“As we’re talking today, we are still not close to having some kind of plan that we can work with that makes me feel comfortable that we’re going to keep that event and the community safe”
What Sherriff Williams is referring to is the GOP convention. He has been becoming under the opinion of that it is not safe to run the GOP convention, in the current state that it is right now. The convention was originally supposed to be between August 24th to the 27th. Due to the Coronavirus surge, that is becoming under doubt right now. Trump also wanted a “full” capacity before, but, has switched from that, and, now the issue is the logistics, or, as Williams is referring to, whether or not they should have the convention at all
Trump has a special place in his heart for people who disagree with him, such as trying to stop John Bolton from publishing his own book about his experiences in the White House. One also needs to look no further than Trump’s actions on several issues, ranging from the way that he called Michael Kohen a rat, the way that he lashed out at Omarosa following the release of her book, and the way that allegedly Stormy Daniels, the pornstar, was threatened when she thought about talking about Trump to understand what might happen in case they cross him. As Volusia County Sherriff Mike Chitwood points out,
“There’s a fear of telling him no because anyone who tells the president no, it’s like off with their heads”
Chitwood sympathizes with Williams, but, is aware of the notion that if you cross Trump, bad things could happen, recognizes the reality of the situation and frames the discussion as to not whether the convention should happen, but, when. Trump has been making repeated comments about reopening schools in the fall, which should show where his thinking is on this issue.
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President Trump is rebooting his reality tv-style coronavirus briefings, months after backing away from them and as COVID-19 cases spike across the country.
Trump announced on Monday morning that he is bringing back the White House briefings, which came to a halt after he suggested during one in April that people infected with COVID-19 should take an “injection” of disinfectant to recover from the virus. Since then, Trump has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus and complained that increased testing is to blame for spiking cases (it’s not).
Speaking to reporters during a pool spray at the White House Monday, Trump spoke of the briefings like a seasoned television producer. Trump claimed the briefings, which were held nearly every day for weeks at the beginning of the pandemic, were “very successful” and garnered record ratings.
“There’s never been anything like it,” Trump said. “And we were doing very well and I thought it would be sort of automatic and a lot of positive things were happening.”
The President went on to outline his plan for the briefings.
“So I think what we’re going to do is I’ll get involved and we’ll start doing briefings whether it’s this afternoon or tomorrow — probably tomorrow,” Trump said. “And I’ll do briefings. And I think part of the briefing much more so than last time because last time we were nowhere with vaccines and therapeutics. And let’s say that ended six weeks ago and we’ll start them again.”
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During the first season of Trump’s briefings, the President often went on bizarre and unrelated tangents. He also often used the briefings to attack the assembled journalists in the room. At one briefing, Trump almost completely ignored the coronavirus threat and instead detailed his administration’s operations to go after MS-13. Cable news networks often cut away from the briefings altogether, in search of actual news on the pandemic.
Trump added Monday that the new briefings will be “a great way to get information out to the public” when it comes to the status of vaccines, therapeutics and “generally speaking where we are” on the COVID-19 outbreak.
The President reiterated the briefing will start “probably tomorrow” during the “good slot” of 5 p.m. and predicted that a lot of people will tune in. Trump said that White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany will continue her briefings separately, but that his briefings will discuss the coronavirus and “perhaps some other things.”
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Congress is back in Washington, D.C., after a two-week recess. And, as usual, there is a lot to tackle. That includes the National Defense Authorization Act, which, as it often is, seems to be about a lot more than authorizing money for defense.
There’s a very big scope this year, as there is every year. But this year, they’re going to be looking even deeper into issues of racial injustice and concerns of discrimination and even police reform. And this is going to keep both chambers very busy this week.
It’s kind of creating a traffic jam, actually, because members also are looking at trying to push through another relief bill to address this coronavirus pandemic. And so they’re having to try and work on both a little bit, if you will. And then in the meantime, they’re going to try and move this defense bill through both chambers quickly.This latest defense bill has found itself infused into the national conversation about racism that has been going on all summer.
It comes on the heels of attempts in both chambers to pass police-reform bills. And this came in the wake of national protests and national outcry for reform of police after the death of George Floyd. He was killed at the hands of police in Minneapolis. And so with that, they came up with some proposals – Democrats in the House did. Senate Republicans had their own, but neither moved out of their chambers. And so this defense bill comes on the heels of that – the heels of that conversation and the heels of the failure of that bill to move. And so what folks see – some Democrats I talked to see this bill as an opportunity for a must-pass legislation to be able to carry some of these concerns that they had when it came to the militarization of police; for example, limiting the kind of, “weapons of war” that are passed down to police. Some folks think there should be a limit on that. We’re going to see a debate on the Senate floor for that issue.
Democrat House leaders working to erase confederate names from American bases
And on the House side, we’re seeing a lot of members moving towards concerns of erasing symbols of the Confederacy and addressing discrimination in the ranks, creating panels to address the demographics among their members, who gets promoted. And on the Senate side, we’re also seeing a really big debate as well on this Confederacy issue and trying to erase these tributes, especially when it comes to these 10 Army installations that still carry the name of confederates.
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The president has made a really big deal out of this this year in terms of his political messaging about Confederate flags and Confederate statues. we’ve seen a lot of twists and turns with this conversation, kind of bouncing off President Trump’s reactions to these movements.
And when, initially, the Senate Armed Services Committee – this is who handles the defense bill – approved their legislation, it included a provision by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to ban these Confederate names. It would remove these kind of tributes within about three years. They negotiated a compromise. She wanted to see it done in about a year – she and other Democrats. And so soon after that, President Trump – he had already raised some concerns about the changing of names. But soon after hearing that Warren, one of his key nemesis on Capitol Hill, was pushing for this and got it in the bill, he threatened to veto it.
One other thing happening during this next round of Congressing is that there’s going to be a high-profile hearing with several major tech companies including the heads of Facebook, Apple and Alphabet. Now this week, we’ve had a massive hack of Twitter that affected lots of high-profile people, including the likely Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.
Now there are questions about their business practices, about potential antitrust implications from the House Judiciary Committee. This year has been all about the way social media, especially on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, has changed the way Americans talk with each other and created this huge avenue for false information, misinformation, disinformation and social agitation to come into the U.S. information ecosystem in a way that we saw in the 2016 presidential election and which has never stopped, which continues to this day. And these platforms with lower-level officials make regular reports to Congress about how they’re doing with that. But this upcoming hearing will be the first time that their CEOs will have appeared together. And these aren’t just any CEOs. These are the biggest dogs of all time – Tim Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet.
Congress can finally address key tech company leaders over misinformation spewed across the internet
Congress is out to make it clear that they are not approving of all of these big companies, rather than, you know, the decade or so before that, where it was, like, a rush to see who can be the coziest with Apple and Facebook and things like that. But we still haven’t had that big sweeping regulation that was – been talked about so much.
In terms of addressing this concern, we have seen members here and there try to tackle this issue. But what they’re facing right now in an election year is such a long list of to-dos that it’s a difficult moment for them to try and tackle it. This is something that we could see maybe more traction come after the election, when they can focus more on these concerns.
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These companies are popular because they’re popular. Americans love Amazon. People love their iPhones. People love talking with the grandmother on Facebook. And how many of us haven’t wasted more hours than we’d like to admit watching videos on YouTube? And so the political challenge for Congress is not only for old lawmakers to kind of get what technology is and figure out a way that it might be able to regulate it but overcoming the political barriers that come from their own constituents, from users themselves, for whom these companies and their platforms are actually pretty popular.
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Even as public opinion has changed on things like Facebook and Twitter, for instance, we’re still mostly – most of us are on it every single day using it, despite what we tell pollsters and emote on those actual platforms.
And, you know, the premise for a lot of antitrust law in the United States is harm to consumers. But for those of us who are Amazon Prime members and who can get, you know, paper towels in two days or whatever, it’s very hard to demonstrate that Amazon has hurt consumers by making them pay more or limiting the amount of choice that they have. That’s a whole other thing that members of Congress and Amazon and Jeff Bezos will litigate. But it just addresses the fact that, as you said, this thread has been playing out in Congress for a long time without any result because, from the perspective of lawmakers, there’s a lot of hurdles for them to overcome to actually get to the point of legislating.
This is when things are supposed to be winding down for the year. And it has been quite a year already, but it feels like it’s actually winding back up. They’re getting closer to this confrontation on whether to provide any more relief to address the pandemic. Meanwhile, they’re trying to push through this defense bill, and there is a very long list of concerns that they’re trying to tackle as all of these crises are underway. There’s even talk of the police-reform bill possibly getting revived. The Republican Senate sponsor – this is Tim Scott of South Carolina – said he has been keeping up with House Democrats over the break. And he says maybe there’s a chance they could restart talks when they return, so it’s a very busy time. It’s only getting busier.
Congress has to do something about the economic crisis caused by Coronavirus
One of the more important things on Congress’s plate right now is some sort of next step of relief funding for this ongoing pandemic and the economic crisis that is going along with it. right now, they’re very far apart, and they’re coming up on some critical deadlines. For example, at the end of this month, we’re going to see this extra unemployment insurance payment – that is $600 on top of what unemployed workers get – that will go away by the end of this month.
And that was a big struggle between Republicans and Democrats, and it continues to be so. It’s part of what’s fueling this division between the parties on trying to meet in the middle. Republicans are emphasizing a plan to create a legal shield for businesses impacted by the pandemic. Meanwhile, Democrats want to see some significant aid once again for families, for state and local governments, for businesses. And Republicans are pushing back on that plan.
The Democrats already passed their proposal. The HEROES Act is what they’ve dubbed it. That is another large bill – about $3 trillion. Meanwhile, Republicans have been pushing back, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying, no, let’s stick to a trillion. Let’s not go past that. And that’s going to be a very difficult task for both of these sides to meet in the middle. And we expect as they come back next week, we’re going to hear a lot of spinning from both sides. And perhaps they can meet for some sort of negotiation in the days to come after that.
Feel free to continue the conversation in the comments section below.
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Trump’s issue is with House and Senate base-renaming provisions in the pending National Defense Authorization Act.
President Trump continues to threaten veto legislation that would rename U.S. military bases named after Confederate figures, despite having support from Congress and the military.
The president appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace saying “I don’t care what the military says. I’m supposed to make the decision.”
“Fort Bragg is a big deal,” Trump said, referring to the huge military base in North Carolina. “We won two World Wars … out of Fort Bragg. We won out of all of these forts that now they want to throw those names away.”
Trump’s issue is with House and Senate base-renaming provisions in the pending National Defense Authorization Act, which authorize $740 billion for defense spending in fiscal 2021.
The president has remained adamant, appearing concerned in the Fox interview that history would be lost if the names of military bases were changed. “We can’t forget that the North and the South fought,” he said. “We have to remember that, otherwise we’ll end up fighting again.“
The president went on to pepper Wallace with questions over a new name for Fort Bragg. “We’re going to name it after the Rev. Al Sharpton?” Trump asked. “What are you going to name it, Chris?”
The pending defense policy bill was not the only measure Trump threatened to veto during the wide-ranging and oftentimes combative Fox interview. He also said he would consider rejecting any new coronavirus stimulus bill with no provision for a payroll tax cut, which he has repeatedly touted despite little congressional support.
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“I want to see it. I want to see it,” Trump said of the payroll tax cut, adding if it weren’t included in a new bill, “I would consider not signing it.”
Trump also spent a portion of the interview laying into Joe Biden, incorrectly claiming his presumptive Democratic rival wanted to defund and abolish the police and attacking his mental fitness.
“Joe doesn’t know he’s alive, OK?” the president said, claiming he also could best Biden in a mental fitness test.
Wallace responded, “I took the test too. It’s not the hardest test.”
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Accusing Wallace of misrepresenting the test, Trump then told Wallace: “I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions.”
“I’ll guarantee you that Joe Biden could not answer those questions,” Trump said.
Finally, near the end of what Trump allowed had been a tough interview by Wallace, the president chided, “Let Biden sit through an interview like this, he’ll be on the ground crying for mommy. He’ll say, ‘Mommy, mommy, please take me home.'”
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Rep. Justin Amash announced on Twitter that he will not be running for reelection to Congress. Amash is the congressman from Michigan who left the Republican Party after supporting the move to impeach President Donald Trump.
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“I love representing our community in Congress. I always will,” Amash wrote on Twitter. “This is my choice, but I’m still going to miss it. Thank you for your trust.”
I love representing our community in Congress. I always will. This is my choice, but I’m still going to miss it.
Amash was currently campaigning as the Libertarian candidate for president, seeking to unseat President Trump. Top Amash aide Poppy Nelson said that Amash has halted his camapign and doesn’t plan to seek the nomination for any office.
Amash, a Grand Rapids native who represents Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, came to national prominence in May 2019, when he became the first Republican member of Congress to declare that Trump had committed impeachable offenses.
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Two months later, he revealed he was leaving the GOP to become an independent. Although Amash was a founding member of the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus, he had emerged as a vocal critic of the president.
In April 2020, Amash said he was forming an exploratory committee for president as a Libertarian Party candidate. The announcement was met with bipartisan derision but encouraged by Trump, who tweeted that Amash “would make a wonderful candidate.”
Many Democrats feared an Amash White House run could siphon votes from their party’s presumptive nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden. But Amash scuttled his prospective bid in May after concluding that “circumstances don’t lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year.”
Amash’s apparent acknowledgment that he will not seek reelection in November opens up a Republican-leaning district that both parties were prepared to contest, though Democrats would have had better odds with Amash in the race.
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Michigan was one of the key battlegrounds Trump flipped in 2016 to capture office. Recent polling, however, shows Biden leading Trump in those Midwestern swing states, Michigan included, as well as among voters nationwide.
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The Washington Ledger 