Music: Marcos Valle & Stacey Kent — ‘The Answer (A Resposta)’
What if Trump refuses to concede the election?
Barton Gellman writes: There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11. As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb. They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not. Something dangerous…
Charting the coronavirus pandemic over the next 12 months — and beyond
Andrew Joseph writes: Think back through the pandemic. Think about the moments that stand out as beacons in the haze — signposts of how it would change all of our lives. Not all of these moments were clear at the time. China’s decision to shut down cities of millions of people in January was staggering, but to most Americans, this new coronavirus remained an ocean away, not something that would demand our own version of a lockdown. Other moments form…
CIA clamps down on flow of Russia intelligence to White House
Politico reports: The CIA has made it harder for intelligence about Russia to reach the White House, stoking fears among current and former officials that information is being suppressed to please a president known to erupt in anger whenever he is confronted with bad news about Moscow. Nine current and former officials said in interviews that CIA Director Gina Haspel has become extremely cautious about which, if any, Russia-related intelligence products make their way to President Donald Trump’s desk. Haspel…
Trump’s team is bracing for a humiliating loss at next week’s debate
Politico reports: Donald Trump will face Joe Biden within days for the first of three presidential debates, and some of the president’s supporters are already bracing for a humiliating loss. White House allies, Republican donors and some of Trump’s closest advisers worry that a recent, frenzied push by his top lieutenants to portray Biden as a seasoned debater — with the goal of raising expectations for the Democratic presidential nominee — is too late and too disingenuous to have an…
Biden faces growing pressure on Supreme Court reform and ending the Senate’s legislative filibuster
Politico reports: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who was not previously a prominent face of the Supreme Court reform movement, jumped on board on Saturday, the day after Ginsburg died. “We should leave all options on the table, including the number of justices that are on the Supreme Court,” she said. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) tweeted that if Mitch McConnell violates his own precedent of not filling vacancies in a presidential election year, “when Democrats control the Senate in the next…
Pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies
The Guardian reports: Leaked chat logs show Portland-area pro-Trump activists planning and training for violence, sourcing arms and ammunition and even suggesting political assassinations ahead of a series of contentious rallies in the Oregon city, including one scheduled for this weekend. The chats on the GroupMe app, shared with the Guardian by the antifascist group Eugene Antifa, show conversations between Oregon members of the Patriots Coalition growing more extreme as they discuss armed confrontations with leftwing Portland activists, and consume…
Facebook says it may quit Europe over ban on sharing data with U.S.
The Guardian reports: Facebook has warned that it may pull out of Europe if the Irish data protection commissioner enforces a ban on sharing data with the US, after a landmark ruling by the European court of justice found in July that there were insufficient safeguards against snooping by US intelligence agencies. In a court filing in Dublin, Facebook’s associate general counsel wrote that enforcing the ban would leave the company unable to operate. “In the event that [Facebook] were…
Music: Stacey Kent — ‘A Tarde’
Covid-19 has killed more Americans than died in battle from five wars combined
CNN reports: What happened today seemed impossible to many Americans six months ago. When Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted in March that Covid-19 could kill 200,000 people in the US, skeptics lambasted him and accused him of fearmongering. But Fauci was right. And the US reached that bleak milestone much earlier than some experts predicted. Since the first known US Covid-19 death on February 6, an average of more than 858 people have died from the disease every day. Many of…
Trump’s alliance with the enemies of democracy
Jonathan Chait writes: Hungarian president Viktor Orbán announced yesterday that he was endorsing President Trump’s reelection campaign. It is fairly uncommon for sitting American presidents to receive election endorsements from foreign leaders, and yet the endorsement fits into a pattern of sorts. Trump has already been endorsed by Russian president Vladimir Putin. He has worked openly with Russian intelligence agents in Ukraine, who represent the corrupt, Russophile wing that was deposed, despite the efforts of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul…
Secret CIA assessment: Putin ‘probably directing’ influence operation to denigrate Biden
Josh Rogin writes: Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top aides are “probably directing” a Russian foreign influence operation to interfere in the 2020 presidential election against former vice president Joe Biden, which involves a prominent Ukrainian lawmaker connected to President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, a top-secret CIA assessment concluded, according to two sources who reviewed it. On Aug. 31, the CIA published an assessment of Russian efforts to interfere in the November election in an internal, highly…
How Ginsburg’s death has reshaped the money race for Senate Democrats
The New York Times reports: For much of 2020, Al Gross’s Senate campaign in Alaska has proceeded as something of an afterthought for most Democrats, a distant contest that was off the radar in terms of determining control of the U.S. Senate. After all, Mr. Gross is not even technically running as a Democrat, an affiliation that might doom him in a conservative state. But in the hours after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on Friday, Dr. Gross’s campaign as…
Rank-and-file union members snub Biden for Trump
Politico reports: Joe Biden has pitched himself to voters as a “union man,” a son of Scranton, Pa., who respects the dignity of work and will defend organized labor if he wins the White House. To rank-and-file members in some unions, especially the building trades, it doesn’t matter. They’re still firmly in Donald Trump’s camp. Labor leaders have worked for months to sell their members on Biden, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2016 when Donald Trump outperformed among union…
Pentagon has been diverting pandemic-related money to defense contractors
The Washington Post reports: A $1 billion fund Congress gave the Pentagon in March to build up the country’s supplies of medical equipment has instead been mostly funneled to defense contractors and used to make things such as jet engine parts, body armor and dress uniforms. The change illustrates how one taxpayer-backed effort to battle the novel coronavirus, which has killed about 200,000 Americans, was instead diverted toward patching up long-standing perceived gaps in military supplies. The Cares Act, which…
A letter to the Progressive International
Yassin al-Haj Saleh writes: [Editor’s note: In April, the Syrian writer and Al-Jumhuriya co-founder Yassin al-Haj Saleh was invited to join the advisory council of the Progressive International, a new movement seeking to “unite, organize, and mobilize progressive forces” around the world, involving well-known figures such as Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, and Yanis Varoufakis. The below letter was to be al-Haj Saleh’s inaugural contribution to the movement’s media arm, Wire; envisaged as a platform “for the world’s progressive forces, translating…