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White House directs federal agencies to cancel race-related training sessions it calls ‘Un-American propaganda’
President Trump is moving to revamp federal agencies’ racial sensitivity trainings, casting some of them “divisive” and “un-American,” according to a memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
In the two-page memo, OMB Director Russell Vought says that Trump has asked him to prevent federal agencies from spending millions in taxpayer dollars on these training sessions. Vought says OMB will instruct federal agencies to come up with a list of all contracts related to training sessions involving “white privilege“ or “critical race theory,” and do everything possible within the law to cancel those contracts, the memo states.https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=3533
The memo, released on Friday, also tells all federal agencies to identify and if possible cancel contracts that involve teaching that America is an “inherently racist or evil country.”
“The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,“ the memo states.
Vought writes in the memo that “it has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda.”
He then refers to a press report that says federal employees “have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism’ or where they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism.’”
It could not immediately be learned what training sessions Vought was referring to in the memo. Recent Fox News segments have heavily criticized “diversity and inclusion” efforts in the federal government started under the Obama administration.
“It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government,” Chris Rufo, research fellow at the right-wing Discovery Institute, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson earlier this week.
The memo later says that “the President, and his Administration, are fully committed to the fair and equal treatment of all individuals in the United States.”
The memo comes after Trump has put himself at the center of an intense national debates about race, politics tactics, the Civil War, and the Confederate flag. Democrats have long taken aim at Trump’s comments about race, including his false assertion that President Obama was not born in the United States.
And this year, after numerous Black Lives Matter protests occurred around the country following incidents when certain police officers killed or shot Black Americans, Trump has sharply criticized social justice protesters and called for law enforcement to crack down hard.
OMB said it would soon issue more guidance on the crackdown of these training sessions.
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A shadow of hunger looms over the United States. In the pandemic economy, nearly one in eight households doesn’t have enough to eat. The lockdown, with its epic lines at food banks, has revealed what was hidden in plain sight: that the struggle to make food last long enough, and to get food that’s healthful — what experts call ‘food insecurity’ — is a persistent one for millions of Americans.
Photographs by Brenda Ann KenneallySeptember 2, 2020
Beginning in May, Brenda Ann Kenneally set out across the country, from New York to California, to capture the routines of Americans who struggle to feed their families, piecing together various forms of food assistance, community support and ingenuity to make it from one month to the next.
Food insecurity is as much about the threat of deprivation as it is about deprivation itself: A food-insecure life means a life lived in fear of hunger, and the psychological toll that takes. Like many hardships, this burden falls disproportionately on Black and Hispanic families, who are almost twice as likely to experience food insecurity as white families.Troy, N.Y.May 9
Like so many who live at hunger’s edge, the members of the extended Stocklas family — whom Kenneally has photographed for years — gain and lose food stamps depending on fluctuating employment status in an unstable economy. They often have trouble stretching their funds to the end of the month, so they pool resources to provide family-style dinners for all.Tap to cycle through images
When Kandice Zakrzewski, 25, was no longer eligible for food stamps, she stopped buying Lactaid for her son, Matthew Ratleph, 2. “We had to give that up for him. And just say ‘You can’t drink milk.’ Or we have to water it down.”
Just days before Kenneally arrived, the governor closed schools statewide, creating a new source of stress for food-insecure families, which often rely on free school lunches to keep their school-age children fed. This made the family’s big collective meals all the more crucial. “Even if it’s just pitching in $10 when we don’t have food stamps,” Kandice Zakrzewski says, “we all pitch in.”
Zakrzewski’s son Brayden Ratleph, 6.
Kayla Stocklas. “We just kind of get our food and just all do our own thing,” Zakrzewski says.Gary, Ind.June 6
Late last year, Doris Hall, 63, moved back to Gary, her hometown, to look after her great-grandchildren — “so they don’t have to be in daycare,” she says. On weekends, she takes in as many as nine of the children — occasionally all 14 — so that their parents can work.Tap to cycle through images
Hall’s rules are strict: naptime in the afternoon, bedtime at 9 p.m. and most important, whatever she cooks, they must eat.
For lunch, it’s “microwaveable stuff,” like corndogs, hot dogs and chicken nuggets that Hall picks up at the nearby food bank. Dinners vary: spaghetti, chicken, soups, tacos. When she has a rare moment to eat alone, she makes her favorite meal for herself: greens and tacos.
Some of Hall’s great-grandchildren waiting for lunch.
Armani and Kimani Lacy, 5. “I never liked cooking,” Hall says, “but now that I’ve been taking care of the grandkids, I stay in the kitchen.”
In the face of deprivation, food-insecure families often seize any opportunity to get and store food when it’s available.
In the middle of a food desert in Jackson, Miss., a family’s freezer holds as much as it can.
Freezing milk in Erie, Pa., so nothing goes to waste.
In Tucson, Ariz., a “cheap soup” made on the stovetop.
In Gary, Ind., assembling a full meal from individual school-lunch portions of taco meat.
Stockpiling supplies in Jackson, Miss.
School lunches, and the single-serving milk cartons they often contain, are a mainstay for food-insecure households, like this one in Gary, Ind.
Kenneally arrived in Illinois in early June, soon after nationwide unemployment claims filed during the pandemic had topped 40 million.Cicero, Ill.June 8
In Cicero, just west of Chicago, Jennifer Villa, 29, was living in an apartment with a kitchen that needed plumbing repairs. She and her family were already struggling — a disability makes it hard for her to work — and the pandemic had meant less fresh food and even longer pantry lines.Tap to cycle through images
Temporarily without a working kitchen, Villa organized the food she received from food pantries in the alleyway outside her home.
Whenever food deliveries came, Villa’s kids would celebrate. “Oh, Mommy, we’re going to have food tonight,” they would tell her. “We’re not going to go to sleep with no food in our tummy.”
Armani Rodriguez
Sonia RodriguezSt. LouisJune 12
By June, the social upheavals following the killing of George Floyd created even more instability for some families. Kenneally visited Manausha Russ, 28, a few days after protests led to the closure of a nearby Family Dollar, where Russ used to get basics like milk, cereal and diapers. “The stores by my house were all looted,” she says.Tap to cycle through images
From left, Aliza, 1, Nyla, 6, Amarri, 5, and Kadynce, 8, with their mother, Manausha Russ.
Russ lives with her four daughters on the west side of St. Louis. She receives about $635 per month in food stamps, but with the girls at home all day, and her partner, Lamarr, there too, it isn’t always sufficient. “Some days I feel like I have a lot,” she says, “and some days I feel like I don’t have enough.”
The family moved into their current apartment about six months ago.
Russ doesn’t have a dining table or chairs yet, so the girls eat on the floor.MemphisJune 19
In so many places, Kenneally found food-insecure families were helping one another out despite their own hardship. Here, in a condominium complex on the city’s east side, a neighbor picked up free school lunches and distributed them to children in the building, including the Boughton sisters: Brooklyn, 4, on the far right, Chynna, 9, and Katie, 8, seen here with a neighbor’s toddler who has since moved away.
Most of the families Kenneally photographed had struggled to feed themselves adequately for years. But she also met families who had been thrown into food insecurity by the pandemic.
FACING
HUNGER
FOR THE
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TIMEText by Tim Arango
In the Horsburgh household, trips to pick up donated food — a service the family had not needed for years, before Covid-19 — became a diversion for the children stuck at home.
Claire Hudson with her son. Hudson has begun bringing food to the homeless in Erie, Pa.
The federal government’s food-stamp program has been dramatically expanded to confront the economic devastation of the pandemic. But even that hasn’t been enough, as the ranks of the needy grow.
Ciara Young (right) and family, Memphis. Young lost her job in the pandemic.
In long conversations around the country this August — at kitchen tables, in living rooms and sitting in cars in slow-moving food lines with rambunctious children in the back — Americans reflected on their new reality. The shame and embarrassment. The loss of choice in something as basic as what to eat. The worry over how to make sure their children get a healthy diet. The fear that their lives will never get back on track.
Alexis Cazimero now drives around San Diego County with her younger children, seen here, distributing food to families like hers.
“Folks who had really good jobs and were able to pay their bills and never knew how to find us,” says Ephie Johnson, the president and chief executive of Neighborhood Christian Charities. “A lot of people had finally landed that job, were helping their family, and able to do a little better. And then this takes you out.”Read the Full EssayMinivans at the Food Pantry:
Meet America’s New Needy by Tim Arango
Clara McMillin, 4, is just one of many American children whose families didn’t face food insecurity until the pandemic set in.
By late June, Kenneally had reached Mississippi, where the economic toll of Covid-19 was falling hard on some of America’s most chronically impoverished areas, where residents have lived under hunger’s shadow for years. The pandemic dropped the state’s labor participation rate to just 53 percent, the lowest in the nation.
Patricia Luckett, 57, has no car, so she sometimes takes a 30-minute walk to get food from a local social services organization in Jackson, Miss.
Luckett at home. “I’m a country girl,” she says. “I love to cook.”
Karen Cotton, 40, and her sons Jayden Brooks (left), 8, and Adrian Brooks, 11, in Jackson, Miss.
Adrian holds one of his favorite snacks. “It’s not filled with sugar, so I buy them in bulk,” Cotton says. “This is what I call a healthy snack.”
Deborah Sulton, 66, who has lived in Jackson all her life, has 25 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
“The way I feed is, I cook like a cook for an army,” Sulton says.
Aydin Sulton, 2, one of the many relatives Sulton helps support with her Social Security income and food stamps.
“I have fed a lot of people and a lot of kids in the community,” Sulton says. “Whatever I got, I will share it because I get my blessings back in return.”
Even before the pandemic, more than half of Mississippi’s seniors — 56 percent — experienced regular shortfalls in food. One in 4 Mississippians is now experiencing food insecurity, according to the nonprofit Feeding America.
The kitchen of Helen O’Bryant and her daughter, Nita, in Greenwood, Miss.
“We’re learning to enjoy life a little better,” says Helen, 72, sitting beside Nita, 45. “Cooking helps, it really does. It’s something I want to do for my daughter.”
Thaddeus Whitehead, 41, with his children Angel, 7, and D’angelo, 8, in Greenwood, Miss.
Whitehead says he spends about $150 on groceries every two weeks, plus he gets boxes of food from a nearby church.
He also catches bream from a local lake. “I cook about 10, and I put the rest of them up in the freezer. Then when we need to eat them, I defrost them.”Jackson, Miss.June 30
The city of Jackson (population 164,000) is often classified as a “food desert” for its high rate of food insecurity and the scarcity of well-stocked stores. Deidre Lyons lives there with her three kids, sister, niece and father. Lyons, 28, receives $524 a month in food stamps, but without access to a car, she can’t easily get to a grocery store to use them.Tap to cycle through images
Lyons’s daughter Tianna, 1.
“My kids, they love to eat,” says Lyons, whose cousin will occasionally drive her to the grocery store when she isn’t caring for her own children. “My kids eat whatever we cook because they aren’t picky eaters. I’m hoping they stay like that.”
Janiya in late June outside Robinson Food Mart.
Jaheim buying a corndog at the Dude With the Food, a convenience store within walking distance of home.
The causes of chronic food insecurity are many: unemployment; low wages; unaffordable or unstable housing; rising medical costs; unreliable transportation.
HOW
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PERSISTS
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AMERICAText by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
At a homeless shelter in Menands, N.Y., in early spring.
Treating hunger as a temporary emergency, instead of a symptom of systemic problems, has always informed the American response to it — and as a result government programs have been designed to alleviate each peak, rather than address the factors that produce them.
A resident at a low-income apartment building in Utica, N.Y., takes a meal to a friend.
Receiving lunches provided by the Y.M.C.A. in Memphis, delivered by a neighbor.
Food banks are supposed to fill in the gaps, but more than 37 million Americans are food insecure, according to the U.S.D.A. “We call it an emergency food system, but it’s a 50-year emergency,” says Noreen Springstead, executive director of WhyHunger, which supports grass-roots food organizations.Read the Full EssayHow Hunger Persists in a Rich Country Like America by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Martha Carrizales, 59, has worked in a school cafeteria for 18 years. When the pandemic led to school closures, she was hired to spend a few hours a day preparing and handing out food to neighborhood residents.
In early July, the pandemic was cresting in Texas just as Kenneally arrived.HoustonJuly 6
Kelly Rivera, a single mother with three kids who makes $688 every two weeks as a teacher’s aide, goes to the food bank on Wednesdays to supplement what she is able to buy with food stamps. “There are times they give you what you need, and there are times they don’t give you what you need,” she says. “You can’t be picky.”Tap to cycle through images
Rivera’s children eat Cheetos on the couch after returning home from picking up groceries. (From left: Destiny, 4, Ana, 6, Jonathan, 3.)
The family had to wait for hours at the Catholic Charities in 100-degree heat. But Rivera has a message for her struggling neighbors who are too proud to visit food banks: “Don’t be ashamed. That is what the community is there for, to help.”
Rivera waiting in a long food line.
Ana, left, and Destiny sit in their car, waiting in a parking lot to be allowed into the actual food line, where they will wait even longer.Hatch, N.M.July 13
Some 800 miles west in New Mexico, near the town of Hatch, workers pick onions for $15 a box, which translates to less than a minimum wage for many workers. There are no food pantries nearby, and so the workers are forced to eat extremely simply on their earnings, making nearly everything they eat from scratch.Tap to cycle through images
At the beginning of the onion season, a priest came to the field at dawn to bless the harvest.
Juan Pablo Reyes is using the money he made picking onions to help pay for college. “People that work at the bottom of the food chain, cultivating all these different crops, are basically the builders of our country,” he says.
Yasmin and Yeslin Reyes, 11, are the only members of their family who don’t work in the onion fields, but that will change next summer.
Their older brothers started when they turned 12, and the same is expected of them.
Juan Pablo’s high school graduation cap says “Proud Immigrant” and has flowers in the colors of the Mexican flag.
Leaving New Mexico, Kenneally headed west across Arizona. She finished her journey in Southern California at the end of July. The story there was no different than it had been across the country, except that wildfires were also beginning to ravage the state — yet another crisis in a year full of them.San DiegoJuly 31
An event planner and hairstylist who has been out of work since early in the pandemic, Alexis Frost Cazimero, 40, now spends her days driving around the county with three of her children — Mason, 6 (not pictured); Carson, 5; and Coco, 1 — collecting food for her family and for neighbors and friends who are unable to leave their homes or reluctant to seek help.
Cazimero says she is grateful she has been able to help others. “Being that person in the community that shares and brings resources to the people that can’t get them brings purpose to my family.”
Adam Cazimero, 40, Coco (standing), Mason and Carson.
Kenneally’s photographs reveal the fragility of American life, exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic. They show us how close to the edge so many families live, how vulnerable and insecure their arrangements are, and also how resilient they can be when faced with a crisis.
But nothing stands out from these images more vividly than the children: eating whatever they can, whenever and wherever they can, somehow managing to maintain, in the midst of this historically desperate time, some innocence and some hope.
Hatch, N.M.
Gary, Ind.
Parma, Ohio
Houston
They are the greatest victims of the food-insecurity crisis. Research has shown long-term links between food insecurity and a wide variety of health issues in children — elevated risks of asthma and other chronic illnesses, lags in educational attainment. And according to a Brookings Institution researcher, the number of U.S. children in need of immediate food assistance is approximately 14 million.
Oneida, N.Y.
East Chicago, Ind.
Florissant, Mo.
For most of these children, the pandemic did not cause the instability that plagues their lives; when it is over, they will face a crisis no less acute, one that has persisted in this country for generations.
Florissant, Mo.
Houston
Hatch, N.M.
In the richest nation on earth, they live at the edge of hunger.
Kenneally visited many food distribution sites along her journey, including ones run by: the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest Pennsylvania, Parma City School District, St. Louis Area Foodbank, Operation Food Search, Neighborhood Christian Centers, Y.M.C.A. of Memphis and the Mid-South and Stewpot Community Services.
Brenda Ann Kenneally is a multimedia journalist who, over 30 years, has produced participatory media projects with families from her home community, including “Upstate Girls: Unraveling Collar City.” She is currently assembling a multimedia autobiography, charting her experience from being a disenfranchised youth to becoming a Guggenheim fellow and frequent contributor to the magazine. Read more about Kenneally’s journey.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, an independent journalist and MacArthur fellow, was embedded in an assisted-living facility as Kenneally began her trip for this issue. They have worked together since 2003.
Tim Arango is a Los Angeles-based national correspondent for The Times. He spent seven years as Baghdad bureau chief and also covered Turkey. Before heading overseas, he had been a media reporter for The Times since 2007.
Additional Reporting by Maddy Crowell, Lovia Gyarkye, Concepción de León, Jaime Lowe, Jake Nevins, Kevin Pang and Malia Wollan.
Photo Editors: Amy Kellner and Rory Walsh.
Design by Aliza Aufrichtig and Eden Weingart.READ 622 COMMENTS
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Any lie will do for a photo op. MA
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — The owner of a camera shop that was destroyed during unrest in Kenosha and highlighted during President Donald Trump’s visit says the president used his store for political gain by appearing with a former owner of the business while touring the epicenter of the latest eruption over racial injustice.
Tom Gram said he bought Rode’s Camera Shop from the Rode family eight years ago, though John Rode still owns the property. Gram’s four decades of work at the store came to an end Aug. 24, when the building was destroyed by fire during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Gram said he got a call Monday from the White House asking if he would join the president on a tour that would showcase the destruction to the business, but Gram rejected the offer. And he said Trump’s references to Rode as the owner of the business were deceptive.
“I think everything he (Trump) does turns into a circus and I just didn’t want to be involved in it,” Gram told Milwaukee station WTMJ-TV.
The White House, however, noted Wednesday that Rode and his family founded and built Rode’s Camera Shop before World War II and still own the building that houses the shop. Trump didn’t visit the site of the shop during Tuesday’s trip to Kenosha, but Rode met with him a few blocks away and participated in a roundtable with the president.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, planned to be in Kenosha on Thursday. Biden plans to hold a community meeting and make another stop at an undisclosed location, the campaign said. This will mark Biden’s first campaign stop in Wisconsin as the presidential nominee and his first in the state since October 2018.
Trump’s visit came over the objections of some state and local leaders. Kenosha has seen protests since Aug. 23, when police shot Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back. On Monday, Trump defended a 17-year-old supporter, Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of fatally shooting two demonstrators in Kenosha on Aug. 25 and wounding a third.
BuzzFeed News, citing since deleted social media, reported that Rittenhouse sat in the front row at a Trump rally in Des Moines in January and a TikTok bio page of his included the slogan “Trump 2020.”
Rittenhouse’s attorney John Pierce tweeted a video of him Tuesday speaking by phone with Rittenhouse from jail in Illinois, where he was arrested.
“I just want to thank every single one of you from the bottom of my heart for the underlining support, it’s just amazing,” Rittenhouse said from the phone held up by Pierce. “I want to thank all of you for the mail I’ve been receiving. It’s been really helpful. I just want to let you all know that I’m going to be out of here soon and stay strong. And I hope to see you guys soon.”
Pierce reiterated his position that Rittenhouse was acting in self defense.
Trump emphasized his “law and order” campaign message during his stop in Kenosha, where he thanked police but did not meet with anyone from Blake’s family.
Also Tuesday, four people arrested during demonstrations in Kenosha filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that local law enforcement arrested only those protesting against police brutality, not “pro-police protesters and militia” who were armed with rifles.
The lawsuit claims that enforcement of a curfew from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. violates constitutional free speech and equal protection rights.
“In Kenosha, there are two sets of laws — one that applies to those who protest police brutality and racism, and another for those who support the police,” the lawsuit said.
Sam Hall, attorney for Kenosha County, called the lawsuit “entirely without merit” and said the county will seek immediate dismissal.
“The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department has worked tirelessly to bring order back to the community and has been careful to protect the rights of all citizens throughout that process,” Hall said in a statement.
An attorney for the city did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday.
The lawsuit includes widely circulated cellphone video from Aug. 25 showing law enforcement officers in armored vehicles handing bottles of water to civilians with rifles and thanking them. One of the people in that video is Rittenhouse.
In the video, police appear to be clearing out protesters while allowing the gun-carrying civilians who said they were there to protect the property to remain.
Those bringing the lawsuit are represented by North Carolina civil rights lawyer Kimberly Motely, who also represents Gaige Grosskreutz, the man prosecutors say was shot in the arm by Rittenhouse.
___
This story has been corrected to indicate that the White House statement about the business was made Wednesday, not Tuesday. The quote from Rittenhouse has been corrected to say ‘mail’ instead of ‘meal.’
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TOTUS is creating more physical harm and injury because he doesn’t want the Postal Service to survive and function as it should, this is to cripple mail in voting which in theory would go against him in the general election. As a voter, if I were a potential vote for him, this would push me to the other side. Add the potential for more infections due to people having to access voting sites even with proper distancing and masks. MA
Dylan Stableford and Christopher Wilson Senior Staff
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Trump: Coronavirus stimulus negotiations sticking point is mail-in voting
President Trump on Thursday said he is withholding approval for a coronavirus relief package because Democrats want to include funds for mail-in voting.
The president said Democrats want $25 billion for the U.S. Postal Service, $3.5 billion of which would be used to shore up infrastructure amid logistical challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is predicted to keep some voters from going to the polls in November.
“They want $3.5 billion for something that will turn out to be fraudulent, that’s election money basically,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “They want $25 billion, billion, for the post office. Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. Now, in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. By the way, those are just two items. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.”
Trump has frequently alluded to what he describes as massive voting-fraud conspiracies affecting millions of votes, but the White House has not provided any evidence to support the claims, and some states already use the process safely. He has cited reports of problems distributing and processing mail-in ballots in local elections, including applications for absentee ballots sent to “dogs” and “dead people.”
Trump himself has voted absentee by mail from the White House, as have a number of his staffers.
In March, Trump criticized initial Democratic attempts to fund mail-in voting in the first round of pandemic relief legislation, but also admitted what may be his real objection: that increased ballot access would be bad for Republicans. He told Fox News that such expansion would lead to “levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
“You know, there’s nothing wrong with getting out and voting, you get out and vote,” the president said to Bartiromo Thursday. “They voted during World War I and World War II, and they should have voter ID, because the Democrats scammed the system.”
“But, two of the items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting,” he added. “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”
President Trump gestures during a news conference at the White House on Wednesday. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted Trump’s attack on the Postal Service.
“When the president goes after the Postal Service, he’s going after an all-American, highly approved-by-the-public institution,” Pelosi said. “Motherhood, apple pie, the Postal Service.”
Last month, Trump floated the idea of delaying the election, which is something he does not have the power to do, as the date of the election is decided by Congress. Federal Election Commission head Ellen Weintraub dismissed the proposal.
“No, Mr. President,” wrote Weintraub. “No. You don’t have the power to move the election. Nor should it be moved. States and localities are asking you and Congress for funds so they can properly run the safe and secure elections all Americans want. Why don’t you work on that?”
It is within the power of the Trump campaign and Republican organizations to sue to make mail-in balloting more difficult, a tactic they have employed in advance of November’s election. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots were rejected during primaries during the past few months, including one in five in New York.
Trump has trailed Biden in polling all summer as approval of his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic craters, with more than 166,000 Americans dead from COVID-19. The polling numbers are so poor in some areas that Republicans have expressed concerns about their ability to maintain control of the Senate.
“This will be the greatest fraud in history,” Trump told Bartiromo, before adding a caveat: “This will be almost as fraudulent as Obama spying on my campaign, but not quite.”
08/03/2020 09:28 pm ET
After Undermining Postal Service, Trump Claims It’s Not Ready For Mail-In Voting
The president made more unfounded claims criticizing mail-in voting, which more Americans are expected to use amid the coronavirus pandemic.
President Donald Trump again went after the United States Postal Service, this time claiming it is not “prepared” for a rise in mail-in ballots in the upcoming general election.
Voters are expected to vote by mail in record numbers in November as gatherings in public, including at polling places, threaten people’s health amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s never been a push like this for mail-in ballots,” Trump said at Monday’s White House coronavirus briefing. The president went on to criticize primary elections in states like New York and New Jersey, which used expanded mail-in voting this year, and railed against Nevada’s Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, who’s expected to sign a bill to mail ballots to all eligible voters.
Trump then went in on the postal service, which has been a target of his attacks for years.
“By the way, I have to say, the post office for many years has been run in a fashion that hasn’t been great. … And I don’t think the post office is prepared for a thing like this,” Trump said of mail-in ballot use in the general election. “How can the post office be expected to handle?”
The president went on to list how USPS receives not only “regular mailing,” but also “a massive number of purchases” from “the internet” and Amazon, calling this “a tremendous strain.” (Some states provide secure drop boxes for voters so they can opt not to send their ballots through the mail, however.)
HuffPost did not immediately get a response from USPS for comment.
“Again, absentee is great, it works. Like in Florida, they’ll do absentee, it really works,” said Trump, who has voted by absentee ballot himself and ignores that absentee ballots are, in fact, mail-in ballots. “But universal mail-in ballots, it’s going to be a great embarrassment to our country.”
Trump has repeatedly and baselessly claimed elections using mail-in ballots are “fraudulent.” There is no evidence of this.
Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy — a major Trump campaign donor appointed in May — has recently made changes to the postal service in the name of cutting costs, including slashing overtime for employees and telling them to leave mail behind if it will delay carriers’ routes — all of which could slow down mail delivery in the coming months.
With the November election less than 100 days away, the U.S. continues to lead the world in coronavirus cases and deaths, with more than 4.6 million confirmed cases and over 155,000 dead from the virus so far.
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President Donald Trump dismissed the “bullshit” of the effects of cancel culture as he negotiated with a senator to preserve the name of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at military installations, according to a recording of a phone conversation given to The New York Times.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) put Trump on speakerphone at an Italian restaurant in Washington, D.C., as the men talked politics Wednesday night. The conversation was overheard and recorded by “someone in the room,” the Times reported Thursday.
“All right, my friend,” said Trump. “Are you doing good? We’re going to keep the name of Robert E. Lee?”
Inhofe responded on the tape: “Just trust me. I’ll make it happen.”
Trump piped up: “I had about 95,000 positive retweets on that. That’s a lot.”
Trump seemed to be referring to his tweet last week that Inhofe had promised he wouldn’t change the names of “Military Bases and Forts” and was “not a believer in ‘Cancel Culture’.”
Trump has threatened to veto the Senate’s Defense Authorization Act that overwhelmingly passed last week and would change military base names that honor Confederates. The 86-14 vote margin could easily override a presidential veto. Trump’s conversation with Inhofe appeared to be a push to protect a veto.
The president seemingly veered into another complaint about so-called cancel culture, in which support for a person is withdrawn over offensive actions or statements. A “lot of people want to be able to go back to life — not this bullshit,” he added.
In the recording of his call with the senator, the president also discussed Inhofe’s sudden cancellation of a confirmation hearing for retired Gen. Anthony Tata, Trump’s pick for a top Pentagon policy post. The move followed deepening concerns from both Democrats and Republicans about Tata’s history of inflammatory tweets in which he called former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader” and attacked Islam.
Earlier in the conversation, Inhofe, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, referred to holding up Tata’s confirmation.
Inhofe had said in a statement that Democrats and Republicans don’t yet “know enough” about Tata and hadn’t received required documentation.
On the recorded portion of the phone call, the men mentioned the possibility of someone “resigning” and being given another appointment.
Inhofe has not commented on the recording.
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Quack President promoting Quack Doctor. MA.
Dickens Olewe – BBC News
July 29, 2020, 12:20 PM
Stella Immanuel – the doctor behind unproven coronavirus cure claim
Stella Immanuel, a doctor at the centre of a controversy over unproven and potentially dangerous claims that an anti-malaria drug can treat Covid-19, is no stranger to conspiracy theories.
Facebook and Twitter have taken down the viral video in which she appears, saying it violates their policies about misinformation – but not before it was retweeted by Donald Trump and one of his sons.
The US president defended himself, saying he found Dr Immanuel, who was born in Cameroon and is based in the Texan city of Houston, “very impressive”.
“She said that she had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients, I thought her voice was an important voice but I know nothing about her,” he said on Tuesday.
Dr Immanuel, who is also a Christian pastor, gave a speech on the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington, captured in a video first published by right-wing website Breitbart on Monday.
‘Don’t leave Africa behind in coronavirus battle’
Along with other medics from a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, she said that Americans were being denied a potential cure for Covid-19.
“Nobody needs to get sick. This virus has a cure – it is called hydroxychloroquine, I have treated over 350 patients and not had one death,” said Dr Immanuel.
Despite some early studies raising hopes that the drug could be used to cure coronavirus, one subsequent larger scale trial has shown it is not effective as a treatment.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has halted its trials, saying it doesn’t reduce death rates in patients with coronavirus.
Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cautioned against using the drug to treat coronavirus patients, following reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” and other health issues.
And Dr Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force, has reiterated these views.
“We know that every single good study – and by good study I mean randomised control study in which the data are firm and believable – has shown that hydroxychloroquine is not effective in the treatment of Covid-19,” he told the BBC on Wednesday.
But Dr Immanuel has insisted taking hydroxychloroquine is not harmful because it is widely taken in her home country of Cameroon, where malaria is endemic.
Witches and demons
Born in 1965, Dr Immanuel graduated with a medical degree from the University of Calabar in neighbouring Nigeria – and has a valid doctor’s licence, according to the website of the Texas Medical Board.
Hydroxychloroquine has long been used as a treatment for malaria
She is also a pastor and the founder of Fire Power Ministries in Houston, a platform she has used to promote other conspiracies about the medical profession.
Her sermons are available on a YouTube account set up in 2009.
Five years ago, she alleged that alien DNA was being used in medical treatments, and that scientists were cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious.
Some of her other claims include blaming medical conditions on witches and demons – a common enough belief among some evangelical Christians – though she says they have sex with people in a dream world.
“They turn into a woman and then they sleep with the man and collect his sperm… then they turn into the man and they sleep with a man and deposit the sperm and reproduce more of themselves,” she said during a sermon in 2013.
Another issue that Dr Immanuel targets is gay marriage, saying it can result in adults marrying children, according to the Daily Beast.
She also offers a prayer to remove a generational curse, originally received from an ancestor, but transmitted through placenta, the news website’s profile of her says.
‘Jesus will shut Facebook’
In her latest video posted on Twitter on Tuesday, she asks patients she says she has cured of Covid-19 to come forward.
“If you don’t speak up we are getting trashed,” she says, encouraging them to use a hashtag when they post their video messages.
Her tweet has had more than 27,000 retweets.
After Facebook took down the America’s Frontline Doctors’ video on Tuesday, she declared that Jesus Christ would destroy the social media giant’s servers if her videos were not restored to the platform.
Facebook has not reported an interruption on its services.
Who are America’s Frontline Doctors?
It is a collection of physicians critical of the scientific consensus around the Covid-19 pandemic. The event on Monday was backed by the Tea Party Patriots, a conservative organisation seeking to re-elect President Trump.
The doctors believe neither masks nor shutdowns are necessary to fight the spread of coronavirus.
The group’s founder, Simone Gold, organised a letter to Mr Trump calling for an end to lockdown measures in May.
Participants were encouraged to seek out interviews with social media influencers, as this was determined to be the best way to reach Americans.
Ralph Norman, a Republican member of the House of Representatives, was standing alongside the doctors when they delivered their news conference.
The debate has been increasingly dividing Americans along political lines, with proponents of hydroxychloroquine pointing to President Trump’s support of it while accusing critics of covering up its potential effectiveness.
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Over the years our politics have ebbed and flowed with some regularity. It is as if the wind changes and politics follows. It is unfortunate we as voters have abandoned the art of reading about candidates and what they have done or are currently doing. Mass media has made us mentally lazy and reliant on imagery that belies the truth. Now, in skulks Donald Trump ,a lackluster media figure with dubious business acumen. The United States apparently has (and perhaps still hasn’t) never really gotten over the Civil War (War Between The States) and it’s aftermath. The lack of education for freed people (which was deliberate) allowed for the appropriation of the “40 acres and a mule” afforded to Black Americans, denial of voting rights and living wages. These economic and civil freedoms had been denied before the conflict and continued until even now under the same umbrella of Racism. Too many Americans have been fed the poison of “White Privilege” directly or subliminally to the detriment of us all. The recent protests have been exacerbated by a neer do well Congress and an adept conman with no redeeming qualities. WE as a nation have allowed ourselves to be subverted by the baser elements of humanity.
Our lack of engagement in the political system by “rote” voting has given us long term politicians who have grown accustomed to being re elected based on promises to be broken. The current unrest across the nation over a pandemic that has been and still is in essence “promoted” by the poor leadership of the White House Con machine. In the shadows of this pandemic are the personal agendas of Cabinet ministers who for the most part are unsuited for the positions they hold. All of this has been tacitly agreed to by us the Voters by ignoring the facts of each elected official’s failures and not bringing them to account. Revolutions take many forms and we need to revolt in the upcoming election. WE ALONE CAN FIX IT!
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Unless I am reading and seeing different information, this administration is conducting an “HUTA” operation on behalf of an uninformed leader. “HUTA” is an acronym for “Heads UP Their Asses” The recent and ongoing mishandling of government is aided and abetted by a cadre of minions whose apparent function is to do what TOTUs wants in spite of their “good” judgement or doing what they want to accomplish according to their personal and ill informed information. This administration has spent more time tweeting rather than administering for the good of ALL citizens no matter the race. There is no excusing the loss respect and the economic down turn brought on by the misfeasance of the 45the Presidency. The poor judgements and actions of this administration has affected all voters even if some cannot understand the long term effects or perhaps refuse to. It is well to remember the baser members of our Congress are enjoying the cover provided by this administration for their nefarious actions. We all strive to be informed but we fail to migrate to more than a single source for information. Please do not become a HUTA member.
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