The Supreme Court decision on Trump's tax records just became more urgent than ever
By John Avlon
Reports that the Russians bribed the Taliban with bounties for killing US service members were stunning -- and not just because of the alleged targeting of American soldiers, but because the Trump administration apparently did nothing to retaliate against Russia.
The White House insists that President Donald Trump was never briefed on the intelligence reports -- begging the question why, if true, that could be the case. However, on Tuesday night, the New York Times reported that President Trump had, indeed, been briefed on the Russian bounties in February -- three months before he unilaterally offered to invite Russia to the G7 meetings.
At the very least, it fits a long pattern of Trump and his team avoiding confrontation with Vladimir Putin, despite constant provocations.
It also provides just the latest, most urgent, example of why so much rides on the Supreme Court's decision on whether Trump's taxes and business records can be turned over to members of the House of Representatives and the New York district attorney. The ruling is expected this week.
This is perhaps the most closely watched Supreme Court decision of this session, with massive implications for the separation of powers and the ability of American voters to make a fully informed decision in the November presidential election.
Trump has, of course, broken with decades of precedent in refusing to release his tax returns, often making up phony excuses for why he can't do it (among them, that he is subject to what would be the longest tax audit in recorded history). The truth is that he's done everything possible to avoid showing his finances to the American people, with Attorney General Bill Barr's Department of Justice now acting like the President's personal lawyer.
As CNN legal analyst Elie Honig points out "In total, six different federal courts -- three district courts and three courts of appeals panels -- have heard these cases, and all six have ruled against Trump." Moreover, court cases stemming from corruption in the administration of Warren G. Harding -- known as the Teapot Dome scandal -- would seem to directly apply. A subsequent 1924 law states that the Treasury Secretary "shall furnish" such tax information requested by relevant congressional committee, which Trump's Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin refused to do, citing no "legitimate legislative purpose."
But there is a clear public and legislative interest in finding out whether Trump has hidden business dealings with the Russians, which might explain his strange but persistent reluctance to confront Vladimir Putin on clear matters of US national interest.
Before Trump's political career, his son Eric repeatedly bragged about being able to bypass American banks -- many of which refused to do business with the Trump organization -- because the company could get all the money it needed from Russia. In 2008, his son Don Jr. told a real estate conference "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets ... we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." And Reuters has reported that 63 Russians invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.
Russia has a notorious reputation for money laundering and two frequent destinations are luxury real estate and casinos -- both of which the Trump organization has operated in the past.
This is far from an academic concern. CNN has tallied no less than 25 times President Trump has been strangely soft on Russia -- from denying Moscow interfered in US elections to his benefit, to suggesting it could keep the conquered Ukrainian province of Crimea, to undermining Obama-era sanctions, to withdrawing US troops from Syria, to praising pro-Russian leaders in Europe, to railing against NATO.
In addition, we've seen a pattern of administration officials being told not to bring up Russia and allegations of election interference to the President. The former Department of Homeland Security head Kirstjen Neilsen was told not to bring up current concern of 2020 election meddling by the Russians to the President because he would react badly. The former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told another senior administration official that it "wasn't a great subject and should be kept below his level."
True to form, when news of the Russian bounties erupted, the White House ignored the substance and declined to speak of retaliation against Russia. Instead, as CNN's Marshall Cohen pointed out in a Fact Check analysis of the White House press secretary's comments: "Throughout her news conference, (Kayleigh) McEnany spent more time criticizing American journalists than condemning Russia for its aggressive moves against US interests, which includes the bounties in Afghanistan, election interference in 2016, and military actions in Syria and Ukraine."
"This smells like the WH trying to mislead the public," added CNN national security analyst Susan Hennessey regarding the administration's pushback. "It is common for different intel agencies to attach different degrees of confidence based on the manner on underlying intel; that isn't the same as there being disagreement over whether something happened."
Court-watchers caution that there is no guarantee that President Trump's business records or taxes will be viewed by the public any time soon even if he loses both cases in the court decision. New York District Attorney Cy Vance, for example, has issued subpoenas for Trump's taxes in the context of a Grand Jury investigation and that information would be closely held by the court. But accountability will lead to more transparency than we've had in the past on an urgent matter that continues to confound even some Trump allies: why does Trump keep praising Putin despite constant provocations?
The American people deserve to know the truth about Trump and Russia. And to find the truth we need to follow the money. The Supreme Court could soon decide whether the truth -- or partisan politics -- will win out before the American people go to the polls this November.
June 30, 2020
So stupid, so incompetent, so playable... Is a freak doll for world leaders...
From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump's phone calls alarm US officials
By Carl Bernstein
In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.
The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.
These officials' concerns about the calls, and particularly Trump's deference to Putin, take on new resonance with reports the President may have learned in March that Russia had offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan -- and yet took no action. CNN's sources said there were calls between Putin and Trump about Trump's desire to end the American military presence in Afghanistan but they mentioned no discussion of the supposed Taliban bounties.
By far the greatest number of Trump's telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump, according to the sources. Meanwhile, the President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was "stupid."
Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, "great" accomplishments as President, and the "idiocy" of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources.
In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him -- Trump -- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. "They didn't know BS," he said of Bush and Obama -- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders.
The full, detailed picture drawn by CNN's sources of Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders is consistent with the basic tenor and some substantive elements of a limited number of calls described by former national security adviser John Bolton in his book, "The Room Where It Happened." But the calls described to CNN cover a far longer period than Bolton's tenure, are much more comprehensive — and seemingly more damning -- in their sweep.
Like Bolton, CNN's sources said that the President seemed to continually conflate his own personal interests -- especially for purposes of re-election and revenge against perceived critics and political enemies -- with the national interest.
To protect the anonymity of those describing the calls for this report, CNN will not reveal their job titles nor quote them at length directly. More than a dozen officials either listened to the President's phone calls in real time or were provided detailed summaries and rough-text recording printouts of the calls soon after their completion, CNN's sources said. The sources were interviewed by CNN repeatedly over a four-month period extending into June.
The sources did cite some instances in which they said Trump acted responsibly and in the national interest during telephone discussions with some foreign leaders. CNN reached out to Kelly, McMaster and Tillerson for comment and received no response as of Monday afternoon. Mattis did not comment.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment before this story published. After publication, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said, "President Trump is a world class negotiator who has consistently furthered America's interests on the world stage. From negotiating the phase one China deal and the USMCA to NATO allies contributing more and defeating ISIS, President Trump has shown his ability to advance America's strategic interests."
One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.
Attacking key ally leaders -- especially women
The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump's tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump's telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN's sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President's calls on US national security to several individuals in private.
Two sources compared many of the President's conversations with foreign leaders to Trump's recent press "briefings" on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.
In addition to Merkel and May, the sources said, Trump regularly bullied and disparaged other leaders of the western alliance during his phone conversations -- including French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison -- in the same hostile and aggressive way he discussed the coronavirus with some of America's governors.
Next to Erdogan, no foreign leader initiated more calls with Trump than Macron, the sources said, with the French President often trying to convince Trump to change course on environmental and security policy matters -- including climate change and US withdrawal from the Iranian multilateral nuclear accord.
Macron usually got "nowhere" on substantive matters, while Trump became irritated at the French President's stream of requests and subjected him to self-serving harangues and lectures that were described by one source as personalized verbal "whippings," especially about France and other countries not meeting NATO spending targets, their liberal immigration policies or their trade imbalances with the US.
But his most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as "near-sadistic" by one of the sources and confirmed by others. "Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her 'stupid,' and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians ... He's toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with."
The calls "are so unusual," confirmed a German official, that special measures were taken in Berlin to ensure that their contents remained secret. The official described Trump's behavior with Merkel in the calls as "very aggressive" and said that the circle of German officials involved in monitoring Merkel's calls with Trump has shrunk: "It's just a small circle of people who are involved and the reason, the main reason, is that they are indeed problematic."
Trump's conversations with May, the UK Prime Minister from 2016 to 2019, were described as "humiliating and bullying," with Trump attacking her as "a fool" and spineless in her approach to Brexit, NATO and immigration matters.
"He'd get agitated about something with Theresa May, then he'd get nasty with her on the phone call," One source said. "It's the same interaction in every setting -- coronavirus or Brexit -- with just no filter applied."
Merkel remained calm and outwardly unruffled in the face of Trump's attacks —"like water off a duck's back," in the words of one source -- and she regularly countered his bluster with recitations of fact. The German official quoted above said that during Merkel's visit to the White House two years ago, Trump displayed "very questionable behavior" that "was quite aggressive ... [T]he Chancellor indeed stayed calm, and that's what she does on the phone."
Prime Minister May, in contrast, became "flustered and nervous" in her conversations with the President. "He clearly intimidated her and meant to," said one of CNN's sources. In response to a request for comment about Trump's behavior in calls with May, the UK's Downing Street referred CNN to its website. The site lists brief descriptions of the content of some calls and avoids any mention of tone or tension. The French embassy in Washington declined to comment, while the Russian and Turkish embassies did not respond to requests for comment.
Concerns over calls with Putin and Erdogan
The calls with Putin and Erdogan were particularly egregious in terms of Trump almost never being prepared substantively and thus leaving him susceptible to being taken advantage of in various ways, according to the sources -- in part because those conversations (as with most heads of state), were almost certainly recorded by the security services and other agencies of their countries.
In his phone exchanges with Putin, the sources reported, the President talked mostly about himself, frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms: touting his "unprecedented" success in building the US economy; asserting in derisive language how much smarter and "stronger" he is than "the imbeciles" and "weaklings" who came before him in the presidency (especially Obama); reveling in his experience running the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and obsequiously courting Putin's admiration and approval. Putin "just outplays" him, said a high-level administration official -- comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. While Putin "destabilizes the West," said this source, the President of the United States "sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him." (At times, the Putin-Trump conversations sounded like "two guys in a steam bath," a source added.)
In numerous calls with Putin that were described to CNN, Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner -- inordinately solicitous of Putin's admiration and seemingly seeking his approval -- while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights; and an arms control agreement, which never got dealt with in a way that advanced shared Russian and American goals that both Putin and Trump professed to favor, CNN's sources said.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has touted the theme of "America First" as his north star in foreign policy, advancing the view that America's allies and adversaries have taken economic advantage of US goodwill in trade. And that America's closest allies need to increase their share of collective defense spending. He frequently justifies his seeming deference to Putin by arguing that Russia is a major world player and that it is in the United States' interest to have a constructive and friendly relationship -- requiring a reset with Moscow through his personal dialogue with Putin.
In separate interviews, two high-level administration officials familiar with most of the Trump-Putin calls said the President naively elevated Russia -- a second-rate totalitarian state with less than 4% of the world's GDP -- and its authoritarian leader almost to parity with the United States and its President by undermining the tougher, more realistic view of Russia expressed by the US Congress, American intelligence agencies and the long-standing post-war policy consensus of the US and its European allies. "He [Trump] gives away the advantage that was hard won in the Cold War," said one of the officials -- in part by "giving Putin and Russia a legitimacy they never had," the official said. "He's given Russia a lifeline -- because there is no doubt that they're a declining power ... He's playing with something he doesn't understand and he's giving them power that they would use [aggressively]."
Both officials cited Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria -- a move that benefited Turkey as well as Russia -- as perhaps the most grievous example. "He gave away the store," one of them said.
The frequency of the calls with Erdogan -- in which the Turkish president continually pressed Trump for policy concessions and other favors -- was especially worrisome to McMaster, Bolton and Kelly, the more so because of the ease with which Erdogan bypassed normal National Security Council protocols and procedures to reach the President, said two of the sources.
Erdogan became so adept at knowing when to reach the President directly that some White House aides became convinced that Turkey's security services in Washington were using Trump's schedule and whereabouts to provide Erdogan with information about when the President would be available for a call.
On some occasions Erdogan reached him on the golf course and Trump would delay play while the two spoke at length.
Two sources described the President as woefully uninformed about the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle East generally, and said he was often caught off guard, and lacked sufficient knowledge to engage on equal terms in nuanced policy discussion with Erdogan. "Erdogan took him to the cleaners," said one of the sources.
The sources said that deleterious US policy decisions on Syria -- including the President's directive to pull US forces out of the country, which then allowed Turkey to attack Kurds who had helped the US fight ISIS and weakened NATO's role in the conflict -- were directly linked to Erdogan's ability to get his way with Trump on the phone calls.
Trump occasionally became angry at Erdogan -- sometimes because of demands that Turkey be granted preferential trade status, and because the Turkish leader would not release an imprisoned American evangelical pastor, Andrew Brunson, accused of 'aiding terrorism' in the 2016 coup that attempted to overthrow Erdogan. Brunson was eventually released in October 2018.
Despite the lack of advance notice for many of Erdogan's calls, full sets of contemporaneous notes from designated notetakers at the White House exist, as well as rough voice-generated computer texts of the conversations, the sources said.
According to one high-level source, there are also existing summaries and conversation-readouts of the President's discussions with Erdogan that might reinforce Bolton's allegations against Trump in the so-called "Halkbank case," involving a major Turkish bank with suspected ties to Erdogan and his family. That source said the matter was raised in more than one telephone conversation between Erdogan and Trump.
Bolton wrote in his book that in December 2018, at Erdogan's urging, Trump offered to interfere in an investigation by then-US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman into the Turkish bank, which was accused of violating US sanctions on Iran.
"Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people," Bolton wrote. Berman's office eventually brought an indictment against the bank in October 2019 for fraud, money laundering and other offenses related to participation in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade the US sanctions on Iran. On June 20, Trump fired Berman -- whose office is also investigating Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal lawyer -- after the prosecutor refused to resign at Attorney General William Barr's direction.
Unlike Bolton, CNN's sources did not assert or suggest specifically that Trump's calls with Erdogan might have been grounds for impeachment because of possible evidence of unlawful conduct by the President. Rather, they characterized Trump's calls with heads of state in the aggregate as evidence of Trump's general "unfitness" for the presidency on grounds of temperament and incompetence, an assertion Bolton made as well in an interview to promote his book with ABC News last week: "I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job," Bolton said.
Family feedback and grievances fuel Trump's approach
CNN spoke to sources familiar with the President's phone calls repeatedly over a four-month period. In their interviews, the sources took great care not to disclose specific national security information and classified details -- but rather described the broad contents of many of the calls, and the overall tenor and methodology of Trump's approach to his telephone discussions with foreign leaders.
In addition to rough, voice-generated software transcription, almost all of Trump's telephone conversations with Putin, Erdogan and leaders of the western alliance were supplemented and documented by extensive contemporaneous note-taking (and, often, summaries) prepared by Fiona Hill, deputy assistant to the President and senior NSC director for Europe and Russia until her resignation last year. Hill listened to most of the President's calls with Putin, Erdogan and the European leaders, according to her closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee last November.
Elements of that testimony by Hill, if re-examined by Congressional investigators, might provide a detailed road-map of the President's extensively-documented conversations, the sources said. White House and intelligence officials familiar with the voice-generated transcriptions and underlying documents agreed that their contents could be devastating to the President's standing with members of the Congress of both parties -- and the public -- if revealed in great detail. (There is little doubt that Trump would invoke executive privilege to keep the conversations private. However, some former officials with detailed knowledge of many of the conversations might be willing to testify about them, sources said.)
In one of the earliest calls between Putin and Trump, the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were in the room to listen — joining McMaster, Tillerson, Hill, and a State Department aide to Tillerson.
"The call was all over the place," said an NSC deputy who read a detailed summary of the conversation -- with Putin speaking substantively and at length, and Trump propping himself up in short autobiographical bursts of bragging, self-congratulation and flattery toward Putin. As described to CNN, Kushner and Ivanka Trump were immediately effusive in their praise of how Trump had handled the call -- while Tillerson (who knew Putin well from his years in Russia as an oil executive), Hill and McMaster were skeptical.
Hill — author of a definitive biography of Putin -- started to explain some of the nuances she perceived from the call, according to CNN's sources — offering insight into Putin's psychology, his typical "smooth-talking" and linear approach and what the Russian leader was trying to achieve in the call. Hill was cut off by Trump, and the President continued discussing the call with Jared and Ivanka, making clear he wanted to hear the congratulatory evaluation of his daughter and her husband, rather than how Hill, Tillerson or McMaster judged the conversation.
McMaster viewed that early phone call with Putin as indicative of the conduct of the whole relationship between Russia and the Trump administration, according to the sources -- a conclusion subsequent national security advisers and chiefs of staff, and numerous high-ranking intelligence officials also reached: unlike in previous administrations, there were relatively few meaningful dealings between military and diplomatic professionals, even at the highest levels, because Trump -- distrustful of the experts and dismissive of their attempts to brief him -- conducted the relationship largely ad hoc with Putin and almost totally by himself. Ultimately, Putin and the Russians learned that "nobody has the authority to do anything" -- and the Russian leader used that insight to his advantage, as one of CNN's sources said.
The Kushners were also present for other important calls with foreign leaders and made their primacy apparent, encouraged by the President even on matters of foreign policy in which his daughter and her husband had no experience. Almost never, according to CNN's sources, would Trump read the briefing materials prepared for him by the CIA and NSC staff in advance of his calls with heads of state.
"He won't consult them, he won't even get their wisdom," said one of the sources, who cited Saudi Arabia's bin Salman as near the top of a list of leaders whom Trump "picks up and calls without anybody being prepared," a scenario that frequently confronted NSC and intelligence aides. The source added that the aides' helpless reaction "would frequently be, 'Oh my God, don't make that phone call.'"
"Trump's view is that he is a better judge of character than anyone else," said one of CNN's sources. The President consistently rejected advice from US defense, intelligence and national security principals that the Russian president be approached more firmly and with less trust. CNN's sources pointed to the most notable public example as "emblematic": Trump, standing next to the Russian President at their meeting in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2018, and saying he "didn't see any reason why" Russia would have interfered in the 2016 presidential election -- despite the findings of the entire US intelligence community that Moscow had. "President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today," Trump said.
The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump's conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world's greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls -- almost never the United States and its historic place and leadership in the world, according to sources intimately familiar with the calls.
In numerous calls with the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Australia and Canada -- America's closest allies of the past 75 years, the whole postwar era -- Trump typically established a grievance almost as a default or leitmotif of the conversation, whatever the supposed agenda, according to those sources.
"Everything was always personalized, with everybody doing terrible things to rip us off — which meant ripping 'me' — Trump — off. He couldn't -- or wouldn't -- see or focus on the larger picture," said one US official.
The source cited a conspicuously demonstrable instance in which Trump resisted asking Angela Merkel (at the UK's urging) to publicly hold Russia accountable for the so-called 'Salisbury' poisonings of a former Russian spy and his daughter with Novichok, a nerve agent developed in what was then the Soviet Union, in which Putin had denied any Russian involvement despite voluminous evidence to the contrary.
"It took a lot of effort" to get Trump to bring up the subject, said one source. Instead of addressing Russia's responsibility for the poisonings and holding it to international account, Trump made the focus of the call -- in personally demeaning terms -- Germany's and Merkel's supposedly deadbeat approach to allied burden-sharing. Eventually, said the sources, as urged by his NSC staff, Trump at last addressed the matter of the poisonings, almost grudgingly.
"With almost every problem, all it takes [in his phone calls] is someone asking him to do something as President on behalf of the United States and he doesn't see it that way; he goes to being ripped off; he's not interested in cooperative issues or working on them together; instead he's deflecting things or pushing real issues off into a corner," said a US official.
"There was no sense of 'Team America' in the conversations," or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. "The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always 'Just me'."
By Carl Bernstein
In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.
The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.
These officials' concerns about the calls, and particularly Trump's deference to Putin, take on new resonance with reports the President may have learned in March that Russia had offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan -- and yet took no action. CNN's sources said there were calls between Putin and Trump about Trump's desire to end the American military presence in Afghanistan but they mentioned no discussion of the supposed Taliban bounties.
By far the greatest number of Trump's telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump, according to the sources. Meanwhile, the President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was "stupid."
Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, "great" accomplishments as President, and the "idiocy" of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources.
In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him -- Trump -- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. "They didn't know BS," he said of Bush and Obama -- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders.
The full, detailed picture drawn by CNN's sources of Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders is consistent with the basic tenor and some substantive elements of a limited number of calls described by former national security adviser John Bolton in his book, "The Room Where It Happened." But the calls described to CNN cover a far longer period than Bolton's tenure, are much more comprehensive — and seemingly more damning -- in their sweep.
Like Bolton, CNN's sources said that the President seemed to continually conflate his own personal interests -- especially for purposes of re-election and revenge against perceived critics and political enemies -- with the national interest.
To protect the anonymity of those describing the calls for this report, CNN will not reveal their job titles nor quote them at length directly. More than a dozen officials either listened to the President's phone calls in real time or were provided detailed summaries and rough-text recording printouts of the calls soon after their completion, CNN's sources said. The sources were interviewed by CNN repeatedly over a four-month period extending into June.
The sources did cite some instances in which they said Trump acted responsibly and in the national interest during telephone discussions with some foreign leaders. CNN reached out to Kelly, McMaster and Tillerson for comment and received no response as of Monday afternoon. Mattis did not comment.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment before this story published. After publication, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said, "President Trump is a world class negotiator who has consistently furthered America's interests on the world stage. From negotiating the phase one China deal and the USMCA to NATO allies contributing more and defeating ISIS, President Trump has shown his ability to advance America's strategic interests."
One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.
Attacking key ally leaders -- especially women
The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump's tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump's telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN's sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President's calls on US national security to several individuals in private.
Two sources compared many of the President's conversations with foreign leaders to Trump's recent press "briefings" on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.
In addition to Merkel and May, the sources said, Trump regularly bullied and disparaged other leaders of the western alliance during his phone conversations -- including French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison -- in the same hostile and aggressive way he discussed the coronavirus with some of America's governors.
Next to Erdogan, no foreign leader initiated more calls with Trump than Macron, the sources said, with the French President often trying to convince Trump to change course on environmental and security policy matters -- including climate change and US withdrawal from the Iranian multilateral nuclear accord.
Macron usually got "nowhere" on substantive matters, while Trump became irritated at the French President's stream of requests and subjected him to self-serving harangues and lectures that were described by one source as personalized verbal "whippings," especially about France and other countries not meeting NATO spending targets, their liberal immigration policies or their trade imbalances with the US.
But his most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as "near-sadistic" by one of the sources and confirmed by others. "Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her 'stupid,' and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians ... He's toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with."
The calls "are so unusual," confirmed a German official, that special measures were taken in Berlin to ensure that their contents remained secret. The official described Trump's behavior with Merkel in the calls as "very aggressive" and said that the circle of German officials involved in monitoring Merkel's calls with Trump has shrunk: "It's just a small circle of people who are involved and the reason, the main reason, is that they are indeed problematic."
Trump's conversations with May, the UK Prime Minister from 2016 to 2019, were described as "humiliating and bullying," with Trump attacking her as "a fool" and spineless in her approach to Brexit, NATO and immigration matters.
"He'd get agitated about something with Theresa May, then he'd get nasty with her on the phone call," One source said. "It's the same interaction in every setting -- coronavirus or Brexit -- with just no filter applied."
Merkel remained calm and outwardly unruffled in the face of Trump's attacks —"like water off a duck's back," in the words of one source -- and she regularly countered his bluster with recitations of fact. The German official quoted above said that during Merkel's visit to the White House two years ago, Trump displayed "very questionable behavior" that "was quite aggressive ... [T]he Chancellor indeed stayed calm, and that's what she does on the phone."
Prime Minister May, in contrast, became "flustered and nervous" in her conversations with the President. "He clearly intimidated her and meant to," said one of CNN's sources. In response to a request for comment about Trump's behavior in calls with May, the UK's Downing Street referred CNN to its website. The site lists brief descriptions of the content of some calls and avoids any mention of tone or tension. The French embassy in Washington declined to comment, while the Russian and Turkish embassies did not respond to requests for comment.
Concerns over calls with Putin and Erdogan
The calls with Putin and Erdogan were particularly egregious in terms of Trump almost never being prepared substantively and thus leaving him susceptible to being taken advantage of in various ways, according to the sources -- in part because those conversations (as with most heads of state), were almost certainly recorded by the security services and other agencies of their countries.
In his phone exchanges with Putin, the sources reported, the President talked mostly about himself, frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms: touting his "unprecedented" success in building the US economy; asserting in derisive language how much smarter and "stronger" he is than "the imbeciles" and "weaklings" who came before him in the presidency (especially Obama); reveling in his experience running the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and obsequiously courting Putin's admiration and approval. Putin "just outplays" him, said a high-level administration official -- comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. While Putin "destabilizes the West," said this source, the President of the United States "sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him." (At times, the Putin-Trump conversations sounded like "two guys in a steam bath," a source added.)
In numerous calls with Putin that were described to CNN, Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner -- inordinately solicitous of Putin's admiration and seemingly seeking his approval -- while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights; and an arms control agreement, which never got dealt with in a way that advanced shared Russian and American goals that both Putin and Trump professed to favor, CNN's sources said.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has touted the theme of "America First" as his north star in foreign policy, advancing the view that America's allies and adversaries have taken economic advantage of US goodwill in trade. And that America's closest allies need to increase their share of collective defense spending. He frequently justifies his seeming deference to Putin by arguing that Russia is a major world player and that it is in the United States' interest to have a constructive and friendly relationship -- requiring a reset with Moscow through his personal dialogue with Putin.
In separate interviews, two high-level administration officials familiar with most of the Trump-Putin calls said the President naively elevated Russia -- a second-rate totalitarian state with less than 4% of the world's GDP -- and its authoritarian leader almost to parity with the United States and its President by undermining the tougher, more realistic view of Russia expressed by the US Congress, American intelligence agencies and the long-standing post-war policy consensus of the US and its European allies. "He [Trump] gives away the advantage that was hard won in the Cold War," said one of the officials -- in part by "giving Putin and Russia a legitimacy they never had," the official said. "He's given Russia a lifeline -- because there is no doubt that they're a declining power ... He's playing with something he doesn't understand and he's giving them power that they would use [aggressively]."
Both officials cited Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria -- a move that benefited Turkey as well as Russia -- as perhaps the most grievous example. "He gave away the store," one of them said.
The frequency of the calls with Erdogan -- in which the Turkish president continually pressed Trump for policy concessions and other favors -- was especially worrisome to McMaster, Bolton and Kelly, the more so because of the ease with which Erdogan bypassed normal National Security Council protocols and procedures to reach the President, said two of the sources.
Erdogan became so adept at knowing when to reach the President directly that some White House aides became convinced that Turkey's security services in Washington were using Trump's schedule and whereabouts to provide Erdogan with information about when the President would be available for a call.
On some occasions Erdogan reached him on the golf course and Trump would delay play while the two spoke at length.
Two sources described the President as woefully uninformed about the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle East generally, and said he was often caught off guard, and lacked sufficient knowledge to engage on equal terms in nuanced policy discussion with Erdogan. "Erdogan took him to the cleaners," said one of the sources.
The sources said that deleterious US policy decisions on Syria -- including the President's directive to pull US forces out of the country, which then allowed Turkey to attack Kurds who had helped the US fight ISIS and weakened NATO's role in the conflict -- were directly linked to Erdogan's ability to get his way with Trump on the phone calls.
Trump occasionally became angry at Erdogan -- sometimes because of demands that Turkey be granted preferential trade status, and because the Turkish leader would not release an imprisoned American evangelical pastor, Andrew Brunson, accused of 'aiding terrorism' in the 2016 coup that attempted to overthrow Erdogan. Brunson was eventually released in October 2018.
Despite the lack of advance notice for many of Erdogan's calls, full sets of contemporaneous notes from designated notetakers at the White House exist, as well as rough voice-generated computer texts of the conversations, the sources said.
According to one high-level source, there are also existing summaries and conversation-readouts of the President's discussions with Erdogan that might reinforce Bolton's allegations against Trump in the so-called "Halkbank case," involving a major Turkish bank with suspected ties to Erdogan and his family. That source said the matter was raised in more than one telephone conversation between Erdogan and Trump.
Bolton wrote in his book that in December 2018, at Erdogan's urging, Trump offered to interfere in an investigation by then-US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman into the Turkish bank, which was accused of violating US sanctions on Iran.
"Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people," Bolton wrote. Berman's office eventually brought an indictment against the bank in October 2019 for fraud, money laundering and other offenses related to participation in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade the US sanctions on Iran. On June 20, Trump fired Berman -- whose office is also investigating Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal lawyer -- after the prosecutor refused to resign at Attorney General William Barr's direction.
Unlike Bolton, CNN's sources did not assert or suggest specifically that Trump's calls with Erdogan might have been grounds for impeachment because of possible evidence of unlawful conduct by the President. Rather, they characterized Trump's calls with heads of state in the aggregate as evidence of Trump's general "unfitness" for the presidency on grounds of temperament and incompetence, an assertion Bolton made as well in an interview to promote his book with ABC News last week: "I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job," Bolton said.
Family feedback and grievances fuel Trump's approach
CNN spoke to sources familiar with the President's phone calls repeatedly over a four-month period. In their interviews, the sources took great care not to disclose specific national security information and classified details -- but rather described the broad contents of many of the calls, and the overall tenor and methodology of Trump's approach to his telephone discussions with foreign leaders.
In addition to rough, voice-generated software transcription, almost all of Trump's telephone conversations with Putin, Erdogan and leaders of the western alliance were supplemented and documented by extensive contemporaneous note-taking (and, often, summaries) prepared by Fiona Hill, deputy assistant to the President and senior NSC director for Europe and Russia until her resignation last year. Hill listened to most of the President's calls with Putin, Erdogan and the European leaders, according to her closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee last November.
Elements of that testimony by Hill, if re-examined by Congressional investigators, might provide a detailed road-map of the President's extensively-documented conversations, the sources said. White House and intelligence officials familiar with the voice-generated transcriptions and underlying documents agreed that their contents could be devastating to the President's standing with members of the Congress of both parties -- and the public -- if revealed in great detail. (There is little doubt that Trump would invoke executive privilege to keep the conversations private. However, some former officials with detailed knowledge of many of the conversations might be willing to testify about them, sources said.)
In one of the earliest calls between Putin and Trump, the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were in the room to listen — joining McMaster, Tillerson, Hill, and a State Department aide to Tillerson.
"The call was all over the place," said an NSC deputy who read a detailed summary of the conversation -- with Putin speaking substantively and at length, and Trump propping himself up in short autobiographical bursts of bragging, self-congratulation and flattery toward Putin. As described to CNN, Kushner and Ivanka Trump were immediately effusive in their praise of how Trump had handled the call -- while Tillerson (who knew Putin well from his years in Russia as an oil executive), Hill and McMaster were skeptical.
Hill — author of a definitive biography of Putin -- started to explain some of the nuances she perceived from the call, according to CNN's sources — offering insight into Putin's psychology, his typical "smooth-talking" and linear approach and what the Russian leader was trying to achieve in the call. Hill was cut off by Trump, and the President continued discussing the call with Jared and Ivanka, making clear he wanted to hear the congratulatory evaluation of his daughter and her husband, rather than how Hill, Tillerson or McMaster judged the conversation.
McMaster viewed that early phone call with Putin as indicative of the conduct of the whole relationship between Russia and the Trump administration, according to the sources -- a conclusion subsequent national security advisers and chiefs of staff, and numerous high-ranking intelligence officials also reached: unlike in previous administrations, there were relatively few meaningful dealings between military and diplomatic professionals, even at the highest levels, because Trump -- distrustful of the experts and dismissive of their attempts to brief him -- conducted the relationship largely ad hoc with Putin and almost totally by himself. Ultimately, Putin and the Russians learned that "nobody has the authority to do anything" -- and the Russian leader used that insight to his advantage, as one of CNN's sources said.
The Kushners were also present for other important calls with foreign leaders and made their primacy apparent, encouraged by the President even on matters of foreign policy in which his daughter and her husband had no experience. Almost never, according to CNN's sources, would Trump read the briefing materials prepared for him by the CIA and NSC staff in advance of his calls with heads of state.
"He won't consult them, he won't even get their wisdom," said one of the sources, who cited Saudi Arabia's bin Salman as near the top of a list of leaders whom Trump "picks up and calls without anybody being prepared," a scenario that frequently confronted NSC and intelligence aides. The source added that the aides' helpless reaction "would frequently be, 'Oh my God, don't make that phone call.'"
"Trump's view is that he is a better judge of character than anyone else," said one of CNN's sources. The President consistently rejected advice from US defense, intelligence and national security principals that the Russian president be approached more firmly and with less trust. CNN's sources pointed to the most notable public example as "emblematic": Trump, standing next to the Russian President at their meeting in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2018, and saying he "didn't see any reason why" Russia would have interfered in the 2016 presidential election -- despite the findings of the entire US intelligence community that Moscow had. "President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today," Trump said.
The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump's conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world's greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls -- almost never the United States and its historic place and leadership in the world, according to sources intimately familiar with the calls.
In numerous calls with the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Australia and Canada -- America's closest allies of the past 75 years, the whole postwar era -- Trump typically established a grievance almost as a default or leitmotif of the conversation, whatever the supposed agenda, according to those sources.
"Everything was always personalized, with everybody doing terrible things to rip us off — which meant ripping 'me' — Trump — off. He couldn't -- or wouldn't -- see or focus on the larger picture," said one US official.
The source cited a conspicuously demonstrable instance in which Trump resisted asking Angela Merkel (at the UK's urging) to publicly hold Russia accountable for the so-called 'Salisbury' poisonings of a former Russian spy and his daughter with Novichok, a nerve agent developed in what was then the Soviet Union, in which Putin had denied any Russian involvement despite voluminous evidence to the contrary.
"It took a lot of effort" to get Trump to bring up the subject, said one source. Instead of addressing Russia's responsibility for the poisonings and holding it to international account, Trump made the focus of the call -- in personally demeaning terms -- Germany's and Merkel's supposedly deadbeat approach to allied burden-sharing. Eventually, said the sources, as urged by his NSC staff, Trump at last addressed the matter of the poisonings, almost grudgingly.
"With almost every problem, all it takes [in his phone calls] is someone asking him to do something as President on behalf of the United States and he doesn't see it that way; he goes to being ripped off; he's not interested in cooperative issues or working on them together; instead he's deflecting things or pushing real issues off into a corner," said a US official.
"There was no sense of 'Team America' in the conversations," or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. "The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always 'Just me'."
Election Catastrophe
Can a Group of Policy Experts Prevent an Election Catastrophe in 2020?
COVID-19, Russia, hurricanes, and Trump—the threats to American democracy are many.
DAVID CORN
Edward Foley has a nightmare. It’s a poli-sci horror tale. A professor of constitutional law and elections expert at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, Foley foresees a scenario for the coming election that could tear apart American democracy.
Peer ahead to election night and imagine a close contest between Donald Trump and the Democratic presidential nominee, so close that the results in Pennsylvania will decide the winner. As the evening proceeds, Trump is narrowly ahead in the Keystone State, with the news networks tallying the incoming votes. When 100 percent of the precincts report, Trump is up by 20,000 votes, and he tweets: “The race is over. Another four years to keep Making America Great Again.” But hold on. The next day—and in the days ahead—as the counting of absentee and provisional votes occurs in routine fashion, Trump’s lead declines. The election is being stolen, Trump proclaims. His devotees take to the streets. The final result comes in: The Democrat triumphs by several thousand votes. “THIS THEFT WILL NOT STAND,” Trump tweets, and he declares political war.
In a 55-page law review article published last year, Foley depicts in granular detail what could happen at this point, if Trump and the Republicans opt to challenge the Pennsylvania results. Here’s a spoiler: It’s a damn mess with no clear outcome. And this one case study of how the 2020 presidential race could become a disaster has caught the attention of academics, former government officials, and policy advocates who have been banding together in different forms to try to address the many ways the election might be disrupted or contested.
One such group is the ominously named National Task Force on Election Crises, a bipartisan collection of experts who are plotting out potential calamities and exploring possible remedies before anything hits the fan. This outfit is not predicting chaos, but it has considered dozens of scenarios beyond the Pennsylvania standoff in which the election could go awry and yield chaos and, perhaps, no easy resolution. It’s hair-raising stuff, and the fact that a number of the nation’s leading experts on elections are alarmed (to varying degrees) about what might transpire in November is in itself frightening.
There are laws and constitutional provisions that cover the management of a presidential election, but Foley, in this one example (which could apply to states other than Pennsylvania), shows that these measures are profoundly inadequate for resolving the sort of dispute that he envisions. In his thought experiment, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania determines the Democratic candidate has won the state and certifies the Democratic slate of electors, sending that notification to Congress. But the GOP-controlled state legislature has other plans: It insists Trump is the true victor, and it forwards the Trump slate of electors to Congress. The House and Senate in early January must decide which slate to accept. (It is the new Congress elected during the November balloting that will be in charge, though Vice President Mike Pence would still at this stage be president of the Senate.) If the party makeup of the two chambers has not changed, the Senate, ruled by Republicans, could well accept the Trump slate, and the House, in Democratic hands, would presumably approve the Democratic candidate’s slate. In the meantime, there could be both state and federal court cases related to the competing slates, with the matter perhaps landing before the Supreme Court.
Foley teases all this out and describes the various court challenges and legal arguments each side could deploy. He points out that in 2016, Trump’s election-night lead in Pennsylvania of 67,951 ultimately dropped to 44,292. So it is not hard to envision that this time an apparent election night win could turn into a loss. In fact, this happened in several congressional races in 2018. Foley makes it plain that the path forward in such a circumstance is not self-evident. The Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs the process for tallying votes within the Electoral College, is imprecise. Under this law, Republicans could even argue that the very existence of competing slates ought to invalidate Pennsylvania’s votes, if the Democratic candidate needs that state to win.
“It would not take an extraordinary calamity, like a foreign cyberattack, for there to be conditions enabling partisans to dispute the result,” Foley writes. “Instead, a dispute engulfing Congress could arise from a situation as routine as [a vote count shift]. Given this possibility, it is truly irresponsible that Congress has not attempted to eliminate—in advance of the 2020 election—the ambiguities that plague the Electoral Count Act.” In other words, the nation could be screwed.
Foley is hardly alone in forecasting a possible fiasco. In October 2018, shortly before the congressional midterm elections, Norman Ornstein, an expert on government and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post that raised a simple question: “What do we do if a national election is disrupted?” Weeks earlier, Hurricane Michael had slammed into the Florida Panhandle, and Ornstein wondered what might happen should a natural disaster strike during an election. If a storm—or an earthquake or a volcano eruption or wildfires—prevented voting, what could be done? States can reschedule state elections, but federal contests cannot be postponed. “We have no Plan B to take the impact into account if a national election is disrupted,” Ornstein bemoaned. “There are no do-overs and no mechanism in place to ameliorate the effect.” And Ornstein had in mind much more than Mother Nature: “What if, for example, China or Russia knocks out the electrical grid in one region of the country on a presidential Election Day? A hundred or more electoral votes would be disrupted, leaving the election outcome unsettled (along with many House, Senate and other elections).”
Neither the US Constitution or any law offers a plan for a makeup election. And what would be fair? Rescheduling voting in those areas that went dark, though voters there would now know the results of the votes cast elsewhere? Or a new vote across the nation? And if the election was thrown to the House of Representatives to settle—without a full House, due to the disrupted elections—would the president picked by this body be considered legitimate? Ornstein noted there was “no easy answer” of how to address a major disruption. What was needed, he contended, was to move quickly on possible reforms “before an event happens.”
Around this time, a nonprofit group based in Washington, DC, called Protect Democracy was engaging in likeminded worrying. The organization was founded in early 2017 by former executive branch officials, many hailing from the Obama administration, with the aim, according to its website, “to prevent American Democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government.” The group has a progressive bent, but its advisers include conservative commentators Linda Chavez and Mona Charen and Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. In the fall of 2018, its officials posed a question: What would occur if there were an aggressive hack of a voting system that prompted serious uncertainty about the results? It could be an attack that causes some units to malfunction. Or a hack of registered voter databases that leads to significant voting problems on Election Day. What would come next? “It caused us to think that we’re not ready for that,” says Ian Bassin, a co-founder of Protect Democracy and a former associate counsel in the Obama White House. “Can we get together people who would be called on in an election crisis and try to develop a consensus?”
Protect Democracy assembled a crew of election and legal experts that now numbers several dozen and dubbed it the National Task Force on Election Crises. The task force includes Foley and Ornstein, as well as Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of homeland security who served in the Bush-Cheney administration, Lanhee Chen, the policy director for the 2012 Romney-Ryan campaign, Paul Rosenzweig, a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush-Cheney years, Michael Steele, a former GOP chair, MarÃa Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of the Voto Latino Foundation, and Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The task force recently added Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. It held its first meeting in June 2019 at Georgetown University, with an ambitious four-point agenda: identify crises that could happen; derive best-case scenarios for addressing them; consider what could be done in advance to give those remedies a shot of succeeding; and weigh actions that could lessen the chances of a crisis.
As part of this process, Protect Democracy last year enlisted students at a Harvard law school clinic it runs to envision for the task force possible crises that could threaten the 2020 election. They cooked up 65 potential disasters—a list that was winnowed to the 15 crises deemed the most likely and most disconcerting. And that lineup was trimmed again. (In this culling process, the possibility of a pandemic was removed as a contender. It was not considered one of the more feasible disturbances.) These possible debacles were termed “Magellan scenarios” because they each involved uncharted waters. And the assortment has included the Foley scenario, natural disasters, a foreign attack on the power grid, a hack on voting systems, violence or the threat of violence interfering with people’s ability to vote, a state or federal official misusing emergency powers to mess with the election, the deployment of law enforcement or immigration enforcement at polling locations to intimidate voters, the Justice Department mounting politically motivated investigations or prosecutions of a candidate, and the refusal of a candidate to concede. The National Task Force on Election Crises began working through these scenarios, looking to see if it could reach agreement on the best ways to avoid these calamities and on how to respond should the worse come to pass.
At first, the task force’s work was behind the scenes. There was no intent to publicize its existence or deliberations before the election. Its organizers were proceeding on a simple assumption: Should a crisis hit, the country might better be able to handle it if a group of experts of different political pedigrees could address the controversy at hand with a single voice. No doubt, in such a time, there would be a cacophony of outrage and opinions spreading across the media and through the national political debate. At what might be a perilous moment, the group, according to one participant, could be “the political anchor of conventional wisdom.” The theory was that the existence of a broad consensus on a key point—say, this group had already determined that an important part of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 should be read a certain way—could ease the way to a resolution and make it tougher for a bad-faith political actor to exploit the situation. For this plan to work, there was no need to reveal the group’s existence before the election went south.
Then the coronavirus struck. “We went from a world with an election crisis possible to one where there is an election crisis,” Bassin recalls.
The task force revealed itself in March. It started a Twitter account and put up a website, noting, “Disruptions to elections can come from natural disasters or human-made disasters such as cyber attacks or improper interference by elected officials. In any event, it’s critical to know the proper steps forward in dealing with a crisis to ensure a free and fair election.” The group began releasing materials on how states should handle elections in the time of a pandemic. It published a coronavirus guide for election officials, recommending they immediately start preparing for wide-scale voting by mail and make plans to provide safe voting (including curbside voting and early voting) and to communicate to voters about changes in voting procedures. It sent a letter to governors, secretaries of state, and state election directors urging them to “implement the Task Force’s recommendations, accelerate planning for the general election, and request additional funding from the federal government if necessary to fund the new initiatives your state will need to undertake for the November election.” The task force released a statement noting that the president cannot cancel a national election or change its date and that “under no circumstance can any president’s term be extended past noon on January 20th without amending the Constitution.”
Task force members, through several working groups, have continued to ponder what could go wrong on November 3, 2020, and what would be the right responses. “As we considered the scenarios, many of us had an instinct to deny the hypotheticals,” Bassin recalls. “We didn’t want to contemplate that these nightmares could happen. The lawyers in the group sought legal answers only to find that the law sometimes does not provide clear answers. In those cases, are there principles that can guide us toward a consensus? If so, forcing people to consider in advance what those are and what should happen seemed a better thing to do than to wait until a crisis strikes.”
In this realm of what-ifs, there is one huge X factor: Donald Trump. How could this group—or anyone—game out what he could do to destabilize the election? He has already proclaimed that the Democrats intend to “steal” the election from him. He has repeatedly decried an increase in mail-in voting, signaling he might not accept the results of such balloting. Last week, Trump, referring to expanded mail-in voting, proclaimed, “This will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country. And we cannot let this happen.” Might he call on supporters to show up at voting locations as protesters or self-appointed poll observers? Might they do so on their own? Might some come armed, as did Trump devotees who descended on state Capitols to protest the coronavirus lockdown orders? What would happen if violence breaks out at polling stations on Election Day and voters cannot exercise their franchise?
“A few instances of violence erupt, and you can imagine Trump saying, ‘Send in the troops,'” Ornstein says in an interview. He adds that he loses sleep over “a million nightmare scenarios.” Yet Ornstein notes that there are some obvious steps to take in advance. One is that the media, especially the news networks and the Associated Press, must inform the public ahead of voting day that the results on election night might not be the final count—and that is not immediate cause for suspicion.
There are plenty of early warning signs to prompt concern, Ornstein says. The Wisconsin and Georgia primaries this spring were marred by voting problems. Georgia polling stations could not handle the turn-out—which was far less than what is expected for November. Kentucky had similar problems. New York State has been unable to process its large number of absentee ballot requests. “If there is an uptick of COVID in the fall, counties and states may limit the number of polling places, especially in cities, which tend to be Democratic areas,” Ornstein remarks. “We could end up with all sorts of question marks.” He has called for making absentee ballots available at polling places on Election Day, in case of long lines and other disorder. Another important front, he points out, is enlisting the major social media outlets to do what they can to prevent the spread of election-related disinformation and any messages that could inspire violence or sabotage at polling paces. Ornstein also hopes the task force and others can pressure Congress to increase election funding for states and localities, especially those that will be working with new systems this fall. “Some states are used to votes by mail to come in at 5 to 6 percent of the full count,” he says. “What happens when you go from 5-to-6 percent to 60 percent?”
Paul Rosenzweig, a Republican (until 2017) who worked on voting security at the Department of Homeland Security and who now is a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, points out that Georgia, with its recent election, moved from 40,000 mail-in voters to 1.25 million. “Even the most competent and the most well-meaning government cannot choke down a change like that without disruption,” he says. He acknowledges that malicious actors do pose a threat to the 2020 election. Hackers could try to mess with voter databases or results. The Russians and Chinese or others could aim to use social media to increase political divisions. But he is most worried about the impact of changes related to the coronavirus pandemic. He refers to a colleague who is researching the affect of cleaning voting machines: “What if we use cleaning fluid on every machine after every voter? They are not designed to be cleaned 500 times a day.”
The natural uncertainty than comes with new voting procedures, Rosenzweig observes, can be exploited and exacerbated by anyone with a desire to undermine the legitimacy of the election: “We could see disinformation campaigns from the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians, or Americans.” On a scale of 1 to 10, he says, his level of worry is now a 4 or 5, mainly because he believes there is still time to deal with potential pitfalls and problems “In August, I’ll either be at a 3 or a 7,” he says. In the months ahead, he hopes the task force can derive clear answers about the legal issues that could arise and provide assistance to local election officials. He says the group plans on war-gaming various Magellan scenarios: “Let’s say there is a hurricane in Florida, or a BLM protest in Oklahoma or a Boogaloo protest in Oakland interferes with voting, or a cyber hack takes down voting rolls in Durham, North Carolina. What do you do? If you game-play it out, you’re in a better position.” Ideally, he notes, the federal government would be running table-top exercises like these. As far as Rosenzweig knows, it isn’t. (Though Trump’s top intelligence officials have publicly stated that Russia is already intervening in the 2020 campaign, Trump has not taken any public steps to thwart the Kremlin’s covert interference.)
The ultimate goal, Rosenzweig says, is to position the task force so it can be provide a voice in any chaos that ensues: “With the right preparation, it can serve as a counterweight to claims the election was not free and fair, assuming we agree it was legitimate. One of the things I am struggling with is coming up with a feasible definition of what I consider a legitimate concern or not a legitimate concern.”
This spring, a separate group of academics—also including Foley and Ornstein—tried to get a jump on possible election chaos and contemplate how best to avoid or manage a crisis. This band was organized by Rick Hasen, a professor at UC Irvine School of Law, who in February published a book titled Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy. In this work, Hasen tracked how the confidence of Americans in the fairness of elections has been decreasing over the past 10 years, and he proposed several medium- and long-term reforms to address that. But, he realized, there was an immediate challenge posed by the current election. He rounded up two dozen experts on elections and in late February held a conference called “Can American Democracy Survive the 2020 Elections?”—just as the coronavirus pandemic was striking.
In a report issued in April, Hasen’s ad hoc committee presented 14 recommendations, some of which overlap with the ongoing work of the task force. It calls for states to improve their procedures for handling absentee and provisional ballots and to develop robust plans for voting during a coronavirus spike. It urges legal experts to resolve the ambiguities of the Electoral Count Act before any disputes occur. Media outlets, it notes, should prepare Americans to be patient for final results. Paper ballots ought to be maximized. “Social media companies have a unique responsibility to prevent the use of their platforms for efforts that would suppress votes through the spread of misinformation about voting,” the report says. (Hasen fears a last-minute barrage of disinformation falsely claiming polling places are being moved because of COVID-19.) This is a list of well-founded should-do’s that included increasing federal assistance for the coming election from $400 million to $2 billion.
One question is who is listening to the concerned experts of the task force and Hasen’s committee. Republicans in Congress so far do not seem eager to spend more money on election management and security. Perhaps the media and social media companies can be nudged in the right directions. But given Trump’s past and present comments—when he thought he might lose the 2016 election, he claimed it was being “rigged”—he obviously has no interest in promoting or following any of these recommendations. “Trump is a symptom more than a cause of our election problems,” Hasen says. “But he has exacerbated things and brought us to a dangerous point.”
Bassin notes that in the weeks and months ahead, the National Election Crisis Task Force will press to build consensus among its experts regarding what could—or should—be done in the assorted break-glass situations. But as this prep work is done, the experts who fear electoral hell breaking loose in November share one hope: The election is not close. A landslide could surmount particular problems that occur on Election Day. If votes are not cast or counted in a particular spot, but the amount of such votes is not decisive, then it will be harder for anyone to claim (justifiably) the election results are not sound. Ornstein frequently talks to election officials, and they share the same mantra; “Dear, Lord, please let it be a landslide.” He explains, “They don’t want to be in a situations where it’s close.” The narrower the race, the greater the likelihood a disruption could affect (or be perceived as affecting) the outcome. “The election has to go smoothly enough,” Hasen says. “If it’s not particularly close, we will still have problems, but I hope these are problems that don’t lead to questions of legitimacy. If it is very close, we’re in big trouble.”
The policy wonks and advocates anxious about the tumult that could erupt on Election Day are hoping discussions and debates before the fact can help the country navigate a crisis. “Every election has errors, but most are not of a sufficient scale to call into question the results,” Rosenzweig says. “In this environment, irregularities become magnified and people are increasingly skeptical. So the question is whether we can be effective in helping.” Speaking for himself and not the task force, Rosenzweig notes there are no guarantees that a bipartisan and nonpartisan collection of knowledgable and somber-minded experts will be able to save the nation from political turmoil. “We’re assuming the national political discussion will be highly dysfunctional, and we are assuming this group alone won’t be able to break through the noise,” he comments. “Others in the world of media and politics will have to be brought in. And even then maybe there will be too much noise. How much can we break through and move the needle? If there is a broken election and a broken populace, there is no magical mechanism.”
COVID-19, Russia, hurricanes, and Trump—the threats to American democracy are many.
DAVID CORN
Edward Foley has a nightmare. It’s a poli-sci horror tale. A professor of constitutional law and elections expert at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, Foley foresees a scenario for the coming election that could tear apart American democracy.
Peer ahead to election night and imagine a close contest between Donald Trump and the Democratic presidential nominee, so close that the results in Pennsylvania will decide the winner. As the evening proceeds, Trump is narrowly ahead in the Keystone State, with the news networks tallying the incoming votes. When 100 percent of the precincts report, Trump is up by 20,000 votes, and he tweets: “The race is over. Another four years to keep Making America Great Again.” But hold on. The next day—and in the days ahead—as the counting of absentee and provisional votes occurs in routine fashion, Trump’s lead declines. The election is being stolen, Trump proclaims. His devotees take to the streets. The final result comes in: The Democrat triumphs by several thousand votes. “THIS THEFT WILL NOT STAND,” Trump tweets, and he declares political war.
In a 55-page law review article published last year, Foley depicts in granular detail what could happen at this point, if Trump and the Republicans opt to challenge the Pennsylvania results. Here’s a spoiler: It’s a damn mess with no clear outcome. And this one case study of how the 2020 presidential race could become a disaster has caught the attention of academics, former government officials, and policy advocates who have been banding together in different forms to try to address the many ways the election might be disrupted or contested.
One such group is the ominously named National Task Force on Election Crises, a bipartisan collection of experts who are plotting out potential calamities and exploring possible remedies before anything hits the fan. This outfit is not predicting chaos, but it has considered dozens of scenarios beyond the Pennsylvania standoff in which the election could go awry and yield chaos and, perhaps, no easy resolution. It’s hair-raising stuff, and the fact that a number of the nation’s leading experts on elections are alarmed (to varying degrees) about what might transpire in November is in itself frightening.
There are laws and constitutional provisions that cover the management of a presidential election, but Foley, in this one example (which could apply to states other than Pennsylvania), shows that these measures are profoundly inadequate for resolving the sort of dispute that he envisions. In his thought experiment, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania determines the Democratic candidate has won the state and certifies the Democratic slate of electors, sending that notification to Congress. But the GOP-controlled state legislature has other plans: It insists Trump is the true victor, and it forwards the Trump slate of electors to Congress. The House and Senate in early January must decide which slate to accept. (It is the new Congress elected during the November balloting that will be in charge, though Vice President Mike Pence would still at this stage be president of the Senate.) If the party makeup of the two chambers has not changed, the Senate, ruled by Republicans, could well accept the Trump slate, and the House, in Democratic hands, would presumably approve the Democratic candidate’s slate. In the meantime, there could be both state and federal court cases related to the competing slates, with the matter perhaps landing before the Supreme Court.
Foley teases all this out and describes the various court challenges and legal arguments each side could deploy. He points out that in 2016, Trump’s election-night lead in Pennsylvania of 67,951 ultimately dropped to 44,292. So it is not hard to envision that this time an apparent election night win could turn into a loss. In fact, this happened in several congressional races in 2018. Foley makes it plain that the path forward in such a circumstance is not self-evident. The Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs the process for tallying votes within the Electoral College, is imprecise. Under this law, Republicans could even argue that the very existence of competing slates ought to invalidate Pennsylvania’s votes, if the Democratic candidate needs that state to win.
“It would not take an extraordinary calamity, like a foreign cyberattack, for there to be conditions enabling partisans to dispute the result,” Foley writes. “Instead, a dispute engulfing Congress could arise from a situation as routine as [a vote count shift]. Given this possibility, it is truly irresponsible that Congress has not attempted to eliminate—in advance of the 2020 election—the ambiguities that plague the Electoral Count Act.” In other words, the nation could be screwed.
Foley is hardly alone in forecasting a possible fiasco. In October 2018, shortly before the congressional midterm elections, Norman Ornstein, an expert on government and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post that raised a simple question: “What do we do if a national election is disrupted?” Weeks earlier, Hurricane Michael had slammed into the Florida Panhandle, and Ornstein wondered what might happen should a natural disaster strike during an election. If a storm—or an earthquake or a volcano eruption or wildfires—prevented voting, what could be done? States can reschedule state elections, but federal contests cannot be postponed. “We have no Plan B to take the impact into account if a national election is disrupted,” Ornstein bemoaned. “There are no do-overs and no mechanism in place to ameliorate the effect.” And Ornstein had in mind much more than Mother Nature: “What if, for example, China or Russia knocks out the electrical grid in one region of the country on a presidential Election Day? A hundred or more electoral votes would be disrupted, leaving the election outcome unsettled (along with many House, Senate and other elections).”
Neither the US Constitution or any law offers a plan for a makeup election. And what would be fair? Rescheduling voting in those areas that went dark, though voters there would now know the results of the votes cast elsewhere? Or a new vote across the nation? And if the election was thrown to the House of Representatives to settle—without a full House, due to the disrupted elections—would the president picked by this body be considered legitimate? Ornstein noted there was “no easy answer” of how to address a major disruption. What was needed, he contended, was to move quickly on possible reforms “before an event happens.”
Around this time, a nonprofit group based in Washington, DC, called Protect Democracy was engaging in likeminded worrying. The organization was founded in early 2017 by former executive branch officials, many hailing from the Obama administration, with the aim, according to its website, “to prevent American Democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government.” The group has a progressive bent, but its advisers include conservative commentators Linda Chavez and Mona Charen and Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. In the fall of 2018, its officials posed a question: What would occur if there were an aggressive hack of a voting system that prompted serious uncertainty about the results? It could be an attack that causes some units to malfunction. Or a hack of registered voter databases that leads to significant voting problems on Election Day. What would come next? “It caused us to think that we’re not ready for that,” says Ian Bassin, a co-founder of Protect Democracy and a former associate counsel in the Obama White House. “Can we get together people who would be called on in an election crisis and try to develop a consensus?”
Protect Democracy assembled a crew of election and legal experts that now numbers several dozen and dubbed it the National Task Force on Election Crises. The task force includes Foley and Ornstein, as well as Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of homeland security who served in the Bush-Cheney administration, Lanhee Chen, the policy director for the 2012 Romney-Ryan campaign, Paul Rosenzweig, a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush-Cheney years, Michael Steele, a former GOP chair, MarÃa Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of the Voto Latino Foundation, and Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The task force recently added Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. It held its first meeting in June 2019 at Georgetown University, with an ambitious four-point agenda: identify crises that could happen; derive best-case scenarios for addressing them; consider what could be done in advance to give those remedies a shot of succeeding; and weigh actions that could lessen the chances of a crisis.
As part of this process, Protect Democracy last year enlisted students at a Harvard law school clinic it runs to envision for the task force possible crises that could threaten the 2020 election. They cooked up 65 potential disasters—a list that was winnowed to the 15 crises deemed the most likely and most disconcerting. And that lineup was trimmed again. (In this culling process, the possibility of a pandemic was removed as a contender. It was not considered one of the more feasible disturbances.) These possible debacles were termed “Magellan scenarios” because they each involved uncharted waters. And the assortment has included the Foley scenario, natural disasters, a foreign attack on the power grid, a hack on voting systems, violence or the threat of violence interfering with people’s ability to vote, a state or federal official misusing emergency powers to mess with the election, the deployment of law enforcement or immigration enforcement at polling locations to intimidate voters, the Justice Department mounting politically motivated investigations or prosecutions of a candidate, and the refusal of a candidate to concede. The National Task Force on Election Crises began working through these scenarios, looking to see if it could reach agreement on the best ways to avoid these calamities and on how to respond should the worse come to pass.
At first, the task force’s work was behind the scenes. There was no intent to publicize its existence or deliberations before the election. Its organizers were proceeding on a simple assumption: Should a crisis hit, the country might better be able to handle it if a group of experts of different political pedigrees could address the controversy at hand with a single voice. No doubt, in such a time, there would be a cacophony of outrage and opinions spreading across the media and through the national political debate. At what might be a perilous moment, the group, according to one participant, could be “the political anchor of conventional wisdom.” The theory was that the existence of a broad consensus on a key point—say, this group had already determined that an important part of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 should be read a certain way—could ease the way to a resolution and make it tougher for a bad-faith political actor to exploit the situation. For this plan to work, there was no need to reveal the group’s existence before the election went south.
Then the coronavirus struck. “We went from a world with an election crisis possible to one where there is an election crisis,” Bassin recalls.
The task force revealed itself in March. It started a Twitter account and put up a website, noting, “Disruptions to elections can come from natural disasters or human-made disasters such as cyber attacks or improper interference by elected officials. In any event, it’s critical to know the proper steps forward in dealing with a crisis to ensure a free and fair election.” The group began releasing materials on how states should handle elections in the time of a pandemic. It published a coronavirus guide for election officials, recommending they immediately start preparing for wide-scale voting by mail and make plans to provide safe voting (including curbside voting and early voting) and to communicate to voters about changes in voting procedures. It sent a letter to governors, secretaries of state, and state election directors urging them to “implement the Task Force’s recommendations, accelerate planning for the general election, and request additional funding from the federal government if necessary to fund the new initiatives your state will need to undertake for the November election.” The task force released a statement noting that the president cannot cancel a national election or change its date and that “under no circumstance can any president’s term be extended past noon on January 20th without amending the Constitution.”
Task force members, through several working groups, have continued to ponder what could go wrong on November 3, 2020, and what would be the right responses. “As we considered the scenarios, many of us had an instinct to deny the hypotheticals,” Bassin recalls. “We didn’t want to contemplate that these nightmares could happen. The lawyers in the group sought legal answers only to find that the law sometimes does not provide clear answers. In those cases, are there principles that can guide us toward a consensus? If so, forcing people to consider in advance what those are and what should happen seemed a better thing to do than to wait until a crisis strikes.”
In this realm of what-ifs, there is one huge X factor: Donald Trump. How could this group—or anyone—game out what he could do to destabilize the election? He has already proclaimed that the Democrats intend to “steal” the election from him. He has repeatedly decried an increase in mail-in voting, signaling he might not accept the results of such balloting. Last week, Trump, referring to expanded mail-in voting, proclaimed, “This will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country. And we cannot let this happen.” Might he call on supporters to show up at voting locations as protesters or self-appointed poll observers? Might they do so on their own? Might some come armed, as did Trump devotees who descended on state Capitols to protest the coronavirus lockdown orders? What would happen if violence breaks out at polling stations on Election Day and voters cannot exercise their franchise?
“A few instances of violence erupt, and you can imagine Trump saying, ‘Send in the troops,'” Ornstein says in an interview. He adds that he loses sleep over “a million nightmare scenarios.” Yet Ornstein notes that there are some obvious steps to take in advance. One is that the media, especially the news networks and the Associated Press, must inform the public ahead of voting day that the results on election night might not be the final count—and that is not immediate cause for suspicion.
There are plenty of early warning signs to prompt concern, Ornstein says. The Wisconsin and Georgia primaries this spring were marred by voting problems. Georgia polling stations could not handle the turn-out—which was far less than what is expected for November. Kentucky had similar problems. New York State has been unable to process its large number of absentee ballot requests. “If there is an uptick of COVID in the fall, counties and states may limit the number of polling places, especially in cities, which tend to be Democratic areas,” Ornstein remarks. “We could end up with all sorts of question marks.” He has called for making absentee ballots available at polling places on Election Day, in case of long lines and other disorder. Another important front, he points out, is enlisting the major social media outlets to do what they can to prevent the spread of election-related disinformation and any messages that could inspire violence or sabotage at polling paces. Ornstein also hopes the task force and others can pressure Congress to increase election funding for states and localities, especially those that will be working with new systems this fall. “Some states are used to votes by mail to come in at 5 to 6 percent of the full count,” he says. “What happens when you go from 5-to-6 percent to 60 percent?”
Paul Rosenzweig, a Republican (until 2017) who worked on voting security at the Department of Homeland Security and who now is a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, points out that Georgia, with its recent election, moved from 40,000 mail-in voters to 1.25 million. “Even the most competent and the most well-meaning government cannot choke down a change like that without disruption,” he says. He acknowledges that malicious actors do pose a threat to the 2020 election. Hackers could try to mess with voter databases or results. The Russians and Chinese or others could aim to use social media to increase political divisions. But he is most worried about the impact of changes related to the coronavirus pandemic. He refers to a colleague who is researching the affect of cleaning voting machines: “What if we use cleaning fluid on every machine after every voter? They are not designed to be cleaned 500 times a day.”
The natural uncertainty than comes with new voting procedures, Rosenzweig observes, can be exploited and exacerbated by anyone with a desire to undermine the legitimacy of the election: “We could see disinformation campaigns from the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians, or Americans.” On a scale of 1 to 10, he says, his level of worry is now a 4 or 5, mainly because he believes there is still time to deal with potential pitfalls and problems “In August, I’ll either be at a 3 or a 7,” he says. In the months ahead, he hopes the task force can derive clear answers about the legal issues that could arise and provide assistance to local election officials. He says the group plans on war-gaming various Magellan scenarios: “Let’s say there is a hurricane in Florida, or a BLM protest in Oklahoma or a Boogaloo protest in Oakland interferes with voting, or a cyber hack takes down voting rolls in Durham, North Carolina. What do you do? If you game-play it out, you’re in a better position.” Ideally, he notes, the federal government would be running table-top exercises like these. As far as Rosenzweig knows, it isn’t. (Though Trump’s top intelligence officials have publicly stated that Russia is already intervening in the 2020 campaign, Trump has not taken any public steps to thwart the Kremlin’s covert interference.)
The ultimate goal, Rosenzweig says, is to position the task force so it can be provide a voice in any chaos that ensues: “With the right preparation, it can serve as a counterweight to claims the election was not free and fair, assuming we agree it was legitimate. One of the things I am struggling with is coming up with a feasible definition of what I consider a legitimate concern or not a legitimate concern.”
This spring, a separate group of academics—also including Foley and Ornstein—tried to get a jump on possible election chaos and contemplate how best to avoid or manage a crisis. This band was organized by Rick Hasen, a professor at UC Irvine School of Law, who in February published a book titled Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy. In this work, Hasen tracked how the confidence of Americans in the fairness of elections has been decreasing over the past 10 years, and he proposed several medium- and long-term reforms to address that. But, he realized, there was an immediate challenge posed by the current election. He rounded up two dozen experts on elections and in late February held a conference called “Can American Democracy Survive the 2020 Elections?”—just as the coronavirus pandemic was striking.
In a report issued in April, Hasen’s ad hoc committee presented 14 recommendations, some of which overlap with the ongoing work of the task force. It calls for states to improve their procedures for handling absentee and provisional ballots and to develop robust plans for voting during a coronavirus spike. It urges legal experts to resolve the ambiguities of the Electoral Count Act before any disputes occur. Media outlets, it notes, should prepare Americans to be patient for final results. Paper ballots ought to be maximized. “Social media companies have a unique responsibility to prevent the use of their platforms for efforts that would suppress votes through the spread of misinformation about voting,” the report says. (Hasen fears a last-minute barrage of disinformation falsely claiming polling places are being moved because of COVID-19.) This is a list of well-founded should-do’s that included increasing federal assistance for the coming election from $400 million to $2 billion.
One question is who is listening to the concerned experts of the task force and Hasen’s committee. Republicans in Congress so far do not seem eager to spend more money on election management and security. Perhaps the media and social media companies can be nudged in the right directions. But given Trump’s past and present comments—when he thought he might lose the 2016 election, he claimed it was being “rigged”—he obviously has no interest in promoting or following any of these recommendations. “Trump is a symptom more than a cause of our election problems,” Hasen says. “But he has exacerbated things and brought us to a dangerous point.”
Bassin notes that in the weeks and months ahead, the National Election Crisis Task Force will press to build consensus among its experts regarding what could—or should—be done in the assorted break-glass situations. But as this prep work is done, the experts who fear electoral hell breaking loose in November share one hope: The election is not close. A landslide could surmount particular problems that occur on Election Day. If votes are not cast or counted in a particular spot, but the amount of such votes is not decisive, then it will be harder for anyone to claim (justifiably) the election results are not sound. Ornstein frequently talks to election officials, and they share the same mantra; “Dear, Lord, please let it be a landslide.” He explains, “They don’t want to be in a situations where it’s close.” The narrower the race, the greater the likelihood a disruption could affect (or be perceived as affecting) the outcome. “The election has to go smoothly enough,” Hasen says. “If it’s not particularly close, we will still have problems, but I hope these are problems that don’t lead to questions of legitimacy. If it is very close, we’re in big trouble.”
The policy wonks and advocates anxious about the tumult that could erupt on Election Day are hoping discussions and debates before the fact can help the country navigate a crisis. “Every election has errors, but most are not of a sufficient scale to call into question the results,” Rosenzweig says. “In this environment, irregularities become magnified and people are increasingly skeptical. So the question is whether we can be effective in helping.” Speaking for himself and not the task force, Rosenzweig notes there are no guarantees that a bipartisan and nonpartisan collection of knowledgable and somber-minded experts will be able to save the nation from political turmoil. “We’re assuming the national political discussion will be highly dysfunctional, and we are assuming this group alone won’t be able to break through the noise,” he comments. “Others in the world of media and politics will have to be brought in. And even then maybe there will be too much noise. How much can we break through and move the needle? If there is a broken election and a broken populace, there is no magical mechanism.”
Europe restricts visitors
Europe restricts visitors from the US amid virus resurgence
Lorne Cook and Tamara Lush
Earlier this month a Missouri woman suffered minor injuries after being knocked to the ground by a grizzly bear in a surprise encoutner.
The European Continent on Tuesday reopened to visitors from 14 countries, but not the U.S., where some of the states that pushed hardest and earliest to reopen their economies are now in retreat because of an alarming surge in confirmed coronavirus infections.
The European Union’s decision came a day after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey closed bars, gyms, movie theaters and water parks, and officials in Republican and Democratic strongholds alike mandated the wearing of masks.
The EU extended its ban on visitors not just from the U.S. but from China and from countries such as Russia, Brazil and India that are seeing rapidly rising caseloads. Britain dropped out of the EU in January and maintains its own rules, requiring arriving travelers to go into 14-day self-quarantine.
President Donald Trump suspended the entry of most Europeans in March.
American make up a big share of Europe's tourism industry, and the summer is a key period. More than 15 million Americans travel to Europe each year, while some 10 million Europeans head across the Atlantic.
The news was a blow to revenue-starved shopkeepers hoping for a summertime boom.
“Americans were 50% of my clientele,” said Paola Pellizzari, who owns a mask and jewelry shop on the Saint-Louis island in the heart of Paris and heads its business association. “We can’t substitute that clientele with another.”
The Louvre museum is scheduled to reopen July 6. Americans used to be the largest single group of visitors to the home of the “Mona Lisa.”
“When I returned after lockdown, five businesses had closed,” Pellizzari said. “As days go by, and I listen to the business owners, it gets worse.”
Sharmaigne Shives, an American who lives in Paris, said she hopes her countrymen can turn things around soon.
“Paris isn’t Paris when there aren’t people who really appreciate it and marvel at everything,” she said. “I miss that. Seriously, I feel the emotion welling up. It’s so sad here.”
Across the English Channel, things are also headed in reverse.
Britain reimposed a lockdown in Leicester, a city of 330,000 people that officials said accounted for 10% of all new coronavirus cases in the nation last week. Stores closed their doors, and schools prepared to send children home.
“I opened my shop last week for the first time and saw an instant increase in orders, and now I worry this change will go back to no orders,” said James West, who runs a design and printing business in Thurmaston, just outside Leicester.
In the U.S., places such as Texas, Florida and California are backtracking, closing beaches and bars in some cases amid a resurgence of the virus.
“Our expectation is that our numbers next week will be worse,” Ducey said in Arizona, where for seven times in 10 days, the number of new cases per day has surpassed the 3,000 mark.
Also Monday, Los Angeles announced it will close beaches and ban fireworks displays over the Fourth of July. And New Jersey's governor said he is postponing the restarting of indoor dining because people have not been wearing masks or complying with other social-distancing rules.
Lorne Cook and Tamara Lush
Earlier this month a Missouri woman suffered minor injuries after being knocked to the ground by a grizzly bear in a surprise encoutner.
The European Continent on Tuesday reopened to visitors from 14 countries, but not the U.S., where some of the states that pushed hardest and earliest to reopen their economies are now in retreat because of an alarming surge in confirmed coronavirus infections.
The European Union’s decision came a day after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey closed bars, gyms, movie theaters and water parks, and officials in Republican and Democratic strongholds alike mandated the wearing of masks.
The EU extended its ban on visitors not just from the U.S. but from China and from countries such as Russia, Brazil and India that are seeing rapidly rising caseloads. Britain dropped out of the EU in January and maintains its own rules, requiring arriving travelers to go into 14-day self-quarantine.
President Donald Trump suspended the entry of most Europeans in March.
American make up a big share of Europe's tourism industry, and the summer is a key period. More than 15 million Americans travel to Europe each year, while some 10 million Europeans head across the Atlantic.
The news was a blow to revenue-starved shopkeepers hoping for a summertime boom.
“Americans were 50% of my clientele,” said Paola Pellizzari, who owns a mask and jewelry shop on the Saint-Louis island in the heart of Paris and heads its business association. “We can’t substitute that clientele with another.”
The Louvre museum is scheduled to reopen July 6. Americans used to be the largest single group of visitors to the home of the “Mona Lisa.”
“When I returned after lockdown, five businesses had closed,” Pellizzari said. “As days go by, and I listen to the business owners, it gets worse.”
Sharmaigne Shives, an American who lives in Paris, said she hopes her countrymen can turn things around soon.
“Paris isn’t Paris when there aren’t people who really appreciate it and marvel at everything,” she said. “I miss that. Seriously, I feel the emotion welling up. It’s so sad here.”
Across the English Channel, things are also headed in reverse.
Britain reimposed a lockdown in Leicester, a city of 330,000 people that officials said accounted for 10% of all new coronavirus cases in the nation last week. Stores closed their doors, and schools prepared to send children home.
“I opened my shop last week for the first time and saw an instant increase in orders, and now I worry this change will go back to no orders,” said James West, who runs a design and printing business in Thurmaston, just outside Leicester.
In the U.S., places such as Texas, Florida and California are backtracking, closing beaches and bars in some cases amid a resurgence of the virus.
“Our expectation is that our numbers next week will be worse,” Ducey said in Arizona, where for seven times in 10 days, the number of new cases per day has surpassed the 3,000 mark.
Also Monday, Los Angeles announced it will close beaches and ban fireworks displays over the Fourth of July. And New Jersey's governor said he is postponing the restarting of indoor dining because people have not been wearing masks or complying with other social-distancing rules.
From the stupid files....
California woman gored multiple times by Yellowstone bison
A 72-year-old California woman was gored and injured multiple times by a wild bison at Yellowstone National Park after repeatedly approaching the animal to take its photograph, park administrators said Monday.
The woman was flown to an Idaho hospital for treatment of her injuries following the June 25 incident. She was not identified and her current condition is unknown.
The woman was at her campsite at the park's Bridge Bay Campground when she approached within 10 feet (3 meters) of the animal multiple times prior to being gored, park officials said.
Run-ins between visitors and bison, also known as buffalo, occur periodically at Yellowstone. The animals are normally placid but can respond aggressively and charge when approached.
Park biologist Chris Geremia said that's what appeared to happen in the latest instance, with the bison responding to what it perceived as a threat when the woman got too close.
Visitors are required to stay at least 25 yards (23 meters) away from large animals, including bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, moose and coyotes, and at least 100 yards (91 meters) away from bears and wolves.
In May, a woman was knocked to the ground when she got too close to a bison near the popular Old Faithful geyser.
A 72-year-old California woman was gored and injured multiple times by a wild bison at Yellowstone National Park after repeatedly approaching the animal to take its photograph, park administrators said Monday.
The woman was flown to an Idaho hospital for treatment of her injuries following the June 25 incident. She was not identified and her current condition is unknown.
The woman was at her campsite at the park's Bridge Bay Campground when she approached within 10 feet (3 meters) of the animal multiple times prior to being gored, park officials said.
Run-ins between visitors and bison, also known as buffalo, occur periodically at Yellowstone. The animals are normally placid but can respond aggressively and charge when approached.
Park biologist Chris Geremia said that's what appeared to happen in the latest instance, with the bison responding to what it perceived as a threat when the woman got too close.
Visitors are required to stay at least 25 yards (23 meters) away from large animals, including bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, moose and coyotes, and at least 100 yards (91 meters) away from bears and wolves.
In May, a woman was knocked to the ground when she got too close to a bison near the popular Old Faithful geyser.
Another possible pandemic....
Swine flu infecting humans raises fears of another possible pandemic
Bloomberg
A strain of flu virus spreading in Chinese pigs has shown it can also infect humans, suggesting that another pathogen with pandemic potential waits in the wings behind the coronavirus.
The flu strain that jumped to humans has become predominant among pigs across China since 2016, according to a team of researchers that includes George Gao Fu, head of China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers based their findings on surveillance studies conducted in 10 provinces from 2011 through 2018.
Influenza is one of the most frequent causes of pandemics, which occur when a new infectious disease that no one has immunity to sweeps around the world. Pigs are known to harbor flu viruses that can occasionally infect workers they come into contact with, creating a risk of wider outbreaks.Called G4 EA H1N1, the swine flu strain bears genes similar to those in the virus that caused the 2009 flu pandemic, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research journal. Tests found the virus in about 10% of 338 swine workers whose serum samples were collected between 2016 and 2018.
The human infections indicate that the flu strain "possesses all of the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus" and that it poses "a serious threat to human health," the researchers concluded.
Zoonoses, diseases that jump from animals to humans, are one of the most common sources of dangerous new infections. Ebola, HIV, and the coronavirus itself are all examples of deadly pathogens that originated in animals. SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic that's infected more than 10 million people and killed more than 500,000 of them, is widely considered by scientists to have come from bats, a natural reservoir of such pathogens.
Bloomberg
A strain of flu virus spreading in Chinese pigs has shown it can also infect humans, suggesting that another pathogen with pandemic potential waits in the wings behind the coronavirus.
The flu strain that jumped to humans has become predominant among pigs across China since 2016, according to a team of researchers that includes George Gao Fu, head of China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers based their findings on surveillance studies conducted in 10 provinces from 2011 through 2018.
Influenza is one of the most frequent causes of pandemics, which occur when a new infectious disease that no one has immunity to sweeps around the world. Pigs are known to harbor flu viruses that can occasionally infect workers they come into contact with, creating a risk of wider outbreaks.Called G4 EA H1N1, the swine flu strain bears genes similar to those in the virus that caused the 2009 flu pandemic, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research journal. Tests found the virus in about 10% of 338 swine workers whose serum samples were collected between 2016 and 2018.
The human infections indicate that the flu strain "possesses all of the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus" and that it poses "a serious threat to human health," the researchers concluded.
Zoonoses, diseases that jump from animals to humans, are one of the most common sources of dangerous new infections. Ebola, HIV, and the coronavirus itself are all examples of deadly pathogens that originated in animals. SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic that's infected more than 10 million people and killed more than 500,000 of them, is widely considered by scientists to have come from bats, a natural reservoir of such pathogens.
Rural Spread...
For these rural NorCal counties, a distinct pattern for coronavirus transmission emerges
By Eric Ting
Bars, gyms, hair salons and other high-risk businesses have been open in Shasta County for weeks now, but the county still has yet to trace a single new coronavirus case to a reopened business.
"There are some cases that our disease investigation team has not been able to identify where those people originally contracted COVID-19," county spokesperson Kerri Schuette told SFGATE. "We know we have community transmission, but haven’t had anything with an outbreak connected to specific store or business."
However, these cases of unknown community spread only make up a small fraction of the county's most recent cases; most known cases have been successfully traced. And a pattern seems to be emerging.
"Most of our new cases have been a result of small, at-home gatherings of some sort," Schuette said. "Most are contracting it from people they know. We had 12 test positive from a small family gathering recently, and another graduation party has four known cases associated with it so far."
Shasta County, home to Redding, has 107 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Monday. Just three patients are hospitalized, and the county believes it has ample hospital capacity to handle a surge. Next-door Tehama County has 62 confirmed cases, and county public health director Minnie Sagar told SFGATE in an email that most of the new cases in her county are also coming from private gatherings of friends and family. Sager stated that contact tracers have not linked a single case back to a reopened business.
The experiences of Shasta and Tehama counties track with what Yuba and Sutter counties reported earlier this month.
"Nearly all of new cases are coming from known cases, either household members, extended family, or people who made visits to the infected person," Yuba County spokesperson Russ Brown said. "Being in close settings where you don’t have safeguards because you're around people you know — that really opens it up to risks and that’s what we're seeing here."
Across the rest of the state, identifying the primary sources of transmission has proved more difficult. Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered that bars shut down in seven different California counties, citing the fact that indoor bars pose unique transmission risks. The massive protests against police brutality following the death of George Floyd have also been linked to the state's recent uptick of confirmed cases, with Los Angeles County public health director Barbara Ferrer stating it is "highly likely" the protests led to an increase in positive cases. However, other cities and counties that have seen large demonstrations have not seen a surge in cases or percent positivity of tests, creating conflicting evidence over the role of the protests on the spread of the virus.
During his press conferences, Newsom has repeatedly stated that social gatherings are major contributors to the spread of the virus,
"Many of us understandably developed a little cabin fever," he said last week. "Some of us, I would argue, developed a little amnesia. Others have just frankly taken down their guard. People are mixing and that is increasing the spread of the virus."
By Eric Ting
Bars, gyms, hair salons and other high-risk businesses have been open in Shasta County for weeks now, but the county still has yet to trace a single new coronavirus case to a reopened business.
"There are some cases that our disease investigation team has not been able to identify where those people originally contracted COVID-19," county spokesperson Kerri Schuette told SFGATE. "We know we have community transmission, but haven’t had anything with an outbreak connected to specific store or business."
However, these cases of unknown community spread only make up a small fraction of the county's most recent cases; most known cases have been successfully traced. And a pattern seems to be emerging.
"Most of our new cases have been a result of small, at-home gatherings of some sort," Schuette said. "Most are contracting it from people they know. We had 12 test positive from a small family gathering recently, and another graduation party has four known cases associated with it so far."
Shasta County, home to Redding, has 107 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Monday. Just three patients are hospitalized, and the county believes it has ample hospital capacity to handle a surge. Next-door Tehama County has 62 confirmed cases, and county public health director Minnie Sagar told SFGATE in an email that most of the new cases in her county are also coming from private gatherings of friends and family. Sager stated that contact tracers have not linked a single case back to a reopened business.
The experiences of Shasta and Tehama counties track with what Yuba and Sutter counties reported earlier this month.
"Nearly all of new cases are coming from known cases, either household members, extended family, or people who made visits to the infected person," Yuba County spokesperson Russ Brown said. "Being in close settings where you don’t have safeguards because you're around people you know — that really opens it up to risks and that’s what we're seeing here."
Across the rest of the state, identifying the primary sources of transmission has proved more difficult. Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered that bars shut down in seven different California counties, citing the fact that indoor bars pose unique transmission risks. The massive protests against police brutality following the death of George Floyd have also been linked to the state's recent uptick of confirmed cases, with Los Angeles County public health director Barbara Ferrer stating it is "highly likely" the protests led to an increase in positive cases. However, other cities and counties that have seen large demonstrations have not seen a surge in cases or percent positivity of tests, creating conflicting evidence over the role of the protests on the spread of the virus.
During his press conferences, Newsom has repeatedly stated that social gatherings are major contributors to the spread of the virus,
"Many of us understandably developed a little cabin fever," he said last week. "Some of us, I would argue, developed a little amnesia. Others have just frankly taken down their guard. People are mixing and that is increasing the spread of the virus."
Bright Planetary Nebula NGC 7027 from Hubble
What created this unusual planetary nebula? NGC 7027 is one of the smallest, brightest, and most unusually shaped planetary nebulas known. Given its expansion rate, NGC 7027 first started expanding, as visible from Earth, about 600 years ago. For much of its history, the planetary nebula has been expelling shells, as seen in blue in the featured image. In modern times, though, for reasons unknown, it began ejecting gas and dust (seen in red) in specific directions that created a new pattern that seems to have four corners. These shells and patterns have been mapped in impressive detail by recent images from the Wide Field Camera 3 onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. What lies at the nebula's center is unknown, with one hypothesis holding it to be a close binary star system where one star sheds gas onto an erratic disk orbiting the other star. NGC 7027, about 3,000 light years away, was first discovered in 1878 and can be seen with a standard backyard telescope toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).Way over budget, way way late, will it ever fly???
Orion’s ‘Twin’ Completes Structural Testing for Artemis I Mission
Before NASA astronauts fly the Orion spacecraft on Artemis missions to the Moon and back, engineers needed to thoroughly test its ability to withstand the stresses of launch, climb to orbit, the harsh conditions of deep space transit, and return to Earth. NASA designed Orion from the beginning specifically to support astronauts on missions farther from Earth than any other spacecraft built for humans.
In June 2020, engineers completed testing on a duplicate of Orion called the Structural Test Article (STA), needed to verify the spacecraft is ready for Artemis I -- its first uncrewed test flight. NASA and its prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, built the STA to be structurally identical to Orion’s main spacecraft elements: the crew module, service module and launch abort system.
The STA testing required to qualify Orion’s design began in early 2017 and involved 20 tests, using six different configurations -- from a single element, to the entire full stack -- and various combinations in between. At completion, the testing verified Orion’s structural durability for all flight phases of Artemis I.
“The STA has been an invaluable source for our engineers to prove out the integrity of Orion’s design,” said Stefan Pinsky, Lockheed Martin’s test manager for the Orion structural test article. “Over the course of testing, planning for the configuration and hardware moves of the three large primary Orion elements is a complex process that can sometimes seem like a giant game of Tetris.”
STA tests included loads testing to ensure the spacecraft structures can withstand intense loads at launch and entry; acoustic and modal testing to evaluate how Orion and its components tolerate intense vibrational forces; pyrotechnic shock testing that recreates the powerful pyrotechnic blasts needed for critical separation events during flight, such as module separation events and fairing jettisons; and a lightning test to evaluate potential flight hardware damage if the vehicle was exposed to a lightning strike prior to launch.
At Lockheed Martin in Denver, teams worked round-the-clock for days at a time to prepare the tests, execute, tear down then reconfigure the STA for the next test, culminating in 330 actual days of testing. During some test phases, engineers pushed expected pressures, mechanical loads, vibration and shock conditions up to 40 percent beyond the most severe conditions anticipated during the mission, analyzing data to confirm the spacecraft structures can withstand the extreme environments of space.
While the team was pushing the physical limits of testing with the STA, the actual Orion vehicle for Artemis I recently underwent rigorous testing at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio to certify it can withstand the extreme temperatures and electromagnetic conditions it will endure during its first mission around the Moon and back. The vehicle is now being readied at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its integration with the Space Launch System rocket prior to its maiden flight.
The STA campaign will continue beyond Artemis I, incorporating structural loads testing on Orion’s launch abort system, and crew module water impact tests to support NASA’s Artemis II mission -- the first flight around the Moon with astronauts. For Artemis III, the mission that will see the first female and next male astronaut land on the surface of the Moon, the STA will be used for testing to include the spacecraft docking system.
“It’s a tremendous achievement for our teams to be able to successfully test this number of STA configurations to validate the structural robustness of the vehicle across the range of conditions that the spacecraft will experience on lunar missions under the Artemis program,” said Howard Hu, NASA’s acting Orion program manager. “These results give us continued confidence that Orion is ready for its first Artemis flight to the Moon next year.”
Before NASA astronauts fly the Orion spacecraft on Artemis missions to the Moon and back, engineers needed to thoroughly test its ability to withstand the stresses of launch, climb to orbit, the harsh conditions of deep space transit, and return to Earth. NASA designed Orion from the beginning specifically to support astronauts on missions farther from Earth than any other spacecraft built for humans.
In June 2020, engineers completed testing on a duplicate of Orion called the Structural Test Article (STA), needed to verify the spacecraft is ready for Artemis I -- its first uncrewed test flight. NASA and its prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, built the STA to be structurally identical to Orion’s main spacecraft elements: the crew module, service module and launch abort system.
The STA testing required to qualify Orion’s design began in early 2017 and involved 20 tests, using six different configurations -- from a single element, to the entire full stack -- and various combinations in between. At completion, the testing verified Orion’s structural durability for all flight phases of Artemis I.
“The STA has been an invaluable source for our engineers to prove out the integrity of Orion’s design,” said Stefan Pinsky, Lockheed Martin’s test manager for the Orion structural test article. “Over the course of testing, planning for the configuration and hardware moves of the three large primary Orion elements is a complex process that can sometimes seem like a giant game of Tetris.”
STA tests included loads testing to ensure the spacecraft structures can withstand intense loads at launch and entry; acoustic and modal testing to evaluate how Orion and its components tolerate intense vibrational forces; pyrotechnic shock testing that recreates the powerful pyrotechnic blasts needed for critical separation events during flight, such as module separation events and fairing jettisons; and a lightning test to evaluate potential flight hardware damage if the vehicle was exposed to a lightning strike prior to launch.
At Lockheed Martin in Denver, teams worked round-the-clock for days at a time to prepare the tests, execute, tear down then reconfigure the STA for the next test, culminating in 330 actual days of testing. During some test phases, engineers pushed expected pressures, mechanical loads, vibration and shock conditions up to 40 percent beyond the most severe conditions anticipated during the mission, analyzing data to confirm the spacecraft structures can withstand the extreme environments of space.
While the team was pushing the physical limits of testing with the STA, the actual Orion vehicle for Artemis I recently underwent rigorous testing at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio to certify it can withstand the extreme temperatures and electromagnetic conditions it will endure during its first mission around the Moon and back. The vehicle is now being readied at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its integration with the Space Launch System rocket prior to its maiden flight.
The STA campaign will continue beyond Artemis I, incorporating structural loads testing on Orion’s launch abort system, and crew module water impact tests to support NASA’s Artemis II mission -- the first flight around the Moon with astronauts. For Artemis III, the mission that will see the first female and next male astronaut land on the surface of the Moon, the STA will be used for testing to include the spacecraft docking system.
“It’s a tremendous achievement for our teams to be able to successfully test this number of STA configurations to validate the structural robustness of the vehicle across the range of conditions that the spacecraft will experience on lunar missions under the Artemis program,” said Howard Hu, NASA’s acting Orion program manager. “These results give us continued confidence that Orion is ready for its first Artemis flight to the Moon next year.”
Lets just waste some more money....
NASA Plans for More SLS Rocket Boosters to Launch Artemis Moon Missions
NASA has taken the next steps toward building Space Launch System (SLS) solid rocket boosters to support as many as six additional flights, for a total of up to nine Artemis missions. The agency is continuing to work with Northrop Grumman of Brigham City, Utah, the current lead contractor for the solid rocket boosters that will launch the first three Artemis missions, including the mission that will land the first woman and next man on the Moon in 2024.
Under this letter contract, with a potential value of $49.5 million, NASA will provide initial funding and authorization to Northrop Grumman to order long-lead items to support building the twin boosters for the next six SLS flights. Northrop Grumman will be able to make purchases as the details of the full contract are finalized within the next year. The full Boosters Production and Operations Contract is expected to support booster production and operations for SLS flights 4-9. The period of performance for the letter contract is 150 days; the definitized contract will extend through Dec. 31, 2030.
“This initial step ensures that NASA can build the boosters needed for future Space Launch System rockets that will be needed for the Artemis missions to explore the Moon,” said John Honeycutt, SLS Program Manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “The letter contract allows us to buy long-lead materials in time for manufacturing boosters for the fourth flight.”
The twin solid rocket boosters, which are mounted on the side of the SLS core stage, will produce more than 75% percent of the thrust for each SLS launch. The boosters were based on the design of the space shuttle solid rocket boosters but include a fifth segment to produce the extra power needed to send the larger SLS rocket to space.
“We’re ready to process and stack the boosters for the Artemis I mission, and we are making great progress producing boosters for the Artemis II and III missions,” said Bruce Tiller, manager of the SLS Boosters office at Marshall. “NASA is committed to establishing a sustainable presence at the Moon, and this action enables NASA to have boosters ready when needed for future missions.”
Northrop Grumman has delivered the 10 solid rocket booster segments to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There they will be stacked with other booster components outfitted at Kennedy and readied for launch. Casting is complete for the solid rocket motor segments for Artemis II and is underway for the Artemis III crew lunar landing mission.
Recently, NASA conducted SLS procurement activities to acquire additional RS-25 engines and core stages for future SLS flights. The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage for the second Artemis mission, as well as the launch vehicle stage adapter and Orion stage adapter are in the initial phase of manufacturing in Alabama.
The SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft, Gateway and Human Landing System are part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration. The Artemis program is the next step in human space exploration. It’s part of America’s broader Moon to Mars exploration approach, in which astronauts will explore the Moon and experience gained there to enable humanity’s next giant leap, sending humans to Mars.
(Each rocket will cost about 2 billion at least...)
NASA has taken the next steps toward building Space Launch System (SLS) solid rocket boosters to support as many as six additional flights, for a total of up to nine Artemis missions. The agency is continuing to work with Northrop Grumman of Brigham City, Utah, the current lead contractor for the solid rocket boosters that will launch the first three Artemis missions, including the mission that will land the first woman and next man on the Moon in 2024.
Under this letter contract, with a potential value of $49.5 million, NASA will provide initial funding and authorization to Northrop Grumman to order long-lead items to support building the twin boosters for the next six SLS flights. Northrop Grumman will be able to make purchases as the details of the full contract are finalized within the next year. The full Boosters Production and Operations Contract is expected to support booster production and operations for SLS flights 4-9. The period of performance for the letter contract is 150 days; the definitized contract will extend through Dec. 31, 2030.
“This initial step ensures that NASA can build the boosters needed for future Space Launch System rockets that will be needed for the Artemis missions to explore the Moon,” said John Honeycutt, SLS Program Manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “The letter contract allows us to buy long-lead materials in time for manufacturing boosters for the fourth flight.”
The twin solid rocket boosters, which are mounted on the side of the SLS core stage, will produce more than 75% percent of the thrust for each SLS launch. The boosters were based on the design of the space shuttle solid rocket boosters but include a fifth segment to produce the extra power needed to send the larger SLS rocket to space.
“We’re ready to process and stack the boosters for the Artemis I mission, and we are making great progress producing boosters for the Artemis II and III missions,” said Bruce Tiller, manager of the SLS Boosters office at Marshall. “NASA is committed to establishing a sustainable presence at the Moon, and this action enables NASA to have boosters ready when needed for future missions.”
Northrop Grumman has delivered the 10 solid rocket booster segments to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There they will be stacked with other booster components outfitted at Kennedy and readied for launch. Casting is complete for the solid rocket motor segments for Artemis II and is underway for the Artemis III crew lunar landing mission.
Recently, NASA conducted SLS procurement activities to acquire additional RS-25 engines and core stages for future SLS flights. The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage for the second Artemis mission, as well as the launch vehicle stage adapter and Orion stage adapter are in the initial phase of manufacturing in Alabama.
The SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft, Gateway and Human Landing System are part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration. The Artemis program is the next step in human space exploration. It’s part of America’s broader Moon to Mars exploration approach, in which astronauts will explore the Moon and experience gained there to enable humanity’s next giant leap, sending humans to Mars.
(Each rocket will cost about 2 billion at least...)
Siberian Arctic Temperatures
Record Temperatures and Record Low Sea Ice in Siberian Arctic
BY THE CONVERSATION [By Mark Serreze]
The Arctic heat wave that sent Siberian temperatures soaring to around 100 degrees Fahrenheit on the first day of summer put an exclamation point on an astonishing transformation of the Arctic environment that’s been underway for about 30 years.
As long ago as the 1890s, scientists predicted that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to a warming planet, particularly in the Arctic, where the loss of reflective snow and sea ice would further warm the region. Climate models have consistently pointed to “Arctic amplification” emerging as greenhouse gas concentrations increase.
Arctic amplification is now here in a big way. The Arctic is warming at roughly twice the rate of the globe as a whole. When extreme heat waves like this one strike, it stands out to everyone. Scientists are generally reluctant to say “We told you so,” but the record shows that we did. As director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and an Arctic climate scientist who first set foot in the far North in 1982, I’ve had a front-row seat to watch the transformation.
Arctic heat waves are happening more often – and getting stuck
Arctic heat waves now arrive on top of an already warmer planet, so they’re more frequent than they used to be. Western Siberia recorded its hottest spring on record this year, according the EU’s Copernicus Earth Observation Program, and that unusual heat isn’t expected to end soon. The Arctic Climate Forum has forecast above-average temperatures across the majority of the Arctic through at least August.
Why is this heat wave sticking around? No one has a full answer yet, but we can look at the weather patterns around it.
As a rule, heat waves are related to unusual jet stream patterns, and the Siberian heat wave is no different. A persistent northward swing of the jet stream has placed the area under what meteorologists call a “ridge.” When the jet stream swings northward like this, it allows warmer air into the region, raising the surface temperature.
Some scientists expect rising global temperatures to influence the jet stream. The jet stream is driven by temperature contrasts. As the Arctic warms more quickly, these contrasts shrink, and the jet stream can slow.
Is that what we’re seeing right now? We don’t yet know.
Swiss cheese sea ice and feedback loops
We do know that we’re seeing significant effects from this heat wave, particularly in the early loss of sea ice.
The ice along the shores of Siberia has the appearance of Swiss cheese right now in satellite images, with big areas of open water that would normally still be covered. The sea ice extent in the Laptev Sea, north of Russia, is the lowest recorded for this time of year since satellite observations began.
The loss of sea ice also affects the temperature, creating a feedback loop. Earth’s ice and snow cover reflect the Sun’s incoming energy, helping to keep the region cool. When that reflective cover is gone, the dark ocean and land absorb the heat, further raising the surface temperature.
Sea surface temperatures are already unusually high along parts of the Siberian Coast, and the warm ocean waters will lead to more melting.
The risks of thawing permafrost
On land, a big concern is warming permafrost – the perennially frozen ground that underlies most Arctic terrain.
When permafrost thaws under homes and bridges, infrastructure can sink, tilt and collapse. Alaskans have been contending with this for several years. Near Norilsk, Russia, thawing permafrost was blamed for an oil tank collapse in late May that spilled thousands of tons of oil into a river.
Thawing permafrost also creates a less obvious but even more damaging problem. When the ground thaws, microbes in the soil begin turning its organic matter into carbon dioxide and methane. Both are greenhouse gases that further warm the planet.
In a study published last year, researchers found that permafrost test sites around the world had warmed by nearly half a degree Fahrenheit on average over the decade from 2007 to 2016. The greatest increase was in Siberia, where some areas had warmed by 1.6 degrees. The current Siberian heat wave, especially if it continues, will regionally exacerbate that permafrost warming and thawing.
Wildfires are back again
The extreme warmth also raises the risk of wildfires, which radically change the landscape in other ways. Drier forests are more prone to fires, often from lightning strikes. When forests burn, the dark, exposed soil left behind can absorb more heat and hasten warming.
We’ve seen a few years now of extreme forest fires across the Arctic. This year, some scientists have speculated that some of the Siberian fires that broke out last year may have continued to burn through the winter in peat bogs and reemerged.
A disturbing pattern
The Siberian heat wave and its impacts will doubtless be widely studied. There will certainly be those eager to dismiss the event as just the result of an unusual persistent weather pattern.
Caution must always be exercised about reading too much into a single event – heat waves happen. But this is part of a disturbing pattern. What is happening in the Arctic is very real and should serve as a warning to everyone who cares about the future of the planet as we know it.
Mark Serreze is a Research Professor of Geography and the Director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado Boulder.
BY THE CONVERSATION [By Mark Serreze]
The Arctic heat wave that sent Siberian temperatures soaring to around 100 degrees Fahrenheit on the first day of summer put an exclamation point on an astonishing transformation of the Arctic environment that’s been underway for about 30 years.
As long ago as the 1890s, scientists predicted that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to a warming planet, particularly in the Arctic, where the loss of reflective snow and sea ice would further warm the region. Climate models have consistently pointed to “Arctic amplification” emerging as greenhouse gas concentrations increase.
Arctic amplification is now here in a big way. The Arctic is warming at roughly twice the rate of the globe as a whole. When extreme heat waves like this one strike, it stands out to everyone. Scientists are generally reluctant to say “We told you so,” but the record shows that we did. As director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and an Arctic climate scientist who first set foot in the far North in 1982, I’ve had a front-row seat to watch the transformation.
Arctic heat waves are happening more often – and getting stuck
Arctic heat waves now arrive on top of an already warmer planet, so they’re more frequent than they used to be. Western Siberia recorded its hottest spring on record this year, according the EU’s Copernicus Earth Observation Program, and that unusual heat isn’t expected to end soon. The Arctic Climate Forum has forecast above-average temperatures across the majority of the Arctic through at least August.
Why is this heat wave sticking around? No one has a full answer yet, but we can look at the weather patterns around it.
As a rule, heat waves are related to unusual jet stream patterns, and the Siberian heat wave is no different. A persistent northward swing of the jet stream has placed the area under what meteorologists call a “ridge.” When the jet stream swings northward like this, it allows warmer air into the region, raising the surface temperature.
Some scientists expect rising global temperatures to influence the jet stream. The jet stream is driven by temperature contrasts. As the Arctic warms more quickly, these contrasts shrink, and the jet stream can slow.
Is that what we’re seeing right now? We don’t yet know.
Swiss cheese sea ice and feedback loops
We do know that we’re seeing significant effects from this heat wave, particularly in the early loss of sea ice.
The ice along the shores of Siberia has the appearance of Swiss cheese right now in satellite images, with big areas of open water that would normally still be covered. The sea ice extent in the Laptev Sea, north of Russia, is the lowest recorded for this time of year since satellite observations began.
The loss of sea ice also affects the temperature, creating a feedback loop. Earth’s ice and snow cover reflect the Sun’s incoming energy, helping to keep the region cool. When that reflective cover is gone, the dark ocean and land absorb the heat, further raising the surface temperature.
Sea surface temperatures are already unusually high along parts of the Siberian Coast, and the warm ocean waters will lead to more melting.
The risks of thawing permafrost
On land, a big concern is warming permafrost – the perennially frozen ground that underlies most Arctic terrain.
When permafrost thaws under homes and bridges, infrastructure can sink, tilt and collapse. Alaskans have been contending with this for several years. Near Norilsk, Russia, thawing permafrost was blamed for an oil tank collapse in late May that spilled thousands of tons of oil into a river.
Thawing permafrost also creates a less obvious but even more damaging problem. When the ground thaws, microbes in the soil begin turning its organic matter into carbon dioxide and methane. Both are greenhouse gases that further warm the planet.
In a study published last year, researchers found that permafrost test sites around the world had warmed by nearly half a degree Fahrenheit on average over the decade from 2007 to 2016. The greatest increase was in Siberia, where some areas had warmed by 1.6 degrees. The current Siberian heat wave, especially if it continues, will regionally exacerbate that permafrost warming and thawing.
Wildfires are back again
The extreme warmth also raises the risk of wildfires, which radically change the landscape in other ways. Drier forests are more prone to fires, often from lightning strikes. When forests burn, the dark, exposed soil left behind can absorb more heat and hasten warming.
We’ve seen a few years now of extreme forest fires across the Arctic. This year, some scientists have speculated that some of the Siberian fires that broke out last year may have continued to burn through the winter in peat bogs and reemerged.
A disturbing pattern
The Siberian heat wave and its impacts will doubtless be widely studied. There will certainly be those eager to dismiss the event as just the result of an unusual persistent weather pattern.
Caution must always be exercised about reading too much into a single event – heat waves happen. But this is part of a disturbing pattern. What is happening in the Arctic is very real and should serve as a warning to everyone who cares about the future of the planet as we know it.
Mark Serreze is a Research Professor of Geography and the Director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado Boulder.
Social-media giants
Would Trump abandon Twitter?
Crackdowns by social-media giants push the president and his followers further toward niche platforms.
By BEN SCHRECKINGER
Big Tech is cracking down on Donald Trump, which gives him all the more reason to retreat from its platforms into his own digital ecosystem.
The president’s reelection campaign and some of his followers had already been joining and promoting alternative social media sites, much as the president pressures Fox News when it displeases him by calling attention to its upstart conservative rival, One America News Network.
That was before the most recent wave of crackdowns on Trump and his supporters by social-media firms seeking to remove content that is deemed offensive, inaccurate or both.
On Monday, the social media platform Reddit shuttered “The Donald,” a forum for Trump supporters, as part of a larger clampdown against groups that had violated rules against harassment and hate speech. Separately, Twitch, a video streaming platform owned by Amazon, suspended the Trump campaign’s channel for rules violations.
The moves — which came the day after Trump tweeted, then deleted, a video in which one of his supporters shouted “white power” in a confrontation with protesters — were just the latest steps by tech companies to distance themselves from Trump and far-right movements.
In recent weeks, as Twitter has begun applying disclaimers to some of Trump’s tweets for violating its policies, Trump’s campaign and many of its online supporters have taken a greater interest in the nascent social media platform Parler. The Twitter-like site markets itself as free-speech friendly and has attracted a small, right-leaning user base. The likes of Eric Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have both joined the platform this month, and on June 18, Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted, “Hey @twitter, your days are numbered,” along with a link to Parler.
While the conflict between social media platforms and the right have intensified in recent weeks, the underlying tensions have been building for years.
Trump’s first campaign and the populist movement behind it rode to power by hijacking attention on mainstream media platforms, often in clever or outrageous ways. The Donald tapped into that strategy, serving as a gathering place for supporters to share pro-Trump memes, many of them offensive, and to strategize about spreading them around the internet, while Trump’s campaign monitored the forum for inspiration.
But The Donald also participated in some of the most dangerous tendencies of right-wing internet populism: In 2016, The forum was instrumental in promoting “Pizzagate,” a false internet conspiracy theory about powerful pedophiles operating out of a a Washington pizzeria that inspired a North Carolina man armed with an assault rifle to storm the business.
Due in part to such incidents, the president’s most fervent supporters, as well as other far-right extremists associated with Trump’s brand of populism, have long presented a dilemma to social media companies. The platforms have faced calls from Democrats and civil society groups to more tightly police their online behavior, but companies have often been reluctant to forego the engagement provided by these users, invest in enforcement or risk complaints of censorship from the president’s supporters.
Calls for a crackdown first gained widespread traction after an August 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly. National outrage prompted social media platforms, payment processors and web hosts to crack down on white nationalism, a move that was largely successful in reducing the visibility and influence of many of the alt-right’s most notorious figures, such as Richard Spencer.
The tightening vice has prompted some on the far right to create or migrate to online platforms more amenable to their politics. In addition to Parler, there is Gab, which bills itself as an anti-censorship alternative to Twitter; Discord, a forum for private chat groups that is popular on the far right; and Urbit, a decentralized computing experiment started by programmer Curtis Yarvin, whose anti-democratic, “neoreactionary” internet writings have influenced a number of Trump’s populist allies, including, reportedly, Steve Bannon.
Even these alternative platforms have their limits. Last week, Discord shuttered one of the largest chat groups associated with the “Boogaloo,” a loose-knit, far-right movement that is often associated with white nationalism and whose name alludes to the idea of a coming civil war. Discord took action after a man associated with the movement was charged with murder during the unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd.
Tech companies’ efforts to rein in right-wing populism also present a dilemma to Trump. Threatening to abandon the platforms may give him leverage to fight back against restrictions, but the platforms still allow him to directly reach tens of millions of people, making it unlikely he would leave them altogether.
Instead, well before the latest round of clashes, the president and his supporters had been taking small steps away from the big social platforms, experimenting with smaller, more controlled digital environments. POLITICO first reported on the Trump campaign’s interest in Parler last year. The campaign has also made an app for supporters with its own social component a centerpiece of its reelection strategy.
That drift away from the big platforms now looks primed to accelerate.
On Monday, as soon as The Donald’s ban from Reddit was announced, its users were touting an alternative forum, TheDonald.Win. Asked for comment on the banning, Trump’s campaign offered a statement urging voters to download the campaign’s app in order “to hear directly from the president.”
Crackdowns by social-media giants push the president and his followers further toward niche platforms.
By BEN SCHRECKINGER
Big Tech is cracking down on Donald Trump, which gives him all the more reason to retreat from its platforms into his own digital ecosystem.
The president’s reelection campaign and some of his followers had already been joining and promoting alternative social media sites, much as the president pressures Fox News when it displeases him by calling attention to its upstart conservative rival, One America News Network.
That was before the most recent wave of crackdowns on Trump and his supporters by social-media firms seeking to remove content that is deemed offensive, inaccurate or both.
On Monday, the social media platform Reddit shuttered “The Donald,” a forum for Trump supporters, as part of a larger clampdown against groups that had violated rules against harassment and hate speech. Separately, Twitch, a video streaming platform owned by Amazon, suspended the Trump campaign’s channel for rules violations.
The moves — which came the day after Trump tweeted, then deleted, a video in which one of his supporters shouted “white power” in a confrontation with protesters — were just the latest steps by tech companies to distance themselves from Trump and far-right movements.
In recent weeks, as Twitter has begun applying disclaimers to some of Trump’s tweets for violating its policies, Trump’s campaign and many of its online supporters have taken a greater interest in the nascent social media platform Parler. The Twitter-like site markets itself as free-speech friendly and has attracted a small, right-leaning user base. The likes of Eric Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have both joined the platform this month, and on June 18, Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted, “Hey @twitter, your days are numbered,” along with a link to Parler.
While the conflict between social media platforms and the right have intensified in recent weeks, the underlying tensions have been building for years.
Trump’s first campaign and the populist movement behind it rode to power by hijacking attention on mainstream media platforms, often in clever or outrageous ways. The Donald tapped into that strategy, serving as a gathering place for supporters to share pro-Trump memes, many of them offensive, and to strategize about spreading them around the internet, while Trump’s campaign monitored the forum for inspiration.
But The Donald also participated in some of the most dangerous tendencies of right-wing internet populism: In 2016, The forum was instrumental in promoting “Pizzagate,” a false internet conspiracy theory about powerful pedophiles operating out of a a Washington pizzeria that inspired a North Carolina man armed with an assault rifle to storm the business.
Due in part to such incidents, the president’s most fervent supporters, as well as other far-right extremists associated with Trump’s brand of populism, have long presented a dilemma to social media companies. The platforms have faced calls from Democrats and civil society groups to more tightly police their online behavior, but companies have often been reluctant to forego the engagement provided by these users, invest in enforcement or risk complaints of censorship from the president’s supporters.
Calls for a crackdown first gained widespread traction after an August 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly. National outrage prompted social media platforms, payment processors and web hosts to crack down on white nationalism, a move that was largely successful in reducing the visibility and influence of many of the alt-right’s most notorious figures, such as Richard Spencer.
The tightening vice has prompted some on the far right to create or migrate to online platforms more amenable to their politics. In addition to Parler, there is Gab, which bills itself as an anti-censorship alternative to Twitter; Discord, a forum for private chat groups that is popular on the far right; and Urbit, a decentralized computing experiment started by programmer Curtis Yarvin, whose anti-democratic, “neoreactionary” internet writings have influenced a number of Trump’s populist allies, including, reportedly, Steve Bannon.
Even these alternative platforms have their limits. Last week, Discord shuttered one of the largest chat groups associated with the “Boogaloo,” a loose-knit, far-right movement that is often associated with white nationalism and whose name alludes to the idea of a coming civil war. Discord took action after a man associated with the movement was charged with murder during the unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd.
Tech companies’ efforts to rein in right-wing populism also present a dilemma to Trump. Threatening to abandon the platforms may give him leverage to fight back against restrictions, but the platforms still allow him to directly reach tens of millions of people, making it unlikely he would leave them altogether.
Instead, well before the latest round of clashes, the president and his supporters had been taking small steps away from the big social platforms, experimenting with smaller, more controlled digital environments. POLITICO first reported on the Trump campaign’s interest in Parler last year. The campaign has also made an app for supporters with its own social component a centerpiece of its reelection strategy.
That drift away from the big platforms now looks primed to accelerate.
On Monday, as soon as The Donald’s ban from Reddit was announced, its users were touting an alternative forum, TheDonald.Win. Asked for comment on the banning, Trump’s campaign offered a statement urging voters to download the campaign’s app in order “to hear directly from the president.”
Security law unanimously passed by Beijing
Hong Kong national security law unanimously passed by Beijing, expected to become effective July 1
All Hong Kong delegates to nation’s two top political bodies to attend session at liaison office on Tuesday afternoon, with law taking effect on Wednesday.
By JEFFIE LAM and KIMMY CHUNG
Beijing’s top legislative body has unanimously passed a sweeping national security law for Hong Kong prohibiting acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security.
The law, approved by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) on Tuesday, is expected to carry a maximum penalty of life in jail.
Sources told the Post the law was approved unanimously by the standing committee’s 162 members, within 15 minutes of the meeting starting at 9am.
Only a handful of Hong Kong delegates to the national legislature saw a draft of the law before its passage, a major point of contention, with many in the city decrying the lack of transparency given the legislation’s far-reaching consequences.
On Sunday, the standing committee began a special meeting fast-tracking the bill, which was passed on the last day of the three-day session.
The Post has been told the Basic Law Committee, which advises Beijing on Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, would meet “immediately after the standing committee passed the law to discuss its insertion into Annex III of the Basic Law”.
A source familiar with the situation had said Xinhua, the official state news agency, would publish the details in the afternoon, marking the first time the law will be fully disclosed to the public.
All Hong Kong delegates to the nation’s top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and the NPC, have been asked to attend a meeting, believed to be a briefing on the bill, at the central government’s liaison office at 3 p.m.
The law is expected to come into effect on July 1, the 23rd anniversary of the city’s handover to China from British rule.
Passage of the contentious legislation came a day after Beijing announced visa restrictions on United States officials who have “behaved extremely badly” over Hong Kong.Beijing and Washington had been locked in an escalating diplomatic row over the year-long Hong Kong protests and the national security law.
The US earlier vowed to strip Hong Kong of its preferential trade status, and had enacted visa restrictions on Chinese officials deemed responsible for undermining local autonomy and freedoms.
Lam ducks questions on new national security law
Shortly before 10am, at her weekly media briefing, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said she would not answer questions on the new law until it was passed by the NPCSC, and had been listed in Annex III, for her government to promulgate it.
“It would be inappropriate for me to answer any questions and explain [the law] at this stage,” she said.
“What I can say is that when the law has been approved … My principal officials and myself will try our best to respond to questions about the law, especially those related to implementation and enforcement.”
Lam was asked if the police force would be appointing a new deputy commissioner to handle national security issues, whether those convicted under the new law could be jailed for life, under what circumstances Beijing would exercise its jurisdiction on Hong Kong’s national security cases, and what her role would be in implementing the new law.
The chief executive only repeated that she would not be answering questions on the new law. Without following the convention of answering at least one English question, Lam ended the briefing after answering a question on the United States’ latest sanctions on Hong Kong.
“That is it for today. I wanted to start my Executive Council on time,” she said.
All Hong Kong delegates to nation’s two top political bodies to attend session at liaison office on Tuesday afternoon, with law taking effect on Wednesday.
By JEFFIE LAM and KIMMY CHUNG
Beijing’s top legislative body has unanimously passed a sweeping national security law for Hong Kong prohibiting acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security.
The law, approved by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) on Tuesday, is expected to carry a maximum penalty of life in jail.
Sources told the Post the law was approved unanimously by the standing committee’s 162 members, within 15 minutes of the meeting starting at 9am.
Only a handful of Hong Kong delegates to the national legislature saw a draft of the law before its passage, a major point of contention, with many in the city decrying the lack of transparency given the legislation’s far-reaching consequences.
On Sunday, the standing committee began a special meeting fast-tracking the bill, which was passed on the last day of the three-day session.
The Post has been told the Basic Law Committee, which advises Beijing on Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, would meet “immediately after the standing committee passed the law to discuss its insertion into Annex III of the Basic Law”.
A source familiar with the situation had said Xinhua, the official state news agency, would publish the details in the afternoon, marking the first time the law will be fully disclosed to the public.
All Hong Kong delegates to the nation’s top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and the NPC, have been asked to attend a meeting, believed to be a briefing on the bill, at the central government’s liaison office at 3 p.m.
The law is expected to come into effect on July 1, the 23rd anniversary of the city’s handover to China from British rule.
Passage of the contentious legislation came a day after Beijing announced visa restrictions on United States officials who have “behaved extremely badly” over Hong Kong.Beijing and Washington had been locked in an escalating diplomatic row over the year-long Hong Kong protests and the national security law.
The US earlier vowed to strip Hong Kong of its preferential trade status, and had enacted visa restrictions on Chinese officials deemed responsible for undermining local autonomy and freedoms.
Lam ducks questions on new national security law
Shortly before 10am, at her weekly media briefing, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said she would not answer questions on the new law until it was passed by the NPCSC, and had been listed in Annex III, for her government to promulgate it.
“It would be inappropriate for me to answer any questions and explain [the law] at this stage,” she said.
“What I can say is that when the law has been approved … My principal officials and myself will try our best to respond to questions about the law, especially those related to implementation and enforcement.”
Lam was asked if the police force would be appointing a new deputy commissioner to handle national security issues, whether those convicted under the new law could be jailed for life, under what circumstances Beijing would exercise its jurisdiction on Hong Kong’s national security cases, and what her role would be in implementing the new law.
The chief executive only repeated that she would not be answering questions on the new law. Without following the convention of answering at least one English question, Lam ended the briefing after answering a question on the United States’ latest sanctions on Hong Kong.
“That is it for today. I wanted to start my Executive Council on time,” she said.
Russian bounties
House Dems headed to White House for briefing on Russian bounties
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has a personal relationship with Trump's chief of staff, will lead the group.
By HEATHER CAYGLE and KYLE CHENEY
A group of nearly a dozen House Democrats will head to the White House Tuesday morning for a briefing on intelligence that Russia provided bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The meeting comes just hours after the New York Times reported on Monday that President Donald Trump was briefed on the intelligence in late February, earlier than previously reported. Trump has denied knowing about the intelligence despite it being included in a written briefing for the president in February, according to the Times.
The No. 2 House Democrat, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), will lead the group this morning. Hoyer has a personal relationship with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who called the Maryland Democrat Sunday to begin arranging the briefing.
Other House Democrats going include Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (Calif.), Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (N.Y.) and Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (Wash.). A mix of Democrats who serve on the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services panels — Reps. Brad Sherman (Calif.), Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), Mikie Sherrill (N.J.), Abigail Spanberger (Va.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) and Bill Keating (Mass).
“I think we have to understand what exactly is in the intelligence, and then understand what, if anything, the White House has done about it. They need to be forthcoming about that,” Slotkin, a former CIA officer, told reporters Monday.
“I need to see the intelligence myself, but if this is serious intelligence, based on how the Russians operate, I think we have to question whether this represents a significant policy shift and why,” she added.
The White House will meet separately on Tuesday with a group of Senate Republicans after briefing a handpicked group of House Republicans Monday. A larger group of senators was given access to intelligence documents related to the Russian bounties late Monday, and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) quickly rebutted Trump’s claim that the news stories were a “hoax.”
“And if you continue ignoring the facts, more soldiers and marines are going to die.,” Murphy said.
Top White House officials have denied that Trump was ever briefed on the intelligence, despite detailed reporting to the contrary. In a statement overnight, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said the intelligence didn’t rise to the level of informing the president, despite reports of the administration being aware of the bounties for months.
“Because the allegations in recent press articles have not been verified or substantiated by the Intelligence Community, President Trump had not been briefed on the items,” O’Brien said.
“Nevertheless, the administration, including the National Security Council staff, have been preparing should the situation warrant action.”
Despite O’Brien’s statement, the intelligence community found the bounty claims credible enough to include in a classified CIA intelligence document distributed to U.S. officials across the world, according to the Times.
O’Brien’s comments came after a day of shifting explanations from Trump and the White House. Though top officials said on Saturday Trump hadn’t been briefed, Trump tweeted Sunday night that “intel” had informed him the allegations were not “credible.” Yet by Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany continued to insist the president hadn’t been briefed, even as briefings were being arranged for lawmakers.
On Tuesday morning, Trump continued his strategy of highlighting pundits raising questions about the veracity of the intelligence, retweeting a dismissive comment from Fox News' Geraldo Rivera who mischaracterized the Times reporting of the episode.
But the White House has so far resisted calls from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who have demanded all members in both chambers receive a briefing from the administration. Pelosi and Trump have a particularly frayed relationship and the two haven’t spoken since October, when Democrats walked out of a White House briefing on Syria after the president insulted the speaker.
Democrats have sharply criticized what they say is further proof of the Trump administration’s clear politicization of what are typically bipartisan intelligence briefings relayed to Congressional leaders and pertinent members in both chambers, regardless of political party.
Instead of briefings — which would include leaders of both the House and Senate and the Intelligence committees — or all members on certain committees, a mishmash group of lawmakers are being summoned to the White House, divided into groups based on whether they’re Republicans or Democrats.
Still, senior Democrats and Republicans said Monday they would continue to press the White House for answers on the bounty intelligence — including if and when the president was briefed; why Trump was not informed, if ineed he was not; and how the administration plans to retaliate against Russia if the reports are true.
But how the two parties seek to message the controversy will be a different matter — Democrats have long accused the president of being soft on Russia and have questioned Trump’s apparent admiration of its authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin.
Though Trump’s allies say he’s been tough on Russia, Trump has repeatedly accepted Putin’s word — over the verdict of U.S. intelligence agencies — about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he’s helped promote baseless Russian narratives about a Ukrainian plot in the election instead. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence leaders say Russia is poised to interfere again in the 2020 election and has worked to destabilize western alliances.
Republicans, meanwhile, have turned their outrage more towards administration officials, questioning the veracity of the intelligence and whether the president was even briefed on the claims, despite news reports to the contrary.
“It is important to be cautious on intelligence writ large, because when it’s proven to not be accurate, it can lead to things like a war or other measures that proved to be counterproductive,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters.
“You pull out one little piece and you put it in the public domain and you act like it was some smoking-gun situation. So that’s one of the reasons I just don’t comment on reports such as these.”
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has a personal relationship with Trump's chief of staff, will lead the group.
By HEATHER CAYGLE and KYLE CHENEY
A group of nearly a dozen House Democrats will head to the White House Tuesday morning for a briefing on intelligence that Russia provided bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The meeting comes just hours after the New York Times reported on Monday that President Donald Trump was briefed on the intelligence in late February, earlier than previously reported. Trump has denied knowing about the intelligence despite it being included in a written briefing for the president in February, according to the Times.
The No. 2 House Democrat, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), will lead the group this morning. Hoyer has a personal relationship with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who called the Maryland Democrat Sunday to begin arranging the briefing.
Other House Democrats going include Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (Calif.), Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (N.Y.) and Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (Wash.). A mix of Democrats who serve on the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services panels — Reps. Brad Sherman (Calif.), Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), Mikie Sherrill (N.J.), Abigail Spanberger (Va.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) and Bill Keating (Mass).
“I think we have to understand what exactly is in the intelligence, and then understand what, if anything, the White House has done about it. They need to be forthcoming about that,” Slotkin, a former CIA officer, told reporters Monday.
“I need to see the intelligence myself, but if this is serious intelligence, based on how the Russians operate, I think we have to question whether this represents a significant policy shift and why,” she added.
The White House will meet separately on Tuesday with a group of Senate Republicans after briefing a handpicked group of House Republicans Monday. A larger group of senators was given access to intelligence documents related to the Russian bounties late Monday, and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) quickly rebutted Trump’s claim that the news stories were a “hoax.”
“And if you continue ignoring the facts, more soldiers and marines are going to die.,” Murphy said.
Top White House officials have denied that Trump was ever briefed on the intelligence, despite detailed reporting to the contrary. In a statement overnight, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said the intelligence didn’t rise to the level of informing the president, despite reports of the administration being aware of the bounties for months.
“Because the allegations in recent press articles have not been verified or substantiated by the Intelligence Community, President Trump had not been briefed on the items,” O’Brien said.
“Nevertheless, the administration, including the National Security Council staff, have been preparing should the situation warrant action.”
Despite O’Brien’s statement, the intelligence community found the bounty claims credible enough to include in a classified CIA intelligence document distributed to U.S. officials across the world, according to the Times.
O’Brien’s comments came after a day of shifting explanations from Trump and the White House. Though top officials said on Saturday Trump hadn’t been briefed, Trump tweeted Sunday night that “intel” had informed him the allegations were not “credible.” Yet by Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany continued to insist the president hadn’t been briefed, even as briefings were being arranged for lawmakers.
On Tuesday morning, Trump continued his strategy of highlighting pundits raising questions about the veracity of the intelligence, retweeting a dismissive comment from Fox News' Geraldo Rivera who mischaracterized the Times reporting of the episode.
But the White House has so far resisted calls from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who have demanded all members in both chambers receive a briefing from the administration. Pelosi and Trump have a particularly frayed relationship and the two haven’t spoken since October, when Democrats walked out of a White House briefing on Syria after the president insulted the speaker.
Democrats have sharply criticized what they say is further proof of the Trump administration’s clear politicization of what are typically bipartisan intelligence briefings relayed to Congressional leaders and pertinent members in both chambers, regardless of political party.
Instead of briefings — which would include leaders of both the House and Senate and the Intelligence committees — or all members on certain committees, a mishmash group of lawmakers are being summoned to the White House, divided into groups based on whether they’re Republicans or Democrats.
Still, senior Democrats and Republicans said Monday they would continue to press the White House for answers on the bounty intelligence — including if and when the president was briefed; why Trump was not informed, if ineed he was not; and how the administration plans to retaliate against Russia if the reports are true.
But how the two parties seek to message the controversy will be a different matter — Democrats have long accused the president of being soft on Russia and have questioned Trump’s apparent admiration of its authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin.
Though Trump’s allies say he’s been tough on Russia, Trump has repeatedly accepted Putin’s word — over the verdict of U.S. intelligence agencies — about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he’s helped promote baseless Russian narratives about a Ukrainian plot in the election instead. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence leaders say Russia is poised to interfere again in the 2020 election and has worked to destabilize western alliances.
Republicans, meanwhile, have turned their outrage more towards administration officials, questioning the veracity of the intelligence and whether the president was even briefed on the claims, despite news reports to the contrary.
“It is important to be cautious on intelligence writ large, because when it’s proven to not be accurate, it can lead to things like a war or other measures that proved to be counterproductive,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters.
“You pull out one little piece and you put it in the public domain and you act like it was some smoking-gun situation. So that’s one of the reasons I just don’t comment on reports such as these.”
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