James.galbraith

An anonymous reader shares a report: The volunteer moderators of Reddit's r/blackladies community -- an online message board that currently has over 40,000 members -- wrote an open letter outlining their frustrations with the popular website in August 2014. They had pitched their message board, known as a subreddit, as a safe space for Black women, but were being deluged with hateful comments and links to racist content from anonymous accounts. "They are relentless, coming in barrages," the moderators wrote. "We have a racist user problem and Reddit won't take action." Several months later Alexis Ohanian, one of Reddit's co-founders, joined a comment thread on r/blackladies discussing the letter. Ohanian, who had recently returned to the company as its executive chairman, said protecting communities like theirs from abuse was a "top priority." He solicited suggestions on how to do it, and expressed interest in an "ongoing dialogue with all of the mods who signed onto the open letter." Reddit user TheYellowRose, a r/blackladies moderator who helped write the letter said in a recent phone interview that Ohanian's promised dialogue never materialized. To TheYellowRose, who asked to be identified only by her screen name because she is still regularly subjected to racist abuse and fears physical violence if her identity is revealed, Ohanian's initial enthusiasm for the idea seemed like just another example of the company's leaders trying to say the right things without seriously confronting the ways their site harbored extremists and gave them a place to organize. Reddit has faced several potential inflection points in its approach to racism in the six years since then, but has never undertaken a full enough reckoning to satisfy its critics. It's facing another big moment in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. Once again, the pressure is coming in part from the volunteers who moderate Reddit's countless message boards. On June 1, Steve Huffman, another co-founder who has been chief executive since 2015, sent a note to Reddit employees voicing support for the Black Lives Matter movement. "We do not tolerate hate, racism, and violence, and while we have work to do to fight these on our platform, our values are clear," he wrote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Donald Trump is in a foul mood. He's "wallowing in self-pity" about the coverage he's getting for his abysmal responses to the global pandemic and the racial reckoning that’s roiling the nation. Some White House aides aren't even sure wants to win a second term given his bouts of ragey self-sabotage, like tweeting out the racist catchphrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

But one thing Trump is clear on is his desire to smoke out and punish whoever leaked info on his run for the bunker several weeks ago during peak White House protests, according to The New York Times.

The Times reports Trump has once again become "consumed" with finding the leakers of that humiliating bunker retreat, for which he earned the nicknames "Bunker Boy" and "Bunker Bitch." And according to several sources, he also wants to prosecute them.

But the bigger picture is that aides aren't even certain Trump's trying to get reelected given his recent behavior, and it's unclear whether that's because he won't rein in his own behavior or he can't rein it in (i.e. he's too mentally impaired to control his fits of rage).

Let's face it, Trump's always pretty pissy about something—he's been wronged, or hasn't been given his proper due, or someone's lurking around the corner to do him in. But things are reportedly worse than usual, according to the accounts of about a dozen people who regularly interact with Trump.

"His recent behavior and remarks, and his inability to move beyond them, strike advisers as different from his usual aberrations," writes the Times. "They’re struck by how his demeanor has shifted during this latest dire threat to his presidency."

Oh, and Trump's new chief of staff has been shocked to learn the White House experience isn't all rainbows and unicorns. "Mark Meadows, the fourth White House chief of staff, has complained that he had no idea how fractious and unwieldy the climate was until he got there." Wow. Turns out it's a hornet's nest in there. Who could've known?

Of course, Trump never really wanted to govern—he just wanted to get elected. Former campaign aide Sam Nunberg noted how immersed Trump was in the details of trying to win the presidency in 2016—he just never happened to mention what he might do if he won. “Over a three-year period between 2012 until 2014, he was focused on the details and even the minutiae of the primary and the general election process," recalled Nunberg. "It was always clear that Trump wanted to be elected president. But the reality of being president was never discussed.”

Apparently, all these national crises are really getting Trump down. He's clearly sick of all the media coverage of the death and destruction he's presiding over. "He has told advisers that no matter what he does, he cannot get 'good' stories from the press, which has often been his primary interest," writes the Times. The death and destruction itself—ya know, people losing their lives, livelihoods, and loved ones—is obviously secondary, if that. Actually, never mind.

More than anything, Trump can't stand the idea of being seen as a "loser" and aides are counting on that to refocus his attention come fall. As for what he might do in a second term? Not a single clue. There’s nothing like visionary leadership. 

One recently fired Atlanta police officer and one working Atlanta cop face charges in the murder of Rayshard Brooks after prosecutors found that not only did a white cop shoot Brooks while he was running from police, but one of the cops then stood on his shoulder. Both of the officers waited two minutes and 12 seconds before calling for help, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said Wednesday as he announced the charges against the men.

Officer Garrett Rolfe faces a murder charge and 10 other counts including aggravated assault, criminal damage to property, and violating his oath of office, Howard said. Officer Devin Brosnan is being charged with aggravated assault and two counts of violating his oath of office. “During that 2 minutes and 12 seconds, Officer Rolfe actually kicked Mr. Brooks as he laid on the ground, while he was there fighting for his life,” Howard said.

Before Brooks was shot, he had complied with police for “41 minutes and 17 seconds” and “never presented himself as a threat,” Howard said. 

The 27-year-old Black father was sleeping in his car at an Atlanta Wendy’s drive-thru on Friday night when officers called to the scene arrived and started questioning him. In that conversation, one of the officers asked Brooks to move his car out of the drive-thru, which is a violation of Atlanta police policy related to DUIs, Howard said.

Still, video of the incident showed Brooks calmly answering officers’ questions. He told them he had been celebrating his daughter’s birthday when he had a few drinks. Then he failed the officers’ sobriety check, and when they attempted to arrest him, video shows him jerking away in a scuffle that led to Brooks grabbing one of the officer’s Tasers, running, and being shot twice in the back, according to video depictions and state investigators.

Howard said during his news conference that even the manner in which officers tried to detain Brooks was not in accordance with Atlanta police policy, which requires police to inform suspects they are being arrested. The prosecutor said he made his decision to charge the officers after viewing eight pieces of video footage, including the restaurant’s surveillance video and police body cam video.

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“We have also concluded that Rolfe was aware that the Taser in Brooks’ possession, it was fired twice. And once it’s fired twice, it presented no danger to him or to any other persons,” Howard said.

Rolfe, the officer who shot Brooks, was fired from the Atlanta Police Department, and Brosnan, the cop who stood on Brooks’ shoulder, was placed on administrative duty, authorities said.

Rolfe had earlier been the subject of 13 other investigations, one of which involved a use of force case he was reprimanded in, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was "exonerated" in nine of the investigations, but the incident involving the firearm in 2015 didn't have a conclusion in public records the AJC obtained.

Brooks' niece, Chassidy Evans, said during an emotional press conference Monday that officers didn’t have to kill Brooks. “Rayshard has a family who loves him, who would have gladly come and got him so he could be here with us today,” Evans said. “Not only are we hurt, we are angry. When does it stop? We are not only pleading for justice, we are pleading for change.”

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

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

An old Communist-era joke from Poland (or at least that's how I heard it), which I was reminded about when talking to a fellow Russian emigre yesterday.

By Maxwell Yezpitelok  Published: June 18th, 2020 

Cream of Wheat is finally reviewing its offensive packaging, which has featured a black chef named “Rastus” since the 1890s.

The announcement by Cream of Wheat’s parent company, B&G Foods, comes after other brands including Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s and Mrs. Butterworth’s overhauled their branding in response to the racial justice protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder.

“We understand there are concerns regarding the Chef image, and we are committed to evaluating our packaging and will proactively take steps to ensure that we and our brands do not inadvertently contribute to systemic racism,” B&G Foods said in a statement. “B&G Foods unequivocally stands against prejudice and injustice of any kind.”

Rolling Stone reports: The breakfast food — first manufactured in 1893 — has long been criticized for its use of Rastus, a smiling African-American chef whose name has been shorthand for a derogatory slur against African-American men and whose visage has been criticized for being stereotypically subservient. The character of Rastus has appeared in numerous minstrel shows dating back to the 1800s. Rastus was removed from the packaging in 1925, but the company replaced it with a similar image that remains today. Calls to remove the character altogether have grown louder as brands have reconsidered their packaging and marketing in recent weeks.

More from USA Today: Quaker Oats was the first to announce Wednesday that it would retire Aunt Jemima from packaging on its brand of syrup and pancake mixes because it’s “based on a racial stereotype.” Hours later, Mars, the owner of Uncle Ben’s, rice announced it “is the right time to evolve the Uncle Ben’s brand, including its visual brand identity.” Conagra Brands announced it has “begun a complete brand and packaging review on Mrs. Butterworth’s.” The shape of the brand’s syrup bottles with the offensive “Mammy” racial caricature of stereotype for Black women.

As we talk about Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, please don't forget about Rastus (that is the characters name, look up what Rastus means) from Cream of Wheat. pic.twitter.com/luklkfK3IF

— K. Renae P. (@KRenaeP) June 17, 2020

Cream of Wheat. The “symbol” for Cream of Wheat comes from the carcicature of a Black man “Rastus”
Rastus is prejorative term associated with Africn Americans in the US. pic.twitter.com/ojRH3srOtY

— Yosemite Sam (@Mrr360) June 17, 2020

We comin for the Cream of Wheat dude too pic.twitter.com/cx6Bn2LV8p

— Phil N DaBlank (@DablankN) June 18, 2020

The model used on current box may have been chef Frank C. White (but the Cream of Wheat Company did not even record his name!). He was originally buried in an unmarked grave in the “colored” section of a cemetery in Leslie, Michigan.

It’s exploitative & overdue for an update. pic.twitter.com/Hhd7bEDX80

— DelVeneto (@DelVeneto) June 18, 2020

Cream of Wheat’s Rastus is a house ni**a, BTW. pic.twitter.com/pPUvRVKsb2

— Naima Cochrane (@naima) June 17, 2020

The question is – WTF took them so long? It's 2020 not 1920. Next up should be #CreamOfWheat. pic.twitter.com/VHuxrFHrbo

— Lady Dragonfly (@RobinDuehring) June 17, 2020

The post Cream of Wheat Finally Reviews Blatantly Racist Packaging Featuring Black Chef Named ‘Rastus’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Today we launched our general election polling averages, nationally and for all states with a sufficient number of polls. Recent polls show former Vice President Joe Biden with a solid lead over President Trump nationally, and in most swing states. Biden currently leads Trump 50.5 percent to 41.3 percent in national polls, according to our average — a 9.2-point lead.¹³

Biden also leads Trump in swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona — although his lead in many swing states are not as wide as his margin in national polls, suggesting that the Electoral College could once again favor Trump in the event of a close election.

Here’s a table showing the averages in swing states:

Biden leads nationally and in most swing states

FiveThirtyEight polling averages as of 5:30 p.m. on June 17, 2020

State	Biden	Trump	Biden Margin
Colorado	54.1%	37.1%	+17.0
Maine*	53.2	39.7	+13.5
New Mexico*	54.1	40.8	+13.3
Virginia	50.5	39.9	+10.6
Michigan	50.9	40.7	+10.2
National	50.5	41.3	+9.2
Nevada	48.2	40.1	+8.0
New Hampshire	50.0	42.3	+7.7
Florida	49.7	42.8	+6.9
Minnesota*	50.8	44.2	+6.6
Wisconsin	49.0	42.4	+6.6
Pennsylvania	49.0	43.7	+5.3
Arizona	47.7	43.6	+4.0
North Carolina	47.6	44.6	+3.0
Ohio	48.4	45.7	+2.7
Georgia	47.0	46.1	+1.0
Iowa	45.6	46.2	-0.6
Texas	46.5	47.2	-0.7

Polls are adjusted for house effects, whether or not they were conducted among likely voters, and the time the poll was conducted.

* Maine, Minnesota and New Mexico do not yet have enough polls for us to display a chart on our polling averages page, but we can calculate an average based on the polls available.

Overall — assuming that states that haven’t been polled go the same way as they did in 2016 — Biden leads in states worth 368 electoral votes, while Trump leads in states totalling 170 electoral votes.¹⁴

But a potential problem for Biden is that Trump could have an Electoral College advantage if the election tightens. Biden currently leads Trump by “only” 6.6 points in the current tipping-point state, Minnesota, but this is narrower than Biden’s 9.2-point lead in the national polls. So while a Biden landslide is possible if he wins all these swing states, so is a Trump Electoral College victory, depending on which way the race moves between now and November.

The rest of this article covers how our polling averages work in a fair amount of detail. We know that a lot of you will probably take the off-ramp here and not read through the methodology. However, we’d encourage you to at least read the next section, which distinguishes between our polling averages (what we’ve just released) and our election forecast model (which we’ll publish later).

[Related: An Updating Average Of 2020 Presidential General Election Polls]

Polling averages are a snapshot, not a forecast

The goal of our polling averages is to reflect the current state of the polling in each state, rather than to predict the eventual outcome. That is to say, our averages are a snapshot, not a forecast. Indeed, the way we calibrate various settings in the polling averages — such as how aggressive they are in responding to new data — is mostly based on how well the polling average predicts future polls,¹⁵ not how well they predict the outcome of the race.¹⁶

The polling averages will, of course, be a major ingredient in our forecast model. But there are times when they will differ from the forecast. For instance, parties typically get a boost in the polls following their national convention. However, this can be fleeting; the convention bounce usually fades over time. Our forecast will adjust for this, but the polling averages are a snapshot of the race today and will not.

In addition, our forecast model will blend the polls with other ways of projecting the outcome in each state, such as what happened in the previous election or its demographics. Our polling averages do not do this, however. They simply reflect the polls, albeit with a number of adjustments that I’ll describe later.

Which polls we include and how we weight them

One pillar of FiveThirtyEight’s philosophy is to include as many polls as possible, although we do use an algorithm that assigns a higher weight to polls with a higher pollster rating. That means we don’t exclude polls just because they’re outliers, because we think the polling firm is partisan, and for any similar reasons. Instead, we have a variety of strategies to make our polling averages more robust without having to cherry-pick data.

But as polling gets more complicated, there are an increasing number of edge cases where it may be unclear what constitutes a scientific poll. So there are some situations where data is excluded:

• We don’t use polls that are banned by FiveThirtyEight because we know or suspect that the pollster faked data.
• We don’t use DIY polls commissioned by nonprofessional hobbyists on online platforms such as Google Surveys. (Professional or campaign polls using these platforms are fine.)
• We don’t treat subsamples of multistate polls as individual “polls” unless certain conditions are met.¹⁷
• We don’t use “polls” that blend or smooth their data using methods such as MRP. These can be smart techniques — but if a pollster uses them, they’re really running a model rather than a poll. We want to do the blending and smoothing ourselves rather than inputting other people’s models into our own.
• We exclude polls that ask the voter who they support only after revealing leading information about the candidates. If, for instance, a poll says “Joe Biden loves puppies. Who do you plan to support: Biden or Trump?” we won’t include it.
• We exclude polls that test hypothetical candidates — for instance, a poll testing a hypothetical three-way race between Trump, Biden and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.

There have also been some recent cases where media organizations that sponsor polls misrepresented what those polls actually say. We are working on policies for how to handle these.

However, we do include a campaign’s internal polls in our averages if they are released to the public. (This is a change from 2016, although something we implemented in our midterm forecast in 2018.) These internal polls are subject to a fairly harsh house effects adjustment though (see below), as historically, internal polls exaggerate their candidate’s margin by a net of around 5 percentage points in presidential races.

If you don’t see a poll listed, it may be that we simply haven’t gotten around to adding it yet, or that we are working with the pollster or the media sponsor to nail down certain information about it. We strongly encourage all press releases and stories about polls to include the following details, at a minimum: the dates the poll was conducted, the sample size, the sample frame (e.g. likely voters) and the firm responsible for conducting the poll. Please don’t hesitate to drop us a line if you think you’ve found a poll that we’re missing.

[Related: We’ve Updated Our Pollster Ratings Ahead Of The 2020 General Election]

Finally, a few notes on how our averages use multiple versions of the same poll and weight polls. Sometimes, the same poll will include multiple turnout models, or several versions of a question (i.e., with or without third-party candidates). When a poll has more than one turnout model, we always use the likely voter version of a poll before the registered voter version, and the registered voter version before the version conducted among all adults. However, if a pollster releases three turnout models and doesn’t designate any of them as the main one, we simply average the versions together.

As for how we weight polls, their weights are based on their sample size and pollster rating. The pollster ratings, in turn, reflect a combination of the pollster’s past performance and whether it meets current industry best practices. In addition, polls receive a penalty to their weight if they are conducted among registered voters or all adults rather than likely voters.¹⁸ And if a particular polling firm conducts a large number of polls in a state within a short period of time, the weight assigned to each of its polls during this period will be discounted. Thus, a pollster cannot “flood the zone” by releasing, say, 10 polls of Arizona all at once.

[Related: Our Pollster Ratings]

How we calculate our polling average

Once we’ve decided which polls to include and how to weight them, there are basically two ways you can calculate a polling average:

1. You can take a simple average of recent polls, which is basically what RealClearPolitics does;
2. Or you can use any of a variety of methods to calculate a trend line of the polls, as HuffPost Pollster formerly did.

FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages are basically a blend of these two techniques, which is slightly more accurate than using either method on its own. For most of the race, our average primarily relies on the averaging method, which is usually the more conservative of the two. (Although, unlike in the case of RCP, there’s not a hard cut-off for the date; rather, the weight assigned to each poll gradually ramps down to zero depending on the number of polls and how long ago it was conducted.) However, our average leans more heavily into the polynomial method of calculating a trend line in the final couple of weeks of the campaign. Thus, our polling averages can be fairly conservative for most of the race but more aggressive later on.

[Related: The Latest Political Polls Collected By FiveThirtyEight]

We also introduced a change with our presidential primary averages this year, where our method now recognizes that certain types of major events are more likely to produce changes in the polls. That means we now treat certain events as essentially spanning multiple days on the calendar. Specifically:

• We treat each party’s convention as being equivalent to 15 days on the campaign trail.
• A candidate clinching his or her party’s nomination counts as 10 days.¹⁹
• A presidential debate is equivalent to six days.²⁰
• And the announcement of the nominee’s VP choice is four days.

Movement in the polls following these events is likely to be real and not statistical noise, so we made these tweaks so that the polling average responds more aggressively following them. Although, as I mentioned in the case of convention bounces, the polls can sometimes revert to the mean a few weeks later, so some of these event-based gains might still be short-lived.

The nitty-gritty on how we adjust polls

At this point, we want to give you a deep dive on what we’re adjusting for in our polling averages. Namely, we adjust polls in three ways: There’s a likely voter adjustment, a house effects adjustment and what we call a timeline adjustment that accounts for how recent a poll is.

First, the likely voter adjustment works by taking polls of registered voters or all adults and inferring what they would say if they were conducted among likely voters instead. The reason we do this is that almost all polls conducted in the closing weeks of the campaign are among likely voters — and likely voter polls are generally more accurate. But many polls earlier in the cycle, especially before Labor Day, are conducted among registered voters. So we’re trying to distinguish actual changes in the state of the race from changes that just reflect a pollster turning on its likely voter filter.

The way the likely voter adjustment works is by starting with historical priors based on the effects that likely voter screens tend to have, but then adjusting these priors as polls are released that provide direct comparisons of likely voter and registered voter versions of the same poll.²¹ For instance, if the same poll has Biden ahead by 6 points among registered voters but only up by 4 points among likely voters, that helps us to calibrate the adjustment. (In other words, we love it when pollsters publish both registered voter and likely voter numbers.)

Republican candidates generally tend to gain more ground from likely voter screens than Democratic ones do, since Republican voters tend to be older and whiter, which are characteristics associated with higher turnout. However, challengers — regardless of party — tend to gain ground in likely voter polls relative to incumbents, probably because some low-propensity voters may choose the incumbent as a default, whereas likely voters have thought through their choice more carefully. That means the effects could be somewhat offsetting this year — Trump is a Republican (which should help him among likely voters) but he’s also an incumbent (which should hurt him).

Still, the effects from partisanship are slightly stronger than the effects from incumbency, and Trump has been doing slightly better in likely voter polls than in registered voter polls so far. Thus, likely voter screens may slightly improve Trump’s position overall — perhaps by a percentage point or so relative to Biden.²²

Next, our house effects adjustment attempts to correct for polls that consistently lean toward one candidate or the other. In our presidential approval averages, for instance, the polling firm Rasmussen Reports has a strong pro-Trump house effect, as Trump tends to have a higher approval rating in those polls than in those from other pollsters. To be clear, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with having a house effect; sometimes, an “outlier” poll turns out to be right. But adjusting for house effects makes polling averages more stable.

[Related: An Updating Calculation Of The President’s Approval Rating]

However, the mechanics of house effects can quickly become complicated, especially if you’re looking at polls across multiple states. For instance, if a certain polling firm has a 3-point pro-Biden house effect in its poll of Colorado, should we also assume it has a 3-point pro-Biden effect when it polls in, say, Pennsylvania?

In past years when calculating house effects, we applied a constant house effects adjustment to all of a firm’s polls, regardless of what state they were conducted in. But after extensively testing that assumption, we found that this strategy doesn’t actually improve the accuracy of your average very much. In fact, it can potentially even make your polling averages less accurate.

I’ll skip the gory details, but if you’re not careful, what can wind up happening is that your averages become anchored to prolific pollsters that poll across many states,²³ and pollsters that focus on just one or a handful of states end up having their numbers adjusted toward these more prolific pollsters. This is a problem because a lot of the information we gain from local pollsters is lost in this process, and pollsters that survey just one state or one region often do a really good job of it.

For example, a lot of Missouri-specific pollsters (correctly, it turned out) had Republican Josh Hawley ahead of Democrat Claire McCaskill in that state’s U.S. Senate race in 2018 while other pollsters (such as Marist College) that conduct polls in many states had McCaskill leading. Our house effects adjustment ended up shifting all the local polls toward McCaskill, putting her ahead in our average when a straight average would have shown Hawley ahead … andHawley eventually won by 6 percentage points.

Thus, we’ve changed our house effects adjustment so that it mostly reflects how a poll compares to others in the same state.²⁴

A few technical notes about our house effects adjustment:

• The adjustment is more aggressive for firms that have done more polling. For instance, if a firm had an apparent 5-point pro-Biden house effect in Wisconsin, but this was only based on one poll, it would be hard to say whether this reflected an actual house effect or if the firm had just happened to come up with an outlier. That’s why our adjustment is more aggressive in cases where a firm has conducted many polls.
• Polling firms also vary in how many undecided and third-party voters they tend to include. Some pollsters often publish results such as Biden 50, Trump 49, for example, with few undecideds. Our house effects adjustment also adjusts for this.²⁵
• For a campaign’s internal polls, our algorithm starts with the prior that they do have a fairly strong house effect favoring the party conducting the poll. This differs from nonpartisan polls, where we start with a prior that the house effect is zero. In both cases, the house effects adjustment moves away from the prior as we collect more data.

Finally, we apply a timeline adjustment based on the recency of the poll²⁶ which adjusts for shifts in the overall race since a poll was conducted. For instance, say that a poll of Arizona last month showed Biden up 3 points there, but there’s been a strong shift toward Trump since then in national polls and in polls of similar states such as Nevada. This adjustment will shift that older Arizona poll toward Trump.

Of course, it would be better to have a new Arizona poll instead of having to adjust the old one. But sometimes, a key swing state can go weeks with little or no polling. (Especially as shrinking media budgets force pollsters to pick and choose their battles more; there was a dearth of high-quality polls in Michigan and Wisconsin toward the end of the 2016 race, for example.) So this adjustment mostly matters when the polling in a state is “stale”; it considerably improves accuracy in these cases. But it doesn’t have much of an effect when there is a lot of recent polling in a state.

The way this adjustment works is that our program examines the trends in national polls and in polls of states that are similar based on our CANTOR scores. So, for instance, the polls of similar states such as Wisconsin and Ohio will have more influence on the adjustment of polls in Michigan than will polls of dissimilar states such as California or Mississippi. National polls also have a major influence on this timeline adjustment, simply because there are a lot of them, so they’re often the easiest way to detect a trend.

[Related: How To Read Polls In 2020]

Additionally, this adjustment also accounts for the elasticity of each state, or how responsive it is to the national environment. Some states (such as New Hampshire) tend to be “swingier” than others because they have a lot of swing voters. So if national polls move by, say, 4 percentage points toward Trump over a particular period of time, we might expect them to move by more than that (perhaps 5 points) in New Hampshire.

Other states are relatively inelastic and tend not to swing as much. Georgia, for instance, has a lot of African American voters and young urban professionals who are heavily Democratic, and a lot of older white evangelicals who are heavily Republican. So even though Georgia has become increasingly competitive as the number of young, college-educated professionals grows, there aren’t actually that many swing voters there, so its polls tend to be fairly stable.

Elasticity scores for 2020, are based on an examination of individual-level polling data from the exit polls in 2008 and from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study in 2012 and 2016, are as follows:

Every state’s elasticity score

Updated for 2020

State	Elasticity
New Hampshire	1.28
Rhode Island	1.26
Maine 1st District	1.25
Vermont	1.23
Maine	1.17
Massachusetts	1.17
Hawaii	1.15
Iowa	1.13
North Dakota	1.11
Idaho	1.10
West Virginia	1.10
Maine 2nd District	1.09
New Mexico	1.09
Colorado	1.09
Connecticut	1.09
Nevada	1.08
Alaska	1.07
Arizona	1.07
Oregon	1.07
Wisconsin	1.06
Washington	1.06
Nebraska 2nd District	1.06
Montana	1.05
Kansas	1.04
Florida	1.04
New Jersey	1.04
Nebraska 3nd District	1.03
South Dakota	1.03
Michigan	1.03
Ohio	1.02
Nebraska	1.02
Utah	1.02
Arkansas	1.02
Texas	1.02
Missouri	1.01
Minnesota	1.01
Indiana	1.00
Kentucky	1.00
Tennessee	0.98
Illinois	0.98
Pennsylvania	0.97
Nebraska 1st District	0.97
California	0.96
New York	0.96
Wyoming	0.95
North Carolina	0.94
Louisiana	0.93
Oklahoma	0.93
Virginia	0.92
Delaware	0.90
South Carolina	0.88
Maryland	0.87
Georgia	0.84
Alabama	0.81
Mississippi	0.79
District of Columbia	0.62

Elasticity scores reflect how much a state’s polls would be expected to change based on a change in national polls. For instance, if Idaho’s elasticity score is 1.1, a 5-point swing in national polls would be expected to produce a 5.5-point swing in Idaho.

Sources: Exit Polls, Cooperative Congressional Election Study

Note that swingier states tend to be white and relatively irreligious. Black voters are generally the most reliable Democratic voters, while white evangelical Christians are generally the most reliable Republican ones. So states such as New Hampshire that have neither many Black voters nor many evangelical Christians tend to be elastic.

That’s it for now! But please drop us a line if anything seems wrong. We do discover bugs from time to time when we’ve launched a new product, and tips from readers are invaluable in catching those.

An alarming resurgence of the coronavirus is threatening to overwhelm America’s fifth-largest city, and its leaders aren’t allowed to do much about it.

“We’ve had elected officials who’ve not wanted to use the word crisis,” Phoenix, Arizona, Mayor Kate Gallego told me by phone earlier this week. “I am very comfortable telling the people of Phoenix, ‘We are in a crisis and you have to take this seriously.’”

Gallego, the Democrat who’s led Phoenix for the past year and a half, was being polite: She was referring to Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, who has downplayed a recent surge in COVID-19 cases that has made his state the new national hot spot for the pandemic. Arizona is now reporting an average of more than 1,500 cases a day, with rampant spread both in its urban centers, including Phoenix, and in rural areas.

It’s one of several states in the South and West, including Texas, Florida, and Oregon, that are seeing a record number of coronavirus cases in recent weeks. But there’s a wide gap in how governors are reacting to the resurgence. Oregon Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, and Utah Governor Gary Herbert, a Republican, have each paused their state’s phased reopening plans in response to the increases. But other Republican governors—Ducey in Arizona, Greg Abbott in Texas, and Ron DeSantis in Florida among them—have refused to reimpose economic restrictions or social-distancing mandates, in many cases frustrating local leaders, whose hands are tied.

[Read: What will happen when the red states need help?]

In Arizona, the spike is evident in a rapidly increasing rate of positive test results. The state is seeing about triple the number of daily cases it was reporting a month ago, when Ducey lifted a stay-at-home order and removed virtually all restrictions on businesses and large gatherings. Hospitalizations are rising too.

“We are reopening too much, too quickly, and without sufficient safety protocols such as masking,” Gallego said. If she could, she said, she would shut down bars and nightclubs, and require all residents to wear a mask outside their home. But Gallego can’t do that: When Ducey first issued his stay-at-home order, in late March, he simultaneously preempted cities and counties in Arizona from acting on their own. “I will continue to believe that government closest to the people is best—except in a global pandemic,” Ducey explained last week. “We want to have clarity and consistency for our citizens.” (The governor partially reversed course yesterday, declaring that local officials would be allowed to require masks—but not restrict businesses—in their communities.)

The same dynamic is happening in Texas, another state that reopened early and is now seeing a corresponding increase in COVID-19 cases. Abbott has scolded 20-somethings for letting “down their guard,” while refusing pleas from mayors and county officials to require masks in their communities. “If we don’t do something now, we’re going to be in an untenable situation,” Judge Lina Hidalgo, the chief executive of Harris County, which includes Houston, told me in a phone interview on Monday. A week ago, the county saw a record number of people hospitalized for COVID-19. “Since then,” she told me, “the numbers have only grown.”

Hidalgo implemented a public alert system to warn residents about the recent spread of the virus. It’s now at orange, one tier below red. Even though bars and indoor dining are open in Houston, Hidalgo is urging residents to stay away and “minimize contact.” Like Gallego in Phoenix, however, she doesn’t have the power to close down businesses. “I’m doing all I can, you know?” she said, with a hint of exhaustion in her voice.

In late May, Oregon was averaging just a few dozen new coronavirus cases a day. But when that daily average began climbing to well over 100 in early June, Governor Brown decided to act.

Oregon’s numbers were still just a fraction of the surge in Arizona—even accounting for its smaller population—but Brown paused the state’s reopening for at least a week to give public-health officials time to analyze the data. Many of the cases were tied to specific outbreaks, she told me in a phone interview on Tuesday, but there were also cases in the state’s metro areas where officials couldn’t determine a source. “So that was very concerning,” Brown said. “We just didn’t know where the cases were coming from.”

The message to residents, she said, was that this pause represents “a yellow light.” “This means caution. Proceed carefully,” she said.

Brown said the new cases were not coming from business sectors that had recently reopened, such as restaurants, hair salons, and gyms. Nor was there an obvious connection to the protests against racism and police brutality that took place in late May and early June. (In one striking demonstration, thousands of closely packed protesters laid down on Portland’s Burnside Bridge for nearly nine minutes to mark the police killing of George Floyd.) “Some of it we just don’t know,” Brown said.

I asked Brown if she thought Oregonians would stomach another shutdown of the state’s economy, if it came to that. “Yes, I do,” she replied. “That is obviously a situation of last resort. But I believe that folks are willing to stay home to save lives, even at this point in time.”

In Arizona and Texas, the reopenings are so far along, and the cultural “return to normal” is so deeply ingrained, that even epidemiologists there are reluctant to broach the possibility of another lockdown. Ducey “has basically taken it off the table as an option, and I think it at least needs to be put back on the table,” Kristen Pogreba-Brown, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona’s College of Public Health, told me. She said that “at a minimum,” Arizona should have a mandatory mask order. “From a purely empirical public-health perspective,” Pogreba-Brown said, “given that our cases are far higher than they were when we actually did have a stay-at-home order, you should probably be looking at shutting things back down. But from a political and a pragmatic point of view, I also just want to do what we can actually accomplish.”

[Read: Their states are in crisis. They’re declaring victory anyway.]

Governors such as Ducey and Abbott seem to have a different attitude entirely.

Following the lead of President Donald Trump, the Arizona and Texas governors are treating mask wearing and social distancing as matters of personal responsibility, or even choices. The simple act of wearing a mask—or a “face diaper,” as some conservatives derisively call it—is a new front in the culture war. Mandates for businesses are out, and “guidelines” are in. In Arizona and Texas, the governmental efforts to fight the coronavirus are now focused entirely on preparing hospital systems to meet an inevitable surge. Containment may have been a goal in the spring, but not anymore.

“We are not going to be able to stop the spread,” Cara Christ, Arizona’s public-health director, said last week, “so we can’t stop living as well.”

That quote alarmed local officials and epidemiologists alike. “It came off as a little callous,” Pogreba-Brown said. But it appeared to convey the sentiments not only of Ducey and his top advisers, but of Arizonans more generally, who have flocked to bars and restaurants and crowded into nightclubs as the state has reopened over the past month. Because Arizona and Texas did not experience initial outbreaks nearly as severe as those in the Northeast earlier this year, officials suspect that people there had less trepidation about returning to crowded spaces once they reopened—and were less inclined to wear a mask. “People assumed that since things were open, they could just get back to life as normal, and I think we’re seeing the consequences of that,” Pogreba-Brown said.

In Arizona, at least, the rapid spread of the virus in recent days might be prompting Ducey to rethink his approach. Yesterday, he referred to the situation as a “crisis” in declaring that local governments could require citizens to wear masks. And while he did not change any statewide mandates, he suggested that more action could be coming.

In both Arizona and Texas, the aggressive reopening and hands-off policy since haven’t made things easier on businesses, which now have the freedom to reopen but also the burden to police themselves. Some are stringent about requiring masks and social distancing. “There are other places that really aren’t even giving it a nod,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler told me.

Restaurant owners say they’ve received little guidance on how best to manage the situation. To their pleasant surprise, customers returned quickly. But so too did the virus: Several restaurants in Phoenix, Houston, and elsewhere reopened only to have to close again because their employees tested positive for COVID-19.

“We didn’t necessarily reopen too quickly. There just needed to be more mandates as opposed to guidelines,” Jason Mok, a Houston restaurateur, told me. Mok, 35, closed his three-year-old restaurant, FM Kitchen and Bar, for six weeks during the height of the pandemic, before reopening for curbside pickup and delivery. Once Texas allowed dine-in service, he said, he stayed one step behind the state mandates throughout most of May, keeping his dining room at only 25 or 50 percent capacity. “At the time, it just didn’t feel right,” he said. Customers showed up, but at the end of May a part-time kitchen employee tested positive, and Mok closed the restaurant for a week.

Ken Bridge, 52, hadn’t even fully opened Millie’s Kitchen and Cocktail, the newest of the five restaurants he owns in the Houston area, when one of his employees tested positive in late May. His staff members had been having their temperature checked twice a day, with anyone registering above 99 degrees sent home. Bridge had been doing takeout and delivery only, and he told me that he’s now looking to open his dining room for the first time at the beginning of July. “We just have to be 100 percent confident,” he said.

Bridge is an optimist by nature, but out and about in Houston, he told me by phone, he sees people not wearing masks, not “taking it as seriously as it could be taken.” Bridge added that his restaurant couldn’t survive on curbside service alone. “I’m so torn,” he said. “In a lot of ways, I wish we were able to be more cautious. The other side of it is—shit, man, it’s unsustainable.”

The House Judiciary Committee late Wednesday approved a major police reform bill on a party-line vote, the first step by Congress to address a crisis that has roiled the country since George Floyd died in police custody on May 25.

Yet for much of the day, the panel was ensnared in acrimonious cultural and political quarrels that had little to do with the underlying issue of police brutality, which the legislation is supposed to address.

Lawmakers fought over “Black Lives Matter” versus “All Lives Matter”; whether Antifa is a terrorist group that should be investigated by the FBI or if the far-right boogaloo movement is a greater threat; whether Congress should require the FBI and other federal law-enforcement agencies to tape their interviews with suspects, citing the Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort cases as prime reasons for doing so; and if the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle is a mortal danger to the rest of republic.

Sometime around dinnertime, the two sides fought for 40 minutes over the security of the southern border.

But the most incendiary exchange of the day took place between the normally low-key Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), an acolyte of President Donald Trump who specializes in throwing rhetorical bombs at Democrats.

The Richmond-Gaetz spat took place as Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) offered an amendment to order federal agencies to consider whether Antifa, the militant anti-fascist movement, is a terrorist organization. The Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), dismissed the proposal as “arrant nonsense” — itself an extraordinary comment by a chairman in the middle of a markup — while Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) claimed that Antifa was a “figment of Donald Trump’s imagination.”

Richmond, for his part, had clearly had enough of what he believed was Republican stalling. Richmond — an African-American lawmaker who is the House Democratic liaison to Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee — lashed out at Republicans for trying to distract from the underlying issue of police violence.

“To my colleagues, especially the ones that keep introducing amendments that are a tangent and a distraction from what we are talking about, you all are white males, you never lived in my shoes and you do not know what it’s like to be an African American male,” Richmond declared. All the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are white.

Gaetz interrupted Richmond to ask whether he was “certain that none of us have nonwhite children, because you reflected on your black son and you said none of us could understand.”

But Richmond cut Gaetz off: “It is about black males, black people in the streets that are getting killed. And if one of them happens to be your kid, I’m concerned about him, too. And clearly I’m more concerned about him than you are.”

That enraged Gaetz, who angrily declared: “You’re claiming you’re more concerned for my family than I do? Who in the hell do you think you are? You don’t know how much we care about our families. This is outrageous.”

“Was that a nerve?” Richmond asked.

“You’re damn right it was a nerve,” Gaetz responded.

The exchange was one of several heated moments in the daylong session. The Judiciary Committee, just six months removed from impeaching the president, includes some of Congress’ most ardent Trump critics and defenders, and the hangover from that battle still reverberates.

There were numerous detours from the issue of police brutality, as Republicans brought up topics such as Big Tech censorship, anti-abortion rights and “lawlessness” in Seattle’s protest zone.

The "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone," in fact, was a recurring theme throughout the proceedings. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) at one point offered an amendment to cut off federal police grants to any municipality that allows an autonomous zone to be created within its borders.

Rep. Pramilya Jayapal (D-Wash.), whose district is home to the Seattle zone, was upset by Republicans’ repeated attempts to raise the issue. She blamed Fox News and “right-wing media pundits” for what she said was “misinformation” being spread about her hometown.

“I don’t know how to keep telling people that what they’re saying are lies,” Jayapal said, growing exasperated as she again slapped down Republican accusations of a “law-enforcement-free micro-state” in her district. “Please stop this nonsense and let’s get back to the bill that's at hand.”

Multiple Democrats, meanwhile, repeatedly used their time to publicly call out Republicans in the hearing room who occasionally took off their masks — in violation of a guidance circulated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday. Under the new coronavirus guidance, Pelosi permitted chairmen to instruct the sergeant at arms to bar anyone who refuses to cover their face from a hearing room.

After several stern reminders, Nadler told Republicans that he wouldn’t recognize anyone who is not wearing a mask. Despite the warning, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), remained mask-less for much of the hearing. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) declared that he didn‘t wear a mask because he didn‘t think contracting coronavirus was any more a health threat than getting the flu, and he dared Nadler to cite a House rule that required masks to be worn. But McClintock did bow to Nadler‘s demands and put on a mask so he could be recognized to speak.

Still, it was a historic day for the subject matter alone — a debate on systemic racism and police brutality consuming both chambers of Congress amid nationwide demonstrations.

For many Democrats, the issue is intensely personal. Eight lawmakers on the panel are African American, including the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), and the House Democratic Caucus chairman, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). Many have been introducing bills for years to rein in police power.

The Democratic roster also includes freshman Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), whose teenage son, who was black, was murdered by a white man over the volume of his music. McBath sat in the front row on Wednesday, just steps away from Gaetz.

And it was those voices, other Democrats say, they intended to showcase.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who is white, said his “first instinct” was to introduce his own legislation on policing reforms. But he said he was urged by black friends and staff to leave it up to the Congressional Black Caucus.

“I think Cedric [Richmond] said it best, speaking to Republicans: ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be in my shoes,’” Swalwell said in an interview. “I’m not in the shoes of my CBC colleagues. Their ideas are going to be more meaningful, so I’m just trying to listen to debate, rather than interject.”

But the panel’s meeting on Wednesday also made history as the House’s first-ever virtual markup amid the global pandemic.

The proceedings took place in a cavernous room in the basement of the U.S. Capitol, with members spread six feet apart, only a handful of staffers and even even fewer reporters. Roughly a dozen members took part in the hearing via remote hookups from their districts.

With each roll call vote, the clerk looked not only to each member in the room, but also to a massive TV screen that showed the live video stream of members in California, Washington and Texas.

The bill was ultimately approved with zero Republican amendments, sending it to the House floor for a vote on June 25 when it is expected to pass largely along party lines. It will then likely languish in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said the chamber will take up the GOP’s own version of policing reforms.

In both bills, the biggest challenge is how to overhaul decades of systemic racism in police departments without causing permanent rifts between officers and the communities they serve.

“They’re being hunted down like they’re the enemy of society. Yes, we want to protect black lives, and all lives, including those who put theirs on the line,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said, noting members of his own family who are in law enforcement.

“I’m sorry I get emotional about this, but it’s an emotional subject.”

In the wave of cancellations sweeping America, Confederate statues have been particularly hard hit.

They have been graffitied, assaulted, and in some cases torn down, while state and municipal authorities rush to remove them.

For his part, President Donald Trump has been a steadfast defender of the statues and other forms of recognition of the Confederacy. He has come out strongly in favor of preserving the names of military bases named after Confederate generals, and pointedly said the other day that we should build on our heritage rather than tear it down. He took the same posture after Charlottesville in 2017.

Conservatives tend to come down the same way. They reflexively oppose politically correct campaigns to track down and destroy anything giving offense. They fear where the slippery slope of a campaign of woke iconoclasm will lead—first it’s Jefferson Davis, then Thomas Jefferson, finally George Washington. They value tradition, and Confederate statues have been part of the landscape of American cities for decades now, and they worry we are trashing part of our history.

This impulse, though, is a mistake. The firings, shamings and acts of destruction that have occurred across the culture over the past two or three weeks are deeply disturbing, but Confederate statues and symbols deserve to be reevaluated, and often mothballed.

Statues of Confederate leaders are an unnecessary affront to black citizens, who shouldn’t have to see defenders of chattel slavery put on a pedestal, literally.

It is impossible to evaluate these monuments without considering the context of why they were created in the first place. Many of them were erected as part of the push to enshrine a dishonest, prettied-up version of the Confederacy—they weren’t a testament to our history, but a distortion of it.

Finally, if we want to learn about, say, Robert E. Lee—and we should—we can do it without staring up at a 60-foot-tall statue of him on a major Richmond, Virginia, thoroughfare.

We should make distinctions, of course. Big statues in prominent public spaces erected to make a point about the supposed glories of the Confederacy should come down and be transferred elsewhere (ideally to museums or battlefields). But this should always be done lawfully and with due deliberation, not via mob action or under mob pressure.

The Confederate flag should be shunned, as a symbol of a viciously flawed cause.

Direct commemorations of the Confederate war dead—obelisks with lists of names of local causalities, Confederate cemeteries—should be preserved as an appropriate way to mark the human cost of a terrible conflict.

The bases are a harder case, since their names have themselves entered the American military tradition and places like Fort Bragg and Fort Benning are better known than their namesakes, the Confederate generals Braxton Bragg and Henry Benning. But as the source of their names becomes more widely known, it’s going to be harder to ask African American soldiers willing to sacrifice life and limb for their country to look past them.

The Richmond statue of Lee, which Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has said is coming down, has long been a point of contention. Its unveiling in 1890 was a key moment in the creation of a cult of Lee, as a man of “moral strength and moral beauty” as a speaker put it that day.

Frederick Douglass appropriately scorned this movement. “It would seem,” he wrote sarcastically, “that the soldier who kills the most men in battle, even in a bad cause, is the greatest Christian, and entitled to the highest place in heaven.”

The apotheosis of Lee was an element of a Lost Cause mythology that maintained that the Civil War wasn’t truly about slavery, only Southern states defending their legitimate prerogatives. This interpretation became very influential; it was also completely false.

Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, made the purpose of the Confederacy unmistakable in his notorious Cornerstone speech in 1861. He said of the new government: “Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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.”

The theory of state rights that the Confederacy used to justify secession wasn’t meant to preserve our constitutional scheme, but to destroy it. It had been developed by South Carolina's John C. Calhoun, who disdained The Federalist Papers and believed the country had set off on an erroneous, nationalist path from the very first Congress.

Besides, the South supported state rights only to the extent that they were useful in protecting slavery. It insisted, after all, on a federal Fugitive Slave Act to ensure that Northern states had no discretion in deciding whether to return runaway slaves.

Secession was a traitorous act that threatened to destroy the American nation, to create a rump republic built on slavery, and to make impossible the subsequent rise of the United States to a world power. Its leaders don’t deserve to be given a place of honor in our landscape denied to worthier men. Confederate statues shouldn’t be vandalized, but they should be reconsidered.

New York City has been electing more and more prosecutors who want to reform law enforcement, ones who see the racial disparities in policing and in the (in)justice system and are doing something about it. Right now, that includes refusing to prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters who police arrested simply for being at the protests, and who weren't violent and weren't destroying property. The New York Police Department (NYPD) is retaliating by pulling out officers assigned to prosecutors' offices.

That happened in the Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens district attorney (DA) offices. Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea said last week that his decision to remove the officer had nothing to do with their decisions not to prosecute protesters, but many in the DAs' offices aren't buying it. Particularly after four out of five of the city's DAs issued a statement supporting the state legislature's decision to ban chokeholds and repeal a law that made police misconduct records secret. "We must take action against the use of excessive force by the police," they said in their statement. Needless to say, the NYPD disagrees.

Times' sources tell the paper that "some senior police commanders were furious about some district attorneys' decisions not to prosecute" protesters, many of whom were arrested on minor charges, like breaking the curfew. One union leader, Edward D. Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said: "It is a dereliction of duty to their oath of office" not to prosecute the protesters. "More important than undercutting the work of the N.Y.P.D., it is undercutting public safety."

The DAs emphasize that this isn't just about "public safety," it's about First Amendment rights. "The protests are important, powerful and are very positive," Manhattan's district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said. "We need to make sure we protect that activity." Eric Gonzalez, DA for Brooklyn agreed, saying: "We stand for the right of people to protest." Queens DA Melinda Katz said she would not prosecute anyone for merely protesting, "which is a First Amendment right."

This is a group of prosecutors who are reformers, who see that the NYPD is targeting Black and brown people, who see illegal police practices like unconstitutional searches, and who aren't willing to be a part of that injustice. They’re looking for alternatives to locking people up. "The justice system shouldn't be the first resort," Vance told the Times. "It should be used only when necessary, especially for low-level offenses, which tend to fall on men and women of color and those economically less resourced."

It doesn't help matters with the cops in that these prosecutors are now working with the public to find bad cops. Vance, for example, took to Twitter to ask citizens to report "police violence or misconduct occurring in Manhattan," and sought out social media posts showing excessive use of force by the cops. They are investing allegations of an NYPD assault on a Black Wall Street Journal reporter, Tyler Blint-Welsh, who was covering the protests and was clearly identified as press.

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and who served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, writing for the Wall Street Journal: Take Trump's handling of the threats posed by the Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE. Ross and others repeatedly pushed to strictly enforce U.S. regulations and criminal laws against fraudulent conduct, including both firms' flouting of U.S. sanctions against Iran and other rogue states. The most important goal for Chinese "companies" like Huawei and ZTE is to infiltrate telecommunications and information-technology systems, notably 5G, and subject them to Chinese control (though both companies, of course, dispute the U.S. characterization of their activities). Trump, by contrast, saw this not as a policy issue to be resolved but as an opportunity to make personal gestures to Xi. In 2018, for example, he reversed penalties that Ross and the Commerce Department had imposed on ZTE. In 2019, he offered to reverse criminal prosecution against Huawei if it would help in the trade deal -- which, of course, was primarily about getting Trump re-elected in 2020.

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President Trump speaks to reporters as John Bolton looks on during a meeting with President of Romania on August 20, 2019. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

What we’ve learned from the flurry of excerpts released Wednesday.

John Bolton is publishing a book that recounts his tenure as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. The Trump administration on Tuesday sued to delay its release, a week before it was set to be published. So, naturally, major news outlets have now “obtained” the book and are releasing the most explosive passages from the memoir.

And oh, boy.

Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, contains numerous remarkable allegations about things President Trump said and did during his interactions with foreign leaders — none of which, it’s worth remembering, Bolton felt compelled to speak publicly about in the months since he left the administration or to testify about unless he was formally subpoenaed during the Senate’s impeachment trial.

But now that he has a book to sell, the longtime Republican foreign policy hand seems ready to dish.

In the book, Bolton — who, again, declined to voluntarily testify under oath during the impeachment trial because the White House told him not to — accuses the Democrat-led House of Representatives of committing “impeachment malpractice” by not going beyond Trump’s dealings with Ukraine to investigate other disturbing actions of Trump’s. Like, for example, Bolton’s claim that Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for electoral help and other instances where Trump sought to use his power for personal or political gain. (Vox hasn’t seen the book in its entirety, so we are relying on reports and excerpts published elsewhere.)

As national security adviser, Bolton was definitely in the room where stuff happened, and as such was privy to Trump’s conversations with world leaders, maybe more than most. Which lends some degree of credibility to his claims.

At the same time, this is Bolton’s account, and it’s not like he and Trump parted on great terms. Bolton, a conservative hawk, didn’t always seem like the right fit for Trump’s more isolationist foreign policy approach, and the two clashed over issues like North Korea and not being able to start wars. So some of Bolton’s claims may be self-serving or tough to verify.

Of course, verifying his claims might have been easier had Bolton testified before Congress under threat of perjury.

Acknowledging that there are no heroes here, below are some of the wildest and most disturbing tidbits from Bolton’s memoir. Read them, and imagine an alternate universe where Bolton’s mustache is moving up and down as he delivers an opening statement before the House Intelligence Committee in the fall of 2019. It kind of helps.

Trump asked Xi for help with his electoral prospects

According to Bolton, President Trump brought up his reelection prospects with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Japan. Xi mentioned China’s critics in the US, and according to Bolton, Trump thought the Chinese leader meant Democrats. So Trump apparently thought he had an opportunity.

Per the Washington Post:

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

Of course, Trump had already publicly asked China to investigate his political rivals back when he was already being investigated for pressuring Ukraine to do the same, so it’s not actually as bad as the other thing that allegedly happened in this meeting.

Trump told Xi to go ahead with the internment of Muslims in China

According to the Washington Post, Bolton writes that at the same meeting between Trump and Xi at the G20, the Chinese leader defended the detention of 1 million Uighurs in internment camps.

“According to our interpreter,” Bolton wrote, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.” The meeting was attended only by the two leaders and their interpreters, so Bolton is relying on what the interpreter told him after the meeting.

The Uighurs, a Muslim population in China’s Xinjiang province, have been forced into so-called “re-education camps,” characterized by reports of torture and political indoctrination. A Pentagon official has described them as “concentration camps.”

Beijing has imposed repressive policies on the group and has Uighurs closely surveilled. It is a clear violation of human rights and ethnic cleansing, one Trump has at least condemned publicly.

Bolton’s book said Trump opposed putting sanctions on China for the issue because of trade negotiations, according to the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, the same day as Bolton’s book was released, Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, according to the White House.

Trump learns about nukes ...

According to Bolton, Trump was apparently surprised that the United Kingdom — one of America’s closest allies — had nuclear weapons during a meeting with former British Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018. “Oh, are you a nuclear power?” Trump said, according to Bolton.

The UK was the third country to acquire the nuclear bomb, following the US and the Soviet Union. It conducted its first successful test of an atomic bomb in 1952.

So, a while ago.

... and about geography

Bolton writes that Trump once asked his then-Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly if Finland was part of Russia.

Maybe this is more forgivable when you consider Bolton also claims that at an August 2018 White House meeting, Trump “asserted that Venezuela was ‘really part of the United States’ and requested military options to invade the South American country and keep it under U.S. control,” the Wall Street Journal writes.

Trump also apparently said invading Venezuela would be “cool,” according to the Washington Post’s account of Bolton’s book.

Trump wanted to withdraw from NATO with a dramatic made-for-TV scene

Bolton claims that during a NATO summit in 2018, Trump decided he had had enough with the historic alliance and wanted out:

“We will walk out, and not defend those who have not [paid],” read a message Trump dictated to Bolton.

Bolton tried to stop Trump from delivering the threat, and became even more alarmed when Trump told him, “Do you want to do something historic?”

Trump had some issues with the Constitution

Bolton claims in the book that Trump told China’s Xi that Americans wanted him to get rid of the two-term limit imposed on presidents by the US Constitution.

Bolton also claims that Trump, apparently mad about leaks to the media coming from inside his administration, complained in 2019 that journalists should be jailed. Bolton says Trump said: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags.”

Meddling in Ukraine, yes, but so many other things

Bolton’s book, according to excerpts, also confirmed that the former national security adviser saw the military aid to Ukraine as tied to investigations involving Hunter Biden, former vice president Joe Biden’s son, and Hillary Clinton. Per the Times:

On Aug. 20, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Trump “said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all the Russia-investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over.” Mr. Bolton writes that he, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper tried eight to 10 times to get Mr. Trump to release the aid.

Bolton also claimed that Trump was fine meddling in US law enforcement if it meant helping out his buddy, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Per the Washington Post:

“Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Bolton writes.

Bolton says he warned Attorney General Bill Barr about Trump’s behavior at a meeting, where Barr expressed concerns about the “appearances” of Trump’s behavior, according to the Post.

Bolton, too, says that the House, by just focusing on Ukraine, committed “impeachment malpractice,” because if they focused elsewhere, Bolton claims “there might have been a greater chance to persuade others that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ had been perpetrated.”

If only there were someone who could have changed that.

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It’s summer, but the coronavirus has not gone away “like magic.” After months of heavy promotion from the White House, hydroxychloroquine is definitely not “a game changer.” And no matter what some Clorox-snorters may claim, an “internal injection” of bleach remains a bad idea.

But if the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t gone away, something else definitely has—the briefings where Trump made all those statements. Because the last time there was either a briefing or meeting of the White House coronavirus task force was April 27. Mike Pence may be out there writing editorials about what a great job Trump has done, as the numbers continue to climb, but it seems like no one is doing any job at all. It’s not just that Donald Trump has decided to hold a rally in a state and a city where cases are up 50% in the last week. As it turns out, the coronavirus didn’t go away after April, but the coronavirus response definitely did.

On Wednesday, the Chinese government cancelled all flights in and out of Beijing following a new wave of COVID-19 cases in the city. All schools have been closed. The city’s emergency level was raised to just one down from the highest. Areas of the city where cases are known are in lockdown, with stores closed and residents strictly confined to their homes. Several neighborhoods have been divided from the city by fencing and guards are manning checkpoints to make sure that curfews and lockdowns are observed. All of this came in response to 137 cases over the course of a week, with 31 coming on Tuesday. 

Or, in other words, China reacted immediately and vigorously to contain an outbreak that was less than what 41 out of 50 states reported on the same day. The total number of cases in Beijing over the last week was less than what 33 states reported just in the last day.

It’s not as if Trump ever actually had a significant contribution to COVID-19 outbreak. The United States never went on lockdown. Travel was never suspended. A national program of testing and tracing never emerged. It wasn’t just that the test was late to arrive, and ineffective in its first incarnation, Trump made it clear that he wasn’t interested in managing “tests in a parking lot” that was somewhere “far away.”  Unlike every other nation on the planet dealing with a deadly pandemic, Trump made it clear that he was not responsible for testing, for treatment, for anything. 

In fact, Trump made that explicitly clear: 

Trump has also made it clear that he’s not even going to consider shutting down the nation in response to any evidence that reopening is generating a new surge of cases. Not that he shut it down the first time. Instead, Trump is doing what he always does—pretending to lead. 

Beijing is shutting down after 132 cases in just the last week. Oklahoma had 228 cases on Tuesday alone, and has already reported 259 on Wednesday. 

Trump will be there for a rally on Saturday.

Across the country COVID-19 cases continue to rise. The small plateau in cases seen for a few days in April are long behind us. This means that municipalities looking to try to reopen parts of their economy must be prudent in how they go about it. As places like Florida are showing us, just reopening and crossing one’s fingers is not a good public or economic plan. This public health crisis is also running in tandem with our country’s native white supremacist history and structure of racial inequality. The rates of spread and mortality of the novel coronavirus is disproportionately affecting Black communities throughout the country.

The Montgomery Advertiser reports that a stream of doctors spoke in front the Montgomery City Council, in Alabama, on Tuesday. They were there to give their opinions on a mandatory mask ordinance in front of the council. One of the speakers was Jackson Hospital pulmonologist William Saliski, who pleaded with the council, saying that "The units are full with critically ill COVID patients [...] This mask slows that down, 95% protection from something as easy as cloth. ... If this continues the way it's going, we will be overrun." 

Saliski explained that Montgomery has been “late to the party,” but that the hospitals are filling up. “Right now we have between 220 and 240 patients in our hospital system. Half of those on ventilators.” Saliski took a very somber breath before proceeding. “The sad part is that of the patients on ventilators, between 85 and 90 percent are the Afro-American [sic] population.” Saliski continued on to explain exactly how and why masks are important. 

After the doctors spoke Councilman Brantley Lyons asked the doctors whether or not social distancing techniques like six feet of separation and the wearing of masks really helps. The doctors told Lyons that they very much do make a difference. But Lyons, who is known to throw around a lot of platitudes about God and the Bible—at least during his election years—feels that partisan political talking points are more important, telling the room that, “At the end of the day, if an illness or a pandemic comes through we do not throw our constitutional rights out the window.”

The ordinance failed to pass in a 4-4 vote, The ordinance had been proposed by Councilman Cornelius Calhoun and supported by Montgomery mayor Steven Reed. It was to last for 30 days and would have only made it mandatory for Alabamans to wear a mask in a public location with a group of 25 or more people.

The fact that Black people in Montgomery have been dying from COVID-19 at a much higher rate has been long understood by everyone in the city. It’s also been a glaring sign for the state in general, as the surge in cases across the state in more populated areas has not been as high as it has been in Montgomery. In fact, “Montgomery County has a smaller population and fewer people being tested than Mobile or Jefferson counties.”  

Dr. Anthony Fauci has already explained that officials downplayed the effectiveness of N95 and other masks in the early days of the pandemic in the hopes of combating shortages in protective equipment supplies that front-line health workers would need. But he has also, as has the entire scientific and medical community, been very clear that wearing masks when out and about is one of the best ways we have at slowing the spread of the virus.

As of Wednesday, Montgomery has a 10 PM curfew as their one enforceable mitigation against the spread of the disease. The curfew, which has been in place for weeks, is supposed to dissuade people from gathering in large groups. Mayor Reed told the news that whether or not the city would end the curfew could be decided later this week, but he had earlier implied that passing the mask ordinance would have led to it.

A new Civiqs poll for Data for Progress shows that while Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the No. 1 choice for vice president (VP) among Democrats and young Black registered voters, California Sen. Kamala Harris is a strong second-place contender and leads among all Black voters. Once you consider the first and second choices of Democratic voters, both significantly outpace the rest of the potential field.  

Georgia powerhouse Stacey Abrams is reportedly not on presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s short list, while the rest of the names on the list above are. The poll tested other names; none received significant support.

Among all Black voters, Harris led the field with 22%, Abrams 18%, and Warren 16%. If you add up first and second choices, it’s 37% Harris, 37% Abrams, and 31% Warren. None of these three take a dominant percentage. 

Among young voters, Warren leads with 38%, Harris 14%, and Abrams 12%. Add up first and second choices, and it’s Warren 54%, Harris 33%, and Abrams 27%. 

Among young Black voters, 18-34, Warren is the top choice of 31%, Abrams 29%, and Harris a shockingly low 7%. Why is Abrams off the short list again? I’d really love to know why she hasn’t gotten due consideration. Add up first and second choices of young Black voters, and Abrams gets a whopping 57%, Warren 38%, and Harris 23%. 

Young voter preferences matter, and Joe Biden is struggling to consolidate Democratic youth support.   

A Black Pittsburgh Post-Gazette journalist is accusing her employer of racial discrimination and illegal retaliation after the paper banned her and another Black journalist from covering protests for George Floyd, according to NBC Philadelphia. The 46-year-old Black father died May 25 when a white Minneapolis cop kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes, sparking protests throughout the country. 

Alexis Johnson was told she couldn’t write about jailed protesters or efforts to raise money for their bail after she mockingly tweeted about trash left behind by tailgaters at a concert for country music singer Kenny Chesney. “Horrifying scenes and aftermath from selfish LOOTERS who don’t care about this city!!!!! .... oh wait sorry. No, these are pictures from a Kenny Chesney concert tailgate. Whoops,” she wrote. She filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday in Pennsylvania, NBC Philadelphia reported.

“The Johnson Tweet was intended to—and did—mock, ridicule and protest discrimination against African Americans by society in general and by whites who equate property damage with human life,” an attorney said in the lawsuit.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette executive editor Keith Burris wrote in an op-ed for the paper that Johnson was not singled out because she’s Black, but because her tweet suggested bias. “A journalist can be a commentator or a chronicler,” he wrote. “He or she cannot be both at the same time. But whether he is a straight up reporter or an opinion writer he must, above all, seek to be fair and truthful.”

Johnson told MSNBC’s Joy Reid that a white reporter who was similarly warned about a social media post he sent wasn’t then taken off of protest-related coverage. “In fact, he covered the protest the following day,” Johnson said.

An attorney brought up another incident of alleged discrimination in the lawsuit. “For example, Defendant’s reporters who spoke out publicly against discrimination and hate after the 2018 shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue—which did not involve actions by police directed at African Americans—were not removed from covering that story,” the attorney said.

The newspaper also banned many journalists who supported Johnson by sharing her tweet with #IStandWithAlexis. That included Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Michael Santiago, who announced on Twitter Sunday he would be leaving the newspaper.

“It was not an easy decision, but as I said on Thursday night during the PBMF panel, how can I work for someone that doesn't love me," he said in the tweet.

RELATED: Pittsburgh union fights back when 2 Black journalists banned from covering George Floyd protests

RELATED: Pittsburgh newspaper editor defends banning 2 Black journalists from George Floyd protest coverage

The Justice Department released recommendations on Wednesday to pare back the legal shield for online platforms that has been crucial to their growth since the earliest days of the internet, taking a direct shot at companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that have come into the cross hairs of the Trump administration. From a report: In a 25-page recommendation, the agency called on lawmakers to repeal parts of a law that has given sites broad immunity from lawsuits for words, images and videos people have posted on their services. The changes to the law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, would put the onus on social media and other online platforms to more strongly police harmful content and conduct while also being consistent about their moderation. The Justice Department proposal is a legislative plan that would have to be adopted by Congress. It adds to growing calls in Washington, from elected officials of both parties, to change Section 230. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order to limit protections for online platforms. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has criticized the law before, too. On Capitol Hill, Republicans have become increasingly critical of Facebook, Google and Twitter for abusing the safe harbor to take down content that employees disagree with, including conservative views.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twitter today announced the launch of a new feature that's designed to allow people to tweet with their voice, sending voice-based messages instead of text.

Twitter is where you go to talk about what's happening. Over the years, photos, videos, gifs, and extra characters have allowed you to add your own flair and personality to your conversations. But sometimes 280 characters aren't enough and some conversational nuances are lost in translation. So starting today, we're testing a new feature that will add a more human touch to the way we use Twitter - your very own voice.

Voice tweets can be created by opening up the tweet composer and tapping the new wavelengths icon. From there, a screen opens with a user's Twitter icon, which can be tapped to begin a recording.

Twitter users can capture up to 140 seconds of audio, but continuous recording is possible and longer audio will create multiple voice tweets.


Voice tweets will appear on the Twitter timeline just like other tweets. Listening to a voice tweet can be done by tapping on the image, and on iOS, playback starts in an audio player that's docked at the bottom of the timeline users can continue to scroll through Twitter.

Twitter is testing voice tweets with a limited number of people on Twitter for iOS at the current time, but the company says that in the coming weeks, everyone on iOS should be able to send voice tweets.
This article, "Twitter Rolls Out New Voice Tweets Feature" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Gregory T. Angelo, the former president of the gay conservative group Log Cabin Republicans, has joined the Trump administration as spokesperson for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The Washington Blade reports: “After he left Log Cabin, Angelo became a stalwart defender of Trump on Twitter in terms of LGBTQ rights, disputing the notion Trump had developed an anti-LGBTQ record by pointing to openly gay appointments like Richard Grenell and the Trump administration’s plan to beat HIV/AIDS by 2030. Angelo also took to Capitol Hill to lobby against passage of the Equality Act, which would amend the Civil Right Acts of 1964 to explicitly define anti-LGBTQ discrimination as a form of sex discrimination under the law.”

The post Former ‘Log Cabin Republicans’ President Joins Trump Administration appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Vice President Mike Pence’s Wall Street Journal op-ed could lead Americans to believe the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is subsiding. The truth is much more complicated. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The White House is misleading Americans about the new Covid spikes. Here’s what we actually know.

The White House is pushing a narrative that renewed concerns over the coronavirus’s spread are merely a media concoction — a worrying strategy in light of the recent spike in cases in some parts of the United States.

What’s actually happening in the United States is much more complicated, and new research on the recent spike in Tennessee reveals some subtle ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic may be evolving.

Why the White House’s coronavirus narrative is wrong

The White House’s view is best represented by Vice President Mike Pence’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on Tuesday: “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave.’”

The vice president ticks through various data points — increased testing numbers, low positive test rates in many states, a steady plateau in new cases nationally, and a decline in deaths — to make his case.

For starters, Pence’s choice of frame is a misnomer. The experts I’ve spoken with aren’t talking about a second wave at all.

“We are still in the first wave; we’re not yet seeing the second wave,” David Celentano, who chairs the epidemiology department at Johns Hopkins, told me last week.

Pence’s preference for focusing on the national numbers obscures the very basic fact that America is not experiencing one Covid-19 outbreak but many. The virus is hitting different places at different times and spreads differently depending on a variety of local factors.

Part of the reason for the national plateau in cases is a decline in New York City and the surrounding area, which were hit hardest by the coronavirus at first. But other places, spared in the early weeks of the pandemic, have now seen their first significant surge.

The states with new Covid-19 spikes — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, etc. — were able to lock down and stave off the coronavirus for a while because it hadn’t saturated their communities in the way it had New York and other early epicenters where the virus first landed in the United States. Social distancing prevented their outbreak from growing exponentially.

But now those states are seeing problematic trends, trends that Pence conveniently ignores in his op-ed: Hospitalizations are increasing and the rate at which Covid-19 tests are coming back positive is on the rise. Both suggest that the increase in cases is not simply the result of more testing, as Pence would clearly prefer Americans to believe, but also more spread within the community.

In other venues, Pence has outright falsely claimed a decline in cases when the opposite is true. As CNN documented, Pence said at a White House event that Oklahoma’s cases are falling but that’s wrong; new cases are up 123 percent over the last two weeks and the positive test rate has more than doubled over the same period. Local health officials say they wish the Trump campaign would postpone a planned rally in Tulsa because of the new spike.

Pence is right that, mercifully, daily coronavirus deaths have declined nationwide (to date, at least 117,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, though that is likely an undercount). But deaths lag behind all of the other pandemic indicators; they are the last place where any new spread would show up in the numbers.

First, people test positive and get counted as a new case. Next, those who develop severe symptoms are hospitalized and added to those figures. Last, some of the people who end up in hospital will die. It’s only at the end of the disease’s course, which can take several weeks to reach, when new trends in the pandemic are reflected in death data.

There is one other way in which Pence’s spin is troublingly Pollyanna-ish. He portrays the plateau in national cases as reason for celebration. But as Max Roser with the University of Oxford pointed out on Twitter, the US has suppressed the virus to nearly the degree that Europe collectively has. (And don’t blame more testing; the US continues to see a higher positive test rate than many European countries.)

Our World In Data

We can’t be complacent. The coronavirus is a sneaky pathogen, with symptoms not revealing themselves for days after an infection, even though infected people can spread it to others before they realize they have the virus. Because of that time lag, it is already too late by the time a local health system nears or reaches its capacity. Preemptive action is necessary.

We have to protect each other through social distancing and other safety precautions, even if our government leaders are wrongly assuring us there is nothing to worry about. That doesn’t mean staying in lockdown forever. But it does mean wearing masks, washing hands, and minimizing our contact with other people to keep the coronavirus in check.

What is actually happening in some of the states seeing Covid-19 spikes

Just because the White House is advancing a coronavirus narrative disconnected from the facts doesn’t mean we aren’t learning more about the pandemic and how it might be evolving. New research out of Tennessee, one of the states with an increase in cases and hospitalizations, provides a critical glimpse under the hood of these new trends.

The study, from a team of Vanderbilt professors, is direct on the question of whether Covid-19 is spreading: “The virus continues to entrench itself in new communities.”

Still, the outbreak in Tennessee may be changing in important ways. The researchers found that while cases and hospitalizations are increasing at the same time, fewer people are ending up in the hospital than we would expect based on earlier trends.

They explain:

While hospitalization rates have risen statewide, hospitalizations have not risen proportionately with case numbers over the course of the pandemic. Why is this? One reason is that the risk profile of positive cases has varied over time and across regions. For example, some areas have at times seen large numbers of new cases among younger people who, absent any other underlying health conditions, have a much lower risk of hospitalization. In other areas there have been outbreaks among high-risk populations in congregate settings such as nursing homes. Outbreaks among higher-risk patients are generally followed by a rise in hospitalizations—but are hard to detect using raw case counts that include much larger numbers of low-risk individuals infected by the virus.

In other words, it would appear that the coronavirus is currently infecting a younger and less vulnerable population, one less at risk of hospitalization, than it was in March and April. There are some differences in the case mix in different regions across Tennessee, but that is the statewide trend.

The Vanderbilt study helpfully illustrates this change in chart form:

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

In my conversations, some public health experts were anticipating this kind of shift. As states begin to reopen — Tennessee relaxed its stay-at-home order on May 1, businesses like restaurants and movie theaters are open again — it may be younger and healthier people who take advantage while older people who know they are more at risk may decide to exercise more caution.

But, to repeat a theme, this is not a justification for complacency. First of all, while fewer young people are hospitalized with Covid-19 compared to older cohorts, a not-insignificant number of them still are. According to the CDC, the hospitalization rate in the US is 52 per 100,000 people for ages 18 to 49, 136 for ages 50 to 64, and 274 for ages 65 and older. So seniors are clearly the most at-risk, but younger people should not think they have no chance of developing a serious case of Covid-19.

Second, if the coronavirus is spreading in the broader population, it has a disconcerting habit of finding its way to the most vulnerable people. New outbreaks in nursing homes have surfaced in Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee in recent days — all states with those worrying aggregate trends.

“Outbreaks seem to follow community spread,” David Grabowski, a Harvard professor who has tracked Covid-19’s impact on long-term care facilities, told me. “We are seeing outbreaks in a new set of states.”

And while hospitalizations in Tennessee are not rising at the same rate as new cases, there is still a risk that local health care systems could be overwhelmed if these trends continue. At some point, the sheer number of people infected could lead to a critical mass of hospitalizations. And many hospitals are now seeing more non-covid patients again, which reduces their capacity to handle a surge in coronavirus patients.

Summarizing their findings on the recent spike, the Vanderbilt researchers wrote: “This has not yet taxed Tennessee’s hospital capacity but does not guarantee that another increase in hospitalized cases will occur in areas with capacity to treat them.”

“Some hospitals across the state have limited ICU and floor beds currently available for potential COVID-19 cases,” they concluded. “A surge in cases could stress these facilities.”

Support Vox’s explanatory journalism

Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

The morgue isn't half-full; it's half-empty.

An amendment to rename U.S. military bases and assets named after Confederate leaders had enough Republican support to pass through the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, but that does not mean Senate Republicans at large aren't going to fight to undo it before it can become law.

Because "the United States should not be bestowing special honors on people who committed actual treason against it" is an objectively correct take for which there is no plausible counterargument, the arguments that will be made by the opposition will by necessity be both insincere and extremely stupid. Fortunately for Republicans, that is their bailiwick. Their oeuvre. Their plan A, plan B, and plan C for every situation. And that brings us to Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, because you just knew I was going there, didn't you.

Sen. Kennedy's objection to the amendment is simple. He believes renaming bases named after Confederate traitors is unfairly targeting the South, because that is the place most supportive of the practice. Why are you singling out our traitors, you bastards?

Says Kennedy: "I think history will show that in the 18th century, in the 19th century, and well into the 20th century, there were many non-Confederate generals, soldiers and others, in both the South and the North who practiced racial discrimination, anti-Semitism and misogyny. I don't think we ought to just pick on the South."

A good and noble point you have there, my young senator, but one three inches down and six feet away from the actual point being discussed at the moment. Traitors. We're talking about traitors. We're talking about non-Americans, men who rebelled against the United States, took up arms against it, led men into battle against it, killed Americans in unfathomable numbers because the cause of slavery—not of racial discrimination, but of chattel slavery, the owning of human beings—was so essential a cause as to require the dissolution of the country rather than face impediments to its continuation and growth.

Those are the people being honored, and in places very far away from the "South." And few to none of them are being honored for their sublime military leadership; the statues were erected, and the bases named, generations later in a deliberate Jim Crow-era push to glorify the "heritage" of continued violence and discrimination against Black Americans. The statues were not put in the public squares because suddenly it became urgent to honor largely forgotten top and mid-tier traitors who had disgracefully not gotten their due, but as public statements glorifying terrorism against Black Americans—lynchings, arsons, and other violence—by elevating, as heroes, those who made themselves infamous for pursuing the ultimate act of terrorism in service to institutional white supremacy.

There's not much subtlety to it, which is why dancing around it now requires Kennedy to grand jeté his way past the entire Civil War to suggest that the Confederate names are being singled out for their practices of "racial discrimination," rather than "widespread murder for the cause of owning people."

Kennedy's counterproposal will be, according to CNN, to "rename every military installation in the country," requiring them to be named after Medal of Honor awardees. This way we can brush aside any disputes over whether Confederate traitors were in fact genuinely bad people who did genuinely horrific things, disputes would very much hurt (white ignorant racist) Southern feelings, according to Kennedy, and by the way escalate the amendment into nationwide discussions over every last military base in the country making everybody equally sad, but none sadder than the others. Or something.

That would be fine too, if it were a proposal made in sincerity. It is not, so we needn't bother with it.

The Whole Problem Here, the whole of it, is that there remains a very sizable contingent of the country and it is not limited to the "South," as Kennedy supposes that has been raised to believe that both violence and treason are good, if in service to institutional racism, and that well while nobody wants to go back to owning people it sure would be lovely if decisions on withholding rights, on systemic oppression, and on state-sponsored violence aimed at non-white American citizens were again considered "rights" that white majorities could vote to perpetuate in their own states if they felt those measures were needed. The flags and statues were all inventions to signal a renewed vigor in the "lost cause" of white supremacy; the "heritage" being honored is the heritage of using whatever violence might be necessary to maintain white supremacy in each town, neighborhood, and block.

Whether the United States should honor traitors as heroes is not, at heart, a question that can tolerate much in the way of both sides debate. It has always required supreme obfuscation to make it sound even plausible, much less endorsable. And it is always the people who do that obfuscation that also pipe up, in the hours before or after, with unrelated suggestions that well maybe going back to the way things were done in the Jim Crow era, just a little, when it comes to ballot boxes or the laws we write, but that has nothing to do with this. This is just about heritage.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has bowed to pressure and decided that he has to allow the Senate to act on policing reform legislation. More to the point, McConnell has recognized that he can use the urgency of this moment to screw Democrats. He's going to hold a vote on the Republican bill next week, but he made it clear in the announcement of that legislation Wednesday morning that it's really a dare to Democrats to oppose it and prevent it from advancing to a full vote. Because the bill does nothing to stop police brutality, it likely won't get Democratic support.

McConnell showed his hand on this by letting Sen. Lindsay Graham loose in a snarling performance that was remarkable even for him, and wildly inappropriate for this issue. His only purpose there was to attack Democrats and suck up to Trump. He blasted Democrats for their "shopping list" of policies and said he was tired of Trump getting blamed for everything. "You had eight years," he snarled, to act on policing reform under President Obama. As if we've all forgotten that the House was Republican after 2010 and the Senate after 2014, and that he and his fellow Republicans blocked every goddamned thing Obama tried.

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Even Sen. Tim Scott—the South Carolina Republican who McConnell put in charge of this effort since he's the only Black guy in the conference—had to go on offense against Democrats. "If we don't have the votes on a motion to proceed," he said, "that means that politics is more important than restoring confidence" in the police in communities of color. Then, on the floor following the bill announcement, McConnell doubled down on the politics: "I'm going to file cloture on the motion to proceed and our Democratic friends, if they want to make a law, and not just try to make a point, I hope they'll join us in getting on the bill and trying to move forward in the way the Senate does move forward when it's trying to actually get an outcome," McConnell said. "A law." Any law, doesn't matter if it actually accomplishes anything.

Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer didn't bite. "This bill will need dramatic improvement," he said. "Let me be clear: this is not about letting the perfect being the enemy of the good, this about replacing what's ineffective with what's effective." Sen. Kamala Harris, the California Democrat who is one of the lead authors of the bill Democrats released last week, the Justice in Policing Act, called this bill a "baseline for negotiation" on a final package. "We obviously want a broader package. […] The environment is so much more ripe for legislation than it is for the First Step Act."

This Republican bill is barely that. It doesn't not ban chokeholds. It doesn't not ban no-knock warrants. It would "incentivize" departments to do it themselves by restricting some federal grants to departments that bar the tactics and creates data collection on the use of force. It tell police they have to keep and update disciplinary action on officers to share with other departments the cops might be seeking jobs at, but does not create a national public database to expose the bad apples. It actually gives more money to the police for more training and equipment, as if that hasn't been tried repeatedly and proven to have failed. It would fold in the anti-lynching bill Republican Sen. Rand Paul has been blocking and creates a commission to study issues impacting Black men and boys, including education, incarceration rates, wealth disparity, and homicide rate. (As if Black girls and women haven't also been persecuted by the police system.) It does not include qualified immunity or police officer liability.

The Democrats' bill, while not nearly as far-reaching as justice demands, is vastly stronger. It does strictly ban police chokeholds and carotid holds. It does ban no-knock warrants for drug cases. It does reinstate Obama's limits on the transfer of military-grade equipment to police departments. It does reform qualified immunity for cops and it does make it easier for victims of police violence to sue individual officers and departments. It does create a national database for the public to see police misconduct. It makes racial profiling by law enforcement covered under civil rights protections. It mandates departments use existing federal funds to require the use of dashboard and body cameras. It beefs up federal oversight, giving the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power in investigations into problematic police departments, and it also gives states’ attorney generals grants to conduct independent investigations.

There are some real teeth in that bill, teeth that Democrats need to fight for and make very clear—right here, right now—that McConnell is delivering none of them. That his bill is basically a political stunt designed to corner Democrats. They need to come out of that corner, starting with Sen. Dick Durbin, who told CNN's Manu Raju: "I think we really need an understanding from Sen. McConnell: Is this a high noon moment, one and done moment, take it or leave it moment?" Three guesses. He told Raju Democrats need assurances that McConnell is not just trying to "embarrass Democrats" by setting them up to block the bill so that it fails.

It's McConnell. At this point everyone knows that's what he's doing. Don't pretend like that's even a question, Durbin. Tell the world you know that's what he's doing. Don't play the good faith game with him, because he sure as hell isn't going to reciprocate.

This moment, this movement is far too essential to allow McConnell to play politics with this way. Democrats need to show the Black community and everyone who has taken to the streets to say “Black Lives Matter” that they get it.

Weeks after Zoom said it will offer end-to-end encryption to only paying customers -- a move that was received poorly by several privacy and security advocates, the popular video calling software said on Wednesday it is making some amendments: We are also pleased to share that we have identified a path forward that balances the legitimate right of all users to privacy and the safety of users on our platform. This will enable us to offer E2EE (end-to-end encryption) as an advanced add-on feature for all of our users around the globe -- free and paid -- while maintaining the ability to prevent and fight abuse on our platform. To make this possible, Free/Basic users seeking access to E2EE will participate in a one-time process that will prompt the user for additional pieces of information, such as verifying a phone number via a text message. Many leading companies perform similar steps on account creation to reduce the mass creation of abusive accounts. We are confident that by implementing risk-based authentication, in combination with our current mix of tools -- including our Report a User function -- we can continue to prevent and fight abuse.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mourners listen to a eulogy by Rev. Al Sharpton at a memorial service for George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 4. | Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Longstanding inequalities have led to the current wave of protests.

The current protests — and the anger that fuels them — did not spring up out of nowhere. They are a cry of pain from a raw nerve that has always afflicted the United States, one that was all too often ignored.

That nerve had a number of causes, and a number of things exacerbating it: biased and violent policing, of course, but also lingering effects of segregation affecting education, job opportunities, and health; a multi-tiered wage system that gives white men greater financial rewards than others, most of all black women; a criminal justice system that is punitive if you are black, but able to find forgiveness, mercy, and understanding if you are white; the sense that not just one’s labor, but one’s life is less valuable than those of other citizens only because of the color of their skin.

People marching in the streets have had enough of this injustice. They are demanding Americans no longer allow themselves to be policed as they have been. They are pulling down memorials to traitorous men who would still have them enslaved. They are calling for lynching to be made a federal crime. They want equal pay, they want political change. They want people to listen carefully, thoughtfully, and to be willing to change their hearts and behavior.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

A historic number of Americans are participating in these protests: According to the Pew Research Center, 6 percent of American adults have taken to the streets in recent weeks, a figure that translates to about 17 million people. Millions more who did not go out want to see real change, too. Recent data shows this — and how the country has reached this point — in the nine charts below.

Even before the protests, black people had far less trust in police

The recent spate of police killings and well-documented police violence at largely peaceful protests — from students being dragged from a car in Atlanta, Georgia, to a 75-year-old man being pushed to the ground and left bleeding in Buffalo, New York — appear to have led Americans to have an increasingly negative view of police, according to a Democracy Fund/UCLA Nationscape poll of more than 6,000 Americans taken from May 28 to June 3.

Pollsters found that the percentage of Americans with an unfavorable impression of police rose from 18 percent in their May 21 to 27 survey, to 31 percent in its May 28 to June 3 poll. The polling for both weeks had a 2.2 percentage point margin of error, meaning either number could be 2.2 percentage points higher or lower than was officially recorded.

Regardless, that increase suggests the American public’s perception of law enforcement has begun to more closely mirror the sentiment of black Americans, who even before the recent protests and killings expressed notable skepticism about police.

For instance, in a Pew Research Center study conducted from April 20 to 26 — about a month before George Floyd was killed — 10,139 American adults were asked for their thoughts on police, and researchers received starkly different answers based on ethnicity.

Most Americans have high confidence in police, the study found — except for black Americans. With a 1.5 percentage point margin of error, 56 percent of black Americans said they had a great deal or fair amount of confidence in police, compared to the 78 percent of white Americans who said the same. And confidence was even lower among young black Americans — 49 percent said they had a great or fair amount of confidence in police.

Some of that lack of confidence appears to come from a belief that police officers are unethical — 48 percent of black Americans see officers’ ethical standards as being low or very low, Pew found.

Many other polls have also captured this lack of trust — for instance, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll taken from January 2 to 8 of 1,088 black Americans (with a 3.5 percentage point margin of error) found that 83 percent said they didn’t trust police “to treat people of all races equally.” Only 14 percent said they did trust police to do so.

The situation has not improved.

A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, taken May 29 and 30 — four days after Floyd was killed — of 1,060 US adults (with a 4.3 percentage point margin of error) found that 94 percent of black Americans believe the criminal justice system treats white Americans better. The same poll found that 91 percent of black Americans don’t believe white and black people receive equal treatment from the police. A Monmouth University study (conducted from May 29 to June 1, of 759 US adults, with a 3.6 percentage point margin of error) found that 87 percent of black Americans believe police are more likely to use excessive force against black people.

More recent work from Pew, a survey conducted from June 4 to 10 of 9,654 US adults, with a 1.5 percentage point margin of error, found that the majority of black men — 64 percent — say they have been stopped unfairly by police.

The sum of all these studies is that there just isn’t trust in police among black Americans — certainly not to the degree there is among white Americans. And one important reason for that is fear: of violence, of unfair treatment, of death.

Black Americans’ lack of trust in law enforcement is fueled by tension and fear

This general lack of trust has long been undergirded by a pervasive tension, one illustrated in video broadcast on Los Angeles’s Fox 11, in which police responding to property seizures at black businesses arrived at the scene and began to detain the business owners rather than those in breach of the law.

It’s a tension that lies in unpredictability — in knowing that any interaction with police can quickly escalate into an unfair, traumatic, and even life-ending event. It’s why Ta-Nahisi Coates recently told Vox’s Ezra Klein he was leery of calling the police when there were fights in his family’s neighborhood. Perhaps the police would come and make peace. But perhaps they would detain the wrong people, as happened in Los Angeles, or even pursue a course of action that left someone dead, as was the case with George Floyd.

The tension created by this uncertainty was reflected in the May 29-30 YouGov survey, which found that the sight of a police officer makes 60 percent of black Americans feel “less secure.” About one-third — 22 percent — of white Americans said the same, while 32 percent of white Americans said the sight of an officer makes them feel more secure, a sentiment shared by only 5 percent of black Americans.

Sean Collins/Vox

Part of the reason for this is the specter of death police carry for black Americans. A much-cited study by researchers at Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and Washington University in St. Louis, explained by Vox’s Dylan Scott, found that black men have a one in 1,000 chance of being killed by police. For no black American is that statistic abstract. Nor is it, increasingly, for other Americans: Since Floyd’s death, the public has learned of the killings of Javier Ambler, Maurice Gordon, Manuel Ellis, Tony McDade, Momodou Lamin Sisay, Rayshard Brooks, and many others.

But there is also fear over not just killing, but racially motivated harassment and detention. The YouGov work found that 43 percent of black Americans say they have been treated unfairly by police, and the Monmouth study found that 44 percent of black Americans felt they or a family member had been harassed by police, compared to 24 percent of white Americans who said the same.

Monmouth’s study also found the majority of black Americans — 87 percent — believe that police are more likely to use excessive force against black people, a sentiment white Americans agreed with, though not by an overwhelming margin; 49 percent of white Americans said police were more likely to use excessive force against black people, while 39 percent felt the use of force wasn’t tied to race.

In addition to the fear, tension, and uncertainty comes a sort of pessimistic cynicism — the sense that if one is the victim of police violence or misconduct, nothing will happen. There was surprise over the speed at which Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed Floyd, was arrested: just four days after Floyd was killed. Arrests of those officers who kill rarely come that quickly — it took nearly a month for the Baltimore officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death, and more than four years for former St. Louis officer Jason Stockley to be arrested for killing Anthony Lamar Smith — if at all.

An analysis by advocacy group Mapping Police Violence found that 99 percent of police killings from 2014 to 2019 did not result in officers being charged with — let alone convicted of — a crime. And that is for those who kill — a situation that would seem to leave little recourse for those who’ve suffered excessive force or were arbitrarily detained.

Black Americans feel this keenly, according to YouGov’s polling. When asked whether police are usually held accountable for misconduct, 82 percent of black respondents said no, compared to the 52 percent of white people, 48 percent of Latinx respondents, and 63 percent of those of other ethnicities who said the same.

And Monmouth’s polling suggests black Americans are forced to face their anxieties and fears around policing more often that other Americans — and in stressful situations. The university’s pollsters asked if an officer had ever kept respondents (or their families) safe in a “dangerous situation.” Across ethnicities, most said police had not; but 41 percent of black Americans said they’d been protected by police, compared to 33 percent of white Americans — a number that, coupled with the survey’s other findings, would seem to suggest that being protected by police has not outweighed the negative perceptions black Americans have of police due to concerns about being victims of violence or unfair treatment.

Black Americans face systemic racism — police are only a part of that

There is a deep and multifaceted problem with how police interact with black Americans — but the issues they face, and those the protests concern, go beyond law enforcement: They are systemic, involving government, health, and economics.

Polling reflects this.

An Axios/Ipsos poll taken from May 29 to June 1 of 1,033 American adults (with a 3.1-3.4 percentage point margin of error) found only 18 percent of black Americans trust the federal government to work for their interests; 67 percent feel Congress is doing a bad job, according to Monmouth’s polling.

Results like these comes amid a global pandemic that has disproportionately affected black, Latinx, and Native Americans — one that the federal government, particularly the executive branch, has struggled to respond to.

Through the end of May, black Americans were hospitalized for Covid-19 at 4.5 times the rate of white Americans, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (adjusted to account for differences in age distributions among each ethnic population). While the CDC’s data set is not yet complete — it has ethnicity information for about 79.9 percent of cases — current numbers show only Native Americans have been hospitalized at rates greater than black Americans.

Sean Collins/Vox

Black Americans don’t just face a disproportionately higher rate of hospitalizations, but a disproportionately higher rate of death as well. While black Americans make up about 13 percent of the US population, the CDC estimates they account for 23 percent of all Covid-19 deaths, as of June 3. White Americans, on the other hand, make up about 76 percent of the US population, but account for 53.2 percent of coronavirus deaths, according to the CDC.

Analysis by the nonpartisan study group APM Research Lab of all coronavirus deaths in 43 US states and Washington, DC, found that more than 25,028 black Americans died of Covid-19 before June 9 — meaning one in 1,625 black Americans has died of the disease. By comparison, one in 3,800 white Americans has died. According to the group’s analysis, if black Americans died of Covid-19 at the same rate as white Americans, more than 14,000 black people who died after being infected by the coronavirus would be alive today.

Less severe cases also disproportionately affect black Americans. Analyzing data collected through June 9, the CDC found that black people make up 22.1 percent of all US coronavirus cases. Black Americans are more likely to know someone who has died of Covid-19 than white Americans — an analysis by the NORC Centers for Public Affairs Research found that 11 percent of black Americans have had a family member or close friend die of the disease, compared to 4 percent of white Americans.

The AP’s Kat Stafford and Hannah Fingerhut note that this disparity is even greater in cities and states that faced particularly high case counts, like Birmingham, Alabama, where 15 percent of black adults had a close friend or family member die, compared to 2 percent of white adults.

Regardless of the severity or outcome, Covid-19 represents not just a health, but an economic burden for many — particularly black Americans.

While coronavirus testing is usually free, any hospitalizations or emergency room visits related to coronavirus care are not. Covid-19-related hospital stays for an insured person could exceed $1,300, with some patients having to pay more than $20,000, according to research by the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation. An analysis from FAIR Health, a nonprofit focused on the cost of care, found that those without insurance — as about 11.5 percent of black Americans were in 2018 — can expect to pay between $42,486 and $74,310.

End-of-life services are also very expensive, with the National Funeral Directors Association putting the median cost of a funeral in 2019 at $7,640.

Unexpected costs like these would be financially ruinous for most Americans at the best of times. A SSRS/Bankrate poll conducted in January (with a 3.39 percent margin of error) found that 59 percent of Americans would be unable to cover a $1,000 emergency, for instance. And even if one has a mild case of Covid-19, the need to quarantine can have taxing financial consequences.

All these costs come as black Americans — who, generally, have always been less secure financially than white Americans — are in a more precarious financial situation than ever.

Black Americans are underpaid and financially disadvantaged

The Covid-19 pandemic comes amid the larger backdrop of a racial income and wealth gap.

Ipsos’s polling found that 33 percent of black Americans said they are in dire financial straits at the moment, nearly double the amount of white Americans who reported the same — 18 percent.

Pew polling has captured a similar struggle, and one that is ongoing, finding that 46 percent of black Americans struggle to pay their bills in a typical month, and that 48 percent reported having difficulties in April. The number of black Americans found to have bill difficulties was nearly double the number of Latinx Americans — 28 percent — and 2.3 times the number of white Americans at 20 percent.

Some of this disparity stems from the fact that there are gross inequalities in pay by ethnicity. Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in the first quarter of 2020, the median pay for a black male worker between the ages of 25 and 54 was $891 per week; for a Latino man of the same age, it was $796 a week. Meanwhile, a white man of the same age averaged $1,128 per week. Women of all three racial groups made less than the average white man, with white women making $906, black women making $767, and Latina women making $701.

Sean Collins/Vox; US Bureau of Labor Statistics data

This difference that extends to those classified as essential workers — a group that, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), is about 15 percent black. And it is one that is particularly evident in high risk essential jobs like health care. EPI’s work found that a white health care worker’s median hourly wages to be $7.96 more than a black health care worker’s.

Sean Collins/Vox

The pay gaps are a reminder that being an essential worker was not enough for equal pay in normal times, and equal pay still has not appeared as these jobs became potentially life-threatening. And potentially resource draining, again, given the costs of care and lost wages caused by infection. Overall, these wage gaps are indicative of a poor economic reality that black Americans have had to endure for centuries — and one that has been a source of stress, with millions under constant concern about paying their bills.

The economy is — and always has been — worse for black Americans

Much has been made of the better-than-expected jobs report released at the beginning of June — after record contractions, the Department of Labor reported that the economy added 2.5 million jobs in May.

The fact that there is still 13.3 percent unemployment — roughly 20.9 million people — was ignored by many, including President Donald Trump, who said the report was “an affirmation of all the work we’ve been doing” and “a great day for [George Floyd], it’s a great day for everybody.”

But while it is good news that some Americans got their jobs back, that good news didn’t reflect everybody, particularly black Americans. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, black unemployment increased slightly from April to May, up 0.1 percentage points (87,000 people), as did Asian American unemployment, which rose 0.5 percent (55,000 people).

Much of the growth in May was driven instead by increases in white employment, which increased by 2 million; Latinx Americans accounted for most of the other new jobs — 286,000.

Sean Collins/Vox

Black Americans’ exclusion from economic gains is nothing new. In January, when the unemployment rate was 3.6 percent, the black unemployment rate was 6 percent; there were about 5.9 million unemployed people, 1.2 million — or 21 percent — of whom were black. There was a similar disparity between the general unemployment and black unemployment rates in June 2019 of 2.3 percentage points; 2.5 percentage points in June 2018; 3.7 percentage points in June 2008; and in the first half of 1988, 6.8 percent.

All this suggests that even once the economy returns to normal, it will still be a poor economy for black workers. And if the recession triggered by the pandemic mirrors the Great Recession, unemployment numbers for black Americans won’t return to that 6 percent level anytime soon. As an analysis by American Progress’s Christian E. Weller notes, “The decline in prime-age employment rates associated with the Great Recession started two months sooner for African Americans than whites and lasted 15 months longer than it did for white workers.”

One reason the unemployment numbers for black Americans tend to be higher, Weller points out, is that it takes unemployed black Americans about five more weeks, on average, to find work than white Americans, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers.

That means more time being unemployed, and more time having to survive off the depressed income unemployment insurance provides. And when it comes to unemployment, the wage gaps discussed previously begin to affect even those who are unemployed or furloughed.

Unemployment benefits (not counting the temporary $600 per unemployment check provided by the CARES Act) are calculated based on one’s former weekly earnings. This means preexisting wage gaps have only exacerbated inequality at a particularly trying time, as black Americans can expect to receive smaller unemployment benefits on average than white Americans.

Black Americans have been denied opportunities to build wealth

The US Federal Reserve shows that unemployed black Americans have less wealth and fewer resources to leverage during lean times. And that they have struggled with debt even during good economic times.

The Fed’s data on US household wealth shows there is no measure by which Americans of color come anywhere close to the wealth owned by white Americans — a paradigm that has held for centuries. In the final quarter of 2019, white Americans held 84.2 percent of US assets; black Americans held 4.8 percent. White Americans hold 85.5 percent of the country’s net worth; black Americans, 4.2 percent.

Sean Collins/Vox

And black Americans’ wealth is not concentrated in leverageable assets. For most Americans, homes are a source of wealth. But a 2019 report by the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) found that 40.6 percent of black households owned homes in the second quarter of 2019, 0.3 percentage points lower than the level of black homeownership following the 1968 passage of the Fair Housing Act.

Those who do own homes often own property that is less valuable for being in a black community. Andre M. Perry, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, told Vox’s Aaron Ross Coleman that his group’s research found that “after controlling for education, crime, walkability, and many other metrics you might find on Zillow, homes in black neighborhoods are devalued by 23 percent. About $48,000 per home, about $156 billion in lost equity.” And even getting those undervalued homes can be a struggle — the NAREB’s study found that black applicants looking for home loans were denied at twice the rate of white applicants.

Those who do get loans are likely to have more difficulty paying them off than their white counterparts, because, again, black Americans make less than white Americans of their same education and skill levels. Younger black Americans, in particular, have other debt burdens draining their income in part, because their families had less wealth to begin with.

Low familial wealth means black college-goers take out more in student loans than white students; data collected by New America’s Wesley Whistle found that in 2016, 84 percent of black college-goers took out student loans, compared to 67 percent of white students.

Not only did most black college-goers have these loans, but even before the current economic downturn, they had trouble staying current with their payments. In 2018, the Federal Reserve found that 28 percent of black Americans ages 18 to 29 with student loans had fallen behind on their payments, as had 15 percent of Latinx college students in the same age range. By comparison, 7 percent of white 18- to 29-year-olds with debt were behind.

US Federal Reserve

All this is a reminder that there are chronic and interconnected factors that exclude black Americans from the benefits of a strong economy, and cause them more anguish than Americans of other ethnicities — particularly white Americans — when times are bad. And although they are so tangled that it is difficult to tell precisely where one economic issue begins and another ends, it is clear they all have one source: the systemic racism that has devalued black labor for more than four centuries and the social injustices that have stemmed from it.

Black Americans are keenly aware of systemic inequality. Increasingly, others are, too.

For decades, it felt as though black Americans lived in a different reality, and one that went largely unacknowledged.

But the worlds black Americans and other Americans live in seem like they are beginning to converge, in large part due to the recent killings of black people — particularly the killing of George Floyd, which 70 percent of Americans had watched by May 30, according to YouGov’s polling.

Following those killings, there has been an increasingly broad understanding that something is not quite right about American life — and that racial inequality is to blame.

According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll — taken of 1,000 registered voters from May 28 to June 2, with a 3.1 percentage point margin of error — 80 percent of the country believes things in the US are out of control. YouGov’s pollsters found that 57 percent of Americans believe race relations are “generally bad” in the US; 45 percent believe they have gotten worse; and 61 percent of Americans said police killings are signs of a larger problem.

A Democracy Fund/UCLA Nationscape poll of more than 6,000 Americans taken from May 28 to June 3, with a 2.2 percentage point margin of error, found that 96 percent of Americans believe black Americans face racial discrimination. And 62 percent of those said black Americans face a lot or a great deal of discrimination — a figure that jumped 12 percentage points from the survey taken from May 21 to 27, suggesting that the protests have played an important role in reshaping the country’s perception of the injustices black Americans face. As of June 10, over two-thirds — 67 percent — of Americans now support the Black Lives Matter movement, according to Pew.

Understanding historical and underlying issues has led to the protests around the country being seen as right. Pew’s June polling found that 65 percent believe the protests are the result of “longstanding concerns about the treatment of black people.” The WSJ/NBC poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe the killing of Floyd to be a bigger issue than even violent protests, and Monmouth’s polling — taken during a time when there was much coverage of people at the protests seizing property and committing violent acts — found that 54 percent of Americans believed the protests themselves to be justified, and that 78 percent felt the anger behind the protests was justified.

More recent polling from the Washington Post/George Mason University (taken from June 2 to 7, of 1,006 US adults, with a 3.5 percentage point margin of error) found this level of support to be sustained: 74 percent of Americans support the protests — and 90 percent of Americans do not blame the protesters for any violence that occurred during recent uprisings.

With this support has come a rapid desire to see change. The Democracy Fund/UCLA Nationscape poll found that the percentage of Americans with an unfavorable view of police increased 13 percentage points between May 21 to 27 and May 28 to June 3. The Washington Post/George Mason poll found that 81 percent of Americans believe the police need to make changes to ensure all Americans are treated equally by law enforcement. And that feeling that something needs to be altered goes beyond just the police: The Post poll captured a desire for leadership that can help “address the nation’s racial divisions” — 62 percent of Americans said they want this. Monmouth’s polling, meanwhile, found that 74 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.

These results help illuminate why there is such broad support for the protesters. It is not only those who march who believe the US is on the wrong track, and that radical changes are needed in policing, political leadership, and the ways people of color are treated.

Politicians have begun to acknowledge this, from the Minneapolis City Council announcing it will restructure the city’s police department to House Democrats unveiling a broad police reform bill. But announcements and intentions are not change — and the data suggests the public will continue to push for it.

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[Right-of-center lawyers send me their to thoughts on Bostock, Blue Monday, and the Conservative Legal Movement]

I have written quite a bit about Blue Monday, but haven't yet offered my own analysis of Bostock. Quite deliberately. I need some time to carefully consider and reflect on each aspect of the majority opinion, and the two dissents. In the interim, I'd like to provide a sampling of the emails I've received about the case.

The first email expresses what many rank-and-file conservative lawyers shared with me: a feeling of disappointment and letdown.

I'll be honest, after yesterday I was feeling quite disheartened about the conservative legal movement. I felt like I had been promised so much more (mainly, truly conservative judges) if I gave the GOP my vote year after year. I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one. It's encouraging to know the scholars and professors leading our conservative legal movement still hold to our principles.

The second email worries how Bostock will be used by Chief Justice Kagan in the future to reach progressive results under the false "flag" of textualism:

I find Bostock demoralizing- Gorsuch has just given Kagan carte blanche to rewrite any law she wants and call it textualism. If Gorsuch can do it, then anyone can. If Gorsuch can rewrite Title VII in this way, then we can rewrite anything to say whatever results we want and say it's textualist. Gorsuch just put a textualist gloss on purposivism. If Congress wants to rewrite Title VII, good! That's their job. But Gorsuch just sent us Fed Soc types back dramatically. The law is not a semantic game, but that's what Gorsuch just said it was.

The third e-mail speaks to our current political realities.

Gorsuch's majority opinion was a double kill-shot and will make him the last of the self-described textualists on the Court. In the short term, he disembowled Trump's last shot at re-election, so Justices Ginsburg and perhaps Breyer will be replaced by President Biden. In the long term, two things will happen. First, no GOP White House will ever trust a textualist again. Instead, Republicans will do what Democrats have always done: look for someone who shares their policy preferences. Second, Bostick will convince the rising generation of legal conservatives to largely abandon textualism. Not because textualism led to a liberal outcome, but because Gorsuch did so with reasoning that was embarrassingly thin. In the end it makes textualism seem like the emperor with no clothes. So the rising generation will splinter, some turning to natural rights, some looking to the common good, and some just trying to bring about naked policy preferences. In James Fenimore Cooper's classic novel, the Mohicans were reduced to one lone man because of external pressures: disease and war. Gorsuch will be the last of the Court's textualists. But this extinction is entirely self-inflicted.

I can speculate on one direct consequence of Bostock. Conservative legal groups that appealed to popular audiences will soon have more difficulty raising funds. And in that vacuum other groups will emerge who are not focused on textualism and originalism, but on social conservatism as a direct goal.

Tenure affords me the protections to speak out freely about those outside and inside my own camp. Not everyone has that luxury. Indeed, internecine squabbles are often the most difficult: it is far easier to criticize an opponent than to criticize a friend whom you rely on. But I can assure you that dissent is in the air.

The Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump group led by Kellyanne Conway’s husband George, and other disillusioned Republicans which crafted the  ‘Mourning in America’, ‘Body Bags’, and ‘Treason‘ ads, is out with another whopper, this one about the president’s health.

In related news, Rebecca Cokley, the director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Tuesday that “ableism,” which Trump has been accused of engaging in himself, “hurts people with disabilities regardless of who pushes it.”

Writes Cokley: “Every single professional with a disability I know has been questioned privately and publicly about whether their ‘condition’ hinders their ability to do their job. This is a universal truth and fear for any individual across physical, mental, intellectual, sensory and chronic illness communities. … Stigma against people with disabilities is real and dangerous. It has serious effects on how people with disabilities are treated in real life, including a steady unemployment rate that hovers around 70 percent, over 20 states that allow child custody to be removed solely on the basis of a parent’s disability, and between 60 and 80 percent of polling places being inaccessible 30 years after the Americans With Disabilities Act. A person’s ability to use a ramp or drink from a glass of water has no bearing on whether someone can fulfill the essential functions of a job, including serving as the president of the United States.”

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