June 28, 2020

In 'God, guns and Trump' country, simmering doubts about the president

In this dry stretch of northwestern Arizona, Trump campaign signs dot the desert landscape, and Trump flags fly from the backs of dusty pickup trucks.

Last fall, an event called “Trumpstock” outside the town of Kingman featured a Trump impersonator, a pro-Trump rapper and a menu of “M.A.G.A. Subs.” Last month, thousands of people blasted classic rock and circled Lake Havasu in a Trump-themed boat parade.

“This whole area is based around people who have the same thing in common,” said Alan Morris, a 36-year-old who participated in the parade. “God, guns and Trump.”

Yet now, as the nation confronts the coronavirus pandemic, an economic recession and mass protests against police brutality and racism, some voters in the longtime Republican stronghold of Mohave County have begun to have second thoughts about the president.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-06-27/in-god-guns-and-trump-country-the-pandemic-and-protests-are-deepening-the-cultural-divide

Wonder what they're thinking now about the reports of Trump's non-response to Russian bounties on US servicemen in Afghanistan...

June 28, 2020

With Trump leading the way, America's coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections

Five months after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the United States, a record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.

President Trump — who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures — now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public health calamity in a century. The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires precision, focus and steady leadership, according to public health experts, administration officials and lawmakers from both parties.

As case numbers began rising again, Trump has held rallies defying public health guidelines, mused about slowing down testing for the virus, criticized people wearing masks and embraced the racially offensive “kung flu” nickname for a disease that has killed at least 123,000 Americans.

A similarly garbled message for the country has also been put forward by the president’s top aides and other senior administration officials, who contradict one another on a daily basis. On Friday, Vice President Pence used the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in almost two months to praise Trump’s handling of the virus and cast aside concerns about a record spike in new infections.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-trump-leading-the-way-americas-coronavirus-failures-exposed-by-record-surge-in-new-infections/2020/06/27/bd15aea2-b7c4-11ea-a8da-693df3d7674a_story.html

June 28, 2020

The Market Partied Like It Was 1932

A remarkable snapback rally, after a deep coronavirus-induced plunge, took stocks into rare and, in some ways, troubling territory.

Simply enumerating the crises afflicting the United States this year is an exhausting job.

Consider that the country has already experienced a presidential impeachment trial, the onset of a tenacious coronavirus pandemic and a grave recession. Add to all of that the heartbreaking video recordings of police officers killing people of color, which vastly amplified the power of the Black Lives Matter movement and led to a presidential threat to unleash armed forces in the streets.

Enough already, right? But there’s more. Even if, by some serendipitous twist, the shocks of 2020 stopped right now, the United States would face predictable traumas already locked in the calendar — most notably an election season of monumental vitriol and consequence that has barely begun.

What’s just as extraordinary as all of this is the stock market’s reaction to it. Stocks over all are down slightly for 2020, and if you haven’t been following closely, it may look as though little has happened in the world. But the numbers plainly show that the market has been traveling in rare and, in some ways, troubling territory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/business/stock-market-prices-irrational.html

June 27, 2020

Florida adds more than 9,500 coronavirus cases in new peak high

Source: Tampa Bay Times

Florida added more than 9,500 coronavirus cases on Saturday, beating the previous day’s record high — a record that beat the one before it by more than 3,000 cases.

On Saturday, the Florida Department of Health announced 9,585 cases, bringing the total infections recorded since early March to 132,545 cases. Hillsborough County, the county with the fourth highest number of coronavirus cases in the state, saw a record-high number of new infections.

The state also recorded 25 deaths, making the death total 3,489 people over the four months since the pandemic began in the state. More than half of the deaths reported Saturday came from the Tampa Bay area. An additional 151 people statewide were hospitalized, the report said.

On Friday, the secretary of the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Hasley Beshears, announced that the department would not allow the consumption of alcohol at bars.

In a Friday press conference, Gov. Ron DeSantis said the surge in cases could be attributed mainly to more testing.

Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/06/27/florida-adds-more-than-9500-coronavirus-cases-in-new-peak-high/

June 27, 2020

Four ways William Barr is already subverting the 2020 elections

Safeguarding the vote would be the top priority of a normal attorney general. It’s the opposite now.

A normal attorney general of the United States right now would be focused on protecting the integrity of the fast-approaching November elections. Instead, the attorney general we have — William P. Barr — is intent on doing the opposite: unraveling the government’s efforts to hold accountable those who infected our last presidential election, in 2016, and undermining the integrity of the vote in 2020. It’s so bad that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, who last weekend said it would be a “waste of time” to try to impeach Barr, is now reconsidering. (For the moment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi says impeachment is not happening.)

There are four ways that Barr’s approach to running the Justice Department imperils the vote: He’s letting off the hook those who contributed to interference in the last election; he’s undermining confidence in the government’s ability to protect the coming election; he’s signaling to bad actors that helping President Trump win will garner them special treatment under the law; and he’s spreading disinformation about the potential for voter fraud.

First, Barr is actively undoing work by the very department he oversees to address the counterintelligence threat exposed during the 2016 elections. At the core of Russia’s effort to distort American democracy was its move to obtain influence over a presidential candidate and his team. That’s what the FBI was investigating when it interviewed Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in January 2017. The criminal charges brought against Flynn for lying during that interview — to which he pleaded guilty twice — affirmed federal law enforcement’s commitment to investigate counterintelligence threats and disrupt them.

But Barr is deliberately unwinding that work. He has overseen the unprecedented attempt by the Justice Department — over the objections of the career prosecutor who handled the case — to drop the charges against Flynn despite his guilty pleas and based on legal theories invented by the department for the Flynn case alone. In a nod to the department’s obviously unusual handling of the case, a dissenting judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit this past week criticized the opinion issued by his two fellow judges, a ruling he said “transforms the presumption of regularity into an impenetrable shield” blocking the trial judge from even scrutinizing why the department took such a bizarre approach to this case. A normal attorney general would be ratcheting up counterintelligence efforts as the 2020 elections approach; Barr is standing down.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/barr-attorney-general-election/2020/06/26/7ad4fc7e-b6fb-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html

June 26, 2020

Trump consumer protection nominee faces stiff opposition over relaxing rules on toxic chemicals

Source: LA Times

A Trump administration toxicologist who relaxed rules on dangerous chemicals linked to serious human health problems has generated bipartisan opposition to her nomination to lead the nation’s consumer safety agency.

Democrats and consumer groups for months have been fighting to block Nancy Beck’s nomination to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission, saying she was too cozy with the chemical industry. The commission oversees the safety of 15,000 consumer products, including strollers and toaster ovens.

Now, two Republican senators are throwing Beck’s nomination into doubt.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she would not support Beck because the Trump administration official had helped weaken regulations of a class of chemicals called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS. The substances have been linked to cancer, birth defects and immune system disorders. Yet they are still used in a host of products, such as firefighting foam, nonstick pans and furniture.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-26/trumps-consumer-protection-nominee-who-relaxed-chemical-rules-faces-bipartisan-criticism

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Just another sign of the Trump administration's deep concern for public health and safety.

At least some Republicans apparently can't stomach this nomination.

June 26, 2020

Most U.S. Travelers Will Be Barred From E.U. When Bloc Reopens

Source: New York Times

Europe will allow outsiders to begin entering again on July 1, but the U.S. and Russia are among the nations considered too risky because they have not controlled the coronavirus outbreak.

The European Union will bar most travelers from the United States, Russia, and dozens of other countries considered too risky because they have not controlled the coronavirus outbreak, E.U. officials said Friday.

By contrast, travelers from more than a dozen countries that are not overwhelmed by the coronavirus will be welcomed when the bloc reopens after months of lockdown on July 1. The acceptable countries also include China — but only if China allows European Union travelers to visit as well, the officials said.

The list of safe countries was completed by E.U. senior diplomats in Brussels after tortuous negotiations on how to reopen the 27-member bloc to commerce and tourism under a common set of standards after months of lockdown.

The list was backed in principle by most E.U. ambassadors and does not require unanimous support, but still needs to be formalized in member states’ capitals as well as in the central European Union bureaucracy before taking effect July 1. Diplomats did not expect the list to change.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/world/europe/europe-us-travel-ban.html

June 26, 2020

Could Doomsday Bunkers Become the New Normal?

When we were told to stay inside our homes, a portion of the population quietly went below ground.


The modular square fallout shelter built by Atlas Survival Shelters, based in Sulphur Springs, Texas. Atlas and other shelter companies have seen a big increase in business since the coronavirus pandemic began.Credit...Atlas Survival Shelters

The first tenant for one of Frank Woodworth’s underground bunkers wasn’t a human, it was a seed. “A couple of hippies called me up and asked me to build them a vault for their heirloom seeds,” he said.

A reserved man with Downeast stoicism, Mr. Woodworth is the owner of Northeast Bunkers, a company in Pittsfield, Maine, that specializes in the design and construction of underground bunkers. It was 18 years ago that Mr. Woodworth outfitted that first steel vault while working as a general contractor, and he has since changed direction, pivoting his business model to focus solely on designing, installing and updating underground shelters.

He stresses that these are not “luxury bunkers” for the top 1 percent, and only a small part of the calls are coming from Doomsday preppers or Cold War-era holdovers. Rather, about two-thirds of his business comes from consumers who pay approximately $25,000 for an underground livable dwelling. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Woodworth said he has been unable to keep up with the demand.

Buyers of these kinds of underground dwellings say that they simply want to protect their families from an increasingly turbulent world. For many, the decision to build a bunker was made before the coronavirus pandemic surfaced, but they say that they now feel prepared for the next local or global crisis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/realestate/could-doomsday-bunkers-become-the-new-normal.html

June 26, 2020

I'm a Health Care Worker. You Need to Know How Close We Are to Breaking.

Now it’s hospital staff in Arizona who are being challenged by the coronavirus, and that didn’t have to be.

As I write this, I have just finished my ninth consecutive overnight shift as an emergency medicine physician here. At the end of each shift I go to an Airbnb, where I have been living alone for two and a half months, away from my wife and 10-year-old daughter so that I am less likely to pass the coronavirus on to them.

In a medical crisis, my job is to manage a clinical team, problem-solve and be in control. It is hard to admit that I feel vulnerable and scared when I think of the Covid-19 surge we are facing now and the combined Covid-19 and influenza tsunami expected later this year. But I am admitting it because you need to know how close health care workers are to breaking.

My colleagues and I watched what happened this spring in New York with horror and hoped we could avoid the same from happening in our state. But our federal and state governments abandoned their duty and let the virus terrorize our vulnerable communities, spreading rampantly. Now we are beginning to experience what hospitals in the Northeast went through months ago.

When Arizona and other states started to open back up in May, public health experts predicted a surge of Covid-19 cases. That surge is just beginning. We see a steady increase in patients arriving at the emergency department with Covid-19 symptoms. Every day Arizona sets a record high for daily cases. As of today, over twice as many Arizonans are hospitalized for Covid-19 symptoms as were on June 1.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/coronavirus-arizona-hospitals.html

June 26, 2020

You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument

The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. But there are still those — like President Trump and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective.

I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html