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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Sam Chatmon

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Mississippi Delta blues singer Sam Chatmon. Enjoy!

^{Sam Chatmon - I Stand And Wonder}

“Are the mass media on the side of the power in the manipulation of the masses, or are they on the side of the masses in the liquidation of meaning, in the violence perpetrated on meaning, and in fascination? Is it the media that induce fascination in the masses, or is it the masses who direct the media into the spectacle?”

-- Jean Baudrillard

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News and Opinion

An excellent deep-dive into the Washington Post's mendacity about the war in Afghanistan and subsequent attempt at a clean up on aisle 9.

Afghan Papers Inadvertently Document WaPo’s Role in Spreading Official Lies

While more explicit admissions of deception on the part of US officials involved in wars are always appreciated, one question rarely discussed among the reports and opinion pieces praising the “Afghanistan Papers” is what this scoop says about the Washington Post.

If the Post is now publishing material demonstrating that US officials have been “following the same talking points for 18 years,” emphasizing how they are “making progress,” “especially” when the war is “going badly,” shouldn’t the paper acknowledge that it has been cheerleading this same line for all of those 18 years? Doesn’t it have a responsibility to examine how it served as a primary vehicle for those officials to spread these same “talking points” to spin the coverage in the desired fashion?

FAIR has been tracking the Post’s coverage of the Afghanistan War from the very beginning, when the paper—along with the rest of corporate media—was actively following the Bush administration’s “guidance” on how to cover the war. In 2001, a FAIR survey (11/2/01) of the Post’s op-ed pages for three weeks following the September 11 attacks found that

columns calling for or assuming a military response to the attacks were given a great deal of space, while opinions urging diplomatic and international law approaches as an alternative to military action were nearly nonexistent.

Eight years later, FAIR (3/1/09) found that the Post’s cheerleading coverage didn’t change much from 2001, as 7 out of 9 Post op-eds and 4 out of 5 editorials supported some kind of military escalation from the day Barack Obama was elected president (11/4/08) through March 1, 2009, as the US was debating a “surge” of additional troops in Afghanistan later that year. ...

The Post also has a history of facilitating official spin for the war. When WikiLeaks posted tens of thousands of classified intelligence documents related to the Afghanistan War, FAIR (7/30/10) found that the Post either dismissed them as not being as important as the Pentagon Papers (7/27/10), or absurdly spun the leaks as good news for the US war effort (7/27/10) because the “release could compel President Obama to explain more forcefully the war’s importance,” and because they “bolstered Obama’s decision in December to pour more troops and money into a war effort that had not received sufficient attention or resources from the Bush administration.”

The Post also buried attempts by whistleblowers and other journalists who were working to expose official lies and war crimes in Afghanistan. When US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was sentenced to serve 35 years in prison for sharing intelligence documents that first exposed what the “Afghanistan Papers” are now corroborating, the Post, along with other corporate outlets, largely neglected Manning’s legal trials and punishment (FAIR.org, 12/4/12, 6/18/14, 1/18/17, 4/1/19). The New York Times, to its credit, did give Manning space for an op-ed (6/14/19) to explain why she risked her freedom to expose matters that the US military recorded but left unreported, including hundreds of US military attacks on Afghan civilians. The Post, for its part, found room to publish frequent op-eds by the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon (e.g., 11/16/09, 6/26/10, 6/3/11, 2/10/13, 7/12/13) spouting the same optimistic US official talking points that the Post’s “Afghanistan Papers” has now exposed as lies (FAIR.org, 1/3/14). ...

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Post’s Afghanistan Papers have inadvertently exposed the Post as a subservient accomplice in disseminating US official lies; corporate media rely on official sources for free content and “scoops” to subsidize their journalism, which often spreads dishonest but convenient talking points by these same sources to retain “access” to this information, trustworthy or not (Extra!, 5/02; New York Times, 4/20/08; FAIR.org, 12/12/19).

Political cartoonist and journalist Ted Rall pointed out, in an account (Common Dreams, 12/11/19) of being marginalized by corporate outlets like the Post:

“The Afghanistan Papers” is a bright, shining lie by omission. Yes, our military and civilian leaders lied to us about Afghanistan. But they could never have spread their murderous BS—thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghans killed, trillions of dollars wasted—without media organizations like the Washington Post, which served as unquestioning government stenographers.

Press outlets like the Post and New York Times weren’t merely idiots used to disseminate pro-war propaganda. They actively censored people who knew we never should have gone into Afghanistan and tried to tell American voters the truth.

It’s this mutually beneficial relationship between the need for corporate media outlets like the Post for “access” to US official sources, and US officials who need corporate media outlets to propagate their preferred spin on US foreign policy to manipulate public opinion, that explains what the Afghanistan Papers expose as the Post’s own role in deceiving the US public. It’s why the Post’s coverage and editorial board can argue that the Trump administration shouldn’t “abandon the country in haste” (even though it’s been 18 years), and rally around the US’s “forever war” in Afghanistan (FAIR.org, 1/31/19, 9/11/19), even as the paper investigates the official lies the continuing occupation depends on.

Newsweek reporter quits after editors block coverage of OPCW Syria scandal

Ilhan Omar writes to US Syria envoy over Turkish white phosphorus allegations

Four US congressional Democrats have written to Donald Trump’s Syria envoy asking him to spell out what information the US has about the alleged use of white phosphorus by Turkey against Syrian Kurdish civilians in October. Ilhan Omar and three of her colleagues in the House of Representatives called on Jim Jeffrey to provide a full briefing – in private if necessary – into whether it believes the incident during the Turkish invasion two months ago amounts to a war crime.

They wrote: “The United States is uniquely positioned as a Nato ally of Turkey and a partner of the Syrian Kurds, who are the alleged victims of this attack, to take a lead on a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding [it].” Pictures emerged at the time of Syrian children who had been seriously burned, prompting accusations that they had been targeted by Turkish forces using white phosphorus in or around the border town of Ras al-Ayn. ...

Inspectors at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) initially said they were “collecting information” on the incident, but subsequently concluded it would “not initiate an investigation”. The OPCW said the case fell out of its remit because the use of white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon was intended to exploit its thermal properties and not its chemical properties. ...

The other congressional signatories to the letter are Karen Bass, Juan Vargas and Sheila Jackson Lee.

Brazil: homes of Bolsonaro associates raided in sweeping anti-corruption operation

Investigators have raided the home of a longstanding friend and associate of the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, as well as addresses linked to Bolsonaro’s son and ex-wife, in the latest phase of a politically damaging corruption investigation embroiling his family.

The operation – part of an embezzlement and money-laundering inquiry focusing on one of Bolsonaro’s three politician sons, Flávio – dominated Brazilian front pages on Wednesday and came as a major embarrassment to the rightwing populist who was elected promising to stamp out corruption.

Officials from Rio de Janeiro’s public prosecutor reportedly descended on multiple addresses linked to Fabrício Queiroz – a friend of Jair Bolsonaro since the mid-1980s – and to Bolsonaro’s ex-wife, and his former father-in-law and sister-in-law. Documents and mobile phones were reportedly seized as 24 warrants were executed in the cities of Rio and Resende.

The investigation is examining suspicions that the now senator Flávio Bolsonaro oversaw a corruption racket during his 15 years as a Rio congressman, with the collaboration of Queiroz, his then security chief and aide. Reports in the Brazilian press have also linked Flávio Bolsonaro to members of a notorious death squad one local broadsheet has called Rio’s “most lethal and secretive phalanx of hired guns”.

Warrant for arrest of Evo Morales issued in Bolivia

Prosecutors in Bolivia’s capital have issued an arrest warrant against the former president Evo Morales, accusing him of sedition and terrorism. The interior minister, Arturo Murillo, recently brought charges against Morales, alleging he promoted violent clashes that led to 35 deaths during disturbances before and after he left office.

On Wednesday, the minister tweeted a picture of what appeared to be the arrest warrant, with the comment: “FYI Senor [Morales].”

Sr. @evoespueblo para su conocimiento pic.twitter.com/1KrAFcevjQ

— Arturo Murillo (@ArturoMurilloS) December 18, 2019

Officials say Morales ordered supporters to blockade cities in order to force out the interim president, Jeanine Áñez, who took over when Morales resigned on 10 November.

Morales, who resigned after a wave of protests and under pressure from police and the military, is now based in Argentina, and has repeatedly denied the charges as a setup. Bolivia’s first indigenous president has described the movement that pressured him to leave as a coup d’état.

India citizenship law: "Modi has got pressure both internally and internationally"

India clamps down on citizenship law protests

Authorities have imposed an emergency law banning large gatherings in parts of India’s capital, Delhi, as nationwide protests escalated, injuring police and demonstrators. A week after a controversial new citizenship law was passed by parliament, which has been accused of openly discriminating against Muslims, protests across the country showed no sign of abating.

Clashes between demonstrators and police in the Seelampur district of Delhi turned violent on Tuesday, with 21 injured and buses and a police outpost set alight, leading police to bring in emergency measures to prevent the gathering of more than four people in certain Muslim-dominated areas of the city. ...

Some of the most violent altercations between protesters and police over the past week have occurred on Muslim-majority university campuses, where students who were marching against the citizenship law were met with police brutality. Harsh Mander, a prominent human rights activist, said he would be filing an official complaint of serious police atrocities over officers’ actions at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday. Police violently stormed the campus, firing teargas and detaining dozens of Muslim students.

Speaking to the Guardian, Mander said multiple students and teachers recounted how the police had used Islamophobic slurs and taunts at the Muslim students as they beat them with batons, including calling them “khatana”, which means circumcised, and shouting the Hindu nationalist slogan “Jai Shri Ram”, meaning Hail Lord Ram, a Hindu God.

French unions to stage new strikes and protests on January over pension reform

French unions meet government as pension strikes continue

The French government and unions are to face-off over controversial pension reforms, 14 days into a crippling transport strike that has damaged businesses, frustrated commuters and cast a shadow over holiday plans. After hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets on Tuesday, both sides stood firm prior to a series of meetings. Government officials have previously said they were ready to negotiate.

Union leaders have vowed to continue their action into the new year as the government defended its plan to forge the country’s 42 pension schemes into a single, points-based system. With attitudes appearing to harden, the CGT union claimed it had cut electricity on Tuesday to tens of thousands of homes in the Gironde department in the south-west and the cities of Lyon, Nantes and Orléans, and about 2,000 households in Paris.

At a meeting late on Tuesday, four unions including the CGT decided to continue their action, which has wreaked havoc on public transport in Paris and other cities, hobbled regional and international trains, and grounded planes on some strike days. The unions urged their members to take “local actions” throughout the Christmas holidays, and vowed there would be no let-up unless the reform plan was withdrawn.

About 615,000 people took part in more than 100 rallies across the country on Tuesday, according to the interior ministry. The CGT put the figure at three times that, with teachers, hospital workers and other public employees joining transport workers.

EU court rules that Catalan leader was jailed improperly

Germany Is Hiring 600 Police and Intelligence Agents to Hunt Down Neo-Nazis

Germany just created hundreds of new intelligence jobs to hunt down far-right extremists and neo-Nazis as part of a tough new approach to tackling the growing problem.

The new plan, announced in Berlin by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer Tuesday, creates 600 jobs, in total — 300 in federal police and 300 in the domestic intelligence services — and comes as a reaction to rising far-right violence in the country. In the past six months, Germany has experienced two deadly acts of terrorism: an attempted gun rampage at a synagogue in Halle that killed two people, and the assassination of a pro-refugee mayor, Walter Luebcke.

Germany has also faced a string of recent scandals involving far-right sympathizers in the army and police, and a new office will be dedicated to sniffing out extremists in the public sector. “Germany has to become more active against the far-right,” Seehofer told reporters. “As a consequence of Halle, we want to assure the public — many steps are being taken.”

FBI Surveillance of Trump Aide Reflects Flaws in Secretive FISA System That Mostly Targets Muslims

The FBI's Systematic Dishonesty

Former FBI Director James Comey initially portrayed last week's damning report on the bureau's investigation of alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russia as a vindication. This week Comey admitted that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered "real sloppiness," which is "concerning." That characterization does not begin to cover the problems described by Horowitz, which yesterday prompted a highly unusual public rebuke from the court that reviews secret warrant applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). ...

While Comey may take comfort from the fact that Horowitz "did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI's decision" to eavesdrop on former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, the rest of us can hardly be reassured by the implication that the FBI is inept rather than corrupt. ...

The pattern of these "errors" is not random, of course, since all of them served to bolster the appearance of probable cause. Horowitz told the Senate Judiciary Committee his investigators "did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified," and he allowed that they might reflect "intentionality," saying "it's fair" to "look at all of these 17 events and wonder how it could be purely incompetence."

It would be reassuring, in a sense, if the FBI's misfeasance could be explained by anti-Trump bias. But as Horowitz noted in his report, the fact that "so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations," one that "was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI" and "FBI officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny," suggests a much deeper problem involving unrestrained overzealousness, confirmation bias, tunnel vision, and groupthink—tendencies that threaten all Americans who value their privacy and reputations.

After House Impeachment Vote, Trump’s Case Headed for Possible “Kangaroo Court” in Senate

It’s Official: Donald Trump Just Got Impeached

Trump became just the third president in U.S. history to face that constitutional rebuke on Wednesday evening as House Democrats moved to prevent what they describe as his continuing assault on American democracy.

“The president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections — the basis of our democracy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said as she opened debate on the House floor on impeachment earlier in the day.

The House passed the first of two articles of impeachment — abuse of power — shortly after 8:30 p.m. by 230-197 a mostly party-line vote that broke along the deeply polarized fissure dividing both Congress and America. No Republicans backed impeachment, while just two Democrats opposed it — including one who plans to switch to the GOP in the coming days. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) voted “present.”

A few minutes later, the House passed the second article — obstruction of Congress — by a near-identical margin, 229-198. The only member that split on the two votes was Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine).

Both articles of impeachment will be taken up by the Senate, likely in a January trial. The GOP-controlled chamber is expected to acquit Trump of the charges, as there are no signs that 67 senators might consider voting to remove him under any circumstances.

Kyle Kulinski: Democrats picked the weakest impeachment argument possible

Pelosi downplays threat to withhold impeachment articles from Senate

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday downplayed the possibility that she would delay the impeachment trial into President Donald Trump, saying she’s merely waiting for Senate leaders to reach an agreement on ground rules before moving forward.

Pelosi’s remarks come after widespread confusion within the Democratic Caucus after the speaker wouldn’t commit to sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, saying she was concerned the upper chamber wouldn’t hold a fair trial. She made her initial statements in a press conference late Wednesday night just minutes after the House took the historic step of impeaching Trump.

Pelosi said she can’t name impeachment managers — the House Democrats who will essentially serve as prosecutors in the Senate trial — until she knows the terms of the proceedings.

“When we see the process that is set forth in the Senate, then we’ll know the number of managers that we may have to go forward and who we will choose,” Pelosi said.

The speaker, who refused to entertain many questions on the Senate trial during her weekly press conference, said she was merely reiterating what she had said the night before. But internal conversations among lawmakers and staff about the California Democrat’s Wednesday night comments reflected uncertainty about the post-impeachment process.

Tulsi Gabbard: Why I voted Present on impeachment

Sanders Report Shows How Millennial Generation Is 'Being Punished With Crushing Student Debt and Low-Paying Jobs'

A new government study commissioned by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders details how crushing student loan debt and stagnant wages are threatening to make millennials the first U.S. generation with a lower quality of life than their parents. The Government Accountability Office report (pdf), obtained Wednesday by Teen Vogue, found that millennials between the ages of 25 and 37 have substantially less wealth, lower homeownership rates, and fewer retirement resources than Generation X and the Baby Boomers.

"The millennial generation (those born between 1982 and 2000) might not have the same opportunity as previous generations had to fare better economically than their parents," the GAO report states. "Millennial households had significantly lower median and average net worth than Generation X households at similar ages."

In a statement to Teen Vogue, Sanders said the study confirms his fears about the grim financial prospects of young people in the United States.

"If we don't fundamentally transform our economy, we are facing—for the first time in the history of this country—the possibility that our young people will suffer a worse future than their parents had," said Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. "We must tell the economic elite who have hoarded income growth in America: No, you can no longer have it all."

The new study, according to Teen Vogue, shows that "student loan debt is what really differentiates millennial finances from other generations, with millennials more likely to have student debt that exceeds their annual income." The report says that "high levels of student debt may affect the ability to accumulate wealth, which may be why average net worth levels have decreased for college graduates."

Sanders is the only 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who has proposed wiping out all $1.6 trillion in U.S. student loan debt currently held by around 45 million Americans. The Vermont senator, who consistently polls at the top of the 2020 field among younger voters, has also proposed making public colleges, universities, and trade schools tuition-free.

US unveils plan to import lower-priced drugs from Canada

The Trump administration, eager to show progress on prescription drug costs, on Wednesday moved forward on its plan to allow Americans to safely and legally get access to lower-priced medicines from abroad.

Health officials unveiled a proposed regulation that would allow states to import many brand name drugs from Canada, with federal oversight. A second draft plan would let pharmaceutical companies seek approval to import their own drugs, from any country.

It’s unclear that either idea will have an impact on patients’ costs ahead of the 2020 election, but the Trump administration has advanced beyond its predecessors in trying to set up a supervised system for importing drugs. Medicines cost less in other advanced countries because the governments take an active role in setting prices.

Affordable Care Act: court strikes down part of Obama healthcare law

A federal appeals court has ruled that the “individual mandate” of the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, is invalid, but other parts of the law need further review.

The ruling handed down on Wednesday by the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans largely sidestepped what happens to some of the most popular parts of the Affordable Care Act such as protections for those with pre-existing conditions, Medicaid expansion and the ability for children under the age of 26 to remain on their parents’ insurance.

The panel agreed with Texas-based US district judge Reed O’Connor’s 2018 finding that the law’s insurance requirement, the so-called “individual mandate”, was rendered unconstitutional when Congress, in 2017, reduced a tax on people without insurance to zero.

The court reached no decision on the big issue – how much of the Affordable Care Act must fall along with the insurance mandate. The act has remained in place while the question of its future has been litigated in court. “It may still be that none of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate, even after this inquiry is concluded. It may be that all of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate. It may also be that some of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate, and some is not,” Judge Jennifer Elrod wrote.

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Of Course They’re Accusing Bernie Sanders Of Anti-Semitism - Because He Supports Palestinians

Given Bernie Sanders’ endurance as a top-tier presidential contender, and his support for Palestinian rights, it was almost inevitable that conservatives would start labelling his campaign anti-Semitic. Last week’s election in Britain—and the alleged similarities between Sanders and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn—provided the pretext. “Linda Sarsour Is Too Antisemitic For The Women’s March, But Not For Bernie Sanders,” declared a February 10 headline in The Federalist. Three days later, The Washington Examiner followed up with, “Bernie Sanders has an anti-Semitism Problem.” Commentary added, “Bernie Sanders Has a Big Jeremy Corbyn Problem.”

The effort to implicate the most successful Jewish presidential candidate in American history in Jew-hatred is now well underway. ...

It distinguishes Sanders even more dramatically from Donald Trump, who invokes anti-Semitic stereotypes more blatantly and more frequently than any American politician in modern memory. From Trump’s 2013 reference to “Jonathan Leibowitz - I mean Jon Stewart,” to his 2015 declaration to a Republican Jewish Coalition crowd that, “You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money” to his closing 2016 campaign ad, which featured three Jews — George Soros, Lloyd Blankfein and Janet Yellin — alongside language about “global special interests” that “control the levers of power” to his suggestion that American Jews view Benjamin Netanyahu as “your prime minister,” to his statement to a Jewish audience, just this month, that “You’re brutal killers, not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me…You’re not gonna vote for the wealth tax,” Trump is almost incapable of speaking about Jews without calling them either avaricious or disloyal.

Yet, astonishingly, The Examiner suggests it is Sanders’, not Trump’s, campaign that “is rapidly turning out to be the most anti-Semitic in decades.”

Bernie is a Jewish person fighting Trump’s hate-filled ideology. His family was murdered in the Holocaust because they were Jewish.

As a Jewish person, my response to this is simple: anyone accusing Bernie of antisemitism — and anyone publishing this shit — is a total asshole. pic.twitter.com/3Hq9nH3RIf

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 14, 2019

Accusing Bernie Sanders of antisemitism? That's a new low

Bernie Sanders – son of Dorothy and Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders, who emigrated from Poland in 1921 to escape antisemitism, and whose family that remained in Poland was slaughtered in the Holocaust – is not antisemitic. But some are trying to convince you that he is.

The conservative Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe published a story accusing the Sanders campaign of being the “most antisemitic in decades”. Worth noting is that Lowe expressed gratitude several months back for her grandfather’s service to the Chetniks, a nationalist armed front which collaborated with the Nazis and delivered thousands of Jews to them in service of building an ethnically homogenous Greater Serbia. She also posed for a picture with Milo Yiannopoulos, who once sent $14.88 on PayPal to a Jewish journalist, a reference to Nazi slogans.

For Lowe and others on the right that have jumped on this bandwagon, though, details don’t really matter. Sanders, an avowed democratic socialist, simply belongs to an opposing political camp with opposing values. Like the attacks against Corbyn abroad and Ilhan Omar at home, those now being lobbed at Sanders aren’t about defeating antisemitism so much as using it as a narrative device to undermine a worldview that offends them. Sanders’s solidarity with Palestinians suffering under occupation is not an affront to Jews but to the right’s propaganda that looking out for their best interest means a blanket, unquestioning support for whatever the Israeli government happens to be doing, which at the moment includes maintaining a brutal apartheid state. ...

Before they snowball into something worse, the right’s allegations of antisemitism against the left – and the first Jew within striking distance of the White House, at that – should be called out for what they are: cynical politiking in service of politicians who will put more Jews in danger.

DNC Spokeswoman pressed on Andrew Yang speaking time

Wall Street has definitely found the right candidate for them. He's a lying sack of shit that loves their money and doesn't care too much about how much blood is on it.

In 'Mind-Blowing Omission,' Buttigieg Campaign Failed to Disclose Wall Street Power Brokers in Release of Major Fundraisers

Among the more than 20 top fundraisers for South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg that his 2020 presidential campaign omitted from a release of his "campaign bundlers" on Friday were hedge fund executives and other power brokers with ties to Wall Street. As Politico reported Tuesday, the list of about 100 bundlers who have raised more than $25,000 each for the mayor left out a number of donors included in an internal campaign fundraising report which the outlet had previously received.

The omission was inadvertent according to Buttigieg spokesman Chris Meagher, who told Politico the campaign was making an updated, accurate list. The news was nonetheless condemned as "sketchy" by Jeff Hauser of the watchdog group Revolving Door Project.

"The first time I saw this list, I said, 'There is no way this is comprehensive.' It's just kind of mind-blowing that they would be this dishonest," Hauser told Politico. ...

In response to criticism from Warren and other progressives, Buttigieg said last week that his campaign "strives to be the most transparent in the field." But Politico revealed that nearly two dozen bundlers had been left out of the campaign's data release, which one critic derided as a "Friday night news dump" designed to satisfy the demands for transparency while leaving out key information. ...

On social media, a number of critics scrutinized the list of previously-undisclosed bundlers that was revealed by Politico Tuesday evening, including former ambassadors, entertainment and advertising executives, and Wall Street figures.

One such bundler was William Rahm, managing director of the hedge fund Centerbridge Partners. The fund was one of several firms that concealed its Puerto Rican debt holdings through shell companies as pension funds in the territory were slashed. "As Puerto Rican debt mounted, vultures swooped in, buying nearly half of the distressed bonds and using that leverage to pressure the Puerto Rican government," wrote David Dayen at The American Prospect earlier this year. "The bouts of austerity and suffering that we've seen on the island are in no small part due to the role of vulture funds like Centerbridge Partners."

Give Buttigieg credit: He is at least aware of which bundlers he should try to conceal from the public," journalist Ryan Grim tweeted.

Bundlers Buttigieg "inadvertently" omitted from his disclosure include:

- a lawyer who repped big banks during the financial crisis
- a director at a hedge fund that drained Puerto Rico's pensions
- an atty who helped cover up Laquan McDonald's murderhttps://t.co/hCZefuSmRe

— BoldProgressives.org (@BoldProgressive) December 18, 2019

BREAKING: @GovMurphy just signed the bill to restore voting rights to people on probation and parole.

In 1844, NJ passed a law taking away the right to vote based on a criminal conviction.

Today—175 years later—the stroke of a pen returned that right to 83,000 people.

Watch: pic.twitter.com/ApxwJdABVx

— ACLU of New Jersey (@ACLUNJ) December 18, 2019

Bernie Blasts Voter Purge By GOP

Rightwing group pushes Wisconsin voter purge that 'could tip' 2020 election

A conservative group is forcing Wisconsin to remove upwards of 230,000 people from state voter rolls more than a year earlier than planned, a move that would disproportionately affect Democrats before the 2020 election.

The group behind the lawsuit, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (known as Will), is a legal advocacy group that has backed conservative causes across the state since the beginning of the decade. Led by Rick Esenberg, Will has defended rollbacks on public sector union power, promoted charter schools, and challenged campaign finance restrictions among other issues.

Earlier this year, Wisconsin election officials sent out notices to about 234,000 people – 7% of registered voters in the state – suspected of changing home addresses this year. They planned on giving people until the spring of 2021 to confirm their registrations before they were removed. But on Friday, county circuit judge Paul Malloy sided with Will and ordered the state to remove the voters from the state’s rolls within 30 days.

Wisconsin officials are appealing the ruling. In a 3-3 split vote Monday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission declined to move forward with the removals, citing the pending appeal.

The dispute is the latest in a series of voting rights brawls in Wisconsin, considered one of the most important states in the upcoming presidential election. In recent years, Republicans drew electoral districts that severely benefitted their party, unsuccessfully tried to limit early voting, and implemented a strict voter ID law. The law discouraged as many as 23,252 people in the state from casting a ballot in 2016, one estimate found. These tactics could sway elections in a state of close wins and losses.

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EPA sued for allowing slaughterhouses to pollute waterways

A coalition of conservation and community groups representing millions of people is suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for refusing to update national water pollution standards for slaughterhouses. The EPA decision allows thousands of meat and poultry processing plants to continue using outdated pollution-control technology, which has been linked to the contamination of waterways across the US.

More than eight billion chickens, 100 million pigs and 30 million cattle are processed each year in more than 5,000 slaughterhouses in America. Around 4,700 of these slaughterhouses discharge polluted water into waterways including the Chesapeake Bay, the country’s largest estuary.

“[Current] EPA standards are either weak and outdated or nonexistent,” said Sylvia Lam, a lawyer with the not-for-profit Environmental Integrity Project, which filed the lawsuit on Wednesday. “Cleaner plants have already installed technology to lessen the pollution they send into their local rivers and streams. By not updating these nationwide standards, EPA is rewarding dirty slaughterhouses at the expense of the public.”

The Clean Water Act requires the EPA to set industry-wide water pollution standards for slaughterhouses and to review those standards each year to decide whether updates are necessary in order to keep pace with advances in pollution-control technology. In October 2019, the EPA announced it would not revise the federal water pollution standards for slaughterhouses that directly discharge processed wastewater into waterways. The EPA last revised these standards 15 years ago and more than a third of these slaughterhouses operate under guidelines that date back to the 1970s.

A ‘Heat Dome’ Is About to Make Australia’s Summer From Hell Even Hotter

The average temperature across Australia reached a record high of 105.6 Fahrenheit on Tuesday, and experts are warning that temperatures could soar even higher later this week.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said Tuesday’s temperatures beat the 2013 record of 104.5 Fahrenheit. Some weather stations in central Australia recorded temperatures that were 16 degrees higher than the usual December averages, with Adelaide reaching record highs of 109.4 Fahrenheit and other parts of South Australia as high as 114.8.

Australian summers typically reach peak temperatures in January and February, but earlier this week, the city of Perth, in Western Australia, experienced three consecutive days above 104 Fahrenheit — which had never before happened during December.

Preliminary results suggest that the 17th December was Australia's hottest day on record at 40.9 ºC, with the average maximum across the country as a whole, exceeding the previous record of 40.3 ºC on the 7th January 2013. https://t.co/TKwWBuFPgJ pic.twitter.com/xOFpokoXos

— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) December 18, 2019

Following Tuesday’s record-breaking temperatures, residents in New South Wales are now preparing for the arrival of a “heat dome” — a large, extremely hot, expansive air mass that sticks around for days. ... The record-breaking heat wave, combined with forecast 60mph winds, is threatening to ramp up bushfires that are raging out of control across New South Wales, the state’s premier warned on Wednesday.

New Chemical Complex Would Displace Suspected Slave Burial Ground in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”

A former burial ground thought to contain the remains of slaves has been identified on a Louisiana property where a massive plastic production complex is sited to be built. Human remains along with evidence of grave shafts were identified on land in the St. James Parish where a subsidiary of the Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Group intends to build 14 facilities to produce plastic bottles, bags, car casings, and synthetic turf, among other products.

Many residents of the area, known as “Cancer Alley,” already oppose the construction of the almost 2,400-acre complex on the west side of the Mississippi River on the grounds that it will double the dangerous amount of toxic chemicals in their air and emit more than 13 million tons of carbon pollution each year, making it the biggest new source of greenhouse gas emissions from a petrochemical plant since at least 2012. The discovery of the burial site adds another layer to their outrage.

“That’s sacred ground,” said Sharon Lavigne, 67, of the plot now covered with sugar cane where people were laid to rest years ago. Lavigne has lived in the area all her life and founded the community group RISE St. James last year to combat the presence of polluting industrial facilities in the parish. “They’re saying they don’t care about your ancestors. They’re slapping us in the face.”

Like many other African American residents in the area, Lavigne believes that she is the descendant of slaves who worked on nearby plantations. Yet because of the lack of documentation of the lives — and deaths — of enslaved people, she doesn’t know the specifics of where they labored or were buried.

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