motherjones--2020-10-09--“Hello, I’m Calling About Jeffrey Epstein…”

Some highlights and lowlights from my tour of Jeffrey Epstein ’ s little black book .
Remember : An appearance in the address book is not evidence of any crime , or of complicity in any crime , or of knowledge of any crime .
Doug Band , longtime adviser to Bill Clinton : Called a number listed as his home number , which wound up being his childhood home .
Spoke to his dad for five minutes .
Seemed like a decent guy .
“ Doug hasn ’ t lived here for 30 years !
” All right , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , former CEO of Bear Stearns : Wife answered the phone .
When asked about Epstein and Cayne ’ s relationship , she said , “ Yes , they were friends , but we have no comment.
” Edward Razek , former chief marketing officer for L Brands : “ I can ’ t talk about any of that .
Our business has requested no interviews.
” Rupert Murdoch , executive chairman of News Corp : His assistant gave me Hope Hicks ’ cellphone number after I asked for it .
Hicks has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Princess Firyal , Jordanian philanthropist : Called home number .
Doorman answered .
I asked for a “ Ms .
Free-yahl , ” completely butchering the pronunciation .
Doorman was confused so I said “ the princess , ” and he immediately told me where she was and who she was with .
Peter Roth , chairman and CEO of Warner Brothers : Listed cell number went to his son ’ s phone .
“ Yeah , I don ’ t really wan na talk about any of this , ” his son @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wan na be anywhere near this whole Jeffrey Epstein thing.
” Jamie Grant , global chairman of investment banking , JP Morgan : Listed cell number also went to his son , who told me his dad didn ’ t know Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell .
“ It ’ s sort of , like , the New York city business world….I would say Jeffrey Epstein is , like , a couple people removed from my Dad.
” Robert Meister , former chairman of Aon insurance and the man who introduced Epstein to Leslie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sicko , bye-bye !
” Kerry Kennedy , president of RFK Human Rights : Listed as an emergency contact for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mary Kennedy and seemed very taken aback that I had forgotten Bobby was dead ( I ’ d asked where he was ) .
I then asked her about Mary Kennedy , who I learned is also dead .
Big yikes all around on this one !
She also told me she used to sell photographs to Mother Jones in her younger days .
Merryl Tisch , former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Regents and heir to the Loews Corporation : Me : “ Hey , I ’ m doing a story on Jeffrey Epstein , I was wondering if you ever met the guy or interacted with him— ” Tisch : “ I don ’ t know who you are .
How did you get my number ?
Me : “ I got it from Epstein ’ s contact book.
” Tisch : “ NO !
This is ridiculous .
Who are you—what ’ s your name ?
” Me : “ My name @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing a story for a magazine— ” Tisch : “ Oh , my god—you have got to be kidding me .
No , I can ’ t help you out—thank god .
I mean—really ?
!
Me !
?
” Me : “ Meryl and Jimmy were listed with an address and this number .
You ’ re Tisch right , with a ‘ c ’ ?
There ’ s a David Tisch listed as well .
Don ’ t know if you ’ re related ?
” Joel Pashcow , board member @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Foundation : “ You ’ re really pathetic , you know that ?
”

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Some highlights and lowlights from my tour of Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book. Remember: An appearance in the address book is not evidence of any crime, or of complicity in any crime, or of knowledge of any crime.
Doug Band, longtime adviser to Bill Clinton: Called a number listed as his home number, which wound up being his childhood home. Spoke to his dad for five minutes. Seemed like a decent guy. “Doug hasn’t lived here for 30 years!” All right, man, take care!
Jimmy Cayne, former CEO of Bear Stearns: Wife answered the phone. When asked about Epstein and Cayne’s relationship, she said, “Yes, they were friends, but we have no comment.”
Edward Razek, former chief marketing officer for L Brands: “I can’t talk about any of that. Our business has requested no interviews.”
Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp: His assistant gave me Hope Hicks’ cellphone number after I asked for it. Hicks has not returned any of my calls.
Princess Firyal, Jordanian philanthropist: Called home number. Doorman answered. I asked for a “Ms. Free-yahl,” completely butchering the pronunciation. Doorman was confused so I said “the princess,” and he immediately told me where she was and who she was with.
Peter Roth, chairman and CEO of Warner Brothers: Listed cell number went to his son’s phone. “Yeah, I don’t really wanna talk about any of this,” his son said. “I don’t wanna be anywhere near this whole Jeffrey Epstein thing.”
Jamie Grant, global chairman of investment banking, JP Morgan: Listed cell number also went to his son, who told me his dad didn’t know Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell. “It’s sort of, like, the New York city business world….I would say Jeffrey Epstein is, like, a couple people removed from my Dad.”
Robert Meister, former chairman of Aon insurance and the man who introduced Epstein to Leslie Wexner: “He’s a sicko, bye-bye!”
Kerry Kennedy, president of RFK Human Rights: Listed as an emergency contact for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mary Kennedy and seemed very taken aback that I had forgotten Bobby—RFK Jr.’s father, that is—was dead. (I’d asked where he was.) I then asked her about Mary Kennedy, who I learned is also dead. Big yikes all around on this one! She also told me she used to sell photographs to Mother Jones in her younger days.
Merryl Tisch, former chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents and heir to the Loews Corporation: Me: “Hey, I’m doing a story on Jeffrey Epstein, I was wondering if you ever met the guy or interacted with him—”
Tisch: “I don’t know who you are. How did you get my number?
Me: “I got it from Epstein’s contact book.”
Tisch: “From who?“
Me: “Jeffrey Epstein’s contact book.”
Tisch: “NO! This is ridiculous. Who are you—what’s your name?”
Me: “My name’s Leland. I’m doing a story for a magazine—”
Tisch: “Oh, my god—you have got to be kidding me. No, I can’t help you out—thank god. I mean—really?! Me!?”
Me: “Meryl and Jimmy were listed with an address and this number. You’re Tisch right, with a ‘c’? There’s a David Tisch listed as well. Don’t know if you’re related?”
Tisch: “Huh….Goodbye!”
Joel Pashcow, board member of the Palm Beach Police & Fire Foundation: “You’re really pathetic, you know that?”


motherjones--2020-10-11--Trump Wants a Repeat of Bush v. Gore. Amy Coney Barrett Might Make It Happen.

President Donald Trump has said he wants the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf in any post-election dispute over the counting of ballots .
“ I ’ m counting on them to look at the ballots , definitely , ” he said at the first presidential debate .
And he wants Amy Coney Barrett swiftly confirmed before the election to ensure such an outcome .
“ I think this will end up in the Supreme Court , ” he said on September 23 .
“ And I think it ’ s very important that we have nine justices.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polls , a replay of 2000 ’ s Bush v. Gore debacle could be the only way he wins .
It ’ s not hard to imagine the court once again installing a Republican president ; indeed , a number of conservative justices are steeped in this history .
Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh worked on George W. Bush ’ s legal team during the 2000 Florida recount and successfully intervened to stop Democratic ballots from being counted .
If confirmed , Barrett would be a third justice who worked for Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likelihood that the court , with a 6-3 conservative majority , would side with Trump in a post-election dispute , even if the facts and the law aren ’ t on the president ’ s side .
On her questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee , Barrett said she “ provided research and briefing assistance ” on Bush v. Gore as a young associate with Miller , Cassidy , Larroca & Lewin .
( The firm later merged with Baker Botts , run by longtime GOP powerbroker James Baker , who oversaw the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worked on the case on location in Florida for about a week at the outset of the litigation , ” she wrote .
Barrett said she worked in Florida with Stuart Levey , a partner at the firm who is now head of the Libra Association , a cryptocurrency organization started by Facebook .
According to court records and interviews with lawyers involved in the 2000 recount , Levey and Barrett worked not just on Bush v. Gore but on two little-known but pivotal related cases during the recount .
In those cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that were disputed by Democrats because of evidence that Republican operatives had altered incomplete absentee ballot request forms .
That position stands in sharp contrast to Trump ’ s current assault on mail voting .
But there ’ s a certain consistency here : Republicans will take whatever stance on mail ballots maximizes their electoral chances .
And Barrett ’ s work in 2000 suggests she might be willing to play along .
In the run-up to the 2000 election , Republicans in Florida made a big push for mail voting and sent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ from the desk of Governor Jeb Bush , ” urging them to vote “ from the comfort of your own house ” —a process that Trump has decried .
Because of a printing error , GOP voters in two Republican counties , Martin and Seminole , submitted absentee ballot requests that lacked required voter identification numbers .
These incomplete request forms should have been discarded according to Florida law , but the Republican supervisors of elections in the two counties illegally allowed operatives with the Florida GOP to correct the forms so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Officials with the Florida Republican Party were given office space at the supervisor of elections office in Seminole County to fix the forms , and in Martin County , a Republican official was allowed to take the incomplete ballots from the office , fill in the missing information , and then return them without any supervision .
Democrats were given no chance to fix problems with their forms .
This allowed Republicans to send 2,000 absentee ballots in Seminole County and nearly 700 in Martin County to GOP voters who otherwise would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the election , Democrats sued and sought to invalidate all 25,000 absentee ballots cast in the two Bush-friendly counties because they weren ’ t able to track which request forms had been changed .
“ These people were not entitled to ballots based on their applications , ” says Edward Stafman , a lawyer who filed the legal challenge .
“ They only got them because they were Republicans.
” If the ballots had been thrown out , Al Gore would have easily overcome his 537-vote deficit to Bush .
“ This was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a lawyer from Baker Botts in Houston who represented the Bush-Cheney campaign in the two counties .
“ If we had lost those cases , we would ’ ve lost the presidency.
” Levey , Barrett ’ s partner , appeared on legal briefs for the Bush-Cheney campaign in both cases , and Bristow remembers Barrett working on them as well .
As a young associate who had previously clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia , “ she was probably doing briefing work with regard to the various motions we were filing and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bristow says .
( Levey declined a request to comment .
The White House didn ’ t respond on Barrett ’ s behalf . )
On the same day as the Bush v. Gore decision , the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush in Martin and Seminole counties .
The lower court opinions , affirmed by the state Supreme Court , found that allowing Republican operatives to fill in missing information on absentee ballot request forms “ offered an opportunity for fraud and created the appearance of partisan favoritism on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ However , “ despite these irregularities , the sanctity of the ballot and the integrity of the election were not affected.
” The Trump campaign has taken the opposite position in litigation this year , successfully convincing a court to throw out 150,000 absentee ballot requests in Iowa after local election officials filled out identification numbers for voters—the very thing that Republicans did in Florida in 2000 .
“ Today ’ s Republicans don ’ t seem to have any problem with reversing positions when it suits them , ” says Barry Richard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Bush-Cheney campaign during the recount .
Barrett ’ s legal work in Florida shows the lengths Republicans will go to in order to elevate politics over the law when it suits their interests and to ignore evidence of fraud or improprieties when it benefits their party ’ s vote count .
Barrett has decided few voting rights cases since then as a judge , but the opinions she has issued illustrate a hostile view toward expanding access to the ballot .
In 2019 , she dissented from an opinion by two Reagan-appointed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Appeals upholding a Wisconsin law preventing people with felony convictions from owning a gun .
Her argument was an unusual one : The Second Amendment carries more weight than the 14th Amendment , which guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law .
“ Felon disenfranchisement laws have a long history , and the Fourteenth Amendment ’ s protection of the right to vote expressly acknowledges the authority of state legislatures to enact such laws , ” Barrett wrote .
“ The Second Amendment contains no similar acknowledgement.
” A 6-3 conservative majority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a disaster for voting rights , potentially killing what ’ s left of the Voting Rights Act , upholding even more extreme gerrymandering , and giving a green light to virtually any effort by Republicans to make it harder to vote .
And if Barrett ’ s past work in Florida is any indication , she may be inclined to side with GOP interests in any dispute over how ballots should be counted , no matter what the law—or the GOP ’ s past support for voting by mail—has to say .

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President Donald Trump has said he wants the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf in any post-election dispute over the counting of ballots. “I’m counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely,” he said at the first presidential debate. And he wants Amy Coney Barrett swiftly confirmed before the election to ensure such an outcome. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” he said on September 23. “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices.”
Given Trump’s slide in the polls, a replay of 2000’s Bush v. Gore debacle could be the only way he wins. It’s not hard to imagine the court once again installing a Republican president; indeed, a number of conservative justices are steeped in this history. Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh worked on George W. Bush’s legal team during the 2000 Florida recount and successfully intervened to stop Democratic ballots from being counted. If confirmed, Barrett would be a third justice who worked for Republicans during the Florida recount, increasing the likelihood that the court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, would side with Trump in a post-election dispute, even if the facts and the law aren’t on the president’s side.
On her questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barrett said she “provided research and briefing assistance” on Bush v. Gore as a young associate with Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin. (The firm later merged with Baker Botts, run by longtime GOP powerbroker James Baker, who oversaw the recount for Bush.) “I worked on the case on location in Florida for about a week at the outset of the litigation,” she wrote.
Barrett said she worked in Florida with Stuart Levey, a partner at the firm who is now head of the Libra Association, a cryptocurrency organization started by Facebook. According to court records and interviews with lawyers involved in the 2000 recount, Levey and Barrett worked not just on Bush v. Gore but on two little-known but pivotal related cases during the recount. In those cases, Republicans sought to count mail ballots that were disputed by Democrats because of evidence that Republican operatives had altered incomplete absentee ballot request forms. That position stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s current assault on mail voting. But there’s a certain consistency here: Republicans will take whatever stance on mail ballots maximizes their electoral chances. And Barrett’s work in 2000 suggests she might be willing to play along.
In the run-up to the 2000 election, Republicans in Florida made a big push for mail voting and sent absentee ballot request forms to Republican voters “from the desk of Governor Jeb Bush,” urging them to vote “from the comfort of your own house”—a process that Trump has decried. Because of a printing error, GOP voters in two Republican counties, Martin and Seminole, submitted absentee ballot requests that lacked required voter identification numbers. These incomplete request forms should have been discarded according to Florida law, but the Republican supervisors of elections in the two counties illegally allowed operatives with the Florida GOP to correct the forms so that Republican voters would receive their ballots.
Republicans will take whatever stance on mail ballots maximizes their electoral chances. And Barrett’s work in 2000 suggests she might be willing to play along.
Officials with the Florida Republican Party were given office space at the supervisor of elections office in Seminole County to fix the forms, and in Martin County, a Republican official was allowed to take the incomplete ballots from the office, fill in the missing information, and then return them without any supervision. Democrats were given no chance to fix problems with their forms. This allowed Republicans to send 2,000 absentee ballots in Seminole County and nearly 700 in Martin County to GOP voters who otherwise would not have received a ballot.
After the election, Democrats sued and sought to invalidate all 25,000 absentee ballots cast in the two Bush-friendly counties because they weren’t able to track which request forms had been changed. “These people were not entitled to ballots based on their applications,” says Edward Stafman, a lawyer who filed the legal challenge. “They only got them because they were Republicans.”
If the ballots had been thrown out, Al Gore would have easily overcome his 537-vote deficit to Bush. “This was 25,000 votes,” says Daryl Bristow, a lawyer from Baker Botts in Houston who represented the Bush-Cheney campaign in the two counties. “If we had lost those cases, we would’ve lost the presidency.”
Levey, Barrett’s partner, appeared on legal briefs for the Bush-Cheney campaign in both cases, and Bristow remembers Barrett working on them as well. As a young associate who had previously clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, “she was probably doing briefing work with regard to the various motions we were filing and legal arguments we were making,” Bristow says. (Levey declined a request to comment. The White House also had no comment on Barrett’s behalf.)
On the same day as the Bush v. Gore decision, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush in Martin and Seminole counties. The lower court opinions, affirmed by the state Supreme Court, found that allowing Republican operatives to fill in missing information on absentee ballot request forms “offered an opportunity for fraud and created the appearance of partisan favoritism on the part of the supervisor of elections.” However, “despite these irregularities, the sanctity of the ballot and the integrity of the election were not affected.”
The Trump campaign has taken the opposite position in litigation this year, successfully convincing a court to throw out 150,000 absentee ballot requests in Iowa after local election officials filled out identification numbers for voters—the very thing that Republicans did in Florida in 2000. “Today’s Republicans don’t seem to have any problem with reversing positions when it suits them,” says Barry Richard, a lawyer in Tallahassee who represented the Bush-Cheney campaign during the recount.
Barrett’s legal work in Florida shows the lengths Republicans will go to in order to elevate politics over the law when it suits their interests and to ignore evidence of fraud or improprieties when it benefits their party’s vote count.
Barrett has decided few voting rights cases since then as a judge, but the opinions she has issued illustrate a hostile view toward expanding access to the ballot. In 2019, she dissented from an opinion by two Reagan-appointed judges on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a Wisconsin law preventing people with felony convictions from owning a gun. Her argument was an unusual one: The Second Amendment carries more weight than the 14th Amendment, which guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law. “Felon disenfranchisement laws have a long history, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of the right to vote expressly acknowledges the authority of state legislatures to enact such laws,” Barrett wrote. “The Second Amendment contains no similar acknowledgement.”
A 6-3 conservative majority with Barrett on the court could be a disaster for voting rights, potentially killing what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, upholding even more extreme gerrymandering, and giving a green light to virtually any effort by Republicans to make it harder to vote.
And if Barrett’s past work in Florida is any indication, she may be inclined to side with GOP interests in any dispute over how ballots should be counted, no matter what the law—or the GOP’s past support for voting by mail—has to say.


motherjones--2020-10-11--The Democrat Seeking to Unseat Lindsey Graham Just Smashed Fundraising Records

South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison raised a staggering $ 57 million in the third quarter of this year—more than any senate campaign has raised in a single quarter in US history .
Harrison seeks to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham , one of President Donald Trump ’ s most vocal supporters and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee .
In recent weeks , Graham has led the effort to swear in Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett , despite previous claims that he wouldn ’ t support filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year .
Harrison is the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who is seeking a a fourth term in the Senate .
Polls show the election in South Carolina to be extremely competitive : Some show Graham having a slight edge , while others show the candidates neck and neck .
Last week , the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its prediction from “ lean Republican ” to “ tossup , ” calling Harrison “ perhaps Democrats ’ best recruit and a fundraising behemoth.
” Harrison has so far massively outraised and outspent Graham , pouring $ 52 million into a TV and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s $ 19 million .
Harrison ’ s third quarter total , most of which came from out-of-state donors , is more than double what Sen. Graham raised in the previous six quarters combined , notes the New York Times .
But the fundraising numbers don ’ t mean Harrison is a shoe-in : After all , the previous quarterly senate fundraising record of $ 38 million was set by Texas ’ s Beto O ’ Rourke in 2018 , who ultimately lost to Sen. Ted Cruz .
As my colleague Kara Voght @ @ @ @ @ @ @ South Carolina election , Harrison ’ s biggest hurdle was originally lack of name recognition .
He ’ s taken the advice of former Georgia guberatorial candidate Stacey Abrams : “ Stacey ’ s advice to me was , ‘ Jaime , you got ta go everywhere .
You can ’ t give up on anybody , ’ ” Harrison said .
“ I think [ the Democratic spirit ] is alive and well all across the South .
The real question is getting people to believe that it ’ s possible here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ People have a little sliver of hope , and now it ’ s important for me to take that sliver and turn it into a roaring flame .
”

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South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison raised a staggering $57 million in the third quarter of this year—more than any senate campaign has raised in a single quarter in US history.
Harrison seeks to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In recent weeks, Graham has led the effort to swear in Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, despite previous claims that he wouldn’t support filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year.
Harrison is the first credible challenger in some time to Graham, who is seeking a a fourth term in the Senate. Polls show the election in South Carolina to be extremely competitive: Some show Graham having a slight edge, while others show the candidates neck and neck. Last week, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its prediction from “lean Republican” to “tossup,” calling Harrison “perhaps Democrats’ best recruit and a fundraising behemoth.”
Last week, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its prediction from “lean Republican” to “tossup.”
Harrison has so far massively outraised and outspent Graham, pouring $52 million into a TV and digital advertising blitz compared to Graham’s $19 million. Harrison’s third quarter total, most of which came from out-of-state donors, is more than double what Sen. Graham raised in the previous six quarters combined, notes the New York Times.
But the fundraising numbers don’t mean Harrison is a shoo-in: After all, the previous quarterly senate fundraising record of $38 million was set by Texas’s Beto O’Rourke in 2018, who ultimately lost to Sen. Ted Cruz.
As my colleague Kara Voght noted in her deep dive about the South Carolina election, Harrison’s biggest hurdle was originally lack of name recognition. He’s taken the advice of former Georgia guberatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: “Stacey’s advice to me was, ‘Jaime, you gotta go everywhere. You can’t give up on anybody,’” Harrison said.
“I think [the Democratic spirit] is alive and well all across the South. The real question is getting people to believe that it’s possible here,” he went on. “People have a little sliver of hope, and now it’s important for me to take that sliver and turn it into a roaring flame.”


motherjones--2020-10-11--Watch Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris Own Mike Pence on SNL

This week ’ s Saturday Night Live had no shortage of content to work with as it took on the vice presidential debates .
The latest episode dropped in the midst of a coronavirus outbreak at the White House , which has infected the president along with several members of his inner circle .
During SNL ’ s cold open , Kate McKinnon , as USA Today ’ s Susan Page , explains : “ Tonight you ’ ll notice that between the candidates we ’ ve installed buffet style sneeze guards on account that one of you works for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the debate ’ s first topic , to which Beck Bennett ’ s Mike Pence replies : “ Dammit.
” But the real standout from the sketch is Maya Rudolph as Sen. Kamala Harris , who repeatedly shuts down Pence ’ s interruptions with “ I ’ m speaking , ” and smiles “ like I ’ m in a TJ Maxx and a white lady asks me if I work here.
” Then things get weird , as Joe Biden , played by Jim Carrey , teleports in to play the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fly .
Herman Cain , played by Kenan Thompson , comes back from the dead to join Biden atop Pence ’ s head and warn the audience , “ Don ’ t trust this White Devil about that ‘ rona .
”

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motherjones--2020-10-12--Republicans Broke Florida’s Unemployment System. Could It Cost Trump the Election?

In mid May , with the pandemic raging and thousands of jobless Floridians in their third month of waiting for unemployment benefits , Kelly Johnson decided it was time to write a letter to Donald Trump , for whom she had voted in 2016 .
“ I just wanted the federal government to step in , because it was such a mess , ” says the 48-year-old single mom of eight and resident of Dunedin , outside Tampa .
“ I was really just desperate at that point.
” Johnson had lost both of her jobs , at a restaurant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ramped up in March .
When she tried to file for unemployment , it took almost a week to get her application through the state ’ s glitchy unemployment website .
The weeks passed—no benefits .
She started a Facebook group for people having trouble getting their benefits , and its membership quickly swelled into the thousands .
Soon , Johnson was spending hours each day on the phone and online trying to help the group ’ s members secure their unemployment checks from Florida ’ s Department of Economic Opportunity ( DEO @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for her own benefits .
Some of them couldn ’ t even file an application because the web interface locked them out or kept crashing .
Others were able to file , but their applications were marked “ pending ” for weeks .
People who did receive benefits got less than they were owed .
Her conversations grew increasingly dire : People were losing their homes and living in their cars .
In April , frustrated by the lack of progress , Johnson and dozens of her group ’ s members began protesting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention of the local press .
Soon , Johnson got an email out of the blue from Sen. Marco Rubio ( R-Fla. ) , who thanked her for contacting his office ( she says she never had ) , asked for more information about her case , and pledged to bring it to the attention of Gov .
Ron DeSantis .
Within a week , Johnson ’ s benefits started rolling in .
She wondered if it was because she had gone on TV so much that Tallahassee wanted to shut her up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s group were still waiting .
So she went to WhiteHouse.gov and wrote her message to the president .
“ I sent a letter to tell him : ‘ You ’ re going to lose this election because of this unemployment , ’ ” Johnson recounts .
“ I was like , ‘ I ’ m working with the unemployed here , and DeSantis is going to lose this for you .
You need to fix this.
’ ” The White House sent her a bland form response .
That same week , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convening a special session to address the unemployment system issues in the state .
For Johnson , it was the last straw .
“ I felt like in our government ’ s eyes we were the scum of the earth , ” she says .
Days later , she went on a local radio show and announced that she was going to run for the state legislature .
And after a lifetime of voting for Republicans , she would do it as a Democrat .
If Trump wants to win the crucial swing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ afford many Kelly Johnsons .
He won the state by 1.2 percentage points in 2016 .
In 2020 , that razor-thin margin could be erased by the thousands of Floridians who have been burned by the state ’ s broken , worst-in-the-nation unemployment system .
It is a system that Trump ’ s Republican allies helped bankrupt after the 2008 financial crisis , setting the stage for disaster when the state faced another downturn .
Now , the system ’ s dysfunction in the face of the COVID pandemic has earned Trump and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including about 600 members of Johnson ’ s group who were 2016 Trump voters but she says have told her they won ’ t vote for him in 2020 .
“ Sometimes for voters it ’ s about what has really hit you viscerally and directly , ” says Aubrey Jewett , a political scientist at the University of Central Florida .
“ That ’ s the kind of issue this is : It hit people hard .
Those are the kinds of things people remember .
In a close election , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things that could sway the election.
” Before the Great Recession , Florida ’ s economy was surging .
Home prices had jumped 70 percent between 1996 and 2004 , and tax revenue from things like real estate transactions and construction rose with them .
Buoyed by this cash , Florida ’ s GOP-majority slashed other taxes , marketing the state to businesses and individuals seeking lower taxes .
In 2006 , 1,000 new residents were moving to Florida per day , adding the equivalent of Tampa to the state ’ s population @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump changed his legal residence to Florida , likely in order to take advantage of the state ’ s tax structure , which includes no estate tax and no state income tax . )
The 2008 downturn hit Florida like a hurricane .
Over the next two years , the state became a foreclosure epicenter , and the state ’ s unemployment rate nearly tripled .
On top of business-friendly tax cuts , Florida had for years allowed businesses to contribute the bare minimum allowed by federal law to the state ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 7 per employee per year .
As the newly jobless flocked to unemployment during the Great Recession , the already diminished trust dwindled .
Soon , Florida , like many states , had to borrow money from the federal government to cover benefits .
The plan was for employers to pay back the borrowed federal money through unemployment taxes .
But in 2011 , at the behest of the business lobby and Republican Gov .
Rick Scott , the state legislature passed a bill that spared employers by cutting benefits .
It reduced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unemployment from 26 to as few as 12 , depending on the state ’ s unemployment rate .
It also made it harder to apply for unemployment , requiring residents to file online and to complete a 45-question math and reading test—ostensibly to help match them with jobs—and upping the number of mandatory weekly job searches required while also making it easier to deny benefits based on a person ’ s misconduct , on or off the job .
“ This governor does not believe in increased taxation , ” Scott ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ So he ’ d like to focus on controlling the outflow of benefits.
” The legislature ’ s Republican majority said lowering companies ’ unemployment tax burden would bring business to Florida , creating jobs and sending money into the empty trust .
Critics saw the measure as something more sinister : an effort to refill the trust by making it as difficult as possible for people to access benefits .
“ Florida sabotaged their system , ” says Michele Evermore , a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emerged from the recession , they ’ d borrowed federal money , they owed it back , and then they had to fill up their trust fund .
And instead of taxing employers to do that , they do it by cutting benefits.
” At the time of the bill ’ s passage in 2011 , Florida was still reeling from the financial crisis , with an unemployment rate of more than 11 percent—the third highest in the nation .
Yet in the year that followed , benefit payments to new recipients fell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national drop .
By early 2013 , just 16 percent of unemployed Floridians were getting aid , the lowest rate in the country .
( The national rate was close to 25 percent . )
Several worker advocacy groups sued , alleging that the new system , with its requirements to file online and its lengthy skills assessment , violated civil rights laws and discriminated against people with disabilities and those who didn ’ t speak much English .
The US Department of Labor agreed , telling the state that it had to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the DEO made only small changes ; it kept the skills assessment and even added another series of forms that applicants had to fill out .
( The legislature made the skills assessment voluntary in 2014 . )
In 2013 , the DEO launched CONNECT , a $ 77 million online unemployment system designed by the consulting firm Deloitte to meet the 2011 law ’ s labyrinthine specifications .
In the year that followed , benefit denials rose 27 percent , even as the number of claims fell .
By 2015 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plummeted to 12 percent—tied with South Carolina for the lowest rate in the nation .
The number of workers who were disqualified for missing reporting requirements quadrupled .
That year , the Florida auditor general issued a scathing audit of CONNECT .
Among dozens of issues like delayed payments , it found that the system often entered in the wrong data , leading legitimate claims for unemployment to be rejected .
Two more audits by the state , the latest in 2019 , came to similar conclusions .
Since the pandemic unemployment crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has taken to blaming Deloitte for the pain caused by the online system .
DeSantis ordered a state investigation of the contract with Deloitte , sued the company , and fined it $ 8 million .
But blaming Deloitte misses the point , says Evermore , because the online interface was designed to implement the unemployment policy set by Republican lawmakers .
“ They ’ re not looking at their own policies , or the 2011 law that set this thing up to be so punishing , ” she says , noting that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same Deloitte-made system yet has one of the state has one of most generous unemployment programs in the country .
“ You can design a system to try and get benefits out , or you can design a system that ’ s designed to hold people up at every turn.
” “ The idea is to make the system as inoperable as possible to reduce how much out-of-work Floridians get , ” says state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez , a Democrat .
“ There ’ s just no other way to describe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ secretary for Scott—who is now a US senator—said in an email that it ’ s “ obviously false ” to claim that as governor , Scott sought to make unemployment difficult for people to access in order to protect businesses from increased taxation .
She did not respond to a request to elaborate .
This spring , with the pandemic in full swing and Florida ’ s hospitality sector alone having shed nearly 400,000 jobs , DeSantis admitted that the unemployment system was a “ jalopy ” and had been designed to fail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the failures of the unemployment system could be a problem for the president in November .
One DeSantis adviser told Politico it was “ a shit sandwich.
” A poll commissioned by the Democratic National Committee in June found broad dissatisfaction among Floridians with Trump ’ s efforts at economic relief .
DeSantis told the DEO to do whatever it had to do to make things right .
The agency spent $ 110 million to add 1500 unemployment call center workers .
But those workers apparently didn ’ t have the authority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to state Sen. Jason Pizzo , who obtained messages between call center workers and supervisors .
A number of workers showed a local TV station that the button they needed to click to move ahead with a caller ’ s application was grayed out and disabled , so they had to instruct desperate callers to try to submit their applications again later .
“ I had call center workers reach out to me who said , ‘ We feel guilty , because we ’ re making pretty good money per hour to lie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phone knowing at the beginning of the call that we can ’ t help them , ’ ” says Pizzo .
Six months into the pandemic , the DEO says it has paid out about 2 million of the 4 million claims it has received .
But people who had to wait months to get unemployment missed out on the federal CARES Act ’ s $ 600-per-week unemployment boost before it expired in July .
That would have been a critical financial lift for many families , notes Pizzo , given that Florida @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week , among the lowest in the nation .
( The DEO did not respond to questions from Mother Jones . )
In September , DeSantis ended Florida ’ s participation in Trump ’ s program to provide an extra $ 300 per week in unemployment benefits two weeks before the program concluded , because the state didn ’ t have enough money to provide the required $ 100-per-week match .
The termination , Pizzo estimates , cost Floridians $ 480 million in benefits .
In Johnson ’ s Facebook group , anger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He ’ s Trump ’ s ‘ guy , ’ ” one user wrote of the governor .
“ He ’ s a tool .
A puppet.
” Johnson says , “ They ’ re angry with DeSantis , but this year , they can ’ t vote him out—so they ’ re going to vote the other guy out.
” Johnson is under no illusions about her tough odds in the race against Republican incumbent Chris Sprowls , who is set to become the Speaker of the Florida House if he wins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says she ’ ll keep working to advocate for a better unemployment system , even in the face of a Republican legislature that has shown little interest in improving unemployment .
“ Because they started to be unemployed , people started to pay attention to politics , ” she says .
People like her were stuck at home without jobs , watching the news and spending hours steeped in the details of unemployment—and of the president ’ s pandemic response .
“ We were home , so we got to pay attention , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ watching the government .
And that ’ s when we were like , ‘ Oh my god .
Why did we vote for this guy ?
’ ”

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In mid May, with the pandemic raging and thousands of jobless Floridians in their third month of waiting for unemployment benefits, Kelly Johnson decided it was time to write a letter to Donald Trump, for whom she had voted in 2016.
“I just wanted the federal government to step in, because it was such a mess,” says the 48-year-old single mom of eight and resident of Dunedin, outside Tampa. “I was really just desperate at that point.”
Johnson had lost both of her jobs, at a restaurant and a gym, when the pandemic ramped up in March. When she tried to file for unemployment, it took almost a week to get her application through the state’s glitchy unemployment website. The weeks passed—no benefits.
She started a Facebook group for people having trouble getting their benefits, and its membership quickly swelled into the thousands. Soon, Johnson was spending hours each day on the phone and online trying to help the group’s members secure their unemployment checks from Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) while at the same time battling for her own benefits. Some of them couldn’t even file an application because the web interface locked them out or kept crashing. Others were able to file, but their applications were marked “pending” for weeks. People who did receive benefits got less than they were owed. Her conversations grew increasingly dire: People were losing their homes and living in their cars.
In April, frustrated by the lack of progress, Johnson and dozens of her group’s members began protesting all over the state and caught the attention of the local press. Soon, Johnson got an email out of the blue from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who thanked her for contacting his office (she says she never had), asked for more information about her case, and pledged to bring it to the attention of Gov. Ron DeSantis. Within a week, Johnson’s benefits started rolling in. She wondered if it was because she had gone on TV so much that Tallahassee wanted to shut her up.
But many people in Johnson’s group were still waiting. So she went to WhiteHouse.gov and wrote her message to the president. “I sent a letter to tell him: ‘You’re going to lose this election because of this unemployment,’” Johnson recounts. “I was like, ‘I’m working with the unemployed here, and DeSantis is going to lose this for you. You need to fix this.’”
The White House sent her a bland form response. That same week, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature voted against convening a special session to address the unemployment system issues in the state. For Johnson, it was the last straw. “I felt like in our government’s eyes we were the scum of the earth,” she says.
Days later, she went on a local radio show and announced that she was going to run for the state legislature. And after a lifetime of voting for Republicans, she would do it as a Democrat.
If Trump wants to win the crucial swing state of Florida, he cannot afford many Kelly Johnsons. He won the state by 1.2 percentage points in 2016. In 2020, that razor-thin margin could be erased by the thousands of Floridians who have been burned by the state’s broken, worst-in-the-nation unemployment system. It is a system that Trump’s Republican allies helped bankrupt after the 2008 financial crisis, setting the stage for disaster when the state faced another downturn. Now, the system’s dysfunction in the face of the COVID pandemic has earned Trump and his allies ire from the newly unemployed, including about 600 members of Johnson’s group who were 2016 Trump voters but she says have told her they won’t vote for him in 2020.
“Sometimes for voters it’s about what has really hit you viscerally and directly,” says Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida. “That’s the kind of issue this is: It hit people hard. Those are the kinds of things people remember. In a close election, it’s definitely one of the things that could sway the election.”
Before the Great Recession, Florida’s economy was surging. Home prices had jumped 70 percent between 1996 and 2004, and tax revenue from things like real estate transactions and construction rose with them. Buoyed by this cash, Florida’s GOP-majority slashed other taxes, marketing the state to businesses and individuals seeking lower taxes. In 2006, 1,000 new residents were moving to Florida per day, adding the equivalent of Tampa to the state’s population each year. (Just last year, Trump changed his legal residence to Florida, likely in order to take advantage of the state’s tax structure, which includes no estate tax and no state income tax.)
The 2008 downturn hit Florida like a hurricane. Over the next two years, the state became a foreclosure epicenter, and the state’s unemployment rate nearly tripled. On top of business-friendly tax cuts, Florida had for years allowed businesses to contribute the bare minimum allowed by federal law to the state’s unemployment trust fund—what amounted to $7 per employee per year. As the newly jobless flocked to unemployment during the Great Recession, the already diminished trust dwindled. Soon, Florida, like many states, had to borrow money from the federal government to cover benefits.
The plan was for employers to pay back the borrowed federal money through unemployment taxes. But in 2011, at the behest of the business lobby and Republican Gov. Rick Scott, the state legislature passed a bill that spared employers by cutting benefits. It reduced the number of weeks someone could receive unemployment from 26 to as few as 12, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. It also made it harder to apply for unemployment, requiring residents to file online and to complete a 45-question math and reading test—ostensibly to help match them with jobs—and upping the number of mandatory weekly job searches required while also making it easier to deny benefits based on a person’s misconduct, on or off the job.
“This governor does not believe in increased taxation,” Scott’s budget adviser told lawmakers during a hearing. “So he’d like to focus on controlling the outflow of benefits.”
The legislature’s Republican majority said lowering companies’ unemployment tax burden would bring business to Florida, creating jobs and sending money into the empty trust. Critics saw the measure as something more sinister: an effort to refill the trust by making it as difficult as possible for people to access benefits.
“Florida sabotaged their system,” says Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project who studies unemployment. “They emerged from the recession, they’d borrowed federal money, they owed it back, and then they had to fill up their trust fund. And instead of taxing employers to do that, they do it by cutting benefits.”
At the time of the bill’s passage in 2011, Florida was still reeling from the financial crisis, with an unemployment rate of more than 11 percent—the third highest in the nation. Yet in the year that followed, benefit payments to new recipients fell by 40 percent, four times the national drop. By early 2013, just 16 percent of unemployed Floridians were getting aid, the lowest rate in the country. (The national rate was close to 25 percent.)
Several worker advocacy groups sued, alleging that the new system, with its requirements to file online and its lengthy skills assessment, violated civil rights laws and discriminated against people with disabilities and those who didn’t speak much English. The US Department of Labor agreed, telling the state that it had to correct the problems or face sanctions. But the DEO made only small changes; it kept the skills assessment and even added another series of forms that applicants had to fill out. (The legislature made the skills assessment voluntary in 2014.)
“Sometimes for voters it’s about what has really hit you viscerally and directly. In a close election, it’s definitely one of the things that could sway the election.”
In 2013, the DEO launched CONNECT, a $77 million online unemployment system designed by the consulting firm Deloitte to meet the 2011 law’s labyrinthine specifications. In the year that followed, benefit denials rose 27 percent, even as the number of claims fell. By 2015, the proportion of jobless Floridians getting benefits plummeted to 12 percent—tied with South Carolina for the lowest rate in the nation. The number of workers who were disqualified for missing reporting requirements quadrupled.
That year, the Florida auditor general issued a scathing audit of CONNECT. Among dozens of issues like delayed payments, it found that the system often entered in the wrong data, leading legitimate claims for unemployment to be rejected. Two more audits by the state, the latest in 2019, came to similar conclusions.
Since the pandemic unemployment crisis hit, Florida’s GOP majority has taken to blaming Deloitte for the pain caused by the online system. DeSantis ordered a state investigation of the contract with Deloitte, sued the company, and fined it $8 million. But blaming Deloitte misses the point, says Evermore, because the online interface was designed to implement the unemployment policy set by Republican lawmakers.
“They’re not looking at their own policies, or the 2011 law that set this thing up to be so punishing,” she says, noting that Massachusetts’s unemployment interface runs on the same Deloitte-made system yet has one of the state has one of most generous unemployment programs in the country. “You can design a system to try and get benefits out, or you can design a system that’s designed to hold people up at every turn.”
“The idea is to make the system as inoperable as possible to reduce how much out-of-work Floridians get,” says state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Democrat. “There’s just no other way to describe it.”
Sarah Schwirian, the press secretary for Scott—who is now a US senator—said in an email that it’s “obviously false” to claim that as governor, Scott sought to make unemployment difficult for people to access in order to protect businesses from increased taxation. She did not respond to a request to elaborate.
This spring, with the pandemic in full swing and Florida’s hospitality sector alone having shed nearly 400,000 jobs, DeSantis admitted that the unemployment system was a “jalopy” and had been designed to fail.
Republicans in the state began worrying that the failures of the unemployment system could be a problem for the president in November. One DeSantis adviser told Politico it was “a shit sandwich.” A poll commissioned by the Democratic National Committee in June found broad dissatisfaction among Floridians with Trump’s efforts at economic relief.
DeSantis told the DEO to do whatever it had to do to make things right. The agency spent $110 million to add 1500 unemployment call center workers. But those workers apparently didn’t have the authority to submit and amend applications, according to state Sen. Jason Pizzo, who obtained messages between call center workers and supervisors. A number of workers showed a local TV station that the button they needed to click to move ahead with a caller’s application was grayed out and disabled, so they had to instruct desperate callers to try to submit their applications again later. “I had call center workers reach out to me who said, ‘We feel guilty, because we’re making pretty good money per hour to lie to people—to spend an hour on the phone knowing at the beginning of the call that we can’t help them,’” says Pizzo.
Six months into the pandemic, the DEO says it has paid out about 2 million of the 4 million claims it has received. But people who had to wait months to get unemployment missed out on the federal CARES Act’s $600-per-week unemployment boost before it expired in July. That would have been a critical financial lift for many families, notes Pizzo, given that Florida caps state benefits at $275 per week, among the lowest in the nation. (The DEO did not respond to questions from Mother Jones.)
In September, DeSantis ended Florida’s participation in Trump’s program to provide an extra $300 per week in unemployment benefits two weeks before the program concluded, because the state didn’t have enough money to provide the required $100-per-week match. The termination, Pizzo estimates, cost Floridians $480 million in benefits.
In Johnson’s Facebook group, anger at Trump and DeSantis grew. “He’s Trump’s ‘guy,’” one user wrote of the governor. “He’s a tool. A puppet.”
“#DeSATAN & #tRUMPSGOTTAGO.”
“DumpDeSantis #DumpTrump2020.”
Johnson says, “They’re angry with DeSantis, but this year, they can’t vote him out—so they’re going to vote the other guy out.”
Johnson is under no illusions about her tough odds in the race against Republican incumbent Chris Sprowls, who is set to become the Speaker of the Florida House if he wins reelection. If she loses, she says she’ll keep working to advocate for a better unemployment system, even in the face of a Republican legislature that has shown little interest in improving unemployment.
“Because they started to be unemployed, people started to pay attention to politics,” she says. People like her were stuck at home without jobs, watching the news and spending hours steeped in the details of unemployment—and of the president’s pandemic response.
“We were home, so we got to pay attention,” she says. “We were watching the government. And that’s when we were like, ‘Oh my god. Why did we vote for this guy?’”
Image credits: Ken Cedeno/CNP/Zuma; Joe Raedle/Getty


motherjones--2020-10-12--Did Amy Coney Barrett Lie to Congress in 2017 or Is She Just Clueless?

Alliance Defending Freedom is the nation ’ s largest and most influential anti-LGBT legal organization .
With a budget of more than $ 50 million and more than 40 staff lawyers , it has participated in nearly 60 successful US Supreme Court cases since it launched in 1994 .
Among them were some of the most high-profile legal battles in the culture wars , where ADF has opposed same-sex marriage and a defended anti-LGBT discrimination .
Its founder , Alan Sears , explained in 2012 speech to the far-right , anti-gay World Congress of Families , “ In the course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alliance Defense Fund has now fought involving this homosexual agenda , one thing is certain : There is no room for compromise with those who would call evil ‘ good.
’ ” Before President Trump nominated her for a seat in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017 , Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett taught a class at five different sessions of the ADF ’ s summer-long law student training program in Phoenix and Alexandria , Virginia .
Known as the Blackstone Legal Fellowship , the program was designed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them as judges , law professors and practicing attorneys to help keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel in America.
” It ’ s part of ADF ’ s long-running effort to seed all levels of public life with Christian legal warriors by training top students and placing them in prestigious internships or clerkships where they can advance the group ’ s larger religious agenda .
Since 2000 , more than 2,400 students have gone through the program and many have gone on to influential government positions .
Just one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ zealot who was in the Blackstone fellowship while a student at Ave Maria law school .
In 2017 , President Trump appointed him deputy general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services .
He is now principal advisor to the director of the HHS Office of Civil Rights , which this year attempted to strip the anti-discrimination protections for LBGT people out of the Affordable Care Act .
Yet when Sen. Al Franken ( D-MN ) asked Barrett about her work for ADF during her 2017 confirmation hearing , she claimed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an anti-LBGT agenda when she agreed to speak there .
She testified that she ’ d only recently learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center had described ADF as a hate group for supporting the criminalization of homosexuality overseas and also for the “ recriminalization of homosexuality in the United States.
” “ This is a group that fights against equal treatment of LGBT people , ” Franken informed her .
“ This is a group which calls for the sterilization of transgender people abroad.
” “ I was not aware of that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m invited to give a lot of talks as a law professor .
I don ’ t know what all of ADF ’ s policy positions are .
And it has never been my practice to investigate all of the policy positions of a group that invites me to speak.
” Franken resigned from Congress amid sexual misconduct allegations in 2018 , but he wasn ’ t the only person skeptical of Barrett ’ s testimony .
“ That answer suggests either she ’ s stunningly unobservant or not fully truthful , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ litigated for two decades against ADF and is senior counsel at Lambda Legal , an LGBT civil rights group .
“ It ’ s truly incomprehensible that somebody who ’ s a conservative legal scholar with a focus on religion and very active in the very conservative religious legal movement would be unaware of ADF ’ s priorities.
” ADF did not respond to a request for comment for this story .
Barrett ’ s 2017 testimony regarding ADF takes on new relevance as she prepares to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , this time for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court .
It raises questions not just about whether she might have previously lied to Congress , but whether she might also lack some of the basic critical faculties usually expected in a lawyer ascending to the nation ’ s highest court .
Indeed , there were plenty of signs at Blackstone that might have tipped off even the dimmest of lawyers to ADF ’ s anti-LGBT agenda during the five times Barrett spoke there .
Let ’ s just start with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ list .
During some of the years Barrett taught , students ’ reading lists included a book written by Sears called The Homosexual Agenda : Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today .
You ’ d have to be living under a rock , or perhaps in a secretive charismatic Christian community , not to appreciate that the title alone indicates how ADF views LGBT people .
Then there ’ s the “ lexicon ” of language that ADF sent to faculty members and asked them to adhere to when they participated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalist Sarah Posner for Type Investigations , the lexicon instructed faculty to excise the word “ gay ” from their vocabulary , and to instead use “ homosexual behavior ” because , according to a note from Sears , “ Homosexuality is a personal struggle.
” “ Sexual orientation ” should instead be called “ sexual preference/choice , ” and transgender should be replaced with “ cross-dressing ” or “ sexually confused.
” Faculty should refer to same-sex marriage as “ marriage imitation.
” The lexicon stresses the use of “ homosexual agenda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ civil rights movement ” because , a note says , “ The goals and the agenda of advocates of homosexual behavior are not ‘ rights , ’ but ‘ demands.
’ ” The lexicon insists on scare quotes around the “ hate ” in hate crimes and replaces the term “ bigotry ” with “ defending biblical , religious principles.
” Maybe the mother of seven was too busy giving talks to the Federalist Society—the conservative legal group pushing her Supreme Court nomination—to read all the materials in preparation for her years of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lexicon didn ’ t clue Barrett in about the views of her employer , her colleagues on the faculty certainly could have enlightened her .
Over the years , Blackstone has drawn speakers from the country ’ s most prominent Christian anti-LGBT groups such as James Dobson ’ s Focus on the Family , whose leaders helped create ADF , and the Family Research Council , headed by Tony Perkins , a man who has long equated homosexuality with pedophilia and warned that gay men pose a dire threat to children .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s who in the fight against marriage equality , notably John Eastman , who headed the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage .
And there was Kyle Duncan , an attorney who spent most of his career fighting marriage equality , and later , defending “ bathroom bills ” and other measures designed to discriminate against transgender people .
( President Trump appointed Duncan to a seat on the 5th Circuit in 2018 . )
The faculty list also makes clear that ADF was unlikely to have invited Barrett to join it if there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its core values .
( “ I ’ ve never been invited , ” Pizer says with a laugh . )
But Barrett declared during her confirmation hearing that she was shocked anyone would suggest the program might promote anti-gay discrimination .
In her years at Blackstone , she insisted she never encountered anything even bordering on anti-LGBT bigotry .
“ I never witnessed any discriminatory conduct in any way , ” she said .
“ I never had a whiff of that .
My presentation was about constitutional interpretation .
It had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In follow-up questions after the hearing , Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse ( D-R.I. ) pressed Barrett further about her work for ADF .
“ You explained that you were unaware of the program ’ s discriminatory conduct at the time you made your speech , ” he wrote .
“ If you had known of the program ’ s support for anti-gay policies , would you have still provided the speech ?
” Again , Barrett—who spoke not once but five times at the group ’ s program—pleaded ignorance .
She said she still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described ADF ’ s anti-gay policy positions .
Of course , she did know enough about it to suggest to Whitehouse that SPLC ’ s designation of ADF as a hate group was “ controversial.
” Barrett told Whitehouse , “ For my part , I would not participate in any program that advocated hatred and discrimination against any group , including LGBTQ persons.
” She was confirmed to the seat 55-43 , checking yet another box in her glide path to the Supreme Court .
There ’ s yet another reason why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the heart of ADF ’ s agenda when she first agreed to speak at Blackstone and continued to help train its burgeoning legal army : ADF was behind some of the most interesting , contentious , and controversial Supreme Court cases of the 21st Century .
Many if not most of them involved LGBT civil rights .
In short , they were precisely the sorts of cases Barrett was supposed to be analyzing and researching during her 15 years teaching constitutional law at Notre Dame before the confirmation—another reason why her 2017 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ files dozens of cases in state and federal courts every year and works hard to boost its public profile , ” says Rob Boston , senior adviser at Americans United for Separation of Church and State , who has followed ADF ’ s work for years .
“ It ’ s inconceivable that anyone who moves even tangentially in conservative legal circles would not know of this group or its agenda.
” Last month , when President Trump announced he was tapping Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nation ’ s most brilliant and gifted legal minds to the Supreme Court .
She is a woman of unparalleled achievement , towering intellect.
” Is it really possible , then , that in her five years of teaching at Blackstone she had no idea that ADF was , for instance , the force behind Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission ?
That ’ s the case in which ADF successfully represented a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple .
Originally filed in 2012 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extensively in the media as it worked its way to the Supreme Court , which in 2018 ruled in the baker ’ s favor on narrow procedural grounds .
“ If she had been unaware of it , one has to wonder how she was doing her scholarly work , ” says Pizer .
“ That type of work requires looking at the world around you and teaching about what ’ s going on.
” Or how about the protracted and very public litigation over Proposition 8 , the 2008 California ballot initiative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state ?
Is there any conceivable way Barrett failed to notice Hollingsworth v Perry , the Supreme Court case that wouldn ’ t exist but for the Christian law firm ?
In 2009 , when activists sued the state to overturn Prop 8 , Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and later , state attorney general Kamala Harris , refused to defend the law in court .
So ADF stepped in to do the state ’ s job .
Representing the official sponsors of the ballot initiative , ADF fought the case all the way to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ruled that ADF ’ s clients did not have standing to bring the case and dismissed it .
The decision effectively legalized same-sex marriage in California two years before the court made it legal nationwide in its decision in Obergerfell v Hodges .
This is yet another case with which ADF was intimately involved , and which conservative Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have been railing against in opinions ever since .
For years , these cases were hot topics in the media , which invariably highlighted ADF ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legal talk circuit .
They involved both a fair amount of anti-LGBT bigotry but also pathbreaking constitutional interpretation—the very subject Barrett was teaching at Blackstone and supposedly studying and teaching as a legal scholar at Notre Dame .
Pressed in 2017 by Franken to explain her professed ignorance of ADF ’ s anti-LGBT bent , Barrett went all wide-eyed ingenue .
She claimed ADF could not possibly be a hate group because it was working on a case with lawyers from the white-shoe law firm WilmerHale , “ one of the most reputable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and they wouldn ’ t be co-counsel with ADF if it were a hate group.
” An incredulous Franken replied , “ So is it your position that no hate group has ever filed or co-filed a brief to the Supreme Court ?
” Franken suggested that her lack of curiosity about the group hiring her to speak might indicate bad judgement , a problem for someone hoping to become a judge .
“ Is it your habit of accepting money from organizations without first learning what they do ?
” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to speak by Pol Pot or by the KKK or a group like that , I would certainly decline the invitation , ” she responded , insisting she ’ d never speak to a hate group .
“ Well , sounds like the ADF is something of a hate group , doesn ’ t it ?
” Franken asked before moving on .
It ’ s hard to watch Barrett ’ s performance during her 2017 confirmation hearing and come away without thinking either she was lying or is a shockingly clueless lawyer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Barrett simply doesn ’ t consider what ADF does as discriminatory or hateful , but rather sees it as the righteous moral work of “ defending biblical principles , ” as the ADF website suggests .
Her inability to see how LBGT people might perceive that work quite differently suggests a form of tunnel vision that even some of the conservatives on the Supreme Court don ’ t have , particularly Justice Neil Gorsuch , a Trump appointee , who this summer wrote the majority opinion in a landmark case , finding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protects gay and transgender workers from discrimination .
“ She was asking the senators to believe the unbelievable , ” Pizer says .
“ I ’ m not going to accuse her of lying to their faces , but given the factual record , it ’ s very hard to believe [ her testimony ] .
That poses a question for all of us about that process .
There ’ s no way to look at it and feel comforted .
”

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Alliance Defending Freedom is the nation’s largest and most influential anti-LGBTQ legal organization. With a budget of more than $50 million and more than 40 staff lawyers, it has participated in nearly 60 successful US Supreme Court cases since it launched in 1994. Among them were some of the most high-profile legal battles in the culture wars, where ADF has opposed same-sex marriage and defended anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Its founder, Alan Sears, explained in 2012 speech to the far-right, anti-gay World Congress of Families, “In the course of the now hundreds of cases the Alliance Defense Fund has now fought involving this homosexual agenda, one thing is certain: There is no room for compromise with those who would call evil ‘good.’”
Before President Trump nominated her for a seat in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett taught a class at five different sessions of the ADF’s summer-long law student training program in Phoenix and Alexandria, Virginia. Known as the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, the program was designed to teach students “how God can use them as judges, law professors and practicing attorneys to help keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel in America.” It’s part of ADF’s long-running effort to seed all levels of public life with Christian legal warriors by training top students and placing them in prestigious internships or clerkships where they can advance the group’s larger religious agenda.
Since 2000, more than 2,400 students have gone through the program and many have gone on to influential government positions. Just one example: Matthew Bowman, an anti-abortion zealot who was in the Blackstone fellowship while a student at Ave Maria law school. In 2017, President Trump appointed him deputy general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services. He is now principal advisor to the director of the HHS Office of Civil Rights, which this year attempted to strip the anti-discrimination protections for LBGT people out of the Affordable Care Act.
Yet when Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) asked Barrett about her work for ADF during her 2017 confirmation hearing, she claimed to have no idea that ADF had an anti-LBGT agenda when she agreed to speak there. She testified that she’d only recently learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center had described ADF as a hate group for supporting the criminalization of homosexuality overseas and also for the “recriminalization of homosexuality in the United States.”
“This is a group that fights against equal treatment of LGBT people,” Franken informed her. “This is a group which calls for the sterilization of transgender people abroad.”
“This is a group that fights against equal treatment of LGBT people. This is a group which calls for the sterilization of transgender people abroad.”
“I was not aware of that,” Barrett replied. “I’m invited to give a lot of talks as a law professor. I don’t know what all of ADF’s policy positions are. And it has never been my practice to investigate all of the policy positions of a group that invites me to speak.”
Franken resigned from Congress amid sexual misconduct allegations in 2018, but he wasn’t the only person skeptical of Barrett’s testimony. “That answer suggests either she’s stunningly unobservant or not fully truthful,” says Jenny Pizer, who has litigated for two decades against ADF and is senior counsel at Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights group. “It’s truly incomprehensible that somebody who’s a conservative legal scholar with a focus on religion and very active in the very conservative religious legal movement would be unaware of ADF’s priorities.” ADF did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Barrett’s 2017 testimony regarding ADF takes on new relevance as she prepares to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday for a new round of hearings, this time for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. It raises questions not just about whether she might have previously lied to Congress, but whether she might also lack some of the basic critical faculties usually expected in a lawyer ascending to the nation’s highest court.
Indeed, there were plenty of signs at Blackstone that might have tipped off even the dimmest of lawyers to ADF’s anti-LGBTQ agenda during the five times Barrett spoke there. Let’s just start with the most obvious: Blackstone’s reading list. During some of the years Barrett taught, students’ reading lists included a book written by Sears called The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. You’d have to be living under a rock, or perhaps in a secretive charismatic Christian community, not to appreciate that the title alone indicates how ADF views LGBTQ people.
Then there’s the “lexicon” of language that ADF sent to faculty members and asked them to adhere to when they participated in the Blackstone program. Unearthed by journalist Sarah Posner for Type Investigations, the lexicon instructed faculty to excise the word “gay” from their vocabulary, and to instead use “homosexual behavior” because, according to a note from Sears, “Homosexuality is a personal struggle.” “Sexual orientation” should instead be called “sexual preference/choice,” and transgender should be replaced with “cross-dressing” or “sexually confused.” Faculty should refer to same-sex marriage as “marriage imitation.” The lexicon stresses the use of “homosexual agenda” rather than “lesbian and gay civil rights movement” because, a note says, “The goals and the agenda of advocates of homosexual behavior are not ‘rights,’ but ‘demands.’” The lexicon insists on scare quotes around the “hate” in hate crimes and replaces the term “bigotry” with “defending biblical, religious principles.”
Maybe the mother of seven was too busy giving talks to the Federalist Society—the conservative legal group pushing her Supreme Court nomination—to read all the materials in preparation for her years of speaking at Blackstone. But if the lexicon didn’t clue Barrett in about the views of her employer, her colleagues on the faculty certainly could have enlightened her. Over the years, Blackstone has drawn speakers from the country’s most prominent Christian anti-LGBTQ groups such as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, whose leaders helped create ADF, and the Family Research Council, headed by Tony Perkins, a man who has long equated homosexuality with pedophilia and warned that gay men pose a dire threat to children.
The past faculty list is a who’s who in the fight against marriage equality, notably John Eastman, who headed the anti-LGBTQ National Organization for Marriage. And there was Kyle Duncan, an attorney who spent most of his career fighting marriage equality, and later, defending “bathroom bills” and other measures designed to discriminate against transgender people. (President Trump appointed Duncan to a seat on the 5th Circuit in 2018.) The faculty list also makes clear that ADF was unlikely to have invited Barrett to join it if there was any indication that she disagreed with its core values. (“I’ve never been invited,” Pizer says with a laugh.)
But Barrett declared during her confirmation hearing that she was shocked anyone would suggest the program might promote anti-gay discrimination. In her years at Blackstone, she insisted she never encountered anything even bordering on anti-LGBTQ bigotry. “I never witnessed any discriminatory conduct in any way,” she said. “I never had a whiff of that. My presentation was about constitutional interpretation. It had nothing to do with those topics.”
In follow-up questions after the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) pressed Barrett further about her work for ADF. “You explained that you were unaware of the program’s discriminatory conduct at the time you made your speech,” he wrote. “If you had known of the program’s support for anti-gay policies, would you have still provided the speech?” Again, Barrett—who spoke not once but five times at the group’s program—pleaded ignorance. She said she still had not investigated whether SPLC had accurately described ADF’s anti-gay policy positions. Of course, she did know enough about it to suggest to Whitehouse that SPLC’s designation of ADF as a hate group was “controversial.” Barrett told Whitehouse, “For my part, I would not participate in any program that advocated hatred and discrimination against any group, including LGBTQ persons.” She was confirmed to the seat 55–43, checking yet another box in her glide path to the Supreme Court.
There’s yet another reason why Barrett likely knew that anti-LGBTQ discrimination was at the heart of ADF’s agenda when she first agreed to speak at Blackstone and continued to help train its burgeoning legal army: ADF was behind some of the most interesting, contentious, and controversial Supreme Court cases of the 21st Century. Many if not most of them involved LGBTQ civil rights. In short, they were precisely the sorts of cases Barrett was supposed to be analyzing and researching during her 15 years teaching constitutional law at Notre Dame before the confirmation—another reason why her 2017 testimony is so utterly unconvincing.
ADF “files dozens of cases in state and federal courts every year and works hard to boost its public profile,” says Rob Boston, senior adviser at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who has followed ADF’s work for years. “It’s inconceivable that anyone who moves even tangentially in conservative legal circles would not know of this group or its agenda.”
Last month, when Trump announced he was tapping Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he said he was nominating “one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds to the Supreme Court. She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect.” Is it really possible, then, that in her five years of teaching at Blackstone she had no idea that ADF was, for instance, the force behind Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission?
That’s the case in which ADF successfully represented a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Originally filed in 2012, the baker’s case was covered extensively in the media as it worked its way to the Supreme Court, which in 2018 ruled in the baker’s favor on narrow procedural grounds. “If she had been unaware of it, one has to wonder how she was doing her scholarly work,” says Pizer. “That type of work requires looking at the world around you and teaching about what’s going on.”
Or how about the protracted and very public litigation over Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in the liberal state? Is there any conceivable way Barrett failed to notice Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Supreme Court case that wouldn’t exist but for the Christian law firm? In 2009, when activists sued the state to overturn Prop 8, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and later, state attorney general Kamala Harris, refused to defend the law in court. So ADF stepped in to do the state’s job.
Representing the official sponsors of the ballot initiative, ADF fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 2013, ruled that ADF’s clients did not have standing to bring the case and dismissed it. The decision effectively legalized same-sex marriage in California two years before the court made it legal nationwide in its decision in Obergerfell v. Hodges. This is yet another case with which ADF was intimately involved, and which conservative Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have been railing against in opinions ever since.
For years, these cases were hot topics in the media, which invariably highlighted ADF’s role, and on virtually every legal talk circuit. They involved both a fair amount of anti-LGBTQ bigotry but also pathbreaking constitutional interpretation—the very subject Barrett was teaching at Blackstone and supposedly studying and teaching as a legal scholar at Notre Dame.
Pressed in 2017 by Franken to explain her professed ignorance of ADF’s anti-LGBTQ bent, Barrett went all wide-eyed ingenue. She claimed ADF could not possibly be a hate group because it was working on a case with lawyers from the white-shoe law firm WilmerHale, “one of the most reputable and esteemed law firms in the country, and they wouldn’t be co-counsel with ADF if it were a hate group.” An incredulous Franken replied, “So is it your position that no hate group has ever filed or co-filed a brief to the Supreme Court?”
“I haven’t researched that question,” she demurred.
Franken suggested that her lack of curiosity about the group hiring her to speak might indicate bad judgement, a problem for someone hoping to become a judge. “Is it your habit of accepting money from organizations without first learning what they do?” he asked.
“If I were invited to speak by Pol Pot or by the KKK or a group like that, I would certainly decline the invitation.”
“If I were invited to speak by Pol Pot or by the KKK or a group like that, I would certainly decline the invitation,” she responded, insisting she’d never speak to a hate group.
“Well, sounds like the ADF is something of a hate group, doesn’t it?” Franken asked before moving on.
It’s hard to watch Barrett’s performance during her 2017 confirmation hearing and come away without thinking either she was lying or is a shockingly clueless lawyer. But there is another possible interpretation: Barrett simply doesn’t consider what ADF does as discriminatory or hateful, but rather sees it as the righteous moral work of “defending biblical principles,” as the ADF website suggests. Her inability to see how LBGT people might perceive that work quite differently suggests a form of tunnel vision that even some of the conservatives on the Supreme Court don’t have, particularly Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, who this summer wrote the majority opinion in a landmark case, finding that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from discrimination.
“She was asking the senators to believe the unbelievable,” Pizer says. “I’m not going to accuse her of lying to their faces, but given the factual record, it’s very hard to believe [her testimony]. That poses a question for all of us about that process. There’s no way to look at it and feel comforted.”


motherjones--2020-10-12--Private Prisons Have Spent More on This Election Than Any Other in History

The for-profit prison industry has spent more money on the upcoming election than any on record—and the vast majority of the donations are going to Republicans .
During this election cycle , private prison PACs , employees , and their families have given $ 2.1 million to candidates , according to the Center for Responsive Politics .
This is no surprise : The for-profit prison business has been booming under the Trump Administration , which has increasingly relied on prison companies to hold immigrant detainees .
As my colleague Madison Pauly wrote in August , the two largest prison companies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relied on federal funding for more than half of their revenue last year , according to their annual reports .
GEO Group , which was responsible for the bulk of the election spending , received $ 900 million in federal contracts in the most recent fiscal year—as compared to $ 500 million in Obama ’ s last year in office .
A recent New York Times investigation into Trump ’ s sprawling business empire found that GEO paid thousands to Mar-a-Lago during Trump ’ s first two years in office , when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of detained migrant families .
The donations from the private prison industry this election cycle have flowed to a number of GOP policymakers .
As Pauly wrote : The recipients include Sen. Corey Gardner of Colorado , where GEO and CoreCivic run networks of halfway houses and GEO is fighting a class-action lawsuit over allegations that it forced immigration detainees to work for little or no pay ; Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ; and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia , the chair of the appropriations committee homeland security subcommittee .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ again , Rep. Henry Cuellar , a conservative Texas Democrat and vocal defender of private prisons whose district includes both GEO and CoreCivic lockups .
Joe Biden , meanwhile , has vowed to end the federal government ’ s use of for-profit prisons , building off an Obama-era policy that was rescinded by the Trump administration .
In a way , the unprecedented spending spree this election cycle makes perfect sense : The private prison industry has a whole lot to lose .

The for-profit prison industry has spent more money on the upcoming election than any on record—and the vast majority of the donations are going to Republicans.
During this election cycle, private prison PACs, employees, and their families have given $2.1 million to candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
This is no surprise: The for-profit prison business has been booming under the Trump Administration, which has increasingly relied on prison companies to hold immigrant detainees.
As my colleague Madison Pauly wrote in August, the two largest prison companies, the GEO Group and CoreCivic, relied on federal funding for more than half of their revenue last year, according to their annual reports.
GEO Group, which was responsible for the bulk of the election spending, received $900 million in federal contracts in the most recent fiscal year—as compared to $500 million in Obama’s last year in office. A recent New York Times investigation into Trump’s sprawling business empire found that GEO paid thousands to Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s first two years in office, when the company was under fire for its treatment of detained migrant families.
The donations from the private prison industry this election cycle have flowed to a number of GOP policymakers. As Pauly wrote:
The recipients include Sen. Corey Gardner of Colorado, where GEO and CoreCivic run networks of halfway houses and GEO is fighting a class-action lawsuit over allegations that it forced immigration detainees to work for little or no pay; Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the chair of the appropriations committee homeland security subcommittee. One of the few Democrats is, again, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a conservative Texas Democrat and vocal defender of private prisons whose district includes both GEO and CoreCivic lockups.
Joe Biden, meanwhile, has vowed to end the federal government’s use of for-profit prisons, building off an Obama-era policy that was rescinded by the Trump administration. In a way, the unprecedented spending spree this election cycle makes perfect sense: The private prison industry has a whole lot to lose.


motherjones--2020-10-12--Kamala Harris Just Slammed the Senate GOP for “Reckless” Endangerment of Capitol Staff

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris ( D-Calif. ) just slammed Senate Republicans ’ “ reckless ” decision to hold Judge Amy Coney Barrett ’ s Supreme Court confirmation hearing “ inside of a closed door room for hours while our nation is facing a deadly airborne virus.
” Harris pointed out that Republicans in the Senate have failed to advance a second coronavirus relief bill to assist the millions who are facing economic devastation because of the pandemic , but nonetheless are attempting to push Coney Barrett ’ s confirmation in the final few weeks before the presidential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ This committee has ignored common sense requests to keep people safe , including not requiring testing for all members , despite a coronavirus outbreak among senators of this very committee , ” she said .
“ The decision to hold this hearing now is reckless and places facilities workers , janitorial staff , and congressional aides and Capitol Police at risk.
” Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday deemed the White House celebration of Coney Barrett ’ s nomination a “ superspreader event.
” Sens .
Thom Tillis ( R-NC ) and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both serve on the Judiciary Committee , tested positive for COVID after attending the White House event .
Watch the video of Harris ’ testimony below :

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) just slammed Senate Republicans’ “reckless” decision to hold Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing “inside of a closed door room for hours while our nation is facing a deadly airborne virus.”
Harris pointed out that Republicans in the Senate have failed to advance a second coronavirus relief bill to assist the millions who are facing economic devastation because of the pandemic, but nonetheless are attempting to push Barrett’s confirmation in the final few weeks before the presidential election—all while endangering people’s health.
“This committee has ignored common sense requests to keep people safe, including not requiring testing for all members, despite a coronavirus outbreak among senators of this very committee,” she said. “The decision to hold this hearing now is reckless and places facilities workers, janitorial staff, and congressional aides and Capitol Police at risk.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday deemed the White House celebration of Barrett’s nomination a “superspreader event.” Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), who both serve on the Judiciary Committee, tested positive for COVID after attending the White House event.
Watch the video of Harris’ testimony below:


motherjones--2020-10-12--The Senate Judiciary Hearings Could Be Amy Coney Barrett’s Second Superspreader Event

Nearly two weeks after Republicans gathered at the White House to celebrate President Trump ’ s third nominee to the Supreme Court at a ceremony that quickly became connected to a cluster of positive coronavirus cases , Sen. Mike Lee ( R-Utah ) —one of the at least 11 people who tested positive after attending the September 26 event—returned to Capitol Hill on Monday to appear in-person for Amy Coney Barrett ’ s confirmation hearing .
Lee declined to wear a mask while giving his opening remarks .
He was seen closely talking to other members of the Senate Judiciary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( R-S.C. ) , whose own refusal to take a coronavirus test prompted the cancellation of a primary debate with his Democratic challenger , Jamie Harrison , on Friday .
( A doctor ’ s note purporting to clear Lee ’ s appearance on Capitol Hill confirmed that he had developed symptoms , “ including remaining but improving fatigue ” over the last week . )
Despite his close contact with a recently-infected Trump , White House chief of staff Mark Meadows refused to engage with reporters unless they agreed to speak with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m more than 10 feet away , ” Meadows said , appearing to mock social-distancing concerns before storming away from a group of Capitol Hill journalists .
“ I ’ m not going to talk to the press.
” The reckless actions came as Democrats blasted Republicans for ignoring precedent and potential coronavirus safety issues to jam through Barrett ’ s nomination so she can be seated in time to hear a challenge seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act .
That case , which the high court is slated to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , would kick more than 20 million people off their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic that ’ s killed more than 210,000 people in the United States .
It ’ s against this prospect of destroying the ACA that Republicans—from the president to Lee—appear emboldened to resume public events , potentially risking the lives of those around them .

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Nearly two weeks after Republicans gathered at the White House to celebrate President Trump’s third nominee to the Supreme Court at a ceremony that quickly became connected to a cluster of positive coronavirus cases, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)—one of the at least 11 people who tested positive after attending the September 26 event—returned to Capitol Hill on Monday to appear in-person for Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing.
Lee declined to wear a mask while giving his opening remarks. He was seen closely talking to other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), whose own refusal to take a coronavirus test prompted the cancellation of a primary debate with his Democratic challenger, Jamie Harrison, on Friday. (A doctor’s note purporting to clear Lee’s appearance on Capitol Hill confirmed that he had developed symptoms, “including remaining but improving fatigue” over the last week.)
Despite his close contact with a recently-infected Trump, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows refused to engage with reporters unless they agreed to speak with him while he was maskless. “I’m more than 10 feet away,” Meadows said, appearing to mock social-distancing concerns before storming away from a group of Capitol Hill journalists. “I’m not going to talk to the press.”
Mike Lee is in the hearing room and chatting with Graham pic.twitter.com/EKT2vnCtnv — Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) October 12, 2020
Mike Lee making an opening statement pic.twitter.com/qPdgIfGE19 — Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) October 12, 2020
Video of Capitol Hill reporters insisting WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows wear a mask while talking with them and Meadows deciding he won’t talk to reporters if he has to wear a mask. pic.twitter.com/kDX10BLDnk — Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) October 12, 2020
The reckless actions came as Democrats blasted Republicans for ignoring precedent and potential coronavirus safety issues to jam through Barrett’s nomination so she can be seated in time to hear a challenge seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act. That case, which the high court is slated to hear just one week after the election, would kick more than 20 million people off their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic that’s killed more than 210,000 people in the United States. It’s against this prospect of destroying the ACA that Republicans—from the president to Lee—appear emboldened to resume public events, potentially risking the lives of those around them.