Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged Conference

Rss Feed Group items tagged

abbykleman

Trump news conference takes on new significance - 0 views

  •  
    The news conference, Trump's first since winning the election, was already looming as a significant rite of passage for someone who is undergoing a transformation from rabble-rousing candidate to the next American President. But new allegations involving Russia are sure to inject an extra charge.
marleymorton

Obama to hold final news conference Wednesday - 0 views

  •  
    The event, two days before his term ends and President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office, will likely be the final time Americans will hear from Obama as a sitting commander in chief. It follows a tradition from past presidents of holding a concluding news conference. President George W.
fischerry

Watch Donald Trump's First Press Conference in 6 Months - Rolling Stone - 0 views

  • Watch Donald Trump's First Press Conference Since Election
fischerry

'SNL' mocks Trump's press conference - 0 views

  • 'SNL' mocks Trump's press conference
fischerry

Watch the entire Donald Trump news conference - 0 views

  • Watch the entire Donald Trump news conference
fischerry

President-Elect Donald Trump Press Conference - 0 views

  • President-Elect Donald Trump Press Conference
Javier E

Trump's America will be on vivid display at annual conservative gathering - The Washing... - 0 views

  • The conservative movement in America now belongs to President Trump.
  • Thousands of activists will arrive in Washington this week for an annual gathering that will vividly display how Trump has pushed the Republican Party and the conservative movement toward an “America first” nationalism that has long existed on the fringes.
  • Matt Schlapp, the president of the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, said the gathering this year will be an acknowledgment of the “realignment going on politically in the country” and of the rising import of “American sovereignty” to conservatives nationally.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “There used to be Pat Buchanan’s people, the populist revolt-types and the establishment of the anti-establishment, who’d get a third of the vote in the primaries and we’d beat them back,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican consultant who led a super PAC that supported former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. “Now they’ve hijacked the Republican Party.”
  • And Breitbart, which has been a sponsor of CPAC for years, has more visibility than ever. As Bannon has pointed out to associates, a site that once organized panels titled “The Uninvited” for guests too controversial for CPAC is now shaping the movement’s agenda.
  • Meanwhile, the libertarian flavor of the conference during the Obama years has faded. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who won the conference’s presidential straw poll three years running, is not coming to CPAC.
  • Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally who has given a series of speeches recently on “Trumpism,” said he is “impressed that CPAC has very intelligently anticipated the direction that Trump is going to take the country and understood that he’ll be the dominant voice on the right for the foreseeable future.”
  • Sam Nunberg, a former Trump adviser who worked on the businessman’s CPAC arrangements in the years before the 2016 campaign, said the conferences were “pivotal” for Trump because they gave him a tangible sense of how his celebrity could be translated to a career in conservative Republican politics.
  • “It’s definitely a show,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, a co-founder of GOProud who left the Republican Party in 2015. “It’s a show that is now designed to perpetuate a fight. Donald Trump lives for the fight. He feeds off the fighting. So does, frankly, the Breitbart organization. It’s all about us versus them. It’s not about ideas.”
julia rhodes

Syria Aid May Resume Despite Fears Over Where It Will Go - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The Obama administration is considering the resumption of nonlethal military aid to Syria’s moderate opposition, senior administration officials said on Thursday, even if some of it ends up going to the Islamist groups that are allied with the moderates.
  • The United States suspended the shipments last month after warehouses of equipment were seized by the Islamic Fron
  • some of the Islamists fought alongside the Free Syrian Army in a battle against a major Al Qaeda-affiliated rebel group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Restoring the aid, they said, would send a message of American support at a time when opposition groups are threatening to boycott a Jan. 22 peace conference out of concern that it will only serve to tighten Mr. Assad’s grip on power and discredit them at home.
  • Aid would continue to be funneled exclusively through the Supreme Military Council, the military wing of moderate, secular Syrian opposition.
  • Opposition groups are scheduled to meet on Jan. 17 to decide whether to attend the conference. But the meeting’s stated goal — to chart a political transition in Syria — seems more elusive than ever, given the recent military gains made by Mr. Assad’s forces.
  • The administration has signaled a willingness to talk to the Islamic Front, but an effort to arrange a meeting in December was rebuffed by the group when the White House opted to send two midlevel State Department officials rather than the ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford.
  • While analysts said a decision to resume aid may encourage opposition groups to attend the peace conference, it would be far short of what is necessary to salvage the meeting — known as Geneva II but set to be held in Montreux, a nearby Swiss city.
  • Among the questions now being debated at the White House and the State Department, officials said, is how to ensure that the aid flows only to vetted organizations, and whether Islamist groups that receive any of it could be compelled to pledge that they will not work with Al Qaeda.
  • Still, as other experts noted, the aid in question includes food rations and pickup trucks, not tanks and bullets. None of it is likely to change the trajectory of the conflict, which some experts said had fallen into a kind of “territorial equilibrium,” in which neither the rebels nor Mr. Assad’s forces have much to gain from further fighting.
B Mannke

BBC News - Syria crisis: UN withdraws Iran invitation to Geneva talks - 0 views

  • e Syrian regime, angered the US and the Western-backed Syrian oppositi
  • The invitation to Iran, a key ally of the Syrian regime, angered the US and the Western-backed Syrian opposition.
  • The peace conference, due to begin on Wednesday, is the biggest diplomatic effort to end the three-year conflict. More than 100,000 people have been killed and millions more displaced in the war.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Withdrawing the invitation was "the right thing to do", Monzer Akbik, the National Coalition's chief of staff, told the BBC.
  • Meanwhile, CNN and UK newspaper the Guardian are reporting claims that the Syrian regime tortured and killed thousands of detainees.
  • But Iran issued several statements on Monday rejecting any attempt to place conditions on its attendance at the conference
  • "understood and supported the basis and goal of the conference".
  • It is unclear whether Iran will be able to join the talks two days later, when they move to Geneva.
  • it shows a chilling systematic documentation of the bodies, each of which was photographed several times and given a number.
  • Some 55,000 photographs showing roughly 11,000 dead detainees were smuggled out of Syria by a defector who served as a military police photographer
  • In May last year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to try to bring both sides together.
  • However, the National Coalition appears resolute that any transitional government will not involve President Bashar al-Assad.
Javier E

2016 Hopefuls and Wealthy Are Aligned on Inequality - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • There is, however, one group of Americans with whom the Republican contenders and Mrs. Clinton, the likely Democratic front-runner, are generally in step: the wealthy.
  • more than 80 wealthy Chicago-area residents and found that 62 percent felt “differences in income in America are too large” — a figure generally in line with public opinion.
  • Only 13 percent of wealthy interview subjects said the government should “reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes.” Only 17 percent said the government should “redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The views of the rich on other policies that might reduce inequality followed a similar pattern. A mere 19 percent of the wealthy, versus two-thirds of the general public, said the government should “see to it” that anyone who wants a job can find one
  • Forty percent of the wealthy, versus 78 percent of the public, said the government should make the minimum wage “high enough so that no family with a full-time worker falls below the official poverty line.”
  • In general, Ms. Chin has found, the rich regard those who do not succeed in life as “people who didn’t take advantage of the education system,” not victims of circumstances beyond their control.
  • Ms. Chin’s findings, which she is scheduled to present at a conference in April, are even more stark. As she puts it, the rich tend to see inequality “as a story about individual hard work, effort and character.”They recognize that growing up poor puts workers at a disadvantage but argue that a middle-class background presents no barrier to economic success and that growing up wealthy can even be a liability because it robs people of their incentive to work hard.
  • one of the most intriguing conclusions of the recent avenue of research: Wealth seems to shape people’s views regardless of their age, gender, education, marital status — or even ideology and political party. “There is a sense in which wealth seems to trump partisanship,”
  • given the attention candidates of all stripes must lavish on wealthy donors, that might explain why even relatively moderate presidential aspirants are reluctant to propose a prominent role for government in reducing inequality
  • Jeb Bush, arguably the most outspoken potential Republican candidate on the subject, has struck much the same posture as his more conservative rivals. “We believe the income gap is real, but that only conservative principles can solve it by removing the barriers to upward mobility,” Mr. Bush wrote
  • Mr. Rubio is the Republican who has come closest to suggesting an affirmative role for government, proposing that Washington redirect money from programs like food stamps to subsidies for low-wage workers, though he would not increase the total funds available for alleviating poverty. A spokesman said by email that Mr. Rubio “doesn’t think the federal government is very good” at reducing poverty and would like to see those programs reformed. He has indicated that he would cut taxes for the rich rather than raise them.
  • Mrs. Clinton was vague when it came to solutions. She promoted the public-private partnerships that the Clinton Foundation was brokering to expand worker training and noted that her husband’s administration had ushered in “broad-based growth and shared prosperity” through increasing the minimum wage and doubling the earned-income tax credit.
  • Before the well-heeled crowd at Aspen, she said, “We have to have a concerted effort to meet a consensus about how to deal with this.”
katyshannon

Video shows L.A. County sheriff's deputies fatally shooting man in Lynwood - LA Times - 0 views

  • Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell has scheduled a news conference Sunday to discuss the fatal shooting by sheriff’s deputies of a man wielding a gun at a busy Lynwood intersection, an incident caught on a dramatic video that has sparked protests in the neighborhood.
  • The sheriff and homicide detectives will discuss the shooting at a news conference at 11 a.m. at the Hall of Justice downtown. A group of civil rights organizations are planning their own news conference and are calling for a meeting with McDonnell.
  • In the 29-second video obtained by KTLA and filmed from a restaurant across the street, a sheriff's deputy follows Robertson as he appears to be walking away from the deputy.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The video showed deputies repeatedly firing at the man, even after he fell to the ground. The Sheriff's Department said the man had fired shots into the air and pointed the weapon at the deputies before they opened fire. Officials also said they recovered a loaded .45-caliber handgun at the scene.
  • The incident comes amid increasing public scrutiny over police-involved shootings both in the Los Angeles area and nationwide. Over the last two years, the Los Angeles Police Department has dealt with several controversial shootings by officers, including one involving an unarmed homeless man on skid row that was also captured on video. That case is still under investigation.
  • The suspect, whose name has not been released by the Sheriff's Department, was pronounced dead at the scene. No deputies were injured. Relatives identified the suspect as Nicholas Robertson, 28.
  • At the shooting site, more than a dozen people gathered in protest Saturday evening, holding signs and yelling into megaphones, “No more stolen lives!” Helmet-clad deputies formed a line and looked on, and one recorded the scene with a video camera.
  • The activists they want the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the shooting and launch a broader probe into the use of force by the Sheriff’s Department.
  • According to authorities, witnesses said that moments before, Robertson turned and pointed the gun at the deputies.At least a dozen gunshots are then heard, and Robertson falls to the ground. He drags himself on the ground alongside an Arco gas station.
  • A brief pause in gunfire follows, then shots begin once more.When the camera pans back, two deputies can be seen a few yards way, both with arms up, pointing their weapons in Robertson's direction.
  • Seth Stoughton, a criminal law professor at the University of South Carolina and a former Tampa, Fla., police officer, said there are circumstances under which an officer can shoot at a suspect walking away from them. “If the deputies reasonably believe the suspect with a firearm presents a danger by walking toward a gas station with vehicles and bystanders, they would be justified in using deadly force.
  • “It does not strike me as egregious like [the] Walter Scott video here in South Carolina.... If the suspect wasn't armed or they didn't have a solid basis for that belief, that would more problematic,” Stoughton said. More facts, he cautioned, are needed to determine what occurred outside the video.
  • Once the suspect is on the ground, how close the gun is to him is key in whether shots are justified, he added.
  • Experts familiar with use-of-force cases said deputies will need to explain why they opened fire and continued to shoot as Robertson was on the ground.
  • “They are going to have to articulate why they made every one of those shots,” said Ed Obayashi, an Inyo County deputy and an attorney. “They must show they reasonably used deadly force.”
katyshannon

News from The Associated Press - 0 views

  • The largest group of world leaders ever to stand together kicked off two weeks of high-stakes climate talks outside Paris on Monday, saying that striking an ambitious deal to curb global warming can show terrorists what countries can achieve when they are united.
  • The U.N.-organized gathering of 151 heads of state and government comes at a somber time for France, two weeks after militants linked to the Islamic State group killed 130 people around Paris. Fears of more attacks prompted extra-high security and a crackdown on environmental protests.
  • The conference is aimed at the most far-reaching deal ever to tackle global warming. The last major agreement, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, required only rich countries to cut carbon dioxide emissions, and the U.S. never signed on. Since then, global temperatures and sea levels have continued to rise, and the Earth has seen an extraordinary run of extreme weather.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • More than 180 countries have already submitted individual national plans, but a climate deal is by no means guaranteed.
  • Among several sticking points is money - how much rich countries should invest to help poor countries cope with climate change, how much should be invested in renewable energy, and how much traditional oil, gas and coal producers stand to lose if countries agree to forever reduce emissions.
  • Reviving the rich-poor differences that caused earlier climate talks to fail, Chinese President Xi Jinping said an eventual global deal must include aid for poor countries and acknowledge differences between developing and established economies.
  • Many of the leaders said the world must keep the average temperature within 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of current levels - and if possible to half that, to spare island nations threatened by rising seas.
  • The world has already warmed nearly 1 degree Celsius since the beginning of the industrial age, and factories and cars continue to belch pollution around the world.
  • Many of the leaders framed the problem as a generational issue, where current leaders owe future generations a livable Earth.
  • Leaders called their attendance in Paris an act of defiance after the Nov. 13 attacks, some of which occurred near the airfield north of the city where the conference is taking place.
  • Many of the leaders paid their respects at sites linked to the attacks. Obama, in a late-night visit, placed a single flower outside the concert hall where dozens were killed, and bowed his head in silence.
  • To that end, at least 19 governments and 28 leading world investors were announcing billions of dollars in investments to research and develop clean energy technology, with the goal of making it cheaper. Backers include Obama, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires George Soros and Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal, and Jack Ma of China's Alibaba.
  • Under the initiative, 19 countries pledge to double their spending on low- or no-carbon energy over the next five years. They currently spend about $10 billion a year, about half of that from the U.S.
  • Gates said he and other investors, including the University of California, are pitching in $7 billion so far and hope to raise more this week.
  • In another announcement, the United States, Canada and nine European countries pledged nearly $250 million to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to rising seas, droughts and other consequences of climate change. Germany pledged $53 million, the U.S. $51 million and Britain $45 million.
  • The money will be made available to a fund for the least developed countries. Other countries that contributed include Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland.
maddieireland334

For Now, Anglicans Avert Schism Over Gay Marriage - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Despite threats of a walkout or even schism over the issue of gay marriage, the archbishops of the Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest body of churches, managed to keep their church intact after a week of tense meetings that ended with a symbolic washing of one another’s feet.
  • In interviews, the American archbishop said his church would not reverse its decision to bless same-sex marriages, and the Canadian archbishop said his church would proceed with a vote this summer to consider approving same-sex marriages.
  • The Most Rev. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, said at a news conference on Friday that it was necessary to impose “consequences” on the Episcopal Church for breaking with church doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman. He also acknowledged that the move would send a painful message to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Bishop Curry said that despite the “overwhelming” vote against his church, he saw signs of openness to change from the primates. “If this is of God, things will change in time,” he said. “And it may not be fast. I don’t know how long. But I know in my lifetime I’ve seen things change that I didn’t believe would ever change.”
  • But the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael B. Curry, said in a telephone interview that he did not expect his church to reverse the decision it made last summer to permit same-sex marriages and to change the definition of marriage so that it was no longer defined by gender.
  • But Archbishop Welby said that the church’s provinces, while autonomous, were “interdependent” and obligated to one another not to deviate from doctrine. “And if you simply ignore that, there will be consequences,” he said.
  • The archbishop of Canterbury said there was no clarity about what would happen if the Americans did not reverse course and the Canadians moved to affirm gay marriage. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” he said at the news conference.
  • He also announced that he intended to hold the next international assembly of Anglican bishops, known as a Lambeth Conference, in 2020. With schism averted at least temporarily, Archbishop Welby said that Friday, the primates agreed to join discussions with the Coptic Church leader, Pope Tawadros II, and Pope Francis, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, to set a common date for Easter.
knudsenlu

Senator Jim Risch on North Korea and the "Bloody Nose" - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • At a recent security conference in Munich, Senator James Risch cautioned that a “very brief” conflict “of biblical proportions” could erupt between the United States and North Korea, leaving in its wake “mass casualties the likes of which the planet has never seen.” He then promptly left his stunned audience to catch a flight. This week, back in Washington, D.C., the Idaho Republican explained the warning. He expressed some hope that economic sanctions and other pressure will make North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rethink his pursuit of nuclear weapons. But if that doesn’t happen, he suggested, the nuclear threat from North Korea is so exceptional that the Trump administration could feel obligated to embark on an all-out war.
  • “The president of the United States has said over and over again that he does not telegraph what and when and how he is going to do something,” he continued. “He proved it once in Syria, in response to [President] Assad using chemical weapons against his people, and he proved it a second time in Afghanistan when he delivered” the “mother of all bombs” against ISIS targets. “Both of those times that he pulled the trigger were very surgical, very direct, accomplished exactly what they were supposed to accomplish.”
  • Isn’t the possibility of miscalculation a good argument for talking to the North Koreans, if only to handle crises? “Of course it is,” Risch said. “Civilized people would do that, wouldn’t they?” But North Korea’s “recklessness” and “maliciousness” mean that its leaders are “entirely different than the civilized people we’re dealing with who are nuclear powers,” he said.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Risch hopes the severe sanctions that the Trump administration has imposed on North Korea will have an impact on the trajectory of the crisis. Yet here too he has his doubts. “Is [Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign] causing them grief? Yes it’s causing them grief,” he said. “Has it caused them to change their thinking and their actions? Not yet.” The administration just implemented strong measures against ships and shipping companies that are helping North Korea evade restrictions on importing and exporting fuel, he noted. But in terms of sanctions, “we’re about at the end of the road as far as the kinds of things we can do.”
Javier E

A Weekend for Ignoring Signs of Doom - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • If this thing starts, it’s going to [probably be] one of the worst, catastrophic events in the history of our civilization, but it is going to be very, very brief. The end of it is [will] see mass casualties, the likes of which the planet has never seen—it will be of biblical proportions. …
  • This president has at his fingertips the ability to dispense what he has said he is going to dispense, if the North Korean regime, if Kim Jong Un, continues down the path that he is [on] … the president can do this quickly and, as I said, it is at his fingertips.
  • the implication of his message was startling: The president of the United States is willing to launch a major war in the near future if North Korea does not back down.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Yet after Risch departed, the panel went on as normal. No one said much about North Korea except to reiterate that there is no bloody-nose strategy. Other preventive-strike options, which do appear to be under serious consideration, were not discussed. Indeed the prospect of the use of force against North Korea hardly came up earlier in the conference.
  • There was no overarching threat or narrative that captivated participants. There was no sense of urgency. No feeling that we were truly on the brink. But, if you looked, red lights were flashing everywhere.
  • Meanwhile, European and American officials did little to dispel the notion that the West is in disarray.
  • And doubts about who truly speaks for the Trump administration continued to swirl.
  • Also remarkable was what the speakers failed to bring up.
  • Wolfgang Ischinger, the chairman of the conference, made several impressive attempts to encourage senior officials to consider how to preserve the liberal international order—to find a way back from the brink— but his message went unheeded.
  • it was not a year for bravery, usefulness, or faith. It was a year for false bravado, contradiction, and selfishness
  • The question we are left with is this: We know things are bad in our world today, but will they break? Judging from the proceedings in Munich, we will need to be very lucky in the year ahead for the answer to be no.
brickol

Under Intense Criticism, Trump Says Government Will Buy More Ventilators - The New York... - 0 views

  • Faced with a torrent of criticism from cities and states that have been pleading for help to deal with the most critically ill coronavirus victims, President Trump announced on Friday that the federal government would buy thousands of ventilators from a variety of makers, though it appeared doubtful they could be produced in time to help hospitals that are now overwhelmed.
  • His announcement came shortly after authorizing the government to “use any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act,” a Korean War-era authority allowing the federal government to commandeer General Motors’ factories and supply chains, to produce ventilators.
  • Just 24 hours before, he had dismissed the complaints of mayors and governors who said that they were getting little of the equipment they needed for an expected onslaught of serious cases.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • He was essentially ordering the company to do something it had already arranged to do: G.M. announced earlier on Friday that it was moving forward with an emergency joint venture with a small manufacturer, Ventec Life Systems, even in the absence of a contract from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
  • In a late-afternoon news conference, Mr. Trump said, “Now it turns out we will have to be producing large numbers.” He said that over the next 100 days, “we will either make or get, in some form, over 100,000 additional units,” more than three times the nation’s annual production.
  • Mr. Trump’s announcement at his coronavirus task force’s daily briefing came on a day of intensive criticism of the administration’s slow response and lack of leadership in a pandemic that has now resulted in over 1,500 deaths in the United States. More than 100,000 people here have been infected with the coronavirus, according to a New York Times database. The United States is the only country so far to hit that milestone.
  • Much of the criticism has focused on the absence of sufficient stockpiles of basic materials like masks and ventilators, and especially on the lack of urgency in organizing increased production and distribution.
  • Officials in more than 200 American cities, large and small, report a dire need for face masks, ventilators and other emergency equipment to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a survey released on Friday.
  • In total, the conference tabulated that cities needed 28.5 million face masks, 24.4 million other items of personal protection equipment, 7.9 million test kits and 139,000 ventilators.
  • Roughly two-thirds of the cities said they had not received any emergency equipment or supplies from their state, the report said. And of those that did receive state aid, nearly 85 percent said it was not enough to meet their needs.
  • More than 90 percent — or 192 cities — told the conference that they did not have an adequate supply of face masks for police officers, firefighters or emergency workers. In addition, 92 percent of cities reported a shortage of test kits to diagnose who has contracted the virus — a problem Mr. Trump has said in recent days was all but solved — and 85 percent said they did not have a sufficient supply of ventilators available to health facilities.
  • In New York, the epicenter of the virus in the United States, doctors and nurses have reported that they were being forced to experiment with putting several patients on a single ventilator — a largely untested, unapproved practice that state authorities are now permitting in an effort to keep alive older adults or immunocompromised patients who could not breathe on their own.
  • “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” Mr. Trump said Thursday night, discussing an urgent request from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. “You know, you’re going to major hospitals sometimes, they’ll have two ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they’re saying, can we order 30,000 ventilators?”
  • Mr. Trump’s abrupt change on the need for ventilators appeared to be in response to news reports that his administration had decided at the last minute not to announce a $1.5 billion contract with G.M. because of concern about the high cost and slow delivery of the machines.
  • Because Mr. Trump played down the severity of the coronavirus for much of January and February, and into the beginning of March, the White House got a late start in assessing how much equipment would be needed.
  • The White House had been preparing to unveil the G.M.-Ventec joint venture this week, and had hoped to announce that upward of 20,000 ventilators would be available in weeks, and that ultimately 80,000 would be produced. But the company complained that FEMA would not commit to spending the $250 million or so it would take to retool the factory.
Javier E

How local officials scrambled to protect themselves against the coronavirus - The Washi... - 0 views

  • Across the country, state and local officials, frustrated by what they described as a lack of leadership in the White House and an absence of consistent guidance from federal agencies, took steps on their own to prepare for the pandemic and protect their communities. In some cases, these actions preceded federal directives by days or even weeks as local officials sifted through news reports and other sources of information to educate themselves about the risks posed by the coronavirus.
  • With scant information about the virus and no warnings against large gatherings, cities such as New Orleans moved ahead in February with massive celebrations that may have turned them into hotspots for the virus.
  • “The leader in global pandemics and protecting the United States starts at the federal level,” said Nick Crossley, the director of emergency management in Hamilton County, Ohio, and past president of the U.S. Council of International Association of Emergency Managers.
  • ...47 more annotations...
  • He praised Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for taking bold steps early, including declaring a state of emergency when there were only three reported cases on March 9, four days before the federal government followed suit. Thirty states had declared a state of emergency by the time Trump declared a national emergency on March 13.
  • “They didn’t move fast enough,” said Crossley, of the federal government. “And what you’ve seen is more local and state officials sounding the alarm. “We needed a national response to this event.”
  • With seven reported infections in the United States by the end of the day, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency on Jan. 31, and Trump announced strict travel restrictions, barring most foreign visitors coming from China. He also imposed the nation’s first mandatory quarantine in 50 years.
  • Officials spent three hours war-gaming how they would respond. The drill prompted the state to send 300 employees home early to test their remote work capability. That unmasked a serious problem: A quarter of the team could not perform their jobs at home because they needed access to secure computer systems.
  • Then he heard the news: The United States had identified its first case of person-to-person transmission involving someone who had not traveled overseas. Also, the World Health Organization classified the coronavirus as a public health emergency of international concern.
  • Chicago Jan. 31: 9,927 cases worldwide, seven cases in the United States
  • Tallahassee Jan. 30: 8,234 cases worldwide, five cases in the United States
  • “We are concerned about our public health system’s capacity to implement these measures, recognizing they may inadvertently distract us from our ongoing tried-and-true efforts to isolate confirmed cases and closely monitor their contacts,” according to a previously unreported Feb. 6 letter. “We also worry about the potential to again overwhelm laboratory capacity, recognizing that national capacity has not been adequate to quickly test our highest-risk individuals.”
  • “In the first few sets of conversations, we were not hearing answers to those questions,” Lightfoot, a Democrat, said of her talks with federal officials. “It was kind of like, either silence, or ‘Do the best you can,’ which was obviously not acceptable.”
  • she drafted a letter to Trump on behalf of the mayors from Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. They insisted on clear, written directions from the federal government, according to the letter, and worried about diverting health-care resources during flu season, when hospitals were already stretched.
  • Americans who had visited China’s Hubei province would be forced to quarantine for 14 days, and those who visited other parts of China would be screened for symptoms and asked to isolate themselves for two weeks. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was caught off guard. The directive came with little guidance. Where were local governments supposed to quarantine the travelers? What would they do if someone refused to quarantine? Who was going to pay for the resources needed to quarantine people?
  • Mount Kisco, N.Y. Feb. 9: 40,150 cases worldwide, 11 cases in the United States
  • Weeks earlier, Amler had started fitting employees for personal protective equipment and training them on how to use the gear. In January, she watched what was happening in Wuhan with growing concern: “It seemed impossible that it wouldn’t eventually spill out of China into the rest of the world.”
  • San Francisco Feb. 24: 79,561 cases worldwide, 51 cases in the United States
  • Trump continued to reassure the public that there was little to worry about. On Feb. 24, he tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
  • But Colfax and his public health staff in San Francisco were seeing something else when they studied the “curves” of the pandemic — graphs showing how many cases were reported in other regions over time.
  • Wuhan’s curve was climbing exponentially, and other countries, such as Italy, were seeing soaring infection rates as well. Colfax noticed that in every infected region, officials were more and more aggressive about restricting their populations
  • “It became apparent that no jurisdiction that was where the virus was being introduced, was sort of, in retrospect, thinking, ‘Oh, we overreacted,’ ” Colfax said.
  • On Feb. 24, Colfax and other health officials assembled their research and met with Mayor London Breed. They made an urgent request: Declare a state of emergency
  • by the end of the meeting, Breed was convinced. They needed to declare a state of emergency so that they could tap into state and federal funds and supplies, and redeploy city employees. The next day, San Francisco became one of the first major cities in the United States to do so, after Santa Clara and San Diego counties did earlier in the month.
  • It would take another 17 days, as the virus infected people in nearly every state, before Trump declared a national emergency.
  • In New Orleans, officials moved ahead with Mardi Gras festivities in late February that packed people into the streets. It was a decision the mayor would later defend as coronavirus cases traced to the celebration piled up.
  • On Feb. 27, at a White House reception, Trump predicted that the coronavirus would disappear. “Like a miracle,” he said.
  • “No red flags were given,” by the federal government, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat, later said in a CNN interview. “If we were given clear direction, we would not have had Mardi Gras, and I would’ve been the leader to cancel it.
  • San Antonio Feb. 29: 86,011 cases worldwide, 68 cases in the United States
  • The last day of February marked a major turning point for the coronavirus in the United States: The first American who had been diagnosed with the illness died
  • In a Saturday news conference, Trump described the patient from the Seattle area as a “medically high-risk” person who had died overnight. A CDC official said that the man, who was in his 50s, had not traveled recently — another sign that the virus was snaking through local communities.
  • During the announcement, Trump asked the media to avoid inciting panic as there was “no reason to panic at all.”
  • “We’re doing really well,” he said. “Our country is prepared for any circumstance. We hope it’s not going to be a major circumstance, it’ll be a smaller circumstance. But whatever the circumstance is, we’re prepared.”
  • That same afternoon in San Antonio, the CDC mistakenly released a woman from quarantine who was infected. The woman was one of dozens of evacuees from Wuhan whom the federal government had brought to a nearby military base and then isolated at the Texas Center for Infectious Disease.
  • the woman had been dropped off at a Holiday Inn near the San Antonio airport and headed to a mall where she shopped at Dillard’s, Talbots and Swarovski and ate in the food court.
  • As local officials learned details about the infected woman’s movements and how she had been transported at 2 a.m. back to the Texas Center for Infectious Disease, they waited for the CDC to issue a statement. Hours passed, but they heard nothing. “They were like quiet little mouses,” Wolff said. “They were all scared to talk because I think they felt they were going to get in trouble with the president of the United States because he was saying there was not a problem.”
  • The next day, San Antonio officials declared a public health emergency and filed a lawsuit to prevent the CDC from releasing the 120 people in quarantine until they were confirmed negative for the virus or completed a 28-day quarantine. A judge denied the motion, but the CDC agreed that evacuees must have two consecutive negative tests that are 24 hours apart and that no one with a pending test can be released.
  • In Oklahoma City, the coronavirus became a reality for Mayor David Holt, a Republican, when the NBA abruptly canceled a Thunder basketball game after a Utah Jazz player tested positive on March 11. Until then, Holt said, the coronavirus felt “distant on many levels.”
  • Mount Kisco, N.Y. March 3: 92,840 cases worldwide, 118 cases in the United States
  • Within days, state authorities set up an emergency operations center in New Rochelle and created a one-mile containment zone. Inside the perimeter, schools and community centers shuttered and large gatherings were prohibited.
  • Through it all, local officials faced backlash from some community leaders who thought they were overreacting.
  • San Francisco March 5: 97,886 cases worldwide, 217 cases in the United States
  • Days after San Francisco’s emergency declaration, Breed stood in front of news cameras to announce the city’s first two cases of the coronavirus.
  • They were not related, had not traveled to any coronavirus-affected areas and had no contact with known coronavirus patients: It was spreading in the community.
  • By then, Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez, a Republican, had announced the cancellation of the Ultra Music festival, a three-day celebration that draws about 50,000 people. Miami was the first city to call off a major music festival, and Suarez faced tremendous backlash
  • When he tried to order more masks, none were immediately available. By then the entire country was scrambling for protective gear.
  • Days later, Holt huddled on the phone with other leaders from the United States Conference of Mayors. For about 20 minutes, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, detailed the crisis seizing her city
  • “She sounded like the main character in a Stephen King novel,” Holt recalled. “She had hundreds of cases, she had dozens of deaths.”
  • “Any struggles that we’re having, whether it be testing or other issues, or even just convincing our public of the seriousness of the matter, there are some roots back to the time period in January and February, when not all national leadership was expressing how serious this was,” Holt said.
  • While the mayors held their conference call on March 13, Trump declared a national emergency to combat the coronavirus.
  • By then, Suarez had tested positive for the coronavirus and was in quarantine. As of Sunday, he remained in isolation, leading the city by phone calls and video chats. He wanted to stop flights into Miami and the governor to order residents to shelter in place as California and other states had already done.
Javier E

Warnings Ignored: A Timeline of Trump's COVID-19 Response - The Bulwark - 0 views

  • the White House is trying to establish an alternate reality in which Trump was a competent, focused leader who saved American people from the coronavirus.
  • it highlights just how asleep Trump was at the switch, despite warnings from experts within his own government and from former Trump administration officials pleading with him from the outside.
  • Most prominent among them were former Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb, and Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council Dr. Luciana Borio who beginning in early January used op-eds, television appearances, social media posts, and private entreaties to try to spur the administration into action.
  • ...57 more annotations...
  • what the administration should have been doing in January to prepare us for today.
  • She cites the delay on tests, without which “cases go undetected and people continue to circulate” as a leading issue along with other missed federal government responses—many of which are still not fully operational
  • The prescient recommendations from experts across disciplines in the period before COVID-19 reached American shores—about testing, equipment, and distancing—make clear that more than any single factor, it was Trump’s squandering of out lead-time which should have been used to prepare for the pandemic that has exacerbated this crisis.
  • What follows is an annotated timeline revealing the warning signs the administration received and showing how slow the administration was to act on these recommendations.
  • The Early Years: Warnings Ignored
  • 2017: Trump administrations officials are briefed on an intelligence document titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.” That’s right. The administration literally had an actual playbook for what to do in the early stages of a pandemic
  • February 2018: The Washington Post writes “CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak.” The meat of the story is “Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo.”
  • May 2018: At an event marking the 100 year anniversary of the 1918 pandemic, Borio says “pandemic flu” is the “number 1 health security issue” and that the U.S. is not ready to respond.
  • One day later her boss, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer is pushed out of the administration and the global health security team is disbanded
  • Beth Cameron, former senior director for global health security on the National Security Council adds: “It is unclear in his absence who at the White House would be in charge of a pandemic,” Cameron said, calling it “a situation that should be immediately rectified.” Note: It was not
  • January 2019: The director of National Intelligence issues the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment of threats to national security. Among its findings:
  • A novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens such as H5N1 and H7N9 influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus having pandemic potential if they were to acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.”
  • Page 21: “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
  • September, 2019: The Trump Administration ended the pandemic early warning program, PREDICT, which trained scientists in China and other countries to identify viruses that had the potential to turn into pandemics. According to the Los Angeles Times, “field work ceased when funding ran out in September,” two months before COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan Province, China.
  • 2020: COVID-19 Arrives
  • anuary 3, 2020: The CDC is first alerted to a public health event in Wuhan, China
  • January 6, 2020: The CDC issues a travel notice for Wuhan due to the spreading coronavirus
  • Note: The Trump campaign claims that this marks the beginning of the federal government disease control experts becoming aware of the virus. It was 10 weeks from this point until the week of March 16 when Trump began to change his tone on the threat.
  • January 10, 2020: Former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert warns that we shouldn’t “jerk around with ego politics” because “we face a global health threat…Coordinate!”
  • January 18, 2020: After two weeks of attempts, HHS Secretary Alex Azar finally gets the chance to speak to Trump about the virus. The president redirects the conversation to vaping, according to the Washington Post. 
  • January 21, 2020: Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease at the CDC tells reporters, “We do expect additional cases in the United States.”
  • January 27, 2020: Top White House aides meet with Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to encourage greater focus on the threat from the virus. Joe Grogan, head of the White House Domestic Policy Council warns that “dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.”
  • January 28, 2020: Two former Trump administration officials—Gottlieb and Borio—publish an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal imploring the president to “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic.” They advocate a 4-point plan to address the coming crisis:
  • (1) Expand testing to identify and isolate cases. Note: This did not happen for many weeks. The first time more than 2,000 tests were deployed in a single day was not until almost six weeks later, on March 11.
  • (3) Prepare hospital units for isolation with more gowns and masks. Note: There was no dramatic ramp-up in the production of critical supplies undertaken. As a result, many hospitals quickly experienced shortages of critical PPE materials. Federal agencies waited until Mid-March to begin bulk orders of N95 masks.
  • January 29, 2020: Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro circulates an internal memo warning that America is “defenseless” in the face of an outbreak which “elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
  • January 30, 2020: Dr. James Hamblin publishes another warning about critical PPE materials in the Atlantic, titled “We Don’t Have Enough Masks.”
  • January 29, 2020: Republican Senator Tom Cotton reaches out to President Trump in private to encourage him to take the virus seriously.
  • Late January, 2020:  HHS sends a letter asking to use its transfer authority to shift $136 million of department funds into pools that could be tapped for combating the coronavirus. White House budget hawks argued that appropriating too much money at once when there were only a few U.S. cases would be viewed as alarmist.
  • Trump’s Chinese travel ban only banned “foreign nationals who had been in China in the last 14 days.” This wording did not—at all—stop people from arriving in America from China. In fact, for much of the crisis, flights from China landed in America almost daily filled with people who had been in China, but did not fit the category as Trump’s “travel ban” defined it.
  • January 31, 2020: On the same day Trump was enacting his fake travel ban, Foreign Policy reports that face masks and latex gloves are sold out on Amazon and at leading stores in New York City and suggests the surge in masks being sold to other countries needs “refereeing” in the face of the coming crisis.
  • February 4, 2020: Gottlieb and Borio take to the WSJ again, this time to warn the president that “a pandemic seems inevitable” and call on the administration to dramatically expand testing, expand the number of labs for reviewing tests, and change the rules to allow for tests of people even if they don’t have a clear known risk factor.
  • Note: Some of these recommendations were eventually implemented—25 days later.
  • February 5, 2020: HHS Secretary Alex Azar requests $2 billion to “buy respirator masks and other supplies for a depleted federal stockpile of emergency medical equipment.” He is rebuffed by Trump and the White House OMB who eventually send Congress a $500 million request weeks later.
  • February 4 or 5, 2020: Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, and other intelligence officials brief the Senate Intelligence Committee that the virus poses a “serious” threat and that “Americans would need to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives.”
  • February 5, 2020: Senator Chris Murphy tweets: Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren't taking this seriously enough. Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.
  • February 9, 2020: The Washington Post reports that a group of governors participated in a jarring meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Robert Redfield that was much more alarmist than what they were hearing from Trump. “The doctors and the scientists, they were telling us then exactly what they are saying now,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said.
  • the administration lifted CDC restrictions on tests. This is a factually true statement. But it elides that fact that they did so on March 3—two critical weeks after the third Borio/Gottlieb op-ed on the topic, during which time the window for intervention had shrunk to a pinhole.
  • February 20, 2020: Borio and Gottlieb write in the Wall Street Journal that tests must be ramped up immediately “while we can intervene to stop spread.”
  • February 23, 2020: Harvard School of Public Health professor issues warning on lack of test capability: “As of today, the US remains extremely limited in#COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs haveCDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it.
  • February 24, 2020: The Trump administration sends a letter to Congress requesting a small dollar amount—between $1.8 billion and $2.5 billion—to help combat the spread of the coronavirus. This is, of course, a pittance
  • February 25, 2020: Messonier says she expects “community spread” of the virus in the United States and that “disruption to everyday life might be severe.” Trump is reportedly furious and Messonier’s warnings are curtailed in the ensuing weeks.
  • Trump mocks Congress in a White House briefing, saying “If Congress wants to give us the money so easy—it wasn’t very easy for the wall, but we got that one done. If they want to give us the money, we’ll take the money.”
  • February 26, 2020: Congress, recognizing the coming threat, offers to give the administration $6 billion more than Trump asked for in order to prepare for the virus.
  • February 27, 2020: In a leaked audio recording Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Intelligence Committee and author of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act (reauthorization of PAHPA), was telling people that COVID-19 “is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”
  • March 4, 2020: HHS says they only have 1 percent of respirator masks needed if the virus became a “full-blown pandemic.”
  • March 3, 2020: Vice President Pence is asked about legislation encouraging companies to produce more masks. He says the Trump administration is “looking at it.”
  • March 7, 2020: Fox News host Tucker Carlson, flies to Mar-a-Lago to implore Trump to take the virus seriously in private rather than embarrass him on TV. Even after the private meeting, Trump continued to downplay the crisis
  • March 9, 2020: Tom Bossert, Trump’s former Homeland Security adviser, publishes an op-ed saying it is “now or never” to act. He advocates for social distancing and school closures to slow the spread of the contagion.
  • Trump says that developments are “good for the consumer” and compares COVID-19 favorably to the common flu.
  • March 17, 2020: Facing continued shortages of the PPE equipment needed to prevent healthcare providers from succumbing to the virus, Oregon Senators Jeff Merkeley and Ron Wyden call on Trump to use the Defense Production Act to expand supply of medical equipment
  • March 18, 2020: Trump signs the executive order to activate the Defense Production Act, but declines to use it
  • At the White House briefing he is asked about Senator Chuck Schumer’s call to urgently produce medical supplies and ventilators. Trump responds: “Well we’re going to know whether or not it’s urgent.” Note: At this point 118 Americans had died from COVID-19.
  • March 20, 2020: At an April 2nd White House Press Conference, President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who was made ad hoc point man for the coronavirus response said that on this date he began working with Rear Admiral John Polowczyk to “build a team” that would handle the logistics and supply chain for providing medical supplies to the states. This suggestion was first made by former Trump Administration officials January 28th
  • March 22, 2020: Six days after calling for a 15-day period of distancing, Trump tweets that this approach “may be worse than the problem itself.”
  • March 24, 2020: Trump tells Fox News that he wants the country opened up by Easter Sunday (April 12)
  • As Trump was speaking to Fox, there were 52,145 confirmed cases in the United States and the doubling time for daily new cases was roughly four days.
anonymous

A Year After Breonna Taylor's Killing, Family Says There's 'No Accountability' : NPR - 0 views

  • Before Breonna Taylor's name became synonymous with police violence against Black Americans, she was an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky.The 26-year-old Black woman's friends and family say she was beloved, and relished the opportunity to brighten someone else's day.
  • Exactly one year ago, Louisville police gunned her down in her home. Now, her name is a ubiquitous rallying cry at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to her story as an example of how difficult it can be to hold police accountable for violent acts. The Louisville incident unfolded during a botched narcotics raid, when officers forced their way into her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13, 2020. Taylor was not the target of the raid and the suspect police were searching for was not at Taylor's home.
  • A year after Taylor's death, none of the officers who fired their service weapons — a total of 32 rounds — face criminal charges directly over Taylor's killing. At least three officers with connections to the raid have been terminated from the force.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Some advocates are calling for Kentucky's Republican-controlled legislature to pass "Breonna's Law," which would ban no-knock warrants statewide. The Kentucky Senate passed a bill late last month restricting such warrants in certain situations, which many activists and Democratic lawmakers say does not go far enough. They had introduced a similar bill in the House in August, called "Breonna's Law," but the House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to move forward with the Republican-sponsored proposal, according to WFPL.
  • But many advocates believe justice has not been done, citing the lack of criminal charges and saying they want to see broader criminal justice reform. Demonstrators plan to gather in downtown Louisville on Saturday to mark the anniversary of Taylor's death, member station WFPL reported. Activists say they hope to keep her memory alive and renew calls for justice, after the winter dampened on-the-ground protests.
  • In September, the city of Louisville announced a $12 million settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Taylor's family, which also included several police reforms.
  • Louisville Democratic Rep. Attica Scott, the primary sponsor of Breonna's Law, told NPR's All Things Considered on Friday that committee officials have said they will consider proposed amendments that would bring the two bills further into alignment.She also said she had written a letter to newly-confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland this week, asking him to fully investigate Taylor's killing.
  • Ju'Niyah Palmer, Taylor's sister, wrote on Instagram earlier this year that her heart was "heavy because we are only 2 months away from me not hearing, seeing or cuddling you for a whole year." Her mother, Tamika Palmer, recently filed complaints with the police department's professional standards unit against six officers for their role in the investigation that included the raid. In an Thursday interview with a Louisville CBS affiliate, Palmer expressed her frustration with the lack of accountability in the case and called on the community to continue demanding justice.
  • Last September, after months of protests in and around Louisville, the city was braced to hear whether a grand jury would hand down criminal indictments for LMPD officers Brett Hankison, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove. At a press briefing Sept. 23, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced no charges directly tied to Taylor's death. The grand jury handed down three criminal counts of wanton endangerment to Hankison, over shooting through Taylor's apartment into a neighboring residence.
  • The grand jury did not charge Mattingly, who shot six times, and Cosgrove, who fired a total of 16 rounds, including what federal investigators determined to be the round that ultimately killed Taylor.
  • Cameron, whose office took over as special prosecutor in the case in May, said at the press conference that both Mattingly and Cosgrove "were justified in their use of force."After the two officers forced their way into Taylor's apartment, her boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired on them. Walker, a licensed gun owner, has maintained that he did not hear the officers announce themselves before entering and mistook them for intruders. He fired a shot, which hit Mattingly in the leg.
  • Cameron, Kentucky's first Black attorney general, told reporters that "evidence shows that officers both knocked and announced their presence at the apartment." He cited the officers' statements and one additional witness as evidence, but also acknowledged there is no video or body camera footage of the officers executing the search warrant.
  • Cameron's announcement sparked fresh outrage and demonstrations in Louisville, Atlanta, Denver, and Portland, among other cities. It added fuel to an already tense period in American society, where national protests focusing on racial justice inequities became a near-daily occurrence following high-profile police incidents with Black Americans, including George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Jacob Blake, Daniel Prude and others who were killed or seriously injured.
  • Days after Cameron's press conference, Taylor's mother, Palmer, said she was "reassured ... of why I have no faith in the legal system, in the police, in the law. ... They are not made to protect us Black and brown people."
  • In that same press conference, Crump raised questions about what evidence Cameron presented on behalf of Taylor to the grand jury. He also publicly called for the release of the transcripts of the proceedings, something that is extremely rare in grand jury cases. The court did so several weeks later, after some jurors took issue with Cameron's explanation for why no officer was directly charged in Taylor's death.
  • Hankison was terminated from LMPD in June, after the department found he fired "wantonly and blindly" into Taylor's apartment. In January, some nine months after Taylor's killing, the department formally terminated Cosgrove and another officer connected to the incident.
  • Both Cosgrove and Detective Joshua Jaynes, who secured the warrant for the raid on Taylor's home, were found to have violated department protocols, according to the termination letters made public on Jan. 6.
  • LMPD officials said that for Jaynes, "the evidence in this case revealed a sustained untruthfulness violation based on information included in an affidavit completed by you and submitted to a judge."LMPD said Cosgrove violated the department's protocols on use of deadly force and failed to activate his officer-worn body camera.
  • In that same batch of documents, LMPD also said that Mattingly, who was shot during the raid, was exonerated on both counts of violating department procedures on use of deadly force and de-escalation. It added, "no disciplinary action taken and the complaint will be dismissed." The disciplinary documents were released the same day Fischer, the Louisville mayor, formally announced that Erika Shields would be the city's next permanent police chief.
  • Shields resigned her post as Atlanta's police chief in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was shot in the back during an encounter with white officers in a Wendy's parking lot in June.
clairemann

Tim Graham: Biden's press conference - top 7 puffballs mainstream media have pitched so... - 0 views

  • he Biden campaign and transition used the COVID restrictions to limit the number of reporters at press conferences, and then only called on reporters we would call "friendly."
  • "They didn't know the questions we were gonna ask, but they certainly knew who we were, all the reporters were known quantities. So there was no chance that they were gonna call on, you know, some local reporter from some unnamed newspaper who was gonna ask Joe Biden a potentially difficult or uncomfortable question."
  • So they knew they would face nothing about Hunter Biden’s corruption. Nothing about Tara Reade’s accusations of sexual assault. Nothing about Democrats being soft on rioting – or a "racial reckoning," as the media like to call it.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Some might say reporters are "tough" on Biden when they demand more outrage about Trump. But that’s not holding him accountable. It’s demanding they sound as anti-Trump as they did.
  • If reporters are still begging Biden to bash Trump after two months in the White House, you'll know they don't believe any of their own rhetoric about holding people accountable.
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 635 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page