theintercept--2020-08-12--College Democrat at Center of Attack on Alex Morse Hoped to Launch Career Through Richard Neal

Morse has rejected allegations of impropriety from the UMass College Democrats , whose “ aim is to train new generations of activists , operatives , and leaders … in the principles of the Democratic Party.
” He has said he believes that Neal was behind the College Democrats ’ action and timing , a charge Neal has denied .
The College Democrats have not alleged that Morse had inappropriate relationships with students he taught , but rather accused him of having relationships with other students in western Massachusetts , some at UMass Amherst .
UMass , like most universities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have a supervisory or teaching relationship — not all students generally .
The 31-year-old mayor of Holyoke , Massachusetts , was barred for allegedly having made students feel uncomfortable by sending them messages through Instagram and matching with University of Massachusetts students on Tinder , in addition to having “ sexual contact ” with students at UMass Amherst , where he was previously an adjunct professor .
In the battle raging for Massachusetts 1st Congressional District , currently held by the chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee Rep. Richard Neal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unlikely places .
Last week , tensions flared after a letter , written by the Massachusetts College Democrats , informed Alex Morse , Neal ’ s challenger , that he was no longer welcome at their events — a letter that was promptly published by the school ’ s newspaper .
With the allegations short of details or any student claiming to be a victim , the focus has shifted to the origin of the letter .
The man serving as chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats , Timothy Ennis , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who teaches a journalism course .
Ennis , according to two members of the College Democrats chapter , was open about his hopes of working for Neal in the future .
Meanwhile , an aide with the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences , in which the journalism program sits , alerted the school ’ s administration of evidence that the recently surfaced allegations against Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse “ are politically motivated , ” according to communication reviewed by The Intercept .
Spokespersons for the administration did not respond to requests for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sophomore and a Morse supporter , was active in the College Democrats chapter and knew Ennis through their joint work on behalf of the Pete Buttigieg campaign for president , with Ennis handing off the reins of the organization to Sheedy .
In November 2019 , when Ennis was president of the College Democrats chapter , the pair were in New Hampshire together campaigning for Buttigieg , and Ennis , she said , opened up about his respect for Neal in a car ride through New Hampshire .
“ He spoke very highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ What he said to me was he wanted Neal to be his ‘ in ’ to politics and work his way up from there.
” Sheedy said she asked Ennis what he thought of Morse , and Ennis said Morse socialized with students in a way he found creepy , and that Morse had recently matched with a student on the Tinder dating app .
Sheedy said she didn ’ t think of it again until last week , when she and the other members of the College Democrats were told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter on the members ’ behalf to the local college paper , which had published an article based on it .
Helena Middleton , a rising sophomore and former member of the University of Massachusetts College Democrats , said she joined the group to meet other college students on the university campus , where a sprawling undergraduate population of 22,000 can make it difficult to feel like part of a community .
A longtime supporter of Morse , she tried to recruit others to join her .
“ I tried to share volunteer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] but the chapter leadership would ignore it while at the same time send out opportunities for candidates like [ Ed ] Markey and Joe [ Kennedy ] , so it was clear to me that there was something going on there , ” said Middleton .
Eventually , she said , she learned that a member of the group ’ s leadership was a student in Neal ’ s journalism course at the time .
“ He made it very clear that he supported the election campaign and that he wanted to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The chief strategist , Ennis , did not respond to requests for comment .
A spokesperson for Neal also did not respond to a request for comment .
Middleton left the chapter several days ahead of the letter ’ s publication , frustrated at the anti-Morse bias from leadership ; Sheedy left the chapter after the letter was published .
The current president , Andrew Abramson , reached out to Middleton last week to apologize for joking about the Morse race in the College Democrats ’ group chat .
for mayor as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ man in Holyoke .
He began teaching a single course per semester as a lecturer in fall 2014 , at the age of 25 , and taught his last class in the fall of 2019 .
Ennis was president of the UMass College Democrats from April 2019 until April 2020 , at which point he transitioned to chief strategist .
That same month , Morse said , College Democrats requested a donation from his campaign .
He declined , saying that his war chest wasn ’ t large enough .
A number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did make such donations .
The president of the state chapter of the College Democrats later took to Twitter to applaud Neal for donating $ 1,000 to the Amherst chapter .
In May , Neal posted a photo of his class , which Ennis , who has since locked his Twitter account , liked .
When asked whether she had any knowledge of accusations against Morse prior to the release of the Massachusetts College Democrats letter , Middleton said she “ definitely wasn ’ t aware of the letter or any issues until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made a statement .
I thought it was odd that they never filed any complaints to UMass before this , which is what you ’ re supposed to do if you ’ re a registered student org.
” The university , in a statement , said that the letter the College Democrats made public was the first time it had been made aware of the allegations .
The charge that Morse used his status as a congressional candidate to pick up students at College Democrat events is untrue , he told The Intercept @ @ @ @ @ @ @ launched in June 2019 , he had been to just one College Democrats event , held in October at a local community college , where Neal and Sen. Ed Markey also appeared .
After the event , he messaged the student who ’ d been on a panel with him to say it had been a pleasure to meet .
After a brief and uneventful back and forth , Morse said , there was no further contact , and the two never met in person .
After Alex Thompson , a reporter at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in June about a potential story involving the College Democrats and DM communications with students , Morse reached back out to say that he was sorry if his message had made the student uncomfortable .
The student blocked him .
The Intercept ’ s attempts to reach the student were unsuccessful .
The UMass College Democrats have not published any of the correspondence the group claims was inappropriate .
Instead , the organization said that Morse “ sought out students that he met at our events privately on social media , in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indicate intimacy.
” ( Morse said he only attended a single event since becoming a candidate . )
Sheedy said that she hopes to become a human rights lawyer in the future and is a passionate supporter of survivors of sexual assault , which was one reason she so resented the approach taken with Morse .
She said that she is open to reviewing any evidence or testimony anybody might put forward , but so far has seen nothing that rises to the level of abuse , which undermines genuine survivors .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on sexual assault , it ’ s tough seeing people mixing up words , ” she said .
An internal poll from the Morse campaign posted Monday , taken before the eruption of the scandal , showed the progressive challenger within striking distance , down 45-35 with 20 percent of the vote still undecided .
These numbers are similar to those achieved a month out from primary day by other progressives challenging incumbents , including Cori Bush , who won an upset primary challenge in Missouri ’ s 1st Congressional District , unseating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family dynasty that controlled the seat since 1969 .

In the battle raging for Massachusetts 1st Congressional District, currently held by the chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee Rep. Richard Neal, political operatives are turning up in unlikely places. Last week, tensions flared after a letter, written by the Massachusetts College Democrats, informed Alex Morse, Neal’s challenger, that he was no longer welcome at their events — a letter that was promptly published by the school’s newspaper.
The 31-year-old mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, was barred for allegedly having made students feel uncomfortable by sending them messages through Instagram and matching with University of Massachusetts students on Tinder, in addition to having “sexual contact” with students at UMass Amherst, where he was previously an adjunct professor.
Morse has rejected allegations of impropriety from the UMass College Democrats, whose “aim is to train new generations of activists, operatives, and leaders … in the principles of the Democratic Party.” He has said he believes that Neal was behind the College Democrats’ action and timing, a charge Neal has denied. The College Democrats have not alleged that Morse had inappropriate relationships with students he taught, but rather accused him of having relationships with other students in western Massachusetts, some at UMass Amherst. UMass, like most universities, only bars relationships between students and faculty who have a supervisory or teaching relationship — not all students generally.
With the allegations short of details or any student claiming to be a victim, the focus has shifted to the origin of the letter. The man serving as chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats, Timothy Ennis, recently completed a class with Neal, who teaches a journalism course. Ennis, according to two members of the College Democrats chapter, was open about his hopes of working for Neal in the future.
Meanwhile, an aide with the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, in which the journalism program sits, alerted the school’s administration of evidence that the recently surfaced allegations against Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse “are politically motivated,” according to communication reviewed by The Intercept. Spokespersons for the administration did not respond to requests for comment.
Clare Sheedy, a rising sophomore and a Morse supporter, was active in the College Democrats chapter and knew Ennis through their joint work on behalf of the Pete Buttigieg campaign for president, with Ennis handing off the reins of the organization to Sheedy. In November 2019, when Ennis was president of the College Democrats chapter, the pair were in New Hampshire together campaigning for Buttigieg, and Ennis, she said, opened up about his respect for Neal in a car ride through New Hampshire. “He spoke very highly of Mr. Neal,” Sheedy said. “What he said to me was he wanted Neal to be his ‘in’ to politics and work his way up from there.”
Sheedy said she asked Ennis what he thought of Morse, and Ennis said Morse socialized with students in a way he found creepy, and that Morse had recently matched with a student on the Tinder dating app. Sheedy said she didn’t think of it again until last week, when she and the other members of the College Democrats were told by leadership that they had written a letter on the members’ behalf to the local college paper, which had published an article based on it.
Helena Middleton, a rising sophomore and former member of the University of Massachusetts College Democrats, said she joined the group to meet other college students on the university campus, where a sprawling undergraduate population of 22,000 can make it difficult to feel like part of a community. A longtime supporter of Morse, she tried to recruit others to join her.
“I tried to share volunteer opportunities [for Morse’s campaign] but the chapter leadership would ignore it while at the same time send out opportunities for candidates like [Ed] Markey and Joe [Kennedy], so it was clear to me that there was something going on there,” said Middleton. Eventually, she said, she learned that a member of the group’s leadership was a student in Neal’s journalism course at the time. “He made it very clear that he supported the election campaign and that he wanted to work for Neal,” Middleton said.
The chief strategist, Ennis, did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Neal also did not respond to a request for comment. Middleton left the chapter several days ahead of the letter’s publication, frustrated at the anti-Morse bias from leadership; Sheedy left the chapter after the letter was published. The current president, Andrew Abramson, reached out to Middleton last week to apologize for joking about the Morse race in the College Democrats’ group chat.
Morse first ran for mayor as a 21-year-old, single, out gay man in Holyoke. He began teaching a single course per semester as a lecturer in fall 2014, at the age of 25, and taught his last class in the fall of 2019.
Ennis was president of the UMass College Democrats from April 2019 until April 2020, at which point he transitioned to chief strategist. That same month, Morse said, College Democrats requested a donation from his campaign. He declined, saying that his war chest wasn’t large enough. A number of other Massachusetts politicians, including Neal, did make such donations. The president of the state chapter of the College Democrats later took to Twitter to applaud Neal for donating $1,000 to the Amherst chapter. In May, Neal posted a photo of his class, which Ennis, who has since locked his Twitter account, liked.
When asked whether she had any knowledge of accusations against Morse prior to the release of the Massachusetts College Democrats letter, Middleton said she “definitely wasn’t aware of the letter or any issues until after it was released. They just made a statement. I thought it was odd that they never filed any complaints to UMass before this, which is what you’re supposed to do if you’re a registered student org.”
The university, in a statement, said that the letter the College Democrats made public was the first time it had been made aware of the allegations.
The charge that Morse used his status as a congressional candidate to pick up students at College Democrat events is untrue, he told The Intercept. Morse said that since his campaign launched in June 2019, he had been to just one College Democrats event, held in October at a local community college, where Neal and Sen. Ed Markey also appeared. After the event, he messaged the student who’d been on a panel with him to say it had been a pleasure to meet. After a brief and uneventful back and forth, Morse said, there was no further contact, and the two never met in person. After Alex Thompson, a reporter at Politico, reached out to the campaign in June about a potential story involving the College Democrats and DM communications with students, Morse reached back out to say that he was sorry if his message had made the student uncomfortable. The student blocked him. The Intercept’s attempts to reach the student were unsuccessful.
The UMass College Democrats have not published any of the correspondence the group claims was inappropriate. Instead, the organization said that Morse “sought out students that he met at our events privately on social media, in a manner widely understood by our generation to indicate intimacy.” (Morse said he only attended a single event since becoming a candidate.)
Sheedy said that she hopes to become a human rights lawyer in the future and is a passionate supporter of survivors of sexual assault, which was one reason she so resented the approach taken with Morse. She said that she is open to reviewing any evidence or testimony anybody might put forward, but so far has seen nothing that rises to the level of abuse, which undermines genuine survivors. “As someone who has very strong views on sexual assault, it’s tough seeing people mixing up words,” she said.
An internal poll from the Morse campaign posted Monday, taken before the eruption of the scandal, showed the progressive challenger within striking distance, down 45-35 with 20 percent of the vote still undecided. These numbers are similar to those achieved a month out from primary day by other progressives challenging incumbents, including Cori Bush, who won an upset primary challenge in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, unseating Rep. William Lacy Clay and the Clay family dynasty that controlled the seat since 1969.


theintercept--2020-08-12--College Democrat Chats Reveal Year-Old Plan to Engineer and Leak Alex Morse Accusations

The letter , sent three weeks before his primary challenge to Rep. Richard Neal , informed Morse that he was no longer welcome at College Democratic events , alleging he used such opportunities to socialize with students and later connect with them on social media in ways that made them feel uncomfortable .
Message logs obtained by the Intercept — both from leaders of the College Democrats UMass Amherst chapter group as well as chats one of them had with Morse — shed new light on how this purported scandal was deployed .
As a condition of obtaining the logs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the chats and paraphrase others .
On Wednesday , following a statement by Morse , the statewide College Democrats chapter clarified that he had in fact only attended a single event during the course of his campaign .
It was after that event in October 2019 that the leadership of the UMass Amherst chapter began to talk about leaking a story damaging to Morse , according to those online communications .
Timothy Ennis , the chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats , admitted in the chats that he was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ felt conflicted about involving the chapter of the College Democrats in a future attack on Morse .
“ But I need a job , ” concluded Ennis .
“ Neal will give me an internship.
” At the time , Ennis was president of the chapter , a post he held from April 2019 to April 2020 , when he was term-limited out .
Leaders of the College Democrats group went beyond merely plans to leak .
They also explicitly discussed how they could find Morse ’ s dating profiles and then lead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then damage his campaign .
That effort appears to have failed to generate the material they hoped for , but the group ’ s leaders did believe they held damning evidence they contemplated leaking : Instagram messages between Morse and Andrew Abramson , who in April became president of the organization .
Ultimately , the College Democrats did not release any chats or any other specific claims against Morse , opting instead to level broader charges that he behaved inappropriately .
Morse , who was an adjunct professor at UMass Amherst until the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consensual relationships with students but has said that he has never had an inappropriate relationship with a student of his , and no such allegations have been made .
On October 5 , Morse attended a College Democrats event at a local community college .
Neal also appeared , and was introduced by Ennis , who was at the time enrolled in a journalism class Neal taught at UMass Amherst .
Neal later told Ennis he was impressed by the event , Ennis claimed in the chats .
Morse sat on a panel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Morse reached out to Abramson on Instagram to say it was a pleasure meeting .
( The two had previously matched on Tinder , Ennis said in the chats , but had never met up .
To match on Tinder means both parties must swipe in the same direction in order to begin a conversation . )
“ Thank you !
Good to see you too , ” Abramson said .
“ How ’ s the rest of your weekend ?
” asked Morse .
“ Pretty good I went home last night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hbu ?
” Abramson said .
“ Aw that ’ s nice .
How was that ?
I had an event to go to last night to speak , then had a wine tasting at a friends house .
Now I ’ m in North Adams to march in a parade , ” Morse replied .
Abramson shared a screenshot of the exchange with friends .
“ Not overt but it ’ s very clear he ’ s not talking to me for no reason , ” he said .
“ Like read @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mind me totally leading him on.
” He added that he accepted the message request “ because why not.
” “ This will sink his campaign , ” Ennis said , calling it part of a pattern of Morse dating students .
That conversation with Abramson appears to be connected to the charge that underlies the College Democrats ’ statement against Morse , when they said that Morse “ sought out students that he met at our events privately on social media , in a manner widely understood by our generation to indicate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Abramson would sink Morse ’ s campaign , the conversation between Morse and Abramson continued for another several weeks .
During that same time period , Ennis was a student in Neal ’ s “ The Politician and The Journalist ” class at UMass Amherst , and had been open with other members of the College Democrats about hoping to land a job with Neal , The Intercept reported Tuesday .
Ennis , in the chats , quipped that perhaps he should leak the information by including it in a paper for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall , Ennis was driving through New Hampshire with Clare Sheedy , a fellow College Democrat , as both were campaigning for Pete Buttigieg .
“ He spoke very highly of Mr. Neal , ” Sheedy told The Intercept .
“ What he said to me was he wanted Neal to be his ‘ in ’ to politics and work his way up from there.
” Sheedy asked what he thought of Morse , and Ennis told him he is known for dating students and had recently matched on a dating app , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and chatted with him via Instagram .
In a statement to MassLive on Monday , Neal spokesperson Kate Norton denied any collaboration between the Neal campaign and the student group , adding that the Neal campaign “ commends these courageous students.
” The College Democrats also responded to allegations of cooperation with the Neal campaign on Sunday , writing on Twitter , “ To suggest that our decision to send the letter to Mayor Morse was a quid pro quo with Rep. Neal , his campaign , or anyone else is untrue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about Ennis and Abramson , Norton reiterated her earlier statement , but added : “ The young men you are asking about have no involvement with the Neal campaign.
” In the chats , Ennis also floated the possibility of leaking allegations against Morse to Politico , and , indeed , in June , the College Democrats did so , pitching the story to Alex Thompson , a political reporter at the outlet .
Thompson reached out to the Morse campaign as part of his reporting , though ultimately did not run the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ college paper ran it .
After receiving the inquiry , Morse said he reached back out to Abramson — the only student Morse had communicated with after a College Democrats event during his campaign .
Morse said he apologized if his outreach had made the chapter president uncomfortable , and Abramson blocked him .
Ennis said in the chats that he had learned from people who had graduated previously that Morse was on Tinder , sharing a screenshot of a profile from the year before .
The profile is standard , dating-app fare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s title as mayor of the nearby town of Holyoke , a position he ’ s had since he was 22 , nor does it mention his time as an adjunct at UMass , which ended last fall .
Ennis said in the chats that Morse had never matched with him or messaged him , but discussed an effort to find him and match .
that followed its initial letter , the College Democrats wrote , “ The letter was written at the direct request of those affected by Mayor Morse ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the writing process .
The stories included in our letter are their stories .
They have not spoken out individually about their personal experiences because they wish to remain anonymous.
” The implication that the letter was the collective work of the members of the chapter is false , however .
It was written by leadership without input from the members , according to messages provided to The Intercept from the organization ’ s GroupMe chat .
The day after the Daily Collegian published the letter , a member of leadership sent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I ’ m sure some of you saw the article about Alex Morse and letter udems and other orgs sent to his campaign .
I ’ m sure many of you are confused and even disappointed .
If anybody needs support or wants to talk about it the udems eboard is here for you.
” A follow-up post included a link to the story .
Five days later , specific allegations have yet to surface .
Abramson declined to comment , and neither Ennis nor the College Democrats responded to requests for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the College Democrats for further comment on Wednesday to ask whether or not their letter was motivated by Ennis ’ s or anyone else ’ s political ambitions , posting their response on Twitter .
The student group denied Ennis ’ s professional ambitions played a role in the crafting of the strategy .
Marans also asked if Morse had indeed declined a request to fund the organization , as the mayor had told The Intercept on Tuesday .
The organization offered HuffPost a selectively edited email regarding a donation from the Morse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it would “ get back to us shortly.
” A copy of the full email was provided to The Intercept .
It reads : “ Hi Hayley — will get back to you shortly on sponsorship .
We ’ ve been committing a great deal to COVID related organizations and want to make sure we honor those activities first .
Sorry for delay .
”

The leadership of the University of Massachusetts Amherst College Democrats began discussing an operation they believed could sink the campaign of Alex Morse for Congress as far back as last October, a plan they then helped engineer and which came to fruition on Friday, after the College Democrats sent a letter regarding Morse to the Daily Collegian, the school’s student newspaper.
The letter, sent three weeks before his primary challenge to Rep. Richard Neal, informed Morse that he was no longer welcome at College Democratic events, alleging he used such opportunities to socialize with students and later connect with them on social media in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. Message logs obtained by the Intercept — both from leaders of the College Democrats UMass Amherst chapter group as well as chats one of them had with Morse — shed new light on how this purported scandal was deployed. As a condition of obtaining the logs, The Intercept agreed to publish some of the chats and paraphrase others.
On Wednesday, following a statement by Morse, the statewide College Democrats chapter clarified that he had in fact only attended a single event during the course of his campaign. It was after that event in October 2019 that the leadership of the UMass Amherst chapter began to talk about leaking a story damaging to Morse, according to those online communications.
Timothy Ennis, the chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats, admitted in the chats that he was a “Neal Stan” and said he felt conflicted about involving the chapter of the College Democrats in a future attack on Morse. “But I need a job,” concluded Ennis. “Neal will give me an internship.” At the time, Ennis was president of the chapter, a post he held from April 2019 to April 2020, when he was term-limited out.
Leaders of the College Democrats group went beyond merely plans to leak. They also explicitly discussed how they could find Morse’s dating profiles and then lead him into saying something incriminating that would then damage his campaign.
That effort appears to have failed to generate the material they hoped for, but the group’s leaders did believe they held damning evidence they contemplated leaking: Instagram messages between Morse and Andrew Abramson, who in April became president of the organization. Ultimately, the College Democrats did not release any chats or any other specific claims against Morse, opting instead to level broader charges that he behaved inappropriately. Morse, who was an adjunct professor at UMass Amherst until the fall of 2019, has acknowledged having consensual relationships with students but has said that he has never had an inappropriate relationship with a student of his, and no such allegations have been made.
On October 5, Morse attended a College Democrats event at a local community college. Neal also appeared, and was introduced by Ennis, who was at the time enrolled in a journalism class Neal taught at UMass Amherst. Neal later told Ennis he was impressed by the event, Ennis claimed in the chats. Morse sat on a panel with Abramson. After the event, Morse reached out to Abramson on Instagram to say it was a pleasure meeting. (The two had previously matched on Tinder, Ennis said in the chats, but had never met up. To match on Tinder means both parties must swipe in the same direction in order to begin a conversation.)
Photo: Obtained by The Intercept
Photo: Obtained by The Intercept
“Thank you! Good to see you too,” Abramson said.
“How’s the rest of your weekend?” asked Morse.
“Pretty good I went home last night to surprise my mom for her birthday hbu?” Abramson said .
“Aw that’s nice. How was that? I had an event to go to last night to speak, then had a wine tasting at a friends house. Now I’m in North Adams to march in a parade,” Morse replied.
Abramson shared a screenshot of the exchange with friends. “Not overt but it’s very clear he’s not talking to me for no reason,” he said. “Like read that message. Also don’t mind me totally leading him on.” He added that he accepted the message request “because why not.”
“This will sink his campaign,” Ennis said, calling it part of a pattern of Morse dating students. That conversation with Abramson appears to be connected to the charge that underlies the College Democrats’ statement against Morse, when they said that Morse “sought out students that he met at our events privately on social media, in a manner widely understood by our generation to indicate intimacy.”
After Ennis concluded the chats with Abramson would sink Morse’s campaign, the conversation between Morse and Abramson continued for another several weeks.
During that same time period, Ennis was a student in Neal’s “The Politician and The Journalist” class at UMass Amherst, and had been open with other members of the College Democrats about hoping to land a job with Neal, The Intercept reported Tuesday. Ennis, in the chats, quipped that perhaps he should leak the information by including it in a paper for Neal’s class.
Also last fall, Ennis was driving through New Hampshire with Clare Sheedy, a fellow College Democrat, as both were campaigning for Pete Buttigieg. “He spoke very highly of Mr. Neal,” Sheedy told The Intercept. “What he said to me was he wanted Neal to be his ‘in’ to politics and work his way up from there.”
Sheedy asked what he thought of Morse, and Ennis told him he is known for dating students and had recently matched on a dating app, Tinder, with a fellow College Democrat, and chatted with him via Instagram.
In a statement to MassLive on Monday, Neal spokesperson Kate Norton denied any collaboration between the Neal campaign and the student group, adding that the Neal campaign “commends these courageous students.” The College Democrats also responded to allegations of cooperation with the Neal campaign on Sunday, writing on Twitter, “To suggest that our decision to send the letter to Mayor Morse was a quid pro quo with Rep. Neal, his campaign, or anyone else is untrue, disingenuous, and harmful.”
Asked about Ennis and Abramson, Norton reiterated her earlier statement, but added: “The young men you are asking about have no involvement with the Neal campaign.”
In the chats, Ennis also floated the possibility of leaking allegations against Morse to Politico, and, indeed, in June, the College Democrats did so, pitching the story to Alex Thompson, a political reporter at the outlet. Thompson reached out to the Morse campaign as part of his reporting, though ultimately did not run the story until months later, after the college paper ran it.
Photo: Obtained by The Intercept
After receiving the inquiry, Morse said he reached back out to Abramson — the only student Morse had communicated with after a College Democrats event during his campaign. Morse said he apologized if his outreach had made the chapter president uncomfortable, and Abramson blocked him.
Ennis said in the chats that he had learned from people who had graduated previously that Morse was on Tinder, sharing a screenshot of a profile from the year before. The profile is standard, dating-app fare, and does not include Morse’s title as mayor of the nearby town of Holyoke, a position he’s had since he was 22, nor does it mention his time as an adjunct at UMass, which ended last fall.
Photo: Obtained by The Intercept
Ennis said in the chats that Morse had never matched with him or messaged him, but discussed an effort to find him and match.
In a statement that followed its initial letter, the College Democrats wrote, “The letter was written at the direct request of those affected by Mayor Morse’s behavior, and those individuals were involved in the writing process. The stories included in our letter are their stories. They have not spoken out individually about their personal experiences because they wish to remain anonymous.”
The implication that the letter was the collective work of the members of the chapter is false, however. It was written by leadership without input from the members, according to messages provided to The Intercept from the organization’s GroupMe chat. The day after the Daily Collegian published the letter, a member of leadership sent the following message: “Hello everyone. I’m sure some of you saw the article about Alex Morse and letter udems and other orgs sent to his campaign. I’m sure many of you are confused and even disappointed. If anybody needs support or wants to talk about it the udems eboard is here for you.”
A follow-up post included a link to the story. Five days later, specific allegations have yet to surface.
Abramson declined to comment, and neither Ennis nor the College Democrats responded to requests for comment. Daniel Marans of HuffPost contacted the College Democrats for further comment on Wednesday to ask whether or not their letter was motivated by Ennis’s or anyone else’s political ambitions, posting their response on Twitter.
The student group denied Ennis’s professional ambitions played a role in the crafting of the strategy. Marans also asked if Morse had indeed declined a request to fund the organization, as the mayor had told The Intercept on Tuesday. The organization offered HuffPost a selectively edited email regarding a donation from the Morse campaign, quoting the campaign as saying it would “get back to us shortly.” A copy of the full email was provided to The Intercept. It reads: “Hi Hayley — will get back to you shortly on sponsorship. We’ve been committing a great deal to COVID related organizations and want to make sure we honor those activities first. Sorry for delay.”


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.


theintercept--2020-08-13--After Rep. Richard Neal Secured $3 Billion for Biofuel Industry, Son Secured Lobby Job

The Trump administration had been providing waivers and less stringent requirements for refineries to produce biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard — a program that has existed since 2005 to encourage a shift towards synthetic fuel produced from organic matter .
But a lapse in a key tax credit in 2018 , combined with changes to the RFS , led to a series of ethanol plant shutdowns .
Last year , the biofuel industry , scrambling for help from Washington , made a concerted push in Congress to secure a lifeline of taxpayer support .
After months of lobbying , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traditional allies in the Iowa delegation in Rep. Richard Neal , the powerful chair of the House Ways and Means Committee , which oversees tax policy .
The Massachusetts Democrat , in a series of legislative maneuvers to maintain government spending levels , delivered a tax break to biofuel companies worth $ 3 billion per year .
The tax credit has been hailed as a major success for the industry , which has faced an uncertain future as the Trump administration has tweaked EPA requirements on the refining industry to reduce incentives for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that blend biofuels , including soybean oil and corn-based fuels , with $ 1 per gallon in tax credits .
It also provides a retroactive benefit to biofuel blenders to 2018 , a move hailed by the industry .
The legislative gift followed a series of PAC donations from the largest ethanol and biofuel companies in America to Neal ’ s campaign , a tradition that enriches the campaign war chests of most legislators on the tax-writing committee .
Industry lobbyists and PACs tied to the biofuel industry in total donated over $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the tax extension was passed as part of the omnibus bill signed last December , the biofuel industry forged even closer ties .
Last month , Brendan Neal , the lawmaker ’ s son , was hired as a lobbyist for Trestle Energy , a California-based biofuel company specializing in low carbon production systems .
Brendan , a former aide to the Neal reelection campaign and a former official with TC Energy , the company formerly known as TransCanada , did not respond to a request for comment .
Trestle Energy and Neal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comment either .
A coalition of lobby groups active on the issue praised Neal for his focus on the issue .
“ We thank the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee for his proposal to extend these tax policies through 2020 , ” wrote several industry organizations active on the push , including the Advanced Biofuels Association .
“ A three-year extension is a welcome proposal that all of us support .
”

Last year, the biofuel industry, scrambling for help from Washington, made a concerted push in Congress to secure a lifeline of taxpayer support.
The Trump administration had been providing waivers and less stringent requirements for refineries to produce biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard — a program that has existed since 2005 to encourage a shift towards synthetic fuel produced from organic matter. But a lapse in a key tax credit in 2018, combined with changes to the RFS, led to a series of ethanol plant shutdowns.
After months of lobbying, the industry found a champion beyond its traditional allies in the Iowa delegation in Rep. Richard Neal, the powerful chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax policy.
The Massachusetts Democrat, in a series of legislative maneuvers to maintain government spending levels, delivered a tax break to biofuel companies worth $3 billion per year. The tax credit has been hailed as a major success for the industry, which has faced an uncertain future as the Trump administration has tweaked EPA requirements on the refining industry to reduce incentives for ethanol production.
The provision provides refineries that blend biofuels, including soybean oil and corn-based fuels, with $1 per gallon in tax credits. It also provides a retroactive benefit to biofuel blenders to 2018, a move hailed by the industry.
The legislative gift followed a series of PAC donations from the largest ethanol and biofuel companies in America to Neal’s campaign, a tradition that enriches the campaign war chests of most legislators on the tax-writing committee. Industry lobbyists and PACs tied to the biofuel industry in total donated over $20,000 to the Neal campaign.
After the tax extension was passed as part of the omnibus bill signed last December, the biofuel industry forged even closer ties. Last month, Brendan Neal, the lawmaker’s son, was hired as a lobbyist for Trestle Energy, a California-based biofuel company specializing in low carbon production systems.
Brendan, a former aide to the Neal reelection campaign and a former official with TC Energy, the company formerly known as TransCanada, did not respond to a request for comment. Trestle Energy and Neal did not respond to a request for comment either.
A coalition of lobby groups active on the issue praised Neal for his focus on the issue.
“We thank the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee for his proposal to extend these tax policies through 2020,” wrote several industry organizations active on the push, including the Advanced Biofuels Association. “A three-year extension is a welcome proposal that all of us support.”


theintercept--2020-08-13--Biden's Promise of a Deportation Moratorium Is Nowhere in His Platform

Throughout most of the primary season , Biden refused to answer for the Obama-era immigration policies that helped build the deportation machine continued by President Donald Trump — and on several different occasions , he has defended deportation policies .
After sustained pressure from immigration activists and a competitive primary , Biden changed his position on the issue , supporting an absolute moratorium on deportations of anyone in the country for his first 100 days in office .
He first made the promise in a CNN town hall before the Nevada caucuses , which his campaign initially denied and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vice president reiterated his commitment to the policy as recently as March 15 at a Democratic primary debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders but hasn ’ t mentioned it on the national stage since .
Joe Biden ’ s presidential campaign on Tuesday released a new agenda to address the economic inequalities Latino communities face , vowing to invest in Latinos ’ economic mobility by “ expanding access ” to education and health care .
But nowhere in the agenda , or on its website , does the campaign mention one of the biggest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 100-day moratorium on any deportations of immigrants already in the United States .
When asked whether Biden still supports a deportation moratorium , campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement that it “ absolutely remains his position ” and “ will not change at any point.
” The campaign did not respond to a follow-up question asking why the policy isn ’ t included in the immigration section of Biden ’ s platform on the campaign website or his Latino agenda .
The platform comes as the Biden campaign makes a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , poised to be the largest nonwhite eligible voting bloc in 2020 .
Although immigration isn ’ t the only issue that matters to most Latino voters , Obama ’ s legacy as the “ deporter-in-chief ” complicates Biden ’ s efforts to build trust .
When immigration rights activist Carlos Rojas confronted Biden about these deportations at an event last year , the former vice president told him to “ vote for Trump ” instead .
It wasn ’ t until the lead-up to the Nevada caucuses , the first real test @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that Biden expressed regret over the Obama-era policies , saying they made a “ big mistake ” in deporting hundreds of thousands of people without a criminal record .
“ I think Democrats have often been afraid to talk about immigration and they have conceded a lot of space for the Republican Party to define immigrants as criminals and to define immigration as a national security problem , and we have seen how Donald Trump has used that to attach really dangerous , racist policies , ” said Ana Maria Archila , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Popular Democracy Action , which endorsed Biden on Thursday .
CPD Action , sister organization of the Center for Popular Democracy , is a national network of more than 50 progressive community groups advocating for pro-worker and pro-immigrant policies that had previously endorsed Sanders , citing his promise for a blanket moratorium — a position his campaign later partially walked back .
Sanders won the Latino vote in Nevada , in part , because he ran on an ambitious platform and invested in sustained outreach efforts that translated the energy to voter turnout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arguably the boldest immigration platform of any Democratic presidential candidate so far , including a vow to dismantle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection — a drastic evolution from his 2016 campaign .
Since Biden clinched the nomination , progressives have hoped that he would adopt certain Sanders policies .
And while the campaign initially seemed like it was shifting a bit to the left on certain issues , like climate change and education , there haven ’ t been meaningful concessions to the left on issues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Archila said the fact that the deportation moratorium is not listed on the Biden campaign ’ s website is “ concerning , ” but the organization will “ hold him to his word.
” “ Biden has an opportunity to lean on it instead of run away from it .
The fact that a commitment that is so important for us is not visible indicates to me that he ’ s behaving as if we were in 2008 , as if we were in 2002 — behaving on the issue of immigration as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in fact it is essential for him to lean on a vision of an inclusive country.
” Belén Sisa , activist and former Latino press secretary for the Sanders campaign , said the omission of the deportation moratorium is “ disappointing ” but “ not surprising.
” Sisa , who is also a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipient , believes it shows a “ lack of commitment , ” adding that the presumptive nominee “ needs to do better rather than try to please those who question our humanity.
” While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidates and campaigns to not make immigration the defining issue for such a diverse electorate , Biden has also refused to support Medicare for All or free public college : two of the biggest factors behind Sen. Bernie Sanders ’ s historic Latino support , particularly among younger voters .
A Latino Decisions poll , conducted after the Miami Democratic debate hosted by Univision , found that a majority of Latino voters supported Julián Castro ’ s proposal to decriminalize border crossings , as well as the pledge by candidates to cover health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s struggles to appeal to the electorate stretch back to the Democratic primary , when he lost young Latino voters overwhelmingly to Sanders in several Western states .
His relative weakness with Latinos continues to trouble his campaign .
Though recent polls show Biden holding a massive lead over President Donald Trump , he also appears to be doing worse among Latino voters than Hillary Clinton did around this same stage of the race .
Biden ’ s support among the demographic has softened during the pandemic as well , a Latino Decisions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in April from 67 percent in mid-February .
As the pandemic has disrupted most in-person campaigning , the Biden campaign is unable to replicate many of the outreach strategies that helped Sanders connect with Latino voters .
The danger for Biden isn ’ t that Latinos swing for Trump , whose ceiling with the demographic tends to be at around 30 percent — but that they won ’ t turn out to vote , which could hurt him in battleground states like Arizona and Pennsylvania .
An estimated 32 million Latinos are expected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2020 presidential election , surpassing the number of eligible Black voters for the first time .
Last month , the Sanders-Biden unity task force , which was set up in May to find common ground between the left and moderate wings of the party and to shore up the progressive vote , unveiled its policy recommendations in a 110-page report , including issues like climate change , criminal justice reform , and immigration .
The eight-member panel ’ s recommendations fleshed out aspects of Biden ’ s immigration policy , and in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has proposed .
But the task force fell short of endorsing many of the policies Sanders supported in the primary , including calls to abolish ICE .
One of the suggestions reiterated Biden ’ s previous promise to enact a moratorium on deportations of people already in the U.S. During a recent interview hosted by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists , Biden also promised that “ not another foot of wall would be constructed ” along the southern U.S. border if he were to win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the purpose of erecting a border wall would end completely .
Though he added that he would not tear down Trump ’ s additions to the barrier , Biden previously signaled openness to allowing Trump to extend the wall as part of an immigration deal that would protect DACA recipients .

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on Tuesday released a new agenda to address the economic inequalities Latino communities face, vowing to invest in Latinos’ economic mobility by “expanding access” to education and health care. But nowhere in the agenda, or on its website, does the campaign mention one of the biggest promises it made during the primary: a 100-day moratorium on any deportations of immigrants already in the United States.
Throughout most of the primary season, Biden refused to answer for the Obama-era immigration policies that helped build the deportation machine continued by President Donald Trump — and on several different occasions, he has defended deportation policies. After sustained pressure from immigration activists and a competitive primary, Biden changed his position on the issue, supporting an absolute moratorium on deportations of anyone in the country for his first 100 days in office. He first made the promise in a CNN town hall before the Nevada caucuses, which his campaign initially denied and then reversed on hours later. The former vice president reiterated his commitment to the policy as recently as March 15 at a Democratic primary debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders but hasn’t mentioned it on the national stage since.
When asked whether Biden still supports a deportation moratorium, campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement that it “absolutely remains his position” and “will not change at any point.” The campaign did not respond to a follow-up question asking why the policy isn’t included in the immigration section of Biden’s platform on the campaign website or his Latino agenda.
The platform comes as the Biden campaign makes a last-minute pivot to win over Latino voters, poised to be the largest nonwhite eligible voting bloc in 2020. Although immigration isn’t the only issue that matters to most Latino voters, Obama’s legacy as the “deporter-in-chief” complicates Biden’s efforts to build trust. When immigration rights activist Carlos Rojas confronted Biden about these deportations at an event last year, the former vice president told him to “vote for Trump” instead. It wasn’t until the lead-up to the Nevada caucuses, the first real test of a candidate’s Latino support, that Biden expressed regret over the Obama-era policies, saying they made a “big mistake” in deporting hundreds of thousands of people without a criminal record.
“I think Democrats have often been afraid to talk about immigration and they have conceded a lot of space for the Republican Party to define immigrants as criminals and to define immigration as a national security problem, and we have seen how Donald Trump has used that to attach really dangerous, racist policies,” said Ana Maria Archila, a co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy Action, which endorsed Biden on Thursday.
CPD Action, sister organization of the Center for Popular Democracy, is a national network of more than 50 progressive community groups advocating for pro-worker and pro-immigrant policies that had previously endorsed Sanders, citing his promise for a blanket moratorium — a position his campaign later partially walked back.
Sanders won the Latino vote in Nevada, in part, because he ran on an ambitious platform and invested in sustained outreach efforts that translated the energy to voter turnout. He also ran on what was arguably the boldest immigration platform of any Democratic presidential candidate so far, including a vow to dismantle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection — a drastic evolution from his 2016 campaign. Since Biden clinched the nomination, progressives have hoped that he would adopt certain Sanders policies. And while the campaign initially seemed like it was shifting a bit to the left on certain issues, like climate change and education, there haven’t been meaningful concessions to the left on issues like immigration or criminal justice reform.
Archila said the fact that the deportation moratorium is not listed on the Biden campaign’s website is “concerning,” but the organization will “hold him to his word.”
“Biden has an opportunity to lean on it instead of run away from it. The fact that a commitment that is so important for us is not visible indicates to me that he’s behaving as if we were in 2008, as if we were in 2002 — behaving on the issue of immigration as if he needed to hide it when in fact it is essential for him to lean on a vision of an inclusive country.”
Belén Sisa, activist and former Latino press secretary for the Sanders campaign, said the omission of the deportation moratorium is “disappointing” but “not surprising.” Sisa, who is also a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipient, believes it shows a “lack of commitment,” adding that the presumptive nominee “needs to do better rather than try to please those who question our humanity.”
While Latino political leaders have long urged Democratic candidates and campaigns to not make immigration the defining issue for such a diverse electorate, Biden has also refused to support Medicare for All or free public college: two of the biggest factors behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’s historic Latino support, particularly among younger voters. A Latino Decisions poll, conducted after the Miami Democratic debate hosted by Univision, found that a majority of Latino voters supported Julián Castro’s proposal to decriminalize border crossings, as well as the pledge by candidates to cover health care for undocumented immigrants.
Biden’s struggles to appeal to the electorate stretch back to the Democratic primary, when he lost young Latino voters overwhelmingly to Sanders in several Western states. His relative weakness with Latinos continues to trouble his campaign. Though recent polls show Biden holding a massive lead over President Donald Trump, he also appears to be doing worse among Latino voters than Hillary Clinton did around this same stage of the race.
Biden’s support among the demographic has softened during the pandemic as well, a Latino Decisions poll found, dropping to 59 percent in April from 67 percent in mid-February. As the pandemic has disrupted most in-person campaigning, the Biden campaign is unable to replicate many of the outreach strategies that helped Sanders connect with Latino voters. The danger for Biden isn’t that Latinos swing for Trump, whose ceiling with the demographic tends to be at around 30 percent — but that they won’t turn out to vote, which could hurt him in battleground states like Arizona and Pennsylvania. An estimated 32 million Latinos are expected to be eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election, surpassing the number of eligible Black voters for the first time.
Last month, the Sanders-Biden unity task force, which was set up in May to find common ground between the left and moderate wings of the party and to shore up the progressive vote, unveiled its policy recommendations in a 110-page report, including issues like climate change, criminal justice reform, and immigration. The eight-member panel’s recommendations fleshed out aspects of Biden’s immigration policy, and in a few areas went further than what he has proposed. But the task force fell short of endorsing many of the policies Sanders supported in the primary, including calls to abolish ICE. One of the suggestions reiterated Biden’s previous promise to enact a moratorium on deportations of people already in the U.S.
During a recent interview hosted by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists, Biden also promised that “not another foot of wall would be constructed” along the southern U.S. border if he were to win the presidency, and that land confiscations for the purpose of erecting a border wall would end completely. Though he added that he would not tear down Trump’s additions to the barrier, Biden previously signaled openness to allowing Trump to extend the wall as part of an immigration deal that would protect DACA recipients.


theintercept--2020-08-13--How Covid-19 Is Transforming Culture and Media in the United States

the Covid-19 pandemic are transforming culture and media in real time , even as the United States struggles to bring @ @ @ @ @ and get the economy back on track .
With “ normal ” life put on @ @ @ @ @ justice and cultural power that had existed even before the pandemic are playing out in @ @ @ @ @ of massive street protests , within workplaces and online .
There have been socially revolutionary @ @ @ @ @ , but never with the variables we have today .
Our guests today on SYSTEM @ @ @ @ @ by The Intercept ’ s Murtaza Hussain , are Nesrine Malik and Yair Rosenberg , @ @ @ @ @ perspective from different sides of the cultural debates now reshaping our world .

The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are transforming culture and media in real time, even as the United States struggles to bring the disease back under control and get the economy back on track. With “normal” life put on hold, the struggles for justice and cultural power that had existed even before the pandemic are playing out in new formats: in explosions of massive street protests, within workplaces and online. There have been socially revolutionary moments in American history before, but never with the variables we have today.
Our guests today on SYSTEM UPDATE, hosted this week by The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain, are Nesrine Malik and Yair Rosenberg, two journalists who give their perspective from different sides of the cultural debates now reshaping our world.