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The Perfect Horse – Elizabeth Letts

by Myrna Posted on September 5, 2016

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Perfect Horse

The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

Elizabeth Letts

Genre: Nature

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: August 23, 2016

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Eighty-Dollar Champion, the remarkable story of the heroic rescue of priceless horses in the closing days of World War II   In the chaotic last days of the war a small troop of battle-weary American soldiers captures a German spy and makes an astonishing find—his briefcase is empty but for photos of beautiful white horses that have been stolen and kept on a secret farm behind enemy lines. Hitler has stockpiled the world’s finest purebreds in order to breed the perfect military machine—an equine master race. But with the starving Russian army closing in, the animals are in imminent danger of being slaughtered for food.   With only hours to spare, one of the Army’s last great cavalrymen, American colonel Hank Reed, makes a bold decision—with General George Patton’s blessing—to mount a covert rescue operation. Racing against time, Reed’s small but determined force of soldiers, aided by several turncoat Germans, steals across enemy lines in a last-ditch effort to save the horses.   Pulling together this multistranded story, Elizabeth Letts introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters: Alois Podhajsky, director of the famed Spanish Riding School of Vienna, a former Olympic medalist who is forced to flee the bomb-ravaged Austrian capital with his entire stable in tow; Gustav Rau, Hitler’s imperious chief of horse breeding, a proponent of eugenics who dreams of genetically engineering the perfect warhorse for Germany; and Tom Stewart, a senator’s son who makes a daring moonlight ride on a white stallion to secure the farm’s surrender.   A compelling account for animal lovers and World War II buffs alike, The Perfect Horse tells for the first time the full story of these events. Elizabeth Letts’s exhilarating tale of behind-enemy-lines adventure, courage, and sacrifice brings to life one of the most inspiring chapters in the annals of human valor. Praise for The Perfect Horse   “Letts, a lifelong equestrienne, eloquently brings together the many facets of this unlikely, poignant story underscoring the love and respect of man for horses. . . . The author’s elegant narrative conveys how the love for these amazing creatures transcends national animosities.” — Kirkus Reviews From the Hardcover edition.

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The Perfect Horse – Elizabeth Letts

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Here’s the Transcript of Trump’s Meeting With the President of Mexico

by robinjsk7726156 Posted on September 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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I can’t reveal my sources, but I have gotten hold of a transcript of Donald Trump’s meeting today with Enrique Peña Nieto. Here it is:

EPN: Mr. Trump, Mexico will never pay for a border wall. The idea is insulting and demeaning to the Mexican people and we resent it. You must stop telling the American people this ridiculous fantasy.

DJT: That’s a nice tie you’re wearing. Is it silk? I’ve always loved silk. Melania does too, and she always makes sure that all our sheets are 100 percent silk. Even Barron’s. You can’t start too young when it comes to quality, you know. When I get to the White House, I’m going to change out all the sheets in the guest rooms. You should come for a visit. It’ll be great. They probably have cotton sheets now because Obama doesn’t know quality the way I do. I mean, the guy is obviously in way over his head, don’t you agree? He just doesn’t understand how to negotiate with a head of state. But you and I are going to get along. We’ll be friends. I just know it. Many of my best friends are Hispanic, you know. It’s something people don’t give me credit for. But that’s the press for you. Is it the same here? How does the press treat you? When you do something great, like inviting me for this meeting, do they give you any credit or do they just publish the most horrible lies about you? When I’m president that’s going to stop. They shouldn’t be able to publish lies and get away with it. They said I wanted to use nuclear weapons on Syria! I mean nuclear, that’s where….

2,385 words omitted

So I told him that was impossible, and he said “Not for you, Trump-san!” The Japanese are great kidders. But he was right. We got it done on time and under budget. It was….

Aide: Sir, the press is waiting. We need to make our way out to the portico.

DJT: And I’ve got a plane to catch. It’s been great talking with you, Enrique. I can call you Enrique, can’t I?

So you see, both sides have told the truth about this meeting. Peña Nieto did tell Trump that Mexico wouldn’t pay for the wall, and Trump didn’t discuss it with him.

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Here’s the Transcript of Trump’s Meeting With the President of Mexico

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Welfare Reform Is 20 Years Old and It’s Worse Than You Can Imagine

by ANSJclbotxccm Posted on August 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last year, Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi made a decision that could disrupt the lives of nearly 84,000 of his state’s poorest residents. There was no public announcement or debate. It took a critical report by advocates and a swell in media coverage to alert policy circles to what was coming. “The overall feeling was a lot of panic and stress,” said Jessica Shappley, a senior policy analyst at the Jackson-based Hope Policy Institute.

The two-term Republican governor had reintroduced a three-month time limit on food stamp access for “able-bodied adults without dependents,” individuals between the ages of 18 and 49 who are known as “ABAWDs.” After three months of receiving food aid, they would now have to prove they were working at least 20 hours a week. If they couldn’t, their food stamps—averaging between $150 and $170 a month—would be cut off. The loss of that aid would disrupt the lives of many low-income Mississippians. “It’s the difference between having a meal every day until the end of the month and literally running on empty the last couple weeks,” said Matt Williams, research director at the Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative.

The time limit is an often overlooked section of the sweeping welfare reform bill that former President Bill Clinton signed into law 20 years ago today. In a statement after signing the bill, Clinton heralded the legislation as a “historic opportunity to end welfare as we know it and transform our broken welfare system by promoting the fundamental values of work, responsibility, and family.” The bill granted states a large degree of discretion over how, and even whether, the food stamp policy was implemented, so that states with high unemployment were able to request a waiver that nullifies the time limit.

In recent years, Republican governors and legislatures across the country have passed up the waivers not because of belt-tightening—SNAP benefits are fully funded by the federal government, and the administrative costs are split 50-50 with the state—but because of ideology. Mississippi, which has the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the country, had received a statewide waiver every year since 2006. But in 2016, the story took an unexpected turn. Echoing like-minded politicians in Wisconsin and North Carolina, Gov. Bryant told the Mississippi Department of Human Services that he wanted to “steer people to jobs,” the Associated Press reported. The consequence? Across the country, tens of thousands of people in areas of high unemployment—including veterans, the homeless, and the mentally and physically handicapped—have lost access to federally funded food assistance. Many are likely to fall into what policymakers call “food insecurity,” the state of not reliably knowing where your next meal will come from.

The tension between conservative ideology and the harsh realities of poverty is nowhere more evident than Mississippi, which has the highest rate of food insecurity in the nation (22 percent) and the second-highest rate of poverty. African Americans are more than twice as likely to be poor than white Mississippians. Three historically impoverished regions converge here: the toe of Appalachia in the northeastern corner, the Delta region along the western edge, and the Black Belt that extends across the state. Since agricultural labor was mechanized, beginning in the 1940s, and jobs in rural regions disappeared, working-age people have moved, leaving a shrunken tax base. “We have some counties that are persistently losing people,” said John Green, director of the Center for Population Studies at the University of Mississippi. “As the counties try to do things like improve education, diversify the economy, invest in small businesses, it’s harder and harder for them to do that.”

With unemployment rates in some counties more than twice as high as in the United States as a whole, few jobs exist for the people who now must work 20 hours a week to avoid losing their food stamps. Earlier this year, Bryant’s spokesman directed the Associated Press to the state’s jobs app, which he said “currently lists more than 40,000 job openings,” but there were twice as many ABAWDs as positions and no guarantees that the jobs were in communities where they lived.

The federal government even offers additional funding to states that pledge to provide job training or workfare slots for every person facing the time limit. But only five states have taken the pledge, and Mississippi is not among them. A memo sent by the Mississippi Department of Human Services to the US Department of Agriculture last year estimated that more than 71,000 of an estimated 84,000 ABAWDs were at risk of losing their food stamps and noted that only 1,391 workfare slots would be made available each month in 2016. The problem, according to Ed Bolen, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is that job training and workfare programs are “expensive,” and under the 1996 welfare reform bill, states are not obligated to offer them.

The time limit became law during a period of seismic shifts in the American welfare system. In July 1996, President Bill Clinton and the Republican-dominated Congress were desperately seeking a compromise on the radical welfare overhaul that Clinton had promised in his presidential run. Clinton had already vetoed two proposals. On the day the House was to vote on a third version, John Kasich and Bob Ney from Ohio proposed a three-month lifetime limit on food stamps for able-bodied adults without dependents—unless they worked 20 hours a week.

Some Democrats were horrified; Bill Hefner (D-N.C.) declared it the “most mean-spirited amendment” that had come before the body in his 22 years in the House. Kasich assured the critics that anyone willing to work would be able to meet the requirement. “If you cannot find a job, you go to work for the state in a workfare program,” he said, adding that the rule would only apply in areas where “there are jobs available.” The amendment was debated for half an hour and added to the welfare reform bill. In negotiations, the time limit was softened to three months every three years. Despite signing the bill, Clinton expressed “strong objections” to the food stamp provision, saying that the policy failed to support able-bodied adults who “want to work, but cannot find a job or are not given the opportunity to participate in a work program.” Summing up the bill’s popular appeal, Ney—who a decade later was jailed for selling official favors to the clients of notorious Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff—told the Columbus Dispatch that there was “no escalator built by Washington to carry you up the ladder of opportunity.”

Suspicion toward the able-bodied poor runs deep in the history of US social assistance. In the words of historian Michael Katz, “Except for the Great Depression of the 1930s, even abundant evidence of job scarcity failed to shake the belief that men were unemployed because they were lazy or incompetent.” During the Reagan era, black mothers described as “welfare queens” became seen as undeserving of aid. By 1996, food stamps were the only form of aid widely available to the able-bodied poor. A few, about 136,000, also received general assistance, or cash benefits granted to the impoverished who do not qualify for other programs. But that support has waned as states slashed their general assistance programs in the intervening decades. Today, only 11 states offer such benefits to childless adults who are not disabled, leaving food stamps the one source of aid for the more than 1 million people in this group.

For all the political rancor directed at the able-bodied poor, remarkably little is known about them. A report commissioned by the USDA in 1998 referred to ABAWDs as a “little-known segment of the Food Stamp population,” and little has changed since then. States are not obligated to track the able-bodied once they leave SNAP; from a policy standpoint, that means they all but disappear. The group likely to be cut off from food stamps have an average monthly income of just 17 percent of the official poverty line, which in 2016 is $11,880 a year for an individual, and includes veterans, the homeless, and people with undiagnosed mental and physical disabilities.

Consider the 48-year-old African American woman in poor physical health who earlier this summer appeared at an office in Indianola, Mississippi, a city in the heart of the Delta known as the childhood home of B.B. King. She wanted a signature to prove that she had come looking for work and arrived at the Mississippi Center for Justice—a Jackson-based public-interest law firm. The staff soon realized that she was one of those nearly 84,000 in the state struck by the new time limit. She told Matt Williams, then a policy associate at the center, that after a lifetime of work her back could no longer handle physical labor. Under federal law, a physical handicap should have qualified her for an exemption from the time limit. But she had been led to understand that, because she was not receiving disability payments, she was legally “able-bodied.” After missing an employment and training session early in the year, the woman lost her food stamps for two months. Desperate, she had re-enrolled and was now paying someone to drive her around the city to perform mandatory job search activities, Williams told Mother Jones. He and a colleague advised the woman to seek a medical notice testifying to her condition, after which they lost contact.

There are provisions in the law to protect people in certain circumstances from the time limit, but to determine whether a person qualifies for an exemption the state has to gather a pile of new information. Many states don’t. Instead they send out form letters informing ABAWDs that they are now facing the time limit and telling them to speak to a caseworker if they qualify for an exemption. By doing that, states have shifted the burden of implementing a vital piece of the policy onto the poor and disadvantaged people affected by it. In Florida, according to Cindy Huddleston, an attorney at Florida Legal Services, people are “never given a complete list of everything that might exempt them.” When the time limit went into effect in Franklin County, Ohio, in 2014, people thought to be ABAWDs “were brought in in very large groups, anywhere from 200 to 400 people…and basically told to go get a job,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. “Having been in those,” she added, “I can tell you they’re worse than cattle calls. It’s hard to hear instructions.”

There are a whole host of reasons why a person might not be able to find or perform work, but little of this information is systematically captured by state agencies. From 2014 to 2015, Hamler-Fugitt’s organization conducted a rare comprehensive survey of 5,000 people subjected to the time limit in Franklin County. What they found contradicts the popular image of the food stamp recipient who could work but just doesn’t feel like it. One in three of their “able-bodied” clients self-reported a physical or mental limitation, with a quarter saying their conditions obstructed daily activities. Nearly 13 percent said they were caregivers to a parent, friend, or relative. And 36 percent said they had felony convictions, a known barrier to employment. Public support for the policy might just hinge on the public not truly knowing who is affected, Cindy Huddleston said. “If people realized that these are veterans, people with mental disabilities, people who have nowhere else to turn…they might feel differently.”

In Mississippi, many of those now facing the time limit likely qualify for an exemption. Ellen Collins runs the Prosperity Center of Greater Jackson, a one-stop shop serving low-income Mississippians in partnership with a Department of Human Services office. When five suspected ABAWDs came in for a meeting with a caseworker earlier this year, she said, it turned out that three of them qualified for an exemption. “What I’m hearing from other offices is that they think that same percentage probably applied,” Collins said. But without individual attention from caseworkers, thousands have likely slipped through the cracks. The Mississippi Center for Justice estimates that more than 42,000 ABAWDs disappeared from the SNAP program between January and June this year.

While advocates suggest that Mississippi could invest more in job training or use the many measures available in the bill to soften the time limit’s impact, there is a much simpler solution: Mississippi could seek a waiver. But, as Williams from the Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative notes, “Pure politics and ideology has driven the decision not to seek that waiver.”

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Welfare Reform Is 20 Years Old and It’s Worse Than You Can Imagine

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The Trump Files: Donald Reenacts An Iconic Scene From "Top Gun"

by StuartSteel Posted on August 22, 2016

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 presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

The dad jeans. The extra-mullet-like hair. The goofy fall. There’s not much to say here, just watch Donald perform the world’s least sexy reenactment of the Top Gun volleyball scene.

No one seems to know when this feat of athleticism actually happened, but the Huffington Post pointed out that the clip was used as The Daily Show’s Moment of Zen in 1999.

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”
Trump Files #52: When Donald Tried to Shake Down Mike Tyson for $2 Million
Trump Files #53: Donald and Melania’s Creepy, Sex-Filled Interview With Howard Stern
Trump Files #54: Donald’s Mega-Yacht Wasn’t Big Enough For Him
Trump Files #55: When Donald Got Into a Fight With Martha Stewart

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The Trump Files: Donald Reenacts An Iconic Scene From "Top Gun"

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How a Wonky Trade Pact You’d Never Heard of Became a Huge Campaign Issue

by Allison05T Posted on August 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Until very recently, grousing about the pitfalls of global trade was seen as akin to complaining about the weather. One could no more stop China from dumping cheap imports than outlaw El Niño. And besides, the deluge of foreign goods would in the long run lift all boats. Or so we were told—before Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump begged to differ.

In a year of seething resentment towards the political establishment, support for “free trade” is no longer a given within either party. Even Hillary Clinton, whose husband famously negotiated NAFTA, has come out against the Trans Pacific Partnership—a sweeping trade deal she helped set up as secretary of state.

Larry Cohen has a pretty good idea why that happened. As the president of the Communications Workers of America, and more recently a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders, he has probably done more than anyone to elevate the issue. I reached out to Cohen to ask how he managed to make trade a big deal again.

Mother Jones: How has global trade affected your union members?

Larry Cohen: Call center jobs are tradable—more tradable than the production of steel or auto parts. Tens of thousands of CWA jobs are now in South Asia with English speakers. But that’s not all. The United States is the biggest consumer of telecom products in the world and almost none of them are made here. Other countries that don’t have this kind of trade regime have held onto those jobs. So Germany with Siemens and France with Alcatel—the French government puts huge penalties on shutdowns. We don’t put any.

MJ: The Democratic Party has been divided on trade since the 1990s, when Bill Clinton pushed through NAFTA with Republican support. President Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership agreement with 12 Pacific Rim countries was supposed to win over the liberal wing of the Democratic Party by better protecting workers and the environment. What happened?

LC: A year ago, President Obama said to me, “Larry, you must admit, the language is a lot better in here.” And I said, “Yeah, the language is a lot better, but the problem is with enforcement.”

MJ: Give me an example.

LC: I worked on a case in Honduras involving the murder of labor organizers and the collapse of bargaining rights. When there’s complaints, the International Labor Affairs Bureau does an investigation. It takes them at least two years. Then you get a report eventually, and then it goes to the US Trade Representative. This is the guy who is gung ho for all these deals in the first place. When he gets to it, he meets with his foreign counterpart. They had one meeting on Honduras. It can move, after years and years, to a loss of some trade preferences. TPP enumerates that a little bit more clearly. But that’s years and years, and by that point, you know?

MJ: The jobs are long gone?

LC: It’s not just the jobs. It was people being butchered! The bottom line is: Multinational corporations get reparations. We get reports.

MJ: In other words, companies get to sue to protect their interests but workers and environmental groups do not?

LC: Right. Companies get to sue under what’s known as “investor state dispute settlement.” Occidental Petroleum got $3 billion from Ecuador because, after the bilateral agreement with the US, Ecuador said, “No more coastal drilling.” That impacted Occidental’s profit. They got an award last year of $3 billion for their lost future profit. Ecuador doesn’t have $3 billion, so it’s in limbo, but probably they will let them drill. TransUnion is suing the US over Keystone: $15 billion. Vattenfall, which is a Swedish energy company, is suing Germany for $5 billion Euros because German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a conservative, said we’re going to shut down nuclear after Fukushima. These are examples. That has been the history of 25 years of so-called improvements in side agreements in trade.

MJ: And you don’t think TPP fixes those problems?

LC: Chapter after chapter was written by corporate lobbyists. Nothing was written by people like me. There was a little side panel on labor and the environment and they didn’t do a single thing we wanted.

MJ: Obama has framed the TPP as part of his “pivot to Asia,” arguing basically that this is really a diplomatic mission aimed at counteracting the influence of China.

LC: That’s what they wrap this in. But what it really is about is all the multinational corporations that are cheering this deal because they will reign supreme in all 12 countries. That is the core of our foreign policy. Just look at our embassies around the word. In Honduras they throw in one person on human rights. This person says, “I am totally overwhelmed. People are killed here, killed there—it’s a police state.” And then the Commerce Department has 15, 20 people in Honduras promoting US multinationals there, from Fruit of the Loom to you name it. It’s way off.

MJ: How did your meeting with Obama come about?

LC: It was May of 2015. I’d been criticizing TPP at the time and they said, “He’d like to talk to you.” What he told me was: “I am too far down the road to change.” He repeated it over and over.

MJ: So you got a sense that he kind of agreed with you?

LC: No, he never agreed with me. His point of view was that this was significantly better than any other trade agreement on the things that I cared about. He did most of the talking. The joke I made at the end was: I grew up as the only kid. There were five adults in my great grandmother’s rural house in North Philadelphia. These were big talkers. Once in a while, I got to talk, and they never listened to a thing I said. And I told the president, “I love you very much anyway.”

MJ: What did he say?

LC: He laughed. They all laughed.

MJ: So after that meeting you kept fighting against TPP—and you almost derailed it.

LC: Right, June 27. They needed 60 votes to pass fast-track authority for the deal. We lost in the Senate by one vote.

MJ: And that’s when you decided to do something different.

LC: In September I said, “I am not going to run again for CWA president. I feel like we are in a box. I want to go back to movement building.”

MJ: So you joined the Sanders campaign as a senior advisor.

LC: Yeah, I worked full time, unpaid.

MJ: On the trade issue?

LC: Yeah, that was my job.

MJ: What did you do, specifically?

LC: In Lansing, Michigan, we set up a trade forum with Bernie and the media and brought in a whole bunch of people who gave firsthand reports about what they had experienced.

We did a nonpartisan march through Indianapolis. Carrier, which is owned by United Technologies, announced a shutdown of their heating and furnaces plant—1,900 jobs moving to Monterrey, Mexico at $3 an hour. Bernie spoke at the march and it was 100 percent about trade.

On the South Side of Chicago, we did a big event in front of the Nabisco plant in the middle of winter with the workers there, mostly black. They had announced they are moving the Oreo cookie line, over 1,000 jobs out of that plant, to Mexico.

Bernie wrote op-eds on trade. He did a thing in Pittsburgh, We had a thing called “Labor for Bernie” that I helped organize, bringing in tens of thousands of active union members.

MJ: Can you point to any particular moment in the campaign when it became clear that the trade issue was really resonating with voters?

LC: Definitely Michigan.

MJ: Sanders’ primary victory there was a big upset.

LC: There were dramatic results there from what we believed was, in part, that work. I would give the credit to Bernie. He really thinks that the way the global economy is working is at the center of what’s wrong. We call it trade, but it really isn’t trade. It’s how we rig it.

MJ: As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton helped set up the negotiations for TPP, so it was surprising when she came out against it in October. Did you see that coming?

LC: Gradually. The pressure was enormous. I think she made a very careful calculation: If she had not come out against TPP, she would have lost to Bernie Sanders. She never could have provided enough cover to the national labor unions that endorsed her campaign without that flip.

MJ: Did you then start to see other prominent Democrats follow her lead?

LC: No. Tim Kaine would be the next prominent Democrat, and that was only when it was announced that he would be vice president.

MJ: Interesting. So what were you doing heading into the Democratic convention?

LC: Bernie put trade right at the top of his list. We had five people on the platform drafting committee out of 16. There was a meeting in St. Louis where the draft got finalized. The language had said that Democrats are “divided” on the TPP. The platform committee itself had I think 188 people, of which we had 72. They realized they had a problem. They took out “Democrats are divided” and instead they listed a bunch of standards that are actually pretty decent. The document concludes by saying: “Trade deals must meet this standard.” We had an amendment that said, “Therefore, we oppose the TPP.” It lost 106 to 74. So we got 2 votes from the Clinton appointees and our 72.

MJ: If Clinton really opposes the TPP, why would most of her platform committee reps oppose that language?

LC: The reason is, I think, that the White House said, “This is a total embarrassment to us. You are our secretary of state. We are not going to put up with that. We don’t want any opposition to the TPP in the platform.”

MJ: Why didn’t you take it to a floor vote?

LC: We could have, because you only need 25 percent of the platform committee to go to the floor, but Bernie’s view was that we would get the same thing. We would lose, and then it would look like the Democratic Party doesn’t oppose the TPP.

MJ: So you orchestrated a protest instead. People who watched the convention on TV may still remember all the anti-TPP signs. How did that come about?

LC: On Monday night we had the giant TPP forum with 800 delegates. That’s where we sort of revved up the signs and the stickers and the chants of “No TPP!” We actually practiced that in the room.

MJ: Whose idea was it to do that?

LC: Me and others who organized the forum. We knew we had to use it as a springboard. That is what a political convention is supposed to be. It’s not just about falling in line. In my opinion, Hillary Clinton is opposed to TPP, so we should be saying it publicly so we don’t give ground to Trump.

MJ: What is your take on how the trade backlash happened within the GOP?

LC: It’s voters. Hillary Clinton would say the same thing. “I listened to voters.” People get it. They look at the numbers about jobs or incomes or the trade deficit, and they see the results.

MJ: Trade might be the only thing Trump and Sanders agree on.

LC: At an ideological level, we don’t have the same views of fair trade at all. Our view would be that workers rights and the environment need to count as much as corporate profits, and Trump’s view would be just that it’s “a bad deal.”

MJ: Do you think you can build an effective bipartisan coalition on trade?

LC: With regular people we can do that. But it’s not like our part of the movement can unite with whatever that part is in the Republican Party. There’s some acknowledgement of each other. That’s about it. I just got off a call earlier making a plan for the next few months. We don’t have any of them to make a plan with.

MJ: Do you think TPP will be addressed in the lame duck session?

LC: Only once can TPP be sent to Congress by any president. If it is sent before the election, it’s really gonna get attacked. Anyone who is in a vulnerable district, that issue is gonna go way to the top. The White House could send it after the election but they are not even guaranteed the vote. So they are caught here. They can’t send it unless they think they have the best chance they possibly have to pass it. That’s why you have House Speaker Paul Ryan doubting it for lame duck.

MJ: So they might just wait until the next administration?

LC: Yeah, but we’re not going to give on that. We are going to mobilize constantly on it.

MJ: And beyond the TPP?

LC: The only thing that the president really controls is trade policy. Congress reacts, the president acts. I do think there is a ground swell for not bringing Wall Street people into the US Trade Representative’s office and taking it over. That has been going on either directly or indirectly for decades.

MJ: What should the overarching principles be?

LC: Balanced trade should be a major factor: The net effect on jobs. Consequences about manufacturing. What happens to different employment sectors in our country. But also, ending the investor state dispute settlement. There should be issues about the environment or workers rights or human rights that can trump national courts in the same way that investment rights do now.

MJ: This stuff is obviously important, yet when politicians talk about it, people’s eyes often glaze over. How do you keep voters engaged?

LC: Only by saying to people quite bluntly, “This is not about trade, it is fundamentally about the way in which large foreign corporations rig the global economy.” We need to have plain, simple language that regulates the global economy where we count just as much as the richest corporations in the world. That’s what people react to.

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How a Wonky Trade Pact You’d Never Heard of Became a Huge Campaign Issue

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Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Was Already Leading His Propaganda Machine

by AlphonsoChauncy Posted on August 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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For months, the conservative news outlet Breitbart News has acted as an unofficial mouthpiece for Donald Trump and lead propagator of the populist, anti-immigrant sentiment that his campaign has tapped into. So it’s fitting that this unofficial relationship is now a little more official, with the site’s executive chairman, Stephen Bannon, joining the Trump campaign as its CEO.

Bannon has blurred the line between journalism and right-wing political advocacy for years. While at the helm of Breitbart News, which he took over in spring 2012 after the sudden death of its founder Andrew Breitbart, Bannon founded a research outfit targeting Democrats and establishment Republicans. He also participated in Groundswell, a group of right-wing activists, journalists, and others who secretly coordinated talking points attacking Democrats and advancing conservative causes. When Breitbart News editor-at-large Ben Shapiro left the publication this spring, he accused Bannon of turning the site into “Trump’s personal Pravda.”

Bannon’s arrival is part of a larger shakeup of the Trump campaign, which is scrambling to mount a comeback amid slumping poll numbers nationally and in key swing states. In addition to Bannon, who is taking a leave from Breitbart News to work for Trump, pollster Kellyanne Conway has been named campaign manager. The elevation of Bannon and Conway appears to amount to a demotion for campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is under scrutiny for his work for the pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine. Manafort had been running Trump’s operation since the nominee’s original campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was ousted in June.

With Trump’s campaign cratering, the Republican National Committee held a “come to Jesus” meeting last week to urge Trump to act more presidential and stay on script. But the selection of Bannon, known for his combative style, suggests Trump will take a different route. Under Bannon, Breitbart News has not only targeted Democrats but has made a blood sport of going after establishment Republicans—even conservatives such as Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan. Breitbart News has published near-daily articles over the last month blasting Ryan and propping up his right-wing primary challenger. (Breitbart News said Ryan was “desperate” and “running scared,” but the House Speaker easily won his August 10 primary with 84 percent of the vote.)

When news of Bannon’s new role atop Trump’s campaign broke on Wednesday morning, Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s former chief strategist, tweeted, “Steve Bannon potentially having inside knowledge of a classified briefing is insane. POTUS should postpone or cancel briefing of Trump.” Glenn Beck freaked out on his radio show, saying, “Ask people who worked at Breitbart! He’s a horrible despicable human being.” Breitbart News, meanwhile, reveled in the anguish of the establishment with such headlines as “WaPo: Trump’s Stephen K. Bannon Hire ‘a Middle Finger to the GOP Establishment.'”

Bannon and Breitbart News‘ unwavering sympathies for Trump were forced into the open this spring when Lewandowski manhandled then-Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields. Instead of backing Fields, the news outlet seemed to go out of its way to disprove her story and support the Trump campaign’s version of events. Even though a Washington Post reporter witnessed the episode and corroborated Fields’ account—and video footage later emerged showing the altercation—Breitbart News ran a series of articles questioning her claims, reportedly with Bannon’s full support. Politico reported that Bannon “made several disparaging remarks” about Fields in conference calls, and the Daily Beast reported that Bannon allegedly referred to Fields as “that f*****g c**t” to others at the publication as the fallout from the incident was unfolding. Fields ultimately resigned; she now writes for the Huffington Post. Several other Breitbart News staffers quit in protest of how Bannon and the publication’s leadership had handled the situation.

Bannon is a relatively new arrival on the political scene. A former Naval officer, he attended Harvard Business School and spent the 1980s working as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. In 1990, he left New York for Los Angeles, where he started a small investment bank focused on Hollywood clientele. He hit the jackpot when he brokered Ted Turner’s acquisition of the media company that owned the TV show Seinfeld. Bannon agreed to accept a stake in Seinfeld, a little-known show at the time, instead of a cash fee. To this day, royalties from the show help fund Bannon’s conservative political activities. By the end of the 1990s, Bannon had entered the film business, first as a producer and later as a director whose credits include documentaries venerating Ronald Reagan and the tea party. Those efforts led Bannon into the orbit of the conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart and ultimately put him atop the conservative provocateur’s new empire.

After Bannon’s role with Trump campaign was announced, Shapiro, Breitbart News’ former editor-at-large, penned a scathing post about his onetime boss. “Bannon’s ascension is the predictable consummation of a romance he ardently pursued,” Shapiro wrote. “I joked with friends months ago that by the end of the campaign, Steve Bannon would be running Trump’s campaign from a bunker. That’s now reality. Every nightmare for actual conservatives has come true in this campaign. Why not this one, too?”

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Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Was Already Leading His Propaganda Machine

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The Trump Files: Donald and Melania’s Creepy, Sex-Filled Interview With Howard Stern

by Tanisha06H Posted on August 17, 2016

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.

If you think Donald Trump is a headache for GOP chairman Reince Priebus, who frequently has to clean up after Trump’s inflammatory comments, just imagine what former Reform Party chairman Russ Verney had to go through. Verney led the party during the 2000 election, when Donald Trump briefly jumped into the race for the Reform nomination for president. But that didn’t stop Candidate Trump from going on Howard Stern’s radio show and putting his then-girlfriend and now-wife Melania on air with the host for a bizarre, creepy, and totally misogynistic interview about life and sex with Trump.

When Trump called in to Stern’s show on November 9, 1999, the conversation turned to Melania (“a potential first lady,” Trump said) and her looks. “Let me talk to that broad in your bed,” Stern demanded. So Trump summoned Melania, who was apparently scantily clad and conveniently sitting nearby, to come to the phone. With Stern oozing his creepiest charm, things rapidly got weird.

After demanding that Melania “put on your hottest outfit” for a Stern-Trump night on the town, Stern asked Melania what she was wearing right then. “Uh, not much,” she replied.

Stern pressed on: “Are you naked? Are you nude?” Melania laughed. “Almost,” she said.

“Ahhh, I’ve got my pants off already,” Stern groaned.

Dropping his voice, Stern asked about how often Melania and Trump had sex and how good it was. “We have a great, great time,” she said, claiming that she and Donald did the deed “even more” than daily. “I can tell you need love,” Stern told her. Other topics of the interview included whether Melania stole cash from Trump’s wallet, what she wore to the beach, and her “very nice chest for a model.”

Trump apparently had no problems with Stern’s racy questioning of his then girlfriend. “Oh man, she’s naked there, isn’t she?” Stern asked when Trump got back on the phone. “She is actually naked,” Trump said. “It’s a thing of beauty.”

In a version of the interview clipped by BuzzFeed News, Stern begged Trump to have sex with Melania on air to boost his ratings. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Trump replied. Someone in Stern’s studio then launched into a crude impression of Melania having sex with Trump. “Please, Donald, don’t put it there!” he cried in a fake accent as Stern’s crew—and Trump—collapsed into laughter. The New York Post also reported that, during the interview, Trump told Stern he frequently “mentally” felt up Melania in public.

But the sex- and harassment-filled radio appearance didn’t exactly strike Trump as a bad move. “Is this your average interview, Robin, for a presidential candidate?” he proudly asked Stern’s co-host before weighing on the role of hotness in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “There are those that say that if President Clinton was caught with a supermodel, he would have been everyone’s hero. Now, of course, I would never say a thing like that, but there are those that say that.”

“President Trump will be a reality,” Stern said as Trump signed off. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Verney, the Reform Party chairman, was nonplussed by the sexually charged Stern interview. “The very first principle of the Reform Party is to set the highest ethical standards for the White House and Congress,” he told the Post, “not the most base, crass attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Whatever their private life is, it should be exactly that—their private life.”

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: Donald and Melania’s Creepy, Sex-Filled Interview With Howard Stern

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In 2006 Interview, Trump Demanded US Troops Leave Iraq—Even if Chaos and ISIS-Like Violence Occurred

by Rad7edzw Posted on August 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last week, Donald Trump repeatedly asserted that President Barack Obama was the “founder” of ISIS and blasted Hillary Clinton as a “co-founder” of the terror group that has taken over large swaths of Iraq and Syria. But Obama was not in the White House and Clinton was not secretary of state when ISIS originated.

When a conservative radio host on Thursday asked if Trump meant that the Obama administration had “created the vacuum” in the region that allowed ISIS to grow, the GOP nominee stuck to his nonsensical statement: “No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS.” Next, Trump claimed he was being sarcastic. Then at a campaign rally, he added, “But not that sarcastic.” It was a very Trumpian couple of days. And on Monday, with a speech on national security that Trump read off a teleprompter, he had a chance to declare what he really thought about Obama, Clinton, and ISIS. After repeating the lie that he had opposed the Iraq War before the invasion, Trump did not restate his “founder” claim, but he said that because of Obama and Clinton, “Iraq is in chaos, and ISIS is on the loose.” He added, “the Obama-Clinton foreign policy has unleashed ISIS.” He insisted that Obama’s withdrawal of US troops from Iraq (which actually was compelled by an agreement reached with the Iraqi government by President George W. Bush) “led directly to the rise of ISIS.”

Here’s the problem for Trump—if being wildly inconsistent and attacking an opponent for supposedly holding a position that Trump himself once advocated is a problem: 10 years ago, Trump called for a complete US withdrawal of troops from Iraq and indicated that he didn’t give a damn if this led to civil war and greater violence there. He even predicted that such a move would cause the rise of “vicious” forces in Iraq. But Trump believed this would not be the United States’ problem. That is, Trump was ardently in favor of the very actions that he now decries and for which he wrongfully blames Obama and Clinton.

In a 2006 CNBC interview, Trump was asked to critique Bush’s performance in the White House. Trump immediately brought up the Iraq War:

I would like to see our president get us out of the war in Iraq because the war is a total catastrophe. I would like to see President Bush get us out of Iraq, which is a total mess, a total catastrophe, and it’s not going to get any better. It’s only going to get worse. It’s a mess.

Trump was passionate and insistent. Bush had to get the hell out of Iraq right away:

What you have to do is get out of Iraq. You can do it nicely. You can do it slowly. You can do it radically.

Trump fancied the do-it-fast approach. And he noted that a US withdrawal should proceed, even though it would precipitate more violence in the region and the worst and most violent forces would benefit. It’s almost as if Trump foresaw the rise of ISIS—but didn’t believe that this mattered for the United States:

I would announce that we have been victorious in Iraq and all the troops are coming home and let those people have their civil war. And, by the way, no matter if we stay or if we leave, the most vicious person that you’ve ever seen in your—. Saddam Hussein is going to be like a nice guy compared to the one who’s taking over Iraq. Somebody will take over Iraq, whether we’re there or not, but probably when we leave, will take over Iraq. He will make Saddam Hussein…He will make Saddam Hussein look like a baby.

In his characteristic manner, Trump did not mince his words and he reiterated his solution:

I just said, announce victory, get them home…Let’s say, “Victory, Tremendous.” Have a big thing in the streets. Then get out real fast before you get shot. Let’s get home…Hey, hate us over there. Now how, how, do you—. The people that like us hate us. Those are the good ones. Then you have the double hate where they wanna just shoot us. But how do you solve that problem? You got to get out of Iraq.

Trump was clear at the time: The United States had to remove its troops, even if that would cause a civil war and a dramatic expansion of violence and terror in Iraq and the region. Now he denounces Obama and Clinton, who were not in charge of US foreign policy at that time, for supposedly implementing the policy he demanded. By Trump’s own standards—sarcastic or not—he is at least an honorary founder of ISIS.

Watch Trump take the exact position he now slams as “naive” and an example of “bad judgment”:

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In 2006 Interview, Trump Demanded US Troops Leave Iraq—Even if Chaos and ISIS-Like Violence Occurred

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BREAKING NEWS! Republican Presidential Candidate Endorses Republican Congressional Candidate

by NormanJobe20433 Posted on August 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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I could have chosen just about any newspaper for this, but here’s the Washington Post last night:

Drink this in: it’s front-page news that the Republican candidate for president has endorsed the Republican Speaker of the House for reelection. Front. Page. News. The New York Times says Trump did it in an effort to “heal” a “party rift.” If so, Trump sure was dragged kicking and screaming into it. He read off his endorsement with all the enthusiasm of a Cultural Revolution dissident reading a confession of his counter-revolutionary deviations to his fellow reeducation campmates.

Anyway, Hillary Clinton also got a tiny bit of press on Friday for once again bobbling her claim that James Comey kinda sorta exonerated her in Emailgate. But the operative word here is “tiny.” It might have been a bigger deal if everyone hadn’t been so busy writing about the latest episode of the Trump telenovela. And Paul Ryan is going to win regardless.

Bottom line: Trump says he’s the guy who’s going to win so much we’ll all get tired of winning. But he lost the news cycle completely on Friday for no reason and no gain, just so he could indulge yet another trivial personal feud. Nice work.

From:

BREAKING NEWS! Republican Presidential Candidate Endorses Republican Congressional Candidate

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#ReplaceTrump? Sorry, Republicans, You’re Stuck With Him.

by KelliFairthorne Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the Trump campaign in turmoil after a week filled with gaffes, bizarre feuds, and rumors of despondent staff (and it’s only Wednesday!), anti-Trump Republicans have once again begun floating the idea that Donald Trump could be replaced as the GOP nominee.

No. He can’t.

Party insiders might have been able to flex their political muscle to keep Trump from the nomination in the first place, but once the Republican National Convention last month formally nominated Trump, the mechanisms by which they can dump him evaporated—no matter how much anyone wants it to be otherwise. Speculation about the possibility that Trump could be removed began to build this morning after ABC’s John Karl reported that senior GOP officials were discussing how to replace Trump on the ballot should he withdraw from the race.

But that’s just it: Trump would have to drop out. He couldn’t be replaced against his will.

A Republican lawyer who has advised the Republican National Committee in previous election cycles told Mother Jones that there are zero options for the party to remove Trump.

“It seems that some outlets/blogs had some misleading headlines, insinuating that Trump could be ‘replaced,’ but that would be an incorrect assessment of the ABC interview,” the lawyer, who requested that his name not be printed, told Mother Jones in an email. “There’s no process under the Rules of the Republican Party for removing a nominee.”

Another GOP insider, attorney Henry Barbour (the nephew of former RNC chair Haley Barbour), was more succinct when asked to be interviewed about the possibility of the GOP replacing the man it crowned as nominee just two weeks ago.

“This is an absurd question,” he wrote in an email. “Sorry.”

The former RNC lawyer said there is a mechanism by which Trump can be replaced, if he voluntarily drops out. Rule 9 of the party’s internal rules stipulates that if a presidential or vice presidential nominee leaves the ticket, the 168 members of the RNC—not voters or delegates—would select a new nominee.

“This is all very hypothetical, but the key point is that the nominee can’t be ‘replaced,'” the lawyer says. “Rule 9 is only intended for filling a vacancy.”

But time is running out for the party to replace Trump even if he steps aside voluntarily. State deadlines for certifying names on the ballot are fast approaching, meaning that Trump’s name would likely remain on some states’ ballots even if he withdrew from the race. Texas, a must-win state for Republicans if they hope to take the White House, has an August 26 deadline for withdrawing. As the Daily Beast noted Wednesday, next week is the deadline for removing Trump from the ballot in reliably red Arkansas and Oklahoma, and swing state North Carolina needs the candidate’s name to be certified by this Friday, August 5.

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#ReplaceTrump? Sorry, Republicans, You’re Stuck With Him.

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