James.galbraith

House Democrats have spent much of the year averting their gaze — and their most powerful investigative weapons — from a mounting list of President Donald Trump’s scandals. But new ones keep popping up whether they like it or not.

Now a debate is bubbling up inside the Democratic Caucus about just how aggressively to confront Trump’s latest alleged abuses, particularly just four months before an election in which the president has damaged himself with near-daily unforced errors and seen his standing slide in national polls. Democrats are also eager to avoid stomping on their own election year agenda.

The House has already deployed its strongest check on the president — impeachment — with no appetite among Democratic leadership or the rank and file to pursue the all-consuming process again, this time amid a global pandemic and national debate over police brutality and institutional racism.

But Democrats can take other steps to try to impose oversight. And the question of how to address what they view as Trump’s increasing lawlessness has become more difficult as Trump’s former top national security aide, John Bolton, leveled a string of jaw-dropping allegations about abuses of power by Trump in service of his reelection. That controversy was compounded by the abrupt weekend firing by Attorney General William Barr of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who has overseen several Trump-connected probes.

The caucus is not nearly as splintered as it was in the lead-up Trump’s impeachment, but while some members want an aggressive congressional response, senior House Democrats say there should be limits.

“We’re only a few weeks — less than 20 weeks from the election — and we need to be concentrating on winning,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), adding, “We don’t need to get bogged down in another impeachment.”

“I do think we ought to hold hearings and bring as much of the information to the public as possible between now and whenever. But I don’t think we ought to go any further,” Cleaver added.

In short, Democrats are balancing a desperate desire to defend institutions they say are being threatened by Trump with concerns that a push to investigate will detract from other urgent national concerns and potentially undermine their own political prospects — and could ultimately be fruitless with the election a few months away.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, didn't downplay the need to hear from Barr and Bolton, but also acknowledged the difficult reality of slogging through the courts to enforce subpoenas or other measures before November.

“It’s a long and tortuous process,” Hoyer told reporters Tuesday. “The election is coming up. We have some four months before that happens. And as a practical matter, getting a court case through that quickly may not be possible, frankly."

Hoyer isn’t alone. Many Democrats in the caucus have “impeachment fatigue” as one senior aide put it. And while all Democrats say they want to hold the president accountable, they also don’t want to lose sight of the ultimate goal — booting Trump out of the White House. Meanwhile, some of their decisions may be made for them, as the Supreme Court weighs cases that could supercharge long-stalled investigations, or sap their energy altogether.

Not everyone is content to wager waiting until Election Day and hoping former Vice President Joe Biden denies Trump a second term. Some Democratic lawmakers and aides would rather use their megaphone to highlight the administration’s scandals every day in the run-up to the election, reasoning that doing so will attract voters, not repel them.

The divide manifested itself Monday, when lawmaker and aides grappled with whether to issue a subpoena for Barr, who has avoided testifying to the Judiciary Committee since he was confirmed in early 2019. Some committee Democrats had been clamoring for a subpoena for weeks, but Chairman Jerry Nadler said the fight wouldn’t be worth months of litigation.

Yet Barr’s effort to remove Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, prompted Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Nadler to rethink the matter. After the two talked over the weekend, Nadler initiated the subpoena process on Monday.

The move took other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee by surprise after Nadler’s team indicated they weren’t inclined to subpoena Barr during a heated staff call earlier in the day.

Barr's conduct will again be the focus Wednesday, when the Judiciary Committee holds a hearing featuring testimony from two sitting Justice Department officials who plan to allege political interference by senior DOJ officials, including Barr. One of them, prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, told the committee in written testimony that he and three colleagues were pressured to recommend a light sentence for longtime Trump associate Roger Stone, who was convicted last year of repeatedly lying to the House Intelligence Committee and intimidating a witness to impede an ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

And lawmakers still hope to press Barr about his role in federal security officers' decision to use force — including tear gas and flash-bang grenades — against peaceful protesters across the street from the White House earlier this month, just moments ahead of Trump's decision to hold a photo op in front of nearby St. John's Episcopal Church.

Despite the media’s attention on Berman’s firing and Bolton’s book, top Democrats have been more focused on this year’s agenda — a landmark police reform bill on the floor this week, and a massive infrastructure bill on the floor the next. And any barbs at Trump, Democratic campaign officials say, should be in line with the party’s message on health care.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sent a memo to vulnerable members this week urging them to focus on Trump’s other headline-grabbing move over the weekend — his claim at a Tulsa, Okla., rally that he has sought to slow down coronavirus testing amid a skyrocketing number of cases. The memo made no mention of the other scandals dogging Trump. That mirrors Democrats’ 2018 approach, when they zeroed in on GOP legislation to repeal Obamacare and strip millions of their health insurance.

Trump’s scandals also didn’t come up on a caucuswide call Monday, and Pelosi mentioned the possibility of subpoenaing Barr only “in passing” on a private leadership call later in the evening, according to Democrats on both calls.

Even some of the caucus’ most prominent liberal voices, many of whom advocated fiercely for impeachment, are pushing a more measured approach now.

“I think that there are certainly things to be gained by continuing to have people testify,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a member of the Judiciary panel.

But Jayapal, like several other Democratic lawmakers and aides interviewed for this story, didn’t explicitly back deploying subpoenas or other forceful measures to compel testimony from some of Trump’s closest current and former advisers.

“Who are the best people to tell that story? There’s a lot of choices, unfortunately, and I think we have to look at the whole picture and figure out what makes the most sense,” she said.

For many Democrats, even the most fervent supporters of impeaching Trump, the dwindling calendar is their dominant reality now.

The election is fast approaching and Trump continues to generate an almost incessant stream of bad headlines, all on his own, without Democrats’ help. Plus, by ceding some of the spotlight to Trump, Democrats say they are denying the pugnacious president a foil to pit himself against.

“We’re at the same disadvantage of the last 3½ years. He sucks all of the oxygen out in the room,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). “In terms of pushing out a message, we don’t have much of an opportunity to do that.”

The internal dispute over how to confront Trump is far less of a fractious divide than it was in the run-up to impeachment. House Democrats have been forced to direct their attention elsewhere as the coronavirus took tens of thousands of lives and devastated the economy, and the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer plunged the country into a wrenching debate over race and policing.

And at least some of the “frontline” Democrats — those facing difficult reelection fights — are expressing support for robust oversight of alleged transgressions by Trump. Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), who was also an early backer of impeachment, said his constituents understand the need to put a check on potential abuses.

“It's never a problem for me to stand up for the rule of law, so long as we are also taking care of health care and infrastructure and helping people survive Covid-19,” he said. “That’s not a difficult argument to make.”

The thorniest question for lawmakers is how to handle the allegations lodged by Bolton, whose new White House memoir suggests that Trump, among other potential abuses, pleaded with Chinese President Xi Jinping to purchase American agricultural products from states crucial to Trump’s reelection. Bolton also alleges that Trump promised to influence U.S. prosecutors to do favors for foreign autocrats.

But House Democrats also have little fondness for Bolton, who infuriated the caucus last year when he refused to testify in the impeachment inquiry over Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate his Democratic adversaries.

Now, though, Bolton has publicly affirmed the details of the House’s inquiry and lodged even more damaging accusations. Democrats have wrestled over the past week with whether to seek Bolton’s sworn testimony once more, with House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff saying, “I don't think we should wait” if the book demands deeper investigation.

“A lot of it is not a surprise, but at the same time, exposure of this president's misconduct is the best way to protect the country,” Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Congress can take steps to protect the country.”

The House’s investigative decisions may hinge partly on a looming Supreme Court decision about whether lawmakers can access Trump’s tax returns or personal financial data from his banks or accountant. The court’s ruling in that case could arm the House with reams of new information that suggest conflicts of interest between Trump and the countries with which he’s conducting foreign policy.

And there’s another imminent issue: Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone is slated to go to prison on June 30 for his conviction on charges of lying to Congress repeatedly during its investigation of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election.

Trump has strongly suggested a pardon or commutation would be forthcoming — sure to enrage Democrats who have treated any move to shield Stone from criminal consequences as potential obstruction of justice.

Whether Congress is able to secure testimony from key Trump administration figures in all of these fights is a difficult challenge for the House, but whether to at least make the attempt is up to them.

“I do think that is our duty,” said Malinowski. “If the administration refuses to allow people to testify, I don't think it's good for maintaining the right long-term balance between the branches of our government for Congress to say, whatever, it's not worth fighting about.”

There may be a new travel ban in the works and this time it could target Americans indefinitely. Despite the fact that the economies of many European Union countries are suffering after coronavirus closures, they may keep their borders closed to American travelers due to the Trump administration's failure to combat the pandemic in the U.S.

According to the New York Times, the EU is mulling a ban that would place Americans in the same bucket of undesirables as Russians and Brazilians. At upward of 120,000 coronavirus-related deaths, the U.S. has lost more people to the pandemic than any other country.

Most American travelers had already been prohibited from entering the EU since mid-March, as European countries closed down to slow the spread of the virus. But the new ban would extend that prohibition past July 1, when the EU is officially reopening its borders, until such time as the U.S. does a better job of containing the virus. 

The EU bloc is reportedly negotiating over two lists of countries that have controlled spread of the coronavirus well enough to be considered safe. "Both lists include China, as well as developing nations like Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam. Both also exclude the United States and other countries that were deemed too risky because of the spread of the virus," writes the Times. Once finalized, the list will be updated every couple of weeks. The EU benchmark is its own average number of new infections per 100,000 people over the past 14 days, which currently sits at 16. According to the Times, the comparable U.S. number is 107.

In a sad twist, Trump imposed a ban on European travelers to the U.S. back in March that he still hasn't lifted. Guess what? No one's clamoring to get into the U.S. and here's why.

President Donald Trump walks in the rain toward Marine One after stopping to speak to the media on the South Lawn of the White House as he prepares to depart for a Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally on June 20, 2020. | Pete Marovich/Getty Images

Trump’s Arizona rally is somehow a worse public health risk than his Tulsa one.

Just a few short days after a flopped rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, President Donald Trump is back on the campaign trail. On Tuesday, the president headed to Arizona to address a student rally in Phoenix, where coronavirus cases have begun to climb at an alarming rate.

The rally is just one part of a larger swing through the state, which is on track to be a key battleground in the general election this November. Trump started his day with a visit to the US Border Patrol station in Yuma, Arizona, where he participated in a briefing on border security.

He also visited the southern border to inspect progress on the wall between the US and Mexico. According to the White House, Trump’s visit included a “commemoration of the 200th mile of new border wall” near San Luis, Arizona.

But it is the rally itself, organized by Students for Trump and Turning Point Action, that has many public health experts concerned. It will likely be far smaller than his Saturday event in Tulsa, which saw only about a third of the 19,200-seat stadium filled. According to NPR, the Phoenix venue — Dream City Church — can hold 3,000 people.

Still, Arizona presents a particularly dangerous situation for an indoor event: Cases in the state have increased by 174 percent over the past three weeks, and the Arizona Health Department reported a record-high 3,600 new cases on Tuesday alone.

Nonetheless, the Arizona Republic reported Tuesday that the majority of the people in line for Trump’s rally were maskless, contrary to a Phoenix policy requiring them.

According to a Monday press release, Dream City Church has taken steps to mitigate the risk of the coronavirus by installing “breakthrough indoor air purification technology.” A video posted by the church’s pastor Monday claimed that the system “kills 99.9 percent of COVID-19 within 10 minutes,” though the church later clarified that statement in a Facebook post.

Those claims are almost certainly exaggerated, as the New York Times reported Tuesday: The ionization system described in the video isn’t new, and it neither works as quickly nor as effectively as the church suggested.

As Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech expert on the airborne transmission of infectious disease, told Talking Points Memo (TPM), air purifiers “can reduce the background level, but that doesn’t help when we’re in close proximity to others.” TPM’s Matt Shuham continued:

In other words, unless every rally attendee has their own personal purification system, the church isn’t going to stop 99.9% of coronavirus, she said.

“This claim has not been demonstrated in any peer-reviewed independent forum that I am aware of,” added Jeffrey Siegel, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto who specializes in air quality.

Legal troubles

Even setting aside the church’s hyperbolic claims about the safety of attending events there during a pandemic, there are reasons to be skeptical of the venue. As Aaron Ament — previously special counsel at the Education Department and now president of the advocacy group Student Defense — points out on Twitter, “Dream City is part of the same Dream Center network that @studentlegalnet sued for lying to students at its for-profit schools.”

As the Washington Post reported last year, the network’s Argosy University chain was removed from federal student loan and grant programs after about $13 million in financial aid went missing. The scandal drove the Dream Center into bankruptcy.

The relationship between Trump’s Education Department — run by billionaire Republican donor turned Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — has also been the topic of investigation by the House Education and Labor Committee. In an October 2019 letter to DeVos, committee chairman Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) indicated that the department’s decision to award financial aid dollars to Dream Center schools may have been illegal.

According to the letter, officials at the Education Department were aware that two of the network’s schools were not accredited; nonetheless, the department charged ahead with releasing financial aid funds to the schools and sought to retroactively accredit them “in contravention of Department policy.”

All of that is to say, as Ament argues on Twitter, that when Trump takes the stage for Tuesday night’s rally, he and the Students for Trump group will be doing so along “with an organization that ran predatory schools that his own Secretary of Education illegally funded after they lost eligibility and accreditation and lied to students about it.”

In addition to Tuesday’s Phoenix rally, Trump’s swing-state tour will continue on Thursday this week with a visit to Wisconsin, where he will participate in a town hall hosted by Fox News personality Sean Hannity.

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MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard attempted to interview some Trump supporters camped out for the president’s rally at a Phoenix megachurch about why they did not want to wear masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic which is now hitting Arizona particularly hard. It didn’t go well.

Said one woman: “It’s not about the mask. It’s about the hypocrisy that it’s okay for tens of thousands of people to go and riot, to go and protest, but you cannot have a group of a group of a thousand or I don’t know how many people are here, this is not okay?”

Another Trump supporter leaned in: “Why don’t you cover the protesters and ask why they aren’t wearing a mask? … Why isn’t the liberal news media focusing on them not wearing a mask?”

When Hillyard asked the woman if she had heard about a special air ionization system the megachurch said it had developed and installed that it claimed would kill 99.9 percent of the coronavirus, another man interjected, “You talkin’ about that COVID-1984 bullsh*t?”

Hillyard then cut back to the news desk.

MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard talks to some Trump supporters in Phoenix about why they refuse to wear masks. pic.twitter.com/GHLGcQirp3

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) June 23, 2020

The post MSNBC Reporter Heckled by Hostile Arizona Trump Supporters About the ‘COVID-1984 Bullsh*t’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Bitcoin ATM operator LibertyX now offers bitcoin purchases at the United States' most popular convenience and drug stores. From a report: Per a PR Newswire released on Jun 22, the company has finished rolling out the buying option which will be available in "20,000 retail locations around the U.S., including major convenience store and pharmacy chains, such as 7-Eleven, CVS Pharmacy, and Rite Aid." This service will give LibertyX users the option to purchase bitcoin with cash at any of the participating retailers' cashier counters. These 20,000 new buying centers add to the 5,000 Bitcoin ATMs that the company has established across the United States since it launched in 2014.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rule of law in America is currently dangling by a thread. Yet it seems that only one Senate Republican believes the upper chamber is there to do anything more than conduct performative acts of governance—even when the president of the United States has fired his chief investigator. 

With the exception of Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, every Senate Republican asked shrugged off the fact that Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr ousted the man who has been overseeing several investigations into Trump's dealings and inner circle.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn  seemed annoyed by questions about the ouster of top prosecutor Geoffrey Berman. "Everything that happens around here creates a tempest in a teapot," Cornyn told CNN when asked about Berman. (Gee, wonder if that has anything to do with the president he voted to acquit.) "I feel like I've got more important things to do," Cornyn added. 

Sometimes being routinely asked about your job is such a downer. Cornyn's got a reelection run, folks, the country can just suck it.

Cornyn, like other Senate Republicans, expressed the view that Trump and Barr were well "within their rights" to sack the guy who was running an investigation into Trump's lawyer and fixer, Rudy Giuliani. And no, he wasn't interested in why they fired Berman and even confirmed that he had no intention of asking—because frankly, it would just be a real pain in the butt to do something resembling his job.

The Senate GOP's No. 2, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, similarly downplayed the removal of the person who is running multiple investigations into Trump. "My assumption is whatever investigations are underway, it will be continued by the career staff there. So they'll go on," Thune said.

"Assumption" being the operative word. No need to actually check on that, or maybe give Barr the impression that Senate Republicans actually care about his motives and are making certain he's not interfering with legitimate inquiries into corruption and criminal activity, perhaps at the highest levels of government. 

By the way, there is a decent chance those investigations will continue even though Barr clearly intended on running the same play he did at the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington—installing a loyalist so he could do favors for Trump allies like trying to lighten their sentence (Roger Stone) or drop their charges altogether (Mike Flynn). But Berman's initial refusal to leave appears to have brought a critical concession—that Berman's own chief deputy, Audrey Strauss, will temporarily assume his responsibilities in the Southern District of New York. 

Barr made that concession in the letter he sent to Berman following his refusal to step down. "By operation of law, the Deputy United States Attorney, Audrey Strauss, will become the Acting United States Attorney, and I anticipate that she will serve in that capacity until a permanent successor is in place," Barr wrote. Strauss is an actual career prosecutor who has a working knowledge of the ongoing investigations while the man Barr tried to install, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton, has no actual prosecutorial experience, let alone any familiarity with the current inquiries at SDNY.  

But the fact that Berman's declination to voluntarily step down forced Barr into naming Strauss as his successor in no way diminishes the severity of the abuses of power that Barr and Trump are committing. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has urged the Department of Justice's internal watchdogs to open an inquiry into the entire matter. 

And Sen. Romney agrees, something isn't right. "From the outside it looks pretty swampy," Romney told CNN. "I certainly hope that any investigations that were being pursued that would relate to the President or donors or friends would be continued to be pursued."

But the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee sure won't go looking. Asked if the American people have the right to know why Berman was fired, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina offered, "Not particularly." That’s basically the official Senate GOP position on everything Trump: The People will get nothing and we will make sure of that. 

Graham echoed other Republicans in asserting that Trump had the right to fire Berman even if Barr's handling of it was "inartful." But Graham has also indicated that he plans to honor the blue-slip tradition on Barr's likely nomination of Clayton to the position, which effectively gives the home state senators—New York Sens. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, in this case—the right to hold up the nomination by refusing to sign off on it. If Graham holds to that, Strauss will likely remain as SDNY's acting U.S. attorney indefinitely. 

In the meantime, House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler expects Berman to testify before the House panel, though timing of that testimony is still up in the air.

Donald Trump is returning to Arizona to make another try at an ego-fulfilling campaign event—and while he’s setting his crowd-size sights lower than he did in Tulsa, the coronavirus dangers are extreme. Trump is speaking at a Students for Trump rally held in a Phoenix megachurch and touring a border wall construction site. Where to start with this?

Let’s start with Arizona’s skyrocketing COVID-19 rates. Skyrocketing as in they’ve doubled in 15 days. As in hospitals are running low on ICU beds. As in a 20.4% positive test rate. And to make matters worse, the state has testing backlogs. That’s the real backdrop for Trump’s visit, as much as he might wish the backdrop would be a heroic image of himself against his racism wall.

Trump is starting his Arizona visit in Yuma at a border wall construction site where two workers have tested positive for COVID-19. He’ll hold a roundtable discussion of border security, tour the operations, and “thank Border Patrol and law enforcement for their tireless efforts,” according to a White House official. Since Trump is sure to lie lavishly about how much new wall he’s had put up, the facts: ONLY THREE MILES OF WALL HAVE BEEN BUILT WHERE THERE WAS NO EXISTING BARRIER. Another 184 miles replace old barriers and not quite 30 more miles of secondary barrier have been constructed. 

This is not the story Trump will be telling, it’s safe to predict.

In the evening, Trump will speak at the Students for Trump rally. Dream City Church, where the rally will be held, holds about 3,000 people. Turning Point Action, the group organizing the event, will be distributing masks, which will be interesting one way or the other—either rally attendees will refuse to comply and wear them, or Trump will be faced with an audience of masked people, which he will hate. Masks are an important step, but if the church is full and people are not distanced, they’ll be of limited benefit. And again, this is a state where coronavirus is spreading fast.

Arizona is a battleground state both for Trump and for Senate Republicans, and it’s a battle that seems to be slipping away from them, which is why Trump is making his second trip to the state since coronavirus shutdowns started. But visiting as virus cases explode in the state could backfire on him—and, unfortunately, on the people of Arizona.

Baltimore’s Ouzo Bay restaurant apologized on Monday and suspended and employee after a viral video showed a black family’s child being denied entry to the eatery because of its “dress code” while a white family’s child wearing the same thing finished their meal.

He had no answer for her. Dress codes only apply to us. pic.twitter.com/QaZyLqX1eY

— PICKMEIKA (@smdftbAGAIN) June 23, 2020

Atlas Restaurant Group, which owns Ouzo Bay, apologized after the video went viral and said it is changing its “dress code” policy so that kids ages 12 and under are not subject to it. It also said the manager in the video has been placed on indefinite leave.

The Baltimore Sun reports: “This is not the first time Atlas has come under fire for its dress code. Last September, Choptank in Fells Point banned ‘baggy clothing, sunglasses after dark and bandannas.’ The restaurant then modified the dress code but defended themselves, calling the criticism “unfortunate.”“

Today, we learned of an incredibly disturbing incident that occurred at one of our restaurants in Baltimore, Ouzo Bay. We sincerely apologize to Marcia Grant, her son & everyone impacted by this painful incident. This situation does not represent who or what Atlas stands for. pic.twitter.com/jsofGRLVw1

— Atlas Restaurant Group (@AtlasBaltimore) June 23, 2020

The post Baltimore Restaurant Denies Entry to Black Family’s Kid Over ‘Dress Code’ as White Kid Wearing Same Thing Finishes Meal: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

The Georgia GOP is trying to corrupt an effort to get hate crimes legislation passed in the state by adding “outrageous protections for cops under investigation” and even going so far as to allow “hate crime” charges for offenses against cops and other first responders, according to the Southern Center for Human Rights. The nonprofit is calling for Georgia voters to tweet and otherwise contact their senators to vote no on HB 838 after Republican Sen. Bill Cowsert snuck the changes into the proposed legislation last week. He announced the dubious plan late Monday during a Senate Rules Committee hearing, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

“We’re very hopeful that the House will be satisfied that these are changes that have brought bipartisan support and did not in any way undermine the initial purposes,” he said. Cowsert added: “We’re equally committed to passing meaningful hate-crime law and also to protecting law enforcement from unnecessary harassment, intimidation, threats and physical injury by citizens.”

Hannah Riley, communications manager for the nonprofit, called the move “sneaky and horrible” in a Twitter thread Tuesday morning. She said:

The new language establishes extraordinary rights for police officers who are under investigation, including:1. to have all witnesses interviewed before the officer is interrogated;2. to receive notice about the nature of the investigation before the officer is interrogated 3. to be interrogated at a reasonable time – preferably when the officer is on duty and will be paid;4. to receive a copy of every question asked and statement made within 72 hours; and5. to be interrogated without offensive language or threats.CONTACT YOUR SENATOR!

Discussion of the bill comes amid nationwide fury over the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. Arbery, a Black man, was unarmed when a white former cop and his son allegedly followed him, accused him of breaking into a South Georgia home, and killed him Feb. 23, 2020. 

Floyd, another unarmed Black man, died May 25 in police custody after a white Minneapolis cop kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes. Less than a month later, Georgia protesters took to the streets again over the death of another Black man at the hands of Atlanta police June 12. Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed when he failed a sobriety check and tried to get away from officers outside of an Atlanta Wendy's restaurant. Officers waited two minutes and 12 seconds before calling for help when Brooks was shot, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said Wednesday as he announced the charges against the two cops involved.

"Republicans adding law enforcement as a protected class to a hate crimes bill shows they do not care about meaningful hate crimes legislation, but would rather weaponize it against Black Georgians,” Georgia Democrats tweeted. “Even more telling, they did this on #Juneteenth. #gapol"

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

RELATED: As Rayshard Brooks was 'fighting for his life,' Atlanta cops kicked him and stood on his shoulder

RELATED: Trump can't be bothered to comment after Black man who 'tussled' with 2 Atlanta cops is shot, killed

RELATED: Fired Atlanta officer who shot Rayshard Brooks twice in the back to be charged with felony murder

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Hovertext:
See, computer science DOES have philosophical implications.

Today's News:

Donald Trump values ratings over lives, and he always has. As the nation has battled a pandemic that has already killed over 122,000 Americans, Trump has repeatedly—and falsely—blamed an increase in new cases on increased testing. Trump has even suggested that if testing stopped, there would be no more cases. All of these claims aren’t just ridiculous, they’re inviting disease. They’re inviting states to take the best tool available off the table in the fight against the pandemic and throw it in the trash.  

But at his poorly attended Tulsa rally, Trump went beyond suggesting that states should reduce testing. Among his rambling statements, Trump said: “When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people; you're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘slow the testing down please.’” White House officials passed it off as a joke immediately after the speech, and on Monday Trump seemed to dodge the question. But on Tuesday, he owned that statement.

When Trump was asked about the statement on Monday, Trump responded with a lengthy “uhhhhh” before giving an endorsement of slowing testing that didn’t actually admit that he directly asked for it to be slowed. “If it did slow down,” said Trump, “frankly, I think we’re way ahead of ourselves, if you wanna know the truth. We’ve done too good of a job.” 122,000 Americans are dead. That’s “too good of a job” as far as Trump is concerned.

White House officials had a different explanation. "Come on now, that was tongue in cheek," said trade adviser Peter Navarro. "That was a light moment for him at a rally." Because tens of thousands of Americans dying is a traditional laughing matter at the White House. That’s also the line that Ivanka stand-in Kayleigh McEnany took on Monday. "No, he has not directed that," claimed McEnany. "It was a comment that he made in jest.”

But on Tuesday, Trump appeared to make liars out of his staff and confirm that he had demanded reduced testing. Asked by CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang if he was really kidding when he asked his people to slow down testing, Trump’s reply was succinct: “I don’t kid.”

From the beginning of the pandemic, it’s been clear that testing and isolation are the best tools against COVID-19, just as they are with almost every infectious disease. Nations that successfully deployed these tools have been able to both contain the disease and protect their economies. Reducing testing means deliberately putting the health of the American public at risk.

But then … Donald Trump values ratings over lives. He’d rather be able to point to good—but false—numbers than to have the actual information needed to protect American lives. 

If Trump was joking, then it’s among the worst jokes in history. If Trump wasn’t joking, it’s nothing less than negligent homicide … 122,000 counts. And climbing.  

Black Lives Matter protesters and Confederate flag-donning counter-protesters faced off in Branson, Missouri this week, outside Dixie Outfitters because of the store owner’s affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan.

The Springfield News-Leader reports: “More than 65 were there to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement and to protest the store. Nearly 50 people came to support the store and the Confederate flag. … The Black Lives Matter demonstrators chanted and used a megaphone to talk about racism in America. The anti-demonstrators in the store’s parking lot used a loudspeaker to play Southern-themed music like ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Song of the South.'”

In a video which has been viewed more than 7 million times, one racist was filmed yelling, “I will teach my grandkids to hate you all! I will teach them to hate all you people.”

“Suck on this,” she added, holding up the Confederate flag and holding her fist high. “KKK belief.”

Sometimes the racists just come out and show themselves.

This woman was part of a counter-protest to a #BlackLivesMatter rally in Branson, Missouri today.

pic.twitter.com/aq3slWXoh7

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) June 22, 2020

The post Proud Racist Tells ‘Black Lives Matter’ Protesters: ‘I Will Teach My Grandkids to Hate You All’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

The Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump group led by Kellyanne Conway’s husband George, and other disillusioned Republicans, has just released its latest, hitting Trump on his remarks about COVID-19 testing.

“The most deceptive, lying president in history finally told the truth. Somehow, it was more shocking than all his deceptions,” says the ad’s narrator.

The clip then features Trump at this Tulsa rally telling the crowd, “When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘slow the testing down, please!'”

“Slow the testing down?” the clip’s narrator asks. “Slow down our chance to save tens of thousands of lives. Slow down our understanding of where COVID is and how it’s spreading. Slow down the steps to reopen the economy. Every single expert told him to test more and test faster, and now we know his response.”

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked about the remarks on Monday, and said, “It was a comment that he made in jest.”

Trump on Tuesday had this to say about his remarks:

“I don’t kid, let me make it clear. We have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. We test better than anybody in the world. Our tests are the best in the world, and we have the most of them. By having more tests, we find more cases. We did 25 million tests. … Here’s what I say: testing is a double-edged sword. In one way, it tells you, you have cases. In other way, you find out where the cases are and you do a good job. We are doing a great job. We have never been credited for it. We’re doing the best testing job anywhere in the world.”

NEW: Asked whether he was kidding when he claimed at his Tulsa rally he had instructed officials to slow down COVID-19 testing, Pres. Trump says, "I don't kid."

Yesterday, press sec. Kayleigh McEnany told @bgittleson the comments had been "in jest." https://t.co/yXYp4j9zXj pic.twitter.com/jjd5XVLRye

— ABC News (@ABC) June 23, 2020

The post ‘Lincoln Project’ Smacks Trump for Telling the Truth About COVID-19 Testing: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

The White House applied a familiar formula to Donald Trump's damning admission Saturday during his rally that he had asked his people to "slow the testing down" for the pandemic—pretend Trump was just joshing America about the greatest public health threat in a century. Solid.

But that was just as big a lie as Trump's pre-rally claim that coronavirus was just "fading away." Trump seems to think that as long as new infections aren't properly counted, no one will care that their sister, dad, or spouse died. Only a sociopath could truly believe the data could supersede the personal experience of losing loved ones.

Experts were quick to offer a rebuttal to Trump's latest delusions about COVID-19, but they bear repeating. Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told the New York Times that far from fading out, the pandemic was more like a blaze in search of tinder. “I don’t see this slowing down for the summer or into the fall,” Osterholm said. “I think this is more like a forest fire ... wherever there’s wood to burn, this fire is going to burn it.” 

If that's true—and it's entirely plausible that it is—the notion that we will experience some sort of semi-predictable series of waves nationwide is bunk. This explanation certainly tracks with the fact that many states and counties that didn't previously experience high rates of infection are now spiking, as is the case in specific regions of Texas, Arizona, Florida, and California. 

Another infectious disease expert told CNN that a vaccine likely won't be available for another year.  

“Not only is it not fading out—this will be with us for at least another 12 months, and that’s the most optimistic scenario for having a vaccine," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

Trump’s consistent and lethal distortion of the facts—as agreed upon by the data and the medical experts—seems criminal at this point. He isn’t simply mishandling the national response or even abandoning the effort. Instead, Trump is purposely funneling lies to American people about the deadliest public health threat in a century. 

Here’s the sweep of the national increase in coronavirus cases via the New York Times.

And here’s several of the states where new infections are spiking in the last 14 days: California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Arizona.

The president who said, 'I don't take responsibility,' searches for new scapegoats.

Nationwide, murals and street art are highlighting the importance of ending racial inequality. Protesters and advocates across the nation are spreading the message through art and paint in addition to protest signs and banners. The street paintings are a call for justice following a global outcry over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

While most cities have left the protest art up, some have opted to cover up the messages. A mural of the words “Black Lives Matter” on the street in front of the Florissant Police Department in Missouri was covered up due to a city ordinance, police said.

Activists painted the mural in the middle lane on Lindbergh ahead of a protest on Friday; by Saturday morning, the mural was covered up. While many felt the city covered the mural due to its message, a spokesperson with the police department said that any kind of painting on the road is not allowed in Florissant. Protestors repainted the mural Saturday only to have it painted over again by the city. The paint cycle repeated once more on Sunday—protesters gathered Sunday night to rewrite “Black Lives Matter” in the street.

"It was painted over because it is illegal to paint the roadway," Steve Michael, an officer with the Florissant Police Department, told BuzzFeed News. "It has absolutely nothing to do with the message." Michael told the news outlet that the city’s street department conducted the job. "If we allow all groups to paint a message anywhere then we would have all kinds of different groups doing it," he added. "We simply cannot allow any group to paint anything on roadways.”

But while Michael said the cover-up was performed by the city to discourage other groups from wanting to paint their slogans on the street as well, critics felt there were other reasons for covering it. Photos of the repainted street quickly went viral on social media, with many users alleging that blue paint was used and questioning its symbolism. The use of blue paint is connected to the metaphor of "the thin blue line," a term used for the police. It is often included in pro-police imagery to convey that police are the line between civilized society and chaos. Michael told BuzzFeed News that the paint used was gray, not blue.  

Florissant, which is a suburb of St. Louis, neighbors Ferguson, Missouri, the town in which young Michael Brown was killed by police in 2014. Local news outlets have reported various incidents of police-initiated violence in the city, including one incident in which an officer hit an unarmed man with an unmarked police vehicle.

In the past, the police department has been known to make threats against individuals who are organizing for community change and activism, and the department continues to do so. Peaceful protesters this weekend expressed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that they were afraid protests would stoke tensions between the community and the police department. Some took to Twitter to express the need for more people to be present as the police menaced them. Police officers allegedly threatened protesters, saying that if they did not clear the street within five minutes, they would be “subject to arrest and other actions, up to and including chemical munitions,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

While Florissant did not allow their street mural to remain, other major cities across the country have. Since the beginning of the month, inspirational and radical slogans have been painted across the nation in places like Washington, D.C., New York, California, and even North Carolina. In Raleigh, North Carolina, three giant yellow words standing 20 feet tall stretch across a block near the Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh. The words read: “End Racism Now.” 

Similar murals have been painted in other cities, including San Francisco, to spread the ongoing call to end racial injustice. As protests continue, these works of art remind us of community strength, rebuilding, and that the momentum of the movement is not lost. We, the people, will not rest until our call for justice is answered.

Have you seen any murals in your town? Share them below!

A burial area where new graves have been dug for suspected and confirmed Covid-19 victims at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, in the Amazon forest in Brazil, on April 22, 2020. | Michael Dantas/AFP via Getty Images

While Indigenous people die from Covid-19 at a disproportionate rate, the Brazilian government has left their lands open to invasion.

On March 31, Suzane da Silva Pereira was the first Indigenous Brazilian to test positive for coronavirus. She is a member of the Kokama people, who live deep in the Amazon rainforest, on the shore of the Solimões River, bordering Colombia and Peru.

Two months later, the Kokama had registered the highest number of Covid-19 deaths among Indigenous people in Brazil: Nearly 60 people, according to Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB), a national nonprofit organization. Among them was the Kokama leader Messias Kokama.

Many Kokama villages, which are accessible only by boat, have implemented checkpoints to keep out non-Indigenous people during the pandemic. However, the hospital in Tabatinga, the nearest city with the most infrastructure to treat patients, is overwhelmed — meaning those in greater need must be taken to Manaus, almost 700 miles away, by plane.

Meanwhile, Indigenous leaders across the country say federal government agencies have not provided them with sufficient support to combat this pandemic — like universal access to food and health care, which are guaranteed by federal law, and enough protection in their lands so they can isolate without the threat of being invaded (and infected with coronavirus from land grabbers).

“We are calling on this government, or lack of government, to be held responsible for the death of our people, and asking the federal attorney’s office to help us get compensation all the deaths in our Kokama family due to Covid-19,” Edney Samias, one of the Kokama’s caciques, or leaders, told me.

Brazil has almost 900,000 Indigenous people, of over 300 different ethnicities. Around 64 percent live in Indigenous areas — lands that, by the Constitution, are supposed to be owned and exclusively enjoyed by Indigenous people and currently make up 14 percent of the country’s square footage. Over 180,000 Indigenous people live in the state of Amazonas, where the Kokama reside, which has been the hardest-hit area in cases per capita.

According to official figures reported by the Health Ministry’s Special Secretariat of Indigenous Health (SESAI), nearly 4,200 Indigenous people have tested positive for Covid-19, and almost 120 have died. However, the death estimates from Indigenous communities and groups are much higher: Over 320 deaths — 144 in Amazonas alone — as of June 20, further showing the disconnect between Indigenous people and the government’s response.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently minimized the dangers of Covid-19, describing it as “a little cold” and calling alarm over the pandemic “hysterical.” He has undermined isolation orders imposed by state governors, called for the country to reopen despite the growing outbreak and even personally attended anti-lockdown protests. In the meantime, Brazil reached more than 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases last weekend.

Bolsonaro’s lack of coordinated response to Covid-19, coupled with his desire to reopen the economy too quickly, has positioned Brazil to become the next epicenter of the pandemic. And now Indigenous people have to rely on a government that neglects them — and on a president who wants to “integrate” them into the rest of the society.

The coronavirus outbreak in Brazil has skyrocketed in recent weeks

Brazil’s coronavirus outbreak has soared since the first case to be confirmed was reported in late February: Not only are there over a million confirmed positive cases, there are nearly 51,000 reported deaths in the country, as of June 22. However, due to the lack of widespread testing, the numbers are likely far higher — the latest national study estimates cases are at least seven times higher than officially reported.

In the first week of June, the government temporarily stopped publishing overall data on Covid-19 cases and deaths, and only the ones of the day-of. The move — called by Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes a “maneuver of totalitarian regimes” — was quickly overruled, but it showed Brazil has further isolated itself from the rest of the world during the pandemic.

The worst affected area in cases per capita is the state of Amazonas — 64.1 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to around 24.1 nationwide, according to the Health Ministry on June 21. In Manaus, which is the closest big city for many Indigenous communities and their place of last resort for medical treatment, the public health care system collapsed between April and May.

Ricardo Oliveira/AFP via Getty Images

The city has made international headlines due to its cemeteries and funeral services being grotesquely overwhelmed. New trenches were dug and refrigerated containers installed to accommodate the spike in deaths. One family even reportedly had to bury their father themselves because of the lack of gravediggers.

According to a study published by the Federal University of Amazonas this month, Manaus will be the first Brazilian city to “beat” the coronavirus, projecting a drastic reduction in the speed of deaths in the city since peaks in the past couple months. However, cases are moving to rural areas, where most Indigenous communities are located. In June, one-third of reported cases happened outside of capitals and metropolitan regions.

Samias said Kokama people are scared to go to hospitals and die away from their families, and many would rather die at home. “My uncle Idelfonso Tananta told me he would rather die hugging his children, grandchildren, and wife,” he recounted. “And that day eventually came.”

After visiting a doctor and being told to isolate at home, Tananta continued to get worse. “One evening he started feeling really sick and out of breath, he went to the bathroom and collapsed there. They put him in the hammock and he fell on the floor, where he took his last breath, hugged his children and wife, smiled, and died.”

Samias also mentioned that after people stopped going to hospitals, the number of deaths decreased. “Only those with below 40 percent [oxygen] saturation go to the hospital. Other than that, they are being treated with traditional medication and Ayahuasca.”

Since April, as cases among Indigenous people began to appear, the governor of Amazonas and both former health ministers have promised to build a hospital dedicated exclusively to Indigenous people. And on May 25, the Health Ministry announced the inauguration of a wing for Indigenous people in a hospital in Manaus dedicated exclusively for Covid-19 patients.

However, those Indigenous people living outside of Indigenous areas cannot be admitted into the wing. These people (36 percent of Indigenous people in the country live in urban areas) are also not allowed to be treated by Special Indigenous Sanitary Districts (DSEIs) — which are SESAI’s primary care networks within Indigenous areas — and must depend on the country’s universal health care system or military hospitals.

In Tabatinga, Samias’s father faced this problem. Since he lived in the outskirts of Tabatinga, he had to be taken to a military hospital and was put on a list to be transferred to Manaus. For days, Samias waited for a plane to arrive, but was never given a clear timeline of when or even if it would happen. The doctor “told me it depends on the government and can’t inform me if it’s coming or not. We’re counting on luck.”

When patients do finally get to a hospital, many are not counted as Indigenous. “This for us is very worrisome because we have Indigenous [people] in an urban context for a variety of reasons: They came for work, to study, cities have expanded into their villages. And when they are going to hospitals, they are accounted as normal citizens ... because there is no Indigenous ethnicity on forms,” Guajajara said.

This helps explain the discrepancy in official reported cases and deaths among the Brazilian Indigenous population and those from Indigenous groups. And the problem with not having accurate numbers is that it leads to a lack of necessary measures to fight the spread of the virus.

Shortcomings of the Brazilian government’s support

The contingency plan to protect native communities during the pandemic, many criticized, didn’t address the specific local needs of each Indigenous community, nor the shortage of resources in the entire country: It relied on DSEIs to develop and carry out their own detailed plans.

The problem with DSEIs is not only are they dependent on SESAI for purchases of materials — like PPE and fuel — but they also most lack infrastructure for even basic care, let alone coronavirus testing and treatment.

Carlos Alberto Llevado is a Cuban doctor who from 2013 to 2016 worked in São Gabriel da Cachoeira in Alto Rio Negro (a region with one of the largest populations of Indigenous people in the country) as part of a federal government program implemented by former President Dilma Rousseff that placed medical professionals in marginalized communities throughout Brazil.

He recalled worrisome conditions in the districts he worked in due to mismanagement of funds and lack of government oversight. “I remember a photo of the ceiling [of a health center] filled with bats, and their feces dripping down the walls,” Llevado told me.

In 2009, only 63 percent of the overall Indigenous population in Brazil, and 35.5 percent of those within Indigenous areas, had access to clean water, according to the government. Llevado said that of the few places that had water storage containers, many didn’t have tops, and would consequently have animal waste in them. “I visited communities that had never seen clear water before — they only used river water. As the name says, Alto Rio Negro [Black River], the water looks like watered wine.”

Buda Mendes/Getty Images

Beyond health care, many families have to travel great lengths and stand in long lines to receive social benefits, such as Bolsa Familia — a federal government program launched in 2003 to provide financial aid to poor families in the country, and was estimated to serve over 100,000 Indigenous families in 2014.

Before stay-at-home orders were enacted in the Solimões region on March 22, many Kokama were still traveling to cities to get their benefits, where they were likely exposed to the virus. “The decree came too late,” said Glades Rodrigues, the president of the nonprofit organization Kokama-kukamiria Indigenous Federation of the People of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. “A lot were already infected because of the due date to receive benefits and salaries. And everyone comes to the city, since there are no banks in our communities.”

Since people are being told to stay at home and can no longer travel to cities to get their aid, the delivery of food baskets (known as cestas basicas) — which provide products like rice, beans, coffee, and oil — to these communities is urgently asked for.

“At this time, we need food baskets to be taken to our communities, not the emergency assistance money,” Samias said, echoing what Indigenous leaders have been asking from the government. “Through donations we’re able to, little by little, give food baskets to hungry families, since they couldn’t get the emergency assistance.”

To help address this problem, the Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, announced the delivery of over 310,000 food baskets to 154,000 Indigenous families beginning in May, with the help of the National Indian Foundation (Funai) — which is in charge of protecting and promoting the rights of Indigenous people, including health, education and land demarcations — as well as the National Supply Company (Conab), linked to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The purchase of these food baskets is being done by the Conab with money from the ministry and the delivery done by the 39 regional units of Funai, which told me they would use “preventive measures guided by the health agencies in order for the action to take place in a safe and effective manner” — but have not detailed what the preventive measures are nor the logistics for delivery.

In a press conference on June 9, Alves said that the baskets were purchased and that in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, all destined baskets had arrived. The Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro has said they weren’t officially notified of the operation and have no information of where these baskets were delivered. APIB has demanded that the ministry officially inform what communities received deliveries, “in order to prove the veracity of the information given.”

As of June 14, just over 105,000 baskets of the 310,000 promised had been delivered.

On top of that, experts fear that the scrapping of Funai over the years, which under Bolsonaro suffered a 40 percent cut in the government’s 2020 budget, increases the risk that Indigenous people will not be properly cared for during the pandemic.

From the additional 10.8 million Brazilian reals ($2 million) in emergency funds Funai received from the federal government to be used in the fight against the pandemic, almost 10 percent was spent for the purchase of new vehicles and maintenance of ones they already had.

But there’s another layer to this problem: Bolsonaro’s pick for the head of Funai in July 2019, Marcelo Xavier da Silva — who, shortly after taking the post, said Indigenous land demarcation would stop being based on “ideological” criteria. He also has strong ties with Nabhan Garcia, a senior agriculture minister, who “froths hate for Indigenous people,” according to da Silva’s predecessor, General Franklimberg de Freitas.

“We used to have structural problems with Funai. Now, we also have ideological problems,” said Guajajara.

In April, for example, Funai set new rules for issuing Declarations of Recognition of Land Limits, which forced landowners to respect the boundaries between their lands and those of the Indigenous peoples (even if those lands were still in the process of official demarcation). Under new guidance, Funai will only issue the declaration for reserves and Indigenous lands approved or regularized by presidential decree.

This directly impacts Indigenous people’s safety, given there are currently 237 areas waiting for official demarcation, which are now at risk of being sold, divided, or invaded in the middle of a pandemic.

Bolsonaro’s dark history with Indigenous people

Going back to his campaign days in 2018, Bolsonaro has made clear his intentions to open up the Amazon for commerce and extinguish territorial protections for Indigenous populations. During his first year as president, deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose to its highest in a decade, according to data from Brazil’s space research agency (INPE) — coinciding with efforts to scale back the fight against illegal mining, logging, and ranching.

Invasions in Indigenous lands also hit a record in 2019 — according to an analysis by CIMI (Indigenist Missionary Council), there were 160 cases of “possessory invasions, illegal exploitation of natural resources and various damage to property” in Indigenous areas, an increase of 40 percent compared to the previous year.

And yet, Bolsonaro has said that as long as he is president “there [will be] no demarcation of Indigenous lands.” On the second day of his mandate, Bolsonaro tried to transfer the right to land demarcation from Funai to the Ministry of Agriculture — a move that stoked fears that preserved areas would be opened up to greater commercial exploration and controlled by interests opposed to environmental preservation. The decision was eventually overruled by the Supreme Court.

And in the midst of the pandemic, deforestation in the Amazon increased over 50 percent in the first quarter of 2020, compared to the same period last year. Indigenous lands are also being invaded, coinciding with the lack of oversight in the rainforest and the exoneration of two inspection chiefs from the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources after a massive operation in April to remove illegal loggers and miners from Indigenous lands in the state of Pará.

In the absence of leadership from the government, NGOs, public figures, and politicians have spoken out. In a letter to the World Health Organization on April 23, the Mixed Parliamentary Front in Defense of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — a caucus launched in 2019 to further Indigenous rights in Brazil’s Congress — called for specific measures, like an emergency fund for Indigenous people to ensure their protection during the pandemic.

Joenia Wapixana, the first Indigenous woman elected as a federal deputy in Congress, is working with other parliamentarians to strengthen the contingency plan for Indigenous people in Brazil.

In March, she proposed a bill for additional resources to the Indigenous Health Care Subsystem, providing monetary aid, an increase in health care infrastructures to handle those in need of hospitalization, and the strengthening of territorial protections.

The bill was approved in Congress with some modifications, such as guaranteeing the stay of missionaries in areas of isolated communities and restricting aid to Indigenous who live in villages — a move that was vehemently criticized by Indigenous groups. It is currently awaiting presidential authorization.

Indigenous leaders say Bolsonaro’s government still needs to do more. “There is an action from the government, but it is insufficient to meet current needs or demand. And then it is up to us, the Indigenous people, to put this pressure on the responsible bodies so that they can implement what was already authorized. But we cannot assume this responsibility that belongs to the government,” Guajajara told me.

In the meantime, Indigenous people are suffering. Kokama received food baskets from Funai in mid-May, but are still heavily relying on donations of food and hygiene products for those in need. On May 14, Edney Samias’s father died while he was still waiting to be taken to Manaus. The last time Samias had seen his dad was when he was admitted to the hospital.

“I’m tired of speaking, I don’t know what to say anymore,” Samias told me. “But we are here, asking the world to listen, to hear our cry.”

Mariana Castro is a Brazilian journalist based in New York City. Find her on Twitter @marianabacastro.

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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler has said that he’s sure that Geoffrey Berman, until this week the U. S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, will testify before the committee. That may not happen at a scheduled hearing on Wednesday. On the other hand … it might. But the word is that Nadler wants someone else to appear: He intends to subpoena Attorney General William Barr to explain how, with five months left in Trump’s term, there’s a possible reason for removing a U. S. attorney in the middle of critical investigations of Trump associates, which is not corrupt.

And Republicans are already making it very, very clear they have an opinion in this matter. That opinion being—Barr shouldn’t talk. Because if he talks, they get to go into the home stretch of the election season, with yet another high-publicized hearing in which they have to protect the schemes of Barr and Donald Trump. Rather than pretend that they don’t hear anything wrong, they’d really rather not hear anything to start with.

Just the rumor that Nadler intends to subpoena Barr was enough to get Jim Jordan to wrestle up some paper and pin down a letter. In what may be the most amusing example of projection not coming directly from Trump, Jordan accuses Nadler of having a “partisan posture” toward Barr by, you know, wanting him to ask him things. Jordan also finds it just outrageous that Nadler would think there was anything at all to see in Barr announcing the resignation of a U. S. attorney who had not resigned, or saying that Trump had fired that attorney, when Trump denied it. 

Barr directly and deliberately lied to the public at least twice in the removal of Berman. That much is absolutely self-evident.

Those lies only bolster the suspicion is Barr acted to remove a competent U. S. attorney who had demonstrated that he would impartially proceed against Trump’s associates despite having been appointed to his role by Trump. Berman had previously conducted the investigation of Michael Cohen, leading to the conviction of Trump’s personal attorney and the discovery of the scheme in which Trump entrapped at least two women to keep them from recounting his sexual encounters with them. It was known that Berman is looking into Trump’s current personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, along with his associates, in part because of the schemes conducted in Ukraine to solicit false testimony against Joe Biden. If Berman was removed to prevent further pursuit of the case against Giuliani, or others associated with Trump, then his removal is a clear act of obstruction. And there’s every indication that Berman wasn’t just investigating Giuliani, but Trump and Trump’s companies.

Barr’s team has already leaked an excuse—they weren’t removing Berman to get rid of Berman, they were doing so to “provide a job” to Barr’s friend Jay Clayton. However, this excuse also demands that Barr appear and defend this actions. First off, Clayton is a corporate attorney, has zero prosecution experience, and is utterly unqualified to take on a key, demanding role that involves investigation and prosecution of some of the most complex financial and criminal conspiracies on the planet. Secondly, Clayton already had a job as chair of Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission—which makes the whole excuse seem like an excuse.

Jim Jordan may already be sweating in advance, but Barr has to explain himself. And Democrats need to be prepared to back a subpoena with content … and contempt with action.

The first case of COVID-19 in New York state was confirmed on March 1, two weeks later, on March 14, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state had over 100 new cases in a single day. Four days later it was 1,000. The next day it was over 2,000. The next day, 3,000. On March 22, the state announced 5,440 new confirmed cases. New York went from 200 cases in a day, to over 5,400 cases in a day … in just a single week.

Obviously, it didn’t. Not in any real sense. New York’s numbers were not determined by the actual spread of COVID-19, which had begun circulating in the area since sometime in January. Modeling shows that by mid-February, at a time when the state had no reported cases, there were already between 500 and 1,000 cases of COVID-19 in New York, and the epidemic was growing unchecked. New York got blindsided. Officials there had neither sufficient knowledge about how the disease spread, nor the available tests to see the freight train bearing down on them. But none of that is true for the states now headed into an all-too-familiar hurricane of full hospitals and lost lives.

Over the last week, new daily cases of COVID-19 in Texas have increased from 2,138 on June 15, to 5,112 on June 22. That’s not the out-of-control storm that ripped into New York and took it to over 11,500 new cases in a single day. It’s worse.

It’s worse because Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was not blindsided. This is happening fully two months after the events that threatened to overwhelm New York, and at a point where Texas is conducting a fairly robust—if not always well-directed—testing program. Abbott can’t claim he doesn’t know how fast COVID-19 can spread, or how quickly it can strain the greatest local health care facilities in the nation, or how a state can go from what seems all-under-control to refrigerated trucks backing up to morgues. He’s seen it. We all have.

The same applies to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida. That state also doubled its daily case rate in the last week. New cases were slightly down on Monday (though double the previous Monday), but that’s more due to the state’s notoriously lax counting, especially on weekends. DeSantis also bore witness to what happened in New York and surrounding states, and rather than do anything to protect his people, he decided that mid-pandemic was a great time to remind Donald Trump just how well he can toady. Rather than taking care to prevent rising cases, or preparing his state for what’s coming, DeSantis has actually been running a “victory lap” around Florida, bragging about what a fantastic job he’s done. And back in D.C., the Sunshine State’s most orange resident has been pointing at DeSantis as a role model for the rest of the nation’s governors.

Meanwhile, in Arizona—where Donald Trump is planning the next rally of his comeback tour on Tuesday night—cases of COVID-19 rose by 2,196 in a single day. Hospitals there have been warning for the last week that ICU beds in the state’s largest cities are already running over 70% full, and that was before the rate of cases doubled, then doubled again. Hospitals in the state are “nearing the edge of being overwhelmed.” So what is Republican Gov. Doug Ducey doing about it? Not a damn thing. On Friday, Ducey used his press event to say “I am confident that we’ve made the best and most responsible decisions possible, guided by public health the entire way.” He said that, even though state and county health officials repeatedly warned Ducey that he was moving too quickly to reopen the state. Ducey also declared that he “is not planning to change course” just because there’s a disaster ahead.

These are just three states among an astounding 23 that saw a surge in COVID-19 cases over the last week. Not all of those states are red states—California is notably at the top of the charts again as the southern half of the state is racking up a total to match Texas. But the other top states—Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina—read like a roll call of governors who answered “yes, sir!” when Trump called on them to reopen. Even some states that don’t seem that bad on pure case count are still racking up frightening numbers. Idaho and Mississippi are both on track to double their cases in a week. Utah and Arkansas seem determined to get “competitive” in the worst possible way.

When that first tsunami of COVID-19 bowled into New York, Gov. Cuomo did not react fast enough (that’s doubly true for NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio). Though he declared a state of emergency a week earlier, it wasn’t until the day New York announced 100 cases that Cuomo restricted gatherings … to fewer than 500 people. It was two days later before New York City schools were closed. And three days after that when the first stay-at-home order was issued. On that day, New York reported 3,000 new cases. Gov. Gavin Newsom had issued a similar order for California a day earlier, when that state hit 190 cases in a day. Had Cuomo moved more quickly—by closing schools and imposing his stay-at-home order even a week earlier—the difference would have been measured in thousands of lives. Perhaps tens of thousands.

But Cuomo was caught in a whirlwind. Without federal leadership, and without available tests, New York walked off a cliff, and didn’t even realize it was falling. The stay-at-home order was issued on March 20 and toughed up over the following days. It worked. New York hit its peak just over two weeks later, and began a painful, ragged decline in new cases. Deaths in New York were, and still are, trailing behind changes in case count. The day Cuomo announced his stay-at-home order, total deaths in the state had just reached 100. The rate of deaths wouldn’t peak for almost two weeks after case counts began to fall. On the worst day, 1,000 New Yorkers died.

In Texas, Florida, and Arizona, deaths at the moment don’t seem that high. In part, that’s been because the new cases of COVID-19 have trended younger than they did in the initial outbreak. Buoyed by the misconception that the disease is “only a threat to old people” and the even more asinine idea that “only old people get it,” younger people in many areas haven’t just ceased showing any concern for social distancing, they’ve demonstrated disdain for anyone who still worries about the disease. But deaths are a trailing indicator. More cases will bring more deaths.

New York got blindsided. The states most affected now walked into the red tide of COVID-19 with their eyes wide open, and their minds tight shut to the advice of experts. Governors like Abbott, DeSantis, and Ducey had a choice: they could protect their citizens, or they could please Donald Trump. There is absolutely no doubt about which way they went.

What happened before was a tragedy. What’s happening now is a crime.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh on February 4, 2020, in Washington, DC.  | Leah Millis-Pool/Getty Images

Liberals have had a surprisingly hopeful Supreme Court term so far, but they may not be celebrating soon.

Liberals rarely have much to cheer in late June, when the Supreme Court typically hands down its biggest decisions. So far, however, this term has been an exception. Last week, the Court handed down a broad opinion holding that a federal civil rights law prohibits employment discrimination against LGBTQ people. It also handed down a much narrower opinion allowing about 700,000 undocumented immigrants to live and work in the United States — although possibly not for very long.

Before the next few weeks are done, however, the Court could take a sharp right turn. Among other things, it still needs to decide a case that presents an existential threat to the constitutional right to an abortion. And it could give President Trump sweeping and unprecedented immunity from congressional investigations.

Ordinarily, the justices decide all the cases they heard over the course of a term by the end of June. But the current term been more dysfunctional than usual due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Supreme Court closed its building to the public in March as a precaution against the virus, and it soon announced that it would not hold its ordinary oral argument sessions in March and April. Instead, the justices heard a subset of the cases the Court originally planned to hear in those two months in May, and heard those arguments in a series of conference calls that were broadcast to the public.

So it’s possible that this unusual schedule will push the Court’s final decisions until later in the summer. Even if that does happen, however, the delay is unlikely to last very long. Within the next several weeks — and possibly within the next several days — the Court could transform several areas of American law.

The Court could effectively eliminate the right to an abortion

For many years, Justice Anthony Kennedy kept an uneasy peace on abortion rights. Though he typically voted to uphold laws restricting access to abortion, he rejected state laws that cut so deeply into the right to an abortion that they threatened to eliminate it altogether.

The Louisiana law at issue in June Medical Services LLC v. Russo is such a law. Like a Texas law that the Supreme Court struck down in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016) (while Kennedy was still on the Court), the law at the heart of June Medical requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital near the clinic where they perform abortions.

These admitting privileges laws are a form of what abortion rights advocates refer to as “targeted restrictions on abortion providers,” or “TRAP” laws — laws that superficially appear designed to make abortions safer, but that actually do little or nothing to advance patient health, while simultaneously making it very difficult to operate an abortion clinic.

If the Supreme Court blesses such TRAP laws, that could be the effective end of a constitutional right to abortion. The right to an abortion would technically still be intact — but states could be free to shut down clinics by imposing so many sham health regulations on them that it would be impossible for them to operate.

But even if the Supreme Court rejects this effort to limit abortion rights — at oral argument in June Medical, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts at times appeared uncomfortable with the backhanded way Louisiana hopes to attack abortion rights — the Court still has a solidly conservative Republican majority that is likely to enable states to ban abortion in a future case.

Trump could gain sweeping immunity from congressional oversight

Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Deutsche Bank are not hard cases. They involve congressional subpoenas seeking many of President Trump’s financial records as a part of various investigations — including an investigation into whether there are “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government, or related foreign actors, and individuals associated with Donald Trump’s campaign, transition, administration, or business interests, in furtherance of the Russian government’s interests.”

Existing law could not be more unfavorable to Trump. As the Court held in Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund (1975), Congress may conduct nearly any investigation, and subpoena documents in that investigation, so long as that investigation is “intended to gather information about a subject on which legislation may be had.” Protecting American elections from Russian interference is a subject on which legislation may be had.

Nevertheless, at oral arguments in Mazars and Deutsche Bank, the Court’s Republican majority appeared more concerned with preventing, in Justice Kavanaugh’s words, Congress from declaring “open season” on presidents than it was with following existing law.

So it is possible, perhaps even likely, that the Court will give Trump broad new immunity from congressional investigation.

The religious right could be one of the biggest winners from this term

Even setting aside the possibility that the Court dismantles abortion rights, the Court also heard several significant religion cases this term that could hand victories to the Christian right.

Trump v. Pennsylvania and Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania concern whether employers with religious objections to birth control may deny health coverage for birth control to their employees. The Trump administration gave nearly all of these employers a broad ability to do so, although it is far from clear that the administration acted lawfully when it did this.

There is a possibility, however, that the Court will hold that religious employers always have a broad right to deny birth control coverage to their employees, regardless of whether the current administration believes they should have this right.

Two other cases, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James School v. Biel, involve the “ministerial exemption” to civil rights laws. Broadly speaking, religious ministers are exempted from anti-discrimination law — a church may fire its preacher because that preacher is a woman, or because they are black. But the definition of who qualifies as a “minister” is unclear.

Both Morrissey-Berru and Biel involve Catholic school teachers who spent a minority of their time teaching religious subjects. If the Court concludes that these teachers qualify as ministers, it could open the door to many other employees of religious employers being defined as ministers as well — stripping those employees of civil rights protections in the process.

Finally, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue concerns whether the state of Montana is obligated to reinstate a scholarship program for private school students, and to permit students at religious schools to obtain these scholarships.

Espinoza could also potentially strike down a state constitutional provision forbidding the state from making “any direct or indirect appropriation or payment from any public fund or monies” to religious institutions, on the (somewhat anachronistic) theory that this provision was inserted into the state constitution because of anti-Catholic bigotry.

Trump could gain broad new power to fire people

Most federal agencies are led by a Cabinet secretary or some other official who can be fired by the president. A few agencies, often described as “independent” agencies, are led by either a single individual or a multi-member board that can only be removed from office for incompetence, malfeasance, or similar cause.

Seila Law v. CFPB involves the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one of a few agencies with a single director who can only be fired by the president for cause. The plaintiffs in this case claim this unusual arrangement is unconstitutional under a theory known as the “unitary executive.” They also claim that the entire CFPB must be struck down, but the Court is unlikely to sign on to that radical claim.

Assuming that the Court does not toss out the entire agency, the immediate stakes in this case are small and could benefit Democrats — if the president can fire the head of the CFPB, former Vice President Joe Biden could immediately appoint his own choice to lead that agency if he becomes President Biden.

But the long-term stakes are potentially very significant. Most independent agencies — agencies like the Federal Reserve or the Federal Communications Commission — are insulated from the president for good reason. If the president could easily fire members of the Fed’s board of governors, then they could potentially pressure the Fed to juice the economy in an election year and change the outcome of that election. If the president had direct control over the FCC, they could potentially target news networks that run critical coverage of their presidency.

It is unclear whether the Supreme Court will hold that the president has the power to fire members of multi-member boards. But at oral argument, the Court’s Republican majority appeared very likely to say that an agency cannot be led by a single individual who cannot easily be fired by the president.

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Donald Trump says he ordered the federal government to arrest anyone attempting to vandalize a “monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S.” and sentence them to 10 years in prison, after police clashed with protesters who were trying to take down a statue of Andrew Jackson near the White House on Monday.

Wild scene in Lafayette Park as protesters clashed with members of the Park Police and Secret Service earlier this evening in #Washington, #DC pic.twitter.com/ZlooQQElJj

— The WannabeWonk (@PotempkinBrain) June 23, 2020

Tweeted Trump: “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… This action is taken effective immediately, but may also be used retroactively for destruction or vandalism already caused. There will be no exceptions!”

…..This action is taken effective immediately, but may also be used retroactively for destruction or vandalism already caused. There will be no exceptions!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 23, 2020

On Monday evening, in a highly unusual move, press were asked by the Secret Service to leave the White House and grounds as protesters were confronted at the nearby statue.

Said CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins to Anderson Cooper: “The Secret Service asked us to leave. I don’t think that’s ever happened since I’ve been inside the White House. Often they say you can’t go outside, the White House is on lockdown. Press was instructed to actually leave the White House grounds and out here, you can see there is a swarm of protesters out in front of the White House. There are reports that they were trying to take down the statute of Andrew Jackson that is in the square right in front of the White House and as we were walking back through here, we saw several protesters who said they had fired some substance at them. They aren’t sure if it was tear gas, pepper spray. … The police moved this barrier to where we are right now. Earlier today this is not where the barrier was. There are several protesters standing around and police officers forming a bit of a hapazard line in front of the White House as we wait to figure out more details about what is going on but clearly, they believe there was some kind of threat happening and that’s why they had reporters leave the White House in that very unusual move, Anderson.”

Later Tuesday, Trump added this:

Trump on people who tried to take down monument of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park: "We're looking at long-term jail sentences for these vandals & these hoodlums & these anarchists & agitators & call them whatever you want … they're bad people." pic.twitter.com/Zak8XEOb9L

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 23, 2020

The post Trump: ‘I Have Authorized 10 Years in Prison’ for ‘Anyone Who Vandalizes or Destroys Any Monument’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

I’m not saying all progressive criticisms or protests are intelligent, or that they cannot be criticized. The problem is that, like “political correctness,” the term “cancel culture” paints all civil rights activism with a broad brush and shuts down thoughtful discussion. The right rules in part by means of Orwellian Newspeak concepts that masquerade as objective phenomena.

For further thoughts on this, I’d check out this essay in TIME by a Muslim woman in Toronto. And as Paul Krugman recently tweeted, “The rage over ‘cancel culture’ is also, I think, part of this syndrome; some people can't stand the idea that they should be asked to, say, avoid insulting women or minorities, as if that were a terrible imposition.”

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Follow me on Twitter at @JenSorensen

If Joe Biden wins in November, much of his agenda will hinge on a potentially surprising power-player: Chris Coons.

Facing a pandemic, struggling economy and perhaps myriad other crises, the gridlock that has long gripped the Senate will instantly threaten Biden’s presidency — and Coons is uniquely positioned to step in.

The Delaware Democrat maintains almost familial ties with Biden, while also enjoying close relationships with GOP senators, with whom he’s starting to have conversations about what the Senate could look like if Biden is elected president.

With Democrats’ odds growing to win the White House and potentially the Senate, lawmakers are beginning to envision life under a Biden administration. And Coons would play a critical role in shepherding the former vice president’s legislative priorities.

“We're going to have a real challenge being able to legislate,” Coons warned in an hourlong interview. “If we're going to legislate durable solutions … we have to be having conversations now about what's the path forward towards a healthier, more functional Senate.”

Coons is known for embracing the centrist, consensus-oriented politics that animate Biden, whose Senate seat he now holds. He’s hopeful that Republicans may be more willing to work with Biden than they did with President Barack Obama. But he also has no illusions about the state of the polarized Senate. And he insists Biden “is not naive.”

Unlike some of his colleagues on the left, Coons doesn’t advocate getting rid of the legislative filibuster. He once even led a letter against scrapping it. But he’s also not ruling it out.

“I will not stand idly by for four years and watch the Biden administration's initiatives blocked at every turn,” Coons said. “I am gonna try really hard to find a path forward that doesn't require removing what's left of the structural guardrails, but if there's a Biden administration, it will be inheriting a mess, at home and abroad. It requires urgent and effective action.”

It’s an acknowledgment of how partisan the Senate has become and signals that aggressive moves may be in store for Capitol Hill if Democrats take back the Senate and the White House and face blanket GOP resistance led by new Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Coons’ bond with Biden also raises the prospect that he could find himself with a senior post in the new administration. Coons, who is up for reelection this year, said he wouldn't speculate on whether he’d leave the Senate and is focused on his assignments on the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees. But his colleagues recognize the possibility of a Cabinet position. Coons’ relationships across the aisle would also make him an easily confirmable choice if Republicans hold on to the Senate majority.

“I prefer to think of him as potential secretary of State,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee member. “I have frankly teased him about it a little bit.”

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), a close Biden ally, added, “If Vice President Biden were to win, I think Chris could serve in a number of high-ranking, significant positions.”

Still, Coons’ relationships in the Senate would provide a unique opportunity to help deliver on Biden’s priorities, particularly if Chuck Schumer and the Democrats don’t finish off the filibuster and they need to win GOP votes to reach a 60-vote threshold on legislation.

“I think he can be pretty influential,” said Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), another Biden supporter. “Chris has that way to be very influential and will help navigate … with members of Congress.”

During his time in the Senate, Coons has often been a bipartisan deal-maker. He played a key role in reaching an agreement with then-Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) to push the FBI to probe further into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Once when a GOP colleague was absent from a Foreign Relations Committee hearing, he changed his vote from "no" to "present" to speed up approval of Mike Pompeo’s secretary of State nomination — a show of courtesy that prompted then-Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to tear up.

Coons has waited a long time to see Biden become president.

He first met Biden in 1986, when he was right out of college, at an event at George Washington University. Coons saw Biden speak in Iowa and New Hampshire during his first presidential run in 1988, volunteered in Iowa on Biden’s 2008 White House bid, and held off on endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016 until it was clear Biden wouldn’t run.

Coons also had a close relationship with Beau Biden, Joe Biden’s son, with whom he began a Young Democrats organization together.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) recalled that when Beau died in 2015 from brain cancer and she wanted to reach out to Biden, Coons was the person she turned to.

“We’ve had conversations about Joe Biden, but the most extensive were when his son died and I wanted to call him and express my condolences and it was Sen. Coons who got me the phone number that I needed to do so,” Collins said.

“He speaks for Joe Biden differently, because he’s not talking about his policy issues,” added Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “He’s talking about him as a person and that’s a different kind of a relationship.”

Coons said his talks with GOP senators about working together in a post-Trump era have been mostly preliminary. But Republicans know if they need to get in touch with Biden or his team, Coons is the right conduit.

Coons’ background on Zoom calls is a photo of him campaigning for Biden in New Hampshire with other Delawareans. He has Biden signs in his home from his time on the road, one from Nevada and another from Iowa. And he wears different Biden T-shirts to work out in.

He talks to the Biden campaign nearly every day, providing advice on a range of topics, including foreign policy. He’s held a number of faith calls for the “Believers for Biden” initiative as well as hosted several fundraisers, including one last week with former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and John Kerry. And he’s promoted Biden in more than 100 media interviews in the past year, according to his staff.

“I couldn't be prouder to have him serve in the seat I once occupied,” Biden said in a statement. “He has also been an invaluable champion and advocate for our campaign on Capitol Hill and elsewhere since the day we launched. I am grateful for his friendship and counsel, and will continue to count on his leadership for many years to come.”

In the early days of the campaign, Coons spent hours on the phone and in person reaching out to local and state representatives in early primary states asking for their support, a sometimes exhausting task.

“I had a two-hour dinner with a state senator from New Hampshire,” Coons recalled. “We're an hour and 45 minutes into it. He goes, 'You know, I had dinner at this exact restaurant with Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and I really appreciate this dinner.' … I’m like, you’re not ready to endorse after two hours? Oh my god.”

Coons also sought to secure early endorsements from Senate colleagues last year for Biden, but many were hesitant given seven of their colleagues were also running for president. As a result, Coons said he “did a lot of listening.”

Now that Biden has wrapped up the nomination, Coons is having conversations with Senate Democrats about how to help Biden win the general election, particularly in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“Sen. Coons has talked to me many times about Vice President Biden,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). “We’ve talked about Michigan. I think he probably talked to everyone about their circumstances in their states.”

He’s also reached out to former GOP lawmakers about supporting Biden. Coons is skeptical that any GOP senators will endorse Biden publicly, but said he could “absolutely, in a few cases” see some backing Biden in the privacy of their voting booth.

Months ago, when Biden’s campaign looked like it might be over after a string of early losses, Coons said he kept recalling a conversation he had with a state representative from South Carolina, while trying to secure yet another Biden endorsement.

“She said, ‘Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what anyone says to me about him. Doesn't matter. I know him, and he knows me,’” Coons said. “I held on to that like ... a life raft.”

Senate Republicans on Monday defended President Donald Trump over his removal of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, whose office was investigating the president’s associates before his abrupt firing over the weekend.

Though some lawmakers took issue with the Justice Department’s chaotic handling of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman’s termination, GOP senators returned to a familiar refrain — deferring to Trump’s judgment as he continues to remove officials involved in the myriad probes that have ensnared him and people close to him for years.

“The president’s been under investigation since before he was elected,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) lamented, calling the episode a “sideshow” amid the Senate’s efforts to pass a police reform bill this week.

Eager to avoid controversy in an election year, Republicans mostly defended Berman’s removal from his post with the Southern District of New York, arguing that Trump — and every president — has the sole power to hire and fire political appointees. Republicans have routinely referenced that authority as Trump has fired several officials over the past few months who are perceived to be disloyal to him, including some who were integral in the efforts to impeach him.

And they quickly dismissed Democrats’ suggestions about a corrupt motive in removing Berman — specifically, potential interference with ongoing investigations involving the president.

“These people all serve at the pleasure of the president,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said. He has exercised his prerogatives to fire people at various times.”

Cornyn added: “Everything the president does generates controversy. Everything the attorney general does generates controversy. It doesn’t mean it’s warranted. Clearly, the attorney general and the president were within their rights.”

The Justice Department was in turmoil over the weekend after Attorney General William Barr announced late on Friday night that Berman was stepping down from his position atop the powerful federal prosecutors’ office. Berman said he had “no intention of resigning,” adding that he only learned of his firing from Barr’s public announcement. He vowed to stay put until the Senate confirms a permanent replacement.

The standoff ensued until Saturday, when Barr told Berman that Trump had agreed to fire him, and Berman vacated the post after Barr said he would allow Berman’s top deputy to take over the office.

Trump later said he was “not involved” in the firing, and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president merely signed off on the termination while Barr “was taking the lead on this matter.” McEnany on Monday denied that Berman’s removal was tied to his investigations and prosecutions of several Trump associates.

Still, the episode has raised questions about possible interference with SDNY’s ongoing, high-profile investigations involving Trump.

Some Republicans took issue with the initial handling and the immediate fallout of the decision, which triggered renewed allegations from Trump’s opponents that Barr was seeking to shield the president and his associates from accountability.

“It could have been done more smoothly. But it’s a situation where the U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said. “That’s how our constitutional system works.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who chairs the Senate’s chief oversight body, added: “It is his prerogative to do that. I thought the whole situation was rather strange.”

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said the Justice Department’s handling of the matter was “a bit inartful,” though he dismissed allegations of a corrupt motive.

“I just want to know, is there anything he did that would impede [ongoing] investigations — and I don’t think so,” Graham said, referring to promises by top administration officials, including Barr.

“You show me fishy, then I’ll be the first one to tell Horowitz to go look,” he added, referring to the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the lone Republican senator to vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, said the firing “looks pretty swampy.”

“I certainly hope that any investigations that were being pursued — particularly those that would relate to the president, or donors, or friends — would continue to be pursued,” Romney said.

Berman donated to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and has contributed to various other GOP political campaigns in recent years. But over the past few years, his office has investigated and charged high-profile Trump associates.

“My assumption is that any investigations that were underway will be continuing,” Thune said of the probes.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York, Trump’s personal attorney, is currently under investigation by the prosecutor’s office; the Trump Organization has also been under a microscope over potential violations of campaign-finance law; and federal prosecutors there have already indicted two Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Berman’s office also successfully prosecuted Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, for campaign-finance violations related to a hush-money payment to a woman who alleged she had an affair with Trump.

Berman was never confirmed by the Senate to his role as U.S. attorney. He was appointed to the post on an acting basis, but the White House was slow to submit a nominee to the Senate, prompting the SDNY judges to appoint him to the role.

Barr has vowed that there will not be any interference with ongoing investigations at SDNY — a promise Republicans emphasized as they defended the move.

“[If] they’re worried about interference with the investigations, Barr said there wouldn’t be any interference,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a former Judiciary Committee chairman, said Monday.

“And I don’t understand why the Democrats are complaining about Berman if the person that’s going to take his place, Berman himself said that that person is competent,” Grassley added. “So I don’t know what the big deal is, really.”

But Grassley himself raised alarms in 2007 when the attorney general at the time, Alberto Gonzales, presided over the removal of multiple U.S. attorneys amid questions about political motivations.

“It is improper for a president to fire a U.S. attorney for retaliatory reasons or to impede or obstruct a particular prosecution for unjust political or partisan gain,” Grassley said at the time. “We don’t want to see the independence, integrity of our attorneys compromised to the point where they aren’t serving their districts in the interests of justice.”

Though Grassley acknowledged that presidents have the power to hire and fire their own U.S. attorneys, he said the handling of the matter — particularly inconsistent statements made by the attorney general — were problematic.

“We shouldn’t be getting conflicting statements from the attorney general and/or his staff,” Grassley said at the time. “We shouldn’t be getting conflicting statements at all. The story must be consistent, complete and of course it must be the truth. We and the American people expect nothing less from our top law enforcement official.”

Democrats have been intensely critical of Berman’s removal, saying it amounted to an effort to interfere with the prosecutor’s investigations involving the president and his associates.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on the Justice Department’s inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility to conduct a joint investigation into Berman’s termination. The White House had initially sought to install Craig Carpentino, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, atop the SDNY. Schumer on Monday lauded Berman’s “courage,” saying that his initial refusal to step down allowed for his top deputy, Audrey Strauss, to instead take over the office.

Schumer has also called on Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to step aside as Trump’s nominee to replace Berman on a permanent basis, adding that Clayton shouldn’t be “an accomplice to this scheme.” Schumer has said he would not return a “blue slip” for Clayton’s nomination. (Senators who withhold blue slips can block nominees to positions in their home states.)

Graham indicated over the weekend that Clayton’s nomination was unlikely to proceed because he intends to continue honoring the “blue slip” policy.

On the House side, the Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Wednesday centering on allegations of politicization of the Justice Department under Trump. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of that panel, said he expected Berman to testify at some point, though it is unclear whether he or anyone involved in the firing will appear before the committee this week.

Kyle Cheney and Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

Thousands march in the Trans Resistance Vigil and March from Franklin Park Playstead to Nubian Square in Boston’s Roxbury on June 13, 2020. | Barry Chin/Boston Globe/Getty Images

The deaths of Layleen Polanco and Tony McDade highlight how black trans Americans are treated and criminalized.

When 27-year-old trans woman Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco lay lifeless in her cell last June, correctional officers at New York City’s Rikers Island stood outside her cell laughing, according to recently released security footage. She had just had an epileptic seizure, but prison staff had failed to conduct the 15-minute-interval health check-ins that are required for prisoners held in solitary confinement. Staff told investigators that they thought she was sleeping.

It was her third seizure in custody.

Earlier this month, an investigation by the Bronx District Attorney’s office cleared prison staff of any wrongdoing in Polanco’s death, even though the DA report also indicated that correctional officers had left her alone for up to 47 minutes, contravening jail regulations.

“The video is the last piece of the puzzle,” David Shanies, an attorney for Polanco’s family in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of New York and several Rikers staff members, told NBC News. “It’s the last bit of indifference to her life that we saw and recklessness to a person who obviously needed help.”

But Polanco’s death is not just a story about the prison system’s neglect of trans people, especially trans women of color. Hers is a story of how the criminal justice system ensnares trans people and ultimately enacts violence against them.

To understand why this happens, though, you have to know how she ended up in solitary at Rikers in the first place.

According to the NBC News report, Polanco was placed in punitive confinement for assaulting an officer, but solitary is also frequently used as a way to protect trans women from the threat of male prisoners. This threat exists because trans women are often housed in men’s jails. She was in jail because she wasn’t able to make her $500 bail. She was arrested because she missed court dates as part of an alternative-to-incarceration program after a previous arrest for sex work. Sex work can be a vital mode of economic survival for trans women.

“It really was like a culmination of a million different factors,” Mateo de la Torre, director of policy and advocacy at Black and Pink, which offers aid and support to LGBTQ prisoners of color, told Vox. “That’s why this system doesn’t work and it is not meant to produce safety.”

A lack of employment and housing protections throughout most of the country contributes to financial insecurity for BIPOC trans women. According to a 2017 survey by New York City’s Anti-Violence Project, transgender New Yorkers were more likely to have a college degree than the general population, but just 45 percent of them have full-time jobs. Overall, transgender workers are more likely to be unemployed compared to their cisgender counterparts, and 34 percent of black trans women face housing insecurity compared to just 9 percent of nonblack trans people.

With astronomically high costs for transition-related surgeries added to an economic system stacked against them, many trans women end up turning to sex work in order to survive. Sex workers, particularly trans sex workers of color, face a disproportionately high risk of violence, including murder. And much of that violence ends up happening at the hands of police.

According to a 2013 report by the Anti-Violence Project, trans people are 3.7 times more likely to experience police violence and 7 times more likely to experience physical violence when interacting with police than cisgender victims and survivors.

“There’s notions that we’re not supposed to exist,” Bamby Salcedo, founder of the Trans Latina Coalition, told Vox. “The police have also internalized all of that and perpetrate that [violence]. So because we have to survive in some type of way, because we’re not supposed to exist in this world, we’re criminalized simply because of who we are.”

The trans man’s death at the hands of police that sparked mass awareness

Tony McDade was a 38-year-old trans man from Tallahassee, Florida, with a history of mental illness. In and out of the justice system for years, McDade wrote to Judge Mark Walker in October 2009 begging for mental health treatment instead of another incarceration after a robbery charge. “I have an anger problem and always fought behind my anger,” McDade wrote, pleading to be sent to Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee for treatment. “I NEED HELP PLEASE SIR. I have a mental problem.”

But around that time, he was indicted and subsequently convicted on federal gun charges and sent to prison in New York.

Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images

On Tuesday, May 26, McDade was beaten by a group of men near his home in Tallahassee while onlookers cheered, an attack that was caught on cellphone video. The following morning, McDade was shot to death by a police officer after allegedly stabbing 21-year-old Malik Jackson, who reportedly took part in the earlier beating, in the parking lot of the Holton Street and Leon Arms apartment buildings.

While a police department representative said McDade was shot after threatening an officer with a gun, that account has been disputed by residents of the apartments who witnessed the incident, according to a Tallahassee Democrat newspaper report (which used McDade’s former name and gender).

Clifford Butler, a resident of the Leon Arms apartments, told local news that a white police officer, whose identity has not been disclosed because Florida law dictates that officers involved in a shooting incident are classified as victims and are due anonymity, did not warn McDade before opening fire.

Another resident recounted on Facebook Live, as reported by Rolling Stone, that the officer said, “Stop moving,” called McDade a racial slur, and then shot McDade after he stopped moving.

“What people need to understand is that when you’re talking about black and brown communities, immigrant communities, communities experiencing poverty, and then you layer that with folks who are LGBTQ, specifically trans and gender nonconforming, [systemic policing] issues aren’t necessarily very different, they’re just amplified,” said de la Torre.

According to de la Torre, that amplification means an increased number of contacts with police and an increased risk of being profiled by police for being black and visibly gender-nonconforming.

“When you exist as a person who is poor and maybe an immigrant and trans, then your chances of engaging with law enforcement skyrocket, and most if not all of those interactions end up being negative or resulting in some form of violence or harassment,” he said.

Last year, an NYPD officer testified at a deposition that he would drive down the street looking for women with Adam’s apples to stop on suspicion of solicitation. Under the law in New York and many other states, discovery of a condom in a purse is sufficient evidence to arrest a trans woman on prostitution charges. A black trans activist in Arizona was infamously arrested in this fashion in 2014, while another black trans woman traveling through Iowa was arrested after hotel staff called the police suspecting that she was a sex worker.

It’s not surprising, then, that 21 percent of black trans women will face incarceration at least once in their lifetimes, a rate significantly higher than the general population. Additionally, there have been reports of police sexually assaulting trans women going back decades.

“If we’re walking down the street, trying to get milk, for instance, but we live in a neighborhood that is high risk, then we get harassed and we get arrested, oftentimes because we are not supposed to be in those neighborhoods,” said Salcedo.

While the death of McDade may have been the incident that finally brought mass attention to the police violence faced by trans people, it’s by no means an isolated incident. In February 2016, trans man Kayden Clarke was shot and killed by police in Mesa, Arizona, during a wellness check. Clarke had Asperger syndrome.

In a video dated a month earlier, Clarke complained that doctors had refused to prescribe him testosterone until his Asperger’s could be cured. Except there is no cure for Asperger’s, leaving Clarke stuck. “You can’t cure neurological disorders!” he said on the video.

It is because of reasons like poverty, homelessness, illness, and mental health issues that many activists are asking to defund police budgets and reallocate resources to social workers for check-ins on mental health and homelessness. Marginalized people have the most interactions with police, meaning there are more chances for these interactions to turn deadly.

As with McDade, initial police and media reports about Clarke used his former name and gender in what is a common experience for trans victims of violence.

It can even be dangerous for trans women to protest against police violence

Protesting against unjust police violence is practically baked into the LGBTQ rights movement. Stonewall, after all, was a revolt against repeated raids by police, who targeted the inn to arrest queer and trans people for violating laws against cross-dressing and homosexual behavior. And three years before Stonewall, black and brown drag queens and sex workers in San Francisco revolted against police violence in the Compton cafeteria riot.

The main thing that’s seemingly changed between then and now is that cisgender, heterosexual people have begun to take notice and protest it themselves.

With the nation turning out for mass protests against police violence after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, McDade’s name has also become a rallying cry against police injustice. His death, along with the killings of two black trans women in the past two weeks, Riah Milton in Ohio and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells in Pennsylvania, has really put a focus on the unique violence faced by black trans people as the nation grapples with racist and violent institutions.

In Brooklyn on June 14, approximately 15,000 people showed up for a Black Trans Lives Matter rally that featured speeches from activists such as writer and editor Raquel Willis and Polanco’s sister, Melania Brown.

Michael Noble Jr./Getty Images

“Communities are waking up to the reality that police departments in their communities aren’t keeping everyone in their community safe and they’re serving a very specific purpose of breaking communities, and to some degree that’s intentional,” said de la Torre.

But even with massive protests against police violence directed at trans people, it can be unsafe for trans people to protest for their own basic civil rights and protections.

Joan Fochs, a 23-year-old white trans woman, attended a Seattle protest against police violence toward black people like McDade and Floyd. But after getting arrested while protesting, Fochs was sent to a men’s jail by the King County Correctional Facility staff after disclosing that she’s transgender. While there, Fochs’s cell was positioned opposite a man who kept exposing his genitals to her; she also suffered verbal sexual harassment from other prisoners. Despite repeated protests, she said, guards mostly ignored her while she sobbed in the corner of her cell.

She told Vox that at some point, staff let the man out of his cell, at which point he pounded on her door for 15 or 20 minutes, making sexually explicit comments. Eventually, after repeated requests, prison staff removed the man from the cell opposite Fochs.

“It felt like everything was going wrong and I had no recourse and had no idea what was even really happening,” said Fochs, who also emphasized that her two-day incarceration was a light experience compared to other trans people who are locked up for years at a time.

According to Salcedo, much of the violence experienced by trans people in the prison system has to do with the way cisgender prison officials organize detention spaces. “We live in a binary system and everything is obviously depending on what you have between your legs, but that also is part of the issue. That definitely contributes to the violence that we experienced,” she said.

Since Fochs’s release, she said she’s heard from countless trans women, especially trans women of color, who have told her that her experience is exactly why they’re afraid to protest. The risk of a humiliating or terrifying stay in a men’s jail is enough to dissuade some from protesting for their basic protection from police violence.

However, after having her story told by a local Patch reporter, Fochs’s experience has also caught the eye of city and state officials who are investigating the incident and pledging to make changes to the way King County evaluates who gets assigned to which gendered prison facility.

Fochs attributes the rush to fix the system to her being a white, cis-passing trans woman. “One of the reasons my story has had such response is because I look like somebody who wouldn’t instigate anything and nothing should happen to,” said Fochs. “I look like a privileged individual, and it’s that privilege that makes people pay attention.”

In 2018, a 52-year-old trans woman in Massachusetts named Angelina Resto sued the state prison system after she was housed in a men’s prison facility after being convicted of a nonviolent crime. Resto had transitioned more than four decades before her conviction, and yet the prison system housed her with men; she claimed she was repeatedly sexually harassed and assaulted by other prisoners as well as prison staff.

In September 2018, Resto won her suit and became the first trans woman in the country to be transferred from a men’s prison to a women’s facility, according to attorneys at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders. Several similar lawsuits have been brought since.

But some reforms seem to be finally making headway as the country rises up against police violence. Trans and sex worker rights advocates have been working for years to change the laws that leave black trans people vulnerable to abuse. While decriminalization of sex work would lower the number of contacts between police and trans people, there are other reforms that have made significant progress as well.

Last week, legislators in the New York State Assembly announced that they had enough support to pursue repealing the “walking while trans” law, which gives police leeway to target trans women of color, and would be undertaking the repeal shortly. In California, Salcedo pointed to Senate Bill 132, which would allow trans people to choose the prison facility they would feel safest in, to avoid situations like Fochs’s.

“Even though trans people are going to continue to be criminalized for who we are, when that happens we’re going to have a little bit of agency for us to choose where we are going to feel the most safe,” said Salcedo.

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Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a primary care physician in Los Angeles, has treated gay men for decades. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, he said, many patients have so dramatically changed their sexual behavior that they shrug off the need for routine screenings for sexually transmitted diseases.

“They say, ‘I haven’t had any contact since I saw you last, so there’s no need to do any STD tests,’” said Klausner, an adjunct professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at UCLA.

But attitudes among these patients are shifting, Klausner has noticed, now that California and other states are loosening policies on social distancing. “People are starting to think about a return to engaging [in sex],” he said, “and are asking me, are there ways they can remain safe” from COVID-19?

Concerns about sexual intimacy during an epidemic are universal and not limited to gay men, of course. Public health experts, including those long involved in HIV prevention, recognize that a proportion of all people are likely to ignore or reject categorical mandates about sexual behavior — whether they involve using condoms or limiting contact because of social distancing norms.

“It didn’t work when we had to deal with HIV, and it won’t work in dealing with COVID,” said Pierre-Cédric Crouch, a clinical nurse researcher at the University of California-San Francisco, and an expert in HIV prevention.

The coronavirus is known to spread through oral and nasal secretions but not specifically through sexual intercourse. In New York City, the health department issued sex and coronavirus guidelines that counsel against sex with those outside your household but advise those who choose otherwise to “have as few partners as possible.”

The guidelines, which note that “kissing can easily pass the virus,” suggest that people “make it [sex] a little kinky” by being “creative with sexual positions and physical barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact while preventing close face to face contact.” In the Netherlands, the government has advised single people considering sex to find a symptom-free sexual partner.

For many gay men, especially in urban areas, sexual exploration with multiple partners is a way of life, whether single or not. Many committed male couples maintain open relationships.

Research supports the notion that gay men tend to have more sexual partners than do heterosexuals. A 2012 review of surveys among adults ages 18 to 39 noted that men who have sex with men (a phrase often used in scientific studies that focus on sexual behavior rather than sexual identity) “reported significantly more lifetime partners than heterosexual men and women at all ages.” In the 35-39 age group, the median lifetime number of sexual partners reported by men who have sex with men was 67, compared with 10 for heterosexuals, according to the study.

Damon Jacobs, a therapist with many gay clients, lives alone in Brooklyn and remained celibate for the first month of the lockdown. At that point, he said, he reached out to a regular and trusted sexual partner.

“He’d also been alone for four weeks except for going outside for groceries, and he also had zero symptoms,” said Jacobs, 49.

“So we got together and started hanging out again,” Jacobs added. More recently, he has met up with several other partners after asking about their social distancing practices. He has also found many of his clients dealing with similar issues after months of being on their own.

“Human beings can cope with certain levels of pain and suffering for a specific amount of time if they perceive an ending,” said Jacobs. After more than two months, he added, people who have been physically isolated are “starved for touch.”

A mid-April survey of more than 1,000 men who have sex with men provided a snapshot of how the coronavirus had affected sexual behavior. While about half reported fewer sexual partners than before the pandemic, only 1% reported more, with 48% reporting no change. (The survey did not ask about the number of partners or whether sex was with a household member.)

Many gay men remain cautious. Lewis Nightingale, a retired graphic designer in San Francisco who lived in New York during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, said he had spent much more time using online apps such as Grindr and Scruff to flirt and sext with other men.

He has received, and turned down, occasional invitations to meet up in person, he said. As an older man, he knows he is in a higher risk group for coronavirus complications. But refraining has been challenging, he said, since expressing himself sexually has played such a big part in his life. “For a lot of gay men, sex is pretty essential for a feeling of connection, for excitement, for validation,” said Nightingale, who has been in a relationship for 16 years.

Last month, Eric, a 42-year-old male escort in Manhattan who asked that his last name not be used, began weighing when and how to return to work. A former occupational therapist whose husband is a physician, he shut down business in mid-March and finally started seeing clients again earlier this month.

For now, he plans to limit scheduled appointments. He intends to see only those he knows well enough to believe they are truthful about routinely wearing masks and being symptom-free. And he is meeting people at his home rather than in a hotel room or their place. “I figure if I have people coming here, I’m only exposed to that person’s germs,” he said.

Eric also plans for now to avoid clients who have attended recent protests against police brutality. “I support the protests 1,000%, but I think they are probably pretty good breeding ground for the virus,” he said. “I don’t want to take that risk.”

In advising his gay patients about sexual activity, Klausner, the Los Angeles physician, said he tries to put the risk in context. The majority of coronavirus cases, he noted, have emerged from workplace and residential settings, such as meatpacking plants and nursing homes, as well as big indoor gatherings, such as concerts and religious services. Although the virus can be transmitted one-to-one in more intimate contexts, he said, “individual risk is really driven by people’s potential exposure to these crowded settings.”

A common misperception — that actions can be clearly defined as risky or not risky — can hamper understanding of other people’s actions, said Julia Marcus, a Harvard epidemiologist and HIV prevention expert. As restrictions on social distancing relax, she said, almost everyone will be making choices and engaging in activities that involve some level of risk — yet will likely be judged by various standards.

“There are very few zero-risk situations,” she said. Unfortunately, she added, “the gay guys are going to be shamed for hooking up, while the straight people having dinner together are less likely to be shamed.”

The post Gay Men and Sex: Choices and Risk In The Time Of COVID appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Sure, things are getting worse all the time. But at least they’re not getting worse three times as fast.

What?

Shit. Never mind.

[A traitorous and failed attempt to secede over slavery is nothing to celebrate.]

There is room for debate over when it is appropriate to rename institutions or remove or relocate statutes and memorials to disgraced public figures. For myself, I think the burden on those calling for such changes should be rather high, and I generally prefer supplementing such memorials or displays–such as by adding statues or memorials of other, more deserving figures–over removal. History is important, including (perhaps especially) when it concerns our shortcomings as a nation.

The one context in which I think such historical effacement is justified concerns memorials to leaders of the Confederacy. While I think it is perfectly appropriate, indeed important, to have such historical artifacts in museums and appropriate venues, I think it is appropriate to remove the names and visages of Confederate leaders from places of honor. There is no good reason to have such statutes in public squares or the names of Confederate generals on U.S. military bases.

My reasons are quite simple: The Confederacy was a traitorous uprising expressly inspired by a desire to maintain slavery as a racial institution.

While the true causes of secession have not always been adequately covered in history books (some of which repeat the fable that southern states seceded over tariffs or suggest it was a "war of Northern aggression), the historical record is abundantly clear. The South seceded over slavery, preemptively seeking to leave the Union after their preferred candidate lost the Presidential election.

The relevant original documents speak for themselves. As southern states seceded, they identified the need to protect slavery as their cause, expressly repudiated the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and were more-than-willing to trample the rights of free citizens in the service of protecting slavery (as well as to prohibit any of the confederate states from seceding).

In his infamous "Cornerstone Speech", Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens declared:

The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

The Confederate states seceded from the Union, and started a war, to protect the institution of slavery. (And, yes, the Confederacy started the war—announcing secession before Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated, and firing the first shots Fort Sumter.)

And they lost, too.

This history is something to remember, but neither the secessionist cause, nor its leaders, are something to commemorate.

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