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Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Karyn Strickler
President
Vote Climate U.S. PAC works to elect candidates to get off fossil fuels and put a fee on carbon, in order to slow climate change and related weather extremes. Since global pandemics are directly linked to climate change, two things are non-negotiable this election season as the U.S. looks toward the future: Americans need to safely cast their ballots and we must vote for climate action in November.
"We must make climate zero Donald J. Trump a one-term President if we hope to slow climate change. Voters also need to think about how far President Trump might go to maintain power as his first term comes to an end in these turbulent times, when in his more lucid moments, he very seriously speculates on Americans injecting disinfectant as a defense against COVID 19," said Vote Climate U.S. PAC President Karyn Strickler.
Democrats proposed reforms to make voting easier as part of the coronavirus stimulus, including mail-in voting. Trump is quoted in The Guardian saying, "They had things, levels of voting that if you'd ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." If he thinks that making voting easier means Republicans will never win again, will he make it more difficult? Will he postpone or cancel the 2020 elections? Will he force Americans to vote in person, risking their lives, during a resurgence of the pandemic this Fall?
Primary elections across the country have already been postponed and rescheduled. Wisconsin was so desperate for new leadership that they voted in-person amid this deadly pandemic, after their Democratic Governor issued an order to postpone in-person voting and the Republican Supreme Court blocked it. All voters can likely expect ongoing Republican voter suppression and Russian interference by any means possible.
Make sure you are prepared now to vote remotely in November. Start by educating yourself. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) addresses absentee voting and all-mail voting. They say, "All states will mail an absentee ballot to certain voters who request one. In two-thirds of the states, any qualified voter may vote absentee without offering an excuse, and in one-third of the states, an excuse is required," and "In a handful of states, a ballot is automatically mailed to every eligible voter (no request or application is necessary)." Our Vote Climate U.S. PAC President, Karyn Strickler just signed-up for her own absentee ballot at the U.S. Vote Foundation. It took less than 5 minutes to file, a few more to print and mail. Every voter, from every state can use this form.
Coming in September, Vote Climate U.S. PAC's 2020 Congressional Voter's Guide makes it easy for every American to elect climate-action candidates. We are currently researching the 2020 Voter's Guide which rates every U.S. House and U.S. Senate incumbent and challenger, giving climate calculations to each, from climate hero to zero. Vote Climate U.S. PAC is a nonpartisan organization, but the partisan divide on the issue of climate change is undeniable and unacceptable. For example, in our analysis of our 2018 research, for our Voter's Guide, we found that the average, overall climate calculation for incumbent Democrats in the U.S. Senate was 85.3 versus Republicans, who scored .63 on average.
Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) was right during Trump's impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate when he said, "You cannot trust this president to do what's right for this country." So Americans and our governors must look out for ourselves in the November election, just as we have been doing during the COVID 19 pandemic. Karyn Strickler said, "Register now to vote by mail. In September consult our Vote Climate U.S. PAC Voter's Guide to vote climate for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. Share the guide widely because if used as intended, our Voter's Guide could transform the politics of climate change in a single election, creating a climate-action majority on the federal level.
Vote Climate U.S. PAC works to elect candidates to get off fossil fuels, transition to clean, renewable, energy and reduce carbon pollution by putting a fee on carbon, in order to slow climate change and related weather extremes.
"Trump has turned Venezuela into an effective US colony," said one critic.
Some critics of the Trump administration are reacting with horror to revelations that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been serving as the de facto ruler of Venezuela.
According to a Saturday report in The New York Times, Rubio for the last several months has been acting informally as the "viceroy" of Venezuela ever since its recognized president, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted by the American military in January and brought to the US to face charges related to "narco-terrorism."
The Times' sources revealed that Rubio "effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources, and its government" and "is deeply involved in the country’s day-to-day operations," while maintaining regular contact with acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez.
Under current arrangements, the US Treasury Department takes in revenue from Venezuela's exports, including its petroleum, and then disperses the money back to the country through its private banks with strict conditions set by Rubio over what it can be spent on.
In explaining the system, the Times likened it to "parents handing out allowances to children," adding that it gives Rubio "immense leverage over... Rodríguez, who depends on the money to pay workers and prop up the national currency."
Elizabeth Saunders, professor of political science at Columbia University, described Rubio's power over Venezuela as "insane," as well as "derelict, unconscionable, and impeachable."
"The secretary of state's time is scarce, valuable, and not outsourcable," Saunders emphasized.
Orlando J. Pérez, professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas at Dallas, said the Times report made a mockery of Rubio's professed claims to want to bring democracy back to Venezuela.
"It appears Rubio has transformed from democracy promotion warrior," Pérez commented, "to transactional realpolitik operative!"
Kenneth Roth, former executive director at Human Rights Watch, wrote that US control over Venezuela appeared similar to the kind of imperial power wielded by European nations in the 19th Century.
"Trump has turned Venezuela into an effective US colony," said Roth, "with Marco Rubio as the viceroy and Washington controlling the country’s oil revenue and dictating major foreign and domestic policies. Democracy has been relegated to the distant future."
Bradley Simpson, historian at the University of Connecticut, also saw the current US arrangement with Venezuela as a return to overt imperialism.
"We are literally back in the Dollar Diplomacy days of the 1910s," Simpson wrote, "when the United States invaded countries and took over their financial systems and ran them as effective colonies. Flagrantly illegal, enormously corrupt. Where is the organization of American states or UN in denouncing this?"
"These hoodlums come in with machine guns—M4, an American-made machine gun—and they detain us. They block off the road."
Rep. Ro Khanna this week was detained by a group of Israeli settlers whom he described as "hoodlums... with machine guns" while making a visit to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank.
In an interview with Reuters published on Saturday, Khanna (D-Calif.) said he and his tour group were surrounded by armed settlers as they were traveling through the West Bank on Wednesday.
"We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it," said Khanna. "And these hoodlums come in with machine guns—M4, an American-made machine gun—and they detain us. They block off the road."
The California Democrat said that the settlers called in members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to help them deal with him and his group.
"The IDF is on their side," Khanna remarked, "not on the side of the Americans."
Cameron Kasky, an aide to Khanna, told Reuters that the group was held for over an hour before officials whom he believed to be police intervened and secured their release.
The IDF told Reuters that both military troops and police officers dispersed the settlers who had set up a roadblock near the small Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta.
Khanna wasn't the only American to have a run-in with Israeli settlers this week, as CNN reported that four settlers attacked groups of journalists, including CNN reporters and crew, who were traveling through an area north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah on Saturday.
As the journalists were driving, four settlers blocked off the road with their cars and began attacking the reporters' vehicles with wooden clubs and metal rods.
"The settlers then began to jump on the vehicle behind CNN's—carrying another group of journalists—and smashed the windshield of that vehicle," the network reported. "Another group of settlers tried to block a separate exit route before chasing the journalists towards the town of Sinjil."
Israeli police arrived on the scene and arrested four settlers who were allegedly responsible for the attacks, CNN reported.
"The Israel Police and the IDF view any manifestation of violence or causing damage to property very seriously," the Israeli officers said after the arrests, "especially when it concerns media personnel performing their work."
Israeli settlers for years have carried out violent attacks on Palestinians living in the West Bank, and witnesses have regularly described IDF soldiers at the scene either standing by as the attacks occur or even actively helping the attackers.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that claims about settler violence have been "blown up beyond belief," describing attacks as being carried out by a small number of "juvenile delinquents."
"This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs."
The Trump administration on Friday escalated its war with the press by subpoenaing several reporters at The New York Times days after the paper published a story on Wednesday that detailed security concerns about the luxury jet the Qatari government gave to President Donald Trump.
According to the Times, the subpoenas are attempting to force reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday next week, a move that the paper describes as an "extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations."
The issued subpoenas do not specifically name the Times' reporting on the Qatari jet as the reason for the grand jury probe, although they were given to all four journalists—Tyler Pager, Julian Barnes, Eric Schmitt, and Eric Lipton—who reported the story.
Additionally, the Times noted, a senior official at the FBI had asked the paper to hold off publishing its story on the jet before it came out on Wednesday, citing unspecified national security concerns about its content.
David McCraw, the top attorney representing the Times' newsroom, denounced the subpoenas as an attack on the freedom of the press.
"The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects," said McGraw. “This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs."
It is highly uncommon for government investigators to subpoena journalists when they are probing national security leaks, as such actions are generally seen as having a chilling effect on reporters’ ability to gather information.
Rick Stengel, former under secretary of state for President Barack Obama, said that the Times' reporting on the Qatari jet, whose security upgrades are being financed with US tax dollars, is completely within the scope of constitutional protections for press freedom.
"The reporting that the Times journalists have been subpoenaed for is exactly the kind of journalism the First Amendment is designed to protect: matters involving national security and taxpayer dollars," wrote Stengel in a Saturday social media post. "Reporting that embarrasses a president is protected speech."
Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin also denounced the Trump administration for trying to drag reporters into a grand jury investigation.
"This action by the US government to subpoena reporters for reporting legitimate news on security concerns about Air Force One should alarm every American," Griffin wrote.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, accused the Trump administration of abusing government power not to defend national security, but to protect the president from personal humiliation.
"We've long said that when the government claims it needs to investigate journalists to protect national security, it really means its own reputational security," said Stern. "This is as clear an example as you can get. The administration's embarrassment that it reportedly charged taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit a flying bribe that still isn't secure enough for hostile times does not supersede the need for a free and independent press."
This is the second time in recent weeks that the Trump administration has tried to subpoena reporters to compel their testimony in grand jury investigations.
In June, the US Department of Justice issued subpoenas for national security reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal related to national security leaks.
Subpoenas against both news organizations were withdrawn after they issued legal challenges in sealed filings.