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"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

-- Harry S. Truman

News and Opinion

Human rights lawyers sue Trump administration for 'silencing' them

Prominent US human rights lawyers are suing the Trump administration over an executive order they say has gagged them and halted their work pursuing justice on behalf of war crimes victims around the world. As a result of the order in June threatening “serious consequences” for anyone giving support to the work of the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, the lawyers say they have had to cancel speeches and presentations, end research, abandon writing ICC-related articles and dispensing advice and assistance to victims of atrocities.

The effect, according to the plaintiffs, has been an unprecedented infringement of their constitutional right to free speech and a chill that has pervaded the world of international humanitarian law. “This is just a wallop, a gut punch, silencing the activities that really have been my life’s work,” said Diane Marie Amann, professor of international law at the University of Georgia and one of the plaintiffs. She argued Donald Trump’s order was a betrayal of an American tradition of global leadership on human rights, including the creation of the Nuremberg Tribunal and a leading role in the establishment of the ICC.

“It is so sad to think that the country in which I was born, in a city called Libertyville, Illinois, is prohibiting me from doing that work,” Amann said.

The executive order was followed in September by the imposition of sanctions – originally designed to be used for drug traffickers and terrorists – against the ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and another senior ICC official. Amann has served as an unpaid special adviser to Bensouda on children in conflict since 2012. ...

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday morning in a federal court in New York by Amann, three other US-based law professors, all acting in their private capacities, and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI). It is directed against Trump, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, attorney general William Barr, the director of the office of foreign assets control, Andrea Gacki, and their respective departments. It calls for the enforcement of the executive order to be halted while the court considers its constitutionality.

US entitled to $5.2m from Edward Snowden's book sales, court rules

The United States is entitled to more than $5.2m from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s book royalties, a federal court ruled this week, according to the US Department of Justice.

In a statement, the department said the US district court for the eastern district of Virginia on Tuesday also ruled in favor of setting up a trust for the government for any future earnings from Snowden’s book, which had been the subject of a federal lawsuit. ...

In September 2019, the US government sued Snowden, who resides in Russia, over his publication of Permanent Record, a book which the United States says violated non-disclosure agreements he signed when working for the NSA and the CIA. ...

The civil litigation over the book is separate from criminal charges prosecutors filed against Snowden under a 1917 US espionage law.

Assange Extradition and the War on Journalism

Trump’s Operation Dictatorship: What the debate exposed

The degenerate spectacle of Tuesday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden will be remembered in history as the United States’ moment of truth. The myth of an invulnerable and eternal American democracy has been shattered. Political reality has burst through the countless layers of deceitful propaganda of the corporate-financial oligarchy and exposed the undeniable fact that the White House is the political nerve center of a far-advanced conspiracy to establish a presidential dictatorship and suppress constitutionally guaranteed democratic rights.

The grunts and barks emitted by Trump on Tuesday night leave no doubt about his intentions. Trump is as serious about the threats he made during the debate as Hitler was about those he wrote down in Mein Kampf. Trump views the November election as a continuation of the political coup d’état that began last June in Washington, D.C, when he unleashed military and police forces against peaceful protesters. Trump’s political strategy is fairly obvious and can be summed up with the infamous phrase: “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.” The conspiracy will unfold as follows:

First, during the remaining month of the election campaign, Trump will do everything he can to discredit the voting process with the intention of delegitimizing the counting of the ballots, which, as he fully expects, will show that he lost the election by millions of votes. He will use fabricated allegations of ballot fraud to incite fascist thugs, assisted by police and unidentified federal agents, to intimidate voters and carry out violent acts at polling stations.

Second, on election night Trump will declare that he is the winner, claiming that all ballots cast through the mail are illegitimate. He repeated during the debate his claim that the only way that he can lose is if the election is “rigged,” through the destruction of ballots and other forms of fraud. Even though he trails heavily in the polls, Trump is counting on a delay in the tally of mail-in ballots to give him the opportunity to declare victory in key battleground states.

Third, Trump will use the 10 weeks between Election Day on November 3 and the Inauguration on January 20 to mobilize his followers in the streets, while turning to a stacked Supreme Court to decide the election in his favor. On Tuesday he again said that he was “counting” on the court to “look at the ballots.” He has the full support of the Republican Party, which is pressing forward with the rapid confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, so that she will be in a position to cast a deciding vote in any court decision on the election.

Trump is also counting on support within the police and sections of the military, as well as his control over the Department of Homeland Security. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that DHS acting Secretary Chad Wolf, a Trump crony, is preparing immigration raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in “sanctuary cities,” such as Denver and Philadelphia, this month. Federal paramilitary forces will be mobilized in many major metropolises in advance of the election. Finally, and most critical of all for the success of his conspiracy, Trump has factored in the spinelessness of the Democratic Party. He fully expects that the Democrats, apart from mouthing a few empty threats, will do nothing to stop him.

Leaks expose massive Western propaganda op in Syria proxy war

Macron claims Syrian fighters operating in Nagorno-Karabakh

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he is sure Syrian fighters were operating in Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenia and Azerbaijan are engaged in heavy fighting.

Macron said he has evidence that fighters have travelled through the Turkish city of Gaziantep on their way to the conflict in the South Caucasus, where the fiercest clashes in years have killed nearly 130 people.

“We have information today that indicates with certainty that Syrian fighters from jihadist groups have transited through Gaziantep to reach the theatre of operations in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Macron said as he arrived for a summit with the European Union leaders in Brussels.

“This is a very grave new development,” Macron warned, saying he agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump “to exchange all the information [they] have about this situation and draw all necessary conclusions”.

Armenia has accused Turkey of sending mercenaries to back its ally, Azerbaijan, and on Monday the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Ankara had dispatched at least 300 proxies from northern Syria.

Rich Mostly Fine But Poorest 'Completely Crushed' After Covid-19 Triggered 'Most Unequal' Recession in Modern US History

While the ongoing pandemic-induced economic collapse has left the highest earners in the U.S. largely unscathed—or, in the case of some billionaires, even wealthier than before—the recession has devastated lower-income workers whose jobs have been disrupted or completely wiped out, making the current downturn the "most unequal" in modern American history.

That's according to a detailed analysis released Wednesday by the Washington Post, which found that the coronavirus recession has eliminated low-wage jobs at around eight times the rate of high-wage jobs. Though no industry has been immune to the pandemic and resulting economic meltdown, the Post emphasizes that low-wage jobs tend to be concentrated in sectors that have been hit hardest by the recession, which triggered the sharpest economic contraction ever recorded in the U.S.

"What ties all of the hardest-hit groups together—low-wage workers, Black workers, Hispanic men, those without college degrees, and mothers with school-age children—is that they are concentrated in hotels, restaurants, and other hospitality jobs," the Post noted. "Most recessions, including the Great Recession, have affected manufacturing and construction jobs the most, but not this time. Nine of the 10 hardest-hit industries in the coronavirus recession are services."

In contrast, as the Post found, "By the end of the summer, the downturn was largely over for the wealthy—white-collar jobs had mostly rebounded, along with home values and stock prices. The shift to remote work strongly favored more-educated workers, with as many as six in 10 college-educated employees working from home at the outset of the crisis, compared with about one in seven who have only high school diplomas."

A series of charts published by the Post starkly display how the coronavirus recession has hit low-income Americans far harder than other major downturns in recent decades:

Staggering chart -->https://t.co/nwnL5bLzYg pic.twitter.com/XEHKW3UX0N

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 30, 2020

"There are very clear winners and losers here," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told the Post. "The losers are just being completely crushed. If the winners fail to help bring the losers along, everyone will lose. Things feel like they are at a breaking point from a societal perspective."

The analysis comes as the nation's economic metrics continue to show that there is no end in sight to the coronavirus recession, which has permanently wiped out millions of jobs and pushed countless Americans to or over the brink of financial ruin. As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, new research by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that 60% of U.S. households with children are struggling to afford basic expenses.

Covid-19 vaccine alone won't defeat spread of virus, report warns

A successful vaccine for Covid-19 will not conquer the spread of the virus alone, with restrictions on daily life likely to continue for some time, a team of experts have said.

Hundreds of teams of researchers around the world are working to produce a vaccine against the coronavirus, with 11 currently in phase three human trials. The UK government has reserved access to six potential vaccines and has raised hopes that a vaccine could be on the cards by spring next year. ...

Prof Charles Bangham, the chair of immunology at Imperial College London said few vaccines completely block an infection, but they can reduce both the severity of disease and the chance of passing it on. However, in the case of vaccines in development against Covid, myriad questions remain. Concerns have already been raised that vaccines against Covid may be less effective in older adults than in other groups – a potential issue if supplies are limited and vaccinations have to be prioritised to those most at risk from becoming infected.

Republicans, Pelosi STAND IN WAY Of More Stimulus While Economy Slowly Collapses

Experts Say 'Self-Promoting' Trump Letter in Covid-19 Food Aid Boxes Clear Hatch Act Violation

As millions of Americans receive publicly-funded food aid boxes during the Covid-19 pandemic, one particular item is leaving a bad taste in many mouths—a self-promoting letter from President Donald Trump.

Common Dreams reported early last month that the Trump administration was set to include mandatory letters from the president in packages distributed as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farmers to Families Food Box program, a $4 billion effort to send 100 million food boxes to needy U.S. families affected by the pandemic.

The move was slammed by Democrats as cynical election year self-aggrandizement—and hypocritical, given the administration's efforts to deprive millions of Americans of crucial food benefits.

More importantly, the letters seen by legal experts as a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from using their official capacities to influence elections.

In a letter (pdf) last month to Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, 49 House Democrats asserted that "a public health crisis is not an opportunity for the administration to promote its own political interests," and that "a federal food assistance program should not be used as a tool for the president to exploit taxpayer dollars for his reelection campaign."

Now those food aid boxes are shipping out across the country, as the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday, and some food pantries are removing the Trump letter before distributing them to families in need.

Barf: Trump’s Agriculture Department began mandating that millions of boxes of surplus food for needy families include a letter from President Trump claiming credit...

Millions paid more than your puny $750 in taxes. Can we get our names on instead? https://t.co/PsQkUyEOOu

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 1, 2020

"It is quite unethical and a misuse of government funds," Dr. Evelyn Figueroa, executive director of the Pilsen Food Pantry, told the Tribune. Figueroa said the pantry plans to remove the letter from the 200 boxes it was expecting to receive. ...

In the letter, Trump claims that "safeguarding the health and well-being of our citizens is one of my highest priorities," and that he "prioritized sending nutritious food from our farmers to families in need throughout America."

However, critics note that the administration has repeatedly moved to slash spending on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Affordable Care Act, and other critical social services desperately needed by the nation's most vulnerable people, especially during the ongoing pandemic—even as Trump and Republicans dramatically reduced taxes on corporations and the wealthy and boosted military spending to near-record levels.

Given the incongruity between this reality and Trump's letter claim about "safeguarding health and well-being," many observers have concluded the president is waging a taxpayer-funded public relations campaign just as the American people begin to render their verdict on his presidency via the ballot box.

"It sure looks like political propaganda, and if its goal was to affect the presidential election, then it violates the Hatch Act," Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Tribune.

Trump cuts US refugee admissions to record low

Donald Trump’s administration has announced plans to let only 15,000 refugees resettle in the United States in the 2021 fiscal year that began on Thursday, setting another record low in the history of the modern refugee program and prompting outrage from civil rights groups. The US state department said the ceiling reflects the Trump administration’s prioritizing of the “safety and wellbeing of Americans, especially in light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.”

Trump, seeking re-election on 3 November, has slashed refugee admissions every year since taking office in 2017. ...

The administration’s plan was released hours after Trump vilified refugees as an unwanted burden for the country at a campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota. He assailed Joe Biden, who has vowed to raise the ceiling on refugee admissions to 125,000 if elected in November. “Biden will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp, and he said that overwhelming public resources, overcrowding schools and inundating hospitals. You know that. It’s already there. It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to your state,” Trump told supporters.

He then condemned Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who arrived to the United States as a Somali refugee and now represents Minneapolis, saying: “How the hell did Minnesota elect her? What the hell is wrong with you people, right?”

"She also is a Rhodes scholar," Trump's @PressSec says of Amy Coney Barrett, who did not receive a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford, but instead received her BA from Rhodes College in Tennessee.

— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) October 1, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett signed newspaper ad that called Roe v Wade 'barbaric'

Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court nominee, signed off on an advertisement in 2006 that called for the overturning of Roe v Wade, and called the landmark abortion rights decision “barbaric” and a “raw exercise of judicial power”. The two-page ad, published by the St Joseph County Right to Life group, an extreme anti-choice organization in South Bend, Indiana, is the most striking evidence to have emerged to date of Barrett’s personal opposition to Roe v Wade.

The Guardian first reported the existence of the advertisement, which Barrett has not disclosed in documents submitted to the Senate ahead of her confirmation hearing.

The first page of the ad, which is signed by Barrett and her husband, Jesse, states that life begins at “fertilization”. The ad, which the organization publishes every year to mark the anniversary of Roe v Wade, was signed by Barrett while she was working as a law professor at Notre Dame. On the second page of the two-page spread, the group condemns Roe and claims that “the majority of those abortions were performed for social reasons”. It also claims that an “increasing majority” of Americans are opposed to abortion as a “method of birth control”.

“It’s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v Wade and restore law that protects the lives of unborn children,” it states.

The revelation will put pressure on some Republican senators who are facing tough re-election battles, including Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who has said she is pro-choice.

David Sirota: Will Coronavirus Throw A Wrench In Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation Process?

Caitlin Johnstone:

The Idiotic Claim That Other Nations Are ‘Disrupting The Public Conversation’ On US Politics

Twitter claims that it has suspended 130 Iranian accounts for “attempting to disrupt the public conversation” during the US presidential debate.

“Based on intel provided by the FBI, last night we removed approximately 130 accounts that appeared to originate in Iran,” a thread by the Twitter Safety account reads. “They were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first 2020 US Presidential Debate. We identified these accounts quickly, removed them from Twitter, and shared full details with our peers, as standard. They had very low engagement and did not make an impact on the public conversation. Our capacity and speed continue to grow, and we’ll remain vigilant.”

This evidence-free claim aligns with the narrative popularized by the Russiagate conspiracy theory that foreign governments seek to “sow discord” in the United States by amplifying controversial political opinions from both sides of mainstream US discourse, and it is idiotic for a number of reasons.

Firstly, anyone who watched America’s trainwreck of a first presidential debate knows the argument that a few social media accounts could make the US political conversation any more polarized, hostile and toxic than mainstream news outlets and elected officials have already made it is like saying a tsunami was exacerbated by someone throwing a thimble full of water in the ocean.

The much-touted Russian social media election interference in 2016 was shown to be a joke, consisting of a few thousand dollars going toward silly memes and posts amplifying both sides of the political conversation, and much of it happening after the election itself. The few sample tweets provided by Twitter in this latest so-called attempt to disrupt the public conversation from Iran are vastly less significant than even that, saying nothing particularly noteworthy and bizarrely appearing to side with Trump.

The idea that any of this could have any effect worth mentioning on the gibbering vortex of irrational vitriol that is American political discourse makes no sense whatsoever, and again Twitter itself admits that it “did not make an impact on the public conversation”. Twitter’s response is a melodramatic swinging at shadows which did nothing but help manufacture the US State Department-friendly narrative that Iran is working to interfere in American democracy.

Secondly, the entire premise is bogus because other nations have every right to influence US political discourse. The US uses its military and economic might to bully and manipulate the world into compliance with its agendas; this by itself is an outrage, and at the very least people around the world should be allowed to exert influence on the political conversation of people who, unlike themselves, are able to cast votes which influence the US government. Anyone in any nation on earth is well within their sovereign boundaries to influence the political discourse of a nation whose government does not honor the national sovereignty of any other nation.

This is especially true of nations like Iran, because it is no exaggeration to say that US politics affect Iranians more than they affect Americans. The lives of Americans have been impacted by the Trump administration far less than the people of Iran, for example, as more starvation sanctions are being pushed while crucial goods are already skyrocketing in price, sick Iranians are having difficulty obtaining life-saving medicine, and life in general has been getting much more difficult for the poorest and frailest Iranian civilians.

When Trump nearly started a war with Iran earlier this year, Americans worried about the price of oil while Iranians worried about their children getting ripped apart by explosives dropped from the sky. These things are not equal, and it’s not even close.

To claim that Iranians–or even the Iranian government–should not be allowed to exert any influence over how people are talking about the government that did this is absurd. Such a viewpoint only looks acceptable through the American supremacist worldview which sees Americans as better, more worthy, and more important than the people who live in other nations.

Thirdly, it is not legitimate for monopolistic tech corporations to align themselves with the US government and then censor speech in a way which always benefits that government. These mass social media purges consistently target accounts from nations which have resisted absorption into the US-centralized power alliance, while known troll operations like the fake “Heshmat Alavi” Twitter account from the MEK terror cult are left free to influence US political discourse because its anti-Tehran focus aligns with the US government.

When you’ve got monopolistic tech giants aligning with government agencies like the FBI to implement censorship which aligns with the US government, what you have is government censorship. There is nothing else you could reasonably call it. We learned back in August that Twitter, Facebook, Google and other massively influential platforms are collaborating with the US government to prevent foreign influence in the lead-up to the US election, and there’s no reason to believe this corporate-state relationship will get any less cozy after November third.

In a corporatist system of government, where corporate power is inseparably intertwined with state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. Every horrible thing the US government accuses other nations of doing is something it itself does as a matter of routine. Increasingly authoritarian control over information and communication is just one more example of this.

Record High Number Of Americans Think Political Violence Is Justified

Citing Post-Election Period as Possible 'Flashpoint,' FBI Memo Warns of Far-Right, White Supremacist Violence to Come

One day after President Donald Trump urged his supporters to engage in voter intimidation during the general election and called on the violent white supremacist group Proud Boys to "stand by" rather than "stand down," The Nation reported that the FBI is preparing for a "violent extremist threat" posed by a far-right, anti-government militia whose members have advocated for a "race war." 

Identifying the loosely-organized group known as the "Boogaloos" as the specific threat, the FBI's Dallas field office prepared an intelligence report on Tuesday—the day of the first presidential debate—titling the document, "Boogaloo Adherents Likely Increasing Anti-Government Violent Rhetoric and Activities, Increasing Domestic Violent Extremist Threat in the FBI Dallas Area of Responsibility."

Known for wearing Hawaiian shirts and military fatigues and carrying weapons to rallies, "Boogaloos" reportedly intend to bring about a second American Civil War, which some adherents believe will be a "race war." In one high-profile case against a Boogaloo proponent, Steven Carrillo was accused this year of killing two law enforcement officers with the aim of "provoking retaliation from the police against the demonstrators" at a Black Lives Matter rally.

The Boogaloo movement has also had a strong presence at protests against Covid-19 restrictions, where many adherents were armed.

With Trump repeatedly stoking the perception among his supporters that—despite the fact that he trails Democratic candidate Joe Biden in several swing state polls—the only legitimate election will be one that he wins and that mail-in ballots will result in a rigged election, the FBI believes Election Day could be a "potential flashpoint" in an escalation of the Boogaloos' violent activities over the next three months, leading up to Inauguration Day in January 2021. 

"Boogaloo adherents likely will expand influence within the FBI Dallas AOR [Area of Responsibility] due to the presence of existing anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, the sentiment of perceived government overreach, heightened tensions due to Covid-19-related state and local restrictions, and violence or criminal activity at lawful protests as a result of the death of an African American USPER [US person] in Minneapolis, factors that led to violence at otherwise peaceful and lawful protests in the FBI Dallas AOR," the report reads.

"Indicators that this assessment is correct include increased violent social media posts of boogaloo adherents and increased 'patrolling' or attendance at events that are anti-law enforcement, anti-government, or anti-authority," the Dallas field office continues.

Trump Tests Positive for COVID-19 After Months of Downplaying Virus & Mocking Biden for Wearing Mask

"When the President said they found a lot of ballots in the river: Where is the river?"@PressSec doesn't answer. pic.twitter.com/Y9WoXayEBo

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 1, 2020

Panic Over Mail-in Voting Only Feeds Trump’s Chaos, Says Top Pennsylvania Democrat

President Donald Trump spent a decent portion of his stage time during Tuesday night’s debate raising questions about the integrity of the voting process in general, but zeroed in on one of his must-win states: Pennsylvania. A U.S. prosecutor working under Trump had already generated confusion in the state with a wildly inappropriate press release suggesting Trump ballots were being discarded in Pennsylvania. Then, a Trump poll watcher attempted to come inside an early-voting site in Philadelphia, which isn’t allowed. She was refused, and Republicans are using the refusal as evidence of conspiratorial activity. During the debate, Trump weaponized the U.S. attorney’s bogus claims, urged his supporters nationwide to monitor the polls, and singled out Philadelphia for particular scorn. “Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” Trump said.

National Democrats have framed this attack on the voting process as an effort to steal the election — to create enough chaos that Trump can go to court and be declared the winner by a Supreme Court stacked with six conservatives, three of them put there by Trump himself. But there’s a step in between there that Democrats are missing, argues Pennsylvania’s Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman. Trump’s sowing of doubt in mail-in voting could leave him with more votes in Pennsylvania, well before a court would need to intervene. In other words, if Democrats fall into his trap, he could win outright.

More than two million absentee ballots have been requested in Pennsylvania, and more than 70 percent of those are by Democrats. The Republican hope, said Fetterman — who’s a popular statewide politician with a reputation for speaking his mind — is that enough of those Democrats, having heard of all the chaos around absentee voting, will be convinced to scrap their plan to vote by mail and instead head to the polls in person. If they do, they’re walking right into a trap, because by Pennsylvania law, a voter who requested an absentee ballot must bring that ballot — including the envelope it was mailed in — or else they cannot vote in person.

Any voter can at that point demand a provisional ballot, but that’s a win for Republicans too, because casting a provisional vote is a time-consuming process. Election precincts will already be short-staffed due to the coronavirus, and poll workers distracted by handling provisional ballots won’t be able to keep the line moving. And that leads to hourslong voting lines, especially in Democratic strongholds. Out in the vast conservative parts of the state, voting centers rarely have lines of more than a few people.

Election Season Upended: Trump’s COVID Diagnosis Could Reshape Race, Debates & SCOTUS Fight

Trump rejects change to rules despite chaos and cringe of first debate

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has rejected calls to change the rules of the next two presidential debates with Democratic challenger Joe Biden after the first chaotic event in Cleveland was marred by constant interruptions and outbursts.

Tuesday night’s debate, the first of three before the 3 November election, saw Trump regularly interrupt and talk over both Biden as well as the moderator, prompting America’s presidential debates commission to announce it would adopt changes to allow for a “more orderly discussion”. The next presidential debate is scheduled for 15 October in Miami.

“We don’t want any changes,” Trump senior campaign adviser Jason Miller said on a conference call with reporters. Trump deputy campaign manager Max Miller said the Biden campaign is pushing for opening and closing statements and a mute button for when candidates ignore the structure of the debate.

Campaign manager Bill Stepien said it was “not history” for the commission to change the rules after a debate has been held. The president also signaled he would oppose any rules changes. “Why would I allow the debate commission to change the rules for the second and third debates when I easily won last time?” Trump asked in a tweet on Thursday.

After Trump and RNC Fail to Cite 'Single Instance' of Fraud, Federal Judge Rejects Effort to Block Mail-In Voting in Montana

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected an effort by the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee to block an expansion of mail-in voting in Montana after the GOP plaintiffs failed to present to the court a single example of voter fraud in the state within the past two decades.

"This case requires the court to separate fact from fiction," Judge Dana Christensen of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana wrote in his 46-page ruling (pdf). "Central to some of the plaintiffs' claims is the contention that the upcoming election, both nationally and in Montana, will fall prey to widespread voter fraud. The evidence suggests, however, that this allegation, specifically in Montana, is a fiction."

Christensen went on to note that during hearings on the lawsuit filed last month against Montana's secretary of state and Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, the Trump campaign and RNC "were compelled to concede that they cannot point to a single instance of voter fraud in Montana in any election during the last 20 years."

"Importantly, Montana's use of mail ballots during the recent primary election did not give rise to a single report of voter fraud," Christensen wrote. "There is no record of election fraud in Montana's recent history, and it is highly unlikely that fraud will occur during the November 3, 2020 general election."

Outrage as Texas governor orders closure of multiple ballot drop-off sites

Texas is already one of the hardest places in America to vote, and Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, on Thursday made it even harder. The announcement from Abbott, a Republican, limits an executive order from July that made it modestly easier for voters to return their ballots during the pandemic. Texas usually only lets voters return their mail-in ballots in person on election day, but Abbott’s July order said voters could return their ballots in person to the election clerk’s office earlier. He also extended early voting by six days.

As a result, some of the biggest counties in the state had planned to offer voters multiple places to drop off their ballots. Harris county, the most populous in the state, planned to let voters return their ballots at 11 of the clerk’s annex offices around the county. Travis county, home of Austin, planned to offer four places to return their ballots. But the move drew backlash within his own party; Republicans sued the governor over the changes.

On Thursday, Abbott backtracked on his earlier order and issued a new executive order only allowing counties to offer voters a single place to return their ballots. Abbott’s order also said officials had to let official poll-watchers inspect the process.

Abbott’s order quickly drew outcry and accusations of voter suppression. Texas already severely limits mail-in voting to those who are 65 and older, or who meet a select few other requirements. The state has aggressively opposed a slew of lawsuits seeking to ease those restrictions amid the pandemic. Texas has seen massive growth among Hispanic and other minority voters in recent years, and many of the restrictions in place are seen as a blatant effort to preserve white political power.

New ‘forever chemicals' contaminating the environment, regulators say

Earlier this year, federal and state researchers reported finding a new, potentially dangerous chemical in soil samples from multiple locations in New Jersey. The compound was a form of PFAS, a group of more than 5,000 chemicals that have raised concerns in recent years because of their potential link to learning delays in children and cancer, as well as their tendency to last in the environment for a long time.

But the new revelations, reported in the June issue of Science magazine, stoked concerns among water-quality researchers and advocacy groups for other reasons, too. It underscored how easy it is for manufacturers to phase out their use of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) once the substances have been regulated, and replace them with newer, related compounds that researchers know even less about. And it showed how difficult it is for regulators to track and oversee these new compounds.

The authors of the Science report, from the Environmental Protection Agency and the New Jersey department of environmental protection (DEP), identified the West Deptford, New Jersey, plant of a company called Solvay Specialty Polymers USA, a division of the Belgian chemical giant Solvay SA, as the likely source of the contamination. Solvay, in a statement to Consumer Reports, denies it is responsible.

But Solvay has been cited by the New Jersey DEP in the past for contamination of soil and water with an older, now-regulated PFAS compound. And the company has used a replacement PFAS at the facility for years, despite having failed to implement an official way for regulators or independent researchers to analyze whether the new compound is present in the environment, according to documents obtained by Consumer Reports through a public records request. ...

The New Jersey DEP tells CR it believes Solvay is using “one or more” of the replacement compounds identified in the Science study at the company’s facility. The replacements are “expected to have toxicity” and other properties similar to currently regulated PFAS compounds, the agency says. The DEP declined to answer questions about whether Solvay’s replacement compounds have been detected in public water supplies.

[Much more at the link. -js]

Brazil's Amazon rainforest suffers worst fires in a decade

Fires in Brazil’s Amazon increased 13% in the first nine months of the year compared with a year ago, as the rainforest region experiences its worst rash of blazes in a decade, data from space research agency Inpe has shown. Satellites in September recorded 32,017 hotspots in the world’s largest rainforest, a 61% rise from the same month in 2019.

In August last year, surging fires in the Amazon captured global headlines and prompted criticism from world leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron that Brazil was not doing enough to protect the rainforest. On Tuesday, the US Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, called for a world effort to offer $20bn to end Amazon deforestation and threatened Brazil with unspecified “economic consequences” if it did not “stop tearing down the forest”.

President Jair Bolsonaro lambasted Biden’s comment as a “cowardly threat” to Brazil’s sovereignty and a “clear sign of contempt”.

Data from Inpe released on Thursday showed that in 2019, fires spiked in August and declined considerably the month after, but this year’s peak has been more sustained. Both August and September of 2020 have matched or surpassed last year’s single-month high.

“We have had two months with a lot of fire. It’s already worse than last year,” said Ane Alencar, science director for Brazil’s Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam). “It could get worse if the drought continues. We are at the mercy of the rain.”

California firefighters watch for ‘violent’ winds as nearly 30 blazes burn

Firefighters in northern California are warily watching for “violent” winds expected to return to the Napa-Sonoma area, amid continuing extreme heat and low humidity. Red flag warnings of extreme fire danger were to continue into Friday evening for large swathes of northern California. “It’s going to be a big firefight for us in the next 36 hours,” said Mark Brunton, Cal Fire operations section chief, during a late-morning briefing. He added commanders were forced to make do with “a limited amount of resources” due to competing demands for fire personnel throughout the state.

More than 2,000 firefighters are battling the Glass fire, which has charred 89 sq miles in Napa and Sonoma counties with almost no containment. It has destroyed about 250 buildings, including 143 homes. The utility company Pacific Gas and Electric also cut power to another 3,100 customers in Napa county at the request of firefighters, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported. ...

A mid-August heatwave strained the grid to the point where Cal ISO ordered utilities to implement brief rolling blackouts for the first time since 2001.

Also of Interest

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Presidential Debate One | George Galloway

A Little Night Music

Dave Specter - Blues from the Inside Out

Dave Specter - Same Old Blues

Dave Specter & Steve Freund - People Get Ready

Dave Specter & Brother John Kattke - Chicago Style

Dave Specter and Tad Robinson - What Love Did To Me

Dave Specter - Soul Serenade

Dave Specter and Jimmy Johnson - Feel So Bad

Dave Specter - New West Side Stroll

Dave Specter - March Through The Darkness