James.galbraith

The Senate is on a crash course to confirm another illegitimate Supreme Court nominee Monday evening, having stayed in over the weekend for procedural votes. That's a sense of urgency from Mitch McConnell totally lacking on responding to COVID-19, even while we're seeing record-breaking new infections and a bleak winter outlook. They voted on cloture Sunday night, 51-48, to advance the nomination to a final vote Monday evening.

Vice President Mike Pence is planning on taking a victory lap and presiding over the Senate Monday night, despite the fact that he is at the center of yet another COVID-19 outbreak in the White House. Senate Democrats have written to him asking him to keep his damn coronavirus-exposed self the hell away. "Your presence alone could be very dangerous to many people," they wrote, to them and to "all the truly essential staff—both Democratic and Republican" who have to be there to make the U.S. Capitol function. Like he cares. In fact, the White House is planning another superspreader event for the ceremonial swearing in of Barrett either Monday night following the vote or Tuesday.

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McConnell couldn't control his glee over the prospect of this vote. Over the fact that he has engineered this takeover. “We’ve made an important contribution to the future of this country,” he said after the cloture vote. “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.” That's a lot of bravado for a man who is about to lose his Senate majority. He's banking on Democrats being unwilling to reform the courts. He's wrong.

Democrats demonstrated their unity against this nomination by holding the floor all night. It couldn't change the outcome of the event, but it demonstrates a united front against McConnell's unprecedented and unprincipled power grab. Even Independent Sen. Angus King is on board with expanding the court, albeit reluctantly. "I don't want to have to do that," he said on the floor Sunday, "but if all of this rule-breaking is taking place, what does the majority expect? What do they expect?"

They need to expect to lose the majority, the White House, and the court. With Barrett, Republican presidents have claimed 15 out of the last 19 Supreme Court justices, while they have lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections. That's called minoritarian rule, which McConnell and the Republican Party have now embraced, along with what is essentially apartheid to maintain it. They can't and won't win the popular vote, so they have to take over every institution they can by cheating, by subverting the rule of law, and by packing the courts with ideologues who will allow them to do it. That ends with this nomination.

Democrats are ready. "McConnell is clearly betting against the Democrats mustering the resolve to ever alter the structure of the court," Brian Fallon of Demand Justice, told NBC News. “Given how far the movement to add seats has already come in just two years, and how likely it is for this 6-3 court to produce rulings threatening progressive priorities, I think it's an unwise bet,” he said. Fallon is a former aide to Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, so he's not just talking out his hat. “It’s a travesty for the Senate, a travesty for the country, and it will be an inerasable stain on this Republican majority forevermore,” Schumer said on the floor. It will fuel a backlash.

Understanding that, embattled Republican Sen. Susan Collins both voted with Democrats against cloture, and will vote against Barrett. Not on the merits of the nominee, she stressed, but because the vote is coming so close to the election. That's Collins trying to split the baby—assure Republicans that she's totally on board with this ideologically, but tell Democrats she's all about fairness. A little too little and way too late for Collins to pull this one out. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is no better. She voted against cloture as well, in muted opposition to the timing of the confirmation. But she's going to be a yes on confirmation. Murkowski is running for reelection in 2022, so you can bet that's a maneuver to stave off another challenge from the right in Alaska. That's her setting herself up to be the Collins of 2022—the backlash from the left will be swift and massive.

How the election's outcome could prove a lot smoother than anyone expects.

Among mental health experts, it is well established that the psychological impact of disasters is typically larger and longer lasting than the medical impact. As high as the numbers of infections and deaths from Covid-19 have already climbed, if the pandemic follows the pattern of previous disasters, the eventual mental toll will be still higher.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that armed with this knowledge, there are steps we can take now to reduce the medical and financial damage of this coming wave of psychological distress.

Covid-19 has already resulted in the death of over 220,000 Americans and the loss of 10.7 million jobs. Americans are coping with forced physical distancing, social isolation and an uncertain future. The simultaneous unrest around systemic racism and widespread election anxiety have exacerbated the traumas experienced by an already vulnerable population. The combined impact on the nation’s mental health is becoming rapidly apparent with national increases in suicidal thoughts, alcohol sales and a 1,000 percent increase in crisis hotline use.

None of this should be a surprise. From 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina, large-scale disasters are known to result in surges of mental illness. Whether disasters are natural, technological, or human made, they result in a high burden of PTSD, anxiety, depression, substance use and suicidality. In addition, past disasters have been associated with behavioral distress including sleep difficulties, decreased sense of safety, irritability, distraction, isolation, existential angst, and an increase in risk behaviors, such as drug use, interpersonal conflict, family child abuse and domestic violence. Studying the catastrophes of the past, researchers have found that disasters follow a consistent course with predictable phases and that mental health distress and suicidality often do not peak until disillusionment sets in, which may be years after the initial disaster. During the Great Depression, for instance, suicide rates did not peak until three years after Black Tuesday.

These patterns mirror what we have seen in our clinical practices as psychiatrists: increases in panic attacks, insomnia, substance use and exacerbation of prior trauma such as flashbacks, nightmares, and worsening thoughts and mood. Research shows that the impact has been especially pronounced for kids, women, racial minority communities, and for those systematically disadvantaged by traditional health care systems. Physical distancing measures increase isolation and complicate access to existing health and social supports, and quarantining itself has been linked to post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion and anger. Unemployment is known to result in increased rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. In a study done by the Well Being Trust, depending on the speed of economic recovery, a 1 percent increase in the national unemployment rate could lead to as many as 154,000 additional deaths due to substance misuse or suicide alone — and we are currently at a 4.4 percent increase in unemployment.

What can we do about it? Perhaps not surprisingly, the first answer is more funding for mental health services. Covid-19 has significantly affected revenue for Community Behavioral Health Organizations, the foundation of our country’s mental health care delivery; these organizations require supplementary funding to ensure they are available to help patients post-Covid. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has asked for $48.5 billion in emergency mental health funding and an additional $5.6 billion to ensure that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the leading federal organization for tackling these issues, can provide local crisis response services. Unfortunately, SAMHSA has so far received only $425 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Security (CARES) Act out of the $140 billion earmarked for hospitals and health care services.

In addition to enough funding, there are specific policies the federal government can put in place to support future mental health, prevent onset of new disease, and decrease the severity of distress. Here are two more specific and politically feasible steps the government can make now to improve national mental health in the future.

First, in anticipation of an increase in suicidal thoughts and behaviors, Congress should accelerate the launch of 988, a national three-digit suicide hotline. Suicide hotlines play an important role in the prevention and treatment of suicidal behaviors; as psychiatrists, we know that for most people suicidal thoughts come in short periods, and intervening during this time can be remarkably effective. A study of 153 people who had attempted suicide in Houston found that 71 percent had less than one hour between their first suicidal thought and attempt. While suicide hotlines exist, a three-digit hotline, or “911 for the brain,” is more memorable than a longer 1-800 number, and in times of distress people need as small a cognitive burden as possible. In September, Congress passed the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act establishing 988, a national suicide hotline with a three-digit number. However, as of now, 988 will not be operational until July 2022. As a first step, Congress and coordinating federal agencies should fast-track implementation of 988 to as soon as possible; with 3,287 Americans attempting suicide every day, speed is critical to saving lives.

Second, private insurers and government payers including Medicare and Medicaid need to do more to ensure ongoing access to mental health services using telehealth and other innovative technologies. Mental health has an enormous supply-demand mismatch with the number of patients needing help far exceeding the number of clinician hours. Tech-enabled solutions are able to expand the reach of clinicians and scale. Telehealth has already become the new standard of care, but there are even more solutions available, including mobile apps, asynchronous care platforms, digital devices, sensors, augmented and virtual reality, and artificial intelligence tools. For example, we’ve seen a flourishing of digital platforms that provide cognitive behavioral therapy or timely substance use treatment. At Brainstorm, our Stanford lab focusing on mental health technology, we have seen an increase in innovative ideas for creating new tech-enabled tools that tackle the mental health impact of Covid-19.

The reality is that before Covid-19, government rules and private insurance policies prevented the daily use of emerging tech in clinical care; insurance companies and government payers were unwilling to reimburse telehealth services at the same rate, or sometimes even at all. Similarly, mobile health apps were usually paid for by Employee Assistance Programs, not medical insurance, or paid for out-of-pocket by patients themselves. The CARES Act temporarily improved the situation by allowing Medicare to pay for telehealth visits during the pandemic. But now, knowing that the mental health pandemic will outlast the Covid-19 pandemic itself, Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance should continue to reimburse telehealth visits at the same rate as in-person care and also pay for novel technologies, such as mobile health apps; a bill introduced by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) would help provide Medicare and Medicaid coverage for prescribed mental health and substance use digital treatments.

As we adjust to a “new normal” and it remains unknown how and for how long Covid-19 will impact our lives, there is no question the United States will struggle with the pandemic’s inevitable mental health consequences for years to come. Now is the time for the nation to take steps to address our future mental health.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 1-800-273-8255.

From Kaz Miyamol, these Venn diagrams present very important information about Halloween.

Tags: Halloween, humor, logic

I think this is the first time in the entire comic someone has asked BRUN how she feels WRT smooching Clinton?

The Trump administration is a few things: it’s fascistic, it’s xenophobic, it’s white supremacist, it’s corrupt, and it is incompetent. The last part of this is a common trait in dens filled with thieves. In some respects it is the saving grace of this regime, as their ability to truly overthrow our democracy has mostly been hampered by their general incompetence. Even the administration’s egregiously obvious attempts to bribe Americans into voting against everybody’s best interests fall flat, because they aren’t very good at anything that doesn’t have to do with the short-term thinking of lining their own pockets. Best people and all of that.

Tragically, the other side of this incompetence is their inability to even muster up the most basic of functioning governmental infrastructures. This has led to, as of this story’s writing, 225,000 dead Americans due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The lacking response to the growing global pandemic, due to both cowardice and egomania, has been well-documented. But the Wall Street Journal has just reported a new level of low: details of the Trump administration’s plans on how to promote reopening the United States by using Santa Clauses, while not protecting first responders.

Contribute now to take back the White House from general incompetence!

According to the WSJ, this coronavirus ad campaign would have cost taxpayers $250,000,000, and was being coordinated by the Department of Health and Human Services. Titled “Covid 19 Public Health and Reopening America Public Service Announcements and Advertising Campaign,” the plan would have offered a deal where Santa Claus performers would receive early vaccines—like before the rest of the American public early—in order to get out there and bring the Christmas cheer to consumers Americans.

This was a part of the big push, using celebrities like Dennis Quaid to make public service announcements in an effort, like with every effort this administration makes, to make themselves look responsive to our national crisis. The deal, like every other deal Trump and his minions have pretended to make, has fallen through. A HHS spokesperson told the WSJ that Alex Azar had no knowledge of this little plan.

This somewhat bizarre idea was reportedly thunk up by HHS assistant secretary Michael Caputo. The plan included rolling out freshly inoculated Santa performers (with elves and Mrs. Clauses) at events in around 35 cities and would have obviously been used by Trump to make some threadbare argument that Trump and MAGA heads were winning and Christmas was saved … from Trump?

In a 12-minute call with Ric Erwin, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, Caputo reportedly told Erwin that if the Santas were “not essential workers, I don’t know what is.” I mean I can think of a few, like doctors and nurses … EMT workers … teachers. I just had my first cup of coffee but I’m sure I could come up with about 1,000 more jobs before Santa Claus performers.

Caputo is the ridiculous person who is on a 60-day "leave of absence to focus on his health and the well-being of his family" after it came out that he’s been actively undermining and attacking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for months. Sounds like a guy Donald Trump can understand.

I am 45 and I have never missed a Christmas in New York with my immediate family in my entire life. Even after I moved out West over a decade ago, and even with two young children, I’ve gone back every year to celebrate the holidays in general with the family. I will not be able to do that this year because of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s handling of our country’s national security response to the COVID-19 virus. The Republican Party was right: there is a war on Christmas and all of those family value things they babble about when it is convenient for them. But that war is from within. They, along with their most conservatively Christian base, have turned their own temples into dens of thieves. 

Trump speaks in New Hampshire on Saturday. | Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Even as cases hit new highs, Trump keeps lying that the pandemic will soon “be over.”

With the pandemic getting worse, not better, President Donald Trump tried to turn reality on its head during a series of rallies on Saturday in North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

“We’re rounding the turn. Our numbers are incredible,” Trump claimed in Lumberton, North Carolina, before blasting the media for its alleged fear-mongering.

But the US is not rounding a turn for the better. Friday and Saturday saw new daily coronavirus infections in the US surge past 80,000 for the first time ever. And it’s not just cases — hospitalizations are up more than 33 percent over the last month, and the seven-day average of deaths is now back above 800.

“That’s all I hear about now. Turn on television, ‘Covid, Covid, Covid Covid Covid.’ A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it. ‘Covid Covid Covid Covid.’ By the way, on November 4, you won’t hear about it anymore,” Trump said. (In case it’s not clear, the plane crash he referred to was made up.)

Trump invoked a nearly identical talking point a couple hours later in Circleville, Ohio, saying, “You know what? On November 4, you’re not gonna hear— the news, CNN, all they talk about, ‘Covid Covid Covid.’ If a plane goes down with 500 people, they don’t talk about ... they’re trying to scare everybody.”

Then, on Saturday night in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Trump argued, falsely, that the main reason cases in the US are going up is because the US does so much testing — “if we did half the testing, we’d have half the cases,” he said, as if testing causes cases — and insisted the coronavirus is “going away.” (In recent weeks, new cases have actually grown at a much faster rate than testing has expanded.)

Trump echoed the same theme during his first rally of the day on Sunday in Londonderry, New Hampshire.

Not only is Trump’s rhetoric irresponsible, but the fact is, he’s holding rallies that make a mockery of social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines recommended by his own government. And these rallies appear to be actively making the pandemic worse by spreading the virus.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of this came on Friday, when Erin Mansfield, Josh Salman, and Dinah Voyles Pulver authored a piece for USA Today that examined how coronavirus cases surged in a number of places where Trump recently held rallies.

From the article:

The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota.

Together, those counties saw 1,500 more new cases in the two weeks following Trump’s rallies than the two weeks before – 9,647 cases, up from 8,069.

But to the extent that Trump actually engages with this reality, his message is that people have to learn to live with it.

“You have to lead your life, and you have to get out,” he advised his fans on Saturday in Ohio.

The White House has no plan — and they aren’t even trying to hide it

Beyond the mounting human toll — more than 220,000 Americans have now died from the coronavirus — the latest spike in cases comes at a politically inopportune time for the White House, with Election Day now just nine days away.

But at this point, the Trump administration isn’t even pretending to have a plan to slow the spread of the virus. Instead, during a CNN interview on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said, revealingly, that “we’re not going to control the pandemic.”

Meanwhile, the White House is dealing with yet another cluster of cases — five people close to Vice President Mike Pence have tested positive for the virus in recent days. Pence, the chair of the White House coronavirus task force, was exposed. But instead of following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, which calls for exposed people to self-quarantine for 14 days, he plans to travel to pandemic rallies on Sunday and Monday.

So not only has the White House given up on protecting the American public, but Trump administration officials have failed to protect themselves. And Trump and Pence are actively making things worse by lying to the American public about the state of the pandemic at rallies that fuel further spread.

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The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes. It’s essential that all Americans are able to access clear, concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives, and the lives of their families and communities. That is our mission at Vox. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election: Contribute today from as little as $3.

One year ago today:

In October of last year, COVID-19 had yet to be discovered. Biden was referring to the systemic quashing of Obama-era pandemic preparedness efforts, part of the Trump team's obsessive dismantling of government and, in particular, any government action taken by President Barack Obama during his own eight-year tenure. A month before Biden's warning, the Trump administration had canceled a 2009-created pandemic early warning program that specifically included work on potential novel coronaviruses.

Trump and his team also dismantled the National Security Council's global health section, halted Department of Homeland Security pandemic preparedness simulations, and ignored a pandemic strategy playbook left to them by the outgoing Obama team.

The first COVID-19 hospitalizations began in Wuhan, China, less than two months after Biden's tweet. It wasn't that the nation's experts did not anticipate the arrival of a deadly new pandemic: the experts knew. It was Trump's team of arch-conservative government saboteurs who laughed off those preparation efforts in pursuit of the longstanding conservative dream of paring down government to the point where it could be drowned in a bathtub.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell poses for photos with Judge Amy Coney Barrett at the US Capitol. | Susan Walsh/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Senate Republicans voted to end debate on Barrett Sunday, clearing the way for her confirmation.

The Senate voted to end its debate over the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Sunday afternoon, a move that sets the stage for a final Senate floor vote for her confirmation on Monday.

Despite efforts by Democratic lawmakers to use procedural maneuvers to slow her appointment, Barrett is on track to be confirmed to the court just about a week before Election Day with almost unanimous support from Senate Republicans.

Republicans have moved quickly to seat Barrett on the court, following her nomination by President Donald Trump in late September. Democrats have protested Republicans working to fill the seat left open by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg so close to the presidential election — particularly given the GOP blocked President Barack Obama’s final Supreme Court nominee for months in 2016, arguing that the winner of that year’s presidential election should get to fill any empty seats.

But Republicans have the votes needed to secure the judge’s place on the court, and the Senate Judiciary Committee began its confirmation hearings for Barrett on October 12.

And on Thursday, the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve Barrett’s nomination, despite the fact that every Democrat on the panel boycotted the meeting — which technically meant they didn’t have the required number of minority members needed to conduct business. Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) disregarded the requirement and proceeded anyway.

On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) deployed a number of tactics to try to slow down the nomination process, with little effect.

For example, he forced a closed Senate session on Friday for the first time since 2010. “The damage to Americans’ faith in these institutions could be lasting. So before we go any further, we should shut off the cameras, close the Senate and talk face to face about what this might mean for the country,” Schumer argued. But the GOP ended that session — which required cameras to leave — in just 20 minutes.

Schumer also tried to file several motions to delay the nomination process, like calling for the Senate to be adjourned until after the election unless both parties settle on a coronavirus relief package, but these all failed as the GOP-controlled Senate acted against them along party lines. Ultimately, McConnell filed a cloture motion, a mechanism for limiting debate, which set up Sunday’s vote.

Saturday, Schumer tried again to halt confirmation proceedings by raising coronavirus relief legislation, but was blocked by the GOP. And the Republicans’ position grew even stronger Saturday afternoon, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — one of just two Republican senators who had objected to confirming a justice before the election — saying she would in fact vote to confirm Barrett during a floor vote.

On Sunday Murkowski, along with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, were the only two Republicans to decline to vote on ending the nomination debate. Murkowski, however, has signaled that her objection is over the timing of the vote, not with Barrett herself, and that she intends to vote to confirm Barrett on a floor vote.

“I’ve concluded she’s the sort of person we want on the Supreme Court,” Murkowski said of Barrett on Saturday, according to Politico. “While I oppose the process that led us to this point, I do not hold it against her.”

Barrett is likely to be confirmed Monday

A final confirmation vote is likely to take place on Monday evening, and barring unforeseen events, Barrett is all but certain to be confirmed.

Republicans need 51 votes to confirm Barrett, and have 53 in the Senate. They can afford to lose three votes, since Vice President Mike Pence can cast a tie-breaking vote in the case of a 50-50 draw.

But that is unlikely to be necessary, since only one Republican lawmaker is expected to defect: Collins, who is running a competitive race for reelection this year.

Political scientists say that the controversy surrounding the Barrett confirmation battle could increase turnout for the elections, by illustrating how high-stakes the next presidency is as the Supreme Court becomes an increasingly politicized institution.

According to polling by Data For Progress, likely voters split largely along party lines in their perception of whether it was appropriate for Republicans to press ahead with one of the most rapid confirmation processes in modern American history.

Schumer has indicated that the Democrats have considered boycotting the final confirmation vote in a display of dissent — and to send a message to the voters that they feel the process is illegitimate.

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The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes. It’s essential that all Americans are able to access clear, concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives, and the lives of their families and communities. That is our mission at Vox. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election: Contribute today from as little as $3.

The folks over at The Lincoln Project aren’t budging after getting hit with a cease and desist letter from Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump for a set of Times Square billboards criticizing the Trump Administration’s COVID response. In fact, they’re doubling down.

“Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere,” the response letter reads “The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster.”

The letter continues: “Your clients are no longer mere Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities. Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump are public officials. They have been public officials since President Trump, in a gross act of nepotism, awarded Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump senior White House positions in 2017. The placement of Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump in these high-level White House offices has been disastrous for Americans everywhere, but is now also devastating to the prospects of your would-be lawsuit.”

The letter, which is well worth a read in its entirety, ends with a bang, saying that “if Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump are genuinely concerned about salvaging their reputations, they would do well to stop suppressing truthful criticism and instead turn their attention to the COVID-19 crisis that is still unfolding under their inept watch. These billboards are not causing Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump’s standing with the public to plummet. Their incompetence is.”

My law firm @MarkSZaidPC is proud to also serve on overall legal team for @ProjectLincoln & applaud/support this letter.

We are more than ready to defend against any frivolous lawsuit from Kusner/Trump. Bring it. https://t.co/F55jejk2YC pic.twitter.com/8cOLcsf5uJ

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) October 25, 2020

These billboards are FACT & Jared Kushner knows it. “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state-His people are going to suffer & that’s their problem.” I heard these & other comments repeatedly. Anyone in the White House who says otherwise is lying. #vote https://t.co/OZ3KaeE1T7 pic.twitter.com/P7QKTWoSDy

— Olivia of Troye (@OliviaTroye) October 25, 2020

To all the people who criticized our billboard in Times Square: https://t.co/TEOKQrPhKv

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) October 23, 2020

Just thought all of you who thought @ProjectLincoln was only focused on Times Square would like to know that, today, a phase 2 billboard campaign launches in, among others, AZ TX WI PA, reminding voters about Trump’s Covid failure and his “suckers/losers” comments.

Cheers!

— Conor Rogers (@conorjrogers) October 23, 2020

Our gift came early pic.twitter.com/9HxQIzStoH

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 25, 2020

The post Read The Lincoln Project’s Scathing Response to Jared and Ivanka’s Attempt to Get Times Square Billboards Removed appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

America's national health agency "halted a public-service coronavirus advertising campaign funded by $250 million in taxpayer money after it offered a special vaccine deal to an unusual set of essential workers: Santa Claus performers." The Wall Street Journal reports: As part of the plan, a top Trump administration official wanted the Santa performers to promote the benefits of a Covid-19 vaccination and, in exchange, offered them early vaccine access ahead of the general public, according to audio recordings. Those who perform as Mrs. Claus and elves also would have been included.... The decision comes as the Covid-19 spread continues to accelerate in most states, and the vaccines are unlikely to be broadly available to the public before the holiday season. The coronavirus ad effort — titled "Covid 19 Public Health and Reopening America Public Service Announcements and Advertising Campaign" — was intended to "defeat despair, inspire hope and achieve national recovery," according to a work statement reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It was to include television, radio, online and podcast announcements, starting immediately. The public-relations blitz began to fizzle after some celebrities, including actor Dennis Quaid, shied away from participating, a former White House official said, amid concerns that the campaign would be viewed as political rather than aiding public health.... [Former pharmaceutical lobbyist Alex Azar, now serving as America's Secretary of Health], has "ordered a strategic review of this public health education campaign that will be led by top public health and communications experts to determine whether the campaign serves important public health purposes," Health and Human Services officials said in a statement. Santa's vaccines were the brainchild of Michael Caputo, a political strategist/lobbyist also appointed to America's Health and Human Services as assistant secretary, according to the Journal. But an HHS spokesman now tells them that the Santa "collaboration will not be happening." They also get a quote from Ric Erwin, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas — who called the news "extremely disappointing." In a 12-minute phone call in late August, Mr. Caputo told Mr. Erwin of the Santa group that vaccines would likely be approved by mid-November and distributed to front-line workers before Thanksgiving. "If you and your colleagues are not essential workers, I don't know what is," Mr. Caputo said on the call, which was recorded by Mr. Erwin and provided to the Journal. [In audio of the call published by the Journal, Santa responds by saying "Ho ho ho ho, ho ho ho. I love you."] "I cannot wait to tell the president," Mr. Caputo said at another point about the plan. "He's going to love this." Mr. Erwin said on the call: "Since you would be doing Santa a serious favor, Santa would definitely reciprocate." Mr. Caputo said: "I'm in, Santa, if you're in...." Mr. Caputo said he wanted Santas to appear at rollout events in as many as 35 cities. In exchange, he said the Santas would get an early crack at inoculation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Donald Trump speaks to a mostly maskless crowd at his Make America Great Again rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on October 20. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Only 24 percent of Trump supporters view the coronavirus as a “very important” issue in this year’s election, compared to 82 percent of Biden supporters.

A new Pew Research Center poll has found a stark partisan difference in views on the importance of the coronavirus pandemic in the days before the presidential election.

The poll, taken from October 6 to 12, found that only 24 percent of registered voters who support Trump view the pandemic as a “very important” voting issue in the 2020 election, compared to 82 percent of Biden supporters. The highest issue of concern for Trump voters, by far, was the economy — 84 percent named that as being “very important” (a reasonably high number of Biden supporters, 66 percent, agreed).

The poll asked registered voters about six issues — abortion, health care, foreign policy, the economy, the coronavirus pandemic, and Supreme Court appointments — and found that Biden and Trump supporters viewed most issues with relatively equal importance. Two interrelated issues were clear exceptions: health care, an issue Biden supporters were 38 percentage points more likely to view as “very important,” and the pandemic, which boasted an even larger 58 percentage point gap.

Pew Research Center

So far, more than 220,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 and roughly 1,000 continue to die every day. States like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Florida — all of which voted for Trump in 2016 — have experienced some of the worst outbreaks in the US. As my colleague German Lopez points out, if Republican-leaning states alone were a country, they’d be in the top 10 for Covid-19 deaths among developed nations.

And the worst may be yet to come: On Friday, the US reported a single-day record of confirmed coronavirus cases, over 85,000 — surpassing the previous high from July by over 10,000 cases. Saturday, the new confirmed case count nearly matched that record high, topping 83,000. With case loads and hospitalizations already at dangerously high levels, epidemiologists have expressed concern that this “third wave” of Covid-19 cases could be the most deadly yet.

Trump has stressed the economy over pandemic response

A second Pew poll, released earlier this month, may give some insight into why many Trump supporters don’t see the coronavirus as an important issue in the upcoming election.

The survey found that 68 percent of Republicans think the US has controlled the Covid-19 outbreak “as much as it could have” versus 11 percent of Democrats; it also found that 66 percent of Republicans think the Covid-19 outbreak has been made out to be a “bigger deal than it really is,” while just 15 percent of Democrats said the same.

Pew Research Center

This poll reflects a narrative advanced by President Donald Trump: that his administration had done everything possible to control the coronavirus outbreak — and that the coronavirus was never as serious as media, experts, and Democratic politicians made it out to be.

Throughout the pandemic, Trump has praised himself and his administration for having done a “phenomenal job” handling the crisis. In Thursday’s presidential debate, Trump cited a model that forecast US deaths if the country took no coronavirus prevention measures, claiming that “2.2 million people, modeled out, were expected to die,” misleadingly suggesting that his administration’s response had saved approximately 2 million lives.

In that same debate, he claimed that “700,000 people would be dead right now” under a Biden administration — a death toll that would have required Biden to do less to stop the virus than the Trump administration has (Biden’s coronavirus plan calls for doing more). Vice President Mike Pence pursued a similar line of attack at the vice presidential debate in early October.

Besides praising his response, Trump has also consistently played down the seriousness of the coronavirus. In the last presidential debate, he responded to a question about the virus by saying, “We’re learning to live with it.” On Saturday alone, Trump tweeted that the record-setting number of new cases in the US is being overhyped, claimed that the virus would magically disappear after the election, and pushed a baseless conspiracy theory that doctors and hospitals are inflating the Covid-19 death count for profit.

Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly pushed to completely reopen the US economy. Echoing a claim he’s been making since March, the president said at Thursday’s debate, “The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself, and that’s what’s happening. ... We can’t keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy.”

From the outside, it’s easy to view Trump’s constant downplaying of the pandemic as political suicide — the sort of behavior that will entrench opposition to the president and potentially cause his supporters to abandon him come November. But the Pew polls released this month appear to tell a different story. Trump’s blatant denial of the coronavirus reality — and his focus on reopening the economy — isn’t turning his base off; to the contrary, it reflects what they already believe about the pandemic.

Political polarization affects views on Covid-19 — but it has its limits

The academic literature on political polarization points to a simple explanation for the massive divergence in public opinion on the coronavirus, Pew’s pollsters detected: Partisans don’t evaluate the world objectively; they take cues from the leaders and media sources who they trust. Drawing on the work of political scientist Sara Wallace Goodman, my colleague Ezra Klein explained this phenomenon with regard to partisan divergence on mask-wearing earlier this year:

Sara Wallace Goodman, a political scientist at the University of California Irvine, has been part of a team repeatedly surveying the same group of Americans to see how their behaviors and attitudes have changed over the course of the virus. Even controlling for factors like the prevalence of the disease in the place respondents live, Wallace Goodman and her colleagues find a significant and growing partisan gap in terms of fear of the disease, perceived safety of different behaviors, and preferred policy solutions.

The key to understanding this, Wallace Goodman says, is that “when people are operating in areas of high misinformation and lack of information, they take cues. We can only be rational if our leaders are rational. If you see the president not wearing a mask in meetings, you’re going to model what he does.”

The same goes for whether you think the importance of the coronavirus pandemic has been overblown, or whether you think the US did everything it could to control the virus. Because few Democrats or Republicans have personally conducted investigations into these issues, the differences in opinion between them hinge on which leaders and institutions they trust. Liberals tend to take their cues from epidemiologists and science journalists — or from political leaders and media outlets that defer to their expertise. Conservatives often take their cues from Fox News, Trump, and other leaders and news outlets who are often skeptical of — or downright hostile toward — those experts.

In fact, when the same Pew poll that evaluated partisan opinions on Covid-19’s seriousness asked respondents about their primary news sources, it unveiled some striking findings. Among Republicans whose primary news sources are Fox News or talk radio, 78 percent thought the seriousness of Covid-19 has been exaggerated, and 90 percent believed the US has done everything it can to control the virus. Republicans who consume a more diverse array of news sources have considerably lower numbers on both counts.

Pew Research Center

None of this means Trump’s dismissive rhetoric and response to Covid-19 will ultimately help him come November. The president has not enjoyed the same kind of pandemic polling bump that peer country leaders and US governors have received. He still lags behind former Vice President Joe Biden by about 9 percentage points in national polls just over a week before the election. Trump also appears to be lacking support among older voters in key swing states like Florida that have been especially hard-hit by the pandemic.

One reason for this appears to be that while Trump’s rhetoric on the coronavirus clearly appeals to Republican voters, it seems far less effective at winning over swing voters.

According to a September Kaiser Family Foundation poll, the coronavirus outbreak is the most important 2020 election issue for 15 percent of undecided voters. And recent polling across seven swing states — Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas — by the conservative polling firm CT Group found that 56 percent of former Trump voters who no longer planned to vote for the president cited his pandemic response as a major factor in reconsidering their support for him.

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Vice President Mike Pence is refusing to quarantine and will continue on the campaign trail despite multiple staffers close to him testing positive for coronavirus.

The New York Times reports Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short tested positive earlier today. At least three other members of his staff have tested positive in recent days.

Pence’s press secretary Devin O’Malley said in a statement that the Vice President and wife Karen Pence tested negative today and that Pence would “maintain his schedule in accordance with CDC guidelines for essential personnel.”

In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was challenged on Pence’s decision to continue campaigning.

After several aides, including his chief of staff, tested positive for Covid-19, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows says VP Pence will keep campaigning: "Essential personnel, whether it's the Vice President of the United States or anyone else, has to continue on" #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/2ZWMmwUHG3

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 25, 2020

In the interview, Meadows declared “we’re not going to control the pandemic.”

This is unbelievable.

Mark Meadows on @CNNSotu: "We're not going to control the virus."

The Trump admin is finally clear about their #covid19 national strategy: capitulation.

— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) October 25, 2020

The post Mike Pence Refusing to Quarantine Despite Chief of Staff, Other Aides Testing Positive for COVID — VIDEO appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

In a darkly humorous flashback skit on last night’s SNL, four friends decide to go to a psychic in 2019 who has visions of a troubling future filled with disinfectants, adult coloring books, and a masturbating Jeffrey Toobin.

“I actually sense a lot of fun travel in your future,” says the psychic, played by Kate McKinnon, to Bowen Yang’s character.

“You do? Ok good!” Bowen responds. “Actually me and my boyfriend are planning to fly to Paris in May.”

“Ah that’s fun!” replies the psychic. “But no, I don’t see you flying to Paris. I see you driving to Kentucky and you are peeing inside a bag in the car because you are afraid to use the gas station bathroom.”

Watch the full skit below.

The post SNL’s Kate McKinnon Warns of the Horrors of 2020 as Psychic from Last Year: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, tested positive for Covid-19 on Saturday, a sign of the virus hitting the inner circle of the White House's coronavirus task force with just 10 days left in the 2020 election.

Pence, who tested negative Saturday, will continue to headline campaign events in the coming days even though the vice president’s office acknowledged he “is considered a close contact” with Short.

Pence “will maintain his schedule in accordance with the CDC guidelines for essential personnel,” said Devin O'Malley, Pence’s press secretary. He said the decision was made in consultation with the White House Medical Unit. "Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence both tested negative for COVID-19 today, and remain in good health," O'Malley said.

Pence is scheduled to travel to North Carolina on Sunday and Wisconsin on Monday, part of a frenzied pace of rallies and other events for the vice president and his boss as they try to make the case for another term amid a third surge in U.S. coronavirus cases on their watch.

The diagnosis, just weeks after numerous other top White House aides were infected by the virus and President Donald Trump was hospitalized for Covid-19 treatment, is sure to inject new focus in the waning days of the 2020 race on the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic. Pence has led the White House’s coronavirus task force since late February, and has regularly served as the administration’s point man to engage with state leaders, reassure the public and argue the virus was under control.

Pence’s decision not to isolate and to continue traveling to public events offers fresh ammunition to Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, who accuse Trump of failing to take the virus seriously enough. White House staffers, including Short, are often seen without masks and Trump continues to hold massive rallies that flout state guidelines.

At an event Saturday, Biden accused Trump of "doing nothing” even as more than 8.5 million people in the United States have been infected. About 225,000 people have died, and the tally of new daily cases is hitting fresh records.

Short, 50, is a longtime Republican operative who served as the White House’s director of legislative affairs in the first 18 months of the Trump administration. He then left the White House but returned in early 2019 to serve as Pence’s chief of staff. He has served as a key staffer involved in the administration’s Covid-19 response and has spoken out against many coronavirus restrictions, mirroring the views of his bosses.

Pence’s office said Short has begun quarantine and assisting in the contact tracing process. Short did not travel with Pence on Saturday. Several staffers deemed to be close contacts with him were pulled from the trip before departure as well, either leaving the plane or not arriving to travel.

Marty Obst, Pence’s top political aide, tested positive in recent days, according to a campaign aide. Katie Miller, Pence's communications director and wife of Trump's top adviser Stephen Miller, tested positive for Covid-19 in May. Short and Obst, who both travel regularly with Pence, did not respond to questions Saturday.

Pence appeared Saturday in Lakeland and Tallahassee, Fla. A day earlier he visited his home state of Indiana, where he voted in Indianapolis, along with Ohio and Pennsylvania.

After a daylong campaign swing, Trump indicated upon exiting Air Force One early Sunday morning that he had just learned of Short’s diagnosis.

“I did hear about it just now,” he told reporters. “I think he’s quarantining. I did hear about that. He’s going to be fine. But he’s quarantining.”

Trump announced on Oct. 2 that he tested positive and was taken to Walter Reed medical center for three days of treatment. He resumed his public schedule less than two weeks later and is now engaged in a frenetic campaign schedule, boasting at multiple rallies a day about how he beat the virus. On Saturday, he was in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.

More than two dozen people with ties to the White House have tested positive, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an outside adviser and debate coach to Trump, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. First Lady Melania Trump and teenage son Barron also tested positive.

Trump continues to downplay the coronavirus pandemic even as infections are again surging and a dozen states set new records in their case counts.

"We're rounding the turn," Trump said in North Carolina "We're doing great. Our numbers are incredible."

In mid-June, Pence himself downplayed the threat just as a second spike in coronavirus cases began.

"The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and these grim predictions of a second wave are no different,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “The truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success. We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives, and we’ve created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future. That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering."

Gabby Orr and Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski will vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, despite her opposition to moving forward with a high court nominee in an election year.

The Alaska Republican said Saturday she will split her votes on Barrett. She will vote against advancing the nomination on a procedural hurdle on Sunday, due to her longstanding objection to confirming a justice so close to the Nov. 3 presidential election.

But based on Barrett’s credentials for the job, she’s a ‘yes’ on the final vote Monday.

“I’ve concluded she’s the sort of person we want on the Supreme Court,” Murkowski said of Barrett. “While I oppose the process that led us to this point, I do not hold it against her.”

The decision by Murkowski to ultimately support Barrett leaves Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) as the only Republican who will vote against Barrett. Collins did not consider Barrett’s nomination on the merits and developed her position from a strong opposition to a confirmation right before the election.

Collins and Murkowski were the only Republicans who initially came out against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plans to fill the vacancy left by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Democrats have denounced the swift confirmation drive for Barrett after McConnell blocked Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland in 2016.

Murkowski opposed the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018, drawing the ire of President Donald Trump but faced little blowback from within her party. She ultimately voted “present” on Kavanaugh’s final confirmation vote despite her opposition, so that Kavanaugh supporter Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) could attend his daughter’s wedding.

Murkowski will be up for reelection in 2022 and conceivably could have voted either way and kept her seat; in 2010 she lost her GOP primary but won the general election as a write-in candidate. Murkowski slipped out a side door when she left the floor, sidestepping a pair of reporters in an otherwise empty Capitol.

The moderate Republican senator met with Barrett earlier this week and they discussed voting rights, the politicization of the Supreme Court and even the conservative nominee’s approach to challenges to Roe v. Wade. Murkowski, who generally backs abortion rights, concluded that Barrett does not have a “predetermined agenda” and had done enough to win her vote.

Murkowski informed GOP leaders of her decision shortly before her speech, said Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota.

Yet Murkowski did seem somewhat torn about the entire endeavor, as she weighed Barrett’s credentials and the Senate’s endless tit-for-tat over the Supreme Court.

“I recognize that confirming this nominee is not going to heal, it’s not going to salve the wounds that these institutions have endured,” she said on the Senate floor Saturday. “But neither will threats that should the balance of power in this chamber change [to Democratic], that everything is on the table, including the end of the legislative filibuster and packing the court.”

A nurse in Pennsylvania administers a Covid-19 test at a drive-through facility. | Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle/Getty Images

There were about 10,000 more new cases Friday than the previous same-day high on July 16.

The United States broke its record for the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases reported in a single day on Friday, an alarming sign that what some epidemiologists are calling a “third wave” of infections is spreading at breakneck speed as winter approaches.

According to the New York Times, by the end of the day on Friday, at least 85,085 cases were reported across the country — about 10,000 cases more than the previous same-day high on July 16.

Public health experts have long warned that uneven compliance with social distancing guidelines, inadequate contact tracing programs, and premature reopenings of indoor venues were creating conditions for a resurgence of virus transmission after its summer peak, and that is what appears to be happening now.

The Covid Tracking Project

The new case numbers also show that the geographic spread is wider than during past spikes. According to an internal report produced on Thursday for officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, and obtained by the Washington Post, more than 170 counties across 36 states have been designated rapidly rising hot spots. And 24 states have broken single-day records of new cases in the past two weeks, the Post reports.

Also concerning is that in the past month there has been a 40 percent rise in the number of people hospitalized for Covid-19 infections. Deaths have not surged so far, but epidemiologists have pointed out that there can be a significant time lag between a surge in cases and deaths tied to that surge.

“Today’s cases represent infections that probably happened a week or two ago,” Boston University epidemiologist Eleanor Murray told Vox’s Dylan Scott in July. “Today’s deaths represent cases that were diagnosed possibly up to a month ago, so infections that were up to six weeks ago or more.”

Saturday, President Donald Trump downplayed the record number of new reported cases on Twitter, and incorrectly claimed that cases were up only because testing ability is up.

But public health experts have pointed to state-level policies on distancing and contact tracing as a key driver of the current uptick. Moreover, the high rates at which coronavirus tests are coming back positive in many states — a key data point for estimating the true spread of the virus — and the surge in hospitalizations are signs that the new wave is not just a result of testing capacity. As Vox’s German Lopez has explained, a high positivity rate actually suggests that not enough tests are being done to track and contain spread in a given area.

Murray, the epidemiologist at Boston University, told the Washington Post that the wide geographic range of the new wave will make it difficult to move health care workers to hot spots. Previous spikes were concentrated in certain communities, allowing medical professionals from less affected areas to be moved to deal with outbreaks. But the breadth of the current outbreak could tax US health care capacity in a manner that has not been seen before.

And Murray also pointed out that this wave is more dangerous that the two that preceded it, because it started from a higher point of infections.

“We are starting this wave much higher than either of the previous waves,” she told the Post. “And it will simply keep going up until people and officials decide to do something about it.”

Experts have warned about a third wave for a while

Medical professionals, epidemiologists and many public health officials have long pointed out the risk of a third wave.

As Vox’s German Lopez wrote in early October, experts warned that a third wave looked likely in light of the fact that the virus was never really suppressed nationally, and that premature reopening, encouraged most aggressively by Trump and Republican governors, would simply accelerate its spread:

Consider Florida. Last month, the state reopened bars and, more recently, restaurants, despite the high risk of these indoor spaces. After Florida previously opened bars, in June, experts said the establishments were largely to blame for the state’s massive Covid-19 outbreak in the summer. As Florida reopens now, it has roughly two to three times the number of Covid-19 cases that it had in early June, and its high test positivity rate suggests it’s still likely missing a lot of cases. The state is fanning its flames while its most recent fire is nowhere near extinguished.

This is, in effect, what much of the country is doing now as it rushes to reopens schools, particularly colleges and universities, and risky indoor spaces. Coupled with recent Labor Day celebrations, experts worry that’s already leading to a new increase in Covid-19 cases.

Experts have pointed out that Trump’s persistent agenda to downplay the dangers of the virus — and his suggestions that the news of a third wave is a media conspiracy designed to throw the election in Democrats’ favor — could intensify the problem as the virus is made into an increasingly partisan issue. The president has repeatedly failed to take responsibility for the troubled US pandemic response, including at the second presidential debate. He has instead blamed China and Democrats for the country’s problems, while leaving it to individual states to create plans to lower the rate of infection.

Some states have had more success in reducing infection than others, but none have managed to eliminate spread altogether. And more worrying still is that cold weather and flu season have yet to fully settle in many states as winter approaches.

The good news is that we know how to counteract further spread.

“None of the ideas to prevent all of this are shocking or new,” Lopez recently wrote. “They’re all things people have heard before: More testing and contact tracing to isolate people who are infected, get their close contacts to quarantine, and deploy broader restrictions as necessary. More masking, including mandates in the 17 states that don’t have one. More careful, phased reopenings. More social distancing.”

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"It's finally happening: Twitch is taking action against copyrighted music — long a norm among streamers — in response to music industry pressure," reports Kotaku. But the Verge reports "there's some funny stuff going on here." First, Twitch is telling streamers that some of their content has been identified as violating copyright and that instead of letting streamers file counterclaims, it's deleting the content; second, the company is telling streamers it's giving them warnings, as opposed to outright copyright strikes... Weirdly Twitch decided to bulk delete infringing material instead of allowing streamers to archive their content or submit counterclaims. To me, that suggests that there are tons of infringements, and that Twitch needed to act very quickly and/or face a lawsuit it wouldn't be able to win over its adherence to the safe harbor provision of the DMCA. The email Twitch sent to their users "encourages them to delete additional content — up to and including using a new tool to unilaterally delete all previous clips," reports Kotaku. One business streamer complains that it's "insane" that Twitch basically informs them "that there is more content in violation despite having no identification system to find out what it is. Their solution to DMCA is for creators to delete their life's work. This is pure, gross negligence." Or, as esports consultant Rod "Slasher" Breslau puts it, "It is absolutely insane that record labels have put Twitch in a position to force streamers to delete their entire life's work, for some 10+ years of memories, and that Twitch has been incapable of preventing or aiding streamers for this situation. a total failure all around." Twitch's response? It is crucial that we protect the rights of songwriters, artists and other music industry partners. We continue to develop tools and resources to further educate our creators and empower them with more control over their content while partnering with industry-recognized vendors in the copyright space to help us achieve these goals.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apparently all you have to do to have your COVID-19 superspreader event approved by Trump’s National Park Service is play the religion card.

As reported by the Independent:

The National Park Service has approved a permit for an evangelical “worship protest” gathering this weekend on the National Mall in Washington DC, which is expected to attract 15,000 attendees amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Sean Feucht, a singer and former Republican congressional candidate, will host the event as part of his “Let Us Worship” tour. He’s held the tour in cities across America amid the coronavirus pandemic to protest Covid-19 restrictions against religious gatherings.

Current guidelines in the nation’s capital prohibit gatherings of more than 50 people. But the National Mall is under the jurisdiction of the Park Service, which has been without a director for the entirety of Trump’s term. Instead, a series of quasi-directors hand-picked by interior secretary and fossil-fuel lobbyist David Bernhardt have controlled the agency. As a result, as pointed out in this article written by Mark Kaufman for Mashable, “The president's office can manipulate or bend it to its whims.”

And those whims apparently extend to subjecting Washington, D.C. residents to COVID-19 infection—as long as its done in the name of Jesus.  According to the Daily Beast, the Park Service issued the permit for the Oct. 25 “protest” with no COVID-19 restrictions required. A spokesman for the Park Service confirmed to the Daily Beast: “While the National Park Service strongly encourages social distancing, the use of masks, and other measures to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, we will not require nor enforce their use.”

Public health experts are appalled.

“It’s disgraceful,” Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University who advises the World Health Organisation, told The Daily Beast. “It violates DC’s Covid-19 plan and it’s almost certainly going to lead to a superspreader event — and cause many new cases, hospitalisation, and even death. It violates virtually every principle to mitigate this pandemic.”

As noted by the Independent , the instigator of this “worship” protest is Sean Feucht, a failed Republican candidate for Congress, singer/musician, and “worship pastor” at the Bethel Church in Redding, California. Feucht was denied a permit for a similar event by the city of Seattle last month. He also provoked the wrath of local health officials in Nashville after holding one of these public gatherings in violation of that city’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Feucht’s attitude towards social distancing measures amounts to mockery. After his permit to infect Seattle was denied, he penned a screed for the right-wing Federalist, which decried the infringement on his “God-given freedoms.”

Now in major cities across America, godless politicians are adopting tactics that more closely resemble those of jihadist ayatollahs than men and women who are sworn to uphold the rule of law.

[...]

Truly, the actions of militant, anti-Christian forces, who want to shut down our churches, silence our worship, and even shoot our fellow believers in the streets, have stirred the soul of the American church.

Feucht is careful to call his superspreader events “protests.” After the Nashville gathering he posted a video on Instagram, stressing: "It's officially a protest, OK? So it's legal."

During the run-up to Donald Trump’s impeachment, Feucht and about 50 other “worship leaders” met with Trump in the Oval Office for a “faith briefing.” At that time, Feucht posed for a picture in which he conspicuously posed touching Trump’s sleeve in the same manner Jesus is described as being touched in the Gospel of Luke. Vice President Mike Pence recently appeared at one of Feucht’s “protests,” and Feucht has also appeared on Fox News.

The event is taking place this Saturday and includes a tent where attendees can be “baptized” by a group of “pastors,” after which the participants will doubtlessly return to wherever they came from, putting everyone they encounter at risk along the way. The Daily Beast interviewed one Washington, D.C. resident, who called the event “fucking stupid” and an “attention-grab” for Feucht.

“This is insane,” D.C. resident Allison Lane told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “This is truly selfish behavior from people who claim to be devoted to the word of God. I don’t get it. The National Park Service is being willfully ignorant.”

No one should be fooled into believing that Feucht’s dangerous agenda is about God. It’s about Feucht.

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The Trump White House’s embrace of white nationalists within the halls of its administration was exposed in even greater depth this week when the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Michael Edison Hayden published an in-depth examination of the career of Julia Hahn, the current deputy communications director and a longtime ally of senior adviser Stephen Miller, whose own white nationalist ties were previously exposed by Hayden.

These are, moreover, hardly the only administration figures with extremist backgrounds—and as if to obscure the reality these reports substantiate, Trump’s defenders in the right-wing media are now attacking the journalists working to expose them by claiming that somehow they are actually part of a deep-state operation to “smear” Trump supporters. At least, that was the story Tucker Carlson was pitching on Fox News.

Julia Hahn’s current role at the White House at least partially entails helping press secretary Kayleigh McEnany prepare her press briefings, but she has held several jobs in the administration prior to this one, primarily as an aide to Trump himself. In that capacity, as Hayden reports, Hahn was involved in a behind-the-scenes campaign to defend Miller in 2017 from a flood of negative reports about his extremist background.

Prior to being hired by the White House, she had worked first as a producer for Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, who has her own history of promoting white nationalist themes. Somewhere around the end of her tenure there, she attended a writers workshop sponsored by an explicitly racist, white-nationalist publishing house, Social Contract Press—notorious for publishing the vile race-war screed, Camp of the Saints.

Her next job was at Breitbart News, where she contributed significantly to that online news site’s alt-right/white nationalist content, particularly during the years it was overseen by Trump’s former chief adviser, Stephen Bannon.

McHugh told Hatewatch that a white nationalist worldview pervaded Hahn’s work at Breitbart News. Hahn’s writing at Breitbart News, and emails about issues of race, like Miller’s private emails, which McHugh leaked to Hatewatch in 2019, consistently portray people of color and Muslims in an intensely negative light. Sometimes, they paint non-white people as violent and dangerous.

Hahn wrote McHugh a story pitch on July 12, 2016, under the subject line, “think you need to do a black on white crime #s story.”

“How many whites have been killed by blacks since Obama has been in office?” Hahn asked McHugh in the body of that email. McHugh did not reply to that email.

Hahn also apparently developed a close working relationship with Peter Brimelow—publisher of the openly nativist/white nationalist site VDare—during this time. And among her regular storylines, she assiduously promoted the Iowa congressional candidacy of white nationalist Paul Nehlen, particularly following his request for a “discussion” about physically removing every Muslim citizen from the U.S.

None of this is particularly new. Trump has empowered far-right white nationalist and conspiracy theorist elements within the walls of his administration, and pursued an agenda friendly to extremist elements, from the very beginning. Senior adviser Miller is the architect of Trump’s immigration policies (not to mention his eliminationist scare campaigns about immigrant caravans and refugees from the Middle East) whose deep ties to white nationalists were exposed last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Trump administration has also been congenial to far-right conspiracy theorists. A National Security Council official, Rich Higgins, authored an internal memo in 2017, widely distributed within the administration, repeating white-nationalist claims that a broad conspiracy of globalists, Islamists, bankers, “Cultural Marxists,” and the “deep state” were actively undermining his presidency. Higgins was fired—a decision that reportedly infuriated Trump—and resurfaced recently as an appointee to the Pentagon.

Similarly, a Trump policy aide and speechwriter named Darren Beattie was fired in 2018 after it was discovered that he had appeared as a speaker for a white nationalist gathering, the H.L. Mencken Club conference, alongside Brimelow and other leading white nationalists. Beattie was known for his ardent support of Trump’s policy to ban travel from Muslim nations. (He later was hired by Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida as a speechwriter.)

Moreover, Trump’s resulting policy agenda has been a white nationalist’s dream, culiminating in such atrocities as the 545 immigrant children whose parents were permanently lost during separation proceedings at the border by Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies.

The reality we are confronted with daily—that the United States (and the rest of the world, with no small assist from Russian interests) is awash in a tide of white nationalism and its attendant violence, and that moreover this tide has been enabled, encouraged, and empowered by Donald Trump, both on the streets of America and within his administration—is not something that can be erased with a sneer.

Yet the White House’s response to the SPLC was a straight-up denial of the facts contained in its report, a gaslighting-style assertion without evidence:

Julia Hahn rejects and condemns racism and hatred in all forms, and, as a Jewish American, finds bigotry of any kind to be truly abhorrent. Every story Julia wrote as a reporter at Breitbart is publicly available and has been since the day she left the publication nearly four years ago. These cherry-picked emails were leaked by a troubled individual who was terminated from Breitbart in disgrace, and SPLC has stooped to a new low by giving her a platform.

Attacking the sources of the information—rather than making any kind of substantive response to the information itself—has so far been the default response both by the White House and by its defenders in right-wing media to discussions of the white nationalists within the administration. The White House attacked the SPLC as an “an utterly-discredited, long-debunked far-left smear organization” who “libel, slander, and defame conservatives for a living,” for its report on Miller. Fox News, in the meantime, simply ignored the story altogether, giving it a total of 42 seconds of airtime.

The response at Fox News to the latest revelations has been a combination of the previous instances: It so far has completely ignored the Hahn revelations, instead going on the attack against journalists engaged in the investigative work of exposing the hidden white nationalists within the ranks of the Trump White House and its supporters.

Tucker Carlson led the parade on Wednesday with an attack on NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny, who has been involved in important reportage on the spread of such far-right phenomena as the “Boogaloo”movement and the QAnon conspiracist cult. Carlson, of course, has already expended considerable energy calling the white nationalist threat a hoax concocted by liberals.

Carlson’s segment featured an interview with none other than Darren Beattie, the adviser/speechwriter with white-nationalist ties who had been earlier fired by the White House. Yet strangely, Carlson omitted any reference to that background whatsoever in the segment, instead presenting Beattie as simply a writer for the webzine Revolver News—which is in fact a far-right site, endorsed by Trump, that has called for shooting protesters (which also went unmentioned).

Instead, Carlson launched into an attack on Zadrozny, claiming that “her job is seeking out personally identifying information about anonymous Trump supporters online, some of them, and revealing their true identities.” Zadrozny’s sin, it seems, was simply being a good reporter: Carlson’s complaint was that she used public information sources to expose her subjects. Moreover, Carlson mischaracterized her work; Zadrozny does not merely expose generic Trump supporters, but rather far-right extremists who use social media to promote their conspiracy-fueled ideologies, often to disastrous effect, such as the anti-vax mom whose child died of the flu after she refused to give him Tamiflu that had been prescribed by a doctor.

Beattie—whose piece in Revolver similarly characterized Zadrozny as focused entirely on Trump supporters, describing her as an “ideological hit man”—told Carlson, “She’s up to no good.” He claimed Zadrozny’s work at NBC News is dedicated entirely to unearthing “anonymous Trump supporters, basically, to ruin their lives.”

But to Beattie, her work was only the tip of a much larger problem:

We see these journalists are not even acting as meaningful journalists. What they’re doing is acting as commissars, a neo-Stasi effectively, in order to crush the rebellion of the American people against their corrupt ruling class, associated with the victory of Donald Trump.

There’s one aspect of this story that’s even more disturbing than what you describe, and that is that Brandy Zadrozny uses this term “disinformation” as a pretext to go after Trump supporters and destroy their lives. I think as many viewers have seen, disinformation is this new buzzword, this new pretext used to silence Trump supporters. What’s especially dangerous about this is that it brings this force to bear in a national-security context. Disinformation is a national-security term. It invites the force of our own national-security to silence Trump supporters domestically. And it’s part of this trend we’re seeing of broader swaths of our own national-security apparatus being repurposed and redeployed domestically to silence, suppress, and destroy the energies associated with Donald Trump’s victory in 2016.

What Beattie does not mention, however, is that his piece was inspired because Zadrozny had inquired with him days before he published his attack on her about his role, and that of Revolver, in an online campaign to “Pizzagate” Joe Biden—that is, to accuse him of complicity in a global pedophilia ring, a la QAnon, as an outgrowth of the supposed cache of emails from his son, Hunter Biden, promoted by the New York Post this week.

Zadrozny published that story Thursday. In it, she reported that “the most significant boost for the child abuse conspiracy theories would come from a website founded in May that has been embraced by Trump surrogates: Revolver News.”

Neither Carlson nor Beattie mentioned any of this in their attack on Zadrozny—as indeed, any mention of the role of white nationalist support for Trump was utterly whitewashed out of the segment. Instead, the message was clear: Carlson, Fox News, and Trump’s entire cohort will instead personally attack the journalists who expose those connections.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are none too pleased with the professional agitators over at The Lincoln Project for a set of Times Square billboards criticizing the Trump Administration’s COVID-19 response. On Friday, the duo sent a cease and desist letter to the anti-Trump group demanding the “outrageous and shameful” signs be taken down or face legal action.

A legal response will be coming soon.

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 24, 2020

One sign features Ivanka Trump, in signature Goya Beans pose, next to text listing the death tally of New Yorkers and Americans killed by the virus. The other sign shows Jared next to enlarged text of his September quote disregarding NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 aid pleas, where he coldly said New Yorkers “are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”

The Hill reports: “The Lincoln Project, as well as Democrats, have launched withering criticism at the White House over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic as cases spike across the country. The group has risen to prominence by releasing rapid-fire ads highlighting the latest controversy stemming from the White House, often going viral online and drawing rebukes from the president.”

The letter was sent the same day that the U.S. set a new record in new coronavirus cases.

The guys over at The Lincoln Project appear undeterred.

To all the people who criticized our billboard in Times Square: https://t.co/TEOKQrPhKv

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) October 23, 2020

Just thought all of you who thought @ProjectLincoln was only focused on Times Square would like to know that, today, a phase 2 billboard campaign launches in, among others, AZ TX WI PA, reminding voters about Trump’s Covid failure and his “suckers/losers” comments.

Cheers!

— Conor Rogers (@conorjrogers) October 23, 2020

My law firm @MarkSZaidPC is proud to also serve on overall legal team for @ProjectLincoln & applaud/support this letter.

We are more than ready to defend against any frivolous lawsuit from Kusner/Trump. Bring it. https://t.co/F55jejk2YC pic.twitter.com/8cOLcsf5uJ

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) October 25, 2020

The post Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Threaten to Sue Lincoln Project Over Times Square Billboards Slamming Trump Administration COVID Response appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Donald Trump isn’t just a sore loser when it comes to elections and debates—he just needs an excuse to whine when things don’t go his way. After abruptly walking out of his 60 Minutes interview earlier this week because it was too “tough,” Trump released the unedited interview footage on his Facebook page Thursday. The interview with Leslie Stahl was set to air on Sunday and focused on issues anyone would think a president is equipped to respond to, including COVID-19, the economy, and health care. Trump shared the footage, breaching an agreement the White House had with CBS News that the taping was merely for “archival purposes only.” 

The raw footage was shared after Trump consistently threatened to release the video and shame Stahl. Amid his usual Twitter rants, he said Tuesday that he was “considering” posting the White House copy “so that everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about…” But it didn’t end there. He even tweeted about Stahl, posting a clip of her not wearing a mask in the White House on the day of the interview. According to CNN, the clip was taken immediately after the interview, before Stahl was able to grab her personal belongings, including her mask.  

Prior to posting the video, Trump consistently referenced it. He just couldn’t get over it. "You have to watch what we do to 60 Minutes," Trump said at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. "You're going to get a kick out of it. Lesley Stahl is not going to be happy.” But in reality, the joke’s on him. Stahl isn’t the one people are laughing at—he is.

The video not only depicts the scene Trump created before leaving the interview, but shows that he found the questions asked too difficult. The raw footage posted on social media ends with Trump whining about the way Stahl began the interview. "You said this was gonna be tough questions, that's no way to talk, that's no way to talk," Trump said.

Stahl began the interview with: “Are you ready for some tough questions?” Instead of being prepared, Trump’s lack of confidence kicked in. He looked frustrated throughout the entire spiel, and cried at the end that the questions he was asked would never be asked to former vice president and current Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. “I see Joe Biden getting softball after softball. I’ve never seen him get asked a question that was hard,” Trump said.

Trump claimed that Biden would have never been asked about the economy in the way that Trump had been. “You wouldn’t say that to Biden, what you just said to me. If he had it, if he had it, you would never say that to Biden,” Trump said. After being asked about the economy, Trump claimed that he “created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” to which Stahl replied, “No.”   

Trump also claimed that most of Stahl’s questions were “inappropriately brought up.” Apparently, to Trump, asking questions related to his role as leader of the U.S. is inappropriate. Maybe that’s why he has a habit of cutting others off while they ask such questions, in addition to giving vague answers. “You’re president,” Stahl replied to the allegation. “Don’t you think you should be accountable to the American people?”

And of course, despite clearly running away and posting the evidence of this himself, Trump claims he did not leave the interview abruptly. “I think we have enough. Really, we have enough. I think we have enough of an interview here, okay?” said a stressed Trump. “Let’s go, let’s go.”

Well, that sounds like running away to me, but knowing Trump, he will never admit it.

In response to the White House posting the raw video footage, CBS News released a statement calling it an "unprecedented decision to disregard" the White House's agreement with the network. The network noted that 60 Minutes is "widely respected for bringing its hallmark fairness, deep reporting and informative context to viewers each week" and thus this action will not deter CBS News from its reporting.

"Few journalists have the presidential interview experience Lesley Stahl has delivered over her decades as one of the premier correspondents in America and we look forward to audiences seeing her third interview with President Trump and subsequent interview with Vice President Pence this weekend," the network added.

On Thursday, Florida reported over 5,500 new cases of COVID-19—and the day isn’t over yet. The number is higher than anything the state has posted since the first half of August, but it reflects a fresh surge that’s keeping the state at an average of around 100 deaths per day and steadily moving it up the Worst States charts. In the next two days, Florida will likely pass New Jersey to take over the No. 4 slot in total deaths. It’s already reached the No. 3 spot in total cases. And it’s by far the largest state when it comes to the top 10 in cases per population.

What’s a Donald Trump-loving, science-hating Republican governor to do? Well, Ron DeSantis has already been trying to follow Trump’s advice to do less testing. Florida is currently testing at the lowest rate of any state, with just one test per 1,000 residents. With cases skyrocketing despite the lowest rate of testing in the nation, DeSantis has only one choice: He has to get sensible, order a statewide mask mandate, cut down mass gatherings, and place restrictions on bars and restaurants. 

Except DeSantis isn’t going to do any of that. Because he’s come up with an alternative: He’s going to stop reporting the numbers.

As WFLA 8 reports, DeSantis says it’s time to “scale back the report frequency.” He’s promising that the data will still be collected. It just won’t be … visible. If daily data is too much for people to stand, just how often would DeSantis share what’s happening in his state? He doesn’t say.

Epidemiologists warned that not having numbers from Florida would mean losing visibility of the epidemic in one of the nation’s most populous states. That could affect everything from local hospital planning, to restrictions and considerations in other states. Taking Florida off the books would place an enormous hole in the nationwide understanding of what is going on, and open the possibility that the state is becoming an even bigger hotspot while covering up the truth.

This is just another step along the cover-up path for DeSantis. Back in May, he ordered county medical examiners to stop releasing daily reports on deaths. This information had been available since … ever, but is no longer visible. Instead, deaths are reported after being massaged by DeSantis’ team at the state level.

That same month, DeSantis also forced analysts to change numbers on the state’s COVID-19 dashboard. A month later, he fired the data scientist who created that dashboard and cut back on the information being provided. DeSantis’ updated version of the dashboard removed information on hospital admissions, emergency room admissions, and available ICU beds. And since Trump took the daily reporting from hospitals away from the Centers for Disease Control and handed it over to a private company owned by a Republican donor, there are good reasons to doubt that any information coming out of Florida is accurate.

This is fine .. this is all fine. People in Florida surely won’t be concerned about having data on a deadly disease hidden from them. 

Vote appropriately, Florida. 

VideoCardz reports: NVIDIA has just told its board partners that it will not launch GeForce RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB cards as planned. NVIDIA allegedly cancels its December launch of GeForce RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB. This still very fresh information comes from two independent sources. Technically GeForce RTX 3080 20GB and RTX 3070 16GB could launch at a later time, but the information that we have clearly stated that those SKUs have been canceled, not postponed. NVIDIA has already canceled its RTX 3070 Ti model (PG141 SKU 0), so the RTX 3070 16GB (PG141 SKU5) and RTX 3080 20GB (PG132 SKU20) will be joining the list. The GeForce RTX 3080 20GB was expected to be a response to AMD Radeon RX 6900/6800 series featuring Navi 21 GPU. All three AMD SKUs will feature 16GB of memory, leaving NVIDIA with a smaller frame buffer to compete with. We do not know the official reason for the cancellation. The RTX 3080 20GB might have been scrapped due to low GDDR6X yield issues, one source claims. The reason behind RTX 3070 16GB cancellation is unknown (this SKU uses GDDR6 memory). The plans for GeForce RTX 3060 Ti remain unchanged. The PG190 SKU 10 remains on track for mid-November launch.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Madison Cawthorn is the 25-year-old North Carolinian Republican candidate for the state’s 11th Congressional District. He’s facing off against Democratic candidate and retired U.S. Air Force Col. Moe Davis. Cawthorn is one of those unicorns the Republican Party likes to show off: a good-looking guy who isn’t 1,000 years old. Technically, Cawthorn doesn’t even remember Republicans like Lindsey Graham’s “good old days” of segregation. However, Cawthorn doesn’t seem to have let that lack of empirical knowledge affect how racist he can be.

According to reports, Cawthorn set up a website in order to attack Davis, his opponent. This website, moetaxes.com, is at first glance your run-of-the-mill conservative attack on a Democratic candidate, saying that said candidate is going to raise your taxes. Upon further review of the website, it turns out that Cawthorn is exactly as run-of-the-mill racist as seemingly the entire Republican establishment is these days. First reported by The Bulwark on Thursday, Cawthorn’s website tries to attack news reporters who have been critical of Cawthorn while being mostly positive about Davis, saying that they’re trying to “ruin white males running for office.” 

Help candidates like Moe Davis win in November, and turn these red state legislatures blue.

On his attack website, Cawthorn has this section attacking Tom Fiedler, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former dean of the Boston University College of Communication. 

Tom Fiedler, who works with Moe Davis' advocates, is working to tear down Madison Cawthorn.

• He quit his academia job in Boston to work for non-white males like Cory Booker, who aims to ruin white males running for office.

After this report, the language on the website was quickly deleted and changed to read that Fiedler “quit his academia job in Boston to become a political operative and is an unapologetic defender of left-wing identity politics.” Cawthorn released a statement saying: “The syntax of our language was unclear and unfairly implied I was criticizing Cory Booker.” Weird. The most racist part was the concept that anyone was interested in ruining white males running for office, as opposed to ruining racist assholes who are running for office.

You may remember Cawthorn as the North Carolina politician who had to quickly delete pictures he had posted to his Instagram account showing him gleefully visiting Hitler’s vacation home, “Eagle’s Nest,” in Germany back in 2017. The posts, which included Cawthorn referring to Hitler as “the Fuhrer,” made news because Cawthorn said it was a dream to visit Eagle’s Nest. Cawthorn put the images back up, and whether or not he’s a budding neo-Nazi remains to be seen.

As Cawthorn himself pointed out:

So, what’s the deal with the paranoia about white males being oppressed? Sounds Hitler-y. This comes around the same time that over 150 former classmates of Cawthorn at Christian conservative Patrick Henry College signed onto a letter detailing “predatory” behavior by Crawford and saying he was not fit to be an elected official. That’s more than half the student body, by the way.

Davis released a statement citing both racist events and the letter from Patrick Henry College, saying: “Madison Cawthorn has proven time and time again that he is unfit for public office. From the predatory sexual behavior that caused his Christian conservative classmates at Patrick Henry College to implore NC-11 voters to reject Mr. Cawthorn, to his incessant lying to embellish his own personal story, to his repeated appeals to racism and bigotry, Madison Cawthorn has clearly established his poor moral character.”

Still, Cawthorn continues to have the full backing of the Republican establishment and conservative gun enthusiasts.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Alabama voters once again have the chance to remove the racist language of Jim Crow from the state's constitution, which was approved in 1901 to enshrine white supremacy as state law.

Courts have long since struck down legalized segregation, but past attempts to strip the offensive phrases have failed. Even though no organized opposition to the measure has emerged this time, some worry that conservative backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement could quash the proposal, which qualified for the ballot months before the nationwide demonstrations that occurred in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.

A measure on the Nov. 3 ballot would allow the state to recompile its 119-year-old constitution in a process supporters say would remove a lingering stain from the state's era of racial segregation and the legalized oppression of Black people.

“What we are trying to do with this small measure is to bring the Alabama Constitution into the 21st century and be more reflective of who we are as a state now,” said Rep. Merika Coleman, one of the sponsors of the bipartisan legislation.

An amendment would clear the way for excising language from the constitution that bans mixed-race marriages, allows poll taxes, and mandates school segregation. It would also remove duplicate sections from the heavily amended document and put related items all in one section.

While eradicating overt racism might seem like a logical move in 2020, approval isn't a given: Voters in the majority white, conservative state have rejected similar proposals twice since 2000.

In 2004, conservatives helped kill a move to clean up the constitution by arguing the move could lead to increases in school taxes. Eight years later, education groups and others opposed a similar measure because it retained segregation-era language that denied the constitutional right to education in Alabama.

Supporters of the measure are being careful with how they present the issue this year.

Called Amendment 4, the proposal as written on statewide ballots does not even mention race. It just says the amendment would let the Legislature “recompile the Alabama Constitution and submit it during the 2022 Regular Session, and provide a process for its ratification by the voters ...."

Supporters are encouraged because no organized opposition has emerged just days ahead of the vote. But they are also wary that conservatives who dominate the state electorate could oppose the amendment if they perceive it as being tied to anti-racism protests.

“It’s possible that the backlash will rear its head and people will vote against it,” said Nancy Ekberg, a director of Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform, a nonprofit that has been pushing for a rewrite for 20 years.

Coleman said there was no connection between the amendment and nationwide protests against racial injustice.

“I don’t understand how anyone would conflate the two issues when we passed the measure in 2019 and it was completely bipartisan,” she said.

The racial justice movement and remnants of racism are tied to measures in some other states. Voters in neighboring Mississippi will decide on a replacement for the Confederate-themed state flag, and Rhode Island voters will decide whether to remove a reference to plantations from the state's official name.

In Alabama, history shows there's reason for supporters of the amendment to worry.

Two decades ago, Alabama voters voted to repeal an unenforceable section of the constitution that made it illegal for Black and white people to marry. About 40% voted against the change, and the amendment either passed narrowly or lost in many rural, mostly white counties.

If voters OK a reworking this year, a final version of the document would still have to be approved by lawmakers and in another statewide vote in 2022.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has not taken an official position on the anti-racist measure or any of the five other statewide amendments on the ballot, but she does not oppose any of them, said spokeswoman Gina Maiola.

The 1901 constitution was written to establish a "rigid apartheid” in Alabama, and the white men who wrote it were successful in disenfranchising Black people and poor white people for generations, said historian Wayne Flynt. Large numbers of Black people did not register to vote until after the civil rights gains of the 1960s.

Flynt said someone — including a state competing for an economic development project — could use the remaining racist language in the constitution to argue that “nothing in Alabama has changed.”

“This referendum and the referendum in ’22 will be a way of opening up the soul of Alabama and see what it looks like on the inside,” Flynt said.

The federal judge presiding over the criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn has ordered the Justice Department to conduct an unusual review of its filings in the case and certify by Monday whether any have been manipulated.

The order is a signal of intense distrust between the judge, Emmet Sullivan, and the department, whose filings are typically accepted at face value. In this case, DOJ has already acknowledged that two documents it previously filed — handwritten notes taken by former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — were altered "inadvertently" to include inaccurate dates.

Sullivan's demand will force the Justice Department to confront tricky interpretations of handwritten notes that DOJ and Flynn's legal team have relied on to seek the dismissal of the prosecution.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to making false statements about his interactions with Russia's then-ambassador to the United States in the weeks before President Donald Trump's inauguration. Flynn encouraged the Russian envoy, Sergey Kislyak, to resist escalating a sanctions battle with the outgoing Obama administration, which sought to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 election. But Flynn told FBI agents in a Jan. 24, 2017 interview — as well as other Trump administration officials — that sanctions were not raised on the calls.

Though Flynn pleaded guilty to lying and cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators for a year, he dropped his legal team in early 2019, hired anti-Mueller firebrand attorney Sidney Powell and reversed his posture, claiming he was entrapped into a guilty plea by corrupt FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors. Earlier this year, Attorney General William Barr appointed a Missouri-based U.S. attorney to review the case and, as Flynn mounted an effort to unravel his guilty plea, Barr moved in May to dismiss the charges altogether.

But Sullivan has resisted pressure to drop the case, instead appointing an outside adviser to argue against dismissal. That adviser, former Judge John Gleeson, has accused Barr of an overtly political effort to drop the Flynn case in order to protect a prominent Trump ally. Sullivan's posture has led to contentious litigation, including a failed effort by Flynn's team to ask the appeals court to elbow Sullivan aside while accusing him of bias. In the intervening months, the Justice Department and Flynn have continued to publicly post sets of documents that Flynn's team has characterized as evidence of FBI misconduct.

Two of those documents included the notes that DOJ now acknowledges were altered, a revelation that Sullivan said last month left him "floored" and demanding answers. In his new order, Sullivan notes that DOJ did not respond to his request to authenticate all 14 exhibits it has filed in support of the dismissal motion.

"Although the government relies heavily on these 14 Exhibits, the government has not provided a declaration attesting that the Exhibits are true and correct copies," he wrote Friday. Though he acknowledged there is typically a legal "presumption" that documents filed by the government are authentic, it doesn't apply in this case. "Here, however, the government has acknowledged that altered FBI records have been produced by the government and filed on the record in this case."

In his order, Sullivan demanded by Monday a sworn declaration that all other documents in the case are "true and correct copies." That declaration, Sullivan says, must spell out the name, date and author of its contents — aspects that were sometimes left ambiguous by the publicly filed records. Sullivan also asks for DOJ to provide transcripts of the handwritten notes, which could also eliminate ambiguities related to some of the hard-to-read scrawlings.

The alteration in Strzok's notes have already led to significant public confusion about a key aspect of the FBI's investigation of Flynn. Strzok's notes summarize a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting at which President Barack Obama, FBI Director James Comey and other national security officials discussed Flynn's contact with Russian officials. The document filed in court included a notation that indicated a date range of Jan. 4-5, 2017 — an addition that DOJ attributes to an inadvertently scanned sticky note.

Despite little ambiguity about the date of the Oval Office meeting, the inclusion of Jan. 4, 2017, as a potential earlier date helped Trump deploy the issue during a debate last month with former Vice President Joe Biden.

Strzok's notes indicate that Biden mentioned the Logan Act — a mostly defunct 18th-century law that criminalizes efforts by private citizens to conduct U.S. foreign policy. The FBI internally discussed using the Logan Act as a basis for its decision to interview Flynn a few weeks later as it investigated his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Ultimately, FBI and DOJ officials said the interview was conducted as part of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Strzok’s notes provide no context about why Biden raised the Logan Act, if it was in response to anyone else or how any officials responded. Biden has previously acknowledged being present in the Oval Office during the discussion of the Flynn matter and indicated he was broadly aware of the FBI investigation. “But that's all I know about it. I don't think anything else,” Biden said.

Trump, though, accused Biden of dredging up the Logan Act himself to go after Flynn.

"You gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn," the president said at the Sept. 29 debate.

Yet other documents released by the DOJ indicate that the notion of pursuing a Logan Act charge against Flynn originated inside the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017, a day before the Oval Office meeting occurred. Messages exchanged between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page on that day reveal a discussion of the obscure law. Strzok provided the text of the statute to Page, as well as an analysis by the Congressional Research Service that noted the Logan Act had been in relative disuse for more than 200 years and could be unconstitutional.

On Thursday, the Justice Department also signaled in a public filing that it had completed its review of the Flynn case and had no additional documents to turn over. DOJ specifically pointed out that it found no evidence of an earlier draft of the FBI's summary of Flynn's Jan. 24, 2017 interview with Strzok and agent Joe Pientka. Flynn's legal team, as well as outside allies including Trump himself, have suggested for more than a year that an "original" summary — known in FBI parlance as an FD-302 — of the interview exists and must be turned over, but DOJ said it scoured all FBI systems and had already turned over three drafts as well as the first finalized version, completed on Feb. 15, 2017.

"You have previously been provided with three draft versions of the FD-302, dated February 10, 11, and 14, 2017, that were circulated in PDF format by email to FBI personnel for review," Justice Department officials indicated. "[T]hese are the only draft versions of the FD-302 that we have located during our diligent searches.

"The department also indicated it found no additional relevant communications about Flynn's case among FBI higher-ups that hadn't already been disclosed.

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Once neuralink is piping twitter directly into our collective amygdala, we will enter the perfect anxiety-based Utopia.

Today's News:

Members of the Wisconsin National Guard test residents for the coronavirus at a temporary test facility set up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 9, 2020. | Scott Olson/Getty Images

Wisconsin’s coronavirus cases have skyrocketed. Here’s why.

The coronavirus epidemic in Wisconsin is so bad that, earlier this month, the state opened field hospitals to take on a wave of cases and deaths that officials feared would overwhelm the health care system.

The US has one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the world, and Wisconsin has one of the worst outbreaks within the US. Only the Dakotas and Montana have higher rates of daily new cases. Wisconsin’s outbreak also shows no signs of abating: Since the beginning of October, the seven-day average of daily new coronavirus cases has risen by almost 40 percent. Covid-19 deaths have increased by more than 95 percent over the month.

Wisconsin is the most populous state ranked in the top five for Covid-19 cases. And it’s likely the most important politically — Donald Trump’s win in the state helped cement his Electoral College victory in 2016.

In some ways, the story of Wisconsin’s recent surge is similar to other surges across the country: Cases gradually rose after restrictions were loosened in May, then skyrocketed as the public eased up — gathering for Labor Day, going back to bars and indoor dining, and returning to college campuses.

“It’s a combination of a lot of things that have occurred at the same time,” Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin Madison, told me. “It was a perfect storm.”

But what makes Wisconsin unique is the role political polarization has played. It’s not just that its voters are divided enough to make Wisconsin a swing state in presidential elections. The state government is also divided, and that’s had clear consequences: Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has repeatedly tried to enact new restrictions and policies to combat Covid-19, only to have them threatened or overturned by Republican lawmakers.

It was a Republican-controlled Supreme Court that forced Wisconsin’s reopening in the first place by striking down Evers’s stay-at-home order. (Some local governments imposed new restrictions, but others didn’t.) It’s the Republican-controlled legislature that’s now threatening to repeal the state’s mask mandate. And President Donald Trump has held rallies in the state — even as its caseload grew — downplaying the pandemic by claiming it’s “rounding the corner” and calling for the state to “open it up.”

Experts argue that the state needs a united front to take down the coronavirus — and, in particular, the state’s Republican leaders have to accept what scientists have repeatedly said on Covid-19. But, for now, the public isn’t getting consistent leadership or messaging. Some GOP lawmakers, like Trump, continue to push for the opposite, calling into question the need for social distancing and masking even as the evidence supports both.

For Wisconsin, that’s not only helped make its coronavirus epidemic one of the current worst in the US but threatens to keep the outbreak going. Until state lawmakers and the public take action, there’s no reason to think Wisconsin’s coronavirus cases and deaths will subside. It’s yet another lesson in the need for continued vigilance against the coronavirus.

“The bottom line is that the vast majority of the population is susceptible to Covid-19,” Amanda Simanek, an epidemiologist, at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, told me.

In some ways, Wisconsin reflects the standard Covid-19 story

Part of what’s led Wisconsin down this path is the story that’s been repeated again and again in explaining different states’ Covid-19 outbreaks: The state reopened too early and quickly, while the public and its leaders didn’t take precautions like social distancing and masking seriously enough.

In Wisconsin, Evers tried to maintain a stay-at-home order. After the state Supreme Court struck it down, he’s tried to institute milder restrictions, such as limits on public gatherings and capacity at restaurants and bars. But courts have blocked those restrictions, too.

Republicans in the state have criticized and fought Evers every step of the way, either in the courts or in the legislature. Trump has played into this — telling supporters at a Wisconsin rally, “I wish you had a Republican governor, because, frankly, you’ve got to open your state up. You’ve got to open it up.”

With only local restrictions left in place, much of the state has reopened.

At the same time, the public has become increasingly fatigued with the pandemic and all the hindrances it’s produced in everyday life. The restrictions also may have seemed less necessary to Wisconsinites, as much of the state avoided the kind of large outbreak seen across the US throughout the summer. That mix of fatigue and complacency, experts said, likely led more people to start moving about and gathering together by Labor Day.

So people went out more, with a chance to infect one another during each interaction. The reopening of indoor bars and restaurants poses especially big concerns for experts: In these spaces, people are close together for long periods of time; they can’t wear masks as they eat or drink; the air can’t dilute the virus like it can outdoors; and alcohol can lead them to drop their guards further.

Wisconsin’s current surge appeared to first take off in colleges and universities, with the state’s college towns ranking among the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the US in September as students returned to campus, partied, and hit up bars and restaurants.

By now, though, the outbreaks have spread much further — nearly statewide. This seemed to start around Labor Day, when friends and family gathered, partied, and spread the virus. Coupled with Wisconsin’s reopening as restrictions have been struck down or eliminated, cases have skyrocketed since then.

This, too, was similar to many of the summer outbreaks, as Memorial Day and reopenings led to new surges of Covid-19 in the South, West, and, over time, much of the rest of the US. Similarly, in the summer, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that increases in cases among younger populations eventually led to increases among older groups — as may have happened after universities and colleges reopened in Wisconsin.

The problem is these places never got Covid-19 cases down. Indeed, Wisconsin’s cases have never consistently declined — at least to levels that experts consider safe. By Labor Day, Wisconsin had more than double the confirmed coronavirus cases that it had at the start of June. That left a large population of infected people to spread the coronavirus to other people as they went out more. “The virus was already there,” Sethi said.

These problems stand to get worse in the fall and winter. The much colder temperatures in Wisconsin will push people indoors, where the virus has an easier time spreading. Friends and families will once again gather for the holidays, from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year’s Eve. Another flu season could strain hospitals further, hindering their ability to treat a surge of Covid-19 patients.

In that sense, Wisconsin’s story really is like much of the country’s: Premature reopenings have led to more cases and deaths, and they’ll potentially lead to even more cases and deaths as the fall and winter likely make things riskier.

“It’s not particularly surprising,” Simanek said. “But it’s not necessarily inevitable.”

Political polarization has uniquely hurt Wisconsin’s response

Political divides now drive different levels of social distancing and mask use between Democrats and Republicans across the country. What makes Wisconsin unique is how pronounced political polarization is in a state so evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans — the state doesn’t register voters by party, but the state legislature is held by Republicans while the governor is a Democrat, and Trump in 2016 won Wisconsin by just 0.7 percent of the vote.

This division has made partisan fights about Covid-19 especially fierce and consequential, particularly between Democratic leaders, including Evers, and Republican leaders in charge of the state’s Assembly and Senate. In general, Evers has tried to push for the policies that experts have called for in the face of Covid-19 — social distancing, masking, and so on — and Republican lawmakers have resisted.

Most recently, Evers declared a third state of emergency related to Covid-19 and extended his mask mandate. Republicans responded by threatening to repeal the mandate (but so far have shown few signs of actually doing it, with the state Assembly not reconvening so far).

On top of hindering the policy response, this has also led to mixed public health messages to the public. By and large, Republicans — particularly Trump — suggest that Covid-19 isn’t a real threat. Democrats, including Evers and presidential candidate Joe Biden, claim that the pandemic has to be taken seriously.

That’s led to partisan differences in who takes action against Covid-19. Anecdotally, people in more Republican parts of the state are less likely to wear masks. That’s backed by polling, which has found that Republicans are less likely to wear masks at all and, if they do wear masks, do so less frequently.

“There’s a lot of mixed attitudes with how to resolve this issue and even questioning whether the pandemic is a problem at all that needs to be addressed,” Sethi said. “So there’s a critical mass in the state — particularly in the northeast of the state, but really throughout the state — that just aren’t taking the precautions they should be taking.”

More broadly, experts worry the political fights have muddled guidance even for people who do want to take Covid-19 more seriously. When state leaders give contradictory advice, and that advice appears to differ based on political party, it may become easier for members of the public to tune out in the face of what seems like another partisan battle in a state that already has a lot of political differences and squabbling.

It’s also leading to less clear messaging as to what the public should do. How dangerous is Covid-19, really? Are social distancing and masks really effective? Are treatments already effective enough to not worry about the disease? Is a vaccine around the corner? These are all valid questions with real answers (all of which generally point to continued, sustained action against the coronavirus), but people have to break through political fights, talking points, and misinformation to get those answers.

The political back-and-forth, Sethi argued, “subconsciously gives people permission to believe what they want to believe.”

In normal times, this kind of response from lawmakers and the public might just block important legislation from passing. But today, it’s fueling a deadly pandemic right as it unfolds.

Wisconsin has to get serious on the crisis to turn things around

As grim as things are in Wisconsin today, the truth is that Covid-19 isn’t unstoppable. The solutions are the same things experts have now been repeating for months throughout the pandemic: More testing and contact tracing to isolate people who are infected, get their close contacts to quarantine, and deploy broader restrictions as necessary. More masking. More careful, phased reopenings. More social distancing.

But Wisconsin, its leaders, and its population have to take these measures seriously. And, crucially, they have to keep at it: Until there’s a vaccine or similarly effective treatment, the coronavirus will remain a constant threat. “There’s only so much you can do to contain this if there isn’t a coherent, uniform response,” Simanek said.

The risk now is that Wisconsin’s outbreak could get so bad that a lockdown may become necessary. That’s what’s happened in Israel and European nations, as they’ve seen Covid-19 epidemics spiral out of control.

Of course, no one wants a lockdown. That’s exactly why experts emphasize the need for less restrictive measures now: If the public and its leaders take social distancing, testing, tracing, and masking seriously and sustain such measures, coronavirus cases can come down without a harsh lockdown. At least, that’s what seemed to work in other developed countries, like South Korea.

As things remain, though, the situation in Wisconsin is pretty bad — with cases still rising and Republican lawmakers still resisting the governor’s actions. If that continues as the fall rolls on and winter arrives, the state’s bad coronavirus outbreak stands to get even worse.

“In the current state,” UW Madison epidemiologist Nasia Safdar told me, “there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.”

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