HEAVYWEIGHTS WEIGH IN ON ASSANGE “SHOW TRIAL”

https://popularresistance.org/heavyweights-weigh-in-on-assange-show-trial/

By Popular Resistance.September 7, 2020
| EDUCATE!,


And Its Threat To Journalists.

Former NYT Vice Chairman and General Counsel, James C Goodale, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist, Chris Hedges, Pentagon Papers Whistleblower, Dan Ellsberg to Speak.


Zoom Online Event Wednesday, September 9, 1:00 EST. Register here.

Washington, DC – An online Zoom call will take place for members of the press this Wednesday, September 9 at 1:00 pm EST to address the United States attempt to extradite WikiLeaks’ publisher, Julian Assange. The call will feature Dan Ellsberg, the whistleblower whose release of the Pentagon Papers helped to bring the Viet Nam War to an end, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, and James Goodale, former Vice President of the New York Times.

“If Julian Assange–the first journalist to be indicted in the US for doing journalism–is extradited and prosecuted, the First Amendment will be in a terminal state as protection for investigative reporting on “national security,” said Dan Ellsberg.

The attempt to extradite Julian Assange to the United States for prosecution is a war against freedom of the press and our right to know. If the prosecution of Assange under the Espionage Act occurs, it will define journalism for the 21st Century. No journalist or publisher who exposes war crimes or corruption will be safe.

“The First Amendment will be damaged if Julian Assange is extradited to the United States and convicted under the Espionage Act,” said Goodale, former Vice Chairman of the New York Times and author of “Fighting for the press: the Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles. “I do not represent Julian Assange; I represent the First Amendment.”

In a prepared statement, Hedges also weighed in. “If Julian Assange is extradited, tried and sentenced in the United States, it will mean the end of journalistic investigations into the inner workings of power,” said Hedges. “It will cement into place a terrifying global, corporate tyranny under which borders, nationality, and law mean nothing.”

Speakers:

Daniel Ellsberg: Pentagon Papers Whistleblower
James Goodale: Former General Counsel and Vice Chairman, NY Times during the Pentagon Papers
Chris Hedges: Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist

“Once such a legal precedent is set, any publication that publishes classified material, from The New York Times to an alternative website, will be prosecuted and silenced – journalism, real journalism, will, at this point, be dead,” said Hedges

The panel will be moderated by Sue Udry, Executive Director of Defending Rights and Dissent.


You are invited to a Zoom webinar.
When: September 9, 2020, 1:00 pm Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Ellsberg, Goodale, Hedges: Assange Extradition and the War on Journalism

Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aoCN1G6WR06VJGqFGBCvGw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Trump’s assault on the free press is under an international spotlight this week with the resumption of Assange’s extradition hearing. In an age where journalists are under attack globally for doing their jobs, Assange is facing a 175-year sentence for publishing factual documents if extradited to the United States. The Trump administration has gone from denigrating journalists as ‘enemies of the people’ to now criminalizing standard practices in journalism that have long served the public interest.

Enough: COVID-19, Structural Racism, Police Brutality, Plutocracy, Climate Change

Between COVID-19, structural racism, police brutality, climate change, plutocratic politics, and threats to democratic governance, it is time—past time—to say ENOUGH. The future is not a fact foretold: it is what people shape by our actions...

September 7, 2020 Nancy Krieger AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AJPH



https://portside.org/2020-09-07/enough-covid-19-structural-racism-police-brutality-plutocracy-climate-change




History never really says goodbye. History says, see you later.”—Eduardo Galeano1




COVID-19 starkly reveals how structural injustice cuts short the lives of people subjected to systemic racism and economic deprivation.2–4 It is not, however, the only crisis at hand.

Since the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, by the Minneapolis, Minnesota, police, protests have coursed through cities and towns across the United States, denouncing structural racism and police violence,5–7 fueled, too, by COVID-19’s disproportionate toll on US populations of color.2–4 In a context in which US police kill upwards of 1000 people per year—nearly three per day, disproportionately Black Americans, and vastly more than in any other wealthy country5,6—the last straw was Floyd’s horrific murder.7 Floyd died because he could not breathe, because police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for an agonizing 8 minutes and 46 seconds—in open view, as videoed for all to see, while three other police standing nearby failed to intervene.

The current upsurge of protest builds on the leadership of so many groups, perhaps most prominently Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 by three radical Black women organizers—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi—in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s vigilante murderer, George Zimmerman, and which rapidly grew in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing by Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in 2014.8 Also feeding these protests is the post-2016 rise in hate crimes,9 coupled with overt expressions of racism, both by word and by policies, at the highest levels of the US government.2,10
COVID-19: TERRIBLE INEQUITIES, TERRIBLE DATA

The inequitable context of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is not a mystery.2,11 In 2019, 53 million US workers, including 44% of all workers aged 18 to 64 years, were employed in low-wage jobs, earning an median hourly wage of $10.22, yielding median annual earnings of only $17 950.12 Meanwhile, a 2017 analysis reported that“[t]he three wealthiest people in the United States—Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett—now own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the American population combined, ”while 20% of US households, and 30% of Black and 27% of Latinx households, have “zero or negative net worth.”11(p4)

The stunning COVID-19 inequities—which are inequities, because health inequities comprise differences in health status across social groups that are unjust, avoidable, and, in principle, preventable13—are, thus, no surprise. Reflecting the impacts of structural racism, including the origins of the United States as a settler–colonial nation and slave republic, US Black and American Indian populations have long lived sicker and shorter lives than the US White non-Hispanic population.3,14,15 Despite serious problems affecting the accuracy of COVID-19 data,16 the pattern repeats with COVID-19.2–4,17–23 Higher burdens of COVID-19 cases and deaths, especially among working-age adults—and in surges of death overall—are documented among communities with high proportions of people of color, high poverty, crowded housing, and high levels of racialized economic segregation,4,17–23 even as their reduced access to COVID-19 testing (used also to classify COVID-19 deaths) would mitigate against such findings.2,16 This high excess toll at younger ages, moreover, cannot be discerned from counts of deaths, or crude or age-standardized mortality rates, as typically reported by health department and other COVID-19 data dashboards.4,19 These data gaps themselves are an injustice.

The new US Census House-hold Pulse Survey offers insights into the inequitable social and economic tolls of COVID-19.24 It found that, for the week of May 28 to June 2, 2020, fully 44% of Black non-Hispanic and His-panic households reported they had no or little confidence they could pay the next month’s rent, more than twice the already alarming 20% reported for White non-Hispanic house-holds.24 In addition, household food insecurity—defined as often or sometimes not having enough to eat in the previous week—was reported by 20% of Hispanic and 26% of Black non-Hispanic households, versus 9.3% of White non-Hispanic households24—with levels for all groups higher than in 2018.25 Overall, among households with persons aged 18 years or older, rent insecurity was reported by 35% versus 13% of persons with less than versus four or more years of college; the corresponding proportions for food insecurity were 14% versus 3%.24 These metrics of misery, and the inequities in this misery, are severe.

What do these terrible data mean for public health? The data are terrible in two ways. First, the data literally are terrible. High levels of missing racial/ethnic data plague the extant (and selectively obtained16) testing and hospitalization data; these limited racial/ethnic data are rarely, if ever, cross-stratified by age or sex/gender,19,20,26 and it has taken months of agitation to secure federal legislation mandating that SARS-CoV-2 laboratory tests must report data on race/ethnicity.26,27 To date, no national, state, or local health agencies report any data on COVID-19 by cases’ income or educational level, occupation (with the exception, in some locales, of data on health care worker vs not), disability status, sexual orientation or gender identity, incarceration status, or nativity.26 Yet, despite all of these data caveats, there are good grounds to be concerned about disproportionate impact across these social groups.2,3,28

Second, even the scant data that do exist terribly expose the lethal politics that treat people of color and other low-income essential workers nevertheless as expendable, who matter solely to keep businesses open, not because their own lives matter.2–4,29,30 At issue are not only hospital workers (including janitors, orderlies, and other staff—not just health care workers) and first responders, but also grocery store workers, warehouse workers, bus drivers, subway conductors, postal workers, security workers, custodians, factory workers, home health aides, and the many others whose work must be done at their workplace and is vital for society to function.28–32 Fully 75% of US workers, comprising 108.4 million people, have jobs that cannot be done from home, and these tend to be lower-income jobs, disproportionately filled by workers of color—for whom lack of a living wage and lack of affordable housing translate to crowded households.2,3,31,32 Meatpacking plants have been the site of terrible COVID-19 outbreaks, reflecting industry opposition to supplying adequate personal protective equipment and to creating conditions in which workers could safely do their jobs and stay home if sick.33 A similar disregard exists for the lives of inmates and immigrant detainees—who, reflecting policies of mass incarceration, are disproportionately Black, Brown, and low-income.34,35

Tellingly, the same conservative groups who have been funding scientific denialism about climate change, attacking environmental regulation, and distorting democratic governance by abetting voter suppression and gerrymandering—all to protect their private interests—have also been contributing to funding anti–lock down protests and related public health COVID-19 regulations that interfere with their ability to maximize profits.36–38 These deathly plutocratic politics are antithetical to protecting people’s health, let alone promoting health equity.36
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND EMBODYING HEALTH JUSTICE

This past June, propelled by the massive protests over police brutality, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the intensification of economic inequities disproportionately harming US communities of color and their health, 20 US cities and counties and three states have declared or are in the process of declaring that racism is a public health crisis.39,40 Major public health, epidemiological, and medical societies have, for the first time ever, made similar declarations.41–43 New conversations are erupting in main-stream media, in city councils, in state legislature, and in Congress over the longstanding but previously marginalized vision of shifting funds from excessive militarized policing to community investment and community safety, informed by principles of social justice, human rights, and participatory budgeting,5–8,35,44–47 Whether this new awareness translates into meaningful change will depend on the sustained mobilization of social movements that recognize both painful histories of past injustice and powerful histories of resistance, thereby inspiring hope for repair and a better equitable and sustainable future.44–47

COVID-19, like previous pandemics, has pulled the thread, revealing profound inequities in every country it touches—while also pointing to our common humanity.3 As with COVID-19, so too with climate change: all humans are threatened, but these risks are deeply and inequitably societally-structured.3,36,46,47 If the past is any guide, unjust systems that people have made can be unmade and transformed.

Clear analysis of the sociopolitical context of COVID-19 inequities is crucial for engaging with the multi–racial/ethnic upsurge of people across the United States and globally,7,47 especially youths, demanding justice and a world in which they can literally breathe. I am heartened by how they are making visible the embodied connections our bodies make each and every day, between our health and our societal and ecological con-texts.3,48 They will propel public health forward.

Between COVID-19, structural racism, police brutality, climate change, plutocratic politics, and threats to democratic governance, it is time—past time—to say ENOUGH.

In 2001, the first World Social Forum, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, declared “Another world is possible.”49 This was a rejoinder to the “There is no alternative”(TINA) mantra of the1980s’ architects of a hyper-globalized market economy devoted to maximizing private wealth, coupled with deregulation, austerity budgets, and destruction of the welfare state—which, in the United States, was done in racialized terms—and this agenda still wreaks woe for the many and riches for thefew.49–51 Yet, as the current shocks of COVID-19 and the past weeks of protest underscore, the future is not a fact foretold: it is what people shape, by our actions, mindful—or ignorant—of our histories.

For those of us in public health, one way to contribute our skills and insights to the changes so urgently needed—in both society overall and the institutions where we work—is to start by respecting the leadership of the myriad groups in coalition, nationally and locally, who are together propelling the current social movement, such as the Movement for Black Lives, the Poor People’s Campaign, and the Green New Deal.47,52–54 Engaging with their integrative policy platforms—which all call for social justice in its myriad forms, including health justice47,52–54—offers needed vision and concrete paths toward fruitful action, so that everyone can thrive.

May George Floyd—who at the time of his death was infected (but not killed) by SARS-CoV-2, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and the thousands and thousands whose lives were cut short by police violence rest in justice. May the untold numbers of families, friends, neighbors, and networks of all who have sickened and died from COVID-19 come together in their grief to help repair this world. And for all of us in public health, as we ratchet up our work for the people’s health, we would do well to remember the wise words of Frederick Douglass(1818–1895), who in 1857, in his “West Indian Emancipation” speech, declared: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”55(p22) Or as Mother Jones(1837–1930), the famous (and to the wealthy, infamous) socialist community and labor organizer, rousingly said, at age 88 in her 1925 autobiography, the time is now to “pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living!”56(p41)

Nancy Krieger is professor of social epidemiology and American Cancer Society clinical research professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA. Correspondence should be sent to Nancy Krieger, PhD, Professor of Social Epidemiology, American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Kresge 717), Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (e-mail: nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu).
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David Graeber on Bullshit Jobs

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIctCDYv7Yg&ab_channel=PenguinBooksUK

Israel’s Crimes Must Be Met With Arms Embargo

The complicity of Western governments such as the US, UK and the European Union allows Israel’s “crimes against a captive civilian population” in Gaza to proceed with impunity.

September 7, 2020 Maureen Clare Murphy THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA




https://portside.org/2020-09-07/israels-crimes-must-be-met-arms-embargo

Israel’s bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip must be met with an “urgent and comprehensive military embargo,” the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee stated on Sunday.

Israel has bombed Gaza every night for the past 12 days in response, or so it claims, to incendiary balloons flown from the territory. Those balloons have caused fires on agricultural land in southern Israel.

Two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.1 million are refugees, some of them from the lands just on the other side of the Gaza boundary fence. Israel denies them their right to return, enshrined in international law, while encouraging Jews worldwide to emigrate to Israel.

Gaza has been under a devastating blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt for the past 13 years.

Israel has faced and has paid little consequence aside from Palestinian resistance in the form of mass protests, rocket fire and incendiary balloons.

Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are deprived of basic human rights under the siege.

Coupled with repeated Israeli military offensives, the siege has eroded the functioning of the health system while Gaza’s authorities cope with the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 outside of quarantine centers in the territory.

Health authorities on Monday confirmed four cases in the same family in Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza’s central region.

Authorities declared an immediate 48-hour lockdown in hopes of thwarting community transmission.

The infection was brought to Gaza by a member of the affected family who had recently visited a hospital in occupied East Jerusalem, the health ministry said.

The health ministry said it would hold Israel responsible for any escalated military aggression during the current state of emergency in Gaza.

Israel’s siege has also sharply increased poverty and aid dependency in the territory has grown ten-fold.

The bleak environment in Gaza has driven many of its young people to despair.

Nearly half of Gaza’s population are children under the age of 15. Most households are moderately to severely food insecure with unemployment rates in the territory among the highest in the world.

Gaza’s children have already lived through multiple Israeli military campaigns.
Escalation looms

A Qatari envoy is reportedly planning to visit Gaza to prevent another escalated confrontation.

A senior Hamas official told the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz that the incendiary balloons won’t stop unless Israel significantly eases the siege.

“I belong to the ranks of senior academics in Gaza and this weekend I couldn’t bring food for my children, so you can understand what happens to the weaker population,” the unnamed official said.

Gaza’s sole power station stopped generating electricity last week after Israel halted fuel supplies in an act of collective punishment over the incendiary balloons launched from the Strip.

Collective punishment is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention – a war crime.

Currently, households in Gaza have three to four hours of electricity per day on average.
Impunity reigns

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee noted in its statement on Sunday that the “new wave of Israeli bombings of Gaza coincides with the sixth anniversary of Israel’s 2014 massacre.”

More than 2,250 Palestinians, including 550 children, were killed during that 51-day offensive.

An independent commission of inquiry formed by the United Nations investigated Israel’s conduct in Gaza in 2014 and stated its concern that “impunity prevails across the board” when it comes to rights violations committed by Israeli forces.

The commission added that the “persistent lack of implementation of recommendations” by previous investigators and various UN bodies towards accountability “lies at the heart of the systematic recurrence of violations.”

Instead, Israel has only been rewarded with normalized relations with “despotic Arab regimes,” as the boycott national committee put it. Those regimes include the UAE, which recently formalized relations with Israel.

With those plaudits came statements of hope for re-engagement in “meaningful negotiations” towards a two-state solution.

Though without having to pay any price, it is hard to see why Israel would see any reason to stop proceeding as usual.

That means meeting any Palestinian resistance to decades of oppression with lethal force.

It means continuing with de facto annexation of West Bank land through confiscation and settlement construction.

It means making life so miserable for Palestinians that many who can leave do just that – even if it costs them their lives.

And it means profiting from the situation by marketing weaponry as “field-tested” on Palestinians to the very countries that instead of sanctioning Israel, purchase its war and surveillance technologies.

As the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee said, the complicity of Western government such as the US, UK and the European Union allows Israel’s “crimes against a captive civilian population” in Gaza to proceed with impunity.

The group is calling for popular pressure on governments to impose military embargoes on Israel. It is also encouraging intensified academic and cultural boycott campaigns, as well as campaigns targeting corporations that enable and profit from Israel’s crimes.

For the long-suffering Palestinians in Gaza, a return to the status quo – as UN and Qatari officials seem keen to secure – is not an option.

A Pandemic Within The Pandemic

Peace is not just the absence of war. Many women under lockdown for Covid 19 face violence where they should be safest: in their own homes.

September 7, 2020 H Patricia Hynes PORTSIDE




https://portside.org/2020-09-07/pandemic-within-pandemic

On March 23, 2020, as Covid 19 was overtaking the world, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres pleaded for peace: “To warring parties: Pull back from hostilities. Silence the guns; stop the artillery; end the airstrikes...End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world. It starts by stopping the fighting everywhere. Now. That is what our human family needs, now more than ever.”

Two weeks later, horrified by the global surge in male violence against women, he again implored for peace: “Peace is not just the absence of war. Many women under lockdown for Covid 19 face violence where they should be safest: in their own homes. Today I appeal for peace in homes around the world. I urge all governments to put women’s safety first as they respond to the pandemic.”

In every region of the world, battery and sexual assault of women and girls isolated at home increased with the spread of the coronavirus. Reports from China's Hubei province indicated that domestic violence tripled during February 2020 compared to February 2019. In France violence against women increased 30% after they initiated a March 17 lockdown; in Argentina, by 25%; and in Singapore, 33%. The pandemic in sexual assault of women and girls followed the Covid 19 pandemic in what Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka called “a perfect storm for…violent behavior behind closed doors.” By the end of May 2020, nearly 250 million women and girls had reported suffering sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner, a far greater number than those infected by the virus.

“Stay Safe – Stay Home” is one of the essential public health measures in containing the Covid virus. Yet home is a dangerous and unsafe place for those 1 in 3 women worldwide who are physically and/or sexually abused over their lifetime, most by a male relative or intimate partner at home. Further, intimate partners commit one-half of femicides – the killing of women because they are women – throughout the world. School, the workplace outdoors, anywhere is safer than home for women and girls at risk of domestic violence.

An estimated 1.6 billion of the world’s children lost their in-school education because of Covid-19, with many in developing countries lacking the benefit of online education at home. For girls, this setback can be yet more dangerous, more violent and more life-limiting. Boarding schools in Tanzania have saved girls from female genital mutilation (FGM) until Covid sent them home. According to the NGO Terre des Hommes, which runs a safe house for girls, “The community has taken advantage of this situation of Covid-19 and where children are now back at home, they are cutting their girls. They know it is against the law but they are not afraid.”

During the 2014-2016 Ebola crisis in Africa, many children were kept out of school at home, especially girls, according to Eric Hazard of Save the Children. “Over 11,000 girls became pregnant,” due to sexual violence and abuse.

Given that the same is assuredly occurring now with our current pandemic, what recourse to healthcare do women and girls have? Some governments in Covid lockdown did not classify sexual and reproductive health – for pregnancy, childbirth, abortion and birth control - as essential, forcing the health centers to close. In the case of India they were repurposed for Covid. The UN Population Fund director Natalia Kanen calls the effect of Covid 19 on women and girls “devastating,” with estimates of 7 million unintended pregnancies worldwide and potentially thousands of deaths from birth complications and unsafe abortions.

What of the situation in the United States? Crime rates plunged in cities and counties across the U.S. over the second half of March – with one exception, domestic violence - as mandatory stay-at–home orders drove millions of residents to stay inside their homes. Calls by victims of domestic violence surged between 10% and 30%, according to an analysis of crime data published by 53 law enforcement agencies in two dozen states.

Another more nuanced study found that the crimes that have dropped are more minor, younger peer group crimes such as vandalism, car theft and DUIs. The graver crimes of homicide and aggravated assault have remained the same. Only intimate partner violence has increased.

And what of the fate of women’s reproductive health clinics? Twelve states quickly banned or blocked abortion services in response to the Covid 19 pandemic, justifying their actions by defining abortion services a non-essential health service. Many defended their actions under the aegis of conserving personal protective equipment (PPE). In response the leading medical professional organizations, among them the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, issued a public statement defining abortion as “an essential component of comprehensive health care.”

Ultimately these bans were rescinded, after successful court challenges or state executive action. However, in the time this took, many reproductive health clinics closed for financial reasons; and the consequences for women and girls in need of abortion, before the bans were lifted, are unknown.

But, ending the Stay at Home order won’t end violence against women. On average, at least one in three women in the US is beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of her lifetime.

More than one in three women regularly fears being sexually assaulted, according to a new report from Gallup,

Violence against women is the “most common but least punished crime in the world,” according to the UN; and it is a catastrophic obstacle for achieving women’s equality worldwide.

As with systemic racism, we must as a society excavate and eliminate the structural roots of violence against women and girls: namely gender inequality, rape culture and the failure to treat violence against women as a serious offense.

Peace on earth begins with peace at home. The degree of equality women have within their families and in their society predicts best how peaceful or conflict-ridden their country is.

Wildfires Ravage West Coast

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuUvTUDOFOQ&ab_channel=FaultLinesRadio

If Trump Tries to Hijack the Election, We Must Be Ready to Resist

Organizations including the NLG, ACLU and Protect Democracy will ready their legal strategies for the battles in the courts. Finally, the people must mobilize to mount mass actions to ensure the integrity of the election.

September 7, 2020 Marjorie Cohn TRUTHOUT




https://portside.org/2020-09-07/if-trump-tries-hijack-election-we-must-be-ready-resist

For nearly four years, we have been laser focused on November 3, 2020, the day that Donald Trump could be voted out of office. In all likelihood, however, the election will not be decided that evening as it has in the past (with the notable exception of the 2000 election). That is because in order to protect themselves against COVID-19, a record number of people will forego the polls and mail their ballots, which take longer to count. There are several scenarios of what could transpire between November 3 and January 20. All of them are frightening.

Once again, Trump has deployed federal agents on U.S. soil over the objection of local authorities, in an apparent attempt to sow chaos and then claim he must be reelected to restore law and order. On August 26, Trump tweeted he would send “federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Kenosha, WI to restore LAW and ORDER” in the wake of protests against the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man shot in the back seven times by a police officer in the presence of Blake’s children. Blake, who remains in critical condition, was left paralyzed. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers declined the White House’s offer of federal assistance. Although Evers had deployed the National Guard the day before, Trump said, “Governor should call in the National Guard in Wisconsin.”

Trump had declared a national emergency and sent federal troops to Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, during anti-racism protests after the public police lynching of George Floyd.

Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice is reviewing presidential emergency action documents (PEADs). PEADs, which originated with President Dwight D. Eisenhower to deal with a possible Soviet attack, have purported to authorize unconstitutional actions, such as the suspension of habeas corpus, arbitrary detention and the declaration of martial law. They are so secret that not even Congress has seen them, but Freedom of Information Act requests have occasionally led to the revelation of their contents in public sources. PEADs could provide Trump with an unfettered opportunity to employ authoritarian, even military, tactics to maintain power.

Trump is preemptively sowing doubt about the outcome of the election. On July 30, he suggested delaying the election, although he does not have the legal authority to do so. And he has floated the idea of sending federal troops to the polls (to police nonexistent voter fraud) which would cause voter intimidation.

Citing no evidence, Trump declared on the first night of the Republican National Convention, “[Democrats are] trying to steal the election.… The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”

Indeed, when Chris Wallace asked Trump on “Fox News Sunday” in late July, “Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?” Trump replied, “No. I have to see.”

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen likewise warned during his testimony last year before the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee, “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

Worried that large numbers of mail ballots will be cast for Joe Biden, Trump admitted he is blocking emergency funding for the beleaguered United States Postal Service (USPS). Touting a false fear of widespread fraud, Trump stated, “They don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can’t do it, I guess,” adding, “Now, they need that money in order to make the Post Office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots.”

It is no coincidence that since June 15, when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy assumed the reins, the USPS instituted several changes that have slowed down mail service, including the removal of 671 sorting machines. DeJoy, who had no prior experience with the Postal Service and has extensive conflicts of interest, is also a major Trump campaign contributor.
Post-Election Scenarios

The Transition Integrity Project (TIP) is a bipartisan organization of campaign chairs, academics and former government officials, established last year out of concern about the manipulation and disruption of the 2020 presidential election and transition. It was convened by Georgetown University Law Center professor Rosa Brooks and Nils Gilman, former vice chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.

In June, TIP conducted election crisis scenario exercises, called “Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition,” to “identify risks to the rule of law or to the integrity of the democratic process” between Election Day and Inauguration Day. TIP assembled a group of more than 100 experts for the experiment. Calling the results “alarming,” TIP’s report assessed “with a high degree of likelihood that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape” and “Trump is likely to contest the result by both legal and extra-legal means, in an attempt to hold onto power.”

The report warned of “an unprecedented assault on the outcome” of the election. “Of particular concern is how the military would respond in the context of uncertain election results.” Most frightening is TIP’s warning, “The potential for violent conflict is high, particularly since Trump encourages his supporters to take up arms.”

TIP’s report noted, “President Trump has begun to lay the groundwork for potentially ignoring or disrupting the voting process, by claiming, for instance, that any mail-in ballots will be fraudulent and that his opponents will seek to have non-citizens vote through fraud.”

Four scenarios developed by TIP were as follows: (1) the winner was unknown the morning after the election and the race was too close to predict with certainty; (2) Biden “won outright” the popular vote and the Electoral College; (3) Trump won the Electoral College by a healthy margin but lost the popular vote by a healthy margin; and (4) Biden won both the popular vote and the Electoral College by narrow margins.

The report stated that in all four hypothetical exercises, Trump cast doubt on the official election results. The second scenario initially showed him alleging massive fraud, demanding investigations and appealing to the media to cast doubt on the result. He “later accepted a loss” once it became clear that his attempts to overturn the election results would not likely succeed. In the fourth scenario, Trump would not concede and set up a fierce competition that concluded with “an uneasy and combative but ultimately successful transition.”

In all four scenarios, Trump encouraged violence and chaos in the streets. His strategy called for recounts, investigations into “voting irregularities” to undermine public confidence in the results of the election, attempting to stop the counting of mail ballots — even ordering Barr to seize mail ballots — organizing his base to take to the streets, and relying on right-wing media to sow chaos and intimidate officials to side with Team Trump. When he trailed in the popular vote count, Trump challenged Biden to “prove a negative” — that there had been no voting fraud.

Participants in the exercises were particularly concerned about “the President’s ability to federalize the national guard; to deploy the military domestically; to launch investigations into opponents and to freeze their assets; and even to control communication in the name of national security.” Barr’s Justice Department “could provide legal cover for the President’s actions.” The report cited Trump’s prior appeals to “Second Amendment people” to defend their rights and his calls to supporters to “liberate” states with restrictive COVID-19 rules. Trump could initiate a foreign crisis after the election or during the transition. Barr might launch a bogus investigation of “terrorist ties” of members of Biden’s transition team to justify surveillance or a false flag operation before the election or in the contested period after the election.

In addition, Republican state legislators in swing states could refuse to certify a Biden victory in the face of Trump’s claims of fraud, according to Harvard government professor Daniel Carpenter. Vanita Gupta, former head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, worries that Trump could “weaponize” COVID and use it as a pretext to issue stay-at-home orders to prevent people from going to the polls when the deadline for requesting absentee ballots has expired.

Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman posits a situation in which Congress must choose the victor and Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are deadlocked. The Presidential Succession Act would make Pelosi the president but is the Supreme Court likely to ratify that outcome? Meanwhile, there would be violence in the streets.

The TIP exercises did not really consider legal strategies both sides could employ, nor did they predict how “the media will shape and drive public opinion.”
What Can Be Done to Safeguard the Election Process?

TIP recommends that congressional leaders conduct oversight hearings and seek assurances from military and agency leaders about their contingency plans. “Military and law enforcement leaders need to plan now for these possibilities to avoid becoming unwitting pawns in a partisan battle,” the report concluded. As Veterans for Peace has urged, service members have a duty to obey lawful orders and a duty to disobey unlawful orders. Many would refuse orders to deploy to U.S. cities to help Trump illegitimately maintain power.

Ackerman proposes that Congress create a special election commission with five Supreme Court justices, comprised of two liberals, two conservatives and the chief justice. It would investigate election challenges and determine the validity of disqualifications.

Meanwhile, Facebook is taking steps to counter false claims of victory on the site by Trump supporters. It is planning for what to do if Trump tries to invalidate the election results with accusations that USPS lost mail ballots or other groups meddled with the vote. Facebook has considered a “kill switch” to stop political advertising from spreading misinformation after Election Day. Twitter and YouTube have also considered unspecified actions they might take after the election. The bottom line is that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter “have to potentially treat the president as a bad actor” who may subvert the democratic process, Alex Stamos, director of Stanford’s Internet Observatory and former executive at Facebook, told The New York Times.

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) will continue to dispatch legal observers to observe and document potentially unlawful or unjustified interference with demonstrators’ rights by law enforcement. NLG members provide legal support for those arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights. Organizations including the NLG, ACLU and Protect Democracy will ready their legal strategies for the battles in the courts.

Finally, the people must mobilize to mount mass actions to ensure the integrity of the election. Those of us who write and do media commentary should continue to educate people about the legal and political situation and organize resistance to attempts to undermine the veracity of the election results.

In light of the massive uprisings against white supremacy in response to the murder of George Floyd, and now the shooting of Jacob Blake, we can expect widespread popular resistance if Trump tries to hijack the election.