"Microsoft's new Edge browser started randomly crashing when users typed into the address bar," reported the Verge on Thursday.
"The issues appear to have affected Edge users who had selected Google as the default search engine."
Microsoft investigated the problem and now says it's believed to have been resolved. The Microsoft Edge crashes started at around 7PM ET, and were affecting macOS and Windows users. Microsoft resolved the problems after around four hours of crashes, but it's not clear why they were only limited to Google search users in Edge.
If users switched to Microsoft's Bing search engine within Edge, the crashes never occured.
The Salt Lake City School District on Saturday denounced transphobic comments that were published in the Highland High School yearbook after a Facebook post pointing them out went viral.
Said the student who exposed the transphobic quote: “I am a student at highland high school going into my senior year. Due to the coronavirus our school did not receive its yearbook until today. Shockingly, one of the senior quotes was not as funny as the rest. The quote by Daniel Totzke stated, ‘There are only two genders and a lot of mental illness’. This is a clear attack towards the trans community at Highland. As a member of the the LQBTQ+, this was extremely offensive to me and many of the students at my school. I demand action to be taken against the student and the administrator that made it so hate speech could go into our 2020 year book. The quotes were submitted before COVID started and the yearbook came out late. There is no excuse for this. Please help me make this public so he can face the consequences of his actions.”
The school district released this statement, the Deseret News reports: “Unfortunately, one of the senior quotes in the yearbook included hate speech. Even more unfortunately, this quote was published in spite of the editing protocol in place for the yearbook. This yearbook quote is absolutely unacceptable and in no way reflective of the Salt Lake City School District, the value we place on every student, and the standards we strive to uphold. Let me make it clear that the Salt Lake City School District condemns hate speech in any form. To have something like this included in one of our high school yearbooks is abhorrent. We are committed to providing a safe and equitable learning environment for allstudents, including our LGBTQIA+ community. To our LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized students I say, please know how deeply your teachers, school administrators and district leaders care about you and your well-being.”
The school district plans to investigate how the quote was allowed to be published.
Motorists on the Florida Turnpike got an eyeful on Saturday when they saw a man stop his SUV, climb the highway median, and leap onto the hood of a moving semi going the opposite direction.
The moments shortly thereafter were captured by another motorist and shared to social media. In the clip, the man can be seen beating the hood of the semi as the truck driver tries to shake him off. The man on the hood is then heard screaming “call the police!” The driver was later intercepted and detained according to police reports.
UPDATE: A white male driving southbound on Florida Turnpike "began acting strange," exited his Toyota SUV, walked on the highway, jumped over the median and on top of a northbound Semi Tractor-Trailer and began striking the window with his hands… via @AndySlaterpic.twitter.com/PCfU4gjnXL
AFP reports: “Despite Germany’s comparatively low toll, authorities are concerned at a rise in infections over recent weeks and politicians took to social media to criticise the rally as irresponsible. ‘We are the second wave,’ shouted the crowd, a mixture of hard left and right and conspiracy theorists as they converged on the Brandenburg Gate, demanding ‘resistance’ and dubbing the pandemic ‘the biggest conspiracy theory’. Few protesters wore a mask or respected the 1.5-metre (five-foot) social distancing requirement, an AFP journalist reported, despite police repeatedly calling on them via megaphone to do so.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands protest peacefully in Berlin against #COVID19 restrictions in Germany. Protesters chant "We are the people. We are fed up. Stop with the lies. Today marks the end of the pandemic." pic.twitter.com/K9gtTtqPd7
This was the scene in Berlin, where an estimated 17,000 people defied social-distancing and mask requirements to join a protest supported by neo-Nazi groups, conspiracy theorists and others who said they were fed up with the restrictions.
Three inmates and two staff members were injured at Ware State Prison Saturday night when inmates facing a heightened COVID-19 threat rioted against authorities at the South Georgia facility. The uprising followed several reports of inhumane treatment at the prison. Two inmates at the facility have died of COVID-19, and 22 prisoners and 32 staff members have tested positive for the virus, according to Georgia Department of Corrections records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Tierra Greene, who identified herself as the sister of a Ware State Prison inmate, tweeted screenshots of May emails her brother sent her describing conditions at the prison. He told her that he tested positive for the virus, was placed on lockdown, and not given the opportunity to shower for about four days.
“I havent had my medicine," he wrote May 2. "I done had a seizure in all behind the door they havebt checked on me or send medical attention!!!i love yall"
Greene's brother said in a follow-up email three days later that although he was told he had the virus, he was not given access to any records proving his results. He said he had another seizure behind a door and was never given medical attention. "these folks really think this shxt a game leaving n----s back hhere really just to die cause aint no medical attention coming like that!!!!" the inmate wrote.
This is my brother writing me back in May from Ware State Prison about how he was being treated. My mom & I called up there & kept receiving different lies from different people pic.twitter.com/moRBsywoWX
Adnan Khan, a former inmate and executive director of the nonprofit Re:store Justice, tweeted: "What you’re seeing at Ware State Prison is evidence of a ruthless system & its negligence of humanity. I know most ppl are thinking ‘this is what criminals do.’ No, prisons are a crime against humanity. This is what humans beings are forced into when you suffocate their dignity."
A Ware State Prison riot is what happens when our prisons arent humane and when underfunded and overworked staff are trained to be ruthless. The violence was already ignored- grievances concerning COVID was the final straw https://t.co/YGRpZoKB7k
— Ashley Jay ðÂ�Â�Â�ðÂ�Â�¾âÂ�Â�âÂ�Â�ï¸Â� (@LegallyBlahh) August 2, 2020
Another social media user who goes by @ryeohmy on Twitter said she lives near the prison and her neighborhood lost power at about 10:30 p.m. with no explanation other than a "main line blew." Power was restored about 45 minutes later, and news of the riot quickly spread.
There�s another issue of contention: COVID-19. According to several sources, including AJC, several inmates and employees are COVID positive. Here�s the kicker: no one was being separated.
She said in another tweet that inmates have been complaining about conditions at the prison for weeks, and “no one has listened.” In a social media screenshot she shared, Lamar Eason, a man who identified himself as a former corrections officer, said he is willing to testify in court regarding safety procedures Warden Jeff Coleman. "has continuously ignored and frankly put his staff in harm's way." Eason accused the warden of "threatening to fire staff who speak out about it or threaten retaliation." "We knew this was coming for a while," Eason said of the riot early Sunday.
Inmates have been complaining for weeks. No one has listened. COs are willing to come forward about the Warden, who�s been a ringleader in the neglect and mistreatment of these inmates. pic.twitter.com/EWEJujqy2a
The Georgia Department of Corrections said in a statement Sunday that two staff members received “minor, non life-threatening injuries” and “three inmates received non life-threatening injuries” in the incident. “A golf cart was set on fire and several windows were broken, but no major damage to the facility has been reported. Officers deployed non-lethal ammunition, and the incident was brought under control.”
The Human and Civil Rights Coalition of Georgia said it has been dealing with issues at the prison since April. That’s when Larry Drew, a representative of the legal services nonprofit, wrote Commissioner Timothy Ward, of the Georgia Department of Corrections, to advocate for an inmate whose family reported had been denied medical treatment after notifying authorities he was having trouble breathing.
"Family members, friends, and members of the general public continued to contact Ware State Prison. They were hung up on," Drew wrote in the letter for inmate Joseph Velez.
“This situation at Ware State Prison has been brewing for months. Now is time for true prison reform in our state.
1. Not everyone in prison is guilty.
2. Nobody on this Earth should EVER feel like they have the liberty to violate the human rights of another and torture them without understanding there will be consequences.”
Donald Trump and his billionaire heiress and non-educator Education Secretary Betsy DeVos continue their relentless push for school reopenings, even threatening to cut off federal funds to those schools that hesitate to throw open their doors, exposing millions of public school children, parents and teachers to the potentially lethal effects of COVID-19. One of their loudest talking points has been the supposedly low rate of transmission of the virus by children.
New research indicates that, although they don’t suffer the same degree of ill effects as adults, children aged 5-17 are actually bastions of COVID-19 contagion to other children, as well as adults such as parents, grandparents, and teachers. More on that in a moment.
As CNN reported on July 22, Trump has a few favorite go-to lines when it comes to kids and COVID-19.
During Wednesday's briefing, Trump continued to advocate for schools opening in the fall. In support of this he claimed that "a lot of people" say children "don't transmit" coronavirus.
"They don't catch it easily, they don't bring it home easily," Trump added. "And if they do catch it, they get better fast."
“More and more studies show that kids are actually stoppers of the disease and they don’t get it and transmit it themselves, so we should be in a posture of—the default should be getting back to school kids in person, in the classroom.”
Never mind that millions of stressed, overcredulous parents are generally accustomed to believing what our education secretaries say (and are unlikely to be familiar with DeVos’ virulently anti-public school credentials). The real danger is that statements like DeVos’ are regurgitated over and over by unqualified bloviators in right-wing media, until they worm their way into school board meetings across the country, ultimately influencing the decisions that determine the fate of the nation’s schoolchildren.
Which brings us back to that research that contradicts both DeVos and Trump. Two separate new studies examining the transmission of COVID-19 by younger children now strongly indicate those statements are categorically false. In fact, the exact opposite seems to be the case: Small children spread the COVID-19 virus quite efficiently, even moreso than adults.
William A. Haseltine, a healthcare contributor for Forbes, reports:
Two new studies, though from different parts of the world, have arrived at the same conclusion: that young children not only transmit SARS-CoV-2 efficiently, but may be major drivers of the pandemic as well.
The first study, published in JAMA, is peer-reviewed. As Haseltine notes, researchers examined findings from a pediatric hospital in Chicago, the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital.
The Chicago study examines the concentration of the SARS-CoV-2 in the nasopharynx, or the upper region of the throat that connects to the nasal passages, of children and adults. According to the results, children 5 years and younger who develop mild to moderate Covid-19 symptoms have 10 to 100 times as much SARS-CoV-2 in the nasopharynx as older children and adults.
Whenever these young children cough, sneeze, or shout, they expel virus-laden droplets from the nasopharynx into the air. If they have as much as one hundred times the amount of virus in their throat and nasal passages as adults, it only makes sense that they would spread the virus more efficiently. The study also shows that children from the ages of 5 to 17, also with mild to moderate Covid-19 symptoms, have the same amount of virus in the nasopharynx as adults age 18 and above.
The Chicago study did not specifically examine the rate of transmission by small children, but rather its efficiency. The fact that a child has 100 times as much of the virus in nasal swab samples strongly points to a very efficient rate of transmission, just like any other cold or virus a child catches and spreads in school or day care. As reported in The New York Timesthis week, the lead author of the study was quite clear on this.
“It definitely shows that kids do have levels of virus similar to and maybe even higher than adults,” Dr. Heald-Sargent said. “It wouldn’t be surprising if they were able to shed” the virus and spread it to others.
The second study examines contact tracing findings conducted in Trento, Italy. While that study is in pre-print and still awaiting peer review, its results are consistent with those in the Chicago study. As Forbes’ Haseltine reports:
The researchers found that although young children had a somewhat lower risk of infection than adults and were less likely to become ill, children age 14 and younger transmit the virus more efficiently to other children and adults than adults themselves. Their risk of transmitting Covid-19 was 22.4 percent—more than twice that of adults aged 30 to 49, whose rate of contagiousness was about 11 percent. “Although childhood contacts were less likely to become cases,” they wrote, “children were more likely to infect household members.”
As Haseltine notes, the Trento study also found the youngest children to be the most efficient transmitters of the disease.
Both studies appear to have been further validated by the horrific experience of a single Georgia YMCA summer camp this week in which nearly half of hundreds of youth campers were infected in a matter of days, despite many “social distancing measures” purportedly in place. In evaluating that incident, the CDC on Friday released a report which could serve as an addendum to these two studies.
These findings demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 spread efficiently in a youth-centric overnight setting, resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups, despite efforts by camp officials to implement most recommended strategies to prevent transmission.
Asymptomatic infection was common and potentially contributed to undetected transmission, as has been previously reported (1–4).
This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection (1–3) and, contrary to early reports (5,6), might play an important role in transmission.
Any parent who has ever raised a preschool or school-aged child is familiar with the varying and often unpleasant viruses they bring home, particularly when those children are still toddlers. These studies show that it is equally likely, even in spite of the most valiant attempts to “socially distance” such children, that it will be effectively impossible to keep them from efficiently transmitting the disease to their parents or siblings when they come home, to say nothing of the potential transmission to teachers and other adult staffers.
As Haseltine observes, “If children from ages 5 to 17 are as or possibly even more contagious than adults, then opening schools in areas where daily rates of infection remain moderate to high is extremely risky and unwise.”
While pushing schools to reopen regardless of the risks, neither Donald Trump nor Betsy DeVos have displayed the slightest interest in the health and safety of our children, of parents, or teachers. But in truth, parents and teachers didn’t need these new studies to understand that. The wisest course of action for any parent or teacher when Trump or DeVos pretend to give advice—as several prematurely reopening schools and youth summer camps are now finding out—is to do the exact opposite of what they recommend.
(h/t FiredUpinCA and fionnmaccumhailus from the comments for the latest CDC report)
The South just can't live without its white supremacist politicians, and the GOP is happy to proivde
Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) complained that “the woke mob is trying to cancel me” after being called out for giving an interview to an OANN reporter known for his links to Nazism and white supremacists.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports: “Jewish groups and media observers pointed out that Posobiec promotes conspiracy theories and once associated with white supremacists including Richard Spencer, who organized the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Posobiec has been criticized in the past for posting anti-Semitic tweets, including tweets that included the numbers 14 and 88, codes used by neo-Nazis.”
Wrote the Anti-Defamation League of Posobiec: “He has enthusiastically promoted a range of lies, including the Pizzagate hoax, and attempted to discredit anti-Trump activists by planting an inflammatory ‘Rape Melania’ sign at a protest event. He frequently tweets anti-Muslim sentiments, and has harassed former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin with anti-Muslim slurs online and in person, tweeting, ‘I screamed ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ at Huma Abedin.‘”
I joined @JackPosobiec on @OANN to discuss why I had to call out the BLM political organization — and why the woke mob is trying to cancel me.
The latest modification to the ever-changing Republican National Convention is one that seems to cater to the incumbent seeking re-election, and his endless war on the media: The entire four-day event will be closed to members of the press, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Conveniently blaming the novel coronavirus, which a near-endless stream of Republicans have continued to minimize, an unnamed Grand Old Party spokesperson attempted to shift responsibility for the decision to the government of North Carolina. "[W]e are planning for all of the Charlotte activities to be closed press: Friday, August 21—Monday, 24th given the health restrictions and limitations in place in the state," the email read, adding that "we are working within the parameters set before us by state and local guidelines regarding the number of people who can attend events."
Press will also be unwelcome in “the room when the Republican National Committee meets to conduct official party business,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. Unless Republicans change their plans, this rejection of the Fourth Estate from the convention is a pretty big deal. In fact, it’s the first time journalists have been barred from a Republican presidential nominating convention, ever. Donald Trump—also known as the guy getting the Republican nomination—has declared the press to be an “enemy” of the American people, and for months has minimized the dangers of the novel coronavirus. He’s also the guy who hasn’t been drawing huge adoring crowds, long considered more essential to his survival than even Big Macs. Balloons and streamers dropping on an all-but-empty arena—and caught on camera for the world to see, and share, and replay—would likely be more than Trump can take. Even before the ban on reporters, the RNC reduced the amount of delegates welcome to just 336, down from over 2,400 in 2016.
"Johnson & Johnson's experimental coronavirus vaccine protected macaque monkeys with a single shot in a pre-clinical study, potentially gaining on other vaccines that are further along in testing but require two doses over time," reports Bloomberg:
Five of six primates exposed to the pandemic-causing pathogen were immune after a single injection. The exception showed low levels of the virus, according to a study published in the medical journal Nature...
The health-care behemoth kick-started human trials on July 22 in Belgium and in the U.S. earlier this week. Although other vaccine-makers have moved more quickly into development, with AstraZeneca having already administered its experimental vaccine to almost 10,000 people in the U.K., gaining protection with a single dose could prove an advantage in the logistical challenge of rolling out massive vaccination programs worldwide.... The primate data show that the coronavirus vaccine candidate generated a strong antibody response, and provided protection with only a single dose, said Paul Stoffels, the drugmaker's chief scientific officer.
J&J aims to embark on the last phase of tests in September, compressing the traditional timeline as it races against others including AstraZeneca, Moderna Inc., Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline Plc for a shot to end the pandemic.... The New Brunswick, New Jersey-based drugmaker will test both a one-dose coronavirus shot, and a shot coupled with a booster in its early-stage studies of more than 1,000 adults, which launched this month.
For those keeping track of the many accomplishments of the Trump administration, we reached a milestone of sorts that received little attention this week: The U.S. daily total of officially recorded deaths due to the SARS-CoV2 virus is now averaging one death per every minute, nearly every day.
The United States recorded 1,456 new deaths on Wednesday, the highest one-day increase since 1,484 on May 27, according to a Reuters tally, bringing total deaths to 151,229.
That was Wednesday. We’re actually closer to 156,000 (official) deaths as of this writing. While tallies vary slightly depending on the specific database, the one death per minute “official death” figure has been roughly consistent over the last three days.
Of course, these are only deaths verified and recorded as caused by the COVID-19 virus. Deaths from pneumonia, heart attacks, stroke or other causes brought on by COVID-19 but occurring before the decedent was actually tested are assumed to drastically increase the death total. It is not possible to determine the total number of excess COVID-19 deaths because the COVID-19 tests actually available to medical providers and hospitals in this country are almost entirely reserved for people still alive. One JAMA Internal Medicine study published in July found that an additional 28% of the total “official” deaths could be so attributed.
For comparison purposes, approximately 1,660 Americans per day die from all forms of cancer, annually, while 1,772 succumb daily from heart disease, including coronary artery disease and stroke. With or without the additional 28% of “excess deaths” as a benchmark, COVID-19 has been a leading cause of daily deaths in this country on and off since Apri, with various reported daily totals regularly exceeding the deaths from heart disease or cancer, particularly during New York City’s initial outbreak.
So while the “one death per minute” figure is not unique since the start of the pandemic, it does provide a reference point for people to wrap their minds around.
Various statistical analyses have been developed that explain how Americans spend their time daily. For example, Americans spend (on average) eight hours and 48 minutes per day sleeping. Assuming you are an “average American,” then while you sleep tonight, approximately 528 Americans will die of the COVID-19 virus.
In the time you spend showering, bathing, brushing your teeth and combing/brushing your hair on any given day, an estimated 47 Americans will die of the virus.
In the time you spend eating breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, 77 Americans will die of COVID-19.
Assuming you are an “average American,” today you will spend two hours and 46 minutes watching television. During your TV time, 166 Americans will have died from the virus.
Americans typically spend two hours and 51 minutes on their smartphones daily, with most of that time spent on social media. So while you looked at your phone today, another 171 Americans died from the virus.
And during the rest of the day, another 451 Americans will have died. This is happening every day.
For a bit of perspective on what 1500 people looks like, here’s a crowd of hundreds of workers in Brussels, protesting layoffs at their Volkswagen factory.
In three months, based on the current death rates, this group of Zapatista marchers in Zocalo Square illustrates how many more people (about 150,000 more) will have died.
But death rates are not staying the same. In July, they increased as the disastrous effects of Trump and the Republican Party’s reopening policies became manifest. As schools reopen, even partially, they will likely spike again, with children as the primary carriers, if not the primary victims. Just two weeks ago Alexis Madrigal, writing for the Atlantic, could state that the deaths of 300,000-800,000 people, based on the infection-fatality rate scenarios projected by the CDC, was still “unlikely.” Now, with a death toll approaching 160,000 in those two weeks, it doesn’t seem unlikely at all.
The lack of containment by American authorities has resulted in not only lost lives, but also lost businesses, savings accounts, school years, dreams, public trust, friendships. The country cannot get back to normal with a highly transmissible, deadly virus spreading in our communities. There will be no way to just “live with it.” There will only be dying from it for the unlucky, and barely surviving it for the rest of us.
Assuming Joe Biden wins the election, he will not be able to exercise any power until nearly the end of January. In the dead of winter, viruses typically thrive as people stay indoors. Does anyone believe that the Trump administration is going to magically change course, implementing a national lockdown and a massive ramped up testing effort out of some sense of duty to the American people? Does anyone expect anything fundamentally different on a national level from this administration between now and January, particularly if and when Donald Trump loses the election in November? We’ve already seen the results of the administration’s policy of dumping all responsibility onto the states.
Right now, it looks as if we’re still hurtling headlong into the darkest winter in this country’s history.
There's a lot of baggage there...I'm thinking this may not be a great idea
Rep. Karen Bass, a top-tier contender to be Joe Biden’s running mate, on Saturday sought to clarify remarks she made in 2010 praising the Church of Scientology.
Video emerged on Friday of the California Democrat speaking at a ceremony for a renovated Scientology church in Los Angeles when she served as speaker of the California State Assembly. The Daily Caller first reported the video’s existence.
In her remarks, Bass called on treating humans with respect and fighting oppression, but also spoke highly of the controversial group and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard.
“The Church of Scientology, I know, has made a difference, because your creed is a universal creed and one that speaks to all people everywhere,” Bass said before an audience of some 6,000 attendees. “That is why the words are exciting of your Founder L. Ron Hubbard, in the creed of the Church of Scientology: That all people of whatever race, color or creed are created with equal rights.”
Bass said in a statement she was trying to find an “area of agreement” with the church, which has faced allegations from former members of abuse, human trafficking and intimidation.
“Back in 2010, I attended the event knowing I was going to address a group of people with beliefs very different than my own, and spoke briefly about things I think most of us agree with, and on those things — respect for different views, equality, and fighting oppression — my views have not changed,” Bass tweeted. “Since then, published first-hand accounts in books, interviews and documentaries have exposed this group.”
While Bass did not say in her statement what she thinks about the church, she mentioned that “everyone is now aware” of the allegations against it. The Congressional Black Caucus chair also stated that she’s not a Scientologist, underscoring that she worships at a Baptist church in Los Angeles.
Bass’s record has increasingly come under scrutiny as she has moved toward the top of presumptive Democratic nominee Biden's vice presidential short list after lobbying by fellow House Democrats.
She has also come under fire from President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign after The Atlantic reported Friday that Bass worked in Cuba in the 1970s with a group aligned with Fidel Castro’s government.
“She was always pro-Castro & later mourned his death,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh tweeted Saturday. “Whether Biden picks her or not, he's written off Cuban-American voters just by considering her.”
On a call organized by the Trump campaign, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) ripped Bass for “showing a stunning amount of interest in the Cuban Revolution," according to the Palm Beach Post.
“She will be the highest ranking Castro sympathizer in the United States government,” Rubio said about Bass if she’s selected to be Biden’s running mate.
Bass has sought to address the Cuban controversy in recent media appearances.
The Congressional Leadership Fund has once againreleased an internal poll of a competitive House race showing the Republican candidate leading but—somehow, mysteriously—has failed to include any information on the presidential contest.
Okay, it's obviously not a mystery at all: Donald Trump's numbers must simply suck, even though CLF's latest survey, from Meeting Street Insights, finds Republican Troy Nehls ahead of Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni 44-32 in Texas' open 22nd Congressional District, the first poll we've seen of the contest. Even those results, with so many undecideds and Nehls well below 50, aren't necessarily all that great for the GOP, which is trying to hold this seat, but the hide-the-ball stunt on the presidential side is getting really egregious at this point: CLF, which is the largest Republican player in House races, has now done the same thing in four polls in just the last week-and-a-half.
Pretty much every recent House poll from Democrats, by contrast, has trumpeted leads for Joe Biden, even in districts Trump won four years ago. For the Congressional Leadership Fund, however, the prospect of embarrassing Dear Leader with ugly polling data is one that must be avoided at all costs. In fact, that overriding directive is so strong, it’s possible that CLF isn't hiding anything: Republican operative Liam Donovan insists that some GOP pollsters really aren't testing presidential matchups when they go into the field, saying, "You don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to."
The claim is entirely believable. Last year, ProPublica reported that the RNC had stopped providing crucial "voter scores" on Trump to candidates, both to "discourage candidates from distancing themselves" from Trump and to prevent any leaks of humiliating statistics. More recently, Daily Beast described the great lengths Trump's own aides have gone to to massage and conceal the truth about his dire standing in the polls.
Simply not asking about Trump's standing at all is the next logical step. But while it might be a great way to keep Trump from getting pissed, burying your head in the sand is also a great way to lose elections.
US ambassador Todd Chapman exits a 2018 meeting in Ecuador. | Dolores Ochoa/AP
Brazilian news reports say the ambassador asked for a “favor.” Democrats are demanding answers.
The Trump administration has been accused of attempting to pressure another foreign country into helping Trump’s reelection prospects, according to a letter from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
That letter cites Brazilian news articles that report US Ambassador to Brazil Todd Chapman pressured members of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to lower ethanol tariffs in order to support President Donald Trump’s reelection efforts.
In the letter, Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Eliot Engel demands Chapman explain an article in which the ambassador is said to have asked for the tariffs to be lowered as a “favor” from the Brazilian government to the Trump reelection campaign.
“Iowa is the largest ethanol producer in the United States…and could be a key player in Trump’s election,” an article in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo reads, according to the letter. “Hence the importance – according to Chapman – for the Bolsonaro government to do the U.S. a favor.”
Beyond the report in O Globo, the New York Times notes, another Brazilian outlet, Estadão, published a similar story based on its own reporting, with its journalists finding that Chapman had made the request, and was rebuffed by government officials.
Alceu Moreira, a Brazilian congressman, also told the Times that Chapman “had made repeated references to the electoral calendar during a recent meeting the two had about ethanol.”
Engel has called for Chapman to respond to the reports by August 4, and for him to provide “any and all documents referring or related to any discussions” with Brazilian officials.
If the reports are accurate, the letter states, Chapman’s actions could be in violation of the Hatch Act, which prevents federal employees from engaging in certain political activities, such as partisan campaigning for candidates.
A State Department spokesperson said in a statement that Chapman’s efforts were part of a policy of pushing for lower tariffs in general, not narrowly focused on supporting an incumbent presidential campaign.
“Allegations suggesting that Ambassador Chapman has asked Brazilians to support a specific U.S. candidate are false,” the statement reads. “The United States has long been focused on reducing tariff barriers and will continue do so.”
Foreign interference marred the 2016 election. Requests for interference led to impeachment.
The reports are also of concern because of how closely they echo the request that led to Trump’s impeachment.
Last July, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “do us a favor” during a phone call in which he asked the leader to look into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of then-candidate, now presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In that call, Trump appeared to condition military aid badly needed by Ukraine on Zelensky’s willingness to search for information that might be used to discredit Biden.
It isn’t clear whether Trump was involved in Chapman’s reported pressure campaign about ethanol, but as Vox’s Zack Beauchamp wrote during 2019’s impeachment hearings, the testimony of another of Trump’s ambassadors — former US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland — showed a willingness on Trump’s part “to use US foreign policy as a tool to cement his own hold on power.”
And that has Trump critics concerned about the Brazilian reports, with Engel warning Chapman in his letter, “Elections in the United States are for the American people and the American people only to decide.”
In delivering that warning, the letter explicitly links Chapman’s reported campaign to the 2016 election, the outcome of which foreign governments repeatedly attempted to sway, according to the results of a Senate investigation.
“Given the events of 2016, it is all the more important for U.S. ambassadors serving our country abroad to not insert themselves into U.S. elections or encourage foreign government officials from any branch of government to do so,” the letter reads.
This warning follows intelligence reports that find Russia has actively worked to disrupt November’s elections — as well as the Democratic presidential primary. But politicians and experts have warned that the US is not as prepared as it ought to be to combat such interference, leaving it vulnerable to meddling attempts not just by adversaries, but by also by Americans who, as Engel writes, “should know better.”
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Pack the fuck out of them. They can't be trusted. Every rule bends when Trump shows up because they're hacks when it's the GOP, but a democrat? unanimous condemnation.
President Donald Trump smiles during a ceremony commemorating the 200th mile of border wall at the international border with Mexico in San Luis, Arizona, June 23, 2020. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
The Supreme Court’s new border wall opinion bends the rules to benefit Trump
The Supreme Court ruled Friday evening, in a 5-4 decision along partisan lines, that President Donald Trump may move forward with his plans to build a multi-billion dollar wall along the US-Mexico border.
The Court’s order marks the second time Trump v. Sierra Club has come before the justices, and the Friday decision says as much about the unusual deference this Court gives to Trump as it does about the wall itself.
The case first reached the Court in late July 2019, after a lower federal court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to transfer $2.5 billion that Congress appropriated for military pay, training, and similar personnel-related matters to wall construction. The administration claims it was allowed to do under a statute permitting the Secretary of Defense to transfer military funds “for higher priority items, based on unforeseen military requirements.”
But, as several lower court judges have pointed out, there’s nothing “unforeseen” about the circumstances that led Trump to build this wall. Trump’s campaigned on plans to build a border wall since 2015. In late 2018 and early 2019, Trump even shut down much of the federal government due to a disagreement over how much money should be appropriated to pay for the wall.
So Congress did not deny Trump much of the funding he sought because it failed to foresee an emergent problem that could only be solved by a border wall. It was well aware of Trump’s case for additional funding for his wall, and it rejected that case.
Nevertheless, in its July 2019 order, the Supreme Court voted almost entirely along party lines to block a lower court order preventing the transfer of funds. That order was brief, but the Court did conclude that “the Government has made a sufficient showing at this stage that the plaintiffs have no cause of action to obtain review of the Acting Secretary’s compliance with Section 8005” — meaning that the particular plaintiffs who brought this case likely do not have the right to challenge this particular transfer of funds.
In theory, that means that a different party might be able to challenge Trump’s decision to transfer funds — although it is far from clear whether a potential party exists that would satisfy this Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court frequently ignores its ordinary procedures to benefit Trump
Technically, the Sierra Club litigation remains ongoing. The July 2019 order merely stayed the lower court’s decision blocking transfer of the military funds until after Sierra Club winds its way through the full appeals process. Friday’s order denies a request by the Sierra Club plaintiffs to lift the stay imposed last year.
The difference between last year’s order and the one handed down Friday turns on a partial dissent written by Justice Stephen Breyer in the 2019 iteration of this case. As Breyer explained, a party seeking a stay of a lower court opinion needs to show more than just a “fair prospect” that the Supreme Court will agree with its arguments. That party also needs to show “a likelihood that irreparable harm will result from the denial of a stay.”
As Breyer noted in 2019, “the Government has represented that, if it is unable to finalize the contracts by September 30, then the funds at issue will be returned to the Treasury.” Thus, he argued, a limited stay might be justified to prevent this money from being returned. “Allowing the Government to finalize the contracts at issue, but not to begin construction, would alleviate the most pressing harm claimed by the Government without risking irreparable harm to” the plaintiffs.
One year later, however, there’s no longer any need for such a limited stay. As Breyer notes in a dissent to Friday’s order, “the Government has apparently finalized its contracts, avoiding the irreparable harm it claimed in first seeking a stay.” Since there’s no longer a likelihood that the government will face irreparable harm in the absence of a a stay, Breyer argues, the stay should lift.
All of this discussion about the procedural posture of the Sierra Club litigation, and the rules governing stays of lower court orders by the Supreme Court, may seem esoteric, but the Court’s order in Sierra Club is part of a much broader pattern. The Roberts Court rarely enforces its own rules governing stays of lower court opinions whenever the Trump administration seeks such a stay.
Indeed, last February, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused many of her colleagues of “putting a thumb on the scale in favor of” the Trump administration whenever that administration seeks relief from a lower court order.
The data bears out Sotomayor’s accusation. According to a November 2019 paper by University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, the Trump administration is unusually likely to seek stays from the Supreme Court, and the Roberts Court is unusually likely to grant them.
“In less than three years, [Trump’s] Solicitor General has filed at least twenty-one applications for stays in the Supreme Court (including ten during the October 2018 Term alone),” Vladeck wrote. By comparison, “during the sixteen years of the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, the Solicitor General filed a total of eight such applications — averaging one every other Term.”
Past administrations typically shied away from making such requests because a stay from the Supreme Court is considered extraordinary relief — the kind that is rarely granted and that parties should be exceedingly reluctant to request. And yet, the Trump administration has a very high win rate, achieving a full or partial victory in about two-thirds of cases where it seeks to temporarily block a lower court opinion.
As Sotomayor wrote last fall, “granting a stay pending appeal should be an ‘extraordinary’ act. Unfortunately, it appears the Government has treated this exceptional mechanism as a new normal.” And the Court appears to have rewarded this behavior.
Friday’s Sierra Club order is significant, in other words, not just because it will allow construction of the wall to move forward. It is also significant because it suggests that the Supreme Court will relax its ordinary procedural rules for the current president.
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Is the Trump administration yet again seeking to sabotage the 2020 census? Coming from an administration that’s also making a blaring unconstitutional attempt to completely erase undocumented immigrants from the census altogether, NPR’s report wouldn’t be a shock at all.
“The Census Bureau is cutting short critical door-knocking efforts for the 2020 census amid growing concerns among Democrats in Congress that the White House is pressuring the bureau to wrap up counting soon for political gain, NPR has learned,” the report said. The decision could result in the significant undercount of communities of color.
While the Census Bureau’s in-person counts of households that have not yet responded was scheduled to end on Oct. 31, the report said that officials were changing that to Sept. 30, a month earlier than planned. Three Census Bureau employees went to NPR after being informed of the changes, speaking “on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs.”
The Census Bureau replied to the report about the date change with a non-answer consisting of a whole bunch of words, saying: "We are currently evaluating our operations to enable the Census Bureau to provide this data in the most expeditious manner and when those plans have been finalized we will make an announcement.” But it’s clear what kind of future damage could happen from the move.
“The condensed door-knocking time frame increases the risk of leaving out many people of color, immigrants and other members of historically undercounted groups from numbers that are collected once a decade to determine each state's share of congressional seats, Electoral College votes and an estimated $1.5 trillion a year in federal tax dollars for Medicare, Medicaid and other public services,” the report said.
“Trump admin rigging census to preserve white power,” journalist Ari Berman responded to the report, which said that “[a]bout 4 out of 10 households nationwide have still not participated in the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the U.S., and self-response rates are even lower in many communities.”
"I'm very fearful we're going to have a massive undercount." We MUST not allow this to happen. The #census is our voice and we ALL will be heard! Fill out the #2020census TODAY � Online �https://t.co/sQ5ErFdJxE � By phone � 844-330-2020 � By mailhttps://t.co/PNR2IoWEXt
The administration is currently facing at least four lawsuits on another census-related move: Trump’s unconstitutional attempt to erase undocumented immigrants from the count.
“We have spent countless hours and dollars encouraging our community members to complete Census 2020,” Pastor Dieufort J. Fleurissaint of Haitian-Americans United said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “With a stroke of a pen, the Trump administration has undermined all of our efforts in a racist attempt to prevent our communities from receiving the representation and resources they need and deserve. This cannot stand.”
“This administration will do anything to try to undermine our democracy,” New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat tweeted about the NPR report. “We will fight this and put an end to this President’s undemocratic actions. We must have a full count!”
Republican Rep. David Schweikert agreed to pay a $50,000 fine, accept a formal reprimand, and admit to 11 different violations of congressional rules and campaign finance laws in a deal with the bipartisan House Ethics Committee to conclude its two-year-long investigation of the congressman. But while the matter may now officially be closed, Schweikert's already uncertain political future is now only more endangered.
The Ethics Committee's wide-ranging findings fell into four categories: (1) "campaign finance violations and reporting errors"; (2) spending government money to support Schweikert's political campaigns; (3) pressuring government staff to perform campaign work; and (4) Schweikert's "lack of candor and due diligence in the course of the investigation."
A special subcommittee convened to carry out the inquiry determined in its own lengthy report that Schweikert had failed to disclose at least $370,000 in campaign donations, expenditures, and loans between 2010 and 2017, and had used at least $1,500 in campaign funds for "impermissible personal purposes." It also found that Schweikert had falsely claimed he loaned his campaign $100,000 on Christmas Day in 2011, then later made up five fictitious payments to a consulting firm that wound up totaling the same amount in order to get his books to balance.
Why lie like this? At the time, Schweikert was on a collision course with fellow GOP Rep. Ben Quayle, since redistricting made it likely that both would try to seek reelection in the same district. Schweikert had immediately announced his intention to run in the 6th District as soon as new maps were announced in October of 2011, but Quayle dithered, so Schweikert almost certainly inflated his cash-on-hand figures with his fake loan in order to deter Quayle from opposing him. It didn't work, as Quayle eventually decided to go head-to-head with Schweikert, but Schweikert wound up narrowly winning their primary, 51-49.
This sort of scam was in fact an ongoing occurrence, according to the Ethics Committee. Schweikert's chief of staff, Oliver Schwab, regularly made outlays on behalf of the congressman's campaign committee that ultimately totaled $270,000, and Schweikert would delay reimbursing Schwab in order to again pad his cash balance on his fundraising reports. He later would conceal repayments to his aide by listing the recipient as Schwab's consulting company.
It was Schwab's behavior, in fact, that helped spur the investigation that ultimately led to Thursday's settlement. In the fall of 2017, the conservative Washington Examiner published a report alleging that Schwab had taken a trip from D.C. to Arizona for Super Bowl weekend in 2015 that was paid for by taxpayers but included non-official activities, such as a Schweikert fundraiser. The Ethics Committee agreed the use of public funds for this trip was improper, though Schwab had already repaid the U.S. Treasury, leading the panel to conclude that "no further steps are required."
Schwab was also at the center of investigators' findings of improper pressure placed on congressional staff to assist Schweikert's campaigns. The committee determined that Schweikert himself "regularly pressured" Schwab to perform campaign work, especially fundraising, and that Schwab in turn pushed other aides to help raise money. One unnamed former staffer charged that Schwab had told him he "would need to take a 40 percent pay cut and his performance would be judged on fundraising," an accusation Schwab did not deny. Schweikert's "lax oversight" of his own office, said the committee, was a violation of House rules because of the atmosphere it created.
Schweikert had a similarly laissez-faire attitude about telling the truth during the course of the Ethics Committee's investigation. The subcommittee's report says the congressman made "misleading" statements, took inordinately long to produce documents, and "made statements that could not be reconciled with the evidence" during his interview with investigators, for which he had come "ill-prepared." The full committee's briefer report concluded that Schweikert's dilatory behavior "allowed him to evade the statute of limitations for the most egregious violations of campaign finance laws"—actions that "were themselves sanctionable misconduct."
Perhaps the only good news for Schweikert in all this is that he can finally stop hemorrhaging cash to his attorneys: His campaign had spent at least $1.1 million in legal fees as of mid-July. But now his Democratic opponent in the November general election—likely physician Hiral Tipirneni—will be able to blast out ads reminding voters that their congressman admitted to almost a dozen ethical violation, paid a huge fine, and was formally sanctioned by the House.
And if Tipirneni wins next week's primary, she'll definitely have the funds to do so. While Schweikert's campaign balance stands at a meager $230,000 thanks to all those expensive lawyers, Tipirneni is sitting on a giant stockpile of $1.3 million.
Schweikert is also facing an electorate that's grown increasingly hostile to the GOP: While Mitt Romney carried Arizona's 6th District—well-educated and relatively affluent turf in the Phoenix suburbs—by a hefty 60-39 margin, Donald Trump only won it 52-42, and Republican Martha McSally prevailed just 51-47 in her unsuccessful Senate bid in 2018. Given the district's demographics, it's far more likely than not that this leftward trend is still underway.
It's quite an irony: Schweikert engaged in all of this skulduggery in order to help him win his past elections. Now it can only help him lose his next one.
The Hill reports: The president landed in Tampa, where he is participating in a fundraiser, and was greeted by dozens of supporters who had gathered along barricades. Few were seen wearing masks, and music that has become standard at Trump campaign events blared over speakers for what was billed as a “Campaign coalitions event with Florida sheriffs.” … The president made only a fleeting mention of the coronavirus pandemic during his 30-minute remarks, even though Florida is the new epicenter of the outbreak in the United States.
Fewer than 100 people appeared to attend the event, and several rows of barricades were visibly empty — which did not go unnoticed by Twitter users. Reactions below.
A wider shot shows more Trump supporters bunched at the front of empty rows of guard rails pic.twitter.com/Y94uBWVFqu
I bought my own reusable metal straws and have been very happy with them :)
Germany is banning the sale of single-use plastic straws, cotton buds and food containers, bringing it in line with a European Union directive intended to reduce the amount of plastic garbage that pollutes the environment. From a report: The Cabinet agreed Wednesday to end the sale of plastics including single-use cutlery, plates, stirring sticks and balloon holders, as well as polystyrene cups and boxes by July 3, 2021. Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said the move was part of an effort to move away from "throw-away culture." Up to 20% of garbage collected in parks and other public places consists of single-use plastic, mainly polystyrene containers.
At Microsoft's Ignite conference in late 2019, the company said it was planning to shut down its standalone Cortana mobile apps as it refocuses on business users. Microsoft today is following through with that plan, announcing that it will shut down the current Cortana iOS and Android apps, end Cortana support for the Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker, and remove the original Cortana functionality from the first-generation Surface Headphones starting in 2021. The Verge reports: These changes are still a few months away, but it marks another big step for Microsoft in pivoting Cortana away from a Google Assistant or Alexa alternative to a more specialized, productivity-focused assistant -- changes the company has already started making on the Windows 10 version of Cortana earlier this year. (To that end, Microsoft also put a September 7th date on the already-announced sunsetting of third-party Cortana skills for Windows.) Instead, Microsoft will be focusing on its productivity features that repurpose Cortana as a part of the Microsoft 365 suite of software, citing the revamped Windows 10 functions and integrated Cortana features in the Outlook and Teams apps as replacements. It's not as full-featured as the original Cortana -- which offered additional functions like smart home controls and music integration -- but by offering a less broad set of features, Microsoft is hoping to create a product that better complements its existing software and competes less directly with established players like Google and Amazon.
Microsoft is also offering a consolation offer of a $50 gift card for Harman Kardon Invoke owners, who'll be most impacted by the removal of Cortana -- which effectively will turn the formerly smart device into a pricey Bluetooth speaker when the firmware update arrives next year. Owners of the original Surface Headphones (who will also see their Cortana experience removed) are also being offered a $25 gift card to make up for the missing service.
In 2016, Donald Trump and his campaign team made more than 100 contacts with Russian agents in what turned out to be a successful effort to plunder information, disseminate propaganda, and ultimately steal an American election. Other Republican officials were certainly involved to some degree—particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who did everything he could to block efforts to make the public aware of Russian interference and damaged election security.
In 2020, Republicans in both House and Senate—having given Trump a free pass to invite foreign interference and approving the whitewashing of Trump’s crimes by Attorney General William Barr—are all on board. That includes Barr, who has all but promised to provide America with a QAnon-sanctioned October surprise. It includes Republican lawmakers like Rep. Devin Nunes, who are sitting on a packet of documents prepared by a pro-Russian official from Ukraine. It includes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been using the State Department to pile up a stack of unsubstantiated attacks on Joe Biden. Barr, Nunes, and Pompeo are not just sitting on this information: they’re deliberately hiding it, looking for the moment to strike when no one has a chance to see what a baseless conspiracy they’re really pushing.
Devin Nunes has always represented the ragged edge of support for Donald Trump. From the moment he jumped from an Uber and sneaked into the White House in an attempt to derail the Russia investigation, to his stint in front of the House Ethics Committee, Nunes made it clear that his loyalty to Trump exceeded any other responsibility. And when it came to questions about when Nunes would be truthful with his House colleagues, he could not have been more clear: “Never.”
So it should come as no surprise that as the 2020 election approaches, Devin Nunes has been working directly with a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker who previously passed along information through Rudy Giuliani. That lawmaker has been feeding information to Republicans in both the House and Senate. It comes in the form of a “packet” of supposed evidence that backs up Trump and Giuliani’s long-debunked claims about Joe Biden’s relationship to the Ukrainian government.
As CNN reports, Democrats have been aware that Republicans in the House and Senate—including Nunes—were sent a packet of information from pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach in January, in the midst of Donald Trump’s impeachment. But Republicans have refused to discuss what’s in the packet, or even admit that they have it. In closed-door Intelligence Committee hearings, Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York made multiple attempts to get Nunes to answer a simple question. "Is the ranking member prepared to even respond to the question?,” asked Maloney. ”How about it, Mr. Nunes? Did you receive a package from Andrii Derkach or not? And would you share with the committee or not?” Nunes did not respond. “Well,” said Maloney. “I guess this is a case where silence speaks volumes."
As Politico reported, that silence extends to the FBI. After Democratic staff members became aware of the existence of the document packet, they requested information on the contents from the FBI. Not only has there been no information provided, there hasn’t even been a response.
During his Tuesday hearing with the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General William Barr was just as silent in refusing to share any information collected in the investigation he’s conducted with the assistance of U. S. Attorney John “Bull” Durham. That investigation also includes sharing Ukraine with Guiliani, as well as attempts to arm-twist officials in London, Rome, and Australia into giving Barr additional leverage that can be used to support Trump.
On Friday, The Hillreported that Rep. Eliot Engel has issued a subpoena to another Republican known to have been stacking up information provided by Giuliani and his associates: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “Secretary Pompeo has turned the State Department into an arm of the Trump campaign and he’s not even trying to disguise it,” said Engel. Pompeo has shared information connected to Joe Biden with Senate Republicans, while hiding it from Democrats. However, it’s hard to call the information Pompeo has shared exclusively with Republicans a “packet” … because it’s over 16,000 pages long.
In the next 97 days, the attack on Joe Biden is going to come from William Barr, from Mike Pompeo, from Senate Republicans, and from Republican representatives like Nunes, all of them using information that has not been vetted, or even seen, by anyone outside the GOP. They’re not planning an October surprise: They’re planning a bullshit assault from every direction.
And, just like in 2016, they’re expected to get every single column of The New York Times and every single moment of network news airtime to repeat their claims, unchallenged, in the days right before the election.
On Thursday, Vanity Fair published a detailed analysis of how the planned federal testing program headed up by Jared Kushner disintegrated into a puddle of mismanagement, hubris, and finger-pointing. As much as any other story over the last three years, it’s instructive in showing how the Trump White House acted as if it were both above the rules and smarter than the experts. Like so many other things that have happened under Trump, it’s ultimately a story about how unwillingness to accept responsibility for anything dooms everything.
Only the utter abandonment of any effort to execute a coherent national testing strategy—a decision that all its own is principally responsible for consigning 160,000 Americans to their deaths—turns out not to be the worst aspect of this story. The worst part is that Trump, Kushner, and everyone involved knew that hundreds of thousands of Americans would die if they failed to act, but they still refused to act out of a political calculation. That calculation was that American deaths in blue states would be good for Trump’s election chances. The worst thing is that Americans did not have to die in vast numbers. The United States’ worst in the world results on COVID-19 were not an accident.
On the day he announced his coronavirus response team, Trump added management of testing for the disease onto the stack of things that son-in-law Kushner was supposed to squeeze in between solving Middle East peace and providing kill lists to authoritarian dictators. Kushner responded by forming a crack team of old college buddies and real estate pals who WhatsApp’d their way to a national testing strategy with the help of advice from billionaire bankers and the occasional health expert. The end result was a plan that recognized that the United States needed a coherent national testing strategy, that states shouldn’t have to compete with each other for protective gear, and that a national contract-tracing database was required to make testing effective.
Then the White House set out to execute that plan. Step one: Illegally purchase over a million Chinese-made COVID-19 tests that turned out to be “contaminated and unusable” in a $52 million taxpayer-funded boondoggle. Step two: Decide that paying any real attention to COVID-19 might be bad for the stock market and just say f-ck it about the whole thing. Seriously.
Trump’s “political instincts” were that it was better to simply continue downplaying concerns about the virus and to keep the federal government out of the testing business. Because, of course, testing for COVID-19 might find COVID-19, which would be “bad publicity.” Besides, Dr. Deborah Birx was backing up Trump, showing models that suggested the virus would just magically disappear with the summer. Trump decided to dump the whole idea of launching any testing plan, forget about contact tracing, and abandon any pretense of a national strategy.
But even that isn’t the worst thing.
As a member of Kushner’s team made clear, Trump didn’t just decide that turning up cases of COVID-19 by testing for them would lead to bad publicity—he decided that, because it was hitting blue states the hardest, he should just let it burn. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states,” said the source, “that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”
Just to repeat that: Trump deliberately decided to let Americans die, in huge numbers, not because there was nothing that could be done, but because it was decided that it would “politically advantageous” to have people dying in states with Democratic governors.
There are acts that go beyond the need for impeachment. There are acts that are so inhumane that they go beyond comprehension. There are actions for which even imprisonment seems inadequate.
But let’s start with impeachment. The imprisonment can come later.
Although hardly any of the governors grappling with the fiercest coronavirus outbreaks are on the ballot this fall, voters’ verdicts about their performance loom heavily over another electoral battle with enormous implications for the balance of power between the parties over the next decade: the struggle for control of state legislatures.
In polls, voters have given higher marks to Democratic governors who have moved cautiously on reopening than to Republicans who reopened early in response to President Donald Trump’s cues. That may offer Democrats their best chance to overcome the GOP’s entrenched advantage in state legislatures—which next year will draw local legislative and congressional-district lines that will govern elections through 2030.
“COVID-19 and the concerns that surround that—everything from the health concerns people have to concerns about the economy and school—it’s the issue in the 2020 campaign, without a doubt,” Bob Trammell, the Democratic minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, told me, echoing the sentiment of Democrats elsewhere. Governor Brian Kemp, one of the Republicans who reopened early, “may not be on the ballot,” Trammell added, but “his response to COVID is very much on the ballot.”
Democrats still face significant obstacles in erasing the Republican lead in state legislatures. The GOP has a big cushion: It now controls 59 state legislative chambers, compared with just 39 for Democrats, according to figures from the National Conference of State Legislatures. In some key state House chambers, such as Florida and Georgia, Democrats must win so many seats that a takeover remains plausible only if the election produces a towering Democratic landslide. And in many states, Democrats must overcome both a substantial Republican financial advantage and gerrymandered district maps that were designed precisely to preserve GOP majorities.
But the 2020 election—coming as both Trump and many Republican governors face howling discontent over their handling of the coronavirus crisis—undoubtedly offers Democrats their best chance yet to recover from their catastrophic state-level losses in the 2010 election.
That year, the Tea Party–led backlash against then–President Barack Obama—particularly his passage of the Affordable Care Act—powered Republicans to historic gains in Congress and in state legislative and gubernatorial races across the country. Republicans added more than 700 state legislative seats, boosting the number of chambers they controlled from 36 to 60. Combined with the GOP gains in governor’s races, that advance swelled the number of states in which Republicans controlled all the levers of government from nine to 21.
The 2010 losses could not have come at a worse time for Democrats, because Republicans having unified control in many states meant they had a free hand to control redistricting. (The exception: states that rely on independent commissions or other means to determine districts.) The GOP drew aggressive maps that guaranteed their grip on state legislatures for the ensuing decade, including in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Though Republicans’ state-level advantage has cracked some since Trump took office—because of both a demographic change favoring Democrats and a suburban backlash against his turbulent presidency—it hasn’t crumbled. Democrats have regained about 300 state legislative seats nationwide since Trump’s election, but Republicans retain a 400-seat edge overall. And although the 2018 election of Democratic governors in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania ended the complete GOP control of those states, Republicans still hold all the levers of power in 21 others, including the Sun Belt behemoths of Texas and Florida. Both states are projected to gain congressional seats after 2020, as is North Carolina, where Republicans hold both legislative chambers and where state law denies the governor, the Democrat Roy Cooper, any role in redistricting. (Democrats hold unified control in just 15 states.)
Now the headwinds buffeting Trump and several Republican governors are offering Democrats the same opportunity the GOP seized in 2010: the chance to post big state-level gains in the election immediately before the decennial reapportionment and redistricting.
With those stakes, Democrats are pursuing a wide range of state-level targets in both the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt. Party strategists believe they have the best chance to dislodge current Republican majorities in the Minnesota state Senate; the state Houses in Texas, Michigan, and Iowa; and one or both chambers in Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The GOP advantage now stands at six seats or fewer in all of those chambers except the Texas and Pennsylvania houses, where the Republican cushion is nine seats each. Democratic groups are contesting Florida and Georgia as well, but with the bigger GOP margins there (14 seats in Florida and 16 in Georgia), they remain a tougher climb.
Common threads connect these contests. Across all of these states, Democrats are almost entirely targeting white-collar suburban seats that have moved away from the GOP in the Trump era. In Texas, for instance, where Democrats gained 12 suburban state House seats in 2018, the party’s remaining targets for 2020 are preponderantly concentrated in the Houston and Dallas suburbs, including eight Republican-held districts that Beto O’Rourke won in his 2018 Senate bid and seven more that he lost by four percentage points or less. Likewise, in Georgia, where Democrats won 14 suburban Atlanta house seats in 2018, the party is again targeting the diverse and growing Cobb and Gwinnett Counties outside the city, where Stacey Abrams ran well in her 2018 gubernatorial race.
That pattern shapes the interaction between the state legislative races and the presidential contest. For the legislative races, the key question isn’t whether Trump or the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, wins a given state; it’s how Trump and Biden perform in the specific seats Democrats are targeting, particularly in major metropolitan regions. Even if Trump holds states such as Georgia, Texas, and Arizona by maximizing his rural performance, Democrats could still get a huge boost in down-ballot races if Biden routs the president in the growing urban and suburban areas. Biden’s performance in big metros is “the whole ball game,” Vicky Hausman, the founder and co-CEO of Forward Majority, a Democratic group that tries to flip state chambers, told me. “Trump can run up the score in the rural areas, and it doesn’t impact our path to the majority through the suburbs.”
The other common thread in these races is that the pandemic has made the functioning of state government seem far more relevant to voters’ lives than it did before. For example, the public-health crisis has provided a vivid backdrop for the calls from Democratic candidates to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in the states that have refused to do so, including Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. Even more, the outbreak has put a spotlight on governors’ decision-making, with Democrats generally moving faster to close down their economies in the spring and more cautiously reopen them this summer, and Republican governors, especially across the Sun Belt, almost uniformly doing the opposite.
Those choices have produced a divergence in governors’ public approval. Recent polls in Florida and Arizona found the approval ratings for Republican governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Doug Ducey of Arizona both tumbling to around 40 percent. Recent surveys in Texas have found Republican Governor Greg Abbott relatively stronger, at just under 50 percent, but that figure still represents a big decline from earlier in his tenure, as many voters disapprove of his handling of the outbreak. A poll released Wednesday in Georgia found that although just more than half of voters statewide approve of Kemp’s handling of the outbreak, nearly three-fifths disapprove in likely swing counties, which include the big Atlanta suburbs. Likewise, Ducey faces a stinging 17-point net disapproval in Maricopa County, the epicenter of both Arizona’s outbreak and the battle for control of the state legislature.
Trump’s diminished standing in many of the targeted state districts reinforces the disparity in public opinion between Republican and Democratic leaders. The nonpartisan Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project samples enough voters each week to assess attitudes down to the county level over time. In an analysis for The Atlantic, based on combined results from early May to mid-July, it found that Trump’s approval rating stood at only about 40 percent or less in Harris and Dallas Counties in Texas, as well as in Hillsborough (Tampa) and Orange (Orlando) Counties in Florida. His approval was just above 40 percent in Maricopa. The poll showed Biden leading Trump in all of those counties.
Jessica Post, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, summed up the polls’ significance this way: Republican legislative candidates must overcome not only long-standing discontent with Trump in the suburbs, but also new unease about their governors. “It is going to be impossible for Republicans to overcome their [party] affiliation, because it’s localized,” she told me.
Particularly in the Sun Belt states buckling under massive virus outbreaks—since June 30, the number of cases has roughly doubled in Arizona and Georgia, increased by a factor of 2.5 in Texas, and nearly tripled in Florida—Democratic challengers are aggressively tying their Republican opponents to the decisions of GOP governors.
In Texas, for instance, Ann Johnson, a former prosecutor in the Harris County district attorney’s office who is running for a Houston-area state House seat, doesn’t mince words in indicting Abbott for his role in Texas’s raging coronavirus outbreak.
“At a moment of crisis, where he got to choose whether he stood with Trump and the extreme version of his party or our medical community, [Abbott] picked Trump and the extreme version of his party, with thousands of Texans paying the price with their lives for it,” Johnson says.
That language is extraordinary: Since Abbott’s election in 2014, he has been so popular in Texas that few politicians in either party have openly tangled with him.
Democratic state-legislative candidates have been equally aggressive in challenging DeSantis’s performance in Florida. “There was not a single scintilla of science or leadership that was displayed, and as the president continued to be the denier in chief, our governor was standing right there next to him,” says Kayser Enneking, an anesthesiologist and the Democratic nominee for a GOP-held state House seat centered on Gainesville. “And our whole legislative Republican contingent had their heads in the sand equally. The legislature has been in lockstep” with the governor.
Ryan Tyson, a Republican pollster in Florida, agrees that approval for DeSantis and Trump alike has fallen amid the state’s surging case numbers. But he says that hasn’t yet translated into “voting intention” for Democrats. Although Floridians are uneasy about the outbreak, he says, other issues—such as Trump’s emphasis on “law and order” and warnings about urban disorder—also are resonating. And whatever the immediate mood, he notes, the GOP state House and Senate majorities are bolstered by a massive fundraising advantage over Democrats. “With the caveat that I think 30 days out we’ll know whether the bottom has fallen out for us or not, as of today, I could see us picking up two seats in the state House,” he says. Democrats flipping the chamber, he predicts, remains “a bridge too far.”
Similarly, Bill Miller, an Austin-based consultant and lobbyist who has worked for candidates in both parties, says that although the pandemic has hurt Texas Republicans, he believes Democrats will still fall short of taking the state House, largely because increased focus on the party’s national agenda closer to Election Day “will be problematic … in this state.”
Democratic strategists I’ve spoken with are more optimistic about their prospects, but they agree the GOP’s financial advantages in several targeted state Houses could prove decisive. Hausman said that in the most recent quarter, Democratic challengers in the targeted races raised only 60 percent, on average, as much as their Republican opponents in Texas, and just 30 percent what their opponents raised in Florida.
“There are no giveaways,” she said. “This is not going to happen naturally because of a Biden win. As it stands now, Democrats are not poised to win the big wins where it matters most unless they step up and invest the big resources that are necessary.”
The urgency in her warning reflects the stakes of failure for Democrats in these contests. Particularly across the fast-growing Sun Belt states, if Democrats win control of at least one state legislative chamber, they could negotiate for state legislative and congressional maps that reflect both their growing suburban strength and the states’ increasing racial diversity. But if Republicans retain control of the mapmaking, they could draw district lines that fortify their eroding majorities in those states.
That doesn’t mean Republicans will control those states in the 2020s as lopsidedly as they did in the 2010s—underlying demographic changes are probably too great for that—but it does mean that Democrats will be pushed back toward the bottom of the hill and face another decade-long climb in both state and congressional contests. “If you control the mapmaking process, it enables you to hold the line,” says Jim Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
Which is why both parties recognize that so much is on the line in the state legislative contests unfolding in the shadow of the pandemic this November.
Unless you're gay, in which case, don't even try to help.
President Donald Trump on Thursday urged Americans who have recovered from Covid-19 to donate their blood plasma to help stem the pandemic.
"If you have had the virus, if you would donate, it would be a terrific thing," Trump said during a roundtable at the American Red Cross headquarters, flanked by his team of coronavirus experts — including NIH leaders Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx.
The Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved or authorized the treatment, known as convalescent plasma, which has been given to 48,000 Americans through clinical trials or the agency's compassionate use program. But the administration experts positioned plasma as part of an arsenal of weapons against Covid-19 that also includes dexamethasone for seriously ill patients and remdesivir for hospitalized patients.
Background: The plasma of coronavirus survivors contains antibodies against the disease, which in theory can help those who are sick fight off the virus. The approach has been used several times over the last 130 years against various diseases with mixed results.
There is no proof yet that convalescent plasma helps Covid-19 patients, but clinical trials are underway to test the treatment's efficacy.The NIH’s treatment guidelines say there is “insufficient data” to recommend either for or against the use of convalescent plasma for the treatment of Covid-19.
The information gained from those trials will also aid the development of Covid-19 vaccines, which seek to prevent infection by helping the body make protective antibodies, said Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert.
Business steps in: Companies are also taking note of the potential for plasma.
Adam Schechter, CEO of the testing firm LabCorp, said at the Red Cross roundtable that his company will offer antibody testing at no charge through doctor's offices to increase blood plasma donations. "LabCorp is currently working with public health authorities and the provider community on the details of the three-month program and will provide additional information in the near future," the company said in a statement.
Paul Perreault, CEO of CSL Limited, said his company and the NIH are designinga clinical trial to test a treatment known as hyperimmune globulin, which is derived from convalescent plasma. The company is enrolling patients in the trial next month. If it shows the treatment is effective, CSL could file an application with the FDA by the end of this year, Perreault said.
What’s next: Hahn said the agency is reviewing the data behind the effectiveness of convalescent plasma. Clinical trials are ongoing and an emergency authorization from the FDA to expand the use of the plasma may be coming soon.
Voice of America is weighing a suspension of four contractors who were involved in publishing a story and video that was deemed too favorable to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, according to two people familiar with the matter.
On July 22, VOA’s Urdu service, which is targeted to Urdu-speaking audiences in Pakistan, India and around the world, posted content on its website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages about an online event Biden did reaching out to Muslim Americans as he urged them to vote for him in November. Top VOA officials, reviewing the material after red flags were raised about it externally, found it violated the network’s editorial policies and ordered it taken down.
In the two-minute video, subtitled in Urdu and overlaid with music, Biden says: “Your voice is your vote, your vote is your voice. Muslim Americans’ voices matter. I’ll be a president that seeks out and incorporates and listens to the ideas and concerns of Muslim Americans on everyday issues that matter most to our communities. That will include having Muslim American voices as part of my administration.”
The footage, which also includes a brief shot of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), was clipped liberally from the livestream of Emgage Action’s Million Muslim Votes virtual conference earlier this month, for which Biden provided a video. Emgage Action is a left-leaning 501c(4) group that has endorsed Biden and “seeks to mobilize American Muslims to advocate for issues that define who American Muslims are by what they stand for,” according to its website.
One of those clips included audio from a voice-over narrator. “Make no mistake people, 2020 is our year. Let’s dive into it with 20/20 vision,” the narrator says in the video. “We can see clearly that America is fighting for its very soul.”
The discussions over the fate of the contractors comes amid a politically charged overhaul of taxpayer-funded media outlets, including VOA. Their suspension would represent a less severe punishment than what VOA’s new leadership had first contemplated, according to the two people: immediate termination.
Bill Baum, a longtime VOA veteran and current senior adviser to the acting director, told colleagues earlier this week that VOA wanted to terminate their contracts immediately because the story resembled a campaign ad, was not balanced and violated VOA’s journalism standards.
But after the general counsel from VOA’s parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, recommended that VOA merely suspend the four contractors, instead of firing them, they may end up keeping their jobs after all. The contractors likely will be provided a chance to explain why they shouldn’t be fired, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions.
In a statement, a VOA spokesperson Bridget Serchak said: “VOA leadership is conducting a full review of the circumstances surrounding the matter. Corrective actions will be taken, once all of the facts of the matter have been collected and thoroughly evaluated.”
President Donald Trump and his allies have complained vociferously about the tone of VOA’s coverage — including an unusual blast in a White House newsletter. In the case of the Biden video, people outside of USAGM had flagged it to the new CEO, Michael Pack, and raised concerns about the content, according to the person.
The video also attracted the attention of conservative journalist Sara Carter, who wrote a story on Monday with the headline: “Voice Of America Promoted A Pro-Biden Muslim Political Campaign Ad, Then Removed It.” She quoted House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) calling it “outrageous that VOA … used its platform to campaign for Biden” and demanding an investigation.
Pack, a Steve Bannon ally, fired the heads of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and other outlets as he started as CEO of the taxpayer-funded media group, moves that drew criticism from members of both parties in Congress. Amanda Bennett, the head of VOA at the time, resigned on his first day in the job.
A veteran documentary filmmaker, Pack has defended the shakeup as necessary to help him reform the organization to align more clearly with its original mission.
But there are deep suspicions of Pack’s true motives within USAGM and among its supporters on Capitol Hill.
“Unfortunately, he’s trying to find one incident and examples he can show that he is improving the content,” one of the people said of Pack. (A USAGM official said that VOA’s language services have long been “scrutinized for failing to meet journalistic standards and principles” and not adhering to VOA’s charter.)
The scrutiny of the Biden video has drawn top VOA officials into close handling of the matter. Officials in the outlet’s front office have told colleagues the Urdu video should have corrected Biden when he referred to the “Muslim ban” by saying President Trump’s 2017 immigration action didn’t ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., but only selected Muslim-majority countries, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions. The video also should have noted that the Trump campaign is doing its own outreach to Muslim voters and that some Muslim organizations support Trump’s reelection, they said.
Top USAGM officials have demanded to know the names of everyone who was involved in the story and asked to interview them, according to one person familiar with the exchanges.
On Tuesday, the acting director of VOA, Elez Biberaj, held multiple meetings with Pack’s front office and was asked by the deputy chief of staff, Diane Cullo, for the names of the journalists involved in putting out the story and the full translation of the piece, according to two people familiar with the matter. VOA shared that information with USAGM and promised to improve the editorial process to prevent this type of episode from happening again. Biberaj also proposed disciplinary action against other people involved.
On Thursday afternoon, Pack announced an investigation into the incident. In a statement, USAGM said the Biden postings had "transgressed the VOA Charter, VOA’s Best Practices Guide, VOA’s Journalistic Code, and agency standards and principles, and, further, might have constituted U.S. election interference and a violation of federal law."
"USAGM staff members who attempt to influence American elections will be held accountable," Pack said. "To safeguard our agency’s reputation and the integrity of our content, I will continue to ensure that violations of journalistic standards and principles are dealt with swiftly and fairly. This investigation – and, indeed, every action that I have taken since starting my tenure last month – has been to repair USAGM so that, once again, U.S. government international broadcasting advances the American national interest.”
There’s little dispute that the Urdu content violated VOA’s editorial standards, but Pack's involvment has heightened tensions.
“It seems as if the CEO’s office is extremely interested in getting from the other side of the firewall into VOA’s activities,” the person familiar with the internal discussions said. The source could not recall VOA ever considering firing people based upon one story being imbalanced, and without a track record of poor performance.
“This just seems to be so fast and so out of the ordinary,” said the person, who called it a “witch hunt.”
For most of its existence, the “Patriot” militia movement has been described by those monitoring its spread as “antigovernment”—which isn’t fully accurate, since most of its adherents openly say that they don’t have a problem with government regulations in such areas as abortion and “law and order.” (They mostly hate the government when it enforces progressive democratic measures: gun control, civil-rights and anti-discrimination law, environmental protections, and the like.) A closer and more accurate term—manifested by its hostility to calling America a “democracy” rather than a “republic”—might well be “antidemocratic.”
This has manifested itself increasingly during the Trump years, when militiamen from the “III Percenters” and “Oath Keepers”—alongside such street-brawling outfits as Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys, all of whom declare themselves likeminded “Patriots”—have shifted their strategies from attacking the government to attacking anyone considered even vaguely “leftist”: liberals, mainstream Democrats, Black Lives Matter activists, and yes, antifascists. Even more disturbing is that one of the manifestations of this shift is that these far-right extremists are increasingly aligning themselves with law enforcement officers—who, as three recent in-depth features on the rise of militias on the political scene explored, appear to be reciprocating in kind.
A recent Washington Post investigation by Joshua Partlow explores how the reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests fueled by the murders of George Floyd and other Black people at the hands of police has manifested itself in a significant wave of fear among rural and exurban conservatives. Along the way, militias such as the “III Percenters” and other “Patriot” outfits have gathered a wave of fresh adherents, who then engage in multiple rounds of threats and intimidation against any peaceful protesters who organize in these areas—and sometimes simply against critics of Donald Trump.
The apotheosis of this trend is an outfit based in Olympia, Washington, called American Wolf—mostly a one-man operation led by a 37-year-old arborist named Peter Diaz, who calls himself a “progressive traditionalist” but whose politics are firmly planted on the extremist right. He claims the protests against police are led by people with a “deep hatred for American ideals”: “Most of them haven’t been able to make their way, so they hate the system we’re in … They want to have a government that gives them everything, they want socialism.”
Diaz also glories in the intimidation his operations bring: “I never thought that I’d be in the back of a pickup rolling through downtown Olympia with six guys heavily locked and loaded, armored out,” Diaz, a former Army reservist, told the Post. “I’m doing something now that’s for a greater cause than myself. And it feels really ... good.”
As Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights pointedly observed, “armed paramilitaries on the streets” is a “remarkably disturbing turn of events.”
“What we’re seeing right now is the outward manifestation of years of organizing by militia-type groups,” Burghart said. “They’ve moved from backwoods training to on-the-streets activism.”
A second Washington Post piece by Isaac Stanley-Becker describes how militias have surged to the forefront of protests held in rural areas in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, fueled in part by wild rumors spread on social media of “antifa buses” full of black-clad vandals about to descend on their hapless towns.
Some of these armed militiamen—particularly those associated with the “Boogaloo” movement, which is animated by their increasingly rabid desire to engage in a civil war against “leftists” and federal law enforcement—have been claiming that they are bringing their Hawaiian shirts, AR-15s, and body armor to these marches in order to “protect” the protesters. Of course, while some libertarian “Boogaloo” cultists may be sincere about this, for strategic white nationalists, it is largely a ruse to increase their opportunities for sabotaging the protests by amplifying the violence at them, as may have been the case with protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Richmond, Virginia.
Moreover, as a rural Black Lives Matter protester from Omak, Washington, told the Post:“Honestly, it was terrifying … They claimed they were there to protect the city from outsiders, but it felt more like preparation to kill.”
Possibly the most disturbing aspect of the report, however, was its description of law enforcement’s hands-off approach, treating threats and intimidation as “free speech.” One Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, police spokesman told the Post: “There’s a right to peacefully assemble, and there’s a right to bear arms,” he said. “If I trample on one of those rights, then I trample on all of them.”
When an Idaho protester was threatened—“I could put a bullet in your head,” the message accompanying a Confederate flag warned—the local sheriff’s office answered: “Unfortunately in Idaho, there’s no crime for that.” In fact, as the story explains, Idaho code specifically makes harassing people with “lewd or profane language, requests, suggestions or proposals” a misdemeanor.
And many described outright encouragement of the ugliness by law-enforcement and other authorities. A county commissioner in Bonner County, Idaho, called for an armed response—which indeed arrived—to a Black Lives Matter protest in Sandpoint. A sheriff in Oklahoma recently called for volunteers to join a “Sheriff’s Posse” that would allow “non-professionally trained people to perform law enforcement functions.”
This trend also turned up in a third profile—by Nicolle Okoren in The Guardian—of a Utah militia calling itself Utah Citizens’ Alarm. It, too, originated as a reaction to a Black Lives Matter protest—this time in Provo, Utah, on June 29, at which a white man who drove his vehicle into the marchers and hit some of them, according to witnesses, was shot by a white marcher; police said they “found this claim to be unsubstantiated.”
The most disturbing part of this story describes how police stood by and watched for hours as cars drove into the crowd and hit marchers, doing nothing. Police only arrived on the scene much later, after which the marcher shot the white driver.
Worst of all, it soon emerged that police watched the vehicular assaults occur, and sat on their hands:
After the Provo protest, a policeman told Josianne Petit, 34, a criminal defense paralegal and founder of Mama & Papa Panthers, an organization dedicated to helping parents of all races in raising black children, that the police were inside watching the whole protest on Facebook Live. She said: “I felt fundamentally betrayed. I had worked with Provo PD extensively prior to that protest and I thought I had a good working relationship with them, but to hear the complete disregard they had for the lives of protesters was alarming to me, but also devastating.”
The scene inspired a 47-year-old Provo man named Casey Robertson to form Utah Citizens Alarm, an armed militia explicitly organized to oppose “leftist” protesters: “I was like, ‘We need to stand together as citizens and go down there and show these people that we’re not going to allow violence, and that we are not going to allow these anarchist violent groups to tear down Provo,” Robertson told The Guardian. “It’s not going to happen without a fight.’”
At later protests, as elsewhere, the militiamen also claimed that their presence was about “protecting” the protesters. The protesters, again, felt the opposite: One BYU English major replied to The Guardian, “Whose bullets are they protecting us from? They are the only ones with guns.”
Ironically, much of the violence generated by the “Boogaloo” cult has so far been directed primarily at police by right-wing extremists:
An Air Force sergeant in California who was a “Boogaloo” fan shot two federal officers at an anti-police protest in Oakland, one fatally. Two days later, after being tracked to Santa Cruz County, he shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy while being arrested. During the rampage, he scrawled the word “Boog” in blood on the hood of the car he was driving.
The three Las Vegas-area “Boogaloo Bois” arrested for building Molotov cocktails as part of a larger campaign to wreak havoc around the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests over police brutality did not plan to attack BLM—as most “Patriot” and “Proud Boy” groups have done over the past three years—but instead sought to use the BLM protests to target police officers and power infrastructure, as a way of ramping up the violence around the protests.
A Texarkana, Texas, man who intended to spark the “Boogaloo” by ambushing police officers, was caught by officers who were alerted by his attempt to livestream his planned killing spree. They went to his location and arrested him shortly thereafter.
A “Boogaloo” enthusiast who posted comments on Facebook about bringing his rifle to an anti-stay-at-home-orders protest in Denver attracted the interest of FBI agents, who upon visiting him at his home discovered a cache of homemade pipe bombs. The man openly expressed his intent to use them to kill any federal agents who tried to invade his home.
Another “Boogaloo Boi” planned to livestream his ambush on police officers at an Ohio national park, but was arrested by FBI agents before he could pull off the plan.
Police seem slow to recognize any kind of violent threat from the extremist right, including domestic terrorism, despite the reality that far-right terrorism occurs at an exponentially greater rate with even greater lethality. This suggests, in fact, that America’s law-enforcement culture may be so deeply conservative that the authoritarian impulses it shares with the extremist right may lead it to ignore the threat not just to law enforcement, but to democracy itself, that the “Patriot”/militia movement represents.
Certainly, anyone counting on law enforcement to protect us from far-right extremists and their violence had better take a long look at our current reality.
Enlarge / Members of the medical staff treat a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at the United Memorial Medical Center on July 28, 2020 in Houston, Texas. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have spiked since Texas reopened, pushing intensive-care units to full capacity and sparking concerns about a surge in fatalities as the virus spreads. (credit: Getty | Go Nakamura)
As COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US approach the highest levels seen in the pandemic so far, national efforts to track patients and hospital resources remain in shambles after the federal government abruptly seized control of data collection earlier this month.
The Trump administration issued a directive to hospitals and states July 10, instructing them to stop submitting their daily COVID-19 hospital data to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which has historically handled such public health data—and instead submit it to a new database in the hands of the Department of Health and Human Services. The change was ostensibly made to streamline federal data collection, which is critical for assessing the state of the pandemic and distributing needed resources, such as personal protective equipment and remdesivir, an antiviral drug shown to shorten COVID-19 recovery times.
Watchdogs and public health experts were immediately aghast by the switch to the HHS database, fearing the data would be manipulated for political reasons or hidden from public view all together. However, the real threat so far has been the administrative chaos. The switch took effect July 15, giving hospitals and states just days to adjust to the new data collection and submission process.
Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, New York Times reported Friday, citing a person with knowledge of the discussions, as President Trump said on Friday that he was considering taking steps that would effectively ban the app from the United States. From a report: It's unclear how advanced the talks between Microsoft and TikTok are, but any deal could help alter TikTok's ownership, said the person with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet company that is valued at $100 billion. That has raised scrutiny of the app, with Trump administration officials saying that they have been concerned that TikTok poses a threat to national security.
The Trump administration has been weighing whether to order ByteDance to divest from American assets it acquired in 2017, which were later merged into TikTok. Bloomberg reported Friday that the president was poised to announce an order that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok's U.S. operations. The Trump administration has also been weighing other potential actions against the company, including adding ByteDance to a so-called "entity list," which prevents foreign companies from purchasing American products and services without a special license, according to people familiar with the matter.
Enlarge / We're already accustomed to data being encrypted while at rest or in flight—FHE offers the possibility of doing computations on it as well, without ever actually decrypting it. (credit: IBM)
Yesterday, Ars spoke with IBM Senior Research Scientist Flavio Bergamaschi about the company's recent successful field trials of Fully Homomorphic Encryption. We suspect many of you will have the same questions that we did—beginning with "what is Fully Homomorphic Encryption?"
FHE is a type of encryption that allows direct mathematical operations on the encrypted data. Upon decryption, the results will be correct. For example, you might encrypt 2, 3, and 7 and send the three encrypted values to a third party. If you then ask the third party to add the first and second values, then multiply the result by the third value and return the result to you, you can then decrypt that result—and get 35.
You don't ever have to share a key with the third party doing the computation; the data remains encrypted with a key the third party never received. So, while the third party performed the operations you asked it to, it never knew the values of either the inputs or the output. You can also ask the third party to perform mathematical or logical operations of the encrypted data with non-encrypted data—for example, in pseudocode, FHE_decrypt(FHE_encrypt(2) * 5) equals 10.
(@disclosetv) August 1, 2020
US ambassador Todd Chapman exits a 2018 meeting in Ecuador. | Dolores Ochoa/AP
President Donald Trump smiles during a ceremony commemorating the 200th mile of border wall at the international border with Mexico in San Luis, Arizona, June 23, 2020. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
#BIDEN#RESIST45
(@Ukfan4L) July 31, 2020
#MakeAmericaSmartAgain (@RandiWYoung) July 31, 2020
