Music: Marcos Valle — ‘Valeu’
Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots
The Washington Post reports: Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, the U.S. Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and D.C. warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest. The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow…
Obama: Trump trying to ‘actively kneecap’ Postal Service to affect 2020 election
NBC News reports: Former President Barack Obama, in an interview released Friday, slammed President Donald Trump for trying to “actively kneecap the Postal Service” to affect mail-in voting in the 2020 election and urged lawmakers and citizens to take actions to “protect the integrity” of the election. Obama, speaking on the podcast of his former campaign manager David Plouffe, was responding to recent comments by Trump, who said earlier this week that holding up emergency funds for the U.S. Postal…
As he attacks mail-in votes, Trump and the first lady requested absentee ballots in Florida
The Washington Post reports: On Thursday, President Trump repeated his attacks against mail balloting, saying it would lead to “the greatest rigged election in history” and “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated.” At the same time, his own absentee ballot to vote in Florida’s primary election on Tuesday was en route to Mar-a-Lago. According to the Palm Beach County elections website, the president and first lady Melania Trump both requested absentee ballots on Wednesday. Trump has voted absentee at least twice…
The plan that could give us our lives back
Robinson Meyer and Alexis C. Madrigal write: Michael Mina is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, where he studies the diagnostic testing of infectious diseases. He has watched, with disgust and disbelief, as the United States has struggled for months to obtain enough tests to fight the coronavirus. In January, he assured a newspaper reporter that he had “absolute faith” in the ability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to contain the virus. By early March, that conviction…
Black like Kamala
Jamelle Bouie writes: Black American identity within the United States emerges from the interaction between structures of oppression — slavery, the slave trade and race hierarchy — and the needs and goals of those enmeshed within them. Slavery bound African captives together into a group; the desire to assert their personhood — to build community, to find respite, to resist — was cause to adopt a common identity. In turn, that common identity gave those individuals and their descendants a…
Government Accountability Office finds Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli are ineligible to serve in their top DHS roles
Politico reports: Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli were invalidly appointed to their positions and are ineligible to serve, a congressional watchdog determined Friday. The Government Accountability Office — Congress’ independent investigative arm — concluded that after the resignation of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in April 2019, an improper succession occurred, with Kevin McAleenan taking on the position. McAleenan then altered the order of succession for other officials to succeed him after his departure. “Because…
Former FBI lawyer expected to plead guilty in review of Russia inquiry
The New York Times reports: A former F.B.I. lawyer intends to plead guilty after he was charged with falsifying a document as part of a deal with prosecutors conducting their own criminal inquiry of the Russia investigation, according his lawyer and court documents made public on Friday. The lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 38, who was assigned to the Russia investigation, plans to admit that he altered an email from the C.I.A. that investigators relied on to seek renewed court permission in…
Music: BossaCucaNova & Marcos Valle — ‘Os Grilos’
Trump says he’s blocking Postal Service funding to prevent ‘universal mail-in voting’
The Washington Post reports: President Trump said Thursday that he does not want to fund the U.S. Postal Service because Democrats are seeking to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, making explicit the reason he has declined to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the cash-strapped agency. “Now, they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with…
Trump’s approach looks increasingly like the autocrats I warned about as a defense intelligence analyst
Kyle Murphy writes: I recently resigned as a senior analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency after experiencing firsthand the actions of U.S. government leaders to suppress nonviolent dissent during the recent nationwide protests for racial justice. I was among the thousands of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters tear-gassed in Lafayette Square and nearly knocked to the ground by the downdraft from a military helicopter hovering over Pennsylvania Avenue. In the course of my work, I have watched autocratic leaders around…
Postal service changes pose threat to voting, says former USPS deputy
The Guardian reports: A former top official at the United States Postal Service (USPS) has warned that recent changes at the agency, now led by a Trump ally, could “disenfranchise” voters as they are implemented just months ahead of an election in which a record number of Americans are expected to vote by mail. Amid reports of significant mail delays, Ronald Stroman, who stepped down earlier this year as the second in command at USPS, said he was concerned about…
The real coronavirus death toll in the U.S. has already surpassed 200,000
The New York Times reports: Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus. As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes….
After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?
Will white people’s participation in Black Lives Matter protests yield real change? Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images By Candis Watts Smith, Pennsylvania State University The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the support of less than half of white Americans. Given that Americans tend to have a very narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of Black-led…
Facebook’s preferential treatment of U.S. conservatives puts its fact-checking program in danger
BuzzFeed reports: On May 8, Prager University, a nonprofit conservative media outlet, published a video on Facebook that incorrectly claimed “there is no evidence that CO2 emissions are the dominant factor” in climate change. Within days, Climate Feedback, a nonpartisan network of scientists and a member of Facebook’s global fact-checking partnership, rated the content as false — a designation that was supposed to result in serious consequences. It was PragerU’s second strike for false content that month, which under Facebook’s…
Catastrophe drives evolution but life resides in the pauses
Renée A Duckworth writes: In certain places around the world – in the Badlands near Drumheller in Alberta, Canada, in the Geulhemmergroeve tunnels in the Netherlands, or in the Hell Creek formation in eastern Montana – you can touch a thin line of rock, and know you are touching the most famous mass extinction event on Earth. This Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary layer is a seam of clay found all over the world, enriched with iridium – an element that appears…