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Javier E

The Suffocation of Democracy | by Christopher R. Browning | The New York Review of Books - 0 views

www.nybooks.com/...suffocation-of-democracy

democracy authoritarian fascism illiberal history

shared by Javier E on 05 Oct 18 - No Cached
  • In the 1920s, the US pursued isolationism in foreign policy and rejected participation in international organizations like the League of Nations. America First was America alone, except for financial agreements like the Dawes and Young Plans aimed at ensuring that our “free-loading” former allies could pay back their war loans. At the same time, high tariffs crippled international trade, making the repayment of those loans especially difficult. The country witnessed an increase in income disparity and a concentration of wealth at the top, and both Congress and the courts eschewed regulations to protect against the self-inflicted calamities of free enterprise run amok. The government also adopted a highly restrictionist immigration policy aimed at preserving the hegemony of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants against an influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants. (Various measures barring Asian immigration had already been implemented between 1882 and 1917.) These policies left the country unable to respond constructively to either the Great Depression or the rise of fascism, the growing threat to peace, and the refugee crisis of the 1930s.
  • Today, President Trump seems intent on withdrawing the US from the entire post–World War II structure of interlocking diplomatic, military, and economic agreements and organizations that have preserved peace, stability, and prosperity since 1945.
  • Paul von Hindenburg, elected president of Germany in 1925, was endowed by the Weimar Constitution with various emergency powers to defend German democracy should it be in dire peril. Instead of defending it, Hindenburg became its gravedigger, using these powers first to destroy democratic norms and then to ally with the Nazis to replace parliamentary government with authoritarian rule. Hindenburg began using his emergency powers in 1930, appointing a sequence of chancellors who ruled by decree rather than through parliamentary majorities, which had become increasingly impossible to obtain as a result of the Great Depression and the hyperpolarization of German politics.
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  • Thinking that they could ultimately control Hitler while enjoying the benefits of his popular support, the conservatives were initially gratified by the fulfillment of their agenda: intensified rearmament, the outlawing of the Communist Party, the suspension first of freedom of speech, the press, and assembly and then of parliamentary government itself, a purge of the civil service, and the abolition of independent labor unions. Needless to say, the Nazis then proceeded far beyond the goals they shared with their conservative allies, who were powerless to hinder them in any significant way.
  • If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings.
  • Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump. The combination of Trump’s abasement before Putin in Helsinki, the shameful separation of families at the border in complete disregard of US asylum law (to say nothing of basic humanitarian principles and the GOP’s relentless claim to be the defender of “family values”), and most recently Michael Cohen’s implication of Trump in criminal violations of campaign finance laws has not shaken the fealty of the Republican old guard, so there is little indication that even an explosive and incriminating report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller will rupture the alliance.
  • Republicans begin with a systemic advantage in electing senators and representatives, because the Democratic Party’s constituency has become heavily concentrated in big states and big cities. By my calculation every currently serving Democratic senator represents roughly 3.65 million people; every Republican roughly 2.51 million. Put another way, the fifty senators from the twenty-five least populous states—twenty-nine of them Republicans—represent just over 16 percent of the American population, and thirty-four Republican senators—enough to block conviction on impeachment charges—represent states with a total of 21 percent of the American population. With gerrymandering and voter suppression enhancing even more the systemic Republican advantage, it is estimated that the Democrats will have to win by 7 to 11 points (a margin only obtainable in rare “wave” elections) in the 2018 elections to achieve even the narrowest of majorities in the House of Representatives
  • In France the prospect of a Popular Front victory and a new government headed by—horror of horrors—a Socialist and Jew, Léon Blum, led many on the right to proclaim, “Better Hitler than Blum.” Better the victory of Frenchmen emulating the Nazi dictator and traditional national enemy across the Rhine than preserving French democracy at home and French independence abroad under a Jewish Socialist.
  • The fascist movements of that time prided themselves on being overtly antidemocratic, and those that came to power in Italy and Germany boasted that their regimes were totalitarian. The most original revelation of the current wave of authoritarians is that the construction of overtly antidemocratic dictatorships aspiring to totalitarianism is unnecessary for holding power
  • the most apt designation of this new authoritarianism is the insidious term “illiberal democracy.” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary have all discovered that opposition parties can be left in existence and elections can be held in order to provide a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy, while in reality elections pose scant challenge to their power. Truly dangerous opposition leaders are neutralized or eliminated one way or another.
  • Total control of the press and other media is likewise unnecessary, since a flood of managed and fake news so pollutes the flow of information that facts and truth become irrelevant as shapers of public opinion. Once-independent judiciaries are gradually dismantled through selective purging and the appointment of politically reliable loyalists. Crony capitalism opens the way to a symbiosis of corruption and self-enrichment between political and business leaders. Xenophobic nationalism (and in many cases explicitly anti-immigrant white nationalism) as well as the prioritization of “law and order” over individual rights are also crucial to these regimes in mobilizing the popular support of their bases and stigmatizing their enemies.
  • Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power in no small part because the fascist-conservative alliances on the right faced division and disarray on the left. The Catholic parties (Popolari in Italy, Zentrum in Germany), liberal moderates, Social Democrats, and Communists did not cooperate effectively in defense of democracy.
  • In the five presidential elections of the twenty-first century, Democrats have won the popular vote four times. Two of these four (2000 and 2016) nonetheless produced Republican presidents, since the Electoral College reflects the same weighting toward small, more often Republican states as the Senate. Given the Supreme Court’s undermining of central provisions of the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County v. Holder), its refusal to take up current flagrant gerrymandering cases (Gill v. Whitford for Wisconsin; Benisek v. Lamone for Maryland), and its recent approval of the Ohio law purging its voting rolls (Husted v. Randolph Institute), it must be feared that the Court will in the future open the floodgates for even more egregious gerrymandering and voter suppression.
  • The unprecedented flow of dark money into closely contested campaigns has distorted the electoral process even further. The Supreme Court decision declaring corporations to be people and money to be free speech (Citizens United v. FEC) in particular has greatly enhanced the ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to influence American politics
  • To consolidate his dictatorship, Hitler had to abolish the independent unions in Germany in a single blow. Trump faces no such problem. In the first three postwar decades, workers and management effectively shared the increased wealth produced by the growth in productivity. Since the 1970s that social contract has collapsed, union membership and influence have declined, wage growth has stagnated, and inequality in wealth has grown sharply. Governor Scott Walker’s triumph over public sector unions in Wisconsin and the recent Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory public sector union dues (Janus v. AFSCME) simply accelerate a process long underway.
  • Alongside the erosion of an independent judiciary as a check on executive power, other hallmarks of illiberal democracy are the neutralization of a free press and the steady diminution of basic human rights
  • In Trump’s presidency, those functions have effectively been privatized in the form of Fox News and Sean Hannity. Fox faithfully trumpets the “alternative facts” of the Trump version of events, and in turn Trump frequently finds inspiration for his tweets and fantasy-filled statements from his daily monitoring of Fox commentators and his late-night phone calls with Hannity. The result is the creation of a “Trump bubble” for his base to inhabit that is unrecognizable to viewers of PBS, CNN, and MSNBC and readers of The Washington Post and The New York Times. The highly critical free media not only provide no effective check on Trump’s ability to be a serial liar without political penalty; on the contrary, they provide yet another enemy around which to mobilize the grievances and resentments of his base. A free press does not have to be repressed when it can be rendered irrelevant and even exploited for political gain.
  • the curtailment of many rights and protections Americans now enjoy is likely. Presumably marriage equality will survive, given the sea change in American public opinion on that issue. But the right of businesses and individuals to discriminate against gays is likely to be broadly protected as a “sincerely held religious belief.” Chief Justice John Roberts’s favorite target, affirmative action, is likely to disappear under his slogan that to end racial discrimination, one must end all forms of racial discrimination. And a woman’s right to abortion will probably disappear in red states, either through an outright overturning of Roe v. Wade or more likely through narrower rulings that fail to find any “undue burden” in draconian restrictions that in practice make abortion unavailable. And equal protection of voting rights is likely to be eroded in red states through ever more insidiously designed voter suppression laws and gerrymandering once the Supreme Court makes clear that it will not intervene to curb such measures
  • No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.
  • Finally, within several decades after Trump’s presidency has ended, the looming effects of ecological disaster due to human-caused climate change—which Trump not only denies but is doing so much to accelerate—will be inescapable. Desertification of continental interiors, flooding of populous coastal areas, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, with concomitant shortages of fresh water and food, will set in motion both population flight and conflicts over scarce resources that dwarf the current fate of Central Africa and Syria. No wall will be high enough to shelter the US from these events. Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism, but regardless of how the Trump presidency concludes, this is a story unlikely to have a happy ending.
malonema1

Emoluments Lawsuit Against President Trump Allowed To Proceed : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ident-trump-allowed-to-proceed

US trump politics culture

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • Federal District Judge Peter Messitte, in Greenbelt, Md., ruled that Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine have legal standing to sue Trump. They allege that Trump wrongly profits when foreign officials do business at the hotel he owns near the White House.
  • But Messitte wants a second hearing in the case, in part to examine the meaning of the emoluments clauses, which have never been considered in court. The domestic Emoluments Clause says the president cannot accept money or favors from state governments. The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars federal officials from getting rewards or benefits from foreign governments.
  • malonema1 on 01 May 18
     
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Javier E

Trump's 'Animals' Remark Is Threatening to Immigrants - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...560762

dehumanization animals trump immigrants

shared by Javier E on 21 May 18 - No Cached
  • “It took an animal to stab a man 100 times and decapitate him and rip his heart out,” Sanders said, referring to the case of an unidentified man killed in the Washington, D.C., suburbs in 2017. “Frankly I think the term ‘animal’ doesn’t go far enough, and I think that the president should continue to use his platform and everything he can do under the law to stop these types of horrible, horrible disgusting people.”
  • There’s a certain moral clarity to these kinds of comments that allows them to be wielded as incredibly effective weapons, both in mobilizing support and in kneecapping opponents.
  • People who oppose this straightforward moral assessment are cast as either misconstruing the speaker or choosing to defend monsters. In this brutally simplistic worldview, one must either side with the “animals” or the humans sent to contain them.
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  • there are policy and human-rights implications to what the president says and does. Dehumanizing rhetoric is a powerful real-world tool, especially when it’s coming from the president of the United States.
  • As with his remarks on Wednesday, it’s unclear whether Trump was referring specifically to gang members or to undocumented immigrants as a whole. This ambiguity could perhaps be chalked up to the president’s imprecise speech, but it’s connected to real policy. This unclarity is a key mechanism in the federal government’s targeting of immigrants across the country.
  • In 2017, ICE arrested and detained Daniel Ramirez Medina, a young undocumented immigrant who’d been shielded from deportation by enrolling in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. ICE tried to strip him of his protected status and deport him, all because they claimed a tattoo of his birthplace proved his affiliation with a gang. According to criminal-justice and immigration advocates, the number of MS-13 arrests is inflated by these flimsy cases. In the Ramirez case, a federal judge criticized ICE for lying even in the court of law about Ramirez’s affiliation, saying the “agency [offered] no evidence to this Court to support its assertions.”
  • According to The Marshall Project, immigrants only have to meet some very loose criteria in order to fall into the gang dragnet, including hanging out where gang members usually frequent or being labeled as a gang member by a “reliable source,” such as a teacher.
  • the treatment of individuals caught up in the dragnet—from frigid detention centers to the separation of mothers from children—certainly still resembles what might be reserved for animals.
  • the combination of draconian rhetoric and the elision of nuance between real and perceived criminal elements is a crux of how racism has worked for centuries in this country and around the world.
  • “superpredator” originates as a zoological term for apex predatory animals—to mobilize massive public support for new criminal-justice policies and provide a moral high ground to marginalize any opponents.
  • any reasonable assessment of mass incarceration in black America will show that the damage has long been done. In Illinois, for example, over 80 percent of juveniles sentenced to life without parole under the superpredator dragnet were minorities. Driven to bloodlust against an ill-defined population of black youths made to be less than human, America strained against the Constitution and the basic precepts of human rights to stamp out a threat—based on a theory that has since been discredited.
  • The true peril of Trump’s comments on Wednesday is this: that the state will be further empowered to suspend human rights.
  • Dehumanization is not just a buzzword, but a descriptor of a specific and well-known psychological and sociological process, by which people are conditioned to accept inflicting increasingly inhumane conditions and punishments on other people
  • dehumanization means both a broadening of what’s acceptable and just who is unacceptable.
  • The most likely outcome of Trump’s “animals” rhetoric isn’t a return to some mythological Pax Americana, as his supporters might suggest. Quite the opposite: It could fuel more informing on neighbors, more regular harassment for people of color, a deeper and wider dragnet, and an increased acceptance of brutality and extralegal practices. That’s what happens when people stop being people.
Javier E

The Arrogance of the Anthropocene - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...595795

anthropocene geology history arrogance

shared by Javier E on 13 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • Each year we spew more than 100 times as much CO2 into the air as volcanoes do, and we’re currently overseeing the biggest disruption to the planet’s nitrogen cycle in 2.5 billion years. But despite this incredible effort, all is vanity. Very little of our handiwork will survive the obliteration of the ages
  • At the end of all their travels—after cataloging all the bedrock of the entire planet—they might finally be led to an odd, razor-thin stratum hiding halfway up some eroding, far-flung desert canyon
  • Unless we fast learn how to endure on this planet, and on a scale far beyond anything we’ve yet proved ourselves capable of, the detritus of civilization will be quickly devoured by the maw of deep time.
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  • Yes, billions of dinosaur bodies died and fell to the Earth here in this span, and trillions more dinosaur footsteps pressed into the Earth, but hardly a trace remains today. A cryptic smattering of lakeside footprints represents their entire contribution to the Triassic period. A few bones and footsteps miraculously preserved in New England and Nova Scotia are all that remains from the entire 27-million-year Early Jurassic epoch. No trace of dinosaurs remains whatsoever from the 18-million-year Late Jurassic. A handful of bones from one layer in Maryland represents the entire 45-million-year Early Cretaceous; the Late Cretaceous gives up a Hadrosaurus in New Jersey, and part of a tyrannosaur in Alabama, but mostly comprises unimpressive fragments of bone and teeth that cover the remaining 34 million years of the Earth’s most storied age, until doomsday
  • So that’s what 180 million years of complete dominance buys you in the fossil record. What, then, will a few decades of industrial civilization get us? This is the central question of the Anthropocene—an epoch that supposedly started, not tens of millions of years ago, but perhaps during the Truman administration
  • as the example of the dinosaurs shows, the chance that any city-swallowing delta deposit from a window of time only a few centuries wide would be lucky enough to be not only buried and preserved for safekeeping, but then subsequently not destroyed—in the ravenous maw of a subduction zone, or sinking too close to the cleansing metamorphic forge of Earth’s mantle, or mutilated in some m
  • there exists a better word in geology than epoch to describe our moment in the sun thus far: event. Indeed, there have been many similarly disruptive, rapid, and unusual episodes scattered throughout Earth history—wild climate fluctuations, dramatic sea-level rises and falls, global ocean-chemistry disasters, and biodiversity catastrophes
  • we’re very likely to return to our regularly scheduled programming and dive back into a punishing Ice Age in the next half-million years. This means that sea level—after shooting up in the coming millennia by our own hand, and potentially burying coastal settlements in sediment (good for fossilization)—will eventually fall hundreds of feet below where it is today, and subject the shallow continental shelves, along with our once submerged cities and magnificent seams of garbage, to the cold winds of erosion (bad for fossilization), where they’ll be mostly reduced to nothing
  • What else of us could be sampled from this sliver of deep-sea-muck-turned-rock—these Anthropocene clays and shale layers? Pass it through a mass spectrometer and you would see, encoded in its elements, the story of the entire planet in this strange interval, the Great Derangement of the Earth’s systems by civilization. You would see our lightning-fast injection of hundreds of gigatons of light carbon into the atmosphere written in the strange skew of carbon isotopes in this rock—as you do in rocks from the many previous carbon-cycle disasters of Earth history. The massive global-warming pulse created by this carbon disaster would be written in oxygen isotope
  • The sulfur, nitrogen, thallium, and uranium isotopes in these rocks (to mention just a few) would whisper to you—again, in squiggles on a graph—that the global ocean lost much of its oxygen during this brief but enigmatic interval. Strontium isotopes would tell you that rock weathering dramatically accelerated worldwide for a few tens of thousands of years as sweltering, violent storms attacked the rocks and wore down the continents during a brief, CO2-driven fever.
  • The most enduring geological legacy, instead, will be the extinctions we cause. The first wave of human-driven extinctions, and the largest hit to terrestrial megafauna since the extinction of the dinosaurs, began tens of thousands of years ago, as people began to spread out into new continents and islands, wiping out everything we tend to think of as “Ice Age” faun
  • nd then, after all that, find itself, at a given point in the far future, fantastically lucky enough to have been serendipitously pushed up just enough so as to be exposed at the surface, but not too high as to have been quickly destroyed by erosion … is virtually ni
  • The first major mass extinction, 445 million years ago, took place in multiple pulses across a million years. An event. The second major mass extinction, 70 million years later, took place over 600,000 years—400,000 years longer than the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens.
  • The idea of the Anthropocene inflates our own importance by promising eternal geological life to our creations. It is of a thread with our species’ peculiar, self-styled exceptionalism—from the animal kingdom, from nature, from the systems that govern it, and from time itself. This illusion may, in the long run, get us all killed.
Javier E

Most American teens are frightened by climate change, poll finds, and about 1 in 4 are ... - 0 views

beta.washingtonpost.com/...9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html

climate change teens youth survey 2019

shared by Javier E on 16 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • In a coastal town in Washington, climate change has a high school junior worried about the floods that keep deluging his school. A 17-year-old from Texas says global warming scares him so much he can’t even think about it.
  • But across the country, teens are channeling their anxieties into activism. “Fear,” says Maryland 16-year-old Madeline Graham, an organizer of a student protest planned for this week, “is a commodity we don’t have time for if we’re going to win the fight.”
  • Roughly 1 in 4 have participated in a walkout, attended a rally or written to a public official to express their views on global warming — remarkable levels of activism for a group that has not yet reached voting age.
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  • The poll by The Post and Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) is the first major survey of teenagers’ views since the explosion of the youth climate movement last year.
  • This week, in the run-up to a major United Nations summit, hundreds of thousands of school kids plan to abandon their classrooms to demand more aggressive measures to protect the planet.
  • “People feel very guilty when a child says, ‘You are stealing my future.’ That has impact,” Thunberg told The Post. “We have definitely made people open their eyes.”
  • More than 7 in 10 teenagers and young adults say climate change will cause a moderate or great deal of harm to people in their generation,
  • Both Lopez and Graham said thinking about climate change makes them afraid, an emotion they share with 57 percent of teens nationwide. Fewer than a third of teens say they are optimistic.
  • most say they rarely or never discuss the issue with family and friends.
  • Adults “think: ‘Oh you’re so young, you don’t know what you’re talking about,’” he said. “But I know the facts, and I know what the most drastic consequences will be. I know that people aren’t doing what needs to be done.”
  • Roughly a third of both teenagers and adults say the issue is “extremely important” to them personally
  • Just under half believe the United States must drastically reduce its fossil fuel use in the next few years to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
  • Adults, he said, don’t seem to take the issue as seriously, or as personally, as people his age
  • Teenagers also share adults’ questions and misconceptions about the ways the world is warming. In both age groups, no more than 2 in 10 say they know “a lot” about the causes of climate change and ways to reduce it
  • fewer than half say they’ve taken action to reduce their own carbon footprints
  • nd roughly 4 in 10 say mitigating the effects of warming will require major sacrifices from ordinary Americans.
  • the number of teenagers who say they’re being taught in school how to mitigate climate change appears to be on the decline
  • Fourteen percent say they have learned “a lot” about the subject, down from 25 percent in 2010
  • “It’s terrible,” said Sam Riley, 17, of Boston. “It’s hardly ever brought up at my school.”
  • The high school junior said he learned nearly everything he knows about climate change from reading the news and searching the Internet
  • Riley, who is black, believes that minorities and people in low income communities will be most severely impacted by warming, because they are more likely to live in vulnerable areas and less likely to be able to insulate themselves.“The wealthier you are, the more protection you have,”
  • black and Hispanic teens express a greater sense of urgency around climate change; 37 percent and 41 percent, respectively, say people need to act in the next year or two, compared with 24 percent of white teens.
  • About 4 in 10 of those under 18 call climate change a “crisis.” But unlike adults, most teenagers say they don’t feel helpless. More than half — 54 percent — say they feel motivated.
  • But,” she said, “this generation — we’re fighters. And we’re going to win.”
brookegoodman

Coronavirus map of the US: latest cases state by state | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...us-latest-cases-state-by-state

us crisis

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 continues to grow in the US. Mike Pence, the vice-president, is overseeing the US response to the coronavirus.
  • Confirmed cases 85,919 (Today: +2,083) Deaths 1,297 (Today: +88)
  • State/territory Confirmed cases Deaths New York 39,140 461 New Jersey 6,876 81 California 4,040 82 Washington 3,207 150 Michigan 2,844 61 Illinois 2,542 26 Florida 2,484 29 Massachusetts 2,417 25 Louisiana 2,304 83 Pennsylvania 1,813 18 Texas 1,658 24 Georgia 1,642 56 Colorado 1,430 19 Tennessee 1,097 3 Connecticut 1,012 21 Ohio 870 15 North Carolina 755 3 Wisconsin 728 10 Indiana 657 17 Maryland 583 4 Nevada 536 10 Alabama 531 1 Missouri 520 9 Arizona 508 8 Mississippi 485 6 Virginia 468 10 South Carolina 456 9 Utah 396 1 Arkansas 349 2 Minnesota 344 2 Oregon 317 11 District of Columbia 267 3 Oklahoma 248 7 Kentucky 247 5 Idaho 191 3 Iowa 179 1 Kansas 172 3 Rhode Island 165 0 Vermont 158 9 Maine 155 0 New Hampshire 154 1 Delaware 143 1 New Mexico 136 1 Hawaii 106 0 Montana 90 1 Nebraska 82 0 West Virginia 76 0 Puerto Rico 64 2 North Dakota 57 0 Alaska 56 1 Wyoming 56 0 South Dakota 46 1 Guam 45 1 Virgin Islands 17 0
brookegoodman

A state-by-state breakdown of US coronavirus cases - CNN - 0 views

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

crisis us

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • (CNN)The first US case of the coronavirus was reported January 21 -- a Washington state man who had recently returned from China. Now, the country has at least 82,250 cases across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
  • Alabama: 531 (including one death)Alaska: 69 (including one death)Arizona: 508 (including eight deaths) Arkansas: 349 (including three deaths)California: 3,006 (including 65 deaths)Colorado: 1,430 (including 24 deaths)Connecticut: 1,012 (including 21 deaths)Delaware: 143 (including one death)District of Columbia: 267 (including three deaths)Florida: 2,353 (including 28 deaths)Georgia: 1,643 (including 56 deaths)Guam: 45 (including one death)Hawaii: 106 Idaho: 189 (including three deaths)Illinois: 2,538 (including 26 deaths)Indiana: 645 (including 17 deaths)Iowa: 179 (including one death)Kansas: 168 (including three deaths)Kentucky: 248 (including five deaths)Louisiana: 2,305 (including 83 deaths)Maine: 155Maryland: 580 (including four deaths)Massachusetts: 2,417 (including 25 deaths)Michigan: 2,856 (including 60 deaths)Minnesota: 346 (including two deaths)Mississippi: 485 (including five deaths)Missouri: 502 (including eight deaths)Montana: 90Nebraska: 73Nevada: 535 (including 10 deaths)New Hampshire: 137 (including one death)New Jersey: 6,876 (including 81 deaths)New Mexico: 136 (including one death)New York: 37,258 (including 385 deaths)North Carolina: 636 (including two deaths)North Dakota: 52Ohio: 867 (including 15 deaths)Oklahoma: 248 (including seven deaths)Oregon: 316 (including 11 deaths)Pennsylvania: 1,687 (including 16 deaths)Puerto Rico: 64 (including two deaths)Rhode Island: 165South Carolina: 456 (including nine deaths)South Dakota: 46 (including one death)Tennessee: 957 (including three deaths)Texas: 1,424 (including 18 deaths)US Virgin Islands: 17Utah: 402 (including one death)Vermont: 158 (including nine deaths)Virginia: 460 (including 13 deaths)Washington: 3,207 (including 149 deaths)West Virginia: 76Wisconsin: 707 (including eight deaths)Wyoming: 55Repatriated cases: 70
  • CORRECTIONS: A previous version of this story included an incorrect number of cases for Florida. That number has been corrected. On March 14, CNN revised the US death count, taking it down by one after discovering a double count of one death. This article also has been updated with the correct number of deaths for Hawaii, and cases for Wisconsin, Alabama.
nrashkind

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

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

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

As virus threatens, U.S. embraces big government, for now - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...vernment-for-now-idUSKBN21F0H4

shared by nrashkind on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • It may, as House Majority Leader and Maryland Democrat Steny Hoyer said on Friday, be out of love that the United States agreed to shut down much of its economy to stop a viral epidemic and save lives.
  • t may, as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, be out of necessity that the federal government agreed to foot the bill.
  • Whatever the motivation, in the scope of two frantic weeks, U.S. elected officials and central bankers have engineered an economic intervention unparalleled outside of wartime.
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  • All in it would supplant perhaps 30% of gross domestic product with government spending and loans, drive the federal deficit as high as needed to make that happen, and broaden U.S. social spending in ways that just a few weeks ago Republicans and President Donald Trump were branding as “socialist.”
  • Confronting an outside enemy that is imperiling both employers and employees, the well-buffered as well as the uninsured, those concerns have fallen away.
  • As of Friday the coronavirus had infected more than 100,000 people in the United States, now the world leader in cases of COVID-19, the illness named after the new virus was first identified in China late last year.
  • Ten of millions will likely face at least a short spell of unemployment - not because business conditions became soft, but because they became dangerous. Epidemiologists have warned that every human interaction increases the risk that the coronavirus spreads uncontrolled.
  • No doubt there will be second-guessing in the months ahead.
  • “There will be plenty of soul searching,” once the crisis is past, Eichengreen said. “Attitudes about the appropriate role for government are going to be contested even more than was the case.”
katherineharron

Sanders says 'rampant' sexism in US is a hurdle for women running for president - CNNPo... - 0 views

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

shared by katherineharron on 10 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • During an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union," Sanders was asked if he thinks "sexism and other forms of bigotry remain hurdles for candidates appealing for not just the general electorate but for the Democratic votes."
  • Their departures left just one woman -- Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii -- in a race that once saw six women vying for the nomination and raised questions about the challenges women face when they campaign for an office that has yet to be held by someone other than a man.
  • "On the other hand, we have made progress in the last 40, 50 years in terms of the number of women who are now in the Congress. You can remember it wasn't so many years ago -- few decades ago -- that Barbara Mikulski of Maryland was the only woman in the United States Senate, and we have made some progress," the Vermont senator said. "But the day has got to come sooner and later that women can see themselves equally represented in Congress -- half or more members of Congress, president of the United States, leaders of companies all over this country."Read More"We have got to get rid of all of the vestiges of sexism that exist in this country, which is still pretty rampant," Sanders added.
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  • "You know, that is the trap question for women," she said after a reporter asked what role gender played in her campaign. "If you say, 'Yeah -- there was sexism in this race,' everyone says, 'Whiner.' And if you say, 'No, there was no sexism,' about a bazillion women think, 'What planet do you live on?'"
brickol

Live Coronavirus News, Updates and Video - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...navirus-news-live-updates.html

politics us trump COVID-19 crisis economics

shared by brickol on 24 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The Tokyo Olympics have been postponed. New York, now the center of the outbreak in America, braces for a flood of patients. The playwright Terrence McNally dies of complications from the coronavirus.
  • tocks rallied on the hope that Washington was close to producing a stimulus bill. Shares soared for airlines and other companies expected to benefit.
  • Trump expressed outrage at having to ‘close the country’ to curb the spread of the virus.
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  • Even as nations from Britain to India declare nationwide economic lockdowns, President Trump said he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” less than three weeks away, a goal that top health professionals have called far too quick.
  • he expressed outrage about having to “close the country” to curb the spread of the coronavirus and indicated that his guidelines on business shutdowns and social distancing would soon be lifted.
  • “I gave it two weeks,” he said, adding, “We can socially distance ourselves and go to work.”
  • “We are honored to serve and put our lives on the front line to protect and save as many lives as possible,” the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association and American Nurses Association wrote in an open letter. “But we need your help.”
  • Mr. Trump fell back on his comparison of the coronavirus to the flu, saying that despite losing thousands of people to the flu, “We don’t turn the country off.”
  • States including California, Maryland, Illinois and Washington have declared stay-at-home or shutdown orders, but other states have been looking for directives from the Trump administration. And countries in Asia are beginning to see a resurgence of coronavirus after easing up on restrictions.
  • For governors and mayors who have been trying to educate people about the urgent need to stay home and maintain social distance, Mr. Trump’s recent statements suggesting that such measures may be going too far threatened to make their jobs more difficult.
  • Mr. Hogan, the chairman of the bipartisan National Governors Association, said that health officials suggest that the virus’s peak could be weeks or months away. “We’re just trying to take the best advice that we can from the scientists and all the experts, and making the decisions that we believe are necessary for our states,” he said.
  • Both Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence said that a lockdown had never been under consideration for the United States.
  • But the president and vice president were resolute that they want the country reopened. Mr. Pence said the administration’s timeline for trying to get businesses restarted and workers out of their homes was shorter than the period that health experts have said would be necessary to flatten the curve.
  • “We’ll focus on our most vulnerable, but putting America back to work will also be a priority, in weeks not months,” Mr. Pence said.
  • Mr. Pence also said two malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for off-label use treating patients with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The F.D.A. did not immediately confirm that assertion, but two administration health officials said it was not true.
  • India, the world’s second-most populous country, will order its 1.3 billion people to stay inside their homes for three weeks to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared on Tuesday.
  • Left unclear was how Indians would be able to get food and other needed supplies. Mr. Modi alluded vaguely to the government and civil society groups stepping in to help, but offered no details.
  • Mr. Modi also pledged to spend about $2 billion on medical supplies, isolation rooms, ventilators, intensive care units and training for medical personnel to combat the pandemic.
  • New York’s case count is doubling every three days, the governor says.
  • “We haven’t flattened the curve,” he said. “And the curve is actually increasing.” The governor, appearing in front of piles of medical supplies, spoke in a far more sober tone and delivered notably bleaker news than he has in previous days.The peak of infection in New York could come as soon as two to three weeks, far earlier than previously anticipated, Mr. Cuomo said, which would put even bigger strain on the health care system than officials had feared.
  • The governor said the state now projects that it may need as many as 140,000 hospital beds to house virus patients, up from the 110,000 projected a few days ago. As of now, only 53,000 are available. Up to 40,000 intensive-care beds could be needed. “Those are troubling and astronomical numbers,” he said.
  • In New York City alone, there have been around 15,000 cases.“Look at us today,” he warned the rest of the country. “Where we are today, you will be in four weeks or five weeks or six weeks. We are your future.”
  • Perhaps it was inevitable that New York City and surrounding suburbs would become the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the United States. The population density, reliance on public transportation and constant influx of tourists — all would seem to make the metropolitan area a target.
  • But to stop the virus, scientists have to figure out which factors played a greater role than others. As it turns out, that is not so simple.
  • Perhaps the epidemic in New York had less to do with the virus than with discrete opportunities to spread: In so-called super-spreader events, one patient somehow manages to infect dozens, even scores of others. At one point, half the cases in Massachusetts were attributed to a single initial infection.
brickol

Trump's 'back-to-work' plan would only make things worse, experts say | US news | The G... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...virus-economy-america-business

COVID-19 us crisis trump economics

shared by brickol on 25 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago – cities across the US are closing down because of the Covid-19 epidemic. The economic impact is already dire. Millions are probably already out of work, and economists are certain we are heading for recession. Donald Trump has a solution: get back to work. But it is a solution that many think will make matters worse, leading to the loss of even more lives and a deeper economic crisis.
  • The administration is now reportedly considering easing some physical distancing directives in order to halt the collapse of the economy.Many experts think that’s a terrible idea.The result would be “an open door to chaos”, said Professor Michael Greenberger, a former counselor to the United States attorney general and now director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland.
  • Greenberger said he could understand the desire to support the economy but that such short-term thinking could be devastating.“There are no two ways about this. The shutdown of the economy is damaging. It is a balancing of risks. I think we will be in worse shape in the public health sector and the financial sector if we just unthinkingly send people back to business as usual.”
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  • “There is no functioning economy unless we control the virus.”But Trump has pinned his re-election hopes on soaring stock markets and record lows in unemployment. Now with stock markets in freefall and jobs set to follow, he seems determined to press ahead and try to relax restrictions on business in an attempt to cure the economic crisis.
  • Gould said some people were likely not to return to work even if ordered to do so. Secondly, she said, it was clear that state governors – who have shut down so many cities – would resist any move from Trump that could worsen the escalating health crisis.Even in normal times, such a conflict would create a constitutional crisis. In the current situation it could be much worse.
  • Public health experts, including the senior official Dr Anthony Fauci, have said Americans will need to adhere to physical distancing restrictions for at least several more weeks to stop the spread of the virus.Such chaos would only exacerbate the problems in the wider economy. Stock markets have fallen even as the Federal Reserve pumps billions into the economy, interest rates are cut and the government works on a bailout plan that could end up costing close to $2tn.
  • Nevertheless, the short-term temptation for Trump to try and push for a return to a normal may prove insurmountable. Not least because as the economic crisis deepens it is clear that his administration made fundamental errors that have exacerbated the situation.Covid-19 can’t be blamed on Trump, but moves he made before the crisis and after it began have substantially worsened the situation – and with it the economy.
  • No matter how you view it, Greenberger argues, the fact is that the US was woefully unprepared for a pandemic that security agencies had reportedly recently warned it about. Trump has disputed those claims, but there is no disputing that shortly after Covid-19 hit the US it became clear the country was ill equipped to deal with it. Frontline health workers are begging for supplies.
Javier E

Revealed: the true identity of the leader of an American neo-Nazi terror group | World ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...americas-neo-nazi-terror-group

leader white supremacy group terror

shared by Javier E on 24 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Using encrypted apps, members of the highly organized group planned terror campaigns; vandalized synagogues; established armed training camps and recruited new members.
  • The US attorney for Maryland, Robert K Hur, speaking after the recent arrest of three members of the Base, said that they “did more than talk – they took steps to act and act violently on their racist views”.
  • Rinaldo Nazzaro has maintained a decidedly low profile: he has no visible presence on any major social media platforms, no published writings under his own name, and no profile in local or national media.
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  • The Guardian was able to unravel Nazzaro’s identity due to his 2018 activities in a remote corner of the Pacific north-west.
  • Last August, an Oregon-based antifascist group, Eugene Antifa, warned that the Base was planning a “hate camp” in the neighboring state of Washington, and claimed Nazzaro (operating under the alias of “Spear”) had purchased land in Stevens county for training purposes. This warning came after a leak of the Base’s internal chats.
  • Property record searches revealed that three 10-acre blocks of undeveloped land were purchased in December 2018 for $33,000 in the name of a Delaware LLC called “Base Global”. In a telephone conversation in late November, Manke confirmed that this was the block of land he had been referring to.
  • The location of the land is consistent with “Norman Spear’s” advocacy of a white supremacist strategy called the Northwest Territorial Imperative (NTI), which was promoted by the deceased white supremacist Harold Covington.
  • The strategy argues for the creation of a separatist ethnostate in the Pacific north-west and encourages white supremacists to move to the region.
  • The plan, he said, would trigger the relocation to the Pacific north-west of the white population in the United States.
  • Under the motto “there is no political solution”, the Base embraces an “accelerationist” ideology, which holds that acts of violence and terror are required in order to push liberal democracy towards collapse, preparing the way for white supremacists to seize power and institute an ethnostate.
  • Materials inspected and sources consulted by the Guardian indicate that Nazzaro, as “Spear”, has faced persistent suspicions from current and former members of the group that he is a “fed”, or the agent of a foreign government, or that the Base is a “honeypot” intended to lure neo-Nazis out into the open for the benefit of law enforcement agencies.
  • The Guardian has discovered that all of the business addresses associated with Nazzaro’s OSI LLCs are “virtual offices”. This describes a situation where a second company provides a business address, and sometimes meeting rooms and greeting services, for businesses who do not wish to maintain their own premises.
andrespardo

'The United States is broken as hell' - the division in politics over race and class | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...n-politics-over-race-and-class

politics US election trump

shared by andrespardo on 07 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • What is true for class also goes for race, gender, age and a range of other affiliations: the American left are the products of the very society they are trying to change. As Trump has targeted women, black people, Latinos, Muslims and immigrants – to name but a few – so those groups have rallied and are asserting themselves while others, within the progressive coalition, have become more sensitized to their condition.
  • At a recent orientation for one Chicago-based progressive group new members related their experiences of the financial crash. The black participants shared stories about losing their jobs and homes and moving back in with their parents. The white ones talked about mounting college debt, graduating from college unable to find a job and moving in with their parents.
  • The first women’s march in Pittsburgh, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, was deeply divided over the involvement of women of color, culminating in a separate march and a black organizer asking whether the official march was a “whites-only feminist event”. In a very segregated city with an almost even split among black, Latino and white, the socialist victories in Chicago came in a range of places, including predominantly black, Latino and white wards as well as a couple that were relatively mixed.
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  • The Chicago DSA branch is overwhelmingly white,” he concedes. “But if you look at the leadership, it’s overwhelmingly people of color. And if you look towards the work we’re doing it’s very intentionally geared towards issues that directly impact people of color and where the solution or the movement is led by people of color.”
  • “They asked me: ‘How could you work with DSA?’ And I said, ‘I’m tired of people who advocate for me and my voice is not at the table.’ We don’t need any more spokespeople. We need people to walk with us.”
  • “I think Trump is going to be a one-term president,” she says. “I don’t think he’s going to win at all. Unless, the Democratic party fucks up and gets this nomination wrong. Which they could.”
Javier E

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

thebulwark.com/ne-of-trumps-covid-19-response

timeline trump response pandemic history policy politics

shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • 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.
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  • 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.
Javier E

Americans Are Paying the Price for Trump's Failures - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...609532

trump response presidency

shared by Javier E on 08 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • don’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump
  • Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency
  • Trump now fancies himself a “wartime president.” How is his war going?
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  • On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.
  • The United States is on trajectory to suffer more sickness, more dying, and more economic harm from this virus than any other comparably developed country.
  • The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault
  • That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too
  • Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.
  • The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him
  • The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time.
  • The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities.
  • The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.
  • sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying.
  • Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.
  • Those lost weeks also put the United States—and thus the world—on the path to an economic collapse steeper than any in recent memory.
  • It’s a good guess that the unemployment rate had reached 13 percent by April 3. It may peak at 20 percent, perhaps even higher, and threatens to stay at Great Depression–like levels at least into 2021, maybe longer.
  • This country—buffered by oceans from the epicenter of the global outbreak, in East Asia; blessed with the most advanced medical technology on Earth; endowed with agencies and personnel devoted to responding to pandemics—could have and should have suffered less than nations nearer to China
  • Through the early weeks of the pandemic, when so much death and suffering could still have been prevented or mitigated, Trump joined passivity to fantasy. In those crucial early days, Trump made two big wagers. He bet that the virus could somehow be prevented from entering the United States by travel restrictions. And he bet that, to the extent that the virus had already entered the United States, it would burn off as the weather warmed.
  • If Trump truly was so trustingly ignorant as late as January 22, the fault was again his own. The Trump administration had cut U.S. public-health staff operating inside China by two-thirds, from 47 in January 2017 to 14 by 2019, an important reason it found itself dependent on less-accurate information from the World Health Organization. In July 2019, the Trump administration defunded the position that embedded an epidemiologist inside China’s own disease-control administration, again obstructing the flow of information to the United States.
  • Yet even if Trump did not know what was happening, other Americans did. On January 27, former Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm about a global pandemic in an op-ed in USA Today.
  • Because Trump puts so much emphasis on this point, it’s important to stress that none of this is true. Trump did not close the borders early—in fact, he did not truly close them at all.
  • Trump’s actions did little to stop the spread of the virus. The ban applied only to foreign nationals who had been in China during the previous 14 days, and included 11 categories of exceptions. Since the restrictions took effect, nearly 40,000 passengers have entered the United States from China, subjected to inconsistent screenings, The New York Times reported.
  • At a House hearing on February 5, a few days after the restrictions went into effect, Ron Klain—who led the Obama administration’s efforts against the Ebola outbreak—condemned the Trump policy as a “travel Band-Aid, not a travel ban.”
  • The president’s top priority through February 2020 was to exact retribution from truth-tellers in the impeachment fight.
  • Intentionally or not, Trump’s campaign of payback against his perceived enemies in the impeachment battle sent a warning to public-health officials: Keep your mouth shut
  • Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego
  • Denial became the unofficial policy of the administration through the month of February, and as a result, that of the administration’s surrogates and propagandists.
  • That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scolded a House committee for daring to ask him about the coronavirus. “We agreed that I’d come today to talk about Iran, and the first question today is not about Iran.”
  • The president’s lies must not be contradicted. And because the president’s lies change constantly, it’s impossible to predict what might contradict him.
  • During the pandemic, this psychological deformity has mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.
  • For three-quarters of his presidency, Trump has taken credit for the economic expansion that began under President Barack Obama in 2010. That expansion accelerated in 2014, just in time to deliver real prosperity over the past three years
  • The harm done by Trump’s own initiatives, and especially his trade wars, was masked by that continued growth.
  • The economy Trump inherited became his all-purpose answer to his critics. Did he break laws, corrupt the Treasury, appoint cronies, and tell lies? So what? Unemployment was down, the stock market up.
  • On February 28, very few Americans had heard of an estimated death toll of 35,000 to 40,000, but Trump had heard it. And his answer to that estimate was: “So far, we have lost nobody.” He conceded, “It doesn’t mean we won’t.” But he returned to his happy talk. “We are totally prepared.” And as always, it was the media's fault. “You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.”
  • on February 28, it was still not too late to arrange an orderly distribution of medical supplies to the states, not too late to coordinate with U.S. allies, not too late to close the Florida beaches before spring break, not too late to bring passengers home from cruise lines, not too late to ensure that state unemployment-insurance offices were staffed and ready, not too late for local governments to get funds to food banks, not too late to begin social distancing fast and early
  • Stay-at-home orders could have been put into effect on March 1, not in late March and early April.
  • So much time had been wasted by the end of February. So many opportunities had been squandered. But even then, the shock could have been limited. Instead, Trump and his inner circle plunged deeper into two weeks of lies and denial, both about the disease and about the economy.
  • Kudlow repeated his advice that it was a good time to buy stocks on CNBC on March 6 after another bad week for the financial markets. As late as March 9, Trump was still arguing that the coronavirus would be no worse than the seasonal flu.
  • The overwhelmed president responded by doing what comes most naturally to him at moments of trouble: He shifted the blame to others.
  • Trump’s instinct to dodge and blame had devastating consequences for Americans. Every governor and mayor who needed the federal government to take action, every science and medical adviser who hoped to prevent Trump from doing something stupid or crazy, had to reckon with Trump’s psychic needs as their single biggest problem.
  • Governors got the message too. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump explained at a White House press briefing on March 27. The federal response has been dogged by suspicions of favoritism for political and personal allies of Trump. The District of Columbia has seen its requests denied, while Florida gets everything it asks for.
  • The Trump administration is allocating some supplies through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but has made the deliberate choice to allow large volumes of crucial supplies to continue to be distributed by commercial firms to their clients. That has left state governments bidding against one another, as if the 1787 Constitution had never been signed, and we have no national government.
  • Around the world, allies are registering that in an emergency, when it matters most, the United States has utterly failed to lead
  • s the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first. Right now, when his only care should be to beat the pandemic, Trump is renegotiating his debts with his bankers and lease payments with Palm Beach County.
  • He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining.
  • Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him, the more conservative Americans who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump.
  • Governments often fail. From Pearl Harbor to the financial crisis of 2008, you can itemize a long list of missed warnings and overlooked dangers that cost lives and inflicted hardship. But in the past, Americans could at least expect public spirit and civic concern from their presidents.
  • Trump has mouthed the slogan “America first,” but he has never acted on it. It has always been “Trump first.” His business first. His excuses first. His pathetic vanity first.
  • rump has taken millions in payments from the Treasury. He has taken millions in payments from U.S. businesses and foreign governments. He has taken millions in payments from the Republican Party and his own inaugural committee. He has taken so much that does not belong to him, that was unethical and even illegal for him to take. But responsibility? No, he will not take that.
  • Yet responsibility falls upon Trump, whether he takes it or not. No matter how much he deflects and insults and snivels and whines, this American catastrophe is on his hands and on his head.
Javier E

Climate science deniers at forefront of downplaying coronavirus pandemic | Coronavirus ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...wnplaying-coronavirus-pandemic

pandemic climate deniers

shared by Javier E on 25 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • DeSmog, a blog and organization that tracks the culprits behind false information about the climate crisis, identified about 70 individuals and groups questioning the deadliness of the coronavirus and pushing for an end to social distancing, along with protesters who have been encouraged by Donald Trump.
  • From the conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the US-based Heartland Institute and UK-based James Delingpole, the review concludes that the same influencers trying to make the public question the severity of global heating are also discounting the science surrounding the coronavirus.
  • “The climate war has largely been about confusing the public and making people trust in science and government less,” said DeSmog’s executive director, Brendan DeMelle. “And here we are in a pandemic where science and global cooperation are critical, and that’s a threat to the ideology of a lot of these … organizations.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “You end up with this conspiracy theory about big government taking over our lives, taking away our freedoms, subjecting us to stay-at-home orders that we have to liberate ourselves from,”
  • The Manhattan Institute, which calls itself a free-market thinktank, ran an article from Heather MacDonald in which she wrote: “Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of 0.000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to 0.12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic.”
  • Alex Epstein, the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress which DeSmog cites as associated with various groups connected to the rightwing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, called the current recession a “mild preview of the Green New Deal”, and said that “our biggest ally in the fight against coronavirus is the fossil fuel industry.”
katherineharron

Trump claims Lincoln got better press treatment as he ups Covid-19 death estimate - CNN... - 0 views

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

crisis

shared by katherineharron on 04 May 20 - No Cached
  • After admitting US coronavirus deaths could hit 90,000, President Donald Trump is bemoaning his own plight -- complaining that he has been treated worse by the press than Abraham Lincoln.
  • "I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen," Trump said at the Fox News town hall Sunday night.
  • Trump was speaking at the time of a widening divide between states that are opening economies and others that are warning of premature declarations of victory amid soaring tensions fomented by weeks of coronavirus lockdowns.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • His statement was classic Trump, not just in his audacity of comparing himself to the man many historians rate as the greatest president, but in his tendency to make every issue -- even in the midst of a national tragedy in which tens of thousands of Americans have died -- about himself.
  • I used to say 65,000 and now I'm saying 80 or 90 and it goes up and it goes up rapidly," the President said at the memorial, a glorious and spectacular backdrop for the Fox News show that an image-making campaign manager could not have bettered.
  • But if states like South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Texas that are opening can provide a blueprint for the "new normal" that will be American life until a vaccine is found, they could point the way to a broader recovery and speed economic rebounds.
  • The reopening -- albeit with many restaurants and businesses at reduced capacity -- will also provide a new challenge for the White House,
  • States like New York and Maryland -- which have plateaued at fairly high levels from Covid-19 -- are warning that easing restrictions too quickly could be disastrous.
  • "My gut says the weather is going to warm, people are bored, people want this over. They see the numbers going down. They can take false comfort,
  • US deaths from Covid-19 are racing toward 70,00
andrespardo

Here comes the polar vortex: America's north-east braced for record May cold | US news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ar-vortex-us-weather-snow-cold

climate climatecrisis US

shared by andrespardo on 08 May 20 - No Cached
  • : America's north-east braced for record May cold
  • The north-eastern US is about to get a cold spring farewell from winter’s bad boy, the polar vortex, which could bring rare May snowfall and record-low temperatures to some areas over the Mother’s Day weekend, forecasters say.
  • Around this time of year, the polar vortex usually breaks up, but this breakup is a bit different, said Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside Boston.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Forecasts called for perhaps as much as 2in of snow in the Berkshire mountains in western Massachusetts on Friday into Saturday; an inch or so on grassy areas of central Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire and western Connecticut; and rain with a few flakes possible in the Boston area, he said.
  • Temperatures may plummet to record lows. The 9 May record low in Boston is 35F, also in 1977. Freeze warnings are in place for parts of Pennsylvania, Tubbs said, with freeze watches stretching into New Jersey and as far south as Maryland.
  • Thursday after being forced closed by the state because of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • “We’re a weather-driven business,” she continued. “But to have this happen the minute we are open is quite unbelievable.”
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