James.galbraith

The Tesla factory in Fremont, California, reopened in May, before local officials had given the all-clear. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A predictable result.

In news that should surprise no one, several workers at a Tesla factory have the coronavirus. The Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD), where the Fremont, California, plant is based, confirmed to Recode that Tesla reported “some” of its employees there tested positive for the virus. For privacy reasons, the number of employees and when they tested positive would not be disclosed. Musk very publicly defied local officials when reopening his factories a few weeks ago.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that two anonymous workers told the paper that “several cases” of Covid-19 had been confirmed at both the company’s Fremont production plant and nearby at its smaller seat-assembly factory. The electric transportation site Electrek later reported that four Tesla workers tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday alone. Tesla did not confirm either of those reports and did not respond to Recode’s request for comment.

It’s a bad look for Tesla and for Musk, the company’s founder and CEO. The company closed its factories in March after disagreements with the Alameda County sheriff and the Fremont Police Department. There was then a fight to reopen the factories in May, when Musk defied local health officials, Tesla sued Alameda County, and then the factories just reopened before being given the blessing to resume operations in defiance of Alameda County health orders last month. The lawsuit was later dropped.

The ACPHD eventually allowed the reopening of the Fremont facilities as long as Tesla agreed to certain safety measures, including having fewer workers per shift and requiring them to wear masks.

An anonymous worker told Electrek that Tesla’s attempts at worker safety and virus prevention fall short.

“We’re still working on top of each other,” the worker told Electrek. “All they do is make us wear a mask in a hot factory. They take our temperature and have us use hand sanitizer when we walk in. But obviously, that isn’t working.”

Musk has been an outspoken Twitter critic of shelter-in-place orders, calling them “de facto house arrest.” He’s also criticized the response to the coronavirus in general. On March 6, he tweeted that the “coronavirus panic” was “dumb,” following that up two days later with a tweet claiming that coronavirus’s danger had been “overstated.” A week after that, he said the panic over the virus “exceeds” the danger of the virus itself. He also openly defied shelter-in-place orders in March, telling Tesla employees that while they shouldn’t “feel obligated to come to work,” he would be there. Workers reportedly felt pressured to continue to show up despite Musk’s assertions that it was “totally ok” if they stayed home.

Though Musk did eventually close the factory and appeared to take the virus more seriously on Twitter for a while, by May he was clearly itching to get Tesla back to work, tweeting photos of ice cream sundaes and saying “life should be lived.”

Musk is likely feeling external pressure to get production up and running on Tesla’s new Model Y as quickly as possible to fulfill preorders, which have been open since March 2019. The factory’s shutdown has only delayed its ability to get the new crossover SUV on the market, and in emails leaked this week, Musk said that he would be “walking the lines” himself in order to get Model Y production up to speed.

The billionaire is known to be a demanding boss who doesn’t, according to reports, seem particularly concerned with worker safety. In 2015, the injury rate at Tesla’s Fremont factory was 30 percent higher than the industrial average. Tesla has denied these reports and called them the work of union activists. The company was also sued in 2018 by a former safety director who claimed that he was fired after he reported unsafe conditions and inaccurate safety reporting practices to the company. (Tesla said the man was fired for “harassing workplace behavior.”)

Additionally, Musk has gotten in trouble for violating labor law in tweets and other actions that discouraged employees from forming unions. Tesla remains the only large US automaker without a unionized workforce, giving them less protection against the whims of management and little recourse against unsafe working conditions.

Without an exact number of new cases, it’s hard to say the extent of the virus’s spread in the factories or when and how the infected workers contracted it. But even one sick worker shows that Musk’s strong-arming the county to get his factories back online has come with a price — even if Musk himself doesn’t have to pay it.

Update, June 10, 3:15 pm ET: Added new information from Electrek and confirmation from the Alameda County Public Health Department.

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Georgia's primary is a mess, and it reminds us of the problems we're facing in the general election.

A screenshot from dashcam footage of Maurice Gordon, who was shot and killed during a traffic stop in New Jersey on May 23. | Courtesy of New Jersey Attorney General’s Office

Footage has been released of the 28-year-old black man being fatally shot during a routine traffic stop in New Jersey.

As people around the world continue to protest racism and police violence, a new case of an officer-involved killing of a black man has come to light. On the morning of May 23, 28-year-old Maurice Gordon was shot and killed by a white New Jersey state trooper during a traffic stop on the Garden State Parkway in Bass River, according to the New York Times.

On Monday, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal released a collection of audio and video files related to Gordon’s death, including police dash cam video of the deadly tussle between Gordon and the officer and a 911 call from Gordon’s friend the day before.

The video shows a lengthy encounter between Gordon and the officer. After having trouble with his car, Gordon, who had been stopped for allegedly speeding, opts to sit in the back of the police car as he awaits a tow truck. But it isn’t until he exits the cruiser that he gets into an altercation with the officer, who shoots him six times. The phone call from Gordon’s friend almost foreshadows the fatal incident, as he calls police worried about his friend’s whereabouts around 27 hours before his death.

In the backdrop, worldwide protests for black lives have been ongoing since the Memorial Day police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which was captured on video and shared widely on social media. This comes after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man who was jogging in Georgia, by a former officer, and the Louisville, Kentucky, police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a black woman sleeping in her home. These killings, coupled with the momentum of the anti-racism protests, are now bringing the national spotlight to overlooked police killings of black people, underscoring the urgency of calls to abolish America’s current public safety framework.

The details leading up to the police shooting of Maurice Gordon

At 6:26 am on May 23, New Jersey state police trooper Sgt. Randall Wetzel stopped Gordon on the Garden State Parkway for allegedly driving 110 miles per hour, according to a statement from the attorney general’s office.

As recorded by the front-facing camera of the police cruiser, Gordon’s vehicle became disabled on the side of the road during the encounter, prompting Wetzel to call a tow truck. As they waited for the truck to arrive, Wetzel asked Gordon if he would prefer to sit in the back of his police car. Gordon agreed. After sitting in the back seat of Wetzel’s vehicle for more than 20 minutes, Gordon exited the vehicle upon Wetzel offering him a mask, according to distant rear-facing camera footage. A confrontation ensued outside the vehicle as Gordon tried to enter the driver’s seat of the police car two different times.

During the first attempt, Wetzel pepper-sprayed Gordon. During Gordon’s second attempt at entering the driver’s seat, Wetzel removed him from the police car, at which point a struggle between the two mounted, ending with Wetzel shooting Gordon six times and killing him, according to backward-facing camera footage. Wetzel handcuffed Gordon after shooting him and can be heard in the video recording saying that Gordon grabbed his gun. By 7:25 am, Gordon had no pulse, according to the attorney general’s report. EMS arrived on the scene a few minutes later and pronounced Gordon dead.

The attorney general’s office says the shooting remains under investigation. As part of the investigation, the office released a total of five recordings captured in 12 files of various incidents involving Gordon across about 30 hours leading up to his death.

Two audio recordings are of a May 22 911 call from Gordon’s friend who called police from Poughkeepsie, where Gordon had been living for the past 10 years, concerned about his safety and well-being. The friend said Gordon was “very panicked” and told him he had a “paranormal experience,” and was a “law-abiding citizen” who was “doing really well.”

Additional video recordings show non-confrontational interactions between Gordon and state police in Brick, New Jersey, where Gordon apparently ran out of gas on the Garden State Parkway at 3:13 am, hours before the deadly encounter in Bass River. The troopers called a tow truck for Gordon that eventually arrived.

Later, at 4:54 am, dash cam footage shows another state trooper pulling up behind Gordon’s car, which was stopped in Waretown, New Jersey, in the left lane of the Garden State Parkway. The state trooper called a tow truck for Gordon and left. Surveillance footage from a Wawa in Barnegat, New Jersey, shows that Gordon was offered a ride to Wawa by people who picked him up off the side of the road, according to the attorney general’s office. After going to Wawa, Gordon returned to his vehicle, continued driving southbound, and was pulled over by an officer at 6:13 am and given a ticket for allegedly driving 101 miles per hour. Thirteen minutes later, Wetzel would pull him over.

Gordon’s family wants answers and #JusticeForMauriceGordon

Wetzel has been placed on administrative leave, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said on Monday that a grand jury would investigate Gordon’s death to determine if Wetzel should face criminal charges, according to the Times report.

Gordon’s family has said they were unable to watch the footage before it was released publicly. The family’s lawyer, William O. Wagstaff, said he believes there is still more footage that has not been released and has requested an independent prosecutor for when the case goes before a grand jury. The attorney general’s office said that the office of the chief medical examiner has not yet completed its medical examination report.

Gordon came to America from Spanish Town, Jamaica, and worked as an Uber driver while studying chemistry at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, according to the Washington Post.

The video recordings were released on Monday amid a tense international atmosphere marked by the repeated killings of black people by law enforcement. George Floyd died when a police officer pinned him by his neck with his knee for nearly nine minutes, echoing earlier cases like that of Eric Garner from 2014, with Floyd telling officers, “I can’t breathe.” Eerily, on the 911 call Gordon’s concerned friend placed before Gordon’s death, the friend can be heard asking, “What’s going to happen to him?”

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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.

It’s Election Day in Georgia, which means reports of rampant voter suppression are pouring out of the state. This time around, fingers are pointing at a new voting machine system, which, since it produces a paper record of votes, should be an upgrade over the state’s former no-paper-trail system. But many precincts were reporting problems with the machines while state election officials point the finger at human error by poll workers.

Meanwhile, voters were standing in line, with an unknown number giving up on voting after waiting for hours to do so. Both Georgia’s House speaker and its secretary of state have ordered investigations, but they’re both Republicans, so ...

“So far we have no reports of any actual equipment issues,” Statewide Voting Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling said in a statement. “We do have reports of equipment being delivered to the wrong locations and delivered late. We have reports of poll workers not understanding setup or how to operate voting equipment. While these are unfortunate, they are not issues of the equipment but a function of counties engaging in poor planning, limited training and failures of leadership.” 

But one local precinct manager told Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters: “The touch pads aren’t receiving or accepting the authorizations, and we are out of provisional ballots. There’s nothing we can do.” Another reported that tablets used to check in voters weren’t working.

And even if we accept the state official’s claim that the equipment is working if poll workers use it correctly, the fact that equipment was delivered to the wrong locations or late is its own big problem. One local news reporter tweeted that up to 20% of the precincts in one county weren’t ready to open at 7 AM: “In some cases no scanners, or printers, or paper.”

State officials don’t just get to point the finger at county and local officials here. The state is implementing an entirely new voting system, and if there are widespread problems—which there appear to be, with multiple counties experiencing serious problems—that’s a state-level problem. Even if the problem is truly local incompetence, is this not something the state could have seen coming and moved to provide training and guidance for?

It’s maybe a good thing this system is getting a try-out before November’s elections, but Georgia clearly has a lot to fix.

Whether they like it or not, he'll determine their political fate.

This morning Donald Trump smeared a 75-year-old American citizen attacked by police in one of the impeached president’s most delusional tweets yet, and that is saying something. "Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?" tweeted the conspiracy-promoting crackpot who has barricaded himself in the White House. (A phone. The man was holding what is known in common circles as a "phone.")

For three years, Senate Republicans have evaded questions about Trump's most grotesque behaviors by insisting that they, America's most powerful lawmakers, have not seen them. It is such a tired game that reporters like Politico's Burgess Everett and Andrew Desiderio are printing out Trump's statements to show them to shut-in senators. The result? Senate Republicans refusing to even look at the paper as they flee.

Multiple reporters pressed Republican senators for their thoughts on Trump now peddling insane conspiracy theories about an American citizen who has been hospitalized after being assaulted by Buffalo police force.

• Sen. Marco Rubio: "I didn't see it, you're telling me about it, I don't read Twitter, I only write on it." (Rubio "liked" another of Trump's tweets only four days ago, one of at least 1,663 tweets known to have been read by Sen. Insert Bible Verse.)

• Sen. Dan Sullivan: “I don’t want to comment right now. I’m on my way to a meeting. I’ll see it when I see it.”

• Sen. John Cornyn going for the cornpone I-am-an-idiot routine: "You know, a lot of this stuff just goes over my head."

• Sen. Kelly Loeffler: Fled to an elevator.

• Sen. Cory Gardner: Didn't "want" to look at it. Fled.

• Sen. Ted Cruz: “I don’t comment on the tweets.” (Sen. Cruz does, however, comment on other presidential tweets.)

• Sen. Lamar Alexander: “Voters can evaluate that. I’m not going to give a running commentary on the president’s tweets.”

• Sen. Susan Fret-Level Collins: “I think it would best if the president did not comment on issues that are before the courts.”

Breaking Republican ranks with unusual admissions that they do at least know how to read:

• Sen. John Thune: “Most of us up here would rather not be political commentators on the president’s tweets. That’s a daily exercise that is something you all have to cover.” But: “It’s a serious accusation, which should only be made with facts and evidence. And I haven't seen any yet.”

• Sen. Mitt Romney: “It was a shocking thing to say. And I won’t dignify it with any further comments.”

With the exception of Romney, each of these Republican senators, and all the others, voted to dismiss impeachment charges brought against Donald Trump with similar defenses. They claimed they had not seen the evidence of Trump's actions, and that they were simply too busy to bother reading it when presented. It is based on cowardice, for the most part, but also on a more transactional calculation: So long as they support Trump, no matter what radicalism, authoritarian proclamations, promotion of violence, or crimes he may commit, the party can continue recrafting America into something more pleasing to their own racist eyes.

There has been no bottom, even after an attack on an American church so that Trump could commandeer it out from under clergy for his own purposes. There will not be one any time soon. They have betrayed their country countless times now; there is no going back.

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In this week’s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the team discusses the latest polling on President Trump’s handling of the pandemic and mass protests. They also look at what young liberals think about former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

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WWDC is shaping up to see some significant Mac news, starting with word earlier today that Apple will be beginning its shift to its own Arm-based processors, and now leaker Sonny Dickson is claiming that Apple will be introducing a redesigned iMac at the event.

MacRumors mockup of iPad Pro-style ‌iMac‌
According to Dickson, the new ‌iMac‌ will have "iPad Pro design language" and thinner bezels similar to those seen on Apple's Pro Display XDR that accompanied the new Mac Pro last year. The ‌iMac‌ will unsurprisingly feature the custom T2 chip that has made way across the rest of the Mac lineup to integrate several security and controller functions.

New ‌iMac‌ incoming at WWDC. ‌iPad Pro‌ design language, with Pro Display like bezels. T2 chip, AMD Navi GPU, and no more fusion drive

— Sonny Dickson (@SonnyDickson) June 9, 2020

Dickson also says the revamped ‌iMac‌ will include graphics processors from AMD's Navi family introduced last year, and will go all-flash on the storage front with the discontinuation of the hybrid Fusion Drive system that has paired a smaller SSD with a larger traditional hard drive to balance speed and capacity.

Apple's ‌iMac‌ hasn't been updated in over a year, so it's certainly due for an update. Reliable leaker CoinX claimed in March that an ‌iMac‌ update was coming "soon," but hasn't shared any additional information on it since then.

Meanwhile, Intel announced new "Comet Lake" processors in late April that would be appropriate for the ‌iMac‌, although we haven't heard specifically which processors Apple plans to include in the updated ‌iMac‌.

Finally, an April rumor claimed that Apple is planning to introduce a lower-priced 23-inch iMac in the second half of this year, which has led to some confusion around timing for any ‌iMac‌ release. It remains to be seen if this 23-inch model is arriving at WWDC, and if so, what overall changes we may see to the size options considering the ‌iMac‌ is currently offered in 27-inch and 21.5-inch sizes.
This article, "New iMac With 'iPad Pro Design Language' and Thin Bezels Reportedly Coming at WWDC" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) proposed an aggressive effort to abolish qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that often lets cops violate the Constitution with impunity. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

A highly technical doctrine protecting cops from lawsuits is finally receiving national attention.

Amid a national outcry over police brutality, qualified immunity, a once-obscure doctrine protecting government officials from being sued in federal court, is having a moment of infamy.

Qualified immunity is supposed to shield public officials from suits involving novel legal claims. But it can also protect police officers faced with rather shocking allegations of misconduct.

There are now two separate proposals in Congress and a raft of court cases hoping to alter or abolish qualified immunity. Though the full implications of these efforts to limit the doctrine vary, all of them would leave police with much less legal protection when officers violate the Constitution.

After two weeks of protests catalyzed by the death of George Floyd during an encounter with Minneapolis police officers, one of whom has been charged with his murder and three of whom have been charged as accomplices to murder, House Democrats united around a proposal to end qualified immunity for police officers. On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and several other top Democrats unveiled a detailed criminal justice reform bill called the “Justice in Policing Act.”

Among other things, this bill would prevent state and local law enforcement and correctional officers from raising a qualified immunity defense in civil rights suits.

Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) had earlier proposed an even more aggressive effort to deal with qualified immunity. Amash’s “Ending Qualified Immunity Act” would prevent any state government official of any kind from raising a qualified immunity defense in a civil rights suit.

So long as President Trump remains in office, however, it is unlikely that any legislative proposal to address qualified immunity will be signed into law.

But legislation may not be necessary to reform qualified immunity. Currently, the Supreme Court is considering whether to hear any of a dozen cases asking the Court to reconsider the qualified immunity doctrine. In one of them, for example, police trashed a woman’s home, smashed several of her windows, and saturated the inside of the home with tear gas — making the house unlivable for two months — after the woman gave police permission to enter the home to search for her ex-boyfriend. A federal appeals court held that the cops in this case had qualified immunity.

As some of these lawsuits point out, qualified immunity is a fairly recent development. And the Court could restore more accountability to police by returning to older rules that governed as recently as the 1960s.

The two legislative proposals reflect differing attitudes about the role of government

Qualified immunity, the Supreme Court explained in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982), exists due to fears that government officials will be inefficient and overly cautious if they face the threat of litigation. The doctrine ensures that litigation won’t divert “official energy from pressing public issues,” and that concerns about being sued won’t deter “able citizens from acceptance of public office.”

The Court was also concerned that “the danger that fear of being sued will ‘dampen the ardor of all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible [public officials], in the unflinching discharge of their duties.’”

This doctrine, it should be noted, applies far beyond police officers to any government official who performs “discretionary functions.” Teachers, firefighters, government regulators, publicly employed social workers, civil rights commissioners, and a wide range of other officials may all raise a qualified immunity defense if they are accused of violating another person’s civil rights.

The House Democratic proposal would leave this framework intact except for state and local law enforcement and for state corrections officers. Their proposal appears to rest on the assumption that officials who carry a badge and a gun — and who are authorized to use force on the state’s behalf — are different in kind from other government employees and should enjoy fewer legal protections.

Under the Democratic proposal, in other words, qualified immunity would still ensure that the “fear of being sued” would not “dampen the ardor” of teachers, regulators, and other officials who are not in law enforcement.

The Amash proposal, by contrast, would eliminate qualified immunity as a defense in nearly all civil rights litigation against state employees. Amash is a former Republican who briefly considered running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, so his proposal likely reflects a greater mistrust of government than the Democratic counterpart.

The Supreme Court could restore an older, narrower form of immunity.

The Constitution does not provide for qualified immunity, nor has Congress enacted any law creating this doctrine. Rather, the doctrine appears to be entirely a creation of the judiciary.

In an influential law review article arguing against qualified immunity, University of Chicago law professor William Baude traces “the key intellectual move” that led to this doctrine’s emergence to the Supreme Court’s decision in Pierson v. Ray (1967). Pierson suggested that long-standing “common law” principles, developed by judges over many years, establish that police enjoy some protection against lawsuits.

Yet the immunity described in Pierson is far weaker than the broad qualified immunity doctrine the Court laid out 15 years later in Harlow. Pierson states that “under the prevailing view in this country a peace officer who arrests someone with probable cause is not liable for false arrest simply because the innocence of the suspect is later proved.” It also concluded that “the same consideration would seem to require excusing [an officer] from liability for acting under a statute that he reasonably believed to be valid but that was later held unconstitutional.”

Thus, under Pierson, a cop who lawfully arrests someone — to arrest a suspect, a police officer must have probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed a crime — may not be sued for false arrest if the suspect is later determined to be innocent. An officer also typically may not be sued if they act pursuant to an act of the legislature, even if that act is later struck down.

But Pierson did not give police a broad ability to violate any legal right that was not “clearly established” at the time of the violation.

At least one member of the Court has suggested that he supports overruling Harlow and returning to something more similar to the Pierson test. In his concurring opinion in Ziglar v. Abbasi (2017), Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that his Court should “reconsider our qualified immunity jurisprudence.”

Thomas’s opinion in Ziglar is both brief and vague, but the thrust of it is that government officials should only be allowed to assert qualified immunity when they claim immunity that “was well established at common law in 1871” (a seminal federal law permitting state officials to be sued for civil rights violations was enacted in 1871). Thomas also cites favorably to Pierson’s holding that “police officers could assert ‘the defense of good faith and probable cause’ against the claim for an unconstitutional arrest because that defense was available against the analogous torts of ‘false arrest and imprisonment’ at common law.”

So it is possible that Thomas, who is typically the most conservative member of the Court, would support a return to the Pierson standard. If his four liberal colleagues join him — or some combination of the Court’s liberal and conservative members — that could be enough to eliminate much of the immunity police currently enjoy when they are sued for civil rights violations.

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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.

On Sunday, police arrested 20-year-old Mazin Mohamedali on simple misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, as well as a violation of probation. On Monday, Judge Deborah Minot ordered him to be jailed without bond, as reported by the Associated Press. How did all of this come about? Mohamedali has reportedly been a lead figure in the protests against police brutality and justice for George Floyd in Iowa City, Iowa. He was arrested over his alleged role in a protest that occurred on Wednesday, June 3, involving several hundred demonstrators. At that protest, police used flash-bang grenades and tear gas in order to break up the crowd. 

Caleb McCullough at the Daily Iowan describes Mohamedali as a “public face and constant voice” for the Floyd protests. Mohamedali is reportedly a member of the Iowa Freedom Riders group. On Sunday, the group shared a list of its demands online, according to the AP. Like many activists, the group calls for a funding cut to the Iowa City Police Department, with the angle being that the money could be used for intervention programs instead. The group also wants to get officers out of schools, lift the local curfew, drop charges against protesters, and decriminalize possession and use of cannabis under 40 grams.

On Saturday evening, Mohamedali reportedly told a crowd outside the Old Capitol building: “Tell your friends if they care about you they’ll be here on Monday. They will help you on Monday. They’ll be ready for war Monday.” According to the AP, a Department of Corrections probation officer referenced that quote, saying Mohamedali “poses a threat to the community and local law enforcement.”

As reported by The Gazette, the June 3 protests seemingly escalated when demonstrators approached the I-80 interstate to block traffic. That’s when officers in riot gear used flash-bang grenades and tear gas; according to the paper, the department has since preemptively shut down the interstate and allowed people to demonstrate there. 

Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague said “we are not OK with the use of agents” against peaceful protesters. He also said he was “heartbroken” that officers used chemical munitions against demonstrators that evening. 

The mayor also led Black Lives Matter chants the day after the incident.

Rockne Cole, Mohamedali’s attorney, said the unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct charges raise “significant constitutional concerns,” according to the AP. 

Here are some clips reportedly from earlier that same evening.

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy is now "open" to renaming the service's 10 bases and facilities that are named after Confederate leaders, an Army spokesperson told POLITICO, in a reversal of the service's previous position.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper also supports the discussion, the spokesperson said.

"The Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Army are open to a bi-partisan discussion on the topic," Army spokesperson Col. Sunset Belinsky said in a statement Monday.

The recent uproar over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police drove McCarthy’s reversal, one Army official said.

The events of the past two weeks “made us start looking more at ourselves and the things that we do and how that is communicated to the force as well as the American public,” the official said.

As recently as February, the Army said the service had no plans to rename the facilities, following the Marine Corps' announcement that it would ban images of Confederate flags from its installations.

An Army spokesperson told Task & Purpose in February that the Army has a "tradition" of naming installations and streets after "historical figures of military significance," including both Union and Confederate leaders.

Prior to Floyd's death, the service was already under pressure to rename some of its best-known installations, including Fort Bragg, N.C., after a New York Times editorial accused the military of "celebrating White supremacists." For example, Confederate general Braxton Bragg was a major slave-owner and is largely considered to be one of the most incompetent generals of the Civil War.

The Army faces an uphill battle in renaming some or all of its 10 installations that honor Confederate military commanders. For years, previous calls for change have gone unheeded, as officials sought to dismiss concerns by arguing the bases were named to celebrate American soldiers and that renaming them would upend tradition.

In the aftermath of violent clashes in Charlottesville, Va., over removing the town's statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in 2017, lawmakers called on the Army to rename two streets at Fort Hamilton, N.Y., that were named after Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Army refused, saying that changing the street names would be "controversial and divisive."

The nine other Army bases in question, all in southern states, are: Forts Benning and Gordon in Georgia; Forts Pickett, A.P. Hill and Lee in Va.; Fort Polk and Camp Beauregard in Louisiana; Fort Hood, Texas; and Fort Rucker, Ala.

The unrest sweeping the country over racial injustice comes as incidents of white nationalism within the ranks appear to be on the rise. A 2019 Military Times survey found that more than a third of troops who responded have seen evidence of white supremacist and racist ideologies in the military, a significant increase from the year before, when only 22 percent reported the same.

McCarthy signaled his evolving views in a message delivered to the force last week in response to the protests. Following other senior military leaders who issued similar messages, McCarthy, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville and Army Sergeant Major Michael Grinston acknowledged the service's struggle with racism and pledged to do better.

"Over the past week, the country has suffered an explosion of frustration over the racial divisions that still plague us as Americans. And because your Army is a reflection of American society, those divisions live in the Army as well. We feel the frustration and anger," they wrote. "We need to work harder to earn the trust of mothers and fathers who hesitate to hand their sons and daughters into our care."

The peaceful protests taking place for weeks now, across the United States, have been marred by law enforcement’s continued practice of brutalizing citizens. A microcosm case of such illegal treatment of Americans was filmed on June 1, in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was here that 21-year-old Temple University student Evan Gorski was hit in the head with a baton by Police Staff Inspector Joseph Bologna. Gorski was held for two days in jail before being released, not charged, with proof that it was Bologna who assaulted the unarmed student and not the other way around.

On Monday, Bologna surrendered to authorities, facing charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and possession of an instrument of crime. This comes a week after the incident in question, and after the video of Bologna’s assault on protesters went viral. It took about 48 hours to drop charges and release Evan Gorski from imprisonment, and it took Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and others four days before they took Bologna “off the street,” saying they would be conducting a “more thorough and methodical Internal Affairs investigation with results that might not be known for some time.” District Attorney Larry Krasner decided to go with the clear evidence at hand, trumping Commissioner Outlaw’s announcement by telling the press he planned to charge Bologna.

Early Monday, Bologna left from the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 to turn himself in. A crowd of Philadelphia police and residents came out to watch. A lot of police cheered Bologna.

To quote criminal defense attorney David Menschel, on Twitter, “When a cop who violently beats the people he ostensibly serves is greeted by the cheers of fellow cops, it’s pretty strong evidence that the whole fucking barrel of apples is spoiled.”

John McNesby, the head of Philadelphia’s police union has said he is “disgusted” by the charges against Bologna. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that as video of Bologna’s assault on Gorski made its way around the internet, more people began releasing videos purporting to show Gorski in the days before, and after, the incident, both lunging at a reporter as well as throwing his bike and tackling “a woman who had apparently tapped its tire.”

People are under a lot of pressure right now. Jobs have different stress points. But law enforcement cannot become more dangerous when stress levels are increased. That is the opposite of what we demand of our law enforcement. Regardless of what happens here, whether or not any real punitive consequences come officer Bologna’s way or not, the financial costs to the city of Philadelphia will be high. 

Gorski will have a very clear case against the city. A young man, beaten by law enforcement, wrongfully imprisoned, and falsely charged. There are calls across the country to defund law enforcement organizations. As we go into a deeper and deeper economic depression—in part the result of our country’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic—municipalities will be looking to make budget cuts as deficits will run high. We already know that politicians love to take money away from teachers and public schools, while frequently increasing the military-style forces of law enforcement. Maybe now will be a time to budget with smarter math in mind. 

A photo of a crowd packed together outside bars in the NYC gayborhood of Hell’s Kitchen went viral on Sunday as few patrons were seen wearing masks or implementing proper distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. New York City began its phase 1 reopening on Monday.

Wrote Stephen James Markey, a nurse case manager, on Facebook, who shared a photo: “It’s called a mask gays … They ain’t asking you to wear a condom  Slap in the face to all healthcare workers and defiance of law. Reason why you won’t progress to Phase 2 right here.”

Other Facebook commenters, some of whom said they witnessed the scene, expressed their anger.

“I’ve been to or walked by that intersection 3 times in the last month and it is EXACTLY what you see in this photo. I felt like the only person in a mask,” said one commenter.

Wrote another commenter: “I live near it too. I go for a walk daily and usually not many people are around. Today was this! I was so f**king annoyed with everyone. I was literally the nutbag screaming “WHERE ARE YOUR F**KING MASKS?!” to people. Everyone was looking at me like I was the crazy one.”

Another commenter, wrote, “This disgusts me.”

Another added: “Why have I been sitting alone in my apartment for three months, only seeing a friend or two like once a week out in the park, if these guys are just going to blow it in the end?”

“Walked by this on Saturday too. Exactly what it looks like. Went from a protest where like 95% of people were wearing masks to this HK ‘block party’ where maybe 5% of people were wearing masks. Have to push through masses of maskless gays like it’s Times Sq,” said another.

Matthew Neff, a designer who sells a large selection of colorful neoprene face masks, published a video of the same area, writing, “What the f**k is wrong with these people in Hells Kitchen? This stupidity happened on 9th avenue today. Was the end of the pandemic announced? Did the vaccine arrive and I didn’t get the iPhone alert? Governor Andrew Cuomo’s mask order says that anyone who is out in public New York and is unable to maintain social distance must wear a mask or a face covering over their mouth and nose. I dont see masks. I even see people meeting and shaking hands.”

“Many of us (including myself) don’t get to go back to work until Phase 4 of reopening,” Neff added. “If we let people act this carelessly without repercussions we aren’t going to go back to work for a long long long time.”

Longtime activist David Mixner, who lives in the area, shared the photo and expressed his rage in all caps: “THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! EVEN IF THEY DON’T CARE FOR THEIR OWN HEALTH, I WISH THEY CARED FOR MINE.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told New Yorkers on Monday that they needed to “stay smart” as the reopening begins. He pointed out that California, Florida, Texas and Arizona have all seen spikes in COVID-19 infection rates.

Said Cuomo: “Look at the reopening date and look at when what happened after they reopened. That is the cautionary tale, my friends. You have to stay smart after the opening because if you don’t, you can see a spike. That is the last thing that we want to see.”

The NYT reports: “Though the virus remains a threat, new infections have fallen to about 500 a day, or roughly half the number from just weeks ago. City and state officials have significantly expanded testing, and hope that newly hired contact tracers — who have been charged with tracking the disease’s spread from person to person — can isolate the virus before it can resurge.”

The post Gay Crowd Outside NYC Hell’s Kitchen Hotspot Slammed for Not Distancing or Wearing Masks on Eve of Phase 1 COVID-19 Reopening appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been trying to get Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to testify about his department’s annual budget for nearly a handful of months. But securing Pompeo's testimony took on even greater significance after allegations recently surfaced that the department's longtime inspector general had been axed by Donald Trump amid a probe he was conducting into potential Pompeo malfeasance. In fact, Trump himself made it crystal clear that he had fired department watchdog Steve Linick at Pompeo's urging.

In short, Pompeo's testimony would have provided a target-rich environment for probing allegations against the secretary of state, which included everything from misusing taxpayer funds to improperly pushing through an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. Perfect timing, then, for the GOP chair of the Senate Foreign Relations panel, Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, to give Pompeo a pass on testifying.

According to Politico, Risch's staff director, Chris Socha, held a phone call last Friday with top aides to Republican members of the committee to tell them Risch was simply dropping his quest for Pompeo's testimony. The decision was framed as an effort to preserve "political capital," which effectively means Risch didn't want to work too hard to actually investigate wrongdoing by Pompeo.

Trump's new chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has now mandated that administration officials get his permission before testifying before Congress. In order to force Pompeo's hand, Risch might have had to subpoena Pompeo, undercut the department's budget, or block other executive branch nominees from being confirmed.

But Risch was clearly much more invested in letting Trump and Pompeo off the hook scot-free. This type of GOP cowardice is exactly what turned Trump into a monster. Republicans never held Trump accountable for anything and he soon learned he could get away with everything—including trying to steal the 2020 election by enlisting the help of a foreign government and ordering federal troops to gas American citizens. 

Typically cabinet secretaries testify before congressional committees of jurisdiction once a year to justify their annual budgets. Apparently, the supposed party of fiscal responsibility doesn't give a damn about the budget anymore, not to mention any waste, fraud, or abuse being perpetrated by Trump and his top administration officials. No wonder Trump’s a monster.

Consider supporting my cartoons here or here so I can continue creating them. 

Apple should purchase a search engine to put pressure on Google, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said Monday in a research report that was shared by Barron's.


Apple and Google don't share details on the amount of money that Google pays to be the default search engine for iOS and Siri, but Sacconaghi estimates that it's around $7 to $8 billion per year, or 30 percent of the estimated $25 billion that Google generates in ad revenue from search on Apple devices.

Google has long paid Apple to prevent Apple from turning to other search engine options like Microsoft's Bing, but Sacconaghi believes that Google has the upper hand in business dealings because it could opt to end its Apple deal if it can convince 70 percent of iOS users to go to Google.com for searching even if it's not the default Safari option.

Apple doesn't have many alternatives to Google, with its only leverage being a swap to Bing, so Sacconaghi suggests that Apple should acquire its own search engine.

"Yes, Google is clearly the dominant force in search today. However, we suspect the company's fear of 'rocking the boat'--which could compromise $15 billion in profits it captures today from iOS--may ultimately limit its freedom of action with Apple. Conversely, Apple may be in a stronger position than at first glance, given it controls the keys to the kingdom on who can monetize iOS search. However, it remains uncomfortably dependent on Bing to act as a counterweight to Google--hence our suggestion that Apple acquire its own search engine."

As for which search engine, Sacconaghi thinks that DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine option, would be a good choice for Apple. Apple could, he speculates, buy it for under $1 billion, giving Apple a solid backup option that does not rely on Google or Microsoft.

"To be certain, we doubt an Apple-owned DuckDuckGo could ever generate profits sufficient to make back the $7 billion to $8 billion a year currently paid by Google. Nevertheless, Apple would still likely be better off than a worst-case scenario where it had no backup, and Google or Microsoft (one or the other) withdrew from the bidding process altogether."

DuckDuckGo would also be compatible with Apple's privacy values, offering iOS users a search option that is free from invasive ad tracking.

Sacconaghi warns that if Apple did attempt to purchase a search engine like DuckDuckGo, it could trigger regulatory oversight that could ultimately block the acquisition, putting Apple in a worse position than before. DuckDuckGo is also reliant on Bing, so Apple would need to make changes to be completely free of Microsoft's influence.

Apple previously used Bing for ‌Siri‌ and Spotlight on Mac and iOS, but in 2017 swapped over to Google for consistency across iOS and Mac devices. Apple has not been rumored to be seeking to make a search engine acquisition.
This article, "Analyst Argues Apple Should Acquire DuckDuckGo Search Engine" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Life can get complicated when your ugly demagoguery undercuts itself.

A Virginia man arrested after driving his truck through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters is “an admitted leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a propagandist for Confederate ideology” according to Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor.

WTVR reports: “Rogers, 36, of Hanover, was formally charged with attempted malicious wounding (felony), destruction of property (felony), and assault and battery (misdemeanor) after police said he drove his pickup truck into a group of protesters Sunday in Lakeside. … A Henrico judge denied Rogers’ bond during Monday’s hearing. … In court Monday, the Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney said Rogers told arresting officers he was the president of the Ku Klux Klan in Virginia and the highest-ranking member not imprisoned.”

Hate crime charges are being considered.

The post Man Who Plowed Truck Through Virginia ‘BLM’ Protesters is Admitted ‘Ku Klux Klan Leader and Propagandist for Confederate Ideology’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Space Force, the branch of the US armed services established by the Trump administration last December, now shares a name with a Netflix comedy starring Steve Carrell. From a report: The military reportedly isn't too concerned about possible confusion over the fictional show's name. Netflix, however, has reportedly secured trademark rights in Europe, Australia, Mexico and elsewhere for Space Force. Currently, the Air Force only owns a pending application for registration of the name Space Force in the US based on intent to use, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Records obtained by the publication showed that Netflix was submitting applications for the name "Space Force" internationally back in January 2019.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As I wrote in my last story, we’re seeing clear correlation between Trump’s personal ratings, and his head-to-head matchups. In other words, whatever his favorability rating is, that’s what he’s pretty much getting against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Here are the four last Civiqs state polls:

Sen. Cory Booker, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kamala Harris, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Karen Bass, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and other congressional Democrats kneel in silence for eight minutes and 46 seconds in the US Capitol Visitor Center to honor George Floyd. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Among other measures, Democrats want to end qualified immunity and chokeholds.

House and Senate Democrats unveiled a new policing reform bill on Monday in the wake of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of a now-former Minneapolis police officer and the weeks of protests against police brutality that followed.

The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 contains a number of measures that make it easier to prosecute police misconduct and demilitarize police departments around the country.

The bill’s biggest provision seeks to end qualified immunity, a thorny legal issue that gives police officers and other public officials broad immunity from civil lawsuits. The US Supreme Court, which has upheld the qualified-immunity doctrine in past rulings, is currently deciding whether to hear arguments next term in a case challenging qualified immunity.

The legislation also incorporates a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker that would create a new national registry to track misconduct as a way to prevent repeat offenders from being rehired at other police departments.

In addition, the bill seeks to ban the use of chokeholds and certain no-knock warrants at the federal level, as well as to incentivize state and local governments to do the same. Both tactics have been factors in police killings of unarmed black people: A no-knock warrant used by police in Kentucky in March ended in the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT who died after officers broke down her door without warning and fatally shot her.

“We cannot settle for anything less than transformative structural change,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Monday. “The martyrdom of George Floyd gave the American experience a moment of national anguish. … True justice can only be achieved with full comprehensive action. That’s what we are doing today.”

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) unveiled the bill alongside leaders and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, led by Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA). The Congressional Black Caucus — members of which include prominent African American senators like Booker and Kamala Harris (D-CA) — was instrumental in writing the bill.

“Empathy and sympathy and words of caring for those who have died and suffered is necessary, but it’s not enough,” Booker said Monday. “We must change laws and systems of accountability. We must pass legislation that makes our common values and our common ideals real in the law of our land.”

While it’s unlikely the Republican-led Senate will support the bill in its current form, or that President Donald Trump would sign it into law, the legislation still signals where Democrats want to take criminal justice reform should they win back the White House and Senate in November. Pelosi also noted that the bill is a “first step” and said there is “more to come” from Democrats on the subject of policing reform.

Multiple lawmakers on Monday called the bill “transformative.” While the expansive bill doesn’t contain any new money for police, it is clearly an attempt to establish federal guidelines for reform rather than defund police departments altogether. That falls short of what some activists are calling for — and what the Minneapolis City Council is attempting to do.

“We want to work with our police departments,” Pelosi said. “There are many things we call upon our police departments to deal with — mental health issues, policing in schools and the rest — that we could rebalance some of our funding to address some of those issues more directly. But this isn’t about that.”

By and large, the bill would give federal agencies like the Justice Department the ability to hold state and city entities more accountable for police misconduct. Because so many policies are determined at the local level, though, the legislation faces limitations. In several points, the bill conditions federal funding on state and local governments adopting the reforms it proposes.

Pressure for reforms in state and local governments is crucial: “Almost all policing is done at the local and state, not federal, level; out of the nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the US, a dozen or so are federal. It’s at the local and state level, then, where reforms can and should happen,” Vox’s German Lopez previously reported.

With over 200 co-sponsors in the House and Senate, the bill is likely to pass the House. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he will call the full House back to vote “as soon as this legislation is ready to hit the floor,” and Democrats are eyeing passage by the end of the month.

But it probably won’t get much further, especially after Trump tweeted his opposition to Democrats’ proposed reforms. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has shown very little appetite for taking up bills that don’t have Trump’s support, and an anti-lynching bill stalled in the Senate less than a week ago.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), will hold a hearing on police violence next week that is likely to provide more insight into what lawmakers are interested in doing. Meanwhile, Democrats on Monday condemned the inertia they’ve seen thus far.

“Just last week, we couldn’t even pass an anti-lynching bill in the US Senate,” Harris noted, mentioning a bill that was held up due to the objections of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

What’s in the police reform bill

The Justice in Policing Act is a wide-ranging bill that attempts to get at the problem of police brutality toward black communities through a number of different means.

One of the most significant parts of the bill is a provision changing the law to make it easier to prosecute police officers who harm or kill someone, as well as those who are charged with other forms of misconduct. But the bill contains a number of other measures, including a requirement for the US attorney general to create new standards for law enforcement accreditation, the establishment of a national registry to track police misconduct, and mandatory racial bias training at the federal level.

Here are some of the key parts of the bill:

Revising federal law on criminal police misconduct and qualified immunity reform: The new bill would change one very significant word in federal law when it comes to prosecuting police: “willful.” That word means prosecutors charging police have to demonstrate there was willful intent on the part of the police officer to kill or harm someone — which can be extremely difficult to prove and successfully prosecute. The bill would change the word “willful” to the phrase “knowingly or with reckless disregard.” It would also define a “death resulting” as any act that was a “substantial factor contributing to the death” of an individual.

In addition, the bill changes something called qualified immunity, which courts have interpreted to give police officers and other public officials broad immunity from being sued if they have violated the constitutional rights of an individual. The bill would make it easier for plaintiffs to recover damages against police officers if the officer is sued and found guilty.

“Qualified immunity is something that has evolved over time. It’s not written into any law,” Booker told NPR’s Weekend Edition on Sunday. “But our highest courts in the land have decided that police officers are immune from civil cases unless there’s been specifically in the past a case of generally the exact circumstances that has led towards a successful action. It creates this bar towards civil action against a police officer for violating your civil rights.”

Ban no-knock warrants in drug cases at the federal level: The use of a no-knock search warrant in Louisville on March 13 had fatal consequences. Police shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor after using a battering ram to break down her door and exchanging fire with Taylor’s boyfriend. The police were executing a search warrant for a drug case, pursuing two other men, but broke down Taylor’s door because they believed the men were receiving packages at her apartment. The Democratic bill would ban these kinds of no-knock warrants in federal drug cases, but also condition federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies on prohibiting their use as well.

Ban chokeholds at the federal level: In 2014, Eric Garner was killed by New York police, who used a chokehold to restrain him during an arrest. And in May, Floyd died after a police officer placed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.

The legislation would put a federal ban in place on the use of police chokeholds, which is defined by the bill as an act putting pressure on an individual’s throat or windpipe that impedes their ability to breathe. Such bans have already been supported by localities across the country including, most recently, Minneapolis.

A federal chokehold ban would further condemn the use of this tactic by police and give the Justice Department more power to levy charges against law enforcement officers that use this maneuver. Activists have raised questions about the efficacy of such bans: Despite the New York Police Department banning chokeholds in 1993, police using the method killed Eric Garner in 2014.

Establish a national registry of misconduct by law enforcement officers: There’s currently very little data available about police misconduct, making it difficult to pin down past offenders and ensure that they don’t receive jobs in new places. According to a USA Today report, punishment for misconduct also varies at the state level, with some requiring police to decertify while others are far less punitive. Creating a national registry about misconduct would enable lawmakers to better understand its frequency and craft targeted responses to combat it.

Require states to report use of force to the Justice Department: Similarly, little is currently known about the frequency with which police officers currently use force, something the bill is striving to change. By mandating state documentation of use of force, law enforcement agencies can begin to determine how often police are engaging in such actions.

Mandate racial bias training at the federal level: A reform that’s been implemented in some police stations across the country, racial bias training is aimed at getting law enforcement officers to recognize their own explicit and implicit biases — and how these attitudes affect the way they respond in different situations. Researchers have found implicit racial biases could be tied to officers being quicker to shoot black subjects versus white subjects. The training involves providing officers with evidence of these biases playing out so they are forced to recognize their existence.

In addition to requiring it at the federal level, the bill would condition funding for state and local police based on their commitment to implementing racial bias training programs. Among critics of racial bias training, questions remain about how effective it is in deterring police abuses and disparate use of force.

Require that deadly force only be used as last resort: The bill would change the use of force standard for federal officers from “reasonableness” to only when it is necessary to either prevent death or “serious bodily injury.” It would require federal officers to use deescalation techniques and only resort to force as a last resort, and would condition federal funds to state and local agencies on their adoption of the same standard.

Make lynching a federal crime: The killings of both Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger who was shot by two white men in Georgia while he was out on a run, have been described as modern-day lynchings. Despite more than 200 attempts to consider bills addressing such acts, there remains no law on the books classifying lynchings as a federal crime.

While the House and Senate have respectively passed their own legislation that would do so, the two have yet to approve one bill and get it signed into law. This bill would guarantee that lynching — described by Hoyer as “the premeditated, extrajudicial killing by a mob or group of people to instill fear” — would be treated as a federal crime. It would also classify conspiring to commit civil rights offenses, such as a hate crime, as a lynching.

Require police to use more body and dashboard cameras: The bill would require federal police officers to wear body cameras and put dashboard cameras on all federal police vehicles. It requires state and local departments to use existing federal funds to increase body camera use, which has been on the rise since the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. However, research has shown that more cameras aren’t the whole story; police don’t always turn them on or review the footage while writing an incident report, and footage is not always made public.

Limit the transfer of military equipment to local police departments: Currently, the military is able to distribute excess equipment including armored vehicles and ammunition to local law enforcement agencies. The bill would prohibit the distribution of equipment like drones and armored vehicles.

The policies don’t go as far as activists have been demanding

The focus for many activists in the recent protests has been a straightforward one: Defund the police.

The idea, as Vox’s Matt Yglesias explains, centers on reducing funding for police and redistributing that money to other programs such as social services like food assistance programs and workforce development. This approach could ensure that more funding can be dedicated to providing support for communities and addressing the fundamental causes of crime. Congressional lawmakers and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have stopped short of backing this idea both in this bill and in recent statements.

“I can’t imagine that happening in a federal way, but let me just tell you that part of that cry is a desire for there to be significant higher investment in communities looking at why police are needed, what happens, what are the root causes of the problems in communities,” Bass said Monday. “A lot of people feel when it comes to the defense budget, maybe that money could be used in different ways, and I think that’s a similar issue.”

Democrats’ bill doesn’t reduce police funding or provide any new money for policing, though there is a provision in it that allocates grants for “projects that begin to ‘re-envision’ what policing might be about in a particular neighborhood,” according to Bass.

Biden, too, supports bolstering funding for social programs but does not back defunding the police, according to a statement from his spokesperson Andrew Bates. He instead supports additional money for community policing programs and other training. Democrats’ broader position on this subject is likely driven, in part, by the support that police still have from a majority of the public — even though people have become more aware of the racial biases behind their work. According to a Monmouth poll conducted in early June, 71 percent of people are satisfied with the job that police are doing in their local neighborhoods.

Activists, meanwhile, note that much of the pressure around police reform and defunding needs to come at the state and local levels, and requires national Democrats to acknowledge specific failings by members of their own party.

Cities, including those run by Democratic mayors, like Baltimore and New York City, for example, are among those where there have been high-profile incidents of police violence killing black individuals during those leaders’ tenure.

“While the Democrats are taking these relatively bold steps in Congress, how are you going to hold these Democrats accountable in these cities and states where these deaths are taking place?” Jordan Giger, a Black Lives Matter organizer in South Bend, Indiana, asked.

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New York Times editor James Bennet resigned yesterday after backlash from publishing an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton. | Eduardo MunozAlvarez/VIEWpress/Corbis via Getty Images

It cannot remain neutral when those values are under threat from racialized authoritarianism.

Last week, the New York Times editorial page published an op-ed by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton calling for a wide-scale military crackdown on protests against police brutality.

It immediately caused an uproar both inside and outside the Times, as covered in the Times itself, the Washington Post, Slate, and here at Vox, by my colleague Zack Beauchamp. That was followed by a plaintive editorial from the head of the Times opinion page, James Bennet, attempting to explain the decision to run the piece, then an official apology from Times editors, and then, on Sunday, Bennet’s resignation.

In his excellent explainer on what happened and the history of tensions between the Times opinion and news sides, Beauchamp asks some questions that I want to pull out and mull over. They get at a core dilemma facing political media in the Trump era.

“Does every idea that’s popular in power, no matter how poorly considered, deserve some kind of respectful airing in mainstream publications?” he asks. “Or are there boundaries, both of quality of argument and moral decency, where editors need to draw the line — especially in the Trump era?”

There clearly are boundaries. The Times would not publish an op-ed advocating for a return to chattel slavery in the US. Presumably no mainstream US publication would. If it was found that a US senator (or a group of them) believed in the return of slavery, the Times would not give the senator space to make his case in the op-ed section. It would assign reporters to cover the story, like a scandal.

That slavery is abhorrent is taken as a background assumption informing coverage, not a subject of legitimate debate in which both sides deserve a hearing.

So the question is where are the boundaries and, just as importantly, who draws them? Who decides what is in bounds and out of bounds? Is it the press’s job to draw those lines and defend those boundaries?

These questions are at the heart of the Cotton affair, and they have haunted all of journalism since Donald Trump became president.

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

I’ll argue in this post that Cotton’s op-ed doesn’t meet the Times’s standards, not only because it contains inaccuracies but because it reflects a worldview incompatible with the baseline small-l liberal values that make the Times’s work, and journalism generally, possible.

That doesn’t just pose problems for the opinion side of the news business; it’s an even bigger challenge for the news side, which has been habituated to a notion of “objectivity” that makes telling the real story impossible.

The movement Trump represents, of which Cotton is an aspiring leader, has drifted into a racialized authoritarianism that is increasingly incompatible with liberal democracy. And because it is part of the core purpose of journalism to defend liberal democracy, that is the story is should tell.

Cotton’s perspective is based on error

In an email to Times staff, publisher A.G. Sulzberger explained how the Times decides what pieces to run: “We don’t publish just any argument,” he said, “they need to be accurate, good faith explorations of the issues of the day.”

Cotton’s op-ed did not meet either standard, accuracy or good faith.

First, accuracy. Cotton described the anti-police brutality protests, and specifically the rioting, as, “nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.”

The Times’s own reporters looked into the rumor of widespread involvement in the protests of antifa, the quasi-anarchist, loosely organized leftist anti-fascist movement. Though dozens of Republicans have advanced that rumor as fact, the Times found it a piece of “protest misinformation” spread deliberately on social media.

Cotton overwhelmingly ascribes the scattered violence of the first few nights to rioters, listing every instance of a police officer being hurt, but does not mention any of the more numerous cases of injured protesters (and journalists). There are dozens upon dozens of videos from the last week showing police using rubber bullets, stun grenades, truncheons, and tear gas, without cause, on unarmed protesters. It is police, over and over again, turning protests into violent clashes, acting not as peacekeepers but, as Vox’s Anna North and Catherine Kim put it, as “counterprotesters.”

Cotton asserts that “one thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain, and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” But aggressive, heavily armed police have only exacerbated the violence. What seems to have reduced it in the past few nights is the drawdown in police presence (along with pleas for peace from figures such as Killer Mike). Sending in more heavily armed law enforcement geared up for hostile crowd control would almost certainly spark more violence, not less.

Meanwhile, as Maggie Koerth and Jamiles Lartey write for FiveThirtyEight, several cities and police forces have demonstrated that dialogue and deescalation work to avoid violence.

“There’s this failed mindset of ‘if we show force, immediately we will deter criminal activity or unruly activity’, and show me where that has worked,” Scott Thomson, the former chief of police in Camden, New Jersey, told them.

Cotton is simply wrong, about the level of violence, who is causing it, and what would work to end it. The op-ed is now topped with an editor’s note noting some of the inaccuracies.

Democratic institutions, including journalism, assume a level of good faith

The Times editors seem to have more trouble with the other part of Sulzberger’s requirements: “good faith.” The best they can bring themselves to say in the note above the piece is that “the tone of [Cotton’s] essay in places is needlessly harsh and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate.”

The tone? Really?

Sulzberger and Bennet fashion themselves old-school, small-l liberals, devoted to an open marketplace of ideas where a range of differing views can be heard. Bennet in particular emphasized challenging the Times’s liberal readers (often with disastrous results, as Beauchamp reports), but that has been a goal of the editorial page from the beginning.

The small-l liberal model is roughly as follows: Certain shared values and rules, enshrined in America’s founding documents and developed in its social and legal traditions, define the small-d democratic playing field. Values like respect for accuracy and shared facts, devotion to equality under law and democratic participation, and opposition to unlawful power are necessary to create a level playing field, but on that field, ideas about government and issues of the day should compete on merit. The more speech the better; let the best speech win. (Obviously I’m describing the liberal ideal, never actually reached in practice, either journalistically or politically.)

To act with good faith in this model is to accept those shared values, rules, and norms and agree to compete within the boundaries of the playing field — to play by the rules. The marketplace of ideas only works if it is open to any idea that conforms to those rules and closed to ideas that reject them.

Here’s the thing, though. While Cotton very deftly exploited the liberal tolerance that Sulzberger and Bennet are so proud of to get his piece published, he does not share that tolerance. The movement he represents — he is often identified as the “future of Trumpism” — is ethnocentric and authoritarian. It is about maintaining the power and status of rural and suburban white people, even as they dwindle demographically, by allying with large corporate interests and using the levers of government to entrench minority rule.

Such a movement is incommensurate with the shared premises that small-l liberals take for granted. Minority rule is incompatible with full democratic participation. A revanchist movement meant to restore power to a privileged herrenvolk cannot abide shared standards of accuracy or conduct. Will to power takes precedent over any principle.

By Sulzberger’s standard, the GOP is not acting, and cannot act, in good faith.

I’ve written about the Republican Party’s decline in more detail here and here (and of course literature on the subject is voluminous, including an excellent book by one Ezra Klein), but for now it is enough simply to note that the party has remained steadfastly and obsequiously supportive of Donald Trump, whose hostility to small-l liberal values is, at this point, unmistakably clear.

There is no way to square support for Trump with the respect for accuracy and good faith that are the Times’s minimal standards, because support for Trump means support for an ever-shifting set of rationales and conspiracy theories reverse-engineered to serve a will to power.

There is no Trumpism but Trump

A few days before Cotton’s op-ed ran, Attorney General Bill Barr personally instructed federal troops to clear Lafayette Square near the White House so that the president could hold a photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. Around half an hour before the city’s stated curfew, federal agents used tear gas and rubber bullets to drive peaceful protesters out. Among those driven away by the gas were clergy from the church itself, who said they were never notified the president was coming and later expressed horror at how the church was used.

Trump tromped in, held up a Bible for the cameras, and tromped back to the White House.

It was pure authoritarian theater, gassing protesters so he could signal to his white evangelical base that he is still on their side.

Jose Luis Magana/AFP via Getty Images

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Patrick Semansky/AP

Roberto Schimdt/AFP via Getty Images

Trump has made no secret of his feelings toward protests and law enforcement generally. He once told Breitbart, “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

He has advocated for the failed and racist “stop and frisk” policy to be expanded to new cities and called Democrats “anti-police.” He removed Obama-imposed limits on military equipment sold to police, encouraged police brutality, told states to “dominate” protesters, threatened protesters with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons,” and tweeted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a prominent segregationist rallying cry from the civil rights era. He wanted to deploy 10,000 active-duty American soldiers to US cities to quell domestic protests and considered firing his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, when Esper resisted.

All this comes in the context of a long history of lurching authoritarianism. The first thing Trump did on entering office is flout the longstanding US tradition of presidents separating from their personal financial interests while in office. His business interests are still mixed up in affairs of state in ways no one fully understands, and his administration is openly deferential toward sectors of the economy that pledge loyalty to him.

He has completely shut down congressional oversight and is currently engaged in a purge of inspectors general, the independent watchdogs within government agencies. One of those IGs, at the State Department, was in the final stages of an investigation into whether some of Trump’s arms deals with the Saudis were legal.

He has pushed for loyalty tests at the FBI, the State Department, and the Department of the Interior, put immigrant kids in cages, used state power to force international allies to launch bogus investigations of his political opponents, and flouted impeachment despite compelling evidence of his guilt. He voiced support for the armed mob of right-wing protesters that stormed the Michigan legislature.

He has waged relentless war on independent journalism, called journalists enemies of the people, threatened to sue journalists, and denounced or threatened any media platform that fact-checks him.

Throughout it all, he lies, lies, lies — 18,000 times during his presidency, as of April. There is no discernible set of principles or governing philosophy at work, only Trump’s day-to-day impulses as he watches Fox News, stews in the residency, and tweets.

Trumpism, if there is such a thing, is a shameless disregard for norms and laws in service of a will to power. It runs on demands for loyalty, disregard of oversight, and devotion to dominating and humiliating opponents.

Yet the GOP has supported him, enabled him, and protected him from accountability, right up to voting him free of impeachment, covering for his disastrous coronavirus response, and echoing his calls for state violence. The party has followed his every impulse.

The GOP has made a devil’s bargain with Trump. They will overlook his rhetorical incontinence, disastrous incompetence, nepotistic corruption, and authoritarianism as long as he protects his corporate sponsors and wages a culture war on behalf of rural and suburban whites.

That’s why he’s going around shouting “LAW & ORDER!” He means “law and order” the way Nixon meant it, as Chris Hayes has described: as a dog whistle to refer to state repression of the “other” — immigrants, deviants, hippies, antifa, gangs, “nihilist criminals simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction,” and always, always people of color, especially black people. It is black people who will bear the brunt of the military crackdown Trump and Cotton envision.

Evan Vucci/AP

Racist authoritarianism is at the core of Trump’s movement. It cannot be truthful or democratic, because neither the facts nor a majority of Americans support it. It cannot engage in good-faith argument, because good-faith debate, like democratic liberalism itself, is premised on values that transcend partisan advantage, and the GOP no longer feels bound by any such principles.

What it has to offer is not “accurate, good faith explorations of the issues of the day,” but what is found in Cotton’s op-ed: paranoid domination porn about state violence visited on political enemies, meant to whip up authoritarian sentiment.

Should the New York Times play a role in channeling those sentiments to its readers? On the opinion side, the answer seems easy — no — but on the news side, matters are more complicated.

Journalistic objectivity looks different from the outside

There has been endless debate about how the press should deal with Trump and Trumpism. Few people seem to think it is doing very well.

The problem is not that the Times and other mainstream outlets aren’t publishing lots of true and important stories. The problem is that they don’t seem to be naming the rise of racialized authoritarianism, which is a very different thing.

Complaints about this come in various forms, that the press is “normalizing” Trump by downplaying the extremity of his actions, or that “both sides” journalism is presenting racist authoritarianism as a legitimate political stance.

If a journalist makes the baseline assumption that a political act or expression was undertaken in good faith — as part of a contest held within the boundaries of democratic liberalism and its assumptions — then she will attempt to remain neutral, presenting it and its critics as equivalent positions in an open political dispute.

Over years of relentless “working the refs,” bullying reporters and editors for more favorable coverage, conservatives have convinced journalists that the initial assumption of good faith is what it means to practice journalistic objectivity. One must accept every new claim as though recently dispatched from the turnip truck.

What would it mean to behave differently? Think of foreign correspondents, dispatched to other countries to cover politics. They are skeptical of everyone and, ideally, objective in a way only an outsider can be.

But that objectivity does not result in an equal measure of good faith extended to everyone, or an equal measure of positive and negative coverage for all parties. Why would it? That’s not objectivity, that’s a very rigidly proscribed subjectivity, an imposition of symmetry on social dynamics that are rarely symmetrical. Indeed, it is precisely the objectivity of the foreign correspondent that allows her to learn from experience, identify those who are and aren’t abusing power, and call out guilty parties without fear or favor.

What would a foreign correspondent think? Let’s ask her. Here’s Amelia Brace, an Australian reporter who was covering the protests in Lafayette Square. Though she identified herself to police as a journalist, she, along with her camera operator, was attacked and beaten by them as they cleared the way for Trump’s photo-op.

“I’ve been in protests just as serious as that, but I’ve never, ever seen police behave that way, not just to the media but to the protesters on the street,” she told the Times. “If we’re getting attacked, it’s just another part of democracy falling down here.”

Democracy is falling down here. The president’s party is no longer committed to it, at least not at the expense of white minority rule. As the two come into conflict, Republicans are throwing democracy overboard, suppressing minority votes and working to ensure that the November elections are as chaotic as possible.

The GOP today is acting in bad faith. To any foreign correspondent, it is obvious. They have seen right-wing strongmen use resentment and violence to turn democracies into autocracies. They know there are far-right parties across the world’s developed democracies that would do the same if they could. It is a familiar story, and it is playing out in almost caricatured fashion in the US today.

Journalism in an era of bad faith

The rise of right-wing authoritarianism is the headline story of US politics, but the domestic mainstream media is prevented by its own anachronistic habits and norms from telling it.

That’s because US journalists, under the funhouse-mirror version of objectivity that dominates mainstream media, are not allowed to learn anything about Republicans. Failing to extend the presumption of good faith to people who have betrayed it repeatedly for decades is “bias.” Covering too many of one side’s lies without ginning up some sort of equivalent negative coverage for the other side is “bias.”

Because journalists must encounter each episode anew, free of assumptions, Trump is forever allowed to set the pace. He does or says something unhinged, and as the marketplace-of-ideas fact-checkers scurry to correct the record, he does or says something else unhinged. He is always the protagonist, with “critics” trailing in his wake like a Greek chorus.

From kids in cages to migrant “invasions” to impeachment to coronavirus to racist police violence, the news is coming at everyone too fast, one gut punch after another, with no time to regain our senses. Even if the media reports on all of it accurately, it’s wildly difficult for the average half-tuned-in media consumer to figure out WTF is going on — what it all means.

The media has largely failed to convey that all these episodes are part of the same drama: a major political party’s escalating attempts to entrench a durable autocratic regime.

(Times media reporter Ben Smith has a story about how this very critique is breaking out in national newsrooms among a new generation of reporters. Ex-Times ombudsman Margaret Sullivan has a great column on the same issues.)

Why isn’t the Times covering rising GOP authoritarianism as a scandal rather than yet another partisan disagreement? Why doesn’t the publication consider it out of bounds, beyond the boundaries of good-faith dispute within a democracy?

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Times editors might say the very fact that authoritarianism is a reasonably popular position (estimates put the hardcore Trump-loving GOP base at around 20 percent of the country) puts it in bounds. But that is tantamount to saying that there are no boundaries at all, that America is whatever the loudest and most powerful voices say it is, that any political movement is, from the perspective of the objective journalist, as good or bad as any other.

It is tantamount to saying that journalism requires neutrality in any conceivable political debate, that there are no values, norms, assumptions, or practices that the media should actively defend and advocate for, as an institution.

Press critic Jay Rosen of NYU took on this dysfunctional notion of objectivity recently in a column about how the press should deal with Trump. His message was simple, captured in his headline: “You cannot keep from getting swept up in Trump’s agenda without a firm grasp on your own.”

The media must begin to assert some agency over the stories it covers and how it covers them, based on its own values. In discussing journalistic objectivity, Rosen agrees that the media’s work should not be politicized, i.e., produced expressly to help one party/candidate or another.

On the other hand, he says, media cannot help but be political. Modern journalism was meant to play a political role, to expose the truth and hold politicians accountable to the small-l liberal values that make liberal democracy possible. It can not remain neutral when those values are under threat. Like other institutions — science, the academy, and US government itself — its very purpose is to both exemplify and defend those values. Its work is impossible without them.

The press should always be fair in the application of its values and standards, but doing so will mean making clear when there is an asymmetry.

The Democratic Party is basically an amalgam of center-left and left parties familiar in other advanced democracies. It has a fairly normal distribution of opinion, a normal level of infighting and incompetence — it is, in the grand scheme of advanced democracies, a normal political party.

The Republican Party has drifted further right than any major party in the democratic world and descended into a paranoid fantasia, shielding an aspiring autocrat from accountability and echoing his calls for loyalty tests and military crackdowns.

The American public, by and large, does not understand this asymmetry and its implications. They do not understand that right-wing authoritarianism is perilously close to toppling US democracy, because they are not able to pick that signal out of the noise of daily “balanced” news coverage, wherein everything is just another competing claim, just another good-faith argument to hash out through competing op-eds.

The signal is too faint. Some high-profile Republicans are trying to boost it, pledging not to vote for Trump. Longtime public servant James Miller tried to boost it by resigning from the Defense Department in the wake of Trump’s photo-op stunt. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and former Chief of Staff John Kelly are trying to boost it. Hell, even Taylor Swift is doing her part.

But it is the media’s responsibility above all. It must sound the alarm, if only to defend the conditions that make it possible. The journalists injured and arrested so far would not be the last in Tom Cotton’s America.

Even in the face of the inevitable pressure campaign from the right, even amid an information environment choked with conspiracies and nonsense, the press must boost that signal — it must tell the real story of what’s going on — before it is too late.

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SiriusXM radio host and author Michelangelo Signorile has weighed in on the recent speculation that homophobic GOP Senator Lindsey Graham is gay and hires male escorts. Graham, or ‘Lady G’ as he has become known over the past few days on social media, came under scrutiny after a gay escort threatened to expose a “homophobic Republican senator,” alleging that many additional escorts he had spoken with had stories about “LG”.

Of course, there were cries that Graham’s privacy was threatened by the speculation and that it wasn’t appropriate.

Signorile, who literally wrote the book on “outing,” (along with several other excellent tomes) explained how former GOP Congressman Aaron Schock’s recent coming out puts this all in perspective, in a new piece on Medium. As you may recall, Schock, the former GOP congressman from Illinois who cast anti-LGBTQ votes for years and years all while denying he was gay himself, recently admitted that yes, he is gay, and has still not apologized for the votes he cast.

Wrote Signorile of Schock: “He’s the perfect example of a man who was deceiving the public in so many ways, and eventually the world would see it fully. The closet, for powerful politicians, becomes a sort of practice run at the art of deception on a grander scale. And when you will sell out your own kind, there’s really no telling how low you will go.”

“Had journalists at mainstream outlets with vast resources, legal teams and researchers, been pursuing Schock for the hypocrisy of his anti-LGBTQ votes — and revealed that he was gay, with clear-cut evidence — it wouldn’t only have likely stopped an anti-gay hypocrite,” Signorile continued, “it would likely have brought down a man who was spending campaign and taxpayer dollars to live in grand style and luxuriously travel around the world.”

“Many LGBTQ people don’t get it,” Signorile added, “and many heterosexual journalists take their cues from them. Some queer people don’t realize this isn’t about indiscriminately ‘outing’ the average person, the private citizens just trying to live their own lives. It’s actually about protecting them from the corruption of those who are public figures — people who go into public life knowing their lives will be open for discussion — who want to deceive people to benefit themselves and their benefactors.”

“Senator Lindsey Graham has promoted a horrendously anti-LGBTQ agenda and now is one of the strongest defenders of a president who is the most anti-LGBTQ president in history, rolling back rights that have been won,” Signorile concludes. “Editors and reporters should be investigating Graham’s hypocrisy the way they investigate public figures’ hypocrisy all the time — and that means following up on reports about his sexual orientation.”

Read Signorile’s excellent piece here.

The post Aaron Schock’s Story Reveals Why Discussing Lindsey Graham’s Sexual Orientation is Totally Appropriate appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

John Oliver took a thorough and important look on Last Week Tonight at the events of the last week and the goal that the Black Lives Matter protests appear to be coalescing around: defunding police departments.

“The police have not just been incidentally tainted by racism,” Oliver began. “For much of U.S. history, law enforcement meant enforcing laws that were explicitly designed to subjugate black people. … All week long, protesters have continued to fill the streets in all 50 states in the wake of the horrific murder of George Floyd by the police. And in response to those protests, which have been a stirring pushback against institutional racism and brutality, it’s been frankly sickening to see them met with this.”

Oliver then showed clips of police brutality seen around the nation this week, moving him to the topic of the president.

“As for the president himself, he initially hid from the protesters in a bunker, later claiming he wasn’t hiding, he was just ‘inspecting’ it. Then, his attorney general had police gas protesters outside the White House so that Trump could have an inexplicable photo op at a nearby church while holding up a Bible like it’s the ticket for his sandwich order that was just called. He also, in announcing jobs numbers on Friday, invoked George Floyd’s name, saying, ‘This is a great day for him,’ which is utterly f**king disgusting.”

Finally, Oliver tackled defunding police departments. This does not mean, as Tucker Carlson asserted, that all police would be eliminated.

Said Oliver: “It means moving away from a narrow conception of public safety that relies on policing and punishment and investing in a community’s actual safety — things like stable housing, mental health services and community organizations. The concept is that the role of the police can then significantly shrink because they are not responding to the homeless or to mental health calls or arresting children in schools or really any other situation where they best solution is not someone showing up with a gun — that’s the idea of defunding the police.”

Oliver ended the show emotionally, sharing a powerful video of Kimberly Jones, co-author of I’m Not Dying with You Tonight, explaining systemic racism.

Listen to what this sister has to say.

I added captions to the video for anyone who needs it.

Credit: David Jones Media https://t.co/W1yuk2aUen pic.twitter.com/tQ9VpuDHyd

— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) June 5, 2020

Oliver also explained: “This clearly isn’t about individual officers. It’s about a structure built on systemic racism that this country created intentionally and now needs to dismantle intentionally and replace with one that takes into account the needs of the people it actually serves…Black communities have had to be perpetual activists while also routinely being disenfranchised and it is long past time for the rest of us to join and make sure their voices are heard and acted upon.”

Watch the full segment:

The post John Oliver Rips Trump for ‘Utterly F—king Disgusting’ Remarks About George Floyd, Explains What ‘Defunding the Police’ Means: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.