Unfit for command.
"The comments represent one of the most explicit acknowledgments to date that the White House’s aggressive push to bring students back to campus this fall has created serious risks for increased COVID transmission. It also underscores just how fragile the current situation is at college campuses across the country."Seems like something they could have predicted. It’s almost like the push to open campuses was motivated by something other than public health concerns.
“While I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president,” Biden said. “I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did. That’s the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party.”Competency looks so unusual! But I think I'm ready for it again.
“Some stories demand collaboration, and this one is a plain example. The nation’s newsrooms — working together and, crucially, with the help of the public in communities around the nation — could find out and explain what is going on, at the macro and micro level,” he said.Dan Gillmor on how the media should work to ensure the postal service story is told.
In another recent Workplace post, a senior engineer collected internal evidence that showed Facebook was giving preferential treatment to prominent conservative accounts to help them remove fact-checks from their content.Heartening to hear Facebook employees are continuing to speak up and challenge management. If you haven’t seen Max Wang’s departure video, it’s well worth your time: Leaving facebook: a critique of fb's policies, priorities, and ideologies, ft. hannah arendt. It’s a very personal take on the difficult ethical spot the company is putting its employees in.
The company responded by removing his post and restricting internal access to the information he cited. On Wednesday the engineer was fired, according to internal posts seen by BuzzFeed News.
"Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades’ worth of institutional postal knowledge."Oh good, Democrats have requested an audit to get to the bottom of this. That should be swift and effective. *headdesk*
"Given these possibilities and Trump’s well-known opposition to voting by mail, logic might suggest that he would attempt to strengthen the USPS to alleviate those concerns. Instead, he’s weakening it and then using that weakness as a reason to argue against mail-in voting."Congress needs to step in quickly here to make sure the right to vote is safe and available during a pandemic.
"’Unfortunately, not only has little to none of that funding been utilized, you are now proposing the very cuts that we sought to avoid with that emergency line of credit,’ Manchin said in his letter."The new Postmaster is considering closing several post offices even though the coronavirus relief package passed by Congress included up to $10 billion in Treasury loans. I wonder if it's because the new Postmaster has a financial interest in seeing it fail? From the Washington Post: Trump ally takes over crisis-ridden Postal Service as top Senate Democrat demands inquiry on hiring:
"DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, the ambassador-nominee to Canada, have between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors, according to Wos’s financial disclosure paperwork filed with the Office of Government Ethics."It's just grifting all the way down. The USPS is going to be critical to democracy here in the near future.
"Federal tactical teams that have clashed with protesters in Portland in recent weeks will soon be leaving the city, Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon said Wednesday."Relieved to hear this.
"Fast forward five years and journalists and commentators are still talking about imminent pivots and praising him for always-temporary changes in his tone."Tiring Trump trope.
"Critics say the government’s slow response to requests for transparency and the national media’s focus on the most salacious moments of the city’s demonstrations prove both federal officials and national reporters care more about property damage than the physical injuries protesters sustain on the streets."What life in Portland is really like right now.
"Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkely said if Wolf is coming to inflame the situation in Portland so the President can “look tough,” the acting DHS leader should leave. “Federal forces shot an unarmed protester in the face,” Merkely said in a tweet. “These shadowy forces have been escalating, not preventing, violence.”"
"This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety," Brown said. "The president is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government."
"The aggressive federal posture has complicated the mission of the Department of Homeland Security, an agency that has spent much of its history focused on foreign terrorism threats and is supposed to build collaborative relationships with local law enforcement partners. And it raises questions of whether it is appropriate for federal authorities to take up the policing of an American city against the wishes of local leaders."
"As noted above, the Oregon statute that authorizes federal law enforcement officers to enforce Oregon law requires the officer to identify their authority and their reason for making the arrest. It does not seem like a stretch to interpret that provision to require an officer to at least identify themselves (1) as a federal law enforcement officer; if not (2) as an employee of a specific federal agency with law enforcement authority."
"The lawsuit was filed on behalf of legal observers and local journalists. Named plaintiffs include The Portland Mercury; Matthew Lewis-Rolland, a freelance photographer who federal agents shot 10 times in the back on Sunday; Justin Yau, a freelance journalist who federal agents attacked with tear gas; and Doug Brown, a legal observer who federal agents threatened to shoot. All individuals were wearing high-visibility shirts that said “PRESS” or “legal observer.”"
"Portland is being used as a bellwether to see what this administration can get away with. And also what works to quell protest. The police tactics don’t work. We’re on night 50. There’s this knowledge, I believe, in the more lucid chunks of the administration, that this problem will get worse in the next month. August is shaping up to be one of the hardest months in our nation’s modern history. September may be worse. And it will have to come to a head."
"...this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we're responsible for around the country."