The Washington Post
Biden says he would be ‘an ally of the light, not the darkness’
In his speech, Biden laid out what he says is at stake in this “life-changing election.”
America faces four converging crises, he said, a global pandemic, an economic crisis, racial injustice and climate change. “his will determine what America is going to look like for a long, long time,” Biden said. “Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They’re all on the ballot.”
Biden warned that another four years of Trump will mean more deaths from the coronavirus, more local businesses will close and more people will be kicked off their health insurance.
Biden also took on President Trump directly in his remarks, praising Barack Obama as someone children “could and did look up to."
NBC News
Trump Cabinet officials voted in 2018 White House meeting to separate migrant children, say officials
In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president's most senior advisers were called to the White House Situation Room, where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide the fate of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there.
… Donald Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller led the meeting, and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as defiance by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
It had been nearly a month since Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general, had launched the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy, announcing that every immigrant who crossed the U.S. border illegally would be prosecuted, including parents with small children. But so far, U.S. border agents had not begun separating parents from their children to put the plan into action, and Miller, the architect of the administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants, was furious about the delay.
Those invited included Sessions, Nielsen, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and newly installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
The Washington Post
Republican push to block controversial Alaskan gold mine gains the White House’s attention
Federal approval of a controversial gold and copper mine in Alaska that would be the largest in North America may be put on hold after a small group of influential Republicans — including the president’s son, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a wealthy Trump donor and one of the vice president’s former top aides — launched a full-court press to block the project.
The proposed Pebble Mine was on the verge of winning a key permit from the Trump administration despite concerns from environmentalists that it could significantly damage Alaska’s world-renowned sockeye salmon fishery in nearby Bristol Bay.
That also happens to be a fishing spot of Donald Trump Jr., who made an impassioned case against the mine to his father during an early August fundraiser he hosted at his Bridgehampton, N.Y., home. Andrew Sabin, a Trump donor who was at the seaside gathering, also told the president that the mine was a bad idea. And last week, Carlson argued against the proposed mine on his television show.
Steve Bannon charged with defrauding donors in private effort to raise money for Trump’s border wall
Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed criminal charges Thursday against Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, and three other men they alleged defrauded donors to a massive crowdfunding campaign that claimed to be raising money for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a news release, prosecutors said Bannon and another organizer, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, lied when they claimed they would not take any compensation as part of the campaign, called “We Build the Wall.” Bannon, prosecutors alleged, received more than $1 million through a nonprofit entity he controlled, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage while keeping a “substantial portion” for himself.
The surprising mission of the Postal Service police who arrested Stephen Bannon
When a Coast Guard vessel sped toward a yacht that had Stephen K. Bannon aboard Thursday morning, it carried the gun-toting members of the Postal Service’s investigator unit. […]
The USPIS may be having its biggest moment of prominence after the arrest of Bannon. He and three others allegedly defrauded donors to a massive crowdfunding campaign that claimed to be raising money for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
A Coast Guard boat approached a yacht Bannon was on in Long Island Sound and disembarked a team to sweep the boat before federal agents boarded to make the arrest, said Chief Warrant Officer Mariana O’Leary, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.
Los Angeles Times
‘Like Armageddon’: Rotting food, dead animals and chaos at postal facilities amid cutbacks
Six weeks ago, U.S. Postal Service workers in the high desert town of Tehachapi, Calif., began to notice crates of mail sitting in the post office in the early morning that should have been shipped out for delivery the night before.
At a mail processing facility in Santa Clarita in July, workers discovered that their automated sorting machines had been disabled and padlocked. And inside a massive mail-sorting facility in South Los Angeles, workers fell so far behind processing packages that by early August, gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes.
Accounts of conditions from employees at California mail facilities provide a glimpse of what some say are the consequences of widespread cutbacks in staffing and equipment recently imposed by the postal service.
Attorney for Minneapolis police officer says he’ll argue George Floyd died of an overdose and a heart condition
The public quickly reached its verdict: Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. Video seen around the world shows him on the pavement, his neck pinned beneath the knee of Officer Derek Chauvin, pleading for his life — “I can’t breathe” — until his body goes limp. Two autopsies concluded the death was a homicide.
Chauvin was charged with murder and three other officers — Thomas Lane and Alexander Kueng, who both helped hold down Floyd, and Tou Thao, who kept onlookers at bay — were charged as accomplices.
In an interview with The Times, a lawyer for Lane laid out for the first time what he said would be a central argument for the defense.
“None of these guys — even Chauvin — actually killed him,” said the attorney, Earl Gray. “He killed himself.”
San Francisco Chronicle
California wildfires are so intense they’re frying the fire cams: See dramatic images
The lightning-sparked wildfires raging across Northern California are so intense that for the first time, they are torching the remote cameras that help monitor them.
Five cameras, including three in the Bay Area, have been destroyed or severely damaged so far — some eerily catching the fires’ time-lapsed progress toward them and their own final moments before the flames overwhelmed them.
It’s a first for the network of about 500 cameras that monitor wildfire activity across the state, managed by AlertWildfire, a consortium of the University of Nevada, Reno, UC San Diego and the University of Oregon.
“Previously in years past, all of our cameras survived a half dozen burn overs,” said Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Lab at UNR, who helped create the AlertWildfire system.
Trump on California wildfires: ‘You got to get rid of the leaves’
Trump renewed his criticism of California’s forestry practices Thursday as wildfires burned up and down the state, saying “many years of leaves and broken trees” are contributing to the disasters.
“I see again, the forest fires are starting. They’re starting again in California,” Trump said at a campaign event in Old Forge, Pa., according to a pool report. “And I said, you’ve got to clean your floors. You’ve got to clean your floors.” […]
On Thursday, Trump said California has had “many, many years of leaves and broken trees. And they’re like, like so flammable. You touch them and it goes up. I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen. The environment. The environment.”
The president threatened to withhold Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance to California after the 2018 fires in Butte County and elsewhere, but never did so. On Thursday, he seemed to make a similar threat.
Michigan Live
U.S. Postal Service scrapping usable mail sorting machines in Grand Rapids, union says
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has scrapped one of West Michigan’s four flat mail sorting machines because the catalog and magazine mail volume is down, according to union representatives.
The remains of the massive machine, which has five feed stations and sorts thousands of catalogs and magazines every day, were being disposed of Wednesday, Aug. 19 at the USPS facility on Patterson Avenue in Kentwood.
These machines are key pieces of equipment used to expedite the mail delivery process. News of the machines being scrapped and disabled comes as concerns have been raised over recent cuts and changes at the USPS ahead of the November general election.
Motherboard
USPS Warns Employees Not to Speak to Press
Memos are trickling down the United States Postal Service bureaucracy warning employees that they should not speak to the press and any customer asking lots of questions may be a journalist sneakily trying to get information out of them.
The memos outline what employees should do if contacted by the media, and are titled "Guidelines for Handling Local Media Inquiries." Motherboard obtained two separate memos from postal employees in two districts. The memos are nearly identical, with different language only about who employees should contact if they receive a media inquiry. They were sent to employees in the last few days, following a spate of articles about the changes Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has made that have put the post office under major scrutiny.
"The Postal Service continuously strives to project a positive image, protect its brand, and present a unified message to the customers and communities it serves," the memo begins. "It is imperative that one person speaks on behalf of the Postal Service to deliver an appropriate, accurate and consistent message to the media."
How Steve Bannon’s Alleged ‘We Build the Wall’ Scam Worked
[…] “Legally, this is a pedestrian accusation,” Jens David Ohlin, vice dean and professor of law at Cornell Law School, told Motherboard in an email. “It’s standard fraud in the nonprofit context: diverting for personal use funds donated to a charitable cause. What’s striking here is the context: ‘Build the Wall!’ is an important political catchphrase for Trump, and Bannon allegedly weaponized it for his own personal profit.”
In December 2018, Kolfage, an Air Force veteran and triple amputee, started a GoFundMe campaign with a $1 billion goal. He called it We the People Build the Wall. “Democrats are going to stall this project by every means possible and play political games to ensure President Trump doesn’t get his victory,” We Build the Wall’s website said. “They’d rather see President Trump fail than see America succeed. However, if we can fund a large portion of this wall, it will jumpstart things and will be less money Trump has to secure from our politicians.”
The campaign was one of the most successful in GoFundMe history and raised more than $20 million in a few weeks. As the funds came in, Kolfage repeatedly said he wouldn’t take a penny of the cash. “I take no salary whatsoever working on this project,” he said in a June 2019 tweet. “It’s completely volunteer and it’s how a nonprofit should be run.”
National Geographic
Sacred Arizona spring drying up as border wall construction continues
Quitobaquito Springs, as the area is known, is one of the only reliable above-ground water sources in the Sonoran Desert. This oasis long provided water to the Hia-Ced O’odham, a tribe indigenous to the area, and records of human use and habitation go back more than 10,000 years. It’s also home to two endangered species found nowhere else in the United States: The Sonoyta pupfish and Sonoran mud turtle.
“The spring is regarded as sacred, a living element provided to all from our Elder teacher,” says tribal elder Ophelia Rivas, referring to the O’odham Creator God.
But this once-quiet spot within Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is in trouble. The flow of water, in slow decline since the 1980s, has dropped about 30 percent since March. The pond is at its lowest level in more than a decade, exposing mud flats throughout—a potentially urgent situation for its endangered animal inhabitants.
The pond is 200 feet from the U.S.-Mexico border, and contractors have already dug a six-foot trench for an electrical grid within a stone’s throw of it. Walls are going up several miles to the east of the spring in Organ Pipe and to the west in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. As construction advances closer to the spring, many people fear that the large quantities of groundwater that contractors withdraw to make concrete for the wall could exacerbate falling water tables and dry up the spring. Quitobaquito is probably fed in part by a regional aquifer that’s already been drawn down by agriculture.
Bloomberg
Russia Opposition Blames Putin for Navalny’s Suspected Poisoning
Opposition activists in Russia have blamed President Vladimir Putin for the suspected poisoning of prominent anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny during a trip to Siberia.
“It’s Putin,” Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter. “Whether or not he gave the order, the fault is entirely on him.”
Navalny, 44, fell ill Thursday on a plane returning to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. The aircraft made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he remains unconscious in serious condition. The Kremlin said it was awaiting the results of medical tests before jumping to conclusions about a poisoning.
Banks Uncover Loophole to Buy Home Loans at Below-Market Prices
Banks and other lenders have found a way to potentially make billions of dollars from the coronavirus-fueled upheaval in the U.S. mortgage market -- yet it risks burning bond investors in the process.
The earnings would come from an unanticipated side-effect of Congress’ decision in March to allow homeowners affected by the pandemic to delay loan payments for as long as a year, combined with arcane regulations governing mortgage-backed securities.
The net result is that lenders would get the chance to buy tens of billions of dollars in mortgages out of bonds for less than their current market value -- transactions that can hurt investors. Banks including Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bancorp are already buying, frustrating bond holders who say the purchases are leading to losses. Lenders counter that the practice is hardly risk-free and has more to do with accounting issues than trying to score a quick profit.
The Atlantic
What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say
His eyes fall to the floor when I ask him to describe it. We’ve been tiptoeing toward it for 45 minutes, and so far, every time he seems close, he backs away, or leads us in a new direction. There are competing theories in the press, but Joe Biden has kept mum on the subject. I want to hear him explain it. I ask him to walk me through the night he appeared to lose control of his words onstage.
“I—um—I don’t remember,” Biden says. His voice has that familiar shake, the creak and the croak. “I’d have to see it. I-I-I don’t remember.”
We’re in Biden’s mostly vacant Washington, D.C., campaign office on an overcast Tuesday at the end of the summer. Since entering the Democratic presidential-primary race in April, Biden has largely avoided in-depth interviews. When I first reached out, in late June, his press person was polite but noncommittal: Was an interview really necessary for the story?
Reuters
Former Republican CIA, FBI heads and national security officials to back Biden
Over 70 former Republican national security officials including ex-CIA and FBI chiefs will endorse Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday while launching a scathing indictment of … Donald Trump, calling him corrupt and unfit to serve.
The group, called Former Republican National Security Officials for Biden, includes some of the most senior Republican members of the U.S. defense and intelligence establishment to have served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump.
The 73-strong group includes retired General Michael Hayden, who served as national security director and head of the CIA; William Webster, the only man to serve as both head of the CIA and FBI; John Negroponte, the first director of National Intelligence; Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center; and Mike Donley, former Air Force secretary.
Belarus launches criminal case against new opposition body
Belarus launched a criminal case on Thursday against a new opposition body, accusing it of an illegal attempt to seize power, a day after President Alexander Lukashenko threatened to sweep the streets of protesters who reject his re-election.
Belarus is facing its biggest political crisis since the breakup of the Soviet Union, with tens of thousands of demonstrators rejecting Lukashenko’s victory in an Aug. 9 vote his opponents say was rigged.
Opponents of Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, unveiled the Coordination Council on Tuesday with the stated aim of negotiating a transfer of power.
China evacuates 100,000 as floods threaten heritage site
Floods on the upper reaches of China’s Yangtze river forced authorities to evacuate more than 100,000 people on Tuesday and threatened a 1,200-year-old world heritage site.
Staff, police and volunteers used sandbags to try to protect the 71-metre (233-foot) Leshan Giant Buddha, a UNESCO World Heritage site in southwestern Sichuan province, as muddy flood water rose over its toes for the first time since 1949, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Sichuan, through which the Yangtze river flows, raised its emergency response to the maximum level on Tuesday to cope with a new round of torrential rainfall.
The Guardian
Greenland ice sheet lost a record 1m tonnes of ice per minute in 2019
The Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of ice in 2019, equivalent to a million tonnes per minute across the year, satellite data shows.
The climate crisis is heating the Arctic at double the rate in lower latitudes, and the ice cap is the biggest single contributor to sea level rise, which already imperils coasts around the world. The ice sheet shrank by 532bn tonnes last year as its surface melted and glaciers fell into the ocean and would have filled seven Olympic-sized swimming pools per second.
The satellite data has been collected since 2003. The 2019 loss was double the annual average since then of 255bn tonnes. Almost that amount was lost in July 2019 alone.
A cup of tea, then screams of agony: how Alexei Navalny was left fighting for his life
For Alexei Navalny it was another routine trip to the regions. Specifically to Siberia’s biggest city, Novosibirsk, and to its alluring neighbour, Tomsk. “An excellent city. One of the most beautiful in our country,” Navalny enthused on Instagram, posting a photo from Tomsk on Wednesday with a group of young supporters.
Navalny is Russia’s most prominent opposition activist. He made no secret of why he had flown to Tomsk, known for its wooden mansions and enlightened university. The goal, he wrote, was to back independent candidates ahead of local elections next month. And, of course, to kick out the “crooks” from Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party.
On Thursday morning he made his way to Tomsk’s Bogashevo airport for a flight back to Moscow. Navalny was travelling with his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, and a couple of aides. At the airport he ordered a cup of black tea at the Vienna coffee house. He sat down. Navalny may be barred from state television but he is nonetheless a celebrity figure in Russia. Another passenger, the local DJ Pavel Lebedev, snapped a photo of Navalny – paper cup in hand, about to sip his drink.
CNN
Fact check: Trump delivers blizzard of false claims in Pennsylvania speech attacking Biden
Hours before former Vice President Joe Biden was scheduled to give his prime-time speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, President Donald Trump attacked him at length in a speech near Biden's birthplace.
Speaking in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, just outside Biden's home town of Scranton, Trump delivered a wild monologue that involved unscripted musings about sharks, boxing, dishwashers and the maintenance of forests.
It also involved a blizzard of false claims.
AP News
Trump appeals as judge OKs Manhattan DA getting tax returns
As … Donald Trump’s lawyers moved swiftly Thursday to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that granted Manhattan’s top prosecutor access to his tax returns, Trump blasted the long-running quest for his financial records as a “continuation of the most disgusting witch hunt in the history of our country.”
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero’s ruling echoed his prior decision in the case, upheld last month by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court had returned the case to Marrero’s courtroom to give Trump’s lawyers a chance to raise other concerns about the subpoena issued by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
Vance has been seeking Trump’s tax returns from the president’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, for more than a year, since Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress that the president had misled tax officials, insurers and business associates about the value of his assets. Congress is also pursuing Trump’s financial records.
Pelosi endorses Kennedy over Markey in US Senate primary
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed Democratic Rep. Joe Kennedy III on Thursday in his bid to oust Sen. Edward Markey in the Massachusetts Democratic primary, backing a young challenger against a veteran lawmaker with whom she’s served in Congress since 1987.
By embracing Kennedy, grandson of the late U.S. attorney general and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Pelosi sided with a congressional upstart against one of Washington’s old guard. Both contenders are among Congress’ more liberal Democrats, but Kennedy, 39, has been in the House since only 2013. Markey, 73, has served in Congress since 1975, moving from the House to the Senate in 2013.
“Joe Kennedy represents this party’s future. He will help lead Democrats forward on the defining battles of our time,” Pelosi said in a fundraising email for him.
The move to spurn Markey, who’s been embraced by many progressives, angered Democrats’ left flank just hours before the final day of the party’s convention, a virtual gathering aimed at rallying the sometimes fractious wings behind presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Vox
What’s really going on with the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump, Republican-led PAC that’s pissing off lots of people
The Lincoln Project is a high-concept pitch: What if Republican political operatives who used to spend their time fighting Barack Obama turned their sights on Trump? And, along the way, maybe most of the Republican Party they helped create?
It’s a catnip narrative… that drives some Democrats nuts. They argue that the Lincoln Project is at best a sideshow, doing things other campaigns have done and are doing that will have minimal impact on the 2020 election. […]
At worst, they mutter, it may be a project that isn’t really meant to help Democrats but to do something else. Though they don’t know what that is.
The meat we eat is a pandemic risk, too
Some experts have hypothesized that the novel coronavirus made the jump from animals to humans in China’s wet markets, just like SARS before it. Unsurprisingly, many people are furious that the markets, which were closed in the immediate wake of the outbreak in China, have already reopened. It’s easy to point the finger at these “foreign” places and blame them for generating pandemics. But doing that ignores one crucial fact: The way people eat all around the world — including in the US — is a major risk factor for pandemics, too.
That’s because we eat a ton of meat, and the vast majority of it comes from factory farms. In these huge industrialized facilities that supply more than 90 percent of meat globally — and around 99 percent of America’s meat — animals are tightly packed together and live under harsh and unsanitary conditions.
Roll Call
Schumer: Ditching filibuster not ‘off the table’ if Biden, Democrats win
On the day that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden delivers his acceptance speech, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer made clear that eliminating the chamber’s legislative filibuster will be on the table if Democrats sweep into the majority with Biden in November.
“We have a moral imperative to the people of America to get a whole lot done if we get the majority, which, God willing, we will, and keep it in the House, and Biden becomes president, and nothing is off the table,” the New York Democrat said Thursday.
“We will do what it takes to get this done. I’m hopeful, maybe if … Trump goes and [Mitch] McConnell is no longer leader, some Republicans might work with us. But we’re going to have to get it done, whether they work with us or not,” he added.
Ars Technica
Coronavirus researchers must examine Trump-backed conspiracy—or lose funding
A New York-based nonprofit that has worked for decades to better understand and prevent the type of coronavirus pandemic now engulfing the world was abruptly stripped of its federal research funding in April. The White House specifically directed the National Institutes of Health to cancel the multimillion-dollar research grant after President Donald Trump promoted an unfounded conspiracy theory that the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was released from a lab in Wuhan, China—a lab that collaborates with the nonprofit.
Now, the NIH has told the nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, that it may have its funding back—if it collects and hands over materials and information about the Chinese lab, which is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
It’s 2020, so of course two tropical storms are coming to the Gulf of Mexico
This Atlantic hurricane season has set all kinds of records. Most notably, we have already run through the "K" name, with Tropical Storm Kyle forming on August 14 off the coast of the Carolinas. This beat the earliest ever "K" storm, the highly memorable Katrina in 2005, by 10 days.
For all of the names being thrown about, however, most of these systems have been "fish storms," remaining out to sea. And only two have developed into hurricanes, Hanna and Isaias, and neither of these progressed beyond Category 1 status. Scientists use a metric called Accumulated Cyclone Energy to measure the overall activity of a season, factoring in duration and intensity of storms. By this standard, 2020 has been quite active, but not extremely so.
