Politics
Yahoo NewsTrump again directs blame at Obama as coronavirus pandemic worsens in U.S.
The president on Monday again sought to redirect blame for his pandemic response to the previous administration.
Associated PressWhite House turns on Fauci as Trump minimizes virus spike
With U.S. virus cases spiking and the death toll mounting, the White House is working to undercut its most trusted coronavirus expert, playing down the danger as President Donald Trump pushes to get the economy moving before he faces voters in November. “I have a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci,” Trump told reporters Monday, calling him “a very nice person.”
DeadlineJudge Lifts Restraining Order On Mary Trump, Freeing Her To Promote Tell-All Book About Family
A New York Supreme Court judge has lifted a restraining order that prevented Mary Trump from publicizing her new tell-all book about her uncle, President Donald Trump, and his family. Robert Trump, the president's brother, had sought a court action to stop the publication of the book, Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family […]
PoliticoPandemic upends Trump’s plans to shrink health care safety net
Republican experts who have led the party’s thinking on Obamacare alternatives acknowledge the conservative agenda is out of step with public demands.
Business InsiderTrump retweeted a post accusing the CDC of lying about the coronavirus to prevent his reelection
Business Insider contacted the White House for comment on President Donald Trump's retweet but did not immediately receive a response Monday morning.
The New York TimesInside the White House, a Gun Industry Lobbyist Delivers for His Former Patrons
Michael B. Williams spent nearly two years helping to run a trade group focused on expanding sales of firearm silencers by American manufacturers.But try as he might, he could not achieve one of the industry's main goals: overturning a ban on sales to private foreign buyers enacted by the State Department to protect U.S. troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere.Then Williams joined the Trump administration.As a White House lawyer, he pushed to overturn the prohibition, raising the issue with influential administration officials and creating pressure within the State Department, according to current and former government officials.On Friday, the State Department lifted the ban, and a longtime industry goal was realized. The change paved the way for as much as $250 million a year in possible new overseas sales for companies that Williams had championed as general counsel of the American Suppressor Association.His role in pushing to lift the ban, which has not been previously reported, follows a well-established pattern in the Trump administration, with the president handing over policymaking to allies of special interest groups with a stake in those policies. And in this case, Williams' victory comes for a key constituency as President Donald Trump seeks reelection.Trump's Cabinet includes a former coal lobbyist as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, a former lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon Technologies as defense secretary, a lobbyist for the auto industry at the helm of the Energy Department and a former oil and gas lobbyist as interior secretary. Those industries have been sources of funds for Trump's campaign and committees supporting it.Williams' work, though lower-profile, has nevertheless been a boon to another crucial political constituency: the gun lobby, which plays a leading role in Republican get-out-the-vote efforts and views eliminating silencer restrictions as an emerging issue. It is a subject that has been embraced by the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. -- an ally of Williams' former trade group -- as well as by other powerful gun industry groups."This is another win for the firearm and suppressor manufacturers by the Trump administration," said Lawrence G. Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, in a statement after the ban was lifted Friday.In an interview, Keane praised Williams, saying "he understands the product, obviously, having worked at the American Suppressor Association." That association said it was "thrilled" with the ban's end; the group also dismissed safety concerns, noting that the sales would be regulated by the State Department and that foreign-made silencers were already available for purchase in other countries.But some in military, diplomatic and arms control circles defended the ban and expressed alarm about its lifting, which was announced Friday afternoon in a little-noticed posting on the website of the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. Although the department's rules had long permitted selling silencers to foreign governments, they did not allow sales to private companies or individuals, whose use of the devices is more difficult to monitor.Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr., who was assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs when the ban was enacted in 2002, said the policy was intended to prevent American equipment from making its way to hostile groups that might use it against U.S. service members, especially during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars."Terrorist groups were using garage door openers to blow up U.S. troops; you kind of think twice about what you are exporting," said Bloomfield, who added that such dangers still exist today. "Who are you selling these silencers to?" he said. "I sure hope that none of these are aimed at U.S. or allied forces."A State Department spokeswoman said the policy change was made to benefit American manufacturers. "U.S. companies should have the same opportunity to compete in the international marketplace as other manufacturers around the world," the spokeswoman said. She also said that silencers were more readily available in foreign countries now than when the ban was imposed.The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Williams declined to comment.An examination of Williams' rise from trade group advocate to West Wing lawyer reveals that White House tumult and turnover created opportunities for him.After joining Trump's campaign in 2016, Williams, at age 30, became an assistant deputy general counsel at the Office of Management and Budget, then led by Mick Mulvaney.In the spring of 2019, not long after Mulvaney was elevated to acting White House chief of staff, Williams joined him as counselor and a deputy assistant to the president. It was from that perch that Williams began to press the gun issues in earnest, according to the current and former officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly.Throughout his time in the White House, Williams maintained close ties to the suppressor association, which is funded by silencer manufacturers, distributors, retailers and customers. His brother, Knox Williams, started the organization and serves as its president and executive director, and the two have remained in regular contact. "We speak almost every day," Knox Williams said in an interview.Michael Williams, his brother said, did not run afoul of Trump administration ethics rules that forbid government officials from working on matters affecting their former employers within two years of leaving. But in 2019, he set to work on gun issues without those constraints.He was involved in a successful push to shift responsibility for foreign sales of semi-automatic weapons, including powerful .50-caliber sniper rifles, to the Commerce Department from the State Department -- an effort that had been underway since the Obama administration and that had been previously blocked by Democratic members of Congress over concerns that it would strip away oversight.Once that was accomplished, Williams turned to the silencer sales ban, even though in internal discussions Pentagon officials had warned against lifting it. The officials feared that U.S. troops who came under silenced gunfire might struggle to locate their attackers and return fire.Knox Williams rejected the suggestion that his group had an inside advantage. "We work the issues that we work just the same as any other organization does," he said, though he said he believed his brother had played a role in the industry scoring its latest win."It's a big victory for us, and a victory for our industry, and a victory for our consumers, and frankly a victory for the country," he said. "This is going to create hundreds of jobs, easily, if not more."Government watchdog groups, however, said the case raised concerns about special interests gaining remarkable access in the Trump White House."When Michael Williams exits through the revolving door to return to the gun industry, I'm sure he will be greeted with open arms," said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, a government ethics advocacy group that has filed records requests for Williams' communications with the gun lobby from the White House budget office.Records obtained by Evers' group show that in early 2018, about a year after his arrival at the White House, Williams was invited by the National Shooting Sports Foundation to three meetings that another invitee described as being about countering gun control measures after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.Keane, the shooting sports foundation's general counsel, said Williams did not attend the meetings and had been invited in error. Nevertheless, he said his group communicated with Williams about the State Department's silencer policy, and other Second Amendment-related issues. He said Williams took on what Keane called the "hook and bullet" portfolio -- fishing and hunting issues -- at the White House.A Georgia native and Eagle Scout, Williams worked as a law clerk for the National Rifle Association before graduating from George Washington University Law School in 2014. Soon after, he went to work at the American Suppressor Association, which his brother had co-founded three years earlier. Michael Williams managed the group's budget, but he also helped draft legislation and lobby lawmakers, his brother said. One of his main issues was the fight to open up sales of silencers to private foreign buyers.Intent on understanding the reasons for the sales ban, Michael Williams filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents from the State Department and then battled the agency over them for more than a year. His association also sought to attack the ban from Capitol Hill, helping to draft and push a bill introduced by Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, in 2016 that would have overturned the sales prohibition, according to Knox Williams. The bill never got out of committee.Neither Michael Williams nor his brother was required to register as a lobbyist at the federal level, his brother said, because they did not spend 20% or more of their time lobbying. "We made sure that we were not hitting those thresholds to require us individually to register," Knox Williams said.The Williams brothers also tried to influence silencer policies in various states, including in New Hampshire, where both registered as lobbyists in 2015.After Trump accepted the Republican nomination in the summer of 2016, their cause got a boost from a prominent figure, Donald Trump Jr.The candidate's son, an avid hunter, recorded a video in September 2016 with Joshua G. Waldron, a founding board member of the suppressor association, expressing support for making silencers easier to buy in the United States.Waldron, who founded a company called SilencerCo, tells Trump in the video "there is no better person than your father to protect our Second Amendment," and says he wants to "try to get the people that love firearms in our community and our industry" to back the Trump campaign.The same month, Michael Wiliams left the suppressor association to become director of Election Day operations for Trump's campaign in North Carolina. He worked as associate counsel on Trump's inaugural committee before joining the Office of Management and Budget in January 2017.He returned to the budget office last month. Knox Williams credited him with helping to lay the groundwork for Friday's announcement before his return. "This is a yearslong effort and buildup that just finally got across the finish line," he said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
ReutersJudge seeks clarity on the scope of Trump's clemency order for Roger Stone
A U.S. judge on Monday asked the Justice Department to explain whether President Donald Trump's order commuting Roger Stone's prison term means the veteran Republican operative does not need to be supervised by probation officers as many convicted felons are after being freed. Congressional Democrats and other critics accused Trump of abuse of power and an assault on the rule of law after the Republican president on Friday gave executive clemency to Stone, his longtime friend and adviser. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who presided over Stone's trial, set a July 14 deadline to receive a copy of Trump's clemency order along with an explanation about whether it also commutes the period that Stone was meant to be supervised after leaving prison.
Yahoo NewsICE to launch 'Citizens Academy' to teach civilians about 'targeted arrests'
Operating with broad authority and minimal oversight, ICE’s enforcement and removal operations have become increasingly aggressive under the Trump administration.
The New York TimesTrump vs. the Women Who Lead Michigan: A Battle With 2020 Implications
LANSING, Mich. -- Beyond being the women leading Michigan's state government, Gretchen Whitmer, Dana Nessel and Jocelyn Benson have a lot in common.All three are Democratic lawyers and part of Generation X, with long lists of accomplishments. Whitmer was the first woman to lead the Democratic caucus in the state Senate. Nessel argued before the Supreme Court and helped pave the way for the legalization of same-sex marriage. And Benson, a Harvard Law School graduate, was the dean of the Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.By 2018, the three were swept into statewide office on a wave that flipped much of Michigan's leadership from red to blue and put three women -- Whitmer, the governor; Nessel, the attorney general; and Benson, the secretary of state -- in charge of running the state for the first time.Now these women share another distinction: They're all targets of President Donald Trump.Trailing in polls to Joe Biden in this key battleground state, the president has taken aggressive aim at Whitmer -- "that woman from Michigan," in his words -- and her counterparts, zeroing in on their mission to expand voting rights in a state where his 2016 winning margin of just 10,704 votes was the narrowest in the country.The three women have in turn responded forcefully to Trump, denouncing his coronavirus response, suing his administration and tangling with him over his maskless appearance at a Ford auto plant. Whitmer, who has been in the national spotlight as a potential running mate for Biden, was also a potent foil to Trump in February, jointly giving the Democratic response to his State of the Union address.Michigan Democrats believe that the state leaders are a not-so-secret weapon in the 2020 election. They see the president's frequent barbs -- he has called Nessel "the Wacky Do Nothing Attorney General" and Benson a "rogue Secretary of State" -- as helping fuel the anti-Trump bandwagon in the state, which before 2016 had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988."We're enraged. We're exhausted," said Lori Goldman, a Bloomfield Township Realtor who started the group Fems for Dems with about a half-dozen suburban Michigan women after the 2016 election. "I'm a woman and I feel the sting of how these women leaders are being treated and called names."The group, which has grown to more than 8,000 members, worked to elect Whitmer, Benson and Nessel. It also helped flip two congressional seats, as well as five seats each in the state House and Senate, from Republican to Democrat in 2018."We are a bunch of dumpy, middle-aged housewives," Goldman said. "That's the one good thing about getting older: You don't need to have people like you anymore. When you get pissed off, you're ready to stand up and say something."The three elected leaders continue to push back against the Trump administration.Whitmer has kept up her criticism of the lack of a federal strategy to fight the coronavirus, which has infected more than 76,000 people and killed more than 6,300 in the state, and spoke out against the president's comments telling governors to "dominate" demonstrators protesting against police brutality and racial injustice.On Tuesday, Whitmer said it was "incumbent on every one of us to mask up, from the White House to the state House," adding, "the fact that we're behind the rest of the world is a disgrace."Nessel has joined or filed dozens of lawsuits to reverse policies enacted under Trump, including one filed Tuesday against the secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, over a rule she instituted reallocating some public school funding to private schools.Nessel called Trump "a petulant child" after he traveled to Ypsilanti in May and declined to wear a mask while touring a Ford Motor Co. plant."I swear, some days I wake up and think Montgomery Burns is president," she said, referring to the greedy boss in "The Simpsons."Trump accused her of scaring businesses away from Michigan with her language.One of the president's biggest concerns surrounding Michigan in November appears to be Benson's actions to ensure voting rights amid the pandemic. She has sent out absentee ballot applications to all 7.7 million voters in the state.Despite little evidence, Trump has repeatedly criticized absentee voting as an invitation for election fraud. He has particularly focused on Benson's mailing effort, initially threatening to withhold federal money for coronavirus relief before backing off.In an op-ed article published in Newsweek in late May, Benson wondered why the president had singled her out when at least six other states were also sending absentee ballot applications to all voters."The obvious answer is that Michigan is one of several states that will heavily influence the outcome of this year's presidential election," she wrote. "We cannot let misinformation -- whether it comes from the White House, the Kremlin or anywhere else -- sow seeds of doubt in our elections."Others have pointed to another reason for Trump's attacks: his history of demeaning prominent women."In some ways, it's not surprising that you've got this trifecta of women in leadership, all of whom are Democrats," said Debbie Walsh, director at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "All of whom have been exercising leadership in making sure that the state remains healthy and have elections that function."She added, "He sees this all as hostile acts against him."The three state leaders are not the only women in Michigan whom the president has targeted. He has also repeatedly criticized Mary Barra, chief executive of General Motors, over her decision to close U.S. auto manufacturing plants and what he perceived as a slow transformation of some plants to make ventilators for virus treatment."Women are sharply viewing it as anti-female," said Richard Czuba, founder of the Glengariff Group, a nonpartisan polling firm in Lansing. "I can see him going after Whitmer if he's worried about her being on the ticket. But he has systemically attacked every prominent female politician in Michigan."The state and national Republican parties have adopted Trump's campaign against the three female leaders, bashing Whitmer's handling of the virus, suing her over her use of emergency powers and slamming her frequent appearances on cable news, which they have called an "audition" to become Biden's running mate.GOP leaders have also seized on a comment by Whitmer's husband, Marc Mallory -- a failed attempt at humor, according to the governor -- in which he reportedly tried to exploit his wife's position to get the family boat put in the water at their northern Michigan vacation home before Memorial Day. Republicans had blue-and-gray beer koozies printed up: "Whitmer Yacht Club … Lockdown for thee, Open waters for me."The Republican-controlled Michigan House of Representatives and Senate have threatened to cut funding from Nessel's office. A group affiliated with the Michigan Freedom Fund, a conservative advocacy group funded primarily by the DeVos family, has sued Benson over the absentee ballot and independent redistricting commission issues, both of which were overwhelmingly approved by Michigan voters in 2018.So far, the courts have rejected the lawsuits, although Republicans are appealing those decisions.And according to polls, Michiganders are siding with the women.Stuck at a 43% approval rating at the start of 2020, Whitmer had weathered a difficult 2019, unable to deliver on her signature campaign issue of "fixing the damn roads," and having lost several crucial budget battles with Republicans in the legislature.But then the first confirmed coronavirus cases hit the state March 10, and Whitmer's response to the pandemic, including a statewide lockdown announced March 23, turned the tide in voters' views of her. Four separate polls taken in April, May and June have shown rising approval ratings, despite several raucous protests against the stay-at-home order at the state Capitol. By June, she was at 60%, while Trump was stuck around 42% nationally."In a crisis, people rally around their leaders," said Czuba, the pollster. "What is unique is that the president is the only leader who hasn't been rallied around. In one fell swoop, the president helped her consolidate her support."The Twitter fights have helped at least one business in Michigan, too.When the virus hit the state, Ivette Lopez thought she would have to permanently close the Outdoor Beerdsman, her 5-year-old coffee and gift shop in northern Michigan.But then Trump's Twitter war with Whitmer began, and Lopez started churning out T-shirts with the slogan "That Woman From Michigan" in her Boyne City home. She has now sold more than 8,000 of them for $20 a pop, including one that Whitmer wore during an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Trevor Noah.""Without these shirts, I would have closed my business," Lopez said. "There's no way I could have made it through the winter."Now, Whitmer and Nessel are turning at least some of their attention to defeating Trump in November. Because of her role as the state's chief elections officer, Benson won't endorse or work for a candidate in the presidential race.Whitmer said on a recent campaign call, "We're all that woman from Michigan, and by the end of this, Donald Trump is going to know not to mess with these women from Michigan."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
Yahoo NewsTrump identifies another hoax: The coronavirus
“The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19,” wrote game show host Chuck Woolery in a tweet promoted by the president.
Yahoo NewsTrump says a President Biden would get 'no ratings'
President Trump, whose halting leadership in the face of the coronavirus pandemic Americans increasingly question, boasted Monday about his one undisputed success: his ability to command media attention.
The IndependentDonald Trump drives golf cart with caddie hanging off the back
Donald Trump wasn't kidding when he said was going to play a "VERY fast" round of golf on the weekend.The president was seen driving a golf cart with the caddie hanging off the back as he played a few holes in Northern Virginia after his rally in New Hampshire was postponed.
Good Morning AmericaBefore VP whispers, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms' rise propelled by controversial figure
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ impassioned plea for calm as her city descended into “chaos” last month has helped catapult her onto Joe Biden’s list of possible running mates – a seamless, rapid, and for some, unexpected ascent to the national stage. “The uncertainty of the federal investigation into corruption at city hall would be something I would not want to overlook if I were choosing a running mate,” said Harvey Newman, a professor emeritus of policy affairs at Georgia State University and a former informal advisor to past Atlanta mayors prior to Reed’s tenure. Bottoms has not been linked to the federal probe.
The Guardian'He's in trouble here': can Trump win this critical swing state again?
If he’s to stay in power, Trump needs to repeat his victory in Wisconsin. But the landscape is very different now – and support is shrinkingDonald Trump claimed to have done so much for African Americans that his campaign decided to open the first ever Republican office in a black neighbourhood of Milwaukee.The office on Martin Luther King drive was decorated with “Black Voters for Trump” signs, and launched with fanfare in February in an attempt to win enough African American votes to repeat the president’s razor-thin victory in Wisconsin four years ago, which was crucial to winning the White House. Two weeks later, the windows were daubed with paint and “scum” scrawled across the door.Not long after that, the coronavirus pandemic shut down campaigning. Now the office is back up and running, but in a very different electoral landscape from the one that existed in February. Covid-19 has shattered the illusion that Trump could take significant numbers of African American votes following his hostility to the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic – which has had a disproportionate impact on communities of colour – has also been a factor.Outside his apartment a block from the Trump campaign office, Cleophus Lobley acknowledged that he helped elect the president in 2016 by not voting. The African American truck driver said the events of the past few months mean he won’t make that mistake again.“Damn right I’m not happy with Trump. To me, he’s really a very prejudiced person. He’s been bad for the black community,” he said.“I’m not just talking about Covid and George Floyd, but that made things worse. That’s the kind of president he is. I decided I would vote this time because of him. Maybe my vote might count. I don’t know anyone around here who will vote for him.”Lobley was among 40,000 people in Milwaukee who voted for Barack Obama but failed to turn out for Hillary Clinton in 2016, including a significant proportion from black neighbourhoods. Their absence was more than enough to give victory to Trump in Wisconsin. He won the state by just 23,000 votes – a margin of victory of 0.77% – giving him a crucial part of the electoral college puzzle that put him into the White House.If he is to stay in power, the president almost certainly needs to repeat that victory while also winning Michigan and Pennsylvania, two other states he took by tiny margins.Wisconsin Republicans suffered stinging setbacks with the loss of the governor’s office in 2018, and in April they lost a key seat on the state supreme court alongside a failed attempt to purge the voting roll of 200,000 people before November’s election.The scale of the Jill Karofsky’s victory in the supreme court race over a sitting justice who was strongly backed by Trump, and the fact of a high turnout despite long lines because so many polling places were closed by coronavirus, gave Democrats reason to hope that their supporters are more engaged with politics than four years ago. This would be bad news for the president. “He’s got a tougher road here than he had in March’’A survey of Wisconsin voters by Marquette law school in Milwaukee gave the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, an eight-point lead over the president in June, a five-point increase on a month earlier.The survey showed rising disapproval in the state for Trump’s job performance, linked to his handling of coronavirus but also the Black Lives Matter protests. More than half said Trump has got it wrong in dealing with Covid-19. Just 30% of voters approved of his response to the killing of Floyd and the demands for police reform.Even on his strongest issue, the economy, Trump’s approval rating fell four points to 50%.Crucially, opposition has grown among independents who were instrumental in delivering Wisconsin to him four years ago. Disapproval of Trump’s leadership among independent voters in the state surged from 36% to 57% between May and June.Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette poll, said that “intense negativity” is to the Democrats’ advantage if it motivates people to vote.“Trump’s in trouble. He’s got a tougher road here – a considerably tougher road than he was facing back in March, when it looked like a very tight race. There seem to be cracks in the nearly unanimous Republican support and a loss of independent support,” he said.It’s a picture found in travelling across Wisconsin over the last week, from its main cities to the rural wilds of the north of the state where Trump did so well four years ago. Republican activists there are increasingly concerned at eroding support for the president and what they see as his lack of a coherent strategy or policies to regain it, particularly on key issues such as healthcare, which has taken on added resonance in the middle of the pandemic.Some county party chairs privately wonder if Trump has already given up hope of re-election because, they say, he continues to repeat the divisive behaviour that has damaged his presidency, as well as taking highly controversial decisions such as commuting Roger Stone’s prison sentence.Franklin said he had been particularly surprised by the president’s low polling over Black Lives Matter.“To the extent that Trump’s reaction to the protest is seen as opposing the valid reasons for the protests, Trump is on the wrong side of public opinion – even here in Wisconsin with our 80-something per cent white population,” he said. “That issue of race and Confederate statues and patriotism, as he sees it, is not playing to a strong suit for him right now.” ‘There is no such thing as democratic socialism. It’s the same as democratic Auschwitz’That was not immediately evident at the Wisconsin Republican convention in Green Bay on Saturday, where party leaders largely sidestepped mention of coronavirus, other than to call it a “communist China-exported plague”, in favour of an assault on Black Lives Matter that marked out the ground the party wants to fight the election on.“We’ve seen violent mobs taking to the streets in order to erase our history,” Congressman Mike Gallagher, who represents a Wisconsin district, told the conference.Katrina Pierson, the former spokeswoman for Trump 2016 and an adviser to this year’s campaign, said that as a black woman she thought it important that Republicans remind African American voters it was their party under Lincoln that freed those who were enslaved.“When black Americans wake up, it’s game over,” she said, to tepid applause.In an effort to stir that awakening, the party is pushing the widely derided claim that “nobody has ever done more” for African Americans than Trump in creating jobs for minorities, criminal justice reform and combating poverty. But Pierson undermined her own case with language sure to alienate large numbers of black voters.“The Black Voices for Trump coalition will be taking on Black Lives Matter. We have the candidate that has the policies that prove black lives matter, because he believes that all lives matter,” she said.A Soviet defector, Yuri Maltsev, broadened the attack on the Democrats by warning the dangers of democratic socialism. The Republican party, he said, is all that stands between freedom and communist “slavery”.“There is no such thing as democratic socialism. It’s the same as democratic Auschwitz,” he said, to some gasps.Wisconsin’s Republican party was one of the few to go ahead with an in-person state convention this year. Few of the mostly elderly delegates were wearing masks, in a reflection of how widely their use is now seen as a political statement in parts of the country.Among delegates to the convention there was no great confidence in a strategy of attacking Black Lives Matter and painting the Democrats as Stalinists.Vicky Ostrey, representing Germantown on the edge of Milwaukee, was not confident Trump will win.“I think it’s going to be a tough re-election,” she said, reflecting a view widely heard from Republican activists, particularly in rural Wisconsin where Trump needs to win big again to offset any surge in re-motivated Democratic voters in the cities.> I think a lot of younger, more progressive voters see this as a referendum on Trump’s presidency, not just coronavirus> > Matt LoweThe threat to Trump’s grip on the White House comes not only from a resurgence in the Democratic vote, but in the loss of independent and moderate Republican support in Wisconsin. That has been steadily eroding as the president alienates former voters piecemeal with his assaults on the military, the justice system and broader democratic norms.Democrats still lose in Waukesha county west of Milwaukee, one of three solidly Republican counties around Milwaukee seen as an important test of Trump’s ability to hold on to the support of prosperous college educated voters. But Democratic candidates have taken an increasing share of the ballot in recent elections for the US Senate, governor and state supreme court.Matt Lowe, the 29 year-old chair of Waukesha’s Democrats, attributes that in part to Republican voters abandoning Trump, but also to a shift in priorities of those Democrats who are not enthusiastic about Biden.“I think a lot of younger, more progressive voters see this as a referendum on Trump’s whole presidency, not just coronavirus,” he said. “I’m a millennial who is also straight, white, cis, living in a fluid community. I know that if Donald Trump is elected for four more years I will most likely be OK as an individual.“But I know that my LGBT friends, my friends of colour, the friends who are less likely to be as safe in a Trump America, they will not be OK. For a lot of younger voters who may be more idealistic, radical, they see that this is more than their ideology. It’s about protecting those who need them as allies to vote to help protect them. It’s a motivation to vote.”Still, there are still four months to the election in a year in which events have moved fast.Franklin said the president could win back support if the economy improves over the summer, but warned that Trump’s pushing for the reopening of schools and universities will damage him if it resulted in a surge in coronavirus cases in the run-up to the election.There is also the question of how the pandemic will affect voting, particularly if many polling stations are closed in the major cities as they were for April’s elections, causing long lines. But some voters waited for hours to cast their ballot, reflecting an apparent determination to counter Trump. More than 60% voted by mail, an option likely to be widely taken up for the presidential election.Whatever it takes, Lobley is determined to be heard this time, even if he is not hugely enthused by Joe Biden.“Biden talks good, but he’s trying to get the majority of black people on his side to get the votes. I know what he’s doing,” he said. “But the important thing is to get rid of this president.”
Good Morning AmericaAs ballots pile up in the mail, a potential 'nightmare' looms on Election Night
New York's polls closed nearly three weeks ago. In fact, in New York, which is typically far more reliant on in-person voting, state law requires a weeklong delay before counting absentee ballots. Professor Charles Stewart III, director of the MIT Election Data & Science Lab, said he's concerned the confusion could last for "a couple weeks, maybe longer."
Business InsiderWhite House chief of staff Mark Meadows told staffers he fed information to suspected leakers to see if they'd tell the media, according to report
According to Axios, President Donald Trump stressed to Meadows that it was important to "find the leakers" within his administration.
Associated PressTrump's reelection operation hires 1,500 field staffers
The Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump’s campaign say they have now hired 1,500 field staffers, aiming to convert their financial advantage over Democrats into votes in November. Trump Victory, the joint field effort of the two organizations, announced Monday the hiring of an additional 300 staffers set to hit 20 target states by Wednesday in the largest field operation ever mounted by a Republican. The Trump team says it is on pace to eclipse the 2.2 million volunteer total that helped reelect President Barack Obama in 2012.
USA TODAYChina sanctions US lawmakers, including Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, over Xinjiang
Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were among those sanctioned by China, days after the U.S. sanctioned China over alleged rights abuses.
The New York TimesPittsburgh Seemed Like a Virus Success Story. Now Cases Are Surging.
PITTSBURGH -- A little more than three weeks ago, officials in Pittsburgh announced a milestone enviable for almost any major city in America: A day had gone by without a single new confirmed case of the coronavirus. It was good news for a city that had seen only a modest outbreak all along, even as the virus raged through places like Philadelphia and New York.That was then.Western Pennsylvania is suddenly experiencing an alarming surge of infections. Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, reported more than 100 new cases for the first time on June 30; two days later, the daily case count surpassed 200. Over two weeks in late June and early July, the county recorded more new cases than in the previous two months combined, and on some recent days has accounted for nearly half of all new known cases in Pennsylvania."Allegheny County is the big area of concern at this point," Gov. Tom Wolf said at a news conference last week. "There have been others more modest," he said, "but right now Allegheny County is the area."The spike in the Pittsburgh area offers a cautionary tale: Even after months of vigilance, an outbreak can flare up all of a sudden. While the nation's current flood of new cases is being driven primarily by the spread of the coronavirus in the South and the West, experts fear that other parts of the country -- including places like Cleveland, Milwaukee and Kansas City, Missouri, which are all seeing new growth -- could be close behind."You are seeing what could be the beginning of what we've been seeing in Texas and Arizona," said Dr. Bill Miller, a professor of epidemiology at the Ohio State University. He described upswings in urban counties in Ohio, a state that saw weeks of steady or declining cases but is now averaging more than 1,000 new confirmed cases a day, the worst so far of the pandemic."We can't let our guard down," he said.For months, Pittsburgh had been both diligent and lucky.The virus began spreading here later than in some early centers of the nation's crisis, like New York City or Detroit. That gave Pittsburgh time to prepare. At the same time, Pennsylvania, which began facing skyrocketing rates in the eastern half of the state, took a more aggressive approach to shutting down public life than states like Florida and Texas, which closed later and reopened earlier.Pittsburgh, which has an economy driven by the health care industry and is a sister city to Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus first emerged, took the threat seriously. Its 300,000 residents largely abided by the new way of life, ordering their pizzas from Mineo's to go, drinking their Yuenglings on the porch at home and wearing masks for grocery trips to Giant Eagle, even as the case numbers remained relatively low.From March 23, when the governor ordered everyone to stay at home, until June 5, when Allegheny County was allowed to lift the more stringent restrictions, the city had hunkered down. But it was not long after that limited reopening in June, as people flocked to bars for the first time in months, that the seeds of the current surge were planted."You have to realize: The virus isn't going to go anywhere until there is a vaccine," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based physician and a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. "You are going to see these flare-ups in any city because wherever there are people, there is this virus."Two weeks ago, Wolf, a Democrat, issued a statewide mask order in response to the mounting cases, a move that was swiftly followed by the governors of West Virginia, where the order applies to indoor public spaces; and of Ohio, where the order applies to hard-hit spots including Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton. On Thursday afternoon, the governor of Kentucky announced a statewide mask order as well.On Wednesday, health officials in Allegheny County banned indoor dining for two more weeks.The next few weeks could prove pivotal for Pittsburgh. There has been a modest if notable rise in hospitalizations, but so far very few COVID-19 patients at the major hospitals are in need of ventilators, hospital officials said. On several recent days, the median age of people testing positive for the virus has been 29, far lower than it was several months ago. Many of them have not had symptoms, officials said, and were prompted to get a test only after learning from a friend or a contact tracer that they had been around someone who tested positive."I wasn't necessarily scared," said Christian Glikes of Pittsburgh, who learned that he may have been exposed at an outdoor game of cards this month. He drove more than an hour to get a test at a CVS store in St. Clairsville, Ohio, the closest he could find on short notice."I'm healthy, I'm 24 years old," Glikes said while at home waiting for his results. "My only concern is giving it to people who aren't so healthy."Some rise in case numbers is inevitable when lockdown orders are lifted and cities enter less restrictive stages of the pandemic response -- what the Pennsylvania government has deemed "the green phase." When Allegheny County entered the green phase in early June, hair salons and gyms opened for the first time in months, though under strict rules, and bars and restaurants allowed some indoor dining. At the same time, large anti-racism protests were taking place across the city, and some Pittsburghers were taking vacations in places like Miami and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina."I knew we would have a bump," said Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat. "The question is whether or not it would exceed the numbers that we had seen earlier. It not only exceeded them; it doubled and I think tripled them. It wasn't supposed to do that."The main source of the current outbreak is largely undisputed. People who had been cooped up for months flocked to the city's bars and clubs, crowding shoulder-to-shoulder like old times on East Carson Street. Complaints poured into the health department about bars ignoring the pandemic rules. "It was almost like the entire city turned 21," said Adalja, who added that he took walks past crowded bars that he suspected would turn into hot spots.Kyle Majerick, a 29-year-old insurance salesman whose evenings before the virus were typically filled with intramural soccer games, happy hours and charity and networking events, was more than ready to have a few beers with friends when the bars reopened. He said he took care to avoid the most crowded spots."You go from having something to do every single night to, 'OK, where am I going to order takeout from and sit at my condo by myself,'" he said. Sitting at a half-empty outdoor bar patio and ordering from a list of options on his phone instead of a touchable table menu, he said, felt safe."It was a change of scenery, which was a breath of fresh air," Majerick, who has not had symptoms, said.Through contact tracing, county officials found that bars and restaurants were the most common denominator of new cases and once again shut down indoor dining. For business owners, the new rules have been dizzying and disheartening.Even after the city's reopening, Jamie Patten kept customers out of her quiet neighborhood wine bar, the Allegheny Wine Mixer, so she could ensure that it was safe. She set up a reservation system for the first time, bought outdoor furniture and installed plexiglass along the bar itself. On Jun 27, the bar opened and regulars returned. A day later, under countywide orders banning the on-site consumption of alcohol, it closed again."We did all this work, we did everything we were supposed to do, and we were seeing results," Patten said. "Now it's all just kind of swept away."Now officials say they are trying a more targeted approach as they search for a way forward, and are adjusting them weekly. Under the latest county order, for example, gyms and hair salons can stay open, at least for now, but indoor dining is barred.Rich Fitzgerald, the Allegheny County executive, said the county now was using what officials learn from contact tracing to more precisely identify venues that pose the most significant risks. And the county also was turning more attention to enforcement, Fitzgerald said."Get rid of the bad apples," he said.State and county officials expressed little appetite to return to a full lockdown, though they said nothing was off the table.Bethany Hallam, a member of the Allegheny County council, said that terminology the state uses may also need rethinking. Under the governor's plan, moving counties into the "green phase" never meant a return to normal, only to a less restrictive set of rules. But that is not how many people apparently heard it."To anybody from a 2-year-old to a 100-year-old, 'green' means go," Hallam said "We went to green, and everybody went wild."The world is not green," she said, "until we have a cure or a vaccine."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
USA TODAYBiden is winning the young and the old in Wisconsin. Trump is winning the middle-aged.
Despite the stereotype that Donald Trump’s political base is “old,” the president has drawn negative ratings from seniors in Wisconsin throughout his term.
ReutersTrump willing to consider more aid to reopen schools, Kudlow says
U.S. President Donald Trump is willing to consider additional aid to re-open schools, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday. "The president has said that he's open to suggestions about additional funding if it appears that would be necessary in certain states and localities, so he will look at that," Kudlow told reporters outside the White House. Trump has been pushing for schools to re-open for the beginning of the school year in the fall, even while the coronavirus surges in states across the country.
The Daily BeastWhoopi Shouts Down Another Meghan McCain and Joy Behar Fight: ‘I Swear to GOD!’
Returning from a one-week summer break, The View quickly devolved into yet another shoutfest between frequent sparring partners Meghan McCain and Joy Behar, prompting lead host Whoopi Goldberg to scold the pair and threaten them with a quick commercial break.The ABC talk show kicked off Monday’s broadcast by discussing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ disastrous Sunday talk-show appearances, something the panel appeared to be in agreement over.“So Meghan, we’re not seeming to get any real guidance from the education secretary. So what do you think a good idea for a plan could be?” Goldberg noted after highlighting DeVos’ inability to detail a comprehensive plan to safely reopen schools on Sunday.“Well, first and foremost on that point, Betsy DeVos needs major media training if she’s going to have a job like this in the administration during a pandemic,” McCain replied. “I don’t know if I have ever seen someone at that level be worse in interviews.”This caused Behar to laugh, prompting McCain to tell her liberal colleague that this is “quite serious” before going on to say she was “really disappointed” and there is still no plan to safely reopen schools this fall while calling on “both sides” to be voted out.“Yeah. What’s funny, Meghan, is that media training is the least of her problems. That’s what made me laugh,” Behar eventually responded.“It’s about communication,” McCain shot back, prompting Behar to add, “I know. She sucks!”Moments later, McCain took offense when Behar said the GOP doesn’t care about education, griping that it’s “very aggressive and incendiary” to “say Republicans don’t care about children.”Behar contended she was criticizing Republicans on “education,” causing McCain to say “whatever” before blasting Democrats for supporting teachers’ unions and presenting a “moving goal of priorities” on reopening schools. McCain, meanwhile, groused that it’s “exhausting” to come on the show and be “told that Republicans don’t care about anything.”As the two continued to bicker, Goldberg jumped in and threw the segment to a commercial break while waving to the camera.The following segment, which was ostensibly about the Trump administration’s attempt to publicly discredit top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, eventually turned into another partisan fight between the two.After Behar chastised McCain for conflating her criticism of Republicans as being about run-of-the-mill GOP voters, McCain shot back by claiming (once again) that she’s the “only Republican in mainstream media” and saying Behar’s remarks come across as “accusatory.”“I’m Republican. I vote for these people,” she grumbled, adding, “All I want is for us at this show to lead by example and not be part of the problem and come in being accusatory.”While Behar continued to attack Republican “idiots,” McCain yelled back that the veteran comedian was going to get President Donald Trump re-elected, leading Goldberg to say enough is enough.“Okay, I swear to God if you don’t stop, I’m going to take us to break again,” she shouted.“I didn’t bring this up,” McCain protested. “We were moving on to another topic! Joy brought it up!”Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar Shut Down Meghan McCain’s COVID OutburstRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
The New York TimesNation's Governors Get Tested for a Virus That Is Testing Them
HOUSTON -- Governors have always been judged on their disaster responses, but the coronavirus wreaking havoc across the country these days does not recede like floodwaters and cannot be tamed by calling out the National Guard.The states' chief executives have been tested for the very virus that keeps testing them -- politically, personally, logistically. And they have been forced onto the national and global stage in a way few governors have ever endured -- an unending and very public test on a highly scientific and ever-shifting subject with the lives of their constituents, the economies of their states and their political careers at stake.Tate Reeves has been the governor of Mississippi for just under six months. During that time, he has had a very full plate: deadly tornadoes, the flooding of the capital city of Jackson, violence in the state prisons, a vote to take down the flag with the Confederate battle emblem.But the coronavirus has eclipsed all of that, and in recent days, the virus was threatening the statehouse and his own house a few blocks away.Reeves, 46, was tested for the virus, as were his wife and three daughters. The tests came back negative, but many of his colleagues at the Mississippi State Capitol were not as lucky -- the virus has infected 26 lawmakers, including the lieutenant governor and the House speaker. Cases have surged statewide -- 674 new cases were announced Wednesday, 703 on Thursday -- and intensive care units at many of the state's largest hospitals are near capacity."I have taken to replacing sleeping with praying," Reeves, an accountant before he got into politics, told reporters.The pandemic has put Reeves, a Republican, and many of America's governors of both parties under a spotlight for which none of their aides and consultants have a playbook. Interviews with aides, advisers and others involved in the coronavirus response efforts of seven governors revealed just how much the crisis has upended their offices, their lives, and how they approach the job. For some, it has magnified their weaknesses and drawn out tensions even within their own parties -- and their own kitchen cabinets.The crisis reached a boiling point this month for some governors, as the virus spread and deaths increased in a swath of states that governors had reopened. Reversing course -- a practice governors prefer not to be seen doing -- has become routine in the age of coronavirus.Reeves had been eager previously to lift the restrictions that had stalled Mississippi's economy and had hoped to have the whole state open by July 1. Now, he has been warning residents of a "slow-moving disaster" and made masks mandatory in 13 of the hardest-hit counties.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, was adamant for weeks that government could not mandate masks. Just before the Fourth of July weekend, as cases and hospitalizations skyrocketed, he swiftly reversed, ordering all Texans to cover their faces in most situations.Minutes before the announcement, he held a conference call with lawmakers, many of them irate Republicans who have grown weary of his mandates, flip-flops and rushed, behind-the-scenes calls."He is doing all this on his own, as far as I can tell, with little-to-no input," said state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a conservative from the Fort Worth suburbs who was on the call and said lawmakers weren't permitted to ask any questions. "It's a one-way conversation. The last time I checked, we didn't elect a king in Texas."The seven governors whose crisis moments were reviewed by The New York Times -- Reeves of Mississippi; Abbott of Texas; Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida; Gov. Gavin Newsom of California; Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas; and Gov. David Ige of Hawaii -- have been scrambling in ways large and small, in ways seen and unseen by the public.Inslee, a Democrat, managed the crisis without the guidance of some members of his staff on various days last week, including his chief of staff. They had to take a day off for furloughs -- a requirement as the state grapples with financial shortfalls caused by the pandemic.Abbott has had his deputy chief of staff talk to the head of the Texas Restaurant Association to relay the latest developments, but DeSantis in Florida -- whose wife, Casey, gave birth in late March to their third child -- often gets on the line himself."I don't get a heads-up from the governor that he's going to call, he just calls," said David M. Kerner, the mayor of Palm Beach County. "At first it caught me off guard."Kelly, the Democratic governor of Kansas, has kept her circle of pandemic advisers small, relying largely on the expertise of her top health official.Hawaii's Democratic governor, Ige, was criticized, according to local news reports, for keeping his inner circle too small by excluding the lieutenant governor, who happened to be a practicing emergency room physician. Early in the pandemic, Ige's administration was reluctant to expand testing, but Lt. Gov. Josh Green wanted an aggressive expansion. In an interview, Ige attributed the tension to "misunderstanding and miscommunication," and said the lieutenant governor has been continuously involved in the response.This is a crisis that governors are managing remotely.On Thursday morning, Inslee settled at a kitchen table inside the governor's mansion in Olympia, Washington, for a series of videoconference meetings. To get the tablet screen up to eye level, the governor placed it on top of a book -- "A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House." He used an album, Judy Collins' "Strangers Again," to prop it at an angle that worked. On the couch nearby, Inslee's wife, Trudi, read a copy of The Seattle Times.Such are the coronavirus war rooms of state chief executives.DeSantis, who has been criticized for reopening Florida too fast and for not issuing a statewide mask mandate, was perhaps the most mobile of the seven governors, leaving home frequently to attend public events. He held three news conferences in three cities in a single week, often wearing a mask that he slipped off when he spoke at the microphone. Inslee, by comparison, has taken to wearing his mask even during video news conferences, his voice muffled as a result.Without a coordinated federal response, governors find themselves in an awkward role, appearing to wield much of the decision-making around managing the crisis, but also expected to hear out and satisfy the wishes of mayors, restaurant owners, emergency medical workers and everyone else. The result: all sorts of new coronavirus committees and task forces -- and bureaucratic snarls.Even with so much advice, governors seemed to be making it up as they go.Dr. Lee A. Norman, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and a colonel in the Kansas Army National Guard, said the coronavirus crisis reminded him of his deployments in the Middle East in that he and Kelly have had to make decisions without as much data as they would like."This very much has that same feel," he said of his experience in the military and with the virus. "We're making decisions before we have complete information and we have to use our best data and judgment and make bold decisions."In California, Newsom awakens early with his children on most days and starts emailing his staff by 6 a.m. He dons a mask and works not out of the domed Capitol in Sacramento, but out of the California Office of Emergency Services command center, a complex in the suburb of Carmichael, where he and his family live.Mornings are for meetings and prep for the noon livestream news conference that Newsom has done almost daily since the start of the pandemic. The Capitol press corps calls the news conferences "Newsom at Noon" and for a while some swapped bingo cards with his go-to phrases: "Bend the curve." "Meet the moment." "Localism is determinative."California acted early to impose a stay-at-home order but the virus, after appearing under control, is on the upswing. That is no surprise to Newsom, who says that the early shutdown helped the state prepare."It bought us time to build out our health care delivery system," Newsom said in an interview this month.For Reeves in Mississippi, who was sworn in Jan. 14, one of his challenges has been in publicly shifting his pandemic posture, from being eager to reopen the economy to urging caution and toughening restrictions.He has spent much of his time in recent days ringing alarm bells he had ignored for weeks, telling reporters Wednesday that the "situation that we have feared is upon us" and urging people to wear a mask and stay home as much as possible."He's dealt with more emergencies than most elected officials deal with in their entire time in office, and this has been like no other," said Pat Fontaine, who is the executive director of the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association and who has been in regular contact with the governor's office.At some daily briefings, Reeves has wished a happy birthday to Mississippians: Alex, Brianna, Alana, Mariah, Asher and Billy. One day, he pointed out that one boy was a green belt in karate. And then he came to Ian Sylvester."Ian Sylvester loves his dog Happy," Reeves said, after looking up from his notes. "Everyone these days needs a dog named Happy."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
The Daily BeastIn Moscow’s Afghan Bazaar, Searching for a Bagman Who Pays Bounties for Dead Americans
MOSCOW—If you ask where to find almost anyone in Moscow’s Afghan community, you’ll be told to come here, to the Hotel Sevastopol. Probably you will be told it has 16 floors, which seems important to the direction givers. Much of the hotel has been turned into a market, a sort of Afghan bazaar where men with tired eyes above their COVID-19 masks crowd into the elevators carrying plastic shopping bags full of fragrant Indian spices, semi-precious stones, and cheap leather goods.Russian neighbors of the Hotel Sevastopol complain bitterly about drugs being sold in the depths of this maze of hallways and rooms converted into tiny shops. Not unlike Afghanistan itself, they say, the market is a complete mess. But the Afghans seem to have enough clout with Moscow’s city government to keep business going. Always, new men are showing up to have a kebab and share the latest news. Lately, talk turned to a certain Rahmatullah Azizi. He was identified by The New York Times at the beginning of this month as a middleman U.S. and Afghan security services believe paid bounties to the Taliban and criminal gangs in Afghanistan to kill American and other coalition soldiers. A unit of the Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, allegedly was behind the operation.Both the U.S. and Afghan security services have been investigating the bounty scheme for months, raiding homes and offices and arresting at least a dozen suspects. According to the report, Azizi accumulated considerable wealth, with expensive cars and private bodyguards. A raid on one of his homes in Afghanistan several months ago turned up half a million dollars in cash. But Azizi was believed to have fled to Russia.Here in the Sevastopol Hotel, however, it appears nobody ever heard of Rahmatullah Azizi. He certainly hadn’t shown up here, people said.A tall young Afghan man, who offered just one name, Sam, was selling lapis lazuli necklaces on the 16th floor. “An Azizi worked here before me,” he said. “But he wasn’t Rahmatullah.” Ali, in a small jewelry shop, said his uncle had a pharmacy in Kabul and knew “everybody,” but not Rahmatullah Azizi. He never heard of any such Azizi. The answers kept coming back the same: Essentially, “Rahmatullah who?”The bazaaris might not have met that Azizi, they said, but they knew what the story of this particular business meant: “Another conflict between Russia and the United States on Afghan land would be a catastrophe for our people,” says Sherkhasan Hasan, formerly a practicing physician, who now runs a small business here selling toys. BLACK TULIPSThe Afghan diaspora in Russia counts about 20,000 in Moscow, and as many as 100,000 around the country. Its leaders, mostly Russian-educated during the decade of Russian occupation and dominance there, play an important role in political negotiations between Moscow and leaders on both sides of the Afghan conflict in which the United States became so deeply embroiled over the last 20 years. Today, Russian attitudes toward Afghanistan are complicated, and even the Kremlin does not articulate any clear strategy. The Soviet war in Afghanistan took the lives of more than 14,000 Soviet soldiers and triggered the fall of the USSR—that is how many in Russia remember this bloody chapter of their country’s modern history. The word Afghanistan is associated with what became known as “Black Tulips,” the Antonov cargo airplanes carrying dead soldiers home. In recent years, there has been a lot of concern about the drug traffic. Afghan opium smuggled across Central Asia makes its way to every Russian region. Thousands of drug addicts die in Russia every year. Stamping out the drug trade, which is partly run through the diaspora, seemed for a time an opening for cooperation between the United States and Russia in Afghanistan. The cooperation ended after the U.S. economic sanctions on Russia were enforced in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea. Russian Bounties for Killing Americans Go Back Five Years, Ex-Taliban ClaimsIn 2008, three of Vladimir Putin’s close allies decided it was time to re-engage on Afghanistan. They were the head of the FSB Federal Security Service, Nikolai Patrushev; the deputy prime minister, Igor Sechin; and director of the drug-control agency, and an old friend of Putin’s from the KGB years, Victor Ivanov. Ivanov’s aide, Yuriy Krupnov, traveled to Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009 to invite Afghan politicians and Pashto leaders to a high-level forum in Moscow. “By then Afghanistan was sick of American occupation and remembered Russians fondly as sheravi, which means Soviet people,” Krupnov told The Daily Beast. THE OPENING Patrushev, Sechin, and Ivanov on the Russian side and Afghan Vice President Karim Khalili opened the forum at another Moscow hotel—the upscale President Hotel—in May 2009 to sign some business agreements, appeal to the Russian government for bank credits, restore 142 Soviet-built industrial sites, and announce support for some educational programs. Bridges were being built. At the forum, an old friend of Moscow, the nephew of Afghanistan’s last king, Abdul Ali Seraj, declared, “We don’t want the American model.” In the fractured political landscape of Afghanistan, Moscow realized, Pashto leaders were once again reasserting their influence, and not just as the Taliban. “This is all wrong to say, ‘Taliban claims this or that,’” Krupnov said. “There are dozens of various Taliban groups among about 60 tribes, who each have their own ancient culture and history.” Russia planned to work on what it saw as this deeper, older level of Afghan power structures. Two months after the forum, in July 2009, President Barack Obama visited Moscow to help launch the so-called reset of the U.S.-Russia relations. In the years to come, Victor Ivanov on the Russian side and Gil Kerlikowske, director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, would lead a joint anti-drug group and organize about 15 joint anti-narcotics operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. national security adviser at the time, Gen. James L. Jones, addressed Nikolay Patrushev, as his “friend and counterpart” in fighting organized crime and terrorism in the country. As a correspondent for Newsweek, I interviewed Ivanov multiple times in 2010 and in 2011. He spoke about the huge volume of drugs coming into Russia and financing terrorism in the North Caucasus. “A kilo of heroin,” he noted, “is worth $150,000 on the street in Russia and a Kalashnikov costs $1,000 on the Afghan market.”Ivanov traveled to Kabul in 2010. On the plane with some members of the press, Russia’s drug tsar drank Champagne and toasted his return to Afghanistan, two decades after he last was there during the war with Soviet army. Krupnov says he believes that Ivanov’s activity—trips to China, to Afghanistan, and Russian drug-fighting centers in Central America—annoyed Washington. The Obama administration’s special envoy for the region, the late Richard C. Holbrooke, said poppy eradication had alienated poor farmers and was driving people into the hands of the Taliban. “Washington’s special representative to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, told Viktor Ivanov to keep his hands off Afghanistan during their meeting at the State Department,” Krupnov says, citing that as a turning point in the relationships. Holbrooke died in 2010, and cooperation continued, but without the commitment that existed before. The last joint operation was in 2012, and meetings ended in 2014. ASSASSINS? REALLY?Today Krupnov denies outreach to the Afghans a decade ago was the beginning of an anti-American campaign in the Middle East and South Asia, or that the Kremlin, brushed off so many times, was offended and seeking revenge in some fashion, much less paying Taliban to kill U.S. and coalition soldiers—which is something that many are perfectly willing to do on their own. “It would be ridiculous to imagine that any Russians in Afghanistan—there are about 300 Russian nationals there and thousands of U.S. military and private forces—would hire assassins to kill American soldiers.” (The element of the GRU cited by the Times as instrumental in the alleged bounty operation, Unit 29155, also has been blamed for destabilization operations in Europe and the attempted murder in Britain of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal.)In any case, outreach to the Taliban has continued. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received a Talib leader, Sher Mohammed Abas, last year along with a group of other Taliban authorities to discuss the joint fight against the Islamic State terror group. The idea that Russia and the United States make a great team against ISIS is one that U.S. President Donald Trump has promoted for years. At the Helsinki summit with Putin in 2018, for instance, Trump noted his appreciation for Russian help against “the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism.”“Both Russia and the United States have suffered horrific terrorist attacks,” Trump said. “We have agreed to maintain open communication between our security agencies to protect our citizens from this global menace.” That was the same summit where Trump said he doubted U.S. intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 elections that made him president.Meanwhile, the Russian foreign ministry has eagerly pointed out that the Trump White House, too, is questioning intelligence on Russian bounties for the deaths of American soldiers. But the sense Russia is inching back into Afghanistan, again in conflict with the United States, is not lost on those who know this relationship well. “I don’t like the idea of some bearded Taliban leaders, who previously tried to drag us back a thousand years, all of a sudden becoming legitimate,” Hasan said of Russia’s negotiations with the group. “It would be a big mistake to help people who everybody considered terrorists.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
“I suspect that the days of widespread compliance with do-it-or-else mandates meant to curb COVID-19 are over.”
“To have mask optional is like saying, ‘Hey, Covid optional.’”
“At this point, with the mask wars well underway, any kind of national mask mandate would be a difficult thing to carry out.”
“Masks help slow the spread, but a well-funded and coordinated testing strategy is the foundation of a modern response.”
“Certain types of masks may also be putting young Black men in danger of harassment or profiling.
