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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Stephan: Finally, here is some good news. When we get the orange monster out of the White House America will have a leader who understands climate change is an issue that cannot be ignored. It will be up to us to encourage him to make it a high priority. This is important because I believe the Republicans in Congress will do what they can to sabotage Biden in every way they can. We won't be the world leader anymore but at least we will be back in the game to save the earth's ecosystem and ourselves.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris greet supporters in Wilmington, Delaware on August 20, 2020. Credit: Olivier Douliery / AFP / Getty
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who took the lead Friday morning in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania according to The Associated Press, has reaffirmed his commitment to immediately rejoining the accord if he wins the 2020 presidential election against incumbent Donald Trump.
“Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it,” Biden tweeted late Wednesday.
Stephan: The most powerful nation in the world brought to its knees because of one narcissistic psychopath, and the unwillingness of the overwhelming majority -- over 6 million voters -- to demand that its laws and traditions be honored. Millions should be out in the streets, every Republican Congressperson should be under nonviolent siege. If American citizens don't or won't protect their country who will? Sixty more days of this and we may no longer be the country any of us recognize.
President Trump is settling scores and taking steps to cement his agenda in his final 60-plus days in the White House, even as he refuses to concede an electoral loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his legal team flails at the results in nearly a half-dozen states.
Trump fired the administration’s top cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs on Tuesday evening, the latest example of Trump settling a score. He expressed displeasure that Krebs issued a statement that the 2020 election had been the most secure in history, a message that undercut Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about voting machine vulnerabilities and a “rigged” election.
The removal of Krebs followed the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and raises the prospect that Trump will remove more officials, such as CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray, while at the same time signaling that anything regarded as disloyalty to Trump will result in punishment.
President-elect Biden has warned that Trump’s refusal to share information on national security and the coronavirus as part of a peaceful transition is threatening lives, while others have warned […]
Dan Balz, Chief Correspondent - The Washington Post
Stephan: There is something seriously wrong with America as a culture and as a society. The Republican Party needs to be disbanded, and Trump and many in his administration should be taken to the Hague and tried for crimes against humanity. It isn't just that Trump will not concede, it is that he is actively and openly sabotaging the country's future and its wellbeing. There is no precedent for this behavior in the last 240 years. Trump makes Benedict Arnold's betrayal look petty.
It has been almost three weeks since President Trump stepped to a lectern in the White House in the early hours of Nov. 4 to declare that the election was being stolen from him. It was a fabrication designed to turn President-elect Joe Biden into an illegitimate president and has continued apace ever since. It will not stop with Biden’s swearing-in on Jan. 20.
Any thoughts Trump might have had of overturning the election were a failed enterprise from the start. On Friday, those hopes were dealt twin blows when Georgia’s secretary of state certified Biden as the winner there and Republican legislative leaders from Michigan, after meeting with the president, signaled they would do nothing to try to undermine the results. Biden has an electoral college majority, and the certification process continues to gather steam.
Through these weeks, the president and his legal team have failed to produce credible evidence of systematic or widespread fraud. Now they are resorting to wild allegations of a grand conspiracy on the part of Biden and the Democrats — charges repeatedly debunked. This effort is being […]
Stephan: The docileness of Americans as their country is taken apart due to the incompetence, corruption, and criminality of the Trump Administration, I believe, is how history will explain what is going on in the United States.
Volunteers help load food as vehicles arrive to pick up food supplies and essential items during a Feeding South Florida drive-through food distribution at Miramar Regional Park on November 19, 2020, in Miramar, Florida. Johnny Louis / Getty
More than half of households in the United States are not “very confident” that they can afford to put food on the table as the holidays approach, according to federal Census data. Meanwhile, what remains of federal pandemic relief programs is set to expire before the end of year.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far refused to take up a $2.2 trillion economic relief package passed by Democrats months ago, even after Democrats attempted to compromise with Republicans and lowered the price tag by $1.2 trillion. If Congress fails to act, an estimated 12 million workers will lose federal emergency unemployment benefits when they expire on December 26 — on top of the 4.6 million who will have exhausted their benefits before then, according to the Century Foundation.
The COVID-19 pandemic has entered a terrifying phase in recent weeks, forcing some state […]
Stephan: At the end of this dark period I think it is necessary to study not so much Trump, but the population of America. This four-year period has revealed who we are, and what we care about. What values matter to us. It is not a pretty picture but I hope, it is an instructive one. Here is a first take.
Illustration by Eiko Ojala
The world has spent the past four years obsessing over President Donald Trump: his biography, his ideology, his speech, his tweets, his moods, his health, his hair. But what did the Trump era teach us about ourselves, and the country he was elected to lead?
Trump’s presidency has been a four-year war on many people’s assumptions about what was and wasn’t “American”—what a leader can call people in public, which institutions really matter, whether power lies with elites or masses. And it has forced serious arguments about what information, and what version of our history, we can even agree on.
With four years of Trump nearly behind us, Politico Magazine asked a group of smart political and cultural observers to tell us what big, new insight this era has given them about America—and what that insight means for the country’s future.
Many were alarmed to discover that our political institutions and norms are more fragile than they thought. Others pointed out the blind spots that members of the political and cultural elite have for the deep […]
Stephan: What amazes me about the Trumpers is that they seem incapable of recognizing that the misery the nation is currently experiencing is entirely the result of Trump and his orcs. Yes, Covid-19 was not created by Trump, but the country's reaction to it, from the lack of national planning, the politicization over wearing masks, the economic policies, such as described in this article, the employment crisis, the destruction of our democracy and on and on are all the result of the incompetence, corruption, and criminality of Trump and those who serve him. And yet it has no effect on the worldview of the Trumpers.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Credit: Gustavo Garello / AP
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday that key pandemic lending programs at the Federal Reserve would expire on Dec. 31, putting the outgoing Trump administration at odds with the central bank and potentially adding stress to the economy as President-elect Joe Biden organizes his administration.
In a letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Mnuchin said the $455 billion allocated to Treasury under the CARES Act last spring, much of it set aside to support Fed lending to businesses, nonprofits and local governments, should be instead available for Congress to reallocate.
The decision comes as data shows the early fast recovery from a historic plunge in the economy is fading, with more than 10 million who had jobs in January still out of work
“I am requesting that the Federal Reserve return the unused funds to the Treasury,” Mnuchin said in a letter to Powell, declining to extend programs the central bank has said were critical to assuring credit flowed to all parts of […]
Stephan: While America reels from Trump's attack on our democracy, the Republican Senators make it clear they care nothing for democracy, but everything for power. And they act accordingly.
McConnell and Graham
Senate Republicans have bucked a century-old tradition to continue to confirm President Donald Trump’s judges in spite of his election loss.
The Senate has confirmed six district court nominees since the election, including a 33-year-old attorney with little trial experience who was rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association (ABA). The move broke a “123-year tradition against voting on judicial nominees of an outgoing president of the defeated party during a lame duck session,” according to Bloomberg Law.
Judicial nominees of presidents who lost their re-election or whose party was defeated have not been confirmed after an election since 1897, Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies judicial appointments, told the outlet. The lone exception was when the Senate confirmed future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who was then the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, to a circuit court in 1980.
Stephan: The incompetence of Trump and his administration to deal with the pandemic is destroying America's already fragile illness profit system. Even worse it is destroying the wellbeing of the men and women who labor every day to keep the rest of us well. All of this was so unnecessary.
The reports have come in from all across the country: Hospitals are filling up, especially in the Midwest, and they are running out of the staff they need to take care of patients.
Last week, the United States broke its record from April for the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, blowing past 60,000 all the way to 73,000, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.
Now new data released by the Department of Health and Human Services quantify the crisis in America’s hospitals in closer detail. At The Atlantic’s request, HHS provided data on the number of hospitals experiencing staffing shortages. From November 4 to November 11, 958 hospitals—19 percent of American hospitals—faced a staffing shortage. This week, 1,109 hospitals reported that they expect to face a staffing shortage. That’s 22 percent of all American hospitals.
In eight states, the situation is even more dire. More than 35 percent of hospitals in Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin are anticipating a staffing shortage this week. COVID-19 puts pressure on hospitals in two ways. […]
