October 2020 – Page 3 – The Tarbabys Blog

Admiral from bin Laden raid endorses Biden in dramatic fashion

MSNBC – MaddowBlog

Admiral from bin Laden raid endorses Biden in dramatic fashion

By Steve Benen October 20, 2020

“I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative,” William McRaven wrote. “But…”

Navy Admiral Bill McRaven testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in 2012.Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc. file

To a degree without modern precedent, an astonishing number of retired American military leaders have stepped up in recent months to denounce Donald Trump, endorse Joe Biden, or both. The list includes four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, each of whom have publicly slammed the incumbent president ahead of his re-election bid.

But as regular readers know, one retired U.S. military leader in particular has gone further than most in warning the public about the man in the Oval Office.

Retired Adm. William McRaven, the former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, is perhaps best known to Americans as the Navy SEAL who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. In a new op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, the retired admiral talks about the ballot he cast this week in Texas.

Truth be told, I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative. But, I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy. Most important, I believe that America must lead in the world with courage, conviction and a sense of honor and humility.

He added, “I voted for Joe Biden.”

Taking aim specifically at the president’s repeated insistence that the United States is held in higher regard thanks to his leadership, McRaven also wrote, without ever mentioning the incumbent president’s name:

Now, the world no longer looks up to America. They have been witness to our dismissiveness, our lack of respect and our transactional approach to global issues. They have seen us tear up our treaties, leave our allies on the battlefield and cozy up to despots and dictators. They have seen our incompetence in handling the pandemic and the wildfires. They have seen us struggle with social injustice. They no longer think we can lead, because they have seen an ineptness and a disdain for civility that is beyond anything in their memory. But, without American leadership the world will indeed be transformed, just not in the way we hope.

I’ve long been fascinated by McRaven’s gradual transition from a retired military leader, content to leave political fights to others, to someone who felt compelled by Trump’s antics to enter the political debate in earnest.

Just weeks into the Trump era, for example, the retired admiral tipped his toes in these waters, describing Trump’s condemnations of his own country’s free press possibly “the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

About a year later, after the president said he’d revoke the security clearances of some of his critics, McRaven wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post urging Trump to revoke his security clearance, too, explaining that he would consider it “an honor” to stand alongside those “who have spoken up against your presidency.”

Last fall, McRaven wrote another piece, this time for the New York Times, reflecting on the president’s willingness to break faith with American allies and American principles. He added that “the fate of our Republic” may depend upon replacing Trump as quickly as possible.

In February 2020, McRaven wrote another Washington Post op-ed, which concluded, “As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

Four months later, the retired Navy admiral explained, “President Trump has shown he doesn’t have the qualities necessary to be a good commander in chief.” On the anniversary of D-Day, McRaven contrasted Trump’s style with the kind of qualities from earlier wartime leaders. “As we have struggled with the COVID pandemic and horrible acts of racism and injustice, this president has shown none of those qualities,” the admiral said. “The country needs to move forward without him at the helm.”

In August, McRaven rang the alarm once more, positioning himself as one of the nation’s most unexpected, most forceful, and most credible Trump detractors. In a Washington Post op-ed, he argued persuasively, “Today, as we struggle with social upheaval, soaring debt, record unemployment, a runaway pandemic, and rising threats from China and Russia, President Trump is actively working to undermine every major institution in this country.”

A couple of years ago, asked for a response to the criticisms, Trump said, “I don’t know McRaven.” Evidently, McRaven knows him all too well.

Trump Is Taking Down Names as Republicans Begin Jumping Ship on His ‘Totally Off the Rails’ Campaign

Daily Beast

Trump Is Taking Down Names as Republicans Begin Jumping Ship on His ‘Totally Off the Rails’ Campaign

Asawin Suebsaeng, Sam Stein October 18, 2020

Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump and his allies have kept close tabs on prominent conservatives the president believes are gearing up to throw him under the bus in the event he loses his bid for re-election.

Two individuals who have spoken to Trump say the president has expressed suspicion that members of his own party believe he will be defeated by Joe Biden. That sense of paranoia has been fed by the president’s aides and confidants, who have flagged news coverage for him of Republican politicians either openly criticizing his conduct or else trying to distance themselves from a looming possible electoral bloodbath.

According to one of the sources with direct knowledge, the president is already contemplating retribution.

“[The president] said something to the effect of: If you’re backing away from him now, don’t bother coming back for a favor when he wins,” the other source said. “He made a comment about how there are some people out there who you can only count on when things are going your way.”

Some of the coverage that has been bookmarked for Trump includes recent stories on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has not only split with the president on coronavirus-related stimulus legislation but made a point of saying he hadn’t been to the White House in weeks because of its cavalier approach to the pandemic.

Trump’s frictions with Republican senators don’t stop there. This past week, the president attacked Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on Twitter over “a nasty rumor” that she was going to oppose his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. He said of the endangered incumbent: “Not worth the work!”

The slight was met with sighs among Trump strategists, who noted that it was utterly unnecessary: He already has enough votes for Barrett’s confirmation.

Beyond that, there is strong suspicion within Trump’s inner sanctum that Sen. Ben Sasse’s (R-NE) office leaked the contents of a call he held with constituents in which he chastised the president for embracing dictators and not condemning conspiracists. Trump’s anger with the call boiled over on Saturday with yet another Twitter attack.

Then there’s Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who has put out two recent statements targeting what he describes as a corrosive turn in national politics. Notable in those statements was condemnation for Trump and little in the way of criticism for Biden.

“You hate to see it, but having been on Capitol Hill, one great way to get attention is to speak against your own party,” said former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), who has for years served as an official Trump surrogate. “Ben Sasse is an intelligent guy and I’m sorry he’s decided this is the time to bolt, [but] I don’t know how it helps swing-state [Republicans] either…But you still don’t see the ideological people breaking. If Ralph Reed said, ‘OK, I’m out of here,’ that would be different.”

Still, those signaling that they’re ready to jump ship do include some major players in conservative politics. One of the president’s most powerful and influential confidants, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has been telling associates he thinks Biden will win in a landslide, as The Daily Beast reported last week. Murdoch specifically said he had been repelled by the president’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis.

Sources familiar with the situation say Trump and Murdoch have not talked in several weeks. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on this story, but Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said in a statement: “President Trump won in 2016 without the vocal support of the political insider crowd, and he’s going to do it again. The President enjoys the support of over 90 percent of Republicans, and our rally data shows that about a quarter of rally registrants are not even registered as Republicans.”

But the knives are out, and not just for perceived turncoats. Within the broad universe of GOP operatives working to re-elect the president, the blame game has already begun. One senior Republican official who has consulted with the campaign said that while staff were still confident the president could win, they were also increasingly alarmed by what the official described as the “gross incompetence with how things were being spent.”

“I think there is a reality where this is what happens in a campaign. This is the point where people start to figure out who takes the fault,” the official said. Asked who would take that fault, the source added: “There is no question that [former campaign manager] Brad [Parscale] will take a large part of it, because that is easy. But anyone with a brain who looks back at this will point to Jared [Kushner]. Jared can’t be both the mastermind and blameless.”

Inside broader GOP circles, a bit of cold realism has taken hold about Trump’s prospects. Few, if any, are pollyannaish. The optimism that does remain is tied to two features of the race: that the president faced a similar skepticism (including from within his own party) four years ago and still won; and that this go around, the Trump campaign has invested substantially more in voter turnout than he did in 2016.

“He’s not winning, but there’s always been a sense that he was in this position in [2016], that it will tighten, and that we have this ground game that will put us over the top,” said a GOP official involved in the re-election effort.

But even that official conceded the limits of the spin. “A ground game is a field goal in a close game,” the official said. “It’s not three touchdowns.”

Among Republican operatives, there has been an expectation that Trump’s polling deficit with Biden would close as the election neared. That tightening has not happened as quickly as they’d hoped, and among the explanations for it are the president’s combustible debate performance, his personal infection with a virus he has downplayed, and the fact that he’s been outspent on the airwaves.

There’s also a growing consensus among the GOP consulting class that Trump has lost some of the political instincts that made him both unorthodox and effective in 2016. Back then, Trump closed the campaign by largely keeping to script, doing rallies, and posting only mundane tweets. This go-around, he’s embraced wilder conspiracies—such as the Osama bin Laden raid being staged—and put up more Facebook ads attacking Hillary Clinton than going after Biden on trade.

“I guess it’s difficult when you’re in the White House, but it’s different than 2016,” the GOP official said. “They just have no message discipline. It’s totally off the rails all the time.”

Trump’s hopes fade in Wisconsin as ‘greatest economy’ boast unravels

The Guardian

Trump’s hopes fade in Wisconsin as ‘greatest economy’ boast unravels

Dominic Rushe October 18, 2020

Closed. Photo by Alan Levine. (CC BY 2.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Photo by Alan Levine. Wisconsin’s economy shrunk by an annual rate of 32.6 percent between April and June compared to the first three months of 2020, according to new numbers released Friday from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. (Wisconsin Public Radio)

Coarse, cruel, chaotic. Donald Trump has been called a lot of things. Even some of his supporters have had a hard time embracing the darker aspects of his personality. Until recently they have, however, trusted the president on one one vital issue: the economy.

But with just 16 days to go until the election, there are clear signs that Trump’s claims to have created the “greatest economy we’ve ever had in the history of our country” are unravelling.

Perhaps nowhere is that more worrying for Trump than in Wisconsin.

Losing Wisconsin ended Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances in 2016. Famously she didn’t campaign there, presuming a win that was snatched from her by Trump’s promises to end unfair trade practices that had hurt the state’s dairy industry and to bring back manufacturing jobs.

Until February, Trump could have confidently boasted that he had made good on his promises. Unemployment had fallen to record lows in the state, manufacturing was coming back – albeit at the same, snail-paced crawl that it had under Obama. The headline figures looked good. Then came the coronavirus – a disease that is now ravaging the state and has, in its wake, exposed the fault lines beneath those headline figures.

The virus and the economy now seem to have morphed into some hideous hybrid, and the fragile recovery that followed the first peak in infections is now being threatened by new spikes in infections. Last week Wisconsin reported 3,747 cases in one day, its highest level since the outbreak, and more than California’s daily average, a state with six times Wisconsin’s 5.8 million population.

“The economy is always big. It’s just this year it is so intertwined with the pandemic that is hard to separate them,” said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran George W Bush’s re-election race in Wisconsin in 2004.

Had the pandemic never happened and the economy been humming along, “that’s all President Trump would be talking about” – but now all anyone is talking about is the virus and what it is doing to the economy.

A recent CNN poll found Trump and his rival, former vice-president Joe Biden, tied among registered voters at 49% apiece on who would handle the economy better. Back in May, 54% of registered voters said Trump would handle the economy better, compared with 42% for Biden.

Graul expects a close race. Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin by just 0.77% in 2016. The polls currently have Biden ahead by a clear 6.5% in the state, but in a year that feels like no other anything can happen between now and 3 November.

In this volatile environment, progressives have been making gains with voters, reflecting on the fragility of the economy Trump had hoped would re-elect him.

Earlier this month, the advocacy group Opportunity Wisconsin held a town hall with Wisconsinites from around that state, who talked about how they see Trump’s economy. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

For an hour on Zoom, the Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin led a discussion with dairy farmers and cheese makers talking about friends and neighbors going out of business even before the pandemic began. University of Wisconsin history professor Selika Ducksworth-Lawton spoke powerfully about how the virus has devastated communities of color in the state. “For marginalized communities, this has been awful. There have been some people who have referred to it almost as an ethnic cleansing,” she said. “We have failed at the most basic requirements of a nation state.”

But perhaps the clearest example of the problems that preceded the pandemic, and have been sadly highlighted by it, came from Kyra Swenson, an early childhood educator from Madison. “I’m a teacher, I’m not a business owner. I don’t have a lot of wealth. It’s just me and my husband trying to make life swing for ourselves and our two kids,” said Swenson.

Even before the pandemic, she said she felt she was getting very little help. Early childhood educators make about $10 an hour in Wisconsin and receive no benefits. “We don’t get a retirement account. We don’t give two hoots about what Wall Street is doing. We are not investing in that. We are trying to pay our rent, pay for food.”

A third of Wisconsin’s early childhood educators are on federal assistance “because that is how hard it is for us to make it.”

Trump’s biggest policy achievement – a $1.5tn tax cut that was billed as a “middle-class miracle” – actually increased her family’s taxes, she said. “It didn’t benefit us. That’s the reality.”

And the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic has been “terrifying”, she said. She thinks it is no coincidence that Wisconsin’s rates have spiked since children and college students went back to school – a move that came after Trump said children could not spread the coronavirus, an opinion that has been widely debunked. “It didn’t have to be this bad,” she said.

Changing minds

Opportunity Wisconsin, aided by the progressive advocacy organization the Hub Project, has had remarkable success turning opinion around on Trump’s economic success through targeted messaging. But it has had big obstacles to overcome, not just because changing opinions is notoriously hard.

The Republicans have been remarkably successful in their economic messaging, not least in Wisconsin. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican party has promulgated the idea that there is a simple formula for economic success: lower taxes, less regulation and smaller government. That message, repeated over and over for 40 years, helped Wisconsin shift from a bastion of progressive politics to a union-bashing laboratory for rightwing economic experiments led by Scott Walker, the former governor, and Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, and backed by the Koch brothers.

Trump in June 2018 breaks ground for a new Foxconn factory with then governor Scott Walker and Foxconn chairman Terry Gou. — Trump in June 2018 breaks ground for a new Foxconn factory with the then governor, Scott Walker, and the Foxconn chairman, Terry Gou. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

That rightward shift was derailed in 2018 with the ousting of Walker and the appointment of Democrat Tony Evers after a coordinated effort by progressives to unseat the Republican star.

What Opportunity Wisconsin did was start with a survey of 27,000 voters, which the group identified as Wisconsinites who were sympathetic to conservative economic ideas – but had doubts about the direction the economy was taking, and who was being left behind.

Using the research, the group targeted 500,000 people who were split into two groups. One received targeted messages that delved behind the top-line economic figures, profiling stories of real Wisconsinites who were struggling, people who had lost jobs, farms, livelihoods under Trump. All messages that underlined the issues that were hurting people in the state even before the pandemic struck. A control group who received no messages was used to measure how successful the effort had been.

A follow-up survey revealed that among those voters who received the targeted messages:

Belief that Trump’s policies helped Wisconsin fell 8.3%.
Approval of Trump’s 2017 tax law fell 5.2%.
Belief that Trump’s economy is working for everyone fell 3.6%.
Approval of Trump on the economy fell 2.3%.

Those are remarkable numbers in any social experiment, and especially in a state that Trump won by such a thin margin.

Dana Bye, campaign director for the Hub Project, thinks a change of focus was instrumental in changing people’s minds. “Nationally and in Wisconsin people look at the stock market and the jobs figures and think that’s the economy. But often their personal experiences are not reflected in those macro figures,” she said.

Adjusted for inflation, wages in Wisconsin have gone up just 73¢ in 40 years, said Bye. “That’s not a statistic you hear often. Instead we hear about GDP or the stock market.”

“The big challenge when talking about the economy is that people don’t look beyond these big, macro numbers. The pandemic has crystalized the idea that there is one economy for the rich and another for working folk.”

If that message gets through to enough people, what was once Trump’s biggest strength in Wisconsin could be his biggest weakness.

Evangelicals opposed to Trump step out of the shadows with new groups and ads

Yahoo – News

Evangelicals opposed to Trump step out of the shadows with new groups and ads

President Trump “attempts to hijack our faith for votes,” the writer Jerusha Duford — Billy Graham’s granddaughter — said Thursday in a Zoom call sponsored by one of a growing number of evangelical groups that have formed to encourage Christians to vote for Joe Biden.

Trump’s “attempts to hijack our faith for votes, and evangelical leaders’ silence on his actions and behavior, has presented a picture of what our faith looks like that is so erroneous that it has done significant damage to the way people view Jesus,” said Duford on the call, which was sponsored by Not Our Faith PAC, a bipartisan group formed just this week with the explicit goal of trying to defeat Trump.

“I spent the better part of my life watching my grandfather look to be an example of Jesus, to how to conduct himself and how to treat people. Scripture talks about doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly, and these are tenets of our faith that I do not believe our president demonstrates in any way,” she said.

Her grandfather, the most famous evangelist of the 20th century, was friends with presidents of both parties and avoided direct involvement in electoral politics. Her uncle Franklin Graham is one of Trump’s most prominent backers on the Christian right.

A screengrab from the Not Our Faith PAC ad. (YouTube)

White evangelicals backing Biden are still a small minority of a group that supported Trump overwhelmingly in 2016. Eighty-one percent overlooked his boasts about sexually assaulting women, his documented history of adultery, his association with the casino industry and his proclivity for golfing over church attendance on Sundays to vote for him. As recently as August he had actually improved his standing with evangelicals, to 83 percent, although more recent polling by the Pew Research Center showed it had slipped somewhat, to 78. Even a small falloff in evangelical support could have a major effect on Trump’s reelection prospects, which is what groups like Not Our Faith are hoping to achieve.

In a phone call to constituents that was leaked to the Washington Examiner on Thursday, a prominent Republican senator who is also a conservative evangelical Christian, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, succinctly outlined the case against Trump.

“He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors,” Sasse said, in remarks that a spokesman for the senator confirmed. “His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with white supremacists.”

Duford said that in her experience, many evangelicals who might have voted for Trump in 2016 “went to the polls crossing their fingers, maybe holding their breath.”

But, she said, “now that we’ve had four years of it … I think that’s going to change their perceptions.”

The most noticeable change from four years ago among some number of white evangelicals is their willingness to vote for a Democrat. In 2016 they might not have voted for Trump, but they were deeply uncomfortable voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Biden doesn’t inspire the same discomfort.

Not Our Faith was formed earlier this week by Michael Wear, a former faith adviser to President Barack Obama, and Autumn Vandehei, a former Republican congressional staffer for Tom DeLay, who was House majority leader from 2003 to 2005. (Vandehei is also married to Jim Vandehei, the co-founder of the political news website Axios.)

The PAC’s first digital ad is targeted to likely voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania. “Christians don’t need Trump to save them,” the ad says. “The truth is that Trump needs Christians to save his flailing campaign.”

Another organization, Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, was formed earlier this month by a group including senior officials at several influential conservative evangelical seminaries and from Christianity Today magazine.

“As pro-life evangelicals, we disagree with Vice President Biden and the Democratic platform on the issue of abortion. But we believe a biblically shaped commitment to the sanctity of human life compels us to a consistent ethic of life that affirms the sanctity of human life from beginning to end,” the group states on it’s website. “We believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore, even as we continue to urge different policies on abortion, we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.”

That announcement was mocked by the conservative satirical website the Babylon Bee, which ran an Onion-like item about a fictional group called “Pro-Life Evangelicals for Moloch” — a heathen deity in the Old Testament who is associated with demands for child sacrifice.

In August, John Kingston, a former corporate lawyer and executive who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts two years ago, formed a group called Christians Against Trumpism and Political Extremism, along with Joel Searby, a Republican political strategist who worked on Evan McMullin’s independent candidacy for president in 2016.

John Kingston in 2018. (Winslow Townson/AP)

“Right now we are bound up as people of faith in this Trumpist sort of prison, sort of thinking, ‘Oh, if we only get that much more political power, if we only get that much more, if we’re willing to compromise this much, then we can actually get someplace,’” Kingston said in an interview. “That triumphalist approach is antithetical to the sacrificial Christianity, the way of the cross which Jesus teaches us.”

Kingston and Searby’s group has a sizable leadership committee that includes several well-known figures inside evangelical Christianity, such as the authors Lisa Sharon Harper, Nancy French and D.L. Mayfield; Jars of Clay lead singer Dan Haseltine; former Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C.; and Wheaton College professor of theology Vincent Bacote.

“Even if the president loses in November, I think we’re in a multi-year fight over what has now been unleashed,” Kingston said.

Amy Sullivan, an author and journalist who worked for Yahoo News from 2015 to 2017, has started an organization called This Is My Story, focused on giving Christian women a platform to express independence.

“Many conservative Christian leaders have told women for decades that their faithfulness was demonstrated through purity and character. But when they had a choice between protecting their power or standing up for the women in their pews, they threw women under the ‘Access Hollywood’ bus,” Sullivan told Yahoo News. “So now women are speaking for themselves.”

Sullivan, author of a 2008 book on Christianity and the Democratic Party called “The Party Faithful,” produced and released a video on Friday morning showing several evangelical women, including Jerusha Duford, repeating in their own voices what Trump was recorded saying in the “Access Hollywood” tape that emerged four years ago. In that video, Trump boasts in vulgar language about how as “a star” he can get away with kissing and groping women.

Jerusha Duford in an new ad "Speak For Yourself". (This is My Story/YouTube) — Jerusha Duford in a new ad, “Speak for Yourself.” (This is My Story/YouTube)

After the women in Sullivan’s video repeat Trump’s words, the text on screen says, “Even after hearing these words, Christian pastors and leaders told women it was our duty to support Trump. They made it clear what they really valued. It wasn’t us. It’s time we speak for ourselves.”

All of these groups are made up largely of Christians who come from a theologically, culturally and politically conservative milieu.

There are also a number of groups headed by Christian leaders who are more politically progressive, such Vote Common Good, the New Moral Majority PAC and Faith 2020.

Those groups are seeking to influence more conservative Christians too. New Moral Majority PAC is organizing Operation Family Meeting, asking Christians who grew up as pastors’ kids or missionary kids, or who were youth group leaders or worship leaders, to talk with immediate family members who might be supporting Trump.

“We want to believe that many of the values that we were raised with still matter. That honesty and kindness are still the hallmark of leadership and that we are called to look after the least among us. But the rise of Trump has caused painful divisions in our families and many of us have quietly distanced ourselves from the communities we came from out of hurt and embarrassment,” the group says.

“We need to engage with them over the hurt their allegiance to the President has caused us because we are the only ones they might listen to.”

President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John's Church across Lafayette Park from the White House on June 1, 2020, in Washington. (Patrick Semansky/AP) — President Trump holds a Bible outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House on June 1. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Even secular groups like Republican Voters Against Trump have enlisted Christians to make faith-based appeals for Biden.

Elizabeth Neumann, who was an assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security until this past year, introduces herself in one video as “first and foremost a follower of Jesus Christ.”

“I’m a wife and a proud mom. I voted for Trump in 2016 primarily because of the pro-life issue,” Neumann says.

But Neumann says she concluded that Trump’s rhetoric has increased the threat of white supremacist terrorism. “We are less safe today because of his leadership. We will continue to be less safe as long as he is in control. And this year, I’ll be voting for Joe Biden,” she says.

Ditching The Donald: Trump’s largest voter base is fleeing at an alarming rate

Salon

Ditching The Donald: Trump’s largest voter base is fleeing at an alarming rate

Tom Boggioni October 18, 2020

US President Donald J. Trump Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

According to a report from MSNBC, the single largest segment of Donald Trump’s base — non-college-educated white men — are fleeing the president’s camp at an alarming rate and admitting that they have become embarrassed by his actions and his bullying.

In interviews with MSNBC’s Liz Plank, many stated that they are remaining in the Republican Party — or called themselves “recovering Republicans’ — but added they want nothing to do with the current top of the ticket.

As the report notes, a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows a dramatic drop in support for the president “among white male voters without college degrees …. from an enormous 35 points to a significant but narrowing 19 points.”

According to Nick Stevens, 30, a Texas small-business owner, he is a Republican who is holding his nose and voting for Democratic challenger Joe Biden because he can’t handle Trump any longer.

“Unfortunately, I’m voting for Joe Biden,” Stevens admitted, with Plank adding,” When we talked on the phone, Stevens said he wasn’t leaving the party because he’s particularly energized by Biden, but rather because he just can’t bring himself to support a man like Trump.”

Stevens was not the only Republican who expressed sentiments like that.

According to Nick Jesteadt, 30, a former conservative evangelist, “He’s made this party untenable,” before adding, “There is just no compassion.”

“A secondary theme also emerged in many of these conversations. While the men often described themselves as recovering Republicans, many spoke like recovering toxic masculinity addicts. What they despised about Trump was a machismo they once emulated,” Plank wrote, before quoting John Chapman, 36, a former Republican who claimed Trump is ” a symptom of the toxic masculinity we all grew up idolizing.”

“I was drinking the Kool-Aid so much that I named my dog Reagan,” Chapman elaborated. “My reaction to Trump’s version of masculinity is just realizing how fragile he must be,” with Stevens chiming in, “Trump’s handling of Covid right now, to a T, describes me two years ago. I had an issue for six years that I refused to go the doctor for, and it was almost fatal, because ‘I was too tough for that.'”

Breaking it down, Plank suggested that Trump’s base has begun to notice that his promises to them have failed to come true.

“While Trump said he would take care of all white men, he has taken care of only some white men: the ultra-rich ones. As many have lost jobs and housing, Jeff Bezos has more than doubled his wealth since the beginning of the pandemic — a jump helped along by Trump’s tax cuts,” she explained. “Your average white male voter isn’t struggling because a woman or a person of color took his job; he is struggling because a select group of white men are hogging resources and paying taxes at a lower rate than the vast majority of Americans. Blaming immigrants for the stagnation many white men feel is a convenient distraction from the fact that it has been enabled by people like Trump himself.”

Trump loves white men. These ‘recovering Republicans’ no longer love him back.

MSNBC

Trump loves white men. These ‘recovering Republicans’ no longer love him back.

Trump is never going to stop playing the role of the male champion on TV. But at least some men are starting to see through the lie.

By Liz Plank October 16, 2020

Image: President Donald Trump pumps his fist at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Oct. 14, 2020.

President Donald Trump pumps his fist at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Oct. 14, 2020.Alex Edelman / AFP – Getty Images

Purely based on voting behavior, it appears many white men love President Donald Trump.

In fact, love might be an understatement given that white men without college degrees voted for Trump at a rate higher than for any other candidate in the last 36 years. In 2016, when I reported from one of his rallies in Marshalltown, Iowa, men told me they would vote for him even if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. Today, they’re risking their own lives on his behalf, braving potentially super-spreader events to line up to se him.

Maybe that’s why, at his first rally since he tested positive for the coronavirus, the president offered to show his male fans affection first. “I feel so powerful,” the president shouted. “I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys … and the beautiful women.” I guess “big fat kisses” from a potentially contagious president work in the reverse order of lifeboats — it’s the men who go first.

But with the election around the corner, some white men are starting to feel a little less loyal to the man who has promised them the moon and the stars. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that Trump’s lead among white male voters without college degrees has dropped from an enormous 35 points to a significant but narrowing 19 points. Every election cycle, we hear that white men can’t be swayed, but what about the ones who can no longer justify staying in Trump’s Republican Party?

Every election cycle, we hear that white men can’t be swayed, but what about the ones who can no longer justify staying in Trump’s Republican Party?

“Unfortunately, I’m voting for Joe Biden,” Nick Stevens, 30, a Texas small-business owner, told me resolutely after he responded to a call-out I made on social media looking for conservative men having second thoughts about Trump. When we talked on the phone, Stevens said he wasn’t leaving the party because he’s particularly energized by Biden, but rather because he just can’t bring himself to support a man like Trump. Stevens, who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, said Trump’s performance of manhood has pushed him away from the GOP. “He feeds off a particular view of masculinity that bullies people,” Stevens said.

Other men described being embarrassed by Trump’s interpretation of strength. “He’s made this party untenable,” Nick Jesteadt, 30, a former conservative evangelist, told me over the phone. “There is just no compassion. And these softer skills and personality traits that shouldn’t be gender-based” are now once again being tied to gender. Jesteadt described Trump’s brash style of leadership, his repeated verbal abuse and his inability to listen as “old classic masculinity” and “stuff you see from ’60s dad sitcoms.”

Patrick Carr, who introduced himself as a “recovering Republican,” voiced a similar sentiment. “Trump’s version of masculinity would have everyone believe that his opinion is the only one that matters because he is president,” he said. As it did for most of the men I spoke to, the president’s treatment of women specifically touched a nerve. “He openly lusted after his daughter and throws women away when they no longer please him,” Carr said. While he’s always voted Republican, this year he’s voting for Biden and Kamala Harris.

A secondary theme also emerged in many of these conversations. While the men often described themselves as recovering Republicans, many spoke like recovering toxic masculinity addicts. What they despised about Trump was a machismo they once emulated. John Chapman, 36, a former Republican who interned for the Republican National Committee and spent a summer working for the Bush administration, told me Trump felt like a “symptom of the toxic masculinity we all grew up idolizing.” He also said this model of masculinity has long been central to the Republican Party, dating to the days of Ronald Reagan.

“I was drinking the Kool-Aid so much that I named my dog Reagan,” Chapman told me. But now that he has seen this model fail for him personally, he sees through it politically. “My reaction to Trump’s version of masculinity is just realizing how fragile he must be,” he said. Stevens agrees. Trump’s “handling of Covid right now, to a T, describes me two years ago,” he said. “I had an issue for six years that I refused to go the doctor for, and it was almost fatal, because ‘I was too tough for that.'”

And there’s another element at play here: the men who identify with being bullied like Biden. Witnessing Biden be mocked as “weak” and humiliated for having a speech disability is just one more reason not to vote for Trump, Stevens said. Meanwhile, Biden’s own expression of masculinity — he’s not afraid to wear a mask or to campaign alongside an equally smart and successful wife — represents a more evolved gender identity that Stevens admires.

At this point, I know what you’re probably thinking: Another piece trying to get inside the heads of white men? But while it’s true that white men are still the most privileged class in our society, their progress has been relatively stagnant compared to that of other groups. Black women’s incomes have more than doubled (as they should and must continue to do!), while the salaries of your average white men haven’t. But this stagnation is a relevant point when it comes to their mindsets and, notably, voting patterns. In 2016, white men responded overwhelmingly to Trump’s populist message. He said he would take care of them. He said he would make them feel like the providers and breadwinners society tells them to be.

But while Trump said he would take care of all white men, he has taken care of only some white men: the ultra-rich ones. As many have lost jobs and housing, Jeff Bezos has more than doubled his wealth since the beginning of the pandemic — a jump helped along by Trump’s tax cuts. Your average white male voter isn’t struggling because a woman or a person of color took his job; he is struggling because a select group of white men are hogging resources and paying taxes at a lower rate than the vast majority of Americans. Blaming immigrants for the stagnation many white men feel is a convenient distraction from the fact that it has been enabled by people like Trump himself.

Maybe that’s why the president is so committed to the “Macho Man” bit.

Maybe that’s why the president is so committed to the “Macho Man” bit, consistently playing the song at his rallies even as thousands of people continue to die. The president, who claims to be the ultimate man’s man, has abysmally failed to both provide for and protect the American public. He’s probably never going to stop playing the role of the male champion on TV. But at least some men are starting to see through the lie.

Rudy Giuliani Is My Father. Please, Everyone, Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Vanity Fair

Rudy Giuliani Is My Father. Please, Everyone, Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

I may not be able to change my father’s mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office.

By Caroline Rose Giuliani October 15, 2020

COURTESY OF CAROLINE ROSE GIULIANI.

I have a difficult confession—something I usually save for at least the second date. My father is Rudy Giuliani. We are multiverses apart, politically and otherwise. I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name, so publicly declaring myself as a “Giuliani” feels counter-intuitive, but I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now. The stakes are too high. I accept that most people will start reading this piece because you saw the headline with my father’s name. But now that you’re here, I’d like to tell you how urgent I think this moment is.

To anyone who feels overwhelmed or apathetic about this election, there is nothing I relate to more than desperation to escape corrosive political discourse. As a child, I saw firsthand the kind of cruel, selfish politics that Donald Trump has now inflicted on our country. It made me want to run as far away from them as possible. But trust me when I tell you: Running away does not solve the problem. We have to stand and fight. The only way to end this nightmare is to vote. There is hope on the horizon, but we’ll only grasp it if we elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Around the age of 12, I would occasionally get into debates with my father, probably before I was emotionally equipped to handle such carnage. It was disheartening to feel how little power I had to change his mind, no matter how logical and above-my-pay-grade my arguments were. He always found a way to justify his party line, whatever it was at the time. Even though he was considered socially moderate for a Republican back in the day, we still often butted heads. When I tried to explain my belief that you don’t get to be considered benevolent on LGBTQ+ rights just because you have gay friends but don’t support gay marriage, I distinctly remember him firing back with an intensity fit for an opposing politician rather than one’s child. To be clear, I’m not sharing this anecdote to complain or criticize. I had an extremely privileged childhood and am grateful for everything I was given, including real-world lessons and complicated experiences like these. The point is to illustrate one of the many reasons I have a fraught relationship with politics, like so many of us do.

Image may contain Rudy Giuliani Tie Accessories Accessory Human Person Suit Coat Clothing Overcoat and Apparel — Rudy Giuliani with Caroline. BY CARMEN VALDES/GETTY IMAGES.

Even when there was an occasional flash of connection in these disagreements with my dad, it felt like nothing changed for the better, so I would retreat again until another issue I couldn’t stay silent on surfaced. Over the years other subjects like racial sensitivity (or lack thereof), sexism, policing, and the social safety net have all risen to this boiling point in me. It felt important to speak my mind, and I’m glad we at least managed to communicate at all. But the chasm was painful nonetheless, and has gotten exponentially more so in Trump’s era of chest-thumping partisan tribalism. I imagine many Americans can relate to the helpless feeling this confrontation cycle created in me, but we are not helpless. I may not be able to change my father’s mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office.

Trump and his enablers have used his presidency to stoke the injustice that already permeated our society, taking it to dramatically new, Bond-villain heights. I am a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community who tells stories about mental health, sexuality, and other stigmatized issues, and my goal is to humanize people and foster empathy. So I hope you’ll believe me when I say that another Trump term (a term, itself, that makes me cringe) will irrevocably harm the LGBTQ+ community, among many others. His administration asked the Supreme Court to let businesses fire people for being gay or trans, pushed a regulation to let health care providers refuse services to people who are LGTBQ+, and banned trans people from serving their country in the military.

Women, immigrants, people with disabilities, and people of color are all also under attack by Trump’s inhumane policies—and by his judicial appointments, including, probably, Amy Coney Barrett. Trump’s administration has torn families apart in more ways than I even imagined were possible, from ripping children from their parents at the border to mishandling the coronavirus, which has resulted in over 215,000 in the U.S. dying, many thousands of them without their loved ones near. Faced with preventable deaths during a pandemic that Trump downplayed and ignored, rhetoric that has fed deep-seated, systemic racism, and chaos in the White House, it’s no surprise that so many Americans feel as hopeless and overwhelmed as I did growing up. But if we refuse to face our political reality, we don’t stand a chance of changing it.

In 2016, I realized I needed to speak out in a more substantial way than just debating my dad in private (especially since I wasn’t getting anywhere with that), so I publicly supported Hillary Clinton and began canvassing for congressional candidates. If the unrelenting deluge of devastating news makes you think I’m crazy for having hope, please remember that making us feel powerless is a tactic politicians use to make us think our voices and votes don’t matter. But they do. It’s taken persistence and nerve to find my voice in politics, and I’m using it now to ask you to stand with me in the fight to end Donald Trump’s reign of terror.

If being the daughter of a polarizing mayor who became the president’s personal bulldog has taught me anything, it is that corruption starts with “yes-men” and women, the cronies who create an echo chamber of lies and subservience to maintain their proximity to power. We’ve seen this ad-nauseam with Trump and his cadre of high-level sycophants (the ones who weren’t convicted, anyway).

What inspires me most about Vice President Biden is that he is not afraid to surround himself with people who disagree with him. Choosing Senator Harris, who challenged him in the primary, speaks volumes about what an inclusive president he will be. Biden is willing to incorporate the views of progressive-movement leaders like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on issues like universal health care, student debt relief, prison reform, and police reform. And he is capable of reaching across the aisle to find moments of bipartisanship. The very notion of “bipartisanship” may seem painfully ludicrous right now, but we need a path out of impenetrable gridlock and vicious sniping. In Joe Biden, we’ll have a leader who prioritizes common ground and civility over alienation, bullying, and scorched-earth tactics.

Speaking of scorched earth, I know many people feel paralyzed by climate despair. I do too, but something still can and must be done. As climate change begins to encroach on our everyday lives, it is clear that our planet cannot survive four more years of this administration’s environmental assault. This monumental challenge requires scientifically literate leadership and immediate action. Joe Biden has laid out an aggressive series of plans to restore the environmental regulations that Trump gutted on behalf of his corporate polluting friends. Biden has a trans-formational clean-energy policy that he will bring to Congress within his first 100 days in office, and perhaps most crucially, he brings a desire and capability to reunite the major nations of the world in forging a path toward a global green future.

I fully understand that some of you want a nominee who is more progressive. For others the idea of voting for a Democrat of any kind may be a hurdle. Now I have another confession to make. Biden wasn’t my first choice when the primaries started. But I know what is at stake, and Joe Biden will be everyone’s president if elected. If you are planning to cast a symbolic vote or abstain from voting altogether, please reconsider. It is more important than ever to avoid complacency. This election is far from over, and if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen.

We are hanging by a single, slipping finger on a cliff’s edge, and the fall will be fatal. If we remove ourselves from the fight, our country will be in free-fall. Alternatively, we can hang on, elect a compassionate and decent president, and claw our way back onto the ledge. If I, after decades of despair over politics, can engage in our democracy to meet this critical moment, I know you can too.

Women spoke out in support of Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin after she received backlash for posing topless in a blazer

Insider

Women spoke out in support of Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin after she received backlash for posing topless in a blazer

Yelena Dzhanova October 17, 2020

Women all over the world are standing in solidarity with Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin after she received backlash for posing topless in a blazer for a magazine cover.
Social media users called the backlash sexist and pointed to examples of other world leaders who have posed topless without repercussion, like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The hashtag #ImWithSanna has gained popularity and gone viral across Instagram and Twitter, with women posting photos of themselves wearing a blazer with nothing underneath in support of Marin.

Scores of women expressed support for Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who was photographed on a magazine cover wearing a blazer without a top underneath.

Marin received backlash after posing for the magazine cover, CNN reported. In response, social media users rallied with supportive posts under the hashtag #ImWithSanna, sharing photos of themselves also wearing a blazer with nothing underneath.

“If you had to generalize it, it will be men saying it was wrong, and women saying it was fabulous,” said Mari Paalosalo-Jussinmäki, director of women’s media at A-lehdet magazine group. A-lehdet publishes Trendi, the magazine in which Marin appeared earlier this month.

“It was a little bit surprising,” Paalosalo-Jussinmäki told CNN.

“We’ve had that sort of photo before, obviously, in a woman’s glossy fashion magazine,” she told the outlet. “We have portrayed women in blazers with nothing underneath for years and years, with famous people, and they had never created any response like this.”

The article accompanying the cover story featured Marin addressing work-life balance and how the lawmaker copes with exhaustion.

Social media users called the backlash sexist and pointed to examples of other world leaders who have posed topless without repercussions. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, often poses for photographs topless, as did former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Neither received similar backlash, as some social media users pointed out.

“I think it speaks of women being tired and fed up with being restricted and told how to act and look and behave, and being judged by their looks — if you’re young and beautiful, then you can’t be taken seriously,” Paalosalo-Jussinmäki told CNN.

At 34, Marin is the youngest prime minister in the world. Earlier this year, a whopping 85% of Finns said they approved of her leadership and handling of the pandemic.

Women globally spend more time on average focusing on household responsibilities than men, according to the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) at the Rotman School of Management. Around the world, “women still do 50% more unpaid work at home than men,” according to GATE. Women overall also are reporting lower satisfaction levels with work-life balance than men.

The pandemic has likely exacerbated these feelings, said Liz Elting, founder and CEO of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation, in an interview with Business Insider.

Women who work from home “have kids to take care of with quarantining and home-schooling going on, and the work is basically falling on women,” Elting said. “So it’s a very difficult time for women, whether they do need to go out and risk their lives to take care of their families or if they’re at home earning a living and trying to take care of their family.”

Miami grapples with how to save treasured bay from rising seas and pollution

Good Morning America

Miami grapples with how to save treasured bay from rising seas and pollution

Stephanie Ebbs, Jon Schlosberg, Ginger Lee, Lindsey Griswold

October 16, 2020

An unprecedented fish kill in Miami’s Biscayne Bay this summer has brought a new push to address issues caused by sea level rise and pollution.

Sea-level rise in Miami and southeast Florida is not a new problem. The water in the area has risen 5 inches since 1993, and a new $400 million pump system is what is keeping a large part of the city dry.

The Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer Department is already planning for a worst-case scenario when it comes to sea-level rise.

“If you look from now till 2040 — so 20-year horizon — we’re planning on worst case about 11 inches of sea level rise, which if you live in South Florida that’s a very frightening thing in your coastal community,” Kevin Lynskey, the department’s director, told ABC News.

PHOTO: 'It's not too late' climate segment with Ginger Zee (ABC News) — ‘It’s not too late’ climate segment with Ginger Zee (ABC News)

Biscayne Bay is described as a turquoise paradise that laps at the coast of southeast Florida and kisses the barrier island of Miami Beach. It includes a national park and aquatic preserve to protect wildlife in the area.

Rachel Silverstein, executive director of the advocacy group Miami Waterkeeper, called it one of the jewels of the state.

“Biscayne Bay generates billions of dollars annually for our regional economy,” she said.

But the bay is dying.

PHOTO: In this Aug. 12, 2020, file photo, a dead fish floats on the surface of the water in Downtown Miami on Biscayne Bay. (Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald via AP, FILE) — In this Aug. 12, 2020, file photo, a dead fish floats on the surface of the water in Downtown Miami on Biscayne Bay. (Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald via AP, FILE)

Canals are carrying trash, fertilizer runoff and contamination from failing septic tanks into the bay.

Over the summer, all the chemicals running into the bay — combined with record heat levels — starved the oxygen out of the water, killing thousands of fish.

“These suffocation events, and this is something that just happened recently in Biscayne Bay, just in early August … is a well-documented pattern of how water bodies essentially die, all around Florida and all around the world, so there’s a very tight connection between nutrient pollution and bacteria levels and these kinds of fish kills,” Silverstein said.

Louis Aguirre, a reporter from Miami ABC affiliate WPLG, recently produced a special about the challenges facing Biscayne Bay.

“We have over 100,000 septic tanks in Miami-Dade County — still to this day. And we need to transition those septic tanks and connectors to our sewer system, which is also aging, ASAP because those septics are just spewing wastewater into our groundwater. You know Miami-Dade only stays 6 feet above sea level, so whatever goes through our groundwater goes into our bay, and that’s pretty disgusting,” he told ABC News.

In a typical septic system, waste from the house enters the tank, the solid waste settles to the bottom and the water goes to the drain field to be clarified. But when sea levels rise it interferes with that process, and the drain field mixes with groundwater and the septic tank fails.

That means waste from a toilet can go directly into the groundwater.

The Miami Dade Water and Sewer Department tells ABC News they have identified 10,000 tanks today that are not high enough anymore, and in 20 years, that number will reach 50,000.

Lynskey explained they are not just focused on septic, they’re also concerned about the canal systems keeping South Florida from turning back into a swamp. As sea levels rise, the canals pick up more trash, nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer used on farms and lawns and carries it right into Biscayne Bay.

PHOTO: In this Aug. 12, 2020, file photo, trash and dead fish float on the surface of the water in Downtown Miami, on Biscayne Bay. (Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald via AP, FILE)

But there is cause for hope.

Tampa Bay faced a similar challenge in the 1970s when the water was so covered in algae the seagrass died and fish and wildlife was driven out. After decades of effort to prevent polluted water from entering the bay, the seagrass has returned to nearly the same level as 1950, an area the size of Manhattan.

But Miami Waterkeeper said the city needs big changes in its sewage infrastructure to prevent more fish kills and preserve the bay.

“So we urgently need to be doing these investments and taking these opportunities we have to retrofit how our city is built and how it functions to be ready for sea-level rise,” Silverstein told ABC News.

The city of Miami agrees the problem is serious, but Lynskey said local leaders haven’t agreed on a path forward. The department is in the process of raising key infrastructure as high as 20 feet above sea level to reduce risk.

“Nobody’s come up with a magic bullet, we’ve already built billions of dollars of buildings and infrastructure. How do we make those survive? We’re still very much grappling with all that,” Lynskey said.

He said that as the sea level continues to rise tough decisions may have to be made from expensive septic tank replacements to decisions on whether to relocate.

“I think over the next 15 years, people are going to have to make some fundamental decisions on whether we’re going to try to keep every inch of land that humans live on, or are there some properties east of the ridge, where ultimately we retreat from and politically, I don’t think we’re there yet, but behind the scenes you can hear the conversations,” Lynskey told ABC News.

Largest wildfire Colorado has ever seen burning now near Fort Collins

Phil Helsel, NBC News October 15, 2020

A Colorado wildfire, fueled by high winds, grew by more than 22,000 acres Wednesday to become the largest in state history.

The Cameron Peak Fire burning in the mountains west of Fort Collins had grown to 158,300 acres by Wednesday evening, making it the largest wildfire in state history, according to The Denver Post newspaper, which has compiled wildfire information.

No injuries or deaths have been linked to the record-setting blaze, which is 56 percent contained.

The fire was fueled by high winds that began Tuesday night and into Wednesday, with sustained winds of around 30 mph and gusts of around 60 mph, incident meteorologist Aviva Braun said. While it will be breezy the rest of the week, high gusts are not expected.

“The conditions will remain challenging, just not nearly as serious as they were today,” she said in a community meeting update that was broadcast online.

Some mandatory evacuations have been ordered, and mandatory evacuation zones for the first time extended to the foothills just west of Fort Collins, but the city was not considered at-risk, The Associated Press reported.

Image: (Bethany Baker / Fort Collins Coloradoan via AP)

Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith said that he understands the difficulties of people being forced to leave their homes.

“We hate to do that to you, however, there’s nothing worse than the concern of losing life,” Smith said. “And the way these winds were changing today — the ability of this thing to go any direction — that’s what was tough.”

Smith said some structures were destroyed by fire Wednesday, but officials won’t know what those were for some time because the area remains dangerous with downed power lines and trees. Officials will be working to assess and count the number of lost structures as soon as they are able.

The new size of the fire puts it ahead of the second-largest wildfire in state history, which also broke out this year, the Pine Gulch Fire. That fire burned 139,007 acres and was 100 percent contained in September.

The Pine Gulch Fire, sparked by a lightning strike around 18 miles north of Grand Junction in July, became what was then the largest fire in state history when in August it surpassed the 2002 Hayman Fire, fire officials said.

The Cameron Peak Fire started Aug. 13 in the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, according to fire officials. A cause is under investigation.

It has been an explosive wildfire season in the western U.S.

California has seen more than 4.1 million acres burned — with 13 major wildfires across the state still burning Wednesday — and more than 9,000 homes and other structures destroyed, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

Thirty-one people in California have died.

Oregon also experienced a wildfire crisis that forced thousands to flee their homes.

Nine people have died in the fires in that state, more than 4,000 homes have been destroyed, and around 1.2 million acres had burned as of Wednesday, according to the state office of emergency management. Seven active fires were still burning in Oregon.