Category Archives: Mop

Here Is the Latest Campaign Faux Controversy

Mother Jones

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I can’t tell if this faux controversy is actually getting much attention, but I know my readers all want to stay up to date:

Donald Trump’s campaign sought an apology Saturday from his Democratic rival after Hillary Clinton took aim at the Republican’s supporters, suggesting that half of them are what she called “deplorables.”

….“To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?,” Mrs. Clinton told donors in New York City. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.” The former secretary of state added that “some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.” The Trump campaign quickly punched back, saying that Mrs. Clinton had revealed “her true contempt for everyday Americans.”

I’m sure this will be followed up on social media with lots of folks “fact checking” Clinton and showing that she’s right. Let’s take a look. Yep, here’s one:

Typical Hillary shill. The Reuters poll he links to clearly shows that less than half of Trump’s supporters are deplorable. At most it’s 49 percent, and the average is only 43 percent. As usual, Hillary Clinton is spinning and exaggerating for her own benefit. No wonder Americans don’t trust her. A tisket, a tasket, Hillary’s in a basket.

OK, fine, that was lame. But hopefully everyone just skips this whole affair. It’s one of those things that belongs in the category of stuff literally everyone knows but can’t say out loud. Trump’s outreach to the racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamaphobic community is pretty obvious and hardly needs any further evidence. Every campaign reporter in the country knows this. The question is, can they say it? Or will they just “report the controversy” and declare that it “casts a new shadow” over a “struggling campaign”? I guess we’ll see.

UPDATE: Well, it’s now on the front page of the LA Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. So I guess it’s getting some traction. Is this just because it’s a slow weekend news day? Or will it last? Come back Monday for your answer!

Original source:

Here Is the Latest Campaign Faux Controversy

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Confessions of a Gun Range Worker

Mother Jones

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Editor’s note: Americans today aren’t just stockpiling guns in record numbers; they are also shooting them at upward of 2,100 gun ranges across the country. In February, the pseudonymous author of this piece—a former employee at a gun range in Orange County, California—contacted Mother Jones reporter Josh Harkinson, who interviewed the author and corroborated his account (as told to Harkinson below) through official documents, news reports, and interviews with two other former employees of the gun range. The management and owner of the gun range did not respond to multiple requests for comment.


I’ve worked in the firearms industry for decades, including at a range in Orange County, California. It’s inside an industrial park, in your standard warehouse type of building. People come in and say, “Oh, I never knew this place existed.” Once you check in, there are two entryways and 16 lanes. The lanes are monitored by video cameras, and there are also large double-paned windows, which, it turns out, are not made of bulletproof glass.

I later worked as a contractor at ranges all over the region. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve witnessed multiple suicides. Three rampage shooters practiced at the Orange County range. The general vibe at the ranges has gotten much more extreme and paranoid. I don’t think this is unique to where I worked. The gun industry is really changing for the worse.

I was attracted to guns as a teenager because my family had been victims of violent crime. My dad had been mugged and my family has been held up in their store at least a couple of times at gunpoint. I guess you could say it’s a way of reclaiming some sense of power over a powerless situation.

My first gun was a military surplus bolt-action, a Lee Enfield. The ATF has a category for these things: curio and relic weapons. It was the only gun that at 18 years old I could legally purchase and walk out the door with. It was fully capable of punching through a car or a cinder block. I started buying and fixing up other relic firearms. At the time I was a college student; I’d sell a gun and use the money to pay for my books. I can’t even remember all the guns I’ve owned. That’s part of what attracted me to working at the range. You would see all sorts of different guns come through. I also came to enjoy the camaraderie. In some ways it’s not just a range so much as a gathering place for a certain type of crotchety old man. You sit there on the bench and drink your nasty cup of coffee and trade lies and war stories. For me, it was something that I kind of didn’t have growing up, because my dad wasn’t always there.

But there were certain people who were difficult. At some point during the day, you would have a gun pointed at you. I had a guy with Parkinson’s, and he had severe muscle tremors. He can’t hold the gun properly, and it jams. He walks off the range, he’s pointing the gun at me, and he’s saying, “Hey, hey, my gun is jammed!” I sidestep the muzzle and say, “Let’s have a look, shall we?” All the while that I am handling it I am saying, “You really shouldn’t be doing that.” And the guy, without missing a beat, says, “It’s all right, the safety’s on the gun.” I pull the slide back and there’s a live round that ejects from the chamber. And I’m thinking, okay, I was a three-pound trigger pull away from getting shot.

The ranges make a lot of their money from renting guns to people—those are the people you really have to watch out for. Like the time we rented a Ruger handgun to this woman. After I turned my back to her, she put the gun behind her ear and blew a nice, clean, round hole through the center of her head. I didn’t really feel anything at the time. At first it was disbelief, and then I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to take care of stuff.” Different guys handle it differently. I know a guy who quit right after something like this happened.

Our standard operating procedure when this happens is to call a cease-fire. Then we clear the range so that nobody is in any danger. Then sometimes you’d go up and, if it’s safe to do so, you’d kick the gun out. I still remember this: The manager at the time wound up putting gloves on and plugging the side of her head with his fingers. I’m thinking, “This isn’t going to do a whole lot. She’s toast, dude.” Not to be callous about it, but she was dead. Her eyes were flapping, there was nothing there.

Gun ranges often have policies that require anyone who rents a gun to be accompanied by a friend. It’s supposed to be a way to prevent suicides, but it doesn’t always work very well. Eventually the range started paying a service to come pick up the bodies and scrub everything. But before that happened, Christ, what was it? Bleach and kitty litter. I remember one time I had come in for a shift change and there was a pool of blood. We didn’t have any bleach but we did have some kitty litter. I remember using that to soak up the blood. And because we didn’t have the bleach, some of my members were kind enough to go across the street to the grocery store and buy some. In hindsight, we had no protocols, we had no protective suits. I could have exposed myself to blood-borne pathogens.

Another one was a father who was getting divorced. He was a pretty big guy. I felt the impact, and when I turned around there was pandemonium. Some of my members came rushing out the door yelling at me to call the police, and we did. The guy had sent suicidal text messages to his family. It made the paper because he was a beloved figure in the community, big into Little League. He was totally normal acting. And the next thing you know, you have 300 pounds hitting the floor.

I feel sorry for the families. Anybody who is that depressed for the most part has my sympathy. I do get a little bit irritated that they have to do it while I’m on duty. I think it’s kind of—I don’t know if you’d say inconsiderate—but almost that. You can’t really ask these people, “Hey, if you are going to kill yourself, why don’t you do it out in the desert or something like that?”

Around 2002, a middle-aged guy named Hesham Hadayet came into the range. He’d purchased a gun at a store. He asked me, “Hey, can you show me how to load and operate this gun?” I am thinking, “Wait a minute, didn’t you just take a class?” I’m like, “Fine, not a problem.” I think he came in two or three more times. I didn’t pay any attention to it. Well, a few months later, I turn on the TV and I see this guy’s face. He’d shot up a ticket counter at LAX. He killed two people and injured two more before being fatally shot by a security guard.

The second guy, Phong Thuc Tran, also shot at the range. He worked for the gas company and had been forced to resign. After he killed his supervisor and his co-worker, he was running around for like a day or two before he parked his car in front of a police station. That’s where he shot himself. We only found out about it when the local cops walked in. The guy, he was a little off, but he was very quiet, respectful. No outward signs of anger. You never would’ve known.

The third one, Scott Dekraai, practiced at the range in 2011 and after that he goes on a shooting rampage. He shot nine people at the Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, including his ex-wife. Only one of them survived.

We talked about them amongst ourselves, but if a member of the shooting public comes in and wants to, we pretty much dummy up. Because who wants to say, “Hey, yeah, there was a mass murderer here at the range?”

There are some good bosses that run these ranges, but for the most part they willingly overlook the fact that this stuff is dangerous. And I’m not just talking about the guns. They’re supposed to properly train people for handling lead, which gets released in large quantities by spent bullets. There’s not really a safe level for lead in your body once you get above five micrograms per deciliter of blood. At the end of the day, you’ve got various things that you have to clean up: the brass shells, paper from the targets, un-burnt powder from the ammunition, little bits of atomized lead. Anything with high enough concentrations of lead is supposed to be put into a canister and treated as hazardous material, but that didn’t always happen.

We’d get tested for lead in our bodies maybe once or twice a year. They would kind of look sideways at you if you asked for the test results. I knew better than that. I just said, “The hell with it.” But the last test that I had, it came back high. I was contacted by the California Department of Public Health, and the guy said, “Uh, why is your lead level so high?”

I started noticing a difference in the type of people coming to the range when Bill Clinton was president. It was the first time I had actually seen somebody post a picture of the president as a target. I told them, “Look, you can’t do that.” Now there’s a company that sells targets with images of Obama, and they put apelike features on him.

You never would have seen something like that 20 years ago when I started. It’s an echo chamber. It’s a place where people feel safe because they feel that people are of like mind. A few months ago, this woman wanted to know about getting her license. I asked her, “What do you need the gun for, if you don’t mind my asking? Was there a crime?” She said, “No, I think there’s going to be an influx of Muslims coming in from our southern border and then they are going to start killing people.” I’ve had people come up to me and say, “I don’t like it that you show these ragheads how to shoot.”

Paranoid? What would you call it when people have six months worth of food? What would you call it when people have 30-plus guns? What would you call it when they are stockpiling ammunition? The gun industry is making a killing, and it’s doing its best to fan the flames. You see stuff in internet gun forums like, “Hey, FEMA is purchasing a million and a half rounds of ammunition.” It’s supposedly because the government is preparing to come around and knock on your door and round you up into camps.

It all plays into people’s paranoid fantasies, and guns are always the solution. They give people a sense of control in a world that is out of control. You go into the NRA convention and look around at the sea of faces— I’m sorry, it’s a bunch of paranoid white guys who see their country slipping away from them. They think people like Trump, or the gun industry, are the “real” Americans. The gun industry could give a rat’s ass. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

I’m leaving the industry to make better money. Dude, I will still be into guns. I like working on ’em. My friends and I still shoot. But the other motivation, just as strong perhaps, is that I don’t want to have to be around a bunch of crazy people.

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Confessions of a Gun Range Worker

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The Ultimate Guide To Creating A Greener Kitchen

When setting out to create a greener kitchen and home it’s hard to know where to start. Information overload is definitely a problem. Five minutes on Google and suddenly I have 42 checklists, 700 “green” products to buy, and if I don’t make the changes today I’ll be diagnosed with 6 different cancers within the year.Alright, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar. There is so much info out there it’s hard to know what to do.

Creating a greener kitchen environment

In our home I focus on making small changes each week to create a greener environment. One week it’s adding more organic produce to the shopping list. The next week we’re taking time to wash and recycle cans and jars.

In order to help you take small steps towards a greener home I’ve put together this guide to help you create a more sustainable, greener kitchen.

I’m not saying you need to dive in and make every one of these changes today. But pick one thing and implement that. Once you’ve mastered that, move on to something else. The path towards a more sustainable life is taken one step at a time.

For simplicity I’ve broken this list down into the 3 R’s; Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

Reducing kitchen waste

Food waste

Image Credit: KaliAntye / Shutterstock

Food waste is a major issue facing the world right now. In the U.S., it is estimated that 40% of the food produced is never even consumed.

When you think about all the water, energy, and time that goes into producing food, that’s a ton of wasted resources!

So what can you do to reduce food waste in your home?

We often end up purchasing more food than we need. This may be because we need a certain amount for a recipe and have no choice but to purchase more than we need. Or, maybe we just shop hungry (always a bad idea).

One way to reduce your food waste is to more carefully plan your cooking. Figure out what recipes you like that share similar ingredients and plan to cook them in the same week. If you don’t enjoy leftovers, learn to cook smaller quantities of food that are better suited for your household’s size.
Another way to reduce food waste is to store your food properly. When stored properly, food will last longer, giving you the chance to eat it before it spoils.

There’s an app for that

The USDA FoodKeeper app is a great way to learn more about the shelf life of various foods and how to store them properly. The best part about this app is that it goes well beyond produce, covering baby food, baked goods, condiments, and even meat. You should definitely take a minute and download the app. You’ll be amazed at how helpful it is.

If you do end up with extra produce that you know will go bad before you can eat it all, you can always freeze a portion for later. We do this in our home all the time with berries and bananas.

Consider composting

Inevitably you’ll have food that goes bad. At home composting can be a great way to put that spoiled produce to good use.

Earth911 took a tour of Singh Farms to learn the technical details about composting. If you’re interested in learning the science of composting click here.

The greatest benefit to composting is that you end up with nutrient rich soil that can be used to grow delicious new produce. To help you get started we put together a video on all you need to know about composting.

You can also check out this article on composting in an apartment as well as the “Do’s and Don’ts of Composting”.

Cleaning products

Image Credit: jordache / Shutterstock

We all have cleaning chemicals in our kitchen, frequently stuffed under the kitchen sink. Have you ever taken a minute to read through the ingredients? Unless you’re a chemist you probably can’t pronounce most of them.

When wiping down your kitchen, floor, and dishes, these cleaning chemicals often leave behind residue that will later come in contact with your hands and food. We recommend replacing these toxic cleaning products with natural ones that work just as well.

Lemon, baking soda, and vinegar are some of the best natural cleaners out there. Here are a few quick suggestions on how to use them to clean your kitchen.

Quick tips

Remove stains from food storage containers: Squeeze the juice from a lemon into the containers, then add a little baking soda. Rub the mixture into the stains. Let sit overnight if necessary.
Clean your microwave: Slice a lemon, put it in a bowl of water and microwave for 45 seconds. This should make stains easier to wipe away and eliminate unpleasant odors.
Clean your coffeemaker: Run the machine with equal parts water and vinegar. Halfway through the cycle, turn it off and let it sit for an hour. Then complete the cycle.
Unclog a drain: Pour 1/2 cup vinegar and 1/2 cup baking soda down the drain. Rinse with water.
Make glasses sparkle: Put one cup of vinegar in the bottom of your dishwasher before you run the cycle. After you run the dishwasher, your glassware shouldn’t be cloudy.
Remove stains from coffee and tea mugs: Fill mugs with one part baking soda and two parts water and let sit overnight. Scrub and rinse in the morning.
Remove burnt food from the bottoms of pots and pans: Sprinkle baking soda over the burnt areas, add hot water and let sit overnight. Scrub in the morning.
Remove odors from food containers: Simply rinse containers with baking soda and water to remove smells. Let sit overnight if necessary.
Clean spills in the oven: Scrub the bottom of the oven with steel wool and baking soda. (Note: If you have a self-cleaning oven, don’t use this method.)

For more tips and tricks on using these natural cleaning products, download the DIY Cleaning Recipes PDF available in the Earth911 Resource Library. Click here to sign up for free.

Energy use

Image Credit: Aprilphoto / Shutterstock

Though it doesn’t happen often, when you do need to purchase new appliances be sure to purchase energy efficient ones.

Energy Star rated products are the go-to choice when it comes to finding the most energy efficient appliances. They (Energy Star) have put together a great tool that allows you to put together a profile of your whole home. After you’ve created your home profile they’ll give you recommendations on how you can save energy.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy your appliances account for about 13% of your home’s energy use. Purchasing newer, more efficient models can save you a significant amount of money over the lifespan of the appliance. When you do replace your appliances be sure to recycle your old ones properly, but more on that later.

Reuse in the kitchen

Food Storage

When it comes time to store leftovers it’s important to use sustainable food storage, and glass and stainless steel are two good options.

Glass

Glass containers such as Pyrex and Glasslock are certainly among the best options available. Glass is a long lasting material and is microwave and oven safe.

In our home, we use this set of Pyrex storage containers daily. My favorite part about using these glass food storage containers is that you can cook your meal in them and then throw the lid on and stick the leftovers in the fridge for later. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Stainless steel

Another great option is stainless steel. Stainless steel has the benefit of not breaking when dropped like glass containers do. (When I was 16 my mom baked my favorite cake in a glass pan. We took it to the park for a party and it got knocked off the table. Glass went everywhere and the cake was ruined. If it had been in a stainless steel pan, we still could have eaten it.)

Stainless steel containers are also completely recyclable. If they get bent out of shape you can take them to your nearest scrap yard and they’ll pay you for the metal.

Another great benefit of stainless steel containers is they can be set right on your stove top to heat up leftovers.

Plastic perhaps?

We are big fans of Preserve products which are almost all made from recycled #5 plastic. Preserve products are microwave safe, dishwasher safe, BPA free, and when you’re done with them they can be sent back to Preserve to be recycled. Image Credit: Preserve Products (Instagram)

If you can’t find a glass or stainless steel container for your food, there are plastic options that are better than others. We are big fans of Preserve products which are almost all made from recycled #5 plastic. Preserve products are microwave safe, dishwasher safe, BPA free, and when you’re done with them they can be sent back to Preserve to be recycled.

One last thing before we jump in to the recycling section. If you aren’t already, start using reusable shopping bags, preferably the canvas or fabric type rather than the plastic ones as there’s no recycling solution available for the large, reusable plastic bags.

Kitchen recycling

Plastic bags

I know I just mentioned using reusable shopping bags but inevitably you’re going to have plastic bags around your home that need to be recycled. Fortunately plastic bags can be recycled at most grocery and retail stores.

While this widespread access to plastic bag recycling is still relatively new, it’s become more and more popular as retailers have set their own sustainability initiatives.

What many people don’t realize is that grocery bags aren’t the only type of plastic bag that can go in these drop off bins.

Plastic bags are typically made from plastic #2 or #4 and can be recycled together. Here are a few other products made from these plastics that you can drop off in these bins.

Ziploc type plastic bags, as long as they are clean and dry.
Plastic, air filled, shipping pouches. (Just cut them and let the air out).
Plastic bread and bagel bags, as long as you empty all the crumbs out.

Find out more about plastic bag recycling and find a location near you by visiting our Plastic Bag Recycling Guide.

Cardboard and cartons

Most city curbside recycling bins accept cardboard so check with your local area collector. Image Credit: sevenke / Shutterstock

Most city curbside recycling bins accept cardboard. To make things easier on space in your own bin, be sure to break them down so they’re flat. Don’t worry about tape and other paper that’s attached to the cardboard as this will be removed during the recycling process.

Most city curbside programs also accept paperboard which is the cardboard-like box that holds cereal, pasta, and other boxed dry goods.

Frozen food boxes, a.k.a. waxed cardboard, unfortunately are not as widely accepted. These boxes require more work to recycle so check with your city or county to find out if you can place them in the recycling bin.

Another product to check on with your city is milk and juice cartons. Many cities do accept them though it is best to double check. Visit the Carton Council to find out if your city accepts cartons in your blue bin.

Appliances

Large appliances, like washing machines, clothes dryers, water heaters, ovens, stoves, refrigerators, freezers, furnaces, and air conditioners are a big source of waste in the United States. However they often aren’t that difficult to recycle.

In fact, if you are replacing an appliance with a new one the company delivering it will often take your old one for recycling. This service has made appliance recycling far easier over the last few years.

When you do replace an old appliance with an Energy Star model, you may be eligible for a rebate. Check the Energy Star rebate finder to see if you qualify.

If you need to recycle an old appliance, be aware that there are often fees to cover the cost of removing and properly disposing of the Freon commonly found in refrigerators, freezers, and A/C units.

Find out more about large appliance recycling and find a recycling location near you by visiting our Large Appliance Recycling Guide.

A homework assignment

As mentioned, cleaning chemicals often contain toxic ingredients that are hazardous to your health. Fortunately, the Environmental Working Group has put together some fantastic resources to help understand what cleaning products are hazardous.

If you’re looking for a first step to greening your kitchen this homework assignment below is perfect. In this assignment we’re going to figure out just how hazardous your cleaning products are. Here’s what to do:

  1. Pull out some of the cleaning products you use most frequently.
  2. Click here to visit EWG’s cleaning product search.
  3. Using the search bar at the top of the page, or the Product search on the left side of the page, look up your cleaning products.

How do your products rate?

Feature image credit: alexandre zveiger / Shutterstock

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Brian Brassaw

Brian manages the Earth911 Recycling Search, making sure there are plenty of recycling resources available for our users. He also shares green living tips and tricks on

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Latest posts by Brian Brassaw (see all)

The Ultimate Guide To Creating A Greener Kitchen – August 25, 2016
7 Eco-Friendly Laundry Detergents For Fresh Clothes – June 24, 2016
Earth Day: 23 Of The Greatest Environmental Quotes – April 22, 2016

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The Ultimate Guide To Creating A Greener Kitchen

Posted in A Greener Kitchen, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, organic, oven, PUR, solar, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Ultimate Guide To Creating A Greener Kitchen

How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists

Mother Jones

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Last week, when Donald Trump tapped the chairman of Breitbart Media to lead his campaign, he wasn’t simply turning to a trusted ally and veteran propagandist. By bringing on Stephen Bannon, Trump was signaling a wholehearted embrace of the “alt-right,” a once-motley assemblage of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ethno-nationalistic provocateurs who have coalesced behind Trump and curried the GOP nominee’s favor on social media. In short, Trump has embraced the core readership of Breitbart News.

“We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon’s target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon’s leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an “electic mix of renegades,” accusing President Barack Obama of importing “more hating Muslims,” and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of “political correctness.”

“Andrew Breitbart despised racism. Truly despised it,” former Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro wrote last week in Daily Wire, a conservative website. “With Bannon embracing Trump, all that changed. Now Breitbart has become the alt-right go-to website, with technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos pushing white ethno-nationalism as a legitimate response to political correctness, and the comment section turning into a cesspool for white supremacist mememakers.”

Exactly who and what defines the alt-right is hotly debated in conservative circles, but its proponents—who tend to be young, white, and male—are united in a belief that traditional movement conservatism has failed. They often criticize trade and immigration policies as examples of how the deck is stacked in favor of outsiders and elites instead of “real Americans” (a.k.a. Trump supporters). They bash social conservatives as ineffective sellouts to the GOP establishment, and rail against neo-conservative hawks for their embrace of Israel. While often tapping into legitimate economic grievances, their social media hashtags (such as #altright on Twitter) dredge up torrents of racist, sexist, and xenophobic memes.

Trump’s new campaign chief denies that the alt-right is inherently racist. He describes its ideology as “nationalist,” though not necessarily white nationalist. Likening its approach to that of European nationalist parties such as France’s National Front, he says: “If you look at the identity movements over there in Europe, I think a lot of them are really ‘Polish identity’ or ‘German identity,’ not racial identity. It’s more identity toward a nation-state or their people as a nation.” (Never mind that National Front founder Jean Marie Le Pen has been fined in France for “inciting racial hatred.”)

Bannon dismisses the alt-right’s appeal to racists as happenstance. “Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe,” he says. “Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes, right? But that’s just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard left that attract certain elements.”

A Twitter analysis conducted by The Investigative Fund using Little Bird software found that these “elements” are more deeply connected to Breitbart News than more traditional conservative outlets. While only 5 percent of key influencers using the supremacist hashtag #whitegenocide follow the National Review, and 10 percent follow The Daily Caller, 31 percent follow Breitbart. The disparities are even starker for the anti-Muslim hashtag #counterjihad: National Review, 0 percent; Daily Caller, 37 percent; Breitbart News, 62 percent.

Bannon’s views often echo those of his devoted followers. He describes Islam as “a political ideology” and Sharia law as “like Nazism, fascism, and communism.” On his Sirius XM radio show, he heaped praise on Pamela Geller, whose American Freedom Defense Initiative has been labeled an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Bannon called her “one of the leading experts in the country, if not the world,” on Islam. And he basically endorsed House Speaker Paul Ryan’s primary challenger, businessman Paul Nehlen, who floated the idea of deporting all Muslims from the United States.

During our interview, Bannon took credit for fomenting “this populist nationalist movement” long before Trump came on the scene. He credited Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)—a Trump endorser and confidant who has suggested that civil rights advocacy groups were “un-American”—with laying the movement’s groundwork. Bannon also pointed to his own films, which include a Sarah Palin biopic and an “exposé” of the Occupy movement, as “very nationalistic films.” Trump, he said, “is very late to this party.”

At Breitbart News, one of the most strident voices for the alt-right has been Yiannapolous, who was banned by Twitter during the RNC for inciting a racist pile-on of Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones. Published back in March, his “Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt Right” featured an illustration of a frog taunting an elephant—the frog image being a meme white supremacists had popularized on social media. The piece praised the anti-immigrant site VDare, the white nationalist site American Renaissance, and white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, as the alt-right’s “dangerously bright” intellectual core.

On the RNC’s opening day, Yiannapolous spoke at a “Citizens for Trump” rally. He also co-hosted a party featuring anti-Muslim activist Geller and the Dutch far-right nationalist politician Geert Wilders. Yiannopolous has proved to be Breitbart‘s most vitriolic anti-Muslim presence, erasing the distinction many conservatives draw between Islam and “radical Islam.” After the Orlando shootings, Yiannopolous told Bannon on his weekly radio show that “there is a structural problem with this religion that is preventing its followers from assimilating properly into Western culture.”

Bannon has stoked racist themes himself, notably in a lengthy July post accusing the “Left” of a “plot to take down America” by fixating on police shootings of black citizens. He argued that the five police officers slain in Dallas were murdered “by a #BlackLivesMatter-type activist-turned-sniper.” And he accused the mainstream media of an Orwellian “bait-and-switch as reporters and their Democratic allies and mentors seek to twist the subject from topics they don’t like to discuss—murderers with evil motives—to topics they do like to discuss, such as gun control.” Bannon added, “Here’s a thought: What if the people getting shot by the cops did things to deserve it? There are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent.”

Some Breitbart staffers who resisted the site’s transformation into a pro-Trump alt-right hub eventually resigned in protest. Several jumped ship after Corey Lewandowski, then Trump’s campaign manager, manhandled Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields at a rally. (The site appeared to side with Lewandowski, and staffers were reportedly told not to question his account.) Among the departing staffers were Fields, who now writes for the Huffington Post, and Shapiro, who has emerged as one of Breitbart‘s most vociferous conservative critics.

On Thursday, in the Washington Post, Shapiro upped the ante, describing the alt-right as a “movement shot through with racism and anti-Semitism,” and Breitbart News as “a party organ, a pathetic cog in the Trump-Media Complex and a gathering place for white nationalists.” The reception he and another conservative Jewish Breitbart critic, Bethany Mandel, have experienced in the Bannonosphere is revealing: In May, when Shapiro, who became editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire after leaving Breitbart, tweeted about the birth of his second child, he received a torrent of anti-Semitic tweets. “Into the gas chamber with all 4 of you,” one read. Another tweet depicted his family as lampshades. Mandel says she has been harassed on Twitter for months, “called a ‘slimy Jewess’ and told that I ‘deserve the oven.'”

After Shapiro called out the anti-Semitism, Breitbart News published (under the byline of Pizza Party Ben) a post ridiculing Shapiro for “playing the victim on Twitter and throwing around allegations of anti-Semitism and racism.”

Back at the RNC, Bannon dismissed Shapiro as a “whiner…I don’t think that the alt-right is anti-Semitic at all,” he told me. “Are there anti-Semitic people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. Are there racist people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. But I don’t believe that the movement overall is anti-Semitic.”

In any case, Breitbart’s conservative dissenters are fearful of what the Trump-Bannon alliance might bring. As Mandel puts it, “There’s no gray area here: Bannon is a bad guy. And he now has control of a major campaign for president.”

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. Additional reporting was done by Kalen Goodluck, Josh Harkinson, and Jaime Longoria.

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How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists

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The Trump Files: When Donald Tried to Shake Down Mike Tyson for $2 Million

Mother Jones

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Until the election, we’re bringing you “The Trump Files,” a daily dose of telling episodes, strange-but-true stories, or curious scenes from the life of GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Donald Trump often promises to give money to charity, but he’s much better at handing out other people’s cash than his own. So it’s no surprise that Trump once tried to strong-arm boxing legend Mike Tyson into giving him $2 million, ostensibly for charity, in 1988.

That June, Trump hosted Tyson’s heavyweight fight against Michael Spinks in Atlantic City, New Jersey, holding it in an arena next to the Trump Plaza casino. It was part of Trump’s play to become a big-time figure in boxing, but his next move went even further. Less than two weeks after Tyson beat Spinks, Trump announced he was becoming a business adviser to Tyson. Any money he made from the arrangement, Trump claimed at a press conference, would go to charities for fighting “AIDS, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis” and “helping the homeless.”

Tyson’s life got increasingly chaotic after the fight. He told reporters he was “burned out” and announced his retirement at age 22. His marriage to Robin Givens was falling apart. (Givens later alleged that Tyson abused her while the two were married.) And he was in the middle of suing his manager, Bill Cayton, whom Trump helped push aside when he slid into Tyson’s circle. But despite the turmoil in Tyson’s personal and professional life, Trump wanted Tyson to fork over the payment for his expert advising services.

“As you are aware, I was very happy to beat Bill Cayton and reduce the ridiculous fees he was getting from you both on his management and personal service contracts,” Trump wrote in a letter to Tyson on October 21, 1988. “Not only was this time-consuming, but tremendous energies and knowledge were displayed—much as you display your energy and knowledge in the ring against an opponent. Over the course of your career, I have probably saved you substantially in excess of $50,000,000 and therefore, the $2 million contribution, all of which will go to worthy charities, is very reasonable. If you could ask your accountants to write a check to the ‘Donald J. Trump Foundation’, I will distribute the money in my name and yours and will let you have a list of the charities which benefited.”

It’s not clear whether Tyson actually made the payment. If he did, Trump might be the only person who benefited. According to BuzzFeed, which reviewed the Trump Foundation’s records in June, the $2 million donation never appeared.

But the demand clearly didn’t hurt Trump and Tyson’s friendship. Trump later publicly suggested striking a deal so Tyson could avoid jail time for rape, and Tyson, who is now Muslim, has even endorsed the GOP nominee despite his Islamophobic stances.

Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:

Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 17 and 6
Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
Trump Files #23: The Trump Files: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
Trump Files #32: When Donald Massacred Trees in the Trump Tower Lobby
Trump Files #33: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
Trump Files #34: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
Trump Files #35: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
Trump Files #36: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
Trump Files #37: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
Trump Files #38: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
Trump Files #39: When Democrats Courted Donald
Trump Files #40: Watch the Trump Vodka Ad Designed for a Russian Audience
Trump Files #41: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
Trump Files #42: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name
Trump Files #43: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers
Trump Files #44: Why Donald Threw a Fit Over His “Trump Tree” in Central Park
Trump Files #45: Watch Trump Endorse Slim Shady for President
Trump Files #46: The Easiest 13 Cents He Ever Made
Trump Files #47: The Time Donald Burned a Widow’s Mortgage
Trump Files #48: Donald’s Recurring Sex Dreams
Trump Files #49: Trump’s Epic Insult Fight With Ed Koch
Trump Files #50: Donald Has Some Advice for Citizen Kane
Trump Files #51: Donald Once Turned Down a Million-Dollar Bet on “Trump: The Game”

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The Trump Files: When Donald Tried to Shake Down Mike Tyson for $2 Million

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump’s big speech at the Republican convention on Thursday didn’t contain a single reference to the environment or climate change. It was vague on policy overall, focusing heavily on the primary themes of this year’s Republican National Convention: bashing Hillary Clinton’s character and fear-mongering over crime and national security, with a heavy dose of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

There was, however, one section that dealt hazily with energy policy. Unfortunately, it was filled with falsehoods. Let’s go through the four key assertions one at a time:

“Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it.”

The apparent source for this figure is the National Association of Manufacturers, a conservative business lobbying organization that is fiercely opposed to regulations. The group’s $2 trillion estimate calculates only the cost of regulatory compliance and not the cost savings that result from government rules. So the fact that environmental and workplace safety regulations prevent health-care expenses and missed work days, for example, is simply ignored in this calculation. When you do account for the benefits of regulations, they often end up saving far more money than they cost. Experts debunked NAM’s report; the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service cited the Office of Management and Budget in calling the kind of methodology used “inherently flawed.” No unbiased, empirical cost-benefit analysis would come up with anything close to the number Trump cites.

“We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.”

The source for this $20 trillion figure is the Institute for Energy Research, an organization funded by the Koch brothers. As The New York Times has previously noted, “economic reality” contradicts this projection. Additional fossil fuel production has diminishing returns because increased supply means lower prices. So, according to experts the Times interviewed, the number is wildly exaggerated.

“My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steelworkers of our country out of work—that will never happen when I am president.”

Hillary Clinton’s admission that coal workers will be put out of work in the years ahead was not a statement of what she wants; it was a statement of reality. The coal industry is shedding jobs because of mechanization, tapped-out mountains, and increasing competition from natural gas and renewables. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan would prevent backsliding toward more coal use but not seriously worsen the industry’s already grim prospects. So Trump can’t actually reverse coal’s decline just by rolling back regulations. In any case, Clinton, unlike Trump, has a plan to put laid-off workers from this dying industry back to work in growing sectors—including, but not limited to, wind and solar energy production.

“With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country. This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans—we will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions more jobs.”

Trump is right that infrastructure investment would be good for the economy. Too bad his party’s own platform explicitly rejects spending on railways and many other kinds of infrastructure. And, in reality, Trump’s insane budget plan would leave no money for such projects.

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

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4 things Trump got very wrong in his convention speech

Tall tales

4 things Trump got very wrong in his convention speech

By on Jul 22, 2016Share

Donald Trump’s big speech at the Republican convention on Thursday didn’t contain a single reference to the environment or climate change. It was vague on policy overall, focusing heavily on the primary themes of this year’s Republican National Convention: bashing Hillary Clinton’s character and fear-mongering over crime and national security, with a heavy dose of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

There was, however, one section that dealt hazily with energy policy. Unfortunately, it was filled with falsehoods. Let’s go through the four key assertions one at a time:

“Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it.”

The apparent source for this figure is the National Association of Manufacturers, a conservative business lobbying organization that is fiercely opposed to regulations. The group’s $2 trillion estimate calculates only the cost of regulatory compliance and not the cost savings that result from government rules. So the fact that environmental and workplace safety regulations prevent health-care expenses and missed work days, for example, is simply ignored in this calculation. When you do account for the benefits of regulations, they often end up saving far more money than they cost. Experts debunked NAM’s report; the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service cited the Office of Management and Budget in calling the kind of methodology used “inherently flawed.” No unbiased, empirical cost-benefit analysis would come up with anything close to the number Trump cites.

“We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.”

The source for this $20 trillion figure is the Institute for Energy Research, an organization funded by the Koch brothers. As The New York Times has previously noted, “economic reality” contradicts this projection. Additional fossil fuel production has diminishing returns because increased supply means lower prices. So, according to experts the Times interviewed, the number is wildly exaggerated.

“My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steelworkers of our country out of work — that will never happen when I am president.”

Hillary Clinton’s admission that coal workers will be put out of work in the years ahead was not a statement of what she wants; it was a statement of reality. The coal industry is shedding jobs because of mechanization, tapped-out mountains, and increasing competition from natural gas and renewables. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan would prevent backsliding toward more coal use but not seriously worsen the industry’s already grim prospects. So Trump can’t actually reverse coal’s decline just by rolling back regulations. In any case, Clinton, unlike Trump, has a plan to put laid-off workers from this dying industry back to work in growing sectors — including, but not limited to, wind and solar energy production.

“With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country. This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans — We will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions more jobs.”

Trump is right that infrastructure investment would be good for the economy. Too bad his party’s own platform explicitly rejects spending on railways and many other kinds of infrastructure. And, in reality, Trump’s insane budget plan would leave no money for such projects.

ShareElection Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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4 things Trump got very wrong in his convention speech

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This Salvadoran Woman Served 4 Years for Having a Miscarriage

Mother Jones

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Maria Teresa Rivera didn’t realize she was pregnant in 2011 when she went into early labor. The 28-year-old factory worker in El Salvador, who already had one son, started bleeding heavily late one night, so her family called an ambulance to drive her to the hospital. The next day, Rivera was taken to jail.

Her crime? Having a miscarriage.

Rivera is one of a number of women in El Salvador incarcerated not for abortion, which is illegal, but as a result of miscarriages. An abortion rights group in the area has identified 17 people convicted of homicide, with sentences upward of 40 years, after facing obstetric emergencies such as miscarriage or stillbirth.

After serving four of her 40-year prison sentence for aggravated homicide, Rivera’s conviction was overturned by a judge and she walked free this spring. But the prosecution appealed her release, and this week a three-judge panel will decide whether to hold a new hearing or throw out the charges for good.

Only six countries in the world, including El Salvador, ban abortion in all cases, even when the pregnancy is the result of rape or threatens the life of the mother. Nicaragua, Chile, the Dominican Republic, the Vatican city-state, and Malta are the only other places with similar prohibitions. In January, El Salvador’s deputy health minister told women to avoid getting pregnant for two years because of worries over the effects of Zika virus.

“A woman who procures herself an abortion is running a very high risk,” Carmen Barroso, the former regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in the Western Hemisphere, told Mother Jones. “She’ll run the risk to her life because she’ll have to have an unsafe abortion because they are so limited in availability. It is tragic.”

The ban in El Salvador got international attention in 2013, when the country’s highest court rejected the abortion request of a young woman, known only as Beatriz, with a potentially life-threatening pregnancy, ruling the “rights of the mother cannot be privileged over those” of the fetus. The fetus suffered from anencephaly, a severe congenital disorder where the fetus’ brain and skull stop growing, giving it little chance of surviving outside the womb. The woman survived after getting a controversial caesarian section.

Despite the ban, more than 19,000 illegal abortions were reported in El Salvador between 2005 and 2008, according to the Ministry of Health’s Information, Monitoring, and Evaluation Unit, an estimate that advocates say is low. Nearly a third of abortions performed were on adolescents, who make up a large percent of the region’s unplanned pregnancies. According to the World Health Organization, 9 percent of maternal deaths in Central America are the result of illegal abortions.

As a result of the criminalization, women in El Salvador frequently face legal scrutiny for abortion-related crimes. According to research done by a Salvadoran advocacy group, between 2000 and 2011 about 130 women were criminally prosecuted for ending their pregnancies. That number doesn’t include cases where the allegations were dropped or cases involving minors, whose records are sealed. Almost 50 women were convicted of either illegal abortion or different degrees of homicide, which carries a sentence of up to 50 years.

Then there are the cases of the 17 women who are part of “Las 17,” as they’re known, who are all, like Rivera, young, impoverished, and accused of losing their pregnancies on purpose. Guadalupe Vasquez, a housekeeper, was only 17 years old when she became pregnant from rape. She decided to keep the baby but lost it during labor. After her employer sent her to the hospital, she was reported to the police and eventually sentenced to 30 years behind bars.

Many of the women, including Rivera, were reported to the police by medical staff at the hospital. In some cases, neighbors or friends called law enforcement.

“I felt the need to go to the bathroom, I pushed, and it was the baby that came out into the latrine,” Rivera said in a video from prison. She passed out from loss of blood and was in the hospital when she woke up. “Then they took me to this place,” she said.

Rivera was convicted “despite the complete lack of evidence of any wrongdoing,” according to an analysis of Las 17 cases by a Salvadoran lawyer and a Harvard sociologist. The analysis also concluded that Salvadoran courts systematically discriminated against the women by aggressively pursuing “the mother’s prosecution instead of pursuing the truth.”

“In stark contrast to the courts’ findings, our analysis concludes that the legal and medical facts in the majority of these cases correspond with medical emergency—not with homicide,” they wrote.

Rivera successfully appealed her conviction and has spent the last two months walking free.

“What worries me is leaving my son alone again,” Rivera, who grew up in orphanages, told Rewire after being released in May. “I was forced to abandon him for four and a half years, and he suffered greatly during that time.”

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This Salvadoran Woman Served 4 Years for Having a Miscarriage

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A Judge Just Slammed San Francisco Cops for Racist Policing

Mother Jones

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A federal judge has ruled that there is “substantial evidence of racially selective law enforcement by the San Francisco Police Department.” The holding came on Thursday in a drug-related case, and as several SFPD officers are under investigation for allegedly sending racist and homophobic text messages. That’s the city’s second police texting scandal, and after a record year for fatal police shootings, it serves as more troubling background to the reform efforts following the firing of police chief Greg Suhr.

US District Judge Edward Chen ruled in favor of 12 defendants arrested during Operation Safe Schools, a series of drug stings carried out in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood by the SFPD and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2013 and 2014. All 37 people arrested during the stings were black. The defendants maintained they were the victims of racial policing. Noting that ethnicities of drug dealers in the Tenderloin vary, Chen’s ruling signaled he would dismiss all charges if the defendants could prove civil rights violations, and allowed them to seek further information, presumably on the races of arrestees and the agencies’ profiling policies, from law enforcement for the next steps of the trial, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Trial evidence included video of an undercover informant declining to buy drugs from an Asian dealer and waiting for another one, who was black, before making a purchase, according to the Chronicle. In a second video, an officer involved in the sting could be heard saying “fuck BMs”—a law enforcement term for black men—the officer holding the camera offered a warning: “Shhh, hey, I’m rolling!”

The ruling “sends a clear message to the government that racial discrimination and selective enforcement will not be tolerated,” said San Francisco’s chief public defender Jeff Adachi. Adachi has said that if the information obtained by the defendants shows a pattern of racism, it could be used to seek dismissal in other criminal cases.

Under new interim police chief Tony Chaplin, the SFPD has undertaken several reform efforts. Recently, the city’s Police Commission unanimously approved a new use-of-force policy that mandates officers attempt to deescalate conflicts before using force. The department’s policies and practices are also under review by the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing.

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A Judge Just Slammed San Francisco Cops for Racist Policing

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The US Could Have Its Very Own Brexit, Samantha Bee Warns

Mother Jones

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On Monday night’s episode of Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, our host outlined some pretty scary parallels between the UK’s Brexit vote and the United States’ presidential election in November.

“While the Brits were waking up in the ruins of their nation saying, ‘Oh God, what have we done?’ a lot of Americans were looking over and saying, ‘Oh God, what are we about to do?'” Bee said, as she showed British news clips highlighting racist outbursts, directed at Muslim and Eastern European immigrants in particular, in the aftermath of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.

In the UK and in the US, “there’s the sad conservative leader who gambled the nation’s future on his ability to control the extremists in his own party and lost,” Bee says as the screen shows photos of Britain’s disgraced PM David Cameron and US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

And Boris Johnson, “Europhobe and former mayor of London,” as well as the likeliest choice to become the next prime minister, is “basically Trump with his hair on backwards.”

But America is not Britain. In fact, not being British is kind of central to our brand, Bee says. While the UK is 87% white, the US is significantly more multiracial. And this diverse population is the key to ensuring that Trump not only loses the general election in November, she says, but loses “in a fucking landslide.”

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The US Could Have Its Very Own Brexit, Samantha Bee Warns

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