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US Monthly Headline News August 2019 Page 2
Federal prosecutors say the suspect charged in a massive data breach at Capital One may have hacked more than 30 other organizations. Paige A. Thompson, a 33-year-old former Amazon employee from Seattle, was arrested last month after the FBI said she obtained personal information from more than 100 million Capital One credit applications. There is no evidence the data was sold or distributed to others. In a memorandum filed ahead of a detention hearing, rescheduled from Thursday to Aug. 22, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle said servers found in Thompson's bedroom contained data stolen from more than 30 unnamed companies, educational institutions and other entities. Prosecutors said much of that data did not appear to contain personal identifying information. Investigators are still working to identify the affected organizations. Thompson's attorney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
By Janelle Griffith
Muskegon police officer Charles Anderson has been placed on leave pending an investigation into the couple's claims, the police department said.
A white police officer in western Michigan has been placed on administrative leave after a prospective home buyer said he saw a framed Ku Klux Klan application and multiple Confederate flags in his house. The Muskegon Police Department announced Aug. 8 it had opened an internal investigation after a social media post was "brought to its attention" accusing the officer, Charles Anderson, of "being in possession of certain items associated with a white supremacy group." The veteran officer was immediately placed on administrative leave, according to the department. The man behind the post, Robert Mathis, who is black, has subsequently received death threats. Mathis posted a picture of the KKK document on Facebook on Aug. 7 after touring Anderson’s home with his wife, Reyna, their two children and a realtor. Reyna and Robert Mathis said they saw the application and several Confederate flags inside the house that is for sale in Holton Township, about 20 miles northeast of Muskegon. The couple believed they were in the home of a police officer because they also saw a police jacket and a photo of an officer in uniform. "My emotions were all over the place. I felt anger, sadness and shame," Reyna Mathis, 42, who is Hispanic, told NBC News on Tuesday. "Our realtor, who is white, even cried. She just kept apologizing."
By Michael D. Shear, Miriam Jordan and Caitlin Dickerson
The Trump administration has said the immigration overhaul it announced this week will ensure that new legal residents carry their own weight, without prejudice or favor. Yet the new rule for weeding out those who might be a drain on taxpayers will almost certainly disadvantage poor people from Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia. Over time, people who are granted green cards — the major step toward winning citizenship — will become wealthier but their numbers will shrink, researchers predicted. More green cards will go to immigrants with a good education and a measure of self-sufficiency; fewer will be granted simply because someone has a family member in the United States. Immigrants from Europe and Canada are least likely to face problems under the new regulations, according to one study, which found that, by contrast, nearly three-quarters of recent arrivals from Mexico and the Caribbean have relatively modest incomes that would jeopardize their chances at a green card.
By Bill McCarthy
Billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg took a familiar swipe at NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre during an Aug. 11 interview on CBS’s "Face the Nation." Host Margaret Brennan asked Bloomberg, who helped launch the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, if he thought the NRA would be able to "bankroll" in 2020 like it did in 2016, when it gave millions to President Donald Trump’s campaign. Numerous mass shootings have taken place since Trump’s election, including two in the span of 24 hours last weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. "I think the NRA has been very badly hurt by this," Bloomberg said. "Ninety percent of NRA members are in favor of background checks, so the NRA is not in the place of most of its members. And in fact, if you go back, you can see Wayne LaPierre, who runs the NRA, testifying before Congress in favor of background checks 15 or 20 years ago."
By bill hutchinson
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 800 points on Wednesday, as investors suffered their worst day of the year as new concerns arose over data on global economic growth.  The tumble followed a series of concerning economic indicators from Germany and China, signaling renewed recession fears in the global economy. One big piece of news came when the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes dipped below the yield of two-year U.S. Treasury notes, a rare occurrence described by market watchers as an "inverted yield curve." The 30-year U.S. Treasury bond also hit a new record low on Wednesday.
By CBS3 Staff
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — At least six Philadelphia police officers were shot during an active firefight in Philadelphia’s Nicetown-Tioga section and rushed to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police said. Another officer suffered a non-shooting injury during the incident.
By Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY
Kamala Harris on Wednesday said if elected president she will press Congress to pass a red flag law that would allow law enforcement officials to temporarily seize the firearms of white nationalists that may be on the verge of carrying out a hate crime. The Democratic presidential candidate's proposal calls for the creation of “domestic terrorism prevention orders” that would give law enforcement and family members of suspected white nationalists or domestic terrorists the ability to petition a federal court to temporarily restrict a person’s access to guns if the person exhibits clear evidence of being a danger. “We need to take action to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and stop violent, hate-fueled attacks before they happen,” Harris said. “By focusing on confronting these domestic terror threats, we can save lives.”
By Clare Foran, CNN
Washington (CNN) - GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa questioned on Wednesday whether there would be any population left on Earth if not for rape and incest, a remark that has drawn condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans. "What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?" he said in Urbandale, Iowa, according to video posted online by the Des Moines Register, which was first to report on the remarks Wednesday. "Considering all the wars and all the rape and pillage that has taken place ... I know I can't certify that I was not a part of a product of that," King said. "I'd like to think that every one of the lives of us are as precious as any other life," he added. The remarks came as King was defending not allowing exceptions for abortion in cases of rape or incest. The Iowa Republican is a controversial and polarizing figure on Capitol Hill who has a track record of making racist comments that have generated backlash across the political spectrum. In January, House Republicans stripped King of committee assignments, an action that took place after an interview in which he appeared to lament that the term "white supremacist" is considered offensive. CNN has reached out to King's office for comment, but did not immediately receive a response. The remarks quickly generated condemnation from lawmakers in both parties.
By Zack Ford
The poem only refers to welcoming "people from Europe," he claimed this week. Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was roundly criticized for comments he made Tuesday on NPR suggesting that the Statue of Liberty’s poem was only meant to welcome immigrants “who can stand on their own two feet.” Tuesday evening, he doubled down by suggesting the poem only applied to “people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies.” CNN host Erin Burnett was grilling Cuccinelli about his earlier remarks, noting that the Emma Lazarus poem The New Colossus, written in 1883 and inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in 1903, specifically describes people who have nothing. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the poem excerpt reads, “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” It does not refer to people who can “stand on their own two feet,” as Cuccinelli had said earlier in the day. Burnett asked Cuccinelli what he believed America stood for. Cuccinelli responded that the poem only referred to class-based societies in Europe, “where people were considered ‘wretched’ if they weren’t in the right class.”
By Cristina Marcos
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) "Moscow Mitch" while attacking him for blocking House Democrats' legislation, including election security measures. Pelosi invoked the "Moscow Mitch" moniker while referring to McConnell's embrace of his portrayal as the "Grim Reaper" blocking House Democrats' progressive policies from moving forward in the Senate. "We all want to invest in building our democracy and saving it from any enemies, foreign and domestic," Pelosi said in remarks before the Illinois Democratic County Chairs' Association in Springfield, Ill., as she discussed House Democrats' overall agenda. “We’ve sent our legislation to the Senate. Moscow Mitch says that he is the Grim Reaper. Imagine describing yourself as the Grim Reaper, that he’s going to bury all this legislation," Pelosi said. "Well, we have news for him. All this legislation is alive and well in the general public." Pelosi's reference to McConnell as "Moscow Mitch" comes after he took to the Senate floor late last month to compare the attacks against him for blocking two election security bills to "modern-day McCarthyism."
By Richard Winton, Mark Puente
The semiautomatic rifle used by a convicted felon in a gun battle with police off the 215 Freeway on Monday, killing CHP Officer Andre Moye and wounding two of his colleagues, was a “ghost gun” that cannot be traced by authorities, according to law enforcement sources. Investigators have publicly described the gun used in the gun battle only as a rifle, but a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation told The Times that Aaron Luther used an “AR-15-style rifle” in the fatal gun battle. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the case candidly. Ghost guns are unserialized weapons that are manufactured from parts that can be ordered through the mail or are machined parts acquired from underground makers. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been unable to trace the weapon used by Luther, two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation said.
By Dan Mangan
The mystery over Ghislaine Maxwell’s whereabouts deepened Wednesday on a report that the alleged madam for Jeffrey Epstein, an accused child sex trafficker, was holed up in a Massachusetts mansion, as an Epstein accuser filed suit against Maxwell. Hours after The Daily Mail reported that Maxwell was living in tech-firm CEO Scott Borgerson’s mansion in Manchester-by-the-Sea, NBC News reported that a property manager of an adjacent parcel of land said that Maxwell was living at Borgerson’s residence as recently as two weeks ago. Borgenson told NBC, however, “she is not at my home.” He admitted knowing Maxwell. The speculation over Maxwell came as prosecutors and Epstein’s accusers set their sights on her, and on the heels of Epstein’s apparent suicide in jail last Saturday. Before Wednesday’s reports, the most recent indication of Maxwell’s location was in 2017, when her civil lawyers reportedly told a judge she was living in London, but without a firm address there.
After El Paso, the trend is clearly pointing in a disturbing direction.
By Casey Michel
When Dylann Roof, the white supremacist terrorist behind the 2015 Charleston massacre, issued his manifesto, he did so with a specific vision of America in mind. To Roof’s mind, the United States was his country — a white man’s nation, worth reclaiming through horrid bloodshed, done in the name of racial supremacy. To Roof, white supremacists could still conquer their country, even if they made up only a fraction of the population. Ideas that white people in America should pack up and relocate elsewhere were ludicrous to Roof. Movements to cleave part of the country — say, the Pacific Northwest — into a whites-only utopia were anathema to Roof’s endgame. “I think this idea is beyond stupid. Why should I for example, give up the beauty and history of [South Carolina?],” Roof claimed. “The whole idea is pathetic and just another way to run from the problem without facing it.” Fast forward four years, to last weekend. In El Paso, Texas, a white supremacist picked up where Roof left off. In a reprise of the Charleston shooter’s slaughter, the alleged El Paso shooter murdered some 22 individuals at a local Wal-Mart, all in the name of white nationalism. A manifesto purportedly written by the shooter lays out his extremism: how he was specifically targeting Hispanics, how his massacre would help prevent Texas from becoming a Democratic stronghold, how he aimed to end “racial mixing.”
By KATY MURPHY
SACRAMENTO — Civil rights and privacy advocates seeking to ban police from using facial recognition tools on body cam footage made their case on Tuesday by applying the same technology to lawmakers' images. A recent test of the Amazon program Rekognition falsely matched the images of 26 California state lawmakers — more than one in five — to mugshots in a large public database, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said. The test used a minimum confidence threshold of 80 percent. Those 26 lawmakers include Assemblyman Phil Ting, the San Francisco Democrat who is carrying a bill in question, CA AB1215 (19R). “This experiment reinforces the fact that facial recognition software is not ready for prime time — let alone for use in body cameras worn by law enforcement,” Ting said. “I could see innocent Californians subjected to perpetual police lineups because of false matches. We must not allow this to happen.” But Amazon called the ACLU test misleading because the group used the default confidence threshold in the face-matching software. A company spokesperson said the company typically recommends that law enforcement agencies set the threshold at 99 on a 100-point scale — in other words, to return matches only when the system is at least 99 percent certain of their accuracy.
By Sarah Frier
(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work. The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained -- only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. They’re hearing Facebook users’ conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said. Facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users’ audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies. “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the company said Tuesday. The company said the users who were affected chose the option in Facebook’s Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed. The contractors were checking whether Facebook’s artificial intelligence correctly interpreted the messages, which were anonymized. Big tech companies including Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. have come under fire for collecting audio snippets from consumer computing devices and subjecting those clips to human review, a practice that critics say invades privacy. Bloomberg first reported in April that Amazon had a team of thousands of workers around the world listening to Alexa audio requests with the goal of improving the software, and that similar human review was used for Apple’s Siri and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Assistant. Apple and Google have since said they no longer engage in the practice and Amazon said it will let users opt out of human review.
By Pete Williams and David K. Li
James Petrucci has been named acting warden of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where the financier was found unresponsive. The warden of the federal lockup where accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein apparently took his own life has been temporarily reassigned and two guards tasked with watching the financier have been placed on leave, Department of Justice officials said Tuesday. The move to reassign the warden, Shirley Skipper-Scott, came three days after Epstein was found unresponsive at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. "Today, the Attorney General directed the Bureau of Prisons to temporarily assign the warden at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York to the Bureau’s Northeast Regional Office pending the outcome of the FBI and OIG investigations into the apparent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, a former MCC inmate," according to a statement by Department of Justice spokesperson Kerri Kupec.
The stock market is very happy about signs of surrender.
By Matthew Yglesias
President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday morning that he was going to delay implementation of looming taxes on a broad set of Chinese-made goods and sent the stock market soaring. Just one week ago, financial markets were heading in the opposite direction as his administration officially designated China as a currency manipulator. In both cases, the literal implications of the policy changes are modest. Instead, the market reaction seems to be about reading the tea leaves as to Trump’s longer-term intentions. Designating China as a currency manipulator had no automatic consequences for policy in Washington or Beijing. It was simply seen as an escalating move and a sign of hardening hearts, an indication that Trump’s fans in the business community might not be getting the pre-election climbdown from trade war that they craved. Conversely, delaying the tariffs on a portion of the scheduled-for-tariffing products by a few months does not have a particularly large direct impact on the American economy. Stocks went up instead largely because it was seen as a sign that the previous signs of escalation in the trade negotiations had been read wrongly. Trump seems to remain attuned to stock market signals and nervous about indications that global financial markets don’t like trade confrontation. That gives investors reason to believe that Trump ultimately won’t push trade war to the limits, and that sent markets soaring. The fact that Trump climbed down in the midst of increasing international attention to escalating protests and crackdowns in Hong Kong gives Chinese leaders a timely propaganda win. But critically, nothing in the vast US-China trade dispute docket has actually been resolved. Trump just blinked a little bit in a mutually harmful conflict that has no obvious endpoint.
By Tucker Higgins
Democratic presidential contenders rolled out new gun control plans in the wake of two mass shootings earlier this month in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. But one contender, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, has diagnosed the problem as part of an “industrial-strength influence campaign” from conservative advocacy groups on the Republican-appointed justices of the Supreme Court — and is making the argument to the judges themselves. The New York lawmaker this week signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief in a high-profile Second Amendment case over now-defunct New York City laws and regulations, urging the justices to drop the matter. The brief was also signed by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Dick Durbin, the Democratic whip, of Illinois.
By Devan Cole, CNN
Washington (CNN)The acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services in a new interview revised the iconic poem on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal to suggest that only immigrants who can "stand on their own two feet" are welcome in the United States. Ken Cuccinelli tweaked the famous poem from Emma Lazarus -- whose words, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" are long associated with immigration to the US and the nation's history as a haven -- as part of a case for strict new measures pushed Monday by the Trump administration that could dramatically change the legal immigration system. "Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus's words etched on the Statue of Liberty, 'Give me your tired, give me your poor,' are also a part of the American ethos?" NPR's Rachel Martin asked Cuccinelli on "Morning Edition" in an interview published Tuesday. "They certainly are: 'Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,'" he replied. "That plaque was put on the Statue of Liberty at almost the same time as the first public charge was passed -- very interesting timing." On Monday, the Trump administration announced a regulation that makes it easier to reject green card and visa applications. The new rule means many green card and visa applicants could be turned down if they have low incomes or little education, and have used benefits such as most forms of Medicaid, food stamps, and housing vouchers, because they'd be deemed more likely to need government assistance in the future. Cuccinelli has defended the changes, writing in a CNN op-ed published Tuesday that "self-sufficiency has been a core tenet of the American dream."
CBS News has learned that the morning of Jeffrey Epstein's death there was shouting and shrieking from his jail cell. Guards attempted to revive him while saying "breathe, Epstein, breathe." Congress is the latest to start investigating Epstein's apparent suicide over the weekend, with new reports raising questions about the federal jail where he was being held. One of Epstein's guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the night he died was reportedly not a regular corrections officer. On Monday, Attorney General William Barr criticized the detention center where the disgraced financier was held. "We will get to the bottom of what happened and there will be accountability," Barr said. "I was appalled and frankly angry to learn of the MCC's failure to adequately secure this prisoner." Government investigators raided the alleged sex trafficker's private island in the Virgin Islands Monday. With Epstein gone, potential co-conspirators involved in his alleged sex-trafficking network are shifting into focus. British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is one of four women accused of recruiting underage girls for sex. She's denied those claims in the past and has not been charged with a crime. Maxwell is said to be Epstein's ex-girlfriend turned business associate. Her current location is unknown. "She was more of a partner in his obsession, really," said Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown, who spent more than two years looking into Epstein's controversial 2008 plea deal. "And there are allegations that she was involved in having sex with some of these girls as well." Court documents from 2011 reveal Epstein controlled several apartments in a building just blocks from his $77 million New York townhouse and allegedly housed "underage girls from all over the world."
By Eric Levenson, CNN
(CNN) - Jeffrey Epstein's death ends the criminal case against him, but his powerful friends and associates may not have heard the last of it. US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman said the investigation of Epstein's alleged conduct, including a conspiracy charge, remains ongoing, and Attorney General Bill Barr similarly said the case will continue against anyone who was complicit with Epstein. "Any co-conspirators should not rest easy. The victims deserve justice and they will get it," Barr said. In addition, Epstein's accusers asked a federal judge on Monday to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement that Epstein reached with prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office in Florida a decade ago, which would give authorities "greater power" to go after his alleged co-conspirators. Given that ongoing investigation, CNN took a look at the notable figures connected to Epstein who have been named in sworn testimony, as well as the major political figures with ties to him.
By Asher Stockler
The donor behind a multi-million dollar lawsuit accusing the National Rifle Association (NRA) of fraud and financial malfeasance told Newsweek the gun rights group's criticisms of his legal action are little more than bluster. In response to news of NRA donor David Dell'Aquila's lawsuit, the organization's outside counsel, William A. Brewer III, said in a written statement to Newsweek that "the lawsuit is totally without merit." Dell'Aquila filed what could become a class action claim in federal court on Tuesday alleging that the NRA is misrepresenting to donors how it uses their contributions. The suit further accused top NRA officials of financial improprieties, the result of months of reporting on the group's spendthrift attitude towards its most high-profile employee, CEO Wayne LaPierre.
By Asher Stockler
A widening inquiry into the National Rifle Association (NRA) and multi-million dollar class-action litigation against its leadership have thrown the already beleaguered gun-rights group and its tax-exempt status into further peril. Among the recent developments that have ratcheted up the pressure: the New York State Department of Financial Services is reportedly opening a probe into the NRA's now-defunct Carry Guard insurance product, which purported to insure gun owners when they kill another individual. The NRA is believed to have pulled the product after inquiries by regulators in several states. Now New York's financial regulator is taking a second look, according to The New York Post. The inquiry reportedly involves kickbacks that the NRA is alleged to have received for facilitating the purchase of insurance policies. The NRA is not licensed to provide or market insurance policies and their involvement in the development of insurance services could run afoul of state law. A memorandum issued by the Department of Financial Services in 2006 concluded that a non-licensed entity can only provide insurance referrals "if there is no discussion of specific insurance policy terms and conditions" and if "compensation for the referral is not based upon purchase of insurance." It is unclear whether the NRA could be considered a referrer under their relationship with insurance companies. A 2018 consent order required insurers to stop offering Carry Guard to New York State residents on the basis that the NRA had no lawful role in the marketing or solicitation of insurance policies. The Post's report indicated that the NRA received $14 million dollars connected with their insurance marketing activities, which could constitute kickbacks and breach state law. New York regulators are also reportedly looking at the NRA's offering of inducements to prospective policyholders, which New York insurance rules forbid.
By Matt Stieb
Following the shooting at an El Paso Walmart that left 22 people dead last weekend, the nation renewed its focus on the threat of white supremacy. While, thankfully, there were no additional large-scale incidents in the U.S., multiple reports in recent days have underscored the serious threat posed by white nationalist violence. On Friday, Conor Climo, a 23-year-old security guard who had discussed attacking a synagogue, was arrested after law enforcement found bomb-making materials in his Las Vegas home in addition to an AR-15, a bolt-action rifle, and a drawing of an attack on a gay bar. The man had also allegedly been in contact with a neo-Nazi group via the encrypted chat service Discord, a group he ultimately left after becoming “bored” with “their inaction,” according to federal prosecutors, who also detailed his plan to “mobilize an eight-man sniper platoon to conduct a shooting attack on Jewish people either at a Las Vegas synagogue or any other area of opportunity.” A couple thousand miles away, in Winter Park, Florida, a white supremacist was arrested on Friday for threatening to shoot up a Walmart. In addition to a manifesto espousing white-nationalist views and anti-immigrant rhetoric, 26-year-old Richard Clayton reportedly posted on Facebook: “3 more days of probation left then I get my AR-15 back. Don’t go to Walmart next week.” Despite the threat, he was not on probation.
By Ed Kilgore
There has been a lot of discussion in political circles about Donald Trump’s job-approval ratings, what they portend, and Trump’s Electoral College strategy for 2020, which doesn’t necessarily require a popular-vote plurality. But in the end, of course, the conjunction of the Electoral College with Trump’s state-by-state popularity is where the deal will go down. The online polling firm Civiqs has published a new set of state-by-state job-approval ratings for Trump as of August 11, and it shows how the president’s overall standing (a 43 percent approval rating nationally, which happens to match the current RealClearPolitics polling average) might translate into electorate votes. It’s not a pretty picture for the president, to put it mildly. Civiqs shows the president’s net approval ratios being underwater (i.e., negative) in 10 states he carried in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. If that were to represent how the 2020 elections turn out, Trump would have a booming 119 electoral votes. And it’s not as though he’s on a knife’s edge between victory and defeat in all these Trump 2016 states where he’s doing poorly: He’s underwater by 12 points in Pennsylvania, 11 in Michigan, and nine in Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. And there’s virtually no indication that states that narrowly went for Clinton in 2016 are trending in Trump’s direction: His approval ratios are minus 18 in Colorado, minus 15 in Minnesota, minus 12 in Nevada, and minus 27 in New Hampshire. These are, by the way, polls of registered voters, not just “adults,” so they should be a relatively sound reflection of the views of the electorate.
By Margaret Hartmann
Court documents unsealed on Friday shed new light on Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s claim that when she was underage, she was forced to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as with Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, and “many other powerful men, including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders,” as it states in a formerly sealed 2017 opinion by late U.S. district judge Robert Sweet. The thousands of pages of documents unsealed in New York today are from Giuffre’s federal defamation case against Epstein’s alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, which was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2017. So far, the documents’ revelations about the current U.S. president are not damning — nor do they “totally exonerate” Trump, as some of his supporters are claiming on Twitter. Here’s the new information we’ve learned about Trump and his ties to Epstein, who is awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
(CNN) - Anthony Scaramucci seems to have finally learned a very, very important lesson about President Donald Trump: If you stick around long enough, he will turn on you. Always. "For the last 3 years I have fully supported this President," tweeted the former White House communications director about his onetime boss and longtime friend. "Recently he has said things that divide the country in a way that is unacceptable. So I didn't pass the 100% litmus test. Eventually he turns on everyone and soon it will be you and then the entire country." "Eventually he turns on everyone." That might seem like an exaggeration made by a disgruntled former friend. It's not. For a man whose life has been defined, in large part, by his open embrace of his inconsistencies and contradictions, one of the very few things Donald Trump has been consistent about is that he goes from love to loathing quickly. If you are close to him (unless you are a member of his immediate family) you are on the clock. It's only a matter of time before he tires of you -- and turns on you. Consider these names (and this is far from a complete list): Michael Cohen, Omarosa Manigault Newman, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, John Kelly, Paul Ryan, Cliff Sims, Donald McGahn, Chris Christie and Scaramucci. All were once close to Trump. All were once publicly praised by Trump. And all are now on the outs with him, the result -- in virtually every circumstance -- of Trump finding fault with them, whether in how they were performing the job he had tasked them with or in how they defended him (or didn't) at all costs.
By James B. Stewart
Almost exactly a year ago, on Aug. 16, 2018, I visited Jeffrey Epstein at his cavernous Manhattan mansion. The overriding impression I took away from our roughly 90-minute conversation was that Mr. Epstein knew an astonishing number of rich, famous and powerful people, and had photos to prove it. He also claimed to know a great deal about these people, some of it potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use. So one of my first thoughts on hearing of Mr. Epstein’s suicide was that many prominent men and at least a few women must be breathing sighs of relief that whatever Mr. Epstein knew, he has taken it with him. During our conversation, Mr. Epstein made no secret of his own scandalous past — he’d pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from underage girls and was a registered sex offender — and acknowledged to me that he was a pariah in polite society. At the same time, he seemed unapologetic. His very notoriety, he said, was what made so many people willing to confide in him. Everyone, he suggested, has secrets and, he added, compared with his own, they seemed innocuous. People confided in him without feeling awkward or embarrassed, he claimed.
US President Donald Trump's administration is to make it more difficult for poorer legal migrants to extend their visas or gain permanent resident status (a green card). The rule targets migrants who rely on public benefits, such as food aid or public housing, for more than a year. Their applications will be rejected if the government decides they are likely to rely on public assistance in future. The rule change would reinforce "ideals of self-sufficiency," officials said. The new regulation, known as a "public charge rule", was published in the Federal Register on Monday and will take effect on 15 October. Who will be affected? Immigrants who are already permanent residents in the US are unlikely to be affected by the rule change. It also does not apply to refugees and asylum applicants. But applicants for visa extensions, green cards or US citizenship will be subject to the change. Those who do not meet income standards or who are deemed likely to rely on benefits such as Medicaid (government-run healthcare) or housing vouchers in future may be blocked from entering the country.
By ERIC GELLER
LAS VEGAS — Democratic lawmakers emerged from the world’s largest hacker conference this weekend with a clear message: Congress must pass legislation to mandate better U.S. election security. In panels and interviews at DEF CON in Las Vegas, where a roomful of hackers demonstrated ways to breach insecure voting machines, those lawmakers focused their fury on the man proudly blocking their bills. “Why hasn’t Congress fixed the problem? Two words: Mitch McConnell,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said during a Friday keynote address to a packed and largely supportive room at DEF CON’s Voting Village. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), one of a handful of computer scientists in Congress, told POLITICO that when it came to his biggest election security concern, “I have two words: Mitch McConnell.” The Senate majority leader has repeatedly blocked votes in the upper chamber on two House Democratic bills that would require voting machines to produce paper records, mandate post-election audits and impose security requirements on election technology companies. Election security experts overwhelmingly say these provisions are vital for protecting the democratic process. But McConnell has argued repeatedly that states, not the federal government, should decide how to run their elections. It’s “stupid to have the view that states have the right to have poor election security,” Lieu told POLITICO.
By Dean Obeidallah
We know the president prefers white people. But a look at the percentages on his appointments gives new meaning to the phrase “White House.” After the 2014 midterm election, there was a sense the GOP was becoming a more racially diverse party when African-American Tim Scott won a seat to the U.S. Senate from South Carolina and Will Hurd and Mia Love were both elected to the House. Even NPR noted then about these historic victories that the Republican Party seemed to be “building momentum for diversifying the GOP ranks.” Those days are long gone. There are currently five times as many Republicans in the House named Jim as there are black Republicans in that chamber. And it’s about to get worse. Will Hurd, the only black Republican currently in the House, announced last week he was retiring. Before that, in 2018, Mia Love was defeated and then mocked by Donald Trump, “Mia Love gave me no love and she lost," adding tauntingly, "Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia." That means unless another black Republican wins a congressional race in 2020, there will be zero on the GOP side of the aisle in the 435-seat House and only in the one in the Senate. Add to that, of the 27 current GOP state governors, none are black or Hispanic.
By Kate Smith
Nashville — After struggling to pass a six-week abortion ban earlier this year, Tennessee lawmakers are now considering one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country: a total ban on the procedure. On Monday and Tuesday, the state's judiciary committee will hear testimony from more than  20 witnesses and debate an 11-page amendment to its stalled "fetal heartbeat" bill. If the changes are adopted, the legislation will ban abortion once a woman knows she's pregnant. The committee, which has seven Republicans and two Democrats, is expected to accept the changes. The amended bill would be put up for a vote in January 2020, when the legislature reconvenes.
After El Paso, the trend is clearly pointing in a disturbing direction.
by Casey Michel
When Dylann Roof, the white supremacist terrorist behind the 2015 Charleston massacre, issued his manifesto, he did so with a specific vision of America in mind. To Roof’s mind, the United States. was his country — a white man’s nation, worth reclaiming through horrid bloodshed, done in the name of racial supremacy. To Roof, white supremacists could still conquer their country, even if they made up only a fraction of the population. Ideas that white people in America should pack up and relocate elsewhere were ludicrous to Roof. Movements to cleave part of the country — say, the Pacific Northwest — into a whites-only utopia were anathema to Roof’s endgame. “I think this idea is beyond stupid. Why should I for example, give up the beauty and history of [South Carolina?],” Roof claimed. “The whole idea is pathetic and just another way to run from the problem without facing it.” Fast forward four years, to last weekend. In El Paso, Texas, a white supremacist picked up where Roof left off. In a reprise of the Charleston shooter’s slaughter, the alleged El Paso shooter murdered some 22 individuals at a local Wal-Mart, all in the name of white nationalism. A manifesto purportedly written by the shooter lays out his extremism: how he was specifically targeting Hispanics, how his massacre would help prevent Texas from becoming a Democratic stronghold, how he aimed to end “racial mixing.”
They apparently don't remember how well it went for them last time.
Casey Michel
The backlash to the Trump administration caging immigrant children has led to store owners asking White House officials to not eat in their restaurants and to protesters publicly confronting those supporting Trump’s policies. Now, voices on the far-right are increasingly unified in their only solution to the matter: civil war. While several far-right figures have been speculating about a looming U.S. break-up for some time, recent rhetoric is a marked escalation from even a few months ago, when certain historical illiterates were only calling for an “amicable divorce.” Now, according to increasingly shrill analysts — and even certain members of Congress — a fratricidal war is the only potential fix for the United States’ domestic tensions. Glenn Reynolds, known colloquially as “Instapundit,” led the charge with a piece in USA Today earlier this week. Pointing to White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders being denied service in Virginia and protesters identifying Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant, Reynolds claimed that the administration officials’ inability to eat at certain restaurants was a sign that civil war was well underway.
By Priscilla Alvarez, Geneva Sands and Tami Luhby, CNN
Washington (CNN) - The Trump administration released a regulation Monday that could dramatically cut the number of legal immigrants allowed to enter and stay in the US by making it easier to reject green card and visa applications. Paired with last week's enforcement raids on food processing plants in Mississippi, Monday's announcement amounts to a concerted effort by the administration to limit legal immigration and crack down on illegal immigration.
The rule means many green card and visa applicants could be turned down if they have low incomes or little education, and have used benefits such as most forms of Medicaid, food stamps, and housing vouchers, because they'd be deemed more likely to need government assistance in the future. It will encourage "self-reliance and self-sufficiency for those seeking to come to or stay in the United States," said acting US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli, appearing in the White House briefing room. In doing so, though, it'll likely make it harder for low-income immigrants to come to the US. When asked about whether the rule is unfairly targeting low-income immigrants, Cuccinelli said: "We certainly expect people of any income to be able to stand on their own two feet, so if people are not able to be self-sufficient, than this negative factor is going to bear very heavily against them in a decision about whether they'll be able to become a legal permanent resident. " The 837-page rule applies to those seeking to come to or remain in the United States via legal channels and is expected to impact roughly 383,000 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
By David Shortell, CNN
New Orleans (CNN) - Attorney General William Barr said investigators are learning of "serious irregularities" at the New York jail where accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was found dead of an apparent suicide over the weekend. "We are now learning of serious irregularities at this facility that are deeply concerning and demand a thorough investigation," Barr told a national policing conference in New Orleans on Monday morning. Barr said he was "appalled" and "angry" to learn of the Metropolitan Correctional Center's "failure to adequately secure this prisoner." Barr announced on Saturday that the FBI and the Justice Department's internal watchdog would investigate Epstein's death.
By Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
The Trump administration announced Monday a major overhaul to the Endangered Species Act in a way it says will reduce regulations, but environmentalists say will push more animals and plants to extinction because of threats from climate change and human activities. The changes end blanket protections for animals newly deemed threatened and allow federal authorities for the first time to take into account the economic cost of protecting a particular species. The Endangered Species Act now protects more than 1,600 species in the United States and its territories. “The best way to uphold the Endangered Species Act is to do everything we can to ensure it remains effective in achieving its ultimate goal – recovery of our rarest species,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt said in a statement.  “The act’s effectiveness rests on clear, consistent and efficient implementation.” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said “the revisions finalized with this rulemaking fit squarely within the president’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species’ protection and recovery goals."
By Ken Dilanian
The FBI Agents Association wants one. Civil liberties groups have expressed opposition, fearing federal overreach and infringement on free speech. WASHINGTON — The news that the alleged El Paso shooter appears to have acted out of a belief in a violent white supremacist ideology has renewed calls for a federal law criminalizing "domestic terrorism." But what exactly would that entail? Although "domestic terrorism" is defined in the Patriot Act of 2001, there is no specific federal crime covering acts of terrorism inside the U.S. that are not connected to al Qaeda, ISIS, other officially designated international terror groups or their sympathizers. For some time, the FBI Agents Association and some former federal officials have been advocating for one, even as the Justice Department has spent years mulling over the matter internally. For just as long, civil liberties groups have expressed opposition, fearing federal overreach and infringement on free speech. "This may sound good, but it isn't," tweeted Hina Shamsi, who directs the ACLU's National Security Project. "FBI officials want more power than they need to investigate & prosecute white supremacist violence, ignoring or downplaying resulting harms to communities of color, Bill of Rights."
By Jessica Bursztynsky
Republican Sen. Rick Scott told CNBC on Monday the U.S. government should return money collected from China tariffs to Americans as tax relief. “Anything we raise in tariffs, we should give back to the rank and public in tax reductions,” the Florida senator said in a “Squawk Box ” interview, acknowledging there’s been some “short-term pain.” “We have to help American farmers open up more markets around the world,” said Scott, who did not elaborate on what such relief might look like. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which collects taxes on imports, showed the U.S. had assessed $23.7 billion in tariffs from early 2018 through May 1. According to a Reuters report, total tariff revenue rose 73% in the first half of 2019 from a year earlier. The trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies has been escalating in recent months, with investors fearing that it could slow global and U.S. economic growth. In fact, Goldman Sachs lowered its fourth-quarter U.S. growth forecast by 0.2% to 1.8%, with the cumulative drag on gross domestic product of 0.6%.
By GABBY ORR
A Trump-supporting West Virginia state senator who represents many evangelicals got three phone calls from constituents complaining about Trump’s profanity after a recent rally. Paul Hardesty didn’t pay much attention to President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Greenville, N.C., last month until a third concerned constituent rang his cell phone. The residents of Hardesty’s district — he’s a Trump-supporting West Virginia state senator — were calling to complain that Trump was “using the Lord’s name in vain,” as Hardesty recounted. “The third phone call is when I actually went and watched his speech because each of them sounded distraught,” said Hardesty, who describes himself as a conservative Democrat. Here’s what he would have seen. Trump crowing, “they'll be hit so goddamn hard,” while bragging about bombing Islamic State militants. And Trump recounting his warning to a wealthy businessman: “If you don't support me, you're going to be so goddamn poor.” To most of America, the comments went unnoticed. Instead, the nation was gripped after the rally by the moment when a “send her back” chant broke out as Trump went after Somali-born Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, an American citizen. But some Trump supporters were more fixated on the casual use of the word “goddamn” — an off-limits term for many Christians — not to mention the numerous other profanities laced throughout the rest of the speech.
Acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner Mark Morgan said there are investigations the public is “unaware of.”
By Riley Beggin
Acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner Mark Morgan dodged questions about reports of undocumented workers at Trump Organization properties Sunday morning. On CNN’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper asked Morgan why Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which Morgan led until early July — hadn’t conducted any raids or investigations into Trump’s eight properties given reports that the clubs and hotels employ undocumented people. “You really can’t say that for sure,” Morgan said. “There are investigations going on all the time that you’re unaware of. ... Of course it’s going to jeopardize the investigation if I come on here and I talk to you about an investigation that’s going on.”
by Ryan Lucas
Former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig goes on trial Monday for alleged false statements connected to work he did on behalf of powerful interests in Ukraine. Craig, a top attorney in Democratic political circles who worked for two Democratic presidents, was indicted in April on two counts of providing false statements to the Justice Department related to his Ukraine work. The judge presiding over the case threw out one of those counts last week, but Craig will still go to trial on the single remaining count. The case against Craig, who has pleaded not guilty, was born out of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. During its investigation, Mueller's team uncovered evidence of alleged wrongdoing by Craig, but referred the material to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia for prosecution. It is one of several cases to emerge from the Mueller inquiry that allege violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The law, known as FARA, requires that people doing political or public relations work in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign entity disclose that fact. It is illegal to willfully not register or to provide false or misleading statements to the Justice Department's FARA unit.
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
Washington (CNN) - It is no longer surprising when President Donald Trump fuels a conspiracy theory online, as he did over the weekend with regard to the apparent suicide of multimillionaire financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. This is the man who built a political career by fanning the fringe of American politics with fevered insinuations or allegations, including, but not limited to the baseless theories that:

   Barack Obama wasn't born in the US
   A rival's father was in on the John F. Kennedy assassination
   The 2016 presidential election was rigged against him even though he won
   Millions voted illegally for Hillary Clinton
   The US government spied on his campaign
   There's a deep state of bureaucrats organized against him
   The special counsel appointed by his Justice Department was actually a witch hunt organized by Democrats

He's done a bang-up job on Twitter using the term "fake news" as a weapon against media organizations that deal in reporting and fact. And the ultimate irony is that he so often misleads his followers with fiction. His latest trip into fantasy comes after the death of Epstein in a federal jail cell in New York.
(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) said on Sunday that fears of the U.S.-China trade war leading to a recession are increasing and that Goldman no longer expects a trade deal between the world’s two largest economies before the 2020 U.S. presidential election. “We expect tariffs targeting the remaining $300bn of US imports from China to go into effect,” the bank said in a note sent to clients. U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Aug. 1 that he would impose a 10% tariff on a final $300 billion worth of Chinese imports on Sept. 1, prompting China to halt purchases of U.S. agricultural products. The United States also declared China a currency manipulator. China denies that it has manipulated the yuan for competitive gain. The year-long trade dispute has revolved around issues such as tariffs, subsidies, technology, intellectual property and cyber security, among others. Goldman Sachs said it lowered its fourth-quarter U.S. growth forecast by 20 basis points to 1.8% on a larger than expected impact from the developments in the trade tensions.
By Chris Mills Rodrigo
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci told Axios on Sunday that Republicans may need to find a candidate to replace President Trump in 2020. "We are now in the early episodes of 'Chernobyl' on HBO, where the reactor is melting down and the apparatchiks are trying to figure out whether to cover it up or start the clean-up process," Scaramucci, who was ousted from his job after 11 days, told the outlet. "A couple more weeks like this and 'country over party' is going to require the Republicans to replace the top of the ticket in 2020," he said. Scaramucci, a prominent Republican donor, said that if Trump "doesn't reform his behavior, it will not just be me, but many others will be considering helping to find a replacement in 2020." "Right now, it's an unspeakable thing," he continued. "But if he keeps it up, it will no longer be unspeakable. The minute they start speaking of it, it will circulate and be socialized. We can't afford a full nuclear contamination site post 2020." Scaramucci's comments to Axios follow him last week calling Trump's visit to El Paso, Texas, to meet with survivors of a mass shooting a "catastrophe."
London -- The death of Jeffrey Epstein is putting new attention on his alleged co-conspirators, who could still face charges. The number one person on that list is Ghislaine Maxwell, who's accused of finding teenage girls for Epstein and his friends -- including a member of Britain's royal family. As CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports, documents unsealed on Friday contain allegations that Maxwell, a close acquaintance of Epstein's, played an "important role" in the late billionaire financier's "sexual abuse ring," directing an underage girl to have sex with Epstein and others. Maxwell strenuously denies the allegations. Her current whereabouts are unknown. "There are multiple victims who claim that Ghislaine Maxwell was a personal participant in recruiting them for Jeffrey Epstein, that she assisted in the scheduling of appointments, multiple victims being delivered to Epstein on a daily basis over an extended period of time," attorney Jack Scarola, who has represented several of Epstein's alleged victims, told CBS News. "There are allegations that Miss Maxwell was an active participant in the sexual abuse." Maxwell has been described as Epstein's ex-girlfriend and assistant -- his "best friend," according to Epstein, and a socialite who helped connect him with the wealthy and famous.
By Danielle McLean
The veto is just the latest sign that GOP leaders want to control the map-making process. New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed a bipartisan bill Friday that would have allowed an independent redistricting committee to redraw the state’s legislative and congressional district maps in 2021 and beyond. The veto is just the latest sign that Republican Party leaders want to control the map-making process and preserve a system that allowed them to racially and politically gerrymander at historic proportions in several GOP-controlled states the last time district lines were redrawn in 2011. But supporters of the bill say the veto could actually backfire on New Hampshire Republicans, currently in the minority party in the state’s legislature. Sununu is up for re-election in 2020. “With his veto, the governor is throwing out a plan that would ensure Republicans are treated fairly in the next round of redistricting even if Democrats do well in next year’s elections,” said Yurij Rudensky, a counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s democracy program who advised New Hampshire legislators on the bill.
Are Trump and his traitorous enablers modern-day McCarthyists?
By Matthew Rozsa
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't like it when you call him #MoscowMitch. He hates it so much that he'll accuse you of being a McCarthyist for doing so. If the accusation was untrue — that is, if McConnell, President Donald Trump and other Republicans weren't empowering Russia at the expense of America for their personal benefit — then #MoscowMitch and talk of collusion in Trump's 2016 presidential campaign would be unfair, even unjust. As the facts currently stand, however, it is a perfectly fair label. They still are not McCarthyist, though, because McCarthyism wasn't really about hating Russia — it was about hating liberals. A quick history lesson. Joseph McCarthy was a United States senator from Wisconsin who served between 1947 and 1957. His political heyday, however, lasted from 1950 to 1954. On February 9, 1950, he delivered an infamous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia in which he claimed without evidence that he had "a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department." Notice that he did not say "Russians" or "traitors to Russia." This isn't because the Soviet Union (the empire controlled by Russia during the bulk of the 20th century) wasn't America's primary geopolitical enemy at the time, or that there wasn't a valid and widespread fear of that nation. Rather it is because the assumption wasn't simply that people would betray America to Russia, but that they would do so because the Soviet Union's authoritarian left-wing ideology was being conflated with all forms of liberalism. When McCarthy warned of "Communists," he was using a dog whistle to vilify anyone whose beliefs were to the left of what he and his supporters deemed acceptable.
By Bess Levin
The president is fine with an immigrant “invasion” when it’s benefitting him financially. Demonizing immigrants played a key role in Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency, just as cracking down on “illegal” border crossings and whipping the base into a frenzy over a so-called migrant “invasion” has been a regular feature of his time in office and reelection efforts. But undocumented immigrants have also served another, lesser known but nevertheless vital function in the president’s life: providing cheap labor at his businesses. And not just, like, in years past, or in the first few months of his presidency, but as of—what’s that now?—today. Yes, it’s a tough job to foam at the mouth daily about people entering the country without going through the proper channels first, use it to justify separating families and sending people back to nations they’ve never known—all the while relying on them to keep your golf clubs running—but somebody’s got to do it! The Washington Post reports that the Trump Organization currently employs a “roving crew of Latin American employees” to perform masonry and maintenance work at his winery and various golf clubs around the country. For almost two decades, the group has been comprised of workers who came into the US illegally—the penalty for which the president seemingly believes should be death—according to two former crew members. Another one, who still works for Trump, told reporters Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold that remains the case today. President Trump “doesn’t want undocumented people in the country,” said Jorge Castro, an Ecuadorian immigrant without legal status who left the company last spring after nine years. “But at his properties, he still has them.” He added: “If you’re a good worker, papers don’t matter.”
By Luke Darby
The same anxiety that drives white supremacists has motivated Republicans to disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them. Before he opened fire on an El Paso, Texas shopping center, killing 22 people and injuring dozens more, the accused gunman, Patrick Crusius, allegedly posted a manifesto online explicitly stating his motivation: he was trying to stop a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. In April, another shooter attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one woman and wounding three other people. In his a “manifesto” attributed to him, he claimed he was responding to the “meticulously planned genocide of the European race”. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 2018, still another shooter attacked a synagogue that he chose deliberately because the congregation helped with refugee relocation. He wrote online that they were trying to “bring invaders in that kill our people”. The man who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this year, called immigration an “assault on the European people”.. All of these shooters were obsessed with the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, sometimes referred to as “white genocide”. It’s the idea that shadowy elites – usually Jewish, almost always liberal – are orchestrating the destruction of white culture through demographic change. The theory goes that white culture will be eroded mainly through migration and birthrates: more people of color are arriving in majority white counties, the ones already there are having more and more babies, and birthrates are declining for the soon-to-be-oppressed white people.
By Gene Demby
In September of 1885, a mob of about 150 white men, armed with rifles, descended upon the Chinatown in Rock Springs, Wyo. They issued an ultimatum to the people who lived there: you have an hour to leave town. The assembled horde was angry at Chinese laborers in the region, who they blamed for keeping the choicest mining areas and depressing their wages. They felt that the Chinese were working the choicest areas of the coal mines, the part that would yield the most coal and thus the most compensation. The Chinese, they felt, were taking what was rightfully theirs. The ultimatum was a formality: the mob had surrounded the neighborhood to make sure there was no easy way to escape, and they didn't even wait the full hour. The mob rushed in, shooting wildly — the beginning of what would become a full-on pogrom. Some of the Chinese survivors would later issue an account of what happened to the Chinese consul in New York City: "Some of the rioters, when they could not stop a Chinese, would shoot him dead on the spot, and then search and rob him. Some would-overtake a Chinese, throw him down and search and rob him before they would let him go. Some of the rioters would not fire their weapons, but would only use the butt ends to beat the Chinese with. Some would not beat a Chinese, but rob him of whatever he had and let him go, yelling to him to go quickly. Some, who took no part either in beating or robbing the Chinese, stood by, shouting loudly and laughing and clapping their hands." By the time the riot ended several hours later, 28 Chinese people were dead.
By David Jackson, USA TODAY
BEDMINSTER, N.J. – Democratic presidential candidates blasted President Donald Trump on Sunday for re-tweeting a no-evidence conspiracy theory seeking to link Jeffrey Epstein's death to predecessor Bill Clinton. “This is another example of our President using this position of public trust to attack his political enemies with unfounded conspiracy theories," Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke said on CNN's "State of the Union." Another presidential candidate, Cory Booker, told CNN that Trump is "whipping people up into anger and worse" and added that “this is a very dangerous president that we have right now." There is no evidence at all linking Clinton to Epstein's death Saturday by suicide, yet Trump on Saturday night re-tweeted the comments of a Twitter user named Terrence K. Williams:
Maxwell is a former longtime member of Jeffrey Epstein's inner circle. He once called her his "best friend." The apparent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, who was found unresponsive Saturday morning in his federal jail cell, is the latest stunning development in the case against the once-powerful financier on charges of sex trafficking. His death came hours after the release of 2,000 pages of court documents, part of a related lawsuit, that revealed allegations that Epstein and a former longtime member of his inner circle, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, ordered a teenage girl to have sex with high-powered men. The U.S. prosecutor in Manhattan, where Epstein was held pending trial, said Saturday that the investigation into the charges in the indictment against him, including one count of conspiracy, will continue. One person who could come under a greater focus is Maxwell. Daughter of the late publishing mogul Robert Maxwell, she was a close friend and confidante of Epstein's after they were first romantically linked in the early 1990s, according to reports. Her name resurfaced Friday after the release of the cache of court papers relating to a 2015 federal defamation lawsuit filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Maxwell.
By David Jackson, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump's latest Twitter battle is with one of his most famous former aides: Anthony Scaramucci, aka "the Mooch." Responding to a Trump attack of the previous night, Scaramucci warned Sunday that Trump will likely turn on the whole country just as he has turned on him. "For the last 3 years I have fully supported this President," Scramamucci wrote. "Recently he has said things that divide the country in a way that is unacceptable. So I didn’t pass the 100% litmus test." He added: "Eventually he turns on everyone and soon it will be you and then the entire country." For the last 3 years I have fully supported this President. Recently he has said things that divide the country in a way that is unacceptable. So I didn’t pass the 100% litmus test. Eventually he turns on everyone and soon it will be you and then the entire country. https://t.co/BUvwujc6LW — Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) August 11, 2019. In a pair of tweets late Saturday night, Trump noted that Scaramucci served an infamous 11 days in 2017 as White House communications director, and "now seems to do nothing but television as the all time expert on 'President Trump.'"
By Ben Kamisar
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., says the administration's actions on immigration have made "whole populations" fearful.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., accused the Trump administration of waging a "campaign of terror" against minority communities in America, pointing specifically to the recent Mississippi food processing plant raids that picked up 680 suspected undocumented workers. Noting that the raids last week arrested predominately Latino workers, the Democratic presidential hopeful said she believes Hispanics feel targeted in America. In an exclusive interview with "Meet the Press," Harris also questioned why the raids occurred so close to last weekend's mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, the largest targeted attack on Latinos in modern American history. "We must point out and never condone anyone who uses their power in a way that fans it. But the reality is that these are forms of hate that are not new to our country, which have in the history of our country taken lethal proportion, and, still today, take on lethal proportion," she said. "This administration has directed DHS to conduct these raids as part of what I believe is this administration's campaign of terror, which is to make whole populations of people afraid to go to work," Harris said. "Children are afraid to go to school for fear that when they come home, their parents won’t be there.”
By Mary Papenfuss
Trump “turns on everyone, and soon it will be you and then the entire country,” cautioned the president’s former pal. President Donald Trump’s short-time communications director and one-time pal Anthony Scaramucci attacked him on Twitter Saturday with a chilling warning: that the commander in chief will eventually “turn” on the “entire country.” Trump had lashed Scaramucci on Twitter earlier for his former friend’s criticism of him. Scaramucci, who served as White House communications director for less than two weeks in 2017, has called Trump’s attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color earlier this summer “racist and unacceptable.” Scaramucci also said on MSNBC’s Hardball Thursday night that Trump’s self-centered appearances in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, were a “catastrophe.” Trump mocked Scaramucci in a tweet for posing as an “all time expert on President Trump,” adding that “he knows very little about me.” He said Scaramucci would “do anything” to “come back in” to the White House.
By Marlow Stern
The “Real Time” host wasn’t buying the Fox News blowhard’s outrageous claim in the wake of the El Paso massacre. “What a shitty week, right?” announced Bill Maher. “Poor El Paso and Dayton, still reeling from two disasters: a mass shooting and a Trump visit.” The comedian kicked off the latest edition of his show Real Time with an extended rant on President Trump’s bizarre, self-centered reaction to the horrifying mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left 30 people dead—including a visit to a hospital in El Paso where Trump ordered an orphaned baby whose parents were both killed in the shooting back to the hospital so it could pose for photos with the president and first lady, since none of the eight gunshot victims being treated in the hospital were willing to do so, according to a CNN report. “We know now this pattern we’ve always seen where whenever there’s a tragedy, it’s always about how he’s feeling, right?!” Maher exclaimed. “It’s like, is he OK? This week after the massacres, he attacked the media, Obama, Google, Sherrod Brown, the mayor of Dayton, Beto, California, Sleepy Joe. He’s the only president who thinks ‘Consoler-in-Chief’ means you console him.”
By Lucian K. Truscott IV
I just got a death threat from a coward on Facebook, but It's the guys in ties on the TV I'm worried about. Some guy named James Neally, sent me a death threat a couple of weeks ago via Facebook Messenger.  “Keep taling (sic) about the potus that way you did in your last article and it will be the end of you and your family.” Nice, huh? I spent several hours talking to the FBI about it this week. They’re trying to find James Neally and they’re not having much success. Facebook won’t reveal their records on Neally’s account to the FBI. He’s got a YouTube channel, on which he posted several videos of himself playing “Cripple Creek” on the banjo, but when I linked to one of the videos on my Facebook page, he took all of them down. He’s hiding now, which is what white supremacist right-wing fanatics do when they’re not actually going out and killing people, like Patrick Crusius did last week when he shot 22 people to death at a Walmart and wounded dozens of others. Going to a Synagogue, or a Walmart, or a public school, or a nightclub, or a movie theater and gunning down a bunch of people down, is what these guys do when they want to spread the evil lies of white supremacy. They seek attention, and they get it by killing people. We have a legitimate reason to be afraid of Patrick Crusius and his ilk because their deranged attachment to white supremacy causes them to kill people to bring attention to their cause. But I don’t think there’s much cause to fear the James Neallys of this world, because all they’re trying to do is shut you up. They don’t want people like me writing the things I write because it threatens their fellow white supremacists. In James Neally’s case, the white supremacist he’s trying to protect is the president of the United States.
By Igor Derysh
Hidden report shows white supremacists were responsible for every race-based domestic terror attack in 2018. The Justice Department suppressed a report showing that suspected white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terror incidents last year. The report by New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security Preparedness was distributed throughout DHS and to federal agencies like the FBI earlier this year before it was obtained by Yahoo News. The document includes data Congress has sought from the Trump administration but the Justice Department has been “unable or unwilling” to provide. The report shows that 25 of 46 suspects in 32 domestic terrorism incidents were identified as white supremacists. The 25 suspected white supremacist suspects were responsible for all “race-based” incidents while others were deemed “anti-government extremists” and “single-issue extremists.” “This map reflects 32 domestic terrorist attacks, disrupted plots, threats of violence, and weapons stockpiling by individuals with a radical political or social agenda who lack direction or influence from foreign terrorist organizations in 2018,” the report said. The map and data in the document were circulated through the DOJ and law enforcement agencies in April, which is around the time that the Senate Judiciary Committee requested the DOJ provide data showing the number of white supremacists involved in domestic terrorism. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told Yahoo News that the committee still has not received the data. “I’m troubled by the lack of transparency, given that we haven’t received this critical information after several requests to the FBI and DOJ,” Booker said. “They cannot and should not remain silent in the face of such a dangerous threat.” - The DOJ under Trump is protecting white supremacists no wonder they like Trump.
By ella torres, aaron katersky and luke barr
Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced millionaire who was facing federal sex trafficking charges, died by suicide early Saturday in his Lower Manhattan prison cell, three law enforcement officials told ABC News. Epstein hanged himself, law enforcement sources said. He was transported in cardiac arrest at 6:39 a.m. from Metropolitan Correctional Center to New York Downtown Hospital, according to sources. Epstein, 66, was set to stand trial next year for allegedly sexually abusing dozens of minor girls in New York and Florida.
By Betsy Woodruff
Emails show that the indicted operative George Nader and the one-time White House strategist Steve Bannon had a closer connection than previously understood. An accused pedophile helped Steve Bannon secure a $100,000 speaking gig from a prestigious Washington think tank, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast. The emails—between Republican fundraiser and investor Elliott Broidy and Lebanese-American political operative George Nader—shed light on the relationship between Trump’s ex-adviser and a man now in jail awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges. The emails point to a closer relationship between Bannon and Nader than previously known. It’s been widely reported that Nader met with Bannon in the White House during his time as a Trump adviser there. But these emails show they stayed in contact after Bannon left government, and that Nader helped the ex-Breitbart chief secure an appearance with a six-figure payday. A Bannon spokesperson, meanwhile, said Nader was “irrelevant” to Bannon’s speech. Nader’s work drew the attention of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who questioned him extensively as part of his probe into foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential race. But Mueller wasn’t the only federal prosecutor interested in Nader. On June 3 of this year, he was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and charged with possessing child pornography. And just last month, the feds rolled out additional charges for child sex trafficking. Nader is in jail awaiting trial, and has pleaded not guilty.
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN
Berkeley Heights, New Jersey (CNN)President Donald Trump on Saturday promoted a conspiracy theory linking the Clinton family to the death of multimillionaire and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the latest instance of Trump propagating baseless conspiracy theories and falsehoods.
Trump shared a tweet and video from conservative comedian Terrence Williams that claimed without evidence that former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- Trump's 2016 presidential election rival -- were responsible for Epstein's death. The Federal Bureau of Prisons and Attorney General Bill Barr said Epstein died in an "apparent suicide" while in federal custody.
As a result of Trump's retweet, the video received more than 3 million views on Twitter by Sunday morning -- more than triple Williams' most recent videos. Both Trump and Bill Clinton were friendly with Epstein in previous decades, but Trump seized on the conspiracy theory Saturday in his latest dig at the Clintons. The tweet also falsely claimed that Epstein died while on suicide watch, even though Epstein had been taken off of suicide watch before his death.
By Taylor Hatmaker
Twitter incited Republican fury after it suspended the Senate majority leader’s account for sharing a video depicting violent threats against McConnell. After briefly suspending an account belonging to Mitch McConnell’s re-election campaign, Twitter has reinstated @Team_Mitch and is swiftly working to patch things up with the Senate majority leader and his many allies on the right. Twitter suspended the campaign account on Wednesday morning after it shared a video that included audio of violent threats against McConnell. On Friday, Twitter explained its reversal and suggested that the campaign account was flagged along with several other users for sharing the video, which the company said violated its rules against abusive behavior. “The video contained a violent threat directed at Leader McConnell, a clear violation of the Twitter Rules,” the company tweeted. “After multiple appeals from affected users and Leader McConnell’s team confirming their intent to highlight the threats for public discussion, we have reviewed this case more closely.” Twitter said that the video will remain online but will be accompanied by a “sensitive media interstitial.” Predictably, GOP figures descended on the suspension immediately, pointing to the incident as an act of political bias—a common accusation conservatives have leveled at big social-media companies in recent months.
By Scott Bronstein, Curt Devine, Drew Griffin and Ashley Hackett, CNN
(CNN) - The Environmental Protection Agency told staff scientists that it was no longer opposing a controversial Alaska mining project that could devastate one of the world's most valuable wild salmon fisheries just one day after President Trump met with Alaska's governor, CNN has learned.
The EPA publicly announced the reversal July 30, but EPA staff sources tell CNN that they were informed of the decision a month earlier, during a hastily arranged video conference after Trump's meeting with Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor, a supporter of the project, emerged from that meeting saying the president assured him that he's "doing everything he can to work with us on our mining concerns." The news came as a "total shock" to some top EPA scientists who were planning to oppose the project on environmental grounds, according to sources. Those sources asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. The copper-and-gold mine planned near Bristol Bay, Alaska, known as Pebble Mine, was blocked by the Obama administration's EPA after scientists found that the mine would cause "complete loss of" the bay's fish habitat. EPA insiders tell CNN that the timing of the agency's internal announcement suggests Trump was personally involved in the decision.
By Caitlin O'Kane, Rachid Haoues
During a speech on Monday addressing the recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, President Trump call for an end to — or substantial reduction of — the "glorification" of violence in "gruesome and grisly" video game culture. While some are quick to blame video games for real-life acts of violence, experts say there is no such link. "When it comes to actual serious criminal violence, there's virtually no evidence that video games matter," James Ivory, professor and research director at Virginia Tech, told CBS News. Ivory has researched the social and psychological dimensions of media, particularly the content and effects of video games. He says he's determined that a lot of things influence violent crime — but the media we consume is not one of them.
By Harmeet Kaur, CNN
(CNN) - When Don Grundmann took the podium to boos and jeers at a Modesto City Council meeting Wednesday, he appeared angry that some people had called his efforts to organize a "straight pride" event in the California city racist. He singled out Councilmember Kristi Ah You, accusing her of "pulling the race card" and allegedly inflaming tensions by "attacking us as racists." Then he appeared to make a slip of the tongue. "We haven't done anything," he said. "We're a totally peaceful, racist group." The crowd erupted in laughter. As Grundmann tried to regain control of the room, he said his group was "here to defend all races" and claimed that Planned Parenthood was the "greatest mass murderer of blacks in this nation's history." Shortly after, he was told his time was up and the crowd booed as he left the podium. Grundmann, who previously ran two failed campaigns for the US Senate, leads a group called the National Straight Pride Coalition. It claims on its website that heterosexuality, the nuclear family and Western civilization, among other institutions, are under attack. The group is planning a "straight pride" parade in a local park on August 24. Modesto is home to about 214,000 people, according to the latest Census.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
A trove of court documents unsealed Friday detail allegations by an alleged victim of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein that while working as a teenage locker room attendant at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort nearly two decades ago she was recruited to give Epstein massages that often involved sexual activity. The roughly 2,000 pages of records released by the Manhattan-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals also show the same woman, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, appears to have claimed she had sex with a series of prominent men — including former politicians — at Epstein’s direction while working as a staff masseuse for the investment adviser, who eventually came under investigation in 2006 for sex trafficking over his involvement with teenage girls. That probe wound up in a controversial plea deal where federal prosecutors in Florida agreed not to file charges against Epstein in exchange for him pleading guilty in 2008 to two state prostitution-related felonies. He served only about 13 months in county jail, much of it with permission to work from his office during the day. The deal drew objections and a lawsuit from some of Epstein’s victims, who alleged they were illegally kept in the dark about the agreement. Earlier this year, a federal judge agreed the victims’ rights were violated. That ruling, and a fresh indictment of Epstein in federal court in New York City last month, set in motion the resignation of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was the chief federal prosecutor in south Florida and signed off on the Epstein deal.
By Nolan Hicks
Sen. Lindsey Graham knocked down the idea of banning semi-automatic weapons nearly identical to those used by soldiers on the off chance a hurricane slams into his South Carolina town. “Here’s a scenario that I think is real: There’s a hurricane, a natural disaster, no power, no cops, no anything,” the Republican lawmaker told reporters aboard Air Force One. A reporter asked if he meant looters. “Yeah, people, they’re not going to come to the AR-15 home,” Graham responded. “Well, I think if you show up on the porch with an AR-15, they’ll probably go down the street.” Graham attempted to turn back questions about the legality of the guns — which were banned for years in the 1990s before the law expired — to choosing which books to read or movies to watch.
The Fox News host’s recent segment was among the most poorly reasoned ever.
By Conor Friedersdorf - Staff writer at The Atlantic
After a white gunman killed 22 people in El Paso, Texas, citing a mythical “Hispanic invasion of Texas” as his motive, Republican Senator Ted Cruz declared on Twitter that “what we saw yesterday was a heinous act of terrorism and white supremacy.” Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw tweeted, “White supremacy has no place in this world. Violence inflicted because of someone’s race or ethnicity is vile, repulsive, and one of the worst evils we face.” Ivanka Trump declared, “White supremacy, like all other forms of terrorism, is an evil that must be destroyed.” The Fox News host Tucker Carlson didn’t share any of those statements with viewers of his program on Tuesday, when he portrayed concerns about white supremacy as “a hoax” by Democrats engaged in a “relentless bid to divide this country.” Those omissions are egregious. Carlson betrayed the trust of his viewers, eliding facts in a way that could stoke the very divisions he accused others of sowing. And apart from the omissions, the segment was riddled with reasoning so inane, one wondered if stupidity or sophistry was the more charitable explanation. White supremacy is “not a real problem in America,” Carlson said, arguing that “the combined membership of every white-supremacist organization in this country, would they be able to fit inside a college football stadium?”
By Kevin Fallon
Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. I’m not exactly, like, happy with how much I think about Taylor Swift. I don’t love that about myself. About me. I mean ME!. Sometimes I think this woman is a polarizing genius whose impact on our entire generation we’re not even close to understanding yet. Other times, she’s the human personification of the mouthfeel of a paper straw. Anyway, Swift sat down for a lengthy Vogue cover story—and, genuinely, bless her for doing that—about sexism, the media’s scrutiny of her (wow, drag me, Taylor)‚ and politics. So here we are again. There was a lot of ink spilled during the 2016 election on Taylor Swift’s deafening silence. It was considered a crisis for the country, particularly women, and as such those with massive public platforms abandoned whatever “Shut Up and Sing” qualms they may have had to talk about the severity of the issues and throw their support to Hillary Clinton while condemning, unequivocally, Donald Trump. Many people grew aggravated that Swift, with her massive fan base of younger people of voting age across many swing states, never spoke up—something that seemed at odds with her consistent outspokenness on female solidarity and the social politics of shaming. Some suspected she didn’t want to alienate fans who were Trump supporters. Others speculated she may have been one herself.
By Daniel Goldblatt - TheBlast
Kid Rock came out of nowhere on Friday morning to attack Taylor Swift for her political beliefs and accuse her of using sex to get famous. It's unclear what sparked Rock's Twitter attack (he hardly ever tweets) but he did not mince words when it comes to his feelings about Swift. "Taylor Swift wants to be a democrat because she wants to be in movies….period," he wrote.And it looks like she will suck the door knob off Hollyweird to get there. Oldest move in the book. Good luck girl." He signed the tweet to make sure you know it definitely came from him.
By Zachary Cohen, CNN
Washington (CNN) - The country's No. 2 intelligence official, Sue Gordon, knew it was likely she would have to eventually step down from her post, but the timing of that decision became more urgent on Thursday after her boss -- outgoing spy chief Dan Coats -- interrupted a meeting she was holding on election security and asked his deputy to submit her letter of resignation, sources familiar with the events told CNN. While details of the conversation between Gordon, an intelligence veteran of more than 30 years, and Coats remain unclear, sources say that the situation clearly abruptly changed after the meeting was interrupted. Shortly after her encounter with Coats, Gordon submitted her letter of resignation to Vice President Mike Pence, though the document itself was addressed to Trump, according to officials, a highly unusual move that prompted some confusion among some West Wing officials who waited for the President's tweet confirming the news.
By Rachel Frazin
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) on Friday wrote a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) condemning a Wednesday raid in his home state that resulted in 680 arrests. Thompson wrote the letter to acting ICE Director Matthew Albence to express "outrage" over the raid that "left an unknown number of children without their parents." "At a time when this country is grieving due to two domestic terrorist shootings, your agency has instead seemingly deliberately disregarded its own long-standing guidelines and carried out another form of family separation," he wrote. "The blatant lack of planning and resulting chaos calls into question the true motivation behind these worksite enforcement operations." Thompson particularly accused the agency of not contacting Mississippi’s Department of Child Protection Services. He asked in the letter for information including the number of children affected and the number left without a caregiver. ICE told The Hill in a statement Friday that it would respond to the letter through official channels.
By Benjamin Fearnow
Leaked FBI documents indicate "black identity extremists" and animal rights activists are among the agency's top counterterrorism priorities under President Donald Trump. The FBI's priority list documents, obtained by The Young Turks Thursday, lay out the Bureau's 2018 fiscal year focal points in counterterrorism, cyber crime and counterintelligence. The 2018-19 "Threat Guidance" documents describe black identity extremists (BIEs) as those who "use force or violence in violation of criminal law in response to perceived racism and injustice in American society." The files claimed some BIEs acted in hopes of "establishing a separate black homeland or autonomous black social institutions, communities or governing organizations within the USA." An internal FBI report from August 2017 was widely criticized for using the BIE label, which many called racist. But the Consolidated Strategy Guide documents leaked this week show the FBI kept the term and made BIEs one of its top counterterrorism priorities. Under the Trump administration, they're considered a bigger threat than terror groups such as Al Qaeda.
By Timothy Bella
The Confederate flag place mat on the dining room table was Rob Mathis’s first hint that something was off inside the home he was thinking of buying. “I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if this was a Klansman’s house?’” said Mathis, who is black. Previously, Mathis and his wife, Reyna, had been ready to make an offer on the five-bedroom home they viewed on Wednesday in Holton, Mich., a small township of less than 3,000 people in Muskegon County. They thought the house on the 22-acre wooded lot about an hour outside of Grand Rapids, Mich., would give them enough space to entertain their children and grandchildren. Then, Mathis walked into the NASCAR-decorated garage to see not one but two Confederate flags in what his wife would tell him was the home of a police officer, MLive reported.
New Day
CNN's John Avlon reports on growing frustration over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's refusal to call the Senate back into session to vote on gun reform legislation after mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas.
by Igor Derys
A Quinnipiac poll found earlier this year that 93 percent of Americans support background checks for all buyers. The National Rifle Association swiftly intervened to pressure President Donald Trump to back off his support for expanded background checks for gun purchases after he called for Congress to act following back-to-back mass shootings last weekend. Trump visited El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Wednesday after mass shootings in both cities left 31 people dead and dozens of others injured. Trump told reporters there was “great appetite for background checks” following the recent massacres. Trump similarly called for expanded background checks after last year’s deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, but the NRA opposed the measure. It ultimately went nowhere. NRA chief Wayne LaPierre acted quickly after the latest pair of mass shootings, reaching out to Trump to pressure him against supporting the expanded background checks bill on Tuesday, the Washington Post reports. LaPierre argued against the bill, claiming it would be unpopular among Trump’s supporters.
by Lois Beckett
The country’s refusal to pass new gun control laws has everything to do with defending racial hierarchy, says author Jonathan Metzl. Why does the United States refuse to pass new gun control laws? It’s the question that people around the world keep asking. According to Dr Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University, white supremacy is the key to understanding America’s gun debate. In his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, Metzl argues that the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege. White Americans’ attempt to defend their status in the racial hierarchy by opposing issues like gun control, healthcare expansion or public school funding ends up injuring themselves, as well as hurting people of color, Metzl argues. The majority of America’s gun death victims are white men, and most of them die from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. In all, gun suicide claims the lives of 25,000 Americans each year. White Americans are “dying for a cause”, he writes, even if their form of death is often “slow, excruciating, and invisible”.
by Faris Bseiso, CNN
Washington (CNN)2020 Democratic hopeful Andrew Yang said Friday that there is "no choice" but to call President Donald Trump a white supremacist, becoming the latest of the Democratic field to label the President with that term. In an interview on "New Day," Yang said "if someone acts and speaks in a certain way then you have no choice but to say that's what he is," when asked by CNN's John Berman if he would call the President a white supremacist. The comment comes after other Democratic presidential candidates have called the President a white supremacist in the wake of the two mass shootings, one involving a white supremacist suspect who is believed to have authored a racist, anti-immigrant document targeting Hispanics, as well as Trump's recent series of racist comments that included his calls for four minority congresswomen to "go back" to the countries from which they came. Three of the four lawmakers are natural-born US citizens. "In this case, I mean, it's very clear the President's actions and words have conveyed a strong sense to many Americans that he has white supremacist beliefs and that's the only standard we can go by," Yang said. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have both said Trump is a white supremacist, making their rebukes of the President some of the strongest from the crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates. Other candidates, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, have agreed with the characterization of the President as a white nationalist. Rep. Tim Ryan, another 2020 hopeful, told CNN's Jake Tapper that "the white nationalists think (Trump's) a white nationalist. And that's the crux of the problem."
By Justin Baragona
“White supremacy is real, as evidenced by fact,” one Fox reporter publicly declared on Twitter following primetime star Tucker Carlson’s claim that white supremacy is a “hoax.”
Three days after Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared on-air that white supremacy is a “hoax,” his colleague, Fox News reporter Cristina Corbin, tweeted out a rebuke of the primetime star’s comments, noting that his views do not represent hers. “White supremacy is real, as evidenced by fact,” she wrote on Friday. “Claims that it is a ‘hoax’ do not represent my views.” Corbin is currently listed on Fox News’ website as “an investigative reporter and producer based in New York.” Her bio page was still active as of this article’s publication. Her most recent article with Fox News, a report on Canadian murder suspects, was published on July 31. White supremacy is real, as evidenced by fact. Claims that it is a "hoax" do not represent my views. — Cristina Corbin (@CristinaCorbin) August 9, 2019. Corbin’s public pushback on Carlson is reminiscent of another recent episode in which a lower-level Fox News employee publicly took a stand against a right-wing host on the network.
By Yun Li
President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. government will no longer have any dealings with Chinese telecom giant Huawei as the trade war continues to escalate. “We are not going to do business with Huawei. ... And I really made the decision. It’s much simpler not doing any business with Huawei. ... That doesn’t mean we won’t agree to something if and when we make a trade deal,” Trump said. “We are talking to China; we are not ready to make a deal, but we’ll see what happens ... China wants to do something, but I’m not doing anything yet. Twenty-five years of abuse. I’m not ready so fast,” Trump said. However, the Commerce Department told CNBC it is still processing special licenses for companies to restart sales to Huawei, and Trump’s comment refers to only the ban on the U.S. government buying from Huawei. Trump’s decision on Huawei came after China halted buying American agricultural products in retaliation for Trump’s surprise tariffs threat last week. China also allowed its currency to drop against the dollar to a key level unseen since 2008.
By Dan Mangan, Kevin Breuninger
A federal appeals court on Friday unsealed nearly 2,000 pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy financier charged with child sex trafficking, and Ghislaine Maxwell, his former girlfriend and his alleged procurer of underage girls. The documents include one containing flight records showing that President Donald Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane in January 1997, from a Palm Beach, Florida, airport to Newark, New Jersey. In another document, one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre, says Maxwell directed her to have sex with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and other prominent people. Giuffre, who had worked as a locker-room attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, also said that Epstein “told me that Donald Trump is a good friend of his,” but that she never saw the two men together. And she said in a deposition that she never had sex with Trump or flirted with him. The White House had no immediate comment on the mention of Trump’s name on the flight logs. Richardson’s office denied he ever met Giuffre, and called the allegations “completely false.”
By John Fritze, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Invasion. Aliens. Killers. Criminals. Those are among the words President Donald Trump repeatedly uses while discussing immigduring his campaign rallies, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the transcripts from more than five dozen of those events. Trump, who traveled Wednesday to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, to meet with victims and family members reeling from mass shootings, is facing pressure from critics who say his language has fed a climate of anger toward immigrants, raising the risk of violence. A manifesto authorities believe was written by the El Paso gunman before his attack decries “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” But "invasion" is just one of several incendiary terms Trump regularly embraces. A USA TODAY analysis of the 64 rallies Trump has held since 2017 found that, when discussing immigration, the president has said “invasion” at least 19 times. He has used the word “animal” 34 times and the word “killer” nearly three dozen times.
By Ed Lavandera and Jason Hanna, CNN
El Paso, Texas (CNN)The man who authorities say killed 22 people at an El Paso Walmart last weekend told police that his targets were "Mexicans," The Washington Post reported Friday, citing an arrest affidavit. The report quotes the affidavit's account from El Paso detective Adrian Garcia, who says 21-year-old suspect Patrick Crusius told him, "I'm the shooter." "The defendant stated (that) once inside the store, he opened fire using his AK-47 shooting multiple innocent victims," the affidavit reads, according to the Post. The Post obtained the affidavit, which is not yet part of the public court record. CNN is reaching out to El Paso police and a defense attorney for Crusius for comment about Garcia's account. The Post reported that a defense attorney has not responded to its inquiries. Police said Crusius, besides killing 22 people, wounded 24 others in Saturday's shooting. He was arrested on the day of the attack, surrendering to a police officer at an intersection just north of the store. Crusius has been charged with capital murder in the shooting and is being held without bond. Police have previously commented about Crusius' motivation: That the shooting appeared to be a hate crime, as investigators believe he wrote a document filled with hatred of immigrants and Latinos -- one that said he wanted to stop a "Hispanic invasion" of Texas.
WASHINGTON – Days after back-to-back mass shootings, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is urging President Donald Trump to call the Senate back to session to vote on several House gun control bills that passed earlier this year. In a letter sent Thursday to the president, Pelosi said that Congress has "an opportunity to work in a bipartisan way to pass gun violence prevention background checks." However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he will not bring the Senate into a special session. "Today, as Speaker of the House, I am writing in good faith to request that you call the United States Senate back into session immediately under your powers in Article II Section 3 of the Constitution to consider House-passed bipartisan gun violence prevention legislation," she wrote. Both chambers of Congress are on a recess right now.
Scott Gleeson, USA TODAY
Miami Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills doubled down on his stance against team owner Stephen Ross, who is hosting a fundraiser for President Donald Trump at his home through his RISE foundation. An emotional Stills told reporters Thursday that he received close to 10 death threats since making comments earlier in the week. The 27-year-old called out the Dolphins owner as hypocritical because RISE's mission statement illuminates "equality" and combats racial discrimination. On Tuesday, he tweeted, "you can't have a non profit with this mission statement then open your doors to Trump." Following Miami's 34-27 preseason victory over the Atlanta Falcons, Stills expounded upon his initial stance. "Someone has to have enough courage to let him know he can't play both sides of this," Stills told reporters. "It's something that I can look back on and say I made the right decision. ... If you're going to associate yourself with bad people, then people are going to know about it. I put it out there for everybody to see it. If you say you're going to be about something, let's be about it."
By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press
Stephen M. Ross, who owns the Miami Dolphins, had no trouble banning his players from kneeling during the national anthem last fall. You know, because sports and politics don’t mix. But he sure didn’t like it this week when folks tore into him after news spread he would be hosting a fundraiser for President Trump.  You know, because sports and politics do mix. As long as it’s your politics. Hypocrisy aside, Ross, who made a fortune in real estate and whose name adorns the business school at the University of Michigan, has every right to support whatever politician he wants. He also has the right to tell the NFL players on his team that they can’t kneel during the anthem. He also has the right to look like an insensitive and tone-deaf opportunist. Which is exactly what he is. Or, he just doesn't care. It’s fine if he wants to support the President's financial policies. But as a man who funds a non-profit organization called "Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality," whose mission statement highlights diversity and acceptance, mingling with the President this week — in the wake of his stunted response to mass shootings — isn't a good look. And folks employed by his team and several other companies he invests in took notice. Dolphins receiver, Kenny Stills, immediately took to Twitter: “You can’t have a non-profit with this mission statement then open your doors to Trump,” Stills tweeted.  Superstar chef, David Chang, who created Momofuku, a restaurant owned in part by Ross, was more blunt in his podcast Thursday:  “Anyone that normalizes gun violence, white supremacy, putting kids into cages, his general lack of decency and respect for anyone else — he is destroying our democratic norms. I cannot stand behind him.”
by Kate Briquelet, Katie Baker, Justin Miller, Pilar Melendez, Tracy Connor
In newly unsealed documents, Virginia Giuffre claims that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked her to politicians, princes, and a high-flying financier, among others. A young woman who says financier Jeffrey Epstein and socialite Ghislaine Maxwell kept her as a sex slave also accused a host of high-powered men of being involved in Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring, according to court records unsealed Friday. Virginia Giuffre, who says that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to powerful people for erotic massages and sex, claimed in depositions in 2016 that Maxwell directed her to have sex with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Britain’s Prince Andrew (whom she has accused before), wealthy financier Glenn Dubin, former senator George Mitchell, now-deceased MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, and modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, as well as “another prince,” a "foreign president," a well-known prime minsiter" and the owner of a “large hotel chain” in France. None of the men named in the deposition have been charged with a crime or even sued in civil court in connection with the Epstein case. The deposition represents accuser Giuffre’s allegations, and the court documents unsealed on Friday did not contain any corroboration or further details, though many documents remain sealed.
Josiah Bates - Time
A Texas police chief has apologized for the actions of his officers after photos circulated widely on social media, showing two officers riding on horses while leading a handcuffed man down a street. The handcuffs were tied to a rope held by one of the officers (or, as a police statement puts it, “a line clipped to the handcuffs”). Chief Vernon L. Hale III of the Galveston police department said the officers “showed poor judgment,” but argued that they did not have any ill intentions. Neither of the officers involved in the incident has commented publicly.
Ted Lieu , U.S. Representative of California
Donald Trump has a history of using harmful, false rhetoric to paint minorities and immigrants as undeserving, dangerous and unwelcome. He claimed immigrants are disproportionately violent and threatening. He told some minorities to "go back" from where they came. He called majority-black cities rat-infested. He invited an artist known for his anti-Semitic cartoons to the White House. Trump has stoked the flames of xenophobia to divide America. Some of his supporters ignore it, and some are inspired by it. By using his platform for hate, Trump has emboldened white supremacists—sometimes with a wink and a nod, other times with overt overtures. It should not be surprising that during Trump's first year as president, the FBI reported that hate crimes committed in the United States increased by 17 percent. Most recently, a white supremacist killed 22 people in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Before him, a white supremacist attacked a synagogue in Pittsburg, killing 11 people. According to a New York Times analysis, since 2017, nine white extremists have carried out active-shooter attacks, killing a total of 70 people. Rather than curb his divisive rhetoric and xenophobic views, Trump is now trying to leverage mass shooting deaths to pass immigration legislation. His first policy response to the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, was to use those tragedies in an attempt to pass immigration bills. He tweeted that background checks legislation for guns should be paired with immigration reform. Trump's proposal is irrational, harmful and offensive. Why should universal background checks legislation, which will save lives and already passed the House of Representatives on a bipartisan basis, be held hostage to Trump's obsession with immigration? Trump is also implicitly blaming immigrants, again. Otherwise there is no reason for him to tie gun safety legislation with immigration legislation.
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