Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, senior advisor, and Best Slenderman, raised eyebrows on Wednesday when a segment of journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, detailed an odd interpretation of Trump’s leadership style. According to Woodward, Kushner compared the Trump presidency to Alice in Wonderland — yes, really — though this doesn’t really give us any confidence in the Trump administration.

Described as Trump’s “ever-loyal cheerleader and true believer,” Kushner told Woodward that we might understand the president a little bit better if we simply studied Alice’s Cheshire Cat, specifically. The colorful cat can best be remembered for its ominous grin, and ability to disappear and reappear at will while speaking only in metaphors. (Okay, I’m starting to see it!)

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there,” Kushner paraphrased to Woodward in an effort to make sense of Trump’s, um, energy. Kushner also told Woodward there are “a hundred different shades of gray,” with the president. “And if people try to get a quick answer out of him, it’s easy. You can get him to decide in your favor by limiting his information. But you better be sure as hell that people with competing views aren’t going to find their way to him. And when that happens, he’s going to undo his decision.” 

Kushner’s assertion that Trump is like a directionless cat who changes decisions at a moment’s notice doesn’t exactly bode well for the president. These aren’t necessarily sought-after characteristics for someone in the highest office of the U.S., especially because Kushner went on to suggest that the “most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots.” Woodward took this as referencing Trump’s former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn. 

But Woodward — much like the rest of us — didn’t see the flattery in any of it. “Did Kushner understand how negative this was?” Woodward writes in his book. “Was it possible the best roadmap for the administration was a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole, and Kushner was willing to acknowledge that Trump’s presidency was on shaky, directionless ground?”

Based on Kushner’s descriptions alone, if the president is a bumbling cat surrounded by “overconfident idiots,” it’s unclear if there is any literary work worth studying that could convince us that we are in good hands. We don’t have to look too far to find examples of Trump’s questionable leadership. The president admitted to Woodward that his strategy for dealing with what he acknowledged as a virus “more deadly than even your strenuous flu,” was to simply downplay it. As a result, Trump has repeatedly lied about the coronavirus pandemic, and even suggested consuming bleach as a treatment.

If Trump is the Cheshire Cat, then we really are on a directionless path trying to figure out for ourselves the best way out of this absurd, nonsensical nightmare. 

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In the months since Netflix’s documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness brought big cats, their rivalries, and a mysterious murder to our screens, new details have come to light in the disappearance of Carole Baskin’s former husband Don Lewis.

Tiger King, the show which centered around the raising of big cats in small cages — and the rivalry of Baskin and Joe Exotic — was an early quarantine staple, with many speculating about the disappearance of Baskin’s husband. Although Joe Exotic, the private zookeeper at the center of the docuseries and Baskin’s arch nemesis, has propagated his unproven suspicions that Baskin killed Lewis back in 1997 (and then fed him to the tigers), Baskin has denied this — and all questions regarding Lewis — for decades. Now, new details could provide context to the mystery.

In an upcoming episode of the true crime docuseries 48 Hours Suspicion, there appears to be some new information about Lewis’ disappearance. In the season premiere, “The Tiger King Mystery,” which airs on September 9, a woman named Trish Farr-Payne comes forward with claims that her ex-husband Kenny Farr, who worked as a handyman for Baskin and Lewis, may have played some role in his disappearance. Purr-ty wild, huh? 

Two days before Lewis went missing, Farr-Payne recounts that her husband warned her, “Don’s gone, and I don’t want you talking about him.” Farr-Payne says someone left a large, padlocked freezer on her front porch that vanished “about a week after Don disappeared.” She says she waited to come forward to the police about what happened because she was afraid for her family’s safety. “You know, I had my kids. I was afraid for them. I was more afraid for them than anything,” said Farr-Payne.

The episode will also include interviews with Lewis’ ex-wife, and his three daughters, though it’s unclear whether Baskin or Joe Exotic will make an appearance. But it’s unlikely, at least for the latter, who is currently serving 22 years in federal prison after he allegedly hiring an undercover FBI agent to kill Baskin.

Still, Exotic says he wants to be helpful to the case. In August, he apparently offered to help the Lewis family in their search for Don, whose body has never been found. While some think Lewis disappeared to Costa Rica, his children believe the theory that Baskin fed him to her tigers. 

Despite these theories, Baskin is not a suspect in the case and has repeatedly denied any involvement in Lewis’s disappearance. “My tigers eat meat; they don’t eat people,” she told People magazine in 1998. “There would be bones and remains of my husband out there. I’m amazed that people would even think such a thing.”

While many loose ends remain in Lewis’ disappearance, and people continue to wonder what really happened, Baskin will be dancing her way around the Dancing With The Stars stage later this month, along with some “cool cats and kittens.”

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Just hours after Michael Reinoehl spoke to VICE News about fatally shooting a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer during a rally in downtown Portland, police shot and killed him near Olympia, Washington. According to the U.S. Marshals Service, investigators who were part of a federal task force moved to arrest Reinoehl Thursday night after a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge issued an arrest warrant. 

“The fugitive task force located Reinoehl in Olympia and attempted to peacefully arrest him,” the U.S. Marshals Service claimed. Law enforcement officers at the scene allege Reinoehl, 48, was armed with a firearm at the time of his arrest and was “threatening the lives of law enforcement officers” but no other witnesses have corroborated this account of events. Officers ultimately shot and killed him during the attempted arrest.

Reinoehl had been a person of interest in the police investigation into the killing of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, the Patriot Prayer member who was participating in a pro-Trump car caravan on August 29 in Portland. In an earlier conversation with VICE, Reinoehl said he was acting in self defense when he shot Danielson. 

“I had no choice. I mean, I, I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn’t going to do that,” Reinoehl said. He also detailed how Danielson threatened him and a friend with a knife, adding, “Had I stepped forward, he would have maced or stabbed me.” After the incident, Reinoehl told VICE News that he went into hiding and relocated his children after shots were fired outside his home, and said after speaking with attorneys he felt he had “a viable case for self defense and protection because there’s a definite threat to my life.”

Reinoehl regularly attended racial justice protests in Portland over the last three months since national uprisings began after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in May. He was previously arrested during an action in July for carrying a loaded gun and resisting arrest.

Not long before reports of Reinoehl’s killing circulated, President Donald Trump tweeted that the Portland Police Department should be arresting him, writing “Do your job, and do it fast.” Anti-racist demonstrators say it’s obvious police have taken a side in the escalating fight for racial justice, and Reinoehl’s killing is only the latest in this battle. Last month, police apprehended 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse after he shot and killed two anti-racist protestors in Kenosha, Wisconsin — as the president came to his defense — but did not act with the same restraint when arresting Reinoehl on Thursday night. 

There have been dozens of attacks on anti-racist protestors since May. In just the last few weeks in Portland, the far right and Trump supporters were suspected of carrying out two attempted pipe-bomb attacks, one drive-by shooting, and pulling guns on protestors, according to the site It’s Going Down. And, on Thursday night, someone drove their car into a Black Lives Matter protest in Times Square in New York City in the latest attempt to attack protestors.. 

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Despite President Donald Trump’s tiresome statements about the need to “restore law and order,” the president is also encouraging some U.S. residents to, uh… break the law. During an interview on Wednesday, the president suggested that people living in North Carolina should vote twice in the upcoming presidential election, both in person and by mail. 

According to Trump, voting twice should prove whether the election systems are secure. “Let them send it in and let them go vote, and if the [mail-in] system is as good as they say it is then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person, the president told WECT-TV in Wilmington.

But, of course, like most things Trump says, this isn’t actually true. In fact, it’s so not true, it’s very illegal: If you vote twice on purpose, you could end up facing felony charges.

Election officials in Michigan and North Carolina were quick to respond to Trump’s suggestion, reminding voters that voting twice is illegal, and voters could be prosecuted for doing so. “Don’t try this at home. I will prosecute you,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel wrote on Twitter. Nessel added, “Also, this might be a good time to remind people not to drink bleach,” a jab at the president’s previous dangerous claims that injecting disinfectants can treat COVID-19. 

The executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, Karen Brinson Bell reminded residents in a statement that voting twice and “soliciting someone to do so” violates state law. Meanwhile, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein offered some useful advice to voters: once you mail your ballot, “you can track it online, and it will show on the website that your ballot has been received.”  

Trump has pushed misleading and downright false information about voting since he first ran for office in 2016, when he repeatedly claimed the election would be rigged against him. Over the last few months, as states prepared to expand vote-by-mail to avoid long lines and crowded polling places amid a global public health crisis, Trump is sowing doubt in the election process with claims that voting by mail is rife with fraudulent activity. 

Previously, the president falsely claimed California was sending ballots to anyone, “no matter who they are or how they got there.” He has also pushed a war on the U.S. Postal Service, refusing to fund the agency because millions of people will rely on it to vote this Fall. Most recently, the president seemed to imply, again falsely, that the Democratic Party knows there will be “fraud and abuse” in the upcoming election because a handful of states will automatically send ballots to residents by mail. 

But while Trump incessantly harps on about the (unfounded) risks of widespread voter fraud in the upcoming election, he is also now encouraging people to vote twice. But please — and I cannot stress this enough — do not listen to our commander-in-chief and attempt to vote twice. I promise it won’t work out well for you!

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Can Trump Actually Defund New York City?

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It looks like President Donald Trump is once again trying to ramp up his own red scare with his latest threats to defund Democratic cities. On Wednesday night, the president warned on Twitter he would cut federal funding for cities that have seen violent protests since May, though often due in large part to the presence of heavily militarized police forces.  

“My Administration will do everything in its power to prevent weak mayors and lawless cities from taking Federal dollars while they let anarchists harm people, burn buildings, and ruin lives and businesses,” Trump wrote. “We’re putting them on notice today.”

My Administration will do everything in its power to prevent weak mayors and lawless cities from taking Federal dollars while they let anarchists harm people, burn buildings, and ruin lives and businesses. We’re putting them on notice today. @RussVought45

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2020

In a longer memo released Wednesday to Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Attorney General William Barr, the Trump administration writes, “Without law and order, democracy cannot function.” Trump has made “law and order” in response to ongoing dissent a focal point of his re-election campaign. 

“Anarchy has recently beset some of our States and cities,” the memo states, naming examples like Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, where locals occupied an area of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood near the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct building. Trump also named Portland, where protestors have taken the streets for more than 80 days, and Washington, D.C.

But the memo distinctly took aim at New York City, the president’s hometown, where he claims “city officials have allowed violence to spike.” The memo further cites Mayor Bill de Blasio’s agreement to cut $1 billion in funding from the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo shot back at the president, accusing Trump of trying to “punish NYC since day one.” In a tweet of his own, Cuomo wrote that Trump “let COVID ambush New York. He refuses to provide funds that states and cities MUST receive to recover. He is not a king. He cannot ‘defund’ NYC. It’s an illegal stunt.”

In a Wednesday evening press conference with reporters, Cuomo called the memo “another attempt to kill New York City,” The New York Times reported. “Everything that he could possibly do in his power to hurt New York City he has done. The best thing he did for New York City was leave. Good riddance. Let him go to Florida. Be careful not to get COVID.”

Like many of Trump’s past threats, this one is also unlikely to hold up in court, Evan Hollander, a spokesman for the Democrat-led House Appropriations Committee, told the Times. Hollander called the memo “nothing more than a distraction from the fact that Americans are less safe under the Trump administration,” a campaign narrative the administration has repeatedly pushed in an effort to align Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris with America’s so-called radical left.

Sam Berger, a former Office of Management and Budget official echoed the same, to The Washington Post. “This is a campaign document coming out of the White House,” said Berger. “Any actual restriction on funding in court will immediately be sued and almost certainly struck down.”

So, it looks like Trump will likely try to defund New York City, but he’ll be at the bitter end of immediate legal push back should he continue to do so.

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The Louisville Metro Police are pushing a deceptive narrative about the events leading up to 26-year-old Breonna Taylor’s killing, placing blame on her ex-boyfriend Jamarcus Glover. The police talking points are problematic enough on their own, framing Glover as the cause of Taylor’s killing because police were investigating his alleged involvement in drug trafficking.

According to the police, police obtained a warrant for Taylor’s home after Glover was seen allegedly picking up a package from there and taking it to a “known drug house.” Detective Joshua Jaynes said he verified with “a US Postal Inspector” whether Glover had received packages to Taylor’s apartment, but a Louisville postal inspector says that never happened, the Louisville Courier Journal reported. 

Still, the police are relying on this narrative to place blame on Glover in Taylor’s killing. “The police are trying to make it out to be my fault and turning the whole community out here making it look like I brought this to Breonna’s door,” Glover told The Courier Journal in an interview. “There was nothing never there or anything ever there, and at the end of the day, they went about it the wrong way and lied on that search warrant and shot that girl out there.” 

Some media reports propagated these police talking points by focusing their attention on Glover, while also framing him as Taylor’s “ex-boyfriend who was arrested on drug charges.” Meanwhile, Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, the LMPD officers who shot and killed Taylor have yet to be arrested.

It’s a known fact that police lie. That was one reason departments across the country were pressured to use body cameras following the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014 — so that there could be no discrepancies between their record and the truth in cases of police violence. Still, they continue to push their false accounts. Police lied when they said George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis Police, “physically resisted officers.” They lied in Kenosha, WI, when they said Jacob Blake was resisting arrest when they shot him in the back seven times as Blake walked away from them to get in his car.  

Despite the fact that police are not reliable sources, newsrooms continue to rely on police voices in their reports. In the process, these reports help to push a violent narrative that Black victims of police violence are responsible for their own brutalization. The only people responsible for Breonna Taylor’s death are the officers that killed her, not her ex-boyfriend, and not her alleged proximity to a narcotics investigation that also relied on some pretty iffy police accounts.

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Megyn Kelly's TWEET About Jacob Blake Was RACIST

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Four days after police in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot Jacob Blake seven times as his three young sons watched from the backseat of his car, former Fox News darling Megyn Kelly is using her online platform to defend the officers. In a series of tweets, Kelly repeatedly pushed the racist, pro-police talking point that Black victims of police violence, including Blake, were resisting arrest — and therefore responsible for their own brutalization. 

Early Thursday morning, Kelly implied that Kenosha police acted appropriately when they shot Blake because, she tweeted, he “was armed with a KNIFE.” Journalists and activists were quick to call her out, accusing her of “spreading white nationalist talking points,” while also stating the facts of what happened during the altercation. Blake wasn’t carrying a weapon on his person. Though Wisconsin police said Blake told them he had a knife in his car, not only is that not illegal, but it also hasn’t been corroborated. Police officers aren’t exactly reliable sources, either — especially when reporting instances of police violence. 

“Wisconsin law does not restrict the possession and carry of knives either openly or concealed,” said Frederick Joseph, a philanthropist and former national surrogate for the Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders campaigns. “And further, even if he has a knife, the sentence for that isn’t death by seven bullets,” added writer Roxane Gay. The 29-year-old survived the shooting but is partially paralyzed.   

Let’s clear something up: Whether a person is innocent or guilty, armed or unarmed, state killings should never be the goal, or an acceptable outcome. There is no excuse for this kind of thing happening time and time again. And, Kelly’s comments continue to push a racist narrative that serves to further dehumanize Black victims of police violence. 

During her time at Fox News, Kelly was known for her racist commentary and frequently invited hate group leaders and extremists on her show, according to the progressive watchdog organization Media Matters for America. After police killed Michael Brown in 2014, Kelly pushed the same narrative, arguing the police were justified because he was allegedly armed. She later defended racist emails sent by Ferguson police and court employees.

Kelly’s latest comments are consistent with her Fox News roots. The network’s TV personalities used their air time on Wednesday to excuse the murders of two Kenosha protesters the night before, and spread false information about the man who shot them. As activists rightly point out, narratives like this — and Kelly’s own stance — will only enable future acts of white supremacist violence.

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Fact checkers have had their work cut out for them during the Republican National Convention this week, with Trump administration officials and supporters making false claims both big and small about everything from the coronavirus pandemic to who signed the Declaration of Independence (we see you, Madison Cawthorn). But it was Lara Trump — Eric Trump’s wife and former campaign adviser to the president — who really stole the show on Wednesday night when she misquoted Abraham Lincoln thanks to a meme. 

When it was Lara’s turn to fearmonger about the socialist boogeyman, she enlisted the help of Lincoln, who according to Trump once “famously said” that “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” 

But we’re very sorry to report to Lara and all her fans (are you there?) that Lincoln never actually said that. The best part: it seems Lara Trump sourced this quote, that she said at the official Republican National Convention — full stop — from a meme. The very famous and definitively inaccurate Lincoln quotation went viral in right-wing circles last year as a meme portraying progressive Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar as a threat to democracy. 

Fact-checking websites debunked the meme at the time, noting that the quotation paraphrases Lincoln’s actual comments “denouncing mob violence which would lead to chaos,” Michael Burlingame, a chair in Lincoln studies at the University of Illinois Springfield told PolitiFact at the time. Burlingame added that Lincoln argued such violence would provoke “the public to demand law and order, which would be provided by an ambitious leader who would rule tyrannically.” 

Lara Trump’s falsehoods didn’t end with Lincoln, though. Trump also celebrated the passage of the 19th Amendment, which she said granted “the right to vote to every American woman.” But Black women, who also organized on the frontlines for voting rights, remained disenfranchised until 1965. 

But some viewers commented on the misquote, pointing out that the Trump administration doesn’t care much about facts. The president made more than 20,000 false claims over a 14-month period, after all. 

Still, Lara Trump should have taken her seventh grade English teacher Mrs. Bee’s advice before sourcing content for her RNC speech from a Facebook meme. According to her, Mrs. Bee once said, “believe none of what you hear, half of what you read, and only what you’re there to witness firsthand,” but it seems she unfortunately believed the wrong half. 

And while her comments about Lincoln and voting rights were among some of the more egregious false statements in Lara Trump’s speech, I also fail to believe her description of the Trump family as “down to earth.”

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Actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli were each sentenced to time in prison on Friday due to their involvement in the college admissions scandal. Giannulli was sentenced to five months and Loughlin was sentenced to two months, both of which were in line with their plea deals. In addition to prison time, Giannulli was also fined $250,000 and required to complete 250 hours of community service, while Loughlin faced a $150,000 fine and 100 hours of community service. They will also each receive two years of supervised release.

The couple pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy charges, Loughlin for conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and Giannulli for conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and honest services wire and mail fraud. Loughlin and Giannulli originally pleaded not guilty to the charges, but took a plea deal earlier this year to avoid taking the case to trial. As a result of the deal, federal prosecutors recommended two months and five months in federal prison, respectively. 

Loughlin and Giannulli were implicated last year along with at least 55 other defendants facing charges in a college admissions scam involving parents conspiring to cheat on admissions exams and bribing university coaches and administrators. The couple allegedly paid William Rick Singer, the mastermind of the scandal, $500,000 to get their two daughters into the University of Southern California as recruits for the rowing team, though neither Olivia Jade nor Isabella participated in the sport.  

In a detention memo released Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling of Massachusetts wrote that Gianulli would receive a higher sentence after engaging closely with Singer. He directed “the bribe payments to USC and Singer” and “personally confronted his daughter’s high school counselor to prevent the scheme from being discovered,” Lelling wrote.

Though Loughlin took a less active role in the scam, she was “fully complicit, eagerly enlisting Singer a second time for her younger daughter, and coaching her daughter not to ‘say too much’ to her high school’s legitimate college counselor,” the memo reads.

Other members of the so-called Operation Varsity Blues have already faced sentencing. Actress Felicity Huffman was charged with fraud conspiracy in the scandal after allegedly paying Singer to inflate her daughter’s standardized test scores. Huffman pleaded guilty in April 2019 and served 11 days of her two-week sentence in October. She has since released a statement apologizing and expressing shame over her role in the scam.

Gregory Abott, founder and chairman of the International Dispensing Corporation, a food-packaging and research company, and Marcia Abott were also among parents charged in the scandal. Both pleaded guilty last year. Dozens of other CEOs of public and private companies and investment firms also pleaded guilty for their involvement in the scam, with parents accused of paying Singer a combined $25 million in bribes.

However, it seems now that prosecutors seek to take a strong stance against the more serious parents involved in the bribery scheme with heavier sentences. Loughlin and Giannulli have not yet commented on the sentence.

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Tensions were high on Friday as Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee over fears that recent reforms DeJoy has pushed could sabotage the 2020 presidential election. In several heated exchanges between senators and DeJoy, the postmaster general claimed many of the service slowdowns were a result of COVID-19, despite such issues not occurring until July. 

DeJoy repeatedly refused to commit to turning over written transcripts of his meetings with governors and other official documents related to service changes resulting in delayed mail deliveries. 

“I don’t know, I don’t have the authority to do some of those things. And that is something that I would need to discuss with counsel and the board’s counsel, so I can’t commit to that,” DeJoy said when asked about meeting minutes. Though he did admit that some of the changes in operations since he took over had resulted in mail delays, DeJoy told the committee he would not restore mail sorting machines that have been removed from various locations nationwide. “There’s no intention to do that,” DeJoy said, arguing the machines are “not needed.” 

DeJoy said that he feels “bad about the dip in our service.” But his testimony on the matter did not restore confidence in the postmaster general, as people took their concerns to Twitter and demanded he resign from his position. 

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy needs to resign. Raise your hand if you agree. #SaveUSPS

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) August 21, 2020

SATURDAY: We gather across the nation at 11 a.m. local time to #SaveThePostOffice from Trump and declare that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy must resign. https://t.co/6zZgZWPCrL https://t.co/iulZwxiSyt

— J. Smith-Cameron (@j_smithcameron) August 21, 2020

Sen. SHERROD BROWN sent a lengthy letter to Postmaster General LOUIS DEJOY in which, among other things, he says DeJoy should resign. pic.twitter.com/eYVLzQj62a

— Daniel Strauss (@DanielStrauss4) August 21, 2020

This comes as no surprise, though, considering the damage that DeJoy’s tenure as postmaster general has caused in a matter of months. Since widespread service changes have been implemented at the United States Postal Service, senators have received an uptick in calls from constituents, including veterans, people with disabilities, seniors, and people living in rural areas who were not receiving necessary items in time. 

Following his appointment in May, DeJoy has cut overtime for mail carriers, and removed hundreds of mail sorting machines, which he argued were in the name of saving money. The changes were met with backlash from USPS union workers, and congressional Democrats. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to prevent the USPS from receiving $25 billion in emergency COVID relief funding. 

“There’s some just heartbreaking stories,” said Republican Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who shared a story about a constituent whose inhaler refill was delayed. “Due to delays, he ran out of it while waiting for it to arrive and then his insurance said, ‘You know what, we’re not going to pay for another refill to be filled because it’s already been shipped through the Postal Service.’” 

Thousands of people are expected to take these calls to the streets in the coming days, with solidarity actions with the USPS planned across the country over the weekend and early next week. DeJoy, for his part, may want to start paying attention to these calls to action.

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In a not-too-surprising, but-still-disappointing twist, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has officially thrown her weight behind Rep. Joe Kennedy in the Massachusetts Senate Democratic primary. Pelosi officially endorsed Kennedy — an establishment Democrat seeking to unseat Sen. Ed Markey, a progressive senator who was an early supporter of such policy proposals as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. But Pelosi’s endorsement of the centrist Kennedy has created some tension among more progressive leaders and Congressional officials, specifically in relation to a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee policy put in place last year that sought to blacklist firms working with candidates challenging incumbents from within the party.

Among those taking issue with the endorsement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voiced her concern over the clear division in policy when it comes to centrists and progressive support within the party. “No one gets to complain about primary challenges again,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. She then went on to ask the DCCC, “when can we expect you to reverse your blacklist policy against primary orgs?” 

The response was unified among other progressives, who took issue with Pelosi’s outright endorsement, despite the fact that the DCCC itself has yet to support Kennedy’s candidacy. The DCCC rules, which were first announced in March 2019, stated individual House members could hire private political vendors that do polling, advertising, digital consulting, fundraising and field organizing; but the DCCC would not hire those organizations or list them on its “preferred” vendor list.

The policy essentially sought to discourage any future primary challenges like those led by left-leaning progressives like Reps. Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley who unseated two Democratic incumbents in 2018. 

Opponents of the new DCCC rules have also argued it would create further barriers for women challengers. “It is hard enough for challengers, for a lot of reasons,” Amy Pritchard, a consultant who worked with Pressley’s campaign told The New York Times last year. “And this policy is a bridge too far. I’d like to see a majority of women in Congress, and it’s not going to happen with this policy.” 

With such regulations in place, progressives are now pointing to the irony of Pelosi backing a Democratic challenger, while arguing the establishment did little to support Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar in the Minnesota Democratic primary earlier this month. “Ilhan’s multimillion challenge was bankrolled by DC lobbyists & dark money groups. He blatantly admitted to using shell corporations to get around the DCCC blacklist,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. She added the DCCC rules seem “like less a policy and more a cherry-picking activity.” 

In the last three years under President Donald Trump, many progressive liberals have lauded Pelosi as a force to be reckoned with — a one-woman resistance against the president. But the House Speaker has also, at times, stood in the way of some of the more radical changes proposed by a new wave of progressive lawmakers. Last year, Pelosi spoke out against Medicare for All, a popular initiative among the party’s further left-wing, and even threw some shade at Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. “It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?” she said. 

Meanwhile, Pelosi’s endorsement of Kennedy cited a need for “courageous leaders.” She stated, “Massachusetts and America need Joe Kennedy’s courage and leadership in the Senate to fight for the change we need.” But progressive leaders with the Sunrise Movement, a climate change PAC, called the move “embarrassing” and argued that Markey’s campaign has inspired “grassroots support” due to his willingness to “stand up for working people and movements when it counts.” 

Justice Democrats, the PAC that helped elect Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, and Pressley in 2018 echoed the same, tweeting on Thursday that her endorsement makes it very clear that there is “one set of rules for progressives and another for the party establishment.” Meanwhile, Massachusetts’s Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Collins wrote, “Nancy, the future of the Democratic Party is NOT a privileged, legacy candidate.” 

Maybe it’s time the establishment realized the same. But if not, here’s a suggestion for Joe Kennedy:

Joe Kennedy III should just go ahead and make his campaign slogan: "Do you have ANY idea who my father is?"

— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) August 20, 2020

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The Real Meaning Behind Obama's 2020 DNC Speech

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Former President Barack Obama addressed the nation on the third night of the Democratic National Convention Wednesday in a chilling speech. And while Trump’s predecessor is known as a warm, charismatic orator, he commanded the attention of the American people in a very different way this time. Obama gave his formal endorsement of the Democratic presidential nominees Joe Biden and his vice presidential pick Kamala Harris while also denouncing President Donald Trump in a nearly unprecedented way. But while the takeaway from his speech was largely around his strong words for Trump, many missed his true warning: Democracy itself is in danger.

“I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously,” Obama said, “But he never did.” He went on, “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe.” The former president continued that under Trump, democratic institutions have been “threatened like never before.” 

While he understands the many reasons that Americans lack trust in government right now, he said, listing special interests groups lobbying Congress and offshoring jobs, Obama warned that the Trump campaign is also “counting on your cynicism.” This is because “They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter.” As a result, he said that democracy will continue to wither “until it’s no democracy at all.”

While the existential message may have seemed lost on the masses in a speech where Obama skillfully criticized the entire Trump presidency, some pundits were eager to point out the real power in his message. “He was talking about the end of democracy. Not complaining that Trump overturned some policies,” Zerlina Maxwell, a writer and political analyst tweeted. “I feel validated in the sense of existential dread that I’ve felt for 4 years.”

Maxwell echoed concerns among some Americans that Trump’s actions are steering the country toward “fascism,” something anti-fascist and anti-racist activists have been warning for the last five years. But as the country faces the doom of a flailing United States Postal Service, random law enforcement raids in cities like Portland and Chicago, and the mass detention of unauthorized immigrants, the fascism of Trump’s presidency becomes impossible to ignore — especially for Obama.

Obama has been critical of Trump in the past, most recently describing the Trump administration’s coronavirus response as “an absolute chaotic disaster.” But never has the former president made such a bold statement about the threats facing not only democratic institutions, but also our communities, as he did in his speech Wednesday night.

“Do not let them take away your power. Don’t let them take away your democracy,” Obama warned. And Obama’s point certainly drives merit: As Americans scramble to even make sure their votes are counted in November, the message is clear: We are facing an unprecedented political crisis, and one that we can no longer ignore.

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