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hannahcarter11

Alabama Trans Youth Dismayed By State's Effort To Block Medical Care : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ates-banning-medical-treatment

alabama trans youth

shared by hannahcarter11 on 09 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • So Hall is watching with alarm as the Alabama legislature advances bills that would outlaw hormone treatment for him and other trans youth in the state.
  • Thinking of the bills' proponents, he says, "Why should some guy who has never met me ... why should he get to tell me what I can and can't do? Why does he get to decide what is right for people who just want to be happy?"
  • This year, state legislatures have proposed a record number of anti-transgender bills.
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  • Alabama is one of 20 states that have introduced bills that would prohibit gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.
  • Alabama's bill is one of the toughest. It would make it a felony to provide transition-related medical treatment, such as puberty blockers, hormones or surgery, to transgender minors.
  • Hall was assigned female at birth. But, he says, when he hit puberty around fifth grade, "That's when I started to fully get uncomfortable with, like, the way that I looked or the way that I felt. Like, in my head I looked a different way than I looked in the mirror."
  • This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement calling bills that prohibit trans medical care, or that ban trans girls from women's sports teams, "dangerous."
  • The Alabama legislation is called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.
  • The swift progress of the trans medical care ban through the Alabama legislature has caused anxiety for families like theirs.
  • At a House health committee hearing this month, lawmakers heard an impassioned plea from Sgt. David Fuller with the Gadsden, Ala., police department, who is father to a transgender girl.
  • Those who treat transgender youth say remarks like these are not just factually wrong; they also stigmatize an already marginalized and vulnerable population.
  • It passed overwhelmingly in the state Senate, by a vote of 23-4, and could go before the full House as early as this week.
  • She points out that in their Birmingham clinic, no minor child is making the decision for treatment on their own. There is a detailed informed-consent process, and the child, their parents and the entire medical team all have to agree on a treatment plan.
  • But if the Alabama bill becomes law, she and her medical team could be charged with class C felonies for prescribing puberty blockers or hormones.
  • That means they could face up to 10 years in prison.
  • LGBTQ advocacy groups are gearing up for immediate court challenges if any of the medical care bans bubbling up around the country become law.
  • For Hall, Alabama's legislation would deny something essential: the person he knows himself to be. And, he says, the notion that he's a "gender-confused child" who's just "going through a phase" causes real pain.
johnsonma23

Alabama chief justice orders halt to same-sex marriage | MSNBC - 0 views

www.msnbc.com/...-orders-halt-same-sex-marriage

politics culture msnbc justice

shared by johnsonma23 on 07 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Alabama chief justice orders halt to same-sex marriage
  • The chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered probate judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, defying a six-month-old Supreme Court decision that made marriage equality the law of the land.
  • U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision only struck down the four same-sex marriage bans that were specifically challenged in the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges. That lawsuit was a consolidated challenge to bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee — not Alabama.
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  • Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary to the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment or the Alabama Marriage Protection Act remain in full force and effect,”
  • U.S. Supreme Court denied the state’s request for a longer stay, which should have cleared the way for gay and lesbian couples to begin marrying in the state. But Moore sent out a letter ordering probate judges to continue denying same-sex couples marriage licenses.
  • rdered all probate judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
  • Granade issued yet another order requiring all probate judges to no longer enforce the state’s same-sex marriage ban
  • Given those two federal orders, Stoll said, there’s no way the Alabama Supreme Court’s March order still stands, regardless of Moore’s belief that it would need to be “reversed by orderly and proper proceedings
malonema1

Moore forces seek retribution against Shelby - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...-richard-shelby-alabama-339185

US politics

shared by malonema1 on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • Alabama GOP Sen. Richard Shelby is confronting a fierce backlash from conservatives over his refusal to support Roy Moore in last month’s special election — with Moore backers pushing a censure resolution and robocall campaign targeting the powerful lawmaker. Moore’s supporters are furious with Shelby over his remark days before the Dec. 12 election that he “couldn’t vote for Roy Moore,” a controversial former state judge who was facing allegations of child molestation. Instead, Shelby said he would write in the name of another unnamed Republican.
  • The censure resolution is unlikely to gain traction against Shelby, an iconic figure in Alabama politics who skated to a sixth and probably final term in 2016. But it shows how a race that dominated national politics for months and badly embarrassed President Donald Trump, who gave Moore his full-throated endorsement, continues to tear at the party.
  • “It is unfortunate to hear that instead of unifying the party ahead of its important 2018 election cycle, people within the Alabama GOP are making a shortsighted attempt to divide the party over Sen. Shelby’s noble stance,” said the senator's spokeswoman Blair Taylor. The censure resolution is expected to come before the state Republican Party’s resolutions committee later this month. A majority of the seven-person panel is needed for it to pass. If it fails, Moore supporters can bring it up at next month’s Alabama Republican Party executive committee meeting, where it would need two-thirds support.
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  • McCain later hit back, launching an ambitious campaign to reshape the Arizona GOP, ridding it of conservative foes and replacing them with close allie
  • ome Alabama Republicans are shrugging off the campaign against Shelby, who they argue had little choice but to line up against the deeply divisive Moore. “I would publicly urge the Alabama Republican Party, if they’re going to adopt any resolution,” said Bill Canary, president and CEO of the Business Council of Alabama, “to adopt one that commends Sen. Shelby for his service to the state.”
Javier E

Want to Know What Divides This Country? Come to Alabama - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ama-moore-trump-divisions.html

alabama nativism whitelash racism history south culture politics Trump

shared by Javier E on 01 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The Republican Party has long preyed on the shame of dispossessed white voters. But that shame — over “being viewed as second-class citizens,” Mr. Kennedy said — has converted into a defiance that the party doesn’t yet seem to grasp.
  • “Populism” has become a convenient shorthand for the nihilistic backlash, and the term has come to invoke a collection of largely irrational cultural tropes. But this doesn’t do justice to the critique of capitalism at the heart of the insurgency.
  • Original, post-Reconstruction populism was the crucible in which the elite deformed the have-nots’ economic urgency into racial anxiety. Alabama yeomen had returned from the Civil War to face a sea change in agriculture, with those formerly independent farmers joining former slaves in peonage to the large landholders.
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  • Realizing they had a revolution on their hands, the Democratic Party’s wealthy ex-Confederates and newly arrived Northern industrialists swiftly put this cross-racial revolt down. They cut off credit to Populist activists and expelled them from their churches; lynchings spiked. They also patented the timeless rejoinders to “class warfare,” calling the Populists a “communistic ring” and, crucially, as one Alabama publication put it, “nigger lovers and nigger huggers.”
  • When the white have-nots revolted in successive decades, they appropriated the elite’s racist shibboleths — and took them so much further than the haves ever intended.
  • And even when the elites were in charge of the racism, they could not always control the monster white supremacy they had created. In Birmingham, the fire hoses and police dogs of Eugene Connor, known as Bull, a city commissioner installed by the “Big Mules,” not only hastened the end of legal segregation but also made his city kryptonite for economic development.
  • The axiom of unintended consequences is the same today, and explains why populism remains ideologically incoherent: Caught up in feel-good spasms of nativism, the base is willing to overlook the Trump administration’s elite, kleptocratic culture. And the tax-cut-hungry Republican establishment keeps sowing the whirlwind, under the assumption that, in Mr. Kennedy’s words, its base “would rather be poor than not be proud.”
  • But the Alabama psyche is complex, and Mr. Trump may have misread it at the now legendary rally in Huntsville where he tore into knee-taking black N.F.L. players — many of whom come out of Alabama football programs and therefore, Mr. Kennedy dryly observed, “are family.”
  • Also important to that redemption narrative is the South’s belated prosecution of civil rights era crimes, and one of its major protagonists is Doug Jones
  • While his appeal to black voters is self-evident, Mr. Jones is also culturally correct by Southern-white standards, a deer-hunting, bourbon-drinking, “Roll, Tide!” product of a Wallace-supporting household in Birmingham’s steel-mill suburbs, who did well as he did good. He is inarguably less “embarrassing” than Mr. Moore to the polite circles frequented by Mr. Strange
  • Defiance is now an epidemic as pervasive as opioids, and Alabama has transformed from backwoods to bellwether. While the press plays the defeat of Mr. Trump’s tepidly endorsed candidate as a debate over the prestige of his coattails, the president has swung the sacred trust of his office, the legacy of Lincoln, behind a candidate whose very existence confirms a republic in peril.
carolinehayter

Amazon Union Vote Count In Alabama: Why Is It Taking So Long? : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...nion-vote-count-taking-so-long

politics US GOP economics policy Culture

shared by carolinehayter on 08 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The results of the 2021 election that everyone has been awaiting with bated breath are taking a while. Blame it on mail-in votes. Yes, this one, too.
  • The results of the historic Amazon union vote in Alabama, which ended more than a week ago, are still a few days away. The count of yes and no votes began on Thursday.
  • The National Labor Relations Board has received 3,215 ballots from workers at Amazon's warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. That's according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which is looking to represent this workplace. It's also a remarkable turnout of more than 50%.
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  • The vote-tally process — done by hand — includes several lengthy steps.
  • Hundreds of ballots have been challenged, the union says, mostly by Amazon. These ballots are then set aside and may play a huge role if the tally of uncontested votes produces a result that's so close that these set-aside votes could sway the outcome.
  • Afterward, the vote-count moved on to the next step. Inside that first letter was a second sealed envelope containing the anonymous ballot. That second set of envelopes required opening and shuffling.
  • On Thursday afternoon, the hand-counting of yes and no votes finally started. This tabulation of anonymous ballots is being streamed online for preregistered members of the media and the general public.
  • The Bessemer workers are deciding whether to form Amazon's first unionized warehouse in America.
  • A vote to unionize would shake up history for both Amazon and Alabama.
  • Amazon unleashed a strong push to sway Bessemer workers to vote against unionizing.
  • The vote is the most consequential labor battle in the U.S. in recent history.
clairemann

Court won't allow Alabama execution without a pastor - SCOTUSblog - 0 views

www.scotusblog.com/...ama-execution-without-a-pastor

Politics SCOTUS US policy crisis

shared by clairemann on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Supreme Court on Thursday night ruled that the execution of an Alabama man must remain on hold unless the state allows the man, Willie Smith III, to have his pastor by his side in the execution chamber.
  • However, the Associated Press reported shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling that Alabama had called off Smith’s execution, which had been scheduled to take place under an execution warrant that designated Thursday as the execution date. The Supreme Court issued its ruling at around midnight eastern time – or about 11 p.m. central time, just one hour before the execution warrant expired.
  • Four justices — Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett — all signed an opinion, written by Kagan, that said the state failed to adequately justify its policy of barring spiritual advisers from the execution chamber.
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  • Three justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh — indicated that they would have allowed the execution to go forward under Alabama’s policy. The remaining two justices – Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – did not publicly disclose how they voted, but at least one of them must have voted with the three liberal justices and Barrett to prevent the execution from occurring without a spiritual adviser.
  • Murphy v. Collier. In that case, a Buddhist inmate challenged Texas’ policy of allowing Christian and Muslim spiritual advisers in the execution chamber while excluding clergy representing other religions, arguing that the policy discriminated against him. The court put the Buddhist inmate’s execution on hold, and Kavanaugh wrote a separate opinion suggesting that one solution would be for the state to bar all spiritual advisers from the execution chamber. Both Texas and Alabama adopted that policy.
  • Kagan explained that any restrictions on Smith’s religious rights must satisfy a stringent test – which, she concluded, Alabama’s policy cannot. Kagan acknowledged that prison security is a compelling interest, but she emphasized that the federal government and some states have allowed clergy members without a connection to the government to attend executions without resulting in any security concerns.
anonymous

How Biden's Solidarity Emboldened a Liberal Push for Power in Alabama - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mazon-union-alabama-biden.html

Politics

shared by anonymous on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • How Biden’s Solidarity Emboldened a Liberal Push for Power in Alabam
  • resident’s support for the rights of unionizing Amazon workers delighted political organizers in Alabama who are hoping to build long-term Democratic momentum in a
  • ike Foster, one of the lead organizers for the union, was less surprised. “We’ve been waiting on him,” he said.
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  • is words demonstrated a willingness to use his bully pulpit on behalf of communities that have often fallen outside the Democratic Party’s governing focus: working-class voters in Republican states, many of whom are Black. The message also elevated the national debate about the future of labor and unions, a cross-ideological issue on which Mr. Biden can uniquely find common cause with the progressive wing of his party even as many Democrats continue to shy away.
  • The task will be tougher in Alabama: The state is much more firmly Republican than its Southern neighbor, having ousted the incumbent Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat, by a healthy margin in 2020. The state has also not experienced the rapid demographic change that has made Georgia’s political transformation possible, and does not have its considerable numbers of college-educated suburban moderates.
  • Mr. Shakir said he had privately lobbied Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, to persuade Mr. Biden to speak out. And in a sign of the potential kinship between Mr. Klain and the left on labor, Mr. Shakir said he believed the president would have chosen Mr. Sanders as labor secretary if the Senate had not been split 50-50, making confirmations more difficult.
  • Although labor leaders, local union activists and national progressive politicians uniformly support an Amazon union in Alabama, that feeling does not reflect the mood inside the warehouse itself. With less than a month to go in the union vote, the 5,800-worker warehouse is split among supporters of the union, strong dissenters and an apathetic center that is growing sick of the national attention.
  • Last week, in a media round table of anti-union warehouse workers hosted by Amazon, some said that Mr. Biden’s message had been unnecessary, and that they did not feel intimidated by the company. A spokeswoman for Amazon declined to directly comment on the president’s remarks.
  • Last year, when Amazon opened the warehouse to the praises of local elected officials, the company hailed its arrival as a sign of economic revival in a predominantly Black area. With the coronavirus pandemic raging, Amazon offered thousands of jobs at a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, more than double the state’s minimum. Some hailed it as a godsend.
  • The legacy of union sensibilities in Alabama maybe don’t follow along partisan lines,” she said. “So regardless of the outcome, one of the things that we really did see over the course of the last three to four years was Democrats and progressive Democrats coming out of the woodwork. Waking up and realizing they weren’t the only person on the block in the retail workplace who has a progressive mind-set.”
cartergramiak

How Biden's Solidarity Emboldened a Liberal Push for Power in Alabama - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mazon-union-alabama-biden.html

politics US Culture biden policy

shared by cartergramiak on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • BESSEMER, Ala. — The first time Darryl Richardson tried to start a union, he was 23 years old and virtually alone in the effort. It failed, he lost his job, and he remembers the lasting fears of other employees who worried they would suffer a similar fate.
  • “I know the president weighed in,” said J.C. Thompson, a process assistant at the warehouse. “And I can’t imagine the pressure our leadership is feeling because there’s a few people — a minority — who are disgruntled.”
  • The task will be tougher in Alabama: The state is much more firmly Republican than its Southern neighbor, having ousted the incumbent Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat, by a healthy margin in 2020. The state has also not experienced the rapid demographic change that has made Georgia’s political transformation possible, and does not have its considerable numbers of college-educated suburban moderates.
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  • When Mr. Biden weighed in on the contentious union debate in Alabama — which has pitted company against worker and neighbor against neighbor as a potentially broader labor push brews at a corporation that has long resisted similar efforts — he showed a new side of his nascent presidency.
  • Last year, when Amazon opened the warehouse to the praises of local elected officials, the company hailed its arrival as a sign of economic revival in a predominantly Black area. With the coronavirus pandemic raging, Amazon offered thousands of jobs at a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, more than double the state’s minimum. Some hailed it as a godsend.
  • While liberal activists in Alabama see an opportunity to reshape the state’s politics, and national progressives seize on a shared priority with Mr. Biden’s administration, Mr. Richardson just wants to be able to take a long bathroom break without the fear of having his pay docked.
yehbru

Alabama Official On Vaccine Rollout: 'How Can This Disparity Exist In This Country?' : ... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...isparity-exist-in-this-country

US Politics Alabama Covid Vaccine Racial Disparity

shared by yehbru on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In Birmingham, Ala., Alabama Regional Medical Services — a health clinic that primarily serves a lower-income, Black neighborhood — has not received a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and news reports say it will have to wait until March 13 for its first shipment.
  • Meanwhile, the first doses in the state went to nearby Mountain Brook, an affluent white suburb of Birmingham, says Sheila Tyson, a local official
  • According to the most recent data provided by the state's health department, in cases where race was reported — white people have received 54.6% of vaccinations, compared to 14.6% for Black people.
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  • Tyson, a commissioner in Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham, says state officials have told her that they are not distributing vaccines to majority-Black neighborhoods because they expect people there may be hesitant to take them.
  • "I am finding out thousands and thousands of people within the state of Alabama want the vaccine. We have over 125,000 people in Jefferson County on the waiting list," she says. "We want it now."
  • "The pandemic has pulled the Band-Aid off of the racist cancer wounds that have covered this country for centuries. No one wants to address it. Everyone keeps dodging the questions," she says. "We have more access than anyone else. So how can this disparity exist in this country?"
knudsenlu

A new generation of young black politicians is coming - the Democrats should listen | U... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ack-politicians-doug-jones-win

politicians democrats black politics US culture

shared by knudsenlu on 22 Dec 17 - No Cached
  • he recent upset in the special election for US Senate in Alabama has Democrats fantasizing about a 2018 wave election, and rightfully so. When you couple the Doug Jones narrow win in Alabama with the big victories in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats have every right to feel optimistic.
  • Boosting African American turnout will continue to be the key to Democratic victories in 2018. And I encourage Democrats to use the campaigns of two, young progressive mayors in the deep south as a blueprint for effective engagement with black voters.
  • This playbook must also prioritize black engagement from start to finish of the campaign. This means engaging black voters around a real policy agenda that is responsive to their needs. For example, Woodfin promoted a comprehensive policy platform during the campaign that spoke directly to the concerns of black voters. Moreover, hiring the right campaign strategists who actually know black voters and understand how to craft and deliver a message that resonates with us is key.
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  • Finally, Democrats have to govern in a manner that prioritizes black voters. We expect more than election-year church visits and endorsements from senior black politicians. We want to see senior African American staff – especially in the US Senate given their shameful record on diversity.
ethanshilling

Tornadoes and Violent Storms Hit Southeast, Leaving at Least Five Dead - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tornadoes-southeast.html

US climate storms

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • At least five people died and homes and businesses were leveled in Alabama as a result of powerful storms and tornadoes moving across the Southeast on Thursday.
  • The National Weather Service reported multiple tornadoes in Alabama, including one that likely traveled over 100 miles, from near Birmingham to the northeastern corner of the state.
  • In Florence, Ala., a police officer was struck by lightning during the height of the afternoon storm, said Chief Mike Holt. The officer suffered burns but survived.
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  • More than 45,000 properties across several states had lost electricity by evening, according to PowerOutage.us.
  • The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, urging residents facing the most imminent danger to “TAKE COVER NOW!”
  • “Our priority at the moment is identifying those citizens in need of emergency medical attention,” John Samaniego, the sheriff in Shelby County, said in a statement, adding that there had been “significant tornado damage,” including residences that had been “completely destroyed.”
  • In Birmingham, James Spann, an ABC33/40 meteorologist, was reporting on the storms when a tornado struck his own home.
  • “It’s not a good situation,” Mr. Spann said when he returned. “The reason I had to step out —we’ve had major damage at my house. My wife is OK, but the tornado came right through there.”
  • Officials warned residents to prepare as schools and government offices closed early. “Stay home, stay safe, stay informed,” Andy Berke, the mayor of Chattanooga, Tenn., said on Twitter.
  • The destructive weather returned a week after some of the same areas were hit by an outbreak of powerful storms that swept through Mississippi and Alabama before moving on to Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia.
  • In 2020, the United States saw almost 1,000 tornadoes and 76 tornado deaths, according to preliminary counts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  • Officials have also warned residents to have an emergency supply kit on hand, complete with items like a first aid kit, nonperishable food, water and batteries.
  • In Florence, Ala., meanwhile, Chief Holt marveled at the unlikely chance that his officer would be hit by lightning and his relatively good fortune at surviving. “He’s doing really well for someone who got struck by lightning,” Mr. Holt said.
mattrenz16

Biden Backs Labor Movement as Amazon Workers Weigh Unionization: Live Updates - The New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-relief-bill-stimulus

shared by mattrenz16 on 01 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden expressed solidarity with workers attempting to unionize an Amazon facility in Alabama in a video released Sunday that emphasized his broad support of the labor movement — without explicitly backing their cause or naming the company itself.
  • Around 6,000 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, a former steel town outside of Birmingham, are voting over the next week on whether they want to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
  • If successful, they would be the first of Amazon’s 400,000 American workers to join a union — a landmark undertaking and early test of Mr. Biden’s campaign claim that he will be the “most pro-union president” ever.
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  • “Let me be really clear: It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union,” he said. “But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer to decide that either.”
  • More than 2,000 of the warehouse’s workers signed cards indicating interest in joining the union, meeting the threshold to hold a vote under National Labor Relations Board rules.
  • The site of the unionization drive is not insignificant. Alabama was a key battleground for the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, and many of the workers at the Bessemer facility are Black, a fact that Mr. Biden noted on Sunday. But Alabama is now a right-to-work state, making it harder for unions to organize or negotiate with employers — which has made it a draw for big companies, especially auto manufacturers.
  • The unionization drive takes place at a time of “reckoning on race,” Mr. Biden said, adding, “It reveals the deep disparities that still exist in our country.”
katherineharron

The 15 most notable lies of Donald Trump's presidency - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • I fact checked every word uttered by this President from his inauguration day in January 2017 until September 2020 -- when the daily number of lies got so unmanageably high that I had to start taking a pass on some of his remarks to preserve my health.
  • Trump got even worse after November 3. Since then, he has spent the final months of what has been a wildly dishonest presidency on a relentless and dangerous lying spree about the election he lost.
  • The most telling lie: It didn't rain on his inaugurationclose dialogSign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.bx-group bx-group-default bx-group-1245864-3DW
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  • It rained during Trump's inaugural address. Then, at a celebratory ball later that day, Trump told the crowd that the rain "just never came" until he finished talking and went inside, at which point "it poured."
  • The President would say things that we could see with our own eyes were not true. And he would often do this brazen lying for no apparent strategic reason.
  • The most dangerous lie: The coronavirus was under control
  • This was more like a family of lies than a single lie. But each one -- the lie that the virus was equivalent to the flu; the lie that the situation was "totally under control"; the lie that the virus was "disappearing" -- suggested to Americans that they didn't have to change much about their usual behavior.
  • more than 386,000 Americans have died from the virus.
  • The most alarming lie saga: Sharpiegate
  • Trump tweeted in 2019 that Alabama was one of the states at greater risk from Hurricane Dorian than had been initially forecast. The federal weather office in Birmingham then tweeted that, actually, Alabama would be unaffected by the storm
  • Trump, however, is so congenitally unwilling to admit error that he embarked on an increasingly farcical campaign to prove that his incorrect Alabama tweet was actually correct, eventually showcasing a hurricane map that was crudely altered with a Sharpie.
  • The most ridiculous subject of a lie: The Boy Scouts
  • When I emailed the Boy Scouts of America in 2017 about Trump's claim that "the head of the Boy Scouts" had called him to say that his bizarrely political address to the Scouts' National Jamboree was "the greatest speech that was ever made to them," I didn't expect a reply. One of the hardest things about fact checking Trump was that a lot of people he lied about did not think it was in their interest to be quoted publicly contradicting a vengeful president.
  • A senior Scouts source -- a phrase I never expected to have to type as a political reporter in Washington, DC -- confirmed to me that no call ever happened.
  • The ugliest smear lie: Rep. Ilhan Omar supports al Qaeda
  • The most boring serial lie: The trade deficit with China used to be $500 billion
  • It was a problem for the country that the President was not only a conspiracy theorist himself but immersed in conspiracy culture, regularly stumbling upon ludicrous claims and then sharing them as fact.
  • So he said well over 100 times that, before his presidency, the US for years had a $500 billion annual trade deficit with China -- though the actual pre-Trump deficit never even reached $400 billion.
  • The most entertaining lie shtick: The burly crying men who had never cried before
  • according to the President, they kept walking up to him crying tears of gratitude -- even though they had almost always not previously cried for years.
  • The most traditional big lie: Trump didn't know about the payment to Stormy Daniels
  • he also lied when he needed to. When he told reporters on Air Force One in 2018 that he did not know about a $130,000 payment to porn performer Stormy Daniels and that he did not know where his then-attorney Michael Cohen got the money for the payment, it was both audacious -- Trump knew, because he had personally reimbursed Cohen -- and kind of conventional: the President was lying to try to get himself out of a tawdry scandal.
  • The biggest lie by omission: Trump ended family separation
  • ere's what he told NBC's Chuck Todd in 2019 about his widely controversial policy of separating migrant parents from their children at the border: "You know, under President Obama you had separation. I was the one that ended it." Yes, Trump signed a 2018 order to end the family separation policy.
  • The most shameless campaign lie: Biden will destroy protections for pre-existing conditions
  • When Trump claimed in September that Biden would destroy protections for people with pre-existing health conditions -- though the Obama-Biden administration created the protections, though the protections were overwhelmingly popular, though Biden was running on preserving them,
  • Trump himself had tried repeatedly to weaken them
  • The lie he fled: He got Veterans Choice
  • Trump could have told a perfectly good factual story about the Veterans Choice health care program Obama signed into law in 2014: it wasn't good enough, so he replaced it with a more expansive program he signed into law in 2018.
  • That's not the story he did tell -- whether out of policy ignorance, a desire to erase Obama's legacy, or simply because he is a liar. Instead, he claimed over and over -- more than 160 times before I lost count -- that he is the one who got the Veterans Choice program passed after other presidents tried and failed for years.
  • The Crazy Uncle lie award: Windmill noise causes cancer
  • At a White House event in 2019, Trump grossly distorted a 2013 quote from Rep. Ilhan Omar to try to get his supporters to believe that the Minnesota Democrat had expressed support for the terrorist group al Qaeda.
  • his 2019 declaration that "they say" the noise from windmills "causes cancer."
  • The most hucksterish lie: That plan was coming in two weeks
  • Trump's big health care plan was eternally coming in "two weeks."
  • My personal favorite lie: Trump was once named Michigan's Man of the Year
  • Trump has never lived in Michigan. Why would he have been named Michigan's Man of the Year years before his presidency?He wouldn't have been. He wasn't.
  • The most depressing lie: Trump won the election
  • Trump's long White House campaign against verifiable reality has culminated with his lie that he is the true winner of the 2020 presidential election he clearly, certifiably and fairly lost.
kaylynfreeman

Former Auburn Coach Tommy Tuberville Wins Alabama Senate Race | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...ace_n_5fa1ce92c5b67617e64c18f8

US politics Trump

shared by kaylynfreeman on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Republican Tommy Tuberville, the former coach of Auburn University’s football team, was projected to easily defeat Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones to pick up a Senate seat long targeted by the GOP, according to The Associated Press.
  • Tuberville ran as a standard-issue Republican, closely aligning himself with the president. “I’m going to stand with President Trump to finish the border wall, cut your taxes and protect life,” he said in his final ad of the campaign.
  • He has relied almost totally on the endorsement of President Donald Trump and Alabama’s heavy Republican lean — Trump won the state by 30 percentage points in 2016 — to win the election, rarely campaigning and declining to debate Jones.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Tuberville managed to embarrass himself: In September, he clearly did not know what the Voting Rights Act was when asked by a constituent. 
Javier E

The Danger of Politicizing 'Freedom' - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...680117

freedom democracy autocracy domination tradition US history culture politics

shared by Javier E on 05 Oct 24 - No Cached
  • Peter Pomerantsev: Freedom seems to be a word that is embraced across America. I’ve seen polling research that shows that, even in this very polarized country, it’s one thing that people across the political spectrum care about.
  • Pomerantsev: Anne, the common conception—the one that I have, anyway—is that freedom is meant to be a good thing. Freedom is meant to be the same thing as democracy. Those two words—I hear them used interchangeably. Freedom means the Bill of Rights, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, the freedom to choose who rules you.
  • Applebaum: Not quite. There’s another equally old American version of freedom, which is freedom to defy the federal government—you know, the freedom to go out into the Wild West and make up your own rules.
  • ...42 more annotations...
  • Jefferson Cowie: One of the great sort of struggles throughout American history is: Where does freedom rest? The biggest fight over that was, of course, the Civil War. But I think the entire American history can be seen as a tension between local versus federal realms of authority, with regard to this slippery idea of freedom.
  • Cowie: And then on Election Day, 1874, as Black people came in from the countryside to vote, white people just pulled guns out of every nook and cranny of downtown Eufaula, Alabama—from sheds, from windows, from underneath porches—and opened fire on Black voters that were lined up to vote and shot them in the streets.
  • He describes how white settlers in the 1830s refused to abide by treaties that the federal government had signed with Native Americans and, instead, would repeatedly steal their land.
  • Applebaum: And then, after the Civil War, during Reconstruction, Barbour County also revolted against the federal government’s demand that freed slaves be allowed to vote
  • Applebaum: Jefferson Cowie is a historian. He teaches at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville. In his book Freedom’s Dominion, he writes about a place called Barbour County, in Alabama, where the two different forms of freedom have come crashing into one another for two centuries now
  • At least 80 were shot. Some say as many as 150. It’s a difficult number to come up with, but 80 confirmed, at least. And that ended Reconstruction violently, in what was essentially a coup d’état in the name of white freedom.
  • Applebaum: Then in the 1950s and 1960s, this version of freedom, the freedom to defy the federal government, emerges again.
  • Applebaum: George Wallace, born in Barbour County, became governor of Alabama during the fraught civil-rights era.
  • the most iconic speech of George Wallace’s life. He only mentioned segregation one other time, for a total of four, but he invokes freedom or liberty two dozen times.
  • The more I dug into the local history and how local and state powers saw themselves in opposition to federal power and saw that their freedom was a local ability to control, to dominate, a freedom to dominate others—the land, the political power of others—then you realize, Oh, what Wallace is talking about is a very specific kind of freedom
  • We allow the word freedom to work in the political discourse because it appears to be a kind of liberal value, but underneath it is actually a very powerful ideology of domination.
  • that’s what he’s really talking about there, because it’s at that moment that the federal government is coming in to take away their freedom to control the political power of Black people.
  • Cowie: Because if you’re running as a snarling racist, you only get so far, he realized. But if you’re running against the federal government, as freedom from the federal tyranny, now you have yourself a coalition, right? Now you have the anti-taxers. You have people who don’t want to deal with integrated housing. You have people who don’t, you know, want the federal government meddling in their lives. And now that’s a broader group that you can bring together.
  • Pomerantsev: So this is not what we traditionally think of as freedom—you know, the freedom to vote, to choose your representatives, the freedom to engage in politics. This is something much darker.
  • Cowie: What happened in Barbour County: The idea of civil rights and the idea of political participation were mobilized effectively in pursuit of the freedom to dominate.
  • Cowie: That’s the model that I’m afraid of for the future.
  • Applebaum: So what you’re saying is: We could elect somebody who would alter the political system.
  • Applebaum: So it wouldn’t be that, you know, a dictator comes to power by driving tanks down the street and shooting up the White House but is, rather, elected with the consent of the voters. Cowie: Right.
  • Cowie: Absolutely. But my nightmare is that fascism comes to America, but it’s marching under the banner of freedom.
  • Cowie: The difference now is they’re beginning to capture federal authority, right? So these people who’ve been anti federal government are now tasting federal power. And this is something that people like John C. Calhoun from South Carolina and George Wallace from Alabama actually envisioned
  • Applebaum: “Transform federal power into their own vision”—that sounds like some of the things we’ve been talking about throughout this series. Tom Nichols reminded us of how easy it would be to subvert the military. We’ve seen how a congressional committee can be used to harass its chairman’s enemies, and, of course, the Justice Department could be used in the same way. We know how weak some parts of our system are; there is not a guarantee that the rest of it is stable.
  • Pomerantsev: In the present day, we often hear about this idea of freedom as being synonymous with freedom from government—or, to be more precise, from democratic government, from checks and balances, from elected officials—that if Americans are just left alone, they’ll be free and achieve their best.
  • Pomerantsev: Yes. You live in a society that makes it possible to do things—to become educated, to be creative, to found a company, to be healthy—and that, not the absence of government, makes you free
  • If you have very poor government, the people are not free. People are then subject to arbitrariness and violence. They’re subject to the rule of the wealthy. Just taking away government and imagining people are free is a kind of magical thinking.
  • Pomerantsev: Anne, you know Timothy Snyder. He’s a professor at Yale, and he’s written a new book, called On Freedom. He lays out a different way of thinking about the word.
  • Timothy Snyder: The basic way that this argument about freedom is now run is that people say, The less government you have, the more free you are, which is fundamentally not true.
  • Applebaum: So Snyder means that you are free to do something, not just free from something.
  • Snyder: Freedom has been an axe, right? It’s been a blade which has been used to cut through things. And I’m trying to suggest that freedom should be more like a plow. Freedom should be a tool which allows us to cultivate things. Freedom should be something which justifies action.
  • the argument is usually made in terms of justice or fairness or equality, and those are all good things. But both politically and, I think, morally, just in terms of the correct description, freedom is often very much more central.
  • Pete Buttigieg: Yes. It’s important to make sure that people are free from overbearing government. But also, government is not the only thing that can make you unfree, and good government helps make sure you’re free from other threats to your well-being.
  • t means one party can try to claim a positive vision of freedom for themselves, and it also means the followers of the other party might oppose it reflexively, just for partisan reason
  • Pomerantsev: I think one way to keep democracy is to make sure we use that word a little more carefully than we do now. I hear a lot of Americans say, Democracy is not working. And I know what they mean
  • But that’s not democracy—that’s autocracy at work. Autocratic tendencies are to blame for this sense that democracy is not working. Even the word democracy is becoming so tainted for so many people that you have to almost avoid the term and really show how the growth of autocracy makes life worse for people every day.
  • Applebaum: Peter, I spoke with David Pepper, who’s written several books about how America is becoming less and less democratic. In a recent evaluation of elections in Texas, nearly 70 percent of races were uncontested, and in Georgia, it was about the same.
  • Pepper: It really changes the entire dynamic of those in power. I mean, think about the incentive system. If you’re in a kind of a competitive race, your incentive system in that kind of system is: You know you can be held accountable by the voters. You better deliver good public results, right?
  • I’ve seen it in country after country. I saw it in Russia and Ukraine and Hungary. It’s no accident that Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident killed, would call his struggle “the final battle between good and neutrality.” He knew that apathy was the enemy.
  • Applebaum: So autocrats and their enablers craft a dysfunctional system, the dysfunctionality, understandably, makes people disgusted or apathetic, and then they start clamoring for something different, something less democratic, because democracy seems so impossible, so incompetent.
  • Pomerantsev: When people choose not to engage—not to run for office or vote or participate—that’s actually just the beginning, because apathy, cynicism, and nihilism grow. And as they do, the appetites of those who want to degrade democracy and seize more power grow, too.
  • Well, in these systems where you literally, for the most part, don’t face an election ever, or a competitive election ever, every incentive in that world is upside down.
  • Pomerantsev: But, Anne, these achievements—they don’t happen in a vacuum. People don’t just spontaneously go out and protest, and then great things happen. Movements take planning. You need to create coalitions—this is where a lot of people mess u
  • America has had success with coalition building in its history. The suffragettes, for example, weren’t just radical women fighting for the right to vote—they found ways to embrace and engage conservative women and get them to join the movement too.
  • Pomerantsev: The answer to the authoritarian urge is not a democratic savior. The answer is going to be: lots and lots of people-powered movements working together, because that already is the essence of democracy and central to taking back—truly taking back—control.
nrashkind

WHO Reviews 'Available' Evidence On Coronavirus Transmission Through Air : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...virus-transmission-through-air

shared by nrashkind on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The World Health Organization says the virus that causes COVID-19 doesn't seem to linger in the air or be capable of spreading through the air over distances more than about three feet.
  • But at least one expert in virus transmission said it's way too soon to know that.
  • "I think the WHO is being irresponsible in giving out that information. This misinformation is dangerous," says Dr. Donald Milton, an infectious disease aerobiologist at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • "The epidemiologists say if it's 'close contact' then it's not airborne. That's baloney," he says.
  • Of course, the world is struggling with a shortage of the most protective medical masks and gear.
  • What's more, one study of hospital rooms of patients with COVID-19 found that "swabs taken from the air exhaust outlets tested positive, suggesting that small virus-laden droplets may be displaced by airflows and deposited on equipment such as vents." Another study in Wuhan hospitals f
  • "The U.S. CDC has it exactly right,"
  • When epidemiologists are working in the field, trying to understand an outbreak of an unknown pathogen, it's not possible for them to know exactly what's going on as a pathogen is spread from person to person, Milton says. "Epidemiologists cannot tell the difference between droplet transmission and short-range aerosol transmission."
  • For the average person not working in a hospital, Milton says the recommendation to stay 6 feet away from others sounds reasonable.
  • People shouldn't cram into cars with the windows rolled up, he says, and officials need to keep crowding down in mass transit vehicles like trains and buses.
  • With coronavirus cases continuing to climb and hospitals facing the prospect of having to decide how to allocate limited staff and resources, the Department of Health and Human Services is reminding states and health care providers that civil rights laws still apply in a pandemic.
  • States are preparing for a situation when there's not enough care to go around by issuing "crisis of care" standards.
  • But disability groups are worried that those standards will allow rationing decisions that exclude the elderly or people with disabilities.
  • On Saturday, the HHS Office for Civil Rights put out guidance saying states, hospitals and doctors cannot put people with disabilities or older people at the back of the line for care.
  • Severino said his office has opened or is about to open investigations of complaints in multiple states. He did not say which states could be the focus of investigation, but in the last several days, disability groups in four states — Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee and Washington — have filed complaints.
  • In Kansas and Tennessee, disability groups and people with disabilities say state guidelines would allow doctors to deny care to some people with traumatic brain injuries or people who use home ventilators to help them breathe.
  • The ventilator issue is coming up in New York, which may soon be the first place where there are not enough ventilators to meet the demand of patients. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will need double its current amount in about three weeks.
  • Severino said Saturday that his office was concerned about complaints of possible ventilator reallocation, an issue that had been raised in New York and Kansas.
  • The PREP Act provides immunity to tort liability claims for manufacturers or drug companies that are asked to scale up quick responses to a disaster such as a nuclear attack or a pandemic.
  • Severino said his office would investigate civil rights violations and it would be up to another office at HHS, the general counsel's office, to make waivers under the PREP Act.
  • Some disability advocates have worried whether that exception could be used to trump civil rights laws that protect people with disabilities from treatment decisions.
  • He was 98 years old.
  • The Reverend Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, died Friday, according to a statement by the Joseph & Evelyn Lowery Institute for Justice and Human Rights.
  • The statement said Lowery died peacefully at home Friday night, surrounded by his daughters.
  • Known affectionately as the "Dean" of the Civil Rights Movement, Lowery was a part of pivotal moments in the nation's history
  • At an appearance on the national mall in 2013, at the age of 91, he led the crowd in the chant "Fired Up? Ready to go?" The event marked 50 years since the 1963 March on Washington, which Lowery attended as a contemporary of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. At that 50th anniversary appearance, he warned that hard-fought gains were under attack.
  • Joseph Echols Lowery was born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1921. He was the son of a teacher and a shopkeeper. The young Lowery experienced firsthand the brutalities of the Jim Crow South and would spend his life fighting for racial justice.
  • One of the first protests he organized was as a young Methodist minister in Mobile, Alabama in the early 1950s. It was aimed at desegregating city buses.
  • From there, Lowery helped coordinate the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the non-violent movement that desegregated the city's public transportation and led to the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
  • Four decades later, at a gathering of civil rights foot soldiers in Montgomery, Lowery reflected on that accomplishment, noting that the number of black elected officials in the country had gone from less than 300 in 1965 to nearly 10,000 by 2005.
  • "It changed the face of the nation," said Lowery.
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