AMD has exceeded its goal to improve the energy efficiency of its mobile processors by 25 times by 2020. According to Thurrott, " The new AMD Ryzen 7 4800H mobile processor improves on the energy efficiency of the 2014 baseline measurement by 31.7 times, the firm says, while offering 'leadership performance' for portable PCs." From the report: "We have always focused on energy efficiency in our processors, but in 2014 we decided to put even greater emphasis on this capability," AMD CTO Mark Papermaster says in a prepared statement. "Our engineering team rallied around the challenge and charted a path to reach our stretch goal of 25 times greater energy efficiency by 2020. We were able to far surpass our objective, achieving 31.7 times improvement leading to gaming and ultrathin laptops with unmatched performance, graphics and long battery life. I could not be prouder of our engineering and business teams."
As AMD notes, greater energy efficiency leads to significant real-world benefits, including improved battery life, better performance, lower energy costs, and reduced environmental impact from computing. And with the focus in mobile computing hardware switching to performance-per-watt these days, AMD is trying to position itself as the traditional PC chipmaker that can rise to the ARM challenge.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: House Democrats yesterday unveiled a $100 billion broadband plan that's gaining quick support from consumer advocates. "The House has a universal fiber broadband plan we should get behind," Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Legislative Counsel Ernesto Falcon wrote in a blog post. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC.) announced the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act, saying it has more than 30 co-sponsors and "invests $100 billion to build high-speed broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved communities and ensure that the resulting Internet service is affordable." The bill text is available here.
In addition to federal funding for broadband networks with speeds of at least 100Mbps downstream and upstream, the bill would eliminate state laws that prevent the growth of municipal broadband. There are currently 19 states with such laws. The Clyburn legislation targets those states with this provision: "No State statute, regulation, or other State legal requirement may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting any public provider, public-private partnership provider, or cooperatively organized provider from providing, to any person or any public or private entity, advanced telecommunications capability or any service that utilizes the advanced telecommunications capability provided by such provider." The bill also has a Dig Once requirement that says fiber or fiber conduit must be installed "as part of any covered highway construction project" in states that receive federal highway funding. Similar Dig Once mandates have been proposed repeatedly over the years and gotten close to becoming US law, but never quite made it past the finish line.
When state leaders got on a conference call with President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force on Monday, a sense of alarm over the spike in cases sweeping the South and West was palpable.
Yet as daily new infections climbed above 30,000 for the first time since May 1, Vice President Mike Pence repeated the same assurance offered by Trump at his rally in Oklahoma two days earlier: The spike is largely due to increased testing.
A task force official said Pence was referencing what many governors had previously observed — that the increased numbers in their states were because of expanded testing — and that he was simply urging them to explain that situation to their constituents. But to others on the call, the exchange was emblematic of the lack of meaningful federal guidance from the task force, even as states wrestle with new contagions that threaten to erase weeks of steady progress.
Participants on the weekly calls say the federal officials — a rotating cast led by Pence that often includes task force coordinator Deborah Birx and testing czar Brett Giroir — rarely deviate from Trump’s view that the pandemic response is a success. The tone is usually optimistic, with Pence highlighting governors that are reopening their economies and officials making clear that while they’re sharing their insights, it’s up to the governors to make their own determinations.
“What we’ve heard over the last two calls is them adhering to this message that the president keeps lifting up,” said one state official, who requested anonymity to describe the private discussions. “Which is, there are not outbreaks, there are not increases in cases — you’re only seeing more cases because we’re doing more testing.”
The officials’ posture on the calls is consistent with Trump’s long-telegraphed desire to shift responsibility for managing the outbreaks to the states. But it’s prompted rising frustration among state officials and the public health experts advising them. They expressed a desire for more extensive federal guidance on how to identify hot spots and reduce infections, along with better data tools and more on-the-ground resources to track cases.
“There has to be much more support from the federal government,” said Richard Besser, the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and one of the advisers on New Jersey’s reopening effort. “It’s very hard to predict how long this is going to continue and what that trajectory is going to look like.”
Though Pence has stayed in close contact with governors and Birx at times will call up state health officials, the task force has offered little new advice for fighting new outbreaks — leaning chiefly on the recommendation that states step up testing around places like nursing homes and meatpacking plants that can quickly become ground zero for new coronavirus clusters, according to participants on the calls.
And despite mounting evidence that the virus is spreading nationwide at a rapid clip, the White House has shown no appetite for taking back the reins of the response, insisting that states and localities are capable of managing the pandemic, with the federal government playing a supporting role.
“We’re confident that the locally executed and state-managed response effort is going to be the model moving forward,” the task force official said, pointing to the downward trend of Covid-19 deaths across the country, “especially when we’re just seeing so many signs of positive and encouraging data on the coronavirus front.”
On the front lines, though, many state and local officials say the rising rate of hospitalizations and jump in rates of positive tests make clear a resurgence is underway. Theadministration’s hands-off approach has forced them to wage a county-by-county war against a virus that doesn’t respect borders, making for a disjointed response that’s consistently trailed the disease’s spread.
There is no comprehensive national coronavirus testing strategy, which has left it largely to local officials and health care providers to decide where to offer tests, and led to logjams in high-demand areas — even as other parts of the country have plenty of capacity.
There is similarly no national apparatus for contact tracing, making it more difficult for states and localities to coordinate efforts to ferret out the disease on the ground, and get a broader view of how the virus is traveling throughout parts of the country.
While the administration has distributed $14 billion in congressionally approved funds to state and local departments for testing and tracing, another $8 billion approved in April for federal efforts remains unspent — a delay that the Department of Health and Human Services has blamed on a lack of clear direction from lawmakers.
On Tuesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told a House panel that agencies across the country have signed up only 28,000 contact tracers to date, well below the 100,000 he anticipates needing to keep the virus in check.
In some major metropolitan areas, like Kansas City, Mo., the funding for testing and contact tracing that was approved by Congress in April is only now starting to trickle down.Kansas City was scheduled to get its slice of the federal aid — about $4 million — for the first time on Thursday.
Patty Hayes, the public health director for King County and Seattle, Wash., said that states and counties continue to compete against each other to purchase sufficient testing supplies and protective equipment.
“We’re still struggling,” she said. “We have to find our own way a lot of times.”
State officials and public health experts have questioned why the Trump administration has not built out more extensive data tools that might help them identify burgeoning outbreaks and direct resources. Many states have opted instead to construct their own public health surveillance systems to obtain better insight into the evolving situation on the ground than what they can get from the federal government.
The CDC’s data systems are siloed, and rely on a jumble of information feeds that are incomplete or duplicative and have frustrated top Trump health officials as well. At the height of the pandemic’s initial wave in April, and amid irritation over the quality of information produced by the CDC, health officials awarded a $10.2 million contract to the health-technology firm TeleTracking Technologies to collect hospital data — even though the CDC already collects much of that information.
“There have been discussions about what we do need to do to get better data and more uniform data,” the task force official said. “Especially in 2020, where data has become increasingly more important in a pandemic response like this.”
But nearly three months after Congress earmarked $550 million for the CDC to modernize its data collection systems, the administration has offered few plans for improving its coronavirus tracking efforts. About $50 million of the funds went to states and public health partners, the CDC said. The rest will be poured into a broader upgrade of federal public health data systems that the agency anticipates will take years to complete.
The Trump administration in the meantime has touted a separate project called HHS Protect and managed in part by Palantir — a Silicon Valley firm funded by close Trump ally Peter Thiel — that it’s said the task force relies upon to consolidate data from hundreds of disparate sources and aid its decision-making. An HHS spokesperson said it's offered access to the system to all 50 states, territories and jurisdictions, as long as they abide by certain terms and conditions and are authenticated by the administration.
But there is no widespread awareness of HHS Protect among state and local officials, some of whom say that if it’s producing valuable new insights, it hasn’t had any clear impact on the way the federal government is managing the response.
“The federal government having the data is only really helpful if they do the right thing with it,” said one state official. “We are gravely concerned by the possibility this administration is ignoring data that shows an increase in disease activity.”
The base-level guidance that the Trump administration has distributed for monitoring and managing outbreaks is often lacking, and sporadically updated, officials said. And while some defended the CDC’s performance, citing the deployment of specialists to hot spots in states like Arizona and Texas and the agency’s frequent briefings with state and local officials, they acknowledged that Trump’s role as the central public messenger for the response has prevented the agency from more widely sharing what it knows.
“They were ahead of rumors, they were ahead of mistakes, they were ahead of questions,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, of the CDC’s role in prior emergencies. “That’s what the administration is missing in their efforts to control the message from the White House — they’re losing the opportunity to really engage the public.”
To fill that vacuum, health departments, hospitals and outside public health experts have leaned on informal networks to share updates and key data points on the virus’ spread and what they’ve learned about how to combat the disease.
Officials cited those communications — often through group email lists and dozens of daily phone calls — as more helpful oftentimes than any of the advice passed on from top officials inside the administration.
“HHS will call people, CDC through existing mechanisms will also talk to people, then the task force wants similar information — and frankly it’s a waste of people’s time when we’re trying to manage a response,” said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, which represents metropolitan health departments.
Juliano described a federal role in the response that’s so ill-defined that officials often don’t know who’s in charge, with state officials dealing more directly with the White House and HHS while county and city health departments interact almost exclusively with the CDC.
“It’s really not the way to run a national response to a national pandemic,” she said.
The Trump administration has defended its role in the response, with officials pointing to efforts to rebuild the national stockpile and strengthen supply lines ahead of the fall — as well as focusing heavily on developing Covid-19 treatments and vaccines.
The administration has held more than 310 briefings since January with various groups and levels of government involved in the response, an HHS spokesperson said, and remains in regular communication with governors and state health officials.
Yet even as states scramble to fortify their health systems and pause their reopenings, there is little visible alarm on the federal level.
“The hot spots are in 3 percent of American counties,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday. “We can get back to work, back to school, back to worship and, more importantly, back to health care, if we act responsibly as individuals.”
It’s a message that public health officials say hasn’t matched the sense of urgency on the ground.
“One of the mistakes this administration has made is that they often speak too soon,” Benjamin said. “If they’re wrong, they have to backtrack. And they’ve had to backtrack so many times.”
If you covered up the name, you'd assume the person being quoted just had a stroke.
It’s the standard question asked of every president running for reelection: “What are your priorities for a second term?” It’s a softball question that allows the incumbent to lay out their aspirations—no matter how pie-in-the-sky—for making this country a better place for all Americans.
Donald Trump was asked that question on Thursday night, and here is his dream for America:
Well, one of the things that will be really great, you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It’s a very important meaning. I never did this before -- I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington I think 17 times, all of the sudden, I’m the president of the United States. You know the story, I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say, ‘This is great.’ But I didn’t know very many people in Washington, it wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now I know everybody. And I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes, like you know an idiot like Bolton, all he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.
Well, God bless America.
Now is the time to get your family, your friends, and yourself, registered and ready to vote this waste of oxygen out of office on November 3.
Late on Thursday, the Trump administration filed its brief with the Supreme Court to challenge the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when the court hears the case this fall. Just before the election. In a pandemic. And they took the protections provided in the law head-on, explicitly arguing that the provision that prevents insurance companies from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions must be tossed, along with the entirety of the law.
The brief argues that because Congress essentially repealed the individual mandate requiring people to purchase insurance or pay a fine by zeroing out the amount of that fine, then the whole law is invalid. "The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate," Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in the Justice Department’s brief. "The individual mandate is no longer a valid exercise of Congress's legislative authority in light of Congress's elimination of the penalty for noncompliance." Just to make sure it’s clear that the Trump administration wants the entirety of the law gone, they reiterate that: "Once the individual mandate and the guaranteed- issue and community-rating provisions are invalidated, the remainder of the ACA should not be allowed to remain in effect." The guaranteed issue and community rating mentioned there are the things that make sure you can get health insurance regardless of preexisting conditions, and that insurance companies can't price coverage out of reach.
It's an astoundingly bad statement for Republicans in Congress. It basically argues (page 43) that no matter what their intent was in passing the tax law and zeroing out the mandate, every single Republican in the House and Senate who voted for the GOP tax law also voted to abolish protections for preexisting conditions and other popular reforms, and the rest of the ACA with it. Everything. Medicaid expansion. People on their parents' insurance until they turn 26. Lower prescription drug costs for Medicare enrollees. Essential health benefits. No discrimination for being a woman. Everything. Coverage would end, immediately, for more than 23 million people—3 million more than when the suit started because so many people have lost coverage from their jobs, because they've lost their jobs in the pandemic.
The arguments outside the brief are just as astoundingly dishonest as the brief itself. For example, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the leading state in the challenge, tweeted: "Obamacare has failed, and the sooner it is invalidated, the sooner each state can decide what type of health care system will best provide for those with preexisting conditions, which is the way the Founders intended." Because the Founding Fathers spent so much time arguing about health insurance policy. The White House has also resorted to just making shit up, though not quite as creatively as Texas' finest.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement Friday that the coronavirus pandemic changes absolutely nothing about the ACA being "an unlawful failure," and in fact the epidemic "further illustrates the need to focus on patient care." Everyone who has a confirmed case of the coronavirus, by the way, has also contracted a preexisting condition. "It limits choice," Deere continued, and "forces Americans to purchase unaffordable plans, and restricts patients with high-risk preexisting conditions from accessing the doctors and hospitals they need."
There is absolutely nothing subtle or nuanced (big surprise) about this argument from the administration. The want the law completely excised, and on the flimsiest of legal arguments, reading congressional intent where it does not exist and putting forward an argument that even some of the law's harshest critics have panned. Jonathan Adler, a conservative law professor who championed another bogus suit against the law, called this one "implausible," "hard to justify," and "surprisingly weak." The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has called it the "Texas Obamacare Blunder." Conservative policy wonk Yuval Levin wrote in the National Review that the suit "doesn't even merit being called silly. It's ridiculous."
But it has actually reached the Supreme Court, which makes it ridiculously dangerous. Which is as apt a description for the entirety of Donald Trump's presidency as you're going to find: ridiculously dangerous. That's being demonstrated every single day of this pandemic with a literal death toll.
Richard Liebowitz, who passed the bar in 2015, started filing copyright cases in this District in 2017. Since that time, he has filed more cases in this District than any other lawyer: at last count, about 1,280; he has filed approximately the same number in other districts.
In that same period, he has earned another dubious distinction: He has become one of the most frequently sanctioned lawyers, if not the most frequently sanctioned lawyer, in the District. Judges in this District and elsewhere have spent untold hours addressing Mr. Liebowitz's misconduct, which includes repeated violations of court orders and outright dishonesty, sometimes under oath. He has been called "a copyright troll," McDermott v. Monday Monday, LLC (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 26, 2018); "a clear and present danger to the fair and efficient administration of justice," Mondragon v. Nosrak LLC (D. Colo. May 11, 2020); a "legal lamprey[]," Ward v. Consequence Holdings, Inc. (S.D. Ill. May 7, 2020); and an "example of the worst kind of lawyering," id. In scores of cases, he has been repeatedly chastised, warned, ordered to complete ethics courses, fined, and even referred to the Grievance Committee. And but for his penchant for voluntarily dismissing cases upon getting into hot water, the list of cases detailing his misconduct—set forth in an Appendix here—would undoubtedly be longer.
One might think that a lawyer with this record would tread carefully, particularly before a judge who had recently sanctioned him. See Rice v. NBCUniversal Media, LLC (S.D.N.Y. July 10, 2019). But—as this case makes clear—not Mr. Liebowitz.
In November of last year, Mr. Liebowitz appeared, in the company of a criminal defense lawyer, before another judge on this Court after being held in contempt for repeatedly lying, including under oath, about the date his own grandfather had died to justify his failure to attend a court conference. See Berger v. Imagina Consulting, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 13, 2019) ("Berger Tr."). The very next day, he appeared before the undersigned and—despite an explicit warning to be "very, very, very careful about the representations" he made in court—lied about his compliance with a court Order that had required an in-person mediation. Making matters worse, Mr. Liebowitz then repeated that lie, over and over, and ultimately under oath during an evidentiary hearing.
On top of that, he violated at least six court Orders. And to cap it off, defense counsel discovered only after incurring the expenses of litigating the case that the Complaint Mr. Liebowitz prepared and filed contained a false allegation—namely, that the photograph at issue in this case had previously been registered with the Copyright Office—that would have required dismissal of the lawsuit at its inception.
In the view of the undersigned, this misconduct, when viewed in light of Mr. Liebowitz's deplorable record, confirms a conclusion that others have reached: that "steps should be taken promptly … to suspend his ability to file new cases," at least until "he has demonstrated" that he can comply "with court rules and rules of professional conduct." Mondragon. But that is a question for another body—the Grievance Committee of this Court—and for another day.
The question for today is what sanctions, if any, this Court should impose on Mr. Liebowitz for his misconduct in this case. For the reasons stated below, the Court concludes that sanctions are amply justified, indeed all but required, and orders a mix of substantial monetary and non-monetary sanctions against Mr. Liebowitz and his firm. The Court also refers Mr. Liebowitz to the Court's Grievance Committee to evaluate whether he should be allowed to continue practicing law in this District….
If specific deterrence—that is, deterring Mr. Liebowitz from repeating his misconduct—were the sole consideration, it is not clear that any sanction (short of, perhaps, disbarment) would suffice. After all, his first lie in this case occurred only one day after he was dressed down by Judge Seibel for repeatedly lying about his grandfather's death, and despite a warning from the Court to be "very, very, very careful" about what he said. And thereafter, as in the case before Judge Seibel, he dug his hole even deeper, repeating his lies over and over, including under oath. (In fact, he arguably expanded upon his lies, concocting, after the fact, his "custom and practice" excuse.)
Even more troubling, as the discussion above makes clear, Mr. Liebowitz's misconduct in this case is part of a larger pattern that has led judges on this court—and, as his practice has expanded to other districts, judges on other courts—to chastise him, impose sanctions on him, and require his clients to post bonds to cover future adverse awards of attorney's fees and costs resulting from his misbehavior. The list of such cases is too long to cite here and, thus, is attached as an Appendix to this Opinion and Order. And even that list is likely not exhaustive….
But because disbarment is an issue for the Grievance Committee, this Court is left with the task of crafting a sanction that could conceivably deter Mr. Liebowitz from repeating his misconduct again. Moreover, another purpose of sanctions is general deterrence—that is, deterrence of "comparable conduct by similarly situated persons." In view of both considerations, it is plain that substantial sanctions—a mix of monetary and non-monetary sanctions—are well justified. As discussed above, much of Mr. Liebowitz's misconduct was the product of intentional bad faith. In addition, Bandshell and Mr. Newberg (who handled the case pro bono) incurred considerable expenses as a result of Mr. Liebowitz's misconduct, having to defend against a lawsuit that was flawed from its inception, having to appear at a mediation that was doomed from the start, and having to litigate the issue of sanctions.
Moreover, there is, to put it mildly, a long and ignominious history of misbehavior by Mr. Liebowitz, and an enormous risk that he will continue his pattern of misbehavior. And finally, Mr. Liebowitz never corrected his misconduct, but rather repeated his lies under oath and, in the case of the false allegation regarding the copyright registration, proffered unconvincing excuses. In light of that record, and the fact that prior efforts to deter him—including hefty fines, see, e.g., Ward ($20,000), and sizeable awards of attorney's fees and costs, see, e.g., Craig ($98,532.62)—were insufficient, substantial sanctions are plainly warranted….
The court ordered that:
"[Mr. Liebowitz must pay] $83,517.49 in fees and costs attributable to the mediation and the sanctions motion" "for misrepresenting that the Mediator gave permission for Mr. Usherson not to attend the mediation in person and for his multiple other violations of the Court's Orders,"
"[Mr. Liebowitz must pay] $20,000 for falsely alleging that the Photograph was registered, not conducting a reasonable investigation prior to filing the lawsuit and after being put on notice of the registration issue, and maintaining the suit thereafter,"
"Mr. Liebowitz shall be required to serve a copy of this Opinion and Order on Mr. Usherson and every other current client of the Liebowitz Law Firm and to file it on the docket of any pending case brought by Mr. Liebowitz or any attorney working for his firm, as well as on the docket of any new case brought within one year from the date of the Opinion and Order by Mr. Liebowitz or any attorney working for his firm,"
"in any action that is filed within one year of the date of this Opinion and Order by Mr. Liebowitz or any attorney working for the Liebowitz Law Firm that involves allegations of copyright infringement, the complaint must include as an attached exhibit a copy of the deposit files maintained by the U.S. Copyright Office reflecting the registration of the relevant copyrighted work or works at issue,"
"the Court will send a copy of this Opinion and Order to the Chair of the Court's Grievance Committee to take whatever action the Committee deems appropriate."
The coronavirus crisis is far from over and along with the horrifying new case counts comes the confirmation of what we all knew from watching it: The Trump administration has failed at just about every level, from providing enough tests to ensuring supplies and equipment to the states and hospitals to distributing the trillions in funding that Congress has provided so far. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) gives the government an "A-ish" on effort, and an "F" on the rest. "Both the Congress and the administration have acted to mobilize resources quickly to help the nation respond to and recover from the pandemic. However, the negative effects of the pandemic on families, communities, and health care systems and on the long-term economic condition of millions of Americans and U.S. businesses are likely to persist into the future," the report says.
It described how the Strategic National Stockpile had not been maintained and was not equipped to respond to demand. Officials told the GAO that "the Strategic National Stockpile did not have the capacity to provide states with supplies at the scale necessary to respond to a nationwide event such as the COVID-19 pandemic," and while Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was aware of that and in fact testified to Congress about it, funding wasn't allocated to replenish it. The report also says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has failed at testing, compiling "incomplete and inconsistent" testing data that "has made it more difficult to track and know the infection rate, mitigate the effect of infections, and inform decisions on reopening communities." The report doesn't address, apparently, Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere in all of this and muck it all up.
The funding that has been provided by Congress has been mismanaged, the GAO says. In just one example that's received some media attention, the IRS either wasn't authorized to or simply did not cross-reference stimulus check recipients with Social Security records so $1.4 billion went to dead people—or in most cases, their descendants. It also points out that many states were completely unprepared for processing unemployment claims, including the additional $600-per-week boost. It found that "states with UI information technology systems that date as far back as the 1970s have reported crashes due to the current claims volumes." It reported that while the Department of Labor "has assisted states' efforts to modernize their UI systems in recent years by, for example, providing grants, technical assistance, and guidance, relatively few states had load-tested their systems for the current volume of claims, according to representatives of state workforce agencies."
The GAO also harshly criticized the Small Business Administration for withholding information. "Congress has charged SBA with implementing the PPP [the Paycheck Protection Program] and other provisions crucial to the nation's economic recovery," GAO wrote. "However, SBA to date has failed to provide information critical to our review, including a detailed description of data on loans made. The agency provided primarily publicly available information in response to our inquiries. SBA officials met with GAO in the beginning of June to discuss questions we had provided about 6 weeks earlier. […] Most agencies were generally able to provide GAO timely access to information for this report while executing their responsibilities during this unprecedented national crisis," GAO wrote. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is trying to keep much of that information secret. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.)
GAO said that "lenders had made about 4.6 million loans totaling about $512 billion" but had not provided any information to loan recipients about how the loans could be forgiven until most of the loans had already been made. It also said that a rush to give the money out left the program vulnerable to fraud. "Because of the number of loans approved, the speed with which they were processed, and the limited safeguards, there is a significant risk that some fraudulent or inflated applications were approved. In addition, the lack of clear guidance has increased the likelihood that borrowers may misuse loan proceeds or be surprised they do not qualify for full loan forgiveness," the GAO wrote.
It's worth pointing out that while a competent administration would have undoubtedly done a much better job and shrunk the scope of this disaster, many of the problems were built in from past administrations and past Congresses. The deficit mania that took hold decades ago has resulted in things like 50-year-old tech systems, inadequate staffing to quickly carry out massive programs in an effective way, and a starved government that just can't meet the demands on it. When we're back to normal (if that even still exists) with a normal president and Congress, one of the first orders of business will be to reinvest and rebuild the infrastructure of government at every level.
In the meantime, an incompetent head is rotting the entire fish that is government, and that's a problem. Job No. 1 will be replacing him.
More murder of black people by police. Why the fuck should we trust this organization anymore?
Protests and outcries in the name of justice following the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police last month have resurfaced a number of cases of police brutality. Names and stories of individuals killed by the police are being shared throughout social media. Amongst these names and stories is young Elijah McClain. Killed last year while being detained by Denver police in Colorado, McClain’s heartbreaking story is being shared on social media under the hashtag #JusticeForElijahMcClain.
Demands that state officials launch an independent investigation into the 23-year-old Black man’s death have prompted Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to announce that his administration will reexamine the case with a special prosecutor. In a series of tweets shared Wednesday, Polis said that “a fair and objective process free from real or perceived bias for investigating officer-involved killings is critical.” He added that he and his legal counsel are “assessing next steps” on what the state can do.
The announcement follows a Change.org petition seeking justice for McClain and demanding all officers involved in his death to be taken off duty. In just three weeks, more than 2.2 million people signed the petition. Piper Rundell, who started the online petition, told CBS News that she created the petition following a conversation she had with McClain’s coworker who was “nearly in tears” while speaking about the incident.
"Hearing that there were cases of police brutality that were happening so close to where I lived kind of inspired me to start the petition — I was just hoping I could do something," Rundell told CBS News. "When the petition got 100 signatures I was so thrilled ... I'm sure you can imagine my excitement when there were 100,000 signatures and now it's gained over 2 million."
McClain’s story is one of the most heart-wrenching stories shared on social media. On Aug. 24, 2019, McClain was dancing while on his walk home from a convenience store. On his way, three white officers stopped McClain after a 911 caller described a "suspicious person” matching his description, Adams County District Attorney Dave Young said in a police summary of the incident.
"The Aurora Police Department Communications Center (Dispatch) received a 911 call from J.V. describing a suspicious black male wearing a ski mask, 'acting weird' by 'waving his arms around,'" the incident overview written by Young read.
According to the report, McClain resisted officer contact, responding that he had done nothing wrong and had a right to walk, resulting in a struggle between him and the officers, during which two of them grabbed his arms.
Prior to his arrest, bodycam video then shows McClain telling officers that he was trying to stop his music to listen to them, CNN reported. The video then shows officers wrestling McClain, who they claim tried to grab their gun, to the ground. During the struggle, an officer is heard threatening McClain: "If you keep messing around, I'm going to bring my dog out and he's going to dog bite you."
According to the incident report, officer Nathan Woodyard then put McClain in a "carotid control hold,” or a chokehold that restricts blood flow to the brain. This caused McClain to briefly lose consciousness. When paramedics arrived at the scene, McClain was given ketamine for sedation, the report read.
In the ambulance, the same medic who administered the ketamine then noticed that "McClain's chest was not rising on his own, and he did not have a pulse." After being taken to a hospital, McClain was declared brain dead three days later. Although a county autopsy did not determine a cause of death, it listed intense physical exertion as a contributing factor. The county claimed no evidence was available to support a ketamine overdose, or determine whether the chokehold contributed to his death. “The decedent was violently struggling with officers who were attempting to restrain him,” the autopsy said, according to Denver 7 ABC. “Most likely the decedent’s physical exertion contributed to death. It is unclear if the officer’s action contributed as well.”
While the officers in the case including Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and Randy Roedema were placed on administrative leave following McClain’s death, they were later reinstated after prosecutors declined to file charges against them, CNN reported. Young decided not to file criminal charges in the case, claiming that "based on the investigation presented and the applicable Colorado law, there is no reasonable likelihood of success of proving any state crimes beyond a reasonable doubt at trial," he wrote in his decision. A police review board later supported this, stating: "The force applied during the altercation to include the carotid control hold and the force applied during the altercation was within policy and consistent with training."
The case has a number of issues. Not only was body camera footage of the arrest not released until months after McClain’s death, but the cameras allegedly fell off during the arrest, causing footage to be inadequately captured. Despite this and the many calls to reopen the case, including the widespread petition, DA Young said he had no intention of reconsidering the case. "I don't open up investigations based on petitions," he told Colorado Politics on June 8. "Obviously, if there is new evidence to look at, I will look at the evidence in any case," he said. "But no. I'm not going to open up an investigation because people are signing a petition."
A day later, City Manager Jim Twombly agreed to undertake an independent investigation into McClain’s death, but that too seemed to come with ill intent. News broke that the attorney hired by Twombly to investigate McClain’s death on behalf of the city of Aurora was biased. Not only was the appointed attorney, Eric Daigle, a former police officer, but he specialized in defending police departments that use excessive force.
“We have watched the events over the last several days and it has become clear that public trust has been eroded,” city council members Allison Hiltz, Curtis Gardner, and Angela Lawson said in an email to Twombly. “We know that the status quo is no longer acceptable in our criminal justice system. Our community has experienced pain and as leaders it is our responsibility to take the first step in restoring public trust.” Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman then announced that Daigle’s contract had been terminated as a result, and a replacement would be selected.
On Thursday, Gov. Polis also announced that a special prosecutor would investigate McClain’s case. Last week, he signed the “Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act,” which requires body cameras to hold individual officers liable for their actions in addition to repealing the use of chokeholds and other dangerous tactics during an arrest.
McClain’s case comes amid widespread calls for defunding the police, criminal justice reform, and accountability for state and local officials. Numerous stories and anecdotes about McClain describe his kind heart and the smiles and happiness he brought into the lives of those around him. Friends shared with the Sentinel that McClain was “the sweetest, purest person” they had ever met and often volunteered his time to help others. Despite this and the fact that he was doing nothing but walking home, police officers still wrongfully attacked him, illustrating the many issues present in our “justice” system.
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His last words, shared below, are heartbreaking and bear witness to his soft nature.
Trigger warning: The following paragraph is difficult to read.
"I can’t breathe. I have my ID right here ... My name is Elijah McClain. That’s my house. I was just going home. I’m an introvert. I’m just different. That’s all. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don’t even kill flies. I don’t eat meat. But I don’t judge people, I don’t judge people who do eat meat. Forgive me. All I was trying to do was become better ... I will do it ... I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I’ll do it. I'll do it. You all are phenomenal. You are beautiful and I love you. Try to forgive me. I’m a mood Gemini. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Ow, that really hurt. You are all very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work."
Poll after poll showed a high level of enthusiasm for voting in the general election in 2020, and in the beginning of the year, voter registration surged to match that excitement. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. New registrations have fallen off a cliff.
The spring of a presidential election year is often a busy time for adding new voters to the rolls, and a recent report from the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve voter turnout and election security, shows registration numbers were even stronger in early 2020 than early 2016. But things changed dramatically in March, at least in the 12 places where FiveThirtyEight or CEIR were able to obtain data on new voters, a category that includes first-time voters, voters who recently moved to the state and, in some states (Texas, for example) even voters who moved between counties in the state.9
Consider Florida, for example, where 109,859 new voters registered in February of this year, compared to 87,351 registrants in February of 2016. But in April 2020, only 21,031 new voters registered, compared with 52,508 in 2016. The same pattern holds in 10 other states, plus Washington, D.C.: Each one registered fewer new voters in April 2020 than in April 2016, including in states where online voter registration is available.
Currently, 39 states plus Washington, D.C., offer the ability to register to vote online, and a 40th (Oklahoma) is expected to implement it this year.10 However, in the three places for which we have the relevant data (Florida, Maryland and Washington), online voter registration has not taken off during the pandemic — certainly not enough to make up for the lost in-person registrations. Even in Washington, where online registrations have ticked up since the beginning of the year, the pace is comparable to 2016: 2,956 people registered online in April and May 2020, similar to the 2,771 people who registered online in April and May 2016.
The fact that new voter registrations were outpacing the 2016 numbers in January and February was predictable, according to David Becker, the executive director and founder of CEIR. For one thing, population growth means that voter registration always climbs a bit, he said. The expansion of automatic voter registration makes getting on the rolls more convenient than ever in many states, too. Voters were also clearly interested in registering, Becker said.
“Every piece of data we had looked at with regard to enthusiasm about engaging in this presidential election cycle indicated that we had to be prepared for the highest-turnout presidential election that almost anyone living had ever seen,” Becker said, “which makes the decline in March and especially April all the more striking.”
Based on the timing, it seems safe to assume that COVID-19 had something to do with the drop-off, but there’s data to back that assumption up, too. In addition to how many new voters register, some states track how these new voters get their name on the books. In 2016 and in the pre-pandemic months of 2020, in-person registration at places like departments of motor vehicles made up a large plurality, or even a majority, of new registrants in the four places11 for which we have data on how new voters are registering. But after the pandemic caused most states to shutter many government offices, those registrations dwindled. By contrast, remote registrations (e.g., online or by mail) held relatively steady.12
“This is completely expected, but very concerning,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. “The coronavirus shut down most of the primary avenues through which Americans register to vote: government offices, and all the malls, theaters and public places where voter registration drives operate.”
Indeed, the closing of schools and public events like festivals has hindered in-person voter registration drives run by third-party organizations. “We had planned to go to 850 high schools leading up to graduation, but as schools closed, that work was clearly disrupted,” said Jeanette Senecal, a senior director for the League of Women Voters who focuses on voter education.
For example, in Florida, third-party organizations registered 14,144 voters in January 2020 — a huge increase from the 1,196 they registered in January 2016. But in April 2020, they registered only 133 voters — down from 3,806 in April 2016.
States and third-party groups can still get around social distancing restrictions to get more voters on the poll books, though. Voto Latino, an organization that works to register and encourage Latino Americans to vote, has been operating digitally almost since its inception and was well prepared to continue its work during a pandemic. It uses digital campaigns to help voters register, which can even work in states like Texas, which does not have online voter registration — Voto Latino created an app that makes it easy to fill out the required form, which is then emailed to the voter to print off and mail in.
Danny Turkel, the communications manager for Voto Latino, said the group has actually seen a surge in voter registration, especially since protests in response to the killing of George Floyd began. “Our original goal entering 2020 was to register 500,000 voters,” said Turkel. “As the numbers have come in and surged, we are now thinking that we could surpass 500,000.”
So what kind of people might have registered if the coronavirus hadn’t struck? Well for one thing, they’re probably disproportionately young. “In any given year, far more young people register than older people, just because 18-year-olds age in [to being able to vote] and young people are more likely to move” and need to register at a new address, said Kevin Morris, a quantitative researcher focusing on voting rights and elections at the Brennan Center. According to Morris’s data, 57 percent of new registrants in Florida in the first four months of 2016 were under the age of 40, as were 65 percent of new registrants in Georgia. While the proportions were similar in the beginning of 2020, the total number was much lower than in the past, which means that lots of young people aren’t registering as usual in at least two key 2020 swing states.
Some of these delayed registrants may never end up registering at all. Though we don’t have data for how a pandemic has affected registration in the past (since the U.S. hasn’t faced a similar situation for a good century), Weiser cited another instance when voter registration dipped due to extenuating circumstances. In May of 2011, Florida passed a new bill that placed tough restrictions on third-party voter registration organizations, prompting many of them, such as the League of Women Voters, to stop operating in the state. The restrictions were suspended by a judge in May 201213 but the damage had been done; a subsequent study found that about 14 percent fewer voters registered in 2011 compared to the same period in 2007, with a notable drop following the introduction of the bill — and those registrations never completely caught up. In 2008, more than 1 million new voters registered in Florida. In 2012, fewer than 900,000 did, according to the state’s voter registration data.
Of course, one unusual law in Florida isn’t exactly analogous to a pandemic, and it’s possible that the high level of enthusiasm for this election will be enough to close the gap that COVID-19 created, especially as states begin to reopen and voters return to registration sites like the DMV. So it’s difficult to know whether this drop in registrations is permanent. But it is clear that despite voters’ intense interest in this election, the coronavirus has already made it harder for new voters to participate in it.
[State reform isn't a complete substitute for abolition of the federal judicial doctrine. But it can achieve a lot. A recent Colorado law provides a model other states would do well to imitate.]
The death of George Floyd and resulting nationwide protests against police abuses have focused renewed attention on the legal doctrine of "qualified immunity," which all too often enables law enforcement officials to escape liability for egregious violations of constitutional rights. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court recently refused to take any cases that might overturn or limit the dubious doctrine it itself created. Congress could potentially abolish or limit qualified immunity by adopting new legislation curbing it. But Senate Republicans say that such a move would be a "poison pill" and it's not clear that GOP supporters of reform can gather enough votes to get it through this year.
The Supreme Court, Congress or both might yet revisit this issue in the future. But in the meantime, there is much that state governments can do without waiting for federal action. The vast majority of law enforcement operations—and law enforcement abuses—are conducted by state and local police. State governments can address their misdeeds without waiting for either the Supreme Court or Congress to act.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis has signed into law Senate Bill 20–217 ("SB-217"), otherwise known as the Law Enforcement Integrity and Accountability Act. SB-217 includes a range of major policing reforms… But perhaps most notably, the law ensures that police officers in Colorado will not be able to avoid liability for their misconduct due to the unlawful shield of qualified immunity.
While many are summarizing SB-217 as "ending qualified immunity" in Colorado, what the law formally does is permit individuals to bring claims against police officers who violate their constitutional rights under Colorado law. SB-217 is therefore a kind of "state analogue" to Section 1983, our main federal civil rights statute. Whereas Section 1983 creates a cause of action allowing individuals whose rights are violated under the federal Constitution to bring a lawsuit for damages in federal court, SB-217 allows individuals whose rights are violated under the state constitution to bring a lawsuit for damages in state court.
Colorado, like most states, has a bill of rights that largely mirrors the federal Constitution (and in some ways is even more protective) so this means that SB-217 will cover things like excessive force claims, unlawful arrests, etc. And most importantly, SB-217 specifically provides that "qualified immunity is not a defense to liability pursuant to this section." So, the law does not technically "eliminate qualified immunity," insofar as we're talking about the federal doctrine — if Coloradans bring Section 1983 claims in federal court, those claims will still be subject to qualified immunity. But the law does ensure, at least with respect to police officers, that Coloradans will have a robust alternative remedy to Section 1983 claims for violations of their constitutional rights.
Colorado is not the first state to enact a "state analogue" to Section 1983, but it is the first state to specifically negate the availability of qualified immunity as a defense through legislation. As it turns out, that clarification is crucial, because in nearly all of the other states that have passed similar laws, state courts have incorporated a similar or identical version of federal qualified immunity, even when the relevant statute says nothing about it.
As Schweikert points out, SB-217 doesn't technically eliminate qualified immunity as a defense to lawsuits charging violations of federal constitutional rights. But it effectively achieves the same goal by eliminating it as an obstacle to lawsuits under the state constitution, which provides much the same rights.
There are, nonetheless, a few limitations to the law. Most obviously, it does not apply to federal law enforcement agencies. In addition, it may not apply to "state-federal task forces," where state and local cops working with the feds can claim immunity to lawsuits under state law, on the theory that they're really acting as federal agents, rather than state ones. As far as I can tell, the text of SB-217 doesn't explicitly address state-federal task forces, and it is not clear to me whether state and local police participating in them can still claim qualified immunity as a defense to suits under state law or not. I welcome correction on this point, from those more expert in Colorado law. But, in the meantime, I would tentatively suggest that Colorado should amend the law to explicitly cover this scenario.
Fortunately, a 2017 Colorado law already imposes tight limits on state and local police participation in the federal "equitable sharing" program that facilitates adoption. But Colorado should take this reform even further, and forbid such adoption altogether. Other states that might imitate the Colorado reform should also address this issue—particularly those that don't already have legislation like the 2017 Colorado law.
Finally, it's worth emphasizing that ending qualified immunity is not the only reform needed to curb law enforcement abuses. There are a variety of other steps states should take as well, only some of which are included in other parts of SB-217.
Despite these limitations, SB-217 is an impressive step in the right direction, one that other jurisdictions can learn from. Other states might also be able to learn from the process by which Democratic Governor Jared Polis and legislative leaders quickly secured broad bipartisan support for the bill. As always, the best should not be the enemy of the good. And this law is very good indeed.
Top political officials in Florida, Arizona, Texas and numerous other states are grappling with a rapid surge in coronavirus cases, facing the threat of an out-of-control outbreak that washes over their citizens and overwhelms their health care systems.
Top political officials in the White House say it’s business as usual from their perspective.
President Donald Trump and his top aides sought Thursday to minimize the threat of the coronavirus to the public’s health and the U.S. economy despite alarms blaring across two dozen states — including many overseen by Trump-friendly leaders.
Aides insisted there would be no change in White House strategy to fight the pandemic, and no additional money or new resources given to states dealing with spikes in cases. “In only 3 percent of the counties across the country are we seeing an increase in cases,” said a senior administration official. “The vast majority of the country is not experiencing that. When they turn on the TV and see maps full of red and then they go out into their communities, that is not what they see.”
Some health officials in the Trump administration are engaging with states and contemplating how to bring the latest surge under control, given that many of the stricken counties are the most populous in each state. But Covid-19 is no longer front and center for Trump or most of his White House, in part because it’s viewed as an unwieldy and losing issue for a president who has always felt much more comfortable playing economic cheerleader than delving into the nuances of health issues, according to interviews with half a dozen current and former senior administration officials and Republicans close to the White House.
The virus has claimed more than 121,000 American lives and no vaccine is imminent. But Trump and his aides are continuing to present a relatively rosy picture of the pandemic by touting a slower pace of deaths nationally even as new cases soared by 47 percent over the past week with surging case counts in key states including Florida, Arizona, Texas, California, Georgia and North Carolina.
Even cases on Trump’s own team don’t alarm the president. Trump’s indoor rally in Tulsa, Okla., last weekend led to positive diagnoses for at least eight Trump staffers. That did not slow the White House push to resume life and reopen businesses across the country — with the assumption Americans take responsibility for their individual health risks, and states responsibility for the response efforts.
“We’re going to see these things. But the economy is not going to be closed down again,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told reporters at the White House on Thursday, echoing a view widely shared by other top White House aides and the president himself.
“The health experts are not telling us there’s a second wave, and we have the tools to deal with this much more expeditiously than we had two or three months ago,” Kudlow said earlier in the day on Fox Business.
Health experts are generally not calling the latest surge a second wave — that event could come in the fall. But they've expressed deep concern about the spike in cases as the country tries to quell the first wave. The U.S. has had one of the world’s most severe and persistent outbreaks.
One official in the administration said it continues to stockpile supplies to fight Covid-19. The coronavirus task force now meets once or twice a week, with Vice President Mike Pence doing a weekly call with governors on the virus.
Still, the influence of top health officials around the president has waned inside the West Wing, with Dr. Anthony Fauci seen as an object of much derision among some aides who frame the latest concerns as fearmongering.
Trump aides are clear that the president does not want to bring the coronavirus response under greater federal control, preferring to leave key decisions — and the political fallout — to state and local leaders as he travels across the country campaigning for reelection for the next four months.
Critics, including some Republicans and many Democrats, argue Trump and his team have abandoned responsibility for fighting the virus at a time just when stronger leadership is needed.
“We're going to have to learn how to live with this virus for a while, and to suggest that we’re beating it or we’re winning just doesn’t have an appreciation for what a public health emergency is,” said T.J. Petrizzo, a Republican lobbyist. “Just accept it, own it. You can’t close your eyes and say there’s no boogeyman in the closet because the truth is that this virus does not go away.”
Trump spoke about the virus sparingly over the past week as he attended a campaign rally in Oklahoma, visited the border wall in Arizona, hosted the president of Poland at the White House and flew to Wisconsin to visit a shipbuilding factory and headline a Fox News town hall with his ally and friend Sean Hannity.
When he did speak about Covid-19, he touted what he viewed as his administration’s stellar response and for the second time in a week invoked a racist nickname for the virus — “kung flu.”
“Someday, it'll be recognized by history. Someday,” Trump said on Tuesday in Arizona about the administration’s coronavirus efforts. “But our actions and your selfless sacrifice — and that's what it was — saved hundreds of thousands of lives. We had to do it. And we did the right thing. And I'll tell you what, we did the right thing. Now we open.”
In the events in Wisconsin on Thursday, Trump repeated one of his go-to explanations for the rise in cases — attributing it to more testing, even though many health experts note the rising case count is far outpacing the jump in testing.
“If we didn’t do testing, we would have no cases,” the president said during the town hall, echoing statements he has made over the last week on Twitter.
But he also claimed that his earlier comments advocating for less testing were made “sarcastically.”
A new poll out this week from The New York Times and Siena College showed Trump’s political exposure on his handling of the virus, with 58 percent of registered voters surveyed expressing disapproval and 38 percent approving.
Trump did much better when voters were asked about his performance on the economy, with 45 percent disapproving and 50 percent of voters approving. White House and campaign aides are deeply aware the president’s reelection prospects hinge very much on the state of the U.S. economy — and have urged him to turn toward that message as much as possible leading into November, even as the U.S. is consumed by the pandemic, economic downturn and protests.
Veering from that course risks turning off Trump voters and key Republicans who pressed the administration to open up the economy during the shutdowns in March and April.
“Having been on the road for the last three weeks in half a dozen states undertaking door-to-door efforts, Americans are, broadly speaking, moving onto the next stage with their lives,” said Tim Phillips, president of the conservative activist group Americans for Prosperity. “They want to discuss issues and politics, so I think that is something the White House and other political campaigns for the Senate and the House understand at this point. Americans are impatient to reopen and tackle big issues.”
Back in Washington on Capitol Hill, Republican senators expressed greater skepticism of the White House’s handling of the virus than they have in previous weeks — a notable difference for lawmakers who tend to align themselves squarely with the president.
“I think we should talk more about getting the medical supply chain back,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally of the president. “I'd like to be talking more about all the efforts to develop a vaccine. The day that people hear that a vaccine is available, even though it may not be available today it's going to be available, anxiety changes. He's got an opportunity here with China to discipline China. So those are the things I'd like him to focus on.”
Marianne LeVine and David Lim contributed to this report.
They cannot be trusted, and they show it by continuing violence every day
“Defund the police.” In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, those three words have rocketed from a fringe political idea to protest-banner slogan to the realm of real policy. Public officials in at least half of the 10 largest cities in America have pledged to reduce police resources, and a number of city councils and voters are considering police-defunding bills, which they see as an extreme but necessary way to combat police violence and reorient the way we think about public safety.
So ... then what? Once any city or state decides it’s going to defund its police department, its leaders have some tough questions to face.
Which specific divisions of the police should be cut? What duties can the police stop handling—and who is supposed to take them on instead? Which specific officers should lose their jobs, and who decides?
Into this conversation has stepped Sam Sinyangwe, a data scientist, policy analyst and activist. In 2015, he co-founded Campaign Zero, an advocacy group that pushes for reforms to combat police brutality. He has lately become something of a celebrity in the wonk world for his deep dives on Twitter and elsewhere into the nitty-gritty details of police budgets. Suddenly, his group’s ideas are no longer just abstract.
“Now we’re in the solutions conversation,” Sinyangwe says. “Whereas before, so much of the space was being taken up by trying to convince people that there was a problem in the first place.”
To get a sense of where that solutions conversation goes from here—and what kinds of options might lie behind the three-word slogan—I spoke with Sinyangwe about what an actual police department budget looks like, how it can inform local reforms, and whether activists are really making the right assumptions about where the money will go if a police department gets defunded. A transcript of that conversation is below, edited for length and clarity.
Zack Stanton: You had an interesting Twitter thread recently about what—when we talk about “defunding the police”—that might entail, given a real police department budget. And you used the budget of the Dallas Police Department, which is roughly one-third of the city’s overall general fund budget. Walk us through what those budget cuts might look like?
Sam Sinyangwe: Yes. So just to frame this at the 50,000-foot level, when you look at the amount of investment going into policing compared to other key priorities, it’s clear that a whole lot of money is going into policing and not a lot is going into thinking about what should the proper response be to a set of issues—whether homelessness or poverty or substance abuse or mental health issues—where there are professionals who could be responding to those issues rather than an armed police officer.
What does it mean to scale up those alternatives while we phase out the policing approach? First, it’s important to note that the ability to analyze a police budget depends on what information is actually made public. And looking at cities across the country, there’s not a standard [public] budget. In some places, there is an itemized budget—like in Dallas, where they actually show how much money is going to particular divisions within the department, how much money is going to recruitment or the narcotics division or the vice division—which allows for a different type of analysis than a budget that just shows the topline total amount. In Dallas, about 5 percent of all arrests that the police make are for violent crime; about 23 percent are for person crimes or crimes against people; about 8 percent are for property crimes; the vast majority of arrests are for low-level offenses. Clearly, there’s a lot of room to reallocate resources.
That means looking through the police budget and seeing which divisions are disproportionately responsible for many of these arrests for low-level offenses and things that ought not to be policed. In Dallas, that is the vice division [and] the narcotics division. The narcotics division focuses on arrests for drug offenses. The vice division tends to focus on policing sex work. Both are low-level offenses that shouldn’t result in arrests and incarceration. That’s $20 million in the budget right there.
Other divisions use some of the most egregious policing tactics we’ve seen over the past month—and indeed over the past six years—of protests. The SWAT division, which is highly militarized, we saw them use tear gas against protesters in Dallas and in cities all across the country. Interrogating the money that’s being spent on that militarized policing ought to be a part of the equation.
One of the things Dallas does that other cities usually don’t is that they post their use-of-force data online. They post it at a level of detail that actually identifies, by officer ID, which officers used force. Nationwide, about 85 percent of the police budget is personnel costs—police officers’ salaries, wages, overtime, benefits—and a substantial cut to the police budget should result in a cut to the number of officers on the force. And that means we have to ask which officers should be laid off first, and that’s where the use-of-force data comes in.
In Dallas, there are about 2,800 use-of-force incidents in a given year, and there are about 3,300 officers on the force. In a given year, the average officer has between zero and one use-of-force incident. But there were many officers there in that dataset who had 25 use-of-force incidents; 18 use-of-force incidents; they had a dozen or more. That’s one piece of data that can help us identify a set of officers who ought to be removed. Other data ought to be a part of this equation—misconduct complaints, allegations that don’t involve use of force, misconduct lawsuits. There’s a universe of data that can be helpful in better understanding which officers are the biggest problems within the department and which should be laid off first.
Stanton: On that front, earlier this week, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke on this issue in an interview with the New York Times. She said, “In our Police Department, about 90 percent of the budget is personnel. When you talk about defunding, you’re talking about getting rid of officers. Most of our diversity lies in the junior officers. So when you’re talking about defunding the police, you’re talking about doing it in a context of a collective-bargaining agreement that requires you to go in reverse seniority, which means you’re getting rid of the younger officers. Which means you’re getting rid of black and brown people. Which means you are eliminating one of the few tools that the city has to create middle-class incomes for black and brown folks. Nobody talks about that in the discussion to defund the police.” I’m curious for your thoughts on that.
Sinyangwe: Many departments across the country, many cities have signed police union contracts that require “last in, first out” policies, where officers can only be laid off in reverse order of seniority. That has to change. I’ve talked to mayors of major cities who’ve said that 80, 90 percent of their police budget is tied up in the police union contract. The contract is what structures officer salaries, benefits, overtime. It structures the process of laying officers off. It structures the process of hiring officers and how officers can be promoted within the department—often in order of seniority and a basic assessment test or a fitness test, rather than outcomes that are preferable in terms of use of force and misconduct. The contract is core to any conversation around police policies and reform and defunding the police. Chicago is in the process of negotiating a new contract, and they should be pushing to remove this clause.
The fact that it will be younger officers—officers who are disproportionately officers of color—that will be laid off first is an issue. But it is not an end-all, be-all. We know, looking at the research literature, that the race of the officer is not a substantial factor in the likelihood that an officer will use deadly force against a black person or a white person. The race of the officer is not the key variable here. Reducing the amount of funding that goes to the police can make much more progress towards addressing issues of police violence than the diversity of the department.
Stanton: There’s an assumption baked into the “defund the police” argument that the money saved by making cuts to police budgets will go into community-building. But I’m curious why that is assumed. Often, when a government budget is reduced, it ends up going to, say, reducing taxes or something of that sort. What gives you faith that if you were to defund the police, the money would be invested in community-building rather than, say, a property tax cut?
Sinyangwe: Well, first of all, the police department is a huge part of the general fund. We’re talking 25-45 percent—sometimes more than 45 percent—of the general fund going to the police department. And as we’re seeing, communities are putting a lot of pressure on elected officials, not only to defund policing, but also to reinvest in community-based alternatives. Core to the “defund” demand is the demand to invest those resources that are shifted away from the police into community-based alternatives.
Stanton: People ranging from Joe Biden to Sen. Tim Scott have made the argument that if we want police reform, there needs to be an increase in funding in order for that to happen. In your research, have you seen any correlation between the amount of funding a department gets and its capability to reform in a meaningful way?
Sinyangwe: No. I have not seen any correlation like that. The departments where officers are better paid or where the department has more resources—I have not seen any research that suggests that those departments somehow have better outcomes in terms of violence. What often is the case is that more funding to police departments tends to be used in ways that can be harmful to communities. Look at body cameras: A lot of money, both federally and at the local and state levels, has been invested in body cameras. And a lot of that money has actually gone into police departments that structure their body-camera programs in ways that are not accountable, are not transparent and allow officers to review the footage before they actually make statements about what happened. Just shifting more resources to police departments is not a recipe for addressing police violence.
At the same time, so much of the resources that police departments have is not tied up in anything having to do with accountability. In Dallas, for example, [activists] are fighting for 1 percent of the police department budget to go to the community oversight structure. One percent of the budget. And that’s a fight—the city has not agreed, and it’s just 1 percent. When you look at the police budget, a pot of money already exists. Police already have the resources they need to implement these types of changes. They just need to make different decisions about where those resources are invested.
Stanton: The politics of policing have been quite fraught—and generally stagnant—for the last number of decades. But right now, the political alignment really seems to be shifting pretty rapidly. Do you have any sense as to why that’s happening now and where you see the politics of it going from here?
Sinyangwe: In 2014, during the Ferguson uprising, a lot of people weren’t convinced that this was a real issue. You can look at public opinion polling, you can look at some of the media and political commentary around this issue back then. People thought there might be an issue in St. Louis or Baltimore. They didn’t believe this to be a nationwide crisis—something systemic in nature. Over the past six years, we’ve seen millions of people take to the streets, engage in activism and convince people that there is a nationwide crisis. We’ve seen video after video of black people being killed by the police in pretty much every situation—whether armed or unarmed, whether running away or standing still. Now, people get that there is something wrong and that something needs to change. Even Republicans admit that something’s wrong; they agree that George Floyd was unjustifiably killed. There are differences about what should be done at this moment, but there is not a lot of disagreement that something must be done. That is what has changed. Now we’re in the solutions conversation, whereas before, so much of the space was being taken up by trying to convince people that there was a problem in the first place.
Stanton: Within that “solutions” conversation, it seems that there are three camps: the “reform” camp; the “defund” camp, which has some overlap with the reformers; and the “abolish the police” camp. I’m curious where you see the fault lines there? Who lines up where?
Sinyangwe: It’s a spectrum, right? I think the “reform” camp, as you define it, thinks that as long as the police exist as an institution, whatever level of funding they have, there ought to be a set of baseline policies and standards and accountability structures that can limit the amount of harm the institution can cause. The “defund” camp is acknowledging that the structure itself needs to be phased out, needs to be reduced in scope, and the role of the police needs to be shrunk. The “abolish” camp is similar, but is also saying that just reallocating those resources isn’t enough; we actually need to uproot this institution in its entirety and replace it with something completely different.
There’s alignment across all of those. And this is sort of controversial, but I believe we have to do all of the above. Even if we’re calling to defund the police, even if we’re calling to abolish the police, it is unlikely that the police will be entirely abolished by next year. Therefore, whatever exists of the police by that point ought to have a set of standards and accountability that can limit the harm it causes. And we shouldn’t allow conversations about those solutions detract from the broader high-level conversation about what we are actually investing in. All of those things have to be juggled simultaneously. Different camps will focus on different areas, and it will take a comprehensive solution to address a complex issue. Oftentimes, those don’t fall along neat ideological lines.
Stanton: How would you characterize your own views on that topic? Do you see the police as necessary?
Sinyangwe: No. I believe that as long as there’s conflict in communities, there will need to be some sort of institution or system to respond to that conflict; I don’t believe that it has to be a police department. There are a host of institutions that can respond to issues that are not policing-based, that do not involve somebody who is armed with a gun and protected under a whole system of laws and policies to use deadly force. I don’t think that needs to be the response. And I believe that to get there, we need to use data as a tool to unpack how to defund the police.
Stanton: As a political matter, do you worry that the “abolish the police” movement, which is broadly unpopular in polls, makes it harder for police reforms to become a political reality as the two get conflated? Or do you instead see the police abolition movement as moving the Overton Window in some way?
Sinyangwe: Yeah, I think they’re pushing the Overton Window. They’re an essential component to this conversation and their work is creating space for the whole sector to rethink its approach to policing. And that’s good. We have to have those conversations. And that vision for public safety is far preferable to accepting a world in which the police kill people, they just kill fewer people. We need to have a vision that people can believe in and have confidence will actually keep them safe—a vision at the scale of the problem.
That’s what this is about: Recognizing that this problem is so severe, so widespread. Even places that have adopted reforms continue to have problems—they may have reduced rates of killings by police, but they still kill people at rates much higher many other countries do. It’s not acceptable to stop at just changing a policy. That’s just not sufficient. I think the “abolition” conversation is pushing the Overton Window and getting more people to talk about the fact that police are getting many resources they shouldn’t be. I think all of that is good.
Stanton: You wrote a piece recently for FiveThirtyEight about how, since 2013, there’s been a substantial decrease in the number of people killed by police in the largest cities in America. But when you pull back and look at police killings nationally, the level has remained more or less the same because there’s been an increase in the use of deadly force in suburban and rural America. The last few weeks of protests and demonstrations have been centered in cities. Why do you think there hasn’t been as much of a suburban push for defunding the police?
Sinyangwe: I mean, politics. It’s just a different battle outside some of the large cities. Even the basic things that have been done in cities have yet to be done in rural and suburban areas. Some big cities had already adopted many of the eight policies in “Eight Can’t Wait.” Philadelphia had seven of them. Chicago had six. L.A. had six. And those policies were adopted relatively recently in large part, in some cases in response to Department of Justice interventions, in response to protests in cities and a lot of pressure that was put on elected officials to change those policies. In rural and suburban areas, many of those changes have yet to take place, and we see the rates of police violence continue to increase in those areas. We haven’t seen even sort of this step one or that the basic minimal standards that have been adopted in cities. The Overton Window is just further back than in big cities.
Stanton: Final question: Where do you see this whole movement going from here?
Sinyangwe: We’re talking about building a system that in cities simply has not been invested in, does not exist—and that’s difficult. There’s a lot of work that has to happen. We have to understand what all the models are. We have to evaluate which models work best for particular situations. We have to work through some of the logistics of how those models will be deployed.
So, for example, in Portland, they’re thinking about replicating [Eugene, Oregon’s] CAHOOTS program, which sends a mental health responder to calls involving mental health crises. For one in every five 911 calls in Eugene, they have an unarmed mental health provider respond rather than a police officer. But there are some logistical questions: What calls, specifically, do you send this provider to? What if the person who calls says that somebody is armed? Do they send the provider? Is there a police officer also sent? What if people know that if they say somebody is armed, even if that person wasn’t, it would be a police officer instead of a mental health provider? What are the logistics of deploying mental health providers? Where do you put them? How do you find providers? There are pipeline issues to actually training the folks we need for this because there hasn’t been this level of investment at this scale. That takes time to build. The logistics about where you deploy them from: In Portland, they’re thinking, ‘Maybe we should house them at fire stations because we have these fire stations all across the city. We don’t want them in police departments because that might be a little bit too close to it.’ All of that is the next phase of the work.
These are not isolated incidents. It's the policy and practice of the police to use unnecessary force, particularly against Black citizens. This is appalling.
A Black man is accusing a Georgia police department of using excessive force when he was shown on video being grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground by an officer in a takedown the man said broke his ribs. Antonio Smith, the injured man police identified, wasn’t even the suspect officers were looking for, police confirmed on social media Monday after an inquiry from Valdosta Daily Times.
Valdosta police confirmed Monday in a Facebook post that they were informed of a related lawsuit against them Friday. The incident, however, dates back to Feb. 8, 2020, when two officers were dispatched to a Walgreens in South Georgia. They had received a complaint that a man outside the business was "harassing customers, screaming loudly, and asking customers for money," police said in the Facebook post.
While one of the officers questioned a man a customer led them to, the other responding officer approached a man behind the Walgreens and asked for identification. “While (the) first officer was running the identification provided by the subject, it was learned that he had active felony arrest warrants,” police said.
The incident took a violent turn after officers approaching the scene overheard the mention of the warrant on a police dispatch, and one of them apparently didn’t realize two different men were being questioned by police by the time he arrived, police said.
In video of Smith’s interaction with police, he can be seen explaining that he was waiting on his sister to wire him money from a local Western Union, which he frequents. Smith provided the officer with identification and was asking police to call his sister when another officer approached him from behind and attempted to restrain him without warning, the video shows.
“What are you doing?” Smith asked. The officer responded: “Put your hands behind your back.”
Smith continued to ask the officer what he was doing, and the officer continued demanding that he put his hands behind his back. Before long, the officer could be seen taking Smith down to the ground while he screamed.
“Oh Jesus! Oh my God! Oh please!” he said. “I wasn’t doing anything. Oh my God! Jesus! Oh my God. You broke my ribs!” Another officer could be heard saying: “Yeah, he might be broken.”
Smith continued to sob, telling officers “it hurts.” Still, it wasn’t until Smith asked why he was being arrested that an officer even mentioned having a warrant for his arrest. At that point, an officer chimed in to explain that Smith didn’t have a warrant out against him. "The guy with the warrant's over there," the cop could be heard saying.
Smith was eventually released and by the time emergency services arrived, he told police he just wanted to leave. A shift supervisor was notified, and it prompted an internal review process, police said.
No shit. And he has no ideas aside from racism for his second term
On Thursday morning, Donald Trump unaccountably began to tweet about the nation’s most pressing issue: lobsters. That’s right, America. With ongoing protests over unabated police violence against Black people, an economy that lost another million and a half jobs this week, and a pandemic that’s spiraling out of control, Trump really wants to speak to you on the subject of crustaceans. Complaining that President Obama “destroyed the lobster” industry in Maine, Trump then claimed that it was “back, bigger and better” and invited fishermen to “make lots of money.”
But there’s a problem with this—a problem that goes beyond this clearly being just an attempt to generate a distraction because Trump’s reverse-Midas touch has turned everything in the nation to s#it. That problem is that even this attempt to change the subject for 10 seconds was an absolute lie. Donald Trump’s White House resume is so pitiful that he can’t find a single real accomplishment to brag about. Not even lobsters.
The truth is that President Obama left the Maine fishing industry sitting on a record catch and record profits. In fact, the industry surged during Obama’s presidency. Since Trump took over, the size of the harvest has gone down, though not by a lot. What has gone down precipitously is the prices Maine fishermen receive for lobsters and the rest of their catch. That’s because Trump’s trade war wrecked their markets, and just like Midwestern farmers, tariffs have made things worse for lobstermen.
Trump has previously made the proud claim that he destroyed the only marine sanctuary off the Maine coast, the Northeast Canyon and Seamounts Marine National Monument, but even that is a lie. Lobsters can already be taken in the sanctuary. All Trump did was delay a phase out that wasn’t set to start until 2023. Not one bit of this anti-environmentalism has had a single benefit for anyone at this point. The industry isn’t “back.” The industry is smaller, less productive, and far less profitable than when Trump took over.
And the people there aren’t fooled by a tweet. Not when they can read their bank accounts. That certainly contributes to why Trump is underwater by a staggering 27% when it comes to his approval rating in Maine. And why polls put Trump behind Joe Biden in the state by double digits.
It’s also why Susan Collins’ vote to keep Trump in office is an anchor around her neck big enough to hold down a whole lot of lobster pots. And why Sara Gideon is on track to take Collins’ Senate seat in the fall. That means that Collins will be looking for work. (Maybe she should try lobstering. I’ve heard you can make lots of money.)
What’s amazing about Trump’s lobster tweet isn’t that it’s a lie — of course it’s a lie. What’s amazing is that when he needs a distraction, Donald Trump can’t find a single real accomplishment to show for his three-plus years in office.
This is warranted. Failure to explain such a blatant point is, at the bare minimum, negligence by journalists. After this long of a pattern, it sure looks intentional.
Want to know why the police reform bill died in the Senate this week? Because, with the exception of must-pass government funding bills, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't know how to actually legislate in any instance that doesn't involve him pulling a shifty procedural move in order to pass things on a party line basis.
There is a formula for passing difficult legislation through the Senate—it involves bipartisan talks and inclusion in crafting the original legislation. Back in 2013, that's exactly how the bipartisan immigration bill managed to clear the Democratic-led Senate (even though the GOP-led House refused to even consider it). The bipartisan "Group of 8" spent months debating a very complex set of policies in order to come to consensus. But McConnell is either fundamentally incapable or just patently unwilling to engage in that kind of give and take, and reporters should be ethically bound to explain that to readers rather than telling them, as most did, that talks simply broke down.
No, talks didn't break down. There were no talks—just Republicans crafting their own bill and then demanding that Democrats deal with it. As Joan McCarter explained, McConnell doomed the bill from the outset. But reporters almost uniformly failed to explain to readers that McConnell's approach ensured the police reform bill would be dead on arrival.
The headlines in most mainstream outlets weren't great, but they generally accurately tagged the measure as being a "Republican bill" (i.e., no Democrats allowed).
NPR: Senate Democrats Block GOP Police Reform Bill
Politico: Dems sink GOP police bill, leaving Senate deadlocked as country reckons with racism
It's technically true that Democrats blocked the bill because they felt the police reforms weren't strong enough, or "didn't go far enough," as many outlets put it. But in the first several paragraphs of the pieces, reporters utterly failed to explain that Republicans predetermined the outcome from the start by cutting Democrats entirely out of the process of crafting the bill. McConnell could have let debate over the bill go through the committee process, otherwise known as regular order. He did not.
In fact, that is McConnell's go-to move—it's really the only way he knows how to craft any legislation at all. In 2017, McConnell shaped his disastrous 400-page tax bill entirely behind closed doors and then, using a procedural stunt, passed it two weeks later without holding a single hearing and without getting a single Democratic vote. Republicans also busily rewrote the bill right up to the last minute in order to secure the votes of several must-get GOP senators. Because alas, Republicans cut Democrats entirely out of the process, just like they did with their 2017 healthcare repeal bill, which ultimately failed because McConnell fell one vote shy of muscling it through without any Democratic support.
On taxes, McConnell managed to sneak his legislative love letter to the mega-rich through the Senate. It was a shoddy, dodgy legislative process that led to a terrible bill that most Americans still frown upon to this day. But at least back in 2017, most outlets went to the trouble of explaining upfront that Republicans were using procedural tricks to exclude Democrats because they simply refused to make any legitimate effort to reach across the aisle.
Today, McConnell has so broken the Senate and is such a dismal lawmaker that reporters appear to have forgotten how legislation that draws bipartisan support is made. Yes, process matters. And on police reform, McConnell entirely sidelined Democrats once again. But this time he did it on a bill for which he couldn't use any procedural hooey to push it through without Democratic votes. Therefore, the GOP bill—accurately tagged in most media coverage—was dead on arrival because McConnell ensured it would be.
So, no CNN, this isn't accurate:
But efforts to find common ground have largely devolved into bitter, partisan finger-pointing …
There were no "efforts to find common ground" by Republicans.
And no, Politico, this technically true half-truth doesn't cut it:
The outcome is a deadlocked Senate once again, with both parties accusing the other of failing to negotiate in good faith ...
Readers deserve more than half truths in order to help them understand why this piece of legislation actually failed.
NPR flirted with illumination, but still missed the mark:
But by Tuesday, Democrats were demanding bipartisan talks before greenlighting floor debate. The move rankled Republicans, who say they already addressed Democrats' demands to move quickly on a bill addressing police brutality.
Perhaps explaining that bipartisan talks are the precursor to getting any tough legislation through would help readers make sense of what's happening in Washington.
Journalists get a lot of public frustration directed at them these days. Some of it is warranted, some of it is not. And certainly threatening journalists is never ever under any circumstances okay. Many of them are trying to do their jobs under very complicated circumstances.
But the public would likely be much more grateful for the job Washington reporters are doing if these reporters made real, good-faith efforts to explain why nothing important or transformative ever seems to come out of our nation's capital. Yes, the country is polarized. McConnell, in particular, holds the power to do something about that division and has explicitly chosen to do nothing but exploit it for his own political purposes.
McConnell has broken the Senate on so many levels. But if that's too big a story to explain in every piece, journalists could easily start small by relaying the simple and honest truth on a single piece of legislation. McConnell and the GOP caucus did not make an honest effort to broker a deal on police reform. That is the simple truth. And whether there was ever any consensus to be reached is something Americans will never know, because Mitch McConnell deprived us all of that opportunity.
Walter Scott was shot in the back and killed by former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager in 2015. Like many of these horrific cases in the era of modern technology, the video made it seem like a very obvious case of murder. Witness Feidin Santana was walking to work when he saw Walter Scott running, and then saw Slager running behind Scott. He pulled out his phone and recorded as then-officer Slager continued chasing after Scott—who’d run off during a traffic stop—into a public park area. The video clearly showed Slager grabbing Scott, and then Scott wriggling free and running away.
Testimony and video showed that Scott was being Tasered by then-officer Slager. When Slager threw the Taser to the ground, Scott ran in terror as Slager pulled his gun, aimed it, and then shot Scott eight times in the back, killing him. The video also showed Slager seemingly grabbing his dropped Taser and then throwing it next to Scott—considered by most an attempt at trying to frame up Scott as a threatening suspect. The first trial of officer Slager ended as a mistrial after a single juror refused to agree with the rest of the jury on the murder count. In 2017 prosecutors tried the case again and Slager, who was facing life in prison if he was convicted, agreed to plead guilty and received a 20-year sentence.
However, that first trial brought up a lot of questions: Was this single juror, in a nearly all white jury, just so racist that there was no convincing him? Could the prosecution, or the solicitor for the Ninth Judicial Circuit in Charleston, Scarlett Wilson, be at all to blame for a problematic prosecution of Slager? Democratic candidate for solicitor Ben Pogue is running against Wilson this fall for this position. He has released a video reminding South Carolinians of Wilson’s performance in trying the original case against former officer Slager—specifically the strange victim-blaming game Wilson played during her opening statement to the jury.
The video of that statement, which was posted by Pogue, shows the strange attempt by Wilson to begin her prosecution of former officer Slager by telling the jury that Walter Scott, who was ostensibly pulled over for a “broken taillight,” was somehow at fault for being shot in the back by a man who was 15 or 20 feet away from him.
SOLICITOR SCARLETT WILSON: And I want to start with something that I suspect, as the evidence unfolds, that you might think, you might not want to say, but I’m going to say it. I’m going to put it right out there. If Walter Scott had stayed in that car, he wouldn’t have been shot. If Walter Scott had not resisted arrest, he wouldn’t have been shot. He paid the extreme consequence for his conduct. He lost his life for his foolishness.
Wilson, a Republican who is the first woman to have the solicitor role in Charleston, came to the forefront after her handling of both the Scott case and the subsequent prosecution of Dylann Roof, the racist white supremacist coward who went into a Black church in Charleston and murdered nine people. Many activists pointed out that Wilson’s history as a prosecutor and solicitor was, not unlike many other prosecutors and solicitors in this country, one of backing the police.
Solicitor Scarlett Wilson blamed Walter Scott for his own death during her 2016 opening statement. This newly revealed video is an appalling representation of the systemic racism our country is rightfully protesting against. #JusticeIsOnTheBallot#scpol#scnewspic.twitter.com/ynkuEKW1Ty
Glad to see some consequences in the future. Let's hope it holds without another 100k dead because of GOP hubris
As Donald Trump's political fortunes head into a tail spin, so go Senate Republicans. In a new battleground state poll released Thursday by New York Times/Siena, Senate Republicans are plunging—whether it's in states they were trying to defend or states they hoped could provide pickup opportunities.
The poll tested six states, three of which were once viewed as having competitive Senate races: Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina.
While people can disagree about what constitutes "competitive" based on the polling, the GOP candidates in every state are suffering—they just can't escape the maelstrom of Trump's turbulence. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, once considered a vulnerable Democrat, now boasts a commanding 10-point lead over GOP challenger John James, 41%-31%.
Meanwhile, GOP incumbent senators in Arizona and North Carolina are struggling to greater and lesser extents. Arizona Sen. Martha McSally is down nine points to Democrat Mark Kelly, which is frankly a slightly more flattering picture than other recent polling, where she's been down solidly by double digits. And North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis trails Democrat Cal Cunningham by three points. In all three states, Trump is not-so-coincidentally sucking wind.
THE TRUMP EFFECT DRAGGING DOWN REPUBLICANS
Senate Deficit
Trump deficit
ARIZONA
McSally -9
Trump -7
MICHIGAN
James -10
Trump -11
NORTH CAROLINA
Tillis -3
Trump -9
Trump is absolutely killing GOP senate candidates with voters who have a college degree. The Times writes: "In Arizona, Mr. Kelly leads Ms. McSally 49 to 39 among voters with a college degree. In North Carolina, Mr. Cunningham is up 52 to 29 with the same voters. And Mr. Peters also enjoys a comfortable margin among college-educated voters, leading Mr. James 47 to 29."
Many of the respondents cited in the Times article tied their vote against Trump directly to their vote against GOP incumbents and candidates.
“We’ve gotta get [Trump] out of there,” said Michael Maddox, 60, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, “and I think one of the ways to help do that is to try to remove some of the folks who support his agenda.” Maddox cited Trump's failures on the pandemic and racist language, such as "kung flu," as fueling his opposition to Trump.
Fern Fousse, 84, of Tuscon, Arizona called McSally a "Trump lackey" and flat-out rejected Trump's brand of Republicanism. “I really resent when I see in the newspaper that Trump is supported by all these Republicans,” Fousse said. “Well, I’m a Republican! I have a voice! And I am not a Trump Republican.” She's voting Democratic for the first time in her life this year.
Virtually all GOP senate incumbents and candidates in tough races this cycle have stopped featuring Trump in their ads. The question is whether any of them will risk drawing Trump's ire with something more overt. Based on where things are headed, subtlety isn't going to save any Republicans from getting dragged down this year.
And Senate Republicans might be dead in the water no matter what. Every member of the Senate GOP caucus up for reelection this year gave Trump their personal imprimatur when they voted to acquit him of abuses of power so flagrant that Russian President Vladimir Putin was surely green with envy.
Ever since protests began following the police murder of George Floyd, the conservative media has been eager to blame rising cases of COVID-19 on protesters. That has required overlooking a number of issues, primarily an utter disconnect between the primary sites of protests and the areas where the pandemic is now staging a massive comeback. But Fox News and its many friends have never been daunted by facts. However, as NPR reports, protests don’t appear to be associated with clusters of COVID-19. That’s because protesters in most areas wore masks, even during prolonged outdoor events in the heat of the day. Meanwhile other, less political activities—like house parties—were tied to new clusters of cases in Washington state, and reopening with a disregard for guidelines, social distancing, and mask mandates is driving up cases in multiple states.
But there is a political factor that’s increasing both the reach and the deadliness of the pandemic. Because studies are now showing how right-wing media, including Fox News, has deliberately spread confusion, conflicting information, and outright lies about the pandemic. These sources downplayed the risk, spread a false sense of security, and encouraged viewers to disregard their personal safety even as hospitals—and morgues—were filling. The most astounding result: Both infection rates and mortality can be mapped to places where Sean Hannity is most popular.
Hannity has long been Donald Trump’s most reliable purveyor of unreliable information, and on the COVID-19 crisis Hannity has worked overtime. In the early days of the crisis, Hannity could be counted on to declare it was a hoax. When Trump was pushing hydroxychloroquine, Hannity was all over it as a miracle drug. When Trump started pushing to reopen, Hannity got out the crow bars to complain that the economy was more important than grandma. So it’s no surprise that Hannity viewers are the most confused about the nature of the pandemic—and more likely to die as a result.
As The Washington Post reports, the more-ignorant-than-ignorant state of Hannity viewers is just one of the outcomes found in three new studies. Those studies show that:
People who watch Fox News and other far-right media outlets had little concern about COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic.
They were more likely to believe in rumors about miracle cures, like taking vitamin C or drinking silver.
They were most likely to believe in conspiracy theories about the origin of the disease, including ideas that the Chinese government created the virus, or that it was connected with 5G communications.
These viewers continued to downplay the disease even as deaths were mounting, believing instead that deaths were being overcounted and that the CDC, FDA, and others were exaggerating the harm caused by COVID-19 “to damage the Trump presidency.”
The views expressed by Hannity and others on Fox, and radio propagandists like Rush Limbaugh, bounced back and forth with both the White House and Republicans in Congress. When a guest on Hannity’s show said COVID-19 was “just the flu,” Sen. Tom Cotton repeated that claim on Capitol Hill. And while some Republicans, both on air and in Congress, were discussing the disease seriously from the outset, as time went on their positions became “Hannitized” for no one’s protection, treating the disease more and more casually and spreading more misinformation.
Finally, the bad information, lies, rumors, conspiracy theories, and more that came from right-wing sources didn’t just change opinions—it changed actions. From how willing people were to climb on a cruise ship to how long they washed their hands, viewership of specific Fox News programs could be related to how people responded to the pandemic over the whole course of what is unfortunately still the beginning of the pandemic.
As the researchers looking into protests discovered, it’s indoor gatherings where people aren’t wearing masks—like, say, Donald Trump’s rallies in Tulsa and Phoenix—that are primary sources of infection. The second biggest source is the workplace, where people are being forced back into unsafe conditions by too-rapid reopening. But all of these situations are made worse by people who underestimate the disease because of bad information provided by right-wing media.
Sean Hannity has always been bad for America, but it’s never been more clear that his disinformation—and that of other right-wing pundits—comes with a body count.
“He's good with the base,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune told CNN. “But all of the people who are going to decide in November are the people in the middle, and I think they want the President at a time like this ... to strike a more empathetic tone.” Trump shouldn’t be less racist because it’s the right thing to do—he should be less racist because he’s alienating voters he (and Senate Republicans) need in November.
To Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, “[i]t looks like something needs to be adjusted” on the Trump campaign. But talking about tactical campaign tweaks with reference to polling is, again, extremely different from condemning racism.
To Sen. Lindsey Graham, “[i]t's been a couple bad weeks, and structurally we got to up our game.”
What does that mean, though? Apparently, “I just think sort of the cultural wars, the Democrats are on the wrong side of that. But at the end of the day, I think a little more message discipline would help.”
What about Trump’s repeated use of the racist term “kung flu” for COVID-19? “Ask the president about that,” said Sen. Thom Tillis. “Every week you all try to get me into a running commentary on the President's comments about a variety of different things. I really don't have anything to add,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
These Republicans have been there for Trump at every turn, giving him their votes on issue after issue and unqualified judge after unqualified judge, and protecting him during the impeachment trial. Now they’re making it clear they don’t really care how racist he is. They just don’t want it to cost them anything.
TWO Tom the Dancing Bug books coming from Clover Press, in celebration of the comic's 30th anniversary--> Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse, and The Super-Fun-Pak Comix Reader.
"Ruben Bolling's craft and commentary are as powerful and as pointed, as capable of making you laugh while breaking your heart as they were when we were all so very young."
-Neil Gaiman, from the Foreword to Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse
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Arizona to the rescue. Need racists and skin cancer? Have we got the state for you!
Guy Phillips, a city councilman in Scottsdale, Arizona, has apologized after yelling “I can’t breathe” before removing his face covering during his speech at an anti-mask rally on Wednesday.
Phillips helped organize the protest, called “Unmask Us,” after Mayor Jim Lane ordered residents to wear face coverings in public amid rising coronavirus rates.
The Arizona Republic reports: Phillips addressed the 200 or so people by pulling off his mask and saying, “I can’t breathe,” the words spoken by George Floyd before he died last month at the hands of Minneapolis police, which sparked protests around the country. … Not long after, in a text to The Arizona Republic, Phillips said the comment had no connection to Floyd. He said his remarks referred solely to the mask. “It was hot and stuffy,” Phillips said. “I did not mean any disrespect and there was no connection,” he said. A couple of hours later he issued an apology to the Floyd family. “I am sorry about a comment I made today that was the same comment Mr. Floyd had made. He didn’t deserve what happened to him and I by no means was trying to make light of it by saying I cant breathe in a mask. Please accept my sincerest apology and that goes out to anyone who became offended.”
Although his city council seat is nonpartisan, Phillips’ website identifies him as a proud member of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the National Rifle Association. But even GOP officials in Arizona are now calling for him to resign.
“Anyone who mocks the murder of a fellow human has no place in public office,” Republican Gov. Doug Ducey wrote Wednesday night on Twitter.
Just flat out wrong. Despicable doesn’t go far enough. The final words of George Floyd should NEVER be invoked like this. Anyone who mocks the murder of a fellow human has no place in public office. Period. https://t.co/l0wyVE2BP4
The Trump administration is set to deploy U.S. marshals to guard national monuments and statues, including those that celebrate the Confederacy, as the president prepares an executive order to protect them.
I have authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison, per the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act, or such other laws that may be pertinent…..
The Washington Post reports: In an email, Marshals Service Assistant Director Andrew C. Smith wrote that the agency “has been asked to immediately prepare to provide federal law enforcement support to protect national monuments (throughout the country).” The subject line of the message indicates it is an “Attorney General Assignment,” suggesting it came from Attorney General William P. Barr. “This is a challenging assignment due to the breadth of possible targets for criminal activity,” Smith wrote. He said the Marshals Incident Management Team would start a joint operations center in Springfield, Va., to coordinate, and every deputy in the Special Operations Group would be made available to help as soon as Thursday. … On Monday, protesters attempted to topple a statue of President Andrew Jackson in a park next to the White House, though police in riot gear intervened and stopped them. That night, Trump tweeted his dismay, and the next morning he wrote that he had “authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison, per the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act, or such other laws that may be pertinent…..”
President @realDonaldTrump makes it clear that he's seen all the videos of statues toppling across the country.
Says he will have an executive order by end of week.
More from CNN: Trump on Wednesday characterized attempts to remove racist or problematic monuments as going to an extreme.”I think many of the people that are knocking down the statues don’t even have any idea what the statue is, what it means, who it is when they knocked down,” Trump said, citing the toppling of a bust of Union general and former President Ulysses S. Grant as an example.”Now they are looking at Jesus Christ, they are looking at George Washington, they’re looking at Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson. Not going to happen, not going to happen while I’m here,” Trump said.There have not been widespread reports of activists tearing down statues of Jesus. … While Trump listed names like Washington, Lincoln and Jesus, his bid to preserve monuments originated against attempts to remove statues of Confederate generals and soldiers. Trump has said they should not be removed.
NBC News’ Geoff Bennett reported Wednesday night that Trump personally asked the Interior Secretary to put back up Washington D.C.’s only outdoor Confederate statute, which was torn down on Juneteenth:
Two sources tell NBC News that Pres. Trump personally called Interior Sec. Bernhardt and asked the Park Service to put back up the statue of Gen. Albert Pike – Washington, D.C.’s only outdoor Confederate statue, which protesters tore down and set on fire the night of Juneteenth.
UnknowingFool writes: A former Intel engineer has put forth information that the QA process around Skylake was so terrible that it may have finally driven Apple to use their own processors in upcoming Macs. Not to say that Apple would not have eventually made this move, but Francois Piednoel says Skylake was abnormally bad with Apple finding the largest amount of bugs inside the architecture rivaling Intel itself. That led Apple to reconsider staying on the architecture and hastening their plans to migrate to their own chips. "The quality assurance of Skylake was more than a problem," says Piednoel. "It was abnormally bad. We were getting way too much citing for little things inside Skylake. Basically our buddies at Apple became the number one filer of problems in the architecture. And that went really, really bad. When your customer starts finding almost as much bugs as you found yourself, you're not leading into the right place."
"For me this is the inflection point," added Piednoel. "This is where the Apple guys who were always contemplating to switch, they went and looked at it and said: 'Well, we've probably got to do it.' Basically the bad quality assurance of Skylake is responsible for them to actually go away from the platform."
Apple made the switch official at its developer conference on Monday, announcing that it will introduce Macs featuring Apple-designed, ARM-based processors later this year.
Because nothing says "I'm a republican" like the humiliation of blocking your own bill because Trump is trying to get foreign help
On June 2, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) signed on as a co-sponsor of a bill to punish China for undermining Hong Kong’s independence. Two weeks later, he turned around and blocked it — at the request of the White House.
As a result, the bipartisan bill, which imposes mandatory sanctions over China’s continued incursions into Hong Kong’s internal affairs, is stalled on Capitol Hill even as it has broad bipartisan support.
The episode, which had not been previously reported, underscores the uphill battle for Congress’ China hawks as they push the Trump administration to punish Beijing over an array of issues, from Hong Kong to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Even for us, this is dysfunctional,” Cramer acknowledged on Wednesday, a week after he objected to the bill’s unanimous passage on the Senate floor, after a last-minute plea from the Trump administration.
According to Cramer, the White House and State Department proposed a series of “technical” corrections to the bill only a half-hour before Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) was set to ask for unanimous consent to pass his bill, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act. Cramer defended his decision to block the legislation, saying he hopes the bill eventually passes but that he wanted to try to “accommodate” the Trump administration’s concerns.
“I hadn’t seen it yet. So my concern was, I don’t think we should do a [unanimous consent request] until we have at least considered the technical review,” Cramer said in a brief interview. “I still haven’t seen it. So I don’t know how dramatic the changes were that they were advocating or whether they hate the whole idea.”
Cramer added that the White House “asked me if I would consider” blocking the bill in the meantime, even though Cramer co-sponsored the bill.
Van Hollen said the proposed changes were “significant,” but he predicted “we may be able to work with” some of them.
“I’m confident we would have an overwhelming bipartisan positive vote on this if it came up. So we’re going to keep pushing on it,” Van Hollen said in an interview.
The Trump administration already has the statutory authority to impose a limited set of sanctions in response to China’s recent national security law, which significantly encroaches on Hong Kong’s autonomy. In late May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that Hong Kong, a former British colony, was no longer autonomous from China— a move that comes with significant trade implications.
“While the United States once hoped that a free and prosperous Hong Kong would provide a model for authoritarian China, it is now clear that China is modeling Hong Kong after itself,” Pompeo said at the time.
Van Hollen’s bill, which he introduced earlier this year alongside Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), would impose mandatory sanctions on individuals, banks and other entities that enable China’s violations of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which established Hong Kong’s sovereignty.
President Donald Trump has come under fire for his posture toward China, including recent scrutiny over allegations made by former national security adviser, John Bolton, who claims in his new book that the president sought political favors from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Bolton writes that Trump even encouraged Xi to continue building detention camps for religious minorities, most notably the Uighur Muslims, in the country’s Xinjiang region.
Last week, Trump signed a bill that requires his administration to produce a report on the oppression of Uighurs and name possible targets for human-rights sanctions. However, Trump wrote in a signing statement that he would treat a key section of the bill as “advisory and non-binding” because it “interferes” with his conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
And later in the week, Trump told Axios that he held off on imposing sanctions related to the internment of Uighurs in order to salvage his trade deal with Beijing.
At the same time, Trump’s re-election campaign has been hammering presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, accusing him of being soft on China.
Van Hollen slammed Trump over his recent comments and Bolton’s claims about his dealings with China. Congressional Republicans alsocontinue to urge Trump to get tough on China for human-rights violations as well as for Beijing's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in the country’s Wuhan region.
“The administration has done nothing with the existing authority and requirements. So I think John Bolton’s book may have given us a clue here, which is that the president talks a big game, but when it comes to human rights issues, he ends up caving to President Xi every time,” Van Hollen said. “His only priority seems to be selling more soybeans, and he’s happy to ignore human rights violations as part of that.”
Vice President Mike Pence briefed Republican senators at a lunch on Wednesday about the U.S. government’s efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic. During the meeting, senators pressed Pence on China’s handling of the virus.
“I told him we need to push back against China really hard and hold them accountable,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said after the meeting.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has widened his lead over President Donald Trump in Wisconsin and narrowly leads the president in Ohio, according to a pair of polls out Wednesday from two key swing states in the Midwest.
In Wisconsin, where Trump eked out a victory in 2016 to flip the state from blue to red, Marquette University Law School poll found the former vice president up 8 percentage points, with 49 percent support to Trump’s 41 percent.
In Ohio, a state Trump carried by 8 points in 2016 and which has voted for the eventual presidential winner for half a century, a new poll from Quinnipiac University found 46 of respondents favor Biden, compared with 45 percent who favor the president.
Both surveys underscore that Biden's ascendance in Midwest states will be key to either candidate’s victory in November. Both Wisconsin and Ohio were won by President Barack Obama in 2012 before flipping to Trump in 2016.
The two polls build on a raft of national polling in recent weeks showing Biden with a growing lead over Trump as the president grapples with responding to the coronavirus pandemic, the economic recession and mass protests for racial justice. One such poll released Wednesday morning showed the former vice president with a 14-point lead over Trump nationwide. The RealClearPolitics average of polls gives Biden a 10-point national lead.
The latest numbers come as both men begin to ease back onto the campaign trail after a monthslong hiatus amid the pandemic. Last weekend, Trump held his first rally since March and began limited travel again in May. Biden has also begun to venture out of his Delaware home for small in-person gatherings.
That the gap between Trump and Biden has grown in Wisconsin is notable considering the past four Marquette polls showed a narrow race of no more than 4 points in head-to-head matchups. Biden's lead in the Marquette poll is up 5 points relative to last month, when the same survey showed Biden with a 3-point lead. In February — before Biden revived his floundering campaign to lock up the Democratic nomination — Trump and Biden were tied at 46 percent.
The Marquette survey found Trump’s support among Republicans has decreased 10 points since May, from 93 percent to 83 percent, and that independents flipped to prefer Biden over Trump 38-30.
Both polls found Trump's approval rating underwater in both states, with Trump's overall job approval dipping for the third straight month in Wisconsin to 45 percent, with 51 percent disapproval. The Quinnipiac poll showed a significant split in the approval/disapproval ratings of Trump versus Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine — 44-53 percent and 75-19 percent, respectively.
The Quinnipiac Poll surveyed 1,139 self-identified registered voters in Ohio from June 18-22, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. The Marquette Law School poll interviewed 805 registered Wisconsin voters by landline or cellphone from June 14-18. Results from the full survey have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
Mnuchin backed off his stance a bit last week, saying that the administration would make some information available, the names and businesses of companies that got $150,000 or more, though it would not release the exact amounts. At the same time, he says "This was a program we never agreed to full transparency, and the reason for that is the loan amount is based upon the amount of salary." Except that PPP program is an existing loan program with the Small Business Administration that has released information dating back to 1991. And except for the part where the SBA website says the agency intends to provide "loan-specific data to the public." And the part where Sen. Marco Rubio, who wrote the legislation, said "SBA is eventually going to have to release that. I always thought they were going to have to, and if they don't, we'll make them do it." So, yes, when Donald Trump signed the measure into law, the administration was pretty much agreeing to full transparency.
But, get this, Mnuchin also says "What I wanted to make sure was for the very small businesses we would not disclose the loan amount and the company name. Because if we did that, you would be able to tell people's compensation, and we didn't think that was fair." That's totally believable, right? They care so damned much about the little guy. But we're not going to see whether these loans are truly going out to those smallest of businesses. So that we don't see how communities of color are getting left out. So we don't see whether or not the loans are going to the regions and the sectors that most need the program. Like whether 55% of Nebraska businesses are still getting the loans while less than 20% of New York's business are receiving them.
That means the administration is ultimately going to disclose about 14% of borrowers, total, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. About 86% of the loans have been $150,000 or less from the data released by the SBA so far. That's not a whole lot of transparency.
