motherjones--2020-02-05--Trump Promised to Eradicate HIV at Last Year’s SOTU. So Far, His Results Are Meh.

At last year ’ s State of the Union Address , President Donald Trump pledged to end the spread of HIV in the United States by 2030 .
A year later , his chances of success are still TBD .
Shortly after the speech , the Trump administration requested $ 291 million for a new initiative called “ Ending the HIV Epidemic : A Plan for America.
” The plan called for a significant increase in funding to domestic HIV prevention and treatment programs , with those funds—as well as other resources—primarily going to areas with the highest rates of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s original announcement , Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar estimated the program would “ reduce new infections by 75 percent in the next five years and by 90 percent in the next ten years , averting more than 250,000 HIV infections in that span.
” The funding was approved in December and has only just now started to flow down to the 50–plus communities it ’ s intended for .
In the meantime , the CDC and Health Resources & Services Administration released supplemental funding to kickstart the president ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ program called Ready , Set , PrEP , which provides free pre-exposure prophylaxis medication to up to 200,000 uninsured people each year .
Those are , undeniably , steps in the right direction .
But on their own , they ’ ll only go so far , says Jen Kates , director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation .
That ’ s because Trump ’ s substantial health care rollbacks may put HIV-positive people at risk .
In the past year , the Trump administration has proposed cutting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ HIV eradication programs , and an additional $ 63 million from a housing subsidy program specifically for HIV-positive Americans ( Congress denied the cuts and is still funding the programs in full ) .
The administration also argued to overturn the Affordable Care Act , including its legal protections for those with preexisting conditions .
Prior to ACA , people that had been diagnosed with HIV were often considered uninsurable .
It has also enacted a Title X gag rule , which prohibits community clinics that receive federal family-planning funds from referring patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which often also provide vital HIV-related care , have since withdrawn from the program , including more than 200 in regions hardest hit by the HIV epidemic .
In 2018 , Trump ’ s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services created additional barriers to Medicaid , such as work requirements , despite the fact that the program is the primary source of health insurance for HIV positive people .
“ HIV and HIV risk don ’ t exist in a vacuum , ” Kates said .
“ All of those other steps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same community that this initiative is trying to reach.
” And that ’ s to say nothing of some of the key figures in the Trump administration ’ s regrettable history on HIV .
As Mother Jones wrote last year , as governor of Indiana , Vice President Mike Pence “ ignored public health officials ’ warnings about the state ’ s HIV outbreak , opting at first ‘ to pray ‘ instead.
” Kates says it ’ s still too early to tell what effects the $ 291 million will have on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been allocated , individual localities will submit proposals for how they ’ ll actually use it .
She says the increased funding is significant , but without successful local strategies and continued fiscal support , the initiative ’ s success is far from guaranteed .
“ The initial amount requested was was certainly an increase , but it ’ s still not enough to reach the ambitious goals of this initiative .
Will that amount be ramped up [ next year ] ?
We ’ ll find out next week when the @ @ @ @ @

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At last year’s State of the Union Address, President Donald Trump pledged to end the spread of HIV in the United States by 2030. A year later, his chances of success are still TBD.
Shortly after the speech, the Trump administration requested $291 million for a new initiative called “Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America.” The plan called for a significant increase in funding to domestic HIV prevention and treatment programs, with those funds—as well as other resources—primarily going to areas with the highest rates of new HIV infections. In the initiative’s original announcement, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar estimated the program would “reduce new infections by 75 percent in the next five years and by 90 percent in the next ten years, averting more than 250,000 HIV infections in that span.”
The funding was approved in December and has only just now started to flow down to the 50–plus communities it’s intended for. In the meantime, the CDC and Health Resources & Services Administration released supplemental funding to kickstart the president’s initiative. HHS also launched a program called Ready, Set, PrEP, which provides free pre-exposure prophylaxis medication to up to 200,000 uninsured people each year.
Those are, undeniably, steps in the right direction. But on their own, they’ll only go so far, says Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s because Trump’s substantial health care rollbacks may put HIV-positive people at risk.
In the past year, the Trump administration has proposed cutting more than $1.7 billion from global HIV eradication programs, and an additional $63 million from a housing subsidy program specifically for HIV-positive Americans (Congress denied the cuts and is still funding the programs in full). The administration also argued to overturn the Affordable Care Act, including its legal protections for those with preexisting conditions. Prior to ACA, people that had been diagnosed with HIV were often considered uninsurable. It has also enacted a Title X gag rule, which prohibits community clinics that receive federal family-planning funds from referring patients to abortion services. Hundreds of clinics, which often also provide vital HIV-related care, have since withdrawn from the program, including more than 200 in regions hardest hit by the HIV epidemic.
In 2018, Trump’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services created additional barriers to Medicaid, such as work requirements, despite the fact that the program is the primary source of health insurance for HIV positive people.
“HIV and HIV risk don’t exist in a vacuum,” Kates said. “All of those other steps could pose real barriers for the very same community that this initiative is trying to reach.”
And that’s to say nothing of some of the key figures in the Trump administration’s regrettable history on HIV. As Mother Jones wrote last year, as governor of Indiana, Vice President Mike Pence “ignored public health officials’ warnings about the state’s HIV outbreak, opting at first ‘to pray‘ instead.”
Kates says it’s still too early to tell what effects the $291 million will have on HIV rates. Now that the funding has been allocated, individual localities will submit proposals for how they’ll actually use it. She says the increased funding is significant, but without successful local strategies and continued fiscal support, the initiative’s success is far from guaranteed.
“The initial amount requested was was certainly an increase, but it’s still not enough to reach the ambitious goals of this initiative. Will that amount be ramped up [next year]? We’ll find out next week when the budget comes out.”


motherjones--2020-02-05--Iowa Shows How Big Tech’s Disinformation Promises Are a Big Failure

Facebook and Twitter failed the first big disinformation test of the 2020 elections .
Hours before this year ’ s 2020 Democratic primary season officially kicked off with Monday night ’ s Iowa caucuses , a right-wing conspiracy claiming voter fraud in Iowa began rippling across conservative Twitter and Facebook communities , all stemming from a “ report ” by Judicial Watch .
The right-wing activist group alleged that “ Eight Iowa counties have more voter registrations than citizens old enough to register.
” ( Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate , a conservative Republican who has pushed for strict @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claim . )
But over the next several hours , Judicial Watch ’ s claim about voting irregularities went viral anyway .
Tom Fitton , the organization ’ s president , wrote a tweet about the claim that got 6,000 retweets ; one from Fox News ’ s Sean Hannity earned another 4,000 .
But it really caught traction when Charlie Kirk—the leader of the youth-oriented , pro-Trump group Turning Point USA—repeated the claims without attribution , accruing over 40,000 retweets .
As the debunked information was spiraling out of control , Facebook @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very slowly , to stymie it .
Facebook began showing warnings to users trying to share the Judicial Watch report and to users trying to share other stories citing the conservative activist group .
But they only did so hours after the claims had gone viral .
Judicial Watch was also able to buy a Facebook ad promoting a post about the report , which the company left up for several hours .
Twitter told reporters that tweets promoting Judicial Watch ’ s conspiracy claims , which seemed designed to erode faith in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violate its policies against election-related misinformation because they didn ’ t “ suppress voter turnout or mislead people about when , where , or how to vote.
” While the false claims about voter registration died down slightly with the evening start of the caucuses , the delayed reporting of the results , spurred by questions about a mobile app that was supposed to help tally the results , spurred a second wave of right-wing election conspiracies .
President Donald Trump ’ s 2020 reelection campaign manager , Brad Parscale , alongside others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Committee , began saying or suggesting that the delay was evidence the election was rigged .
Their baseless claims were also widely shared and retweeted .
After 2016 , technology companies had promised to be ready , repeatedly saying that they would work to avoid the same mistakes that they made during the 2016 election .
That cycle was plagued with disinformation , coming from from both shady , small businesses trying to put out fake divisive content to rake in ad money , as well as a Russian state-sponsored operation to influence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by tech companies .
Despite such assurances , they again failed what should have been a relatively easy test .
The disinformation spread from a handful of visible , high-profile sources .
They used tactics that could have been anticipated , as they have been deployed in the past when conservative users whipped up conspiracies that a 2018 caravan of migrants bound through Mexico for the U.S. was a Soros funded operation , and that bomb scares targeting liberal elites were a false flag .
Facebook and Twitter have had time to observe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respond—but they somehow didn ’ t .
Both companies say they ’ ve been working hard to create technical mechanisms to spot and stop nefarious groups trying to manipulate their platforms to spread political misinformation .
And in certain related areas , they ’ ve been relatively effective .
Facebook and Twitter , with a few exceptions , appear to be proficient in identifying and taking down foreign and for-profit influence networks .
This suggests that technological solutions to enforce many of the rules on their platforms can work .
But the social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out how to meaningfully update their policies to establish the frameworks regarding the types of content they target .
And as it stands , those policies leave massive loopholes that U.S. citizens acting in bad faith can take advantage of—and often do .
Facebook has clearly and publicly been unwilling to scrutinize or reassess such gaps .
During an insipid and circumspect speech at Georgetown in October , Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg essentially spent the entirety of his remarks reiterating that his company has no interest in changing the anything-goes aspects of its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alter the flow of information on Facebook , even if it means misinformation can spread freely .
Jack Dorsey , the CEO of Twitter , has expressed similar sentiments .
There ’ s likely one main reason for this .
Dipayan Ghosh—an academic at the Shorenstein Center on Media , Politics , and Public Policy and a former employee on Facebook ’ s Washington , D.C.-based privacy and public policy team—says his old colleagues don ’ t want to rock the boat with conservatives in a way that would threaten the corporate bottom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protecting the company ’ s interests in the face of conservatives in this country , ” he says .
Facebook maintains its decisions about political content and advertising aren ’ t motivated by profit because political advertising makes up a very small percentage of its total revenue .
That latter claim is true , but Ghosh says its misleading : the business worry isn ’ t that conservatives will no longer advertise on Facebook , it ’ s the “ concern that Trump and Republicans could turn on these companies and try to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ platforms are now comparatively so much better at handling foreign misinformation .
The repercussions are so much smaller because both Republicans and Democrats have expressed opposition to foreign political influence on the internet .
Until the social media platforms are willing to call out the Sean Hannitys , the Charlie Kirks , or anyone else involved in U.S. politics who abuses their platforms , they will be making their products available to spread falsehoods targeting residents of their own country .
Unless that changes , no matter how good their anti-disinformation technology becomes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ again .

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
Facebook and Twitter failed the first big disinformation test of the 2020 elections.
Hours before this year’s 2020 Democratic primary season officially kicked off with Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, a right-wing conspiracy claiming voter fraud in Iowa began rippling across conservative Twitter and Facebook communities, all stemming from a “report” by Judicial Watch.
They again failed what should have been a relatively easy test.
The right-wing activist group alleged that “Eight Iowa counties have more voter registrations than citizens old enough to register.” (Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a conservative Republican who has pushed for strict voter ID laws, quickly debunked the claim.) But over the next several hours, Judicial Watch’s claim about voting irregularities went viral anyway. Tom Fitton, the organization’s president, wrote a tweet about the claim that got 6,000 retweets; one from Fox News’s Sean Hannity earned another 4,000. But it really caught traction when Charlie Kirk—the leader of the youth-oriented, pro-Trump group Turning Point USA—repeated the claims without attribution, accruing over 40,000 retweets.
As the debunked information was spiraling out of control, Facebook and Twitter were doing very little, very slowly, to stymie it.
Facebook began showing warnings to users trying to share the Judicial Watch report and to users trying to share other stories citing the conservative activist group. But they only did so hours after the claims had gone viral. Judicial Watch was also able to buy a Facebook ad promoting a post about the report, which the company left up for several hours.
Twitter told reporters that tweets promoting Judicial Watch’s conspiracy claims, which seemed designed to erode faith in Iowa’s process, did not violate its policies against election-related misinformation because they didn’t “suppress voter turnout or mislead people about when, where, or how to vote.”
While the false claims about voter registration died down slightly with the evening start of the caucuses, the delayed reporting of the results, spurred by questions about a mobile app that was supposed to help tally the results, spurred a second wave of right-wing election conspiracies.
President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign manager, Brad Parscale, alongside others from the campaign and the Republican National Committee, began saying or suggesting that the delay was evidence the election was rigged. Their baseless claims were also widely shared and retweeted.
After 2016, technology companies had promised to be ready, repeatedly saying that they would work to avoid the same mistakes that they made during the 2016 election. That cycle was plagued with disinformation, coming from from both shady, small businesses trying to put out fake divisive content to rake in ad money, as well as a Russian state-sponsored operation to influence the election—both of which spread completely unmitigated by tech companies.
Despite such assurances, they again failed what should have been a relatively easy test. The disinformation spread from a handful of visible, high-profile sources. They used tactics that could have been anticipated, as they have been deployed in the past when conservative users whipped up conspiracies that a 2018 caravan of migrants bound through Mexico for the U.S. was a Soros funded operation, and that bomb scares targeting liberal elites were a false flag. Facebook and Twitter have had time to observe, learn, and develop ways to respond—but they somehow didn’t.
Both companies say they’ve been working hard to create technical mechanisms to spot and stop nefarious groups trying to manipulate their platforms to spread political misinformation. And in certain related areas, they’ve been relatively effective. Facebook and Twitter, with a few exceptions, appear to be proficient in identifying and taking down foreign and for-profit influence networks.
“It’s about protecting the company’s interests.”
This suggests that technological solutions to enforce many of the rules on their platforms can work. But the social media giants still haven’t figured out how to meaningfully update their policies to establish the frameworks regarding the types of content they target.
And as it stands, those policies leave massive loopholes that U.S. citizens acting in bad faith can take advantage of—and often do. Facebook has clearly and publicly been unwilling to scrutinize or reassess such gaps. During an insipid and circumspect speech at Georgetown in October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg essentially spent the entirety of his remarks reiterating that his company has no interest in changing the anything-goes aspects of its philosophy or making structural changes that would alter the flow of information on Facebook, even if it means misinformation can spread freely. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, has expressed similar sentiments.
There’s likely one main reason for this. Dipayan Ghosh—an academic at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy and a former employee on Facebook’s Washington, D.C.-based privacy and public policy team—says his old colleagues don’t want to rock the boat with conservatives in a way that would threaten the corporate bottom line. “It’s about protecting the company’s interests in the face of conservatives in this country,” he says.
Facebook maintains its decisions about political content and advertising aren’t motivated by profit because political advertising makes up a very small percentage of its total revenue. That latter claim is true, but Ghosh says its misleading: the business worry isn’t that conservatives will no longer advertise on Facebook, it’s the “concern that Trump and Republicans could turn on these companies and try to regulate them.”
This would explain why platforms are now comparatively so much better at handling foreign misinformation. The repercussions are so much smaller because both Republicans and Democrats have expressed opposition to foreign political influence on the internet.
Until the social media platforms are willing to call out the Sean Hannitys, the Charlie Kirks, or anyone else involved in U.S. politics who abuses their platforms, they will be making their products available to spread falsehoods targeting residents of their own country. Unless that changes, no matter how good their anti-disinformation technology becomes, what happened on Monday will happen again.


motherjones--2020-02-05--My Surreal Afternoon With Donald Trump’s Favorite Black Supporter

Before Kanye West posted photos of his MAGA hat , and before anyone had ever heard of the video bloggers Diamond and Silk , there was Michael the Black Man .
If you ’ ve ever watched a Donald Trump rally , you ’ ve almost certainly seen Michael , standing as close as he can get to the president , waving his BLACKS FOR TRUMP sign , wearing a white T-shirt that proclaims with promiscuous capitalization : “ TRUMP & Republicans Are Not Racist.
” He became such a consistent ponytailed presence at Trump events—by his own count he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the last four years—that Kenan Thompson once played him in a Saturday Night Live sketch .
( Thompson ’ s version of Michael held signs reading “ BLACKS FOR WHITES ” and “ CASH 4 GOLD.
” ) He ’ s gone by the names Maurice Woodside , Michael Symonette , and Mikael Israel , but now he prefers to be called Michael the Black Man .
He ’ s a peculiar character on the fringe of American politics , a part-time musician and club promoter who hosts a radio show on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He also has several websites promoting various religious and political conspiracy theories , and he ’ s friendly with Republican leaders across South Florida .
A video on his site shows Florida Sen. Rick Scott , back when he was still governor , telling Michael , “ I saw you on TV with Trump .
You did a good job.
” Michael also has pictures of himself with Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Rep. Allen West .
The president has singled him out at rallies to thank him .
At a 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Michael from the stage .
“ I love that sign , ” he said into the microphone .
“ ‘ Blacks for Trump , ’ I love that sign .
Thank you !
” At another campaign event , in Lakeland , Florida , Trump held up one of Michael ’ s signs , waved it , then kissed it .
Over the years , several reporters have taken notice and published stories examining Michael ’ s past , including his jarring criminal history , but I wanted to know more about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Republican Party that ’ s practically anathema to African Americans .
( In most polls , Trump ’ s approval rating among Black people is somewhere between 12 and 20 percent , with a vast majority consistently disapproving . )
How did he become the “ Blacks for Trump ” guy ?
What ’ s it like being one of the only Black faces in a sea of white at those rallies ?
After all , as the election cycle gears up , we ’ re going to be seeing a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So I reached out to him through a number listed on one of his websites .
After a couple short conversations on the phone , he invited me to come down to Miami to interview him at home .
We ended up discussing everything from how he became a Republican to where his money comes from to the time in the ’ 80s and ’ 90s when he was in a murderous Black supremacist cult and went on trial for allegedly stabbing a man in the eye with a stick and beating another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we met , Michael was living in an expansive , ’ 80s-chic mansion in a posh Miami neighborhood not far from the beach .
The house was surrounded by palm trees and a tall white wall with a security gate .
There was a dock on the canal out back .
From a distance it looked like an immaculate property—the county estimated the value at $ 1.4 million—but as I got closer I realized the entire building was waterlogged : warped plaster and rust-colored stains on the outside walls , red tiles missing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ massive cracks in the driveway cement .
On the day of my visit , there was a Rolls-Royce parked out front but no working air conditioning inside .
( I would later learn that the house was in foreclosure . )
In the living room , he had elegant , worn leather furniture , a fish tank half filled with foggy water , a piano , and an entertainment center with a muted TV turned to Fox News .
When I showed up , Michael told his associates to start recording me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ couch , one holding a video camera , the other holding a phone .
Three other guys , all of them older Black men , sat in chairs nearby , watching and nodding along as Michael spoke .
He never told me who they were , and they never introduced themselves .
Once in a while they clapped or muttered affirmatives like you might hear during a church sermon or a political speech .
Soon the man holding the phone got tired and sat down .
And with good reason .
What I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ visit quickly turned into one of the most surreal conversations I ’ ve ever had .
Michael is frenetic when he talks , going on for long stretches without pausing , skipping from topic to topic—within the span of a minute he might quote Trump , curse Hillary Clinton , and reference the Book of Ezekiel .
To start , Michael wanted me to know that , no , Donald Trump doesn ’ t pay him to come to rallies .
And , no , nobody asks him to stand onstage behind the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ camera .
Sitting on the old leather couch in his warm , muggy living room , Michael told me that he gets in line early , sometimes a day in advance , and then spends all night waiting .
And he said there are often dozens of other Black people at those Trump events , “ but they stay on the edges because they don ’ t wan na be seen.
” Michael likes to be seen , and he likes to share his views on politics and religion : a blend of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Testament interpretations .
He also likes to share his personal story .
He grew up in Miami in the ’ 60s at a time of strife and transformation , when the civil rights movement and an influx of immigrants set the backdrop for a number of racial uprisings .
His father was a Republican , Michael said , because GOP politicians would come to the nightclub he owned .
“ He used to brag on Nixon , and he loved Reagan , ” Michael told me .
“ You know you can ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the late ’ 70s , Michael saw the miniseries Roots .
He remembers the image of LeVar Burton in shackles , the scenes of Black people being whipped .
He says this was what led him to hate all white people .
It was around that time , he told me , that he briefly became a Muslim , but he abandoned the faith after he met a man named Moses Israel .
“ He gave me a flyer , ” Michael told me , “ and said , ‘ The white man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hulon Mitchell Jr. , in Oklahoma , the same man would later call himself Yahweh Ben Yahweh—Hebrew for “ God , son of God ” —and start what prosecutors alleged was a violent , race-based religious sect that firebombed perceived detractors , mutilated defectors , and allegedly murdered as many as 14 people in the 1980s .
Soon , Michael joined Yahweh Ben Yahweh ’ s church , the Temple of Love , located in the Liberty City section of Miami .
Founded in 1979 as a branch of the Black Hebrew Israelites @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black supremacy , tied up with the idea that all of humanity descends from the ancient tribes of Israel and that those tribal battles still exist throughout the world .
The Temple of Love was initially seen as a positive force in a deteriorating part of the city .
The neighborhood was once home to a thriving Black middle class that had fled to the suburbs amid an influx of displaced lower-income Black residents from nearby Overtown , which had been ravaged by “ urban renewal.
” The Liberty City of the late @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police violence .
These were the conditions that gave rise to the Temple of Love .
Like a lot of Black and Black-oriented cults , Yahweh Ben Yahweh ’ s outfit set up shop in the large gaps in public provision .
( He is said to have patterned himself in part after Father Divine , the Black spiritual leader whose Peace Mission Movement served material needs that were going unmet in Jim Crow America— “ extensions , ” for instance , that were essentially safe , affordable hotels . )
The group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pushed “ for better education , employment opportunities , housing , and health care for African Americans , ” as Julius H. Bailey points out in his history of African American religion , Down in the Valley .
Police appreciated that the Temple of Love seemed to clean up the crime-ridden streets of some of Miami ’ s most dangerous neighborhoods .
Politicians stopped by , seeking the Yahweh vote .
After a few years , for reasons that are still unclear , Yahweh Ben Yahweh changed what he was saying about race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ‘ Son , you know all white people are not the devil , ’ ” Michael remembered .
He acted out the conversation that followed , flailing his arms .
“ I was very upset , but Yahweh Ben Yahweh said , ‘ Son , if you have a race war , you ’ re going to have to kill me.
’ I said , ‘ What are you talking about ?
’ He said , ‘ Son , I ’ m lighter than most white men , ’ which was true.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the white friends he ’ d forsaken .
That was going to be hard enough , but then , he said , “ Yahweh Ben Yahweh hit me with the ultimate bomb : ‘ You know you should never vote for Democrats.
’ ” They argued at first .
Abraham Lincoln , Yahweh Ben Yahweh told him , was a Republican .
Michael looked it up and returned the next day , “ flabbergasted.
” The way Michael recounted it , Yahweh Ben Yahweh told him , “ The Democrats were the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ murderers of our people.
” Everyone at the temple was told to register to vote—and to support the candidates their leader liked .
Michael had an up-close view as Temple of Love followers helped get a few underdog Republicans elected to various local offices .
He watched as Yahweh Ben Yahweh ’ s influence and power grew .
By the mid-1980s , the FBI estimated that there were about 5,000 members spread over 38 different cities .
At one point , Yahweh Ben Yahweh and the group controlled $ 100 million in real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Herald .
A few years later , the mayor of Miami declared October 7 , 1990 , “ Yahweh Ben Yahweh Day.
” The Southern Poverty Law Center would later call that moment the culmination of an “ orgy of misplaced praise.
” While the sect preached peace and rebuilt homes , the public started hearing stories about severed ears and public beatings of dissidents .
In 1994 , Sydney P. Freedberg , a reporter for the Miami Herald , wrote a book about the group .
Brother Love : Murder , Money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s rise to power , the lifestyle inside the Temple , and the investigations that linked the group to extortion schemes , fire bombings , and more than a dozen murders .
( Interestingly , at one point , in an aside , the book also compares the cult leader to Donald Trump , noting that they both tended to acquire property with borrowed money . )
Members of the sect adopted new names and wore white robes with white headscarves everywhere they went .
A security team roamed the halls of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the surrounding streets , with wooden shepherd sticks they called “ staffs of life.
” Some of the followers were reportedly seen walking around with machetes on their hips .
Dissidents lived in fear .
One former member was found dead and dismembered at the edge of the Everglades .
Another member told police he killed six people at the behest of Yahweh Ben Yahweh .
Michael makes a brief appearance in Brother Love .
Freedberg describes him as “ a Romeo-like jazz singer whose voice was a blend of Nat King Cole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eventually arrested Yahweh Ben Yahweh and his followers in 1990 , Michael was charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit murder and spent months in jail awaiting trial .
Michael ’ s brother , Ricardo , who was also a member of the Temple of Love , testified against him in court , saying that Michael stabbed a man through the eye with a sharpened stick and that he participated in the beating of the man who ended up headless in the Everglades .
Michael testified in his own defense .
According @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hyperkinetic that courtroom spectators couldn ’ t quit chuckling .
He quoted love scriptures as if reciting from a mail-order catalog.
” He reportedly sang a song to jurors and told them , “ I am like a sheep , that ’ s what I am .
I ’ m not a warrior.
” After a prolonged trial , the group ’ s leader was convicted in 1992 on 14 charges of murder conspiracy and spent 11 years in prison .
He died of prostate cancer in 2007 .
Michael and a handful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found not guilty .
Later , Richard Scruggs , one of the prosecutors in the case , told the Miami New Times that the verdict in Michael ’ s case was “ an acquittal by pity.
” When I asked Michael about it , he said Yahweh Ben Yahweh ’ s convictions were purely political , stressing that the group was not convicted of the underlying murder charges .
“ If they didn ’ t do any of the acts , ” he asked me , “ then what the hell was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eye-stabbing “ never happened ” and that the victim was seen with his eye weeks after the alleged murder .
“ All of it was stupid.
” ( The victim is presumed dead , and his body has never been found . )
He said the other murder charge—he referred to it as “ this so-called act ” —only came up when prosecutors couldn ’ t get him for money laundering .
He told me that , yes , at least one of Yahweh Ben Yahweh ’ s followers was a murderer : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Rozier told police that Yahweh Ben Yahweh ordered him to kill white people chosen at random and Black people who ’ d insulted the leader .
Michael told me all of those murders—Rozier confessed in court to seven—occurred before Rozier had joined the temple .
( Yahweh Ben Yahweh also publicly excommunicated Rozier before his trial . )
As we talked , Michael spent several minutes acting out various scenes from the trial , sometimes standing up and waving his arms , sometimes calling over to the men watching us , sometimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one point he leaned over and spoke directly into my recorder to compliment Yahweh Ben Yahweh ’ s former attorney , Alcee Hastings .
“ I don ’ t really like Alcee , because you ’ re a Democrat , ” he said .
“ But I ’ m gon na give you your props on this one.
” After Yahweh Ben Yahweh went to prison , Michael continued to involve himself in politics .
In South Florida , reporters are used to his bizarre claims and antics .
He showed up to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ September 2008 with signs reading “ Obama Endorsed by the KKK ” and “ Blacks Against Obama.
” I asked him how he came to support Donald Trump .
Michael told me he actually encountered Trump years earlier , in New York .
“ A long time ago me and Yahweh Ben Yahweh was marching down Broadway , and Yahweh Ben Yahweh stopped and had a little chat with Trump , ” he told me .
“ I didn ’ t listen to what he was talking about .
Then Yahweh Ben Yahweh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , son .
Now , that ’ s the kind of white man we need as our president.
’ ” He was evasive , though , when we started talking about how he could afford to travel to so many Trump events across the country .
Who picked up the tab on flights to Arizona , Texas , South Carolina ?
He first told me he and his friends all used to buy and sell houses , that they were rich when George W. Bush was president .
“ We were just making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explained .
“ It was just easy because the regulations were not there.
” When I pushed the issue , he admitted sometimes the local Tea Party pays for some of his travel .
“ We go out there and just stand there .
Just being Black is an amazing phenomenon.
” ( When I reached out to Tea Party members in the Miami area , most didn ’ t return my calls . )
That ’ s how he ’ s had the chance to meet Marco Rubio , Rick Scott , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He went to a big Glenn Beck rally in Washington , DC , and , he told me , Andrew Breitbart used to ask him about the Bible .
Given his extreme views and his occasional proximity to powerful politicians , I asked him if he ’ s ever been interviewed by the Secret Service .
“ I had been questioned by them one time , ” he told me .
“ But they just wanted to make sure everything was okay , which is cool.
” Now , he said , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ask how he ’ s doing .
He said some have even told him that they listen to his radio station every day .
“ They know who I am , what I ’ m thinking.
” A representative from the Secret Service politely told me the agency had no comment for this story .
Michael told me he doesn ’ t drink or smoke , but he does sometimes host parties where drinking and smoking happen .
Some of those parties , he noted , have resulted in noise complaints .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ five times since his murder trial , on charges ranging from grand theft auto to attempting to carry a gun onto a plane , but he was never convicted .
Michael said that each incident was a misunderstanding or a mistake by officers .
In 2010 , police came to the house after Michael ’ s adult son , Jeremiah , fired an AK-47 out by the canal , the Miami New Times reported .
Officers said the shots were an attempt to intimidate swimmers who had climbed on to their boat , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Michael told me his son was shooting in the air to scare away men trying to steal his boat .
The topic of his yacht came up in discussion a few times throughout the afternoon , actually .
It was a four-story party boat he sometimes used to help raise money for Republican politicians .
The boat ’ s name : “ Boss.
” From our conversation , it ’ s not clear at all what happened to it .
At one point , Michael casually tells me that local Democrats sank @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said it was the City of North Miami , and that he plans to sue .
Whatever happened , the loss seems to have devastated him .
“ When they took my yacht , ” he told me , “ I ’ m not gon na lie , that broke me.
” His monologue stretched across the afternoon .
At one point , the battery in the video camera that was trained on me died , and there was some discussion about whether there was a backup battery—and if so , where it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Trump , and I asked what he thinks of the president ’ s policies .
That started him on a diatribe about how “ nine guys in the Republican Senate are actually Mormons ” and how “ Mormons are mostly Cherokee.
” ( He also believes that the KKK is made up entirely of Cherokees . )
If you go to the websites he advertises on his signs and T-shirts ( BlacksForTrump2020.com and Gods2.com ) , you ’ ll be redirected to HonestFact.com .
It ’ s an early-internet-looking site , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ texts of various fonts , sizes , and colors .
Michael ’ s posts touch upon everything from how Hillary Clinton wants to start a race war and sides with ISIS to why Judge Roy Moore is innocent of any allegations of sexual misconduct with minors .
The site is also filled with references to Canaanites and Cherokees , like his strange claim that “ PROTESTERS are PHONEY Black people & are really East Indians & Cherokees acting Black.
” When I asked him about these things , he explained that he believes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world can be traced back to Noah ’ s sons , one of whom was evil .
Most white people , he said , along with Latinos , Asians , and Black people in America—but not Africa—have descended from Noah ’ s good sons .
The descendants of Ham are the evil ones , the ones he called Canaanites and Cherokees .
He cited scripture so fast it was impossible to keep up .
Michael had made it clear that his entire worldview—including his support for President Trump—had been shaped by his time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we talked about his beliefs and their origins in this strange cult , the more I wondered if Yahweh Ben Yahweh ’ s temple has , despite the murder trials and prison sentences , returned to South Florida .
After nearly three hours of bizarre conversation surrounded by strangers in a humid living room , I was uncomfortable , and I started trying to wind down the conversation .
Before I parted for the day , I asked him : “ Is Yahweh Ben Yahweh back ?
” I don ’ t know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Michael just looked at me and shook his head .
“ The group never left , ” he said .
“ I ’ ve always been Yahweh.
” Michael walked me to the door , out past the Rolls-Royce , and through the security gate .
We shook hands and , with the same smile he wore all day , he told me to look for him and his sign on TV at the next Trump rally .

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Before Kanye West posted photos of his MAGA hat, and before anyone had ever heard of the video bloggers Diamond and Silk, there was Michael the Black Man. If you’ve ever watched a Donald Trump rally, you’ve almost certainly seen Michael, standing as close as he can get to the president, waving his BLACKS FOR TRUMP sign, wearing a white T-shirt that proclaims with promiscuous capitalization: “TRUMP & Republicans Are Not Racist.” He became such a consistent ponytailed presence at Trump events—by his own count he’s been to more than 70 in the last four years—that Kenan Thompson once played him in a Saturday Night Live sketch. (Thompson’s version of Michael held signs reading “BLACKS FOR WHITES” and “CASH 4 GOLD.”)
He’s gone by the names Maurice Woodside, Michael Symonette, and Mikael Israel, but now he prefers to be called Michael the Black Man. He’s a peculiar character on the fringe of American politics, a part-time musician and club promoter who hosts a radio show on his own pirate station in Miami. He also has several websites promoting various religious and political conspiracy theories, and he’s friendly with Republican leaders across South Florida. A video on his site shows Florida Sen. Rick Scott, back when he was still governor, telling Michael, “I saw you on TV with Trump. You did a good job.” Michael also has pictures of himself with Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Rep. Allen West.
The president has singled him out at rallies to thank him. At a 2016 campaign event in Miami, Trump pointed to Michael from the stage. “I love that sign,” he said into the microphone. “‘Blacks for Trump,’ I love that sign. Thank you!” At another campaign event, in Lakeland, Florida, Trump held up one of Michael’s signs, waved it, then kissed it.
Over the years, several reporters have taken notice and published stories examining Michael’s past, including his jarring criminal history, but I wanted to know more about this person, someone openly embraced by a Republican Party that’s practically anathema to African Americans. (In most polls, Trump’s approval rating among Black people is somewhere between 12 and 20 percent, with a vast majority consistently disapproving.) How did he become the “Blacks for Trump” guy? What’s it like being one of the only Black faces in a sea of white at those rallies? After all, as the election cycle gears up, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Michael the Black Man.
So I reached out to him through a number listed on one of his websites. After a couple short conversations on the phone, he invited me to come down to Miami to interview him at home. We ended up discussing everything from how he became a Republican to where his money comes from to the time in the ’80s and ’90s when he was in a murderous Black supremacist cult and went on trial for allegedly stabbing a man in the eye with a stick and beating another man who was later decapitated.
At a 2016 campaign event in Miami, Trump pointed to Michael from the stage. “I love that sign,” Trump said into the microphone. “‘Blacks for Trump,’ I love that sign. Thank you!”
When we met, Michael was living in an expansive, ’80s-chic mansion in a posh Miami neighborhood not far from the beach. The house was surrounded by palm trees and a tall white wall with a security gate. There was a dock on the canal out back. From a distance it looked like an immaculate property—the county estimated the value at $1.4 million—but as I got closer I realized the entire building was waterlogged: warped plaster and rust-colored stains on the outside walls, red tiles missing from the roof, crumbling paint, massive cracks in the driveway cement. On the day of my visit, there was a Rolls-Royce parked out front but no working air conditioning inside. (I would later learn that the house was in foreclosure.)
In the living room, he had elegant, worn leather furniture, a fish tank half filled with foggy water, a piano, and an entertainment center with a muted TV turned to Fox News. When I showed up, Michael told his associates to start recording me. Two men stood in front of the couch, one holding a video camera, the other holding a phone. Three other guys, all of them older Black men, sat in chairs nearby, watching and nodding along as Michael spoke. He never told me who they were, and they never introduced themselves. Once in a while they clapped or muttered affirmatives like you might hear during a church sermon or a political speech. Soon the man holding the phone got tired and sat down.
To start, Michael wanted me to know that, no, Donald Trump doesn’t pay him to come to rallies. And, no, nobody asks him to stand onstage right behind the president.
And with good reason. What I’d originally planned as a short visit quickly turned into one of the most surreal conversations I’ve ever had. Michael is frenetic when he talks, going on for long stretches without pausing, skipping from topic to topic—within the span of a minute he might quote Trump, curse Hillary Clinton, and reference the Book of Ezekiel.
To start, Michael wanted me to know that, no, Donald Trump doesn’t pay him to come to rallies. And, no, nobody asks him to stand onstage behind the president, right in frame for the camera. Sitting on the old leather couch in his warm, muggy living room, Michael told me that he gets in line early, sometimes a day in advance, and then spends all night waiting. And he said there are often dozens of other Black people at those Trump events, “but they stay on the edges because they don’t wanna be seen.”
Michael likes to be seen, and he likes to share his views on politics and religion: a blend of Fox News talking points and idiosyncratic Old Testament interpretations. He also likes to share his personal story. He grew up in Miami in the ’60s at a time of strife and transformation, when the civil rights movement and an influx of immigrants set the backdrop for a number of racial uprisings. His father was a Republican, Michael said, because GOP politicians would come to the nightclub he owned. “He used to brag on Nixon, and he loved Reagan,” Michael told me. “You know you can’t argue with your dad.”
In the late ’70s, Michael saw the miniseries Roots. He remembers the image of LeVar Burton in shackles, the scenes of Black people being whipped. He says this was what led him to hate all white people.
It was around that time, he told me, that he briefly became a Muslim, but he abandoned the faith after he met a man named Moses Israel. “He gave me a flyer,” Michael told me, “and said, ‘The white man is the devil!’” Born Hulon Mitchell Jr., in Oklahoma, the same man would later call himself Yahweh Ben Yahweh—Hebrew for “God, son of God”—and start what prosecutors alleged was a violent, race-based religious sect that firebombed perceived detractors, mutilated defectors, and allegedly murdered as many as 14 people in the 1980s.
Soon, Michael joined Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s church, the Temple of Love, located in the Liberty City section of Miami. Founded in 1979 as a branch of the Black Hebrew Israelites, the church preached a message of Black supremacy, tied up with the idea that all of humanity descends from the ancient tribes of Israel and that those tribal battles still exist throughout the world. The Temple of Love was initially seen as a positive force in a deteriorating part of the city. The neighborhood was once home to a thriving Black middle class that had fled to the suburbs amid an influx of displaced lower-income Black residents from nearby Overtown, which had been ravaged by “urban renewal.” The Liberty City of the late 1960s was characterized by racist neglect and police violence. These were the conditions that gave rise to the Temple of Love. Like a lot of Black and Black-oriented cults, Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s outfit set up shop in the large gaps in public provision. (He is said to have patterned himself in part after Father Divine, the Black spiritual leader whose Peace Mission Movement served material needs that were going unmet in Jim Crow America—“extensions,” for instance, that were essentially safe, affordable hotels.) The group bought up property in blighted areas and pushed “for better education, employment opportunities, housing, and health care for African Americans,” as Julius H. Bailey points out in his history of African American religion, Down in the Valley. Police appreciated that the Temple of Love seemed to clean up the crime-ridden streets of some of Miami’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Politicians stopped by, seeking the Yahweh vote.
Yahweh Ben Yahweh told him, “The Democrats were the slave masters, and they were the murderers of our people.”
After a few years, for reasons that are still unclear, Yahweh Ben Yahweh changed what he was saying about race. “One day he told me, ‘Son, you know all white people are not the devil,’” Michael remembered. He acted out the conversation that followed, flailing his arms. “I was very upset, but Yahweh Ben Yahweh said, ‘Son, if you have a race war, you’re going to have to kill me.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Son, I’m lighter than most white men,’ which was true.”
Michael was encouraged to make amends with the white friends he’d forsaken. That was going to be hard enough, but then, he said, “Yahweh Ben Yahweh hit me with the ultimate bomb: ‘You know you should never vote for Democrats.’”
They argued at first. Abraham Lincoln, Yahweh Ben Yahweh told him, was a Republican. Michael looked it up and returned the next day, “flabbergasted.” The way Michael recounted it, Yahweh Ben Yahweh told him, “The Democrats were the slave masters, and they were the murderers of our people.”
Everyone at the temple was told to register to vote—and to support the candidates their leader liked. Michael had an up-close view as Temple of Love followers helped get a few underdog Republicans elected to various local offices. He watched as Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s influence and power grew. By the mid-1980s, the FBI estimated that there were about 5,000 members spread over 38 different cities. At one point, Yahweh Ben Yahweh and the group controlled $100 million in real estate assets, according to the Miami Herald. A few years later, the mayor of Miami declared October 7, 1990, “Yahweh Ben Yahweh Day.” The Southern Poverty Law Center would later call that moment the culmination of an “orgy of misplaced praise.”
While the sect preached peace and rebuilt homes, the public started hearing stories about severed ears and public beatings of dissidents. In 1994, Sydney P. Freedberg, a reporter for the Miami Herald, wrote a book about the group. Brother Love: Murder, Money, and a Messiah chronicles the leader’s rise to power, the lifestyle inside the Temple, and the investigations that linked the group to extortion schemes, fire bombings, and more than a dozen murders. (Interestingly, at one point, in an aside, the book also compares the cult leader to Donald Trump, noting that they both tended to acquire property with borrowed money.)
Members of the sect adopted new names and wore white robes with white headscarves everywhere they went. A security team roamed the halls of the Miami temple, and some of the surrounding streets, with wooden shepherd sticks they called “staffs of life.” Some of the followers were reportedly seen walking around with machetes on their hips. Dissidents lived in fear. One former member was found dead and dismembered at the edge of the Everglades. Another member told police he killed six people at the behest of Yahweh Ben Yahweh.
Michael makes a brief appearance in Brother Love. Freedberg describes him as “a Romeo-like jazz singer whose voice was a blend of Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis.” When the FBI eventually arrested Yahweh Ben Yahweh and his followers in 1990, Michael was charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit murder and spent months in jail awaiting trial.
Michael’s brother, Ricardo, who was also a member of the Temple of Love, testified against him in court, saying that Michael stabbed a man through the eye with a sharpened stick and that he participated in the beating of the man who ended up headless in the Everglades. Michael testified in his own defense. According to Freedberg, he was “so hyperkinetic that courtroom spectators couldn’t quit chuckling. He quoted love scriptures as if reciting from a mail-order catalog.” He reportedly sang a song to jurors and told them, “I am like a sheep, that’s what I am. I’m not a warrior.”
After a prolonged trial, the group’s leader was convicted in 1992 on 14 charges of murder conspiracy and spent 11 years in prison. He died of prostate cancer in 2007. Michael and a handful of other followers, though, were found not guilty. Later, Richard Scruggs, one of the prosecutors in the case, told the Miami New Times that the verdict in Michael’s case was “an acquittal by pity.”
When I asked Michael about it, he said Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s convictions were purely political, stressing that the group was not convicted of the underlying murder charges. “If they didn’t do any of the acts,” he asked me, “then what the hell was the conspiracy?”
He told me the eye-stabbing “never happened” and that the victim was seen with his eye weeks after the alleged murder. “All of it was stupid.” (The victim is presumed dead, and his body has never been found.) He said the other murder charge—he referred to it as “this so-called act”—only came up when prosecutors couldn’t get him for money laundering. He told me that, yes, at least one of Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s followers was a murderer: a former NFL player named Robert Rozier. Rozier told police that Yahweh Ben Yahweh ordered him to kill white people chosen at random and Black people who’d insulted the leader. Michael told me all of those murders—Rozier confessed in court to seven—occurred before Rozier had joined the temple. (Yahweh Ben Yahweh also publicly excommunicated Rozier before his trial.)
As we talked, Michael spent several minutes acting out various scenes from the trial, sometimes standing up and waving his arms, sometimes calling over to the men watching us, sometimes slapping me on the shoulder. At one point he leaned over and spoke directly into my recorder to compliment Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s former attorney, Alcee Hastings.
“I don’t really like Alcee, because you’re a Democrat,” he said. “But I’m gonna give you your props on this one.”
After Yahweh Ben Yahweh went to prison, Michael continued to involve himself in politics. In South Florida, reporters are used to his bizarre claims and antics. He showed up to a rally for then-candidate Barack Obama in September 2008 with signs reading “Obama Endorsed by the KKK” and “Blacks Against Obama.”
I asked him how he came to support Donald Trump. Michael told me he actually encountered Trump years earlier, in New York.
“Yahweh Ben Yahweh stopped and had a little chat with Trump. Then [he] came back and said, ‘See, son. Now, that’s the kind of white man we need as our president.’”
“A long time ago me and Yahweh Ben Yahweh was marching down Broadway, and Yahweh Ben Yahweh stopped and had a little chat with Trump,” he told me. “I didn’t listen to what he was talking about. Then Yahweh Ben Yahweh came back and said, ‘See, son. Now, that’s the kind of white man we need as our president.’”
He was evasive, though, when we started talking about how he could afford to travel to so many Trump events across the country. Who picked up the tab on flights to Arizona, Texas, South Carolina? He first told me he and his friends all used to buy and sell houses, that they were rich when George W. Bush was president. “We were just making money hand over foot,” he explained. “It was just easy because the regulations were not there.”
When I pushed the issue, he admitted sometimes the local Tea Party pays for some of his travel. “We go out there and just stand there. Just being Black is an amazing phenomenon.” (When I reached out to Tea Party members in the Miami area, most didn’t return my calls.)
That’s how he’s had the chance to meet Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Allen West, and Jeb Bush. He went to a big Glenn Beck rally in Washington, DC, and, he told me, Andrew Breitbart used to ask him about the Bible.
Michael was once questioned by the Secret Service: “But they just wanted to make sure everything was okay, which is cool…They know who I am, what I’m thinking.”
Given his extreme views and his occasional proximity to powerful politicians, I asked him if he’s ever been interviewed by the Secret Service.
“I had been questioned by them one time,” he told me. “But they just wanted to make sure everything was okay, which is cool.” Now, he said, the agents are used to seeing him and ask how he’s doing. He said some have even told him that they listen to his radio station every day.
“They know who I am, what I’m thinking.”
A representative from the Secret Service politely told me the agency had no comment for this story.
Michael told me he doesn’t drink or smoke, but he does sometimes host parties where drinking and smoking happen. Some of those parties, he noted, have resulted in noise complaints. He’s also been arrested at least five times since his murder trial, on charges ranging from grand theft auto to attempting to carry a gun onto a plane, but he was never convicted. Michael said that each incident was a misunderstanding or a mistake by officers.
In 2010, police came to the house after Michael’s adult son, Jeremiah, fired an AK-47 out by the canal, the Miami New Times reported. Officers said the shots were an attempt to intimidate swimmers who had climbed on to their boat, and Jeremiah was charged with aggravated assault. Michael told me his son was shooting in the air to scare away men trying to steal his boat.
The topic of his yacht came up in discussion a few times throughout the afternoon, actually. It was a four-story party boat he sometimes used to help raise money for Republican politicians. The boat’s name: “Boss.” From our conversation, it’s not clear at all what happened to it. At one point, Michael casually tells me that local Democrats sank the yacht. At another point he said it was the City of North Miami, and that he plans to sue. Whatever happened, the loss seems to have devastated him.
“When they took my yacht,” he told me, “I’m not gonna lie, that broke me.”
His monologue stretched across the afternoon. At one point, the battery in the video camera that was trained on me died, and there was some discussion about whether there was a backup battery—and if so, where it might be.
The conversation drifted back to Trump, and I asked what he thinks of the president’s policies. That started him on a diatribe about how “nine guys in the Republican Senate are actually Mormons” and how “Mormons are mostly Cherokee.” (He also believes that the KKK is made up entirely of Cherokees.)
If you go to the websites he advertises on his signs and T-shirts (BlacksForTrump2020.com and Gods2.com), you’ll be redirected to HonestFact.com. It’s an early-internet-looking site, a mishmash of photos and video links and texts of various fonts, sizes, and colors. Michael’s posts touch upon everything from how Hillary Clinton wants to start a race war and sides with ISIS to why Judge Roy Moore is innocent of any allegations of sexual misconduct with minors. The site is also filled with references to Canaanites and Cherokees, like his strange claim that “PROTESTERS are PHONEY Black people & are really East Indians & Cherokees acting Black.”
Michael had made it clear that his entire worldview—including his support for President Trump—had been shaped by his time with Yahweh Ben Yahweh.
When I asked him about these things, he explained that he believes that all of the races in the world can be traced back to Noah’s sons, one of whom was evil. Most white people, he said, along with Latinos, Asians, and Black people in America—but not Africa—have descended from Noah’s good sons. The descendants of Ham are the evil ones, the ones he called Canaanites and Cherokees. He cited scripture so fast it was impossible to keep up.
Michael had made it clear that his entire worldview—including his support for President Trump—had been shaped by his time with Yahweh Ben Yahweh. The longer we talked about his beliefs and their origins in this strange cult, the more I wondered if Yahweh Ben Yahweh’s temple has, despite the murder trials and prison sentences, returned to South Florida. After nearly three hours of bizarre conversation surrounded by strangers in a humid living room, I was uncomfortable, and I started trying to wind down the conversation. Before I parted for the day, I asked him: “Is Yahweh Ben Yahweh back?”
I don’t know what I expected to hear, but Michael just looked at me and shook his head.
“The group never left,” he said. “I’ve always been Yahweh.”
Michael walked me to the door, out past the Rolls-Royce, and through the security gate. We shook hands and, with the same smile he wore all day, he told me to look for him and his sign on TV at the next Trump rally.


motherjones--2020-02-05--Trump Panders to Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans While He Deports and Detains Them

In a State of the Union that doubled as a reelection pitch , President Donald Trump claimed to be supporting the citizens of three Latin American countries struggling under leftist rule : Cuba , Nicaragua , and Venezuela .
The selection was more than a little convenient .
In November , Trump hopes that voters from those countries—many of whom live in Florida—will back him , not the Democratic opponent he will liken to the socialists many of them fled .
Trump ’ s push was reinforced by a guest in the House gallery .
After calling Venezuelan president Nicolás @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people , ” Trump turned and introduced Juan Guaidó , the opposition leader who claims to be the country ’ s rightful president , with US backing .
“ All Americans are united with the Venezuelan people in their righteous struggle for freedom , ” Trump said .
But as Guaidó took in bipartisan applause , roughly 24,000 Venezuelans across the United States were facing deportation .
Trump could grant them work permits and temporary protections against deportation at any time .
He chooses not to .
Trump ’ s policies have placed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For the past year , under a program known as Remain in Mexico , the Trump administration has forced roughly 60,000 asylum seekers to spend months in cartel-controlled border cities while they wait for immigration hearings they ’ re set up to lose .
Among them are more than 7,700 Cubans , 2,000 Venezuelans , and 1,400 Nicaraguans .
There have been more than 800 public reports of violent attacks against people sent back to Mexico under the program .
Those who have been allowed into the United States have been sent to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they face indefinite detention and some of the nation ’ s harshest judges .
In August , more than 150 Cuban detainees at a Louisiana ’ s Bossier Parish Corrections Center protested the Trump administration ’ s decision to make it nearly impossible for them to be released from detention and made eligible for green cards .
As Mother Jones reported , guards responded by pepper-spraying them .
In October , Roylan Hernández Díaz , a Cuban asylum seeker , died by apparent suicide at another Louisiana jail .
“ Sadly , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going on in this country that the whole world comes to take refuge in , ” his partner , Yarelis Gutiérrez , told me the day after his death .
“ Look at what ’ s happening today .
You just don ’ t know if they ’ re getting asylum or dying.
” Two days after Christmas in 2018 , I met Isaac Molina , along with his partner and her two children , at a border crossing in Tijuana .
Molina is exactly the type of person Trump wants to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nicaraguan doctor who provided medical attention to people protesting President Daniel Ortega .
Molina escaped to the US-Mexico border after being shot in the back and abdomen by police officers loyal to the Nicaraguan president .
Instead of releasing Molina at the border , the Department of Homeland Security separated him from his family and sent him to a for-profit prison in rural Mississippi .
ICE finally released Molina in April after a four-month legal battle .
Trump has inflicted similar suffering on thousands of other Nicaraguans , Cubans , and Venezuelans .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump ’ s best hope is that they ignore his actions and think only of his words .

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In a State of the Union that doubled as a reelection pitch, President Donald Trump claimed to be supporting the citizens of three Latin American countries struggling under leftist rule: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The selection was more than a little convenient. In November, Trump hopes that voters from those countries—many of whom live in Florida—will back him, not the Democratic opponent he will liken to the socialists many of them fled.
Trump’s push was reinforced by a guest in the House gallery. After calling Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro “a tyrant who brutalizes his people,” Trump turned and introduced Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader who claims to be the country’s rightful president, with US backing. “All Americans are united with the Venezuelan people in their righteous struggle for freedom,” Trump said.
But as Guaidó took in bipartisan applause, roughly 24,000 Venezuelans across the United States were facing deportation. Trump could grant them work permits and temporary protections against deportation at any time. He chooses not to.
Trump’s policies have placed other Venezuelans in more dire situations. For the past year, under a program known as Remain in Mexico, the Trump administration has forced roughly 60,000 asylum seekers to spend months in cartel-controlled border cities while they wait for immigration hearings they’re set up to lose. Among them are more than 7,700 Cubans, 2,000 Venezuelans, and 1,400 Nicaraguans. There have been more than 800 public reports of violent attacks against people sent back to Mexico under the program.
Those who have been allowed into the United States have been sent to for-profit jails in the Deep South where they face indefinite detention and some of the nation’s harshest judges. In August, more than 150 Cuban detainees at a Louisiana’s Bossier Parish Corrections Center protested the Trump administration’s decision to make it nearly impossible for them to be released from detention and made eligible for green cards. As Mother Jones reported, guards responded by pepper-spraying them.
In October, Roylan Hernández Díaz, a Cuban asylum seeker, died by apparent suicide at another Louisiana jail. “Sadly, we can’t understand what’s going on in this country that the whole world comes to take refuge in,” his partner, Yarelis Gutiérrez, told me the day after his death. “Look at what’s happening today. You just don’t know if they’re getting asylum or dying.”
Two days after Christmas in 2018, I met Isaac Molina, along with his partner and her two children, at a border crossing in Tijuana. Molina is exactly the type of person Trump wants to be seen as championing. He is a Nicaraguan doctor who provided medical attention to people protesting President Daniel Ortega. Molina escaped to the US-Mexico border after being shot in the back and abdomen by police officers loyal to the Nicaraguan president. Instead of releasing Molina at the border, the Department of Homeland Security separated him from his family and sent him to a for-profit prison in rural Mississippi. ICE finally released Molina in April after a four-month legal battle.
Trump has inflicted similar suffering on thousands of other Nicaraguans, Cubans, and Venezuelans. When their compatriots head to the polls, Trump’s best hope is that they ignore his actions and think only of his words.


motherjones--2020-02-05--Trump Breaks the Law by Ripping Up Official Papers All the Time

President Donald Trump ’ s campaign was quick to rebuke House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for ripping up her copy of @ @ @ @ @ address Tuesday night .
Charlie Kirk , the founder of the conservative group Turning Point @ @ @ @ @ ’ s destruction of government records constitutes a violation of US Code punishable by up @ @ @ @ @ .
But as it turns out , Trump rips up official papers all the time @ @ @ @ @ Times reported Tuesday : President Trump has long made it a practice to tear up @ @ @ @ @ away .
It is a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act , which is @ @ @ @ @ cover-up .
When the National Archives sent staff members to tape these records together , @ @ @ @ @ .
As usual , the rules don ’ t seem to apply to Trump , @ @ @ @ @ the Constitution gives him , as president , the right to do whatever he wants—a @ @ @ @ @ if it votes to acquit him this afternoon .

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President Donald Trump’s campaign was quick to rebuke House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for ripping up her copy of the State of the Union address Tuesday night.
Speaker Pelosi just ripped up: One of our last surviving Tuskegee Airmen. The survival of a child born at 21 weeks. The mourning families of Rocky Jones and Kayla Mueller. A service member's reunion with his family. That's her legacy. — The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 5, 2020
Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, tweeted that Pelosi’s destruction of government records constitutes a violation of US Code punishable by up to three years in prison.
US Code prohibits the destruction of government records Nancy Pelosi may have just committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2071, Section 2071 (a) when she ripped up President Trump’s State of the Union address This violation is punishable by up to three years in prison 🤔 — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 5, 2020
But as it turns out, Trump rips up official papers all the time. As the New York Times reported Tuesday:
President Trump has long made it a practice to tear up his papers and throw them away. It is a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act, which is supposed to prevent another Watergate-style cover-up. When the National Archives sent staff members to tape these records together, the White House fired them.
As usual, the rules don’t seem to apply to Trump, who has famously boasted that the Constitution gives him, as president, the right to do whatever he wants—a lie the Senate will uphold if it votes to acquit him this afternoon.


motherjones--2020-02-06--Clinton Gave Up On Rural America. Are the Democrats About To Do It Again?

President Donald Trump , speaking in Iowa last week , made a bold prediction about his prospects in the Hawkeye State this coming November : “ We ’ re going to win the great state of Iowa , and it ’ s going to be a historic landslide , ” he thundered .
Trump may actually turn out to be right this time ( though probably not about the victory margin ) .
Democratic Party decision-makers have decided that the 2020 nominee can ’ t compete with Trump for rural votes , as recent pieces by veteran Politico and Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentiment has echoed throughout recent conversations with Democratic strategists , activists and campaigns , a consensus that would have been unthinkable just eight years ago : Iowa is no longer a battleground , ” Politico ‘ s Tim Alberta reported .
“ Not in 2020 , anyway.
” Iowa is a relatively rural state , and the Dems feel like there ’ s a bigger payoff to be found in more metropolitan-heavy regions , the articles report .
If the Democratic candidates do fly over farm country , they would be following the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ During that year ’ s general election , Clinton basically wrote off the rural vote .
Months before the Iowa caucus , she alighted on Ankeny , a small town outside of Des Moines , to release a vague rural policy plan .
After narrowly defeating Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa , she trained her gaze to more population-dense regions , essentially ignoring rural-dominated counties .
The reasoning was simple .
In a fiercely contested national campaign , time and resources have to be allocated carefully , and rural areas tilt conservative and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while cities and suburbs grow .
The Clinton campaign ’ s decision ended up benefiting Donald Trump , who ran a much more prominent rural operation .
Clinton not only lost Iowa by nearly 10 percentage points in the general election—a state Barack Obama handily won twice—but she narrowly surrendered the much larger farm-heavy states Pennsylvania , Michigan , and Wisconsin , where her strong advantage in metropolitan regions was trumped by her rural collapse .
“ Hillary lost rural America 3 to 1 , ” a Democratic insider told Politico .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 1 , it would have broken differently.
” There ’ s much more at stake than Iowa ’ s six electoral votes .
Back in 2008 , Barack Obama campaigned hard in farm country during the general election and won 45 percent of the rural vote , helping him paint Pennsylvania ( 20 electoral votes ) , Michigan ( 16 ) , and Wisconsin ( 10 ) blue .
He clung to those states in 2012 , even though his rural support slipped to 39 percent .
In 2016 , Clinton learned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that level can be disastrous , says Jake Davis , policy director for Family Farm Action , a political advocacy group .
She grabbed just 34 percent of the rural vote , and what had been a blue wall in the eastern farm belt—stretching from Iowa to Pennsylvania—came tumbling down .
The next Democratic candidate doesn ’ t need to devote massive resources to farm counties with the goal of beating Trump in rural America , Davis said .
But completely ignoring these regions would be foolish .
The nominee “ has to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Make some campaign stops , talk about [ rural people ’ s ] issues , listen to their issues , and there ’ s 10 percent of voters out there who feel like they ’ re disenfranchised from both parties , ” he said .
“ It ’ s there for the taking , and it ’ s clear President Trump isn ’ t taking care of rural areas , ” he added , referring to the administration ’ s export-roiling trade machinations , its policies favoring big meat packers over independent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among seed/agrichemical conglomerates .
In contrast , this year ’ s Democratic contenders—especially senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders—have actually released bold rural/farm policies , which I ’ ve summarized here .
They promise to crack down on the seed , pesticide , and meat-packing corporations that dominate farm country , and pledge to enlist farmers in the fight against climate change by paying them to store carbon in the soil .
At a forum in California last week—which you can catch on the latest episode of Bite podcast—Art Cullen , the Pulitzer-winning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in rural northwest Iowa , sounded similar themes .
Clinton lost the Midwestern farm belt because “ she never showed up , ” Cullen said .
“ The first rule of politics is to ask people for their vote .
She never asked the Midwest for their votes.
” Over the past several months , as Democratic presidential candidates have barnstormed the vast rural stretches of the state , hoping to generate momentum by showing well in the Feb. 3 Iowa caucus , their vows to break up the agribusiness oligopolies and pay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Cullen said .
Their message was well-timed : A long slump in crop prices persists , farm bankruptcies keep climbing , and another round of massive spring storms in 2019 put Trump ’ s climate-change denialism in an unflattering light .
Asked if Trump could triumph in the region again , Cullen was incredulous .
Farmers “ are fed up , and for the life of me , I ’ ll eat your left shoe if Iowa goes to Trump again , ” Cullen said .
Perhaps those Democratic strategists should think @ @ @ @ @ @ @

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President Donald Trump, speaking in Iowa last week, made a bold prediction about his prospects in the Hawkeye State this coming November: “We’re going to win the great state of Iowa, and it’s going to be a historic landslide,” he thundered.
Trump may actually turn out to be right this time (though probably not about the victory margin). Democratic Party decision-makers have decided that the 2020 nominee can’t compete with Trump for rural votes, as recent pieces by veteran Politico and Washington Post reporters laid out.”A new sentiment has echoed throughout recent conversations with Democratic strategists, activists and campaigns, a consensus that would have been unthinkable just eight years ago: Iowa is no longer a battleground,” Politico‘s Tim Alberta reported. “Not in 2020, anyway.” Iowa is a relatively rural state, and the Dems feel like there’s a bigger payoff to be found in more metropolitan-heavy regions, the articles report.
Listen to the latest episode of Bite: Subscribe using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.
If the Democratic candidates do fly over farm country, they would be following the lead of Hillary Clinton in 2016. During that year’s general election, Clinton basically wrote off the rural vote. Months before the Iowa caucus, she alighted on Ankeny, a small town outside of Des Moines, to release a vague rural policy plan. After narrowly defeating Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa, she trained her gaze to more population-dense regions, essentially ignoring rural-dominated counties. The reasoning was simple. In a fiercely contested national campaign, time and resources have to be allocated carefully, and rural areas tilt conservative and have been draining population for decades, while cities and suburbs grow.
The Clinton campaign’s decision ended up benefiting Donald Trump, who ran a much more prominent rural operation. Clinton not only lost Iowa by nearly 10 percentage points in the general election—a state Barack Obama handily won twice—but she narrowly surrendered the much larger farm-heavy states Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where her strong advantage in metropolitan regions was trumped by her rural collapse. “Hillary lost rural America 3 to 1,” a Democratic insider told Politico. “If she had lost rural America 2 to 1, it would have broken differently.”
There’s much more at stake than Iowa’s six electoral votes. Back in 2008, Barack Obama campaigned hard in farm country during the general election and won 45 percent of the rural vote, helping him paint Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Michigan (16), and Wisconsin (10) blue. He clung to those states in 2012, even though his rural support slipped to 39 percent. In 2016, Clinton learned the hard way that dipping much below that level can be disastrous, says Jake Davis, policy director for Family Farm Action, a political advocacy group. She grabbed just 34 percent of the rural vote, and what had been a blue wall in the eastern farm belt—stretching from Iowa to Pennsylvania—came tumbling down.
The next Democratic candidate doesn’t need to devote massive resources to farm counties with the goal of beating Trump in rural America. But completely ignoring these regions would be foolish.
The next Democratic candidate doesn’t need to devote massive resources to farm counties with the goal of beating Trump in rural America, Davis said. But completely ignoring these regions would be foolish. The nominee “has to show up,” he said. “Make some campaign stops, talk about [rural people’s] issues, listen to their issues, and there’s 10 percent of voters out there who feel like they’re disenfranchised from both parties,” he said. “It’s there for the taking, and it’s clear President Trump isn’t taking care of rural areas,” he added, referring to the administration’s export-roiling trade machinations, its policies favoring big meat packers over independent farmers, and its approvals of mega-mergers among seed/agrichemical conglomerates.
In contrast, this year’s Democratic contenders—especially senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders—have actually released bold rural/farm policies, which I’ve summarized here. They promise to crack down on the seed, pesticide, and meat-packing corporations that dominate farm country, and pledge to enlist farmers in the fight against climate change by paying them to store carbon in the soil.
At a forum in California last week—which you can catch on the latest episode of Bite podcast—Art Cullen, the Pulitzer-winning editor of the small-town Storm Lake Times in rural northwest Iowa, sounded similar themes. Clinton lost the Midwestern farm belt because “she never showed up,” Cullen said. “The first rule of politics is to ask people for their vote. She never asked the Midwest for their votes.”
Over the past several months, as Democratic presidential candidates have barnstormed the vast rural stretches of the state, hoping to generate momentum by showing well in the Feb. 3 Iowa caucus, their vows to break up the agribusiness oligopolies and pay farmers for climate-ready agriculture have drawn cheers, Cullen said. Their message was well-timed: A long slump in crop prices persists, farm bankruptcies keep climbing, and another round of massive spring storms in 2019 put Trump’s climate-change denialism in an unflattering light.
Asked if Trump could triumph in the region again, Cullen was incredulous. Farmers “are fed up, and for the life of me, I’ll eat your left shoe if Iowa goes to Trump again,” Cullen said. Perhaps those Democratic strategists should think twice before writing off farm country.