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FOCUS | Kavanaugh: Dr. Christine Blasey Seeks to Forestall a Trauma to the Nation That Was Inflicted on Her |
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Monday, 17 September 2018 11:45 |
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Cole writes: "Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of Psychiatry at Palo Alto University and an affiliate at Stanford University, gave a harrowing interview in the Washington Post Sunday accusing a young, drunk Brett Kavanaugh of having attempted to rape her."
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh officiates at the swearing-in of a federal appeals court judge last month. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Kavanaugh: Dr. Christine Blasey Seeks to Forestall a Trauma to the Nation That Was Inflicted on Her
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
17 September 18
 hristine Blasey Ford, a professor of Psychiatry at Palo Alto University and an affiliate at Stanford University, gave a harrowing interview in the Washington Post Sunday accusing a young, drunk Brett Kavanaugh of having attempted to rape her. He tore, she alleges, at the bathing suit she was wearing under her clothes. When she tried to scream, he put his hand over her mouth. She was beset with claustrophobia and could not breathe. He was drunk, out of control. Would he kill her without meaning to? You can relive her panic, her terror, her trauma in her words. And you wonder what it did to her, ever after.
Kavanaugh denies the charges. If he was blind drunk, you have to wonder whether he genuinely does not remember what he did. Although I believe Blasey, I should acknowledge that we only have an allegation against Kavanaugh, and no proof so far.
She writes under Blasey, so that is what I will call her. Blasey has a great deal of credibility. She told her therapist about the incident in 2012, as well as her husband, and named Kavanaugh to the latter. She has passed a polygraph test. She is being vilified by the right wing noise machine, of course, and says she came forward so late in the game because she just didn’t want the extreme hassle of playing this role– but was persuaded by the imminence of the Republican GOP’s anointment of him this coming Thursday (which may still happen).
I have no idea whether her accusation will derail the Kavanaugh nomination, though certainly the Republicans will put him through if they possibly can, because they know he will help destroy what is left of workers’ unions, will protect Capital from all challenges of social justice, will uphold the stupid precept that money is speech (and so only the rich really have the right to speak and shape politics), and will make the Evangelical and conservative Catholic wings of the GOP happy by finally overturning Roe v. Wade and returning us to the Coathanger Epoch, in which tens of thousands of women died annually from botched abortions.
I just wanted to share my horror at the ordeal that the teenaged Professor Blasey was put through and at the further gauntlet she must now run through the berating bully boys of the latently fascist, patriarchal Right.
And, I wanted to reveal that I looked for some of her articles on psychiatry, and found one, the abstract of which brought tears to my eyes in light of her Sunday op-ed.
The article is Bruce Arno, Christine Blasey, Enid Hunkeler, Janell Lee and Chris Hayward, “Does Gender Moderate the Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment and Adult Depression?” Child Maltreatment (8/2011), 175-183.
The article looks at trauma in children, including “emotional, physical and sexual abuse,” and the way it leads to depression (Major Depressive Disorder or MDD). And the question here was whether boys and girls process all this differently, or there is a difference between the sexes with regard to how likely they are to fall victim to major depression as a result of being abused.
The article was published in 2011, just a year before she told her therapist about the Kavanaugh rape attempt. I don’t want to pry, but it seems to me pretty obvious that her interest in the subject of this article is autobiographical. She says she determined to brush off the attempted assault, but it clearly left a deep mark.
This is the abstract:
“Although considerable evidence demonstrates that adults who report childhood maltreatment are at increased risk of depression in adulthood, little is known about whether gender moderates risk. In a sample of 5,673 adult Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) patients, the authors employed the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8) to assess major depressive disorder (MDD) and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to assess five different types of childhood maltreatment: emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, as well as emotional and physical neglect. Logistic regression models tested the main and interactive effects of gender and childhood maltreatment. Consistent with previous studies, men and women with histories of each type of childhood adversity were significantly more likely to meet criteria for MDD. However, the authors found no evidence that gender moderates the risk of depression. These findings suggest that men and women reporting history of childhood maltreatment are equally likely to suffer major depression in adulthood.”
As a psychiatrist, Professor Blasey has shown a special interest in ways of treating depression. And she is interested in helping veterans get over Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which she and her co-authors define as “intrusive thoughts, hyperarousal, avoidance, and negative mood and thoughts, in response to an experienced or directly or indirectly observed traumatic event.”
Her most recent co-authored piece argues that Yoga may be a superior therapy for veterans suffering from PTSD, finding in a small uncontrolled sample that it reduced PTSD symptoms but did not appear to affect perceived stress. The abstract says
“Self-reported PTSD symptoms significantly reduced while perceived stress did not. Lower baseline set-shifting predicted greater improvements in PTSD between baseline and 4 weeks; early improvements in set-shifting predicted overall reduction in PTSD. Greater psychological flexibility was associated with lower PTSD and perceived stress; more yoga practice, before and during the study, was associated with greater psychological flexibility. Other predictors were not supported.”
[–“Psychological Flexibility and Set-Shifting Among Veterans Participating in a Yoga Program: A Pilot Study” by
Timothy Avery, PsyD Christine Blasey, PhD Craig Rosen, PhD Peter Bayley, PhD, Military Medicine (26 March 2018) ]
So this great and selfless woman has dedicated her life to helping people (including veterans) who have been abused and traumatized to deal with the resulting symptoms. She took her own horrible experience with spoiled DC elite males and turned it into lemonade for others. And now, at immense personal cost, she has stepped forward to attempt to save us all from a severe trauma.
If the GOP shoehorns Kavanaugh in (even though we are on the cusp of an election and they sidelined Merrick Garland on exactly these grounds) then all Americans will be raped by the elitist political philosophy of Kavanaugh, and half of Americans will lose autonomy over their own bodies to a Federal government in thrall to a religious minority (Evangelicals are now only about 17% of Americans, and anti-abortion Catholics are maybe 12%). Workers will lose the few rights they have left. The US will revert completely to the Robber Baron age of the late nineteenth century, and America will be about as favorable to women’s rights as Mauritania, the Philippines and Honduras.
So apparently we all need to take up yoga.
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The People Must Have Another Vote - to Take Back Control of Brexit |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49137"><span class="small">Sadiq Khan, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Monday, 17 September 2018 08:42 |
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Khan writes: "The unfortunate reality is that Theresa May has failed to negotiate a Brexit position with her own party - let alone agree a deal with the EU. At every stage, her government has looked unprepared and out of its depth, resulting in a litany of wrong turns."
London mayor Sadiq Khan. (photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA)
The People Must Have Another Vote - to Take Back Control of Brexit
By Sadiq Khan, Guardian UK
17 September 18
Theresa May’s abject failure in negotiating a deal with the EU means that the public must have a fresh say
 t’s now been two years and nearly three months since the EU referendum. I’m sure I speak for most of the country when I say it feels like we’ve been talking about Brexit for far longer.
It’s no secret I campaigned for the UK to remain and I’ve said all along that any form of Brexit – no matter how hard or soft – would result in fewer jobs, less prosperity and a reduced role for Britain on the world stage. The evidence for this is irrefutable.
However, the will of the British people was to leave the EU. I respect that and wanted us to make the best of the situation. That’s why, since the referendum, I’ve given the government my support where appropriate as they’ve tried to negotiate with the EU. It’s why, despite our many differences, I’ve worked closely with the Brexit secretary and other cabinet members to push for the best possible deal.
In good faith, I’ve given the government every bit of advice and information available to City Hall and every opportunity to strike a deal that would minimise the impact on people’s livelihoods. But I’ve become increasingly alarmed as the chaotic approach to the negotiations has become mired in confusion and deadlock, leading us down a path that could be hugely damaging – not only to London, but the whole country.
The unfortunate reality is that Theresa May has failed to negotiate a Brexit position with her own party – let alone agree a deal with the EU. At every stage, her government has looked unprepared and out of its depth, resulting in a litany of wrong turns. And, not for the first time, it seems the debate has become more about Boris Johnson’s political ambitions than what’s good for the country.
Until now, I’ve held out hope the government would finally get its act together, start listening to the advice of employers, trade unions and everyone who has a stake in getting this right and seek the best possible deal with the EU – putting the national interest ahead of narrow party politics. But it’s clear this prospect is now dead in the water.
With time rapidly running out, we are left with two possibilities – a bad deal, which could end up being so vague that we leave the EU blind to what our future relationship will be, or a “no-deal” Brexit.
Both these scenarios are a million miles from what was promised during the referendum campaign, only further exposing the lies and mistruths sold to the public. They are also both incredibly risky and I don’t believe May has the mandate to gamble so flagrantly with the economy and people’s livelihoods.
Terrifyingly, we are now in real danger of crashing out of the EU with no deal. Despite the fanciful assurances from Johnson, this would be by far the worst outcome – with independent research showing that it could potentially result in 500,000 fewer jobs across Britain by 2030. These are real jobs and people’s living standards being put at risk.
So, after a lot of careful consideration, I’ve decided the people must get a final say. This means a public vote on any deal or a vote on a no-deal, alongside the option of staying in the EU.
As mayor, I wouldn’t be doing my job standing up for Londoners if I didn’t say now that it’s time to think again about how we take this crucial decision.
I don’t believe it’s the will of the people to face either a bad deal or, worse, no deal. That wasn’t on the table during the campaign. People didn’t vote to leave the EU to make themselves poorer, to watch their businesses suffer, to have NHS wards understaffed, to see the police preparing for civil unrest or for national security to be put at risk if our co-operation with the EU in the fight against terrorism is weakened.
It’s time to take this crucial issue out of the hands of the politicians and return it to the peopleso that they can take back control. Another public vote on Brexit was never inevitable, or something I ever thought I’d have to call for. But the government’s abject failure – and the huge risk we face of a bad deal or a “no deal” Brexit – means that giving people a fresh say is now the right – and only – approach left for our country.
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I Worked in an Amazon Warehouse. Bernie Sanders Is Right to Target Them |
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Monday, 17 September 2018 08:39 |
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Bloodworth writes: "Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages. Amazon is one of the biggest employers of those who receive food stamps in the United States, with nearly one in three Amazon workers on food stamps in Arizona and one in 10 in both Pennsylvania and Ohio."
'We all know what Amazon does, but only now are we gaining a better understanding of how Amazon does it.' (photo: Mark Lennihan/AP)
I Worked in an Amazon Warehouse. Bernie Sanders Is Right to Target Them
By James Bloodworth, Guardian UK
17 September 18
In some US states, nearly one in three Amazon workers are on food stamps. Sanders would rightly tax companies whose employees require federal benefits
 mazon has become a ubiquitous feature of modern life. You can find almost anything on its website, and whatever it is you want – books, music, film – Amazon can get it to you the very next day or even sooner. We all know what Amazon does, but only now are we gaining a better understanding of how Amazon does it.
Lately Amazon has been on the receiving end of criticism over the way it treats its workers as well as how much it pays them. At the forefront of this campaign has been Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages. Amazon is one of the biggest employers of those who receive food stamps in the United States, with nearly one in three Amazon workers on food stamps in Arizona and one in 10 in both Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Sanders has also been highlighting some of the 19th century working practices used by Amazon to control and discipline its workforce inside of its fulfilment centres. Sanders’ bill – the ‘Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act’, or the ‘Stop BEZOS Act’ - would tax employers like Amazon when their employees require federal benefits.
The Senator is right to push Amazon on this. But he is also right to highlight the company treatment of its workers. I worked undercover as an order picker at one of the company’s warehouses for three weeks in 2016, in the small Staffordshire town of Rugeley in the United Kingdom. I took the job as part of the research for my book, Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low Wage Britain.
The warehouse employed around 1,200 people. Most of my co-workers were immigrants from Eastern Europe, predominantly Romania. During shifts of 10-and-a-half hours, it was our job to march up and down the long narrow aisles picking customer orders from two-metre-high shelves. Over the course of a single day a picker could walk as far as 24 kilometres (representatives from Amazon would frequently boast that the warehouse was the size of ‘10 soccer pitches’). We were paid the minimum wage to do this, which at the time was £7 per hour.
Before I started the job I had a relatively positive view of Amazon - admittedly derived from my use of the company’s website as a consumer. When I set out to write my book I was simply looking at low paid, precarious work. I ended up working at Amazon by accident: my search for a low paid job merely coincided with a recruitment drive on Amazon’s part.
Yet what I found while working for Amazon shocked me. I had done warehouse work previously when I was younger, along with a range of other poorly-paid, manual jobs. In other words, my shock at the way workers were treated by Amazon was not a product of some wet-behind-the-ears naivete: I fully expected warehouse work to be tough. Yet what I witnessed at Amazon went far beyond that. This was a workplace environment in which decency, respect and dignity were absent.
The atmosphere of the warehouse had the atmosphere of what I imagine a low security prison would feel like. You had to pass in and out of gigantic airport-style security gates at the end of every shift and each time you went on break or needed to use the toilet. It could take as long as 10 or 15 minutes to pass through these gigantic metal scanners. A corporate, Orwellian form of double-speak was pervasive. You were not called a worker but an “associate”. You weren’t fired but instead you were “released”. Near the entrance to the warehouse, a cardboard cut-out of a fictional Amazon worker proclaimed, via a speech bubble attached to her head, that “we love coming to work and we miss it when we’re not here”.
The contrast between this sickly corporate uplift and the reality of life as an order picker at Amazon was stark. Workers were regularly admonished by management for clocking up so-called ‘idle time’, which was usually no more than the time it took to go to the bathroom. A recent survey of Amazon warehouse workers in England by the group Organise found that 74% were afraid to go to the toilet during a shift out of fear of missing productivity targets. On one occasion I found a Coca Cola bottle containing urine sitting incongruently on a warehouse shelf amidst the assorted miscellania, evidently left there by a worker too scared to take a toilet break.
Amazon operated a draconian disciplinary points system, whereby points were given to workers for things like missed productivity targets, ‘idle time’ and clocking in a few minutes after the start of a shift. We were warned that talking to co-workers could also result in the acquisition of a point. Should you receive six points you would lose your job. Illness was punished as a misdemeanour by the company. I took a day off sick and was given a point for it – despite notifying Amazon several hours before the start of my shift that I was ill and offering to provide a note from the doctor. When I returned to work I asked an Amazon manager how they could justify such a policy, which effectively punished people for being ill. “It’s what Amazon have always done”, he replied blandly.
In Amazon’s case, convenience evidently has a cost, and this cost is born by those toiling away in Amazon’s warehouses, rarely heard from in the media and invisible to the millions of people who every day submit orders through Amazon’s website. It’s about time these people – the labour we rely upon for our every whim - were given a voice, and Bernie Sanders deserves credit for giving them one.
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If the Deep State Didn't Exist Before, the President Has Brought It Into Being With His Attacks on Bruce Ohr |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=44647"><span class="small">Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair</span></a>
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Sunday, 16 September 2018 13:20 |
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Tracy writes: "It's a cosmic irony of Trump's Washington that the same people Donald Trump has arbitrarily branded the 'Deep State'-Never Trumpers, so-called Obama holdovers, establishment Republicans, and those who disagree with Trump's agenda-have been forced underground, meeting clandestinely, communicating furtively."
Bruce Ohr, center, arrives for a closed hearing of the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees on Capitol Hill. (photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
If the Deep State Didn't Exist Before, the President Has Brought It Into Being With His Attacks on Bruce Ohr
By Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair
16 September 18
If the Deep State didn’t exist before, the president has brought it into being with his attacks on Bruce Ohr. The mood in some pockets of the State Department, one former official said, has “turned normal-functioning government into a scary thing for regular civil servants.”
t the downtown bistros and power-lunch venues that serve as official Washington’s unofficial commissaries, there is a creeping sense of paranoia. It’s not just the heightened political sniping, which has turned incestuous K Street burghers into blood enemies and D.C.’s swampland into a Superfund site, or the McCarthyite hunt for an anonymous op-ed author, or the mountain of subpoenas being prepared in the back rooms of Democratic congressional offices. Instead, for those career civil servants whose bureaus have attracted the suspicion of the White House, much of the fear is emanating from the president himself. “That is the new normal. We meet in the back rooms of coffee shops, and only set up in-person conversations and talk in private,” an ex-administration official said of interactions with their former colleagues. “They are absolutely paranoid, even when the discussion is of the most anodyne nature.”
It’s a cosmic irony of Trump’s Washington that the same people Donald Trump has arbitrarily branded the “Deep State”—Never Trumpers, so-called Obama holdovers, establishment Republicans, and those who disagree with Trump’s agenda—have been forced underground, meeting clandestinely, communicating furtively. Ordinary staffers have been converted into reluctant “resistance” fighters. While it is business as usual in many corners of Foggy Bottom, the mood in some pockets of the State Department, the former official said, has “turned normal-functioning government into a scary thing for regular civil servants.” One source recounted stories of employees in select State Department bureaus decorating their cubicles with pro-Trump imagery, so as to avoid suspicion. If the Deep State didn’t exist before, Trump has brought it into being.
The Trumpian turmoil surrounding Bruce Ohr has been particularly chilling, according to more than a dozen current and former administration officials who I spoke with in reporting this story. Ohr, a career civil servant who served as associate deputy U.S. attorney general in the Southern District of New York, and, later, head of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering division, was little known outside the department—until Trump began tweeting about him in August, amplifying conspiracy theories surrounding Ohr’s work on the Steele dossier, and exposing him to a tidal wave of online harassment. “It is incredible that individual career public servants would be singled out by the president. The fact that Bruce is among the group of public servants that the president has named is very surprising,” said Julie Zebrak, a former D.O.J. attorney who worked with Ohr. “It is certainly not normal. We have to continue to say things are not normal.”
There is a stark difference between Trump’s attacks on Ohr and politically appointed individuals like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his deputy Rod Rosenstein, and F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, all of whom have come under presidential fire. “As bad as it may be to see the president take on in public his own political appointees, it is a very different proposition when he goes after career federal employees,” Max Stier, the president and C.E.O. of the nonpartisan government watchdog, Partnership for Public Service, told me. Political appointees serve at the pleasure of the president; civil servants serve the United States government. “[Political appointees] really can’t stay if they can’t support the president,” a former political appointee who left their post told me. Everyone else “should be immune and protected from political pressure,” this person added, noting the dangers of self-censorship. “What it will do is water down the analysis and advice the president gets. People will lie low, and say as little as possible, and wait it out.”
In another era, Ohr’s interactions with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the infamous Trump-Russia document, would have been uncontroversial. “Having those kinds of liaison relationships is a normal part of the work he and I did together,” said Eugene Casey, who worked closely with Ohr in 2005 and 2006 as then-chief of the F.B.I.’s Eurasian organized crime unit. “For him to be reprimanded for having those types of relationships seemed, to me, absurd. Just absurd.” Of course, the conspiracy theories surrounding Ohr are not limited to his work with Steele. In another hallmark of the Trump era, Ohr has also been targeted in conservative media for his wife’s work with Fusion GPS, the political intelligence firm that contracted with Steele. In the last month, 5 of Trump’s 13 tweets about Ohr have also referenced his wife, Nellie. “Bruce & Nelly Ohr’s bank account is getting fatter & fatter because of the Dossier that they are both peddling,” he wrote in one. At another point, he told reporters outside the White House that Ohr’s security clearance should be rescinded. “I suspect I’ll be taking it away very quickly,” he said. “For him to be in the Justice Department, and to be doing what he did—that is a disgrace.”
For an official like Ohr, losing one’s security clearance is tantamount to professional castration. “What is happening to Mr. Ohr is so upsetting to some of us, because if his security clearance is arbitrarily removed, it is as if he is being fired,” Casey added. “If he did violate some D.O.J. procedure that I am not aware of—he may very well have done so—[that] is a matter for the Office of the Inspector General of [the] D.O.J. to look into, not a political matter . . . The president calls him a disgrace, and I would like to know: what is the basis for that? Because I don’t see it.”
Another irony: if Trump ultimately follows through on his threats, the impact on the Russia probe would be negligible. “If he strips Bruce Ohr of his clearance and he can no longer work on an investigation, then the next person in line steps in. The Department of Justice is a Hydra. The entire government bureaucracy is not about individuals; they do not make or break an investigation. There is always someone that then steps into those shoes and continues it. I think the firing of James Comey is the ultimate example of that,” Asha Rangappa, a former F.B.I. counter-intelligence agent, explained. “[Trump] is going to keep trying to cut off these heads. It is one thing to do it for former officials who really don’t have any ongoing involvement, but for an active investigation . . . He doesn’t seem to understand that the wheels of justice are turning, and that even as the president of the United States, there is very little that he can do to stop it.”
On the other end of downtown Washington, across the National Mall in Foggy Bottom, the president’s attacks on Ohr and his Justice Department colleagues have sent a clear signal to the diplomatic corps. “Targeting people and going after them—potentially with the consequence of taking from them their livelihood—that is very, very serious stuff,” one State Department official told me. ”I know it has been on everybody’s mind, and it is by design.” A second State Department official echoed the sentiment. “I think these actions only further confirm the politicized approach this administration takes towards civil servants. It certainly has a chilling effect on those of us who might engage in political activities that are consistent with the Hatch Act,” they told me, referencing the 1939 law that constrains the political activity of federal employees.
Allegations of reprisals against State Department employees for their perceived politics or lack of loyalty to Trump preceded the controversy over Ohr. Last week, Foreign Policy reported that the Office of the Inspector General has opened an investigation into the actions of Mari Stull, a political appointee in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs. According to F.P., Stull—a former food lobbyist who blogged about wine under the pseudonym “Vino Vixen”—is allegedly under investigation for using her position to punish State Department employees for their work on Obama-era policies, “vetting” bureau employees and making homophobic remarks to at least two gay State Department staffers. (A State Department spokesperson said in a statement to F.P. that the “department fully cooperates with investigations of both the Department’s I.G. and the permanent Office of Special Counsel.”)
“The entire [government] system is based on this notion that these people are there under the merit system, because of their qualifications to do the job, and it is not, in fact, appropriate to take action against them because of, again, their perceived political beliefs,” Stier explained. “They are not only bad in terms of what the outcomes will be for the public, but in some instances, they are illegal. It is actually illegal to fire a federal employee, or to take a negative personnel action against them, on the basis of their political beliefs or perceived political beliefs.”
The O.I.G.’s decision to look into Stull was welcomed by diplomats I spoke with. Still, expectations remain low that any substantive action will be taken. Brian Hook, a former Tillerson deputy who was revealed to have compiled a list of staffers suspected of being disloyal to the president, and to have exchanged such information with the White House, for instance, was never reprimanded or fired. In fact, he was tapped last month to lead Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s new Iran Action Group. “I don’t think anything has changed, and I don’t think anything will change, at least until there is some meaningful oversight,” the first State Department official told me. “I think a lot of people are aghast and deflated over the fact that there has been no meaningful review of his actions, and, that, even with the very serious information that is out there, he essentially gets another cush and plum job. It is ironic that it is on the subject matter on which he routed out one of the department’s experts.” (“Following the initial congressional inquiries, this matter was referred to two independent entities for review: the State Department Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.)
“Vino Vixen” is not the only political appointee sources say has Trumpified the State Department. As I previously reported, White House ideologues like Stephen Miller have also exerted influence throughout Foggy Bottom with the appointment of political allies like Andrew Veprek (who was recently in the news for criticizing a United Nations resolution that condemned racism as a threat to democracy) at the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, and refugee-program skeptic John Zadrozny at Policy Planning. Foreign Policy adds another name: Bethany Kozma, who officials say has politicized what are normally technical deliberations at the U.S. Agency for International Development. “In some bureaus, there is a clear viewpoint that you have to show that you are a Republican if you want to advance, even for career folks,” a congressional staffer told me.
For civil servants who might otherwise protest, Trump’s attacks on Ohr have underscored that such ideological vetting is not only acceptable, but, arguably, encouraged. “If they see the president attacking, directly, a career employee, there are always going to be ramifications for the people that speak out. I mean, half the people will tell us stuff; the other half are scared to say anything, because they don’t know what is going to happen, and they don’t see any ramifications [for] those people, who are engaged in bad behavior,” the congressional staffer continued. “There is a chilling effect, for sure.”
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his month marks four years since the 
