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#Trump Supporters Accused of Bullying Delegates Who Don’t Fall In Line

Some Republican convention delegates are complaining that pro-Trump thugs harassed and threatened them for not falling into line behind the nominee.

This is not a new phenomenon; there’s even a Delegate Defense Hotline set up by the Ted Cruz campaign in April that bullied delegates can call.

Kera Birkeland, a delegate from Utah, said she was confronted by two women in the bathroom at the Quicken Loans Arena Monday night. “They yelled at me, called me names,” she wrote on Facebook. “They said I should die. They said the police should be pulled from the Utah delegation and we should all die. They never touched me. They did not say they would kill me. They just said I should die.”

Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, joked about the incident on Tuesday. “I think I have a pretty good sense of what’s going on in this convention, but I haven’t gone in to the bathrooms yet,” he told reporters.

Birkeland was part of a group of delegates who unsuccessfully called for a roll call vote on the convention’s rules on Monday – widely seen as the last gasp of a #Nevertrump movement. Birkeland initially supported Rand Paul for president, then Ted Cruz.

Tommy Valentine, a 22-year-old Virginia delegate, told ThinkProgress that representatives from the Trump campaign threatened him about the petition for a roll call vote: “I had one Trump staffer who came to me and said, ‘When Trump becomes president, he will remember,’” Valentine said. “They were going around to the delegates who would sign the documents intimidating them and telling them to take their names off it.”

Last week Trump backer Carl Paladino sent an email to Stefani Williams, a delegate from Utah. “You should be hung for treason Stefani,” Paladino wrote. “There will not be a Republican Party if you attempt to replace Trump. I’ll be in your face in Cleveland.”

Back in April, Tom John, a “Never Trump” delegate from Indiana, received an email: “You know traditional burial is polluting the planet. Tom hope the family is well.”

And Trump ally Roger Stone said”> that delegates who didn’t support Donald Trump in Cleveland would find trouble.  “We’re going to have protests, demonstrations. We will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal,” he said.

At that point, the Trump campaign denounced the threats: “They’re deplorable and we condemn any kind of act of intimidation or any kind of threat. There’s no place for that in politics,” Trump Indiana co-chairman Tony Samuel told CNN.

But in late April, not long before he quit the race, Ted Cruz sent an email to supporters announcing a hotline called the Delegate Defense Hotline, intended to make sure that Republicans who did not support Trump would be safe in Cleveland. The Cruz campaign also launched a Delegate Defense Fund, asking for help to raise $500,000.

“Those of us who play by the rules, stick to our principles and fight hard to defend liberty and freedom do not deserve to be attacked by Donald trump (sic) and his goon squad,” Cruz wrote in the email.

When you call the hotline, the phone doesn’t ring; it goes straight to the answering machine: “You’ve reached the official Ted Cruz for President delegate defense line which has been set up for our supporters to report any intimidation, threats, or attacks on them or their families by supporters of Donald Trump. Please leave a detailed message about any issues you’ve faced as well as the best way to reach you and we will be in touch as soon as we can. Thank you for your support of Ted Cruz for President.”

The Intercept called the hotline 12 times and left three voicemails, but got no response. The Intercept also reached out to Cruz’s presidential campaign office, his Senate campaign office, and his Senate office but did not receive responses. Cruz received 559 delegate votes, compared to Trump’s 1,543.

As for Birkeland, she said she’s getting over the encounter.“It shook me at first,” she wrote on Facebook. “I came out of the bathroom crying, which is how people from Utah found out. The story spread. News crews caught me crying. I was just in shock. But I was and I am ok. Yesterday, while riding the bus downtown, a democrat said to me; “You’re a young republican, we should kill you before you produce off spring”. (sic) It’s just been a great two days.”

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#Civilian Death Toll From Coalition Airstrikes in Syria Could Be Single Largest in U.S.-Led War on ISIS

Scores of civilians trapped in Islamic State-controlled territory in northern Syria were reportedly killed Tuesday by airstrikes from Western coalition aircraft. The reported death toll, potentially the highest ever to result from a coalition bombing in the international campaign against ISIS, continued to climb as The Intercept reached out to monitoring groups tracking operations in the area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 56 civilians were killed when their convoy of vehicles attempted to slip out of an area north of the city of Manbij in the predawn darkness, as U.S.-backed forces pushed forward in an increasingly bloody offensive in the area. In a brief phone interview, a representative from the Britain-based organization said that while coalition aircraft were believed to be responsible for the air raid, the group suspected it was a “100 percent mistake.”

Airwars, a nonprofit that tracks claims of civilian casualties resulting from the international air campaign against ISIS, said incoming reports indicated the death toll may prove to be well over 100 civilians — potentially making it the largest single loss of civilian life resulting from coalition airstrikes since the U.S.-led campaign to destroy ISIS began nearly two years ago. Tuesday’s reports were the latest in a string of recent incidents in which coalition aircraft have been implicated in the deaths of civilians in the Manbij area.

“Really these civilians are in a desperate situation,” Chris Woods, head of Airwars, told The Intercept. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

The Pentagon confirmed it had reports of civilian casualties in the area around Manbij. “We are aware of reports alleging civilian casualties in the area,” U.S. Marine Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. “As with any allegation we receive, we will review any information we have about the incident, including information provided by third parties, such as the proximity of the location to CJTF [Combined Joint Task Force] airstrikes, and any other relevant information presented.”

“If the information supporting the allegation is determined to be credible, we will then determine the next appropriate step,” the spokesperson added. “We take all measures during the targeting process to avoid or minimize civilian casualties or collateral damage and to comply with the principles of the Law of Armed Conflict.”

The push to retake Manbij and surrounding villages began in earnest in late May and has combined intense fighting on the part of U.S.-backed opposition forces and more than 450 coalition airstrikes, according to the Pentagon’s count. U.S. Central Command says that coalition forces have launched at least 11 strikes in Manbij over the last 48 hours. In a press release issued Tuesday, the Pentagon reported that its largely Kurdish-led ally — referred to alternately as the Syrian Democratic Forces or the Syrian Arab Coalition — had captured an Islamic State headquarters located in a hospital in eastern Manbij.

By all accounts, life for the 70,000 civilians in the area, who remain trapped between ISIS fighters and the coalition campaign, has been hellish. Groups monitoring conditions on the ground have reported corpses decomposing in the streets and bodies left buried under the rubble of airstrikes, inaccessible due to the insecurity in the area. Airwars estimates at least 190 civilians have been killed in coalition strikes since the campaign began, including at least 39 children and 23 women.

Exactly what happened Tuesday remains unclear. While the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and others reported civilians killed as they fled ISIS, an account published by Syria Direct, a nonprofit media organization, reported that six missiles fired by coalition forces at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning struck a school in the village of Tokhar, a short distance northeast of Manbij, killing “anywhere from 65 to 160 people.” Sources on the ground told the outlet the “school housed displaced people from neighboring villages.” CENTCOM, which did not comment on specific allegations of civilian casualties, said its recent strikes in the area had targeted ISIS “tactical units” and “fighting positions.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Intercept it had no information on a school being struck. The Telegraph, which reported 85 civilians killed in Tuesday’s air raid as they fled Tokhar, suggested today’s operation was the first mission launched from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey since the facility was temporarily shut down after last week’s failed coup. The base has served as a key node in the U.S. war against ISIS.

Woods, of Airwars, said Pentagon data shows roughly 98 percent of the coalition airstrikes in the Manbij campaign are overseen by the U.S., and last week was the largest number of civilian casualties since the effort began in August 2014. His organization was in the midst of preparing a report on the marked rise in civilian casualties in the area when Tuesday’s reports began to come in. Photos circulated on social media purported to show victims, including young children, being buried in mass graves.

Compared to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies in the Russian military, which have employed airpower in notoriously indiscriminate ways, targeting hospitals and densely populated urban areas, the U.S. coalition has generally taken great care to avoid civilian casualties, Woods said. The developments in Manbij, he said, were particularly worrying as coalition forces prepare to mount similar campaigns to retake larger cities from ISIS control. “This is the first big assault with a U.S.-backed proxy,” he said. “This bodes very badly for Mosul,” Iraq’s second largest city, which remains under ISIS control.

“Major alarm bells are ringing for us right now,” Woods added. “There’s something very, very bad happening out there at the moment.”

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#Brazil’s Largest Newspaper Commits Major Journalistic Fraud to Boost Interim President Temer

(The version of this article in Portuguese will be published shortly)

One of the looming mysteries during the last several months of Brazil’s political crisis (as The Intercept has repeatedly noted) has been the complete absence of polling data from the country’s largest media outlets and polling firms. The lower house voted on April 17 — more than three months ago — to send to the Senate impeachment charges against democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff, which resulted in the temporary installation of her Vice President, Michel Temer, as “interim President.”

Since then, there had been no published polls from Datafolha — the polling firm used by Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de.S Paulo — asking Brazilians if they favor Dilma’s impeachment, if they favor the impeachment of Temer, and/or if they want new elections to choose a new President. The last Datafolha poll prior to the impeachment vote was on April 9, and it found that 60% favored Dilma’s impeachment while 58% favored the impeachment of Temer. It also found that 60% wanted Temer to resign after Dilma was impeached, and that 79% favored new elections once they both left.

Headline: “Ibope poll shows that 62% prefer new presidential elections”

The last poll from the other major firm, Ibope, was published on April 25, and it found that 62% want both Dilma and Temer to leave office and then new elections held; 25% wanted Dilma to remain and complete her term; and only 8% favored what has happened thus far: that Dilma is removed and Temer remains as president. Still, that poll — as bad it was for Temer — was all the way back in April.

Incredibly, even though Temer was installed more than three months ago,  the Senate is just weeks away from a final vote on Dilma’s impeachment, and the world’s eyes will be on Brazil when the Olympics begin in two weeks, there have been no new polls published — until this weekend. On Saturday, Folha de S.Paulo trumpeted a major new poll from Datafolha that was as surprising as it was positive for interim President Temer. It was also a radical departure from prior polls. The top headline promoted by Folha, which quite predictably went all over the country very quickly, announced that half of the country now wants Michel Temer to remain President through the end of what would have been the end of Dilma’s term in late 2018.

With the final impeachment vote imminent, that is an extremely significant finding: that 50% of Brazilians think it’s best for the country if Temer completes Dilma’s term. At least as significant was Folha‘s claim that only 4% said they want neither Dilma nor Temer to stay, while only 3% want new elections. This was Saturday’s lead online article:

[HEADLINE: “For 50% of Brazilians, Temer should remain; 32% want Dilma to return”

POLL GRAPHIC: “What is best for the country?

Temer continues: 50%;

Dilma returns: 32%;

Neither of the two: 4%;

Elections: 3%;

Other responses: 2%;

Don’t know: 9%]

The paper also blasted this result on the front-page of its Sunday print edition, the most-read edition of any newspaper in Brazil:

[Highlighted paragraph: “In politics, 50% advocate that Michel Temer remain as president, and 32% prefer the return of Dilma Rousseff.”

Highlighted graphic: “What would be best for the country? Temer continues: 50%; Dilma returns: 32%; Neither of the two: 4%; Elections: 3%; Other/don’t know: 11%]

Not only was this result shocking given the widespread animus toward Temer revealed by prior polls, but it also made no sense on its own terms. To begin with, other Datafolha questions that asked who voters preferred to become President in 2018 showed that Temer was at only 5%, compared with the poll leader, former President Lula da Silva, who was between 21-23%, followed by Marina Silva at 18%. Moreover, only 14% approve of Temer’s new government (compared to 31% who strongly disapprove and 41% who are neutral). Beyond that, a full 1/3 of Brazilian voters can’t even name Temer as their current President. And, as one left-wing site noted in denouncing this latest polling headline from Folha as a “statistical fraud,” it is simply inconceivable that the percentage of Brazilians favoring new elections fell from 60% in April to 3% now, while the percentage wanting Temer to remain as President skyrocketed from 8% to 50%.

All of those facts made it extremely difficult to understand how Folha‘s top-line headline — that 50% want Temer to remain as President through the completion of Dilma’s term — could possibly be true. It’s contrary to all known data. But Folha is the country’s largest paper; Datafolha is a reasonably credible polling firm; and they were unequivocal in their headline and lead graphic about this result. Despite all these obvious grounds for doubt, Folha did not publish the actual questions asked nor the underlying data with this article, so it was impossible to fact-check their claims.

As a result, this headline — that half the country want Temer to remain as President through 2018 — was heralded by most media outlets and instantly became ingrained as fact: as a potentially lethal fact that could easily seal the deal against Dilma. After all, if 50% of the country literally want Temer as their President through 2018, it’s hard to see how fence-sitting Senators will deny them what they want.

But yesterday, the full data and underlying questions were made public. It is now evident that — whether through corrupt motives or utter ineptitude — a journalistic fraud has been committed by Folha. The reason only 3% of Brazilians said they want new elections, and only 4% said they want neither Dilma nor Temer to remain as President, is because the poll question excluded those as options. As the journalist Alex Cuadros noted today, the actual question that was asked only gave respondents two options: either (1) Dilma returns or (2) Temer stays through 2018.

[Question 13: “In your opinion, what would be better for the country: that Dilma returns to the presidency, or Michel Temer continues in the term until 2018?”]

So clearly, 50% of Brazilians did not say that it would be best for the country if Temer continues to complete Dilma’s term in 2018: they only said that would be the best choice if the only alternative was that Dilma returns. Moreover, it is plainly not the case that only 3% of Brazilians want new elections; since they were not asked that. What happened was that 3% of the respondents went out of their way to volunteer that option when presented with the binary choice of “Dilma returns” or “Temer stays.” It’s impossible to know from this poll what the actual percentage is of those who want Temer to stay through 2018, or those who favor new elections, or, for that matter, what percentage wants Dilma to return. By falsely limiting the question to only two choices, Folha ensured that the results would be totally distorted.

For many reasons, asking the question in this manner — by excluding all choices but those two — is wholly unjustified. For one, Brazil’s Supreme Court previously ruled that the impeachment of Temer should be voted on given that he participated in the same actions that Dilma did. Beyond that, several of the country’s most prominent figures — including former chief Supreme Court justice Joaquim Barbosa and former presidential candidate Marina Silva, as well as Folha‘s own editorial page — have called for new elections to choose the next president after Dilma’s impeachment. Andréa Freitas, Professor of Political Science at Unicamp, told The Intercept: “given that new elections are a viable option, it should have been included as an option.”

And as Cuadros noted, prior polls about Dilma and Temer, including the April 9 poll from Datafolha, expressly asked respondents whether they favored new elections. So it’s baffling why this Datafolha poll would purposely omit Temer’s impeachment and new elections, and confine the choices to “Dilma returns” or “Temer stays.”

But that’s simply an argument about polling methodology — whether it makes sense to limit the choices to just those two outcomes. What happened here was much worse. Once Folha decided to limit the question this way, they can’t then deceive the country by pretending that the respondents were offered the full range of choices. By concealing that fact, Folha‘s headline and lead graphic were not just misleading but outright false.

It is plainly false to say — as Folha‘s graph did — that only 3% think “new elections would be best for the country” since the poll did not ask about new elections. Even more damagingly, it is also completely false to say that “50% of Brazilians believe it is best for the country if Temer continues” through completion of Dilma’s 2018 term. One can only say that 50% want Temer to stay if the only other choice is Dilma returns. 

But if the other options are included — Temer is impeached, Temer resigns, new elections are held — it is a virtual certainty that the percentage of Brazilians who want Temer to stay through 2018 will drop precipitously. As Professor Freitas put it: “it could be that 50% prefer Temer to Dilma if those are the only choices, but part of that 50% favor new elections. With that option not included, there’s no way to infer that these people prefer Temer.”

This is no small matter. It’s hard to overstate the impact that this hyped poll has had. It’s the only poll from a credible firm that has been published in months. It was timed right before the final Senate vote. And it contained the extraordinary announcement that half of the country is eager for Michel Temer to remain President through 2018: a headline as sensationalistic as it is false.

Just consider how this poll finding was hyped — quite predictably — by headlines from other major Brazilian media outlets:

[Datafolha: 50% of Brazilians wants Temer through 2018″]

The first paragraph reads: “polling from Datafolha conducted on July 14 and 15 found that 50% of Brazilians prefer interim President Michel Temer continue through 2018. The return of suspended president Dilma Rousseff was chosen by 32% of respondents. The rest of the 18% chose neither of the two, said they did not know, or prefer new elections.”

[For 50%, Temer should continue; 32% want the return of Dilma, says Datafolha”]

The first paragraph reads: “Datafolha Polling revealed on Saturday that 50% of respondents prefer that interim president Michel Temer remain through 2018. For 32%, the best would be the return of suspended president Dilma Rousseff.”

In an interview with The Intercept, Datafolha’s Luciana Schong insisted that it was Folha, not her polling firm, which determined the questions to be asked. She acknowledged that it is misleading to state that 3% of Brazilians want new elections “since the respondents were not asked this question.” Schong further stated that any description of this data that claimed that 50% of Brazilians want Temer to remain as President would be inaccurate if it did not note that the question confined the options to only two.

In late April, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued its annual press freedom ranking and Brazil dropped to 104th in the world due in part to the fact that “media ownership continues to be concentrated in the hands of leading industrial families linked to the political class.” Specifically, the group found that “in a barely veiled manner, the leading national media have urged the public to help bring down President Dilma Rousseff” and “the journalists working for these media groups are clearly subject to the influence of private and partisan interests, and these permanent conflicts of interests are clearly very detrimental to the quality of their reporting.”

It’s one thing for Brazil’s plutocratic media to openly incite and agitate the fall of a democratically elected government. As RSF found, that behavior poses a direct threat to both democracy and press freedom. But it’s quite another to watch as they simply manufacture headlines and false narratives to suggest that a large portion of the country supports the individual who seized power undemocratically when they plainly do not.

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