Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
OND is a little short tonight because dealing with this wifi is a pain!
Chicago Tribune: Gov. J.B. Pritzker voices support of Black Lives Matter goals while making clear that ‘anybody who is looting ... should be held responsible’ by Rick Pearson
After statements by some Black Lives Matter Chicago leaders in support of looting, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday tried to separate illegal acts from support for the movement’s larger goal of restorative justice.
“First of all, anybody who is looting, shooting or breaking the law should be held responsible. Period. End of sentence. So, let’s set that as a baseline,” the first term Democratic governor said at an unrelated news conference at the Thompson Center.
“People who are protesting and voicing their concern and standing up for people’s rights and doing it in a peaceful fashion, they have every right to do that. But those are two very different things,” he said.
Black Lives Matter Chicago has held several demonstrations in recent days, with leaders saying the weekend’s downtown looting was a reaction to a police-involved shooting in Englewood.
Texas Tribune: Trump called the USMCA the best trade deal ever. Analysts say it's not likely to help Texas during the pandemic. By Meena Venkataramanan and Julian Aguilar
When the port of Laredo passed Los Angeles to become the busiest trade hub in the country in February, optimism was high in Texas.
An ongoing U.S. trade war with China meant a drop in traffic at West Coast trade hubs while Texas’ land ports with Mexico were on the verge of benefiting from the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a 21st century upgrade to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. The new agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada was touted by President Trump and some Democrats as a landmark deal that would ensure America stayed on top of the global economy.
Trump called it the “the best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA” in a December 2019 tweet, then repeated his frequent claim that NAFTA was the country’s worst trade deal.
But several months into a COVID-19 pandemic that continues to ravage the global economy, analysts say there isn't anything in the USMCA that's going to make an immediate difference and help offset the massive economic losses caused by the pandemic.
East Bay Times: Oakland teachers union, district reach tentative agreement on distance learning by Angela Ruggieiro
OAKLAND — The Oakland Unified School District and teachers union, Oakland Education Association, have reached a tentative agreement for what distance learning will look like for students this school year.
The district announced there was a tentative agreement around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday after ongoing negotiations for nearly one month.
Details of the agreement were not provided Wednesday. The two sides said they were still “fine-tuning” some of the details, and would not release more information about the agreement.
The memorandum of understanding will be voted on over the next week by OEA members, who were expected to receive the full text and more details Wednesday, and the school board.
The two sides say the distance learning deal “prioritizes teacher flexibility as well as a quality learning experience for students with consistent live interaction with their teachers and other OEA members,” according to a district state released late Wednesday.
Washington Post: Relief talks stumble again as Trump asserts a deal is ‘not going to happen’ by Erica Werner and Jeff Stein
A new attempt to restart economic relief negotiations between the White House and Democrats ended just minutes after it began on Wednesday, with President Trump appearing to cast doubt on the whole process by announcing a deal is “not going to happen.”
Just a few days earlier, he had suggested the he was open to a new round of talks.
In declaring the whole process over, Trump used a news conference to criticize Democrats’ proposals for funding election preparations and the Postal Service as part of a broader spending measure. Those were among multiple issues that divided the parties during two weeks of negotiations that initially collapsed Friday before a failed attempt to revive them Wednesday.
“The bill’s not going to happen because they don’t even want to talk about it, because we can’t give them the kind of ridiculous things that they want that have nothing to do with the China virus,” Trump said at the White House during an evening news briefing.
Reuters: Exclusive: Trump administration asks court to dismiss Big Tech's challenge to social media executive order by Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration has filed a motion asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit against the president’s executive order targeting social media companies, calling it a “profound misunderstanding,” according to a copy of the motion seen by Reuters.
The lawsuit was brought in June by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a Washington-based tech group funded by Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Twitter Inc. It marked the first major legal test of President Donald Trump’s directive.
Trump issued an executive order in May against social media companies in an attempt to regulate platforms where he has been criticized, just days after Twitter took the rare step of fact-checking one of his tweets about mail-in voting. Trump threatened to scrap or weaken a law known as Section 230, which protects internet companies from litigation over content posted by users.
The lawsuit by CDT argued Trump’s social media executive order violates the First Amendment rights of social media companies, will chill future online speech and reduce the ability of Americans to speak freely online.
New York Times: Biden and Harris Pledge a Strong Challenge to Trump and a Path Out of Crisis by Katie Glueck and Thomas Kaplan
WILMINGTON, Del. — Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Kamala Harris made their debut as running mates in a high school gymnasium on Wednesday, pledging to lead the country out of the coronavirus crisis amid an onslaught of attacks from President Trump as the two national tickets went head-to-head for the first time, less than three months before Election Day.
The first full day for the newly announced Democratic presidential ticket offered a glimpse of how two once-bitter rivals from opposite coasts and different generations will try to unite Americans around their candidacies. Projecting warmth toward each other, they sketched out a vision of recovery from the public health and economic catastrophes the nation is confronting — crises that, they argued, Mr. Trump has made worse at every turn with an extraordinarily divisive presidency.
“We need more than a victory on Nov. 3,” Ms. Harris said. “We need a mandate that proves that the past few years do not represent who we are or who we aspire to be.”
Ms. Harris, a Californian who once served as attorney general of the state, made clear that part of her campaign role would be demonstrating her skills as a prosecutor to build a case against Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, methodically detailing what she cast as their failures in combating the coronavirus, reopening the economy and creating conditions under which schools could reopen safely this fall.
BBC News: Coronavirus in Europe: Infections surge in France, Germany and Spain
Germany has recorded its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases in more than three months as European countries struggle to curb a surge in infections.
More than 1,200 cases were reported in Germany in the past 24 hours. Officials said the rise was due, in part, to people returning from holidays.
It came as Germany warned against non-essential trips to parts of Spain.
Meanwhile, France had 2,524 new cases in 24 hours, the highest daily rise since its lockdown was lifted in May.
The German foreign ministry said it had added a partial travel warning to the Spanish capital Madrid and the Basque region on Tuesday amid rising infections there. Warnings were already in place for the regions of Aragon, Catalonia and Navarra.
Germany has recorded more than 9,000 coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began.
DW: Indonesia's first transgender public official breaks conservative mold by Ayu Purwaningsih
As the mayor of a small village in Indonesia, Hendrika Mayora Kelan celebrated her 34th birthday last week by giving out vegetables to her community.
Kelan is the first openly trans woman to become a public official in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country.
"I am grateful for the support of the people to me as a trans woman. They entrusted the leadership of the village council to me," Kelan told DW.
She said at times during the election, she felt inferior because of her sexual orientation. But it seems her reputation as a hard worker mattered more to the village.
"As soon as I was elected, I was immediately confronted with the hardships brought on by the pandemic. So, I immediately created a food security program, planted crops and distributed them to the community," said Kelan.
The Habi Village Consultative Body has important functions, including drawing up village regulations, overseeing the use of village funds and monitoring the performance of village officials.
AlJazeera: Where are all the women leaders? by Nina Montagu-Smith
When Satsuki Katayama was appointed as the sole female minister in Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's new cabinet in 2018, she immediately came face-to-face with the practical obstacles facing women in leadership positions.
Just before the declaration ceremony to mark the new government, Katayama was informed she was not dressed correctly for the occasion. Imperial Palace dress code stipulates that women must wear long dresses. So while the men spent the time before the ceremony relaxing and schmoozing with their fellow parliamentarians, Katayama hastily rushed out to find a more suitable outfit - just because she is a woman.
It is easy to dismiss such incidents as small annoyances, but when they occur on a daily basis they act as roadblocks and barriers to women assuming leadership positions. While women have made strides, particularly in advanced capitalist societies, this is still a new game for them - especially women of colour.
This week, US Democratic party presidential candidate Joe Biden announced that Senator Kamala Harris would be his running mate and future vice president if he wins the vote this November. This is frontier stuff - it is the first time a woman of colour has been given such a position on a major party ticket in the US. To some, this highlights how patriarchal the system remains as she had to have it bestowed upon her by a man - Biden. It remains to be seen if this is a real marker for progress, or a tokenistic effort on the part of the Democrats.
Everyone have a good evening!