| AG Barr: 'What happened to the Trump presidential campaign ... must never happen again' Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:49 PM PDT  Attorney General William Barr issued restrictions on the FBI's ability to conduct surveillance of elected officials following Carter Page wiretap errors.
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| Fort Hood commander loses post, denied transfer after incidents at Army base Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:56 PM PDT  Maj. Gen. Scott Efflandt had been set to take over the 1st Armored Division in coming weeks.
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| The right-wing group Patriot Prayer, associated with a man killed in the Portland protests, has a history of provoking left-wing groups: 'This was just a matter of time' Posted: 31 Aug 2020 10:31 AM PDT  An Anti-Defamation League researcher fears that Aaron Danielson's killing will spur more bloodshed between right- and left-wing groups.
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| FBI Reports Chicago Gangs Have Formed Pact to Shoot Cops ‘On Sight’ Posted: 01 Sep 2020 11:13 AM PDT  A federal intelligence alert from the FBI field office in Chicago, Ill., warned that about 30 gangs in the city have made a pact to shoot police officers if they draw their weapons in public, ABC 7 reported on Monday.Intelligence alerts are frequently distributed to law enforcement officials, especially if the alerts involve threats to an officer's safety. This particular alert was based on "a contact whose reporting is limited and whose reliability cannot be determined," meaning a street source, witness, or information obtained through surveillance.The alert states that Chicago gangs have agreed to "shoot on-sight any cop that has a weapon drawn on any subject in public.""Members of these gang factions have been actively searching for, and filming, police officers in performance of their official duties," the alert continues. "The purpose of which is to catch on film an officer drawing his/her weapon on any subject and the subsequent 'shoot on-sight' of said officer, in order to garner national media attention."In early August, mobs of people staged what appeared to be a coordinated spate of looting and vandalism at Chicago's Magnificent Mile, a stretch of high-end businesses in the city's downtown. The looting occurred after police shot and arrested a suspect in the Englewood neighborhood. The looting was reportedly prompted by a rumor, which went viral on social media, that the cops had shot and killed a child, when in fact they had injured a 20-year-old man.Chicago has seen a rise in murders and shootings since the death of George Floyd earlier this year, a surge in violence likely compounded by economic dislocation caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a rise in anti-police sentiment, which has reportedly led police in many cities to adopt less aggressive tactics. There were 2,749 shooting victims in the city as of Monday, up 917 from the same period last year.Chicago police superintendent David Brown, who started his position several weeks before the Floyd protests, said on Monday that "a sense of lawlessness" has been observed by officers on the street. Brown also noted that the dangers for officers have dramatically increased."I think 51 officers being shot at or shot in one year, I think that quadruples any previous year in Chicago's history," Brown said. "So I think it's more than a suggestion that people are seeking to do harm to cops."
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| The New Uighurs? Mongolians Protest as China Moves to Erase Local Culture Posted: 01 Sep 2020 02:02 AM PDT  HONG KONG—Students, teachers, parents, and others are staging protests in Inner Mongolia, a semi-autonomous region in northern China, by surrounding police stations and gathering outside schools. Thousands are congregating in rare displays of open defiance of governmental orders.These demonstrations were sparked by the Chinese government's directive issued in the summer to broaden the footprint of Mandarin Chinese in state-compiled textbooks and classroom instruction within the region, displacing the Mongolian language in academic environments and daily usage.From Sept. 1 onward, the authorities will shift public elementary and middle schools' language of instruction to Chinese, specifically for three courses—language and literature, history, as well as morality and law (which includes political and ideological indoctrination). The change will be rolled out in phases, eventually keeping just mathematics and art classes in the region's dominant native tongue.On anonymous parent said teaching everything in a second language would make it more difficult for children to learn in school. "As Mongolians—myself and other parents—we are not willing to watch our mother tongue be gradually replaced by another language. Sure, we study Chinese, from a young age so that's not an issue," they told the Voice of America Mandarin service.Ethnic Mongolians who reside in China see this as a step to erase an important part of their culture. Some see it as forced homogeneity directed at their youngsters, much like what is happening in Tibet and Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has strict rules that limit the public displays and practices related to each region's cultural identity. It's all part of the Chinese central government's objective to impose cultural and linguistic homogeneity on one of the world's largest and most diverse nations. As new policies are rolled out to bring this closer to fruition, the many cultures of more than one hundred million people are slowly expunged.The snapback came right before the start of the academic year. High school pupils, many wearing their school uniforms—blue and white track jackets with loose-fitting blue pants, worn by public school students all over the country—formed crowds and chanted, "Mongolian is our mother tongue! We are Mongolian until death!"The gatherings were peaceful. As of Tuesday, police officers were on site mostly to observe the protests.> ӨвөрмонголЭхХэлээХамгаалахТэмцэл > Жирэм, Хүрээ хошуунд, эцэг эхчүүд хүүхдүүдээ сургуулиас нь гаргаж авч байгаа байдал. pic.twitter.com/KM0wPVKWXQ> > — Enkhochir Khuvisgalt (@Khereid_Mongol) August 30, 2020Since the July announcement that schools in Inner Mongolia would phase out Mongolian language instruction, 4,200 petitions have circulated by ethnic Mongols in China against the policy, according to Made in China Journal, a quarterly publication that covers the socioeconomic changes in the country.In some cases, names are added to the petitions in circular formation so as not to create a hierarchy on paper, preventing the authorities from singling out one person as an organizer within the opposition. This method has historical precedence: regional resistance groups and secret societies in the 19th and 20th centuries applied this arrangement so that ringleaders could not be identified and captured.> While China forces the Chinese language onto students in Inner Mongolia, Mongolian elders write back in protest. pic.twitter.com/u7032oyBSF> > — Ungerni Khooloi (@Nicholastrad) August 31, 2020The regional education bureau of Inner Mongolia issued a statement on Monday to soothe the concerns of parents and students, saying, "The current bilingual education system has not changed." But people in the region point out that television, radio, and other forms of media are already broadcast in Mandarin Chinese, and that their own language is largely absent in massively distributed media. While families generally speak Mongolian at home, paring it back from schools will diminish the language's usage by ethnic Mongols who live in China.Language schools in five other provinces are also reducing their usage of local languages and dialects, replacing the curriculums with Mandarin Chinese instruction according to the government's new rules.Online posts about reactions to this policy, especially protests and petitions, are being censored. Videos of the demonstrations in Inner Mongolia have been scrubbed from Weibo, a domestic platform that functions like Twitter, as well as other social media sites. In late August, the only Mongolian language social network, Bainu, was taken offline by the Chinese government.The People's Republic of China propagates a myth of social harmony where the Han Chinese majority (more than 91 percent of the population) lives alongside 55 minorities. During the annual gathering of the country's rubber-stamp parliament, known as the National People's Congress, delegates from non-Han regions wear their traditional attire to stand out from the sea of black suits worn by most bureaucrats. Oftentimes, the lives and cultures of minorities are reduced to folksongs and dances, paving over the tensions caused by the Chinese authorities' demands for uniformity.This is particularly true in Xinjiang, a Muslim-majority region where up to a million Uyghurs are in "thought transformation" camps at any given moment. People who are trapped in these high-security locations spend hours each day rehearsing musical and dance programs, which are then performed for visiting journalists as "proof" that individuals are "transformed" or "reformed," and can be integrated into the Chinese fabric of society.In these camps, language instruction plays an important role too. A leaked 2017 memo that was penned by an official who was at the time in charge of the region's security included this directive: "Make remedial Mandarin studies the top priority."This type of linguistic engineering is not new in China. The Chinese Communist Party governs by uniformity, mainly addressing ideological and economic matters, not so much social and cultural factors. Part of the idea is that people can be unified—or more easily kept under control—if they speak, hear, and read a single, flattened language, one that removes cultural intricacies and distinctions, breaking connections within regional pockets to channel direct links to the party's own organs.The policy in Inner Mongolia is, on paper, meant to foster stronger economic inclusion in an impoverished area within China. But the fact is that locals see its implementation as a slight—and a continuation of Han Chinese incursion into their culture. Many feel that their traditions are being dismantled in the name of poverty reduction, and few ethnic Mongolians have benefited from mining booms in an area that is nearly twice the size of Texas. Instead, state-run enterprises have reaped most of the profits.Now, the people of Inner Mongolia wonder if even their own language may be fading away too.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| A grieving daughter in Wuhan is suing China, saying its early cover-up of COVID-19 killed her father. In response, the authorities reportedly intimidated her family. Posted: 01 Sep 2020 05:13 AM PDT  Zhao Lei told Sky News, "I think the government covered up some facts."
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| U.S. to send millions of rapid COVID-19 tests to states to support school reopening, other tasks Posted: 01 Sep 2020 09:42 AM PDT  Other top priorities for the newly purchased tests include day care centers, first responders, and "critical infrastructure," said Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The tests will be distributed in collaboration with Abbott beginning in mid-September, Giroir said. Abbott said last week it will ramp up production to around 50 million tests per month by mid-October.
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| US vetoes UN resolution over Islamic State fighters' return Posted: 31 Aug 2020 11:20 AM PDT  The United States vetoed a U.N. resolution Monday calling for the prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration of all those engaged in terrorism-related activities, saying it didn't call for the repatriation from Syria and Iraq of foreign fighters for the Islamic State extremist group and their families which is "the crucial first step." U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft said the resolution, "supposedly designed to reinforce international action on counter-terrorism, was worse than no resolution at all."
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| 2 dead as Mauritius oil spill clean-up boats collide Posted: 01 Sep 2020 04:06 AM PDT  The prime minister of Mauritius said Tuesday two sailors were dead and two others missing after a tugboat assisting in a major oil spill clean-up off the Indian Ocean island collided with a barge.
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| More than $130K raised for California family after girls seen using Taco Bell WiFi for school work Posted: 01 Sep 2020 01:04 PM PDT  A now-viral photo of two young students using the free WiFi in a Taco Bell parking lot for online learning highlights unequal access to internet.
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| Trump intel officials announce they will no longer offer Democrats election security briefings Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:41 AM PDT  Democrats condemn "shocking abdication" of responsibility as intelligence officials scale back
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| A transgender woman died while in custody on Rikers Island after she couldn't afford $500 bail. NYC just agreed to pay her family $5.9 million. Posted: 31 Aug 2020 11:56 PM PDT  Layleen Polanco had an epileptic seizure while being held in isolation at Rikers Island in 2019. A report identified several systemic failures.
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| San Francisco Salon Owner Says Nancy Pelosi Visited Despite Citywide Closure Posted: 01 Sep 2020 02:41 PM PDT  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) visited a San Francisco hair salon for a wash and blow-out on Monday, the salon's owner told Fox News, despite a citywide closure on hairstyling businesses.San Francisco only allowed hair salons to reopen with outdoor services on Tuesday, following a closure to combat the coronavirus pandemic. However, Pelosi apparently received indoor services at eSalon near the city's Marina district on Monday.Owner Erica Kious criticized Pelosi in an interview with Fox, while security footage obtained by the network appeared to show Pelosi inside the premises. Kious said a stylist who rents a chair in the salon contacted her about the visit, and that she doesn't have control over whether the stylists bring customers to the salon because they're currently not required to pay her."It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can't work," Kious said."This business offered for the Speaker to come in on Monday and told her they were allowed by the city to have one customer at a time in the business," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement. "The Speaker complied with the rules as presented to her by this establishment."National Review has reached out to the speaker's office for additional comment.San Francisco implemented some of the strictest coronavirus lockdown measures in the country in March, issuing a "shelter-in-place" order for residents with exceptions only for exercise and visits to grocery markets and pharmacies. The city allowed hair and nail salons to reopen on Tuesday for outdoor services only, and will clear gyms to open outdoors next week.
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| Trump White House Warns Colleges: Don’t Send Your COVID-Infected Students Home! Posted: 01 Sep 2020 09:48 AM PDT  Top White House officials rang the alarm bell during a call with the nation's governors on Monday, pleading with them to advise college presidents in their states to keep COVID-infected students on campus or risk another major outbreak. "We know that what happened across the South [in June] was primarily driven by 18-to-25 year olds, across the South, with asymptomatic spread," said Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force. "Sending these individuals back home in their asymptomatic state to spread the virus in their home town or among their vulnerable households could really recreate what we experienced over the June time frame in the South. So I think every university president should have a plan for not only testing but caring for their students that need to isolate."The comments represent one of the most explicit acknowledgments to date that the White House's aggressive push to bring students back to campus this fall has created serious risks for increased COVID transmission. It also underscores just how fragile the current situation is at college campuses across the country. Emails Show Chaos and Confusion at Ole Miss Over Coronavirus ExposureAccording to a New York Times tracker of COVID-19 at American colleges and universities, some 26,000 cases have emerged at over 750 institutions since the novel coronavirus hit the United States early this year. At the University of Alabama system alone, over 1,300 cases have been reported, according to the school's own coronavirus case tracker.Those spikes in infections have put college and university officials in a difficult position over how to manage community spread on their campuses. On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that students and professors at the University of Mississippi—a state where GOP Gov. Tate Reeves explicitly cited saving college football to justify a mask mandate—felt the administration was pressuring exposed (if not infected) students to return home to their families. Transparency concerns about outbreaks, and the prospect of students bringing coronavirus back to their older, possibly immunocompromised relatives, have also followed outbreaks at other major southern colleges like Alabama. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, meanwhile, shut down in-person instruction for undergrads just one week into the semester last month, and at least some students were reportedly set to head home without being tested for COVID-19. The University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, and Michigan State University also quickly pivoted to online learning last month.Despite these cases, the White House has been adamant that schools not only open their doors to on-campus learning this fall but that fall sports—specifically football—proceed as usual. Justifying this stance, top administration officials have downplayed the severity of transmission and infection among younger populations. President Donald Trump himself has insisted—despite inconclusive evidence, at best, to support his claim—that healthy college athletes are "not going to have a problem" with the disease. In fact, powerhouse college football programs like Texas Tech and Oklahoma have reported recent outbreaks among their active players.University of Alabama to Profs: Don't Tell Students About COVID-Infected ClassmatesSpeaking to governors on the call Monday, Vice President Mike Pence echoed Birx's admonition that infected students remain isolated on campus for fear that asymptomatic transmission could impact wider populations. "In general, we want to encourage, even when you have test positivity on campuses, we want to encourage universities to have students remain on or near campus and minimize the potential exposure to the larger community," said Pence. "We really believe—and I spoke to a university president just the other day—in suspending classes for a few weeks, have people study in their rooms, and... that kind of isolation."We believe, let's have the testing, let's have the mitigation efforts, good practices in place," Pence added. "But we really believe that remaining on or near campus is the best course possible for the overall health and well-being [of the community]."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| American Airlines pilots landing in Los Angeles spotted a 'guy in a jetpack' just 300 yards from their passenger jet Posted: 01 Sep 2020 07:48 AM PDT  After other pilots confirmed the sighting near LAX, the LAPD is investigating the rogue aeronaut, who could face hefty fines if caught.
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| With peak of hurricane season almost here, forecasters watch four areas for tropical development Posted: 31 Aug 2020 10:46 AM PDT  The most active day of the hurricane season is around Sept. 10. As the season's peak nears, forecasters are watching four areas for development.
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| Far-right Patriot Prayer group says fatal shooting victim in Portland was a supporter Posted: 31 Aug 2020 03:36 PM PDT  "I have regrets that Jay was shot," group founder Joey Gibson said of Saturday night's deadly confrontation after a pro-Trump caravan entered the city.
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| US warns NKorea still pressing ballistic missile development Posted: 01 Sep 2020 08:51 AM PDT  The US government warned Tuesday that North Korea continues to acquire materials and equipment for its ballistic missile program, despite claims in Washington that Pyongyang has pulled back on its nuclear ambitions.
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| 'Antifa hunter' gets 3 years in prison for online racist threats Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:54 PM PDT  A Florida man who called himself "the Antifa hunter" as he began an online campaign to terrorize and harass people who opposed his white supremacist ideology was sentenced on Monday to more than three years in prison.
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| Soldier who made ‘vile’ Holocaust joke to 3 million TikTok followers punished, Army says Posted: 31 Aug 2020 04:48 PM PDT  "He wrote: 'For legal reasons this is a joke.' ... Would he look into the eyes of Survivors liberated by @USArmy and tell them this?" the Auschwitz Memorial Museum said in a tweet.
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| Russia released secret footage of history's largest man-made explosion — a nuclear blast thousands of times stronger than Hiroshima Posted: 01 Sep 2020 03:09 PM PDT  The blast was equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT — nearly 1,500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined.
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| Abu Dhabi crown prince says committed to Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:06 PM PDT  The Abu Dhabi crown prince said on Monday that the United Arab Emirates is committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV reported. In a statement read by UAE's foreign minister Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said to the Palestinian community in the country that the normalistion deal with Israel was a sovereign decision in the favour of peace. "Peace is a strategic choice, but not at the expense of the Palestinian cause," he said according to Al Arabiya.
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| Residents in Kenosha are dismayed at law enforcement's response to the Jacob Blake shooting and protests: 'They just let the fires burn' Posted: 31 Aug 2020 11:45 PM PDT  During nights of civil unrest, parts of the city burned as armed citizens attempted to protect their properties from being destroyed.
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| Hamas says deal reached to calm violence with Israel Posted: 31 Aug 2020 12:42 PM PDT  Gaza's Hamas rulers said Monday they have reached an agreement through international mediators to end the latest round of cross-border violence with Israel. Under the deal, Hamas is to halt the launches of explosives-laden balloons and rocket fire into Israel, while Israel said it will ease a blockade that has been tightened in recent weeks. The Israeli restrictions have worsened living conditions in Gaza at a time when it is coping with a new coronavirus outbreak.
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| Hawaii to require visitors to fill out online 'Safe Travels' form before travel Posted: 31 Aug 2020 12:08 PM PDT  Beginning Tuesday, Hawaii will require all visitors to fill out a "Safe Travels" application, including health and contact information, before travel.
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| What Donald Trump's refusal to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse reveals about his election strategy Posted: 01 Sep 2020 10:40 AM PDT  Donald Trump will have known that the Kyle Rittenhouse case was likely to come up when he scheduled a White House briefing on Monday afternoon and went hard on his presidential rival Joe Biden's stance on law and order. The story of a 17-year-old who went onto the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, to keep the peace but ended up accused of killing two protesters and injuring a third has dominated the US headlines since it happened last week. Which makes the US president's response when asked if he condemned the actions of Mr Rittenhouse and other vigilantes all the more telling - he declined to say yes, instead mounting a defence for the accused's behaviour. The remarks reflect not just the fractured debate about anti-racism protests and episodes of violence seen this year in America but also how, with two months to go, Mr Trump sees a message that could help win him re-election. Firstly, the complexities of the incident must be untangled. Numerous pieces of footage have surfaced which show snippets of what happened that night, videos which are sure to form a central part of the court battle to come. In one, Mr Rittenhouse is running, apparently being chased, before turning and shooting. In another he trips and is kicked and hit by a skateboard when down, after which he shoots multiple times again.
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| Schools are more segregated than 30 years ago. Here's what's driving the change. Posted: 31 Aug 2020 05:18 AM PDT  School integration programs once broke down barriers. Today, white and Black students in cities like Minneapolis are growing up apart.
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| Zimbabwe to return land seized from foreign farmers Posted: 01 Sep 2020 09:16 AM PDT  Hundreds of mainly European farmers could benefit from the move, aimed at mending relations with the West.
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| Miami Democrat wants gun dealers held responsible for suspected straw purchases Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:37 PM PDT  A new bill from Miami Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell would make gun dealers responsible for identifying when customers are purchasing a weapon for someone else and halting the transaction.
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| Letters to the Editor: Warp-speed vaccine manufacturing sickened 40,000 kids with polio in the 1950s Posted: 01 Sep 2020 03:00 AM PDT  A reader who became sick with polio after being vaccinated in 1955 warns of the perils of rushing a COVID-19 vaccine.
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| China can make India suffer 'severe' military losses: Global Times Posted: 31 Aug 2020 04:57 PM PDT |
| Police use footage from Amazon's Ring doorbells for investigations, but leaked documents reveal the FBI is concerned that homeowners could spy on officers Posted: 01 Sep 2020 01:29 PM PDT  Motion-detection cameras could also show officers' locations in a standoff or compromise officer safety, the FBI report said.
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| Police: Teacher with far-right ties harassed health officer Posted: 01 Sep 2020 11:35 AM PDT  A California community college instructor with ties to the far-right, anti-government "boogaloo" movement was in custody on suspicion of sending two dozen misogynistic and threatening letters to a county health officer involving the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said Tuesday. Alan Viarengo, 55, was arrested last week and investigators seized 138 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and explosive materials from his home in Gilroy, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said. Viarengo was charged with felony counts of stalking and threatening a public official after authorities said the letters were sent to county Health Director Dr. Sara Cody.
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| '2020 has been rough, but yesterday was Supreme': Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiates couple's wedding Posted: 01 Sep 2020 05:39 AM PDT  "2020 has been rough, but yesterday was Supreme," the bride, Barb Solish, said in a tweet along with a photo of Ginsburg presiding over the ceremony.
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| Minnesota Dems Warn Biden: We Could Be the Next to Flip Red Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:11 AM PDT  As the end of convention season brings with it the final stretch of a years-long presidential campaign, a hauntingly familiar feeling is in the air in Minnesota, slowly alarming Democrats as November approaches—the chill of 2016.Four years ago, Minnesota was supposed to be a breezy, no-drama pickup for Hillary Clinton. Neither the Clinton nor Trump campaigns bothered investing any significant resources there, and certainly not much in-person time—Trump flew in for a last-minute rally days before Election Day; Clinton never set foot in the state as the Democratic nominee.Clinton won Minnesota's 10 electoral votes by a mere 1.5 percent, or some 44,000 votes out of 2,944,813 cast. As Democrats were giddily investing precious resources to "expand the map" and compete in historically conservative states like Arizona and Texas, they nearly lost the state with history's longest streak of voting for a Democratic presidential candidate.Part of what made Minnesota such a nail-biter was an unexpected surge of Trump votes from the state's rural areas, among people who were not reliable GOP voters or not reliable voters to begin with.This shift, similar to what happened in other states—neighboring Wisconsin most excruciatingly—has not gone unnoticed by President Donald Trump's re-election campaign. Over the course of the 2020 presidential cycle, Trump has visited Minnesota several times—Vice President Mike Pence visited Duluth just this weekend—and his campaign has reserved over $14 million in TV ads through November so far. Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign, meanwhile, has reserved roughly a quarter of that. A marquee ad from Biden meant to rebut Trump's convention speech on Thursday is running in a slate of key swing states. Minnesota wasn't one of them, though Biden is planning to hit the state, for the first time as a 2020 candidate, in an in-person campaign swing that Biden himself teased last week. Now, among Democrats in Minnesota the concerned chatter is growing that Biden, like Clinton, might overlook the state as he focuses on recapturing ones Trump won in 2016, from Wisconsin and Michigan to more "reach" states like Arizona and Georgia. Of course, there are clear signs of Biden's strengths in Minnesota; most recent polls have shown Biden ahead anywhere from 3 to 10 points. Still, a scenario where Biden wins Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes after heavy investment from the party—but loses Minnesota's 10—has crossed the minds of more than a few Democrats here. "There's so much optimism bias in planning that only positive trends will happen," sighed a Democratic operative in Minnesota, who requested anonymity to discuss the presidential race candidly. "We've looked at some people who voted in 2016, but didn't vote in 2018, and we have Biden underwater by double digits with those people," explained the operative. The same big-picture demographic trends that put Wisconsin in play for Trump—and that make the state worth fighting out and investing in for Biden—are undoubtedly at work in Minnesota too, they argued."We know marginal effects are strongest when one side is spending a lot, and that's the kind of dynamic we're looking at in Minnesota, where Trump is set to outspend Biden by a substantial sum of money," said the operative. "There are definitely warning signs in here. It's not a 'for sure' win without involvement—this isn't a gimme.""The president is going to be competitive in Minnesota. He's spending enough to make sure of it," said another longtime Minnesota Democratic operative, who said the state could provide a chance for Trump to break a venerable Democratic coalition as he did in Wisconsin and Michigan four years ago. "Biden has some work to do with the young progressive voters in the cities to make sure they turn out… it's not clear that the campaign understands that they still need to convince them to show up and cast a vote against President Trump." Democrats in Minnesota aren't the only ones trying to keep down rising anxiety that, despite unemployment rates skyrocketing in response to a pandemic that's on track to claim as many as a quarter-million American lives by Election Day, Trump might actually pull it off.Biden Campaign Aims to Show Wisconsin They've Learned From Hillary's Mistake In Nevada and New Hampshire, another pair of states Clinton narrowly won in 2016, Biden is considered the favorite. In New Hampshire, the average of his lead in polls is nearly 10 points. For Trump, adding a state he didn't win last time to his column this year is sure to be an uphill battle. But 2020 may present new challenges for Democrats, giving pause to Biden backers in three states he absolutely must win. "We're just not as organized in 2020 as we were in 2016—that's just a fact," an official with the influential Culinary Workers Union in Nevada told The Daily Beast, citing the devastation that the pandemic and economic shutdowns have had on union members. Four out of five Local 226 workers are still out of work due to coronavirus-related shutdowns, which the official said has hampered everything from raising funds for get-out-the-vote efforts to providing food assistance for members.Nevada is another state that Democrats appear to be banking on, despite Clinton's comparatively narrow margin of victory—a mere 2.4 percent, a 4-point drop from President Barack Obama's margin of victory in 2012—and the pandemic's impact on the state's most powerful political organizer.The realities of the pandemic, which has halted in-person political outreach nationwide at the same time as it has affected the health and livelihoods of the workers that unions represent, has also hampered the ability of the state's powerful labor unions to boost civic engagement among a loyal Democratic constituency."We actually have members that we have to serve and we have to get contracts with them and so that's the priority," said one SEUI official. "Obviously, normally we would do an extensive field program and be knocking on doors, we would be doing rallies, but with COVID-19 that's not going to happen."But other union officials cautioned that while the pandemic has thrown the old political organizing rulebook out the window, Nevada Democrats can still expect organized labor to help."This is a global pandemic. Everyone around the world has been deeply impacted, but Culinary Union members are resilient," said Bethany Khan, the Culinary Union's director of communications and digital strategy, who pointed to a COVID-19 safety bill passed with the union's support as proof that labor is still a force to be reckoned with in the state. "The Culinary Union is 85 years old and we are the best positioned to continue the fight to protect Nevada workers."In New Hampshire, the ghosts of 2016 aren't quite haunting Democrats in the same way as out West, but they also haven't been forgotten. Biden finds himself facing a similar test in the Granite State, a state with few electoral votes but one that Trump has shown an eagerness to bring back into the red this election cycle. While county Democratic chairs were quick to sound at least cautiously optimistic about Biden holding the state, that hasn't stopped one county party leader in an area Trump won by 586 votes in 2016 from making it clear that she wants to see added effort from the Biden campaign. "I think they need to do more," said Judith Kaufman, the chair of the Sullivan County Democratic Committee. "I think they need more visibility." Trump lost New Hampshire to former Secretary of State Clinton in 2016 by around 2,700 votes, and held two major rallies in Manchester as the state's 2020 Democratic primary played out. That narrow margin however, has not helped make Trump's path in the state appear much easier. A late July poll by the Granite State Panel via the University of New Hampshire Survey Center found Biden with a 13-point lead on Trump. And after abandoning a planned rally in Portsmouth last month, an in-person rally was held in the state on Friday. That same day, absentee ballot mailers that had been sent earlier by the state GOP led to a cease and desist order from the New Hampshire Department of Justice because they "may cause voter confusion and frustration," in the lead-up to the state's September primary, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. New Hampshire GOP chairman Stephen Stepanek emphasized that Republicans are a united front in the state unlike in 2016. Trump suffered a major blow when then Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who was running for re-election at the time, announced following Trump's infamous Access Hollywood tape that she wouldn't be voting for the GOP nominee. Ayotte would go on to lose her seat to Democrat Maggie Hassan the next month. "The president is competitive, will be competitive and will win," Stepanek said. But a Republican strategist in the state who worked for a different primary candidate in 2016 had less optimism for Trump's chances in the state, calling the president an underdog at the moment. "Smart Democrats that I know are running like their hair's on fire," the strategist said. "They're not taking this for granted."Following his 2016 loss in New Hampshire it appears that Trump has had the state in mind as one he can flip, the strategist said, and the campaign's activity in the state reflects that. "My perspective is that Trump's ground game here is strong, and even though he is unpopular here and even though his numbers are weak, Biden is a frontrunner who could cough up that lead at any time," they said. Biden campaigned sporadically in the state ahead of its February primary, but fled New England to campaign in South Carolina on the night of the state's primary. As he rallied with the southern voters that would come to resurrect his campaign, the former Vice President came in fifth in New Hampshire with around 8.5 percent of the vote. Despite failing to be a significant force in the primary, Democrats in New Hampshire don't anticipate Biden's poor performance in February hurting his odds in November. But there is a sense that Biden is benefiting from an anti-Trump fervor that has further strengthened his chances. "There's both. There's people who are very enthusiastic for Biden and Harris and there's people who are just like, 'We can't stand four more years of this other guy,'" said Carl DeMatteo, the head of the Cheshire County Democratic Committee. And from his view in Rockingham County, where Trump won in 2016 by more than 10,000 votes, the county's Democratic party chairman, Larry Drake, said the specter of the president has been even more of a driving factor. "There are certainly Biden supporters, and I think he's well-liked and everything, but I think the main thing is the opposition to Trump," Drake said. "...I think that's the strongest motivating thing for people to vote for Biden." Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Sharp rise in Chinese coercive diplomacy in 2020, says new report Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:51 AM PDT  The Chinese Communist Party is increasingly resorting to the use of coercive diplomacy, taking advantage of the lack of a coordinated pushback from like-minded governments, according to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The study analyses 152 cases of the CCP's use of coercive diplomacy across 28 countries, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand and in East Asia over the past decade, and concludes that governments need to counter its "divide-and-conquer" tactics through a joint strategy via multilateral institutions. "Our dataset suggests the CCP has begun to use coercive diplomacy far more actively. We found a sharp increase from 2018 onwards," said Fergus Hanson, Emilia Currey and Tracy Beattie, the ASPI authors, in a statement. "In the first eight months of 2020 we found 34 cases of coercive diplomacy, which equates to more than half of the number recorded in 2019. Unless states can come up with a better strategy to resist coercive diplomacy, we can expect this trend to continue."
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| Pentagon intensifies China operation with waterway flyovers Posted: 01 Sep 2020 07:49 AM PDT  The Trump administration is intensifying a challenge to China's ruling Communist Party and its sweeping territorial claims over some of the world's most important strategic waterways.
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| New filing shows USPS board chairman is also director of Mitch McConnell super PAC Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:00 PM PDT  Mike Duncan under scrutiny over "irregular" process that led to Louis DeJoy's appointment as postmaster general
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| After 3 unplanned shutdowns at Turkey Point nuclear plant, feds launch ‘special inspection’ Posted: 31 Aug 2020 01:13 PM PDT  After three unplanned nuclear reactor shutdowns over three days this month, federal regulators have launched a "special inspection" at Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point plant.
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| Migrants detained in Louisiana plead for help after storm Posted: 31 Aug 2020 03:37 PM PDT |
| Trump's rambling, lie-filled interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News went way off the rails, even by his standards Posted: 01 Sep 2020 10:22 AM PDT  Trump claimed, without evidence, that people in the "dark shadows" were controlling Joe Biden's 2020 campaign.
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| Here Is the Bloody Face of Putin’s New Crackdown Posted: 31 Aug 2020 10:17 AM PDT  MOSCOW—Yegor Zhukov is the face of a new generation of Putin opponents using social media as well as student rallies to stand up to the regime. On Sunday night, he was beaten up outside his home in Moscow hours after posting a YouTube video criticizing Putin. In a statement to the police, he said: "I have not suffered any property damage, but my face is broken."An image of the 22-year-old's bruised face, with bleeding lips and a swollen eye, has already gone viral online—an instant new symbol of Putin's latest crackdown.The country's leading opposition figure, Aleksey Navalny, was already comatose in a hospital bed in Berlin, fighting to regain consciousness after what German doctors describe as exposure to a poisonous substance whose effects are consistent with a nerve agent. This has been a summer of doom for Putin's opponents. The Russian president prevailed in a constitutional referendum in July, which is likely to keep him in power until 2036. Since then, Russians have watched bloody police crackdowns on protesters in Belarus, including alleged cases of torture and rape, ordered by Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator now being aided and abetted by Putin. Last week, the country was horrified to wake up to the news of Navalny's poisoning in Siberia. The attack on Zhukov—who is really just a kid—only added to a widespread sense of repression. On Sunday, Zhukov posted a video on his YouTube channel, which has 227,000 subscribers, about a crackdown against Putin's critics at his university, the Higher School of Economics. The school used to be a bastion of free speech in a country where that is increasingly rare.Zhukov, who was arrested last year during anti-government protests and threatened with eight years in prison, was due to begin his studies on the Masters program this fall. The video was posted in response to university administrators who abruptly told him that he would not be enrolled this year, even though he had already been accepted and had paid to start the course.Almost 200,000 people online watched Zhukov say: "Clearly, no professional person, who is serious about political science, would describe Vladimir Putin's regime as effective." Within hours, the student opposition leader was badly beaten outside his house in Moscow by unknown assailants. In the two decades of the Putin era, Russia has seen crackdowns on the media, human rights defenders, and opposition parties. Universities are the latest target. Professors and students believe potential students are blacklisted from enrolling at the Higher School of Economics by the FSB, Russia's successor to the KGB. "Authorities must be aware of Russia's history: students have always united in political movements," former Higher School of Economics professor and founder of Transparency International, Yelena Pamfilova, told The Daily Beast. "There is a giant crisis and not only in Russia: people in trouble, like Zhukov, want to call police for help but there is no trust for police and that is very dangerous." Intellectuals have long used the Higher School of Economics as a safe space where progressive political and economic ideas could be formulated and shared. "Recently, all professors with skeptical attitudes toward the government have lost their contracts," Zhukov said. "Our opposition student media was deprived of its status as a student organization."Last summer, Zhukov, who is morer libertarian than liberal, joined protests triggered by numerous violations at Moscow City Council elections. He was arrested and charged with public appeals for extremism. He could have been sentenced to eight years in prison, but he became a cause célèbre with thousands of students, professors, and ordinary Russians protesting that the charges should be dropped. The case against him was eventually dismissed but the university took action to avoid a repeat of the controversy, and in January all students and university staff were banned from making any political declarations in public or engaging in political activity. Zhukov believes the university was forced to make these announcements by the authorities. "The government got scared of our unity, that we were together with the university's management. It is hard for me to believe that people who for years built 'the most liberal university of the country,' all of a sudden turned into the guardians of the government," he said. It is unclear who or what scared the university management into the sudden policy change, but some of its best professors stopped working, including Yulia Galyamina, a linguist and opposition leader. Police broke her jaw, cracked her teeth, and gave her a severe concussion when she took part in a protest. Yelena Lukyanova, another professor who left the university, said kicking out Zhukov had forced the crackdown into the public eye. "At least they told the man everything openly, while all we heard was some indirect hints," she wrote on social media. Lukyakova and three other former professors have started "the Free University," an independent educational project free of political pressure and censorship. "There will be no 'disloyal' students at the Higher School of Economics, we spoke about these horrible changes six months ago, and here is the nail in the coffin of my alma mater," wrote former student Roman Kiselyov-Augustus on Facebook. "They can ban you from studying for your political activity."Zhukov returned home on Monday still badly bruised, but doctors said there would be no lasting damage from the attack. From the hospital, he had repeated the favorite slogan of former Putin nemesis Boris Nemtsov: "Russia will be free." The Russian opposition leader was assassinated beneath the walls of the Kremlin in February 2015, when Zhukov was 18 years old. In neighboring Belarus, crowds are also demanding freedom after discredited elections. More than 100,000 protesters marched across the bridge in Minsk to the presidential residence, demanding Lukashenko's resignation on Sunday. The Kremlin had stayed quiet for the first couple of weeks of the protests, while hundreds of Belarusians were detained, many beaten and tortured. Putin has since signaled growing support for the Lukashenko regime. To demonstrate Moscow's backing, Putin called Lukashenko on Sunday with birthday greetings, while a crowd of protesters was outside chanting, "Happy birthday, Lukashenko, you are a rat!"Putin has also promised to send men from Moscow to help Lukashenko "halt extremist activity in the republic if an urgent need arises," a spokesman said.Veteran human rights defender and chairwoman of the Civic Assistance Committee, Svetlana Gannushkina, said the two autocrats from the former Soviet Union had been emboldened by President Donald Trump's calls to violently put down protests in the U.S. "Looking at Trump, they think it is OK to solve problems with the opposition outside of the rule of law," she said. "In Russia the first target for the Kremlin's reprisal is always the intelligentsia. Until recently, Zhukov's university, the Higher School of Economics, was the source of progressive liberal ideas. Clearly it was an unpleasant place for the authoritarian government." Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| South Korea charges intelligence officers with raping North Korean defector Posted: 01 Sep 2020 12:23 AM PDT |
| Airbus unveils B-model Lakota helos to enter US Army fleet next year Posted: 01 Sep 2020 11:53 AM PDT  A new Lakota will join the Army National Guard in 2021.
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