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Unrest Erupts After A Man Was Fatally Shot During An Arrest Attempt In Minneapolis : NPR - 0 views

  • Crowds vandalized buildings and stole from businesses in Minneapolis' Uptown neighborhood after officials said a man wanted for illegally possessing a gun was fatally shot by authorities who were part of a task force trying to arrest him that included U.S. Marshals.
  • Following the Thursday afternoon shooting, a small crowd gathered in the neighborhood where the man was shot, shouting expletives at police.
  • Later in the night, people vandalized "numerous" buildings and looted some, Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said in a email to reporters early Friday. A dumpster was burned and windows were smashed.
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  • The U.S. Marshals Service said a task force was trying to arrest the man on a state warrant for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
  • The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms both tweeted that they were responding to help investigate. The Marshals said the state BCA is leading the investigation.The Minneapolis Police Department said it was not involved in the shooting.
  • It was not clear how many law enforcement officers fired their weapons. A spokeswoman with the U.S. Marshals said the U.S. Marshals leads the task force, which is comprised of several agencies.
  • an aerial view of the top level of the parking ramp where Thursday's shooting reportedly occurred showed a silver sport utility vehicle with a shattered back window. It was surrounded by many other vehicles near a white pop-up tent. Several officers were nearby and in a glass-enclosed stairwell.
  • The man, who was in a parked car, didn't comply with law enforcement and "produced a handgun resulting in task force members firing upon the subject," the U.S. Marshals said in a statement.
  • Before Thursday night's unrest, tensions in Minneapolis already had risen after crews early Thursday removed concrete barriers that blocked traffic at a Minneapolis intersection where a memorial to Floyd was assembled after his death.
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Leaders due in Paris for COP21 climate change meeting - CNN.com - 0 views

  • World leaders arrived in Paris on Sunday for potentially historic climate talks that will play out amid security concerns driven by the November 13 terror attacks in France.
  • Frustrations over restrictions on protests put in place following the attacks gave rise to what French President Francois Hollande called "scandalous" scuffles between protesters and police at the Place de Republique, the site of a memorial to victims.French authorities have clamped down on public demonstrations in the aftermath of the deadly attacks, blocking environmental campaigners' plans for a big march on Sunday.
  • Police arrested more than 200 people Sunday following flare-ups in which protesters pelted police with shoes, bottles and even candles police said were taken from memorials.
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  • Riot police responded with tear gas.Hollande said authorities knew "troubling elements" would arrive in Paris for the talks, and said that was why "these sorts of assemblies were banned and some were ordered to stay home."
  • Despite those tensions, demonstrators were largely peaceful ahead of the crucial climate change session. In place of the big march, protesters lined up thousands of shoes representing climate change activists.
  • The talks will begin in earnest on Monday. Nearly 150 world leaders are expected attend the United Nations climate change summit, called with the aim of reaching a landmark global deal on limiting greenhouse gas emissions.The leaders of the United States, China and India -- the world's top three carbon-emitting countries -- are among those scheduled to attend the opening day of the event, known as COP21.
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FBI investigating Philadelphia cop shooting as terrorism - CBS News - 0 views

  • FBI investigating Philadelphia cop shooting as terrorism
  • FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that last week's shooting of a Philadelphia police officer was being investigated as "a terrorist attack."
  • Late last Thursday, police said Edward Archer approached Officer Jesse Hartnett's patrol car and fired a hail of bullets at close range.
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  • Hartnett, 33, was shot three times in the arm and will require multiple surgeries.
  • Archer confessed to the shooting and told investigators he was following Allah, and had pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS
  • The 30-year-old is being held without bail.
  • The tip said Archer is "part of a group that consists of three others." She went on to say that Archer "is not the most radical of the four" and that "the threat to police is not over."
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Texas Gov. Abbott signs legislation penalizing cities that defund the police | Fox News - 0 views

  • Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation Tuesday that will penalize cities and counties that defund their police departments. 
  • If the county does not receive voter approval but moves forward with reducing law enforcement, it too will have its property tax withheld. 
  • "With these laws, we are bolstering our support for law enforcement while ensuring a safer future for all Texans," Abbott said Tuesday.  "I applaud the Texas Legislature for joining me in passing these priority items and for making sure Texas remains a law-and-order state." 
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  • "This is what defunding the police looks like," Abbott wrote in a tweet. "Austin is incapable of timely responding to a victim shot in the head."
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About 20,000 National Guard Members To Deploy For Inauguration, Officials Say : Insurre... - 0 views

  • Local and federal security officials expect about 20,000 National Guard members to be involved in securing Washington, D.C., for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next week.
  • "I think you can expect to see somewhere upwards of beyond 20,000 members of the National Guard that will be here in the footprint of the District of Columbia,"
  • It represents an uptick in National Guard troops that will be deployed to the area. Army Times reported earlier this week that the Pentagon had authorized 15,000 National Guard members to be sent to the District for the inauguration.
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  • The troops will be coming from nearly all states, Bowman reported, adding that only those who are either military police or have law enforcement experience will be armed.
  • The exact number to be deployed is still being worked out by the Secret Service, the lead agency on inauguration security, and others,
  • Contee said the inauguration has been designated as a "national special security event," adding the final numbers of troops would come from the Secret Service and leaving open the possibility the numbers could fluctuate.
  • Others will have access to their weapons but not carry them, and it remains unclear where the troops will deploy at the U.S. Capitol, according to the U.S. official.
  • President Trump issued a statement Wednesday urging supporters to commit "NO violence," citing unspecified reports on future demonstrations.
  • Presidential inaugurations are always massive security operations, but Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20 is facing heightened security concerns following last week's breach of the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer.
  • These security moves come as the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to impeach President Trump a second time.
  • It was a startling reminder that just a week ago rioters attacked the building, overrunning Capitol Police in an attempt to block lawmakers from confirming Biden's Electoral College victory.
  • Since the siege, some members of Congress, including Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, have requested that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy review backgrounds of any National Guard troops involved in inaugural security.
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Opinion | Want to See My Genes? Get a Warrant - The New York Times - 0 views

  • While there may be broad public support for a technique that solved serial murders, just because technology allows for a new type of investigation doesn’t mean the government should be allowed to use it in all cases.
  • 90 percent of Americans of European descent will be identifiable from their DNA within a year or two, even if they have not used a consumer DNA service
  • As for easy access, GEDmatch’s website provides exactly this opportunity. Consumers can take profiles generated from other commercial genetic testing services, upload them free and compare them to other profiles. So can the police.
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  • If the police felt free to use it in an assault case, why not shoplifting, trespassing or littering?
  • When you consent to genetic sleuthing, you are also exposing your siblings, parents, cousins, relatives you’ve never met and even future generations of your family
  • Legitimate consent to the government’s use of an entire family tree should involve more than just a single person clicking “yes” to a website’s terms and conditions.
  • the police usually confirm leads by collecting discarded DNA samples from a suspect. How comfortable should we be that a school resource officer hung around a high school cafeteria waiting to collect a teenager’s “abandoned” DNA?
  • All of these issues point to one problem: Police use of genetic genealogy is virtually unregulated
  • Our genetic and digital identities raise similar questions of autonomy, civil liberties, and intrusion by public and private entities.
  • Rather than wait for the courts to deal with difficult and novel issues about genetic surveillance and privacy, state legislatures and attorneys general should step in and articulate guidelines on how far their law enforcement agencies should go.
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Opinion | We Dared to Assemble. For That, We Were Killed. - The New York Times - 1 views

  • LAGOS, Nigeria — The High Court of Justice is on fire. Behind my home, it has been ablaze since noon. But in reality, the justice system the court claims to represent has been burning for nearly 60 years.
  • “We the people,” begins the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Section 40 guarantees us the right to freedom of assembly. By Section 41, “we the people,” are guaranteed the right to free movement. So, we assembled. And we moved. For that, we have been killed.
  • In Nigeria, the accepted experience with almost all officialdom is aggressive: the civilian officers in full military garb who slap women trying to enter the passport office; the ordinary policeman who pulls his gun on unarmed civilians because they dared to talk back. Violence defines the predictable. It takes an unpredictable, extraordinary level of brutality to cause a storm.
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  • On Oct. 3, a video surfaced online that appeared to show the point-blank killing of a Nigerian citizen by officers of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, commonly known as SARS. In the days since the video’s emergence, people across the country, young and some old, have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and call for SARS’s disbandment.
  • SARS was founded in 1992 to deal with violent crimes like kidnappings and armed robbery, common at the time. In the years since, SARS has come to resemble the armed thugs it supposedly combats. Often in plain clothes, SARS officers became synonymous with torture, illegal detention and extortion. Violent crime might have fallen, but it was not because criminals knew that they would face the full force of the law, but rather that they would be extrajudicially murdered.
  • When unlawfully arrested protesters need legal aid, they simply ask and networks organized online call volunteer lawyers, who drop what they are doing and proceed to the police station. When protesters need food, water or mobile phone data, they ask and food, water and money from an ever-growing fund of global donations is sent. And when they need ambulances or security guards to protect them from hired thugs, from the state itself, they ask, and private ambulance and security services are sent their way.
  • SARS would be disbanded and investigations opened, but the police were largely a force of hardworking officers not to be tarnished by “the few bad eggs.”
  • For two weeks, protesters dared to speak truth to power, and for two weeks the army had been looking for an excuse to make it clear that in Nigeria, violence — their violence — always reigns. They found it.
  • Most in the Nigerian government want us to see them as figures of authority. But recent events have confirmed they would be nothing without their fists. They have confirmed it is they who are afraid — afraid that their children, regardless of age, ethnicity or gender should, one day, be free in a country where honor and respect are not the result of force. It is they who are afraid that, unleashed from their shallow power, this country might no longer be a testament to unnecessary suffering and violence.
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President Donald Trump's response to police killing threatens to further deepen unrest ... - 0 views

  • (CNN)President Donald Trump pledged a crackdown of the protests that arose from the police killing of George Floyd, sparking concerns from some Democrats and Republicans that his response to the crisis further deepens the divide in a country already unnerved by a pandemic, distressed economy and racial unrest.
  • The President tweeted on Saturday that if protesters breached the White House's fence, they would "have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen." And he called on Democratic officials to "get MUCH tougher" or the federal government "will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests."
  • DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, also urged Trump to help "calm the nation" and to stop sending "divisive tweets" in an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
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  • Elected officials on both sides of the aisle said on Sunday that the President should instead focus on unifying the nation or decline to address the country at all.
  • The protests this weekend came after Officer Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer who thrust his knee into Floyd's neck as he begged for air for more than 8 minutes, was arrested and charged with murder. The Department of Justice has vowed to quickly proceed with a federal investigation into Floyd's death. Protesters say they want to see charges for all four police officers involved in Floyd's death.
  • In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Robert O'Brien, the White House national security adviser, defended Trump, saying the White House and the President support peaceful demonstrations. He went as far to deny that there is systemic racism in America among police agencies.
  • "The death of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis was a grave tragedy. It should never have happened," the President said. "It has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger and grief."
  • The President said he had spoken to Floyd's family on Friday, the same day he tweeted that "THUGS" are "dishonoring" his memory. "Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts," he tweeted.
  • "Every time I respond to Donald Trump, I do it from a place where I realize he doesn't deserve a response, he doesn't deserve my attention or my emotion. Our people do," Booker said on CNN. "Donald Trump no longer has the capacity to break my heart, to surprise me."
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Ontario declares an emergency over truck blockades in Canada | AP News - 0 views

  • Ontario’s premier declared a state of emergency Friday in reaction to the truck blockades in Ottawa and at the U.S. border and said he will urgently press for new legislation cracking down on those who interfere with the free flow of goods and people.
  • Since Monday, scores of truck drivers protesting Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions and railing against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have bottled up the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor to Detroit. And hundreds of others have paralyzed downtown Ottawa over the past two weeks.
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  • The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest U.S.-Canadian border crossing, carrying 25% of all trade between the two countries.
  • The Freedom Convoy has been promoted and cheered on by many Fox News personalities and attracted support from the likes of former President Donald Trump.
  • On Friday, amid signs that authorities might be prepared to get tough, police in Windsor and Ottawa awaited reinforcements from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the federal police force.
  • Ottawa’s mayor has asked for 1,800 additional police officers, nearly doubling the manpower available to the the city’s police force, which has 2,100 officers and civilian members.
  • The reaction to the protests has also been marked by disagreements over who’s in charge. Canada’s emergency preparedness minister said this week that Ontario has ultimate responsibility, while the province’s transport minister said it is the federal government’s job to secure the border.
  • Also, the leadership of the opposition Conservative Party on the federal level has openly supported the truckers, apparently happy to make this Trudeau’s problem.
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Rhode Island coronavirus: State is looking for New Yorkers to slow the spread of the vi... - 0 views

shared by nrashkind on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Rhode Island's governor said Friday that law enforcement officers will stop cars and knock on doors in coastal communities to identify people who've been to New York state, joining other states in restricting the movements of out-of-state visitors to slow the spread of coronavirus.
  • Police began monitoring highways at noon Friday and may pull over individuals with New York state license plates to ask the same questions, particularly on the base of the Newport Bridge, Raimondo said.
  • "I feel bad that New York is getting such a bad rap sheet when it's really all over the place, you know, it shouldn't be that way, but unfortunately right now we have a lot of cases," Koppie told WPRI. She said she was planning to return home the same day.
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  • All individuals who have traveled to New York have already been ordered to self-quarantine for 14 days. These added measures will make sure law enforcement identifies individuals who should be following the self-quarantine order, said the governor, a Democrat.
  • New York is coronavirus epicenter in the US, with more than 52,300 cases and at least 728 deaths as of Saturday, according to CNN's state-by-state count.
  • Rhode Island has more than 239 cases with two deaths as of Saturday.
  • "I've got my hands full here with responding to this crisis and I'm not going to second guess or criticize what other governors are doing or not doing," Edwards said.
  • Earlier in the week, DeSantis said he would expand his executive order mandating a 14-day self-isolation period for travelers coming to Florida from airports in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
  • The governor said he would have to look at what it would take to shut the border.
  • In New Mexico, Gov. Lujan Grisham on Friday ordered that everyone traveling by air into New Mexico self-quarantine for 14 days immediately upon arrival. Under the state's emergency order, people will only be allowed to leave quarantine for medical care
  • In Kansas, the government said any travelers from Colorado and Louisiana must self-quarantine when they arrive in the state.
  • Kansas has already placed self-quarantine requirements on travelers from Florida, Washington, California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
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'Its Own Domestic Army': How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan’s Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.
  • “We knew there would be violence,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, about the Jan. 6 assault. Endorsing tactics like militiamen with assault rifles frightening state lawmakers “normalizes violence,” she told journalists last week, “and Michigan, unfortunately, has seen quite a bit of that.”
  • The chief organizer of that protest, Meshawn Maddock, on Saturday was elected co-chair of the state Republican Party — one of four die-hard Trump loyalists who won top posts.
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  • Ms. Maddock helped fill 19 buses to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally and defended the April armed intrusion into the Michigan Capitol. When Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, suggested at the time that Black demonstrators would never be allowed to threaten legislators like that, Ms. Maddock wrote on Twitter, “Please show us the ‘threat’?”“Oh that’s right you think anyone armed is threatening,” she continued. “It’s a right for a reason and the reason is YOU.”
  • The lead organizer of the April 30 armed protest, Ryan Kelley, a local Republican official, last week announced a bid for governor. “Becoming too closely aligned with militias — is that a bad thing?” he said in an interview.
  • In the first major protest in the country against stay-at-home orders, thousands of cars, trucks and even a few cement mixers jammed the streets around the Statehouse in Lansing, in what Ms. Maddock called Operation Gridlock. About 150 demonstrators left their vehicles to chant “lock her up” from the Capitol lawn — redirecting the 2016 battle cry about Hillary Clinton against Ms. Whitmer. A few waved Confederate flags. About a dozen heavily armed members of the Michigan Liberty Militia turned up as well
  • woven through Michigan’s militia timeline is a persistent strand of menace. In the early 20th century, the Black Legion, a paramilitary group that included public officials in Detroit and elsewhere, began as an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan and was linked to numerous acts of murder and terrorism.
  • Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, were reported to have associated with militia members in Michigan, though Mr. Olson said they had been turned away because of their violent rhetoric. In the aftermath, militias were largely exiled to the fringes of conspiracy politics, preparing for imagined threats from the New World Order.
  • in recent years, as the Republican Party has drifted further to the right, these groups have gradually found a home there, said JoEllen Vinyard, an emeritus professor of history at Eastern Michigan University who has studied political extremism. Much of their cooperation is centered on defending gun ownership, she said
  • epublicans have controlled both houses of the Michigan Legislature for a decade and held the governor’s mansion for the eight years before Ms. Whitmer took office in 2019. Mr. Trump’s brash nationalism had alienated moderate Republicans and independents while pushing the party to the right.
  • Surrounded by militiamen about two weeks later in Grand Rapids, at an event also organized by Mr. Howland and Mr. Kelley, the senator said in a speech that they had taken him to task for his “jackasses” comment and he effectively retracted it.
  • Ms. Maddock declared Michigan a “tyranny” that night on the Fox News Channel, though she later distanced herself from the armed men. “Of course the militia is disappointing to me, the Confederate flag — look, they’re just idiots,
  • When local armed groups in Michigan began discussing more demonstrations, most Republicans shunned them at first. “They were scared of the word ‘militia,’” recalled Phil Robinson, a member of the Liberty Militia.
  • As the Legislature met on April 30 to vote on extending the governor’s restrictions, Mr. Kelley and his militia allies convened hundreds of protesters, including scores of armed men, some with assault weapons. One demonstrator hung a noose from the back of his pickup. Another held a sign warning that “tyrants get the rope.” Dozens entered the Capitol, some angrily demanding entrance to the lower chamber.
  • “We were harassed and intimidated so that we would not do our jobs,” said Representative Donna Lasinski, leader of the Democratic minority. Lawmakers were terrified, she added.
  • Mr. Maddock, the Republican legislator and Ms. Maddock’s husband, recognized some of the intruders and left the House floor to confer with them. “I like being around people with guns,” he later told The Detroit News.
  • Mr. Trump sided with them, too. “The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” he tweeted. “These are very good people.”
  • Roughly a dozen to 18 armed groups are scattered across Michigan in mostly rural counties, their membership fluctuating with political and economic currents. Estimates of active members statewide are generally in the hundreds.
  • “I was able to see that they are patriots that love their country like the rest of us,” she said, adding that they are “all Republicans.”
  • Other Republicans also came to accept the presence of armed activists. Ms. Gatt, who took part in protests organized by Mr. Kelley and Ms. Maddock, said she felt “intimidated by the militia when I first started getting involved,” but soon changed her mind.
  • The state G.O.P. quickly jumped into the fight. In June, a nonprofit group linked to the Republican Party began providing more than $600,000 to a new advocacy group run in part by Ms. Maddock that was dedicated to fighting coronavirus restrictions. A charity tied to Mr. Shirkey kicked in $500,000.
  • Critics argued that race was an unstated factor in the battle over the stay-at-home order. The Republicans who rallied against the rules were mostly white residents of rural areas and outer suburbs. But more than 40 percent of the deaths in Michigan early on were among African-Americans, concentrated in Detroit, who made up less than 15 percent of the state’s population
  • The Black Lives Matter protests in Michigan were rarely violent or destructive, and the largest took place in Detroit. But Republicans in the rest of the state reacted with alarm to the flashes of violence elsewhere around the country, and President Trump reinforced their fears with his warnings about “antifa.”
  • “Liberals look for trouble and civil unrest and conservatives PREPARE for it,” Gary Eisen, a Republican state legislator and owner of a concealed-weapon training business, wrote on his Facebook page. “I thought maybe I would load up a few more mags,” he added, later saying he had been joking
  • He accused Democrats of encouraging violence. “The Democrats have got antifa; they have got BLM,” he said. “The Democrats championed all of this stuff from a leadership level.”
  • More prominent Michigan Republicans portrayed the Black Lives Matter movement as a looming threat, too. Ms. Maddock told the news site MLive.com that the “destruction” caused by the protests was “absolutely devastating” and “inexcusable.”
  • At the peak of the protests against police violence, though, Mr. Kelley’s American Patriot Council still aimed its sharpest attacks at Governor Whitmer and her stay-at-home order. It released public letters urging the federal authorities to arrest her for violating the Constitution by issuing a stay-at-home order. “Whitmer needs to go to prison,” Mr. Kelley declared in a video he posted on Facebook in early October that was later taken down. “She is a threat to our Republic.”
  • A few days later, federal agents arrested more than a dozen Michigan militiamen, charging them in a plot to kidnap the governor, put her on trial and possibly execute her.
  • It was the culmination of months of mobilization by armed groups, accompanied by increasingly threatening language, and Mr. Trump declined to condemn the plotters. “People are entitled to say, ‘Maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t,’” he declared at a rally in Michigan.
  • Hours after the Nov. 3 election, Ms. Maddock wrote on Facebook: “35k ballots showed up out of nowhere at 3 AM. Need help.” She urged Trump supporters to rush to “monitor the vote” at a ballot-counting center in Detroit. “Report to room 260 STAT.”
  • Mr. Kelley, with Mr. Howland and their armed militia allies, showed up for a rowdy protest outside the ballot counting. Later that month Mr. Kelley told a rally outside the Statehouse that the coronavirus was a ruse to persuade the public to “believe Joe Biden won the election,” The Lansing State Journal reported. One woman held a sign saying “ARREST THE VOTE COUNTERS.”
  • When attempts to stop the counting failed, Ms. Maddock in December led 16 Republican electors trying to push into the Michigan Capitol to disrupt the casting of Democratic votes in the Electoral College. During a “Stop the Steal” news conference in Washington the next day, she vowed to “keep fighting.”
  • Mr. Kelley and Mr. Howland were filmed outside the U.S. Capitol during the riot. Both men said they did not break any laws, and argued that the event was not “an insurrection” because the participants were patriots. “I was there to support the sitting president,” Mr. Kelley said.
  • Mr. Shirkey, the Michigan Senate leader who came around to work with the militias, declined to follow the movement behind Mr. Trump all the way to the end. Summoned to the White House in November, Mr. Shirkey refused the president’s entreaties to try to annul his Michigan defeat.
  • But in an interview last week, the lawmaker said he nonetheless empathized with the mob that attacked Congress.“It was people feeling oppressed, and depressed, responding to what they thought was government just stealing their lives from them,” he said. “And I’m not endorsing and supporting their actions, but I understand where they come from.”
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The U.S. Isn't Ready for What's About to Happen - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • If Americans conclude that life will continue mostly as normal, they may be wrong. The United States is far less prepared than other democratic nations experiencing outbreaks of the novel coronavirus
  • Aggressive steps are essential to protecting the public from a deadly virus. Last week, the World Health Organization assessed the fatality rate at a shocking 3.4 percent, much higher than previously believed
  • If Americans could seek testing and care without worrying about co-pays or surprise bills, and if everyone who showed symptoms had paid sick leave, the United States could more easily slow the spread of COVID-19. But a crisis finds a nation as it is, not as its citizens wish it to be.
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  • The coronavirus—and the measures enacted to stop it—could quickly change the rhythms of Americans’ daily lives.
  • few Americans’ personal experience gives them any reason to understand how disruptive these changes could be if the epidemic continues to worsen.
  • A municipal police chief in the Boston area recently urged me to imagine that a school district closed for even three weeks. Take just one child, raised by a single parent who is a police officer. The child is home, so the parent must stay home. Other officers in the same patrol will be affected even if they don’t have kids in school. Shifts will change, nonessential functions will be put off, and the department will have less flexibility to respond to problems unrelated to the epidemic—even as, with more teens unsupervised, rates of car accidents and certain crimes could well increase.
  • Pence promised 1.5 million coronavirus tests, but The Atlantic reported Friday that, according to all available evidence, fewer than 2,000 had been conducted in the United States. Trump himself is simply lying about basic facts about the COVID-19 response; despite the testing kit shortfall, he has publicly stated that everyone who wants to get tested can get tested.
  • China’s aggressive containment of the new virus in the early weeks of this year gave other nations time to ready themselves
  • The United States wasted that opportunity. Trump’s initial impulse to downplay the risk, at least until the stock market took note, wasn’t just fanciful; it was dangerous.
  • Americans should also understand that even the best preparation humanly possibly wouldn’t be perfect—and that what the United States has done so far falls far short of that. Especially at this point, even a more vigorous response will not preclude a lot of people from getting sick. Preventing all infections is no longer a possibility, and the measure of success is how much public-health authorities can reduce the number of people who die or fall seriously ill.
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Covid Live Updates: Florida Opts to Halt Daily Virus Reports - 0 views

  • The Florida Department of Health will no longer update its Covid-19 dashboard and will suspend daily case and vaccine reports, the governor’s office confirmed on Friday.
  • Officials first announced last week that the state would end daily reports in a news release outlining Florida’s plans to transition into the next phase of its Covid-19 response now that cases in the state are decreasing.
  • In the past two weeks, Florida has seen a 43 percent drop in coronavirus cases and deaths, and 50 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine dose, just below the national average of 51 percent, according to a New York Times database.
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  • Florida’s dashboard was created in part by Rebekah D. Jones, a state data scientist who was fired for insubordination in May 2020, a conflict that she said came to a head when she refused to manipulate data to show that rural counties were ready to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns.
  • Ms. Jones’s firing became a flash point as Mr. DeSantis, a close ally of then-President Donald J. Trump, touted Florida’s early success in battling the virus — a victory lap that turned out to be premature at the time and led to a disastrous summer. State officials insisted that her claims about hiding virus data were false.
  • In December, state police agents with guns drawn raided Ms. Jones’s home in Tallahassee to execute a search warrant in a criminal investigation, after police said a breach at the Florida Department of Health was traced to her computer. She denied having anything to do with the breach.
  • Ms. Jones’s dashboard generally shows a higher number of cases than the number reported by the state.
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Third bank cuts ties with Trump after Capitol riot | TheHill - 0 views

  • A third bank declared its plans to cut ties with President TrumpDonald TrumpGrowing number of GOP lawmakers say they support impeachment YouTube temporarily bars uploading of new content on Trump's channel House passes measure calling on Pence to remove Trump MORE and the Trump Organization on Tuesday in the aftermath of the raid on the Capitol last week.
  • Florida-based Professional Bank, which once provided Trump with an $11 million mortgage, announced that it won’t conduct future business with the president or his organization.
  • The Florida bank represents the third bank to end its relationship with Trump and the Trump Organization after a pro-Trump mob breached and vandalized the Capitol building last week in an attempt to disrupt Congress’s certification of President-elect Joe BidenJoe BidenGrowing number of GOP lawmakers say they support impeachment House passes measure calling on Pence to remove Trump Disney, Walmart say they will block donations to lawmakers who objected to Electoral College results MORE’s Electoral College win.
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  • The New York-based Signature Bank announced that it would close down Trump’s personal accounts that have about $5.3 million due to the “displeasure and shock” management experienced following the Capitol riots. 
  • Earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported that Deutsche Bank would not conduct future business with Trump or his company besides monitoring the payment of existing loans amounting to more than $300 million. 
  • The deadly riots resulted in at least five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer and a woman shot by a plain clothes Capitol Police officer.
  • The New York bank also called on the president to resign and said it would not make future agreements with lawmakers who contested the Electoral College results after the riots.
  • “We witnessed the President of the United States encouraging the rioters and refraining from calling in the National Guard to protect the Congress in its performance of duty,” the statement continued.
  • Eric TrumpEric TrumpLet's make Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 the day Trumpism died Ivanka Trump urges 'patriots' storming Capitol to 'stop immediately' in now-deleted tweet Eric Trump warns of primary challenges for Republicans who don't object to election results MORE, one of the president’s sons put in charge of day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization, told The Associated Press that banks and other companies ending their relationship with the business after the riots exemplifies a liberal “cancel culture.”
  • “If you disagree with them, if they don’t like you, they try and cancel you.”
  • Several companies, in addition to the banks, have distanced themselves from the president after last week’s events, including Shopify, which took down trumpstore.com, and PGA of America, which moved a 2022 championship away from Trump property.
  • New York City declared on Wednesday that it would end contracts with the Trump Organization to run attractions in the city’s park, with Mayor Bill de BlasioBill de BlasioRepublican Staten Island candidate apologizes for Hitler reference New York City considering ending business contracts with Trump Columnist Ross Barkan discusses the slow vaccination process in the state of New York MORE (D) saying, “New York City doesn’t do business with insurrectionists.”
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Jan. 6 Was 9 Weeks - And 4 Years - in the Making - POLITICO - 0 views

  • the evening of November 5, the president of the United States addressed the American people from the White House and disgorged a breathtaking litany of lies about the 2020 election. He concluded that the presidency was being stolen from him, warning his supporters, “They’re trying to rig an election and we can’t let that happen.” Feeling a pit in my stomach, I tweeted, “November 5, 2020. A dark day in American history.”
  • From scrolling my social media feed and listening to the cable news punditry buzzing in the background, it seemed my fear was a minority sentiment. If anything, much of the commentary that night was flippant, sardonic, sometimes lighthearted, with many smart people alternately making fun of Trump’s speech and brushing it aside
  • I tweeted again: “I mean, if you spend all your time around people who won't believe a word of what Trump just said, good for you. But that’s not the real world. 70 million people just voted for a man who insists that our elections are rigged. Many of those people will believe him. It’s harrowing.”
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  • Nobody knew exactly how that belief would manifest itself; I certainly never expected to see platoons of insurrectionists scaling the walls of the U.S. Capitol and sacking the place in broad daylight. Still, shocking as this was, it wasn’t a bit surprising. The attempted coup d'état had been unfolding in slow motion over the previous nine weeks. Anyone who couldn’t see this coming chose not to see it coming. And that goes for much of the Republican Party.
  • there’s one conclusion of which I’m certain: The “fringe” of our politics no longer exists. Between the democratization of information and the diminished confidence in establishment politicians and institutions ranging from the media to corporate America, particularly on the right, there is no longer any buffer between mainstream thought and the extreme elements of our politics.
  • The president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, urged him to invoke martial law. The Texas Republican Party suggested seceding from the union. The Arizona Republican Party endorsed martyrdom. Eric Metaxas, the pseudo-evangelical leader with a devoted following on the right, followed suit. “I’d be happy to die in this fight,” he told the president during a radio interview. “This is a fight for everything. God is with us.”
  • All of that was before the president alleged the greatest conspiracy in American history.
  • More than a few told me I was being “hysterical,” at which point things got heated, as I would plead with them to consider the consequences if even a fractional number of the president’s most fervent supporters took his allegations, and his calls to action, at face value. When I submitted that violence was a real possibility, they would snicker. Riots? Looting? That’s what Democrats do!
  • So convinced were the president’s allies that his rhetoric was harmless that many not only rationalized it, but actually dialed it up. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator who once skewered Trump’s dishonesty, promised “earth-shattering” evidence to support his former rival’s claims of a rigged election. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted that “President Trump won this election,” told of a plot to cheat him and alerted the viewers watching him on Fox News, “We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.” Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who famously called Trump “a pathological liar,” himself lied so frequently and so shamelessly it became difficult to keep up. Dozens of other congressional Republicans leveled sweeping, unsubstantiated allegations of mass voter fraud, some of them promoting the #stopthesteal campaign online.
  • Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich floated the arrest of election workers. Mark Levin, the right-wing radio host, urged Republican-controlled legislatures to ignore the results of their state elections and send pro-Trump slates to the Electoral College. Right-wing propaganda outlets like The Federalist and One America News churned out deceptive content framing the election as inherently and obviously corrupt. The RNC hosted disgraced lawyer Sidney Powell for a sanctioned news conference that bordered on clinically insane, parts of which were tweeted by the @GOP account. The president’s lawyers and surrogates screamed about hacked voting machines and international treachery and Biden-logoed vans full of ballots. One conservative group paid a former police captain a quarter-million dollars to investigate voter fraud; he performed an armed hijacking of an air-conditioning repair truck, only to discover there were no fake ballots inside.
  • As the Electoral College meeting drew closer, hundreds of Republican members of Congress signed on to a publicity-stunt lawsuit aimed at invalidating tens of millions of votes for Biden. When it failed, the legislatures in several states closed public proceedings in response to actionable threats
  • The first time I heard someone casually suggest an “imminent civil war,” on a reporting trip in January 2020, I shrugged it off. But then I heard it again. And again. Before long, it was perfectly routine. Everywhere I went, I heard people talk about stocking up on artillery. I heard people talk about hunting down cabals of politically connected pedophiles. I heard people talk about the irreconcilable differences that now divide this country. I heard people talk about the president, their president, being sabotaged by a “deep state” of evil Beltway bureaucrats who want to end their way of life. I heard people talk about a time approaching when they would need to take matters into their own hands.
  • Despite all of these arrows pointing toward disaster — and despite Trump encouraging his followers to descend on Washington come January 6, to agitate against certification of Biden’s victory — not a single Republican I’d spoken with in recent weeks sounded anxious
  • the point remains: They were conned into coming to D.C. in the first place, not just by Trump with his compulsive lying, but by the legions of Republicans who refused to counter those lies, believing it couldn’t hurt to humor the president and stoke the fires of his base.
  • it has long been canon on the right that leftists — and only leftists — cause mayhem and destruction. Democrats are the party of charred cities and Defund the Police; Republicans are the party of law and order and Back the Blue. As Republicans have reminded us a million times, the Tea Party never held a rally without picking up its trash and leaving the area cleaner than they found it.
  • And yet, the right has changed dramatically over the past decade. It has radicalized from the ground up, in substance and in style. It has grown noticeably militant.
  • Trump once told me, “The Tea Party still exists — except now it’s called Make America Great Again.” But that’s not quite accurate. The core of the Tea Party was senior citizens in lawn chairs waving miniature flags and handing out literature; the only people in costumes wore ruffled shirts and tri-corner hats. The core of the MAGA movement is edgier, more aggressive and less friendly; its adherents would rather cosplay the Sons of Anarchy than the Sons of Liberty.
  • There is one thing that connects these movements: Both were born out of deception
  • Republican leaders convinced the grassroots of 2009 and 2010 that they could freeze government spending and reform entitlement programs and repeal Obamacare
  • Trump convinced the grassroots of 2015 and 2016 that he, too, could repeal Obamacare, while also making Mexico pay for a border wall and overhauling the nation’s infrastructure
  • The key difference is that the Tea Party slowly faded into obscurity as voters realized these promises politicians made were a scam, whereas the MAGA movement has only grown more intensely committed with each new con dangled in front of them.
  • Make no mistake: Plenty of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol complex on Wednesday really, truly believed that Trump had been cheated out of four more years; that Vice President Mike Pence had unilateral power to revise the election results; that their takeover of the building could change the course of history
  • The notion of real troublemaking simply didn’t compute. Many of these Republicans have kept so blissfully ensconced in the MAGA embrace that they’ve chosen not to see its ugly side.
  • For the past nine weeks, I’ve had a lot of highly unusual conversations with administration officials, Republican lawmakers and conservative media figures.
  • Based on my reporting, it seemed obvious the president was leading the country down a dangerous and uncharted road. I hoped they could see that. I hoped they would do something — anything.
  • From party headquarters, the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman flung reckless insinuations left and right as her top staffers peddled a catalogue of factually inaccurate claims. The two Republican senators from Georgia, desperate to keep in Trump’s good graces ahead of their runoff elections, demanded the resignation of the Republican secretary of state for no reason other than the president’s broad assertions of corruption, none of which stood up to multiple recounts and investigations by GOP officials statewide
  • Local lawmakers in states like Michigan and Wisconsin told Republicans they’d been cheated, citing the suspicious late-night counting of mail ballots, when they were the ones who had refused to allow those ballots to be counted earlier,
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National Guard Readies for Election Day Deployment - The New York Times - 0 views

  • This year has brought a barrage of emergencies across the country that have required the National Guard — the coronavirus pandemic, hurricanes, wildfires and a wave of street protests.
  • Communities are bracing for protest regardless of the election’s outcome. If demonstrations turn violent and overwhelm the local police, governors will almost certainly call out their states’ National Guard.
  • Under federal law, it is the Guard, not active-duty military, that can enforce order on domestic soil.
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  • States are already on alert for violence. On Monday, Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts ordered 1,000 members of the National Guard to be on standby in case of turmoil following Tuesday’s election.
  • Hundreds of National Guard troops already have been called up in non-law-enforcement roles, to assist states where the ranks of poll workers have been depleted by the coronavirus pandemic.
  • But in a year that is anything but normal, with the electorate sharply polarized, the president warning supporters of a stolen election, and gun sales through the roof, states are bracing for violence that may overwhelm local law enforcement and bring uniformed military troops into the streets.
  • Legal experts say the election may complicate the response because the president has broad discretion to sidestep legal restrictions by declaring an insurrection, which would allow him not only to take control of state National Guard troops, but also to deploy the Army or Marines.
  • But at the same time Mr. Trump threatened to deploy active-duty troops, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued against such a move to control the wave of protests in American cities, including Washington, at least at that time
  • Mr. Esper said at a Pentagon news conference that deploying active-duty forces in a domestic law enforcement role “should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations.”
  • Governors have mobilized Guard forces frequently in recent months to respond to protests over violent policing, as well as hurricanes and wildfires. In June, during the height of the protests, about 86,000 Guard troops were deployed in domestic missions.
  • While federal law bars using federal troops, that restriction can be lifted by the president under the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to send in armed forces if he decides local authorities are not enforcing the laws of the United States.
  • The Insurrection Act could complicate the response to civil unrest, Ms. VanLandingham said, because mayors and governors have no say in what is classified as insurrection, so troops could be sent in even if local authorities do not think they are needed.
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Biden-Harris administration: Here's who could serve in top roles - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • President-elect Joe Biden is set to announce who will serve in top roles in his administration in the coming days and weeks.
  • Ron Klain, one of his most trusted campaign advisers, will serve as his incoming chief of staff. And Jen O'Malley Dillon, Biden's campaign manager, and Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a co-chair of Biden's transition team and presidential campaign, will serve in top roles in the White House.
  • Each of Biden's Cabinet nominees will need to be confirmed by the US Senate, which is currently controlled by Republicans. Two runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 could determine which party controls the chamber and impact the Cabinet confirmation process.
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  • The Cabinet includes the vice president and the heads of 15 executive departments
  • Klain served as Biden's chief of staff in the Obama White House and was also a senior aide to the President.
  • Klain has been a top debate preparation adviser to Biden, Obama, Bill Clinton, Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.
  • O'Malley Dillon will join Biden's incoming administration as a deputy White House chief of staff. O'Malley Dillon was Biden's presidential campaign manager and has served numerous other political campaigns -- including former Rep. Beto O'Rourke's failed 2020 presidential primary campaign and both of Barack Obama's presidential campaigns.
  • Richmond is expected to leave Congress to join Biden's White House staff in a senior role.
  • Rice served in the Obama administration as UN ambassador and national security adviser.
  • A longtime Biden ally, Coons was one of the first members of Congress to endorse the former vice president when he declared his 2020 presidential candidacy.
  • Rice at one point was thought to be the clear choice to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, but in 2012 withdrew her name from consideration to avoid a bitter Senate confirmation battle.
  • Blinken served in the Obama administration as the deputy secretary of state, assistant to the president and principal deputy national security adviser.
  • During the Clinton administration, Blinken served as a member of the National Security Council staff at the White House, and held roles as the special assistant to the president, senior director for European affairs, and senior director for speechwriting and then strategic planning. He was Clinton's chief foreign policy speechwriter
  • Yates was fired by Trump from her role as acting attorney general.
  • Throughout his Senate career, Coons has been known for working across the aisle and forging strong relationships with high-profile Republicans who shared common interests.
  • Brainard currently serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
  • Brainard was the US representative to the G-20 Finance Deputies and G-7 Deputies and was a member of the Financial Stability Board. During the Clinton administration, Brainard served as the deputy national economic adviser and deputy assistant to the President.
  • Raskin was the deputy secretary of the US Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration. She was previously a governor of the Federal Reserve Board.
  • Outside of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Raskin, a former deputy secretary at the department, would be the top choice for most progressives.
  • Rice was one of a handful of women on Biden's shortlist for a running mate.
  • During the mid-1990's, she served as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction, as well as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy
  • Mayorkas was deputy secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, and served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's United States Citizenship and Immigration Services
  • Monaco played a critical role in Biden's vice presidential selection committee, and served as Homeland Security and counterterrorism advisor to Obama.
  • Jones is the junior United States Senator from Alabama. He lost his reelection bid earlier this month to Republican Tommy Tuberville.
  • Jones was also involved in the prosecution of Eric Rudolph, whose 1998 attack on a Birmingham abortion clinic killed an off-duty police officer.
  • If chosen and confirmed, Flournoy would be the first female secretary of defense.
  • Yates had been appointed by Obama and was set to serve until Trump's nominee for attorney general was confirmed.
  • Haaland is a congresswoman from New Mexico, and is one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress. Biden has said he wants an administration that looks like the country. Haaland, the vice chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary if she were to get an offer and accept it.
  • Yang is an entrepreneur and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. He rose from obscurity to become a highly-visible candidate, and his supporters are sometimes referred to as the "Yang Gang." His presidential campaign was centered around the idea of universal basic income, and providing every US citizen with $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year.
  • Nelson is the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. She cemented her image as a rising star of the labor movement during a prolonged government shutdown that stretched from December 2018 to January 2019.
  • Sanders is reaching out to potential supporters in labor to ask for their support as he mounts a campaign for the job. But he is viewed as a long shot and so far has received mix reactions from labor leaders.
  • Walsh is AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka's pick for the job, a big endorsement in what could soon turn into a contentious debate between moderate Democrats and progressives, who will favor Sen. Bernie Sanders or Michigan Rep. Andy Levin
  • Levin is a popular progressive who is also growing his base of support with labor leaders, including at the Communications Workers of America.
  • But he also has credibility with climate activists for having helped create Michigan's Green Jobs Initiative.
  • Murthy, a doctor of internal medicine, is the co-chair of Biden's coronavirus advisory board
  • Bottoms is the mayor of Atlanta and is a rising star of the Democratic Party. Bottoms stepped into the national spotlight when she denounced vandalism in her city as "chaos" after demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis. Bottoms is a former judge and city council member.
  • Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO and has long pushed for education reform
  • Inslee is the governor of Washington state, and previously served in the US House of Representatives.
  • Buttigieg is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. Buttigieg's presidential bid was historic -- he was the first out gay man to launch a competitive campaign for president, and he broke barriers by becoming the first gay candidate to earn primary delegates for a major party's presidential nomination.
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Opinion | Amsterdam shows why the U.S. criminal justice system is a failure - The Washi... - 0 views

  • In the Netherlands, there are roughly 2.6 guns for every 100 people; there are more than 120 guns per 100 people in the United States.
  • “21% of state and 20% of federal prisoners said they possessed a gun during their offense.
  • In the Netherlands there are about 27 gun homicides a year. Not 27 per 100,000. Total
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  • 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021. (The U.S. population is about 20 times that of the Netherlands; U.S. gun homicides are more than 1,777 times the number in the Netherlands.)
  • “Since 2014, 23 prisons have been shut, turning into temporary asylum centres, housing and hotels. … The number of prison sentences imposed fell from 42,000 in 2008 to 31,000 in 2018 — along with a two-thirds drop in jail terms for young offenders
  • Registered crimes plummeted by 40% in the same period, to 785,000 in 2018.”
  • in the United States, “Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of over 350,000 people
  • possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences.”
  • the United States has 163 times the number of incarcerated people as the Netherlands, more than eight times as many per 100,000 people.
  • “The United States spends nearly $300 billion annually to police communities and incarcerate 2.2 million people.”
  • “The societal costs of incarceration — lost earnings, adverse health effects, and the damage to the families of the incarcerated — are estimated at up to three times the direct costs, bringing the total burden of our criminal justice system to $1.2 trillion.”
  • These two very different systems didn’t just happen. Each country made choices.
  • In real terms, the U.S. criminal justice system and ubiquitous guns require an industry — ambulances, emergency room personnel, police, courts, judges, prisons, lawyers, private security and more — that the Dutch system does not
  • As I walked down the streets of Amsterdam, I imagined what we could have bought with the money we spend on the criminal justice system: universal college education, universal medical care, a strong social safety net.
  • The human cost of crime in America — a family driven into poverty because a breadwinner is murdered, a child permanently disabled from a gunshot, children terrorized in schools — is astronomically higher than in the Netherlands.
  • there is the opportunity cost in the United States — the murdered child who doesn’t grow up to invent the next cancer cure, the school that is forced to use resources on lockdown drills and grief counselors rather than reading teachers
  • We are very good at feeding a criminal justice system; we’re not so adept at eliminating crime
  • Understand, then, that we have our current criminal justice system because we have fetishized guns, criminalized addiction, neglected mental and emotional health, and resisted addressing social factors driving crime.
  • We could do it differently. We simply don’t want to
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Miami Beach Issues Curfew To Curb Swelling Spring Break Crowds : Coronavirus Updates : NPR - 0 views

  • Just as tens of thousands of revelers were dreaming of dancing the night away in Miami Beach on Saturday, the city abruptly declared a state of emergency. Local officials shut down traffic on the causeways leading into the beach mecca, ordered outdoor restaurants to suspend outdoor dining starting at 7 p.m. and banned strolling on the city's iconic Ocean Drive after 8 p.m. The announcement came after cheap flights, discounted hotel rooms and new rules rolling back state-mandated COVID-19 restrictions led to a surge of visitors into Miami Beach and other Florida hot spots just as U.S. colleges pause for spring break.
  • Gelber said he was imposing the 8 p.m. curfew and entry restrictions into Miami Beach preemptively before things get worse. Videos of the area show dense crowds of revelers, many of them maskless, drinking, dancing and ambling along Ocean Drive on Saturday night before police moved in to disperse them.Police say they arrested "at least a dozen" people for violating the state of emergency on Saturday night. This is actually fewer arrests than last week, when Miami Beach police detained nearly 100 people as cops tried to break up spring break crowds.
  • As in much of the U.S., COVID-19 numbers in Florida have dropped from a peak in January, but that previous nationwide surge followed soon after the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Public health officials are now warning that gatherings for spring break and the upcoming Easter holiday could again amplify coronavirus transmission as pandemic fatigue prompts people to let their guard down.
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  • Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, echoed that sentiment in an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly this month. Collins said Americans need to be patient and continue with masks and social distancing for a bit longer.
  • In another disruption to the national rites of spring, the pandemic blew out some March Madness brackets over the weekend. In the NCAA men's basketball tournament, a surreal score line of 1-0 popped up on tracking apps for the game between Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Oregon. VCU was forced to pull out of the event after reporting multiple positive coronavirus tests.
  • VCU coach Mike Rhoades said on a videoconference Saturday night announcing his team's withdrawal from the tournament.
  • Rhoades said there were "no dry eyes" when he told his players the news. "This is what you dream of as a college player and a coach, and to get it taken away like this is just a heartbreaking moment in their young lives."
  • But Rhoades added that all his squad did was lose a basketball game, while "500,000 people have lost their lives."
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Trump Backers Block Highways as Election Tensions Play Out in the Streets - The New Yor... - 0 views

  • Law enforcement authorities are increasingly worried, not just about what they have already seen, but also about what has been threatened, especially online.
  • Vehicles with Trump flags halted traffic on Sunday on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey and jammed the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge between Tarrytown and Nyack, N.Y. Another pro-Trump convoy in Virginia ended in a tense shouting match with protesters as it approached a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond.
  • In Graham, N.C., a get-out-the vote rally on Saturday ended with police using pepper spray on some participants, including young children, and making numerous arrests. Organizers of the rally called it flagrant voter suppression.
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  • In Graham, N.C., a city of roughly 15,000 people between Greensboro and Durham, the police said protest organizers had failed to coordinate with city officials in planning their rally, and that it became “unsafe and unlawful.”
  • “I’m encouraged that more than 90 million Americans have already cast their ballots, which, if you do the math, is the equivalent of the entire 1996 presidential election,” Jeh C. Johnson, who served as secretary of homeland security during the Obama administration, said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
  • Officials in New Jersey told a local newspaper that the motorcade stopped near the Cheesequake Service Area — about 30 miles outside New York City — and “backed traffic up for about five miles.”
  • In Graham, N.C., a get-out-the vote rally on Saturday ended with police using pepper spray on some participants, including young children, and making numerous arrests. Organizers of the rally called it flagrant voter suppression.
    • kaylynfreeman
       
      That is completely unecessary.
  • “large militia presence” drawn by President Trump’s own event nearby.
  • Mr. Trump has not committed to a peaceful transfer of power.
  • Sunday’s incidents came a day after a group of Trump supporters in Texas, driving trucks and waving Trump flags, surrounded and slowed a Biden-Harris campaign bus as it drove on Interstate 35, leading to the cancellation of two planned rallies. The F.B.I. confirmed on Sunday that it was investigating the incident.
  • On Saturday, President Trump tweeted a video of the incident with a message, “I love Texas!” After the F.B.I. announced it was investigating, he tweeted again, saying, “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” and instead “the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA.”
  • Vehicles with Trump flags halted traffic on Sunday on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey and jammed the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge between Tarrytown and Nyack, N.Y. Another pro-Trump convoy in Virginia ended in a tense shouting match with protesters as it approached a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond.
  • The group settled a lawsuit last month against officials in Graham who they accused of violating the First Amendment rights of protesters.
  • “We are very concerned about groups lurking and trying to intimidate voters in particular communities,” Ms. Clarke said. Her group’s election protection hotline received calls from nearly a dozen counties in Florida just over the past week, she said, reporting individuals or groups harassing voters at the polls.
    • kaylynfreeman
       
      They can't even see who you vote for anyway. They are being so extra. It's one thing to just be a trump supporter but an extremely different thing to act like a white suppremists group trying to force people to vote for Trump.
  • A separate set of anti-Trump protesters marched in New York City to counter the pro-Trump caravans, leading to some scuffles and arrests.
  • Groups that monitor voting have been preparing for intimidation at the polls at least since September, when protesters disrupted voters at a polling location in Fairfax, Va.
  • Of particular concern are militia groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, whose members have lurked on internet chat boards like 4Chan. “We are keeping an eye on them,” said Joanna Lydgate, national director of the Voter Protection Program which works closely with law enforcement on voting issues.
    • kaylynfreeman
       
      The Proud Boys is a far-right and neo-fascist male-only organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States and Canada.
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