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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Johnny Littlejohn

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Johnny Littlejohn. Enjoy!

^{Johnny Little John - Johnny's Jive}

"What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes."

-- Samuel Adams

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News and Opinion

NYPD Disappeared Black Lives Matter Protesters Into Detention For Days at a Time. Lawmakers Want to End the Practice.

In early June, hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters languished for days in cramped New York City jail cells. Stuck in holding pens without masks and exposed to soiled conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic, they were unable to reach loved ones or lawyers. The protesters were effectively disappeared into New York City’s detention system. Attorneys from the Legal Aid Society went to court to demand the protesters’ immediate release. In a lawsuit filed against the New York Police Department, attorneys from Legal Aid, a public defense organization, alleged that over 400 individuals in city detention facilities had been held for more than 24 hours without seeing a judge, in breach of state law and detainees’ constitutional rights.

The public defenders accused the police department of deliberately slow-rolling standard procedures to keep protesters in jail as payback for demonstrations against police brutality. Lawyers for the police asserted that the NYPD faced unprecedented challenges with both a pandemic and widespread protests raging. In a one-line decision, Judge James M. Burke of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan sided with the police. “All writs are denied,” he ruled. In doing so, Burke accepted the NYPD’s rationale that the conditions on the ground should overrule preexisting state law: The 1991 Roundtree v. Brown decision established the 24-hour standard from arrest to arraignment. ...

State Sen. Michael Gianaris introduced a bill to codify the Roundtree decision and better track detentions. On Wednesday afternoon, the bill passed the full New York State Senate, clearing the way for it to appear before the state Assembly as soon as this week. It is unclear whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who in June called on city district attorneys to keep looters in jail for longer than 24 hours, would seek to veto the measure. Already having pushed the legislation through two committees, Gianaris will bring his bill before the legislature’s full upper chamber on Wednesday.

The bill would oblige all police departments in New York State to either bring an arrested individual before a judge within 24 hours or immediately release them upon request. It would also add a new section to the laws governing habeas corpus in New York, clarifying that anyone held for more than 24 hours before their arraignment is entitled to release unless the police produce “clear and convincing evidence that such a delay” is warranted. Under the new statute, police departments would have to give an individualized explanation for each person’s delay — something the NYPD did not have to do last month.

Paramilitary-Style Tactics in Portland Mirror Decades of U.S. Violence on the Border & Abroad

Trump Sends More Than 100 Federal Agents to Chicago to Fight Violence

President Donald Trump will send “more than 100” federal agents to crack down on surging crime in Chicago — but will not order a Portland-style paramilitary strike force to patrol the city. Agents from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will “help state and local officials fight high levels of violent crime, particularly gun violence,” according to a statement from John Lausch, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Speaking from the White House, Trump once again blasted Chicago leaders for allowing a “shocking explosion … of heinous crimes of violence” to take place. The president decried the shooting of 15 people outside a Gresham neighborhood funeral home Tuesday evening as an example of the “absolute insanity” taking place in Chicago.

Federal officials offered no timeline for the deployment of the additional agents, nor did they say how long they would be assigned to Chicago.

Without evidence, Trump blamed Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city — which prohibits Chicago police from working with federal agents on most immigration-related issues — for the surge in crime.

“Her Front Teeth Were Knocked Out”: Chicago Teen to Sue Police Officer Who Hit Her at a Protest

Here's Why Cities Won't Be Able to Stop Trump's Secret Police

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned Tuesday that while she welcomes a “partnership” with federal law enforcement, “we do not welcome dictatorship, we do not welcome authoritarianism, and we do not welcome unconstitutional arrest and detainment of our residents.” But while President Trump threatens a national surge of federal forces dubbed "Operation Legend," experts say there’s little local officials can do to stop the feds from turning more U.S. cities into Portland, where unidentified federal agents in fatigues have beaten and fired projectiles at BLM protesters and even snatched them off the streets in unmarked cars.

While some of Trump’s “secret police” tactics against protesters may be brazenly unconstitutional, legal scholars said they’ll be very hard for mayors and governors to stop, thanks to the vast authority Trump enjoys to protect federal property. “It will be difficult for state officials to stop them, because federal authority is about more than just protecting federal monuments and bridges,” said Jens David Ohlin, vice dean of Cornell Law School. “It’s also about investigating and enforcing federal offenses, which can occur anywhere.” ...

“Based on the news reports that I’ve seen, there are pretty clear violations of the Fourth Amendment,” which bars arrests without probable cause, said Steven Schwinn, a Constitutional scholar at John Marshall Law School in Chicago. “But it’s still going to be difficult to find a judicial remedy.” ...

The legal wrangling might boil down to a question of how many blocks away from federal property the feds can operate. “A federal judge could order federal officers not to violate the First or Fourth Amendment, but they do have authority to protect federal property and federal personnel,” said Schwinn. “To the extent they’re engaged in that activity, that is lawful. So drafting an order to stop them gets tricky.” And there simply aren’t federal rules that would force them to wear identifying badges, or drive official-looking cars, legal experts say.

Philly DA Larry Krasner: Trump Is a “Wannabe Fascist.” I Will Charge His Agents If They Break Law

Stirring Fears of Pre-Crime Policing, DHS Head Chad Wolf Confirms Federal Agents in Portland Making 'Proactive' Arrests

Critics unloaded on acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf after the agency head revealed in an interview on Fox News Tuesday evening that federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Oregon are "proactively" arresting demonstrators in the city.

"Chad Wolf needs to be 'proactively' relieved of duty," tweeted journalist Amr Khalifa in response to the remarks.

Wolf told Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum that DHS agents were detaining protesters because of insufficient assistance from local law enforcement and city officials.

"Because we don't have that local support, that local law enforcement support, we are having to go out and proactively arrest individuals," said Wolf.

Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wold says the actions of his department in Portland are "proactive" arrests of individuals and argues that his stormtroopers aren't bound by the physical jurisdiction of federal property. pic.twitter.com/tIkcSTSmKf

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) July 21, 2020

"Constitution, schmonstitution," replied journalist Dan Gilmor.

The secretary added that federal officers did not need local permission to conduct operations in the city, calling the assertion "ridiculous."

"You need to hold individuals accountable," said Wolf. "When we don't do that, I think we get what we see in Portland today."

Civil liberties advocates noted the similarity between Wolf's "proactive" language and the plot of the 2002 film Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise plays a futuristic cop tasked with "pre-crime" policing.

"In other words, they're arresting people who haven't actually done anything wrong," tweeted journalist Ashton Pittman. "Welcome to 2020: Minority Report Edition."

Democrats Made Trump's Goon Squad Possible!

Federal agents retreat to Portland base as protesters control streets

Night upon night the chant goes up in front of Portland’s federal courthouse: “Whose streets?” The answer depends on the hour of the day. After Donald Trump sent federal agents to take control of a city he said had been abandoned by its mayor to anarchists and mob rule, the protesters still turning out in support of Black Lives Matter can make a legitimate claim that these are, as the chant goes, “our streets”. ...

After pushing back demonstrators, many of them kitted out in helmets and gas masks, the federal agents retreated into their courthouse citadel to mocking jeers and women who were part of the “Wall of Moms” protest linking arms and chanting: “Our streets.” This ritual was played out three times on Wednesday morning but the end result was the same as every other night. The DHS officers dispatched by the president to put down the demonstrations have instead become prisoners of the building they are ostensibly there to defend.

“The feds don’t have control of the streets,” said a woman holding a sign, “100% not a terrorist”, who gave her name only as Shannon. “I think they’re more scared than us. They’re hiding in there. They don’t know what they’re doing.” ...

The arrival of the federal officers, drawn from several agencies including the US Marshals Service and the border patrol, fleetingly sent a wave of alarm through the demonstrators after men in camouflage began snatching people off the streets in unmarked vans. Those detained said they were dragged into the courthouse without being told why they were being arrested or by whom and then suddenly let go without any official record of being held. It smacked of police state tactics. So did some of the violence meted out by federal agents who looked more like an occupying army in a war zone.

But if the intent was to intimidate the protesters into abandoning the few square blocks of downtown Portland under their control, it backfired spectacularly. Residents of a city with a long history of radical street protest were outraged at the tactics which suddenly revitalized a protest movement that was waning after more than 50 nights of demonstrations. It is now the federal agents who appear under siege, reduced to defending the courthouse from attempts to break in or set it on fire. In a visible surrender of ground, the DHS taskforce has even abandoned bothering to re-erect a fence around the federal building torn down on Saturday night.

A Trump Ad Used A Photo of Protesters Beating Up a Cop — in Ukraine, 6 Years Ago

A series of Trump campaign ads that ran briefly this week featured a photo of protesters assaulting a police officer to represent “chaos and violence” in the United States, but it turns out the photo was actually taken several years ago during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

The ad was paid for by “Evangelicals for Trump,” and according to Facebook’s advertising library, the Trump campaign began running at least three different versions of it on the social networking site on July 21. The ads all have two photos next to each other — one of Trump with law enforcement and the other of protesters beating a cop — but feature different captions, which are tailored to issues like religious freedom and abortion and not policing issues. ...

The first of photo in the ads shows Trump from an event at the White House last year that hosted sheriffs from all over the country. (Trump was presented with an award given by 190 sheriffs for the president’s “unwavering efforts to stop illegal immigration.”)

But juxtaposed with the photo of Trump and the sheriffs is another photo which is available on WikiMedia Commons and was taken on February 18, 2014, and uploaded six days later by Mstyslav Chernov. The picture was first brought to light by Jesse Lehrich, a former aide to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, in a series of late Tuesday tweets. As Lehrich noted, the police officer is wearing the insignia of the Internal Troops of Ukraine, a now-defunct agency which was later absorbed into the new Ukrainian National Guard in March 2014.

Chernov confirmed to Business Insider that he took the photograph.

Trump ties climbing Covid-19 cases to Black Lives Matter protests

Donald Trump has cited Black Lives Matter protests against the police killing of George Floyd as among the likely causes of the recent surge in coronavirus cases. The US president did not blame the anti-racism demonstrations directly but suggested that they “presumably” led Americans to lower their guard against the pandemic.

“There are likely a number of causes for the spike in infections cases,” Trump told reporters at his second briefing on the virus in two days following a three-month impasse. “Cases started to rise among young Americans shortly after demonstrations, which you know very well about, which presumably triggered a broader relaxation of mitigation efforts nationwide.”

Public health experts say there is little evidence that the protests spread Covid-19 in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington or other cities. They took place outdoors, where the virus spreads less easily, and most participants wore face masks, which Trump has conceded is an effective preventive measure.

US daily coronavirus deaths surpass 1,000 for first time since June

Daily deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday surpassed 1,000 for the first time in the US since the start of June, as Donald Trump admitted the crisis would “get worse” before it got better.

The seven-day average for the number of deaths in the country has been slowly rising this month, according to multiple data analyses, and went past the 1,000 mark on Tuesday, taking US fatalities to more than 142,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has forecasted that the country will reach 150,000 deaths by early August.

The peak number of people hospitalized at once was 59,000 on Tuesday, according to the Covid Tracking Project, reaching numbers that were last seen in April when the virus was spreading rapidly in the US north-east.

California surpasses New York as state with most coronavirus cases after record day

California has recorded its highest number of new Covid-19 cases in a single day, as the state surpassed New York for the most total cases in the country.

The state saw 12,807 confirmed cases on Tuesday, the governor, Gavin Newsom, announced on Wednesday. That figure brings the state’s total to more than 413,576 since the pandemic began, Newsom announced.

The figures mean California has surpassed New York, once the undisputed center of the US crisis, for the most coronavirus cases in the country. However California – which has a population of 40 million, twice that of New York – remains behind the Empire state in other metrics. New York still has by far the most coronavirus-related deaths in the country with more than 32,500, and its rate of confirmed infections of about 2,100 per 100,000 is twice California’s rate.

The case surges came with a warning from the California Hospital Association that the state must secure more hospital beds.

Roughly 45,000 of the state’s 50,000 hospital beds are filled, said Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association. While the state currently has capacity to add 20,000 beds, it must prepare to treat more patients, Coyle said.

I just asked @senatemajldr if he anticipates a coronavirus bill will pass by the end of next week — which is what @stevenmnuchin1 and @MarkMeadows are running around the Hill saying.

MCCONNELL let out a big laugh and said: “No.”

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 21, 2020

WAPO Reporter: GOP MELTS DOWN Over Stimulus, With Dire Consequences For Workers

Maine Letter Carriers Allege USPS Leadership 'Willfully Delaying' Mail to Sabotage Postal Service From Within

A formal complaint filed last week with the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General by a Portland, Maine letter carrier alleges that city Postmaster James Thornton is unlawfully mandating the delay of first-class mail in order to prioritize the delivery of Amazon packages.

The complaint, first reported Tuesday by the Portland Press Herald, comes weeks after Louis DeJoy took over as U.S. Postmaster General and wasted little time implementing "major operational changes" and cost-cutting measures at the agency that critics warned would slow mail delivery and leave USPS unable to compete with private-sector competitors.

Before he was unanimously appointed by the USPS Board of Governors in May, DeJoy was a major donor to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The Board of Governors is controlled by Trump appointees.

Mark Seitz, the 16-year Postal Service veteran who lodged the Inspector General complaint on July 13, told the Press Herald that he suspects Thornton's orders to prioritize the delivery of Amazon packages over first-class mail came in response to pressure from national USPS leadership.

"Thornton is willfully delaying thousands of first-class and priority parcels so that fourth-class Amazon parcels can go out for delivery instead," reads Seitz's complaint.

The Press Herald summarized the changes Thornton is imposing at the Portland Post Office:

Typically, letter carriers sort a small amount of mail in the morning before they begin their routes. If mail isn't sorted by the time carriers leave, they return midday to collect it or an assistant carrier would step in and ensure that all the mail is delivered on time. Now, according to letter carriers inside the Portland post office, clerks are told to stop sorting by 8:30 am, an hour and a half before most carriers leave for their routes, and are then sent home to cut costs, leaving first-class parcels unsorted in the office overnight.

According to letter carriers in Portland, it's medications, paychecks, and other first-class mail that's getting left in the office overnight. They say Amazon packages are taking priority at the order of the postmaster and other supervisors in the building.

Seitz's allegation, according to the Press Herald, "was corroborated by two other letter carriers who said they wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution."

The operational changes described by Portland mail carriers resemble a new initiative the USPS officially launched Wednesday titled "Expedited to Street/Afternoon Sortation (ESAS)."

Under the new program, according to a USPS document posted on Twitter by The Intercept's Ryan Grim, "city carriers will not sort any mail during the morning operation."

"They will clock in, retrieve mail that was pulled down from the previous day," the document reads. "Any unsorted First Class flats will go directly to the street with the carrier and be routed in delivery sequence while on the street. Upon return from the street delivery, carriers will sort all mail, as directed by management. During this time they will also handle any ancillary duties previously performed in the morning."

In response to the new initiative, Grim tweeted that "we're watching the deliberate destruction of the Post Office unfolding in front of us." ...

The changes come as the USPS is in the midst of a financial crisis manufactured by Congress and made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused a sharp decline in mail volume. Congress approved $10 billion in emergency relief funds for USPS in March, but the Trump administration has refused to release the money as it seeks to force changes to the agency's finances and operations.

Unemployment Claims SPIKE For First Time In Months, Millions At Risk Of Eviction

Pig in a poke?

US agrees to pay Pfizer $2bn for Covid-19 vaccine doses by end of year

The Trump administration will pay Pfizer nearly $2bn for a December delivery of 100m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine the pharmaceutical company is developing, the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Alex Azar, announced on Wednesday.

There is no approved vaccine for Covid-19, but the government has provided financial support for five vaccine candidates. The agreement is part of a plan to ramp up manufacturing in the event a vaccine is approved. The US could buy another 500m doses under the agreement, Azar said.

“Now those would, of course, have to be safe and effective” and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Azar said during an appearance on Fox News. The vaccine candidate is being developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech SE, and is still in early clinical trials.

The agreement is part of Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, under which multiple Covid-19 vaccines are being developed simultaneously. The program aims to deliver 300m doses of a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine by January 2021. Under the initiative, the government will speed development and buy vaccines –before they are deemed safe and effective – so that the medication can be in hand and quickly distributed if the FDA approves or authorizes its emergency use after clinical trials.

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Biden Promises Not To Mess With Corporations, Contradicts Bernie Sanders Pledge

Democrats Unveil Draft Foreign Policy Platform With Promises to End “Forever Wars” and “Regime Change”

New draft text of the Democratic Party’s 2020 platform calls for bringing “forever wars to a responsible end” and pledges to end the U.S. role in the conflict in Yemen — a sharp reversal from the Obama administration’s policy of arming and assisting the Saudi-led intervention.

The 80-page text, first reported by the Washington Post, is a sign of how far the party’s center of gravity has shifted in four years. The draft was released Tuesday evening to the more than 150-member platform committee for an amendment process. It will likely be ratified at the 2020 Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee next month.

With lengthy sections on racial justice, immigration, climate change, and health care, the document hews closely to many of the policy recommendations produced by a Biden-Sanders unity effort earlier this month. But that unity report largely left out foreign policy, which is where some of the Democratic platform draft’s most significant departures from the 2016 platform lie.

The draft text includes a section on scaling back the military’s involvement in Afghanistan and counterterrorism operations around the world. The text says Democrats support a “durable and inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan” that prevents Al Qaeda from sheltering in the country, and pledges to “right-size our counterterrorism footprint,” including by working with Congress to repeal use-of-force authorizations which presidents including Barack Obama have cited as an expanding legal basis for counterterrorism actions in many different countries. As vice president and on the campaign trail, Joe Biden has argued that the U.S. should reduce its military presence in Afghanistan while maintaining a role for special operations.

The draft text for 2020 shows Democrats doing more to distance themselves from Trump — denouncing him for failing to get the U.S. out of wars, accusing him of “further militariz[ing] our foreign policy,” and saying that his decisions “brought the world closer to catastrophe.”

Krystal Ball: Biden FORGETS All Of American History Just To Bash Trump

US spends millions of taxpayer dollars on ineffective voting restrictions

Restrictive “voter identification” laws pushed by Republicans, and widely regarded to be ineffective and discriminatory, have cost taxpayers at least $36m in just a few states, the Guardian can reveal.

It’s well documented that restrictive voter ID laws are ineffective and discriminatory. The type of voter fraud they claim to prevent is a myth, and the burden of showing an ID disproportionately lands on students, low-income voters and African Americans.

However, these laws are also extraordinarily expensive to implement and defend. Based on information obtained through open records requests, the Guardian has found that the partial costs of litigation, free identification cards, public education and other fees amount to tens of millions across the country.

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As Planet Edges Closer to Multiple Climate Tipping Points, Scientists Identify First Active Methane Gas Leak in Antarctica

Scientists have for the first time identified an active leak of methane gas from the sea floor in Antarctica, increasing the possibility that the planet is close to one of the "tipping points" that would put the impacts of global heating out of humans' control.

According to The Guardian, researchers led by Andrew Thurber at Oregon State University found the methane leak in a region known as Cinder Cones in McMurdo Sound, within the Ross Sea. The site is 30 feet below the surface of the ocean.

In addition to finding methane dissolved in the water there, the scientists found that microbes which usually consume the gas before it reaches the atmosphere had only formed in small numbers five years after they first began to study the site.

Thurber called the findings "incredibly concerning."

"It is not good news. It took more than five years for the microbes to begin to show up and even then there was still methane rapidly escaping from the sea floor," he told The Guardian. "The methane cycle is absolutely something that we as a society need to be concerned about."

Scientists have warned for years that the climate crisis could lead to the "tipping point" of methane leaks in the sea floor and the thawing of permafrost regions.

"At some point in a warming world, greenhouse gas emissions from nature will go way beyond anything we can control," tweeted Australian immunologist Peter Doherty.

The Ross Sea has not yet warmed significantly from the climate crisis, so the research did not directly link the methane leak to global heating.

But climate models have not yet accounted for significant delays in the development of microbes, which help to keep methane from leaking into the atmosphere.

"The big question is: how large is the lag [in microbe development] compared with the speed at which new leaks of methane might potentially form in the wake of retreating ice?" Prof. Jemma Wadham of the University of Bristol in the UK, who reviewed the study, told The Guardian.

Congress approves billions for US national parks in rare bipartisan push

The US Congress has approved a sweeping, long-awaited bill to continuously fund national, state and local parks – a major boon to conservation and one of the few pieces of significant legislation the government has been able to agree on in a divisive election year.

The Great American Outdoors Act, passed on Wednesday afternoon, allocates $9.5bn over the next five years for previously neglected park repairs. And it sets up $900m a year to acquire land for conservation and continue maintenance.

“Parks are at the crux of nature access, and we’ve seen them become especially important during coronavirus, where especially communities of color are less likely to live within walking distance of a park, let alone a national park,” said Shanna Edberg, the Hispanic Access Foundation’s director of conservation programs. “The start of the solution to that is fund for public lands.”

After years in limbo for the funding plan, Donald Trump surprised lawmakers when he agreed to back it in March. The Senate passed the legislation with bipartisan support in June. It will now head to the White House for Trump’s signature.

About 9 million more people visited national parks in 2019 than 2018. Yet national parks such as Yellowstone and Grand Canyon have a huge backlog of work that crews have been unable to perform – leading to the collapse of historic buildings and the shuttering of trails.

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Also of Interest

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

Intercepted podcast - Weak State: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Exposed America’s Dysfunctional Democracy

No Badges, No IDs, and Rubber Bullets: How Trump’s Secret Police Are Going After Portland Protesters

Trump’s plan to send paramilitary police throughout the US: The ruling class prepares for civil war

Warnings of Fascism in America Grow

Canadian federal court rules asylum pact with US violates human rights

Australia Pours Money Into Insane US War Games Yet Won’t Support Its Own Citizens

State Dept-Funded Transparency International Silent on Jailed Transparency Activist Julian Assange

California city removes Black Lives Matter mural after request to add pro-Trump art

Bolivia elections in doubt as police find bodies of hundreds of Covid-19 victims

Newly excavated tools suggest humans lived in North America at least 30,000 years ago

Keiser Report | Pouring Money into Losing Money

How Fracking Became America's Money Pit

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A Little Night Music

Johnny Littlejohn - Reconsider Baby

Johnny Littlejohn - Mean Old World

Johnny Littlejohn - Slidin' Home

Johnny Littlejohn - Driftin' Blues

Johnny Littlejohn - Slidin

Johnny Littlejohn - What in the World (You Gonna Do?)

Johnny Little John - Just Got It Town

Johnny Little John - Kitty O

John Littlejohn - Shake your money maker

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