15 August 21
Lacking for August: Larger Donors
So far for August, larger donations, even those of one hundred dollars or more, have been scarce. The volume of donations is actually up, but the dollar figures are down.
Not everyone can make a larger donation. But it would really help.
For your consideration, respectfully.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
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15 August 21
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Can’t let that happen.
s COVID-19 once again surges around the country, government officials, medical professionals, former bodybuilders, and regular old people who just want the pandemic to end have begged, pleaded, and literally given away money to convince those who have not yet gotten vaccinated to do so. Then you have Donald Trump. As a former president of the United States—who regularly complains he doesn’t get enough credit for the vaccines—you might think that he would be out there on a daily basis urging Americans to go get their shot, particularly in light of the fact that a large percentage of his base has refused to do so, and suffered grave consequences. But he has not and the reason, like most things regarding Trump, is that he’s an unrepentant asshole who hasn’t done a thing in his life without asking, “What’s in it for me?”
The Daily Beast reports that “despite pleas from multiple friends and advisers,” Trump has repeatedly rebuffed the idea of mounting “anything resembling a real effort to get his supporters vaccinated.” Some have suggested public service announcements. Others have pitched prime-time interviews and speeches on the topic. Yet others have recommended Trump do vaccine drives at his rallies. Some simply suggested his office send out periodic reminders of the importance of getting inoculated.
All of these ideas have been shot down, in part because in Trump’s sick mind, more people getting vaccinated—and thus protected from from a highly contagious disease that has killed nearly 620,000 people in the U.S. to date—would be helping Joe Biden.
…in recent months, Trump has simply said he doesn’t feel he needs to do any “favors” for Biden, given how much Biden is “destroying” the country—and that if Biden wants to ask him to do something, the sitting president is welcome to ask, the sources recounted…. Trump even released a written statement last month sympathizing with anti-vaxxers because, according to Trump, “people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don’t trust [Biden’s] Administration, they don’t trust the Election results, and they certainly don’t trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth.”
The other reason he’s loath to do little more than say he “recommends” getting vaccinated in random interviews before quickly changing the subject, is that Trump believes telling people to get a lifesaving shot will hurt him politically.
According to two of the sources who have spoken to Trump about this, he has occasionally referenced polling and other indicators—such as what he’s seen on TV—that show how the vaccines are unpopular with many of his supporters. This has left the impression with some of those close to Trump that he doesn’t want to push too hard on the subject, so as to not “piss off his base,” one of the two people said.
In poll after poll this year, self-identified Republicans have been out of step with the mainstream of Americans on a number of public health issues related to the coronavirus pandemic, from attitudes towards mask requirements, to vaccine hesitancy, to blatant anti-vaccine posturing. A Morning Consult poll published Wednesday showed approval for local government mask mandates in offices, gyms, and indoor dining areas enjoyed hovering in the low to mid 60 percent range among Americans overall. But the partisan breakdown shows that, despite majorities of independents and Democrats supporting mask mandates, most Republicans are still opposed to them.
Trump’s political operations have, of course, actively encouraged that divide.
On Wednesday afternoon, Team Trump texted supporters asking, “Why haven’t you claimed your ‘FREEDOM PASSPORT’ shirt from President Trump?” The link sends users to a page from WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform, offering a white T-shirt emblazoned with the American flag and the words “THIS IS MY FREEDOM PASSPORT” for a $45 donation.
Though the page itself does not mention the word “vaccines,” as the Daily Beast notes, metadata tags instruct social media platforms to use the headline “FREEDOM PASSPORTS > VACCINE PASSPORTS” when posting the link on Twitter and Facebook.
Joe Biden. (photo: Melina Mar/Getty Images)
resident Biden promised that the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan would not be a hasty rush to the exits.
It would be responsible, deliberate and safe.
But clearly he and his administration misjudged the speed with which the Afghan forces would collapse and the Taliban would take control.
"The jury is still out. But the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely," Biden said on July 8, but just a month later that appears to be exactly what's happening.
As fears rise of the Kabul government collapsing, Biden now has to send 3,000 troops back to Afghanistan on a temporary mission to help evacuate most of the American embassy in Kabul and Afghan civilians who supported the U.S.
The move has led to more questions about whether the United States was mistaken by withdrawing so quickly, but Biden said this week Afghans "must fight for themselves" as the U.S. military remains on track for a full withdrawal by the end of August.
Here are five reasons why the U.S. is not likely to return to war in Afghanistan.
1. Voters are opposed to staying in Afghanistan
For months, Biden has been making the case that it's time "to end the forever war." The war was launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by al-Qaida, which was given safe harbor in Afghanistan by the then-ruling Taliban.
"We already have service members doing their duty in Afghanistan today whose parents served in the same war," Biden said in April, explaining his plans to leave the country. "We have service members who were not yet born when our nation was attacked on 9/11."
His push has been largely supported by the American public.
A July poll by the Chicago Council found 70% of Americans support withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the attacks, while 29% oppose doing so.
Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, says once Biden made the decision and started pulling troops out, there was no turning back.
"You cannot rewind this film," he said.
Crocker said it'd be "political suicide" at this point to return to combat operations. He noted that Biden this week had said, "I do not regret my decision," even as the Taliban gained more territory.
To be clear, Biden is already in troubled political waters. Republicans are blasting him over the quick advance of Taliban forces, raising the specter that Afghanistan could once again become a haven for terrorists.
And Crocker says Biden should also be concerned about the reactions from his own party:
"I mean, this is the commander-in-chief and this is the commander-in-chief's first foray into a military situation. And if he's handled it this badly, what's going to happen to the rest of the party?"
2. Returning would risk American casualties
Compared to when he reopened the Kabul embassy in 2002, Crocker said the Taliban is operating under an "utterly different scenario" today.
They're a much stronger fighting force. They've been inspired by their victories. They have momentum.
Yes, combat troops could return. The Taliban military is no match for U.S. forces. But the costs would not be insignificant and likely far more than what the American public is willing to support.
"It would destroy his presidency, not least because they would have to fight their way back in, and they would clearly take casualties doing it," Crocker said.
3. Doubts more time would create a different outcome
The United States spent $2.26 trillion on the war in Afghanistan, trying to rebuild the Afghan government and train its military, according to the Costs of War project.
Ivo Daalder, who served as a U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013, said after 20 years of investments, the Afghan state could still not defend itself.
"And for his critics who say, 'Oh, if we had just stayed a little longer we would have avoided the situation.' If you weren't able to do what needed to be done in 20 years, why do you think 21 or 22 years would have done the trick?" Daalder said.
But former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann said the current crisis was avoidable.
He told NPR the United States has "a much larger moral debt" to the Afghans who have "bought into our values ... when we talk about democracy and about women's rights and justice."
"The United States is now in a kind of panic — almost panic mode," Neumann says, "trying to protect our own people."
4. The U.S. mission wouldn't be clear
In April, Biden announced plans to withdraw U.S. troops, saying the country achieved its main objective of ensuring Afghanistan was not a safe haven for those wanting to do harm in the United States.
"We went to war with clear goals" Biden said. "We achieved those objectives. [Osama] Bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaida is degraded in Iraq — in Afghanistan. And it's time to end the forever war," he said.
The United States would need a new reason to return.
"So what's the mission?" Crocker said. "To exterminate the Taliban? Bolster the [Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani government? In what ways? And again, to what end? So it's just to me is an utterly imaginary scenario. We will not be going back."
5. Biden's focus is on domestic challenges — and China
Biden has pledged to restore the soul of America. He's made clear that starts at home.
In his April speech, Biden said that rather than return to war with the Taliban, the United States needs to "focus on the challenges that are in front of us."
He pointed to the need to bolster American competitiveness, especially with China, and fight the pandemic.
"We'll be much more formidable to our adversaries and competitors over the long term if we fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20," he said.
Charles Kupchan, a senior adviser in the Obama White House, said it's a lesson Biden learned after four years of former President Donald Trump.
"Understanding why Trump was elected and almost reelected requires acknowledgement that many Americans felt that the country was overreaching," said Kupchan, who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations and is the author of Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World.
"Trump was responding to a sentiment in the American electorate: 'Too much world, not enough America. What about us?'," Kupchan said.
He said Biden understands this and therefore is focused on repairing problems at home and "rebuilding schools in Kansas, not in Kandahar."
"He's making a judgment that part of that agenda requires retrenchment from the Middle East and focusing mostly on the domestic agenda," Kupchan said.
And when it comes to foreign policy, Biden has said the U.S. needs to be more focused on adversaries like China than the conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan that have consumed America for decades.
Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, attends the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally - where no masks or vaccines were required - earlier this month. The previous year's event was associated with a surge in Covid cases. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Governors of states such as Florida and Texas, where the Delta variant is surging, have made masks and vaccines a partisan issue, in a lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism
he crowd gathered under a tent at the water’s edge, their tables decorated with the Stars and Stripes and checked tablecloths. In their midst in Austin county, Texas, last Saturday was the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, laughing with delight and playing the fiddle.
With the coronavirus roaring through the state and hospitals near breaking point, comparisons with Nero fiddling while Rome burned were irresistible, although journalist Alisha Grauso pointed out on Twitter: “Nero actually enacted sweeping relief efforts to try to quell the fire and also offer his people aid in the aftermath, particularly the lower class, so Abbott is somehow worse than a Roman emperor known today as being a psychotic tyrant.”
But Abbott, who has banned mask requirements, is far from an outlier in a Republican party which, having long sought to downplay the climate crisis, is now offering a confusing, incoherent and anti-scientific response to the biggest public health crisis for a century.
Some Republican leaders are seeking to support Joe Biden’s efforts to beat the pandemic by encouraging the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible. But others are actively trying to undermine the president’s offensive by embracing what critics regard as lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism.
These Republicans seem intent on scoring political points by appealing to a pandemic-weary’s public yearning to get back to something like normal life. Still in thrall to former president Donald Trump, they fiercely oppose mask or vaccine mandates by invoking traditional party tenets of individual freedom, personal responsibility and resisting state interference.
But with America now averaging about 113,000 cases a day, an increase of nearly 24% from the previous week, and hospitalizations up 31% from the week before, Republicans stand accused of causing the deaths of their own voters as the highly contagious Delta variant scythes through red states where vaccination rates are low.
Elaine Kamarck, a Democrat who served in the Bill Clinton administration, said bluntly: “They’ve gone out of their minds. There’s just no other way to describe this. This is about the dumbest thing you could imagine because the only people listening to them are their voters. So this is the first time I’ve ever seen a political party advocating things that would harm their voters, maybe even kill their voters.”
For six months the vaccine program was an example of American ingenuity, energy and can-do spirit, but more recently it has become yet another case study in the self-inflicted wounds of polarization, reviving a sense of anxiety, uncertainty and pessimism. In the past week Florida and Texas, states whose leaders take pride in riling the Biden administration, have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country.
Abbott banned mask mandates yet pledged to bring in extra healthcare workers from out of state and ask hospitals to postpone elective surgeries. The Austin and Dallas independent school districts have said they will defy Abbott’s ban and require masks.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has also outlawed mask requirements in the state and threatened to withhold the salaries of superintendents and county school board members who issue them for students. As infections soar among children, some of the state’s biggest school districts vowed to flout the governor’s order.
Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, welcomed hundreds of thousands of people to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally where no masks or vaccines are required, while Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, declared: “Mandating masks is not the answer. Personal responsibility is the answer, common sense is the answer. And we have an abundance of both in South Carolina.”
At the White House on Thursday, Biden expressed frustration with governors prolonging the pandemic. “I know there are lot of people out there trying to turn a public safety measure – that is, children wearing masks in school so they can be safe – into a political dispute,” he said. “And this isn’t about politics. This is about keeping our children safe.”
Critics say the governors have abandoned the conservative principle that decisions should be made at a local level but they have support from prominent Republican senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Paul, a licensed physician and senator for Kentucky, urged civil disobedience against coronavirus restrictions, saying in a video: “It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us.” He has been banned from YouTube for a week over a post that questioned the efficacy of masks.
Biden’s effort is also being undercut by prominent conservative media figures including the Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who have challenged the safety and questioned the effectiveness of the vaccine, as well as online conspiracy theories that falsely suggest that it harms fertility, contains microchips or even creates vampires.
Democrats are dismayed by such willingness to turn even a matter of life and death into a partisan issue. They note that a minority of the population is hampering the entire nation’s recovery and needlessly endangering more lives, including children.
Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist, said: “They share a profound irresponsibility. What they’re doing will sicken people and some people will die. In my view DeSantis and Abbott are both doing it for political purposes to satisfy the base. DeSantis, at least, is too smart to not know what he’s doing or not know what he should be doing but that’s what we’ve come to in this country.”
The resurgent pandemic has also exposed fault lines in the Trump-era Republican party, a contradiction embodied by the former president himself. He continues to trumpet his success in developing the vaccines, and quietly received one in January, yet often seems reluctant to encourage his supporters to follow suit.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader frequently at odds with Trump, has paid for ads in Kentucky urging his constituents to get vaccinated, citing his own childhood struggle with polio and the decades it took to develop a polio vaccine.
Kay Ivey, the governor of Alabama, has spoken out about her frustrations with the unvaccinated. “Folks supposed to have common sense, but it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks,” she said last month. “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”
Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, has admitted that he regretted signing a ban on mask mandates in schools and asked the state legislature to reverse the decision. “I signed it for those reasons that our cases were at a low point,” he said. “Everything has changed now. And yes, in hindsight I wish that had not become law.”
Sarah Sanders, a former White House press secretary who is running for Arkansas governor, published an opinion column about why she decided to get vaccinated, citing Trump and his family’s own shots as one reason – “If getting vaccinated was safe enough for them, I felt it was safe enough for me” – but stopped short of telling others to do likewise, advising: “Pray about it, discuss it with your family and your doctor.”
DeSantis and Abbott are both facing re-election contests in 2022, and seen as potential presidential contenders in 2024, which might help explain why their responses are targeted at the Trump base while Hutchinson and Ivey are more pragmatic. Other Republicans have an eye on next year’s congressional midterm elections, which they hope to turn into a protest vote against Biden.
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman turned Trump critic and radio host, said: “It’s where their voters are. I interact with the Republican base every day. They are still highly skeptical or resistant to vaccines. They’re up in arms against any sort of mask wearing and mask mandates. So I hear that every day from the base. If I’m hearing that, then you know these Republican officeholders are hearing that as well, so they’re just going to cater to that.”
Asked why voters feel this way, Walsh added: “They’re predisposed to believe a lot of this shit, but it’s also said to them every day by people like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and talk radio – the world I come from. Like Republican elected officials, they know where their audience is so they fuel this every day and they feed it every day. So they bounce back off of each other.
“Look, typically midterm elections are all about turnout and if Republican elected officials go squishy on masks and even vaccines people are not going to come out and vote. So they can’t do that.”
But Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, argues that such a strategy will prove counterproductive in the long term.
“Never before in the history of our country where we’ve had to confront national crises have elected officials behaved so badly, so disingenuously and with so much disregard for the safety and security of the American people,” he said.
Steele added: “Individuals like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and others are out here selfishly proclaiming that somehow I’m more free if I don’t wear a mask. Well, that’s just bullshit and the only freedom you get from not wearing a mask is death.”
A COVID-19 test drive-thru site in Houston, Texas. Gov. Abbott issued an executive order prohibiting any government entity from issuing mask mandates. (photo: Callaghan O'Hare/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
epublicans in Texas are on a warpath.
They’re fighting to fortify their trifecta control of state government despite a rapidly diversifying electorate, and to establish themselves as the bastion of arch-conservatism in the United States. Victory seems imminent, at least in the upcoming election cycle, if not in the years thereafter. But the people of Texas — Republican, independent, and Democrat — have become collateral damage. Because in having dedicated themselves to battle, Texas Republicans have forgotten how to govern.
This is certainly the case for the Texas legislature, whose GOP majority has just led it through its most conservative session in decades. During that session, GOP lawmakers failed to pass much-needed structural reforms to the state’s electrical grid after it collapsed during a catastrophic winter storm earlier this year, as well as a federal Medicaid expansion program that would have given health care coverage to 1.4 million uninsured Texans amid a raging pandemic. Instead, the legislature has prioritized bills that allow any adult in the state to carry a handgun without a license or permit and that ban abortions after six weeks.
It is now on track to enact one of the most restrictive voting laws in the country after an effort that has literally rendered the legislature unable to govern: Democrats fled the state to deprive the legislature of the quorum it needs to operate to protest the bill, leaving Texans without a representative governing body. In response, the Republican House speaker did not offer to negotiate a policy compromise, but has tried to arrest the Democrats who fled.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, meanwhile, has become a prominent national right-wing figure on both immigration and the pandemic.
He has waded into battles with the Biden administration over the US-Mexico border, setting off on a misleading quest to construct a wall on his own (the taxpayer funds he’ll use for the effort are enough for only a few miles of wall, at most) and falsely claiming that migrants are behind Covid-19 surges. And as the delta variant is infecting almost 12,000 Texans a day in reported tests, he has also refused to reinstate mask mandates at the state level, banned local governments from doing so, and sued those that defy him.
It’s all a bid to keep the GOP base happy in the lead-up to next year’s midterm elections, as Republicans in the state are more concerned about potential primary challenges from the right than any serious offensive from Democrats. But with their focus on raising their political profiles and defeating potential rivals, they have forgotten to actually govern amid several statewide crises in recent months: the winter storm that left tens of thousands without power and in the cold, the arrival of increasing numbers of migrants at the border, and the recent resurgence of Covid-19 cases due to the delta variant.
According to Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist based in Austin who ran Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s 2014 reelection campaign, Republicans are just doing their job by responding to what Texas Republican voters want: “The voters are driving Republican policies,” Steinhauser said.
But at some point, elected officials have a responsibility to protect the health and safety of their constituents and the basic human rights of anyone who passes through their state, even if it’s not what their base wants. Few Texas Republicans have embraced that sense of duty; state Rep. Lyle Larson, a Republican from San Antonio, has been a lone dissenting voice calling on his colleagues to “do the right thing with no expectation of getting re-elected” on issues like Covid-19, Medicaid expansion, and election law.
“We’ve come to a point where Republican elected officials in Texas treat their jobs like they’re Fox News contributors as opposed to people with responsibilities to their constituents,” said Zack Malitz, co-founder of the progressive Real Justice PAC and a former adviser on Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 Texas Senate campaign.
Malitz’s view reflects the general frustration of Democrats. But there is a limited amount they — or anyone concerned about Texas government — can do. The reality of how districts are drawn, as well as Texas Republicans’ push to restrict voting, means many of those GOP lawmakers with little interest in lawmaking are likely to hang on to their seats next year. And that means the problems Texans have faced due to their government’s neglect are likely to continue.
The Texas legislature is scoring political points at the expense of addressing the most pressing issues
For a while after the 2018 elections, Texas Republicans were focused on bread and butter issues like property taxes and school finance that wouldn’t offend many independents and Democrats. Democrats made some major inroads that year, not just retaking the US House, but also picking up 12 seats in the Texas House and two in the Texas Senate. That shook Republicans’ confidence a bit, and left them looking to play it safe.
But after Democrats’ predictions that they would turn Texas blue in 2020 failed to come to fruition, Republicans felt that they were given a mandate, marking the return of culture war-type issues that most energize their base in the Texas legislature.
“In Texas, Republicans still win statewide and have done so in the last couple of election cycles, even though we had some narrower races in 2018,” Steinhauser said. “If you’re a Republican running statewide, you still have to speak to the Republican Party first, not only to get the nomination, but to turn them out and win in November.”
That pressure has manifested in what Steinhauser described as the most conservative session of the state legislature in his memory. The governor has already signed legislation that removed permit requirements to carry a handgun and also established an effective ban on abortion that is currently facing legal challenges.
But there is also a special session of the state legislature underway where lawmakers are supposed to work on legislation that would prevent schools from teaching critical race theory or mandating masks or Covid-19 vaccines, and to provide funding for border security, among other Republican causes.
All the while, the failure of the Texas power grid during the winter storm — a statewide crisis that impacted Texans regardless of political party — has been glossed over. Though the governor signed laws to prepare the electrical grid to withstand future extreme weather events, the legislature hasn’t passed any bills delivering direct relief for consumers who were slammed with huge electricity bills as a result of the blackouts or making the kind of forward-looking structural changes to Texas’s electricity market that many experts have called for.
Nor did the legislature, in either their regular or special sessions, find time to address many other pressing concerns in Texas, like Medicaid expansion and police reforms that were proposed in the aftermath of former Houston resident George Floyd’s death.
“These cultural war issues get people to hunker down in the trenches that they’re used to being in around elections and refocus voters’ attention on how much they hate the other side,” Malitz said. “These issues are being deliberately used as a distraction from really widely felt stuff in Texas right now: Covid, economic recovery, the blackouts, baseline bad governance.”
Republicans are also trying to strip Texans of the only tool they have to demand good governance with a bill that would make the state’s already very restrictive voting laws even more so. It passed the state Senate on Thursday despite a more than 15-hour filibuster from an Austin Democrat, but still needs to pass the House and be signed by the governor.
As my colleague Ian Millhiser notes, the bill would strengthen constraints on absentee voting; ban drive-through polling sites; introduce new limitations and paperwork requirements on people who help disabled voters and non-English speakers cast a ballot; make it harder to remove partisan poll watchers who harass voters or otherwise disrupt an election; and impose harsh new penalties on people who commit even minor violations of Texas election law.
Steinhauser said that Texas Republicans are more unified behind that agenda than they have been in a long time.
“Part of that is probably the party being out of power nationally and having a common political enemy, if you will — to have the White House and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to point to,” he said. “Also having Trump be a little less front and center in the party has allowed them to focus their critiques on national Democrats.”
But for Texas Democrats, there isn’t room for compromise on the Republican agenda. House Democrats had fled the state en masse last month in an effort to prevent votes on the voting bill in particular. But after Republican Speaker Dade Phelan signed civil arrest warrants for absent Democrats on Tuesday night with a green light from the Texas Supreme Court, nearly enough of them have returned to form a quorum, a two-thirds majority of the chamber required to conduct business, giving the Republican majority a chance to move forward with their agenda.
Though Republicans have decried Democrats’ actions as breaking relationships in a chamber that has historically sought to give the minority party a seat at the table, Republicans had already drawn battle lines with a legislative agenda designed to exploit partisan divisions.
Gov. Abbott has tried to pass off his failures on the Covid-19 resurgence on migrants
Beyond the problems with the legislature, Texas is in the middle of another statewide crisis: a third wave of Covid-19, this time brought on by the highly contagious delta variant. It has left hospitals with dwindling numbers of ICU beds and delaying non-emergency medical procedures while the governor calls in out-of-state medical staff to come to the rescue.
Nevertheless, Abbott hasn’t budged in refusing to use his gubernatorial powers to try to get rising case — and death — numbers under control. He could, for instance, implement statewide mask or vaccine mandates, but will not, saying that curbing the epidemic now comes down to “personal responsibility.”
He has instead actively worked against the interests of public health, issuing an executive order that prohibits any government entity from issuing its own mask mandates, effectively hamstringing local governments that are bearing the brunt of Covid-19 surge in keeping Texans safe. Several counties have gone ahead and implemented mask mandates anyway, but Abbott is going to court in an effort to reverse them.
Though he has praised the vaccine and has gotten the jab himself, Abbott is focused on protecting the rights of the unvaccinated.
“They have the individual right and responsibility to decide for themselves and their children whether they will wear masks, open their businesses and engage in leisure activities,” Abbott told the Dallas Morning News. “Vaccines, which remain in abundant supply, are the most effective defense against the virus, and they will always remain voluntary — never forced — in the State of Texas.”
Steinhauser said that Abbott is trying to balance the desire of millions of Texans not to return to the shutdowns of last year with the real immediate need to get millions more Texans vaccinated. Democrats, however, see it as an abdication of the governor’s responsibility to protect public health.
“This is beyond inaction — this is the governor tying the hands of health experts who are trying to keep Texans healthy as cases and hospitalizations increase,” Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, a former critical care nurse, said in a statement.
What’s more, Abbott has sought to blame the recent delta surge on migrants arriving on the southern border — playing into a false, nativist, and damaging right-wing narrative that might be particularly attractive to Republican voters in the state, who have long identified immigration and border security as top priorities in public opinion polling.
At a national level, a recent Axios poll found that nearly 37 percent of unvaccinated Americans blame “foreign travelers in the US” for the rise in Covid-19 cases. Abbott has played no small part in creating that perception.
They’re “allowing free pass into the United States of people with a high probability of Covid, and then spreading that Covid in our communities,” he said in an interview last month on Fox News.
But available data hasn’t shown migrants on the border to be any more likely to test positive for Covid-19. In March, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) told Congress that less than 6 percent of migrants at the border had tested positive for Covid-19, a lower percentage than the Texas positivity rate at that time.
Scapegoating migrants serves two purposes for Abbott: It obscures his role in failing to prevent the current Covid-19 surge and provides him with an excuse to pursue the kind of restrictive immigration policies that former President Donald Trump both popularized and made a priority.
He recently issued an executive order allowing public safety officers to stop and reroute vehicles suspected of transporting migrants with Covid-19, though the measure has been blocked in federal court for now.
He has told Texas child care regulators to revoke the licenses of facilities that house migrant children and state troopers to jail migrants for state crimes, such as trespassing on private property when they cross the border.
And he is trying to finish the wall along the Texas border, putting forth a $250 million “down payment” drawn from state disaster relief funds — money that could have gone to the aid of those still recovering from last winter’s storms, or those struggling under the burden of the pandemic — and crowdfunding almost another $500,000 as of June 23. That’s still a drop in the bucket of what he might need to finish the project, which the federal government estimated could cost as much as $46 million per mile in some sectors of the border.
But it doesn’t really matter if Abbott finishes the wall or whether his executive order is ever allowed to go into effect. The policies have generated news cycles that boost his profile nationally, which will be important if he pursues a 2024 presidential bid as rumored.
“It’s a fantastic talking point for his primary electorate, both next year and in 2024,” Malitz said. “It’s government by theater. The things that they are doing with government in Texas are, by and large, for the purpose of introducing a message into the right wing media machine with obviously catastrophic humanitarian results.”
Abbott and his fellow Texas Republicans have been very successful at controlling messaging, and have had many wins in energizing state conservatives. Their party is poised to retain control of Texas. But these victories have come at a great cost, carried by the people of Texas.
A strawberry picker uses a bandana covering her nose and mouth to avoid inhaling smoke while working in the fields in Oxnard, California, during a recent wildfire season. (photo: Philip Cheung/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
Researchers speculate that smoke helps spread the virus and weakens lungs, making symptoms more severe
ollutants in smoke billowing from huge wildfires in the west of America have probably caused an increase in Covid-19 infections and deaths across several US states, new research has found.
Last year more than 10m acres of land were torched by wildfires, with five out of the six largest fires ever documented in California occurring within just a few months. The burning trees, shrubs and buildings gave off enormous plumes of smoke containing small particles of soot.
The spread of these tiny particles, known as PM2.5, probably caused a spike in Covid cases and deaths in parts of the US west, the new paper has discovered. The smoke helped raise the coronavirus infection rate by nearly 20% in certain counties, with half of all Covid deaths in some places attributable to the pollution, according to the study.
“In some counties the association was very strong indeed – on days with lots of wildfire smoke the Covid cases went up by a lot,” said Francesca Dominici, a professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health who co-authored the research, which was led by Xiaodan Zhou, a researcher at Esri. “Combining wildfires with this pandemic can have a really disastrous effect. It’s disturbing.”
Previous research, which Dominici was also involved in, found that a small rise in people’s long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with an 11% increase in deaths from Covid. Another study from last year suggests that 15% of all Covid-19 deaths around the world are attributable to dirty air.
Researchers have said more work needs to be done to fully establish the connections but there was now compelling evidence that polluted air is exacerbating outbreaks of the coronavirus. It is thought that emitted pollutants can help spread the infection, while also weakening people’s lungs before they are infected with Covid, raising the likelihood they will get severely ill or die.
The latest paper, published in Science Advances, analyzed 92 counties across California, Washington and Oregon and sought to eliminate causes of Covid increases other than nearby wildfires. It found that the wildfires had the largest impact upon Covid cases in the counties of Butte, California, and Whitman, Washington. The greatest influence on Covid deaths, meanwhile, was found in Butte county and Calaveras county, California.
Last year’s spate of wildfires may well be surpassed in 2021, with huge blazes under way such as the Bootleg fire in Oregon, which at one point was the size of Los Angeles, and the Dixie fire in northern California, which is the largest in the state’s recorded history. The town of Greenville, California, was almost completely destroyed by fire last week.
Smoke from the fires has been detected from space, sweeping as far east as New York, where it turned the skies hazy. On Saturday, the city of Denver experienced the worst air quality in the world for several hours due to smoke from western wildfires.
“We only looked at counties in the west but I’d speculate that it doesn’t matter where you are, if you are getting high levels of PM2.5 from wildfire smoke in New York, you will get the same catastrophic effect,” said Dominici. “It’s very concerning. I’d say to anyone living in a place affected by wildfires to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Longer-term, this shows us, yet again, the importance of fighting climate change.”
Kristie Ebi, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research, said the study “adds to the weight of evidence that air pollution may increase sensitivity” to the coronavirus.
Ebi added that lockdowns and mask mandates were not fully factored into the paper, although the researchers did measure people’s mobility during the study period.
George Thurston, an expert in environmental medicine at New York University who also was not involved in the research, said: “The study findings are very plausible, in that tiny combustion particles are well known to pick up and carry other airborne toxins deep into the lung.”
Atlanta based rap poet and musician Lil Baby AKA, Dominique Armani Jones. (photo: Christopher Parsons)
The Bigger Picture recorded with the Black Lives Matter protests of the George Floyd Killing in full swing rose to become one of the most significant, most listened to and most influential protest songs thus far of the 21st century.
Lyrics Lil Baby, The Bigger Picture.
From the 2020 album, My Turn.
Protests and growing national outcry continues over the death of George Floyd
(Section 8 just straight cooked this motherfucker up)
Last night, people protesting in Minneapolis escalated
As demonstrators were lashed by tear gas and rubber bullets
The main message here, the main message here, the main message here
Is that they wanna see those officers involved
They want to see those officers arrested
Officers arrest
(I can't breathe, I can't breathe)
Trade my 4x4 for a G63
Ain't no more free Lil Steve
I gave 'em chance and chance, and chance again
I even done told them please
I find it crazy the police'll shoot you
And know that you dead, but still tell you to freeze
Fucked up, I seen what I seen
I guess that mean hold him down if he say he can't breathe
It's too many mothers that's grieving, they killing us for no reason
Been going on for too long to get even
Throw us in cages like dogs and hyenas
I went to court and they sent me to prison
My mama was crushed when they said I can't leave
First I was drunk, then I sobered up quick
When I heard all that time that they gave to Taleeb
He got a life sentence plus
We just some products of our environment
How the fuck they gon' blame us?
You can't fight fire with fire
I know, but at least we can turn up the flames some
Every colored person ain't dumb
And all whites not racist
I be judging by the mind and heart
I ain't really into faces
Fucked up, the way that we livin' is not getting better
You gotta know how to survive
Crazy, I had to tell all of my loved ones
To carry a gun when they going outside
Stare in the mirror whenever you drive
Overprotective, go crazy for mine
You gotta pay attention to the signs
Seem like the blind following the blind
Thinking 'bout everything that's going on
I boost security up at my home
I'm with my kind if they right or they wrong
I call him now, he'll pick up the phone
And it's five in the morning, he waking up on it
Tell 'em wherever I'm at, then they comin'
I see blue lights, I get scared and start runnin'
That shit be crazy, they 'posed to protect us
Throw us in handcuffs and arrest us
While they go home at night, that shit messed up
Knowing we needed help, they neglect us
Wondering who gon' make them respect us
Cause I can see in your eye that you fed up
Fuck around, got my shot, I won't let up
They know that we a problem together
They know that we can storm any weather
It's bigger than black and white
It's a problem with the whole way of life
It can't change overnight
But we gotta start somewhere
Might as well gon' 'head start here
We done had a hell of a year
I'ma make it count while I'm here
God is the only man I fear
Fuck it, I'm goin' on the front line
He gon' bust your ass if you come past that gun line
You know when the storm go away, then the sun shine
Gotta put your head in the game when it's crunch time
I want all my sons to grow up to be monsters
I want all my daughters to show out in public
Seems like we losing our country
But we gotta stand up for something, so this what it comes to
Every video I see on my conscience
I got power, now I gotta say somethin'
Corrupted police been the problem where I'm from
But I'd be lying if I said it was all of them
I ain't do this for the trend, I don't follow them
Altercations with the law, had a lot of them
People speaking for the people, I'm proud of them
Stick together, we can get it up out of them
I can't lie like I don't rap about killing and dope
But I'm telling my youngins to vote
I did what I did cause I didn't have no choice or no hope
I was forced to just jump in and go
This bullshit is all that we know, but it's time for a change
Got time to be serious, no time for no games
We ain't takin' no more, let us go from them chains
God bless they souls, every one of them names
It's bigger than black and white
It's a problem with the whole way of life
It can't change overnight
But we gotta start somewhere
Might as well gon' 'head start here
We done had a hell of a year
I'ma make it count while I'm here
God is the only man I fear
They trainin' officers to kill us
Then shootin' protestors with these rubber bullets
They regular people, I know that they feel it
These scars too deep to heal us
What happened to COVID? Nobody remember
It ain't makin' sense, I'm just here to vent
It happen to one of your people, it's different
We get it, the system is wicked, just learn how to pick it
Knowledge is power, I swear I'm a witness
I know that I'm gifted, I won't go too deep
Cause I'm scared they'll get me, ain't scared to admit it
Some shit I can't mention it's people who can
Well, here's the chance, I won't take the stand
But I'll take a stand for what I believe
Must not be breathing the air that I breathe
You know that the way that I bleed, you can bleed
I never been a fan of police
But my neighborhood know I try to keep peace
So it's only right that I get in the streets
March for a reason, not just on GP
Our people died for us to be free
Fuck do you mean? This was a dream
Now we got the power that we need to have
They don't want us with it and that's why they mad, yeah
It's bigger than black and white
It's a problem with the whole way of life
It can't change overnight
But we gotta start somewhere
Might as well gon' 'head start here
We done had a hell of a year
I'ma make it count while I'm here
God is the only man I fear
It's bigger than black and white
It's a problem with the whole way of life
It can't change overnight
But we gotta start somewhere
Might as well gon' 'head start here
We done had a hell of a year
I'ma make it count while I'm here
God is the only man I fear
Democratic senators Joe Manchin and John Hickenlooper in the Capitol before a Senate vote on May 28, 2021. (photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)
Seven Democratic senators voted with the GOP to block restrictions on fracking this week. Those seven Democrats also raked in $1.7 million in donations from oil and gas donors.
ne day after the release of a landmark scientific report on climate change, the US Senate faced its first test vote on whether scientists’ grave new warnings are being heeded. In response, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers used the moment to try to prevent America from halting a fossil fuel extraction process linked to one of the most dangerous greenhouse gas emissions — and to rampant ozone pollution choking the American West.
Fifty Republicans and seven Democrats voted Tuesday in favor of a GOP amendment designed to prohibit the executive branch from banning hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. The measure’s supporters included Colorado’s Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, whose constituents have been warned in recent days to remain inside because of a mix of smoke from climate-intensified wildfires as well as ozone — the latter of which is driven in part by fracking emissions. New Mexico Democrats Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján also voted yes. Their state has been plagued with unhealthy air, too, with local officials telling people on Monday to stay inside as much as possible.
The other Democratic yes votes were senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, and Maine independent Angus King, whose states have all seen poor air quality at times this summer from wildfires in the west.
Five of the seven Democrats voting for the measure hail from blue states won by President Joe Biden, who declared unequivocally during the 2020 campaign: “I am not banning fracking.” Over the course of their careers, the seven Democratic lawmakers who backed the GOP amendment have raked in nearly $1.7 million from donors in the oil and gas industry, according to data from OpenSecrets.
The vote on Tuesday suggests the entire Republican Party in Congress and some Democrats are either still climate deniers who insist fossil fuels can be part of an environmentally sustainable future, or ecocidal sociopaths who are too corrupt and soulless to care what happens.
The Biden administration’s call Wednesday for OPEC members to boost oil production offered additional evidence that, for all of their rhetoric about the climate emergency, many Democratic leaders appear ready to let the world burn.
Banning a Fracking Ban
Monday’s landmark report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointed to methane emissions as a key driver of the climate crisis. Emissions of methane — among the most dangerous accelerants of climate change — have exploded in concert with the expansion of fracking.
Ilissa Ocko, a climate scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, said Monday that “cutting methane emissions is the single fastest, most effective way there is to slow the rate of warming right now,” according to Gizmodo.
Despite scientists’ warnings about the links between climate change, methane emissions, and fracking, Tuesday’s budget amendment sponsored by Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), aims to “prohibit the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating rules or guidance that bans hydraulic fracturing,” according to the legislative text.
Cramer’s initiative follows Republican officials in states across the country passing legislation blocking local communities from restricting fracking. If some version of the Cramer proposal ever ended up actually becoming law, the Biden administration and future administrations could be permanently barred from banning fracking.
Cramer’s top career industry donor by far has been oil and gas, which has pumped more than $1.1 million into his election campaigns, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Cramer is also pushing separate legislation to effectively prohibit the federal government from regulating fracking — which is already exempted from clean water laws, thanks to legislation passed during the Bush administration.
A recent report from the environmental nonprofit Earthworks found that North Dakota is now awash in toxic chemicals and wastewater amid its recent fracking boom.
Because it is part of the budget process, Cramer’s amendment is not binding — it only instructs the Senate Budget Committee to allow for a fracking ban in the final budget resolution.
Since the measure passed, Senate Budget Committee chairman Bernie Sanders (I-VT), will be given the power — and encouragement — to include language prohibiting a fracking ban in his $3.5 trillion budget resolution, which is meant to fund programs to address climate change.
Sanders voted against the amendment, and is the sponsor of legislation to ban fracking.
Fossil Fuel Allies in Blue States
Though symbolic, the Cramer amendment’s simplicity is clarifying. It put every senator on record about a controversial fossil fuel extraction process that has not only been linked to carbon emissions and toxic air, but also to water pollution and health problems.
Just two years ago, researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health found that Coloradans living near fracking sites are at far greater risk of cancer, and previous research linked fracking to birth defects.
Bennet’s vote for the GOP measure comes on the one-year anniversary of his op-ed promising Coloradans that he understands that “time is running out for bold action on climate change.” The senator, who made his personal fortune as a corporate raider for oil billionaire Philip Anschutz, has received $347,000 of campaign cash from the oil and gas industry. He is up for reelection in 2022.
Hickenlooper’s vote is among the first he’s cast on the issue as a senator since using his two gubernatorial terms to boost oil and gas production and become one of the most vociferous fossil fuel advocates in American politics. He earned the nickname “Frackenlooper” after he boasted to Congress that he drank fracking fluid because he’s so sure it is safe.
He won the Colorado Senate Democratic primary in 2020 after the national party endorsed him and dumped cash into the race, helping him defeat a progressive candidate whose major television ad warned that climate change would result in days in which Coloradans were told to avoid being outside.
That projection has now become reality at precisely the moment Hickenlooper voted for the amendment to prevent any president from advancing a fracking ban. Hickenlooper raised $146,000 from oil and gas donors last year.
Manchin, whose family runs a coal brokerage, has taken in $670,000 from oil and gas donors during his career. Manchin holds a key role in deciding climate policy as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, after Democratic senators made him the ranking member of the committee in late 2018.
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