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aleija

In Rural Virginia, a Militia Tries to Recruit a New Ally: The County Government - The New York Times - 0 views

  • After Virginia passed gun laws, conservatives began invoking the state’s colonial-era constitution, which calls for a “well regulated militia.”
  • whereas a militia was “the last best hope” when liberties are threatened by “a tyrannical government,” then be it resolved: Halifax County would support a local militia.
  • Throughout one of the most tumultuous political years in memory, armed paramilitary groups have marched: crowding into statehouse galleries, violently defending public monuments and now planning to show up at the polls on Election Day.
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  • n the winter of outrage that followed, gun owners poured into Richmond, crowded county board meetings and formed paramilitary groups in one county after another.
  • But not everyone saw this fight as just about gun policy. It was also about power.
  • “Virginia is not the Virginia it used to be,” lamented John Sharp, a supervisor in Bedford County, which passed a militia resolution in May. “We’re outvoted.”
  • “Biden’s coming for us; there will be a war,” said Paul Cangialosi, who works with the Virginia Militia Alliance, created after last year’s election to organize armed groups across the state. “We don’t fix this at the ballot box, I hate to say it. We’re too divided.”
  • The founders saw militias, Mr. Abbott explained, as preventing “governments who had the majority from being able to impose their will on people who didn’t want their will.”
  • “If we do this tonight, what we’re doing is we’re just provoking or enhancing the possibility that we’re going to have civil unrest,” he said, talking of the fatal shootings at the August protests in Kenosha, Wis.
lmunch

Opinion: There is a key word missing from the climate movement - CNN - 0 views

  • And those memories have me thinking about climate change. As a father, Christian pastor and full-time climate organizer, climate change is rarely far from my mind. But now that President Joe Biden has made it the centerpiece of his legacy-defining American Jobs Plan -- with its investment in clean energy, its overhaul of our outdated energy grid, its commitment to clean transportation, and its promise of millions of family-sustaining jobs -- it's bound to be top of mind for many Americans for some time to come.
  • After all, the phrase "climate change" elicits a laundry list of emotions for most of us: anger, dread, guilt and grief, among them. A growing body of research is revealing the toll climate grief is taking on our collective mental health, and insomnia and other mental health concerns related to climate-induced anxiety have been documented across 25 countries. Absent from most of our climate-related emotional inventory is delight, contentedness or joy.We need to change that.
  • What else can I feel but shame as the land God has commanded me to hold in trust for my children and grandchildren is desecrated? What else is there to feel but guilt at my own ignorance and complicity, and rage at the behemoth vested interests who have worked so hard to thwart my efforts at every turn?
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  • For sustained, long-term action -- the kind needed to face down the threat of climate change -- we need more than anger. Every one of us needs a sense of agency. We need a community of belonging. We need hope that our actions can make a difference. We need joy.
  • I began to notice a curious alchemy as I continued to plunge my hands into the earth and look my neighbors in the eye on the bus and cook new plant-based meals with friends. Guilt was slowly transforming into gratitude, despair into joy.
  • When I think of the world my son is set to inherit, my stomach clenches. But even in those moments, I can find joy again when I think of the world we could all create, with enough political will and commitment to the common good. When I think about that world, and the millions of everyday people cultivating communities of belonging in order to dream it into being, my heart sings.
hannahcarter11

Why Lagging COVID Vaccine Rate At Rural Hospitals 'Needs To Be Fixed Now' : NPR - 0 views

  • President Biden on Tuesday is set to announce new steps to reach rural Americans in the push to get as many people as possible vaccinated for the coronavirus
  • It has prioritized a list of doctors enrolled in the vaccine system based on a "social vulnerability index" used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including doctors in many rural communities — and has been asking state government to send vaccine doses to those doctors, the official said.
  • The administration also plans to work with states to enroll more pediatricians and family doctors in their vaccine systems so they can begin giving people vaccines, a step that becomes "particularly critical" if the Food and Drug Administration gives emergency authorization for adolescents ages 12-15 to start getting the Pfizer vaccine, the official said.
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  • "So if you've got a quarter of the nation's rural hospitals having less than 50% of their staff vaccinated, you have a problem that needs to be fixed now."
  • 30% of the 160 rural hospital executives who responded said less than half of their employees had been vaccinated — even though health care workers have been eligible for months now
  • The new steps come as some rural hospitals are finding that their own staff members are reluctant to get the shot.
  • The Washington Post that found 29% of health care workers in rural areas didn't plan to get the COVID-19 vaccine. That's a greater well of hesitancy than the poll found among health care workers in urban and suburban areas.
  • He cited studies showing vaccines were effective and that the worst side effects were comparable to the vaccine for shingles, which is widely used.
  • There were also Zoom sessions for staff, led by doctors, leaving plenty of time for questions. Having trusted doctors and nurses vaccinated has been reassuring to others in the broader community, said chief nursing officer Kris Dascoulias, whose roots in the community are so deep that she was born in Memorial Hospital, where she now works.
  • The White House knows that doctors and other trusted local leaders will be the way to break through pockets of hesitancy in rural communities, said Bechara Choucair, the White House vaccinations coordinator.
edencottone

Opinion | The Political Weapon Biden Didn't Deploy - POLITICO - 0 views

  • Perhaps the most surprising element of President Joe Biden’s first presidential speech on Thursday night was what it did not include.
  • The lion’s share of his talk was a detailed account of the effort to contain and control the coronavirus pandemic. Apart from a passing reference to the “denial” and “silence” of his unnamed predecessor, politics was not on the agenda.
  • The selling of his Rescue Plan is expected to begin any time, but Biden clearly decided it could wait a day or two.
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  • Yet there is no doubt that the political implications of his plan have the potential to be nothing less than radical.
  • It was 11 years ago, almost to the day, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Obamacare, “we have to pass the bill so that you can know what’s in it.” That notion, which seemed borrowed from the Queen of Hearts’ absurdist “Sentence first! Verdict afterwards!” approach in Alice in Wonderland, turns out to have been even more applicable to this week’s American Rescue Act.
  • And there’s an $86 billion commitment to protect the pensions of a million retirees whose multi-employer plans were in danger of insolvency—without even a pretense that this is linked to the Covid pandemic. It’s the kind of bailout you might expect in a nation where organized labor is a significant share of the workforce. Now, in a United States where unions represent barely 6 percent of the private sector labor force, that protection is law.
  • what it represents is the possibility that the Democratic Party has found a tool to reconnect it to a working and middle class whose loyalty has been threatened for well over half a century.
  • The fraying of the New Deal coalition was very much on the mind of Robert F. Kennedy, whose presidential campaign was based on holding it together. In his last weeks, he began talking about an issue he believed had broad appeal: specifically, how many of the wealthiest Americans avoided paying a fair share of taxes. By the end of 1968, divisions over the war in Vietnam, deadly riots in the cities and upheaval on college campuses reduced the Democratic share of the presidential vote from 60 percent in 1964 to 43 percent; Richard Nixon and George Wallace divided the rest.
  • All through the 1980s, Democrats and their intellectual allies tried to grapple with the fact that voters seemed to prefer Democratic policies (on health care, education, taxes), but voted, at least at the presidential level for Republicans. (I have a vivid memory of House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt assuring a group of journalists that once the American people saw his party’s proposals for lower drug prices and access to college, they would return to the fold.)
  • And it took an emerging demographic sea change that yielded an increasingly nonwhite electorate, and a more liberal cohort of college-educated whites, to outweigh (at least in popular vote terms), the increasingly Republican tilt of less-educated whites and to put Barack Obama in the White House.
  • While both were reelected, those midterm failures had severe consequences that endure; in particular, 2010 produced a GOP takeover at the state level that now threatens severe voting limits across the country.
  • It is an unapologetic assertion of the power of government to redress a set of grievances without any assertion of identity politics; while the stark facts of the pandemic mean that it has hit with special force in Black and brown communities, the remedial power of government is directed to the victims defined by circumstance, not color.
  • This is a possibility that Republicans simply may not have imagined, given their midterm successes in running against the initiatives of the past two Democratic presidents, and inflicting on Clinton and Obama successive political catastrophes.
  • More broadly, it appears to contain provisions that leapfrog a dilemma that has plagued Democratic social programs in the past: When they are perceived as helping one class of voters, they meet with a powerful backlash, (often one infused by racial resentment). When a program reaches broadly—Social Security, Medicare and, increasingly, the Affordable Care Act—it becomes politically potent.
  • But what does seem clear is that, unlike past measures that required huge congressional majorities, a radical change in the social fabric of the United States has become a reality—and with it, an opportunity for the Democratic Party no one could have imagined 50 days ago.
rerobinson03

Suspect's Church Calls Atlanta Spa Attacks 'the Result of a Sinful Heart' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, was charged this week with eight counts of murder in the attacks on three massage parlors in and around Atlanta. A former roommate has described a “religious mania” that marked Mr. Long’s life in the years before the shooting spree. And the police have said that Mr. Long, 21, told them he had a sexual addiction, and that the shootings were an attempt to eliminate temptation.
  • The church statement came amid several developments in the case on Friday, including the official identification of the four women who were killed in two Atlanta spas. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Asian-American leaders in Atlanta, and community members held a vigil in memory of the shooting victims.
  • The records, provided in response to a request from The New York Times, contradict what Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta said at a news conference this week: “As far as we know in Atlanta, these are legally operating businesses that have not been on our radar, not on the radar of A.P.D.”
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  • As the community mourned the shooting victims, new details emerged about the arrest of Mr. Long, who was apprehended on Tuesday night on an interstate in Crisp County, about 150 miles south of Atlanta. According to a police report, he asked authorities whether he was going to spend “the rest of his life” in jail.
  • The attacks on the spas have stoked a furious outcry over escalating anti-Asian violence and rhetoric. Anger was also directed at a Cherokee County sheriff’s deputy — who served as the agency’s spokesman for the investigation — for saying that Mr. Long had “a really bad day” before the shootings, and for anti-Asian Facebook posts that he made last year.
anonymous

Derek Chauvin Trial: 14 Jurors Are Seated To Hear Case Of George Floyd Killing : NPR - 0 views

  • A 14th juror was selected in former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's murder trial on Monday, one week before opening arguments are scheduled to begin on March 29. The court initially called for 12 jurors and at least two alternates; it could now add additional jurors to the panel, in case anyone drops out.
  • Chauvin, who is white, is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd, who was Black. Video recordings showed that Floyd was held facedown on the asphalt — and that Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes.The jury reflects a range of ethnicities, although slightly over half of the jurors have been described in court as white.
  • The trial is expected to last at least four weeks. The two alternate jurors won't know of their status until the panel heads to the deliberation phase. Jury selection in the case has often moved more quickly than was predicted: when it began on March 9, the process was expected to last several weeks, as the judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys quizzed dozens of potential jurors about their lives and any opinions they held about Floyd's death in police custody last Memorial Day.
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  • The relatively fast pace endured despite the loss last week of two jurors who were struck from the panel after they said that because of Minneapolis' recent $27 million settlement with Floyd's family, they could no longer promise to be impartial.
  • The jury reached 14 members days after Cahill denied the defense's motions to move the case to another venue or delay the proceedings – steps that Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, called for because of the potential impact of the settlement news on the jury pool.
  • The initial jury pool included 326 people; as of late last week, Cahill said that the court had questioned around 60 of them. The selection process continued on Monday, as the judge and the two sides of the case sought to ensure the jury is fair and impartial. As of around midday Monday, the defense had used 14 of its 18 challenges and the prosecutors had used 8 of their 10 challenges, Cahill said.
  • In another ruling from Friday, Cahill ruled that only a portion of the evidence and details from an earlier police stop of Floyd would be allowed in the trial.Cahill noted similarities between Floyd's interaction with police on May 25, 2020, and the earlier police stop on May 6, 2019. In both instances, the judge said, there were signs that Floyd had ingested drugs after being approached by police officers. In the two cases, Cahill said, Floyd's physical behavior is "remarkably similar."
  • But the judge also said Floyd's "emotional behavior" from that earlier encounter was not admissible. And he restricted how much of a police video recording from the 2019 arrest could be used in court.The only recordings from the 2019 incident that are relevant to the current case, he added, are segments that could be linked to the cause of Floyd's death and his medical condition.The case is being closely watched, with Floyd's death having inflamed widespread protests against racial inequality and police brutality.
Javier E

Can Vaccinated People Spread the Coronavirus? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Dr. Walensky’s comments hinted that protection was complete. “Our data from the C.D.C. today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” she said. “And that it’s not just in the clinical trials, it’s also in real-world data.”Dr. Walensky went on to emphasize the importance of continuing to wear masks and maintain precautions, even for vaccinated people. Still, the brief comment was widely interpreted as saying that the vaccines offered complete protection against infection or transmission.
  • “If Dr. Walensky had said most vaccinated people do not carry virus, we would not be having this discussion,”
  • “What we know is the vaccines are very substantially effective against infection — there’s more and more data on that — but nothing is 100 percent,” he added. “It is an important public health message that needs to be gotten right.”
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  • “There cannot be any daylight between what the research shows — really impressive but incomplete protection — and how it is described,” said Dr. Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
  • This opens the door to the skeptics who think the government is sugarcoating the science,” Dr. Bach said, “and completely undermines any remaining argument why people should keep wearing masks after being vaccinated.”
  • Clinical trials of the vaccines were designed only to assess whether the vaccines prevent serious illness and death. The research from the C.D.C. on Monday brought the welcome conclusion that the vaccines are also extremely effective at preventing infection.
  • Given the rising numbers, it’s especially important that immunized people continue to protect those who have not yet been immunized against the virus, experts said.
  • Follow-up data from clinical trials support that finding. In results released by Pfizer and BioNTech on Wednesday, for example, 77 people who received the vaccine had a coronavirus infection, compared with 850 people who got a placebo.
  • “Clearly, some vaccinated people do get infected,” Dr. Duprex said. “We’re stopping symptoms, we’re keeping people out of hospitals. But we’re not making them completely resistant to an infection.”
  • The number of vaccinated people who become infected is likely to be higher among those receiving vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, which have a lower efficacy, experts said. (Still, those vaccines are worth taking, because they uniformly prevent serious illness and death.)
  • The study enrolled 3,950 health care workers, emergency responders and others at high risk of infection. The participants swabbed their noses each week and sent the samples in for testing, which allowed federal researchers to track all infections, symptomatic or not. Two weeks after vaccination, the vast majority of vaccinated people remained virus-free, the study found.
  • “Vaccinated people should not be throwing away their masks at this point,” Dr. Moore said. “This pandemic is not over.”
anonymous

Scars from Flint's water crisis shake city's faith in Covid vaccine - 0 views

  • In the weeks since the arrival of the first Covid-19 vaccines, the Rev. Dr. Sarah Bailey has been fielding calls from friends and neighbors in Flint.
  • The vaccine won't give them the virus and it won't affect their DNA, she tells them, just as all major medical authorities have said based on extensive testing. She walks them through the science behind the vaccines.
  • The people reaching out to Bailey aren't folks who will take a vaccine just because the federal government tells them it's safe and effective. They live in Flint, a city still reeling from the 18 months starting in 2014 when public officials insisted that tap water, eventually found to contain dangerously high lead levels, was safe to drink.
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  • Many Flint residents are Black, and they have long memories of racist treatment by doctors who dismissed or neglected their medical needs.
  • Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, chief medical executive of the state Department of Health and Human Services, said the state's plan to vaccinate 70 percent of residents as quickly as possible includes efforts to enlist people like block club captains, fraternity and sorority presidents and religious leaders to promote the vaccine — an effort Khaldun said is especially important in the Black community, where what she called "vaccine hesitancy" is high.
  • "When you tell us that the water is safe but it really wasn't, that relationship between leadership and the community is still damaged," said Todd Womack, the pastor of community connections at Central Church of the Nazarene in Flint. "That just layers the historical trauma that has presented itself in our community."
  • "There's a reason, a quite valid reason, for there to be concerns about how the health care system in general, and often health care systems and the government together, have treated the African American community historically in the United States,"
  • "There is still systemic racism that exists. There is still, quite frankly, sometimes explicit bias that exists in the health care system, and so I think we need to name it and not shame these groups of people where they may have some hesitancy."
  • The process of spreading the information is just beginning, but it's going to need to come from more than one place, said Debra Furr-Holden, an epidemiologist who has been leading community discussions about the virus as director of the Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions
  • But at the same time, "relationships are built on trust, and trust takes time," she said. "They developed a vaccine at warp speed, and they're trying to skip a bunch of processes in the trust and relationship-building process."
  • "You don't allow your pulpit to become a platform," he said, adding that he understands "what you are risking when you open these platforms to a community that's already been taken advantage of, misused, abused."
  • "In this country, we know that African Americans have always been targeted as test dummies," he said, referring to unethical medical experiments including the infamous Tuskegee study, which left hundreds of Black men with untreated syphilis for decades.
  • "There was this push for everybody to use the water from the city," both during the crisis and after the city switched to a cleaner water source and started distributing filters and replacing corroded pipes, Womack said.
anonymous

New York State Sues NYPD Over Its Handling Of 2020 Racial Justice Protests : NPR - 0 views

  • New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department, citing "a pattern of using excessive force and making false arrests against New Yorkers during peaceful protests" that sought racial justice and other changes.
  • The Black Lives Matter movement and other activists organized large protests in New York and other states last year, after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Demonstrations grew over similar incidents, including the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.
  • "more than 1,300 complaints and pieces of evidence" about the police response to the protests in New York City. It's now seeking a court order "declaring that the policies and practices that the NYPD used during these protests were unlawful."
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  • Along with the court order, the attorney general is asking for policy reforms, as well as a monitor to be installed to oversee the NYPD's tactics and handling of future protests.
  • The NYPD has been sharply criticized over a number of its officers' actions in the past year. Last May, police SUVs were shown in a video of a protest in Brooklyn, surging into a crowd that had surrounded them. In another incident, an officer drew his gun and pointed it at a crowd of people.
  • The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After the lawsuit was filed, the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York issued a statement blaming the city's leadership for the problems at the protests.
  • The police actions broke state and federal law, James says. The lawsuit alleges that New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan "failed to prevent and address the pattern or practice of excessive force and false arrests by officers against peaceful protesters in violation of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution"
  • James announced the lawsuit against the NYPD Thursday morning, in a virtual news conference that began shortly before New York Gov.
  • Last June, the NYPD suspended at least two officers for their behavior during protests, including an officer who was captured on video pushing a woman to the ground in Brooklyn. Another officer was punished for "pulling down an individual's face mask in Brooklyn and spraying pepper spray at him,
  • Human Rights Watch, an independent watchdog group, issued a report last year on the police misconduct in Brooklyn which said that clearly identified medics and legal observers were among those zip-tied and beaten by police, in a response to the protest which was "intentional, planned, and unjustified."
  • The lawsuit says the police department sent thousands of poorly trained officers to cope with large-scale protests, resulting in mass arrests and attempts to suppress demonstrations. It also says the NYPD made a practice out of "kettling" – corralling people by using physical force and obstructions – to arrest protesters rather than allow crowds to disperse.
  • A Minnesota judge ruled this week that Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who kept his knee on Floyd's neck for several minutes, will stand trial alone when proceedings begin in March. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Readability mode is unavailable for this webpage. Please visit cache page or original page Top - A + ==== Serif ====PT SerifMerriweatherMartelNoto SerifSlabo 27pxAndadaLoraRoboto Slab== Sans Serif ==Source Sans ProOpen SansLato
xaviermcelderry

When is Inauguration Day 2021? What You Need to Know - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Although many of the events will be virtual, Maju Varghese, the executive director of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, said the goal was an “inclusive and accessible celebration that brings Americans together and unifies our nation, especially during such a tough time for our country.”
  • Mr. Biden will be sworn in by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on the Capitol’s West Front sometime before noon. The new president is then expected to give his inaugural address and conduct a review of military troops, as is tradition.
  • But instead of a traditional parade before cheering spectators along Pennsylvania Avenue as the new president, vice president and their families make their way to the White House over a mile away, there will be an official escort with representatives from every branch of the military for one city block.
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  • At 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, the evening before Mr. Biden takes the oath, the committee will hold a lighting ceremony around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in remembrance of people in the United States who have lost their lives in the coronavirus pandemic.
  • For weeks, Washington has been preparing for the possibility of protesters. But the nation’s capital was kicked into high alert after a violent mob breached the Capitol building and forced lawmakers to halt the official counting of Electoral College votes to affirm Mr. Biden’s victory.
  • President Trump announced Friday that he would not attend Mr. Biden’s inauguration.Mr. Biden called that decision “one of the few things he and I have ever agreed on.”Still, it is a major break with tradition for a president to skip the ceremonial heart of the country’s democracy: the peaceful transfer of power.
  • Vice President Mike Pence will attend, an aide said Saturday, after Mr. Biden made clear on Friday that he was welcome.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story
Javier E

Covid-19 Vaccine Leaders Waited Months to Approve Distribution Plans - WSJ - 0 views

  • The CDC had wanted to start helping states plan in June how to get people vaccinated. But officials at Operation Warp Speed rebuffed the agency’s plan for distributing vaccines. They adopted a similar plan in August only after exploring other options—and then held the release of the CDC’s playbook for states for two weeks for additional clearance and to put it out with another document
  • Operation Warp Speed was supposed to be a high-water mark of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, but it stumbled at the finish line because of problems in federal planning and foresight
  • “They didn’t plan for the last inch of the last mile, the part that matters most—how you’re going to actually vaccinate that many people quickly,”
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  • In the midst of a pandemic surge in Massachusetts last month, UMass Memorial Health Care canceled an event to vaccinate health workers because it had no idea how many doses it would receive. A month later, the hospital system says it learns how many doses it will receive just one to two days before they arrive.
  • “This is the toilet-paper situation all over again,” said Eric Dickson, the UMass hospital system’s chief executive, referring to the hoarding of vaccine doses. He said federal leaders failed to issue clear guidance on how vaccines would be allocated and when they would arrive. “The federal government blew it.”
  • The slow pace likely means tens of thousands of lives that could have been saved will be lost
  • Officials on Operation Warp Speed and on the White House task force have privately faulted the CDC’s handling of the prioritization of vaccines for the slow rollout. Those officials were unhappy that the CDC and its federal advisory body on immunizations planned to prioritize health-care workers over older Americans and urged the CDC to take a looser approach that would have made more Americans initially eligible to receive the vaccine.
  • The CDC recommended that health-care workers and nursing-home residents receive the first doses of vaccine, followed by people ages 75 and over and front-line essential workers. The CDC responded that health-care workers are a high priority for vaccination because they are exposed to Covid-19 and need to be healthy to take care of patients.
  • CDC Director Robert Redfield implored Congress in September to provide about $6 billion to the agency to help states prepare for the vaccination campaign. The next month, state officials asked congressional leaders for at least $8 billion for vaccine distribution.
  • Congress didn’t pass a bill authorizing more funds for the CDC for vaccine administration until late December. Officials in a number of states say they had to use funding approved earlier by Congress for other urgent needs for the pandemic.
  • CDC and other public-health officials also urged the use of existing systems with  immunization records of which vaccines a person has received, and when. They had to convince Operation Warp Speed leaders that these systems, or registries, were essential for a successful vaccination program, according to CDC and other public-health officials. Warp Speed eventually approved funding for upgrades to the systems in the fall, and military experts helped make them.
aidenborst

Atlanta synagogue says it was targeted by cyber attack before joint service with Ebenezer Baptist Church - CNN - 0 views

  • The president of an Atlanta synagogue says its website was the target of a cyberattack during its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Shabbat service with US Sen.-elect Raphael Warnock's Ebenezer Baptist Church.
  • The Temple's website service provider told the synagogue's executive director that "'malicious user agents' had continuously loaded the Temple website with the objective of shutting it down," Alexander's letter said.
  • The executive director was told it was the "largest-ever attack affecting the provider's network," Alexander wrote, blocking not just The Temple, but the provider's other synagogue clients across the country.
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  • "Presumably, The Temple was singled out by a racist and anti-Semitic group or individual bent on silencing our joint Temple-Ebenezer Baptist Church MLK Jr. Shabbat," Alexander wrote
  • "Authorities are conducting an investigation," the letter said. CNN has reached out to The Temple and local authorities for additional information.
  • Rothschild later befriended King, per The Temple and city of Atlanta's websites, and delivered a eulogy for King at a memorial service organized by Atlanta clergy members.
aidenborst

Harris to be sworn in as vice president by Justice Sonia Sotomayor - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Kamala Harris will be sworn in Wednesday as the next vice president of the United States by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, according to a Harris aide.
  • Harris will make history as the first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president, and she will be sworn in by the first Hispanic and third female justice in US Supreme Court history.
  • The vice president-elect will take her oath of office using two Bibles; one that previously belong to a former neighbor and family friend of Harris,' Regina Shelton, and another that belonged to Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court, the aide said.
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  • "Mrs. Shelton would bring her Bible to church every Sunday," Harris wrote. "Sitting alongside her, I was introduced to the teachings of that Bible. My earliest memories were of a loving God, a God who asked us to 'speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves' and to 'defend the rights of the poor and needy.' This is where I learned that 'faith' is a verb, something we must live and demonstrate through our actions."
  • President-elect Joe Biden and Harris will take their oaths of office on the West Front of the US Capitol during a significantly scaled-down event on January 20.
  • Authorities are bracing for more extremist violence in the coming days after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed and breached the US Capitol on January 6 in a violent riot that left five people dead. The National Park Service announced Friday that the National Mall will be closed to the general public on Inauguration Day due to security concerns.
xaviermcelderry

Can Conservative Media Still Return to Business as Usual? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • On a Friday in late December, people who tuned in to “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on Fox Business encountered something they had most likely never seen before: a subdued, uncertain Lou Dobbs. “There are a lot of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software,”
  • This was a major departure from the norm. In the weeks after the November election, Dobbs had spent most of his prime-time hour on a farrago of conspiracy theories about how Donald Trump had actually defeated Joe Biden. Among his favorites was one involving Smartmatic, which — according to Dobbs and various guests — was founded by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who died in 2013, and sat at the center of a plot to rig the election.
  • But such clarifications evidently made little impression on the believers who, a few weeks later, stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of the election results, leaving conservative media with a question even more vexing and consequential than how to respond to the threat of a libel lawsuit: How far could it really follow its audience?
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  • After the elections, those on the supply side of the conservative media equation — especially Fox, a huge corporate entity with significantly more to lose than its smaller rivals — believed their greatest challenge was how, exactly, to serve the audience’s demands without running afoul of libel law.
  • The network understood that it could spend all day pushing scandals, even tendentious ones, but there were still some things better left to wilder precincts.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox. It was Donald Trump, during his guest appearances on “Fox & Friends” and other Fox shows, who banged the drum of birtherism; the network’s own stars largely steered clear.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox. It was Donald Trump, during his guest appearances on “Fox & Friends” and other Fox shows, who banged the drum of birtherism; the network’s own stars largely steered clear. When conspiracy theorists claimed online that Obama planned to use a military training operation to declare martial law in Texas, Fox covered the kerfuffle mostly to dismiss or even mock it. The network understood that it could spend all day pushing scandals, even tendentious ones, but there were still some things better left to wilder precincts.
  • Now that Fox is preparing for a Biden administration, the same muscle memory is kicking in. The business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter and his brother James have given rise to myriad Fox reports about a “Biden crime family,” and the network has become preoccupied with Biden’s age, with a “medical contributor” appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show to talk about atrial fibrillation and cognitive decline.
  • Indeed, since Trump’s defeat, many conservative-news consumers have abandoned the comparably more staid precincts of Fox for OANN and Newsmax; in the month after the election, Newsmax viewership rose 497 percent between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., while Fox suffered a 38 percent decline. The demand among conservative-news consumers for the unhinged is obviously high.
  • For the past four years, Trump has not only met that demand; he has steadily increased it. Now, with his claims of a landslide electoral win, he has crossed a line that conservative media is asked to cross, too, lest it be left behind. It’s one thing for conservatives to believe Biden is corrupt or hopelessly senile, but to believe that his election is patently fraudulent goes far beyond the outer edges of even toxic partisanship
zoegainer

For the first time in over 100 years, Virginia won't celebrate Lee-Jackson Day - CNN - 0 views

  • For the first time in more than 100 years, Lee-Jackson Day will not officially be celebrated in Virginia.The holiday, which was observed on the Friday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January, celebrated Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson as "defenders of causes." The event typically involved Civil War-themed parades, wreath layings and reenactments hosted by Confederate memorial groups.Last February, state lawmakers in Virginia passed a bill that would swap the holiday honoring the Confederate generals for Election Day.
  • Confederate symbols have become increasingly unpopular for their association with pro-slavery activists and racism.
  • "Virginia has a story to tell that extends far beyond glorifying the Confederacy and its participants,"
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  • In December, the Virginia Military Institute removed a statue of Jackson from its campus, relocating it to a Civil War museum. That same month, a statue of Lee was removed from the US Capitol by the state of Virginia, with Northam opting to replace it with one of Barbara Johns.
mariedhorne

Samsung Is Without a Leader as Jay Y. Lee Returns to Prison - WSJ - 0 views

  • Mr. Lee, the 52-year-old grandson of Samsung’s founder, received a 30-month prison sentence from a South Korean appeals court on Monday, in a retrial of his 2017 conviction for bribing South Korea’s former president. His prior time behind bars of roughly a year counts toward his new sentence. If granted early parole, Mr. Lee could walk free next year.
  • In a sign of his vast influence, Mr. Lee’s detainment triggered a selloff across Samsung’s affiliates, wiping away billions of dollars in market value. Samsung Electronics fell 3.4%, battery maker Samsung SDI Co. slid 4.2% and Samsung C&T Corp. , the conglomerate’s de facto holding company, dropped 6.8%.
  • Unlike in 2017, Samsung Electronics—the conglomerate’s crown jewel—isn’t in the middle of a historic run in memory-chip prices. That period was so fruitful that it negated the ill effects of the prior year’s embarrassing global recall of Galaxy Note 7 smartphones.
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  • Going by “Jay Y. Lee” in the West, he has led the Samsung conglomerate since his father was incapacitated by a 2014 heart attack. But with his father’s death in October, Mr. Lee was expected to formally take the Samsung chairmanship, a transfer he will now have to navigate from behind bars.
  • His father’s death triggered a hefty inheritance tax under South Korean law. It puts Mr. Lee, his mother and two sisters on the hook for more than 11 trillion South Korean won, or roughly $10 billion, to inherit the patriarch’s shares in various Samsung companies. The tax must be paid over the next five years.
katherineharron

Will Donald Trump go down as the worst president in history? - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • With just days left in his time as president, Donald Trump undoubtedly has begun to consider how history will remember him. The early returns aren't promising.
  • The other major recent study of best (and worst) presidents came in 2018 from Brandon Rottinghaus from the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Boise State University. Known as the "Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey," this one poll 170 members of American Political Science Association.
  • "Donald Trump is quite likely to assume the title as the worst president in American history."
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  • In 2019, Siena College released its latest rankings, the result of the combined views of 159 presidential scholars who rated each of the 44 men who have been president (Grover Cleveland was president twice!) on 20 different aspects of the job. (The categories range from "integrity" to "willing to take risks" to "luck.")
  • In those rankings, Trump placed third to last -- behind only James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.
  • "The serving president has entered the survey between 15th, Obama, and 23rd, G.W. Bush, as scholars begin to observe their accomplishments, assess their abilities and study their attributes," said Don Levy, who runs the Siena College polling operation. "This year, Donald Trump enters the survey at 42nd, and he is only ranked outside of the bottom five in two of the 20 categories that scholars use to assess the presidents, 'luck' and 'willingness to take risks.'"
  • On "luck," Trump ranked tenth. On "willingness to take risks," he was 25th.
  • "On several occasions, Trump has suggested that he expects to take his place on the list of former presidents aside Abraham Lincoln, presumably knocking George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and all the others in the top rank down a tick," wrote presidential historian Joseph Ellis in a op-ed for the Los Angeles Times this week. "To put it politely, he needs to adjust his expectations."
  • Trump ranked dead last in this survey, trailing Buchanan, William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce and Johnson, respectively
  • Among self-identified conservatives, Trump was ranked as the 40th best president.
  • Among moderates and liberals in the survey, Trump was ranked dead last.
  • That same group was asked who the next president on Mount Rushmore would be. (This is a theoretical question since there is no more room to add a face to Mount Rushmore.) Only two presidents got double-digit votes: Franklin Roosevelt (108) and Barack Obama (12). Trump got a total of 0 votes.
  • "I shook his hand, and I said, 'Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.' And he goes, 'Do you know it's my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?'. "I started laughing. He wasn't laughing, so he was totally serious."
  • Now, making historical judgments about a president in the middle of his term -- or even immediately after his term ends -- is a dicey business. Ulysses S. Grant was widely seen to be a failure in the immediate aftermath of his presidency but has fared far better in the light of history.
  • But at least at first glance, it seems unlikely that time will benefit Trump. After all, what these presidential rankings missed is the second half of Trump's terms in office, which was dominated by his administration's botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his tone-deaf response to the "Black Lives Matter" protests in the summer of 2020 and his fact-free allegations of a rigged 2020 election. None of which age well. Not to mention the fact that Trump made history this week as the only president to be impeached twice.
Javier E

A Year Later, Wuhan, the First Post Coronavirus Pandemic City - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A year ago when Wuhan shut down, it offered the world a forewarning about the dangers of the virus. Now, it heralds a post-pandemic world where the relief at unmasked faces, joyous get-togethers and daily commutes conceals the emotional aftershocks.
  • The Chinese Communist Party has been singularly successful at stifling infections and vaulting Wuhan back to life faster than any foreign counterparts. But China, too, is singularly powerful at controlling remembrance of disasters, erasing troublesome facts and omitting critical questions from its official narrative.
  • Even in Wuhan, it can be easy to forget that time when shutting off a whole city seemed like a unique, draconian experiment on 11 million people. Coming from the city became a source of stigma last year; now it is a point of pride.
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  • Where the city’s months in isolation once stood out as brutally exceptional, the recent daily death toll from the virus in the United States has sometimes approached China’s official total for the whole pandemic — undergirding confidence in Wuhan’s return.
  • The exhibition extols the role of the military, and a diorama celebrates the medical teams from across China who came to Wuhan’s aid. Doctors and other “martyrs” who lost their lives fighting the pandemic in Wuhan are memorialized on a white wall, but the thousands of civilians who died have no wall of their own.
  • Many in Wuhan now embrace the version of events offered by the Chinese government, and say that their “city of heroes” waged a proud fight against a virus that has gone on to humble wealthier countries. Some residents view the early failures in a more forgiving light, after seeing the trail of calamities in the United States and other democracies.
  • “The Wuhan epidemic was dealt with well, really well,” she says. “It fully showed the superiority of China’s policies.”
  • China is the only major economy that has continued to grow in the pandemic.
  • Even before China’s crisis ended, leaders began pushing local officials to jump-start economic life. Infrastructure projects have been revived in Wuhan, and the city’s consumer electronics factories have found ready buyers in countries hamstrung by the virus.
  • He is not desperate for the vaccine. “It’s a very safe environment now,” he says. “It’s no big deal if I get one or not, but I will if they want me to.”
  • People who suffered infection say that neighbors and relatives still treat them with suspicion, as if they might still spread the disease — despite medical assurances to the contrary.
katherineharron

Trump departs Washington a pariah as his era in power ends - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Donald Trump's era in Washington is over.
  • The President, addled and mostly friendless, will end his time in the capital a few hours early to spare himself the humiliation of watching his successor be sworn in.
  • He departs a city under militarized fortification meant to prevent a repeat of the riot he incited earlier this month. He leaves office with more than 400,000 Americans dead from a virus he chose to downplay or ignore.
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  • Trump's departure amounts to a blissful lifting of a four-year pall on American life and the end to a tortured stretch of misconduct and indignities
  • At least some of the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in November are sad to see him go. Scores of them attempted an insurrection at the US Capitol this month to prevent it from happening at all. The less violent view him as a transformative President whose arrival heralded an end to political correctness and whose exit marks a return to special treatment for immigrants, gays and minorities.
  • In his final days, Trump has been surrounded by a shrinking circle of associates, many of them decades younger. Old friends who used to speak with him regularly said they can no longer reach him
  • The violent mob attack on the citadel of American democracy capped a presidency built upon disregard for democratic norms, antagonizing government institutions and willful ignorance of the far right's violent and racist tendencies.
  • There is no evidence the President has reckoned with the consequences of his actions; the opposite appears to be true. He came to regret a concession video he had recorded at the urging of his family and advisers, who told him he was seriously close to being removed from office.
  • Freshly impeached for a second time, this time with support from a few Republicans, Trump ends his term with the lowest approval rating of his tenure. Republicans remain divided on whether he represents the future of their party.
  • One thing Trump's presidency undoubtedly accomplished: revealing in stark fashion the racist, hate-filled, violent undercurrents of American society that many had chosen previously to ignore. It became impossible to overlook as Trump's presidency concluded with violent riots of White nationalists and neo-Nazis at the Capitol.
  • Ten Republicans voted for his impeachment in the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history.
  • They appeared to reconcile, but other senior Republicans began breaking with the President, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican.
  • He even had a falling-out with his vice president, Mike Pence, whose characteristic fealty was severed after he heard nothing from Trump while mobs appeared to be hunting him during the insurrection attempt
  • Instead of attending his successor's inauguration, Trump is departing the White House early to attend a military-style sendoff at Joint Base Andrews. He balked at the idea of leaving Washington an ex-president and did not particularly relish the thought of requesting use of the presidential aircraft from Biden
  • Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's ties to Russia proved an immense distraction that preoccupied both the President and his White House. It resulted in the convictions of several Trump associates, many of whom he pardoned.
  • Trump enters his post-presidency facing swirling legal matters and with the fate of his business empire in doubt.
  • Without some of the protections afforded him by the presidency, Trump will become vulnerable to multiple investigations looking into possible fraud in his financial business dealings as a private citizen.
  • Even as he exits the White House, there is little question that Trump's shadow will cloud the capital for the foreseeable future. The matter of his impeachment still lingers in the Senate, which will begin a trial after Biden is sworn in. And Trump's influence on his party's direction going forward will amount to a reckoning for conservatives, who now must decide whether theirs is the party of a president who incited an insurrection on his way out of office.
  • Trump has left the Republican Party in civil war.
  • Trump has amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in a leadership PAC formed after the election that he will be able to use for future political activity, including boosting candidates. There are few restrictions on how the money can be used.
  • But since then, officials have cast doubt on his intentions, suggesting instead he was more interested in keeping the potential 2024 GOP field in limbo rather than seriously contemplating another run.
  • The results of Trump's presidency are not particularly mixed. While there have been some achievements -- a reshaped Supreme Court, a dismantled regulatory state and the brokering of diplomatic achievements in the Middle East -- Trump's overarching legacy is one of division and rancor capped by the catastrophic events of January 6, when he had 14 days left in his term.
  • "This is more work than in my previous life," he told Reuters 100 days into the job. "I thought it would be easier."
  • Trump had spent his previous decades cultivating a public profile as a savvy businessman and larger-than-life New York City mogul, despite a succession of bankruptcies and collapses. His second act as a reality television star with a penchant for race-baiting conspiracies (such as questioning President Barack Obama's birthplace) led into his third act as president, and along with it an eye toward artifice and spectacle.
  • Trump is the first president in 150 years to stage such a boycott. While Pence will attend Biden's swearing-in, other members of Trump's family, including wife Melania and daughter Ivanka, will be absent.
  • Instead of rising to the difficulties, Trump amended the job to fit his own liking. He mostly skipped reading lengthy intelligence documents, preferring in-person briefings that on some occasions left out important information about which Trump would later claim ignorance.
  • Most tragically, Trump showed little interest in leading the nation through the coronavirus pandemic, self-styling himself a "wartime leader" for a few days before reverting to downplaying the crisis and eventually pretending it did not exist
  • . A fateful invitation to attend Bastille Day in Paris in 2017 turned Trump on to the thrills of a military parade, which he unsuccessfully lobbied for in Washington for another three years.
cartergramiak

Opinion | Three Weeks Inside a Pro-Trump QAnon Chat Room - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “We have to trust that there’s going to be military tribunals and we’ll get to watch all kinds of executions.”
  • As President Biden’s inauguration ticked closer, some of Donald Trump’s supporters were feeling gleeful. Mr. Trump was on the cusp of declaring martial law, they believed. Military tribunals would follow, then televised executions, then Democrats and other deep state operatives would finally be brought to justice.
  • These were honestly held beliefs.
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  • Participants tend to revere Mr. Trump and believe he’ll end the crisis outlined by Q: that the world is run by a cabal of pedophiles who operate a sex-trafficking ring, among other crimes. While the chat room group is relatively small, with only about 900 subscribers, it offers a glimpse into a worrying sect of Trump supporters. Some conspiracists like them have turned to violent language in the wake of Mr. Trump’s electoral loss.
  • Listening to the conspiracists — unfiltered and in their own voices — makes that digital conversation disturbingly real.
  • “I just read somewhere that Biden just lowered the age of consent to age 8. Has anybody heard anything about that?”
  • Sometimes the chat is lighthearted, like when supporters swap details about grocery runs or wish one other happy birthday. But the conversation can also turn dark, like when they speak longingly about “brutal” televised executions or simply ask, “Can the people declare war inside the country if they wanted to?”
  • As the rally began, participants uploaded dispatches from the ground. The mood was positive, even emotional. In the chat, they shared their real-time reactions as Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.
  • They believed Mr. Trump would use his Washington rally to announce mass arrests and release long-awaited evidence supporting Q’s theories. None of that happened.
  • Mr. Trump needed to allow the vote to be certified to spot his enemies. He could use the Insurrection Act at any moment, putting America under martial law and using the military to seize control of the government.
  • They had been through this cycle so many times before, with promises of lawsuits that could overturn the election or a Supreme Court intervention that Mr. Trump had planned for months. None of it came to pass. Still, they had hope.
  • “We know not to watch CNN. We know not to watch these people. But when we have people that we trust on the right, and we’re pushing that information out — because we don’t have many media sources, so the ones that come out, they need to be pretty damn good. And for them to take advantage of people’s hope? We cannot have that.”
  • Rather than re-evaluate their approach in the wake of Q’s failures, many doubled down. The problem wasn’t that the whole worldview was false, just that they had been led astray by inaccurate reports and misinterpretations. Their response was to improve their process. They would develop a list of sources, vet credentials, link to original material, and view unconfirmed information skeptically. They were, in a sense, inventing journalism.
  • Theories spread that Q was actually part of a deep state plot to keep Mr. Trump’s supporters complacent
  • After the inauguration, Ron Watkins, one of the main pushers of QAnon’s theories, whom some suspect is actually Q, seemed to signal the end of the movement. In a message to followers, he focused on the strength of the community, writing, “As we enter into the next administration please remember all the friends and happy memories we made together over the past few years.”
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