Do Black People Vote? The Racist Lie Rooted in the American Psyche
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=52635"><span class="small">Rashawn Ray, Guardian UK</span></a>
Thursday, 19 December 2019 13:52
Ray writes: "There is a common stereotype among black and white Americans, and it's that black people don't vote."
Black voter turnout was 59.6% in 2016, 66.6% in 2012, and 65.2% in 2008. The voter turnout for black people in each election was higher than Latinos and Asians and higher than whites in 2012. (photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/Getty)
Do Black People Vote? The Racist Lie Rooted in the American Psyche
By Rashawn Ray, Guardian UK
19 December 19
Despite the tactics of voter suppression working against them, black people are one of the most stable voting blocs in the US
here is a common stereotype among black and white Americans, and it’s that black people don’t vote.
During his 2016 keynote address at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Barack Obama went so far as to say: “Even if all restrictions on voting were eliminated, African Americans would still have one of the lowest voting rates. That’s not good. That is on us.’” On the other end of the spectrum, Trump insinuated that black voters stayed home during the election. “They didn’t come out to vote for Hillary. They didn’t come out… so thank you to the African American community.”
The same message reverberated through political commentary and activism. Brando Starkey of The Undefeated wrote that, “Black people who didn’t vote let us down,” in the 2016 election. Two years later, the Detroit News’Bankole Thompson wrote, “It is not enough to raise your fist in a political frenzy as a symbol of Black power and solidarity if you are failing to exercise the power of the ballot and not showing up at the polls.”
Despite these comments, “black people don’t vote” is not based in data: though they are only 13% of the US population, black voters are among the most stable voting bloc in politics, despite the concerted efforts to stop them. The myth, instead is rooted in an exaggerated narrative derived from Reconstruction-era stereotypes about work ethic, opportunity and culpability. Similar to how black people were the economic scapegoat for the downfall of southern states once slavery was outlawed, they also became the political scapegoat for the losses of the Republican party in the late 1800s.
After the civil war, black voter turnout boomed and elected nearly 20 black people to the House and Senate and many more to local and state positions. By December 1887, however, Congress convened without one black member in about two decades leading to “The Negroes Temporary Farewell” when black people were excluded from Congress.
As black people gained political power during Reconstruction, southern states passed stringent voter ID laws and gave black people voting literacy tests that included outlandish questions such as: how many plies are on a roll of toilet paper or how many bubbles does a bar of soap have? Some were even lynched for voting or asking for the right to vote.
Black people became disenchanted with the Republican party and some started to align with the civil rights arm of the Democratic party as Jim Crow continued to disenfranchise them. Once the 15th amendment was restored during the civil rights movement, black people instantly became a strong voting bloc for the Democratic party, particularly in the south.
When Democrats lose, however, it is the same stereotype – black people didn’t come out to vote. But in the last three presidential elections, black voter turnout was 59.6% in 2016, 66.6% in 2012, and 65.2% in 2008. The voter turnout for black people in each of these elections was higher than Latinos and Asians and higher than whites in 2012.
Of the 10 states highlighted in the graph, black voter turnout in seven of these states in 2016 was higher or the same as their percentage of the state. In five states, black people represented over 40% of Democratic voters in 2016.
While it is true that black voter turnout decreased from 2012 to 2016, it does not mean that black people are to blame for the Democratic loss of the 2016 election. Twelve percent of whites who voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump in 2016. Considering Hillary Clinton lost by less than 11,000 votes in Michigan and 44,000 votes in Pennsylvania, these changes made a difference too.
Despite the apparent preference for voting Democrat, black voters are not a monolith. Gender, education and incarceration are factors in determining voter turnout and political party preference. Generally, women vote at higher rates than men across race, and this is true of black women too. And, while most black women with or without college degrees voted for Hillary Clinton, only 78% of black men with a college degree (16% voted for Trump) and 82% without a college degree voted Democrat (11% voted for Trump).
This data still doesn’t tell the whole story. Current barriers to voting are real, pervasive and covert. In 2013, the decision in the Shelby county v Holder case afforded people who want to disenfranchise black people the license to do so. Incriminating documents were found on the hard drive of a Republican operative known as the “gerrymandering king” who deliberately drew new political maps to dilute the black vote in North Carolina. Nearly 900 polling places were closed from 2012 to 2016, including over 400 in Texas and nearly 40 in the Carolinas.
There are also the 6.1 million people disenfranchised due to felony convictions. About 40% of this group is black. This means one of every 13 black people cannot vote due to voter disenfranchisement.
We have to challenge the stereotypes and assumptions we make about each other and recognize that real barriers to voting continue to persist but are surmountable. If we really want to create racial equity in the political process so that all Americans can truly embrace American democracy, The Voting Rights Act will be fully restored and expanded, the Shelby v Holder decision will be revisited to prevent gerrymandering, millions of returning citizens will have their voting rights restored, and election day will become a federal day of service to remove barriers related to employment.
How the Israel Army Muzzles Free Expression for Palestinians
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=52634"><span class="small">Amy Braunschweiger, Human Rights Watch</span></a>
Thursday, 19 December 2019 13:52
Braunschweiger writes: "The Israeli army detained Farid al-Atrash for five days. He wishes it hadn't affected him so profoundly when authorities crammed him into a crowded cell or transported him to court in a cramped metal enclosure inside a military vehicle. Thousands of Palestinians, after all, have been detained for much longer and treated worse than he was, he says."
Israeli forces in West Bank. (photo: AFP)
How the Israel Army Muzzles Free Expression for Palestinians
By Amy Braunschweiger, Human Rights Watch
19 December 19
he Israeli army detained Farid al-Atrash for five days. He wishes it hadn’t affected him so profoundly when authorities crammed him into a crowded cell or transported him to court in a cramped metal enclosure inside a military vehicle. Thousands of Palestinians, after all, have been detained for much longer and treated worse than he was, he says.
Farid was arrested in 2016 for participating in a protest. Now, more than three years later, he’s still awaiting judgment from an Israeli military court. The charges for protesting carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years. If the verdict goes against him, the 42-year-old human rights lawyer and father of three could be back behind bars.
Farid is not alone in facing imprisonment for freely speaking his mind in the West Bank.
Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it has ruled using military orders issued in those early days. Under those orders, the Israeli army has stripped Palestinians of basic civil rights protections, arresting Palestinian journalists, activists, and others for their anti-occupation speech, activism, and political affiliations. Even if such restrictions might have been justified in the name of security in the early days of the occupation, they don’t fly after more than five decades.
Instead, Israel should grant Palestinians living in the West Bank full protection of their human rights, on par with the rights it grants its own citizens. The law of occupation requires Israel to restore “public life” for the occupied Palestinian population. The longer an occupation, the more military rule should resemble an ordinary governing system. After 52 years of occupation with no end in sight, Israel should allow Palestinians a more normal public and political life, including safeguarding the rights to free speech, assembly, and association.
However, a new Human Rights Watch report, ‘Born Without Civil Rights,’ shows this is far from reality.
Farid, born in Bethlehem, has long spoken out against Israel’s occupation. While well-known in human rights circles, he’s a soft-spoken man who enjoys working behind the scenes. As a lawyer working with the Independent Commission for Human Rights, a quasi-official body of the Palestinian Authority, he documents human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority and Israel in the West Bank and advocates for change.
He grew up in a refugee camp in Bethlehem and regularly saw soldiers raid the camp and conduct mass arrests, he told Human Rights Watch. Israeli forces detained his grandfather, father, and uncles for protesting, and in 2003, they shot Farid’s younger brother in the spinal cord while he was demonstrating, paralyzing half his body.
Israel/West Bank: Grant Palestinians Equal Rights
52 Years into Occupation, Rights Suspension Unlawful, Unjustifiable
Farid came to believe that Palestinians need to struggle for their freedom, so he studied law.
In 2016, he joined more than 100 people in an annual protest demanding the opening of al-Shuhada Street in the heart of the West Bank city of Hebron, near where several hundred Jewish Israeli settlers chose to live.
The street was once home to a bustling Palestinian market. But starting in 1994, the Israeli army slowly began closing the street to Palestinians. The restrictions began after an Israeli settler killed 29 Palestinians praying in a Hebron mosque and intensified following fatal attacks by Palestinians on settlers during the Intifada of the early 2000’s. Over time, the army shuttered windows, welded shut the doors of shops and homes, and turned the street into a “sterile” zone. Today, the army forbids Palestinians from walking down much of the street, while permitting Israeli settlers and tourists to do so. Israel claims the policies that separate the area’s settlers and the Palestinians, which include more than 100 physical obstacles and 21 permanently staffed checkpoints that restrict Palestinian movement, are necessary to protect the settlers living there.
Farid says he stood at the front of the demonstration, holding a sign with “Open Shuhada Street” printed on it in English. He saw soldiers pointing at him, and as the soldiers descended to break up the demonstration, they arrested him.
The soldiers put Farid in their jeep, blindfolded him, and had him lay on the floor in the back, he said. One of the security officers slapped him. They took him to Etzion detention center and locked him in a very small room that held 10 people. The mattresses and the blankets were dirty, he said. He was tired, and when he asked the other detainees for a cup of water, they laughed. There were no cups, they told him, you have to drink out of the faucet. The disregard for the dignity of detainees shook him.
After five days in the crowded cell, Farid said he was taken to court in a military transport vehicle called a bosta, often used to transport prisoners. In the bosta he sat on a metal chair, which was inside a narrow metal box. Officers shackled his arms and legs and blindfolded him, then closed the box’s door, and Farid said he heard them locking it. The space was so tight his knees hit the door. There was only one small air hole. Being there was one of the hardest moments of his life, he said – it was like being in a grave.
When they arrived at the military court and he was released from the box, Farid threw up, he said.
Although taking part in peaceful protests is protected by the rights to free speech and assembly, the court leveled numerous charges against Farid, including “incitement” for “attempt[ing] to influence public opinion … in a manner that may harm public order or safety,” citing his chants, “waving Palestinian Authority flags,” and taking part in a protest without a permit. They also charged him with entering a “closed military zone,” assault on a soldier, and interference with a soldier, but furnished no evidence of these offenses other than his non-violent participation in the demonstration. All the offenses carry possible prison time. They released him on bail after five days in detention.
Had he wanted to, Farid could have agreed to a plea deal, and may have been sentenced to time served, something many other Palestinians do. It’s a common dance at the court – after all, 10 to 15 Palestinians on average are arrested daily by Israeli troops, and at any given time, around 5,000 Palestinians are in detention.
Instead, he said he decided to challenge the military courts, which have a near 100 percent conviction rate. He’s innocent of these charges, he said, and he hopes a video taken of his arrest, showing that he left the protest peacefully with an officer, will help his case. Still, soldiers testified against him in the hearings, saying he “interfered” with them, an overly broad charge that could mean anything.
More than three years later, his trial has wrapped up. The verdict remains pending.
These days, Farid still goes to protests. But he no longer stands in the front – he believes he is less likely to be arrested if he hides in the back. His experiences have made him afraid to speak out.
He doesn’t want to feel this way. He wants all Palestinians to have their rights to free speech, assembly, and association protected. But the reality is, Farid has lived his whole life under occupation without having these rights protected, and he’s raising his three daughters under the same oppressive system.
FOCUS: A Stunning Vote Reversal in the DeRay Mckesson' First Amendment Case
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27142"><span class="small">Garrett Epps, The Atlantic</span></a>
Thursday, 19 December 2019 12:37
Epps writes: "'In America, political uprisings, from peaceful picketing to lawless riots, have marked our history from the beginning - indeed, from before the beginning,' wrote Judge Don R. Willett of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in a remarkable opinion issued Monday."
Black Lives Matter leader DeRay Mckesson. (photo: Leah Milis/Reuters)
A Stunning Vote Reversal in the DeRay Mckesson' First Amendment Case
By Garrett Epps, The Atlantic
19 December 19
A Fifth Circuit panel judge has changed his mind about DeRay Mckesson’s liability for violence at a Baton Rouge protest, but Americans’ right to protest is still under assault.
n America, political uprisings, from peaceful picketing to lawless riots, have marked our history from the beginning—indeed, from before the beginning,” wrote Judge Don R. Willett of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in a remarkable opinion issued Monday. “The Sons of Liberty were dumping tea into Boston Harbor almost two centuries before Dr. King’s Selma-to-Montgomery march (which, of course, occupied public roadways, including the full width of the bloodied Edmund Pettus Bridge).”
The allusion to unruly protest is not what is remarkable about Willett’s opinion. That sort of talk is black-letter, almost boilerplate judicial language about First Amendment protection for political protests that edge up to, or even into, violence in the streets.
What is remarkable is that Willett wrote it in a surprise opinion, changing his vote in one of the most important First Amendment cases now pending in front of the Supreme Court—Mckesson v. Doe, in which a Louisiana police officer is attempting to impose possibly ruinous tort damages on DeRay Mckesson, a national leader of Black Lives Matter. Doe (who is proceeding under a pseudonym) claims that Mckesson owes him damages because the officer was injured in a protest outside the Baton Rouge Police Department on July 9, 2016. During that protest, someone in the crowd threw a hard object that injured the officer. Mckesson was present that night, but Doe doesn’t claim that Mckesson threw the object; instead, he claims—in defiance of Supreme Court precedent—that Mckesson owes him damages because the civil-rights leader did not prevent the nameless protester from throwing the object.
This is a theory of liability unknown to the First Amendment. In an important case arising from the civil-rights movement, the Court held in 1982 that protest leaders can’t be sued for the violent actions of others unless the plaintiffs can show that the leaders themselves either engaged in violence or incited or directed the violence. Doe alleged “incitement,” but made no real attempt to show it.
The First Amendment and civil-liberties communities were shocked by the Fifth Circuit’s original decision, issued in April, which brushed aside the First Amendment with the breezy bromide that “the First Amendment does not protect violence.” The decision was unanimous—Willett was on the panel, but the opinion was written by Judge E. Grady Jolly. (Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod was the third member.) That opinion was a dagger pointed at the heart of the treasured American right to protest against government action. If protest organizers can be sued, and possibly ruined, by lawsuits if anyone at their protest (even, say, an undercover police officer) turns violent, no ordinary citizen would dare organize protests.
Mckesson’s lawyers asked the Fifth Circuit to rehear the case en banc (as a full court); in response, the same panel withdrew its original opinion and substituted a new one that said, in legal verbiage, “We agree with ourselves and by golly, we are right.”
The case landed in the Supreme Court’s inbox on December 6. Mckesson’s petition for the Court to hear the case, written by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out that the Fifth Circuit panel decision flatly defied the Court’s own precedent in a landmark case called NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware. Advocates of free speech were holding their collective breath waiting to see whether this Court, which preens as a First Amendment champion when the rights of corporations or the rich are at issue, would call out the wayward panel or silently ratify its radical change in the law.
The latter course just got harder. Willett, a Trump appointee and former Texas Supreme Court justice, has now changed his vote and issued a full-throated defense of the idea that free speech covers even unruly protest.
“I have had a judicial change of heart,” Willett wrote. “Admittedly, judges aren’t naturals at backtracking or about-facing. But I do so forthrightly. Consistency is a cardinal judicial virtue, but not the only virtue. In my judgment, earnest rethinking should underscore, rather than undermine, faith in the judicial process. As Justice Frankfurter elegantly put it 70 years ago, ‘Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.’”
The words are true, and the practice of judicial self-examination is, while not unheard-of, regrettably rare. In this case, reexamination led Willett to see two gaping holes in the majority’s case. First, he pointed out, despite the panel’s earlier decision, it’s not clear that even Louisiana tort law would support a lawsuit against Mckesson. To reach that conclusion, the panel had to, in essence, make new Louisiana state law. Every second-year law student knows that is a practice courts of appeals are supposed to avoid—especially when doing so creates a federal constitutional issue.
Willett further wrote that, having insisted on reaching the free-speech issue, the panel botched that as well. Doe’s complaint alleged that Mckesson “incited” the violence that led to Doe’s injuries. But Doe’s lawyer didn’t even bother to explain how. As Willett put it:
Not one of the three elements of “incitement”—intent, imminence, likelihood—is competently pleaded here. Nor does the complaint competently assert that Mckesson directed, intended, or authorized this attack. Our Constitution explicitly protects nonviolent political protest. And Claiborne Hardware, among “our most significant First Amendment” cases, insulates nonviolent protestors from liability for others’ conduct when engaging in political expression, even intentionally tortious conduct, not intended to incite immediate violence. The Constitution does not insulate violence, but it does insulate citizens from responsibility for others’ violence.
Judges Jolly and Elrod also issued a new opinion taking issue with Willett’s defection.“Imagine protesters speaking out on a heated political issue are marching in a downtown district,” they write. “As they march through the city, a protester jaywalks. To avoid the jaywalker, a car swerves off the street, and the driver is seriously injured. If the dissenting opinion’s interpretation of Claiborne Hardware is correct, the First Amendment provides an absolute defense to liability for the jaywalker in a suit by the driver.” This misstates the facts. There would be no protection for the jaywalker. But the First Amendment would, and should, protect the organizer of the protest. Doe is suing Mckesson because he can’t find the jaywalker.
Willett’s dissent is a sign of life for old First Amendment precedents. It reveals how poorly Doe argued his rather weak case, how cavalierly the original opinion treated the Constitution, and how hard the result is to defend, even to a conservative judge like Willett. However, the majority’s opinion still stands, and, as David Keating of the Institute for Free Speech told me, “still poses a huge threat to political speech.”* But, he continued, “now there’s more hope it will soon be set aside.” Alex Abdo of the Columbia University Knight First Amendment Institute agrees: “While it is encouraging that Judge Willett has recognized that the First Amendment protects DeRay Mckesson’s right to engage in nonviolent political protest, it remains profoundly discouraging that the majority opinion has allowed the case against Mckesson to proceed.”
The switch provides an excellent opportunity for the Supreme Court, with all deliberate speed, to issue a summary reversal of the Fifth Circuit decision and enter judgment, then and there, for DeRay Mckesson. It should not merely vacate and remand the case. Willett’s defection is heartening, but this Fifth Circuit panel still threatens to trammel Americans’ right to protest.
FOCUS: The A to Z of Things Trump Could and Should Have Been Impeached For
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=44184"><span class="small">Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept</span></a>
Thursday, 19 December 2019 12:01
Hasan writes: "It was a major moment in this car crash of a presidency - and a major achievement for House Democrats. Still, I couldn't help but be disappointed that there were only two articles of impeachment passed against this president. Two? That's it?"
Jennifer Nellans of Des Moines holds a sign reading Impeach Now during an impeachment rally outside of the Iowa state capitol building in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019. (photo: Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register)
The A to Z of Things Trump Could and Should Have Been Impeached For
By Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept
19 December 19
urrah! On Wednesday evening, Donald Trump became only the third president of the United States to be impeached. The House of Representatives voted 230-197 to charge Trump with abuse of power and 229-198 to charge him with obstruction of Congress.
It was a major moment in this car crash of a presidency — and a major achievement for House Democrats. Still, I couldn’t help but be disappointed that there were only two articles of impeachment passed against this president. Two? That’s it? Why were other Trumpian offenses not included? For context, it’s worth recalling that there were a whopping 11 articles of impeachment passed against Andrew Johnson in 1868. With Richard Nixon in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee considered five articles of impeachment, before passing three of them. With Bill Clinton in 1998, the House of Representatives voted on four articles and approved two of them.
Are we expected to believe that House Democrats really think Trump has only committed two impeachable offenses? Even the president himself seems to have been caught off guard by the Democrats’ very narrow approach to impeachment. “Frankly, I think he’s a little surprised it’s the Ukraine thing that’s done it,” a White House official told CNN.
The harsh reality, of course, is that Trump commits impeachable offenses on nearly a weekly basis. So here is an A to Z of such offenses — by issue and/or by crime — that were inexplicably overlooked or ignored by the House of Representatives.
AMAZON
Trump has personally and repeatedly instructed the Postmaster General to double shipping rates for Amazon, in an attempt to inflict billions of dollars of new costs on founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. “Some administration officials,” reported the Post in May 2018, “say several of Trump’s attacks aimed at Amazon have come in response to articles in The Post that he didn’t like.”
In the summer of 2017, Trump personally intervened to try and block a merger between AT&T and Time Warner — in order to try and punish CNN, which is owned by Time Warner, for its unfavorable coverage of him. Per the New Yorker, Trump told aides: “I’ve been telling [then National Economic Council director Gary] Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened! I’ve mentioned it fifty times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”
DEATHS
Over the past 12 months, six migrant children aged between 2 and 16 — five from Guatemala and one from El Salvador — have died in federal custody. Over the previous ten years, not a single migrant child died in custody. Is this not impeachable? It gets worse: as BuzzFeed News reported recently, “immigrants held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails around the US received medical care so bad it resulted in two preventable surgeries … and contributed to four deaths.”
The president of the United States is a fraudster. Don’t take my word for it. In November 2016, less than two weeks after he was elected, Trump settled three different fraud lawsuits related to his Trump University for $25 million. Earlier this month, as the New York Attorney General Letitia James formally announced, the president was “forced to pay $2 million for misusing charitable funds for his own political gain” and his Trump Foundation was “shut down for its misconduct.” Trump isn’t fit to run a university or a charity, so how is he fit to run the country?
GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
As the New York Times reported in October 2018, the General Services Administration, which manages real estate for the federal government, had planned to turn the FBI’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. “over to a commercial developer” — until, that is, the president intervened to veto the sale. As a group of Democratic lawmakers pointed out, Trump was “‘dead opposed’ to the government selling the property, which would have allowed commercial developers to compete directly with the Trump Hotel” only a block away. Is this not worthy of further investigation and, possibly, impeachment?
HUSH MONEY
We know that Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud, made illegal hush money payments to two women — Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal — who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. We also know, thanks to federal prosecutors, that Cohen “acted in coordination and at the direction of” the president himself. How is this brazen violation of campaign finance laws not an impeachable offense?
INCITEMENT OF VIOLENCE
The president is a threat to law and order. As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has observed: “On at least eight occasions, he has encouraged his supporters — including members of the armed forces — to attack his political opponents.” In addition, a bevy of domestic terrorists arrested since 2016 have cited either Trump’s name, his inflammatory rhetoric, or both.
JARED
Trump demanded that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be granted a security clearance, despite objections from intelligence officials who warned that Kushner could be compromised by his business ties to foreign governments. The president may have the right to give anyone a security clearance and yet, as House Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler explained in March, “You can do things that are within your power that are abuses of power and that are crimes.”
KIDS IN CAGES
The Trump administration, as a matter of policy, separated more than 5,400 children — including babies and toddlers — from their migrant parents at the Mexico border. Hundreds of those kids were locked up in cages. This was a clear violation of international law, and experts with the UN’s Human Rights Council also said the policy may have amounted to “torture.”
LIES, LIES, AND LIES
Trump has told more than 15,000 falsehoods since coming to office. To quote presidential historian Douglas Brinkley: “There is no president that lied as if they were a form of breathing, except Donald Trump.” But lying isn’t an impeachable offense, right? Wrong. The very first article of impeachment against Nixon accused him of “making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States.”
MEDIA ATTACKS
Trump, as even Fox News host Chris Wallace observed last week, “is engaged in the most direct, sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history.” The president has asked the FBI to jail reporters who publish leaks, has threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of media organizations that criticize him, and relentlessly attacked and demonized journalists as “scum,”“slime,”“sick people,”“fake news,” and “the enemy of the people.” Members of the press have received death threats from people echoing the president’s vile language.
NEGLIGENCE
Local officials in Puerto Rico have blamed presidential negligence and incompetence for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico, in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017. Trump’s response? He falsely claimed that 3,000 Americans didn’t die. He also tried to “illegally withhold” much-needed and congressionally appropriated disaster relief money. According to the Washington Post, Trump told White House officials that “he did not want a single dollar going to Puerto Rico… Instead, he wanted more of the money to go to Texas and Florida.”
OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election identified 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by the president. More than 1,000 former federal prosecutors agreed that Trump’s conduct, had he been a private citizen, would have resulted “in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
PERJURY
We know Trump lies all the time — but how about the lies he tells under oath? The president told the Mueller inquiry: “I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with [former adviser Roger Stone], nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign.” In November, however, his former deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, said in court that Trump had been aware in advance of Wikileaks disclosures in 2016, based on his conversations with Stone. The response of conservative lawyer George Conway, husband of Kellyanne? “Perjury.”
QANON
You’ve heard of QAnon, right? The batshit crazy group of online conspiracy theorists obsessed with a Deep State plot against Trump? The president has retweeted QAnon supporters on multiple occasions; invited them to speak at his rallies; and hosted them at the White House. Why does this matter? The FBI has warned that QAnon will “very likely” drive extremists “to carry out criminal or violent acts.” So how is it okay for the president to endorse or promote such a dangerous group?
RAPE
Trump has not only been accused of sexual assault and harassment by dozens of women but, in June, the writer E. Jean Carroll also accused him of raping her in the dressing room of a luxury department store. “I haven’t paid much attention,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, when asked to comment on Carroll’s shocking claim. But why not? Shouldn’t rape be an impeachable offense? “I wish there had been a third Article of Impeachment against Donald Trump,” Carroll tweeted last week. “The Abuse Of Women.”
SYRIA
Less than three months after entering office, in April 2017, Trump launched airstrikes against Syria, without a vote in Congress. Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu, a former attorney in the Judge Advocate General Corps of the U.S. Air Force, called the strikes “FRICKIN ILLEGAL.” And remember: as former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes has acknowledged, the lack of congressional authorization, and threat of impeachment from House Republicans, “was a factor” in the controversial decision by the Obama administration not to bomb Syria in 2013.
TAX EVASION
In October 2018, a blockbuster 13,000-word investigation by the New York Times found that Trump “received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s.” What kind of dodges? “He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents.… Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more.”
ULTRA VIRES
Remember how Trump declared a fake “national emergency” in February, to circumvent Congress and fund his border wall? Well, Trump himself bluntly admitted that there was no emergency or even urgency: “I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.” His critics, therefore, argue that the president acted “ultra vires” — a Latin phrase meaning “beyond the powers.”
VLADIMIR
The Mueller report may have ruled out a criminal conspiracy between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, but we know that Trump welcomed Russian help during the 2016 campaign and later suggested he wasn’t bothered by Moscow’s interference in the election. We also know that Trump handed over classified intel to the Russians in the Oval Office. As Harvard law professor and former Bush administration official Jack Goldsmith co-wrote, “Questions of criminality aside…. If the President gave this information away through carelessness or neglect, he has arguably breached his oath of office” and there is “thus no reason why Congress couldn’t consider a grotesque violation of the President’s oath as a standalone basis for impeachment.”
WITNESS INTIMIDATION
In January, Michael Cohen announced he was postponing his public congressional testimony because of “ongoing threats against his family” from the president and his attorney Rudy Giuliani. In November, Trump attacked former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as she was testifying in front of the House Intelligence Committee, prompting committee chair Adam Schiff to accuse the president of “witness intimidation in real time.” This is the behavior not of a president but of a mob boss.
XI
Why is there no mention of the Chinese president Xi Jinping in either of the two articles of impeachment? Why only the Ukrainian president? If the Democrats’ argument is that involving foreign governments in U.S. elections is an impeachable offense, as well as a threat to national security, then why stop at Ukraine? What about China? Listen to the president himself, speaking to reporters outside the White House in October: “China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine.”
YEMEN
In Syria, Trump dropped bombs without congressional approval. In Yemen, the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, Trump has helped Saudi Arabia to continue to drop bombs despite explicit opposition from both chambers of Congress. As an analyst in the Guardian argued, Trump’s decision to veto a bipartisan bill calling for an end to U.S. military involvement in the Saudi air war amounted to “flagrant defiance of the 1973 War Powers Act that checks a president’s ability to engage in armed conflict without express consent of Congress.”
ZELENSKY
The president of the United States didn’t just abuse his power in attempting to pressure the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden; he tried to bribe him. Pelosi accused Trump of bribery and so too did the House Democrats’ 169-page impeachment report. Yet, as Vox noted, “when Democrats actually unveiled their articles of impeachment last week, bribery was MIA.” Why?
RSN: Republicans Defend Trump With "Four Facts" That Are Fake
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Thursday, 19 December 2019 09:29
Boardman writes: "Again and again during the House impeachment hearings we heard one Republican after another assert 'four facts' in Trump's defense. The phrasing varied, but the assertions remained substantively unchanged."
Sen. Mitch McConnell. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Republicans Defend Trump With "Four Facts" That Are Fake
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
19 December 19
gain and again during the House impeachment hearings we heard one Republican after another assert “four facts” in Trump’s defense. The phrasing varied, but the assertions remained substantively unchanged. Here they are in capsule form as expressed by Rep. Jim Jordan on Fox News in response to the interviewer’s comment about the hearings that “You did not engage each other so nothing was done.” Jordan’s reply is like a spousal batterer (“she just won’t listen!”):
I get that but again, they won't accept the facts. Four facts have never changed, they will never change. They've always been there. We have the transcript. There was no quid pro quo on the transcript. We have the two guys who were on the call. President Trump, President Zelensky, both have said no pressure, no pushing, no linkage of an investigation to the security assistance money. We have the fact Ukraine didn't even know aid was paused at the time of the call and most importantly Ukraine took no action, i.e., never made any announcement of investigation into anybody let alone the Bidens to get the aid released. Those facts have always been there but they don't care….
Yes, we have “the transcript.” It is not a verbatim transcript, it is a composite transcript compiled from the notes of an unknown number of notetakers who listened to the 30-minute phone call as it happened on July 25, 2019. In the words of the White House: “The text in this document records the notes and recollections of Situation Room Officers and NSC policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place.” There is no assurance that this is a complete or fully accurate transcript, but it is five pages long, single-spaced and is the best record we have of this phone call between two presidents. No one knows whether a verbatim transcript exists. So what does this composite transcript show about the Republicans’ alleged “four facts”?
#1 “There was no quid pro quo on the transcript.”
The phrase “quid pro quo” has no inherent value. A quid pro quo can be good in one circumstance or bad in another. The phrase means, literally, “something for something,” an exchange of items of value made freely or under duress. A quid pro quo can exist in a variety forms from proposal to completed deal. The transcript shows that on July 25, both presidents were considering a variety of quid pro quo arrangements without formally settling on any specific tradeoff.
President Zelensky is the first to ask for a quid, that the US bring pressure to bear on the European Union to enforce sanctions against the Russian Federation. The US is on record supporting those sanctions. President Trump never addresses the ask (page 2).
President Zelensky promptly asks for a second quid (page 2): “I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.” This is a core issue. Javelins are anti-tank weapons that are already available for use to check a possible Russian tank attack in the Donbass, where Russian-backed separatists are fighting Ukrainian forces in what is essentially a civil war. Both presidents here know that the Javelins are part of the $391 million aid package that has been approved by all the interested agencies of the US, only to be held back by the White House. Trump knows this. Zelensky may or may not know about the hold, he surely knows the aid has not arrived and here he is gently inquiring about it. (He doesn’t say what Rudy Giuliani told his aide in a recent conversation (page 3).)
President Trump does not respond to requests about sanctions or Javelins. His immediate response is an ask of his own, or a quo (page 3): “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine….” Trump’s references to Crowdstrike and Robert Mueller make clear that he’s asking for an investigation of alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US election. This allegation is actually Russian disinformation.
President Trump asks again for this investigation (page 3): “I would like to have the Attorney General [William Barr] call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”
President Trump asks a third time for this investigation (page 3): “Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.”
President Zelinsky immediately accepts Trump’s request, apparently unconditionally, but without specificity (page 3): “Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier.” After more general expressions of mutual friendship and “strategic partnership,” Zelensky concludes with an apparent confirmation of a tacit quid pro quo: “… in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.”
President Trump says “good,” seeming to approve the quid pro quo as presently framed. Then he immediately moves to a new ask, another quo. In muddy fashion, Trump asks for some sort of an investigation that involves Yuriy Lutsenko, former Ukrainian prosecutor from May 2016 to August 2019. [In 2010, Lutsenko had been convicted of corruption, sentenced to 4 years in prison, and he was later pardoned in 2013. During 2018-2019, Lutsenko was instrumental in sharing information with Rudy Giuliani and helping to get US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch removed on April 25, four days after Zelensky was elected president].
President Trump, in the same passage, asks for an investigation into the Bidens, another quo (page 4): “The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it...” [Trump is referring to events in 2015 when Biden, acting with the backing of the US, EU, IMF and others in the international community, pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin. In 2016 Lutsenko succeeded Shokin. Both prosecutors looked into Burisma, Hunter Biden’s employer. Neither prosecutor brought a case against Burisma. Lutsenko now says there was no case to be brought. Currently, the Trump campaign is running an ad that falsifies these events.] The only current relevance of Trump’s interest is Burisma is that it potentially hurts a possible future opponent, Joe Biden.
President Zelensky again responds with apparent acceptance of Trump’s request (page 4): “I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation…. the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.” Zelensky makes a promise asked for by Trump. He says he knows what’s going on and implies that he expects a quid pro quo. He refers to a company that Trump has not mentioned in this conversation. And Zelensky promises his prosecutor will do what Zelensky asks. That is the bald face of corruption. If Trump cares a whit about corruption, this is where he interjects something about the rule of law. In reality, he is promising that his own prosecutor will be colluding in this plan to get at the Bidens.
President Zelensky makes one more ask (page 5): “I also want to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington DC. On the other hand, I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.” Zelensky outlines a specific quid pro quo without calling it that.
President Trump responds by repeating the quid pro quo in different words: “Well, thank you very much and I appreciate that. I will tell Rudy [Giuliani] and Attorney General Barr to call. Thank you. Whenever you would like to come to the White House, feel free to call. Give us a date and we'll work that out. I look forward to seeing you.” On the face of it, the two presidents have reached an initial agreement on a quid pro quo, with the expectation of more to follow.
#2. “We have the two guys who were on the call. President Trump, President Zelensky, both have said no pressure, no pushing, no linkage of an investigation to the security assistance money.”
This is a profoundly dishonest Republican talking point, riddled with irrelevance.
President Zelenksy and Ukraine desperately need US support to become and remain a free and independent democratic nation. ANY exchange with the US is inherently full of pressure for any Ukrainian president. The power imbalance is huge and continuing. The US is in a position to make offers that Ukraine can’t refuse.
President Zelinsky is not going to say publicly that he felt pressured. That would be madness and against his national interest.
President Trump is not going to say he pressured Ukraine because he doesn’t have to admit an obvious reality and he’s comfortable lying.
There is no specific linkage investigation and the aid money, but there is an implicit linkage. When Zelinsky raises the aid issue, Trump’s silence speaks volumes, and adds to the pressure.
There is a very specific linkage of an investigation and a White House visit. The White House visit is more important to Zelensky than most foreign presidents. Not only does Zelensky need to bolster his presidential credibility in any way he can, Ukraine need the US to show the Russians that it will be a reliable ally for Ukraine. For Ukraine, this is close to life and death.
The Republican talking point is disgusting in its distortion of reality and in its implied willingness to discard an actual reformer in Ukraine in defense of a corrupt destroyer in the US.
The reality for Ukraine is worse than Republicans or Trump ever admit. That reality includes the presence of the Russian military along the entire eastern border of Ukraine as well as active Russian involvement on the side of the separatists in eastern Ukraine, the Donbass region, since 2014. (Crimea is another constant issue for Ukraine.) The Russian involvement in the Donbass may not rise to the technical definition of war, but the combat has been intense enough to kill more than 13,000 people.
Zelensky is acutely aware of the Donbass, and resolving it has been one of his highest priorities. That’s why he needs US support, as a check on Russia. That’s why he needs Javelin missiles, as a check on Russian tanks coming into Ukraine. When Trump withholds military aid, including Javelins, he sends a signal that not only pressures Ukraine, but that also reassures Putin, reinforcing Trump’s image as pro-Russian. Zelensky’s vulnerability and Zelensky’s limited maneuverability are apparent to anyone who examines his situation. For Republicans to act as if that situation does not exist is quintessential bad faith and tantamount to lying at an existential level.
#3.“We have the fact Ukraine didn't even know aid was paused at the time of the call….”
This is, at best, a disputed “fact” of limited relevance. At Trump’s request, the Office of Management and Budget had put a hold on $391 million in aid by July 3. By July 25, Zelensky was surely aware that the aid had not been delivered and, assuming basic competence, his government had at least made discreet inquiries as to when it might be expected.
As of July 3, the hold on Ukraine aid was a secret to most of the relevant US officials, including those who had approved its being sent. By mid-July, knowledge of the hold had spread, to the concern of members of State, Defense, NSC, and other agencies. One OMB official feared that the hold violated the Impoundment Control Act.
The OMB didn’t put the hold in writing until after the July 25 phone call.
During the July 25 call, President Zelensky raised the issue obliquely and got no answer. Raising a stink about not receiving a gift hardly seems like an effective diplomatic approach if the goal is to get the full $391 million.
#4. “… and most importantly Ukraine took no action, i.e., never made any announcement of investigation into anybody let alone the Bidens to get the aid released.”
Insofar as this is “most important,” it’s a clear measure of how bankrupt the Republican defense of Trump has become.
The critical timeframe is from July 25 to September 11, when the aid was released. During those seven weeks, Trump officials put increasing pressure on Zelenksy to announce the Biden investigation. They even wrote out the statement they wanted him to make. Eventually, Zelensky agreed to go on CNN to make the announcement, and a date was scheduled in September.
But on August 28, Politico broke the story. On September 9, the House announced an investigation. On September 11, the White House released the aid. At some point, Zelensky cancelled his CNN appearance.
The only reason Zelensky didn’t deliver on the quid pro quo demanded by Trump was that Trump’s impeachable chicanery was exposed.
The Republicans’ defense of Trump, their ritual recital of “four facts” that are fake, is an unsupportable sham. But for them it doesn’t really matter. They’ve managed to muddy the waters to Trump’s benefit. And the Senate – the jury in any impeachment trial – is already coordinating with the defendant on his acquittal, the Constitution be damned.
William Boardman has been writing for Reader Supported News since 2012. A collection of his essays, EXCEPTIONAL: American Exceptionalism Takes Its Toll, was published in September 2019 and is available from Yorkland Publishing of Toronto. He is a former Vermont assistant judge.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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gain and again during the House impeachment hearings we heard one Republican after another assert “four facts” in Trump’s defense. The phrasing varied, but the assertions remained substantively unchanged. Here they are in capsule form as 
