What Will a Virtual Convention Look Like?

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In Tell-All Foreword, Cohen Promises Sordid Tales Trump ‘Does Not Want You to Read’

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Trump says he intends to deliver his convention speech from the White House lawn, a move that raises legal questions.

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Kushner Says Meeting with Kanye was a ‘Friendly Discussion’

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Michael Cohen releases new details about his forthcoming memoir.

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Trump Makes Clear His Opposition to More Money to Support Mail Voting

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How Biden Chose Harris: A Search That Forged New Stars, Friends and Rivalries

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Biden, Seizing on Masks as a Campaign Issue, Calls for a Mandate

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Three killed in Bangalore clashes over Prophet Muhammad post

Police in the southern city of Bangalore opened fire on protesters angered by the Facebook post.

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France seeks cooperation from Iran, Russia on Lebanon

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‘It Was a Planned Attack.’ Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Says Looting Was Organized

A day after looters overwhelmed police officers in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot says the violence was an organized raid

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17-year-old Chili's hostess attacked by angry customers after trying to enforce restaurant's COVID-19 seating policy

"I had blood rushing everywhere," Kelsy Wallace told a local Baton Rogue news station WBRZ, describing the restaurant attack.

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South Dakota Gov. Noem to build security fence around residence

The GOP official, a big supporter of Trump, has come under fire for her handling of coronavirus.

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This is what it looks like in Sturgis, South Dakota, where hundreds of thousands of unmasked bikers are partying like the coronavirus isn't real

Bikers at the Sturgis Rally say they're enjoying the freedom and crowds they haven't been able to experience elsewhere during the pandemic.

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U.S. says Iran briefly seizes oil tanker near Strait of Hormuz

The Iranian navy held the vessel for some five hours before releasing it Wednesday, said a U.S. military official.

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Conservatives are trying to destroy the US Postal Service. Instead we should expand it

The USPS is our most successful and trusted institution by almost any measure. Let’s embrace and empower it There is an American corporation that employs 633,108 people, handles 142.6bn pieces of product every year, and holds a 48% global market share in its sector. It constitutes a domestic retail network larger than McDonald’s, Starbucks and Walmart combined, one that spans even the most rural and isolated parts of the United States. It is an iconic brand tremendously popular with the American public. Even during a devastating pandemic, this firm has seen its total third-quarter revenue increase by $547m year over year.Instead of trumpeting that 3.2% gain, however, the corporation’s CEO ominously warns that the company is “in a financially unsustainable position absent significant fundamental change” and threatens to start scrapping it for parts. The notion is bizarre. Yet that is exactly what’s happening to the United States Postal Service (USPS). A completely politicized and manufactured crisis threatens to destroy one of the most important institutions in the United States.The US Post Office Department was created by the federal government soon after the American Revolution with a mission to connect a geographically diverse country and avoid the state censorship that plagued colonial America. In the centuries that followed, it has only expanded that mandate, maintaining tens of thousands of far-flung retail offices and postal boxes, all at no taxpayer expense.No surprise that 91% of Americans hold a favorable view of the USPS.Contrary to common tropes of state inefficiency, the post office is both fulfilling a broad social service, far beyond what is expected of any private corporations, and doing so profitably. Those profits are disguised, however, by a 2006 law imposed by Congress that requires the USPS to create a $72bn fund to pay for its post-retirement healthcare costs 75 years into the future. It’s a requirement no other organization, public or private, has to fulfill.Business leaders often worry about state intervention “picking the winners and losers” of market competition. But the decades-long campaign against the USPS is more like the opposite – the state undermining its own successful project in pursuit of ideologically driven cutbacks and privatization schemes.The damage being done won’t just affect American consumers, particularly those in rural areas that rely the most on the USPS. It will also affect voters – during a pandemic when voting by mail is more important than ever – and hundreds of thousands of workers.Postal employment is one of America’s most powerful engines of upward mobility. As early as 1861, the Post Office Department began hiring black employees and maintained that practice throughout the century of racial apartheid that followed the end of slavery. Today, a full quarter of USPS workers are black and the vast majority of them unionized. For these workers, and millions of others, stable public sector employment is the only viable route to union protections, job stability and a decent living.Given the status of the USPS as one of the largest employers in the United States, a needless austerity program of any size would directly affect every community in the country. But the indirect effects would be just as profound. Collective bargaining influences pay and benefits across sectors, benefiting even non-union workers in private companies like FedEx. USPS unions, such as the American Postal Workers Union, have intervened more widely, too, in defense of social goods enjoyed by all working people and backing Bernie Sanders and his demands for new programs like Medicare for All.However, rather than just trying to protect the USPS as it currently exists from Trump administration attacks, we should go further. Let’s expand the USPS’s mandate.> We can imagine, for example, the USPS using its unrivaled logistical reach to deliver food and other essentials to the poor and elderlyFor example, we should consider resurrecting postal banking. Throughout much of the 20th century the Post Office Department operated a savings system, which allowed customers to make deposits. Today, numerous countries offer postal banking services, including France, New Zealand and South Korea. The return of the postal savings system could help the millions of American adults who currently don’t have a bank account, but may regularly access the more than 17,000 post offices in zip codes where there is only one or no bank branch location.As private banks continue to operate in predatory ways and close local branches and “payday lenders” prey on workers without bank accounts, a viable public option is needed more than ever.We can imagine, for example, the USPS using its unrivaled logistical reach to deliver food and other essentials to the poor and elderly, or expanding into the field of telecommunications by helping to improve access to broadband internet in rural areas. No single part of our government is going to be able to do everything well. But it’s worth considering expanding the scope of our best-functioning agencies to meet the challenges of the 21st century.Despite our country’s tremendous wealth we’re failing behind our peers in the industrial world on a range of metrics such as poverty, hunger, life expectancy and infant mortality. Part of the reason is our refusal to invest in and develop our public sector and services. We’re failing ourselves and generations to come. Now is the time to double down on our most beloved and efficient public institution, not jeopardize its future. * Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality

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Commissioner says local Democrats won’t stop him from tweeting about hydroxychloroquine

Even as a local Democratic Party official threatens to call for his removal from public office, Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola said he will not delete his Twitter account or stop sharing articles promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.

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'Are you ready': Jill Biden sends message to Kamala Harris's husband after Democrat VP pick announced

Jill Biden sent a message of support to Douglas Emhoff, after his wife Kamala Harris was announced as Joe Biden‘s running mate for the 2020 presidential election.Ms Harris was confirmed as Mr Biden’s running mate on Tuesday, following months of speculation about who would join the 77-year-old on the Democratic ticket at the 2020 presidential election.

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MBS is stamping out the final threat to his rule, bringing an end to his 3-year coup marked by power grabs, forced disappearances, and assassinations

Crown Prince Mohammed is gunning for Saad al-Jabri and Mohammed bin Nayef, but they are old friends of the US, who want answers from the kingdom.

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After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?

The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the support of less than half of white Americans.Given that Americans tend to have a very narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in decline. The current, second wave of the movement feels different, in part because the past months of protests have been multiracial. The media and scholars have noted that whites’ sensibilities have become more attuned to issues of anti-Black police violence and discrimination. After the first wave of the movement in 2014, there was little systemic change in response to demands by Black Lives Matter activists. Does the fact that whites are participating in the current protests in greater numbers mean that the outcome of these protests will be different? Will whites go beyond participating in marches and actually support fundamental policy changes to fight anti-Black violence and discrimination?As a scholar of political science and African American studies, I believe there are lessons from the civil rights movement 60 years ago that can help answer those questions. Principles didn’t turn into policyThe challenges that Black Americans face today do not precisely mimic those of the 1960s, but the history is still relevant. During the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, there was a concerted effort among Black freedom fighters to show white Americans the kinds of racial terrorism the average Black American lived under. Through the power of television, whites were able to see with their own eyes how respectable, nonviolent Black youth were treated by police as they sought to push the U.S. to live up to its creed of liberty and equality for all of its citizens.Monumental legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, purportedly guaranteeing protection from racial discrimination in many public spaces and equal opportunity to register to vote and cast a ballot. Additionally, whites were increasingly likely to report attitudes that many would now view as nonracist over the following several decades. For example, white Americans were more willing to have a nonwhite neighbor. They were less likely to support ideas of biological racism or the idea that whites should always have access to better jobs over Blacks.But these changed values and attitudes among whites never fully translated into support for government policies that would bring racial equality to fruition for Blacks. White Americans remained uncommitted to integrating public schools, which has been shown to drastically reduce the so-called racial achievement gap. Whites never gave more than a modicum of support for affirmative action policies aimed to level the playing field for jobs and higher education.This phenomenon – the distance between what people say they value and what they are willing to do to live up to their ideals – is so common that social scientists have given it a name: the principle-policy gap.White Americans’ direct witness of police brutality led to a shift in racial attitudes and the passage of significant legislation. But even these combined changes did not radically change the face of racial inequality in American society. Going backwardBy the 1970s and 1980s, political leaders would capitalize on whites’ sentiments that efforts for racial equality had gone too far.That created an environment that allowed the retrenchment of civil rights-era gains. The Republican Party’s so-called “Southern Strategy,” which aimed to turn white Southern Democrats into Republican voters, was successful in consolidating the support of white Southerners through the use of racial dog whistles. And the War on Drugs would serve to disproportionately target and police already segregated Black communities.By the 1990s, racial disparities in incarceration rates had skyrocketed, schools began to resegregate, and federal and state policies that created residential segregation and the existing racial wealth gap were never adequately addressed. From understanding to action?Scholars have made efforts to reveal the intricate and structural nature of racism in the U.S. Their analyses range from showing how racial disparities across various domains of American life are intricately connected rather than coincidental; to highlighting the ways in which race-neutral policies like the GI Bill helped to set the stage for today’s racial wealth gap; to explaining that America’s racial hierarchy is a caste system. But my research shows that white Americans, including white millennials, have largely become accustomed to thinking about racism in terms of overt racial prejudice, discrimination and bigotry. They don’t see the deeper, more intractable problems that scholars – and Black activists – have laid out. [Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.]Consequently, it has taken a filmed incident of incendiary racism to awaken whites to the problems clearly identified by Black activists, just as it did for previous generations.My research also shows that individuals’ understanding of the problem influences their willingness to support various policies. A big issue that our society faces, then, is that white Americans’ understanding of racism is too superficial to prompt them to support policies that have the potential to lead to greater justice for Black Americans. Attitudes and policies don’t matchSome have suggested that this second wave of the Black Lives Matter movement is the largest social movement in American history. These protests have led local representatives to publicly proclaim that Black Lives Matter; policymakers, government officials and corporations to decry and remove Confederate symbols and racist images; and congressional as well as local attempts to address police accountability.But, as after the civil rights era, the principle-policy gap seems to be reappearing. Attitudes among whites are changing, but the policies that people are willing to support do not necessarily address the more complex issue of structural racism. For example, polling reveals that people support both these protests and also the way that police are handling them, despite evidence of ongoing brutality. The polling also shows that the majority of Americans believe that police are more likely to use deadly force against Black Americans than against whites. But only one-quarter of those polled are willing to support efforts to reduce funding to police – a policy aimed to redistribute funds to support community equity. More whites are willing to acknowledge white racial privilege, but only about one in eight support reparations to Blacks.Americans may choose to dig deeper this time around. Some state legislators, for example, are attempting to leverage this moment to create more systemic changes beyond policing – in schools, judicial systems and health matters. But ultimately, Americans will have to overcome two intertwined challenges. First, they will have to learn to detect forms of racism that don’t lend themselves to a mobile-phone filming. And they will have to recognize that dismantling centuries of oppression takes more than acknowledgment, understanding and well-meaning sentiment. It takes sacrifice and action.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces * How the failures of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty set the stage for today’s anti-racist uprisingsCandis Watts Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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What No Student Loan Payments Until 2021 Means for You

You don’t have to make another federal student loan payment in 2020. Federal student loan borrowers were already in an automatic interest-free pause on payments as part of the original coronavirus relief bill, known as the CARES Act. This pause was expected to expire Sept. 30, but an extension of the forbearance through Dec. 31 was directed in a memorandum signed by President Donald Trump on Aug. 8.

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NRA lawsuits come amid changing face of American gun owners

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Trump campaign, Republican groups sue Iowa election officials over absentee ballot forms

The suits seek to invalidate tens of thousands of ballot request forms already being returned, requiring voters to resubmit before an Oct. 24 deadline

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