July 30, 2016

Bernie Sanders’ Former Press Secretary Says She Experienced Blatant Racism From Staffers

Source: BuzzFeed

In an interview for online newsletter Lenny, Symone Sanders said the Vermont senator was horrified when she told him about her experience.

posted on Jul. 30, 2016, at 5:10 p.m.

Tamerra Griffin
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Bernie Sanders’ former national press secretary says she experienced repeated incidents of racism from other staff while on the campaign trail, and at one point broke down in tears in her car.

In an interview for Lenny, an online newsletter co-founded by Lena Dunham, 26-year-old Symone Sanders (no relation to the Vermont senator) spoke with writer Mikki Halpin and described several instances in which felt she was discriminated against as a high-ranking black female campaign worker.

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Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tamerragriffin/symone-sanders-discusses-racism?utm_term=.ifMyxxm22#.ce6RddyKK

July 30, 2016

Clinton's court shortlist emerges

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The Hill talked to three well-connected groups in Washington about Clinton's Supreme Court options should she win the White House. None would go on the record, citing the sensitivities surrounding the issue.

But there’s broad agreement about who Clinton would be most likely to consider, not only for the vacancy already on the court, but also the additional ones that could open up over the next four years if liberals like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Anthony Kennedy were to retire.

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Topping the list, insiders say, is Garland. Other top contenders for a Clinton appointment would be Sri Srinivasan, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and Jane Kelly, a judge on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Obama White House reportedly considered both judges this year before the president nominated Garland.

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Paul Watford, an African American judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is also being mentioned as a potential Clinton nominee, along with Jacqueline Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American judge on the same court.

more
http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/289643-clintons-court-shortlist-emerges

July 30, 2016

Donald’s Achilles’ heel: Trump’s racism could lose him moderate white support, data shows

Trump's overt bigotry could drive Independent whites to the Democratic party

SEAN MCELWEE

Over the past few weeks, there has been been renewed discussion about Donald Trump’s past racism and the racism that has persisted throughout his campaign. Trump and his father were sued twice by the Department of Justice for refusing to rent apartments to black people. He has said, in private, that he believes, “Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is; I believe that.” He also publicly called for the execution of the Central Park Five, all of whom were later declared innocent (afterwards, he said they were “no angels.” During his campaign, Trump has regularly engaged in racist rhetoric. He engaged in a racist attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge overseeing the lawsuit against Trump University. Trump has retweeted racists and accounts connected to the “white genocide” hashtag (a white supremacist hashtag). He has frequently referred to Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.”

I’ve been noting that this story has powerful possibilities for months, and yet many have dismissed the idea that Trump’s racism will do anything other than help him among whites. However, my analysis of ANES 2016 suggests that Trump’s racism may be extreme enough to alienate not just voters of color, but also moderate whites.

Racism Might Harm Trump With Whites

Many commentators have correctly noted that Trump’s racist comments hurt him among people of color. Latinos and Asian Americans have widely rejected Trump, and in one Ohio poll, Trump had 0% support among African-Americans. Among harder-to-poll Spanish-speaking Latinos, Trump’s support is less than 11 percent. Trump may well win an even smaller share of the non-white vote than Republicans normally win (Romney won just 17% of the non-white vote).

However, there are several reasons to believe that some whites who would happily cast a vote for a Reagan, Romney or McCain would hesitate to vote for Trump. Why? Because Americans are very aware of more glaring forms of racism, like racial stereotyping. As legal scholar Ian Haney Lopez argues, the Republicans have had electoral success by using dog-whistles, rather than explicit racial appeals. Codewords like “welfare queens” obscure the realities of race that are being discussed, leaving politicians with plausible deniability. This strategy has been used mostly by the right, though Democrats have also used it (i.e. the famous “superpredators” comment).

A large share of whites will support racist policies, but some may balk at supporting open racism. In ANES 2016, anti-black stereotyping is disturbingly common among whites: 30 percent say black people are lazier than whites and 40 percent say black people are more violent. However, attitudes described by scholars as “racial resentment” are even higher.

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http://www.salon.com/2016/07/30/donalds_achilles_heel_trumps_racism_could_lose_him_moderate_white_support_data_shows/

July 30, 2016

Barney Frank thumps Trump: ‘Home-grown bigots’ are more of a threat to LGBT rights than ...

Barney Frank thumps Trump: ‘Home-grown bigots’ are more of a threat to LGBT rights than ‘foreign ideologies’

In an appearance on Friday night’s edition of Real Time with Bill Maher Ovetime, former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank (D) rejected summarily Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s overtures toward the LGBT community.

Frank said that in the 45 years he’s been fighting for LGBT equality, “the number of foreign ideologues that have attacked us has been quite small, it was a terrible event, but they were very specific. Home-grown bigots,” he said, “they have free rein.”

Frank went on to say that Trump has made it known that former Justice Antonin Scalia is his model of a perfect jurist and Supreme Court appointee.

Scalia, Frank said, “was the most important homophobe in America to ever hold high office. If you appoint an Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, you’ve done more to unravel the gains we have made more than anything else.”

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http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/barney-frank-thumps-trump-home-grown-bigots-are-more-of-a-threat-to-lgbt-rights-than-foreign-ideologies/

July 30, 2016

Courts Deal Setbacks To GOP-Backed Voting Restrictions In 3 States

CHICAGO (AP) — Courts dealt setbacks to Republican efforts in three states to restrict voting, blocking a North Carolina law requiring photo identification, loosening a similar measure in Wisconsin and halting strict citizenship requirements in Kansas.

The rulings Friday came as the 2016 election moves into its final phase, with Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton locked in a high-stakes presidential race and control of the U.S. Senate possibly hanging in the balance. North Carolina is one of about a dozen swing states in the presidential race, while Wisconsin has voted Democratic in recent presidential elections and Kansas has been solidly Republican.

The decisions followed a similar blow earlier this month to what critics said was one of the nation's most restrictive voting laws in Texas. The New Orleans-based U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said Texas' voter ID law is discriminatory and must be weakened before the November election.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the Virginia-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked North Carolina's law that limited to six the number of acceptable photo IDs. The law also curtailed early voting and eliminated same-day registration.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/three-voting-rights-laws-gop

July 30, 2016

Pressure Grows on Obama to Name DNC Hackers

U.S. officials say the hackers who hit the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaigns are Russian. Lawmakers want the White House to show the evidence for who’s behind the hack.

ASPEN, Colorado — Pressure is mounting on the Obama administration to publicly identify the source of a cyber attack against the Democratic National Committee, which law enforcement and intelligence officials say has been traced to Russia and appears to be part of a campaign to meddle with the presidential election.

This week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers—as well as former intelligence officials, retired military officers, and security experts—urged President Obama to call out Russia for the hacking campaign. After all, these experts say, that’s what he did when North Korea was blamed for a damaging cyber attack against Sony Pictures in retaliation for a satirical film. That hack was seen as an assault on core American values of freedom of expression. Similarly, the breach of the DNC is viewed as an affront to the U.S. electoral process that cannot go unanswered.

Officially, the White House and intelligence agencies have taken no public stance on who is behind the attack, which was first revealed in June and took on new urgency when DNC staff emails were leaked last week, showing that the organization tried to undermine the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign amid the scandal. And the email leak cast a shadow over the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week. But six U.S. officials and security experts have told The Daily Beast that the evidence linking Russia to the hack appears conclusive. Obama himself stepped closer to pinning the hacks on Russia when he told NBC News that “experts have attributed this to the Russians” and that it was “possible” the leak was designed to help the Trump campaign.

Three U.S. officials told the Daily Beast that it is too early to discuss possible retaliation against Russia, noting that the FBI is still investigating the breach. But privately, the officials said, there are discussions underway about a response that is at least as public and as aggressive as the U.S. response to the Sony hack, in 2014.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/29/pressure-grows-on-obama-to-name-dnc-hackers.html

July 30, 2016

Cartoon: Russians Hack Into Trump’s Tax Returns

[image][/image]

July 30, 2016

Analysis: Get Ready For The Nastiest, Most Unpredictable Campaign You Can Imagine

David Lightman
McClatchy Washington Bureau

PHILADELPHIA — America is about to endure the closest, nastiest, most unpredictable presidential election in more than three decades. Not since Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan ran against each other in 1980 has the choice been so stark, the warnings from each candidate about the other so dire, the likely outcome so murky.

As this year's political conventions end, there is no clear victor. But watch upcoming polls. The leaders in the first polls conducted after Labor Day, which in most recent election cycles is the first after both conventions end, has won the White House every election year since 1952.

"That's when the dust settles. That is the person who ends up taking the oath of office," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, at a breakfast hosted this week by McClatchy.

There is one exception. In 1980, the parties were tied at Labor Day, and the election didn't swing until the final days.

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http://www.nationalmemo.com/nastiest-unpredictable-campaign-imagine/

July 30, 2016

Fox News Didn’t Show Democratic Convention Speeches That Cut Against Its Right-Wing Narrative

Alex Kaplan

Fox News did not air several Democratic National Convention speeches from figures promoting issues that run counter to the narrative the network has pushed for years—including racial justice, reproductive rights, gun safety reform, LGBT equality, and respect for Muslim-Americans.

During the second day of the convention on July 26, members of the “Mothers of the Movement,” a group of women whose African-American children were killed due to gun violence or in officer-involved shootings, shared their experiences and their children’s memories. The women also urged people to support Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who they said “isn’t afraid to say that black lives matter,” and pushed for criminal justice reform and gun safety reform. Fox News not only neglected to air the speeches, but the Mothers of the Movement appearance went completely unmentioned at the time. Fox News and right-wing media have repeatedly demonized the Black Lives Matter movement, likening it to “a hate group” and a “murder movement.” They have also dismissed calls for criminal justice reform, pushing the “black-on-black crime” canard as an excuse and calling concerns about systemic racism in American society “dumb.”

The convention also featured speakers who advocated for protecting abortion rights, including Planned Parenthood Action Fund president Cecile Richards, who spoke on July 26, and NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue, who spoke on July 27. Both speeches were ignored by Fox. Protecting abortion rights runs counter to the stigma Fox casts on the medical procedure, with their hosts falsely framing abortion law restrictions as patient safety measures and calling a common abortion procedure “dismemberment abortion.” Conservative media have joined Fox figures to demonize Planned Parenthood, repeatedly pushing debunked myths that the organization profited off the selling of fetal tissue. This smear effort has been led by Fox News, which has hosted overwhelmingly anti-choice guests — often extremists — to push misinformation about abortion and about Planned Parenthood.

The convention included remarks from relatives of victims of the Orlando and Sandy Hook massacres, both speaking on July 27 on behalf of gun safety reform. Fox covered neither speaker. Fox has consistently misinformed on the issue of gun safety, pushing the National Rifle Association-driven lie that gun safety measures would “take” guns away from lawful gun owners,and calling gun safety reforms “flat-out dangerous.” Right-wing media have also falsely claimed that shootings tend to occur in so-called “gun-free zones,” and have even asserted that restricting assault weapons such as those used in the Orlando and Sandy Hookmass shootings constitutes a “war on women.”

more
http://www.nationalmemo.com/fox-news-democratic-convention-speeches-right-wing-narrative/

July 30, 2016

Donald Trump now hates Michael Bloomberg because Bloomberg was mean to him

By Philip Bump

One of the more effective speeches during the Democratic convention came from former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In many ways, Bloomberg is what Donald Trump wants to be: a very rich guy who runs a media company and who converted that wealth into political power. Of all of the rich New Yorkers involved in the 2016 campaign, Bloomberg is the richest, worth some $40 billion, four times what Trump says he's worth and 13 times what Bloomberg (the media company) estimates Trump is actually worth. (Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is a lowly millionaire.)

Bloomberg is an ideological centrist in a way that now seems almost quaint, and his endorsement of Clinton on Wednesday night was more an anti-endorsement of Trump. He hammered Trump, questioning his actual wealth, calling him a con man and a hypocrite, and suggesting that Clinton deserved votes because she is "sane" and "mature." And on Thursday, as Clinton was preparing to accept her party's nomination, Trump got mad about it.

At an event in Iowa, he started talking about how he wanted to "hit" the Democratic speakers at the convention who were disparaging him. The choice of words was awkward, but it seems clear he meant it in the way he's used it throughout his campaign: To go after them with verbal or tweeted insults.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/29/donald-trump-now-hates-michael-bloomberg-because-bloomberg-was-mean-to-him/?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1