Lindsey

Police confront demonstrators as Black Lives Matter supporters protest in Portland, Oregon on July 4, 2020. | John Rudoff/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

“At this point, we’re already in a constitutional crisis,” an Oregon attorney told Vox.

Oregon’s governor doesn’t want them. Oregon’s senators don’t want them. Portland’s mayor and city commissioners don’t want them. And Portland’s residents don’t want them.

And yet, at the urging of President Donald Trump, federal officers are roaming the streets of Oregon’s biggest city in unmarked vehicles, detaining protesters without identifying themselves.

Multiple reports and videos clearly show heavily armed federal law enforcement officers dressed in camouflage stepping out of unmarked civilian vans and forcibly detaining anti-racism and anti-police brutality demonstrators on the streets of Portland, often far away from any federal property (where federal officials have jurisdiction). In many instances, those taken into custody hadn’t clearly violated any laws.

After several days of fear and confusion as reports of these mysterious activities piled up, the Trump administration acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had officers from Border Patrol and other agencies use unmarked vehicles in Portland last week to protect federal property, namely a federal courthouse in the heart of the city, which has been tagged by graffiti and had a small fire and broken windows.

Trump administration officials, especially acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, have defended the aggressive tactics. They’ve portrayed the largely peaceful George Floyd-inspired protests in the city, which have lasted over 50 days and at times led to some property destruction and minor attacks on authorities, as a “violent mob” of “lawless anarchists.”

“The city of Portland has been under siege ... by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city,” he said in a lengthy July 16 statement. “Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property, including the federal courthouse, and attack the brave law enforcement officers protecting it.”

“DHS will not abdicate its solemn duty to protect federal facilities and those within them,” he added.

But critics say the heavy-handed approach is an overreaction to mostly peaceful protests and detrimental to the rule of law. “This is the stuff of fascist regimes, not American democracy,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) told me. “It’s important that we don’t have secret police in America,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) also said in an interview.

Two direct consequences have come out of the national controversy.

First, activists and the lawyers who represent them say the once-dwindling crowds are growing again in response to the federal government’s actions. “More and more protesters are coming out each night,” said Ashlee Albies, a local attorney who represents Don’t Shoot Portland, a civil rights organization. “There are more protesters now than there are feds.”

A mounting standoff, some worry, could potentially lead to even more tensions and violence. In just the past day, demonstrators burned the Portland police union’s building and federal officers fired tear gas at mothers peacefully protesting.

Second, a legal battle is now underway, pitting Portland’s citizens against a federal government with broad statutory authorities. Few, though, believe the courts will compel the Trump administration to stand down. At most, it might lead federal law enforcement to act more cautiously, but they’ll still operate in areas where locals don’t want them to.

Which means the events in Portland are likely to persist for quite some time, testing the limits of federal authority in American cities and the resolve of those who live in them. “At this point, we’re already in a constitutional crisis,” said Juan Chávez, a lawyer and director of the civil rights project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center.

Activists say Portland police were abusing their power before federal officials arrived

Two months ago, the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by police officers in Minneapolis, sparked nationwide protests calling for racial equality and expansive police reform. As in other American cities, thousands took to the streets of Portland and vowed to keep the pressure on local and federal leaders. But the situation in Portland quickly turned ugly.

From the start, Portland’s police force used tear gas to maintain order. Such measures led a US district judge on June 9 to ban the use of tear gas except in instances “in which the lives or safety of the public or the police are at risk.” That order would be expanded two weeks later to include rubber bullets and other nonlethal munitions.

In the midst of the legal battle, Portland’s police force claimed order was unraveling as statues of Confederate generals and former Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were defaced or torn down.

State lawmakers passed a law saying local police could only use tear gas on protesters if police declared that a “riot” was underway that could severely impact the safety of officers and property. That provided law enforcement quite a loophole to continue using tear gas, local activists told me — one that police have exploited since.

That not only angered protesters but also impacted uninvolved citizens. In some cases, the tear gas would waft into residential areas, affecting drivers, homeowners, gas station attendants, and public transportation riders far away from the standoff.

But in some ways that wasn’t so surprising, locals said: Portland’s police had long been known to use aggressive tactics, as evidenced by a recent incident in which officers swarmed a protester on his bicycle to arrest him.

Portland’s police department continued to defend its actions, though, claiming such measures were necessary to tamp down unruly or unlawful protests.

Tear gas “is uncomfortable, but effective at dispersing crowds,” Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said in a July 1 video posted to Twitter. “We would rather not use it. We would rather have those in the area follow the law and not engage in dangerous behavior.”

Deploying tear gas and other crowd-control methods didn’t compel all protesters to stop demonstrating, but they did lead to a reduction in numbers, activists said. Still, any amount of protesters tussling with law enforcement was apparently too much for President Donald Trump, so he got involved.

The feds come to Portland

On June 26, Trump signed an executive order to send federal officers to cities around the country to protect statues, monuments, and federal property. Five days later, Wolf, the acting Department of Homeland Security secretary, formed the Protecting American Communities Task Force to coordinate the response nationwide.

“DHS is answering the President’s call to use our law enforcement personnel across the country to protect our historic landmarks,” Wolf said in a July 1 statement. “We won’t stand idly by while violent anarchists and rioters seek not only to vandalize and destroy the symbols of our nation, but to disrupt law and order and sow chaos in our communities.”

According to DHS, the new task force would “conduct ongoing assessments of potential civil unrest or destruction and allocate resources to protect people and property,” which might “involve potential surge activity to ensure the continuing protection of critical locations.”

The task force was put together in haste. The units DHS would send didn’t have the proper training to deal with mass demonstrations, per a Homeland Security memo prepared for Wolf and reported by the New York Times on Saturday. And yet, groups like “BORTAC” — a Border Patrol unit that mainly investigates drug dealers and acts like a SWAT team — deployed to Portland in early July.

They and other federal law enforcement officers assembled at the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, drawing the attention of protesters and prompting a crowd to form outside the building. But on July 1 — the day the task force was formally announced — the federal officers really made their presence known. They came out of the boarded-up building and fired pepper balls at the demonstrators before retreating back inside.

That was the first clue activists got that the feds would be more involved than initially expected. Washington said federal officials would be in Portland mainly to protect federal property and investigate federal crimes, said Chávez, the civil rights attorney, but “we knew then and there that that wasn’t all they were doing.”

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was nervous about what he’d seen and called for an end to violent protests and a review of police tactics on July 3. “I am calling for a full and thorough review of all use of force tactics and meaningful public transparency,” he said.

But the federal government’s involvement only escalated from there.

On July 12, 26-year-old protester Donavan LaBella was shot in the head by federal officials with a “less lethal” munition while he held a boombox in front of federal officers. His mother said LaBella sustained facial and skull fractures requiring reconstructive surgery. That episode sparked a major outcry from the city and state’s most prominent politicians.

“The events of last night at the federal courthouse were the tragic and avoidable result of President Donald Trump, for weeks, continuing to push for force and violence in response to protests,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said in a statement at the time. “President Trump deploying armed federal officers to Portland only serves to escalate tensions and, as we saw yesterday, will inevitably lead to unnecessary violence and confrontation.”

And in the last week or so, it appears federal officers have taken their mandate a step further by riding around Portland in unmarked vehicles and detaining suspects in ways critics say amounts to kidnapping.

Perhaps the best-known case is that of Mark Pettibone. He and his friend were returning home from a protest at the courthouse in the early hours of July 15. The protest had been mostly peaceful, and law enforcement agencies hadn’t used tear gas against demonstrators that day.

But around 2 am, unidentified people in camouflage stepped out of a van and threw Pettibone into the back of it against his will. Pettibone, who claims he did nothing suspicious or illegal, told Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) on July 16 that “I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldn’t see and they held my hands over my head.”

After driving around downtown for a while, the armed men took him inside a building, which Pettibone would only later learn was the federal courthouse. “It was basically a process of facing many walls and corners as they patted me down and took my picture and rummaged through my belongings,” he told OPB.

Pettibone was placed in a cell before two officers came to read him his Miranda rights, though he says they didn’t say why he was under arrest. Pettibone didn’t waive those rights and instead demanded to speak to a lawyer. Roughly 90 minutes later, the officials let him go without recording his arrest or charging him with any crime.

In a subsequent interview with the Washington Post, Pettibone said he still doesn’t know exactly who arrested him or why.

Federal agents deny having detained Pettibone and haven’t answered reporters’ questions about that and other similar incidents. But Pettibone’s account, reflected in other people’s testimonials and videos, seems to show that this is a new — and highly irregular, if not illegal — practice by federal authorities. Even if the agents have a small patch on their arm that says the name of their agency, the fact that you can’t tell who they are, they won’t say who they are, and they ride in unidentified vehicles while wearing camouflage (not their usual uniforms) makes them unmarked.

“Detaining human beings is generally not a lawful tactic just to talk to people,” said Joshua Geltzer, the executive director for the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University.

The situation has become so fraught that even Portland’s police department has distanced itself from the federal actions. “At times, federal officers may take action in proximity to Portland officers ... We may take action near them,” Lovell, the police chief, said last week. “The federal officers have their objectives and the Portland Police Bureau has our objectives. We don’t direct federal officers’ actions, and they do not direct ours.”

Such a statement was likely offered ahead of what Lovell surely suspected was an imminent legal fight — one that has just arrived.

“If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere”

If you ask federal officials about their conduct in Portland — namely operating in secret to detain suspected offenders of federal law — they say they’re just maintaining law and order while following the president’s directives.

“While the US Customs and Border Protection respects every American’s right to protest peacefully, violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated,” a spokesperson for the agency told me, echoing Wolf’s assertions that “violent anarchists have organized events in Portland over the last several weeks with willful intent to damage and destroy federal property, as well as injure federal officers and agents.”

The spokesperson stressed two other points. First, the spokesperson said that CBP agents do identify themselves — including wearing insignia of their department (as in the tweet below) — but don’t display their names “due to recent doxxing incidents against law enforcement personnel who serve and protect our country.”

Second, the spokesperson said CBP supports the Federal Protective Service, a DHS agency charged with safeguarding federal property in Portland and elsewhere.

The spokesperson cited 40 USC 1315, which gives the DHS secretary the authority to have federal agents under his command bolster the FPS’s efforts. Others called into that support mission include the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Members of those forces are allowed to arrest those suspected of crimes, carry weapons, and even investigate potential offenses on or off federal property, experts say (though how far off that property is permissible and what reasonable suspicion authorities must initially prove is up for debate).

There are many possible violations to look into as protesters have graffitied and launched fireworks at federal buildings and property, as well as thrown objects like rocks and bottles at US government agents.

Even so, Georgetown’s Geltzer says the level of force must match the suspected offense — and that shooting protesters in the face with projectiles or detaining them in shadowy ways doesn’t do that. “No one excuses bad behavior, but it doesn’t change what an appropriate response looks like,” he told me. Law enforcement can of course speak with suspects if they assent, Geltzer continued, but “what’s not okay is going to the point of forcible arrest — against someone’s will — without probable cause.”

One would think federal authorities would act more cautiously because the city and state didn’t invite them in to help, experts said.

So far, federal authorities have yet to show real evidence to back up claims of probable cause, save for a litany of alleged violations by Wolf in his July 16 statement. Below is a screenshot of a few sections from that list.

Department of Homeland Security

That lack of clarity is partly why Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum last Friday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies involved in the federal response in Portland. Per her office’s press release last week, the motion, if granted, “would immediately stop federal authorities from unlawfully detaining Oregonians,” thereby protecting their First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights (among others).

“Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening,” Rosenblum said in a statement at the time. “If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere.” She clearly has the support of Oregon’s US politicians, with Wyden, Merkley, and two representatives on the same day calling for a probe into federal law enforcement.

“This abuse of power demands an investigation, and those federal agents involved should find their federal employment terminated,” Wyden told me.

Beyond the legal matters, though, there’s also a question of whether the federal officers’ tactics are even effective at calming down the protests — or whether, as most experts I spoke to said, they’re inflaming the situation further.

First, there’s the basic issue of federal officials not wearing specific identifying uniforms or insignia or otherwise clearly identifying themselves to those they’re detaining.

Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the Brennan Center for Justice, told me the practice of officers identifying themselves before detaining suspects is equally important for officers’ safety as for citizens’. The person under suspicion may not believe federal officers are who they really are, instead believing they are members of militias or even just random vigilantes. Portland, after all, has become an epicenter in the US for far-right violence, replete with ordinary citizens dressing like soldiers to make a political point and scare their enemies.

Such confusion makes policing in this way harder. “How are [suspects] supposed to know that it’s a federal official arresting them?” German asked. “Without proper insignia, the interest in resisting is much greater,” potentially escalating to violence. It’s also possible, but less likely, that federal officials will mistake each other for protesters or militia groups in similar uniforms. “We don’t want to be pitting law enforcement against one another in the streets of an American city,” German noted.

Then there’s the broader issue of using harsh tactics to attempt to quell demonstrations.

Edward Maguire, an expert on protest policing at Arizona State University who co-authored a well-regarded (free) book on the subject, said the federal government’s strategy to use overwhelming force will surely backfire.

Simply put, his research from observing the policing of protests around the world shows authorities who use over-the-top tactics spark a massive backlash. The “moderates” in the crowd — that is, those protesting peacefully and who don’t break the law — start to embrace a more radical stance toward law enforcement aiming to control the protest. Instead of calming everything down, then, authorities end up with “a lot of people who are really pissed off,” Maguire said.

The Trump administration is committing this cardinal sin of protest policing in Portland. “The response that we’re seeing from the federal agents is unskilled, lacks any coherent underlying strategy, and seems almost perfectly designed to escalate tensions rather than reduce them,” Maguire told me. “It’s almost cartoonish it’s so ridiculous.”

The implications are chilling. On one hand, you have a federal government determined to quash protests with ever-increasing force. On the other hand, you have demonstrations that at one point were winding down but are now ramping up again in direct response to the heavy-handedness.

And so far the escalating standoff shows no signs of dissipating.

No one is backing down

Talk to Portland’s protesters and their lawyers, and it’s clear they expect to stay the course despite federal pressure.

“We’ve been shot at, gassed, and beaten over the last two months — and we still haven’t given up,” said Chávez, the Oregon Justice Resource Center attorney. “The intimidation is part of the intent,” but “the only thing that can stop this is people power.”

“People in Portland are not going to back down, so the feds should just leave,” said Albies, the attorney for civil rights activists in the city. “The more they attack protesters, the more they demonstrate that property is more important than human rights and human lives.”

But listen to the statements from those in charge of the federal response and it’s equally apparent they will continue this campaign. “We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE,” Trump wrote in a Sunday tweet.

Likely bolstered by the president’s vocal support, acting DHS chief Wolf — fresh off a visit with federal officers in Portland the week before — told Fox News on Monday that “I don’t need invitations by the state, state mayors, or state governors to do our job. We’re going to do that, whether they like us there or not.”

With no one backing down, tensions have continued to skyrocket. On Sunday night, protesters broke into the Portland Police Association’s office and lit the building on fire, according to the city’s police.

That same evening, federal officers launched tear gas at members of Mothers Against Police Brutality who had formed a human shield in front of demonstrators. They were mainly chanting, “Leave our kids alone!” per someone at the scene, who also noted that at least one of the mothers was pregnant.

Despite the rising tensions, the Trump administration is apparently pleased with overall results. It appears the federal government is considering a similar response in Chicago, which would surely cause an even bigger uproar due to the size of the city and Trump’s racially charged comments about violence there. It would also crystallize that Trump and others believe such measures are the only way to handle nationwide protests, results be damned.

That’s why Albies and other activists believe a definitive stand must take place in Portland — or else risk similar scenes metastasizing around America. “Litigation is not going stop this. Political action is not going to stop this. People power is not going to stop this,” she said. “But all of that together will place maximum pressure on the police and federal government.”

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Looks like we finally have some secret police to call our own. Ongoing protests stemming from a Minnesota police officer's brutal killing of an unarmed Black man have provoked a federal response. In some cases, the National Guard has been called in to quell the more violent and destructive aspects of some demonstrations. Others -- like the 50+ days of continuous protests in Portland, Oregon -- have been greeted with something far more frightening.

Jonathan Levinson and Conrad Wilson of Oregon Public Broadcasting were the first to break the news of unidentified federal officers yanking people off the street into unmarked vehicles and disappearing them for a few hours of interrogation.

In the early hours of July 15, after a night spent protesting at the Multnomah County Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, Mark Pettibone and his friend Conner O’Shea decided to head home.

[...]

A block west of Chapman Square, Pettibone and O’Shea bumped into a group of people who warned them that people in camouflage were driving around the area in unmarked minivans grabbing people off the street.

“So that was terrifying to hear,” Pettibone said.

They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them.

“I see guys in camo,” O’Shea said. “Four or five of them pop out, open the door and it was just like, ‘Oh shit. I don’t know who you are or what you want with us.’”

Pettibone was grabbed by the unidentified officers, who wore nothing indicating which branch of the federal government they worked for, and shoved into a van with his hat pulled down over his eyes. He was taken to the federal courthouse (something he wasn't aware of until he was released), patted down, photographed, and had his belongings searched. After all of this, he was put into a cell where he was finally read his Miranda rights. He refused to talk to the officers and they released him about 90 minutes later. At no point was he told what he had been detained for, nor was he given any paperwork documenting his detainment.

No one appears to know for sure which branch of the federal government is taking people off the street and detaining them without probable cause. The officers performing these sweeps use unmarked vehicles and dress in camouflage uniforms that contain no identfying info that might indicate what agency they work for.

The federal government has deployed a mixture of federal agencies to cities with ongoing protests, including the US Marshals Service, CBP, ICE, and Bureau of Prisons riot officers. Presumably the DEA is in the mix as well, since it invited itself along for this anti-free-speech ride.

The DHS -- speaking through its acting secretary -- says this is justified.

The city of Portland has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city. Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property, including the federal courthouse, and attack the brave law enforcement officers protecting it.  

A federal courthouse is a symbol of justice - to attack it is to attack America. Instead of addressing violent criminals in their communities, local and state leaders are instead focusing on placing blame on law enforcement and requesting fewer officers in their community. This failed response has only emboldened the violent mob as it escalates violence day after day.

A long list of supposed atrocities committed by protesters follows. Most of the list details graffiti, along with low-level vandalism targeting cameras and police barriers. Also listed are activities like trespassing, doxing federal officers, and deploying laser pointers. Secretary Chad Wolf universally describes the protesters as "violent anarchists," even though there's no evidence linking protesters to coordinated activities by anarchists groups. Setting off fireworks and clashing with riot police are normal behavior during protests, but Wolf's narrative portrays these as acts of war in a clash local law enforcement agencies are losing.

Wolf says he's going to take this local action nationwide. Protesters in other cities will soon be experiencing the federal government's Stasi-esque bypassing of niceties like the need to establish probable cause before shoving people into unmarked vans and dragging them away for questioning.

With as much lawbreaking is going on, we're seeking to prosecute as many people as are breaking the law as it relates to federal jurisdiction. That's not always happening with respect to local jurisdiction and local offenses. But, you know, this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we're responsible for around the country.

The Oregon state Department of Justice has already filed a lawsuit against the federal government for its actions. Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum issued this statement a few days after OPB broke the news.

I share the concerns of our state and local leaders -- and our Oregon U.S. Senators and certain Congressional representatives -- that the current escalation of fear and violence in downtown Portland is being driven by federal law enforcement tactics that are entirely unnecessary and out of character with the Oregon way. These tactics must stop. They not only make it impossible for people to assert their First Amendment rights to protest peacefully. They also create a more volatile situation on our streets.

TL;DR: the federal government's secret police are rioting.

Other civic leaders in Oregon feel the same way.

The mayor of Portland demanded Friday that President Donald Trump remove militarized federal agents he deployed to the city after some detained people on streets far from federal property they were sent to protect.

“Keep your troops in your own buildings, or have them leave our city,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said at a news conference.

Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said Trump is looking for a confrontation in the hopes of winning political points elsewhere and to serve as a distraction from the coronavirus pandemic, which is causing spiking numbers of infections in Oregon and the nation.

If Trump and Republicans don't like Governor Brown politicizing the federal response to protests, they should take a long look at their own motivations first.

If you can't read/see the tweet, it says:

Flanked by AG Barr, Pres says he's planning announcement next week on Federal action to quell violence in cities, citing Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago. He says some cities "are like war zones," and makes it partisan, saying they're run by "liberal, left-wing Democrats."

The only agency that's confirmed its presence in Portland is the CBP.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokeswoman said on Friday agents had been deployed to Portland to support a newly launched U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unit, tasked with enforcing last month’s executive order from Republican President Donald Trump to protect federal monuments and buildings.

But the DHS claims officers have not been rolling up on people in unmarked vans and dragging them to unknown locations for questioning.

A senior DHS official said officers arrested people for assaulting federal officers and vandalizing federal property, but did not provide specific cases. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the issue, rejected the idea anyone was arrested without good cause.

“Federal officials don’t go around arresting people for no reason,” the official said. “This isn’t communist China.”

No. It's not. But that's what's happening. And it's being done with the blessing of the "law and order" president who has spent more time bashing people engaged in First Amendment activity than condemning the actions of the law enforcement officers who triggered these ongoing demonstrations. You don't have to be a Communist to enact a police state. Fascists like police states, too.

Let's step away from the secret police tactics that everyone -- including the agency overseeing the secret police -- agrees shouldn't be happening here and look at why federal agents and officers might be wandering the streets in gear that doesn't clearly indicate their agency affiliation.

It's all about dodging accountability. If arrestees and detainees don't know who's tossing them into unmarked vans, they're going to have a much more difficult time suing them for violating their rights. Sure, you can sue Does and unknown agencies but without more, it's going to be tough to keep the lawsuit alive. Detainees are being released without paperwork, ensuring there are no links between the officers doing the detaining and the rights violations they're inevitably going to be sued over.

The lack of identifying insignias makes it impossible for onlookers to testify to more than the fact that they same someone toss a Portland resident into an unmarked van and drive away. This testimony would be mostly useless in a kidnapping investigation. It's even less useful in federal lawsuits where officers and their agencies are already given a great deal of deference on top of the qualified immunity escape hatch.

But there's more to it than lawsuits. This is truly frightening even for those not being disappeared. Friends and family members who witness this happening (or are informed of it by witnesses) don't know who took the resident off the streets or who to contact to see if they can provide bail money or a ride home or even check on their well being.

Cops have been limiting personal accountability since the protests began by covering their badge numbers and removing other identifying information. The federal government's insertion of a melange of federal agencies into the mix muddies the water further, making it almost impossible for citizens to know who's coming after them or for what reason. Officers can stop people momentarily with reasonable suspicion but it requires probable cause to take them off the street and detain them for questioning. None of that appears to be in play, no matter what the DHS Secretary says. If the federal agents were so sure about the "rightness" of their actions, they wouldn't be afraid to wear agency insignias and/or identify themselves when detaining people.

This is nothing more than federal-level intimidation tacitly approved by this administration -- one that feels any local agency not actively brutalizing protesters has lost control of the situation. And the agencies involved are doing everything they can to ensure they and their officers will get away with it.

Everyone is still sorting out exactly what happened last week with the big hack of Twitter in which a number of prominent accounts -- including those of Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, and Uber -- all tweeted out a Bitcoin scam, promising to double people's money if they sent Bitcoin to a specific wallet (which appeared to receive a little over $100k). However, from what has been reported so far, it appears we actually got fairly lucky and that it was mainly a bunch of SIM swapping social engineers who historically have focused on getting popular short usernames. If you're not familiar with all of this, the Reply All podcast had a fascinating episode about the scam last year.

Meanwhile, Vice has a post describing how the hackers involved convinced a Twitter employee, who had access to a Twitter control panel, to make changes for them. The guy who controls the (formerly Adrian Lamo's) Twitter account @6, provided some details on how the hack got around two factor authentication controls: within the control panel a new email address was added to the account, and then, from the control panel, the two factor authentication would be disabled. An alert would be emailed out about this -- but to the new email address. Brian Krebs provided some details about who he thought was behind all of this (and the connection to the SIM swapped hack of Jack Dorsey's account from last year). Finally, the NY Times scored an interview with the hackers themselves -- again, showing that it was just a crew of SIM swapping kids, mostly doing this for the lulz (and also suggesting that the person Krebs fingered was only peripherally involved, in that he'd made use of the same access to pick up Lamo's old @6 account, but didn't take part in the Bitcoin scheme).

The interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or a sophisticated group of hackers. Instead, it was done by a group of young people — one of whom says he lives at home with his mother — who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6.

The Times verified that the four people were connected to the hack by matching their social media and cryptocurrency accounts to accounts that were involved with the events on Wednesday. They also presented corroborating evidence of their involvement, like the logs from their conversations on Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers and hackers, and Twitter.

What does become clear is that, from the details revealed so far, this wasn't some grand nefarious scheme. This was a bunch of kids having fun, who happened to get access to a control panel through some means or another.

At the very least, we should be thankful that's all this was. As multiple people I spoke to have said, we should be very, very, very glad that this was basically some kids having a laugh and hoping to make a little money, rather than a nation state wishing to start World War III. And while Twitter has not yet said if Direct Messages were accessed, from everything that's been revealed so far, it's pretty clear that whoever controlled these accounts easily had access to DMs.

And that should raise a bunch of questions.

While the hack was still going on, Senator Josh Hawley dashed off one of his infamous letters to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, asking a list of questions. Surprisingly, given Hawley's involvement and the usual inanity of his letters, this one was somewhat on point and asked a bunch of mostly reasonable questions:

Did this event represent a breach of users’ own account security or of Twitter’s systems?

Were accounts protected by two-factor authentication successfully targeted in this breach? If so, how was this possible?

Did this breach compromise the account security of users whose accounts were not used to share fraudulent posts? If so, how many accounts were affected? Were all accounts’ security compromised by this breach?

How many users may have faced data theft as a consequence of this breach?

What measures does Twitter undertake to prevent system-level hacks from breaching the security of its entire userbase?

Did this attack threaten the security of the president’s own Twitter account?

However, much more important is the key question asked by Senator Ron Wyden: why hasn't Twitter introduced end-to-end encryption for DMs, which would have prevented the ability for hackers to have read DMs under the circumstances described above.

"In September of 2018, shortly before he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, I met privately with Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey. During that conversation, Mr. Dorsey told me the company was working on end-to-end encrypted direct messages. It has been nearly two years since our meeting, and Twitter DMs are still not encrypted, leaving them vulnerable to employees who abuse their internal access to the company's systems, and hackers who gain unauthorized access," Wyden said in a statement.

Of course, given all that, we should note that despite Hawley asking good questions, he's a bit of a hypocrite here, as he has attacked encryption for years, and is a co-sponsor of the EARN IT Act, which will endanger encryption. If Hawley actually wanted Twitter to better protect user privacy in their data, he should be supporting Wyden's push to have the company encrypt more, not less.

A little more than a year ago, a federal court was asked how much First Amendment do we hand out to minors? Well, it's more than this particular school thought. The Pennsylvania school being sued was pretty sure it could draw the First Amendment line wherever it felt was appropriate. That's why administrators took action against a teen cheerleader (referred to in the lawsuit as "B.L.") when she decided to express her displeasure with her extracurricular activities with some extra-colorful language.

B.L. took to Snapchat to rant about her cheerleading experience, culminating in a "fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything" post that the school decided violated B.L.'s agreement not to disparage the school or its cheer program. The school agreed that students had Constitutional rights, but that B.L. had waived hers when she joined the cheerleading program. The federal court disagreed, stating that the revocation of rights must be voluntary, but B.L.'s wasn't really of the free will and volition variety.

[N]either B.L. nor her mother had bargaining equality with the coaches or the school; the Cheerleading Rules were not subject to negotiation; and B.L. and her mother were not represented by counsel when they agreed B.L. would abide by the Rules.

Also:

Additionally, conditioning extracurricular participation on a waiver of a constitutional right is coercive.

Having learned a valuable lesson about the First Amendment and how voluntary agreements should actually be voluntary, the school walked away from the suit chastened and newly respectful of students' rights.

Oh wait. The other thing.

The school appealed, determined to waste more taxpayer money attempting to secure judicial blessing to screw taxpayers' offspring. And the Third Circuit Court of Appeals says the First Amendment still holds.

Before we get to the heart of the First Amendment affirmation [PDF] delivered by the Third Circuit, let's stop and appreciate this brief discussion of emojis.

B.L. was frustrated: She had not advanced in cheerleading, was unhappy with her position on a private softball team, and was anxious about upcoming exams. So one Saturday, while hanging out with a friend at a local store, she decided to vent those frustrations. She took a photo of herself and her friend with their middle fingers raised and posted it to her Snapchat story. 1 The snap was visible to about 250 “friends,” many of whom were MAHS students and some of whom were cheerleaders, and it was accompanied by a puerile caption: “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” J.A. 484. To that post, B.L. added a second: “Love how me and [another student] get told we need a year of jv before we make varsity but that’s [sic] doesn’t matter to anyone else? 🙃?.”²

Here's the footnote appended to the inverted smiley:

The “upside-down smiley face” emoji “indicate[s] silliness, sarcasm, irony, passive aggression, or frustrated resignation.” Upside-Down Face Emoji, Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/e/emoji/upside-down-face-emoji (last visited June 25, 2020).

A wealth of emotions contained concisely. If brevity is the soul of wit, I have severely underestimated the incredible depth of the text messages I've received from my offspring. That being said, it's great to see courts willing to discuss emojis since they're going to be an inescapable part of First Amendment jurisprudence for the foreseeable (and unforeseeable, if we're honest) future.

The court makes quick work of the First Amendment arguments. Is this speech protected? Yes. Tinker says so and has said so for years. Online communication platforms can blur the line between on-campus and off-campus speech, but the courts should err on the side of caution rather than draw harmful conclusions that damage free speech protections this country has respected since its conception.

The courts’ task, then, is to discern and enforce the line separating “on-” from “off-campus” speech. That task has been tricky from the beginning. See, e.g., Thomas, 607 F.2d at 1045–47, 1050–52 (declining to apply Tinker to a student publication because, although a few articles were written and stored at school, the publication was largely “conceived, executed, and distributed outside the school”). But the difficulty has only increased after the digital revolution. Students use social media and other forms of online communication with remarkable frequency. Sometimes the conversation online is a high-minded one, with students “participating in issue- or cause-focused groups, encouraging other people to take action on issues they care about, and finding information on protests or rallies.” Br. of Amici Curiae Electronic Frontier Foundation et al. 13. Other times, that conversation is mundane or plain silly. Either way, the “omnipresence” of online communication poses challenges for school administrators and courts alike.

[...]

The lesson from Reno and Packingham is that faced with new technologies, we must carefully adjust and apply—but not discard—our existing precedent. The thrust of that lesson is not unique to the First Amendment context. But it may be of special importance there because each new communicative technology provides an opportunity for “unprecedented” regulation. Packingham, 137 S. Ct. at 1737. And even when it is unclear whether the government will seize upon such an opportunity, the lack of clarity itself has a harmful “chilling effect on free speech.” Reno, 521 U.S. at 872. Updating the line between on- and off-campus speech may be difficult in the social media age, but it is a task we must undertake.

When B.L. hopped on Snapchat to deliver a set of derogatory F-bombs about her school experience, she did so with the force of the First Amendment behind her. This was about school. This was not of the school, so to speak.

Applying these principles to B.L.’s case, we easily conclude that her snap falls outside the school context. This is not a case in which the relevant speech took place in a “school-sponsored” forum, Fraser, 478 U.S. at 677, or in a context that “bear[s] the imprimatur of the school,” Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. at 271. Nor is this a case in which the school owns or operates an online platform. Cf. Oral Arg. Tr. 25 (discussing a “school listserv”). Instead, B.L. created the snap away from campus, over the weekend, and without school resources, and she shared it on a social media platform unaffiliated with the school. And while the snap mentioned the school and reached MAHS students and officials, J.S. and Layshock hold that those few points of contact are not enough. B.L.’s snap, therefore, took place “off campus.”

Good stuff, but it gets even more entertaining here. The Appeals Court cited Tinker in support of its respect of the student's free speech rights. The school cited Tinker in support of its refusal to respect the First Amendment rights of the student. Guess who's actually correct.

The Tinker test asks whether or not contested speech might reach the school and leapfrog the gap between on-campus and off-campus. The Appeals Court says that's an inevitability in the social media age. But that doesn't change the underlying rationale. The question isn't whether f-bombs on social media will be seen by other students. That's always a possibility. The question is whether the student's speech is perceived to be a representation of the school itself. In this case, the student's Snapchat messages could not have been seen as a proxy for the school's speech. It was solely the disgruntled cheerleader's protected expression of displeasure.

We hold today that Tinker does not apply to off-campus speech—that is, speech that is outside school-owned, -operated, or -supervised channels and that is not reasonably interpreted as bearing the school’s imprimatur.

The Appeals Court lays down the ground rules for further school-related free speech challenges. Social media platforms may have muddied the waters but the court wades in to draw a bright line.

[A] test based on whether the speech occurs in a context owned, controlled, or sponsored by the school is much more easily applied and understood. That clarity benefits students, who can better understand their rights, but it also benefits school administrators, who can better understand the limits of their authority and channel their regulatory energies in productive but lawful ways.

Finally, the court addresses the school's contention that B.L. waived her rights when she agreed to participate in the cheerleading program. Whether or not the waiver was valid, the rule that waived it didn't apply to B.L.'s fuck parade.

B.L.’s snap contained foul language and disrespected her school and team. But the rule’s language suggests it applies only “at games, fundraisers, and other events,” a suggestion echoed by its invocation of “[g]ood sportsmanship.” Id. That would not cover a weekend post to Snapchat unconnected with any game or school event and before the cheerleading season had even begun. And common sense supports this reading: It is hard to believe a reasonable student would understand that by agreeing to the Respect Rule, she was waiving all rights to malign the school once safely off campus and in the world at large. Indeed, one of the cheerleading coaches recognized that the rule “doesn’t say anything about not being able to use foul language or inappropriate gestures . . . away from school.” J.A. 90. So this rule is of no help to the School District.

The court's conclusion? We personally may not have chosen to deploy a mixture of swear words and emoji to convey our thoughts but that doesn't make this conveyance of thoughts any less worthy of First Amendment protection.

The heart of the School District’s arguments is that it has a duty to “inculcate the habits and manners of civility” in its students. Appellant’s Br. 24 (citation omitted). To be sure, B.L.’s snap was crude, rude, and juvenile, just as we might expect of an adolescent. But the primary responsibility for teaching civility rests with parents and other members of the community. As arms of the state, public schools have an interest in teaching civility by example, persuasion, and encouragement, but they may not leverage the coercive power with which they have been entrusted to do so. Otherwise, we give school administrators the power to quash student expression deemed crude or offensive—which far too easily metastasizes into the power to censor valuable speech and legitimate criticism. Instead, by enforcing the Constitution’s limits and upholding free speech rights, we teach a deeper and more enduring version of respect for civility and the “hazardous freedom” that is our national treasure and “the basis of our national strength.” Tinker, 393 U.S. at 508–09.

Fuck cheer, indeed. Students of the Third Circuit: rejoice. The court has your foul-mouthed backs.

George Washington University announced Monday it will form special committees to consider renaming the Cloyd Heck Marvin Center and the “Colonials” moniker used by its sports teams. DC Councilmember Mary Cheh will head the committee that will examine the nickname, an homage to American revolutionaries that some believe is nonetheless freighted with the full weight […]

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Today, the Smithsonian announced the National Zoo and the Udvar-Hazy Center will reopen to the public on Friday, July 24. Visitors will be required to obtain a free, timed-entry pass, which can be reserved starting today at si.edu/tickets or by calling 1-800-514-3849, ext. 1. The Zoo will be open from 8 AM to 4 PM […]

Around 7:00 am, the first of the crew begins shuffling into Nationals Park. By 7:30, about 30 cooks have arrived. By 8, kitchens across the stadium are buzzing and clanging as the cooks thrash broccoli, dice onions, and row their way through Titanic-size skillets of tender beef. At 8:30, the first volunteers show up in […]

Copyright 2020 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Tags: body, Erin Davis, gender, Liana Sposto, literature, Pudding, words

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NYT’s The Upshot ran a survey through the data firm Dynata asking people how often they wear a mask in public. The Upshot then mapped the likelihood that a random group of five people are all wearing masks:

These variations reflect differences in disease risk and politics, but they also may reflect some local idiosyncrasies. Elizabeth Dorrance Hall, an assistant professor of communications at Michigan State University, said mask behavior can be subject to a kind of peer pressure: If most everyone is wearing one, reluctant people may go along. If few people are, that can influence behavior, too. Such dynamics can shape the behavior of friends, neighbors and communities.

As you might guess, it looks similar to the map of where people were staying at home.

Tags: coronavirus, mask, Upshot

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“RBG works less than 5 miles from here. If you won’t wear a mask to protect your friends and family, do it to protect RBG.” Signs bearing this message popped up around Adams Morgan last weekend depicting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg photoshopped in a pink mask. Part of an effort from the Adams […]

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Samantha Sulik (left), director of a day care center in Tacoma, Washington, walks a child to their parent at the end of the day. As a precaution against the spread of the coronavirus, parents are not allowed to come into the building when they pick up their children. | Ted S. Warren/AP

“Families are not okay,” one expert says. It’s making the economic crisis way worse.

The nation’s largest school district, New York City, said last week that students will be physically in classrooms only part time at the most in the fall. The nation’s second-largest, Los Angeles, announced Monday that it will be remote only. Meanwhile, day care centers around the country are closing their doors, unable to balance the higher operating costs and reduced enrollment that came with the coronavirus pandemic.

Experts have been warning for months that this pandemic would cause an unprecedented child care crisis in the United States, a country whose system for caring for children was already severely lacking before the public health emergency began. But policymakers devoted little attention to the problem, and for months this spring, parents were left to figure out, largely on their own, how to do their jobs with schools and day cares closed.

As summer lurches toward fall, many families have reached the breaking point. And for single parents, especially those working low-wage jobs, the consequences of an ongoing lack of child care could be devastating. Yet the United States has not done the work of viral suppression necessary to safely open schools and child care centers in many parts of the country. In some cases, restaurants and bars have been prioritized over schools. The idea, it seems, is to swiftly get people back to work and boost economic growth above all else.

But throughout all this, there has been little acknowledgment of the real economic impact a broken school and child care system has on families and child care workers — many of whom are also caring for their own kids. Maybe that’s because, historically, the work of taking care of other people, often performed by women and especially by women of color, has been devalued and largely ignored.

“This crisis has laid bare the ways in which caring for the well-being of society has a huge value, and that value has not been accounted for in our economic statistics and economic policy priorities,” Kate Bahn, the director of labor market policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told Vox.

Dollars and cents are just one incomplete way to measure the enormous impact that educators and care workers have on Americans’ lives. But they’re a way that policymakers tend to understand. With that in mind, below is a numerical framework for thinking about the impact of the current child care crisis on the American economy — and the necessity of resolving that crisis in a way that’s safe and equitable for all involved.

More than 41 million workers have kids under 18. Almost all of them lost child care as a result of the pandemic.

As of 2018, over 41 million workers between the ages of 18 and 64 were caring for a child under the age of 18, according to the Brookings Institution. Nearly 34 million of those were caring for a child under 14.

When the pandemic hit, schools and day care centers across all 50 states shut down. At the peak of closures, 55.1 million students at K-12 schools around the country were affected, according to Education Week. An additional 5 million younger children in day care and preschool were affected as well, as Amanda Becker reports at The 19th. Some day care programs did remain open for children of essential workers, and some cities set up special centers to care for those children. However, not all such workers were comfortable sending their children to center-based care while the virus was spreading, and such care was not available in all areas.

Overall, millions of parents suddenly saw their primary source of child care disappear, with no alternatives on the table. That put them in an incredibly difficult position.

In normal times, inadequate child care is the equivalent of a 5 percent pay cut for parents. Now it’s much worse.

The pandemic has made a simple truth abundantly obvious, if it wasn’t already: Working parents need child care to do their jobs. When they don’t have a safe place for their kids to be during their work hours — whether that’s at school, at a day care center, or at home with a family member or nanny — their work suffers.

Parents had a hard time finding care for their kids long before Covid hit — in one 2018 survey, 83 percent of parents of children under 5 said finding affordable, quality care in their area was a serious problem, according to the Center for American Progress. And having inadequate child care creates serious problems for parents at work — in surveys conducted before the pandemic, parents reported having to miss shifts to care for kids, being distracted at work, and being reprimanded at work for absence or other issues related to taking care of kids, Clive Belfield, an economics professor at Queens College, told Vox in an email. They also reported problems with career growth, like an inability to apply for promotions or enroll in training programs that could result in a better job.

All of that impacts workers’ earnings over time. Overall, having inadequate access to child care, in the pre-pandemic economy, was like getting about a 5 percent pay cut, Belfield said.

This impact fell disproportionately on mothers, who do the majority of child care in families. In one 2018 survey by the Center for American Progress, mothers were 40 percent more likely than fathers to say they had personally felt a negative impact of child care issues on their careers.

And that was before Covid. The impact of losing child care due to the pandemic is likely to be far worse than simply having inadequate care before the crisis hit, Belfield said.

That’s because, even as some day care programs and camps reopen, there are far fewer child care options than there were before the pandemic. Those that exist are likely more expensive. And parents may have lost their jobs or had their wages cut, like a full 43 percent of Americans as of April, so they are less able to afford child care. All that means that parents are facing a bigger pay cut due to child care problems than they would have before the pandemic, at a time when they’re less able to afford it.

By late June, 13 percent of parents had cut back hours or quit their jobs

With schools and day cares closed, most parents were forced to figure out child care solutions on their own. They cobbled together a variety of arrangements, from splitting up child care duties (in dual-earner families) to asking grandparents to move in and care for kids. But even with these arrangements, parents had to cut back on their work significantly.

In one survey of 2,557 working parents conducted between May 10 and June 22, 13 percent had cut back hours or quit work entirely due to child care problems, the Washington Post reported. And parents lost an average of eight hours of work a week to child care responsibilities — the equivalent of a full day.

80 percent of moms say they’re handling the majority of homeschooling responsibilities in their families

Nearly all parents are being affected to some degree by the crisis in child care and education, but mothers are bearing a disproportionate share of the burden. In an April poll by Morning Consult for the New York Times, 80 percent of moms with kids under 12 said they spent more time than their partners supervising remote learning. Just 45 percent of dads said the same.

In the same survey, 28 percent of mothers said that they were working less than usual, compared with 19 percent of fathers.

And about 16 percent of parents are taking care of kids alone, without a partner

Coupled parents may be able to share child care duties during the pandemic — even if moms still do more. But as of 2017, about 16 percent of parents in the US were single, without a partner in the home, according to the Pew Research Center. About 18 million children were living in homes with just one parent.

Overall, single parents are far more likely to be women — in 2017, 81 percent of parents living alone with kids were moms, according to the Pew Research Center. And women of color are more likely than white women to either be single parents or be significant breadwinners in their households.

As of 2018, 74 percent of Black moms were either single or providing at least 40 percent of a couple’s earnings, compared with 58 percent of Native American moms, 47 percent of Latina moms, and 45 percent of white moms, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. (Asian/Pacific Islander moms were less likely than white mothers to be single or significant breadwinners, at 42 percent.)

Black and Latina women, in particular, are also overrepresented in many essential and front-line jobs that can’t be done from home. This makes solving the child care problem all the more difficult, since they can’t supervise their children while teleworking, as some parents have been able to do. And across races, more than a third of single mothers are living in poverty, making it harder for them to pay for babysitters or other child care arrangements even where they are available.

All this means that the child care crisis is falling particularly hard on a subset of parents — single and low-income mothers — who are the least able to afford additional challenges right now. As Michelle Holder, an economics professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Vox earlier this month, “The problem really looks very bad for women of color who are mothers.”

Add to that parents needing and looking for jobs: More than 11 percent of women are unemployed right now

The difficulty of finding child care is already causing parents to drop out of the workforce and reduce hours. Meanwhile, millions of Americans, many of them parents, have lost jobs due to the economic crisis. Job losses have been especially pronounced among women, 11.2 percent of whom were unemployed in June, compared with 10.2 percent of men. Black and Latina women have also been disproportionately affected, with unemployment rates of 14 percent and 15.3 percent, respectively.

And many parents, especially moms, won’t be able to take new jobs if they can’t get reliable child care. “As we think about what’s it going to take for women to reenter the workforce,” Nicole Mason, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told Vox, “that’s when we’re going to start to see that there’s some critical challenges, most of them related to care, that women will have to overcome, before they can not only reenter the workforce but also sustain employment.”

And while parents have been hoping for some relief in the fall if schools and child care centers reopen, things may be about to get worse rather than better.

40 percent of child care programs say they will have to close permanently without outside help

While some day care centers serving infants, toddlers, and preschoolers have reopened since the spring, the pandemic continues to put an enormous strain on these businesses, many of which operate on extremely tight margins in the best of times. The public health crisis has driven down enrollment as parents pull their children out due to fear of the virus or because they have lost their jobs — in a June survey of child care programs by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), enrollment was down by an average of 67 percent.

Since many programs are supported entirely by tuition, fewer kids means less money to work with. The pandemic has also driven up costs, because centers need additional cleaning supplies, personal protective equipment, and sometimes more staff members to accommodate social distancing requirements. In the NAEYC survey, more than 70 percent of programs were incurring substantial additional costs.

As a result of these pressures, two out of five programs in the survey said are certain they would have to close if they don’t get some kind of government help. That includes half of all child care programs that are minority-owned businesses. Only 18 percent of programs said they expected to last longer than a year if they don’t get help.

This is the crisis that child care experts have been warning about since the pandemic began — without assistance, day care centers could disappear permanently, and working parents will have no place to send their kids, even if and when it’s safe. As Kim Kruckel, executive director of the Child Care Law Center, put it to Vox in April, “child care will not be there for us when we’re all ready to go back to work if we don’t include them specifically, in a targeted, effective way, in the relief packages.”

More than 250,000 child care workers have lost their jobs

The closure of child care centers isn’t just a crisis for working parents — it’s also a crisis for care workers, many of whom have children themselves. As a result of pandemic shutdowns and enrollment losses, 258,000 child care workers have been laid off, according to the Washington Post.

These workers are among those who can least afford to lose their jobs: They make an average of just $10.82 an hour, and many relied on public assistance even before the pandemic struck. Many — 75 percent in Los Angeles County, for example — are immigrants, and many speak English as a second language, which can make it more difficult to apply for programs like unemployment. And in most places, unemployment isn’t available at all to workers who are undocumented.

Now, many child care workers have been thrown even deeper into poverty. And an enormous job loss in the child care sector — more than a quarter of a million workers — is a drain on the broader economy as well.

When it comes to schools, the news is just as grim: At least 3 of the country’s biggest school districts will be partially or fully remote in the fall

While parents of infants and toddlers struggle with the availability (and safety) of day care centers in their area, parents of older children have been looking to the schools to ease the burden in the fall. And for many families, that means public schools, which ordinarily offer not just education but also a free, reliable place for children to be during the day.

Unfortunately, coronavirus cases are surging around the country, leaving teachers, staff, and parents alike concerned about the safety of reopening schools. For example, 7 in 10 parents saw returning to school as risky, according to a July poll by Axios. And three of the country’s largest school districts — Los Angeles, San Diego, and New York City — have announced that their classes will be partly or fully remote in the fall, meaning parents will still be responsible for supervising learning and providing child care at least some of the time.

That likely means more parents having to reduce their hours, more parents dropping out of the workforce, and more parents unable to reenter the workforce because they have to take care of their kids. Meanwhile, state, local, and federal officials have yet to offer much in the way of relief for working parents — in announcing the New York City schools’ plan to go partially remote, Mayor Bill de Blasio said only that child care help for parents was “something we’re going to be building as we go along.”

Faced with month after month of working while also taking care of kids, “women are having to make tough choices about maintaining their employment,” Mason said.

With fewer options for child care, parents could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime

We don’t yet know the long-term impact of parents having to reduce hours or drop out of the labor force during the pandemic, experts say. But the data we have on parents who drop out of the workforce to care for children during normal times isn’t reassuring.

Parents who leave the workforce make less even when they go back to work, as Michael Madowitz, Alex Rowell, and Katie Hamm noted in a 2016 analysis at the Center for American Progress. And those losses add up in lower wage growth over time, as well as lower retirement savings and Social Security benefits. Overall, parents lose up to three or four times their annual salary for every year out of the workforce.

For example, a 26-year-old mom making $44,600 annually — the median yearly wage for women in the US as of the first quarter of 2020 — would lose $163,139 over her lifetime by taking just one year off of work, according to a Center for American Progress calculator.

Those lost wages obviously matter enormously to families — especially to low-income and Black and Latinx families, who have less accumulated wealth than white families to fall back on. They also matter to the economy as a whole.

“It’s not good for economic growth if you have primarily women having to reduce or eliminate working altogether because they don’t have other alternatives for child care,” Holder said.

Trump has offered zero solutions to solve the problem

Now, in July, it seems policymakers are finally becoming aware of this fact, though their responses aren’t always helpful. President Trump, for example, is pushing to reopen schools so that the economy can recover, but without a plan for doing so safely.

Ultimately, the evidence suggests that the choice between boosting the economy and controlling the virus is a false one — the economy can only grow again once people know it is safe to return to some semblance of normal life.

And a huge part of that life is being able to get reliable care for children. However, that aspect of life has been seemingly forgotten in many reopening plans, as governors and other officials open restaurants and bars without a clear strategy for safely reopening schools — or for testing and tracing to keep community spread low so that schools can open.

The result is that, in addition to the enormous cost to children’s learning and the overall health and well-being of families, the economy can’t recover because parents can’t work.

The solution, experts say, isn’t simply to throw open the school doors and let the virus range free. Rather, it’s to actually acknowledge the value of child care and education and develop our public health and economic policies accordingly.

Right now, “teachers are trying to take on the burden of teaching students in a totally new way,” and child care workers are “massively shifting how they do their jobs,” Bahn said. “These workers are helping carry our society through to the other side of this pandemic.”

But these workers have also been historically underpaid, their concerns often ignored, and the work they do devalued. “There is a clear economic value to caring for well-being, but we have not necessarily accounted for it in our statistics or in our policy priorities as a nation,” Bahn said.

If we could begin to value that work, we might be able to craft a future in which children and the workers who care for and teach them could be safe, even amid a pandemic.

But “what’s so tragic in this moment is that there is no plan,” Mason said. “States don’t have a plan, schools don’t have a plan, families don’t have a plan.”

And while we don’t yet know the full extent of the pandemic’s impact, economically or otherwise, Mason said, “above all, what’s true is that families are not okay.”

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