James.galbraith

The use of “convalescent plasma”—blood plasma from people who have recovered from an infectious disease—has been a common treatment going back for decades. From ZIKA and flu, to Ebola and SARS, direct administrations of the antibodies contained in the blood of disease survivors has been trialed as a potential means of conferring at least some immunity on others. For some diseases it works remarkably well, for others the effect of plasma therapy is less potent, but the trials are an obvious step toward finding a means of fighting a disease when neither conventional treatment nor vaccines are available.

Widespread trials of convalescent plasma are currently underway with COVID-19 patients, and early results of those trials have been hopeful. The primary focus of these trials has been, understandably, on the hope that plasma therapy might provide a tool to help those seriously ill when other treatments had been unsuccessful. But there’s another potential use of the antibodies provided by survivors—a prophylactic use. These antibodies might provide a temporary immunity to COVID-19 for those who have not yet been infected. It wouldn’t be a vaccine, because the protective effect would likely fade in a matter of weeks, but it might provide a safety net for those on the front line of fighting the disease and those most vulnerable, until a vaccine or better treatments are available. So … why isn’t this happening?

The University of California San Diego is about to launch a trial of exactly this ability to use plasma therapy as a means of transferring “temporary immunity.” The university is seeking donors who have tested positive for COVID-19, and have recovered from illness. Their plasma will be used in a trial targeted at reaching 487 participants, where the participants have a high risk factor ”such as age or an underlying condition” or are in a position, such as healthcare workers, where they’re are known to face probable exposure. 

The UCSD study is part of a series of studies coordinated through Johns Hopkins looking at plasma as both a treatment and a preventative. Those trials began back in April, and recruitment for the first prophylactic trial began in May. Early results have indicated that plasma appears to be safe for patients, and with over 7,000 patients enrolled in therapy trials, the outcomes there appear to indicate that plasma treatment is helpful, though far from a silver bullet.

There do not appear to be any published results from prophylactic trials at this point—which is not surprising. As with vaccines, trials of any prophylactic tend to be time-consuming affairs that are based more on statistics than direct evidence. It’s easy to see failure: If a large number of those enrolled catch the disease, then the trial is unsuccessful. But if participants in the trial don’t come down with COVID-19, or the disease affects only a few participants; is that because the prophylactic is successful, or because the patients weren’t exposed? The ethics of deliberately exposing participants are more than a little shady.

However, there’s a major limiting factor in the trials now underway—all of them appear to be dependent on plasma introduced though IV treatment. This means participants must undergo a transfer of plasma in a healthcare center, which can take at least several minutes, and the number of treatments that each volunteer donor can produce is limited. Even if the trials turn out to be staggeringly effective, it’s hard to imagine that this technique could be used to protect more than a few thousand front-line workers. It certainly doesn’t seem like a treatment that could be applied to millions in advance of an available vaccine.

But there is another way.

Rather than a IV-based treatment, the antibodies in plasma can be further refined and concentrated to the point where they can be administered through an ordinary injection. As the Los Angeles Times reports, a pair of researchers—Dr. Michael Oxman and Dr. John Zaia—submitted a proposal to the government to being a trial of exactly this approach. But their request went unfunded. While $27 million was given to develop a pair of IV-based forms of COVID-19, none was provided for an injectable approach. 

Oxman and Zaia made a second application for a clinical trial at UCSD, for an injection trial that would run side-by-side with the IV-based trial now underway. This trial would have used 5-millimeter vials of concentrated “immune globulin” (IG). This application was supported by other researchers, but it was also rejected.

The Times article collects a number of quotes showing the consternation of other medical experts, including Dr. Michael Joyner from the Mayo Clinic. “Beyond being a lost opportunity, this is a real head-scratcher,” said Joyner. “It seems obvious.”  Those quoted included Dr. Anthony Fauci, who calls the idea of injectable IG “a very attractive concept.” However, Fauci does express concern that the efficacy of plasma treatments as a prophylactic treatment needs to be tested before an intramuscular shot is developed.

And that seems to be where things are stuck—no one wants to support the development of a shot until it’s clear that the IV-based plasma is effective. And prophylactic trials take months to demonstrate good results. That means that even the earliest of these trials are unlikely to produce definitive results before late August or September. Even if the intramuscular shots were given the go-ahead at that point, developing the treatment, determining the proper dose, and setting up large scale production could mean that the shots were not available until near the end of the year.

Which puts these shots squarely up against another obstacle: Vaccine developers. Most of the same companies that might potentially ramp up to produce of these shots in quantity, are already betting on development of a vaccine by early 2021. Putting resources toward development of something that is seen as a temporary patch seems like a distraction—or even competition—to the product they’re racing to market. Compounding that effect is the fact that “Operation Warp Speed” has already invested hundreds of millions to produce vaccines in advance of trials. They’re being produced right now. No money is available to produce the IG shots.

If effective, an IG shot could be made cheaply and administered by any nurse or assistant who can give an ordinary shot. If just 10% of those who have already recovered from COVID-19 in the United States could be persuaded to donate plasma, it would be enough for 13 million treatments. Those at potential risk, from doctors and nurses, to nursing home residents and workers, to teachers facing reopening schools, could all be protected in a matter of weeks. Only that solution is not being developed, and short of a deep-pocketed “angel” stepping in to make it happen, it’s unlikely this approach will be developed.

But there is another really good reason why it should be—the vaccine bet is far from a sure thing. The first vaccines off the line may prove ineffective, or may turn out to have unacceptable risks. Finding a final solution to COVID-19 may require months of additional trials, and societies around the world could find themselves mired in social distancing and reduced activity for an extended period … That is, unless they have a fallback; a preventative measure that’s easily made, easily administered, and capable of keeping critical workers safe while the bugs are worked out of a long term solution.

Early testing with plasma has found it to be safe. We don’t yet know if prophylactic use will be effective. But IG shots are easily made, easily scaled up, and represent the best known hope for immunity short of an effective vaccine. If someone has a few million dollars to invest in humanity, it’s hard to think of a better place to put it at the moment.

Donald Trump on Saturday morning defended commuting the sentence of his confidante and longtime associate Roger Stone, who was set to head to prison this week on seven felony charges.

Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) July 11, 2020

The NYT reported late Friday: “In a lengthy written statement punctuated by the sort of inflammatory language and angry grievances characteristic of the president’s Twitter feed, the White House denounced the ‘overzealous prosecutors’ who convicted Mr. Stone on ‘process-based charges’ stemming from the ‘witch hunts’ and ‘Russia hoax’ investigation. The statement did not assert that Mr. Stone was innocent of the false statements and obstruction counts, only that he should not have been pursued because prosecutors ultimately filed no charges of an underlying conspiracy between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia.”

Tweeted Trump, predictably, on Saturday: “Roger Stone was targeted by an illegal Witch Hunt that never should have taken place. It is the other side that are criminals, including Biden and Obama, who spied on my campaign – AND GOT CAUGHT!”

Roger Stone was targeted by an illegal Witch Hunt that never should have taken place. It is the other side that are criminals, including Biden and Obama, who spied on my campaign – AND GOT CAUGHT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 11, 2020

Writes David Frum at The Atlantic:

“It is not illegal for a U.S. citizen to act or attempt to act as a go-between between a presidential campaign and a foreign intelligence agency, and Stone was not charged with any crime in conjunction with his Trump-WikiLeaks communications. But it’s a different story for the campaign itself. At a minimum, the Trump campaign was vulnerable to charges of violating election laws against receiving things of value from non-U.S. persons. Conceivably, the campaign could have found itself at risk as some kind of accessory to the Russian hacks— hacking being a very serious crime indeed. So it was crucially important to the Trump campaign that Stone keep silent and not implicate Trump in any way.

“Which is what Stone did. Stone was accused of—and convicted of—lying to Congress about his role in the WikiLeaks matter. Since Stone himself would have been in no legal jeopardy had he told the truth, the strong inference is that he lied to protect somebody else. Just today, this very day, Stone told the journalist Howard Fineman why he lied and who he was protecting. ‘He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”’ You read that, and you blink. As the prominent Trump critic George Conway tweeted: ‘I mean, even Tony Soprano would have used only a pay phone or burner phone to say something like this.’Stone said it on the record to one of the best-known reporters in Washington. In so many words, he seemed to imply: I could have hurt the president if I rolled over on him. I kept my mouth shut. He owes me.“

The post Trump Defends Commuting Sentence of Longtime Associate Roger Stone appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Leading Off

● Wisconsin: Conservative judges in two separate Wisconsin cases decided in the last two weeks have handed down decisions reinforcing Republican efforts to entrench themselves in power and leaving Democrats with little recourse to reform the status quo.

On Thursday, Wisconsin's conservative-dominated Supreme Court ruled largely along ideological lines to uphold nearly all of the power grabs that Republican legislators passed in a 2018 lame-duck session to strip Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and state Attorney General Josh Kaul of their powers before they took office after they defeated Republican incumbents that year. Because GOP gerrymandering resulted in Republicans winning sizable legislative majorities in the midterms even though Democrats won more votes, Democrats were unable to repeal these power grabs under Evers.

A week earlier, a panel of three judges on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to the GOP's voter ID law, reinstated cuts to early voting, and reactivated multiple other voting restrictions that Republican legislators had passed earlier this past decade that lower courts had suspended. The judges took more than three years since the case was argued to release their decision, giving no explanation for a delay that legal experts called "shocking."

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Campaign Action

​In their lame-duck session, Republicans passed legislation that removed key powers from both Evers and Kaul and transferred them to lawmakers. Most notably, Republicans took away Evers' ability to appoint members of several state boards and agencies. They also usurped Kaul's authority to decide whether to approve court settlements and whether the state should even defend lawsuits like those challenging voter suppression and gerrymandering. And they slashed early voting availability, although that move had been put on hold until the recent 7th Circuit ruling.

The Supreme Court upheld the laws stripping powers from Evers and Kaul, an unsurprising decision given the court's ruling last year that rejected a challenge to the legality of the entire lame-duck session itself. These decisions, along with one in April that blocked Evers from postponing elections that month to avoid exposing voters to coronavirus, cement the court's Republican-aligned majority as one of the most partisan in the nation—one that has willingly facilitated GOP legislators' attempt to reject the legitimacy of Democratic victories in 2018.

Meanwhile, in the voter ID case, the court revived a limit of two weeks for early voting, which had been allowed for as long as six weeks in some parts of the state. The judges also restored a requirement that voters maintain residency for at least 28 days to be able to vote at a given location, even if they've moved from elsewhere within the state. Voters with fewer than 28 days of residency would have to vote at their previous address.

In addition, the court barred the state from letting most voters receive an absentee ballot by fax or email so that they can print them out and return them by mail, even though military and overseas voters are permitted to do so. Multiple federal courts have also temporarily allowed blind voters in other states to obtain ballots this way due to the pandemic.

Most ominously, the judges, all of whom were appointed by Republicans, implied that any manipulation of election laws for partisan gain was constitutional even for laws that potentially discriminate against voters based on race. "If one party can make changes that it believes help its candidates, the other can restore the original rules or revise the new ones," they wrote, even though the very purpose of such laws is to make it impossible for the disadvantaged party to regain control.

This reasoning is the logical extension of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2019 decision prohibiting all federal challenges to partisan gerrymandering. If adopted by other courts, especially the Supreme Court, it would be open season for lawmakers to all but rig elections outright.

The ruling, however, was not a complete defeat for the plaintiffs. The 7th Circuit did uphold a decision letting college students use expired university IDs, as well as a prohibition on requiring schools to share citizenship information with the state. The judges gave the lower courts a chance to rewrite their now-invalidated injunctions to give voters who lack an ID the ability to easily get one, though that may be easier said than done especially because of the pandemic. The plaintiffs have not yet indicated whether they will appeal.

In a third recent case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court opted not to expedite an appeal by conservative activists who are trying to compel the state to purge roughly 129,000 voter registrations. The court won't hear the case at least until Sept. 29, when progressive Judge Jill Karofsky will have replaced conservative Justice Dan Kelly following her victory in April's election.

The timing matters because with Kelly still in office, conservatives would likely have had at least a 4-to-3 majority in favor of ordering the purge. However, once Karofsky takes her seat, conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn will most probably decide the fate of this lawsuit. Earlier this year, he sided with the progressive minority in declining to expedite the case, though it's unclear which way Hagedorn leans on the merits of the case. Even if the court permits the purge, such a decision may come too late to affect the November general election.

Ballot Measures

● Arkansas: Redistricting reformers have submitted approximately 99,000 signatures to place an amendment on November's ballot to establish an independent redistricting commission. About 89,000 signatures must be found valid, including an amount equivalent to 5% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election in at least 15 of Arkansas' 75 counties.

Submitting only 10,000 more signatures than the minimum needed gives the initiative's backers less margin for error than is typically advised for such an effort, and even supporters estimate that only around 75,000 of their signatures are probably valid. However, Arkansas gives organizers one additional month to gather signatures if their initial submission includes valid signatures equivalent to 75% of the total needed both statewide and in at least 15 counties.

Supporters are waging an ongoing federal lawsuit seeking to suspend a requirement that initiative petition signatures be witnessed or notarized in-person. A lower court had temporarily blocked the requirement, allowing voters to sign petitions at home and mail them in, but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a short-term stay of that ruling last month while it decides whether to issue a lengthier stay while the GOP's appeal proceeds.

Separately, electoral reform supporters have submitted roughly 95,000 signatures for a different constitutional amendment that would establish a "top-four" primary. Under this system, all candidates regardless of party would compete on a single primary ballot, with the top four finishers advancing to a general election that would be decided by instant-runoff voting.

● Massachusetts: Supporters of a ballot initiative that would enact a statute implementing instant-runoff voting in congressional and state elections have submitted nearly double the 13,000 additional signatures needed to qualify for November's ballot. As a result, it's likely that voters will have a chance to decide whether to make Massachusetts the second state after Maine to adopt this reform for all state and federal races, aside from the presidency.

● North Dakota: Supporters of a ballot initiative that would amend North Dakota's constitution to reform redistricting and its electoral system have submitted some 37,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot, 27,000 of which must be valid. Officials will determine by Aug. 10 whether the measure has qualified.

As we've previously detailed, this measure would replace traditional primaries with a "top-four" system where the four candidates with the most support would advance to the general election regardless of party. From there, instant-runoff voting would be used to determine the winner. Additionally, the measure would require that any voting machines create a paper record of every vote—North Dakota currently uses paper ballots by default and voting machines for voters with disabilities—and that the secretary of state conduct routine audits of elections.

The other major change would remove the Republican-dominated legislature's control over state legislative redistricting (North Dakota only has a single congressional district, which covers the entire state). The proposal would hand redistricting over to the state Ethics Commission, which voters created with a 2018 ballot initiative. The commission's five members are chosen by unanimous agreement of the governor and the majority and minority leaders of the state Senate; they would draw maps using several nonpartisan criteria.

● San Francisco, CA: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has unanimously voted to put a referendum on the ballot this November that would amend the city's charter to lower the voting age to 16 in local elections.

Voters narrowly rejected a similar proposal 52-48 in a 2016 referendum, but if they pass the measure this time, San Francisco would become the first major city in the country to lower the voting age, though a few small localities in Maryland already allow 16-year-olds to vote in local elections.

Relatedly, all California voters will also get a chance to decide on another November referendum that would amend the state constitution to let 17-year-olds vote in primary elections for all levels of government if they will turn 18 by the time of the general election, a policy that a number of states already allow.

Redistricting

● Michigan: A federal district court has dismissed a Republican-backed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Michigan's new independent redistricting commission that voters passed at the ballot box in 2018. This ruling follows a GOP loss in April before a panel of three judges on the GOP-heavy 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had unanimously upheld the lower court's refusal to temporarily block the law creating the commission while the case proceeded on the merits.

Republicans had been challenging the new commission in two lawsuits that were consolidated into a single set of proceedings. One lawsuit argued that the new commission violated Republicans' First Amendment rights to free speech and association and their 14th Amendment right to equal protection because it imposes prohibitions on who may serve as a commissioner.

Republicans argued in the other lawsuit that the process for selecting commissioners violates the GOP's First Amendment rights to freedom of association by preventing political parties from picking their own commissioners. The appeals court rejected both arguments by citing Supreme Court precedent enabling prohibitions on certain individuals serving on the commission, a decision the district court cited in its own ruling.

The Republican plaintiffs have not yet announced whether they will appeal but said they are considering their options.

● New Jersey: Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey have introduced a constitutional amendment that would delay the implementation of new legislative districts from 2021 until 2023 and keep the current districts in place if the Census Bureau is unable to deliver the data from the 2020 census needed to draw new districts on time next year. The Trump administration has already told Congress that it doesn't expect to be able to meet its early 2021 deadlines because of the pandemic and requested a new deadline of July 31. The proposed amendment would come into effect if the census doesn't certify New Jersey's data by Feb. 15.

Democrats hold the three-fifths supermajorities needed to put the amendment on the ballot without any GOP support, although voters would have to approve it in November for it to take effect. If no amendment passes, however, and the state is unable to meet its deadlines mandated under its constitution, it's unclear what exactly would happen except that litigation would be a certainty.

New Jersey has a bipartisan redistricting commission appointed by legislative and state party leaders, and in past decades, a court-appointed tiebreaker has chosen between maps proposed by the two parties rather than draw their own lines. After the 2010 census, the tiebreaking member selected the Democratic proposal, leading the GOP to blast this proposed amendment as a power grab, although common statistical measures find no unfair advantage for Democrats under the current map.

Felony Disenfranchisement

● District of Columbia: The D.C. Council has once again passed a bill to completely eliminate felony disenfranchisement as part of a larger package of police reforms, repealing and replacing the version it passed last month over what the lead sponsor called "relatively minor tweaks," sending the latest legislation to Mayor Muriel Bowser for her expected signature.

The bill would immediately restore voting rights for several thousand citizens and would require officials to provide incarcerated citizens with registration forms and absentee ballots starting next year. However, because it is emergency legislation, it must be reauthorized after 90 days, though Council members plan to make it permanent soon.

Once Bowser signs the bill, D.C. would become only the third jurisdiction in the country after Maine and Vermont to maintain the right to vote for incarcerated citizens. It would also be the first place to do so with a large community of color: The District is 46% African American, and more than 90% of D.C. residents currently disenfranchised are Black.

● Florida: Voting rights advocates have asked the Supreme Court to overturn a recent stay by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals of a lower court ruling that had struck down the Florida GOP's poll tax on citizens who have served their felony sentences but owe court fines or fees. If it's put back into effect, the district court's ruling would pave the way for approximately 800,000 citizens who couldn't pay off Florida's predatory court costs to regain their voting rights, a group of citizens that is disproportionately Black.

Separately, the 11th Circuit scheduled a hearing on the merits of the case for Aug. 18, the very same day as Florida's statewide primary and nearly a month after the July 20 voter registration deadline for that election, ensuring that affected voters will be unable to vote in that election if the Supreme Court doesn't intervene.

Ballot Access

● Minnesota: Minnesota officials have announced that they will not appeal a federal district court ruling from June that issued a preliminary injunction blocking a state law that would have listed Democrats last on the ballot in every partisan contest statewide in November after national Democrats sued. The court said that ballot order will be determined randomly for 2020, though the state's agreement with plaintiffs would give lawmakers a chance to change the law legislatively next year before the case proceeds further. As we've previously explained, being listed higher on the ballot can give candidates a modest boost, particularly in less-salient downballot races.

Voter Suppression

● Indiana: Voting rights advocates have filed a federal lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of a law that Republicans passed in 2019 to prohibit voters, parties, and candidates from asking a court to keep polling locations open past 6 PM local time on Election Day if there are problems with voting. Under current law, only bipartisan county election boards can ask a court to extend polling hours, and only after a unanimous vote.

The plaintiffs argue that this law violates the First and 14th Amendments and has a disparate impact on Black and Latino voters. Alongside Kentucky, Indiana is the only state that closes its polls at 6 PM on Election Day (all others close 7 PM or later), and this early closure makes it difficult to vote for people who work on Election Day or are caregivers for children or family members.

● Iowa: Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed a budget bill into law that makes Iowa's voter ID regime more onerous and makes absentee voting more cumbersome for election officials to facilitate despite an expected surge in mail voting due to the pandemic.

The law adds a new requirement that voters present ID if they go to their county government offices to vote early in-person. A second provision requires absentee ballot applications to include the voter's "voter ID PIN," a state-issued four-digit number that few voters are likely aware of.

In addition, under the state's previous laws, county officials could verify voter identities using other information on their applications or the state's registration database, but this new law disallows that. Instead, officials would have to contact the voter individually to confirm their identity, which could cause significant delays in processing absentee requests and lead to voters not receiving their ballots in time to vote by mail.

● Montana: A state court has issued a preliminary injunction blocking a GOP-supported law that makes it a crime for most Montanans to turn in another person's absentee mail ballot, ruling in favor of the Native American advocates who brought a suit arguing that the statute violates the state constitution. The court had previously blocked the law on a short-term basis days before the June 2 primary, but this latest ruling suspends the law until the judge can issue a final ruling on the law, which may not happen until after November's elections.

The law in question was approved by voters in 2018 after Republican legislators placed it on the ballot to circumvent a veto from Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock. It makes it a felony to turn in someone else's absentee ballot unless the person doing so is the voter's family member, caregiver, household member, or acquaintance, and even those individuals may turn in no more than six others' absentee ballots. Only postal workers and election officials are fully exempt.

Montana is one of a few states that lets voters opt into permanently receiving an absentee mail ballot in all elections, which is intended to make it easier to vote. In addition, the pandemic prompted officials to mail every voter a ballot for the June 2 primary, and mail voting is likely to be very popular in November. However, because many Native Americans living on remote reservations lack reliable postal service and access to transportation, many ask others who do not face such barriers to turn in their ballots for them.

Republican state Attorney General Tim Fox and Secretary of State Corey Stapleton have not yet indicated whether they will appeal, though the lead GOP sponsor of the law said he hoped that they would.

Electoral College

● Electoral College: On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected two legal challenges to the constitutionality of state laws prohibiting "faithless electors" in the Electoral College, ruling that states may enforce their laws that require the replacement of electors attempting to vote for a candidate other than the one whose slate they appeared on. Faithless elector bans are the law in 32 states and the District of Columbia, but only 15 states have provisions that actually enforce those bans by requiring faithless electors to be replaced with faithful ones.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Colorado's ban on faithless electors last year, but Washington's Supreme Court upheld its state's ban. The losers in both lawsuits had appealed to the Supreme Court, which ultimately upheld Washington's ruling and overturned the case out of Colorado.

Supporters of overturning faithless elector bans brought their cases in the hopes that victory would undermine public support for the Electoral College and lead to reforms abolishing it. However, justices such as Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh raised concern that doing so would "lead to chaos" and a "massive campaign to try to influence electors" in a close election, which could open the door to corruption, blackmail, and potentially the disenfranchisement of voters.

Although the cases did not address the ongoing effort to reform the Electoral College by having states with a majority of electoral votes to pledge their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, it may nevertheless neutralize one of the several potential legal threats to this project, known as National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. That's because the court validated the notion that the Constitution grants the states sweeping authority to determine how they award their electors, although other potential constitutional challenges remain if the compact attains enough member states to enter into effect.

Elections

● Mississippi: This fall, Mississippi voters will have their chance to repeal a provision of the state's Jim Crow-era constitution that deliberately penalizes Black voters and the Democrats they support in elections for statewide office. However, the proposed change could end up replacing one major hurdle for Democratic candidates with another.

Last week, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill placing a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would change the way the state conducts elections by eliminating Mississippi's version of the Electoral College, a key feature of the state's 1890 constitution that proponents openly announced was enacted "to secure to the State of Mississippi 'white supremacy.'"

The provision in question requires candidates for statewide offices such as governor or attorney general to win not only a majority of the vote but also a majority of the state House's 122 districts. If no candidate surpasses both thresholds, the members of the House choose the winner, and there's nothing to stop them from picking the person who lost the popular vote.

After Republicans took control of the legislature in 2011, they redrew their own districts to guarantee they'd never lose their grip on power. They did so by making sure a majority of districts would be heavily white and, therefore, heavily Republican. As a result, they not only gerrymandered the state House, they gerrymandered every statewide election, too. The effect was so pronounced that in last year's race for governor, which Democrat Jim Hood lost by 52-47, Hood would likely have had to win by 15 points just to have a shot at carrying 62 House districts.

This proposed amendment would no longer require candidates for statewide office to carry a majority of the state House districts, but it would mandate a separate general election runoff if no candidate earned a majority of the vote. Georgia has had a similar runoff law on the books for years, and those runoffs have consistently seen turnout plummet and hurt Democratic candidates. If Mississippi Republicans wanted to ensure candidates are elected with majority support, they could instead replace the current system with instant-runoff voting or another preferential voting system that would eliminate the need for a separate runoff election.

Even if this amendment fails to pass, it may not be the last word. Last year, a group of Black voters challenged this mini-Electoral College in federal court on the grounds that it violated the Constitution's guarantee of one person, one vote. While the judge who heard the case agreed, he put the suit on hold to give lawmakers time to correct the problem themselves. If they fail to, the judge said, he'd allow litigants to once more pursue their claims.

Election Changes

Please bookmark our litigation tracker for a complete summary of the latest developments in every lawsuit regarding changes to elections and voting procedures as a result of the coronavirus.

● Colorado: The Colorado Supreme Court, which has a 6-1 majority of Democratic appointees, has unanimously overturned Democratic Gov. Jared Polis' executive order that had allowed ballot initiative supporters to gather voter signatures by mail or email, siding with the business groups that brought the case and reinstating a requirement that signatures be witnessed in-person. This ruling may make it impossible for some measures to qualify for the ballot ahead of the Aug. 3 deadline to submit signatures.

● Michigan: The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has stayed a district court ruling that had required Michigan to either lower the number of signatures needed to put initiatives on November's ballot or give supporters more time to gather them. The plaintiffs have not yet indicated whether they will appeal the stay while the case proceeds on the merits.

● New Hampshire: Advocates for blind voters have filed a federal lawsuit arguing that New Hampshire makes it impossible for them to exercise their right to vote a secret ballot using an absentee ballot. They want the court to require that New Hampshire let voters with such disabilities use the same absentee voting system available to military and overseas voters, which allows voters to fill out their ballots using a computer and print them out to mail them in.

● New York: Civil rights advocates have filed a federal lawsuit objecting to New York's procedures for rejecting absentee ballots. They aim to avoid a repeat of 2018, when New York had the highest rate of rejected mail ballots in the country, with 14% of such ballots invalidated. The plaintiffs are challenging how ballots with problems such as a signature either missing or not matching the one on file are rejected without notifying voters. They want the state to require that voters be alerted and given a chance to remedy the problem in a timely manner.

● North Carolina: Voters who are suing North Carolina in state court to make it easier to vote absentee have amended their lawsuit to include a request for 21 extra days of in-person early voting. The case remains pending before a lower court.

Separately, the ACLU has filed a new lawsuit in state court to suspend the requirement that absentee voters have someone witness their ballot in-person. The GOP legislature with the support of Democrats passed a law earlier this year to require only one witness instead of two witnesses or a notary. However, even one required witness is more than most states mandate and has been waived by courts this year in other states with such requirements on their books.

● Oregon: Redistricting reformers announced on Wednesday that they had failed to obtain enough signatures by the July 2 deadline to put an initiative on the November ballot that would establish an independent redistricting commission. However, their campaign isn't over just yet thanks to a lawsuit that organizers filed in federal court shortly ahead of the deadline. The plaintiffs are asking the court to lower the number of signatures needed, which is currently about 150,000, and for an extension of the deadline to submit them.

Reformers did not reveal how many signatures they had already submitted to the state, only saying it was in the "tens of thousands." It's unclear whether they will be able to meet the requirements if only one or the other of their two requests are granted and not both, since they lack the ability to obtain signatures electronically and instead have to direct supporters to an online form that must be printed out and mailed in to officials.

● Pennsylvania: The Trump campaign and several Republican Congress members have filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to prohibit counties from setting up drop boxes or locations aside from the county board office for voters to return their absentee mail ballots. They also want to bar officials from counting mail ballots that aren't placed in a secrecy envelope and allow Pennsylvanians to serve as poll watchers across the state regardless of which county they live in.

These provisions would add onerous burdens for mail voting access, and the measure on poll watchers in particular appears intended to encourage voter intimidation in urban communities of color in cities like Philadelphia. At one 2016 campaign rally, Trump listed several cities with large Black populations—including Philadelphia—and urged his supporters to volunteer as poll watchers in them.

● Puerto Rico: Governor Wanda Vázquez of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (known by its Spanish acronym, PNP) signed a bill into law making changes to Puerto Rico's election code late last month only after lawmakers removed a contentious provision that would have enabled online voting for absentee voters this year and set the island on a path to transition entirely to universal online voting by 2028. Lawmakers removed the provision after election security experts expressed alarm at the major risk of hacking with such a system.

Vázquez's party passed the final bill over the objections of the pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party, or PPD, which is the island's other major party. The bill expanded early voting and eligibility for mail voting, but the PPD denounced it as a power grab. Opposition lawmakers claimed it would allow Puerto Ricans who've left the island for the mainland to vote absentee in an effort to bolster the PNP's support, which has been hurt by scandals that culminated in Vázquez's predecessor resigning last year.

● South Carolina: South Carolina's state Election Commission has announced that it will provide prepaid postage on all absentee ballots this year amid an ongoing federal lawsuit by Democrats seeking to ease access to absentee voting. Democrats are still challenging the requirement that voters must provide a valid excuse, which the GOP waived for the primaries but has left untouched for November.

● Tennessee: Republican officials announced that they plan to enforce parts of a 2019 law restricting absentee voting eligibility despite a recent state court ruling that allows all voters to cast an absentee ballot due to concerns over COVID-19. The law requires that newly registered voters who registered by mail, a voter registration drive, or public assistance offices must vote in-person the first time. Black voters in particular have been more likely to register through registration drives in recent years, exposing them to a disproportionate impact.

Republicans passed this restriction in 2019 in reaction to a 2018 surge in Black voter registrations. The law added criminal penalties to certain components of voter registration drives in an effort intended to make them all but impossible to conduct. While the GOP subsequently repealed some of those provisions regarding registration drives after a court ruling had curtailed them, other provisions of the law remain in effect, such as one that makes it a crime to pay workers based on the number of registrations they gather instead of paying them hourly or allowing them to volunteer.

However, the GOP's decision to enforce this in-person voting requirement for these registrants is not the final word, as the plaintiffs in the case that loosened the absentee voting restrictions are challenging this mandate as well. Republicans are currently appealing that ruling to the state Supreme Court, although the high court refused to stay the lower court's decision while the appeal proceeds.

The Eastern District of New York has a new U.S. attorney.

Seth DuCharme, a former senior official at Justice Department headquarters whose return to New York was first reported by POLITICO, was sworn in Friday by the district’s chief federal judge, Roslynn Mauskopf. Rich Donoghue, the former head of that office, resigned Friday.

Donoghue will take a new role in Washington as second-in-command of the deputy attorney general’s office. It’s a role DuCharme previously held — meaning the two have swapped jobs.

Donoghue isn’t the first U.S. attorney helming a powerful New York office to be sworn in by a judge there rather than confirmed by the U.S. Senate; Geoffrey Berman, whom Attorney General William Barr recently fired from his post as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, officially ascended to that role the same way.

As U.S. attorney in the Brooklyn office, Donoghue was responsible for leading the Justice Department’s work related to matters connected to the Ukraine affair that precipitated President Donald Trump’s impeachment. The office also often handles high-profile criminal and national security cases, including terrorism prosecutions.

In his time there, Donoghue won the trust of Barr and other senior officials at Main Justice. His move to Washington will bring a significant injection of prosecutorial experience into the deputy attorney general’s office.

DuCharme, meanwhile, is back in his old stomping ground. Before his stint at Main Justice, he was chief of the Criminal Division of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s Office. He also was counsel to Barr, advising him on national security issues.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis personal injury attorneys who infamously pointed guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters outside their mansion last month, once allegedly fought to exclude gays from their ritzy neighborhood, Portland Place.

The McCloskeys sued Portland Place’s trustees, demanding that they enforce neighborhood rules known as the Trust Agreement, including one that prohibited unmarried people from living together. The couple unsuccessfully appealed the case all the way to the state Supreme Court.

“Several neighbors said it was because the McCloskeys didn’t want gay couples living on the block,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Friday evening in an exposé about the couple’s disturbing history.

“The trustees voted to impeach Patricia McCloskey as a trustee in 1992 when she fought an effort to change the trust indenture, accusing her of being anti-gay,” the Post-Dispatch reported. “Mark McCloskey clarified in a deposition much later that the trust agreement barred unmarried people living together, regardless of their sexuality. ‘Certain people on Portland Place, for political reasons, wanted to make it a gay issue,’ he said.”

Mark McCloskey made the statement in a deposition after the Portland Place trustees sued the couple in 2002 to foreclose on their house, because they weren’t paying their neighborhood dues. He said in the deposition that the couple had declined to pay the dues because the trustees “weren’t doing something, which was their obligation under the Trust Agreement.”

The lawyer questioning McCloskey asked, “Was it possible the issue was the trustees were allowing a gay couple to live there?”

Mark McCloskey responded that he didn’t know.

“I know there has been an ongoing issue about the definition of single family in Missouri law, and that the (agreement) calling for exclusively single family residences wouldn’t allow, technically, unmarried heterosexual people to live on Portland Place,” he said.

Read the full story here.

The post St. Louis Couple Who Pointed Guns at BLM Protesters Once Fought to Exclude Gays from Neighborhood appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Roger Stone leaves federal court on November 15, 2019, after being found guilty for obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

Stone was convicted for lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Mueller probe.

President Donald Trump has commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence in a stunning exercise of presidential power that is not altogether unexpected.

Stone, a longtime Republican operative, was convicted in November 2019 for obstructing a congressional investigation, lying to Congress, and witness tampering in a trial that stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. On February 20, Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison.

Trump’s commutation landed just days before Stone was expected to report to prison July 14.

Trump’s commutation stops short of a full pardon. The conviction will remain on Stone’s record — for now, at least. But the Trump ally won’t have to serve his approximately 3 year prison term.

Trump has long disdained the Mueller investigation and claimed it has unfairly targeted him and his associates — not just Stone, but his former campaign chair Paul Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Trump and his attorneys dangled pardons during the Russia investigation.

With Stone, Trump himself has finally gone beyond complaining to explicitly intervening to erase his associates’ convictions.

Trump repeatedly signaled that he would grant clemency to Stone, it’s the most definitive example yet of him using the power of the presidency to protect his friends or advance his interests, Jim Pfiffner, a professor at George Mason University, said. “A willingness to use the pardon power to protect his friends and supporters sends a signal to others who might be willing to break the law in support of the president,” Pfiffner wrote in an email.

The controversy leading up to Stone’s commutation

Prosecutors made the case that Stone obstructed the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election by lying to the committee about his attempts to contact WikiLeaks, and by intimidating and trying to get another witness to lie for him about those efforts.

During the trial, witnesses such as Rick Gates (a Manafort associate who pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe and cooperated with prosecutors) and Steve Bannon testified that Stone claimed to the campaign that he had inside information about WikiLeaks’s access to damaging information about Hillary Clinton, which Mueller’s investigation found was obtained through hacking by Russian military intelligence.

Prosecutors did not actually prove that Stone had any inside information during the trial. But, as Vox’s Andrew Prokop has written, prosecutors during the trial argued that “Stone’s motivation for his lies and obstruction was that ‘the truth looked bad for Donald Trump.’”

So maybe it’s not surprise that Trump has closely followed this case — and appeared to publicly pressure the Justice Department to lessen his sentence. In February, as Stone’s sentencing date approached, federal prosecutors recommended that Stone serve between 87 and 108 months (about seven to nine years) in prison — a range prosecutors said adhered to federal guidelines and “would accurately reflect the seriousness of his crimes and promote respect for the law.”

But not according to Trump. “This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” the president tweeted early Tuesday morning. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”

Later that same day, the Justice Department began signaling that it would intervene, with an anonymous official suggesting that was not the sentence recommendation that had been briefed to the department. Things escalated from there, as four prosecutors handling the case abruptly withdrew their involvement.

Aaron Zelinsky, who worked on Mueller’s team, filed a memo withdrawing himself from the case. Next came prosecutor Jonathan Kravis, who said he was leaving the team because he had resigned as an assistant US attorney. Two more followed: Adam Jed and Michael Marando said they would also remove themselves from the case.

The mass exodus came as the Justice Department submitted a February 11 memo in the Stone case that said its first sentencing memo did “not accurately reflect the Department of Justice’s position on what would be a reasonable sentence in this matter.”

The document said the DOJ believes “incarceration is warranted” but that 87 to 108 months isn’t appropriate and doesn’t “serve the interests of justice in the case.”

If this all gave the impression that the Justice Department had caved to pressure from Trump, and that prosecutors resigned in protest of this interference, well, Trump has done little to dispel that troubling notion.

“Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought,” Trump tweeted. He went on to claim the “Mueller Scam” was improperly brought. That’s a wholesale mischaracterization of the inspector general’s report on the Russia investigation, which said the case was appropriately predicated. Mueller took over the Russia investigation almost a year after the FBI had opened it, and there’s no evidence the former FBI director lied to Congress.

Many months later, Zelinsky also told the House Judiciary Committee in June that political interference played a role in Stone’s sentencing. “What I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president,” he testified.

Ultimately, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 40 months (about three years) in prison for his conviction. It ended up falling below the sentencing guideline recommendations, but then again, that could have happened anyway — it was always up to the judge.

Now that Trump has granted Stone a commutation, the sentence doesn’t matter so much. It also puts Barr’s apparent intervention on Stone’s behalf in an even more unforgiving light — a sign that all along, this was about trying to help the president’s cronies.

A president’s use of clemency also can’t be thought of in isolation. “They have to be thought of alongside all of the other mechanisms for presidential enforcement or non-enforcement of different laws,” Bernadette Meyler, a law professor at Stanford University, told me that. The commutation is the last step in a troublesome list of interventions.

Trump didn’t use a full pardon, so Stone isn’t absolved of his crimes. But he won’t face the consequences for them either. Trump’s commutation effectively rewards Stone for his deceptions, which prosecutors say were intended to protect the president. The message: Try to protect the president, and you’ll be rewarded.

Will Trump face any fallout for this?

Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence is, at the most basic level, constitutional. The president does have essentially unchecked power when it comes to granting clemency for federal crimes. That does not mean it’s wise. This could very well be a precarious moment in Trump’s presidency, especially as his administration faces pressure for his handling of the coronavirus and nationwide protests against police brutality.

Trump isn’t the first president to use his clemency power controversially, of course. George H.W. Bush pardoned those caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal, which implicated Bush himself. Bill Clinton’s pardon of financier Marc Rich also raised questions of influence peddling, specifically whether Clinton had rewarded a prominent donor, leading to a congressional investigation. And in 2007, George W. Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice.

But both of those examples came in the final weeks and days of the presidents’ terms in office; they were leaving the presidency for good, which dulled the political fallout. Trump took this risky move months before he’s up for reelection for a second term. At the same time, Trump didn’t fully absolve Stone, and only erased his sentence, which might have been an attempt to dull the political impact.

Either way, the only real check on Trump’s pardon power is political — whether voters reject his actions, or Congress investigates and denounces it. That includes Republicans, too.

Experts told me the founders very much worried that the pardon power could be abused by presidents. They saw impeachment as a possible check on this. Trump already has one impeachment under his belt, and it proved that his defenders in Congress are simply unwilling to break with him.

And Trump already has handful of controversial pardons on his list, too, including a string of recent ones for former politicians and businessman all doing corrupt things.

Mark Osler, a law professor at University of St. Thomas and a former federal prosecutor, said past presidents have used their pardon powers in a principled way, even when it was unpopular, such as President Gerald Ford’s decision to grant amnesty to Vietnam draft dodgers. They can also use it to signal what they value, like President Barack Obama’s use of clemency for nonviolent drug offenders. But Trump has largely used his pardon power to forgive others who felt unfairly accused, to benefit popular right-wing figures, and to reward and benefit his friends — and Stone, a longtime and faithful associate of the president, fits right in.

“With President Trump, in the 2016 election, we all knew how much he valued loyalty,” Osler said. “And it was completely predictable how he would use clemency.

The question with Stone’s commutation is whether Trump feels emboldened enough to lessen or wipe out the convictions of others implicated in the Mueller probe, separate and apart from his Justice Department.

For his detractors, it will be an alarming breach of the rule of law and another norm shattered. But for Trump and his supporters, this will be yet another triumphant assault on the “Russia hoax.”

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President Donald Trump’s campaign has postponed his scheduled MAGA rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Saturday, citing the threat of bad weather from Tropical Storm Fay.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the rally, planned for an airplane hangar, would be delayed by a week or two due to the “big storm.” And campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh blamed “safety reasons because of Tropical Storm Fay.”

The president himself wrote on Twitter: “With Tropical Storm Fay heading towards the Great State of New Hampshire this weekend, we are forced to reschedule our Portsmouth, New Hampshire Rally at the Portsmouth International Airport at Pease. Stay safe, we will be there soon! #MAGA2020.”

However, weather forecasts and other reports quickly cast doubt on whether the cancellation was prompted by the storm, with many suggesting Trump was merely trying to avoid another low-turnout embarrassment.

From the New York Times: Current weather forecasts for Portsmouth indicate that the rain is supposed to stop there around noon on Saturday; the rally was scheduled for 8 p.m. … It was not clear whether the New Hampshire rally was on track to fill up. Aides were adamant they’d fill the venue. But people familiar with the sign-ups said the interest in the rally was significantly lower than for rallies that took place before the coronavirus paused campaigning. … The postponement came as a spate of new polls show that Americans are being increasingly cautious about the coronavirus, as cases across the country, particularly in the South and West, have surged.

More from Mediaite: According to weather.com, the chance of rain does not exceed 25 percent anytime after 12 noon in Portsmouth, NH on Saturday. The rally was slated to take place in the evening. New Hampshire TV station WMUR notes that Tropical Storm Fay is on track to go west of the Granite State, with Vermont on track to get hit harder by the system. … Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi noted that President Trump has previously held rallies in rain and snow — including in New Hampshire.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that the the Trump campaign has been fretting for weeks about whether he could draw a large crowd in New Hampshire — or, if not, whether they could make the rally look full.

“The danger, all agreed, was a repeat of Trump’s disastrous last rally, three weeks ago in Tulsa, Okla., where TV cameras showed two-thirds of the indoor arena as a sea of empty blue seats, and the vast throngs predicted outside failed to materialize,” the LA Times reported. “Worse, health officials later said the president’s Tulsa rally ‘likely contributed’ to a sharp spike in coronavirus infections in the state, one of three dozen now battling a record increase in COVID 19 cases. On Friday, the White House abruptly pulled the plug on the planned New Hampshire rally, citing weather worries even though the forecast showed morning thunderstorms mostly clearing by the evening.”

More from Twitter below.

Cloudy with a chance of a puny crowd https://t.co/0vq7Qz3q31

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) July 10, 2020

10% chance of rain lol pic.twitter.com/4DV7KIZ3jx

— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) July 10, 2020

Tropical storm Joe is coming.

Afraid of low turnout again? Sad.

— Biden War Room (Text UNITED to 30330) (@BidenWarRoom) July 10, 2020

Many people are saying my sharpies are better than ever pic.twitter.com/pxVqt65dUh

— Donald J. Trump (parody) (@DonnyTheMessiah) July 10, 2020

My teen daughter here in AZ is heartbroken. This will be the 3rd rally she’s missed since June. #tiktok

— JulieE777 (@E777Julie) July 10, 2020

"Tropical Storm Fay"

That isn't how one spells "nobody wanted to come see me."

— Jean L.P. Jaurès (@larsp2740) July 10, 2020

Just admit it. You postponed the rally because you didn't want to get embarrassed again like you did in Tulsa. Trump's base is fading fast and he is going to go pout in his bunker!

— Mrs. Krassenstein (@HKrassenstein) July 10, 2020

The post ‘Cloudy with a Chance of a Puny Crowd’: Trump May Have Canceled Rally Due to Low Interest, Not Storm appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Following scathing reviews of a computer game it released in May, Amazon.com is delaying its next big-budget game by at least six months. From a report: The decision represents another setback for the technology giant's ambitions to break into the gaming industry. The next game, New World, was supposed to debut in late August but is now scheduled for spring 2021, Rich Lawrence, director of Amazon's game studio, wrote in a blog post Friday. The company wants extra time to implement changes suggested by players who have been testing the game, he wrote. Delays are fairly common in the video game industry, but this was an important opportunity for Amazon to redeem itself after a recent flop. Amazon is trying to make a name for itself as a maker of big-budget video games that can compete with those from the likes of Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. But Amazon's Crucible, a free-to-play PC game introduced in May, was panned by critics, prompting Amazon to take the highly unusual step of pulling the game from wide circulation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Start the clock on Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley. It’s been clear for some time that Milley is tired of supporting Trump’s misuse of the military and efforts to insert active forces into nonviolent protests. Milley was pulled into Trump’s attack on protesters in Lafayette Square and the wholly inappropriate stroll across the street so Trump could wave a Bible over a deserted church, but following that event, Milley apologized for being part of Trump’s PR stunt, saying, “I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” But criticizing Trump’s actions is one thing. On Thursday, Milley did the one thing unforgivable for the Trump White House—he criticized Russia. And he did so in a way that entangles the actions of Trump and Vladimir Putin.

“If in fact there’s bounties,” said Milley, “I am an outraged general. If, in fact, there’s bounties directed by the government of Russia or any of their institutions to kill American soldiers, that’s a big deal. That’s a real big deal.” Now if the media would only treat it that way.

Of course Milley did walk across to the church, despite knowing it was wrong. And he did back off his outraged general act long enough to provide the latest excuse for Team Trump.

The story of Russia paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers and throw a monkey wrench into ongoing peace talks is just two weeks old, and every day it seems that another shoe drops. Even so, the attention it’s getting is decidedly tiny.

We now know this wasn’t a singular or marginal intelligence report. It was the result of a series of reports that went back to shortly after Trump took office. Intelligence first suggested that Russia was involved in sending financial aid to the Taliban as early as 2017 while Michael Flynn was still in charge of the NSA. By 2019, the story of bounties being paid for the murder of American and allied forces was John Bolton gave Trump a personal briefing and U. S. intelligence shared the information with allied nations. Six months ago, police raided locations in Afghanistan and located men directly involved in transferring Russian funds to the Taliban—along with a stack of cash. In February of this year, the information was covered again in Trump’s daily brief.

This is not a wild idea. This is the consensus opinion of U. S. intelligence, and has been for over a year.

The question put to Milley during a hearing in the House wasn’t whether he believed Russia is engaged in these payments; it’s obvious they are. The question is: Why isn’t Trump doing anything about it? That brought on Milley’s claim of outrage, but it also immediately generated a significant incident of weasel-wording. 

Rather than directly address the fact that Trump is not just failing to act against Russia, but openly supporting Russia’s cause over that of allies, Milley instead moved to a different issue. He claimed that if there are Russian bounties, then we’re not sure they’re connected to specific casualties. In other words, we know:

• Russia was offering money to the Taliban for the death of Americans
• Americans were killed by the Taliban following Russia’s offer.
• Russia delivered money to the Taliban through a series of intermediaries.

But we can’t be sure that any specific murder of U. S. forces was paid for by a specific payment to the Taliban. That’s apparently enough uncertainty for Milley to moderate his outrage.

Still, even though Milley was miles away from the clear presentation of the intelligence assessment, he’s even further away from Trump, who continues to describe the whole thing as “a hoax.” Which is a good sign that General Mark Milley may soon discover how much nicer it would be to join all the rest of “Trump’s generals” … in retirement.

The Republican Party and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski have always had a rocky relationship. The daughter of Senate giant Frank Murkowski, she has always seemed an odd fit for a party that has evolved ever right. 

She was appointed to her seat in 2002, and cruised easily with a primary victory in 2004 before squeaking out a general election win 49-46. But in 2010, during the apex of the frothy tea party-movement, Murkowski was ousted in the Republican primary against Sarah Palin-backed Joe Wilson (remember her?). She is a senator today because during her write-in campaign, Alaska Democrats rallied around the lesser-of-two-evils. Yet as we saw Thursday, Alaska is shifting leftward while Senate Republicans are headed into the minority. Republicans back home hate her. So why fight it? It’ll soon be time for her to ditch the GOP, become an independent, and caucus with the Democrats. 

Yesterday’s Alaska poll by Public Policy Polling (PPP) confirmed what we have been seeing in our own Civiqs data, and what I’ve been hearing from insiders—that Alaska is a battleground state this year—at the presidential, Senate, and House levels.

According to PPP, impeached racist Donald Trump has a narrow 48-45 lead against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the presidential contest. In the Senate race, incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan leads by a woeful 39-34 against independent (and de facto Democrat) Al Gross, despite the latter having a name ID of almost zero. And in the House race (Alaska only has one), Democrat Alyse Galvin leads long-time Republican incumbent and crank Don Young 43-41. 

But here’s something else that is really interesting: only 29% of poll respondents approved of Murkowski when asked about her job approvals, compared to 55% who disapproved. That’s not a base upon which one builds a successful reelection campaign, which she will in 2022.

Amazingly, among Republicans, those job approval numbers are an eye-popping 17-71%! She is loathed inside her own party. Meanwhile, Democrats’ approvals of her are at 41-41%!

Of course, Democrats like her because she’s become a thorn on the GOP’s side. While she voted to acquit Trump during his impeachment trial, she has legislatively bucked the GOP in key moments—the vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the only Republican “no” vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation vote, a rare “no” on George W. Bush’s PATRIOT Act, a vocal critic of Trump’s racist border wall, the list goes on. She has needled her caucus leader, Mitch McConnell, for his unwavering focus on judges. “It’s unfortunate that we’re kind of viewing [judicial nominees] as this is the one thing we can do,” she said. “We’re not focusing on [legislation] as much as I think we should or we could.” Republican Senate whip John Cornyn, in charge of getting his colleagues to vote however leadership wants them to vote, said, “I would say she’s the most independent.” 

There is definitely no love lost between her and Trump. After her Kavanaugh vote, he did what Trump does and lashed out on Twitter: 

Trump was joined by Alaska’s most famous grifter: 

Murkowski hasn’t backed down, by any measure. Where Maine Sen. Susan Collins pretends to be oh-so-concerned before caving to Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Murkowski just doesn’t give a damn. When former Trump defense secretary Gen. James Mattis unloaded on Trump, Murkowski singularly stood out among her cowardly caucus by underscoring the important of that criticism.

“I was really thankful. I thought General Mattis’ words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” she told reporters. “When I saw General Mattis’ comments yesterday I felt like perhaps we are getting to a point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally. And have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.” 

She added that she was “struggling” over whether she could support Trump.

So it’s obvious, Republicans hate her and are gunning for her. Murkowski isn’t stupid, and she sees the dangers she faces in a Republican primary. That’s why her crew is pushing a ballot initiative that would replace party primaries with a “jungle primary,” in which all candidates run on the same line. The top four finishers (regardless of party) would advance to a runoff to determine the ultimate winner. 

That could certainly save her hide, but why bother? What is keeping her a Republican, at this point, besides fealty to the legacy of her father? She can strike out and build her own legacy. 

Alaska has a rich tradition of Democratic-caucusing independents. She doesn’t need to become a Democrat, just caucus with them. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, I’m sure, would be happy to let her keep her committee assignments, and in particular, her chairmanship of the Energy and Natural Resources committee—of obvious importance to Alaska. 

Obviously, it would be stupid of her to do this before November, while Republicans still control the chamber. But she’ll have to decide, if Democrats take the Senate (which is likely at this point), whether she wants to live in the hapless minority in a new, filibuster-free Senate, or whether she wants to keep her chairmanship, her influence, and—perhaps most importantly—the ability to vote her conscience without having to deal with the likes of McConnell, Cornyn, and the rest of the male-dominant Republican Party.

It would also be the ultimate “fuck you” to Trump and Palin, and you know Murkowski wants to deliver that message. The disdain is visceral. 

Ultimately, she won’t win reelection on the strength of Republican voters. Her base is now Alaska Democrats. They are the reason she is in the Senate today, and they will be the reason she keeps her job, even if the jungle-primary ballot initiative is enacted. So why not own it? 

Given Alaska’s shift leftward in recent cycles, it’s also the smart political-electoral play. 

One more thing the president is taking credit for.

A member of the medical staff listens as Montefiore Medical Center nurses call for N95 masks and other critical PPE to handle the coronavirus pandemic on April 1, 2020, in New York. | Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images

Five months into the pandemic, the Trump administration hasn’t taken charge of a supply chain that’s been stretched thin.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, it was nearly impossible to buy N95 masks. These masks, unlike surgical masks or cloth masks, are tight-fitting and filter airborne particles that can carry the virus, making them a key source of protection for health care workers, some of whom have died after being exposed to Covid-19 at their medical facilities. Now, as the United States continues to reopen and the number cases and hospitalizations surge, that troubling shortage of personal protective equipment — and especially N95 masks — is once again a problem.

A survey from the National Nurses Union found that 85 percent of nurses reported being asked to reuse personal protective equipment that’s meant to be single-use. At one private clinic in Arizona, medical workers are treating Covid-19 patients without being given any N95 masks, according to the New York Times. The shortage is so dire that the inventor of the powerful filtration material in these masks has come out of retirement to look for ways to decontaminate his invention and make them safer for reuse.

But why is there still a shortage? Despite months of shutdown that were meant to reduce pressure on the health care system and give the US more time to prepare, production for personal protective equipment, which includes N95 masks, medical gowns, and medical gloves, never adjusted to meet the massive demand caused by the pandemic. At the same time, reopening in many states has meant that other businesses, like outpatient medical offices and construction firms, are now in search of N95 masks too. Meanwhile, the recent surge in Covid-19 cases that has followed reopening is almost certainly leading to a greater need for protective equipment in hospitals, especially in the places currently experiencing massive outbreaks, like Florida and Texas.

In early April, Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA), which allows the federal government to order private companies to produce needed supplies, to obtain more masks produced by 3M, one of the major American mask manufacturers. Later that month, the Department of Defense announced several other contracts for N95 masks. But as it becomes increasingly evident that these measures weren’t enough, organizations like the National Nurses United, a nationwide nurses union, and the American Medical Association have in recent weeks called for the Trump administration to use the law more aggressively to address the PPE shortage.

Earlier this week, presidential candidate Joe Biden released a supply chain plan for Covid-19 that calls for more broadly invoking the DPA, in part to deal with the ongoing shortage of N95 masks. “The Trump administration is still dragging its feet on using the DPA to produce urgently-needed supplies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and has fallen far short of the domestic mobilization we need,” the plan says.

“There was sometime in May where I felt like it was getting to more of a steady state,” Anne Miller, the sourcing lead for Project N95, a protective equipment clearinghouse established during the pandemic, told Recode. “The whole tenor of everything seems to be ramping back up again, and we see lots of requests for N95 respirators, isolation gowns, and surgical masks.”

A growing number of cases is increasing demand

Since states across the country have moved toward full reopening, the coronavirus crisis has arguably gotten worse than it has ever been. On July 9, the US saw nearly 60,000 new Covid-19 cases. In a majority of US states, Covid-19 cases are increasing, according to the New York Times, and outbreaks risk overwhelming some rural hospitals and smaller cities that weren’t prepared for the pandemic.

“It feels like right now we see more demand this week than we did last week, and I think we will continue to see that,” said Miller, who expects that reopening schools and universities will also cause another surge in cases, though she notes that heightened demand for N95 masks never really went away.

But national coordination of a supply chain was never set up to effectively distribute personal protective equipment and other supplies, despite calls for the federal government to step in. The National Strategic Stockpile didn’t have a large amount of backup supplies to begin with, and it wasn’t set up to respond to the full needs of a pandemic. Without leadership from the federal government — which insisted that supplies should be handled on the local and state level — governors and hospital systems have been arranging their own private purchases of personal protective equipment, often directly competing with one another. It’s an approach that Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker recently likened to the Hunger Games.

Opening up means more people need protective equipment

When the pandemic first started, the country’s primary concern was getting protective equipment to hospital health care workers who were treating Covid-19 patients. But as the country opens back up, people working in medical and dental offices, as well as other industries like construction, are looking for N95 masks too.

Michael Einhorn, the president of the medical supplier Dealmed, said there’s also an understandable incentive for medical facilities to buy more safety stock beyond what they need for present day-to-day operations. He points to efforts like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 90-Day Supply Goal as an example. That guidance urges health care facilities to have in stock enough protective equipment to last about three months.

“There are biopsies that need to take place. People need to get screened and tested. There are people out there that need treatment outside of Covid,” Einhorn told Recode. “These facilities that treat these patients don’t have access to N95s, and it’s a very big problem.”

At the end of June, the American Medical Association (AMA) sent a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) emphasizing that doctor’s offices and practices outside of hospital systems were struggling to get access to personal protective equipment. James Madara, the AMA’s CEO and executive vice president, raised the alarm about “growing concern” from doctors about shortages and said that despite pleas to Congress, “a remedy remains elusive.” In fact, the problem in outpatient medical facilities was bad enough that Madara also sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence, asking the administration to invoke the Defense Production Act.

“Without adequate PPE, physician practices may have to continue deferring care or remain closed, which will continue to have a dramatic impact on the health of their patients,” Madara wrote.

One major challenge is that many of these medical facilities don’t typically buy in bulk the way large hospital systems do and aren’t used to buying protective equipment for their daily operations. One doctor told a local paper in Pennsylvania that if his surgery center and clinic were to reach full capacity, it would only have enough PPE to last a week or two and would then have to shut down.

“If I’m a doctor, and I’m going to open my practice and … need a respirator every day, I only need a box of 20,” explains Miller, from the N95 Project. “But you can’t go out and buy a box of 20.”

The supply chain is still riddled with problems

On its own, the US simply isn’t producing enough N95 masks and other protective equipment to meet demand, despite major producers like 3M and Prestige Ameritech ramping up production. Even before the pandemic, the US relied significantly on imports, especially from China, and many point to a lack of leadership and coordination in the early months of the pandemic as a cause for the ongoing shortages.

The federal government actually turned down an early offer from Prestige Ameritech to produce millions of masks early this year, according to the Washington Post. Leading companies in the medical equipment distribution industry also told members of Congress that between January and March, the administration gave them little effective guidance, and there’s still no national coordination of a supply chain.

At the beginning of the pandemic, finding a steady and trustworthy supply of N95 masks was difficult. Hospitals ended up with counterfeit and otherwise unreliable products, while others placed orders for masks that would never arrive. There was also price gouging and hoarding, and a growing number of new, and often unreliable, suppliers attempting to take advantage of desperate buyers.

The murkiness of the supply chain has improved somewhat, though issues remain. Miller, who has kept an eye on the gray markets for protective equipment, said that many “opportunistic players have been winnowed out of the market.” The ones that remain are more reliable, and payment terms for bulk purchases have begun to return to normal. Dealmed’s Einhorn said that hospitals and buyers have become more aware of unreliable orders and the risk of counterfeit or otherwise suspicious products.

“Our government has basically said that we’re going to allow the free economy to fix the issues,” Val Griffeth, an Oregon-based doctor who co-founded a nonprofit PPE effort called Get Us PPE, told Vox last month. “Unfortunately, it takes time and capital to ramp up production, and because the government has not devoted capital to helping solve the situation, we’re seeing a delay in its resolution.”

In fact, officials don’t seem to think shortages are as significant as some medical workers have said. Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday said that the supply of PPE is “very strong” and encouraged medical workers to re-use products.

“I’m not going to tell you we’re able to meet all demand, but there’s significantly less unfulfilled orders today than in April,” the navy official who is overseeing medical supplies distributed by the federal government, John Polowczyk, told the Washington Post in early July. “I don’t have the sense of there being severe shortages.”

It’s difficult to estimate exactly how bad the national shortage is at scale, but direct reports from medical facilities are alarming. Doctors at a medical center in Houston told the New York Times they’ve been instructed to reuse N95s for up to two weeks. A family physician in Virginia, who is on the state’s testing task force, told local news that surgical masks continue to be used unless they become dirty, and disposable gowns are also reused. In Bradenton, Florida, nurses have protested because, they say, they’re not given enough proper protective gear and aren’t updated about patients’ Covid-19 statuses.

If cases continue to surge, there’s no doubt that concerning reports like these almost certainly will, too.

Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.

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NEW YORK — The U.S. Roman Catholic Church used a special and unprecedented exemption from federal rules to amass at least $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.

The church’s haul may have reached -- or even exceeded -- $3.5 billion, making a global religious institution with more than a billion followers among the biggest winners in the U.S. government’s pandemic relief efforts, an Associated Press analysis of federal data released this week found.

Houses of worship and faith-based organizations that promote religious beliefs aren’t usually eligible for money from the U.S. Small Business Administration. But as the economy plummeted and jobless rates soared, Congress let faith groups and other nonprofits tap into the Paycheck Protection Program, a $659 billion fund created to keep Main Street open and Americans employed.

By aggressively promoting the payroll program and marshaling resources to help affiliates navigate its shifting rules, Catholic dioceses, parishes, schools and other ministries have so far received approval for at least 3,500 forgivable loans, AP found.

The Archdiocese of New York, for example, received 15 loans worth at least $28 million just for its top executive offices. Its iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue was approved for at least $1 million.

In Orange County, California, where a sparkling glass cathedral estimated to cost over $70 million recently opened, diocesan officials working at the complex received four loans worth at least $3 million.

And elsewhere, a loan of at least $2 million went to the diocese covering Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, where a church investigation revealed last year that then-Bishop Michael Bransfield embezzled funds and made sexual advances toward young priests.

Simply being eligible for low-interest loans was a new opportunity. But the church couldn’t have been approved for so many loans -- which the government will forgive if they are used for wages, rent and utilities -- without a second break.

Religious groups persuaded the Trump administration to free them from a rule that typically disqualifies an applicant with more than 500 workers. Without this preferential treatment, many Catholic dioceses would have been ineligible because -- between their head offices, parishes and other affiliates -- their employees exceed the 500-person cap.

“The government grants special dispensation, and that creates a kind of structural favoritism,” said Micah Schwartzman, a University of Virginia law professor specializing in constitutional issues and religion who has studied the Paycheck Protection Program. “And that favoritism was worth billions of dollars.”

The amount that the church collected, between $1.4 billion and $3.5 billion, is an undercount. The Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference, an organization of Catholic financial officers, surveyed members and reported that about 9,000 Catholic entities received loans. That is nearly three times the number of Catholic recipients the AP could identify.

The AP couldn’t find more Catholic beneficiaries because the government’s data, released after pressure from Congress and a lawsuit from news outlets including the AP, didn’t name recipients of loans under $150,000 -- a category in which many smaller churches would fall. And because the government released only ranges of loan amounts, it wasn’t possible to be more precise.

Even without a full accounting, AP’s analysis places the Catholic Church among the major beneficiaries in the Paycheck Protection Program, which also has helped companies backed by celebrities, billionaires, state governors and members of Congress.

The program was open to all religious groups, and many took advantage. Evangelical advisers to President Donald Trump, including his White House spiritual czar, Paula White-Cain, also received loans.

‘TRULY IN NEED’

There is no doubt that state shelter-in-place orders disrupted houses of worship and businesses alike.

Masses were canceled, even during the Holy Week and Easter holidays, depriving parishes of expected revenue and contributing to layoffs in some dioceses. Some families of Catholic school students are struggling to make tuition payments. And the expense of disinfecting classrooms once classes resume will put additional pressure on budgets.

But other problems were self-inflicted. Long before the pandemic, scores of dioceses faced increasing financial pressure because of a dramatic rise in recent clergy sex abuse claims.

The scandals that erupted in 2018 reverberated throughout the world. Pope Francis ordered the former archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, to a life of “prayer and penance” following allegations he abused minors and adult seminarians. And a damning grand jury report about abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses revealed bishops had long covered for predator priests, spurring investigations in more than 20 other states.

As the church again reckoned with its longtime crisis, abuse reports tripled during the year ending June 2019 to a total of nearly 4,500 nationally. Meanwhile, dioceses and religious orders shelled out $282 million that year — up from $106 million just five years earlier. Most of that went to settlements, in addition to legal fees and support for offending clergy.

Loan recipients included about 40 dioceses that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years paying victims through compensation funds or bankruptcy proceedings. AP’s review found that these dioceses were approved for about $200 million, though the value is likely much higher.

One was the New York Archdiocese. As a successful battle to lift the statute of limitations on the filing of child sexual abuse lawsuits gathered steam, Cardinal Timothy Dolan established a victim compensation fund in 2016. Since then, other dioceses have established similar funds, which offer victims relatively quick settlements while dissuading them from filing lawsuits.

Spokesperson Joseph Zwilling said the archdiocese simply wanted to be “treated equally and fairly under the law.” When asked about the waiver from the 500-employee cap that religious organizations received, Zwilling deferred to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

A spokesperson for the bishops’ conference acknowledged its officials lobbied for the paycheck program, but said the organization wasn’t tracking what dioceses and Catholic agencies received.

“These loans are an essential lifeline to help faith-based organizations to stay afloat and continue serving those in need during this crisis,” spokesperson Chieko Noguchi said in a written statement. According to AP’s data analysis, the church and all its organizations reported retaining at least 407,900 jobs with the money they were awarded.

Noguchi also wrote the conference felt strongly that “the administration write and implement this emergency relief fairly for all applicants.”

Not every Catholic institution sought government loans. The Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy based in Stamford, Connecticut, told AP that even though its parishes experienced a decline in donations, none of the organizations in its five-state territory submitted applications.

Deacon Steve Wisnowski, a financial officer for the eparchy, said pastors and church managers used their rainy-day savings and that parishioners responded generously with donations. As a result, parishes “did not experience a severe financial crisis.”

Wisnowski said his superiors understood the program was for “organizations and businesses truly in need of assistance.”

LOBBYING FOR A BREAK

The law that created the Paycheck Protection Program let nonprofits participate, as long as they abided by SBA’s “affiliation rule.” The rule typically says that only businesses with fewer than 500 employees, including at all subsidiaries, are eligible.

Lobbying by the church helped religious organizations get an exception.

The Catholic News Service reported that the bishops’ conference and several major Catholic nonprofit agencies worked throughout the week of March 30 to ensure that the “unique nature of the entities would not make them ineligible for the program” because of how SBA defines a “small” business. Those conversations came just days after President Trump signed the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which included the Paycheck Protection Program.

In addition, federal records show the Los Angeles archdiocese, whose leader heads the bishops’ conference, paid $20,000 to lobby the U.S. Senate and House on “eligibility for non-profits” under the CARES Act. The records also show that Catholic Charities USA, a social service arm of the church with member agencies in dioceses across the country, paid another $30,000 to lobby on the act and other issues.

In late April, after thousands of Catholic institutions had secured loans, several hundred Catholic leaders pressed for additional help on a call with President Trump. During the call, Trump underscored the coming presidential election and touted himself as the candidate best aligned with religious conservatives, boasting he was the “best (president) the Catholic church has ever seen,” according to Crux, an online publication that covers church-related news.

The lobbying paid off.

Catholic Charities USA and its member agencies were approved for about 110 loans worth between $90 million and $220 million at least, according to the data.

In a statement, Catholic Charities said: “Each organization is a separate legal entity under the auspices of the bishop in the diocese in which the agency is located. CCUSA supports agencies that choose to become members, but does not have any role in their daily operations or governance.”

The Los Angeles archdiocese told AP in a survey that reporters sent before the release of federal data that 247 of its 288 parishes -- and all but one of its 232 schools -- received loans. The survey covered more than 180 dioceses and eparchies.

Like most dioceses, Los Angeles wouldn’t disclose its total dollar amount. While the federal data doesn’t link Catholic recipients to their home dioceses, AP found 37 loans to the archdiocese and its affiliates worth between $9 million and $23 million, including one for its downtown cathedral.

In 2014, the archdiocese paid a record $660 million to settle sex abuse claims from more than 500 victims. Spokespeople for Los Angeles Archbishop Jose M. Gomez did not respond to additional questions about the archdiocese’s finances and lobbying.

In program materials, SBA officials said they provided the affiliation waiver to religious groups in deference to their unique organizational structure, and because the public health response to slow the coronavirus’ spread disrupted churches just as it did businesses.

A senior official in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which worked with the SBA to administer the program, acknowledged in a statement the wider availability of loans to religious organizations. “The CARES Act expanded eligibility to include nonprofits in the PPP, and SBA’s regulations ensured that no eligible religious nonprofit was excluded from participation due to its beliefs or denomination,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, some legal experts say that the special consideration the government gave faith groups in the loan program has further eroded the wall between church and state provided in the First Amendment. With that erosion, religious groups that don’t pay taxes have gained more access to public money, said Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor and attorney who has represented clergy abuse victims on constitutional issues during bankruptcy proceedings.

“At this point, the argument is you’re anti-religious if in fact you would say the Catholic Church shouldn’t be getting government funding,” Hamilton said.

CASHING IN FAST

After its lobbying blitz, the Catholic Church worked with parishes and schools to access the money.

Many dioceses -- from large ones such as the Archdiocese of Boston to smaller ones such as the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin -- assembled how-to guides to help their affiliates apply. The national Catholic fiscal conference also hosted multiple webinars with legal and financial experts to help coach along local leaders.

Federal data show that the bulk of the church’s money was approved during the loan program’s first two weeks. That’s when demand for the first-come, first-served assistance was so high that the initial $349 billion was quickly exhausted, shutting out many local businesses.

Overall, nearly 500 loans approved to Catholic entities exceeded $1 million each. The AP found that at least eight hit the maximum range of $5 million to $10 million. Many of the listed recipients were the offices of bishops, headquarters of leading religious orders, major churches, schools and chapters of Catholic Charities.

Also among recipients was the Saint Luke Institute. The Catholic treatment center for priests accused of sexual abuse and those suffering from other disorders received a loan ranging from $350,000 to $1 million. Based in Silver Spring, Maryland, the institute has at times been a way station for priests accused of sexual abuse who returned to active ministry only to abuse again.

Perhaps nothing illustrates the church’s aggressive pursuit of funds better than four dioceses that sued the federal government to receive loans, even though they entered bankruptcy proceedings due to mounting clergy sex-abuse claims. Small Business Administration rules prohibit loans to applicants in bankruptcy.

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico -- once home to a now-closed and notorious treatment center for predator priests -- prevailed in court, clearing the way for its administrative offices to receive nearly $1 million. It accused the SBA of overreaching by blocking bankruptcy applications when Congress didn’t spell that out.

Yet even when a diocese has lost in bankruptcy court, or its case is pending, its affiliated parishes, schools and other organizations remain eligible for loans.

On the U.S. territory of Guam, well over 200 clergy abuse lawsuits led church leaders in the tiny Archdiocese of Agana to seek bankruptcy protection, as they estimated at least $45 million in liabilities. Even so, the archdiocese’s parishes, schools and other organizations have received at least $1.7 million as it sues the SBA for approval to get a loan for its headquarters, according to bankruptcy filings.

The U.S. church may have a troubling record on sex abuse, but Bishop Lawrence Persico of Erie, Pennsylvania, pushed back on the idea that dioceses should be excluded from the government’s rescue package. Approximately 80 organizations within his diocese received loans worth $10.3 million, the diocese said, with most of the money going to parishes and schools.

Persico pointed out that church entities help feed, clothe and shelter the poor -- and in doing so keep people employed.

“I know some people may react with surprise that government funding helped support faith-based schools, parishes and dioceses,” he said. “The separation of church and state does not mean that those motivated by their faith have no place in the public square.”

Data journalist Justin Myers contributed from Chicago.

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Donald Trump’s reign of error has been remarkable on a historic level in a variety of ways: COVID-19, the destruction of our traditional overseas alliances and open appeasement of Russia, the increasingly open embrace of white nationalism. To that list we must now add something with similarly long-term consequences: the stark surge of domestic terrorism committed by right-wing extremists—many of whom act on the belief they are supporting, defending, and enabling Trump and his agenda.

Data gathered from 2017 through 2019—and published today—by a team I led at Type Investigations and Reveal News shows that far-right domestic terrorism now dramatically eclipses all other forms of terrorist threat in the United States, both in raw numbers of events and in sheer lethality. It’s as though Trump lifted the lid off the Pandora’s Box of far-right violence and the demons promptly flew out.

The numbers show the stark increase during Trump’s presidency:

The 87 people killed by far-right terrorists over the first three Trump years—145 if we include the 58 killed in the October 2017 shooting rampage in Las Vegas—far outstrip the 17 killed by Islamists or the four killed by left-wing extremists.

That’s, conservatively, 87 deaths in three years, compared with the 46 killed by far-right extremists over the final three years of the Obama administration—a dramatic shift in lethality over a short period of time.

Yet law enforcement priorities remain skewed. The database shows that during the first three years of the Trump administration, cases involving Islamist extremists were preempted 18 times, compared with seven completed attacks, or 72%—a powerful indicator of the resources federal agencies poured into such probes. In contrast, a minority of right-wing extremist cases were preempted—18, compared with 30 realized attacks, or 37.5%.

Closer examination of the data—particularly the information about each of the cases included in the numbers—also reveals that the face of American domestic terrorism has changed dramatically in the past half-decade. What emerges from the data is a portrait of a new kind of domestic terrorist: familiar in its essential lone wolf appearance, but radically new in its networking, its motivations, and its targets.

Prior to the past decade, domestic terrorists were usually radicalized through traditional and underground media that relied on old methods of delivery, mainly print and radio, as well as face-to-face recruitment in meetings and semi-public gatherings. The modern Trump-era domestic terrorist looks something like this:

• Male (over 98% of all perpetrators in the database were men). Many are also highly prone to misogynist ideas and values, often violently so.
• Radicalized online. These actors were introduced to violent extremist ideas through various online interactions—social media, message boards, chat rooms, comment sections on videos—that are followed by an immersion in the world of conspiracy theories as well as white nationalist ideology.
• While eschewing organizational affiliation, is an avid participant in online communities where the violent ideology is shared.
• Directly inspired by preceding acts of terrorism, creating a kind of sequential effect in which the wave of violence keeps building.
• Significantly more likely to have killed and injured people, and their preferred weapon is a semiautomatic rifle using large magazines and high-velocity rounds.
• Is only a “lone wolf” in the sense that he is likely to be knowingly participating in and fulfilling a longtime strategic goal of organized white nationalists; these are not unrelated, “isolated incidents.”

This new database updates an earlier version the same team assembled and published in 2017. In many regards, the updated database resembles its earlier iteration despite the differences in timespan: The earlier database covered nine years while the updated numbers are those from 2017 through 2019, only three years. As before, there were roughly twice as many cases involving right-wing extremists (49) as Islamist radicals (25), while only a small percentage of the cases (five total) involved left-wing extremists.

To explore the database, spend some time in the interactive graphic entitled “The new domestic terrorism.” It contains each of the individual cases, including links to substantiating articles and documents. You can view it both in terms of raw numbers as well as via a map of the United States.

One of our more controversial findings, no doubt, will be our conclusion that Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock—who murdered those 58 people at a music festival in October 2017—was a right-wing extremist, despite official investigations that classified his motivation as unknown. It was our feeling, and that of the experts we consulted, that the evidence of Paddock’s motivations and political orientation was both substantial and eventually overwhelming, as the article explains.

In addition to our main piece, be sure to check out Stan Alcorn’s superb radio piece exploring how people become radicalized online, featuring interviews with a former far-right extremist named Joshua Bates who works nowadays to counter the movement’s effects.

Assembling this database has been a multiyear project that actually began in 2013, and the update has been in progress since October 2018. I’d like to express deep appreciation to the team members who shepherded it through its various stages and made it happen, particularly Sarah Blustain and Darren Ankrom at Type Investigations, and Esther Kaplan, Stan Alcorn, and Soo Oh at Reveal News.

During yet another nighttime phone chat with Sean Hannity, Donald Trump started off with an effort to once again claim that Democratic candidate Joe Biden is confused. In the process, Trump wandering into a claim that he took a cognitive impairment test, “very recently when I, uh—when I—you know, the radical left was saying ‘Is he all there? Is he all there’ And I proved I was all there ‘cause I got—and I aced it. I aced the test. Heh. [Biden] should take the same exact test, a very standard test, I took—took it at Walter Reed, uh, medical center, uh, in front of doctors, and they were very surprised. They said, ‘That’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did.’”

Trump may believe that this little tale both defends his own brainpower and challenges Biden, but there are a number of things to note here. First, Trump is known to have taken the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test in 2018. That test is a “screening instrument” for cognitive dysfunction that uses language and spacial orientation to assess possible damage. Trump was said to have passed that test. However, that was over two years ago, which doesn’t seem like “very recently.” Which brings in the question of why doctors were administering another cognitive impairment exam to Trump, and does it have a connection to something much more recent: Trump’s still-unexplained late night trip to Walter Reed?

Trump is slated to pay a visit to Walter Reed in the next two weeks, and has even said he expects to wear a mask while he’s there. But the last time he was there was back in November, when he slipped out of the White House on a Saturday evening and made an unplanned visit to the medical center. The White House attempted to pass this off as an attempt by Trump to get an “interim checkup,” but it was clearly done in response to some real or perceived medical emergency that no one in the White House has revealed.

It’s also worth noting that Trump’s statement seems at odds with the White House official statements on his Walter Reed visit. In addition to claiming that Trump had not suffered any chest pain or “acute” condition, the White House statement at the time specifically said “he did not undergo any specialized cardiac or neurologic evaluations.” It seems like a test for cognitive impairment would fall under that umbrella.

Based on Trump’s statement that he “very recently” took a cognitive impairment test at Walter Reed, it seems very likely that after Trump was taken from the White House on a Saturday, he was given a second cognitive impairment test, which he took in front of “doctors”—plural. According to Trump, he “aced” this test. But then, this is the guy who hired someone to take his SAT, so Trump’s real score on the test is far from certain. In any case, Trump claims that doctors were “very surprised” at how well he did.

Why would doctors be shocked that Trump could draw a clock face and pin a name on zoo animals? It seems likely this was because of something like a transient ischemic event, or minor stroke. If the Trump’s own statements are to be trusted—and really, they are not—he was taken to the hospital on a Saturday evening, doctors administered a cognitive impairment test, and were surprised that he scored well on this test. All of this points to an expectation that he would not score well because of some perceived impairment.

Cognitive impairment and dementia in all forms are not a joke. They’re also not a cause for shame. However, they are a cause for concern, especially when someone is charged with making critical decisions for the nation.

It’s clear that Trump has made the idea that Joe Biden “isn’t all there” a key element of his campaign for the fall. But why do Donald Trump’s doctors keep asking him to take these assessments, and why are they surprised if he does well?

Amid the current disaster, no one cares about gaffes anymore. As well they shouldn't.

Pity the poor dweller in Donald Trump’s Washington. Whether it’s in the White House, the military, or any federal agency, at any moment, Trump can intrude into your area of expertise, say the most foolish thing imaginable, then walk away. Those left holding the ruins of science, knowledge, and reason are faced with the task of trying to find some way to inform the public … without ever appearing to contradict the utterly wrong things Trump has said. 

And so, here we are again at Sharpiegate, the story where Trump was so unwilling to admit a mistake, and so insistent that reality bend to his will, that he demonstrated his decidedly un-Jedi powers by crudely altering the predicted path of a hurricane using a black marker. In an America where 135,000 people are dead from Trump’s current and ongoing mistake, the fact that Trump’s ego didn’t permit him to admit even the smallest error is no surprise, and it may seem like time to put this particular nonsense in the rear view. Except that the White House is still blocking the release of a report related to the incident, the head of NOAA violated ethics agreements in his efforts to please Trump, and the agency actually allowed false information to reach the public. Meanwhile, those within the agency that followed both ethical and scientific guidelines, put their careers on the line to defend the truth.

Trump’s including Alabama in a list of states threatened by Hurricane Dorian is, and was, just an artifact of Trump not closely following updates on the dangerous storm and repeating information that was several days out of date. It’s literally something that he could have made go away with the simplest of admissions. But, just as we’re being reminded daily in the COVID-19 crisis, Trump can never, ever, ever, never admit even the slightest mistake. So instead, Trump gave an update on the storm in which the potential path of Dorian had been crudely and ludicrously extended to make Trump “right.”

Even then it would have been nothing. However, when actual members of the Weather Service tried to inform the nation of the areas actually threatened by the storm, they were silenced. More than that, NOAA leadership sent out a statement criticizing the forecasters for providing clear, and absolutely accurate, information.

As The New York Times is now reporting, those scientists and officials received clear notice that their jobs were on the line if they didn’t shut up and go along. The inspector general’s report, still buried thanks to pressure by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, shows that Ross put pressure on the agency to “close the gap” between Trump’s statement and the predictions coming from the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama. The problem, of course, was that one side of the gap was the truth and the other side was a mistake. In telling people to close the gap, those inside the agency read it as a directive to lie. Or else.

The end result was that acting administrator of NOAA Dr. Neil Jacobs ended up lying in a way that not only provided false information, but attacked NWS Birmingham forecasters for trying to provide the correct information. Because Jacobs was leaned on by Ross. And Ross was determined to make Trump “right.” And that was Sharpiegate. It sounds like a trivial thing. In some ways, it certainly was trivial. And Trump’s taking to a weather service map with a heavy black marker was so silly it was hilarious. But Sharpiegate is exactly what is happening right now, to the tune of tens of thousands of lives.

The National Weather Service was willing to put out false and misleading information, rather than cross Trump, because they feared that if they didn’t do so, their jobs were on the line. In an ideal world, this might be a “Spartacus moment” in which everyone in the chain of command refused to obey and stood up for scientific accuracy. That didn’t happen.

And that’s exactly what’s happening now at the FDA as Donald Trump continues to hype drugs that do more harm than good in the treatment of COVID-19. It’s what’s happening at the CDC as Trump insists on reopening America. It’s what’s happening in state governments where Trump and Trump-supporting governors are pushing for numbers to be altered and outcomes hidden.

Sharpiegate is about the point at which people, fearful for their jobs and terrified of their bosses, make a compromise between telling the truth, and telling what Trump wants to hear. That might not have had a great cost when it comes to Hurricane Dorian. But what it’s costing us now is inestimable.

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After President Trump won the 2016 election, there was a big debate over the role “identity politics” played in his victory. Some scholars argued that many white voters without a college degree — a group that proved pivotal in that election — jumped from supporting then-President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 largely because they liked Trump’s framing of identity issues, such as immigration, more than Hillary Clinton’s.²⁵ After the election, some (usually white) liberal and Democratic-leaning voices said that Democrats needed to abandon “identity politics” or face more defeats like Clinton’s. Other liberal voices (often Black) said that Trump had successfully tapped into the racist views of many white Americans. Both of those perspectives implied that debating issues of identity and race was bad for Clinton and good for Trump, and in the future it would be good for the GOP and bad for Democrats.

Never mind all that, at least for now. America is talking about identity and race, and so are both presidential candidates. And all that racial talk seems to be helping Democrats, not Republicans. Joe Biden led Trump by about 6 percentage points in national polls on May 25, the day a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. Biden leads Trump by an average of nearly 10 points now, after weeks of race and racism dominating the national discussion.

Obviously a lot of factors could explain Trump’s decline in the polls, most notably the coronavirus outbreak and the president’s failure to come up with any real plan to limit the virus’s spread.

But it’s worth exploring this question: Why aren’t identity politics backfiring on Biden and helping Trump? It’s hard to say for sure, but here are five theories, ordered roughly from strongest to weakest.

Trump is in the White House now

Some political science research suggests that public opinion on major issues tends to move against the sitting president. So if President John Doe says he hates Granny Smith apples, Americans will begin consuming them by the bushel. And that pattern has already played out with Trump, with Americans becoming more supportive of immigrants and Obamacare, likely in reaction to the president’s attempts to limit immigration and repeal the health care law.

Current polling — and even polls from earlier in the Trump presidency — has shown Americans expressing more liberal views on racial issues. Those numbers might suggest real change in racial attitudes among Americans. (More on that in a bit.)

But what looks right now like increasing racial liberalism may really just be anti-Trump sentiment. If Americans, particularly Democratic-leaning Americans, perceive that Trump is opposed to the Floyd protests and to racial justice causes more broadly, they might become more supportive of such causes, consciously or unconsciously, simply as a reaction to the president’s sentiments.

[Related: Our 2020 National Polling Averages]

So in terms of identity politics and their role in presidential elections, it may have been that a racialized discourse was electorally bad for Democrats when their party controlled the White House, like in 2016. But this kind of discourse is fine and perhaps even electorally beneficial for Democrats with a Republican president in office.

Also, the story here could simply be that Trump is a flawed candidate who was going to struggle in 2020 no matter what issues were dominating the news at the time. After all, he was viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of voters on Election Day in 2016, according to exit polls, and he has remained fairly unpopular throughout his presidency. In 2019 and earlier this year, Democrats spent a lot of time debating which of their potential presidential candidates was most “electable.” But Biden’s almost-10-point lead suggests that basically any of the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would likely be leading Trump right now if he or she were the presumptive Democratic nominee.

2016 was a fluke and identity politics don’t always hurt Democrats

Part of the focus on identity issues as an electoral liability stems from the current makeup of swing states and the Electoral College. White voters without degrees have become increasingly Republican-leaning and represent a disproportionate share of the electorate in key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. So Democrats need to worry more about appealing to white voters without degrees to win an Electoral College majority than they would if presidential elections were decided by a simple national plurality vote. Thus, a lot of post-2016 coverage started from the assumption that Democrats have an identity and race problem because they must appeal to white voters without degrees and that voting bloc — at least based on the 2016 results — seemed to be put off by Democrats’ approach to identity issues.

But that framing might be wrong, or at least a bit overstated. Why? First, there’s an alternate reading of the 2016 results that suggests race wasn’t an unusually important factor in motivating the white voters who switched to Trump. Second, the overall racial dynamics of American politics are not that bad for Democrats and perhaps even favorable to them.

Zoom out beyond 2016 and take the long view: The last seven presidential elections have featured four Democratic victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College (1992, 1996, 2008, 2012); one instance where the GOP won the popular vote and Electoral College (2004); and two kind of fluky GOP wins in which Republicans lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College (2000, 2016).

[Related: How Popular Is President Donald Trump?]

That long view doesn’t look great for Republicans, and identity and race help explain why. Democrats have been handily winning the vote among Asian, Black and Hispanic Americans, who combined are growing as a share of the electorate. (The share of nonwhite U.S. voters was about 26 percent in 2016, compared to about 13 percent in 1980.) Democrats’ status as the party of minorities helps them in some ways, requiring the GOP to consolidate an increasingly high percentage of the country’s white voters to win elections.

But it isn’t easy or necessarily guaranteed that the Republicans will overwhelmingly win the white vote overall or the white non-college vote specifically — even in an election that’s centered on race. The 2017-2018 period was full of racialized political debate, most notably on immigration policy, but the exit polls suggest Democrats lost white voters without a college degree by 24 percentage points in 2018, compared to 37 points in 2016. So far in 2020, polls show Biden losing white voters without a degree by a margin closer to 20 points.

Meanwhile, Biden might carry white voters with a college degree by a large margin, in part because those voters have been turned off by Trump’s approach to racial issues. Indeed, white voters with a college degree or postgraduate education have been trending Democratic for years, and the GOP approach to race and ethnicity is likely a factor.

In short, the evidence suggests that Trump’s approach on racial issues never really appealed to people of color in the first place and, outside of November 2016, it has also been really off-putting to white voters with degrees and not that appealing to white voters without degrees.

It’s harder to use Biden as a wedge

On policy issues, including those around identity and race, Biden’s positions are clearly to the left of the ones Obama ran on in 2008 and arguably to the left of Clinton’s in 2016. In explicitly promising to pick a woman as vice president and a Black woman as Supreme Court justice, Biden has gone beyond Clinton or Obama in terms of allocating very important government posts based on gender and race. And Biden’s rhetoric on racial issues is similar to Clinton’s in 2016. After Floyd’s death, while Trump largely dismissed the protests, Biden called for “an era of action to reverse systemic racism.”

But Biden is an older white man. So his identity likely makes it harder for Trump to run an identity-based campaign against Biden than against Clinton and, to some extent, incumbent president Obama. (The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer made this argument explicitly in a recent piece.) Biden does not visually symbolize a changing America the way President Obama did and the way a President Hillary Clinton would have.

Also, Biden has self-consciously positioned himself as a more moderate Democrat and has distanced himself from more liberal elements of the party, including the causes favored by more liberal Black Americans, like defunding the police.

The electorate has really shifted on racial issues

It’s possible that Trump’s identity politics are less effective in 2020 than they were in 2016 because the events of the last four years have resulted in a real leftward shift on racial issues among Americans. And that shift is fundamental and real, not just about partisanship or anti-Trump sentiment, as I suggested above. After all, in interviews with reporters, more liberal-leaning people and even some former Trump voters are suggesting that they understand racial inequality more deeply now than ever before.

Institutions are aligned with Biden on these issues

Major U.S. businesses, corporations and other elite institutions are typically wary of being perceived as partisan. But in the wake of Floyd’s death, corporate America seems to have decided, for whatever reason, that support for Black Lives Matter and comprehensive, aggressive efforts to reduce racial inequality are either not that partisan or that they’re stances worth taking even if they annoy some Republicans.

So at least right now, it’s not really Biden and Democrats versus Trump and Republicans on issues of identity and race in America; rather, it’s Biden, Democrats, Facebook, Merck, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, Nike, Stanford and lots of other major institutions versus Trump and Republicans.

[Related: The Latest Political Polls Collected By FiveThirtyEight]

This dynamic is not totally unique to the spring and summer of 2020. Major companies in America are often aligned with liberal cultural values — for example, supporting gay marriage even before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated any remaining bans on same-sex unions.

But even if corporate America’s recent posture on racial issues isn’t that surprising, it’s still important. With a lot of major institutions in America echoing his general message, it’s not surprising that Biden’s identity politics are resonating more than Trump’s.

I’m writing this article at a particular moment in time. Perhaps there will be a backlash to the Floyd protests and public opinion will shift. Maybe Trump will benefit from that. If Biden picks a female vice presidential nominee, particularly one who is also a person of color, perhaps Trump’s identity tactics will resonate more with voters because he’ll then have a foil who is more like Clinton and Obama. Alternatively, Trump could make up ground in the polls due to unrelated issues and factors.

And even if Biden wins, that won’t totally answer the question of whether identity politics is bad or good for Democrats. Like I said, perhaps basically any Democratic candidate would beat Trump amid a viral outbreak the president mishandled.

All that said, it appears right now that the identity politics of 2020 are a net plus for Democrats — and perhaps they weren’t too big a problem for Democrats in the first place. It’s hard to prove any of this, but it’s an important discussion to have. In 2008, it seemed like Democrats won a presidential contest that was largely about race. But even though the presidential nominees were white in 2016 and 2020, those may have been more racialized campaigns. And if the current polls hold up, Democrats, after losing a very racialized campaign, may show that they can win one.

Cities like El Paso, Texas, are coping with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit alongside the Covid-19 pandemic. | Cengiz Yar/Getty Images

“I’m actually really worried about indoor transmission.”

A heat wave is baking much of the United States this week, with some of the highest temperatures forecasted in Southwestern states battling some of the most troubling coronavirus outbreaks in the country.

Arizona, for instance, is currently suffering from one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 with the highest daily reported cases per capita in the country. Meanwhile, Phoenix hit a high of 109 degrees Fahrenheit in recent weeks, and the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for the region through the weekend.

Parts of Texas are also experiencing extreme heat, with temperatures rising into triple digits in cities like El Paso. The Covid-19 outbreak in the state has also worsened in recent weeks, with more than 10,000 new cases reported on Tuesday, beating a previous record.

These states were among those that began relaxing some of their pandemic control restrictions, like closing non-essential businesses, before infection rate had a chance to decline. Now, as the number of new infections and hospitalizations has surged, governors of these states have reimposed some measures and implemented new ones, like mandatory face masks.

However, the combination of extreme heat and a fast-spreading virus in the Sun Belt is now creating a new set of problems that could undermine efforts to control Covid-19. From hampering surge capacity plans for hospitals to increasing people’s likelihood of getting exposed to the virus while sheltering indoors from the heat, heat can make things harder. And temperatures are poised to rise even higher in the southwest in the future due to factors like the urban heat island effect and climate change.

But there are ways to mitigate some of these risks. In particular, tactics like increasing ventilation reduces the likelihood of transmitting the infection indoors. These measures will be key to making schools, offices, and public spaces safe enough to reopen.

The many ways that extreme heat can worsen Covid-19 risks

Early in the pandemic, many hoped summer weather would reduce the transmission of Covid-19. Based on patterns with past coronaviruses, some scientists suggested that factors like ultraviolet light on sunny days, humidity, and heat could potentially reduce the spread of Covid-19 by impairing the virus itself. But the evidence from the United States and other parts of the world shows warmer temperatures have done little to curb the rise in new cases.

“In the context of this escalating pandemic, weather is pretty far down on the list of things that influence spread,” said Katherine Ellingson, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Arizona, in an email.

However, there are several indirect ways that extreme heat can alter how Covid-19 moves through a population and potentially worsens the outbreak.

People spending more time indoors

When temperatures get searingly hot, people spend more time in enclosed spaces, which presents the greatest opportunity for infection if the virus is present. “I’m actually really worried about indoor transmission,” said Davidson Hamer, a professor of global health and medicine at Boston University. “It’s so hot in the Southwest US that people are not outside. They’re being driven inside, so then you have all the issues of aerosol transmission and recycled air, a lot of which honestly we don’t fully understand yet.”

For a state like Arizona, it can be difficult to go outside at all for days at a time. But it’s not clear yet whether this will raise or lower the transmission rate of Covid-19.

“Most of us are indoors, and that in some ways is good because it encourages people to stay home, but it some ways it’s also very challenging because people want to go be around others,” said Saskia Popescu, an infection prevention epidemiologist at George Mason University based in Arizona.

If the heat keeps people isolated, that could slow the pandemic.

However, if parks and open air cafes are uncomfortable in the heat, people are likely to hop from one air-conditioned space to another — from a house, to a car, to a store, to restaurant, and so on.

That’s why infection risk can remain high if people are frequently in groups, even small ones.

“I think people assume, ‘Oh, I’m not in a 50-person spin class inside, I’m just having a few people over, that’s not as risky,’” Popescu said. “When we focus solely on large gatherings, that can be a poor communications strategy.”

Another key concern is that with so many people infected now, there may be a rise in new Covid-19 infections within households as people shut doors and windows and switch on the A/C.

Workplaces for people with essential jobs can also become major sources of transmission as they switch on cooling systems and seal off the outdoors.

So many people can end up in high-risk scenarios for Covid-19 that are nearly impossible to avoid. “And this is where vulnerability to infection comes as a result of socioeconomic and occupational risk factors, not individual choices about where to eat, socialize, or exercise,” Ellingson said.

Increased air pollution

Another issue during heat waves is that air pollution tends to get worse on hot days. Pollutants like ozone form more readily in high temperatures, which in turn can exacerbate breathing problems. That’s particularly troubling for a respiratory infection like Covid-19 that has shown a link between more severe illness and air pollution. In poorly sealed buildings, that outdoor pollution can become indoor air pollution, often leaving the poorest residents of a city little respite.

Building surge capacity for health care becomes more difficult

Extreme heat also poses problems for the response to Covid-19. As hospitals approach their limits of beds, they may struggle to implement their backup plans.

Things like outdoor tents and temporary clinics like those deployed in New York City are much harder to set up in the heat and more expensive to run when they have to be air conditioned. “Those capabilities quickly go out the window,” Popescu said.

Avoiding health impacts of heat can create opportunities for transmission

Heat itself is a potent health threat and is the deadliest form of extreme weather, according to the National Weather Service. High temperatures make it harder for the body to shed excess heat, straining breathing and circulation. That can then lead to potentially fatal conditions like hyperthermia and heat stroke.

While most people can avoid the most extreme heat, not everyone has access to air conditioning or can afford the power bills to pay for it. Places like Maricopa County in Arizona do operate public cooling shelters for people who don’t have access to their own cool spaces. But that also creates another opportunity for people to gather in an enclosed space.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued Covid-19 guidance for cooling centers that include social distancing, as well as calling on local governments to assist low-income residents with utility bills so they can pay for cooling in their own homes.

Improving indoor air could help curb Covid-19 transmission during heat waves

Right now, scientists are still reckoning with how the virus spreads between people. Initially, the main modes of transmission were thought to be surfaces and also respiratory droplets that usually fall out of the air within 3 to 6 feet of their origin. That’s what informed guidance to wear masks, sanitize surfaces, and stay 6 feet away from others.

But a group of more than 200 scientists this week have called on the World Health Organization to recognize aerosols — tiny particles that can stay aloft longer— as a contributor to Covid-19 infections.

“All the data over the last couple of months point to aerosols as a major mechanism for transmission of this virus,” Hamer said.

That would mean that the virus could spread through the air to a greater degree than some previously thought. This has important implications for strategies to control the spread of the virus, particularly indoors where it can circulate in the air. One preprint study (research that has not yet been peer-reviewed) found that infectious virus particles could be found in an aerosol up to three hours after the aerosol was formed.

The duration can change depending on how much air is circulated in the space, whether the air is filtered, and factors like temperature, humidity, and lighting. But there is potential for Covid-19 to spread through ventilation systems.

“Regarding the spread of the coronavirus via ductwork, the short answer is yes, it is plausible,” said Parham Azimi, a postdoctoral researcher studying environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Definitely, in indoor environments, with low ventilation rates or without supplemental control strategies like air purifiers and filtration, we would face a lot higher risk of getting infected.”

In another preprint paper, researchers in the United Kingdom looked back at the Covid-19 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship where at least 700 passengers out of 3,711 tested positive for the virus. The researchers concluded that inadequate ventilation was a key factor in the spread of the disease on the ship. And another paper looking at a Covid-19 outbreak in a restaurant in Guangzhou, China, found that the direction of airflow from the restaurant’s air conditioner influenced which patrons ended up infected.

That means one of the more effective strategies for limiting the indoor spread of Covid-19 in places like classrooms would be to improve indoor air quality. “The easiest and fastest ways would be increasing ventilation or putting air purifiers inside of each class,” Azimi said. “That would help reduce airborne transmission.”

Similarly, the CDC guidelines for reopening schools recommend that facilities “increase circulation of outdoor air as much as possible, for example by opening windows and doors.”

Increasing ventilation means that less air is stagnant in a given space, so a potentially infectious aerosol has less time to linger. But opening windows during triple-digit temperatures can cause more problems than it solves. And improper ventilation that doesn’t adequately cycle air out of a room could just end up spreading aerosols around.

Air purifiers can also clear out aerosols by using devices like HEPA filters. However, purifiers are limited by how quickly they work since they can only process a small volume of air at a time, becoming ineffective in larger rooms.

There are also more sophisticated ways to improve air quality too, like ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, where ultraviolet light is used to sterilize air. These devices can be integrated into HVAC systems to clean a large volume of air. It’s effective, but expensive, requiring costly hardware and installation. For schools and businesses struggling with their finances amid the pandemic, tactics like UVGI could be out of reach.

The lessons learned from fighting the pandemic during a heat wave could still be applicable in cooler times of year, according to Azimi. Improving ventilation would help reduce infection risks in the winter as people similarly spend more time indoors to avoid the cold.

But one side effect of many of these measures is that they increase energy consumption. During a heat wave, running HVAC systems at a higher capacity or installing air cleaning devices adds to power demands. For consumers, that raises their energy bills, and for utilities, that adds stress to the power grid. Researchers have found that the risk of power outages rises under extreme heat.

The Texas grid operator ERCOT said in May that it’s anticipating record electricity use this summer in the state, driven by heat. While it has more reserve power this year than last, ERCOT says it may still have to issue energy emergency alerts if power demand rises too high.

So improving indoor ventilation during a heat wave isn’t simply turning fans on full blast. It requires planning, balancing costs and benefits, and infrastructure to support it.

And Azimi cautioned that ventilation alone isn’t enough to reduce the risk of indoor transmission of Covid-19; it’s just one piece of a comprehensive strategy that includes measures like physical distancing between people and wearing masks. It is possible to stay cool and stay safe from Covid-19, but it requires anticipating risks and planning for them.

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Jillian Wuestenberg, the 32-year-old white woman who faces felony charges for threatening a black family at gunpoint outside a Michigan restaurant last week, tearfully pleaded her case Thursday in an interview with a local TV station.

“There are a lot of facts that are missing, a lot of things that have only been seen from one side, and not through our eyes,” Wuestenberg told WXYZ Channel 7.

Wuestenberg was accompanied during the interview by her husband — 42-year-old Eric Wuestenberg, who is also charged in the incident and has been fired from his job — as well as their attorney.

“This was just an attack, pure and simple, from the other side,” Jillian Wuestenberg said. “We were berated, our race was brought into it. I just wanted to go home to my children and feed my children.”

Wuestenberg acknowledged she may have bumped 15-year-old Makayla Green with her bag as she was leaving the restaurant, but said she didn’t understand how the incident escalated. Wuestenberg claims she tried to apologize to Makayla but ultimately drew her weapon — which had been holstered beneath her shirt — after she was “rapidly and aggressively approached” by “multiple people” who got “within two feet “of her. (Makayla Green and her mother, Takelia Hill, were unarmed.)

“It’s hard to watch, it’s scary,” Wuestenberg said of video of the incident, which has been viewed millions of times online. “The more I see it, the more I realize I’m more afraid of that situation now than I was then. I was terrified at that moment and my terror is just exponentially greater since then, looking back, seeing how in danger I really was. … I remember thinking, I’m not going home tonight.”

Wuestenberg said she grew up around a lot of guns and rifles — “they were just an everyday part of life” — and admitted to chambering a bullet during the incident. “That meant I’m about to die, and I don’t want to die,” she said.

She also addressed allegations of racism: “I have never seen myself as ignorant or racist. I have a genuine love for every single person I meet. Everyone has a story, everyone is important, and that really crushed me at the core of who I am, because I genuinely adore every person I meet. … There is so much hate in this world at this point in time and I don’t want a single person to feel what we’re feeling right now.”

Asked if there was anything she would have done differently, Wuestenberg said, “I would have stayed home and cooked.”

Watch the interview as well as the original video below.

The post Woman Who Threatened Black Family at Gunpoint Tearfully Claims She Acted in Self-Defense: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
If your reaction is 'but it's easy to count the dots' you might want to check your motherboard.

Today's News:

Amid an apparent parking dispute, the driver of a Hyundai Elantra randomly attacked “punks” and “young people” over Grindr hookups.

The exact nature of the dispute is unclear, but it appears from video of the incident posted to Twitter this week that the woman had parked her non-electric vehicle in a space with a charging station.

The video, filmed by the other party in the dispute, begins with the woman bizarrely slapping her butt and saying, “Take this!”

The woman then returns to her car so she can retrieve her phone to film her own video and put it on Instagram, as she mutters about “punks who think they own the world” and “do what they want.”

SHES ACTUALLY SO- pic.twitter.com/NJmsX1sxWU

— POOJA (@DUCKlGYALSTAN) July 7, 2020

After a brief conversation with security guards about the parking situation, the woman says, “I have to do my video,” as she points her phone at the other party and walks toward him.

“You’re disgusting and I’m so sick of these young people who think they’re all that,” she says. “Here you go, sweetheart, let’s test you. My goodness, nothing better to do with your time, because this is what your generation does. You go on Grindr and do hookups. You show every part of your body, and you have no self-respect. Oh my goodness, none whatsoever.”

At that point, one of the security guards intervenes in an apparent attempt to prevent the dispute from escalating.

“He comes and tells me what I can do. He’s not my boss,” the woman is later heard telling the security guard.

After the security guard points to a sign above the electric charging station, the woman hops in her Elantra to pull out — but not before threatening the other party with her video.

“Yours goes up, mine goes up, and it will have a lot to say,” she warns.

The video prompted several Twitter users to speculate that someone may have hooked up with the woman’s husband on Grindr.

FR!!! How you gonna say Grindr and not Tinder, how does this granny Karen even know about these apps if her man wasn’t looking pic.twitter.com/pfFmzQfSud

— BLACK LIVES MATTER (@vvitchingh0ur) July 9, 2020

Her attacks are way too specific and personal. She definitely married a gay man and is lashing out because she caught him cheating on her with a 20 something he met on Grindr. Karen (a nod to Mrs. VP – Karen Pence) is the perfect moniker for this woman. https://t.co/xP0M0Imwfu

— Elia ¯(ツ)/¯ (@elianorton) July 8, 2020

Aww poor Karen and her menopause mustache jealous of the younger generation getting action on Grindr.

— FatbutSexy (@OmarMus68411998) July 8, 2020

who the the gay responsible for telling Karen about Grindr? pic.twitter.com/jcq9sGduyp

— ro malone (@rocellothekid) July 8, 2020

…..and do hook ups which one of the gays stole this Karen’s husband over Grindr https://t.co/xYWitADygW pic.twitter.com/RMIh5n73oM

— Tony Franco (@_TonyFranco_) July 8, 2020

The post Homophobic Karen Attacks ‘Punks’ Amid Parking Dispute: ‘You Go on Grindr and Do Hookups’ (WATCH) appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

A powerful Alabama Republican state senator who serves on the governor’s coronavirus task force says he wants to see more people contract COVID-19.

Del Marsh, president pro tempore of the state Senate, made the remarks on Thursday after Alabama set a new daily record for coronavirus cases.

Sen. Del Marsh says he is not concerned about reaching more than 2,000 cases in one day.
Marsh says he wants to see more people with COVID-19 because "we start reaching an immunity as more people have it and get through it." pic.twitter.com/JH43IJCdUw

— Lydia Nusbaum (@LydiaNusbaum) July 9, 2020

“I’m not as concerned as much as the number of cases, and in fact, quite honestly, I want to see more people, because we start reaching an immunity as more people have it and get through it,” Marsh said. “I don’t want any deaths, as few as possible, so those people who are susceptible to the disease, those with pre-existing conditions, elderly population, those folks, we need to do all we can to protect them. But I’m not concerned.”

More from the Daily Beast: Marsh, who was tapped in March to serve as president pro tempore on Gov. Kay Ivey’s COVID-19 task force, appeared to be referring to the concept of herd immunity, which means that once a certain threshold of infections is reached and immunity builds in the population, the virus won’t be able to spread as easily. Scientists have already cautioned that a herd immunity strategy won’t be effective against COVID-19—a warning grimly illustrated in Sweden, where an anti-lockdown strategy led to a death rate among the world’s highest, at 43 deaths per 100,000 people. Marsh’s comments were in stark contrast to a sobering warning from the Alabama Hospital Association that the state’s hospitals are already under strain and yet rising numbers haven’t even taken into account the surge of cases expected to come as a result of the Fourth of July weekend. 

It’s not the first time Marsh has taken an unconventional stance on an issue. Back in 2015, he said he opposed same-sex marriage for budgetary reasons.

“You gotta look at the financial aspect of this as well,” Marsh said at the time. “Let’s face it. If gay marriage is approved, I assume that those types of unions, those people would be entitled to Social Security benefits, insurance. Where does it end?”

A few reactions below.

It’s probably much easier to be “not concerned” when you don’t actually understand science.
Those of us with advanced degrees in science are actually pretty concerned. #stayinyourlane #alpolitics #aldems #al01 https://t.co/ELqy4FzFbR

— Kiani for Congress (@KianiGardner) July 10, 2020

Today, AL Senate pro-tem @SenatorDelMarsh said of record setting #COVID19 cases “I want to see more people because we start reaching immunity if more people have it and get thru it.”

State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris told us there is no data to support this claim. @CBS_42

— Jack Royer (@JackRoyer) July 9, 2020

Del Marsh once again wins the award for dumbest politician in Alabama, and that’s saying something when Mo Brooks attributed rising sea levels to rocks falling into the ocean. https://t.co/5bvPzdIIZU

— Dylan (@DylanFromBHM) July 10, 2020

As any resident of Anniston will tell you, Del Marsh is the dumbest motherfucker in the entire state https://t.co/chZwdpA3Yi

— erek smith (@Erek_Smith) July 10, 2020

Stupidity aside, it is nice to see so many Alabama Republicans suddenly so sold on evolution. https://t.co/7jE4bCTvFC

— Josh Moon (@Josh_Moon) July 9, 2020

The post Alabama GOP Senator Who Serves on Coronavirus Task Force: ‘I Want to See More People’ Contract COVID-19 (WATCH) appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

After calling in to Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show on Thursday night, President Donald Trump said doctors were “very surprised” when he recently passed a cognitive test.

Trump on Cognitive Tests: I actually took one.. and I proved I was all there because I aced it… I took it at Walter Reed Medical Center in front of doctors and they were very surprised. They said that’s an unbelievable thing, rarely does anyone do what you just did pic.twitter.com/pwxcjRVL3V

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) July 10, 2020

“He hasn’t taken any cognitive tests because he couldn’t pass one,” Trump said of his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. “I actually took one very recently when the radical left was saying, ‘Is he all there? Is he all there?’ I proved I was all there because I aced it. I aced the test, and he [Biden] should take the same exact test. A very standard test.

“I took it at Walter Reed, a medical center, in front of doctors, and they were very surprised,” Trump added. “They said, that’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did. But he should take that same test.”

The Washington Post reports: It’s unclear exactly what cognitive test Trump was referring to in the interview. The most recent publicly disclosed cognitive test Trump took at Walter Reed was in January 2018, when the White House’s top physician said he got a perfect score. The exam Trump took then was the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is designed to detect mild cognitive issues, largely in older people. The 10-minute exam asks patients to identify farm animals in pictures, draw a clock, and perform basic word-recall exercises. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment clarifying whether Trump has taken another test more recently. Along with jabs at Biden, Trump’s latest Hannity interview also covered the Sun Belt coronavirus hotspot, Trump’s willingness to wear a mask on an upcoming public appearance, and the Black Lives Matter street mural in New York that Mayor Bill de Blasio helped paint, which Trump derided.

Watch the full interview and check out a few reactions below.

Even if it were true, “the doctors were *very* surprised I passed a cognitive test” is not really the slam dunk the president thinks it is. https://t.co/7hk0LAFxcZ

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) July 10, 2020

I watched this interview tonight live and was shocked that President Trump revealed that he had recently taken a cognitive test at Walter Reed. Wow. We obviously need to know more about that visit. https://t.co/rWvdAItgZ8

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) July 10, 2020

A stroke-like incident (see secret trip to Walter Reed) would require a cognitive test, no?
And a doc may be very happy to see a patient able to successfully identify a farm animal, count to 20, or tell a circle from a square.
Amazed, even, when the patient was a known idiot.

— Thom Hartmann (@Thom_Hartmann) July 10, 2020

Trump is now claiming that he "recently" went to Walter Reed and took a cognitive exam that he did so well on, doctors were "surprised."

Trump wasn't recently at Walter Reed.

It's not a good thing when doctors are surprised you passed a cognitive test.https://t.co/IvpLxGfBKb

— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) July 10, 2020

Trump stumbles & spills his Walter Reed trip included a cognitive test. His trip was urgent, prob after he was incoherent & prob included a sequential MRI. He’s clueless a/b how bad he sounds w/ “The Doctors were very surprised.” His dementia is obvious & they are carrying him https://t.co/TNXfIHOWn1

— Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) July 10, 2020

The post Trump: Doctors Were ‘Very Surprised’ That I Passed a Cognitive Test (WATCH) appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

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Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley on Thursday condemned Confederate leaders as traitors and said he supports a review of Army bases named after those who fought against the Union, a viewpoint that puts him at odds with the commander in chief.

Pressed by Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) about the 10 Army installations named for Confederate leaders, Milley told the House Armed Services Committee that the military needs "to take a hard look at the symbology" of the Civil War — such as base names, display of the Confederate battle flag and statues — as well as improve in other areas such as "the substance of promotions."

"The American Civil War … was an act of treason at the time against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S. Constitution — and those officers turned their backs on their oath," Milley said. "Now, some have a different view of that. Some think it's heritage. Others think it's hate."

"The way we should do it matters as much as that we should do it. So we need to have, I've recommended, a commission of folks to take a hard look at the bases, the statues, the names, all of this stuff, to see if we can have a rational, mature discussion."

President Donald Trump has threatened to veto any defense policy legislation that changes the names of the bases, and earlier tweeted that the discussion is off the table for his administration.

"The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars," he tweeted. "Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations."

Still, members of both parties in both houses of Congress have backed legislation in the authorization bill to rename the bases. A pair of military appropriations bills in the House also attempt to tie funding to renaming the bases.

Brown also pushed Defense Secretary Mark Esper about plans for a military-wide ban on the Confederate flag. The Marine Corps has already banned the flag's display and the Navy has announced it's formulating a similar order.

A draft plan for a department-wide ban has been circulating among Pentagon brass, according to multiple reports this week. Esper told Brown that he has "a process underway" to examine "substantive and symbolic" issues.

"We want to take a look at all those things," Esper said. "There is a process underway by which we affirm ... what types of flags are authorized on U.S. military bases."

"I want to make sure that we have an approach that is enduring, that could withstand legal challenge, but that unites us and most importantly helps build cohesion and readiness," he added.

The House version of the National Defense Authorization Act includes a provision, authored by Brown, to ban the display of the Confederate flag on Defense Department property.