vox--2020-09-14--Why an endangered Republican Senate majority is targeting Minnesota in 2020

It ’ s been a hectic few years for Minnesota ’ s Democratic Sen. Tina Smith .
First appointed in 2018 to replace former Sen. Al Franken after he resigned in late 2017 amid sexual harassment allegations , Smith had less than a full year in Congress before her first election as senator — a special to determine who served out the few years remaining in Franken ’ s term , which she won by more than 10 points .
Now , she ’ s on the ballot for a full six-year term of her own : Come November , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ known for once complaining that it was no longer socially acceptable to call women “ sluts ” ) .
Smith has a net +13 approval rating , according to Morning Consult ; Minnesota is a habitually Democratic state , even as it has become more competitive in presidential elections .
But Republicans are determined not to make things easy for her in 2020 .
After narrowly losing Minnesota to Hillary Clinton in 2016 , President Donald Trump took to Twitter last year to call his shot : “ In 2020 , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anti-Semite Rep. Omar , & the fact that Minnesota is having its best economic year ever , I will win the State !
” That makes Minnesota one of relatively few target states for a GOP Senate majority that ’ s looking imperiled .
There are vulnerable Republican senators on defense in Arizona , Colorado , Maine , and North Carolina , to name just a few — but the party has also decided to invest heavily in the only upper-Midwestern state it failed to flip in 2016 .
The Trump campaign is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the ad tracking site AdAge , Trump has about $ 14.1 million in TV advertising booked in Minnesota through November 3 — more than his team is putting into Michigan , Wisconsin , or Arizona , at least for now — and his campaign is spending more in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market than it is anywhere outside of Florida .
An investment on that scale by the Trump team isn ’ t just a positive for the president ’ s chances in the state .
It ’ s also good news for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ line with the president in agenda and style that his political future in the state is almost certain to rise and fall with Trump ’ s .
“ We ’ ve been working hard in this state for well over a year , ” Minnesota GOP chair Jennifer Carnahan told Vox .
“ And that ’ s a more impressive effort and focus than we ’ ve ever put in Minnesota if you go back probably even two decades.
” Jason Lewis was a Trump-style candidate before it was popular Smith ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a former one-term representative who was ousted from the seat by Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in 2018 .
Before his brief stint in Congress , he was a controversial right-wing radio host in Minnesota with a long history of racist and sexist comments , and he ’ s been tagged as a “ mini-Trump ” since at least May 2016 , well before he won his House primary .
In 2020 , that makes Lewis less of an outlier than he was four years ago , when , according to Roll Call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican Congressional Committee took a pass on congratulating him the night of his primary win .
But even if it ’ s Trump ’ s GOP now , not every Republican Senate candidate is running toward the president with open arms .
In Colorado , for example , incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner has focused more on burnishing his bipartisan credentials than defending Trump , as Vox ’ s Ella Nilsen points out in her deep dive on the Colorado Senate race .
Not so for Lewis : If Trump loses Minnesota this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ship .
The two are so simpatico that one senior member of the Smith campaign refers to the Trump team in Minnesota as “ Jason Lewis ’ s shadow campaign infrastructure.
” On the campaign trail , Lewis hasn ’ t shied away from those similarities .
Late last month , he told voters in Rochester that the “ fundamental duty of government is restoring public order and backing the blue ” and decried the state ’ s coronavirus lockdown as “ Orwellian.
” And on Twitter , he ’ s embraced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against Biden , arguing that Democrats are “ coming after God ” and want to “ dismantle American society.
” Unlike Lewis , who didn ’ t make his first foray into formal politics until 2016 , Smith has a long history in Minnesota politics .
A former Planned Parenthood executive in the state , she served as chief of staff first to Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak — a job that reportedly earned her the name “ the velvet hammer ” — and then to Gov .
Mark Dayton before becoming Minnesota ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a candidate , Smith has emphasized her fairly moderate record and her willingness to reach across the aisle ; in a Zoom debate with Lewis last month , she stressed her focus on “ practical , commonsense things that we can work on in a bipartisan way.
” But David Schultz , a professor of political science at Hamline University in St. Paul , says that Smith ’ s quiet , efficient legislative style comes with some challenges .
“ She doesn ’ t come across , I think , as sort of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ former Sen Al .
Franken ] did , ” Schultz said , and “ she ’ s kind of been lost next to Amy Klobuchar , ” Minnesota ’ s senior senator and a one-time Democratic presidential candidate .
Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin concedes that “ people are still getting to know Tina , ” but when they do , he ’ s confident they ’ ll like what they see .
“ The last two years in particular , ” he says , Smith has “ kept her nose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being a good senator and doing her job and making sure that she represents Minnesota in Washington , and that work has not gone unnoticed.
” Historically , Minnesota isn ’ t much of a swing state .
But Trump and the state GOP think they can make it one .
If Lewis — and Trump — want to flip Minnesota red in 2020 , they have a lot of history to contend with .
Minnesota hasn ’ t gone for the GOP in a presidential election since 1972 , when incumbent Richard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ giving it an 11-election streak of supporting Democratic presidential candidates .
Clinton ’ s 2016 margin in the state may also have made Minnesota look more vulnerable for Democrats than it actually is .
Though Clinton in 2016 only won by about 44,000 votes — out of nearly 3 million cast statewide — University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs says Clinton “ made monstrous errors in how she ran that race.
” “ Clinton basically ran a bad campaign , ” Schultz says .
“ She gets destroyed by Bernie Sanders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come back to campaign here after she loses , and what happens ?
You know , she basically took the state for granted.
” Still , Trump ’ s Republican Party sees a glimmer of hope .
FiveThirtyEight has made the argument that Minnesota has become redder .
As Nathaniel Rakich noted , “ In 1984 , the state was 18.2 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole .
But in 2016 , for the first time since 1952 , Minnesota voted more Republican than the rest of the U.S. ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book on presidential swing states , thinks there ’ s something to that .
Part of the close margin in Minnesota in 2016 was Clinton , he says , but part of it is just demographics : Schultz argues that Minnesota is genuinely trending purple .
And Carnahan , the state GOP chair , believes that the protests and unrest that have followed the killings of Ahmaud Arbery , Breonna Taylor , and George Floyd , as well as the police shooting of Jacob Blake , which left him paralyzed below the waist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past its tipping point .
Though nationwide protests calling for racial justice and police reform have been largely peaceful ( about 93 percent peaceful , according to one study ) , some cities — notably Minneapolis ; Kenosha , Wisconsin ; and Portland , Oregon — have seen rioting , fires , and violent clashes between police , protesters , and pro-Trump militias , including two deadly shootings .
“ I do see a momentum shift in Minnesota , ” Carnahan told Vox in July , “ and a lot of that has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state and mayors of the two largest cities that completely let every single person in the state down by letting our cities burn for a week and sitting on their hands and doing nothing.
” According to Schulz , there was a version of a law-and-order message that could have worked for Trump , but he believes Trump missed the mark by leaning so hard into the politics of white racial resentment .
“ If [ Trump ] made the same messaging about law and order without the powerful racial overtones that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ he might get to here .
He might get some of those suburban voters to listen to him who are very concerned about what happened in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
” If Lewis wants to pull off a win , he ’ ll likely need to thread the same needle , though his history of racist comments and close ties to Trump could make that difficult .
But Schultz isn ’ t ruling anything out .
“ The Senate race is even tighter , ” he told Vox over email this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law-and-order reaction to it are part of the explanation.
” The coronavirus overshadows a lot of other issues Even if Minnesota is on its way to perennial swing-state status , though , and even if there is — or was — a building suburban backlash to civil unrest and “ defund the police ” rhetoric from activists , 2020 isn ’ t shaping up to be the best year to test either theory .
With fewer than 60 days to go until November 3 , the coronavirus pandemic has shaken up the electoral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leads Trump by about 7.5 points nationally according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average , and even states like Texas , Ohio , and Iowa are starting to look tight for the president , though Trump retains a lead in all three .
That could make it harder for Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee to expand their map and press the attack in states like Minnesota .
“ The number one issue in the minds of Minnesotans is the same one that we ’ re seeing everywhere , ” Jacobs told Vox @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We ’ ve got a pandemic , it ’ s clearly not under control , even where there are businesses that are open , consumers are scared to go out , and the Republican Party of Minnesota has sided with the president , ” whose approval rating on his handling of the coronavirus outbreak is hovering around 39 percent , according to FiveThirtyEight .
That reality hasn ’ t changed in the intervening months , but the race has still narrowed , at least at the Senate level .
While FiveThirtyEight has Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 7.7 points , a handful of Senate polls suggest that Smith ’ s lead could be as little as 2 or 3 points versus Lewis .
Most recent polls , however , have better news for Smith — Public Policy Polling has her up by 8 points , to name one .
The Cook Political Report relabeled the Minnesota Senate race in July , moving it from “ Likely D ” to “ Solid D , ” and it hasn ’ t moved since then .
Whatever the polls show , though , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anachronistic name for the state Democratic Party — is feeling good about Smith ’ s chances in November .
“ We wouldn ’ t trade our starting position right now with theirs , ” Martin , the state DFL chair , said .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

It’s been a hectic few years for Minnesota’s Democratic Sen. Tina Smith. First appointed in 2018 to replace former Sen. Al Franken after he resigned in late 2017 amid sexual harassment allegations, Smith had less than a full year in Congress before her first election as senator — a special to determine who served out the few years remaining in Franken’s term, which she won by more than 10 points.
Now, she’s on the ballot for a full six-year term of her own: Come November, Smith will face Republican Jason Lewis (known for once complaining that it was no longer socially acceptable to call women “sluts”).
Smith has a net +13 approval rating, according to Morning Consult; Minnesota is a habitually Democratic state, even as it has become more competitive in presidential elections. But Republicans are determined not to make things easy for her in 2020.
After narrowly losing Minnesota to Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Donald Trump took to Twitter last year to call his shot: “In 2020,” he tweeted, “because of America hating anti-Semite Rep. Omar, & the fact that Minnesota is having its best economic year ever, I will win the State!”
That makes Minnesota one of relatively few target states for a GOP Senate majority that’s looking imperiled. There are vulnerable Republican senators on defense in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina, to name just a few — but the party has also decided to invest heavily in the only upper-Midwestern state it failed to flip in 2016.
The Trump campaign is spending like they mean it: According to the ad tracking site AdAge, Trump has about $14.1 million in TV advertising booked in Minnesota through November 3 — more than his team is putting into Michigan, Wisconsin, or Arizona, at least for now — and his campaign is spending more in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market than it is anywhere outside of Florida.
An investment on that scale by the Trump team isn’t just a positive for the president’s chances in the state. It’s also good news for Lewis, who’s so in line with the president in agenda and style that his political future in the state is almost certain to rise and fall with Trump’s.
“We’ve been working hard in this state for well over a year,” Minnesota GOP chair Jennifer Carnahan told Vox. “And that’s a more impressive effort and focus than we’ve ever put in Minnesota if you go back probably even two decades.”
Jason Lewis was a Trump-style candidate before it was popular
Smith’s opponent this fall, Jason Lewis, is a former one-term representative who was ousted from the seat by Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in 2018. Before his brief stint in Congress, he was a controversial right-wing radio host in Minnesota with a long history of racist and sexist comments, and he’s been tagged as a “mini-Trump” since at least May 2016, well before he won his House primary.
In 2020, that makes Lewis less of an outlier than he was four years ago, when, according to Roll Call’s Simone Pathé, the National Republican Congressional Committee took a pass on congratulating him the night of his primary win.
But even if it’s Trump’s GOP now, not every Republican Senate candidate is running toward the president with open arms. In Colorado, for example, incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner has focused more on burnishing his bipartisan credentials than defending Trump, as Vox’s Ella Nilsen points out in her deep dive on the Colorado Senate race.
Republican politicos in Colorado say Gardner will still have to forge ahead with the independent “happy warrior” campaign ethos that got him to the Senate in the first place. “Trump is not going to win Colorado,” Colorado Republican consultant Tyler Sandberg, who ran former Rep. Mike Coffman’s House campaigns, told Vox. “I think it’s a show, not tell thing. [Gardner’s] got to demonstrate that he’s different.”
Not so for Lewis: If Trump loses Minnesota this November, Lewis will go down with the ship. The two are so simpatico that one senior member of the Smith campaign refers to the Trump team in Minnesota as “Jason Lewis’s shadow campaign infrastructure.”
On the campaign trail, Lewis hasn’t shied away from those similarities. Late last month, he told voters in Rochester that the “fundamental duty of government is restoring public order and backing the blue” and decried the state’s coronavirus lockdown as “Orwellian.” And on Twitter, he’s embraced the near-apocalyptic rhetoric that Trump has deployed against Biden, arguing that Democrats are “coming after God” and want to “dismantle American society.”
Unlike Lewis, who didn’t make his first foray into formal politics until 2016, Smith has a long history in Minnesota politics. A former Planned Parenthood executive in the state, she served as chief of staff first to Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak — a job that reportedly earned her the name “the velvet hammer” — and then to Gov. Mark Dayton before becoming Minnesota’s lieutenant governor in 2015.
As a candidate, Smith has emphasized her fairly moderate record and her willingness to reach across the aisle; in a Zoom debate with Lewis last month, she stressed her focus on “practical, commonsense things that we can work on in a bipartisan way.”
But David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University in St. Paul, says that Smith’s quiet, efficient legislative style comes with some challenges.
“She doesn’t come across, I think, as sort of the natural campaigner in the way that [former Sen Al. Franken] did,” Schultz said, and “she’s kind of been lost next to Amy Klobuchar,” Minnesota’s senior senator and a one-time Democratic presidential candidate.
Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin concedes that “people are still getting to know Tina,” but when they do, he’s confident they’ll like what they see.
“The last two years in particular,” he says, Smith has “kept her nose to the grindstone and just worked on being a good senator and doing her job and making sure that she represents Minnesota in Washington, and that work has not gone unnoticed.”
Historically, Minnesota isn’t much of a swing state. But Trump and the state GOP think they can make it one.
If Lewis — and Trump — want to flip Minnesota red in 2020, they have a lot of history to contend with. Minnesota hasn’t gone for the GOP in a presidential election since 1972, when incumbent Richard Nixon won every state but Massachusetts, giving it an 11-election streak of supporting Democratic presidential candidates.
Clinton’s 2016 margin in the state may also have made Minnesota look more vulnerable for Democrats than it actually is. Though Clinton in 2016 only won by about 44,000 votes — out of nearly 3 million cast statewide — University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs says Clinton “made monstrous errors in how she ran that race.”
Schultz, the Hamline University professor, agrees.
“Clinton basically ran a bad campaign,” Schultz says. “She gets destroyed by Bernie Sanders in the caucuses, doesn’t come back to campaign here after she loses, and what happens? You know, she basically took the state for granted.”
Still, Trump’s Republican Party sees a glimmer of hope. FiveThirtyEight has made the argument that Minnesota has become redder. As Nathaniel Rakich noted, “In 1984, the state was 18.2 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. But in 2016, for the first time since 1952, Minnesota voted more Republican than the rest of the U.S.”
Schultz, who in 2018 co-authored a book on presidential swing states, thinks there’s something to that. Part of the close margin in Minnesota in 2016 was Clinton, he says, but part of it is just demographics: Schultz argues that Minnesota is genuinely trending purple.
And Carnahan, the state GOP chair, believes that the protests and unrest that have followed the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, as well as the police shooting of Jacob Blake, which left him paralyzed below the waist, could be what push the state past its tipping point.
Though nationwide protests calling for racial justice and police reform have been largely peaceful (about 93 percent peaceful, according to one study), some cities — notably Minneapolis; Kenosha, Wisconsin; and Portland, Oregon — have seen rioting, fires, and violent clashes between police, protesters, and pro-Trump militias, including two deadly shootings.
“I do see a momentum shift in Minnesota,” Carnahan told Vox in July, “and a lot of that has been driven by a governor in our state and mayors of the two largest cities that completely let every single person in the state down by letting our cities burn for a week and sitting on their hands and doing nothing.”
According to Schulz, there was a version of a law-and-order message that could have worked for Trump, but he believes Trump missed the mark by leaning so hard into the politics of white racial resentment.
“If [Trump] made the same messaging about law and order without the powerful racial overtones that he’s using,” Schultz said, “he might get to here. He might get some of those suburban voters to listen to him who are very concerned about what happened in Minneapolis and St. Paul.”
If Lewis wants to pull off a win, he’ll likely need to thread the same needle, though his history of racist comments and close ties to Trump could make that difficult. But Schultz isn’t ruling anything out.
“The Senate race is even tighter,” he told Vox over email this month. “George Floyd and the law-and-order reaction to it are part of the explanation.”
The coronavirus overshadows a lot of other issues
Even if Minnesota is on its way to perennial swing-state status, though, and even if there is — or was — a building suburban backlash to civil unrest and “defund the police” rhetoric from activists, 2020 isn’t shaping up to be the best year to test either theory.
With fewer than 60 days to go until November 3, the coronavirus pandemic has shaken up the electoral map. Former Vice President Joe Biden leads Trump by about 7.5 points nationally according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average, and even states like Texas, Ohio, and Iowa are starting to look tight for the president, though Trump retains a lead in all three. That could make it harder for Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee to expand their map and press the attack in states like Minnesota.
“The number one issue in the minds of Minnesotans is the same one that we’re seeing everywhere,” Jacobs told Vox in July. “Which is: We’ve got a pandemic, it’s clearly not under control, even where there are businesses that are open, consumers are scared to go out, and the Republican Party of Minnesota has sided with the president,” whose approval rating on his handling of the coronavirus outbreak is hovering around 39 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight.
That reality hasn’t changed in the intervening months, but the race has still narrowed, at least at the Senate level. While FiveThirtyEight has Biden up in Minnesota by an average of 7.7 points, a handful of Senate polls suggest that Smith’s lead could be as little as 2 or 3 points versus Lewis.
Most recent polls, however, have better news for Smith — Public Policy Polling has her up by 8 points, to name one. The Cook Political Report relabeled the Minnesota Senate race in July, moving it from “Likely D” to “Solid D,” and it hasn’t moved since then.
Whatever the polls show, though, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party — essentially an anachronistic name for the state Democratic Party — is feeling good about Smith’s chances in November.
“We wouldn’t trade our starting position right now with theirs,” Martin, the state DFL chair, said.


vox--2020-09-14--What the heck is going on with TikTok and Oracle, explained

The fate of TikTok , the wildly popular video-sharing app , has involved plenty of plot twists since President Donald Trump signed an executive order in late August that promised to effectively ban TikTok from doing business in the US over national security concerns — unless the Chinese-owned app sold its US operations to an American company by September 20 .
The latest turn : Microsoft , which had been seen as the frontrunner among several potential bidders , said on Sunday it isn ’ t buying the app .
Instead , Oracle , a database software company whose co-founder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump , is the winning bidder .
But wait — Oracle isn ’ t actually going to buy TikTok .
Instead , it ’ s offered to buy the rights to take over TikTok ’ s US data operations ( which Microsoft also originally wanted to do , but Trump discouraged — more on that later ) , further complicating the situation .
The proposed deal between Oracle and ByteDance , the Chinese company that owns TikTok , involves a number of extraordinarily political , volatile , and complex factors .
By this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what ’ s going on and how TikTok got here in the first place .
Here ’ s what we know so far , and what the implications of this deal are .
Oracle won ’ t buy TikTok outright , and it ’ s not clear if that will assuage national security concerns Right now , there ’ s still a lot we don ’ t know about the details of the proposed TikTok-Oracle deal , since the terms aren ’ t public .
But one thing we do know is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to become a “ trusted technology provider ” of ByteDance , rather than buying the company ’ s US operations outright .
Here ’ s Oracle ’ s statement Monday morning : “ Oracle confirms Secretary Mnuchin ’ s statement that it is part of the proposal submitted by ByteDance to the Treasury Department over the weekend in which Oracle will serve as the trusted technology provider .
Oracle has a 40-year track record providing secure , highly performant technology solutions.
” If this Oracle-TikTok proposal goes through as planned — not as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ question of why President Trump issued the executive order pressuring TikTok to sell off its entire US operations in the first place .
Trump said he issued the executive order over grave national security concerns .
Namely , that the Chinese government could allegedly pressure TikTok to funnel sensitive US user data back to Beijing because ByteDance is a Chinese-owned company .
Another concern is that TikTok could be censoring topics on TikTok that the Chinese government doesn ’ t approve of .
TikTok has repeatedly asserted that it stores all US data @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would ostensibly make it difficult for the Chinese government to reach .
It ’ s also denied censoring content in the US on behalf of the Chinese government .
While there isn ’ t any public evidence proving that the Chinese government has ever coerced TikTok to spy on US users or control what they see and discuss on the app , it ’ s also hard to rule out that could ever happen .
The Chinese government regularly exerts authority over domestic companies for political purposes , such as pressuring tech companies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a real head-scratcher is that it ’ s not clear how Oracle handling TikTok ’ s US data — without spinning TikTok US into a separate company free from ByteDance ’ s oversight — would assuage any of these security or censorship worries .
“ If these things were a concern before , it ’ s not clear why that wouldn ’ t be a concern now , ” Bobby Chesney , a professor at the University of Texas who specializes in national security law , told Recode .
Although it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will approve this deal , Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said about the deal on CNBC Monday morning , “ We have a lot of confidence in both Microsoft and Oracle ; they [ ByteDance ] have chosen Oracle.
” All this has unfolded as CFIUS , a US national security regulatory agency , is conducting an ongoing review into TikTok — a process that Trump seemingly bypassed to issue his executive orders about the app .
Mnuchin said CFIUS ’ s technical teams will be reviewing the proposal with Oracle and ByteDance this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issue a recommendation to President Trump on whether or not to approve the deal .
He also said that , as part of the proposal , TikTok has promised to create 20,000 new US-based jobs .
Another key player in all of this is the Chinese government .
Previously , it had reportedly said that it won ’ t let ByteDance sell off its secret sauce — its proprietary recommendation algorithm — to the US .
So from ByteDance ’ s perspective , a partial sale to Oracle that doesn ’ t include @ @ @ @ @ @ @ situation for both the US and the Chinese government .
But then what was the point of the executive order forcing a sale , even if Trump had no intention of actually enforcing it and even if these national security concerns weren ’ t serious enough to warrant a full-on sale of TikTok US in the first place .
Oracle ’ s cozy relationship with Trump could be helping its prospects of a deal with TikTok Oracle ’ s co-founder Larry Ellison and CEO Safra Catz are rare supporters of Trump among mostly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ board member Peter Thiel is another notable exception ) .
In February , Ellison hosted a massive fundraiser for Trump at his personal estate in Coachella Valley .
And Catz was one of the only major tech CEOs to serve on Trump ’ s transition team when he took office .
In August , when it was first reported that Oracle was weighing a bid for TikTok , Trump spoke approvingly , calling Oracle “ a great company ” and Ellison a “ tremendous person.
” Catz ’ s and Ellison ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gone over well with Oracle ’ s largely liberal-leaning employees , many of whom are immigrants working on H1B engineering visas and whose legal residency status has been threatened by Trump ’ s anti-immigration policies .
The cozy relationship between Oracle ’ s leadership and Trump is raising questions about whether or not that has played a role in the new plan for TikTok ’ s future in the US .
“ I think with Oracle and the relationship they have with the administration , one wonders , ‘ Now , what kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
’ ” said Chesney .
But that ’ s all speculative , Chesney said , since the terms of the deal are still unknown .
It ’ s also entirely possible that Oracle simply made a higher offer than Microsoft , or laid out better terms .
Chesney also suggested that maybe ByteDance viewed Oracle as the most likely company to appease not just the US government but the Chinese government as well .
Even some Oracle employees — admittedly ones who disapprove of their company leaders ’ ties to the Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Employees on Monday had not heard anything internally from Oracle leadership as of midday and were hunting around for details .
One employee in a meeting on Monday commented that they worried about their ability to recruit their friends to the company if they think Oracle “ is complicit in the corruption ” of the Trump administration , according to an internal Slack message seen by Recode that relayed the comment .
“ I see this as kissing Trump ’ s ass and damaging Oracle even further in the developer community , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hate us , ” said one employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of losing their job for publicly criticizing the company .
Another said many colleagues “ have a gross taste in their mouth about the whole process , ” because of the Trump administration ’ s “ role in all this and the perceived closeness of Larry and Safra to Trump .
Just feels to us like that ’ s what got the business.
” But ultimately , this employee said , a TikTok deal could be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ As someone who has stock , I ’ m not hating that part of it right now , ” said the employee .
The way Trump has gone about this whole process raises concerns about the rule of law In a way , the TikTok situation is just another play in a years-long trade war between China and the US that Trump has escalated during his presidency .
China has long banned US consumer tech companies like Facebook and Google from doing business in its country .
In turn , Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from doing business in the US .
These kinds of economic sanctions are standard foreign policy tactics in a president ’ s arsenal .
But the manner in which Trump has gone about forcing this TikTok deal — issuing unexpected and confusing executive orders , making contradictory statements to the press , openly suggesting that TikTok should essentially bribe the US government to sweeten the deal , and now considering a deal with terms that Trump initially dismissed until a similar offer was put forward by business leaders who have supported him in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with civil liberties advocates and political analysts about the president ’ s exertion of authority and the free market in the US .
TikTok is also a wildly popular consumer app with 100 million US users , so its fans are left fretting over whether the US government might end up actually shutting TikTok down .
For users , probably not much will change if Trump approves the bid from Oracle , as the data company manages data on the back end and shouldn ’ t change how the TikTok app actually looks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerns about how Oracle will use this data , and whether it would use it to inform its other operations .
But given all the twists and turns that have led to this politically complicated deal , exactly what ’ s next in the TikTok-Trump saga at this point is anyone ’ s guess .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

The fate of TikTok, the wildly popular video-sharing app, has involved plenty of plot twists since President Donald Trump signed an executive order in late August that promised to effectively ban TikTok from doing business in the US over national security concerns — unless the Chinese-owned app sold its US operations to an American company by September 20.
The latest turn: Microsoft, which had been seen as the frontrunner among several potential bidders, said on Sunday it isn’t buying the app. Instead, Oracle, a database software company whose co-founder and CEO are both open supporters of Trump, is the winning bidder.
But wait — Oracle isn’t actually going to buy TikTok. Instead, it’s offered to buy the rights to take over TikTok’s US data operations (which Microsoft also originally wanted to do, but Trump discouraged — more on that later), further complicating the situation.
The proposed deal between Oracle and ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, involves a number of extraordinarily political, volatile, and complex factors. By this point, you may be confused about what’s going on and how TikTok got here in the first place. Here’s what we know so far, and what the implications of this deal are.
Oracle won’t buy TikTok outright, and it’s not clear if that will assuage national security concerns
Right now, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the details of the proposed TikTok-Oracle deal, since the terms aren’t public.
But one thing we do know is that Oracle has said it’s proposing to become a “trusted technology provider” of ByteDance, rather than buying the company’s US operations outright.
Here’s Oracle’s statement Monday morning: “Oracle confirms Secretary Mnuchin’s statement that it is part of the proposal submitted by ByteDance to the Treasury Department over the weekend in which Oracle will serve as the trusted technology provider. Oracle has a 40-year track record providing secure, highly performant technology solutions.”
If this Oracle-TikTok proposal goes through as planned — not as a full sale — it raises the question of why President Trump issued the executive order pressuring TikTok to sell off its entire US operations in the first place.
Trump said he issued the executive order over grave national security concerns. Namely, that the Chinese government could allegedly pressure TikTok to funnel sensitive US user data back to Beijing because ByteDance is a Chinese-owned company. Another concern is that TikTok could be censoring topics on TikTok that the Chinese government doesn’t approve of.
TikTok has repeatedly asserted that it stores all US data in the US and Singapore, which would ostensibly make it difficult for the Chinese government to reach. It’s also denied censoring content in the US on behalf of the Chinese government.
While there isn’t any public evidence proving that the Chinese government has ever coerced TikTok to spy on US users or control what they see and discuss on the app, it’s also hard to rule out that could ever happen. The Chinese government regularly exerts authority over domestic companies for political purposes, such as pressuring tech companies to hand over user data.
What’s a real head-scratcher is that it’s not clear how Oracle handling TikTok’s US data — without spinning TikTok US into a separate company free from ByteDance’s oversight — would assuage any of these security or censorship worries.
“If these things were a concern before, it’s not clear why that wouldn’t be a concern now,” Bobby Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas who specializes in national security law, told Recode.
Although it’s unknown so far if Trump will approve this deal, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said about the deal on CNBC Monday morning, “We have a lot of confidence in both Microsoft and Oracle; they [ByteDance] have chosen Oracle.”
All this has unfolded as CFIUS, a US national security regulatory agency, is conducting an ongoing review into TikTok — a process that Trump seemingly bypassed to issue his executive orders about the app. Mnuchin said CFIUS’s technical teams will be reviewing the proposal with Oracle and ByteDance this week and that the agency will then issue a recommendation to President Trump on whether or not to approve the deal. He also said that, as part of the proposal, TikTok has promised to create 20,000 new US-based jobs.
Another key player in all of this is the Chinese government. Previously, it had reportedly said that it won’t let ByteDance sell off its secret sauce — its proprietary recommendation algorithm — to the US. So from ByteDance’s perspective, a partial sale to Oracle that doesn’t include the prized algorithm could be a win-win situation for both the US and the Chinese government.
But then what was the point of the executive order forcing a sale, even if Trump had no intention of actually enforcing it and even if these national security concerns weren’t serious enough to warrant a full-on sale of TikTok US in the first place.
Oracle’s cozy relationship with Trump could be helping its prospects of a deal with TikTok
Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison and CEO Safra Catz are rare supporters of Trump among mostly liberal Silicon Valley tech executives (Facebook board member Peter Thiel is another notable exception).
In February, Ellison hosted a massive fundraiser for Trump at his personal estate in Coachella Valley. And Catz was one of the only major tech CEOs to serve on Trump’s transition team when he took office.
In August, when it was first reported that Oracle was weighing a bid for TikTok, Trump spoke approvingly, calling Oracle “a great company” and Ellison a “tremendous person.”
Catz’s and Ellison’s support of Trump hasn’t always gone over well with Oracle’s largely liberal-leaning employees, many of whom are immigrants working on H1B engineering visas and whose legal residency status has been threatened by Trump’s anti-immigration policies.
The cozy relationship between Oracle’s leadership and Trump is raising questions about whether or not that has played a role in the new plan for TikTok’s future in the US.
“I think with Oracle and the relationship they have with the administration, one wonders, ‘Now, what kind of a level playing field was this?’” said Chesney. But that’s all speculative, Chesney said, since the terms of the deal are still unknown. It’s also entirely possible that Oracle simply made a higher offer than Microsoft, or laid out better terms.
Chesney also suggested that maybe ByteDance viewed Oracle as the most likely company to appease not just the US government but the Chinese government as well.
Even some Oracle employees — admittedly ones who disapprove of their company leaders’ ties to the Trump administration — are scrutinizing the TikTok deal. Employees on Monday had not heard anything internally from Oracle leadership as of midday and were hunting around for details.
One employee in a meeting on Monday commented that they worried about their ability to recruit their friends to the company if they think Oracle “is complicit in the corruption” of the Trump administration, according to an internal Slack message seen by Recode that relayed the comment.
“I see this as kissing Trump’s ass and damaging Oracle even further in the developer community, giving them more of a reason to hate us,” said one employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of losing their job for publicly criticizing the company.
Another said many colleagues “have a gross taste in their mouth about the whole process,” because of the Trump administration’s “role in all this and the perceived closeness of Larry and Safra to Trump. Just feels to us like that’s what got the business.” But ultimately, this employee said, a TikTok deal could be a good business play for the company.
“As someone who has stock, I’m not hating that part of it right now,” said the employee.
The way Trump has gone about this whole process raises concerns about the rule of law
In a way, the TikTok situation is just another play in a years-long trade war between China and the US that Trump has escalated during his presidency. China has long banned US consumer tech companies like Facebook and Google from doing business in its country. In turn, Trump has restricted Chinese tech companies like Huawei from doing business in the US. These kinds of economic sanctions are standard foreign policy tactics in a president’s arsenal.
But the manner in which Trump has gone about forcing this TikTok deal — issuing unexpected and confusing executive orders, making contradictory statements to the press, openly suggesting that TikTok should essentially bribe the US government to sweeten the deal, and now considering a deal with terms that Trump initially dismissed until a similar offer was put forward by business leaders who have supported him in the past — has raised troubling concerns with civil liberties advocates and political analysts about the president’s exertion of authority and the free market in the US.
TikTok is also a wildly popular consumer app with 100 million US users, so its fans are left fretting over whether the US government might end up actually shutting TikTok down.
For users, probably not much will change if Trump approves the bid from Oracle, as the data company manages data on the back end and shouldn’t change how the TikTok app actually looks or feels to users.
There are concerns about how Oracle will use this data, and whether it would use it to inform its other operations. But given all the twists and turns that have led to this politically complicated deal, exactly what’s next in the TikTok-Trump saga at this point is anyone’s guess.
Theodore Schleifer contributed reporting to this article.


vox--2020-09-14--A federal court ruling could allow Trump to deport 400,000 immigrants next year

A federal appeals court has upheld President Donald Trump ’ s decision to take away legal protections for 400,000 immigrants , who could be deported next year if he wins reelection — despite having put down roots in the US over years or even decades .
Citizens of El Salvador , Haiti , Honduras , Nepal , Nicaragua , and Sudan have been able to stay in the US through Temporary Protected Status ( TPS ) , a protection typically offered to citizens of countries experiencing natural disasters or armed conflict that allows them to legally live and work in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ senior State Department officials , Trump tried to end TPS for those countries starting in November 2017 , arguing that conditions have improved enough that their citizens can now safely return .
A federal court decision had prevented Trump from proceeding to roll back those protections temporarily .
But on Monday , a divided panel of judges at the Ninth Circuit lifted the lower court ’ s block , meaning that the administration could terminate TPS status for all countries but El Salvador on March 5 , 2021 ( Salvadorans would lose their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After those dates , TPS recipients ’ work permits will expire and they will lose their legal status , making them eligible for deportation .
Those affected could include roughly 130,000 essential workers , more than 10,000 of whom are in medical professions , and roughly 279,000 US-citizen children under age 18 who are living with TPS recipients and could be separated from their families if their relatives were deported .
Wilna Destin , a TPS recipient from Haiti who has lived in Florida for two decades and recently contracted Covid-19 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ninth Circuit ruling represented just one in a series of challenges she has recently had to face .
“ We have coronavirus , we have hurricane , and now this .
For me , it ’ s another disaster , ” she said .
The presidential election could decide what becomes of TPS holders The fate of TPS holders hinges on the outcome of the presidential election this fall .
If former Vice President Joe Biden is elected , he has vowed to prevent TPS recipients from being sent back to countries that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a path to citizenship to those who have lived in the US for an “ extended period of time and built lives in the US.
” He would also try to expand TPS protections to Venezuelans fleeing their country ’ s present socioeconomic and political crisis .
If Trump wins , his administration could also decide not to move forward with ending TPS protections at any time .
But what ’ s more likely is that Congress will face pressure to pass legislation offering permanent protections to TPS holders who have put down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from deportation .
The Dream and Promise Act , which passed the House last year , would have made TPS holders who have lived in the US for three or more years eligible to apply for a green card and , eventually , US citizenship .
It could serve as a template for further negotiations , though whether it will get any traction depends on the makeup of the next Congress .
In a second term , Trump could also move forward with his plan to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 700,000 young immigrants who came to the US as children to live and work in the US legally .
( The Supreme Court has temporarily prevented him from doing so , but his administration is laying the groundwork for him to try again and has refused to fully reinstate the program . )
“ Temporary Protected Status is on the ballot in November , ” Frank Sharry , the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group America ’ s Voice , said in a statement .
“ And if we do not remove @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the largest mass deportations and family separation crises in American history.
” The Ninth Circuit ruled that no court has the authority to review the administration ’ s decision to terminate TPS , which it said is a matter of agency discretion .
It also dismissed the ACLU ’ s argument that Trump ’ s decision to terminate TPS was motivated by racial animus toward nonwhite , non-European immigrants in violation of the Constitution ’ s guarantee that everyone receive equal protection under the law , regardless of race or national origin .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ who represented TPS holders at the Ninth Circuit , said in a press call that the organization will ask the full appeals court to review the case and , failing that , would seek review at the Supreme Court , potentially setting up another high-profile case challenging Trump ’ s immigration policy .
In the meantime , immigration advocates are waiting on the result of another lawsuit now before the Second Circuit concerning some 40,000 Haitian TPS recipients .
If that court decides that the administration can ’ t terminate their TPS status @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their status before next March .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
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A federal appeals court has upheld President Donald Trump’s decision to take away legal protections for 400,000 immigrants, who could be deported next year if he wins reelection — despite having put down roots in the US over years or even decades.
Citizens of El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan have been able to stay in the US through Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a protection typically offered to citizens of countries experiencing natural disasters or armed conflict that allows them to legally live and work in the US. Against the advice of senior State Department officials, Trump tried to end TPS for those countries starting in November 2017, arguing that conditions have improved enough that their citizens can now safely return.
A federal court decision had prevented Trump from proceeding to roll back those protections temporarily. But on Monday, a divided panel of judges at the Ninth Circuit lifted the lower court’s block, meaning that the administration could terminate TPS status for all countries but El Salvador on March 5, 2021 (Salvadorans would lose their status on November 5, 2021). After those dates, TPS recipients’ work permits will expire and they will lose their legal status, making them eligible for deportation.
Those affected could include roughly 130,000 essential workers, more than 10,000 of whom are in medical professions, and roughly 279,000 US-citizen children under age 18 who are living with TPS recipients and could be separated from their families if their relatives were deported.
Wilna Destin, a TPS recipient from Haiti who has lived in Florida for two decades and recently contracted Covid-19, said in a press call that the Ninth Circuit ruling represented just one in a series of challenges she has recently had to face.
“We have coronavirus, we have hurricane, and now this. For me, it’s another disaster,” she said.
The presidential election could decide what becomes of TPS holders
The fate of TPS holders hinges on the outcome of the presidential election this fall.
If former Vice President Joe Biden is elected, he has vowed to prevent TPS recipients from being sent back to countries that are unsafe and would pursue legislation providing a path to citizenship to those who have lived in the US for an “extended period of time and built lives in the US.” He would also try to expand TPS protections to Venezuelans fleeing their country’s present socioeconomic and political crisis.
If Trump wins, his administration could also decide not to move forward with ending TPS protections at any time. But what’s more likely is that Congress will face pressure to pass legislation offering permanent protections to TPS holders who have put down roots in the US, shielding them from deportation.
The Dream and Promise Act, which passed the House last year, would have made TPS holders who have lived in the US for three or more years eligible to apply for a green card and, eventually, US citizenship. It could serve as a template for further negotiations, though whether it will get any traction depends on the makeup of the next Congress.
In a second term, Trump could also move forward with his plan to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed more than 700,000 young immigrants who came to the US as children to live and work in the US legally. (The Supreme Court has temporarily prevented him from doing so, but his administration is laying the groundwork for him to try again and has refused to fully reinstate the program.)
“Temporary Protected Status is on the ballot in November,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said in a statement. “And if we do not remove Trump ... we could see one of the largest mass deportations and family separation crises in American history.”
The Ninth Circuit ruled that no court has the authority to review the administration’s decision to terminate TPS, which it said is a matter of agency discretion. It also dismissed the ACLU’s argument that Trump’s decision to terminate TPS was motivated by racial animus toward nonwhite, non-European immigrants in violation of the Constitution’s guarantee that everyone receive equal protection under the law, regardless of race or national origin.
The ACLU’s Ahilan Arulanantham, who represented TPS holders at the Ninth Circuit, said in a press call that the organization will ask the full appeals court to review the case and, failing that, would seek review at the Supreme Court, potentially setting up another high-profile case challenging Trump’s immigration policy.
In the meantime, immigration advocates are waiting on the result of another lawsuit now before the Second Circuit concerning some 40,000 Haitian TPS recipients. If that court decides that the administration can’t terminate their TPS status, they could be spared termination of their status before next March.


vox--2020-09-14--“There has to be retribution”: Trump’s chilling comments about extrajudicial killings, briefly expla

“There has to be retribution”: Trump’s chilling comments about extrajudicial killings, briefly explained

President Donald Trump is campaigning on “ law and order , ” but a string of comments he made over the weekend showed how he ’ s steering the country toward violent lawlessness .
During an interview with Jeanine Pirro that aired on Fox News Saturday evening and then during political rallies he held in Nevada on Saturday and Sunday , Trump lauded law enforcement officials for killing antifa supporter Michael Reinoehl .
Reinoehl was wanted on suspicion of killing a supporter of a right-wing group called Patriot Prayer named Aaron Danielson during confrontations between a caravan of Trump supporters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on August 28 .
Officers said Reinoehl pulled a gun on them before his fatal September 3 shooting in Lacey , Washington , and two witnesses told the Olympian they saw Reinoehl fire a weapon at officers .
But one witness told the Oregonian that officers opened fire unprompted .
( US marshals were present during the raid that killed Reinoehl , but local officials reportedly fired the fatal shots . )
“ Officers shot multiple rapid-fire rounds at Reinoehl before issuing a brief ‘ stop ’ command , quickly followed by more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the eyewitness , an ordained minister named Nathaniel Dingess , said , according to a statement released by his lawyer .
While public knowledge about the circumstances surrounding Reinoehl ’ s death remains scant , if officers shot Reinoehl without justification , it ’ d be tantamount to murder .
But Trump made abundantly clear that he ’ s not waiting for the facts to come in before he draws conclusions .
“ Now we sent in the US marshals for the killer , the man that killed the young man in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Two and a half days went by , and I put out [ on Twitter ] , ‘ When are you going to go get him ?
’ And the US marshals went in to get in , and in a short period of time , they ended in a gunfight .
This guy was a violent criminal , and the US marshals killed him .
And I ’ ll tell you something — that ’ s the way it has to be .
There has to be retribution when you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rally on Saturday night in Minden , Nevada , Trump alluded to Reinoehl ’ s killing and lauded US marshals for doing a “ great job , ” adding , darkly , “ you know what I mean.
” Then , on Sunday night in Henderson , Trump brought up the incident again and said , “ as you know , in Portland the other day , we had to send in the US Marshals .
A man , who ’ s a bad guy , bad guy , shot somebody right in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they say was a very fine young man .
Shot him , killed him .
Just shot him like , it was on television .
Two and a half days , nothing happened , I said , ‘ What ’ s going on ?
’ We sent in the US marshals , it was taken care of in 15 minutes , okay ?
” It ’ s bad enough that the president is more or less endorsing extrajudicial killings before all the relevant facts are known , and despite an eyewitness saying it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even worse viewed in light of how Trump is politicizing street violence .
What we know about the killing of Michael Reinoehl Reinoehl was a self-proclaimed “ 100 % antifa ” supporter who participated in protests in Portland that started after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis cops in late May .
On August 29 , he was involved in a confrontation that ended in Danielson ’ s death .
Police identified him as a suspect using surveillance and social media videos .
Just hours before he was tracked down in Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vice News in which he claimed he shot Danielson in self-defense .
But he was charged with second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon .
Eyewitnesses agree that about 25 to 50 shots were fired in the moments leading up to Reinoehl being fatally shot .
But as mentioned earlier , eyewitness accounts differ .
A lawyer representing Dingess , the witness who described Reinoehl ’ s killing as tantamount to an execution , called for an independent investigation in a statement .
“ Given the political sentiment of the deceased , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the investigation ought to be handled by an outside organization without ties to law enforcement , if it can really be considered fair and neutral , ” the lawyer , Luke Laughlin , said .
“ The law requires , and Reinoehl ’ s family and the public deserve , transparency and accountability .
At a time when public outcry over police killings is at its peak in this country , it is imperative that the circumstances of Reinoehl ’ s death not be swept aside.
” The “ law and order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s comments suggesting that Reinoehl ’ s killing was justified stands in contrast to his silence regarding the killing of two protesters in Kenosha , Wisconsin , last month .
Those protesters , who took to the streets following the police shooting of Jacob Blake , were allegedly gunned down by a 17-year-old Trump supporter named Kyle Rittenhouse who has since been charged with first-degree murder .
But instead of condemning Rittenhouse , Trump suggested his actions were justified during a news conference on August 31 .
“ That was an interesting situation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I saw , and he was trying to get away [ from protesters ] , I guess , it looks like , and he fell , and then they very violently attacked him , ” Trump said .
“ I guess he was in very big trouble .
He probably would ’ ve been killed.
” During that same news conference , Trump made an evidence-free accusation that left-wing protesters have “ killed a lot of people , ” and announced that the departments of Homeland Security and Justice are forming a joint @ @ @ @ @ @ @ civil unrest.
” He refused to condemn supporters of his who were filmed shooting paintball guns and macing people in Portland on the night Danielson was killed , saying “ that was a peaceful protest ” and “ paint is not bullets.
” So while the president pays lip service to law and order , his pattern of excusing deadly acts against his enemies while condoning it when they ’ re committed by his supporters tells a very different story .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

President Donald Trump is campaigning on “law and order,” but a string of comments he made over the weekend showed how he’s steering the country toward violent lawlessness.
During an interview with Jeanine Pirro that aired on Fox News Saturday evening and then during political rallies he held in Nevada on Saturday and Sunday, Trump lauded law enforcement officials for killing antifa supporter Michael Reinoehl. Reinoehl was wanted on suspicion of killing a supporter of a right-wing group called Patriot Prayer named Aaron Danielson during confrontations between a caravan of Trump supporters and counterprotesters in Portland, Oregon, on August 28.
Officers said Reinoehl pulled a gun on them before his fatal September 3 shooting in Lacey, Washington, and two witnesses told the Olympian they saw Reinoehl fire a weapon at officers. But one witness told the Oregonian that officers opened fire unprompted. (US marshals were present during the raid that killed Reinoehl, but local officials reportedly fired the fatal shots.)
“Officers shot multiple rapid-fire rounds at Reinoehl before issuing a brief ‘stop’ command, quickly followed by more rapid-fire shooting by additional officers,” the eyewitness, an ordained minister named Nathaniel Dingess, said, according to a statement released by his lawyer.
While public knowledge about the circumstances surrounding Reinoehl’s death remains scant, if officers shot Reinoehl without justification, it’d be tantamount to murder. But Trump made abundantly clear that he’s not waiting for the facts to come in before he draws conclusions.
“Now we sent in the US marshals for the killer, the man that killed the young man in the street,” Trump told Judge Jeanine. “Two and a half days went by, and I put out [on Twitter], ‘When are you going to go get him?’ And the US marshals went in to get in, and in a short period of time, they ended in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the US marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something — that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.”
Trump on a purported antifa sympathizer who allegedly killed someone in Portland being killed by federal forces: "This guy was a violent criminal, and the US Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something -- that's the way it has to be. There has to be retribution." pic.twitter.com/WfIP9b37sA — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 13, 2020
During his rally on Saturday night in Minden, Nevada, Trump alluded to Reinoehl’s killing and lauded US marshals for doing a “great job,” adding, darkly, “you know what I mean.”
"By the way, the US Marshals did a great job in Portland. You know what I mean" -- here's Trump endorsing US Marshals killing a purported antifa sympathizer who was allegedly involved in a murder pic.twitter.com/v2vbhE49xz — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 13, 2020
Then, on Sunday night in Henderson, Trump brought up the incident again and said, “as you know, in Portland the other day, we had to send in the US Marshals. A man, who’s a bad guy, bad guy, shot somebody right in the middle of the street, who they say was a very fine young man. Shot him, killed him. Just shot him like, it was on television. Two and a half days, nothing happened, I said, ‘What’s going on?’ We sent in the US marshals, it was taken care of in 15 minutes, okay?”
It’s bad enough that the president is more or less endorsing extrajudicial killings before all the relevant facts are known, and despite an eyewitness saying it was unjustified. But it’s even worse viewed in light of how Trump is politicizing street violence.
What we know about the killing of Michael Reinoehl
Reinoehl was a self-proclaimed “100% antifa” supporter who participated in protests in Portland that started after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis cops in late May. On August 29, he was involved in a confrontation that ended in Danielson’s death. Police identified him as a suspect using surveillance and social media videos.
Just hours before he was tracked down in Washington state, Reinoehl did an interview with Vice News in which he claimed he shot Danielson in self-defense. But he was charged with second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon.
Eyewitnesses agree that about 25 to 50 shots were fired in the moments leading up to Reinoehl being fatally shot. But as mentioned earlier, eyewitness accounts differ. A lawyer representing Dingess, the witness who described Reinoehl’s killing as tantamount to an execution, called for an independent investigation in a statement.
“Given the political sentiment of the deceased, and the national climate regarding police shootings, the investigation ought to be handled by an outside organization without ties to law enforcement, if it can really be considered fair and neutral,” the lawyer, Luke Laughlin, said. “The law requires, and Reinoehl’s family and the public deserve, transparency and accountability. At a time when public outcry over police killings is at its peak in this country, it is imperative that the circumstances of Reinoehl’s death not be swept aside.”
The “law and order” guy is actually lawless
Trump’s comments suggesting that Reinoehl’s killing was justified stands in contrast to his silence regarding the killing of two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last month. Those protesters, who took to the streets following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, were allegedly gunned down by a 17-year-old Trump supporter named Kyle Rittenhouse who has since been charged with first-degree murder.
But instead of condemning Rittenhouse, Trump suggested his actions were justified during a news conference on August 31.
“That was an interesting situation. You saw the same tape that I saw, and he was trying to get away [from protesters], I guess, it looks like, and he fell, and then they very violently attacked him,” Trump said. “I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would’ve been killed.”
Trump defends Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old supporter of his who is charged with murdering two protesters in Kenosha pic.twitter.com/KdfkdTPRVG — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 31, 2020
During that same news conference, Trump made an evidence-free accusation that left-wing protesters have “killed a lot of people,” and announced that the departments of Homeland Security and Justice are forming a joint operations center to “investigate violent left-wing civil unrest.” He refused to condemn supporters of his who were filmed shooting paintball guns and macing people in Portland on the night Danielson was killed, saying “that was a peaceful protest” and “paint is not bullets.”
So while the president pays lip service to law and order, his pattern of excusing deadly acts against his enemies while condoning it when they’re committed by his supporters tells a very different story.


vox--2020-09-14--Trump’s attempts to corrupt the CDC, explained

President Donald Trump and his administration are actively trying to undermine and corrupt the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the country ’ s premier public health agency , in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic .
The CDC is supposed the be the country ’ s top agency in the fight against diseases — it ’ s in the organization ’ s name .
But as news reports have made clear over the past several months , the Trump administration has repeatedly interfered with the CDC ’ s work , hindering its ability to respond to the ongoing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dan Diamond at Politico , confirmed by the New York Times : A vocal Trump ally and spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services , Michael Caputo , and a scientific adviser he hired , Paul Alexander , are pushing the CDC to alter or halt reports that are unflattering to the president and his administration ’ s response to Covid-19 .
The efforts don ’ t seem to have yet led to “ sweeping changes ” for the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports , which are highly regarded public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But , according to Diamond , they ’ ve led to delays with a few reports , and there are general concerns about political interference at the agency , whose public health mission is supposed to be independent of politics .
In a recent example , the CDC held a report on hydroxychloroquine , which Trump hyped up as a treatment for Covid-19 , for a month .
The report concluded that “ the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks.
” Caputo ’ s team suggested — without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report ’ s authors had political leanings against Trump .
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are highly regarded in the public health world .
In 1981 , one of the reports was the first to document what turned out to be HIV/AIDS among five gay men .
For decades , the reports have provided rigorous evidence on various medical and scientific developments , from tuberculosis to the opioid epidemic to Covid-19 .
The Trump administration , however , began to take issue with the CDC reports after officials interpreted one released in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s response to Covid-19 — noting , among other issues , the US ’ s “ limited testing.
” CDC officials believed , Diamond reported , that the report “ was merely recounting the state of affairs and not rendering judgment on the response.
” Since then , the administration has demanded to see the reports early and pushed to make changes , including to reports that were already published .
While the CDC hasn ’ t reportedly agreed to major alterations , officials and researchers have sometimes compromised on wording .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Trump administration attempting to meddle in the CDC ’ s work .
Between getting the CDC to effectively recommend less testing for Covid-19 ( which Trump said he wants ) , forcing the agency to change other guidelines , and muzzling officials ’ public appearances , Trump has tried to bend the traditionally apolitical agency to his will .
Among all these stories is a concerted attempt by Trump and his people to mask the true scope of the epidemic .
Whether it ’ s empirical evidence that Trump ’ s response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more cases than the president would like , the “ problem ” isn ’ t that the CDC is doing anything wrong but that the truth the CDC has helped expose shows the Trump administration has failed in its response to the coronavirus .
The reality is the US has suffered one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the world , and America still reports more daily new deaths due to the disease than all other developed nations .
No amount of meddling in the CDC ’ s work will change that .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CDC ’ s work Last month , the CDC changed its testing guidelines to no longer recommend testing for people who have no Covid-19 symptoms but have come into close contact with a person known to be infected .
It was effectively a recommendation to test fewer people , soon after Trump said he had asked his people to “ slow the testing down , please , ” because , he claimed , more tests revealed more coronavirus cases and made the US look bad .
The changes were reportedly pushed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ force — while Anthony Fauci , the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and an opponent of the changes , was under anesthesia for surgery .
Experts called the changes misguided and dangerous .
When paired with contact tracing , testing is crucial to stopping the spread of Covid-19 .
It allows officials to not only track the scope of an outbreak but get people and their close contacts to isolate if they ’ re confirmed to be infected , halting the spread of the virus .
For the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without symptoms because research shows the infected can still transmit the virus without displaying any symptoms .
Aggressive testing and tracing have helped other countries , such as Germany and South Korea , control their Covid-19 outbreaks .
Trump has also repeatedly undermined the agency ’ s other guidelines .
After the agency recommended that the public use masks , Trump claimed it was a personal choice , refused to wear a mask himself , and said people wear masks to spite him .
While the CDC released careful , rigorous guidelines on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that states “ LIBERATE ” themselves and open prematurely .
At one point , Trump went after the CDC ’ s school reopening guidelines — leading the agency to update the guidelines to be more favorable to opening schools .
Previously , the Trump administration had already sidelined the CDC in the public spotlight .
Those efforts began early on in the pandemic .
On February 25 , Nancy Messonnier , director of the CDC ’ s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases , told reporters that Americans should prepare for community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the possibility that “ disruption to everyday life might be severe.
” In retrospect , the warning was correct .
But soon after the briefing , Messonnier was pushed out of the spotlight — though she ’ s still on the job , her press appearances have been limited — reportedly because her negative outlook angered Trump .
It wasn ’ t just Messonnier .
The CDC is supposed to play the leading role in America ’ s fight against pandemics , but it ’ s been largely invisible in press @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mike Pence , involving advisers and health officials , such as Fauci and Deborah Birx , who aren ’ t part of the agency .
CDC Director Robert Redfield acknowledged as much : “ You may see [ the CDC ] as invisible on the nightly news , but it ’ s sure not invisible in terms of operationalizing this response.
” As University of Michigan medical historian Howard Markel told me , the US has “ benched one of the greatest fighting forces against infectious diseases ever created.
” The CDC ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t been faultless .
Under Redfield , the agency took weeks to fix botched Covid-19 tests it sent out to labs across the country .
The slowdown in testing , also caused by the Food and Drug Administration ’ s initial resistance to approving more testing from private and other independent labs , led to what ’ s now considered a “ lost month ” in February as the US should have ramped up its testing capacity to prepare for the coronavirus .
But the Trump administration ’ s concerns about the agency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much about its efficacy but that the facts on Covid-19 — including those the CDC reports on — make the president look bad .
At the core of Trump and his administration ’ s complaints about the CDC seems to be a concerted effort to make it appear as though America is quickly returning to normal before the November election .
That effort was on display at August ’ s Republican convention , which was seemingly designed to downplay America ’ s Covid-19 epidemic .
Trump even admitted to this in an interview @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wanted to always play [ the coronavirus ] down , ” Trump said on March 19 .
“ I still like playing it down , because I don ’ t want to create a panic.
” This is , of course , a terrible way to approach a pandemic .
Viruses don ’ t care about politics , and they ’ ll spread as long as people and their governments don ’ t take action to stop them .
We ’ ve seen that time and time again as Trump has meddled with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staff muzzled Messonnier , it turns out she was right — Covid-19 has disrupted day-to-day life significantly .
After Trump suggested states reopen faster than the CDC recommended , the US saw a resurgence of Covid-19 cases , from California to Arizona to Texas to Florida , as it turned out states had opened prematurely .
After Trump pushed schools to reject the CDC guidelines and open quickly , there have been outbreaks in universities and K-12 settings .
Meanwhile , the US continues suffering a terrible epidemic .
The US hasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all wealthy nations , but it ’ s in the bottom 20 percent for deaths since the pandemic began , and reports seven times the deaths as the median developed country .
If America had the same Covid-19 death rate as , say , Canada , 100,000 more Americans would likely be alive today .
Overall , Covid-19 cases in the US are now declining after the country ’ s recent surge .
But that ’ s in large part because people have ignored much of what Trump has said : The public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counties , and states , have embraced social distancing , particularly indoors , and masking — likely driving new infections down .
At the same time , the US ’ s number of cases and deaths remains unacceptably high ; over the past week , more than 700 Americans died each day , on average , from Covid-19 .
Some US outbreaks continue to pop up too , with states in the Midwest and South recently hit hard .
The CDC is merely reporting on and acting on that reality , as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the extent the Trump administration succeeds in interfering with the CDC ’ s work , the US will likely continue to suffer more than it has to during the pandemic .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
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President Donald Trump and his administration are actively trying to undermine and corrupt the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the country’s premier public health agency, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The CDC is supposed the be the country’s top agency in the fight against diseases — it’s in the organization’s name. But as news reports have made clear over the past several months, the Trump administration has repeatedly interfered with the CDC’s work, hindering its ability to respond to the ongoing pandemic.
The latest news comes from Dan Diamond at Politico, confirmed by the New York Times: A vocal Trump ally and spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, and a scientific adviser he hired, Paul Alexander, are pushing the CDC to alter or halt reports that are unflattering to the president and his administration’s response to Covid-19.
The efforts don’t seem to have yet led to “sweeping changes” for the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, which are highly regarded public health bulletins published for professionals and scientists. But, according to Diamond, they’ve led to delays with a few reports, and there are general concerns about political interference at the agency, whose public health mission is supposed to be independent of politics.
In a recent example, the CDC held a report on hydroxychloroquine, which Trump hyped up as a treatment for Covid-19, for a month. The report concluded that “the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks.” Caputo’s team suggested — without any publicly provided evidence — that the report’s authors had political leanings against Trump.
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are highly regarded in the public health world. In 1981, one of the reports was the first to document what turned out to be HIV/AIDS among five gay men. For decades, the reports have provided rigorous evidence on various medical and scientific developments, from tuberculosis to the opioid epidemic to Covid-19.
The Trump administration, however, began to take issue with the CDC reports after officials interpreted one released in May as critical of the Trump administration’s response to Covid-19 — noting, among other issues, the US’s “limited testing.”
CDC officials believed, Diamond reported, that the report “was merely recounting the state of affairs and not rendering judgment on the response.”
Since then, the administration has demanded to see the reports early and pushed to make changes, including to reports that were already published. While the CDC hasn’t reportedly agreed to major alterations, officials and researchers have sometimes compromised on wording.
This is just the latest example of the Trump administration attempting to meddle in the CDC’s work. Between getting the CDC to effectively recommend less testing for Covid-19 (which Trump said he wants), forcing the agency to change other guidelines, and muzzling officials’ public appearances, Trump has tried to bend the traditionally apolitical agency to his will.
Among all these stories is a concerted attempt by Trump and his people to mask the true scope of the epidemic. Whether it’s empirical evidence that Trump’s response to Covid-19 was slow or testing revealing more cases than the president would like, the “problem” isn’t that the CDC is doing anything wrong but that the truth the CDC has helped expose shows the Trump administration has failed in its response to the coronavirus.
The reality is the US has suffered one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the world, and America still reports more daily new deaths due to the disease than all other developed nations. No amount of meddling in the CDC’s work will change that.
The Trump administration has repeatedly interfered with the CDC’s work
Last month, the CDC changed its testing guidelines to no longer recommend testing for people who have no Covid-19 symptoms but have come into close contact with a person known to be infected. It was effectively a recommendation to test fewer people, soon after Trump said he had asked his people to “slow the testing down, please,” because, he claimed, more tests revealed more coronavirus cases and made the US look bad.
The changes were reportedly pushed by the White House’s coronavirus task force — while Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and an opponent of the changes, was under anesthesia for surgery.
Experts called the changes misguided and dangerous. When paired with contact tracing, testing is crucial to stopping the spread of Covid-19. It allows officials to not only track the scope of an outbreak but get people and their close contacts to isolate if they’re confirmed to be infected, halting the spread of the virus. For the coronavirus, that necessitates testing even people without symptoms because research shows the infected can still transmit the virus without displaying any symptoms. Aggressive testing and tracing have helped other countries, such as Germany and South Korea, control their Covid-19 outbreaks.
Trump has also repeatedly undermined the agency’s other guidelines. After the agency recommended that the public use masks, Trump claimed it was a personal choice, refused to wear a mask himself, and said people wear masks to spite him. While the CDC released careful, rigorous guidelines on how places should reopen, Trump demanded that states “LIBERATE” themselves and open prematurely. At one point, Trump went after the CDC’s school reopening guidelines — leading the agency to update the guidelines to be more favorable to opening schools.
Previously, the Trump administration had already sidelined the CDC in the public spotlight.
Those efforts began early on in the pandemic. On February 25, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters that Americans should prepare for community spread of the coronavirus, social distancing, and the possibility that “disruption to everyday life might be severe.”
In retrospect, the warning was correct. But soon after the briefing, Messonnier was pushed out of the spotlight — though she’s still on the job, her press appearances have been limited — reportedly because her negative outlook angered Trump.
It wasn’t just Messonnier. The CDC is supposed to play the leading role in America’s fight against pandemics, but it’s been largely invisible in press briefings led by Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, involving advisers and health officials, such as Fauci and Deborah Birx, who aren’t part of the agency. CDC Director Robert Redfield acknowledged as much: “You may see [the CDC] as invisible on the nightly news, but it’s sure not invisible in terms of operationalizing this response.”
As University of Michigan medical historian Howard Markel told me, the US has “benched one of the greatest fighting forces against infectious diseases ever created.”
The CDC’s response to the pandemic hasn’t been faultless. Under Redfield, the agency took weeks to fix botched Covid-19 tests it sent out to labs across the country. The slowdown in testing, also caused by the Food and Drug Administration’s initial resistance to approving more testing from private and other independent labs, led to what’s now considered a “lost month” in February as the US should have ramped up its testing capacity to prepare for the coronavirus.
But the Trump administration’s concerns about the agency don’t seem to be so much about its efficacy but that the facts on Covid-19 — including those the CDC reports on — make the president look bad.
Hiding the truth won’t stop the virus
At the core of Trump and his administration’s complaints about the CDC seems to be a concerted effort to make it appear as though America is quickly returning to normal before the November election. That effort was on display at August’s Republican convention, which was seemingly designed to downplay America’s Covid-19 epidemic.
Trump even admitted to this in an interview with journalist Bob Woodward: “I wanted to always play [the coronavirus] down,” Trump said on March 19. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
This is, of course, a terrible way to approach a pandemic. Viruses don’t care about politics, and they’ll spread as long as people and their governments don’t take action to stop them.
We’ve seen that time and time again as Trump has meddled with the CDC. Although he and his staff muzzled Messonnier, it turns out she was right — Covid-19 has disrupted day-to-day life significantly. After Trump suggested states reopen faster than the CDC recommended, the US saw a resurgence of Covid-19 cases, from California to Arizona to Texas to Florida, as it turned out states had opened prematurely. After Trump pushed schools to reject the CDC guidelines and open quickly, there have been outbreaks in universities and K-12 settings.
Meanwhile, the US continues suffering a terrible epidemic. The US hasn’t seen the most Covid-19 deaths of all wealthy nations, but it’s in the bottom 20 percent for deaths since the pandemic began, and reports seven times the deaths as the median developed country. If America had the same Covid-19 death rate as, say, Canada, 100,000 more Americans would likely be alive today.
Overall, Covid-19 cases in the US are now declining after the country’s recent surge. But that’s in large part because people have ignored much of what Trump has said: The public, as well as many cities, counties, and states, have embraced social distancing, particularly indoors, and masking — likely driving new infections down.
At the same time, the US’s number of cases and deaths remains unacceptably high; over the past week, more than 700 Americans died each day, on average, from Covid-19. Some US outbreaks continue to pop up too, with states in the Midwest and South recently hit hard.
The CDC is merely reporting on and acting on that reality, as the agency is tasked with doing. To the extent the Trump administration succeeds in interfering with the CDC’s work, the US will likely continue to suffer more than it has to during the pandemic.