Steven Senne/AP

For the last three years, the left has trained their sights on ousting incumbent Democrats who stand in the way of their liberal agenda. But in the Massachusetts Senate race, they were forced to defend their own, and they won: Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has fended off a primary challenge from Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III (D-Mass.), with Kennedy conceding the race as the results were still coming in Tuesday night.

When Kennedy declared his challenge to Markey last September, he framed it as a generational challenge. The four-term member of Congress said in his Facebook announcement that this race would be “the fight of my generation.” The Boston Globe said it was “the starting gun of a generational showdown.”

Not so fast, said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), with whom Markey had co-authored the Green New Deal. “Sen. Markey is the generational change we need,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters at the time. “Generational change doesn’t mean ‘elect whoever is younger.’”

It was a quip that drew the battle lines in a Democratic primary that largely defied them. As I wrote last fall, “both have hewed to the bleeding edge of progressive politics”:

In addition to his longstanding role as a leader when it comes to pushing climate change legislation, Markey was at the forefront on issues such as net neutrality and denuclearization during his 13 terms in the House. And Kennedy has spent his scant time in Congress staking out a progressive record. Earlier this month, Kennedy, who backed the Green New Deal in December, wrote about the need to “end the filibuster, eliminate the electoral college and put in term limits for Supreme Court justices” on his Facebook page. Both have cosponsored their chambers’ respective Medicare for All bills and endorsed fellow Bay Stater Elizabeth Warren’s run for president.

But Ocasio-Cortez’s contribution to the fight was more than just her political framing. Her work with Markey on the Green New Deal drew the early endorsement of the Sunrise Movement—and it’s very young, very Online supporters, as I wrote last week:

“If he was alright with AOC, he was alright with them,” Markey campaign manager John Walsh tells me, referring to the New York lawmaker’s influence on progressive voters who might not have known much about the senator. “This is based on who Ed is, and this energy with Sunrise and others was already in the tank. And all we had to do is figure out how to bring it out.”

To “bring it out,” the Markey campaign appealed to the proclivities of Markey’s Gen Z fans, refashioning the 74-year-old as a progressive firebrand and unintentional hipster—not unlike the sort of political branding Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) enjoyed during his two presidential runs. The effort reached its apex in April, when the campaign tweeted a PSA on the merits of mask-wearing, featuring Markey modeling his own in a bomber jacket and Nike high-tops. From there, the Markeyverse was born, an enthusiastic group of dozens of Markey stan accounts that did the heavy lifting of digital organizing in the midst of a campaign now almost entirely online.

But what led to Kennedy’s loss was not Markey’s army of memers, many of whom are too young to vote or don’t live in Massachusetts. It was the coalition of affluent, white, liberal Sanders and Warren sympathizers who joined them, achieving a unity that evaded that group during the presidential primary. Kennedy, meanwhile will now be out of a job come January—and is the first Kennedy to ever lose a race in Massachusetts.

Rep. Richard E. NealDon Treeger/The Republican/AP

In an election cycle full of high-profile Democratic primary challenges, none of them had been as prized to progressives as the one facing House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.). But on Tuesday night, Alex Morse, the 30-year-old mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, lost to Neal in the 1st Congressional District.

Morse declared his candidacy last July, just about a year after Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) had unseated their older, long-serving members of Congress and reenergized their party’s left flank in the process. Morse, who was first elected as mayor of Holyoke when he was 21, challenged Neal on a premise that the district would be better served by someone like him: a young, gay millennial who would side with the Squad. “People talk a lot about how the power the congressman has is seniority, but it’s not the members of Congress that have been there 20 or 30 years who are setting the agenda,” he told me last summer. “It’s those members who have been there as short as seven months.”

As chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Neal has jurisdiction over almost all of the domestic policy agenda—a circumstance that, as I wrote last year, has been a thorn in progressives’ sides:

“Richard Neal opposes everything that’s catching fire in the Democratic Party,” [Justice Democrats’ spokesperson Waleed] Shahid says. “Neal’s basically a huge turd,” snaps Sean McElwee, the leftist provocateur and influential co-founder of the think tank Data for Progress. Neal’s committee oversees taxation, Social Security, Medicare, and welfare—nearly every economic issue Democrats hope to tackle. Yet when it comes to the policy ideas that excite the progressive base, he isn’t on board. He’s the only member of the Massachusetts delegation who hasn’t co-sponsored the Green New Deal. He asked his colleagues not to mention Medicare for All by name during a hearing called for the express purpose of discussing the single-payer proposal.

They also accused Neal of slow-walking his request for Trump’s tax returns, which a 1924 law grants the Ways and Means chair the authority to procure. Though Neal eventually did make that move in April 2019, critics say his four-month delay allowed the Trump administration time to run out the clock with court challenges—which they’ve so far succeeded in doing. (Neal also turned down an offer from New York state to request Trump’s state tax returns, arguing that doing so would complicate his federal request.)

But of even greater concern to the left was Neal’s perceived coziness with corporate interests, many of whom rushed to his financial defense when rumors of a primary challenge swirled: By the time Morse entered the race, Neal had already amassed a $4 million war chest. In Morse’s corner was a unified phalanx of influential progressive groups, such as Indivisible and the Working Families Party, whose support of insurgent candidates had been more scattershot in other contests. Last week, Ocasio-Cortez threw her support behind Morse through her political action committee, a vote of confidence that drew both national attention and donations.

Scandal haunted the final month of the campaign after the Massachusetts College Democrats made vague accusations that Morse hade made inappropriate sexual advances Morse on students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he served as a guest lecturer. The accusations nearly derailed Morse’s challenge, but subsequent reporting from The Intercept determined that the claims were both unfounded and politically motivated by supporters of Neal, who denied knowledge or involvement. In the end, the episode boosted Morse: He raised nearly half a million dollars and drew more than 400 new volunteers to his campaign as additional details cleared his name.

But ultimately, no amount of national support nor political foul play could persuade Western Massachusetts voters to choose Morse. Many still like the fact that their representative, who will almost certainly win his 17th term in November, is one of Congress’ most powerful members.

Carolyn Kaster

After another week of deadly violence across America, Joe Biden issued a stern warning to voters: Violence is facing Americans on all fronts, and President Donald Trump is squarely to blame for it.

Biden hammered that theme in a speech he gave in Pittsburgh Monday afternoon. “We need justice in America, and we need safety in America,” Biden said, naming the pandemic, its attendant recession, police violence, and white nationalism. “The common thread? An incumbent president who makes things worse, not better. An incumbent president who sows chaos rather than providing order.”

Biden’s speech was prompted by the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old unarmed Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the murders of two protestors by a white supremacist as they took to the streets to demonstrate against the officer’s actions. As the violence unfolded, Trump had been tweeting demands for law and order. Over the weekend, he credited the return to calm in Kenosha with his decision to send in the National Guard—though Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers made the initial decision to call them in. All the while, Trump has mocked Biden and said that he’s soft on crime because “he can’t lose the Crazy Bernie Super Liberal Vote!”

Police violence and racial inequality took center stage for Biden’s attack on how the president’s rhetoric has made the country less safe. “Seven bullets in the back of Jacob Blake, a knee on the neck of George Floyd, the killing of Breonna Taylor—in her own apartment,” Biden said, listing the recent attacks that have spurred nationwide demands to the end of police brutality. But the former vice president also rebutted the president’s attacks. “Ask yourself: Do I look to you like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?” he asked. “I want a safe America—safe from COVID, safe from crime and looting, safe from racially motivated violence, safe from bad cops.”

"This is a sitting president of the United States of America. He’s supposed to be protecting this country, but instead he’s rooting for chaos and violence. The simple truth is Donald Trump failed to protect America. So now he’s trying to scare America." — @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/vJ1odJYwMm

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) August 31, 2020

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Friday that nationwide discontent boosted Trump’s reelection prospects. “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” she told Fox and Friends. 

Biden has made the opposite bet, one that has fueled his campaign’s entire raison d’être. He premised his entrance into the Democratic presidential primary last April on the Trump’s response to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he said there had been “some very fine people on both sides” of the violence. He repeated that logic at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month, saying that Charlottesville had been his “call to action.” After a racially-motivated mass shooting in El Paso last August left 23 dead, Biden hit those notes during a speech in Iowa. But the former vice president, who was officially named as the Democratic presidential nominee earlier this month, hasn’t yet had the chance to draw this particular contrast with Trump, in real-time, with the spotlight of the general election upon him.

Last spring, Trump began to distance himself from his response to Charlottesville after Biden entered the race with that message. After Biden spoke today, Trump instead doubled down on his law-and-order rhetoric. “To me, he’s blaming the Police far more than he’s blaming the Rioters, Anarchists, Agitators, and Looters, which he could never blame or he would lose the Radical Left Bernie supports!” Trump tweeted after Biden’s remarks.

Alex Wong/Getty

Donald Trump’s popularity with members of the military is at an all-time low, according to the findings of a Military Times poll released Monday. Nearly 50 percent of troops view him unfavorably and more than 43 percent say they will vote for Joe Biden in November, compared to just 37.4 percent planning to vote for Trump. 

The male-dominated military tends to be more politically conservative than the general population, but since Trump took office, his support among active-duty troops and veterans has taken a nosedive. In May 2016, more than 54 percent of troops surveyed by Military Times said they intended to vote for him, but by 2018, his support had taken a dive. That year, Trump sent thousands of troops to the southern border as part of a pre-election stunt to draw attention to the arrival of a migrant caravan, shocked his advisers by announcing an unexpected withdrawal of US forces from Syria, and sparred with James Mattis, the retired Marine Corps general who resigned as secretary of Defense that December. 

Despite his clashes with military leaders and numerous attacks on military families like the Khans, Trump had mostly maintained high levels of support among veterans and enlisted service members. Veterans were even credited with helping him win the White House, given their outsized support for him in swing states like North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida. But that support is not as persistent as Trump, or his allies, seem to think. 

New @MilitaryTimes survey of active duty troops has absolutely devastating numbers for @realDonaldTrump. The Republican Party has long considered the military as part of its base, but Biden is now leading Trump among servicemembers 43/37.https://t.co/2c5ifD4KI1 pic.twitter.com/wqfIxrNOkc

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) August 31, 2020

In recent months, he has frustrated the military with a series of bizarre, politically-motivated orders, from clearing several service members accused of war crimes to requiring West Point cadets to return to campus, at the risk of their own health, so he could give an in-person commencement speech. 

His threat to use the military to quell protests in the wake of the killings of George Floyd sent another shock through the military community, leading even the tight-lipped Mattis to step off the sidelines and condemn Trump. Rosalinda Maury, director of applied research at Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families, which conducted the survey in partnership with Military Times, told the news outlet that, despite some commonalities on certain topics, “the military is not a homogenous population.” But what’s clearer than ever is that Trump’s expectation that the military will have his back at the polls, as they did in 2016, is a flawed one. 

Mother Jones Illustration/Shuttershock

This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files“—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current president—on August 19, 2016.

Donald Trump wasn’t the only celebrity with a show called The Apprentice. In fall 2005, media mogul Martha Stewart had a short-lived spin-off of the TV series. When Stewart’s show failed to be renewed for a second season because of low ratings, she blamed Trump for keeping his show on the air and taking away viewers from her version. Trump didn’t take too kindly to the comment, and in typical fashion, the billionaire fought back.

In an open letter, he called her performance “terrible,” said the show “lacked mood, temperament, and just about everything else a show needs for success,” and decried her “totally unconvincing demeanor.”

Stewart, in shock, responded to her “longtime friend,” calling his comments “mean-spirited and reckless.”

But Trump didn’t stop there. In an interview with Newsweek, he said, “What moron would think you’re going to fire the guy with the No. 1 show on television?” according to the New York Daily News.

Trump tried to calm things on Larry King Live the following month, saying, “I love her. She’s a wonderful woman. I wish her well.” But it doesn’t seem like Stewart was placated. Last fall, in an appearance on the late-night show Watch What Happens Live, Stewart resurrected her 10-year-old accusation against the current Republican presidential nominee.

“I was supposed to fire him on air,” she said. Stewart later added, “And then Donald liked it too much. And look at, you know, it’s fantastic for him. It’s built him a platform. So now he thinks he can be president.”

Stefani Reynolds/CNP via ZUMA Wire

The US Postal Service Board of Governors told Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Friday that she would have to wait to find out whether the body would release its members’ financial disclosure forms.

Warren demanded the documents at the outset of the week, just before embattled US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before the House Oversight Committee about operational changes he’s made to the postal service that have slowed mail and raised concerns among critics that he was deliberately handicapping the postal service as part of President Donald Trump’s attacks on vote by mail.

In a letter sent to the board Monday morning, Warren noted her staff had requested the financial disclosures so the public could evaluate whether board members have financial conflicts of interest that would help inform why they were standing behind DeJoy’s actions that have hampered mail delivery. 

Warren’s staff was previously told that the board members’ financial disclosure forms were non-public. While that determination followed the letter of the law, it wasn’t “consistent with the public interest,” Warren wrote in her letter.

After a week of no response, on Friday a board official replied, writing her request had been received and was under review so as to “provide a substantive response in the near future.” The letter made no commitment to release anything.

“The American people should not have to worry that the Postal Service Board of Governors are swimming in conflicts of interest and as a result part of Trump megadonor DeJoy’s sabotage scheme,” Warren told Mother Jones on Friday after receiving the letter. “I look forward to seeing their response—and the entire Board’s full financial disclosures.”

Mother Jones illustration; Shutterstock

This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files“—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current president—on July 20, 2016.

One of Donald Trump’s biggest achievements as a team owner in the United States Football League was the signing of Doug Flutie, the Boston College quarterback and 1984 Heisman Trophy winner, to his New Jersey Generals.

The USFL was off to a good start as a spring football league, but it had Trump-fueled ambitions of moving to the fall and challenging the NFL for dominance. To have any chance of that, the league needed to sign big-name stars, and Flutie, a college hero who had thrown one of the most famous passes in football history, fit the bill. Trump launched a charm offensive on Flutie and his father, and his deep pockets meant he had no problem giving the quarterback the “reasonably ridiculous” contract he’d promised: $8.3 million over six years, according to the New York Times, making him the highest-paid football player in the country.

At least at first. Less than two months later, in April 1985, Trump was demanding that other USFL owners help pay for parts of Flutie’s contract. “When a guy goes out and spends more money than a player is worth, he expects to get partial reimbursement from the other owners,” Trump told United Press International in his guise as John Barron, one of the fake underlings Trump invented to talk to the press. “Everybody asked Trump to go out and sign Flutie…for the good of the league.”

At first, Trump claimed the USFL’s other owners had verbally agreed to help fund his act of altruism. But shortly thereafter, he admitted to the Times that it hadn’t happened. “I said that I would [sign Flutie], but that at some future date I would ask for partial reimbursement,” he said. “Nobody agreed that they would. Nor would I have expected them to. But I wanted to get it on the record.”

The other owners shrugged off Trump’s demands—which were soon overshadowed by much bigger problems for the USFL. The league, driven in part by Trump’s thirst for a fall schedule, quickly fell apart after Flutie’s rookie year. Attendance had dropped, teams (including the Generals) were forced to merge, and the league received only $3 in damages despite winning its antitrust lawsuit against the NFL. The USFL never played another game, and Flutie moved on to the Chicago Bears.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

If you noticed a droning, high-pitched noise playing somewhere far off as Donald Trump spoke at the Republican National Convention Thursday night, you may have thought your ears were ringing. Fear not: Those were just protesters raising a ruckus near the back lawn of the White House, attempting to drown out the president.

Protesters are trying to come close to the back lawn of the White House to drown out Trump’s speech with loud music. Police won’t let them get closer. pic.twitter.com/WRHcilKV00

— Ines Pohl (@inespohl) August 28, 2020

The crowd played music, rattled noisemakers, and banged pots and pans to express their opposition to Trump—who made the unprecedented decision to accept the Republican presidential nomination at the White House.

Protest outside the White House on 15th as President Trump gets ready to take the stage. pic.twitter.com/Jf6aXZpq6O

— Kirk A. Bado (@kirk_bado) August 28, 2020

More pleasing to the ear than the scene on the White House lawn, if you ask me.

RNC Video

On the fourth (and thankfully last) night of the Republican National Convention, sandwiched between a live speech from Debbie Flood, a business owner in Wisconsin, and a recorded video message from Ann Dorn, the widow of a retired St. Louis police officer, came a video about public housing in New York City. It was weird to see a pro-public housing video in support of a president with a long history of housing discrimination. It was even weirder trying to figure out who the video was for.

It opens with New York City Housing Authority residents, people who live in the country’s largest government housing project, criticizing New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for his handling of the housing crisis in the city. Lynne Patton, the HUD official that oversees New York and New Jersey public housing and who is one of the few high-profile Black members of the Trump administration, is also featured in the video. She made headlines in 2019 after spending a week living with NYCHA residents, documenting some of the horrific conditions they must endure.

In some ways, the residents in the video aren’t wrong. NYCHA, which houses half a million people, is in fact in major disrepair: A 2019 investigation concluded that the city needs $32 billion to make repairs. But it wasn’t what I’d call an effective case on their behalf. In the video, there’s plenty of bipartisan criticism to go around for de Blasio, but he’s not running for president. The key point seems to come when one of the NYCHA residents claims that Democrats—as a picture of Biden flashes on the screen—are letting undocumented immigrants live in public housing, while citizens are forced to spend years on waiting lists. Again, it’s true that waiting lists are impossibly long, but blaming it on immigrants doesn’t tell the full story, as I explained last year: 

Even though undocumented immigrants aren’t able to access government housing subsidies, mixed-status families in which there is at least one eligible member, like a child with US citizenship, are able to live in public housing. Federal subsidies only cover the eligible member of the household, but undocumented family members may live there as well. The Trump administration’s new rule, however, would require every member of the household to be eligible for federal subsidies—or the entire family faces eviction. According to HUD’s own regulatory impact analysis, this proposal could affect 76,000 people living in public housing—including 55,000 children—and lead to mixed-status families becoming temporarily homeless.

When HUD first proposed the rule last month, the agency said it was necessary to shorten years-long waitlists for American citizens, but in its analysis, the agency did acknowledge that this rule likely will not achieve that goal.

Beyond this, it’s especially rich that Donald Trump wants to claim the mantel of fair housing. In 1973, the Department of Justice sued Trump for denying housing to Black people. Trump denied the accusations at the time and for decades later, but a New York Times investigation found that his properties had a long history of racial bias. But one not need to look to the past: In recent weeks, he’s fear-mongered to his base by telling them Democrats want low-income people—”minorities”—to move into their nice suburbs. Earlier this week, the white couple in Missouri who pointed their guns at Black Lives Matter protesters also alluded to this invasion as well.

The incoherence of the messaging again begs the question: Who in the world was this video for? The handful of Black conservatives who like to dabble in xenophobia as a reason for the current state of affairs for our community? Is there a Public Housing Lovers Caucus in the Republican party that we don’t know about?

Judging from the verbal tongue bath the president has received this week from everyone from his own children to Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, it was probably just to serve his own ego.

Mother Jones Illustration/Shuttershock

This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files“—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current president—on November 2, 2016.

The last time Donald Trump won an election was in 1998, and that contest was for the National Enquirer‘s “sexiest billionaire title.” Trump won with 70.3 percent of the vote, with Ralph Lauren coming in a distant second at 9.7 percent.

So what made Trump the choice of 300 ladies in a “nationwide poll?” “No question about it: Donald Trump has charisma,” one told the Enquirer. “I’d date him even if he were a taxi driver!” Another declared, “Trump can put his shoes under my bed anytime!”

“Going out with Donald would be a dream come true,” another woman told the tabloid. “His pouty lips make my knees quiver.”

Trump couldn’t help but bask in the glory. “I’m flattered,” he told the Enquirer. “It’s an honor.”

Your nightly guide to racism at the Republican National Convention.

Two former NFL players, both Black men, spoke at the RNC on the same night a wildcat strike in the name of Black lives spread across the sports world. They were joined by a veteran of the civil rights movement, who touted his civil disobedience half a century ago to Republicans as protests continued in Kenosha over the police shooting of another Black man. The speeches were so dissonant with the current moment that they were practically dispatches from another dimension, one in which, sure, America may have had a long, hot summer of discontent many years ago but 2020 has been just fine.

Jack Brewer's full remarks at the @GOPconvention#RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/6nDwo3SAf9

— Team Trump (Text VOTE to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 27, 2020

Then we heard Burgess Owens, another NFL alum and Fox and Friends host who is now the Republican nominee for Utah’s 4th congressional district seat:

This November, we stand at a crossroads. Mobs torch our cities while popular members of Congress promote the same socialism my father fought against in World War II. We have a Democrat candidate for president who says that I’m “not Black” if I don’t vote for him. Now, more than ever, we need leaders who stand by their principles and won’t compromise their values for political opportunities. Now, more than ever, we need leaders who will stand up to the lawlessness supported by the radical left. This November, we have an opportunity to reject the mob mentality and once again be the America my great-great grandfather believed in. 

Both men’s speeches included all the signposts of their Black history bona fides you might expect from men of their generation. Enslaved ancestors? Check. Sharecropper grandparents? Yep. Family encounters with Jim Crow racism and the KKK? You know it. Their experiences were dwarfed, however, by the testimony of Clarence Henderson, a civil rights activist who participated in the 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina, lunch counter sit-in. He spoke not only of this particular act of bravery, but of the obstacles he faced being born in a segregated US—poverty, a substandard education—and of his ultimate triumph over them. And all of these Black men adduced their deep, intimate knowledge of this country’s entrenched racism to an argument for…why Donald Trump should be reelected as president. “If you do vote for Biden,” Henderson said, “you don’t know history.” 

Clarence Henderson, a Republican and civil rights activist, said "America isn’t perfect," but it is "always improving." He blasted Joe Biden for having the "audacity to say if you don’t vote for him 'you ain’t black.'" https://t.co/GQmAT0rWL4 pic.twitter.com/3XOVgTNAgr

— CNN (@CNN) August 27, 2020

I don’t mean to be blithe here or suggest that any of these speakers were being disingenuous about their experiences with racism. On the contrary, it is because these narratives are so credible that it is so insulting to find them being made in a dog-and-pony show in support of a demonstrably racist president. 

Brewer, Owens, and Henderson are not the only Black people to appear at this year’s RNC, and they won’t be the only Black people casting a vote for Trump in November. Black conservatives are complicated, and their politics are inflected by racism as surely as are the politics of Black liberals and leftists. Their conservatism is no sin. But what’s unconscionable is the way they reduced 400 years of systemic racial oppression—whose legacy we are grappling with today—to “partisan differences” in order to cape for a president who has consistently proven that he will work to uphold that very system. What’s disingenuous is the way they asked Black voters to swallow their platitudes about Trump being the criminal justice reform candidate mere minutes before Mike Pence began blowing the familiar dog whistles of “looting and violence” versus “law and order.”

And ultimately, all this work of the noble Trump-supporting Negro exists for little reason other than to serve as a balm for the pained conscience of suburban white audiences. The reminders that the GOP is the party of Lincoln, the wailing about the “radical” left and its project of sowing division—these aren’t inducements for other Black people to vote Republican so much as they’re assurances to white moderates that Republicans aren’t bigots or racists; the other side is. The nice Black man on TV says so. 

Tonight, white Republicans didn’t have to say the n-word. They got their Black friends to all but say it for them. And for that, tonight’s RNC earns the full 10 out of 10 Atwaters. 

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump approximate a kiss after her speech on the second day of the Republican National Convention. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Your nightly guide to racism at the Republican National Convention. 

Long before racist birther Melania Trump made a plea for unity, the undercard of the RNC’s second night featured what can only be described as a parade of Good Ones. These were the good kinds of immigrants, the good kinds of Black and Brown folks, people living or at least aspiring to live clean, capitalist lives on the bright side of the American Dream. Donald Trump delivered a stunt pardon of a bank robber turned Christian prison reformer. He presided over an unspeakably cynical stunt naturalization ceremony. The message of all these various gimmicks was that “hard work and determination” plus chance opportunities plus the beneficence of beaming white saviors can shape and shift the lives of the lower orders for the better. 

We don’t have to enumerate all the ways the administration has in fact worked to block the various pathways to success that speakers were touting all night. The actual problems facing Black and Brown people in America were entirely beside the point anyway. Tuesday night was aimed at the wobbly moderates in the GOP’s camp who would like the loud part made quiet again.

Some other highlights:

—Abby Johnson, a one-time Planned Parenthood clinic director turned anti-abortion activist, wrongly claiming that “almost 80 percent of Planned Parenthood abortion facilities are strategically located in minority neighborhoods”—as if that would be a bad thing for Black and Latino women who suffer higher rates of maternal mortality. The New York Times reported that, actually, only 4 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clinics are located in neighborhoods in which more than a third of people are Black.

This was the same Abby Johnson, by the way, who said recently it would be “smart” for cops to racially profile her biracial son.

—The Good Prosecutor, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, peddling tired attacks about Democrats’ “all-out assault on Western civilization” and decrying the notion that one’s skin tone dictates one’s political leanings.

I think often about my ancestors who struggled for freedom, And as I think of those giants and their broad shoulders, I also think about Joe Biden, who says, “If you aren’t voting for me, you ain’t Black”; who argued that Republicans would put us “back in chains”; who says there is no “diversity” of thought in the Black community. Mr. Vice President, look at me. I am Black. We are not all the same, sir.

Cameron, the state’s first top Black prosecutor, is in a good position to know that there are some aspects of the American experience that are shared across the Black population. He’s the guy overseeing the investigation into the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. 

—Eric Trump marveling at how the “silent majority had no one fighting for them in either party” until his father came along. He went on to repeat the line that “radical Democrats” ruined America. But for whom?

In the view of the radical Democrats, America is a source of the world’s problems. As a result, they believe the only path forward is to erase history and forget the past. They want to destroy the monuments of our forefathers. They want to disrespect our flag, burn the stars and stripes that represent patriotism and the American dream. They want to disrespect our National Anthem by taking a knee while our armed forces lay down their lives every day to protect our freedom. They do not want the Pledge of Allegiance in our schools. Many of them don’t want one nation under God. The Democrats want to defund and disrespect our law enforcement. The Democrats want an America where your thoughts and opinions are censored when they do not align with their own.

—Acting Homeland Security Chad Wolf, himself a sort of stunt appointee, leading the stunt naturalization ceremony beside the president at the White House and trampling the Hatch Act in the process. It was a gross, exploitative spectacle, suffused with the idea that there are good immigrants and bad immigrants.

Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf presides over a naturalization ceremony at the White House during the RNC. His appearance is an apparent violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from performing political activities on duty https://t.co/tz1YGPbJoz pic.twitter.com/N0oLsprTZM

— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 26, 2020

USCIS employee on seeing naturalization ceremony during RNC:

“It sickened me to my core to watch that spectacle given every directive this administration has taken from day one to demonize immigrant communities, including naturalized ones.”

— Hamed Aleaziz (@Haleaziz) August 26, 2020

so chad wolf, who is illegally performing the duties of DHS head, broke the law by conducting a naturalization ceremony as part of a partisan event at the White House. do i have that right?

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) August 26, 2020

RNC is showing a naturalization ceremony conducted at the White House. Left unsaid:
-Trump has brought legal and illegal immigration to a near standstill.
-Trump separated hundreds of immigrant kids from their families.
-Trump continues push for the wall to keep immigrants out.

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) August 26, 2020

This is un f’n believable. The most anti-immigrant President in history staging a naturalization ceremony in the WH, with military in uniform, FOR A POLITICAL CONVENTION. infuriating.

— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) August 26, 2020

—Melania Trump framing her family’s immigration story as the prototypical one, ignoring the stark differences between their tale and the plight of many, many others under her husband’s administration. The First Lady pleaded for a stop to “the violence and looting being done in the name of justice,” and she asked that we instead focus on the future. 

Like all of you, I have reflected on the racial unrest in our country it is a harsh reality that we are not proud of parts of our history. I encourage people to focus on our future while still learning from our past. You must remember that today we are all one community, comprised of many races, religions, and ethnicities. Our diverse and storied history is what makes our country strong, and yes, we still have so much to learn from one another.

With that in mind, I would like to call on the citizens of this country to take a moment, pause, and look at things from all perspectives. I urge people to come together in a civil manner so we can work and live up to our standard American ideals.

I also ask people to stop the violence and looting being done in the name of justice. And never make assumptions based on the color of a person’s skin. Instead of tearing things down, let’s reflect on our mistakes. Be proud of our evolution and look to a way forward. Every day, let us remember that we are one nation under God and we need to cherish one another.

She closed her speech in front of a crowded White House lawn, in defiance of social-distancing guidelines, with a message to voters conveyed under the guise of not playing politics. 

We all know Donald Trump makes no secret about how he feels about things. Whether you like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking. And that is because he is a person who loves this country and its people and wants to continue to make it better. Donald wants to keep your family safe, he wants to help your family succeed. He wants nothing more than for the country to prosper and he doesn’t waste time playing politics.

What sort of family do you suppose she has in mind? Does it look like mine? Or does it look more like, say, the McCloskeys?

So how badly did they want to say the n-word tonight? Although this motley crew of speakers couldn’t hit the high notes the McCloskeys did on Monday, the naturalization stunt alone merits 8 out of 10 Atwaters.

Olivier Douliery/Getty

At least one speaker at Republican National Convention said she was horrified by the corrosive effects of nepotism. Then Tiffany Trump took to the mic.

“When you look at his 47 year career in politics the people who benefited are his family members, not the American people,” claimed Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, referring to Former Vice President Joe Biden, and the discredited conspiracy theories about his son, Hunter. (In reality, of course, Trump got himself impeached because of the very scandal Bondi is distorting.)

She added: “Joe says he will build back better… yeah, build the Bidens back better.”

But, as the following video neatly summarizes, when you’ve programmed back-to-back Trumps praising their father, going after nepotism doesn’t exactly land a blow. Watch:

RNC: Nepotism is bad.

Also RNC: “I love you, dad!!!” pic.twitter.com/ylMHEaRjSr

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) August 26, 2020

Mother Jones illustration; Shutterstock

This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files”—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current President—on July 21 2016.

Donald Trump being Donald Trump, he more than once aspired to build the world’s tallest skyscraper. In 1984, it looked like he might get his chance.

That July, Trump told the media he was eyeing a soon-to-be-constructed section of landfill on the East River in Lower Manhattan as the site for a 150-story tower. “New York City deserves to have the tallest and greatest building in the world, and I would be very interested in doing it,” he told the New York Times. Trump’s proposed 1,940-foot combination office, apartment, and hotel building would smash the height record then held by the Sears Tower in Chicago by nearly 500 feet.

Reactions were skeptical. The Associated Press reported that Paul Goldstein, the manager of the community board for the area where the tower would stand, literally giggled as he considered the idea. “We’ve had some bizarre development proposals down here, but this takes the cake,” he said. In Chicago, architecture critic Paul Gapp ridiculed Trump’s plan in an article for the Chicago Tribune. “The world’s tallest tower would be one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city,” he said. Trump hadn’t produced any drawings of the tower, so the story was accompanied by a conceptual sketch of the building as dreamed up by the Tribune, with Gapp explaining why the likely end product would be pointless and inefficient.

Trump decided the best course of action was to sue Gapp and the Tribune for libel—and $500 million in damages. He claimed Gapp’s review had “virtually torpedoed” the project and subjected him “to public ridicule and contempt, all of which have caused him to suffer embarrassment and financial harm.” The Tribune’s drawing was deemed “an atrocious, ugly monstrosity” by Trump’s lawyers.

The case was dismissed about a year later, but it cost the Tribune $60,000 in legal fees to get the angry billionaire off its back, according to the Washington Post.

Your nightly guide to racism at the Republican National Convention.

Tonight was the “I’m not racist, and my Black friend says so” portion of the RNC, featuring speeches from Tim Scott and Herschel Walker, among others, and a lot of predictable talk about “opportunity zones” and the Democratic “plantation.” For the hard stuff, we turn to the undercard. Here’s Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis “gun couple” who famously mounted an armed defense of their topiary from Black Lives Matters protesters:

Check out Patricia, sounding a dogwhistle immediately discernible to suburban right-wingers (many of them Democrats in California!):

They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs all together by ending single-family home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness, and low-quality apartments into now-thriving suburban neighborhoods. President Trump smartly ended this government overreach, but Joe Biden wants to bring it back.

And here’s Mark, pronouncing “Marxist” with a hard “r” at the end.

The Marxist, liberal activist leading the mob to our neighborhood stood outside our home with a bullhorn screaming, “You can’t stop the revolution.” Just weeks later, that same Marxist activist won the Democrat nomination to hold a seat in the US House of Representatives….That Marxist revolutionary is now going to be the congresswoman from the first district of Missouri.

(He’s talking about Cori Bush, by the way.)

Tonight’s RNC message: We love Black people so long as they’re nowhere near our front yard.

How badly did they want to say the n-word? On the strength of the McCloskeys’ appearance, we award Monday’s proceedings 10 out of a possible 10 Atwaters. 

Tom Williams/CNP/Zuma

About five hours into Louis DeJoy’s congressional testimony Monday, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) lobbed the postmaster general a softball.

“What is the cost of a first-class postage stamp?” she asked.

“Fifty-five cents,” DeJoy said.

Then things got tricky. “What about to mail a postcard?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” DeJoy said.

Porter took the line of questioning one step further, asking DeJoy the cost of mailing a greeting card in a square envelope. DeJoy, grinning, said, “I’ll submit that I know very little about a postage stamp.”

DeJoy, a Republican Party megadonor, has served as the chief executive officer of the United States Postal Service for 70 days after a career in the private sector. His predecessor, Megan Brennan, worked for the USPS for about 28 years before she was appointed postmaster general, having started her career as a mail carrier in 1986. Her predecessor, Patrick R. Donahoe, worked for the Postal Service for 35 years.

Porter further revealed that DeJoy did not know how many people had voted by mail in the last presidential election. “I’m concerned about your understanding of this agency,” she said, “and I’m particularly concerned about it because you started taking very decisive action when you became postmaster general. You started directing the unplugging and destroying of machines, changing of employee procedures, and locking of collection boxes.”

"I'm glad you know the price of a stamp, but I'm concerned about your understanding of this agency. And I'm particularly concerned about it because you started taking very decisive action when you became Postmaster General."@RepKatiePorter breaks it down. pic.twitter.com/U6e8k88BzL

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) August 24, 2020

Katie Porter asks DeJoy how much it costs to mail a postcard. DeJoy says he doesn't know. HE IS POSTMASTER GENERAL

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) August 24, 2020

In response to Porter’s questioning, DeJoy insisted that he was not responsible for the major operational changes Porter mentioned—changes that have apparently led to major mail delays. “If you did not order these actions to be taken, please tell the committee the name of who did,” Porter said.

DeJoy’s response? “I do not know.”

When Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) asked DeJoy if he actually read the ordered changes that were to take effect, his answer was… less than convincing. So Porter pressed him. "Could you please tell me who did order these changes, if you as Postmaster General did not?"

Watch 👇 pic.twitter.com/gnYasOgSLd

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) August 24, 2020

Stefani Reynolds/CNP via ZUMA Wire

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, already under fire for his operational changes, will testify before the House Oversight Committee today, two days after an appearance before a Senate panel where he said he had no intention of restoring mail sorting machines that had been removed and admitted that the changes he’s made have delayed the mail which has, as one Senator put it, “hurt people.”

Testifying alongside DeJoy will be Robert Duncan, the chairman of the US Postal Service Board of Governors, the body that hired DeJoy this summer in a process that a the board’s vice chair felt was so irregular that he resigned. While DeJoy and his policy changes have alarmed postal workers, outside experts, and Congressional Democrats over the last few weeks, the roles played by both the board and by individual members are now receiving broader scrutiny.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was one of a handful of Democratic senators who helped prompt a US Postal Service Office of Inspector General investigation into DeJoy’s actions, is now demanding members of the board release financial disclosures that could help reveal whether they “have investments or outside responsibilities that potentially pose conflicts of interest.”

“Unfortunately, this information is not available to the public,” Warren wrote in a letter sent to the board’s members today. The move comes after a recent, but unsuccessful attempt by Warren’s staff to obtain financial disclosure reports filed by board members to postal service ethics officials, where they say they were told the reports “are not releaseable to the public” because board members’ status as “Special Government Employees” who work less than 130 days per year.

“The public has a right to know if members of the Postal Board of Governors have financial conflicts of interest, and,” Warren wrote, “if so, whether those conflicts might be affecting their actions—or if they might account for the failure to act.”

Warren is calling on the board members to voluntarily releasing their “complete and unredacted financial disclosures to the public… as rapidly as possible.”

2020 08 24 Letter to Board of Governors Re Financial Disclosures (Text)

DeJoy, a major donor and political supporter of President Donald Trump who comes from the world of private shipping and logistics, has defended his policy changes—including limiting overtime, the removal of large mail sorting machines in key postal processing hubs, and making mail trucks move between locations even if they don’t contain all that day’s mail—as necessary to stem financial losses.

But postal workers, outside experts, and Democrats have said his changes are part of a deliberate effort to both weaken the postal service to hasten its privatization and also as a means to suppress mail voting, an outcome that neatly aligns with the president’s public position on the practice.

Some have pointed to DeJoy’s financial interests in USPS competitors—reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars—as problematic conflict of interest and as a potential factor in his decision making. That same business background was cited by Senate Republicans as a positive during Friday’s hearing, while Democrats largely left the issue untouched during limited questioning.

Mother Jones Illustration/Shuttershock

This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files”—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current President—on August 24, 2016.

“Forty Wall Street is a special building,” Donald Trump declared in The Art of the Comeback, his 1997 book. And he’s right—but not in the way he  probably meant.

Trump devoted an entire chapter of that book to bragging about his acquisition of 40 Wall Street, now called the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street, a 72-story office tower he called “perhaps the most beautiful building in New York.” In his telling, Trump purchased the building from its bumbling Hong Kong-based owners for a paltry $1 million. He then renovated it into a $20 million-a-year cash cow that fetched some of the highest rents in the city at the time. When Trump tried to sell the building in 2004, he expected to get offers of at least $400 million, but none apparently arrived and he took the building off the market.

Bloomberg wrote in June that 40 Wall Street “may be the best deal of his career. No single property in his portfolio is more valuable than 40 Wall Street, according to a Bloomberg valuation of his assets last year.” But there’s a catch. Bloomberg also reported that “no U.S. address has been home to more of the unregistered brokerages that investors complain about, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s current public alert list.”

While there are plenty of legitimate businesses at 40 Wall Street, the Bloomberg reporters found that shady companies or businesspeople could, and did, snatch up offices at the Trump Building to get themselves a Wall Street address and the cachet that comes along with it. That’s in part because rents at 40 Wall Street have apparently sagged over time, as have rents on Wall Street in general. When having office space next to the New York Stock Exchange became less important for financial firms, Trump was forced to entice renters with low rates. So while Trump boasted in 1997 that rents in the building were “at the top of the downtown Manhattan market,” Bloomberg found that the average space at 40 Wall Street now rents for $20 less per square foot than the area average. The Wall Street Journal also reported in 2012 that the building’s $27-per-square-foot starting rent hadn’t budged since Trump had taken over.

“Since Donald Trump took over 40 Wall Street in 1995, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against at least 29 people connected to 12 alleged scams tied to the building,” Bloomberg wrote. “Current executives at 40 Wall St. include a 29-year-old who made millions of dollars lending money to penny-stock companies. A financier fighting criminal fraud charges is on the 38th floor. On the 28th, where offices can be rented for $10 an hour, cash-advance firm Viceroy Capital Funding is run by a man awaiting sentencing for his role in a marijuana-smuggling ring.”

But the biggest scam at 40 Wall Street may have been run by Trump himself: The building is also the former headquarters of Trump University.

U-T San Diego/ZUMAPRESS

With the frequency and fervency that President Donald Trump and his supporters talk about supposed rampant mail voting fraud, one would think it would be fairly easy for them to put forward some evidence. Well, maybe not so much.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania gave the Trump campaign the opportunity to do just that recently, and it turned over a whole lot of nothing.

Here’s what happened, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer: In June the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit alleging that allowing Pennsylvania voters to deposit mail ballots in official drop boxes would violate law requiring they be returned to local election offices. Drop boxes, the campaign argued, would allow “illegal absent and mail-in voting, ballot harvesting, and other fraud to occur and/or go undetected, and will result in dilution of validly cast ballots.”

The Trump campaign also alleged the boxes “provide fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos,” and that the “threat” created by the actions of the state and the counties “was on full display” in the state’s June 2 primary.

Lawyers opposing the suit asked the court to force the campaign to provide evidence of its claims. Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan, a Trump appointee, agreed and on August 13 ordered the campaign to “produce such evidence in their possession, and if they have none, state as much.”

Instead of bucking up and taking the latter way out, the Trump campaign submitted 524 pages of utterly irrelevant documents to opposing legal counsel, first reported Thursday by the Intercept and Type Investigations. The mix includes copies of applications the Trump campaign submitted to register pollwatchers, a series of unfilled public requests to counties inquiring about mail ballot procedures, and printouts of a few news stories from Philadelphia discussing isolated election fraud convictions—none of which are about drop boxes.

A Trump campaign official listed in the document did not respond to a request for comment about the filing or how the documents included relate to the case. In written answers to the judge’s request obtained by Mother Jones, the campaign said that they never alleged that ballot harvesting, manipulating and destroying ballots, or voter fraud from mail-in or absentee ballots had ever actually occurred during the primary—just that there was an opportunity for those things to happen.

“What they’re doing is just speculating,” says Sarah Brannon, the managing attorney for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, and an attorney on the case. “Their goal is to get a court order that bans the use of drop boxes by any county.”

The campaign’s lawsuit trying to stop drop boxes is just one of dozens that Trump and his supporters have filed in as many states that would make it harder for people to vote as part of the Republican National Committee’s $20 million budget to fight broader voter access as a result of the pandemic.

Democratic National Convention/AP

The Democratic National Convention may be virtual but it didn’t stop the field of 2020 primary contestants from having a nice family dinner. Even eight months ago it would’ve been hard to imagine Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Cory Booker all gathering to praise Democratic nominee Joe Biden. 

Democrats were hitting the Trump-is-a-bully-theme hard on the final night of the convention, and Sanders sumed it up by calling Biden “a human being who is empathetic, who is honest, who is decent, and at this particular moment in American history, my god, that is something that this country absolutely needs.” 

.@BernieSanders calls for unity and praises @JoeBiden as "a human being who is empathetic, who is honest, who is decent, and at this particular moment in American history, my god, that is something that this country absolutely needs." #DNC2020 pic.twitter.com/b5SapeNrxL

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) August 21, 2020