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Top U.S. & World Headlines — September 8, 2020

Kenosha Journalist Quits over Coverage of Jacob Blake Protests, Citing Ignorance, Lack of Diversity

The mainstream media’s role in perpetuating racism has come under increased scrutiny during the nationwide uprisings against injustice, leading to resignations and firings at news outlets across the country and calls for more diverse newsrooms. Daniel Thompson, the former digital editor at Kenosha News, says that’s what led him to quit his job after his news outlet ran a misleading headline and article about a peaceful Jacob Blake protest that focused almost exclusively on one speaker’s threat of violence. “Now more than ever for the media, it’s important to try to give a full, accurate picture.” says Thompson. “I don’t think the situation happened out of any malicious intent. I think it was simply ignorance and a lack of diversity or diverse voices that were part of the decision.”

Quid Pro Quo: Did Trump Help Kill Anti-Corruption Probe in Guatemala to Aid Reelection Bid?

Iván Velásquez is a Colombian prosecutor who headed the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala from 2013 to 2019, a powerful U.N.-backed commission formed to investigate corruption in the country and supported by the Obama administration. But Velásquez and other investigators were expelled from the country after the Trump administration agreed to withdraw support for the commission in apparent exchange for Guatemala's support of Trump's immigration and Middle East policies. The details of that quid pro quo between President Trump and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales are detailed in a new investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. We speak with reporters Aaron Glantz and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes.

The Police Can’t Be Judge, Jury & Executioner: Filmmaker Yoruba Richen on Killing of Breonna Taylor

Months after the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, new details have emerged about the final moments of the 26-year-old EMT's life and the police raid that brought it to a violent end, as detailed in a New York Times documentary that includes dozens of interviews and a review of more than 1,200 new photos of the crime scene. Taylor, whom police shot five times in her own home on March 13, has since become a household name and rallying point in the national movement for racial justice. The police officers responsible for her death have not been charged. We speak with Yoruba Richen, director and producer of "The Killing of Breonna Taylor," who says the case exposes the systemic violence at the heart of U.S. policing.

The End of Oil? Pandemic Adds to Fossil Fuel Glut, But COVID-19 Relief Money Flows to Oil Industry

The End of Oil? Pandemic Adds to Fossil Fuel Glut, But COVID-19 Relief Money Flows to Oil Industry. As the coronavirus pandemic contributes to a glut of fossil fuels, groups like Greenpeace are calling on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to ban fossil fuel interests from his campaign and administration, if he wins, even as he recently declared at a campaign stop that he “will not ban fracking.” We discuss the politics of fossil fuels with reporter Antonia Juhasz, who says the end of oil could be near, and look at how the industry has profited from the COVID bailout. “The pandemic has taken essentially every weakness that already existed in the oil industry and then made each of them much, much worse, leaving the oil industry in a situation where I would argue it is at its weakest since its inception,” she says.

360 Everest Trek Part 07

How Fascism Works: Trump's "Law & Order" Is Lawlessness, Fueling Racist Violence & Chaos

As President Trump openly embraces the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon and promotes "law and order" while refusing to condemn armed followers of his who target antiracist protesters, we speak with Jason Stanley, Yale philosopher and scholar of propaganda, author of "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them." Stanley says Trump built a cult of personality within the Republican Party, as evident during the Republican National Convention, and has moved the United States steadily into authoritarianism during his term. "Fascism is a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of supposed threats by leftist radicals, minorities and immigrants. He promises only he can save us," Stanley says. "In the RNC, what we saw is we saw a cult of the leader."

"Where Is the Accountability?" 23 Deaths at Ft. Hood Prompt Commander's Removal, New Investigation

The top commander at Fort Hood is removed from his post, and the U.S. Army has launched an investigation, after a series of murders and accusations of sexual abuse at the base, with 23 deaths at Fort Hood this year and 13 soldiers disappeared, killed or who died by suicide. In April, the remains of soldier Vanessa Guillén were found near the base, and the main suspect in that case killed himsef in July shortly after he was accused of her murder. Her case sparked national outrage about sexual assault in the military and led to the introduction of legislation to make it easier for military personnel to report sexual assault and harassment. "Rape culture, systemic racism, corruption and impunity has been really part and parcel in the Department of Defense for decades," says Air Force veteran Pam Campos-Palma, who leads the Vets for the People project, adding that Congress must provide proper oversight of the military.

Freedom Struggle: Angela Davis on Calls to Defund Police, Racism & Capitalism, and the 2020 Election

In a Democracy Now! special, we revisit our interview with the legendary activist and scholar Angela Davis about the uprising against police brutality and racism launched in May after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protests have helped dramatically shift public opinion on policing and systemic racism, as "defund the police" becomes a rallying cry of the movement. Davis is professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For half a century, she has been one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States and an icon of the Black liberation movement. We interviewed her in early June.

Cornel West & Ben Jealous on Whether Progressives Can Push Joe Biden Leftward If He Defeats Trump

In a Democracy Now! special, Harvard professor Cornel West and Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way and former president of the NAACP, discuss the 2020 DNC, Joe Biden's vow to fight systemic racism and "overcome this season of darkness in America," the historic nomination of Kamala Harris as his partner on the ticket, and how the convention was a showcase for a broad anti-Trump coalition, including prominent Republican figures given plum speaking slots, but few voices from the party's insurgent left wing. "At this moment, with the decline and fall of the American empire, it looks as if the system is unable to generate enough energy to seriously reform itself. It remains sanitized, superficial," says Dr. West. "I want fundamental change." Jealous says Biden is someone progressives can work with and pressure. "The theme of this convention was really one of unity," he notes. "This is a time when we have to come together to defeat a president who is the most evil, the most corrupt that any of us have seen." We originally interviewed West and Jealous last month as the DNC ended.

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Top U.S. & World Headlines — September 2, 2020

Top U.S. & World Headlines — September 1, 2020

Meet the New Yes Man on Trump's COVID Task Force: Dr. Scott Atlas Wants U.S. to Adopt Herd Immunity

As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States passes 6 million, with a death toll of over 183,000, the Trump administration is loosening coronavirus restrictions, fast-tracking vaccine approval and disregarding safety tests, and now one of Trump's top medical advisers is pushing for the country to adopt a controversial "herd immunity" strategy, raising alarm among public health officials. Washington Post health reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb says Dr. Scott Atlas is not an epidemiologist and was brought on specifically because he would back President Trump's position "about how the pandemic was going, that the threat was receding, that the country should reopen." We also speak with Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, who argues the U.S. is already following an "implicit" herd immunity policy. "They realize it's politically toxic, so they don't want to use the phrase, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck," he says.

White Supremacist in the White House: Ibram X. Kendi on Trump's Calls for "Law & Order" in Kenosha

We speak with Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, and air excerpts from the families of Jacob Blake and George Floyd at the massive protest marking the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington. Kendi also discusses President Trump’s planned visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin, as he blames Democrats for violence during protests there and in Portland, Oregon. "Racism has spread to every part of the body," says Kendi, comparing U.S. racism to cancer, "and then we have a president who is claiming that it doesn't exist."

Stephen Miller: The white nationalist driving Trump's immigration policies

Republicans held a televised naturalization ceremony at this week's RNC featuring president Trump congratulating a group of five new citizens. Journalist Jean Guerrero says it was an attempt to create a "false dichotomy between legal and illegal immigration," meant to signal that the Trump administration supports this "legal" immigration. But Guerrero points out that many of the administration's immigration policies, led by top advisor Stephen Miller, have been aimed at dismantling many of those legal pathways — including, most consequentially, asylum protections for refugee families at the border. "Stephen Miller primarily has been targeting families," says Guerrero. "This is not about national security. This is not about keeping out criminals. This is about reengineering the ethnic flows into this country to keep Brown and Black families out." In her new book, "Hatemonger," Guerrero shows that Stephen Miller pulls directly from eugenicist and white supremacist playbooks in crafting immigration policy.

“On a Hunting Spree”: Wisc. Rep. David Bowen Says Cops Turned Blind Eye to White Militias in Kenosha

The police shooting of Jacob Blake has sparked massive protests across the country and in Kenosha, where a white teenager opened fire on Black Lives Matter protesters and killed two people. Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old self-declared militia member and avid Trump supporter, was apprehended in Antioch, Illinois, after fleeing Wisconsin. He has been charged with murder. Wisconsin state Representative David Bowen, who has attended racial justice protests in Kenosha, says he “witnessed firsthand” how freely organized white supremacists targeted protesters without interference from law enforcement, and accuses police of giving Rittenhouse the “Dylann Roof treatment,” managing to arrest him without incident, while unarmed Black people are frequently met with deadly force. “This is Exhibit A and Exhibit B of why we need to transform law enforcement and public safety in Wisconsin and in this country,” Bowen says.

ACLU Demands Resignation of Top Cops in Kenosha for Racism & Brutal Response to Jacob Blake Protests

The ACLU of Wisconsin is calling for top Kenosha law enforcement officials to resign in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, who was left paralyzed below the waist after a white officer shot him in the back seven times. The shooting has sparked mass protests in Kenosha and around the U.S., bringing renewed attention to racism and violence in the Kenosha police force. A damning video of Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth has surfaced from a 2018 news conference, when he described Black people accused of shoplifting and crashing a stolen car as “garbage people that fill our communities that are a cancer to our society.” We speak with Chris Ott, executive director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, who says both Beth and Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis need to go. “When police and law enforcement go into communities in this militarized way, this heavy-handed way, it just inflames tensions, makes things worse and creates dangerous new situations,” says Ott.

From Reagan to Trump: Why the RNC was a pinnacle of conservative propaganda

President Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination at the RNC on Thursday. Historian Rick Perlstein says Trump's rhetoric is driving people to the type of violence that was on full display this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where white 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse gunned down protesters who had mobilized against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Perlstein says Trump draws directly from a history of Republican authoritarian propaganda dating back at least to Reagan. "Ronald Reagan would definitely say two plus two equals five — there's no question about it. But when he would say things like that, it would tend to be the off-the-cuff stuff," says Perlstein. "Whereas when Donald Trump takes a podium and he's reading a speech — that's when he lies the most adamantly. And it shows that the kind of lying, deception, propaganda, authoritarianism is qualitatively more systematic than under Ronald Reagan."

“The Games Will Not Go On”: Pro Athletes Strike for Black Lives, Bringing Leagues to Grinding Halt

Hurricane Laura Floods ICE Jails in Louisiana as Asylum Seekers from Cameroon Strike over Conditions

People held in immigration jails in Louisiana report horrific conditions and continued mistreatment after Hurricane Laura devastated the area. Immigrants detained at the LaSalle and Jackson Parish jails say that after the storm, the two facilities have flooded with urine and feces and lack electricity, clean food or water. Many of those protesting the conditions are from Cameroon, and refugee rights groups, including the Cameroon American Council, are demanding an investigation into conditions. "The current immigration system is based on the racist practices, the white supremacy of 400 years," says Sylvie Bello, founder of the Cameroon American Council, one of the leading immigration advocacy groups working with Black and African communities in the U.S. She says it's vital during a time of "racial reckoning" to fight for Black immigrants in ICE detention.

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"No rights whatsoever": The historical development of the U.S. caste system

In a new book, "Caste: The Origins of our Discontents," journalist Isabel Wilkerson argues that the word "racism" does not adequately capture the historical plight of Black people in the U.S. in its totality. Drawing from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s reflections upon his 1958 visit to India, Wilkerson says the U.S. racial hierarchy is best understood as a caste system similar to the one that structures Indian society. "Caste system essentially is an arbitrary grading, an artificial graded ranking of human value in a society. And it’s one in which there’s a fixed infrastructure that, in our country, predates anyone who’s alive today," says Wilkerson. "This is the hierarchy that we have all inherited, that no one alive created, but we have inherited it, and we live under the shadow of that system."

The Case Against Trump Is “Open and Shut”: Kamala Harris Slams President’s Handling of Pandemic

As Kamala Harris, the first woman of color on a major presidential ticket, hits the campaign trail with Joe Biden for the first time, we play an extended excerpt of her address, in which she blasts President Trump’s handling of the economy, immigration, racial justice and the coronavirus pandemic. “The case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut,” Harris says. “Just look where they’ve gotten us: more than 16 million out of work; millions of kids who cannot go back to school; a crisis of poverty, of homelessness, afflicting Black, Brown and Indigenous people the most.”

Public Health vs. Politics: White House Scrapped Nationwide COVID Testing Plan to Hurt Blue States

As the U.S. coronavirus death toll passes 155,000, there is still no national testing program, with widespread shortages and delays hampering efforts to contain the pandemic. This continues months after President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner launched a White House task force with the goal of establishing a national testing plan. We speak to investigative reporter Katherine Eban, whose explosive Vanity Fair report chronicles Kushner's fumbling efforts and the sudden decision to abandon the project on political grounds. "The participants expected that at any moment in early April, the plan would be announced," says Eban. "It vanished into thin air."

"It's Basically a Death Sentence": Hunger Strikers Demand Release as Virus Surges in ICE Jails

People being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails are holding work strikes and hunger strikes over the lack of access to personal protective equipment or quality medical care, and to demand their release. We speak with Joe Mejia, an asylum seeker who was among a group of prisoners at Yuba County Jail in California who led a hunger strike while he was held there for nearly 11 months. "That place is dangerous," Mejia says. "It is a death sentence to detainees, especially right now with the coronavirus."

Militarized BORTAC Border Patrol Raids & Ransacks Medical Camp on U.S. Border, Arrests 30 Migrants

In Arizona, heavily armed Border Patrol officers raided the medical camp of humanitarian group No More Deaths and detained 30 migrants whose whereabouts are now unknown. It was the second raid in just two days on the camp, which provides water, food and medical attention to refugees crossing into the United States through the scorching Sonoran Desert. "Immediately after they entered the camp, the first thing they did was round up all of the No More Deaths aid workers and zip-tie them, remove their phones," says Montana Thames, a humanitarian aid worker with No More Deaths. "It was very clear they didn't want any witnesses." No More Deaths also recently published documents revealing the Border Patrol Union, a pro-Trump and anti-immigrant extremist group, had instigated a 2017 raid of the same camp.

Big Tech monopolies need to be broken up and regulated, says business professor Scott Galloway

Business professor Scott Galloway says Big Tech firms have gotten too powerful, crushing smaller competitors and warping the entire technology sector with their control over major platforms. “If you own the rails you’re not supposed to be competing with the end destination," says Galloway, a professor of marketing at NYU Stern. The CEOs of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple were grilled recently by lawmakers in Washington over their anti-competitive practices, part of a growing chorus of voices demanding antitrust action against the tech behemoths. Galloway says the online companies should be split up into several smaller firms, while Apple needs to be much more tightly regulated.

How the Pandemic Defeated America: Ed Yong on How COVID-19 Humiliated Planet’s Most Powerful Nation

As the world passes a grim milestone of 20 million coronavirus cases, we look at how the pandemic humbled and humiliated the world’s most powerful country. Over a quarter of the confirmed infections and deaths have been in the United States, which has less than 5% of the world’s population. Ed Yong, a science writer at The Atlantic who has been covering the pandemic extensively since March, says existing gaps in the U.S. social safety net and the Trump administration’s “devastatingly inept response” made for a deadly combination.

How did the coronavirus defeat the world's most powerful country? Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic, says the Trump administration's "devastatingly inept response" and preexisting gaps in the social safety net combined to make the U.S. the worst-hit country on the planet, accounting for a quarter of cases despite comprising less than 5% of the world's population. Yong says the most glaring problem is the lack of healthcare access, adding that "universal healthcare is a thing we have to fight for" in order to deal with the coronavirus as well as future pandemics.

As Kamala Harris Makes History as VP Pick, Her "Top Cop" Record Faces New Scrutiny Amid BLM Protests

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's selection of California Senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate for the November election makes her the first Black woman and the first Indian American on a major party presidential ticket. "It's hard to overstate how historic, how monumental this is," says Aimee Allison, president of She the People, which works to elevate the political voice and leadership of women of color. But in the midst of the largest protest movement in American history against racist policing, Briahna Joy Gray, the former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, says "there's a great deal of frustration" with Harris, who is "known for being the top cop from California."

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