theintercept--2020-10-09--Bear Fights and Attila the Hun: A Look at the 2020 Landscape

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A Georgia senator compares herself to Attila the Hun. An Alaska Senate challenger brags about fighting a bear. While the president’s Covid-19 diagnosis has dominated the headlines, local and state races have been getting interesting, and on this week’s episode D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim breaks them down with the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel. Then, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman clears up some myths about mail-in voting.
Newscaster: It’s a stunning development for most voters, regardless of their political positions.
Newscaster: Talk about an October surprise!
Newscaster: It is extraordinary on many different levels, given this President’s history with managing or, many would argue, mismanaging what is still an out-of-control pandemic in our country.
Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Ryan Grim. News of Donald Trump’s COVID diagnosis, his stint at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and his theatrical return to the White House on Monday night were, of course, the big stories this week. All of which made Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate feel like even more of a sideshow than usual.
Both candidates studiously avoided any explicit mention of the president’s diagnosis, but Trump, nonetheless, loomed large over the whole thing. Even the opening spiel from moderator Susan Page was pretty clearly aimed at the President:
Susan Page: The two campaigns and the Commission on Presidential Debates have agreed to the ground rules for tonight. I’m here to enforce them. We want a debate that is lively, but Americans also deserve a discussion that is civil.
RG: Not since he decided to skip a primary debate in 2016 was Trump’s absence so keenly felt on a debate stage.
Megyn Kelly: Before we get to the issues, let’s address the elephant not in the room tonight.
RG: And, as it turns out, Wednesday night’s might have been the last debate between the two campaigns we’re gonna get. On Thursday morning, the presidential commission on debates announced that the next contest would be held virtually — after all, one of the candidates has a deadly and highly contagious disease, and he skipped the required test last time.
The president quickly responded:
President Donald J. Trump: I’m not gonna waste my time on a virtual debate. That’s not what debating is all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate? That’s ridiculous. And then they cut you off whenever they want.
RG: As is so often the case with this president, it appears that all of his predictions that Biden would be the one trying to get out of debating him were just projection.
DJT: I know he’d like not to do the debates. I think he probably has to; I don’t know how you get out of the debates. I think you probably have to.
DJT: I don’t think he wants to debate at all. I’ve seen he wants to try and blame COVID for that, too. He’s not getting out of his basement. He’s got a basement deal going.
RG: Now, the plan is to move the debate to October 22, to give Trump more time to recover. And, frankly, I have a hard time believing that he’ll ever pass up the chance to appear live for 90 minutes before 70 million people — assuming he’s remotely healthy enough.
That would put the last debate on October 29, if it actually happens. Then comes a socially distanced Halloween, and then Election Day, November 3.
Yet we don’t really have an election day anymore. By the time you listen to this, more than 6 million people will already have cast their ballots. In Pennsylvania alone, 2.5 million absentee ballot requests have been sent in.
Later in the show, we’ll talk to the state’s lieutenant governor, Democrat John Fetterman, about why it’s important not to get panicked about the postal service, and why the best move for voters is to mail those suckers back, not show up in person on election day.
As of earlier this week, in Florida, half a million Democrats have returned mail ballots, compared with just 270,000 Republicans. That’s a state where Republicans normally win mail-in voting. In North Carolina, more than 200,000 Democrats have already returned mail ballots, three times the number of Republicans who have done the same.
On today’s show, I wanted to do something that we haven’t seen anywhere yet, and that’s a thorough run-through of the entire electoral map — House, Senate, and President. We’re not going to hit every single race, but we do want to get deeper into the weeds than most news outlets would. And for that, we need a sherpa, and there’s nobody better than the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, who joins us now from Utah.
Dave, welcome to Deconstructed.
Dave Weigel: Sure.
RG: So Dave, the reason I wanted to have you on is because everybody knows that the Senate is in play on November 3, and people who’ve been following it even remotely closely know that, you know, Susan Collins is quite vulnerable. And if Democrats don’t beat Susan Collins, it’s very hard to see what their path is to taking back the Senate.
They also know that Mark Kelly is probably picking up his senate seat, picking up that senate seat in Arizona; Cory Gardner, a Republican in Colorado, is struggling hard.
But I wanted to go one layer further and talk about some of the other races around the country that you’ve been covering closely. And let’s do this kind of rapid-fire, so that we can bring as many as we can to people’s attention.
So Iowa, Joni Ernst in 2014 kind of breaks onto the national stage with this bizarre ad about castrating pigs and she’s gonna bring that same energy to Washington.
Joni Ernst: I’m Joni Ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm. So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork. [Pig squeals.]
RG: How’s she looking this time around?
DW: Well, it was kind of telling because it was an attempt to bait Democrats into making fun of her. And by Democrats, I mean just people online, people on TV, you see this in the Trump-Biden campaign too: when Biden doesn’t say something offensive, they try to find some liberal celebrity to make fun of it. So she was very good at channeling this sort of liberal outrage.
RG: She was triggering the libs.
DW: She was triggering the libs. That’s the term for it. And this cycle, she didn’t have a very strong message out of the gate. They didn’t take her Democratic opponent seriously. Therese Greenfield had run for Congress in 2018; her campaign manager basically scammed her — because he falsified signatures, got her kicked off the ballot. Republicans just wrote her off and said, “This is a second or third-tier recruit” and that’s not entirely wrong. It’s a theme. A lot of the people who are doing fine in the polls right now or even ahead, were not the party’s first choice.
So Greenfield is a farmer-turned-businesswoman. Nothing that incredible about her record, not a ton of money to spend on her own, but she just dug in and fundraised. And I think all these Democrats, this cycle, benefited from this rolling interest the Democratic base suddenly has in giving to everybody. You know, just going to ActBlue and spamming it.
She raised a bunch of money and Ernst did not take her seriously until — kinda now. The attacks on her have been repetitive. She hasn’t really found a theme. And we’ll probably talk about more of these: these states where just the party thought the 2016 map was locked in stone, and did not do the work to prevent Democrats from winning back some of these people that voted for Barack Obama twice. That’s kind of the Greenfield coalition; she got more suburbanites, and she’s pulled back some of these Obama voters.
RG: Right, and Democrats won three of those house seats in 2018, and almost won the JD Scholten one. Does JD have any shot against the generic Republican that’s running in that 4th district this time?
DW: The Party doesn’t treat it like that. JD actually made a statement of rejecting national party money, and I’m not scoffing on purpose, but it was smart for him to do that because he wasn’t gonna get any. The party — they’re not triaging; they’re actually playing pretty aggressively around the country. But they’re playing in places that have more Paneras and Pizza Ranches, I’d say. And Northwest Iowa is not one of the places they see is super fruitful. I mean, to the extent they hold those districts like Minnesota 7th and Colin Peterson, they’re trying to hold them. But they’re not really trying to make gains in those places. Where they see the gains are these kind of soft underbelly, suburban districts, and where they see the Senate races coming into play, it’s often these voters who’ve just been Republican without objection for such a long time that have been moving towards the Democrats out of rejection of Trump.
RG: Right. And Iowa is one of the states where there’s a Senate race and also the Electoral College in play, as Biden could actually win that state. Let’s go to another one of those, which is North Carolina, which is another big pickup. You’ve got the Democrat Cal Cunningham and you’ve got the republican Tom Tillis, who also, you know, came in in that 2014 kind of ebola-ISIS wave. How’s Cal Cunningham looking? And we also have a bit of a sexting scandal going on down there, don’t we?
Newscaster: Cal Cunningham texted with a Democratic strategist calling her “historically sexy.”
Newscaster: There’s so many questions around this. Historically sexy? I mean, what does that mean?
DW: Yeah. And that race is a little bit fascinating. There’s a very complicated story — it sounds simple that he had an affair with someone he met, probably this year, who was, at that moment separated from her husband. This spurned husband has said that some of the texts published in the media are not true. And what we’ve seen in a few cases is if we have a sex scandal, especially if it’s one where you’re both adults, the partner, I should say was not a subordinate, if that burns for three or four days you’re usually fine. The question here is if this goes further.
But the attitude of Democrats has been: about 300,000 votes have been cast already. Tom Tillis has to explain why Donald Trump’s behavior’s fine, Cal Cunningham’s isn’t. They’re kind of making lemonade with the fact that they can’t actually find a different candidate.
One of the all time stupidest moves I’ve seen from an election year, though. I mean, forget just normally having an affair as a candidate — that’s generally something people try to avoid doing — having an affair during a pandemic, we were just discussing how hard it is to get around the country. I just don’t know how he did it logistically.
But yeah, that that is not being taken off the board is the point. The things have bent so much this year, that even though the Democrats are furious with this guy for creating risk where there wasn’t any, he was ahead, Tillis was terribly unpopular, they kind of think they can grind this out despite his mistakes.
And they’ve done this before, just in bluer states. You know, you’ve got Senator Blumenthal, Connecticut, a lot of Democrats are worried they’d have to cut bait on him for exaggerating his military experience. He survived.
I mean, look at who the President is. People have just over time, put up with more and more scandal from their politicians. So, I’m not making a prediction. I’m just talking about how nihilistic we all are. Ten years ago, were there enough voters who were so angry about the Republican Party that they would vote for someone like this? I don’t think so. In 2020, with the week we just had, with the four weeks we could be having? I’m not ruling it out.
But Cunningham kind of overnight moved from, I’d say that the person seen as the Democrats most likely right for pickup to TBD. If you have these candidates on a poster board, which Chuck Schumer probably does, and he moves them around, he got moved to a question mark. And they’ll see what happens.
RG: Yes. What about Montana? Interesting Senate race going on out there.
DW: You have a kind of ideal situation. So Democrats didn’t get all the recruits they wanted, right? And I mentioned how they didn’t get top recruits in every race. Sometimes the top recruit, honestly, is somebody that gets mentioned a lot and they weren’t gonna be that good of a candidate. Sometimes it’s like in Georgia, Stacey Abrams, in Texas, Beto O’Rourke, both people, I think, had they been the nominees might be in a more commanding position.
Democrats right now are like, they’re in the fight, but they’re not ahead. And so in Montana, Democrats had a couple of second or third-tier recruits, but they tried for a year to get Steve Bullock not to run for President, to run for Senate. He finally, after his presidential bid failed, after he was done with the work of the legislature, etc., he finally jumped in the race and turned it into a competitive one overnight.
And you really need to track Republican spending on this — I mean, you and I both do — they would love to have had states like Montana, like Alaska, like some of these places that the Party just walked into in 2014. They love to have them off the board. I mean, some of those places they won last time, they are: South Dakota is off the board, Arkansas is off the board, West Virginia, there’s just — even though there’s a, you know, fascinating progressive candidate in that race, Republicans, they’re not spending any money.
RG: They’re not too worried.
DW: Montana, they were really hoping they could just take $20 million, move it from there to somewhere else, and they can’t. They’re spending money. Bullock has not been ahead, but he’s been a fairly popular governor. There’s been a couple of attempts to drum up a scandal that haven’t worked. And Bullock has run a very, kind of like a gubernatorial reelection campaign, but for the Senate seat. And he’s helped — and this will be a theme too — he’s helped. When he ran for governor the last few times, he had to run first 10 and then 20 points ahead of the Democratic ticket. Joe Biden’s not winning Montana right now, but the polling has him losing it by high single digits. So Bullock needs to outrun Biden by maybe nine points to win this, maybe less.
RG: And Another one they hope to have off the board was Alaska. And all of a sudden that’s looking competitive now.
DW: Yeah.
RG: Now Gross, he’s supported by the Democratic Party, he will caucus with the Democrats. He’s kind of a dream recruit, though he’s not technically a Democrat, right? He’s a commercial fisherman and a surgeon running against Dan Sullivan, who also won in 2014.
Ad Voiceover: He was born in the wake of an avalanche, bought his first fishing boat with a bank loan at age 14, and killed a grizzly bear in self defense after it snuck up on him.
RG: Do you think that Al Gross is serious?
DW: He is. And Alaska is a strange political state. If you’re winning 200,000 votes in Alaska, you probably got elected. And that’s not true in much of the country, not in a Senate race, not in a House race. And Alaska Democrats have this odd coalition that has put the brakes on some of the conservative Governor’s agenda. They had an independent governor for four years, and he kind of inherited the worst economic situation the state had, so it didn’t end well.
But you’ve had a state that votes Republican, but honestly, the days when it voted Republican by a landslide seemed to have altered. And one factor I think is less remarked on here is that some of the gains they wanted from Republican rule, like drilling in Anwar, that’s done already. There’s not much more Republicans can offer.
Something that I think has been remarked on a lot is it’s not a socially conservative state. Now it has socially conservative pockets in the Mat-Su Valley where Sarah Palin’s from, but the swing voter in, let’s say, Missouri is a conservative pro-life voter; the swing voter in Alaska doesn’t care about that, is just kind of like a government-off-my-back person. And the Democratic messaging for Al Gross and from Alyse Galvin, the other independent running for house, has been kind of a like, right, Washington’s a mess, look at the corruption that Republicans have done.
The Pebble Mine issue, which is a little weed-sy to get into. But Al Gross got this great gift where lobbyists for this mining project that’s deeply unpopular in Alaska, always has been, that Donald Trump Jr. actually opposed because when he was campaigning. You have the head of that project, who has since resigned, just bragged about how easy it is to bite off Dan Sullivan. So you’ve had a very smart campaign there. I mean, but they hired up some staff that you might normally have seen in kind of a front-edge House race. They just decided to take a gamble on Alaska and see if they could beat this guy. And Republicans are trying very quickly, in a few weeks, really, to define negatively this out-of-nowhere Democrat. And the problem in Alaska, and this is a fact that it’s really hard to track, not only does Alaska have a lot of mail voting in general, but this year, it’s off the chart.
RG: Oh, right.
DW: So we’re not sure how many people are going to be voting by which point. We’re going to get more data on that. But the timing for Democrats, even if they don’t win this, was probably as good as they could think.
RG: Yeah. And the economy has actually been extra brutalized up there, because of the tourism industry. People aren’t taking cruises.
DW: Oh, yeah.
RG: People are not traveling to Alaska in the way that they were before.
Georgia is a fascinating one, because there are not one but two Senate races. Let’s start with Jon Ossoff, who famously ran in that special election, which was kind of the introduction to the country, to the resistance and the ability of donors around the country to have this utterly bottomless well of money.
He ended up losing by — what — two points or so to Karen Handel in this special election in the Georgia suburbs. But it was a harbinger of the way that these suburbs were turning bluer. And so now he’s running neck and neck against David Perdue, the former CEO of Dollar General and a bunch of other corporations who also is a first-term, you know, 2014 product. Did you think Jon Ossoff had a shot at the beginning? And what do you think now?
DW: His theory of the race made sense, it was just a lot of these races are Democrats probably where they maybe would have topped out at 40 percent before, their floor is probably 46 percent, 47 percent. So he had a theory of how to win. It’s a state where Democrats just have been burned a lot. And again, Republicans didn’t quite take him seriously; when they did, they started running a lot of attacks that were reminiscent of 2017.
I mean, for whatever reason, my brain just retains — in lieu of actually good information — my brain retains all these ads I’ve seen. Republicans were running ads against Ossoff from 2017, accusing him of being part of the radical left-wing mob back when it was just footage of the Women’s March, or something.
So they’re running the same plays against him. And Purdue hasn’t distinguished himself much in the Senate. Part of this is, if you’re a republican under Mitch McConnell’s majority, your job has been to confirm judges and then, maybe, at the last minute, provide votes for some deal to fund the government.
But no Republican running this year, nobody’s really running on “Here’s what I did in the Senate”; they’re running on, “I’m against socialism.” And that’s kind of a theme, when I dive in all the Republicans this year, there’s only a few who are trying to run on specific stuff they brought home, and the rest, their instinct, is just to run against the crazy Democrat because that’s what psychs the base up.
Republicans are spending a ton of money in this state — which, again, I wouldn’t say that they never thought they’d have to compete in Georgia when the year began. They did not think Jon Ossoff was gonna suck in $5-$6 million of their advertising.
RG: Right.
DW: They really had been surprised that the party’s losses in the outer suburbs of Atlanta are so steep, that they’re worried about losing a lot of their majority in the House, which they drew — I mean, this is think about Georgia, and all of these places, is that they drew the blinds back when — you know the term dummymandor. Maybe everyone doesn’t. But when you draw something in 2011, and by 2018, it starts to look stupid, because you didn’t imagine all these voters changing their minds or all these new people moving in?
RG: Right.
DW: That’s kind of what happened in Georgia. And it’s trickled up where Democrats have this strong bench. Ossoff’s running a fairly mistake-free campaign. And the other race, which I think you’re about to mention, is there’s this jungle primary for the Senate seat Johnny Isaacson used to have. Republicans appointed Kelly Loeffler, who’s kind of famous now, somebody who had no interest in real right-wing base politics, who’s now running basically as a Barry Goldwater cartoon. Doug Collins, who’s running as an a even more pro-Trump candidate.
RG: Literally, literally running as Attila the Hun.
DW: Yeah, there’s these two ads comparing her to Atila the Hun.
Ad Voiceover: Did you know Kelly Loeffler was ranked the most conservative senator in America?
Ad Voiceover: Yep, she’s more conservative than Attila the Hun.
Attila the Hun: [Indistinct]
Ad Voiceover: You like China? Got it.
Attila the Hun: [Indistinct]
Ad Voiceover: Attack big government? Yeah.
Attila the Hun: [Indistinct]
Ad Voiceover: Eliminate the liberal scribes.
Ad Voiceover: More conservative than Attila the Hun.
RG: And so Loeffler is comparing herself to Attila the Hun, for people who aren’t following this closely enough, because she is trying to get into the runoff and there’s an even more conservative Republican Doug Collins, in the race.
And so, it brings up this dynamic where as states are becoming purple, the remaining local Republican Party moves further and further right. And you saw this in Virginia play out pretty rapidly.
DW: Yeah.
RG: And I think you’re seeing it a little bit in North Carolina, even though the party there is still dominant. Are you seeing this around the country? That as the state becomes competitive, the Republican Party almost becomes less competitive, like they head as far right as they can?
DW: Yeah. I am.
And that’s a factor in Texas, where Ellen West is now the chair of the party. It’s a factor in Arizona. It’s been an issue in Virginia, and Virginia is kind of the patient zero of this, where Republicans lost ground for various reasons. One of them, which is really inside baseball, is that they, for a cycle, replaced their primaries with a convention, they did a little bit more of that this year, because of COVID, the convention has been nominating far more right-wing candidates.
So despite this model of Virginia, and despite the alternative model where Republicans can win stuff, and they’re running as moderates in like Vermont and Massachusetts, these these parties in states that were red, and have shifted quickly, they haven’t adjusted, in part, because the people who left the party, they weren’t huge activists anyway, but the kind of people who might vote for them, show up and vote in a primary, a lot of them just moved to the Democratic Party. Not with incredible enthusiasm, but, in some places, big numbers.
And that was the first sign of weakness for Republicans in Texas two years ago and Georgia this year (well, Georgia, two years ago, too) was this huge primary turnout, especially in you know, your Mariettas, your Sandy Springs, your Dentons and what have you.
Minnesota is a bit of an outlier, except one thing I’d point out about the Midwest is even Republican Party leadership in those states is not that right-wing, what they’ve done all year is go all-in on anti-masked freedom, keeping businesses open, things like that. And they’ve just bought themselves in because the energy of the party is from the conservative movement, from the laissez-faire, you know, don’t tread-on-me-with-the-mask from that side of the party. You’ve had them just staple themselves to what’s not a super popular take. It hasn’t been all year.
I think there’s an idea maybe in May that people would get so sick of the lockdowns that they flip back to the Republican Party. We’ve got a month, less than a month, and it hasn’t happened. And I don’t imagine that the sickness of the President is going to move those numbers again.
RG: [laughs] Right.
DW: But you have, even Republican parties in states where they were competitive, where they lost a little bit of ground 2018, they just have not adapted by running as moderates. The only exception, kind of, is in the Michigan Senate race. You have this. John James, who ran in 2018, is running again and has run what the local media’s kind of dinged him for, for a fairly, a little bit like Cal Cunningham’s campaign in North Carolina — very much about the personality, about his military record, not taking positions on anything.
RG: Right.
DW: Which has been brutally tough for these guys to just stay out of issues that grew out of the George Lloyd protest; stay out of the ACA lawsuit.
One final point about Michigan is this is a candidate who, again, ran in 2018. The lawsuit against the ACA that’s currently heading to the Supreme Court, that existed in 2018. And he finally took a position on the lawsuit last month.
So like, for example, where Republicans are running as moderates, they’re kind of having to step around all these really far-right stances that the Republican Party’s taken.
RG: Right. So, now, Texas is a fascinating one. You know, Beto O’Rourke, very nearly wins, you know, finishes a couple points behind. Democrats flipped, I think, two seats in the House. But there were about nine or 10 other house races that were single-digit losses. And this time, a couple polls this week have Joe Biden tied, have MJ Hegar the Democrat, just a point or two behind John Cornyn, people are increasingly saying that Texas is actually real. Now, is it real? Or is this the kind of state that because of voter suppression Democrats have to win by five or 10 to win it?
DW: Well, I’m glad you brought that up. Because a thing that I think has both horrified Democrats and told them that they’re on the right track, is you’ve had just a number of efforts to expand the front, make it easier to vote, make it easier to drop a ballot off, make it easier to get an absentee ballot, all that stuff, just killed by conservative judges or by the governor. The governor himself put out an order that Harris County, which is bigger than most states in terms of population — in terms of size if you’re talking about my home state of Delaware — Harris County has one place to drop off ballots, and Loving County, which has like 100 people, has one place to drop off ballots.
So the Democrats look at that. And they say: Well, there’s not much we can do if judges keep siding with them. But they’re doing it because there is a chance of us getting to 50 percent in the state. And so it is real. So there’s just so many conservative, white, rural voters in Texas. They left the Democratic Party 20-30 years ago, and they’re all-in for Trump. They were all-in for Ted Cruz. They actually voted more for Cruz in ’18 than they did in ’12. Their growth is being outpaced by the growth of more liberal voters in the big cities and in the suburbs. And this is like 70 years of this being the x factor, the Rio Grande Valley — the U.S.-Mexico border — heavily Latino, heavily Hispanic, generally Democratic, but it can have low turnout. And even in 2016, the turnout in parts of the Rio Grande Valley was lower than it was in 2012, despite improvement for Hillary Clinton around the state.
I say this has been going on forever. I mean, when the poll tax existed, when Texas had that until the ‘60s, that was half the Democratic Party’s job was just handing out money to Latino voters to pay the thing and vote.
RG: Mhmm.
DW: So they look at the map and they say there are enough human beings who want to vote for us here to maybe win this thing. It’s just — how much do we want to invest in order for us to lose 38 electoral votes because of some court decision that says we’ve got to throw out 100,000 ballots. I think that’s what worries people there.
RG: Well, Dave Weigel, thank you so much for joining us. I’m hearing my kids in the background, so I think I better go deal with them for a minute. Be safe on the road. Be safe tonight.
DW: Oh, awesome. It was good to be here.
[Musical interlude.]
RG: Now the media spends about 99.9 percent of its time talking about who people are going to vote for and why. But they don’t spend nearly enough time talking about how they vote, or whether they’re going to be even able to vote.
We are now going to be joined by Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, who has been sounding the alarm on social media, and in interviews about what he sees as an, apparently, so-far successful Republican strategy to kind of panic Democratic voters into doing the wrong thing. And he’s going to explain a little bit about that here.
John, thanks so much for joining Deconstructed.
Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
RG: So talk to us a little bit about Democratic attitudes toward mail-in voting, and what you’re seeing on the ground in Pennsylvania?
JF: Sure. Well, let me run through a really brief history of vote-by-mail in Pennsylvania.
Last year, it was groundbreaking in terms of voting reforms in Pennsylvania. And far more Republicans voted for it than Democrats did. And this was supposed to be like a great moment in evolution and democracy in Pennsylvania. And then, as you know, the whole narrative flipped when the President started trashing mail-in ballots —
DJT: Mail-in-voting, it’s going to be the greatest fraud in the history of elections.
DJT: The only way they can win Pennsylvania, frankly, is to cheat on the ballot.
JF: — and everything like that. So the Pennsylvania GOP is in this incredibly awkward position of having championed and voted for unanimously, as far as I know, a bill now that they can’t really defend to the leader of their own party. And so it’s created this really weird kind of reality.
And Democrats, I believe, are increasingly becoming unnerved by the idea of vote-by-mail, which I say is completely unjustified and unwarranted.
RG: Right.
JF: And my concern has consistently been that that’s been one of the goals of the other side all along, is to sow that doubt, to foment chaos, that could ultimately suppress turnout in a way that wouldn’t necessarily be obvious otherwise.
RG: And so what you’re saying is that if you’ve applied to vote by mail, you should actually just go ahead and vote by mail.
JF: Absolutely.
RG: And why is that? Walk us through that.
JF: Because the mail can handle it. And we’re almost a month out from Election Day. And if you’re mailing to a local address from Philadelphia — bear in mind, every ballot that you send is going to be a local letter. You know, if I’m in Allegheny County, I’m sending it from the Pittsburgh area to the Pittsburgh area; it’s not like you’re sending it to California or something. So this is all very local mail. And you have almost a month for it to get there and count.
In fact, you do have a month if you count the three days after Election Day that these ballots will count, so long as it’s postmarked. So I sent you a video of a line of people just dropping off their ballots. And I’m like: “Why would you stand in a line when you could just drop it in the mailbox?”
I mean, we paid the postage. We literally paid. You literally have to just, boop, drop it in the mailbox, and don’t worry about it. But that tells me that people’s confidence has been rattled, that they’re willing to stand in a line, half-a-mile-long, just to drop off their ballot.
RG: And so correct me if I’m wrong. About 2.5 million absentee ballots have been requested.
JF: Correct. Yeah.
RG: They’re overwhelmingly Democratic, more than 70 percent.
JF: Correct.
RG: And if somebody gets rattled and they decide, you know what, I don’t trust the mail, Trump is sabotaging it, it’s too important, I’m going to show up in person, what happens if they don’t bring their absentee ballot with them?
JF: One, they would have to know that you can always request a provisional ballot. And then that creates its own set of challenges. Logistically speaking, that is a much more in-depth and complicated process. You know, those, those were always a failsafe. So in the rare exception, if someone shows up that isn’t on the list, or there’s an issue; it’s not meant to accommodate a black swan event where you have this wholesale idea of people who have requested a ballot, and they say: You know what? I’m doing it in person. But you have to bring your ballot, your envelope, all of that, in order for them to cancel that out. And if you don’t, your only option is a provisional ballot.
RG: Right. And then you’ve jammed up the line. And as I understand it, this is the law in a few other states as well. And it’s totally counterintuitive. You know, if I’m thinking, well, I’m gonna go vote in person, I don’t think, “Well, I need to bring the absentee ballot that I’m not going to cast.”
JF: Exactly! Right.
RG: I would just go down and vote. I probably would have tossed it already.
JF: Yeah, exactly.
RG: And you think this is their goal. They hope that they can create enough chaos at the polls, that people just turn around and go home?
JF: Precisely. Precisely. People get mail every day; the mail works. It might be a little bit slower. But you saw that video in Philadelphia that I sent you. You have a line a mile long of people, at least from what they said, handing in their ballots.
So that tells me they don’t trust the mail. In other words, they’re saying, I don’t trust the U.S. mail service to get a letter from one point in Philadelphia, you know, maybe three blocks or a mile, to another point in Philadelphia in the next 30 days. Come on!
RG: And so you’ve been working with the Republican Commissioner. So this isn’t a partisan matter either.
JF: No! Not at all.
RG: Your point here is that the mail will get your ballot where it needs to go. Put it in the mail, and be done with it.
JF: Exactly. I trust the mail. And as long as you follow the instructions and put one envelope inside another, there’s a 100 percent chance that vote is going to count and be delivered on time.
RG: Well, before I let you go, Lieutenant Governor, as you know, Senator Toomey, the state’s Republican Senator said he’s not running for reelection in 2022. You giving a look to that race?
JF: Sure. There’s two open lanes in Pennsylvania in ’22, and I’m considering both of them. The Democrats have a deep bench and there’s an embarrassment of riches of good quality candidates, for sure. But yeah, Toomey’s retirement caught a lot of people by surprise, and I genuinely wish him well in his retirement — it’s not a partisan thing — and, yeah, both lanes are open.
RG: John, thanks so much for joining us here on Deconstructed.
JF: Oh, it’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
[Musical interlude.]
RG: That was John Fetterman. And that’s our show.
Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.
And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept, and also the author of the book We’ve Got People. If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give — your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review — it helps people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com. Thanks so much!
See you next week.


theintercept--2020-10-09--He Sought Asylum After MS-13 Tried to Kill Him. Amy Coney Barrett Sent Him Back Into Danger.

2013 , Gerson Alvarenga-Flores was in a taxi with three friends , on his way to a birthday party in a rural town outside of La Unión , El Salvador .
Suddenly , two men with rifles appeared in the road ahead and signaled for the taxi to stop .
The men were both members of the MS-13 gang .
When the passengers refused to exit the taxi , the gang members began shooting .
Three of the passengers were shot : One was grazed by a bullet , another severely wounded — though he would survive — and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had remained in the taxi , which had started reversing away during the scramble .
He was left without a scratch .
He went to the police , who told him that “ they couldn ’ t be responsible for what had happened or for our lives , ” according to a transcript of his asylum hearing .
Soon after the attack , Alvarenga started receiving threats : The gang members didn ’ t want a witness to their murder left alive .
On his way to classes at the university where he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gang members he had encountered stormed onto a bus to confront him , but he was able to jump off and , again , escape .
Alvarenga hid out for a couple of months , but soon realized he had no hope left for a life in El Salvador .
He fled to the United States to ask for asylum .
His five-year search for protection would eventually be denied in 2018 by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett , then a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals , based on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s story that a dissenting judge called “ trivial.
” After her decision was issued , Alvarenga was deported back to El Salvador , just before Christmas in 2018 .
Now , Alvarenga hardly leaves his parents ’ small property for fear he ’ ll be spotted and killed .
“ I can ’ t go anywhere , not even to the park .
I can barely work , ” he said .
“ This isn ’ t life.
” As the Senate confirmation hearing approaches , Barrett ’ s judicial record @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like abortion and health care are being carefully picked apart , but her immigration record has come under less severe scrutiny .
And , while as a 7th Circuit judge — nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate in 2017 — she only issued five immigration-related decisions , she very well may play a key factor in the hyperpartisan realm of immigration law .
Alvarenga ’ s story speaks not only to how Barrett might rule on such immigration cases , but to the systemic regulatory disaster of the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to protect the persecuted .
Whether Trump or Joe Biden wins the presidential election , a raft of immigration-related cases could reach the Supreme Court in the next four years .
But four more years of Trump ’ s harsh policies would likely engender continued — and more consequential — legal challenges .
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick , policy counsel at the American Immigration Council , told The Intercept that there are a number of “ consequential immigration cases that could come before the Supreme Court , ” including cases on the public charge rule @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from migrating to the U.S. — further attacks on asylum , and other changes to the regulatory system .
Considering her immigration-related decisions from the 7th Circuit , Michael Kagan , a law professor at the University of Nevada , Las Vegas , and author of “ The Battle to Stay in America , ” told The Intercept that Barrett ’ s stance was not necessarily anti-immigrant .
“ Some of her decisions would please the Trump administration and some would please immigration activists , ” Kagan said .
While Kagan detected “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — he called her ruling on the Alvarenga case “ boilerplate ” and “ a pretty straightforward decision based on the rules ” — the decision itself adhered to a system of laws whose gears are gummed up by more than a century of anti-immigrant vitriol .
Barrett ’ s other immigration decisions on the 7th Circuit also point to a tight , textual analysis .
She dissented from a ruling in which the majority blocked the Trump administration from wielding a “ public charge ” rule : the racist , classist , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long wielded to keep out the immigrants it doesn ’ t want .
Barrett even acknowledged in her dissent that some critics view the public charge rule as “ too harsh.
” Nonetheless , she would have upheld it .
In another case , however , she ruled against the Trump administration ’ s attempt to end the use of administrative closure , a tool judges can use to stop deportations in complicated or lengthy proceedings — especially when the immigrant may be eligible to stay legally if given enough time to process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them to prioritize other cases .
For Alvarenga , that Barrett ’ s rulings are based strictly on the word of the law are little comfort .
Under the law , she could have ruled differently — not only in his case itself , but also in a procedural matter that would have kept him safer upon deportation — but Barrett chose not to use her discretion , failing to take the dangers Alvarenga faced into account in her ruling .
In Alvarenga ’ s eyes , Barrett had the last say in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protection .
Now , he fears for his life .
“ I followed the migration laws , ” Alvarenga said .
“ I respect those laws .
But the system , and those who apply the laws , they got it wrong.
” think about it , ” Alvarenga said of the attack and ordeal that followed .
“ From one night to the next morning , my life was ruined.
” He never was able to finish his degree .
After fleeing , he spent more than two years in what he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of immigration detention centers in the United States — while fighting for asylum .
His name was smeared in the local press when Salvadoran police , in cahoots with MS-13 , issued an arrest warrant for him , triggering an Interpol red alert .
His family , too , received death threats .
His mother said there were “ over two hundred calls ” in the weeks following the attack , including demands for thousands of dollars , which they didn ’ t have .
The reason he ultimately lost his plea to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the details of the attacks themselves .
There were two minor inconsistencies between a written 2013 declaration about the attacks and Alvarenga ’ s version of events presented in person before the courts in 2017 — both related to vehicle doors .
The first declaration , Alvarenga explained , was made over the phone while he was in immigration detention , where he couldn ’ t hear his attorney well and the line kept cutting out .
Transcripts show that initial immigration judge would not allow him to explain the problems with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have interrogated but didn ’ t .
His story , Alvarenga told me , has always been the same .
In the 2013 declaration , Alvarenga supposedly said that his friend José escaped from the front seat of the taxi and ran away , suffering only a graze wound .
In his oral testimony in court , four years later , Alvarenga said that José was seated in the backseat with him and jumped out of the taxi from there .
Likewise , the declaration said that , while riding to class , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bus to escape his would-be killers .
But , in his in-court oral testimony , he said he escaped through the back door of the bus .
He told me , again , that he had always maintained he had left out the back .
“ They got on in front , ” he said , exasperated .
“ So how could I have gotten off in front ?
I couldn ’ t go through them.
” Judge Thomas Durkin , in his dissenting opinion to the appeal , saw the inconsistencies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as “ trivial when considered in relation to Alvarenga ’ s broader story.
” Still , these kinds of immaterial consistencies can be grounds for asylum denial , according to the 2005 REAL ID Act .
The law , purportedly meant to deter terrorists from abusing the asylum system , not only required evidence to support claims , but allowed for judges to deny claims based on even minor discrepancies in an applicant ’ s testimony .
Reichlin-Melnick gave the example of an asylum-seeker stating they were beaten “ a few times ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beaten a dozen times — a difference that could be grounds for denial .
Kagan , the law professor , said Barrett ’ s rulings were by the book .
In the immigration court system , appellate judges defer to immigration judges ’ decisions unless the facts “ compel ” the judge to reverse the decision .
“ The court of appeals are not supposed to reverse a decision just because they have a hunch that it was a wrong decision , ” Kagan said .
There are also no explicit requirements to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effects of trauma .
“ Good judges should take all these things into account , ” Reichlin-Melnick said .
“ But not all judges are good judges.
” Despite the constraints , judges have ample room for discretion , leading , for instance , to Durkin ’ s dissent in the Alvarenga case .
By law , judges should also consider the “ totality of the circumstances , ” which entail the conditions of confinement , the fallibility of human memory — especially in regard to trauma — and the time between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beings are not automatons , ” Reichlin-Melnick said .
“ Memory is fallible.
” About his time in detention , Alvarenga said : “ It was a totalitarian space .
You have to do everything they tell you .
For a human being , that ’ s hard .
I couldn ’ t sleep , I didn ’ t feel good .
Psychologically , it was so hard .
You even lose your sense of time.
” He went for long periods , he told me , without even seeing the sun .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to injury can come from a simple failure to acknowledge the circumstances of a case , even as part of a by-the-book decision against an asylum-seeker .
As she ruled against Alvarenga , for instance , Barrett didn ’ t mention any of the context stacked against people like him : from the trauma of the initial incidents to navigating the labyrinth of immigration court to the cruelties of detention , all done outside of native languages .
Barrett offered no comment on how any of that might have resulted in those discrepant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ piece of her final ruling that Alvarenga saw as disdain for his experience — an unnecessary swipe , apart from the decision to deport him , but casting a pall over that ruling nonetheless .
In Barrett ’ s decision , there is a footnote on page 2 : Alvarenga , still scared for his life , had asked for his name to be redacted in the published record of his case — something the 7th Circuit has granted in similar cases .
It would have brought a small measure of insurance ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want the gangs or the corrupt local police in El Salvador to realize he was being sent back .
He didn ’ t want to be a target again .
Barrett refused his request .

In early March 2013, Gerson Alvarenga-Flores was in a taxi with three friends, on his way to a birthday party in a rural town outside of La Unión, El Salvador. Suddenly, two men with rifles appeared in the road ahead and signaled for the taxi to stop. The men were both members of the MS-13 gang. When the passengers refused to exit the taxi, the gang members began shooting.
Three of the passengers were shot: One was grazed by a bullet, another severely wounded — though he would survive — and a third killed on the spot. Alvarenga had remained in the taxi, which had started reversing away during the scramble. He was left without a scratch. He went to the police, who told him that “they couldn’t be responsible for what had happened or for our lives,” according to a transcript of his asylum hearing.
Soon after the attack, Alvarenga started receiving threats: The gang members didn’t want a witness to their murder left alive. On his way to classes at the university where he was studying systems engineering, the same gang members he had encountered stormed onto a bus to confront him, but he was able to jump off and, again, escape.
Alvarenga hid out for a couple of months, but soon realized he had no hope left for a life in El Salvador. He fled to the United States to ask for asylum.
“I can’t go anywhere, not even to the park. I can barely work. This isn’t life.”
His five-year search for protection would eventually be denied in 2018 by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, then a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, based on the technicality of minor discrepancies in Alvarenga’s story that a dissenting judge called “trivial.” After her decision was issued, Alvarenga was deported back to El Salvador, just before Christmas in 2018.
Now, Alvarenga hardly leaves his parents’ small property for fear he’ll be spotted and killed. “I can’t go anywhere, not even to the park. I can barely work,” he said. “This isn’t life.”
As the Senate confirmation hearing approaches, Barrett’s judicial record and past statements on hot-button legal issues like abortion and health care are being carefully picked apart, but her immigration record has come under less severe scrutiny. And, while as a 7th Circuit judge — nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate in 2017 — she only issued five immigration-related decisions, she very well may play a key factor in the hyperpartisan realm of immigration law.
Alvarenga’s story speaks not only to how Barrett might rule on such immigration cases, but to the systemic regulatory disaster of the U.S. asylum process itself: how it fails to protect the persecuted.
Whether Trump or Joe Biden wins the presidential election, a raft of immigration-related cases could reach the Supreme Court in the next four years. But four more years of Trump’s harsh policies would likely engender continued — and more consequential — legal challenges. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, told The Intercept that there are a number of “consequential immigration cases that could come before the Supreme Court,” including cases on the public charge rule — which serves to bar poor people from migrating to the U.S. — further attacks on asylum, and other changes to the regulatory system.
Considering her immigration-related decisions from the 7th Circuit, Michael Kagan, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of “The Battle to Stay in America,” told The Intercept that Barrett’s stance was not necessarily anti-immigrant. “Some of her decisions would please the Trump administration and some would please immigration activists,” Kagan said. While Kagan detected “no bias for or against immigrants” — he called her ruling on the Alvarenga case “boilerplate” and “a pretty straightforward decision based on the rules” — the decision itself adhered to a system of laws whose gears are gummed up by more than a century of anti-immigrant vitriol.
(The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the Alvarenga case and Barrett’s immigration record.)
Barrett’s other immigration decisions on the 7th Circuit also point to a tight, textual analysis. She dissented from a ruling in which the majority blocked the Trump administration from wielding a “public charge” rule: the racist, classist, misogynist, centuries-old club the government has long wielded to keep out the immigrants it doesn’t want. Barrett even acknowledged in her dissent that some critics view the public charge rule as “too harsh.” Nonetheless, she would have upheld it.
In another case, however, she ruled against the Trump administration’s attempt to end the use of administrative closure, a tool judges can use to stop deportations in complicated or lengthy proceedings — especially when the immigrant may be eligible to stay legally if given enough time to process an application — and which also allows them to prioritize other cases.
For Alvarenga, that Barrett’s rulings are based strictly on the word of the law are little comfort. Under the law, she could have ruled differently — not only in his case itself, but also in a procedural matter that would have kept him safer upon deportation — but Barrett chose not to use her discretion, failing to take the dangers Alvarenga faced into account in her ruling. In Alvarenga’s eyes, Barrett had the last say in his case and failed to offer him protection. Now, he fears for his life.
“I followed the migration laws,” Alvarenga said. “I respect those laws. But the system, and those who apply the laws, they got it wrong.”
“It hurts to think about it,” Alvarenga said of the attack and ordeal that followed. “From one night to the next morning, my life was ruined.” He never was able to finish his degree. After fleeing, he spent more than two years in what he referred to as prison — a series of immigration detention centers in the United States — while fighting for asylum. His name was smeared in the local press when Salvadoran police, in cahoots with MS-13, issued an arrest warrant for him, triggering an Interpol red alert. His family, too, received death threats. His mother said there were “over two hundred calls” in the weeks following the attack, including demands for thousands of dollars, which they didn’t have.
The reason he ultimately lost his plea to stay in the U.S. goes back to the details of the attacks themselves. There were two minor inconsistencies between a written 2013 declaration about the attacks and Alvarenga’s version of events presented in person before the courts in 2017 — both related to vehicle doors. The first declaration, Alvarenga explained, was made over the phone while he was in immigration detention, where he couldn’t hear his attorney well and the line kept cutting out. Transcripts show that initial immigration judge would not allow him to explain the problems with the declaration in court — something Barrett could have interrogated but didn’t. His story, Alvarenga told me, has always been the same.
In the 2013 declaration, Alvarenga supposedly said that his friend José escaped from the front seat of the taxi and ran away, suffering only a graze wound. In his oral testimony in court, four years later, Alvarenga said that José was seated in the backseat with him and jumped out of the taxi from there. Likewise, the declaration said that, while riding to class, Alvarenga jumped out of the front of the bus to escape his would-be killers. But, in his in-court oral testimony, he said he escaped through the back door of the bus. He told me, again, that he had always maintained he had left out the back. “They got on in front,” he said, exasperated. “So how could I have gotten off in front? I couldn’t go through them.”
Judge Thomas Durkin, in his dissenting opinion to the appeal, saw the inconsistencies that came up in his court appearance as “trivial when considered in relation to Alvarenga’s broader story.” Still, these kinds of immaterial consistencies can be grounds for asylum denial, according to the 2005 REAL ID Act. The law, purportedly meant to deter terrorists from abusing the asylum system, not only required evidence to support claims, but allowed for judges to deny claims based on even minor discrepancies in an applicant’s testimony. Reichlin-Melnick gave the example of an asylum-seeker stating they were beaten “a few times” and then later specifying that they were beaten a dozen times — a difference that could be grounds for denial.
“Good judges should take all these things into account. But not all judges are good judges.”
Kagan, the law professor, said Barrett’s rulings were by the book. In the immigration court system, appellate judges defer to immigration judges’ decisions unless the facts “compel” the judge to reverse the decision. “The court of appeals are not supposed to reverse a decision just because they have a hunch that it was a wrong decision,” Kagan said. There are also no explicit requirements to take into account cultural differences or the effects of trauma. “Good judges should take all these things into account,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “But not all judges are good judges.”
Despite the constraints, judges have ample room for discretion, leading, for instance, to Durkin’s dissent in the Alvarenga case. By law, judges should also consider the “totality of the circumstances,” which entail the conditions of confinement, the fallibility of human memory — especially in regard to trauma — and the time between the act and the testimony. “Human beings are not automatons,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “Memory is fallible.”
About his time in detention, Alvarenga said: “It was a totalitarian space. You have to do everything they tell you. For a human being, that’s hard. I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t feel good. Psychologically, it was so hard. You even lose your sense of time.” He went for long periods, he told me, without even seeing the sun.
For advocates, however, adding insult to injury can come from a simple failure to acknowledge the circumstances of a case, even as part of a by-the-book decision against an asylum-seeker. As she ruled against Alvarenga, for instance, Barrett didn’t mention any of the context stacked against people like him: from the trauma of the initial incidents to navigating the labyrinth of immigration court to the cruelties of detention, all done outside of native languages. Barrett offered no comment on how any of that might have resulted in those discrepant details.
Then there was a small piece of her final ruling that Alvarenga saw as disdain for his experience — an unnecessary swipe, apart from the decision to deport him, but casting a pall over that ruling nonetheless.
In Barrett’s decision, there is a footnote on page 2: Alvarenga, still scared for his life, had asked for his name to be redacted in the published record of his case — something the 7th Circuit has granted in similar cases. It would have brought a small measure of insurance; upon deportation, he didn’t want the gangs or the corrupt local police in El Salvador to realize he was being sent back. He didn’t want to be a target again. Barrett refused his request.


theintercept--2020-10-10--Federal Agents Used Toxic Chemical Smoke Grenades in Portland

she was standing in front of the federal courthouse on Lownsdale Square on the night of July 25 , Olivia Katbi Smith had already been exposed to tear gas several times .
On those previous occasions during the Black Lives Matter protests in Portland , Oregon , this summer , being gassed had been very unpleasant : leaving her coughing and making her eyes and nose run and sting .
But this time , standing about 30 feet from the fence that was surrounding the downtown courthouse , Smith felt suddenly and violently worse than she ever had before .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was going to puke or pass out , ” she recalled recently .
“ I was stumbling , trying to get away.
” Smith , who is 28 , was wearing goggles plus an N95 mask and thought that whatever was making her ill might have been trapped inside her mask .
“ So I made a really bad instinctual decision to take it off , ” she said .
“ And instead of bringing relief , it instantly felt so much worse , like I was trapped in the air .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ breathe.
” Smith , like thousands of others in Portland , took to the streets in June to protest the suffocation and killing of George Floyd by a police officer .
By the beginning of July , the crowds had begun to thin somewhat .
But after Trump decided to send federal law enforcement to the city that month , the number of protesters surged and violence escalated .
And according to interviews with more than a dozen people who attended the protests and research by the Portland-based Chemical Weapons Research Consortium , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use of chemical munitions on the crowds in the second half of July , as the federal agents released greater amounts and different types of smoke and gas onto crowds that seemed to set off severe and sometimes lasting health effects .
The Portland Police Bureau began using tear gas on Black Lives Matters protesters almost as soon as they first assembled in late May .
Mayor Ted Wheeler acknowledged that the city has used “ CS ” tear gas .
The commonly used formulation contains 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile , a compound that was designed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have long-term effects , including chronic bronchitis .
In early September , Wheeler ordered the police to stop using it .
Tear gas is banned in war but can be used to disburse crowds of civilians .
After federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security descended on Portland in July in a mission dubbed “ Operation Diligent Valor , ” the use of chemicals irritants to control , drive away , and confuse protesters and obscure the actions of law enforcement grew and intensified .
Among the products that federal agents appear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a hexachloroethane “ smoke grenade ” manufactured by a company called Defense Technology and sold as “ Maximum HC Smoke.
” Volunteers for the Chemical Weapons Research Consortium collected 20 canisters from the protest area that are the size and shape of the smoke grenades , at least five of which still had Defense Technology labels on them .
The group also analyzed the chemical residue on one of the recovered spent canisters and found it contained chemicals known to be released by the smoke grenades .
Juniper Simonis , a scientist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that they were also able to track the use of the “ HC ” bombs or grenades through video and photographs because of their distinctive burning patterns .
“ No other type of munition they used burns like it , ” said Simonis , who described the smoke bombs as giving off “ visible heat ” for one-and-a-half to two minutes .
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept about its agents ’ use of hexachloroethane “ smoke grenades ” and other kinds of crowd control @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Technology referred questions about the use of the grenade to its parent company , the Safariland Group , which did not respond .
The HC smoke bomb , which was developed in the 1930s to disperse people and conceal actions on the battlefield , is particularly dangerous to health and the environment .
The Military-Style Maximum Smoke HC grenade from Defense Technology is “ very toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects ” and is “ suspected of causing cancer , ” according to the grenade ’ s safety data sheet .
Environmental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of trees and a long-term reduction in their growth .
The health effects of hexachloroethane include nausea , vomiting , central nervous system depression , and kidney and liver damage , according to the compound ’ s material safety data sheet .
Zinc chloride , a compound released by the grenades in even greater amounts than hexachloroethane , has “ long-lasting effects ” on aquatic life , according to its manufacturer ’ s safety data sheet .
The toxic compound also causes fever , chest pain , and liver damage and is associated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loss .
Although the grenade ’ s manufacturer , Defense Technology , markets it as “ military style , ” the Department of Defense appears to have begun phasing out the smoke bomb years ago because it was incredibly dangerous .
A 1994 report of the U.S. Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory notes , “ Exposure of unprotected soldiers to high concentrations of HC smoke for even a few minutes has resulted in injuries and fatalities.
” The Department of Defense did not respond to an inquiry about whether it had discontinued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 2012 report by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program , the Department of Defense ’ s environmental program , indicates that the U.S. military was at the time exploring the adoption of several less toxic “ obscurants ” because of the serious breathing difficulties , swelling of the lungs , severe liver problems , and death associated with the grenades .
The SERDP report notes that those health issues “ pose a threat to the health of the war fighters that are exposed to this smoke during training and combat.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and smoke during the standoffs with federal agents in Portland report a constellation of immediate and enduring effects not usually associated with tear gas , including vomiting , hair loss , inability to eat , and inability to focus or “ brain fog.
” Some of the symptoms are consistent with those the military and the chemical manufacturers have linked to both hexachloroethane and zinc chloride .
Many people were instantly sickened by the chemical cloud .
“ I vomited and the people around me were vomiting as well , ” said a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ A whole block of people was throwing up into their respirators , ” said Hexen , who was also wearing a respirator that covered much of her face .
“ At that point , I felt like I had to take it off to vomit , ” she said .
“ And when I did , I had a blinding , choking feeling .
My whole body started shaking .
I couldn ’ t see , and I couldn ’ t process anything.
” Laura Jedeed , who went to the majority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t vomit but wanted to .
“ There ’ s a gag reflex , ” she said of her immediate reaction to the substance that federal agents sprayed into the air .
While she had been exposed to tear gas from the Portland Police Bureau on several occasions , “ whatever the feds were putting out there felt a lot worse , ” said Jedeed .
“ It burns like you ’ re on fire for 24 hours.
” The night after being exposed , Jedeed slept clutching frozen cans to cool her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day after , I ’ d get a gag reflex when I was swallowing.
” Long after that , she struggled to eat and by August had lost 10 pounds .
Although Jedeed served in the Army ’ s 82nd Airborne Division and was deployed twice to Afghanistan , she said the ordeal of being exposed to chemicals “ felt more like combat than anything I experienced in the military.
” Others also reported being uninterested in or repelled by food , and weight loss that persisted for days and sometimes weeks after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a music journalist and regular at the protests , began to find it difficult to eat in late July after being repeatedly exposed to tear gas and smoke bombs lobbed by federal agents .
By early August , he had dropped from 193 to 181 pounds and recently said that he has yet to regain the weight .
The harms caused by the chemical agents are among the many physical injuries that resulted from the clashes with federal agents and local police in Portland .
In a report released Thursday , Physicians for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of disproportionate and excessive use of force ” by both Portland Police Bureau officers and federal agents during the protests throughout June and July .
The report details brutal injuries from rubber bullets , other impact munitions , and tear gas canisters thrown at protesters in the city , which has logged more instances of police brutality during this summer of protest than any other U.S. city .
The report also noted that the number of serious injuries from these “ kinetic impact projectiles ” in Portland increased after federal agents arrived in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confirmed 115 head injuries during the protests following George Floyd ’ s death between May 26 and July 27 .
Nate Cohen was one of the people in Portland whom federal agents shot with a tear gas canister in July .
Cohen was working as a medic around 1 a.m on July 26 .
And although U.N. guidance says governments have to protect medical personnel so that protesters have timely access to emergency medical services , and Cohen was wearing seven visible red crosses at the time , he said he felt clearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agents .
The American Civil Liberties Union is representing Cohen and several volunteer street medics in a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security , the U.S .
Marshals Service , and the city of Portland for targeting them at the protests .
“ Tear gas canisters are not designed and explicitly not meant to be shot at human beings , ” said Cohen , who has a chronic heart condition that has worsened since the incident and now has a canister-shaped scar on his chest .
While local police also used gas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agents used them differently , according to Cohen .
“ The Portland Police Bureau usually shot them into the air , ” he said .
“ The feds were shooting them at people.
” And that ’ s only one of several ways that chemical crowd control weapons were misused to potentially dangerous effect .
While Portland police did consistently use tear gas , the federal agents used far more of it .
“ The amount of tear gas that they used , especially in late July , was so extreme relative to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what that level of exposure does to people , ” said Cohen .
The fact that several of the tear gas canisters recovered after the protests showed that the products had expired long ago raises further questions , according to Cohen .
“ These were 10 to 15 years past their throw-out dates , ” he said .
“ None of us have any clear idea of what happens to CS gas after it begins to break down.
” Perhaps the biggest question about the chemicals is which ones exactly the agents released @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had gotten somewhat accustomed to being gassed by Portland police before she was doused with chemicals by federal agents in late July .
“ We had learned pretty quickly that you can get used to the sting that comes along with it , ” Randolph said of the gas released by the local police .
“ But when the feds started tear gassing , it was painful.
” Even though she was wearing a gas mask and had covered her body from head to toe , Randolph found herself suddenly and painfully unable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ haze from canisters the agents had shot near her .
“ I dropped to my knees , ” she said .
“ I could not walk or stand up to the point where people had to help me.
” The aftereffects lasted markedly longer than when she had been gassed in the past .
“ I had a mental fog for almost a week afterward , ” said Randolph , who is a neuroscientist and board member of Don ’ t Shoot Portland .
In addition to being confused , unable to focus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had several severe migraines and vomited twice during the weeks after her exposure .
For days , she was so sick she was unable to leave her bed .
Many of the friends Randolph was gassed with told her they were also having symptoms — including some that she didn ’ t have .
One thing they all shared was the question of what exactly they had been exposed to .
“ What was that ?
” Randolph and her friends began asking each other .
According to the Physicians for Human Rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ where there is not sufficient toxicological information available to confirm that it will not cause unwarranted health problems ” is probably unlawful .
“ It ’ s absolutely unacceptable that we don ’ t know what was used , ” said Dr. Michele Heisler , medical director at Physicians for Human Rights .
According to Heisler , international principles require law enforcement to provide information on the composition of any chemical irritants used .
“ But , in Portland , there was no information provided.
” For people who were exposed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the use of potentially multiple unknown chemicals .
“ What happens if , in the space of two minutes , you breathe HC gas then another gas and then another gas ?
” asked Cohen .
“ I don ’ t think anybody knows .
I think we ’ re in uncharted territory as to what the implications are.
” Life in this uncharted territory can be scary .
Mac Smiff , who is still trying to regain the weight he lost since July , worries about the possibility that he and others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chemicals that blanketed Portland this summer may have an increased cancer risk .
“ I was just talking to a friend whose mom has cancer about how many of us have been exposed to things that may be carcinogens , ” said Smiff .
“ There are still so many questions we were exposed to.
” Randolph , the neuroscientist , is worried about lasting mental health effects .
“ Being gassed is traumatic , ” she said .
“ And seeing all that violence happen , a lot of people will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for anxiety , depression , and mood disorders.
” While most of the tactical federal agents withdrew from Portland in late July , a protester who goes by Jack Tudela believes she was again exposed to the toxic chemicals when she was attending a protest at an ICE facility on September 18 .
Since July , Tudela had already experienced some disturbing symptoms she tied to the chemicals used by the federal agents .
She usually likes to keep her nails long but recently began to notice that her nails were turning brittle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beginning to lose her waist-long , black hair .
After she showered , clumps of hair came off in her comb .
And Tudela , who has a seizure disorder that is controlled by medicine , said she experienced more frequent mild seizures after the gassing incidents .
Like many other women who protested in Portland , Tudela also noticed changes in her menstrual cycle after being exposed to chemicals at the protests .
Tudela ’ s exposure at the September protest may further exacerbate and prolong all of the symptoms she is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gas that night , ” she said .
Tudela went to that protest to draw attention to reports that ICE had performed hysterectomies on women in their custody without their consent .
And , as she expected , after the chemical-laden confrontation , she experienced some of the same reactions she had at previous protests , including burning in her lungs , nausea , vomiting , difficulty focusing , and an aversion to food .
Still , she said , expressing outrage over the violation of others ’ bodies was worth the risks @ @ @ @

By the time she was standing in front of the federal courthouse on Lownsdale Square on the night of July 25, Olivia Katbi Smith had already been exposed to tear gas several times. On those previous occasions during the Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, this summer, being gassed had been very unpleasant: leaving her coughing and making her eyes and nose run and sting.
But this time, standing about 30 feet from the fence that was surrounding the downtown courthouse, Smith felt suddenly and violently worse than she ever had before. “I didn’t know if I was going to puke or pass out,” she recalled recently. “I was stumbling, trying to get away.” Smith, who is 28, was wearing goggles plus an N95 mask and thought that whatever was making her ill might have been trapped inside her mask. “So I made a really bad instinctual decision to take it off,” she said. “And instead of bringing relief, it instantly felt so much worse, like I was trapped in the air. It was overwhelming. I could not breathe.”
Smith, like thousands of others in Portland, took to the streets in June to protest the suffocation and killing of George Floyd by a police officer. By the beginning of July, the crowds had begun to thin somewhat. But after Trump decided to send federal law enforcement to the city that month, the number of protesters surged and violence escalated. And according to interviews with more than a dozen people who attended the protests and research by the Portland-based Chemical Weapons Research Consortium, there was a marked shift in the use of chemical munitions on the crowds in the second half of July, as the federal agents released greater amounts and different types of smoke and gas onto crowds that seemed to set off severe and sometimes lasting health effects.
Smoke Grenades
The Portland Police Bureau began using tear gas on Black Lives Matters protesters almost as soon as they first assembled in late May. Mayor Ted Wheeler acknowledged that the city has used “CS” tear gas. The commonly used formulation contains 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, a compound that was designed to induce immediate pain but can also have long-term effects, including chronic bronchitis. In early September, Wheeler ordered the police to stop using it. Tear gas is banned in war but can be used to disperse crowds of civilians.
Photo: Courtesy of Juniper Simonis
After federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security descended on Portland in July in a mission dubbed “Operation Diligent Valor,” the use of chemical irritants to control, drive away, and confuse protesters and obscure the actions of law enforcement grew and intensified. Among the products that federal agents appear to have used during the military-style crackdown is a hexachloroethane “smoke grenade” manufactured by a company called Defense Technology and sold as “Maximum HC Smoke.” Volunteers for the Chemical Weapons Research Consortium collected 20 canisters from the protest area that are the size and shape of the smoke grenades, at least five of which still had Defense Technology labels on them. The group also analyzed the chemical residue on one of the recovered spent canisters and found it contained chemicals known to be released by the smoke grenades.
Juniper Simonis, a scientist and researcher with the Portland-based group, said that they were also able to track the use of the “HC” bombs or grenades through video and photographs because of their distinctive burning patterns. “No other type of munition they used burns like it,” said Simonis, who described the smoke bombs as giving off “visible heat” for one-and-a-half to two minutes.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept about its agents’ use of hexachloroethane “smoke grenades” and other kinds of crowd control weapons on protesters in Portland. Defense Technology referred questions about the use of the grenade to its parent company, the Safariland Group, which did not respond.
The HC smoke bomb, which was developed in the 1930s to disperse people and conceal actions on the battlefield, is particularly dangerous to health and the environment. The Military-Style Maximum Smoke HC grenade from Defense Technology is “very toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects” and is “suspected of causing cancer,” according to the grenade’s safety data sheet. Environmental effects of the smoke bombs include defoliation of trees and a long-term reduction in their growth.
The health effects of hexachloroethane include nausea, vomiting, central nervous system depression, and kidney and liver damage, according to the compound’s material safety data sheet. Zinc chloride, a compound released by the grenades in even greater amounts than hexachloroethane, has “long-lasting effects” on aquatic life, according to its manufacturer’s safety data sheet. The toxic compound also causes fever, chest pain, and liver damage and is associated with anorexia, fatigue, and weight loss.
Although the grenade’s manufacturer, Defense Technology, markets it as “military style,” the Department of Defense appears to have begun phasing out the smoke bomb years ago because it was incredibly dangerous. A 1994 report of the U.S. Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory notes, “Exposure of unprotected soldiers to high concentrations of HC smoke for even a few minutes has resulted in injuries and fatalities.”
The Department of Defense did not respond to an inquiry about whether it had discontinued use of HC smoke grenades. But a 2012 report by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, the Department of Defense’s environmental program, indicates that the U.S. military was at the time exploring the adoption of several less toxic “obscurants” because of the serious breathing difficulties, swelling of the lungs, severe liver problems, and death associated with the grenades. The SERDP report notes that those health issues “pose a threat to the health of the war fighters that are exposed to this smoke during training and combat.”
(Left/top) After a reaction has stopped, HC canister shows charred remains and (right/bottom) HC ordnance off-gassing Zinc Chloride mid-deployment. Photo: Courtesy of Sarah Riddle.
Immediate and Lasting Effects
Protesters who were exposed to chemical gas and smoke during the standoffs with federal agents in Portland report a constellation of immediate and enduring effects not usually associated with tear gas, including vomiting, hair loss, inability to eat, and inability to focus or “brain fog.” Some of the symptoms are consistent with those the military and the chemical manufacturers have linked to both hexachloroethane and zinc chloride.
Many people were instantly sickened by the chemical cloud. “I vomited and the people around me were vomiting as well,” said a medic who goes by Opal Hexen. “A whole block of people was throwing up into their respirators,” said Hexen, who was also wearing a respirator that covered much of her face. “At that point, I felt like I had to take it off to vomit,” she said. “And when I did, I had a blinding, choking feeling. My whole body started shaking. I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t process anything.”
Laura Jedeed, who went to the majority of protests in July, didn’t vomit but wanted to. “There’s a gag reflex,” she said of her immediate reaction to the substance that federal agents sprayed into the air. While she had been exposed to tear gas from the Portland Police Bureau on several occasions, “whatever the feds were putting out there felt a lot worse,” said Jedeed. “It burns like you’re on fire for 24 hours.” The night after being exposed, Jedeed slept clutching frozen cans to cool her hands. “And for about a day after, I’d get a gag reflex when I was swallowing.” Long after that, she struggled to eat and by August had lost 10 pounds.
Although Jedeed served in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and was deployed twice to Afghanistan, she said the ordeal of being exposed to chemicals “felt more like combat than anything I experienced in the military.”
Others also reported being uninterested in or repelled by food, and weight loss that persisted for days and sometimes weeks after the initial exposure. Mac Smiff, a music journalist and regular at the protests, began to find it difficult to eat in late July after being repeatedly exposed to tear gas and smoke bombs lobbed by federal agents. By early August, he had dropped from 193 to 181 pounds and recently said that he has yet to regain the weight.
Read Our Complete Coverage Protests for Black Lives
The harms caused by the chemical agents are among the many physical injuries that resulted from the clashes with federal agents and local police in Portland. In a report released Thursday, Physicians for Human Rights documented a “consistent pattern of disproportionate and excessive use of force” by both Portland Police Bureau officers and federal agents during the protests throughout June and July. The report details brutal injuries from rubber bullets, other impact munitions, and tear gas canisters thrown at protesters in the city, which has logged more instances of police brutality during this summer of protest than any other U.S. city. The report also noted that the number of serious injuries from these “kinetic impact projectiles” in Portland increased after federal agents arrived in July. Nationwide, the group has confirmed 115 head injuries during the protests following George Floyd’s death between May 26 and July 27.
Nate Cohen was one of the people in Portland whom federal agents shot with a tear gas canister in July. Cohen was working as a medic around 1 a.m on July 26. And although U.N. guidance says governments have to protect medical personnel so that protesters have timely access to emergency medical services, and Cohen was wearing seven visible red crosses at the time, he said he felt clearly targeted at close range by the federal agents. The American Civil Liberties Union is representing Cohen and several volunteer street medics in a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the city of Portland for targeting them at the protests.
“Tear gas canisters are not designed and explicitly not meant to be shot at human beings.”
“Tear gas canisters are not designed and explicitly not meant to be shot at human beings,” said Cohen, who has a chronic heart condition that has worsened since the incident and now has a canister-shaped scar on his chest. While local police also used gas canisters as ballistic weapons, the federal agents used them differently, according to Cohen. “The Portland Police Bureau usually shot them into the air,” he said. “The feds were shooting them at people.”
And that’s only one of several ways that chemical crowd control weapons were misused to potentially dangerous effect. While Portland police did consistently use tear gas, the federal agents used far more of it. “The amount of tear gas that they used, especially in late July, was so extreme relative to normal procedures that we have no idea what that level of exposure does to people,” said Cohen.
The fact that several of the tear gas canisters recovered after the protests showed that the products had expired long ago raises further questions, according to Cohen. “These were 10 to 15 years past their throw-out dates,” he said. “None of us have any clear idea of what happens to CS gas after it begins to break down.”
They are maximum smoke HC. The one Garrison is on Twitter for filming as it burned, I have a living dud of. DM me if you need to see it physically. pic.twitter.com/kFk8SfXA8t — Phoenix?????? (@PhoenixRisingx3) August 1, 2020
Uncharted Territory
Perhaps the biggest question about the chemicals is which ones exactly the agents released and in what quantities. Anita Randolph had gotten somewhat accustomed to being gassed by Portland police before she was doused with chemicals by federal agents in late July. “We had learned pretty quickly that you can get used to the sting that comes along with it,” Randolph said of the gas released by the local police. “But when the feds started tear gassing, it was painful.” Even though she was wearing a gas mask and had covered her body from head to toe, Randolph found herself suddenly and painfully unable to breathe after being surrounded by a haze from canisters the agents had shot near her. “I dropped to my knees,” she said. “I could not walk or stand up to the point where people had to help me.”
The aftereffects lasted markedly longer than when she had been gassed in the past. “I had a mental fog for almost a week afterward,” said Randolph, who is a neuroscientist and board member of Don’t Shoot Portland. In addition to being confused, unable to focus, and struggling with memory, Randolph had several severe migraines and vomited twice during the weeks after her exposure. For days, she was so sick she was unable to leave her bed. Many of the friends Randolph was gassed with told her they were also having symptoms — including some that she didn’t have.
One thing they all shared was the question of what exactly they had been exposed to. “What was that?” Randolph and her friends began asking each other.
According to the Physicians for Human Rights report, the use of chemical irritants “where there is not sufficient toxicological information available to confirm that it will not cause unwarranted health problems” is probably unlawful.
“It’s absolutely unacceptable that we don’t know what was used,” said Dr. Michele Heisler, medical director at Physicians for Human Rights. According to Heisler, international principles require law enforcement to provide information on the composition of any chemical irritants used. “But, in Portland, there was no information provided.”
For people who were exposed, questions about their health are compounded by the use of potentially multiple unknown chemicals. “What happens if, in the space of two minutes, you breathe HC gas then another gas and then another gas?” asked Cohen. “I don’t think anybody knows. I think we’re in uncharted territory as to what the implications are.”
Life in this uncharted territory can be scary. Mac Smiff, who is still trying to regain the weight he lost since July, worries about the possibility that he and others who spent time in the fog of chemicals that blanketed Portland this summer may have an increased cancer risk. “I was just talking to a friend whose mom has cancer about how many of us have been exposed to things that may be carcinogens,” said Smiff. “There are still so many questions we were exposed to.”
Randolph, the neuroscientist, is worried about lasting mental health effects. “Being gassed is traumatic,” she said. “And seeing all that violence happen, a lot of people will be reaching out for mental health support — for anxiety, depression, and mood disorders.”
While most of the tactical federal agents withdrew from Portland in late July, a protester who goes by Jack Tudela believes she was again exposed to the toxic chemicals when she was attending a protest at an ICE facility on September 18. Since July, Tudela had already experienced some disturbing symptoms she tied to the chemicals used by the federal agents. She usually likes to keep her nails long but recently began to notice that her nails were turning brittle and breaking off. She was also beginning to lose her waist-long, black hair. After she showered, clumps of hair came off in her comb. And Tudela, who has a seizure disorder that is controlled by medicine, said she experienced more frequent mild seizures after the gassing incidents. Like many other women who protested in Portland, Tudela also noticed changes in her menstrual cycle after being exposed to chemicals at the protests.
Tudela’s exposure at the September protest may further exacerbate and prolong all of the symptoms she is experiencing. “They unleashed so much gas that night,” she said. Tudela went to that protest to draw attention to reports that ICE had performed hysterectomies on women in their custody without their consent. And, as she expected, after the chemical-laden confrontation, she experienced some of the same reactions she had at previous protests, including burning in her lungs, nausea, vomiting, difficulty focusing, and an aversion to food. Still, she said, expressing outrage over the violation of others’ bodies was worth the risks to her own.