Tag Archives: national

Donald Trump to Russia: Please Hack Hillary!

by CaitlynEoff Posted on July 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Update, July 27, 12:55 p.m. ET: The Clinton campaign quickly blasted Trump’s comments in a statement from Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser. “This has the be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” Sullivan said. “This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”

Donald Trump encouraged Russian hackers to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails during a bizarre press conference on Wednesday in Miami.

“Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said, referring to the emails that were not handed over to investigators from Clinton’s private email server. “I think you’ll be rewarded mightily by our press.”

The call for foreign hackers to take down his opponent was only one of the many strange moments in the press conference. Other highlights included:

Trump claiming, “I don’t know anything about him,” when asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin and the growing amount of evidence that the Democratic National Convention hack was carried about by Russia. Trump has in fact praised Putin for years and said in November of Putin that “I got to know him very well.”
A repeat of the claim that American Muslims don’t report terror plots to authorities. FBI Director James Comey said last month after the terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida, that “some of our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things who happen to be Muslim.”
Trump appeared to confuse Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, with former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean.
He said he wouldn’t go to France, which has been the target of several recent terror attacks. “France isn’t France anymore,” he said, likely referring to the number of immigrants who now live in France. The French Embassy declined to comment.

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Donald Trump to Russia: Please Hack Hillary!

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Planned Parenthood Sting Videographer Cleared of Felony Charge

by BonitaIliffe Posted on July 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday morning, Texas prosecutors dismissed the felony charge against David Daleiden, the founder of the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress, and Sandra Merritt, one of his associates, related to their work last year in creating sting videos targeting Planned Parenthood. They were facing charges of tampering with a government record over allegations that they had made and used fake drivers’ licenses to facilitate their meetings with Planned Parenthood staffers.

Under Daleiden’s leadership, the CMP last summer released a series of secretly-recorded, deceptively-edited videos which purported to show Planned Parenthood staffers negotiating the sale of fetal tissue, a practice which is illegal. Since then, 12 state-level and 4 congressional investigations have found no such wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood. Despite these exonerations, the video series continued to reverberate, spawning state and federal efforts to defund the women’s health provider.

The charges dismissed today were issued in January by the Harris County District Attorney’s office. After the CMP videos, the office had assembled a grand jury to investigate Planned Parenthood but after an extensive investigation that spanned more than two months, the group cleared the women’s health provider and chose to indict Daleiden and Merritt instead. The grand jury also charged the pair with a class A misdemeanor: offering to buy human organs, namely fetal tissue. The pair was cleared of this charge in June.

After Tuesday morning’s dismissal, Daleiden touted the victory on Twitter:

But Daleiden’s legal troubles aren’t over yet. A lawsuit filed last summer against CMP by the National Abortion Federation is ongoing, as is a suit filed by Planned Parenthood in California in January, accusing the CMP of racketeering, illegally creating and using fake driver’s licenses, and invading the privacy of, and illegally recording, Planned Parenthood officials and staff.

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Planned Parenthood Sting Videographer Cleared of Felony Charge

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Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders Have a Warning for Our Future

by DeannaZ91u Posted on July 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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

Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders each chose different words to unite their party on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, but there was a unifying theme to their speeches. In outlining the high stakes of the election, they all talked about the huge consequences for future generations.

Take Michelle Obama, who said, “In this election, and every election, it is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives.” Warren later said, “Hillary will fight to preserve this earth for our children and grandchildren. And we’re with her!” And then in Sanders’ big finale, he noted “the need to leave this world in a way that is healthy and habitable for our kids and future generations.”

Anyone who’s concerned about climate change should recognize this argument. Perhaps more than any big issue in this election, climate change is about the decisions we make now and their impact on future generations. Whether they were referring to climate change or not, Obama, Warren, and Sanders were pleading with the Bernie-or-bust section of their party using the same logic.

“This election is about climate change, the great environmental crisis facing our planet,” Sanders said, in remarks that were nearly word-for-word what he said when he endorsed Clinton two weeks ago. “Hillary Clinton is listening to the scientists who tell us that unless we act boldly to transform our energy system in the very near future, there will be more drought, more floods, more acidification of the oceans, rising sea levels…Hillary Clinton understands that a president’s job is to worry about future generations, not the profits of the fossil fuel industry.”

Warren talked about how dysfunction in Washington, DC, benefits the fossil fuel industry rather than the public. “Washington works great for those at the top,” she said. “When huge energy companies wanted to tear up our environment, Washington got it done…When we turn on each other, bankers can run our economy for Wall Street, oil companies can fight off clean energy.”

Obama didn’t hit on climate change directly in her rousing speech, but she didn’t need to. It’s clear enough what inaction on global warming would do to hurt younger generations.

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Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders Have a Warning for Our Future

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Clinton Announces Tim Kaine as Her Running Mate

by SharylDellinger Posted on July 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton announced Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate on Friday, making what’s widely seen as a safe pick by choosing a man with deep political experience, but one who might not have much potential to generate new excitement for her campaign. She announced the decision in a text message to supporters, informing them, “I’m thrilled to tell you this first: I’ve chosen Sen. Tim Kaine as my running mate.”

Read about Tim Kaine’s past as a civil rights attorney.

Kaine backed Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary but was an early booster of Clinton’s 2016 bid and has long been seen as a front-runner to be Clinton’s vice presidential pick. While he doesn’t have a loyal following among the Bernie Sanders crowd, as someone like Elizabeth Warren does, it’s easy to see why Kaine appealed to Clinton. He has an extensive political résumé, as a former mayor of Richmond, lieutenant governor and governor of Virginia, and head of the the Democratic National Committee, and now as a senator from an important swing state.

Kaine isn’t a rhetorical bomb-thrower. He still carries the reserved Midwestern persona that he gained growing up in the Kansas City suburbs. A former civil rights attorney who won a major redlining verdict against Nationwide Insurance before he launched his political career, Kaine, much like Clinton, offers a quieter version of progressivism than Sanders or Warren, with an emphasis on finding compromise and achieving incremental progress. During his first few years in the Senate, Kaine has focused on foreign policy, seeking to impose limits on the president’s powers to conduct war.

Kaine’s challenge will be to convince Sanders fans that he’s on their side, and he didn’t do himself any favors in the lead-up to his vice presidential rollout. Earlier this week, he signed onto a pair of letters, bipartisan but largely authored by Republicans, that asked federal regulators to ease regulations on community banks.

Read more about Kaine’s full career here.

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Clinton Announces Tim Kaine as Her Running Mate

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

by NannetteUnj Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

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Behind-the-Scenes Photos From Trump’s Bizarre GOP Convention

by WillKulaciowg Posted on July 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Photographer Scott Brauer has turned his camera and blinding flash toward the 2016 Republican and Democratic national conventions.

Brauer photographed the Republican National Convention in Cleveland for the Mother Jones Instagram account (@motherjonesmag). Below is a gallery of some of our favorite images. Follow along to see what Brauer captures at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week.

Bauer’s project, “This Is the Worst Party I’ve Ever Been To” gives a wry, insider’s look at campaigning for president. The Boston-based photographer offers viewers revealing glimpses of staff, supporters, media, and other machinations of the campaign process we don’t often see. He takes a step back to include the periphery of what’s going on as other photographers shoot pictures of politicians and protesters, offering fascinating insight into the banality of what’s really going.

Crews set up the day before the start of the 2016 Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

Balloons hang from the ceiling a day before the start of the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Anti-Muslim demonstrators address a crowd of media in downtown Cleveland.

Sirius XM radio reporter Jared Rizzi works from the delegate floor on the first day of the Republican National Convention in the Quicken Loans Arena.

Republican-themed jeweled wooden handbags made by Timmy Woods of Los Angeles are seen for sale in the Freedom Market in the secure area outside the arena on the first day of the convention.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley appears in a video by the Republican Governors Association shown to the delegates on the first day of the event.

Former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole wore an “I STILL Like Ike” pin while sitting in a VIP section at the RNC.

Actor Scott Baio after speaking at the RNC

A worker kneels outside the Society Lounge on East 4th Street near the entrance to the RNC.

Stevedore Crawford of Columbus, Ohio, one of the demonstrators in Cleveland’s Public Square, is surrounded by some family members, friends, and a lot of media. He said that in 1984, he was shot by a police officer and he shot the police officer back. He says he spent 12 years in prison. He spoke about racism, Tamir Rice, and police conduct.

A member of the Indiana State Police stands guard in front of anti-Muslim protesters in Cleveland’s Public Square.

Sen. Orrin Hatch shakes hands at the convention.

Members of the Alabama delegation react as Sen. Jeff Sessions speaks at the RNC.

Martin Parr (left) and Christopher Morris (down low) photograph a member of the Florida delegation holding a Trump figurine. Morris was in the news earlier this year after he was “choke-slammed” by a Secret Service agent while covering a Trump rally.

During the formal nomination, roving camera crews moved between different states’ delegations to show the votes. It was the main video feed used by television networks. Here, on the back of a piece of cardboard, you can see the list of states and territories that this team will cover: California, Alabama, Maine, Virginia, Montana, Wyoming, and Guam. Ohio is crossed out.

Each night the Republican convention begins with the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, and a prayer, at minimum. Here, people toward the back of the delegate floor stand during the national anthem.

People danced and sang along during country singer Chris Janson’s performance at the convention.

A man talks on his phone on Wednesday night near the nosebleed section of Quicken Loans Arena during the RNC.

Food is hard to come by inside the Quicken Loans Arena. Here, photographer Nate Gowdy eats a pretzel during some downtime Wednesday night.

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Behind-the-Scenes Photos From Trump’s Bizarre GOP Convention

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Anti-LGBT Bathroom Law Just Cost North Carolina the All-Star Game

by gisellenewbery Posted on July 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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The National Basketball Association is officially pulling the plug on North Carolina as the site of its annual All-Star game. The move, an economic blow for the city of Charlotte, comes nearly four months after Gov. Pat McCroy signed into law a sweeping bill (HB2) that struck down workplace discrimination protections for LGBT employees and forced transgender people to use public restrooms that match their biological sex.

Back in April, NBA commissioner Adam Silver warned that the league might take the All-Star weekend away from Charlotte if the state kept its discriminatory legislation intact. “While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2,” the NBA said in a statement Thursday. The league plans to reconsider Charlotte as a site in 2019 “provided there is an appropriate resolution to this matter.”

Gov. McCroy promptly shot back, noting that the “sports and entertainment elite, Attorney General Roy Cooper and the liberal media” have misrepresented the law’s intention. “American families should be on notice that the selective corporate elite are imposing their political will on communities in which they do business, thus bypassing the democratic and legal process,” he said in a statement.

The league’s decision adds to the mounting pressure on state leaders from businesses, athletes and entertainers, advocacy groups, and politicians to make amends. In response, North Carolina lawmakers drafted legislation in late June that would roll back the portions of HB2 that required “certificates of sex reassignment” before a trans person could use the desired bathroom. The amendments also added language about federal protections, restored the ability of LGBT people to sue for employment discrimination, and increased penalties for people convicted of certain crimes against others in bathrooms. But the ACLU and others spurned the attempts, calling instead for a full repeal.

As Deadspin points out, this isn’t the first time criticism from professional sports leagues have prompted changes to anti-LGBT laws. Two years ago, after Arizona lawmakers passed a law that let businesses turn away gay, lesbian, and transgender customers as an expression of the business owner’s religious beliefs, NFL officials considered relocating the Super Bowl from Arizona to Tampa. (Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the measure.)

The NFL also suggested that Atlanta’s bid to host the Super Bowl in 2019 was at risk over Georgia’s similar “religious freedom” law—Gov. Nathan Deal eventually vetoed the bill. Last April, amid condemnation from NASCAR , the NCAA, and the NBA Indiana governor and VP hopeful Mike Pence modified a similar “religious freedom” law—and took a lot of heat from fellow conservatives as a result.

Read the NBA’s full announcement here:

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Anti-LGBT Bathroom Law Just Cost North Carolina the All-Star Game

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Secret recording reveals who’s first on Trump’s government purge list

by YCPLucioxtqk Posted on July 21, 2016

Secret recording reveals who’s first on Trump’s government purge list

By on Jul 21, 2016Share

If Donald Trump wins in November, his first act may as well be to paint the White House gold. His second act, according to a secret recording obtained by Reuters, could be ridding the government of Obama appointees.

One of his top targets would be the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump’s ally/hostage Chris Christie, who is leading the candidate’s White House transition team, told donors in a private meeting at the Republican National Convention that they’re drawing up a list of government employees to fire. He hopes for congressional legislation to make it easier to fire public workers.

“One of the things I have suggested to Donald is that we have to immediately ask the Republican Congress to change the civil service laws. Because if they do, it will make it a lot easier to fire those people,” Christie told donors at a closed-door meeting at the RNC. “As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people,” he added.

Trump has promised to eliminate the EPA entirely, while also rolling back environmental legislation and pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord.

Since its creation by Richard Nixon in 1970, the EPA’s enforcement of environmental regulations has led to cleaner air, water, and land across America. So while Trump may not make America great again, he will certainly make it polluted again.

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

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Secret recording reveals who’s first on Trump’s government purge list

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Fracking and immigration activists unite 60 feet above the RNC

by CathyNpykchtei Posted on July 19, 2016

moral highground

Fracking and immigration activists unite 60 feet above the RNC

By on Jul 19, 2016Share

Four anti-fracking, pro-immigrant activists scaled 60-foot flagpoles a few blocks from the Republic National Convention on Tuesday morning, then unfurled a massive banner that read “Don’t Trump our communities.”

What are these two groups of activists doing together? Their issues overlap. In many places around the country, immigrants live in areas where oil companies use hydraulic fracturing to release natural gas and oil. Most of the fracking in California, for instance, happens in the Central Valley, near fields where undocumented workers harvest crops to feed the rest of the country. Fracking sites are more likely to be in neighborhoods of color and poverty.

Emmelia Talarico, an activist who traveled to Cleveland, Ohio from Maryland for the protest, said that “communities directly impacted by oil and gas extraction have come together with immigrant communities being torn apart by deportations to take a stand against an unjust system that targets us all.”

Three of the four activists were arrested and are now raising money for bail.

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

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Fracking and immigration activists unite 60 feet above the RNC

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Republicans are trying to scare you about crime, but cities have been getting safer

by MazieHibbs Posted on July 19, 2016

Republicans are trying to scare you about crime, but cities have been getting safer

By on Jul 19, 2016Share

The first night of the Republican National Convention had a clear theme: be afraid, be very afraid. Officially, the theme was “Make America Safe Again.” There was a lot of discussion of terrorism and Benghazi, but many speakers also invoked rising crime as a reason to elect Donald Trump.

“The vast majority of Americans today do not feel safe,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said. “They fear for their children. They fear for themselves. They fear for our police officers, who are being targeted.”

Fortunately for America, but unfortunately for Trump, our cities are in fact safer than they have been in decades. Violent crime rates have dropped by about half since 1991. Murders have fallen 13 percent since Obama took office. Murders of police officers have been at a lower annual average under President Obama than under George W. Bush.

While the United States still has a high crime rate for a developed country, as Matt Yglesias points out in Vox, neither Trump nor his surrogates have presented substantive proposals to address it. Rather, the GOP raises racially tinged fears of crime, insecure borders, and terrorism. Meanwhile, they ignore the biggest gathering threat to humanity: climate change.

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

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Republicans are trying to scare you about crime, but cities have been getting safer

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