Trump’s secret police ramp up, corona economics 💰 and DHS + Pentagon funding.
GET UP come on ᵍᵉᵗ ᵈᵒʷⁿ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᶦᶜᵏⁿᵉˢˢ
Good morning, friends, family, and weirdos who found this via LinkedIn. Welcome to the nu metal of political media: it’s embarrassing, it’s full of angst, and it’s made by people who have bad relationships with their parents. It’s also fuckin’ fun and fuckin’ cool.
Trump’s use of federal agents as a secret police force is about to ramp way up: and the extent to which is something we may not even be aware of just yet. That’s definitely going to make the widespread animosity felt towards law enforcement better, right?
Expanded unemployment benefits are going to end tomorrow. That’s a scary reality for many Americans. What’s going to replace it? What other stimulus packages can Americans expect to see? We’re going to take a look at the latest in rumors on the economic response to COVID-19.
With all of these funding and policing concerns, how have Democrats been voting? The answer is pretty astoundingly awful. Let’s take a glance at the recent DHS and Pentagon funding votes.
Plus this new thing we’re gonna do, cutely titled “Breadcrumbs.” Some other stories of interest and a few choice words on them! Check it out, thanks!
You may not be able to hear it but we’re over here doing the “UH, UH” grunts from “Down with the Sickness.” It’s a tough time, alright?
TRUMPOCALYPSE
Trump’s Secret Police Are Just Getting Started
In retrospect, the sentiment that Trump would end up having a secret police force makes a lot of sense. The clock sure feels like in its final hour and it wouldn’t be a proper Doomsday without a fascist sending in the troops to crack some skulls, huh?
Let’s look at where this may be going.
The Vibe is...Foreboding
Trump’s justification for this, as always, is confusing and muddled. He says that he wants to send a “surge” of federal agents out to combat “violent crime;” whether he’s referring to protest-related violence or just violent crime in general, though, isn’t exactly a point we’ve been briefed on.
His first major target in the wake of Portland is Chicago, which did recently have a mass shooting, but that hardly seems like something federal police officers could mitigate.
The federal agents deployed will come from a variety of agencies, including the DEA, ATF, the Marshals Service, DHS, and the FBI. More specifically, many of those DHS agents will be border police, just like we saw in Portland.
What’s this authoritarian project called, anyway? “Operation Legend.” It’s named after a four-year-old, LeGend Taliferro, who was shot while sleeping in his home in Kansas City. That said, something about it feels uh...ok, it feels like some Nazi garbage if we’re being honest.
No Seriously, It’s Foreboding
The future is unclear of course but some quality reporting done by the great Ken Klippenstein for The Nation may help us understand the extent of this project.
According to documents he dug up, Trump’s efforts are going to extend further than most of us have realized until very recently. That’s because he isn’t just requesting thousands of personnel to go out but also drones and dozens of other aircraft to be used.
This happened in the wake of protesting well, basically everywhere across the country. Local law enforcement agencies around the country began to panic and request federal interference. That assistance comes in the form of “aerial surveillance, crowd control, unmarked vehicles and plainclothes surveillance.”
Seriously, read the article. We’ll even link it again! The depths of this deployment of federal resources are just astounding.
Bottom line: feels pretty scary, feels pretty bad. Push on your local governments to push back against this and keep this kinda nonsense out of your community.
CORONA ECONOMICS
An Update on the State of Coronavirus Economics
Tomorrow, expanded unemployment benefits will expire. If you’re lucky enough to not already be highly aware of that, you may not understand just how big of a problem that is—so we’re going to take a look. We’re also going to give you a brief update on what the rumblings are regarding another stimulus check.
Expanded UI
We’ve seen unemployment claims skyrocket since COVID-19 hit U.S. soil. That did steady out for a bit, though we’ve recently seen claims rise again for the first time in months, likely a result of so many states failing to tackle the virus. The U.S. is currently sitting at 1,000 COVID-19 deaths a day. An eviction moratorium will expire on Friday for about 12 million people, meaning their landlords could give them the boot. Lastly in this tale of terror, UI bonus benefits are going to expire tomorrow.
For every horrible bill Congress gets their grubby little fingers on, the CARES Act actually did some good and the expansion of UI benefits—an additional $600 to unemployed individuals—was one big winner. The benefits actually capped a rise in poverty and despite broken unemployment systems in states across the nation, there’s no denying that it kept a lot of people afloat.
Congress acted too slowly for there to not be a lapse in expanded unemployment benefits. However, there will almost certainly be a renewal of some kind of expanded UI. The rumors as of now are that Democrats want to maintain that $600/week but that Republicans want to push that down to roughly ~$200 a week. The GOP hates poors, whaddya expect?
Stimulus Checks
Did you get that $1,200 a few months ago? Sure hope you did because plenty of folks didn’t!
If you did though, there’s good news. It’s looking fairly likely that Democrats, Republicans, the White House, and even Trump are all on board with repeating the CARES Act stimulus pathway. That means another $1,200 with a $75K salary threshold.
Hopefully coming in August. Hopefully.
Bottom line: none of this is set in stone but considering what’s going down tomorrow with UI benefits, we figured an update would be helpful. There are other chips on the table too, like potential payroll tax cuts. It’s all very confusing but if you’d like to keep up to date, we recommend following Jeff Stein from the Washington Post on Twitter.
DEMOC-RATS. DEMONRATS? Uhhh…
Democrats Fumble DHS & Pentagon Funding
Not to be unreasonable but it seems like now may be a good time to not give more credence to the police state. That should likely involve thinking about how we fund something like the bloated Pentagon or the DHS, which as we’ve said plenty of times tonight, is being used as an evil stormtrooper squad. So how come Democrats are so bad at this again?
Maybe Vote THOSE Motherfuckers Out?
House Democrats are currently debating the next DHS funding bill. For the Congressional Progressive Caucus, that means a rather simple idea: don’t bring it up for a vote because Trump is using them to abuse immigrants and protestors. However, House Democratic leaders want to lump DHS funding in with appropriations for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. That would make it nigh impossible for progressives to oppose it.
As Congresswoman Jayapal, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus put it—approving funding for the DHS is “adding insult to injury for immigrants across the country but also peaceful protestors against white supremacy.”
With all these quibbles about money and not letting Americans starve or be forced into extreme poverty, you’d think there would be some savvy lawmakers out there thinking about where to cut off some excess. One such place would be the Pentagon.
Senator Bernie Sanders proposed an amendment to the $740 billion annual defense policy bill that would slash the national security budget by $74 billion and redirect it towards domestic needs. The Senate voted 23-77 against that bill. There are 45 Democrats in the Senate, by the way.
The House had a companion bill put forth by Mark Pocan, another Progressive Caucus co-chair. That vote failed 93-324. 139 Democrats voted against it while 185 Republicans did the same.
Bottom line: remember this bullshit next time someone says “where will we get the money!” Take a look at where the Democrats who voted this down get their funding from. We promise many of them are backed by the defense industry and that many of them do not care about your health, safety, or freedom nearly as much as they claim to.
BREADCRUMBS
Where the News Gets “Fun!”
Joe Biden calls Donald Trump America’s ‘first’ racist president. If I were a debate moderator, I would simply ask Joe Biden “dude, what’s wrong with you?”
US army retreats from Twitch as recruitment drive backfires. You heard that right, the military was recruiting kids through competitive gaming and streaming on Twitch. After Jordan Uhl brought light to the fact that they were censoring anyone who pointed out the U.S. has committed war crimes, the strategy faced a good deal of criticism. While we’re at it, get military recruiters out of high school college fairs, thanks.
Powerful Ohio Republican Is Arrested in $60 Million Corruption Scheme. God, YES, that rules. Also, the main villain of this story is named “Larry Householder,” so it’s probably worth a read.
Democrats Unveil Draft Foreign Policy Platform With Promises to End “Forever Wars” and “Regime Change.” That also means backing the hell out of our involvement in what’s going on in Yemen. We’ll believe it when we see it but credit where credit is due: this would be a massively good thing for the world.
END OF THE LINE...
That’s it for today.
That’s what we’ve got. Remember, we’re only able to do this every day because of readers like you. Drop your friends, family, or anyone else whose email you happen to have a referral link and help us grow. We’d truly appreciate it.
Have a good one,
The Bread Line
we’re listening to:
(shout out to Mo Troper for the recommendation via Twitter)