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anonymous

Opinion: Mass shootings show what is poisoning American democracy - CNN - 0 views

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

shared by anonymous on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • he recent shootings in Boulder and Atlanta have put the issue of gun violence at the center of America's national discussion, and both tragedies demand greater attention be paid to how racism and gun violence, especially mass shootings, intersect.
  • At a policy level, Congress and the President should pass common-sense gun control laws, complete with stringent background checks, and an assault weapon ban that would reduce the likelihood of mass shootings and gun violence.
  • Right-wing narratives suggesting that Americans' second amendment birthright -- along with White patriarchal power structures -- are under assault spread not only among hate groups online but in Congress. "Every time that there's an incident like this," observed Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, "the people who don't want to protect the Second Amendment use it as an excuse to further erode Second Amendment rights."
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  • The Supreme Court is scheduled this week to discuss adding a case to the next term's docket that could expand the scope of the Second Amendment if the court declares New York state's stringent concealed carry law a violation of an individual's right to possess a firearm.
  • America's broken political system prevents even basic, common-sense gun control legislation from ever seeing the light of day.
  • Race plays a central role in America's twisted history of gun control. When Black folk, from Malcolm X to the Black Panthers, tried to apply their Second Amendment right to bear arms in the service of defending Black lives against racial terror they were violently repudiated.
  • The Republican Party, beginning with Richard Nixon's 1968 "law and order" campaign and continuing through Sen. Ron Johnson's comments about Black Lives Matter in relation to the January 6 insurrection, has successfully vilified large parts of the Black community as criminal. At times this was done with an assist from Democrats, including then-Sen. Joe Biden's coauthorship of the 1994 Crime Bill, who co-signed treating many Black Americans as gun-toting "thugs."
  • In this sense, America's crisis of mass shootings -- ongoing before the Covid-19 pandemic and continuing amid its ravages -- is not only bound up in the operations of our political institutions but also more emotionally connected to how some White Americans understand their relationship to our national identity.
  • Organized racial terrorist groups, beginning in the late 19th century, reached new peaks of national respectability in the early 20th century as the reformulated Klan (rebirthed in Stone Mountain, Georgia) marched 30,000 strong at the US Capitol on August 8, 1925.
  • White supremacist violence infects our criminal justice system as much as it does our political institutions. Dylann Roof, the young White racist who murdered nine Black church parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, was treated with respect, even kindness, by law enforcement, who stopped by a fast-food restaurant to get him something to eat after he committed mass murder.
  • Perhaps what is most striking in the case of the apprehension of violent White mass shooters is that law enforcement routinely manages to arrest them unharmed. This stands out in stark contrast to oftentimes innocent Black suspects who end up dead at the hands of the police.
  • The deadly assault on the US Capitol cast a spotlight on how predominantly White law enforcement understood, responded to and at times sympathized with White rioters who brandished Confederate flags and anti-Semitic propaganda in the Capitol building rotunda.
  • We will see a sign of true equity in criminal justice when we can see Black and White shooting suspects safely apprehended at identical rates. But limiting the easy access to guns and ending racist police violence will not eradicate White rage.
leilamulveny

Opinion | Don't Let QAnon Bully Congress - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...qanon-capitol-security.html

opinion congress new york times Politics Trump US history

shared by leilamulveny on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Allowing the U.S. government to be held hostage by political extremists is unacceptable.
  • While this won’t surprise most people, it likely came as a shock to many QAnon followers. According to that movement’s expediently evolving lore, March 4 — the date on which U.S. presidents were inaugurated until the mid-1930s — was when Mr. Trump was to reclaim the presidency and resume his epic battle against Satan-worshiping, baby-eating Democrats and deep-state monsters.This drivel is absurd. It is also alarming. Violent extremists, obsessed with the symbolism of March 4, were for weeks nattering about a possible attack on Congress, according to law enforcement officials.On March 2, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin to law enforcement agencies, warning that militia extremists might be plotting to overrun the Capitol complex and “remove Democratic lawmakers.” The details of the possible plot were hazy, but the threat unnerved enough people that House leaders canceled Thursday’s session. The voting schedule was condensed, and lawmakers left town early for the weekend.Although March 4 came and went without a bloody coup attempt — that is, without another bloody coup attempt — damage was still done. Lawmakers abandoned their workplace out of fear of politically motivated violence. This not only disrupted the people’s business. It also sent a dangerous signal that Congress can be intimidated — that the state of American government is fragile.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOf course the safety of lawmakers and other Capitol Hill workers must be a priority. But allowing the government to be held hostage by political extremists is unacceptable.The current security threat is not expected to dissipate any time soon. If anything, the intelligence community has cautioned that the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol may have emboldened extremists. Having sacked the Capitol, the lunatic fringe is now dreaming of a bigger, bloodier encore.
  • Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida delegation’s mini-Trump, is in full froth. “Pelosi hired a bigot to hunt MAGA,” he charged last month. Last Tuesday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the speaker, arguing that General Honoré’s criticism of the police and lawmakers was “disqualifying.” On Thursday, Tucker Carlson told viewers: “Honoré is an unhinged partisan extremist. He’s nuttier than anyone affiliated with QAnon.”
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  • Of course the safety of lawmakers and other Capitol Hill workers must be a priority. But allowing the government to be held hostage by political extremists is unacceptable.
  • Trump toadies should not be allowed to turn this issue into a partisan game. Steps must be taken to safeguard the seat of government. Going forward, lawmakers cannot be seen as bowing to political thugs, their work upended whenever there is a semi-credible threat. That is not the American way.
  • March 4 was just one target. The acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda Pittman, recently warned that extremists have been talking about possibly blowing up the Capitol during President Biden’s first address to a joint meeting of Congress, which has not yet been scheduled, with an eye toward killing “as many members as possible.”
  • This drivel is absurd. It is also alarming. Violent extremists, obsessed with the symbolism of March 4, were for weeks nattering about a possible attack on Congress, according to law enforcement officials.
  • On Monday, lawmakers were briefed on the findings of the security assessment that the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, requested in the wake of Jan. 6. Russel Honoré, a retired Army lieutenant general who led the task force, recommended a variety of permanent enhancements. These include beefing up the Capitol Police force, in terms of increased staffing, improved training, enhanced authority for its leadership and a new emphasis on intelligence work; creating a quick-reaction force to be on call 24-7 to handle imminent threats; installing a retractable fencing system; and adding protections for rank-and-file members of Congress at home and while they are traveling and back in their districts.
  • Last Thursday was not Donald Trump’s triumphant return to power after all.While this won’t surprise most people, it likely came as a shock to many QAnon followers. According to that movement’s expediently evolving lore, March 4 — the date on which U.S. presidents were inaugurated until the mid-1930s — was when Mr. Trump was to reclaim the presidency and resume his epic battle against Satan-worshiping, baby-eating Democrats and deep-state monsters.
  • This not only disrupted the people’s business. It also sent a dangerous signal that Congress can be intimidated — that the state of American government is fragile.
  • In the wake of Jan. 6, enhanced protections were put in place around Capitol Hill. There is an increased police presence along with thousands of National Guard troops. Last week, Chief Pittman requested that the Guard presence, originally set to expire Friday, be extended 60 days. (The Pentagon has yet to issue a final decision.) Inside the Capitol building, additional metal detectors have been installed. The grounds are ringed by security fencing. Lawmakers from both parties have complained that “the people’s house” now has the grim vibe of an armed camp — or a low-security prison.
  • Republicans, many of them desperate to downplay the Jan. 6 tragedy, are already attacking General Honoré as biased.
  • The general has not been shy about criticizing lawmakers and others he regards as having fed the postelection chaos, and he has suggested that some Capitol Police officers may have been complicit in allowing rioters into the building.
hannahcarter11

Violence Continues In Myanmar As Police Enforce Curfew And Occupy Hospitals : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ce-curfew-and-occupy-hospitals

violence myanmar coup

shared by hannahcarter11 on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • More than a month after the military orchestrated a coup against the country's democratically elected leader, Myanmar police are continuing to use violence against peaceful protesters.
  • The death toll is continuing to rise — and it now includes a local official from the deposed leader's political party.
  • the body of U Khin Maung Latt, who campaigned for candidates from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party in recent elections, was released to his family on Sunday. Police reportedly took him by force from his home late Saturday. Witnesses reported seeing him being kicked and beaten. Police told the family he died after fainting. The pro-democracy activist was buried on Sunday.
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  • The military is using increasingly aggressive tactics to try to maintain order as it arrests protesters throughout the country
  • The violence isn't limited to the sites of demonstrations. For days, heavy weapon fire has been heard in the evenings as police patrol the streets to enforce an 8 p.m. curfew.
  • Multiple universities and hospitals are being occupied by police, and security forces often target medical personnel and ambulances, The Associated Press reports. Occupying hospitals lets police easily arrest wounded people, who they would presume to be protesters, the AP said.
  • Social media posts from the country are full of reports of demonstrators facing tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and even live rounds as they gather in Myanmar's largest cities.
  • Elsewhere in the city, army troops asked Mandalay Technological University staff members if they could use the institution as a base; after staffers rejected the request, soldiers cleared the area by force, Myanmar Now reported.
  • "You can see them walking down the streets in Yangon, firing up through the windows as people look in horror down on the streets,"
  • In February, Myanmar's ambassador to the U.N., who was appointed before the coup, pleaded for international assistance — and was removed from his position the next day
  • The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reports that at least 54 people have been killed since the Feb. 1 coup, and nearly 1,800 have been arrested. Around 300 of them have been released, but the rest remain in detention, AAPP says.
  • Meanwhile, state-run media is characterizing the demonstrations as "riots."
  • The country's deposed civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has had two trial appearances, even as she has been unable to meet with her attorney.
rerobinson03

ICE Meant to Capture Drug Lords. Did It Snare Duped Seniors? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mericans-drug-trafficking.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The final step to collect his millions was a good-will gesture: He needed to embark on a whirlwind tour to several countries, stopping first in São Paulo, Brazil, to pick up a small package of gifts for government officials.
  • Under the program, ICE officials share information with foreign law enforcement agencies when they learn about potential smuggling. But critics say the program does not do enough to warn unwitting drug mules that they are being duped; instead, U.S. officials in some cases are delivering vulnerable older Americans straight into the hands of investigators in foreign countries, where they can be locked up for years.
  • Since Operation Cocoon was created in 2013, information shared by ICE has led to more than 400 travelers being stopped by law enforcement at foreign airports, resulting in about 390 drug seizures. More than 180 of those stopped on suspicion of carrying narcotics were American citizens, and 70 percent of those were over age 60.
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  • he Trump administration informed some members of Congress last year that Mr. Stemberger was most likely arrested after ICE shared information with foreign authorities through Operation Cocoon, according to correspondence reviewed by The New York Times.The correspondence suggests U.S. authorities became aware of Mr. Stemberger’s plans before he left, something Vic Stemberger believes amounted to a missed opportunity to save his father. John Eisert, the assistant director of investigative programs for Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of ICE, said the agency generally became aware of such plans when it picked up on irregular travel, but declined to comment on Mr. Stemberger's case.
  • Investigators from the Southern District of New York and the Drug and Enforcement Administration, in part hoping to lighten Mr. Stemberger’s sentence, told Spanish authorities in October 2019 that he appeared to have been “pressured, cajoled and subjected to a variety of deceptive and manipulative strategies to induce him to believe that he would receive millions of dollars in inheritance funds.”
  • J. Bryon Martin, a 77-year-old retired pastor from Maine, spent nearly a year in jail in Spain after authorities found more than three pounds of cocaine hidden in an envelope he picked up in South America. He said a woman he fell in love with online had asked him to pick up the package and bring it to her.Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, pushed the State Department to work with Spanish authorities to secure Mr. Martin’s release on humanitarian grounds in 2016.
  • Mr. Wiegner said narcotics organizations used to recruit young people vacationing in South America but had turned to less obvious targets. “You probably wouldn’t suspect a grandmother or grandfather of carrying 25 kilos of cocaine,” he said. “If you have a 25-year-old European surfer, it might raise a bit more suspicion.”
  • In his email exchanges with the scammers, Mr. Stemberger occasionally expressed concern that he was entering a fraudulent agreement, a finding U.S. investigators highlighted to Spanish authorities when arguing that Mr. Stemberger thought he was pursuing a legal business opportunity.
anonymous

Michigan Capitol Bans Open Carry : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ns-open-carry-in-state-capitol

shared by anonymous on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The commission that manages the common areas of the Michigan State Capitol adopted a policy Monday that bans openly carrying guns throughout much of the building
  • The Michigan State Capitol Commission voted 6-0 to adopt the new policy following the armed assault on the U.S. Capitol last week and protesters with guns swarming the statehouse last April.
  • Under the new policy, only law enforcement personnel and people with valid concealed-weapon permits may openly carry a gun into the Capitol. The commission opted against stricter prohibitions, arguing that its power to adopt a full ban appears sketchy and that it has no budget to take actions such as installing metal detectors at public entrances.
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  • The decision was widely panned and faintly praised.
  • "I am hopeful that the Capitol Commission will recognize the need for further action, and I stand ready to assist in implementing this policy to keep Michiganders safe."
  • Whitmer was the target of an alleged plot to kidnap and execute her over COVID-19 restrictions.
  • Incoming Republican House Speaker Jason Wentworth said he thinks the commission exceeded its authority.
  • "The Speaker is grateful for the work of the Capitol Commission, but it does not have the authority to set policy in the Capitol. The Speaker will be looking at options for handling that moving forward. In the meantime, the Michigan State Police will be enforcing the new ruling. In order to ensure there is no confusion at the Capitol, Speaker Wentworth asks everyone to respect the Michigan State Police and the rules they enforce."
woodlu

Rare Pentagon Mission: Armed Troops in Capital - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-national-guard-protests.html

shared by woodlu on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • the Defense Department crossed a Rubicon that for the last six months Pentagon officials have tried to avoid: potentially pitting armed military forces against American citizens in the streets.
  • History has shown that such events never go well,
  • the most famous military confrontation with American citizens dates to 1932, when President Herbert Hoover ordered Army troops to clear more than 40,000 people
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  • the Pentagon is going where before it feared to tread. And it is some of the very same people — Democrats — who have in the past warned against a muscular response to past protests, now pushing for an armed military.
  • the acting police chief in Washington, Robert J. Contee III, announced Wednesday that an additional 5,000 National Guard troops would be deployed to the city to support local law enforcement providing security for Mr. Biden’s inauguration,
  • More than 3,000 National Guard troops, rotating in 12-hour shifts, will provide security in and around the Capitol at any given time.
  • Foreign interference that may be masked as domestic unrest is another point of concern
  • law enforcement officials expressed concern that the police and National Guard troops had inadequate time to coordinate and fully understand the complicated chains of command in Washington’s overlapping local and federal jurisdictions.
  • need for good planning and coordination
  • the goal of the police and National Guard should be “prevention and de-escalation” of any violence.
  • The planning has gone beyond Washington, officials say, as Mr. Biden’s aides try to understand the plans for the capitals of all 50 states, where there is also fear of violence or attacks on State Capitol buildings or federal facilities.
  • Members of the Guard at the Capitol will be equipped with M9 sidearms and some will carry automatic rifles and shotguns.
  • Department of Homeland Security officials are worried they may turn to cyberinterference, in an effort to black out Mr. Biden’s first words to the nation, and the world.
  • similar concerns about infrastructure attacks,
  • vast majority of military forces in Washington will be National Guard
  • Pentagon officials express deep worry about protests that are planned for the inauguration. Some 16 groups
  • law enforcement agencies are planning for a range of outcomes, including a worse-case scenario in which people with firearms try to attack dignitaries, “suicide type aircraft”
  • try to fly into the Capitol’s restricted airspace and even remote-controlled drones that could be used to attack the crowd.
aidenborst

Pentagon authorizes 25,000 National Guard members for inauguration - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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

Politics US trump history crisis Culture policy gop inauguration Biden riot security

shared by aidenborst on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The Pentagon has authorized up to 25,000 National Guard members for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, the National Guard Bureau said in a press release Friday, marking an increase from the 21,000 troops authorized a day earlier.
  • "Every state, territory and the District of Columbia will have National Guard men and women supporting the inauguration," the statement said.
  • The surge in service members comes as law enforcement in the nation's capital and around the country brace for more extremist violence after the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol last week.
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  • "Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the US Capitol from 17 January through 20 January," the bulletin states.
  • Speaking at a news conference Monday, Bowser, a Democrat, stressed that she was concerned about more violent actors potentially coming to the city in the run-up to the inauguration, saying, "If I'm scared of anything, it's for our democracy, because we have very extreme factions in our country that are armed and dangerous."
  • The agency has been instructed to begin its preparations for the inauguration ahead of schedule.
  • Law enforcement is using a huge amount of surveillance, including monitoring phones and other communications, in an all-out effort to track individuals to ensure they do not travel to Washington, according to law enforcement officials.
  • Some extremists are so suspicious and obsessed with anti-government conspiracies that they're telling associates they don't trust some of the planned protests, fearing they are actually FBI plots to try to frame them, according to one official.
  • Security officials also have shared information citing specific concerns about vehicles that could be used to breach security, the source said. The information adds to the already heightened alert in the capital as authorities try to protect a central area of the city where the transfer of power will take place on January 20.
  • "I can assure the residents of the District of Columbia that the Metropolitan Police Department and federal partners are in a posture to respond to the information that's out there thus far that we've heard," Contee said.
katherineharron

Opinion: Capitol riot a stunning reminder of America's policing crisis - CNN - 0 views

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

trump

shared by katherineharron on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • When DC Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone collapsed on the ground after he was repeatedly Tasered by Trump supporters who had stormed the US Capitol on January 6, his attackers started stripping him of his ammunition, police radio and badge.
  • "Kill him with his own gun." That was one of many, many incriminating comments the insurgent mob shouted for the world to hear that day. Another was: "We were invited here. We were invited by the President of the United States."
  • Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon Shaman" who was arrested and charged in connection with the riot, later told the FBI, according to a complaint, that "he came as a part of a group effort, with other 'patriots' from Arizona, at the request of the President that all 'patriots' come to D.C. on January 6, 2021."
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  • Clearly, the rioters of January 6 believed they had been "invited" to the Capitol to stop Congress from the constitutionally mandated counting of electoral ballots in a desperate attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
  • two Capitol Police officers have been suspended and at least 10 others are under investigation for their behavior during the riot.
  • In 2017, Trump endorsed police brutality, telling officers on Long Island, "When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said: 'Please don't be too nice.'
  • In a March 13, 2019 interview, Trump told Breitbart News, "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people..."
  • Throughout the last five years, President Donald Trump has embraced the police and repeatedly called himself the "president of law and order," even though he consistently defied this both through his words and actions.
  • Trump supporters said so themselves when they chanted "Traitors!" at the police. One woman in a Trump 2020 sweatshirt said, "You should be on our side."
  • Despite the "Blue Lives Matter" flags many carried, they turned on Fanone, attacked Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died from his injuries, and injured more than 50 other officers.
  • Sworn police officers are beholden to no president or other official. They get their authority from the Constitution.
  • they need more than legal authority. They need legitimacy
  • Even though the government may give police officers the legal rights to carry out their duties to enforce the law, they lose their credibility when the community no longer see them as trustworthy.
  • Those police officers, police leaders and police unions who have reciprocated the corrupt embrace of a lawless president have betrayed not only the public trust but the trust of their brothers and sisters in uniform.
  • The killings of George Floyd and too many other unarmed, Black Americans, have already created a crisis in policing. This has been exacerbated by Trump, who has politicized his support for the police while chipping away at our institutions and undermining our faith in government as a whole.
  • For many people, police officers are the government. When you are in enough trouble to dial 911, it isn't the president, Congress or the Supreme Court that comes running. It is a cop.
  • Any attempts to fix this crisis will require reestablishing trust between the police and the community they serve.
  • We in law enforcement must work to repair our reputation, both in the eyes of the public and among ourselves
  • President Biden must have the courage to go beyond police reforms, and push for a reimagining of law enforcement. He must task government and the nation with answering this radical yet basic question: What do we want from our police?
  • President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, on which I served, has given Biden much to build on. It painted a picture of policing, in which officers should be professional, accountable, transparent and self-monitoring in order to learn from any mistakes.
rerobinson03

Capitol Riot Investigation: Man Who Carried Confederate Flag Arrested - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...Kevin-Seefried-arrested.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A federal prosecutor in Texas also said on Thursday that a retired Air Force officer who stormed the Senate chamber dressed in military-style clothing and holding zip ties had intended to “take hostages.”
  • he retired officer, Larry Rendell Brock, was arrested in Texas on Sunday on one count of unlawfully entering a restricted building and another of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, the Justice Department said at the time.
  • The top federal prosecutor in Washington said this week that he expected the number of people charged with crimes tied to the Capitol riot to rise into the hundreds.
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  • A retired firefighter from Chester, Pa., was also arrested on Thursday after he was identified as the man seen in a video throwing a fire extinguisher at police officers during the riot. The man, Robert Sanford, is charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer engaged in the performance of official duties and civil disorder among other crimes.
  • Another man was charged on Thursday after law enforcement officials identified him as the person seen repeatedly striking an officer with a flagpole on the stairs of the Capitol in a video posted on Twitter. That man, Peter Stager of Arkansas, was charged with obstructing law enforcement, according to the criminal complaint.
Javier E

Opinion | Finally, a President Acknowledges White Supremacy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-white-supremacy.html

white supremacy terrorism biden politics history

shared by Javier E on 23 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The primary reason that right-wing political violence persists in the United States is that it has rarely been prioritized by law enforcement, and the primary reason it has rarely been prioritized is political reluctance to do so.
  • under Donald Trump and even under Barack Obama, security officials continued to shower resources on addressing foreign threats rather than those closer to home.
  • Much of this problem was instigated and exacerbated by Trump himself. With the president winking at and even encouraging right-wing violence while falsely claiming that left-wing groups were the real problem, it’s hardly surprising that federal law enforcement would downplay the issue.
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  • Republican politicians and luminaries of conservative media have also cultivated cozy ties with the far right.
  • Neumann told me that there was a sense among many in law enforcement that Americans could not cause great harm — domestic terrorists were “lone wolves,” they were disorganized and uncoordinated, their danger was nothing existential.
  • In the absence of leaders declaring that “this is the threat that we’re facing and we’re going to leverage all our tools in our tool kit to go after it,” Neumann said, misinformation and disinformation clouded the issue, which is why so many Americans are unaware of the prevalence of far-right terrorist acts — which, in turn, is why there’s little political focus on it.
  • asking Republicans to repeatedly and specifically disavow radical white terrorism wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
anniina03

Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation - The ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...am-criminal-investigation.html

politics us history trump policy

shared by anniina03 on 25 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began.
  • The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry, and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election.
  • Mr. Trump has made clear that he sees the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies.
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  • House Democrats are examining in part whether his pressure on Ukraine to open investigations into theories about the 2016 election constituted an abuse of power.Sign Up for On Politics With Lisa LererA spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.Sign Up* Captcha is incomplete. Please try again.Thank you for subscribingYou can also view our other newsletters or visit your account to opt out or manage email preferences.An error has occurred. Please try again later.You are already subscribed to this email.View all New York Times newsletters.The move also creates an unusual situation in which the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into itself.
  • It was not clear what potential crime Mr. Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted.
  • Mr. Trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a vindication of the years he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the Russia investigation.
  • Federal investigators need only a “reasonable indication” that a crime has been committed to open an investigation, a much lower standard than the probable cause required to obtain search warrants.
  • However, “there must be an objective, factual basis for initiating the investigation; a mere hunch is insufficient,” according to Justice Department guidelines.
  • Mr. Barr expressed skepticism of the Russia investigation even before joining the Trump administration. Weeks after being sworn in this year, he said he intended to scrutinize how it started and used the term “spying” to describe investigators’ surveillance of Trump campaign advisers.
  • F.B.I. agents discovered the offer shortly after stolen Democratic emails were released, and the events, along with ties between other Trump advisers and Russia, set off fears that the Trump campaign was conspiring with Russia’s interference.
  • The C.I.A. did contribute heavily to the intelligence community’s assessment in early 2017 that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and tried to tip it in Mr. Trump’s favor, and law enforcement officials later used those findings to bolster their application for a wiretap on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
  • Mr. Mueller said that he had “insufficient evidence” to determine whether Mr. Trump or his aides engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians but that the campaign welcomed the sabotage and expected to benefit from it.
  • Law enforcement officials suspected Mr. Page was the target of recruitment by the Russian government, which he has denied.Mr. Durham has also asked whether C.I.A. officials might have somehow tricked the F.B.I. into opening the Russia investigation. Mr. Durham has indicated he wants to interview former officials who ran the C.I.A. in 2016 but has yet to question either Mr. Brennan or James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence. Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked them as part of a vast conspiracy by the so-called deep state to stop him from winning the presidency.
  • Mr. Durham has delved before into the secret world of intelligence gathering during the Bush and Obama administrations. He was asked in 2008 to investigate why the C.I.A. destroyed tapes depicting detainees being tortured. The next year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. appointed Mr. Durham to spearhead an investigation into the C.IA. abuses.
  • After nearly four years, Mr. Durham’s investigation ended with no charges against C.I.A. officers, including two directly involved in the deaths of two detainees, angering human rights activists.
Javier E

Devin Nunes's Attack on the Press Is Misguided - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...602347

gop epistemic closure in-group communications politics trump

shared by Javier E on 21 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • The House Republicans’ underlying argument is too jumbled and confusing even to be agreed with. It can only be absorbed. It is to be repeated, not to be analyzed. It is not even really an argument at all. It is a hypnotic litany, a creed of faith—a faith all the more compelling for defying sense and experience.
  • At Fox News, on talk radio, and on the web, American conservatives have built a communications system that effectively consolidates in-group identity. Much of the time, the talkers and listeners do not themselves understand what they are saying. They use key words and phrases as gang signs: badges of identity that are recognized without necessarily being understood.
  • This system of communication tightly bonds in-group members. That bond, in turn, exerts tremendous power over American politics.
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  • The price paid for this achievement is that the communications system lacks any means to convince nongroup members. How can you convince people when they cannot understand what on Earth you are talking about?
  • Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and the others have fenced off conservative Americans from the rest of American society. Within that safe space, insiders hear only what is familiar and comforting. When those protected insiders step outside into the larger world, they find themselves completely unprepared for it
  • The job of Republican members of Congress at the hearing was not to win converts. Their job at the hearing was to enforce orthodoxy and punish heresy—not to convince, but to corral. They had better hope that enforcement will be enough, because enforcement is all they still know how to do.
leilamulveny

Man Who Broke Into Pelosi's Office and Others Are Charged in Capitol Riot - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...capitol-riot-charges.html

capitol trump crisis

shared by leilamulveny on 09 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Law enforcement officials also backed off a suggestion that Mr. Trump could face criminal charges for inciting the riot after a top prosecutor had said a day earlier that investigators were examining anyone involved, “not only” the rioters.“Don’t expect any charges of that nature,” Ken Kohl, a top prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, told reporters in a telephone briefing on Friday.
  • Law enforcement officials also sought to explain the security failure, saying that they had no indication that the day would turn violent
  • pledged to fight for their cause.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • And some could face more serious charges, including in the death of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was overpowered by rioters who, according to two law enforcement officials, struck his head with a fire extinguisher. He was rushed to the hospital and died on Thursday.
  • He also rebutted the notion of any involvement in the violence by left-wing antifascist agitators, whom Mr. Trump’s supporters have falsely tried to blame.
  • One of the most serious federal cases involved Lonnie L. Coffman of Falkville, Ala. In the bed of his truck, officers found what they described as an M4 assault rifle and magazines loaded with ammunition. They also found rags, lighters and 11 glass Mason jars filled with a liquid later identified as gasoline.
  • “The goal here is to identify people and get them,” Mr. Kohl said.The Washington police have also arrested dozens, mostly on charges of unlawful entry and curfew violations.
  • The images of Mr. Barnett were “shocking” and “repulsive,” said Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general.
  • Prosecutors charged the leader and founder of the Hawaii chapter of the far-right Proud Boys group, Nicholas Robert Ochs, with unlawful entry after he posted a picture on Twitter from the Capitol and told a CNN reporter that he had gone inside.
  • A pair of pipe bombs found on Wednesday afternoon outside the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters, blocks from the Capitol, contained crude mechanical timing devices, according to an official familiar with their initial examination, suggesting they were intended to be detonated. It was not clear when they were meant to explode.
  • Other close allies of the president made similar comments at the rally. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said that Republicans should back Mr. Trump’s efforts to undo the election result or face consequences. “We’re coming for you,” he said.
  • Incitement of a riot is a misdemeanor crime in Washington that carries up to 180 days in prison or a $1,000 fine, but the maximum sentence increases to 10 years if victims suffer serious bodily harm or serious property damage occurs.
katherineharron

Federal authorities expected to erect 'non-scalable' fence around White House - CNNPoli... - 0 views

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

election

shared by katherineharron on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Federal authorities are expected to put back into place a "non-scalable" fence around the entire perimeter of the White House on Monday as law enforcement and other agencies prepare for possible protests surrounding the election,
  • The fence, the same type that was put up during protests this summer, will encompass the Ellipse and Lafayette Square. It will go down 15th Street to Constitution Avenue and then over to 17th Street. The fence will then run up to H Street and across by Lafayette, and then come down 15th Street, the source said.
  • The extra layer of security marks the most high-profile example to date of authorities preparing for unrest following this year's election
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • As CNN previously reported, the immediate perimeters around the White House have already been largely blocked off to the public this year for a range of reasons, from construction on the White House gate, to protests and looting that occurred in downtown Washington in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
  • And many businesses in the downtown DC area in the proximity of the White House have boarded up doors and windows in the last couple of days in anticipation of possible protests.
  • DC Metro police have been preparing its officers for well over a year, as it does ahead of every general election, ensuring that they are prepared to handle everything from civil disturbance to crowd control to potential disruptions to metro transit, Patrick Burke, executive director of the Washington, DC, Police Foundation, previously told CNN.
  • "If there's no winner, you will see significant deployments of officers at all levels across the capital," said Burke. "Officers will get cancellations of days off, extensions of shifts and full deployments of officers across the city."
Javier E

Opinion | Trump's ugly law enforcement crackdown is even alienating Republicans - The W... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...is-even-alienating-republicans

law enforcement police repression

shared by Javier E on 22 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • critics of the “war on terror” under Bush might point out, as Jamelle Bouie did, that building up a massive militarized force such as DHS has always invited overreaching and authoritarian abuses of the kind we’re seeing now, and that they should prompt a rethink of DHS’s fundamental mission and makeup.
  • Of course, the fact that two of Bush’s homeland security chiefs — both of whom were involved in prosecuting that war on terror — are now condemning what’s happening might also be read as a sign of how far Trump has strayed into such abuses.
  • Chertoff suggested to me that DHS officials might ask themselves whether they have a similar duty, now that Trump has turned to them to create the TV imagery he thinks will help him get reelected.
katherineharron

Mark Esper: Pentagon chief on shaky ground with White House after breaking with Trump o... - 0 views

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

shared by katherineharron on 03 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • cretary of Defense Mark Esper is on shaky ground with the White House after saying Wednesday that he does not support using active duty troops to quell the large-scale protests across the United States triggered by the death of George Floyd and those forces should only be used in a law enforcement role as a last resort.
  • "we are not in one of those situations now," distancing himself from President Donald Trump's recent threat to deploy the military to enforce order.
  • "The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act," he told reporters. Esper also distanced himself from a maligned photo-op outside St. John's Church.
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  • "as of right now Secretary Esper is still Secretary Esper."
  • "Should the President lose faith, we will all learn about that in the future," she added.
  • A senior Republican source told CNN that there has been ongoing tension involving Esper and that Trump has no respect for his defense chief. Esper has had little influence and essentially takes his lead from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the source said, adding that this latest press conference will undoubtedly make things worse.
  • One White House official said aides there did not get a heads up about the content of Esper's remarks, most notably Esper's decision to publicly break with the President on the use of the military to address unrest in US cities.
  • As tear gas wafted through the air in Lafayette Park across from the White House, Trump announced from the Rose Garden that if state or city leaders refuse "to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents," he will invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows a president to deploy the US military to suppress civil disorder.
  • Esper also addressed the killing of Floyd, calling it a "horrible crime" and said "racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it, and to eradicate it.""The officers on the scene that day should be held accountable for his murder. It is a tragedy that we have seen repeat itself too many times. With great sympathy, I want to extend the deepest of condolences to the family and friends of George Floyd from me and the Department. Racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it, and to eradicate it," he said.
  • For months, the President and O'Brien have been losing faith in Esper's ability to lead the military and his tendency to avoid offering a full-throated defense of the President or his policies, according to multiple administration officials.
  • In December, Esper sat for an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier at the Ronald Reagan Defense Forum and when asked what it was like to work for Trump, he responded, "he is just another one of many bosses I've had and you've had your time that you learn to work with."
  • On Tuesday, White House officials scratched their head at an interview Esper gave to NBC News claiming he did not know he was walking to St. John's church on Monday with the President. Officials said the plans were clear inside the West Wing and that Esper's explanations made little sense. Esper clarified on Wednesday that while he knew they were going to the church, he did not know the movement would turn into a photo opportunity.
  • "I am concerned that in the current environment, it would be all too easy to put our men and women in uniform in the middle of a domestic political and cultural crisis. Discussions regarding the Insurrection Act could easily make them political pawns. The respect, trust, and support our troops have earned from their fellow citizens is the foundation of their strength and we must be careful not to erode that strength," he said in a statement.
Javier E

American Boogaloo: Meme or Terrorist Movement? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...613843

boogaloo terrorism alt-right

shared by Javier E on 05 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • Disturbingly, the boogaloo movement is at least the third example of a mass of memes escaping from 4chan to become a real-life radical political movement, the first being the leftist-libertarian hacktivist collective Anonymous, which emerged in 2008; the second was the far-right fascist group of angry young men called the alt-right, which formed in 2015. (The conspiracy theory QAnon might be considered a fourth, but it is more than a political movement.)
  • their arrival can be explained by tracing their online origins. Similar to other right-leaning extremist movements, they are the product of an unhappy generation of men who compare their lot in life with that of men in previous decades and see their prospects diminishing. And with a mix of ignorance and simplicity, they view their discontent through the most distorted lens imaginable: internet memes.
  • The birthplace of the boogaloo movement, 4chan’s /k/ section, is ostensibly devoted to the ownership and purchase of weapons. But in practice, it is a space where weapons discussions combine with 4chan’s politicized male anger.
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  • Since its founding in 2003, 4chan has attracted a unique population of deeply cynical men, once all young, but now aged from their 40s down to their teens, who generally use the board to express their angst through dark humor. People who are unhappy with the circumstances of their life tend to retreat there. The unhappier they are, the longer they stay and the more they post.
  • The co-option of Hawaiian imagery and igloos was inherently cynical and meaningless. There was no connection to the group’s ideology outside of the linguistic resemblance of the word boogaloo to igloo and luau. But this co-option fit the ethos of online spaces perfectly, with a niche group celebrating its anti-government, libertarian views by draping them in colorful jokes and nonsense that could be remixed and reinterpreted endlessly.
  • The message board /k/’s culture overlapped heavily with 4chan’s virulently racist politics discussion board /pol/. However, by 2017, the movement that had developed there—the alt-right—had largely imploded, after the disastrous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
  • By 2018, as talk of fascism declined on /pol/, the more libertarian and less overtly racist culture of 4chan’s /k/ and the boogaloo movement began to fill the empty niche.
  • The memes about a new civil war spread from /k/ to various groups on Facebook and Reddit, all with names that evoked the terms boogaloo, igloo, or luau. Enthusiasts also congregated in group chats using services such as Discord.
  • The politics of the boogaloo boys are deeply contradictory and varied but can be roughly summed up by a few agreed-upon ideas. They are libertarian, in favor of gun rights, and opposed to government police forces. Many users say they are active-duty service members or military veterans.
  • As with the alt-right, many boogaloo posts are about men in crisis, humiliated or debased. Intermingled with memes about revolution are nostalgic images and video clips, glitched out to look like old VHS tapes, of what they imagine was the ideal existence: being the patriarch of a middle-class American nuclear family sometime between the 1950s and the 1990s.
  • The catalyst was similar to what mobilized so many young people on the left: the notion that the government enriched a privileged few at the expense of the people. In this, the boogaloo boys shared the anti-corporatist left’s belief that the government had betrayed public trust by maintaining a growing police force to perpetuate an unjust status quo.
  • I’m not surprised by the odd mixture of ideologies that the boogaloo movement encompasses. One of my first sources was a chan-going Black man in his 30s, an accelerationist Communist who was friends with a variety of radicals, including many in the alt-right. What these men shared was years of marginalization and a hatred of the present state of society.
  • As decades of rising inequality produced successive generations who felt they were consigned to the fringes, 4chan became an outlet to express rolling waves of escapist memes and radical anger. Among the left, this uptick in radicals and the corresponding increase in funding for law-enforcement agencies have generated further support for protests aimed at defunding the police and diverting the funds to social programs
  • But 4chan occupies a unique place on the social web, distinct from more mainstream sites. If 4chan’s history is any indication, it’s extremely likely that some portion of these social-media users and posters on /k/ are federal agents. Having interviewed many young men who ran chan-style sites, I know that state security agencies knock on their doors early and often and ask for comprehensive records.
  • before most people, including myself, got wind of the boogaloo movement, Rutgers University had generated a “contagion and ideology report” for law-enforcement agencies in February that detailed the group’s online network. Its conclusion: The boogaloo boys are terrorists. Its recommendations: more law enforcement, more surveillance.
carolinehayter

In A Small Pennsylvania City, A Mental Crisis Call To 911 Turns Tragic : Shots - Health... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...milys-call-to-911-turns-tragic

Politics US pennsylvania shooting police policy Culture

shared by carolinehayter on 30 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Rulennis Muñoz remembers the phone ringing on Sept. 13. Her mother was calling from the car, frustrated. Rulennis could also hear her brother Ricardo shouting in the background. Her mom told her that Ricardo, who was 27, wouldn't take his medication. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia five years earlier.
  • Rulennis knew that her brother was in crisis and that he needed psychiatric care. But she also knew from experience that there were few emergency resources available for Ricardo unless a judge deemed him a threat to himself or others.
  • Ricardo was becoming aggressive; he had punched the inside of the car. Back on their block, he was still yelling and upset, and couldn't be calmed. Deborah called 911 to get help for Ricardo. She didn't know that her sister was trying the non-emergency line.
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  • Rulennis called a county crisis intervention line to see if Ricardo could be committed for inpatient care. It was Sunday afternoon. The crisis worker told her to call the police to see if the officers could petition a judge to force Ricardo to go to the hospital for psychiatric treatment, in what's called an involuntary commitment. Reluctant to call 911, and wanting more information, Rulennis dialed the non-emergency police number.
  • A recording and transcript of the 911 call show that the dispatcher gave Deborah three options: police, fire or ambulance. Deborah wasn't sure, so she said "police." Then she went on to explain that Ricardo was being aggressive, had a mental illness and needed to go to the hospital.
  • When the dispatcher questioned Deborah further, she also mentioned that Ricardo was trying "to break into" his mom's house. She didn't mention that Ricardo also lived in that house. She did mention that her mother "was afraid" to go back home with him.
  • The Muñoz family has since emphasized that Ricardo was never a threat to them. However, by the time police got the message, they believed they were responding to a "domestic disturbance."
  • "Within minutes of ... that phone call, he was dead," Rulennis says.
  • A Lancaster police officer walked toward the house. Ricardo saw the officer approach through the living room window, and he ran upstairs to his bedroom. When he came back down, he had a hunting knife in his hand.
  • In video from a police body camera, an unidentified officer walks toward the Muñoz residence. Ricardo steps outside, and shouts "Get the f—k back." Ricardo comes down the stairs of the stoop and runs toward the officer. The officer starts running down the sidewalk, but after a few steps, he turns back toward Ricardo, gun in hand, and shoots him several times. Within minutes, Ricardo is dead.
  • After Ricardo crumples to the sidewalk, his mother's screams can be heard, off camera. Police made the body camera video public a few hours after Ricardo's death, in an effort to dispel rumors about Ricardo's death and quell rioting in the city. The county district attorney has since deemed the shooting justified, and the officer's name was never made public.
  • It was a tragedy for the Muñoz family — but it's not that unusual. According to a Washington Post tracker, police killed about a thousand people in the U.S. in the past 12 months. Like Ricardo, a quarter of those people had a diagnosis of a serious mental illness.
  • Across the U.S., people with mental illnesses are 16 times more likely than the overall population to be killed by police, according to one study from the mental health nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center.
  • Miguelina Peña, says she tried for years to get help for her son.
  • Among the problems, the family couldn't find a psychiatrist who was taking new patients, Peña says. Additionally, Peña speaks little English, and that made it difficult to help Ricardo enroll in health insurance, or for her to understand what treatments he was receiving. Ricardo got his prescriptions through a local nonprofit clinic for Latino men, Nuestra Clinica.
  • Instead of consistent medical care and a trusted therapeutic relationship, Ricardo got treatment that was sporadic and fueled by crisis: He often ended up in the hospital for a few days, then would be discharged back home with little or no follow-up. This happened more times than his mother and sisters can recall.
  • Laws in Pennsylvania and many other states make it difficult for a family to get psychiatric care for someone who doesn't want it; it can only be imposed on the person if he or she poses an immediate threat, says Angela Kimball, advocacy and public policy director at National Alliance on Mental illness. By that point, it's often law enforcement, rather than mental health professionals, who are called in to help.
  • "Law enforcement comes in and exerts a threatening posture," Kimball says. "For most people, that causes them to be subdued. But if you're experiencing a mental illness, that only escalates the situation."
  • "Dialing 911 will accelerate a response by emergency personnel, most often police," she says. "This option should be used for extreme crisis situations that require immediate intervention. These first responders may or may not be appropriately trained and experienced in de-escalating psychiatric emergencies."
  • The National Alliance on Mental Illness continues to advocate for more resources for families dealing with a mental health crisis. The group says more cities should create crisis response teams that can respond at all hours, without involving armed police officers in most situations.
  • There has been progress on the federal level, as well. Kimball was happy when President Trump signed a bipartisan Congressional bill, on Oct. 17, to implement a three-digit national suicide prevention hotline. The number — 988 — will eventually summon help when dialed anywhere in the country. But it could take a few years before the system is up and running.
  • "And instead of a cop just being there, there should have been other responders," Rulennis says. "There should have been someone that knew how to deal with this type of situation."
Javier E

Which States Have Coronavirus Travel Restrictions? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...617321

quarantine

shared by Javier E on 10 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • Hawaii has one of the strictest quarantine laws in the country.
  • The state’s geographic isolation has helped and hurt its efforts to control the virus. On one hand, the state would be completely unequipped to deal with a coronavirus surge. There are no states nearby from which to borrow doctors or ICU capacity. The island of Kauai has just 15 ventilators. On the other hand, everyone enters Hawaii through its airports, which makes enforcing a quarantine easier there than in almost every other state.
  • There’s no national database of quarantine noncompliance, but in U.S. states other than Hawaii, quarantine violations rarely result in fines or jail time—or, really, any consequences at all,
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Yet quarantine compliance is essential for the combination of testing, contact tracing, and isolation of sick people to work. Simply telling people they’ve been exposed and letting them loose on the nation’s Outback Steakhouses is not sufficient
  • Public-health departments are reluctant to seem like bad cops—or cops at all.
  • Hawaii created its quarantine law as a travel quarantine, stopping everyone at the airport. These types of quarantines are logistically easier to implement—they don’t require contact tracers—than medical quarantines, in which the state orders a certain individual to stay in isolation
  • Some other countries have imposed much tougher travel restrictions and quarantine policies. At one point, Greeks were required to text authorities to explain why they needed to go out. Norway quarantined its own citizens under threat of a fine or imprisonment. Most foreigners still can’t fly to Vietnam.
  • Keen believes that Hawaii residents are on such high alert because of long-ago pandemics that came to the islands and killed large percentages of the population
  • “Generations of stories you hear, from great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, that the pandemics nearly killed off Native Hawaiians,” she told me. “So there is a great fear here of outsiders coming in and bringing it with them.”
  • On the mainland, states cite a combination of COVID-19 denial, logistical hurdles, and funding and personnel shortages to explain why they haven’t been willing or able to enforce quarantines.
  • scofflaws: Some people stay inside for three or four days, then decide, “I’m bored with staying home,”
  • Some states can’t quarantine people, because they have too many cases to trace
  • Even if a North Dakotan wants to do the right thing, she might not be able to without going hungry or losing her job. Grocery delivery isn’t available in parts of the large and rural state
  • In fact, many COVID-exposed Americans who want to stay home and quarantine have an intractable problem: Their bosses won’t let them
  • The Families First Coronavirus Response Act granted paid leave to recover from COVID-19 to many Americans. But the law doesn’t cover everyone: Large companies aren’t included, and small companies can claim an exemption. Because of these exemptions, only 47 percent of private-sector workers have guaranteed access to coronavirus-related sick leave,
  • The U.S. is the only country out of 193 nations to exclude workers from sick-leave benefits based on the size of the company they work for, according to a recent UCLA study.
  • “We don’t really pay people to stay at home to quarantine,” Polly Price, a global-health professor at Emory University, says. But that’s exactly the problem: In a study in Israel, people were more likely to quarantine after exposure to COVID-19 if they were paid during their isolation.
  • Months into the pandemic, half of Americans didn’t know they might have the right to stay home with pay if they contracted the coronavirus.
  • even if they did, employers might have pressured them to come to work if they were no longer showing symptoms,
  • “After testing positive, employees are being scheduled and expected to work as long as they don’t show symptoms and [are] not placed in quarantine,” a worker at a Georgia taco restaurant complained in July. OSHA has formally inspected just 11 of the employers in these incidents. “Under the Trump administration, OSHA decided to do almost no enforcement,”
  • America’s laissez-faire federal pandemic response has, in effect, treated each state like its own country
  • When it comes time to isolate sick people, though, it becomes painfully clear that states aren’t countries. Wisconsin can’t stop Iowans from driving into it. North Dakota doesn’t have enough health workers to trace all of its infected citizens. The governor can’t help you when your employer is—legally—dragging you back into the office.
  • the reason Hawaii has been so ruthlessly effective at quarantine is that it in some ways still acts as its own country with its own border controls.
  • The state consistently has some of the lowest case numbers in the nation. As with so many other pandemic rules, Americans might not like quarantine, but it works.
clairemann

Briefs Draw Battle Lines as Texas Abortion Law Nears Supreme Court - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...reme-court-texas-abortion.html

us politics SCOTUS abortion

shared by clairemann on 29 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • The justices, who will hear arguments on Monday in two cases challenging the state’s near-total ban, required the parties to file their briefs with extraordinary speed.
  • The court will hear arguments on Monday in two different challenges, one brought by abortion providers in the state and the other by the Justice Department. The court’s scheduling order required the two sides to file their opening briefs simultaneously, with responses due on Friday.
  • Both challengers said the law, which bars most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, is at odds with Roe v. Wade, which prohibits states from banning abortions before fetal viability, or around 23 weeks. They added that the law, known as Senate Bill 8, was cynically drafted to avoid review by federal courts.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “S.B. 8 was designed to nullify this court’s precedents and to shield that nullification from judicial review,” wrote Brian H. Fletcher, the acting solicitor general, in the federal government’s brief. “So far, it has worked: The threat of a flood of S.B. 8 suits has effectively eliminated abortion in Texas at a point before many women even realize they are pregnant, denying a constitutional right the court has recognized for half a century.”
  • The patient may not be sued, but doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, and people who help pay for the procedure or drive patients to it are all potential defendants. Plaintiffs do not need to live in Texas, have any connection to the abortion or show any injury from it, and they are entitled to at least $10,000 and their legal fees if they win. Defendants who win their cases are not entitled to legal fees.
  • “Where, as here, a state enacts a blatantly unconstitutional statute, assigns enforcement authority to everyone in the world and weaponizes the state judiciary to obstruct those courts’ ability to protect constitutional rights,” the brief said, “the federal courts must be available to provide relief.”
  • The law effectively deputizes ordinary citizens — including those from outside Texas — allowing them to sue clinics and others who violate the law. It awards them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful.
  • Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, filed a single brief in both cases, arguing that neither the federal government nor the providers were entitled to sue. The right way to challenge the law, Mr. Paxton said, was for abortion providers to violate it, be sued in state court, and present constitutional or other arguments as defenses.
  • “If Texas is right, no decision of this court is safe,” he wrote in his brief. “States need not comply with, or even challenge, precedents with which they disagree. They may simply outlaw the exercise of whatever constitutional rights they disfavor; disclaim enforcement by state officials; and delegate the state’s enforcement authority to members of the general public by empowering and incentivizing them to bring a multitude of harassing actions threatening ruinous liability — or, at a minimum, prohibitive litigation costs.”
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