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Here’s Why It’s Fair—and Necessary—to Call Trump’s Chief Strategist a White Nationalist Champion

by IsabellAyala Posted on November 14, 2016

Mother Jones

After Donald Trump announced he was appointing Stephen Bannon to a top job in the White House as chief strategist, I sent out a tweet referring to a Mother Jones story that reported on how Bannon, when he was head of Breitbart News, the far-right conservative site, provided a haven for white nationalists. In response, Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser and conspiracy theory advocate (he wrote a book claiming Lyndon B. Johnson killed John F. Kennedy), tweeted at me: “‘White Nationalist’ my ass. Stop with the childish name calling….we don’t call you a communist.”

There was a major problem with his tweet: I am not a communist, and Bannon is indeed a champion of white nationalists and white supremacists. And this is according to an expert on this matter: Stephen Bannon.

In July, Bannon, who soon would leave Breitbart to become a top campaign aide to Trump, was interviewed by journalist Sarah Posner. He proudly declared of Breitbart, “We’re the platform for the alt-right.” The alt-right is an extreme but not well-defined wing of the conservative movement that rants against immigrants, Muslims, the globalist agenda, and multiculturalism and that generally advocates white nationalism (if not white supremacism—in this world, there is a difference). The alt-right also generates a hefty amount of anti-Semitism. (For more on the alt-right, see here and here.)

In that interview, Bannon did claim that not all alt-righters were racists and anti-Semites. “Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right?” he said. “Maybe. 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.” But that was whitewashing. How do we know? Because of Breitbart‘s own coverage.

In March, the website published an article headlined “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” which was co-written by Milo Yiannopoulos, a prominent figure in the movement. It noted that the alt-right opposed “full ‘integration'” of racial groups: “The alt-right believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved.” This piece cited Richard Spencer, a 30-something Duke Ph.D. dropout, and his AlternativeRight.com website as “a center of alt-right thought.”

What does Spencer, the intellectual guru of the movement, advocate? He is quite explicit: an all-white United States. This is not a secret. In a recent interview with Mother Jones, Spencer explained his belief that America’s white population is endangered, due to multiculturalism and immigration, and he advocated “a renewed Roman Empire,” a dictatorship where only white people could be citizens. “You cannot view another white person as your enemy,” he remarked. His goal is a white ethnostate. How to get there may be unclear. He added that he hoped America’s nonwhites can be convinced to leave the country on their accord: “It’s like presenting to an African that this hasn’t worked out. We haven’t made each other happier. We are going to have to take part in this paradigmatic shift together.” During the campaign, Spencer declared, Trump “loves white people.”

Race is central to the alt-right. Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart editor, notes, “The alt-right, in a nutshell, believes that Western culture is inseparable from European ethnicity.” That is, being white. Whether its activists prefer white nationalism (saying that different races can’t get along so nonwhites should somehow be separated from white America) or white supremacism (saying that whites are inherently superior to others), this is a racist movement. And its activists have also traded in anti-Semitism, often hurling anti-Semitic jabs at journalists who write about the alt-right or Trump. By the way, Bannon’s ex-wife did once accuse him of making anti-Semitic remarks. (Bannon denied making the comments.)

There are not many dots to connect in this picture, and the lines between them are clear. Whatever he might believe, Bannon is a self-proclaimed ally of the alt-right. (Shapiro notes that Bannon may not buy all its guff, but “he’s happy to pander to those people and make common cause with them.” And regarding Bannon, Lisa De Pasquale, a Breitbart contributor, on Monday said on the To the Point radio show that promoting the alt-right at Breitbart was “good for his business model.”) And the alt-right promotes white nationalism (if not white supremacism). So journalists who do not report that Trump has selected for a top spot in the White House an enabler of white nationalists—which certainly could qualify Bannon as a white nationalist himself—are doing the public and the truth a disservice. Thanks to Trump, a comrade of racists—many of whom are now cheering his appointment—is slated to help run the US government. This fact should be front and center, as the nation heads toward the Trump era.

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Here’s Why It’s Fair—and Necessary—to Call Trump’s Chief Strategist a White Nationalist Champion

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These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming

by ConcepcMacarthu Posted on November 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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Like labor unions everywhere, the local Plumbers & Pipefitters union in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley—a historically Democratic bastion due to the influence of labor—endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in September 2015 and urged its members to vote for her. But unlike in years past, when Roland “Butch” Taylor briefed about 200 members on the union’s support of Clinton and the prospective benefits of a Clinton presidency in May, the meeting didn’t go well. “I got a lot of boos,” he recalls. “I got a lot of chatter back. And out of the group, only one person came up and asked me for a T-shirt.”

“Right then and there, I knew something was wrong,” says Taylor, who retired a few months later. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe it will change as the campaign moves forward.'”

As the results on election night show, it didn’t change. Clinton fell well short of polls and expectations in the Rust Belt, losing two key swing states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and two that were thought to be safe bets, Michigan and Wisconsin. Working-class white voters, including many union members, banded together into a pro-Donald Trump force that the strategists in Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters didn’t see coming until it was too late.

But local Democrats did. And they tried to warn the Clinton campaign.

In May, after thousands of Democrats had switched parties to vote for Trump in the primary, Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman David Betras circulated a memo cautioning that Trump was making headway in his Rust Belt region and urging the Clinton campaign to take the threat seriously. The memo focused largely on the issue of trade, arguing that because Democratic politicians in Ohio regularly denounce the North American Free Trade Agreement and free trade generally, Trump’s anti-trade message was familiar and its appeal powerful. If the Clinton team didn’t find a way to counter it, Betras warned, she would lose a lot of votes she was counting on.

Betras sent the memo to Aaron Pickrell, an adviser to Clinton’s Ohio campaign team; David Pepper, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party; Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represents northeast Ohio; and union leaders in the region.

To counter Trump’s populist appeal, Betras urged Clinton to go vigorously after blue-collar workers by promising to bring back jobs. The key, Betras argued, was to have this message delivered not by politicians but by local blue-collar families in radio and television ads across the region. “The messages can’t be about job retraining,” he wrote. “These folks have heard it a million times and, frankly, they think it’s complete and total bullshit.” Instead, he argued, the ads should “focus on the reinvigoration of American manufacturing, and I don’t mean real high-tech stuff because they’ve heard that a million times before and they aren’t buying it.”

Betras wrote:

Talk about policies that will incentivize companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs. Talk about infrastructure—digging ditches, paving roads, building buildings and producing the materials needed to do it all. The workers we’re talking about don’t want to run computers, they want to run back hoes, dig ditches, sling concrete block. They’re not embarrassed about the fact that they get their hands dirty doing backbreaking work. They love it and they want to be respected and honored for it. And they’ll react positively if they believe HRC will give them and their kids the opportunity to break their backs for another ten or twenty or thirty years. Somewhere along the line we forgot that not everyone wants to be white collar, we stopped recognizing the intrinsic value of hard work.

Clinton did revoke her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal, supported unions and higher wages, and talked about an economy that would work for all people. While Trump spoke in broad strokes, her website boasted detailed economic plans, including one to bring back manufacturing. But it was clear from Bernie Sanders’ primary victories in Wisconsin and Michigan that she was lagging with the white working class. Like Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney four years ago, she was the candidate who made millions by giving speeches to Wall Street banks. (It certainly didn’t help that when pieces of those speech transcripts were released in the WikiLeaks hacks, the sentence that stood out most was: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” Trump used that line at his campaign rallies to claim, falsely, that Clinton was going to open the borders completely.)

“Somewhere in all of this, we forgot that we’re the party of the working class,” says Betras, trying to explain Clinton’s loss. He believes the campaign did try to reach out to the blue-collar families of the Rust Belt, but that the attempts never reached the pitch and fervor they needed. “I did like her message of ‘Stronger Together,’ but that doesn’t get anyone a job, does it?”

The Ohio Democratic Party shared Betras’ memo with Clinton’s Ohio campaign team, according to state party spokeswoman Kirstin Alvanitakis. In an email to Mother Jones, Alvanitakis wrote that “Chairman Betras’s memo was a helpful reminder that Democrats should not neglect working-class voters and the Clinton campaign should acknowledge the very real struggles working families are facing in Ohio.”

She added, “The Ohio Democratic Party was the first state party in the nation to pass a resolution against fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and our leaders—including Sen. Sherrod Brown, Rep. Tim Ryan, Rep. Marcy Kaptur and more—acutely understand the economic pressure facing working-class families because of terrible trade deals and big banks and corporate special interests run amok. The fact is that the typical Ohio household had a higher income three decades ago than it has had in the past few years.”

Betras believes strongly that economic populism was to thank for Trump’s Rust Belt victories, saying, “It was people who want a job and want to be able to work and want a job, and they would accept an imperfect messenger because at least he was saying that.” But of course there was more to Trump’s message. Some African American residents of Youngstown, the largest city in Mahoning County, have long believed that Trump’s appeal in the region had more to do with racial resentment than with economic populism—that Trump’s racially charged rhetoric united white voters against others who they believed were taking their jobs, their culture, and their country. (On Tuesday night, Clinton won Mahoning County by a hair thanks to backing in minority-majority Youngstown but lost the mostly white surrounding counties of the Mahoning Valley.) As a local African American labor organizer told Mother Jones this summer, “This whole racist rhetoric plays well with some people here.”

Like Betras, Taylor doesn’t believe his peers and neighbors who supported Trump are racist. But he understands how Trump’s talk about immigration appealed to people in the Rust Belt. A few years ago, his union was working on a billion-dollar natural gas processing plant, and the workers noticed that the bulk of the work was being done by Spanish-speaking laborers who arrived each morning on buses. “It brought a lot of resentment to the area because they’d never seen it before,” Taylor says. “People see that and then they go tell everybody else, and social media, the way it is, it just runs wild.” He believes Trump benefited when the community saw immigrants “taking jobs that Americans think they should be doing.”

When went to Youngstown in June and met Taylor, jovial and smartly dressed in a suit, he believed his peers would see through Trump’s demagoguery on trade and manufacturing and reject him. “We also are citizens of this country concerned about how he’ll react, whether it’s a nuclear war, God forbid, to racist comments, to deporting immigrants,” he said. “These are core beliefs that as citizens of this country we don’t stand for.”

In the aftermath of the election, even as Taylor looks backs and sees the writing on the wall, he sounds shaken by what the country—and specifically white-working class voters in the Rust Belt—allowed to happen. He acknowledges that the Clintons were “wrapped so close to NAFTA” (which Bill Clinton approved as president) and that Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees from big banks looked bad. “I see where people would have resentment,” he says.

But then, sounding close to tears, he adds, “She’s the most qualified person ever to run for the position, and I agree, she would have done a great job if given the opportunity. But she did not—she had the opportunity to win. She did not win.”

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These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming

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New Research Confirms Guns on College Campuses Are Dangerous

by tfem31x Posted on November 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Eight states currently have laws that allow people to carry guns on college campuses. In 24 others, individual colleges can decide whether to allow firearms on the premises. The primary rationale for these laws, according to their supporters, is safety: School shooters, they say, are less likely to succeed in their attacks if students and teachers are armed and able to fight back.

But a new study from Johns Hopkins University shows that campus carry laws are unlikely to deter rampage shooters and may in fact lead to more injuries and deaths. Here are the main takeaways from the research:

Concealed-carry laws do not deter mass shootings

Advocates for looser gun laws have popularized the idea that armed criminals are more likely to attack in “gun free” zones where nobody can fight back against them. Colleges that ban students from carrying weapons are consequently more dangerous, according to proponents of campus carry laws. But this theory is not supported by data, the Johns Hopkins study found. From 1966 to 2015, only 12 percent of 111 high-fatality mass shootings in the United States—at college campuses or elsewhere—took place in “gun free” zones, and only 5 percent took place in “gun restricted” zones, where security guards were armed but civilians were banned from carrying weapons. Another analysis, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, drew similar conclusions: Only 13 percent of mass shootings from 2009 to 2015 occurred in gun-free or gun-restricted zones. What’s more, allowing people to carry concealed weapons has been connected with an increase in violent crime, according to researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice. They noted a 10 percent average increase in violent crime in states that adopted right-to-carry laws.

Armed civilians are not likely to stop a rampage shooter

When a mass shooting does occur, campus carry advocates say, it helps to have responsible gun-toting civilians in the area, so they can thwart the attacker. Pro-gun economist John Lott and other advocates point to 39 incidents where they say armed civilians have helped stop gunmen. But when the Johns Hopkins researchers looked into the cases, they found that only 4 of 39 actually involved an armed civilian stopping a rampage shooter. What about the other 35 alleged incidents? As with various past cases debunked by Mother Jones, they did not stand up to scrutiny: Twenty-two of them weren’t actually mass shootings—sometimes a gun was never even fired. In two mass-shooting incidents, an armed security guard or a law enforcement officer, not a civilian, intervened. In two other incidents, armed civilians helped detain a perpetrator after the shooting had already ended, and they didn’t use guns to do so. In five mass shootings, armed civilians tried but failed to stop the attacker—and three of them were shot in the process.

Separate research from the FBI shows similar results. The bureau looked at 160 active-shooter situations from 2000 to 2013 and found only one case where an armed civilian intervened to stop an attack that was underway. (And that civilian was a US Marine.) In 21 cases, an unarmed civilian interrupted the attack and restrained the gunman. In other words, unarmed civilians were far more likely than those with guns to stop an active shooting in progress.

Respond effectively in an active-shooting situation requires extensive training, the Johns Hopkins researchers noted. “There is no reason to believe that college students, faculty and civilian staff will shoot accurately in active shooter situations when they have only passed minimal training requirements for a permit to carry,” they wrote.

Campus carry could lead to more suicides and other gun violence

College students are much less likely to stop a rampage shooter than they are to use firearms to inflict harm on themselves or others, the researchers found. The brains of young adults are still developing, they explain, and that can compromise impulse control and judgment—both of which “are essential for avoiding the circumstances in which firearm access leads to tragedy.” That could be one reason why 19- to 21-year-olds have the highest rate of homicide offenses, according to FBI data. The risk of violent confrontations increases when you throw alcohol and binge-drinking into the mix, the researchers added.

The risk of suicidal behavior, which peaks at age 16, is also high through the mid-20s, the researchers wrote, noting the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses on college campuses. “Research demonstrates that access to firearms substantially increases suicide risks, especially among adolescents and young adults, as firearms are the most common method of lethal self-harm,” they explained. In one study of 645 college campuses, guns were used in about a third of suicides by male students.

The Johns Hopkins study also broke down gun violence on campuses another way: Of 85 shootings or “undesirable discharges of firearms” on colleges from 2013 to June this year, only 2 percent involved rampage shooters. Much more common were interpersonal arguments that turned into gun violence (45 percent), premeditated attacks on a single person (12 percent), suicides or murder/suicides (12 percent), or unintentional discharges (9 percent).

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New Research Confirms Guns on College Campuses Are Dangerous

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Hillary Clinton Is an Open Book

by MiaOddo02554 Posted on November 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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With a mere 6 days left in Campaign 2016, Ezra Klein points out that Hillary Clinton is perhaps the most transparent presidential candidate in history:

We have Hillary Clinton’s full tax returns going back to the year 1977…public schedules…her campaign’s donors and her foundation’s donors…tens of thousands of emails from her time at the State Department…thousands of her campaign chair’s emails…investigative reports, congressional testimony, and documentary evidence from the inquiries into Whitewater, Benghazi, and Travelgate….so many independent biographies that I couldn’t come up with an accurate count.

….The story with Trump is quite different. We have the three pages from his 1995 tax return…books Trump has written about himself…financial disclosures to the Federal Election Commission, in which he claims, in all capital letters, to have “10 BILLION DOLLARS,” but no one believes that document…Digging beyond that image is difficult because Trump has forced his former associates, and even his former romantic partners, to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Despite all this, Clinton has a reputation for opacity while Trump has a reputation for being open about everything. The reason is deceptively simple: it’s what both candidates want. Clinton very clearly does her best to reveal as little as possible. Trump, by contrast, will talk about anything, loudly and volubly. It’s true that when he talks, he lies constantly and says next to nothing when he’s not lying, but the impression he gives is of somebody with nothing to hide.

Clinton’s reputation is not unfair. Most of her openness has been forced on her, after all. Trump’s reputation, by contrast, is ridiculous. He hides everything and lies about what he can’t. And since he runs a private company and has never served in government, he can get away with it. He’s not subject to FOIA requests or WikiLeaks dumps or random judges deciding that all his emails should be made public.

This isn’t going to change, and at this point it no longer matters whether it’s fair. It just is. But it’s what produces such bizarre levels of CDS1 among conservatives. They’ve forced so much openness on Clinton in an effort to destroy her, and it drives them crazy that it’s done nothing except paint a portrait of a pretty normal politician. Over 25 years, they’ve managed to uncover only three “scandals” that are even marginally troubling,2 and every dry well does nothing but convince them that Clinton is even more devious than they thought. By this time, we’ve tracked practically every hour of every day of Clinton’s life for the past decade, and there’s almost literally no unexamined time left. But it doesn’t matter. The next one will get her for sure!

The truth is different, of course. Hillary Clinton dislikes the press and has learned to be very careful in her public utterances. She has done a few dumb things in her life, and pushed the envelope further than she should a couple of times. If you dislike her, that’s fine. But basically she’s a fairly ordinary politico—ironically, an unusually honest one. When she makes a deal, her word is good. When she talks about policy, she’s careful not to overpromise. On the honesty front, she is Mother Teresa compared to Donald Trump.

1Clinton Derangement Syndrome, in case you’ve forgotten.

2The cattle futures thing remains intriguingly dodgy. Travelgate didn’t involve anything illegal, but definitely shows Clinton in a bad light. And Emailgate may not have produced any evidence of wrongdoing, but it did uncover a case of poor judgment.

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Hillary Clinton Is an Open Book

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Newt Gingrich Refuses to Discuss His Attack on Megyn Kelly

by ImogeneLeclair Posted on October 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday night, Newt Gingrich, the Republican who was forced to resign as House speaker in the late ’90s and who now is a top Donald Trump surrogate, got into a row with Fox News host Megyn Kelly. Toward the end of a segment on the presidential election, the often combative Gingrich started grousing about the media paying too much attention to all the women who have accused Trump of sexual assault (after a video emerged of Trump bragging about committing sexual assault). Kelly defended the media’s handling of this story: “We have to cover that story, sir.” What about a Hillary Clinton speech in which she referred to open borders? Gingrich retorted. “That is worth covering,” Kelly said.

Gingrich then angrily exploded: “Do you want to go back to the tapes of your shows recently? You are fascinated with sex and you don’t care about public policy. That’s what I get out of watching you tonight.” Kelly shot back: “I am not fascinated by sex. But I am fascinated by the protection of women.” Gingrich became irate and dared Kelly to say “Bill Clinton” and “sexual predator.” She did not take the bait, and shortly after that, Kelly said goodbye to Gingrich and asked him to “spend some time” working on his “anger issues.”

The exchange blew up Twitter and was the talk of the politerati. On Wednesday morning, as Trump was holding an event in Washington, DC, to promote his new hotel, with Gingrich one of the few notable GOPers in attendance, he congratulated Gingrich for tangling with Kelly (with whom Trump once feuded).

Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony in the hotel lobby, Mother Jones asked Gingrich about his emotional face-off with Kelly. “Do you really think that Megyn Kelly was overly fascinated with sex by asking about the sexual-assault accusations regarding Trump?” we inquired. Waving his hand, Gingrich replied, “I’m not going to talk about that.”

We followed up: “But given that you guys impeached a president” about a matter involving sex—Gingrich interrupted, “It speaks for itself. It speaks for itself.” He and his (third) wife then walked away to eat lunch at the hotel restaurant.

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Newt Gingrich Refuses to Discuss His Attack on Megyn Kelly

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Donald Trump Takes Time Off From Campaigning for an Infomercial

by Graciela5532 Posted on October 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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With less than two weeks to go before the presidential election, Donald Trump spent Wednesday morning not worrying about making America great again but about preserving his business empire.

As Trump took the stage for the grand opening of his new hotel in Washington, DC, it wasn’t clear whether he would be talking about the election or just praising this new venture. It was a throwback to the Republican primary, when campaign events and Trump product placement went hand in hand. (At a press conference at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago in March, Trump bragged about his business prowess by listing products that have borne his name over the years—Trump steaks, Trump vodka—as the cable networks aired the event live.)

The hotel opening was listed on his campaign website and staffed partly by campaign employees. But with election day around the corner, Trump seemed more interested in basking in the glow of the media cameras to hype this project—and his kids, Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric, who were there for the occasion. He had given up a morning of campaigning in a swing state for this. On the same day, Mike Pence, was holding a rally in Utah, a state Republicans should be able to take for granted but where Trump has been slipping in the polls.

“With a notable exception of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this is the most coveted piece of real estate in Washington, DC,” Trump said to a full room of VIPs in business suits and dresses. The well-attired attendees, who clapped when Trump entered the room, did not look like folks upset with NAFTA and who were eager to see the Washington swamp drained. One VIP was a woman who works for a major consulting firm in Washington who recently booked meeting rooms at the hotel for an event in April. The rates were low, she said, as many companies in the capital shy away from the Trump hotel because of Trump’s campaign. “There are a lot of people who will not want to have anything to do with this place,” she said. She noted that her firm is hoping that by the time of its event, Trump will have “calmed down.”

With more than two hundred journalists in the ballroom covering the odd event, Trump claimed that the hotel showed that he can get things done. He declared, “My theme today is five words: ‘under budget and ahead of schedule.'” (That is actually six words.) Trump then pivoted from hailing his hotel to assailing Obamacare. The health care program “is in free fall,” he said. The “military is depleted,” he added. Finally, he congratulated Newt Gingrich, one of his surrogates, for a combative interview with Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Tuesday night.

Though the ballroom was packed with camera crews and reporters, Trump’s days of getting uninterrupted air time on major cable networks are over. None of the cable networks paid much attention to his event Wednesday. It stood in stark contrast to the last big event he held at the hotel.

That was September 16, and Trump was riding high. The polls showed him neck-and-neck with Hillary Clinton, and he tricked the media into giving him a free 45-minute infomercial for his new Washington hotel. He had invited the press to the hotel, with a soft opening underway, for what was billed as a major statement on birtherism. The word was that Trump would finally declare that he believed Obama was a US citizen, after years of championing the conspiracy theory that the president was born in Kenya. Instead, Trump used about half an hour of the free media coverage to promote the hotel and showcase military veterans supporting his campaign. Eventually, he made about 20 seconds of remarks regarding his supposed abandonment of birtherism (which hardly seemed genuine).

After that event, Trump was pleased with how he had bamboozled the media, and the press fumed. “We got played,” CNN’s John King admitted. Ultimately, this stunt may have backfired on Trump. It became a turning point in his media coverage. Major news outlets called his birther statement—in which he blamed Clinton for starting the birther charge—a lie. And when Trump gave a tour of the hotel that day to the photographers and videographers in his press pool, without any reporters, the pool decided to destroy the footage. Shortly after this episode, Trump’s campaign began tanking, following his poor performance at the first debate and the appearance of a video of him bragging about sexually assaulting women.

After the September birtherism event ended, the stage on which Trump had touted his new hotel literally collapsed as the cameras were still rolling—a perfect metaphor for what happened that day between Trump and the press. On Wednesday morning, the stage did not fall apart. But it seemed as if Trump might have realized that his electoral prospects had. He appeared more fixated on trying to save his brand, which has been harmed by the divisive and insult-driven campaign he has mounted. After the ribbon-cutting ceremony in the hotel lobby, Ivanka was hobnobbing with well-wishers and accepting congratulations. Mother Jones asked her if her father’s presidential bid had damaged the Trump brand. She just smiled and quickly walked away.

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Donald Trump Takes Time Off From Campaigning for an Infomercial

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Happy Anniversary to Us!

by LukeBusby011 Posted on October 21, 2016

Mother Jones

Mother Jones was born in 1976 (the same year, incidentally, as Apple Computer, The Muppet Show, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Big Red gum). We celebrated our birthday on October 20 with a gala where former Republican Party Chair Michael Steele made some news, and where we also premiered a new video that takes you inside MoJo‘s journalism.

We’re on a mission to save investigative reporting by building a new, reader-supported revenue model. If you think this kind of journalism is an essential element of our democracy, please make a tax-deductible gift now.

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Happy Anniversary to Us!

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Exclusive: Central Park Five Members Blast Trump for Insisting They’re Guilty

by CarinIzd030521 Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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After Donald Trump reaffirmed his long-held belief this week that the men known as the Central Park Five were guilty in an infamous, decades-old rape case, two members of the since-exonerated group blasted Trump in interviews with Mother Jones, calling him a “stunt artist” and saying “he’s gotten worse” since his involvement in their 1990 conviction.

“You have a person who’s supposed to be a very intelligent business man, and what I’m sure he would do if he was trying to purchase a property is do his due diligence,” Yusef Salaam told me Friday, noting that Trump continued to ignore the facts of the Central Park Five case. “For somebody to still stand on the side of injustice like Donald Trump is, that becomes a very scary place to be.”

In a statement to CNN this week, Trump said he still believed the Central Park Five were guilty. “They admitted they were guilty,” he told CNN’s Miguel Marquez. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that the case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers were convicted of brutally attacking a young white jogger in New York City’s Central Park. The crime, which came at the height of the crack epidemic and skyrocketing crime rates, enflamed racial tension in the city. About two weeks after the incident, Trump published a full-page ad in four major New York newspapers calling for the teens to be brought to justice—and suggesting that they should face the death penalty. But in 2002, all five men—who spent between 6 and 13 years in prison—were exonerated based on DNA evidence and a confession from the actual perpetrator, whose DNA was shown to match evidence at the scene.

Mother Jones talked to two members of the Central Park Five—Salaam and Korey Wise—about Trump’s role in their case, their thoughts on his presidential candidacy, and his latest comments about their case. Not surprisingly, neither is happy to see one of their main antagonists on the national stage day in and day out. Nor is a third member of the group, Raymond Santana, who skewered Trump on Twitter:

Salaam, who was 15 when he was jailed for the assault, said he believes Trump played a crucial role in the media campaign against him.

“Trump was one of the fire starters—really the main fire starter—because his name held a lot more weight,” he said. His ad facilitated “the conviction that was going to happen in the public arena prior to us even getting into the courthouse.”

Wise told me he only learned about Trump’s ad after watching a documentary on his case several years ago. After seeing it, he understood why the case had become so incredibly charged. “I said, ‘Wow! Wow! Wow!'” Wise said. “This is where a great deal of the energy that was directed at me in terms of physical threats” came from.

“The ad was talking about and goes specifically into fears that the public was having at that particular time,” Salaam told me. “He’s talking about how ‘we’ve had to give up our leisurely stroll in the playground, and we can’t ride our bikes, or we can’t walk around in the streets because now we’re hostages, ruled by the laws of the streets.'” Trump has revisited those themes in his presidential campaign, often citing gun violence in cities like Chicago as indicative of a breakdown in “law and order,” which he insists he can restore.

Salaam also suggested that Trump was a hypocrite for attacking Hillary Clinton over her “superpredator” remarks in the first presidential debate. “She well within her right could have said, ‘Well you took out a full-page ad calling for the execution—the lynching, the death—of young black and Latino men—and you have never apologized.'”

More than 25 years later, Trump hasn’t changed, Salaam said. “As a matter of fact, he’s gotten worse,” he said. “He believes in everything he’s put out there—the racial vision he’s created.”

For his part, Wise said he doesn’t think about what a Trump presidency would mean because he doesn’t take him seriously: “He’s a stunt artist…He follows publicity.”

But Salaam had a bleaker assessment of what the country would look like with Trump as commander in chief: “If he becomes president, what is that going to mean for the people who are losing their lives in the street? This ‘law and order’ is going to be a very, very scary thing for us as a people.”

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Exclusive: Central Park Five Members Blast Trump for Insisting They’re Guilty

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Is Hurricane Matthew the New Normal?

by AbrahamVillegas Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hurricane Matthew, which is currently menacing the United States after causing more than 800 deaths in Haiti, has focused the world’s attention on the growing threat posed by flooding and extreme storms. Here’s what you need to know about how climate change could make these natural disasters even worse.

Severe weather costs billions

So far in 2016, there have been a total of 12 floods and severe storms in the United States that have caused more than $1 billion in losses each, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The losses cover damage to property and infrastructure, interruptions to business operations such as store closings, and agricultural damage to crops and livestock.

Four of those catastrophic floods—two in Louisiana and one each in Texas and West Virginia—have occurred inland as a result of heavy rain. That’s double the previous record, which dates back to 1980. The pattern is clear: “Since 1991, the amount of rain falling in very heavy precipitation events has been significantly above average,” according to the National Climate Assessment, released in 2014.

Why the increase? As explained in the assessment, warmer temperatures enable the air to hold more water vapor. This extra vapor is then ready to be picked up and unleashed by the next storm system.

National Climate Assessment

As the Environmental Protection Agency states, however, the trend is by no means a universal one. As some parts of the country—such as the Midwest, Northeast, and Great Plains—see increased flooding, other regions, like the Southwest, have seen a decrease.

Sea levels are rising, and coasts are threatened

Global sea levels have risen 8 inches since 1880, according to a Climate Central analysis, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. The culprit? Human activity. Climate Central’s report shows that along the coasts, two-thirds of flood days are now caused by human impact.

In addition to flooding from heavy rainfall, rising seas caused by melting ice sheets and warming water (which takes up more space than cooler water) are already causing coastal flooding in places such as Norfolk, Virginia—even on days without rain, as the New York Times explains. This type of flooding, termed “sunny-day flooding,” can happen at high tide and when winds are strong enough to cause the water to flow onto streets, the Times notes.

Human activity causes two-thirds of coastal flood days. Climate Central

Hurricanes could get worse

Climate models cited by the National Climate Assessment also predict an increase in the number of powerful category 4 (wind speeds above 130 miles per hour) and category 5 hurricanes (wind speeds above 155 miles per hour) by late this century. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, was upgraded to a category 5 at its most dangerous peak before striking Louisiana as a category 3 storm. It displaced more than 400,000 people, with some estimates topping 1 million. More than a decade later, the exact number of people killed by the storm is still unknown.

Matthew made landfall in Haiti as a category 4 but has been reduced to a category 3 as it pummels Florida. (UPDATE: Matthew has now been downgraded to a category 2 storm.) Yesterday, President Barack Obama declared states of emergency in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, and Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, warned, “This storm will kill you.” Matthew spent more time as a category 4 or 5 storm than any other hurricane on record in the eastern Caribbean, said Adam Smith, a scientist at NOAA.

The warmer surface temperature of the water in the Caribbean Sea has contributed to Matthew’s “resilience and power,” Smith added in an email to Mother Jones.

Storm surge, or the water pushed onto land by high winds, has been another contributing factor to Matthew’s danger. It reached a peak of four feet near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is predicted to reach as much as six to nine feet in parts of Florida and South Carolina if the surge coincides with high tide.

In fact, storm surge is one of the most dangerous effects of a hurricane. “Along the coast, storm surge is often the greatest threat to life and property from a hurricane,” according to the National Hurricane Center.

And the threat could grow. A study released in 2013 showed that warming temperatures could cause a tenfold increase in extreme storm surges in the next few decades.

“Climate change makes worse many of our weather extremes than they would have been naturally,” Smith said.

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Is Hurricane Matthew the New Normal?

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Donald Trump Promised to Release a List of His Creditors. We’re Still Waiting.

by JoanW10cgjdlk Posted on October 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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During the first presidential debate, moderator Lester Holt asked Donald Trump about his refusal to release his tax returns, explaining that part of “the reason nominees have released their returns for decades” is so voters can determine if a potential president’s debts reveal any conflicts of interest. “Don’t Americans have a right to know if there are any conflicts of interest?” Holt asked. Trump brushed the question off, saying that “you don’t learn that much from tax returns.” (As the New York Times reported this weekend, just a few pages of Trump’s tax records from 1995 reveal that the GOP nominee may not have paid federal income taxes for 18 years.) He claimed that the personal financial disclosures he had already filed with the Federal Election Commission provided a more detailed overview of his finances, though those records do not reveal income, tax rates, charitable donations, and loan interest payments. “But,” Trump told Holt, “I could give you a list of banks, I would—if that would help you, I would give you a list of banks. These are very fine institutions, very fine banks. I could do that very quickly.”

Mother Jones has been trying to determine Trump’s full roster of creditors, so we immediately contacted his campaign to request the list Trump offered. A week later, we’re still waiting.

Even without the release his tax returns—a standard practice for presidential candidates since the Nixon era—it is clear that should he reach the White House he would face significant conflicts of interest due to his complex business interests. His personal financial disclosure report provides an incomplete view of his finances. Filed in May, the form lists 16 loans that are valued in vague ranges that make it impossible to determine the total amount he owes. For instance, five of Trump’s loans are valued at $50 million or more (the FEC doesn’t require anything more specific). According to this disclosure, Trump owes a minimum of $315 million. But the real amount appears to be much higher. A search of property records throughout the United States shows that those 16 loans are valued, conservatively, at $675 million.

His financial disclosure forms likely do not reveal the full scope of his intricate finances. As the New York Times reported in August, Trump has invested in partnerships that owe nearly $2 billion—loans, including one from the Bank of China, that are not identified within his personal financial disclosure. Trump’s representatives told the Times that Trump would not be liable for those loans, but because he is an investor in the buildings used as collateral for these loans, his investments are certainly linked to the loans.

And Trump’s most recent financial disclosure is already out of date. For instance, Trump reported to the FEC in May that he owed UBS Real Estate, a subsidiary of the Swiss banking giant, between $5 million and $25 million in connection with a loan for commercial property at New York City’s Trump International Hotel and Tower. But Trump no longer has this loan. According to New York City property records, the loan was for $7 million, and his company paid it off with a new $7 million loan from a much smaller lender named Ladder Capital Finance. Trump’s history of failed deals and repeated bankruptcies has made him persona non grata with many of the world’s top banks, forcing him to rely on smaller institutions such as Ladder Capital. According to public documents, Trump currently owes Ladder Capital at least $275 million.

Ladder Capital specializes in packaging loans into larger portfolios that are eventually sold off to other lenders. This is significant because it would be important to know exactly who owns Trump’s debt—a potential source of leverage over a commander-in-chief. Tax returns would reveal to whom Trump is paying interest. It would be a small step forward in transparency, if the Trump campaign issues a list of his creditors. But the full scope of his finances—and his creditors—will not be known unless he releases his tax returns.

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Donald Trump Promised to Release a List of His Creditors. We’re Still Waiting.

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