James.galbraith

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Hundreds of workers at the personal styling service Stitch Fix have quit their jobs after incoming CEO Elizabeth Spaulding announced earlier this month that employees would no longer be allowed to work any hours they choose, according to interviews with half a dozen former and current employees. BuzzFeed News reports: The changes to the company's scheduling policies led to an exodus of around a third of its stylists, part- and full-time employees who work from home selecting clothing items for customers. "It was a gut punch," said Kara Calagera, who used the extra income from Stitch Fix to pay her mortgage and car insurance. Keeping the job "wasn't feasible without the flexibility." For years, Stitch Fix has attracted employees who -- because they have part-time jobs, stay home with kids, or have a disability -- needed flexible, remote work. Until now, the company allowed employees who could provide their own computer and internet to work from home, some for as little as five hours per week, recommending and sending Stitch Fix clothing to customers at any time of day. But in an email sent to staff earlier this month, the company informed stylists that employees would now be required to work at least 20 hours per week on a set schedule during regular business hours; their log-on and log-off times would be tracked, and stylists would at least temporarily no longer be allowed to become full-time employees. Those who couldn't work within the new rules were offered a $1,000 bonus to quit, provided they agreed to sign a nondisclosure agreement that promised, among other things, they would not sue the company. Some employees, citing the company's expanding use of computer-generated clothing recommendations, said that the recent workforce reductions made them feel like their jobs have shifted from styling clients to training an algorithm that will replace them. Stitch Fix acknowledged that recent changes were inconvenient for some staffers but said the shift would help the company expand the variety of "styling services" it offers. "Our Stylists are instrumental in building relationships with clients and creating the highly personalized experience Stitch Fix is known for," a spokesperson said via email. But employees across the company are working together to track how many have quit since the August 2 announcement, connecting on social media and sharing internal staffing numbers in each region: a tally from earlier this week found that around 1,500 stylists had left following the policy change.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the many tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic, wholly separate from the terrible toll it has taken on peoples’ lives and health, is the degree to which millions of Americans have willingly allowed themselves to be pitted against their neighbors, mostly as a result of amoral, deceptive, and self-serving propaganda churned out by the Republican Party. Nowhere has this capitulation to cynical GOP opportunism been more obvious than in the contrived battle over masking in our nation’s public schools.

The fact that elected Republicans in nearly every state have knowingly allowed this “debate” to metastasize in the hopes of gaining some political advantage from it has made it next to impossible to contain the pandemic as it spreads through the population of 50 million or so still-unvaccinated children under the age of 12. Taking their cues from these politicians and their reinforcing media, parents have dutifully engaged in highly publicized, vitriolic, demonstrative efforts to prevent local school officials from imposing simple, protective masking requirements universally recommended by medical doctors and scientific experts to contain the virus. Because school boards are often beholden to the same political dogma their local population is fed, the spewing of manufactured outrage and grievance by irate, propagandized parents has prompted many officials to abandon such measures altogether, often against their own better judgment and the advice of public health officials.

Some of these officials have decided to tread a seeming middle path, allowing parents who are otherwise unwilling to send their children to school with a mask the option to “opt out” of any mask requirements. Of course, the result of that dodging of their responsibility is twofold: The pandemic continues to spread unabated among those children who remain unmasked, and parents who still want to mask their children in areas where denial of the virus is strong are treated as pariahs, berated, or otherwise vilified by their neighbors who’ve had their own beliefs validated by these officials.

Even in those areas with the loudest and most ignorant confluences of parents and state officials, however, there are pockets—sometimes large pockets—of dissent from this embrace of ignorance and disinformation. One parent in Chattanooga, Tennessee, disgusted with her own school district’s opt-out policy, vented her frustration this week on Facebook. Her post, which has since gone viral, captures the hypocrisy being peddled by Republicans in their opposition to mask-wearing as well as any medical critique ever could.

As reported by Sydney Page, writing for The Washington Post’s sister publication, The Lily:

Last week, Tennessee’s Hamilton County School District announced that masks will be mandatory for students and staff, with one key caveat: Students whose parents complete an opt-out form will be exempt from the policy. The district was ahead of the curve; on Tuesday, Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed an executive order that extended that option to all parents in the state.

The problem, of course, is that allowing children (or their parents) to opt out of protecting against a public health menace like the COVID-19 delta variant effectively washes the district’s hands of responsibility when one of those kids (or his/her parents) contracts the virus. It also does nothing affirmatively to contain the spread of the virus. In other words, it’s a cop-out, and a craven one at that.

An East Hamilton school district mom (identified only as “Wendy” in the article to protect her privacy) took to Facebook with the following response, pointing out the hypocrisy of allowing children to opt out of masking. She pointedly asks for the school’s opt-out form for its dress code:

“As the parent of a daughter at East Hamilton, I find the school’s dress code policy to be misogynistic and detrimental to the self-esteem of young women,” the Aug. 11 email read. “… In light of the opt-out option related to the recently announced mask mandate, I can only assume that parents are now in a position to pick and choose the school policies to which their child to be subject. ... I therefore intend to ... send my daughter to school in spaghetti straps, leggings, cut offs, and anything else she feels comfortable wearing to school.”

Her full email, which was obtained and reposted on Twitter by the Tennessee Holler, is below:

Her point is this: The school district is so unconcerned about the spread of a deadly and debilitating virus that it allows parents to opt their children out of the only effective measures to prevent its spread. Yet it has no qualms about imposing similar mandates—with no allowance for opting out— governing how the same children come dressed for school. Which is more important? And at what time do the misguided and misinformed beliefs of individual parents about protecting themselves and others take a back seat to the good of the community?

As Page writes:

The primary purpose of the email was to underscore the inconsistency of the new mask policy — and the potentially grave ramifications of allowing parents and students to reject it, particularly amid the mounting covid-19 caseload in the state, Wendy said.

Or as another East Hamilton parent interviewed for Page’s article put it: “It’s just mind-boggling that we can arbitrarily choose these silly dress code rules and then take a lifesaving health protection tool and make it optional.”

As reported by Katherine Wu writing for The Atlantic, nearly one-fifth of all new COVID-19 infections in this country are now occurring in unvaccinated young children. As Wu explains, the extremely transmissible delta variant of the virus is driving this surge over the last few months. As a result, pediatric and children’s hospital ICU units in several states are being filled to capacity, with more and more serious cases reported: “In several states, health workers say that kids—many of them previously completely healthy—are coming in sicker and deteriorating faster than ever before, with no obvious end in sight.”

There is no “end in sight” because parents who want their younger children to go to school are now forced to cope not only with the virus but with the selfishness and ignorance of fellow parents, which is encouraged by officials whose sole intent appears to be escape the responsibility they were elected to uphold.

From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Rates Stuck in The Middle

Rates are on hold until the next chapter is written in the complex saga of covid versus the market. This isn't to say rates perfectly flat--simply that the prevailing momentum has been sideways for the past few weeks.

Since mortgage rates only change once or twice a day, we can use 10yr Treasury yields to see finer detail. This entire week took place in the fairly narrow range of 1.29 to 1.21, and it ended with yields precisely in the middle at 1.25%.
...
What does all this mean in plain English? Rates are low--much lower than most anyone expected at this point in the year. The key reason is "delta" and Fed's patient approach to changing rate-friendly policies. The lingering concerns about the nature of the post-covid economy also make the list. [30 year fixed 2.93%]
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

This is a graph from Mortgage News Daily (MND) showing 30 year fixed rates from three sources (MND, MBA, Freddie Mac).   

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President Joe Biden on Monday pressed businesses and public leaders to implement vaccine mandates after the federal government issued its first full approval of a Covid-19 vaccine.

The Food and Drug Administration early Monday approved Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine for people 16 and older, a step beyond the emergency-use authorization under which the shot has been available since late 2020.

"I'm calling on more companies in the private sector to step up with vaccine requirements that will reach millions more people," Biden said in remarks at the White House. "If you're a business leader, a nonprofit leader, a state or local leader, who has been waiting for full FDA approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that — require it. It only makes sense to require a vaccine to stop the spread of Covid-19."

But the president’s call for schools and business to require vaccination — especially as the Delta variant fuels an increase in hospitalizations — comes amid stiff resistance to mask and vaccine mandates by some Republican governors and lawmakers who say they are unnecessary.

There is also mounting concern among health experts about breakthrough infections in already-vaccinated people, an event that administration officials say is still very rare but can be prevented if more people are immunized. Along with the Pfizer vaccine that is now fully approved, Americans also have access to shots from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson under emergency authorization.

Biden this month mandated vaccinations or routine testing for millions of federal works and the Pentagon said Monday morning that it would require them for active military.

The president said that more than 170 million people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated against the virus, while 30 million more have gotten at least one shot of the two-dose regimen. Six million shots were administered in the most recent seven-day period the highest week total since mid-June.

"If you're one of the millions of Americans who said that they will not get the shot until it has full and final approval of FDA: It has now happened," he said. "The moment you've been waiting for is here."

It is unclear whether the full approval will sway skeptical Americans. Roughly 30 percent of holdouts polled recently by Kaiser Family Foundation said they would be more likely to get a fully approved shot than an emergency authorized dose, but many respondents also did not realize the Pfizer shot and others had not yet been approved.

Biden also commended FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock for leading the agency during the approval process. While supporters have floated Woodcock, who has helmed FDA's drug division for years, as the permanent commissioner, Biden has yet to announce a nominee.

The town of Iraan (pronounced Ira-Ann), in Texas, is shut down. According to The Texas Tribune, the  oilfield town, with a population just north of 1,200-1,300 people, had its local school shut down last week after about 25% of the staff and 16% of the student body tested positive or were in quarantine for COVID-19. The West Texas town only has a 14-bed hospital with zero critical care facilities. The Tribune reports that the closest hospitals with the equipment and services needed to handle serious COVID-19 cases are “all 80 miles or more away.” The Iraan-Sheffield Independent School District made this announcement last Monday after only five days of classes.

Iraan’s schools are not fighting Republican death-eater Gov. Greg Abbott’s anti-mask mandates. The Iraan-Sheffield Independent School District joins three other school districts that both allowed mask-wearing to be “optional” and are now closed due to high COVID-19 numbers. A statement from the district’s superintendent, Dr. Tracy Canter, conveyed to parents that the school would be closed until at least Aug. 30. CNN reports that this may be an optimistic timetable as Iraan saw 119 people tested in the first two weeks of August, and 50 of those tests came back positive. The town’s city council has already voted to close down the city building and “postpone late fees on water and gas utilities and stop utility disconnections for at least a month.”

The football season has been postponed for now.

Iraan General Hospital CEO Jason Rybolt told CNN he was “very concerned for the community," and whether the small town of Iraan will be receiving the medical treatment it needs. The hospital’s chief nursing officer, Connie Miles, told CBS7: “We started seeing some patients come into our facility that were needing more care than what they could get at home last week, and we have transferred some patients out to larger facilities. Our biggest issue right now is finding facilities that will take these patients because every facility in the state is full.” Iraan, like the other districts that have closed down, is an area where fewer than a third of residents are fully vaccinated. 

The Tribune expanded on how prevalent the problem was in the Iraan school district as about 27% of “instructional staffers” were already out due to COVID-19 before the awful numbers this past week were announced. These staffers—as well as other facility staff—pose a much larger risk of spreading the virus than in many larger areas simply because many of them have numerous responsibilities beyond instruction. “During the day, some teach and then coach and then drive the bus.” According to the Tribune, the Morgan Mill Independent School District in Fort Worth, Texas, closed after “half the staff was out sick.”

A depressing side note to an already depressing story: According to Morgan Mill Superintendent Wendy Sanders, many of the “staff out sick” did not want to be tested for COVID-19. “It was their personal choice to not get tested. I don’t believe in taking away personal freedom of choice and enforcing testing.” Fine. But then, when can they be allowed back to the school? The Tribune did not ask that follow-up question, so it’s hard to say whether or not simply saying you’re sick means you just sit out for 10 days until maybe you feel better. So you don’t test before coming back to school to face a population of children, many of whom cannot be given a vaccine at this time, even if they wanted one? 

Iraan’s school system joins others throughout the Lone Star state in closing down as COVID-19 surges across the country. According to the Associated Press, at least 21 other Texas school districts have defied coronavirus-positive Abbott’s terrifying overreach. These rural schools will also have to deal with state-mandated instructional time being lost due to closures. There will be some remote conferencing mixed in with extended days, and probably nixing some minimum days that were supposed to be allotted to teachers for instructional planning.

Iraan General Hospital reports that it has “a sufficient supply of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine available. Please call our Rural Health Clinic @ 432-639-2580 or Connie Miles, RN, CNO @ 432-639-3514 with eligibility questions or to schedule your appointment today!”

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
She's gonna get a really bad score on 'ignoring the way I'm perpetually judging her'.

Today's News:

Persuade the hesitant, but ignore the unhinged. We should keep ourselves safe from them, and nothing more.

Welcome to Political Outliers, a column that explores groups often portrayed as all voting the same way. In today’s climate, it’s easy to focus on how a group identifies politically, but that’s never the full story. Blocs of voters are rarely uniform in their beliefs, which is why this column will dive into undercovered parts of the electorate, showing how diverse and atypical most voters are.

Think you might fit the bill? Fill out this form and we might get in touch. 

Mack Bair, 24, supports same-sex marriage. Matthew C., 22, backs marijuana legalization, and Luke T., 22, is solidly pro-abortion rights. (Both asked not to use their last names out of fear of retribution for their political views.) John Henke, 20, says he believes climate change is happening — and that humans are playing a role.

At first blush, these young men might seem like progressive voters. But they’re not: All four voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 and, for those old enough, in 2016 as well.

They’re all also part of Generation Z, America’s youngest adult generation, which is more ethnically and racially diverse than any generation before it.⁴⁹ And similar to millennials, who are now in their mid-20s to early 40s, members of Gen Z are more liberal on a number of key social issues than older generations. According to Pew’s 2020 verified voter survey, millennials and Gen Zers also backed Biden over Trump in that year’s election, by a 20-point margin.⁵⁰

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/americans-ending-war-afghanistan-79488089

But despite the generation’s overall progressive bent, this hasn’t translated into overwhelming Democratic support. In fact, some research suggests that Gen Zers are no more likely to identify as members of the Democratic Party than registered voters in the overall electorate, and a plurality is unwilling to identify with either political party. That means that, despite their overwhelming support of Biden in the presidential election, there is also a small — but, so far, solid — chunk of Gen Z that identifies as Republican.

To better understand who these voters are and what motivates them to align with a party that has remained conservative on many issues important to Gen Z, I looked at polling data and political science for clues. I also spoke with six Gen Zers who voted for Trump and either identify as Republican or lean Republican. What I learned is that most of them break with the mainstream of the Republican Party on many social and cultural issues but solidly agree with the GOP’s stances on the economy. They also think the Democratic Party, as it is now, has veered too far left, specifically with its stances on immigration, gun control and race.

“When it comes to Gen-Z Republicans, I think folks need to understand that we don’t fit neatly in a box, and I think that boggles the media,” said Javon Price, 23, a self-described conservative Republican who spoke in his personal capacity but works as a policy analyst for the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit group allied with Trump that promotes the former president’s policies. “We’re normal everyday people like everybody else, and political beliefs aren’t the end-all be-all.”

Republicans in this generation are more likely to take what they call “libertarian” approaches to social issues like same-sex marriage, and surveys show that these young Republicans are more likely to care about “cancel culture” than the electorate as a whole. They’re also overwhelmingly white and male. But despite being more liberal on social issues than older Republicans, most of the young Republicans I spoke with admitted to me that they don’t see themselves ever leaving the GOP. And if Trump runs for president in 2024 and wins his party’s primary, most also said they would vote for him again. Even so, many of them are not too far behind their Democratic peers on a number of social issues, according to polling analysis as well as interviews with these young voters.

Recent polling from Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape found that both Democrats and Republicans in this generation, ages 18-24, have favorable opinions of people who are LGBTQ (83 percent of young Democrats have a favorable view compared with 66 percent of young Republicans) and support legalizing marijuana (67 percent of young Democrats compared to 55 percent of young Republicans). The gap between Democratic and Republican Gen Zers is also fairly small when it comes to separating children from their parents at the border when their parents could be prosecuted for illegally entering the U.S., with just 7 percent of young Democrats and 26 percent of young Republicans agreeing with that policy.

The fact that young Republicans aren’t that different from their Democratic peers on some social issues is largely on par with what academic research and studies from Pew have found, though not all social issues were as cut and dried. For example, even though two-thirds of Gen Zers want stricter gun measures, according to Rasmussen Reports survey data, young Republicans are still far less likely than young Democrats to want to ban assault rifles, according to Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape. One of the Republican men I spoke with said gun rights had even become a barometer for how he judges political candidates. “If you know somebody’s opinion on gun rights, you can make a pretty educated guess as to where they stand on every other issue — even unrelated ones,” Stephan Kapustka, 22, told me.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/buy-2020-census-good-news-democrats-nate-silver-79467274

Abortion may be another issue like this. Although the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape polling showed that a majority of Gen Zers from each party said they believe at least some abortions should be permitted — and only 16 percent of young Democrats and 33 percent of young Republicans said abortions should never be permitted — the issue divided the men I spoke with. For example, Price, who voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, is strongly anti-abortion. Regarding his childhood neighborhood outside of Newark, New Jersey, he told me, “I could more easily find a Planned Parenthood than I could a park.” Henke, who is Christian, agreed; during a separate phone call, he said he used to take a more hands-off stance toward abortion but switched to an anti-abortion stance after talking with his pastor. Matthew C., meanwhile, told me he’s pro-abortion rights. Overall, few Republicans want to outright ban abortion, but this is one social issue where young Republicans appear to be closer to the opinions of their elders in the party.

But the biggest gaps between Gen-Z Republicans and Democrats aren’t on social issues. It’s how they view issues of economic and foreign policy. And for many young Republicans, that’s what’s driving their support of the GOP. For example, Gen-Z Democrats are way more likely than Gen-Z Republicans to support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour (79 percent for young Democrats compared with 43 percent for young Republicans), cutting taxes for families that make less than $100,000 a year (69 percent compared with 43 percent) and raising taxes for families that make over $600,000 a year (70 percent compared with 38 percent).

“A lot of us are very financially motivated, and maybe that’s because we grew up in the Great Recession,” Henke told me. “I was raised to be financially responsible because my parents started with pretty much nothing and now they’re both pretty successful. They’ve taught me and my family to be fiscally responsible, and that’s the biggest thing that motivates me.” 

Indeed, even though the Democratic Party is closer in line with where some of these Gen-Z Republicans stand on social issues, it might be economic policy — plus opposition to abortion and gun control — that has a bigger hold on them. Some of Trump’s more populist messaging around “draining the swamp” has also resonated with them. 

“[Trump] made me really proud to be an American and made me feel like the American Dream is alive and well,” Luke T. said. “He did a really good job of grabbing hold of people’s frustration with the establishment, and I liked that he was an outsider, rather than a traditional Republican.” 

But it’s not just the economy and Trump that has made these young voters loyal to the GOP. Kapustka told me he’s open to more left-leaning views on social issues, but that he’s had conversations with his fellow Republican friends who think that “the Democrats don’t really care about them because they’re evil, white males or something like that.” 

Data and interviews with Gen-Z Republicans illustrate a cap on young Republicans’ more socially liberal views, particularly as it pertains to recent political fights over “cancel culture” and how socially progressive or “woke” Americans should be. For instance, polling from Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape found that over half (55 percent) of Gen-Z Republicans believe we should end the practice of shaming people who say things that aren’t politically correct, versus 38 percent of Gen-Z Democrats who believe the same. This could be related to research that suggests Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that they self-censor their political views due to fear of judgment for what they believe. “Shutting people down or attacking them on Twitter seems to be a new thing,” Matthew C. told me. “And I think ‘cancel culture’ is horrible. I grew up around social media and the internet, and they both can be very toxic.”

Indeed, political science research suggests that young voters are shaped by what happens in their late adolescence and early adult years, so if there is a fear among younger Republicans that voicing their political views risks retribution, it could explain in part why recent GOP culture-war issues have played such a role in shaping these voters’ political consciousness. 

To be sure, there’s still a lot we don’t know about Gen Z as a whole because they make up less than 10 percent of the electorate. Moreover, most of what we do know is limited to how they voted in the past one or two presidential races. But it’s possible that, over time, Gen-Z Republicans won’t be a political minority. There’s already some evidence that today’s younger liberals might get more conservative as they get older, and roughly one-third of Gen-Z voters who don’t identify as Republican said that they would consider voting for a moderate Republican candidate, according to a June 2020 survey by the Niskanen Center. For now, though, young Republicans are just a small slice of the electorate, but as long as the party sticks to its roots — or, its founding principles of small government and free enterprise — it’s unlikely these voters are going anywhere anytime soon.

Meredith Conroy contributed research.

CORRECTION (Aug. 24, 2021, 6:09 p.m.): An earlier version of the first chart in this article said there was a +23.2 point gap between Republicans and Democrats ages 18-24 on whether they supported capping carbon emissions to combat climate change. The gap was actually +33.3 points.

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/bidens-approval-rating-fallen-fivethirtyeight-politics-podcast-79388894

Watch: https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/video/cuomo-resigning-now-fivethirtyeight-politics-podcast-79389991

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted full approval to the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer. It's been fully approved for people aged 16 and older, and is still authorized for emergency use for kids ages 12-16.

"The FDA's approval of this vaccine is a milestone as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. While this and other vaccines have met the FDA's rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product," said Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D. "While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated. Today's milestone puts us one step closer to altering the course of this pandemic in the U.S."

The vaccine will be marketed under the name "Comirnaty." There's a reason for that name, as explained by trade publication Fierce Pharma: "Comirnaty mashes up community, immunity, mRNA and COVID—pretty much everything that could fit into the moniker for the world's most high-profile product at the moment."

"The name is coined from Covid-19 immunity, and then embeds the mRNA in the middle, which is the platform technology, and as a whole the name is meant to evoke the word community," said Scott Piergrossi, Brand Institute president of operations and communications. Brand Institute is the place where drug names are thought up. The generic name of the drug is tozinameran. But what really matters if it will get people to take the damned thing.

The Pentagon had already announced it would mandate all members of the armed forces get the vaccine. That was reiterated Monday following the drug's approval, and the deadline for getting the first shots could be moved up from the original mid-September date. Refusing to get the vaccine could result in a court martial.

Will all the people who've been using the excuse that the vaccine is "experimental" now line up? Don't count on it. "It will provide an additional nudge but not make a huge difference,” said Jesse Goodman, a former FDA chief scientist who is a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Georgetown University in an interview with The Washington Post. Not all public health experts are as pessimistic. "A full approval takes away that 'Oh, it's experimental’ kind of language. For some people, it might make a difference. They will feel more confident and comfortable," University of Maryland School of Public Health professor Sandra C. Quinn told the Post. Dr. Quinn has studied public acceptance of vaccines.

What the authorization probably will lead to is more employers requiring the vaccine, and more vaccine requirements for colleges and universities, entertainment venues, and commercial spaces. New York City schools are going first.

Of course, all those people who have hit upon horse dewormer as the miracle cure for COVID-19 probably won't be swayed. The neigh-sayers are getting all the encouragement they need from Fox News (where else), which responded to the approval complete predictably. "FDA just giving full approval to Pfizer's COVID vaccine, it's the first vaccine to get that full approval and in record time too, that has critics asking if the process was rushed. Was it?"

Yeah, the same Fox News that couldn't get enough of "Operation Warp Speed” and has been falling all over itself to give Trump credit and tout its success.

Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments

In the U.S. healthcare system, "hospitals are charging patients wildly different amounts for the same basic services," reports the New York Times — citing an investigation into medical care costs at 60 major hospitals. This year the U.S. government ordered hospitals to publish complete lists of the prices they negotiate with private insurers, "and it provides numerous examples of major health insurers — some of the world's largest companies, with billions in annual profits — negotiating surprisingly unfavorable rates for their customers." In fact America's government-run Medicare health insurance for senior citizens is negotiating much lower rates than the privately-insured patients are getting, the Times points out — sometimes paying just 10% of what the major health plans are paying. "In many cases, insured patients are getting prices that are higher than they would if they pretended to have no coverage at all..." Until now, consumers had no way to know before they got the bill what prices they and their insurers would be paying. Some insurance companies have refused to provide the information when asked by patients and the employers that hired the companies to provide coverage. This secrecy has allowed hospitals to tell patients that they are getting "steep" discounts, while still charging them many times what a public program like Medicare is willing to pay. And it has left insurers with little incentive to negotiate well. The peculiar economics of health insurance also help keep prices high. Customers judge insurance plans based on whether their preferred doctors and hospitals are covered, making it hard for an insurer to walk away from a bad deal. The insurer also may not have a strong motivation to, given that the more that is spent on care, the more an insurance company can earn. Federal regulations limit insurers' profits to a percentage of the amount they spend on care. And in some plans involving large employers, insurers are not even using their own money. The employers pay the medical bills, and give insurers a cut of the costs in exchange for administering the plan.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Texas is breaking records with its increasing surge in COVID-19 cases. The state currently makes up approximately 25% of all new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. Hospitals are reporting shortages of ICU beds as the delta variant infects the unvaccinated community eight times faster than other strains, officials said according to The Texas Tribune. But of course, instead of addressing the problem, encouraging vaccinations, and enforcing safety measures like wearing masks, some Texas officials are just doing what they do best—blaming others.

In speaking about Texas’s rise in COVID-19 cases Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick blamed Black Americans for the surge during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Aug. 19. Of course, he also had to distribute the blame away from Republicans to Democrats too.

"Most of the numbers are with the unvaccinated and the Democrats like to blame Republicans on that," Patrick said. "Well, the biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. The last time I checked over 90 percent of them vote for Democrats in their major cities and major counties, so it's up to the Democrats to get, just as it's up to Republicans to try to get as many people vaccinated."

Patrick ended his statements by claiming that while he respects the rights of people who don't want to get the vaccine and it won't be forced, nothing is being done to the African American community "that has a significantly high number of unvaccinated people."

Basically, Patrick expects some action to be taken, yet has never acknowledged the risk anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers pose during their protests which have repeatedly been violent towards the public and health care professionals.

In response to Patrick’s ignorant comments, Stanford Medical researcher Jorge A. Caballero provided data contradicting his statements. "Per the Census Bureau, 50% of unvaccinated adults in Texas are White (non-Hispanic) There are 3 unvaccinated White adults for every 1 unvaccinated Black adult in Texas 1 in 3 #COVID19 cases in Texas have been among White individuals Oh yeah, and Dan Patrick is a racist."

Others noted that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has blocked Black mayors, including those of Houston and Dallas, from implementing CDC recommended COVID-19 regulations, yet has “the audacity to blame Black people for the spread of COVID in his state.”

In Texas, conditions have gotten so bad elective and non-urgent medical procedures are once again being delayed to free up beds for COVID-19 patients. But despite the strain of the state’s hospitals and his own positive diagnosis, Abbott stays consistent in his views against implementing safety measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. Abbot has not only downplayed the pandemic since the first case of COVID-19 but has barred officials from imposing mask mandates.

But this isn’t the first time Patrick has spoken about Texas’s high COVID-19 case count or blamed others instead of taking responsibility. It’s just ironic he blames others while supporting anti-mask parents. Speaking to Fox News on Aug. 6, Patrik addressed the controversy behind school mask mandates alongside criticizing the Biden Administration.

"I have six, soon to be seven grandchildren and four of them are in elementary school," Patrick said. "I'm not going to tell my son and my daughter-in-law what to do with their children regarding masks. I'm not going to tell my daughter and son-in-law what to do about their children and their masks. That's up to my daughter and my son to make that decision based on a lot of factors."

While Patrick expects Democrats to encourage individuals to get vaccinated, he doesn’t even believe in telling his own grandchildren to wear masks—even though masks have been proven to significantly lower the spread of COVID-19.

"So if I'm not going to tell my own son and daughter... why would I tell total strangers out there? We have five and a half million kids in public schools. That is more kids in school than half the states have people, I think. I'm not going to tell the parents of Texas, this is what you must do, and neither should the Department of Education or the Biden administration,” Patrick continued.  

He then went on to blame the Biden administration for their lack of border control, alleging that COVID-19 was spreading in the state due to migrants at the border.

Across the country, more young adults and children are being admitted to hospitals at alarming rates and those under age 12 are not even eligible for the vaccine, putting them at greater risk. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), more than 121,000 COVID-19 cases in children have been reported in the week ending Aug. 12, representing 18% of all new cases nationwide.

As a result of Abbott’s mask ban, some Texas school districts even pushed back against Abbott’s anti-mask mandate in order to keep children safe through a clever loophole: making masks part of the dress code, Daily Kos reported. This week, Abbott withdrew that executive order in the face of increasing, unmanageable dissent from nearly every district in the state. 

Despite previous data claiming that children are less likely to experience COVID-19 symptoms, new studies have found just how dangerous it can be for children to contract COVID-19 and how rapidly they can spread it. Instead of blaming Black folk for the virus and expanding on his racist claims, Patrick needs to take a look at reality and evaluate his own party’s stance. Without supporting safety regulations to stop the curb of the novel coronavirus, Patrick himself is encouraging a surge.

As of this report, less than 55% of Texans over 12 years old are fully vaccinated, data compiled by the Houston Chronicle found. This number lags behind the national rate of 60%.  

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An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this month, Apple unveiled a system that would scan iPhone and iPad photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The announcement sparked a civil liberties firestorm, and Apple's own employees have been expressing alarm. The company insists reservations about the system are rooted in "misunderstandings." We disagree. We wrote the only peer-reviewed publication on how to build a system like Apple's -- and we concluded the technology was dangerous. We're not concerned because we misunderstand how Apple's system works. The problem is, we understand exactly how it works. Our research project began two years ago, as an experimental system to identify CSAM in end-to-end-encrypted online services. As security researchers, we know the value of end-to-end encryption, which protects data from third-party access. But we're also horrified that CSAM is proliferating on encrypted platforms. And we worry online services are reluctant to use encryption without additional tools to combat CSAM. We sought to explore a possible middle ground, where online services could identify harmful content while otherwise preserving end-to-end encryption. The concept was straightforward: If someone shared material that matched a database of known harmful content, the service would be alerted. If a person shared innocent content, the service would learn nothing. People couldn't read the database or learn whether content matched, since that information could reveal law enforcement methods and help criminals evade detection. But we encountered a glaring problem. Our system could be easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship. The design wasn't restricted to a specific category of content; a service could simply swap in any content-matching database, and the person using that service would be none the wiser. About the authors of this report: Jonathan Mayer is an assistant professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University. He previously served as technology counsel to then-Sen. Kamala D. Harris and as chief technologist of the Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau. Anunay Kulshrestha is a graduate researcher at the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy and a PhD candidate in the department of computer science.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Carly Tennes  Published: August 17th, 2021 

An anonymous reader writes: Apple's NeuralHash algorithm (PDF) -- the one it's using for client-side scanning on the iPhone -- has been reverse-engineered. Turns out it was already in iOS 14.3, and someone noticed: Early tests show that it can tolerate image resizing and compression, but not cropping or rotations. We also have the first collision: two images that hash to the same value. The next step is to generate innocuous images that NeuralHash classifies as prohibited content. This was a bad idea from the start, and Apple never seemed to consider the adversarial context of the system as a whole, and not just the cryptography.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeopardy! just hired a new host, but not one without controversy. Mike Richards, a former executive producer of the show who is set to succeed Alex Trebek as host, issued an apology to The Ringer Wednesday after sexist comments he made resurfaced. According to The Ringer, Richards "repeatedly used offensive language and disparaged women's bodies,” in addition to offensive comments about Jewish and poor people in episodes from his podcast The Randumb Show in 2013 to 2014.

"It is humbling to confront a terribly embarrassing moment of misjudgment, thoughtlessness, and insensitivity from nearly a decade ago," Richards told The Ringer. "Looking back now, there is no excuse, of course, for the comments I made on this podcast and I am deeply sorry.” Richards added that the podcast was “intended to be a series of irreverent conversations between longtime friends who had a history of joking around.”

The Ringer reviewed all 41 episodes of the podcast before the recordings were pulled offline Tuesday. In one of the episodes, Richards allegedly claimed that one-piece swimsuits made women “look really frumpy and overweight.” He even encouraged co-host Beth Triffon to audition for Taiwanese roles because of her height and said, “Ixnay on the ose-nay … She’s not ew-Jay,” during a discussion about big noses. In another episode, he called Triffon a “booth ho” and “booth slut” after she spoke about working as a model at a trade show. Richards’ had no boundaries—he compared women’s Halloween costumes to prostitute outfits, commented on former female co-workers’ appearances, and mocked Triffon's economic status.

But that’s not all: Outside of his comments about women, Richards also made disparaging remarks about Haiti. In an episode in which Triffon mentioned problems with her apartment, Richards reportedly said: “Does Beth live, like, in Haiti?”

“Doesn’t it sound like that?” Richards continued. “Like, the urine smell, the woman in the muumuu, the stray cats.”

According to The Ringer, the episodes were pulled shortly after the outlet asked Sony and Richards’ agent about the show. In response to the outlet's inquiries, Sony claimed it was not aware of the podcast until the comments were brought forward.

Richards’ apology came moments after.

“Even with the passage of time, it’s more than clear that my attempts to be funny and provocative were not acceptable, and I have removed the episodes,” he said in his apology statement. “My responsibilities today as a father, husband, and a public personality who speaks to many people through my role on television means I have substantial and serious obligations as a role model, and I intend to live up to them.”

The Ringer’s report, published Wednesday, follows other controversy surrounding Richards. According to Variety, Richards has been involved in multiple discrimination lawsuits as an executive producer on The Price Is Right.

While Richards denied any wrongdoing, the lawsuits alleged that he had mistreated female staff members, including constantly making insensitive remarks to a pregnant employee.

Additionally, a suit filed in 2010 by Brandi Cochran said that Richards insisted his input be taken into consideration for what show models should wear.

Richards decided that the models’ skirts should be shorter and said that he liked the models to look “as if they were going out on a date,” the suit said. “At his suggestion, models wore bikinis on the show more frequently.”

According to court records, his name was removed from at least two lawsuits before they were settled.

Additionally, fans have questioned how much influence he had in the host selection of Jeopardy! as executive producer of the show since May 2020.

According to The Washington Post, Richards began his career in television in 1977. Years later, after failing to replace Bob Barker as host of The Price Is Right, Richards was given a job as the show’s co-executive producer. He later worked on Let’s Make a Deal, and then moved on to become executive producer of both Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.

Jeopardy! begins taping its new season with Richards as the host on Thursday. 

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President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a plan to require Covid-19 vaccinations for staff in federally funded nursing homes — and withhold money for facilities that don't comply with the policy.

It's the first time the White House has used the threat of holding back federal funding to boost vaccination rates and will impact roughly 15,000 nursing homes employing 1.3 million people. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid will issue an emergency regulation in September, making staff vaccination a condition of funding.

While Biden officials for months have encouraged vaccinations and backed states’ various incentives for shot recipients, the coming mandate is a significant pivot toward penalizing facilities without requirements.

"More than 130,000 residents of nursing homes have sadly, sadly, over the period of this virus, passed away. At the same time, vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country," Biden said in remarks at the White House. "With this announcement, I'm using the power of the federal government as a payer of health care costs to make sure we reduce those risks to our most vulnerable seniors. These steps are all about keeping people safe and out of harm's way."

The president added that studies indicate high vaccination rates among nursing home staff are associated with 30 percent fewer Covid-19 cases among long-term care patients.

The administration floated a vaccine order earlier this month, earning swift criticism from Republicans and industry groups who warned they would oppose the plan.

Biden unveiled the order in remarks on the need for Covid-19 boosters in the broader population amid the ongoing surge fueled by the Delta variant, which now accounts for nearly every new Covid-19 case in the country. In his remarks, Biden also encouraged masking requirements at schools to keep children safe and backed broader vaccine mandates in the workplace.

The health department would still need to develop and finalize the new regulations slated for next month. Just 60 percent of nursing home staff are vaccinated against Covid-19 currently, according to the agency. Those staff serve about 1.6 million nursing home residents, many of the people most vulnerable to severe Covid-19 and the impact of emerging variants.

New Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released on Wednesday showed a significant drop in vaccine effectiveness among nursing home residents in particular, compounding concerns that the most vulnerable could remain at heightened risk as long as the virus is circulating around them.

The White House noted in a fact sheet that several states have already instituted vaccine requirements for nursing home staff "and this action will ensure consistent and equitable standards across the country."

The verdict has been rendered: The Covid-19 vaccines on offer in the United States — Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are safe and effective. The vaccines protect (to some degree) against Covid-19 infections, but they also vastly reduce the chances of serious illness, hospitalization and death following rare “breakthrough” infections. Except for a smattering of transient, relatively mild side effects and extremely rare severe reactions, what’s not to like?

Yet a sizable number of people here and abroad have refused vaccination. Only about 60 percent of Americans have gotten at least one vaccine dose. You can blame America’s lax vaccine attitude on a variety of factors, but other countries that have national health care systems, universal access to the vaccines, and cultural and class homogeneity have struggled to jab everybody, too. Take the egalitarian republic of Iceland, which has only 360,000 residents. Just 80 percent of this well-educated population of civic-mind folks have taken the shot, and the rate of vaccination has slowed, maybe even plateaued. The United Kingdom’s vaccination rate similarly has slowed, currently standing at about 70 percent, as has Canada’s, currently at about 73 percent.

In polls, people offer a grab-bag of reasons for resisting vaccination. They intend to get the jab later. They worry about the side effects, or about how quickly the vaccines were produced. They say they can’t afford to miss work if the vaccine makes them sick. They express distrust of big pharma and doctors. They regurgitate vaccine misinformation. They protest they don’t know where to get the shot. For some Americans, rejecting a vaccine could be related to their faith — 24 percent of white evangelicals told a pollster in June that they wouldn’t get vaccinated, the highest share of any religious group. And even though some 4.7 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in 183 countries so far, some people still say they’re waiting until the shots are proven safe. (Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy is not just a U.S. thing, by the way. Russia, other parts of Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East lag, too.)

Without questioning the poll respondents’ motives, we can agree that these excuses are paper-thin. Yet reluctance to get vaxxed seems to be built into many vaccination programs in the United States, including vaccines for the flu, shingles, hepatitis, polio and others. No matter what vaccine is packed into the syringe, no matter the quality of persuasion and education applied, most vaccines hit a ceiling well below 100 percent of the U.S. population. Vaccine reluctance has been with us since the first vaccine, which prevents smallpox, proved its worth in the late 18th century. During the 2019-2020 flu season, only 48 percent of U.S. adults took the flu vaccine. It’s unlikely the avoiders declined that vaccine over “trust” or because they couldn’t find it or they wanted to wait until it was proven absolutely safe. Only about 35 percent of people over age 60 have taken the recommended shingles vaccine. At least that 24 percent of white evangelicals who said they would avoid the Covid-19 vaccine are consistent on the subject: In a 2018 Pew survey, 22 percent of them said they oppose mandatory vaccinations for children. Nor is mass vaccine avoidance new. At the turn of the previous century, the Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded to combat mandatory vaccination.

Where, exactly, does this long-held indisposition come from? Wall Street Journal columnist William A. Galston surmised earlier this summer that, in the United States, an innate Republican antipathy for being told what to do informs the reluctance. He might be right, but that doesn’t explain the vaccine holdouts in Iceland or Canada, home to very few Trump Republicans. Scientists studying the vaccine conundrum have found that some people anchor their vaccine mindset to initial doubts about safety or efficacy, and that those attitudes harden even after safety and efficacy have been assured. “Once people question the safety or effectiveness of a vaccine, it can be very difficult to get them to move beyond those negative associations,” said Feng Fu, one of the study’s authors.

Setting aside mathematical models, political analysis and polls for a moment, we should remind ourselves that most vaccines are elective, designed to prevent or reduce the severity of illness in healthy people. Taking a vaccine is like buying insurance. You might never know for sure if the vaccine blocked disease, but taking it will buy you some peace of mind. Most other medicines are the opposite of elective — they’re taken by the sick in order to get better. Although there are some outliers, most people take meds without making the excuses vaccine resisters offer. Sick people demonstrate almost no “drug hesitancy.” Instead, some people who come down with serious Covid-19 infections experience a deathbed conversion and ask if they can still take the vaccine. (Sorry, it’s too late.) Of course, there’s an obvious downside to the resisters who catch Covid-19: Their infections spread the contagion. The ghoulish upside is that they also increase herd immunity.

Often, the more medicine people take, the more medicine they want. Old people, many of whom already take statins or blood thinners, have normalized drug-taking. They sense their mortality, and this knowledge makes them open to additional medical intervention. Adding a shot of Pfizer is a simple matter of adding another arrow to their medical quivers.

The million-dollar lottery appears to have failed to win vaccine hearts and minds. Can we change resisters into enthusiasts by encouraging them to become pill-popping hypochondriacs? Probably not. Convert them into enthusiasts by providing more facts? Assuredly not. Now that billions of doses safely have been served and untold thousands of lives have been saved, it’s hard to imagine a fact we could conjure that would persuade them. If visiting an intensive care unit and finding that nearly every ventilated person is unvaccinated won’t convince you to take the vaccine, what will? Should we teach fear of the virus by screening the Covid-19 equivalent of those old bloody drivers’ ed films? Lecture the anti-vaxxers for the 100th time that prevention via vaccination is superior in almost every way to treatment? Explain the cost-benefit argument one more time? Appeal to their altruism? Explain once more that, absent a vaccine, it’s less a question of whether you’re going to get a brutal case of Covid-19 than when?

Mandating vaccination for employment or for admittance to the next Foo Fighters concert will move some people on the margins, as will public shunning of the unvaccinated. But persuasion, shame, nudging and the setting of barriers have limited powers over people. Governments can enforce laws requiring vaccination, according to a Supreme Court precedent from 1905. But the punishment is only a fine, and recent rulings have upheld religious exemptions to the laws.

A world in which 100 percent of the population volunteered for Covid-19 vaccination would be the best. But that’s not the one we live in. Vaccine resistance is not solely about this particular vaccine. Don’t vax me, bro, has been the default setting for many adults since the invention of the first vaccine, and door-to-door visits and passports can’t change that. As much as the campaign to vaccinate might want to exercise zero-tolerance policies against resisters, in the absence of a law mandating universal compliance, we can’t reach that goal. Realism requires us to accept — though not salute — deadenders who have burrowed deeply into their tunnels. Some people will never surrender their lost causes.

******

Send me your best reason for not getting vaccinated: Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. My email alerts collect vaccinations the way Jay Leno collects cars. My Twitter feed seeks an Ebola vaccination. You don’t have to convince my RSS feed that it’s sick.

I used to challenge my friends—usually when we were well into our cups—to come up with the most crass and inappropriate product placement they could for a movie. Product placements are done all the time, of course. If you see a Roman centurion eating Funyuns at the foot of the cross on Golgotha, that’s almost certainly a product placement paid for by Frito-Lay. If Jesus himself tucks into a family-sized bag of Tostitos, you can take it to the bank.

What could be crasser than that, you ask? Oh, lots of things. A Bactine product placement during the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan? A BP drop-in during An Inconvenient Truth? And couldn’t Jack have been holding a Red Bull or something as he sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic at the end of Titanic? Huge missed opportunity there.

Well, nothing my or my friends’ imaginations could conjure could possibly equal this. In the middle of a tirade about Joe Biden’s efforts to get us out of our seemingly interminable Afghanistan quagmire (erm, maybe the pro-invasion, pro-Bush cheerleaders should just STFU, considering they got us into this mess in the first place), Sean Hannity not-so-subtly dropped a MyPillow plug. 

The Sean Hannity Show, via Media Matters:

SEAN HANNITY (RADIO HOST): How would you like to be in Kabul today, as an American, and you can't get to the airport? Where are you thinking your life is headed? If you're one of those family members, I bet you're not sleeping. I don't even think My Pillow can do it. MyPillow.com. That's where I go. I fall asleep faster, I stay asleep longer. These are going to be a lot of sleepless nights for so many of our fellow Americans. We've got to get them home.

Fucking weird, huh?

Even weirder is that this was actually the second day in a row he shilled for one of his advertisers while discussing the fraught situation in Afghanistan.

The Daily Beast:

During Monday afternoon’s program, for instance, he urged his listeners to call into his show to discuss Afghanistan before seamlessly transitioning into a commercial for a cellphone company.

“There is a stampede, not only out of Afghanistan, but a stampede away from high prices, overpriced service from the big carriers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. The average family making the switch to PureTalk,” Hannity casually said before continuing on with his on-air pitch for the service.

Really, Sean? Are your sponsors so desperate for airtime that they want to be associated with this 20-year rolling disaster? Could I write some of these drop-ins for you? How about, “I zealously promoted two reckless, aimless military campaigns that killed tens of thousands of people, wasted trillions of dollars, and left us no better off than when we started. How do I sleep at night? MyPillow pillows and mattress toppers! MyPillow, the pillow company for unrepentant chickenhawk warmongers.”

By the way, Pillow Man Mike Lindell’s brie has now slid so far off his cracker it’s oozing its way to the Earth’s molten inner core. Now he thinks one of the reporters at his cyber symposium was an Antifa leader because he wore a protective face mask. And he still thinks the Supreme Court will vote to “take down” the 2020 election sometime soon … ish.

He was also viciously attacked by a man with a tangerine.

So, yeah, Lindell probably needs all the pillow plugs he can get. Of course, that doesn’t make Hannity’s behavior any less silly. Or weird. Or flat-out noxious and revolting. But why would he change his shtick now?

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Just $12.96 for the pack of 4! Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Selling fake IDs seems to be a thing of the past. Now, some Americans are instead selling fake vaccine cards. Months after the first case of an American prosecuted for selling counterfeit vaccine cards comes a similar (yet different) case. Instead of selling fake cards, an Illinois man decided to sell real ones—and for cheap. A pharmacist has been arrested and charged with selling authentic Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 vaccination cards on eBay, federal prosecutors said Tuesday, according to WTTW News.

According to a statement from the Justice Department, 34-year-old Tangtang Zhao, a Chicago-based pharmacist, sold at least 125 authentic CDC vaccination cards. He had access to them through his job and sold them for approximately $10 per card between March 25 to April 11. He now faces up to 120 years in prison for illegal sales because each transaction Zhao completed counts as one count of theft of government property punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

While federal agents did not identify which pharmacy Zhao worked for, an online profile obtained by WTTW News found that Zhao was a pharmacist for Walgreens in South Chicago. He appeared in court Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheila M. Finnegan of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

“Knowingly selling COVID vaccination cards to unvaccinated individuals puts millions of Americans at risk of serious injury or death,” Emmerson Buie Jr. of the FBI’s Chicago Field Office said. “To put such a small price on the safety of our nation is not only an insult to those who are doing their part in the fight to stop COVID-19, but a federal crime with serious consequences.”

Zhao's arrest is the latest in a series of arrests related to fake, forged, or illicitly obtained COVID-19 vaccination cards. Earlier this month, two travelers were arrested after using fake vaccination documents to enter Canada from the U.S., in the first case of traveling with fake vaccination cards and COVID-19 test results. Additionally, last week U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized a shipment from China with more than 3,000 counterfeit vaccine cards.

Concerns over fake vaccine cards are increasing as some cities across the country implement proof of vaccination for indoor activities like dining at restaurants and going to bars. On Monday, New Orleans became the first U.S. city to enforce a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for public indoor activities; New York City followed by enacting a similar vaccine mandate on Tuesday. A vaccine mandate will also take effect in San Francisco on Friday.

As the demand for proof of cards increases, those who refuse to get vaccinated are looking into fake cards.

Of course, instead of acknowledging the risks posed by fake vaccination cards and the spread of COVID-19 that follows, some people (like Fox News's Brian Kilmeade) make ignorant comparisons and promote this trend of obtaining fake vaccine cards. It comes as no surprise, though, given Fox News’ constant downplaying of the virus since the start of the pandemic.

The FBI issued a warning regarding fake vaccination cards earlier this year, noting that not only does it increase the risk of COVID-19 but it is illegal to both buy or sell the fraudulent cards, which could be charged as forgery. 

"Stealing and selling COVID-19 vaccination cards is inexcusable and will not be tolerated.” Lamont Pugh III, special agent in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said, according to CBS News. "Fraudsters who engage in such unlawful conduct undermine efforts to address the pandemic and profit at the public's expense," Pugh added. "The health and safety of the public is our top priority, and we encourage people to obtain vaccination cards from their administering medical providers."

Police reform negotiations between Republican and Democratic lawmakers no longer include conversation on qualified immunity, Politico reported, quoting three sources who have knowledge of the situation but wish to remain anonymous. Changes to the legal protection for police officers are off the table, the political news site reported.

But the details in a request for the Supreme Court to review a lower court’s decision on a Denver case exemplify exactly why qualified immunity is not a point people of color can afford to compromise on. The legal doctrine frees individual government officials and police officers from guilt in civil suits unless they have violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right. The Denver case calls on  justices to examine the qualified immunity doctrine’s application when officers intentionally disregard their training to retaliate against a person for filming them, and that’s exactly what Denver police officers are accused of doing when someone recorded them beating David Flores because he refused to remove a sock from his mouth and slamming to the ground his pregnant girlfriend who tried to help Flores in the 2014 incident. The officers suspected that the sock contained drugs, according to the factual background in the review request.

The facts laid out in the request of the Supreme Court maintain:

“On August 14, 2014, respondent John Bauer, a detective in the Denver Police Department, saw what he thought was a drug transaction involving a silver car. He radioed for backup and followed the car to a parking lot. Exiting his vehicle, Detective Bauer then announced “police.” Pet. App. 8a. When the driver of the car, David Flores, did not immediately show his hands, Bauer “pulled him from the car and pinned him against it.” Id.

As respondent Sergeant Russell Bothwell arrived to assist, Flores “removed a sock from his waistband and stuffed it in his mouth.” Pet. App. 8a. There was no indication that Flores was armed or dangerous. But the officers assumed the sock contained drugs, so they ordered him to “spit it out.” Id. The officers then “fell to the ground” with Flores as they tried to remove the sock. Id.

Petitioner Levi Frasier was observing this tussle from nearby in the parking lot. Detective Bauer initially “asked him for help” getting the sock out ofFlores’s mouth. Pet. App. 8a. Petitioner briefly assented. But as other officers arrived, they asked petitioner to step back. Petitioner “moved about ten feet away and started video-recording the event using his tablet computer.” Id. Nothing he did interfered with the officers’ actions. SA_101, 111; A_268.

What petitioner recorded was dramatic. WhileFlores refused to release the sock from his mouth, one of the officers pinned his forearm on Flores’s head.Another officer pinned Flores’s arms behind his back.Respondent Officer Charles Jones then punchedFlores “in the face six times in rapid succession,” Pet.App. 8a; SA_75. As petitioner later described it: “[T]he punches were punishing, but what must have hurt even more was the cement hitting Mr. Flores back in the face. . . . [I]t seemed like after one strike, [OfficerJones] could have stopped and, . . . manually pulled out the sock.” SA_75. “There wasn’t a need for the second or the third, for sure the fourth, fifth, or sixth.Each one seemed to get more violent and powerful.” Id.

Flores’s girlfriend, Mayra Lazos-Guerrero, who was seven-and-one-half-months’ pregnant, began screaming and approached the officers. “Officer Jones pushed her away, and then Officer Evans grabbed her ankle and pulled her off her feet.” Pet. App. 9a. She fell onto her stomach and face, hitting the pavement.

As petitioner recorded the violent interaction,Sergeant Bothwell called out, “Camera!” Pet. App. 9a. All of the officers had attended the Denver PoliceDepartment’s trainings explaining that citizens have a First Amendment right to record the police while performing their duties in public. Id. 66a, 70a. And they all were aware that this constitutional rule“protected [Frasier’s] right to record them.” Id. 13a,66a, 70a. Nevertheless, as petitioner stopped filming and returned to his parked car, Officer Evans followed him “and asked him to bring his identification and the video of the arrest to the officer’s patrol car.” Id. 9a.

Petitioner brought his driver’s license, but not his computer tablet, over to the patrol car. He was afraid that if he let the officers have access to the video, they would make it “disappear.” Id. 9a. As petitioner explained, “I had just witnessed an officer that I didn’t feel had the power to be able to strike somebody in the face, and I was the only one with video evidence of his wrongs.” SA_33, 78. Officer Evans continued to ask for the video. Gesturing to the back seat of his patrol car, he told petitioner, “Well, we could do this the easy way or we could do this the hard way.” Pet. App. 9a. When petitioner still did not respond, Officer Evans asked him to fill out a witness statement form. Upon further prodding from Officer Evans to disclose whether he filmed the incident, petitioner wrote (falsely) in his statement that “he took only a Snapchat photo of the arrest.” Id. 10a. He added that he “no longer had a copy” of the photo on his “phone” because “Snapchat removes [footage] as soon as you send [it].” Id.(alterations in court of appeals opinion).

Officer Evans told petitioner to go get his phone.As petitioner returned from his car, another officer said, “That’s not it” and indicated that his recording device had been larger. A_1014-15. At that point, all five of the officers encircled petitioner and demanded the video. Believing he would be taken to jail if he refused any longer, petitioner retrieved his tablet. Pet.App. 11a. Officer Evans then “grabbed the tablet out of [petitioner’s] hands” and began searching for the video of the arrest. Petitioner objected that this was improper without a warrant, but Officer Evans continued to scan files on the tablet. Id. He then announced to the other officers, “I don’t see the video in here. I can’t find it.” Id. Another officer responded,“As long as there’s no video, it’s okay. . . . [I]f there’s just a photo, that’s fine, as long as there’s no video.”Id.; SA_89, 96. The officers then gave petitioner back his tablet and his driver’s license, and he left.

Mr. Flores was taken away in an ambulance, bleeding from the back of his head. The record does not disclose the extent of his injuries.3. After the incident, petitioner provided a copy of his video to the Denver Police Department and Fox31News Denver. The media outlet aired an investigative report on the officers’ use of force and produced several follow-up reports.2 After the incident was publicized, the Department changed its use-of-force policy to prohibit officers from using “physical force solely to stop a person from swallowing a substance or to retrieve evidence from the person’s mouth.””

Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute, tweeted about the case: "I've seen plenty of no-brainer cert petitions in my day, but this one—from a CA10 decision granting QI to cops who were specifically trained that there's a constitutional right to record police in public that they mustn't interfere with—takes the cake."

He said in a Twitter thread that modern qualified immunity doesn't have "a shred of legitimacy," but Republican legislators, represented in congressional negotiations by Sen. Tim Scott, would obviously beg to differ. Scott, Sen. Cory Booker, and Rep. Karen Bass have been leading already stalled negotiations on police reform for months as law enforcement unions repeatedly caused the legislators to backtrack. Law enforcement officials want any changes to the qualified immunity doctrine stripped from any police reform package, and progressives have advocated that the doctrine must be gutted to hold officers accountable for their brutality.

“We compromise, we die,” Rep. Cori Bush tweeted in June. “If we compromise on qualified immunity, police officers will continue to kill Black people with impunity. The provision to end qualified immunity must remain in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. I won't vote for it without it.”

Bush, the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress, worked as a triage nurse during unrest in Missouri following the death of Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014 in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Brown, an 18-year-old Black man, was shot at least six times and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Despite the common narrative that Brown was suspected of robbing a convenience store, officers admitted they had no knowledge Brown was a robbery suspect and had only stopped him for walking in the street.

When Bush was asked in April whether she would vote for a version of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a comprehensive police reform bill, that didn’t include changes to the qualified immunity doctrine, she said flat out she isn’t prepared to support that. “St. Louis did not send me here—St. Louis being number 1 for police murder in the country per capita and has been that way for years—the people did not send me here to save their lives by falling down on the one thing that we needed the most, no.”

House Majority Whip James Clyburn faced criticism in May for being all too willing to compromise. “I will never sacrifice good on the altar of perfect,” he said in a CNN interview when asked about qualified immunity. “I just won’t do that.”

Caroline Anderegg, a spokesperson for Scott, said in a statement Politico received that "the senator will stay at the negotiating table as long as progress is being made" and that negotiators "will continue to work through August toward finding an agreement.” RELATED: Shocking! Negotiations on police reform bill hampered by the very people who need to reform

RELATED: James Clyburn is wrong on this one. Qualified immunity must be tossed out with other trash

The Republican-led Maricopa County Board of Supervisors filed a financial claim Wednesday seeking $2.8 million from the GOP-led Arizona State Senate for the cost of replacing elections equipment compromised during the Republicans’  sham audit.

The Notice of Claim sent to Arizona Senate president Karen Fann by Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel explains that Fann signed an agreement indemnifying the county "for losses it might incur as a result of transferring its materials to the Senate."

But after the county delivered its election equipment to the Senate, the Senate allowed Cyber Ninjas and other firms to handle, examine, and test it. 

"None of these firms were accredited by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission to test or 'audit' elections equipment," Adel wrote. "Because the County’s equipment was compromised while in the Senate’s control, the equipment was rendered unusable not only in Arizona but in every jurisdiction." He continued that election and cybersecurity experts, including those from the Department of Homeland Security, have agreed that "no methods exist" to ensure the integrity of the machines for use in future elections.

In other words, Fann, your wacko 'ninja' team totaled our equipment. Time to pay up.

The letter includes some nice flourishes, including hailing Fann as a "sophisticated businesswoman" and "distinguished public servant" while turning the knife.

But bottom line, it concludes: "The County is willing to settle all its claims against the Senate for a sum certain of two million, eight hundred thirty-three thousand, two hundred twenty dollars ($2,833,220.00), which is the cost to the County's taxpayers to replace the equipment that was compromised and rendered useless while in the Senate’s custody and control.”

Adel gave the Senate 60 days to take the county up on the offer, the time period required by Arizona state law, according to KPNX NBC reporter Brahm Resnik. After that, the county will likely sue.

Giving the public a voice? Great. Allowing a small minority to seize power it couldn't win otherwise? Not so much.

Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell on Tuesday stood on the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of the brutal Bloody Sunday beatings of civil rights marchers on March 7, 1965, to formally introduce the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in the House. She was joined by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate. The House is going to take up the bill next week, during its short August session.

"Today, old battles have become new again as we face the most pernicious assault on the right to vote in generations," Sewell said Tuesday. "It's clear: federal oversight is urgently needed." A House committee also held a hearing on the bill this week in preparation for its introduction. Assistant attorney general for civil rights Kristen Clarke told the panel, "We have seen an upsurge in changes to voting laws that make it more difficult for minority citizens to vote and that is even before we confront a round of decennial redistricting where jurisdictions may draw new maps that have the purpose or effect of diluting or retrogressing minority voting strength."

Why yes, we have. That's thanks to the decision by John Roberts' Supreme Court majority in the 2013 Shelby v. Holder case to gut the Voting Rights Act by ending federal oversight of states and localities with a history of voter suppression. Under the VRA, states and localities had to get approval from the Department of Justice to change registration and voting laws. Once that provision was struck down, all hell broke loose in the war on voting. This session, the extremist Supreme Court struck down the last part of the law that had any real teeth in stopping voter suppression.

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Restoring the VRA is essential to restoring democracy, as is the further move of passing the For the People Act. Republican lawmakers across the nation are diabolically creative and brutal in passing new voter suppression laws. The redistricting process now underway is also going to be dominated by Republicans in much of the nation, and will further cement minority rule/. That is, unless gerrymandering is ended at the federal level. That's one thing that the For the People Act would do.

Passing this legislation in the House will happen. It won't in the Senate—not without an end to the legislative filibuster. The only Republican who has given any indication that she would vote with Democrats to restore voting rights is Alaska's Lisa Murkowski. The remaining necessary nine GOP votes simply doesn't exist, whatever Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema try to tell you. That's the first institutional hurdle that has to be overcome to restore simple representative democracy in this nation.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is taking another run at it. Before the Senate left for August recess, he set up a vote on the For the People Act as one of the first actions for the Senate's return in September. "Voting rights, voting rights, will be the first matter of legislative business when the Senate returns to session in September. Our democracy demands no less," Schumer said. He should adopt a new mantra: "Filibuster reform, filibuster reform, filibuster reform," because without it, voting rights ain't happening.

The filibuster isn't the only institutional obstacle to voting rights, however. Because this Supreme Court, with its six conservatives (and at least four extremists) will likely look for any excuse at all to strike these laws down. That's one reason it's taken this long for the House to move on the Lewis Voting Rights legislation. They've been building the legislative history for it to try to make it bullet-proof in the courts.

"Whichever way congress would go in trying to amend the Voting Rights Act and reestablish some form of preclearance, it's going to have a Supreme Court where at least some members are going to be extremely skeptical of congressional power in this area," Rick Hasen, law professor at University of California, Irvine told CNN. That's what the House has been attempting to answer.

They've amassed thousands of pages of testimony and documents to demonstrate that restoring preclearance is necessary in the face of current racial voting discrimination. "We're putting it together in a report so that next time there's a lawsuit, they can't throw it out on these grounds that the data are old, that we're basing it on something that is outdated," a House Administration Committee staff member said. "Because we've gone out and collected evidence and testimony—thousands of pages of it." The House, at least, recognizes that they have an actual enemy in the Supreme Court. So far President Biden and a Senate Democratic majority haven't accepted that.

That's the second big institutional change that has to happen: The Supreme Court has to be reformed. The easiest and probably most essential means for that is expansion, but it could include something like term limits, as well. It absolutely has to include bringing the Supreme Court under the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, from which it is currently exempt.

The urgency of both filibuster and court reform is hard to overemphasize. Redistricting is happening right now. More and more restrictive voter suppression laws are being enacted in many states. The next federal election, just a little over a year from now, could spell the end of Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, and the end to Biden's ability to carry out his agenda. It could also mean Biden is the last Democratic president for the foreseeable future. That's not an exaggeration at all—it is exactly what the entire Republican Party and the dark money groups propping it up have been fighting tooth and claw for while Democrats politely respect tradition.

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