While John Bolton sat back and contemplated his huge book advance, and even larger supply of personal cowardice, those who had served under him demonstrated both bravery and dedication to the Constitution in coming forward to testify in the impeachment of Donald J. Trump. The two most critical witnesses of the entire event may have been Dr. Fiona Hill, who testified to how Trump suborned the foreign policy of the United States to “a domestic political errand” and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who made it clear that Trump and others were promoting “a false and alternative narrative of Ukraine” and that Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president had generated serious concern.
In his opening statement before the House, Vindman sent a touching reassurance to his father. "Dad, my sitting here today, in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected officials, is proof that you made the right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth." However, even though he was slated for promotion this month, Vindman has now announced he is leaving the military. Because Donald Trump is determined to prove that the United States can be just as bad as the Soviet Union.
After over 21 years of service, Vindman was slated to be promoted to full colonel. However, there were concerns that Trump—who had Vindman both reassigned and escorted forcibly from the White House—might interfere. In normal times, this shouldn’t be a concern. However, these are anything but normal times, and considering that Trump had already acted against Vindman’s twin brother, even though he did not testify, the idea of Lt. Col. Vindman being persecuted for doing his duty both as a military officer and a citizen seemed a pretty good bet.
Earlier this month, a purge got underway at the Defense Department as Trump flushed career officials and military officers who were seen as more loyal to anything, Constitution included, than to Trump. This included the removal of the top official overseeing international security, Kathryn Wheelbarger, and acting comptroller Elaine McCusker. Their crime was only that they had a “good relationship” with former general Jim Mattis. But now that Mattis is on Trump’s enemies list, so is everyone associated with him.
Considering that even guilt by association was enough to doom others, it shouldn’t be that surprising that CNN is now reporting that “military officials have communicated to Vindman that the White House has sought to become involved in the promotion process.” Vindman has also been told that he is “no longer deployable” in his area of expertise. So, rather than stay around, Vindman is retiring. In a statement from his attorney, the lieutenant colonel says that he has been subject to a "campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation" directed by Trump since the impeachment.
Vindman may be leaving now, but he should be going with the admiration of a nation—and a promise from Joe Biden that when Trump is gone, the military will once again have room for those who have demonstrated true personal bravery.
A city councilman in LaPorte, Indiana is under fire after comments broadcast from a City Hall meeting attacking gay people and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Councilman Roger Galloway’s remarks were made in response to “a resident seeking city support in increasing LGBTQ visibility and youth resources,” according to NWI Times.
Said Galloway: “You talk… LGB … your talking gay people…Stuff like that? Do you know that is against the Bible? Anybody ever read the Bible? That’s my comment.”
At a separate point in the meeting, when the Black Lives Matter movement was brought up, Galloway went “All Lives Matter” on the forum: “I was in Vietnam. I don’t care if they were purple. We fought for each other. We took care of each other. You have Black Lives Matters. How ’bout the Hispanics, the Asians, the white people? We’re all here. I still don’t understand. Of course I’m 70 years old, but uh, let’s wake up and take care of everybody in our community. Our whole country. I don’t understand Black Lives Matters, I probably never will but it’s for all of us, Okay? That’s my comment.”
La Porte’s mayor Tom Dermody denounced the remarks: “The things said at last night’s City Council meeting are unacceptable. These comments are not reflective of the goals we have for the future of LaPorte, nor are they representative of our city government team as a whole. We want our community to be a place that is welcoming to all and will continue working hard to ensure that is the case.”
Galloway later issued an apology and said he was open to some reeducation: “I apologize for my comments at the City Council meeting last night. La Porte is a welcoming community and my remarks did not reflect that. My personal opinions and beliefs should never get in the way of my ability to represent our community as a whole. The LGBTQ representatives from the meeting have agreed to meet with me in the coming days. I am grateful for their willingness to have a conversation so I can learn more and develop a better understanding.”
Yep, the APA is the Trump administration's nemesis. And if we get the Senate, it'll allow MANY of Trump's rollbacks to be nuked.
[A complaint filed in MA district court alleges violations of the APA]
I blogged yesterday about the federal government's declaration on July 6 that international students enrolled at universities that have moved to online instruction for this fall are at risk of losing their visa status. Harvard and MIT have now filed a complaint in district court to enjoin the so-called July 6 Directive, arguing that it fails to conform to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
As I and others suspected yesterday, one of the key issues is the one of reliance. The complaint highlights that the so-called March 13 Guidance, which relaxed the pre-existing restrictions on international students taking online classes, specified that the March rule change would remain "in effect for the duration of the emergency". The complaint goes on to state that "[t]he President's national emergency declaration has not been rescinded or terminated" and that coronavirus continues to constitute an emergency, with the number of cases not having greatly decreased and in fact spiking in some places.
After describing the significant steps that Harvard and MIT have taken to move most of their instruction online, the complaint emphasizes the many costs that students have incurred in reliance on the March 13 Guidance, such as by taking out loans or signing leases. At this point, if they have to return to their home countries, these students would have to "abandon housing arrangements they have made, breach leases, pay exorbitant air fares, and risk COVID-19 infection on transoceanic flights. And if their departure is not timely, they risk detention by immigration authorities and formal removal from the country that may bar their return to the United States for ten years." Once home, the students in some countries would be unable to pursue their education properly or at all due to time zone variations as well as "unavailable, unreliable, or state-managed Internet connections, and other barriers to online learning."
Any school that attempts to keep its (sometimes thousands of) international students in the United States under the rules for hybrid models–which combine in-person and online instructional components–would have to get all these students' I-20 forms reissued within 21 business days of the new directive. According to the complaint, "Doing so is not only unduly burdensome, but, in many cases, impossible because students are generally not required to register for particular classes until closer to the start of the semester."
The complaint alleges three violations of the APA. The first allegation is that the July 6 Directive is arbitrary and capricious because it fails to consider important aspects of the problem and fails to address the serious reliance interests involved. The second is that the directive is arbitrary and capricious because it fails to offer a reasoned basis to justify the change. The third is that the directive violates the APA because it "is a substantive rule that alters students' and universities' rights and obligations under the law" and ICE did not provide the requisite "good cause" for failing to follow the usual notice-and-comment procedure. Among other relief, the complaint requests a temporary restraining order, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, and an order vacating the July 6 Directive and reinstating the March 13 Guidance.
An Ohio lawmaker is using conspiracy theories to justify giving potentially dangerous advice to his constituents. “Are you tired of living in a dictatorship yet,” GOP Rep. Nino Vitale asked Tuesday in a Facebook post. “This is what happens when people go crazy and get tested. STOP GETTING TESTED!”
Vitale went on to claim COVID-19 testing is “giving the government an excuse to claim something is happening that is not happening at the magnitude they say it is happening. Have you noticed they never talk about deaths anymore, just cases,” he said. “And they never talk about recoveries. They just keep adding to numbers they have been feeding us from over 3 months ago!”
Vitale, who is up for reelection in November, was responding to an order that Gov. Mike DeWine announced Tuesday, which requires residents in seven counties to wear face coverings in public. The counties identified—Butler, Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Huron, Montgomery, and Trumbull—were selected because officials have determined there is a "very high risk” of “exposure and spread" in those areas.
Ohio has reported 57,956 confirmed coronavirus cases and 2,927 related deaths, a sliver of the nation's 2.9 million confirmed cases and 130,133 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The state is, however, one of about 20 that are reporting higher incidents of the virus. Ohio’s death toll rivals that of new COVID-19 epicenters like Texas, Arizona, and Florida. In fact, Florida is the only state of the three with more reported COVID-19 deaths than Ohio. Florida has reported 3,778 COVID-19 deaths. Texas has 2,655, and Arizona has 1,810, according to the CDC.
DeWine acknowledged in his news release that expert recommendations of wearing masks, along with social distancing and limited interactions with others, can help protect communities. "It has been, and remains, a very strong recommendation that I urge all Ohioans to continue doing even if you are not in a red-alert (very high exposure) county,” he said.
Still digesting, but Kagan's concurrence is a roadmap to future litigants
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled 7-2 (with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting) on the Affordable Care Act and birth control, handing the Trump administration a victory by expanding the kinds of employers that can cite religious objections in denying birth control to employees.
NBC News reports: “The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, gives the government authority to create the religious and moral objections, said Justice Clarence Thomas for the court’s 7-2 majority. The Department of Health and Human Services “has virtually unbridled discretion to decide what counts as preventive care and screenings,” and that same authority ‘leaves its discretion equally unchecked in other areas, including the ability to identify and create exemptions from its own guildelines.’ In dissent, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said the court in the based has struck a balance in relgious freedom cases, so that the beliefs of some do not overwhelm the rights of others. ‘Today for the first time, the court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree’ and ‘leaves women workers to fend for themselves’ in seeking contraceptive services, they said.”
Sotomayor, in dissent with Ginsburg, decries the "simplistic approach" taken by the court, saying it "has no basis in law and strips thousands of schoolteachers of their legal protections." pic.twitter.com/foyvPGpLyQ
Ginsburg and Sotomayor go a step further, and just say the Court got it wrong altogether here, noting that more than 100,000 women "would immediately lose access to no-cost contraceptive services" under the Court's ruling. pic.twitter.com/M6jn0w08vv
NBC News adds: “The decision today involved Trump administration rules that would allow publicly traded companies and large universities to claim a religious objection for refusing to provide the coverage. Even more broadly, employers and schools with any moral objection would also be exempt from the requirement.”
Justice Samuel Alito testifies about the Court’s budget during a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on March 7, 2019, in Washington, DC. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Court’s “ministerial exception” decision means many Americans just lost their right to be free from discrimination.
Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru is a difficult case, which raises profound questions about how much control a religious institution has over the individuals who instruct others in the faith.
But the Court’s resolution of Morrissey-Berru is also a fairly maximalist decision. The upshot of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for a 7-2 Court is that thousands of teachers at religious schools are no longer protected by anti-discrimination laws. If one of them is fired for being Black, or gay, or a woman, the law may do nothing to intervene.
The case involves the “ministerial exception” to civil rights laws. As a general rule, religious institutions have total control over whom they employ as “ministers.” That means that if a church wants to fire its preacher because of that preacher’s race or gender, it may do so, even though such discrimination ordinarily is illegal.
As Alito explains, the Constitution protects “the right of churches and other religious institutions to decide matters ‘of faith and doctrine’ without government intrusion.” Implicit in this right is a certain “autonomy with respect to internal management decisions that are essential to the institution’s central mission. And a component of this autonomy is the selection of the individuals who play certain key roles.”
Yet while the Supreme Court held in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC (2012) that “ministers” are beyond the reach of civil rights laws, it provided only the vaguest guidelines on who qualifies as a “minister.” Alito’s opinion in Morrissey-Berru adds some meat to those dry bones. Under his opinion, “when a school with a religious mission entrusts a teacher with the responsibility of educating and forming students in the faith, judicial intervention into disputes between the school and the teacher threatens the school’s independence in a way that the First Amendment does not allow.”
Thus, a teacher at a religious school whose duties include religious instruction qualifies as a “minister,” and is therefore unprotected by anti-discrimination law.
The plaintiffs in Morrissey-Berru had fairly minimal religious duties
One upshot of Morrissey-Berru is that the ministerial exception attaches even to teachers who spend the bulk of their time engaged in secular instruction. The case concerns two Catholic school teachers, Agnes Morrissey-Berru and Kristen Biel, who claim they were fired for illegitimate reasons.
Morrissey-Berru alleges age discrimination, while Biel’s estate claims that she illegally lost her job after she “requested a leave of absence to obtain treatment for breast cancer” — she eventually died of the disease. The schools, meanwhile, claim that both women’s contracts were not renewed due to legitimate concerns about their job performance.
But these factual disputes will never be resolved, because the ministerial exception places both women beyond the reach of civil rights laws such as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Both women were elementary school teachers at Catholic schools. Like most elementary school teachers, they taught a broad range of subjects rather than specializing in any one area. Most of their time was spent on secular topics such as arithmetic or grammar, but both women also spent some time instructing their students in the Catholic faith. Biel, for example, was “required to teach religion for 200 minutes each week” and administer a weekly test on religious subjects.
Under Alito’s decision, this fairly small amount of religious instruction — a little more than three hours a week — was enough to trigger the ministerial exception. “Implicit in our decision in Hosanna-Tabor,” Alito writes, “was a recognition that educating young people in their faith, inculcating its teachings, and training them to live their faith are responsibilities that lie at the very core of the mission of a private religious school.”
It’s unclear how far the ministerial exception will extend to non-teachers
One upshot of Hosanna-Tabor is that many teachers — perhaps all teachers in religious schools with good lawyers — are no longer protected from discrimination. Teachers who already provide religious instruction are now overwhelmingly likely to be classified as “ministers,” and religious schools could potentially bring all of their teachers within the ministerial exception’s umbrella by assigning them new religious duties.
But what of other employees of religious institutions? As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in dissent, “the rights of countless coaches, camp counselors, nurses, social-service workers, in-house lawyers, media-relations personnel, and many others who work for religious institutions” are now uncertain.
Alito’s opinion is vague regarding these employees, stating that courts must “take all relevant circumstances into account and to determine whether each particular position implicated the fundamental purpose of the exception.” But its heavy focus on individuals who teach religion suggests that the ministerial exception could sweep quite broadly.
Here’s a personal example: Starting when I was 16, I had a summer job as a junior counselor at a Christian-identified summer camp. I spent the bulk of my time on entirely secular activities — like playing capture the flag or teaching students to refer to the rear end of a boat as the “stern.” But a couple of evenings a week, I would lead a group of children in a 10-minute “devotion” and close that devotion with a prayer.
In effect, I spent 20 minutes a week providing religious instruction to these children.
Was that enough to qualify my 16-year-old self as a “minister”? Morrissey-Berru, with its emphasis on employees tasked with “educating young people in their faith,” suggests that I very well may have qualified, as could many other workers with minimal religious duties.
Meanwhile, it is likely that at least some employers will try to game Morrissey-Berru to immunize themselves from liability for discrimination. Consider, for example, a 2015 manual called Protecting Your Ministry From Sexual Orientation Gender Identity Lawsuits, which was published by the Southern Baptist Convention and a leading Christian-right law firm. That manual advised religious employers to assign religious duties to low-level employees in an attempt to bring them under the ministerial exception:
When feasible, a religious organization should assign its employees duties that involve ministerial teaching, or other spiritual qualifications — duties that directly further the religious mission. For example, if a church receptionist answers the phone, the job description might detail how the receptionist is required to answer basic questions about the church’s faith, provide religious resources, or pray with callers. Consider requiring all employees to participate in devotional or prayer time, or to even lead these on occasion.
It is still unclear whether a receptionist, who is told to “answer basic questions about the church’s faith” in a bad-faith attempt to strip that receptionist of their civil rights, would qualify as a minister. Alito’s opinion does instruct courts to “take all relevant circumstances into account” when determining “whether each particular position implicated the fundamental purpose of the exception.”
But, at the very least, Morrissey-Berru is likely to plunge victims of such tactics into months — or even years — of expensive litigation just to determine whether they have any rights at all.
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“More than 650 coronavirus cases have been linked to nearly 40 churches and religious events across the United States since the beginning of the pandemic, with many of them erupting over the last month as Americans resumed their pre-pandemic activities,” The New York Times reports.
That includes a Texas church where the pastor told people they could resume hugging a few weeks into reopening. He became one of 50 people at the church to test positive.
“In retrospect, I would have said: Just maintain that distance,” he told the Times. “In a spiritual environment we had people who were away from fellowship for so long and in isolation. They were hurting. We just got to a point where we thought, we need to have normal church services.” Obviously the virus showed how little it cares about people’s need for normal church services, with hugging.
Even churches that have made serious efforts to be responsible have seen cases. “Our churches have followed protocols—masks, go in one door and out the other, social distancing,” a Louisiana United Methodist Church bishop told the Times. “And still people have tested positive.”
In New York City, one church that could be reopening after 60 of its congregants died is instead waiting, and researching what it can do safely. “For a church that has lost so many people, it would be a moral violation to go ahead and reopen right now,” pastor Jared Stahler of Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church told the Associated Press. “We would give people a false sense of comfort.”
The church continues to focus on online services and providing assistance to its parishioners. ”Saint Peter’s Church has been a holy example of how our buildings may be closed, but our church has always been open,” said Bishop Paul Egensteiner. It’s an example more churches should be following.
Attorneys hired to review Facebook's civil rights policies concluded Wednesday that the company has failed to adequately combat discrimination and voter suppression on its platform, and rebuked the social network's executives for prioritizing political speech over civil rights and other values.
The auditors called Facebook's approach to civil rights "too reactive and piecemeal" in the long-awaited review, and said the company's recent progress is threatened by its decision not to take action on posts from President Donald Trump that made unsubstantiated claims about mail-in ballots.
"Facebook’s failure to remove the Trump voting-related posts and close enforcement gaps seems to reflect a statement of values that protecting free expression is more important than other stated company values," the auditors wrote in the report.
The audit may be the most consequential critique yet of the absolutist view of free speech that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described as essential to his social network. Though Facebook is not obligated to adopt the auditor's recommendations, their conclusions will be difficult to ignore as they follow a two-year review that the company sanctioned.
The audit's findings are also likely to embolden Facebook's critics in the civil rights community, who in recent weeks have orchestrated a widespread advertising boycott of the company. The report appears to validate a number of their arguments against the company, including that Facebook's policies prohibiting voter suppression and misinformation are not applied evenly, and that the company should be taking stronger steps to root out white supremacy and other forms of hate.
“I don't feel that Facebook has embraced the urgency that people want them to operate with," Laura Murphy, a former ACLU director who co-led the audit, said in an interview. "I think that they are moving in the right direction, but the results are not adequate.”
Facebook public policy director Neil Potts said in an interview that the company will review the recommendations and "explore what we can do to ensure that we are still adhering to our core value of giving people voice but recognizing that voice is not unfettered."
"We do have other values like safety, authenticity, privacy, dignity," Potts said.
While the auditors acknowledge Facebook has made strides to root out the foreign election interference that was prevalent during the 2016 presidential race, for instance, Murphy said that its failure to take action against Trump's misleading statements sets a "very dangerous precedent" for election-related speech allowed on the platform.
"Facebook has made policy and enforcement choices that leave our election exposed to interference by the President and others who seek to use misinformation to sow confusion and suppress voting," the audit states. Facebook should continue to broaden its policies about what constitutes voter suppression and misinformation, and enforce those policies to the fullest extent possible, they write.
Auditors expressed alarm at a much-discussed speech that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered at Georgetown University in October in which he spoke of the social network's obligation to free speech. They told Facebook leaders that Zuckerberg's definition of free expression would allow for harmful and divisive rhetoric on the platform that conflicts with the company's pledge to uplift civil rights.
"The lack of clarity about the relationship between those two values is devastating," the auditors wrote.
“The company has not really addressed the tension of civil rights and free speech head on," Murphy added in an interview. "It's elevated free speech and the auditors think that civil rights needs to be elevated. The two are not mutually exclusive.”
The auditors found Facebook has not sufficiently address bias in the algorithms that power so much of its network, including those that recommend the groups and content that its users see when they engage on the platform.
"Facebook should do everything in its power to prevent its tools and algorithms from driving people toward self-reinforcing echo chambers of extremism, and that the company must recognize that failure to do so can have dangerous (and life-threatening) real-world consequences," the report states.
Auditors applauded Facebook for establishing a Civil Rights Task Force that meets monthly under the direction of Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, and for recently launching a search for a vice president who will oversee civil rights initiatives and training. But the auditors said they are nevertheless "deeply concerned" that Facebook has not hired more civil rights experts across the company over the past two years, saying its recent commitments "do not go far enough" to address the scale of the problem.
Facebook tapped Murphy and civil rights attorney Megan Cacace to lead the independent review of its civil rights policies. The pair interviewed hundreds of civil rights leaders and lawmakers to catalog their concerns with Facebook, and then dug into Facebook's existing practices and policies. Wednesday's report marks the audit's third and final installment, though Murphy and Cacace have agreed to continue advising Facebook in a capacity still to be determined.
The auditors are finishing their review at a time when Facebook's relationship with civil rights organizations is at a low.
Many advocates are spearheading a month-long Facebook advertising boycott that has attracted the support of nearly 1,000 brands, including big names like Verizon and Unilever. They say the social network has failed to address hate speech and disinformation that disproportionately effects minority communities.
Boycott organizers left a meeting with Zuckerberg and other senior Facebook executives Tuesday feeling their demands are not being taken seriously. The audit published Wednesday did little to change their opinion.
"As Facebook continues to amass and consolidate power, the wellbeing and safety of our democracy is at stake," Color of Change President Rashad Robinson said in a statement. "And if Facebook won’t create rules for the platform that protect free elections and public safety, then Congress must intervene to ensure civil rights are protected."
More incompetent unstable bigots being pushed by the Trump administration. The GOP should be so proud
The arrival of a new political appointee is spawning confusion and concern at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where earlier staff changes have already led to serious internal tensions.
Pete Marocco, who to date has held positions or details at the departments of Defense, State and Commerce under President Donald Trump, has now joined the aid agency, a USAID spokesperson confirmed. His transfer from the Pentagon to the aid agency, which manages roughly $20 billion in foreign aid each year, is being greeted with all the excitement of a root canal.
Marocco left a bitter trail at the Pentagon and in Foggy Bottom, dogged by criticism that he created a toxic work environment by undermining and mistreating career staffers. POLITICO spoke to seven U.S. government officials worried about Marocco’s move to yet another agency, including three who reached out to a reporter independently and two who worked with him directly.
Marocco, who previously was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for Africa affairs, is expected to run USAID’s soon-to-be-established Conflict Prevention and Stabilization bureau, a job that would give him sway over a range of programs designed to help strengthen institutions in fragile states overseas. But the agency has not announced the hire yet, and a USAID spokesperson would say only that his title will be “senior adviser” for now.
The very uncertainty of Marocco’s role is unsettling many inside the agency, particularly as he has infuriated career government employees throughout his time in the administration. USAID staffers have already been frustrated by the arrival of several other new political appointees whose past comments have sparked concerns about discrimination and other fears, as previously reported by POLITICO.
Two U.S. officials who worked directly with Marocco, both of whom requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, described how he frequently undermined career staffers, causing several to flee their divisions.
They said Marocco would push for quick actions, such as canceling a contract — and get angry when told that proper procedures must be followed. “If you pushed back on him, he’d make it his focus to disempower you, to cut you out of conversations,” one of the officials said.
POLITICO obtained a copy of one formal grievance submitted by a U.S. official against Marocco, which alleges, among other things, that he had entered the workspace while still awaiting results of being tested for the coronavirus, a move his colleagues felt put them at risk. It asserts that Marocco would frequently go outside the chain of command to influence policy in ways that made his colleagues uncomfortable and reluctant to share information with him, for instance, by talking to the White House and boasting about it.
Marocco, whose online bio includes serving in the Marines and private sector security work, would not offer comment for this story. But he has his defenders: One former State Department colleague dismissed the critics, saying he is “competent, professional and more than qualified to work on these issues.”
The criticism of Marocco is just the latest instance of Trump appointees clashing with career officials, starting with a president who routinely inveighs against a supposed “deep state” of bureaucrats bent on thwarting his agenda. It is happening as the White House looks to cleanse the government of officials deemed insufficiently pro-Trump, leading to friction with Cabinet heads accustomed to more leeway in choosing their own staff.
The possibility that Marocco could lead the conflict prevention bureau upset some USAID staffers in particular because a widely respected career official was supposed to get that role, the title of which is technically “assistant to the administrator.” That employee, Rob Jenkins, is “beloved” in the agency, one of several USAID officials said in praising him.
John Barsa took over as USAID’s acting administrator in April. He succeeded Mark Green, who had kept USAID largely insulated from the many storms of the Trump years. Green also spearheaded a reorganization of the agency that has led to the creation of new bureaus but also spurred some internal angst as staffers try to figure out where they will land.
Green’s departure has given the White House an opportunity to install political appointees some top Trump aides deem more loyal to the president. But several of those appointees have histories of comments that are Islamophobic, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ and even anti-democracy.
There is widespread concern among USAID staffers about the political appointees’ motivations and the role they will play in hiring, firing and priority-setting. Numerous USAID staffers have demanded in various ways, including at least one letter, that Barsa, the acting administrator, take concrete steps to ensure that they will not face discrimination on religious, sexual or other grounds.
Barsa has said in the past that he would not tolerate discrimination on his watch. But he’s also defended some of the political appointees, decrying “news article attacks” on them.
No shit. Conservative "governance" has real world consequences, and we'll see if deaths follow every other COVID trend.
A sign warns against the Covid-19 coronavirus near the Navajo town of Tuba City, Arizona, on May 24, 2020. | Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images
Arizona’s governor claimed “it’s safe out there.” Then coronavirus cases skyrocketed.
The US is struggling with a resurgence of the coronavirus in the South and West. But the severity of Arizona’s Covid-19 outbreak is in a league of its own.
Over the week of June 30, Arizona reported 55 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people per day. That’s 34 percent more than the second-worst state, Florida. It’s more than double Texas, another hard-hit state. It’s more than triple the US average.
Arizona also maintained the highest rate of positive tests of any state at more than 25 percent over the week of June 30 — meaning more than a quarter of people who were tested for the coronavirus ultimately had it. That’s more than five times the recommended maximum of 5 percent. Such a high positive rate indicates Arizona doesn’t have enough testing to match its big Covid-19 outbreak.
To put it another way: As bad as Arizona’s coronavirus outbreak seems right now, the state is very likely still undercounting a lot of cases since it doesn’t have enough testing to pick up all the new infections.
The state also leads the country in coronavirus-related hospitalizations. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in five inpatient beds in Arizona are occupied by Covid-19 patients — about 42 percent more than Texas and 65 percent more than Florida, the states with the next-highest share of Covid-19 patient-occupied beds. With hospitalizations rapidly climbing, Arizona became the first in the country to trigger “crisis care” standards to help doctors and nurses decide who gets treatment as the system deals with a surge of patients. Around 90 percent of the state’s intensive care unit beds are occupied, based on Arizona Department of Health Services data.
While reported deaths typically lag new coronavirus cases, the state has also seen its Covid-19 death toll increase over the past several weeks.
This is the result, experts say, of Arizona’s missteps at three crucial points in the pandemic. The state reacted too slowly to the coronavirus pandemic in March. As cases began to level off nationwide, officials moved too quickly to reopen in early and mid-May. As cases rose in the state in late May and then June, its leaders once again moved too slowly.
“What you’re seeing is not only a premature opening, but one done so rapidly there was no way to ensure the health care and public health systems didn’t get stressed in this process,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist based in Arizona, told me.
At the same time, recommended precautions against the coronavirus weren’t always taken seriously by the general public — with experts saying that, anecdotally, mask use in the state can be spotty. That could be partly a result of Republican Gov. Doug Ducey downplaying the threat of the virus: While he eventually told people to wear masks in mid-June, as of late May he claimed that “it’s safe out there,” adding, “I want to encourage people to get out and about, to take a loved one to dinner, to go retail shopping.”
Ducey’s actions and comments “gave the impression we were past Covid-19 and it was no longer an issue,” Popescu said, “which I believe encouraged people to become lax in their masking [and] social distancing.”
After weeks of increases in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, Ducey pulled back Arizona’s reopening on June 29, closing downs bars, theaters, and gyms.
Experts say the move is a positive step forward, but also one that came too late: With coronavirus symptoms taking up to two weeks to develop, there are already infections out there that aren’t yet showing up in the data. The state can expect cases, hospitalizations, and, probably, deaths to continue to climb over the next few weeks.
Ducey acknowledged the sad reality: “It will take several weeks for the mitigations that we have put in place and are putting in place to take effect,” he said. “But they will take effect.”
Ducey’s office argued it took the action as was necessary at the time, based on the data it collected and its experts’ recommendations. “Our steps are in line with our facts on the ground that we’ve been tracking closely,” Patrick Ptak, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, told me.
Arizona now offers a warning to the rest of the world. The state’s caseload was for months far below the totals in New York, Michigan, and Louisiana, among the states that suffered the brunt of the virus in the US in the early months. But by letting its guard down, Arizona became a global hot spot for Covid-19 — a testament to the need for continued vigilance against the coronavirus until a vaccine or similarly effective treatment is developed.
Arizona was slow to close and quick to reopen
Arizona was initially slow to close down. While neighboring California instituted a stay-at-home order on March 19, Ducey didn’t issue a similar order for Arizona until March 31 — 12 days later.
That might not seem like too much time, but experts say it really is: When the number of Covid-19 cases statewide can double within just 24 to 72 hours, days and weeks matter.
Arizona was also quick to reopen its economy. After states started to close down, experts and the White House recommended that states see a decline in coronavirus cases for two weeks before they reopen. Arizona never saw such a decline. In fact, it arguably never even saw a real plateau. The number of daily new cases rose slowly and steadily through April and into May, and then the exponential spike took off.
German Lopez/Vox
So it’s not quite right to say that Arizona is experiencing a “second wave” of the coronavirus. It arguably never controlled the first wave, and the current rise of cases is a result of continued inaction as the initial wave of the virus continued spreading across the state. (The Navajo Nation, which is partly in Arizona, was an initial coronavirus hot spot. But its case count has declined since May, in part because it took strong measures against the virus.)
Arizona and other states experiencing a surge in Covid-19 now “never got to flat,” Pia MacDonald, an epidemiologist at the research institute RTI International, told me. “That means the states didn’t get to very good compliance with the public health interventions that we all need to take to make sure the outbreak doesn’t continue to grow.”
Despite no sustained decline in Covid-19 cases, Arizona moved forward with reopening anyway. Ptak, the governor’s spokesperson, acknowledged that the state didn’t meet the two-week decline in cases, but he said the state had met another federal gating criteria for reopening by seeing a decline in the test positivity rate “week after week” throughout May.
Once the state started to reopen, it moved quickly. Within weeks, Arizona not only let hospitals do elective surgeries but started to allow dining-in at restaurants and bars, and gyms and salons, among other high-risk indoor spaces, to reopen. The short time frame prevented the state from seeing the full impact of each step of its reopening, even as it moved forward with additional steps.
Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, argued it was this rate of reopening that really caused problems for the state. “It was a free-for-all by May 15,” Humble told me. Referencing federal guidelines for reopening in phases, he added, Arizona effectively “went from phase 0 to phase 3.”
It’s not just that Ducey aggressively reopened the state, but that he also prevented local governments from imposing their own stricter measures. That included requirements for masks, which Ducey didn’t allow municipalities to impose until mid-June — weeks after Covid-19 cases started to rapidly rise. (Ptak claimed the governor acted once he received requests from mayors along the southern border to do so.)
Some of that is likely political. As recommendations and requirements for masks have expanded, some conservatives have suggested wearing a mask is emblematic of an overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic that has eroded civil liberties. President Donald Trump has by and large refused to wear a mask in public, even saying that people wear masks to spite him and suggesting, contrary to the evidence, that masks do more harm than good. While some Republicans are breaking from Trump on this issue, his comments and actions have helped politicize mask-wearing and other measures.
For example, there was an anti-mask rally in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 24. There, a local council member, Republican Guy Phillips, shouted George Floyd’s dying words — “I can’t breathe!” — before ripping his own mask off, according to the Washington Post. (Phillips later apologized “to anyone who became offended.”)
Evidence supports the use of masks: Severalrecentstudies found masks reduce transmission. Some experts hypothesize — and early research suggests — that masks played a significant role in containing outbreaks in several Asian countries where their use is widespread, like South Korea and Japan.
But for a Republican governor like Ducey, the politicization of the issue means a large chunk of his political base is resistant to the kind of measures needed to get the coronavirus under control. And those same constituents are likelier to reject taking precautions against the coronavirus, even if they’re recommended by government officials or experts.
Ducey himself seemed to play into the politics: One day before Trump visited a plant in the state, and as the president urged states to reopen, Ducey announced an acceleration of the state’s reopening plans.
Other factors, beyond policy, likely played a role as well in the rise in cases. While summer in other parts of the country lets people go outside more often — where the coronavirus is less likely to spread — triple-digit temperatures in Arizona can actually push people inside, where poor ventilation and close contact is more likely to lead to transmission.
Some officials have argued Black Lives Matter protests played a role in the new outbreak. But the research and data so far suggest the demonstrations didn’t lead to a significant increase in Covid-19 cases, thanks to protests mostly taking place outside and participants embracing steps, such as wearing masks, that mitigate the risk of transmission. In Arizona, the surge in coronavirus cases also began before the protests took off in the state.
Arizona is now stuck playing catch-up
Arizona saw its coronavirus cases start to increase by Memorial Day on May 25. The increase came hard — with the test positivity rate rising too, indicating early on that the increase was not merely the result of more testing in Arizona. Hospitalizations and deaths soon followed.
Yet Ducey didn’t begin to scale back the state’s reopening until more than a month later — on June 29. This left weeks for the coronavirus to spread throughout the community.
The sad reality is Arizona will suffer the consequences of the governor’s slow action for weeks. Because people can spread the virus without showing symptoms, can take up to weeks to show symptoms or get seriously ill, and there’s a delay in when new cases and deaths are reported, Arizona is bound to see weeks of new infections and deaths even after Ducey’s renewed restrictions.
“Even if I put in 100 percent face mask use and everybody complied with it in Arizona right now, there would still be weeks of pain,” Cyrus Shahpar, a director at the global health advocacy group Resolve to Save Lives, told me. “There are people out there spreading disease, and it takes time [to pick them up as cases], from exposure to symptom onset to testing to getting the testing results.”
Experts argue the state still needs to go even further. Humble advocated for more hospital staffing, a statewide mask requirement, more rigorous rules and better enforcement of the rules for reopening businesses, and improved testing capacity and contact tracing. He also pointed to the lack of timely testing in prisons as one area that hasn’t gotten enough attention and could lead to a blind spot for future Covid-19 outbreaks.
One potentially mitigating factor is the state’s infected have trended younger than they did in initial bouts of the US’s coronavirus outbreak, with people aged 20 to 44 making up roughly half of cases. That could keep the death toll down a bit — though Covid-19 deaths in Arizona have already risen, and experts warn of the risks of long-term complications from the coronavirus, including severe lung scarring, among young people as well.
Above all, experts say that the rise in cases was preventable and predictable.
The research suggests the lockdowns worked. One study in Health Affairs concluded:
Adoption of government-imposed social distancing measures reduced the daily growth rate by 5.4 percentage points after 1–5 days, 6.8 after 6–10 days, 8.2 after 11–15 days, and 9.1 after 16–20 days. Holding the amount of voluntary social distancing constant, these results imply 10 times greater spread by April 27 without SIPOs (10 million cases) and more than 35 times greater spread without any of the four measures (35 million).
The flipside, then, is likely true: Easing lockdowns likely led to more virus transmission.
This is what researchers saw in previous disease outbreaks.
Several studies of the 1918 flu pandemic found that quicker and more aggressive steps to enforce social distancing saved lives in those areas. But this research also shows the consequences of pulling back restrictions too early: A 2007 study in JAMA found that when St. Louis — widely praised for its response to the 1918 pandemic — eased its school closures, bans on public gatherings, and other restrictions, it saw a rise in deaths.
Here’s how that looks in chart form, with the dotted line representing excess flu deaths and the black and gray bars showing when social distancing measures were in place. The peak came after those measures were lifted, and the death rate fell only after they were reinstated.
This did not happen only in St. Louis. Analyzing data from 43 cities, the JAMA study found this pattern repeatedly across the country. Howard Markel, a co-author of the study and the director of the University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine, described the results as a bunch of “double-humped epi curves” — officials instituted social distancing measures, saw flu cases fall, then pulled back the measures and saw flu cases rise again.
Arizona is now seeing that in real time: Social distancing worked at first. But as the state relaxed social distancing, it saw cases quickly rise.
This is why experts consistently cautioned not just Arizona but other states against reopening too quickly. It’s why they asked for some time — two weeks of falling cases — before states could start to reopen. It’s why they asked for states to take the reopening process slowly, ensuring that each relaxation didn’t lead to a surge in new Covid-19 cases.
Because Arizona and its leaders didn’t heed such warnings, it’s now suffering a predictable, preventable crisis — making it the state with the worst coronavirus epidemic in the country that’s suffered the most widespread coronavirus outbreak in the world.
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In his ‘Keeping Them Honest’ segment on Tuesday night, Anderson Cooper blasted Donald Trump for his ridiculous assertion to Greta van Susteren that the U.S. is “in a good place” when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Does that sound like reality, that we’re in a good place?” asked Anderson. “Those are his actual words. I didn’t actually believe it when I first heard it, but it’s on tape.”
“California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases,” Reuters reports. “The biggest jumps occurred in Texas and California, the two largest U.S. states, with more than 10,000 each.”
Yet Trump proclaimed he’s ready to open schools.
“The man whose every decision is based on what will get him reelected, what will energize his base and appeal to people’s most primal fears, is saying that governors and school officials don’t want schools open because of politics, because it benefits them politically.” said Anderson.
“We’re so deep down a well of lies it’s hard to realize how dark this is,” Anderson continued. “There is no political benefit keeping schools closed and kids upset and parents angry and parents unable to work because their kids are stuck at home. Oh, yeah, politically that’s going to serve you really well by doing that.”
Added Anderson: “Even as new modeling from the University of Washington today forecasts 208,000 people in this country may be dead of COVID-19 by Election Day. Which the president still does not seem to think is all that bad. Because he is still repeating the same falsehoods as ever about testing and mortality, which fell for a while, but is once again sadly, sickeningly, ticking up.”
Anderson then highlighted a statement from Trump on deaths, testing, and schools: “We have more cases because we’re doing more testing. We have more cases. If we did half the testing, we’d have far fewer cases but people don’t view it that way. What they have to view, though, is if you look at the chart … if you look at the chart of deaths, deaths are way down. What we want to do is get our schools open. We want to get them open quickly, beautifully in the fall.”
Anderson then pointed out Mike Pence’s complicity in all this.
“Dr. Fauci calls the mortality claims a false narrative. And in any case, those numbers, they had begun rising. More than 600 fatalities compared to 250 a day over the weekend, but the vice president nodded, of course, and agreed, and praised the president for his leadership, because that’s what he does, and he tried to spin the president’s lie about 99 percent of COVID cases being ‘totally harmless.'”
Said Pence: “Look, the American people know President Trump is an optimist and believes in this country and believes the American people deserve to have the whole story.”
“What does that even mean?” Anderson gasped. “The president doesn’t want you to know the whole story. If he wanted you to know the whole story, he wouldn’t have stopped the virus task force daily briefings and silenced Dr. Fauci and others from appearing on television like he used to. He wouldn’t claim that we are in a good place. President Trump is not an optimist, like the vice president is claiming, he’s a fabulist. The president can call a ‘lie’ a ‘hope,’ but it doesn’t make it so. It’s lipstick on a pig, Mr. Vice President. The American people, they do deserve the whole story. They deserve the whole truth, as well.”
Joe Biden may be 119 days from being elected president, but that isn’t stopping him from trying to help the nation right now. From the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, Donald Trump has downplayed the seriousness of the disease, criticized governors who have taken action to save citizens, hawked ineffective snake oil, and bragged about what a great job he’s doing. Through it all, Trump has resisted providing any real national plan. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to run testing stations “in some parking lot.” He doesn’t want states asking for supplies because the federal government “is not a shipping clerk.” And when it comes to anything COVID-19 related, Trump has made it clear that coming to the federal government is “the last resort.”
Oddly enough, Joe Biden believes that a nation should have a national plan. And unlike the Republican alternative to Obamacare—still missing in action after over 8 years—Biden’s COVID-19 plan actually exists. In fact, Biden is offering up the plan right now, and telling Donald Trump he can use it all. Because Biden’s plan would actually save American lives and American incomes.
A quick look at Biden’s plan shows that it’s exactly the kind of thing that healthcare professionals have been asking for since January. Which is absolutely not a bad thing. Rather than leading by his “great instincts,” Biden’s plan shows that he’s willing to listen to experts, act rationally, and use the power of the presidency to make things better for America. It’s almost like … leadership.
Here’s what Biden’s offering:
A national program of free, regular COVID-19 testing for everyone, managed by a Pandemic Testing Board that would coordinate the data and provide consistent access. This includes expanding drive through test sites and test availability until no one has to wait, or to expose themselves to potential risk, to be tested for COVID-19. That compares with Trump’s complete withdrawal of the pitiful few federally-managed test sites, the irregular, and unpredictable testing provided by many states, and results that are so difficult to obtain or so slow in coming that they’re worthless.
A national program of contact tracing that starts with at least 100,000 new hires and is dedicated to doing nothing but tracking COVID-19 cases, their contacts, and their progress through the healthcare system or in self-isolation. This would work in conjunction with states that are currently throwing up their hands at the impossibility of working through contacts with the available resources. Compare to nothing at all from Trump’s side, because apparently the federal government isn’t a clerk, or a manager, or worth a damn thing with Trump in charge.
A consistently managed, sustainable supply chain for PPE, test kits, and safety gear for healthcare workers. Four months into the pandemic, states are again complaining that masks, gowns, gloves, and face shields are all in short supply, just as cases are surging. Compare to Trump, who has set state against state, and dispatched arbitrary amounts of supplies, often punishing blue states for not praising him sufficiently by denying them needed supplies.
A team dedicated to looking ahead to needs that may crop up in the future, rather than just addressing the requests of states at the moment. Compare this with … whatever Jared is doing at the moment.
A national promise to provide healthcare workers with:
priority access to supplies of PPE.
additional pay for placing themselves at risk.
free housing to workers coming into crisis points.
information hotlines and trustworthy on-line consultation.
emotional-health support and psychological first aid with a promise that seeking help will not impact future employment.
emergency leave for workers who get sick, or need to care for a sick family member.
and no, there’s no comparison for any of this.
A coordinated global effort to develop treatments and vaccines that doesn’t depend on “a hunch” about any drug, doesn’t involve taking the U.S. our of the World Health Organization, and doesn’t involve the U.S. trying to buy drug manufacturers to deprive other nations of access. Compare with the opposite. Biden is promising to immediately restore the U. S. association with and commitment to the World Health Organization.
A guarantee that therapies and vaccines for COVID-19 will be made available to everyone, without allowing price gouging that limits benefits to the wealthy. Compare with … have you seen the price of remdesivir?
Consistent national guidelines for reopening businesses and schools that include protections for worker safety, guaranteed sick leave, and guaranteed leave for those caring for a family member. Biden’s plan would also provide systems by which consumers could know that stores were following safety guidelines and were “Safer for Shoppers” while providing small businesses with a “restart package” that would help them retain existing workers and hire new workers while dealing with necessary changes to their business. Compare with chaos, no guidelines, and shoppers being bullied for wearing a mask.
Finally, Biden’s plan would recognize something that Republicans keep saying—older Americans are at greater risk. But rather than treating this as an excuse to kill grandma to save Wall Street, Biden offers additional funding and testing to the elderly so that they can safely obtain the things they need and get care without facing increased risk.
Imagine if all of this had been implemented in May. Imagine if it had been implemented in March. Imagine if the plan had been spelled out in January and phased in as required.
America might now be mourning the two or three thousand who died in the COVID-19 peak that was crushed by national contact tracing in April. Shoppers would be visiting stores safely. Schools would be talking about reopening sensibly, knowing exactly the number of active cases in their area and that there were resources available to help them address any risk.
Compare with … Naw. Let’s just vote, so we don’t have to compare.
The Trump administration has officially withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization, according to a Democratic senator and multiple news reports. But the withdrawal process will take a year, so Trump may not be able to see it through.
"Congress received notification that POTUS officially withdrew the US from the WHO in the midst of a pandemic," Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) wrote on Twitter today. "To call Trump's response to COVID chaotic and incoherent doesn't do it justice. This won't protect American lives or interests—it leaves Americans sick and America alone."
According to The Hill, a senior Trump administration official confirmed today that "the White House has officially moved to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization."
Microsoft seems to be getting a kick out seeing users struggle to find Windows 10 features these days. After moving the Fresh Start feature in the latest version, 2004, and reducing the number of days Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education users can manually delay updates, the company is now experimenting with moving key Control Panel features, including System information, to Settings, Windows Latest blog spotted. From a report: It's a change that some long-time Windows users might not take to easily. If you're like me and have been using the Control Panel for decades, getting accustomed to this feature will be as arduous as unlearning a bad habit. To be fair, it's a bit redundant to have information on your system's specs located in three different places, not to mention all three don't show the exact same information. Currently, Windows 10 users can access hardware information about their PC in several places, but the main ways are: Control Panel > System and Security > System, and Settings > System > About, or by typing 'system information' into the search bar.
System and About show nearly the same info, what processor you have and how much RAM you have installed, for instance, except About will show you what version of Windows you have. System Information shows more detailed information about your PC, including your motherboard, GPU, and other hardware. Microsoft is trying to centralize this information, and moving forward, it seems likely that Control Panel will be killed off entirely.
A man, identified as Michael Lofthouse, the CEO of Solid8, an IT company based in San Francisco, launched an obscene racist rant at an Asian family celebrating a birthday at a restaurant in Carmel Vally, California.
The aftermath of the incident was captured on video by Jordan Chan, who said she had been singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her aunt at Bernardus Lodge and Spa’s Lucia restaurant when Lofthouse began yelling things at them like “F**k you Asians”, “Go back to whatever fucking Asian country you’re from”, and “You don’t belong here”.
In the video, Chan told Lofthouse to repeat what he said, and Lofthouse said, “F**k you. You f**kers need to leave. You Asian piece of sh*t” while giving the group the finger.”
The waitress stepped in and began yelling at Lofthouse: “You need to leave. No, you do not talk to our guests like that. You need to leave right now. Get out of here. You are not allowed here ever again.”
Chan told KION: “I’ve dealt with racism as well but never on that scale. Never on that level to the point where somebody completely unprovoked felt obligated to voice out their hatred for absolutely no reason, just because they’re filled with that much hatred and because what, because we’re different skin color.”
Chan posted another incidence of racism by Lofthouse following the encounter.
KION adds: “In addition to support Chan is receiving on social media, we’re learning people are showing support for the waitress in the video. We’re told she’s receiving donations online for how she handled the situation and plans to donate them tO the ACLU.”
The Bernardus Lodge issued a statement following the incident: “This is an extremely unfortunate situation, however we are proud of our staff at Lucia in keeping with Bernardus Lodge’s core values; this incident was handled swiftly and the diner was escorted off property without further escalation. We provide guests with a safe environment for lodging and dining, and extend our sincere apologies to the guests enjoying a birthday celebration on a holiday weekend.”
Heavy.com reports: “Records show that Lofthouse emigrated to the United States in 2010, originally living in New York City. Lofthouse graduated from Newcastle Business School in 2005. He studied business at the school, which is associated with Northumbria University, located in the northeast of England, according to his now-deleted LinkedIn page. Lofthouse’s Twitter page has been suspended due to a violation of Twitter’s rules.”
One of the few effective tools we have for slowing the spread of COVID-19 has been rendered ineffective in the southern states now experiencing record coronavirus infections. Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine told CNN host Anderson Cooper on Monday that the cases in those states "are rising so rapidly that we cannot even do contact tracing anymore. I don't see how it's possible to even do that."
COVID-19 infections are so now so prevalent in many areas, in other words, we simply can't determine where the infections are coming from or who else needs to be warned. In Arizona, around a fourth of all COVID-19 tests performed are coming back positive—a tell-tale symptom of rationed testing in which only the most obviously sick are receiving tests, and the wider public is not being tested at all. These states are now reaching uncontrolled and uncontrollable pandemic levels; we haven't yet seen for certain whether death counts will soar as they did in New York during the first wave of the pandemic, but there is absolutely no evidence suggesting they will not.
Congress has less than a month to hammer out a deal on the next round of stimulus before expanded unemployment benefits expire. State and local governments are starting to feel the pinch of budget shortfalls. And while the U.S. got a piece of (relatively) good news in last week’s jobs report, which featured an unemployment rate 2.2 percentage points lower in June than it had been in May, the economy has been thrown back into chaos in the meantime, with a number of states pulling back on their reopenings amid spiking COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.
Our newest survey of economists highlights just how consequential governmental decisions over the next month may be: On average, these economists think that a refusal by Congress to extend unemployment benefits or bail out state and local governments is just as likely to hurt the economy as local economies staying open in spite of COVID-19 spikes — or even closing because of the virus.
In partnership with the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, FiveThirtyEight asked 31 quantitative macroeconomic economists what they thought about a variety of subjects around the coronavirus recession and recovery efforts. The most recent survey was conducted from July 2 through 6, which means the June jobs report was fresh on respondents’ minds — but so was the state of the pandemic, along with challenges ahead for lawmakers.
“There’s a distinct risk that between now and November, Congress’s ability to continue fiscal support will be very limited by election-year politics,” said Jonathan Wright, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University who has been consulting with us on the design of the survey. “That could be more of a drag on the economy than the local and state shutdowns just because the effect would be so huge.”
With a congressional showdown looming, we asked the experts to estimate the probability that several policy decisions would have the biggest negative impact on U.S. gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2020. Among the five options we presented, the single most important to the economists was a decision by state and local governments to reclose their economies because of COVID-19 outbreaks. But a decision by Congress not to provide funding to state and local governments was close behind. And the weight given to choices made by the federal government — bailing out local governments, extending unemployment insurance and providing ongoing aid for small businesses — added up to be even more important when taken as a whole:
What are the biggest economic risk factors by year’s end?
Average probabilities that each scenario would have the largest negative impact on U.S. GDP in the fourth quarter, according to economists
Local or state response options
Avg. Probability
Decision to reverse local economic openings due to COVID-19 spikes
26%
Decision to keep local economies open despite COVID-19 spikes
17
Total
43
Federal response options
Not providing funding for state and local governments*
23%
Ending/reducing expansion of unemployment benefits
20
Ending/cutting back on aid to small businesses
14
Total
57
* Funding to address budget shortfalls associated with COVID-19.
The survey of 31 economists was conducted July 2-6.
“[State and local governments] are facing severe budget crises and will be laying off workers to balance their budgets,” said Julie Smith, a professor of economics at Lafayette College. That, she said, could lead to longer periods of high unemployment and financial pain for many households. Meanwhile, she added, cutting back or ending the federal unemployment extension would cause many people’s incomes to decline dramatically, leaving them with much less money to spend — which could make a big dent in GDP.
Perhaps for this reason, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the economists’ fourth-quarter real GDP predictions. When we last asked the panel for its forecast, it thought that GDP would be growing by 4.1 percent at the end of the year, a big improvement from the -28.2 percent quarter-over-quarter annualized growth it foresaw for the second quarter of 2020. This time around, the panel is calling for less negative growth (-25.5 percent) in the second quarter and a very similar fourth-quarter growth rate to last time (3.8 percent). But the range around that end-of-year forecast has gotten a lot wider — a sign of just how much things could go wrong. The gap between our consensus forecast’s 10th and 90th percentile predictions for fourth-quarter GDP growth was 10.9 percentage points in the last survey; now that gap is 12.8 percentage points, with almost all of the extra uncertainty coming in the form of downside risk. (The panel’s consensus 10th percentile GDP growth forecast has dropped from -2.0 percent to -3.5 percent.)
The economists weren’t especially optimistic about the trajectory of the unemployment rate over the course of 2020, either. The consensus prediction was that the unemployment rate in December would be 10.1 percent, which is only 1 percentage point lower than the rate in June — and is still comparable to the unemployment rate at the height of the Great Recession. Stephen Cecchetti, a professor of international finance at the Brandeis International Business School, pointed out that workers are increasingly likely to be losing their jobs permanently, rather than temporarily, which will make it harder for them to get back into the labor force. And he added that it will take time for the economy to adjust to a new reality where working from home is the norm, which could also keep the unemployment rate from falling quickly. Cecchetti was also among the economists who thought that in a worst-case scenario, the unemployment rate could skyrocket again by the end of the year.
“There are a lot of people who haven’t been exposed to the virus,” he said. “It’s not hard to imagine new outbreaks in places like New Jersey or Massachusetts that force us to shut down all over again.”
About half of the economists in the survey also thought the country’s top earners would end the year with an even greater share of the nation’s personal income. In order to get a sense of how much the panel thought the COVID-19 recession would increase income inequality, we asked about a new metric created by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which found that in 2016, households in the top 10 percent of incomes (adjusted for household size) accounted for 37.6 percent of the country’s personal income. Fifty percent of the respondents thought this number would be significantly higher by the end of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, while 47 percent thought it would be about the same. Only one respondent thought it would be lower.
“My best guess is that this pandemic is going to worsen income inequalities,” said Sarah Zubairy, a professor of economics at Texas A&M University. She hypothesized that this was because job loss has been concentrated among lower-wage workers who can’t do their jobs remotely, and who may find themselves ricocheting in and out of the labor force if states have to abruptly pull back their reopening plans.
And in another sign that the U.S. has been knocked off course by the virus — and the subsequent leadership response — our survey panel overwhelmingly believes (with 90 percent agreement) that China will beat both America and the European Union on the road back to pre-crisis real GDP levels. In retrospect, according to Wright, this was kind of a “no-brainer” because China’s economic growth so far has been quite swift, and it has tools to enact sweeping fiscal stimulus that aren’t available to less centrally controlled economies like the U.S. or the E.U. But some of this might also be based on the Chinese government’s reputation for — how should we put this? — releasing overly favorable public data. “When all is said and done, if they don’t like the actual data they can fudge the numbers,” Wright said. “Put those three things together, and there’s almost no way they can’t be the first back.”
Wright also pointed to another ominous result in the survey: 19 percent of respondents thought that the 10-year average real U.S. GDP growth rate would be reduced by 1 to 2 percent per year. To be sure, the vast majority (77 percent) of economists thought the 10-year average growth rate would be reduced by less, although only one person thought it would go up. But the responses were still alarming, Wright said, because they indicated a serious degree of pessimism about the speed with which the economy will not just return to where it was at the end of 2019, but also catch up with where it would have been if the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t happened.
However, Allan Timmermann, professor of finance and economics at the University of California, San Diego — who has also been consulting with us on the survey — was encouraged that the majority of respondents didn’t expect more long-term damage to growth. “This is still a large impact in terms of its cumulative effect on the economy,” he wrote in an email. “But it does suggest that most respondents think the economy will bounce back in due course — as opposed to leading us to a ‘lost decade’ scenario (as we have seen in Japan) with growth slowing down by an even larger amount.”
Overall, though, the latest survey responses paint a picture of America’s still-precarious road back to economic health. So much depends on the course of COVID-19 itself and how much the virus forces local economies to shut down again to slow its spread. But a lot is also riding on important policy decisions around the virus, which are still being debated. “I think economists have been surprised so far by the pace of the rebound,” Wright said. “But that hasn’t made them less worried about the weeks or months ahead.”
As of the end of the quarter, impeached racist Donald Trump had raised about $76 million more than presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. That’s ... a big difference. And while Biden has begun closing the gap in recent months, he may never make it up.
Now money isn’t the be-all, end-all of presidential politics. Hillary Clinton outraised Trump by $230 million in 2016. That’s not a typo. $230 million. Much of that is wasted on TV ads. When is the last time a 30- or 60-second spot changed anyone’s mind about Trump or Clinton or any other presidential candidate? Regardless, I would worry about it even less, because Trump is genuinely pissing his cash away.
We’ve already seen that Trump’s campaign spending has been less about winning votes and more about keeping Trump himself happy. That’s why it spent $400,000 on an ad buy in Washington, D.C.—the place that will give Biden his most lopsided victory. But you know who watches TV in Washington? Most of that ad buy was on Fox News, of course.
But $400,000 was presidential chump change. Now we’re seeing the first big money moves, and they look stupid.
We’ve seen a strong correlation between Trump’s job approval ratings and the states that are in play this November. So let’s start there.
In short, any state bathed in blue (approves of Trump) is safe Republican. Any mid- or dark-orange state is safe Democratic. It’s the light-colored states that are in play, and here they are:
Net Trump
job approval
2016 Trump
win margin
Michigan
-13
+0.2
Arizona
-12
+3.5
Pennsylvania
-11
+0.7
Iowa
-10
+10
North Carolina
-10
+4
Wisconsin
-9
+0.8
Florida
-8
+2.2
Georgia
-7
+5
Ohio
-5
+8
Montana
-4
+21
Alaska
-2
+15
Texas
-1
+9
The only state that looks out of place is Iowa, otherwise I’d predict that these are 2016 Trump states in order of likelihood of turning blue this year. (I’d put Iowa after Georgia.)
That’s why when I talk about Montana, Alaska, Iowa, and Texas becoming competitive, I’m less interested in their electoral votes (as nice as they would be) and more interested in the impact that would have on down-ballot races. All four of these states have important Senate races, all four have important House races, and all four of them have important down ballot state-level races. The better Biden does, the better our down-ballot candidates will fare.
But for presidential purposes, if Biden wins Iowa, he’s already won Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, and with them 279 electoral votes and the victory (which is 270). If Biden wins Ohio, he’s already won Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, and Georgia, with a healthy 334 electoral votes. Ohio’s 18 electoral votes would look nice added to that total, but they are unnecessary for presidential victory.
Make sense? One of Clinton’s big mistakes in 2016 was spending to expand the map in Arizona and Georgia without locking down the core states needed for victory. If Biden spends every dime on his core seven states—Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that would be totally okay. Everything after that is just gravy, and we don’t need gravy, as delicious as it might be.
So how is Trump wasting his money? By spending money in Iowa, Ohio, and other reach Biden states. He just plopped down a cool $18.4 million in Ohio while only reserving $7.4 million in Wisconsin and $5.2 million in Arizona. Michigan isn’t even on the list. How does that even remotely make sense? There is no scenario in which Ohio will be a deciding state. Interestingly, the Trump campaign claims their polling is showing them with a “wide” lead in Ohio. $18.4 million says they’re lying.
During the primary season, Trump spent $7 million in Iowa in order to … what exactly? And he’s kept spending there ever since. In Texas, Trump was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars last year, telegraphic fear of his weak electoral standing in what should be a safe Republican state (for now). The state, along with Iowa and Ohio, was part of the campaign’s $14 million ad blitz in June.
Exactly. Nothing. The chart looks the same in every other battleground state. Because people aren’t making presidential voting decisions based on what they see on TV. They don’t need an ad to understand Trump’s values, his priorities, or his “leadership” style. His messaging is clear, and directed straight to his rabid QAnon and Boogaloo base. And his performance speaks for itself—in body bags. No ad will ever overcome the disadvantages of who and what Trump himself represents.
We don’t even need to get into the effectiveness of those ads, do we? Look at this ridiculous Trump digital ad and then ask yourself: “Who the hell would be convinced to support Trump as a result?”
That’s not the only way the campaign is wasting money. As of mid-May, the campaign had already spent over $16 million on legal fees. For comparison’s sake, Biden’s campaign had spent $1.3 million at that time. Every time the campaign “sues” CNN or another outlet for a poll it doesn’t like, or unflattering coverage, or airing a negative campaign ad, his supporters get fleeced. It makes Trump feel good and happy! Suing people is among his favorite things! But it’s not smart stewardship of campaign resources.
None of this is really a surprise. Trump is literally the guy who went bankrupt running a casino, a business that essentially prints money. His bankruptcies are legion. And he’s shown time and time again that he feels no particular need to safeguard the trust of his investors, much less that of his donors.
So the moral of the story? Money isn’t everything in presidential politics—just ask Hillary Clinton. And when it comes to Trump’s war chest, assume he’s going to piss away a good amount of that cash, because he already has.
Mississippi took an image of the Confederate battle flag off its state flag. NASCAR banned the Confederate flag. The Marine Corps ordered the Confederate flag be removed from its public and work spaces, and the Navy is moving toward doing the same. The Defense Department overall, though? Ehhh … it’s starting to think about maybe possibly banning the flag of a traitor nation at some point.
An unnamed official “said the draft policy being considered at the Pentagon’s highest levels would build on recent moves by military services to bar Confederate symbols on facilities they control and, if approved, would represent the first Defense Department-wide prohibition of such iconography,” The Washington Post reports.
Donald Trump will not be happy, and Defense Department leaders know that. Trump has railed against NASCAR for its Confederate flag ban, and he has railed against moves to rename military bases that currently bear the names of Confederate leaders. Trump has even threatened to veto a defense authorization bill over the issue.
That’s how much Donald Trump loves this symbol of racism and slavery.
“For more than a century, the flag was used extensively by the Ku Klux Klan as it waged a campaign of terror against Black Americans after the Civil War and during the civil rights movement, as segregationists in positions of power raised it in defense of discriminatory Jim Crow laws, and in the continuance of a false narrative of white racial superiority,” the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Lecia Brooks wrote last month. “Our public entities, especially our military assets, should no longer play a role in distorting history by honoring a secessionist government that waged war against the United States to preserve white supremacy and the enslavement of millions of people.”
The ban the Pentagon is considering would not apply to the inside of barracks rooms or to things like bumper stickers on personal vehicles. Just the public, official spaces of the United States military.
Idiocy has a price, and FL is going to be paying it for a long time.
Carsyn Davis, a 17-year-old with preexisting health issues who is one of the youngest in Florida to die from COVID-19, attended a church function with 100 other children two weeks before her death, and was treated with the Trump-touted drug hydroxychloroquine, which is potentially lethal.
NBC2 reports: “The ME’s report said on June 10, Carsyn attended a ‘church function.’ NBC2 has confirmed it was a youth church event hosted by First Assembly of God in Fort Myers. The medical examiner reported Carsyn was ‘with 100 other children. She did not wear a mask. Social distancing not followed.’ From June 10 through June 15, the report said Carsyn’s mother, a nurse, and her stepfather, a physician’s assistant, prophylactically treated her with azithromycin, an antibiotic. But on June 13, she developed symptoms: a headache, sinus pressure, and a mild cough. The report said her family thought she had a sinus infection.”
Davis’s mom’s Facebook page “is awash in QAnon conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine and coronavirus misinformation and dubious legal theories” according to Raw Story.
“Carsyn’s symptoms persisted, and on June 19, the medical examiner reported Carsyn’s mother noted she looked ‘gray’ while sleeping,” NBC2 continues. “Her mother discovered her oxygen levels were low, so she gave Carsyn some of her grandfather’s oxygen. The report said her parents also gave her hydroxychloroquine.”
Donald Trump’s silence over the Russian scheme to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan hasn’t been getting much press, displaced from the headlines by Trump’s own schemes for killing wholesale volumes of American civilians in America. But never let it be said that Trump can’t multitask. Trump can hate everyone who tries to inject any semblance of reality into the nation’s planning for the coronavirus pandemic, and Trump can hate everyone who spilled the beans on how he kept chatting up Vladimir Putin months after he was aware that Putin had put contracts on Americans.
As Politico reports, Trump is engaged in an internal investigation to locate and punish the people who let slip both the knowledge of Russia’s efforts to buy American deaths in Afghanistan, and the people who keep making it clear that Trump knew about the scheme for over a year. But this is just the latest in Trump’s long line of efforts to determine who stole the strawberries. And just as likely to succeed.
Whistleblowers of any sort have long been on Trump’s naughty list. His own twisted sense of morality requires that personal loyalty to Trump trumps all other concerns—even when Trump is in the midst of plans that could harm large numbers of people or the nation. Even when he’s doing something purely illegal. Trump made it clear that he was perfectly willing to breech both the spirit and the letter of whistleblower protection laws during his impeachment (Reminder: Donald Trump was impeached!) and the purge of inspectors general shows that Trump is out to get the tattletales, no matter where they live. Who watches the watchmen? No one, as far as Trump is concerned.
Trump is still engaged in announced investigations of who posted an anonymous op-ed back in September of 2018 that said, among other things, “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” And Trump is still looking for the person who distributed internal schedules in 2019showing that Trump spent well over half his time either thumbing buttons on Twitter, or appreciating the softness of the Charmin, in unstructured “executive time.”
And now even more of Trump’s White House is involved in investigating those scoundrels at … Trump’s White House, this time in an effort to catch whoever let slip the Russian bounty scheme, and then kept making if obvious that Trump knew. Because he did. As a quick reminder:
Trump was personally briefed on the Russian operation by John Bolton over a year ago.
Trump received updates on the scheme at multiple points, including a February 27 daily brief.
Trump has called Putin at least five times since March, with the content of those phone calls unknown.
Trump has made repeated demands, despite knowing that Russia was both conducting a proxy war against American forces and engaged in an effort to thwart peace negotiations in Afghanistan, to have Russia readmitted to the G7, and threatened to invite Putin personally if other nations did not agree.
Amusing as it may be to see how much effort Trump puts into chasing his own tail, it’s even more frustrating that all of these whistleblowers are content to remain whistleblowers. Again and again, members of Trump’s staff have spoken up to denounce his policies after they’ve been removed from office—and often after they’ve secured a book contract so they can collect a check for describing just how dysfunctional things are within Trump’s regime. But none of them seem to be willing to step forward openly and immediately when seeing Trump engaged in behavior harmful to the nation.
There should always be whistleblower protections, and the information brought forward by these women and men is invaluable. But the fear with which insiders continue to regard Trump is frustrating specifically because Trump mistakes that fear for respect.
A man wearing a “Running the World Since 1776′ t-shirt was captured on video flipping out at Costco in Fort Myers, Florida after an elderly woman asked him to wear a mask. The incident is said to have taken place on June 27, but has recently gone viral.
“You’re harassing me. I feel threatened,” the man screamed, presumably spraying spittle everywhere and advancing toward another man who had reportedly come to defend the elderlywoman. “Back off! Threaten me again. Back the f**k up put your f**king phone down.”
One of the customers targeted by the man reportedly said Costco handled the incident well: “To give Costco the credit, they escorted him out and made me wait inside and monitored him until he left and then they send someone with me to the car to make sure I’m okay.”
This occurred at the Gulf Coast Town Center location on 6/27 and one of the customers targeted said: "To give Costco the credit, they escorted him out and made me wait inside and monitored him until he left and then they send someone with me to the care to make sure I'm okay."
Boing Boing adds: “Posters on social media speculated that the man yelling ‘I feel threatened!’, despite being the aggressor, is an attempt to pre-emtively invoke Florida’s “stand your ground” law. This law allows the use of deadly force if one is threatened or attacked in public and imposes no duty to retreat. “
Police officers line up by the AFL-CIO building during a stand-off between law enforcement officers and protesters at the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC, on June 23. | Astrid Riecken/Washington Post/Getty Images
Inside the distinctive, largely unknown ideology of American policing — and how it justifies racist violence.
Arthur Rizer is a former police officer and 21-year veteran of the US Army, where he served as a military policeman. Today, he heads the criminal justice program at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank in DC. And he wants you to know that American policing is even more broken than you think.
“That whole thing about the bad apple? I hate when people say that,” Rizer tells me. “The bad apple rots the barrel. And until we do something about the rotten barrel, it doesn’t matter how many good fucking apples you put in.”
To illustrate the problem, Rizer tells a story about a time he observed a patrol by some officers in Montgomery, Alabama. They were called in to deal with a woman they knew had mental illness; she was flailing around and had cut someone with a broken plant pick. To subdue her, one of the officers body-slammed her against a door. Hard.
Rizer recalls that Montgomery officers were nervous about being watched during such a violent arrest — until they found out he had once been a cop. They didn’t actually have any problem with what one of them had just done to the woman; in fact, they started laughing about it.
“It’s one thing to use force and violence to affect an arrest. It’s another thing to find it funny,” he tells me. “It’s just pervasive throughout policing. When I was a police officer and doing these kind of ride-alongs [as a researcher],you see the underbelly of it. And it’s ... gross.”
America’s epidemic of police violence is not limited to what’s on the news. For every high-profile story of a police officer killing an unarmed Black person or tear-gassing peaceful protesters, there are many, many allegations of police misconduct you don’t hear about — abuses ranging from excessive use of force to mistreatment of prisoners to planting evidence. African Americans are arrested and roughed up by cops at wildly disproportionate rates, relative to both their overall share of the population and the percentage of crimes they commit.
Something about the way police relate to the communities they’re tasked with protecting has gone wrong. Officers aren’t just regularly treating people badly; a deep dive into the motivations and beliefs of police reveals that too many believe they are justified in doing so.
To understand how the police think about themselves and their job, I interviewed more than a dozen former officers and experts on policing. These sources, ranging from conservatives to police abolitionists, painted a deeply disturbing picture of the internal culture of policing.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Police officers confront protesters in front of City Hall in New York City on July 1.
Police officers across America have adopted a set of beliefs about their work and its role in our society. The tenets of police ideology are not codified or written down, but are nonetheless widely shared in departments around the country.
The ideology holds that the world is a profoundly dangerous place: Officers are conditioned to see themselves as constantly in danger and that the only way to guarantee survival is to dominate the citizens they’re supposed to protect. The police believe they’re alone in this fight; police ideology holds that officers are under siege by criminals and are not understood or respected by the broader citizenry. These beliefs, combined with widely held racial stereotypes, push officers toward violent and racist behavior during intense and stressful street interactions.
In that sense, police ideology can help us understand the persistence of officer-involved shootings and the recent brutal suppression of peaceful protests. In a culture where Black people are stereotyped as more threatening, Black communities are terrorized by aggressive policing, with officers acting less like community protectors and more like an occupying army.
The beliefs that define police ideology are neither universally shared among officers nor evenly distributed across departments. There are more than 600,000 local police officers across the country and more than 12,000 local police agencies. The officer corps has gotten more diverse over the years, with women, people of color, and LGBTQ officers making up a growing share of the profession. Speaking about such a group in blanket terms would do a disservice to the many officers who try to serve with care and kindness.
However, the officer corps remains overwhelmingly white, male, and straight. Federal Election Commission data from the 2020 cycle suggests that police heavily favor Republicans. And it is indisputable that there are commonly held beliefs among officers.
“The fact that not every department is the same doesn’t undermine the point that there are common factors that people can reasonably identify as a police culture,” says Tracey Meares, the founding director of Yale University’s Justice Collaboratory.
The danger imperative
In 1998, Georgia sheriff’s deputy Kyle Dinkheller pulled over a middle-aged white man named Andrew Howard Brannan for speeding. Brannan, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD, refused to comply with Dinkheller’s instructions. He got out of the car and started dancing in the middle of the road, singing “Here I am, shoot me” over and over again.
In the encounter, recorded by the deputy’s dashcam, things then escalate: Brannan charges at Dinkheller; Dinkheller tells him to “get back.” Brannan heads back to the car — only to reemerge with a rifle pointed at Dinkheller. The officer fires first, and misses; Brannan shoots back. In the ensuing firefight, both men are wounded, but Dinkheller far more severely. It ends with Brannan standing over Dinkheller, pointing the rifle at the deputy’s eye. He yells — “Die, fucker!” — and pulls the trigger.
The dashcam footage of Dinkheller’s killing, widely known among cops as the “Dinkheller video,” is burned into the minds of many American police officers. It is screened in police academies around the country; one training turns it into a video game-style simulation in which officers can change the ending by killing Brannan. Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who killed Philando Castile during a 2016 traffic stop, was shown the Dinkheller video during his training.
“Every cop knows the name ‘Dinkheller’ — and no one else does,” says Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who currently teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
The purpose of the Dinkheller video, and many others like it shown at police academies, is to teach officers that any situation could escalate to violence. Cop killers lurk around every corner.
It’s true that policing is a relatively dangerous job. But contrary to the impression the Dinkheller video might give trainees, murders of police are not the omnipresent threat they are made out to be. The number of police killings across the country has been falling for decades; there’s been a 90 percent drop in ambush killings of officers since 1970. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, about 13 per 100,000 police officers died on the job in 2017. Compare that to farmers (24 deaths per 100,000), truck drivers (26.9 per 100,000), and trash collectors (34.9 per 100,000). But police academies and field training officers hammer home the risk of violent death to officers again and again.
It’s not just training and socialization, though: The very nature of the job reinforces the sense of fear and threat. Law enforcement isn’t called to people’s homes and streets when things are going well. Officers constantly find themselves thrown into situations where a seemingly normal interaction has gone haywire — a marital argument devolving into domestic violence, for example.
“For them, any scene can turn into a potential danger,” says Eugene Paoline III, a criminologist at the University of Central Florida. “They’re taught, through their experiences, that very routine events can go bad.”
Michael Sierra-Arevalo, a professor at Rutgers University, calls the police obsession with violent death “the danger imperative.” After conducting 1,000 hours of interviews with 94 police officers, he found that the risk of violent death occupies an extraordinary amount of mental space for many officers — far more so than it should, given the objective risks.
Here’s what I mean: According to the past 20 years of FBI data on officer fatalities, 1,001 officers have been killed by firearms while 760 have died in car crashes. For this reason, police officers are, like the rest of us, required to wear seat belts at all times.
In reality, many choose not to wear them even when speeding through city streets. Sierra-Arevalo rode along with one police officer, whom he calls officer Doyle, during a car chase where Doyle was going around 100 miles per hour — and still not wearing a seat belt. Sierra-Arevalo asked him why he did things like this. Here’s what Doyle said:
There’s times where I’ll be driving and the next thing you know I’ll be like, ‘Oh shit, that dude’s got a fucking gun!’ I’ll stop [mimics tires screeching], try to get out — fuck. Stuck on the seat belt … I’d rather just be able to jump out on people, you know. If I have to, be able to jump out of this deathtrap of a car.
Despite the fact that fatal car accidents are a risk for police, officers like Doyle prioritize their ability to respond to one specific shooting scenario over the clear and consistent benefits of wearing a seat belt.
“Knowing officers consistently claim safety is their primary concern, multiple drivers not wearing a seatbelt and speeding towards the same call should be interpreted as an unacceptable danger; it is not,” Sierra-Arevalo writes. “The danger imperative — the preoccupation with violence and the provision of officer safety — contributes to officer behaviors that, though perceived as keeping them safe, in fact put them in great physical danger.”
This outsized attention to violence doesn’t just make officers a threat to themselves. It’s also part of what makes them a threat to citizens.
Because officers are hyper-attuned to the risks of attacks, they tend to believe that they must always be prepared to use force against them — sometimes even disproportionate force. Many officers believe that, if they are humiliated or undermined by a civilian, that civilian might be more willing to physically threaten them.
Scholars of policing call this concept “maintaining the edge,” and it’s a vital reason why officers seem so willing to employ force that appears obviously excessive when captured by body cams and cellphones.
“To let down that edge is perceived as inviting chaos, and thus danger,” Moskos says.
In these situations, the officers aren’t always threatened with a deadly weapon: Floyd, for example, was unarmed. But when the officer decides the suspect is disrespecting them or resisting their commands, they feel the need to use force to reestablish the edge.
They need to make the suspect submit to their authority.
A siege mentality
Police officers today tend to see themselves as engaged in a lonely, armed struggle against the criminal element. They are judged by their effectiveness at that task, measured by internal data such as arrest numbers and crime rates in the areas they patrol. Officers believe these efforts are underappreciated by the general public; according to a 2017 Pew report, 86 percent of police believe the public doesn’t really understand the “risks and challenges” involved in their job.
Rizer, the former officer and R Street researcher, recently conducted a separate large-scale survey of American police officers. One of the questions he asked was whether they would want their children to become police officers. A majority, around 60 percent, said no — for reasons that, in Rizer’s words, “blew me away.”
“The vast majority of people that said ‘no, I don’t want them to become a police officer’ was because they felt like the public no longer supported them — and that they were ‘at war’ with the public,” he tells me. “There’s a ‘me versus them’ kind of worldview, that we’re not part of this community that we’re patrolling.”
You can see this mentality on display in the widespread police adoption of an emblem called the “thin blue line.” In one version of the symbol, two black rectangles are separated by a dark blue horizontal line. The rectangles represent the public and criminals, respectively; the blue line separating them is the police.
In another, the blue line replaces the central white stripe in a black-and-white American flag, separating the stars from the stripes below. During the recent anti-police violence protests in Cincinnati, Ohio, officers raised this modified banner outside their station.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
A demonstrator holds a “thin blue line” flag and a sign in support of police during a protest outside the governor’s mansion in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 27.
In the “thin blue line” mindset, loyalty to the badge is paramount; reporting excessive force or the use of racial slurs by a colleague is an act of treason. This emphasis on loyalty can create conditions for abuses, even systematic ones, to take place: Officers at one station in Chicago, Illinois, tortured at least 125 Black suspects between 1972 and 1991. These crimes were uncovered by the dogged work of an investigative journalist rather than a police whistleblower.
“Officers, when they get wind that something might be wrong, either participate init themselves when they’re commanded to — or they actively ignore it, find ways to look the other way,” says Laurence Ralph, a Princeton professor and the author of The Torture Letters, a recent book on the abuses in Chicago.
This insularity and siege mentality is not universal among American police. Worldviews vary from person to person and department to department; many officers are decent people who work hard to get to know citizens and address their concerns.
But it is powerful enough, experts say, to distort departments across the country. It has seriously undermined some recent efforts to reorient the police toward working more closely with local communities, generally pushing departments away from deep engagement with citizens and toward a more militarized and aggressive model.
“The police have been in the midst of an epic ideological battle. It’s been taking place ever since the supposed community policing revolution started back in the 1980s,” says Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. “In the last 10 to 15 years, the more toxic elements have been far more influential.”
Since the George Floyd protests began, police have tear-gassed protesters in 100 different US cities. This is not an accident or the result of behaviors by a few bad apples. Instead, it reflects the fact that officers see themselves as at war — and the protesters as the enemies.
A 2017 study by Heidi Reynolds-Stenson, a sociologist at Colorado State University-Pueblo, examined data on 7,000 protests from 1960 to 1995. She found that “police are much more likely to try to quell protests that criticize police conduct.”
“Recent scholarship argues that, over the last twenty years, protest policing [has gotten] more aggressive and less impartial,” Reynolds-Stenson concludes. “The pattern of disproportionate repression of police brutality protests found in this study may be even more pronounced today.”
There’s a reason that, after New York Police Department Lt. Robert Cattani kneeled alongside Black Lives Matter protesters on May 31, he sent an email to his precinct apologizing for the “horrible decision to give into a crowd of protesters’ demands.” In his mind, the decision to work with the crowd amounted to collaboration with the enemy.
“The cop in me,” Cattani wrote, “wants to kick my own ass.”
Anti-Blackness
Policing in the United States has always been bound up with the color line. In the South, police departments emerged out of 18th century slave patrols — bands of men working to discipline slaves, facilitate their transfer between plantations, and catch runaways. In the North, professional police departments came about as a response to a series of mid-19th century urban upheavals — many of which, like the 1834 New York anti-abolition riot, had their origins in racial strife.
When talking about race in policing and the way it relates to police ideology, there are two related phenomena to think about.
The first is overt racism. In some police departments, the culture permits a minority of racists on the force to commit brutal acts of racial violence with impunity.
Examples of explicit racism abound in police officer conduct. The following three incidents were reported in the past month alone:
In leaked audio, Wilmington, North Carolina, officer Kevin Piner said, “we are just going to go out and start slaughtering [Blacks],” adding that he “can’t wait” for a new civil war so whites could “wipe them off the fucking map.” Piner was dismissed from the force, as were two other officers involved in the conversation.
Joey Lawn, a 10-year veteran of the Meridian, Mississippi, force, was fired for using an unspecified racial slur against a Black colleague during a 2018 exercise. Lawn’s boss, John Griffith, was demoted from captain to lieutenant for failing to punish Lawn at the time.
Four officers in San Jose, California, were put on administrative leave amid an investigation into their membership in a secret Facebook group. In a public post, officer Mark Pimentel wrote that “black lives don’t really matter”; in another private one, retired officer Michael Nagel wrote about female Muslim prisoners: “i say we repurpose the hijabs into nooses.”
In all of these cases, superiors punished officers for their offensive comments and actions — but only after they came to light. It’s safe to say a lot more go unreported.
Last April, a human resources manager in San Francisco’s city government quit after spending two years conducting anti-bias training for the city’s police force. In an exit email sent to his boss and the city’s police chief, he wrote that “the degree of anti-black sentiment throughout SFPD is extreme,” adding that “while there are some at SFPD who possess somewhat of a balanced view of racism and anti-blackness, there are an equal number (if not more) — who possess and exude deeply rooted anti-black sentiments.”
Psychological research suggests that white officers are disproportionately likely to demonstrate a personality trait called “social dominance orientation.” Individuals with high levels of this trait tend to believe that existing social hierarchies are not only necessary, but morally justified — that inequalities reflect the way that things actually should be. The concept was originally formulated in the 1990s as a way of explaining why some people are more likely to accept what a group of researchers termed “ideologies that promote or maintain group inequality,” including “the ideology of anti-Black racism.”
Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images
A demonstrator walks past a mural for George Floyd during a protest near the White House in Washington, DC, on June 4.
This helps us understand why some officers are more likely to use force against Black suspects, even unarmed ones. Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychologist at John Jay and the CEO of the Center for Policing Equity think tank, has done forthcoming research on the distribution of social dominance orientation among officers in three different cities. Goff and his co-authors found that white officers who score very highly in this trait tend to use force more frequently than those who don’t.
“If you think the social hierarchy is good, then maybe you’re more willing to use violence from the state’s perspective to enforce that hierarchy — and you think that’s your job,” he tells me.
But while the problem of overt racism and explicit commitment to racial hierarchy is a serious one, it’s not necessarily the central problem in modern policing.
The second manifestation of anti-Blackness is more subtle. The very nature of policing, in which officers perform a dizzying array of stressful tasks for long hours, brings out the worst in people. The psychological stressors combine with police ideology and widespread cultural stereotypes to push officers, even ones who don’t hold overtly racist beliefs, to treat Black people as more suspect and more dangerous. It’s not just the officers who are the problem; it’s the society they come from, and the things that society asks them to do.
While overt racists may be overrepresented on police forces, the average white officer’s beliefs are not all that different from those of the average white person in their local community. According to Goff, tests of racial bias reveal somewhat higher rates of prejudice among officers than the general population, but the effect size tends to be swamped by demographic and regional effects.
“If you live in a racist city, that’s going to matter more for how racist your law enforcement is ... than looking at the difference between law enforcement and your neighbors,” he told me.
In this sense, the rising diversity of America’s officer corps should make a real difference. If you draw from a demographically different pool of recruits, one with overall lower levels of racial bias, then there should be less of a problem with racism on the force.
There’s some data to back this up. Pew’s 2017 survey of officers found that Black officers and female officers were considerably more sympathetic to anti-police brutality protesters than white ones. A 2016 paper on officer-involved killings of Black people, from Yale’s Joscha Legewie and Columbia’s Jeffrey Fagan, found that departments with a larger percentage of Black officers had lower rates of killings of Black people.
But scholars caution that diversity will not, on its own, solve policing’s problems. In Pew’s survey, 60 percent of Hispanic and white officers said their departments had “excellent” or “good” relations with the local Black community, while only 32 percent of Black officers said the same. The hierarchy of policing remains extremely white — across cities, departmental brass and police unions tend to be disproportionately white relative to the rank-and-file. And the existing culture in many departments pushes nonwhite officers to try and fit in with what’s been established by the white hierarchy.
“We have seen that officers of color actually face increased pressure to fit into the existing culture of policing and may go out of their way to align themselves with traditional police tactics,” says Shannon Portillo, a scholar of bureaucratic culture at the University of Kansas-Edwards.
There’s a deeper problem than mere representation. The very nature of policing, both police ideology and the nuts-and-bolts nature of the job, can bring out the worst in people — especially when it comes to deep-seated racial prejudices and stereotypes.
The intersection of commonly held stereotypes with police ideology can prime officers for abusive behavior, especially when they’re patrolling majority-Black neighborhoods where residents have long-standing grievances against the cops. Some kind of incident with a Black citizen is certain to set off a confrontation; officers will eventually feel the need to escalate well beyond what seems necessary or even acceptable from the outside to protect themselves.
“The drug dealer — if he says ‘fuck you’ one day, it’s like getting punked on the playground. You have to go through that every day,” says Moskos, the former Baltimore officer. “You’re not allowed to get punked as a cop, not just because of your ego but because of the danger of it.”
The problems with ideology and prejudice are dramatically intensified by the demanding nature of the policing profession. Officers work a difficult job for long hours, called upon to handle responsibilities ranging from mental health intervention to spousal dispute resolution. While on shift, they are constantly anxious, searching for the next threat or potential arrest.
Stress gets to them even off the job; PTSD and marital strife are common problems. It’s a kind of negative feedback loop: The job makes them stressed and nervous, which damages their mental health and personal relationships, which raises their overall level of stress and makes the job even more taxing.
According to Goff, it’s hard to overstate how much more likely people are to be racist under these circumstances. When you put people under stress, they tend to make snap judgments rooted in their basic instincts. For police officers, raised in a racist society and socialized in a violent work atmosphere, that makes racist behavior inevitable.
“The mission and practice of policing is not aligned with what we know about how to keep people from acting on the kinds of implicit biases and mental shortcuts,” he says. “You could design a job where that’s not how it works. We have not chosen to do that for policing.”
Across the United States, we have created a system that makes disproportionate police targeting of Black citizens an inevitability. Officers don’t need to be especially racist as compared to the general population for discrimination to recur over and over; it’s the nature of the police profession, the beliefs that permeate it, and the situations in which officers find themselves that lead them to act in racist ways.
This reality helps us understand why the current protests have been so forceful: they are an expression of long-held rage against an institution that Black communities experience less as a protection force and more as a sort of military occupation.
David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Police officers often represent more of a military occupation than a protection force for Black communities.
In one landmark project, a team including Yale’s Meares and Hopkins’s Vesla Weaver facilitated more than 850 conversations about policing among residents of six different cities, finding a pervasive sense of police lawlessness among residents of highly policed Black communities.
Residents believe that police see them as subhuman or animal, that interactions with officers invariably end with arrests and/or physical assaults, and that the Constitution’s protections against police abuse don’t apply to Black people.
“[It’s often said that] if you don’t have anything on you, just agree to a search and everything will be okay. Let me tell you, that’s not what happens,” Weaver tells me, summarizing the beliefs of her research subjects. “What actually happens is that you’re bound to get beat up, you’re bound to get dragged to the station. The police can search you for whatever. We don’t get due process, we don’t get restitution — this is what we live by.”
Police don’t treat whole communities like this because they’re born worse or more evil than civilians. It’s better to understand the majority of officers as ordinary Americans who are thrown into a system that conditions them to be violent and to treat Black people, in particular, as the enemy. While some departments are better than others at ameliorating this problem, there’s not a city in the country that appears to have solved it entirely.
Rizer summarizes the problem by telling me about one new officer’s experience in Baltimore.
“This was a great young man,” Rizer says. “He joined the Baltimore Police Department because he wanted to make a difference.”
Six months after this man graduated from the academy, Rizer checked in on him to see how he was doing. It wasn’t good.
“They’re animals. All of them,” Rizer recalls the young officer telling him. “The cops, the people I patrol, everybody. They’re just fucking animals.”
This man was, in Rizer’s mind, “the embodiment of what a good police officer should have been.” Some time after their conversation, he quit the force — pushed out by a system that takes people in and breaks them, on both sides of the law.
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