theintercept--2020-08-15--White House Plants Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorists Among Reporters in Briefing Room

effort to make his daily news conferences even more like campaign events than they already are , the White House press office has been packing the briefing room with supporters of President Donald Trump from far-right media outlets who can be relied on to toss him softball questions and initiate attacks on his political rivals .
Clearly in on the plot , Trump solicited a question each day this week from one of the guests invited by his press secretary , Kayleigh McEnany , to stand at the back of the room — where representatives of One America News , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the health of reporters by violating social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines .
On Monday , Trump called on Chanel Rion , a far-right Republican operative and conspiracy theorist now working as a correspondent for One America News , a San Diego cable channel dedicated to spreading lies about Joe Biden and elderly protesters battered by the police .
Rion gave Trump the opportunity to unleash a familiar riff from his pre-pandemic rallies by suggesting to him that Biden might have been considering President Barack Obama ’ s former national security adviser , Susan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ she can best cover up a lot of the Obamagate surveillance crimes that have taken place during your campaign.
” Trump responded by accusing Obama and Biden of “ probably treason.
” The next day , Rion triggered another familiar Trump diatribe by asking for his take on the resignation of Carmen Best , the first Black woman to lead Seattle ’ s police force , after the city council voted to cut her department ’ s budget .
“ What does this say about our country ?
” Rion asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say about the Defund Police movement ?
” The president replied by repeating the lie that Seattle ’ s Democratic mayor had let “ a radical left group , Antifa and others , take over a big portion of the city.
” On Wednesday , Rion drew Trump ’ s attention to what looked like a fairly lame conservative prank — the fact that the obscure website antifa.com was suddenly redirecting traffic to Biden ’ s campaign site .
Suggesting that this stunt might somehow indicate support for Biden from the loose network @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a shadow army , Rion asked if the president thought Biden and his running mate , Sen. Kamala Harris , should “ publicly denounce the Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization ?
” Powe ’ s question was based on a blog post by the founder of Gateway Pundit , Jim Hoft , which amplified an attack on Biden from the Kremlin-owned site Russia Today .
Hoft ’ s post also quotes the analysis of Heshmat Alavi , a supporter of a militant Iranian cult called the Mojahedin-e-Khalq , who , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is a fictional character .
McEnany did not respond to a question about whether she or someone else in her office invited Powe to the briefing on Friday , but Powe is a former blogger for WorldNetDaily , the far-right website that helped create the racist “ birther ” conspiracy theory to undermine President Barack Obama .
Alyssa Farah , the White House director of strategic communications , is the daughter of Joseph Farah , who founded WorldNetDaily .
In the 1990s , Joseph Farah was a leading proponent of the conspiracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Foster might have been murdered .
The presence of Rion , Akan and Powe also infuriated the White House Correspondents Association , whose members have agreed to send only 14 reporters a day during the pandemic , to maintain safe social distance .
The WHCA also wants the aisles at the sides and the back of the room to be open for photographers and video crews to operate safely .
“ It is outrageous that the White House continues to invite ‘ guests ’ to press briefings , putting the health and safety @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk , ” the WHCA president , Zeke Miller , said in an email .
“ The WHCA ’ s social distancing guidelines were crafted in consultation with the White House based on the recommendations of the CDC and the nation ’ s leading public health professionals .
Trampling on those guidelines endangers the critical work of reporters who have maintained independent press coverage of the presidency throughout the pandemic.
” Unlike the original , freewheeling coronavirus task force briefings — which came to a sudden halt in April when Trump mused that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if injecting patients suffering from Covid-19 with bleach or isopropyl alcohol , or exposing them to ultraviolet light , might cure them — the president ’ s current news conferences are much shorter and seem designed mainly to get his lengthy , written opening statements on the air and get him out of the briefing room after taking just a handful of questions .
Trump ’ s opening statements at the latest briefings are often nakedly political in nature , featuring crude , jarring attacks on Biden and other Democrats .
“ Today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politicize a pandemic and to show his appalling lack of respect for the American people .
That ’ s what it is , ” Trump said at the start of Thursday ’ s briefing .
“ At every turn , Biden has been wrong about the virus , ignoring the scientific evidence and putting left-wing politics before facts and evidence.
” After then blatantly lying about Biden ’ s suggested response to the pandemic in the most idiotic terms — “ Sleepy Joe rejects the scientific approach in favor of locking all Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” — Trump concluded , with a stunning lack of self-awareness : “ To Joe , I would say : Stop playing politics with a virus .
Too serious .
Partisan politics has no place here .
It ’ s a shameful situation for anybody to try and score political points while we ’ re working to save lives and defeat the pandemic.
” Trump ’ s prepared remarks at these briefings almost always feature highly misleading health and economic statistics intended to convey the false impression that the federal government ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world .
At Tuesday ’ s briefing , for example , Trump said in his opening statement : “ Since the end of July , the seven-day average for cases in the United States has fallen by nearly 20 percent , but the virus continues to increase in nations across the globe .
Last week , France and Germany both recorded their highest daily number of new cases in three months — not that I want to bring that up , but might as well explain it to the media.
” While those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of new cases in Europe and decrease by percentage in the U.S. were accurate , what they hid was the fact that , in raw numbers , the pandemic is obviously far less under control here than there .
The day Trump made those remarks , 53,315 new Covid-19 infections were confirmed by testing in the U.S. Germany ’ s highest number of daily infections in three months , recorded this week , was 1,445 .
Cases are down more in the U.S. but from a very high level to a slightly less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , cases are rising but from very low baseline .
Adjusted for population , the U.S. recorded 154 new cases per million on Friday , while France had 41 and Germany 17 .
While the pandemic is resurgent in many parts of the world , Trump has been unable so far to brow-beat the public into accepting his obviously false claims that things are better in the United States than in Europe or Asia .
A new poll released by Monmouth University on Thursday showed that 52 percent of Americans “ think the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is worse than other countries , ” while just 15 percent feel the U.S. is doing a better job than others and 29 percent say it is doing about the same .

In an apparent effort to make his daily news conferences even more like campaign events than they already are, the White House press office has been packing the briefing room with supporters of President Donald Trump from far-right media outlets who can be relied on to toss him softball questions and initiate attacks on his political rivals.
Clearly in on the plot, Trump solicited a question each day this week from one of the guests invited by his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, to stand at the back of the room — where representatives of One America News, The Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit compromised the health of reporters by violating social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines.
On Monday, Trump called on Chanel Rion, a far-right Republican operative and conspiracy theorist now working as a correspondent for One America News, a San Diego cable channel dedicated to spreading lies about Joe Biden and elderly protesters battered by the police.
Rion gave Trump the opportunity to unleash a familiar riff from his pre-pandemic rallies by suggesting to him that Biden might have been considering President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser, Susan Rice, as his running mate because, “she can best cover up a lot of the Obamagate surveillance crimes that have taken place during your campaign.” Trump responded by accusing Obama and Biden of “probably treason.”
The next day, Rion triggered another familiar Trump diatribe by asking for his take on the resignation of Carmen Best, the first Black woman to lead Seattle’s police force, after the city council voted to cut her department’s budget. “What does this say about our country?” Rion asked Trump. “And what does this say about the Defund Police movement?” The president replied by repeating the lie that Seattle’s Democratic mayor had let “a radical left group, Antifa and others, take over a big portion of the city.”
On Wednesday, Rion drew Trump’s attention to what looked like a fairly lame conservative prank — the fact that the obscure website antifa.com was suddenly redirecting traffic to Biden’s campaign site. Suggesting that this stunt might somehow indicate support for Biden from the loose network of antifascist groups Trump has falsely portrayed as a shadow army, Rion asked if the president thought Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, should “publicly denounce the Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization?”
.@ChanelRion: Should Joe Biden, Kamala Harris publicly denounce Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization? President @realDonaldTrump: They should, I think they're afraid to. pic.twitter.com/KO1InJb8aq — Wojciech Pawelczyk (@WojPawelczyk) August 12, 2020
“They should,” Trump replied. “I think they’re afraid to. In my book, it’s virtually a part of their campaign: Antifa.” There was nothing remotely surprising in Trump making the absurd argument that Biden, a centrist Democrat, is secretly part of an antifascist subculture, but Rion’s play-acting as a White House correspondent is not intended to elicit any new information from the president. The point of these exchanges is to shield Trump from what tough questions about his failure to lead a coordinated federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic and to give him an opportunity to repeat lines he has already rehearsed, delivered as if they were answers to questions of vital importance.
Rion, who has been attending briefings as a guest of the White House press secretary since April, previously traveled to Ukraine with the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to promote false accusations about Biden spread by the pro-Russian lawmaker Andriy Derkach. An American intelligence assessment released last week concluded that Derkach was involved in a Russian plot to undermine Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party by “spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls” from 2016 between the former vice president and Ukraine’s president.
On Thursday, shortly after Trump praised the crackpot legal scholar who invented a racist conspiracy theory that Harris was not eligible to be vice president, even though she was born to immigrant parents in Oakland, he turned again to Rion. This time, however, she asked if he would, instead, take a question from Emel Akan of The Epoch Times, another of his press secretary’s guests from an equally rabid pro-Trump media outlet.
When Trump agreed, Akan asked him how the U.S. would respond to “the recent attack on press freedom in Hong Kong,” specifically the arrest of the publisher of the popular Apple Daily tabloid news site, Jimmy Lai, who has been an outspoken critic of the pro-Beijing leadership in the semiautonomous Chinese city. Lai could be charged with “collusion” with the United States for meeting Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington last summer to discuss Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement.
Although Trump began by saying, “Well, I think it’s a terrible thing,” he appeared to have little familiarity or interest in the subject of press freedom, or democracy in Hong Kong, pivoting quickly into his stock complaints about China’s trade policies. He even seemed to gloat a bit when he said that, as a result of the U.S. withdrawing the “tremendous financial incentives” for businesses based in Hong Kong, American companies might profit from the crackdown on the territory.
“We’ve now withdrawn all of those incentives. It’s going to be very hard for Hong Kong to compete,” Trump said. “And I will tell you that the United States… will end up making a lot more money because of it, because we lost a lot of business to Hong Kong,” he added. “We made it very convenient for people to go there, for companies to go there. We’ve withdrawn all of that and the United States will be a big beneficiary from an economic standpoint.”
While Trump’s answer was not the kind of stirring endorsement of press freedom Akan might have expected from an American president, inciting an attack on China’s government was probably gratifying to the owners of The Epoch Times. The paper is owned by members of the dissident Chinese Falun Gong spiritual movement who have spent heavily to promote Trump as a useful battering ram against their ultimate enemy: the Chinese Communist Party that considers the banned sect a cult. An Epoch Times coronavirus explainer video echoes Trump’s rhetoric that China is to blame for the global pandemic, but urges people to call it not “the China Virus,” as Trump does, but the “CCP Virus.”
The White House press secretary’s invitation to the Epoch Times writer to participate in the briefing alongside reporters and photographers from some of America’s leading news organizations is remarkably brazen given that last year, when The Epoch Times was the largest buyer of pro-Trump ads on Facebook outside of the president’s own campaign, the site spent heavily to promote the baseless conspiracy theory that Biden had abused his power as vice president in 2016 to protect his son’s business interests in Ukraine.
Since then, the site has been banned from advertising on Facebook, after NBC reported that the newspaper had secretly placed Facebook ads promoting President Trump. Last week, Facebook also removed 303 fake accounts linked to The Epoch Times for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and pro-Trump conspiracy theories about supposedly shadowy figures behind the ongoing racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
On Friday, after Trump twice refused to answer a question from The Associated Press about whether he believes the QAnon conspiracy theory in which he is a central figure, he solicited one from Alicia Powe, a proponent of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory who writes for the far-right Gateway Pundit blog.
Powe, who has claimed that the Clinton Foundation controls the FBI and is stifling investigations of child sex-trafficking rings and the murder of Seth Rich, asked Trump to comment on the accusation that Biden had claimed credit for the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Powe’s question was based on a blog post by the founder of Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft, which amplified an attack on Biden from the Kremlin-owned site Russia Today. Hoft’s post also quotes the analysis of Heshmat Alavi, a supporter of a militant Iranian cult called the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, who, as my colleague Murtaza Hussain revealed last year, is a fictional character.
McEnany did not respond to a question about whether she or someone else in her office invited Powe to the briefing on Friday, but Powe is a former blogger for WorldNetDaily, the far-right website that helped create the racist “birther” conspiracy theory to undermine President Barack Obama. Alyssa Farah, the White House director of strategic communications, is the daughter of Joseph Farah, who founded WorldNetDaily. In the 1990s, Joseph Farah was a leading proponent of the conspiracy theory that deputy White House counsel Vince Foster might have been murdered.
The presence of Rion, Akan and Powe also infuriated the White House Correspondents Association, whose members have agreed to send only 14 reporters a day during the pandemic, to maintain safe social distance.
The WHCA, which normally decides which accredited journalists are allowed in to the briefing room on a given day, also wants the aisles at the sides and the back of the room to be open for photographers and video crews to operate safely. “It is outrageous that the White House continues to invite ‘guests’ to press briefings, putting the health and safety of everyone in that workspace at greater risk,” the WHCA president, Zeke Miller, said in an email. “The WHCA’s social distancing guidelines were crafted in consultation with the White House based on the recommendations of the CDC and the nation’s leading public health professionals. Trampling on those guidelines endangers the critical work of reporters who have maintained independent press coverage of the presidency throughout the pandemic.”
Until April, OAN was a member of the correspondents’ association but the cable channel was expelled after Rion kept showing up at briefings when it was not her turn. Since then, she has attended press events as a guest of the White House press secretary.
Unlike the original, freewheeling coronavirus task force briefings — which came to a sudden halt in April when Trump mused that doctors should “check” to see if injecting patients suffering from Covid-19 with bleach or isopropyl alcohol, or exposing them to ultraviolet light, might cure them — the president’s current news conferences are much shorter and seem designed mainly to get his lengthy, written opening statements on the air and get him out of the briefing room after taking just a handful of questions.
Trump’s opening statements at the latest briefings are often nakedly political in nature, featuring crude, jarring attacks on Biden and other Democrats. “Today, we saw Joe Biden continue to politicize a pandemic and to show his appalling lack of respect for the American people. That’s what it is,” Trump said at the start of Thursday’s briefing. “At every turn, Biden has been wrong about the virus, ignoring the scientific evidence and putting left-wing politics before facts and evidence.”
After then blatantly lying about Biden’s suggested response to the pandemic in the most idiotic terms — “Sleepy Joe rejects the scientific approach in favor of locking all Americans in their basements for months on end” — Trump concluded, with a stunning lack of self-awareness: “To Joe, I would say: Stop playing politics with a virus. Too serious. Partisan politics has no place here. It’s a shameful situation for anybody to try and score political points while we’re working to save lives and defeat the pandemic.”
Trump’s prepared remarks at these briefings almost always feature highly misleading health and economic statistics intended to convey the false impression that the federal government’s pandemic response is the envy of the world.
At Tuesday’s briefing, for example, Trump said in his opening statement: “Since the end of July, the seven-day average for cases in the United States has fallen by nearly 20 percent, but the virus continues to increase in nations across the globe. Last week, France and Germany both recorded their highest daily number of new cases in three months — not that I want to bring that up, but might as well explain it to the media.” While those statistical measures of the increase by percentage of new cases in Europe and decrease by percentage in the U.S. were accurate, what they hid was the fact that, in raw numbers, the pandemic is obviously far less under control here than there.
The day Trump made those remarks, 53,315 new Covid-19 infections were confirmed by testing in the U.S. Germany’s highest number of daily infections in three months, recorded this week, was 1,445. Cases are down more in the U.S. but from a very high level to a slightly less high level. In much of Europe, cases are rising but from very low baseline. Adjusted for population, the U.S. recorded 154 new cases per million on Friday, while France had 41 and Germany 17.
Photo: Our World in Data
“Those were model countries that you used to talk about and say how well they were doing,” Trump said to a reporter on Wednesday, of other, unnamed nations, “except, they just exploded — they just had very big flare ups.”
Trump also steadfastly refuses to admit that deaths from Covid-19, which have averaged over 1,000 a day for the past three weeks in the U.S., are now far higher than anywhere in Europe, even when adjusted for population.
Photo: Our World in Data
While the pandemic is resurgent in many parts of the world, Trump has been unable so far to brow-beat the public into accepting his obviously false claims that things are better in the United States than in Europe or Asia. A new poll released by Monmouth University on Thursday showed that 52 percent of Americans “think the United States’ handling of the pandemic is worse than other countries,” while just 15 percent feel the U.S. is doing a better job than others and 29 percent say it is doing about the same.
Having complained on Wednesday about what he called “a wiseguy question” from a reporter who noted that two top Federal Reserve officials “said that the economy hasn’t recovered strong enough because the country hasn’t contained the virus,” Trump devoted part of his opening remarks at Thursday’s briefing to falsely complaining that Biden, who held a news conference two weeks ago, “never takes questions.”
“I take questions; he never takes questions,” Trump continued. “And you sort of wonder what’s going on, because they’re not that difficult. Some can be nasty, but they’re not that difficult.”
Updated: Saturday, August 15, 2:52 p.m. PDT
This article was updated to note President Donald Trump’s objection to former Vice President Joe Biden not holding as many news conferences as him.


theintercept--2020-08-16--Progressive Boston Doctor Seeks to Unseat “Do-Nothing Moderate Democrat” in Congress

Goldstein ’ s campaign argues that this race presents a viable opportunity to bring another progressive to Congress , even if Lynch is not as influential as other incumbents who ’ ve been toppled , like Reps. Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel .
“ I am constantly confounded by progressives ’ infatuation with claiming these big headline victories instead of just winning and building power , ” said Karen Clawson Cosmas , Goldstein ’ s campaign manager .
“ We can replace a do-nothing moderate Democrat with someone who is actually a champion of the issues of the progressive wing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case against Lynch rests on substantive policy differences , including Medicare for All and reproductive rights .
The incumbent opposes single-payer health care , and while Lynch has criticized federal efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and “ draconian ” state-level abortion restrictions , he himself identifies as pro-life and believes ending pregnancies should be “ legal and rare.
” On Wednesday , Goldstein ’ s campaign released a poll claiming he trailed just 7 percentage points behind nine-term moderate incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch .
Conducted last weekend by Lincoln Park Strategies , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters remain undecided .
However , Lynch held a clear advantage when it came to name recognition , with roughly 70 percent of voters knowing who he was , compared to 40 percent recognizing Goldstein .
Still , the pollsters concluded Goldstein “ has a real chance to win ” because among undecideds , 42 percent said they ’ d prefer to vote for a more progressive candidate , 71 percent said they ’ d prefer a pro-choice candidate , and 73 percent said they ’ d prefer a candidate who backs Medicare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , other progressive challengers are struggling to attract similar attention .
In the crowded House race to replace Kennedy , two progressives appear tied for third behind two more conservative Democrats .
And in the Boston-area 8th Congressional District , Robbie Goldstein , a 36-year-old primary care physician , is scrambling to get his name out and convince voters he ’ s not running a long-shot bid .
With just over two weeks left until the Massachusetts Democratic primary , progressives across the country are focused on the high-profile primaries of Sen. Ed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy , and Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse , who is running against House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal .
Lynch has long been the most conservative member of the Massachusetts delegation , though he argues that ’ s all relative for their deep blue state .
“ Calling me the least liberal member from Massachusetts is like calling me the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon , ” Lynch quipped a decade ago in the Boston Globe .
Goldstein is hoping for a surge in the final weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently in St. Louis , and Jamaal Bowman in New York — though Goldstein trails them both in fundraising and major endorsements , and he has far less name recognition than Bush , a Ferguson activist who ran for Congress in 2018 and was featured in a documentary alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez .
By the end of June , Goldstein had raised just $ 292,000 , next to Lynch ’ s $ 660,000 , though Goldstein did raise more in June than in the previous five months combined .
To some extent Goldstein is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the last quarter Lynch raised just $ 45,000 , and has spent no money to date on TV or Facebook ads .
Also , unlike some of his Massachusetts colleagues running for reelection , Lynch has had no members of Congress campaigning on his behalf .
Goldstein says this is a reflection of his opponent “ not having any friends left in Washington.
” Goldstein , meanwhile , is backed by left-wing groups like Indivisible , Our Revolution , Progressive Massachusetts , and even the Boston Teachers Union .
Justice Democrats , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this primary , after having considered backing another progressive physician , Mohammad Dar , who entered the race almost a year before Goldstein did , but dropped out early due to personal reasons .
Lynch ’ s campaign spokesperson , Scott Ferson , said they are confident about the representative ’ s standing in the district and resources available left to campaign .
“ We have a voter engagement plan in place , and he ’ s not fundraising just to stockpile money , ” Ferson said .
“ He ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this race.
” up poor in South Boston public housing and spent two decades as an ironworker , was first elected to Congress in 2001 .
He represents a district that over the last two decades has grown both more diverse and more gentrified .
Following the 2010 Census , Lynch ’ s district boundaries were redrawn , and while Joe Biden won every city and town in the 8th Congressional District on Super Tuesday , Goldstein says there ’ s a real path to victory , since Warren and Bernie Sanders racked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than Biden .
An Irish Catholic proud of his ties to blue-collar workers , Lynch has voiced concerns about the party drifting too far left and is critical of the term “ socialism , ” which he warns could scare off older voters .
Ferson argues that Lynch remains “ well-in-tune ” with his district and has handily defeated candidates who have run to his left in the past .
In 2018 , Lynch was challenged by Brianna Wu , a software engineer who ran on Medicare for All and tackling income inequality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the vote .
The sharpest contrast between the two candidates revolves around health care .
Ironically one of Lynch ’ s biggest vulnerabilities is that he was just one of 45 House Democrats to vote against the Affordable Care Act in 2010 , and of those Democrats , only three remain in Congress .
Rep. Dan Lipinski , one of the three , lost his primary in March to progressive challenger Marie Newman .
At the time , Lynch explained he voted no because he felt the final version gave too much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead to spiking prices , and he opposed how the bill taxed union health care plans and eliminated opportunities for state public options .
“ I don ’ t think [ Lynch ] is as conservative as Lipinski , but I do think the thing that sticks with people here is him having voted against the Affordable Care Act , given how much activism there was around that , ” said Jonathan Cohn , a leader with Progressive Massachusetts , a statewide advocacy group .
“ People remember that.
” Lynch , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to “ rip out the ACA root and branch ” and says he ’ s proud of the work done to repeal the tax on union health care plans .
Goldstein “ wants to dismantle the ACA and get rid of it , so if you ask me who really supports the ACA , that ’ s Stephen , ” said Ferson , Lynch ’ s spokesperson .
Lynch , who has long self-described as an anti-abortion Democrat , notably began moving left in 2013 , when he ran against Ed Markey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John Kerry became secretary of state .
As a state legislator in Massachusetts , Lynch tried to ban abortions after 24 weeks , and in Congress he voted to support the “ partial-birth abortion ” ban .
But in 2013 , Lynch made clear that while he was pro-life and wanted abortions to remain “ rare , ” he would seek to protect Roe v. Wade and vote against any Supreme Court nominee who wanted to overturn the decision .
He ’ s moved even further left in recent years .
In 2019 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ condemning states for their new abortion restrictions and Congress for trying to defund Planned Parenthood .
“ If these recent developments define the ‘ pro-life ’ movement , you can count me out , ” he wrote .
Lynch received 100 percent ratings from NARAL Pro-Choice America for the last five years , but neither NARAL nor Planned Parenthood is endorsing in the primary .
Goldstein , who has also been endorsed by local chapters of the Sunrise Movement , is campaigning on being more aggressive on climate change than the incumbent .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Green New Deal , though has said the 10-year timetable outlined in the resolution to transition completely off fossil fuels is “ unrealistic.
” Lynch originally was a strong supporter of the Keystone Pipeline , but reversed his position on that in 2013 .
In a recent primary debate , Lynch urged viewers to look at his ratings from the League of Conservation Voters , where he has a “ lifetime score ” of 95 percent .
Goldstein has repeatedly blasted Lynch for once calling climate change an “ elitist ” issue , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ magazine article , though the full quote and context is not included in the piece .
Lynch has denied using that descriptor .
While Lynch ’ s campaign disputes that he used that exact word , Ferson , his spokesperson , linked the sentiment to Lynch ’ s background as an ironworker and the congressman ’ s belief that lawmakers shouldn ’ t be “ cavalier ” when discussing job loss associated with transitioning off fossil fuels .
“ I think it ’ s in the context of who do we need to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discussions , ” said Ferson .
“ And he supports the Green New Deal in part because it ’ s so focused on creating new jobs.
” Shawn Zeller , the author of the CommonWealth article who now works as an editor at CQ Roll Call , told The Intercept that Lynch had made the reference in the context of his support for Tim Ryan for House speaker .
“ Trump had just won the presidency and Lynch was among those who felt Pelosi was leading the party too far left , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In an interview with me , he mentioned climate change as an example and said he preferred Democrats focus on lunch bucket issues to help the working class.
” On issues of immigration , there are differences between the candidates too .
Over the objections of President Barack Obama in 2015 , Lynch voted to tighten vetting standards for refugees from Iraq and Syria , and in 2018 he voted in favor of a resolution lauding Immigration and Customs Enforcement , even when 133 House Democrats just voted “ present.
” While Lynch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ child separation policy and backed a 2019 resolution to establish standards of care at border facilities , some of his constituents say he ’ s moved too slowly , and been too quiet overall .
“ He ’ s just not interested in engaging with constituents who are looking for someone with a sense of urgency , ” said Tonya Tedesco , a Boston activist who organized trips to Lynch ’ s district offices last summer to press him on immigration .
“ We are in crisis mode and I do not know @ @ @ @ @ @

With just over two weeks left until the Massachusetts Democratic primary, progressives across the country are focused on the high-profile primaries of Sen. Ed Markey, who is fending off a challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy, and Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who is running against House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal.
Elsewhere in the state, other progressive challengers are struggling to attract similar attention. In the crowded House race to replace Kennedy, two progressives appear tied for third behind two more conservative Democrats. And in the Boston-area 8th Congressional District, Robbie Goldstein, a 36-year-old primary care physician, is scrambling to get his name out and convince voters he’s not running a long-shot bid.
On Wednesday, Goldstein’s campaign released a poll claiming he trailed just 7 percentage points behind nine-term moderate incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch. Conducted last weekend by Lincoln Park Strategies, the poll found that 29 percent of likely voters remain undecided. However, Lynch held a clear advantage when it came to name recognition, with roughly 70 percent of voters knowing who he was, compared to 40 percent recognizing Goldstein. Still, the pollsters concluded Goldstein “has a real chance to win” because among undecideds, 42 percent said they’d prefer to vote for a more progressive candidate, 71 percent said they’d prefer a pro-choice candidate, and 73 percent said they’d prefer a candidate who backs Medicare for All.
Goldstein’s case against Lynch rests on substantive policy differences, including Medicare for All and reproductive rights. The incumbent opposes single-payer health care, and while Lynch has criticized federal efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and “draconian” state-level abortion restrictions, he himself identifies as pro-life and believes ending pregnancies should be “legal and rare.”
Goldstein’s campaign argues that this race presents a viable opportunity to bring another progressive to Congress, even if Lynch is not as influential as other incumbents who’ve been toppled, like Reps. Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel. “I am constantly confounded by progressives’ infatuation with claiming these big headline victories instead of just winning and building power,” said Karen Clawson Cosmas, Goldstein’s campaign manager. “We can replace a do-nothing moderate Democrat with someone who is actually a champion of the issues of the progressive wing of the party.”
Lynch has long been the most conservative member of the Massachusetts delegation, though he argues that’s all relative for their deep blue state. “Calling me the least liberal member from Massachusetts is like calling me the slowest Kenyan in the Boston Marathon,” Lynch quipped a decade ago in the Boston Globe.
Goldstein is hoping for a surge in the final weeks — similar to what Cori Bush saw recently in St. Louis, and Jamaal Bowman in New York — though Goldstein trails them both in fundraising and major endorsements, and he has far less name recognition than Bush, a Ferguson activist who ran for Congress in 2018 and was featured in a documentary alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. By the end of June, Goldstein had raised just $292,000, next to Lynch’s $660,000, though Goldstein did raise more in June than in the previous five months combined.
To some extent Goldstein is banking on complacency from his opponent. In the last quarter Lynch raised just $45,000, and has spent no money to date on TV or Facebook ads. Also, unlike some of his Massachusetts colleagues running for reelection, Lynch has had no members of Congress campaigning on his behalf. Goldstein says this is a reflection of his opponent “not having any friends left in Washington.”
Goldstein, meanwhile, is backed by left-wing groups like Indivisible, Our Revolution, Progressive Massachusetts, and even the Boston Teachers Union. Justice Democrats, which endorsed Morse, has stayed out of this primary, after having considered backing another progressive physician, Mohammad Dar, who entered the race almost a year before Goldstein did, but dropped out early due to personal reasons.
Lynch’s campaign spokesperson, Scott Ferson, said they are confident about the representative’s standing in the district and resources available left to campaign. “We have a voter engagement plan in place, and he’s not fundraising just to stockpile money,” Ferson said. “He’s doing things in a way that fits this race.”
Lynch, who grew up poor in South Boston public housing and spent two decades as an ironworker, was first elected to Congress in 2001. He represents a district that over the last two decades has grown both more diverse and more gentrified. Following the 2010 Census, Lynch’s district boundaries were redrawn, and while Joe Biden won every city and town in the 8th Congressional District on Super Tuesday, Goldstein says there’s a real path to victory, since Warren and Bernie Sanders racked up more votes in the district overall than Biden.
An Irish Catholic proud of his ties to blue-collar workers, Lynch has voiced concerns about the party drifting too far left and is critical of the term “socialism,” which he warns could scare off older voters. Ferson argues that Lynch remains “well-in-tune” with his district and has handily defeated candidates who have run to his left in the past. In 2018, Lynch was challenged by Brianna Wu, a software engineer who ran on Medicare for All and tackling income inequality, and beat her with 71 percent of the vote.
The sharpest contrast between the two candidates revolves around health care. Ironically one of Lynch’s biggest vulnerabilities is that he was just one of 45 House Democrats to vote against the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and of those Democrats, only three remain in Congress. Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the three, lost his primary in March to progressive challenger Marie Newman.
At the time, Lynch explained he voted no because he felt the final version gave too much power to the insurance industry and would lead to spiking prices, and he opposed how the bill taxed union health care plans and eliminated opportunities for state public options.
“I don’t think [Lynch] is as conservative as Lipinski, but I do think the thing that sticks with people here is him having voted against the Affordable Care Act, given how much activism there was around that,” said Jonathan Cohn, a leader with Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide advocacy group. “People remember that.”
Lynch, for his part, has criticized Goldstein for trying to “rip out the ACA root and branch” and says he’s proud of the work done to repeal the tax on union health care plans. Goldstein “wants to dismantle the ACA and get rid of it, so if you ask me who really supports the ACA, that’s Stephen,” said Ferson, Lynch’s spokesperson.
Lynch, who has long self-described as an anti-abortion Democrat, notably began moving left in 2013, when he ran against Ed Markey for the Senate seat left open when John Kerry became secretary of state. As a state legislator in Massachusetts, Lynch tried to ban abortions after 24 weeks, and in Congress he voted to support the “partial-birth abortion” ban. But in 2013, Lynch made clear that while he was pro-life and wanted abortions to remain “rare,” he would seek to protect Roe v. Wade and vote against any Supreme Court nominee who wanted to overturn the decision.
He’s moved even further left in recent years. In 2019, he wrote a Boston Globe op-ed condemning states for their new abortion restrictions and Congress for trying to defund Planned Parenthood. “If these recent developments define the ‘pro-life’ movement, you can count me out,” he wrote. Lynch received 100 percent ratings from NARAL Pro-Choice America for the last five years, but neither NARAL nor Planned Parenthood is endorsing in the primary.
Goldstein, who has also been endorsed by local chapters of the Sunrise Movement, is campaigning on being more aggressive on climate change than the incumbent. Lynch was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, though has said the 10-year timetable outlined in the resolution to transition completely off fossil fuels is “unrealistic.” Lynch originally was a strong supporter of the Keystone Pipeline, but reversed his position on that in 2013. In a recent primary debate, Lynch urged viewers to look at his ratings from the League of Conservation Voters, where he has a “lifetime score” of 95 percent.
Goldstein has repeatedly blasted Lynch for once calling climate change an “elitist” issue, a charge based on a 2017 CommonWealth magazine article, though the full quote and context is not included in the piece. Lynch has denied using that descriptor.
While Lynch’s campaign disputes that he used that exact word, Ferson, his spokesperson, linked the sentiment to Lynch’s background as an ironworker and the congressman’s belief that lawmakers shouldn’t be “cavalier” when discussing job loss associated with transitioning off fossil fuels. “I think it’s in the context of who do we need to include when we’re having those discussions,” said Ferson. “And he supports the Green New Deal in part because it’s so focused on creating new jobs.”
Shawn Zeller, the author of the CommonWealth article who now works as an editor at CQ Roll Call, told The Intercept that Lynch had made the reference in the context of his support for Tim Ryan for House speaker. “Trump had just won the presidency and Lynch was among those who felt Pelosi was leading the party too far left,” Zeller wrote in an email. “In an interview with me, he mentioned climate change as an example and said he preferred Democrats focus on lunch bucket issues to help the working class.”
On issues of immigration, there are differences between the candidates too. Over the objections of President Barack Obama in 2015, Lynch voted to tighten vetting standards for refugees from Iraq and Syria, and in 2018 he voted in favor of a resolution lauding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even when 133 House Democrats just voted “present.” While Lynch has condemned President Donald Trump’s child separation policy and backed a 2019 resolution to establish standards of care at border facilities, some of his constituents say he’s moved too slowly, and been too quiet overall.
“He’s just not interested in engaging with constituents who are looking for someone with a sense of urgency,” said Tonya Tedesco, a Boston activist who organized trips to Lynch’s district offices last summer to press him on immigration. “We are in crisis mode and I do not know that he recognizes that.”


theintercept--2020-08-17--Massachusetts State Party Leader Told College Democrats to Destroy Communication Records

On Friday , Martinez flatly denied the suggestion that she demanded records of her communications with CDMA members be destroyed , saying simply , “ That ’ s completely false.
” The instructions were delivered verbally , but call records obtained by The Intercept line up with the timing , and other statements from Martinez on the timeline and her involvement have also been proven wrong by documents reviewed by The Intercept .
Multiple attempts throughout the weekend to reach Martinez for follow-up comments were unsuccessful .
Martinez , one of at least three senior members of the party who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the Morse allegations , made the demand after reporting from The Intercept early last week revealed the existence of a long-running scheme by some members of CDMA and the organization ’ s UMass Amherst chapter to undermine Morse , according to two people involved with College Democrats of Massachusetts leadership and three members of the commonwealth ’ s Democratic State Committee , all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals .
The College Democrats have also been advised not to put anything additional in writing .
The executive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the scandal around congressional candidate Alex Morse began to implode , told student leaders to delete records of communications between themselves and the state party , according to five sources with knowledge of the matter .
The executive director , Veronica Martinez , had personally coordinated with College Democrats ahead of the release of allegations of sexual impropriety against the Holyoke mayor .
Bickford on Monday insisted that party leadership was only involved in referring CDMA to Roosevelt and rejected the suggestion that the state party put its thumb on the scale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involved in contested primaries , and this race is no different , ” he said .
Evidence of the communications was not successfully destroyed , and , along with multiple sources , formed the basis of an Intercept report Friday that Mass Dems leadership was in communication with the College Democrats about the concerns they raised regarding Morse , including offering coaching on how to deal with the press .
Martinez on Thursday told The Intercept that her involvement with the CDMA letter ended when she and Mass Dems chair Gus Bickford referred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ board to legal counsel — a lawyer who turned out to be Jim Roosevelt , a powerful attorney with ties to players in state and national Democratic politics .
Morse is running against Rep. Richard Neal , the chair of the powerful Ways and Means committee , which oversees tax policy and is involved with most legislation that goes through Congress , in Massachusetts ’ s September 1 Democratic primary .
An internal poll conducted for the Morse campaign over the weekend has the challenger closing to within 5 percentage points ; Morse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ debate that streams Monday at 7 p.m. Samuel Biagetti , an openly gay candidate running for state representative in Worcester ’ s 5th District , told The Intercept that he confronted Bickford on Saturday about the decision to connect the student group with Roosevelt , arguing that Roosevelt ’ s long tenure with the party and his former role as a health insurance CEO made him unable to be unbiased in a race by an insurgent challenger against a longtime incumbent .
( Roosevelt was also previously chair of the board of trustees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bickford told Biagetti that Roosevelt ’ s private work was irrelevant and that his position on the Democratic National Committee made him an ideal choice .
He also claimed to Biagetti that he had no interaction with any members of the College Democrats nor did he have any knowledge of their interactions with Roosevelt since he had referred the group to the lawyer .
allegations against Morse were first published on Friday , August 7 , by the Daily Collegian , the UMass Amherst college paper , in an unbylined article .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with a headline that set off days of recriminations against Morse .
Roosevelt , according to sources connected to CDMA leadership and familiar with the matter , was actively involved in developing the letter , advising on the content and looking it over when it was done to ensure it was not defamatory .
After the letter was completed , it was leaked to the Collegian by an unknown source — a move that came as a surprise to at least two members of the CDMA executive board , as well as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s executive board .
The next morning , a member of the UMass Amherst chapter ’ s executive board ( referred to internally as the e-board ) shared the article with the group ’ s rank and file via the text messaging app GroupMe , according to logs that were shared with The Intercept .
It was the first time most members were made aware of the allegations or the plan to confront Morse .
The letter had made three claims : First , that Morse had matched with students on dating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats ; second , that he had attended College Democrat events and approached students later on social media in a way that made them uncomfortable ; and third , that Morse , who had previously been a lecturer at UMass Amherst , teaching a single course per semester , had had “ sexual contact ” with students .
Morse acknowledged having relationships and conversations online with students but said he had never slept with one of his own students , which is barred by UMass policy .
The university has announced a Title @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the College Democrats chapter to be damning enough to end his campaign .
On the GroupMe chat , another e-board member told the group , “ No one should feel bad for having supported Alex Morse in the past .
… And it ’ s totally valid for people to feel disappointed and frustrated that the leftist challenger to an incumbent like Neal has tanked his own candidacy like this.
” The group ’ s president , Andrew Abramson , seconded the comment but has otherwise been mostly silent in the GroupMe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last year and also chatted with Morse on Instagram after a College Democrats event , as The Intercept previously reported .
The conversation in the group chat over the next several days moved on to other races , and talk of whether Neal ’ s 2018 challenger might run again in 2022 , until one student posted The Intercept ’ s first investigation of the allegations , showing that the chapter ’ s former president , Timothy Ennis , had been hoping to get a job with Neal and had known about rumors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with students as far back as last fall .
That post was met with silence .
The same student also then posted the second Intercept article , which included Abramson ’ s messages with Morse as well as messages from Ennis confirming his support for Neal and his hope to launch his career through the Ways and Means chair .
Met again with no response , the student posted , “ Is leadership going to pretend like this group isn ’ t involved in a national news scandal or is there actually going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” A third e-board member noted that a public response had been offered to HuffPost .
“ How about a response made to us ?
” the student suggested .
“ If you ’ re going to speak for all of us , maybe you could speak to us.
” A different e-board member offered to address the concerns , asking that the comments not be leaked to reporters and allowing that the frustration was both justified and shared .
“ [ W ] e did not intend for our communication with Morse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We FIRMLY deplore homophobia against anyone , and ( especially since many of us are queer ) it was in no way our intention to smear Alex in the press in a public way .
That ’ s why we sent a private letter.
” The first signs of dissension among the upper ranks of the group began to appear .
The e-board member said that Ennis was not involved in writing the letter but that Abramson was — acknowledging that given The Intercept ’ s reporting on Abramson and his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been inappropriate for him to be involved .
Ennis has not responded to requests for comment ; Abramson declined to comment .
E-board members told the group that the leadership believed that if they remained silent , the story would end sooner .
After The Intercept published an article on Friday detailing the collusion between the state party and the College Democrats , a member of the e-board posted it to the group chat .
“ I know many of you will have questions , and frankly I do as well , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s involvement : “ The CDMA president was the one interfacing with him and MassDems and she relayed his comments back to the CDMA executive board.
” Members began calling for Abramson ’ s resignation as chapter president , and were informed privately that he would be stepping down .
Sources also said that Hayley Fleming , CDMA president , would be leaving her post as well .
one has brought forward specific allegations of misconduct or misbehavior against Morse .
The 31-year-old mayor has denied any impropriety , telling The Intercept @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ never ” reached out to him about the issues raised by the students , suggesting that concern for the safety of students was not what drove the party .
For his part , Neal has said that he had no involvement .
“ Any implications that I or anyone from my campaign are involved are flat wrong and an attempt to distract from the issue at hand , ” he said , going on to condemn “ homophobic attacks or efforts to criticize someone for who they choose to love.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would look into the origin of the accusations against Morse after the September 1 primary , to avoid impacting the election — effectively investigating the students Martinez has told to stay silent .
Zelda MacGregor , a DSC member , told The Intercept that she found the focus on the college group distressing , especially in light of the revelations about the state party ’ s role in developing the letter .
“ I ’ m deeply concerned the party is about to throw some college kids under the bus when the only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Mass Dems leadership for advice , ” said MacGregor .
From August 12-16 , A Case for Women , a Texas-based law firm that focuses on massive class-action lawsuits , ran a Facebook ad soliciting information from people who had been contacted by the mayor in “ a manner widely understood by our generation to indicate intimacy , ” language lifted directly from the CDMA letter .
The advertisement reached between 50,000-100,000 people in the district over the course of four days .
The founder of the group , Susan Knape , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ O ’ Rourke ’ s People Powered Action PAC , the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee , and the House Senate Victory Fund , according to FEC documents .
Not long after news of the ad broke , it was deactivated .
A Case for Women , which has worked on rideshare sexual abuse settlements and defective breast implant cases , did not respond to requests for comment .
In a statement on Monday , Sean Meloy , the political director of the LGBTQ Victory Fund , which endorsed Morse in late June , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ad as well .
The Facebook ad campaign was part of “ a series of orchestrated political attacks meant to weaponize Alex ’ s sexuality and appeal to a homophobic narrative around the sex lives of LGBTQ people , ” Meloy said .
“ It is evident that those involved in this plot planned to unleash these homophobic forces and setup a campaign of slander as ballots hit mailboxes , ” said Meloy .
“ While the lies and coverups are being exposed , primary day is just two weeks away and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perpetrators intended .
It is essential that voters in the 1st Congressional District learn the source or sources of these attacks so they can make an informed decision about who they want as their next member of Congress.
” On Sunday , Sunrise Movement , which had paused its support of Morse , announced it would be reentering the race with vigor .
Justice Democrats , according to an FEC filing , pumped another $ 150,000 into the campaign against Neal the same day .
And Jamaal Bowman , who had been backed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to unseat Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel in New York , also announced he was jumping back into the race on behalf of Morse .
provoked anger within the state party against Bickford and Martinez , who many members of the DSC , speaking on condition of anonymity , described as out of step with the party base .
On Saturday , Bay State Stonewall Democrats issued a statement demanding “ an independent investigation of all individuals involved in any way and for the immediate resignation , suspension , or removal of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or knowledge of , this unprecedented abuse of power .
That includes any party involved from the College Democrats of Massachusetts , the Democratic State Committee , and Democratic Party .
”

The executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, as the scandal around congressional candidate Alex Morse began to implode, told student leaders to delete records of communications between themselves and the state party, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter. The executive director, Veronica Martinez, had personally coordinated with College Democrats ahead of the release of allegations of sexual impropriety against the Holyoke mayor.
Martinez, one of at least three senior members of the party who spoke with the College Democrats of Massachusetts about the Morse allegations, made the demand after reporting from The Intercept early last week revealed the existence of a long-running scheme by some members of CDMA and the organization’s UMass Amherst chapter to undermine Morse, according to two people involved with College Democrats of Massachusetts leadership and three members of the commonwealth’s Democratic State Committee, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The College Democrats have also been advised not to put anything additional in writing.
On Friday, Martinez flatly denied the suggestion that she demanded records of her communications with CDMA members be destroyed, saying simply, “That’s completely false.” The instructions were delivered verbally, but call records obtained by The Intercept line up with the timing, and other statements from Martinez on the timeline and her involvement have also been proven wrong by documents reviewed by The Intercept. Multiple attempts throughout the weekend to reach Martinez for follow-up comments were unsuccessful.
Evidence of the communications was not successfully destroyed, and, along with multiple sources, formed the basis of an Intercept report Friday that Mass Dems leadership was in communication with the College Democrats about the concerns they raised regarding Morse, including offering coaching on how to deal with the press. Martinez on Thursday told The Intercept that her involvement with the CDMA letter ended when she and Mass Dems chair Gus Bickford referred members of the student organization’s board to legal counsel — a lawyer who turned out to be Jim Roosevelt, a powerful attorney with ties to players in state and national Democratic politics.
Bickford on Monday insisted that party leadership was only involved in referring CDMA to Roosevelt and rejected the suggestion that the state party put its thumb on the scale. “We absolutely do not get involved in contested primaries, and this race is no different,” he said.
Morse is running against Rep. Richard Neal, the chair of the powerful Ways and Means committee, which oversees tax policy and is involved with most legislation that goes through Congress, in Massachusetts’s September 1 Democratic primary. An internal poll conducted for the Morse campaign over the weekend has the challenger closing to within 5 percentage points; Morse and Neal will be part of a debate that streams Monday at 7 p.m.
Samuel Biagetti, an openly gay candidate running for state representative in Worcester’s 5th District, told The Intercept that he confronted Bickford on Saturday about the decision to connect the student group with Roosevelt, arguing that Roosevelt’s long tenure with the party and his former role as a health insurance CEO made him unable to be unbiased in a race by an insurgent challenger against a longtime incumbent. (Roosevelt was also previously chair of the board of trustees for the Massachusetts Hospital Association.) Bickford told Biagetti that Roosevelt’s private work was irrelevant and that his position on the Democratic National Committee made him an ideal choice. He also claimed to Biagetti that he had no interaction with any members of the College Democrats nor did he have any knowledge of their interactions with Roosevelt since he had referred the group to the lawyer.
The College Democrat allegations against Morse were first published on Friday, August 7, by the Daily Collegian, the UMass Amherst college paper, in an unbylined article. The story was quickly picked up by Politico, with a headline that set off days of recriminations against Morse. Roosevelt, according to sources connected to CDMA leadership and familiar with the matter, was actively involved in developing the letter, advising on the content and looking it over when it was done to ensure it was not defamatory. After the letter was completed, it was leaked to the Collegian by an unknown source — a move that came as a surprise to at least two members of the CDMA executive board, as well as some members of the UMass Amherst chapter’s executive board.
The next morning, a member of the UMass Amherst chapter’s executive board (referred to internally as the e-board) shared the article with the group’s rank and file via the text messaging app GroupMe, according to logs that were shared with The Intercept. It was the first time most members were made aware of the allegations or the plan to confront Morse.
The letter had made three claims: First, that Morse had matched with students on dating apps, including members of the College Democrats; second, that he had attended College Democrat events and approached students later on social media in a way that made them uncomfortable; and third, that Morse, who had previously been a lecturer at UMass Amherst, teaching a single course per semester, had had “sexual contact” with students. Morse acknowledged having relationships and conversations online with students but said he had never slept with one of his own students, which is barred by UMass policy. The university has announced a Title IX investigation.
The article was considered by the College Democrats chapter to be damning enough to end his campaign. On the GroupMe chat, another e-board member told the group, “No one should feel bad for having supported Alex Morse in the past. … And it’s totally valid for people to feel disappointed and frustrated that the leftist challenger to an incumbent like Neal has tanked his own candidacy like this.”
The group’s president, Andrew Abramson, seconded the comment but has otherwise been mostly silent in the GroupMe. Abramson matched with Morse on Tinder last year and also chatted with Morse on Instagram after a College Democrats event, as The Intercept previously reported.
The conversation in the group chat over the next several days moved on to other races, and talk of whether Neal’s 2018 challenger might run again in 2022, until one student posted The Intercept’s first investigation of the allegations, showing that the chapter’s former president, Timothy Ennis, had been hoping to get a job with Neal and had known about rumors of Morse chatting with and having relationships with students as far back as last fall. That post was met with silence. The same student also then posted the second Intercept article, which included Abramson’s messages with Morse as well as messages from Ennis confirming his support for Neal and his hope to launch his career through the Ways and Means chair. Met again with no response, the student posted, “Is leadership going to pretend like this group isn’t involved in a national news scandal or is there actually going to be some communication and explanation?”
A third e-board member noted that a public response had been offered to HuffPost. “How about a response made to us?” the student suggested. “If you’re going to speak for all of us, maybe you could speak to us.”
A different e-board member offered to address the concerns, asking that the comments not be leaked to reporters and allowing that the frustration was both justified and shared. “[W]e did not intend for our communication with Morse to be public,” she said. “We FIRMLY deplore homophobia against anyone, and (especially since many of us are queer) it was in no way our intention to smear Alex in the press in a public way. That’s why we sent a private letter.”
The first signs of dissension among the upper ranks of the group began to appear. The e-board member said that Ennis was not involved in writing the letter but that Abramson was — acknowledging that given The Intercept’s reporting on Abramson and his chats with Morse, it may have been inappropriate for him to be involved. Ennis has not responded to requests for comment; Abramson declined to comment. E-board members told the group that the leadership believed that if they remained silent, the story would end sooner.
After The Intercept published an article on Friday detailing the collusion between the state party and the College Democrats, a member of the e-board posted it to the group chat. “I know many of you will have questions, and frankly I do as well,” she said, specifically addressing Jim Roosevelt’s involvement: “The CDMA president was the one interfacing with him and MassDems and she relayed his comments back to the CDMA executive board.”
Members began calling for Abramson’s resignation as chapter president, and were informed privately that he would be stepping down. Sources also said that Hayley Fleming, CDMA president, would be leaving her post as well.
To date, no one has brought forward specific allegations of misconduct or misbehavior against Morse. The 31-year-old mayor has denied any impropriety, telling The Intercept on Friday that state party leadership had “never” reached out to him about the issues raised by the students, suggesting that concern for the safety of students was not what drove the party. For his part, Neal has said that he had no involvement. “Any implications that I or anyone from my campaign are involved are flat wrong and an attempt to distract from the issue at hand,” he said, going on to condemn “homophobic attacks or efforts to criticize someone for who they choose to love.”
The Massachusetts Democratic Party last week said it would look into the origin of the accusations against Morse after the September 1 primary, to avoid impacting the election — effectively investigating the students Martinez has told to stay silent.
Zelda MacGregor, a DSC member, told The Intercept that she found the focus on the college group distressing, especially in light of the revelations about the state party’s role in developing the letter. “I’m deeply concerned the party is about to throw some college kids under the bus when the only thing they did wrong was come to the Mass Dems leadership for advice,” said MacGregor.
From August 12-16, A Case for Women, a Texas-based law firm that focuses on massive class-action lawsuits, ran a Facebook ad soliciting information from people who had been contacted by the mayor in “a manner widely understood by our generation to indicate intimacy,” language lifted directly from the CDMA letter. The advertisement reached between 50,000-100,000 people in the district over the course of four days.
The founder of the group, Susan Knape, has donated thousands of dollars to Beto O’Rourke’s People Powered Action PAC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the House Senate Victory Fund, according to FEC documents. Not long after news of the ad broke, it was deactivated. A Case for Women, which has worked on rideshare sexual abuse settlements and defective breast implant cases, did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement on Monday, Sean Meloy, the political director of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, which endorsed Morse in late June, responded to A Case for Women’s ad as well. The Facebook ad campaign was part of “a series of orchestrated political attacks meant to weaponize Alex’s sexuality and appeal to a homophobic narrative around the sex lives of LGBTQ people,” Meloy said.
“It is evident that those involved in this plot planned to unleash these homophobic forces and setup a campaign of slander as ballots hit mailboxes,” said Meloy. “While the lies and coverups are being exposed, primary day is just two weeks away and the attacks continue, just as the perpetrators intended. It is essential that voters in the 1st Congressional District learn the source or sources of these attacks so they can make an informed decision about who they want as their next member of Congress.”
On Sunday, Sunrise Movement, which had paused its support of Morse, announced it would be reentering the race with vigor. Justice Democrats, according to an FEC filing, pumped another $150,000 into the campaign against Neal the same day. And Jamaal Bowman, who had been backed by both groups in his successful bid to unseat Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel in New York, also announced he was jumping back into the race on behalf of Morse.
The scandal has provoked anger within the state party against Bickford and Martinez, who many members of the DSC, speaking on condition of anonymity, described as out of step with the party base.
On Saturday, Bay State Stonewall Democrats issued a statement demanding “an independent investigation of all individuals involved in any way and for the immediate resignation, suspension, or removal of individuals responsible for, or with participation or knowledge of, this unprecedented abuse of power. That includes any party involved from the College Democrats of Massachusetts, the Democratic State Committee, and Democratic Party.”
https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1294667455546249218
On Sunday afternoon, Bickford said in a statement that he was asking the state party’s “First Vice Chair Deb Kozikowski, Second Vice Chair Leon Brathwaite, and Personnel Committee Chair Mark DiSalvo to initiate an independent review. This group will, upon their unilateral authority, select an independent investigator to review the matter, determine whether rules were broken, and publish in due order a report and attendant recommendations, if any. The report, in full, will be provided to the entire DSC membership upon its receipt.”
https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1295068543789207552
But the effort by Bickford to quell what has become an uprising in the party is falling flat with the rank and file, with members of the DSC privately handicapping Bickford’s odds of surviving the fallout from the scandal. Sources also noted that the trio does not include a single member of the LGBTQ+ community, a major sticking point. “Three state committee leaders appointed to a panel to oversee the investigation and not one openly LGBTQ+ member? The Chair is ignoring the voices in the community crying out for to be heard,” one dissatisfied DSC member said.
By Sunday night, an open letter signed by, thus far, 54 members of the DSC was released. Waiting to investigate the party’s conduct until after the primary “so as not to affect [the contest] is ludicrous given the damage that has already been inflicted on Mayor Morse’s campaign by the actions of the Mass College Dems,” the letter argued. The investigation, the letter continued, ought to be “conducted by individuals or an organization outside of the MDP to ensure independence and transparency.”
We co-sign this statement with @PVDemSoc and @Boston_DSA — Setting The Record Straight with our unwavering support for @AlexBMorse to win and represent CD1 #USCongress pic.twitter.com/mWW9JdLrPs — Berkshires DSA (@BerkshiresDSA) August 16, 2020
In a lengthy, fiery statement on Saturday, the Pioneer Valley and Berkshires chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America made clear they reject attempts by the state party and its acolytes “to capitalize on a cynical theory that voters in MA-1 are sex-panicked homophobes to ‘sink the career’ of a progressive candidate of growing popularity, and keep one of their own in power.”
“We’re pleased this crude, disgusting ploy is blowing up in their faces, and are pleased Alex Morse is vindicated by his actions and the factual record, which he has spoken about himself in recent days,” the groups said. “We think it’s absurd he was ever forced to defend himself at all.”