Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News writes—She warned America that Russia hacked our voting rolls. Why is she in jail?
[...] In the spring of 2017, with public concern mounting about the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, federal officials still sought to assure people that there’d been no major success in penetrating electronic voting systems. But Winner, a commended Air Force veteran with a top-secret security clearance, then working for a government contractor, had seen evidence that federal officials weren’t telling the whole truth.
And so [26-year-old Reality] Winner did what Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Felt, and others whose difficult decisions made in real time have long since been vindicated by history had done: She blew the whistle. In sending her evidence to the news media, Winner took down a cover-up of information that the Russians had, in fact, been far more aggressive — and successful — in targeting voting systems. Indeed, one major electronic voting-records vendor, later identified as VR Systems, had been hacked into, and Russians then used that information to target voting officials in the critical swing state of Florida with “spear-phishing” emails aimed at compromising their computer networks. [...]
Under her plea agreement, Winner will spend 5 years and three months in prison — until late 2022, if time served is included. [...]
Winner’s arrest and the aggressive prosecution of her under a federal law — the Espionage Act — intended for spies, not whistle-blowers, came just four months after President Trump and then-FBI director Jim Comey sat in the Oval Office and spoke about jailing journalists and the need to put a leaker’s (in Comey’s acknowledged words) “head on a pike.” They both laughed about that.
Walter Shapiro at Roll Call writes—No, Dems Aren’t Disarrayed, Riven, Imploding, Eating Their Young or Battling for the Soul of the Party:
“Democrats in disarray” is one of those alliterative phrases beloved by pundits and political reporters. Database searches can trace it back to the Eisenhower administration, and the expression came into its own during the period when the Vietnam War upended politics.
At the end of the first year of Richard Nixon’s presidency, New York Times columnist James Reston (under a headline that you can easily guess) wrote, “It is not only power that corrupts but sometimes the absence of power, and the Democrats are following the familiar pattern. They are complaining about the failure of Republican leadership and providing very little of their own.”
It seems inevitable that this story line would reemerge now that we are in political limbo, with most congressional primaries over and the fall campaigns yet to begin. So an emblematic story led Sunday’s New York Times under the print headline, “Democrats Brace as Storm Brews Far to Their Left.” [...]
For a party supposedly riven by unbridgeable chasms, the Democrats survived the primaries without major stumbles. This year, there are no Democratic challengers in winnable seats who have been forced to go on television to explain, “I am not a witch.” And in California’s top-two “jungle primary,” the Democrats avoided squandering any potential House pickups by making sure they got a candidate onto the ballot in all contested districts.
Nor are this year’s congressional races some overwrought struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party. Presidential candidates, rather than congressional contenders, define the direction of a party. The current Republican Party is a haunted-house image of Trump rather than a reflection of the economic issues that animated GOP congressional candidates in 2014 and 2016.
Tim Radford at the Climate News Network writes—Washington’s political lobbying shackles science:
Between 2000 and 2016 Washington’s political lobbying used money as lavishly as ever. The electricity utilities, fossil fuel companies and transportation companies spent around $2bn to “lobby” the US Congress and Senateon matters of climate legislation. Those sectors most likely to be affected by any changes in the law spent most on the issue.
In contrast, environmental organisations and the renewable energy sector each spent no more than a thirtieth of such sums.
And during the first 16 years of the new century, lobby spending in the US fluctuated: between 2000 and 2006, lobbyists for big energy spent only about $50m.
But as President Obama began office in the White House in 2009, and the US Congress started to contemplate legislation to contain or limit global warming driven by profligate fossil fuel use worldwide, lobbyist spending had peaked at $362m, according to new research in the journal Climatic Change.
Since then, President Trump has announced the US withdrawal from a global agreement to contain climate change signed by President Obama. The implication is that when it comes to influencing climate legislation, money talks more urgently and effectively than evidence.
Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian writes—The latest Trump scandal would have destroyed any other president:
Shall we cast our minds back to the more innocent era of 1992, when the presidential campaign of a young southern governor by the name of Bill Clinton was nearly derailed by claims that he’d had an extramarital affair with a former lounge singer by the name of Gennifer Flowers?
As it happens, Clinton survived that episode – he and Hillary appeared jointly on 60 Minutes, as Hillary famously explained: “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette”, but it was a close-run thing.
Now imagine that a tape emerged in which Clinton and his personal lawyer were heard discussing how best to pay the hush money that would keep Flowers silent, an undeclared payment that would be in violation of campaign finance laws. There can be no doubt: it would have destroyed Clinton as a candidate, and it would have been seized on as (further) grounds for his impeachment as president.
Yet late on Tuesday, the lawyer for Michael Cohen – Donald Trump’s personal attorney, fixer and keeper of his secrets – released a tape in which he and Trump are heard discussing how exactly to fund the silencing of a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal. Cohen apparently wanted it be handled legally, while Trump seemingly had other ideas. [...]
And yet few would now bet on the Cohen tape story destroying Trump. Instead, they’ll guess it will dominate the news cycle for a few hours, and be ignored by Fox News before being replaced by something else. For this has become the established pattern.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Trump lies. And lies. And lies:
“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
When the history of the Trump era is written, this quotation from our president will play a prominent role in explaining the distemper of our moment and the dysfunction of his administration. Trump was talking about media coverage of his trade war, but he was also describing his genuinely novel approach to governing: He believes that reality itself can be denied and that big lies can sow enough confusion to keep the truth from taking hold.
This has advantages for Trump, because it dulls the impact of any new revelation. Old falsehoods simply get buried under new ones. [...]
The bad news is that, among Republicans, his strong-approval number stands at 62 percent. Trump’s hope of clinging to power rests on the assumption that he can continue inventing enough false story lines to keep his party at bay. His theory seems to be that a lie is as good as the truth as long as the right people believe it.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—What Doesn’t Kill Him Makes Him Stronger: The more Trump lies, the more he is empowered to lie:
Facts don’t matter to millions of Americans anymore. That is just the truth. Republicans bewitched by Donald Trump have devalued the import of truth.
It is a sad truth and a dangerous one. What is the operational framework of a society when the truth ceases to be accepted as true?
There may be precedents in other countries, but one would be hard pressed to find a precedent here. It is becoming cliché now to say that we are in uncharted territory with Trump and his regime, but that is precisely where we are.
There is tremendous possibility for peril, but luckily for Trump and the country, we have so far avoided all-out catastrophe. There is no guarantee that our lucky streak will be extended.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky at The Guardian writes—The far-right doesn't have to win to set the legislative agenda:
Across Europe, parties that have won less than one-quarter of the national vote are redefining the parameters of public debate and bringing ideas and policies that were once beyond the pale into the mainstream.
Since 2015, when nativist parties began to chalk up impressive electoral triumphs from Provence to Pennsylvania, there has been much hand-wringing among establishment politicians and left-wing voters in Europe and the United States.
Some breathed a sigh of relief after Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 victory over Marine Le Pen and the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte’s defeat of Geert Wilders, taking solace in the refrain: “At least they didn’t win.”
They should not be comforted. The fact is far-right parties don’t have to win to set the legislative agenda.
Leo Wasserman is the director and David Kaiser is the president of the Rockefeller Family Fund. At The New York Times, they write—A Carbon Tax Plan That’s a Bad Deal for the Public:
Beware of oil companies bearing gifts. Recently, the lobbyists and former Senators Trent Lott and John Breaux, backed by companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell, have been campaigning for a federal tax on carbon dioxide emissions. This would increase energy costs, but all revenue from the tax would be returned to the public. A family of four might receive a $2,000 check from the government every year. And we would all have an incentive to reduce our use of carbon-based fossil fuels in favor of clean energy.
Most environmentalists, including us, desperately want a meaningful tax on carbon. But several of the people involved in this proposal have shown little previous interest in climate change. The oil industry had few better friends than Mr. Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, and Mr. Breaux, a Democrat from Louisiana, when they were in office. So what is going on here?
Well, Mr. Lott and Mr. Breaux aren’t simply proposing a tax, but a deal: a carbon tax in exchange for two other things. First, they want “an outright repeal of the Clean Power Plan,” which allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions and which the Trump administration is moving to cancel. Second — and most consequentially — they want to give fossil fuel companies immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for damage they have done to the climate. As their proposal puts it, “Robust carbon taxes would also make possible an end to federal and state tort liability for emitters.”
Jessica Valenti at The New York Times writes—What Feminists Can Do for Boys:
One of the many political ironies of our time is that feminism’s most powerful cultural moment has coincided with the rise of extreme misogyny. While women protest, run for office and embrace the movement for gender equality in record numbers, a generation of young, mostly white men are being radicalized into believing that their problems stem from women’s progress.
Whether it’s misogynist terrorism, the rash of young men feeling sexually entitled to women or the persistent stereotype of “real men” as powerful and violent, it’s never been clearer that American boys are in desperate need of intervention.
Though feminists have always recognized the anguish that boys face in a patriarchal system, we haven’t built the same structures of support for boys that we have for girls. If we want to stop young men from being taken in by sexism, that has to change.
Simon Jenkins at The Guardian writes—Trump’s tweet to Iran cannot bully the west away from making peace:
Wow. Social media really is transforming the art of diplomacy. Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has called the rulers of Iran a “mafia more than a government”. They are a bunch of “hypocritical holy men” who have devised “all kinds of crooked schemes to become some of the wealthiest men on Earth while their people suffer”. When Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, pleads for the mother of all peace instead of the “mother of all wars”, Trump retorts that if he ever says that again, he will see “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before … Be cautious!” Children are told that words can never hurt you, but there must be limits.
For Trump to deride Tehran as a mafia state while courting the leaders of Russia and North Korea is bit rich. Perhaps after his ham-fisted private diplomacy with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, he finds it easier to retreat to belligerence and abuse. More serious is the immediate bone of contention: the triggering this month of American sanctions following Washington’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear disarmament accord with Iran. Financial dealings with Tehran will have to freeze, followed in the autumn by a ban on imports of Iranian oil.
The resumption of sanctions is unlikely to destroy the regime or change its policies in the region. The US does not rule the world. But sanctions will almost certainly undermine moderation and reinforce conservatism within Iran. It will make an Iranian bomb more, not less, likely.
Emily Atkin at The New Republic writes—The Media’s Failure to Connect the Dots on Climate Change: Why are some major news outlets still covering extreme weather like it's an act of God?
The science is clear: Heat-trapping greenhouse gases have artificially increased the average temperature across the globe, making extreme heat events more likely. This has also increased the risk of frequent and more devastating wildfires, as prolonged heat dries soil and turns vegetation into tinder.
And yet, despite these facts, there’s no climate connection to be found in much news coverage of extreme weather events across the globe—even in historically climate-conscious outlets like NPR and The New York Times. These omissions, critics say, can affect how Americans view global warming and its impact on their lives.
Major broadcast TV networks are the most glaring offenders. Media Matters reviewed 127 segments on the global heat wave that aired on ABC, CBS, and NBC this summer, and found that only one, on CBS This Morning, mentioned the connection between climate change and extreme heat. This fits a long-running pattern. As Media Matters noted, its latest annual study of broadcast coverage found that “during the height of hurricane season in 2017, neither ABC nor NBC aired a single segment on their morning, evening, or Sunday news shows that mentioned the link between climate change and hurricanes.”
Kathy Kiely at USAToday writes—All Americans have a constitutional right to criticize President Donald Trump:
Wow. What would the Donald Trump of 2016 have to tweet about this?
As of Monday, we are now living in a brave new world where it’s “extremely inappropriate” to criticize the president of the United States.
That is the high crime and misdemeanor the White House press secretary cited in putting several top former officials from previous administrations on notice that they might be losing their security clearances.
“Making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russia against the president is extremely inappropriate,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders intoned repeatedly at Monday’s press briefing, clearly reading from a pre-approved script.
Never mind the hypocrisy of this coming from an administration whose leader spent years spreading false innuendo that the last president was not born in the United States and, therefore, not able to hold his high office.