Riley Beggin | Vox

Biden maintains a strong lead over Trump in new national polls

2020-09-06T18:44:24-04:00

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden delivering his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been able to maintain a healthy lead over President Donald Trump with about two months until the presidential election, according to multiple recent national polls.

While much can change in the coming weeks, more than 10 polls released in the last week show Biden with at least a 2 percentage point lead — and as much as a 10 percentage point lead — on his rival. Taken together, the surveys give the Democratic nominee an average national lead of 6.9 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics’s analysis. The results indicate that the former vice president’s dominance in the polls over the sitting president endures — despite Biden’s advantage narrowing from a 10 percentage point average lead in late June.

Biden performed the best in polls conducted by Quinnipiac (taken from August 28 to August 31) and CBS News/YouGov (taken from September 2 to 4): Both found he had a 10 percentage point lead over Trump, with 42 percent of likely voters saying they would vote for Trump and 52 percent saying they would vote for Biden. Polls taken in late August and early September from Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP, CNN/SSRS and Grinnell College found a lead of 8 points, while those from USA Today/Suffolk University and Reuters/Ipsos found Biden had a lead of 7 points. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll had him leading by 6 points.

Other polls taken during the same time period found Biden’s lead to be much smaller, however. A poll from Emerson College of more than 1,500 likely voters found Biden had only a 2 percentage point lead, for example — a result that, taking into account the poll’s with a 2.4 percent margin of error, would make Biden and Trump essentially tied.

In general, Trump’s popularity with voters appears to have risen slightly following the end of the Republican National Convention on August 28, but that post-convention bounce has not been significant enough to eat into Biden’s lead in any recent national poll.

Trump has an edge on the economy, Biden led on everything else

In a presidential election year marked by a seemingly neverending public health crisis, massive protests over racial injustice and police brutality, and ongoing financial instability due to coronavirus closures, voters indicated that safety and security will be top of mind as they head to the ballot boxes — regardless of who they see as having better solutions.

Voters in most of the polls indicated that they have greater trust in Trump’s ability to handle the economy, a rare bright spot for the president.

“Biden is the bring-us-together candidate, while Trump is Mr. fix-the-economy,” Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll director Mark Penn told The Hill. Their poll found 53 percent of Americans trust Trump over Biden to make the economy rebound.

But when it comes to most other issues, voters seemed to trust the former vice president.

Significantly more respondents to the Quinnipiac poll said Biden would do a better job handling racial inequality (58 to 36 percent) and the coronavirus (56 to 40 percent) than Trump would. And this spread is indicative of the results in many of the other recent polls.

From more pointed questions about safety to the reliability of a vaccine, foreign policy or health care, most of the surveys echo one another — voters trusted Biden more than Trump to handle a crisis.

“While the president has been pushing the issue of safety to the center of the presidential campaign, it raises the question: Who most has your back, the current administration, or the challengers?” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said. “As racial strife, a seemingly endless pandemic, and an economy on life support unnerve Americans, voters foresee a more reliable lifeline in the Biden Harris ticket.”

Two months from November, the polls can still swing

Of course, there are still two months until Election Day, and any number of unforeseen circumstances could lead to dramatic changes in polling.

In fact, at the same point in the 2016 election cycle, former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was leading in national polls against Trump. Biden had an average 7 percentage point lead over the president when August came to a close, and Clinton had an average 4 point lead at the same time four years ago. Trump enjoyed closer polling margins with Clinton throughout the 2016 cycle, but she still outranked him for most of the year before the election.

Four years out, experts say one of things pollsters missed in 2016 was the need to correct for a bias toward college-educated voters, who are more likely to respond to polls and were less likely to vote for Trump. And as Li Zhou has explained for Vox, many polls in the 2016 election failed to capture voters who made up their minds at the last minute.

Recent polls suggest most voters have made up their minds who they want to vote for this year — the CBS News/YouGov poll found only 3 percent of voters are undecided — but that does not mean Biden will have a 7 point lead on Election Day. These polls simply show how voters were thinking about the race over the last few weeks, not how they will feel on November 3 — or even if they will vote at all.

Some experts have noted there’s evidence to show that when people think a candidate is extremely likely to win, they’re more apt to stay home on Election Day. And exactly how the pandemic will affect voting, beyond record requests for mail-in ballots, remains to be seen.

Uncertainties like these have Democrats warning their base not to get complacent, despite Biden maintaining a national lead. Whether they’re successful in driving turnout — and whether polling will reflect results — remains to be seen.

Jacob Blake speaks out about being shot by a police officer: “It’s nothing but pain”

2020-09-08T12:59:53-04:00

Protesters in Kenosha march holding a banner in support of Jacob Blake on September 1, 2020. | Daniel Boczarski/MoveOn/Getty Images

Reclining in a hospital bed, Jacob Blake addressed being shot seven times by a Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer in late August for the first time Saturday night.

In a video posted on Twitter by his family’s lawyer, civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, Blake spoke about the constant pain he experiences due to the shooting, which left him paralyzed from the waist down.

“I got staples in my back, staples in my damn stomach,” Blake said. “You do not want to have to deal with this shit, man — 24 hours … it’s nothing but pain.” He added that even basic tasks like eating and sleeping hurt him.

#JacobBlake released this powerful video message from his hospital bed today, reminding everyone just how precious life is. #JusticeForJacobBlake pic.twitter.com/87CYlgPDBj
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) September 6, 2020

“There’s a lot more life to live out here, man. Your life — and not only just your life, your legs, something that you need to move around and move forward in life — can be taken from you like this, man,” he said with a snap of his fingers.

And he ended the short message by urging his supporters to action in order to ensure they don’t experience his pain firsthand.

“Please, I’m telling you. Change your lives out there,” Blake said. “We can stick together, make some money, make everything easier for our people out there. Because there’s so much time that’s been wasted.”

Blake was shot by white Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey on the evening of August 23. Police were responding to a domestic incident in which a woman said her “boyfriend was present and was not supposed to be on the premises.”

Multiple witnesses have said Blake was trying to break up a verbal dispute between two women. Three officers arrived initially, including Sheskey.

The shooting that followed went viral due to two videos showing officers attempting to force Blake to the ground, and later, Blake attempting to enter a gray van before Sheskey shoots him seven times.

The FBI has opened a civil rights investigation into Blake’s shooting, which occurred amid ongoing unrest across the country.

Blake’s shooting — and the recent killings of other Black men — have stoked ongoing protests

The videos reinvigorated nationwide protests against police brutality, which have been ongoing for months after the killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Multiple nights of uprisings followed in Kenosha, during which buildings were set on fire and police and protesters clashed. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called in the state National Guard on the second night. On the third night, a white teenager who had proclaimed his support for police on social media shot three people, killing two.

Protests against police brutality have been unfolding in US cities almost daily since Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in late May. Some of those have turned into full-on uprisings involving conflict between protesters and police, looting, and the burning of buildings and cars.

And they continued over Labor Day weekend, quickened by the police killings of Deon Kay in Washington, DC, on September 2; Dijon Kizzee in Los Angeles on August 31; and the release of new video of Daniel Prude’s killing in Rochester, New York.

On Saturday, hundreds protested in Louisville — the city in which Breonna Taylor was killed — ahead of the Kentucky Derby. Counter-protesters came into contact with the protesters near the city’s Metro Hall, leading to tense confrontations, but no violence. Members of both groups were seen carrying firearms. Black Lives Matter protesters marched to Churchill Downs, where the derby was taking place. The evening ended with outdoor dancing in at least one corner of the city.

Words became blows as militia groups and supporters for BLM, Breonna Taylor faced off. Some people from both sides tried to talk things out — a few shook hands — but one worried woman said ‘Our city has never been divided like this before.’ https://t.co/p6bYwnPbmm pic.twitter.com/j3xnV0y4rm
— Matt Stone (@mattstonephotog) September 5, 2020

In Rochester, New York, demonstrators gathered to protest Prude’s death by suffocation. In March, police put a hood over Prude’s head and pressed his face to the ground for two minutes. Around 1,500 people marched Saturday evening, calling for the resignation of city leaders. They faced off with police outside City Hall, and some reportedly began throwing rocks and fireworks at police officers, who fired tear gas and pepper balls back.

Tear gas dispersed at protesters in Rochester NY, police are pushing and telling everyone to disperse #rochesterprotests #HappeningNow pic.twitter.com/jtQzFI7krv
— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) September 6, 2020

In Washington, DC, Kay’s aunt addressed protesters, telling them, “The officer that shot Deon, him and Deon had a problem with each other. He never liked Deon or the young boys that be down there on Mellon Street,” and saying her nephew likely spent his final moments “afraid.” Several hundred people marched throughout the city, including near the site of Kay’s death and near the White House, demanding greater transparency from leaders and police reforms.

In Portland, Oregon — where a Trump rally led to clashes between the president’s supporters and protesters, as well as the shooting of a right-wing activist — protests began calmly. Later in the evening, a group of around 500 protesters marching toward a police precinct were met with officers who declared it a riot. Police released tear gas and shot rubber bullets, and a protester threw a Molotov cocktail which police said hit another demonstrator.

While the deaths of Taylor, Floyd, Kay, Prude, and others are memorialized by protests, the underlying issue of inequities in policing continue, as Vox’s Aaron Ross Coleman has written. Since Taylor was killed in mid-March, at least 83 other Black people have been killed by police, according to data compiled by the Washington Post. Other organizations like Mapping Police Violence estimate that number is even higher.

And while more white Americans are killed by police annually, Black Americans face an outsized number of deaths compared to their population. Black people are killed by police at twice the rate of white Americans.

Almost no police killings result in officers charged with a crime, according to Mapping Police Violence. That’s one thing the massive civil rights movement unfolding across the country seeks to change.

The Trump administration began scaling back the census count. A judge stopped it — for now.

2020-09-06T17:11:05-04:00

Census workers Anna Arroyo and Carla Kuilan Rijos (left to right) taking calls about the census at City Hall in Reading, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 2020. | Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle/Getty Images

A federal judge ruled Saturday that the Trump administration must stop plans to halt in-person census counting early — at least temporarily.

The long-term fight over the administration’s efforts to shorten the census data collection period will continue under the decision, which resulted in a temporary restraining order from US District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California. Koh’s order requires the administration to stop scaling back counting efforts until at least September 17, when another court hearing will help determine when counting will end.

The potential consequences are vast: The census count influences not only the number of representatives each state gets in Congress, but how much federal funding each state receives — and how voting district lines are drawn for the next decade.

Ahead of the coronavirus pandemic, census data collection was scheduled to conclude on August 15; however, it was extended until October 31 given the challenges the pandemic created, particularly around in-person outreach — a key way of ensuring hard-to-count populations are included in the final tally.

In early August, the bureau announced it would end counting at the end of September instead, arguing doing so was necessary to meet the December 31 deadline to send the final numbers to Congress. Work to wind down counting is already underway, according to the associate director of the census, who said in court filings that the agency had already started firing temporary employees in some areas.

A number of civil rights groups, local governments, and the Navajo Nation — among others — sued over the new deadline, and Koh determined communities would likely experience irreparable harm if the census count was cut short.

“An inaccurate count would not be remedied for another decade,” Koh wrote. That “would affect the distribution of federal and state funding, the deployment of services, and the allocation of local resources for a decade.”

The consequences of an undercount would hit low-income and minority communities the hardest

If the census count is ended sooner than planned, it could bring lasting consequences.

As of now, around 35 percent of households haven’t responded to the census. But the impact of that isn’t shared equally.

Large swaths of the country lag behind the 2010 response rate, according to a research initiative led by the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center. Rural areas in Montana, Texas, Oregon, New York and elsewhere remain more than 10 percentage points behind their response rate a decade ago. Renters, low-income people, young children, and immigrants are among those who are the hardest to count.

Overall, about 20 percent of homes were counted through a “followup,” which involves Census Bureau employees visiting homes in person or counting families using other records.

But Rob Santos, vice president and chief methodologist at the Urban Institute and president-elect of the American Statistical Association, told Vox’s Nicole Narea that method relies in part on reports from neighbors, which aren’t as accurate, and on Social Security and IRS data. The federal government is less likely to have reliable administrative data on hard-to-count households than others. For example, unauthorized immigrants who do not have Social Security numbers may be less likely to file taxes with the IRS.

These complications mean ending the census count early could leave immigrant and rural communities, as well as communities of color, without the financial, educational, and political resources their true populations would state they are due. Latino advocates in particular have been particularly vocal in raising the alarm about how an undercount could undercut the political power of Latino voters.

But it’s not just civil rights advocates who are concerned. Four former census directors have asked the Trump administration to push the deadline to respond to the census even further out, until April 2021.

Trump is no stranger to politicizing the census. He sought to include a question on citizenship status in the 2020 census; several states challenged it in court, arguing it would depress response rates. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor in 2019 because the administration had lied about why it had pushed to include the question.

Instead of fighting that ruling, Trump issued an executive order that required the Census Bureau to use administrative records to create estimates on citizenship, and allowed the agency to collect more data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In July, it became clear why the administration hoped to get that data. Trump issued a memo excluding unauthorized immigrants from being included in the counts for congressional districts in 2021. That, too, has been challenged in court.

More will become clear about the schedule for ending the census on September 17. But for now — with money and power on the line — the count will continue.

Colleges are making last-minute changes as coronavirus cases spike. That’s tough for students.

2020-09-08T11:47:32-04:00

Students walk on campus at the University of South Carolina on September 3, 2020. In the final week of August, the university reported a 26.6% positivity rate among the student population tested for Covid-19. | Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Coronavirus cases are flooding the campuses of US colleges and universities, leading to last-minute instructional changes — and sudden disciplinary actions — that have caused difficulties for students and their families.

This week at Northeastern University in Boston, 11 students were dismissed from their program without tuition reimbursement for violating Covid-19 social distancing policies, and the Ohio State University suspended 225 students before classes even began for similar infractions.

There have been more than 50,000 confirmed cases on college campuses since the pandemic began, according to the New York Times, a number that has increased dramatically in recent weeks. That’s prompted a number of colleges, like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to cancel in-person classes after students had already paid tuition. And as Vox’s Terry Nguyen has reported, rising case numbers have also left many students scrambling to find housing off-campus or transportation back home.

The increasing infections have left college towns such as Auburn, Alabama, and Ames, Iowa, hot spots for coronavirus outbreaks. More than 1,000 cases have been discovered at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, nearly 1,200 at University of South Carolina, nearly 1,400 at the University of Alabama, 540 at the University of Kansas, 752 at Texas A&M, and 962 at University of Iowa.

University administrators are all handling the surges differently. Currently, around 20 percent of colleges are either primarily or fully in-person, according to a tracker from Davidson College’s College Crisis Initiative. Around a third are either fully or primarily offering courses online. Overall, Irwin Redlener, director of the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia University, described the current higher education situation to Politico as “national chaos.”

Some schools, like Boston University and Colby College, are checking students daily for coronavirus symptoms. Others are setting up quarantine dorms and creating screening stations throughout campus. But many aren’t conducting robust testing of students — in fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t recommend testing when some colleges opened for summer instruction.

And when things go awry, it’s often students who take the blame for the failure, leading to a rash of suspensions at schools including Syracuse University, the University of Miami, and the State University of New York, among others.

Some argue this is an ineffective strategy given that the patchwork of policies employed by universities around the country largely fails to protect students. Julia Marcus, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and Jessica Gold, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote in the Atlantic this summer:

Relying on the self-control of young adults, rather than deploying the public-health infrastructure needed to control a disease that spreads easily among people who live, eat, study, and socialize together, is not a safe reopening strategy—and yelling at students for their dangerous behavior won’t help either.

Rising cases and sudden policy changes have left students in a difficult place

That schools would see high case numbers and be forced to move instruction online should have been obvious, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sophomore named Suzy told Nguyen.

“From the moment we stepped foot on campus, I knew we weren’t going to be there for a long time,” Suzy said. “Parents knew. I overheard someone joking that they’ll see their kids in two weeks.”

And this has largely been the case, leaving students frustrated at sudden changes, and upset to learn they would not be attending class in person after paying tuition or making travel plans.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill held in-person classes for only one week before shutting down on August 17. Jarrah Faye, a sophomore at UNC and a residential adviser in a first-year dorm, told Nguyen she had to both find new housing for herself and support freshmen moving out while keeping up with online classes.

“Where am I going to live? I have so many questions and so little time to think about what I’m going to do and where I’m going to go,” Faye told Nguyen. “Had this been done better, low-income students like myself wouldn’t have been put in this position of wondering whether our housing will be refunded, or if we’ll have enough money to get food if dining halls close down.”

With cases continuing to climb, colleges are now faced with a new problem: Whether to send students back home to communities where they could continue to spread the virus, as Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned against doing, or risk keeping them on campuses to wait out a pandemic. It’s another piece of the complexities of education in 2020 — but one that many see as a problem that could have been avoided.

The fight over defunding Stars and Stripes, explained

2020-09-08T15:26:58-04:00

US soldier Sgt. John Hubbuch reads Stars and Stripes in Bosnia in 1999. | Amel Emric/AP Photo

The Trump administration moved to close Stars and Stripes, a popular state-supported newspaper serving US military members, and was criticized for the plan Friday. Shortly afterward, President Donald Trump reversed the Pentagon decision and said the federal government won’t cut funding to the paper.

Trump’s announcement came as he faced fierce blowback over reports that he’d called slain American soldiers “losers” and “suckers.” But it also renewed a long-standing debate over whether the Pentagon should be funding its own newspaper — while raising new concerns about the Trump administration’s approach toward taxpayer-funded news outlets.

Pentagon officials sent an order to Stars and Stripes in August requiring the paper to present a plan for shutting down by September 15 and for stopping publication by September 30, according to a report by Kathy Kiely for USA Today. The military leaders claimed authority to shut down the paper under Trump’s 2021 defense department budget request, which sought to eliminate its $15.5 million annual budget.

But Congress has yet to approve the president’s budget request; an appropriations bill that passed the House of Representatives in July reversed Trump’s proposal and restored Stars and Stripes’s funding. The Senate version of the bill did not include funding for the paper; however, as the Military Times notes, the issue of funding the paper is expected to be taken up by both chambers later this year.

Ahead of Trump’s announcement, a number of bipartisan lawmakers asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper to stop the shutdown of Stars and Stripes, arguing a savings of $15.5 million would have little impact on the department’s $700 billion budget while having “a significantly negative impact on military families.” The paper has about 1.3 million readers and has been distributed to US troops since its founding during the Civil War.

Aides showed Trump news reports that blamed him for putting an end to the beloved paper, prompting him to reverse the cuts, a senior administration official told the New York Times.

This isn’t the first time Stars and Stripes has been on the chopping block

While Trump has certainly expressed animosity toward journalists during his time as president, his administration is not the first to attempt to eliminate the paper that serves US troops.

The paper was launched in 1861 by journalists who were Union soldiers and began regular publication during World War I. It is supported by Defense Department funding, but it is editorially independent and is delivered to US troops around the world. As the senators who wrote Esper noted, the paper has often covered issues other papers have not, including the continuation by schools on military property of in-person instruction despite the pandemic.

It has also consistently published work that’s put it out of step with Pentagon leadership, such as when it released a report uncovering internal documents that showed the Department of Defense was not only using contractors to rate journalists’ reporting on the war in Afghanistan, but appeared ready to use those ratings to manipulate the journalists into producing more positive coverage.

Unsurprisingly, these sorts of reports have created tension between Stars and Stripes and the officials within the executive branch who have a hand in appropriating its funding. Former President Barack Obama’s administration proposed gutting the paper multiple times during his presidency.

In recent years, those with close connections to the paper have allowed there’s some validity to questions over whether the paper should continue to exist. Former Stars and Stripes ombudsman Tobias Naegele wrote in 2016 that the paper does lose money, and that there’s legitimacy to the argument that a print publication for troops is no longer necessary in a world in which many soldiers can get news online — including on the Stars and Stripes website.

But Naegele also said troops in areas with less reliable internet access — such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait — can and do benefit from a print product crafted exclusively for them.

And troops’ difficulties in getting news digitally may become a more common problem, Jeff Schogol, a reporter for the military news outlet Task & Purpose, told the New York Times.

“The U.S. military as a whole is trying to reduce its electromagnetic signature, and that means service members will likely not have their phones or even access to the internet while in a war zone,” Schogol said. “That’s why Stars and Stripes is still vital to keeping troops downrange informed. The Russians and Chinese cannot jam or launch a denial of service attack against physical copies of a newspaper.”

Other state-funded media outlets have faced trouble under the Trump administration

Stars and Stripes isn’t the only news organization with a fate tied to the government purse. The US Agency for Global Media oversees five news outlets — Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting — that broadcast around the world.

Trump, who has called Voice of America “disgusting,” nominated Steve Bannon ally Michael Pack to head the agency. It took two years for the Senate to approve the nomination due to concerns that he would transform the outlets into a propaganda machine for the president.

But Pack took over the agency after being confirmed in June. He quickly fired four top officials and dissolved their organizations’ boards. The remaining leaders of Voice of America resigned over the appointment.

While the outlets did conform heavily to pro-US views during World War II and the Cold War, the Agency for Global Media now remains largely objective, with its editorial independence intended to show the US’s dedication to a free press. But experts — and reporters within the agency — are concerned Pack’s leadership may be undermining that.

Pack, a conservative filmmaker, told The Federalist Radio Hour podcast last month that his plan is “to drain the swamp, to root out corruption, and to deal with these issues of bias,” and later suggested that some journalists may be foreign spies.

That prompted a number of Voice of America reporters and editors to write a letter to the publication’s director arguing Pack’s comments “endanger the personal security” of VOA reporters and threaten US national security objectives. They also claimed many executives have been dismissed for attempting to educate Pack on Agency for Global Media outlets’ legal rights to editorial independence.

As with the funding question over Stars and Stripes, the Trump administration isn’t the first to express frustration with Agency for Global Media outlets. Vox’s Alex Ward explains:

Pack has a point when he says his agency has problems, many of which have been previously highlighted by Democrats such as Hillary Clinton. A recent controversy last month included a video made by Voice of America’s Urdu service which many (including Pack) said looked more like a pro-Biden political ad than a news piece, leading the CEO to remove multiple contractors and editors involved with the production.

Nevertheless, Pack’s changes have raised considerable concern that the administration is silencing impartial voices, a concern mirrored by the announcement the Trump administration planned to get rid of Stars and Stripes. Ancillary to these concerns is the president’s consistent denigration of US media, both commercial and public. He’s painted journalists as the “enemy of the people” for years.

Thus far, however, both the Agency for Global Media outlets and Stars and Stripes have been able to survive. And when Congress resumes session, it is likely Stars and Stripes will receive the funding Trump has promised. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have signaled support for the news organizations, with Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) telling Esper in August, “as a veteran who has served overseas, I know the value that the Stars and Stripes brings to its readers.”

Trump orders federal anti-racism training to be ended, calling it “a sickness”

2020-09-06T17:25:12-04:00

President Donald Trump directed the Office of Management and Budget to end anti-racism trainings Friday. He later tweeted that such programs are a “sickness” that must be eradicated. He’s shown here during a news conference at the White House on Sept. 4. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

President Donald Trump directed federal agencies Friday to end diversity training programs, calling them on Saturday “a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue.”

Trump’s decision to eliminate the anti-racism training — featuring “critical race theory” and discussions of “white privilege,” according to the directive — comes amid a nationwide reckoning on racial injustice the president has firmly opposed.

The change was announced in a memo sent to the heads of federal agencies from Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought wrote that Trump ordered the sessions canceled after learning federal agencies are spending millions of dollars training employees in “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”

Those trainings taught workers that “virtually all White people contribute to racism” or benefit from it, the memo claims, adding that some of the trainings have stated there is “racism embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity or the belief that the most qualified person should receive a job.”

These teachings “engender division and resentment” within the federal workforce and contradict the “fundamental beliefs” of the nation, Vought claimed, adding that is why Trump has asked him to stop “these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.”

The memo repeatedly cites “press reports” as having illuminated the substance of the trainings. While it doesn’t identify what those reports are, a New York Post opinion piece on the subject was published Tuesday and picked up by Fox News, which the president watches almost religiously.

Agencies have been told to begin identifying trainings related to critical race theory or white privilege, as well as any training that suggests the US is “an inherently racist or evil country” or “that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil,” and to investigate ways to end their contracts with those providing the instruction.

Following reporting on the memo, Vought tweeted, “the days of taxpayer funded indoctrination trainings that sow division and racism are over.” Trump, too, celebrated the decision on Twitter, highlighting the positive reactions of some supporters through retweets, and by asking people to “report any sightings” of the trainings “so we can quickly extinguish!”

Trump Orders Purge of ‘Critical Race Theory‘ from Federal Agencies https://t.co/ygXcTXRHsQ via @BreitbartNews This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue. Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2020

The decision is particularly salient, given that it comes amid one of the largest civil rights movements in American history, which has seen ongoing anti-racism protests that have sparked conversations about racial inequities in a number of industries.

Critical race theory aims to examine the systemic racism people are currently protesting

Trump’s decision seeks to root out trainings on critical race theory, framing it as an insidious idea that conceptualizes white people and institutions as inherently racist. This is not accurate, however.

Critical race theory is a school of thought that examines how race and racism is perpetuated through existing legal and cultural systems. It supposes that examining and critiquing social institutions — and creating spaces for people of color to share their experiences — can help create a fairer world. Examining the advantages white people enjoy in social, economic, and political areas (also known as white privilege) is a part of understanding and challenging those systems.

But the Trump administration has long pushed back on that concept, which has been thrown into the spotlight as the US grapples with racial fault lines exposed by the coronavirus pandemic — which has disproportionately killed people of color — and continued shootings of Black people by police.

Trump has said the Black Lives Matter movement is a “symbol of hate” and has called those protesting police brutality “thugs.” He’s threatened to end protests by sending US troops into American cities, saying ongoing anti-racism protests amount to “domestic terror.”

Throughout his presidency, Trump has vehemently opposed protesters’ and officials’ efforts to take down Confederate statues and has begun to promote a “law and order” campaign message that has included a racist dog whistle pledge to protect “suburban housewives” from “inner city” crime.

And the president has consistently declined to condemn brazenly racist comments or actions. For instance, when a supporter in a retirement community was filmed shouting “white power” while driving a golf cart bedecked with Trump memorabilia in June, he retweeted it.

Amid the pandemic, he’s called the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and the “kung flu,” which his critics say has been connected to an increase in racist slurs and jokes against Asian Americans. He’s recently resurfaced birther conspiracy theories against Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris that echo the lies he repeatedly spread about former President Barack Obama.

The American public has responded in kind. Around half of Americans say the president has made race relations in the country worse since he took office, according to a Pew study — a number that has remained fairly steady since the start of Trump’s tenure. And Pew has also found confusion, as well as a deep partisan divide, over what the ongoing anti-racism protests are about.

Despite Vought claiming otherwise, it is these sorts of divisions that diversity trainings — including those that feature critical race theory — are meant to bridge.

Republicans announce speaker lineup for the RNC

2020-08-24T11:03:19-04:00

President Donald Trump speaks at the Republican National Committee winter meeting at the Trump International Hotel on February 1, 2018, in Washington, DC. | Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

The Republican National Convention will open Monday for four days of in-person and online events featuring a slew of conservative voices including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and — of course — President Donald Trump.

Trump is slated to appear every day of the convention (but may not give an address every night) leading up to Thursday evening, when he will formally accept the party’s nomination to be its candidate for president this fall.

The Trump campaign released the list of speakers for the convention Sunday morning.

The Trump campaign releases list of RNC speakers for this week pic.twitter.com/tvffhA0N9n
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) August 23, 2020

Among the speakers on Monday, which is themed “Land of Promise”: Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Donald Trump Jr., and Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis-area couple that brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in late June.

On Tuesday, themed “Land of Opportunity,” First Lady Melania Trump will speak, as well as Pompeo, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Eric and Tiffany Trump.

Wednesday, which is “Land of Heroes” themed, will feature Vice President Mike Pence, speaking from Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, along with Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Joni Ernst, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, former NFL player Jack Brewer, and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law (wife of Eric) who is a Trump campaign adviser.

The speakers in Thursday’s “Land of Greatness” lineup include Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. McConnell, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Ivanka Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and finally Trump himself, speaking from the White House.

The convention was originally scheduled to be held in person at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, it will now be held partly in person in Charlotte and partly remotely, with speeches delivered from Washington, DC, and elsewhere. Trump’s acceptance speech was supposed to take place in Jacksonville, Florida, but was cancelled in late July as cases surged in the state.

The in-person portion of the convention will include a roll call of 336 delegates — six for each state and territory — in Charlotte on Monday night, compared with the 2,400 that came to the 2016 RNC. Trump and Pence are expected to show up in person to the event on Monday. Attendees will be asked to quarantine as much as possible beforehand and will be required to take temperature checks before entering the venue.

The RNC will be live-streamed online through the Committee’s social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube and Amazon Prime. Most major television channels, including ABC News, CBS News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News and PBS News, are also expected to cover the convention.

New goal: 25,000

In the spring, we launched a program asking readers for financial contributions to help keep Vox free for everyone, and last week, we set a goal of reaching 20,000 contributors. Well, you helped us blow past that. Today, we are extending that goal to 25,000. Millions turn to Vox each month to understand an increasingly chaotic world — from what is happening with the USPS to the coronavirus crisis to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work — and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. Contribute today from as little as $3.

College students are motivated to vote, but many don’t trust US elections

2020-08-24T14:08:47-04:00

College students report a preference for Joe Biden — though they’re more likely to vote for him out of distaste for President Donald Trump. | Craig Walker/Boston Globe via Getty Images

College students are highly motivated to vote, but they say they’re less confident in the legitimacy of the election — and many are likely to doubt the results.

That’s according to a new survey from the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that funds research and projects to foster more engaged communities. The survey was done through College Pulse, a research agency focused on college students.

And though the findings show Democratic nominee Joe Biden is clearly the preferred candidate among those polled, respondents aren’t excited about him — rather, they support him because they dislike President Donald Trump.

The survey, conducted from August 9 to 12, polled 4,000 students enrolled in four-year universities. The results paint a picture of an increasingly engaged electorate of young people who harbor mistrust of political parties and traditional election systems. The findings reflect a widening gap — evidenced in the older voter base of both Biden and Trump — between young people and the legacy parties and electoral structures they feel aren’t working for them.

“It really points to cracks in our democratic institutions and processes at a pretty high level,” said Evette Alexander, director of learning and impact at the Knight Foundation.

“If we have significant parts of the population … doubting our democratic process, it leads them away from participating, it leads them away from being engaged citizens, it leads them away from being informed,” she added.

Around 37 percent of students surveyed leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 43 percent identified as independent; only around 12 percent leaned toward the Republican Party. That’s a breakdown Alexander said is representative of the college population based on the sample size. Researchers weighted respondents for race and gender to ensure those categories were also representative.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, a majority of Americans, 59 percent, didn’t feel confident in the honesty of the nation’s elections — in part thanks to the legacy of foreign interference in the 2016 election. That’s more than most other major democracies and on par with Lithuania and Turkey.

That confidence has been further shaken by an ongoing fight over the US Postal Service, which will be charged with handling a higher-than-usual influx of mail-in ballots due to the pandemic, and concerns — largely ginned up by President Trump, without evidence — over the integrity of mail-in voting itself.

That’s reflected among young people: More than half of the students surveyed said they think the November election won’t be administered well, and only half said they believe the presidential race will be conducted in a fair and transparent way. More than 80 percent said they believed special-interest groups have more influence over elections than voters do.

Nearly half of college students said problems at polling places, low voter turnout, evidence of foreign interference, and the winner of the election losing the popular vote would make them have “major doubts” about the fairness of the election. Women were more likely than men to harbor those doubts.

College students’ views also reflect the partisan divide over mail-in voting seen at the national level: Only 17 percent of Democratic students said they would have major doubts about the fairness of the election if most votes were cast by mail, while 57 percent of Republican students did.

In total, 53 percent of students said they’d cast a ballot by mail — a surprising majority likely driven by the threat of coronavirus, Alexander said, given that young people usually don’t vote by mail.

College-aged voters favor Biden, but not because they like him

Despite their mistrust of the country’s election systems, more than 70 percent of students said they are “absolutely certain” they’ll vote in November. That largely cuts across racial, political, and gender lines, indicating a widespread interest in heading to the polls.

Students cited Covid-19 and race relations as the most important issues facing the country today, reflecting ongoing fears about the coronavirus pandemic in the US and the increased scrutiny on racial equity and justice due to widespread Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in May.

Around 70 percent said they’d vote for Biden, compared with only 18 percent who said they’d cast a ballot for Trump. But asked whether they have a favorable view of the former vice president, only around half agreed.

“I think we can read between the lines there that for students, a vote for Biden is a vote against Trump,” Alexander said.

That lack of enthusiasm extends to the parties as well: Only 26 percent of students had a positive view of the Republican Party, and only 51 percent had a positive view of the Democratic Party. The findings on the presidential candidates and political parties are illustrative of a disillusionment with national politics from young people, Alexander said.

Instead, young people are turning to other forms of activism such as participating in protests, contacting elected officials, and discussing issues with friends and family. Participation in local elections is “extremely low” among college students, the report found, but most still think local elections are one of the most effective ways to bring about change.

That paradox may have something to do with the way college students get their political news, Alexander said. Information channels about local politics rarely reach college-aged voters — who primarily get their news by scrolling through social media — let alone voters under 40.

That’s an indicator that candidates and organizations that are social-media savvy should work to mobilize young people by reaching them where they already are.

“Look, these students are interested in participating outside of national politics. For some, national politics isn’t delivering on its promises, at least to them right now,” Alexander said. “There’s an opportunity — and perhaps a mandate — for local issues to become more front and center, where people’s eyes and attention are.”

New goal: 25,000

The real Maryanne Trump scandal is the Trump family’s wealth

2020-09-05T11:00:45-04:00

Donald Trump, Maryanne Trump, and Robert Trump during the opening of Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1990. | Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, sharply disparaged the president and said she believed he paid a friend to take his SATs in audio recordings published by the Washington Post Saturday night.

Trump “has no principles — none,” Barry said in the recordings provided to the Post. “It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”

Barry, a former federal judge, made the comments in a set of secret recordings in 2018 and 2019 by her niece, Mary Trump, who has emerged as a fierce critic of the president.

Barry said that Donald Trump “doesn’t read,” that “he was a brat,” and that she did his homework for him, adding that she believes he paid a friend to take the standardized tests that allowed him to transfer from Fordham University to the University of Pennsylvania. She also expressed disgust over “what they’re doing with kids at the border” in the Trump administration’s family separation policy for migrants.

The allegation that Trump cheated on a college entrance exam (which he denies) was one of the oft-questioned parts of a book by Mary Trump released earlier this year, in which she describes the dramatic inner workings of the Trump family and how it shaped the president’s psyche. The recordings with Barry, provided to the Post to substantiate the allegation, seem to be one of the underpinnings of her book.

There’s more to the story, however: Mary Trump’s spokesperson told the Post she recorded her aunt to gather evidence supporting her claim that she was cheated out of a significant portion of her inheritance after her grandfather and family patriarch Fred Trump Sr. died in 1999.

Barry, Robert Trump, and Donald Trump joined a lawsuit to prevent Mary from getting a larger inheritance, and she eventually settled the matter in 2001, after being told the estate was worth $30 million. She later came to believe it was worth around $1 billion and the family had lied about its value.

In her book, Mary Trump said she became a major source in a 2018 New York Times investigation into the sprawling financial corruption of the larger Trump family, who amassed their wealth in part due to tax dodges.

The Trump family has a long history of tax evasion and deceptive business practices

The publication of Maryanne Trump Barry’s comments marks the first time a member of the family besides Mary Trump has been heard disparaging Donald Trump and his history of deception. But Barry herself has been implicated in the Trump family’s shady financial activity — a scandal that eclipses the secret recordings.

The 2018 Times investigation revealed a pattern of tax evasion that allowed Donald Trump to receive the current equivalent of at least $413 million from his father. Fred Trump, the family’s patriarch whose real estate business was the foundation of its wealth, further enriched the family by hiding millions of dollars of gifts through shell companies.

As David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner of the Times reported in 2018:

Much of [the $413 million] came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

The IRS didn’t catch on, and Fred Trump transferred more than $1 billion to his children. The Trumps paid only about $52.2 million in taxes, rather than the at least $550 million they could have been forced to pay.

Barry was the co-owner of one of those shell companies used to draw cash from their father’s businesses by marking up purchases already made by employees rather than buying equipment for Fred Trump’s buildings, the Times reported, as it claimed to do. The millions of dollars siphoned through the company went — untaxed — to Barry, Donald Trump, and their other siblings.

In 2018, a lawyer for Donald Trump denied the Times’s reporting, saying the allegations of “fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” adding, “there was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone.” In Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough, she said Barry denied a willing part in any scheme. “I met with Maryanne shortly after the article ran. She denied all of it. She was just a ‘girl,’ after all. When a piece of paper was put in front of her, she’d signed it. … She seemed unconcerned that there would be any repercussions,” Mary Trump wrote.

But after the Times’s investigation was published, a judicial conduct council launched an investigation into how Barry benefited from tax schemes and may have influenced actions taken by the family over the decades. The Times reported last year that Barry, now 83, retired 10 days after a court official told complainants that the investigation would get “the full attention” of the council, ending the investigation. (Barry was appointed as a federal judge by President Ronald Reagan. She complained in Mary Trump’s recordings that Donald Trump long held his “only favor” to her over her head: asking his lawyer Roy Cohn to push Reagan to appoint more female judges.)

Donald Trump has claimed on the campaign trail to be a self-made billionaire, and he has built trust with many voters on the premise that his business expertise can benefit the country. But the Times’s reporting illustrates how Trump — who was earning $200,000 annually in today’s dollars by the age of 3 — was propped up by family wealth.

The beneficiaries of the family scheme are now among the most powerful people in America. That will be on full display beginning Monday, when the Republican National Convention will convene with part digital, part in-person events throughout the week.

Some of the key speakers at the convention will be members of the Trump family. In addition to the president, Donald Trump Jr., Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and Tiffany Trump are all slated to appear, making it a true family affair.

New goal: 25,000

Democrats push for $25 billion for the Postal Service. The White House says it will reject it.

2020-08-24T10:06:20-04:00

A man walks past a United States Postal Service truck and mailbox outside a post office in August in Jersey City, New Jersey. | Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy assured legislators Friday that election mail will be delivered on time in November, despite lacking a plan to do so amid an expected influx of mail-in ballots.

After DeJoy testified before the GOP-led Senate committee, House Democrats held a rare Saturday session to approve legislation that would repeal postal changes and invest $25 billion in the agency. The measure passed mostly on partisan lines, although 26 Republicans voted in favor of the proposal. Still, there are no plans for a Senate vote, and President Donald Trump has made clear his opposition.

Despite the US Postal Service’s status as an independent agency, the White House and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reportedly played a role in the process that led to DeJoy’s selection as postmaster general. A Trump donor and former logistics executive, he has faced increased scrutiny in recent weeks as new operational changes made under his leadership have slowed mail delivery times.

DeJoy says that he implemented the changes — including eliminating overtime for postal workers, removing mail sorting machines, and requiring postal workers to leave mail behind at facilities if it’s not processed in time — to cut costs for the agency that has long been struggling financially.

The result: longer delays in delivery of letters and packages, which have raised concerns that the policies could impact the November presidential election. Mail-in voting rates are expected to skyrocket this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic, which complicates in-person voting. Some have argued Trump is intentionally sabotaging the agency to make mail-in voting harder, and the president acknowledged he plans to withhold funding to make it more difficult for the agency to process absentee ballots.

As public backlash mounted, DeJoy announced last week that the changes would be put on hold until after the November election “to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”

But speaking before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Friday, DeJoy said dismantled sorting equipment capable of processing 21.4 million pieces of flat mail per hour won’t be restored and the policy requiring workers to leave mail behind at facilities won’t be reversed. DeJoy also claimed that the Postal Service didn’t have any planned changes for election mail, even as internal documents reported by CNN show the agency did plan to process ballots differently this year in a way that could contribute to slower delivery. That policy has been reversed.

DeJoy told the committee he’s still “extremely highly confident” that election mail will be delivered on time in the fall, but couldn’t provide details of a plan to ensure on-time delivery and said it wouldn’t be ready to show lawmakers by the end of the weekend, indicating it was still being drafted.

USPS has long had money problems. Lawmakers disagree on how to help.

The Postal Service has long been one of the most popular American institutions, but the largely self-funded service has long struggled to remain solvent. Mail volume has been slowing, and the agency is required to fund its employees’ post-retirement health care costs 75 years into the future due to the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, a policy that doesn’t apply to any other federal agency or private company.

The pandemic nearly delivered a fatal blow to USPS when first-class mail began dropping and tens of thousands of workers were unable to come to work due to illness or other coronavirus-related concerns. The agency spent hundreds of millions of dollars on making post offices and sorting facilities safe, including investing in personal protective equipment and plexiglass dividers.

The agency was expected to run out of money by the end of September but is now likely to be buoyed through the middle of 2021 due to a surge in coronavirus-related package shipments. Some Republican policymakers have long sought to privatize the agency to compel it to compete with companies like UPS and FedEx. Democrats often argue it should be viewed as a public service, tasked with delivering mail to rural areas that are less efficient to reach.

Now, in the face of outrage over changes that could contribute to mail delays and anxiety over mail-in voting in the fall, lawmakers in the Democrat-led House have passed a bill that would provide $25 billion in funding for the Postal Service.

In addition to the influx of funding, the Delivering for America Act, sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), would prohibit USPS from making any changes to service and operations that were in place at the beginning of 2020, before DeJoy took over the agency. It would require no more changes be made until the coronavirus pandemic is over.

The Trump administration has said it “strongly opposes” the House’s Postal Service funding bill and said the president would likely veto it even if it did pass the Senate. The White House argues it would implement “burdensome” requirements that would make election mail delivery harder and that the funding is “an overreaction to sensationalized media reports.”

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said he supports including $10 billion in funding for the Postal Service in a coronavirus aid legislative package, “just to make sure the post office is on good terms going into the November election.” The White House has said it may support additional funding for the agency as a part of a coronavirus aid package. But Democrats have so far rejected proposals to fold in the Postal Service funding. They are generally opposed to smaller-scale coronavirus aid packages, which may sap leverage for their key priorities, such as resuming sweeping unemployment benefits and shoring up state and local government budgets.

DeJoy will testify before Congress again on Monday, this time in front of the House Oversight Committee. As public scrutiny over the Postal Service continues to mount, DeJoy’s next appearance may be even more contentious than the last.

New goal: 25,000