Daily Kos: Laura Clawson

It took months for Ahmaud Arbery's killers to be charged. Now the Justice Department may investigate

Daily Kos Staff

Monday May 11, 2020 · 6:51 AM PDT

2020/05/11 · 06:51

Mugshots: Travis and Gregory McMichael — Travis and Gregory McMichael

After it took two changes of prosecutor and a leaked video before Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault, Georgia’s attorney general has asked the Department of Justice to investigate how the case was handled. “We are committed to a complete and transparent review of how the Ahmaud Arbery case was handled from the outset,” Attorney General Chris Carr said in a statement Sunday.

“We have requested the involvement of the DOJ since we first took this case,” S. Lee Merritt, the attorney for Arbery’s parents, wrote in a statement. “There are far too many questions about how this case was handled and why it took 74 days for two of the killers to be arrested and charged in Mr. Arbery’s death.”

'It is scary to go to work,' Trump adviser says, after COVID-19 appears in the White House

Laura Clawson

Daily Kos Staff

Monday May 11, 2020 · 5:55 AM PDT

2020/05/11 · 05:55

President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Thursday, April 23, 2020, in Washington, as Vice President Mike Pence listens. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Donald Trump’s personal valet has tested positive for COVID-19. So has Mike Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, who has not only been maskless at recent White House meetings but is married to top Trump staffer Stephen Miller. “It is scary to go to work,” top economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on CBS Sunday morning, adding an admission sure to be perceived as disloyal: “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”

The appearance of coronavirus in the White House comes despite stringent measures to protect Trump and Pence, including daily testing for top aides and testing for outside visitors before they enter meetings with Trump. In other words, the White House is doing exactly what Trump has been saying the rest of the country doesn’t need to do to be safe—and it’s still not enough. Trump will have an opportunity to change his tune on testing in public remarks scheduled for Monday afternoon, but so far his stance has been that “by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”

Unemployment insurance boost is tiny next to tax cuts for the rich, this week in the war on workers

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday May 09, 2020 · 3:55 PM PDT

2020/05/09 · 15:55

Republicans are doing their best to push people off of unemployment, with governors reopening states so that the most vulnerable workers are forced back into unsafe workplaces. But the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz write that the extra $600 in unemployment insurance has been the best economic response to coronavirus—and it needs to be extended.

“Money spent on continuing crucial unemployment insurance provisions will help avoid a prolonged period of high unemployment that will do far more serious and persistent damage to the economy,” they write. “In the last six weeks, close to 30 million workers have applied for unemployment insurance. It’s worth noting as a point of comparison that those 30 million workers would need to be provided an extra $1,400 per week for a year to match the fiscal size of the 2017 tax cuts aimed at corporations and the rich.”

COVID-19 news: Trump and Pence to be tested daily as another White House aide tests positive

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 5:00 PM PDT

2020/05/08 · 17:00

The day after news broke that a military aide who serves as a personal valet to Donald Trump had tested positive for coronavirus, Trump announced that he and Mike Pence would be getting daily tests (even as he continued to downplay the need for expanded testing nationally). But that valet wasn’t the end of it for the White House. Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Pence and the wife of top Trump aide Stephen Miller, also tested positive.

Stephen Miller’s mark continues to be felt through his use of the pandemic as an excuse to treat immigrants even worse than before, with hundreds of migrant children deported after arriving alone in the U.S. But he’s not the only Republican using coronavirus to harm vulnerable people. State-level Republicans are using reopening orders to scare low-wage workers back into unsafe workplaces.

Trump claims 'Project Airbridge' is a big COVID-19 success, so why is he hiding its results?

Laura Clawson

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 10:45 AM PDT

2020/05/08 · 10:45

White House adviser Jared Kushner listens as President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Thursday, April 2, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) — Jared Kushner.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence have done a lot of bragging about “Project Airbridge,” the effort—supposedly led by First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner and his merry band of inexperienced "volunteers"—to quickly bring in personal protective equipment (PPE) through a public-private partnership. The deal is that the federal government pays for planes to bring masks, gloves, and gowns sourced overseas by private companies, and half of the equipment is sold to coronavirus hot spots while the other half goes to wherever those private companies care to sell it.

“If you think about it, if there are 100 cargo planes, then right now what we know at a minimum is that 50 cargo planes full of much-needed, desperately needed PPE is coming to America and we have no idea where it’s going,” Rep. Ted Deutch said in April. But a new Washington Post investigation suggests that—as with so many things when the Trump administration is involved—what we’re getting is not the best case scenario.

Republicans threaten low-wage workers with fraud charges if they're too scared to go back to work

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 8:54 AM PDT

2020/05/08 · 08:54

Esra Demir styles the hair of customer Ken Menendez at Salon Loft in Atlanta, Georgia on April 24, 2020. - Governor Brian Kemp has eased restrictions allowing some businesses such as hair and nail salons to reopen today in the US state of Georgia after a four-week lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus. (Photo by Tami Chappell / AFP) (Photo by TAMI CHAPPELL/AFP via Getty Images)

Republicans were really not happy about passing a $600 per week increase in unemployment benefits, and Republican governors are moving to make it impossible for many people to collect it. As Republican governors reopen their states quickly—more quickly than is safe—they force people back to unsafe jobs, and money is the weapon making it stick. If you can theoretically go back to your job, even if it’s unsafe, then you aren’t eligible for unemployment insurance.

After Ohio encouraged employers to turn in workers who don’t want to go back to unsafe jobs, 600 employers turned in 1,200 workers. (Ohio Democrats countered with a website for workers to report unsafe workplaces.) Iowa similarly has a tip line for employers to call to report reluctant workers, and Alabama’s government has warned people that collecting unemployment rather than going back to an unsafe job is fraud.

Trump and Pence to get daily coronavirus tests after valet diagnosed with COVID-19

Laura Clawson

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 7:36 AM PDT

2020/05/08 · 07:36

US President Donald Trump gestures as he departs the White House, on May 5, 2020, in Washington, DC en route to Arizona, where he will tour a mask factory and hold a roundtable on Native American issues. (Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Testing shortages have been one of the big stories of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, with legitimately sick people unable to get tested. But now that a personal valet to Donald Trump has tested positive for COVID-19, Trump and Mike Pence will be tested every day.

Trump claimed: “I’ve had very little contact, personal contact, with this gentleman,” in contradiction to reports that the valet served him his meals and brought him Diet Cokes. The military aide was reportedly symptomatic at the time he tested positive. The White House uses the Abbott rapid testing kits, which are fast but less accurate than tests that are sent out to labs and take longer.

Trump campaign teases upcoming attack ads with widely mocked 'Death Star' brag

Laura Clawson

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 7:00 AM PDT

2020/05/08 · 07:00

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - OCTOBER 10: Brad Parscale, campaign manager for U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks before a rally at the target center on October 10, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The rally follows a week of a contentious back and forth between Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and President Trump. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images) — Brad Parscale.

The coronavirus pandemic has prevented the Trump campaign from unleashing the full force of its massive bank account and bottomless dishonesty against former Vice President Joe Biden so far, but that’s about to end. It just wouldn’t have looked presidential to be campaigning quite so openly and viciously, but now that Donald Trump is pushing to reopen the country before it’s safe to do so, he’s giving his campaign cover for the long-desired attacks.

The Trump campaign is kicking off a $10 million attack ad onslaught, with manager Brad Parscale tweeting Thursday: “For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star)” and “in a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time.” Twitter had a few things to say about this analogy.

'History is written by the winner': Barr and Trump do victory lap after dropping Flynn case

Laura Clawson

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 08, 2020 · 5:58 AM PDT

2020/05/08 · 05:58

Attorney General William Barr appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee to face lawmakers' questions for the first time since releasing special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 1, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) — William Barr

Attorney General William Barr claimed he was “doing the law’s bidding,” and not Donald Trump’s bidding, when he had the Justice Department move to dismiss charges against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Despite that admission of guilt, Barr claimed that “A crime cannot be established here.”

But something else Barr said is far more revealing of his thinking—and of his determination to do anything he can to protect Trump at whatever cost to equal justice. Asked how history would judge his move, Barr answered, “Well, history is written by the winner.” He clearly intends for Team Trump to be writing that history, and dropping charges against Flynn is one step in that process. There are other steps planned.

Essential workers speak out on the unsafe conditions they face

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 07, 2020 · 12:02 PM PDT

2020/05/07 · 12:02

MIAMI, FLORIDA - APRIL 13: Lorena Martinez wears a mask and gloves as she works as a cashier at the Presidente Supermarket on April 13, 2020 in Miami, Florida. The employees at Presidente Supermarket, like the rest of America's grocery store workers, are on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, helping to keep the nation's residents fed. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

For all the talk about how they’re heroes, too many essential workers still aren’t feeling valued in the ways that matter: protections for their health and safety. A new study of essential workers in western Massachusetts—a region with two cities among the highest COVID-19 death rates in the country—finds that 51% said they don't feel safe on the job, a number that rose to 67% among grocery and other retail workers.

Nearly two out of three workers said they couldn’t practice social distancing, 29% didn’t get COVID-19 transmission training, 21% don’t have masks, 17% don’t have hand sanitizer, 8% aren’t able to practice regular hand-washing, and 16% were asked by their employers to keep their health information from their coworkers. And this is in Massachusetts, where labor protections are strong by comparison with, say, Texas, where the Hillstone Restaurant Group told workers they couldn't wear masks as restaurants reopen for on-site dining.

Trump taps big Republican donor to head the Postal Service during coronavirus crisis

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 07, 2020 · 9:17 AM PDT

2020/05/07 · 09:17

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 14: A United States mail carrier wearing a mask is seen delivering mail as the coronavirus continues to spread across the United States on March 14, 2020 in New York City. The World Health Organization declared coronavirus (COVID-19) a global pandemic on March 11th. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

Donald Trump loves big donors and hates the U.S. Postal Service, and now he’s putting one of the former in charge of the latter. Trump has tapped Louis DeJoy—who has given more than $2 million to the Trump campaign and other Republican causes since 2016 and is the finance chair for the Republican National Convention—to be the next postmaster general.

Trump has made his agenda for the Postal Service clear: starve it of resources and force it to charge uncompetitive amounts to deliver packages for Amazon, which he hates because Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. And of course Trump is always eager to hurt workers like the Postal Service’s unionized, 21% Black workforce.

Meatpacking plants are epicenters of coronavirus. The Trump administration is blaming workers

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 07, 2020 · 7:53 AM PDT

2020/05/07 · 07:53

US President Donald Trump looks on as US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar steps down from the podium after speaking on protecting Americas seniors from the COVID-19 pandemic in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on April 30, 2020. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images) — Alex Azar

The Trump administration is determined to keep meatpacking plants open and running fast even as they become epicenters of coronavirus—and administration officials are trying to distract from that by blaming the workers for getting sick. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently told a bipartisan group of lawmakers that the high infection rates at meatpacking plants weren’t about the plants themselves but about the workers’ “home and social” lives.

”Their theory of the case is that [workers] are not becoming infected in the meat processing plant, they're becoming infected because of the way they live in their home,” Rep. Ann Kuster of New Hampshire told Politico about the call. This comes after workers at one Smithfield pork plant filed a complaint saying they could get in trouble for pausing their work long enough to cover their faces while coughing or sneezing, and after at least one company has threatened a union for going public with safety concerns. This work involves standing close together without time to wash or sanitize hands regularly—in part, because the Trump administration allowed a speed-up of pork processing lines.

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