Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Byther Smith. Enjoy!

"Billionaires are not good stewards of society. They are not kind. They are not wise. They aren’t even really smart. They just figured out how to diddle narratives and numbers in a way that funnels them money and power. They are empty parasitic middle-men, and they are conmen.

I mean, look who’s president right now. Look who rose to the top of a capitalist system in the most powerful nation on earth. This is what you get. Imagine thinking that a system which elevates such a creature to the very top of the most powerful society can ever be of service to human health and harmony."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Portland: protesters' outrage grows over federal officers' 'blatant abuse'

After more than 50 nights of protests in Portland, prompted by the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis in May, demonstrators in Portland are being met not only by local police officers, but also militarized federal agents deployed by Donald Trump.

On Saturday night, police said protesters broke into the Portland Police Association building, set it on fire and started dumpster fires. The department declared a riot and teargas was used, according to pictures and video from the scene. In a video posted by Zane Sparling, a reporter for the Portland Tribune, a federal officer appeared to be repeatedly hitting with a baton a man standing virtually still.

There have been multiple reports of federal agents driving through the city in unmarked vehicles, picking demonstrators off the streets. In one instance, a person was handcuffed by two people in camouflage with “police” patches and taken into an unmarked vehicle. ...

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Sunday, Trump tweeted: “We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE.”

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler has called on federal officers to stay away. Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, he said: “The president has a complete misunderstanding of cause and effect. “We have dozens, if not hundreds of federal troops descending upon our city. And … they are sharply escalating the situation. Their presence is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism. It’s not helping the situation at all. They’re not wanted here. We haven’t asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.” ...

Oregon attorney general Ellen Rosenblum filed a lawsuit in federal court on Friday, against DHS, the Marshals Service, Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protection Service, alleging their behavior violated state citizens’ right to peacefully protest as well as their due process rights.

Ken Klippenstein: Uncovering Unmarked Federal Agents In Portland

Oregon DOJ Launches Criminal Probe Into Violence by Trump-Deployed Feds

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum on Friday announced a criminal probe into violence committed against peaceful protesters by unidentified federal officials who President Donald Trump deployed to Portland earlier this month to quash Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Rosenblum also said her office is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Protection Service, and their agents for violating "the civil rights of Oregonians by seizing and detaining them without probable cause" after video footage showed federal officials in combat fatigues snatching protesters off the streets and throwing them into unmarked vehicles.

"These tactics must stop," Rosenblum said in a statement. "They not only make it impossible for people to assert their First Amendment rights to protest peacefully. They also create a more volatile situation on our streets. We are today asking the federal court to stop the federal police from secretly stopping and forcibly grabbing Oregonians off our streets."

"The federal administration has chosen Portland to use their scare tactics to stop our residents from protesting police brutality and from supporting the Black Lives Matter movement," Rosenblum continued. "Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening. If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere."

The criminal investigation led by the Oregon Department of Justice and Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill will center on a gruesome July 11 incident in which a peaceful demonstrator was shot in the head by an impact munition. The munition, reportedly fired by a federal officer, fractured the 26-year-old protester's skull.

The Secretary of Homeland Security released a statement justifying the invasion of Portland, by a variety of federal agencies that refuse to identify themselves or speak with local officials, using a list of violent Antifa crimes. Only issue is it’s a list of graffiti incidents. pic.twitter.com/B5TJ1Mb8KB

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) July 17, 2020

Worth a full read:

The Portland Seizures Are the Next Step To Latin American Style Fascism

As you may have heard, masked men without badges are jumping out of unmarked vans and grabbing people in Portland. This is a clear violation of due process. They appear to choose their victims primarily by looking at videos of protests, identifying people and grabbing them when they see them.

This is essentially a lesser version of what America taught Latin American nations to do at the School of the Americas. It doesn’t yet, so far as I know, include torture and rape once the victim reaches the site where they are held, but if it is allowed to continue that will happen next.

The people doing it appear to Department of Homeland Security; primarily ICE: border control agents. They’ve always obviously been trained as brownshirts: that’s why they brutalize powerless people for a living, including children, something that happened under Obama, though it became worse under Trump. Brownshirts need to be dehumanized, and you dehumanize thugs by making them dehumanize other people. ...

Americans have spent a lot of time teaching other people how to do this, and in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere where they were “advisors” have engaged in such behaviour themselves. When American citizens became too uppity, it was inevitable that such tactics would be used against Americans also.

Oregon Senator Vows Amendment to Bar Trump From Sending "Paramilitary Squads Onto America's Streets"

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley on Saturday announced plans to introduce an amendment barring the Trump administration from deploying federal law enforcement to U.S. streets as backlash continues over the White House's use of unidentified agents to violently crack down on protests in Portland and detain demonstrators without cause.

"When I get back to D.C. next week, I will be introducing an amendment to the defense bill with Sen. Ron Wyden to stop the Trump administration from sending its paramilitary squads onto America's streets," Merkley tweeted, referring to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) currently under consideration in the Senate. "We won't let these authoritarian tactics stand."

Merkley's proposal came as the Trump administration was hit with a barrage of lawsuits over its deployment of federal agents to quash ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in Portland. Video footage posted to social media in recent days shows unidentified federal agents dressed in combat fatigues firing impact munitions into crowds and throwing protesters into unmarked vehicles.

This guy in Portland tonight must be made of steel. Unreal. pic.twitter.com/5rg7CEvaKU

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) July 19, 2020

Worth a full read:

Dems' Sternly Worded Letter Won't Stop Fascism

Two weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that President Trump deployed unidentified agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to Portland, Ore., where they were filmed getting out of unmarked vehicles and abducting protesters off the street. A few days later, House Democrats responded by obediently advancing an appropriations bill that funds the department -- with no apparent restrictions on such deployments.

“This bill as a whole will strengthen our security and keep Americans safe while upholding our American values of fairness and respect,” said Democratic House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, amid growing outrage at the situation in Oregon. With congressional Democrats on their way to approving $50 billion for DHS, Trump administration officials are now boasting about their plans to replicate the Portland invasion in other cities. Those officials seem emboldened to ignore local Democratic opposition to the federal deployments.

“I don’t need invitations by state mayors or state governors to do our job -- we’re going to do that whether they like us there or not,” Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf defiantly declared on Fox News this morning.

While it is true that the current Homeland Security funding bill has a few good things in it (it rejects funding for Trump’s border wall), the larger point is clear: Once again, while Democrats issue press releases telling America they really want to stop Trump, and while Democrats actually have a huge amount of power to do just that, they often refuse to use that power. They clearly expect nobody to mind the yawning gap between their #Resistance rhetoric and their lack of action -- even as the White House now openly threatens to ignore federal laws.

This isn’t some isolated incident. We’ve seen this act over and over again: Democrats slam Trump’s authoritarianism and corporatism, while pushing to give him more police power and rubber-stamping his corporate bailouts. Indeed, at times it almost seems as if Democrats are engaging in deliberate performance art to try to dare us to care about this bait and switch -- as if they really cannot believe we are all this ignorant or asleep to not even notice the swindle.

Big talk from the Progressive Caucus. I wonder if the odds are above negligible that they will actually do anything.

The Progressive Caucus will formally oppose the National Defense Authorization Act unless significant action is taken to eliminate wasteful Pentagon spending. Rubber-stamping a record $740 billion for the Pentagon shortchanges millions of families trying to get by in this crisis.

— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) July 19, 2020

Trump bids to stop billions in track-and-trace funds as virus cases spike

Donald Trump is seeking to block billions of dollars in funding for coronavirus testing and contact tracing efforts even as cases rise across the US, where around 70,000 people are testing positive each day.

White House opposition to spending proposed by Senate Republicans has sparked frustrations in his own party, according to the Washington Post, the New York Times and other media outlets. Senate Republicans are preparing to unveil a new coronavirus relief bill when Congress returns from a two-week recess. The package, which must address the public health threat of Covid-19 and the resulting economic crisis, could be the last relief bill Congress passes before the November elections.

More than 140,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the US and more than 3.7 million cases of the respiratory illness have been identified. Cases were dropping in April, but have since increased sharply across the country. Trump has repeatedly blamed increased testing for the rise in cases, though that is not what results show.

The World Health Organization advised that before reopening, rates of positivity in testing should remain at 5% or lower for at least 14 days. More than 5% of people are testing positive for coronavirus in 34 of 52 US states and territories, indicating the US is testing too few people to adequately respond to the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The Trump administration reportedly wants to cut $25bn Republicans propose allocating for state contact tracing and testing efforts. The White House is also trying to block $10bn for the nation’s top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and $15bn for the top medical research agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as money for state and Pentagon anti-Covid efforts abroad.

'The virus doesn't care about excuses': US faces terrifying autumn as Covid-19 surges

In early June, the United States awoke from a months-long nightmare. Coronavirus had brutalized the north-east, with New York City alone recording more than 20,000 deaths, the bodies piling up in refrigerated trucks. Thousands sheltered at home. Rice, flour and toilet paper ran out. Millions of jobs disappeared. But then the national curve flattened, governors declared success and patrons returned to restaurants, bars and beaches. “We are winning the fight against the invisible enemy,” vice-president Mike Pence wrote in a 16 June op-ed, titled, “There isn’t a coronavirus ‘second wave’.”

Except, in truth, the nightmare was not over – the country was not awake – and a new wave of cases was gathering with terrifying force. As Pence was writing, the virus was spreading across the American south and interior, finding thousands of untouched communities and infecting millions of new bodies. Except for the precipitous drop in New York cases, the curve was not flat at all. It was surging, in line with epidemiological predictions.

Now, four months into the pandemic, with test results delayed, contact tracing scarce, protective equipment dwindling and emergency rooms once again filling, the United States finds itself in a fight for its life: swamped by partisanship, mistrustful of science, engulfed in mask wars and led by a president whose incompetence is rivaled only by his indifference to Americans’ suffering.

With flu season on the horizon and Donald Trump demanding that millions of students return to school in the fall – not to mention a presidential election quickly approaching – the country appears at risk of being torn apart.

The problem facing the United States is plain. New cases nationally are up a remarkable 50% over the last two weeks and the daily death toll is up 42% over the same period. Cases are on the rise in 40 out of 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico. Last week America recorded more than 75,000 new cases daily – five times the rate of all Europe.

Health Experts Warn Against Feinstein Threat to Withhold Covid-19 Funding to Compel Mask Mandates

Public health experts on Friday panned a proposed amendment from a senior Democratic senator that would cut coronavirus aid money to states where leaders refuse to institute mask mandates.

Though the amendment was put forth by Feinstein as a way to compel better public health decisions, especially by many Republican lawmakers openly opposing mask-wearing and state-level mandates, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) president Dr. Adam Gaffney told Common Dreams the plan would only end up harming the most vulnerable.

"While policies to increase use of masks are logical public health measures, it makes zero sense to punish the residents of states for the decisions of their leaders by withholding crucial stimulus dollars as a legislative stick," said Gaffney. "States need urgent assistance now to maintain health, educational, and other social programs."

Senator Dianne Feinstein just pulled a very Dianne Feinstein move, announcing a proposed amendment to the next federal stimulus package that would withhold money from states where face masks in public are not yet mandatory. https://t.co/iQeEYpXlny

— SFist (@SFist) July 17, 2020

Feinstein's plan would prohibit federal funding for any state without a statewide mask mandate. About half of all states have a mandate in place; in other states, like Georgia, leaders have resisted urgings from public health experts and efforts by local city and county officials to impose such a rule.

"This is a matter of life or death," Feinstein said in a statement, "and partisan politics shouldn't play a role."

According to Benjamin Corb, public affairs director for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, threatening to cut the funding makes as much sense as the White House's push to reopen schools.

"While I understand the temptation, using federal funds during a pandemic to force behavior (whether it be the administration and school reopening, or Sen.Feinstein and this policy) isn't the best way forward," Corb told Common Dreams in an email.

Corb acknowledged that the science supports Feinstein's contention that states should mandate masks, calling the science behind wearing masks to prevent transmission of Covid-19 "clear and indisputable."

"My concern is that Sen. Feinstein's proposal will hurt the average citizens of a state for the unwise actions of their governor or local leaders," said Corb. "Simply put—there have to be better ways to accomplish the goal of incentivizing mask wearing."

Outraged Over Trump's Inept School Reopening Push, Teachers Ready #RedForEd Resurrection

As teachers and parents across the U.S. continue to express outrage over the federal government's demand that public schools fully reopen in the next few weeks for the fall semester, some educators are looking to revitalize the nationwide Red for Ed movement of 2018 which led thousands of them to walk out of their classrooms in a fight for better conditions and wages. 

The original wave of protests in Oklahoma, Arizona, West Virginia, and other states were focused on properly funding public schools and paying teachers and support staff to ensure a quality education for students.

Now teachers in Florida, where more than 100 Covid-19 deaths have been recorded per day for four days in a row, are demonstrating with signs reading, "Red for Ed, Not Red for Dead" as they express anger over the Trump administration's refusal to ensure schools have safety measures in place in the fall and its simultaneous insistence that schools are "fully operational." 

Teachers in Tampa are protesting this week as officials decide whether to adopt a hybrid teaching model this fall, with some in-person instruction and some remote. 

In June, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conducted a poll of its 1.7 million members and found that two-thirds hoped to teach in person at least part-time this coming school year, provided the government ensures there are proper ventilation and sanitation systems, masks, and the ability to socially distance at schools.

But this month, as the CDC has released guidelines recommending that schools are able to follow those protocols, President Donald Trump dismissed those requirements as "very tough and expensive" to provide.

Last weekend, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos appeared on Fox News to repeat an earlier threat to schools which don't fully reopen in the fall, regardless of the administration's refusal to ensure they can do so safely, saying they should face funding cuts. Republicans in Congress are reportedly considering making emergency school funding conditional on reopening in the next coronavirus relief package.

"It's as if Trump and DeVos want to create chaos and want to jeopardize reopening," Randi Weingarten, president of AFT, told The Guardian. "There's no other reason why they would be this reckless, this callous, this cruel."

Jessica Salfia, a teacher in West Virginia who participated in the Red for Ed strikes in 2018, told New York magazine that DeVos, a proponent on school voucher programs which pull funding from public schools, is using the deadly pandemic to "dismantle public education" once and for all.

"There is no doubt in my mind it is a calculated attempt," Salfia told New York on Friday. "There is no other reason to put our teachers and our schools in danger and to push us to reopen."

NEWS: The White House will NOT allow @CDCgov to testify at next week’s Committee hearing on safely reopening schools. https://t.co/dNY32jNsja

— Committee on Education & Labor (@EdLaborCmte) July 17, 2020

Trump Gave a Rambling Presser About Dishwashers the Day the U.S. Smashed Another Coronavirus Record

On the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, President Donald Trump talked about dishwashers, dryers, showerheads, and faucets.

What he didn’t speak about was the tens of thousands of Americans contracting the coronavirus every day and the hundreds of people who are dying from it.

The U.S. shattered its single-day record for new coronavirus infections on Thursday, reporting more than 77,000 thousand cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

It marks the 11th time in the last month that the U.S. has set a new daily record for infections. But more troubling for public health experts is that the death toll from those infections is now beginning to follow the same trend.

The most powerful man in the world whines a lot

— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) July 19, 2020

Over 100 Houston Doctors Slam Rep. Dan Crenshaw for “Spreading Dangerous Disinformation” on Coronavirus

More than 100 doctors, medical professionals, and emergency room physicians in the Houston area have signed their names to a letter condemning Republican Rep. Daniel Crenshaw for spreading misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been ravaging the Texas city hard in recent weeks.

The doctors didn’t mince their words. “The COVID-19 pandemic should not be a partisan issue — that’s why even Governor Abbott is finally stalling the reopening process and implementing the mask mandates that he unwisely blocked just two short months ago,” the medical workers, who are primarily women, wrote in the letter, which is first being reported on by The Intercept. “Dan Crenshaw, on the other hand, has spewed lies for the past four months — minimizing the threat we face and spreading dangerous disinformation for self-indulgent headlines.”

Doctors rarely ever make such pointed political statements, but the urgency of the coronavirus crisis — and the real harm caused by disinformation spread by elected officials — prompted the Houston-area physicians to speak up, especially as Republicans in the state continued to promote large, indoor gatherings against the advice of public health experts. “As everyone is seeing right now with Dr. Fauci, the medical community is just getting raked over the coals, and undermined and blamed,” Dr. Christina Propst, a pediatrician in Houston who helped to organize the letter, told The Intercept. “If you’re a physician working in places like Texas and Florida, you’re just battling disinformation constantly, and it gets so exhausting and frustrating.”

The list of Crenshaw’s comments undermining the seriousness of the pandemic runs long. He has also taken it upon himself to strongly defend the Trump administration’s response to the public health crisis. ... In their letter, the doctors criticized Crenshaw for “undermin[ing] the advice of our public health experts at every turn — enabling millions of his followers to the same.” This mixed messaging, they say, left medical workers “handicapped in our mission” to protect Texans from the start of the pandemic. “We need elected officials who don’t throw out meaningless platitudes while trying to shift blame to the institutions working to keep us informed and protected,” the doctors wrote.

Much more at the link:

Masks Off: How the Brothers Who Fueled the Reopen Protests Built a Volatile Far-Right Network

The emails played to fear. “Entire police departments are being overwhelmed by mobs of criminals bent on violence, robbery, arson, and more,” read one sent in June, as demonstrations against police brutality rocked the country. “Minnesotans have seen our peaceful streets turn violent overnight with riotous mobs,” read another, sent not long after the burning of Minneapolis’s Third Precinct. “Radical leftists … are looting in our streets, lighting buildings on fire, terrifying citizens, and murdering cops,” intoned a third. Antifa is in the streets, coming for your guns, and did you know that Nickelodeon is removing the police dog character from the hit toddler show “Paw Patrol?” (It isn’t.)

For right-wing fringe activist Ben Dorr, who sent the emails, outrage about Black Lives Matter was an easy pivot from another cause he’d been promoting. With his brothers Aaron, Chris, and Matthew, Ben Dorr helped launch protests to reopen states across the country shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic this spring. Alone or together, the four Dorr brothers started a slew of Facebook groups, joined by hundreds of thousands of members, that have helped to fuel skepticism about health precautions and pushed for states to open prematurely. In a country where the simple act of wearing a mask has become a political statement, the people who organize against masks are worth watching.

The Dorr brothers, who range in age from 29 to 40, have ties to tea party figures like Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul and have been dismissed by people on both the right and the left as astroturfing hucksters who are more interested in profit than policy. Even the National Rifle Association has denounced them as scammers. ... But the Dorrs’ network shouldn’t be discounted. At a moment when the Republican Party is struggling to deal with President Donald Trump’s declining poll numbers and the unchecked spread of Covid-19, the reopen activists offer conservatives new energy, as tea party supporters once did. “The Dorrs are really important because they have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the conservative grassroots,” said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which tracks right-wing extremists. “The hope among conservatives now is that they can somehow shape that into a mobilizing force.”

By the institute’s count, Facebook groups promoting the reopen cause have 2.7 million members. At least 325,000 of those users belong to Dorr-affiliated groups. “My suspicion is that the Dorrs have flourished because of social media and whatever it is that makes people both trusting and suspicious,” said Sally Jo Sorensen, a South Dakota-based blogger who has tracked the Dorr family for decades. “These guys have flourished because of people’s willingness to believe someone is out to harm them.” The paranoid atmosphere around reopen protests has, in some cases, led to attempts at violence. In May, a reopen protester in Colorado was arrested after investigators found four pipe bombs in his home. In June, federal prosecutors charged three Nevada men for conspiring to blow up or set fire to U.S. government buildings during Black Lives Matter protests in Las Vegas. Their plot had taken shape in April, in connection with anti-lockdown demonstrations in Nevada.

While the Dorr brothers have not been directly tied to particular violent incidents, they are adept at inciting rage and collecting donations with petty insults, racist dog-whistling, and silly stunts. They have made a career out of skewering mainstream Republicans. They are, in short, the perfect people to stoke hate in a Trump presidency during a global pandemic. And in true Trumpian fashion, by paying themselves and promoting hate they may end up spawning a movement.

Krystal and Saagar: White House, GOP Stimulus Plan Will Lead To COMPLETE DISASTER, Economic Crash

White, Rich People Got Their Coronavirus Stimulus Money Faster Than People of Color

Some of the communities hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic also didn’t get their stimulus checks as fast as their white or richer counterparts. A recent study conducted by the Urban Institute shows that of the 150 million Americans who received their economic relief money designated by the CARES Act, both families living in poverty and people of color were less likely to receive their one-time stimulus check of $1,200 on schedule.

While three-quarters of white Americans say they received federal stimulus money hit their bank accounts by late May, only 69% of black Americans and 64% of Hispanic Americans say they got their money around the same time. The study also shows that race wasn’t the only factor. It shows that just 59% of households living at or below the federal poverty level received their checks in late May.

Meanwhile, their middle-class counterparts living above the poverty level received checks on time at a much higher rate: 73% of households living 100% above the poverty level got their checks on time, while 85% of households living 400% above the poverty level got their checks on time. “Adults were less likely to receive the payments if they had family incomes below 100 percent of FPL or if they were Black or Hispanic, and particularly if they were Hispanic and in families with noncitizens,” the study says.

Hacking For A COVID-19 Vaccine?

Spanish government denies spying on Catalan leaders

As a leading Catalan politician renewed calls for an investigation, Spain’s socialist-led coalition government has emphatically denied any involvement in the use of spyware to target senior members of the Catalan independence movement, saying: “This government doesn’t spy on anyone.”

A joint investigation by the Guardian and El País has determined that the mobile phones of at least five members of the regional independence movement – including the speaker of the Catalan parliament – were targeted using powerful software that its makers claim is sold only to governments.

The reports have prompted calls for a parliamentary investigation, and two of the alleged victims have already said they will take legal action against Félix Sanz Roldán, the head of Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI) at the time of the targeting in April and May last year. Roldán told the Guardian this week the CNI “always acts with the most scrupulous regard for the law” and said he had nothing more to add. Spain’s interior ministry, meanwhile, has said the actions of state security forces are always conducted “with the utmost respect for the law”.

Worth a full read, much more at the link:

Half of Oklahoma Is “Indian Country.” What If All Native Treaties Were Upheld?

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision last week that altered the map of Oklahoma. The eastern half of the state, including much of Tulsa, is now, for legal purposes, Indian country. The Supreme Court decision was uncommon — Indigenous people have seen few victories so sweeping in the high court — but treaty violations like those that occurred in Oklahoma are not. “The rule of thumb is every treaty’s been broken,” said Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University.

Going back to the original treaty texts would make broad swaths of the nation Native territory. That means Indigenous people would have a stronger voice on environmental enforcement, more of a say on fossil fuel infrastructure construction, be able to better control the fate of Native children removed from their parents’ home, and less likely to be tried in local courts where district attorneys are elected using racist, tough-on-crime politics. Beyond control over the land itself, the treaties lay the groundwork for obligations requiring the federal government to provide adequate resources to support health care, safety, and education — which have never been fulfilled.

Powerful Native movements in the U.S. — from the American Indian Movement in the 1970s to the Standing Rock movement in 2016 — have centered around fulfilling treaty obligations. The McGirt v. Oklahoma decision last week provides a window into what treaty fulfillment would mean — and an invitation for action by Congress, courts, and the executive branch, especially if a Democratic president is elected in November. “As important and right on as this decision is, it does not give tribes anything new,” Sarah Krakoff, a law professor at the University of Colorado, told The Intercept. “There are these treaty promises and treaty rights, but tribes have to litigate to make them real, especially in the modern era, because from the time the treaties were negotiated until now, federal Indian policies abandoned commitment to treaties.” Rulings like the one in Oklahoma, she added, affirm a reality that has been routinely ignored: “Treaties are the law of the land.”

Trump refuses to commit to accepting election result as Biden enjoys poll lead

Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 15% among registered voters nationally and holds a 20-point lead when it comes to who Americans trust to handle the coronavirus pandemic, according to a major poll out on Sunday. In the same ABC News/Washington Post poll, Biden led by two points in March and 10 points in May. Now, among respondents who said they will certainly vote in November, Biden leads by 11%.

Fox News also released a poll on Sunday. It put Biden ahead on coronavirus, race relations and the economy and eight points up nationally.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday recorded at the White House on Friday, Trump said “I’m not losing, because those are fake polls” and refused to say if he would accept the result if Biden won in November. “I have to see,” Trump said. “I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.”

Krystal Ball: Rural Voters FLEE Trump Proving Dems Theory Of How To Win WRONG

Energy regulators uphold compensation for rooftop solar energy producers

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday rejected a challenge to a practice in which homeowners are paid for the excess solar energy they produce for the electric grid.

The commission voted unanimously against a challenge to the practice, known as net metering, from the New England Ratepayers Association.

The association argued that FERC, rather than the states, should have exclusive jurisdiction over the price paid to homeowners and that they are currently overcompensated.

However, FERC rejected their petition, saying that New England Ratepayers Association failed to “identify a specific controversy or harm that warrants the Commission acting” according to a summary of Thursday’s FERC meeting.

Court strikes down Trump administration's methane rollback

A federal court late Wednesday struck down a Trump administration rule that weakened restrictions on methane gas releases from drilling on public land, restoring an Obama-era rule.

In 2018, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rolled back parts of the prior rule that limited the release of the greenhouse gas. The change was expected to allow for more methane leaks in a process called flaring and add to air pollution. 

On Wednesday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers determined that the rulemaking process used by the BLM was “wholly inadequate.”

“In its haste, BLM ignored its statutory mandate under the Mineral Leasing Act, repeatedly failed to justify numerous reversals in policy positions previously taken, and failed to consider scientific findings and institutions relied upon by both prior Republican and Democratic administrations,” wrote the Obama appointee.

“In its zeal, BLM simply engineered a process to ensure a preordained conclusion,” she added in the decision’s conclusion. “Where a court has found such widespread violations, the court must fulfill its duties in striking the defectively promulgated rule.”

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Here’s What Everyone, Including Mary Trump, Gets Wrong About Donald Trump’s Failed Response to COVID-19

All Statues Are Local: The Great Toppling of 2020 and the Rebirth of Civic Imagination

So It Turns Out ‘Overpopulation’ Was Always A Stupid Patriarchal Myth

Democrats Demand Trump Reverse 'Irresponsible' Order as States Lose Access to Crucial Covid-19 Data

Powell & Iraq—The Uses and Abuses of National Intelligence Estimates

Powell & Iraq—How One Resignation May Have Stopped the Disastrous Invasion

What a Difference a Cycle Makes: Pelosi Statement on Jamaal Bowman Compared to AOC Tells a Tale of Two Years

Portland, Capitalism, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Cancel Government Secrecy: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The Other Madisons review: an astonishing story of a president's black family

Zaid Jilani: Free Speech Letter HYPOCRISY Shuts Out Glenn Greenwald

Krystal and Saagar: Gunman Targets Federal Judge Tied To Epstein Case

A Little Night Music

Byther Smith - Money Tree

Byther Smith - Don't Like To Travel

Byther Smith & The Night Riders - Monticello Lonely

Byther Smith - I'm In A Hole

Byther Smith - Hello Mrs Brown

Byther Smith - Hold That Train

Byther Smith - Cried Like a Baby Child

Byther Smith - Mad Man

Byther Smith - You Ought To Be Ashamed

Byther Smith - Help The Poor & Addressing The Nation With The Blues