theintercept--2020-08-10--The Rise of Hakeem Jeffries Is Being Disrupted From Below

The most credible threat against a CBC member in the spring came from Morgan Harper , challenging Rep. Joyce Beatty in Columbus , Ohio .
Beatty won in a landslide , 68-32 , and Jeffries pounced .
That same insurgency had come after a new batch of incumbents in the 2020 cycle , and Jeffries was committed to defending his caucus , particularly members of the Congressional Black Caucus .
As Rep. Lacy Clay and other CBC members suggested , racial animus lay behind the primary challenges .
On the morning of April 29 , Hakeem Jeffries logged on to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been locked in a public feud with the progressive insurgency that had , paradoxically , cleared the way for his rise to House Democratic caucus chair by ousting the previous occupant of the position , his friend and mentor Joe Crowley of Queens .
Meltdown ?
Not us .
Congrats @ JoyceBeatty on a decisive 36 point ( ?
?
?
?
?
? )
victory in Ohio ’ s democratic congressional primary !
Up next @ VoteYvette @ LacyClayMO1 # ClarkeForCongress # StayWithClay .
They started this fight .
We will finish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Jeffries ’ s reference to a “ meltdown ” appeared to be a misreading of an article in The Intercept published more than nine months earlier , headlined , “ How Morgan Harper ’ s Ohio Primary Challenge Explains the House Democratic Meltdown.
” The story reported that a spate of recent public accusations of racism made by CBC members against Justice Democrats were fueled by anger at Harper ’ s challenge to Beatty — which the progressive political action committee at the time was not actually supporting .
The same day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the official Twitter account of Jeffries launched an attack on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ’ s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti , an assault that was joined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , which culminated in Chakrabarti ’ s departure not long after .
Jeffries , admired among his colleagues for his communications skills and speechmaking from the House floor , is widely seen as an heir to Nancy Pelosi as party leader .
She tapped him to play a leading role in the impeachment debate , and he didn ’ t disappoint .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ he surprised his counterparts in the upper chamber by quoting rapper Biggie Smalls .
But peeling back a layer suggests that the comforting narrative might not offer so much comfort after all .
Yes , Clarke survived , but she did so with her opposition split among three candidates .
The primaries in New York , if viewed through a rosy glass , could be seen as more evidence .
Clarke won convincingly .
Yes , Rep. Eliot Engel fell to Justice Democrat Jamaal Bowman , but New York Democratic insiders dismissed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It doesn ’ t show AOC ’ s power — it shows that New York voters want demographic changes in the House , ” one anonymous Democrat assured the New York Post .
“ They don ’ t want old white guys who don ’ t do anything .
Not only old white guys ; but old white guys who only work when they ’ re up for reelection .
People are punishing these kinds of lawmakers .
If you ’ re old , white and lazy , you ’ re going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decisive win was more evidence for CBC members that the insurgency was driven by young , white hipsters and wasn ’ t resonating with working-class Black voters .
That was a story CBC members had told themselves and repeated publicly , and after Beatty ’ s blowout win , many appeared to believe it was true .
The post-Harper mop-up operation , Jeffries suggested , would move next to his neighboring district in Brooklyn , where Rep. Yvette Clarke faced two progressive challengers , and then to St. Louis , where Cori Bush @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lacy Clay .
That shoutout might convey that Jeffries has his finger on the pulse of Brooklyn ’ s Clinton Hill and surrounding neighborhoods , where Biggie grew up and which Jeffries has represented as an elected official since 2006 .
But the results of two races in June show that many voters in Jeffries ’ s own backyard hold views significantly to his left , leaving Jeffries vulnerable to a potential challenge in 2022 .
In both contests , candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America defeated Jeffries ’ s picks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support behind 16-term Bronx representative Engel . )
The CBC had also comforted itself by observing that Ocasio-Cortez , in 2018 , had done better against Crowley in neighborhoods that were gentrifying .
In 2020 , she did better everywhere .
In the race for New York Assembly District 57 that spans from Clinton Hill through Prospect Heights to Crown Heights , insurgent Phara Souffrant Forrest toppled four-term incumbent Walter Mosley .
Although Mosley is Jeffries ’ s protégé who won the state office upon his mentor ’ s departure for Congress , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
New York ’ s State Senate districts consist of multiple Assembly districts .
In the 25th Senatorial District , the DSA ’ s Jabari Brisport carried AD 57 with over 67 percent of the vote , defeating Bedford-Stuyvesant Assembly Member Tremaine Wright , who touted her support from Jeffries .
En route to his landslide win , Brisport also bested Wright in her own Bed-Stuy district by over 450 votes .
A small portion of Brisport ’ s district includes Sunset Park , where the DSA ’ s Marcela Mitaynes toppled 13-term @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the assistant speaker .
The northern end of Jeffries ’ s congressional district includes a section of Clinton Hill , where progressive challenger Emily Gallagher racked up a clear majority of votes in her successful effort to unseat 24-term Williamsburg incumbent Assembly Member Joe Lentol .
There are also nearby portions along the borders of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick , where DSA state Sen. Julia Salazar did well in her initial successful run two years ago and then cleaned up in her reelection this year .
Buoyed by its recent successes , the NYC-DSA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We ’ re looking at all districts in all boroughs , ” said co-chair Chi Anunwa .
“ Out-of-touch incumbents should be quaking in their boots.
” Anunwa said it is too early to forecast whether the DSA will mount a challenger against Jeffries .
The group is currently focused on next year ’ s New York City elections .
Redistricting is also an issue that will not be resolved until the fall of 2021 at the earliest .
Jeffries ’ s current district adjoins those of Clarke in Brooklyn and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ districts must reach 50 percent Black in the 2020 Census in order to remain intact .
The current map of Jeffries ’ s district includes areas of Brooklyn where the DSA has yet to set up shop , including Canarsie , Mill Basin , and Coney Island .
All three are working-class shoreline communities hit hard by Superstorm Sandy , meaning the Green New Deal ( which Jeffries has yet to support ) likely would appeal to younger residents there .
Jeffries ’ s base is the older Democrats throughout the district .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first half of this year , both Souffrant Forrest and Brisport found that many residents were quite responsive to the DSA ’ s platform .
“ Voters want single-payer health care , a Green New Deal , and universal rent control , and they want representatives who will show up and fight for those issues , ” said Souffrant Forrest .
In Brisport ’ s view , such “ bold , universal programs excite the Democratic base , not means-tested halfway measures.
” As the No .
5 ranking member of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ DSA members and others as an integral member of the Pelosi team that doesn ’ t support single-payer or the Green New Deal .
While Jeffries has expressed his support for Medicare for All , there is no mention of it on his 2020 campaign website .
Unlike Crowley or Engel , Jeffries is not vulnerable to the charge that he ’ s absent from his home turf .
As his senior political adviser Cathy Toren said , “ Rep .
Jeffries is highly visible in the community and regularly meets with constituents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Toren and others in Jeffries ’ s camp say that people in the district also have responded favorably to the congressman ’ s work amid the pandemic , during which Jeffries has helped Pelosi push through relief measures including eviction protections .
Moreover , Jeffries ’ s team maintains that his high-profile efforts to unseat Trump have also played well in the overwhelmingly Democratic district .
That Jeffries is a strong supporter of Joe Biden is no surprise .
In advance of the 2016 Democratic primary , the congressman led the attack by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sanders , whom Jeffries labeled “ a gun-loving socialist with zero foreign-policy experience.
” Along with Engel and Iraq War veteran Rep. Max Rose , Jeffries recently voted to approve the Pentagon ’ s $ 740 billion budget .
The other nine members of New York City ’ s delegation all voted no .
Fundraising is another issue that certainly places Jeffries at odds with the NYC-DSA , which doesn ’ t support candidates that take real estate or corporate donations .
According to OpenSecrets , a project of the Center for Responsive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recipient of hedge-fund money , collecting nearly $ 150,000 through July 1 .
Rose is second , with almost $ 130,000 .
Despite lacking any primary or known general election challenger , Jeffries has raised nearly $ 4 million in the 2019-2020 cycle .
Just over $ 1.1 million of that has come from a combination of financial sector , real estate interests , and insurance industry largesse .
Among his leading contributors are hedge-fund leaders Elliot Management and the Blackstone Group .
Both companies have close ties to Trump .
Jeffries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 700,000 from his campaign coffers to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee .
Such prolific fundraising in no way hurts Jeffries ’ s current standing in the party , but if he can ’ t protect his own incumbents , the money is not worth the paper it ’ s printed on .
Leading up to the St. Louis primary , Jeffries re-upped his support for Clay .

On the morning of April 29, Hakeem Jeffries logged on to celebrate. The congressman from Brooklyn had been locked in a public feud with the progressive insurgency that had, paradoxically, cleared the way for his rise to House Democratic caucus chair by ousting the previous occupant of the position, his friend and mentor Joe Crowley of Queens.
That same insurgency had come after a new batch of incumbents in the 2020 cycle, and Jeffries was committed to defending his caucus, particularly members of the Congressional Black Caucus. As Rep. Lacy Clay and other CBC members suggested, racial animus lay behind the primary challenges.
The most credible threat against a CBC member in the spring came from Morgan Harper, challenging Rep. Joyce Beatty in Columbus, Ohio. Beatty won in a landslide, 68-32, and Jeffries pounced.
“Meltdown? Not us,” he posted to Twitter. “They started this fight. We will finish it.”
Meltdown? Not us. Congrats @JoyceBeatty on a decisive 36 point (??????) victory in Ohio’s democratic congressional primary! Up next @VoteYvette @LacyClayMO1 #ClarkeForCongress #StayWithClay. They started this fight. We will finish it ??????. — Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeemjeffries) April 29, 2020
Jeffries’s reference to a “meltdown” appeared to be a misreading of an article in The Intercept published more than nine months earlier, headlined, “How Morgan Harper’s Ohio Primary Challenge Explains the House Democratic Meltdown.” The story reported that a spate of recent public accusations of racism made by CBC members against Justice Democrats were fueled by anger at Harper’s challenge to Beatty — which the progressive political action committee at the time was not actually supporting. The same day many of those charges were published, the official Twitter account of Jeffries launched an attack on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, an assault that was joined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which culminated in Chakrabarti’s departure not long after.
The post-Harper mop-up operation, Jeffries suggested, would move next to his neighboring district in Brooklyn, where Rep. Yvette Clarke faced two progressive challengers, and then to St. Louis, where Cori Bush was taking a second run at Rep. Lacy Clay.
Jeffries’s optimism proved misplaced.
Beatty’s decisive win was more evidence for CBC members that the insurgency was driven by young, white hipsters and wasn’t resonating with working-class Black voters. That was a story CBC members had told themselves and repeated publicly, and after Beatty’s blowout win, many appeared to believe it was true.
The primaries in New York, if viewed through a rosy glass, could be seen as more evidence. Clarke won convincingly. Yes, Rep. Eliot Engel fell to Justice Democrat Jamaal Bowman, but New York Democratic insiders dismissed the incumbent as out of touch. “It doesn’t show AOC’s power — it shows that New York voters want demographic changes in the House,” one anonymous Democrat assured the New York Post. “They don’t want old white guys who don’t do anything. Not only old white guys; but old white guys who only work when they’re up for reelection. People are punishing these kinds of lawmakers. If you’re old, white and lazy, you’re going to get kicked out.”
But peeling back a layer suggests that the comforting narrative might not offer so much comfort after all. Yes, Clarke survived, but she did so with her opposition split among three candidates.
Elsewhere in Brooklyn, it was a bloodbath for Jeffries.
Jeffries, admired among his colleagues for his communications skills and speechmaking from the House floor, is widely seen as an heir to Nancy Pelosi as party leader. She tapped him to play a leading role in the impeachment debate, and he didn’t disappoint. In presenting his case against Trump, he surprised his counterparts in the upper chamber by quoting rapper Biggie Smalls.
"If you don't know, now you know." Hakeem Jeffries closes #impeachment speech quoting Biggie. pic.twitter.com/21ldHyjxLc — Zach Wolf (@zbyronwolf) January 22, 2020
That shoutout might convey that Jeffries has his finger on the pulse of Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill and surrounding neighborhoods, where Biggie grew up and which Jeffries has represented as an elected official since 2006. But the results of two races in June show that many voters in Jeffries’s own backyard hold views significantly to his left, leaving Jeffries vulnerable to a potential challenge in 2022.
In both contests, candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America defeated Jeffries’s picks. (Jeffries had also thrown his support behind 16-term Bronx representative Engel.) The CBC had also comforted itself by observing that Ocasio-Cortez, in 2018, had done better against Crowley in neighborhoods that were gentrifying. In 2020, she did better everywhere.
In the race for New York Assembly District 57 that spans from Clinton Hill through Prospect Heights to Crown Heights, insurgent Phara Souffrant Forrest toppled four-term incumbent Walter Mosley. Although Mosley is Jeffries’s protégé who won the state office upon his mentor’s departure for Congress, Souffrant Forrest prevailed by nearly 3,000 votes.
New York’s State Senate districts consist of multiple Assembly districts. In the 25th Senatorial District, the DSA’s Jabari Brisport carried AD 57 with over 67 percent of the vote, defeating Bedford-Stuyvesant Assembly Member Tremaine Wright, who touted her support from Jeffries. En route to his landslide win, Brisport also bested Wright in her own Bed-Stuy district by over 450 votes. A small portion of Brisport’s district includes Sunset Park, where the DSA’s Marcela Mitaynes toppled 13-term Assembly Member Felix Ortiz, who was the assistant speaker.
The northern end of Jeffries’s congressional district includes a section of Clinton Hill, where progressive challenger Emily Gallagher racked up a clear majority of votes in her successful effort to unseat 24-term Williamsburg incumbent Assembly Member Joe Lentol. There are also nearby portions along the borders of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick, where DSA state Sen. Julia Salazar did well in her initial successful run two years ago and then cleaned up in her reelection this year.
Buoyed by its recent successes, the NYC-DSA is now seeking to expand its presence. “We’re looking at all districts in all boroughs,” said co-chair Chi Anunwa. “Out-of-touch incumbents should be quaking in their boots.”
Anunwa said it is too early to forecast whether the DSA will mount a challenger against Jeffries. The group is currently focused on next year’s New York City elections.
Redistricting is also an issue that will not be resolved until the fall of 2021 at the earliest. Jeffries’s current district adjoins those of Clarke in Brooklyn and Gregory Meeks in Queens. All three districts must reach 50 percent Black in the 2020 Census in order to remain intact.
The current map of Jeffries’s district includes areas of Brooklyn where the DSA has yet to set up shop, including Canarsie, Mill Basin, and Coney Island. All three are working-class shoreline communities hit hard by Superstorm Sandy, meaning the Green New Deal (which Jeffries has yet to support) likely would appeal to younger residents there. Jeffries’s base is the older Democrats throughout the district.
As they campaigned in Central Brooklyn during the first half of this year, both Souffrant Forrest and Brisport found that many residents were quite responsive to the DSA’s platform. “Voters want single-payer health care, a Green New Deal, and universal rent control, and they want representatives who will show up and fight for those issues,” said Souffrant Forrest. In Brisport’s view, such “bold, universal programs excite the Democratic base, not means-tested halfway measures.”
As the No. 5 ranking member of the House Democrats, Jeffries is viewed by DSA members and others as an integral member of the Pelosi team that doesn’t support single-payer or the Green New Deal. While Jeffries has expressed his support for Medicare for All, there is no mention of it on his 2020 campaign website.
Unlike Crowley or Engel, Jeffries is not vulnerable to the charge that he’s absent from his home turf. As his senior political adviser Cathy Toren said, “Rep. Jeffries is highly visible in the community and regularly meets with constituents on street corners throughout the district.”
Toren and others in Jeffries’s camp say that people in the district also have responded favorably to the congressman’s work amid the pandemic, during which Jeffries has helped Pelosi push through relief measures including eviction protections. Moreover, Jeffries’s team maintains that his high-profile efforts to unseat Trump have also played well in the overwhelmingly Democratic district.
That Jeffries is a strong supporter of Joe Biden is no surprise. In advance of the 2016 Democratic primary, the congressman led the attack by Hillary Clinton’s team against Bernie Sanders, whom Jeffries labeled “a gun-loving socialist with zero foreign-policy experience.” Along with Engel and Iraq War veteran Rep. Max Rose, Jeffries recently voted to approve the Pentagon’s $740 billion budget. The other nine members of New York City’s delegation all voted no.
Fundraising is another issue that certainly places Jeffries at odds with the NYC-DSA, which doesn’t support candidates that take real estate or corporate donations. According to OpenSecrets, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics, Jeffries is the leading congressional recipient of hedge-fund money, collecting nearly $150,000 through July 1. Rose is second, with almost $130,000.
Despite lacking any primary or known general election challenger, Jeffries has raised nearly $4 million in the 2019-2020 cycle. Just over $1.1 million of that has come from a combination of financial sector, real estate interests, and insurance industry largesse. Among his leading contributors are hedge-fund leaders Elliot Management and the Blackstone Group. Both companies have close ties to Trump.
Jeffries, in turn, has steered nearly $700,000 from his campaign coffers to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Such prolific fundraising in no way hurts Jeffries’s current standing in the party, but if he can’t protect his own incumbents, the money is not worth the paper it’s printed on.
Leading up to the St. Louis primary, Jeffries re-upped his support for Clay.
Track. Record. Matters. Rep. Lacy Clay is not a status quo Democrat. He’s a strongly progressive Democrat. Vote @LacyClayMO1 on August 4th!!! https://t.co/Ejr7f24b3Y — Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeemjeffries) August 1, 2020
The next day, he followed it up with some cryptic chest-thumping.
Never. Bend. The. Knee. — Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeemjeffries) August 2, 2020
On Tuesday night, his spokesperson circulated vote numbers showing Clay up convincingly in the early vote count.
On Wednesday, Jeffries was silent on the race.


theintercept--2020-08-10--Leaked Documents Reveal What TikTok Shares with Authorities — in the U.S.

executive order banning Americans from using TikTok is driven by concerns that the company might hand over user data to Chinese authorities .
Recently hacked police documents reveal the nature of the company ’ s relationship to law enforcement — not in China but in the United States .
TikTok ’ s parent company , ByteDance , is headquartered in Beijing , where the government censors social media content and maintains other forms of influence over tech companies .
But a glimpse at what TikTok does in the U.S. underscores that data privacy issues extend beyond China .
Documents published @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hacked by someone claiming a connection to Anonymous and published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets , show the information that TikTok shared with U.S. law enforcement in dozens of cases .
Experts familiar with law enforcement requests say that what TikTok collects and hands over is not significantly more than what companies like Amazon , Facebook , or Google regularly provide , but that ’ s because U.S. tech companies collect and hand over a lot of information .
The documents also reveal that two representatives with bytedance.com email addresses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ California Regional Intelligence Center , a fusion center that covers the Silicon Valley area .
And they show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security actively monitored TikTok for signs of unrest during the George Floyd protests .
The number of requests for subscriber information that TikTok says it receives from law enforcement is significantly lower than what U.S. tech giants reportedly field , likely because police are more accustomed to using data from U.S. companies and apps in investigations .
TikTok enumerates its requests from law enforcement in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent of which says that for the last half of 2019 , the company received 100 requests covering 107 accounts .
It handed over information in 82 percent of cases .
Facebook , by contrast , says it received a whopping 51,121 requests over the same period , and handed over at least some data in 88 percent of cases .
A 2018 document found in BlueLeaks titled “ Law Enforcement Technology Investigations Resource Guide ” gives police details on how to obtain records from Musical.ly , which was acquired by ByteDance and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is unclear whether these data releases were in response to warrants , subpoenas , or other requests , and the company would not give details , citing user privacy .
All social media platforms are required by law to comply with valid court orders requesting user information , but what they actually provide can vary widely , said Ángel Díaz , an expert on national security and technology at the Brennan Center for Justice .
Companies also have the right to challenge requests for user data in court — though they often don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for which TikTok handed over data in the BlueLeaks dump range from influencers with tens of thousands of followers to people who primarily post for friends .
One user contacted by The Intercept said they were unaware that their information had been given to law enforcement .
Díaz said that in certain emergency situations , where moderators have a good-faith belief that there is a threat to someone ’ s life or a risk of serious physical harm , tech companies may voluntarily turn over information to the U.S. government without notifying the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ account after The Intercept asked the company about it .
“ We are committed to respecting the privacy and rights of our users when complying with law enforcement requests , ” said TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza .
“ We carefully review valid law enforcement requests and require appropriate legal documents in order to produce information for a law enforcement request.
” TikTok has tried to distance itself from its Chinese origins , hiring a former Disney executive as CEO , engaging lobbyists with ties to the Trump campaign , and pledging to add @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some of that expansion is apparently coming in the area of cooperation with authorities .
TikTok recently sought out a law enforcement response specialist and is currently recruiting a global law enforcement project manager .
The team that reviews law enforcement requests is based in Los Angeles , Favazza said .
The BlueLeaks documents also indicate that U.S. federal investigators and police — some of whom are themselves enthusiastic TikTok users — increasingly view the app as a useful tool .
In the early days of the George Floyd protests , law enforcement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Twitter , and other social media apps , to track protests and dissent .
An FBI report from June 2 titled “ Civil Unrest May 2020 Situation Report ” alleged that TikTok was among the apps being used to promote violence .
“ Reporting nationally indicates individuals are using traditional social medial platforms and encrypted messaging applications ( YouTube , Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , TikTok , Telegram , Topbuzz.com , Snapchat , Wickr ) to discuss potential acts of violence.
” In lieu of actual examples of physical violence , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ rumors about false activities , ” and , cryptically , “ false reports of violence to incite violence.
” Three days later , another FBI dispatch warned , “ An identified user posted a video on TikTok demonstrating which tab to pull to quickly remove body armor of LEO/military , saying ‘ do with this information what you will.
’ The post was gaining significant traction.
” One satirical TikTok video even got a dedicated intelligence report , from DHS ’ s Office of Intelligence and Analysis .
On May 31 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the handle weirdsappho posted a video riffing off a tweet that comedian Jaboukie Young-White , a correspondent for “ The Daily Show , ” wrote after the National Guard was deployed to Minneapolis .
Young-White tweeted , “ thank god they ’ re bringing in the army , ” at a moment when anxiety about the deployment was running high .
“ I would be heartbroken if someone disabled a tank by putting water balloons filled w sticky liquids ( esp some sort of sugar/milk/syrup combo ) into a glass jar and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it inoperable support our troops.
” In her video , weirdsappho included some of the replies to the tweet , which expanded on the joke .
The DHS report reprised weirdsappho ’ s video , quoting the tweet and the replies verbatim , without explaining their source or giving context .
The intelligence report bore the subject line “ Social media video provides TTPs ” — tactics , techniques , and procedures — “ on how to interfere with the U.S. National Guard during riots , ” suggesting that the teenager was an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dispatch was first reported by the online news site Mainer .
In last week ’ s executive order , Trump cited concerns that TikTok ’ s ownership by ByteDance could “ allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans ’ personal and proprietary information.
” TikTok ’ s track record , and ByteDance ’ s obligations under Chinese law , do present unique security concerns .
The Chinese state has invested significant resources in using artificial intelligence to monitor and manipulate public opinion , and ByteDance has been brought along in that effort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a Chinese state media group , leaving open the possibility that some of its technology might be used for propaganda purposes .
TikTok ’ s privacy policy states that the company may share user information with “ a parent , subsidiary , or other affiliate of our corporate group.
” Multiple class-action lawsuits have accused TikTok of sending data to China , though TikTok says that the data of U.S. users is stored in Virginia and backed up in Singapore .
TikTok has also censored political speech that is disfavored by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hong Kong protests and about the internment in inhumane camps in northwestern China of Uyghurs , an oppressed Muslim minority group .
Internal documents previously obtained by The Intercept show that TikTok instructed moderators to suppress posts created by users who were deemed poor , ugly , or disabled .
The guides appeared to have been hastily translated from Chinese .
“ The common concern , whether we ’ re talking about TikTok or Huawei , isn ’ t the intentions of that company necessarily but the framework within which it operates , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Chinese technology at the Center for a New American Security .
“ You could criticize American companies for having an opaque relationship to the U.S. government , but there definitely is a different character to the ecosystem.
” At the same time , she added , the Trump administration ’ s actions , including a handling of Portland protests that brought to mind the police crackdown in Hong Kong , have undercut official critiques of Chinese practices : “ At a moment when we ’ re seeing attempts by the administration to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and ideology with China , these eerie parallels that keep recurring do really undermine that.
” Last week ’ s executive order takes effect 45 days after its issuance .
Trump appears to favor ByteDance selling TikTok to an American owner , with Microsoft being the frontrunner .
If that happens , some concerns about data privacy with regards to China might be eliminated .
But the BlueLeaks documents highlight that without more restrictions in the United States on what companies can collect and hand over to investigators , there ’ s reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , American or Chinese .

President Donald Trump’s executive order banning Americans from using TikTok is driven by concerns that the company might hand over user data to Chinese authorities. Recently hacked police documents reveal the nature of the company’s relationship to law enforcement — not in China but in the United States.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is headquartered in Beijing, where the government censors social media content and maintains other forms of influence over tech companies. But a glimpse at what TikTok does in the U.S. underscores that data privacy issues extend beyond China.
Documents published in the BlueLeaks trove, which was hacked by someone claiming a connection to Anonymous and published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets, show the information that TikTok shared with U.S. law enforcement in dozens of cases. Experts familiar with law enforcement requests say that what TikTok collects and hands over is not significantly more than what companies like Amazon, Facebook, or Google regularly provide, but that’s because U.S. tech companies collect and hand over a lot of information.
The documents also reveal that two representatives with bytedance.com email addresses registered on the website of the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a fusion center that covers the Silicon Valley area.
And they show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security actively monitored TikTok for signs of unrest during the George Floyd protests.
The number of requests for subscriber information that TikTok says it receives from law enforcement is significantly lower than what U.S. tech giants reportedly field, likely because police are more accustomed to using data from U.S. companies and apps in investigations. TikTok enumerates its requests from law enforcement in a biannual transparency report, the most recent of which says that for the last half of 2019, the company received 100 requests covering 107 accounts. It handed over information in 82 percent of cases. Facebook, by contrast, says it received a whopping 51,121 requests over the same period, and handed over at least some data in 88 percent of cases. A 2018 document found in BlueLeaks titled “Law Enforcement Technology Investigations Resource Guide” gives police details on how to obtain records from Musical.ly, which was acquired by ByteDance and merged into TikTok that year.
Document: Law Enforcement Technology Investigations Resource Guide
In the releases shown in BlueLeaks, TikTok handed over multiple IP addresses, information about the devices used to register for accounts, cellphone numbers, and unique IDs tied to platforms including Instagram, Facebook, or Google if the user logged in using a social media account. (Business Insider first reported the specifics of what TikTok collects.)
It is unclear whether these data releases were in response to warrants, subpoenas, or other requests, and the company would not give details, citing user privacy. All social media platforms are required by law to comply with valid court orders requesting user information, but what they actually provide can vary widely, said Ángel Díaz, an expert on national security and technology at the Brennan Center for Justice. Companies also have the right to challenge requests for user data in court — though they often don’t do so.
The accounts for which TikTok handed over data in the BlueLeaks dump range from influencers with tens of thousands of followers to people who primarily post for friends. One user contacted by The Intercept said they were unaware that their information had been given to law enforcement. Díaz said that in certain emergency situations, where moderators have a good-faith belief that there is a threat to someone’s life or a risk of serious physical harm, tech companies may voluntarily turn over information to the U.S. government without notifying the user. TikTok restored access to the account after The Intercept asked the company about it.
“We are committed to respecting the privacy and rights of our users when complying with law enforcement requests,” said TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza. “We carefully review valid law enforcement requests and require appropriate legal documents in order to produce information for a law enforcement request.”
TikTok has tried to distance itself from its Chinese origins, hiring a former Disney executive as CEO, engaging lobbyists with ties to the Trump campaign, and pledging to add 10,000 positions in the United States. Some of that expansion is apparently coming in the area of cooperation with authorities. TikTok recently sought out a law enforcement response specialist and is currently recruiting a global law enforcement project manager. The team that reviews law enforcement requests is based in Los Angeles, Favazza said.
One satirical TikTok video even got a dedicated intelligence report.
The BlueLeaks documents also indicate that U.S. federal investigators and police — some of whom are themselves enthusiastic TikTok users — increasingly view the app as a useful tool. In the early days of the George Floyd protests, law enforcement used TikTok, along with Facebook, Twitter, and other social media apps, to track protests and dissent.
An FBI report from June 2 titled “Civil Unrest May 2020 Situation Report” alleged that TikTok was among the apps being used to promote violence. “Reporting nationally indicates individuals are using traditional social medial platforms and encrypted messaging applications (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, Topbuzz.com, Snapchat, Wickr) to discuss potential acts of violence.” In lieu of actual examples of physical violence, the document pointed to the doxxing of officers, “rumors about false activities,” and, cryptically, “false reports of violence to incite violence.”
Three days later, another FBI dispatch warned, “An identified user posted a video on TikTok demonstrating which tab to pull to quickly remove body armor of LEO/military, saying ‘do with this information what you will.’ The post was gaining significant traction.”
One satirical TikTok video even got a dedicated intelligence report, from DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. On May 31, a 19-year-old TikTok user who goes by the handle weirdsappho posted a video riffing off a tweet that comedian Jaboukie Young-White, a correspondent for “The Daily Show,” wrote after the National Guard was deployed to Minneapolis.
Young-White tweeted, “thank god they’re bringing in the army,” at a moment when anxiety about the deployment was running high. “I would be heartbroken if someone disabled a tank by putting water balloons filled w sticky liquids (esp some sort of sugar/milk/syrup combo) into a glass jar and throwing it at the windshield, rendering it inoperable support our troops.” In her video, weirdsappho included some of the replies to the tweet, which expanded on the joke.
The DHS report reprised weirdsappho’s video, quoting the tweet and the replies verbatim, without explaining their source or giving context. The intelligence report bore the subject line “Social media video provides TTPs” — tactics, techniques, and procedures — “on how to interfere with the U.S. National Guard during riots,” suggesting that the teenager was an imminent threat. The existence of the dispatch was first reported by the online news site Mainer.
In last week’s executive order, Trump cited concerns that TikTok’s ownership by ByteDance could “allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.” TikTok’s track record, and ByteDance’s obligations under Chinese law, do present unique security concerns. The Chinese state has invested significant resources in using artificial intelligence to monitor and manipulate public opinion, and ByteDance has been brought along in that effort. ByteDance recently established a joint venture with a Chinese state media group, leaving open the possibility that some of its technology might be used for propaganda purposes.
TikTok’s privacy policy states that the company may share user information with “a parent, subsidiary, or other affiliate of our corporate group.” Multiple class-action lawsuits have accused TikTok of sending data to China, though TikTok says that the data of U.S. users is stored in Virginia and backed up in Singapore. TikTok has also censored political speech that is disfavored by the Chinese government, including videos about the Hong Kong protests and about the internment in inhumane camps in northwestern China of Uyghurs, an oppressed Muslim minority group. Internal documents previously obtained by The Intercept show that TikTok instructed moderators to suppress posts created by users who were deemed poor, ugly, or disabled. The guides appeared to have been hastily translated from Chinese.
“At a moment when we’re seeing attempts by the administration to draw a contrast in terms of values and ideology with China, these eerie parallels that keep recurring do really undermine that.”
“The common concern, whether we’re talking about TikTok or Huawei, isn’t the intentions of that company necessarily but the framework within which it operates,” said Elsa Kania, an expert on Chinese technology at the Center for a New American Security. “You could criticize American companies for having an opaque relationship to the U.S. government, but there definitely is a different character to the ecosystem.” At the same time, she added, the Trump administration’s actions, including a handling of Portland protests that brought to mind the police crackdown in Hong Kong, have undercut official critiques of Chinese practices: “At a moment when we’re seeing attempts by the administration to draw a contrast in terms of values and ideology with China, these eerie parallels that keep recurring do really undermine that.”
Last week’s executive order takes effect 45 days after its issuance. Trump appears to favor ByteDance selling TikTok to an American owner, with Microsoft being the frontrunner. If that happens, some concerns about data privacy with regards to China might be eliminated. But the BlueLeaks documents highlight that without more restrictions in the United States on what companies can collect and hand over to investigators, there’s reason to worry about any social media platform, American or Chinese.


theintercept--2020-08-11--The Race to Replace Joe Kennedy in Congress is Heating Up

for Joe Kennedy ’ s congressional seat in Massachusetts is presenting Democratic primary voters with one of their final opportunities of the cycle to decide which direction to take the party .
The nine-person race includes just about every archetype from every faction of the Democratic Party .
There has been no public polling of the 4th Congressional District race , leaving voters who want to cast their ballot strategically in the dark .
But a new internal survey from the campaign of Ihssane Leckey , provided to The Intercept , shows the progressive candidate surging into a virtual tie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mermell is a longtime friend and ally of Rep. Ayanna Pressley , who has endorsed her , while Leckey has the support of Rep. Ilhan Omar , who faces her own primary in Minnesota on Tuesday .
But the poll has Leckey and Mermell not battling for first , but for third — within striking distance of two more conservative Democrats .
Mermell comes out of the party ’ s dominant wing , having served as a top aide to Gov .
Deval Patrick and in a senior role at Planned Parenthood .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Alliance for Business Leadership .
A fellow Alliance board member , Josh Boger , recently backed Mermell in the Boston Globe .
He ’ s the founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals , recently in the news for its $ 272,000-per-year cystic fibrosis medication .
Like Pressley , Mermell has fixed herself in the Elizabeth Warren lane , caught between the insurgent Bernie Sanders left and the deep pockets and influence of Massachusetts ’ conservative political establishment .
That can work for the popular incumbent Pressley , but it didn ’ t work for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She won 9 percent in a June survey also commissioned by Leckey ’ s campaign , and only rose 1 percentage point in the most recent telephone survey to 10 percent .
The most recent survey of 400 likely primary voters was conducted from August 1-4 by Frederick Polls , the same firm that conducted the June survey .
( Warren herself has not endorsed in the race . )
The leader in the poll was former prosecutor and corporate attorney Becky Grossman , pulling 19 percent with more than triple the support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the founder of City Year who is currently polling at 6 percent .
Grossman decided to run for public office just a few days after Donald Trump ’ s election , part of a wave of resistance that brought a generation of talented women and men — mostly women — off the sidelines and into political combat .
A Newton City Council member , she describes herself as the mom most likely to organize the class Halloween party , and her top priority is taking on the National Rifle Association , a popular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ district .
The ads flooding Massachusetts ’ 4th Congressional District — winding through affluent Boston suburbs and down to working-class Fall River — on air , online , and by mail , depict Grossman ’ s main qualification as her status as a mom , something Ihssane Leckey can also claim .
“ There are only 25 moms of young kids in Congress ” has become a constant and grating refrain in Grossman ’ s ads .
What ’ s left out in the flurry of pro-Grossman commercials is a different familial connection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her father-in-law who has served as the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee , the chair of the Democratic National Committee , and Massachusetts state treasurer .
She ’ s taken in tens of thousands in maxed out donations from members of the Grossman family , received financial support from a smattering of Boston ’ s top financial firm executives , and won a healthy contribution from the National Association of Realtors PAC .
Despite both her statewide and national political connections , Grossman , too , has stalled , rising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ June .
Much of the movement in the poll went toward 32-year-old Jake Auchincloss , another Newton city councilor and a former Republican who has been hammered recently for a series of anti-Muslim and racist remarks .
In 2016 , Auchincloss defended the harassment of Black students at a local high school on First Amendment grounds after a Confederate flag was used for intimidation , likening it to that of a Black Lives Matter or LGBTQ flag .
Similarly , constituents have raised grave concerns about a 2010 Facebook post in which Auchincloss @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t burn their book , but they can burn our flag ?
” citing an article on Pakistani lawyers burning the American flag .
At a recent hearing in Newton , he voted against a 1 percent decrease in funding for the local police , drawing the ire of civil rights activists further angered by the candidate ’ s insensitive comments on the irrelevance of Indigenous Peoples ’ Day .
Two town council members from Newton have endorsed Leckey .
Auchincloss , from a Massachusetts clan with long ties to the Kennedys , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name alone .
His parents have given heavily to a super PAC that also includes powerful Boston power brokers like Robert Kraft and John Connors and that has spent $ 139,200 in support of his candidacy so far .
The former Marine captain has also come under scrutiny for a recent Boston Globe that current and former members of the Globe ’ s newsroom and editorial board described to The Intercept as an unprecedented rupture from the paper ’ s editorial norms .
Auchincloss ’ s mother , Dr. Laurie Glimcher , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Boston ’ s Dana–Farber Cancer Institute , is a close friend , ally , and frequent collaborator with Linda Henry , the managing director and owner of the newspaper .
Henry is regularly involved in editorial board decisions but has failed to offer a disclosure on her relationship with Glimcher or her role in the rocky process that led to the board ’ s endorsement .
After blowback from Globe readers and employees , who were angry that a deep blue seat might be given to a former Republican thanks to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s editorial page editor Bina Venkataraman announced a public interview with the Newton City Councilor .
On Monday , Venkataraman interrogated Auchincloss on his record of racist and Islamaphobic statements , while also taking to Twitter to state that a full post-mortem on the Globe ’ s editorial board process would come later , “ in a moment that can ’ t be exploited by political interests.
” In a statement appearing in CommonWealth magazine , Venkataraman said , “ The Auchincloss endorsement choice was in no way steered or suggested by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ full editorial board deliberation that was then presented to the Henrys , who approved it .
… Linda Henry sat in on our deliberations in this race as an observer , as she does in other editorial board meetings.
” The Globe did not immediately respond to The Intercept ’ s request for comment .
While Auchincloss has repeatedly touted his service as a Marine captain in Afghanistan where he commanded an infantry platoon in 2012 , his time spent training a 60-man counter narcotics operation in Panama has received little to no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Army School of the Americas ’ long history of disastrous foreign intervention there , namely their role in training Panamanian dictator and drug lord Manuel Noriega .
( The SOA , in 2001 , was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation , a reflection of its toxic reputation in the region . )
In the June survey , Auchincloss sat at 7 percent , and his spending blitz and the Globe backing has lifted him to 16 .
Only Leckey , a self-described democratic socialist , has similarly surged , on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign , rising from 3 percent to 11 .
The number of undecided voters dropped from 46 to 25 percent , meaning the race is slowly solidifying but still up for grabs .
Part of Leckey ’ s rise has to do with her effective positioning as a counterweight to the billionaire donors propping up her competitors ’ campaigns .
At the Boston Federal Reserve , Leckey worked on stress testing banks involved in consumer lending , evaluating their stability in areas like credit card lending , mortgages , and student loans .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk — the likelihood of a party defaulting on a debt , which then produces cascading effects through the system — within major financial institutions is an asset for a progressive in a race heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical executives , fossil fuel interests , and private equity moguls .
There is presently nobody in Congress with comparable experience in that critical area of bank regulation .
Rep. Katie Porter , D-Calif. , and her mentor Warren are both experts on consumer finance , and now have legislative experience when it comes to risk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serving in Congress would be a unique complement .
Leckey argues that a holistic approach to legislating the financial sector is critical .
Trump supporters , she noted , believe that the nation is like a business and that therefore President Donald Trump , a businessman , is the best choice to run it .
“ He knows exactly how to run it into the ground .
If you really believe our country is running as a business , you have to have risk assessment , and risk management , and this country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Those risks , she said , include environmental risk , credit card risk , student loans , and medical debt .
“ The more you can ’ t pay , the higher the interest , right , bundled and put in the portfolios of the big banks , and when it takes those giant banks down , the CEOs still profit.
” In her most recent ad , a six-figure buy , Leckey is linking that message to her identity as the only woman of color in the race , a good place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in late pursuit of racial justice .
“ I struggled through poverty , put myself through college and took on Wall Street ’ s greed .
Now as the only woman of color in this race , I ’ m fighting for racial justice , to guarantee health care , free pre-K , and housing for all , ” she says in the ad .
“ We need leaders who represent our diversity and courage.
” Leckey ’ s rise is linked to her ability to go up on TV the past month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a $ 650,000 loan she and her husband made to her campaign .
The loan has brought attention to her husband ’ s income from his position with Boston Energy Trading and Marketing , with suspicion that fossil fuel money may be fueling her campaign .
“ Ihssane ’ s husband is currently employed by Boston Energy Trading and Marketing , LLC , which to our knowledge , deals at least in part in fossil fuels , ” reads a letter sent by former Leckey staff to the Boston chapter of the Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s not the case : The firm , a Mitsubishi subsidiary , helps manage and run the electrical grid , which is agnostic as to its power source .
In a post-Green New Deal , zero-carbon world , firms like Boston Energy will still be around to manage electrical grids .
“ My husband and I don ’ t have a dime from fossil fuels .
We don ’ t work in fossil fuels , ” she said .
“ His job is to make sure we don ’ t get blackouts .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ hurts poor people the most.
” The letter was signed by her former fundraising director , Rachel Craig , who was terminated by the campaign in December , as well as two other former staff who remained anonymous .
The letter accuses Leckey of “ a lack of work ethic ” and of being “ downright cruel ” to the campaign staffers .
Leckey launched her bid in May 2019 , when Kennedy was still expected to be running for reelection .
In September , when Kennedy announced his challenge to incumbent Sen. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of attention , but also a deluge of new rivals .
The campaign had been limping along at that point , as Boston ’ s campaign staff infrastructure was reluctant to be blacklisted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for working for a campaign challenging a Kennedy .
Democratic presidential campaigns , too , were absorbing seasoned aides .
“ It was very challenging to find people with a long professional background who are strong at running congressional campaigns , ” acknowledged Leckey .
Much of the original staff has since turned over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is over , Leckey has been able to bring in four veterans of Bernie Sanders ’ s operations , including Josh Miller-Lewis , doing communications ; Jeremy Meadow , working on the data side ; Malea Stenzel Gilligan , doing fundraising ; and Brooke Adams , running field operations .
The former Sanders aides , who are no strangers to a gruff boss , say that the characterization of Leckey as cruel by the disaffected former aides is utterly foreign to their experience .
The letter ’ s characterization of Leckey as having @ @ @ @ @ @ @ makes a stark contrast with her life story .
Leckey , 35 , was born in Meknes , Morocco .
Her father , a public school teacher , died when Leckey was 13 , unable , she said , to afford the heart medication he needed .
Her mother raised Leckey and her three older brothers , while Leckey resisted the strict , conservative culture of Morocco , and survived sexual abuse .
The first time , she said , her mother told her not to tell anyone , otherwise her brothers might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in prison .
At the age of 17 , she also survived an unsafe , illegal abortion — the only kind available to the nonwealthy .
After a year at a public college , she transferred to a more selective school , studying economics .
At 20 , she managed to get a visitor visa to the United States , and applied for and received a student visa while in the country .
She learned English , made it her home , and eventually worked her way to the Federal Reserve Bank of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leading stress tests at major banks .
The former staffers had asked the Boston DSA to rescind its endorsement .
Boston DSA , without speaking with Leckey , distributed it to its entire membership .
The staffers also provided it to The Intercept .
Leckey , a onetime dues-paying member of the DSA who was active with the group , responded by rescinding her acceptance of the group ’ s endorsement .
I was told that Boston DSA ’ s political endorsements were not just a symbol candidates put on their website , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a relationship that is built upon our shared values of compassion and justice in all of its forms .
Instead of engaging with me in a process or even attempting to contact me as part of a fact-finding approach that seeks truth , you acted carelessly by promoting and spreading false , unfounded , and racist allegations about me .
You chose to circulate a letter filled with anti-immigrant and sexist smears to Boston DSA ’ s entire membership .
And one or more members of your organization also appear to have chosen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ members of the press .
You have not shown even the vaguest interest in dialogue .
Instead , you told my campaign that on Saturday , I could have a few minutes in a public trial to attempt to defend myself , and immediately follow it with a vote to rescind your support .
Your approach mocks the Anti-Harassment and Inclusion priority we passed this year and is antithetical to restorative justice .
Leckey ’ s most impassioned response was to the charge of laziness .
The letter the leadership circulated implies an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I have fought these stereotypes since I came to America .
I moved to this country with nothing , and have had to work twice as hard to overcome the barriers and stereotypes immigrants , Muslims , and women of color face every day .
We are told we are angry and aggressive , and othered .
I mopped restaurant floors to get through community college .
I earned a Women in Math scholarship that allowed me to become the first in my family with a college degree when I earned a Bachelor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ University .
I work long hours everyday while caring for my child and family because that ’ s what immigrants do .
And as a survivor , I have always prioritized making time for healing for myself and my staff .
I am proud of the campaign we are running , and can not express the full extent of my gratitude and love for every member of this campaign , including the many amazing members of Boston DSA who have volunteered their time and support .
I genuinely hope one day Boston DSA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the values of our movement , but the leadership of this chapter has thus far failed in that task .

A crowded primary for Joe Kennedy’s congressional seat in Massachusetts is presenting Democratic primary voters with one of their final opportunities of the cycle to decide which direction to take the party. The nine-person race includes just about every archetype from every faction of the Democratic Party.
There has been no public polling of the 4th Congressional District race, leaving voters who want to cast their ballot strategically in the dark. But a new internal survey from the campaign of Ihssane Leckey, provided to The Intercept, shows the progressive candidate surging into a virtual tie with the campaign of Jesse Mermell.
Mermell is a longtime friend and ally of Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who has endorsed her, while Leckey has the support of Rep. Ilhan Omar, who faces her own primary in Minnesota on Tuesday.
But the poll has Leckey and Mermell not battling for first, but for third — within striking distance of two more conservative Democrats.
Mermell comes out of the party’s dominant wing, having served as a top aide to Gov. Deval Patrick and in a senior role at Planned Parenthood. She was also a board member at the Alliance for Business Leadership. A fellow Alliance board member, Josh Boger, recently backed Mermell in the Boston Globe. He’s the founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, recently in the news for its $272,000-per-year cystic fibrosis medication.
Like Pressley, Mermell has fixed herself in the Elizabeth Warren lane, caught between the insurgent Bernie Sanders left and the deep pockets and influence of Massachusetts’ conservative political establishment. That can work for the popular incumbent Pressley, but it didn’t work for Warren, and Mermell appears stalled. She won 9 percent in a June survey also commissioned by Leckey’s campaign, and only rose 1 percentage point in the most recent telephone survey to 10 percent. The most recent survey of 400 likely primary voters was conducted from August 1-4 by Frederick Polls, the same firm that conducted the June survey. (Warren herself has not endorsed in the race.)
Photo: Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
The leader in the poll was former prosecutor and corporate attorney Becky Grossman, pulling 19 percent with more than triple the support of the Bain Capital-backed Alan Khazei, the founder of City Year who is currently polling at 6 percent. Grossman decided to run for public office just a few days after Donald Trump’s election, part of a wave of resistance that brought a generation of talented women and men — mostly women — off the sidelines and into political combat. A Newton City Council member, she describes herself as the mom most likely to organize the class Halloween party, and her top priority is taking on the National Rifle Association, a popular issue with Democratic primary voters in the district.
The ads flooding Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District — winding through affluent Boston suburbs and down to working-class Fall River — on air, online, and by mail, depict Grossman’s main qualification as her status as a mom, something Ihssane Leckey can also claim. “There are only 25 moms of young kids in Congress” has become a constant and grating refrain in Grossman’s ads. What’s left out in the flurry of pro-Grossman commercials is a different familial connection, this one to Steven Grossman: her father-in-law who has served as the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Massachusetts state treasurer.
She’s taken in tens of thousands in maxed out donations from members of the Grossman family, received financial support from a smattering of Boston’s top financial firm executives, and won a healthy contribution from the National Association of Realtors PAC.
Despite both her statewide and national political connections, Grossman, too, has stalled, rising just 2 points from 17 percent in June.
Much of the movement in the poll went toward 32-year-old Jake Auchincloss, another Newton city councilor and a former Republican who has been hammered recently for a series of anti-Muslim and racist remarks. In 2016, Auchincloss defended the harassment of Black students at a local high school on First Amendment grounds after a Confederate flag was used for intimidation, likening it to that of a Black Lives Matter or LGBTQ flag. Similarly, constituents have raised grave concerns about a 2010 Facebook post in which Auchincloss wrote: “So we can’t burn their book, but they can burn our flag?” citing an article on Pakistani lawyers burning the American flag. At a recent hearing in Newton, he voted against a 1 percent decrease in funding for the local police, drawing the ire of civil rights activists further angered by the candidate’s insensitive comments on the irrelevance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Two town council members from Newton have endorsed Leckey.
Photo: Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Auchincloss, from a Massachusetts clan with long ties to the Kennedys, also has family help in more than name alone. His parents have given heavily to a super PAC that also includes powerful Boston power brokers like Robert Kraft and John Connors and that has spent $139,200 in support of his candidacy so far. The former Marine captain has also come under scrutiny for a recent Boston Globe
endorsement
that current and former members of the Globe’s newsroom and editorial board described to The Intercept as an unprecedented rupture from the paper’s editorial norms. Auchincloss’s mother, Dr. Laurie Glimcher, who holds the title of president and CEO at Boston’s Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, is a close friend, ally, and frequent collaborator with Linda Henry, the managing director and owner of the newspaper. Henry is regularly involved in editorial board decisions but has failed to offer a disclosure on her relationship with Glimcher or her role in the rocky process that led to the board’s endorsement.
After blowback from Globe readers and employees, who were angry that a deep blue seat might be given to a former Republican thanks to the paper’s intervention, the newspaper’s editorial page editor Bina Venkataraman announced a public interview with the Newton City Councilor. On Monday, Venkataraman interrogated Auchincloss on his record of racist and Islamaphobic statements, while also taking to Twitter to state that a full post-mortem on the Globe’s editorial board process would come later, “in a moment that can’t be exploited by political interests.”
In a statement appearing in CommonWealth magazine, Venkataraman said, “The Auchincloss endorsement choice was in no way steered or suggested by the Henrys; it came from a full editorial board deliberation that was then presented to the Henrys, who approved it. … Linda Henry sat in on our deliberations in this race as an observer, as she does in other editorial board meetings.” The Globe did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
While Auchincloss has repeatedly touted his service as a Marine captain in Afghanistan where he commanded an infantry platoon in 2012, his time spent training a 60-man counter narcotics operation in Panama has received little to no scrutiny despite the Marines and the U.S. Army School of the Americas’ long history of disastrous foreign intervention there, namely their role in training Panamanian dictator and drug lord Manuel Noriega. (The SOA, in 2001, was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a reflection of its toxic reputation in the region.)
In the June survey, Auchincloss sat at 7 percent, and his spending blitz and the Globe backing has lifted him to 16.
Only Leckey, a self-described democratic socialist, has similarly surged, on the back of her own well-funded ad campaign, rising from 3 percent to 11. The number of undecided voters dropped from 46 to 25 percent, meaning the race is slowly solidifying but still up for grabs. Part of Leckey’s rise has to do with her effective positioning as a counterweight to the billionaire donors propping up her competitors’ campaigns. At the Boston Federal Reserve, Leckey worked on stress testing banks involved in consumer lending, evaluating their stability in areas like credit card lending, mortgages, and student loans. But her more recent work evaluating counterparty risk — the likelihood of a party defaulting on a debt, which then produces cascading effects through the system — within major financial institutions is an asset for a progressive in a race heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical executives, fossil fuel interests, and private equity moguls.
There is presently nobody in Congress with comparable experience in that critical area of bank regulation.
There is presently nobody in Congress with comparable experience in that critical area of bank regulation. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., and her mentor Warren are both experts on consumer finance, and now have legislative experience when it comes to risk analysis and bank regulation, but Leckey serving in Congress would be a unique complement. Leckey argues that a holistic approach to legislating the financial sector is critical. Trump supporters, she noted, believe that the nation is like a business and that therefore President Donald Trump, a businessman, is the best choice to run it. “He knows exactly how to run it into the ground. If you really believe our country is running as a business, you have to have risk assessment, and risk management, and this country has none,” Leckey said. Those risks, she said, include environmental risk, credit card risk, student loans, and medical debt. “The more you can’t pay, the higher the interest, right, bundled and put in the portfolios of the big banks, and when it takes those giant banks down, the CEOs still profit.”
In her most recent ad, a six-figure buy, Leckey is linking that message to her identity as the only woman of color in the race, a good place to be among a Democratic primary electorate in late pursuit of racial justice. “I struggled through poverty, put myself through college and took on Wall Street’s greed. Now as the only woman of color in this race, I’m fighting for racial justice, to guarantee health care, free pre-K, and housing for all,” she says in the ad. “We need leaders who represent our diversity and courage.”
Leckey’s rise is linked to her ability to go up on TV the past month, which itself was made possible by a $650,000 loan she and her husband made to her campaign. The loan has brought attention to her husband’s income from his position with Boston Energy Trading and Marketing, with suspicion that fossil fuel money may be fueling her campaign. “Ihssane’s husband is currently employed by Boston Energy Trading and Marketing, LLC, which to our knowledge, deals at least in part in fossil fuels,” reads a letter sent by former Leckey staff to the Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
But that’s not the case: The firm, a Mitsubishi subsidiary, helps manage and run the electrical grid, which is agnostic as to its power source. In a post-Green New Deal, zero-carbon world, firms like Boston Energy will still be around to manage electrical grids. “My husband and I don’t have a dime from fossil fuels. We don’t work in fossil fuels,” she said. “His job is to make sure we don’t get blackouts. … When we have blackouts, it hurts poor people the most.”
The letter was signed by her former fundraising director, Rachel Craig, who was terminated by the campaign in December, as well as two other former staff who remained anonymous. The letter accuses Leckey of “a lack of work ethic” and of being “downright cruel” to the campaign staffers.
Leckey launched her bid in May 2019, when Kennedy was still expected to be running for reelection. In September, when Kennedy announced his challenge to incumbent Sen. Ed Markey, Leckey got a flood of attention, but also a deluge of new rivals. The campaign had been limping along at that point, as Boston’s campaign staff infrastructure was reluctant to be blacklisted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for working for a campaign challenging a Kennedy. Democratic presidential campaigns, too, were absorbing seasoned aides. “It was very challenging to find people with a long professional background who are strong at running congressional campaigns,” acknowledged Leckey.
Much of the original staff has since turned over, and now that the presidential campaign is over, Leckey has been able to bring in four veterans of Bernie Sanders’s operations, including Josh Miller-Lewis, doing communications; Jeremy Meadow, working on the data side; Malea Stenzel Gilligan, doing fundraising; and Brooke Adams, running field operations. The former Sanders aides, who are no strangers to a gruff boss, say that the characterization of Leckey as cruel by the disaffected former aides is utterly foreign to their experience.
The letter’s characterization of Leckey as having “a lack of work ethic” makes a stark contrast with her life story. Leckey, 35, was born in Meknes, Morocco. Her father, a public school teacher, died when Leckey was 13, unable, she said, to afford the heart medication he needed. Her mother raised Leckey and her three older brothers, while Leckey resisted the strict, conservative culture of Morocco, and survived sexual abuse. The first time, she said, her mother told her not to tell anyone, otherwise her brothers might kill the assailant and themselves wind up in prison.
At the age of 17, she also survived an unsafe, illegal abortion — the only kind available to the nonwealthy. After a year at a public college, she transferred to a more selective school, studying economics. At 20, she managed to get a visitor visa to the United States, and applied for and received a student visa while in the country. She learned English, made it her home, and eventually worked her way to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where she became a regulator leading stress tests at major banks.
The former staffers had asked the Boston DSA to rescind its endorsement. Boston DSA, without speaking with Leckey, distributed it to its entire membership. The staffers also provided it to The Intercept.
Leckey, a onetime dues-paying member of the DSA who was active with the group, responded by rescinding her acceptance of the group’s endorsement.
I was told that Boston DSA’s political endorsements were not just a symbol candidates put on their website, but instead would be the beginning of a relationship that is built upon our shared values of compassion and justice in all of its forms. Instead of engaging with me in a process or even attempting to contact me as part of a fact-finding approach that seeks truth, you acted carelessly by promoting and spreading false, unfounded, and racist allegations about me. You chose to circulate a letter filled with anti-immigrant and sexist smears to Boston DSA’s entire membership. And one or more members of your organization also appear to have chosen to leak your email to membership to members of the press. You have not shown even the vaguest interest in dialogue. Instead, you told my campaign that on Saturday, I could have a few minutes in a public trial to attempt to defend myself, and immediately follow it with a vote to rescind your support. Your approach mocks the Anti-Harassment and Inclusion priority we passed this year and is antithetical to restorative justice.
Leckey’s most impassioned response was to the charge of laziness.