The Commentariat -- May 28, 2020
Thanks again to safari for keeping the show on the road. He persisted. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Afternoon Update:
The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Thursday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Thursday are here.
Joe Biden demonstrates how to be a real president:
~~~ OR, You Could Read a Trump Tweet. Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Thursday offered his first expression of sympathy in observance of the milestone of 100,000 American coronavirus deaths, tweeting his condolences after drawing criticism for failing to reflect on the human cost of the outbreak in recent days. 'We have just reached a very sad milestone with the coronavirus pandemic deaths reaching 100,000,' Trump wrote online. 'To all of the families & friends of those who have passed, I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy & love for everything that these great people stood for & represent. God be with you!'"
Trump Can't Handle the Truth, Ctd. Jeff Stein & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "White House officials have decided not to release updated economic projections this summer, opting against publishing forecasts that would almost certainly codify an administration assessment that the coronavirus pandemic has led to a severe economic downturn, according to three people with knowledge of the decision. The White House is supposed to unveil a federal budget proposal every February and then typically provides a 'mid-session review' in July or August with updated projections on economic trends such as unemployment, inflation and economic growth. Budget experts said they were not aware of any previous White House opting against providing forecasts in this 'mid-session review' document in any other year since at least the 1970s." Mrs. McC: There must be a hole in the floor under the Oval Office carpet to hold all the stuff Trump has tried to sweep under the rug.
Tim Mak of NPR: "Marc Short, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, owns between $506,043 and $1.64 million worth of individual stocks in companies doing work related to the Trump administration's pandemic response -- holdings that could run afoul of conflict of interest laws. Many of the medical, pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies -- including 3M, Abbott Laboratories, Gilead Sciences, Procter & Gamble, Medtronic, Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson -- in which Short and his wife hold stock have been directly affected by or involved in the work of the coronavirus task force chaired by Pence. Other companies among his holdings, such as CVS, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Walmart and Roche, have been publicly touted by the White House for their work with the federal government on the coronavirus response.... The White House contends he has followed administration guidelines to avoid conflicts of interest." Mrs. McC: Uh-huh.
Kate Conger & Mike Issac of the New York Times: "Twitter on Thursday added new fact-checking labels to hundreds of tweets, even as the Trump administration prepared an executive order to curtail the legal protections that shield social media companies from liability for the content posted on their platforms. Twitter's move escalated the confrontation between the company and President Trump, who has fulminated this week over actions taken by his favorite social media service." ~~~
~~~ Maggie Haberman & Kate Conger of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is preparing an executive order intended to curtail the legal protections that shield social media companies from liability for what gets posted on their platforms, two senior administration officials said early Thursday. Such an order, which officials said was still being drafted and was subject to change, would make it easier for federal regulators to argue that companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter are suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts, among other examples. The move is almost certain to face a court challenge and is the latest salvo by President Trump in his repeated threats to crack down on online platforms. Twitter this week attached fact-checking notices to two of the president's tweets after he made false claims about voter fraud...." A similar WashPo story is linked below. A Reuters story is here.
Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "Attorney General William P. Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney in Texas to scrutinize Obama-era officials who sought to identify anonymized names in government documents that turned out to be people connected to then-President-elect Trump, a Justice Department official said Wednesday. In an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said the attorney general had tasked John Bash, the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Texas, to examine the practice of 'unmasking,' which many Republicans charge was abused by the previous administration to unfairly target people close to Trump.... Bash's review is an offshoot of an investigation underway by U.S. Attorney of Connecticut John Durham.... Notably, Barr said during a news conference last week that he did not expect Durham would investigate former president Barack Obama or former vice president Joe Biden.... Unmasking is a common practice...." ~~~
~~~ David Shortell of CNN: "Overall, the level of unmasking has increased under the Trump administration, in the last three years. There were more than 10,000 unmaskings last year and nearly 17,000 in 2018, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Statistical Transparency reports. There were 9,529 in 2017, Trump's first year in office. Under the Obama administration, there were about 9,217 unmaskings in 2016 and only 654 in 2015."
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Jeff Cox of CNBC: "First-time claims for unemployment benefits totaled 2.1 million last week, the lowest total since the coronavirus crisis began though indicative that a historically high number of Americans remain separated from their jobs.... Continuing claims, or those who have been collecting for at least two weeks, numbered 21.05 million, a clearer picture of how many workers are still sidelined. That number dropped sharply, falling 3.86 million from the previous week. The insured unemployment rate, which is a basic calculation of those collecting benefits vs. the total labor force, came down sharply to 14.5% from 17.1% the previous week."
Marc Fisher of the Washington Post: "One hundred thousand Americans dead in less than four months.... These 100,000 ... are they mostly famous people. They are, overwhelmingly, elderly -- in some states, nearly two-thirds of the dead were 80 or older. They are disproportionately poor and black and Latino. Among the younger victims, many did work that allowed others to stay at home, out of the virus's reach. For the most part, they have died alone, leaving parents and siblings and lovers and friends with final memories not of hugs and whispered devotion, but of miniature images on a computer screen, tinny voices on the phone, hands pressed against a window." ~~~
~~~ Ashley Parker of the Washington Post: "President Trump has spent his life in thrall to numbers -- his wealth, his ratings, his polls. Even during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, he has remained fixated on certain metrics -- peppering aides about infection statistics, favoring rosy projections and obsessing over the gyrating stock market. But as the nation reached a bleak milestone this week -- 100,000 Americans dead from the novel coronavirus -- Trump has been uncharacteristically silent. His public schedule this week contains no special commemoration, no moment of silence, no collective sharing of grief. Instead, Trump's most direct comments so far on the number came in a pair of tweets Tuesday, amounting to a preemptive rebuttal. 'For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn't done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number,' he wrote."
~~~ Stephen Collinson of CNN: "The first tragedy of America's bleak coronavirus milestone is that 100,000 people didn't have to die. The second is that no one knows how many more will perish before the pandemic fades.... The US has been plagued by one of the most mismanaged, and certainly one of the most politically divisive, coronavirus mitigation efforts in the world.... There will be plenty of blame to be shared.... But despite his crisis-defining comment back in March -- 'I don't take responsibility at all' -- much of the blame must fall inevitably on Trump. Such moments of national peril are exactly what presidents are for.... Trump's 2016 convention vow -- 'I alone can fix it' -- and his entire leadership model of fomenting divisions, inventing his own facts and distracting from his failings by sparking new scandals has been irredeemably exposed. The steadily rising fatality toll brings its own awful judgments -- that no number of attacks on the previous administration or raging tweets can disguise."
The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Wednesday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Wednesday are here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Maggie Fox of CNN: "Antibody tests used to determine if people have been infected in the past with Covid-19 might be wrong up to half the time, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in new guidance posted on its website. Antibody tests, often called serologic tests, look for evidence of an immune response to infection. 'Antibodies in some persons can be detected within the first week of illness onset,' the CDC says." Mrs. McC: So, um, useless.
Michael Scherer of the Washington Post: "A growing chorus of Republicans are pushing back against President Trump's suggestion that wearing cloth masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is a sign of personal weakness or political correctness. They include governors seeking to prevent a rebound in coronavirus cases and federal lawmakers who face tough reelection fights this fall, as national polling shows lopsided support for wearing masks in public. 'Wearing a face covering is not about politics -- it's about helping other people,' Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said Tuesday in a plea over Twitter, echoing comments by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) last week. 'This is one time when we truly are all in this together.' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) posted a photograph on Instagram of himself in a mask Tuesday night. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who faces a tough reelection fight, has added '#wearyourmask' to his Twitter handle.... The comments come as Trump continues to treat face masks as something to mock, refusing to wear one in public and joining his staff and family in ridiculing his Democratic rival Joe Biden for doing otherwise.... For Biden, the debate with the president over masks is a stand-in for their deeper disagreements over Trump's handling of the pandemic.... On Tuesday Biden made his Twitter avatar a picture nearly identical to the one Trump mocked." ~~~
~~~ Wow! Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday made an extensive pitch for Americans to don face masks as a means to begin returning the country to normalcy while the coronavirus remains a threat. 'There's no stigma attached to wearing a mask. There's no stigma attached to staying six feet apart,' the Kentucky Republican said at an event back in his home state, referencing social distancing guidelines recommended to stem the transmission of the coronavirus. Speaking hours before the national death toll surpassed 100,000, McConnell directed his pitch mostly at younger Americans, explaining that 'you have an obligation to others' in case they might be asymptomatic carriers of the virus." Mrs. McC: This is Mitch McConnell defying Der Trumpenführer AND making sense. Fairly amazing. ~~~
~~~ Eric Bradner of CNN: "Joe Biden called ... Donald Trump 'an absolute fool' on Tuesday for sharing a tweet that mocked the former vice president for wearing a mask Monday at a Memorial Day ceremony. In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Delaware -- Biden's first in-person interview since being knocked off the campaign trail by the coronavirus pandemic -- the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said Trump is fueling a cultural opposition to wearing masks when 'every leading doc in the world is saying we should wear a mask when you're in a crowd.... This macho stuff, for a guy -- I shouldn't get going, but it just, it costs people's lives. It's costing people's lives,' Biden said. Trump's position amounts to 'stoking deaths,' he said. He added: 'Presidents are supposed to lead, not engage in folly and be falsely masculine.'"
Veronica Stracqualursi of CNN: "Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday called for a cautious approach to reopening the US and implored Americans to wear face masks in public, comments that are at odds with ... Donald Trump's push to have America quickly return to normalcy. 'I want to protect myself and protect others, and also because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that's the kind of thing you should be doing,' Fauci ... told CNN's Jim Sciutto.... Fauci said he believes that while wearing a mask is not '100% effective,' it is a valuable safeguard and shows 'respect for another person.'" ~~~
~~~ Zachary Brennan of Politico: "National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci on Wednesday became the first Trump administration official to say definitively that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment for the coronavirus, based on the available data. 'The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy,' Fauci ... said on CNN. But he stopped short of calling for an outright ban of the drug...." ~~~
How to hydroxychloroquine pic.twitter.com/yMObDCFGXS
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) May 19, 2020
~~~ "Karaoke Trump." James Poniewozik of the New York Times: "The words are 100 percent Donald J. Trump's. The actions belong to the comedian Sarah Cooper, whose homemade lip-syncs of the president's rambling pandemic-related statements have become the most effective impression of Mr. Trump yet."
Ken Klippenstein of The Nation: "The US military's Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, raised concerns during a recent meeting about President Donald Trump's decision to suspend payments to the World Health Organization (WHO), according to documents obtained exclusively by The Nation.... [The information] reveals that AFRICOM appears to fear that if the United States stops contributing to the WHO during the Covid-19 pandemic, China will use that as an opportunity to expand its influence in Africa." --s
Erica Green of the New York Times: "Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, defiant amid criticism that she is using the coronavirus to pursue a long-sought agenda, said she would force public school districts to spend a large portion of federal rescue funding on private school students, regardless of income."
Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "House lawmakers cast the first-ever remote congressional floor votes Wednesday -- albeit under a legal cloud after Republican leaders filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the arrangement. The new system of voting by proxy was pushed forward by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and fellow Democratic leaders this month as a temporary measure, they said, that would allow lawmakers' full participation during the global coronavirus pandemic, which has made travel and in-person meetings hazardous.... Under rules adopted earlier this month, 71 House members filed letters designating a colleague to cast floor votes on their behalf during the pandemic while they remain away from the Capitol. One by one Wednesday, dozens of Democrats stood at the microphones Wednesday afternoon and announced -- most of them through masks -- how the absent members were voting. The House passed the resolution -- calling for sanctions against Chinese officials for harsh treatment of the Uighur ethnic minority in the Xinjiang region -- on a 413-to-1 vote, with 69 yes votes cast by proxy." An AP story is here.
Tony Romm & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "President Trump is preparing to sign an executive order Thursday that could roll back the immunity that tech giants have for the content on their sites, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump's directive chiefly seeks to embolden federal regulators to rethink a portion of law known as Section 230, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.... That law spares tech companies from being held liable for the comments, videos and other content posted by users on their platforms.... The order will mark the White House's most significant salvo against Silicon Valley after years of verbal broadsides and regulatory threats from Trump and his top deputies." ~~~
~~~ " I Have an Article 2." Jill Colvin of the AP: "Threatening to shut down Twitter for flagging false content. Claiming he can 'override' governors who dare to keep churches closed to congregants. Asserting the 'absolute authority' to force states to reopen, even when local leaders say it's too soon. As he battles the coronavirus pandemic..., Donald Trump has been claiming extraordinarily sweeping powers that legal scholars say the president simply doesn't have. And he has repeatedly refusing to spell out the legal basis for those powers."
~~~ Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Washington Post: "President Trump and his supporters lashed out against social media companies Wednesday, targeting a Twitter executive with personal attacks and escalating a battle with the social media company over using a fact-check label on his tweets for the first time this week.... The choice to label Trump's tweet [making false claims about mail-in voting] was ultimately made by the company's general counsel in concert with the acting head of policy, [a source] said."
Michael Grynbaum & Marc Tracy of the New York Times: "Even President Trump's most stalwart media defenders have recoiled at his baseless smears against the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, whom Mr. Trump has all but accused of killing a former staff member two decades ago despite a total lack of evidence. The president ... is now facing an unusual chorus of reproach from the media platforms he relies on for comfort. The New York Post, Mr. Trump's first read in the mornings, lamented in an editorial on Tuesday that the president 'decided to suggest that a TV morning-show host committed murder. That is a depressing sentence to type.'... And the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, a bellwether of establishment conservative thought, called Mr. Trump's unfounded accusation against Mr. Scarborough 'ugly even for him.'... If this week's blowback affected Mr. Trump, the president has not shown it: He taunted Mr. Scarborough again on Wednesday in a tweet that referred to a 'Cold Case.'" ~~~
~~~ After whacking lefties for spreading the conspiracy story that Joe Scarborough murdered an intern, the right-wing Washington Examiner Editors write: "... it is ... unfortunate that the latest person to trumpet and repeat this vile slander is the president supposedly leading this nation through a time of crisis. Whatever his issues with Scarborough, President Trump's crazed Twitter rant on this subject was vile and unworthy of his office. Some will undoubtedly shrug it off as Trump being Trump, but one could hardly be blamed for reading it and doubting his fitness to lead.... Observers might even someday look back at this incident as the instant when things began to unravel."
~~~ The Upside-down World of Donald J. Trump. Jerry Lambe of Law & Crime: "... Donald Trump got a reality check on Tuesday..., when Twitter began flagging the president's false or misleading tweets and providing links to factually accurate information.... The president responded by attacking the social media platform, claiming the privately owned company was 'stifling free speech,' a statement which many legal experts saw fit to fact-check as well.... The platform's new fact-checking mechanism appeared when Trump tweeted a series of false and unsubstantiated claims about the prevalence of voter fraud in relation to mail-in absentee ballots.... The link, which urged people to 'Get the facts about mail-in ballots,' directed readers to a brief statement explaining the untrue nature of the claims and a list of bullet points rebutting several individual falsehoods.... '...Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!' [Trump tweeted.]... The First Amendment protects 'subjects and citizens from government action.' Twitter is not the government. The irony of the president complaining that a non-state actor was violating his right to free speech -- only to threaten to use his government position to prevent that non-state actor from continuing to operate in such a way (which would be a violation of Twitter's First Amendment rights) -- was not lost on legal experts. Anti-Trump Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe ... called Trump's tweet's 'insane.' [Actually 'INSANE.']" ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Beyond the stupid, there's a double irony here. Trump is using the very platform he criticizes & threatens to criticize & threaten that platform. In addition, as Larry Tribe writes (and anyone who has read the Bill of Rights knows), a person does not have a First-Amendment right to express opinions on a private platform. It's true that governments can regulate these platforms, and the platforms could violate U.S. law, for instance by limiting access to white Christian men.
~~~ Zeke Miller of the AP: "The president can't unilaterally regulate or close the companies, and any effort would likely require action by Congress. His administration shelved a proposed executive order empowering the Federal Communications Commission to regulate technology companies, citing concerns it wouldn't pass legal muster. But that didn't stop Trump from angrily issuing strong warnings. [After his initial threats, Trump later] tweeted without elaboration, 'Big Action to follow.'... [Trump's] 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said Twitter's 'clear political bias' had led the campaign to pull 'all our advertising from Twitter months ago.' Twitter has banned all political advertising since last November." ~~~
~~~ ** Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A ruling that emerged from a powerful federal appeals court in Washington on Wednesday morning is strong evidence that the courts are unlikely to be receptive to ... Donald Trump's claims that he and his political supporters are being silenced by social media platforms like Twitter. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit resoundingly rejected a lawsuit the conservative legal organization Freedom Watch and right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer filed in 2018 against four major technology companies: Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple. Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have banned Loomer, citing anti-Muslim statements. The unanimous court decision from a three-judge panel runs to only four pages, but is dismissive of a wide range of legal claims some conservatives and liberals have leveled at social media firms in recent months. The appeals court judges said that, despite the companies' power, they cannot violate the First Amendment because it regulates only governments, not the private sector."
Aw, Shucks. Peter Baker & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "For President Trump, it was a chance to rewrite the story line from tragedy to triumph. Even as the United States reached the grim milestone on Wednesday of 100,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic, he would help mark the nation's trailblazing return to human spaceflight from American soil. But Mr. Trump's hopes of demonstrating that America was back with the verve of a rocket's red glare were doused by lightning-filled storm clouds that forced flight controllers to scrub the long-awaited launch of the SpaceX rocket even as the president watched helplessly from the Kennedy Space Center. Only minutes after heralding what was to be the first launch of NASA astronauts into orbit from the United States in nearly a decade, a disappointed Mr. Trump scrapped planned remarks and made a hasty retreat to Air Force One to fly back to Washington.... Mr. Trump vowed not to give up, promising to return this weekend when the launch will be tried again." ~~~
~~~ Kenneth Chang of the New York Times: "With gray clouds above that did not move away fast enough, a rocket launch that was to be the first to take American astronauts to orbit from American soil in nearly a decade stayed on the ground, disappointing spectators including ... Donald J. Trump and ... Mike Pence.... The launch of two NASA astronauts on a rocket built by SpaceX, the rocket company started by billionaire Elon Musk, would be the first launching of people by a private company and not a national space agency like NASA. For this launch, SpaceX was in charge, although in consultation with NASA officials."
Erin Banco, et al., of the Daily Beast: "When State Department inspector general Steve Linick was abruptly fired [by Donald Trump on the recommendation of Mike Pompeo], one of the inquiries he was conducting concerned a massive, highly controversial weapons sale to Saudi Arabia. Now the Trump administration is preparing to sell Riyadh even more weapons, The Daily Beast has learned. Two individuals familiar with the situation, including one with direct knowledge, said the Trump administration is drafting another request for a significantly smaller package of arms that includes precision-guided munitions similar to those Secretary of State Mike Pompeo approved in a highly contentious $8 billion sale in 2019. Congress voted to condemn that sale, and is likely to strongly push back against a new one, too. The proposed sale comes less than two weeks after ... Trump fired Linick." ~~~
~~~ Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) in a CNN opinion piece: "The administration is currently trying to sell thousands more precision-guided bombs to the President's 'friend,' Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.... I received draft State Department documentation that it is now pursuing this previously undisclosed sale -- details of which have not yet been made public -- even though the Saudis seemingly want out of their failed and brutal war in Yemen, and despite the fact that a bipartisan majority in Congress rejected previous sales of these weapons. The administration has refused to answer our fundamental questions to justify this new sale and articulate how it would be consistent with US values and national security objectives." --s
Elections 2020
Um, It's Not a Secret Anymore. Theodore Schleifer of Recode in Vox: "... Democrats are scrambling to patch the digital deficits of their presumptive nominee. And behind the scenes, Silicon Valley's billionaire Democrats are spending tens of millions of dollars on their own sweeping plans to catch up to ... Donald Trump's lead on digital campaigning -- plans that are poised to make them some of the country's most influential people when it comes to shaping the November results. These billionaires' arsenals are funding everything from nerdy political science experiments to divisive partisan news sites to rivalrous attempts to overhaul the party's beleaguered data file.... In Silicon Valley's new political moment, four billionaires in particular -- LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt -- have the most ambitious plans.... Each of these billionaires is moving their pieces with varying levels of secrecy, and often with minimal disclosure, scrutiny, or accountability."
Gotcha. Gotcha Again. Steve Contorno of the Tampa Bay Times: "For a week, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has defended ... Donald Trump's assault on vote-by-mail, insisting, like her boss, that it invites election fraud. But, also like her boss, McEnany has taken advantage of its convenience time and time again. In fact, the Tampa native has voted by mail in every Florida election she has participated in since 2010, according to a Tampa Bay Times review of her voting history. Most recently, she voted by mail in the state's March 2020 presidential primary, just as Trump did after he made Florida his new permanent home.... In a statement emailed after the story published, McEnany said: 'Absentee voting has the word absent in it for a reason. It means you're absent from the jurisdiction or unable to vote in person. President Trump is against the Democrat plan to politicize the coronavirus and expand mass mail-in voting without a reason, which has a high propensity for voter fraud....' However, Florida does not have absentee voting. Anyone can vote by mail here without a reason."
Dahlia Lithwick & Richard Hasen of Slate: "The right-wing legal network spawned by the Federalist Society has finally gone full Trumpian. It has morphed from a group of apparently principled conservatives debating high-minded theories of legal interpretation, into a secretly-funded cabal spouting conspiracy theories such as the myth of widespread voter fraud.... [W]e have now approached peak-hackery, and that hackery is now being directed at manipulating elections. That part really is new, and it is a dangerous development that threatens the rule of law.... So far, [the Federalist] effort has been mostly directed at seating deeply conservative judges on the federal bench for decades to come. But there is a new initiative afoot: an effort to engage in political dirty tricks to manipulate democracy itself." --s
Texas. Alexa Ura of ProPublica: "The Texas Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a lack of immunity to the new coronavirus does not qualify a voter to apply for a mail-in ballot.... The court agreed with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that the risk of contracting the virus alone does not meet the state's qualifications for voting by mail.... Texas voters can qualify for mail-in ballots only if they are 65 years or older, have a disability or illness, will be out of the county during the election period, or are confined in jail. The Texas election code defines disability as a 'sickness or physical condition' that prevents a voter from appearing in person without the risk of 'injuring the voter's health.' Although the court sided with Paxton's interpretation of what constitutes a disability, it indicated that it is up to voters to assess their own health and determine if they meet the state's definition. 'We agree, of course, that a voter can take into consideration aspects of his health and his health history that are physical conditions in deciding whether, under the circumstances, to apply to vote by mail because of disability,' the court ruled. The high court also rejected Paxton's request to prevent local election officials from sending mail-in ballots to voters who were citing lack of immunity to the coronavirus as a disability. Those officials ... cannot deny ballots to voters who cite a disability -- even if their reasoning is tied to susceptibility to the coronavirus." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Raise your hand if you think that the average election official -- much less the average voter -- can figure out this ruling. Can't think of a better way to sow confusion than issuing a "nuanced" decision.
The New York Times live-updated the SpaceX launch, which was scheduled to occur yesterday. "With gray clouds above and choppy waves in the Atlantic, NASA called off a rocket launch that was to be the first to take American astronauts to orbit from American soil in nearly a decade. The next opportunities to launch are Saturday at 3:22 p.m. Eastern time and Sunday at 3 p.m. The launch of two NASA astronauts on a rocket built by SpaceX, the rocket company started by billionaire Elon Musk, would mark the start of an era of human spaceflight that extends beyond national space agencies."
Daniel Lewis of the New York Times: "Larry Kramer, the noted writer whose raucous, antagonistic campaign for an all-out response to the AIDS crisis helped shift national health policy in the 1980s and '90s, died on Wednesday morning in Manhattan. He was 84. His husband, David Webster, said the cause was pneumonia."
Beyond the Beltway
California. Nouran Salahieh, et al., of KTLA: "Hundreds of protestors took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles Wednesday for a demonstration in the name of George Floyd, a black man who died after being pinned beneath a Minneapolis police officer's knee. A large group broke away and got onto the 101 Freeway around 6 p.m., blocking traffic on both sides of the freeway during rush hour as Los Angeles Police Department officers and Los Angeles Fire Department units responded. At one point, some people surrounded a California Highway Patrol car and were seen banging on it and kicking it as the vehicle drove through the crowd on the freeway near Alameda Street. Several climbed onto the car's hood and then fell off as it drove away, aerial video from Sky5 showed. One person was seen rolling off the hood and hitting the ground as the patrol car sped up. Firefighters were later seen treating the person, who was lying on the ground in the midst of the crowd, before transporting him in an ambulance."
Minnesota. Doug Glass of the AP: "A man was shot to death as violent protests over the death of a black man in police custody rocked Minneapolis for a second straight night Wednesday, with protesters looting stores near a police precinct and setting fires. Police said they were investigating the death as a homicide and had a suspect in custody, but were still investigating what led to the shooting." ~~~
~~~ Matt Furber, et al., of the New York Times: "Medaria Arradondo, [Minneapolis's police] chief [who is black], swiftly fired all four [police]men on Tuesday and called for an F.B.I. investigation once the video showed that the official police account of the arrest of ... George Floyd [a black man, by a police officer using excessive force], bore little resemblance to what actually occurred. When hundreds of residents poured into the streets on Tuesday night to protest Mr. Floyd's death, officers used tear gas and fired rubber bullets into the crowd, eliciting cries of biased policing. Community activists are calling for murder charges against the officers and a top-to-bottom federal review of Mr. Arradondo's department.... President Trump on Wednesday called Mr. Floyd's death a 'very, very sad event.' Joseph R. Biden Jr. ... said the death was 'part of an ingrained, systemic cycle of injustice that still exists in this country,' and that it 'cuts at the very heart of our sacred belief that all Americans are equal in rights and in dignity.'" ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: On MSNBC, Chris Hayes & Joy Reid contrasted the tear gas & rubber bullets blown into a majority-black protest against the apparent murder of Mr. George to the lenient, hands-off police response to armed white protesters who stormed Michigan's capitol building in defiance of the state's lawful stay-at-home order.
New Jersey. Maria Cramer of the New York Times: "A New Jersey Superior Court judge who asked a woman if she had closed her legs to try to prevent a sexual assault has been ordered removed from the bench by the state's highest court, which concluded his behavior made it 'inconceivable' that he could ever handle cases of domestic violence or sexual assault. The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the judge, John F. Russo Jr., who served in Ocean County, should be removed from the bench 'effective immediately.'... During disciplinary hearings about the case, Judge Russo said that he was trying to help the woman become 're-engaged' during her testimony...." Mrs. McC: Right. Russo thinks he did nothing wrong; he was "helping" the woman.
New York. Update of a story linked yesterday. Sarah Nir of the New York Times: "... the encounter [between Christian Cooper & Amy Cooper (not related) in Central Park's Ramble], which was recorded on video, took an ugly turn. As the man, Christian Cooper, filmed on his phone, the woman, clutching her thrashing dog, called the police, her voice rising in hysteria. 'I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life,' she said to him while dialing, then repeated to the operator, twice, 'African-American.' The video, posted to Twitter on Memorial Day by Mr. Cooper's sister, has been viewed more than 30 million times.... Within 24 hours, the woman, identified as Amy Cooper (no relation to Mr. Cooper), had given up her dog, publicly apologized and been fired from her job. Mr. Cooper, 57, a Harvard graduate who works in communications, has long been a prominent birder in the city and is on the board of the New York City Audubon Society.... Ms. Cooper had been a head of insurance portfolio management at Franklin Templeton, according to her LinkedIn page, and graduated from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.On Tuesday afternoon, Franklin Templeton announced that she had been fired." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Way Beyond
China/Hong Kong. Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "China officially has the broad power to quash unrest in Hong Kong, as the country's legislature on Thursday nearly unanimously approved a plan to suppress subversion, secession, terrorism and seemingly any acts that might threaten national security in the semiautonomous city. As Beijing hashes out the specifics of the national security legislation in the coming weeks, the final rules will help determine the fate of Hong Kong, including how much of the city's autonomy will be preserved or how much Beijing will tighten its grip. Early signals from Chinese authorities point to a crackdown once the law takes effect, which is expected by September." An AP story is here. ~~~
~~~ Edward Wong of the New York Times: "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Wednesday that the State Department no longer considered Hong Kong to have significant autonomy under Chinese rule, a move that indicated the Trump administration was likely to end some or all of the United States government's special trade and economic relations with the territory in southern China." A CNN story is here.
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