Lindsey

While the Trump administration and its allies (like Josh Hawley) like to talk a lot about monopolization in "big tech," they couldn't actually care less about monopolies or their impact on competition. For example while Hawley and the Trump FCC/DOJ have made an endless stink about the power of "big tech," that's largely for performative political reasons, namely to perpetuate the utterly false claim that Conservatives are being "censored," to bully tech giants away from encryption, or to frighten them away from finally doing something about the (profitable) bigotry and disinformation problems that plague their networks.

Oddly, this performative, sometimes vindictive nonsense is often conflated with actually caring about monopoly power and reforming antitrust. You only need to look at the DOJ and FCC's mindless rubber stamping of every fleeting whim of the US telecom industry, one of the most heavily monopolized (and widely despised) sectors in technology. While T-Mobile was getting the red carpet rolled out for its competition and job killing merger with Sprint, Bill Barr's DOJ was busy hassling small cannabis companies, or filing empty-headed "antitrust" lawsuits against automakers for agreeing to limit emissions.

Studies from the likes of the Antitrust Institute (pdf) have made it very clear: the Trump administration's interest in "antitrust reform" is utterly and completely hollow. During an era when lagging antitrust enforcement needed to be meaningfully improved and reformed, the Trump administration instead began wielding antitrust as a political bludgeon to gain leverage over its enemies and dole out favors to its allies. It's mindless theater and an abuse of the law, yet it's often portrayed as serious adult policy making by many experts and the press.

Despite ongoing whistleblower investigations of Barr's politicization of antitrust, his DOJ is now rubber stamping the merger between native advertising platforms Taboola and Outbrain. EU and UK regulators have been scrutinizing the deal, arguing it will erode competition in the native advertising (read: clickbait) space, resulting in notably worse terms for already struggling publishers who face getting an even smaller share of advertising revenue:

"The Competition and Markets Authority said it has concerns the merger will result in a substantial lessening of competition and that it will investigate further unless the businesses take steps to address them...Many national and local news websites in the UK use one of the two services and the CMA said a “large proportion” of the publishers it contacted as part of its initial investigations were concerned about the potential impact of the deal."

More specifically, UK regulators say the combined companies would enjoy an 80% market share for the clickbait online recommendations market:

"Taboola and Outbrain are the 2 largest providers of content recommendation services to publishers in the UK, with a combined market share of over 80%. They supply very similar services and are each other’s main competitor. In particular, the companies’ internal documents and information received from publishers showed the strong competition between the companies.

If the merger were to go ahead, the CMA is concerned that publishers in the UK will have a reduced choice of supplier for content recommendation services. This could result in a worsening of terms for publishers and a reduction in their share of advertising revenue. A large proportion of the publishers contacted by the CMA were concerned about the impact of the deal if it goes ahead."

Many in the marketing sector have echoed those sentiments, stating the only thing the merger really accomplishes is creating a "gigantic vortex of crap":

In contrast there's been little to no serious scrutiny by the Barr DOJ, which apparently didn't spend too much time thinking about the deal's potential pitfalls:

"The Taboola-Outbrain merger had been proposed by the companies’ executives as way for publishers to monetize digital content outside of Big Tech’s monopolies. But some publishers Adweek has been talking to question how the merged company would be structured and what sort of terms it would offer publishers.

“What will be interesting is what happens to yield?” a publishing source told Adweek. “Will this be an improvement? Will the joined forces allow more yield to flow through to publishers? Or does this actually remove some competition in such a way that yield suffers? I don’t know.”

Now, maybe the Trump DOJ seriously looked at this deal intelligently and greenlit it based on adult policy making (they've yet to explain the approval). But based on what we've seen in the last year or two (like DOJ antitrust boss Delrahim using his personal phone and text message accounts to personally guide T-Mobile to merger approval, something, it should go without saying, antitrust enforcers should not be doing), that's giving them too much credit. It could really be as simple as the fact that Taboola execs told the DOJ this might potentially challenge "big tech," and that was enough for them.

That's the problem when you start abusing legal authority with reckless abandon--you lose any trust or faith in the idea that your decisions are actually being based on the data.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to the media after weekly policy luncheons on Capitol Hill July 21, 2020 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Senate Republicans want to give sweeping lawsuit immunity to businesses accused of helping spread the coronavirus.

On Monday, Senate Republicans unveiled their opening offer in negotiations over new legislation to mitigate the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Senate GOP’s $1 trillion package of proposals arrived just days before enhanced unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of July, meaning that many jobless Americans’ incomes will drop precipitously if a new bill isn’t signed into law this week.

House Democrats passed their proposal 10 weeks ago — a $3 trillion package that extends the enhanced benefits and provides various forms of relief to individuals, businesses, and state governments.

One of the centerpieces of the Senate Republican package is a bill that would give businesses sweeping immunity from lawsuits alleging that they helped spread the coronavirus to their workers or customers.

It’s such a high priority that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told CNBC on Tuesday that Republicans are “not negotiating over liability protection” — a position that, if true, could blow up any possibility of additional pandemic relief becoming law.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, warned that McConnell’s refusal to negotiate over the proposed liability shield is a sign that McConnell “does want to get to an agreement” on additional pandemic relief.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) echoed Pelosi, saying that “we asked [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin and [White House Chief of Staff Mark] Meadows to go back and see if Mr. McConnell really meant that. Because that would mean he’s probably not interested in any bill at all.”

It’s easy to see why Democrats feel this way. When this bill’s critics describe the Republican proposal, they frequently use a strong word: “impossible.” As Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said in a Senate floor speech denouncing the bill on Tuesday, the legislation “makes it nearly impossible to prevail” in court against a company accused of taking inadequate measures to slow the spread of the pandemic.

The bill, entitled the SAFE TO WORK Act, places a wide array of obstacles before workers and consumers who allege that they were infected due to a business’s negligence — or even against plaintiffs who allege they were infected because of truly reckless behavior by a business. Many of these obstacles are significant barriers to liability in and of themselves. But the combination of these many new hurdles could give businesses all but total immunity from lawsuits alleging that they allowed the virus to spread unchecked.

As Remington Gregg, a lawyer with Public Citizen, told me, “it is near impossible for a suit” to even get to court under the Republican proposal. And once a suit commences, proving a plaintiff’s case is “almost impossible.”

Among other things, the bill requires plaintiffs to identify “all places and persons” they visited and “all persons who visited [their] residence” two weeks prior to the onset of symptoms. It shields businesses from liability unless they acted in “reckless disregard” of their legal obligations — while simultaneously reducing the scope of those obligations in many jurisdictions. It imposes a heightened burden of proof on plaintiffs. It shields many businesses so long as they have a “written or published policy on the mitigation of transmission” that aligns with “applicable government standards.” And it drastically limits the remedies available to most plaintiffs who somehow overcome all of these hurdles.

Oh, and one more thing. It allows businesses to sue — and collect damages and attorney’s fees from — anyone who so much as writes a letter to a business demanding compensation for certain Covid-19-related legal violations, if the allegations in that letter are later deemed “meritless.” And it allows the United States attorney general to sue law firms, unions, and other entities that are “engaged in a pattern or practice” of seeking compensation for similar violations.

The bill, in other words, does not simply make it nearly impossible for Covid plaintiffs to prevail in court. It also discourages lawyers from even taking on clients with the coronavirus who want to hold a business accountable for their infection, because those lawyers could potentially face crippling costs for representing such clients.

What the bill does

The Republican proposal imposes a wide array of barriers on plaintiffs alleging that they became infected with Covid-19 due to the negligent (or worse) actions of their employer or a business that they patronized. Think of a meat-packing plant that forbids its workers from wearing masks, and that forces them to work in close quarters even though the bosses are aware that workers are becoming sick.

As noted above, these barriers require plaintiffs to give a detailed account of where they’ve been and who they’ve been in contact with prior to becoming infected; they limit the amount of money damages available to most plaintiffs; and they actively discourage lawyers from taking clients with Covid-19-related concerns.

Perhaps most significantly, the bill drastically alters the legal and evidentiary standards governing suits against a business accused of spreading the coronavirus.

Though tort law varies by state. plaintiffs who claim they were injured by a business will typically prevail if they can show that the business was negligent in allowing an injury to happen. As Gregg explains, that means that the business failed “to take reasonable care under the circumstances.”

There is already a great deal of flexibility built into this “reasonable care” standard. Courts, for example, might excuse an error by an emergency room physician who is so inundated with Covid-19 cases that they can barely focus on each individual patient, even though they might hold another doctor liable for the same error if that doctor were acting in ordinary circumstances.

Similarly, a business that did not require its employees to wear masks at the beginning of the pandemic, when little was known about the disease and how it spreads, would likely not be liable for this mistake. But a business that did not require masks after the benefits of mask-wearing became widely known is more likely to be deemed negligent.

Negligence suits are normally weighed under a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, meaning the plaintiff must show that the entirety of the evidence supporting their position is more persuasive than the evidence supporting the defendant’s position.

The SAFE TO WORK Act makes several significant changes to this ordinary framework.

First, it requires plaintiffs to prove far more than negligence to prevail. Rather, the plaintiff must show that a business committed a “conscious, voluntary act or omission in reckless disregard” of its legal obligations to that plaintiff. It’s not enough, in other words, for a plaintiff to show that a business failed to “take reasonable care” to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Rather, plaintiffs will generally have to show that the business made a conscious choice to ignore the danger that its actions would spread the disease.

Second, a plaintiff has to do more than show that a preponderance of the evidence supports their claims. Rather, they must prove their claims by “clear and convincing evidence,” a heightened burden of proof that courts typically reserve for unusually sensitive cases. For instance, if the government wants to confine a person with mental illness against their will because they believe that person to be a threat to themselves or others, the government typically must prove that such confinement is justified by clear and convincing evidence.

Third, the bill specifically requires a plaintiff to prove — again, by clear and convincing evidence — that the business’s reckless behavior exposed them to the coronavirus, and that this “actual exposure to coronavirus caused the personal injury of the plaintiff.”

The implications of this requirement are profound. Imagine a worker in a meat-packing plant who is infected on the job due to unsafe working conditions. Now imagine that, on the same day that the worker becomes infected, they make a weekly grocery shopping trip. Under the Republican proposal, this worker has a heightened burden to prove that they became infected at work and not at the grocery store. That’s a difficult task under a preponderance of the evidence standard. It could very well be impossible under the more demanding clear and convincing evidence standard.

It should be noted, moreover, that these are only some of the additional burdens imposed on coronavirus plaintiffs by the SAFE TO WORK Act. Taken together, the many burdens imposed by this law will make it extraordinarily difficult for such plaintiffs to even find a lawyer willing to take their case. They will make it unusually hard for that lawyer to even file a complaint. And, even if the case proceeds to trial, the plaintiff will face a nearly insurmountable burden of proof.

On top of all that, if the plaintiff does prevail, the bill places strict limits on the amount of money damages they are able to collect unless they can show that the business engaged in “willful misconduct.”

The case for the Republican proposal

The SAFE TO WORK Act opens with nearly a dozen pages of findings laying out Senate Republicans’ case for immunizing businesses from Covid-19-related liability. “To halt the spread of the disease,” the bill notes, “state and local governments took drastic measures. They shut down small and large businesses, schools, colleges and universities, religious, philanthropic and other nonprofit institutions, and local government agencies.”

But now, the United States faces an “economic storm,” and additional government spending “alone cannot protect the United States from further devastation.” Rather, “only reopening the economy so that workers can get back to work and students can get back to school can accomplish that goal.”

The bill, in other words, fairly candidly places the goal of “reopening the economy” before the goal of continuing to halt the spread of Covid-19. The bill also claims that “one of the chief impediments to the continued flow of interstate commerce as this public health crisis has unfolded is the risk of litigation.” Such lawsuits “threaten to keep” many businesses and other institutions “from reopening for fear of expensive litigation that might prove to be meritless.”

There is little evidence, however, that Covid-19-related litigation is a major impediment to economic growth — or even that it is particularly common. Hunton Andrews Kurth, a multi-national law firm that primarily represents corporate clients, tracks coronavirus-related litigation within the United States. As of this writing, its database identifies 3,832 legal complaints filed since January 30 — the date the first legal complaint in the database was filed — relating to the disease. (Disclosure: My father was a partner at Hunton & Williams, one of two firms that merged to form Hunton Andrews Kurth.)

Nearly 4.000 cases may seem like a lot — but about 16 million civil lawsuits were filed in state trial courts in 2018, according to the Conference of State Court Administrators and the National Center for State Courts. So the 3,832 coronavirus-related cases identified by the Hunton database are a tiny fraction of the American justice system’s civil docket.

Most of the cases flagged by the Hunton database, moreover, are not the sort of personal injury or employment-related suits targeted by the SAFE TO WORK Act. Some, for example, involve contractual obligations that could not be performed due to the pandemic. Others are suits brought by students seeking refunds from colleges or universities. Many are suits challenging state public health orders requiring businesses to close.

Fewer than 100 of the cases listed in the Hunton database involve personal injury or wrongful death suits brought on behalf of people who claim they were exposed to the coronavirus in a workplace or other business setting.

So what happens now?

Many opponents of the Republican proposal doubt that Senate leaders actually believe this bill will become law. “It’s very clear that this is not a serious attempt at policymaking,” Gregg, the lawyer from Public Citizen, told me. McConnell’s threats to not negotiate notwithstanding, the SAFE TO WORK Act reads more like an intentionally provocative entry into negotiations with congressional Democrats than a proposal that has any serious chance of passing muster with those Democrats.

“I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that [Republicans] will come out and say ‘we’re willing to compromise,’” Gregg told me, though he was concerned that, by taking such an extreme position in their initial proposal, Senate Republicans could tilt the negotiations and the final compromise in their direction.

It’s unlikely that Republicans will agree to a compromise that does not include some kind of liability protections for businesses in the broader package of pandemic relief legislation. McConnell has repeatedly claimed that some kind of liability shield is a “red line” and that “we can’t pass another bill unless we have liability protection.”

So what would a reasonable compromise look like? University of Chicago law professor Daniel Hemel and Northwestern University law professor Daniel Rodriguez lay out one possibility in an op-ed that ran Tuesday in the Washington Post. Instead of just giving a blanket liability shield to businesses, they propose Congress should reward businesses that promote public health with a limited degree of lawsuit immunity.

Suppose that a hairdresser tests positive for Covid-19. The best way to prevent more infections would be for this individual’s employer to immediately identify who that hairdresser’s clients were in the last several days, and to call them and warn them that they may have been exposed to the virus.

But there’s a problem, Hemel and Rodriguez explain. “The salon owner worries that by doing so, she could be opening the door to lawsuits from customers who become ill.”

To avoid this problem, Hemel and Rodriguez propose a targeted fix: “A safe harbor from tort liability for businesses that inform customers about potential exposures within 24 hours of the business receiving notice that one of its employees or another customer on its premises had covid-19.”

Such a proposal would not be without costs. As the two professors acknowledge, it could prevent some customers from being compensated by genuinely negligent businesses. And a safe harbor for businesses that immediately warn customers “might weaken incentives for businesses to take safety precautions in the first place.” But these costs would, at the very least, have offsetting benefits — Hemel and Rodriguez’s proposal would give businesses a powerful incentive to warn customers of possible infection.

When I asked Hemel about this proposal, he pointed to a couple examples of similar legal rules that protect negligent companies or individuals that try to correct their error. The Federal Rules of Evidence, for example, provide “that subsequent remedial measures cannot be used to prove negligence, culpable conduct, product defect, or failure to warn.”

For example, if Toyota recalls cars with a defective airbag, the fact that a recall happened cannot be used to prove that the airbag was defective — because otherwise Toyota would be reluctant to conduct a recall in the first place.

Similarly, Hemel noted, many states have “I’m sorry” laws that provide that “if a doctor apologizes to you for a medical error, you can’t use the apology as evidence in your malpractice suit.”

As Hemel admits, neither of these examples are a “perfect analogy” for his and Rodriguez’s proposal. Though lawyers cannot cite a product recall as evidence that a product was defective, they still might be able to prove that product defective by other means. Hemel and Rodriguez, by contrast, propose giving much broader immunity to businesses that swiftly warn their customers about possible infection.

But their proposal is also fairly narrowly targeted and, unlike the euphemistically named SAFE TO WORK Act, Hemel and Rodriguez accept that protecting the public health is a valuable goal that shouldn’t be undermined by over-broad legal immunity.

Republicans waited until the last moment to even offer a proposal for the next round of pandemic relief legislation. If that legislation does not pass in just a few days, millions of Americans’ incomes will fall off a cliff — and the nation could plunge deeper into economic ruin.

And yet, McConnell insists that no bill will pass unless it includes a liability shield. If he sticks to that position, that’s not just terrible news for the country — it’s likely to be a disaster for the Republican Party in an election year.

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The heat this month has kept coming and coming and now has set a record for its persistence. On Tuesday, Washington, D.C., notched its 26th day hitting at least 90 degrees, topping the previous record for the most such days in a month.

Workers make surgical gowns in Changyuan, China, on April 9, 2020. Because of trade and transportation difficulties tied to the pandemic, US hospitals are buying less equipment from international suppliers, particularly ones in China. | Li Jianan/Xinhua via Getty Images

Hospitals have had to turn to domestic suppliers for masks and other equipment, putting them in greater financial jeopardy. 

Over 16.5 million people around the world have been infected by Covid-19, and the numbers continue to rise steadily. The pandemic has severely disrupted almost every aspect of the global economy, including the global supply chain. Across the world, factories have shut down or slowed production; countries have restricted exports and imports; and transportation has slowed or halted.

While this turmoil has affected many industries, America’s health care system has been hit especially hard. Over the past two decades, US health care has come to rely heavily on international suppliers, especially in China, for thousands of essential products, from surgical gowns to syringes. In fact, as of 2019, the US was the largest importer of medical goods — including of personal protective products — in the world.

Over the past few months as the pandemic raged, most US hospitals and health systems have responded by turning to domestic suppliers. They are more reliable given the difficulties with transportation and trade, which have become worse since the pandemic began.

This trend is likely to continue, as hospitals and health care systems try to ensure that they have a steady supply of essential products.

But this new domestic strategy has a particular disadvantage: In general, it is much more expensive. And this puts hospitals, and potentially, their patients in greater financial jeopardy.

Higher domestic prices are likely due to a combination of the increased costs of manufacturing in the US, as well as the booming demand that has outpaced supply. For example, in December, Johns Hopkins Medicine, where I oversee the supply chain, was paying 40 cents for a gown from our supplier in China. We are now paying $9 per gown, from a domestic supplier. That’s more than 20 times the former price — all at a time when we need more gowns than ever. This change has the potential to significantly increase health care costs, and will only add to the existing strain on health care providers, health insurers, and consumers.

Right now, increased supply costs may not seem like the most important health care issue we face. And it’s not. The immediate task of saving lives obviously takes precedence over all other concerns.

But to save lives, we need personal protective equipment, we need tubing, we need gowns. And we also need to be able to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of our institutions. Without a reliable, affordable supply of a range of products, we can’t properly care for our patients, both those with Covid-19 and those with other health problems.

How the medical supply crisis got so bad

The current supply problems began in January. With the initial coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan and the realization that it would likely spread globally, hospitals around the world began to stock up on supplies, which decreased their availability. Beyond the overall turmoil brought on by the pandemic, China took additional steps to protect itself that further obstructed the supply chain.

In February, to ensure that the country had adequate domestic supply, the Chinese government took over the production and distribution of medical products. China was not the only country to do this, but because it is a leading global supplier of so many health care products — personal protective equipment (PPE) such as N95 masks, medical devices, antibiotics and pharmaceutical ingredients, to name a few — the decision had major consequences. In 2019 alone, China supplied a quarter of the entire globe’s face masks.

According to the Congressional Research Service, which earlier this year published a report on US imports of medical supplies, China exported in 2019 nearly $21 billion in pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and health care products to the US. There are no figures yet for 2020, but health care imports from China will almost certainly drop significantly.

For some products, US reliance on China was particularly high. Last year, the US imported $1.9 billion in PPE from China, about 30 percent of our total PPE imports.

China’s response is understandable; it was dealing with a significant disease outbreak. But in the US, this move kicked off shortages of PPE, as well as some medicines, and other important health care products — shortages from which we haven’t yet recovered.

Can we fix the supply problem before the pandemic ends?

China seems to have its outbreak relatively under control, and it has now somewhat eased limits on exports of medical supplies. This is good news, but the steps so far will not meet the overall increased demand.

The pandemic will continue to wreak havoc with logistics, creating bottlenecks that have slowed the movement of supplies. Pandemic restrictions, in particular physical distancing, slow down almost every part of the process, especially production. And some of our suppliers tell us that they are starting to see shortages in the raw materials they need for production, such as the material typically used to make isolation gowns. So it’s likely that health care providers will continue to rely more on domestic suppliers.

There are some benefits to this turn to US supplies. The route from factory to bedside is more stable, and providers are helping to support US workers, and the US economy.

But at the same time, the higher costs are putting pressure on health care; even before the pandemic, most providers were striving to cut budgets. Those pressures will only grow: the pandemic has increased costs at many hospitals (see: the huge increase in the costs of medical gowns), while also reducing revenue, due to the enormous number of appointments and elective procedures (which usually generate a substantial amount of health care systems’ income) that have been canceled and postponed.

So what can we do? I don’t have all the answers, and to be honest, I don’t think anyone does. The first step is to raise awareness of the problem.

On the ground, a potential solution is to return to reusable supplies. Over the past two decades, most hospitals replaced many reusable products with disposables. Johns Hopkins, and I suspect many other systems, will reconsider that choice. And we can do more to conserve supplies, using them carefully and only when necessary.

We also need to diversify our supply chains, connecting with manufacturers in India, Central America, and elsewhere. We can also focus on self-manufacturing; over the past few months, for instance, volunteers at Johns Hopkins have assembled tens of thousands of face shields. Of course, this sort of free labor is not the solution, but local supply handling could help ease the burden somewhat.

Federal and state governments can help by ensuring that domestic product manufacturers aren’t unfairly raising prices, as has apparently occurred in some places. They could also provide financial and logistical support to health care providers so they can better manage higher supply costs.

As this situation continues to evolve, the health care system and its partners will need to develop creative solutions to help ensure that hospitals can continue to afford to keep everyone safe.

Lisa Ishii, a head and neck surgeon, is the senior vice president of operations for Johns Hopkins Health System.

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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.

Demonstrators protest outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters to demand the release of immigrant families in detention centers at risk during the coronavirus pandemic, in Washington, DC, on July 17, 2020. | Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

Trump once vowed to stop separating immigrant families, but he’s trying again amid the pandemic.

President Donald Trump made a pledge in June 2018 to stop separating families in immigration detention, seemingly bringing an end to a policy that was designed to deter migrants from attempting to cross the southern border, and that ignited protests nationwide.

“We’re going to keep families together but we still have to maintain toughness or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all of the things that we don’t stand for and that we don’t want,” Trump said, signing an executive order stating that it is the “policy of this administration to maintain family unity” in immigration detention except in cases where parents pose a danger to their children.

But two years later, it’s clear that the Trump administration never fully renounced family separations.

Immigrant advocates found that hundreds of children were separated from their parents and other family members in the months following Trump’s executive order. In at least some cases, immigration officials were using minor immigration violations, such as reentering the US without authorization, and unsubstantiated allegations of gang affiliation, to claim that parents posed a danger to their children and to justify separating them.

These kinds of separations have largely come to a halt, particularly as the Trump administration has shut down the asylum system at the southern border in recent months.

Now, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the administration is setting itself up to carry out what immigrant advocates call a new kind of family separation. This time, it’s pressuring parents already detained within the United States to voluntarily separate from their children by presenting them with what the administration has called a “binary choice.” Either allow their children to be placed with relatives or a foster family in the US while the parents remain detained, or stay together as a family in indefinite detention and risk contracting Covid-19.

This risk for these families isn’t theoretical: Covid-19 has already spread through ICE facilities and in the prison system more broadly, infecting thousands who are in confinement.

The policy affects about 300 parents and children who remain detained across three family detention centers, two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania, where they are housed together.

But in presenting this choice, the administration is ignoring a third option: releasing the families together, which it has the discretion to do at any time. Under previous administrations, many families were simply released into the interior of the US on parole if the parents had no criminal history.

“We know that there is an alternative,” Krish Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, said. “We hope that this moment should force us to ask ourselves why we lock up asylum-seeking families in the first place. Unless the families are released together, we are looking at family separation by another name.”

ICE has been ordered to release children, but that could lead to family separations

The coronavirus has already ripped through immigration detention centers: Across the more than 130 private and state-run facilities nationwide, there have been more than 3,800 confirmed Covid-19 cases and three deaths among detainees as of Tuesday.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released some medically vulnerable people from immigration detention during the pandemic. It has also made efforts to mitigate the spread of coronavirus in its facilities; for instance, it recently instituted voluntary Covid-19 testing for new arrivals at one of the family detention centers in Karnes, Texas, and started isolating people who test positive so they don’t infect other detainees.

But ICE’s compliance with Covid-19 preventative protocols has remained spotty. Across the three family detention centers, about 90 staff and detainees have consequently contracted the virus so far.

Last month, a federal judge in California found that the conditions inside these detention centers remain hazardous, ruling that keeping children in detention likely violates a decades-old agreement that lays out basic standards for their care. That agreement — known as the “Flores settlement” — mandates that the government release migrant children “without unnecessary delay” and keep them in “safe and sanitary conditions” in the meantime.

Children themselves don’t generally appear to be vulnerable to the virus unless they have a preexisting health condition that puts them at risk. But the effects of social isolation in detention can be particularly harmful to them, exacerbating psychological trauma and mental health issues during a critical developmental period. They may also be able to carry the virus without exhibiting symptoms, potentially spreading it to those with whom they come into contact.

The judge consequently ordered the government to release more than 100 children.

“The family residential centers are on fire and there is no more time for half measures,” US District Judge Dolly Gee wrote in her decision.

ICE was supposed to comply with that order by July 27. But the agency is required to obtain parents’ consent in order to release their children to relatives or foster families in the US, and none have agreed so far.

What’s more, the agency remains steadfast in refusing to release the families together or pursue comparatively low-cost alternatives to keeping immigrants in detention, including the now-defunct Obama-era Family Case Management Program. Under that program, which Trump ended in June 2017, families were released and assigned to social workers who aided them in finding attorneys and accommodation and ensured that they showed up for their court hearings.

Judge Gee acknowledged Saturday that her earlier order to release the children is essentially “unenforceable” until the status quo changes. She can’t compel ICE to release the parents along with their children as part of the lawsuit she’s overseeing. And another federal judge in Washington, DC, who has jurisdiction over the parents’ cases, recently refused to release them despite finding that ICE “continues to fall short of full compliance” with its Covid-19 guidelines.

Lawyers for the immigrants are still trying to negotiate with the Trump administration over a permanent procedure by which ICE could present parents with the option of allowing their children to be released or else waive their children’s right to be expediently released under the Flores settlement. They’re asking the government to at least offer an explanation of immigrants’ rights.

But some immigrant advocates say those negotiations shouldn’t be happening in the first place and that the lawyers should instead be seeking the release of all families. RAICES, an organization that offers legal aid to immigrants and refugees, is trying to intervene in the case before Judge Gee.

“Both permanent separation and indefinite detention are adverse to their interests,” the organization said in a statement. “The very act of presenting families in prison together with this question is cruel.”

In the meantime, families have to weigh the trade-offs: potentially exposing their children to the coronavirus in these detention facilities versus a traumatic separation that could also put their well-being at risk.

ICE has been pursuing this binary choice policy since the early days of the pandemic, though it has yet to persuade any families in detention to voluntarily separate. A report by Amnesty International found that officials at all three family detention centers had instructed immigrant parents as early as mid-May to sign forms that would allow their children to be released from detention.

The forms were written in English, which many of the Spanish-speaking and Indigenous immigrants could not understand. NBC News’s Julia Ainsley, who obtained a copy of the forms, reported that the form stated that it complied with the Flores settlement agreement.

The parents were told that their children would be sent to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, which could place them with other family members in the US or foster families, according to Refugees International. Some children were under the age of 3, including 12-month-old babies who could not yet talk or walk.

The parents knew that, if they remained in detention without their children, they would face almost certain deportation. But they also feared for their children as the coronavirus continued to spread in immigration detention.

“They didn’t force us, but they did tell us we could send our daughter away because of the pandemic,” one parent said in the Amnesty International report.

Family separations were previously used to deter unauthorized immigrants

The Trump administration previously separated parents from their children as the consequence of a “zero-tolerance” policy meant to deter immigrants from attempting to cross the border without authorization. Beginning in mid-2017, the federal government ran a pilot program in El Paso, Texas, under which it began filing criminal charges against anyone who crossed the border without authorization, including parents with minor children — even though many of them intended to seek asylum in the US.

Parents were sent to immigration detention to await deportation proceedings. Their children, meanwhile, were sent to separate facilities operated by ORR and, in some cases, released to other family members in the US or foster homes.

The Trump administration formalized the policy in May 2018. At least 5,000 families were separated before Judge Gee ordered the federal government in June 2018 to reunify the families affected and end the policy.

The federal government, however, neglected to link the children to their parents in its databases, making the reunification process difficult, especially in the hundreds of cases of children who were under the age of 5.

Advocates say that the Trump administration is now trying to use family separations as a way to make it easier to deport parents. The Los Angeles Times’ Molly O’Toole detailed one such case in which officials threatened to deport a couple’s children back to El Salvador alone unless their mother gives up her claims to protection in the US and goes back with them, promising never to return to the US.

Family separations carry a long-term cost

The US government has long known the psychological harms associated with separating families. These harms would only add to the anxiety created by the pandemic as immigrants and their children fight for their release from detention.

Commander Jonathan White, who previously oversaw the government’s program providing care to unaccompanied immigrant children, told Congress that, beginning in February 2017, he had repeatedly warned the officials who concocted the policy that it would likely cause “significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child.”

A September 2019 government watchdog report confirmed those effects, finding that immigrant children who entered government custody in 2018 frequently experienced “intense trauma” and those who were “unexpectedly separated from a parent” even more so.

Each child reacts to family separation differently. But psychologists have observed three main kinds of effects: disruptions to their social attachments, increases in their emotional vulnerability, and, in some cases, post-traumatic stress disorder, Lauren Fasig Caldwell, director of the American Psychological Association’s children, youth, and families office, said.

Those symptoms could be only short-term or persist in the long run — or not even manifest until a child enters their teen years or adulthood. Any of them could significantly hinder a child’s later success in academics and in the workplace.

Parents who were separated from their children have experienced their own trauma — which may manifest in symptoms similar to those that researchers observe in children — and may not have the mental and emotional capacity to be able to provide what their children need.

“This crisis is certainly a crisis of the government’s own making,” Shalyn Fluharty, director of the Dilley Pro Bono Project, a legal aid group for women and children seeking asylum, said in a press call in May. “No parent should be presented with a choice of being separated from their child.”

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A Uighur man at a temperature checkpoint in Kuqa, China, on June 29, 2020. | David Liu/Getty Images

There is more and more evidence of China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Jewher Ilham said she had not heard from her father since 2017.

Her dad, Ilham Tohti, is an economics professor and prominent Uighur intellectual in Xinjiang, China. He ran a website, UighurOnline, that focused on issues pertaining to the Muslim ethnic minority group.

Chinese authorities repeatedly shut down the website. Jewher says the family received death threats. Chinese authorities also disappeared her father multiple times before detaining him in 2014 and quickly finding him guilty on separatism charges. He was sentenced to life in prison.

At first, Jewher told me, because her father was a political prisoner, the family could visit him every few months. But then the Chinese government cut off access entirely.

Jewher is in the United States; she still has extended family in Xinjiang, the northwestern region in China where most Uighurs live. She does not talk with them, either. “If they talk to me or if they receive a phone call from me, I don’t think anything good will happen to them,” she told me over the phone in July.

Jewher’s father was targeted by the Chinese government for his advocacy of Uighur rights. But in recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has arbitrarily detained between 1 million and 3 million other Uighurs in so-called “reeducation centers” and forced them to undergo psychological indoctrination programs, such as studying communist propaganda and giving thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Chinese officials have also reportedly used waterboarding and other forms of torture, including sexual abuse, as part of the indoctrination process.

Researchers from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, using satellite imagery and other evidence, have documented more than 380 re-education camp detention centers and prisons in Xinjiang, with at least 61 having been expanded or updated within the last year.

It is the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II.

The concentration camps are the most extreme example of China’s inhumane policies against the Uighurs, but the entire population is subject to repressive policies. China has used mass surveillance to turn Xinjiang into a high-tech police state.

Uighurs inside and outside the camps are exploited for cheap labor, forced to manufacture clothing and other products for sale both at home and abroad. The New York Times revealed in July that some Chinese-made face masks being sold in the United States and other countries were produced in factories that relied on Uighur labor.

Another recent investigation found evidence that Chinese authorities subjected Uighur women to mass sterilization, forcing them to take birth control or have abortions and putting them in camps if they resist. Some have argued this attempt to control the Uighur population meets the United Nations’ definition of genocide.

The Chinese government, however, claims that the camps are merely vocational and training centers, and that they’re teaching people job skills. It has justified the oppression in Xinjiang as an attempt to clamp down on terrorism and extremism emanating from the Uighur separatist movement.

There have been incidents of violent unrest over the years, including a few deadly terrorist attacks, and at least one Uighur extremist group in the region, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, has ties to al-Qaeda and the global jihadist movement. But most experts say Beijing’s repression and subjugation of millions of Uighurs is vastly disproportionate to the comparatively minor terror threat in the region.

As more and more reports of the atrocities happening in Xinjiang are revealed, the international community is grappling with how to punish China for its abuses. The United States recently imposed sanctions on Chinese officials involved in persecuting the Uighurs and punished companies believed to be reliant on Uighur forced labor.

Advocates and bipartisan groups of lawmakers are calling for more forceful action, and earlier this week the House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation that requires companies to prove products from the Xinjiang region are not made with coerced Uighur labor.

Yet the persecution of the Uighurs continues and in full view of the world.

Jewher is now herself an activist for Uighur rights. She says knowing what is happening to Uighurs makes her more determined to preserve her culture, her history, and her language. “I don’t think there’s any other words to put for this action,” she said. “I think it is genocide. It’s genocide, period.”

Why China is targeting the Uighur Muslim community in Xinjiang

Javier Zarracina/Vox

Xinjiang, where about 11 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities live, is an autonomous region in China’s northwest that borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia. It has been under Chinese control since 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was established.

Uighurs speak their own language — an Asian Turkic language similar to Uzbek — and most practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam. Some activists, including those who seek independence from China, refer to the region as East Turkestan.

Once situated along the ancient Silk Road trading route, Xinjiang is oil- and resource-rich. As it developed along with the rest of China, the region attracted more Han Chinese, a migration encouraged by the Chinese government.

That demographic shift inflamed ethnic tensions, especially within some of the larger cities. In 2009, for example, riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, after Uighurs protested their treatment by the government and the Han majority. About 200 people were killed and hundreds injured during the unrest.

The Chinese government blamed the protests on violent separatist groups, a tactic it would continue to use against the Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities across China.

The Chinese government justifies its clampdown on the Uighurs and Muslim minorities by saying it’s trying to eradicate extremism and separatist groups. Attacks, some violent, by Uighur separatists have occurred in recent years, and some Uighurs have become foreign fighters, joining groups like ISIS. But there’s little evidence of any cohesive separatist movement — with jihadist roots or otherwise — that could challenge the Chinese government, some experts tell me.

Xinjiang is also a major logistics hub of Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar infrastructure project along the old Silk Road meant to boost China’s economic and political influence around the world. Xinjiang’s increasing importance to China’s global aspirations is a major reason Beijing is exerting its control in the region.

“This region is critical to China’s future development and the Belt and Road initiative,” Dru C. Gladney, a professor of anthropology at Pomona College in Claremont, California, who studies the region, told me. “All those roads go through Xinjiang.”

China’s “de-extremification” policies against the Uighurs

China’s crackdown on the Uighurs was initially part of a policy of “de-extremification.” Under this policy, Beijing imposed draconian restrictions in Xinjiang intended to erase the Uighurs’ Islamic religious and cultural identity, including imprisoning hundreds of thousands in so-called “reeducation” camps.

China has a dark history with reeducation camps, combining hard labor with indoctrination to the party line. According to research by Adrian Zenz, a leading scholar on China’s policies toward the Uighurs and Senior Research Fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Chinese officials began using dedicated camps in Xinjiang around 2014, around the same time that China blamed a series of terrorist attacks on radical Uighur separatists.

In 2016, Xinjiang also got a new leader: a powerful Communist Party boss named Chen Quanguo, whose previous job was restoring order and control to the restive region of Tibet. Chen has a reputation as a strongman and is something of a specialist in ethnic crackdowns. The United States placed human rights sanctions on Chen and other Chinese officials in Xinjiang earlier this month.

Chen “is responsible for the system that used technology to round up Uighurs at such a rapid pace — not only in Xinjiang, but also similar models of convenience-style police stations were sort of tested in the Tibet region prior to being deployed in the Xinjiang context,” said Olivia Enos, a senior policy analyst at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation.

Increased and aggressive mass surveillance and police presence accompanied his move to Xinjiang, including his “grid management” policing system. As the Economist reported, “authorities divide each city into squares, with about 500 people. Every square has a police station that keeps tabs on the inhabitants. So, in rural areas, does every village.”

Security checkpoints where residents must scan identification cards were set up at train stations and on roads into and out of towns. Authorities have reportedly used facial recognition technology to track residents’ movements. Chinese officials also reportedly took blood and DNA samples, framed as mandatory check-ups.

Police confiscate phones to download the information contained on them to scan through later or track Uighurs through their cellphones. Police have also confiscated passports to prevent Uighurs from traveling abroad. Uighurs abroad say their families are targeted by Chinese officials, part of a pressure campaign to keep the diaspora from speaking out.

Some of the targeted “de-extremification” restrictions gained coverage in the West, including a ban on certain Muslim names for babies and another on long beards and veils. The government reportedly tried to promote drinking and smoking because people who didn’t drink or smoke — like devout Muslims — were deemed suspicious.

In October 2019, Radio Free Asia, a news agency backed by the US government, also reported that Han Chinese men were being sent to check in on and sometimes sleep with Uighur women, including those whose husbands were detained in the camps. The “Pair Up and Become Family” program, as it is called, is designed to “promote ethnic unity,” one local official explained.

Chinese officials have justified these policies as necessary to counter religious radicalization and extremism, but critics say they are explicitly meant to curtail Islamic traditions and practices.

The Chinese government is “trying to expunge ethnonational characteristics from the people,” James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University, told me in 2018. “They’re not trying to drive them out of the country; they’re trying to hold them in.”

“The ultimate goal, the ultimate issue that the Chinese state is targeting, [is] the cultural practices and beliefs of Muslim groups,” he added.

What we know, and don’t know, about the concentration camps

“Reeducation camps” — or training camps, as they are also called in China — are perhaps the most sinister pillar of this de-extremification policy. Experts estimate as many as 3 million people have disappeared into these camps at some point, with about 1 million currently being held.

At first, the Chinese government denied these camps even existed. China’s state-run media at one time dismissed the reports of detention camps as Western media “baselessly criticizing China’s human rights.”

But China has since stopped pretending that the camps aren’t real. Instead, the government is trying to cast them as both lawful and innocuous. In October 2018, Chinese officials effectively legalized the “education camps” for the stated goal of eradicating extremism. Later that month, a government official in Xinjiang — who was himself an ethnic Uighur — compared the detention centers to “boarding schools” and its detainees to “students.”

“Many trainees have said they were previously affected by extremist thought and had never participated in such kinds of arts and sports activities. Now they realize how colorful life can be,” Xinjiang Governor Shorat Zakir reportedly told Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency.

What’s really going on in the camps is difficult to know because of China’s disinformation campaign and tight clampdown on information. But leaked official documents and chilling firsthand accounts from people detained in the camps have helped outside experts and researchers put together a disturbing portrait of the abuses that take place there.

These camps are much more like prisons than so-called boarding schools. A 2018 report by Agence France-Presse described camps in which thousands of guards carry spiked clubs, tear gas, and stun guns to surveil detainees, who are held in buildings surrounded by razor wire and infrared cameras. AFP journalists also reviewed public documents showing that government agencies overseeing the camps purchased 2,768 police batons, 550 electric cattle prods, 1,367 pairs of handcuffs, and 2,792 cans of pepper spray.

An investigation by Reuters in 2018 also found that, according to satellite imagery, 39 suspected camps almost tripled in size between April 2017 and August 2018. “Collectively, the built-up parts in these 39 facilities now cover an area roughly the size of 140 soccer fields,” the report said.

In 2019, another set of leaked documents revealed how tightly controlled the camps are. According to the BBC, detainees were “never” allowed to escape, and their “behavioral violations” would face discipline and punishment. The documents ordered surveillance of dorm rooms and classrooms. Leaked drone footage, believed to be recorded last August, appears to show hundreds of Uighur prisoners, blindfolded and handcuffed, being transferred by train.

And there is evidence that China is continuing to expand the detention of the Uighurs, even beyond the re-education camps. China has claimed since last year that detainees had graduated and been released, rejoining society because their indoctrination program worked. In August, Buzzfeed News used satellite imagery to document 2017 detention facilities built since 2017, one in every county in Xinjiang. According to Buzzfeed, as China sought to detain people, they repurposed government buildings, but, over time, these sites have become fortified, and more and more prison-like.

A report released this month by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) also found China’s network of detention centers continues to grow. ASPI documented 380 centers that had been built or expanded since 2017, and at least 60 new facilities have been built or expanded between July 2019 and July 2020 alone; about half are more heavily securitized facilities — maximum security prisons, basically. ASPI also found evidence that some of the earlier re-education camps had been decommissioned. It’s a sign this is just arbitrary detention, without even the pretense China had used before.

The Chinese government continues to target Uighurs outside the camps. In February 2020, a leaked 137-page spreadsheet from Karakax County in Xinjiang showed exactly how Uighur families were tracked by authorities. The spreadsheet contained 300 names of Uighur families, including the identities of people committed to concentration camps, and those whom officials were monitoring. Some of those being tracked were as young as 16.

Among the things that caught the attention of authorities were obtaining a passport (whether or not they traveled), praying regularly, or even wearing a beard, according to the New York Times. Family members were monitored for participating in religious ceremonies like funerals or weddings. Uighurs were also sent to camps if they violated China’s birth restrictions.

Additional research by Zenz and the Associated Press in June 2020 bolstered this finding, showing that Chinese officials were systematically trying to stop Uighur women from having children under the threat of internment if they violated the rules. According to the report:

The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.

The research backs up anecdotal reports from women detained in the camps, who say they were forced to undergo examinations and abortions.

In December 2017, Gulzira Mogdyn, a 38-year-old ethnic Kazakh and Chinese citizen, was detained in Xinjiang and put under house arrest. She told the Washington Post in October 2019 that during her detention, she’d been forced to undergo a physical examination. She was 10 weeks pregnant; a month later, doctors terminated her pregnancy against her will. “Two humans were lost in this tragedy — my baby and me,” Mogdyn told the Post.

Inside these camps, detainees are reportedly subjected to bizarre exercises aimed at “brainwashing” them, as well as physical torture, rape, and sleep deprivation. Millward, the Georgetown professor, said the Chinese authorities see the camps as “a kind of conversion therapy, and they talk about it that way.”

A source also told Radio Free Asia in 2018 that a Chinese official had referred to the “reeducation” process as similar to “spraying chemicals on the crops. That is why it is general reeducation, not limited to a few people.”

The Washington Post published an account from Kayrat Samarkand, who was detained in one of the camps for three months:

The 30-year-old stayed in a dormitory with 14 other men. After the room was searched every morning, he said, the day began with two hours of study on subjects including “the spirit of the 19th Party Congress,” where Xi expounded his political dogma in a three-hour speech, and China’s policies on minorities and religion. Inmates would sing communist songs, chant “Long live Xi Jinping” and do military-style training in the afternoon before writing accounts of their day, he said.

“Those who disobeyed the rules, refused to be on duty, engaged in fights or were late for studies were placed in handcuffs and ankle cuffs for up to 12 hours,” Samarkand told the Post.

At a July 2018 hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China — a special bipartisan committee set up by Congress to monitor human rights in China — Jessica Batke, a former research analyst at the State Department, testified that “in at least some of these facilities, detainees are subject to waterboarding, being kept in isolation without food and water, and being prevented from sleeping.”

“They are interrogated about their religious practices and about having made trips abroad,” Batke continued. “They are forced to apologize for the clothes they wore or for praying in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The increasing use of forced Uighur labor

Beyond the detention camps, there is now growing evidence that Uighurs are being forced to work in Chinese factories. Given the ubiquity of Chinese manufacturing, that almost certainly means that the exploitation of Uighurs is embedded within global supply chains.

“It is becoming increasingly hard to ignore the fact that goods manufactured in East Turkestan have a high likelihood of being produced with forced labor,” Nury Turkel, chair of the board of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told Congress in October 2019, using “East Turkestan” to refer to Xinjiang.

The forced labor is happening both within Xinjiang and in other parts of China, according to recent reports. A March 2020 report from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China also found Uighur forced labor taking place within internment camps.

According to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), at least 80,000 Uighurs were taken from Xinjiang and transferred to various factories around China between 2017 and 2019, though it’s likely that’s a lowball estimate. Some Uighurs were taken directly from concentration camps to the factories, though the conditions mirrored those they faced in detention, according to that same study. Uighurs were under constant surveillance, forced to undergo Mandarin language instruction and other political teachings in their free time. Most critically, they cannot leave.

In July 2019, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported a story of a Uighur woman, 38-year-old Dilnur, who was sent to an internment camp along with her husband. In May, Dilnur had contacted her sister in Australia to tell her she’d be taken from the camps and sent to work in a technology factory in Urumqi. “660 people are brought in shackled and handcuffed and it is big,” she wrote.

Again, it’s hard to get full information out of China’s tightly controlled system, but leaked documents and testimony from some workers who’ve been forced into factories offer compelling evidence. The revelations raise serious questions for the global supply chain and anyone who buys goods that at one point passed through China.

The ASPI found that at least 27 suspected factories are using laborers from Xinjiang, which potentially have connections to 83 major global brands. The Xinjiang region, specifically, is a major cotton hub for China, meaning Xinjiang cotton might end up in the final products of many clothing lines.

The Washington Post and ASPI found that the South Korean-owned Qingdao Taekwang Shoes Co. in Laixi, China, a Nike supplier for decades, employs about 700 Uighur workers. Though they could not confirm that the Uighurs were forced to work, eyewitnesses told the Post that the workers weren’t allowed to leave freely.

Nike has since said it’s in contact with suppliers to “assess potential risks” related to the employment of Uighurs. Other companies, like Apple, have said they found no evidence of forced labor but are monitoring their sources.

Another recent investigation in the New York Times found that forced Uighur labor is being used to make personal protective equipment, specifically those disposable surgical face masks that are ubiquitous in the time of Covid-19.

In July, more than 72 Uighur rights group and 100 civil society groups worldwide launched a campaign to end forced Uighur labor, demanding companies stop sourcing cotton, yarn, textiles, and finished products from Xinjiang, and for companies to cut ties with suppliers implicated in forced labor schemes.

The world is paying more attention to the Uighurs. It’s still not enough.

Zubayra Shamseden, the Chinese outreach coordinator with the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told me in July that Uighurs have faced discrimination for years in education and employment. “It just didn’t get the attention of the world,” she said.

The recent headlines, including those about birth control and forced sterilization, have helped change that. But, she said, anyone who really tried to see what was happening in Xinjiang could see if they looked. “It’s clear it’s there. It’s just crystal clear,” she said, adding that China is still denying all of it.

That the world is finally starting to pay attention is important, but it’s not nearly enough. Activists say governments and international institutions need to do more to pressure China.

Uighurs in the diaspora are pushing for the International Criminal Court to investigate China for genocide and other atrocities. Naomi Kikoler, director of the Simon-­Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, said in March that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that China is responsible for crimes against humanity.” However, because China doesn’t recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction, that method might have its limits.

Some US lawmakers have been pushing for the US to get tougher on China on the Uighur issue, and the State Department has advocated for the Uighurs as part of its religious freedom initiatives. And the Trump administration is finally beginning to take more forceful steps to punish China for its human rights abuses.

President Donald Trump himself had been pretty quiet on the topic until recently, and it seems his desire to negotiate a trade deal with China was a big reason why. “Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal,” Trump said in June, when asked why he hadn’t yet imposed US Treasury sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the repression of the Uighurs.

Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton also alleged that Trump personally gave Xi Jinping the green light to keep building the camps, telling Xi at a meeting in June 2019 that it was “exactly the right thing to do.” (The meeting was attended by only the two leaders and their interpreters, so Bolton is relying on what the interpreter told him after the meeting. Other US officials have denied Bolton’s account.)

In June, however, Trump signed into law the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which imposes sanctions on foreign individuals and entities involved in abuses in Xinjiang and requires the president to periodically “send Congress a list identifying foreign individuals and entities responsible for such human rights abuses.”

Since then, the US has sanctioned officials, including Chen Quanguo, who’s in charge of Xinjiang and the mastermind behind its surveillance policies. The US also placed sanctions on the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau and its director, Wang Mingshan, under the Global Magnitsky Act, which targets human rights abusers around the world.

The US sanctions angered China, and Beijing retaliated by sanctioning US officials, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who have been some of the most prominent voices in Congress in condemning China’s abuse of the Uighurs.

The US also blacklisted 11 Chinese companies in July because of their ties to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which means those companies can’t easily access US technology or products. At least nine of the companies had ties to forced Uighur labor, including some named in the ASPI report that were connected to major clothing brands. Two others were added to the list because of their use of “genetic analyses” targeting Muslim minority groups.

Earlier in September, the Trump administration also put new restrictions on clothing, technology, and hair products from certain companies linked to forced Uighur labor. It’s already legal for Americans to import any goods made with forced labor, but the knottiness of supply chains has made this harder to detect. The administration is also considering a more sweeping ban on all cotton imports from Xinjiang.

But the Trump administration’s tougher approach toward China on the Uighur issue also comes as the administration has sought to put increasing pressure on China over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Tensions between Washington and Beijing are escalating, and the tit for tat is sinking the relationship between the two superpowers.

“I am concerned that once again the Uighurs are not being taken seriously, in and of themselves, rather than being used as kind of a pawn in a larger geopolitical strategy,” Gladney, of Pomona College, said.

Pressure on China for its human rights abuses — both in Xinjiang and in Hong Kong — should be a priority for any US administration. “I definitely think that there’s an effort to squeeze China in any way that it can possibly be done,” Enos said of the United States. “But I think there’s also this broader recognition that what’s going on in Xinjiang is definitely among some of the worst human rights atrocities taking place, certainly in this decade, maybe even in our generation.”

New details about atrocities inside the camps have added even more of a sense of urgency — though there’s still more to be done. Though Trump confronted China (virtually) at the United Nations this week for various misdeeds, he did not explicitly condemn China for its activities in Xinjiang.

Bipartisan lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act this week, which would require that companies prove any products sourced from Xinjiang did not involve forced labor and would compile of list of Chinese companies that relied on forced labor. (It still needs to go through the Senate.)

Senators have also urged the Trump administration to make a formal declaration that atrocity crimes are happening in Xinjiang. Some advocates are also calling on consumers to boycott products that might have been made with Uighur labor.

Economic pressure — especially if it forces major corporations to break ties with some Chinese suppliers — may be one of the most effective tools, though that is also increasingly challenging in a world that’s consumed by the coronavirus pandemic and an economic catastrophe.

But the pandemic itself, Shamseden of the Uyghur Human Rights Project told me, is yet another reason for urgency. She saw it as another potential reason for China’s government to escalate its crackdown, under the guise of quarantine for Covid-19. “It’s going to be another good excuse to just detain people arbitrarily,” she said.

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Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

by Dara Lind

Federal authorities are using a new tactic in their battle against protesters in Portland, Oregon: arrest them on offenses as minor as “failing to obey” an order to get off a sidewalk on federal property — and then tell them they can’t protest anymore as a condition for release from jail.

Legal experts describe the move as a blatant violation of the constitutional right to free assembly, but at least 12 protesters arrested in recent weeks have been specifically barred from attending protests or demonstrations as they await trials on federal misdemeanor charges.

“Defendant may not attend any other protests, rallies, assemblies or public gathering in the state of Oregon,” states one “Order Setting Conditions of Release” for an accused protester, alongside other conditions such as appearing for court dates. The orders are signed by federal magistrate judges.

For other defendants, the restricted area is limited to Portland, where clashes between protesters and federal troops have grown increasingly violent in recent weeks. In at least two cases, there are no geographic restrictions; one release document instructs, “Do not participate in any protests, demonstrations, rallies, assemblies while this case is pending.”

Protesters who have agreed to stay away from further demonstrations say they felt forced to accept those terms to get out of jail.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

“Those terms were given to me after being in a holding cell after 14 hours,” Bailey Dreibelbis, who was charged July 24 with “failing to obey a lawful order,” told ProPublica. “It was pretty cut-and-dried, just, ‘These are your conditions for [getting out] of here.’

“If I didn’t take it, I would still be in holding. It wasn’t really an option, in my eyes.”

It could not be learned who drafted the orders barring the protesters from joining further demonstrations. The documents reviewed by ProPublica were signed by a federal magistrate in Portland. Magistrates have broad authority to set the terms of release for anyone accused of a crime. They typically receive recommendations from U.S. Pretrial Services, an arm of the U.S. Courts, which can gather input from prosecutors and others involved in the case. ProPublica identified several instances in which the protest ban was added to the conditions of release document when it was drafted, before it was given to the judge. It remained unclear whether the limits on protesting were initiated by Justice Department officials or the magistrates hearing the cases.

Constitutional lawyers said conditioning release from jail on a promise to stop joining protests were overly broad and almost certainly a violation of the First Amendment right to free assembly.

“The government has a very heavy burden when it comes to restrictions on protest rights and on assembly,” noted Jameel Jaffer of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. “It’s much easier for the government to meet that burden where it has individualized information about a threat. So for example, they know that a particular person is planning to carry out some unlawful activity at a particular protest.”

Over the past week, the federal government has sharply increased the number of protesters it’s charging with federal crimes — often for petty offenses that are classified as federal misdemeanors only because they occur on federal property. Court documents reviewed by ProPublica show that over a third of the protesters are charged with “failing to obey a lawful order,” which 14 protesters were charged with between July 21 and July 24 alone.

The office of the U.S. attorney for Oregon, Billy J. Williams, did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about who was making charging decisions. In a recent interview with The Oregonian, Williams urged local citizens to demand that “violent extremists” who have attempted to break through the fence outside the federal courthouse leave. “Until that happens, we’re going to do what we need to do to protect federal property.”

Craig Gabriel, an assistant U.S. attorney who works for Williams, insisted the office understood and respected the right to protest racial injustice. “People are angry. Very large crowds are gathering, expressing deep and legitimate anger with police and the justice system,” Gabriel told The Oregonian. “We wholeheartedly support the community’s constitutionally protected rights to assemble together in large, even rowdy protests and engage in peaceful and civil disobedience.”

Gabriel did not mention the written restrictions against protest that have been made a condition of release for some of those arrested.

Several protesters who were let go on July 23 had bans against demonstrating added by hand on their release documents by Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta, who signed off on them, a review by ProPublica found. Acosta’s office did not respond to ProPublica’s questions.

For those released on July 24, the restriction was added to the original typed document, also signed by Acosta. One protester arrested and released earlier in the month had his conditions of release modified at his arraignment on July 24. The modified order, signed by Acosta, added a protest ban not previously included.

Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta modified a court order to prohibit a Portland protester from attending “protests, assemblies, demonstrations, or public gatherings in the state of Oregon.” The defendant’s name was redacted by ProPublica. Obtained by ProPublica

Three of the 15 protesters charged on July 27, in orders signed by Magistrate Judge Jolie A. Russo, also had explicit protest restrictions added to their release terms. (One release order has not yet been posted to the federal courts database.) Russo’s office did not reply to ProPublica’s questions.

“I don’t see that as constitutionally defensible,” Jaffer said. And I find it difficult to believe that any judge would uphold it.”

The ACLU’s Somil Trivedi said, “Release conditions should be related to public safety or flight” — in other words, the risk that the defendant will abscond. “This is neither.” He described the handwritten addition of a protest ban to a release document as “sort of hilariously unconstitutional.”

Publicly, the Trump administration has claimed that it has no problem with the protests that erupted in Portland and other American cities in response to the May 25 death of George Floyd, a Black man, in police custody in Minneapolis. The administration said it launched Operation Diligent Valor in July with a massive deployment of federal officers merely to protect federal property from “violent extremists.”

Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School said that imposing a protest ban as a release condition undermines the distinction between protected protest and criminal activity. “Even if they’re right that these people did, in fact, step beyond the bounds of the First Amendment and do something illegal, that doesn’t mean you can then restrict their First Amendment right.”

A court order prohibits a Portland protester from attending “any other protests, rallies, assemblies or public gatherings in the state of Oregon.” The defendant’s name was redacted by ProPublica. Obtained by ProPublica

In many cases, the charges leveled at Portland protesters are closely tied to their presence at the protest — and not to any violent acts.

Eighteen of the 50 protesters charged in Portland are accused only of minor offenses under Title 40, Section 1315, of the U.S. Code. That law criminalizes certain behavior (like “failure to obey a lawful order,” as well as “disorderly conduct”) when it happens on federal property or against people who are located on that property. In other words, it describes behavior that wouldn’t otherwise be a matter for a federal court.

Dreibelbis, like other protesters to whom ProPublica has spoken, said he was arrested for being on the sidewalk outside the federal courthouse. Because the federal government owns the land under the sidewalk, another protester (who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid influencing his upcoming trial) told ProPublica it’s “common knowledge” among protesters that the sidewalk is a no-go zone, and setting foot on it risks federal prosecution.

Dreibelbis told ProPublica he roller-skated into the protest, expecting to attend only briefly. He said he knelt on the sidewalk and was arrested by officers. (The charging document filed against Dreibelbis offers no arrest details.)

Section 1315 is the same law the Trump administration is using to justify initiating the federal show of force in Portland, which the administration has said it intends to employ in other cities where protests have raged since Floyd’s death.

The law allows the secretary of homeland security to supplement the Federal Protective Service, the relatively small agency partly responsible for federal building security, with law enforcement agents from the department’s other agencies (such as Customs and Border Protection).

Both President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, have invoked that part of the law in the past. But the use of that same law to file criminal charges appears to be novel. The Obama administration sent a “surge force” of 400 FPS agents, and a dozen CBP agents, to Baltimore in 2015, when the police killing of Freddie Gray sparked broad unrest, but no charges were filed under Section 1315 itself in that response.

In Portland, the federal government has relied on the FPS and U.S. Marshals to write affidavits used to charge protesters in federal court. But it has detailed other agencies on the protest front lines: DHS agencies cited in court complaints include CBP, through its BORTAC tactical unit; Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s investigations unit; DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis, in addition to FPS. Complaints also cite the U.S. Marshals and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which are Justice Department entities.

In the first weeks of the operation, the most common charge against protesters was assault of a federal officer — which, in some cases, counted as a crime on federal property because protesters on the streets were shining lasers at officers inside the courthouse. (DHS has claimed that some officers may permanently lose their vision, but as of July 24, the most serious injury detailed in federal charging documents was an agent who reported seeing spots in his eyes for 15 minutes after the laser attack.)

Over July 23 and 24, however, 10 of the 13 cases opened were charges only of “failing to obey a lawful order.” (One other defendant was charged with assaulting a U.S. Marshal while detained inside the courthouse — where she had been taken after an arrest for “failing to obey a lawful order.”)

Since then, almost all cases have accused protesters of assaulting a federal officer (generally a misdemeanor charge).

In many of the assault cases, files are thin and no details of the allegations have been posted, even for protesters charged as early as July 6. No case files identify an alleged victim — either by name or by the “unique identifier” on their uniforms. (DHS officials have claimed it’s unfair to describe the federal agents in Portland as “unidentified” because they clearly show identification.)

Some assault accusations charge protesters with throwing unidentified objects at officers in body armor, who were unharmed.

Even those defendants who aren’t explicitly barred from attending protests are unable to return to the epicenter of Portland’s unrest as a condition of their release. They are placed under a curfew (either from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. or 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.) and told not to go within five blocks of the courthouse grounds except for court hearings.

Experts said that while restrictions of that sort are common, they’re still questionably constitutional. “Though ‘stay away’ orders from a place where a potential crime has been committed are generally standard,” the ACLU’s Trivedi said, “‘stay away’ orders from public places that are part of the public square are more questionable.” But he and others conceded that the government could make an argument that it was necessary to prevent further wrongdoing.

They saw no legitimate rationale for a blanket ban on protests.

“I suppose the government could argue, ‘You disobeyed a law enforcement officer at a protest, and we don’t trust you to not do it again,’” Trivedi said. But the release documents already instruct defendants that they are not allowed to break any laws while awaiting trial.

“If they want to say ‘don’t break a law again,’ they’ve already said that,” Trivedi told ProPublica. “Beyond that, the only part that’s left would be not letting you exercise your First Amendment right.”

Driebelbis, for his part, must now watch the protests proceed without him. “I work across the water from the protests, and I can see it every” night, he told ProPublica. “I’m protesting from this side.”

He hastened to clarify that he didn’t mean he was attending a protest in violation of the court order. “Not protesting! There’s no protesting going on in the party of one. But I am there in spirit.”

DACA recipients and their supporters rally outside the US Supreme Court on June 18, 2020, in Washington, DC.  | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

DREAMers are facing limbo yet again as Trump explores ending DACA for a second time.

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it is considering trying again to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and will not be accepting new applications from immigrants who hope to gain its protections, throwing the future of hundreds of thousands young immigrants who came to the US as children into doubt.

The Supreme Court ruled on June 18 that President Donald Trump couldn’t end the program, which has allowed almost 700,000 unauthorized immigrants known as “DREAMers” to live and work in the US free from fear of deportation, without a more robust rationale. In the weeks since that decision, the administration had remained silent as to whether it would consequently start accepting new applications for the program, causing confusion among those who have been waiting for years for a chance to apply.

Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, clarified Tuesday that the administration is reviewing the policy further and may well move forward with ending the program. In the meantime, it will impose new restrictions on applicants — a move that immigrant advocates say is a blatant violation of the Supreme Court’s decision.

That review will examine the legality of the DACA program, which former President Barack Obama created via executive order in 2012, and its impact on immigration trends, a senior administration official told reporters.

“I have concluded that the DACA policy, at a minimum, presents serious policy concerns that may warrant its full rescission,” Wolf wrote in a policy memorandum issued Tuesday. “At the same time, I have concluded that fully rescinding the policy would be a significant administration decision that warrants additional careful consideration.”

In the meantime, the administration will reject all new DACA applications and related applications for work permits, as well as halve the period for which renewals will be valid from two years to just one year. It will also reject most new and pending requests for advanced parole, which allows DACA recipients to travel outside the US for humanitarian, education, or employment purposes.

Approximately 66,000 people have become eligible for the program since 2017, when Trump first tried to rescind the program and stopped accepting new applications. They may have previously missed out because they hadn’t completed the educational requirements or joined the military.

The decision makes DACA a key immigration issue in this fall’s presidential election. It’s not likely that the Trump administration could end DACA entirely before the election or even Inauguration Day in 2021. But if Trump wins a second term, time would be on his side. And even if he leaves office, the only way that DREAMers, including those who have long waited for a chance to apply for DACA, can get assurance of their right to remain in the US is if Congress intervenes.

The DACA program remains popular among both Republicans and Democrats: even 69 percent of Trump voters support protections for DREAMers, according to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll. But the move suggests Trump is again resorting to restrictive immigration policies as a means of rallying his base.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has vowed to restore DACA and resume accepting new applications. He would also try to work with Congress to pass permanent protections for DREAMers.

“Make no mistake, the vast popularity of the program, combined with a looming election, prevented Trump from immediately ending the program,” Andrea Flores, deputy director of immigration policy for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “But this policy memo makes his intentions clear: His next move is a complete end to the DACA program to destroy the lives of Dreamers once again.”

Immigrant advocates say Trump is obligated to accept new DACA applications

Most people who are granted DACA maintain their status for two years, after which they can apply to renew in additional two-year increments indefinitely. They typically apply while they are still in school or after graduating from high school so that they can obtain a work permit and get a job or attend university.

Immigrant advocates have argued that the Trump administration has been openly defying the Supreme Court’s decision and other court orders, issuing rejection notices to those who tried to newly apply for DACA status. (It has been accepting renewals.)

Lawyers for DACA recipients who had challenged Trump’s initial decision to end the program back in 2017 recently told a New York federal judge that they were concerned that administration officials were ignoring the Supreme Court’s “unambiguous decision and their legal obligations” in refusing to process new applications. And House Democrats Zoe Lofgren and Jerrold Nadler penned a letter to Trump claiming that his failure to resume processing new DACA applications constituted “illegal usurpation of authority in violation of the separation of powers.”

A federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration on July 17 to begin processing new applications, finding that the Supreme Court’s ruling restored the program to its status before Trump tried to terminate it in September 2017.

US District Judge Ryan Grimm didn’t set a deadline for the administration to comply, but he is moving forward with a hearing addressing the question of whether he should hold the administration in contempt. And in a recent telephonic briefing, he criticized the administration for failing to clarify its policies with regard to new DACA applications in a timely manner.

“It creates a feeling and a belief that the agency is disregarding binding decisions by appellate and the Supreme Court,” he said. “There is a cost for not having these things clarified, and the plaintiffs have borne the lion’s share of that cost thus far.”

But a senior administration official said Tuesday that Grimm didn’t have the final say given that there remains pending litigation over new DACA applications in other federal courts.

Trump could rescind DACA without Congress’s help

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Trump claimed that he still wanted to end the program and would submit new paperwork backing up that decision. He accused the justices on Twitter of punting the DACA issue, which has been the subject of contentious legislative debate for the better part of a decade.

It’s not clear exactly how he intends to end the program. He could do so without Congress’s help, but he said during a press conference at the White House on Tuesday that he also intends to work with Congress on creating a “merit-based system” for immigration. He didn’t elaborate further on what that meant, but he has previously described such a system as one that prioritizes high-earners and skilled workers over those with family ties to the US.

The administration could terminate DACA using the same method it employed in 2017: The Department of Homeland Security could issue another memo. Trump could also issue an executive order terminating DACA. But either method would likely be challenged and swiftly blocked in federal court, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell Law School. Whether, and how quickly, the administration could defend its policy on appeal remains an open question.

The justices wrote in their opinion that if they wanted their decision to survive in the courts, the administration would have to address why it decided not to partially roll back protections for DACA recipients — such as taking away their work authorization but still shielding them from deportation. It’s not clear whether the Trump administration has any interest in more narrowly revoking their protections, but even so, it would be devastating for DREAMers to lose their ability to work in the US.

The administration would also have to address why the interests of DACA recipients, who have relied on the program since 2012, do not outweigh the administration’s interests in terminating the program. DACA recipients have been settled in the US for years — some arriving before they were old enough to remember — and have earned degrees and established careers and families here. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has expressed concern that DACA could face litigation because it alleges the program was created illegally via executive action.

Alternatively, the administration could try terminating DACA via the regulatory process, which would put termination on stronger legal footing. But the entire process could last months, if not years, requiring that officials draft and issue a proposed rule, solicit comments from the public, and address those comments before publishing a final rule.

“Neither alternative is likely to terminate the DACA program before the presidential election in November,” Yale-Loehr said. “This makes the election even more important than before. If President Trump wins reelection, he will have another four years to try to terminate the DACA program.”

---

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The coronavirus has gifted us many tragedies and inconveniences both large and small this year, and among the latest is one that most of us probably wouldn’t have predicted a few months ago—a nationwide coin shortage.

Read more...

In search of songs that define music in the 1990s, Matt Daniels and Ilia Blinderman for The Pudding look for songs that that Gen Z still recognizes. Also, the songs that are mostly foreign to the younger generation:

In 1999, “Wild Wild West” was the song of the summer. Yet it is fading far faster than any other ’90s hit with comparable starting popularity. Twenty years ago, it was inescapable. Maybe Millennials are still too sick of it, even for nostalgia rotation. Perhaps it wasn’t even that great of a song to begin with, artificially inflated by Smith’s celebrity and cross-promotion with the film Wild Wild West.

Sorry, Will Smith.

The results are based on data gathered by The Pudding in an interactive survey.

Tags: music, Pudding

In February, we wrote about how a patent troll, Voice Tech, had sued a small open source voice assistant company, Mycroft AI, claiming infringement. Mycroft AI and its founder/CEO Joshua Montgomery had put up a blog post about the situation, which attracted our attention, in part due to his willingness to call out trolling for trolling, and promising not to back down. It included some strong language, including:

I don’t like letting these matters go quietly. In my experience, it’s better to be aggressive and "stab, shoot and hang” them, then dissolve them in acid. Or simply nuke them from orbit, it is the only way to be sure.

There was certainly precedent for Montgomery to take this kind of stance. In the past, we've highlighted how Newegg's "we never settle with patent trolls" approach had been quite successful. And, more recently Cloudflare's similar approach had been successful as well. Standing up to patent bullies is important in not letting them get away with such shenanigans.

In April, we wrote about the case again, after seeing one of the troll's lawyers, Tod Tumey (who had also sent the original threat letters to Mycroft AI), submitted one of the oddest filings we've seen in court. It was "Suggestions in Support of Motion for Relief to Require Decorous and Civil Conduct by the Parties." In it, Tumey made the wholly unsubstantiated case that Mycroft and Montgomery had engaged in threatening behavior towards Tumey, had tried to hack his website, and more. As we noted at the time, there was no evidence whatsoever to support this. The story had gone viral on Reddit, and the likely result of that being that some immature Reddit users did some immature things, sending Tumey some angry emails and signing him up for some mailing lists. There was no reason to believe they were coming from Montgomery himself.

In fact, Montgomery directly denied having anything to do with any of that. He later filed a declaration with the court to that effect as well. However, after oral arguments a week after my blog post, the judge in the case made a somewhat surprising order from the bench (after mentioning my blog post!?!?), telling Mycroft that it needed to edit its original blog post to take out some of the more incendiary language.

THE COURT: All right. Here is where the Court is landing. In your Exhibit 5 to your opposition in your document 20, in that exhibit, it is a posting by Techdirt. And one of the sentences in that writing -- the paragraph begins with, As Tumey recounts, the various angry, immature, internet trolls then did a bunch of other mean stuff to Tumey, such as signing him up for mailing lists. This is, again, childish behavior, but it's kind of what often happens when you do something stupid and the internet finds out about it.

And I find that there is sufficient evidence that the harassment that plaintiff's counsel has received is induced or inspired by the postings of Mr. Montgomery. In particular, the initial blog posting on February 5th where his -- the posting is, basically, I want you to do something for me. And he says, I'd like -- I don't often ask this, but I'd like for everyone in our community to share the post in any which way they can. And so that is what -- he is calling folks into action to get the word out.

And then as he describes and educates the readers as to what a troll is, then he explains what their internal policy -- how they're going to combat this. And he describes it in equating plaintiff as a bully and the language of punching a bully in the face; stab, shoot, hang them; and dissolve them in acid; and nuke them from orbit; and that he is turning into a hunter, a troll hunter. I think that even though he may not be directly the source of the harassment, his actions are foreseeable and that that is what would happen based on his conduct.

So I am going to order, at least for the pendency of this case, or until ordered otherwise, for defense to assertively take down the sentence that begins with "I don't often ask this," to delete that portion until the section where "a brief history of patents in the United States." I'd also order defense to assertively search and take down in those similar -- whether it's Facebook or blogs or whatever, the remainder of the writing beginning with "the thing is, once you pay the bully, he just comes back again and again and again." And so from that sentence -- that can stay in, but where it begins with "Eventually, the lunch money adds up to a lot more than a doctor's visit." From "eventually" until the end of that posting, for that to be deleted. And I do -- I'm not asking that all that blog be taken down, just those sections

Mycroft's lawyer asks for some clarification and the judge again explains what needs to be taken down:

THE COURT: Yes. So they need to take down "I don't often ask this, but I'd like for everyone in our community who believes that patent trolls are bad for open source to repost, link, tweet, and share this post. Please help us to get the word out by sharing this post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or email." All of that is to be deleted.

In addition, towards the end, beginning with, "Eventually, that lunch money adds up to a lot more than a doctor's visit." And that continues on. And to take down the remainder, which includes Tod Tumey's confidential correspondence information and the email 1, 2, 3, email 4, final notice letter link. And then there shouldn't be any need for the image attribution. Does that clarify your concern?

So, first off, I don't see how this is possibly allowed under the 1st Amendment. Directly ordering a company to edit a blog post to remove a request to share the blog post on social media seems like a fairly blatant infringement of the 1st Amendment. A company should certainly have the right to notify its community that it is in the middle of a costly legal battle (one that it believes is frivolous), and part of getting people to understand how serious it is is asking for that information to be shared.

Mycroft's lawyer then points out that since the company is part of the open source community, he's worried that this order might prevent them from collaborating on certain projects, or even asking for assistance, and the judge gives an unfortunate answer to that scenario:

MR. DeBACKER: So often -- they are part of an open source network that collaborates with other open source innovators. And I just want to be clear that they're going to be able to continue to ask for support outside of this matter with sharing links and such with their open source network, if they post on other forums, if they're going to be allowed to request aid and other things like that, as long as they're not directing it towards codes like this.

THE COURT: Well, I'll just have to see it as it comes. I don't want to have to rule on that now. I know just in my own little messing around on my phone, I see that they may be seeking financial assistance with attorneys' fees. You know, that I'm not -- that doesn't have anything to do with this issue. So I don't know what else you're referring to, but just -- I mean, I think it's common sense what the Court's focus is.

That "know it when I see it" kind of thing is dangerous to free speech as well. It does not provide any clear guidelines, and likely creates a chilling effect in which the company has to be careful not to run afoul of these amorphous speech suppressing rules. Again, I can't see how that doesn't fly in the face of the 1st Amendment. Yes, there's the infamous Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it" test for obscenity, but obscenity is a clearly defined exception to the 1st Amendment. And, yes, incitement to imminent violence is also an established exception, it's a very narrow one. And the Mycroft blog post comes nowhere near that standard. The violent imagery was clearly figurative, not literal. It even linked to an article where the "stabbed, shot, and hanged" message came from -- and it was about killing off an attempt to ban municipal broadband. In other words, it was clearly figurative and not an actual threat or incitement to violence.

Either way, the case is getting even more bizarre, and still dealing with my blog post. One of Voice Tech's lawyers sent a letter to Mycroft's lawyers saying that a later blog post by Mycroft which merely links to my blog post is in contempt of the order, because my blog post contains the original language the court ordered deleted.

It has come to Voice Tech’s attention that on July 1, 2020, Joshua Montgomery published an article on Mycroft AI’s website entitled “Mark II Update – June 2020.” Under the “Updates” section, in the second paragraph, there is a link entitled “patent trolls” as shown here:

That link, when clicked, takes the reader to a TECHDIRT article from February 13, 2020, which focuses on the language Mycroft was ordered to take down. To the extent Mycroft is able to have the threatening language removed from the TECHDIRT article, it is obligated to do so. At the very least, Mycroft must remove the link to this TECHDIRT article, which Joshua Montgomery recently included in his Mark II Update article on Mycroft’s website.

Further, the original threatening article is currently posted on the Mycroft Community Forum at this URL: https://community.mycroft.ai/t/troll-hunter-mycrofts-position-on-patent-trolls/8047. This publicly available posting of the original article needs to be redacted to comply with the Court’s Order. Additionally, the links to emails 1, 2, 3, and 4, as well as the final notice letter, are still active and need to be deleted.

Voice Tech demands that Mycroft remove the link to the TECHDIRT article and redact the original article on the Mycroft Community Forum by no later than the close of business on Wednesday, July 22, 2020. If Mycroft fails to comply, Voice Tech will have no option but to file a motion for contempt with the Court.

Seeing as the letter said that "to the extent Mycroft was able to have the threatening language removed from the TECHDIRT article, it is obligated to do so," the company forwarded the letter on to us. Obviously, Mycroft has no ability to remove language from Techdirt, and we have no intention of removing such language, as we feel that our posting that original language is clearly protected under the 1st Amendment. I do see that Mycroft has removed the link from its blog to us however, meaning that some of the fallout from this unconstitutional order is that it sends us less traffic. That seems unfortunate and again raises 1st Amendment concerns about a judge's order, and the plaintiff's demands, directly targeting a news site for our reporting.

Obviously, it's not good that some immature kids got angry at the lawyers behind Voice Tech, but people are sick of patent trolls and takedowns and sketchy attempts to abuse legal process. It certainly seems like this gag order and further demands to censor speech are just another part of that trend.

I found the whole situation with the court order perplexing, so I asked 1st Amendment lawyer Ken White if that order, or the request from Voice Tech's lawyers was out of the ordinary, and he told the following:

“There’s no lawful basis to demand that Techdirt take down any part of its story – all the more so now that the story involves this First Amendment controversy, which is the heart of what Techdirt covers. As always, I’m ready to lend a legal hand if needed.”

Hopefully that's the end of this issue, though I am still troubled by Voice Tech's desire to censor speech (and, of course, its trolling efforts).

On a separate note, it appears that Unified Patents, the organization that tries to get bad patents invalidated, has now become aware of the Mycroft AI situation and has filed for an inter partes review at the US Patent Office. One hopes that these patents are thrown out and that Mycroft AI is able to get back to focusing on building open source voice assistants, rather than having to fight back against a bunch of lawyers building nothing but trouble.

A surge of federal agents swept into Portland, Oregon in response to ongoing protests in the city. The city hadn't asked for federal help, but help arrived anyway. And it wasn't much help. The blend of federal agents -- drawn from the CBP, US Marshals Service, and ICE -- rolled onto the streets in unmarked vehicles. Out of these vehicles sprang agents dressed like soldiers, wearing no markings clearly identifying the officers or the agency they represented. Residents were taken off the street to unknown locations for questioning. They were later released and given no paperwork that informed them who had detained them or for what reason.

This federal intervention was immediately greeted by several lawsuits, including one filed by Oregon's Department of Justice. One set of plaintiffs has already secured a temporary restraining order against the federal government. (h/t Mike Scarcella)

Portland journalists sued the DHS -- along with the Portland Police Bureau, US Marshals Service, and the city itself -- over attacks on journalists and neutral observers by law enforcement officers. The federal agencies were added to the lawsuit shortly after they added themselves to mix in early July.

The court has granted the restraining order, finding that the government's actions pose a threat to multiple Constitutional rights. There's a history of violence against journalists by federal agents, detailed here in the court's order [PDF].

On July 15, 2020, Plaintiff Justin Yau, while carrying photojournalist gear and wearing clothing clearly identifying him as press, asserts that he was targeted by a federal agent and had a tear-gas canister shot directly at him. At the time he was fired upon, he was taking pictures with his camera and recording with his cell phone while standing 40 feet away from protesters to make it clear that he was not part of the protests. In addition, late July 19th or early July 20th, Declarant Nathan Howard, a photojournalist who has been published in Willamette Week, Mother Jones, Bloomberg Images, Reuters, and the Associated Press, was covering the Portland protests. He was standing by other journalists, and no protesters, as federal agents went by. The nearest protester was a block away. Mr. Yau held up his press pass and repeatedly identified himself as press. A federal agent stated words to the effect of "okay, okay, stay where you are, don't come closer." Mr. Yau states that another federal agent, who was standing immediately to the left of the agent who gave Mr. Yau the "okay," aimed directly at Mr. Yau and fired at least two pepper balls at him at close range.

Declarant Jungho Kim is a photojournalist whose work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle and Ca/Matters, among others. He wears a neon yellow vest marked "PRESS" and a white helmet marked "PRESS" in the front and rear. He has covered protests in Hong Kong and California. He has experience with staying out of the way of officers and with distinguishing himself from a protester, such as by never chanting or participating in protest activity. He had never been shot at by authorities until covering the Portland protests on July 19, 2020. During the protest, federal agents pushed protesters away from the area where Mr. Kim was recording. He was around 30 feet away from federal agents, standing still, taking pictures, with no one around him. He asserts that suddenly and without warning, he was shot in the chest just below his heart with a less lethal munition.Because he was wearing a ballistic vest, he was uninjured. He also witnessed, and photographed, federal agents firing munitions into a group of press and legal observers.

Unbelievably, the federal government testified that it was unwilling to cease its violent acts towards journalists.

The Federal Defendants intend to keep dispersing journalists and legal observers. See ECF 67 at 20 (arguing that allowing journalists and legal observers to remain "is not a practicable option"). The actions by the federal agents described by Plaintiffs are part of a pattern of officially sanctioned conduct. The Federal Defendants argue that such conduct is necessary to protect federal property.

The government is begging for a restraining order and the court is more than willing to oblige. As it points out, the government is basically saying it is going to continue to do harm to people exercising their rights.

Plaintiffs, however, are not breaking any laws -- to the contrary, they are engaging in constitutionally protected First Amendment activity. It is one thing to ask citizens to obey the law in the future to avoid future alleged harm. But it is quite another for the Federal Defendants to insist that Plaintiffs must forgo constitutionally protected activity if they wish to avoid government force and interference.

Here's another one of the government's rejected pitches: let us violate their rights and they can sue us later. Not an option, says the court.

The Federal Defendants also argue that Plaintiffs have legal remedies available, such as bringing a civil rights action or a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and thus a forward-looking equitable remedy is not appropriate. Backward-looking claims for money damages, however, would not provide the relief Plaintiffs are seeking. Plaintiffs desire access and the ability to exercise their First Amendment rights to observe and report on government misconduct.

Every one of the federal government's arguments fail here. And for very good reason: every argument sucks. The court knocks them down one-by-one.

The Federal Defendants argue that Plaintiffs have an alternative location, because they can watch from a few blocks away. This argument is without merit. Federal agents are using tear gas, which decreases visibility, and the protests are at night. Reporting from a few blocks away is not a viable alternative location.

The Federal Defendants also argue that closure is essential because allowing some people to remain after a dispersal order is not practicable and is unworkable. This argument is belied by the fact that this precise remedy has been working for 21 days with the Portland Police Bureau. Indeed, after issuing the first TRO directed against the City, the Court specifically invited the City to move for amendment or modification if the original TRO was not working, or address any problems at the preliminary injunction phase. Instead, the City stipulated to a preliminary injunction that was nearly identical to the original TRO, with the addition of a clause relating to seized property. The fact that the City never asked for any modification and then stipulated to a preliminary injunction is compelling evidence that exempting journalists and legal observers is workable.

And there it is: federal officers are blocked from arresting or physically harming reporters and observers. Reporters are not bound by orders to disperse. The government is forbidden from seizing any recording equipment unless the person is suspected of a criminal act. And if it does that, there's a long set of rules for how seizures must be documented and what steps must be followed before the government can gain access to the content of seized devices.

This is probably the best part of the entire order -- something that makes it clear federal officers aren't going to get away with playing dumb when they start violating reporters' rights.

Because the Court considers any willful violation of this Order, or any express direction by a supervisor or commander to disregard or violate this Order, to be a violation of a clearly established constitutional right and thus not subject to qualified immunity in any action brought against any individual employee, officer, or agent of the Federal Defendants under Bivens v. Six Unknown Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), notice of this Order must be widely disseminated.

The government may be rethinking its "well, they can just sue for rights violations" argument. Walking into a lawsuit effectively naked is no federal officers' idea of a good time. For the foreseeable future, the federal government will have to play by the rules it set: respecting the rights it supposed to be guaranteeing.

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A resident of a senior living complex in Peabody, Massachusetts, waves from a window at family members. Nursing homes and assisted living centers in the US have varied widely in Covid-19 precautions. | Pat Greenhouse/Boston Globe via Getty Images

The virus is reaching some of the state’s older, more vulnerable residents.

When coronavirus cases began to spike again, experts outlined the worst-case scenario: that those spikes, initially concentrated among younger people who were more cavalier once businesses reopened, would eventually migrate to older people — particularly long-term care facilities, where so many seniors have already died from Covid-19.

And now, according to a new data analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, it seems those fears are being realized. The question is how bad it will get.

Over a two-week period from late June to July 10, in 23 states that KFF characterized as “hot spots,” the number of cases in long-term care facilities increased by 18 percent. That was lower than the overall increase in cases over the same period in those states, which was 49 percent, but it was still substantially higher than the increase in long-term care cases in the not-hot spot states (about 4 percent; overall cases in those states rose by 11 percent).

That disparity strongly suggests the more dramatic increase in long-term care cases in the hot-spot states is the result of broader community spread. It also indicates that the precautions nursing homes are taking to keep the virus out can only do so much good if the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in the outside world.

Texas and Florida, for example, saw the largest increases in overall cases during the time period studied — and they experienced the biggest spikes in long-term care cases. Overall cases in both states have doubled; infections in nursing homes jumped by 50 percent.

“These increases are particularly troubling given that they have happened amidst the strict measures that facilities have put in place,” Priya Chidambaram, the policy analyst at KFF who wrote the analysis, told me.

You could be tempted to take heart that the number of cases among long-term care patients has not increased as much as cases for the general population in US hot spots. But considering how much more adverse their outcomes are likely to be, that is actually little solace.

Long-term care patients account for less than 4 percent of all confirmed US Covid-19 cases, but more than 25 percent of the nearly 150,000 deaths. The disease is extremely deadly for older people: more than 10 percent of people older than 80 who contracted the coronavirus in Spain, Italy, and South Korea have died. According to the New York Times, the overall US case fatality rate is about 4 percent, but in nursing homes it is closer to 20 percent.

The same trends are playing out in the states currently enduring surges. Chidambaram told me that long-term care deaths in the new hot spots had increased at six times the rate of the states with more contained spread over a recent two-week period. In Texas, deaths in nursing homes leapt by more than 60 percent in that time; Florida also saw a 20 percent increase.

“We are more likely to see severe illness and death among those in long-term care facilities, so any rise in cases is concerning,” she said.

As I covered previously, the US had set itself up for failure in containing a pandemic within long-term care settings. For too long, those facilities have been poorly funded and they had not been adequately prepared for a major infectious disease outbreak. Early shortages in providing adequate Covid-19 testing for patients and protective gear for staff compounded the preexisting problems.

But the US is now months into the pandemic and this new data shows the country hasn’t been able to fully insulate nursing homes and assisted-living facilities when the virus is spreading in the broader community. Long-term care facilities have taken precautions — mandated testing, restrictions on visitors, isolating sick residents — but it still hasn’t been enough to suppress the virus’s spread.

“There is so far not much evidence that we know how to shield the most vulnerable when there is widespread community transmission,” Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard epidemiologist, told me recently.

And nursing homes are still enduring shortages in staffing or protective equipment or both; about 1 in 3 facilities have reported those problems, per KFF. Lags and gaps in reporting make it difficult to ascertain the exact toll of the virus on long-term care workers, but even a cursory attempt to reconcile the federal data on residents specifically with the Times’s count of all cases and deaths in nursing homes, including workers, suggests tens of thousands of workers have gotten sick and hundreds if not thousands of them have died in the pandemic.

So mitigation measures focused on nursing homes can’t totally prevent the coronavirus from finding its ways to vulnerable populations. Instead, the best way to protect nursing home residents and other older people is to contain the virus altogether. Several experts have pointed out to me that the countries that have seen the best results in long-term care settings are the ones that have, on the whole, kept their outbreaks under control.

As William Hanage at Harvard put it to me, both Massachusetts and Norway have seen about 60 percent of their coronavirus deaths occur in nursing homes. But for Massachusetts, that amounts to nearly 5,000 deaths, while in Norway, it is less than 200.

“The best way to keep these people safe is to keep community transmission low,” he said.

Instead, the recent spikes have led to record highs in new daily cases. Hospitalizations matched their spring peak. Cases have started to plateau in the past few days, but they aren’t dropping yet.

If the goal is to suppress spread overall to protect the elderly, as experts say it should be, then the US still has a long way to go.

This story appears in VoxCare, a newsletter from Vox on the latest twists and turns in America’s health care debate. Sign up to get VoxCare in your inbox along with more health care stats and news.

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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.

Beginning today, NIH and the biotech company Moderna are testing a Covid-19 vaccine in humans as part of the third phase of a clinical trial. The research needs 30,000 volunteers. It’s taking place across the country, at 89 different sites. And three of them are in the Washington area: George Washington University in DC, the […]

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If you’ve ever wondered how Nintendo’s classic games evolved before they reached store shelves, you might have a good chance to find out. According to VGC, (via Eurogamer) a “gigaleak” of Nintendo art assets and source code from the mid-1990s has sur...

As certain sectors of American society “debate” wearing masks in public during a pandemic, scientists are baffled. How can people avoid facing such an obvious medical reality? But this isn’t the first time groups have resisted the adoption of a new accessory designed to protect others.

“Many historical accounts show deep impatience with past surgeons’ hesitation to adopt surgical gloves,” writes Thomas Schlich, historian of medicine. Before gloves, surgeons would root around in their patients’ body cavities with their bare hands. It would take “more than a decade of passionate argument” before surgeons finally accepted gloves as a necessity.

The controversy surrounding surgical gloves was spurred by a growing movement promoting asepsis (complete sterility) over antisepsis (killing bacteria after they got into a wound). Asepsis, a concept championed by surgical pioneer Joseph Lister, required the doctor to completely sterilize instruments before surgery, usually by boiling them. Hands, unfortunately, are classified as “non-boilable” objects.

And so it was that on April 13, 1898, the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the German Society for Surgery devoted an entire afternoon session to the topic of gloves.

The Austrian surgeon Alexander Fraenkel wrote of the session that it “felt like a commercial fair, not like a scientific meeting befitting the dignity and importance of the occasion.” He continued: “For a whole afternoon participants discussed the best glove models.” In a sort of proto-fashion show, people were “marching up all the various specimens made from different materials, in all sizes and price ranges…. A whole apparatus of pseudoscience was mobilized to inaugurate the new fashion of the surgeon in gloves.”

Fraenkel would later publish an article decrying the use of gloves altogether, proclaiming them, in Schlich’s analysis, to be a “bizarre aberration, part of the equally bizarre ‘surgical costume’ with bonnet, mask, and veil that some of his colleagues had thought up to achieve the erroneous goal of complete sterility in operations.”

To be fair, some of the earliest attempts at surgical gloves seem a little bizarre today. Elbow-length fabric gloves of cotton or silk quickly became soaked with blood during surgery. Leather military gloves were tested but deemed too clumsy. One surgeon tried treating the fabric of his gloves with wax before surgery, in an attempt to make them less permeable. Some suggested putting wax directly onto the surgeon’s hands and forgoing gloves altogether (the idea never took off).

After much debate, and trial and error, one surgeon proposed that “the ideal glove had to fulfill five conditions,” writes Schlich. “It had to be (1) impermeable, (2) flexible, and (3) tear-resistant, (4) it had to not squeeze the skin too tightly and not get too hot, and (5) it had to be sterilizable.”

By 1907, impermeable rubber gloves had become cheaper and more durable, and their use began to grow more widespread. The technology was still imperfect: Schlich writes that these early rubber gloves “were easily torn by instruments and bone edges, and they still impaired surgeons’ sense of touch and…their slipperiness made it difficult to grasp and hold smooth organs such as the bowels.”

Despite these imperfections, doctors were forced to acknowledge that it was probably better not to spread their germs to other people, even if they had to be a little uncomfortable. Sound familiar?

The post The Surgeons Who Said No to Gloves appeared first on JSTOR Daily.

by Derek Willis, Eric Umansky and Moiz Syed

by Eric Umansky

Until last month, New York state prohibited the release of police officers’ disciplinary records. Civilians’ complaints of abuse by officers were a secret. So were investigators’ conclusions. The public couldn’t even know if an officer was punished.

The New York City police officer whose use of a prohibited chokehold led to the death of Eric Garner in 2014 had a record of misconduct. Garner’s last words — “I can’t breathe” — became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.

The city investigator who revealed the existence of the officer’s record was forced to resign in 2017; the officer himself wasn’t fired until 2019.

When the death of George Floyd and footage of his pleas for his life ignited worldwide protests, activists in New York renewed their push to repeal the statute that kept disciplinary records under wraps, known as 50-a. State lawmakers finally acted, voting to repeal the provision, which had been on the books for decades.

Soon after, ProPublica asked New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, or CCRB, for a list of officers, along with the complaints against them, and what discipline, if any, had been recommended.

Today, we are making this information public and, with it, providing an unprecedented picture of civilians’ complaints of abuse by NYPD officers as well as the limits of the current system that is supposed to hold officers accountable. We’ve published a database that lets you search the police complaints so you can see the information for yourself. Data experts can also download the data.

The database lists active-duty officers who’ve had at least one allegation against them substantiated by the CCRB: That’s about 4,000 officers out of the NYPD’s 36,000-member force.

Unions for city police officers, firefighters and corrections officers have sued New York City to stop the disclosure of most of these and other disciplinary records. The unions objected to the release of any cases other than “proven and final disciplinary matters.” That would exclude the vast majority of complaints against officers.

“We are defending privacy, integrity and the unsullied reputations of thousands of hard-working public safety employees,” a union spokesman said on the filing of the lawsuit.

On Wednesday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the city, including the CCRB, from releasing disciplinary records. Judge Katherine Polk Failla also barred the New York Civil Liberties Union from disclosing data it had obtained. ProPublica has not been a party to the case and is not subject to the order by Failla, who has scheduled a hearing for next month.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In releasing the information included in our database, ProPublica is not publishing all complaints against officers. As we’ve noted, we’ve limited the data to only those officers who’ve had at least one substantiated allegation. And every complaint in the database was fully investigated by the CCRB, which means, among other steps, a civilian provided a sworn statement to investigators. We’ve also excluded any allegations that investigators concluded were unfounded, meaning investigators determined the incident did not happen as the complainant alleged. There were about 3,200 allegations listed as unfounded in the data we were provided, about 9% of the total.

We chose to include the basic information disclosed by the CCRB about allegations that investigators deemed unsubstantiated. Unsubstantiated means the CCRB — which has limited investigative powers — was not able to confirm that the alleged incident happened and that it violated the NYPD’s rules. Still, these records can help readers examine the records of officers who have been the subject of a pattern of complaints.

“We understand the arguments against releasing this data. But we believe the public good it could do outweighs the potential harm,” said Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor in chief. “The database gives the people of New York City a glimpse at how allegations involving police misconduct have been handled, and allows journalists and ordinary citizens alike to look more deeply at the records of particular officers.”

The CCRB receives thousands of complaints every year, but it is only able to substantiate a tiny fraction of them. In 2018, the agency examined about 3,000 allegations of misuse of force. It substantiated 73.

Investigators are often not able to reach conclusions on cases, in significant part because they must rely on the NYPD to hand over evidence, such as footage from body-worn cameras. Often, the department doesn’t do so, despite a legal duty to cooperate with CCRB investigations.

In other cases included in our database, investigators concluded that what a civilian alleged did happen, but the conduct was allowed by the NYPD’s rules. The Police Department’s guidelines often give officers substantial discretion, particularly around use of force. In the curious jargon of police oversight, those cases are classified as “exonerated.”

“I exonerated tons of cases that involved awful conduct that fell within the guidelines,” said former CCRB investigator Dan Bodah, who now researches police oversight at the Vera Institute of Justice. “It’s kind of haunting. The law and policy gives cops a lot of discretion.”

Despite all the limitations, some officers still have multiple allegations against them that have been substantiated. According to the records, 303 officers still working at the NYPD have had five or more substantiated allegations against them. The data we have only shows the briefest of descriptions of alleged abuse. Usually just a few words. But they add up: There are nearly 5,000 allegations of “physical force,” nearly 2,000 of “frisk” and more than 600 of “gun pointed.”

Readers can use the information in the database to request details on cases from the CCRB.

And, even without those further details — which the CCRB is currently barred from releasing because of the order by Failla — users can look at the records and see potential patterns of abuse. Thirty-four officers have had 40 or more allegations against them.

GO Fest 2020 Day 2 is upon us and we’ve prepared a comprehensive overview of what to expect today. The second day of GO Fest is themed around Team GO Rocket and their plan to takeover the world of Pokémon GO.

Completing the Team GO Rocket special research will unlock encounters with Shadow Mewtwo and Victini.

Team GO Rocket takeover

Grunts have taken over all the PokéStops! The Grunts use weaker Pokémon than usual, but their lineups haven’t been changed significantly. The Grunts also refresh, which means you can encounter Grunts at the same PokéStop multiple times.

Rocket Leaders

Team GO Rocket Leaders are using their old lineups again and they have a fixed lineup throughout all encounters:

Shadow Mewtwo and Victini

Victini

Shadow Mewtwo and Victini are obtainable by completing the Stage 4/6 of GO Fest 2020: Rocket Straight to Victory special research.

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GO Fest 2020: Rocket Straight to Victory

Stage 1/6

• Take a Snapshot: 2 Incense
• Power Up Pokemon 3 times: 100 Pokeballs
• Send 3 Gifts to Friends: 2020 Stardust
• Stage rewards: 20x Max revives, 2020 XP, Machamp

Stage 2/6

• Defeat 2 Team GO Rocket Grunts: Weavile
• Rescue 2 Shadow Pokemon: 20 Max Potions
• Purify a shadow Pokemon: 20 Max Revives
• Stage rewards: 2020 Stardust, Golem encounter, 20x Rare Candy

Stage 3/6

• Defeat Team Leader Cliff: Shadow Articuno
• Defeat Team Leader Arlo: Shadow Moltres
• Defeat Team Leader Sierra: Shadow Zapdos
• Stage rewards: 20x Revive, 1x Super Rocket Radar, 5000 Stardust

Stage 4/6

• Defeat Team Go Rocket Boss Giovanni: Shadow Mewtwo
• Stage Rewards: 20x Ultra Balls, Victini, 2x Incense

Stage 5/6

• Claim Reward: 2020 Stardust
• Claim Reward: 2020 XP
• Claim Reward: 2020 Stardust
• Stage rewards: 20x Ultra Balls, 20 Victini candy, 2x Incense

Stage 6/6

• Take a Snapshot of Victini: 20 Victini Candy
• Catch 20 different Pokemon: 10 Rare Candy
• Send 3 Gifts to Friends: 1 Super Incubator
• Stage Rewards: Victini Shirt, 2 Premium Battle Pass, 2 Star Piece

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Event Specific Raid Bosses

Tier	Raid Bosses
Tier 1	Timburr Klink
Tier 2	Kirlia Exeggutor (Alola) Gible
Tier 3	Aerodactyl Skarmory Chansey
Tier 4	Blastoise Charizard Venusaur
Tier 5	Giratina (Origin) Giratina (Altered) Dialga Palkia

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Event specific 7 KM Eggs

Pichu	Cleffa	Igglybuff
Togepi	Azurill	Buneary
Munchlax	Woobat	Happiny
Eevee	Budew	Riolu
Chingling	Zigzagoon (Galarian)	Meowth (Galarian)
Darumaka (Galarian)	Farfetch’d (Galarian)	Stunfisk (Galarian)

The post Pokémon GO Fest 2020 Day 2 Guide appeared first on Pokemon GO Hub.

CDC: One-third of COVID-19 patients who aren’t hospitalized have long-term illness

One-third of COVID-19 patients who aren’t hospitalized have long-term illness, CDC says

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks at a press conference at Corona Plaza in Queens, New York, on April 14, 2020. | Scott Heins/Getty Images

She responded to sexist insults made by Rep. Ted Yoho this week and called out a broader culture of sexism in Congress.

In a powerful floor speech condemning Rep. Ted Yoho’s misogynistic statements earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decimated a common trope that men have used time and again to defend themselves from allegations of sexism: the “father of daughters” excuse.

During a policy disagreement at the US Capitol on Tuesday, Yoho called the Congress member “crazy,” “disgusting,” and “out of [her] freaking mind.” After she left, he reportedly said she was a “fucking bitch,” according to The Hill’s Mike Lillis.

In remarks on Wednesday, Yoho glossed over most of this without taking accountability for his words. “Having been married for 45 years with two daughters, I’m very cognizant of my language,” Yoho said. “The offensive name-calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleagues and if they were construed that way, I apologize for their misunderstanding.”

Ocasio-Cortez, however, called his deflection out for what it was: the latest example of men engaging in a culture of abuse toward women while using the women in their lives to avoid scrutiny for their actions.

“I will not stay up late at night waiting for an apology from a man who has no remorse over calling women and using abusive language towards women,” she said in a floor speech on Thursday. “But what I do have issue with is using women — wives and daughters — as shields and excuses for poor behavior.”

Her speech, which emphasized that the problem is much bigger than Yoho, was long overdue.

“Mr. Yoho was not alone. He was walking shoulder to shoulder with Representative Roger Williams,” she said. “And that’s when we start to see that this issue is not about one incident. It is cultural. It is a culture of a lack of impunity, of acceptance of violence and violent language against women, an entire structure of power that supports that.”

You can watch the entirety of her remarks below:

The inequities Ocasio-Cortez called out are ones that have been a problem for some time: In her speech, she decried misogyny in Congress, dismissed the excuses that have been made for men’s behavior, and questioned the example that Yoho and others were setting for other men.

When someone leverages the “father of daughters” trope as a shield from accountability, for example, they hurt the very people they claim to respect and value, Ocasio-Cortez argued. In fact, they admit via their own actions that it’s acceptable to act in this way toward all women.

“Mr. Yoho mentioned that he has a wife and two daughters. I am two years younger than Mr. Yoho’s youngest daughter. I am someone’s daughter too,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Now, what I am here to say is that this harm that Mr. Yoho levied, tried to levy against me, was not just an incident directed at me, but when you do that to any woman, what Mr. Yoho did was give permission to other men to do that to his daughters.”

For too long, men have used this “father of daughters” cop-out as a seemingly valid response while failing to address the specific harms caused by their actions.

Ocasio-Cortez’s speech has sparked a broader conversation about misogyny

Ocasio-Cortez’s speech on Thursday was about more than just the incident with Yoho.

While that exchange was the inciting factor, it ultimately sparked a broader conversation about sexism in Congress, an institution still overwhelmingly dominated by men. Presently, just 24 percent of the House members are women while the other three-quarters are men.

During her floor speech, Ocasio-Cortez was joined by more than 10 men and women who took turns excoriating Yoho’s remarks and an institution that has long advanced and tolerated such misogyny.

“I want to be clear that this violent language is about power,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who referenced a time she was criticized by a Republican lawmaker as a “young lady [who] didn’t know a damn thing about what [she] was talking about.”

“These are the things that happen to us all the time,” Jayapal said.

Others who spoke included Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Jackie Speier, Ilhan Omar, Al Green, and Steny Hoyer, all of whom you can watch in the clip below:

Further highlighting the prevalence of sexism, a New York Times report about Ocasio-Cortez’s speech has since been criticized for its framing of Ocasio-Cortez’s actions. The piece, which back-handedly praised her skill at “using her detractors to amplify her own political brand,” drew pushback for deeming her speech — and not Yoho’s comments — as the “disruptive” event.

“[Women voicing] fury at systemic degradation is read as opportunistic. Whereas men’s abusive behavior [is] rarely understood as fundamental to how they attained & maintain THEIR power. But it is!” tweeted New York magazine writer Rebecca Traister.

Ultimately, Ocasio-Cortez’s speech and the comments by her colleagues highlighted how entrenched misogyny continues to be on Capitol Hill and beyond, as well as the dedicated focus that more and more lawmakers have to combating it.

In Congress, a growing number of women lawmakers has led to more open confrontations about sexism in recent years, discussions that are poised to continue. “Nothing is more wholesome for our government, for our politics, for our country, than the increased participation of women,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a press conference on Friday.

“We are not going away,” emphasized Jayapal.

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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.

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Strap yourselves in Trainers, Pokemon Go 2020 Fest Has Begun! As our overseas friends have just started experiencing the event we now have more details about Go Fest that we’re excited to share with you all.

Please note: This info is coming directly from our friends over at Serebii.net and will be updated as and when new information comes in.

Event Date: Saturday, July 25, 2020, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. & Sunday, July 26, 2020,  10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. local time.

Bonuses

• Boosted Pokemon Spawns for all who purchased a ticket.
• Special Research that gives a decent number of items.
• New shiny Pokemon have been released including Heatmor, Hat-wearing Kanto Starters and Unown!
• 3 Weeks of “Ultra Unlock” bonuses if enough global challenges are completed.

Habitats

There are 5 different “Habitats” that will rotate each hour on the hour for the duration of the event. The exact nature of which habitat you will face first will be determined by your time zone. You can see exactly which schedule you will have by clicking here.

Our friends over at P337.info have devised a handy web app that detects your timezone and displays the schedule of habitats based upon your location.

The 5 habitats are:

• Battle
• Friendship
• Fire
• Water
• Grass

Spawn Increases Throughout Entire Event

Incense	Incense	Photobomb

Spawn Increases Throughout Battle Biome

Machop	Grimer	Dratini
Sneasel	Skarmory	Slakoth
Sableye	Meditite	Swablu
Zangoose	Seviper	Gible
Croagunk	Stunfisk	Durant

Spawn Increases Throughout Friendship Biome

Pikachu	Clefairy	Jigglypuff
Chansey	Eevee	Snorlax
Togetic	Marill	Sudowoodo
Wobbuffet	Mantine	Roselia
Feebas	Woobat	Chimecho

Spawn Increases Throughout Grass Biome

Bulbasaur	Venusaur	Oddish
Exeggcute	Exeggutor	Tangela
Sunkern	Treecko	Seedot
Cherrim	Snover	Leafeon
Snivy	Foongus	Ferroseed

Spawn Increases Throughout Fire Biome

Charmander	Charizard	Vulpix
Ponyta	Marowak (Alola)	Magmar
Flareon	Houndour	Torchic
Numel	Tepig	Darumaka
Litwick	Heatmor

 

Spawn Increases Throughout Water Biome

Squirtle	Poliwag	Tentacool
Slowpoke	Magikarp	Vaporeon
Chinchou	Qwilfish	Mudkip
Carvanha	Clamperl	Oshawott
Tympole	Alomomola

New Pokémon in Event

• Pikachu Visor Bulbasaur
• Pikachu Visor Charmander
• Pikachu Visor Squirtle
• Rotom
• Victini

New Shiny Pokémon In Event

The Global Challenges

Trainers should work together in the Global Challenge Arena! This GO Fest–exclusive feature will be available only to ticket holders. In the Global Challenge Arena, Trainers will have to join forces in order to complete a collaborative challenge each hour. If Trainers complete a challenge, they will earn a bonus for the remainder of the hour. You can check the Global Challenge Arena screen to keep track of global progress!

Day 1 Priorities:

We all like a helping hand sometimes and for those who are looking for a few pointers please see the below points for what you should be focusing your time on during this first Day of Go Fest.

• Catch as many Pokemon as you can whilst your in a specific habitat! – Some of these spawns are very rare that you might not get another chance to catch for a long time so fill your boots! The professor is standing by with the grinder for all of those ‘Mon that don’t make the cut.
• Don sweat – If you miss a particular Pokemon, the habitats appear twice each, so wait focus on the current spawns and go after your prize later in the day.
• Remember to help complete the current Global Challenges. These change every hour and there is a huge set of rewards if we all manage to achieve a certain number completed. See below for the ‘Deets.
• Remember to HAVE FUN! We might never get to experience an event like this ever again so please don’t forget to enjoy yourselves out there, wherever you are!

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Event Specific Raid Bosses

Tier	Raid Bosses
Tier 2	Kirlia Exeggutor
Tier 3	Aerodactyl
Tier 4	Blastoise
Tier 5	Kyogre Groudon

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Event Research Encounters

Via Serebii.net

Go Fest Welcome

Task	Reward
Take a Snapshot of your buddy	Incense x 10
Use an Incense	Great Ball x 200
Catch 20 Fire type Pokemon	Charizard Encounter + 10,000 XP
Catch 20 Water type Pokemon	Blastoise Encounter + 10,000 Stardust
Catch 20 Grass type Pokemon	Venusaur Encounter + 2 x Lucky egg
Battle in 2 Raids	Gible Encounter
Make A New Friend	Snorlax Encounter

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Ultra Unlock Bonus  rewards for completing the global challenges

If enough trainers come together to complete the following number of global challenges then there will be 3 weeks of “Ultra Unlock” Bonuses. There will be a total of 32 possible global challenges to complete within the 2-day event window and the requirements are as follow:

Challenge	Reward
Complete 8 Global Challenges	Dragon Week
Complete 16 Global Challenges	Enigma Week
Complete 24 Global Challenges	Unova Week

 

Day 2

Although today has given us an inkling of what general sort of thing to expect from Go Fest, Day 2 has always been sold as a “Surprise” and a complete shake-up for players.

Stay tuned for our Day 2 Guide…

The post Pokemon Go Fest 2020 Day 1 Guide appeared first on Pokemon GO Hub.