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In ICE Detention, Forced to Pay for Soap
"Inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in Texas's Jefferson County Jail, René Escobedo González says he's not getting enough food. ICE requires the privately run jail to serve detained immigrants three meals per day, but, in a clear effort to keep attendance low and costs down, breakfast is served at 3:30 am. Escobedo says that even if he does wake up, the meals are sparse, and often days old. Since ICE detained him in January, Escobedo has been feeling hunger pains, and he's been forced to ask his family in Florida to constantly refill his commissary account so that he can buy ramen noodles, both for himself and for others in the detention center.
Then came the coronavirus pandemic. In late March, still locked in ICE detention, Escobedo began asking his family for money so he could afford another necessity he would otherwise miss: soap.
"Soap we have to buy from the commissary," Escobedo says. "They give us a tiny soap that is only good for one use." He says that once a week, on Tuesday, the jail gives each person a ration of soap, but it lasts about a day. If people want more, they have to pay.
The coronavirus crisis has thrown the archipelago of ICE detention centers run by private prison companies into chaos. In an effort to cut costs, for-profit detention centers ration out goods—like soap—with the expectation that detained people will buy more with money from their commissary accounts if they run out. In many for-profit detention centers, detained people are given one bar of soap per week, for washing their hands and their bodies. In the midst of the pandemic, as detainees fear for their lives, that rationing system has collapsed. Today, washing one's hands could mean saving one's life or that of those around them, but Escobedo and others in ICE detention say that taking that basic step still comes at a price.
"We basically have to hunger strike to get what we need," says Jose Miranda-Gonzalez, a man detained in Georgia's Folkston ICE Processing center. He says that soap and cleaning products are rationed out in such meager amounts that he and other detainees have periodically stopped eating to pressure the detention center staff to provide enough supplies.
"People who can't afford commissary can't have enough soap to wash their hands," Miranda-Gonzalez says. Last month, he says he bought 10 bars of soap at the commissary and cut them in half to pass out among detainees who couldn't afford their own.
ICE and multiple for-profit detention centers have contested the allegations. A spokesperson from GEO Group, which runs the Folkston facility where Miranda-Gonzalez is locked, wrote in a statement for this article, "We strongly reject these unfounded allegations, which we believe are being instigated by outside groups with political agendas…. Our ICE Processing Centers provide access to regular handwashing with clean water and soap in all housing areas and throughout each facility."
Responding to a request for comment, Danielle Bennet, spokesperson for ICE, pointed to a statement available on the agency's website, which claims that ICE detention centers run by the agency itself provide ample soap. When it comes to private detention centers, the statement explains, "ICE continues to encourage facilities to follow CDC guidelines as well as those of their state and local health departments."
"I'm not aware of any hunger strikes related to soap and hygiene products," Bennet wrote in an e-mail.
However, that statement contrasts with multiple reports from detained immigrants who say they've engaged in mass protests in recent weeks demanding soap, cleaning products, and toilet paper. Besides Miranda-Gonzalez in Georgia, detained people in Washington state and Lousiana told me they've either taken part in or witnessed hunger strikes. In audio obtained by ProPublica last month, a detained Salvadoran man explains that his detention center—the Hudson County Correctional Facility—gives them only one bar of soap per week. They're meant to use this small bar both for bathing and washing their hands, so it runs out quickly. In the recording, Ronal Umaña says he and others began hunger striking to pressure the detention center staff to give them soap so they can clean their hands, as well as toilet paper and other hygiene necessities.
At this point, the coronavirus has infected hundreds of thousands of Americans and killed over 50,000. One of the CDC's most basic guidelines for avoiding COVID-19 is, of course, frequently washing one's hands. Robyn Barnard, an asylum attorney in Southern California, says that her client contacted her and asked her to put money in his commissary so he could buy soap to wash his hands. Julie Schwietert Collazo, the director of Immigrant Families Together, says that she's gotten requests for commissary fund grants from detained immigrants across the South who tell her they don't have "even basic hygiene items." Natalia Santanna, an immigration attorney based in the Bay Area, says that her clients are rationed some soap each week, but not nearly enough to wash their hands as frequently as the CDC recommends. "If they don't pay for it from commissary, they can't wash their hands."And in New York, Sophia Gurulé, an immigration lawyer who serves as immigration policy counsel for The Bronx Defenders, says her organization has noted the same thing.
"A lot of our clients only get their soap by buying it from commissary," Gurulé says. She explains that many of her clients aren't in dedicated ICE detention centers but rather local jails that have contracts with ICE (this is the sort of detention situation Escobedo finds himself in). Still, the situation is the same: "Commissary is where they predominantly get their soap."
Charging for Soap
Why do ICE detention centers continue to charge money for good as basic as soap during the pandemic?
While there's no one answer to what prices look like in the commissary, detention centers do seem to have inflated margins. ICE employs different private contractors, including for-profit prison conglomerates like Geo Group, CoreCivic, and LaSalle Corrections, to run many of its facilities. But as a general rule, the prices being charged at commissaries are inflated. In 2019, a bar of Dove soap cost $2.44 in CoreCivic's Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, according to a Reuter's investigation; the same bar costs about a dollar at a drugstore.
However, when it comes to private detention facilities' charging money for hygiene products, the prices themselves aren't the whole story. The business model of these facilities isn't necessarily to make a profit on commissary goods but rather to "motivate" immigrants into working in-detention jobs, which can pay as little as $1 per day.
R. Andrew Free is one of the attorneys who has brought multiple lawsuits (along with organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center) against corporations like CoreCivic and Geo Group. At the center of these lawsuits is a shocking allegation: Private detention centers are engaging in forced labor.
Free alleges that detention facilities create "artificial scarcity" in order to coerce the people locked inside into working in-detention jobs. Here's how that sounds in the words of Wilhen Hill Barrientos, an asylum seeker from Guatemala whom Free and the SPLC represented in a case against CoreCivic filed in 2018: "[You] either work for a few cents an hour or live without basic things like soap, shampoo, deodorant and food," Hill Barrientos said in a statement about the lawsuit.
And here's Free describing another lawsuit he filed in a district court in California, this time representing a client detained in Adelanto, a massive Geo Group detention center in Southern California (the same facility where Robyn Barnard's client now claims he's forced to buy soap): "We've articulated this deprivation scheme," Free says. "That claims Geo purposely skimps on basic necessities—like food soap, clean water, medicine—in order to make it so that they have a readily available workforce."
Both Geo and CoreCivic rejected the allegations made in the forced labor lawsuits. A spokesman for Geo called the claims "unfounded," and Amanda Gilchrist, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, wrote, "All work programs at our ICE detention facilities are completely voluntary and operated in full compliance with ICE standards, including federally established minimum wage rates for detainee volunteer labor.… CoreCivic provides detainees all basic living necessities in accordance with federal detention standards, and it does not deprive detainees of anything to coerce their participation in a work program."
While a bevy of forced labor lawsuits have been filed against CoreCivic and Geo (starting with Free's first salvo in 2014), all the cases are still making their way through the federal judicial system, and no ruling has yet been made one way or another. But Free notes that—despite multiple attempts from GeoGroup and CoreCivic to have the cases thrown out—no judge has dismissed any of the suits. "There have been at least 15 different decisions in which Geo or CoreCivic have tried to get a lawsuit thrown out of court, or limited in some way, and in none of them have courts agreed with the companies," he says. He says that this is indication that multiple judges see enough compelling evidence in the allegations to continue the court proceedings.
Free says that besides creating the incentive for detained people to work, there's little reason for prison companies to charge for goods like soap, deodorant, or cans of tuna.
"There's no financial reason these companies couldn't just provide all of these things for free," he says. "The amount of commissary, those things are not a showstopper in terms of financial loss to a company if they just provided that for free."
In private ICE detention facilities, most basic services—from meal service to custodial cleaning—couldn't run without detained people. Unlike a government-run institution, these private companies' missions are not to reform criminals or protect detainees while their cases wend their way through courts—the mission of these companies is to maximize profit for shareholders. This for-profit model doesn't just entail locating the cheapest possible goods and services; it also means hiring as few people as possible.
"These facilities don't staff even one more person than they need," Free says, noting that, even in the best of times, they work with near-skeleton staff.
That means that, for many detention centers to run at all, the managing companies rely on detained people's labor. For people who don't have any family in the United States, or people on the outside who can wire money into their commissary accounts (which itself comes with shocking fees), the only way to earn money to buy goods is by working the $1-per-day jobs—an incentive many detained people say does its job of being "motivational."
In the past decade, claims of immigrants' being coerced into labor, or even "treated like slaves," have been frighteningly common—though Free points out that it has not just been immigrants. One of his clients was Frank Serna, a United States citizen whom ICE picked up mistakenly and detained illegally for over 300 days.
"One of the things [Serna] told me after he got out was, 'They were slaving us. How am I supposed to feel about myself for that kind of treatment?'" Free says.
Detention in the Age of Coronavirus
In the midst of an epochal pandemic, the business model of for-profit private detention companies has created a dangerous situation. Miranda-Gonzalez, in the Folkston ICE Processing center, says, "Guards aren't even showing up for work anymore," and attorneys like Gurulé say they're worried that staffing shortages and interrupted supply chains could lead to deteriorating conditions as the pandemic goes on. And the "artificial scarcity" created by the for-profit model means that basic pandemic necessities are hard to get inside: Across the country, people in ICE detention have been reporting a severe lack of now-critical products—not just soap, but also cleaning wipes, disinfectant, and even toilet paper.
"There are times when we literally have to beg for soap," says Marlen Seo, a woman detained in the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana, operated by Geo Group. "We are just given a four-ounce bottle to use weekly. We are not provided with any sanitary wipes for the phones that we all use, nor are we given any sanitizing lotion." Other people detained in LaSalle say that at times they've resorted to cleaning the showers with shampoo.
When it comes to working these sorts of cleaning jobs, Seo also said that she and the 80 other women in her unit were—up until recently—cleaning communal spaces without any pay. It wasn't until women that transferred in from other units told them that detained jobs pay money that they began requesting the wages owed to them.
In Escobedo's jail in Texas—run by LaSalle Corrections, a separate company—Escobedo says that the quality of essentially all services has gone down since mid-March, when the pandemic began to hit the United States. He says they're getting less food, and the conditions have become filthy, "like a pig sty." He thinks it has to do directly with COVID-19 affecting staffing and supply lines.
There have also been alleged shortages of PPE. Through much of March and April, people detained in for-profit detention centers across the country reported that few, if any, guards were wearing face masks or other protective gear. Recently, private prison companies have begun providing masks in at least some detention centers, but detained people still report that guards often fail to wear the protective gear.
"I've talked to some of the guards and they're scared too," says Seo. She says that many of them have said they wish they could stay home. Other people in ICE detention elsewhere in the country have alleged that guards and staff have begun to skip work—potentially contributing to the sorts of deteriorating conditions Seo and Escobedo describe.
Seeking to fill in the gaps, immigrant advocates have tried to funnel money to detained people's commissary accounts, so they can buy soap and other goods.
Schwietert Collazo's organization, Immigrant Families Together, has long provided $50 grants to detained people to enhance their commissary funds. "We help them buy soap because often they're only getting one little hotel bar per week," she says. Schwietert Collazo says that the people with the least resources—with families who can't help them—are the ones who are now most at risk for Covid-19, because they can't afford soap and other goods from the commissary. Recently, she's been fielding requests largely from Cuban asylum seekers, whose families can't get money into their accounts.
"These stories are just heartbreaking," Schwietert Collazo says. "People who have been detained for nine, 11 months. People who are saying I've never talked to my family this whole time, I've never been able to buy food or hygiene items this entire time." (Detention centers charge exorbitant rates for phone calls to family and friends.)
In many facilities, to cope with the shortages, detained people will often engage in their own mutual aid efforts and share their commissary funds with others. For instance Escobedo has been buying ramen and other products for the men he's detained with. Seo says the women who can afford commissary goods will often spread the resources around. And Miranda-Gonzelez says people share soap when they can.
"We support each other, we stick together," he says.
According to Free, these sorts of mutual support projects are the only reason the public hasn't heard a flood of alarms about shortages in detention centers.
"If there are places where there are not complaints, it's because the people inside are helping each other," he says.
Schwietert Collazo reaches a conclusion about the conditions she's been hearing about from dozens of different detained people: "When you look at the detention center model, it's for profit," she says. "You want to cut costs. You do not want to actually provide care."edo González says he's not getting enough food. ICE requires the privately run jail to serve detained immigrants three meals per day, but, in a clear effort to keep attendance low and costs down, breakfast is served at 3:30 am. Escobedo says that even if he does wake up, the meals are sparse, and often days old. Since ICE detained him in January, Escobedo has been feeling hunger pains, and he's been forced to ask his family in Florida to constantly refill his commissary account so that he can buy ramen noodles, both for himself and for others in the detention center.
Schwietert Collazo reaches a conclusion about the conditions she's been hearing about from dozens of different detained people: "When you look at the detention center model, it's for profit," she says. "You want to cut costs. You do not want to actually provide care."
Don Lemon: Trump wants to move on, but this is not over
Georgia governor poised to lift restrictions, despite warnings
"Gov. Brian Kemp appears poised to ease social restrictions that created disruptions for millions of Georgians amid a still-spreading global pandemic.
A month-old shelter-at-home order is set to expire just before midnight Thursday. But Kemp kept Georgians in the dark Wednesday about what comes next in the state's fight against the coronavirus.
"We will announce more tomorrow," Candice Broce, the governor's spokeswoman, said in an email Wednesday. She declined to comment further.
Kemp has strongly hinted — most recently, during a news conference on Monday — that he would lift the shelter-at-home order for all but elderly and sick Georgians. He has spoken forcefully about the economic harm caused by the quarantine, particularly the damage done to countless small businesses.
But by easing the restrictions, Kemp would be disregarding dire warnings from public health officials.
In a study of Georgia coronavirus cases that was released Wednesday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the virus appears to be more dangerous than previously thought for relatively young and healthy people.
The CDC, with help from the Georgia Department of Public Health, studied the cases of 305 coronavirus patients who were hospitalized in metro Atlanta and Albany in March. More than three-fifths were younger than 65, the CDC said, and slightly more than one-fourth had no medical problems "thought to put them at higher risk for severe disease."
The findings, the CDC said, show the need for continued social-distancing measures — "not only to protect older adults and those with underlying medical conditions but also … persons in the general population who might not consider themselves to be a risk for severe illness."
» COMPLETE COVERAGE: CORONAVIRUS IN GEORGIA
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Easing restrictions now would cause the virus to strengthen and spread, said Rebecca Mitchell, an epidemiologist and visiting assistant professor at Emory University. Mitchell is running as a Democrat for a state legislative seat in Gwinnett County.
On the most recent day for which complete data is available, she said, more than 700 new coronavirus cases were confirmed statewide.
"We're letting each one of these new cases go out and impact more people in the community," Mitchell said in an online news conference staged by a group seeking to expand Medicaid benefits in Georgia. "It means they will be in contact with many more people."
Another participant in the news conference said Kemp would be to blame for the harm his decision caused.
"It makes me mad," said Dr. Karen Kinsell, the only physician in rural Clay County, nearly 200 miles southwest of Atlanta. "We have politicians who know almost nothing about health and health care and biology making decisions … that are going to kill more Georgians. How can that be OK?"
Georgia's toll from the new coronavirus continues to increase. By Wednesday evening, the state's public health agency said, 1,096 Georgians had died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The state crossed the 1,000 mark in deaths just a day earlier.
More than 25,000 Georgians have tested positive for the virus.
Nevertheless, Kemp and his aides have said state data shows the virus' spread is declining or hitting a plateau. Other experts have questioned their interpretations.
Kemp's shelter-at-home order prohibited Georgians from going out except for "essential" or "necessary" purposes. It allowed most employers to engage only in "minimum business operations," and it closed gyms, bowling alleys and "close-contact" establishments such as tattoo parlors, hair and nail salons, and barber shops. The order also suspended dine-in service at restaurants.
Kemp allowed those close-contact businesses to reopen last week and authorized restaurants to open their dining rooms on Monday. Bars and nightclubs remain shuttered.
Barber and shop owner Chris Edwards wears a mask and cuts the hair of customer David Boswell at Peachtree Battle Barber Shop at 2333 Peachtree Road in Atlanta on Friday, April 24, 2020. The first phase of Gov. Brian Kemp
Barber and shop owner Chris Edwards wears a mask and cuts the hair of customer David Boswell at Peachtree Battle Barber Shop at 2333 Peachtree Road in Atlanta on Friday, April 24, 2020. The first phase of Gov. Brian Kemp's plan to reopen Georgia during the coronavirus pandemic included barber shops, hair salons and gyms, though not all chose to open their doors. JOHN SPINK/JSPINK@AJC.COM
Georgians older than 65 and those considered medically fragile — including people with moderate to severe asthma, smokers and anyone who is severely obese — are to remain under self-isolation until at least May 13, when a public health state of emergency expires. The General Assembly could extend the state of emergency at Kemp's request.
Kemp was among the last of the nation's governors to impose statewide social-distancing measures and among the first to begin lifting them. Shelter-at-home orders have expired in at least five other states, but most issued "safer at home" guidelines urging residents to avoid going out as much as possible. Some states, such as Tennessee and Colorado, eased restrictions in all but their metropolitan counties.
In Georgia, Kemp's executive orders have prohibited local governments from adopting their own, more stringent regulations. That prohibition has been controversial among local-government officials, particularly after Kemp reversed decisions to close Georgia beaches.
Maddie Nichols, 8, sits in the car as her mother Blythe Nichols
Shirley Sessions, the mayor of Tybee Island, a small oceanfront town outside Savannah, said she expects a surge of beach visitors this weekend if Kemp lifts the shelter-at-home order.
"I still disagree" with Kemp's pre-empting local regulations, Sessions said in an interview. "But I accept what we're faced with. And, rather than fighting it, I'm trying to see how we can make it work for our community without being belligerent or argumentative to the governor."
As the end date of the shelter-at-home mandate neared, Kemp made it clear he was as worried about business owners and their employees as about the threat from the virus. Many, he said, are becoming "desperate" over the restrictions imposed on them and the resulting economic hardships.
"This is uncharted territory," Kemp said Monday. "But we also had people on the verge of losing everything."
Politics drive Georgia's reopening gamble as coronavirus cases rise | US news | The Guardian
"When John Gianoulidis, owner of the Kafenio Greek Diner, heard the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, announce restaurants could offer dine-in services once again this week, he feared the worst for his restaurant and coffee shop in Atlanta.
Here's the deal, he typed out on Facebook.
"Kemp mandates restaurants reopen, whether I reopen dining rooms or not. I file for business interruption insurance, it does not go through since I am 'allowed' to operate full capacity," he hypothesized, adding further down in the now viral post, "If things blow up again, they are still on my tab not on the states, since they are no longer employed. Guys, this is about screwing the working class and small business, not about helping us."
Economists are uncertain if Gianoulidis is entirely correct about the exact rationale behind the sudden announcement to reopen Georgia as coronavirus cases continue to rise, with nearly 25,000 confirmed in the state as of Tuesday afternoon. The state's reopening has been so early that even Donald Trump urged Kemp not to do it.
But they can agree the most in danger from Kemp's actions – both economically and healthwise – are those who open their businesses or return to work in Georgia's new sudden easing of restrictions.
The state's current count of positive virus cases makes it the tenth highest in the country as employees were cleared to serve meals in a restaurant, offer up tattoos or provide hair and nails services and check-in gym goers for Zumba class. In the last month, Georgia's department of labor processed 1,090,536 claims, more than the last three previous years combined. Nearly a third of the claims came from the food and accommodation industry, many of whom can now – technically – go back to work as restaurants open.
While that may help ease the burden of claims processed by the state, how it affects the greater economy is unclear, said Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Initiative.
"From an economic standpoint, it's just not really clear why you open up one set of businesses, versus another set," she said, referring to Kemp allowing non-essential business to reopen.
Kemp's office did not respond to the Guardian's request for comment. The state's department of labor did not have much concrete guidance as to whether the reopening would see jobless claims shifted off the government books.
"This is a way for them to continue to receive some of those same benefits as they gradually come back to work. And then when it's time to get back to work that employer stops filing for them," the Georgia department of labor communications director, Kersha Cartwright, said.
But it's unclear when that line between gradual and full time was drawn and by whom it was to be decided – the state or the employer.
Many business owners, like Gianoulidis, will continue to offer carry-out options, but want to wait to hear the risks versus rewards from health officials before opening and seating customers in close quarters, they say.
"I'm just trying to figure out what's going on. I haven't heard from the US health department," Gianoulidis said, adding he would rather hear from health officials than politicians.
But for those businesses that do open up, while the state continues to follow through on its shelter-in-place order until 30 April , this could leave vulnerable employees on even more uncertain grounds, said Gould. Some might not want to go back to work, feeling unsafe while others may be living with elderly family members or those with pre-existing conditions.
Others may return to work, uncertain about the state's policy on unemployment insurance, Gould added, unsure if they would still qualify now that their place of employment is open.
When asked what would happen if employees of non-essential businesses that could reopen under the state's mandate chose not to return in fear of their safety, Georgia's department of labor could not clarify if they would still be eligible to file for unemployment.
"Work with your employer, try to work something out. If you cannot work it out and you decide to separate yourself from that place of employment then we will base our eligibility upon the facts presented in the case," Cartwright said.
Georgia's governor might not have felt the pressure to rush his state's residents back to work if he had more financial support to fill in gaps where the Cares Act did not reach, an April report from American Progress said.
"I think that if the federal government stepped in and actually provided significantly more state and local aid to help them deal with the pandemic and to help them deal with this relief period and the recovery, that would be good for the economy," Gould agreed.
But the health risks of an early reopening could be even more risky than an economic one.
According to a new analysis of data released by the Daily Beast in collaboration with MIT and Harvard Universities, that could most likely be the case. If the state had continued its current stay-at-home mandate and kept non-essential businesses closed, coronavirus fatalities by mid-June would have been somewhere between 1,004 and 2,922. Instead, the team's simulation suggests that number could now be as high as 9,748.
"This is a policy that has not been endorsed by experts in public health … one concern going forward is whether it would lead to new outbreaks and contribute to a second wave of growth of the pandemic," Cornell University labor economics professor Francine Blau said.
For now, Gianoulidis will keep his dining areas closed, like many other restaurants in Atlanta, with too many financial and health risks at play for him to open them with confidence.
"I'm just going to continue doing what I'm doing until we get a better idea of what's going on," he said."
Vote safely by mail in November? Not so fast, say Republicans | US news | The Guardian
"An explosive fight is emerging over whether Americans will be able to vote in November without risking their lives.
It's unclear how safe it will be to gather at the polls during the presidential election, but President Donald Trump and other top Republicans have made it clear that they will oppose efforts to make it easier to vote by mail as an alternative.
Both Republicans and Democrats have long utilized mail-in voting, and voters on both ends of the political spectrum overwhelmingly favor making it easier to do so in the election. But Trump's opposition appears based on a thinly-veiled political calculus: the fewer Americans who vote, the better the political prospects for the Republican party.
"They had things, levels of voting, that if you'd ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again," the president said in March, dismissing Democratic efforts to expand mail-in voting.
That Republican estimation has been at the center of many of the hotly-contested fights over voting rules in recent years. The party has generally favored restrictions on voting, such as voter ID, while Democrats have pushed to make it easier to cast a ballot.
When it comes to vote by mail, however, the calculation is unsupported by evidence. Making it difficult to vote by mail could actually wind up hurting the Republican party.
"It's become an explosive issue because President Trump and some others at the top of Republican party, including [RNC chair] Ronna McDaniel, have made it an issue," said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. "That puts Republicans in somewhat of a bind, because in many places in the country, vote by mail is a successful and safe way that Republicans get the vote out among their supporters."
A Stanford study examining the switch to vote by mail in California, Washington, and Utah found that it did not benefit Democrats or Republicans, and only modestly increased turnout. Colorado elected a Republican US senator the year after it switched to all vote-by-mail elections. In Florida's March primary, Republicans were more likely to vote by mail.
"We would work really hard on absentee ballots. It was a staple of our strategy," said Mac Stepanovich, a retired Florida Republican political operative, said of past campaigns. "Republicans probably ought not to be complaining about it."
Even as Republican operatives are seeking to scale up their vote-by-mail operations, congressional Republicans have staunchly opposed efforts in coronavirus stimulus bills that would make it easier to vote. They dismissed plans to require states to automatically mail everyone a ballot, expand early voting, and implement online voter registration. So far, the parties have agreed on allocating $400m to states to help them prepare for elections, a fraction of the minimum $4bn experts say is needed.
"It's really disappointing that our political leaders aren't all working to ensure that every eligible American is able to cast a ballot that will count," said Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "There used to be a point in time where having free and fair access to the ballot was a bipartisan issue."
Currently, five US states conduct their elections entirely by mail, while access to mail-in balloting varies widely in others. To run an election that relies heavily on vote by mail would require investing millions of dollars in ballots, staffing, new technology and messaging, according to the Brennan Center.
In Orange county, California, switching to vote-by-mail took three or four years of planning and cost at least $3m, said Neal Kelley, the county's registrar of voters. In Washington state, it took five years to transition to an all vote-by-mail system. Most US election offices – some with just one or two full-time employees – do not have the resources to make this transition in time for November without support.
"The clock is ticking," said Amber McReynolds, the chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute and Coalition, which advocates for vote by mail.
In recent weeks, Democrats and voting groups have filed a slew of lawsuits – taking aim at restrictive state laws that require voters to give an excuse to vote by mail or have an in-person witness for their ballots. Advocates also want states to pick up the cost of postage on mail-in ballots and registration forms, calling it an unconstitutional poll tax.
But Republicans in Texas, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and Nevada have opposed these lawsuits. The office of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, even went so far as to say that anyone who advised a voter they could cast a mail-in ballot because of Covid-19 could be subject to "criminal sanctions".
The Republican National Committee and Trump's re-election campaign meanwhile, had already planned to spend $10 million to fight Democratic voting lawsuits. An RNC spokesman told NPR the committee would probably spend even more because of Covid-19.
If this political stalemate persists, the US might end up with a large-scale version of the chaotic Wisconsin primary, which took place earlier in April.
With coronavirus cases rising, Wisconsin severely limited early voting and an unprecedented 1.2 million people requested absentee ballots. Election offices were overwhelmed with absentee ballot requests, and some voters never received ballots at all. Turnout didn't drop as severely as many projected, but voters in Milwaukee were forced to wait hours in line to vote. At least 52 people have since tested positive for Covid-19.
Without action, there could be similar consequences in November. There might be a delay in issuing ballots, and voters might get their ballots too late to vote, said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political science professor. A nefarious actor could intentionally slow down the election process by making multiple ballot requests, forcing the election official to investigate (one clerk in Wisconsin reported a voter requested a ballot 11 times).
"We're already seeing failure in a low-turnout election. It's not gonna get any better in a high-turnout election," McDonald said.
More voting by mail will also slow down reporting of election results, since election officials would have to count ballots coming in after election night. This could leave room for a candidate to question the legitimacy of the results.
"I'm concerned not only that a delay in reporting results will leave room for people to claim fraud, but also potentially for a candidate who's ahead in an early count to claim victory while the votes may shift as additional votes are counted," Hasen said.
Breaking from Trump, some Republican officials have embraced vote-by-mail, though modestly. Ohio's governor and secretary of state encouraged everyone to request an absentee ballot for the state's primary. Georgia's top election official, a Republican, is mailing absentee request forms to all active registered voters. Republican officials in New Hampshire and Kentucky have eased restrictions on mail-in voting.
Meanwhile, officials in some Democratic-leaning jurisdictions are not waiting for state support, and plan to send absentee ballot request forms to all registered voters. Such a move could force Republican counterparts to follow suit.
"The intransigence of the Republicans to think that anything that might increase turnout might help the Democrats is very short sighted," McDonald said. "I think Republicans are making a huge strategic error here if they don't want to provide resources."
Opinion | Georgia's Coronavirus Reopening Is a Cautionary Lesson - The New York Times
"Here's what other states can learn from our inept reopening.
Dr. Landman is a specialist in infectious diseases.
ATLANTA — Last week was a bad one for Georgia, and an especially bad one for our governor, Brian Kemp. On April 20, he announced that he would allow Georgia's tattoo parlors, hair and nail salons and other "high touch" businesses to reopen as early as April 24, ahead of even President Trump's ambitious plans. In the days since, the state has reverberated with political turmoil. Even the president rebuked Mr. Kemp for moving too fast.
For better or worse, the governor has made our state the nation's canary in this particularly terrifying coal mine.
Someone had to go first, and Mr. Kemp isn't the only political leader eager to reopen the country. But the ham-handed way he went about it makes Georgians of all stripes afraid of what comes next, and it leaves us wondering whether he is setting us up for a punishing new wave of infections. He has clashed with city and county leaders and left business owners — the people he was trying to help — in the dark.
From my vantage point as a doctor, an epidemiologist, a journalist and a native Georgian, it's clear that if there's anything to be gained from this moment's anguish, it is the opportunity to help others avoid our mistakes. Here are some of the lessons my state has learned.
Don't underestimate the importance of good data.
Despite all the warnings in the news media, it can be tempting to cherry-pick evidence that supports a move to reopen. Governor Kemp said his decision was based on "favorable data" and enhanced testing, but the more we looked, the more questionable that data looked: fluctuations among data curves, some of which conflicted with each other; weeklong lags in Georgia's reporting of Covid-19 cases and deaths.
Never mind that neither of the metrics Mr. Kemp cited — the past week's average of total daily cases, and daily deaths — was among the federal gating criteria, a set of benchmarks intended to help states decide when to reopen their economies. And while our testing capacity is increasing by the day, we have yet to demonstrate the coordination needed to identify emerging hot spots in real time.
It's not just about having favorable data, or even enough testing. It's about having the right infrastructure to assess it and ensure sustained decreases in cases.
"If the answer to all that is not an absolute yes, it raises serious questions about the wisdom of opening up sectors of the economy," said Joshua Weitz, a quantitative biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who specializes in disease dynamics. Georgia's public health funding is substantially lower than that of other states; you get the data quality you pay for.
As a consequence of the way our state gathers, reports and publicizes data, many Georgians don't trust that our leadership is making smart decisions. And while on Monday Mr. Kemp announced some changes in data reporting that will most likely improve transparency, many of my neighbors already share a creeping sense that the most critical decision of his administration was made in a data-free zone.
Don't punish small businesses by treating their decision to reopen — or not — as a purity test.
Last weekend, Jenn Jones, who owns the Creature Studio hair salon and spa in Atlanta, told me that her business would go under if she didn't reopen by June. So She's reopening. She was slowly collecting masks and gloves for her employees, and she had redesigned her salon space to accommodate the social distancing recommended by the Georgia Board of Cosmetology and Barbers.
Her decision does not signal any support for Mr. Kemp. "I don't align with his policies whatsoever," she said, echoing a position taken by business owners and politicians across the state. It's not about politics; it's about survival.
But you wouldn't grasp the complexity of these decisions from the responses of people watching them play out from afar. On social media and over email, customers and neighbors are threatening to boycott businesses that reopen, regardless of the degree to which they consider customers' safety. People on my own neighborhood website are circulating lists of local businesses that do and do not open as a pandemic purity test of sorts, intended to guide the buying decisions people will make when the pandemic is over.
Somehow, we've reached the point where caring about public health has become a progressive issue, while the nation's economy has become a conservative one. This division is false; no one should have to choose between financial annihilation and helping to spread a deadly disease. But thanks to unforgivable failures of political leadership, business owners in Georgia are bearing the burden of that choice — and the same will happen in every state that follows our lead.
We have dangerous tensions between our state and local governments.
The governor's decision came as a surprise to our mayors, who were not consulted or informed about his executive order in advance — and were barred by one of its clauses from issuing local orders more or less restrictive than his.
Many felt the choice was the wrong one for their communities. Bo Dorough, a Democrat, is the mayor of Albany, Ga., which at one point in the pandemic had the most Covid-19 deaths per capita outside New York City. He pleaded with the governor to "recognize there are exceptions." Atlanta's democratic mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who described seeing people lined up for haircuts and manicures in the days following the reopening announcement, said, "What we are essentially saying in Georgia is, 'Go bowling and we'll have a bed waiting on you.'"
Even Randy Toms, a Republican who is the mayor of Warner Robins, near Atlanta, said the order was concerning. "I don't want people to go out and believe the virus is gone," he said. But the governor didn't budge.
It's unclear why Mr. Kemp made such a unilateral decision, but it's not surprising. The move might be intended as payback: For several weeks in March, Mr. Kemp declined to shut Georgia down despite dire projections of the pandemic's public health impact. Many local governments issued countywide shelter-in-place orders during that time, which Mr. Kemp's chief of staff decried as "overreach."
Fortunately, some other states with imminent plans to reopen, like neighboring Tennessee, have carved out exceptions or given leeway to local governments. But governors, especially Republicans who have historically clashed with Democratic mayors, may be lured into using the reopening as leverage. Don't. The people who suffer most from the results of uncoordinated public health efforts are often the people who have the least. Save the peevishness for a lower-stakes crisis.
Success is up to us.
Georgia went first. Some of our confusion and fears were inevitable — but the governor exacerbated those with his poor planning, and he may have set us up for a relapse. Inevitably, other governors will make other mistakes, even if they learn from Georgia's mistakes.
But as we — citizens, business owners and local politicians — are learning, that doesn't mean we will fail. As other states reopen — and they will — saving ourselves and one another will be up to us.
Keren Landman is a physician who specializes in infectious diseases and a journalist who writes about public health."
Trump and Kushner on the Coronavirus: Wishful Thinking and Revisionist History - The New York Times
Trump spreads lies, lies, and more lies.
""We did all the right moves," the president said Wednesday. "The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story," said his son-in-law.
WASHINGTON — The total number of coronavirus cases in the United States exceeded one million. The American death toll surpassed that of the Vietnam War. And the economy was reported to have shrunk by nearly 5 percent. But the White House on Wednesday declared its response to the crisis "a great success story."
As states begin to lift quarantines, President Trump is trying to recast the story of the pandemic from that of an administration slow to see and address the threat to one that responded with decisive action that saved lives. Recognizing that the crisis jeopardizes his chances of re-election, he and his allies want to convince his supporters that the cascade of criticism is unwarranted.
"We think we really have crossed a big boundary and much better days are ahead," Mr. Trump said on Wednesday at a televised meeting at the White House with business leaders. The session was intended to highlight what the president hopes will be the resumption of a healthier economy only hours after the release of the most cataclysmic economic numbers of the past decade.
"I often say I see the light at the end of the tunnel very strongly," Mr. Trump said.
The president waxed at length about restoring life to the United States as if the crisis were nearly over. He disclosed that he plans to fly to Arizona next week and soon after that to Ohio, his first trips out of the White House since early March other than a short visit to Norfolk, Va., to see off a Navy hospital ship dispatched to hard-hit New York. He talked wistfully of going to football games and resuming his campaign rallies. "I'd like to get out," he said.
In the revised history of the pandemic that Mr. Trump and his team offered, his actions were not belated and inadequate, but bold and effective. "We did all the right moves," Mr. Trump said. "If we didn't do what we did, you would have had a million people die, maybe more, maybe two million people die."
Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser who has been overseeing efforts to provide medical equipment to states hit hard by the coronavirus, presented a similarly revisionist account of the administration's record on Wednesday.
"We're on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and I think that we've achieved all the different milestones that are needed," Mr. Kushner said on "Fox & Friends," one of the president's favorite shows. "The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. And I think that that's really, you know, what needs to be told."
The comments came on the same day that the Commerce Department reported that the economy contracted by 4.8 percent in the first quarter of the year, the largest decline since the recession of a decade ago and probably the forerunner of a much steeper collapse in the second quarter that could be the worst since the Great Depression.
At the same time, the reported death toll from the virus in the United States topped 60,000 — more killed in eight weeks than the 58,000 American troops killed in eight years of major combat in Vietnam. The death toll has already reached where it was expected to be in August, more than three months from now, according to projections accepted by the White House. The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now estimates that 73,000 will die by August.
Mr. Kushner's comments drew scorn from critics of the administration. "On what planet is 59,000 plus deaths a 'success story'?" Michael R. Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and Justice Department inspector general, asked on Twitter.
Zac Petkanas, a Democratic strategist and campaign aide to Hillary Clinton in 2016, said the public would not be convinced.
"The truth is that Trump and his administration's response is anything but a success — especially when it comes to testing," said Mr. Petkanas, now working with a health care advocacy group called Protect Our Care. "They made huge promises that they simply haven't delivered, including that 'anybody who wants a test can get a test.' But they aren't fooling anyone."
Presidents have gotten in trouble declaring success at odds with the reality on the ground, perhaps most memorably in recent years when President George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier deck in 2003 and declared major combat operations over in Iraq in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner. President Barack Obama later declared that "America's war in Iraq will be over" when he pulled forces out in 2011, only to have to send troops back nearly three years later.
But Mr. Trump has demonstrated a striking tendency to try to frame the political narrative on his own terms, even when at variance with the facts, through relentless repetition and the power of his bully pulpit.
While making no criminal accusations last year against Mr. Trump, the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III pointedly said his report "does not exonerate" the president. Nonetheless, Mr. Trump declared so many times that it did that 35 percent of the public believed that Mr. Mueller had exonerated him, according to one poll, mainly the core supporters who matter to him most.
The need to shift the narrative was made abundantly clear by the latest spate of polls showing more Americans souring on his handling of the virus and supporting former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in the November election.
A survey by USA Today and Suffolk University found Mr. Biden leading 50 percent to 40 percent in a two-way matchup, a margin that disturbed Mr. Trump's strategists, who have said they recognize that the election will turn largely on the coronavirus and resulting economic meltdown.
In his public appearances on Wednesday, Mr. Trump did not dwell on the 60,000 dead or the tens of millions put out of work, but focused instead on what he claimed were the successes of his administration. "A lot of progress had been made," he said. "It's pretty incredible."
Mr. Trump promoted a new study on a possible treatment and predicted that the virus would soon no longer be a major threat. "This is going away," he said, "and when it's gone, we're going to be doing a lot of things."
Mr. Kushner said May "will be a transition month" as states began reopening. "I think you'll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal," he said. "And the hope is that by July, the country's really rocking again."
Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Kushner addressed why the president for weeks played down the virus, comparing it with the ordinary flu, predicting that cases would go down to zero and suggesting that the virus would "miraculously" disappear. People close to the White House have said that Mr. Kushner agreed with Mr. Trump early on that the Democrats and the news media were hyping the virus to damage the president, although Mr. Kushner's allies have insisted that he always took it seriously.
In his television interview, Mr. Kushner rejected the concerns of governors and public health experts who said that testing remains woefully inadequate to justify reopening the country after weeks of lockdown. Mr. Trump's administration committed this week to helping states be able to test at least 2 percent of their populations each month, but public health experts said that was a fraction of what is needed to map out how far the virus has spread.
"We've done more tests than any other country in the world, so we've got to be doing a lot of things right," Mr. Kushner said, referring to 5.8 million tests as of Tuesday.
"The eternal lockdown crowd can make jokes on late-night television," he added, "but the reality is that the data's on our side."
"And President Trump has created a pathway to safely open up our country and make sure that we can get our economy going and get America back to a place where it will be even stronger than it was before," Mr. Kushner said."
In two months this happened and fools who obviously did not do well in math don't understand exponential growth want to reopen the country now. this is utterly stupid.
Falwell Focuses on Critics as Coronavirus Cases Near Liberty University Grow - The New York Times
"Jerry Falwell Jr. has tried to have journalists arrested as he maintains he has been unfairly maligned. But the coronavirus keeps spreading around Liberty University.
WASHINGTON — Jerry Falwell Jr.'s angry counteroffensive against critics of his decision to invite Liberty University students back to its Lynchburg, Va., campus after spring break has played out in the media, the courts, even with the campus police.
But his campaign has been undermined by the spread of a virus he cannot control.
Since March 29, when the first case was diagnosed in a Liberty student living off-campus, confirmed coronavirus cases in the Central Virginia health district, which surrounds Lynchburg and Liberty, have grown from seven to 78. One person has died. On Tuesday, a Lynchburg city police officer tested positive, forcing another officer into quarantine and setting off a furious effort to trace all of the infected officer's contacts.
It is not known whether any of those cases are linked to returning Liberty students, but the university community is exposed as well. Liberty said on Wednesday night that two employees had tested positive for the coronavirus, two more had results pending, and seven were quarantined at home. Beyond the one acknowledged infection in a student, who the university said was not enrolled in classes, test results are due Friday on another student. Two other students have been relocated and quarantined in an annex with "no symptoms, no test."
A worship leader at Thomas Road Baptist Church, which is adjacent to and affiliated with Liberty's campus, is also sick with Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
"It's been quite a two weeks," the leader, Charles Billingsley, said in an emotional message on Facebook.
Amid those struggles, a Liberty student on Monday filed a class-action lawsuit in a federal court in Virginia, saying that Liberty and Mr. Falwell had "placed students at severe physical risk and refused to refund thousands of dollars in fees owed to them for the Spring 2020 semester," according to a statement from the law firm filing the suit.
The furor in Lynchburg centers on Mr. Falwell's decision to open the campus to all students and staff at a time when most American universities were closing for fear of spreading the disease. For weeks before that decision, Mr. Falwell had derided other universities' coronavirus responses as overreactions driven by a desire to harm President Trump.
"We think it's irresponsible for so many universities to just say 'closed, you can't come back,' push the problem off on other communities and sit there in their ivory towers," he told a conservative radio host.
Since the media spotlight trained on Liberty's decisions, Mr. Falwell, a close ally of Mr. Trump, has protested that his policies were no different than many other university administrators, and that he has been singled out for unfair criticism by liberal journalists bent on his destruction.
"The facts are that Liberty University's response to the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic is indistinguishable from that of many, if not most, universities, and, more importantly, it had not experienced a single on-campus student or employee testing positive for Covid-19," he said this week in a statement that ignored illnesses among off-campus members of the Liberty community.
To his supporters, he has been less temperate. The media, he said in a radio interview with John Fredericks, who identified himself as a Trump campaign operative, "just want power, they're authoritarian, they're like nothing I've seen since, if you go back in history, to Nazi Germany. That's what they remind me of."
And he has spared no effort to defend his actions since articles on Liberty's reopening ran in ProPublica and The New York Times. He pursued arrest warrants for misdemeanor trespassing against two journalists, Alec MacGillis, a reporter for ProPublica, and Julia Rendleman, a freelance photographer for The Times. He enlisted a New York law firm to threaten legal action against The Times and, he has said, other outlets as well.
He called a Times reporter shortly before midnight, leaving a voice mail message that said, "you're in some serious trouble." He accused the journalists of putting his students at risk because they traveled from New York City. (They did not.)
Last week, Liberty ran full-page advertisements in regional newspapers saying that reopening the campus after spring break put Liberty "in pretty good company" with Virginia Tech, the University of California at Los Angeles, Texas A&M, and Arizona State University.
But all of those actions have had consequences.
Liberty's legal threat against the photographer elicited a response from the newspaper's counsel, David McCraw.
"Julia was engaged in the most routine form of news gathering: taking pictures for a news story," Mr. McCraw said in a statement. "We are disappointed that Liberty University would decide to make that into a criminal case and go after a freelance journalist because its officials were unhappy with press coverage of the university's decision to reopen campus in the midst of the pandemic."
Virginia Tech and U.C.L.A., singled out in Liberty's ad, said Liberty's portrayal of their on-campus population after spring break was inaccurate and inflated.
Liberty incorrectly said the number of students still living on Virginia Tech's campus after spring break was 950, when the true number was 483, said Tracy Vosburgh, vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech. Before the ads ran, "we notified Liberty on Thursday, April 9 that the number was incorrect," she said, and asked that Liberty correct it at the time. Liberty did not.
U.C.L.A. spokesman Steve Ritea made a similar point: Liberty University "inaccurately projected that 20 percent of our student population remained on campus after spring break," he said. "In fact, that percentage is in the low single digits."
Officials at Arizona State and Texas A&M said the numbers in the Liberty ad were correct.
About 1,900 Liberty students initially returned to campus; the university has said it does not know how many more returned to off-campus housing in Lynchburg. Liberty said on Wednesday that 1,060 students remain on campus, providing no count of off-campus students.
The university continued in-person teaching for a couple of classes until Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam ordered that all higher education institutions in the state cease such instruction. That order came after The New York Times article disclosed that one Liberty student had tested positive for Covid-19.
Mr. Falwell has announced that residential students who did not return to campus would receive a $1,000 credit toward fees for the next school year, but lawyers leading the lawsuit against him say that is a fraction of the lost residential fees, which were between $9,200 and $16,000 for the 2019-2020 academic year.
Adam Levitt, a partner at the DiCello, Levitt, Gutzler law firm that represents the student who filed the class action lawsuit, said that since filing the suit on Monday, "a substantial number of students and family members have reached out to us." He put the numbers in double digits but declined to be more specific.
"Like other universities," Mr. Falwell acknowledged in his statement Wednesday, Liberty has been sued "as a result of state-mandated restrictions." He added, "we think the law is clear that these claims are without merit."
City officials say that Mr. Falwell assured them during spring break that only about 300 students, who either live abroad or had nowhere else to go would return after spring break. Then he changed his mind, reopening the campus to a potential population of thousands.
Mr. Falwell has not contacted Lynchburg Mayor Treney Tweedy or the city manager, Bonnie Svrcek, since bringing the students back to campus, a move the mayor called "reckless" at the time.
In an interview on a conservative radio show on Tuesday, Mr. Falwell blamed national media coverage for the backlash. "I really attribute all what the mayor said and what the city manager said to fear that was put into them by lies from the national press," Mr. Falwell said.
Ms. Svrcek called that characterization "unfounded, ridiculous and insulting."
"I am not and never have been motivated by fear of anyone," she said in an email Tuesday night. "My and the mayor's request of President Falwell to close the university following spring break was based on President Trump's and Governor Northam's emergency declaration."
Last week the city furloughed 47 part-time employees, trying to plug a $4.9 million tax revenue shortfall this year, after coronavirus social distancing measures closed most businesses."
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Trump's judges are a giant step backward for America
Shira A Scheindlin Tue 28 Apr 2020 05.00 EDT
After three years of Trump's appointments, the federal judiciary is 73% white and 66% male, but it will be even more male and pale by the end of his term
The US Capitol is seen from the supreme court in Washington DC on 27 April 2020. Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuters
Whether or not he is re-elected, Donald Trump will be revered by conservatives for his judicial appointments. As of March, Trump has appointed 193 judges to the federal bench, with another 39 pending on the floor of the Senate or in the Senate judiciary committee. Those nominations will surely be acted on favorably by the Senate before 20 January 2021, when there may be a new president and a new Senate. There are another 38 district court vacancies awaiting nominations. In one presidential term, Trump may appoint up to 270 federal judges, or 31% of the entire federal judiciary. For perspective, Barack Obama appointed 329 in eight years.
There is no doubt that the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, will confirm Trump's appointments until the very last day of his term. This is of course the same Senate gatekeeper who infamously blocked Obama's final supreme court nomination, Merrick Garland, for an entire year – on the ground that in the final year of a presidency, the Senate should await "the will of the people" in the upcoming general election. But that was then. The rules have apparently changed. McConnell will pack the courts with "right-thinking" ideologues who will carry out Trump's agenda long after he has been subjected to the scorn of historical scrutiny.
We now know a lot about Trump's judicial appointments. Eighty-five per cent are white and 76% are male. This is a significant step backward. Obama's judicial appointments were 64% white and 58% male. Today, after more than three years of Trump's appointments, the federal judiciary is 73% white and 66% male, but it will be even more male and pale by the end of his term. Even more troubling is the average age of the Trump judges. According to Brookings, the median age of Trump's judicial appointments by the beginning of his fourth year in office is 48.2. By the same time in his presidency, the median age of Obama's appointees was 57.2. This means that Trump judges will serve, on average, for 10 years more than the Obama judges.
Statistics only tell part of the story. More important is the impact of these statistics on the critical issues that face the courts now and in the future. Courts should reflect the people they serve. I served as a federal district judge for 22 years. The vast majority of criminal defendants (in non-white-collar cases) were either African American or Hispanic, as were their family members. Plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases were overwhelmingly women, minorities or persons with disabilities. The same was true in actions involving prisoner rights, voting rights, housing discrimination and public benefits. Not all cases involve big corporations and business disputes.
A diverse bench engenders trust and credibility. Many studies have shown that decision-makers reach better decisions when they bring a variety of experiences to their analysis. A 36-year-old lawyer who has never tried a case, has not represented individual clients, and has not spent years facing life's challenges is not well-positioned to decide on the length of a prison term, the need for access to healthcare, abortion, food stamps, Medicare or housing, or the impact of pollution or discrimination on working people's quality of life. It is for this reason the American Bar Association's standing committee on the federal judiciary insists that a candidate for judicial office have at least 12 years of experience practicing law – not talking about it as a speech writer, lobbyist or media star.
When I was appointed to the bench I was 48. I had been a federal prosecutor, a defense lawyer, and had handled many civil cases in trial and appellate courts. That experience was invaluable. I knew both the substance and procedure of federal practice. The same cannot be said of many of Trump's nominees, whose only qualifications appear to be their consistently rightwing voting records.
Consider the following four Trump judges, all of whom were appointed in their 30s. What they have in common is not their legal experience, but their outspoken support of Trump's political agenda. All were members of the Federalist Society or other rightwing organizations, clerked for conservative judges, and have written articles or advocated for legal positions that are vastly out of step with most Americans.
Allison Rushing was 36 when she was confirmed to a seat on the fourth circuit court of appeals, 11 years after graduating from law school, and Trump's youngest nominee to a circuit court judgeship. She clerked for then-circuit judge Neil Gorsuch and for Justice Clarence Thomas. Her law practice during the remaining nine years was limited to representing big corporations at one of the nation's largest law firms.
Andrew Brasher was 38 when he was confirmed to a seat on the 11th circuit court of appeals, after serving for only nine months on the district court for the middle district of Alabama. In the years just before his appointment he served as Alabama's solicitor general, often advocating for rightwing causes.
Justin Walker, best known for his full-throated defense of Brett Kavanaugh (for whom he clerked), was appointed as a district judge in the western district of Kentucky, at 37, just 10 years after graduating law school. He is a protege of Mitch McConnell, who held up debate on a Covid-19 relief bill to attend Walker's induction ceremony. Less than six months after Walker took the bench, Trump announced that he intended to nominate him for an upcoming vacancy on the DC court of appeals.
Patrick Wyrick was 38 when he was confirmed as a judge for the western district of Oklahoma. Four years after graduating law school he became the solicitor general of Oklahoma. He is a protege of Scott Pruitt, the disgraced former head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
One of these judges could easily end up on the supreme court; two are known to be on the shortlist. All will probably still be on the bench 40 years from now. That alone should make voters think hard about the upcoming presidential election. As the saying goes: elections have consequences.
Shira A Scheindlin served as a United States district judge for the southern district of New York for 22 years. She is the co-chair of the oard of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and a board member of the American Constitution Society."
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help with timing please? https://osu.ppy.sh/s/205056 nvm, i managed to time it !
only the second one?? man,you're good.
This needs to get ranked. pls pls pls. +1 star.
Thank you! oh,and happy anniversary!
thanks for the welcome! ahaha,yep! but i didn't know back then.
there's going to be a sapphire halloween party.. anyways,thanks for the welcome!
ahaha,thought i was original.. anyways,thanks!
taking it ~ The ability to teleport.
Great skins! Love the first one.


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Home › Teams › England › Players › Denis Compton
Denis Compton
Denis Charles Scott Compton
23-05-1918 Hendon, Middlesex, England
Major Teams
Batting Style
Right-hand bat
Bowling Style
Photos: Denis Compton
Cricketers playing football
Videos: Denis Compton
Nick Compton terms Alastair Cook's company "awesome"
Denis Compton Biography
Dashing, debonair, handsome, Compton's flashing blade kindled sparks of life into a sombre post-War nation.
The Second World War had intervened when he had been a youth with promise of untold greatness, barely 21 years of age. The best part of his twenties was given up to serve the British Lion. Then, as the nation trudged out of the desolate years, their souls still blackened by the atrocities, this gallant knight of English batsmanship traced the zenith of his lofty career. Crowds flocked to the grounds, dull of eyes, shabby of attire, ears still ringing from gunfire; and were transformed into a clapping, cheering, joyous multitude.
Often he performed the magic with a willow borrowed from a teammate. In the 1955 Test against South Africa, he arrived at Old Trafford without his kit, borrowed an antique piece from the museum and scored 158 and 71.
Compton stood at the crease a flamboyant figure — the risk-taker, yet not reckless. His bearing was eloquent in grace, style and substance. He had all the strokes in the book and many beyond it. He cut with flash, lofted with élan, and drove on both sides of the wicket — curiously avoiding the straight drive. His speciality was perhaps the sweep, of which there were plenty of variations, some quite audacious. Against fastest bowlers, he often stood outside the crease, making them bowl the length he desired, daring them to pitch short and happily hooking bumpers. His many duels with Keith Miller and Ray Lindwall have gone down as folklore. And finally, he was the master of improvisation. Having slipped and fallen flat in the middle of a stroke, he once essayed a one-handed late cut to the boundary at the last moment.
It was not for nothing that his face smiled from hundreds of billboards, promoting Brylcreem and cigarettes. He was the icon of the nation.
During the War, Compton earned 14 England caps in football and played 17 First-Class games in India. At the same time, as a Sergeant-Major he managed to get his men fit to win against the Japanese.
On the cricket ground, his attention was often divided between the action at hand and the horse he had backed in the nearby course. And when he could take time off cricket, he turned out for Arsenal — and was considered good enough to get back his position as a winger after the War.
In the spring of 1950, Compton turned out in the Cup final against Liverpool with his knee heavily bandaged. Spurred on by a mammoth slug of whiskey, he played beautifully in the second half. Arsenal won and Compton was a hero. And he would never walk without pain again.
Operation followed operation till his knee-cap was removed. It now rests in a tin in the museum of Lord's — according to Compton "a revolting thing — looks as if rats have been nipping at it. I can't imagine why anyone would want to look at it."
People still look at it with awe. Because Compton returned to bat for England even after he no longer had it. Considering the years of War and the problems with the knee, it is remarkable that Compton ended with 5,807 runs in 78 Tests at 50.07 with 17 hundreds.
Arunabha Sengupta
Denis Compton Batting & Fielding Averages
Career M In R NO HS Avg BF SR 100s 50s 4s 6s Ct St
Test 78 131 5807 15 278 50.06 5778 100.5 17 28 482 -- 49 0
ODIs 0 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
T20s 0 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
World Cup 0 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Denis Compton Bowling Averages
Career M B R W Avg EC SR 5WI 10WM BBI BBM
Test 78 2438 1410 25 56.40 3.470 97. 1 0 5/70 5/77
ODIs 0 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
T20s 0 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
World Cup 0 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Denis Compton Career statistics
Test Debut
England v New Zealand at Kennington Oval, Kennington, August 14, 1937
South Africa v England at St George's Park, Port Elizabeth, March 1, 1957
News ON Denis Compton
Left-arm wrist spinners in cricket, part 6: Maurice Leyland, Denis Compton, Arthur Morris
Maurice Leyland was probably the person to coin the word 'Chinaman'. Denis Compton and Arthur Morris practised the art, too.
Nick Compton's heroics evoke memories of Denis Compton
Nick, who was batting on 18, during the 19th over, tried to duck Overton's delivery after hitting him for a four.
Trivia: When Compton batted with Dexter
Denis Compton's last Test was in 1957 and Ted Dexter's first Test was in 1958.
Ashes 2013: Alastair Cook happy to open alongside Joe Root
England captain Alastair Cook said Tuesday he had no qualms about having Joe Root open alongside him in the cauldron of an Ashes Test.
WICB lauds Shivnarine Chanderpaul for milestone in First-Class cricket
West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Dave Cameron says "character and focus" are the main factors that have driven West Indies ...
Shivnarine Chanderpaul plays his 300th First-Class match
West Indies batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul has joined many batting greats by appearing in his 300th First-Class match.
More News on Denis Compton
Features ON Denis Compton
Virat Kohli and others with Test double-hundreds at city of birth
Virat Kohli is the fourth to do this, after Sunil Gavaskar, Vinod Kambli, and Gautam Gambhir.
'Ambidextrous' XI 1: Right-handed batsmen, left-handed bowlers
Here is a list of those who batted right-handed hand and bowled left-arm.
Denis Compton's disappointment at a stand at Lord's being named after him
Not many cricketers are expected to show disappointment when stands at the Mecca of cricket is named after them. But Denis Compton was ...
Grandparents, great-grandparents, other ancestors in international cricket
Bruce Murray and Amelia Kerr are the first instance of a grandfather-granddaughter pair to play international cricket.
Martin Donnelly bowled off bowler's footmark
Martin Donnelly was scoring as freely as ever for Warwickshire against Middlesex when he was dismissed in the oddest of fashions.
The C's: Splendid batsmen, fiery pacers, one great spinner
When we come to the C's we find a crowd of commendable batsmen, a clutch of quality bowlers and at least a couple of charismatic ...
More Features on Denis Compton

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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David "Davy" Crockett – Frontier Hero
David "Davy" Crockett was a frontiersman, explorer, pioneer, folk hero, soldier, and politician who is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet "King of the Wild Frontier".
David was born to John and Rebecca (Hawkins) Crockett on August 17, 1786, in Greene County, Tennessee. The family followed the patterns of western settlement, moving three times by the time David was 12. In 1796, the family opened the Crockett Tavern on the road from Knoxville, Tennessee to Abingdon, Virginia in present-day Morristown, Tennessee. The building today continues to stand is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Two years later, in 1798, John Crockett hired his son out to Jacob Siler to help drive a herd of cattle to Rockbridge County, Virginia. When the job was complete, Siler tried to detain David by force, but the 12-year-old escaped at night by walking seven miles in two hours through knee-deep snow. He eventually made his way home in late 1798 or early 1799. Soon afterward he started school, but preferred playing hooky and ran away to escape his father's punishment. He did not return home for some 30 months.
While he was away he worked as a wagoner and day-laborer and at odd jobs to support himself. When he returned home in 1802 he had grown so much that his family did not recognize him at first. When they did, he found that all was forgiven. Crockett reciprocated their generosity by working for about a year to discharge his father's debts, which totaled $76 and subsequently returned to school for six months.
Soldiers in the War of 1812
On August 14, 1806, Crockett married Mary "Polly" Finley, and the couple would eventually have three children. They remained in the mountains of East Tennessee for just over five years. In the fall of 1811, he moved his family to Lincoln County, Tennessee and in 1813 moved them again to Franklin County, Tennessee. Crockett supported his family primarily as a farmer and hunter.
In 1813, following a massacre by Creek warriors of the occupants of Fort Mims, Alabama, Crockett enlisted in the Tennessee Militia. He participated in the Battle of Tallussahatchee of the Creek War in northern Alabama but returned home when his enlistment was up; missing the decisive Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814, when the Creek were defeated. During his second enlistment, which began in September 1814, he joined Andrew Jackson's forces at Pensacola, Florida during the War of 1812, but was discharged again prior to the Battle of New Orleans.
In 1815, Polly Crockett died in 1815 and a year later, David married Elizabeth Patton.
In the fall of 1816, Crockett moved his family to what would become Lawrence County, Tennessee. He served as justice of the peace and commissioner for the town of Lawrenceburg and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel-commandant in the local militia. In 1821, Crockett was elected to the Tennessee legislature, where he served two terms.
In 1827 Crockett was elected to the United States Congress from Tennessee, where he served from 1827 to 1831 and again from 1833 to 1835. Crockett's tenure in Congress was most noted by his opposition to the president, fellow Tennessean Andrew Jackson, on land reform issues and the Indian removal bill.
It was during this time that the legend of Davy Crockett began to grow. Crockett promoted himself as a simple but honest man who was an outstanding hunter and marksman. In 1834, he published an autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee, which made him a popular figure nationally. Afterward, a number of books and almanacs began to appear, claiming to be true stories about David Crockett. Narrated in frontier lingo, these tales often related bigger-than-life adventures, making Davy Crockett a frontier hero in his own time and for generations to come.
To derail Crockett's political plans, Jackson and William Carroll, governor of Tennessee, engineered Crockett's defeat in his bid for reelection to Congress in 1835. After losing, Crockett said, "you may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." He next appeared in East Texas, ostensibly looking for land upon which to settle. Texas obviously agreed with Crockett as he wrote a letter on January 9, 1836, stating:
"I must say as to what I have seen of Texas it is the garden spot of the world. The best land and the best prospects for health I ever saw, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here. There is a world of country here to settle. . . . I have taken the oath of government and have enrolled my name as a volunteer and will set out for the Rio Grand in a few days with the volunteers from the United States. But all volunteers is entitled to vote for a member of the convention or to be voted for, and I have but little doubt of being elected a member to form a constitution for this province. I am rejoiced at my fate. I had rather be in my present situation than to be elected to a seat in Congress for life. I am in hopes of making a fortune yet for myself and family, bad as my prospect has been."
Alamo Battle
The very next month, he arrived at the Alamo with his group of Tennessee Mounted Volunteers. Fighting against Santa Anna during the siege of the Alamo, he lost his life on March 6, 1836, along with 189 defenders.
After his death, he continued to be credited with acts of mythical proportion. These led in the 20th century to television and movie portrayals, and he became one of the best-known American folk heroes.
Compiled and edited by Kathy Weiser-Alexander, February 2020.
Davy Crockett at the Battle of the Alamo
Remember the Alamo – The Battle
Soldiers & Officers in American History
The Texas Revolution
History.com
Sons of Dewitt Colony
Old West Main Page


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Consumers' complex media consumption habits mean that advertising must, of necessity, be multi-platform to boost reach and engagement levels. Several benefits of multi-platform advertising have been highlighted in the literature. However, it is unclear whether there are any inherent challenges. Particularly in developing African economies such as Ghana where firms face resource constraints, advertisers cannot afford to miss the mark with the advertising spend. As such, practitioners must carefully off-set any dangers of multi-platform advertising. Given the subject's absence in the literature, there is little scholarly guideline with which to do this. This chapter contributes insights into the issue by asking the questions: (1) are there negative consequences to multi-platform advertising and (2) how may practitioners counter such? Then, using Ghana as empirical setting and exploratory interviews as primary method, the chapter engages the experiences of advertisers, advertising practitioners and audiences to gain a holistic view of the challenges of multi-platform advertising.
With rising levels of consumer sophistication (O'Donohoe & Tynan, 1998) and complex media consumption behaviors (Taneja et al., 2012), advertisers must, often, rethink their marketing communication strategies. To effectively reach and engage consumers, firms are forced to use multi-platform advertising to counter consumers' sophisticated and fragmented media consumption habits (Fulgoni & Lipsman, 2014). This means that in a single advertising campaign, messages are delivered on a multiplicity of media platforms including both traditional and new media as advertisers seek to leverage cross benefits (Briggs & Stipp, 2000; Zigmond & Stipp, 2010).
The objectives of this strategy are manifold, including enhancing the reach of advertised messages (Fulgoni & Lipsman, 2014), boosting message impact and increasing brand engagement as well as the opportunity to trigger cross-platform information search (Zigmond & Stipp, 2010). While these benefits have received validation in the literature, assertions in both popular and scholarly media suggest the need for a closer look. For instance, according to a Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings (2014) report, multi-platform advertising campaigns do not always live up to their promises; they fail to achieve much better results than single media campaigns. Vakratsas and Ma (2005) have also presented evidence suggesting advertising effectiveness varies across the various media used in multi-platform advertising.
Yet, scholarly literature appears silent on the inherent dangers of multi-platform advertising. In an era when the advertising spend faces great scrutiny, this chapter argues that marketers cannot afford to miss the mark with their multi-platform advertising campaigns. This places on scholars a greater need to shed light on any possible dark-sides. Critically too, while the literature on multi-platform advertising is growing, evidence on its practice in and implications for firms in emerging markets is scarce. As such, for advertisers and advertising practitioners in countries such as Ghana, there is a double jeopardy of working with a scholarly foundation that is lagging in both danger signposts and context-relevant insights.
To fill these gaps, this chapter explores the negative sides of multi-platform advertising in an emerging market context, Ghana. Specifically, it examines the challenges arising out of multi-platform advertising from the perspectives of three advertising stakeholders for whom the use of multiple platforms has implications: advertisers, advertising practitioners and advertising consumers. Alongside this agenda, the chapter also delves into the possible remedies that exist for countering any challenges of multi-platform advertising. This chapter reports data from a study of some advertisers, advertising practitioners and consumers in Ghana.
In so doing, the study makes three key contributions to the literature. First, this study is the first to engage the subject of multi-platform advertising from the perspective of its inherent challenges. While there is growing evidence of its benefits (Fulgoni & Lipsman, 2014; Zigmond & Stipp, 2010), an absence of evidence on its dark-sides presents a challenge to both advertisers and practitioners. Not only is there a threat of overlooking such challenges during campaign planning and execution, but critically, advertisers risk reducing the impact of their investments in the advertising budget. By exploring the inherent dangers in multi-platform advertising, this study presents an opportunity to illuminate, holistically, the advertising media planning process.


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Perdue at Purdue: USDA Secretary Voices Support for Gene Edited Plants During Recent College Visit
By Inari | Posted on April 23, 2019
Purdue University Photo/Tom Campbell
Inari CEO Ponsi Trivisvavet was among a select group of agribusiness executives invited to meet earlier this month with USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue at the home of Purdue University President Mitch Daniels. Read on for Ponsi's take on what was later discussed on the topic of gene editing and the secretary's stance regarding recent advances in plant science.
USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue visited West Lafayette, Indiana — epicenter of Inari's plant breeding and product development efforts — to celebrate Purdue University Ag Week. Following a breakfast meeting that included myself and a handful of other ag industry leaders, the secretary joined university President Mitch Daniels for a public and very frank one-on-one regarding critical issues in the agriculture industry.
Along with a discussion of trade deals, border tensions, and concerns over recruiting the next generation of U.S. farmers, Secretary Perdue reinforced his endorsement for the advanced science that underpins the next wave of agriculture breakthroughs, which are precisely the type of discoveries we're working on at Inari.
The secretary's remarks on gene edited plants drew from the USDA's March 28 statement on plant breeding innovation, which provides clarification on policies regarding the new techniques. He didn't mince words as he discussed the potential hazards of rejecting the new tools our plant breeders have available to them as they seek to improve crop performance and mitigate the effects of climate change and food security.
"We have created many problems in society today because we're very comfortable with our food supply — particularly in (developed nations)," Secretary Perdue remarked. "I hope we don't have to get hungry again to accept these wonderful technologies," he said of gene-editing, before admonishing countries that seek to prohibit this approach to plant breeding.
"I hope we don't become like the European Union," the secretary continued. "I call (the EU) a technology-free zone. They righteously talk about 'How do we eliminate world hunger by 2030?'" he said, referring to the year by which the global population is expected to reach 9 billion. "But without using the tools that can do that?"
Secretary Perdue, in turn, praised nations that embrace new technologies, including Brazil and Canada, and he encouraged the EU to keep an open mind on cutting-edge approaches that address the challenges of global food production.
As a company with an international focus and a mission to develop crops that are more sustainable and resilient to climate change, we agree with the secretary and intend to stay involved as the industry convenes a global dialog on the benefits of these advances.
Summing up, the secretary reiterated a point that so many of us in the industry already believe:
"All (gene editing) does is expedite what can happen naturally (in plant breeding)," Secretary Perdue said, adding that advanced technologies will offer "amazing, exponential productivity that we can use to help feed 9 billion people."
And the company he used to illustrate businesses that are successfully applying these technologies to address nutrition, yield, and other challenges? It's the one he referred to twice as the "example right here in town": Inari.
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What Happened to Hotmail UK accounts?
Hotmail used to provide localized domain address as hotmail.co.uk but to provide better and uniform user experience around the globe, Hotmail UK site is upgraded to Outlook.com. Many users criticized this move from Hotmail as all Hotmail UK accounts were forced to upgrade. Many users were not aware of the change, so when they see Outlook.com instead of old Hotmail site, they get panicked. If you are an old Hotmail UK user, you do not need to worry about where old Hotmail has gone. Still, you can sign into Hotmail account and access Microsoft services. It's a new Outlook.com email service with better feature and service, which is accessible with your old Hotmail email and password.
Can I Sign in to Hotmail.co.uk?
Where are my old Hotmail UK emails and contacts?
I lost my old emails and contacts after the upgrade.
Can Hotmail.co.uk sign up be done?
How can I get Hotmail UK support?
Well, you cannot get old Hotmail interface, but sure you can sign in Hotmail.co.uk with your email and password.
You will be asked to enter Microsoft account, and Your Hotmail UK account is also Microsoft account, enter your Hotmail.co.uk username and password.
You will reach into Outlook inbox, as all Hotmail accounts are upgraded to Outlook, UK accounts are also updated.
As Hotmail is upgraded to Outlook.com, all things remain the same. All your emails and contacts remain intact in their place.
As mentioned earlier your emails and contacts will not be affected by the update. If you lost your emails, it means either you are inactive for a long time, and your ID got inactive. Or when upgrading to Outlook.com, you were given the option to select in which folder you want to move old emails. So your inbox is empty, check other folders.
No. You cannot create new hotmail.co.uk account. If you want to sign up Hotmail, You can select either @hotmail.com or @outlook.com.
There is no particular Hotmai.co.uk support provided by Microsoft. If you have any problem regarding Outlook, you can check our Outlook support page.
If you have any other question or problem regarding Hotmail UK, please let us know in the comment section.