Independent News
The Washington Monument gets closed down as Interior secretary tests positive for COVID-19
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Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has tested positive for COVID-19. According to the The Washington Post, this has led to officials closing down the Washington Monument starting Friday. According to a spokesperson, “The Secretary was recently at the Washington Monument. In working with our public officials and out of an abundance of caution, a couple of employees have quarantined resulting in a temporary workforce reduction at the monument and its temporary closure.”
According to WaPo, some National Park Service staff had been exposed to Bernhardt, who had been giving “private, nighttime tours to associates.” The Interior secretary’s positive COVID-19 test also led to one of the many Trump-driven holiday parties being canceled on Thursday. The news of the Interior secretary’s diagnosis has led to questions about whether or not Deputy Secretary Katharine MacGregor should be making planned trips to national parks all next week.
According to sources, MacGregor—like Bernhardt—has a tendency to not wear masks when inside.
Bernhardt, who tested positive for the coronavirus before he was to attend a Cabinet meeting with President Trump on Wednesday, has been in proximity with several Interior officials in the past week. Political appointees had meetings Monday and Tuesday, according to two federal officials, which culminated with a reception with food and drink in the secretary’s office.
The fact that these Interior officials keep putting national park employees in danger by continuing their “private” touring during a pandemic is a great example of what they represent. This country and its things are for them to exploit and vacation on, and everyone else can go and, frankly, die for all they care.
Bombshell: Kushner helped create ‘campaign’ shell company that secretly paid Trump’s family members
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Business Insider is reporting that Donald Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser Jared Kushner approved creation of a shell company that “secretly paid” Trump’s family members and “spent almost half of the campaign’s $1.26 billion war chest.”
That would amount to a cool $617 million in cash supposedly meant for Trump’s reelection campaign that essentially disappeared without a trace. The shell company appears to have served as a pass-through entity with the added benefit of shielding all of its transactions from public view.
But no worries, the company, created in April 2018, was headed by Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump as president and Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence as its vice president, so they surely kept things on the up and up. Additionally, the Trump campaign’s CFO, Sean Dollman, became the shell company’s treasurer—and we all know what a tight ship Dollman ran at Trump’s broke campaign.
Business Insider appears to have had one key anonymous source but adds, “Insider independently verified details of this person’s account with other sources close to the Trump campaign.”
The real genius of the shell company, called American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC (AMMC), was that it evaded federally mandated disclosures that would have provided insights into where Trump’s campaign cash was being funneled. Even some of Trump’s top advisors and campaign staff—who were aware of the company—say they knew next to nothing about its operations. Campaign finance records reveal that more than $600 million was spent through AMMC, but it’s unclear exactly where that money went.
Oh, and this is fun: “Trump’s campaign leaders even launched an internal audit of the shell company and operations under former campaign manager Brad Parscale but never reported the results of that review,” writes Business Insider. But most of AMMC’s money, some $415 million, was actually spent after Parscale was ousted as campaign manager in July. The final few months of the race is also when the Trump campaign became glaringly strapped for cash.
Shockingly, Kushner, Dollman, and Parscale all declined to comment for the story. But Lara Trump and John Pence appeared keen to wash their hands of AMMC.
“Lara Trump and John Pence resigned from the AMMC board in October 2019 to focus solely on their campaign activities, however, there was never any ethical or legal reason why they could not serve on the board in the first place. John and Lara were not compensated by AMMC for their service as board members,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told Business Insider Friday.
The Federal Elections Commission has the power to issue fines if it concludes campaign finance laws were breached. But the Department of Justice could also open a criminal investigation if federal prosecutors believe a “knowing and willful” violation of election law took place.
A former Republican chair of the FEC, Trevor Potter, filed a civil complaint in July charging that the Trump campaign was “disguising” some $170 million in spending “by laundering the funds” through AMMC.
Senate Republicans hold hearing trafficking in same election fraud lies courts unanimously rejected
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Most Senate Republicans have finally admitted that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States, but one thing they’re not conceding is the fight to keep Donald Trump’s cultists filled to the gills with disinformation.
Naturally, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has jumped to the front of the line, using his post as chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to mainstream as many of Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories as possible during a hearing on “election irregularities.” This is where Johnson really excels: holding hearings and launching investigations specifically to recycle charges with no basis in fact and give them the sheen of congressional heft.
It’s a perfect fit for Johnson—whose relationship with reality seems pretty loose at best—but the fact that nearly every Republican senator on the committee joined in Johnson’s scheme signifies that Republicans have every intention of continuing to be the party of baseless conspiracies long after Trump leaves office.
Johnson’s main witnesses, supposedly called forth to examine fraud in the election, were a cadre of loser attorneys who had failed to prove a single instance of fraud in the courts, where Trump has lost fully 59 cases. One witness, according to The Washington Post, got his case thrown out of a Nevada court for failing to demonstrate “under any standard of proof that illegal votes were cast and counted,” wrote the judge. That ringing endorsement apparently made him a perfect witness to elucidate the imaginary fraud for Johnson’s hearing.
But the witnesses weren’t the only ones spreading lies. Republicans piled on with their own claims:
- “There was fraud in this election,” stated Johnson. “I don’t have any doubt about that.”
- “I think it’s the right thing to do to get people to feel comfortable that elections are free and fair,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said, justifying the hearing. “And if this one wasn’t that, the next one will be.”
- “Fraud happened,” asserted Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. “The election in many ways was stolen.”
Don’t be fooled by the certainty of those statements—none of them are backed up with evidence. Except for Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who appears to think the very existence of rampantly misinformed people is proof positive of fraud.
“Yesterday, I was talking from the state of Missouri with some of the constituents back at home, a group of about 30 people,” Hawley recounted. “Every single one of them, every one of them told me that they felt they had been disenfranchised, that their votes didn’t matter, that the election had been rigged. These are normal, reasonable people. These are not crazy people.”
Oh, well, there you have it—they “felt” disenfranchised, all 30 of them.
This is what passes for logic these days among the esteemed representatives of one of the nation’s two major parties in what was once considered “the world’s greatest deliberative body”—now simply a cesspool of GOP-sponsored disinformation. My how we’ve fallen.
Yet another hand recount of votes puts a harpoon through the mighty kraken
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Georgia conducted a hand recount. Georgia conducted a machine recount. Neither of these things made a significant difference in either the vote totals or the level of lies Donald Trump and his followers are telling about the election. That was, of course, just one of several recounts that have taken place, none of which have moved the needle significantly. Trump even threw a token $3 million at Wisconsin asking for a recount in just the most Joe Biden-friendly counties. Nothing.
But Sidney Powell’s vast and tangly “kraken” includes a claim that, not only was Hugo Chavez the designer of Dominion Voting Systems tabulating machines, but specific counties were targeted as places to tack on mass dumps of Biden votes. In particular, Antrim County, Michigan, was regarded as the “heart” of this conspiracy theory.
However, as it turns out, Antrim County kept a paper ballot of every single vote. On Thursday, the county went through those paper ballots and the results are shocking…ly consistent with the vote as indicated by the machines.
As the Detroit Free Press reports, a hand tally of every single vote cast in Antrim County did find some Trump votes missed by the machines. Twelve of them, out of 15,962 votes cast.
In the filing made to the Supreme Court earlier this week, Powell stated that Michigan’s legislature had moved to block the appointment of electors supporting Biden. This never happened.
That filing also included a “report” on voting machines in Antrim County written by Russell Ramsland. Ramsland was described as a “cybersecurity analyst” who had testified in multiple cases—a claim that PolitiFact rates as “pants on fire.” What does seem to be true is that Ramsland has filed multiple claims described as “wildly inaccurate.” In this case, the report insisted that a mistake made by a Republican county clerk—which the clerk admitted—was really evidence that the the numbers in Antrim County had been manipulated by Dominion.
Honestly, the claims never made any sense, because Antrim County went for Donald Trump by 4,000 votes. Even if the county went for Trump 100%, it still wouldn’t have made up for even one tenth of the lose he suffered in Michigan. But it didn’t. As the hand count shows, Trump got what he got.
As it turns out, “kraken” is apparently the ancient Norwegian word for “shrimp.”
A (kind of) farewell to the best friend this community has ever had
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Neeta Lind, aka Navajo, is retiring at the the end of the year.
She is our beloved Director of Community. I don’t know when she actually started working here and I can’t bother to look it up because to me, Neeta has been tirelessly organizing this community from the very beginning. There is no Daily Kos without her. And I don’t know how you bid farewell to a friend, coworker, and resident diva.
Of course, it’s easier to say “goodbye” when it’s not a real goodbye. To tamp down any rising panic, Neeta won’t be leaving the community. In fact, she’ll continue maintaining the Indian Country Today account, and plans to be more present in general, thanks to being free of her administrative duties. So all in all, this might be a good thing for most of you!
But it is a loss for those of us who have the pleasure of working with her—her endless sunny optimism, fierce passion, encyclopedic knowledge of this community and its history, and amazing intuition for how this community will react to potential changes. She has been the fiercest advocate for the interests of this community, providing a north star to the organization as it has evolved over the years, always guaranteeing that we center you all in every decision we make.
I decided to take a look at her posting history, and got a big kick out of it:
Her first comment was in response to a roll call diary/story, and she chimed in. Her first story was about a mining operation trying to open up in Navajo country, a topic near and dear to her (and one with a happy resolution). That passion for her American Indian community’s rights has underpinned her advocacy work, and Neeta was an early and enthusiastic booster for Rep. Deb Haaland, just nominated by President-elect Joe Biden to run his Department of the Interior, the first American Indian to ever be selected for a cabinet office (unbelievably).
But as you can see in that screenshot of her first diaries/stories, she quickly pivoted to getting people offline and into doing stuff in real life. And that’s truly where Neeta shone—bringing so many of us painfully reclusive introverts into actual physical contact, reinforcing the tenets of our online community with that very real human touch.
And so, I’m going to take this chance to share some photos from events she has organized over the years (it’s hard to find pictures of her in them, since she was usually taking them!). Many of you have your own, and it would be amazing if you could share them as well.
Neeta, I love and adore you. You’ve made this site and this world a better place, you are a blessing in my life, and while I’ll miss you in the Daily Kos Slack, I do look forward to seeing you more in the comments and diaries/stories of this site.
This one is so awesome:
daily KD
L-R Second Row: belinda ridgewood, navajo, sidnora, Chris Reeves, Glic and peregrine kate
L-R Back Row: Mrs. side pocket with side pocket behind her, Denise Oliver-Velez, Meteor Blades, jotter, effervescent with TomP hiding behind her and aha aha aka Mrs. jotter
Neeta has always been about bringing people together, and I suspect none of that is about to change anytime soon.
COVID-19 is racking up a horrible toll. Staying safe now requires more care than ever before
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On Thursday, the United States racked up over 231,000 new cases of COVID-19. Over 3,200 people died. These are hideous numbers, not at all made better by the fact that Wednesday was worse. Right now across the country, the 7-day moving average puts the number of new cases at 220,000. That’s 40,000 cases a day higher than it was on the day before Thanksgiving. The 7-day average for deaths is 2,600. That’s 900 more each day than on the day before Thanksgiving.
And still, there are people pointing at the fall in reported cases in several states over that period and somehow breathing a sigh of relief. Sure, cases are up in places like Texas, California, and Florida. But smaller states like Iowa and South Dakota—both loaded down with COVID-19 right before the holiday—have actually seen case counts falling steadily for almost a month. Where is that Thanksgiving surge that concerned so many?
The answer is that it’s right here, on Johns Hopkins test tracking site. In 47 out of 50 states, testing declined, not just last week, but the last two weeks straight. The CDC suggests that an adequate level of testing includes a rate of positive returns less than 3%. By that measure, the states that are currently testing at a level sufficient to describe what’s happening in their boundaries are: Vermont and Hawaii. That’s it. Every other state is operating in the dark about what’s really happening.
For some of them, like the supposedly improving South Dakota, week over week declines in testing rates have the state at 41% positive test rates. The actual rate of hospitalization in South Dakota, as reported by The Covid Tracking Project, remains above that of either California or Texas. As their nationwide data shows, the U.S. has seen an overall slight rise in testing since Thanksgiving (which can be spotted by the sharp recent dip on most of the charts below). While the peak on the daily new cases may appear to be somewhat blunted, the peak on hospitalizations and deaths is not. This is because the nation is once again test constrained. Many states are back to reporting numbers of COVID-19 cases that are roughly equivalent to those self-reporting illness.
The word for what the data is showing is a very high order of “bad.” And it’s not just that the current numbers are awful, they are also foreboding. Because when it comes to the numbers on the two charts to the right—hospitalizations and deaths—we are far from through seeing what Thanksgiving delivered. For everyone who picked up COVID-19 in that period following November 27, the first symptoms should have appeared by now. Median onset of first symptoms would have had those people getting sick last week. But severe illness typically comes later. From first symptoms to severe respiratory distress typically take 3 to 10 days (moving from onset to severe faster than a week is a bad sign when it comes to eventual outcome). Those people who were hospitalized for severe symptoms usually had a hospital stay of 10 days to two weeks. It’s around that same point—a total of 20 days after first symptoms—that patients either recover … or don’t.
The people who are dying today got infected before Thanksgiving. The price to be paid for those turkey dinners isn’t yet known. But it will be. Soon.
What is clear is that case counts and deaths are still at the highest levels they have been at any point since the pandemic began. Do not be fooled by a declining number of cases in specific locations, or reports of an improving “trend.” As the matching hooks in the testing and cases above indicate, the only sure trend is that less testing generates lower numbers.
Right now, hospitalization rates in particular are a huge concern. Not only are there numerous states where capacity is being strained, this is happening after states have put in place both formal and informal standards that mean many of those who might have been hospitalized a month ago are being sent home. Vaccines for healthcare workers are great, and absolutely necessary, but they will not generate more healthcare workers, or alleviate the exhaustion generated from unbroken weeks of overwork.
This next week could bring a happy surprise, with cases genuinely beginning to drop. However, there is very little cause to think this is true. What is more likely is that the toll from Thanksgiving will become apparent, just in time for it to be compounded by Christmas. Joe Biden could easily walk into a situation in January in which Americans are dying at a rate of 5,000 or more each day. That may sound horrific, but what’s happening now would have sounded horrific to anyone a month ago. And what was happening then would have been horrific to anyone from a month before that.
We’re at a situation now where it can be assumed that every social situation involves exposure to the coronavirus. There is no such thing as a safe gathering. People who have been “pretty good” through this whole affair are not being good enough. Routines that have been good enough to protect most people to this point are no longer good enough.
The time to take extreme caution was weeks ago. But if you haven’t started, start now.
More so than at any time since the initial surge, the numbers being seen in the United States are being shaped not by the true level of infection, but by the availability of tests.
The high level of positive returns shows that, despite increasing tests in a few states, the level of testing has not been this inadequate since tests since tests became widely available.
Supreme Court dismisses challenge to Trump’s push to exclude undocumented immigrants from census
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The Supreme Court has by a 6-3 vote dismissed the legal action against the Trump administration’s mission to erase undocumented immigrants from the count in order to affect apportionment of House seats, apparently claiming its too early to challenge the obviously unconstitutional policy he’s been trying to implement. “The liberals dissent on all fronts AND say Trump’s policy is illegal,” legal observer Mark Joseph Stern said.
“The Supreme Court majority’s dodge in the case keeps alive a far-right passion project to fundamentally change who gets representation in the United States,” Talking Points Memo said. “Even if Trump does not succeed in implementing the policy due to logistical issues that have arisen, Friday’s decision sets the table for a future administration to try again during the next census.”
Those “logistical issues” include the possibility that “processing anomalies” will delay initial numbers until possibly Jan. 26—just days after President-elect Joe Biden takes office. But it’s all a big giant maybe, because New York Law School professor and census expert Jeffrey Wice told the Associated Press last month there’s the possibility of Trump using his remaining power to just put in a new person “who will do whatever Trump wants him to do.”
And of course, the Supreme Court’s ruling could just bolster that effort. Advocates say they’re ready to continue pursuing the case if Trump continues with his anti-immigrant policy, which has been repeatedly blocked in lower courts. In a statement received by Daily Kos, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project stressed the high court’s ruling “is only about timing, not the merits.”
“This ruling does not authorize President Trump’s goal of excluding undocumented immigrants from the census count used to apportion the House of Representatives,” Director Dale Ho said. “The legal mandate is clear—every single person counts in the census, and every single person is represented in Congress. If this policy is ever actually implemented, we’ll be right back in court challenging it.”
“The Supreme Court just ruled that our lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census was premature,” the ACLU tweeted. “This fight isn’t over. If this policy is actually implemented, we’ll see them right back in court. ‘Premature’ means that SCOTUS ruled that until Census numbers are reported, we won’t know if Trump will be able to exclude undocumented immigrants, and if he does, how that will impact electoral representation. Until we know, the Justices ruled not to decide on the case.”
Pentagon chief halts all briefings with Biden team, shocking officials across Defense Department
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Ho. Ho. Ho. The Pentagon is apparently too busy over the holidays to brief Biden transition officials on national security issues, or really anything else for the next couple of weeks.
Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller—who has been on the job just over a month—abruptly ordered a Pentagon-wide halt to any transition briefings on Thursday night, shocking officials across the department, according to Axios. Trump administration officials “left open the possibility cooperation would resume after a holiday pause.” Wow, how magnanimous.
An anonymous senior Defense Department official dismissed the move as the cancellation of “the last few scheduled meetings” until next year. Then that person went on to suggest the onerous meeting schedule was hindering daily operations at the department.
“These same senior leaders needed to do their day jobs and were being consumed by transition activities,” the official said. “With the holidays we are taking a knee for two weeks. We are still committed to a productive transition.”
Oh, just “taking a knee,” are we? Why not just surrender worldwide? Or who knows, maybe it’s an early Christmas gift from Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin, giving him time to cover his tracks shortly after the biggest cybersecurity breach in American history was reported on Wednesday.
Whatever the case, it’s simply inane for the Pentagon to take a holiday break on briefing Biden transition officials now, right as a massive clean-up over the security breach ensues. Axios reports that many officials inside the building were “stunned” by the move.
Here’s how briefings about the breach are going elsewhere—it isn’t pretty. The Trump administration obviously has no clue what happened or how to deal with it. Either that or a massive cover up is under way—something that would be unthinkable in any other administration but Trump’s.
Republicans throw up another last-minute roadblock to COVID-19 relief package
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Republicans have thrown up yet another roadblock to a COVID-19 relief package, according to Sen. Brian Schatz. “We almost have a bipartisan COVID package, but at the last minute Republicans are making a demand that WAS NEVER MENTIONED AS KEY TO THE NEGOTIATIONS,” Schatz tweeted Friday morning. “They want to block the FED from helping the economy under Biden. It’s the reason we don’t have a deal.”
In other words, Republicans are trying to use what’s supposed to be a stimulus package to try to damage Joe Biden’s presidency before it begins at tremendous cost to the nation. Next time a Republican claims to care about small business, consider this reporting from The New York Times: ”Republicans were working to limit the power of the Federal Reserve to provide credit to businesses, municipalities or other institutions in the future, both by rescinding money earmarked to support Fed lending programs and preventing the central bank from restarting them using different funds.”
With a moving target like this legislation, reporting is often obsolete before anyone reads it, but here’s what else is being reported. The first question is whether there will be a government shutdown over the weekend, something Congress could avert by passing another short-term continuing resolution—but may not. John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, expects that someone will object, forcing a shutdown to “keep pressure on the process until we get a deal.”
”Government shutdowns are never good,” Thune said, adding: “If it’s for a very short amount of time on a weekend, hopefully it’s not going to be something that would be all that harmful.”
Of course Republicans would want to downplay the seriousness of a shutdown they are forcing through their constant games with what can be included in COVID-19 relief—a bill that should have been passed months ago.
Several of the basics being reported haven’t changed much in recent days: $600 payments to individuals under an income threshold to be determined (in the spring, it was $1,200 to people with incomes under $99,000), a $300 weekly boost to unemployment benefits and an extension on the length of unemployment eligibility (though the length of the extension seems to be under active negotiation), somewhere over $300 billion for “small” businesses (with or without guardrails to keep it from being gamed by large businesses), and money for vaccine distribution and schools. No money for state and local governments beyond targeted funds like those latter two, and no Republican-desired corporate immunity from consequences for coronavirus-related recklessness.
The big thing we know, though, is that it is Dec. 18 and expanded unemployment expired on July 31. For many people, unemployment will run out on Dec. 26. Poverty has skyrocketed. The economy is in trouble. State and local governments are hemorrhaging jobs. And Mitch McConnell continues to stand in the way, as he has been doing since early summer.
Alabama’s incoming senator plans to create chaos for Trump, and Trump is overjoyed
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Donald Trump may have found the senator he needs to challenge the election results in Congress—and it’s the guy who can’t name the three branches of government. Alabama Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville said Thursday he might join with some far-right members of the House to challenge the results as Congress certifies the results of the Electoral College. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not going to like this, having already warned Senate Republicans that it would be a “terrible vote,” forcing them to look anti-Trump by voting to uphold the election results.
But Tuberville’s plan to try to help overturn the election results had the intended effect: a barrage of glowing tweets from Trump. Tuberville is “a great champion and man of courage. More Republican Senators should follow his lead,” according to one tweet. “We had a landslide victory, and then it was swindled away from the Republican Party – but we caught them. Do something!” Every part of this is false, of course.
Less than an hour later: “Tommy will be more popular than ever before – a hero!” And “Thank you!” And then a barrage of retweets of Trump supporters exulting in Tuberville’s plan. A little later, “I am very disappointed in the United States Supreme Court, and so is our great country!” The man was really in a desperate false hope/grief/rage/denial spiral Thursday evening.
Around the same time Trump went off on this tear, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany put on her campaign hat and lied about the election, insisting that the results had been suspicious in ways they simply were not and holding out hope to supporters that “litigation is ongoing”—despite those multiple rejections from the Supreme Court and dozens of rejections from lower courts.
Tuberville can definitely complicate the vote certification process in Congress, making it take hours longer and creating kind of a mess. He can’t stop Joe Biden from becoming president, given McConnell’s refusal to go along. But Trump’s refusal to acknowledge reality is getting new fuel, priming the country for weeks more ugliness and for Trump’s supporters to continue digging in in the belief that Biden’s presidency will not be legitimate. The only good that can come out of this is if Trump’s base turns against congressional Republicans who vote to uphold the will of the voters, and even that is not what you’d call a good outcome.