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Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who has raised questions about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) continued leadership, endorsed three U.S. military veterans as candidates for the House on Wednesday.
The former Marine announced his support for Dan Feehan in Minnesota, Aaron Scheinberg in West Virginia and Amy McGrath in Kentucky.
“I am proud to endorse this group of new leaders who have shown a clear commitment to service,” Moulton, himself a Marine veteran, said in a statement.
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“I am confident that these candidates will put service over self and country over party when they come to DC. I look forward to campaigning for them in the months ahead and serving with them in Congress.”
Of the three candidates, Feehan would appear to have the best chance for success. He is running for an open seat in Minnesota being vacated by Rep. Tim Walz (D), who has decided to run for governor. It is considered a toss-up district by the Cook Political Report.
Scheinberg and McGrath face higher hurdles.
The former would take on GOP Rep. Alex Mooney, who previously won his West Virginia seat by 16 percentage points in 2016. It’s also a state where President Trump is popular.
McGrath would join a crowded Democratic primary in Kentucky. The winner would take on Rep. Andy BarrAndy BarrKentucky Senate candidate: McConnell ‘couldn’t care less if we die’ House GOP to launch China probes beyond COVID-19 Put entrepreneurs, workers and flexibility in next stimulus package MORE (R), who won the seat by 22 percentage points in 2016.
It is unusual for a rank-and-file member to announce endorsements, but Moulton has increasingly sought a national spotlight.
After Democrats lost a special election for the House in Georgia, Moulton called for new leadership. Republicans have repeatedly tied Pelosi to Democratic candidates.
In June, Moulton made an initial wave of endorsements for eight other military veterans.
“The status quo isn’t working,” he said in Wednesday’s statement. “We’re not going to fix the problems facing Americans today without a fresh perspective and a new approach in Washington.
“These candidates represent a new generation of leadership in the Democratic Party and are driven by a commitment to service,” the press release says.
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Controversial former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, fresh off of a pardon by President Trump last week, is floating a primary bid against Sen. Jeff FlakeJeffrey (Jeff) Lane FlakeGOP lawmakers stick to Trump amid new criticism Kelly holds double-digit lead over McSally in Arizona: poll Trump asserts his power over Republicans MORE (R-Ariz.) that would complicate Flake’s path to reelection.
“I could run for mayor, I could run for legislator, I could run for Senate,” Arpaio told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
He added that “a lot of people around the state” are asking him to primary Flake, who is being battered by the right for his repeated criticisms of Trump.
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Arpaio’s apparent interest in the Arizona primary comes as Trump continues to encourage potential challenges to Flake.
He recently tweeted in support of former State Sen. Kelli Ward (R), who jumped into the 2018 primary before the 2016 race even ended. And Trump’s administration continues to speak to potential challengers, most recently meeting with a group backstage at his rally in Phoenix last week.
Arpaio has been a vocal supporter of Trump. The pardon freed Arpaio from serving jail time over a criminal contempt ruling after he was charged with ignoring a court order in a racial profiling case.
That pardon led to an outcry from Democrats and some Republicans, criticism that Arpaio told the Examiner frustrated him. Flake offered some criticism of the pardon on Twitter.
The sheriff’s proximity to Trump would add even more intrigue to the race if he ran, raising questions as to whether Trump would decide to back his primary bid. Arpaio told the Examiner that the two have not spoken this year.
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Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE recalled her concession call with then-President-elect Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE as “one of the strangest” moments of her life, though one that was “perfectly nice and weirdly ordinary.”
“ ‘Donald, it’s Hillary,’ ” the former Democratic presidential candidate writes in her upcoming book, “What Happened,” according to excerpts published by The Daily Beast. “It was without a doubt one of the strangest moments of my life. I congratulated Trump and offered to do anything I could to make sure the transition was smooth.
“He said nice things about my family and our campaign. He may have said something about how hard it must have been to make the call, but it’s a blur now, so I can’t say for certain. It was all perfectly nice and weirdly ordinary, like calling a neighbor to say you can’t make it to his barbecue. It was mercifully brief.”
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Clinton’s stunning electoral loss to Trump in November was widely unexpected by pollsters and pundits, who had for months before the election predicted a sound victory for the former secretary of State.
Trump ultimately won the election with 306 electoral votes, compared to Clinton’s 232. She won the popular vote, however, by nearly 3 million votes.
In her book, which is scheduled to be released Sept. 12, the former Democratic nominee recounts her experiences during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The City of Oakland, California took a bold step towards protecting the health of its citizens and the global environment on Monday after city council members voted unanimously to ban the storage and handling of coal and petroleum coke in the city.
The ban, sought by local environmental groups for over a year, is expected to derail plans for a massive export terminal on the city-owned waterfront, known as the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT).
According to the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club, the port developers “have been quietly soliciting a partnership with four Utah counties to export up to ten million tons of coal out of Oakland each year. The partnership would make Oakland the largest coal-export facility on the West Coast, and would increase national coal exports by a whopping 19 percent.”
Community members opposed to the planned facility rallied both in and outside Monday’s overflow hearing. The San Jose Mercury News reports:
“This is what grassroots organizing looks like,” Bruce Nilles, senior campaign director for Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, declared on social media.
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The vote came three days after city staff released a long-anticipated report that recommended the ban based on its findings that OBOT “would pose a serious health risk to both workers at the planned terminal and West Oakland residents, who already suffer from high levels of asthma and other respiratory illnesses,” the Mercury News reports.
The ordinance, which requires a second vote on July 19th to become finalized, was proposed by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Councilman Dan Kalb, who argued that such projects pollute the air and pose serious risks to workers and community members. While the new rule specifically pertains to future projects, the council also voted unanimously on a resolution to apply the ordinance to OBOT.
The proposed terminal had sparked a fierce local debate, which developers and other supporters of the project framed as a choice between local jobs and the environment.
Following the vote, councilmember Rebecca Kaplan deemed it “a proud day for democracy.”
“I think what this vote proves is that we understand the importance of protecting the health and safety of our community,” Kaplan said. “It also shows that we were able to push back against the lies from the industry that were so deceptive.”
“When I heard about the possibility of coal coming through this port I just had a really bad feeling come over me,” said Derrick Muhammad, a representative of the International Longshore Workers Union. “Oakland families are already worried about asthma and other sickness because of highways and port activities. It’s not right to ask them to take on the worry and risk of nine million tons of coal passing through their neighborhoods on trains each year.”
“Allowing coal exports through Oakland not only harms the community and the environment, but is also inconsistent with the progressive climate goals set by the City of Oakland and State of California,” added Irene Gutierrez, an attorney with Earthjustice.
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Drawing Russian rebuke, NATO members and partners on Monday launched what is being called the largest war game in decades—a 10-day exercise involving 31,000 troops and thousands of vehicles from 24 countries, none more committed than the United States.
The exercise, dubbed “Anakonda-16,” is taking place in Poland ahead of next month’s NATO summit in Warsaw that will likely approve more troops to be stationed in eastern Europe. The United States is providing around 14,000 troops for the exercise, more than any other participating nation.
According to Stars and Stripes:
A separate international naval exercise, Baltops-16, also involving NATO forces, began Monday in Finland, which is not a member of the global alliance.
The activity comes, as journalist Lucian Kim noted in an analysis published by Reuters, “just weeks after the United States inaugurated the first of two controversial missile-defense installations in Eastern Europe. Next year, the Pentagon plans to quadruple military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion and begin rotating an armored brigade through Eastern Europe—in addition to extra NATO forces to be deployed to Poland and the Baltics.”
Indeed, in mid-May Moscow called the U.S.’s newly activated missile defense site in Romania a “direct threat” to security and part of “the start of a new arms race.” Earlier this year, it was revealed that the U.S. was ramping up the deployment of heavy weapons and armored vehicles to NATO member countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
And last month, work began on a separate missile interception base at Redzikowo, a village in northern Poland—”turning the country,” analyst Gilbert Doctorow wrote on Friday, “into a U.S. bastion and potential launch platform against Russia in possible violation of existing agreements governing intermediate-range nuclear weapons.”
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On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the uptick in activity near Russia’s borders.
“We do not hide that we have a negative attitude toward the NATO line of moving its military infrastructure to our borders, drawing other countries into military unit activities,” he said. “This will activate the Russian sovereign right to provide its own safety with methods that are adequate for today’s risks.”
Meanwhile, speaking of the Polish war games as well as the ongoing “SaberStrike” operation in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov told journalists that the exercises “carry a serious destabilizing component” and that their “main goal is to continue the aggravation of tensions.”
At RT, author and journalist Robert Bridge offered a tongue-in-cheek thought experiment highlighting the ratcheting tensions:
A report issued last summer said ever-growing war games conducted by Russian and NATO forces feed a “climate of mistrust.”
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It’s “the least boring piece of news related to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in ages,” according to one campaigner.
Celebrities including Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, punk band Anti-Flag, and Lost actress Evangeline Lilly are mobilizing against the 12-nation, corporate-friendly deal—which has been exposed by multiple analyses as threatening the climate, labor protections, access to medicine, and human rights—with a nationwide series of activism-fueled music events starting next Saturday in Denver.
“Working people everywhere have had enough,” said Morello in a press statement. “The TPP is nothing short of a corporate takeover of our democracy. That’s why people are rising up to stop it. Corporate lobbyists want to sneak the TPP through Congress quietly; that means it’s time for us to get loud.”
And get loud they will, with the Rock Against the TPP roadshow, jointly organized by Morello’s new label, Firebrand Records, and digital rights group Fight for the Future. In addition to Denver, the tour will make stops in at least four yet-to-be-announced cities.
“The TPP is not a trade deal, it’s a corporate coup—an attack on the future of democracy and free speech,” said Fight for the Future campaign director Evan Greer. “People from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly oppose it, and we’re going to fight not only to stop the TPP, but to make sure that decisions that affect all of us are never made behind closed doors in the future.”
Though the agreement is “at the heart” of President Barack Obama’s trade agenda—last week on the “Tonight Show,” the president declared he was “down with TPP”—it faces steep odds in Congress and widespread opposition from both the general public and presidential candidates.
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The Washington Post reports that “[p]roponents of the pact have said they are eyeing a potential ‘lame duck’ session of Congress after the November elections as the best chance to get the deal ratified.”
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Al Jazeera added:
But as Lilly put it, “This fight against the TPP is not about right and left, it’s about right and wrong. Whatever you’re passionate about, whether it’s human rights, internet freedom, climate change, or food safety, the TPP is a bad deal for humanity, and a threat to the future of democracy. The more people learn about the TPP, the less they like it. It’s our responsibility to sound the alarm, before it’s too late.”
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Via a new Gallup poll, more evidence comes Friday that the nation’s electorate really doesn’t like this year’s leading presidential candidates.
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has the dubious distinction of being the most unfavorably viewed of any candidate over the past seven decades—displacing 1964 Republican candidate Barry Goldwater from the bottom spot.
The poll offers no smug moment for Clinton: her scores put her among the bottom four presidential candidates, with scores barely better than those of Goldwater.
The scores are on based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,025 adults, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Respondents were asked to give a number between +1 and +5 to give a favorable view of a candidate, with +5 being the most favorable. They were also asked for a number -1 to -5 to express an unfavorable view of the candidate, with -5 being very unfavorable.
With that data, Gallup indicated who has the highest unfavorable and highest favorable ratings, as well as overall favorable and overall unfavorable ratings.
Trump’s highly favorable rating is just 16 percent, and his highly unfavorable rating is 42. Goldwater’s highly favorable rating was 17, for comparison, and his highly unfavorable rating was just 26 percent.
Clinton, for her part, has a highly favorable rating of 22 percent and a highly unfavorable rating of 33 percent.
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Democrat George McGovern had a bad image during his 1972 presidential bid as well. His scores are sandwiched between those of Goldwater and Clinton, having a 21 percent highly favorable rating and 20 percent highly unfavorable score.
Looking at total favorable versus total unfavorable ratings, Clinton edges out Trump, having 51 percent favorable to 50 percent unfavorable. The real estate mogul, meanwhile, has 42 percent favorable versus 59 percent negative.
Gallup states: “The wild card in this year’s ratings is that more Americans view Clinton and Trump highly unfavorably than highly favorably, and to an unprecedented degree.”
Looking at the other end of the list, Dwight D. Eisenhower (in ’56) leads the total favorable score with 84 percent, followed by Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter (in ’76) with 81.
The new Gallup poll is not the first survey showing voters’ distaste for both leading candidates.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in May showed voters choosing to vote against Trump or Clinton, rather than for one of the candidates.
And an NBC News/Survey Monkey poll also released in May showed that 60 percent of respondents said they “dislike” or “hate” Clinton, and 63 percent felt that way about Trump.
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The runaway success of the interactive augmented reality game Pokémon GO was overshadowed this week by privacy complaints, prompting the app to issue an update to its policies—but critics, including Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), remained concerned that its parent company is still trying to “catch them all.”
Franken wrote a letter (pdf) to Niantic Inc CEO John Hanke on Tuesday asking for information about the app and expressing concern “about the extent to which Niantic may be unnecessarily collecting, using, and sharing a wide range of users’ personal information without their appropriate consent.”
“As the augmented reality market evolves, I ask that you provide greater clarity on how Niantic is addressing issues of user privacy and security, particularly that of its younger players,” wrote Franken, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law.
Using players’ GPS coordinates and Google map of their city, Pokémon GO superimposes characters from the games for users to catch and train for virtual battle against other players.
It was revealed earlier this week that Pokémon GO users were, in signing up, automatically granting Niantic access to their email address, IP address, browsing history, and location, among other data, unless they opted out of certain authorizations listed in a lengthy terms of service agreement.
And iPhone users who signed in with their Google accounts and did not opt out were allowing Niantic full access to their accounts, including read and write privileges to their email.
Niantic claimed that particular policy was a mistake, issuing an update that removed that access and instead only collected users’ names and Gmail addresses. But Franken wrote that other privacy issues remained.
“We recognize and commend Niantic for quickly responding to these specific concerns, and ask for continued assurance that a fix will be implemented swiftly,” his letter continued.
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Marc Rotenberg, president of the digital rights group Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that there were no practical reasons for the app to request personal information.
“You can build a game that superimposes graphics over the real world, that relies on maps and locations, without having to know a person’s name,” he said. “Niantic made the choice not to do that.”
Franken issued several questions for Hanke to answer, including:
- Can you explain exactly which information collected by Pokémon GO is necessary for the provision or improvement of services? Are there any other purposes for which Pokémon GO collects all of this information?
- If, in fact, some of the information collected and/or permissions requested by Pokémon GO are unnecessary for the provision of services, would Niantic consider making this collection/access opt-in, as opposed to requiring a user to opt-out of the collection/access?
- Can you provide a list of current service providers? Does Pokémon GO also share users’ information with investors in Pokémon GO?
“Pokémon GO’s privacy policy specifically states that any information collected—including a child’s—’is considered to be a business asset’ and will thus be disclosed or transferred to a third party in the event that Niantic is party to a merger, acquisition, or other business transaction,” Franken’s letter continues.
He also asked for an update on Niantic’s updated policy revoking its full access to Google accounts and for Hanke to “confirm that Niantic never collected or stored any information it gained access to as a result of this mistake.”
Franken gave Hanke until August 12 to reply.
Rotenberg noted to the WSJ, “I think people care about their privacy but the reality is that there is very little they can do about it and they know that.”
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Three police officers have been confirmed killed and at least three others were injured in a shooting Sunday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to the sheriff’s office.
One suspect was also killed and authorities say two others may be at large. Police did not say whether the officers had been targeted or whether the shooting occurred during a law enforcement situation.
Several police officers have reportedly been shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to officials who say the situation is still unfolding.
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The New Orleans-based Advocate reports that “Both lanes of Airline Highway are shut down from Goodwood Boulevard to Old Hammond Highway and from Old Hammond to Drusilla Drive.” Civilians are urged to stay away.
CNN reports that seven officers were shot, although Sgt. Don Coppola of the Baton Rouge Police Department told local media the extent of the injuries and the status of the shooter are unclear.
Kip Holden, the mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish, said, “There is still an active scene…. Right now we are trying to get our arms around everything.”
“The count is three officers dead possibly,” Holden said. “Everything is moving fast and I have not been able to verify everything.”
The shooting follows charged protests in Baton Rouge over the police killing of Alton Sterling, a black man whose death was caught on video, and the deaths of five officers ambushed by a shooter in Dallas, Texas just days later.
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Footage from an ABC investigation revealed juvenile detention center guards in Australia’s Northern Territory shackling, hooding, taunting, and teargassing detained children—as well as leaving them in solitary confinement for extended periods of time.
Such abuse of children “may amount to torture by the government responsible for their care.”
—UNICEF AustraliaThe haunting footage that aired Monday on the investigative program “Four Corners” provoked comparisons to the U.S. military’s illegal torture of detainees in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, scandalizing human rights observers in Australia and worldwide.
Australia’s Indigenous Affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, characterized the TV documentary as “some of the most disturbing footage I have ever seen.” He added: “And it beggars belief that the people that we put in charge of [caring] for vulnerable children in detention and[…] looking after their welfare were in fact brutalizing those children.”
In one segment that has garnered particular outrage, 17-year-old Dylan Voller was shown being hooded and shackled to a chair, where he was left in solitary confinement for hours:
Voller and five other former inmates are now suing the Northern Territory government over their treatment while detained, according to the Guardian.
The ABC footage, in addition to documenting widespread abuses, also contradicted guards’ prior testimony at several points. The Independent reports:
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Children’s advocacy organization UNICEF Australia observed on Monday that the abuse of children documented by ABC “may amount to torture by the government responsible for their care.”
“As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,” the group added, “Australia must fulfill its promise: ‘No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment…Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.'”
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has launched a federal inquiry into the abuse. Turnbull told reporters, “Like all Australians, we were shocked and appalled by the images of mistreatment of children at the detention center.”
Yet the alarming footage was recorded between 2010 and 2015, leading some observers to say that in fact the abusive treatment of children was widely known and ignored by those in power. The Guardian reports:
Indeed, Australian news site New Matilda details many similar reports of abuse at such detention centers that went ignored in the past—and also points out that “what we saw on ‘Four Corners’ [last night] is how authorities behave when they know they’re being recorded. Can you imagine how they behave when they think they’re not?”
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