Russia targets Black voters
2020 election war game, California wildfires, Paul Rusesabagina, Sonny Rollins turns 90
The U.S. presidential election is only 56 days away as the country continues facing a public health crisis, an economic crisis, the climate crisis and a growing social crisis.
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Jazz legend Sonny Rollins celebrated his 90th birthday yesterday. Check out his interview with Cornel West below, as well a video of two of his live sets in Denmark from the 1960s.
Racial tensions roiling US pose target for election meddling
“[Russia’s] Internet Research Agency overwhelmingly focused on race and the Black Lives Matter Movement when targeting the U.S. in 2016. The goal, part of the Russian playbook for decades, was to sow chaos by posting content on both sides of the racial divide. Indeed, “no single group of Americans was targeted by IRA information operatives more than African-Americans,” concluded a report from the Senate Intelligence Committee.” (Associated Press)
The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis
“A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis,” writes Rosa Brooks in a Washington Post op-ed.
Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Pentagon official, is founder of the Transition Integrity Project, which ran a series of war games for the 2020 election.
Read the Transition Integrity Project’s full report here.
California Wildfires: Extreme Heat Turns State Into a Furnace
“As California endures one of its worst wildfire seasons ever, a new rash of fires stoked by extreme heat has destroyed homes, cloaked much of the state in smoke, forced thousands of people to evacuate and threatened another round of rolling blackouts.” (New York Times)
White House Said to Keep Sick Kids on Campus. Emails Reveal the Messy Reality.
“In the month since students began traveling back to their college campuses, coronavirus hot zones have migrated with them. Now many of the cities and towns where cases are surging fastest—places like Iowa City, Auburn, Statesboro, and Ames—are college towns. And while lax policies toward containment on and off-campus have created local breeding grounds for the virus, they’re not expected to stay local long, with sick students leaving campus and fall weather increasing viral spread.” (The Daily Beast)
Prosecutors charged more police after Ferguson but struggled to win convictions. Will that change after George Floyd?
“A Washington Post analysis of prosecutions that occurred before and after Ferguson found little change in the conviction rate for officers charged in fatal on-duty shootings.
“Once these cases moved into courtrooms, prosecutors faced the same hurdles that existed before Ferguson. Officers are afforded wide latitude to use force under the law, vouched for by experts and trusted by juries. They are convicted less than half the time, usually for lesser charges.” (Washington Post)
Rwanda's Kagame denies Paul Rusesabagina was kidnapped
“The outspoken government critic is now accused of supporting rebel violence in Rwanda. His family and supporters say they have not been able to speak to him and that he has not had access to a lawyer nearly a week after he was paraded in front of the media in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, in handcuffs.” (Al Jezeera)