James.galbraith

[However necessary a federal presence may be in some places, DHS should leave the CBP at home.]

It may well be necessary to deploy federal personnel in some cities to protect courthouses and other federal properties. The federal government has the authority and responsibility to protect federal property. There are also legitimate federal interests in enforcing federal law (though federal law should itself not exceed constitutional limits nor impinge on state interests).

If federal agents are going to be dispatched to various cities to enforce federal law, they should still be expected to follow the law and respect constitutional rights. On that score, there are good reasons to believe that some federal agencies are more responsible and accountable than others. The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is the nation's largest civilian law enforcement agency, but it also appears to be the least disciplined and least accountable.

Just how bad is the CBP? This amicus brief filed on behalf of former CBP officials paints a very disturbing picture of an agency that is out of control, and is either unable or unwilling to discipline rogue agents.

[T]he Border Patrol has become increasingly militarized since 2001, with some agents comparing their role to that of the U.S. Marine Corps—even though the Border Patrol is not part of the military, and is instead a civilian law enforcement agency. Combined with inadequate field training on appropriate uses of force, these factors have led to an environment in which Border Patrol agents have unnecessarily employed lethal force on the U.S.-Mexico border.

When excessive force incidents occur, internal government investigations suffer from systemic problems. The agency with the most direct interest in the investigation—CBP—can only undertake an investigation if another agency declines. And agents maintain a culture of protectionism that thwarts investigations even when they are undertaken.

As the brief documents, the CBP does not adequately screen or trains new hires, and misconduct is rampant. Even when CBP officers resort to lethal force without adequate justification, little is done about it.

As I said above, it may be necessary for the federal government to deploy agents to protect federal property, courthouses in particular. But not just any federal agents will do, and the CBP are the last people who should be patrolling the streets of our cities.

Federal agents peppered sprayed Vietnam veteran/journalist Mike Hastie directly in the face as on Sunday night in Portland, Oregon according to Andrew Kimmel, a media producer who caught the encounter on video and shared it to social media. Hastie was expressing his anger at the agents, who have inflamed the situation in Portland, which continued for its 60th straight night on Sunday.

Newsweek reports: “After less than 20 seconds, one officer approaches him from somewhere off camera and dispenses pepper spray into Hastie’s face. He holds the canister closer than an arm’s length from Hastie. The federal agents, wearing camouflaged military gear, then proceed to leave the area. Upon moving past Hastie, officers tell him to ‘back up’ and ‘move.’ One shoves him when the group walks by.”

Hastie spoke to Kimmel after the encounter: “That was a direct spray.”

The organization VoteVets also shared the video, writing, “this is NOT how we should treat our veterans.”

The Guardian reports: “Trump has justified the move, saying it is intended to tackle anarchy and violence on the streets of Portland and other cities. But he has focused his rhetoric at the Democratic management of those cities in what critics have decried as a blatant electoral ploy ahead of November’s election. Far from quelling unrest, Trump’s actions have also lit a fuse under demonstrations in other cities. Protesters reconvened in Seattle on Sunday night in support of fellow demonstrators in Portland.”

The post At Close Range: Vietnam Veteran Blasted in the Face with Pepper Spray by Trump’s Federal Agents in Portland — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) is making headlines after proposing a bill that would penalize schools that adopt the 1619 Project, a curriculum first introduced by Nikole Hannah-Jones for The New York Times Magazine which places slavery at the center of discourse in American history teaching

Mediaite reports: “The 1619 Project won praise for describing how slavery’s legacy continues to affect present-day America, and Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for her work. However, it was also subject to criticism as ‘historical revisionism’ for some of its assertions, primarily the claim that the American Revolution was primarily fought to preserve slavery. Leslie M. Harris, who had served as a fact-checker for the project, was among several prominent historians who “vigorously disputed” this claim, as she wrote in an op-ed at Politico.”

Said Cotton in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat Gazette: “The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable. I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it. I have no problem with people debating that in a constructive, reasoned, deliberate fashion. What I can’t tolerate, what I think no one should tolerate, are angry mobs tearing down statues of anyone.”

“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country,” Cotton added. “As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”

If Cotton’s Saving American History Act of 2020 passes, “school districts that embrace the curriculum would no longer qualify for federal professional development funds, money that is intended to improve teacher quality. Federal funding would also be lowered slightly to reflect any ‘cost associated with teaching the 1619 Project, including in planning time and teaching time.'”

The post Tom Cotton Says Slavery ‘the Necessary Evil Upon Which the Union Was Built’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

President Donald Trump on Saturday said his administration is “closely monitoring” a pair of major storms in Texas and Hawaii as the first hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season made landfall along the pandemic-stricken Texas coast.

“We continue to coordinate closely with both states,” the president tweeted from his Bedminster, N.J., golf club, urging residents to listen to emergency management officials to protect families and property.

Hurricane Hanna, a Category 1 storm, brought 90 mph winds and the potential for dangerous flooding as it made landfall south of Corpus Christi, Texas, late Saturday afternoon. Earlier in the day, the president approved an emergency declaration in Hawaii as Hurricane Douglas approached the islands.

The arrival of hurricane season has the potential to further stretch already-strained emergency responders in Texas and Florida, two of the country’s biggest coronavirus hotspots. Corpus Christi and the surrounding beach communities of Nueces County have been particularly hard hit, with cases spiking over the summer season.

Texas on Wednesday reported nearly 200 coronavirus deaths — a single-day record. Florida’s coronavirus case count was set to pass New York’s on Saturday, putting it second only to California in total cases since the start of the pandemic.

Roughly 4.1 million people nationwide have had Covid-19 infections, and more than 145,000 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor this week told Good Morning America his agency is ready to simultaneously handle the hurricane season and the ongoing pandemic.

“The agency has been up and running dealing with Covid-19, but we’ve also been preparing for the hurricane season,” Gaynor said. “We knew it was coming.”

Corpus Christi Mayor Joe McComb urged residents to stay home but wear masks if they’re forced to evacuate, according to the Associated Press.

Trump has raised eyebrows in recent years for his dubious statements about hurricanes, reportedly claiming they could be stopped with nuclear weapons. Last summer, after tweeting that Alabama could be among the states threatened by a hurricane despite the storm making landfall far to the east, the president displayed a map apparently doctored with a Sharpie showing the state in the hurricane’s path.

In addition to monitoring the hurricanes on Saturday, Trump tweeted condolences to game show host Regis Philbin, who died Friday, and played golf with former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre at his Bedminster club.

The legacy nonprofit of the 40th U.S. President, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, responded this week to a joint fundraising stunt from the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Donald Trump’s re-election campaign by squashing it, the Washington Post reported Saturday. The Foundation’s concern? The Trump campaign’s trading of trashy coin and photo sets featuring the Gipper and the Orange Menace for a little less than 50 bucks.  “It was simply handled with a phone call mid-last week to the RNC, and they agreed to stop,” Reagan Foundation chief marketing officer Melissa Giller told the Post of the latest cease-and-desist demand faced by the campaign to keep the country in the hands of a Velveeeta-hued despot and his wholly-unqualified children.

The latest, but not the first.

It’s no secret that Trump and his team have a history of using songs at rallies and events without permission, and then facing the wrath of musicians and their attorneys, who use colorful and big words, respectively, to insist that Trump never, ever do that again. Additionally, the call to stop using Reagan’s name and likeness on the gold “colored” coins and in fundraising emails comes nearly three months after Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, chastised the Republican Party—the entire party!—for invoking her daddy’s name when attempting to “justify” continued support of Trump. 

This latest episode started with an email on July 19, according to the Post. The ridiculous fundraising email was crafted to seem like it came from DJT himself, but actually came from the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a “joint venture” between the campaign to keep Trump in office and the RNC.

The solicitation offered, for a donation of $45 or more, a “limited edition” commemorative set featuring two gold-colored coins, one each with an image of Reagan and Trump. The coins were mounted with a 1987 photograph of Reagan and Trump shaking hands in a White House receiving line — the type of fleeting contact that presidents have with thousands of people a year.

It’s worth noting here that Trump himself uses the “fleeting contact” excuse to dodge any unsavory associations for which photographic evidence exists, most notoriously with Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas.  But back to the email.

“Friend,” the fundraising email purportedly from Trump said, “I just saw our new Trump-Reagan Commemorative Coin Sets and WOW, these coins are beautiful - I took one look and immediately knew that I wanted YOU to have a set. These aren’t any ordinary coins. They symbolize an important time in our Nation. This year, in addition to being re-elected as YOUR President, it also marks the 40th anniversary of our Nation’s 40th President, Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, we already sold out of the first batch we had in stock. But I liked these coins so much that I asked my team to rush order another batch for my TOP SUPPORTERS ONLY.”

It cautioned: “I’ve authorized a very limited production of these iconic coins, which is why I’m ONLY offering them to our top supporters, like YOU. This offer is NOT available to the general public, so please, do NOT share this email with anyone.”

Unfortunately for the campaign to keep the coronavirus great, someone on the mailing list DID share that email with someone, and the Reagan Foundation found out. “Within seconds,” as Giller described it, the leadership decided to shut it down. Though the RNC did agree to the Foundation’s demand, Giller notes that they’re still tracking down how many people saw the email and how many “top supporters” bought the non-legal tender and photo of Donnie’s Big Day with Ronnie. In fact, Giller adds, the Foundation is still deciding whether or not to involve attorneys. 

This response was not expected by the campaign, and certainly not the RNC, whose comms director, Michael Ahrens, dashed off a pouty email to the Post. "Given that the Reagan Foundation just recently hosted the Trump family to raise money for its organization and has not objected to us using President Reagan’s likeness before, their objection came as a surprise. Even though we believe our use of the image was appropriate, we will stop emailing this fundraising solicitation as a courtesy,” he wrote in anything but a courteous manner.

As of this writing, though, the commemorative set, as gaudy and gold-plated as Trump himself, is still available through the campaign. Here’s a screenshot I took at 4:20pm PDT, which hasn’t changed at all from the Web Archive capture on July 18. 

Trump, of course, loves to invoke Reagan, though he had no idea that the Gipper’s own 1980 racist campaign slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again,” preceded Trump’s MAGA-fication of the red-hatted GOP. When he was made aware that he didn’t originate the dogwhistle, Trump triumphantly sneered that Reagan hadn’t trademarked the phrase, while he had, even touting his knowledge of marketing.  Consistent with most of the one-term failure’s understanding of things, that “knowledge” only goes so far. The rights to all things Reagan—Ronald and Nancy—have belonged to the Reagan Foundation since the 1990s.

Pandemic numbers remain staggering. A reasonable take is this is the July 4 peak (ie due to holiday partying), now starting to wane, but community seeding makes it slow to disappear, and might lead to plateauing. The virus will not go away before the election, which starts in 6 weeks. More here (NY Times).

Josh Kraushaar/National Journal:

Tsunami warning for Republicans

Republicans are inching closer to a political wipeout, losing complete control of power in Washington. The way things are going, the 2018 midterms may end up looking like a GOP high water mark.

Internal Republican divisions are also beginning to emerge, in ways that suggest the party is already looking ahead to a post-Trump future. Republicans are struggling to find consensus on a new coronavirus-relief package, a fight that pits fiscal conservatives wary of spending additional public money against the risk of economic calamity that awaits if they don’t. Several House GOP hard-liners went after Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney this week, accusing her of being insufficiently supportive of the president. Cheney, a potential future party leader, fired back by portraying them as political nihilists. In Kansas, outside Republican groups are pouring millions into a primary in a desperate attempt to prevent a hard-right candidate from costing the party an otherwise winnable Senate race.

This is the sign of a political death spiral. At this point, Republicans would be content to suffer through another blue-wave election, holding out hope the Senate could remain narrowly in Republican hands. Right now, Republicans are staring at the reality of a historic tsunami, wiping out all their avenues of power in a rebuke against a hapless president.

You can pretend this isn’t happening if you want. But if you ‘work like you’re 10 points down’, you’re 24 or 25 points wrong. Just letting you know.

Daily Beast:

An Alabama Doctor’s 78-Patient Weekend of COVID Hell

Over the course of last Thursday to Monday, Thrasher treated 78 patients, the “grand majority” of whom were suffering from severe cases of COVID-19. Of that group, many were on ventilators. Between himself, another doctor, and a nurse practitioner, the team treated 140 patients at four hospitals, he said. That’s more than double their normal summer caseload, and the patients are getting younger and younger, ranging from their twenties to their seventies.

And that there is why. 

Back when the world was new and we were just getting into the pandemic, I lamented the dearth of landslide stories (knowing that if Trump were up in the polls and predictions, the stories would never stop and that a Biden landslide was a possibility even then).

Well, problem solved. They are no longer hard to find.

Nate Cohn/NY Times:

White Flight From Trump? What a Decisive Biden Win Could Look Like

Republican structural advantages in the House, the Senate and the Electoral College would be in jeopardy.

Recent national polls show that Joe Biden’s commanding lead has eroded longstanding demographic divisions that have favored Republicans, endangering their hold on a tier of states where the Democratic Party usually has little chance to prevail in federal elections, even Republican strongholds like Kansas or Alaska.

President Trump still has plenty of time to close the gap with Mr. Biden. But with Mr. Biden’s lead enduring well into a second month amid a worsening coronavirus pandemic, it’s worth considering the potential consequences of a decisive Biden victory.

AP/ABC-12:

Poll: Very few Americans back schools fully reopening in the fall

Virtual instruction. Mandated masks. Physical distancing. The start of school will look very different this year because of the coronavirus pandemic — and that's OK with the vast majority of Americans.

Only about 1 in 10 Americans think daycare centers, preschools or K-12 schools should open this fall without restrictions, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. Most think mask requirements and other safety measures are necessary to restart in-person instruction, and roughly 3 in 10 say that teaching kids in classrooms shouldn't happen at all.

James Joyner/Outside the Beltway:

Democrats Likely to Retake Senate

A hundred days out, a wave election is the best bet.

As noted repeatedly here and elsewhere, Democrats have a natural edge in public sentiment that’s offset by institutional arrangements that give Republicans an unfair advantage. Trump received nearly 3 million fewer votes than his Democratic opponent in 2016 and still won.

Still, his personality and policies have been so repulsive that he has had negative approval ratings from the beginning. Even with a relatively strong economy—the longest period without a recession in American history—his re-election prospects were in doubt. But re-electing the President is our default position and the Electoral College tilt gave him a decent shot.

The pandemic, and Trump’s obviously incompetent management of it, pretty much put an end to that. And the party is tied to him even moreso than usual, owing to Congressional sycophancy and abetting his lies.

And we know who to blame. Hint: he’s a senator from Kentucky.

Nancy Shively/USA Today:

Teacher: I was a reluctant Trump voter. Coronavirus is the end of my Republican identity.

Teachers don't need Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos to lecture us about how children should be in school. We know it. But we also have to keep them safe.

I am a special education teacher and lifelong Republican who reluctantly voted for Donald Trump in 2016 as the less bad of two bad choices. When the pandemic hit, the incompetence of the man for whom I had voted and the complicity of everyone around him forced me to admit that I could no longer maintain any kind of self-respect as a Republican. So even though I had voted Republican in every presidential election since 1976, I changed my voter registration to independent and I will be voting for Joe Biden in November.

Nevertheless, I am still haunted because, deep down, I fear that with that vote I may have signed my own death warrant.

I live and teach in a small Oklahoma town. It’s not far from the site of President Trump’s Tulsa campaign rally on June 20 that appears, as common sense would have predicted, to be a super-spreader event.

Andy Slavitt/twitter:

COVID Update July 23: If you don’t know many people who have Coronavirus, its because you don’t know the people who pick the food you eat.

Yes many of the people getting sick are working for us.

I hate to put this in terms of privilege— which I have in massive amounts— but the luxury to say “I don’t like masks” or “I’m tired of staying at home”— & dictating how we live & work are very different around the country. 

I talked to an ICU doctor in a state with large number of hospitalizations & asked him to tell me about the people in the ICU. “Mostly black. Also Hispanic.” Old or young? “Older but some young. All essential workers or their parents.”

Enlarge / The new generation of Gorilla Glass promises double the scratch resistance of 2018’s Gorilla Glass 6. (credit: Corning)

It takes about two years for Corning to develop each new generation of Gorilla Glass, the resilient material that graces a critical mass of smartphones. That process has for several update cycles focused on protecting screens against drops, fending off shatters and cracks by boosting what’s known as compressive strength. The newly announced Gorilla Glass Victus, though, gives equal weight to preventing scratches. That’s harder than it sounds and more useful than you’d think.

It’s not that Gorilla Glass has dismissed scratches entirely. But the last time Corning prioritized it as a threat was in Gorilla Glass 3, which came out all of seven years ago. Since then, smartphones have gotten much better about bouncing back from sidewalk run-ins, but handle an inadvertent key dig about the same as they did when the iPhone 5S came out. (Corning still provides glass for the iPhone, but a custom formulation distinct from the Gorilla Glass line.) Enter Victus, which promises double the scratch resistance of 2018’s Gorilla Glass 6. It performs better in a drop test, too, surviving a 2-meter fall compared to its predecessor’s 1.6m durability.

Scratch that itch

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Enlarge / Southwest has dozens of 737s in storage. The airline says it hasn't experienced the glitch described in the FAA directive. (credit: Dylan Ashe)

The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered airlines to inspect the engines of their 737 airplanes after four reports of "single-engine shutdowns."

Many 737 aircraft have been sitting in hangars for weeks as the coronavirus pandemic suppressed demand for air travel. As airlines have resumed operations, they've discovered that a key valve has a tendency to get stuck after weeks without being used. The FAA estimates that around 2,000 aircraft could be affected.

"If this valve opens normally at takeoff power, it may become stuck in the open position during flight and fail to close when power is reduced at the top of descent," the FAA's directive warns. That could result in "an unrecoverable compressor stall and the inability to restart the engine."

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Enlarge / Intel's continuing setbacks when developing newer, denser manufacturing processes raise questions about how it will compete with AMD—let alone emerging ARM-based rivals like Amazon, Apple, or Ampere. (credit: MaximumPC / Getty Images)

Yesterday, Intel's Q2 2020 earnings report brought more grim news for the company's advanced manufacturing processes. Its next-generation 7nm manufacturing process is now a full year behind schedule, with those parts now scheduled to see the light of day no earlier than late 2022.

Intel’s 14nm barrier

Intel's struggles with 7nm development and manufacturing follow what can generously be described as a less-than-successful transition to 10nm. In March of this year, Intel CFO George Davis described the company's 10nm process (used in its current Ice Lake line of laptop CPUs) as "[not] the best node that Intel has ever had," going on to say that 10nm Intel would be "less productive than 14nm, less productive than 22nm... it isn't going to be as strong a node as people would expect from 14nm or what they'll see in 7nm."

These struggles to get higher clock speeds and better yield rates out of 10nm has forced Intel to continue relying on its aging 14nm process, now so elderly and frequently revised it's often referred to as "14nm++++." The Ice Lake 10nm laptop CPUs are a long way from worthless—due to their higher integrated GPU performance and power efficiency, they're a premium choice for battery-constrained devices. But even in laptops, Intel Ice Lake 10nm competes directly against Intel Comet Lake 14nm, with the highest-performance Intel parts coming from the older process.

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An attorney with a legal advocacy agency that held a vigil outside a McAllen, Texas hotel where they said migrant children are being illegally held by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractor was violently shoved by plainclothes, unidentified men after he entered the building to try to offer the children legal assistance and ensure their well-being.

Legal advocacy group Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) was at the hotel following a horrific AP report that ICE has detained unaccompanied kids as young as 1 at a number of Hampton Inn & Suites locations before quickly deporting them in violation of their rights. With members of the organization warning they were being held “with no paper trail,” the legal advocate attempted to see the children only to be physically blocked by three men.

In video from TCRP, Andrew Udelsman, an attorney with the organization, is confronted by three unidentified men after exiting an elevator onto one of the upper floors of Hampton Inn & Suites hotel in McAllen, a hotel chain owned by Hilton. It’s a normal hotel, but what’s happening inside the rooms isn’t normal. Children are being held by ICE contractor MVM Inc. as they presumably wait for quick deportation under a Stephen Miller-led order, in violation of anti-trafficking law.

The men, wearing protective gear but no identification, quickly block the attorney, who yells in Spanish in the direction of the rooms that he’s a lawyer and is there to help. As one of the unidentified men then more aggressively shoves him back, he again yells to the children in Spanish, asking them to say their names and if they’re in trouble:

In video outside the location, TRCP’s Zenen Jaimes Perez slammed the violent force and said that “all we’re to do is make sure that the people who are inside are able to get some type of legal help.” He said that under Miller’s expulsion policy, “no one is being afforded due process. We have children and other asylum seekers in here, with no paper trail. This is literally a black box of information. If we cannot get their information, they will be expelled from this county, back into violence.”

In another image shared by TCRP, people could be seen holding handwritten signs up to the window reading: “We don’t have phone,” and “we need your help.” While it was unclear if the people holding up the signs were children, it was clear one of the figures was holding a baby: 

“This was ONE room in that hotel,” Perez said in another tweet. “We know that at least two entire FLOORS are being used to detain people before they are illegally expelled.Our government is running a black-site in McAllen, TX to circumvent federal and international protections for asylum seekers.”

This week’s shocking AP report said that MVM Inc.—which holds a federal contract close to $50 million—has held children as young as 1 for several days at a time. As I noted on Thursday, it’s unclear how some of the younger children arrived to the U.S alone, but there’ve been reports that desperate parents forced to wait out their asylum cases in Mexico under another cruel administration policy have sent their kids alone back into the U.S. 

Welcome to another episode of Confidence Interval, where we make a persuasive case for a hot take … and then reveal how confident we really feel about the idea. This time, elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich ponders whether the Democrats can pick up 13 seats in the U.S. Senate this November to have a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority.

Back in February, before Donald Trump started punishing states by withholding protective gear and ventilators, he needed another way to punish his former home state. In retaliation for New York’s refusal to share all driver’s license information with ICE and DHS, residents of the state were banned from Global Entry programs designed to speed Americans through airports. This was back in the Before Time, when Global Entry mattered because Trump had not yet managed to make America such a pariah that its citizens are banned from nearly every destination on the planet.

On Thursday, DHS suddenly reversed itself and lifted the ban, saying that New York was now giving it what was needed. But it wasn’t until later in the day that the real reason for this reversal became clear. As might be expected, this effort to punish New York for perfectly legal actions immediately ended up in court, where the DHS defended the action and made claims about the threat posed by New York’s refusal to share all driver’s license information with ICE and DHS. Now DHS has had to beat a hasty retreat, because it turned out to be lying.

The DHS ban came just three months after Trump officially became a Florida Man, at a point when he was angry at New York for ongoing efforts to secure his tax information. Despite the claims that it was aimed at the state’s refusal to provide vehicle information, information that other states were also not providing, it was clear from the outset that it was meant to punish New York for the ongoing efforts to investigate Trump’s finances. It was also seen as a signal to states that contained “sanctuary cities”—hand over those immigrants, or your people are going to be complaining from the airports.

But the DHS statement that it was voluntarily lifting its NY ban was a long way from the truth. The truth was that DHS had to issue a contrite and highly unusual letter to the judge, apologizing for “inaccurate or misleading statements.” That apology went out to both the court, and to New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Details of the court documents show how DHS had already accepted the same level of information provided by New York with other states, but singled New York out for special treatment. Then they went to court and argued that the information provided by New York was inadequate that New Yorkers had to be blocked from the the Global Entry program for “safety.” 

In other words, they lied. About everything. Including the reason the ban was started and why it was lifted. 

Enlarge (credit: US DOE)

So far, the focus on cutting the US's carbon emissions has fallen on two obvious targets: electrical production and transportation. But to engage in the sort of deep decarbonization we'll need to address climate change, we can't really ignore any significant source of emissions. And the places we live are significant sources—even before the pandemic kept many of us from leaving the house, US households accounted for about 20 percent of the country's energy-related carbon emissions.

On its own, the authors of a new analysis say, US housing would be the world's sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, placing it ahead of Germany. How do we get that down in order to address climate change? To find out, some researchers from the University of Michigan did an incredibly detailed analysis of the US's housing stock, figuring out the factors that influenced its carbon emissions. They then calculated which options might bring those emissions down to where they'd be compatible with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Emissions at home

To understand US housing's energy use, the researchers started with average samples of the housing in each state, with the number of buildings ranging from 100,000 to 10 million. This data included information on the building's age, how much space it enclosed, how it's heated, and so on. Their model also incorporated details of things like power use, housing density, details of the electric grid, and so on.

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Remember when Republicans fear-mongered about “death panels” they claimed would result from federal health-care legislation? It was PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” in 2009.

Now, though, some local authorities in the U.S. are apparently being forced to establish the equivalent of death panels, after GOP governors rushed to reopen their states amid the coronavirus pandemic.

One of those governors is Texas’ Greg Abbott, who was under tremendous political pressure from his GOP base to lift COVID-19 restrictions, led by the likes of salon owner Shelley Luther. Since then, Texas has become an epicenter for the virus, and the situation is particularly dire in Starr County, in the Rio Grande Valley.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports: Starr County Memorial Hospital — the county’s only hospital — is overflowing with COVID-19 patients. The county has been forced to form what is being compared to a so-called “death panel.” A county health board – which governs Starr Memorial – is set to authorize critical care guidelines Thursday that will help medical workers determine ways to allocate scarce medical resources on patients with the best chance to survive. A committee will deem which COVID-19 patients are likely to die and send them home with family, Jose Vasquez, the county health authority, said during a news conference Tuesday. “The situation is desperate,” Vasquez said. “We cannot continue functioning in the Starr County Memorial Hospital nor in our county in the way that things are going. The numbers are staggering.”

More from San Antonio’s KSAT-TV: “Emergency rooms are holding patients for hours or days because, basically, we do not have any rooms inside the hospital to put those patients,” said Dr. Jose Vazquez, Starr County health authority. About 70,000 people live in Starr County, and more than 1,600 of its residents have tested positive for COVID-19. … “If we determine that the patient had a very, very small chance to make it alive, (we have) to discuss with that family and present the options, that perhaps it’s more sensible for the patient and for the family … to go to their home and to offer end of care, end of life care, and compassionate care to them,” Vazquez said.

Asked what his message would be to state leaders, Vasquez added: “We need action and we need it now.”

Watch the station’s report below.

The post Texas County To Establish ‘Death Panel’ As Only Hospital Overflows with COVID-19 Patients: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night, President Donald Trump threatened to deploy as many as 75,000 federal law enforcement officers to U.S. cities to quell violent crime, regardless of whether local officials request the assistance.

“At some point, we’re going to have to do something much stronger than being invited in” — Trump teases using federal authorities to invade cities against the will of local officials pic.twitter.com/ycuCntX62k

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 24, 2020

“We’re going to all of the cities, any of the cities, we’re ready,” Trump said. “We’ll put in 50,000, 60,000 people that really know what they’re doing and they’re strong, they’re tough. And we could solve these problems so fast, but, as you know, we have to be invited in. At some point, we’re going to have to do something that’s much stronger than being invited in, but we have to be invited in.”

Later in the interview, Trump upped the number to 75,000, which would represent three-quarters of the total number of federal law-enforcement officers in the U.S., according to CNN.

Trump also mocked Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler for getting tear-gassed by federal officers this week.

Trump on the tear gassing of Portland’s mayor by federal officers:

“He wanted to be among the people, so he went into the crowd and they knocked the hell out of him. That was the end of him. So it was pretty — pretty pathetic.”https://t.co/TaQKqcAP3U pic.twitter.com/4qz5Owu3c0

— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) July 24, 2020

“He made a fool out of himself,” Trump said. “He wanted to be among the people so he went into the crowd and they knocked the hell out of him. That was the end of him.”

On Thursday night, in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, a judge issued a temporary restraining order against federal agents in Portland, prohibiting them from threatening to arrest, arresting, dispersing or using force against journalists and legal observers who attend ongoing racial justice protests.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration sent a team of tactical border officers to Seattle on Thursday.

The post Trump Threatens to Deploy 75K Federal Officers to U.S. Cities Against Will of Local Officials (WATCH) appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Everything Donald Trump does is a scam. Everything Donald Trump's family does is a scam. It is all just one big grift, from top to bottom, sucking in money from the gullible and the supplicants and "mostly" from Russia, if you believe his weird but omnipresent failsons, only to spend it on lavish pet project golf clubs and Gatsby-esque role play.

The latest scam is a play to give Trump's private company, temporarily "managed" by his failsons so that it cannot be directly tied to Trump's presidency or campaign, a more direct role in Trump's presidency and campaign. The Washington Post reports that the Trump Organization has now trademarked the term "telerally," referring to "organizing events in the field of politics and political campaigning." You know what that means, right?

Yup. Now that Trump has so thoroughly endangered the American public that even he is beginning to suspect he will not be able to put on in-person rallies, he is planning to funnel the for-profit work of organizing virtual rallies to his own company.

Before, Trump could take a cut of his own appearances and rallies (and more importantly, those of any willing supplicants) by hosting them at his for-profit hotels and clubs. Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has rendered that particular scam less profitable, the Trump clan is scurrying to shift business to charging the Trump campaign and supplicant campaigns for hosting the internet versions they are now forced to use after Trump's colossal, history-altering pandemic failure.

What could go wrong? When you think "technological prowess in the organization and application of distributed virtual communications platforms," your mind naturally turns to ... Eric and Donald Trump Jr. Right? Eh, they'll buy something. It'll be fine.

To repeat, everything the Trump family does has been geared towards milking Pumpkin Hitler's newfound power for cheap-ass, low-caliber grifts. Let us host the British Open. Come have your industry meetup at our Washington hotel. What if we, like, formed a new line of hotels themed around patriotism? What if we started charging fees every time Dad had a campaign speech—can we do that? Etc.

If they had more money, Don Jr. would probably pay scientists to genetically engineer new, never-before-seen animals to kill, ones with 10-foot antlers and T-R-U-M-P spelled out in gold hair on their flanks. But sure, go with the same grift Rudy Giuliani used to launder influence-seeking cash after his own public decline—claim you're now technology experts. How original.

Six days after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oregon added agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and United States Marshals to its existing lawsuit against the City of Portland and the Portland Police Bureau, a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the Donald Trump-deployed secret police. 

The original class-action lawsuit was filed June 30 on behalf of journalists and legal observers.

The attorneys (asked) the federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order to immediately prohibit law enforcement from:

• Using any form of physical force against a journalist or legal observer, including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades;
• Arresting or threatening to arrest journalists and legal observers or seizing their equipment;
• Threatening, harassing, or intimidating a journalist or legal observer;
• Using indiscriminate force against crowds that are likely to contain journalists or legal observers;
• "Kettling" or "killboxing" crowds that are likely to include journalists or legal observers; and
• Ordering or forcing journalists or legal observers to disperse, or to stop recording or observing a protest.

The lawsuit, Woodstock v. City of Portland … seeks an order declaring law enforcement’s actions unconstitutional and prohibiting them from targeting and attacking journalists again. The lawsuit also seeks damages for injuries sustained.

Unfortunately, the TRO issued Thursday lasts two weeks, and applies only to the press and legal observers.

U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon signaled early in the day that he was leaning towards issuing the order. All eyes have been on Portland in recent days, as federal agents unleashed upon Portland have come under repeated, widespread, and intense scrutiny and criticism for not just their acts of force against peaceful protesters, but against press, legal observers, and even the Portland mayor. Attorneys for the fascists Trump administration didn’t make much of a case.

Andrew Warden, serving as counsel for the federal government, argued the federal law enforcement were in a volatile and dangerous situation on the ground and said the order the judge was considering would place law enforcement in an “impossible position” where they had to choose between protecting public safety and risking running afoul of the court’s orders.

Warden claimed that it’s “not realistic to ask law enforcement officers to verify press passes or hat color while trying to restore order in a chaotic situation where lasers are being shot at them to blind them, fireworks are being targeted at them, everyone’s wearing masks, helmets, face coverings.” Warden also lamented that “nearly everyone appears to have a camera or a cellphone out to record things further making it difficult to distinguish legitimate journalists from others.”

Judge Simon was unimpressed by Warden’s hot take.

After Warden made his opening remarks, Simon questioned whether any injuries were caused to federal officers or damage had been caused to the courthouse by anyone who was a journalist or a legal observer.

He also questioned whether federal officers had received specific training in crowd control.

The attorney said they had no evidence of a journalist or legal observer causing damage.

He didn’t know the extent of the training, , but pointed the judge toward a recent press conference by the acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf.

This story is developing. 

The former Minneapolis cop accused of killing George Floyd has also been charged with multiple tax evasion felonies, Minnesota prosecutors announced Wednesday. Derek Chauvin and his wife Kellie Chauvin are accused of failing to file individual tax returns from 2016 to 2019 and "fraudulently filing tax returns from 2014 to 2019," Washington County Attorney Pete Orput said in a news release. Prosecutors also accused the Chauvins of knowing “their obligation to file state income tax returns” from “multiple correspondences sent in 2019 by the department.”

"When you fail to fulfill the basic obligation to file and pay taxes, you are taking money from the pockets of citizens of Minnesota,” Orput said. “Our office has and will continue to file these charges when presented.  Whether you are a prosecutor or police officer, or you are doctor or a realtor, no one is above the law."

The Chauvins were each charged with nine felony counts, including underreporting more than $464,000 in income, with interest and penalties bringing in another $37,868, according to the Star Tribune. Kellie Chauvin, a real estate agent and owner of a photography business, told investigators filing returns "got away" from her, the newspaper reported. When she called her husband in jail June 26 to tell him their home had been searched and she was meeting with someone to help fix the tax issues, Derek Chavin suggested keeping “who we have used to handle for many years.”

In turn, she said: “Yeah, well, we don’t want to get your dad involved, because he will just be mad at me, I mean us, not doing them for years.”

The couple is apparently going through a divorce, which Kellie Chauvin’s attorney sought to be sealed, citing “constant harassment from the public” and hacked financial and Social Security information, according to the Star Tribune. “The circumstances surrounding Respondent’s incarceration has resulted in rage and violence throughout the community directed at both Petitioner and Respondent,” the attorney said in the filing.

Derek Chauvin is accused of killing Floyd on May 25 when Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes while two other officers kneeled on Floyd's back and legs. Former officers Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao, who protected his peers by keeping bystanders at bay, have all been charged in Floyd's death and a $1 million bail has been set for them, CNBC reported last month.

CLICK HERE to support organizations that are fighting every day for racial justice.

RELATED: $1 million bail set for three former Minneapolis police officers arraigned in George Floyd death

A Christian school in Tennessee that receives federal funding has revoked its admission of a gay student based on his sexual orientation, after learning that he planned to live with his fiancé in graduate housing.

Alex Duron was set to begin a master’s program in nurse anesthesia at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, this fall. However, last weekend, Duron received a letter from the school saying his admission had been revoked.

“Your request for graduate housing and your social media profile, including your intent to live with your partner, indicates your unwillingness to abide by the commitment you made in signing (the university’s community values statements),” the letter stated.

According to a student life handbook, the university prohibits “sexually impure relationships.”

“Sexually impure relationships include but are not limited to participation in or appearance of engaging in premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexual activities, or cohabitation,” the handbook states. “Union affirms that sexual relationships are designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between a man and a woman. The Bible condemns all sexual relationships outside of marriage (Matt. 5:27-29; Gal. 5:19). The promotion, advocacy, defense or ongoing practice of a homosexual lifestyle (including same-sex dating behaviors) is also contrary to our community values. Homosexual behaviors, even in the context of a marriage, remain outside Union’s community values. We seek to help students who face all types of sexual temptation, encouraging single students to live chaste, celibate lives, and encouraging married students to be faithful to their marriage and their spouse.”

Duron wrote on Facebook on Tuesday: “This weekend I received very bad news regarding the institution I chose for my continued education. It turns out that a faith-informed education from Union University is not God’s plan for me, because Union University is not “informed” enough to not recognized that bigotry masked as religion is not Christian at all. My God taught me to love they neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and not to judge as is told in the book of Matthew. I am writing to let the public know that this is not ok. There are several words to describe what has occurred: Bigotry, Prejudice, Heterosexism, Homophobia. What has happened to me is not the worst part. Did you know that this is 100% Legal? Did you know that Union University is not a fully private school and accepts federal funding? Did you know that your taxes are allowing them to discriminate against LGBTQ+ and their allies? If you think this is WRONG. If you are SHOCKED. If you don’t want your taxes supporting an institution of higher education that is legally allowed to discriminate, then please LIKE. SHARE. Spread the word. Union University may not be right for me. I can accept that, but I cannot accept that our government is giving them the money to discriminate against me. Friends understand that I am doing fine and I have moved on from this. I have strong support all around me and I know my worth. Continuing to push forward but recognizing that gay discrimination lies all around us. #gaypride2020 #futurecrna #myfiancerocks #BLM #transgenderrights #equality“

More from the Charlotte Observer: Union University — which touts itself as “the oldest institution affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention” — is home to roughly 3,100 undergraduate and graduate students, according to its website. Tuition and fees for the average undergraduate total close to $45,000 a year. To help students offset that cost, the university receives federal funding from the U.S. government. According to the Treasury Department’s data lab, which tracks federal spending, Union received more than $40 million from the government in 2018. … As a recipient of federal funds, Union is subject to Title IX regulations, which bar K-12 schools and institutions of higher education that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex — including sexual orientation. But there’s a catch: They can claim a religious exemption.

Read the full story here.

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Because apparently it isn’t enough to have just one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary terrorizing America, former agency head Kirstjen Nielsen resumed her rehabilitation tour and appeared at a conference affiliated with another former Trump official, Anthony Scaramucci, this week, where she continued to do what she consistently did while in office (other than separate families): try to save her own ass.

In one moment from The Mooch’s event, Nielsen, who signed family separation into place, yet again lied and claimed there was no family separation policy. In a second moment, Nielsen claimed “it’s so past time” to give permanent status to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients. But her actions speak more loudly: Nielsen supported the decision to rescind DACA.

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times gave Nielsen some great unpaid PR help by tweeting this gem of a quote from that conference this week, without any context: 

Of course, the context being that Nielsen’s support for deporting DACA recipients was official. Like, as official as it gets:

Just in case there was any doubt left in the air, Nielsen’s DHS added some touches to let you know the disdain was clear. “When a DREAM Act deal seemed possible,” tweeted immigration attorney Aaron Hall, “Nielsen's Department of Homeland Security's press shop started a concentrated campaign to sink it, including saying that the bi-partisan deal ‘ignores the lessons of 9/11.’ Not feeling this rehab tour.”

Neither are we, especially as her appearance at the conference made it clear she remains unrepentant about her cruelest act in office, as a main architect of the family separation policy:

Nielsen lied about the policy numerous times while in office—to legislators, to the press, and to us. In a timeline on the policy, reporter Jack Herrera wrote that in May 2018, “California Senator Kamala Harris grilled Nielsen in a Senate hearing,” where “Nielsen falsely denied that administration had a policy of separating children from their parents.”

He writes that the next month Nielsen again lied and falsely claimed during a White House press conference that "[t]his administration did not create a policy of separating families at the border.” She also tweeted the same lie from her official government account:

We wrote about that memo Soboroff is referencing here back in 2018. It exists. It’s there. She signed it, yet lied about it and is still lying about. 

“We have the secretary of Homeland Security absolutely denying all of this, under oath, to Congress,” a frustrated Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon told CNN's John Berman last year in calling on the FBI to open an investigation into perjury. “I am just sick and tired of this administration lying to the American people, lying to Congress, doing it under oath, and it’s time for real accountability.”

A count from late last year said that nearly 5,500 children were stolen by the Trump administration since 2017, 1,556 of those kids in the months before any policy was officially implemented the following spring. The administration is still trying to separate more families:

Nielsen doesn’t care about what she helped carry out, so she has nothing to move on from. But the children kidnapped under the policy haven’t moved on, and neither should we when it comes to what our government did to them—and is trying to do to them right now, in our name.

The Republican Senate still seems quite determined to install any crackpot, no matter how unqualified or damaging, to any position Trump's team of catastrophic screw-ups can think of. On Tuesday the Senate Banking Committee voted on party lines to advance the nomination of Judy Shelton as Trump-desired addition to the Federal Reserve Board. Shelton is a crackpot, pure and simple. She is a crackpot that puts Trump's other crackpots to shame. Even Republicans were extremely dubious about her nomination, until as usual Something Happened and the children of the Senate decided to just do whatever the orange gasbag's team wanted.

How bad is Shelton as a pick? Bad enough to inspire "God Help Us" headlines and theories that Trump is choosing her because he knows he is going to lose reelection and is "salting the earth behind him." That bad.

Judy Shelton's economic expertise has consisted, in part, of a long-standing demand that the United States return to the gold standard, a Ron Paulian notion considered both unworkable and actively dangerous by every non-kook economist in the world. She objects to the notion that the Fed even exists. She has been an opponent of the Fed stimulating the economy even during world-shaking crises, during a period of time when world-shaking crises seem to be cropping up with some regularity; she also objects to federal deposit insurance, the thing that props individual U.S. households up when a world-shaking crisis causes banks to collapse.

And she evolved from some of these positions the moment senators started asking about them, one of the surest signs that somebody is lying their behind off to get through confirmation hearings a la the "I like beer" guy.

The position that is most concerning right now, however, is Shelton's theory that the Federal Reserve needs mostly to be less independent. It should "pursue a more coordinated relationship" with the president, she now says. It should consult with Congress more often.

Whatever you might think of the Federal Reserve, there is no surer way to both kill it dead and send the nation into economic chaos than to have the Fed "coordinate" policy according to what elected officials are demanding in the run-ups to their own reelection campaigns. Basing the value of the dollar on gold, Beanie Babies, or potatoes would all be less disastrous than that.

As of this moment, Sen. Mitt Romney is the only Republican who has publicly said that he would be voting against Shelton. The nomination would fail with four such Republican defections, which means it would require three other Republicans to not do the Obviously Corrupt thing. It seems a tall order—which itself is still astonishing. It seems the more radical, unhinged, corrupt, ignorant and down-in-the-polls Trump becomes, the more tightly the party clings to him.

With daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths still on the rise, the coronavirus pandemic is not slowing down in the US.

More Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid-19 than at almost any other point in the pandemic, a grim indicator that the coronavirus pandemic is not slowing down in the US.

On July 23, 59,846 people across the United States were in the hospital after testing positive for the novel coronavirus, according to data reported by the Covid Tracking Project, just below the peak of 59,940 reached on April 15, when the New York City area was the epicenter of the US outbreak. (As the Covid Tracking Project notes, the national and state hospital data are erratic and incomplete at the moment, and reported totals may continue to shift.)

Christina Animashaun/Vox

What’s clear is that Covid-19 has migrated across the country to many more regions in the three months since. In the spring, hospitalizations were overwhelmingly concentrated in the Northeast, but now more than half of hospitalized Covid-19 patients are in the South. The West has also seen the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients double since April, while the Northeast now accounts for fewer than 5,000 of the nearly 60,000 current hospitalizations.

The current total is likely an undercount. Two states, Kansas and Hawaii, do not report current hospitalization data, and some states may temporarily not be reporting full hospitalization numbers because of a recent change in the reporting system ordered by the Trump administration.

“The hospitalization number is the best indicator of where we are,” Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told Vox. “We’re going to go to new heights in the pandemic that we haven’t seen before. Not that what we saw before wasn’t horrifying enough.”

The growth has been driven by accelerating spread in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas in particular. On April 15, when New York City hospitals were nearly being overrun with Covid-19 patients, Texas had about 1,500 patients hospitalized with the disease. Today, more than 10,000 Texans are hospitalized with Covid-19.

Some areas are reaching a woeful tipping point of hospitals stretched to maximum capacity, scrambling to find beds in other facilities for Covid-19 patients. Miami-Dade County reported this week that the number of patients in need of ICU care had exceeded the number of available ICU beds. More than 50 hospitals across the state say they have no ICU beds available.

Texas Medical Center in Houston has already filled up its usual non-pandemic ICU unit and been forced to rely on its surge capacity plans to handle the patient load. Earlier this month, 10 out of the 12 hospitals in the Rio Grande Valley reported that they were completely full and needed to start transferring patients to hospitals elsewhere in the state.

This was, unfortunately, to be expected. Nearly all of the states currently experiencing an increase in new cases and hospitalizations started relaxing their social distancing restrictions in May and June before meeting the government’s reopening guidelines of having sufficiently reduced the virus’s spread and adequately ramped up their testing and tracing capabilities. New cases began rising and hospitalizations followed a few weeks after that. Now deaths are ticking up again, reversing a steady decline that had begun in early May.

Four million Americans have had confirmed cases of Covid-19. More than 143,000 of them have died. With hospitalizations surging and several states still reporting thousands of new cases a day, experts say we are in for a difficult August and fall.

“We’ve still got 91 to 92 percent of people who are still vulnerable, who have not been infected,” said Topol. “And so that just shows how many more people can be hurt. Obviously many won’t get so sick, but many will.”

The new hospitalizations, and the untenable pressure they’re putting on the health care system, are also a reminder of how critical it is for states to implement and enforce measures like mandatory face masks, and for the federal government to solve testing and contact tracing problems. “It should be an all-points bulletin to really bear down on this because otherwise there’s no limit on where this might go,” said Topol.

Hospitals are running out of staff, supplies, and beds for Covid-19 patients

Hospitals in hot spots across the country are expanding and even maxing out their staff, equipment, and beds, with doctors warning that the worst-case scenario of hospital resources being overwhelmed is on the horizon if their states don’t get better control of the coronavirus.

“With Covid, a lot of times people who aren’t sick enough yet get pushed to the back, and then they can become really, really sick unfortunately because we were focusing our efforts on the people who are on the brink of death,” an emergency room doctor at the Banner Health system in the Phoenix metro area, who asked to go unnamed fearing retaliation from his employer, told Vox recently.

Other doctors in Arizona, where 85 percent of hospital beds statewide were in use as of Thursday, have said the scarcity of resources means they’ll soon be rationing medical care, as doctors in Italy were forced to do.

“The fear is we are going to have to start sharing ventilators, or we’re gonna have to start saying, ‘You get a vent, you don’t.’ I’d be really surprised if in a couple weeks we didn’t have to do that,” says Murtaza Akhter, an emergency medicine physician at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix.

The rampant transmission of the virus in Arizona and resulting pressure on hospitals are particularly infuriating to some emergency room and ICU staff, who say they’re having to make decisions on the fly that they’re uncomfortable making.

“Sending people with Covid home with oxygen tanks because we don’t have the resources for them? This is something I’ve never done in my life before,” says Akhter. “This is crazy. And this is gonna be even worse in a couple of weeks. So far we’re trying to hold steady, but how long will that last?”

The psychological toll, he says, is serious too.

“To come off a shift and be like, ‘I’m losing hope’ — that’s a dangerous place to be in,” he says. “I don’t want to feel that way. And that’s because despite the horrible numbers, despite the fact I’m still getting the Covid cases [in the ER], despite what we’ve been saying to the media from the front line, I drive home from work and I literally see lots of people congregating together closely and in the grocery store not wearing masks.”

Texas hospitals say they are in better shape now with personal protective equipment than they were in March and April, but that could change as the crisis gets worse. Roberta Schwartz, executive vice president at Houston Methodist, says her facilities have sometimes had trouble getting gowns and disinfectant wipes. John Henderson, who represents a trade association for rural hospitals in the state, says he recently “got a couple of SOS calls.”

Staffing is a universal problem in hot spots. Houston Methodist has already brought in out-of-state nurses and asked its administrative staff with nursing certifications to start doing medical work again. Nurses are also being asked to work longer and overnight shifts.

Rural hospitals in Texas aren’t running out of beds yet, but they are running into a staffing shortage. These facilities might typically have five patients in a given unit, and the hospitals have staffed them accordingly. But now there might be as many as 20 patients.

“You’re working every nurse as much as you can work them and still not meeting the need,” Henderson says.

It’s not clear where more staff could come from. The state has already sent about 2,300 volunteers to the Rio Grande Valley, one of the hardest-hit areas in the state.

“Other areas are requesting that workforce support,” Henderson says. “But there’s not much more in terms of resources to be sent.”

Another concern is ventilators. Rural hospitals in Texas would ordinarily transfer their patients in serious condition, the kind who might be on a ventilator for days, to a larger hospital in the city. But because urban hospitals are already overrun with Covid-19 patients, there is nowhere for the rural hospitals to send their patients. Instead, they are forced to keep those patients, causing their beds to fill up even more quickly.

And while the current coronavirus patients are younger than those seen in the spring, Henderson says his hospitals don’t have enough of the nasal oxygen hookups that are used to help those patients breathe on their own and prevent them from being put on a ventilator.

“They’ve shown to be effective, but everybody’s trying to get them,” he says.

El Centro Regional Medical Center in Imperial County, one of California’s biggest Covid-19 hot spots right now, has already brushed up against its worst-case scenario. The hospital recently saw its available ventilators dwindle to one.

Adolphe Edward, the hospital’s CEO, convened an impromptu committee to evaluate the patients currently on ventilators so they could prioritize if another patient who needed one came through their door. They checked the patients’ lung capacity and considered whether they could risk taking one or two of them off the ventilator if the need arose.

Luckily, Edward figured out a workaround. He called another nearby hospital and asked if they had any ventilators available. They had two, which they shipped over to El Centro. For now, the machines are still there, though Edward says he and the other hospital have stayed in constant contact in case the ventilators need to be transferred again.

Daily deaths are creeping up again but are still far below the earlier peak

While daily Covid-19 hospitalizations are surging, another key metric, daily deaths, was 1,039 on July 23, still less than half of its May 7 peak of 2,742, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Yet the trend is ominous, since daily deaths were dropping steadily by mid-June and then began rising again in early July.

On Thursday, Florida reported a new record single-day death toll of 173. Texas hit its own respective record on Wednesday, with 193 deaths.

Since many Covid-19 fatalities to date have occurred among people who were hospitalized for weeks before succumbing, experts say they expect deaths will continue to rise in the coming days and weeks. Yet it’s possible, they say, that fewer people who are hospitalized will end up dying in this summer stage of the pandemic as compared to the spring.

“Hospitalizations undoubtedly are going to be associated with more deaths or chronic illnesses, but I’m hoping that the deaths are not as steep as they were back in March and April,” said Topol. “And maybe that’s because they are more young people that are sick and they will pull through. Maybe it’s also because the treatments are getting better, not just the drugs but just the whole approach.”

Overall, he says, “The hope is that the relationship between hospitalizations and fatalities won’t be as tight as it was, but we have to watch this closely because that’s the optimistic view.”

Update, July 24: This article and its headline previously stated that hospitalizations had surpassed a peak reached in April. They have been updated to reflect irregularity in the hospitalization data.

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Enlarge / The most salacious tips obviously also have the most dramatic backlighting. (credit: Andrew Brookes | Getty Images)

A representative from the Department of Justice suggested in 2018 that the Federal Bureau of Investigation should have a look into NPR's use of a secure, encrypted tipline, newly publicized emails reveal.

Reporter Jason Leopold obtained an email exchange from DOJ officials from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and shared them on Twitter. The email thread begins with an April 2018 message from Neil McCabe, who was at the time a reporter at One America News Network (OANN), a far-right cable news channel best known for boosting and spreading conspiracy theories. McCabe was writing to Lauren Ehrsam Gorey, who was then a spokesperson in the DoJ's Office of Public Affairs (i.e., the department's communications and public relations division).

"Can you find out if DOJ is cool with NPR running a Tor-enabled tip email?" McCabe wrote, adding a link to NPR's instructions for sending in confidential tips.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Unemployment claims rose to 1.4 million last week, up about 100,000 from the week before, the Labor Department reported, ending 15 weeks of consecutive declines in new applications.

An additional 975,000 people applied for aid under the temporary federal pandemic unemployment assistance program, created to provide jobless aid to workers ineligible for traditional unemployment benefits, such as gig workers.

The increase in the number of workers seeking new aid comes as several states like California, Texas and Florida have closed some businesses down again, and coronavirus cases have shot up across the United States.

More than 30 million Americans are currently on unemployment and several states have delayed reopening plans in recent weeks -- shrinking the already small pool of available work.

"The combined effect of rising layoffs, expiring unemployment benefits and escalating coronavirus outbreaks sets up a perfect economic storm that could easily derail the weakening economy’s fledgling recovery," said Glassdoor Senior Economist Daniel Zhao in reaction to the report.

The data will fuel the urgency in Washington to extend the enhanced federal pandemic unemployment benefits set to expire this weekend, as lawmakers debate another economic rescue package.

Republicans were originally opposed to continuing the extra $600-a-week jobless benefit, but are now on board with offering more federal unemployment aid -- at a lower amount.

However, it’s already too late to prevent a lapse in benefits for millions of workers. Some states with antiquated systems won’t be able to update their computers in time to prevent a gap.

The rise in jobless claims confirms economists' fears that despite declines in the unemployment rate in May and June, the economy is still scrambling to recover from the pandemic-induced shock.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast earlier this month that unemployment will continue to climb, peaking at 14 percent in the third quarter of this year.