Black smoke billowed from the chimney of the Russian consulate in San Francisco on Friday, a day after President Donald Trump ordered the closure.

Russia was ordered to close the consulate and two diplomatic annexes in New York and Washington until Saturday.

The San Francisco Fire Department sent a team to investigate but was ultimately turned away by consulate staff.

An Associated Press reporter heard people coming out of the consulate telling firefighters that everything was OK and that the smoke was due to “unidentified items” being burned in a fireplace.

Mindy Talamadge, a fire department spokeswoman, confirmed to the AP that firefighters were dispatched to the consulate and found the smoke was coming from the chimney.

Talamadge also noted that it was a hot day in the city, with temperatures reaching 35 degrees at lunchtime, and she wasn't sure what might have burned there.

“It wasn’t unintentional. They burned something in their fireplace,” Talamadge told the AP.

Some on social media speculated that consulate staff burned documents.

A fire truck showed up at the Russian consulate in San Francisco, where documents or other items were apparently burned https://t.co/qhQDZWll3F

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) September 1, 2017

The Trump administration's decision to order Russia to close its consulate, the oldest in the United States, comes amid heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow.

In late July, Congress voted overwhelmingly to impose new sanctions on Russia over its interference in the 2016 election. Trump eventually agreed, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to sign the legislation imposing the sanctions.

Moscow responded by ordering the expulsion of 755 US diplomats. Trump controversially thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for doing so, but later claimed he was being sarcastic.

The decision to close the consulate and two diplomatic annexes was made directly by the president, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

In a statement about the move, the US State Department said: “The United States hopes that, having complied with the Russian Federation's desire for parity, we can avoid further retaliation from both sides and move forward to achieve the stated goal of both sides .” of our Presidents: improved relations between our two countries and increased cooperation in areas of mutual interest. The United States stands ready to take further action if necessary and warranted.

While speaking to students in Moscow on Friday about these latest developments, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would “respond harshly to things that harm us.”

Unusual knowledge

Newsweek strives to challenge conventional wisdom and find connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek strives to challenge conventional wisdom and find connections in the search for common ground.

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SACRAMENTO — Count another dent in Donald Trump’s once-impenetrable armor: California Republicans are no longer marching in unwavering lockstep behind him — and some are saying so publicly for the first time.

Her preferred alternative: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“I’m leaning toward DeSantis,” Rep. Tom McClintock, of R-Elk Grove, Sacramento County, told The Chronicle at the three-day California Republican Party convention that ended Sunday. “He’s offering all of Donald Trump’s policies without the drama.”

McClintock is believed to be the first member of the 12-member California GOP House delegation to publicly support DeSantis and, perhaps more importantly, break with Trump. But he wasn’t the only member of the delegation to drop support for the former president. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale (Butte County), who represents some of the most conservative parts of California where Trump is popular, told The Chronicle he was undecided.

Their voices — like those of other California Republicans — will carry unusual weight in this presidential campaign, which is in full swing with DeSantis’ visit to Iowa on Friday, Trump’s landing on Monday and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley already visiting .

While California’s Republican Party is virtually powerless within the state — a Republican has not won a statewide office since 2006, and Democrats hold a supermajority in the legislature — Republican voters will enjoy an intergenerational opportunity to make their voices heard in next year’s presidential campaign To provide.

Ballots will arrive in California mailboxes in the second week of February for the March 5 state primary. The last time there was a GOP open field was in 2016, Trump completed the nomination when Californians cast their ballot in June.

This time, however, candidates must run in California if they want to win the GOP nomination. In the 2016 open primary, California provided the largest number of delegates (172) and will probably do so again.

The weekend’s state convention provided the party’s leaders and grassroots activists – the people who do the political grunt work of a campaign – the first opportunity to speak their minds.

Often her silence said the most.

Even if Republicans did not publicly support DeSantis — who is not yet an official candidate — many did not knee-jerkly support Trump, which would have been viewed as heresy in previous election cycles.

Instead, DeSantis has shown his power in California in other ways.

Fred Whitaker, chairman of the influential Orange County Republican Party Chapter, saw the power of DeSantis in action this month when the Florida governor led a fundraiser there that drew 900 people and raised $742,000 for the local party. Whitaker called it “the greatest event the Orange County Republican Party has ever had.”

“That showed me that there is tremendous interest in 2024,” he said. “And there’s tremendous interest in Governor DeSantis.” Whitaker, who is not engaged in the presidential race, said DeSantis’ accomplishment was even more impressive because Whitaker had just one month to complete the annual fundraiser instead of the typical five to plan.

“People are ready for something different,” Whitaker said.

Look no further than the 2020 results in Orange County, arguably California’s toughest battleground region. Republican Representatives Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach and Young Kim, R-Fullerton each received a higher share of the vote (51%) than Trump (44%).

“I read the voters,” Whitaker said as he assessed DeSantis’ growing strength, “and I read the donors.”

Ivy League-educated DeSantis (with a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a law degree from Harvard Law School) connects with the party’s “intellectual conservative base,” Whitaker said, “but he’s also a tough person,” which “will push back .”

“So many of our constituents who are close to President Trump say, ‘I don’t want a woke country,’ and they like someone who’s willing to hit back,” Whitaker said. “Governor DeSantis has this unique ability to marry the two different wings.”

It is revealing that even longtime Californian Trump supporters do not reflexively back a candidate. That includes Harmeet Dhillon, the San Francisco attorney who ran for Republican National Committee chair this year and lost to incumbent Ronna McDaniel. DeSantis kick-started Dhillon’s RNC presidential campaign by praising her on the eve of the vote, saying the party needs “fresh blood.” Returning the praise at Congress, Dhillon said voters like him because “he’s a very impressive governor.”

That’s kudos from Dhillon, an attorney who still represents Trump in a few legal cases across the country.

“He’s conservative. He is effective. He has a good track record in his state. Not only do people like his rhetoric, they like his results,” DeSantis’ Dhillon told me. “So I think he’s a natural choice for someone looking for the next generation of Republican leaders. But when it comes to rhetoric and politics, he’s not that different from Trump. And I think in that sense they’re both competing for the same voters.”

Gonzalo Vergara is a two-time Trump voter, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who lives in El Dorado County and said he supports DeSantis.

“I think Trump had his four years and he could have done better than what he did,” Vergara, 68, told me.

“It’s kind of a hard-to-swallow dish,” Vergara said. “I don’t think he can win because I think there are more people who are against him because they don’t like him. It would give the Democratic Party, whoever they nominate, a win by default.”

Steve Frank, a longtime California Conservative chronicler and 2019 party presidential candidate, has seen the momentum swing toward DeSantis during the 75 speeches Frank delivers annually to Republican clubs across the state.

“Many of the people who were previously Trump are publicly saying they are dating Trump. Privately, much of this state’s conservative leadership will go with DeSantis,” Frank said.

Not only do they like DeSantis’ likely campaign mantra — “In Florida, waking is to die for” — they like that he backs it with legislation and opposes what they see as the tyrants of the left and the media.

“They say that not only is this a guy who could hold his own against the Democrats, but also against people like Putin and Xi,” Frank said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “They see him as President.”

Grassroots support buoyed a February Berkeley IGS poll in California that showed DeSantis leading a field of 11 current and potential GOP candidates with 37% of the Republican vote, followed by Trump at 29% and Haley at 7%.

LaMalfa, the congressman representing a district where Trump received 58% of the vote in 2020, told me that “Trump still has the nomination to lose.”

But LaMalfa, who has endorsed Trump twice before, has not yet decided who he will endorse in 2024. He advised Trump not to get bogged down in attacks on his challengers.

“He needs to focus on his race and not worry about what the other contestants are doing,” LaMalfa told me. “You don’t have to run at DeSantis; You don’t have to go after Nikki Haley.” He also said that given his popularity in that part of California, voters in his part of the state don’t want DeSantis to attack Trump.

“DeSantis is a great candidate, but I think Ron would be wise not to confuse it with Trump,” LaMalfa said.

Trump still has fans here. The party was considering a resolution to support Trump in negotiations to end the war between Ukraine and Russia. On Sunday, however, 75% of the congress participants rejected it.

Joan Leone, president of the Republican Club of San Francisco, still supports Trump. She said, “DeSantis is great, but I don’t want him to leave Florida right now,” for fear it might fall into Democrat hands. And Leone has a wish for Trump.

“He has to completely forget what happened in 2020,” Leone said. “He doesn’t have to have cute little names for the other candidates. Focus on what he did (as President) because I loved my 401(k) when Trump was President.”

Younger Republicans are also waiting.

“We’re waiting to see who comes out,” said David Chan, a 20-year-old UC Berkeley student and leader of the College Republicans of California, who voted for Trump last time.

Other Republicans remain nervous about expressing their preference for anyone.

“It’s a pretty tricky time right now and nobody wants their name in block letters,” said Scott Woodworth, a San Jose resident who chairs the California Young Republicans Federation. “The party is still working on the vision and direction in which it wants to go. You have different factions and we will see which will win.”

Even Marty Miller, who sold Trump T-shirts and pins at the convention, hedged his bets. He peddled DeSantis buttons next to those that read, “Presidents Are Temporary/Trump Is Forever.”

Miller is a Trump supporter. What gives?

Said Miller, “I’m a capitalist, baby.”

Reach Joe Garofoli: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @joegarofoli

The post Social gathering occasion exhibits GOP Californians shifting on from Trump appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Margie Talavera was a Navy corpsman at the tail end of the Vietnam War. Like many veterans of many wars, she doesn’t enjoy talking about what she experienced, the wounded sailors she patched up — or the alcohol addiction that pursued her into civilian life.

In the decades since her six-year hitch ended in 1979, Talavera became a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey clown, a postal carrier and more. But the booze and the trauma it no longer masked pitched her into occasional periods of couch surfing until finally, a few years ago, she became someone she fervently did not want to be: a person without a home in San Francisco.

That’s when that time in the Navy as a healing corpsman paid off, and in a way, reached through the years to heal her.

In late 2020, Talavera became one of the first people to move into the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, a state-of-the-art supportive housing complex for 62 formerly homeless veterans, built near Oracle Park, the San Francisco Giants stadium in Mission Bay.

Top of story: Margie Talavera holds her dog tags and service medal from her time in the U.S. Navy. She lives in the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, a state-of-the-art supportive housing complex for 62 homeless veterans.

Above: Talavera feeds her dog, Little Bear, after a walk in the neighborhood near her home.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

“I have to pinch myself sometimes to believe I actually live here,” said Talavera, 67, who shares her roomy one-bedroom apartment with her 10-year-old Scottish terrier, Little Bear. “The first thing I saw when I walked in here was the brand-new bathroom, and nobody had ever used it. After living in my car and on couches of friends and family…”

She stopped, eyes wide, unable to speak for a moment.

“It’s beautiful.”

The Edwin M. Lee Apartments, fully opened in 2021, are a showpiece of how to reduce homelessness through permanent supportive housing, in this case by blending conscious architectural design with a citywide-best ratio of one case manager for every 12 residents.

They’re everything the city is shooting for in supportive housing, in contrast to the troubled century-old residential hotels
exposed by The Chronicle
this year as substandard.

But the complex also represents an effort to jump-start a very specific promise to the nation’s military veterans, one that stalled during the four-year term of former President Donald Trump.

‘A commitment to end veterans homelessness’

Talavera picks up a meal at a lunch for veterans hosted in September by a volunteer community group, Twitter for Good, in the community room of the Edwin M. Lee Apartments.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Veteran homelessness had declined by 47% from 2010 to 2016 as the federal government made the extra health and housing resources available through the Department of Veterans Affairs to quickly move veterans into supportive housing geared for them. That momentum halted after Trump’s election as his national homelessness and welfare officials reduced emphasis on the issue in funding and policy decisions, leaving the numbers flat as he left office.

However, during the first two years of the Biden administration, the nation saw an 11% reduction in the number of homeless veterans, according to figures released this month by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. That brings the one-night national total of unhoused veterans to 33,136 — 55% fewer than the 2010 total of 74,087.

Until the latest national figures came out, San Francisco had been roughly keeping pace with the nation,
cutting its number of homeless veterans
by 45% from 2010 to 2019. But while the rest of the nation improved, the city’s numbers stayed flat from 2019 to 2022 — from 608 homeless vets to 605 — even as the overall homeless
one-night count fell 3.5%
to 7,754.

But program managers with the city’s coordinated entry system for homeless residents say the needle may be moving in the right direction again. Ten months after the last official survey was conducted in January, program managers say the city’s coordinated entry system that routes homeless people into services is indicating that the current nightly number of unhoused veterans appears to have dropped to around 400.

Experts acknowledge that one-night Point-In-Time counts, normally taken every two years but delayed by the pandemic, are imprecise at best. And the daily calculations conducted by the coordinated entry system could change. But together they seem to reflect progress.

Federal homelessness officials and national experts credited the national drop to the renewed focus, outlined in a multiagency agenda released in 2021, and new funding including $481 million for VA homelessness programs in the American Rescue Plan.

“I’m seeing movement nationally, and I’m seeing movement in San Francisco,” said Ann Oliva, one of the architects of former President Barack Obama’s national veterans homelessness program. “Our progress on ending veterans homelessness is the proof point for ending all homelessness.”

Oliva is now executive director of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. While working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Obama, she and
Dr. Josh Bamberger, UCSF
clinical and family medicine professor, helped develop the 2010 national strategy that led to the reduction in the unhoused veterans’ population.

The Biden administration is asking Congress for 200,000 new housing vouchers to be used nationally, an unspecified number of which could be used for veterans. Along with an increase in grants coming to the city, local vet program managers see progress ahead.

“The Trump administration really put the kibosh on housing vouchers for veterans — and focus on vets in general — but we’ve been encouraged,” said
Michael Blecker, executive director
of Swords to Plowshares — which with the Chinatown Community Development Center developed and operates the Lee apartments. “I think we can make progress.”

Another veterans housing complex of 105 units is expected to open on Treasure Island in February, and Swords to Plowshares — the city’s main homeless veterans aid nonprofit — anticipates getting a $4.5 million grant from the state Department of Veterans Affairs in January to help house vets.

Swords has already gotten several million more dollars for homeless vets programs and housing this year, including $1.2 million in federal and city funds to expand its drop-in center, along with nearly $1 million in U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs funding for suicide prevention among the same population.

The city Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing intends to focus on unhoused vets with the most acute difficulties.

“San Francisco made a commitment to end veterans homelessness, and of course there are more challenges than just supplying a roof,” Mayor London Breed said. “The services are very important, too, so I’m looking forward to any new resources we get. I see movement in the right direction.”

The most important beneficiaries of any progress, of course, are the ones who get roofs.

Army veteran Randall Larson, a longtime artist, looks over his paints in his home at the Edwin M. Lee Apartments.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Randall Larson is seen in an archival photo from approximately 1979 when he served in the U.S. Army. He now lives at the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, a state-of-the-art supportive housing complex in San Francisco for 62 formely homeless vets.

Handout/Courtesy Randall Larson / Handout/Courtesy Randall Larson

Army veteran Randall Larson holds a prescription he received in September to help him deal with lingering pain in his arm and shoulders from an injury sustained years ago. He lives in the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, a state-of-the-art supportive housing complex in Mission Bay for 62 formely homeless vets, which has comprehensive medical and counseling services.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Left: Larson in 1979, when he served in the U.S. Army. Right: Larson holds a prescription he received in September to help him deal with lingering pain in his arm and shoulders from an injury sustained years ago. Photos courtesy Randall Larson and by Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle
Top: Larson in 1979, when he served in the U.S. Army. Above: Larson holds a prescription he received in September to help him deal with lingering pain in his arm and shoulders from an injury sustained years ago. Photos courtesy Randall Larson and by Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

“I don’t know where I’d be if not for this place,” said 72-year-old Randall Larson, who turned his living room into a studio where he makes paintings of people and landscapes that are popular in the complex. A former Army sergeant partially paralyzed in a traffic accident years ago, he struggled with evictions when landlords converted their buildings, time in the street and interim housing before moving to the Ed Lee complex.

“I finally feel like I’m really home,” he said.

‘A real example of how to do it right’

Larson calls taxi companies to transport apartment residents who signed up to work on his crew setting up the Haight Street Fair in October.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

The apartments he lives in are named after the late Mayor Ed Lee, who pushed hard to reduce veterans’ homelessness before he died of a heart attack in 2017.

One month before he died, Lee
oversaw the opening of a 70-unit
supportive housing complex for veterans on Minna Street, and said he hoped someday to bring the number of chronically homeless vets living outside down to a functional zero, meaning none would stay on the streets for more than 90 days before being sheltered or housed.

That hasn’t happened, though state-of-the-art facilities like the Lee apartments
can make a big difference,
said Keith Boylan, deputy secretary for veterans services at the California Department of Veterans Affairs, which helped fund the complex’s construction.

The 62 units are layered into a five-story, U-shaped building with a garden in the middle. The neighborhood is serene, and the large meeting rooms include a computer lab, counseling offices, a library and a kitchen for big gatherings. The vets get free meals six days a week, frequent movie gatherings, art workshops, music appreciation meetings and the like.

Three of the offices on the ground floor are for case managers — which at one for every 12 residents is double the
city’s goal for supportive housing
complexes. One of those offices is staffed through the VA, illustrating how extra federal resources can make a complex like the Lee apartments better than usual.

“The Ed Lee Apartments is a great program, a real example of how to do it right,” Boylan said.

Another aspect that sets the complex apart is the 57 apartments across the inner courtyard occupied by low-income families. The concept of situating veterans alongside families is unique in the region.

“There’s this myth that housing is some kind of magic, that you put someone in a unit and all their problems are solved,” said Malcolm Yeung, executive director of the Chinatown CDC. “It’s not true.

“It’s creating the right environment and support and so many other things that make the difference,” he said. “And that’s what’s happening with these apartments.”

Several vets said that, after years of struggle, they appreciate the laughter of children and the proximity of families.

Navy vet Mark Shaffer, 62, said that’s a big factor in helping him overcome much of the trauma from several years of homelessness — and leftover stress from his 1979-83 duty time on ammunition ships that too often felt like floating bombs.

U.S. Navy veteran Mark Shaffer, a resident of the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, wipes tears from his eyes as he discusses his experience with homelessness. “Not all wounds are apparent,” he says.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

“Look, I never got married or had children, but I got to witness a newborn daughter coming into the world here a little while ago,” he said, eyes misting. “I love that, love being around all these beautiful families.”

And for their part, the families seem to like having ex-military around — and formerly homeless ex-military at that. It assuages bad feelings for some, especially children, who used to live in difficult neighborhoods layered with encampments.

“I got scared at the last place we lived at, in the Tenderloin,” Emily Ekcab, 10, said as she grabbed a handful of candy from a bowl at a Halloween party for the families and vets. “There were a lot of homeless people outside our door and the workers in the building were kind of mean to us. But here, I feel protected because so many of these people used to be soldiers.”

Right then, Army vet Lawrence Zenk, 70, walked past and gave her a thumbs up. Emily laughed and gave a thumbs up in return.

“At first I was against the idea of moving into a place where I was living around a bunch of kids, but I’ll tell you — these kids are really well behaved,” Zenk said. “This is the best place in the country, the way I see it. The kids and the family folks are just nice to be around.”

Yeung said he was also skeptical about the concept of combining the two populations.

“This one was a bit of an experiment,” he said. “It sounded crazy to me at first, but it’s been anything but that.”

Letting the families and vets have their own spaces, but able to meet in the middle — “that builds a new community in a setting that transmits calm,” he said. “That’s not a small thing.”

It certainly hasn’t been a small thing for Talavera, who has adorned her apartment with pictures of landscapes and family. Empowered by her new stability, she wrote a one-act pantomime play about overcoming challenges, and after recently workshopping it with theater friends in the Lee complex’s main hall, she’s booked to perform it at the Marsh theater in December.

Talavera prepares for her one-woman pantomime show at the Edwin M. Lee Apartments. Her show is scheduled to be performed at the Marsh theater in San Francisco in December.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

“I come into a warm, secure home now,” she said quietly. “I feel we all have the right to be safe, but maybe there is a little more to that when you’re a veteran. When you sign that piece of paper to enlist, it means, ‘I will die right now if I have to.’ So now I feel like maybe I’m safe here because I made it safe for everyone else in that time I served.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron

The post San Francisco and the U.S. had been fixing veteran homelessness till Trump. Can the promise be restored? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Margie Talavera was a Navy corpsman at the tail end of the Vietnam War. Like many veterans of many wars, she doesn’t enjoy talking about what she experienced, the wounded sailors she patched up — or the alcohol addiction that pursued her into civilian life.

In the decades since her six-year hitch ended in 1979, Talavera became a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey clown, a postal carrier, and more. But the booze and the trauma it no longer masked pitched her into occasional periods of couch surfing until finally, a few years ago, she became someone she fervently did not want to be: a person without a home in San Francisco.

That’s when that time in the Navy as a healing corpsman paid off, and in a way, reached through the years to heal her.

In late 2020, Talavera became one of the first people to move into the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, a state-of-the-art supportive housing complex for 62 formerly homeless veterans, built near Oracle Park, the San Francisco Giants stadium in Mission Bay.

Top of story: Margie Talavera holds her dog tags and service medal from her time in the U.S. Navy. She lives in the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, a state-of-the-art supportive housing complex for 62 homeless veterans.

Above: Talavera feeds her dog, Little Bear, after a walk in the neighborhood near her home.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

“I have to pinch myself sometimes to believe I actually live here,” said Talavera, 67, who shares her roomy one-bedroom apartment with her 10-year-old Scottish Terrier, Little Bear. “The first thing I saw when I walked in here was the brand-new bathroom, and nobody had ever used it. After living in my car and on couches of friends and family…”

She stopped, eyes wide, unable to speak for a moment.

“It’s beautiful.”

The Edwin M. Lee Apartments, fully opened in 2021, are a showpiece of how to reduce homelessness through permanent supportive housing, in this case by blending conscious architectural design with a citywide-best ratio of one case manager for every 12 residents.

They’re everything the city is shooting for in supportive housing, in contrast to the troubled century-old residential hotels
exposed by The Chronicle
this year as substandard.

But the complex also represents an effort to jump-start a very specific promise to the nation’s military veterans, one that stalled during the four-year term of former President Donald Trump.

‘A commitment to end veterans homelessness’

Talavera picks up a meal at a lunch for veterans hosted in September by a volunteer community group, Twitter for Good, in the community room of the Edwin M. Lee Apartments.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Veteran homelessness had declined by 47% between 2010 and 2016 as the federal government made the extra health and housing resources available through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, to quickly move veterans into supportive housing geared for them. That momentum halted following Trump’s election as his national homelessness and welfare officials reduced emphasis on the issue in funding and policy decisions, leaving the numbers flat as he left office.

However, during the first two years of the Biden administration, the nation saw an 11% reduction in the number of homeless veterans, according to figures released this month by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. That brings the one-night national total of unhoused veterans to 33,136 — 55% fewer than the 2010 total of 74,087.

Until the latest national figures came out, San Francisco had been roughly keeping pace with the nation,
cutting its number of homeless veterans
by 45% between 2010 and 2019. But while the rest of the nation improved, the city’s numbers stayed flat between 2019 and 2022 — from 608 homeless vets to 605 — even as the overall homeless
one-night count fell 3.5%
to 7,754.

But program managers with the city’s coordinated entry system for homeless residents say the needle may be moving in the right direction again. Ten months after the last official survey was conducted in January, program managers say the city’s coordinated entry system that routes homeless people into services is indicating that the current nightly number of unhoused veterans appears to have dropped to around 400.

Experts acknowledge that one-night Point-In-Time counts, normally taken every two years but delayed by the pandemic, are imprecise at best. And the daily calculations conducted by the coordinated entry system could change. But together they seem to reflect progress.

Federal homelessness officials and national experts credited the national drop to the renewed focus, outlined in a multi-agency agenda released in 2021, and new funding including $481 million for VA homelessness programs in the American Rescue Plan.

“I’m seeing movement nationally, and I’m seeing movement in San Francisco,” said Ann Oliva, one of the architects of former President Barack Obama’s national veterans homelessness program. “Our progress on ending veterans homelessness is the proof point for ending all homelessness.”

Oliva is now executive director of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. While working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under Obama, she and
Dr. Josh Bamberger, UCSF
clinical and family medicine professor, helped develop the 2010 national strategy that led to the reduction in the unhoused veterans’ population.

The Biden administration is asking Congress for 200,000 new housing vouchers to be used nationally, an unspecified number of which could be used for veterans. Along with an uptick in grants coming to the city, local vet program managers see progress ahead.

“The Trump administration really put the kibosh on housing vouchers for veterans — and focus on vets in general — but we’ve been encouraged,” said
Michael Blecker, executive director
of Swords to Plowshares — which with the Chinatown Community Development Center developed and operates the Lee apartments. “I think we can make progress.”

Another veterans housing complex of 105 units is expected to open on Treasure Island in February, and Swords to Plowshares — the city’s main homeless veterans aid nonprofit — anticipates getting a $4.5 million grant from the state Department of Veterans Affairs in January to help house vets.

Swords has already gotten several million more dollars for homeless vets programs and housing this year, including $1.2 million in federal and city funds to expand its drop-in center, along with nearly $1 million in U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs funding for suicide prevention among the same population.

The city Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing intends to focus on unhoused vets with the most acute difficulties.

“San Francisco made a commitment to end veterans homelessness, and of course there are more challenges than just supplying a roof,” Mayor London Breed said. “The services are very important, too, so I’m looking forward to any new resources we get. I see movement in the right direction.”

The most important beneficiaries of any progress, of course, are the ones who get roofs.

Army veteran Randall Larson, a longtime artist, looks over his paints in his home at the Edwin M. Lee Apartments.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Randall Larson is seen in an archival photo from approximately 1979 when he served in the U.S. Army. He now lives at the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, a state-of-the-art supportive housing complex in San Francisco for 62 formely homeless vets.

Handout/Courtesy Randall Larson / Handout/Courtesy Randall Larson

Army veteran Randall Larson holds a prescription he received in September to help him deal with lingering pain in his arm and shoulders from an injury sustained years ago. He lives in the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, a state-of-the-art supportive housing complex in Mission Bay for 62 formely homeless vets, which has comprehensive medical and counseling services.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Left: Larson in 1979, when he served in the U.S. Army. Right: Larson holds a prescription he received in September to help him deal with lingering pain in his arm and shoulders from an injury sustained years ago. Photos courtesy Randall Larson and by Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle
Top: Larson in 1979, when he served in the U.S. Army. Above: Larson holds a prescription he received in September to help him deal with lingering pain in his arm and shoulders from an injury sustained years ago. Photos courtesy Randall Larson and by Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

“I don’t know where I’d be if not for this place,” said 72-year-old Randall Larson, who turned his living room into a studio where he makes paintings of people and landscapes that are popular in the complex. A former Army sergeant partially paralyzed in a traffic accident years ago, he struggled with evictions when landlords converted their buildings, time in the street and interim housing before moving to the Ed Lee complex.

“I finally feel like I’m really home,” he said.

‘A real example of how to do it right’

Larson calls taxi companies to transport apartment residents who signed up to work on his crew setting up the Haight Street Fair in October.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

The apartments he lives in are named after the late Mayor Ed Lee, who pushed hard to reduce veterans homelessness before he died of a heart attack in 2017.

One month before he died, Lee
oversaw the opening of a 70-unit
supportive housing complex for veterans on Minna Street, and said he hoped someday to bring the number of chronically homeless vets living outside down to a functional zero, meaning none would stay on the streets for more than 90 days before being sheltered or housed.

That hasn’t happened, though state-of-the-art facilities like the Lee apartments
can make a big difference, said Keith Boylan, deputy secretary for veterans services at the California Department of Veterans Affairs, which helped fund the complex’s construction.

The 62 units are layered into a five-story, U-shaped building with a garden in the middle. The neighborhood is serene, and the large meeting rooms include a computer lab, counseling offices, a library and a kitchen for big gatherings. The vets get free meals six days a week, frequent movie gatherings, art workshops, music appreciation meetings and the like.

Three of the offices on the ground floor are for case managers — which at one for every 12 residents is double the
city’s goal for supportive housing
complexes. One of those offices is staffed through the VA, illustrating how extra federal resources can make a complex like the Lee apartments better than usual.

“The Ed Lee Apartments is a great program, a real example of how to do it right,” Boylan said.

Another aspect that sets the complex apart is the 57 apartments across the inner courtyard occupied by low-income families. The concept of situating veterans alongside families is unique in the region.

“There’s this myth that housing is some kind of magic, that you put someone in a unit and all their problems are solved,” said Malcolm Yeung, executive director of the Chinatown CDC. “It’s not true.

“It’s creating the right environment and support and so many other things that make the difference,” he said. “And that’s what’s happening with these apartments.”

Several vets said that, after years of struggle, they appreciate the laughter of children and the proximity of families.

Navy vet Mark Shaffer, 62, said that’s a big factor in helping him overcome much of the trauma from several years of homelessness — and leftover stress from his 1979-83 duty time on ammunition ships that too often felt like floating bombs.

U.S. Navy veteran Mark Shaffer, a resident of the Edwin M. Lee Apartments, wipes tears from his eyes as he discusses his experience with homelessness. “Not all wounds are apparent,” he says.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

“Look, I never got married or had children, but I got to witness a newborn daughter coming into the world here a little while ago,” he said, eyes misting. “I love that, love being around all these beautiful families.”

And for their part, the families seem to like having ex-military around — and formerly homeless ex-military at that. It assuages bad feelings for some, especially children, who used to live in difficult neighborhoods layered with encampments.

“I got scared at the last place we lived at, in the Tenderloin,” Emily Ekcab, 10, said as she grabbed a handful of candy from a bowl at a Halloween party for the families and vets. “There were a lot of homeless people outside our door and the workers in the building were kind of mean to us. But here, I feel protected because so many of these people used to be soldiers.”

Right then, Army vet Lawrence Zenk, 70, walked past and gave her a thumbs up. Emily laughed and gave a thumbs up in return.

“At first I was against the idea of moving into a place where I was living around a bunch of kids, but I’ll tell you — these kids are really well behaved,” Zenk said. “This is the best place in the country, the way I see it. The kids and the family folks are just nice to be around.”

Yeung said he was also skeptical about the concept of combining the two populations.

“This one was a bit of an experiment,” he said. “It sounded crazy to me at first, but it’s been anything but that.”

Letting the families and vets have their own spaces, but able to meet in the middle — “that builds a new community in a setting that transmits calm,” he said. “That’s not a small thing.”

It certainly hasn’t been a small thing for Talavera, who has adorned her apartment with pictures of landscapes and family. Empowered by her new stability, she wrote a one-act pantomime play about overcoming challenges, and after recently workshopping it with theater friends in the Lee complex’s main hall, she’s booked to perform it at the Marsh theater in December.

Talavera prepares for a full run-through of her one-woman pantomime show for select guests in the spacious community room at the Edwin M. Lee Apartments. Her show is scheduled to be performed at the Marsh theater in San Francisco in December.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

“I come into a warm, secure home now,” she said quietly. “I feel we all have the right to be safe, but maybe there is a little more to that when you’re a veteran. When you sign that piece of paper to enlist, it means, ‘I will die right now if I have to.’ So now I feel like maybe I’m safe here because I made it safe for everyone else in that time I served.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron

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He had traveled to Jura for rest and isolation so that he could focus on the concept of Big Brother. He succeeded, and this book revolutionized publishing in 1949 with its history of Eternal War, ubiquitous government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda.

Many people may well believe that the 1984 fiction was put into practice during the 2020 US presidential election. And some people, like the Chinese government, were so shocked by Orwell’s story that they banned his books from their social media platforms in 2019.

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Those of a certain age will remember that it wasn’t always that way. In fact, New York State Governor Mario Cuomo delivered a speech at the US Democratic Congress in 1984. Almost 80 million people watched the speech on their televisions and Governor Cuomo was interrupted by applause more than 50 times from the live audience. That was the year President Ronald Regan spoke eloquently about the US being “a shining city on a hill.” Cuomo contrasted this image that “the hard truth is that not everyone shares in the splendor and glory of this city”.

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US election: Americans in Scotland fear the result of the vote

Aside from last-minute problems – like a successful legal challenge by Donald Trump – Joe Biden appears to be the elected President of the United States.

He was carried into the White House by a tsumani of people who understood he was talking about them when he said the Covid pandemic was “not over” and added, “Just ask the people at your dining table will look at an empty chair ”. Reaching for a loved one in their bed at Christmas or out of habit, only to find it is empty too.

A voice of integrity, honor and truth

Trump supporters slap the glass and chant slogans outside a room where postal votes were counted in Detroit, Michigan (Image: Jeff Kowalsky / AFP via Getty Images)

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris held up a highly polished mirror to the American people as if to say, “Is that what you really want?”

As the world has become increasingly dystopian since 1984, it strikes me that even today, amid the stormy seas of electronic mass media, a voice of integrity, honor and, yes, truth can rise above the maddened crowd.

Combining the folklore of Ronald Reagan, the sincerity of Jimmy Carter, and even the sincere wrath of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were able to overcome all odds by finding their common voice and asking a simple question.

They kept asking: “Is this the America we want for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren?”

It is a simple and at the same time profound question. If you interviewed 300 million US citizens and asked them about their dreams for the future, you would find as many splinters as you can see when you cut a huge tree in the forest.

Another morning

These factions have always been part of the American experiment. However, because of recent poor national leadership, this noble experiment has failed because of the seeds of division rather than the formation of courageous coalitions.

Now President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign slogan, “It’s Tomorrow in America” ​​seems to be true again with the advent of new leadership, albeit from an opposing party.

The challenge now for future President Biden and Vice President Harris is that they must first heal the wounds of the recent past. And while these scars will be visible for many years to come, they will always remind us of the American dream stronger and more enduring than any selfish despot, angry white racist group, or a lewd QAnon conspiracy troll.

Further from dystopia

When Governor Cuomo stood at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco and spoke to thousands of delegates, his voice did not thunder, but rather, quietly and firmly, he reminded all Americans that their country was a “story of two cities” rather than a “brilliant” one City on a hill. “

Then he threw a strong spotlight on the dark side of this hill, using statistical evidence to show how unfair America had become. He concluded with these words, which in both 1984 and 2020 will bring a deep sense of treasure and upward development: “To be successful, we need to give up some small bits of our individual interests in order to build a platform that we all do can endure “. on, immediately and comfortably – proudly – sing along. “

I believe the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris opened a new opportunity to step by step from our dystopian past and present to a new chapter for America and her friends and admirers around the world to stand together and sing again proud that these are our values ​​and that our hopes for the future will be realized with new leadership that values ​​truth, respect, kindness and, yes, love.

Professor Joe Goldblatt is Professor Emeritus of Scheduled Events at Queen Margaret University. He has both Scottish and US citizenship and has been known as an “Honorary Orcadian” because of his many visits. He voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. To learn more about Professor Goldblatt’s views, visit www.joegoldblatt.scot

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WASHINGTON – From the revered giant sequoia trees of the southern Sierra to the unbroken views of historic Route 66 in the Mojave Desert, five national monuments in California are waiting for President Trump’s Home Secretary to judge whether they are left alone, shriveled, or eliminated by Thursday should be.

The California monuments were reviewed in an unprecedented review – ordered by Trump in April – to see if their protected status prevents potential commercial use. They are among the more than two dozen monuments that Home Secretary Ryan Zinke is examining nationwide.

The United States has 129 national monuments named by President of Theodore Roosevelt under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to improve the protection of the existing state, and none have ever been abolished. No president has tried to downsize a memorial since President John F. Kennedy.

The current review covers monuments created by presidents dating back to Bill Clinton. So far, Zinke has announced that he is likely to propose reducing the size of the 1.35 million acre Bears Ears memorial in Utah and leaving six others unchanged, including the new Sand to Snow memorial northeast of Palm Springs, which Created by President Barack Obama.

The government review has sparked outrage from democratic lawmakers and environmental groups.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, who had a strong hand in designating three desert monuments, is grappling with the administration on this matter.

“This is war,” said Feinstein in an interview. “This is our story.”

While Congress has the power to revoke or change monuments, there’s not much a Democrat in the minority party can do to stop Trump from changing them. So the fight has to be fought in court, where Trump’s legal powers are called into question.

In California, the monuments yet to be reviewed are the 330,780-acre Berryessa Snow Mountain Monument, northeast of Santa Rosa; the 204,000-acre Carrizo Plain in San Luis Obispo County, known for its stunning wildflower blooms, but also includes oil and gas leases; the 346,000 acre Monument in the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County; the 328,000 acre Giant Sequoia National Monument in Tulare County; and the Mojave Trails National Monument, which includes the distinctive stretch of Route 66.

The Cascade-Siskyou National Monument in Oregon, which leads to California, is also being reviewed.

Trump’s executive order calls for determining whether the monument awards had no input from local and state officials and “other relevant stakeholders” when they were created, or would prevent energy development or “otherwise slow economic growth”.

The California attorney general Xavier Becerra promised in an eleven-page letter to Zinke that he would sue immediately if any monument changes were attempted in his state. A large number of environmental groups are committed to doing the same.

Ryan Henson, senior policy director of CalWild, a California wilderness coalition, called the government’s actions a “time on our corpses.”

Although a president has unilateral authority to erect monuments, the Antiquities Act provides no provision to revoke a designation, and the 1976 federal law governing the administration of state politics expressly prohibits the Home Secretary from revoking or altering a monument.

But the review even has its defenders in California, where public land is overwhelmingly popular. One monument that appears most taboo by name – the Giant Sequoia National Monument – has some local officials calling for its size to be reduced.

A giant sequoia dwarfs the surrounding forest along the Trail of the 100 Giants in Sequoia National Monument north of Kernville, California.David McNew / Getty Images

They say the memorial, named by President Bill Clinton in 2000, threatens the ancient sequoia groves by preventing the use of wood on thin conifers that are now choking the forests.

“It sounds very selfish that I work for a sawmill,” said Darren Mahr, wood manager at Sierra Forest Products sawmill in Terra Bella, Tulare County. “But we drew a line around the forest hoping it would be safe and instead we put it on the line.”

A century of fire fighting has turned the open grove forests John Muir described into thick fir and pine thickets, many of which were killed by drought or beetles.

Stephen Worthley, Tulare District inspector, led a board vote asking Tine for a cut to make the deforestation possible. He said the U.S. Forest Service lacks the money to carry out the controlled burns needed to restore the health of the forest, and cutting down to thinn the trees would pay for itself.

The harsh fire of 2015 put more stress on the monument than it should have been due to the density, he said. Some of the “ancient trees we should protect with everything inside died due to the intensity of the fire,” Worthley said. The groves “are in greater danger today than they were before the monument was erected”.

Rabbit owls can be found on both the Mojave Trails and the Castle MountainsDavid Lamfrom / National Parks Conservation Asso

In Southern California, Rep. Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, San Bernardino County, wrote a letter to Zinke asking him to cut the 1.6 million acre Mojave Trails National Monument by half a million acres. The memorial is the centerpiece of three California desert monuments, including Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains, which Obama named at Feinstein’s request last year.

The Mojave Trails Monument protects the last pristine stretch of Route 66 and maintains a biological link between Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve.

If Cook’s request is met, he will help a plan by a private company, Cadiz Inc., to pump billions of gallons of water from the desert aquifer beneath the memorial for sale to southern California cities. Cook joined nine other members of the California House from both parties in a private letter in March, urging Zinke to clear the way for Cadiz.

David Lamfrom, director of California’s desert and wildlife program for the National Parks and Conservation Association, a conservation group, said Cook’s proposed monument reductions “directly overlap with the Cadiz Project.”

Zinke has already overturned Obama-era regulatory decisions that blocked the project. Deputy Home Secretary David Bernhardt is a former Cadiz attorney and lobbyist and his former law firm holds shares in Cadiz. Bernhardt also led a Trump transition team that put Cadiz on a list of the top 50 infrastructure projects in the country.

The aquifer feeds rare desert springs that support plant and animal life, and the US Geological Survey said Cadiz grossly overestimated the aquifer’s natural ability to self-recharge. The National Park Service said the estimates were so out of bounds that they “shouldn’t even be taken into account”.

“The public needs to understand that this is the first big step in the destruction of Mojave Trails,” said Feinstein. She called the Cadiz Project “a murderer. I don’t trust these people. “

Both Cook and Feinstein had proposed laws to protect the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow, and Castle Mountains, but they never agreed on the exact limits, and so the legislation never got through Congress. Feinstein turned to Obama in frustration.

Cook told The Chronicle in a statement that the area he plans to remove is not warranted for historic monument status as it was never included in legislation created by him or Feinstein. He called the Cadiz question “immaterial”.

The Yucca Valley Congressman also asked Zinke to include the Castle Mountains Memorial in the review process. It is not known if Zinke will do this. The 21,000-acre monument protects rare tall desert grassland and large Joshua Tree forests. Cook said in his letter to Zinke that downsizing the monument would help a Canadian gold mine.

The method used by Zinke to review his monuments remains unclear. Inside spokeswoman Heather Swift said in an email that Zinke had opened the process for a 60-day public comment period “to make the process transparent and give people a voice”. The department received 2.7 million comments, mostly in favor of the monuments.

Swift said Zinke also held “dozens of meetings” with various groups, including “people and organizations representing all sides of the issue.”

Zinke has visited eight monuments, but none in California.

David Myers, executive director of Wildlands Conservancy, which has bought nearly 600,000 acres of Mojave Desert and donated it to the federal government for protection, said he invited Zinke to visit Mojave Trails but never heard a word. There are approximately 45,000 acres of donated land in the area that Cook plans to remove.

Myers said the Mojave Trails Memorial is “really what keeps the desert intact with this mega-landscape that connects Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve. Otherwise there are only protective islands in the desert. “

Jim Conkle, a Marine known as “Mr. Route 66, “for his efforts to protect the historic road, said neither Cook nor his staff would speak to him. “They don’t answer my phone calls, my emails, I go there to see them, they are there, but they are not there for me,” he said. “You don’t want anything to do with me. Because they know that I just want to sit down and say, ‘Why are you doing this?’ “

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who took former Home Secretary Sally Jewell on two hikes in the Berryessa-Snow Mountain area to help her expulsion, said the memorial review “looks like another attempt to wipe out everything President Obama did”. He said the monument review was exhaustive.

“The idea of ​​them coming back and trying to handle this,” he said, “is just a colossal waste of time.”

Carolyn Lochhead is the Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead

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SALT LAKE CITY — On the third night of the four-day Republican National Convention President Donald Trump joined Vice President Mike Pence on stage to hear the national anthem, capping a night where the party stood firmly behind “the thin blue line of law enforcement.”

Trump did not speak, but threw his support behind his vice president who moments before promised the American people that he and President Donald Trump will make America great again (again). He was among several Republicans who defended law enforcement, vowing never to defund the police, and promising strength on the streets of cities where protest or violence occurs.

Pence named Kenosha, Wisconsin, specifically among those cities, site of the most recent police shooting of a black man, 29-year-old Jacob Blake, a father of three who remained in serious condition Wednesday night. That shooting has sparked protests in Kenosha. In addition to the strong law and order message, Pence expressed compassion and concern for the thousands of American families who are suffering from the novel coronavirus, and those who are in the path of Hurricane Laura.

It showed the remarkable backdrop of the convention, part of an election season playing out while the nation deals with multiple crises, including deadly fires in California.

“The violence must stop – whether in Minneapolis, Portland, or Kenosha. Too many heroes have died defending our freedoms to see Americans strike each other down. We will have law and order on the streets of America for every American for every race and creed and color,” Pence said.

He also showed compassion for those in harms way.

“Our prayers are with you tonight, and our administration is working closely with authorities in the states that will be impacted … this is a serious storm,” he said of those in the hurricane’s path.

The Republicans used the night to showcase heroes and leaders, including Sister Deirdre “Dede” Byrne, a Catholic sister and retired U.S. Army doctor, who praised Trump for caring for the rights of the unborn. She said, “I’m not just pro-life, I’m pro eternal life.”

Multiple speakers throughout the night worked to slam Biden as part of the Washington establishment and the “radical left.” But Republicans also told upbeat stories of President Trump’s care for them personally.

Pence celebrated the promise of America, shining a light on the country’s ideals and values. He championed the American flag as a beacon of hope. He said God has helped the country stay free.

“Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” he said.

Pence wasn’t without making political points. Multiple times throughout his speech, Pence attacked Biden, saying the former vice president would lead America “on a path toward socialism.” Pence said “you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”

But the flag became the closing image of the night.

“We’re going through a time of testing,” he said. “But if you look through the fog of these challenging times, you will see our flag is still there today.”

Highlights:

• There was a sense of optimism during the third night. Speakers touted American heroes and leaders while also lifting up the Trump-Pence ticket.
• Multiple speakers throughout the night worked to slam Biden as part of the Washington establishment and the “radical left.”
• Another constant theme promoted Trump as a “law and order” president. There were acknowledgements of protests, riots and chaos in the streets. Pence and others said there must be support for law enforcement and all communities — no matter race, religion or creed.
• Speakers Wednesday spoke of President Trump’s support of women and the administration’s “America First” foreign policy, many giving personal accounts of their interactions with the president.
• A video presentation talked about Fort McHenry, and how the events there inspired the national anthem. The fort is a reminder for the patriots who have stood strong and prevailed. The video celebrated the national anthem.
• There were mentions of current events, including Hurricane Laura, the coronavirus pandemic, the protests over the shooting in Kenosha, Wisc., and more.

Quotes of the night:

• “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” — Vice President Mike Pence
• “The heroes who held this fort took their stand for life, liberty, freedom, & the American flag and those ideals have defined our nation.” — Pence
• “America is a nation of miracles.” — Pence
• “Stay safe and know that we’ll be with you every step of the way to support, rescue, respond, and recover in the days and weeks ahead. That’s what Americans do.” — Pence
• “I’m running for Congress because we don’t need more career politicians. We need a few more chimney sweeps.” – Utah congressional candidate Burgess Owens
• “Every time Joe Biden offers a new idea, you should ask yourself, ‘why didn’t he try that the last 48 years?’” – Richard Grenell, former acting Director of National Intelligence
• “President Trump rightly calls his foreign policy America First.” – Grenell
• “Donald Trump truly cares for Black lives.” – Clarence Henderson, a participant of the 1960 Greensboro Woolworth sit-in
• “This is an election that will decide if we keep America America, or if we head down a frightening path toward socialism.” – Lara Trump, wife of the president’s son, Eric Trump
• “I knew my baby was a human being created by God, and that made him worthy of life. I am thankful that President Trump values the life of the unborn.” – Tera Myers, the mother of son with Down syndrome and school choice activist
• “Unlike the doctor who told me to end Samuel’s life before it even began, President Trump did not dismiss my son,” – Myers said of meeting Trump last year
• “I’m not just pro-life, I’m pro eternal life.” – Sister Deirdre Bryne
• “We are a people with a common set of ideals conceived in liberty. A people that have sacrificed time and again — for our freedom, and the freedom of others.” – Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL
• “For decades, he has elevated women to senior positions in business and in government.” – Kellyanne Conway of Trump
• “From Seattle to Portland, to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across the country are being overrun by violent mobs.” – South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem

Here is a running look of the speeches as they happened throughout the night.

Utah Republican congressional candidate says we need “more chimney sweeps”

Burgess Owens, a Republican candidate running to unseat Utah’s sole Democratic Congressman Ben McAdams.

The former NFL Super Bowl winner, who played professional football for a decade, said he lost it all after his business failed, leaving his family of six in a one-bedroom apartments in New York City. To provide for the family, Burgess said he worked as a security guard and a chimney sweep.

• “I’m running for Congress because we don’t need more career politicians. We need a few more chimney sweeps,”
• “We need more leaders like President Trump who understand the freedoms that make up the fabric of America.”
• “We have a Democrat candidate for president who says that I’m ‘not black’ if I don’t vote for him.”
• The former chimney sweep, author and Fox New contributor said his great-great grandfather came to America as a slave and escaped on the Underground Road.
• “I’m here today, a candidate for Congress, because of my great-great grandfather, Silas Burgess.”
• “This November, we have an opportunity to reject the mob mentality and once again be the America my great-great grandfather believed in.”

Grenell says why “America First” is worth four more years

Richard Grenell, the former acting Director of National Intelligence and former Ambassador to Germany, spoke of the nation’s ”endless wars.”

The former Trump Administration official said President Trump was right to call the endless wars “a disaster.”

• “American foreign policy was failing to make Americans safer.”
• “I wish every American could see how President Trump negotiates on their behalf.”
• “In four short years, Donald Trump has led even some Washington democrats to agree on the Chinese threat.”

He said that “nationalism” is a good thing, not something Democrats can attack Republicans for. Grenell then attacked Biden as an establishment candidate.

• “Don’t be fooled, the Washington establishment is trying to sell you on their candidate.”
• “Every time Joe Biden offers a new idea, you should ask yourself, ‘why didn’t he try that the last 48 years?’”
• “With Donald Trump and Mike Pence in the White House, the boss is the American people.”
• “President Trump rightly calls his foreign policy America First.”

“It has no bias of red or blue,” he added.

Look to history when making your election choice, says Clarence Henderson, Greensboro sit-in participant

Clarence Henderson — a participant in the 1960 Greensboro Woolworth sit-in — talked about the impact of peaceful protests and the need to understand history in the current political climate.

Henderson said the media is trying to make people believe in the same Democratic talking points. But America should pay attention to the past.

• “It was the Republican Party that passed the 13th Amendment.”
• “If you do vote for Biden, you don’t know history.”

Henderson said Trump has made America a place where people are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin

• “Donald Trump truly cares for Black lives.”
• “Donald Trump is not a politician. … Politicians are a dime a dozen. A leader is few and far between.”

Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump, says Trump will keep ‘America America’

Lara Trump made the case that Trump has been a helpful president for women in the workplace, and one who will keep America as a beacon of hope.

• “President Trump will keep America America.”

She said she wasn’t surprised when Trump nominated women to so many positions within the government. She listed off statistics about women and employment under Trump.

• “He didn’t do these things to gain votes or check a box. He did them because it was the right thing to do.”

Lara Trump also referenced Hurricane Laura, saying “May God bless the Gulf states” who are in the path of the hurricanes.

Lara Trump also spoke about violent mobs and how the idea of defunding the police will put people at risk.

• “We cannot dare to dream our biggest dreams for ourselves or our children” while consumed with the worries for our family.
• “This is an election that will decide if we keep America America, or if we head down a frightening path toward socialism.”
• “Will remain the beacon of hope for those around the world?”

Ohio mom and school-choice advocate praised Trump’s pro-life views

Tera Myers, the mother of son with Down syndrome, spoke to the benefits of school choice.

Her lobbying efforts in Ohio led to a law that provided scholarship money for special needs students to attend school that provide an “education tailored specifically to their individual needs,” according to a statement from the Trump/Pence campaign.

“One size did not fit all,” she said of the public school opportunities for her son.

Myers said she was told her son’s life “wasn’t worth living” by a doctor who suggested she terminate the pregnancy.

• “I knew my baby was a human being created by God, and that made him worthy of life. I am thankful that President Trump values the life of the unborn.”
• “Unlike the doctor who told me to end Samuel’s life before it even began, President Trump did not dismiss my son,” Myers said of meeting Trump last year.
• “President Trump gave Samuel an equal seat at the table.”

Sister Deirdre Bryne spoke of Trump’s pro-life beliefs

Sister Deirdre “Dede” Byrne, a Catholic sister and retired U.S. Army doctor, said humility is the foundation of her order, but she could speak of her experience. She had spent time deployed as a surgeon with the Army and has helped refugees abroad as a nun.

• “Those refugees all shared a common experiences…they have all been marginalized.”

Sister Byrne said the unborn are marginalized in America.

• “As followers of Christ, we are called to stand up for life.”
• “As a physician, I can say without hesitation, life begins at conception.”
• “I’m not just pro-life, I’m pro eternal life.”

“Donald Trump is the most pro-life president that this nation has ever had,” she said.

Crenshaw praises American heroes

Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, spoke Wednesday night during the Republican convention about the courage and strength of Americans who face adversity.

Crenshaw — a former Navy SEAL, whose right eye was destroyed in an IED blast in Afghanistan — said heroism is not something you only experience on battlefields.

• “Every single day we see them, if you just know where to look. It’s the nurse who volunteers for back to back shifts caring for COVID patients because she feels that’s her duty. It’s the parent who will re-learn algebra because there’s no way they’re letting their kid fall behind while schools are closed. It’s the cop that gets spit on one day and will save a child’s life the next.”
• “We are a people with a common set of ideals conceived in liberty. A people that have sacrificed time and again — for our freedom, and the freedom of others. That’s something no other country — ever, anywhere — can claim.”

America is a nation full of heroes.

They deserve to be celebrated.

The American story deserves to be celebrated.

America is the greatest country on earth, and our future is bright.

That’s what my speech will be about. Be sure to tune in. https://t.co/eCtoorGIjn

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) August 26, 2020

Kellyanne Conway lauded Trump’s support of women

Kellyanne Conway, a presidential advisor, said “a woman in a leadership role can still seem novel. Not so for President Trump.”

• “For decades, he has elevated women to senior positions in business and in government.”
• “He confides in and respects us.”

Conway said, “President Trump helped me shatter a barrier in the world of politics by empowering me to manage his campaign to a successful conclusion.”

• “For many of us, women’s empowerment is not a slogan…it comes from the everyday heroes who nurture us, shape us, and who believe in us.”

Conway lauded the president for taking on the drug crisis.

“He picks the toughest fights, and tackles the most complex problems. He has stood by me, and he will stand up for you,” she said.

Gov. Noem says Trump is “fighting for you,” spoke of principles

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, the state’s first female governor, spoke to America’s principles. Noem said those principles are “equality,” “freedom,” and “opportunity.”

• “But today, our founding principles are under attack,” the governor said.
• “We must fight to protect these foundational rights”
• “We are not, and will not, will be the subjects of an elitist class of so called ‘experts’.”

The governor said “it took 244 years to build this great nation, flaws and all. But we stand to lose it in a tiny fraction of that time if we continue down the path taken by Democrats and their radical supporters.”

• “From Seattle to Portland, to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across the country are being overrun by violent mobs.”

Noem lauded President Trump for shrinking the government, giving money back to hard working Americas, advanced religious liberty and protecting the Second Amendment.

“He’s fighting for you,” the governor said.

From Seattle and Portland to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs. The violence is rampant. There’s looting, chaos, destruction, and murder. People that can afford to flee have fled. (1/2)

— Governor Kristi Noem (@govkristinoem) August 25, 2020

The post RNC 2020: Mike Pence speaks; Trump seems; speeches; quotes; highlights appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Republicans have intensified their unrest-focused message, with Kenosha as a backdrop.

• Mike Pence salutes Trump, rewrites virus history and frames the election as existential.

• Richard Grenell, a former diplomat and intelligence official, revives an unsubstantiated wiretap claim.

• We fact-checked the Republican National Convention.

• Clarence Henderson, a civil rights pioneer, makes a case for ‘peaceful’ protests.

• Lara Trump says her ‘preconceived notion’ about the Trumps disappeared when she became one.

• Joni Ernst praises Trump for paying attention to Iowa’s farmers and coming to visit after a storm.

• Lee Zeldin rewrites Trump’s aid to New York during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

• Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese dissident, praises Trump’s approach to Beijing.

• Elise Stefanik pushes Trump’s reopening approach and hits Biden on the economy.

• Kellyanne Conway is leaving the White House, but not the spotlight.

• Dan Crenshaw, a Texas congressman, draws on his military experience to talk about heroism.

• Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee senator, gives a dark and misleading speech focusing on law enforcement.

• Kristi Noem, once rumored to be a Pence replacement, attacks Democrats on law and order.

Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that “we will have law and order on the streets of this country for every American of every race and creed and color.”Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Republicans used the third night of their convention on Wednesday to amplify warnings of violence and lawlessness under Democratic leadership, trying to capitalize on the worsening unrest in Wisconsin to reclaim moderate voters who might be reluctant to hand President Trump a second term.

The party also made appeals to social conservatives with attacks on abortion and accusations that the Democrats and their nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., were “Catholics in name only.” And they intensified their effort to lift Mr. Trump’s standing among women with testimonials vouching for him as empathetic and as a champion of women in the workplace — from women who work for him, a number of female lawmakers and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

Speaking hours after Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin called in the National Guard to restore order to Kenosha, Wis., where a police officer shot a Black man this week, numerous Republicans led by Vice President Mike Pence assailed Mr. Biden for what they claimed was his tolerance of the vandalism that had grown out of racial justice protests, asserting that the country would not be safe with him as president.

“Last week, Joe Biden didn’t say one word about the violence and chaos engulfing cities across this country,” said Mr. Pence, standing before an array of American flags at Fort McHenry in Baltimore and vowing: “We will have law and order on the streets of this country for every American of every race and creed and color.”

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a strong supporter of the president, said that places like Seattle, Portland, Ore., and other cities run by Democrats were being “overrun by violent mobs.” She likened the violence to the lead-up of the Civil War and asserted that people “are left to fend for themselves.”

Ms. Noem invoked a young Abraham Lincoln, claiming he had been “alarmed by the disregard for the rule of law throughout the country.”

“He was concerned for the people that had seen their property destroyed, their families attacked and their lives threatened or even taken away,” she said, adding “Sound familiar?”

The intense focus on the rioting amounted to an acknowledgment by Republicans that they must reframe the election to make urban unrest the central theme and shift attention away from the deaths and illnesses of millions of people from the coronavirus.

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Mike Pence Accepts Nomination and Attacks Joe Biden

In making his case for another Trump term, the vice president spoke of President Trump’s character “when the cameras are off.”

So with gratitude for the confidence President Donald Trump has placed in me, the support of our Republican Party and the grace of God, I humbly accept your nomination to run and serve as vice president of the United States. Over the past four years, I’ve had the privilege to work closely with our president. I’ve seen him when the cameras are off. Americans see President Trump in lots of different ways. But there’s no doubt how President Trump sees America. He sees America for what it is: a nation that has done more good in this world than any other, a nation that deserves far more gratitude than grievance. And if you want a president who falls silent when our heritage is demeaned or insulted, he’s not your man. Last week, Joe Biden didn’t say one word about the violence and chaos engulfing cities across this country. So let me be clear: The violence must stop — whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha. Too many heroes have died defending our freedom to see Americans strike each other down.

In making his case for another Trump term, the vice president spoke of President Trump’s character “when the cameras are off.”CreditCredit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

For four years, Vice President Mike Pence has stood as an unfailingly loyal deputy to President Trump — even and especially when he gets overruled.

In public and private, Mr. Pence lauds Mr. Trump. And on Wednesday night, he used his convention speech to paint the president as a great builder of the American economy and defender of American law enforcement.

The vice president said that Mr. Trump was upholding the very nature of the country, and if Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president, the United States would lose its essential character and become unrecognizable — at least to a Trump-friendly social conservative like Mr. Pence.

“Last week, Joe Biden said democracy is on the ballot, but the truth is, our economic recovery is on the ballot, law and order are on the ballot. But so are things far more fundamental and foundational to our country,” Mr. Pence said. “It’s not so much whether America will be more conservative or more liberal, more Republican or more Democrat. The choice in this election is whether America remains America.”

“So with gratitude for the confidence President Donald Trump has placed in me, the support of our Republican Party, and the grace of God, I humbly accept your nomination to run and serve as vice president of the United States,” Mr. Pence said.

Speaking to a crowd at Fort McHenry in Baltimore that did not appear to be socially distanced or wearing masks, Mr. Pence described a president who acts differently in private than he does in public — a picture sharply at odds with nearly all of the reporting that depicts Mr. Trump in private as even more prone to pique and outbursts than he is before television cameras.

“I’ve seen him when the cameras are off,” Mr. Pence said. “Americans see President Trump in lots of different ways, but there’s no doubt how President Trump sees America. He sees America for what it is, a nation that has done more good in this world than any other, a nation that deserves far more gratitude than grievance.”

Mr. Pence made the night’s first significant reference to Hurricane Laura, a major storm bearing down on Texas and Louisiana, a notion that would have not raised eyebrows during any other political convention but seemed off-key during a week devoted to singing the praises of Mr. Trump.

“This is a serious storm, and we urge all of those in the affected areas to heed state and local authorities,” Mr. Pence said. “Stay safe, and know that we will be with you every step of the way to support, rescue, respond, and recover in the days and weeks ahead.”

In a seeming reference to Mr. Trump’s defense of Confederate monuments and the Confederate flag, Mr. Pence, who is from Indiana, added: “If you want a president who falls silent when our heritage is demeaned or insulted, then he’s not your man.”

Mr. Pence was the only Republican convention speaker to mention Kenosha, Wis., where the Sunday police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, has inflamed racial tensions. He condemned people there who caused property damage — though he made no mention of the shooting that prompted the unrest.

“President Trump and I will always support the right of Americans to peacefully protest,” said Mr. Pence, who in 2017 flew to Indianapolis for an N.F.L. game and then walked out after several players knelt during the national anthem. “But rioting and looting is not peaceful protest. Tearing down statues is not free speech, and those who do so will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Mr. Pence, like many speakers during the Republican convention, also sought to rewrite the recent history of how Mr. Trump has handled the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 180,000 Americans and counting.

“Before the first case of the coronavirus spread within the United States, the president took unprecedented action and suspended all travel from China, the second largest economy in the world,” Mr. Pence said.

Yet by April 40,000 people had traveled to the United States from China since Mr. Trump imposed his travel ban on Jan. 31, and more than 430,000 since the coronavirus was first disclosed in China a month earlier.

Mr. Pence also said Mr. Trump had “marshaled the full resources of our federal government from the outset,” adding, “He directed us to forge a seamless partnership with governors across America in both political parties.”

This would come as a surprise to Democratic governors in Illinois, New York and Washington State, among others, who found themselves on the receiving end of Mr. Trump’s attacks for publicly criticizing the federal government’s inability to produce personal protective equipment or sufficient testing to determine how far the virus had spread in their states.

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Richard Grenell Revives Unfounded Obama Wiretap Claim

The former intelligence official and ambassador to Germany doubled down on an unsubstantiated accusation that the Obama administration spied on the incoming Trump administration in 2016.

Donald Trump — he called America’s endless wars what they were: a disaster. The media was shocked, because Donald Trump was running as a Republican. And yet he said out loud what we all knew: that American foreign policy was failing to make Americans safer. Our great cities and industries were hollowed out. Entire communities were devastated, and our manufacturing plants were shipped off to China. That’s what happened when Washington stopped being the capital of the United States and started being the capital of the world. Today the Democrats blame a global pandemic that started in China on President Trump. And they still blame Russia for Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016. As acting director of national intelligence, I saw the Democrats’ entire case for Russian collusion, and what I saw made me sick to my stomach. The Obama-Biden administration secretly launched a surveillance operation on the Trump campaign, and silenced the many brave intelligence officials who spoke up against it.

The former intelligence official and ambassador to Germany doubled down on an unsubstantiated accusation that the Obama administration spied on the incoming Trump administration in 2016.CreditCredit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times

The undiplomatic diplomat Richard A. Grenell, who briefly held a top intelligence post in the Trump administration, revived the baseless theory that President Barack Obama personally ordered federal law enforcement officials to spy on Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“The Obama-Biden administration secretly launched a surveillance operation on the Trump campaign, and silenced the many brave intelligence officials who spoke up against it,” said Mr. Grenell, who served as United States ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020, and alienated many German officials by weighing in on the country’s internal politics.

Mr. Grenell launched a far-ranging attack on Democratic foreign policy initiatives, slamming the Iran nuclear deal and globalist goals he said Mr. Biden would pursue.

“Washington stopped being the capital of the United States, and started being the capital of the world,” he said of the Obama administration’s approach.

In his remarks at the Republican convention on Wednesday, Mr. Grenell, one of the few gay people to hold a high administration post under Mr. Trump, claimed to have “watched President Trump charm the chancellor of Germany, while insisting that Germany pay its NATO obligations.”

No one appears to have told that to the chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has privately expressed doubts about Mr. Trump’s leadership and publicly criticized his response to the coronavirus, albeit indirectly. “As we are experiencing firsthand, you cannot fight the pandemic with lies and disinformation,” Ms. Merkel said in June. “The limits of populism and denial of basic truths are being laid bare.”

This year, Mr. Grenell served briefly as acting director of national intelligence. In that capacity, he was the first openly gay cabinet-level official in United States history.

He claimed on Wednesday that this post gave him access to information about Democratic investigations into possible “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia four years ago that “made me sick to my stomach.”

Mr. Grenell, known for dunking on reporters and critics on Twitter, had no chance of being permanently confirmed for that position after Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said he was unqualified.

Since then, he has served as the Republican National Committee’s liaison on L.G.B.T. outreach, a tall order at a time when Mr. Trump has made a point of rolling back protections for transgender people enacted during the Obama administration.

Our team of reporters who cover the Pentagon, Congress, health care and more fact-checked tonight’s speeches. See the claims and how they stack up against the truth.

Clarence Henderson addressed the virtual convention on Wednesday night.Credit…Republican National Convention

Clarence Henderson, who helped desegregate the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960, joined a chorus of Black Trump supporters making the case that Mr. Trump is not racist — even though as many as eight in 10 Black people think he is.

Mr. Henderson did not directly refer to the chaotic protests in Portland, Ore., and Kenosha, Wis. But he contrasted his actions 60 years ago — joining his friends at the counter on the second day of the protests — with the current demonstrations.

“Our actions inspired similar protests throughout the South against racial injustice. And in the end, segregation was abolished and our country moved a step closer to true equality for all,” he said. “That’s what actual peaceful protest can accomplish.”

The Greensboro demonstrations, while not the first sit-ins, were a watershed moment in the civil rights movement — especially after the media broadcast images of an unruly white mob dumping food and drinks on the polite, neatly dressed and nonviolent protesters.

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Lara Trump Lauds President’s Record on Advancing Women

President Trump’s daughter-in-law was one of many female speakers for the convention who credited him, using her own experience as an example. “He knew I was capable, even if I didn’t,” she said.

My seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. B., used to tell us, “Believe none of what you hear, half of what you read and only what you’re there to witness firsthand.” The meaning of those words never fully weighed on me until I met my husband and the Trump family. Any preconceived notion I had of this family disappeared immediately. They were warm and caring. They were hard workers, and they were down to earth. They reminded me of my own family. They made me feel like I was home. Walking the halls of the Trump Organization, I saw the same family environment. I also saw the countless women executives who thrived there year after year. Gender didn’t matter. What mattered was the ability to get the job done. I learned this directly when, in 2016, my father-in-law asked me to help him win my cherished home state and my daughter’s namesake, North Carolina. Though I had no political experience, he believed in me. He knew I was capable even if I didn’t. I wasn’t born a Trump. I’m from the South. I was raised a Carolina girl. I went to public schools and worked my way through a state university. Mrs. B. from my seventh-grade English class was right. What I learned about our president is different than what you might have heard. I learned that he’s a good man.

President Trump’s daughter-in-law was one of many female speakers for the convention who credited him, using her own experience as an example. “He knew I was capable, even if I didn’t,” she said.CreditCredit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law and a senior adviser to his re-election campaign, offered a glowing portrait of the family she had married into on Wednesday night, painting the Trumps as “warm” and “caring.”

Speaking at the Republican National Convention, Ms. Trump, who is married to Eric Trump, conceded that she had “certainly never thought that I’d end up with the last name Trump.” But as soon as she met her husband and joined his family, she said, “Any preconceived notion I had of this family disappeared immediately.”

“I wasn’t born a Trump. I’m from the South,” she said. “I was raised a Carolina girl. I went to public schools and worked my way through a state university.”

“What I learned about our president is different than what you might have heard,” she added. “I learned that he’s is a good man. That he loves his family. That he didn’t need this job.”

With her remarks, Lara Trump joined the growing list of Trump family members and close associates who have been tapped to praise the president based on their relationship with him. They have sought to soften the president’s image, suggesting that he treats the people he cares about exceedingly well.

Ms. Trump also tried to use her firsthand experience to try to improve her father-in-law’s standing with women, remarking that she had seen women thrive in the Trump Organization, which granted them big responsibilities.

“I know the promise of America because I’ve lived it, not just as a member of the Trump family, but as a woman who knows what it’s like to work in blue-collar jobs, to serve customers for tips and to aspire to rise,” she said.

“No one on earth works harder for the American people,” she added later, speaking about the president. “He’s willing to fight for his beliefs, and for the people — and the country — that he loves.”

Burgess Owens, a Fox News contributor and a former N.F.L. player, is running against Representative Ben McAdams, a Democrat, in Utah’s Fourth Congressional District. Credit…Republican National Convention

Burgess Owens, the Republican nominee in a Utah congressional district that Democrats flipped in 2018, took the stage at the Republican convention on Wednesday and recalled his great-great-grandfather, Silas Burgess, who escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad and ultimately became a landowner.

He also recalled his own experience: After playing in the N.F.L., he started a business that failed, and ended up working as a chimney sweep before achieving “a rewarding career in the corporate world.”

“Career politicians, elitists and even a former bartender want us to believe that’s impossible,” Mr. Owens said, referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by her former job. “They want us to believe that what I did, what my great-great-grandfather did, is impossible for ordinary Americans. As patriots, we know better.”

Mr. Owens, who is also a Fox News contributor, is running against Representative Ben McAdams in Utah’s Fourth Congressional District. Mr. McAdams narrowly upset a Republican incumbent, Mia Love, in 2018.

On Tuesday, Mr. Owens was accused of plagiarizing parts of his book “Why I Stand: From Freedom to the Killing Fields of Socialism,” which he denied. Also this week, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that a former Utah legislator was urging the Republican National Committee to revoke his speaking slot because he appeared earlier this year on a YouTube program associated with the false QAnon conspiracy theory.

Mr. Owens has said that he didn’t know about the link and that he does not support QAnon.

Senator Joni Ernst faces a tight race this year against Theresa Greenfield, her Democratic opponent.Credit…Republican National Convention

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, the only endangered Senate Republican to speak at this week’s Republican National Convention, on Wednesday night highlighted President Trump’s help for farmers and claimed that a Biden administration would harm them.

“I can’t recall an administration more hostile to farmers than Obama-Biden, unless you count the Biden-Harris ticket,” Ms. Ernst said. “The Democratic Party of Joe Biden is pushing this so-called Green New Deal. If given power, they would essentially ban animal agriculture and eliminate gas-powered cars. It would destroy the agriculture industry, not just here in Iowa, but throughout the country.”

Mr. Biden has promised no such thing. He never endorsed the Green New Deal, much to the frustration of his party’s more progressive elements. He has endorsed reinstating higher fuel efficiency standards put in place by President Barack Obama and rescinded by Mr. Trump.

Ms. Ernst, who won in the 2014 Republican wave and faces a tight challenge this year, is betting her best chance to secure re-election is by tethering herself tightly to President Trump. On Wednesday she kept her remarks narrowly focused on Iowa, praising Mr. Trump for visiting the state after a storm damaged much of the state this month.

Like many speakers during the convention, Ms. Ernst laced her remarks with heavy criticism of the national news media — and praise for the president, who she said had bent media coverage to his will.

After the storm, Ms. Ernst said, “most of the national media looked the other way. To them, Iowa is still just flyover country.” She added, “When President Trump came to Cedar Rapids, the national media finally did, too.”

There is scarce public polling in Iowa, but a poll from The Des Moines Register in June showed Ms. Ernst’s Democratic opponent, Theresa Greenfield, ahead by three percentage points. This month, a Monmouth poll showed Ms. Ernst ahead by one point; each candidate’s polling lead was within the margin of error.

The race has already set fund-raising records for an Iowa Senate contest, and is expected to result in more money spent on TV advertising than ever before in the state.

Ms. Ernst’s convention appearance could only be better for her than her 2016 speech in Cleveland, which was largely overshadowed by the debut, directly before she took the stage, of the “lock her up” chant led by Michael T. Flynn, a Trump campaign adviser at the time. Mr. Flynn spoke for far longer than his allotted time, and Ms. Ernst was given less time to speak than she had planned for.

On Wednesday night, Ms. Ernst’s remarks, which were recorded from Des Moines, followed a prerecorded veterans’ round-table discussion.

In her 2014 campaign, Ms. Ernst pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act, balance the federal budget and cut spending. “Let’s make ’em squeal,” she said in a viral ad, highlighting her history castrating hogs on her family’s farm.

But after Mr. Trump’s election in 2016 — Ms. Ernst had an interview with him when he was in search of a running mate — she backed away from her campaign promises to become one of the president’s stalwart defenders.

Her first 2020 TV ad echoes Mr. Trump’s tone on China.

“We rely on Communist China for far too much, from technology to medicine,” she said. “So I’m fighting to bring it home.”

Rep. Lee Zeldin addressed the convention on Wednesday.Credit…Republican National Convention

For at least a decade, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York has been promoted as a Republican rising star.

Mr. Zeldin, 40, is a lawyer and Iraq war veteran from Long Island who first won election to the New York State Senate in 2010 by campaigning against a payroll tax that funded the New York subway and commuter railways.

Since he was elected to Congress in the 2014 Republican wave, Mr. Zeldin has become a staunch supporter of President Trump, who carried Mr. Zeldin’s eastern Long Island congressional district by 12 percentage points after Barack Obama had won it in the 2008 and 2012 elections.

Mr. Zeldin’s defense of Mr. Trump during the initial House impeachment proceedings was so thorough that no Republican spoke more than he did, according to a review of early deposition transcripts last year by NBC News.

On Wednesday night he used his four-minute Republican convention speaking slot to praise Mr. Trump — and his son-in-law Jared Kushner — for providing his district in Suffolk County and New York City with personal protective equipment for medical workers caring for coronavirus patients.

“Jared Kushner and I were on the phone late” one Saturday night, Mr. Zeldin said. “The very next day, President Trump announced he was sending us 200,000 N95 masks. He actually delivered more than 400,000.”

Mr. Zeldin’s praise for the Trump administration neglects to mention what was a nationwide shortage in medical-grade masks and other protective equipment for doctors and nurses. The Trump administration’s response was a scattershot effort that led to various governors’ begging the White House for help and offering public praise of Mr. Trump, some of which has been used in footage that has been aired during this week’s Republican National Convention. And New York’s hospitals were not able to handle all of the patients suffering from the pandemic.

Mr. Zeldin, one of just two Jewish Republicans in Congress, won re-election relatively easily in 2016 and 2018, but faces a significant challenge this year from Nancy Goroff, a chemistry professor at Stony Brook University. The Cook Political Report rates the contest as “Lean Republican,” and the House Democrats’ campaign arm on Wednesday added Ms. Goroff to its “Red to Blue” list of most competitive races.

Chen Guangcheng, who was persecuted and confined to his home by the Chinese government, escaped to the United States in 2012 with the help of officials at the American Embassy in Beijing. Credit…Republican National Convention

The Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng on Wednesday praised President Trump’s handling of relations with China and said he had “shown the courage” to stand up to China’s Communist Party.

In China, “expressing beliefs or ideas not approved by the C.C.P. — religion, democracy, human rights — can lead to prison,” Mr. Chen said at the Republican convention. “The nation lives under mass surveillance and censorship.”

He added: “The U.S. must use its values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law to gather a coalition of other democracies to stop C.C.P.’s aggression. President Trump has led on this, and we need the other countries to join him in this fight.”

Mr. Chen, who was persecuted and confined to his home by the Chinese government, escaped to the United States in 2012 with the help of officials at the American Embassy in Beijing. Under a deal with the Chinese government, negotiated under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he received a fellowship to attend law school in New York.

It did not take long for him to become enmeshed in American politics. In 2013, he accepted a fellowship with the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank.

Madison Cawthorn rose to national prominence in June, when he upset a Trump-endorsed candidate to win his House primary in North Carolina. Credit…Republican National Convention

Madison Cawthorn, a 25-year-old House candidate in North Carolina vying to fill the seat vacated by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, offered himself as the future of the Republican Party on Wednesday night at its convention.

In remarks that — highly unusual at this convention — focused on himself instead of President Trump, Mr. Cawthorn placed himself in the company of twentysomething founding fathers: George Washington, who received a military commission at 21; Abraham Lincoln, who ran for office at 22; and James Madison, who Mr. Cawthorn said signed the Declaration of Independence at 25.

(Mr. Madison, who was 25 in 1776, did not sign the Declaration of Independence.)

“In times of peril, young people have stepped up and saved this country abroad and at home,” Mr. Cawthorn said. “We held the line, scaled the cliffs, crossed oceans, liberated camps and cracked codes.”

As his remarks ended, Mr. Cawthorn, who is paralyzed from the waist down, dramatically lifted himself up onto a walker as he recited the phrase “to the republic, for which I stand.”

It was a moment seemingly intended to go viral, fitting with how Mr. Cawthorn rocketed to national prominence in June, when he upset a Trump-endorsed candidate to win his primary.

He was just 24 years old, a self-described real estate investor who uses a wheelchair after being paralyzed from a car crash. The crash, he said at the time, “derailed” plans to attend the Naval Academy.

But as it turned out, Mr. Cawthorn — who has since turned 25, the legal age to serve in the House — has little real estate portfolio to speak of, had his application to the Naval Academy rejected before his car accident, and once drew scrutiny for a post on social media about Adolf Hitler.

This month, Jezebel unearthed several pictures on Mr. Cawthorn’s Instagram page from a 2017 trip he had taken to Germany. There, he visited Hitler’s vacation home.

“The vacation house of the Führer,” he wrote. “Seeing the Eagles Nest has been on my bucket list for awhile, it did not disappoint.”

He added: “Strange to hear so many laughs and share such a good time with my brother where only 79 years ago a supreme evil shared laughs and good times with his compatriots.”

Mr. Cawthorn later wrote on Facebook that he had visited the historical site to celebrate the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany. In a subsequent video, he said political attacks suggesting he had affinity for the Nazi regime were “an attack on disabled people.”

During his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Cawthorn made no mention or allusion to his social media posts. Instead he made a call, during a convention otherwise devoted to trashing liberals as America-haters, for both sides of the political spectrum to get along.

“We are committed to building a new town square,” he said. “To liberals, I say let’s have a conversation. Be a true liberal, listen to other ideas and let the best ones prevail. And to conservatives, let’s define what we support and win the argument in areas like health care and on the environment.”

Mr. Cawthorn is almost certain to win his general election and go to Washington next year. Mr. Trump carried Mr. Cawthorn’s western North Carolina district by 17 percentage points in 2016. Mr. Cawthorn’s campaign did not make him available to be interviewed.

Representative Elise Stefanik was the youngest member of Congress when she was elected in 2014 and now, at 36, she is still one of the youngest Republicans.Credit…Republican National Convention

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the youngest Republican woman elected to Congress, called President Trump “the only candidate who will stand up for hardworking families and protect the American dream for future generations.”

Echoing many other convention speakers this week, Ms. Stefanik framed the election as “a choice between the far-left democratic socialist agenda versus protecting and preserving the American dream.” (The Democratic nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., from the party’s center-left wing, does not advocate socialism and won the primary over candidates from the left.)

“President Trump is working to safely reopen our Main Street economy,” she said. “He understands that the engine of our country is fueled by the ingenuity and determination of American workers, entrepreneurs and small businesses. Joe Biden wants to keep them locked up in the basement and crush them with $4 trillion in new taxes.”

Ms. Stefanik, who was the youngest member of Congress from either party when she was elected in 2014, developed a moderate, bipartisan reputation in her first few years in office, and sometimes clashed with leadership over the party’s future. She called for a post-mortem analysis after the 2018 midterms and has criticized Republican leaders for not devoting more resources to electing women; she started her own political action committee to support Republican women running for Congress.

But during President Trump’s impeachment hearings, Ms. Stefanik took a much sharper tone, at one point accusing the Democratic committee leader, Representative Adam B. Schiff, of trying to silence her and her colleagues “simply because we are Republicans.” Mr. Trump tweeted his approval.

Since then, Ms. Stefanik’s Twitter feed has become more reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s, complete with a nickname for her Democratic opponent, Tedra Cobb: “Taxin’ Tedra.”

That tone also characterized her convention speech, in which she said Mr. Trump had “fought tirelessly to deliver results for all Americans, despite the Democrats’ baseless and illegal impeachment sham and the media’s endless obsession with it.”

“I was proud to lead the effort standing up for the Constitution, President Trump and, most importantly, the American people,” she said. “This attack was not just on the president. It was an attack on you, your voice and your vote.”

Ms. Stefanik said that Americans had not been swayed, and that “our support for President Trump is stronger than ever before,” though Mr. Trump’s approval rating in the RealClearPolitics average is lower now than it was the day the Senate acquitted him in February.

Michael McHale, president of the National Association of Police Organizations, addressed the convention on Wednesday.Credit…Republican National Convention

The head of a national organization that advocates on behalf of law enforcement hailed President Trump as a staunch defender of the police on Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention amid national upheaval over the police killing of a Black man in Kenosha, Wis.

The speaker, Michael “Mick” McHale, leads the National Association of Police Organizations, a coalition of police unions and associations from across the country. He praised Mr. Trump for his “support of aggressive federal prosecution of those who attack our police officers” and baselessly claimed that Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, had allowed his campaign to be taken over by people who are “anti-law enforcement.”

“I’m proud that the overwhelming majority of American police officers are the best of the best and put their lives on the line without hesitation,” said Mr. McHale, who met with Mr. Trump at the White House last month and whose organization has endorsed him. “Good officers need to know that their elected leaders and the department brass have their backs.”

Mr. McHale’s implicit condemnation of those who have criticized the police and their use of force comes at a time of unrest in Kenosha, after a video showed a police officer shooting Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back. Two people were killed and a third was seriously injured in the protests that followed, and a white teenager who was not affiliated with the protesters was arrested and charged with murder.

Mr. McHale’s dark language reflected the foreboding tone speakers have used throughout the Republican convention, as they have sought to paint a picture of the United States under Democratic leadership as a dystopian country plagued by violence.

Citing what he described as “chaos” in cities like Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York in recent months, where protesters have taken to the streets to condemn police violence and the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, Mr. McHale echoed the Trump campaign in asserting that when elected leaders “make the conscious decision not to support law enforcement,” shootings, “murders, looting and rioting occur unabated.”

His claim is exaggerated; violent crime has risen by about 0.4 percent compared to the same period last year across 25 large American cities, according to the latest available data.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly stressed the need for “law and order” and has embraced the notion of himself as a defender of law enforcement at a time when some progressives — fed up with the killing of Black people by the authorities — have called for defunding the police or in some way lessening their broad roles and responsibilities in communities.

This month, a union representing tens of thousands of New York City police officers endorsed Mr. Trump and became what his campaign said at the time was the sixth police association to do so.

But Mr. Trump has also frequently attacked the country’s top law enforcement officers and sharply criticized institutions like the Justice Department and F.B.I. His relentless critiques of the F.B.I. in relation to its agents’ role in the special counsel inquiry that led to his impeachment has caused both Democrats and Republicans to worry that the president has undermined public confidence in law enforcement.

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Kellyanne Conway Praises Trump’s Relationships With Women

Kellyanne Conway, who will be departing the Trump administration at the end of August, shared anecdotes about President Trump treating women as equals in her remarks to the Republican National Convention.

One hundred years ago, courageous warriors helped women secure the right to vote. This has been a century worth celebrating, but also a reminder that our democracy is young and fragile. A woman in a leadership role can still seem novel. Not so for President Trump. For decades, he has elevated women to senior positions in business and in government. He confides in and consults us, respects our opinions and insists that we are on equal footing with the men. President Trump helped me shatter a barrier in the world of politics by empowering me to manage his campaign to its successful conclusion. With the help of millions of Americans, our team defied the critics, the naysayers, the conventional wisdom — and we won. For many of us, women’s empowerment is not a slogan. It comes not from strangers on social media or sanitized language in a corporate handbook. It comes from the everyday heroes who nurture us, who shape us and who believe in us.

Kellyanne Conway, who will be departing the Trump administration at the end of August, shared anecdotes about President Trump treating women as equals in her remarks to the Republican National Convention.CreditCredit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Kellyanne Conway, President Trump’s homestretch campaign manager in 2016, made the case that Mr. Trump, contrary to his image, was a proponent of women’s empowerment.

“A woman in a leadership role can still seem novel,” Ms. Conway said on Wednesday, which was also Women’s Equality Day.

“Not so for President Trump. For decades, he has elevated women to senior positions in business and in government. He confides in and consults us, respects our opinions, and insists that we are on equal footing with the men. President Trump helped me shatter a barrier in the world of politics by empowering me to manage his campaign to its successful conclusion.”

Some women who worked for Mr. Trump’s development company have painted a different picture, claiming that while Mr. Trump hired and promoted women to positions of authority, he sometimes ridiculed them over their physical appearance.

Ms. Conway announced last week that she was stepping down from her post as presidential counselor to spend more time with her family after a long series of social media posts from her teenage daughter criticizing her work for Mr. Trump.

Ms. Conway’s husband, George — a conservative lawyer who has emerged as one of the president’s most pointed and prolific Twitter hecklers — announced that he was leaving his position with the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, at the same time Ms. Conway revealed her White House departure.

Ms. Conway, a longtime Republican pollster, lasted longer in Mr. Trump’s inner circle than almost anyone outside of his family, in part because she was able to pull off an unlikely balancing act — engaging with the news media as she tried to undermine its standing over negative coverage of the president.

But she is likely to be remembered for coining one of the most memorable one-liners of Mr. Trump’s presidency. When pressed about the administration’s inflated claims about the size of the inauguration crowd in 2017, she described those numbers as “alternative facts.”

VideoKaren Pence gave a largely apolitical speech to the Republican National Convention, focusing on her work with military families.CreditCredit…Republican National Convention

Karen Pence, who reportedly expressed reservations about her husband’s acceptance of Mr. Trump’s running-mate offer, on Wednesday made one of the least overtly political speeches yet at the Republican convention, focusing on her work with veterans and military spouses.

“I have had the honor of meeting many heroes across this great country,” said Ms. Pence, an artist and educator who has supported art therapy programs geared at helping veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Many of our veteran heroes struggle as they transition back into civilian life,” Ms. Pence said. “Sometimes the stress is too difficult to manage alone.”

Ms. Pence said she had been motivated by family members who have served in the military.

“The Pences are a military family,” she said. “Our son, Michael, serves in the United States Marines, and our son-in-law, Henry, serves in the U.S. Navy.”

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Kayleigh McEnany Shares Mastectomy Story

The White House press secretary shared her story about her battle with breast cancer and compared her “hard” decision about having a preventive mastectomy to the “easy” decision to support President Trump.

When I was 21 years old, I got a call that changed my life. It was my doctor, informing me that I had tested positive for the BRCA2 genetic mutation, a mutation that put my chances of breast cancer at 84 percent. It was the same mutation that my mom had, compelling her to get a preventative double mastectomy, removing her breast tissue but protecting her from a disease that has taken far too many of our mothers, our sisters, our friends. In my family, eight women alone were diagnosed with breast cancer, several in their young 20s. I now faced the same prospect. For nearly a decade, I was routinely at Moffitt Cancer Center, getting M.R.I.s, ultrasounds and necessary surveillance. During these visits, I crossed paths with brave women battling cancer and fighting through chemotherapy. They were a testament to American strength. They are American heroes. Choosing to have a preventative mastectomy was the hardest decision I ever had to make. But supporting President Trump, who will protect my daughter and our children’s future, was the easiest.

The White House press secretary shared her story about her battle with breast cancer and compared her “hard” decision about having a preventive mastectomy to the “easy” decision to support President Trump.CreditCredit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, described how President Trump offered words of support after she underwent a preventive mastectomy two years ago.

“During one of my most difficult times, I expected to have the support of my family, but I had more support than I knew,” Ms. McEnany said. “As I came out of anesthesia, one of the first calls I received was from Ivanka Trump. As I recovered, my phone rang again. It was President Trump, calling to check on me. I was blown away.”

Ms. McEnany’s testimony added another voice to the chorus of speakers at the Republican National Convention who have sought to paint Mr. Trump in a softer and more compassionate light. Ms. McEnany was a late addition to the schedule, people involved in the planning said.

Ms. McEnany became the latest woman on Mr. Trump’s staff who has defended him by pointing to her personal experience with him. Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, and Kellyanne Conway, the outgoing White House counselor, have often defended the president’s behavior by noting that he doesn’t treat them, personally, differently from men on his staff.

On Tuesday, Melania Trump, the first lady, became one of the only R.N.C. speakers to acknowledge the lives lost to the coronavirus, as she tried to cast a softer light on her husband’s presidency, which has often been filled with anger and derision.

In her own speech, Ms. McEnany told voters of the trials of raising a small child and of living with a health condition. (She had previously written about undergoing a preventive double mastectomy to lower her risk of breast cancer after testing positive for the BRCA2 mutation.)

She said Mr. Trump “stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions,” despite the fact that Mr. Trump supports undoing the Affordable Care Act’s protections for those with such conditions.

Her remarks were part of a broader project to make Mr. Trump more palatable to women. Tuesday’s program, for instance, included a prerecorded video which praised Mr. Trump’s record of promoting women to key positions in the White House.

Ms. McEnany, who was the national press secretary for Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign before being named his fourth White House press secretary earlier this year, also told viewers about her 9-month-old daughter, framing her fight for Mr. Trump as a fight for to protect her daughter’s future.

“I choose to work for this president for her,” she said. “When I look into my baby’s eyes, I see a new life, a miracle for which I have a solemn responsibility to protect. That means protecting America’s future — a future President Trump will fight for.”

VideoRepresentative Dan Crenshaw of Texas drew on his experience in Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL in a speech on American heroism to the Republican National Convention.CreditCredit…Republican National Convention

Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, a retired Navy SEAL who was elected to Congress in 2018, drew on his experience fighting in Afghanistan to paint America as a “country of heroes” and shared sacrifice in a speech on Wednesday night at the Republican convention.

Mr. Crenshaw, who was deployed five times before being medically retired in 2016, spoke of a friend on the battlefield who had helped ensure his survival, but was killed just weeks later. And as he emphasized a theme of Wednesday’s programming, he sought to highlight everyday Americans as heroes, while also leveling a series of implicit critiques at those who have challenged the status quo and fought for racial justice.

“It’s the parent who will relearn algebra because there’s no way they’re letting their kid fall behind while schools are closed,” he said. “And it’s the cop that gets spit on one day and will save a child’s life the next.”

“Heroism is self-sacrifice, not moralizing and lecturing over others when they disagree,” he added. “Heroism is grace, not perpetual outrage. Heroism is rebuilding our communities, not destroying them. Heroism is renewing faith in the symbols that unite us, not tearing them down.”

Mr. Crenshaw, who represents an area surrounding Houston, won his 2018 race by more than seven percentage points in a Republican-leaning but potentially competitive state in the November general election. His Democratic opponent this year is Sima Ladjevardian, an Iranian-American lawyer and political activist who was previously an adviser to Beto O’Rourke.

Mr. Trump bested Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points in Texas in 2016, but several recent polls have shown him in a much tighter race four years later with Mr. Biden.

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Marsha Blackburn Claims ‘Leftists’ Want to ‘Cancel’ Law Enforcement

The Tennessee senator gave a speech full of fiery rhetoric attacking Democrats and lauding law enforcement and military service members.

I want to talk to you about another kind of hero, the kind Democrats don’t recognize because they don’t fit into their narrative. I’m talking about the heroes of our law enforcement and armed services. Leftists try to turn them into villains. They want to cancel them. But I’m here to tell you, these heroes can’t be canceled. Tennessee is full of them. After all, we’re the Volunteer State. The common thread between them is a deep-seated desire to serve a cause larger than themselves. They don’t believe their country owes them anything. They believe they owe their country and their fellow man. As hard as Democrats try, they can’t cancel our heroes. They can’t contest their bravery, and they can’t dismiss the powerful sense of service that lives deep in their souls.

The Tennessee senator gave a speech full of fiery rhetoric attacking Democrats and lauding law enforcement and military service members.CreditCredit…Republican National Convention

Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee gave a dark convention speech, claiming that Democrats wanted to “cancel” law enforcement and service members.

“Leftists try to turn them into villains, they want to cancel them, but I’m here to tell you these heroes can’t be canceled,” said Ms. Blackburn, a firebrand conservative and one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal defenders. “As hard as Democrats try, they can’t cancel our heroes. They can’t contest their bravery, and they can’t dismiss the powerful sense of service that lives deep in their souls. So they try to defund them — our military, our police, even ICE — to take away their tools to keep us safe.”

Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, does not support defunding the police or ICE. Nor does he support “defunding” the military, though he expressed openness during the primary to reducing the defense budget somewhat.

Delving deeply into the culture-war rhetoric that has dominated much of the Republican Party during the coronavirus pandemic, Ms. Blackburn criticized lockdown restrictions that, in some places, closed churches while allowing liquor stores and abortion clinics to stay open. (Churches, and other indoor spaces where large groups of people gather for extended periods of time, have been linked to much more coronavirus transmission than stores or clinics.)

In a fear-mongering message, she also suggested that Democrats wanted to control Americans.

“If the Democrats had their way, they would keep you locked in your house until you become dependent on the government for everything,” she said. “That sounds a lot like Communist China to me.”

Ms. Blackburn, who was elected to the Senate in 2018 after more than 15 years in the House, was known for much of her career for her opposition to abortion, though she turned to a broader pro-Trump message both in her most recent campaign and in her speech on Tuesday. She led a House committee that investigated allegations in 2015 and 2016 that Planned Parenthood had sold fetal tissue for profit; neither the congressional investigation nor multiple state-level inquiries substantiated those allegations.

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota once ordered up a replica of Mt. Rushmore with President Trump’s face on it.Credit…Republican National Convention

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota is one of Mr. Trump’s favorite admirers — so popular, in fact, that rumors have swirled from time to time that she might be called upon to replace Wednesday night’s keynote speaker, Mike Pence, on the 2020 ticket.

Ms. Noem echoed Mr. Trump’s hard-edge language against demonstrators protesting police violence in her speech, hours after a pro-Trump teenager from Illinois was arrested in connection with the killing of two protesters in Kenosha, Wis., after the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake.

“From Seattle and Portland to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs,” she said. “The violence is rampant. There’s looting, chaos, destruction, and murder. People that can afford to flee have fled. But the people that can’t — good, hard-working Americans — are left to fend for themselves.”

Ms. Noem, the first female governor of her state, has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump’s law-and-order campaign, and ushered through a law lifting a requirement for licenses for concealed firearms as one of her first actions after being elected in 2018.

When the president went so far as to suggest, according to the Argus Leader, that he aspired to see his own chiseled visage on Mount Rushmore someday, Ms. Noem (who has no say over such matters) seemed open to the suggestion.

She even ordered up a four-foot-tall model of the statue with a fifth face on it (his). The president returned the favor with an appearance at the national monument earlier this year, a boon to one of his most unapologetic defenders.

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Peaceful Marches and Armored Vehicles: Scenes From Kenosha Protests

Unrest in Kenosha, Wis., continued after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black resident. Peaceful demonstrations earlier in the day gave way to chaos as law enforcement faced off with protesters.

Crowd leader: “Say his name!” Crowd: “Jacob Blake.” Crowd leader: “Say his name!” Crowd: “Jacob Blake.” Crowd leader: “Black lives, they matter now!” Crowd: “No justice, no peace!” No justice, no peace!” “A group of people who are enraged, hurt, afraid, right? Some people protest by laying on the floor. Some people protest by screaming. Some protest by burning. What I’m saying is, right, until you fix the issue don’t talk to me about the infrastructure when there’s life in the balance. The Constitution was written with Black folks not in mind. Back up to when?” “You just said, let’s burn it all down and start over, who thinks we should burn it all down and start over? Raise your hand.” “Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.” “Who thinks we — hold on, I’m just quoting Greg — he said, he said, let’s burn it all down and start over. Raise your —” “I’m talking about the Constitution, sir. I’m talking about the Constitution. Burn the Constitution.” “And if we don’t get it …” Crowd: “Shut it down!” “And if we don’t get it …” Crowd: “Shut it down!” “And if we don’t get it …” Crowd: “Shut it down!” “What’s up, y’all? What’s up, y’all?” Crowd: “Black lives matter. Black lives matter.” “Clear the area. Please stop destroying our property.” “[expletive] you! I’ve been to Iraq. I’ve been to Afghanistan.” [sirens] “Do not let anyone fall in behind us.”

Unrest in Kenosha, Wis., continued after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black resident. Peaceful demonstrations earlier in the day gave way to chaos as law enforcement faced off with protesters.CreditCredit…Stephen Maturen/Reuters

The arrest of a 17-year-old Illinois native in connection with the killing of two people protesting a police shooting in Kenosha, Wis., threatens to overshadow the third night of a Republican convention that has portrayed President Trump as a bulwark against chaos and unrest.

By late Wednesday, a storm of discordant news descended on the Republican convention bubble in Washington as a strengthening Hurricane Laura menaced Louisiana and Texas.

The shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by the police in Kenosha, a city of 100,000 people between Chicago and Milwaukee, has created a powerful and growing cascade of reaction that could influence the content — and certainly the context — of speeches scheduled to be delivered by Vice President Mike Pence and others.

Planners would not say if they were making any changes to address the developments.

The NBA scrapped its playoff schedule after Milwaukee Bucks players announced a boycott in protest of the shooting of Mr. Blake as Democrats condemned the inclusion on Monday night’s program of a Missouri couple who had brandished weapons at protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s killing.

President Trump sought to seize the initiative early Wednesday, announcing that he would deploy the National Guard and other law enforcement to Kenosha, Wis., to quell the unrest that has erupted since the police there shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, on Sunday.

“I will be sending federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Kenosha, WI to restore LAW and ORDER!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

But the focus quickly shifted back to the tenor of his campaign, when it became apparent that the suspected gunman, Kyle Rittenhouse, was a white pro-police activist, and not one of the protesters demonstrating against the police.

Late Wednesday, Buzzfeed reported that Mr. Rittenhouse appeared to be in the front row of a Trump campaign rally in January, standing not far from the president.

The shooting took place as a crowd was gathering near a gas station, where protesters encountered a group of men who were carrying guns and saying they wanted to protect the area from looting.

Mr. Blake, 29, was shot several times in the back by a police officer as he tried to get into the driver-side door of an S.U.V. His three children were in the back seat. Mr. Blake was paralyzed from the waist down, his father said.

Within hours of the shooting, graphic video of it taken by a neighbor raced across social media, and Kenosha erupted into protest, looting and fires downtown. Officers used tear gas to try to disperse protesters.

Protests continued on Monday and Tuesday, and on Tuesday night, a face-off at a gas station between protesters and armed men who promised to protect the property turned into the violent confrontation that led to Mr. Rittenhouse’s arrest. In addition to the two people shot dead, a third was left seriously injured.

In one of the most striking moments of the second night of the Republican convention on Tuesday — both for its content and for its blatant disregard of the separation between the White House and the campaign trail — President Trump held a naturalization ceremony for five immigrants.

It was an obvious effort by Mr. Trump’s campaign to cast him as pro-immigrant after three and a half years of anti-immigrant policies. But at least two of the five new citizens were not told it was being broadcast at the convention.

The decision by Mr. Trump’s campaign to feature the naturalization ceremony angered some senior officials with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Some asylum officers confronted senior agency officials during a virtual town hall on Wednesday about whether Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, had violated rules prohibiting political activity by presiding over the ceremony.

“It’s one of the things that shouldn’t be politicized, and you can hardly get more political than your partisan political convention,” said Barbara Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush and Obama administrations.

The Trump campaign has halted its broadcast television advertising campaign, pulling down all broadcast ads on Tuesday with no new ads scheduled to start until Sept. 8, a two-week dark period with less than 70 days to go until the election.

It is the second time over the past 30 days that the Trump campaign has gone completely dark on broadcast television, having paused advertising in late July following the shift in leadership as Bill Stepien took over as campaign manager from Brad Parscale. They are maintaining a presence on national cable.

The pause comes as the Biden campaign has been amping up its television advertising presence. In the period that the Trump campaign is slated to be dark, the Biden campaign has roughly $20 million booked in battleground states. In the immediate aftermath of the convention, the Biden campaign will have the airwaves to itself.

In a statement, the Trump campaign said the recent campaigning by President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, combined with the coverage of the convention, was enough media to carry them. The campaign also said, “we will be back up on broadcast TV well before September 8th.”

“Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence have been visibly visiting battleground states, meeting actual voters and dominating local news coverage,” said Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for the Trump campaign. “It also makes little sense to blow donor money on ads during convention weeks, when all of the national media is focused on the candidates anyway. Our continuing massive digital presence, with special emphasis on the convention weeks, should not be discounted.”

The post-convention break follows a similar pause during Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he stopped all television advertising for nearly a month after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. But that convention ended in mid July, and he was not the well-funded incumbent he is now. Even so, the 2016 Trump campaign was advertising by late August.

The campaign has kept up a notable digital advertising presence, spending nearly $4 million on Facebook alone over the past week. There is no publicly available method of tracking future reservations for digital advertising.

Miami-Dade County elections workers processed mail-in ballots for the Florida primary in Doral, Fla., in August.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

Federal officials on Wednesday reported no evidence of coordinated fraud in the implementation of state vote-by-mail efforts, dealing a blow to President Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that voting by mail will spur a wave of rigged balloting.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the F.B.I., and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said their investigators had not found any cases of widespread attempts to use the Postal Service to illegally influence the election, during a background briefing with reporters in Washington.

Such efforts would be difficult to execute given the sprawling and decentralized system of voting even if someone tried, they said.

“We have yet to see any activity to prevent voting or to change votes, and we continue to think it would be extraordinarily difficult for foreign adversaries to change vote tallies,” the deputy attorney general under Mr. Barr, Jeffrey A. Rosen, said in separate remarks for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Their assessment is in line with those of state officials who have argued that vastly increasing the use of mail-in voting is the only way to ensure that people concerned about contracting coronavirus by voting in person are not disenfranchised.

Mr. Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr have cast doubt on the security of mail ballots, despite assurances from elections officials in both parties that mail-in voting poses only minimal risks.

In July, and again this month, Mr. Trump has raised the possibility, without evidence, that foreign adversaries would forge mail-in ballots and rig the election. Mr. Trump said the widespread use of mail-in and other absentee balloting is “going to be the greatest election disaster in history.”

“You guys like to talk about Russia and China and other places, they’ll be able to forge ballots, they’ll forge up, they’ll do whatever they have to do,” Mr. Trump said in July.

The post Mike Pence Closes Out Night time three of the G.O.P. Conference, Making the Case for Trump appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

A San Francisco skyscraper owned by President Donald Trump launched in June but has still not sold and may cost less than expected, according to a report in the San Francisco Business Times.

Perhaps best known as the former Bank of America Center, the 52-story tower at 555 California St. is the fourth tallest building in the city at 779 feet. In the spring, the value was estimated at $ 1 billion.

Vornado Realty Trust has a 70% interest in the building and manages the property. Trump has a 30% stake in a limited partnership.

The San Francisco Business Times reported that Steven Roth, CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, addressed the sluggish sale during a profit call on Wednesday.

“Investor interest and widespread appreciation for the quality of these assets are active. However, given the caution shown by investors, it does not look like we will hit our original top tick price target,” said Roth. “Nonetheless, we are still actively pursuing a transaction in these assets that may take the form of a sale, partial sale, joint venture, or refinancing.”

In the call, Roth also referred to another property in Manhattan owned by Trump, 1290 Avenue of the Americas in New York City, which is also on the market.

RELATED: Top Tech Company Defies Trend, Adding 42,000 Square Feet to SF’s Office Space

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Kathleen Pender pointed out in a 2015 story that Trump got his stake in the building through a passive real estate investment.

“In 2007, Vornado acquired its 70 percent stake in the two buildings owned by US companies controlled by a Hong Kong investment group for $ 1.8 billion,” Pender wrote. “Trump was a limited partner in the investment group and, according to Forbes, had argued with it. The deal gave Trump a 30 percent stake in the two buildings.”

Many SF locals did not realize that Trump owned a portion of 555 California, but when the real estate mogul politician first campaigned and became president in 2016, the news spread and small groups of protesters regularly took the financial district’s address on .

Last month, teachers, nurses and parents gathered in the building to support Proposition 15, which aims to increase business tax to help fund education in the state. A study by 48hills calculated that Vornado Realty Trust and Trump currently pay $ 11.7 million less in local property taxes than if the building’s property tax was calculated based on its current market value.

When it was built in 1969, the building at 555 California Street was the tallest on the West Coast. The Salesforce Tower at 1,070 feet is now SF’s height gainer. The Transamerica pyramid is the second tallest and 181 Fremont the third.

The post San Francisco skyscraper part-owned by Trump is available on the market, however not promoting appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Good morning and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Friday October 2nd and I’m writing from Los Angeles.

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Just before 1 a.m. in Washington early Friday morning, the President of the United States sent a tweet that quickly sent shock waves around the globe.

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus. The president tweeted that he and the first lady would “begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately.”

[Read the story: “Trump and first lady test positive for the coronavirus” in the Los Angeles Times]

His positive test came just hours after the White House announced that Senior Adjutant Hope Hicks tested positive for the virus after several trips with the president this week, including the first presidential debate in Ohio on Tuesday and a campaign rally in Minnesota had Wednesday. Vice President Mike Pence tested negative on Friday morning.

The president traveled to New Jersey for re-election Thursday and appeared at a fundraiser at his Bedminster Golf Club. According to the New York Times, White House officials have been aware of Hicks’ likely diagnosis since Wednesday night, though she reportedly didn’t receive her positive test until Thursday.

News of Trump’s diagnosis comes just a month before the US presidential election and seven months into a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans and changed almost every aspect of life across the country. The president has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the coronavirus threat and refused to adhere to public health guidelines.

Trump is 74 years old and has a higher risk of serious complications from the coronavirus. According to the Associated Press, this is the most serious known public health fear a sitting US president has encountered in recent history. Several other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, have previously contracted the coronavirus.

And now this is happening across California:

Dangerously dry and windy conditions will challenge the crews battling the glass fire in California’s wine country in the coming days as officials warn that gusts of wind could potentially drive the fire towards communities in Napa County. Los Angeles times

Disney’s Bob Iger resigns from Governor Gavin Newsom’s task force as tensions mount over theme park closures: the Los Angeles Times

California Adds a COVID-19 Equity Requirement: California’s major counties will only be allowed to further open their economies if they reduce coronavirus infections in the hardest-hit locations where poor, black, Latin American and Pacific islanders live. Los Angeles times

Note: Some of the websites we link to may limit the number of articles you can access without signing up.

LA STORIES

Mega donors and police unions have poured nearly $ 12 million into the LA District Attorney’s race. Incumbent Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey’s campaign was largely backed by law enforcement unions, while wealthy lawyers primarily focused on the Bay Area provided much of the funding for challenger George Gascón. Los Angeles times

After a disastrous election in March, LA County faces a “major challenge” in November. It will be the first choice since the troubled debut of the county’s new $ 300 million electoral system that officials have been trying for months to fix. Los Angeles times

In these Koreatown stores, kimchi is everything and more. Independent kimchi stores try to focus on quality and specific flavor in order to stand out from the crowd. Los Angeles times

Traditional Baechu Kimchi and Baek Kimchi surrounded by a range of raw materials from Kae Sung Market in Koreatown.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

[See also: “Your guide to the must-try kimchis of L.A.” in the Los Angeles Times]

Dodgers Advance: The Dodgers battled the Milwaukee Brewers in the best-of-three wildcard round at Dodger Stadium and moved to the National League Division Series to face either the St. Louis Cardinals or the San Diego Padres . Los Angeles times

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

Trump’s war on electoral integrity “follows a racist playbook used in Orange County in the 1980s.” Columnist Gustavo Arellano advocates historical comparisons. Los Angeles times

The government has attempted to intimidate the department into keeping a Foster Farms poultry factory open despite the coronavirus outbreak at the facility, according to the Merced County’s director of public health. CBS News

CRIME AND COURTS

A federal appeals court upheld Newsom’s coronavirus restrictions on indoor worship during the pandemic. A majority in the U.S. 9th appeals court said California’s church health ordinances did not discriminate against religious expression. Los Angeles times

HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

One reason for the terrible fire season in Northern California? Less rain than in Southern California. Los Angeles times

A ranger station in Sequoia National Forest was wrapped in foil like a “big baked potato” to protect it from wildfire. “Only one chimney stuck out, making the structure look like a big, badly wrapped Christmas present.” Fresno bee

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

California’s Deepening Crises: Santa Cruz County Lost Nearly 1,000 Homes To The CZU Lightning Complex Fires. The real estate crisis is now worse than ever. San Francisco Chronicle

The workers quietly come back to the offices in Southern California. About 25% of the country’s employees already come to the office regularly – not five days a week, but at least two or three days, according to research by Newmark Knight Frank broker Ryan Harding and his colleagues. Los Angeles times

Alexandra Rousso, foreground, left, and Carly Kinnan, background, left, receptionists at Hudson Pacific Properties, a large Los Angeles office rental company, work behind security partitions to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Desperate for art and culture IRL? Here are six shows in Southern California to see in person. Los Angeles times

A poem to start your Friday: “Pan Dulce” by Jose Hernandez Diaz. Poetry Foundation

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CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Los Angeles: sunny, 96. San Diego: sunny, 84. San Francisco: partly sunny, 78. San Jose: partly sunny, 93. Fresno: sunny, 98. Sacramento: sunny, 100. More weather is here.

AND FINALLY

Today’s California memory comes from Hap Freund:

In 1978, Claudia, the woman I eventually married, I moved from a house in eight acres of woodland and pasture overlooking Puget Sound to Santa Monica while she was attending law school in Los Angeles. I started my job in Ventura and commuted on the Pacific Coast Highway for the first few weeks. Every morning I was excited to see little black figures in the water as I drove north; I came home every evening to tell Claudia about the seals I saw. Until I finally discovered, embarrassed, that they were surfers in wetsuits.

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints, ideas, and unrelated book recommendations to Julia Wick. Follow her on Twitter @Sherlyholmes.

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