shown him in a tight race with Biden .
Trump also let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more intimate setting : for $ 100,000 donors could join a roundtable policy discussion with Trump , and two top cabinet officials from energy and interior .
But perhaps to ensure that his fealty to fossil fuels can ’ t be doubted , Trump in mid-July announced major changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act to help speed up reviews for large pipeline and infrastructure projects .
Bill Miller , a major industry lobbyist and consultant in Austin , told the Associated Press that while many fossil fuel companies were hurt by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had begun to recover .
“ It ’ s the kind of industry that remembers their friends through thick and thin , and Trump is their friend .
”

In mid-June the oil pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren hosted a fundraising bash at his palatial Dallas, Texas, home that drew the presence of Donald Trump and raised $10m for the US president’s campaign coffers.
Warren’s fundraising gusher for Trump occurred after he and his wife had donated a hefty $1.7m since 2019 to Trump Victory, a fundraising vehicle for Trump’s re-election and the Republican National Committee, according to the non-partisan Open Secrets group.
All this campaign largesse comes after Warren’s company Energy Transfer notched a major win soon after Trump took office, winning regulatory approval to move ahead with the controversial and legally embattled Dakota Access pipeline.
The Dallas billionaire’s ties with Trump were boosted when Trump in 2017 tapped Rick Perry to be energy secretary; a former Texas governor, Perry sat on the board of an Energy Transfer subsidiary before his energy post, and afterwards in early 2020 joined another Energy Transfer board.
Warren’s fundraising skills, personal checks and access to top officials, underscore how fossil fuel billionaires and other energy moguls from Texas to New York to Oklahoma, have opened their wallets wide and raised cash to re-elect Trump, after three-plus years of enjoying Trump’s sweeping energy deregulation and tax cuts.
Since Trump took office his favorite Super Pac, America First Action, has raked in millions of fossil fuel dollars. The Super Pac has received $1m from the shale oil billionaire Harold Hamm and his company Continental Resources, and another $1m from the coal mogul Robert Murray, who runs the eponymous Murray Energy, according to Open Secrets.
The Super Pac has also pulled in $500,000 from the coal billionaire Joe Craft of Alliance Resource Partners, $750,000 from the Texas oilman Syed Javaid Anwar of Midland Energy, and $500,000 from John Catsimatidis, a top investor in United Refining Co, as Open Secrets and news reports show.
Moreover, Trump tried to reassure his fossil fuel friends of his support in early April when the pandemic was causing them economic pain. Trump huddled at the White House with a select group of industry moguls including Hamm, Warren and the Texas oilman Jeff Hildebrand to solicit ideas for new federal relief.
Afterwards, Trump pledged he would “make funds available to these very important companies”.
An oil drilling operation near New Town, North Dakota, on 1 July. Under Trump the Dakota Access pipeline received regulatory approval. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA
Like Warren and Hamm, Hildebrand has given big bucks to help Trump. Hildebrand, who runs the Hilcorp Oil, and his wife have given $775,000 to the Trump campaign and allied committees since 2017, campaign records show.
Energy analysts see ample reasons why fossil fuel honchos have been staunch Trump donors.
“The fossil fuel industry and its leaders will continue to support Donald Trump because he will do anything he can to continue fossil fuel dominance of the American energy sector,” said David Bookbinder, the general counsel for the non-partisan Niskanen Center, which has advocated for more alternative fuels.
To be sure, were the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, to win the presidency it would be a sharp break with Trump’s pro-fossil fuels agenda. Biden has endorsed a $2tn green energy plan and has indicated he would roll back many of Trump’s regulatory breaks for fossil fuel companies.
Biden also has championed the Paris climate agreement of 2015 that aims to fight global warming by curbing fossil fuel emissions more aggressively. But Trump, who has called manmade climate change a “hoax”, denounced the accord as a “total disaster” for US competitiveness and withdrew the US from the agreement effective 4 November, the day after the election.
Biden has pledged that if he is elected, the US would rejoin.
Little wonder that Trump Victory, the joint fundraising committee of Trump’s campaign and the RNC, has raked in $9.3m from fossil fuel donors in 2019-2020, while its counterpart Biden Victory has raised a meager $40,465 from fossil fuel donors in the same period, according to Open Secrets.
Still, Biden’s consistent lead in recent national polls coupled with Trump’s fears of losing any more ground to the challenger have kept him pressing fossil fuel allies for more funds, and reassuring them with new initiatives.
Donald Trump adjusts his jacket as he stands with Double Eagle Energy co-CEOs Cody Campbell, left, and John Sellers in Midland, Texas. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
On 29 July, Trump returned to Texas for more fundraisers in the fracking stronghold of Odessa which reportedly was expected to haul in $7m for Trump Victory.
Trump’s visit also showcased his oil industry bona fides by visiting and getting a photo op with two CEOs at a leading fracking company, Double Eagle Energy Oil Rig, in Midland where he enthused there were “a lot of big beautiful rights behind me”.
Trump’s latest Texas swing underscored its status as a must-win state that went heavily for Trump in 2016 but where some recent polls have shown him in a tight race with Biden.
Trump also let his Texas supporters talk policy in a more intimate setting: for $100,000 donors could join a roundtable policy discussion with Trump, and two top cabinet officials from energy and interior.
But perhaps to ensure that his fealty to fossil fuels can’t be doubted, Trump in mid-July announced major changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act to help speed up reviews for large pipeline and infrastructure projects.
Bill Miller, a major industry lobbyist and consultant in Austin, told the Associated Press that while many fossil fuel companies were hurt by the pandemic, parts of the industry had begun to recover. “It’s the kind of industry that remembers their friends through thick and thin, and Trump is their friend.”