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Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in his dissent, saw a broader threat from the majority opinion. “It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” Justice Alito wrote. “In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.” Gay rights advocates had constructed a careful litigation and public relations strategy to build momentum and bring the issue to the Supreme Court when it appeared ready to rule in their favor. As in earlier civil rights cases, the court had responded cautiously and methodically, laying judicial groundwork for a transformative decision. It waited for scores of lower courts to strike down bans on same-sex marriages before addressing the issue, and Justice Kennedy took the unusual step of listing those decisions in an appendix to his opinion. Chief Justice Roberts said that only 11 states and the District of Columbia had embraced the right to same-sex marriage democratically, at voting booths and in legislatures. The rest of the 37 states that allow such unions did so because of court rulings. Gay rights advocates, the chief justice wrote, would have been better off with a victory achieved through the political process, particularly “when the winds of change were freshening at their backs.” In his own dissent, Justice Scalia took a similar view, saying that the majority’s assertiveness represented a “threat to American democracy.” But Justice Kennedy rejected that idea. “It is of no moment whether advocates of same-sex marriage now enjoy or lack momentum in the democratic process,” he wrote. “The issue before the court here is the legal question whether the Constitution protects the right of same-sex couples to marry.” Later in the opinion, Justice Kennedy answered the question. “The Constitution,” he wrote, “grants them that right.”

Pope Francis’ Views on Same-Sex Civil Unions Were Cut From a 2019 Vatican Interview A Mexican broadcast company says Francis made the comments to its correspondent more than a year ago, and people close to the company say the Vatican then edited them out.

On Tuesday, August 11, many conservatives were hoping that Marjorie Taylor Greene — a QAnon conspiracy theorist — would lose a GOP congressional primary runoff in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. But Greene was victorious, defeating fellow Republican John Cowan (a neurosurgeon) by double digits. Now, a devotee of the QAnon cult will be competing with Democrat Kevin Van Ausdale in the general election, and Greene pulled off her primary victory with the help of well-known Republicans like Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Politically, Greene is a far-right Republican, comparing Democratic billionaire George Soros to Nazis and describing the 2018 midterms as an “Islamic invasion of our government.” And she has openly promoted the QAnon cult, which believes that President Donald Trump was sent to combat an international pedophile ring and that a mysterious figure named Q is providing updates about Trump’s battle. Greene, in a 2017 video posted on YouTube, described “Q” as “someone that very much loves his country, and he’s on the same page as us — and he is very pro-Trump.” Greene went on to say, “I’m very excited about that now there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it.” In the general election, Greene will be competing with Van Ausdale — who works in the tech industry — for the seat that Republican Rep. Tom Graves will be vacating. And she stands a good chance of winning: according to the Cook Political Report, Georgia’s 14th Congressional District is 27% more Republican than the U.S. on the whole. In addition to Jordan and Meadows, Greene received donations from Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Citizens United and Koch Industries (which is co-owned by billionaire Republican mega-donor Charles Koch). Jordan, Meadows and Citizens United, according to the American Independent, all donated $2000 to her campaign — while Biggs donated $1000. Meanwhile, Koch Industries donated $5000 through its political action committee. In an e-mail sent to AlterNet this week, a spokesperson for Koch Industries stressed that “Koch does not support her campaign” — noting that “in June, upon learning of Ms. Greene’s past comments, KOCHPAC immediately requested a refund of its contribution” and saying that Koch does not condone Greene’s “harmful and divisive rhetoric.” Scott Hogan, executive director of the Georgia Democratic Party, pointed to Greene’s primary victory as proof that extremism is openly embraced in her party. “Republican extremism is on the ballot across Georgia,” The Hill quotes Hogan as saying, “and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s primary win tonight after embracing vile racism and conspiracy theories represents exactly what’s wrong with today’s GOP…. Georgia Republicans own this crisis, and their mealy-mouthed statements can’t hide the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene’s nomination is a stain on their party.” Rep. Cheri Bustos, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, spoke out as well — saying, “Georgia Republicans, and Republican candidates running across the country, will have to answer for her hateful views in their own campaigns.”

According to the fantastical, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory known as QAnon, a secret cabal of liberals, Hollywood celebrities and foreign governments is kidnapping and sexually abusing children before eating them. This ritual grants members of the evil global elite special powers they use to manipulate the world and oppress (white) Christians and other groups. In QAnon's alternate reality, a shadowy figure known as "Q" — who has been notably silent of late — sends out secret "drops" containing messages, clues and orders to true believers. As explained by Q, Donald Trump and his MAGA allies have led a resistance movement against the Deep State, preparing for a great cataclysm called "the Storm," in which Trump will seize full power (or, latterly, return to power) and all will be revealed. Ultimately, QAnon is an updated version of the infamous anti-Semitic libel "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a conspiracy theory which has existed since the early 20th century and played a central role in the Holocaust. QAnon is also much more than a mere conspiracy theory. It is a cult that has destroyed families and relationships. It is a con that lures in the weak-minded and the vulnerable. It is a political force with ambiguous but substantial influence within the neofascist Republican Party. It could also be described as a live-action roleplaying game for lonely and socially alienated adults who are desperate for a sense of agency, meaning and community in their lives. QAnon also has elements of religion. Adrienne LaFrance writes at the Atlantic: The Seventh-day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are thriving religious movements indigenous to America. Do not be surprised if QAnon becomes another. It already has more adherents by far than either of those two denominations had in the first decades of their existence. People are expressing their faith through devoted study of Q drops as installments of a foundational text, through the development of Q-worshipping groups, and through sweeping expressions of gratitude for what Q has brought to their lives. Does it matter that we do not know who Q is? The divine is always a mystery. Does it matter that basic aspects of Q's teachings cannot be confirmed? The basic tenets of Christianity cannot be confirmed. Among the people of QAnon, faith remains absolute. True believers describe a feeling of rebirth, an irreversible arousal to existential knowledge. They are certain that a Great Awakening is coming. They'll wait as long as they must for deliverance. Trust the plan. Enjoy the show. Nothing can stop what is coming. As a new religion, the emergence of QAnon coincides with and has fueled the Republican Party and Trump movement's embrace of right-wing terrorism and other political violence. Terrorism and extremism expert Colin Clarke told the Independent how white right-wing Christian evangelicals are being radicalized by the QAnon conspiracy theory into committing acts of terrorism: "It's not going to get better anytime soon, unfortunately… Conspiratorial thinking is very closely associated with high-anxiety situations and endless wars, elections and national tragedies," he said. Moreover, Clarke said there has been a "crossover" between the QAnon systems and evangelical Christianity that is going to imbue right-wing extremism with the sort of violent fanaticism more associated with al-Qaeda or Isis. "Religious terrorism tends to be more lethal, because people believe they're serving a higher purpose by committing acts of violence, as opposed to secular groups or ethno-nationalists who are fighting over territory or land," he explained. "You can't negotiate with these people, and you especially can't negotiate with QAnon, because how do you assuage grievances that don't exist?" Clarke also posited that synergies between QAnon and the American anti-abortion movement — another religiously inspired faction that dominates the GOP — could spark extremist violence in the mold of the string of bombings carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph between 1996 and 1998. In an effort to understand how white Christian evangelicals are being radicalized into terrorism and other forms of extremism, I recently spoke with Robert Jones, CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Jones is also a leading scholar on religion, politics and culture. His essays and other commentaries have been featured by the Atlantic, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the New York Times. Jones is also the author of "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity" and "The End of White Christian America." In this conversation, Jones explains how Trump's insurrection and the Capitol attack should also be understood as expressions of white supremacy and Christian nationalist violence. He also details how white evangelicals actually believe that they are being oppressed and have become victims in America — false beliefs which make them very susceptible to conspiracy theories such as QAnon, political extremism and, in the worst-case scenario terrorism and political violence such as we witnessed on Jan. 6. Jones also explores why white evangelicals are so loyal to Donald Trump and his political cult and what that reveals about American politics and society. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. How do we explain white Christian evangelicals' enduring devotion to Donald Trump, no matter what he does? He can encourage terrorism, attempt a coup, incite a lethal attack on the Capitol and engage in all manner of apparent crimes, and they still love him. Polling shows that even after the insurrection on Jan. 6, there are still supermajorities of white evangelicals reporting that they hold favorable views of Donald Trump. There was a majority of evangelicals saying before the 2020 election that they saw President Trump as being called by God to be president. That has been true throughout Trump's presidency. One of the most remarkable things about white evangelicals in terms of Donald Trump is how little their favorability toward him have changed. Two impeachments, major scandals —including sex scandals involving sordid matters such as having affairs and paying hush money — none of that really seems to have shaken their favorability towards Trump. It's been very stable, somewhere between two-thirds and 80% favorable of Trump during the entire four years he was president. There are two likely reasons for this. The slogan "Make America Great Again" was supposed to be changed to "Keep America Great" [for 2020]. The Trump campaign very quickly pivoted away from that and just stayed with the old slogan. The power of Trump's appeal is a backward nostalgia which involves going to back to a previous time when white Christians had more power in the United States. "Making America Great Again" signals to that desire to "restore" that state of affairs. During Trump's campaign speeches, and even on Jan. 6, Trump would say things such as, "If you're not ready to stand up and fight, America as you know it will be over. You're going to lose your country." But who is the "your"? Who is the "our"? Trump is appealing to a white Christian base. What he is communicating is, "I'm the person who's going to help you continue to hold onto your sense of ownership of this country." For Trump's base of voters that is what it is all about. His appeal is not about policies. It's certainly not about abortion or same-sex marriage. The appeal is based around a single issue. Looking at the Jan, 6 attack, what did you see when you analyzed that crowd of insurrectionists? It was remarkable to me. There were Bibles, there were crosses, there were Bible verses on signs. There were flags that said things such as, "Trump is my president, Jesus is my savior." There were shofars being blown, not by Jews but by Christians, who were convinced they were fulfilling some prophecy by bringing Trump into office. Perhaps the image that stuck with me the most is that there was a fair amount of attention being paid to the Confederate battle flag being marched through the Capitol building. But what did not get enough attention is that there was also the Christian flag. Many people may not be familiar with it. That flag was being marched right into the House chamber along with the Confederate flag. They were all there. There was also a big white cross being carried up the steps along with all those other banners. I am not quite sure that the American people as a whole really understand what the coexistence of all those symbols really means. The insurrectionists are telling us who they are. They very deliberately chose those symbols. They wore them on their clothes. These were white supremacists. These were Christians. Those two groups were not fighting each other. They were marching side by side. The Ku Klux Klan is a white Christian right-wing terrorist organization. Many of the white supremacists and other terrorists who attacked the Capitol likely identity as "Christians." Why the tendency to parse "Christianity" and "white supremacy" as somehow being distinct from one another? I guarantee you that if all those people had been carrying Muslim symbols, the narrative would be that they were radical Islamic terrorists. America has such a long history of being dominated by Christianity that many people are reluctant to really see the connections between white supremacy and Christianity as part of American culture. But you are exactly right. The Ku Klux Klan targeted not just African Americans but also Jews and Catholics, because they considered the United States to be a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant country. What do we know about the relationship between the QAnon conspiracy theory and white Christian evangelicals? Paul Djupe, who is a political scientist at Denison University, did a recent study looking at the overlap between QAnon and evangelicals. He found that more than half of white evangelicals agree with the basic beliefs of QAnon. It has made deep inroads. But that's really not that surprising. When you look at the structure of QAnon, it is essentially a loose collection of pseudo-Christian ideas that have been floating around evangelical Christianity for decades. If we go back to the "Left Behind" novels from the 2000s, the building blocks of QAnon are right there. For example, there is a big battle of good versus evil, a worldwide conspiracy to control the government, and the job of Christians is to be local prayer warriors who are allied with angels in a literal fight against their enemies, who are working with the devil. QAnon has many of those same things. There is supposed to be a great "Storm" that will sweep away all the illegitimate holders of power and bring in a figure who is essentially the messiah. Donald Trump has been overlaid onto that "Left Behind" narrative. Combating the influence of QAnon is a really serious challenge for white Christian pastors. What about the overlaps between QAnon and anti-Semitism? In many ways, QAnon really goes back to the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Such ideas have been around for quite some time. They are certainly not new. QAnon is just their current manifestation. It is very important for pastors to make those connections for parishioners so that they can see the dangerous historical lineage that they are continuing with QAnon. Why do white evangelicals somehow feel under siege or disadvantaged in the United States? In reality, they are oppressing other groups of people -- white evangelicals are not "victims" in America. I am from the South and understand how the idea of being under siege runs deep here. That is especially true in the culture of Southern evangelicalism. It goes way back to the Lost Cause mentality of the Civil War and as a backlash to the civil rights movement. A proclivity to be the "victim" runs deep in terms of theology here as well. This is particularly true in white evangelical circles. Both Republicans and white evangelicals believe that they face more discrimination than other groups such as African Americans and gays and lesbians. That trend has been documented in the polling data and other research for several years. That sense of being under siege has become even stronger during the Trump years. It was certainly there before that, but it's become even stronger. What do we know about why white evangelicals gravitate to QAnon more than other groups of Christians? Both groups believe in invisible people who tell them things and share secrets only with them. One would think that Christians who are so oriented would be joining QAnon across the board. By way of comparison, both white evangelicals and African American Christians share many similar theological beliefs. However, it is white evangelicals who are much more likely to be connected to QAnon and similar conspiracy theories. I do not believe that the answer lies in a common belief in something invisible. QAnon and other like beliefs are ultimately self-serving. At the end of the day, QAnon preserves white power. We passed from being a majority white Christian country to one that is no longer majority white Christian. That happened proximate to Obama's time in office. With him, the first black president, there was a very vivid symbol of demographic change. That really has set off a desperate struggle where many white Christians are now in a bid to hold onto their group's power. Weird things happen when you get desperate. Those white Americans are reaching for almost anything that will tell them that they are still the most important group in the country, that they still own the country, the country was created for their benefit. In many ways the bedrock of their worldview is crumbling. PRRI has completed new polling and research on questions of "religious freedom." What have you learned? One of the clearest findings is when we ask people the direct question, "Do you think religious liberty in America is under threat". Most Americans say no. But we have a very loud minority, four in 10 Americans, telling us that religious liberty is being threatened today. Again, it is white evangelicals who really stand out as a group, with more than 70% of them saying religious liberty is being threatened. No other religious group in the United States comes anywhere near that. It really is just this one very loud minority group of white evangelicals. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that if you go back to 2008, they were 21% of the population. Today they're only 15% of the population. As white evangelicals have started shrinking as a group, they are getting louder and more desperate. When a group feels existentially threatened, they are more prone to engage in terrorism and other violence. They literally believe they are in a life-and-death battle. White evangelical Protestants are at a very dangerous place in their history today. They have been accustomed to being in the majority, as part of the mainstream of American culture. They find themselves increasingly out of step with the country in terms of their beliefs and their attitudes. Their children and grandchildren are disaffiliating from white evangelical churches. It is a shrinking movement. The danger then becomes that if part of your worldview depends on the belief that America is a Christian nation — and not just a Christian nation but really a Protestant nation — and moreover that your group are rightful inheritors of that country, and you add in leaders telling you that your country is being unfairly taken away from you, it all becomes a very dangerous powder keg. Such beliefs can lead to extraordinary responses. I believe that the extremes of this view are violent. We should take that very seriously.

FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, Trump supporters, including Doug Jensen, center, confront U.S. Capitol Police in the hallway outside of the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington. Some followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory are now turning to online support groups and even therapy to help them move on, now that it's clear Donald Trump's presidency is over. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File) FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, Trump supporters, including Doug Jensen, center, confront U.S. Capitol Police in the hallway outside of the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington. Some followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory are now turning to online support groups and even therapy to help them move on, now that it's clear Donald Trump's presidency is over. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File) PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Ceally Smith spent a year down the rabbit hole of QAnon, devoting more and more time to researching and discussing the conspiracy theory online. Eventually it consumed her, and she wanted out. She broke up with the boyfriend who recruited her into the movement, took six months off social media, and turned to therapy and yoga. “I was like: I can’t live this way. I’m a single mom, working, going to school and doing the best for my children,” said Smith, 32, of Kansas City, Missouri. “I personally didn’t have the bandwidth to do this and show up for my children. Even if it was all true, I just couldn’t do it anymore.” ADVERTISEMENT More than a week after Donald Trump departed the White House, shattering their hopes that he would expose the worldwide cabal, some QAnon adherents have concocted ever more elaborate stories to keep their faith alive. But others like Smith are turning to therapy and online support groups to talk about the damage done when beliefs collide with reality. The QAnon conspiracy theory emerged on fringe internet message boards in 2017. At root, the movement claims Trump is waging a secret battle against the “deep state” and a sect of powerful devil-worshipping pedophiles who dominate Hollywood, big business, the media and government. It is named after Q, an anonymous poster who believers claim has top-secret government clearance and whose posts are taken as predictions about “the plan” and the coming “storm” and “great awakening” in which evil will be defeated. It’s not clear exactly how many people believe some or all of the narrative, but backers of the movement were vocal in their support for Trump and helped fuel the insurrectionists who overran the U.S. Capitol this month. QAnon is also growing in popularity overseas. Former believers interviewed by The Associated Press liken the process of leaving QAnon to kicking a drug addiction. QAnon, they say, offers simple explanations for a complicated world and creates an online community that provides escape and even friendship. Smith’s then-boyfriend introduced her to QAnon. It was all he could talk about, she said. At first she was skeptical, but she became convinced after the death of financier Jeffrey Epstein while in federal custody facing pedophilia charges. Officials debunked theories that he was murdered, but to Smith and other QAnon supporters, his suicide while facing child sex charges was too much to accept. ADVERTISEMENT Soon, Smith was spending more time on fringe websites and on social media, reading and posting about the conspiracy theory. She said she fell for QAnon content that presented no evidence, no counter arguments, and yet was all too convincing. “We as a society need to start teaching our kids to ask: Where is this information coming from? Can I trust it?” she said. “Anyone can cut and paste anything.” After a year, Smith wanted out, suffocated by dark prophesies that were taking up more and more of her time, leaving her terrified. Her then-boyfriend saw her decision to move on from QAnon as a betrayal. She said she no longer believes in the theory, and wanted to share her story in the hopes it would help others. “I was one of those people too,” she said of QAnon and its grip. “I came out on the other end because I wanted to feel better.” Another ex-believer, Jitarth Jadeja, now moderates a Reddit forum called QAnon Casualties to help others like him, as well as the relatives of people still consumed by the theory. Membership has doubled in recent weeks to more than 119,000 members. Three new moderators had to be added just to keep up. “They are our friends and family,” said Jadeja, of Sydney, Australia. “It’s not about who is right or who is wrong. I’m here to preach empathy, for the normal people, the good people who got brainwashed by this death cult.” His advice to those fleeing QAnon? Get off social media, take deep breaths, and pour that energy and internet time into local volunteering. Michael Frink is a Mississippi computer engineer who helps administer a QAnon recovery channel on the social media platform Telegram. He said that while mocking the group has never been more popular online, it will only further alienate people. Frink said he never believed in the QAnon theory but sympathizes with those who did. “I think after the inauguration a lot of them realized they’ve been taken for a ride,” he said. “These are human beings. If you have a loved one who is in it, make sure they know they are loved.” QAnon supporters will respond in different ways as reality undermines their beliefs, according to Ziv Cohen, a forensic psychiatrist and expert on extremist beliefs at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University. Those who only dabbled in the conspiracy theory may shrug and move on, Cohen said. At the other extreme, more militant believers may migrate to radical anti-government groups and plot potentially violent crimes. Indeed, some QAnon believers have already done so . In the middle, he said, are those who looked to QAnon “to help them make sense of the world, to help them feel a sense of control.” These people may revise QAnon’s elastic narrative to fit reality, rather than face up to being hoodwinked. “This isn’t about critical thinking, of having a hypothesis and using facts to support it,” Cohen said of QAnon believers. “They have a need for these beliefs, and if you take that away, because the storm did not happen, they could just move the goal posts.” Some now say Trump’s loss was always part of the plan, or that he secretly remains president, or even that Joe Biden’s inauguration was created using special effects or body doubles. They insist that Trump will prevail, and powerful figures in politics, business and the media will be tried and possibly executed on live television, according to recent social media posts. “Everyone will be arrested soon. Confirmed information,” read a post viewed 130,000 times this week on a popular QAnon channel on Telegram. “From the very beginning I said it would happen.” But a different tone is emerging in the spaces created for those who have heard enough. “Hi my name is Joe,” one man wrote on a Q recovery channel in Telegram. “And I’m a recovering QAnoner.”

To Donald Trump, it’s “people who love our country”. To the FBI, it’s a potential domestic terror threat. And to you or anyone else who has logged on to Facebook in recent months, it may just be a friend or family member who has started to show an alarming interest in child trafficking, the “cabal”, or conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and the coronavirus. This is QAnon, a wide-ranging and baseless internet conspiracy theory that reached the American mainstream in August. The movement has been festering on the fringes of rightwing internet communities for years, but its visibility has exploded in recent months amid the social unrest and uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, a QAnon supporter is probably heading to the US Congress, the president (who plays a crucial role in QAnon’s false narrative) has refused to debunk and disavow it, and the successful hijacking of the #SaveTheChildren hashtag has provided the movement a more palatable banner under which to stage real-life recruiting events and manipulate local news coverage. Here’s our guide to what you need to know about QAnon. So what is QAnon? “QAnon” is a baseless internet conspiracy theory whose followers believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children. QAnon followers believe that Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against this cabal and its “deep state” collaborators to expose the malefactors and send them all to Guantánamo Bay. A man holds a sign condemning supposed pedophilia in the film industry, in Hollywood on 22 August. Photograph: Christian Monterrosa/EPA There are many, many threads of the QAnon narrative, all as far-fetched and evidence-free as the rest, including subplots that focus on John F Kennedy Jr being alive (he isn’t), the Rothschild family controlling all the banks (they don’t) and children being sold through the website of the furniture retailer Wayfair (they aren’t). Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Chrissy Teigen and Pope Francis are just some of the people whom QAnon followers have cast as villains in their alternative reality. This all sounds familiar. Haven’t we seen this before? Yes. QAnon has its roots in previously established conspiracy theories, some relatively new and some a millennium old. The contemporary antecedent is Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 presidential campaign when rightwing news outlets and influencers promoted the baseless idea that references to food and a popular Washington DC pizza restaurant in the stolen emails of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta were actually a secret code for a child trafficking ring. The theory touched off serious harassment of the restaurant and its employees, culminating in a December 2016 shooting by a man who had travelled to the restaurant believing there were children there in need of rescue. QAnon evolved out of Pizzagate and includes many of the same basic characters and plotlines without the easily disprovable specifics. But QAnon also has its roots in much older antisemitic conspiracy theories. The idea of the all-powerful, world-ruling cabal comes straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fake document purporting to expose a Jewish plot to control the world that was used throughout the 20th century to justify antisemitism. Another QAnon canard – the idea that members of the cabal extract the chemical adrenochrome from the blood of their child victims and ingest it to extend their lives – is a modern remix of the age-old antisemitic blood libel. How did QAnon start? On 28 October 2017, “Q” emerged from the primordial swamp of the internet on the message board 4chan with a post in which he confidently asserted that Hillary Clinton’s “extradition” was “already in motion” and her arrest imminent. In subsequent posts – there have been more than 4,000 so far – Q established his legend as a government insider with top security clearance who knew the truth about the secret struggle for power between Trump and the “deep state”. Though posting anonymously, Q uses a “trip code” that allows followers to distinguish his posts from those of other anonymous users (known as “anons”). Q switched from posting on 4chan to posting on 8chan in November 2017, went silent for several months after 8chan shut down in August 2019, and eventually re-emerged on a new website established by 8chan’s owner, 8kun. Q’s posts are cryptic and elliptical. They often consist of a long string of leading questions designed to guide readers toward discovering the “truth” for themselves through “research”. As with Clinton’s supposed “extradition”, Q has consistently made predictions that failed to come to pass, but true believers tend to simply adapt their narratives to account for inconsistencies. For close followers of QAnon, the posts (or “drops”) contain “crumbs” of intelligence that they “bake” into “proofs”. For “bakers”, QAnon is both a fun hobby and a deadly serious calling. It’s a kind of participatory internet scavenger hunt with incredibly high stakes and a ready-made community of fellow adherents. How do you go from anonymous posts on 4chan to a full-fledged conspiracy movement? Not by accident, that’s for sure. Anonymous internet posters who claim to have access to secret information are fairly common, and they usually disappear once people lose interest or realize they are being fooled. (Liberal versions of this phenomenon were rampant during the early months of the Trump administration when dozens of Twitter accounts claiming to be controlled by “rogue” employees of federal agencies went viral.) QAnon supporters await the arrival of Donald Trump for a rally at Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 2018. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images QAnon might have faded away as well, were it not for the dedicated work of three conspiracy theorists who latched on to it at the very beginning and translated it into a digestible narrative for mainstream social media networks. A 2018 investigation by NBC News uncovered how this trio worked together to promote and profit off QAnon, turning it into the broad, multi-platform internet phenomenon that it is today. There now exists an entire QAnon media ecosystem, with enormous amounts of video content, memes, e-books, chatrooms, and more, all designed to snare the interest of potential recruits, then draw them “down the rabbit hole” and into QAnon’s alternate reality. How many people believe in QAnon? And who are they? Nobody knows, but we think it’s fair to say at least 100,000 people. Experts in conspiracy theories point out that belief in QAnon is far from common. While at one point, 80% of Americans believed a conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination, a poll by Pew Research in March found that 76% of Americans had never heard of QAnon and just 3% knew “a lot” about it. The largest Facebook groups dedicated to QAnon had approximately 200,000 members in them before Facebook banned them in mid-August. When Twitter took similar action against QAnon accounts in July, it limited features for approximately 150,000 accounts. In June, a Q drop that contained a link to a year-old Guardian article resulted in approximately 150,000 page views over the next 24 hours. These are rough figures to draw a conclusion from, but in the absence of better data, they hint at the scale of the online movement. In general, QAnon appears to be most popular among older Republicans and evangelical Christians. There are subcultures within QAnon for people who approach studying Q drops in a manner similar to Bible study. Other followers appear to have come to QAnon from New Age spiritual movements, from more traditional conspiracy theory communities, or from the far right. Since adulation for Trump is a prerequisite, it is almost exclusively a conservative movement, though the #SaveTheChildren campaign is helping it make inroads among non-Trump supporters (see below). QAnon has spread to Latin America and Europe, where it appears to be catching on among certain far-right movements. Why does QAnon matter? First, there’s the threat of violence. For those who truly believe that powerful figures are holding children hostage in order to exploit them sexually or for their blood, taking action to stop the abuse can seem like a moral imperative. While most QAnon followers will not engage in violence, many already have, or have attempted to, which is why the FBI has identified the movement as a potential domestic terror threat. Participation in QAnon also often involves vicious online harassment campaigns against perceived enemies, which can have serious consequences for the targets. QAnon is also gaining traction as a political force in the Republican party, which could have real and damaging effects on American democracy. Media Matters has compiled a list of 77 candidates for congressional seats who have indicated support for QAnon and at least one of them, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, will in all likelihood be elected in November. People march during a ‘Save the Children’ rally outside the Capitol building on 22 August in St Paul, Minnesota. Photograph: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images As the hero of the overall narrative, Trump has the unique ability to influence QAnon believers. On 19 August, at a White House press briefing, he was given the opportunity to debunk the theory once and for all. Instead, he praised QAnon followers as patriots and appeared to affirm the central premise of the belief, saying: “If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it; I’m willing to put myself out there, and we are, actually. We’re saving the world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country and, when this country is gone, the rest of the world will follow.” QAnon believers were jubilant. Didn’t you mention #SaveTheChildren? What’s that all about? Participating in QAnon is largely made up of “research” – ie learning more about the byzantine theories or decoding Q drops – and evangelism. Most of the proselytization relies on media manipulation tactics designed to catch users’ attention and send them into a controlled online media environment where they will become “redpilled” through consuming pro-QAnon content. QAnon followers have for years used a wide range of online tactics to achieve virality and garner mainstream media coverage, including making “documentaries” full of misinformation, hijacking trending hashtags with QAnon messaging, showing up at Trump rallies with Q signs, or running for elected office. A very potent iteration of this tactic emerged this summer with the #SaveTheChildren or #SaveOurChildren campaign. The innocuous sounding hashtag, which had previously been used by anti-child-trafficking NGOs, has been flooded with emotive content by QAnon adherents hinting at the broader QAnon narrative. (It doesn’t help that the debate around human trafficking is already full of bogus statistics.) On Facebook, anxiety over children due to the coronavirus pandemic, a resurgent anti-vaxx movement, and QAnon-fueled scaremongering about child trafficking have all combined to inspire a modern-day moral panic, somewhat akin to the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s. Hundreds of real-life “Save Our Children” protests have been organized on Facebook in communities across the US (and around the world). These small rallies are in turn driving local news coverage by outlets who don’t realize that by publishing news designed to “raise awareness” about child trafficking, they are encouraging their readers or viewers to head to the internet, where a search for “save our children” could send them straight down the QAnon rabbit hole.

Former President Donald Trump may no longer be in the public eye now that he has departed the White House but apparently, his face is still being seen all over the world, namely in China these days. Although Trump is typically associated with his signature red "Make America Great Again" hats, Chinese people are actually buying statues of the former president but the 14-foot monuments serve a relatively different purpose. According to The Guardian, Trump Buddha statues are now being sold for 999 Chinese yuan (£110 GBP/$150 USD) on the Alibaba-owned Chinese eCommerce platform, Taobao. The statue reportedly shows Trump with his "hands folded in his laps, thumbs pointing outwards, is a pose from Buddhist art that signifies meditation and contemplation." More than 100 of the statues have been produced thus far. So what do the statues signify for buys? In an interview with The Global Times, one buyer explained that the statue of the twice-impeached president serves as a "humble reminder not to be 'too Trump'" The latest statues come just months after another popular set of Trump novelty items made their way to the Etsy marketplace. Those items, currently being sold by a seller in the United Kingdom (U.K.), featured a "3D-printed bright orange Trump Buddha." On the site, the seller explained that the novelty items were not politically-inspired. Like the statues being sold in China, the seller notes that the novelty items also serve as a reminder of the priceless things were could all benefit from. "The Trump Buddha is not intended to stir up anything political. In fact, this Laughing Buddha mashup is simply a reminder that no matter where we fall in the political spectrum, we could all use a little more laughter and joy in our lives!"

Donald Trump is not known for his calm and peaceful demeanour, but that hasn’t stopped one entrepreneurial furniture-maker in China from casting a statue of the former US president in a pose more readily associated with the Buddha. The Trump Buddha statue, listed on the Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao, is priced at 999 Chinese yuan (£110 GBP/$150 USD) for the small version, which measures 16cm tall. A larger version, listed as 46cm tall, is available for 3,999 yuan (£440/$610). The statue, with Trump’s hands folded in his laps, thumbs pointing outwards, is a pose from Buddhist art that signifies meditation and contemplation, something the 74-year-old has had more time for since leaving the White House in January for his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida. The Trump Buddha statue shows Donald Trump in a meditative pose. Photograph: Zamuyu/Taobao China’s state-owned Global Times paper first reported on the product and spoke to the seller, based in Xiamen, Fujian province, who is promoting the statue with the slogan “Make your company great again!” The seller said they had already sold “dozens” of the 100 statues manufactured so far. One buyer told the Global Times they had bought the statue as a humble reminder not to be “too Trump”. Trump – whose name can be rendered in two different spellings in Chinese –特朗普 for Tèlǎngpǔ or 川普 for Chuānpǔ – is a popular source of merchandise on the Taobao website, where users can buy Trump facemasks, models, little statues, hats, socks and more. Taobao, owned by Alibaba, has yearly retail sales said to exceed the combined e-commerce sales of all US companies. By 2016 more than 1bn products were available on the site. It’s not the first time the twice-impeached former president of the US has been rendered in a Buddha pose. Novelty gifts of a 3D-printed bright orange Trump Buddha are available on the craft website Etsy, where the seller says: “The Trump Buddha is not intended to stir up anything political. In fact, this Laughing Buddha mashup is simply a reminder that, no matter where we fall in the political spectrum, we could all use a little more laughter and joy in our lives!”

If you have the Buddhist gift of living in the here-and-now, share it. It’s your friends’ best, perhaps only, hope. Before I tell you more about how to cure your friends’ alcoholism, based on my experiences in my local bar in Brooklyn, let me dispatch with the worlds of alcoholism/addiction treatment and alcohol policy. Don’t worry—it won’t take long! A few decades ago, the world’s most famous alcohol epidemiologist and policy wonk* wrote the following: “In comparing Scotland and the United States, on the one hand, with developing countries like Mexico and Zambia … we were struck with how much more responsibility Mexicans and Zambians gave to family and friends in dealing with alcohol problems, and how ready Americans and Scots were to cede responsibility for these human problems to official agencies or to professionals. . . Studying the period since 1950 in seven industrialized countries (including California), a period in which alcohol consumption grew, we were struck by the concomitant growth of treatment provision in all these countries. The provision of treatment, we felt, became a societal alibi for the dismantling of long-standing structures of control of drinking behavior, both formal and informal.” In other words, as we look to treatment to solve our addiction problems, we export them to Betty Ford, without realizing that the only solution is for families and friendship groups to change altogether. Our dominant narrative is both wrong and the major cause of our national addiction epidemic. Now that I’ve resolved America’s misguided treatment fixation, let me return to my local bar, where I hang out with a couple of musicians, occasionally joined by one of their wives (who grew up in Europe). The three of them probably drink too much—but none is an alcoholic. All of them are too involved with their work, their marriages, their friendships with one another and others in the community to fall into that category. I am closest to one of these men. He is a highly respected musician who is always working. In addition, he throws himself into his friendships, his marriage, and the accoutrements of his life, including alcohol and food. My friend is a true-life philosopher, one from whom I gain daily affirmations. He’s not Buddhist. But his thinking contains strong Buddhist elements. While he claims to believe my views, I don’t think really understands them. He knows I’m anti-AA and pro-harm reduction. But he doesn’t get the essence of my ideas about addiction. He does, however, illustrate them perfectly in the way that he lives his life. *** Buddhist Vignette #1—Addiction Is In the Life, Not the Thing My friend, during a discussion with a third person, asks me, “Are painkillers addictive?” I answer: “Have you ever taken painkillers?” “Yes, but I don’t like them, and I try to stay away from them.” I then launch into my rap about how the psychiatric manual, DSM-5, calls only one thing an addiction: gambling. My friend: “Really? I could never sit somewhere throwing money away on gambling. It has no appeal for me.” Buddhist moral: Addiction is not in the thing. It is in the life and outlook of the person who uses the thing. (Although, their addictions are not them.) *** Buddhist Vignette #2—The Perfection of Imperfection My friend decides to go hardware shopping. He ends up at the bar with me. “My wife [she doesn’t go to the bar] is cleaning up our office, putting everything into piles. But then I can never find anything! I like stuff splayed around the room!” “Anyhow, in order to get out of there, I told her I’d go out to buy some storage bins. She said, ‘Don’t make any detours!’” “But the bar is directly on the route I was going!“ (Big horse-laugh.) He then proceeds on a discourse about Brooklyn hardware and bargain supply stores where he shops, while he has one beer, then leaves. Buddhist moral: My friend married his wife after he had decided he would probably end up single. “Then I stopped searching for perfection. I also abandoned the idea that I had to be the knight in shining armor for a woman. She’s fine the way she is. And I’m good enough. I revel in the perfection of our imperfection.” *** Buddhist Vignette #3—Finding Life on Side Streets (Yet Having Purpose) My friend announced enthusiastically at the bar: “I found the best Mexican restaurant on Sunday, over on 14th Street! My wife wanted to go to Costco, which is a couple of miles away. I said, ‘We should walk.’ and she agreed.” “On the way back, we took a little side street I didn’t know about, and we found the greatest little Mexican restaurant. They make all the ingredients themselves.” He proceeds with a loving description of every dish they had, and how cheap each one was. Me: “How did your wife like the place?” “She loved it—can’t wait to go back. She left a giant tip.” Buddhist moral: When you live in the here-and-now, you are able to find life on the side streets. And that’s where life really is. Or at least, some of it—it’s also found in his purpose and mission in making creative, beautiful music that he and I love. Several times I have prevailed on him to take out his horn and play at the bar—including with my family on my birthday. *** Despite my friend’s inherent wisdom, this group of people I drink with, knowing my specialty, now wants me to solve the alcoholism of another friend of theirs. I haven’t met him. But they feel that I will have the key to his problem. I note from their descriptions that he is not involved in an intimate relationship, nor does he have occupying, meaningful work. And when they all get together with him, it is nearly always at a bar, not in some other engaging activity. How to tell them: “I can’t cure your friend’s alcoholism. You, as his friends, stand to offer him a better pathway out of his condition than I ever could in a session or two.” Next time I stop by for a drink with them all, my task will be to change their focus from me as rescuing hero to themselves as the man’s friends. *Robin Room, the author of the quote, has long since refocused his efforts on reducing the world’s alcohol consumption by (a) raising the price on alcohol, (b) raising the drinking age in those weird Southern European countries that allow people to drink at age 16 (truth be told, the drinking age is even lower in Spain, Italy, France, Portugal and Greece). Room and his colleagues at the World Health Organization are virtually all from Scandinavian or English-speaking countries (so-called “temperance cultures”). They are not in the least deterred by two remarkable epidemiological findings. First is the inverse correlation across Western Europe between the amount of alcohol consumed and alcohol problems in a country. Nordic countries, which consume the least alcohol, have the most such problems, while Southern European countries, which consume the most, have the fewest. How does that work? In Nordic countries, people drink spirits on special occasions, when they binge. In Mediterranean countries, they drink, mainly wine, regularly and moderately with meals amidst family and friends. And, second, when Sweden, as a member of the EU, was forced to reduce traditionally high tariffs on alcohol imported from mainland Europe, drinking problems were reduced as Swedes began imitating their Southern neighbors’ more moderate drinking habits.

President Donald Trump’s vice president and secretary of state appear to have a conflict between their private religious beliefs and their public duties, according to a financial journalist. Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo are each a “genuine, end-of-days, believer in the apocalypse,” and Financial Times journalist Edward Luce said their religious beliefs about the end times exerts a troubling influence on their duties. “Generally I believe a public figure’s beliefs should be irrelevant to their job,” Luce wrote. “Whether they’re atheist, Opus Dei, Buddhist or Muslim, should have no bearing on our assessment of their fitness for office. Yet I can’t help but feel anxious that both of Donald Trump’s main global envoys, Pompeo and Pence, have a conflict between their private beliefs and what they publicly claim to be doing.” Luce argued that both Trump administration officials were part of a “millenarian cult,” and he worried their “militant creed” would influence their public policies to spark a “final conflagration in which the righteous will vanquish the wicked.” “Call me a serial fretter, but I don’t take comfort from the fact that Pence is a heartbeat away from being commander-in-chief,” Luce wrote. “Nor do I see Pompeo as one of the grown-ups restraining Trump. He’s an enabler, not a preventer. Where Trump goes, Pompeo will follow. Let’s hope Trump never gets religion.” Read more of Luce’s column here.

Lorie Ladd gazes into the camera with glossy eyes, a look that mimics the long stare one gets after meditating. She's about to give one one of her sermons, one of "most challenging" ones she's ever had to make, she explains. Ladd says she's received a message that needs to be shared from "higher dimensional consciousnesses," what she refers to as the "Galactic Federation of Light." But before revealing the message, Ladd, a self-described "ascension teacher," advises her viewers to shed the stereotypes that have been "programmed" into them — "polarities," she calls them, like "Democrat" and "Republican" — and listen to her message: Donald Trump is a "massive and powerful lightworker." "To say that I was shocked was an understatement," Ladd tells her nearly 139,000 YouTube followers of her revelation. "I have been digesting information from my guides about what this lightworker in human form looking like Donald Trump has been doing for the human collective; this man has more charge around him than any other human on the planet right now." Ladd goes on to explain that her video isn't a "political one," but a "consciousness one," and that she's not talking about "voting," but "ascension." Trump, as she explains in the next half hour, is here to help assist humans in what many in the New Age and spiritual communities refer to as a great "awakening" of consciousness. The idea behind the awakening is that human consciousness is approaching a "fifth dimension," which will eventually bring humans closer to the "Source." A lightworker, as defined by well-being magazine Happiness, is someone who feels "an enormous pull towards helping others." The term, they say, can be interchangeable with "crystal babies," "indigos," "Earth angels" and "star seeds"; "these spiritual beings volunteer to act as a beacon for the Earth, and commit to serving humanity," the story continues. This rhetoric might sound cultish, but these phrases don't belong to any one specific religious sect. Indeed, such belief systems are part of a larger, more diffuse New Age culture embraced by the ever-increasing number of Americans leaving organized religion in droves — or who were never religious in the first place — and turning to conspirituality by way of many self-described spiritual and wellness influencers online. Conspirituality, the term that defines this movement, was coined by researcher Charlotte Ward. She describes conspirituality as "a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fueled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews." There is no official indoctrination video, no book to read; the hundreds of thousands of people who embrace these New Age-like beliefs find them on YouTube vlogs like Ladd's, as well as Instagram and Facebook. Recently, conspiritualists have begun to overlap with the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon. This notion that Trump is a lightworker shares obvious parallels with the belief, held by some evangelicals, that Trump is comparable to Jesus; similarly, some QAnon followers believe that Trump is the "world leader" whose mission is to "save the children." Yet what makes the lightworker theory especially odd is that it has emerged from a demographic that would have previously been described as apolitical, or even far-left. However, as the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol showed, QAnon and Trump adherents no longer middle-aged, conservative white men like the Republican Party of yore. Many of those who embrace right-wing fringe beliefs are yogis, woo-woo, love-and-light types, too. Take Jake Angeli for example, the so-called "QAnon Shaman" who donned a horned hat and spear-tipped American flag as he stormed the Capitol building on January 6. The 33-year-old, who identifies as having "shamanistic" beliefs, was recently granted the right to be fed an all-organic diet in jail in line with his religious practice. Ladd's declaration that Trump was a lightworker sent shockwaves through conspiritual and self-help communities. (Salon reached out to Ladd for comment, but did not receive a response.) Some spirituality and consciousness bloggers vehemently disagreed. But many influential figures in the community thought Ladd was onto something, including Christiane Northrup, a physician and best-selling author who has been spreading anti-vaccination rhetoric and has embraced QAnon. Matthew Remski, a co-host of the Conspirituality podcast and a cult dynamics researcher, described Northrup as a "conspirituality aggregator" who feeds what she finds most interesting to her followers, of which she has many. "What I think is really brilliant about this particular iteration of QAnon — or 'soft' or 'pastel Q,' you could call it — is that it's really effective at evading content moderation," Remski said. "To only really say something positive about the person who's at the head of QAnon mythology and sort of soft-pedal all of the aggression and triumph that is going to be involved in his mission is a really good way of brand-washing QAnon for the wellness set." Indeed, while social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have suspended many accounts sharing QAnon-related disinformation, the wellness influencers remain. Dr. Ronald Purser, a professor of management at San Francisco State University and the author of "McMindfulness," said that in uncertain times, societies see a rise of "occultures," meaning "groups of people who are attracted to strange occult and esoteric ideas, mixing them in unforeseen ways with political movements." "A common theme in such movements is the need for purification, purifying and purging unwanted elements – toxins, impurities, or anything foreign or other," Purser said. "This is why we see so many New Age yoga practitioners seduced by QAnon." Purser said there are parallels between the rise of "occultures" now and the role spirituality and mysticism played in Nazi Germany. Notably, the Third Reich appropriated the swastika, a symbol used by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains; the word means "well-being" in Sanskrit. "Consider Hitler, who was obsessed with the occult, was a vegetarian, used astrologers [and] oracles," Purser said. "The Nazi Heinrich Himmler, head of SS, was enamored with Eastern mysticism, and he sent an expedition to Tibet in search of lost remnants of a secret and pure Aryan race; Hitler was seen as a 'light worker' [as in someone who's saving humanity] that would purge Germany of Jews." Purser added that Trump and his enablers have "mastered the ability of weaponized mass delusion through social media." "Many of the New Agers drawn to QAnon are probably suffering from unresolved trauma – like many in Trump's base as well," Purser said. "It's easier to look to a savior and to find scapegoats than to face one's own fears and pain." When asked about the term lightworker, and where it derives from, Remski said he first heard it when he was in a "Course in Miracles" cult from 1999 to 2003. The name is a reference to a book, titled "A Course in Miracles," that was published by Helen Schucman in 1976; Schucman claimed the book had been spoken to her via "inner dictation" from Christ. Remski said the word "light" appears in the text frequently. "Light is not only the sort of keynote of this Manichaean universe in which things are either light or shadow, they're either good or bad, it's also like schizotypal as a universe, it is given this materiality as well," Remski said of Schucman's book. "Light is said to be something that can fill a person up, it can blow a person apart, it can enter a person, and I think it probably overlaps with some pre-modern ideas like prana or ch'i — those kind of folk medicine ideas of vital force — but it's also associated with an absolute truth, an ontological transformation . . . like once once light enters into you, you are forever changed." While the book "A Course in Miracles" doesn't include the term "light worker," the theme of light itself runs throughout. "The key is only the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing," a typical passage reads. One prominent figure who was deeply influenced by "A Course in Miracles" is former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. In 1996, Williamson wrote a book, "A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of 'A Course in Miracles,'" that was structured as a reflection on the original text. Williamson, too, has used the term "light worker" before; in a 2013 Facebook post, Williamson wrote, "A light-worker is not someone who ignores the darkness; it's someone who transforms the darkness." Obviously, Williamson and Trump are political opposites; Williamson, a Democrat, came down hard and repeatedly on Trump's policies during her 2020 campaign. Salon asked Williamson what she thought about the term "lightworker" being used to describe Trump. She replied via email: "I think it's insane. . . . Like many others, I don't understand it but I find it deeply disturbing." When asked why he believes people have been so eager to embrace this belief that Trump is a "lightworker," Remski said that it is because it can "offer all of the benefits of the conspiratorial mindset, without a lot of the drawbacks." "Because you're saying something kind about him," Remski said, "as the social psychologists basically repeat over and over again." Remski believes conspiracy theories are attractive because they "satisfy epistemic needs." "Like, 'I'm now I'm going to know something that nobody else knows,' or 'I'm going to meet my survival needs, meaning this information is going to help me tolerate what's happening, but also maybe even preserve me from danger,'" he said. But as the social media spread of the "lightworker" theory illustrates, conspiracy theories also open up their adherents to communities of people that they can hang out with, Remski mused.

A museum has been forced to remove its statue of former President Donald Trump as a result of it being punched by visitors. According to Talking Points Memo, Louis Tussaud's Waxworks in San Antonio, Texas, has removed its Trump statue from public view and placed it in a storage closet. In a statement to the San Antonio Express-News, Clay Stewart—the Regional Manager for the museum's parent company Ripley's Entertainment—confirmed the physical damage to Trump's statue. The publication reports that the wax figure, namely the former president's face, had been "punched, scratched and beaten." He also noted that political affiliation can also increase the possibility of physical damage to their figures. "When it's a highly political figure, attacks can be a problem," Stewart said. Suzanne Smagala-Potts, the public relations manager for Ripley Entertainment, also spoke with My San Antonio where she discussed the museum's policy which allows for visitors to interact with their life-like figures. She noted that, in many cases, visitors are encouraged to take photos with the wax figures. "We have a very open policy with our wax museums, we want them to be interactive," Smagala-Potts told the publication. "Visitors often like to touch the life-like figures and are encouraged to pose for selfies. It is not uncommon for wax statues to be returned to a team of artists for touch-ups." At this point, it is unclear whether or not a Trump statue will return to public view at the museum. However, multiple inside sources familiar with the company have revealed that there is a possibility it may return when the museum "unveils a wax figure of President Joe Biden."

A Trump statue has caught on with China’s online shopping community. Picture: SCMP/agency

Buddha statue of Trump. Photo: Sina Weibo After he stepped down from office, Donald Trump might have faded away from Chinese people's minds. But instead, a statue of Donald Trump as Buddha is trending on an online shopping platform, with the slogan "make your company great again!"The statue, with Trump's contemplative face lowered, and both hands resting in its lap, is labeled by the seller on Taobao as "Trump, who knows Buddhism better than anyone." The item is priced ranging from 999 yuan ($153) to 3,999 yuan, depending on its size.The seller said that the idea of the Trump Buddha statue reminded him of Trump's slogan of "Make American Great Again" and the former US president often claimed he knew things better than anyone. So the seller adapted the idea into something auspicious for Chinese companies: "make your company great again.""Most people just bought it for fun," the seller told the Global Times, noting that they only made 100 of the statues and have already sold dozens.A buyer in Shanghai, who wished not to be named, told the Global Times that he bought one of the statues after seeing the product in a WeChat moment."I bought it for fun and put it on my desk at home as a decoration," he said. "Trump can also be regarded as a representative of an era, and extreme egoism. Now the era has passed but I want the statue to remind me: Don't be too Trump."Global Times

It's part of a new push by Democrats after taking control of the Senate. The House on Thursday passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, a measure that would require universal background checks on all commercial gun sales, part of a new push for gun control after Democrats won control of the Senate. Some Republicans strongly objected to the expanded checks, one saying they're "meant to turn law-abiding citizens into criminals." Despite their criticism, eight Republicans backed the bill, which passed 227-203. The universal background check legislation was introduced in March by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., who is chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, has three GOP cosponsors. "These two pieces of legislation will go a long way in improving gun violence," Thompson said at a press conference shortly before the bill passed Thursday morning. Thompson also touted the efficacy of background checks, while surrounded by lawmakers who support the bill, including Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., whose son was a victim of gun violence. The bill is the work of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force which was created in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The legislation was originally introduced and passed by the House in early 2019 but was never considered by the Republican-controlled Senate. The House voted 219-210, mostly along party lines, to pass a gun control measure introduced by Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C to extend the the waiting period for background checks to 10 days. The bill would close the "Charleston loophole," which allows the sale of a gun if a background check hasn’t been done in three days. The name was coined after the loophole allowed shooter Dylann Roof to obtain a gun for a massacre in a Charleston church that killed nine people. Clyburn discussed bill shortly before it passed in the House Thursday morning. "You know, I get a little emotional when I think about the Charleston loophole because there's nothing more sacred in the lives of most people than their church," Clyburn said. "However, he still should not have had the gun and the reason he had the gun is because when he went to purchase it and the three days expired, as the current law allows, they had not been able to verify the information he had given them, and therefore could not complete the background check,” Clyburn said Wednesday during House floor debate on the legislation. "This law would have prevented [Roof] from getting a gun." The bills did face ire from Republican House members not in support of expanded background checks. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said in a tweet that “universal background checks on guns are only meant to turn law-abiding citizens into criminals." Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., also took issue with Clyburn’s legislation, and during debate on the House floor Wednesday, said it was not fair. "Is it fair to surround yourself with armed guards, with Capitol Police who have guns, with personnel details, bodyguards and ask the people to pay for it while you make it harder for those same people to protect themselves? I don’t think that’s fair," Massie said. After the two bills were introduced, President Joe Biden threw his weight behind the effort, saying in a tweet that he is committed to "passing common-sense gun safety reforms as president." Though both bills will likely pass in the House, they will face an embattled passage in the 50-50 split Senate. Though some moderate Democrats and Republicans, like Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., have put forward background check bills in the past. ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.

Amid growing concerns about violent clashes between protesters across the country, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins on Tuesday suggested in a social-media post that armed demonstrators at Louisiana protests should be met with deadly force. In a Facebook post Tuesday that featured a picture of Black men carrying assault-style weapons and other tactical gear, Higgins, R-Lafayette, said that anyone arriving in the state "aggressively natured and armed" would have a "one way ticket." "I'd drop any 10 of you where you stand," said the post, which was removed not long after appearing on Higgins' official campaign account. "Nothing personal. We just eliminate the threat. We don't care what color you are. We don't care if you're left or right. if you show up like this, if We recognize threat...you won't walk away." Facebook removed the post for breaking the company's "Violence and Incitement" policies, a company spokesperson confirmed late Tuesday. Such action by Facebook against a sitting member of Congress or other high-profile politicians is extremely rare. The picture Higgins attached was taken from news coverage of an armed group of protesters marching in Louisville earlier this summer to protest the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid. "We don't want to see your worthless ass nor do we want to make your Mothers cry," Higgins wrote. Higgins is a loud champion of gun rights — including the right to openly carry firearms in public, which is legal in Louisiana — and regularly wears a handgun while in the state. Neither Higgins nor a spokesman for his congressional office responded to numerous messages Tuesday and Wednesday. The post by Higgins came amid protests in Lafayette over the death of Trayford Pellerin, who was shot and killed by Lafayette police on Evangeline Thruway on Aug. 21. Protesters have also denounced Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory's response to Pellerin's death, expressing no sympathy for Pellerin's family in his initial statement. Around the time Higgins' post went up, 40 to 50 heavily armed members of a right-wing militia group — the Louisiana Cajun Militia, which formed four years ago to oppose the removal of Confederate monuments — showed up at a Tuesday night Black Lives Matter demonstration outside Lafayette City Hall. Members of the group said they attended the demonstration to protect protesters, though a man identifying himself as the group's commander, Michael "Sauce" McComas, also told a reporter with the Daily Advertiser that "we’re just not gonna let them go around burning flags and intimidating.” McComas also told The Advocate that members of the militia had quarrelled with members of Black Lives Matter in the past over the question of what to do with Confederate monuments. The militia group that showed up in Lafayette on Tuesday evening, composed of White men, was geared up in much the same manner as the Black protesters in Louisville pictured in Higgins' Facebook post. Higgins made no mention of the Louisiana Cajun Militia group and didn't respond to questions about their presence. The Black Lives Matter protest outside Lafayette City Hall was a peaceful affair and featured a barbecue, a jab at Guillory after a demonstrator was arrested over the weekend after setting up a grill on the street outside Guillory's house to cook hot dogs and hamburgers in a stunt aimed at luring the parish leader outside to talk. +2 Lafayette mayor refuses to meet with protesters outside his home: 'That's not good trouble' Protesters in Lafayette and Mayor-President Josh Guillory and his administration continue to be at odds over community response to the police … U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, called Higgins' comments "disappointing, but not surprising" and "a clear adolescent ploy designed to stoke fear, incite violence, garner social media clicks and raise money for his campaign." Richmond said it's "rare that members of the same congressional delegation openly criticize each other" but that "Higgins' dumb and reckless Facebook post requires serious condemnation." Rob Anderson, a Democrat who's running against Higgins in the November election after unsuccessfully challenging him in 2018, ripped Higgins over the post and said he'd reported it to law enforcement. "No elected official in this nation in any office should be responsible for drumming up violence where there is no violence," Anderson said in a statement. "What Congressman Higgins has done with his words inciting violence is to rally those who believe his words to arm themselves, and come into our district looking for war." The Anti-Defamation League also condemned Higgins' "dangerous" Facebook post. "It’s reprehensible that a sitting member of Congress would take to social media and openly advocate for violence," said Aaron Ahlquist, the group's regional director. "This behavior is dangerous and indefensible." Higgins doubled down on his removed message Tuesday night after it was removed by Facebook and appeared to take aim at the company. "America is being manipulated into a new era of government control. Your liberty is threatened from within," Higgins wrote in his follow-up post on Facebook. "Welcome to the front lines, Ladies and Gentlemen. I suggest you get your mind right. I’ll advise when it’s time gear up, mount up, and roll out.” That post was removed by Facebook on Wednesday. Link: Former Opelousas officer who lied to cover for Clay Higgins is now on the congressman's payroll Higgins, a former policeman and sheriff's deputy in St. Landry Parish, was disciplined by his commanding officer in Opelousas after he struck a handcuffed Black man and then lied about it amid an internal probe. He remains a certified law enforcement officer in Louisiana and currently holds a commission through Attorney General Jeff Landry's office. A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office also did not respond to messages about the post. -Staff writer Ken Stickney contributed to this report.

Netflix's "Murder Among the Mormons" co-directors Jared Hess and Tyler Measom were both young — six and 14, respectively — when a series of Salt Lake City bombings killed several high-profile members of the Mormon church in 1985. The murders drew national attention to the church, which, after a century of being viewed as a sort of "outsider religion" plagued by 19th-century extermination orders and persecution campaigns, had become and remains one of the fastest-growing denominations in the United States. The violent nature of the crimes was a juxtaposition against a religious group that is often caricatured for its unrelenting optimism (as David Foster Wallace once wrote, "There's always a Mormon around when you don't want one, trying your patience with unsolicited kindness"), and as such, the bombings captured tabloid attention, which quickly gave way to conspiracy theories. "Nobody knew what was going on," Hess told Salon in an interview. "Because of that, it was a really uncomfortable time for so many people. Everyone was trying to get to the bottom of this tragedy, the likes of which Salt Lake City had never really experienced before." Speculation continued. Was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints actually behind the bombings? Or was it tied to the impending collapse of an investment business with which two of the bombing victims were involved? The real answer, which is comprehensively outlined over the gripping three-episode true crime docuseries, is stranger than fiction. And it's a story that many Americans either never knew or don't clearly remember. It starts with Mark Hofmann, a master forger who had initially made a name for himself in the burgeoning Mormon antiquities market. He launched his career by selling "found" documents about the early LDS Church to collectors, or the Church itself, and was known by some at the time as the "Indiana Jones" or a "rock star" of Mormon documents. But then, in 1984, he produced what was later termed the "Salamander Letter." The correspondence describes how Joseph Smith found golden plates, which later resulted in the Book of Mormon, with the help of what the letter described as "a seer stone, a kind of magical looking-glass." The letter also said Smith was initially barred from gaining possession of the plates by an "old spirit" that "transfigured himself from a white salamander." This stood in opposition to the early church's claims that it was the angel Moroni who had appeared to Smith and told him about the buried ancient record that would later become the Book of Mormon, and the fear was that the "Salamander Letter" would call into question Smith's spiritual experience by associating it with folk magic. "I think when a lot of these documents were 'discovered,' it was really disrupting for the church, because it called into question the basis of what the church was, its history and founding," said Hess. "[The LDS Church leaders] had never dealt with anything like this before." That revelation could potentially cause a huge rift in the denomination. Hofmann anticipated this fear and acted to suppress the letter, but then his life, finances and work came under increased scrutiny — and secrets began to emerge from his past, sparking violence. "There's no other true crime saga out there like this," Hess said. "There are the murders, the forgeries and the religious aspects of it. And it was important to tell it from the perspective of people who lived it." According to Hess, who is still a member of the Mormon church, and Measom, who left the faith years ago, the initial title of the series was "The Salamander," and then later "The Salamander Murders," but they were ultimately influenced by the streaming service to change it. "I think clearer is better for Netflix true crime," Hess said. "There was this question of 'Is it about killing lizards? What is it about?' But there was this clip of archival news from the time, I think it was a national news report about all the attention on Utah, that said, 'There's murder among the Mormons.' And that was it." Measom continued with a laugh: "Plus, we like alliteration." The new title is more conspicuous, which Hess and Measom anticipate could turn off some potential viewers. "But I think anytime you're doing a film about a particular group, people are going to be nervous," Measom said. "You could say you're doing a film about a country club, and if someone is a member, they're going to be at least a little nervous about how it's portrayed." However, one of the ultimate goals of the series, Hess said, was to clarify the events surrounding the Salt Lake City bombings which, while becoming part of the church's collective mythology, are largely unremembered by the mainstream public. That was what drew him to the project after nearly two decades of making offbeat comedies like "Napoleon Dynamite," "Nacho Libre" and "Don Verdean," a 2015 comedy lightly based on Hofmann's forgeries about an archeologist who, after being bankrolled by an evangelical pastor, searches for items that can prove that the stories from the Bible are true. "We showed it to several people during production, including my brother and some other people who are also LDS, and they said that it was educational and that it helped 'clear the air' regarding some of the details of the bombings," Hess said. "It's a true crime story that just has so many layers to it." But the docuseries isn't just a reflection on the history of a crime. A major, contemporary theme woven throughout "Murder Among the Mormons" is how susceptible people are to disinformaion when they want to believe something simply because it supports an existing point of view, much like how Hofmann found eager buyers for his earlier forged documents. "We are all surrounded by so much information, it's everywhere, and people could do so much research — and they just don't," Measom said. "And what Mark found in his forgery victims were people who were willing buyers, people who were susceptible to that disinformation, because they were blinded by their own faith or beliefs or sometimes greed. He even says at one point, 'When somebody says something is real, it becomes real.'" And, "Murder Among the Mormons" quietly asserts, we could all be similarly taken. Not that we'd necessarily rack up thousands of dollars of debt to purchase purported Mormon antiquities, but for all of us, there's likely a point that we would take an ill-advised leap of faith, without fact-checking, simply because doing so supports the beliefs we currently hold. With that in mind, the series overwhelmingly eschews salaciousness for compassion in its retelling of the Salt Lake City bombings. One of the reasons the series is able to achieve that tone is because "Murder Among the Mormons" offers unprecedented access to people who were intimately familiar with Hofmann and the bombing victims, including Brent Metcalfe, a historian who did research for Hofmann; Dorie Olds, Hofmann's ex-wife; Randy Rigby, a close friend of one of the bombing victims; Richard E. Turley Jr., a Latter-day Saint historian; and Ken Sanders, a Salt Lake City-based expert in rare books and antiquities. Many of those interviewed for the series were still emotional about the tragedy, the filmmakers said, largely because it was underpinned by fundamental questions about faith, religion and skepticism, which are also often private topics in American culture. You see hints of this as soon as the documentary opens on a visibly upset Shannon Flynn, a rare documents dealer whose voice wavers when he's asked about Hofmann. "Can I ask a favor?" he says. "Don't make me answer that. Don't make me answer that. Let someone else do it. I don't want to make a hero out of him. Because he was fantastic." Hess and Measom said that getting people to open up was a process. It helped that they were both raised in the LDS church, currently lived in Salt Lake City and had been toying with the idea for a documentary project about the "Salamander Letter" for almost a decade. Measom also has a track record of exceptionally thoughtful work about Mormonism, including the longform NPR radio documentary "Wives Tale," a short documentary about a love story between a Mormon missionary and a communist in 1974 called "Elder," and "Sons of Perdition," which "follows three teenage boys after they escape from the secretive FLDS polygamist sect and must fend for themselves in mainstream America." But according to Measom, in the case of "Murder Among the Mormons," the biggest thing they had going for them was time. Living in Salt Lake City, they spent years going to lunch with the individuals whom they would eventually go on to interview. "This wasn't a situation where we just spent an hour with someone to get a quote," he said. "We would sit with them, just asking questions and really listening to their memories and feelings. Think about it — how often do people have the opportunity to tell their stories and have someone really listen?" Hess added: "A lot of the people we spoke with hadn't had to talk about [the events surrounding the bombings] for years, so I think when they started reliving it, and we were listening, the emotions became very fresh again." "Murder Among the Mormons" is currently streaming on Netflix.

On June 1 of this year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – or the Mormons – will celebrate the 40th anniversary of what they believe to be a revelation from God. This revelation to the then-President of the Church Spencer W. Kimball – which is known as “Official Declaration 2” – reversed longstanding restrictions placed on people of black African descent in the church. Advertisement: As a scholar of American religion and Mormonism, I believe this history illustrates the struggle the Mormon church has had with racial diversity – something that the church leadership still grapples with today. Early history of black priesthood and restrictions In the Mormon church, all men above the age of 12 serve in a priestly office, which Mormons call collectively “the priesthood.” Additionally, all Mormons, men and women alike, are taught that the sacramental rituals most essential to their salvation are performed in Mormon temples. Advertisement: The most important of these rituals is a ceremony called “sealing,” in which family relationships are made eternal. Though Mormons believe that virtually all humanity will enjoy some degree of heaven after death, only those in sealed relationships will enter the highest levels of heaven. In the 1830s and 1840s, the earliest years of the church, under the leadership of founder Joseph Smith, African-American men were ordained to the priesthood and historians have identified at least one black man who participated in some temple rituals. Under Smith’s successors, however, these policies were reversed. Advertisement: In 1852 Smith’s immediate successor Brigham Young announced that black men could not hold the priesthood. In the following decades, both black men and black women were barred from temple worship. These policies affected a small number of black Mormons. A small number of enslaved black people had been brought to Utah in the 1840s and 1850s by white Mormons and some were baptized into the church. Slavery was legalized in Utah in 1852 and remained so until the Civil War. There were also free African-Americans who became Mormon. Most prominent was Elijah Abel, a carpenter who joined the church in 1832 and was ordained to priesthood office. He served several missions before his death in 1884. Jane Manning James was a free black woman who became a Mormon in 1841 and followed Brigham Young to Utah. Historians have found records of both Elijah Abel and Jane Manning James requesting permission to be sealed in Mormon temples. Both requests were denied. Advertisement: More generally, after these restrictions came into place, Mormon missionaries avoided proselytizing people of African descent. Justifications for the restriction Young and other Mormon leaders offered various explanations for these decisions. Young, for example, repeated a long-standing folk belief that black people were descended from Cain, a Biblical figure God cursed for murdering his brother. Advertisement: Historical evidence indicates that Young and his colleagues were distressed when black members of the church sought to marry white women. Young seems to have believed that barring black men from the priesthood and both black men and women from the ritual of sealing would prevent racial intermarriage in the church. In the years that followed, other Mormon leaders offered other explanations for the restriction. Some said that black people possessed less righteous souls than white people did. Other Mormons as recently as 2012 suggested that black people had to mature spiritually before they could be allowed full participation in the church. As a result, Mormonism historically attracted few black converts. Advertisement: Global spread of Mormonism By the mid-20th century, church membership was growing rapidly all over the world, and it became obvious that the restrictions on members of African descent were styming church growth. In the 1940s and 1950s, Christian faiths were attracting many converts in West Africa. In Nigeria, some of these African Christians discovered Mormon publications and began writing letters to Mormon leadership requesting baptism into the church, claiming to be attracted by the church’s temple worship and teachings about heaven. Mormon leaders in Utah were torn. As the church’s racial restrictions made it impossible to ordain African men, there could be no congregations established among black Africans. At the same time, the Nigerian government denied visas to Mormon missionaries. In the end, the church could not send missionaries or official congregations, but did dispatch Mormon literature in an attempt to guide African believers. Advertisement: The racial restrictions caused problems elsewhere in Africa as well. In South Africa, for example, converts had to document their genealogy to demonstrate a lack of African ancestry before they could receive ordination to the priesthood or worship in temples. In 1954, Church President David O. McKay issued a directive that unless converts’ appearance indicated black African ancestry, they would be allowed full participation in the church. By the 1960s and 1970s, church missions were expanding in Latin America, particularly in Brazil. As in South Africa, Mormon missionaries were confronted with the issue of determining the ancestry of their converts in a nation where intermarriage was far more common than it was in the United States. Pressures emerged in the United States as well. As the black freedom movement expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, criticisms of the church mounted. Through the late 1960s and early 1970s, university sports teams around the country protested or boycotted playing teams from church-owned Brigham Young University. But the leadership of the church remained was divided over whether to end the priesthood and temple restriction entirely. It was in 1978 that the conflict was resolved when President Kimball announced he had received a revelation from God. Advertisement: The legacy of the restriction today Although the church has ended the restrictions against blacks, they have had lasting effects. Today about one in 10 converts to Mormonism are black, but surveys report that only about 1 to 3 percent of Mormons in the United States are African-American. Despite the changes, African-American members say they still face racial discrimination. In 2012, for example, a professor at Brigham Young University suggested that God had put the earlier ban in place because black people lacked spiritual maturity. Advertisement: Today, church leaders have announced a celebration of Kimball’s revelation under the theme “Be One.” They have called for unity against “prejudice, including racism, sexism, and nationalism.” This language presents a vision of Mormonism far more inclusive than language used in the past. To some African-American members of the church, though, such celebrations seem premature given the persistent presence of racist ideas within the church. Nonetheless, at a time when the church’s growth rates in the United States are slowing down and growth rates in the global South – particularly Africa and Latin America – are rising, the celebrations this June indicate a desire on the part of church leadership to acknowledge the value of its diversity. Kimball’s removal of the priesthood and temple restrictions on people of color may have opened the doors to a modern church, but the decision to celebrate his declaration shows how the church is still grappling with its legacy of racial discrimination. Matthew Bowman, Associate Professor of History, Henderson State University

Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal—only to find their country in an identity crisis. What will the third century of the faith look like? Link Copied Photographs by Michael Friberg Image above: The Oquirrh Mountain Temple sits about 20 miles south of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where the Church is based. This article was published online on December 16, 2020. To meet with the prophet during a plague, certain protocols must be followed. It’s a gray spring morning in Salt Lake City, and downtown Temple Square is deserted, giving the place an eerie, postapocalyptic quality. The doors of the silver-domed tabernacle are locked; the towering neo-Gothic temple is dark. To enter the Church Administration Building, I meet a handler who escorts me through an underground parking garage; past a security checkpoint, where my temperature is taken; up a restricted elevator; and then, finally, into a large, mahogany-walled conference room. After a few minutes, a side door opens and a trim 95-year-old man in a suit greets me with a hygienic elbow bump. “We always start our meetings with a word of prayer,” says Russell M. Nelson, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “So, if we may?” The official occasion for our interview is the Mormon bicentennial: Two centuries ago, a purported opening of the heavens in upstate New York launched one of the most peculiar and enduring religious movements in American history, and Nelson designated 2020 as a year of commemoration. My notebook is full of reporterly questions to ask about the Church’s future, the painful tensions within the faith over race and LGBTQ issues, and the unprecedented series of changes Nelson has implemented in his brief time as prophet. But as we bow our heads, I realize that I’m also here for something else. For the past two months, I’ve been cooped up in quarantine, watching the world melt down in biblical fashion. All the death and pestilence and doomscrolling on Twitter has left me unmoored—and from somewhere deep in my spiritual subconscious, a Mormon children’s song I grew up singing has resurfaced: Follow the prophet, don’t go astray … Follow the prophet, he knows the way. As president of the Church, Nelson is considered by Mormons to be God’s messenger on Earth, a modern heir to Moses and Abraham. Sitting across from him now, some part of me expects a grand and ancient gesture in keeping with this calamitous moment—a raised staff, an end-times prophecy, a summoning of heavenly powers. Instead, he smiles and asks me about my kids. Over the next hour, Nelson preaches a gospel of silver linings. When I ask him about the lockdowns that have forced churches to close, he muses that homes can be “sanctuaries of faith.” When I mention the physical ravages of the virus, he marvels at the human body’s miraculous “defense mechanisms.” Reciting a passage from the Book of Mormon—“Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy”—he offers a reminder that feels like a call to repentance: “There can be joy in the saddest of times.” There is something classically Mormon about this aversion to wallowing. When adversity strikes, my people tend to respond with can-do aphorisms and rolled-up sleeves; with an unrelenting helpfulness that can border on caricature. (Early in the pandemic, when Nelson ordered the Church to suspend all worship services worldwide and start donating its stockpiles of food and medical equipment, he chalked it up to a desire to be “good citizens and good neighbors.”) This onslaught of earnest optimism can be grating to some. “There’s always a Mormon around when you don’t want one,” David Foster Wallace once wrote, “trying your patience with unsolicited kindness.” But it has served the faith well. By pretty much every measure, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has defied the expectations of its early observers. In the years immediately after its founding—as Mormons were being chased across the country by state-sanctioned mobs—skeptics predicted that the movement would collapse before the century was out. Instead, it became one of the fastest-growing religions in the world. The Church now averages nearly 700 converts a day; it has temples in 66 countries and financial reserves rumored to exceed $100 billion. In the past few years, Mormons have become a subject of fascination for their surprising resistance to Trumpism. Unlike most of the religious right, they were decidedly unenthusiastic about Donald Trump. From 2008 to 2016, the Republican vote share declined among Latter-day Saints more than any other religious group in the country. And though Trump won back some of those defectors in 2020, he continued to underperform. Joe Biden did better in Utah than any Democrat since 1964, and Mormon women likely played a role in turning Arizona blue. Scholars have offered an array of theories to explain this phenomenon: that Mormon communities are models of connectedness and trust, that the Church’s unusual structure promotes consensus-building over culture war, that the faith’s early persecution has made its adherents less receptive to nativist appeals. Nelson attributes these qualities to the power of the Church’s teachings. “I don’t think you can separate the good things we do from the doctrine,” he tells me. “It’s not what we do; it’s why we do it.” As a lifelong member of the faith, I can’t help but see a more complicated story. Mormons didn’t become avatars of a Norman Rockwellian ideal by accident. We taught ourselves to play the part over a centuries-long audition for full acceptance into American life. That we finally succeeded just as the country was on the brink of an identity crisis is one of the core ironies of modern Mormonism. The story of the Latter-day Saints begins with a confused teenage boy. It was the spring of 1820, and the town of Palmyra, New York, was in the throes of the Second Great Awakening. Fevered Christian revivals were everywhere. New sects were sprouting, and preachers competed fiercely for converts. To Joseph Smith, a 14-year-old farm boy with little education, the frenzy was at once exhilarating and disorienting. As he would later write in his personal history, he became consumed with the question of which church to join—sampling worship services, consulting scripturians, and growing ever more concerned about the state of his soul. The turning point in his spiritual search came when he was reading the Book of James: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God … and it shall be given him.” Determined to test the thesis, he walked into a grove of trees near his family’s farm and knelt down to ask for guidance. What happened next, according to Smith, would be the catalyst for a new world religion—the literal restoration of Christ’s Church to the Earth. In his own words: I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me … When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! I don’t remember the first time I heard this story, but I do know where I was when I committed it to memory. As a Mormon teenager in suburban Massachusetts, I woke up every morning at 5:30 to attend a “seminary” class held in the bishop’s basement. This was no mark of special devotion on my part; all the Mormon kids were expected to be there, and so all the Mormon kids were, Mormonism being a religion that prizes showing up. Most mornings, we struggled to stay awake while our teacher read from the Bible, but on Fridays, we ate cinnamon rolls and played scripture-memorization games. Our teacher would hold up cue cards with verses scrawled across them, while we repeated the words over and over until we could recite them without looking. Smith’s canonized account of “the first vision” was the longest of the passages, but it was also the most important. The power of his story was in its implausibility. No reasonable person would accept such an outlandish claim on its face—to believe it required faith, a willingness to follow young Joseph’s example. This was how our teacher framed the story, as much object lesson as historical event. Don’t believe in this because your parents do, we were told. Go ask God for yourself. But the part of Smith’s account that always resonated most with me was what happened after the vision. Word got around Palmyra, and the community turned on him. His claims were declared to be “of the devil.” His family was ostracized. Facing pressure to recant, Smith refused. “I had seen a vision,” he wrote later. “I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it.” In seminary, this was treated as a coda to the main event—mentioned, if at all, as an example of standing up for unpopular beliefs. But to a 21st-century teenager who was already insecure enough about his oversized head and undersized muscles without bringing a weird religion into the mix, it sounded a lot like a cautionary tale. At school, I laughed along when the boys in the cafeteria asked how many moms I had. My own testimony didn’t come in a blaze of revelation, but in living the faith day to day. The church was where I felt most like myself. The green hymnals we sang from on Sundays, the sacramental Wonder Bread we passed down the pews, the corny youth dances in the sweaty church gym where we’d jump around to DJ Kool before closing with a prayer—these were more than just quirks of my parents’ religion. They were emblems of an identity, one I could never fully reveal to my non-Mormon friends. At school, I laughed along when the boys in the cafeteria asked me how many moms I had, and I nodded thoughtfully when the girl I liked speculated, after the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, that she must have been an easy mark for brainwashing because she was Mormon. When the time came to apply for college, I feigned an interest in Arizona State University just so my guidance counselor wouldn’t think I was interested only in Mormon colleges. I aimed to cultivate a reputation that sanded off the edges of my orthodoxy—he’s Mormon, but he’s cool. I didn’t drink, but I was happy to be the designated driver. I didn’t smoke pot, but I would never narc. All this posturing could be undignified, but I took pride in my ability to walk a certain line. Unlike my co-religionists in Utah—where kids went to seminary in the middle of the day, at Church-owned buildings next to the high schools—I was one of only a few Mormon kids in my town. If my classmates liked me, I reasoned, it was a win for Mormons everywhere. In the pantheon of minority-religion neuroses, this was not wholly original stuff. But I wouldn’t realize until later just how deeply rooted the Mormon craving for approval was. The Church that Joseph Smith set about building was almost achingly American. He held up the Constitution as a quasi-canonical work of providence. He published a new sacred text, the Book of Mormon, that centered on Jesus visiting the ancient Americas. He even taught that God had brought about the American Revolution so that his Church could be restored in a free country—thus linking Mormonism’s success to that of the American experiment. And yet, almost as soon as Smith started attracting converts, they were derided as un-American. A charismatic figure with gleaming blue eyes and a low voice, Smith taught a profoundly optimistic theology that stood in contrast with the harsher doctrines of his day. But what made him most controversial was his commitment to establishing a “new Jerusalem” in the United States. The utopia he envisioned would be godly, ordered, and radically communitarian. As the Mormons searched for a place to build their Zion, they were met with an escalating campaign of persecution and mob violence. In New York, Smith was arrested at the urging of local clergy. In Ohio, he was tarred and feathered. By the time the Mormons settled in Missouri, they were viewed as enemies of the state. Their economic and political power made local officials nervous, as did their abolitionist streak. (Though the Church would later adopt exclusionary policies toward Black people, many of its early members disapproved of slavery.) Residents complained that the growing Mormon community had “opened an asylum for rogues, vagabonds, and free blacks” in their backyard. Mormon leaders responded with their own incendiary rhetoric. The tension came to a head on October 27, 1838, when the governor issued an “extermination order” demanding that all Mormons be driven out of the state or killed. A few days later, a militia descended on a Mormon settlement about 70 miles northeast of Kansas City and opened fire. Witnesses would later describe a horrific scene—women raped, bodies mutilated, children shot at close range. By the end of the massacre, 17 Mormons had been killed, and homes had been looted and burned to the ground. The violence was justified, in part, by the portrayal of Mormons as a degenerate, nonwhite race—an idea that would spread throughout the 19th century. Medical journals defined Mormons by their “yellow, sunken, cadaverous visage” and “thick, protuberant lips.” Cartoons depicted them as “foreign reptiles” sprawled out over the U.S. Capitol. At one point, the secretary of state tried to institute a ban on Mormon immigration from Europe. Related Stories Among the Mormons God’s Plan for Mike Pence The Mormon Church Tries to Create a Little More Space for LGBTQ Families For a time, Smith and his followers retained an almost quaint trust in America’s democratic system. Even as they were forced to flee Missouri and resettle in Nauvoo, Illinois, they were convinced that the Constitution guaranteed their freedom of religion—and that if they could simply alert the nation’s leaders to what was happening, all would be made right. In 1839, Smith led a delegation to Washington, D.C., to seek redress for the Mormons’ violent expulsion from Missouri. In a meeting with President Martin Van Buren, the prophet presented a vividly detailed list of offenses committed against his people. But the president, fearing a backlash from Missourians, dismissed his appeals. “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you,” Van Buren said, according to Smith’s account. The experience radicalized Smith. Stung by the government’s mistreatment—and under siege by a growing anti-Mormon cohort—he took on a more theocratic bent. In Nauvoo, he served simultaneously as prophet, mayor, and lieutenant general of a well-armed Mormon militia. He introduced the ancient biblical practice of polygamy to his followers, eventually marrying at least 32 women himself. He even convened a group of men to draft a replacement for the U.S. Constitution, which they believed had failed them. Still, the Mormons’ innate Americanness made them self-conscious theocrats—constantly establishing new councils and quorums designed to disperse power and hold one another accountable. Though the Church was hierarchical, it was infused with checks and balances. Congregations were led by a rotating cast of volunteers. Decisions were presented to congregants for ratification. “All things shall be done by common consent in the Church,” read one Mormon scripture. In 1844, Smith launched a quixotic presidential bid to draw attention to the Mormon plight. He campaigned on abolishing prisons and selling public lands to purchase the freedom of every enslaved person in the country. America, he wrote, should be a place where a person “of whatever color, clime or tongue, could rejoice when he put his foot on the sacred soil of freedom.” The campaign wouldn’t last long. That June, Smith was arrested for ordering the destruction of an anti-Mormon printing press. While he awaited trial, a mob attacked the jail where he was being held with his brother Hyrum and murdered them both. Among his followers, the prophet’s death gave way to infighting, defections, and yet another flight from their homes—this time into the western desert beyond America’s borders. Yet even as the Mormons fled their country, they weren’t ready to disown it. In “The Angel of the Prairies,” a short story written by a Church leader at the time, the Latter-day Saints were not victims or enemies of the American experiment, but its purest embodiment: “When they had no longer a country or government to fight for, they retired to the plains of the West, carrying with them the pure spirit of freedom.” Like Noah’s ark before the flood, Mormonism was, to its adherents, a vehicle for the preservation of America’s highest ideals. One day, they believed, their former countrymen would turn to them for deliverance. It’s hard to overstate just how deeply this history is woven into modern Mormon life. As little kids, we sing songs about pioneer children who “walked and walked and walked and walked”; when we get older, we read about pioneers burying their children in shallow graves on the brutal westward trek. The stories I grew up hearing in church—about Missouri and martyrdom and Martin Van Buren—were often sanitized for devotional effect. But the scars they’ve left on the Mormon psyche are real. At its worst, this reverence for our forebears can fuel an unhealthy persecution complex—or even be used to dismiss groups that have faced much worse oppression, much more recently. In June, a Facebook page affiliated with Brigham Young University–Idaho shared a post that compared early Mormon persecution to slavery and encouraged people of color to “RISE ABOVE” racism. (The post was deleted after student outcry.) But the stories of pioneer suffering have also instilled in many American Mormons a sensitivity to the experiences of immigrants and refugees. According to one survey, Latter-day Saints are more than twice as likely as white evangelicals to say they welcome increased immigration to the United States. When Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslim immigration, the Church, hearing an eerie historical echo, issued a blistering condemnation. Later, when Trump signed an executive order allowing cities and states to veto refugee resettlement, Utah was the first red state in the country to request more refugees. Muhammed Shoayb Mehtar, who served as an imam in Utah for more than a decade, told me that when new people would arrive at his mosque—many of them refugees fleeing desperate circumstances—locals would show up, offering food, furniture, and jobs. In some states, Muslims worried about harassment and hate crimes. But in Utah, Mehtar said, “folks don’t have this toxic view of Oh, they are foreigners; they want to take over. They don’t have that mentality within them.” Like most teenage Mormons who sign up for missionary service, I wanted an adventure, stories to tell. The Church sent me to Texas. “I think it goes back to the beginning,” says Elder M. Russell Ballard, a senior apostle in the Church. “We were really refugees.” As a direct descendant of Hyrum Smith, Ballard talks about the Church’s early history with the raw emotion of a family tragedy. “We never forget,” he told me, “that Joseph and Hyrum were gunned down in cold blood.” Ballard told me about a trip he’d made to Greece on behalf of the Church. During a visit to a refugee camp, he witnessed a Syrian family get tossed from a dinghy into the Aegean Sea and crawl onto the beach, shivering, soaked, and hungry. As volunteers handed them towels and food, one of the children, a 9-year-old boy named Amer, tore into a package of Oreos and offered the first one to Ballard. Today, the cookie sits encased in a small cube on the apostle’s desk—a reminder, he says, to reach out to “those people running for their lives” all over the world. When I turned 19, I put in my papers to become a missionary, and prayed to be sent abroad. I pictured myself building chapels on some far-flung island, or teaching the gospel in a mountainside hut. Like most of the teenage Mormons who sign up for missionary service, I wanted an adventure, stories to tell. The Church sent me to Texas. I arrived in August amid a record-breaking heat wave that seemed designed to test my faith. Huffing up hills on an eight-speed bike—necktie whipping in the wind, white shirt soaked with sweat—I wondered whether the other elders muttered bad words under their breath, too. But I came to appreciate the little miseries of missionary life. The grueling schedule, the rigid curfew, the monastic abstention from movies and TV—each small sacrifice had its sanctifying effect. Religion without difficulty had always seemed pointless to me. The divine magic was in what faith demanded. I quickly realized that my knack for playing the likable Mormon would come in handy in the Bible Belt. Likability, it turned out, was a big part of the job. With our black name tags and IBM-salesman uniforms, missionaries were walking billboards for the Church. We were trained to take rejection in stride, to cling to our good-natured wholesomeness no matter what. When a Baptist minister condemned you to hell, you smiled politely and complimented his landscaping. When somebody hurled a Big Gulp at you from a passing car, you calmly collected the cup and looked for the nearest trash can. Once, in the seedy apartment complex where I lived with another missionary, we made the mistake of leaving our laundry unattended, and returned to find it drenched in urine. Not wanting to make a scene, we shrugged and pumped more quarters into the washing machine. We spent most of our time teaching prospective converts about the faith or offering English classes for local Spanish speakers. On slow days, we’d go door-to-door passing out pamphlets and copies of the Book of Mormon. This was not a particularly efficient method for finding future Mormons, but we looked for small victories. I skimmed an old copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People, and practiced jokes that I could deploy on strangers’ doorsteps. We took consolation in these pleasant, fruitless interactions, telling ourselves that we’d improved the Mormon brand, however slightly. “Planting seeds,” we called it. In 2007, I was serving in the heavily Latino Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch when voters approved a city ordinance designed to punish undocumented immigrants. As missionaries, we lived fairly disconnected lives—no newspapers, no social media—so I didn’t know at the time that the crackdown had become a national scandal. But I remember the snippets of hushed conversation—la migra, miedo—that I caught at the laundromat. I remember, the Sunday after the referendum passed, the women huddled, crying, in the church foyer; the chapel half-full for the Spanish service because so many members feared crossing town lines. And I remember the branch president, a young Guatemalan dad with glasses, abandoning his usual soft-spoken style to reassure his shaken congregation. “You are children of God,” he thundered. “Never, never let them make you feel like less.” So little about their experience was truly accessible to me, but I felt a flicker of solidarity in that moment that I hoped would never be stamped out. On a sticky summer evening in Brooklyn, the Bushwick Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints threw a karaoke night. The congregation was small but eclectic, and as members took turns at the microphone, the wonderful weirdness of the Mormon community was on full display. A missionary from Hong Kong crooned a pop ballad in Cantonese. A petite goth fashion designer headbanged to Metallica. While young dads scurried around filling plastic cups with Sprite and replenishing the pretzel bowl, older members from Guyana and the Philippines sang their favorite songs. Mormonism has a reputation for conformity—starched white shirts and white picket fences and broods of well-behaved white children. But in much of the world, Mormon congregations are characterized by the way they force together motley groups of people from different backgrounds. Unlike most American Christians, Latter-day Saints don’t get to choose whom they go to church with. They’re assigned to congregations based on geographic boundaries that are often gerrymandered to promote socioeconomic diversity. And because the Church is run almost entirely by volunteers, and every member is given a job, they have to work together closely. Patrick Mason, a historian of religion, calls this “the sociological genius of Mormonism”—in a society of echo chambers and bowling alone, he says, the Church has doubled down on an old-fashioned communitarianism. In some ways, the Bushwick congregation, where my wife and I landed after moving to New York, was unusual. It was more diverse than a typical Mormon ward, and more bootstrapped. We met in a retrofitted space leased from a Jewish community center across the street from a public-housing complex. When our Sunday-morning services were interrupted by a subwoofered SUV parked outside, our branch president—a bearded filmmaker with a conciliatory approach to neighborhood relations—would slip outside and offer the driver a twenty to take the music down the block. We took turns teaching Sunday school and delivering sermons. When one of us lost a job, somebody would stop by with a carload of groceries. When one of us had to change apartments, we’d all show up with cardboard boxes and doughnuts. At work, I was surrounded by 20-something journalists with similarly curated Twitter feeds. But at church, my most meaningful relationships were with people who resided well outside my bubble—middle-aged mail carriers and Caribbean immigrants; white-haired retirees and single parents navigating the city’s morass of social services. Our little community wasn’t perfect. We argued and irritated one another, and more than once a heated Sunday-school debate ended in shouting and hurt feelings. But the dynamic was better than utopian—it was hard. Over time, we learned to live a portion of our lives together, to “mourn with those that mourn,” as the Book of Mormon teaches, “and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.” Spencer Cox, who was elected governor of Utah in November, told me that his state has been shaped by this ethic. When the Mormon pioneers first arrived in the territory in 1847, they built their homes in village centers and established their crops on the outskirts of town so that farmers weren’t isolated from one another. “This was not a place that people were really excited to settle—it was kind of a wasteland,” Cox said. “To scratch it out here, to make it work, you really had to rely on each other.” Though Utah is very conservative, its residents generally don’t romanticize rugged individualism or Darwinian hyper-capitalism. It has the lowest income inequality in the country, and ranks near the top for upward mobility. The relative lack of racial diversity no doubt helps skew these metrics—structural racism doesn’t take the same toll in a state that is 78 percent white. But economists say the tightly networked faith communities have provided a crucial extra layer to the social safety net. To Mormons, this mindset has always been a matter of theology. Joseph Smith taught that salvation was achieved through community, not individual action alone. And his expansive view of the afterlife—as a kind of sprawling, joyous web of interconnected family reunions—prioritized human relationships. “I would rather go to hell with my friends,” he was said to have preached, “than to heaven alone.” In 1863, a writer for The Atlantic named Fitz-Hugh Ludlow traveled to the Mormon settlement in Utah, and was surprised by what he found. In his 11,000-word dispatch, Ludlow presented the strange desert civilization of exiles as a study in contradictions. The Mormons were clearly theocratic, yet he found no evidence of corruption. Their open embrace of polygamy was scandalous, yet somehow appeared more practical than lascivious. Their beliefs were preposterous, but sincere. The Mormons Ludlow encountered seemed to believe they had something to offer their former nation, now riven by the Civil War. When he talked to Brigham Young—Joseph Smith’s bearded, burly successor—the prophet predicted doom for the Union, and a flood of immigrants to Utah. After the war, Americans would be drawn to Mormons’ comity and the genius of polygamy, whose appeal would be obvious after so many men died fighting. “When your country has become a desolation,” Young told the writer, “we, the saints whom you cast out, will forget all your sins against us, and give you a home.” From the April 1864 issue: Fitz-Hugh Ludlow among the Mormons Ludlow played the quote for laughs—a sign of the absurd grandiosity of a people who comprised, in his estimation, “the least cultivated grades of human society, a heterogeneous peasant-horde.” He predicted that the Church would “fall to pieces at once, irreparably,” as soon as Young died. But until then, the Mormon threat was not to be taken lightly. Mormonism was, he wrote, “disloyal to the core”—just like the Confederates: “The Mormon enemies of our American Idea should be plainly understood as far more dangerous antagonists than hypocrites or idiots can ever hope to be.” Ludlow’s story, published in the April 1864 issue, was emblematic of how the rest of the country viewed Utah. Just a few years earlier, President James Buchanan had sent U.S. forces to the territory to put down a rumored Mormon rebellion. The Republican Party, in its founding platform, placed polygamy alongside slavery as one of the “twin relics of barbarism.” Yet Mormons still longed for full initiation into American life. By the end of the 19th century, they had embarked in earnest on a quest for assimilation, defining themselves in opposition to their damaging caricatures. If America thought they were non-Christian heretics, they would commission an 11-foot statue of Jesus and place it in Temple Square. If America thought they were disloyal, they would flood the ranks of the military and intelligence agencies. (At one point, Brigham Young University was the third-largest source of Army officers in the country.) To shake the stench of polygamy—which the Church renounced in 1890—they became models of the large nuclear family. By the middle of the 20th century, Mormon prophets were appearing on the cover of Time and Hollywood had made a hagiographic movie about Young. Mormons were Boy Scouts and business leaders, homemakers and family men. They developed a reputation for volunteerism, priding themselves on being the first on the ground after a natural disaster. Some of these transformations were more conscious than others, says Matthew Bowman, a historian at Claremont Graduate University. “But desire for respectability,” he adds, “is very much at the heart of modern Mormonism.” Read: When Mormons aspired to be a ‘white and delightsome’ people The assimilation efforts had a darker side as well. Having been cast as a nefarious race, Mormon leaders became determined to reclaim their whiteness. Beginning with Young, and continuing until 1978, Black men were barred from holding the priesthood—a privilege extended to virtually every Mormon male—and Black families were unable to participate in important temple ordinances. Church leaders preached that black skin was a “curse” from God and discouraged marriage between Black and white people. Rather than opposing America’s racial hierarchy, they attempted to secure their place at the top of it, says the scholar Janan Graham-Russell: “There was almost this ultra-pure whiteness that Mormons were striving for.” The Church has been haunted by the consequences ever since. In January 2012, I got a job covering Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. America was in the midst of what headline writers were calling “The Mormon Moment,” as Romney’s candidacy had occasioned a surge of interest in the country’s most enduring homegrown religion. It should have been a major milestone in the faith’s American journey. But something was amiss in the Mormon assimilation project. Romney was a clear product of his Church. Born into the faith, he’d served as a missionary in France, graduated from BYU, and raised five strapping sons with his high-school sweetheart. When his political star first began to rise, Romney tried to deflect questions about his religion by arguing that Mormonism was “as American as motherhood and apple pie.” When he was asked, in an early interview with this magazine, “How Mormon are you?,” he responded: “My faith believes in family, believes in Jesus Christ. It believes in serving one’s neighbor and one’s community. It believes in military service. It believes in patriotism; it actually believes this nation had an inspired founding. It is in some respects a quintessentially American faith.” Many Americans weren’t so sure. In the Republican primaries, Romney encountered skepticism from conservative evangelicals such as the megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who declared Mormonism a “cult” from the “pit of hell.” On MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell sneered that Romney’s Church had been founded by a guy who “got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it.” In Slate, Jacob Weisberg argued that no one who believed in “such a transparent and recent fraud” as Mormonism could be trusted with the presidency. Meanwhile, Romney’s all-American persona—cultivated by generations of assimilators—proved to be a political liability. With his Mormon-dad diction (all those hecks and holy cows and goshdarnits) and his penchant for reciting “America the Beautiful” on the stump (“I love the patriotic hymns”), Romney seemed like a relic—a “latter-day Beaver Cleaver,” as one Boston Globe writer put it. To those familiar with Mormon history, the irony was notable. “It is now because Mormons occupy what used to be the center that they fall into contempt,” wrote Terryl Givens, a Latter-day Saint scholar. As the only Mormon reporter in the Romney-campaign press corps, I was in a unique position to watch him squirm as he confronted these issues—and I often made it harder for him. I wrote about the candidate’s faith constantly, much to the consternation of his consultants, who had made a strategic decision to ignore the religion issue altogether. Often when I asked the campaign for comment on a Mormon-related story, I was told, curtly, to “ask the Church.” (The Church’s spokespeople—determined to project political neutrality—usually directed me back to the campaign.) When I went on TV to discuss the race, I’d talk about how Romney should open up about his religious life. But as the election wore on, I began to understand his reluctance. I didn’t buy the idea that his religion should be off-limits. But I also couldn’t believe some of the things my otherwise enlightened peers were willing to say about a faith they knew so little about. I heard reporters crack jokes about “Mormon underwear,” and I fielded snickering questions on TV about obscure teachings from early prophets. One day, the CEO of the company where I worked gathered the staff for a presentation in which he explained internet virality by comparing Judaism with Mormonism. He’d given versions of the talk before. The idea was that Jews might have the “higher quality” religion, but Mormonism was growing faster because its members—slick marketers that we were—knew how to “spread it.” To make his point, he flipped through a series of slides featuring various famous Jews before comically declaring that the most famous Mormon was Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of the Killers. Once again, I felt that familiar tug—to smile politely, to laugh agreeably. I faked a phone call so that no one would see my face turn red. I often wondered if Romney shared my ambivalence about “The Mormon Moment”—if he ever struggled with the ways in which his candidacy shaped perceptions of his Church. When I asked him about this recently, he pushed back on the premise. “I didn’t see my role as a political candidate to proselyte, or educate, even, about my religion,” he told me. “I wanted to make it clear that I was not a spokesman for my Church.” Fair enough. But he must have also known that was hopeless. As Romney was trying to become the first Mormon president, The Book of Mormon musical was selling out on Broadway. Co-written by South Park’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the show skewered Mormonism with gleeful profanity and depicted its adherents as simpletons. My initial reaction, after listening to the soundtrack, was exasperation that this was how affluent theatergoers were being introduced to my faith. But I also felt compelled to be a good sport—and I wasn’t alone. When Romney was asked about the show, he said he’d love to see it: “It’s a Tony-award winner, big phenomenon!” And the Church itself took out ads in the playbill that read, “You’ve seen the play. Now read the book.” (The show’s creators had apparently anticipated something like this: Stone would later recount that when friends asked if he was concerned about Mormons protesting, he said, “Trust us, they’re going to be cool.”) Read: The ignorance of mocking Mormonism I remember being delighted by the Church’s response. Such savvy PR! Such a good-natured gesture! See, everyone? We can take a joke! But then I met a theater critic in New York who had recently seen the musical. He marveled at how the show got away with being so ruthless toward a minority religion without any meaningful backlash. I tried to cast this as a testament to Mormon niceness. But the critic was unconvinced. “No,” he replied. “It’s because your people have absolutely no cultural cachet.” Somehow, it wasn’t until that moment that I understood the source of all our inexhaustible niceness. It was a coping mechanism, born of a pulsing, sweaty desperation to be liked that I suddenly found humiliating. What happens when a religious group discovers that it’s spent 200 years assimilating to an America that no longer exists? As their native country fractures and turns on itself, Mormons are being forced to grapple with questions about who they are and what they believe. And a loose but growing liberal coalition inside the Church is pushing for reform. One major source of tension is race. Since lifting its ban on Black priesthood-holders in 1978, the Church has made fitful efforts to reckon with its history. In 2013, it formally disavowed its past racist teachings. In 2018, it announced a partnership with the NAACP, an organization that had once led a march through the streets of Salt Lake City to protest the Church’s discrimination. And in the spring of 2020, President Nelson responded to the killing of George Floyd by decrying the “blatant disregard for human life” and calling on racists to “repent.” Amos Brown, the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, told me his experience with Church leaders has left him convinced that they are making a genuine effort: “They were transparent enough and humble enough to say, ‘Hey, the Church may have a checkered past, but we want to work with you now.’ ” Read: Choosing to stay in the Mormon Church despite its racist legacy Still, for many Black members, the progress has been painfully slow. When Tamu Smith saw Nelson’s statement—which also included a condemnation of looting and property destruction—she felt something familiar. “I see the effort, and I can appreciate the effort, but I still thirst,” she told me. “I want more.” Smith, who grew up in California and joined the Church when she was 11, now lives in Provo, Utah, where she often hears white Mormons try to rationalize the Church’s past racism. And while she’s seen hopeful signs of progress, she believes the Church can’t truly move forward without a show of complete institutional repentance: “As part of a living Church, I believe that an apology is necessary.” So far, the Church has ignored such calls, a fact that Smith attributes to fear. Though the Church has never claimed prophetic infallibility, Smith says that for many orthodox believers, the faith is “either true or it’s not—the Church can’t make a mistake; the Church can’t back off; the Church can’t fix something that’s problematic.” Mormon leaders are afraid that if they apologize for the racism of past prophets, she speculates, they will undermine their own authority. That institutional fear is a common theme in the Church’s response to a certain kind of activism. Though Mormons are encouraged to air their doubts and even voice dissent among themselves, Church leaders have sometimes lashed out when dissenters start attracting external allies. This dynamic is perhaps best exemplified by the ongoing debate about the role of women in the faith. In 2000, the Church excommunicated the feminist scholar Margaret Toscano, who had challenged Mormon teachings on male authority and the priesthood. What drew the Church’s censure wasn’t really the substance of her critiques, but her success in attracting media attention. Kristine Haglund, a feminist and former editor of the liberal Mormon journal Dialogue, says it doesn’t help that intrafaith debates are so often misunderstood by outsiders. For example, coverage of Mormon gender issues often focuses on the fight for female ordination. But a 2011 Pew survey found that only 8 percent of women in the Church supported the idea. “One of the reasons I think Mormon feminist activism is so tricky is that the things that are important to women’s experience in the Church are … hard to explain and impossible to turn into a slogan,” Haglund told me. As an example, she cited calls for the Relief Society, which is led by women, to operate autonomously at the local ward level, instead of reporting to a male bishop. “ ‘Ordain women’ makes sense to outsiders,” she said, “but it doesn’t resonate within Mormonism the way it does with non-Mormon feminist allies.” In recent years, perhaps no issue has provoked more debate within the Church than its treatment of LGBTQ people. For decades, the Church was an uneasy partner in the religious right’s crusade against same-sex marriage—united in a shared orthodoxy, but also keenly aware that many in the coalition privately derided Mormons as heretics and cultists. This effort culminated in 2008, when the Church helped wage a high-profile—and successful—campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California. The short-lived political victory was followed by an intense backlash, and in recent years the Church has taken a more conciliatory approach. It launched a website dedicated to promoting “kindness and respect” for gay Mormons and endorsed a bill in Utah that expanded housing and employment protections for LGBTQ people. The Church affirmed that homosexuality was not a choice, and one former Church official, a psychologist, publicly apologized for his promotion of conversion therapy. Still, the Church has not changed its prohibition on same-sex relationships and gender transitions. Nathan Kitchen, the head of the Mormon LGBTQ group Affirmation, calls this “the rainbow stained-glass ceiling” in the Church. A formerly devout Mormon who came out as gay in 2013 and divorced his wife, Kitchen says that he stopped going to church not because he stopped believing, but because he felt forced to choose between his sexuality and his faith. For those of us who have seen people we care about wrestle with the same agonizing choice, Kitchen’s story hits home. But although views among rank-and-file Mormons are evolving, the Church has codified its teachings on sexuality as doctrinal. That means they won’t change until the prophet says he’s received divine permission. On a nightstand next to his bed, Russell Nelson keeps a notebook where he records his revelations. Before he entered Church leadership, he was a cardiothoracic surgeon who helped design the first heart-lung machine. During his early years as a doctor, he would often receive late-night phone calls from the hospital beckoning him to perform emergency operations. “I don’t get those phone calls anymore,” he told me. “But very frequently, I’m awakened with directions to follow.” Lately, the notebook has been filling up quickly. “Judgment Day is coming for me pretty soon,” Nelson said. It was a strange sort of confession, and I didn’t know how to respond. The Mormon claim to prophetic revelation is one of the faith’s most audacious doctrines, and also its most practical. A kind of theological survival mechanism, it allows the Church to adapt and reform as necessary while giving changes the weight of providence. When Nelson ascended to the presidency of the Church, in 2018, few members expected the then-93-year-old to be a transformational leader. But his tenure has been an eventful one. Some of Nelson’s reforms have been small, inside-baseball measures, such as shortening the length of church services and expanding the approved wardrobe for missionaries. (Coming soon to a doorstep near you: elders without neckties.) He’s also launched a campaign against the term Mormon, arguing that the nickname deemphasizes the Church’s Christianity. (I chose to use the term in this story for clarity’s sake, and also because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presented a multisyllabic writerly dilemma that my own God-given talents left me powerless to solve.) Other reforms have been more significant. He reversed a policy that restricted baptisms for children of same-sex couples, adjusted temple ordinances in ways that emphasize women’s authority, and appointed the first-ever Asian American and Latin American apostles to the Church’s second-highest governing body. But while some of these changes have been celebrated as signs of progress, Nelson has not budged on key issues. When I asked him what he’d say to LGBTQ people who feel that the Church doesn’t want them, he told me, “God loves all his children, just like you and I do,” and “There’s a place for all who choose to belong to his Church.” But when I asked whether the prohibition on same-sex relationships might someday be lifted, he demurred. “As apostles of the Lord, we cannot change God’s law,” he said. “We teach his laws. He gave them many thousands of years ago, and I don’t expect he’ll change them now.” As we spoke, I noticed that Nelson kept glancing down at an open binder on the table. It’s easy to forget that he’s almost 100 when you’re with him. He’s remarkably spry for a nonagenarian, and prone to enthusiastic tangents about the human body’s “servoregulatory mechanisms.” But he also seems to understand the risk of saying the wrong thing. So when he talks about the LGBTQ community, he slows down and reads from his notes to make sure he’s hitting every letter in the acronym. I thought, in that moment, about the difficulty of Nelson’s job—about trying to steer a 200-year-old institution in a world that refuses to sit still. Mormons like to say that while the Church’s policies and programs may change, the core of the gospel is eternal. But identifying that core can be hard. What do you keep, and what do you jettison? Which parts are of God, and which parts came from men? What’s worth preserving in the endangered Americanism that Latter-day Saints have come to embody, and what’s best left behind? These are the questions that Nelson faces as he tries to figure out what Mormonism should mean in the 21st century. And he knows he’s running out of time to answer them. As we neared the end of our conversation, the prophet closed his binder and became quiet. “Judgment Day is coming for me pretty soon,” he said. It was a strange sort of confession—both startling and obvious, at least from an actuarial standpoint—and I didn’t know how to respond. After another pause, Nelson began to contemplate what he would have to answer for in his imminent “interview” with God. “I doubt if I’ll be judged by the number of operations I did, or the number of scientific publications I had,” he told me. “I doubt if I’ll even be judged by the growth of the Church during my presidency. I don’t think it’ll be a quantitative experience. I think he’ll want to know: What about your faith? What about virtue? What about your knowledge? Were you temperate? Were you kind to people? Did you have charity, humility?” In the end, Nelson told me, “we exist to make life better for people.” As mission statements go, a Church could do worse. But Mormonism has always harbored grander ambitions. There is a story about Joseph Smith that has circulated among Mormons for generations. In 1843, a year before his death, he was meeting with a group of Church elders in Nauvoo when he began to prophesy. The day would come, Smith predicted, when the United States would be on the brink of collapse—its Constitution “hanging by a thread”—only to be saved by a “white horse” from God’s true Church. Historians and Church leaders have long dismissed the story as apocryphal, and today the white-horse prophecy exists primarily as a winking in-joke among Latter-day Saints whenever a member of the Church runs for office. But the notion has lingered for a reason. It appeals to the Mormons’ faith in America—and to their conviction that they have a role to play in its preservation. That conviction is part of why conservative Mormons were among the GOP voters most resistant to Trump’s rise in 2016. He finished dead last in Utah’s Republican primary, and consistently underperformed in Mormon-heavy districts across the Mountain West. When the Access Hollywood tape leaked, the Church-owned Deseret News called on Trump to drop out. On Election Day, he received just over half of the Mormon vote, whereas other recent Republican nominees had gotten closer to 80 percent. Trump did better in 2020, owing partly to the lack of a conservative third-party candidate like Evan McMullin. (Full postelection data weren’t available as of this writing.) But the Trump era has left many Mormons—once the most reliable Republican voters in the country—feeling politically homeless. They’ve begun to identify as moderate in growing numbers, and the polling analyst Nate Silver has predicted that Utah could soon become a swing state. In June, a survey found that just 22 percent of BYU students and recent alumni were planning to vote for Trump. Robert P. Jones, the head of the Public Religion Research Institute, says this Mormon ambivalence is notable when compared with white evangelicals’ loyalty to Trump. “History and culture matter a lot,” Jones told me. “Partisanship today is such a strong gravitational pull. I think what we’re seeing with Mormons is that there’s something else pulling on them too.” When I talk with my fellow Mormons about what our faith’s third century might look like, one common fear is that the Church, desperate for allies, will end up following the religious right into endless culture war. That would indeed be grim. But just as worrisome to me—and perhaps more likely—is the prospect of a fully diluted Mormonism. Taken too far, the Latter-day Saint longing for mainstream approval could turn the Church into just another mainline sect—drained of vitality, devoid of tension, not making any real demands of its members. It’s not hard to imagine a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that is “respectable” in the way of the Rotary Club, because it’s bland, and benign, and easy to ignore. Kathleen Flake, a Mormon historian at the University of Virginia, told me many of the Church’s concessions to modernity have been healthy and necessary. “But it’s like a game of strip poker,” she said. “How far will you go?” The hard parts of Mormonism—huffing up hills in a white shirt and tie, forgoing coffee, paying tithes—might complicate the sales pitch. But they can also inspire acts of courage. After Romney voted to remove Trump from office—standing alone among Republican senators—he told me his life in the Church had steeled him for this lonely political moment, in which neither the right nor the left is ever happy with him for long. “One of the advantages of growing up in my faith outside of Utah is that you are different in ways that are important to you,” he said. In high school, he was the only Mormon on campus; during his stint at Stanford, he would go to bars with his friends and drink soda. Small moments like those pile up over a lifetime, he told me, so that when a true test of conscience arrives, “you’re not in a position where you don’t know how to stand for something that’s hard.” In Mormon circles, Romney’s impeachment vote was fodder for another round of “white horse” jokes. But the reality, of course, is that America will never be “saved” by a single person, or even a single group. What holds the country together is its conviction in certain ideals—community, democracy, mutual sacrifice—that it once possessed, and now urgently needs to reclaim. If Mormonism has anything to offer that effort, it will have to come from a confident Church, one that is unafraid of owning up to its mistakes and embracing what makes it distinct. This article appears in the January/February 2021 print edition with the headline “The Most American Religion.”

"It's cheaper to get to Mexico this weekend than it is to see 'Book of Mormon' on Broadway," griped a friend of mine on Twitter earlier this week. That may not be exactly true (unless you're riding a donkey all the way across the border), the new musical from "South Park" creators Trey Park and Matt Stone (along with "Avenue Q's" composer Robert Lopez) has created the new hot ticket during a season full of washes. It almost makes a believer out of us again: During a time when a $56 million play directed by Julie Taymor with music by Bono can't even get off the ground (because it keeps crashing into it?), there is something spiriting about a show whose music hearkens back to old-school Broadway numbers like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Of course, this is referring to the melody and dance routines, not the lyrics themselves. I was lucky enough to catch a short preview of "The Book of Mormon" -- a fish-out-of-water tale about two missionaries who end up in northern Uganda -- when it was still in rehearsal. Since there were no lighting cues or curtains yet, Trey came out before the preview and told us how we'd know our 15 minutes was up. "You’ll know when it’s over because everyone will sing 'cunt' and then take a bow," said the voice of Eric Cartman. He wasn't lying. Advertisement: So you would think that some of that language and sacrilegious commentary would perhaps color some theater critics' opinions of the show. If anything, it's made believers out of even those who believed that Broadway's musicals haven't had a chance at resurrection since Mel Brooks' "The Producers." Ben Brantley of the New York Times was particularly effusive: This is to all the doubters and deniers out there, the ones who say that heaven on Broadway does not exist, that it’s only some myth our ancestors dreamed up. I am here to report that a newborn, old-fashioned, pleasure-giving musical has arrived at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, the kind our grandparents told us left them walking on air if not on water. So hie thee hence, nonbelievers (and believers too), to "The Book of Mormon," and feast upon its sweetness. Apparently, "The Book " will have you speaking its language in no time at all. As for the inter-mingling of songs like "Fuck You God" and the story of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Trey and Matt treat their source materials with equal reverence. But a major point of “The Book of Mormon” is that when looked at from a certain angle, all the forms of mythology and ritual that allow us to walk through the shadows of daily life and death are, on some level, absurd; that’s what makes them so valiant and glorious. And by the way, that includes the religion of the musical, which lends ecstatic shape and symmetry to a world that often feels overwhelmingly formless. Which is to say, the "South Park" episode that made fun of Smith and got so many family groups up in arms (though apparently the Mormon Church issued a statement saying that they understood Matt and Trey were exercising free speech …"They are fascinating because they really are that nice," says Stone) is less visible here. In reality, this show has a bigger global consciousness than perhaps any mainstream musical, and if you needed a song and dance routine to be that spoonful of sugar to help you swallow the unsightly pill that, hey, Uganda has a huge AIDS epidemic right now and maybe we should all step outside our own tiny dreams and egos and try to better the world somehow, then "The Book Of Mormon" is more than willing to sugarcoat it's message for you in the form of its fantastic musical numbers. Still, this is the "South Park" guys we're talking about here, and as David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter said in his review of the production: Advertisement: Religious zealots are not going to roll up, but the show manages to have a comic field day with Mormonism while simultaneously acknowledging – maybe even respecting – the right of everyone to follow any faith they choose. Or invent. Hey, it still beats watching a chorus member get their sternum crushed to the melodies of U2.

Citation Options Sagers, J.E. (2020). “There’s Always a Mormon Around When You Don’t Want One”: What Wallace Can Teach the Church Media Machine. In David Foster Wallace and Religion: Essays on Faith and Fiction (pp. 163–174). New York,: Bloomsbury Academic. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501345319.ch-012 Sagers, Jessica E. "“There’s Always a Mormon Around When You Don’t Want One”: What Wallace Can Teach the Church Media Machine." David Foster Wallace and Religion: Essays on Faith and Fiction. .. New York,: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 163–174. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 22 Mar. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501345319.ch-012>.

God’s authority was not absolute in [Joseph] Smith’s time. Much is made of the revivals in the early 1800s, public displays of religiosity, and the proliferation of new cults, sects, and prophets. But these might also have expressed anxiety about religion. Not only were many of the revival conversions rescinded, but those that stuck were not necessarily the beginning of a generous new life. Joseph was deeply bothered by the petty partisanship he often noticed between converts and their preachers. As he wrote in The History of the Church, “Yet when the converts began to file off, some to one party and some to another, it was seen that the seemingly good feelings of both the priests and the converts were more pretended than real; for a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued; priest contending against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions.” As the nineteenth century progressed, God’s shifting place was reflected in the arts. Painters who’d been trained in Christian iconography like Goya said, “There are no rules,” and didactic traditions about how the Christian story should be told began to be challenged. Joseph seems sensitive to this, or if not sensitive in an educated way to the Enlightenment and its consequences, he seems to intuit how being Christian was fraught in new ways. Religion was losing its dignity. Science was coming on. Advertisement: Joseph’s first great trauma at eight was a showdown between the two. His whole family had fallen ill with typhoid during the early months of 1812. His older sister, Sophronia, almost died. Joseph seemed to recover, but after several weeks, he developed painful infections, first in his armpit and then in his shinbone. Doctors wanted to amputate, but Lucy fought it. The surgeons explained the only alternative was risky surgery, which might result in Joseph’s death. Lucy’s determination held steady. When the surgeon arrived on the morning of the operation, Joseph climbed into his father’s lap on the bed. His swollen leg was propped up by folded sheets. The doctor was going to cut out the infected bone in three sections. He would do this first by boring through Joseph’s shin from one side and then the other. Everyone understood the operation would be excruciatingly painful: there was no anesthetic. But there wasn’t any prayer, either. Joseph was offered brandy first, wine second, and restraining ropes third. Yet he was part of a household that prayed regularly and where the parents had just tearfully petitioned God on their knees to save Sophronia, their young daughter, in the darkest hour of her typhoid fever. Sophronia lived. Before Joseph’s operation, God did not come into the conversation until after the boy had rejected alcohol and restraints and urged his mother to leave the room because his suffering would be too much for her. Finally the boy said as the last thing he could think of, “The Lord will help me, and I shall get through with it.” That brandy should be offered under the circumstances before God was only realistic. But that realism spoke volumes. The Smiths knew they lived in a world where medications could reach physical pain that God could not. Joseph was born after the Enlightenment. He was born after the American Revolution, which guaranteed religious freedom. It was the first time the state and the Christian religion had been set apart since Constantine the Great had made Christianity the established religion of the Roman Empire. Joseph was familiar with family members who’d turned their backs on evangelic religion. Once, when Lucy started attending Methodist services, her father-in-law threw Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason through the doorway of the Smiths’ home. Jesse Smith, an uncle on Joseph’s father’s side, was an outspoken critic of conversion. He dismissed his young relative’s prophetic revelations from the start. When Joseph confided his vision of God and Jesus in the grove to a Methodist minister — who had taken part in the wildly expressive revivals around Palmyra — the man said such visions had “ended with the Apostles.” Advertisement: Joseph’s “fertile imagination” inspired worldly doubt in his friends. They weren’t critical of his treasure digging, but when Joseph began to blur gold in caves with gold plates and God in heaven, several felt he was stretching the truth. Joseph himself wasn’t totally convinced of his visions. Some claimed that on several emotional occasions, Joseph admitted he had never seen anything with his peep stone. In Fawn Brodie’s telling phrase, there is a “savagely cynical account” by one of Joseph’s early confidants, Peter Ingersoll, about the origins of the Book of Mormon. According to Ingersoll, Joseph told him he’d brought home some fine white sand wrapped in his shirt, and his family wanted to know what it was. Joseph said, “I happened to think of what I had heard about a history found in Canada, called the golden Bible; so I very gravely told them I had received a commandment to let no one see it, for says I, no man can see it with the naked eye and live. However, I offered to take out the book and show it to them, but they refused to see it, and left the room. Now, I have got the damned fools fixed, and will carry out the fun.” These all make me feel that Joseph swung in and out of belief and nothingness as he zigzagged between the moment Moroni appeared to him in 1823, when he was seventeen, and the time when he dug up the plates in 1827 at the age of twenty-one. From the time Moroni told Joseph he had been chosen to deliver a book containing “the fullness of the everlasting Gospel,” he must have constantly meditated on what was being asked of him. His family had every confidence he was wonderful, but Joseph was terribly alone in conceiving and pursuing his religious destiny. There were no AP courses for a religiously gifted teenager. He had no experience of “translating” and no idea he was getting on a career track as a prophet until 1830, when he received a revelation to that effect. No grown person around him had a whisker of the kind of originality that he would display as God’s vehicle for the Book of Mormon. His learning curve was going to be incredibly steep and challenging. In many ways, he was like a devotional painter trying to work after God had been declared to be dying. His story was filled with angelic visits, a familiar part of the folk worship around him, but his strong, untutored intelligence also “got” the contemporary anxiety about God’s authority. Joseph had that anxiety himself. He understood the implications. Joseph was always extremely alone as he chose the next rung in the climb to prophethood and was probably frightened by his despair when it came on. Yet he was inspired by Moroni to the most daring self-invention. The angel helped Joseph sense his own powers in relation to the Force who scared Tom and Huck out of their skulls. It may have even been the angel who helped Joseph understand how undermined Jesus was, and how it might take some sort of hyperrealism to restore him. Fortunately, Joseph was a quick study in the uses of magic. I believe that under the twin pressures of his faith and his despair, he created a model of the gold plates as a finishing touch to the authority he wanted. Advertisement: Moroni had clearly laid out the standard of behavior he expected from Joseph: “He must not lie, nor swear, nor steal.” Somehow, Joseph had to make it all up as he went along and also become worthy of being the guardian of the gold plates. He was supposed to visit the plates every September until he was ready. Describing himself in retrospect, he wrote, “I frequently fell into many foolish errors, and displayed the weakness of youth, and the foibles of human nature; which, I am sorry to say, led me into divers temptations, offensive in the sight of God.” He once again criticized his “levity,” love of “jovial company,” and the shallow tendencies of his “cheery temperament.” He might lack seriousness and integrity, yet now realized he was called to have an eye “single to the glory of God.” He understood the overlap between make-believe and religious belief. When the moment was right, if it became necessary, he could make a model. According to his friend Oliver Cowdery, the first time Joseph went and looked at the gold plates in 1824, “he could not stop thinking about how to add to his store of wealth … without once thinking of the solemn instruction of the heavenly messenger, that all must be done with the express view of glorifying God.” On another visit, Joseph could not resist temptation and tried to dig up the plates. That was when he got knocked over by the towering toad that whacked him with a rusty sword. In Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Bushman says there were “three other attempts” whose failure made Joseph cry out to the Lord “in the agony of his soul.” Every time, he was chastened by Moroni, saying the temptation for gold was from the Devil. Advertisement: Apart from his own desire for success and money, Joseph’s family had other serious needs for cash. In this same period, the Smiths were desperate because they had built a house on rented land, property carrying a debt of long standing. But just then, “the angel told him he must quit the company of the money-diggers. There were wicked men among them. He must have no more to do with them.” Joseph had no other means of making an income except for treasure digging. He had never made much from it, but his professional reputation had spread so that he was getting better offers. In Harmony, Pennsylvania, Josiah Stowel, a prosperous, respectable landowner, had heard of Joseph and believed the reports about the boy with a gift for seeing what others could not see with the natural eye. Stowel offered good wages in return for Joseph’s help searching for a lost silver mine. Joseph couldn’t turn the work away because of the family’s pressing debts, but his sense of conflict grew. Joseph and his father found lodging with Isaac Hale, a settler and legendary hunter. At the start, Hale invested in Stowel’s project. Gradually, though, he came to feel the whole enterprise of money digging was a delusion when Joseph turned up neither silver nor gold after weeks of effort. Hale’s opinion of Joseph followed the same trajectory. To begin, he had some interest in Joseph, but by the end Hale saw him as nothing but trouble. In between, the tall, fair, blue-eyed youth had fallen in love with Hale’s daughter Emma, a remarkable young woman who returned his feelings. She was a brunette with deep, brown eyes; a spirited and witty person with some education. She was seen as a good judge of character by her family and friends, also as “fine looking, smart, (and) a good singer” who “often got the power.” When she was a child, her prayers for her father’s return to orthodox Christianity persuaded him to do so. While Joseph and Emma were living under the same roof, their relationship developed quickly and soon reached a point where they wanted to marry. Isaac Hale was furious. He wouldn’t hear of his daughter marrying “a stranger” whose only means of support was to dig for treasure. Soon after, in March 1826, Joseph was arrested and taken for trial in South Bainbridge, some miles away in New York. Though Josiah Stowel still believed in Joseph’s gifts, his nephew had charged him with being a “disorderly person and an imposter,” a legal term of art really aimed at curbing magic practices. Whether the nephew felt some part of his own property was threatened isn’t clear, but Joseph, who was already on trial within, now had to go on the stand publicly to answer charges of seeking to defraud his employer. Just when he was most conflicted about money digging, most intent on becoming worthy to marry the woman he needed, most striving to be worthy to receive the plates, Joseph stood accused of pretending. What, if anything, was real in him? Advertisement: According to the 1813 New York statute by which he’d been charged, “All jugglers, and all persons pretending to have skill in physiognomy, palmistry, or like crafty science, or pretending to tell fortunes, or to discover where lost goods may be found … shall be deemed and adjudged disorderly persons.” Once the statute had been passed, it might as well have stood as an unofficial boundary between the Age of Magic and the Age of Science. It was certainly a moment that raised the question of what would be left of religion when magic was gone. Religion and magic were still floating around in the culture in a pool with “superstition,” “witchcraft,” and “lying.” Visions were part of daily life and language, although losing respectability, and many people who believed in them didn’t like to admit they did. Joseph had them and wasn’t afraid to say so. His boon companions admired his boldness, but didn’t stand by him when it counted. Again and again in the court record witnesses say Joseph “pretended” to be able to find treasure in the earth; that he “pretended” that he could see precious things at a distance by holding a white stone to the sun; that he looked into a hat “pretending” to find a chest of dollars. Some of these witnesses had been in a position to see Joseph “pretend” to do these things because they were with him, hoping that the pretense would pan out. Two of the witnesses called to testify about Joseph’s activities, Peter Ingersoll and Willard Chase, were annoyed with his inflated claims about an angel, gold plates, a new Bible. Only two men, including Josiah Stowel, vouched for Joseph’s “professed skill” and gave examples of his finding gold with a white stone. Joseph was found guilty and fined, which seemed to focus his energy. He was “mortified” that people would think he had dedicated his God-given power to the pursuit of “filthy lucre.” Even before the trial ended, he began to distance himself from peep stones, saying he had used them only “on a few occasions.” The gold plates, however, were different from the stones. After the trial, he went back to Harmony and again asked Isaac Hale for Emma’s hand. Her father was even less interested in having Joseph as a son-in-law. When Joseph returned home and told his parents he was determined to marry Emma, they gave him their blessing. Advertisement: On his annual trip to the plates on Hill Cumorah, the angel told him he must come back with the right person. Joseph was sure that person was Emma. Not only did she believe in his First Vision, Moroni’s visit, and the gold plates, he confessed to his parents that she filled his terrible loneliness. This connection between Emma and his prophetic mission had become so crucial that Joseph went back to Harmony once more and persuaded Emma to elope. They were married on January 18, 1827. Emma was the first significant intimate from outside his family in a long list who helped Joseph complete his unfinished self. He had an instinct for these collaborators, and Emma, with her sure, steady intelligence, was an irreplaceable long-term fit for his work in progress. After their marriage, they stayed with the Smiths for eight months before her father would let Emma and Joseph pick up her belongings. Isaac wept when he saw the couple. He accused Joseph of “stealing” Emma, and then extracted a promise from Joseph never to engage in money digging again. Now, according to Peter Ingersoll’s recollection, Joseph cried in his turn as he promised and “acknowledged he could not see in a stone, nor never could; and that his former pretensions in that respect, were all false.” His tears were real and pathetic as he gave up this important part of himself. The stones had had their place in the story, but now there would only be the plates. The plates could stay. They were what the stones had never quite fully been: symbols. Everything was now in place for Joseph to act. It didn’t take long to make his model. He had wooden frames, tin. He’d heard the preachers talk about the symbols of the church. Now there was going to be another one. Still, I am sure it took a last visit from the angel before he created his model. As Joseph passed the brushy place where the plates were on Hill Cumorah, Moroni stopped him and delivered “the severest chastisement” of his life. The angel told the faltering prophet apprentice, “I had not been engaged enough in the work of the Lord; that the time had come for the record to be brought forth; and that I must be up and doing and set myself about the things God commanded me to do … I know the course that I am to pursue, so all will be well.” When Joseph finished making the model of the plates, he had a crucial clue in the modern scavenger hunt for God. Then he took his model and buried it in its appointed place on Hill Cumorah. I am not the first follower of Joseph to say he made the plates. In Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, Dan Vogel, a former Mormon, imagines the scene when Joseph cuts out the plates from tin and crafts them into a loosely fashioned book. He does not say when in his prophetic journey Joseph made the plates; he never speculates on how making the Book of Mormon plates might have played in and out of Joseph’s conscience over time. Vogel believes Joseph is a “pious fraud,” a prophet who created a prop for the sake of giving his religion reality for the many who needed an outward sign. Advertisement: In a phone interview, Richard Bushman, another Joseph biographer and a faithful Mormon, told me, “The gold plates are the hinge between different views of Joseph. If he just had visions of God, it would be one thing. But once Joseph dug the plates up, there are no categories except fraud — or miracle. Our doubts about his sincerity hinge on that claim. In an effort to prove their authenticity, he shows the plates to other people and publishes a kind of deposition over their names. The plates and the witnesses then force people to a stark decision: Is he a fraud or did he actually find plates?” Richard Bushman believes completely that Joseph found gold plates. So do many other faithful Mormons. I believe Joseph created a model of the gold plates shortly after his encounter with the angry angel Moroni. I don’t think it makes him a fraud — unless you think the Book of Mormon is a fraud. To me, the Book of Mormon is a strange work of God’s genius. There were four years between Moroni’s first visit and the night Joseph finally took the plates. All that time, at some level of his imagination, he’d been preparing to fulfill the truly unbelievable task of translating a work of new scripture. Daring to think he could do this took incredible belief on his part. I would describe him in some sort of collaboration with God as he moves toward the hour when he has to deliver. God is doing His part in calling Joseph to a dramatic role so far beyond himself. Joseph does his part by setting the stage: by making the plates and burying them. The angel’s impatience and fury is his cue to finally act. A few days later, Joseph and Emma, dressed all in black, went to Hill Cumorah in a carriage. His wife waited for him while Joseph dug up the plates, then brought them back wrapped in cloth. Within hours of their coming home, the neighborhood was buzzing with rumors that Joseph had the “Gold Bible” at home. Men who had hunted treasure with Joseph felt he owed them a share of his good fortune. Willard Chase hired a conjurer to help a posse of disgruntled locals discover where Joseph had hidden the plates. A crowd pounded on the Smiths’ door, and the Smiths rushed out roaring to scare them away. The plates (which had been put into a chest and stored under the hearthstone) were now moved to the cooper’s shop in the yard. After the plates were taken out of the box in their wrapping, the empty box was put under a floorboard; the plates themselves were hidden anew in a huge heap of flax. Willard Chase and his sister, Sally, returned that night to find the plates with her peep stone. They tore up the floorboards and when they didn’t find the plates, smashed the empty box in their fury. These kind of skirmishes went on until December. By then Joseph was so frustrated by interruptions, he took his wife to her parents’ house in a horse-drawn carriage, with the gold plates submerged in a barrel of beans. Reprinted from Falling in Love with Joseph Smith: My Search for the Real Prophet by Jane Barnes with the permission of Tarcher/Penguin, a member of Penguin Group USA. Copyright 2012 by Jane Barnes.

Nine members of a prominent Mormon family in northern Mexico, all women and children, were gunned down on Nov. 4 in territory whose control is disputed by the Sinaloa Cartel and the La Linea militia. Mexico, which has experienced high crime for over a decade, has seen violence surge in recent weeks. On Oct. 17, a shootout in the city of Culiacan involving the Sinaloa Cartel led officials to release from custody Ovidio Guzman, the son of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. In the context of so much bloodshed, the LeBaron killings are both highly unusual and tragically quotidian. Unlike most murder victims in Mexico, the LeBarons are U.S. citizens and Mormons – part of a religious community that broke away from Utah’s Church of Latter-Day Saints years ago. But, as many Mexican journalists have written, the peace activism of family member Julián LeBaron could also have made his community a target. And the LeBarons have a history of violent encounters with organized crime. Mormons in Mexican history In my 2018 book on American- and Canadian-based religious enclaves in Mexico, I researched the Latter-Day Saints community and the LeBaron Mormons of Chihuahua state, near the U.S. border. Typically, these communities’ members are somewhat reluctant to talk to outsiders, beyond proselytizing. But as a person of Mennonite background with relatives in Mennonite colonies in Mexico, I was able to interview members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – the official name of the mainstream Mormon church – in northern Mexico. Along with the Romneys – relatives of Sen. Mitt Romney, whose father was born in Mexico – the LeBarons are among the most storied families in Mormon history. Members of Utah’s Latter-Day Saints community emigrated to Mexico in the 1880s to follow their religious beliefs by living in polygamous families, which was illegal in the United States. Polygamy was illegal in Mexico, too, but the government there offered a flexible definition of family and did not enforce its anti-polygamy laws. Alma “Dayer” LeBaron, the patriarch, was born in 1886 and grew up as a Latter-Day Saint in Colonia Dublán, Chihuahua. In 1904, he married a woman from nearby Colonia Juárez. She left him when he sought a polygamous marriage. LeBaron fled the Mexican Revolution for Utah in 1912, where he married two women – Maude McDonald and Onie Jones – and had what’s been described as “a large family of sons.” LeBaron and his big family returned to Mexico in 1924 to find that their Latter-Day Saint neighbors did not welcome their polygamy. So LeBaron established his own colony, called LeBaron, in Chihuahua, Mexico. Today it stretches approximately six miles along a municipal highway and is four miles wide, surrounded by fields. LeBaron also began his own Mormon church. Poverty and conflicts For 50 years, the LeBarons migrated back and forth across the Mexico-U.S. border, with Alma’s sons serving as missionaries evangelizing on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. But the community struggled with poverty and, starting in the 1970s, ran into land conflicts with a nearby farming community that had been granted land by the government after the Mexican Revolution. The LeBaron colony’s land may have been illegally purchased from this neighboring land grant. Area peasants called the LeBarons “American invaders” and destroyed their fences. This allowed cattle into the LeBaron’s fields, damaging their crops. Judges in Mexico, however, sided with the LeBarons, whom they saw as productive members of the local economy. The land clashes between Mormon and Mexican ranchers have largely dissipated, though a flare-up occurred just last year. After Alma Dayer LeBaron died in 1951, his sons – Joel, Ross, Ervil and Verlan – disagreed over the future of the church Alma had established, leading to violence within the family and the formation of new fundamentalist groups. Ervil LeBaron was arrested and convicted for the 1972 murder of his brother Joel. That verdict was later overturned, but in 1981, a Utah court convicted Ervil of a different murder. He died in prison in 1981. Members of this community report enduring beatings, underage marriage and other abuse, as the escapee Anna LeBaron recounts in her 2017 memoir “The Polygamist’s Daughter.” The LeBarons have also been victims of violence. In 2009, 16-year-old Eric LeBaron was kidnapped by drug traffickers. His family successfully lobbied the government for help and secured his release. In retaliation, a cartel killed Eric LeBaron’s brother Benjamín LeBaron and brother-in-law Luis Widmar in 2011. Frustrated by violence, another brother, Julián LeBaron, that year joined a high-profile peace movement founded by the poet Javier Sicilia. LeBaron and Sicilia reportedly fell out in 2012. But after the murder of Julián’s cousin and other family members on Nov. 4, Sicilia wrote a condolence letter encouraging Julián to “uncover the barbaric reality.” Integration in Mexico As their peace activism shows, the LeBarons are more integrated in Mexican society than other religious minority groups I’ve studied. The LeBarons have long sought connections with fellow Mexicans to proselytize about their beliefs. And 39-year-old Alex LeBaron, from this community, has worked for the government of Chihuahua. From 2015 to 2018, he was even an elected official. Alex LeBaron also married a Mexican woman, Brenda Ríos, in a Catholic ceremony. Like other northern Mexicans, the LeBarons are a thoroughly cross-border community. Much of their purchasing power in Mexico comes from remittances sent by male relatives who work in the U.S. Like their neighbors, too, the LeBarons are vulnerable to the violence that surrounds them. Mexico’s death toll in 2019 is on pace to exceed the 33,341 murders seen in 2018. In spite of a new National Guard established to fight crime, last year was Mexico’s deadliest year since modern record-keeping began. Violence in Chihuahua state, where homicides had dropped markedly in recent years is rebounding. So the LeBarons may have an uncommon backstory. But from kidnappings to gruesome murders, they share a familiarity with tragedy that far too many Mexicans know far too well. Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter. Rebecca Janzen, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, University of South Carolina This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It's always amusing when far-right Republicans slam conservative media outlets for not being right-wing enough. One such Republican is Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who has been highly critical of two right-of-center media outlets in his state: the Deseret News and Salt Lake City's KSL Radio/KSL-TV — which is owned by Bonneville International, the broadcasting arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Lee believes that the Deseret News (also owned by Mormons) and KSL are insufficiently right-wing, and talk radio right-winger Glenn Beck is joining him. Beck tweeted, "Utahans: why would you ever read this paper? @SenMikeLee is right. How can you trust a thing @DeseretNews writes if they can get this simple principle so wrong? History TEACHES Pure Democracy leads to slavery and suffering." McKay Coppins, a staff writer for The Atlantic, has devoted a Twitter thread to Lee and Beck's ludicrous claims that Mormon-owned media outlets in deeply Republican Utah are too liberal. Coppins explains, "So, Mike Lee has been waging a FB/Twitter crusade lately against the Utah media outlets owned by his church (KSL, Deseret News). The individual critiques are nitpicky, but basically he seems frustrated that the outlets aren't right-wing enough. Now Glenn Beck has joined the cause." Coppins goes on to say, "This crusade is strange, in part, because neither outlet is remotely liberal. But it's classic Trumpian ref-working. As I reported earlier this year, Trump and his allies planned to take the fight to local media in 2020…. That seems to be happening in Utah." Coppins also notes that President Donald Trump "continues to underperform with" Mormon voters in Utah. Nonetheless, Utah is a deep red state that Trump is almost certain to win in the 2020 presidential election. While polls are showing former Vice President Joe Biden to be competitive in some light red states — including Texas and Georgia — a Y2 Analytics poll released on October 5 found Trump ahead by 10% in Utah. And on September 17, an RMG Research poll showed Trump with an 18% lead in that state.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) _ A letter written in 1830 about the fundamental revelations of the Mormon Church does nothing to undermine the traditional image of the church’s heavenly origins or its founder, say two Brigham Young University scholars. Ronald Walker and Dean C. Jessee, both associate professors at BYU and widely published specialists on Mormon history, defended the so-called ″white salamander″ letter Thursday at the annual meeting of the Mormon History Association. The letter was written by Martin Harris on Oct. 23, 1830, and sent to W.W. Phelps, a Rochester, N.Y., newspaper publisher who later converted to Mormonism. Critics say the letter tarnishes the character of Mormonism’s first prophet and presents him as a treasurer-seeker and a practitioner of the occult. Church members believe the letter is significant because it connects Smith and the origins of Mormonism with folk magic. Harris, who financed the printing of the Book of Mormon, is revered by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as a ″special witness″ to the divine instruction an angel passed on to Joseph Smith, the church’s founder. The 11/2 -page correspondence describes how Smith found golden plates, which later resulted in the Book of Mormon, with the help of what the letter described as ″a seer stone, a kind of magical looking-glass.″ The letter also said Smith was prevented at first from gaining possession of the plates by an ″old spirit″ that ″transfigured himself from a white salamander.″ Jessee defended the authenticity of the letter, which a Mormon bishop bought last year from a collector in New England and donated to the church in April. The missive appeared in a church publication last week. ″There is no reason to suspect the authenticity of the Harris letter, based on the physical properties and handwriting,″ said Jessee. Jessee admitted finding stylistic differences when comparing the letter with other documents written by Harris, but dismissed the discrepancies. ″While a person’s fingerprints don’t change,″ he said, ″his writing style often does.″ Walker discussed the imagery of the Harris letter, which church antagonists say are at slight odds with traditional accounts of its founding. The standard account of Smith has him directed by an angel in 1823 to find the golden plates, which he translated with the help of a seer stone. Later an angel allowed Harris and two others to see and handle the plates before taking them to heaven. Walker traced the history of treasure-seeking and the popular belief in magical spirits and argued that they were part of the social milieu of the period. ″It is a 20th century mindset that doesn’t understand the foundations of folklore,″ said Walker. ″It is clear that diggers were many kinds of people and came from many different social groups.″ Walker cited references to divining rods, seer stones and other seemingly magical occurrences that have appeared in religous works throughout history. He said such references are now held sacrosanct and not questioned. ″Today we trivialize the old culture and refuse to pay it respect,″ he said. Walker said traditional accounts have acknowledged that Smith was involved in treasure-digging activities, although not as actively as suggested in the Harris letter, and that the correspondence reinforces the beginnings of Mormonism.

Most American adults self-identify as Christians. But many Christians also hold what are sometimes characterized as “New Age” beliefs – including belief in reincarnation, astrology, psychics and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects like mountains or trees. Many Americans who are religiously unaffiliated also have these beliefs. Overall, roughly six-in-ten American adults accept at least one of these New Age beliefs. Specifically, four-in-ten believe in psychics and that spiritual energy can be found in physical objects, while somewhat smaller shares express belief in reincarnation (33%) and astrology (29%). But New Age beliefs are not necessarily replacing belief in traditional forms of religious beliefs or practices. While eight-in-ten Christians say they believe in God as described in the Bible, six-in-ten believe in one or more of the four New Age beliefs analyzed here, ranging from 47% of evangelical Protestants to roughly seven-in-ten Catholics and Protestants in the historically black tradition. Moreover, religiously unaffiliated Americans (those who say their religion is atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular”) are about as likely as Christians to hold New Age beliefs. However, atheists are much less likely to believe in any of the four New Age beliefs than agnostics and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular.” Just 22% of atheists believe in at least one of four New Age beliefs, compared with 56% of agnostics and eight-in-ten among those whose religion is “nothing in particular.” Americans who consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious also tend to accept at least one New Age belief. Roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults in this category hold one or more New Age beliefs, including six-in-ten who believe spiritual energy can be located in physical things and 54% who believe in psychics. And among those who say they are religious and spiritual, 65% espouse at least one New Age belief. Americans who reject both the religious and spiritual labels also are more likely to reject New Age beliefs. Roughly three-in-ten or fewer in this group believe in psychics, reincarnation, astrology or that spiritual energy can be found in objects. And fewer than half (45%) affirm one or more of these beliefs. There also are gender, age and other demographic differences associated with New Age beliefs. For instance, just as women are more likely than men to identify with a religion and to engage in a number of religious practices, women also are more likely to hold New Age beliefs. Across all four measures – belief in psychics, reincarnation, astrology and that spiritual energy can be found in objects – larger shares of women than men subscribe to these beliefs. And overall, seven-in-ten women hold at least one New Age belief, compared to 55% of men. Also, adults under age 65, those who have not graduated from college, racial and ethnic minorities, and Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party are more likely than others to hold to at least one New Age belief.

A federal judge ordered a D.C. correctional facility to feed an all-organic diet to the Phoenix man who took part in the raid on the U.S. Capitol with a painted face and a fur hat with horns, in keeping with his professed religion as a shaman. Jake Angeli had gone without food for nine days, his attorney told the court in a Wednesday hearing, because the D.C. Department of Corrections had refused Angeli's request to be fed all organic food. In an emergency court filing on Wednesday, Albert Watkins, the St. Louis attorney representing Angeli, said that his client had lost 20 pounds while in custody. Angeli, in a handwritten note to the D.C. facility requesting an all-organic diet, said he was a shaman who was willing to suffer rather than modify his beliefs. “If I have to go a week without food or longer, than so be it,” Angeli wrote. “I will stay committed to my spiritual beliefs even if it means I suffer physically.” FOR SUBSCRIBERS: How Jake Angeli went from being a Phoenix character to a face of the U.S. Capitol raid When asked by the judge to define what food would satisfy his request, Angeli said it would be food labeled with the organic label from the United States Department of Agriculture. Angeli told the judge that his eight years of eating only organic food has "created a delicate bio-chemical balance in my body." However, an attorney for the D.C. Department of Corrections disputed, in an email to Angeli's attorney, that Angeli had not eaten for a week. The email to Watkins was included as part of his emergency motion. “Also, based on information and belief, contrary to your assertions,” the email said, “your client has not gone seven days without eating.” The email did not elaborate on what Angeli has eaten or how often. That attorney, Eric Glover, did not return a request for comment from The Republic. That detail was also not addressed during a 30-minute court hearing on Wednesday before Judge Royce Lamberth. There, an attorney for the D.C. Department of Corrections said that the institution's religious services department could find no evidence that an organic diet was part of the tenants of the shaman religion. Without such a finding, the department was not under any obligation to honor the request, the attorney said. The department had no outside budget for food requests, aside from the contract with its regular food provider. That contract, the attorney told the judge, did not include organic foods. Watkins, arguing before the judge, said that his client's religious beliefs were more important than any bureaucratic hurdles that the D.C. facility would have to overcome. Watkins said that the shaman religion doesn't have recognized rules or structures as other faiths do. But that Angeli's refusal to eat for nine days should be proof enough of the sincerity of his religious beliefs. Watkins said Angeli was being forced to "choose between starvation, death or consuming something that is adverse to his long-held faith." The judge ruled from the bench that Angeli's request be honored. He said he would file a written ruling later. Angeli had become a fixture at protests and rallies throughout Phoenix in the past two years wearing an eye-catching outfit that included a fur headdress with horns and face paint. He would also be shirtless, showing off elaborate tattoos. All of it, he said in past interviews with The Republic, was part of his self-study as a shaman. Angeli wore that same outfit as he roamed the Capitol rotunda and the U.S. Senate chamber on Jan. 6, after he and a mob of Trump supporters breached the building, sending Representatives and Senators scurrying into secured rooms. FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Before the US Capitol raid, Jake Angeli and other Trump supporters staged attempt in Arizona Angeli briefly took the seat on the U.S. Senate dais that had been occupied minutes before by then-Vice President Mike Pence who was presiding over a joint session of Congress. Lawmakers were in the midst of certifying the states’ electoral votes, making official the victory of President Joe Biden and the defeat of then-President Donald Trump. While at the dais, Angeli left a threatening note for Pence that read, in all capital letters: “It’s only a matter of time. Justice is coming!” Angeli was arrested Jan. 9 at the Phoenix FBI office. A grand jury in D.C. later indicted him, under his legal name of Jacob Chansley, on six criminal charges, including two felonies. The maximum punishment for the crimes, as charged, would be 28 years in prison. A judge in Arizona ordered Angeli held in custody and transported to D.C. to await trial. Angeli filed an inmate request slip with the D.C. Department of Corrections on Jan. 27, two days after he was moved there from Phoenix, asking for an all-organic diet. The slip was included as part of the court filing. In the handwritten note, Angeli said he had eaten an all-organic diet for the past eight years as part of his practice as a shaman. In his note, Angeli defined organic food as that which “has been made by God.” That meant, he said, nothing with genetically modified organisms, otherwise known as GMOs, as well as food grown without herbicides, pesticides or processed with artificial colors or flavorings. “I am humbly requesting a few organic canned vegetables,” Angeli wrote, “canned tuna (wild caught) or organic canned soups.” Angeli wrote that he had occasionally fasted as part of his religious practice as a shaman, but had not gone more than a few days. Angeli said that if he doesn't eat organic, he suffers physically. "I simply ask that you understand that the physical effects of not eating organic are harmful to my body and bio-chemestry," he wrote. Watkins, in his filing, said that non-organic food would represent an "object intrusion" into Angeli's body that, under the shamanistic belief, introduces disease. Angeli's reaction to non-organic food was immediate, Watkins wrote, and "not simply discomforting, but debilitating and, notably, dehydrating." The matter of the organic diet was raised while Angeli was held in Phoenix. It was honored in Arizona after being raised in court. Angeli, in his slip, said he would “kindly and humbly ask that a brief exception be made in this location as well.” During Angeli's initial appearance in Phoenix, his public defender mentioned the need for an organic diet. Magistrate Judge Deborah Fine instructed Angeli's court-appointed attorney to work out the issue with the U.S. Marshal's Service. She told the attorney to mention that it was under her direction. "Mr. Chansley needs to eat," she said using Angeli's legal name. However, Angeli’s request for an organic diet was denied by the chaplain for the facility on Monday. The chaplain noted on the slip, which was included in the filing, that Angeli did not identify himself as a shaman when he entered the D.C. facility. Further, the chaplain wrote that the religious services department was “unable to find any religious merit” showing that practitioners of shamanism need an organic diet. In his motion, Watkins said the court could solve the diet issue by releasing Angeli. That would also resolve the difficulty Watkins said he had communicated with his client about the case. Federal prosecutors, in a motion also filed Wednesday ahead of the hearing, opposed Angeli's release. The motion said the government took no position on his diet while in custody. Wakins told the judge that since he had granted Angeli's request for organic food, there was no need to address the release motion on Friday. Watkins, in his motion arguing for Angeli's release, said his client was “uniquely postured” to assist both federal investigators and members of Congress in finding out more about the Jan. 6 raid. But, he said, he could only make such offers of cooperation after being able to spend time with his client. Watkins said in his motion that he had only had “a couple” of unmonitored phone calls with Angeli since he had signed on as his attorney. However, he told the judge in the hearing that he had worked out an arrangement with the D.C. facility that would allow him to speak to his client more often. Watkins said in his written motion that Angeli had no criminal history and would pose no danger if released. He said that Angeli practiced non-violence as a shaman. “(T)o the extent,” Watkins wrote, “he captures and releases insects rather than swatting, killing or injuring same.”

Single swastikas began to appear in the Neolithic Vinca culture across south-eastern Europe around 7,000 years ago. But it's in the Bronze Age that they became more widespread across the whole of Europe. In the Museum's collection there are clay pots with single swastikas encircling their upper half which date back to around 4,000 years ago. When the Nazis occupied Kiev in World War Two they were so convinced that these pots were evidence of their own Aryan ancestors that they took them back to Germany. (They were returned after the war.)

QAnon, the viral pro-Trump conspiracy theory alleging that world is run by a band of satan-worshipping pedophiles, is gaining steam in the yoga and wellness community. iStock On social media, some teachers and influencers are posting QAnon-related messaging—although it doesn’t always explicitly mention QAnon by name. On pastel backgrounds and in pretty fonts they call COVID-19 a hoax, encourage gun ownership, warn about human trafficking, and celebrate Donald Trump as a “light worker” in his quest to “save the children.” Yoga teachers including Hala Khouri and Seane Corn—cofounders of the yoga and social justice organization Off the Mat, Into the World—started seeing posts like these in their feeds near the beginning of the Coronavirus lockdown this spring. Khouri has said she believes the debunked viral documentary Plandemic, which spread misinformation about COVID-19, was an entry point to QAnon for many in the wellness community. (The documentary was removed by both Facebook and YouTube in May.) In March, celebrity OB/GYN Christiane Northrup, MD, started sharing QAnon-related “save the children” messaging, along with videos and memes that disparage vaccines and mask-wearing and encourage distrust of mainstream media. Northrup also shared Plandemic with her more than 750,000 followers on social media. In an interview with Jezebel, Khouri discussed how she was “slammed” by many members of her Facebook community when she questioned the veracity of the documentary. Soon after, an explosion of posts pushing back on mask-wearing and a proliferation of memes warning of a government-led holocaust via vaccine flooded her feeds. see also Do Politics Belong in Yoga? Yoga Teachers and Wellness Leaders Respond to QAnon Khouri, Corn, and other high-profile members of the wellness community like Jeff Krasno, the creator of the yoga festival Wanderlust and now the director of Commune—a wellness video and podcasting platform—were so disturbed by QAnon’s allegations that they were moved to publicly denounce it. On September 13, Corn posted this statement, created by a concerned group of yoga and wellness leaders, to her 108,000 followers on Instagram: Corn told Yoga Journal that she believes QAnon messaging is manipulative and exploitative—designed to incite chaos and division in the lead-up to the upcoming presidential election. “I just wanted to alert people that QAnon is a cult and it’s dangerous and it’s got its roots in white supremacy culture,” says Corn. “People should be aware of misinformation that is being targeted directly at the wellness community.” By the end of September, Corn’s post had around 10,000 likes. After accruing thousands of comments, many from QAnon supporters spreading disinformation, Corn decided to disable comments on September 24. “As much as I may have helped people to gain awareness, I may have also introduced people to QAnon theories and beliefs,” she said. see also 8 Steps Yogis Can Take to Turn Political Anxiety Into Mindful Activism The Roots of QAnon According to believers of QAnon, the leaders of the cabal consist of top democrats and liberal entertainers; dark forces who threaten humanity. “Q” is the name of a supposed high-clearance intelligence officer who drops cryptic messages about the cabal on various websites. According to The New York Times, Q has “dropped” almost 5,000 messages so far, many repeating warnings about satanic rituals that have previously made their way into mainstream culture: If you lived through the 80s, you might remember evening news stories claiming Satanists were infiltrating daycares and schools to abuse children. Another QAnon claim, that cabal members kill and eat children to gain special powers from their blood, is a recycled Blood Libel conspiracy theory rooted in anti-semitism from the turn of the Twentieth Century, which helped to fuel Nazism across the world. Conspirituality Why are some members of the spiritual community putting stock in this conspiracy theory? Two of the issues QAnon distorts—child abuse and human trafficking—are legitimate concerns, and many in the wellness community, including Corn, feel passionately about stopping them. (Corn has been working to fight human trafficking for decades. She recommends a few organizations that she’s personally cooperated with in both the United States and India: Children of the Night and Apne App.) More generally, spiritual seekers are attracted to the idea of hidden and secret knowledge, and the existence of a grand cosmic plan, according to British writer and philosopher Jules Evans, who’s written extensively about the intersection of mysticism and conspiracy theories. “People prone to spiritual experiences may also be prone to unusual beliefs like conspiracy theories, which could be described as a paranoid version of a mystical experience,” Evans says. “Conspirituality” is a term that was used by academic Charlotte Ward in 2011 in the Journal of Contemporary Religion. It is described as a “a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fueled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews.” Conspirituality is also a podcast, hosted by Derek Beres, Julian Walker, and Matthew Remski, that explores the cult-like behavior of QAnon and its theories. see also 11 Yoga Practices for Working Through Stress and Anxiety How to Spot QAnon, Protect Yourself from Disinformation, and Respond In an interview with cult survivor and researcher Remski on the Conspirituality Podcast, Corn warned of the dangers of “Pastel QAnon” and their pleas to “protect children.” If you look closely, you might see QAnon hashtags attached to the posts, mixed in with other hashtags used by anti-trafficking campaigns: #savethechildren, #endsextrafficking, #eyeswideopen, #thegreatawakening, #dotheresearch, #followthewhiterabbit. (See a list of QAnon terminology here, compiled by the Conspirituality Podcast.) According to Evans, “We need to learn how to balance our intuition with critical thinking, otherwise we can fall prey to ideas which are bad for us and our networks.” If you see QAnon-related posts in your social feeds and want to start a conversation with the person who posted, Krasno recommends avoiding posting in their comments, as that can give the post more weight and help it spread further. He also recommends avoiding using words like ‘conspiracy’ or ‘conspirituality.’ “[These words] immediately cast any sort of skepticism in a negative light, and many conspiracies have been proven through hard-nosed journalism, including theories about Jeffrey Epstein, Watergate, and child sex trafficking,” he says. The word conspiracy can put people on the defensive and erode the common ground you are trying to create in an effort to bridge your worldview with others’, he explains. “You also have to be sensitive to the fact that some folks who support QAnon are survivors of sex trafficking and abuse,” says Krasno. “And now they feel heard, and have agency and community.” see also A Sequence for Building Resilience in This Political Climate When Krasno does engage with members of his community posting QAnon messages, he tries to frame his responses around discernment and media literacy, asking them if they know the source of the information they are sharing and whether it is reliable—whether it meets journalistic standards, has come from multiple expert sources, and was fact-checked. “I remind myself that we are all susceptible to being imperceptibly influenced by misinformation, and then I ask others to be aware of that as well,” Krasno says. If your own opinions have changed over the last several months, he suggests asking yourself why. “One of the hardest things in the world now is to differentiate fact from fiction,” he says, especially when misinformation is prolific online. “I also challenge people to get off of social media for a day, or even a week, to see how they feel,” Krasno adds. “The goal of QAnon and other similar movements is to propagate chaos by constantly agitating people, tapping into sympathetic nervous system responses that inspire you to fight. When people get off of social media for a while, they usually feel better, more relaxed, and happier.” see also A Yoga Sequence to Train Your Brain to Relax

The faces in this image are the faces of people we’ve lost to Covid-19. May they rest in peace. Even as an empath, it’s hard to imagine the seething outrage, helplessness, disgust, terror, powerlessness, horror, and understandable hatred Black and Indigenous People of Color and Jewish people must have felt while watching video footage of white supremacists and QAnon followers egged on by a sitting President of their country while some in law enforcement practically rolled out the red carpet for them. Some wore Camp Auschwitz t-shirts. Others waved the Confederate flag. As one commenter said, this felt like a massive gang rape on our country, but especially for BIPOC and Jewish people. The comparison between how peaceful Black Lives Matters protestors on the Capitol steps were tear-gassed to make way for Trump’s photo op versus how weak the police presence was in the Capitol while all of our elected Congresspeople were gathered together in a room to certify our democracy’s election results is downright sickening, not to mention suspicious. Nobody can doubt that if those insurrectionists storming the Capitol were Black, there would have been a massacre in our nation’s seat of democracy. That we got as close as we did to watching Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi hung by a crazed mob of Proud Boys and QAnon brass in the makeshift gallows erected by these traitors is downright terrifying. That it was all supported by a President who told those attempting a coup “I love you” and “You’re special” makes me crazed, and I’m not a Black or Indigenous woman. I have all but one of the privileges an American can have (I’m not male.) To imagine how this sits with a Black woman or a transgender American or an Indigenous elder or a Holocaust survivor is almost incomprehensible. One of my Black female friends is now planning to expatriate, and I don’t blame her. She doesn’t think it’s safe for her to live here anymore and she plans to seek asylum elsewhere before a real massacre does happen. And make no mistake about it. She’s right. This COULD happen, and if you don’t believe it could, you haven’t studied history. I also can’t help wondering how it’s going with so many of my colleagues in the yoga, wellness, and spirituality world, the ones who got coopted by pastel Q and conspiracy theory propaganda promoted by right-wing extremists. How are Christiane Northrup, Kelly Brogan, Sayer Ji, JP Sears, JZ Knight, David Wolfe and all the people on the Conspirituality podcast’s “red-pilled” list feeling when they see violent QAnon insurrectionists and Proud Boys cheering each other on while trying to lynch our Vice President and leaders in Congress? Can they now penetrate the delusion to see that this is not a Great Awakening taking us to the 5D but a Great Darkening in our country? I got trolled by tens of thousands of vicious people in our so-called “spiritual circles” in 2020 because I was posting in support of public health recommendations, Black Lives Matters hashtags, nuanced pro-vaccination posts, and posts suggesting that the California wildfires were indeed related to anthropogenic climate crisis and not just forest mismanagement. I can’t help wondering how are those people who I banned and deleted because they couldn’t seem to respect boundaries against abusing me are feeling right now. As much as it hurt to be treated with such contempt and hatred (because yes, I am a human, and yes, I am sensitive), I feel a strange tenderness towards them now because I know most of them aren’t bad people; they’re hurt people. I can’t help wondering- are they sickened like I am when they watch the “QAnon shaman” Jake Angeli taint the sanctity of Indigenous healing by calling himself a shaman while dressed in Indigenous clothing that didn’t even try to cover KKK markings on his chest, all while dripping with unbridled hubris that he’s broken into the Capitol as part of mob of insurrectionists? Are all those pastel Q intuitives, alternative health providers, neo-shamans, yoga teachers, life coaches, health coaches, and mind-body medicine doctors still believing all those conspiracy theories, all while an actual conspiracy to overthrow the government was being masterminded by Donald Trump and his followers? Are they so brainwashed by a lunatic that they can’t see that our whole democracy is under threat? Are they able to break through the delusion enough to see that they’ve been lied to, that they got duped, and that it’s time to accept that they’ve made a grave mistake? Do they have the moral strength and psychological health to be able to handle the shame they must feel when they realize which side of history they wound up on? Shame is a normal emotion, a healthy response to doing something wrong, something that violates your integrity or violates someone else’s boundaries, something that harms other people or harms yourself. We’re supposed to be able to feel healthy shame so we can be motivated to make apologies and make amends, to change our behaviors and admit when we mess up. Are they feeling this necessary shame so they can admit their mistakes, make amends with the people they’ve hurt, and for those in the public eye, publicly recant, even if it means losing a lot of followers? I’m not so sure people will know how to wrestle with that much shame, especially when healthy shame has been so demonized in this country, creating a whole lot of shameless people, but I hope I’m wrong. I hope people can feel their own shame and that, after we rumble with all those feelings, we can welcome people who went down the rabbit hole back into the fold in 2021. If we ostracize them, we only make them more at risk of being isolated and therefore vulnerable to being even more radicalized. How can we possibly reconcile this? How can a disgusted, horrified spiritual Black woman who is so scared of her government and her fellow countrymates that she’s planning to escape the tyranny of living in the US ever welcome back into our circle the “spiritual white women” who parroted Q conspiracies, voted for “Trump as a lightworker,” believe Covid is a hoax, think Democrats are pedophiles who drink the blood of children, refuse to wear a mask, spout off anti-vaccine propaganda promoted by the likes of Mikki Willis, and insist that All Lives Matter and that it’s actually Antifa storming the Capitol (it’s wasn’t)? If we can’t even find common ground in our yoga, wellness, and spiritual circles, I fear for the future of this country. Let us do what we can to CALL EACH OTHER BACK IN. I’m not suggesting some spiritual bypass wherein we stuff our rage or hide our grief or pretend we don’t feel disgust, horror, and judgment towards those who betrayed public health measures, defiled democracy, turned their backs on social justice in this country and participated in spreading a lethal virus by refusing to wear masks or socially distance, a virus that unfairly infects and kills our most vulnerable and marginalized pillars of society more than it harms the privileged. I’m not suggesting there shouldn’t be social or professional or legal consequences. Making a mistake this big sometimes requires losing friends, losing your job, losing money, losing your reputation, or losing your marriage. Those who broke into the Capitol should be held accountable and our President must be punished. I am not talking about calling in the extremists. They are probably beyond inclusion. I am talking about the people who are more like you than they are not like you, the people you’ve loved and lost this year down the rabbit hole. We will definitely need truth and reconciliation so we can express all those feelings and not jump to some premature forgiveness, and it’s okay to decide that someone who became vulnerable to QAnon is no longer someone you want as your friend, partner, employee, teacher, politician, or doctor. But at least in our spiritual circles, we need a way to off-ramp those who were truly brainwashed into a cult and now want to get out. We need a way to humanize each other so we don’t just ostracize and abandon those who were traumatized and thereby make them even more vulnerable to cultic manipulation and brainwashing. Just as families do their best to welcome cult members back into the fold when they wake up to their delusions and finally leave the cult, we need to find a way to do the same for our own. This is part of why we created an online gathering place to do just that- Healing With The Muse. We’ll be using Zoom to host mini-workshops twice a month and also a monthly writing group so we can have difficult conversations with clear safety boundaries, as well as care for ourselves with creative expression, trauma healing, energy healing, music, art, dancing, and breakout rooms where we can talk to one another more intimately. It is our hope that nobody will be shamed by others for what they’ve believed or how they’ve behaved in 2020. It is our desire to call those in our spiritual circles back in, to reunify, to create safe, brave space where we can heal the parts that might have been curious about conspiracies or not understood the gravity of what was actually happening. We hope to help people treat the traumas that cause polarization so we can feel more empathy, first for our own hurt parts, and then for the wounds in others. Both the victims and the perpetrators of white supremacy, patriarchy, conspiratorial thinking, distrust of authority, and capitalist greed leading to widespread poverty in our country stem from trauma. We need healing now more than ever. Sliding scales are available so anyone who is ready for this kind of healing will be made welcome. Let us feel all our righteous rage and express our horror but also let us dare to find what we can agree upon. I suspect that many in this community agree upon more than we disagree upon. Yes, the things we disagree upon are of dire and life-threatening consequence right now. But let us at least try to humanize one another so we don’t wind up like Nazi Germany or Rwanda. When someone you know comes out of the rabbit hole, feeling like “OMG, what have I done?” instead of saying, “I told you so,” just consider calling them back in. I’m not talking about bypassing accountability or consequences. But for those willing to get help and undergo the trauma treatment necessary to recover from cultic abuse, can we avoid making it worse by rejecting them categorically? Please, dear God, help us. Lissa

There’s a woman I know running a wellness coaching business in Sydney’s eastern suburbs who tells me Trump is a “light worker”. There are people who “follow” me – mums making their own bone broth, yoga teachers posting Rumi memes – who believe the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, is storing kids in tunnels under Melbourne’s CBD. When he’s not giving daily Covid-19 press conferences in his reassuring polar fleece, they tell me, he is involved in a global child sex trafficking cabal. Some retweet Pete Evans’ links to David Icke, a Holocaust denier who thinks the world is run by shape-shifting lizards from outer space. As Victoria’s lockdown takes its toll, these people I loosely know have flooded my social feeds with impassioned pleas for me to “wake up” and fight #msm (mainstream media), quoting what we now know to be QAnon conspiracy jargon, hashtagged and often in screaming caps. When I ask to see their research (I’m genuinely curious and the sheer onslaught has made me question my adherence to the scientific method) that coronavirus is a hoax dreamed up by a satanic cell of elites, I am directed to alt-right YouTube links and the viral documentary Plandemic. When I flag (in what I hope is a calm digital tone) the film has been removed from most digital platforms and Science magazine has systematically disproved most of its claims, I’m told it’s me who’s been sucked into the (#msm) conspiracy. #DOYOUROWNRESEARCH, they scream-text at me. I asked one commenter the other day, “How do you know vaccines are a ‘Deep State’ plot to wipe out white people?” “How do YOU know it’s not?” was the reply. It felt like biting my own teeth. How did the 'love and light' go so dark? I’m active on social media, I’m an Australian woman in the public eye and I regularly share political posts. Which is to say, I am a repository for the full psychological kaleidoscope of public opinion, fear and blame circling the zeitgeist. I’ve also spent the past three years researching the colliding Black Swans and Hyperobjects that have culminated in the clusterfuck that is 2020, for my latest book This One Wild and Precious Life. I thought I’d mined most of the dark corners, was alive to all the “unprecedents”. But little prepared me for this most recent pop-political mash-up, coined conspiritualism. It’s certainly a Venn overlap that is hard to fathom. How did wellness warriors come to unite with the alt-right QAnon community? How did the “love and light” go so dark? Well, first it’s worth acknowledging that this is not the first time the new age community has joined forces with the far right. The Nazis used astrologers; Hess, the deputy führer, opened a centre for alternative medical practices. It’s also not uncommon for child sex trafficking theories to become the convergence point for conspiracy groups from both ends of the spectrum – hurting children is an easy way to demonise an enemy. Even tunnel theories have been around for decades. Things today are crazy uncertain. The climate and biodiversity devastation, a global pandemic, worldwide recession – we know the gnarly gist. In such magnitude-10 wobbly times, we have often mobilised against an enemy. It’s kept us united with our tribe and feeling safe. But this is not a war. No one identifiable force caused the viral leaps that led to the coronavirus pandemic, no one generation caused global warming. When we don’t have an identifiable enemy – or worse, the enemy is “us” – it is tempting to create one. As the cruel chasm between the haves and have-nots widens, it’s understandable the “elites” of politics, science, Hollywood and business become a target for terrified people. There’s also this. My sense, as something of a veteran (albeit retired) of the wellness realm, is there’s a genuine desire for truth behind the phenomenon. As the world gets more complex and noisy, truth can easily become confused with 'truthiness' The wellness and alternative spiritual crew have united over the past decade to expose the vested interests of the food, pharmaceutical and oil industries – for valid and worthy reasons. Drug companies have abused our health. The Gates Foundation should be more transparent and accountable, considering the massive influence it has over global public health. And the fight to expose truth has united this community. Meanwhile, political trust is at an all-time low globally. Media and other moral structures that once held the status quo accountable have desiccated. It’s understandable that we be suspicious and questioning. I am on a number of issues. But as the world gets more complex and noisy, truth can easily become confused with “truthiness”. Under the sheer volume of competing facts and studies, news stories and social media posts that bludgeon us daily, we succumb to truth-lite. The overwhelm sees us seek expedient options. As I argue in my book, we are wholly ill-equipped to deal with fake news. We have lost the ability to read closely and deeply. Our attention spans are shot – rendering us entirely incapable of being resilient to bullshit. Studies show most of us simply can’t work our way through complex issues like life-affecting contracts and information relating to our political responsibilities (um, Brexit!). Ditto the science that explains how viruses and vaccines work, or how to check if science is gold standard. Or whether a YouTube documentary is reputable. We have access to more information, but no one taught us how to sift through it. Indeed, a recent study found that people are a lot more likely to share false coronavirus information than they are to think about whether it’s true. Thinking about whether something is true or not is hard work, and so as Maryanne Wolf puts it, this cognitive flaccidity “incentivises a retreat to the most familiar silos of unchecked information, which require and receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and demagoguery”. I’d also add that sharing exclusive information after you’ve done “your own research” (flaccid or otherwise) can provide us with a sense of agency in a world that has left us feeling increasingly overwhelmed and powerless. We “know” there’s an international cabal of sex traffickers telling us to wear face masks because – everyone on Facebook says it’s true. It’s a bit like why we all bought toilet paper when the pandemic first hit: because everyone bought toilet paper. Studies show we repeatedly trust social proof far more than evidence-based proof. It’s human, understandable. Truth-lite then conflates with what I call spiritualism-lite. Contemporary spiritualism has tended to cherry-pick the “love and light” feel-good bits of the various traditions, the bits that promote personal freedom and individuality, leaving out the responsibility, service and the sacrifice to the greater good. We are all reeling from the disconnection and competitive fragmentation that the neoliberal model has driven us to We connect to our yoga mats and go inward to connect to ourselves, we attend to self-care of our gut microbiota, but eschew politics and heavy stuff. When these diet versions of the real thing converge, being told to isolate or wear a mask is seen as an affront to flowy freedom – so must amount to a conspiracy, rather than a noble act of civic engagement. There’s a meme a wellness blogger with a gut powder range quoted back at me in my Instagram comments thread, after I posted what could certainly be read as a condescending remark. It’s a Rumi line I feature in my book, for there truly is a Rumi line for every moment of human despair: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” We are capable of meeting in this field. Human history is full of such moments where we have unified not around an enemy but around a bigger, higher cause. Often it’s truth. We are all reeling from the disconnection and competitive fragmentation that the neoliberal model has driven us to, and we all know that nothing but a monumental shift will steer the ship right. We will indeed need to do our own research and demand more truth. But we will also need to defer to and respect science to do so. We need to understand that research done via YouTube is not “your own research”. It’s an algorithm at play that handcuffs us to our worst cognitive biases. We need to be sceptical – but for the sake of understanding, not to create more tribalism. I would argue that we also need, at a broader level, to instigate fake news resilience training, like Finland has. It works. I find my ultimate comfort and hope in this: conspiracy theories don’t satiate for long. We move on from them, as we do with all diet or “lite” versions of things. We ultimately seek the full-fat version of life. Climate activist, Trump supporter, bone broth maker – we are all feeling unsatiated, disconnected, baffled. We’re all trying to find truth and certainty. Ironically, it’s our disconnection that unifies us. And it’s our yearning for full-fat life that, I hope, will see us meet in the field.

U.S. Christians, especially evangelical Christians, identify as environmentalists at very low rates compared to the general population. According to a Pew Research Center poll from May 2020, while 62% of religiously unaffiliated U.S. adults agree that the Earth is warming primarily due to human action, only 35% of U.S. Protestants do – including just 24% of white evangelical Protestants. Politically powerful Christian interest groups publicly dispute the climate science consensus. A coalition of major evangelical groups, including Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, launched a movement opposing what they describe as “the false worldview” of environmentalism, which supposedly is “striving to put America, and the world, under its destructive control.” Studies show that belief in miracles and an afterlife is associated with lower estimates of the risks posed by climate change. This raises the question: Does religion itself predispose people against climate science? Surveys of people around the world, as well as social science research on denial, suggest the answer to this question is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. Where religion and science can’t be reconciled An automatic resistance to science would seem to make sense for some religious believers. There are several ways that core aspects of modern scientific knowledge tend to undermine literalist or fundamentalist readings of religious texts. In particular, evolution by natural selection, the central concept underlying the biological sciences, is utterly incompatible with most creationist faith traditions. Religion offers the comforts of a measure of control and reassurance via an omnipotent deity that can be placated by ritual. In contrast, the scientist’s naturalistic universe offers neither an intrinsic moral order nor a final reward, which can be unsettling for the devout and in conflict with their faith. Because of these mismatches, one might expect those with a strong religious affiliation to be reflexively suspicious of scientific findings. Indeed, in a large international survey, 64% of those who described religion as an “important part” of their life said they would side with their religious teachings in a disagreement between science and their religion. Other studies find that, for the faithful, religion and science are at odds as ultimate explanations for natural phenomena. Climate science denial may stem more from politics than religion Social scientist Dan Kahan rejects the idea of an automatic link between religiosity and any anti-science bias. He argues that religiosity only incidentally tracks science denial because some scientific findings have become “culturally antagonistic” to some identity groups. According to Kahan’s data, identification as a political conservative, and as white, is much more predictive of rejecting the climate consensus than overall religiosity. He argues that anti-science bias has to do with threats to values that define one’s cultural identity. There are all kinds of topic areas wherein people judge expert qualifications based on whether the “expert” confirms or contradicts the subject’s cherished view. Social scientist Donald Braman agrees that science denial is context dependent. He points out that while conservative white males are more likely to be skeptics on global warming, different demographic groups disagree with experts on other particular topics. For example, where a conservative person invested in the social and economic status quo might feel threatened by evidence for global warming, liberal egalitarians might be threatened by evidence, say, that nuclear waste could be safely stored underground. As I explain in my book, “The Truth About Denial”, there’s ample evidence for a universal human tendency toward motivated reasoning when faced with facts that threaten one’s ideological worldview. The motivated reasoner begins with a conclusion to which he or she is committed, and assesses evidence or expertise according to whether it supports that conclusion. White American evangelicals trend very strongly toward political conservatism. They also exhibit the strongest correlation, among any faith group, between religiosity and either climate science denial or a general anti-science bias. Meanwhile, African-American Protestants, who are theologically aligned with evangelical Protestants but politically aligned with progressives, show some of the highest levels of climate concern. North America is the only high-income region where people who follow a religion are substantially more likely to say they favor their religious teachings over science when disagreements arise. This finding is driven mainly by politically conservative U.S. religious denominations – including conservative Catholics. A major new study looking at data from 60 countries showed that, while religiosity in the U.S. is correlated with more negative attitudes about science, you don’t see this kind of association in many other countries. Elsewhere, religiosity is sometimes even correlated with disproportionately positive attitudes about science. And the U.S. is generally an outlier in terms of attitudes toward human-caused global warming: Fewer Americans accept the climate science consensus than residents of most other countries. All this would suggest that climate science resistance has more to do with cultural identity politics than religiosity. Which comes first? But the available evidence cuts both ways. A landmark study from the 1980s suggested that fundamentalist religious traditions are associated with a commitment to human dominion over nature, and that this attitude may explain anti-environmentalist positions. Even after controlling for political ideology, those committed to an “end-times theology” – like U.S. evangelicals – still show a greater tendency to oppose the scientific consensus on environmental issues. [Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.] Perhaps some specific theologies bias the believer against the idea that human beings could be responsible for the end of humanity. This bias could show up as an automatic rejection of environmental science. We are left with something of a “chicken and egg” problem: Do certain religious communities adopt politically conservative positions on climate change because of their religious tradition? Or do people adopt a religious tradition that stresses human dominion over nature because they were raised in a politically conservative community? The direction of causation here may be difficult to resolve. It wouldn’t be surprising to find either religious dogmatism or political conservatism linked with anti-science attitudes – each tends to favor the status quo. Fundamentalist religious traditions are defined by their fixed doctrines. Political conservatives by definition favor the preservation of the traditional social and economic order. Consider that perhaps the single essential aspect of the scientific method is that it has no respect for cultural traditions or received views. (Think of Galileo’s findings on the motion of the Earth, or Darwin on evolution.) Some would argue that scientific inquiry’s “constant onslaught on old orthodoxies” is the reason both conservatives and frequent churchgoers report a decreasing overall trust in science which continues to this day. Even if politics and culture rather than religion itself may be driving climate science denial, religious communities – as some religious leaders, including the Roman Catholic Pope, have recognized – bear a responsibility to exercise some self-awareness and concern for well-being rather than blindly denying the overwhelming consensus on a civilization-ending threat like human-caused global warming.

The Loneliness Of The Climate Change Christian Enlarge this image toggle caption Mark Seliger Mark Seliger With Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings underway, some are hoping — others are fearing — that her political and religious beliefs as a conservative Catholic might influence her decisions as a Justice. Her critics and supporters alike seem to take it for granted that religious values have a profound influence on the landscape of American politics. Few religious interest groups have wielded as much political power in the United States over the past few decades as white evangelical Christians. They focused their attention at first on family values, abortion, and same sex marriage, but have since expanded to global geopolitics and climate change. But just as their religious values have changed U.S. politics, U.S. politics have influenced religion. Conservative political priorities around climate change have trickled down to church sermons, and exhortations from the pulpit guard against the "blasphemy" of environmentalism. In this episode, we take you back to a surprisingly recent period of time before environmentalists were painted as agents of the devil, and when lots of people felt that environmentalism was the issue that might bring Christians and scientists together. We bring you the story of someone who spent years trying to find the right words and right language for both Christians and skeptics. Until, one day — he said too much. Additional Context: According to a study from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, among Christians, evangelicals are most likely to believe that God expects humans to be good stewards of nature. But the same study shows that evangelicals are least likely to believe that climate change is real and human-caused. "The Evangelical Vote" from NPR's Throughline podcast explores the history of the American evangelical voting bloc, and how it became so deeply intertwined with conservative politics in the United States. After separating from the National Association of Evangelicals, Richard Cizik founded his own faith-based organization, the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. Listen to Rough Translation wherever you get your podcasts, including NPR One, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and RSS.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump said this week that American Jews who chose to vote for Democrats were being disloyal, he was flirting with a notion that has fueled anti-Semitism for generations and has been at the root of some of the most brutal violence inflicted upon Jews in their history. The accusation that Jews have a “dual loyalty” — that they are not to be trusted because their true allegiance is to their religion, rather than to the country in which they live — dates back thousands of years. It animated the Nazis in 1930s Germany, when they accused Jewish people of being traitors and used charges of disloyalty to justify their arrests, persecutions and mass killings. After the founding of Israel, the charge was that Jews were more loyal to Israel, the Jewish state, than to their own countries. The smear persists in various forms to this day: It is a common refrain of white supremacists who claim there is a secret plot orchestrated by Jews to replace white people through mass migration and racial integration. “The Jews have been a persistent minority for thousands of years, living in exile, living in diasporas, and the Jews have been made convenient scapegoats for various purposes,’’ said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. “That’s why they often call anti-Semitism the oldest hatred.”

Read the Introduction Introduction Presenting Jews to America Maybe you, reading these words, were the only Jew in your elementary school class, and maybe around Chanukah time, your mother would come in with a large shopping bag full of the wax-covered menorah from home, candles, plastic dreidels, and five pounds of potatoes. You would sit close to her, but not too close, as she explained what Chanukah was and why Jews celebrated it. And then you helped pass out dreidels and grate potatoes as your mom heated the oil in the electric frying pan. Or perhaps you grew up the child of immigrants who did not speak English at home, and when friends came over, you had to explain why your parents spoke a different language. Maybe you traveled through Europe or India and found yourself the only American in a crowded youth hostel lounge, fielding questions about what Americans do and think. You will likely understand that individuals, groups, and whole societies are pressed to explain themselves when they encounter people whom they are unlike. The way they explain themselves, however, is rarely static; it depends on to whom they are speaking, where and when the conversation is taking place, and whether the listener appears interested. Over the course of Jewish history, Jews often thought of themselves as living among strangers. Through stories, rituals, laws, and folkways, Jews sought to understand their relationship to non-Jews. In the modern era, in a more sustained fashion than any other historical period, explaining—or presenting—Jewishness to non-Jews became a political necessity and an act of Jewish survival. For some Jews, the task bred ideological fervor, a sense that Jewishness was enacted only when Jews were busy addressing themselves to the non-Jewish world. Even for those who were not so fervid, few Jews could navigate modernity without considering how to talk about being Jewish to non-Jews. This book is about some of the ways in which American Jews explained themselves to non-Jews and how the meaning of Jewishness became inseparable from their explanations. In the United States, Jewish leaders—rabbis and intellectuals—sought to generate a public language of Jewishness, one that carried authority and was disseminated into an American public sphere. Speaking of Jews is a history of how these leaders talked about Jewishness in public from immediately after World War I through the civil rights era. As the most widely recognized spokespeople of American Jews, countless rabbis devoted themselves to creating an American language of Jewishness. Taking to the roads, the airwaves, the printing presses, university classrooms, and pulpits across the country, rabbis engaged in the central and as yet unexamined project of presenting Jewishness to the United States. Their task, as they saw it, was as much about defining a collective identity as it was about crafting an ideology about the relationship between Jews and non-Jews and the role that Jews could play in a non-Jewish society. At different times and in different contexts, rabbis claimed that Jews' religious ideals, their history, or their distinctive behaviors allowed the United States to forge ahead with its democratic experiment. When properly conceived, a public language of Jewishness, instead of marking Jews as outside of or peripheral to American life, enabled Jewish leaders to define Jews as indispensable to the United States. Just as rabbis were developing new American ideologies of Jewishness, an intellectual revolution—what I call a social-scientific turn—irrevocably imprinted itself on the way Jews talked about their Jewishness. The stirrings of a new discourse of Jewishness emerged in the 1920s, when the social sciences offered a vital, nonreligious, nonbiological, and increasingly popular language in which Jews could explain themselves to Americans. Although the other social sciences, including psychology, anthropology, economics, and political science, were part of the social-scientific turn, sociological language and models became unrivaled sources of authority, sculpting the public language that American Jewish leaders used to talk about Jewishness.Over time, rabbis filtered their own pronouncements about Jewishness through sociological language and even through prominent sociologists themselves. By the World War II era, sociological Jewishness had become the central framework through which Jews translated themselves to the United States. In its universalization of communal distinctiveness, its commonsense functionalism, and its sheer popularity, sociological language endowed Jewishness with the kind of meaning and purpose for which American rabbis—and many other Jews—had searched. Refracted through a sociological framework, Jewishness was explained as a set of collective patterns and behaviors, many of which corresponded to the circumstances of one's birth into a Jewish family. Religion, according to this model, was a functional Jewish identity marker, no different from education level, occupation, neighborhood, or friends, all of which similarly could explain where a person fit in the structure of American society. The Jewish social-scientific turn had deep American roots. Starting in the late nineteenth century, American universities had established sociology departments, which were thriving by the early decades of the next century. In the World War II era, the federal government recognized sociology as nationally valuable and channeled money to support sociological studies and institutes in hopes that they would illuminate the path toward social harmony and national strength.Simultaneously, Americans increasingly relied on experts who used empirical and rational methods to make sense of daily life.The Jewish attraction to the social sciences paralleled these trends, yet it was also a response to the particular circumstances of minority and Jewish life. Already in nineteenth-century Europe, Jews had distinguished themselves as crucial contributors to the nascent field of sociology, using its methods to makes sense of the political, economic, and religious upheavals afoot.Whether in Europe or the United States, sociology offered minority groups an opportunity to integrate their experiences into larger national contexts. It also became a crucial political and ideological tool that members of minority groups used to influence the direction of social change. As a group, Jews were the subjects of a number of important sociological studies, and some of the most important American sociologists by the mid-twentieth century were Jews themselves. None of this was inconsequential. The fact that Jews helped mold the field of sociology is critical to understanding why sociological language became so useful in Jews' efforts to explain themselves to the United States, although this is far from the only reason sociology appealed to American Jews. For Jews, the ineffability of Jewishness had long pressed the questions of where they belonged and which categories of personhood—bodily, communal, or religious ones—best described them. Indisputably, Mordecai Kaplan's revolutionary reformulation of Jewishness penned in the 1920s and 1930s was an essential foundation for the social-scientific turn and predisposed rabbis—many of whom considered themselves Kaplan's students—to feel comfortable in the idioms of sociology. Jews, Kaplan wrote in Judaism as a Civilization, should be understood as a "distinct societal entity."Drawing in no small part on early sociologists, especially èmile Durkheim, Kaplan explained that what made a Jew a Jew was not what he or she believed, but how he or she lived. Religion, in other words, was a social phenomenon, and Jewishness, larger than religion alone, was a composite of social phenomena. What sociology seemed to offer was a functional way to define Jewishness that corresponded to the lived lives of Jews. Understood through midcentury sociology, Jewishness was a social fact that limned the kinds of interactions Jews could have with non-Jews. The original source of difference between Jews and non-Jews did not interest sociologists as much as the daily realities of that difference. Religion understood as a social phenomenon certainly marked people as different from one another, but it did so in remarkably consistent, even universal, ways. While rendered as description, sociological explanations of Jewishness came to exercise prescriptive force. Sociological explanations of Jewishness designated only certain patterns as normal, tying those to core American values. Behaviors inconsistent with this new language of Jewishness could simply be dismissed as deviant. In the post–World War II era, as rabbis and Jewish leaders explained Jewishness more and more in sociological terms, counterexplanations were overshadowed. The language of sociological Jewishness became ubiquitous and could be found in popular articles and books about Jews, in sermons and lectures delivered in front of large audiences, and on radio and television broadcasts. It seeped into the everyday ways Jews and non-Jews talked about Jewishness, and it influenced how Jews thought about themselves and their future. The Modern Jewish and American Histories of Difference While Jews had been grappling with how to shape a particularly American Jewish identity since their earliest settlements on American soil, the period from the end of World War I through the civil rights era saw the flourishing of Jewish attempts to create a public and synthetic American Jewish identity. By the 1920s a significantly expanded American Jewish population had started to stabilize because of new restrictions on immigration to the United States, and as European Jewish life crumbled, it became the central body of diasporic Jewry. In many ways, this process culminated by the end of the 1960s, when all measures indicated that Jews in the United States had achieved economic, political, and cultural success, and when the next generation—the baby boomers—started to rebel against the terms of their parents' success. Over these same years, a thriving world of Jewish popular culture developed: radio broadcasts, novels and short stories, films, theater and dance productions, music, and the visual arts were instrumental in shaping Jews' encounters with non-Jews.Jewish authorities and intellectuals, the focus of this book, generated self-conscious explanations of Jewishness, aware—sometimes painfully so—of the cultural landscape in which they lived. In imagining and disseminating new modes for talking about being Jewish, they hoped to control how Americans understood Jews. At the same time, they worked to reshape the available language in which Jews themselves thought and talked about Jewishness. Most important, these leaders perceived their efforts to create public, popular, and American explanations of Jewishness as essential to the long-standing project of Jewish survival itself. Being treated in law as individuals compelled American Jews to question the terms of their collective existence: whether it served an ongoing purpose, and on what foundation it could rest. Already Jews in Enlightenment-era Europe had started wrestling with these questions, as they were (or in some cases, imagined themselves to be) on the brink of emancipation into full citizenship. Jewish Enlightenment thinkers sought to define Jews as guides for the process of modernization and, in effect, positioned Jews as avant-garde. Initiating an explosion of new cultural and political movements, many of these thinkers conceived of Jewishness as an ideology to mediate between Jews and the non-Jewish world. Yet for the most part, European nations and thinkers defined modernity in opposition to Jewish religion and culture, designating Jews as a problem or obstacle along the path toward social improvement. America, a polyglot, heterogeneous society even well before nationhood, took a very different route to modernity.An open immigration policy, a thriving slave economy, a denominational—not centralized—ecclesiastical structure all made difference an indelible part of American life. Figuring out how to balance aspirations for national unity with the reality of diversity was an American obsession. The solutions that policy makers and thinkers proposed—creating hierarchies of belonging and not belonging, establishing assimilationist and Americanization programs, waging campaigns to teach Americans how to appreciate difference and how to be different—shaped the political, economic, and cultural life of the nation.Jews were neither the originators nor the primary subjects of these debates about diversity. Rather, they entered into an ongoing conversation. But, as in many European countries, Jews also had a particular stake in guiding discussions about the role of difference in modernity. Jewish leaders in the United States realized that Jewish survival could not be taken for granted, though not for the same reasons that challenged it in Europe. American citizenship law, in theory, promised to protect Jews as individuals, but it extended no similar protections over Jews as a group. The social prejudices and discriminatory policies that American Jews experienced never issued a persistent threat to Jewish survival. America's commitment to liberal individualism, however, accosted the collective dimensions of Jewish life. American Jews became deeply invested in producing and revising American ideologies about social diversity, like pluralism, liberalism, and individualism, for the simple reason that these ideologies held promise to sustain or disrupt Jewish life. Scholars and commentators on American Jewish life have explained why Jews have maintained such a strong tradition of liberalism and, alternatively, why some shifted away from that liberalism.Yet in drawing attention to the ways Jewish leaders crafted a public language of Jewishness, I necessarily raise a different question about Jewish liberalism: how did Jewish leaders rearticulate American liberalism and embed it in their efforts to conserve group identity? In the same years when many Jewish thinkers were suggesting the ways that group distinctiveness could play a vital role in American democracy, most Jews were learning to look and act like Americans—through their worship styles, their consumer habits, their political loyalties, and their leisure patterns. This has been richly documented by a number of historians.Absent from most studies of Jewish life in the United States, however, is a consideration of the language that Jews crafted to explain themselves into American life. While this book does not ignore popular culture sources—like films, television programs, and novels—as channels through which non-Jews encountered Jewishness, its aim is to explain the intellectual framework Jewish leaders created to make Jewishness intelligible to the American public. By showing how Jewish leaders attempted to formulate Jewishness as an ideology to mediate between Jews' desire for acceptance into the United States and their commitment to Jewish survival, I hope to contribute to a larger historical and political discussion about how people, communities, and nations have encountered the tension between humanism or universalism on the one hand, and particularism or distinctiveness on the other.Americans Jews were forced to be self-conscious of their differences from other Americans, but they were also given the freedom to eradicate many of those things that made them different. Jewish leaders used their stature and authority to propose a public language of Jewishness, broadly accessible and even attractive to non-Jews, that could nonetheless articulate an ongoing purpose for Jewish distinctiveness. By no stretch did Jewish leaders arrive at perfectly balanced formulations of Jewishness. Depending on one's perspective, they may have even failed miserably. Yet what interests me is how they again and again revised the terms of Jewishness, responding to demographic, political, and cultural transformations in American and Jewish life. Who Spoke, Who Listened The rabbis and intellectuals portrayed here were, of course, not speaking for every Jew. Nonetheless, the figures I chronicle in this book imagined that their understandings of Jewishness corresponded to realities of Jewish and American life. They also believed that, through their public authority and the positions they occupied, they could reshape those realities. Often their conversations were insular—taking place at academic conferences or meetings with other rabbis—but these rabbis and intellectuals were also committed to speaking in places where Jews and non-Jews would hear them: synagogues, college campuses, summer camps, brotherhood meetings, fund-raisers, historical commemorations, rallies, Jewish newspapers, American popular magazines, highly publicized books, radio shows, and television programs. The fact remains that they were an elite group. While women certainly joined these public conversations about Jewishness, the majority of the historical actors in this book are men, a function of the gendered nature of the rabbinate and academy during the time in which they lived. Their efforts to explain Jewishness were enmeshed with gender ideals and anxieties. These leaders were also among a set of educated Jews who lived at a time when many Jews were not formally educated. Furthermore, until World War II, among the rabbis involved in rethinking the language of Jewishness, Reform rabbis figured disproportionately, for many reasons. First, with two-thirds of Reform rabbis ministering to small Jewish communities outside the northeastern corridor, they were pressed more than other rabbis to explain Jewishness to curious, incurious, and sometimes hostile onlookers.Second, the Reform movement had the deepest institutional roots in the United States, established before the massive wave of eastern European immigrants invigorated the American Orthodox and Conservative movements. As a result, Reform Judaism developed an infrastructure for interacting with the non-Jewish world far earlier than the other movements. Finally, ideologically and intellectually, Reform Jews tended to be more concerned with life outside a purely Jewish context.By the World War II era, many Conservative rabbis took their place alongside Reform rabbis and devoted themselves to explaining the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. As hundreds of Conservative synagogues sprouted in the burgeoning suburbs, Conservative rabbis became the face of Jewishness to postwar America. Rabbis were joined by Jewish intellectuals, especially, as I argue, social researchers in the pursuit of creating Jewishness as an exportable, comprehensible, and indispensable American idea. With attention to who was speaking, who may have been listening, and in what context, I trace how rabbis and intellectuals crafted a public language of Jewishness to communicate the relationship between Jews and the non-Jewish world in which they lived. In the first chapter, I explore two avenues through which Reform rabbis formulated Jewishness for the United States in the 1920s: their lecture tours to college campuses, and their efforts to create a Jewish missionary movement. Whether talking to predominantly non-Jewish college students or imagining the terms of missionary Judaism, these rabbis tended to define Jewishness as a set of ethical precepts that could guide anyone in better apprehending and inhabiting the world. Jewishness, they asserted, could help an individual in need just as ably as it could revitalize a nation suffering from the malaise of a brutal and seemingly meaningless war. These same years, however, saw the emergence of a new vocabulary of Jewishness formulated in sociology departments and Jewish research institutions. In chapter 2, I argue that, instead of defining Jewishness as an ethical force, sociologists observed it as a social force. The utility of sociological Jewishness as a public discourse through which Jews could explain themselves to non-Jews became abundantly clear in the decades following the 1920s. Chapter 3 illustrates the efficacy of sociological language for explaining Jewish distinctiveness and Jewish Americanness by exploring how rabbis and sociologists talked about Jewish marital patterns in the interwar years. As sociologists increasingly equated social harmony with family harmony, many rabbis learned to position Jewish endogamy (or inmarriage) as an American value. Sociological vocabulary filtered into rabbis' normative pronouncements against intermarriage, while at the same time religious norms sculpted sociological models, eroding boundaries between a so-called sacred realm and a secular realm of human inquiry. By World War II, Jewish leaders were convinced that Jewish survival in the United States depended on sociological explanations of Jewishness. A cadre of Conservative rabbis, the subjects of chapter 4, maintained that the ultimate purpose of Jewishness was its function outside the Jewish world. Even while some rabbis highlighted Jewish spiritual insights, they still explained Jewishness through its instrumental and social terms: Jews, as a group, served the public good by mirroring and confirming nationalistic goals. In the cold war era, a number of Jewish intellectuals were motivated to align Jewishness and national goals even more precisely. Chapter 5 describes how they helped reformulate sociological thought to reflect what some termed an essential American ethnic pattern, simultaneously recrafting the meaning of Jewishness and Americanness. While rabbis and Jewish intellectuals put their faith in the ability of a sociological vocabulary to guard Jewish survival, some started to sense the limitations of this model of Jewishness. Chapter 6 argues that the postwar resurgence of missionary thought among some Reform rabbis and the growth of a more general outreach movement to non-Jews pushed the boundaries of Jewishness and threatened to disrupt its assumed sociological fixity. The final chapter describes a new kind of stumbling block to Jewish leaders' efforts to explain Jewishness: rising rates of intermarriage. Indicative, perhaps, of their success in explaining Jewishness as being both attractive and fundamentally American, marriages between Jews and non-Jews seemed to call into question the very project of making Jewishness knowable and familiar to the non-Jewish world. A community that had come to articulate itself as a product of social facts became embroiled in a survival crisis when those social facts proved impossible and undesirable to sustain. Living in a time when integrationist ideals pervaded American culture and politics, and bombarded by studies about ever-increasing intermarriage rates, rabbis and Jewish leaders found themselves without a vocabulary of Jewishness that could make sense of their times. This book ends with leaders searching for a new language of Jewishness and experimenting with what I term a language of volition: a language that describes Jewishness as a choice, not a social fact, not a religious mandate, and not a biological rule. Yet blood, God, and community are tough to replace or discount, as anyone thinking about Jewishness in the beginning of the twenty-first century would likely admit. Much of this book is about changes in Jewish self-understanding. Still, Jewish leaders and intellectuals consistently drew analogies between Jewishness and the United States. The Jewish story, they proclaimed, was a metonym for the American story. Such was their faith in America's inclusiveness, and their willed attempt to subvert narrower or less tolerant narratives of America's heritage. But the same statement could produce a new mechanism of exclusion, suggesting that other Americans, particularly other new Americans, who did not follow the same social, economic, and political patterns as the Jews, were perhaps less worthy exemplars of the American story. Clearly, Jews suffered social exclusion in the United States, but this fact did not negate the parallel existence of Jewish pride and even feelings of superiority.The conviction—of faith and of necessity—that Jews and Judaism had a uniquely meaningful message to give the modern world sustained Jewish life in modernity and fueled Jews' efforts to explain themselves to, and as, America.

““[A] well-researched, solid, and broadly persuasive addition to the literature on philanthropy in Britain.” – Histoire sociale / Sociale History “Descriptive ... [and] expands our knowledge of the growing charitable work of the period, especially of fund-raising techniques.” – Cercles Book Review “A compelling reexamination of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century philanthropic field. It will be of interest not only to historians of philanthropy and social reform, but also to business historians and, perhaps most importantly, to those currently involved in nonprofit work.” – Journal of British Studies

Photo Credit: A New York Times retrospective published on February 10, 1895 describes generally how Purim was celebrated in the city before the Civil War – which turns out to be not all that different from how we celebrate it today – and, in particular, focuses on the origins of the Purim Association of the City of New York (1862-1902): Prior to the founding of this society, it was a general custom in Hebrew circles in the city to keep open house on Purim Day, and the young people made merry by disguising themselves in all sorts of comical costumes and visiting their friends so attired. The Purim festival…is looked upon as a sort of carnival day, and even at the present many east side Jews commemorate it by donning all sorts of outlandish masks and dresses. It was this custom that gave the impetus to this little coterie of ten to make this holiday the time for a grand masquerade ball, and from the very start, these affairs became a social event of the season…. Advertisement This unusual Purim story begins with Myer Samuel Isaacs (1841-1904), the eldest son of the Rev. Dr. Samuel M. Isaacs who, upon his arrival here in 1839, became the second English-speaking Orthodox rabbi in the United States. The Isaacs family became founding members of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, perhaps the leading Jewish civil rights organization of its time. Real estate lawyer, judge, and philanthropist, Myer Isaacs was deeply committed to both Jewish communal work and the municipal affairs of New York City. He founded the Hebrew Free School Association, the United Hebrew Charities, the Montefiore Home, and the Hebrew Technical Institute; served as the first president of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and as a member of the Central Committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle; helped organize the Citizens’ Union; and advocated for the rights of Jews in Eretz Yisrael, Europe, Turkey, and Morocco. He also established Seward Park on the Lower East Side of New York and was a personal friend of Teddy Roosevelt. However, it was as publisher and co-editor of The Jewish Messenger that he ran an editorial in the paper’s January 13, 1860 edition urging that “Purim should be selected as the occasion of a good fancy dress ball, the proceeds to be donated to charity.” This idea, based upon the traditional Purim ritual of matanot la’evyonim (giving gifts to the poor), stimulated the founding of the Purim Association, which Myer served as its first president. The purpose of the Purim Association was perhaps best summarized by the March 15, 1883 Purim Gazette issued years later by the Association: Annually the Purim Association invokes the aid of the citizens of New York on behalf of some well-deserving charity, and the financial success of the Purim balls furnishes the best proof that the appeals are not in vain. The ever-ready response of the people testified to the deep interest of the community in maintaining all institutions which alleviate suffering and improve the condition of the need and deserving poor. On March 17, 1862, in the midst of the raging Civil War, a group of nine or ten (reports vary) wealthy Jewish young men conducted the first Purim ball, which was held at Irving Hall on Shushan Purim. More than 1,300 tickets at five dollars each were sold, with the proceeds split between Jews’ Hospital and the Hebrew Benevolent Society. As the celebrants were about to attend the midnight Purim banquet, news came that Union troops had captured New Orleans and Confederate president Jefferson Davis had been killed. The crowd responded with great cheers and the playing of martial music. (Although the Union did take New Orleans, reports of Davis’s death were premature, and he actually died in 1889 in, of all places, New Orleans.)

No one of the ancient Hebraic celebrities holds a more absolute sway in the affections of the Jews of this day than Esther, the beautiful and pious spouse of Ahasuerus. In comemoration of the signal service rendered by that estimable lady to her nation, on the occasion of the timely elevation of Haman, the envious enemy of her uncle Mordecai, whose daily place of rest was in the neighborhood of the King's gate, the Jewish people yearly observe the Feast of Purim. In this City, the first grand ball of the Purim Association was given last year, with marked success, and the second was given on Thursday night, at the Academy of Music. The building was very elegantly and tastefully decorated and most brilliantly illuminated, the floor was laid for dancing, and the usual magnificence of the Academy incredibly enhanced. Not less than 3,000 of our Jewish population, with their friends, were present, of whom the great majority were in fancy costume. A more brilliant affair has never been witnessed at the Academy. The most perfect order prevailed, and every arrangement, police, supper, hat and cloak, and whatever, was perfect and unmarred by the slightest accident. The usual variety of absurdities, in the way of disguise, was manifest, though many of the dresses were exceedingly rich, and displayed great taste in selection and skill in preparation. One lady was dressed in the height of fashion, in garments made entirely of Frank Leslie's paper, and was decidedly a feature of the night, as were "Joan of Arc," "Old Aunt Dinah," "Mehitabel Ann," "Old Mother Goose," "Pocahontas," "Anne Boleyn" and the "Dame aux Camelias." Very many exquisite evening toilettes set off the charms of the black-eyed belles in the boxes, and the universal masculine verdict is, that so many pretty faces have never before been seen at any one occasion, within the walls of the Academy. The following Committeemen deserve the recognition of their guests, for the able and thoroughly satisfactory manner in which they discharged their duties: Floor -- Myer S. Isaacs, Chairman; Moses H. Moses, Adolph L. Sanger, A. Henry Schutz, Judah H. Solomon, Herman H. Stettheimer, Joseph A. Levy, Louis G. Schiffer, Theodore Hellman, Solomon Weill. Reception -- Lionel Davies, Jacob S. Isaacs, Geo. Levy, Marcus Moses, Nathan Solomon, Emile Jacobi, Alex. Meyer.

Purim, which falls this year on Feb. 26, ranks among Judaism’s most joyous holidays. In synagogues, Jews read the Scroll of Esther, a book in the Hebrew Bible that explains how Purim came to be. Jewish people dress up in costumes and host carnivals. At home, they indulge in festive dinners with ample wine. It’s a time of togetherness. Jews deliver treats to one another and make sure to provide charity for their most needy. As a historian of American Judaism, I point to Purim as an important holiday that did much to increase Jews’ visibility in the United States in the 19th century. During that period, Purim put a social spotlight on New York’s Jews and their up-and-coming relationship to the city’s most elite class. The story of Purim Purim tells the tale of Esther, an orphaned girl-turned-queen, how she married King Achashverosh, then saved the entire Jewish community in the ancient Persian city of Shushan, through her bravery and wit. The story, going back to the fourth century, describes the plot of Haman, a top advisor to King Achashverosh, to exterminate the local Jewish community. Haman was jealous of the local Jewish leader Mordecai, who enjoyed high standing in Achashverosh’s court. Mordecai was also Esther’s uncle, a fact unknown to Achashverosh, so that Esther’s Jewish identity could remain concealed. When Queen Esther learns about Haman’s plan, she risks her life and discloses her Jewishness to her husband. The king sides with his bride over his doomed advisor. Purim became a celebration of the victory of Shushan’s Jews over the evil Haman. The Purim story resonates with today’s American Jews. It’s packed with contemporary themes such as charges of dual loyalty, that Jews cannot be trusted as Americans when they remain tied to Israel. With many Jews marrying outside of their religion, Purim rings relevant on the issue of intermarriage as well. Yet, Esther’s tale was perhaps less useful in the 19th century when America’s Jews were not so visible and they weren’t as concerned about assimilation. When a group of New York Jewish socialites invented the Purim Ball in the 1860s, their intention was to downplay Purim’s Persian legend. Their goal was to be the same, not different. They wanted to be counted in Manhattan’s upper crust. The start of a fancy Purim Ball In January 1860, Myer Isaacs, a lawyer and political activist, issued a proposal in the pages of the Jewish Messenger, a weekly published in his native New York by his father, Samuel Myer Isaacs. The younger Isaacs suggested “Purim night should be selected as the occasion of a good fancy dress ball, the proceeds to be devoted to charity.” Isaacs’s assumptions about the linkage between a classy event and fundraising was typical of the “charity market” among Victorian Era elites. Philanthropy was an exchange: The donor obtained an “experience” — musical concerts, theater, for example — for his or her generous contribution. It was a period when charity provided the affluent with an opportunity to solidify their place atop the social ladder. Purim was an ideal candidate for this sort of ritual enhancement for New York’s Jewish elite. One of its traditions was charity-giving; the Purim Ball over time would become a reliable source of income for the Jewish orphanages and welfare societies in New York. Purim in New York No one was quick to pick up on Isaacs’s recommendation, however. Isaacs tried again the following year, always in the pages of his father’s newspaper. In 1862, he took more concrete steps. The 20-year-old gathered a small group of first-generation American Jews with aspirations to appear on a routine basis in the New York society columns. They organized the first Purim ball at Irving Hall, a prominent theater space in Manhattan, decorating the space with ornaments and plenty of pageantry such as entertainment and plays. New York statute forbade masquerades, so Isaacs and his friends publicized it to wealthy New Yorkers as a “Fancy Dress Ball.” The guests, Jews and non-Jews, intuited the meaning and appeared dressed as Little Red Riding Hood and Shakespearean figures such as Romeo and Hamlet. Even though it was a Purim event, there was no mention that anyone was expected to dress up as Queen Esther. The affair was very well received by attendees, compelling Isaacs to formalize the Purim Association of the City of New York to help ensure the newfound tradition persisted. The Purim Ball straddled the line between a Jewish ritual and a New York society event. Yet, it hewed in the direction of the latter, attracting the leading women and men of New York. The mayor, police chief and leading figures of Tammany Hall frequented the balls. The Purim Association did not hold the gala on the actual date of Purim — usually it was held the day after or in the subsequent week — allowing New York’s Jews to observe Purim with its more traditional and less extravagant trappings. The Purim Ball’s second installment was upgraded to the grander and more capacious Academy of Music. Its organizers distributed 800 invitations, which turned out to be quite insufficient. In all, 3,000 women and men attended the ball in March 1863. A report published in the New York Times declared that a “more brilliant affair has never been witnessed at the Academy.” The Times article stated, “Very many exquisite evening toilettes set off the charms of the black-eyed belles in the boxes, and the universal masculine verdict is, that so many pretty faces have never before been seen at any one occasion, within the walls of the Academy.” A Manhattan ‘institution’ The masquerade theme might have fit into Purim tradition, but Isaacs intended for it to accommodate all New Yorkers. As Isaac then wrote in the Jewish Messenger, he wanted it to “come off in such a way as to justify the suggestion that all New York is celebrating Purim.” The favorable reviews were sufficient for Isaacs to declare that the Purim Ball had emerged, by its second iteration, as a Manhattan “institution,” an affair “naturalized in New York.” The archives at the American Jewish Historical Society reveal that the top-priced seating boxes went to couples with Jewish surnames such as Seligman, Rosenwald, Schiff and Guggenheim. The Purim Association spared no expense on the music. New York socialites and leading politicians continued to gravitate to the event, looking forward to the Purim Ball. Tickets for the event, sold at auction, did not last long on the open market, especially the preferred theater boxes. [Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter.] By the 1890s, the Purim Association rented a larger space in Madison Square Garden and held bidding for the choicest seats in the vestry room of one of New York’s most well-heeled synagogue, Temple Emanu-El. Beyond New York The success of New York’s Purim Ball inspired others to organize similar events. By the 1880s, it was replicated in dozens of communities. St. Louis’s Jews were very proud of their “well-regulated” masquerade ball which, they claimed was “one of the most enjoyable affairs in the society world.” In 1891, the Purim program held in Philadelphia, much influenced by a local aristocratic spirit, was fashioned more like a debutante ball, a coming-of-age event for upper-class young ladies. The Purim Ball, then, was a cultural transaction. Jews believed it led them to acquire status and America obtained a curious and swanky incarnation of Purim, in New York and beyond.

The pandemic has either created too much free time or too little. Kitchen-table commutes and reduced social obligations expand mornings and weekends for some, while caretakers and gig workers are exhausted by the constant, overlapping demands of home and work. It's no surprise, then, that idleness is trending. Concepts like “niksen," Dutch for “doing nothing," and “wintering," resting in response to adversity, have entered the wellness lexicon. Doing nothing is even being called a new productivity hack, aligning the practice with an always-on culture that seeks to optimize every waking minute. While such prescriptions largely target the privileged who have the resources to curate their schedules, idleness can also be a form of resistance to the capitalist machine. Artist Jenny Odell's bestselling book “How to Do Nothing" argues for using leisure time to build cohesive communities by engaging with your local environment instead of your smartphone. In other words, there's an ethics to idleness. And the debates on its ethics date back thousands of years, to philosophers and theologians who distinguished between civic-minded leisure, or “otium," and sloth, or “accidia." Though leisure and sloth have variously been praised and scorned, a central tension runs through the history of idleness, from the Roman Empire to today: What obligations do humans have to society? And just because you can do nothing, should you? Ancient roots Many ancient Romans disparaged otium as political disengagement that threatened the stability of the republic. (Its opposite, “negotium," is the source of the word “negotiation.") Yet others sought to recuperate leisure and idleness for positive political ends. Cicero and Seneca both advocated for an otium consisting of personal cultivation that would serve society. They argued that properly studying history, politics and philosophy demanded time away from the business of the city. Citizens who learned from these subjects could help ensure peace and stability in the republic. Both took care to distinguish the otium of study from the idleness of hedonistic indulgences like drinking and sex. Medieval Christian society more sharply divided the two modes of idleness. Monastic communities performed the “Opus Dei," or work of God, that included activities the Romans would have defined as otium, like contemplative reading. But the medieval system of vices and virtues condemned sloth. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote that it was “the bilge-hold of all wicked thoughts and of all trifles, jests, and filth." Sloth distracted from many kinds of work: productive economic labor, the spiritual work of penance and the “good works" of charity that supported society's most vulnerable members. Idleness and industry The division of idleness into beneficial “otium" and reprehensible “accidia" elicited new critiques in the industrial era. The 19th-century economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen acerbically noted that leisure was a status symbol that distinguished the haves from the have-nots. He counted “government, warfare, religious observances and sports" as primary leisure activities enjoyed by capitalist elites. Essentially, Veblen condemned the classical and medieval activities of learning and leisure with the vitriol once reserved for sloth. At the same time, others construed even the most slothful forms of idleness as a bold resistance to modernity's greatest ills. Robert Louis Stevenson found in idleness an antidote to capitalist striving that acquainted the idler with what he called “the warm and palpating facts of life" – a kind of immediate experience of one's fellow man and natural environment that was otherwise squelched by participation in the capitalist machine. If Stevenson's take on idleness had a tongue-in-cheek dilettantism to it, Bertrand Russell's was deadly serious. He saw the solution to the high-stakes ideological conflict of the 1930s, between fascism and communism, in leisurely study and debate. In Russell's view, what he proudly called “laziness" promoted a virtuous habit of mind that encouraged deliberative discourse and guarded against extremism. Yet as the 20th century progressed, productivity again became a status symbol. Long work hours and a packed calendar conveyed status – even virtue – when judged by capitalist values. Should you do nothing? Underlying this divided conception of idleness is the paradox at its heart. By definition, it is nonaction, unlikely to influence the world. Yet escaping the hamster wheel of productivity can spark the ideas that change the world. Real thought and insight require time away from “negotium." A Reddit forum celebrates the shower thoughts that happen when the mind wanders, and Silicon Valley companies grant sabbaticals to encourage innovation. But it's hard to tell from the outside whether idleness is hedonistic or edifying. If today's surge of interest in idleness promotes itself as a panacea for a peculiarly modern condition stemming from lockdown ennui and the omnipresence of technology, it has sometimes failed to grapple with the political implications of its prescriptions. Extra sleep, time for hobbies and retreat from mundane cares restore the body and mind and promote creativity. Yet too often, the wellness movement's treatment of idleness – which rebrands the medieval sin of sloth as a virtue – reinforces its privileges. At its worst, it curates rarefied products and experiences – from eye pillows to expensive anti-burnout retreats – for those with the means and the time, further isolating them from society. Everyone needs rest, and it's easy to feel the attraction of disengagement. But idleness has too often been a resource unequally allocated to the haves and moralized as sloth among the have-nots. So, should you do nothing? Whatever choice you make, you should know that personal idleness has a different function from civic-minded idleness. Personal idleness restores and renews but can also lead to antisocial or exploitative behavior. Civic-minded idleness acknowledges our connection with society even as we withdraw from it, giving us space to explore, play and discover. Ultimately, this should lead to a more equitable society. Both kinds of idleness can be a social good. But the more opportunities people have to be idle, the better off everyone is. Ingrid Nelson, Associate Professor of English, Amherst College This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Senate Democrats have introduced sweeping voting rights legislation passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month. The For the People Act aims to improve voter registration and access to the polls, ends partisan and racial gerrymandering, forces the disclosure of dark money donors, increases public funding for candidates and imposes strict ethical and reporting standards on members of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans have signaled they'll use the filibuster to defeat the bill. This comes as voting rights are under attack in courthouses and statehouses across the country. Republican state lawmakers have introduced over 250 bills in 43 states to limit voter access. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court appears poised to uphold controversial voting limits in Arizona, in a case that would further gut the Voting Rights Act. We turn now to newly elected Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock's first Senate speech. He's the first Black senator to represent Georgia and the first Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate in the South. Reverend Warnock is also a pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, which was the spiritual home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now Senator Warnock focused on voting rights in his maiden floor speech, but he began by condemning the deadly shootings at the three spas in the Atlanta region on Tuesday that left eight people dead, including seven women, six of whom were of Asian descent. SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK: Mr President, before I begin my formal remarks, I want to pause to condemn the hatred and violence that took eight precious lives last night in metropolitan Atlanta. I grieve with Georgians, with Americans, with people of love all across the world. This unspeakable violence, visited largely upon the Asian community, is one that causes all of us to recommit ourselves to the way of peace, an active peace that prevents these kinds of tragedies from happening in the first place. We pray for these families. Mr President, I rise here today as a proud American and as one of the newest members of the Senate, in awe of the journey that has brought me to these hallowed halls, and with an abiding sense of reverence and gratitude for the faith and sacrifices of ancestors who paved the way. I am a proud son of the great state of Georgia, born and raised in Savannah, a coastal city known for its cobblestone streets and verdant town squares. Towering oak trees, centuries old and covered in gray Spanish moss, stretched from one side of the street to the other, bend and beckon the lover of history and horticulture to this city by the sea. I was educated at Morehouse College, and I still serve in the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, both in Atlanta, the cradle of the civil rights movement. And so, like those oak trees in Savannah, my roots go down deep, and they stretch wide, in the soil of Waycross, Georgia, and Burke County and Screven County. In a word, I am Georgia, a living example and embodiment of its history and its hope, of its pain and promise, the brutality and possibility. Mr President, at the time of my birth, Georgia's two senators were Richard B. Russell and Herman E. Talmadge, both arch-segregationists and unabashed adversaries of the civil rights movement. After the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board ruling outlawing school segregation, Talmadge warned that blood will run in the streets of Atlanta. Senator Talmadge's father, Eugene Talmadge, former governor of our state, had famously declared, "The South loves the Negro in his place, but his place is at the back door." When once asked how he and his supporters might keep Black people away from the polls, he picked up a scrap of paper and wrote a single word on it: "pistols." Yet, there is something in the American covenant — in its charter documents and its Jeffersonian ideals — that bends toward freedom. And led by a preacher and a patriot named King, Americans of all races stood up. History vindicated the movement that sought to bring us closer to our ideals, to lengthen and strengthen the cords of our democracy. And I now hold the seat, the Senate seat, where Herman E. Talmadge sat. And that's why I love America. I love America because we always have a path to make it better, to build a more perfect union. It is a place where a kid like me who grew up in public housing, the first college graduate in my family, can now stand as a United States senator. I had an older father. He was born in 1917. Serving in the Army during World War II, he was once asked to give up his seat to a young teenager while wearing his soldier's uniform, they said, "making the world safe for democracy." But he was never bitter. And by the time I came along, he had already seen the arc of change in our country. And he maintained his faith in God and in his family and in the American promise, and he passed that faith on to his children. My mother grew up in Waycross, Georgia. You know where that is? It's way 'cross Georgia. And like a lot of Black teenagers in the 1950s, she spent her summers picking somebody else's tobacco and somebody else's cotton. But because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went to the polls in January and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator. Ours is a land where possibility is born of democracy — a vote, a voice, a chance to help determine the direction of the country and one's own destiny within it, possibility born of democracy. That's why this past November and January, my mom and other citizens of Georgia grabbed hold of that possibility and turned out in record numbers: 5 million in November, 4.4 million in January — far more than ever in our state's history. Turnout for a typical runoff doubled. And the people of Georgia sent their first African American senator and first Jewish senator, my brother Jon Ossoff, to these hallowed halls. But then, what happened? Some politicians did not approve of the choice made by the majority of voters in a hard-fought election in which each side got the chance to make its case to the voters. And rather than adjusting their agenda, rather than changing their message, they are busy trying to change the rules. We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights unlike anything we've ever seen since the Jim Crow era. This is Jim Crow in new clothes. Since the January election, some 250 voter suppression bills have been introduced by state legislatures all across the country, from Georgia to Arizona, from New Hampshire to Florida, using the big lie of voter fraud as a pretext for voter suppression, the same big lie that led to a violent insurrection on this very Capitol — the day after my election. Within 24 hours, we elected Georgia's first African American and Jewish senator, and, hours later, the Capitol was assaulted. We see in just a few precious hours the tension very much alive in the soul of America. And the question before all of us at every moment is: What will we do to push us in the right direction? And so, politicians, driven by that big lie, aim to severely limit — and, in some cases, eliminate — automatic and same-day voter registration, mail-in and absentee voting, and early voting and weekend voting. They want to make it easier to purge voters from the voting roll altogether. And as a voting rights activist, I have seen up close just how draconian these measures can be. I hail from a state that purged 200,000 voters from the roll one Saturday night, in the middle of the night. We know what's happening here: Some people don't want some people to vote. I was honored on a few occasions to stand with our hero and my parishioner, John Lewis. I was his pastor, but I'm clear he was my mentor. On more than one occasion, we boarded buses together after Sunday church services as part of our Souls to the Polls program, encouraging the Ebenezer church family and communities of faith to participate in the democratic process. Now, just a few months after Congressman Lewis's death, there are those in the Georgia Legislature, some who even dare to praise his name, that are now trying to get rid of Sunday Souls to the Polls, making it a crime for people who pray together to get on a bus together in order to vote together. I think that's wrong. Matter of fact, I think that a vote is a kind of prayer for the kind of world we desire for ourselves and for our children. And our prayers are stronger when we pray together. To be sure, we have seen these kinds of voter suppression tactics before. They are a part of a long and shameful history in Georgia and throughout our nation. But, refusing to be denied, Georgia citizens and citizens across our country braved the heat and the cold and the rain, some standing in line for five hours, six hours, 10 hours, just to exercise their constitutional right to vote — young people, old people, sick people, working people, already underpaid, forced to lose wages, to pay a kind of poll tax while standing in line to vote. And how did some politicians respond? Well, they are trying to make it a crime to give people water and a snack as they wait in lines that are obviously being made longer by their draconian actions. Think about that. Think about that. They are the ones making the lines longer, through these draconian actions. And then they want to make it a crime to bring grandma some water while she's waiting in a line that they're making longer. Make no mistake: This is democracy in reverse. Rather than voters being able to pick the politicians, the politicians are trying to cherry-pick their voters. I say this cannot stand. And so I rise, Mr President, because that sacred and noble idea — one person, one vote — is being threatened right now. Politicians in my home state and all across America, in their craven lust for power, have launched a full-fledged assault on voting rights. They are focused on winning at any cost, even the cost of the democracy itself. And I submit that it is the job of each citizen to stand up for the voting rights of every citizen. And it is the job of this body to do all that it can to defend the viability of our democracy. That's why I am a proud co-sponsor of the For the People Act, which we introduced today. The For the People Act is a major step in the march toward our democratic ideals, making it easier, not harder, for eligible Americans to vote by instituting commonsense, pro-democracy reforms, like establishing national automatic voter registration for every eligible citizen and allowing all Americans to register to vote online and on Election Day; requiring states to offer at least two weeks of early voting, including weekends, in federal elections, keeping Souls to the Polls programs alive; prohibiting states from restricting a person's ability to vote absentee or by mail; and preventing states from purging the voter rolls based solely on unreliable evidence, like someone's voting history — something we've seen in Georgia and other states in recent years. And it would end the dominance of big money in our politics and ensure our public servants are there serving the public. Amidst these voter suppression laws and tactics, including partisan and racial gerrymandering, and in a system awash in dark money and the dominance of corporatist interests and politicians who do their bidding, the voices of the American people have been increasingly drowned out and crowded out and squeezed out of their own democracy. We must pass For the People so that people might have a voice. Your vote is your voice, and your voice is your human dignity. But not only that, we must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. You know, voting rights used to be a bipartisan issue. The last time the voting rights bill was reauthorized was 2006. George W. Bush was president, and it passed this chamber 98 to 0. But then, in 2013, the Supreme Court rejected the successful formula for supervision and preclearance contained in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They asked Congress to fix it. That was nearly eight years ago, and the American people are still waiting. Stripped of protections, voters in states with a long history of voter discrimination and voters in many other states have been thrown to the winds. We Americans have noisy and spirited debates about many things — and we should. That's what it means to live in a free country. But access to the ballot ought to be nonpartisan. I submit that there should be 100 votes in this chamber for policies that will make it easier for Americans to make their voices heard in our democracy. Surely, there ought to be at least 60 in this chamber who believe, as I do, that the four most powerful words uttered in a democracy are "the people have spoken," therefore we must ensure that all of the people can speak. But if not, we must still pass voting rights. The right to vote is preservative of all other rights. It is not just another issue alongside other issues. It is foundational. It is the reason why any of us has the privilege of standing here in the first place. It is about the covenant we have with one another as an American people: E pluribus unum, "Out of many, one." It, above all else, must be protected. And so, let's be clear. I'm not here today to spiral into the procedural argument regarding whether the filibuster, in general, has merits or has outlived its usefulness. I'm here to say that this issue is bigger than the filibuster. I stand before you saying that this issue — access to voting and preempting politicians' efforts to restrict voting — is so fundamental to our democracy that it is too important to be held hostage by a Senate rule, especially one historically used to restrict the expansion of voting rights. It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in the society. Colleagues, no Senate rule should overrule the integrity of our democracy, and we must find a way to pass voting rights, whether we get rid of the filibuster or not. And so, as I close — and nobody believes a preacher when he says, "As I close" — let me say that I — as a man of faith, I believe that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea: the sacred worth of all human beings, the notion that we all have within us a spark of the divine and a right to participate in the shaping of our destiny. Reinhold Niebuhr was right: "[Humanity's] capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but [humanity's] inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." John Lewis understood that and was beaten on a bridge defending it. Amelia Boynton, like so many women not mentioned nearly enough, was gassed on that same bridge. A white woman named Viola Liuzzo was killed. Medgar Evers was murdered in his own driveway. Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, two Jews and an African American standing up for that sacred idea of democracy, also paid the ultimate price. And we, in this body, would be stopped and stymied by partisan politics, short-term political gain, Senate procedure? I say let's get this done no matter what. I urge my colleagues to pass these two bills, strengthen and lengthen the cords of our democracy, secure our credibility as the premier voice for freedom-loving people and democratic movements all over the world, and win the future for all of our children. Mr. President, I yield the floor. AMY GOODMAN: That's Georgia's new Democratic senator, the Reverend Raphael Warnock, giving his first speech from the Senate floor. In a rare display in the Senate, the people in the room gave him a standing ovation. When we come back, we speak to Heather McGhee, author of the new book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Stay with us. [break] AMY GOODMAN: "We'll Never Turn Back" by Mavis Staples. The 81-year-old legend just got her second dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

The recent mass killing of mostly Asians at three Atlanta-area Asian massage parlors is widely seen as a culmination of escalating racism against Asian-Americans. In March 2020, when Donald Trump started calling the novel coronavirus "Chinese virus" and "Kung flu" to deflect blame from himself and to create alternative targets for his followers' rage, mental health professionals warned that he would become the greatest risk factor of injury and mortality. With the now 550,000 Covid-19 deaths, at least 40% of which were directly attributable to Donald Trump's mismanagement as per a recent Lancet article, and up to 97% of which were unnecessary according to a Columbia University study, the ensuing suffering has been displaced onto China, the Chinese, and anyone who looks Chinese. Just as four years of Donald Trump's dehumanization of immigrants and desperate migrants led to unprecedented hate crimes and mass shootings, and his portrayal of mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests as violent descended on them the full federal forces and police brutality, his rhetoric has now placed Asian-Americans in peril. The Trump presidency was a public health emergency that exacerbated the nation's problems on multiple levels, and healing must follow a full accounting of its implications. The World Mental Health Coalition, which step-by-step predicted the disastrous mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, accurately anticipated a violent insurrection such as what happened on January 6, 2021, and appropriately warned of a mental health pandemic in the absence of a referendum on the Trump presidency, is now launching a Project for National Healing with a series of Truth and Reconciliation Town Halls that will bring together leading intellectuals, mental health professionals, and other speakers of truth. Themes we will cover include racism, dangerous leadership, cultism, economic inequality, and imperialism. We will, together with interviews of prominent players and ordinary citizens, analyze what exactly happened over the last four years, where we are now, and how we can heal as a nation. While the Democratic Party has announced a 9/11-type commission on the narrow focus of what happened around the January 6, 2021, insurrection, we believe that the politicians, the Congress, and the mainstream media are ill-equipped to provide a serious, credible, unconflicted, and professional analysis. The political parties and the country as a whole have become far too polarized and partisan without common method or agreed-upon reality. Additionally, they are unable to stand up to the attacks are bound to come to a major public effort. Hence, there is both a vacuum and a need that the World Mental Health Coalition (WMHC) can fill. Our work has always emphasized strict adherence to professional standards, scientific evidence, and independence from any political or financial obligations. We have additionally demonstrated an ability to withstand intense political pressures that would silence expert voices. To this end, the WMHC has inaugurated its Truth and Reconciliation Town Hall series on March 13, 2021, with the theme: "Racism, White Supremacy, and Societal Mental Health." A video recording of the event is now available. We presented racism as a non-scientific, non-factual belief that is rooted in the pathological need to assert superiority over others in order to fight a deep-seated sense of inferiority. It shields its adherents from prosecution while subjecting Blacks, Latinx, Native Americans, and Asians to various forms of violence and intergenerational trauma, stimulating societal self-annihilation, as we have seen under Donald Trump's presidency. Kevin Washington, Ph.D., and Bandy Lee, M.D., M.Div., Board members of the World Mental Health Coalition, served as co-chairs. The session opened with Cornel West, Ph.D., soon-to-be Dietrich Bonhoeffer chair at Union Theological Seminary and former professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University. He drew attention to the fact that Blacks have been chronically hated for 400 years and yet keep dishing out love and producing love warriors. Instead of getting caught up in the weight and the impossibility of overcoming, Black and African people, who keep producing freedom fighters, are not calling for terrorizing others, or the Black version of the Ku Klux Klan, but liberty for everybody. Wade Nobles, Ph.D., professor emeritus at San Francisco State University and co-founder of the Association of Black Psychologists, proposed as a first concept the attempted "epistemicide" of African thought, or the attempt to kill the ability even to know what it means to be African and human. Hence, Africans walk in the world fumbling, stumbling, trying to be, seeking respect and recognition from, and then ending up looking at who their oppressors really are. The assault on the capital, the very place this whole country holds to be sacred, illustrates the human savagery that is white supremacy. Gregory Carr, Ph.D., associate professor of Africana studies and chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, noted that we need to understand what it means for a society to be mentally unwell, which has a great deal to do with the political and economic structures. Settler violence has been from the first people who came here with an intent to dispossess others of their humanity, which we are still responding to. Moving forward together may mean creating the space to be able to contribute our distinct perspectives without collapsing them. Cristalis Capielo Rosario, Ph.D., assistant professor in counseling and counseling psychology at Arizona State University and former officer of the National Latinx Psychological Association, recounted the Puerto Rican experience. An internalized notion that their experiences, histories, and knowledge are inferior, underdeveloped, or do not exist at all allows political exclusion, economic exploitation, cultural control, and social fragmentation to take hold, much as in Latin America. Alicia Mousseau, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and first out LGBTQ vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, highlighted that there are over 560 federally recognized tribes in the United States, and therefore she could not speak on behalf of all of them, but true American history includes the indigenous people of the nation. Going from being the majority to now one to two percent of the population is a historical trauma, but they pass on who they are in their communities through the elders. The path to healing may be arduous and long, exposing many uncomfortable truths, but it is a course we must confront, and we hope you will join us.

The final death toll from coronavirus will not be the result of viral disease; it will be the result of mental disease. The greatest risk factor of disease and death is not being considered, and that is Donald Trump. If he continues in this presidency, he is on course for having three main effects: First, he will make a deadly pandemic much worse. Second, he will stoke divisions between “believers” and “unbelievers” in his alternative reality. And third, he will vastly augment suffering, which he will be tempted to direct into widespread violence. It is not difficult for scientists to see that the president has already multifold exacerbated the coronavirus pandemic. The reasons are psychological: he is incapable of doing what is necessary, for that would require him to face reality, which means also his own emptiness and incapacity. It is unsurprising that he dismantled the infrastructure of one of the top programs for global pandemic preparedness in the world “to save money,” only to pay for it with trillions of dollars, which will still bring back neither the economy nor the millions of lives lost. However, again, reality will not matter. A leader who is truly convinced of his false beliefs will be far more effective at spreading those beliefs among his followers than any rational strategy. Soon, a leader’s pathology becomes a nation’s pathology. Humanity did not avoid another Plague in the modern era because of the lack of a microbe; we avoided it because of the application of science, public health, and prevention practices. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was a near-pandemic that was stopped because a global network of professionals rapidly detected it—months before the World Health Organization (WHO) even announced the disease. When H1N1, or swine flu, was detected in Mexico and then the United States in the same month, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released medical supplies and drugs within a week, and accurate testing in less than two weeks, which it shared with other countries. A Different Story Coronavirus has been a very different story. At any other time, the U.S. would have led efforts and coordinated global fights against epidemics, but the science-averse Trump administration had already axed the CDC expert in China. Meanwhile, the authoritarian Chinese government reprimanded and silenced the physician who tried to raise alarms about the virus in December 2019; its denial and desire to present orderliness caused the disease to spread freely in the critical early stages. After five weeks, however, it instituted a vigorous lockdown that broke the spread after two months. Our government, by comparison, ignored ominous, classified warnings about the global danger through January and February, declined testing that was already available through the WHO, and actively downplayed the threat by falsely stating, “we have it totally under control,” calling it the Democrats’ “new hoax,” and that “like a miracle, it will disappear.” Despite causing the need for extreme measures, by allowing the disease to spread freely throughout the U.S. in the critical stages, Donald Trump first touted lifting federal recommendations of isolation by Easter to stimulate the economy. In the absence of a cure or a vaccine, while still exponentially rising, the U.S. has now surpassed every country of the world at over 140,000 cases and over 2,600 deaths), this would have been a recipe for the disease to spiral out of control. While he finally backed down under great pressure, it reveals what historians might come to call pure madness. 'Criminal-Mindedness' and Pathology As a forensic psychiatrist, I make distinctions between the criminal-mindedness and mental pathology that might combine to produce this kind of “madness”. These are separate concepts: most criminal minds are not mentally ill, and most mentally ill minds are not criminal. Yet they are not mutually exclusive: when criminal-mindedness combines with mental pathology or, more, mobilizes it, atrocities such as genocide (or democide) become possible. We see this when Donald Trump observes the “effectiveness” of his “gut”; he believes it to be good strategy on his part, when he is enabling the power of pathology that will eventually be destructive to all, including himself. The lack of conscience and detachment from reality make critical situations far worse. This holds equally true for the economy as for the viral pandemic. Unable to recognize the underlying cause of the economic downturn, he manages neither the public health crisis nor the devastation of people, and the markets respond accordingly. Just as with his gutting of our pandemic response capabilities, he had squandered our economic response capabilities earlier by threatening the Federal Reserve to inflate an artificial economy for his reelection purposes. Now, he has pressured it into depleting the rest of its ammunition when the war has barely begun. Transmitting Delusions Another effect of pathology is that delusions will be more infectious: a leader who is truly convinced of his false beliefs will be far more effective at spreading those beliefs among his followers than any rational strategy. Soon, a leader’s pathology becomes a nation’s pathology. Delusions, unlike mere misinformation, transmit through emotional bonds, which in turn make their recipients highly resistant to true information and dangerously defensive when facts catch up with them. Because deaths, suffering, and ruined livelihoods are real, fury will build. As he creates more crises, these become opportunities for the criminal mind to further its hold on power. Since the growing fury will never be directed at its true source, it becomes a weapon for the source to redirect against his enemies, critics, or whatever target he wishes. We have already seen what he can do by calling the novel coronavirus “Chinese virus,” simultaneously deflecting blame and creating new targets for attack. Meanwhile, vast suffering and deaths will solidify his followers in fearful dependence, defensive idealization, and obedience to cultic programming. He is already using daily press conferences for hypnosis of himself as protector and giver of false reassurances, even as they recklessly harm and kill. People have seen how pathology runs deep and is not something a person can “pivot” from to manage a country. The coronavirus situation is worse than a war, affecting almost every country on earth. The death toll and hardship he multiplies could lead to actual international conflicts and, thanks to the nuclear arms race he renewed, potential nuclear war. Those who believe they have seen “the bottom” are unaware that this is actually the tip of the iceberg. Like all pandemics, the time for prevention is before we see the full effects; for his mental health pandemic, the time for it is now.

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Amnesty International USA Recorded 125 Separate Incidents of Police Violence Against Protesters, Medics, Journalists and Legal Observers in 40 States and D.C. During May and June Protests The Report Chronicles the Stories of More Than 50 People Affected by Police Violence as Black Lives Matter Grows Into the Largest Social Movement in U.S. History Today, Amnesty International USA released a report documenting widespread and egregious human rights violations by police officers against protesters, medics, journalists and legal observers who gathered to protest the unlawful killings of Black people by the police and to call for systemic reform in May and June of 2020. The report, The World is Watching: Mass Violations by US Police of Black Lives Matter Protesters’ Rights, builds on Amnesty’s interactive mapping of violence against protesters and new findings on the use of lethal force by the police. It is the most comprehensive human rights analysis of police violence against protesters to date. The unnecessary and sometimes excessive use of force by police against protesters exhibits the very systemic racism and impunity they had taken to the streets to protest Ernest Coverson, Amnesty International USA’s End Gun Violence Campaign Manager The research consisted of more than 50 interviews conducted by AIUSA over several weeks in June 2020 highlighting people’s experiences in the context of the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd. It also offers recommendations for local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, government officials and Congress to comply with AIUSA’s best practices for policing protests; hold law enforcement accountable for human rights violations against protesters, journalists, medics and legal observers; and pass laws and policies to ensure the right to peacefully protest. “The unnecessary and sometimes excessive use of force by police against protesters exhibits the very systemic racism and impunity they had taken to the streets to protest. The research shows that people who were simply exercising their human right to peacefully protest were met with such violence that they lost eyesight, survived brutal beatings, and suffered seizures and severe wounds,” said Ernest Coverson, Amnesty International USA’s End Gun Violence Campaign Manager. “The Trump administration is now doubling down on military-style crackdowns against protesters, with Attorney General William Barr’s egregious defense of the use of federal troops in Portland and threats to deploy more agents to other cities. President Trump’s actions represent a slippery slope toward authoritarianism and must immediately stop. We need the country’s approach to the policing of protests to be changed from the ground up at the local, state, and federal levels,” said Justin Mazzola, a researcher at Amnesty International USA. UNNECESSARY USE OF FORCE Law enforcement repeatedly used physical force, chemical irritants such as tear gas and pepper spray, and kinetic impact projectiles as a first resort tactic against peaceful protestors rather than as a response to any sort of actual threat or violence. Violations of people’s rights occurred during arrests and detentions as well. The use of tear gas during the COVID-19 pandemic is especially reckless. As protestors took to the streets, wearing masks and attempting to socially distance due to the virus, police fired tear gas and pepper spray, escalating risks for respiratory issues and the release of airborne particles that could spread the virus. Between May 26 - June 5, 2020, AIUSA documented at least six incidents of police using batons, and 13 instances of the use of kinetic impact projectiles such as sponge rounds and rubber bullets in 13 cities across the United States. What’s more, AIUSA found numerous cases of the unnecessary use of tear gas and pepper spray as a first resort to disperse large groups of peaceful protestors: 89 cases of specific use of tear gas in cities in 34 states, and 21 incidents of unlawful use of pepper spray in 15 states and the District of Columbia. Such unnecessary and excessive tactics were also used by law enforcement to target medics, legal observers and media representatives. Intensive care nurse Danielle Meehan, who treated 26 year-old student Aubreanna Inda after she was hit in the chest with a flash grenade in Seattle: At one point, Aubreanna Inda told her, “I feel like I am dying.” Danielle Meehan explained, “[She] lost her pulse 3-4 times after my medic partners and I started treating her. We resuscitated her each time with [cardiopulmonary resuscitation].” Rabbinical student and protester Lizzie Horne recounted after the authorities pepper sprayed and tear gassed her and a large group of protesters who were trapped on an embankment of a highway in Philadelphia: “Out of the blue, they started breezing pepper spray into the crowd...then they started with the tear gas. Someone who was right in front -- had a tear gas canister hit his head and started running back. We were trying to help him, flushing his eyes and then he just fainted and started having a seizure.” 17 year-old Elena Thoman, who was tear gassed by the police in Denver, told AIUSA researchers: “At first it feels like the feeling when you’re chopping onions and then escalates to the point where your skin is burning...I had a lot of open skin and it was burning for an hour. It made me cough a lot -- I had to take my mask off because the mask had tear gas in it...so even though there is COVID, I had to take my mask off.” President Trump’s actions represent a slippery slope toward authoritarianism and must immediately stop. We need the country’s approach to the policing of protests to be changed from the ground up at the local, state, and federal levels Justin Mazzola, a researcher at Amnesty International USA NBC News photojournalist Ed Ou, after he and other journalists were attacked by police officers in Minneapolis: “They had enough time to shake the pepper spray and to spray it, despite me and others shouting, ‘Press, press,’ continually.” The group was corralled back into a dead end with nowhere to escape as the officers used batons to beat them and discharged grenades, tear gas, and pepper spray on them. His head was bleeding. Despite his repeatedly asking for help, several law enforcement officers walked past him offering no assistance. Ed Ou was treated at a nearby hospital, requiring four stitches for his head injury. “I’ve literally spent most of my career in places where being a journalist was something I had to hide and something I had to be careful about sharing. And this is one place where I should be able to proclaim this is what I do.” Legal observer Jack*, who was beaten by the police in Chicago: “Three to four more officers who were behind me pulled me up onto a concrete barrier and threw me over onto a wheelchair ramp. I landed on my back and lost my hat. I was looking around when three or four other officers started hitting me with batons. Another protester tried to stop the police, and they started hitting him. People were yelling ‘legal observer’ as it was happening. I was crouched, trying to protect myself, and telling them, ‘I’m not resisting, I’m not resisting.’” *Name changed to protect interviewee’s anonymity. RECOMMENDATIONS ON POLICING OF PROTESTS AIUSA is calling on Congress to pass the Protect our Protestors Act of 2020 (HR 7315). The organization is also calling on all law enforcement agencies to revise their policies and practices for the policing of protests, and comply with international human rights standards, including the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, the guiding principles underpinning all operations before, during and after demonstrations. The Department of Justice and all state Attorneys General should investigate, effectively, impartially, and promptly, all allegations of human rights violations by police officials during public assemblies, including unlawful use of force, and bring all those found responsible, including commanding officers, to account through criminal or disciplinary proceedings as appropriate, and provide full redress to victims.

Psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, who has sounded the alarm over President Donald Trump's mental health since he announced his candidacy, warned that his post-election meltdown shows he may become more dangerous after his electoral defeat. Lee, who has taught at Yale and served as a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health, warned that the public should not underestimate Trump's ability to exert his will on his political opponents, even if his days in the White House are numbered. Advertisement: Well before his conclusive defeat, Trump responded to falling behind in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada by baselessly alleging fraud and falsely declaring victory in states where he was trailing. His campaign has also filed multiple lawsuits challenging the vote-counting in various states, although many have already been outright rejected by judges while others have little chance of affecting the race. Lee is a violence expert who has worked on multidisciplinary, public health approaches to violence prevention for more than 20 years. She is the author of the textbook "Violence" and editor of "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President." She is also president of the World Mental Health Coalition, which on Saturday will hold a town hall on "How to Heal the Nation." "We are entering perhaps the most dangerous period of this presidency, and a safe landing will depend on how we understand what is happening and how well we prevent potential catastrophe," Lee told Salon. "For these reasons, in late September, more than 100 senior mental health experts went on video record to announce that Donald Trump was too psychologically dangerous and mentally unfit to qualify for the presidency or candidacy for re-election. More than a week ago, we held an emergency interdisciplinary conference that followed up on our earlier National Press Club conference, broadcast in full on C-SPAN, which brought together 13 of the nation's top experts in fields as diverse as psychiatry, law, history, political science, economics, social psychology, journalism, climate science and nuclear science to emphasize the need for fit leadership. A month ago, I urgently published a "Profile of a Nation" to help the public understand what it was facing through this perilous time and to assist with coping and recovery." Advertisement: Lee spoke to Salon about what she expects from Trump after his defeat and how the public can move forward after his presidency. Trump has lied nonstop about winning states he lost and voter fraud that hasn't happened. Is this him just trying to save face or do you think he actually believes he won? First, we should understand that it is still premature to believe that the problem will now be confined to Donald Trump. We must continue to state the facts but also be aware that winning the vote is only the beginning. Mental health professionals' warnings — that we are facing greater dangers than people assumed — continued to go unheeded, and while people are scratching their heads as to how pundits and pollsters could have gotten the margin of victory so wrong, for us it was predictable because of the psychological factors involved. To continue to preclude psychological considerations on a psychological issue is like going into battle without weapons or armor. We are doing the same with the pandemic. Advertisement: As to whether Donald Trump actually believes he has won, while this is difficult to tell without an examination, we can have a good estimation from his followers' responses. Delusions are cherished beliefs that allow one to create mostly for oneself a desired reality, where one is a "winner," for example, while dispelling intolerable truths, such as that one could be a "loser." While strategic lies can only get one so far, actual delusions are far more emotionally powerful and more easily passed on because the primary person communicating them is truly convinced of them. Because those with delusions usually know their beliefs are untrue, but simply have pushed this knowledge into their unconscious, you can also see from their resistance to facts and evidence, doubling down, and even becoming violent when challenged. We see this in his followers, who are often impermeable to information that contradicts their fixed beliefs and can grow belligerent if challenged. Advertisement: How do you think he will react once all the election results are certified and his court challenges are inevitably rejected or fall short? We should not underestimate his psychological ability to gauge what he needs to say or do to manipulate his followers and intimidate, exhaust or defeat his opponents. He is ingenious at this, since he has done this all his life for sheer psychic survival: It is a matter of life or death for him. In mental pathology, where higher functions are impaired, one is often more driven more by one's "primitive brain," or what Donald Trump refers to as his "gut." This part of the brain is irrational but very powerful, as the emotional drive is strong. To a person with pathological narcissism, illegitimate power is a psychological lifeline, for which one would do anything—including destroy oneself and the world. This may not make sense from a rational point of view, but it is entirely expected of a mind overtaken with emotional need. Joe Biden has suggested that Trump will be escorted from the White House if he doesn't leave. Do you think he might simply refuse to leave the White House on Jan. 20? Advertisement: This is almost certain. He himself has announced he will not leave. His patterns so far reveal that he has few internal constraints, and from his inability to tolerate criticism or to admit that he is ever wrong, we can expect him to go to any extents to avoid being a "loser" and a "sucker." Breaking laws and norms therefore will be nothing for him, especially when his emotional lifeline depends on it, since the loss of the presidency will mean the loss of a steady stream of adoration, in addition to the likelihood of prosecution and going broke. What does someone like Trump do after a massive defeat? Do you think he will run again? We see how he easily enters into rage attacks, especially when he feels that the world has not supplied him with the adulation and approval he feels entitled to, which it inevitably never does. But when there is an all-encompassing loss such as this, which takes away everything he has been depending on for the last four years, it can trigger a vengeful rampage of destruction against a whole nation that has failed him. Whether he runs again will depend on what we do in the interim, including the media not enabling his pathology. Advertisement: Trump's supporters have been stoking conspiracy theories about the votes for days. How do you think that plays out during Biden's presidency? Are we going to have to hear for years about how the election was stolen when there is no evidence at all? Separation from their "leader" will bring a great deal of trauma to his supporters because of the emotional dependence he cultivated, and the degree to which he separated them from their ordinary interests, their loved ones and their own realities. They, too, will be fighting with their lives to keep his presidency, as we can see from the extreme conspiracy theories they are willing to espouse just to keep him in the "right." How this plays out in the Biden presidency will depend on how conditions are changed to facilitate their recovery. First, reduction of exposure alone will be healing. I often emphasize the "shared psychosis" or "folie à millions" (madness by the millions) among his followers, a phenomenon that has been well documented by renowned mental health experts such as Carl Jung and Erich Fromm. Symptoms are shared when a severely mentally-impaired person is placed in a position of influence and there is sustained exposure. The treatment is separation, after which most secondary persons will return to their baseline state, and takes care of the emotional part. The cognitive part has been maintained through propaganda and cultic programming, and something needs to be done to reduce programs masquerading as "news," while using psychological tactics to insulate from other information sources, and creating social media "bubbles." Then we need to fix the socioeconomic and cultural conditions that gave rise to their vulnerability in the first place. Advertisement: There is a great deal of collective psychological healing to do, and this is one of the reasons why I urgently wrote and published my "Profile of a Nation: Trump's Mind, America's Soul," as a public service and sequel to "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump." It tries to give people tools for understanding and getting through this difficult period, as well as to know that there will be ways for the nation to heal and to recover our soul. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Donald Trump Remains a Threat; the Half-Million Dead May Be the Lucky Ones As U.S. Covid-19 deaths have exceeded 500,000, an article in the Lancet lays much of the responsibility squarely on Donald Trump. While much has been said about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, the true scandal is how and why a psychologically dangerous person was allowed to preside over more American deaths in one year than those by all the terrorists and foreign enemies in one hundred years. If impeachment for inciting violent insurrection was too slow, occurring a week after the event as he held onto full nuclear powers, for the deadliest assault that was killing thousands of Americans every day, impeachment did not even happen. Ignoring the dangerous psychology and mental unfitness in a U.S. president has led to multiple disasters for the nation and the world. Whereas Joe Biden has tackled the pandemic with admirable single-mindedness and speed, he may already have inherited an impossible mission. Herd immunity, or achieving immunity in 70% to 85% of the population, may be elusive for a problem that spiraled out of control for nearly a year. The Trump presidency was emblematic for ignoring the mounting problem, sabotaging public health efforts, and even threatening governors who tried to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. And now, rampant infection has allowed mutation into different variants, Donald Trump’s “Project Warp Speed” itself was a hoax with an alarmingly slow start, and a mental health pandemic may hamper the vaccination of more than half of U.S. adults. Ignoring the dangerous psychology and mental unfitness in a U.S. president has led to multiple disasters for the nation and the world. It remains conjecture whether we would even have a pandemic had Donald Trump’s pathological envy of his predecessor not dismantled his highly-praised pandemic-preparedness systems, or his anti-science compulsion not bled the CDC dry, such that it needed to pull out its China team just months before the novel coronavirus outbreak. Experts Blocked Before a large portion of the population became “psychologically immune” to facts and sound advice, mental health professionals were making a breakthrough, raising the issue of the president’s mental fitness to the number one topic of national conversation and receiving invitations from all the major news programs. Then, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) stepped in to block us permanently from the major media. In early 2017, when the APA changed its ethical guidelines to create a gag order on public figures, in time to shield Donald Trump from criticism, some of us estimated that, if he were not held accountable for mental unfitness—the number one emergency of the presidency and the cause of most other crises—then no other accountability would gain traction. Indeed, Congress members who depended on us to “educate the public medically so we can act politically” could no longer act, and the entire nation acculturated to a malignant normality that culminated with a largely preventable plague and a violent insurrection based on pure fabrication. On the Comeback Currently, after committing perhaps the greatest act of terror against one’s own government this nation has seen, he has not only roamed free for almost two months but has practically announced that he will have another go at it. At least this is what can be extrapolated from his recent statements, interviews, and promise to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Since opportunities to contain him and his influence through Senate conviction were not taken, he seems emboldened to undermine the new administration and to reassert himself on the political scene. However, we are not helpless, and here is what the president can do: First, prosecute Donald Trump. Whereas Biden does not have direct prosecutorial power, which is the domain of the Department of Justice or the states, he has considerable moral authority and influence as president. If he truly wishes “reconciliation” and “unity”, he should heed the advice of mental health experts, who have long warned that the current situation is too far beyond normalcy to apply rational logic. With pathological personalities, the correct management consists of limit setting, containment, and full and speedy prosecution of Donald Trump and all who helped orchestrate his criminal acts. Biden should help reclaim what has been lost by emphasizing and affirming lawfulness, morality, and reality. The sooner this can happen, the sooner we will have the safe space to begin our national healing. Second, stem Trumpism. One of the tragic effects of an uncontained and prolonged, highly pathological presidency has been a mental health pandemic, or “shared psychosis” at alarming levels, which has worsened our collective mental health and torn apart communities, families, and couples. As a result, we find ourselves living in different realities, sometimes in the same household, and mourning family members who are still living but lost to us. The personality cult Donald Trump has cultivated is not a formal cult of relatively small numbers isolated from the rest of society but indoctrination from the very positions of president and mainstream “news”. Rather, the isolation is psychological, in that vulnerable individuals are psychologically conditioned to reject facts and logic and to accept only a false, “authorized reality,” without the need for physical insulation from the world. I outline a multi-step course in my Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul, but the first step to recovery is to discredit and to keep Donald Trump out of public life. Third, divest from corrupt associations. When the APA intervened to help entrench the Trump presidency, it denigrated its own field, reinforcing public misconceptions of psychiatry as mere speculation that anyone could do, yielding little knowledge without some mythical advantage of a private examination and being a stigmatized field that, unlike all others, the public should never hear from experts about. It deprived the American people of critical knowledge, just as those in power were employing psychological techniques for illegitimate control, and subsequently took funds and privileges from the Trump administration, with its affiliates receiving one windfall after another for their institutions in ways that are asymmetric from other institutions of science and medicine under the same administration. The Biden administration does not have to go along with a “mental health association” that has harmed public health by sidelining the field it purportedly represents, and should not appoint without an investigation Jeffrey Lieberman, the foremost enabler of the Trump presidency, to any position under Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Xavier Becerra, whose confirmation is this week. The World Mental Health Coalition, which formed in part to step in where the APA failed in its societal leadership, is forming a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to research how and why a mental health emergency went unaddressed under the Trump presidency. We are also available for consultation regarding fitness tests for presidential and vice-presidential candidates, the prevention of dangerous leadership, and the promotion of societal mental health. Featured image: Trump with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy R-Calif.) at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. (Kevin McCarthy photo)

[COMMENTARY] Donald Trump Will Continue To Be Dangerous if Not Convicted The new Biden administration has spoken greatly of “healing” and “unity”, but these cannot occur without there first being a mental health intervention. This may sound odd, but it is the number one emergency of our time. Without addressing the mental health pandemic, even the Biden administration’s admirable steps to contain the viral pandemic will encounter obstacles. The first step to any mental health intervention is boundaries, in this case, conviction and prosecution. Mental health professionals knew from the start that Donald Trump would be very dangerous with presidential powers. For this reason, we immediately held a conference at Yale School of Medicine and published our assessment in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump in 2017. We tried to warn the nation, risking our careers to explain how he would grow worse, and that, without intervention, his dangers would spread and erupt. The nation experienced this most dramatically on January 6, 2021, but there were many preceding signs. Last summer, I wrote a new book, Profile of a Nation, to help the public understand that “he is truly someone who would do anything,… no matter how destructive, to stay in power”—and would become an even greater danger after the 2020 election, claiming victory regardless of the outcome. The massacre of lawmakers he almost caused at the Capitol, save for a few heroes, proves how close he came to declaring “martial law” or “civil insurrection” in order to remain. This was the kind of explosion I and thousands of my colleagues at the World Mental Health Coalition anticipated, which is why we issued more than 300 pages of letters, petitions, and statements asserting that, if Donald Trump were not restrained via the special counsel’s report, impeachment, or the 25th Amendment, he would become “uncontrollable” over time. We had advised on psychologically effective ways of approaching the first impeachment. In 2019, we urged early impeachment—ideally during the unprecedented government shutdown—an “encyclopedia of articles” that reflected the actual level of crimes and misdemeanors, and an indefinite delay on the delivery of articles if the Senate did not appear as if it would do its duty. Our advice went unheeded, and the extremely delayed impeachment with only two articles created a very dangerous situation, as we warned in our petition to Congress in October 2019 with more than 250 mental health professional signatories, three days before Donald Trump caused the massacre of our Kurdish allies, and in December 2019 with over 800 mental health professional signatories, one month before he ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general, bringing us to the brink of war. The speaker proceeded to deliver the articles in a way that allowed for Donald Trump’s triumphal State of the Union address, a vengeful firing spree of those who lawfully testified against him, and a worse situation than if impeachment had not occurred. Indeed, if the articles had been held onto another month, his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic may have led to a greater likelihood of conviction in the Senate, and hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved. We must not repeat the same mistakes. We all saw how his unending lies, abuses, and multiple attempts to rig an election that he lost, eventually led to his fomenting deadly violence and near-loss of our democracy. As we did with the Mueller report, the transcript of his phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state, and his “Save America” rally speech, mental health professionals can explain how Donald Trump uses words and directly incites violence. Research on violence, furthermore, places in perspective the power of rhetoric, which can cause epidemics of violence far more effectively than specific orders or direct physical assaults. The ideal course would have been to have swift conviction; impeachment itself was late, happening a week after the actual incident. We would not allow a serial killer to be on the loose with bombs, ammunition, and assault rifles for days, let alone weeks; to permit a serial mass killer, by the order of hundreds of thousands, with nuclear weapons capable of destroying all civilization, without containment was a bad psychological precedent. If the Senate does not appear as if it will convict him, prolonging the trial and presenting as much evidence as possible, including multiple testimonies, could help. Other articles of impeachment may be added, especially since, of the many travesties, we are still living through the soon-to-be half-million Americans dying in ways that would not have happened had Donald Trump been contained, removed by the 25th Amendment, or successfully impeached last year, as we prescribed at the onset of the pandemic. Unless conviction swiftly removes such privileges as access to the nation’s greatest secrets through the top intelligence briefings former presidents receive, Donald Trump will continue to be a great danger to the country. If he continues without being held accountable, he will use the acquittal to “vindicate” himself and to claim that the second impeachment was another “hoax” designed to undermine him and that all subsequent indictments and prosecutions are politically motivated to prevent his election in 2024. He will resume holding rallies, harping incessantly that he was the real victor in 2020, threatening civil war and further escalating social and political divisions that would prevent what the rest of us call “healing”. He will blame the long-term misery from his failures on the Biden administration, just as easily as he claimed the long-term benefits of the Obama administration’s economic policies to be his own. Through the manipulation of his followers, he will project himself more than ever as the savior destined to “make America great again.” Furthermore, continued lack of accountability will have a detrimental effect on the public’s mental health by adding to the psychological trauma that is a consequence of normalizing deadly criminality and severe pathology. His exploitation and abuse of those who support him, who are the most in need of healing, will also not stop. In sum, not convicting Donald Trump in today’s circumstances will ensure that he is a serious continuing danger to our country, with major repercussions behaviorally and historically. For the past four years, we witnessed the perils of permitting a dangerously unfit person in an office he could not handle. Only conviction, as expediently as possible, would help mitigate the vast harm to the nation’s mental health he has caused and begin to set standards for justice, morality, and reality. Mental health experts are willing to testify on any of this and are standing by. About the contributor: Dr. Bandy Lee, M.D., M.Div., is a forensic psychiatrist, violence expert, and faculty member of Yale School of Medicine for 17 years who also taught at Yale Law School for 15 years. She was a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health, a consultant with the World Health Organization since 2002, and author of the textbook, Violence (2019). She edited The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President (2017 and 2019) and authored Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul (2020). She is also president of the World Mental Health Coalition, which is forming a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to examine what happened over the Trump years and how the nation can heal from it. For donations to her organization, a tax-deductible 501(c)3, please go here.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers have issued fresh calls for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate why government officials and law enforcement failed to stop the attack on the US Capitol in January, following Donald Trump’s acquittal in his impeachment on charges that he incited the insurrection. The commission would be modeled after a panel created in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, which reviewed what caused the atrocity and laid out recommendations on how to foresee and prevent any future incursions. “We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time,” said Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator of South Carolina and close Trump ally who voted to acquit the former president on Saturday. “His behavior after the election was over the top,” Graham said of the former president on Fox News Sunday. Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware agreed. Speaking on ABC’s This Week, he said that a bipartisan commission would “make sure we secure the Capitol going forward and that we lay bare the record of just how responsible and how abjectly violating of his constitutional oath Trump really was”. Using harrowing video footage from the day, Democratic House prosecutors laid out their case that the former president stoked the attack with violent rhetoric and dangerous insistence on the debunked conspiracy theories suggesting he had won the 2020 presidential election, against all evidence that he had, in fact, lost. Seven Republicans joined 50 Democrats in the Senate to hold Trump responsible for inciting the deadly insurrection, led by armed supporters who announced intentions to kill or harm lawmakers including Mike Pence, the former-vice president, and Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. Though the result of the trial was the most bipartisan in history, House managers ultimately did not secure the 67 votes required to convict Trump. But an independent commission could be another way for both Republicans and Democrats to hold Trump accountable. Other investigations have already been planned, with two Senate committees set to investigate security failures during the riots. In the House, Pelosi has also asked for a review of the Capitol’s security process. “There should be a complete investigation about what happened,” said Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator of Louisiana who has been censured by fellow Republicans in his home state for voting in favor of conviction. A commission would reveal “what was known, who knew it and when they knew, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again”, Cassidy told ABC, adding that he was “attempting to hold President Trump accountable” with his vote in the trial. Even Republicans who found Trump “not guilty” with their vote have tried to distance themselves from the former president. Most notably, the senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said: “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.” McConnell, who insisted that he voted against impeachment because Trump was no longer in office, after refusing to hold the trial while Trump was still in office, statements on Saturday seemed to punt the responsibility of holding Trump responsible to civil courts: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.” Prior to the impeachment vote, Pelosi wrote a letter to her Democratic colleagues saying it is “clear that we will need to establish a 9/11-type commission to examine and report upon the facts, causes and security relating to the terrorist mob attack on January 6”. She renewed her support for the commission after Trump’s acquittal. A commission on the Capitol riot would need to be approved via legislation like the 9/11 commission was, and lawmakers may ultimately disagree on who should sit on it. Still, the idea has been gaining steam. “For the first time in however many years, we had an insurrection incited by the president of the United States where five people died, more have died since, hundreds were injured, people lost fingers, lost eyesight,” Madeleine Dean, one of the House impeachment managers, said on ABC. “Of course there must be a full commission, an impartial commission, not guided by politics, filled with people who would stand up to the courage of their conviction,” she said.

In March 2017, shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created a gag order out of an obscure guideline prior to the Trump administration called “the Goldwater rule.” This alarming act is the reason we held an ethics conference at Yale School of Medicine, my institution, the very next month. It drew national attention and led to the public-service book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. It also led me to become a whistleblower not just of the president but of the APA. The book became an unprecedented New York Times bestseller of its kind, speaking to the hunger of the public, and we donated all revenues to the public good so as to remove any conflict of interest. The featured authors represent only a small sample of the many thousands of mental health professionals who came forth in historically unprecedented ways. Together we formed the National Coalition, which became the World Mental Health Coalition (WMHC) with international membership, by the end of 2017. It is the only professional organization to address the issue of dangerous leadership, intending to step in where we believed the American Psychiatric Association failed in leadership. It also remains the largest organization of mental health professionals to speak up about the dangerous mental impairments of Donald Trump. While the alarm of the moment brought us together, our mission is broader: to promote societal mental health and wellbeing in general. To illustrate how psychological dangers in a position of power can spread to other domains, we held another unprecedented conference, with the book’s second edition in March 2019, at the National Press Club by the title, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” A panel of thirteen top national experts assembled from fields as diverse as law, history, political science, economics, journalism, social psychology, nuclear science, and climate science, and C-SPAN broadcast our three-hour discussion in full. We tried to educate the public about how the president’s psychological dangers translated into social, cultural, civic, and geopolitical dangerousness and followed up in October 2020 with an emergency follow-up meeting. Since the first Yale conference, Congress members had reached out to us, and eventually we met with over fifty lawmakers on Capitol Hill. They encouraged us to educate the public medically so that they could act politically. We were initially very successful, raising the issue of the president’s mental health to become the number one topic of national conversation. Many of us were interviewing with the media many hours a day, every day, and the public was listening. Just when we believed we were close to having an effect, the APA stepped in, accusing us of “armchair psychiatry” and “the use of psychiatry as a political tool,” even though alerting the public about potential dangers and the need for a public servant to undergo an evaluation is not diagnosis. Rather, it was breaking its own new “Goldwater rule,” rendering judgments on us public figures by this time, without having examined us and gotten consent from us (its new requirement for making any comment, not just diagnosis, since the Trump administration). It also remained quiet about its own former officers who diagnosed but did so in ways to eliminate problems in the president. Finally, it failed to mention that its “rule” did not apply to the 94 percent of practicing mental health professionals who are not APA members, including myself and most members of the WMHC (many of whom resigned from the APA in objection to its inconsistent ethics). Our professional responsibility to society, on the other hand, is universal, and even outlined in the APA’s own code of ethics as being of primary importance and a mandate under which “the Goldwater rule” is a mere annotation. In addition, the APA itself says we should “serve society by advising and consulting with the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government,” mentioned before “the Goldwater rule.” While the resulting loss of media exposure hampered our efforts to meet our societal responsibility, no one seemed to feel the loss more than the public. It never stopped flooding us with the messages, “Where are the psychiatrists? Where are the psychologists?” Americans had to learn to do without expertise, just as it has with the pandemic, and the results have been equally devastating. Since learning of Covid-19, we stated that the death toll would reflect not the characteristics of the virus but the president’s mental state, and now we have a blow-by-blow account of how what we said would happen, happened. A Columbia University study confirmed that 130,000 to 210,000 of the 217,000 Covid-19 deaths at the time were avoidable. Knowledge saves lives. Only when the public is equipped with knowledge can it properly protect and govern itself. We believe that there are still many dangers we can avert if we had a full understanding of the situation at hand, instead of singling out mental health as the one field from which the people cannot access expertise. Our other actions have included a full-scale, independent and peer-reviewed mental capacity evaluation in April 2019 that demonstrated total incapacity, more than 800 petitioning Congress in December 2019 about the dangers, and 100 senior mental health professionals going on video record in September 2020 to declare the current president too psychologically dangerous and mentally unfit to be president. In August 2020, we also published more than 300 pages of our letters, petitions, and conference transcripts, including our March 2020 “Prescription for Survival.” We continue in our endeavor to serve society by empowering the people through education and by sharing our expertise. Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div. President

Synergy is when two or more agents come together to create a reaction greater than any one of them could have achieved on their own. It can be good or bad, depending on the desired outcome. The synergy between Donald Trump and the coronavirus pandemic is a disaster. Writing at the Advocate, John Casey summarizes this deadly synergy: "As this crisis deteriorates, becomes unmanageable and inexplicably horrible, so will Trump's behavior. A perfect storm that will unravel an unprepared, unrelatable, and unsympathetic president. A fairy tale turned into the horror of all horror stories." As many of America's and the world's leading mental health experts have repeatedly warned, Trump is mentally unwell to the extreme. He has publicly and repeatedly shown that he is a malignant narcissist, a pathological liar and a delusional fabulist. He is detached from reality and appears to live in his own fantasy world. His lack of empathy, care and concern for others can reasonably be described as sociopathic. The coronavirus pandemic is one of the greatest threats to public health — and perhaps even modern human civilization — of the last century. Many millions of people may directly die from the virus in the United States and around the world. The global economy is collapsing into a state that may be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. To defeat the coronavirus will require patient and wise leadership based on facts, reason, and expertise. Because the coronavirus is a public health crisis it is a problem of science and empirical knowledge. It cannot be wished away or prayed away or eliminated through other forms of magical thinking. For many reasons, including his mental health, overall temperament, values and intelligence, Donald Trump is existentially ill-equipped to handle this emergency and defeat the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Bandy Lee is perhaps the leading voice among those who have warned the American people and the world that Donald Trump's presidency would result in disaster. She is a professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and editor of the bestselling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump." In our most recent conversation, Lee contended that explains the pressures of the coronavirus pandemic are making Donald Trump's various mental pathologies worse and more dangerous. She explained her view that Trump, aided by Fox News and other parts of the right-wing echo chamber, is creating a collective state of mental illness among his cult members that is making the coronavirus even more lethal. As she has done before, Lee argued that Donald Trump is the most dangerous person on the planet and expressed her concern he may use the coronavirus pandemic to start or inflame mass violence in order to keep himself in power permanently. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. For several years you have been one of the most prominent public voices warning the American people and the world about the dangers represented by Donald Trump. Now, facing the coronavirus pandemic, where are we as a country and people, relative to the events you predicted would result from Trump's presidency? This a real crisis, both in terms of Trump's presidency and in terms of his psyche. At first Trump tried to manage the coronavirus in his mind by pretending that it was nothing. It was something that would go away in no time; the virus would somehow magically disappear. That is Trump's fantasy world. When that wasn't happening, and the stock market was in crisis and tumult, Trump then tried to look like he was in charge by giving a speech to the whole country. Trump continues to have these televised speeches and press conferences to make it look like he is control of the coronavirus crisis, all while he has Mike Pence and other government officials praise him on TV. Trump is not in touch with reality. He cannot control the coronavirus with his mind and by living in a fantasy world, as he has done for most of the crisis. Mental health professionals have been warning for years that Trump's mental health issues would lead to such a dire situation. Trump is not showing just a lack of presidential leadership. What he is doing is so irresponsible and inept that having him as president is in some ways worse than having no leadership in the country at all. Trump is spreading disinformation, suppressing reality, and threatening those experts and other people who are telling him things about the coronavirus pandemic that he doesn't want to hear. Now we in America and around the world are living through the horrible results of Trump's behavior. His mental health issues are translating directly into deaths and widespread calamity. Watching Donald Trump's evasion of responsibility for making the coronavirus much worse, his emotional distance, lack of care and concern, and general lack of interest, it seems clear that he is a likely sociopath. He does not appear to be a human being who is capable of empathy or sympathy for other people. He appears incapable of feeling guilt when his actions hurt people. That is correct. Donald Trump lacks the traits of empathy, sympathy and guilt. Those basic characteristics of humanity have not developed in him. No matter how many lives are impacted by the virus or how many deaths occur, it doesn't really touch him. Human beings are like objects to Donald Trump. He doesn't really relate to other people as if they are human beings. For example, we have now learned that Trump and his son-in-law and other family members may be trying to make money off the coronavirus pandemic through testing, the vaccine and the masks. Making money from the coronavirus disaster is more real to Donald Trump than the lives of people being lost to the virus. How does Trump's malleable view of reality, his extreme and dangerous fantasies, impact his decision-making? It's not that he has a malleable view of reality — if his view of reality was flexible then it could in some ways be productive. Trump actually wishes to hold on to the opposite of reality because he cannot tolerate reality as it exists. In truth, Trump is incompetent and not even able to engage in rational thinking. As such, the most threatening thing to a person whose mind works in such a way is science and facts. Scientific evidence and empirical reality are immutable. They do not change to fit Trump's desires and whims. This is very threatening to Donald Trump. When the World Health Organization reported a 3.4% death rate for Coronavirus, Trump could not simply wish it away as being less than 1% — which was his immediate desire. This is all very threatening for him. During Trump's press conference last Monday, he looked extremely deflated, as if he was finally beaten down by the actual numbers about the coronavirus. The infection rates have skyrocketed, and the stock market is not being easily manipulated by Donald Trump to stop crashing. Trump's behavior, his looking beaten down, is what happens to an overinflated self-image when it is confronted with reality. Trump cannot tolerate reality. He cannot last very long without either falling into a deep state of depression or lashing out in massive violence. Those two go hand in hand. We can also imagine that the dangers of such an outcome are not only very present but could actually increase with time as the coronavirus pandemic continues. Donald Trump may use the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to expand and secure his power. If he were to lose an election, will he step down from office? Will Trump declare martial law? When reality pushes back against Trump's fantasy world he is going to fight back as though he is fighting for his life. Donald Trump, with all the powers of the presidency and given his mind and behavior, is the most dangerous man on the planet. Are you suggesting the coronavirus is an opportunity for Donald Trump to fully take over the country and to end democracy and the rule of law? Once Trump gets a fuller grasp of the situation, one can imagine that his thoughts will immediately go in that direction. Donald Trump is continually at war with the world and reality. Trump could use the coronavirus as an opportunity to secure his power. Given that the American public is frightened and confused, this could be an opportune moment for such a move. When the Senate chose not to convict Trump it encouraged him. Such a personality does not settle down. Such a personality is not content with the power he is amassing. Trump's expectations of power are rising in ways which are uncontrollable. Such behavior is Trump's megalomania, the uncontrollable expansion of power and control over society that you see when such personalities take power. There are so many naysayers who say, "Oh, Trump's not dangerous, he's bumbling. He hasn't gotten what he wanted, he can't even think that way." How would you respond? Trump is impaired and, yes, he does seem to be a bumbling fool. But Trump has a massive following and he controls the Republican Party. The problem is that when there is a person like Donald Trump who is impaired in the higher functions of the brain, the lower functions — the primitive or "reptilian" brain — become more powerful than ever before. That part of the human brain is based on fear, on instinct. Those impulses help Trump to control his people, his frenzied irrational followers. Those people are the key to Trump's power. This is not a strategy; it is a pathology. Trump's movement is an actual mental disease spreading across the country. As others have pointed out, Donald Trump leads a cult. The Republicans and his other followers are Trump's cult members. It works very much that way because when a person has high levels of exposure to someone with untreated mental pathology, the vector of transmission is not physical, as we are seeing with the coronavirus, but instead through emotional bonds. Donald Trump creates emotional bonds and a condition of dependence on him among the cult members. Trump is delusional. Trump is not just lying, because simple lying does not have such a powerful effect on an entire population. Trump's delusions have been induced across an entire population of his supporters and other followers. Now an entire segment of the American people is delusional and detached from reality through Trump. We see this with Trump initially telling the country that the coronavirus is a hoax, that they should go out to restaurants and gatherings, go to work, hug people, etc. Because Trump's followers revere him, they do what he says. Trump's obvious mental pathologies, in combination with the coronavirus, seem like a true disaster for America and the world. It was bound to happen. The coronavirus just happened to be part of the equation. The coronavirus pandemic is a graphic illustration of how disastrous allowing the mental health pandemic that is Trump's cult to continue unabated. A mental disease pandemic is now making everything else worse, including the coronavirus. Trump is inspiring very dangerous behavior. It is fanatical. This is what happens when mental pathology from an influential figure engulfs a large segment of the population. Trump's followers derive their identity, their sense of meaning in their lives, and how they understand the world from what he says. Trump actually disdains the people who follow him. But Trump will do anything to keep their loyalty because they are the base of his power. Donald Trump has a pathological, authoritarian relationship with his followers. In that relationship they have lost their personhood, autonomy and even their ability to think for themselves. Trump's followers are becoming more dependent, more conformist and more servile to him the longer he stays in power. Trump supporters contact me every day. Several years ago, I was able to converse with them and I was able to challenge their beliefs — not convert them, per se, but at least engage with them as human beings and start a conversation. That has become much more difficult now, because Trump's supporters are fixed in their thinking. They automatically regurgitate Trump's talking points. They are unable to hear what other people are saying if it does not support Trump. You can no longer reason with them. The only solution would be removing Trump from the presidency. That has not happened and therefore the pathology has deepened. With the coronavirus it will come to a point where Trump supporters get sick and die in large numbers. They will still support Donald Trump. Trump is not a savior, but a human being with flaws. Trump's followers cannot even conceive of that fact. It cannot even enter their conscious mind because they will block it. If a person tries to explain reality to Trump's supporters, they will do anything to hold onto their fantasies about Trump and to follow his commands. Unfortunately, there is a dynamic where mental symptoms are contagious, and individuals start to have the same symptoms of the primary person — even though they usually don't have a mental health disorder. Mentally unwell leaders influence their followers to behave the same way. Fox News and the right-wing media have been circulating dangerous lies about the coronavirus. How does that fit into the Trump mental disorder pandemic? I was watching Fox News some 20 years ago and realized that it would cause a national public mental health crisis in the future. Donald Trump is the result of decades of poisoning people's minds and manipulating and controlling them. How will Trump's followers and other people addicted to Fox News and the right-wing disinformation machine reconcile seeing real people — perhaps even their relatives — get sick and die from the coronavirus with the lies they have been told by their trusted information sources? The human mind is very powerful. The human mind is capable of turning everything upside down, and Donald Trump has already instructed his followers not to believe what they're seeing and only to listen to him. Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have been instructing the same thing. I am very afraid that the coronavirus pandemic will cause many deaths and that Donald Trump will then say that the disease was somehow spread in the United States by the Democrats in order to ruin his re-election chances. Trump's followers will believe that and blame the Democrats. In their minds the coronavirus will be the Democrats' fault and not the result of a global disease. That is another example of how Trump, the Republicans and the broader right-wing movement use stochastic terrorism against Democrats, liberals, nonwhite people, Muslims and any other group or individuals they target as the "enemy." In that logic, if the Democrats are somehow responsible for the coronavirus then violence against them is both reasonable and necessary. Donald Trump has violence in mind. He's a coward. Normally, he would not even wish to go in the direction of violence, but if his survival were threatened — especially his emotional and mental survival and his inflated sense of self — Trump will resort to violence. That violence could be in the form of a civil war or a war in another country. Trump has said such things before. His foreign policy also reflects his violent mind. My greatest worry is that the more the coronavirus crisis worsens and the more Trump feels threatened as he realizes that he cannot force his delusional reality into being a real one, there is a greater likelihood of him resorting to extreme means.

Crises have a way of sorting the good presidents from the bad. Historians rank Abe Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt among the top three presidents for their handling of the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II. By contrast, the string of catastrophes that trailed George W. Bush, from 9/11 to Iraq to Hurricane Katrina to his obliviousness to warning signs in the housing market before the 2008 crash guarantee that he will have a permanent place in the bottom tier of presidents. Also certain to be at or near the bottom of that list is Donald Trump. Trump has been able to maintain 40% approval ratings by effectively manipulating the lizard brains of white Republicans, but even before COVID-19 hit, he was considered one of the worst presidents in the two surveys of scholars done in 2018. Trump’s increase in attention to the COVID-19 crisis for the brief window of time between when he declared a national emergency (on March 13) until he shifted most of his attention back to his re-election campaign (roughly six weeks later) helped mitigate the damage somewhat, but his inaction from January 3 (when the administration claims to have first become aware of the virus) until March 13 made the situation exponentially worse than it should have been. And his failures of governance since March 13 greatly outweigh the handful of positive steps he took in that time in scope and number. As Anthony Fauci said, numbers don’t lie. Our federal response has been the shame of the first world, as America has posted over 170,000 deaths (4X any other developed country) and 5,500,000 infections (more than 10X any developed country), both significant undercounts from the true numbers. This story starts, as many tales of Republican incompetence do, with sheer ignorance and lack of curiosity. Ronald Reagan was able to ignore the AIDS crisis for years because it was “a gay disease” and didn’t impact anyone close to him until his old Hollywood acquaintance Rock Hudson asked for—but did not receive—his help in 1985. Despite having spent months manipulating post-9/11 public fear with an orchestrated campaign of lies about fictitious WMDs, George W. Bush still didn’t understand the historical friction between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq when he invited Iraqi guests of mixed faiths to a super bowl party two months before the invasion. History repeated itself with Donald Trump, like Reagan and Bush a P.R.-centric empty suit lacking intellectual curiosity, policy chops, or any interest in the mechanics of governing. It was common knowledge before Trump took office that an infectious outbreak of some kind was likely to occur during his presidency. As reported on January 11, 2017, Anthony Fauci told a pandemic preparedness forum (held at Georgetown University) “history has told us definitively that [outbreaks] will happen because [facing] infectious diseases is a perpetual challenge. It is not going to go away. The thing we’re extraordinarily confident about is that we’re going to see this in the next few years.” (W1*)(*Pandemic-related warnings will be abbreviated throughout this piece with a red W) On January 13, 2017, seven days before Trump took office, officials from the Obama administration had a three-hour transition meeting with top Trump officials in which they discussed disaster management. Of the exercises they went through together, the pandemic response exercise was “perhaps the most concrete and visible transition exercise that dealt with the possibility of pandemics, and top officials from both sides — whether they wanted to be there or not — were forced to confront a whole-of-government response to a crisis. The Trump team was told it could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was ‘paramount.’” (W2) Unfortunately for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who would die of the coronavirus, and the millions more who would get infected, stable, competent staffing and effective collaboration in the executive branch were prerequisites to an effective national response. Whereas Obama’s administration would maintain the same cabinet members and White House staff through his first term, 2/3rds of the Trump staffers attending the transition meeting would be gone by the time the pandemic was in full swing, leading to a major loss of institutional memory. (1) Another key element of an effective national disaster preparedness response was a president who was engaged in the process. From before he took office, there were concerns that Trump wasn’t up to the task because of his ignorance of the subject and indifference to getting up to speed with this crucial part of his job. According to Peter Nicholas of the Atlantic, “When a senior White House aide would brief President Donald Trump in 2018 about an Ebola-virus outbreak in central Africa, it was plainly evident that hardships roiling a far-flung part of the world didn’t command his attention. He was zoning out. ‘It was like talking to a wall,’ a person familiar with the matter told me.” (2) This indifference manifested with Trump’s first budget to Congress. Though the administration found money for big increases in the already-bloated defense budget and later passed a $2.3 trillion tax cut overwhelmingly tilted to the 1%, Trump’s minions cut funding (3) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the agency tasked with protecting public health in the face of the opiate epidemic, AIDS, flu, and infectious outbreaks. Within the tax cut bill were steep cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund (called “the core of public health programs” by Tom Frieden, who headed the CDC under Barack Obama). (4) On May 11, 2017, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, submitted a threat assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which said “A novel or reemerging microbe that is easily transmissible between humans and is highly pathogenic remains a major threat because such an organism has the potential to spread rapidly and kill millions.” (W3) Appointed to head the CDC, in July 2017, was Brenda Fitzgerald, a right-wing Republican from Georgia who replaced interim director Anne Schuchat, a highly-experienced, long-time public health advocate (5). Among Fitzgerald’s priorities was scrubbing seven dirty words—including “evidence-based,” “science-based,” “diversity,” and “fetus”—from CDC budget documentation. Fitzgerald’s time at the CDC was brief: she resigned on January 31, 2018 when it came out that she had owned stocks in a tobacco company even as she ran an agency dedicated to anti-smoking campaigns (6). Politico reported that “one day after Fitzgerald purchased stock in Japan Tobacco, she toured the CDC’s Tobacco Laboratory, which studies tobacco’s toxic effects.” On February 1, 2018, the Washington Post reported that “CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak” (7): “The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off (8) and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (9) And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent (10), the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced.” (11) On February 13, 2018, Dan Coats (Trump’s Director of National Intelligence) submitted a threat assessment to Congress which stated that “The increase in frequency and diversity of reported disease outbreaks—such as dengue and Zika—probably will continue through 2018, including the potential for a severe global health emergency that could lead to major economic and societal disruptions, strain governmental and international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support. A novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens such as H5N1 and H7N9 influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus having pandemic potential if they were to acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.” (W4) On April 10, 2018, Trump hired John Bolton, one of the architects of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, as his National Security Adviser. Bolton in turn fired Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert (12), whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks.” On April 27, 2018, at the Malaria Summit in London, Bill Gates discussed the federal government’s lack of readiness for the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” In the second week of May, 2018, “the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. (13) Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending (14) and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. (15) And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated. (16) An article by Lena Sun of the Washington Post touched on just how big of a blow these moves were to U.S. disaster preparedness: “The White House proposal ‘is threatening to claw back funding whose precise purpose is to help the United States be able to respond quickly in the event of a crisis,’ said Carolyn Reynolds, a vice president at PATH, a global health technology nonprofit. (W5) “Collectively, warns Jeremy Konyndyk, who led foreign disaster assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Obama administration, ‘What this all adds up to is a potentially really concerning rollback of progress on U.S. health security preparedness.’ “‘It seems to actively unlearn the lessons we learned through very hard experience over the last 15 years,’ said Konyndyk….‘These moves make us materially less safe. It’s inexplicable.’” (W6) That same week, on May 9, 2018, “Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the [National Security Council], spoke at a symposium at Emory University to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. That event killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. ‘The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern,’ she told the audience. ‘Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no.’” (W7) On May 10, 2018, Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton “re-organized” the National Security Council (NSC), or more accurately “fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure” which had been set up by the Obama administration after the Ebola crisis, by collapsing the NSC’s Office of Global Security (17). In the wake of Bolton’s action, the top official tasked with coordinating a response to a pandemic, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council, resigned on the same day that a new Ebola outbreak was reported in the Congo. (18) The Office of Global Security had been a comprehensive crisis response team which brought together principals from the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, the National Security Council, and the Department of Homeland Security; the Trump administration replaced neither Ziemer nor the command infrastructure (19). On May 15, 2018, Virginia Democrat Gerald Connolly, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote Bolton a letter “to express the deep concerns with several recent actions the White House has taken to downgrade the importance of global health security.” Looking forward, the letter stated, “We fear these recent decisions will leave the United States vulnerable to pandemics and commit us to a strategy of triage should one occur.” (W8) Democratic senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio piggybacked on these concerns in a May 18, 2018 letter to President Trump: “In our globalized world, where diseases are never more than a plane ride away, we must do all we can to prepare for the next, inevitable outbreak and keep Americans safe from disease. I urge you to act swiftly in reaffirming your commitment to global health security by taking immediate action to designate senior level NSC personnel to focus on global health security, supporting adequate and appropriate funding for global health security initiatives, and leading the way in preparing for the next pandemic threat.” (W9) In September of 2018, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services diverted $266 million from the CDC to operations to detain immigrant children. (20) In January of 2019, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put out a threat assessment warning that “the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.” (W10) On April 17, 2019, at a bio-defense summit, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar said, “Of course, the thing that people ask: ‘What keeps you most up at night in the biodefense world?’ Pandemic flu, of course. I think everyone in this room probably shares that concern.” (W11) According to John Bolton, on June 29, 2019, when Trump met with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Japan, Trump “turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.” In July of 2019, under pressure from industry groups, the administration quietly seeded a future disaster by “relaxing the requirements tied to infection control” in nursing homes. (21) In September of 2019, a “study by the Council of Economic Advisers ordered by the National Security Council predicted that a pandemic similar to the 1918 Spanish flu or the 2009 swine flu could lead to a half-million deaths and cost the economy as much as $3.8 trillion.” (W12) That same month, the Trump administration ended PREDICT, “a pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.” The program “gathered specimens from more than 10,000 bats and 2,000 other mammals in search of dangerous viruses. They detected about 1,200 viruses that could spread from wild animals to humans, signaling pandemic potential. More than 160 of them were novel coronaviruses, much like SARS-CoV-2.” (22) In their fiscal year 2020 budget, the Trump administration proposed a 20% cut to the CDC budget (23). On November 18, 2019, one day after the first known case of COVID-19, “an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the ‘United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.’” (W13) According to Josh Margolin and James Gordon Meek of ABC News, in December of 2019, intelligence sources gave multiple briefings about the threat of COVID-19 to “the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House.” The White House pushed back on this reporting, claiming that they were first informed of the coronavirus on January 3, 2020, when Robert Redfield, Trump’s CDC head, received a phone call from China. Around this time, intelligence services began putting information about coronavirus in Trump’s Daily Brief. (W14) On January 8, the American public was made aware of COVID-19 when the Washington Post reported an outbreak of an “‘unidentified and possibly new viral disease in central China’ that was sending alarms across Asia in advance of the Lunar New Year travel season.” Already, “Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines were contemplating quarantine zones and scanning travelers from China for ‘signs of fever or other pneumonia-like symptoms that may indicate a new disease possibly linked to a wild animal market in Wuhan.’” In response, the CDC issued a public health alert. Rather than address the new potential public health crisis, Trump tried to score cheap partisan points by lying about Barack Obama’s Iran peace deal at that day’s press conference (24). Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar wasn’t able to get Trump’s ear about the coronavirus until January 18, fifteen days after the administration claims they had been notified (25). According to the Washington Post, Trump was more concerned about short-term political pressure than public health: “When [Azar] reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about [a proposed ban on] vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market.” That same day, Rick Bright, who headed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), pleaded with his boss, Dr. Robert Kadlec (the assistant secretary for preparedness and response) to “convene high-level meetings about the virus.” Kadlec responded that was “not sure if that is a time sensitive urgency.” (26) On January 21, the day the first coronavirus case in the U.S. was confirmed by the CDC, Dr. Bright emailed Laura Wolf (the director of the Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, which is under the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response). The email asked Wolf to reach out to Michael Bowen, the CEO of Prestige Ameritech, a domestic medical supply company. Appearing on CNBC on January 22, Trump offered the first of dozens of false reassurances when he told an interviewer, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” (27) Asked if he trusted the COVID-related information he was getting from China, Trump said he did because “I have a great relationship with President Xi” and “We just signed probably the biggest deal ever made.” (In reality, Trump was covering up for Xi; Trump’s intelligence briefings had made it clear China was suppressing information about the virus, but Trump was more concerned about increasing trade with China, which he thought could help him win a second term.) Earlier in the day, Michael Bowen had emailed “top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services” and offered to produce 1.7 million N95 masks per week for the national stockpile. Bowen’s offer was turned down by Laura Wolf, so he sent a follow-up email on January 23 which stated “We are the last major domestic mask company….My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.” Despite Rick Bright’s warnings about a coming shortage of masks (W15)—the national stockpiles had around 1/50th of what the country would need during a pandemic—and multiple emails from Bowen alluding to the “imminent risk” of a mask shortage and the mass orders he was getting from China and Hong Kong, the administration would never follow through on Bowen’s offer. (28) This indifference was reflected in two meetings of Trump’s disaster management team that took place on the 23rd. Bright’s concerns about medical supplies and BARDA’s lack of funds weren’t shared by Robert Kadlec or Alex Azar (29), who “asserted that the United States would be able to contain the virus and keep it out of the United States. Secretary Azar further indicated that the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] would look at the issue of travel bans to keep the virus contained.” Bright was punished for his outspokenness; Azar and Kadlec excluded him from the next disaster management meeting. (30) That same day, Trump was briefed by a CIA analyst and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, who communicated that COVID-19 could “spread globally.” (W16) On January 24, one day after China had shut down Wuhan and other cities, Trump tweeted praise of China’s “transparency” and said that “It will all work out well.” This would be just one of fifteen times Trump praised China in January and February of 2020. On January 25, Michael Bowen emailed Bright “about the mask shortage, explaining that his company was getting requests from China and that nearly half of the masks in the U.S. are imported from Chinese manufacturers. ‘If the supply stops, US hospital will run out of masks. No way to prevent it.’” Bright forwarded the information to Kadlec the following day. (W17) On January 27, “White House aides huddled with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus, according to people briefed on the meeting. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, argued that the administration needed to take the virus seriously or it could cost the president his reelection, and that dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months. “Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings. In early briefings, however, officials said Trump was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.” (31) On January 28, twenty five days after the administration had officially become aware of coronavirus, on the day that China’s president met with the Director-General of the World Health Organization to map out responses to COVID-19, the same day that Department of Veterans Affairs senior medical adviser Dr. Carter Mecher told colleagues that “the projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe”and mitigation efforts would soon be necessary on a “Red Dawn” email (W18), CNN reported that “Trump has not…named a single official within the White House responsible for coordinating the administration’s response. (32) That has some wondering whether enough is being done in advance of a potential crisis, particularly since the role of the National Security Council under Trump has shifted away from leading a response to a health crisis to merely coordinating between agencies.” Trump’s indifference was a direct contrast to Barack Obama, who had “anointed a former vice presidential staffer, Ronald Klain, as a sort of ‘epidemic czar’ inside the White House, clearly stipulated the roles and budgets of various agencies, and placed incident commanders in charge in each Ebola-hit country and inside the United States.” On the same day Trump was told (again) by an intelligence briefer that China was “withholding data” about COVID-19, he gushed at a campaign rally in New Jersey that he had “signed a fantastic new trade agreement with China that will boost New Jersey exports and defend New Jersey jobs.” On January 29, Peter Navarro, an economic adviser to Donald Trump, sent a memo to the White House warning that coronavirus could kill up to 543,000 Americans. (W19) Despite Navarro’s memo, and the fact that the U.S. had yet to take any significant actions to counteract the coronavirus (33), Trump continued his narrative of false assurances with a tweet that he had “Just received a briefing on the Coronavirus in China from all of our GREAT agencies, who are also working closely with China. We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments. We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!” (34) On Thursday, January 30, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared a global health emergency while praising China’s efforts to contain the virus. On a flight to campaign appearances in the Midwest, Trump received a call from Alex Azar, who warned him a second time of the destructive potential of the pandemic. Trump dismissed Azar as “alarmist.” (35) Later that day, speaking in front of Michigan auto workers on the day the WHO had declared a global health emergency, the day the CDC reported the first person-to-person transmission in the U.S., Trump said, “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.” (36) Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross doubled down on Trump’s denial, telling Fox Business News that the virus “will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.” (37) Though Ross claimed the virus would increase job growth, and Trump was confident that the U.S. had “very little problem” with the virus, the Trump Administration delivered one of a string of mixed messages (38) when they announced the formation of a Coronavirus Task Force on the same day. In contrast to the efficient and responsive crisis management model Barack Obama had set up, where Ron Klain coordinated actions among diverse agencies, Trump’s commission had confusing lines of authority, where “at least three different people—[Health and Human Services head Alex] Azar, Vice President Mike Pence and coronavirus task force coordinator Debbie Birx—can claim responsibility.” (39) In a crisis where immediate, decisive action was needed, the administration chose a slow-moving model choked with discussion and deliberation which focused on closing off borders rather than testing and tracing and countrywide mitigation (40). Klain offered a prescient prognosis at the Atlantic Monthly: “The U.S. government has the tools, talent, and team to help fight the coronavirus abroad and minimize its impact at home. But the combination of Trump’s paranoia toward experienced government officials (who lack ‘loyalty’ to him), inattention to detail, opinionated rejection of science and evidence, and isolationist instincts may prove toxic when it comes to managing a global-health security challenge. To succeed, Trump will have to trust the kind of government experts he has disdained to date, set aside his own terrible instincts, lead from the White House, and work closely with foreign leaders and global institutions—all things he has failed to do in his first 1,200 days in office.” Writing in Foreign Policy the next day, January 31, Laurie Garrett (a Pultizer-winning science journalist) posed an important question: “The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting down a national holiday, building enormous quarantine hospitals in days’ time, and ramping up 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment—are indeed gargantuan. It’s impossible to watch them without wondering, ‘What would we do? How would my government respond if this virus spread across my country?’” Her government that day declared a public health emergency and restricted Americans who had been in China over the past two weeks from re-entering the country. Trump presented the decision as a coup de grâce to the pandemic. Speaking to Fox’s Sean Hannity on February 2, Trump said, “We pretty much shut it down coming from China.” (41) In fact, as Ron Klain would mention to Congress a few days later, over 100,000 people* had come to the States from China in the month before the ban, so “the horse is already out of the barn.” (*the New York Times would later point out that this was a significant underestimate, as 430,000 travelers would enter the country from China from January-April of 2020, including 40,000 after the travel ban, 42) Trump would go on to brag repeatedly about the China ban as an example of a gutsy leadership move, but he made the decision reluctantly (after Delta Airlines and American Airlines had suspended flights from China and United notified the White House that they were about to do so) and he wouldn’t restrict travel from Europe, which brought many more travelers into the U.S.. than China and would provide the bulk of New York’s cases, for six more weeks (43). In just the month of February, two million Europeans would come to the U.S., hundreds bringing the virus with them. In a February 3 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Laurie Garrett explained that John Bolton’s dissolution of the pandemic response office (see #17) was done out of spite: “it was a big mistake by the Trump administration to obliterate the entire infrastructure of pandemic response that the Obama administration had created. Why did he do it? Well, it certainly wasn’t about the money, because it wasn’t a heavily-funded program. It was certainly because it was Obama’s program.” (44) Pressed by Goodman to provide more detail about the Global Security Office, Garrett continued: “It was a special division inside the National Security Council, a special division inside of the Department of Homeland Security…and collaborating centers in HHS, headquarters in Washington, the Office of Global Health Affairs, and the Commerce Department, Treasury Department. But what Obama understood, dealing with Ebola in 2014, is that any American response had to be an all-of-government response, that there were so many agencies overlapping, and they all had a little piece of the puzzle in the case of a pandemic.” “…What the Obama administration realized was that you can’t corral multiple agencies and things from private sector as well as public sector to come to the aid of America, unless you have some one person in charge who’s really the manager of it all. And in his case, it was Ron Klain, who had worked under Vice President Biden. And he was designated, with an office inside the White House, to give orders and coordinate all these various things….Well, that was all eliminated. It’s gone. And now they’re hastily trying to recreate something.” On February 4, the Wall Street Journal posted an op-ed by Trump’s former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, titled “Stop a U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak Before It Starts,” in which he stressed the importance of ramping up testing for the virus so that public health officials would know where to focus their efforts. (W20) That same day, the administration rolled out new regulatory guidelines. Any lab that wanted to test needed to meet strict criteria to get an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Though Trump had gutted every environmental regulation in sight, and scaled back oversight of Wall Street, his FDA over-regulated this crucial public health function (45), forcing public health labs to re-run their tests, which would delay reporting of the number of confirmed cases (46), robbing public health officials of vital information about the spread of infection in their areas. The EUA also slowed down private labs by demanding that they get CDC approval before using their tests (47). On February 5, Democratic senators met with administration officials and proposed emergency funding “for essential preventative measures, including hiring local screening and testing staff, researching a vaccine and treatments and the stockpiling of needed medical supplies.” (W21) HHS secretary Azar declined the funding, claiming it wasn’t needed. (48) After the meeting, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted “Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren’t taking this seriously enough. Notably no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.” On February 6, the World Health Organization shipped out 250,000 test kits. The administration could have requested WHO kits, but insisted that the U.S. develop its own tests. That day, the CDC shipped out 90 test kits. (49) On February 7, the same day World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that “The world is facing a chronic shortage of gowns, masks, gloves and other protective equipment in the fight against a spreading coronavirus epidemic,” the same day that Rick Bright’s suggestion that the federal government begin mass production of masks was rejected by Trump’s disaster management team, (50) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted about “the transportation of nearly 17.8 tons of donated medical supplies…including masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials”—to China. These shipments represented just a fraction of the vital medical supplies, later desperately needed inside our borders, which would be exported from the U.S. due to the Trump administration’s failure to plan ahead and ban exports, as Germany, South Korea, and twenty-two others countries did. (51) Asked at a news conference that day if he was concerned that China was covering up the full extent of the virus, Trump replied “No. China is working very hard. Late last night, I had a very good talk with President Xi, and we talked about — mostly about the coronavirus. They’re working really hard, and I think they are doing a very professional job. They’re in touch with World — the World — World Organization. CDC also. We’re working together. But World Health is working with them. CDC is working with them. I had a great conversation last night with President Xi. It’s a tough situation. I think they’re doing a very good job.” He said much the same thing on Twitter, where he praised China’s leadership and pushed misinformation about warm weather ending COVID-19: “Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but…….he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!” Rick Bright continued his focus on medical supplies on February 8, when he met with Trump’s economic adviser, Peter Navarro (see W19). Bright and Navarro “drafted a memo sent to the White House coronavirus task force that called for the U.S. to immediately halt the export of N95 masks and ramp up production.” (W22) On February 9, “a group of governors in town for a black-tie gala at the White House secured a private meeting with [Dr. Anthony] Fauci and [CDC head Robert] Redfield. The briefing rattled many of the governors, bearing little resemblance to the words of the president.” On February 10, Trump repeated a false talking point multiple times. “Trump said on Fox Business: ‘You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather.’” (52) He told state governors: ‘You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.’ (53) And he told supporters at a campaign rally: ‘Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that’s true.’” (54) Just before the rally, when asked by Trish Regan of Fox News about China’s COVID-19 transparency, Trump said that the Chinese “have everything under control….We’re working with them. You know, we just sent some of our best people over there…It’s going to be fine.” On February 11, Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell contradicted Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (see #37) when he said that the coronavirus would “very likely” impact America’s economy. On February 12, the New York Times reported that Trump’s CDC had sent state labs flawed test kits, further slowing down the testing process. (55) HHS secretary Alex Azar appeared before a Senate committee on February 13 and said, “As of today, I can announce that the CDC has begun working with health departments in five cities to use its flu surveillance network to begin testing individuals with flu-like symptoms for the Chinese coronavirus….This effort will help see whether there is broader spread than we have been able to detect so far.” The statement gave the impression that the Trump administration was making progress in combating the virus, which was false, as the cities still lacked functional tests and the surveillance systems weren’t in place. Azar knew this, but was desperate to create positive spin for the administration (56). On Valentine’s Day, as worldwide deaths from the virus were at 1,000 and climbing, Trump spoke before the National Border Control Council. He again wheeled out the false assertion that warm weather would douse the virus (57) and said, “We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.” On February 18, Trump tweeted opposition to a measure that would limit sales of U.S. technology to China and again defended President Xi. Asked at a news conference what he thought of “the data coming out of China,” Trump said, “Look, I know this: President Xi loves the people of China, he loves his country, and he’s doing a very good job with a very, very tough situation.” Taking stock of Trump’s handling of COVID-19 so far, Atlantic contributor Peter Nicholas offered perceptive summations of the Trump Administration’s failures of governance and the challenges ahead: “He has hollowed out federal agencies and belittled expertise (see #1), prioritizing instead his own intuition and the demands of his political base. But he’ll need to rely on a bureaucracy he’s maligned to stop the virus’s spread.” The article cited the ramifications of Trump’s allergy to bad news: “‘We have a president who doesn’t particularly care about competent administration, and who created a culture in which bad news is shut down,’ (58) says Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, whose state is home to one of multiple airports screening passengers for the coronavirus. ‘And when you’re dealing with a potential pandemic, you need to know all the bad news. If this disease ends up not overwhelming us, that would be a blessing. But it would not be because the Trump administration was ready. They were not.’” Nicholas also addressed Trump’s continual lies and distortions about the scope of the virus: “Since Trump’s first upbeat assessment, the number of people sickened by the virus has spiraled. At the time of the CNBC interview (see #27), 17 people in China had died from the virus and about 540 were infected. Today, the death toll is about 1,900 and the number of infections tops 73,000. At least 15 cases have been reported in the U.S., and an additional 14 Americans infected with the virus arrived yesterday following their evacuation from a cruise ship in Japan.” Undeterred by scientific facts, Trump pushed the warm weather myth again on February 19, telling a reporter “I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine.” (59) He also went to bat for President Xi. Asked how confident he was “that China is being 100 percent honest with us when it comes to this scary virus?,” Trump said, “I’m confident that they’re trying very hard….I know President Xi. I get along with him very well. We just made a great trade deal….I think it’s going to work out fine.” On February 20, Politico reported on the flawed test kits the CDC had sent out and mentioned that the cost of the kits was so high ($250/each) that Trump’s Health and Human Services department was starting to run out of money (60)—which could have been avoided if Azar had accepted additional congressional funding proposed on February 5 (see #48). The coronavirus task force met on February 21. Reviewing the escalation in cases abroad, the group “concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation’s economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans.” Early on the morning of February 23, Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and professor at Harvard, tweeted that “the US remains extremely limited in #COVID19 testing. Only 3 of 100 public health labs have @CDC test kits working (61) and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it.” (62) Later that day, Peter Navarro wrote a memorandum to the president stating that “There is an increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life as many as 1-2 million souls…To minimize economic and social disruption and loss of life, there is an urgent need for an immediate, supplemental appropriation of at least $3.0 billion dollars to support efforts at prevention, treatment, inoculation, and diagnostics…Any member of the Task Force who wants to be cautious about appropriating funds for a crisis that could inflict trillions of dollars in economic damage and take millions of lives has come to the wrong administration.” (W23) Unconcerned with trifles like data, Trump told reporters that day, “We’re very much involved. We’re very — very cognizant of everything going on. We have it very much under control in this country.” On Monday, February 24, trying to make up for previous short-sighted budget cuts, the administration “asked Congress for $2.5 billion in emergency funds to handle coronavirus in the United States. (To compare to a recent health crisis, the Obama administration requested $6 billion in emergency funding for the 2014 Ebola outbreak and eventually received $5.4 billion.) Though Democrats in Congress have pushed the administration to call for emergency coronavirus funding since early February, Politico states that ‘White House officials have been hesitant to press Congress for additional funding, with some hoping that the virus would burn itself out by the summer.’” The $2.5 billion request was a pittance, approximately 1/1000th the size of Trump’s tax cut (63), most of which went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Azar knew the funding was inadequate, but was hamstrung by administration officials who didn’t grasp the seriousness of the virus and lacked pull with Trump to override them in favor of the public interest. Even as the news grew worse, Trump continued to give false assurances, tweeting “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA….Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” (64). In fact, Trump had no idea if things were “under control” because his administration had failed to get functional test kits out. That same day, the stock market had its second biggest drop in its history. The following day, February 25, the stock market cratered for the fourth consecutive day, losing 879 points to end at 27,081. While the Dow Jones tanked, Nancy Messonier, the director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, made the case for community mitigation and told reporters that the virus would cause “severe” disruptions in American’s lives. Unaware that his public health officials were planning to propose mitigation efforts, Trump scolded Messonier’s ultimate boss, Alex Azar, for the toll her announcement had on the stock market (65) and the next day demoted Azar, putting Mike Pence in charge of the coronavirus task force. As a result of Trump’s temper tantrum, the task force’s time-sensitive recommendations for social distancing, school closures, and cancellations of crowded events was put on hold. It would be three long, deadly weeks before Trump would finally announce social distancing recommendations on March 16 (66), during which time the CDC would later estimate “COVID-19 cases increased more than 1,000-fold.” According to researchers at Columbia University, the last two weeks of delay cost the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. (67) At a time when bipartisan harmony was more important than ever, Trump trolled Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on Twitter for pointing out that $2.5 billion wasn’t remotely adequate to the task: “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is complaining, for publicity purposes only, that I should be asking for more money than $2.5 Billion to prepare for Coronavirus. If I asked for more he would say it is too much. He didn’t like my early travel closings. I was right. He is incompetent!” (68) And even as it was reported that “Trump spent the past 2 years slashing the government agencies responsible for handling the coronavirus outbreak,” Trump tweeted that “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.” While in India that day, Trump told reporters, “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are…getting better. They’re all getting better….As far as what we’re doing with the new virus, I think that we’re doing a great job.” (69) Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow echoed Trump’s lies and contradicted CDC officials when he told CNBC, “We have contained this, I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight.” (70) Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported on the severe shortage of N95 masks American hospitals were facing due to onerous federal regulations (71) and a lack of support from the Trump administration (72), and the administration’s lack of a plan going forward, which was causing confusion and panic among state and local officials (73). Though the administration had had three years to to build national reserves of emergency medical supplies, Azar’s testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee that day showed that “the Strategic National Stockpile had only 30 million masks. That number is less than one one-hundredth of the 3.5 billion that a specialized group within HHS that focuses on the risk from viral outbreaks has estimated are necessary.” (74) The next day, February 26, Politico reported that the “U.S. isn’t ready to detect stealth coronavirus spread” due to poor coordination among crisis management staff (75), the administration’s failure to get functional test kits out in a timely fashion (76), and needlessly strict test criteria: “Just 12 of more than 100 public health labs in the U.S. are currently able to diagnose the coronavirus because of problems with a test developed by the CDC, potentially slowing the response if the virus starts taking hold here. The faulty test has also delayed a plan to widely screen people with symptoms of respiratory illness who have tested negative for influenza to detect whether the coronavirus may be stealthily spreading.” Only six states were testing for the virus and the testing was limited to people who had been to China or were experiencing symptoms, which was allowing the virus to spread undetected. Harvard epidemiology professor Mark Lipsitch told Politico, “China tested 320,000 people in Guangdong over a three-week period. This is the scale we need to be thinking on.” Meanwhile, on the same day he was told that community spread was present in the U.S., Trump tweeted that the U.S. was in “great shape,” (77) continued to compare coronavirus to the flu, though the virus has approximately 20 times the mortality rate (78), and told White House reporters, “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low….When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” (79) In reality, the States had 60 cases at the time, the number was increasing, and the real number was far greater but undetected due to the administration’s failure to get functional test kits out. The poor communication among officials overseeing the coronavirus response continued, as “[Health and Human Services Secretary Alex] Azar didn’t know until late in the afternoon that Vice President Mike Pence would be in control of the process. The HHS secretary was reportedly ‘blindsided’ by the news.” In picking Pence to lead the administration’s response to coronavirus, Trump referred to his vice president as an “expert” and someone with “a certain talent for this,” though Pence’s reluctance to support needle exchange and steep cuts to Planned Parenthood (which provides HIV testing in addition to birth control) as governor of Indiana had contributed to an HIV outbreak there. With Pence’s ascension, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn was finally brought into the coronavirus committee. For weeks the FDA’s powers to work with private companies to increase production of test kits, PPE, and other medical necessities had been ignored (80). As of February 27, 2,800 people had died and 82,000 cases had been reported worldwide. Business Insider had the following headline: “Trump defends huge [19%] cuts to the CDC’s budget (81) by saying the government can hire more doctors ‘when we need them’ during crises.” Trump responded to criticisms of the budget cuts by saying, “I’m a businessperson. I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them….When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.” Despite the increasing gloom, the administration continued to play pretend. Appearing before the House Ways and Means committee, Alex Azar said, “The immediate risk to the public remains low” (82) and “It will look and feel to the American people more like a severe flu season in terms of the interventions and approaches you will see.” Trump told an audience attending an African American History Month event at the White House, “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” (83) He also tweeted “Only a very small number in U.S., & China numbers look to be going down. All countries working well together!” (84) On Friday, February 28, nearly two months after the administration had first been informed of the coronavirus, NBC reported that the U.S. had done fewer than 500 tests, even as China had done over 300,000 and South Korea was doing 10,000 or more/day. ProPublica offered one of many post-mortems to come, highlighting the grave error the administration had made in bypassing World Health Organization test kits which were ready to go (see #49) in favor of CDC test kits, which weren’t: “The CDC announced on Feb. 14 that surveillance testing would begin in five key cities, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. That effort has not yet begun. “Until the middle of this week, only the CDC and the six state labs — in Illinois, Idaho, Tennessee, California, Nevada and Nebraska — were testing patients for the virus, according to Peter Kyriacopoulos, APHL’s senior director of public policy. Now, as many more state and local labs are in the process of setting up the testing kits, this capacity is expected to increase rapidly. “There are other ways to expand the country’s testing capacity. Beyond the CDC and state labs, hospitals are also able to develop their own tests for diseases like COVID-19 and internally validate their effectiveness, with some oversight from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But because the CDC declared the virus a public health emergency, it triggered a set of federal rules that raises the bar for all tests, including those devised by local hospitals. “So now, hospitals must validate their tests with the FDA — even if they copied the CDC protocol exactly. Hospital lab directors say the FDA validation process is onerous and is wasting precious time when they could be testing in their local communities.” (85) As Margaret Hamburg (Obama’s FDA commissioner from 2009-2015) would later tell Olga Khazan of the Atlantic, “the [FDA] could have proactively reached out to different national and international labs to see whether their tests could be approved for use in the U.S.,” but there’s no evidence that they did (86), and in fact the FDA “told one Seattle infectious-disease expert, Helen Chu, to stop testing for the coronavirus entirely….Chu was not alone. Dozens of labs in the U.S. were eager to make tests and willing to test patients, but they were hamstrung by regulations for most of February, even as the virus crept silently across the nation.” Uncertainty over the virus contributed to the markets having their worst week since the crash of 2008. Later that night, even as other countries had started social distancing in response to the virus, Trump put thousands of his supporters at risk of exposure with a political rally in North Charleston, South Carolina. It was one of eight campaign events Trump would have after being notified of coronavirus. (87) Asked about administration efforts to combat coronavirus before the rally, Trump told Sinclair Broadcasting, “I think it’s really going well. We did something very fortunate: we closed up to certain areas of the world very, very early — far earlier than we were supposed to. I took a lot of heat for doing it. It turned out to be the right move, and we only have 15 people and they are getting better, and hopefully they’re all better. There’s one who is quite sick, but maybe he’s gonna be fine….We’re prepared for the worst, but we think we’re going to be very fortunate.” During the rally, Trump accused Democrats of politicizing the coronavirus and said concern over the issue was a “hoax.” (88) Trump’s chief of staff Nick Mulvaney used the same talking point that night, telling reporters at the Conservative Political Action conference, “The reason you’re seeing so much attention to it [the coronavirus] today is [Democrats] think this is going to be what brings down the president….That’s what this is all about….I got a note today from a reporter saying, ‘What are you going to do today to calm the markets?’ I’m like, really, what I might do to calm the markets is tell people to turn their televisions off for 24 hours.” (89) The next day, Saturday, February 29, the first American death at the hand of the coronavirus “hoax” was reported. Speaking in Maryland before the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump said “And we’ve done a great job. And I’ve gotten to know these professionals. They’re incredible. And everything is under control. I mean, they’re very, very cool. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it well. Everything is really under control.” Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” the next day, Sunday, March 1, Alex Azar claimed that, “In terms of testing kits, we’ve already tested over 3,600 people for the virus. We now have the capability in the field to test 75,000 people, and within the next week or two we’ll have a radical expansion even beyond that.” Like most of the Trump administration’s public messaging, this was false. (90) At the time, less than 1,000 tests had been completed. By comparison, South Korea, a country 1/6th the size of the U.S., which had discovered the virus within its borders on the same day—January 20—had done over 80,000 tests. As of Monday, March 2, U.S. coronavirus deaths were up to six; globally over 90,000 cases had been reported. Dr. Matt McCarthy, a physician at New York-Presbyterian, told CNBC that he still didn’t have any test kits (91): “‘This is not good. We know that there are 88 cases in the United States. There are going to be hundreds by the middle of the week. There’s going to be thousands by next week. And this is a testing issue.’ McCarthy added, ‘They’re testing 10,000 a day in some countries, and we can’t get this off the ground….I’m a practitioner on the firing line, and I don’t have the tools to properly care for patients today.’” Dr. Eva Lee, an infectious disease researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, commented in a Red Dawn email (see W18) with Trump administration public health officials: “We need actions, actions, and more actions. We are going to have pockets of epicenters across the country, West coast, East coast and the South. Our policy leaders must act now. Please make it happen!” At a campaign rally the same day in Charleston, North Carolina, Trump said, “We had a great meeting today with a lot of the great companies and they’re going to have vaccines, I think relatively soon. And they’re going to have something that makes you better and that’s going to actually take place, we think, even sooner.” This was patently false (92), as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical expert on the coronavirus task force, had told Trump earlier that day. Fauci estimated that it would take a year-and-a-half for a vaccine to emerge. After solid gains on Monday, the Dow lost 800 points on Tuesday, March 3, bringing it down to 25,917 at day’s close. Speaking to reporters, Trump continued to minimize the virus, claiming, “There’s only one hot spot, and that’s also pretty much in a very — in a home, as you know, in a nursing home.” In fact, the nursing home in Washington state wasn’t the only cluster of known coronavirus activity, as California and Oregon had both reported areas of community contagion. (93) On Wednesday, March 4, the death toll in the U.S. reached ten and New York reported an infected community. Two months after the administration had been notified of the virus, and six weeks after Michael Bowen had written Health and Human Services (HHS) officials about the need for mass production of masks (see #28), HHS finally ordered 500 million N95 masks. Speaking to airline executives at the White House, Trump continued to downplay the extent of the crisis, saying, “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they’ll get better. There are many people like that.” (94) He also blamed the Obama administration for the lag in testing, claiming an Obama regulation had slowed the administration down, which was false (95). Trump’s lies and blame shifting continued in an interview with Sean Hannity which appeared later that day. Trump falsely claimed that the Obama administration “didn’t do anything about” swine flu and that based purely on his intuition, science-based coronavirus fatality rates were flawed—“I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number — and this is just my hunch — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild, they’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people.” (96) On Friday, March 6, reported cases in the U.S. passed 300 and deaths were up to 17, including the first on the East Coast. The Atlantic ran an article about the administration’s failure to get functional test kits out called “The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing.” Two months after the Trump administration had first been notified of the coronavirus and one month after a task force had been formed, only 1,895 tests could be verified, a fraction of the 10,000-20,000 tests South Korea was performing daily. According to the authors, “The figures we gathered suggest that the American response to the coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, has been shockingly sluggish, especially compared with that of other developed countries….The net effect of these choices is that the country’s true capacity for testing has not been made clear to its residents. (97) This level of obfuscation is unexpected in the United States, which has long been a global leader in public-health transparency.” Earlier in the day, Trump had appeared at a signing ceremony for the Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, which would dedicate $8.3 billion to fighting the coronavirus. The funding was more than three times what the administration had requested (see #63) and yet still a pittance relative to the scope of the virus, roughly 1/235th of the amount Trump spent on his tax cut, the bulk of which went to the upper 1%. (98) Many public health officials felt the appropriations came a month too late (99), shortchanging localities of crucial resources for testing and personal protective equipment. At the signing, Trump offered false assurances and minimized the scope of the public health disaster that he was spending $8.3 billion on, saying, “And in terms of deaths, I don’t know what the count is today. Is it eleven? Eleven people? And in terms of cases, it’s very, very few.” (100) After the signing, Trump visited CDC headquarters in Atlanta, where he continued to lie about test kits: “Anybody that needs a test can have a test. They are all set. They have them out there. In addition to that they are making millions more as we speak but as of right now and yesterday anybody that needs a test that is the important thing and the test are all perfect like the letter was perfect.” (101) Asked about the passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship docked in San Francisco who were forced to stay on the ship for the time being, Trump expressed concern that allowing them onshore, where they would be added to the number of confirmed cases, would make him look bad: “I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship. That wasn’t our fault, and it wasn’t the fault of the people on the ship, either. OK? It wasn’t their fault either. And they’re mostly Americans, so I can live either way with it. I’d rather have them stay on, personally.” (102) Trump also said “I hear the numbers are getting much better in Italy,” though the country was entering a lockdown and would experience two hundred more deaths over the weekend to come. On Saturday, March 7, Politico led with “Trump’s mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis,” an in-depth feature by Dan Diamond exploring the impact of the Trump administration’s internal dysfunctions on their crisis management response. Diamond’s exposé revealed that Mike Pence and other administration officials had wanted to evacuate the Grand Princess cruise ship in order to keep the passengers who didn’t have coronavirus from getting it from those who did, but that Trump had overruled his advisors because he didn’t want the number of reported cases to increase. The article stated that “As the outbreak has grown, Trump has become attached to the daily count of coronavirus cases and how the United States compares to other nations, reiterating that he wants the U.S. numbers kept as low as possible. Health officials have found explicit ways to oblige him by highlighting the most optimistic outcomes in briefings (103), and their agencies have tamped down on promised transparency. The CDC has stopped detailing how many people in the country have been tested for the virus (104), and its online dashboard is running well behind the number of U.S. cases tracked by Johns Hopkins and even lags the European Union’s own estimate of U.S. cases.” The article confirmed that onerous regulations and Trump’s lack of policy engagement (see #2) were key elements in the test delays and that “Trump’s aides discouraged [HHS Secretary Alex] Azar from briefing the president about the coronavirus threat back in January” because Trump “rewards those underlings who tell him what he wants to hear while shunning those who deliver bad news.” (see #58) “…The pressure to earn Trump’s approval can be a distraction at best and an obsession at worst: Azar, having just survived a bruising clash with a deputy [Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] and sensing that his job was on the line, spent part of January making appearances on conservative TV outlets and taking other steps to shore up his anti-abortion bona fides and win approval from the president, even as the global coronavirus outbreak grew stronger. “Around the same time, Azar had concluded that the new coronavirus posed a public health risk and tried to share an urgent message with the president: The potential outbreak could leave tens of thousands of Americans sickened and many dead. “The jockeying for Trump’s favor was part of the cause of Azar’s destructive feud with Verma, as the two tried to box each other out of events touting Trump initiatives. Now, officials including Azar, Verma and other senior leaders are forced to spend time shoring up their positions with the president and his deputies at a moment when they should be focused on a shared goal: stopping a potential pandemic. (105) “‘The boss has made it clear, he likes to see his people fight, and he wants the news to be good,’ said one adviser to a senior health official involved in the coronavirus response. ‘This is the world he’s made.’” (106) The closing paragraph read “‘If this sort of dysfunction exists as part of the everyday operations—then, yes, during a true crisis the problems are magnified and exacerbated,’ said a former Trump HHS official. ‘And with extremely detrimental consequences.’” The following day, March 8, as international cases had passed 100,000 and the importance of social distancing was becoming increasingly obvious, HUD secretary Ben Carson was asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about the advisability of Trump holding rallies where thousands of people were crammed together. Carson, a neurosurgeon who knew better, chose Trump’s favored talking point over public safety: “…going to a rally, if you’re a healthy individual and you’re taking the precautions that have been placed out there, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t go. However, if you belong to one of those categories of high risk, obviously, you need to think twice about that.” (107) As of Monday, March 9, the official tally in the U.S. was over 700 infections and 26 deaths. The Dow lost 2,000 points that day, the biggest one-day loss in history. Former Republican senator and governor Judd Gregg offered a sober appraisal of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus: “The budget he recently submitted to Congress savaged the BioShield account (108). This is the program that was set up after the SARS epidemic and anthrax events well over a decade ago to allow the federal government to fund research on pharmaceutical responses to biological attacks or a pandemic outbreak. “The program was needed because this type of research is extremely expensive and has little commercial upside. The drugs developed are unique and narrowly targeted. “Thus, in order to get this research up and running, Congress and the prior administrations created the program. In this instance, Congress actually anticipated a serious issue and began addressing it effectively. “But the president and his people got it wrong. In their usual naive and uninformed style, they have tried to eviscerate the program. “This action came in the face of significant warnings from the intelligence community that a biological attack is one of the primary threats we face from terrorists. And now we know a pandemic is also a primary threat.” Gregg’s key takeaway: “The president and his people also have an abysmal track record when it comes to preparing for pandemics.” While the virus spread undetected, testing continued to move at a glacial pace, and the Dow was in free fall, Trump kept busy attacking imagined foes on Twitter. One tweet read “This is your daily reminder that it took Barack Obama until October of 2009 to declare Swine Flu a National Health Emergency. It began in April of ’09 but Obama waited until 20,000 people in the US had been hospitalized & 1,000+ had died. Where was the media hysteria then?” In actuality, Obama had declared a public health emergency two days after the first swine flu death (109). A second tweet read “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, ‘The risk is low to the average American.’” (110) Trump also tweeted his mistaken talking point about coronavirus being akin to the flu, not for the first time: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” (111) By Tuesday, March 10, over 113,000 coronavirus cases had been reported globally and more than 4,000 people had died. At a hearing about Trump’s 2021 budget proposal, Russ Vought, the administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), defended a 15% proposed cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (112) and a steep cut to the annual contribution to the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund. (113) More administration failures were uncovered by David Lim and Brianna Ehley of Politico with a big scoop titled “U.S. coronavirus testing threatened by shortage of critical lab materials.” The piece detailed how a shortage of lab materials (114) was exacerbating America’s already-slow pace of testing, thereby jeopardizing public safety (115) by keeping public health officials from having accurate data about the number of cases and the areas with high concentration. The article pointed out that seven weeks after the first case was discovered in the U.S., just over 5,000 people had been tested, though “HHS Secretary Alex Azar had told lawmakers [one week earlier] that U.S. labs’ capacity could grow to 10,000-20,000 people per day by the end of the week.” (116) All evidence to the contrary (see #1-#116), Donald Trump continued to blame his predecessor and pitch the case that his administration was doing a good job of crisis management. During a briefing at the capital, Trump said, “As you know, it’s about 600 cases, it’s about 26 deaths, within our country. And had we not acted quickly, that number would have been substantially more.” He added that “…I think the U.S. has done a very good job on testing. We had to change things that were done that were nobody’s fault, perhaps, they wanted to do something a different way, but it was a much slower process from a previous administration and we did change them.” The next day, Wednesday, March 11, the U.S. had over 1,000 reported cases and 32 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic. The Dow lost over 1,000 points for the second time in three days, ending at 23,553. The National Basketball Association suspended its season. CNN.com posted an investigative piece entitled “Confusion over the availability and criteria for coronavirus testing is leaving sick people wondering if they’re infected.” The article noted that though Mike Pence had recently said on CNN’s “New Day” that anyone with a doctor’s order could get a test, this was not the case in practice, as the U.S. was woefully unprepared to provide tests on this scale. (117) People were also not getting tests due to strict CDC criteria: “In order to be prioritized for testing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that one must have a fever, cough or difficulty breathing as well as have been in close contact with a person known to have coronavirus. Or, they had to ‘have a history of travel from affected geographic areas within 14 days of their symptom onset.’” As the article noted, “only 11,079 specimens [have] been tested in the U.S., paling in comparison to the more than 230,000 people tested in South Korea, which has about one sixth the US population.” Dr. Rod Hochman, the CEO of Providence St. Joseph Health, told Politico, “Testing is so critically important because it helps us as clinicians figure out the extent of the spread. It has implications for how we care for patients and where we put them….It’s unraveling the detective story of how the virus spreads but we are trying to do it now with no data.” On Rachel Maddow’s show that evening, Ron Klain, who had been Obama’s Ebola czar (see #39, #41), pointed out that one of the Trump administration’s biggest mistakes was to privatize testing. As related by journalist Thom Hartmann, “Instead of taking the World Health Organization (WHO) test kits which are cheap and widely available all over the planet, and having them distributed across the country back in December, or January, or February when we knew this disease was spreading in the United States, Klain said that Trump has outsourced the testing to two big American companies, Quest and Labcorp.” (see #49) Trump’s public appearances on Wednesday didn’t inspire confidence. During a press conference with Ireland’s prime minister, Trump again minimized the threat by saying, “It goes away….It’s going away. We want it to go away with very, very few deaths.” (118) Though the virus was supposedly going away, Wednesday’s 1,000-point drop in the Dow convinced Trump to address the nation in a prime-time speech that was roundly panned. Again he minimized the threat (claiming coronavirus had a “very, very low risk” for most Americans, 119), cast blame on China and Europe for having the disease before the U.S., gave confusing information while ad-libbing that contradicted administration policy (120), and again lied about the slow pace of testing when he said, “Testing and testing capabilities are expanding rapidly, day by day. We are moving very quickly.” The address was meant to reassure the American public and stabilize the markets, but Trump’s ill-prepared speech sent stock futures tumbling in real time. Republican journalist and former W. Bush speechwriter David Frum predicted the future with uncanny precision: “More people will get sick because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. More people will suffer the financial hardship of sickness because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. The medical crisis will arrive faster and last longer than if somebody else were in charge. So, too, the economic crisis. More people will lose their jobs than if somebody else were in charge. More businesses will be pushed into bankruptcy than if somebody else were in charge. More savers will lose more savings than if somebody else were in charge. The damage to America’s global leadership will be greater than if somebody else were in charge.” On Thursday, March 12, the day after Trump’s prime time address meant to reassure the nation and calm the stock market, the Dow Jones lost almost 1,000 points, ending at 21,200. In an email thread with Tom Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security adviser (see #12), James Lawler (director of Clinical and Bio-defense Research at the National Strategic Research Institute) said, “We are making every misstep leaders initially made in [simulations] at the outset of pandemic planning in 2006. We had systematically addressed all of these and had a plan that would work—and has worked in Hong Kong/Singapore. We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window and are making decisions based on intuition. Pilots can tell you what happens when a crew makes decisions based on intuition rather than what their instruments are telling them.” (121) The most glaring of the Trump administration’s failures was its inability to get test kits out. Even Republicans were starting to grumble, as detailed in “Testing lag ignites political uproar as Trump insists process is very smooth.” Cutting against Trump’s consistently self-serving narrative, Anthony Fauci, Trump’s key coronavirus advisor, said, “The system is not geared toward what we need right now, what you are asking for….It is a failing. Let’s admit it.” The piece pointed out that more than two months after the administration first became aware of the virus, “only about 11,000 people have been tested, according to figures shared with members of Congress on Thursday. According to statistics compiled by the American Enterprise Institute, nationwide capacity to process the test kits being distributed has so far ramped up only to about 20,000 people per day – meaning it could be weeks before any tested patient gets results. “Lawmakers of both parties reached for the same touchstone – South Korea, which has managed to treat hundreds of thousands of its people, allowing it to avoid the rapid spread seen in China, Italy and other countries….‘South Korea is able to process tests in an hour, and in the U.S. it takes more than two days – that’s not adequate,’ said Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska.” The article pointed out that South Korea tests in a single day the number of people the U.S. has tested in over two months, with drive-up exams which aren’t possible in the U.S. due to strict testing guidelines. (122) Burdensome and deadly regulations were further discussed at ProPublica, which revealed that an FDA directive “requires that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a sister agency, re-test every positive coronavirus test run by a public health lab to confirm its accuracy. “The result, experts say, is wasting limited resources at a time when thousands of Americans are waiting in line to get tested for COVID-19.” (123) Duplicate tests were just one element of a failed operation. The Trump administration’s key mistakes were summarized by Politico reporter Dan Diamond in an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross: “The Trump administration and health officials knew back in January that this coronavirus was going to be a major threat. They knew that tests needed to be distributed across the country to understand where there might be outbreaks. But across the month of February, as my colleague David Lim at Politico first reported, the tests that they sent out to labs across the country simply did not work. They were coming back with errors. “The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, recognized that and promised that new tests would be distributed soon. But one day turned into two days turned into three days turned into several weeks, and in the meantime, we know now coronavirus was silently spreading in different communities, like Seattle. By the time that the Trump administration made a decision to allow new tests to be developed by hospitals by clinical laboratories, it was a step that was seen as multiple weeks late.” (124) “…I don’t use this word lightly, Terry, but I’d say that this testing failure and the broader response to the coronavirus has been a catastrophe. “…the Trump administration failed to plan for this moment. There were leadership failures, like failing to think through the implications of not having a testing strategy in place. (125) There were leadership failures in allowing feuds to fester for months and months that – in the middle of a crisis, those cracks have widened and caused delays in making simple decisions. “He cut funding for a program that predicted when viruses could jump from animals to humans basically around the same time that this new coronavirus appears to have jumped from animals to humans in China.” (see #22) Amid the disaster unfolding all around and because of him, Trump continued to lie to the American public. Asked about the lack of testing at a White House briefing, Trump said, “over the next few days, they’re going to have four million tests out” and “Frankly, the testing has been going very smooth….If you go to the right agency, if you go to the right area, you get the test.” He even found a way to brag about the administration’s response: “It’s going to go away….The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point…when you look at the kind of numbers that you’re seeing coming out of other countries, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it.” (126) The administration did one thing right on March 12: its Health and Human Services Department placed its first order for N95 masks. Unfortunately, the order came far too late and wouldn’t be filled until the end of April, long after the pandemic had started to ravage America’s emergency rooms. Friday the 13th was again all about the test kits. Where were they? Raw Story reported that the Trump Administration’s Health and Human Services agency had finally named a testing czar—ten weeks after being notified of the virus. (127) Caitlin Owens of Axios pointed out that “less than a dozen academic labs” were doing tests because of strict administration guidelines. Medical directors discussed how their requests to test had been delayed or denied until it was too late. (128) According to the BBC, testing capacity in the U.S. was just 22,000 people/day while South Korea, which is 1/6th the size of the U.S., was testing up to 20,000 people/day. And the 22,000 projection was very optimistic, according to Andy Slavitt, Barack Obama’s acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who tweeted, “We can at best do 10,000 tests/day. We should be able to do millions” and “All of this could have been ramped up and solved in January & February and right now we would be talking about containment.” The Atlantic reported that less than 14,000 tests had been done in the ten weeks since the administration had first been notified of the virus, though Mike Pence had promised the week prior that 1.5 million tests would be available by this time. The article’s key takeaway? “Getting out lots of tests for a new disease is a major logistical and scientific challenge, but it can be pulled off with the help of highly efficient, effective government leadership. In this case, such leadership didn’t appear to exist.” (129) Speaking to one of the prime causes of that failure in leadership, Beth Cameron, who ran Obama’s pandemic office in the National Security Council, explained the disastrous operational vacuum caused by John Bolton’s closing of the Global Security Office (see #17): “In a health security crisis, speed is essential. When this new coronavirus emerged, there was no clear White House-led structure to oversee our response, and we lost valuable time.” “…The job of a White House pandemics office would have been to get ahead: to accelerate the response, empower experts, anticipate failures, and act quickly and transparently to solve problems. “Our team reported to a senior-level response coordinator on the National Security Council staff who could rally the government at the highest levels, as well as to the national security adviser and the homeland security adviser. This high-level domestic and global reporting structure wasn’t an accident. It was a recognition that epidemics know no borders and that a serious, fast response is crucial. “A directorate within the White House would have been responsible for coordinating the efforts of multiple federal agencies to make sure the government was backstopping testing capacity, devising approaches to manufacture and avoid shortages of personal protective equipment, strengthening U.S. lab capacity to process covid-19 tests, and expanding the health-care workforce. “The office would galvanize resources to coordinate a robust and seamless domestic and global response. It would identify needs among state and local officials, and advise and facilitate regular, focused communication from federal health and scientific experts to provide states and the public with fact-based tools to minimize the virus’s spread. The White House is uniquely positioned to take into account broader U.S. and global security considerations associated with health emergencies, including their impact on deployed citizens, troops and regional economies, as well as peace and stability. A White House office would have been able to elevate urgent issues fast, so they didn’t linger or devolve to inaction, as with coronavirus testing in the United States.” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security director, piggybacked on these criticisms with a look at the culture of mis-governance Trump bred and embodied, and Trump’s fixation on his 2020 campaign to the exclusion of all else: “As the first COVID-19 cases began to spread with alarming speed and lethality in China, President Trump evidently did not choose to make the issue a priority. Based on his public comments and Twitter feed, the incoming information that consumed his attention was more likely to come from cable television or political gossip than deep inside his intelligence briefings. (130) Presumably, he also had a certain view of what he’d be doing in early 2020—chiefly, preparing the ground for his reelection campaign—and veering off course to prepare for a pandemic would have undermined those plans. A simple presidential communication of interest in a subject can set the government in motion, but in this case, that signal apparently never came.” (131) “…Instead of seeing U.S. government expertise as a resource, Trump has routinely derided career experts as “deep state” operatives, insufficiently loyal to him and his agenda. (132) Well into the COVID-19 outbreak, he said things such as ‘A lot of people think that it goes away in April with the heat,’ or ‘This is a flu.’ I doubt that any government expert would suggest that Trump say those things. The statements, instead, suggest a president either making things up or cherry-picking things he’s heard from non-experts to offer false reassurance to the public.” “…By constantly trying to get himself through the news cycle, Trump has done irreparable damage to the long-term objective of ensuring that he’s a credible voice on the COVID-19 crisis.” (133) That night, as the administration got ready to take food stamps away from 700,000 Americans in the middle of a pandemic (134), a 1,000-point loss in the Dow prompted Trump to finally declare a national emergency. At a press conference announcing the news, Trump failed to model coronavirus safety protocols, as he had done all week, shaking hands and standing cheek-by-jowl with other administration officials (135). Trump also made a false claim about Google constructing a testing center and, reality aside, claimed that “the administration expects 1.4 million tests in the next week and 5 million within the month.” (ten days later, less than 300,000 tests would be completed; one month later, less than three million would be completed, 136) Asked if he took responsibility for the lag in testing, Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time that wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.” (137) Asked by PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor how he could say he had no responsibility for the testing failures despite his appointee’s elimination of the Global Security Office (see #17), Trump again ducked responsibility, saying “That’s a nasty question…When you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people [in the administration].” That night, after stocks rebounded on news of the declaration, Trump “sent a note to supporters that included a chart showing the Dow Jones Industrial Average dramatically rising roughly at the time he began a news conference declaring a national emergency over coronavirus. The President signed the chart.” On the chart were the words “‘The President would like to share the attached image with you, and passes along the following message: From opening of press conference, biggest day in stock market history!’” Peter Wehner, a conservative Republican who had served under multiple Republican administrations, summed up the historical moment in an Atlantic post: “…the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain. (138) These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security. What we now know is that the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity.” On Saturday, March 14, in “From complacency to emergency: How Trump changed course on coronavirus,” Gary Orr and Nancy Cook of Politico reported on Donald Trump’s 180-degree turn. Just three days before he declared a national emergency, Trump had said the coronavirus “will go away” and that his administration’s “response was ‘really working out.’” In fact, Trump’s indifference to the crisis had forced city and state leaders to step up before a federal response of any kind had taken shape. Though he was purportedly now focused on helping the American people get through an economic crisis, Trump continued to advocate a payroll tax which would steal revenue from Social Security and Medicare and give more money in real dollars to the wealthy and upper-middle class, doing little for the people who needed the money most. (139) The following Monday, March 16, the Washington Post led with, “How U.S. coronavirus testing stalled: Flawed tests, red tape and resistance to using the millions of tests produced by the WHO.” The key stat-line in the piece was that “From mid-January until Feb. 28, fewer than 4,000 tests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were used out of more than 160,000 produced.” (140) The CDC had come up with a test quickly, by January 17, but “From there…U.S. efforts fell quickly behind, especially when compared with the efforts of the [World Health Organization], which has distributed more than 1 million tests to countries around the world based in part on the method developed by the German researchers….As early as Feb. 6, four weeks after the genome of the virus was published, the WHO had shipped 250,000 diagnostic tests to 70 laboratories around the world. “By comparison, the CDC at that time was shipping about 160,000 tests to labs across the nation — but then the manufacturing troubles were discovered, and most would be deemed unusable because they produced confusing results. Over the next three weeks, only about 200 of those tests sent to labs would be used.” “…U.S. efforts to distribute a working test stalled until Feb. 28, when federal officials revised the CDC test and began loosening up FDA rules that had limited who could develop coronavirus diagnostic tests.” Due to the flawed test kits and CDC regulations, as of February 21, “Health officials across the country began pleading for a test that worked, or at least the authorization to use another test.” Interviewed for the article was Alex Greninger of the University of Washington. “His lab had developed its own test and began seeking approval to use it on patients on Feb. 18. But that test, along with others that had been developed in various academic centers and hospitals, could not be used on patients until the FDA relaxed its testing rules. “[Greninger] noted that many of the state public health labs had also figured out how to use the CDC test properly — by tossing one of its components — but were not allowed to actually do so until the FDA approved the workaround that same day. “We had all these state public health labs that had a perfectly good [test] on their hands, and they knew it, they were upset,” Greninger said. “…As late as Feb. 27, only 203 specimen tests had been run out of state labs; another 3,125 had been run out of the CDC.” Even as earlier stumbling blocks to mass testing had been overcome, new hurdles that had been overlooked by the administration (141) were appearing, as reported by David Lim of Politico: “A potential shortage of cotton swabs and other basic supplies needed for coronavirus testing is emerging as a new threat to the Trump administration’s plans to roll out high-volume testing to 2,000 sites across the country by the end of the week.” “…The materials in question include swabs that medical workers use to collect samples of patients’ phlegm and saliva for testing, and disposable plastic tips for the pipettes that lab technicians use to transfer liquids. Testing labs say they’re also concerned about the availability of personal protective equipment for their staff.” Asked at a press conference that day how he’d rate his response to the crisis, Trump said, “I’d rate it a ten,” part of a pattern of over 100 self-congratulatory remarks he would make throughout his upcoming press briefings. The following day, Tuesday, March 17, the Washington Post published an article about another disastrous facet of the pandemic which the administration had failed to prepare for: “Covid-19 hits doctors, nurses and EMTs, threatening health system.” (142) In addition to the concern about hospital overcrowding and a lack of beds, the virus was now threatening the health and lives of the clinicians tasked with administering to the sick, putting yet another strain on the system: “Dozens of health-care workers have fallen ill with covid-19, and more are quarantined after exposure to the virus, an expected but worrisome development as the U.S. health system girds for an anticipated surge in infections. “From hotspots such as the Kirkland, Wash., nursing home where nearly four dozen staffers tested positive for the coronavirus, to outbreaks in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California and elsewhere, the virus is picking off doctors, nurses and others needed in the rapidly expanding crisis. “They have been put at risk in the United States not only by the nature of their jobs, but by shortages of protective equipment such as N95 face masks (143) and government bungling of the testing program, which was delayed for weeks while the virus spread around the country undetected. “Because testing has lagged, health-care workers often have no way to know whether people walking through the door with respiratory symptoms are suffering from the flu or covid-19, providers said. Even when precautions are taken, the virus has found its way into health-care facilities.” (144) As clinicians in the trenches struggled with shortages of protective gear, swabs, and their own illnesses thanks to Trump’s indifference to the virus for ten weeks, Trump said at a press conference, “This is a pandemic…I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” One week earlier he had said that the coronavirus “will go away.” Though the president had changed his tune, many of his followers still thought the virus was a hoax (see #88). After two months in which Trump had minimized and dismissed the seriousness of the virus with a steady stream of propaganda, polling showed that 79% of Democrats understood that “the worst is yet to come,” while only 40% of Republicans grasped the obvious, a level of ignorance which would lead to a lack of compliance with public safety guidelines and a major spread in infections in the ensuing months. (145) Despite Trump’s numerous failures to protect the public from the virus (#1-#145), 81% of Republicans approved of Trump’s management of the crisis. On Wednesday, March 18, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait discussed imminent, devastating human consequences which could have been significantly reduced with proper planning in “The Hospital Deluge Is Coming. Washington Has Done Almost Nothing to Prepare.” His opening paragraph summarized why America found itself in such a disastrous situation: “The most efficient first step would have been to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from spreading in the first place. As many reports have widely documented, that first step never took place because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to deploy an effective coronavirus test. ‘This is such a rapidly moving infection that losing a few days is bad, and losing a couple of weeks is terrible,’ Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, tells Bloomberg News. ‘Losing 2 months is close to disastrous, and that’s what we did.’ “The loss of those two months deprived the government of any chance to prevent the pandemic from sweeping across the entire country. Officials have been forced into reaction mode (146), deploying blunt measures of closing public spaces to try to slow down the spread. Even so, it is highly likely that, within a few weeks, the number of infected patients will exceed the capacity of the hospital system to treat them. “Washington has had weeks and weeks to prepare for this surge. The three most obvious and foreseeable shortages are hospital beds (147), respirator masks to protect medical staff (148), and ventilators (the machines that are needed to pump air into the lungs of patients with the most serious coronavirus symptoms). (149) “You would think the government would have spent the last two months scrambling to produce more of all three. There is no evidence this has happened, and a great deal of evidence it has not.” The answer to the supply shortage was clear: Trump needed to invoke the Defense Production Act, which would marshal the resources of the federal government to mass-produce the medical supplies needed by American hospitals. Fifty-seven House Democrats had sent an open letter to Trump on March 13, asking him to trigger the act. Though the situation was clearly about to become desperate, Trump told a reporter, “Well, we’re able to do that if we have to. Right now, we haven’t had to, but it’s certainly ready. If I want it, we can do it very quickly. We’ve studied it very closely over two weeks ago, actually. We’ll make that decision pretty quickly if we need it. We hope we don’t need it. It’s a big step.” The scale of the administration’s negligence to help prepare states and localities was laid out with grim statistics: “Oregon sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence on March 3 asking for 400,000 N95 masks. For days, it got no response, and only by March 14 received its first shipment, of 36,800 masks. But there was a problem. Most of the equipment they got was well past the expiration date and so ‘wouldn’t be suitable for surgical settings,’ the state said. (150) “New York City also put in a request for more than 2 million masks and only received 76,000; all were expired, said Deanne Criswell, New York City’s emergency management commissioner.” (151) Over at Axios, Bob Herman focused on just one aspect of the coming shortage in “No part of the U.S. has enough hospital beds for a coronavirus crisis.” Herman reported that, “Every corner of the U.S. is at risk for a severe shortage of hospital beds as the coronavirus outbreak worsens.” “…Why it matters: Total nationwide capacity for health care supplies doesn’t always matter, because hospitals in one area can help out neighboring systems when they’re overwhelmed by a crisis. But these projections indicate that won’t be an option with the coronavirus — everybody will be hurting at the same time. “By the numbers: Harvard’s projections show if 50% of all currently occupied hospital beds were emptied and sizable percentages of Americans were infected, the country would need at le

Crises have a way of sorting the good presidents from the bad. Historians consistently rank Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt among the top three presidents for their handling of the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II. By contrast, the string of catastrophes that trailed George W. Bush, from Iraq to Hurricane Katrina to his obliviousness to warning signs in the housing market before the 2008 crash guarantee that he will have a permanent place in the bottom tier of presidents. Also certain to be at or near the bottom of that list is Donald Trump. Trump has been able to maintain 40% approval ratings by effectively manipulating the lizard brains of white Republicans, but even before COVID-19 hit, Trump was considered one of the worst presidents in the two surveys of scholars done in 2018. Trump’s increase in attention to the COVID-19 crisis for the brief window of time between when he declared a national emergency (on March 13) until he shifted most of his attention back to his re-election campaign (roughly six weeks later) helped mitigate the damage somewhat, but his inaction from January 3 (when the administration claims to have first become aware of the virus) up to March 13 made the situation exponentially worse than it should have been. And his failures of governance since March 13 greatly outweigh the positive steps he took in that time in scope and number. As the United States approaches 125,000 deaths (3X any other developed country) and over 2,300,000 infections (8X any other developed country), the depths of human misery unleashed by Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic become clearer by the day. This story starts, as many tales of Republican incompetence do, with sheer ignorance and lack of curiosity. Ronald Reagan was able to ignore the AIDS crisis for years because it was “a gay disease” and didn’t impact anyone close to him until his old Hollywood acquaintance Rock Hudson asked for—but did not receive—his help in 1985. Despite having spent months manipulating post-9/11 public fear with an orchestrated campaign of lies about fictitious WMDs, George W. Bush still didn’t understand the historical friction between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq when he invited Iraqi guests of mixed faiths to a super bowl party two months before the invasion. History repeated itself with Donald Trump, like Reagan and Bush a P.R.-centric empty suit lacking intellectual curiosity, policy chops, or any interest in the mechanics of governing. It was common knowledge before Trump took office that an infectious outbreak of some kind was likely to occur during his presidency; there were concerns that he wasn’t up to the task because of his ignorance of the subject and indifference to getting up to speed with this crucial part of his job. According to Peter Nicholas of the Atlantic, “When a senior White House aide would brief President Donald Trump in 2018 about an Ebola-virus outbreak in central Africa, it was plainly evident that hardships roiling a far-flung part of the world didn’t command his attention. He was zoning out. ‘It was like talking to a wall,’ a person familiar with the matter told me.” (1) This indifference manifested with Trump’s first budget to Congress. Though the administration found money for big increases in the already-bloated defense budget and passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut overwhelmingly tilted to the 1% later that year, Trump’s minions cut funding (2) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the agency tasked with protecting public health in the face of the opiate epidemic, AIDS, flu, and infectious outbreaks. Within the tax cut bill were steep cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund (called “the core of public health programs” by Tom Frieden, who headed the CDC under Barack Obama). (3) Appointed to head the CDC, in July 2017, was Brenda Fitzgerald, a right-wing Republican from Georgia who replaced interim director Anne Schuchat, a highly-experienced, long-time public health advocate (4). Fitzgerald’s time at the CDC was brief: she resigned on January 31, 2018 when it came out that she had owned stocks in a tobacco company even as she ran an agency dedicated to anti-smoking campaigns (5). Politico reported that “one day after Fitzgerald purchased stock in Japan Tobacco, she toured the CDC’s Tobacco Laboratory, which studies tobacco’s toxic effects.” On February 1, 2018, the Washington Post reported that “CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak” (6): “The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off (7) and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. (8) Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (9) And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent (10), the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced.” (11) On April 10, 2018, Trump hired John Bolton, one of the architects of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, as his National Security Adviser. Bolton in turn fired Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert (12), whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks.” On April 17, 2018, at a bio-defense summit, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar said, “Of course, the thing that people ask: ‘What keeps you most up at night in the biodefense world?’ Pandemic flu, of course. I think everyone in this room probably shares that concern.” On April 27, 2018, at the Malaria Summit in London, Bill Gates discussed the federal government’s lack of readiness for the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” Despite Azar’s professed concern, Gates’s message fell on deaf ears inside the Trump administration. In the second week of May, 2018, “the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. (13) Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending (14) and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. (15) And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated. (16) “The White House proposal ‘is threatening to claw back funding whose precise purpose is to help the United States be able to respond quickly in the event of a crisis,’ said Carolyn Reynolds, a vice president at PATH, a global health technology nonprofit. “Collectively, warns Jeremy Konyndyk, who led foreign disaster assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Obama administration, ‘What this all adds up to is a potentially really concerning rollback of progress on U.S. health security preparedness.’ “‘It seems to actively unlearn the lessons we learned through very hard experience over the last 15 years,’ said Konyndyk….‘These moves make us materially less safe. It’s inexplicable.’” That same week, on May 9, 2018, “Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the [National Security Council], spoke at a symposium at Emory University to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic. That event killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. ‘The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern,’ she told the audience. ‘Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no.’” On May 10, 2018, Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton “re-organized” the National Security Council (NSC), or more accurately “fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure” which had been set up by the Obama administration after the Ebola crisis, by collapsing the NSC’s Office of Global Security (17). In the wake of Bolton’s action, the top official tasked with coordinating a response to a pandemic, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council, resigned on the same day that a new Ebola outbreak was reported in the Congo. The Office of Global Security had been a comprehensive crisis response team which brought together principals from the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, the National Security Council, and the Department of Homeland Security; the Trump administration replaced neither Ziemer nor the command infrastructure (18). In January of 2019, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put out a threat assessment warning that “the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.” In September of 2019, a “study by the Council of Economic Advisers ordered by the National Security Council predicted that a pandemic similar to the 1918 Spanish flu or the 2009 swine flu could lead to a half-million deaths and cost the economy as much as $3.8 trillion.” That same month, the Trump administration ended PREDICT, a “pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.” The program “gathered specimens from more than 10,000 bats and 2,000 other mammals in search of dangerous viruses. They detected about 1,200 viruses that could spread from wild animals to humans, signaling pandemic potential. More than 160 of them were novel coronaviruses, much like SARS-CoV-2.” (see #133) In their fiscal year 2020 budget, the Trump administration proposed a 20% cut to the CDC budget (19). On November 18, 2019, “an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the ‘United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.’” (20) Though some sources claim the White House was notified of a potentially “cataclysmic event” as far back as November of 2019, the administration’s story is that it was first informed of the coronavirus on January 3, 2020, when Robert Redfield, Trump’s CDC head, received a phone call from China. Intelligence services began putting information about coronavirus in Trump’s Daily Brief. On January 8, the American public was made aware when the Washington Post reported an outbreak of an “‘unidentified and possibly new viral disease in central China’ that was sending alarms across Asia in advance of the Lunar New Year travel season.” Already, “Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines were contemplating quarantine zones and scanning travelers from China for ‘signs of fever or other pneumonia-like symptoms that may indicate a new disease possibly linked to a wild animal market in Wuhan.’” In response, the CDC issued a public health alert. Rather than address the new potential public health crisis, Trump tried to score cheap partisan points by lying about Barack Obama’s Iran peace deal at that day’s press conference (21). Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar wasn’t able to get Trump’s ear about the coronavirus until January 18, fifteen days after the administration had been notified (22). According to the Washington Post, Trump was more concerned about short-term political pressure than public health: “When [Azar] reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about [a proposed ban on] vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market.” That same day, Rick Bright (see #265), who headed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), pleaded with his boss, Dr. Robert Kadlec (the assistant secretary for preparedness and response) to “convene high-level meetings about the virus.” Kadlec responded that was “not sure if that is a time sensitive urgency.” (23) On January 20, the first coronavirus case in the U.S. was confirmed by the CDC. On January 21, Dr. Bright from BARDA emailed Laura Wolf (the director of the Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, which is under the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response). The email asked Wolf to reach out to Michael Bowen, the CEO of Prestige Ameritech, a domestic medical supply company. Appearing on CNBC on January 22, Trump told an interviewer, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” (24) Earlier in the day, Michael Bowen emailed “top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services” and offered to produce 1.7 million N95 masks per week for the national stockpile. Bowen’s offer was turned down by Laura Wolf, so he sent a follow-up email on January 23 which stated “We are the last major domestic mask company….My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.” Despite Rick Bright’s warnings about a coming shortage of masks—the national stockpiles had around 1/50th of what the county would need during a pandemic—and multiple emails from Bowen alluding to the “imminent risk” of a mask shortage and the mass orders he was getting from China and Hong Kong, the administration would never follow through on Bowen’s offer. (25) This indifference was reflected in two meetings of Trump’s disaster management team that took place on the 23rd. Bright’s concerns about medical supplies and BARDA’s lack of funds weren’t shared by Robert Kadlec or Alex Azar, who “asserted that the United States would be able to contain the virus and keep it out of the United States. Secretary Azar further indicated that the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] would look at the issue of travel bans to keep the virus contained.” Bright was punished for his outspokenness; Azar and Kadlec excluded him from the next disaster management meeting. On January 24, one day after China had shut down Wuhan and other cities, Trump tweeted that “It will all work out well.” On January 25, Michael Bowen emailed Bright “about the mask shortage, explaining that his company was getting requests from China and that nearly half of the masks in the U.S. are imported from Chinese manufacturers. ‘If the supply stops, US hospital will run out of masks. No way to prevent it.’” On January 27, “White House aides huddled with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus, according to people briefed on the meeting. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, argued that the administration needed to take the virus seriously or it could cost the president his reelection, and that dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months. “Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings. In early briefings, however, officials said Trump was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.” (26) On January 28, twenty five days after the administration had become aware of coronavirus, on the day that China’s president met with the Director-General of the World Health Organization to map out responses to the virus, the same day that Department of Veterans Affairs senior medical adviser Dr. Carter Mecher told colleagues that “the projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe” and mitigation efforts would soon be necessary on a “Red Dawn” email, CNN reported that “Trump has not…named a single official within the White House responsible for coordinating the administration’s response. (27) That has some wondering whether enough is being done in advance of a potential crisis, particularly since the role of the National Security Council under Trump has shifted away from leading a response to a health crisis to merely coordinating between agencies.” (see #17) Trump’s indifference was a direct contrast to Barack Obama, who had “anointed a former vice presidential staffer, Ronald Klain, as a sort of ‘epidemic czar’ inside the White House, clearly stipulated the roles and budgets of various agencies, and placed incident commanders in charge in each Ebola-hit country and inside the United States.” On January 29, Peter Navarro, an economic adviser to Donald Trump, sent a memo to the White House warning that coronavirus could kill up to 543,000 Americans. Despite Navarro’s memo, and the fact that the U.S. had yet to take any significant actions to counteract the coronavirus (28), Trump continued his narrative of false assurances with a tweet that he had “Just received a briefing on the Coronavirus in China from all of our GREAT agencies, who are also working closely with China. We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments. We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!” (29) On Thursday, January 30, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared a global health emergency while praising China’s efforts to contain the virus. On a flight to campaign appearances in the Midwest, Trump received a call from Alex Azar, who warned him a second time (see #22) of the destructive potential of the pandemic. Trump dismissed Azar as “alarmist.” Later that day, speaking in front of Michigan auto workers the day the WHO declared a global health emergency, the day the CDC reported the first person-to-person transmission in the U.S., Trump said, “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.” (30) Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross doubled down on Trump’s denial, telling Fox Business News that the virus “will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.” (31) Though Ross thought the virus would increase job growth, and Trump was confident that the U.S. had “very little problem” with the virus, the Trump Administration delivered one of a string of mixed messages (32) when they announced the formation of a Coronavirus Task Force on the same day. In contrast to the efficient and responsive crisis management model Obama had set up, where Ron Klain coordinated actions among diverse agencies, Trump’s commission had confusing lines of authority, where “at least three different people—[Health and Human Services head Alex] Azar, Vice President Mike Pence and coronavirus task force coordinator Debbie Birx—can claim responsibility.” (33) In a crisis where immediate, decisive action was needed, the administration chose a slow-moving model choked with discussion and deliberation which focused on closing off borders rather than test kits or medical supplies (34). Klain offered a prescient prognosis of what was to come at the Atlantic Monthly: “The U.S. government has the tools, talent, and team to help fight the coronavirus abroad and minimize its impact at home. But the combination of Trump’s paranoia toward experienced government officials (who lack ‘loyalty’ to him), inattention to detail, opinionated rejection of science and evidence, and isolationist instincts may prove toxic when it comes to managing a global-health security challenge. To succeed, Trump will have to trust the kind of government experts he has disdained to date, set aside his own terrible instincts, lead from the White House, and work closely with foreign leaders and global institutions—all things he has failed to do in his first 1,200 days in office.” Writing in Foreign Policy the next day, January 31, Laurie Garrett (see #36) posed an important question: “The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting down a national holiday, building enormous quarantine hospitals in days’ time, and ramping up 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment—are indeed gargantuan. It’s impossible to watch them without wondering, ‘What would we do? How would my government respond if this virus spread across my country?’” Her government that day declared a public health emergency and restricted Americans who had been in China over the past two weeks from re-entering the country. Speaking to Fox’s Sean Hannity on February 2, Trump said, “We pretty much shut it down coming from China.”(35) In fact, as Ron Klain would mention to Congress a few days later, over 100,000 people* had come to the States from China in the month before the ban, so “the horse is already out of the barn.” (*the New York Times would later point out that this was a significant underestimate, as 430,000 travelers would enter the country from China from January-April of 2020, including 40,000 after the travel ban) Trump would go on to brag repeatedly about the China ban as an example of a gutsy leadership move, but he wouldn’t restrict travel from Europe, which would provide the bulk of New York’s cases, for six more weeks. In a February 3 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Laurie Garrett explained that John Bolton’s dissolution of the pandemic response office (see #17) was done out of spite: “it was a big mistake by the Trump administration to obliterate the entire infrastructure of pandemic response that the Obama administration had created. Why did he do it? Well, it certainly wasn’t about the money, because it wasn’t a heavily-funded program. It was certainly because it was Obama’s program.” (36) Pressed by Goodman to provide more detail about the Global Security Office, Garrett continued: “It was a special division inside the National Security Council, a special division inside of the Department of Homeland Security…and collaborating centers in HHS, headquarters in Washington, the Office of Global Health Affairs, and the Commerce Department, Treasury Department. But what Obama understood, dealing with Ebola in 2014, is that any American response had to be an all-of-government response, that there were so many agencies overlapping, and they all had a little piece of the puzzle in the case of a pandemic…. “…What the Obama administration realized was that you can’t corral multiple agencies and things from private sector as well as public sector to come to the aid of America, unless you have some one person in charge who’s really the manager of it all. And in his case, it was Ron Klain, who had worked under Vice President Biden. And he was designated, with an office inside the White House, to give orders and coordinate all these various things….Well, that was all eliminated. It’s gone. And now they’re hastily trying to recreate something.” On February 4, the Wall Street Journal posted an op-ed by Trump’s former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, titled “Stop a U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak Before It Starts,” in which he stressed the importance of ramping up testing for the virus so that public health officials would know where to focus their efforts. That same day, the administration rolled out new regulatory guidelines. Any lab that wanted to test needed to meet strict criteria to get an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Though Trump had gutted every environmental regulation in sight, and scaled back oversight of Wall Street, his FDA over-regulated this crucial public health function (37), forcing public health labs to re-run their tests, which would delay reporting of the number of confirmed cases (38), robbing public health officials of vital information about the spread of infection in their areas. The EUA also slowed down private labs by demanding that they get CDC approval before using their tests (39). On February 5, Democratic senators met with administration officials and proposed emergency funding “for essential preventative measures, including hiring local screening and testing staff, researching a vaccine and treatments and the stockpiling of needed medical supplies.” HHS secretary Azar declined the funding, claiming it wasn’t needed (40). After the meeting, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted “Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren’t taking this seriously enough. Notably no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.” On February 6, the CDC shipped out 90 test kits. The World Health Organization shipped out 250,000. On February 7, the same day World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that “The world is facing a chronic shortage of gowns, masks, gloves and other protective equipment in the fight against a spreading coronavirus epidemic,” the same day that Rick Bright’s suggestion that the federal government begin mass production of masks was rejected by Trump’s disaster management team, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted about “the transportation of nearly 17.8 tons of donated medical supplies…including masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials”—to China. (These shipments represented just a fraction of the vital medical supplies, now desperately needed inside our borders, which were exported from the U.S. in January-March due to the Trump administration’s failure to plan ahead and ban exports, as Germany, South Korea, and twenty-two others countries did, 41). Bright continued his focus on medical supplies on February 8, when he met with Trump’s economic adviser, Peter Navarro (see #29). Bright and Navarro “drafted a memo sent to the White House coronavirus task force that called for the U.S. to immediately halt the export of N95 masks and ramp up production.” On February 9, “a group of governors in town for a black-tie gala at the White House secured a private meeting with [Dr. Anthony] Fauci and [CDC head Robert] Redfield. The briefing rattled many of the governors, bearing little resemblance to the words of the president.” On February 10, Trump repeated a false talking point multiple times. “Trump said on Fox Business: ‘You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather.’” (42) He told state governors: ‘You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.’ (43) And he told supporters at a campaign rally: ‘Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that’s true.’” (44) On February 11, Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell contradicted Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (see #31) when he said that the coronavirus would “very likely” impact America’s economy. On February 12, the New York Times reported that Trump’s CDC had sent state labs flawed test kits, further slowing down the testing process (45). HHS secretary Alex Azar appeared before a Senate committee on February 13 and said, “As of today, I can announce that the CDC has begun working with health departments in five cities to use its flu surveillance network to begin testing individuals with flu-like symptoms for the Chinese coronavirus….This effort will help see whether there is broader spread than we have been able to detect so far.” The statement gave the impression that the Trump administration was making progress in combating the virus, which was false, as the cities still lacked functional tests and the surveillance systems weren’t in place. Azar knew this, but was desperate to create positive spin for the administration (46). On Valentine’s Day, as deaths from the virus were at 1,000 and climbing, Trump spoke before the National Border Control Council. He again wheeled out the false assertion that warm weather would douse the virus (47) and said, “We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.” (48) Even as his administration was clearly fumbling the response (see #1-#46), he said, “And 61 percent of the voters approve of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. And, you know, we did a very early move on that. We did a — I was criticized by a lot of people at the beginning because we were the first. We’d never done it before.” (49) On February 18, Atlantic contributor Peter Nicholas offered perceptive summations of the Trump Administration’s failures of governance so far and the challenges ahead: “He has hollowed out federal agencies (see #7 and #10) and belittled expertise (50), prioritizing instead his own intuition and the demands of his political base. But he’ll need to rely on a bureaucracy he’s maligned to stop the virus’s spread.” The article cited the ramifications of Trump’s allergy to bad news: “‘We have a president who doesn’t particularly care about competent administration, and who created a culture in which bad news is shut down,’ (51) says Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, whose state is home to one of multiple airports screening passengers for the coronavirus. ‘And when you’re dealing with a potential pandemic, you need to know all the bad news. If this disease ends up not overwhelming us, that would be a blessing. But it would not be because the Trump administration was ready. They were not.’” Nicholas also addressed Trump’s continual lies and distortions about the scope of the virus: “Since Trump’s first upbeat assessment, the number of people sickened by the virus has spiraled. At the time of the CNBC interview (see #24), 17 people in China had died from the virus and about 540 were infected. Today, the death toll is about 1,900 and the number of infections tops 73,000. At least 15 cases have been reported in the U.S., and an additional 14 Americans infected with the virus arrived yesterday following their evacuation from a cruise ship in Japan.” Undeterred by scientific facts, Trump pushed the warm weather myth again on February 19: “I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine.” (52) On February 20, Politico reported on the flawed test kits the CDC had sent out (see #45) and mentioned that the cost of the kits was so high ($250/each) that Trump’s Health and Human Services department was starting to run out of money (53)—which could have been avoided if Azar had accepted additional congressional funding proposed on February 5 (see #40). The coronavirus task force met on February 21. Reviewing the escalation in cases abroad, the group “concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation’s economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans.” Early on the morning of February 23, Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and professor at Harvard, tweeted that “the US remains extremely limited in #COVID19 testing. Only 3 of 100 public health labs have @CDC test kits working (54) and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. (55) How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it.” (56) On Monday, February 24, trying to make up for previous short-sighted budget cuts (57), the administration “asked Congress for $2.5 billion in emergency funds to handle coronavirus in the United States. (To compare to a recent health crisis, the Obama administration requested $6 billion in emergency funding for the 2014 Ebola outbreak and eventually received $5.4 billion.) Though Democrats in Congress have pushed the administration to call for emergency coronavirus funding since early February, Politico states that ‘White House officials have been hesitant to press Congress for additional funding, with some hoping that the virus would burn itself out by the summer.’” (58) The $2.5 billion request was a pittance, approximately 1/600th the size of Trump’s tax cut (59), most of which went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Azar knew the funding was inadequate, but was hamstrung by administration officials who didn’t grasp the seriousness of the virus and lacked pull with Trump to override them in favor of the public interest. Even as the news grew worse, Trump continued to give false assurances, tweeting “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA….Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” (60). In fact, Trump had no idea if things were “under control” because his administration had failed to get functional test kits out. That same day, the stock market had its second biggest drop in its history. The following day, February 25, the stock market cratered for the fourth consecutive day, losing 879 points to end at 27,081. While the Dow Jones tanked, Nancy Messonier, the director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, made the case for community mitigation and told reporters that the virus would cause “severe” disruptions in American’s lives. Unaware that his public health officials were planning to propose mitigation efforts, Trump scolded Messonier’s ultimate boss, Alex Azar, for the toll her announcement had on the stock market (61) and the next day demoted Azar, putting Mike Pence in charge of the coronavirus task force. As a result of Trump’s temper tantrum, the task force’s time-sensitive recommendations for social distancing, school closures, and cancellations of crowded events was put on hold. It would be three long, deadly weeks before Trump would finally announce social distancing recommendations on March 16 (62). At a time when bipartisan harmony was more important than ever, Trump trolled Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on Twitter for pointing out that $2.5 billion wasn’t remotely adequate to the task: “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is complaining, for publicity purposes only, that I should be asking for more money than $2.5 Billion to prepare for Coronavirus. If I asked for more he would say it is too much. He didn’t like my early travel closings. I was right. He is incompetent!” (63) And even as it was reported that “Trump spent the past 2 years slashing the government agencies responsible for handling the coronavirus outbreak,” Trump tweeted that “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.” (64) While in India that day, Trump told reporters, “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are…getting better. They’re all getting better….As far as what we’re doing with the new virus, I think that we’re doing a great job.” (65) Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow echoed Trump’s lies and contradicted CDC officials when he told CNBC, “We have contained this, I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight.” (66) Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported on the severe shortage of N95 masks American hospitals were facing due to onerous federal regulations (67) and a lack of support from the Trump administration (68), and the administration’s lack of a plan going forward, which was causing confusion and panic among state and local officials (69). Speaking before the Senate Appropriations Committee that day, Alex Azar said “that the Strategic National Stockpile had only 30 million masks. That number is less than one one-hundredth of the 3.5 billion that a specialized group within HHS that focuses on the risk from viral outbreaks has estimated are necessary.” The next day, February 26, Politico reported that the “U.S. isn’t ready to detect stealth coronavirus spread” due to poor coordination among crisis management staff, the administration’s failure to get functional test kits out in a timely fashion, and needlessly strict test criteria (see #37): “Just 12 of more than 100 public health labs in the U.S. are currently able to diagnose the coronavirus because of problems with a test developed by the CDC, potentially slowing the response if the virus starts taking hold here. The faulty test has also delayed a plan to widely screen people with symptoms of respiratory illness who have tested negative for influenza to detect whether the coronavirus may be stealthily spreading.” Only six states were testing for the virus and the testing was limited to people who had been to China or were experiencing symptoms, which was allowing the virus to spread undetected. Harvard epidemiology professor Mark Lipsitch told Politico, “China tested 320,000 people in Guangdong over a three-week period. This is the scale we need to be thinking on.” Meanwhile, Trump continued to compare coronavirus to the flu, though the virus has approximately 20 times the mortality rate (70), and told White House reporters, “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low….When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” (71) In reality, the States had 60 cases at the time, the number was increasing, and the real number was far greater but undetected due to the administration’s failure to get functional test kits out. The poor communication among officials overseeing the coronavirus response continued, as “[Health and Human Services Secretary Alex] Azar didn’t know until late in the afternoon that Vice President Mike Pence would be in control of the process. The HHS secretary was reportedly ‘blindsided’ by the news.” (72) In picking Pence to lead the administration’s response to coronavirus, Trump referred to his vice president as an “expert” and someone with “a certain talent for this,” though Pence’s reluctance to support needle exchange and steep cuts to Planned Parenthood (which provides HIV testing in addition to birth control) as governor of Indiana had contributed to an HIV outbreak there (73). With Pence’s ascension, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn was finally brought into the coronavirus committee. For weeks the FDA’s powers to work with private companies to increase production of test kits, PPE, and other necessities had been ignored (74). As of February 27, 2,800 people had died from the virus, while 82,000 cases had been reported worldwide. Business Insider had the following headline: “Trump defends huge [19%] cuts to the CDC’s budget (75) by saying the government can hire more doctors ‘when we need them’ during crises.” (76) Trump responded to criticisms of the budget cuts by saying, “I’m a businessperson. I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them….When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.” (77) Despite the increasing gloom, Trump continued to play pretend. He told an audience attending an African American History Month event at the White House, “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” (78) He tweeted “Only a very small number in U.S., & China numbers look to be going down. All countries working well together!” (79) On Friday, February 28, nearly two months after the administration had first been informed of the coronavirus, NBC reported that the U.S. had done fewer than 500 tests, even as China had done over 300,000 and South Korea was doing 10,000 or more/day (80). ProPublica offered one of many post-mortems to come, highlighting the grave error the administration had made in bypassing World Health Organization test kits which were ready to go (81) in favor of CDC test kits, which weren’t: “The CDC announced on Feb. 14 that surveillance testing would begin in five key cities, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. That effort has not yet begun. (see #46) “Until the middle of this week, only the CDC and the six state labs — in Illinois, Idaho, Tennessee, California, Nevada and Nebraska — were testing patients for the virus, according to Peter Kyriacopoulos, APHL’s senior director of public policy. Now, as many more state and local labs are in the process of setting up the testing kits, this capacity is expected to increase rapidly. “There are other ways to expand the country’s testing capacity. Beyond the CDC and state labs, hospitals are also able to develop their own tests for diseases like COVID-19 and internally validate their effectiveness, with some oversight from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But because the CDC declared the virus a public health emergency, it triggered a set of federal rules that raises the bar for all tests, including those devised by local hospitals. “So now, hospitals must validate their tests with the FDA — even if they copied the CDC protocol exactly. Hospital lab directors say the FDA validation process is onerous and is wasting precious time when they could be testing in their local communities.” (82) As Margaret Hamburg (Obama’s FDA commissioner from 2009-2015) would later tell Olga Khazan of the Atlantic, “the [FDA] could have proactively reached out to different national and international labs to see whether their tests could be approved for use in the U.S.,” but there’s no evidence that they did (83), and in fact the FDA “told one Seattle infectious-disease expert, Helen Chu, to stop testing for the coronavirus entirely….Chu was not alone. Dozens of labs in the U.S. were eager to make tests and willing to test patients, but they were hamstrung by regulations for most of February, even as the virus crept silently across the nation.” Uncertainty over the virus contributed to the markets having their worst week since the crash of 2008. Later that night, even as other countries had started social distancing in response to the virus, Trump put thousands of his supporters at risk of exposure with a political rally in North Charleston, South Carolina. It was one of eight campaign events Trump would have after being notified of coronavirus. Asked about administration efforts to combat coronavirus before the rally, Trump told Sinclair Broadcasting, “I think it’s really going well. We did something very fortunate: we closed up to certain areas of the world very, very early — far earlier than we were supposed to. I took a lot of heat for doing it. It turned out to be the right move, and we only have 15 people and they are getting better, and hopefully they’re all better. There’s one who is quite sick, but maybe he’s gonna be fine….We’re prepared for the worst, but we think we’re going to be very fortunate.” (84) During the rally, Trump accused Democrats of politicizing the coronavirus and said concern over the issue was a “hoax.” (85) Trump’s chief of staff Nick Mulvaney used the same talking point that night, telling reporters at the Conservative Political Action conference, “The reason you’re seeing so much attention to it [the coronavirus] today is [Democrats] think this is going to be what brings down the president….That’s what this is all about….I got a note today from a reporter saying, ‘What are you going to do today to calm the markets?’ I’m like, really, what I might do to calm the markets is tell people to turn their televisions off for 24 hours.” (86) The next day, Saturday February 29, the first American death at the hand of the coronavirus “hoax” was reported. Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” the next day, March 1, Alex Azar claimed that, “‘In terms of testing kits, we’ve already tested over 3,600 people for the virus. We now have the capability in the field to test 75,000 people, and within the next week or two we’ll have a radical expansion even beyond that.” Like most of the Trump administration’s public messaging, this was false (87). At the time, less than 1,000 tests had been completed. By comparison, South Korea, a country 1/6th the size of the U.S., which had discovered the virus within its borders on the same day—January 20—had done over 80,000 tests. As of Monday March 2, U.S. coronavirus deaths were up to six; globally over 90,000 cases had been reported. Dr. Matt McCarthy, a physician at New York-Presbyterian, told CNBC that he still didn’t have any test kits (88): “‘This is not good. We know that there are 88 cases in the United States. There are going to be hundreds by the middle of the week. There’s going to be thousands by next week. And this is a testing issue.’ McCarthy added, ‘They’re testing 10,000 a day in some countries, and we can’t get this off the ground….I’m a practitioner on the firing line, and I don’t have the tools to properly care for patients today.’” Dr. Eva Lee, an infectious disease researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, commented in a Red Dawn email (see #27) with Trump administration public health officials: “We need actions, actions, and more actions. We are going to have pockets of epicenters across the country, West coast, East coast and the South. Our policy leaders must act now. Please make it happen!” At a campaign rally the same day in Charleston, North Carolina, Trump said, “We had a great meeting today with a lot of the great companies and they’re going to have vaccines, I think relatively soon. And they’re going to have something that makes you better and that’s going to actually take place, we think, even sooner.” This was patently false (89), as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical expert on the coronavirus task force, had told Trump earlier that day. Fauci estimated that it would take a year-and-a-half for a vaccine to emerge. After solid gains on Monday, the Dow lost 800 points on Tuesday, March 3, bringing it down to 25,917 at day’s close. Speaking to reporters, Trump continued to minimize the virus, claiming, “There’s only one hot spot, and that’s also pretty much in a very — in a home, as you know, in a nursing home.” In fact, the nursing home in Washington state wasn’t the only cluster of known coronavirus activity, as California and Oregon had both reported areas of community contagion (90). On Wednesday, March 4, the death toll in the U.S. reached ten and New York reported an infected community. Two months after the administration had been notified of the virus, and six weeks after Michael Bowen had written Health and Human Services officials about the need for mass production of masks, HHS finally ordered 500 million N95 masks. Speaking to airline executives at the White House, Trump continued to downplay the extent of the crisis, saying, “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they’ll get better. There are many people like that.” (91) He also blamed the Obama administration for the lag in testing, claiming an Obama regulation had slowed the administration down, which was false (92). Trump’s lies and blame shifting continued in an interview with Sean Hannity which appeared later that day. Trump falsely claimed that the Obama administration “didn’t do anything about” swine flu and that based purely on his intuition, science-based coronavirus fatality rates were flawed—”I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number — and this is just my hunch — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild, they’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people.” (93) On Friday, March 6, reported cases in the U.S. passed 300 and deaths were up to 17, including the first on the East Coast. The Atlantic ran a post-mortem about the administration’s failure to get functional test kits out called “The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing.” Two months after the Trump administration had first been notified of the coronavirus and one month after a task force had been formed (see #34), only 1,895 tests could be verified, a fraction of the 10,000-20,000 tests South Korea was performing daily. According to the authors, “The figures we gathered suggest that the American response to the coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, has been shockingly sluggish, especially compared with that of other developed countries….The net effect of these choices is that the country’s true capacity for testing has not been made clear to its residents. (94) This level of obfuscation is unexpected in the United States, which has long been a global leader in public-health transparency.” Earlier in the day, Trump had appeared at a signing ceremony for the Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, which would dedicate $8.3 billion to fighting the coronavirus. The funding was more than three times what the administration had requested (see #57) and yet still a pittance relative to the scope of the virus, roughly 1/180th of the amount Trump spent on his tax cut, the bulk of which went to the upper 1% (95). Many public health officials felt the appropriations came a month too late (96), shortchanging localities of crucial resources for testing and personal protective equipment. (see #40) At the signing, Trump offered false assurances and minimized the scope of the public health disaster that he was spending $8.3 billion on, saying, “And in terms of deaths, I don’t know what the count is today. Is it eleven? Eleven people? And in terms of cases, it’s very, very few.” (97) After the signing, Trump visited CDC headquarters in Atlanta, where he continued to lie about test kits: “Anybody that needs a test can have a test. They are all set. They have them out there. In addition to that they are making millions more as we speak but as of right now and yesterday anybody that needs a test that is the important thing and the test are all perfect like the letter was perfect.” (98) Asked about the passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship docked in San Francisco who were forced to stay on the ship for the time being, Trump expressed concern that allowing them onshore, where they would be added to the number of confirmed cases, would make him look bad: “I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship. That wasn’t our fault, and it wasn’t the fault of the people on the ship, either. OK? It wasn’t their fault either. And they’re mostly Americans, so I can live either way with it. I’d rather have them stay on, personally.” (99) Trump also said “I hear the numbers are getting much better in Italy,” though the country was entering a lockdown and would experience two hundred more deaths over the weekend to come. On Saturday, March 7, Politico led with “Trump’s mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis,” an in-depth feature by Dan Diamond exploring the impact of the Trump administration’s internal dysfunctions on their crisis management response. Diamond’s exposé revealed that Mike Pence and other administration officials had wanted to evacuate the Grand Princess cruise ship (see #99) in order to keep the passengers who didn’t have coronavirus from getting it from those who did, but that Trump had overruled his advisors because he didn’t want the number of reported cases to increase. The article stated that “As the outbreak has grown, Trump has become attached to the daily count of coronavirus cases and how the United States compares to other nations, reiterating that he wants the U.S. numbers kept as low as possible. Health officials have found explicit ways to oblige him by highlighting the most optimistic outcomes in briefings (100), and their agencies have tamped down on promised transparency. The CDC has stopped detailing how many people in the country have been tested for the virus (101), and its online dashboard is running well behind the number of U.S. cases tracked by Johns Hopkins and even lags the European Union’s own estimate of U.S. cases.” The article confirmed that onerous regulations (see #37) and Trump’s lack of policy engagement (see #1) were key elements in the test delays and that “Trump’s aides discouraged [HHS Secretary Alex] Azar from briefing the president about the coronavirus threat back in January” (see #22) because Trump “rewards those underlings who tell him what he wants to hear while shunning those who deliver bad news.” (see #51) “…The pressure to earn Trump’s approval can be a distraction at best and an obsession at worst: Azar, having just survived a bruising clash with a deputy [Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] and sensing that his job was on the line [see #59], spent part of January making appearances on conservative TV outlets and taking other steps to shore up his anti-abortion bona fides and win approval from the president, even as the global coronavirus outbreak grew stronger. “Around the same time, Azar had concluded that the new coronavirus posed a public health risk and tried to share an urgent message with the president: The potential outbreak could leave tens of thousands of Americans sickened and many dead. “The jockeying for Trump’s favor was part of the cause of Azar’s destructive feud with Verma, as the two tried to box each other out of events touting Trump initiatives. Now, officials including Azar, Verma and other senior leaders are forced to spend time shoring up their positions with the president and his deputies at a moment when they should be focused on a shared goal: stopping a potential pandemic. (102) “‘The boss has made it clear, he likes to see his people fight, and he wants the news to be good,’ said one adviser to a senior health official involved in the coronavirus response. ‘This is the world he’s made.’” (103) The closing paragraph read “‘If this sort of dysfunction exists as part of the everyday operations—then, yes, during a true crisis the problems are magnified and exacerbated,’ said a former Trump HHS official. ‘And with extremely detrimental consequences.’” The following day, March 8, as international cases had passed 100,000 and the importance of social distancing was becoming increasingly obvious, HUD secretary Ben Carson was asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about the advisability of Trump holding rallies where thousands of people were crammed together. Carson, a neurosurgeon who knew better, chose Trump’s favored talking point over public safety: “…going to a rally, if you’re a healthy individual and you’re taking the precautions that have been placed out there, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t go. However, if you belong to one of those categories of high risk, obviously, you need to think twice about that.” (104) As of Monday, March 9, the tally in the U.S. was over 700 cases reported and 26 deaths. The Dow lost 2,000 points that day, the biggest one-day loss in history. Former Republican senator and governor Judd Gregg offered a sober appraisal of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus: “The budget he recently submitted to Congress savaged the BioShield account (105). This is the program that was set up after the SARS epidemic and anthrax events well over a decade ago to allow the federal government to fund research on pharmaceutical responses to biological attacks or a pandemic outbreak. “The program was needed because this type of research is extremely expensive and has little commercial upside. The drugs developed are unique and narrowly targeted. “Thus, in order to get this research up and running, Congress and the prior administrations created the program. In this instance, Congress actually anticipated a serious issue and began addressing it effectively. “But the president and his people got it wrong. In their usual naive and uninformed style, they have tried to eviscerate the program. “This action came in the face of significant warnings from the intelligence community that a biological attack is one of the primary threats we face from terrorists. And now we know a pandemic is also a primary threat.” Gregg’s key takeaway: “The president and his people also have an abysmal track record when it comes to preparing for pandemics.” While the virus spread undetected, testing continued to move at a glacial pace, and the Dow was in freefall, Trump kept busy attacking imagined foes on Twitter. One tweet read “This is your daily reminder that it took Barack Obama until October of 2009 to declare Swine Flu a National Health Emergency. It began in April of ’09 but Obama waited until 20,000 people in the US had been hospitalized & 1,000+ had died. Where was the media hysteria then?” In actuality, Obama had declared a public health emergency two days after the first swine flu death (106). A second tweet read “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, ‘The risk is low to the average American.’” (107) Trump also tweeted his mistaken talking point about coronavirus being akin to the flu, not for the first time: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” (108) By Tuesday, March 10, over 113,000 coronavirus cases had been reported globally and more than 4,000 people had died. At a hearing about Trump’s 2021 budget proposal, Russ Vought, the administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), defended a 15% proposed cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (109) and a steep cut to the annual contribution to the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund (110). In partnership with Brianna Ehley, David Lim of Politico had a big scoop called “U.S. coronavirus testing threatened by shortage of critical lab materials.” The piece detailed how a shortage of lab materials (111) was exacerbating America’s already-slow pace of testing, thereby jeopardizing public safety (112) by keeping public health officials from having accurate data about the number of cases and the areas with high concentration. The article pointed out that seven weeks after the first case was discovered in the U.S., just over 5,000 people had been tested, though “HHS Secretary Alex Azar had told lawmakers [one week earlier] that U.S. labs’ capacity could grow to 10,000-20,000 people per day by the end of the week.” (113) All evidence to the contrary, Donald Trump continued to blame his predecessor and pitch the case that his administration was doing a good job of crisis management. During a briefing at the capital, Trump said, “As you know, it’s about 600 cases, it’s about 26 deaths, within our country. And had we not acted quickly, that number would have been substantially more.” (114) He added that “…I think the U.S. has done a very good job on testing. We had to change things that were done that were nobody’s fault, perhaps, they wanted to do something a different way, but it was a much slower process from a previous administration and we did change them.” (115) The next day, Wednesday, March 11, the U.S. had over 1,000 reported cases and 32 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic. The Dow lost over 1,000 points for the second time in three days, ending at 23,553. The National Basketball Association suspended its season. CNN posted an investigative piece entitled “Confusion over the availability and criteria for coronavirus testing is leaving sick people wondering if they’re infected.” The article noted that though Mike Pence had recently said on CNN’s “New Day” that anyone with a doctor’s order could get a test, this was not the case in practice, as the U.S. was woefully unprepared to provide tests on this scale (116). People were also not getting tests due to strict CDC criteria: “In order to be prioritized for testing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that one must have a fever, cough or difficulty breathing as well as have been in close contact with a person known to have coronavirus. Or, they had to ‘have a history of travel from affected geographic areas within 14 days of their symptom onset.’” As the article noted, “only 11,079 specimens [have] been tested in the U.S., paling in comparison to the more than 230,000 people tested in South Korea, which has about one sixth the US population.” Dr. Rod Hochman, the CEO of Providence St. Joseph Health, told Politico, “Testing is so critically important because it helps us as clinicians figure out the extent of the spread. It has implications for how we care for patients and where we put them….It’s unraveling the detective story of how the virus spreads but we are trying to do it now with no data.” On Rachel Maddow’s show that evening, Ron Klain, who had been Obama’s Ebola czar (see #33 and #35), pointed out that one of the Trump administration’s biggest mistakes was to privatize testing. As related by journalist Thom Hartmann, “Instead of taking the World Health Organization (WHO) test kits which are cheap and widely available all over the planet, and having them distributed across the country back in December, or January, or February when we knew this disease was spreading in the United States, Klain said that Trump has outsourced the testing to two big American companies, Quest and Labcorp.” (see #81) Trump’s public appearances on Wednesday didn’t inspire confidence. During a press conference with Ireland’s prime minister, Trump again minimized the threat by saying, “It goes away….It’s going away. We want it to go away with very, very few deaths.” (117) Though the virus was supposedly going away, Wednesday’s 1,000-point drop in the Dow convinced Trump to address the nation in a prime-time speech that was roundly panned. Again he minimized the threat (claiming coronavirus had a “very, very low risk” for most Americans, 118), cast blame on China and Europe for having the disease before the U.S. (119), gave confusing information while ad-libbing that contradicted administration policy (120), and again lied about the slow pace of testing when he said, “Testing and testing capabilities are expanding rapidly, day by day. We are moving very quickly.” (121) The address was meant to reassure the American public and stabilize the markets, but Trump’s ill-prepared speech sent stock futures tumbling in real time. Republican journalist and former W. Bush speechwriter David Frum summed up the historical moment with uncanny precision: “More people will get sick because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. More people will suffer the financial hardship of sickness because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. The medical crisis will arrive faster and last longer than if somebody else were in charge. So, too, the economic crisis. More people will lose their jobs than if somebody else were in charge. More businesses will be pushed into bankruptcy than if somebody else were in charge. More savers will lose more savings than if somebody else were in charge. The damage to America’s global leadership will be greater than if somebody else were in charge.” (#122-128) On Thursday, March 12, the day after Trump’s prime time address meant to reassure the nation and calm the stock market, the Dow Jones lost almost 1,000 points, ending at 21,200. In an email thread with Tom Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security adviser (see #12), James Lawler (director of Clinical and Bio-defense Research at the National Strategic Research Institute) said, “We are making every misstep leaders initially made in [simulations] at the outset of pandemic planning in 2006. We had systematically addressed all of these and had a plan that would work—and has worked in Hong Kong/Singapore. We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window and are making decisions based on intuition. Pilots can tell you what happens when a crew makes decisions based on intuition rather than what their instruments are telling them.” The most glaring of the Trump administration’s failures was its inability to get test kits out. Even Republicans were starting to grumble, as detailed in “Testing lag ignites political uproar as Trump insists process is ‘very smooth.’” Cutting against Trump’s consistently self-serving narrative, Anthony Fauci, Trump’s key coronavirus advisor, said, “The system is not geared toward what we need right now, what you are asking for….It is a failing. Let’s admit it.” The piece pointed out that more than two months after the administration first became aware of the virus, “only about 11,000 people have been tested, according to figures shared with members of Congress on Thursday. According to statistics compiled by the American Enterprise Institute, nationwide capacity to process the test kits being distributed has so far ramped up only to about 20,000 people per day – meaning it could be weeks before any tested patient gets results. “Lawmakers of both parties reached for the same touchstone – South Korea, which has managed to treat hundreds of thousands of its people, allowing it to avoid the rapid spread seen in China, Italy and other countries….‘South Korea is able to process tests in an hour, and in the U.S. it takes more than two days – that’s not adequate,’ said Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska.” The article pointed out that South Korea tests in a single day the number of people the U.S. has tested in over two months, with drive-up exams which aren’t possible in the U.S. due to strict testing guidelines (129). Burdensome and deadly regulations were further discussed at ProPublica, which revealed that an FDA directive “requires that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a sister agency, re-test every positive coronavirus test run by a public health lab to confirm its accuracy. “The result, experts say, is wasting limited resources at a time when thousands of Americans are waiting in line to get tested for COVID-19.” (130) Duplicate tests were just one element of a failed operation. The Trump administration’s key mistakes were summarized by Politico reporter Dan Diamond (see #99-#103) in an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross: “The Trump administration and health officials knew back in January that this coronavirus was going to be a major threat. They knew that tests needed to be distributed across the country to understand where there might be outbreaks. But across the month of February, as my colleague David Lim at Politico first reported, the tests that they sent out to labs across the country simply did not work. They were coming back with errors. “The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, recognized that and promised that new tests would be distributed soon. But one day turned into two days turned into three days turned into several weeks, and in the meantime, we know now coronavirus was silently spreading in different communities, like Seattle. By the time that the Trump administration made a decision to allow new tests to be developed by hospitals by clinical laboratories, it was a step that was seen as multiple weeks late.” (131) “…I don’t use this word lightly, Terry, but I’d say that this testing failure and the broader response to the coronavirus has been a catastrophe. “…the Trump administration failed to plan for this moment. There were leadership failures, like failing to think through the implications of not having a testing strategy in place. (132) There were leadership failures in allowing feuds to fester for months and months that – in the middle of a crisis, those cracks have widened and caused delays in making simple decisions. “He cut funding for a program that predicted when viruses could jump from animals to humans basically around the same time that this new coronavirus appears to have jumped from animals to humans in China.” (133) Amid the disaster unfolding all around and because of him, Trump continued to lie to the American public. Asked about the lack of testing at a White House briefing, Trump said, “over the next few days, they’re going to have four million tests out” (134) and “Frankly, the testing has been going very smooth….If you go to the right agency, if you go to the right area, you get the test.” (135) He even found a way to brag about the administration’s response: “It’s going to go away….The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point…when you look at the kind of numbers that you’re seeing coming out of other countries, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it.” (136) The administration did one thing right on March 12: its Health and Human Services Department placed its first order for N95 masks. Unfortunately, the order came far too late and wouldn’t be filled until the end of April, long after the pandemic had started to ravage America’s emergency rooms. Friday the 13th was again all about the test kits. Where were they? Raw Story reported that the Trump Administration’s Health and Human Services agency had finally named a testing czar—ten weeks after being notified of the virus (137). Caitlin Owens of Axios pointed out that “less than a dozen academic labs” were doing tests because of strict administration guidelines. Medical directors discussed how their requests to test had been delayed or denied until it was too late (138). According to the BBC, testing capacity in the U.S. was just 22,000 people/day while South Korea, which is 1/6th the size of the U.S., was testing up to 20,000 people/day. And the 22,000 projection was very optimistic, according to Andy Slavitt, Barack Obama’s acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who tweeted, “We can at best do 10,000 tests/day. We should be able to do millions” and “All of this could have been ramped up and solved in January & February and right now we would be talking about containment.” The Atlantic reported that less than 14,000 tests had been done in the ten weeks since the administration had first been notified of the virus, though Mike Pence had promised the week prior that 1.5 million tests would be available by this time (139). The article’s key takeaway? “Getting out lots of tests for a new disease is a major logistical and scientific challenge, but it can be pulled off with the help of highly efficient, effective government leadership. In this case, such leadership didn’t appear to exist.” Speaking to one of the prime causes of that failure in leadership, Beth Cameron, who ran Obama’s pandemic office in the National Security Council, explained the disastrous operational vacuum caused by John Bolton’s closing of the Global Security Office (see #17): “In a health security crisis, speed is essential. When this new coronavirus emerged, there was no clear White House-led structure to oversee our response, and we lost valuable time… “…The job of a White House pandemics office would have been to get ahead: to accelerate the response, empower experts, anticipate failures, and act quickly and transparently to solve problems. “Our team reported to a senior-level response coordinator on the National Security Council staff who could rally the government at the highest levels, as well as to the national security adviser and the homeland security adviser. This high-level domestic and global reporting structure wasn’t an accident. It was a recognition that epidemics know no borders and that a serious, fast response is crucial. “A directorate within the White House would have been responsible for coordinating the efforts of multiple federal agencies to make sure the government was backstopping testing capacity, devising approaches to manufacture and avoid shortages of personal protective equipment, strengthening U.S. lab capacity to process covid-19 tests, and expanding the health-care workforce. “The office would galvanize resources to coordinate a robust and seamless domestic and global response. It would identify needs among state and local officials, and advise and facilitate regular, focused communication from federal health and scientific experts to provide states and the public with fact-based tools to minimize the virus’s spread. The White House is uniquely positioned to take into account broader U.S. and global security considerations associated with health emergencies, including their impact on deployed citizens, troops and regional economies, as well as peace and stability. A White House office would have been able to elevate urgent issues fast, so they didn’t linger or devolve to inaction, as with coronavirus testing in the United States. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security director, piggybacked on these criticisms with a look at the culture of mis-governance Trump bred and embodied, and Trump’s fixation on his 2020 campaign to the exclusion of all else: “As the first COVID-19 cases began to spread with alarming speed and lethality in China, President Trump evidently did not choose to make the issue a priority. Based on his public comments and Twitter feed, the incoming information that consumed his attention was more likely to come from cable television or political gossip than deep inside his intelligence briefings. (140) Presumably, he also had a certain view of what he’d be doing in early 2020—chiefly, preparing the ground for his reelection campaign—and veering off course to prepare for a pandemic would have undermined those plans. A simple presidential communication of interest in a subject can set the government in motion, but in this case, that signal apparently never came.” (141) “…Instead of seeing U.S. government expertise as a resource, Trump has routinely derided career experts as “deep state” operatives, insufficiently loyal to him and his agenda. (142) Well into the COVID-19 outbreak, he said things such as ‘A lot of people think that it goes away in April with the heat,’ or ‘This is a flu.’ I doubt that any government expert would suggest that Trump say those things. The statements, instead, suggest a president either making things up or cherry-picking things he’s heard from non-experts to offer false reassurance to the public. “…By constantly trying to get himself through the news cycle, Trump has done irreparable damage to the long-term objective of ensuring that he’s a credible voice on the COVID-19 crisis.” That night, as the administration got ready to take food stamps away from 700,000 Americans in the middle of a pandemic (143), a 1,000-point loss in the Dow prompted Trump to finally declare a national emergency. At a press conference announcing the news, Trump failed to model coronavirus safety protocols, as he had done all week, shaking hands and standing cheek-by-jowl with other administration officials (144). Trump also made a false claim about Google constructing a testing center (145) and reality aside, claimed that “…the administration expects 1.4 million tests in the next week and 5 million within the month.” (ten days later, less than 300,000 tests would be completed; one month later, less than three million would be completed, 146) Asked if he took responsibility for the lag in testing, Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time that wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.” (147) Asked by PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor how he could say he had no responsibility for the testing failures despite his appointee’s elimination of the Global Security Office (see #17), Trump again ducked responsibility, saying “That’s a nasty question…When you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people [in the administration].” (148) That night, after stocks rebounded on news of the declaration, Trump “sent a note to supporters that included a chart showing the Dow Jones Industrial Average dramatically rising roughly at the time he began a news conference declaring a national emergency over coronavirus. The President signed the chart.” On the chart were the words “‘The President would like to share the attached image with you, and passes along the following message: From opening of press conference, biggest day in stock market history!’” (149) Trump’s triumphalism would prove premature, as the Dow would drop 4,000 points the following week, to 19,173, nearly 700 points lower than it was on the day Barack Obama left office and bequeathed Trump with a vibrant economy. Peter Wehner, a conservative Republican who had served under multiple Republican administrations, summed up Trump’s mistakes in an Atlantic post: “…the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain. These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security. (150) What we now know is that the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity.” On Saturday, March 14, in “From complacency to emergency: How Trump changed course on coronavirus,” Gary Orr and Nancy Cook of Politico reported on Donald Trump’s 180-degree turn. Just three days before he declared a national emergency, Trump had said the coronavirus “will go away” (151) and that his administration’s “response was ‘really working out.’” (152) In fact, Trump’s indifference to the crisis had forced city and state leaders to step up before a coordinated federal response had taken shape. Though he was purportedly now focused on helping the American people get through an economic crisis, Trump continued to advocate a payroll tax which would give more money in real dollars to the wealthy and upper-middle class, doing little for the people who need the money most (153). The following Monday, March 16, the Washington Post led with, “How U.S. coronavirus testing stalled: Flawed tests, red tape and resistance to using the millions of tests produced by the WHO.” The key stat-line in the piece was that “From mid-January until Feb. 28, fewer than 4,000 tests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were used out of more than 160,000 produced.” (154) The CDC had come up with a test quickly, by January 17, but “From there…U.S. efforts fell quickly behind, especially when compared with the efforts of the [World Health Organization], which has distributed more than 1 million tests to countries around the world based in part on the method developed by the German researchers….As early as Feb. 6, four weeks after the genome of the virus was published, the WHO had shipped 250,000 diagnostic tests to 70 laboratories around the world. “By comparison, the CDC at that time was shipping about 160,000 tests to labs across the nation — but then the manufacturing troubles were discovered, and most would be deemed unusable because they produced confusing results. Over the next three weeks, only about 200 of those tests sent to labs would be used.” “…U.S. efforts to distribute a working test stalled until Feb. 28, when federal officials revised the CDC test and began loosening up FDA rules that had limited who could develop coronavirus diagnostic tests.” Due to the flawed test kits and CDC regulations, as of February 21, “Health officials across the country began pleading for a test that worked, or at least the authorization to use another test.” Interviewed for the article was Alex Greninger of the University of Washington. “His lab had developed its own test and began seeking approval to use it on patients on Feb. 18. But that test, along with others that had been developed in various academic centers and hospitals, could not be used on patients until the FDA relaxed its testing rules. “[Greninger] noted that many of the state public health labs had also figured out how to use the CDC test properly — by tossing one of its components — but were not allowed to actually do so until the FDA approved the workaround that same day. “We had all these state public health labs that had a perfectly good [test] on their hands, and they knew it, they were upset,” Greninger said. “…As late as Feb. 27, only 203 specimen tests had been run out of state labs; another 3,125 had been run out of the CDC.” Even as earlier stumbling blocks to mass testing had been overcome, new hurdles that had been overlooked by the administration (155) were appearing, as reported by David Lim at Politico: “A potential shortage of cotton swabs and other basic supplies needed for coronavirus testing is emerging as a new threat to the Trump administration’s plans to roll out high-volume testing to 2,000 sites across the country by the end of the week. “…The materials in question include swabs that medical workers use to collect samples of patients’ phlegm and saliva for testing, and disposable plastic tips for the pipettes that lab technicians use to transfer liquids. Testing labs say they’re also concerned about the availability of personal protective equipment for their staff.” Asked at a press conference that day how he’d rate his response to the crisis, Trump said, “I’d rate it a ten,” part of a pattern of over 100 self-congratulatory remarks he would make throughout his upcoming press briefings. (156) The following day, Tuesday, March 17, the Washington Post published an article about another disastrous facet of the pandemic which the administration had failed to prepare for (157): “Covid-19 hits doctors, nurses and EMTs, threatening health system.” In addition to the concern about hospital overcrowding and a lack of beds, the virus was now threatening the health and lives of the clinicians tasked with administering to the sick, putting yet another strain on the system: “Dozens of health-care workers have fallen ill with covid-19, and more are quarantined after exposure to the virus, an expected but worrisome development as the U.S. health system girds for an anticipated surge in infections. “From hotspots such as the Kirkland, Wash., nursing home where nearly four dozen staffers tested positive for the coronavirus, to outbreaks in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California and elsewhere, the virus is picking off doctors, nurses and others needed in the rapidly expanding crisis. “They have been put at risk in the United States not only by the nature of their jobs, but by shortages of protective equipment such as N95 face masks and government bungling of the testing program, which was delayed for weeks while the virus spread around the country undetected. “Because testing has lagged, health-care workers often have no way to know whether people walking through the door with respiratory symptoms are suffering from the flu or covid-19, providers said. Even when precautions are taken, the virus has found its way into health-care facilities.” As clinicians in the trenches struggled with shortages of protective gear, swabs, and their own illnesses thanks to Trump’s indifference to the virus for ten weeks, Trump said at a press conference, “This is a pandemic…I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” (158) One week earlier he had said that the coronavirus “will go away.” Though the president had changed his tune, many of his followers still thought the virus was a hoax (see #85). After two months in which Trump had minimized and dismissed the seriousness of the virus with a steady stream of propaganda, polling showed that 79% of Democrats understood that “the worst is yet to come,” while only 40% of Republicans grasped the obvious (159). Despite Trump’s numerous failures to protect the public from the virus, 81% of Republicans approved of Trump’s management of the crisis. On Wednesday, March 18, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait discussed imminent, devastating human consequences which could have been significantly reduced with proper planning in “The Hospital Deluge Is Coming. Washington Has Done Almost Nothing to Prepare.” His opening paragraph summarized why America found itself in such a disastrous situation: “The most efficient first step would have been to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from spreading in the first place. As many reports have widely documented, that first step never took place because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to deploy an effective coronavirus test. ‘This is such a rapidly moving infection that losing a few days is bad, and losing a couple of weeks is terrible,’ Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, tells Bloomberg News. ‘Losing 2 months is close to disastrous, and that’s what we did.’ “The loss of those two months deprived the government of any chance to prevent the pandemic from sweeping across the entire country. Officials have been forced into reaction mode (160), deploying blunt measures of closing public spaces to try to slow down the spread. Even so, it is highly likely that, within a few weeks, the number of infected patients will exceed the capacity of the hospital system to treat them. “Washington has had weeks and weeks to prepare for this surge. The three most obvious and foreseeable shortages are hospital beds (161), respirator masks to protect medical staff (162), and ventilators (the machines that are needed to pump air into the lungs of patients with the most serious coronavirus symptoms). (163) “You would think the government would have spent the last two months scrambling to produce more of all three. There is no evidence this has happened, and a great deal of evidence it has not.” The answer to the supply shortage was clear: Trump needed to invoke the Defense Production Act, which would marshal the resources of the federal government to mass-produce the medical supplies needed by American hospitals. Fifty-seven House Democrats had sent an open letter to Trump on March 13, asking him to trigger the act. Though the situation was clearly about to become desperate, Trump told a reporter, “Well, we’re able to do that if we have to. Right now, we haven’t had to, but it’s certainly ready. If I want it, we can do it very quickly. We’ve studied it very closely over two weeks ago, actually. We’ll make that decision pretty quickly if we need it. We hope we don’t need it. It’s a big step.” (164) The scale of the administration’s negligence to help prepare states and localities was laid out with grim statistics: “Oregon sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence on March 3 asking for 400,000 N95 masks. For days, it got no response, and only by March 14 received its first shipment, of 36,800 masks. But there was a problem. Most of the equipment they got was well past the expiration date and so ‘wouldn’t be suitable for surgical settings,’ the state said. (165) “New York City also put in a request for more than 2 million masks and only received 76,000; all were expired, said Deanne Criswell, New York City’s emergency management commissioner.” (166) Over at Axios, Bob Herman focused on just one aspect of the coming shortage in “No part of the U.S. has enough hospital beds for a coronavirus crisis.” Herman reported that, “Every corner of the U.S. is at risk for a severe shortage of hospital beds as the coronavirus outbreak worsens… “…Why it matters: Total nationwide capacity for health care supplies doesn’t always matter, because hospitals in one area can help out neighboring systems when they’re overwhelmed by a crisis. But these projections indicate that won’t be an option with the coronavirus — everybody will be hurting at the same time. (167) “By the numbers: Harvard’s projections show if 50% of all currently occupied hospital beds were emptied and sizable percentages of Americans were infected, the country would need at least three times more beds to care for everyone. “Those models line up with James Lawler, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who forecasted in a recent presentation to hospital insiders that the U.S. may eventually have as many as 96 million cases, resulting in 4.8 million hospitalizations. He told Axios he stands by those projections. “The U.S. has 924,000 total hospital beds, or less than three beds for every 1,000 people. Roughly 5% of those beds are in standard intensive care units, where the sickest coronavirus patients would need to go.” Due to the expected shortage in hospital beds, medical facilities were delaying heart surgeries, “slow-growing or early-stage cancers,” and cancer screenings such as mammograms and colonoscopies (168). On Thursday March 19, as the full scale of the disaster was coming into clearer focus, the New York Times documented the Trump administration’s failures to act on information that was readily available in “Coronavirus Outbreak: A Cascade of Warnings, Heard but Unheeded.” The piece revealed that Trump’s Health and Human Services department had run a series of simulations (called “Crimson Contagion”) about responding to a hypothetical respiratory virus from China from January to August of 2019. The simulations “drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.” Further, “The draft report, marked ‘not to be disclosed,’ laid out in stark detail repeated cases of ‘confusion’ in the exercise. Federal agencies jockeyed over who was in charge. State officials and hospitals struggled to figure out what kind of equipment was stockpiled or available. Cities and states went their own ways on school closings. “Many of the potentially deadly consequences of a failure to address the shortcomings are now playing out in all-too-real fashion across the country. And it was hardly the first warning for the nation’s leaders. Three times over the past four years the U.S. government, across two administrations, had grappled in depth with what a pandemic would look like, identifying likely shortcomings and in some cases recommending specific action.” “…Asked at his news briefing on Thursday about the government’s preparedness, Mr. Trump responded: ‘Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion. Nobody has ever seen anything like this before.’ “The work done over the past five years, however, demonstrates that the government had considerable knowledge about the risks of a pandemic and accurately predicted the very types of problems Mr. Trump is now scrambling belatedly to address. (169) “But the planning and thinking happened many layers down in the bureaucracy. The knowledge and sense of urgency about the peril appear never to have gotten sufficient attention at the highest level of the executive branch or from Congress.” Just as Republicans did when George W. Bush failed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and contributed to the deaths of 1,800 Americans through sheer incompetence, Trump passed the buck to state governments. At a press conference that day, Trump said, “Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work…the federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. We’re not a shipping clerk.” (170) As New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait pointed out, “It is absolutely astonishing that Trump believes state and local governments should have primary responsibility for handling a national pandemic. Those governments lack the bargaining power and national scale to take control of industrial processes that lie outside their borders.” At the same press conference, a Washington Post photographer noticed that Trump had made one change to the notes he was using while speaking to the press—crossing out the word “coronavirus” and writing the words “Chinese virus” above it, a dog whistle to his racist supporters and a needless provocation to a country we should have been collaborating with who could provide the U.S. with pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment (171). As of Friday, March 20, eleven weeks after administration officials were first notified of the coronavirus, states and localities were still waiting for tests so that they could know where outbreaks were concentrated. (172) According to reporters Dan Goldberg, Brianna Ehley, and David Lim of Politico: “…governors and public health officials say they are still being forced to dramatically ration the tests, while labs are confronting daunting backlogs that delay the results….governors have been on the phone with Vice President Mike Pence and other federal officials, begging for additional supplies, testing kits, swabs, reagents and protective equipment. “The shortage of tests means that in many states people who believe they might have contracted the virus can’t know for sure and are told to stay home for weeks. (173) It means health care workers don’t know whether they’ve contracted the illness even as they treat infected patients and tend to members of high-risk groups, such as the elderly, who might be in the hospital for other reasons. (174) And it means public health officials are left guessing where they should direct resources because they can’t be certain whether there are clusters of cases. “….That’s left states to impose strict criteria on who can be tested, frustrating people across the country who are showing symptoms, worried but were told to wait and see if their cases worsen. In several states, only those who are hospitalized or at high risk, including those with underlying conditions, can be tested.” (175) Karen Weise and Mike Baker of the New York Times gave a preview of the severe rationing American hospitals would soon face: “Medical leaders in Washington state, which has the highest number of U.S. coronavirus deaths, have quietly begun preparing a bleak triage strategy to determine which patients may have to be denied complete medical care in the event that the health system becomes overwhelmed by the coronavirus in the coming weeks. “Fearing a critical shortage of supplies, including the ventilators needed to help the most seriously ill patients breathe, state officials and hospital leaders held a conference call Wednesday night to discuss the plans, according to several people involved in the talks. The triage document, still under consideration, will assess factors such as age, health and likelihood of survival in determining who will get access to full care and who will merely be provided comfort care, with the expectation that they will die.” Not only were hospitals likely to have shortages in beds, but clinicians would be hampered from doing their jobs because of the Trump administration’s failure to help states get adequate surgical masks and other personal protective equipment. In “Where are the Masks?,” Wajahat Ali revealed that to date the U.S. had tested only 82,000 people (by comparison to 270,000 tested in South Korea, 1/6th America’s size), leaving clinicians in the dark about whether their patients had the virus, and that “2,629 health workers had been infected” in Italy, giving a preview of what medical workers in the States had to look forward to if stocks of protective gear weren’t ramped up quickly. If clinicians get sick, “no one else will be left, especially in small communities, to take care of patients as the coronavirus exponentially spreads.” (see #157) Trump had committed to using the Defense Production Act to address this issue two days earlier, but had changed his mind later that night, tweeting that he would only invoke the Act “in a worst-case scenario in the future.” (176) Ali reported that “Almost every health-care professional I interviewed criticized the government’s lack of preparedness. ‘The biggest mistake we’ve made is that we awakened to this problem too late,’ said [a] New York emergency-room doctor. ‘We had three months of warning from China and then Europe, and we didn’t take it seriously.’” Another New York physician told Ali, “We have known for six weeks, and there was literally zero response and preparedness….The entire health-care system is a massive failure on a federal level.’” Clinicians “also voiced frustration toward the CDC and its changing guidelines on personal protective equipment. A few weeks ago the CDC said physicians needed N95 masks. Later, it said surgical masks would suffice. This week, it said bandanas and scarves can be used as a last resort. The physicians said they believe these shifting guidelines are driven by equipment shortages, and not the actual safety of health-care workers.” (177) With cities and some states shutting down, reported cases increasing by the day, widespread testing still not happening, hospitals overburdened and expecting worse, adequate PPE nowhere in sight, and a record number of Americans about to file for unemployment in no small part due to administration inaction from January 3 until March 13 (178), Peter Alexander of NBC asked Trump at that day’s daily coronavirus briefing, “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?” Trump’s response to this reasonable question was, “I say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say. I think it’s a very nasty question, and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.” (179) Saturday, March 21 featured an autopsy of executive branch failures from Politico’s resident expert on the Trump administration’s response, Dan Diamond (see #100 and #131). Diamond pointed out that while Trump’s sudden shift to publicly acknowledging the coronavirus with regular briefings and promises of federal assistance was assuaging gullible and uninformed Americans, behind the scenes the failures were evident: “…no one in the White House had devised a national strategy for obtaining and distributing the necessary supplies in the likely months-long fight against the pandemic that lies ahead, said three people with knowledge of the planning efforts. Those supply-planning efforts are only now underway.” As a result of 10 weeks of inaction from the administration, Seattle and New York City “have effectively abandoned efforts to conduct broad testing on residents, instead urging them to stay home given the shortages — an acknowledgment that efforts to contain coronavirus have failed and they need to prioritize limited supplies (180). Local officials also are making unusual crowdsourcing appeals. (181) “‘We need companies to be creative to supply the crucial gear our healthcare workers need. NY will pay a premium and offer funding,’ New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted on Friday. ‘If you have any of these unused supplies, please email [email protected].’” Not only was the Trump administration not using the Defense Production Act, they were actively competing with states for equipment

Donald Trump's presidency has caused a large increase in self-reported levels of stress among the American people. This will impact their health for generations. A similar dynamic is taking place in Europe and other parts of the world where authoritarian and other forma of extremist or reactionary politics have taken hold. Authoritarianism is not just a political and moral crisis — it is a public health crisis as well. This is another example of how politics is both a function of nature and nurture. There is the biological component of how the human brain is hardwired to respond to the environment. Nurture also influences how the brain develops and therefore processes information — and this in turn helps to shape political values and behavior. Ultimately, the truism that "the personal is political" remains correct in many ways that are both obvious as well as subtle and unexpected. How is the stress caused by Donald Trump and his right-wing movement negatively impacting the health and decision-making of the American people? In what ways has fear been weaponized by Trump and other authoritarians? If biology is connected to political behavior, where did all of these "new" authoritarians in America and elsewhere come from? How can we use our increasing knowledge about the human brain and stress to craft better public policy? How has research drawn from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology been abused and distorted by public figures such as Jordan Peterson and others who want to make grand claims about human behavior? How can science help us to understand the relationship between brain structure and sociopolitical behavior? In an effort an answer these questions I recently spoke with Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biological sciences and neurology at Stanford University. Sapolsky is one of the world's leading authorities on the connection between stress and disease, and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987. He is the author of numerous books, including "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers," "A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons," and most recently "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst." His writing has appeared in many publications, including Scientific American, Harper's and The New Yorker. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. How is this moment of rising authoritarianism, with Donald Trump in the United States and similar leaders around the world, impacting people on a physical and emotional level? Broadly, I would say it is generating a huge amount of stress and of the type that is of the worst sort. This is the stress that pushes people towards parochialism and banding together with comfortingly similar faces. This type of stress pushes people towards being less empathetic. It pushes towards the worst kinds of stress management, which is scapegoating. Recent surveys show that stress levels among the American people are at record levels. What explains this? Nobody in their right mind would say that it's more stressful today than what it was like for someone whose farm in Oklahoma was blowing away in 1930. But what I think has changed — and is at the root of an awful lot of these levels of stress skyrocketing — is that the most effective sources of communal support have been withering away. Social support is declining. This is the stability of communities and families. Stability has gotten jettisoned in part because social capital as a whole is crashing in many different communities. This is driven by income inequality and other problems, but also because we as individuals have needs and desires now that are exactly of the type that harms a sense of community. We like being mobile. We want to be able to be anonymous. We want to be able to reboot ourselves. We're willing to move to whatever isolated corner of the country for a good job or two years of great schooling or another opportunity. In having those opportunities, we have lost some really traditional sources of comfort and stress reduction. Trumpism and other types of right-wing populism in the United States and elsewhere are a symptom of deep feelings of loneliness and social atomization. Right-wing authoritarianism is also a story of a loss of social capital. Trump's followers and other authoritarians are desperate for a feeling of community. It is not surprising that some observers have described Trump's rallies as being like church revivals. That is a reflection of how after and during Trump's election the American pundit class discovered the marginalized white male, the undereducated working-class white male, and how they've been made to seem peripheral and left behind culturally. It is exactly such a circumstance that pushes a person towards one's in-group values, and that dynamic is certainly on display at Trump's rallies. There is research that suggests that the brains of in-group or higher social status group members in a given society do not behave in the same way when said person encounters someone they deem to be of "lower" social status. There is research which examined whether or not cars slowed down and stopped for people in crosswalks. The expensiveness of the car was taken as a proxy for socioeconomic status. This research shows that the wealthier the person, the less likely they were to stop for someone at a crosswalk. What's most interesting here is that people on top have every reason to be falling for system justification. This all makes wonderful sense. What's vastly more interesting is people on the bottom having a social dominance orientation and supporting the status quo. Liberals often ponder the incorrect question which is, "How is it that election after election, so many of the poor vote against their economic interests by putting robber baron Republicans into power?" My explanation is that the benefit these Republican voters are getting is a visceral one, which is that at least it's making for a world that's predictable. I think the relationship between social-dominance orientation in people and the extent to which they're made uncomfortable by ambiguity and novelty is really important. Better a stable world that's familiar, in which I'm doing pretty poorly, than dealing with all the ambiguity of a changing world. This also explains why what I have described as "political sadism" by Trump and other conservatives has been so effective. Right-wing leaders abuse their supporters and then those same supporters feel compelled towards the political leaders who are hurting them. It is catharsis. You get someone who's good at manipulating those emotions and what they do is to raise every terrifying prospect one could imagine: "We're being invaded by hordes of rapists and drug dealers, etc. The whole world is laughing at us, but here's the solution. The solution is me." It has to be very cathartic in that sense to generate the terror and then resolve it. In some ways picking up on your concept of a Trump rally as some evangelical religious revival, religion is really good at decreasing anxiety. That sounds great until you consider that religion is mostly good at decreasing the anxieties that it invented in the first place. If political behavior is informed by biology, how do we explain where these "new" authoritarians have come from? Authoritarians have always been here. But the features of a given moment make that way of thinking more or less appealing. Germany in the 1920s, when people are starving, suddenly makes "populist" answers and scapegoating different groups as the source of the problem much more appealing. Today's tumult in America is a much subtler one, where all sorts of folks whose values used to be at the core of society are now made to seem peripheral. Many people who are often not very educated or have occupations and skills that are obsolete and who maybe feel like the dominant culture has passed them by are now imagining themselves surrounded by people who don't look like them. This can be immigrants or refugees. In the face of all that change, easy answers start to seem really appealing. Let's reflect on the resurgent power of ethnocentrism, racism and nativism in today's politics. Trump won the White House by playing on racist stereotypes and other myths about immigrants from Latin America. But that fear-mongering was most powerful among white racially homogeneous communities. Communities that are more racially integrated did not succumb to these threats. How do we explain that? Your observation fits perfectly with all the news coverage about how people who live right on the U.S.-Mexico border are saying, "Emergency? What emergency? What are you talking about?" What exposure does is, with any luck, is show you a reality and objective truth that is very different from what the demagogues are saying. Temperament also matters as well. On the most basic level, is the unknown a scary thing or an exciting thing? Even the temperament of children in terms of novelty at a young age is predictive of anxiety and political orientation later on in life. The notion of humans as inherently rational beings has been not only trashed in economics, but trashed in all the best research on moral decision-making. Researchers have shown that brain structure influences political behavior. Those who tend to be more authoritarian and conservative are more likely to fixate on unpleasant images and obsess about things that are viewed as pollutants or are "dirty," People who tend to be more liberal or progressive are not as sensitive to the same stimuli. How can these divergences be weaponized in politics? Disgust is a very powerful tool for bringing about crowd violence. If a group can be dehumanized and made into the Other, the "them," to treat that group horribly is made much easier. Powerful neurobiological processes have assisted in that process and outcome. What about sociobiology? Has it fallen out of fashion yet? With the popularity of Jordan Peterson and other academic-adjacent types who try to make grand claims about human nature and biology, that area of study seems to still be popular. The good research typically does not support such narratives in the slightest. That sort of sociobiology research in the 1970s and 1980s has lost most of its steam because the work has gotten more rigorous. This is true not just of human beings. Complex social species violate strict sociobiological models of behavior because individual differences disprove conclusions about such things as nice pseudo-economic models regarding decision-making that optimizes reproductive success for example. Much of this re-emerged in the 1990s in the form of evolutionary psychology, and that has certainly been appropriately trashed concerning its excesses. One of the problems with that type of research and theory is a focus on differences without a focus on the reliability of the differences as well as the magnitude of the difference. Another problem is a focus on averages rather than understanding that the most interesting stuff about humans is variability from the mean and the importance of individual difference. Jordan Peterson's simplistic perspective on the universe is not sustained by rigorous science. Those simple stories are very lucrative. This is especially true regarding claims about how men and women are "naturally" different from one another. When you hear such arguments, do you just dismiss them out of hand? Are such claims even worth engaging? It terrifies me. It is very hard to dismiss. It constantly strikes me that, "Oh my God, you should be able to debate these people and show how nonsensical they are," and then realizing any sane person who is coming from my field would be out of their minds to even engage in such a debate or discussion. Why? Because the undercurrent of their claims is not anything that's solvable by rational arguments and facts. The men's rights types and others who parrot their claims are just trying to appeal to unpleasant emotions. You cannot reason somebody out of a stance they were not reasoned into in the first place. Jordan Peterson doesn't have followers because his arguments are logically airtight. There are many men who are fed up with feeling that they are somehow marginalized or made peripheral. Peterson is someone who is telling them what they want to hear on an emotional level. I am concerned about the implications of "big data" as applied to genetic research. "Sociogenomics" seems like it can be easily twisted to bring back and legitimate old discredited theories about race. In essence, "sociogenomics" could be a 21st century way of giving life to zombie ideas such as "race science" and "eugenics" from a century or more ago. To the extent to which we are in the "genomics era," one thing that disturbs me is how broadly most people misinterpret what genes have to do with behavior. One should not ask what a gene does. Instead we should ask what a gene does in a particular environment. There is no species that provides more diversity of environments than human beings when it comes to generating genes that are subordinate to environmental interactions. "Evolutionarily adapted" is not a moral value. It is not a state of goodness of fit. It is just a statement of how you're dealing with the environment in the present. And just as evolution is not directional towards ever more wonderfully "supreme beings" until it produces Germanic culture in the 1930s, in the same way evolution is not a force of moral selection or value selection. We have the tools for getting incredible amounts of data. There are people taking online surveys and instead of 60 subjects in your study, there are 5,000. A researcher is sequencing genomes from 100,000 people. Instead of recording from one neuron at a time, we can record information from thousands. What results is an amount of data that researchers cannot intuitively make sense of. There is no intuitive way to understand those massive amounts of data. The downside then, as you suggest, is that it is easy to manipulate and subsequently produce whatever result you want with that data. This leads us to "epigenetics" and how stress impacts different individuals and communities. On one hand it is very powerful to be able to say that environment and stress have measurable negative impacts on individuals and groups, often as demarcated along the color line. But I am also deeply concerned about how this research can be used to advance regressive arguments such as that these problems are genetic and can't be fixed by public policy. One of the big worries is exactly what you raise. Epigenetics can be used to suggest that things can't change, they are unfixable. Then a few steps later the conclusion can be that these problems should be fixed on a societal level because they are inevitable. But in reality nothing about the biology of this is about inevitability. It is all about propensities, vulnerabilities and potential as related to the environment. For example there are claims that everything that can go wrong with our health is stress-related. This is certainly not the case. Stress causes very few diseases. What stress does is it makes it harder for your body to withstand the traditional causes of diseases. In the realm of stress management there are these claims about the power of the mind and psychology to buffer people from stressful circumstances. The danger here is an absurd notion that we all have the power to be free from stress if we only had the right attitude and if we only had the correct internal coping mechanisms. "Stress management" is mostly for neurotic middle-class or higher-status people working on their "First World problems." Stress management should not be expected to make a dent in your life if you are homeless or if you're a refugee or if you have a terminal disease. The solutions are then framed as being individual and primarily a function of "self-reliance" and "personal responsibility," as opposed to being communal and public-health-oriented. Absolutely. Mental health professionals, who are trained to think about one person at a time, often wind up being so stressed out because they realize what they are dealing with are mostly public health problems. Any claim that a person should be able to meditate away their neurochemical imbalances or organic disease states — what are these societal-sized problems on an individual level — is just ridiculous. Let us imagine that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or another forward-thinking elected official asked you to testify about your research on stress and human biology. What advice would you offer? Everything that researchers such as myself know about the links between socioeconomic status and stress-related health repeatedly shows that at the end of the day the mediating factor is that poor communities and socially unequal societies create people who do not trust each other and feel like they do not have efficacy. Social capital crashes in communities that are unequal and/or poor. Do something about that. That's the level where intervention is needed. Medication is not a long-term solution.

Trump Declares Coronavirus A Public Health Emergency And Restricts Travel From China Enlarge this image toggle caption Evan Vucci/AP Evan Vucci/AP Updated 7:55 p.m. ET The Trump administration declared a public health emergency in the U.S. Friday in response to the global coronavirus outbreak. "Today President Trump took decisive action to minimize the risk of novel coronavirus in the United States," said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at a White House press conference. The risk of contracting the coronavirus is the U.S. is low — something that federal health administration officials emphasized repeatedly. "We are working to keep the risk low," Azar said. The declaration of a public health emergency — which will become effective Sunday at 5 p.m. ET — enables the government to take temporary measures to contain the spread of the virus, which has been confirmed in seven people in the U.S. The action means that U.S. citizens who have been in China's Hubei Province in the past 14 days will be subject to 14 days of mandatory quarantine if they travel back to the United States. Earlier Friday, federal officials announced that American citizens who were evacuated from Wuhan earlier in the week would be quarantined for 14 days at March Air Reserve Base in Southern California. The action represents the first time in 50 years the U.S. has instituted a quarantine order. In addition, the U.S. is temporarily suspending entry of most travelers arriving from China, or who have recently been in China, if they are not U.S. citizens. "Foreign nationals other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have traveled in China in the last 14 days will be denied entry into United States," Azar said. Further, U.S. citizens who have been in other areas of mainland China in the past two weeks will be subject to screening at the airport of entry and to heightened monitoring for 14 days. In their Friday remarks, federal health officials pointed to the fast global spread of the virus as justification for the move. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency on Thursday. U.S. officials also tried to explain their reasoning for an intense focus on this outbreak, which so far has not led to any deaths in the U.S., though it has led to more than 250 in China. "I often get asked [about the] influenza outbreak," which has led to at least 8,000 deaths in the U.S. this season, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the NIH. "People want to know why we're paying so much attention to the novel coronavirus." In contrast to the seasonal flu toll, which is predictable, Fauci said, "there are a lot of unknowns [with the coronavirus]." "The number of cases has steeply inclined each and every day," Fauci noted. In addition, at the beginning of the outbreak, it wasn't clear whether an infected person without symptoms could transmit the virus to another person. "Now we know for sure that there are" asymptomatic infections, Fauci said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II declared a public health emergency for the entire United States to aid the nation’s healthcare community in responding to 2019 novel coronavirus. “While this virus poses a serious public health threat, the risk to the American public remains low at this time, and we are working to keep this risk low,” Secretary Azar said. “We are committed to protecting the health and safety of all Americans, and this public health emergency declaration is the latest in the series of steps the Trump Administration has taken to protect our country.” The emergency declaration gives state, tribal, and local health departments more flexibility to request that HHS authorize them to temporarily reassign state, local, and tribal personnel to respond to 2019-nCoV if their salaries normally are funded in whole or in part by Public Health Service Act programs. These personnel could assist with public health information campaigns and other response activities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working closely with state health departments on disease surveillance, contact tracing, and providing interim guidance for clinicians on identifying and treating coronavirus infections. HHS is working with the Department of State to assist in bringing home Americans who had been living in affected areas of mainland China. HHS divisions also are collaborating with industry to identify and move forward with development of potential diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics to detect, prevent, and treat 2019-nCoV infections. In declaring the public health emergency, Secretary Azar acted within his authority under the Public Health Service Act. This declaration is retroactive to January 27, 2020. This U.S. public health emergency declaration follows a declaration by the World Health Organization that spread of the virus constituted a public health emergency of international concern. # # #

President Joe Biden has promised that COVID-19 vaccines will be available to all residents of the United States by May 1, saying that his goal is for Americans to return to some degree of normalcy by July 4. Science writer Katherine J. Wu, in an article published by The Atlantic, stresses that there is both good news and bad news where COVID-19 vaccines are concerned. The bad news is that some people who are vaccinated for COVID-d19 will be infected anyway; the good news is that the vast majority won't. "Breakthrough infections, which occur when fully vaccinated people are infected by the pathogen that their shots were designed to protect against, are an entirely expected part of any vaccination process," Wu explains. "They're the data points that keep vaccines from reaching 100 percent efficacy in trials; they're simple proof that no inoculation is a perfect preventative. And so far, the ones found after COVID-19 vaccination seem to be extraordinary." So far, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has approved three COVID-19 vaccines: one from Pfizer, one from Moderna — and most recently, one from Johnson & Johnson. Wu notes that since December, "nearly 40 million Americans" have been fully vaccinated. And the evidence, according to Wu, makes a strong argument for getting a COVID-19 vaccine. "A vanishingly small percentage of those people have gone on to test positive for the coronavirus," Wu observes. "The post-shot sicknesses documented so far seem to be mostly mild, reaffirming the idea that inoculations are powerful weapons against serious disease, hospitalization, and death. This smattering of cases is a hazy portent of our future: Coronavirus infections will continue to occur, even as the masses join the ranks of the inoculated. The goal of vaccination isn't eradication, but a détente in which humans and viruses coexist, with the risk of disease at a tolerable low." And as WBIR reported, even if you do get infected after being fully vaccinated, your case of COVID-19 is likely to be less severe: Research reveals people who have been vaccinated but still develop COVID-19 will likely have minimal to no symptoms. "This fact that you can be vaccinated and still get COVID, but with minimal symptoms or no symptoms, is one of the reasons that all the public health authorities are saying, keep wearing your mask, keep social distancing. And here is a perfect example of why that's so important," Dr. Bill Smith said. What Wu describes as "breakthrough cases" is not unique to COVID-19 vaccines. Some people who receive flu shots get the flu anyway, but more often than not, flu shots work well — and millions of people avoid the flu because of them. However, Wu points out that new COVID-19 variants that have been emerging in different parts of the world are raising concerns about "breakthrough cases." "When breakthrough cases do arise, it's not always clear why," Wu observes. "The trio of vaccines now circulating in the United States were all designed around the original coronavirus variant, and seem to be a bit less effective against some newer versions of the virus. These troublesome variants have yet to render any of our current vaccines obsolete." Saad Omer, described by Wu as a "vaccine expert" at Yale University, told her, "The more variants there are, the more concern you have for breakthrough cases, Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at St. Louis' Washington University, told Wu, "Being vaccinated doesn't mean you are immune. It means you have a better chance of protection." Wu concludes her article by stressing that when it comes "breakthrough cases" and COVID-19 vaccines, it will be important to comprehend the data in the months ahead. "The more people we vaccinate," Wu notes, "the more such cases there will be, in absolute numbers. But the rate at which they appear will also decline, as rising levels of population immunity cut the conduits that the virus needs to travel. People with lackluster responses to vaccines — as well as those who can't get their jabs — will receive protection from the many millions in whom the shots did work. In a crowd of people holding umbrellas, even those who are empty-handed will stay more dry."

Biden will compel states to make all adults eligible for vaccines by May 1 WASHINGTON — The White House will compel state, local, and tribal governments to make all American adults eligible to sign up for Covid-19 vaccines no later than May 1, President Biden said on Thursday. The Biden administration has previously issued non-binding directions or recommendations on Covid-19 mitigation measures like mask use or school reopenings. But the aides stressed that, using the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services, its vaccine order will be binding, and states’ compliance will be mandatory. The goal, Biden aides told reporters on a conference call, is to allow Americans to gather in relative normalcy by July 4. advertisement “Because of all the work we’ve done, we will have enough vaccine for all adults in America by the end of May,” Biden said. “That’s months ahead of schedule, and we are mobilizing thousands of vaccinators to put the vaccine in one’s arm.” The announcement marks the Biden administration’s most aggressive pledge yet on vaccine availability. Upon his inauguration on Jan. 20, Biden pledged the country would administer 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days in office — a mark the country is set to pass within weeks, well in advance of the deadline. Biden said last week that there would be enough vaccines for all American adults seeking them by May, though he stopped short of pledging that all those seeking vaccines would be eligible to receive them. advertisement The U.S. is currently administering over 2 million vaccines per day, and manufacturing scale-ups from the manufacturers of the three currently authorized for use — two-dose regimens made by Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership, and a one-dose vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson — mean that number will likely grow in the coming weeks and months. Biden pledged, moving forward, that the U.S. will maintain its pace of at least 2 million vaccines per day, stressing that the country is easily on track to pass his initial 1-million-per day goal. (In fact, the country was administering nearly 1 million vaccines per day even before Biden’s inauguration.) “When I came into office, you may recall, I set a goal that many of you said was, kind of, way over the top,” Biden said. “I said I intended to get 100 million shots in arms in my first 100 days in office. Tonight, I can say we’re not only going to meet that goal — we’re going to beat that goal.” The announcement came just hours before Biden was set to make a primetime address marking the anniversary of widespread coronavirus-related shutdowns in 2020. During the press call, Biden aides also outlined a broader acceleration of the vaccination effort. The government will double the number of retail pharmacies participating in the vaccine rollout, meaning 20,000 commercial sites will offer Covid-19 immunizations. It will also double the number of federally backed mass vaccination centers, and deploy an additional 4,000 active-duty military personnel to assist in the vaccine effort, bringing the total number of troops involved to 6,000. The administration will also attempt to expand the pool of professionals who can give vaccines to include paramedics, physician assistants, veterinarians, and dentists, and medical students, including some training for non-physician positions. HHS will also launch a new website to help Americans find available vaccines, the aides said. Much of Biden’s address is set to focus on the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package that Biden signed into law on Thursday. The administration said it would use $50 billion from that bill to invest in a testing effort aimed at helping schools quickly reopen. Separately, the administration will direct funds toward scaling up screening tests in congregate settings like homeless shelters and prisons, and fund a new ramping-up of at-home tests that individual Americans could use outside a medical setting. On the call, Biden officials also announced they would use an additional $1.7 billion in the relief bill to expand genomic sequencing infrastructure used to detect coronavirus variants that are potentially more transmissible, or less deterred by existing vaccines.

When breakthrough cases do arise, it’s not always clear why. The trio of vaccines now circulating in the United States were all designed around the original coronavirus variant, and seem to be a bit less effective against some newer versions of the virus. These troublesome variants have yet to render any of our current vaccines obsolete. But “the more variants there are, the more concern you have for breakthrough cases,” Saad Omer, a vaccine expert at Yale, told me. The circumstances of exposure to any version of the coronavirus will also make a difference. If vaccinated people are spending time with groups of unvaccinated people in places where the virus is running rampant, that still raises their chance of getting sick. Large doses of the virus can overwhelm the sturdiest of immune defenses, if given the chance. The human side of the equation matters, too. Immunity is not a monolith, and the degree of defense roused by an infection or a vaccine will differ from person to person, even between identical twins. Some people might have underlying conditions that hamstring their immune system’s response to vaccination; others might simply, by chance, churn out fewer or less potent antibodies and T cells that can nip a coronavirus infection in the bud. Read: You’re not fully vaccinated on the day of your last dose The effects of vaccination are best considered along a spectrum, says Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis. An ideal response to vaccination might create an arsenal of immune molecules and cells that can instantaneously squelch the virus, leaving no time for symptoms to appear. But sometimes that front line of fighters is relatively sparse. Should the virus make it through, “it becomes a race [against] time,” Ellebedy told me. The pathogen rushes to copy itself, and the immune system recruits more defenders. The longer the tussle drags on, the more likely the disease is to manifest. The range of vaccine responses “isn’t a variation of two- to threefold; it’s thousands,” Ellebedy told me. “Being vaccinated doesn’t mean you are immune. It means you have a better chance of protection.” For these reasons and more, Viviana Simon, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York, dislikes the term breakthrough case, which evokes a barrier walling humans off from disease. “It’s very misleading,” she told me. “It’s like the virus ‘punches’ through our defenses.” Vaccination is actually more like a single variable in a dynamic playing field—a layer of protection, like an umbrella, that might guard better in some situations than others. It could keep a lucky traveler relatively dry in a light drizzle, but in a windy maelstrom that’s whipping heavy droplets every which way, another person might be overwhelmed. And under many circumstances, vaccines are still best paired with safeguards such as masks and distancing—just as rain boots and jackets would help buffer someone in a storm.

Though it's rare, you can still catch COVID-19 after getting vaccinated, but research shows milder symptoms and lower transmission. KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Carol Ottaviano is a volunteer for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trial. She rolled up her sleeves for both shots last September ( show card). "More than anything, I was interested in knowing what a clinical trial was. I knew it was a 50/50 shot of if I would get the real deal or not, and also just wanting to do something for the common good," Ottaviano said. When the telltale side effects of the vaccine kicked in, she suspected she got the “real deal.” In December, researchers confirmed her hunch. She said she felt a new sense of security, pretty confident she was protected from COVID-19. In January, a trip to Texas proved to be a reality check. Her father was in his final days so she gathered with friends and family. A couple of days later she started suffering from a stomach ache and low-grade fever. She went to get tested because she had been around her sister, her husband and her 90-year-old mother. "The next day I got the phone call that you don’t want to get that said, ‘You’ve got COVID.' So I was shocked. I said, 'Are you sure about that result?' and they said, 'Yes,'" Ottaviano said. Ottaviano is one of a small group of people to test positive for COVID-19 after getting the 95% effective Pfizer vaccines. Research reveals people who have been vaccinated but still develop COVID-19 will likely have minimal to no symptoms. "This fact that you can be vaccinated and still get COVID, but with minimal symptoms or no symptoms, is one of the reasons that all the public health authorities are saying, keep wearing your mask, keep social distancing. And here is a perfect example of why that's so important," Dr. Bill Smith said. Smith heads up several COVID-19 vaccine trials in Knoxville, including the Pfizer study. He said these studies are essential. "We’re collecting this data over the next couple of years because we don’t know how long it’s going to last. We will continue to get information about its effectiveness against variants as these arise. We’re going to continue to get any information on any unexpected delayed side effects that we don’t know about at this point," Smith said. Ottaviano never expected to be among the 5% but is grateful she didn’t pass COVID-19 on to her family

At a time when as many Americans as possible need to be vaccinated for COVID-19, a Milwaukee-based pharmacist has been arrested and accused of intentionally destroying more than 500 doses of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine. The pharmacist's arrest was confirmed by police officials in Grafton, Wisconsin, according to National Public Radio. The charges the person is facing include criminal damage to property and endangering public safety. The Aurora Medical Center reported, in late December, that vials containing Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine disappeared from a pharmacy refrigerator and were left out overnight — which made them unusable, as the vaccine needs to be stored in cold temperatures. At first, the Aurora Medical Center believed that the vaccine doses were destroyed because of a simple mistake. But on Wednesday night, the Center said that the person who destroyed the doses "acknowledged that they intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration." And the Grafton Police Department officials said that the pharmacist who was arrested admitted "to intentionally removing the vaccine, knowing that if not properly stored, the vaccine would be ineffective." NPR reporter Vanessa Romo explains, "During a teleconference Thursday, Chief Aurora Medical Group Officer Jeff Bahr told reporters that the former employee deliberately removed the vials from refrigeration on two separate occasions — on December 24 overnight, then returning them to proper storage, and then again on December 25 into Saturday morning." The Aurora Medical Center, in an official statement, said, ""We are more than disappointed that this individual's actions will result in a delay of more than 500 people receiving their vaccine. This was a violation of our core values, and the individual is no longer employed by us." The center, according to NBC News, has vaccinated more than 21,000 health workers so far.

Officials in Hamilton County, Tennessee have been caught giving the COVID-19 vaccination to "close friends and family" after turning away elderly people by claiming they had run out of the vaccine. When a journalist questioned a car of seven younger people who had been vaccinated, the people in the car laughed and said, "We got contacts," as in, they're connected to people who could give them the vaccination over older people who need it far more. WRCB reports that on Thursday, the Hamilton County Health Department began offering vaccines to people 75 and older at 9 a.m., quickly causing a traffic jam and causing the department to start turning away cars by 1 p.m., including cars filled with old people who had been waiting over four hours. Acting on a tip, WRCB reporters returned to the site after dark "to find cars leaving the property," the news station reports. "The people in those vehicles told Channel 3 family members or friends who were helping to administer the vaccines called to tell them there were extra doses and they should come to receive a dose." Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger told the news station that the vaccination team mistakenly told the cars that had arrived earlier to leave, thinking they would run out of doses. When the team realized it had enough doses thawed that needed to be used quickly before going bad, they hen called others to come and get vaccinated. "They wanted to make sure that none of it would go to waste," Coppinger said, adding, "I understand the frustration of those who waited in line and did not get the vaccine (Thursday), and I can assure you we will learn from this experience. We will explore better ways to get the job done, and we appreciate the patience of the public as we move forward in performing this unprecedented service." The screw-up merely illustrates problems with the national vaccine roll-out. One commenter in Oklahoma said that the state has no vaccination roll-out plan, and is allowing people to sign up for vaccinations using an unverified SignUpGenius web page that requires no verification nor screening based on age or whether one is a frontline worker.

Helpful tips Talk to your doctor about taking over-the-counter medicine, such as ibuprofen, acetaminophen, aspirin, or antihistamines, for any pain and discomfort you may experience after getting vaccinated. You can take these medications to relieve post-vaccination side effects if you have no other medical reasons that prevent you from taking these medications normally. It is not recommended you take these medicines before vaccination for the purpose of trying to prevent side effects.

During a hearing on the nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic this Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci while citing studies he said show that the threat of being reinfected with the virus is relatively low. Paul said the studies show "significant optimism" that the virus is on the wane. "What specific studies do you cite to argue that the public should be wearing masks well into 2022?" Paul asked Fauci. Fauci replied that he didn't understand the connection Paul was drawing between masks and reinfection. "We're talking about people who have never been infected before," Fauci said. "You're telling everybody to wear a mask whether they've had an infection or a vaccine," Paul shot back. "What I'm saying is they have immunity and everybody agrees they have immunity. What studies do you have that people who have had the vaccine or have had the infection are spreading the infection? If we're not spreading the infection, isn't it just theater? You've had the vaccine and you're wearing two masks -- isn't that theater?" Fauci, visibly frustrated with Paul's line of questioning, replied, "Here we go again with the theater." "Let's get down to the facts," Fauci said. "The studies that you quote from Crotty and and Sette look at in vitro examination of memory immunity, which in their paper they specifically say this does not necessarily pertain to the actual protection. It's in vitro. ... The other thing is when you talk about reinfection and you don't keep in the concept of variants, that's an entirely different ball game. That's a good reason for a mask." Paul reiterated his point that "there is no evidence" of significant reinfection after natural infection or the vaccine. "It doesn't exist," Paul said. "You're not hearing what I'm saying about variants," Fauci replied. Paul argued that there's no evidence of significant reinfections from variants with hospitalizations and deaths, to which Fauci replied that "we don't have a prevalent variant yet." Watch the full exchange in the video below:

by Emily James After more than a month into New York City's experiment with reopening schools in a hybrid format that has students alternating between classrooms and their homes, teacher Sapphira Hendrix still finds herself working until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, planning lessons and responding to students. One night in particular, she recounts, when finishing up a lesson plan for one of her classes, she glanced at the clock and noticed it was 4:30 a.m. "I realized I had just finished my work for the night at about the same time I normally would be getting up to start my day." Hendrix says this was one of the moments she finally was struck with the absurdity of what educators in her community, and in many school districts across America, are doing to carry their work in a pandemic. "This isn't healthy or sustainable," she says. When New York City schools opened their doors with a plan for students to cycle in and out of classrooms and learn remotely the rest of the time, many doubted this big city would pull it off. Educators, parents, and students had questions about the logistics of an undertaking so enormous by a Department of Education that has struggled for years, even without a pandemic. Hudson High School of Learning Technologies in Manhattan, where Hendrix works, seems like a great example of a school that's doing hybrid learning right. Founded in 2010, this relatively new school serves a disproportionately high-poverty (84 percent) population of students, yet has a high rate (43 percent) of students taking Advanced Placement courses. Educators I've spoken to at the school say they have banded together and created a school learning plan that's functioning well during the pandemic, mixing in-person and remote learning and providing their students with high-quality education. And yes, we can look to a school like HHSLT to find lessons in making miracles happen in unbelievably challenging times. But too often, when we hear stories of educators who are reaching above and beyond, we applaud them briefly and move on from the story too soon. A closer look reveals that educators are suffering beneath the taxing workload and unreasonable dedication this hybrid opening has required. What's happening at HHSLT symbolizes what's happening citywide and across the country: a group of people with little resources creating something out of nothing, who desperately need and deserve more support. Hendrix, a math teacher who also serves as the school's programmer, is tasked with creating the school's continuously changing schedules, making sure students have a schedule that provides them with a diversity of subject matter and propels them toward graduation, and providing teachers with the increasingly complex rosters of who is in their classes and when. "All of this planning to reopen schools, and I doubt they asked any programmers for advice," Hendrix says, reflecting on the impossible nature of doing the job this year. Even after countless summer meetings discussing program options, the real planning couldn't even begin until after August 7 when the district closed the opt-in window for parents to choose in-person learning for the first quarter. This led to a frantic race to make it all happen. "On August 10, 25 percent of students were remote, and a handful of teachers [were planning to work remotely as well]," Hendrix told me. "So I started to plan for that." Because the district continued to allow parents to opt out of in-person learning on a rolling basis, the student numbers still changed daily, with more students switching to remote learning, all while more teachers were approved for accommodations to work remotely. By the end of the summer, the number of HHSLT students who were expected to learn remotely had increased to 51 percent. Hendrix had to reprogram on a daily basis, and still does. Even months after the start of school, she still has to notify 10-15 teachers of program changes every evening. She considered taking a childcare leave because the taxing workload was not sustainable. "It felt like my job was never complete. I could never finish and move on to my next task." Glen Pandolfino, a global studies and economics teacher at HHSLT, moves room to room throughout the day in order to minimize the students' exposure and help them remain in their "pods." He describes what it's like to instruct with a mask on as being difficult to be engaged and be heard. Technology has helped. "I can't get over how well the staff uses digital education," he says. "I'm an old-school teacher, but it [hybrid learning] is forcing me to do things differently, and I appreciate it [digital education tools] a lot more. And I appreciate the younger teachers taking time out to help me learn all of this." When I ask Pandolfino if he feels like kids are learning, he chuckles in a warm way that makes me feel like I'm his student. "Oh yes, they are learning great content." He goes on to tell me about the political revolution project his students are working on that they are presenting to each other the following Monday—his excitement about the project is palpable. Pandolfino says that despite all the challenges, he's really proud of the work his staff has done to make school happen this year. "I think we are doing a good job of providing some semblance of 'normal' for the students," he says, and that an "even bigger lesson" the teachers convey is that, "Whether in-person or online, the kids understand we are there for them." Dr. Jody Wurzel, the school's guidance counselor, agrees that this school year has been the most trying one of her career—and it isn't even December yet. But even with the strange new environment—with the six-foot distance and students spread out awkwardly around a big room—during Dr. Wurzel's walk-throughs of classes, she is able to sense kids are happy and at ease. "I'm so glad to see the kids here, and engaged to the best they can be," she told me. "You can see a smile through a mask. As a counselor, I [now] have to be able to look into [students'] eyes and see the emotions there, instead of their mouths. I have to be able to look at the top of a face and assess through that—the eye contact, the cheekbones moving, the tone of their voice." She described her visit to an advisory class earlier in the day, where she saw kids helping each other from a distance, laughing with each other. "I was able to feel the energy walking into that room. And in an entire classroom of kids, not one of them was in distress. They were all happy, taking everything they could from the time they had together." Schools like HHSLT seem to be managing the impossible—but these educators' successes don't exist in a vacuum. For solutions to work for students in the long term, the work of educators needs to be paired with considerations of how parents and communities can support schools and educators so they can do this work on a sustainable basis. Educators are the strongest army right now trying to create normalcy for America's kids, but at what expense? How many of them will be able to continue this way without the support from elected officials, from local budgets, without protections from layoffs? If these are the people who are solving the education system's Rubik's Cube on a daily basis, what can we do as a society to make sure we don't lose them? We can start by asking teachers what they need. What better experts are there on this than educators themselves? They can best tell us what models make sense and what resources we need to provide. "All of these decisions about how to return to the building were made without anyone who works in a school building, without their input," Hendrix laments. "We're just not heard. We have no voice." She also comments on the criticism educators have taken for the parts of the model that haven't worked—the lack of staffing and ballooning class sizes. "It's so unfortunate that teachers are being blamed for the shortcomings of the system," she says. Of course, teacher burnout was a common issue even before the pandemic. Its causes have always been multifaceted—ranging from lack of autonomy within the classroom to a frenzied environment with too little rest and inability to regroup. Schools chronically lack resources, budget, time for the lessons, and time to prepare. Insert the pandemic and hybrid learning model, and all of these causes intensify drastically. This year, in-person teachers struggle without breaks, without a home classroom, and with health and safety fears. Remote teachers struggle with technology issues and ballooning class sizes. Both types of teachers struggle with the time necessary to adjust curricula to support virtual learning. "Everyone feels like a first-year teacher this year," Hendrix said, referring to the stress, strain, and amount of planning involved. Many teachers feel that their workload is invisible to society. While across the country, people are discussing the education of children on a daily basis, our communities and leaders are not addressing teachers' well-being and quality of life. This huge oversight will have a grave effect on our education system if we don't focus on it before it's too late. According to a 2017 Learning Policy Institute report, teacher burnout (called "dissatisfaction" in the report) is the number one reason educators leave the system before retirement, and the leading cause of teacher shortages. The effects of the way our teachers are treated and the lack of support they receive have undeniable consequences for our education system. According to an analysis of the report by the Graide Network, "Teacher burnout leads to reduced educational quality, because it increases the numbers of underqualified or straight-up unqualified teachers in the system." The message is clear: Schools are making the hybrid learning plan work as best they can, but our teachers are likely not okay. Yes, they are getting the work done—but their physical, emotional, and mental health may be suffering in the process. To continue on this path without providing educators the support and resources they need is a huge disservice not only to our educators but also to the future of our schools. Our children deserve a proper education, but they deserve to learn from teachers whose basic needs are met, who have not been up until or since 4:30 a.m. It's the educators doing the saving now, but we need to save our educators too. This article was produced by Our Schools. Emily James is a writer and former teacher in New York City. She currently works as a member rep for the United Federation of Teachers. On Twitter, follow her at @missg3rd. This story has been updated to correct a description of Hendrix's class.

A bipartisan Senate amendment to withdraw the remaining 8,600 U.S. troops from Afghanistan—ending a bloody war that has dragged on for nearly two decades—failed Wednesday after 16 Democrats joined 44 Republicans in voting to table the measure, effectively guaranteeing it will not be included in the chamber's $740.5 billion National Defense Authorization Act. Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, applauded Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) in a statement for forcing senators to go on the record with their amendment, which would have required the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan within a year and brought an end to the 19-year war—the longest in American history. "The pandemic clearly shows that expensive endless wars that cost $6 trillion from taxpayers make Americans less safe as they take funds from critical needs like healthcare," said Martin. Below are the 16 members of the Senate Democratic caucus who voted with nearly every Republican to table the Afghanistan amendment: Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) Tom Carper (Del.) Chris Coons (Del.) Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) Maggie Hassan (N.H.) Doug Jones (Ala.) Angus King (Maine) Joe Manchin (W.Va.) Bob Menendez (N.J.) Chris Murphy (Conn.) Jack Reed (R.I.) Jacky Rosen (Nev.) Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz) Mark Warner (Va.) Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) The Paul-Udall amendment would also have repealed the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, Congress' sweeping legal green light for the deployment of U.S. troops to Afghanistan that was subsequently used by the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations to justify military action in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other nations as part of the so-called "war on terror." "American voters agree we must end endless wars," said Martin. "After nearly 19 years, over 147,000 casualties and total costs over a trillion dollars, it's long past time to bring troops home and invest in political, diplomatic, and development tools. Yet, the Senate voted against debating to end the wars."

Sen. Rand Paul contradicted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and told people during a FOX News interview on Friday to discard their masks once they have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have been infected with the coronavirus. "If you’ve had the disease or you’ve been vaccinated and you’re several weeks out of your second dose, throw your mask away and tell Dr. Fauci to take a leap because, once you have immunity, you don’t need to do this," the Kentucky Republican told Fox News host Lauren Ingram. The CDC says "not enough information is currently available" to lift its recommendations that people wear masks and practice social distancing after getting the vaccine. "Experts need to understand more about the protection that COVID-19 vaccines provide in real-world conditions before making that decision. Other factors, including how many people get vaccinated and how the virus is spreading in communities, will also affect this decision," the CDC says. More coronavirus news:Kentucky's COVID-19 positivity rate drops below 12% as 3,096 more cases are reported "Masks and social distancing will need to continue into the foreseeable future — until we have some level of herd immunity. Masks and distancing are here to stay," Dr. Preeti Malani, the chief health officer at the University of Michigan, told PBS. Malani also said that no vaccine is immediately effective. It takes roughly two weeks before an immune system to make the antibodies necessary to block the infections. Experts also aren’t sure whether the COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from spreading the virus. As of right now, the vaccines are only known to prevent people from getting sick. Until experts can determine that, the safest thing is to keep wearing masks, according to Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director. Some on social media criticized Paul for his comments. "With this ludicrous statement, Rand Paul presents more compelling personal evidence that he remains a very ignorant, dangerous, and misguided individual," tweeted former CIA Director John Brennan. "Unfortunately, we have far too many of them within our midst and within our government as of late."

The nation's top infectious diseases doctor Anthony Fauci Anthony FauciGetting the facts right on Operation Warp Speed 1 in 6 US adults has been fully vaccinated for COVID-19, CDC says Fauci: COVID-19 variant likely accounts for up to 30 percent of US infections MORE on Thursday clashed with Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulMcCarthy had COVID-19 last year Overnight Health Care: Biden says country will pass 100 million COVID-19 shots this week | US to send surplus AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Mexico, Canada | Senate confirms Becerra for HHS in tight vote Fauci clashes with Rand Paul over masks MORE (R-Ky.) over the need for people to continue wearing masks once they've already been infected with or vaccinated against COVID-19. "You're telling everyone to wear a mask," Paul said. "If we're not spreading the infection, isn't it just theater? You have the vaccine and you're wearing two masks, isn't that theater?" "Here we go again with the theater," an exasperated Fauci responded. "Let's get down to the facts." ADVERTISEMENT Paul, who was infected with COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic last March, has said he is immune to future infection. As a result, he refuses to wear a mask in the Capitol and has declared he does not need to be vaccinated. Paul argued there are no studies that show significant reinfection among people who have recovered from the virus or after vaccination. "I agree with you, that you very likely would have protection from wild type for at least six months if you're infected," Fauci said, but pointed out there is no protection from some of the more infectious variants, like the one one first found in South Africa. The variants are a "good reason for a mask." "You're making policy based on conjecture!" Paul said, talking over Fauci and accusing him of wanting people to wear masks "for another couple of years." "You've been vaccinated and you parade around in two masks for show," Paul continued. "If you already have immunity, you're wearing a mask to give comfort to others. You're not wearing a mask because of any science." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance states that those who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 should still wear a mask in public. Paul, a libertarian ophthalmologist, has clashed repeatedly with Fauci throughout the pandemic on a wide range of topics including the idea of herd immunity and the effectiveness of restrictions. "Let me just state for the record, masks are not theater," Fauci said, adding that "I totally disagree" with what Paul said.

Glyphosate is a systemic broad-spectrum herbicide that is by now the most extensively used herbicide in the world and has been the source for a still heated controversy about its harmful effects on human health and the environment. The different weighting of scientific studies has led to different attitudes in most countries towards appropriate handling and their regulatory authorities. Therefore, an in-depth analysis of the global research landscape on glyphosate is needed to provide the background for further decisions regarding appropriate and careful use, taking into account the different regional conditions. The present study is based on established bibliometric methodological tools and is extended by glyphosate-specific parameters. Chronological and geographical patterns are revealed to determine the incentives and intentions of international scientific efforts. Research output grew in line with the exponential growth in consumption, with the field of research becoming increasingly multidisciplinary and shifting towards environmental and medical disciplines. The countries with the highest herbicide use are also the leading countries in glyphosate research: USA, Brazil, Canada, China and Argentina. The link between publication output and market parameters is as evident as the association with national grants. The research interest of the manufacturing company Monsanto could be shown as the second largest publishing institution behind the US Department of Agriculture, which interest is underscored by its position among the otherwise government-funded organizations. Developing countries are generally underrepresented in glyphosate research, although the use of glyphosate is increasing dramatically. In conclusion, the incentives are strongly linked to market and agricultural interests, with the scientific infrastructure of the countries forming the basis for financing and conducting research. The existing international network is important and needs to be expanded and strengthened by including the lower economies in order to take into account all regional and social needs and aspects of glyphosate use.

The European Commission has blocked Austria from implementing a planned ban on the controversial weedkiller glyphosate, a document seen by POLITICO shows. Brussels deems Vienna’s bid to ban the herbicide over concerns about its impact on human health and the environment as incompatible with EU law, according to a letter sent by the Commission’s Director General for the Internal Market Kerstin Jorna to Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, dated August 17. “In an area governed by directly applicable EU law, member states may not adopt national provisions that would affect the correct and full application of EU law,” the letter states. … ADVERTISEMENT Three months ago, Vienna notified Brussels of its intention to ban glyphosate …. But the Commission rejected …. claims the substance poses a risk to groundwater and human health, and saying that problems linking pesticides to biodiversity decline were not unique to Austria. Read the original post (Behind paywall)

The country took this step to protect insect populations that play a pivotal role in ecosystems and pollination of food crops Bayer, after taking over Monsanto last year, has been facing a wave of lawsuits alleging that the herbicide causes cancer. Photo: Global Justice Now/Flickr Germany has decided to phase out glyphosate, a chemical and labelled carcinogen found in weedkiller Roundup made by Bayer AG subsidy Monsanto, by the end of 2023. The move is to ensure that insect populations that play a pivotal role in ecosystems and pollination of food crops are not wiped out. In 2023, the European Union’s approval for the chemical will expire. Germany’s Cabinet on September 4, 2019 agreed to the ban, which includes a “systematic reduction strategy” to cut its usage by farmers. The country plans to begin with prohibiting its use in domestic gardens, city parks and edges of agricultural fields. After Austria recently became the first country to ban all use of the chemical, 20 French mayors went against their national government and banned it in their municipalities. There are restrictions on its use in Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands too. Germinal chemical and drug giant Bayer is already facing around 18,400 cases in the US. Bayer, after taking over Monsanto last year, has been facing a wave of lawsuits alleging that the herbicide causes cancer. In many of these cases, the firm has ended up paying huge compensations to the claimant. Glyphosate is used widely in agriculture, forestry, urban and home applications. Its use has been surrounded by much debate due to safety concerns. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) had declared glyphosate it “probably” carcinogenic to humans. While farmer groups and the chemical industry are pushing for its use, biologists believe that it affects species diversity and damages ecosystems. Glyphosate is popular in India too where farmers use the chemical as an alternative to expensive manual weeding. Despite being aware of its toxicity, farmers in India want the chemical as it helps them control weeds in their farms at a lower cost. For genetically modified herbicide-tolerant crops, the usage is more as farmers spray it more liberally across fields to clear the weeds.

Glyphosate - Where is it Restricted or Banned in the United States? Despite the IARC report’s 2015 conclusion that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. As such, glyphosate is not banned by the U.S. government; Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides are readily available for purchase throughout the country. However, not everyone agrees with the EPA’s conclusion on glyphosate. A number of cities, counties and even one U.S. state have issued bans, restrictions or warnings on glyphosate as a result of the ongoing health concerns. Is Glyphosate Banned in California? California has not issued a statewide ban on glyphosate. However, on July 7, 2017, California became the first state in the nation to issue a warning on glyphosate by adding the chemical to the state’s Proposition 65 list of chemicals and substances known to cause cancer. California’s decision to warn consumers about glyphosate was pursuant to the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, better known as California Proposition 65, a ballot initiative approved by voters in 1986 to address toxic chemical exposure concerns. Prop 65 requires California to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. U.S. Cities to Restrict or Ban Glyphosate California Burbank, California – City Council members voted to discontinue the use of Roundup in city parks for one year, and Burbank Unified School District will no longer use the herbicide due to cancer concerns. Carlsbad, California – The City Council voted unanimously to adopt a policy that makes organic pesticides the preferred method for killing weeds. “Asked to choose between aesthetics and public health…I’m going to choose public health every time,” said Councilwoman Cori Schumacher. Encinitas, California – Banned the use of Roundup and other glyphosate-based weed killers in city parks. Irvine, California – City Council passed resolution to cease spraying Roundup and other chemicals on public parks, streets and playgrounds. Petaluma, California – City officials are considering a ban on glyphosate for use in public parks. Richmond, California – Issued an ordinance to ban the use of glyphosate for all weed abatement activities conducted by the city. Thousand Oaks, California – City instituted a ban on glyphosate use on public golf courses. Boulder, Colorado – Banned Roundup for use on city parks. Durango, Colorado – Instituted an Organically Managed Lands program to minimize the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Montgomery County, Maryland – County Council voted to ban the use of cosmetic pesticides on private lawns. Takoma Park, Maryland – Placed restriction on cosmetic pesticides for lawn care on public and private property. New Paltz, New York – The use of toxic pesticides and herbicides by city employees or by private contractors is forbidden on all city-owned lands. Rockland County, New York – Created a Non-Toxic Pesticide program, mandating the use of natural, non-toxic, or as a last resort with prior approval, the least toxic pesticide use. Westchester County, New York – Enacted a law for pesticide-free parks. Cuyahoga County, Oregon – Local ordinance prohibits the use of pesticides on county-owned land, and established the adoption of an Integrated Pest Management program for county-owned properties. South Portland, Oregon – Passed a pesticide plan that discourages property owners from using certain pesticides and herbicides. A growing number of Connecticut towns, including Branford, Cheshire, Granby, Essex, Greenwich, Manchester, Plainville, Roxbury, Watertown, and Woodbridge have adopted bans or restrictions on glyphosate use. The state also has Public Act 09-56 to eliminate the use pesticides in K-8 schools.North Miami, Florida – City Council approved a plan calling for the gradual reduction of pesticide use on city property and a study on alternative pesticides.Dozens of cities and townships in Maine have adopted local ordinances restricting or banning pesticides and herbicides.Marblehead, Massachusetts – Created Organic Pest Management program to phase out pesticides and herbicides.Minneapolis, Minnesota – Commissioners of the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board decided to eliminate all glyphosate-based products from being used in neighborhood parks.Reno, Nevada – The city initiated a pesticide free pilot program.Taos County, New Mexico – Taos County Commissioners are considering the possibility of banning all pesticides, including glyphosate.New Jersey has State and local ordinances encouraging Integrated Pest Management programs to eliminate or drastically reduce the use of pesticides. At least 15 city school districts and over a dozen other parks and recreation departments in the state have enacted IPM programs.New York’s Park and Recreation Department has measures to eliminate or reduce pesticide and herbicide use in areas under its control.Source: Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, 1/22/2018 Back to Organic Records Search

The present study was performed to elucidate the cellular mechanisms of Biomphalaria alexandrina snails hemocytes against sublethal concentration (10 mg/L) of herbicide Roundup (48% Glyphosate) and/or Schistosoma mansoni infection during 7 days of exposure. Obtained results indicated that herbicide treatment and/or infection led to significant increase (P<0.05) in total hemocytes count during exposure period. Examination of hemocytes monolayers resulted in observation of 3 morphologically different cell types, round small, hyalinocytes and spreading hemocytes. Spreading hemocytes are the dominant, more responsive and highly phagocytic cell type in all experimental groups. Moreover, the exposure to herbicide, infection or both together led to a significant increase (P<0.05) of in vitro phagocytic activity against yeast cells during 7 days of exposure. In addition, flow cytometric analysis of cell cycle and comet assay, resulted in DNA damage in B. alexandrina hemocytes exposed to herbicide and/or S. mansoni infection when compared to control group. The immunological responses as well as molecular aspects in B. alexandrina snails have been proposed as biomarkers of exposure to environmental pollutants.

Costly cancer lawsuits may spur search to replace world's most common weed killer "Total fear and shock." That's how Andrew Kniss, a weed scientist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, describes the reaction of farmers to recent courtroom defeats suffered by a leading manufacturer of glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide. Agricultural researchers are also worried, he says. They fear the loss of a compound that is crucial for controlling weeds and conserving soil. The scientists and farmers "are really nervous that these verdicts and public perception could cause them to lose this tool." Last week, a California jury awarded $2 billion to two property owners who claimed their non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer, was caused by years of using Roundup, a common glyphosate-based herbicide. It was the third legal loss since August 2018 for Bayer AG in Leverkusen, Germany, which has seen its market value plummet to $52 billion, cut nearly in half since it acquired Monsanto a year ago. No national health agency has identified any cancer risk from glyphosate. But some scientists say that between public distrust and the rise of weeds resistant to Roundup and other herbicides, the moment is ripe to push for new and diverse forms of weed control. "We need to move to cropping systems that are less reliant on herbicides," says Paul Neve, a weed scientist at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, U.K. It will be tough to compete with glyphosate, which accounts for about 25% of all herbicides sold worldwide. By targeting a universal plant enzyme crucial to making amino acids, it can kill a wide array of weeds. With transgenic crops engineered to resist glyphosate, such as Bayer's Roundup Ready seeds, farmers can spray glyphosate while their crops are growing and control weeds without plowing them up, which saves fuel and conserves the soil. The environmentally beneficial practice of using cover crops—planted when a field would otherwise be bare—also depends on glyphosate, says Helen Hicks of Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom. Planting rye, for example, prevents weeds from growing while also boosting soil carbon and retaining moisture. Farmers then spray glyphosate to kill the cover crop, and because the chemical quickly becomes inactive in the soil, they can immediately plant the field with any crop. The recent controversy erupted after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, part of the World Health Organization, in 2015 listed glyphosate as a "probable carcinogen"—a label it has applied to dozens of chemicals, but also to red meat and very hot beverages. IARC decides only whether there is convincing evidence of a hazard; it does not evaluate the likelihood of getting sick at varying levels of exposure. That's the role of national health agencies, which take into account not only some peer-reviewed studies, but also confidential industry data before deciding what exposures might be acceptable. European, U.S., and other agencies have concluded glyphosate is safe when used properly. Nevertheless, the IARC decision unleashed a flood of lawsuits and increased the pressure from environmental groups to ban glyphosate. The groups point to hints of health risks from animal studies, which may not be large enough to pass muster with the health agencies. Campaigns against glyphosate are strongest in the European Union, where member nations in 2017 only narrowly reapproved a 5-year authorization of the compound. If glyphosate is ever pulled from the market, farmers could turn to other herbicides, but all have drawbacks. U.S. corn growers would likely spray more atrazine, for example, but it is prone to contaminating groundwater and has been banned by the European Union. Certain crops have been engineered to withstand glufosinate, an herbicide that costs more and doesn't work as well as glyphosate, especially in arid regions. Tolerance to dicamba has been added to crops as well, but this herbicide can drift in the wind and damage other crops. Companies are engineering crops to tolerate multiple herbicides because more than 40 weed species worldwide have evolved resistance to glyphosate, spurred by its heavy use. Crop scientists hope it will be more difficult for weeds to simultaneously evolve resistance to a cocktail of herbicides. But it's not impossible, and eventually new chemistries will likely be needed. Ironically, glyphosate itself has suppressed the development of new herbicides. No compound with a new way of attacking weeds, or mode of action, has been commercialized for more than 30 years, because it was so hard for companies to compete with cheap glyphosate, says Franck Dayan, a weed scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. But many companies are ramping up their R&D efforts. "I expect within the next decade we'll see several new modes of action on the market," says Stephen Duke, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Oxford, Mississippi. Some new candidates were described this week at a meeting of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in Ghent, Belgium, including a biopesticide Duke is studying called MBI-014. Under development by Marrone Bio Innovations in Davis, California, MBI-014 is made by bacteria and includes several compounds that attack plants in new ways, such as by interfering with RNA production, which disrupts protein synthesis. Horst Steinmann, a weed scientist at the University of Göttingen in Germany, says the public debate over glyphosate could raise the profile of nonchemical alternatives. "Perhaps there is a turning point now," he says. In Australia, after a long and intense battle with herbicide-resistant weeds, farmers have resorted to a laborious but effective way to keep weeds from proliferating: During harvest, the chaff is pulverized to crush any weed seeds, or burned in the field. Mechanical weeders, pulled by tractors, have long been used as an alternative to herbicides, although they are impractical in vineyards on steep hillsides or in orchards with drip-irrigation tubing. Recently, engineers have added video cameras to the machines to help farmers target weeds more precisely. For high-value crops, autonomous robots are becoming viable. Some spray tiny doses of herbicide directly onto weeds, whereas others use blades, lasers, or electricity to kill weeds. "There are potentially amazing technological advances occurring," says Karla Gage, a weed ecologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. But she advocates for cover cropping and other approaches that offer ecological side benefits. In the evolutionary arms race between weeds and farmers, the need to refine all the tools, robotic or otherwise, will never end, Dayan says. "Plants will evolve resistance to anything," he says. "Whatever we do, we'll have to face the way nature works." "It will always win."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), founded half a century ago in 1970, has existed under nine different presidents including Donald Trump. One of the people who has been encouraging the EPA to weaken its environmental standards is John DeSesso, who has a long history of lobbying on behalf of chemical companies. And science reporter Elizabeth Shogren, in an article for Reveal News, describes DeSesso’s campaign to persuade the EPA that trichloroethylene or TCE — a toxic chemical linked to fetal heart defects — is perfectly safe. DeSesso, Shogren reports, met with “a dozen EPA scientists and officials” in the hope of convincing them that TCE is not dangerous. According to Shogren, DeSesso has “primarily earned his living” as a “contract scientist for chemical companies and their trade associations, promoting their positions on toxic chemicals from arsenic to Roundup. As cancer clusters, immune disorders and fetal abnormalities mounted in communities contaminated by TCE, DeSesso was paid to cast doubt on the research establishing TCE’s toxic effects on the human body.” In making his case for TCE to the EPA, Shogren notes, DeSesso set out to “undercut” a 2003 study that was led by scientist Paula Johnson for the University of Arizona and was “a landmark in establishing that TCE exposure at trace levels was highly toxic to developing embryos.” John’s study, according to Shogren, “had been pivotal in past EPA evaluations of TCE’s risks.” In February, the EPA released an evaluation of the effects of TCE — one that, Shogren warns, “appears to show the influence of DeSesso and his chemical company sponsors.” “Dismissing the findings of the Johnson study and decades of scientific research, the published evaluation rejects fetal heart malformations as a benchmark for unsafe exposure levels to TCE,” Shogren observes. Jennifer McPartland, a senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, told Reveal News, “This decision is grave. It not only underestimates the lifelong risks of the chemical, especially to the developing fetus — it also presents yet another example of this administration bowing to polluters’ interests over public health.”

For several years, Republicans have been waging a war against the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) — which is the World Health Organization’s cancer research division — in response to its assertion that glyphosate (an ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup) is probably carcinogenic. And according to a report by Lee Fang for The Intercept, newly released documents show that Republicans’ anti-IARC campaign was encouraged by Monsanto’s attorneys and lobbyists. Documents ranging from e-mails to deposition transcripts, Fang reports, have been made public by the law firm Baum Hedlund — which represents Dewayne Johnson, a cancer patient and former groundskeeper who alleges that years of using Roundup contributed to his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Johnson won a lawsuit against Monsanto and was awarded $289 million by a jury, although a judge reduced that amount to $78 million. Fang reports that according to Baum Hedlund, a combination of “company e-mails, documents and deposition transcripts” show that “Monsanto lawyers and lobbyists guided lawmakers, coordinating efforts to question the IARC’s credibility and slash U.S. support for the international body.” It was in March 2015 that IARC first publicly warned that glyphosate could be carcinogenic. And in June 2015, according to Fang, Michael Dyke (who was Monsanto’s vice president of government affairs at the time) outlined the company’s political and lobbying strategy to discredit the IARC. In an e-mail, Fang reports, Dyke wrote that he had sent teams of lobbyists to talk to “key staff” at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the State Department as well as members of Congress. Later in 2015, Fang reports, Dykes updated his colleagues at Monsanto on additional ways to discredit the IARC — including a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing where the EPA was to be asked about glyphosate’s safety. “We will make sure Committee members ask EPA the glyphosate safety question,” Dykes wrote. In 2016, according to Fang, FTI Government Affairs was one of the consulting firms that helped Monsanto in its anti-IARC efforts. FTI, that year, ghost-wrote a letter that was attributed to Republican Rep. Rob Aderholt of Alabama and insisted that glyphosate “does not cause cancer” and that IARC was promoting “bunk science.” Although Aderholt’s name was attached to the letter, it was actually written by FTI lobbyists. That letter, Fang adds, was followed by other letters from Republican Congress members demanding an investigation of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for IARC. Republicans who wrote those letters included Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz (who chaired the House Oversight Committee at the time), South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy (who succeeded Chaffetz as House Oversight chair) and Texas Rep. Lamar Smith (who chaired the House Science Committee at the time). All of them demanded inquiries into IARC funding and glyphosate being designated a carcinogen. In 2018, according to Fang’s report, Smith sent letters to cancer researchers in Norway demanding that they “correct the flaws in IARC.” And the House Appropriations Committee cut $2 million in IARC funding.

After a six-year halt, Colombia plans to restart the toxic aerial spraying of glyphosate on coca crops as early as next month—drawing "most welcome" support from U.S. President Joe Biden and sharp criticism from 150 regional experts who wrote to Biden, "your administration is implicitly endorsing former President Trump's damaging legacy in Colombia." On March 2nd, the Biden administration welcomed Colombia's decision to restart its aerial coca eradication program in Biden's first annual 2021 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report: "The government of Colombia has committed to re-starting its aerial coca eradication program, which would be a most welcome development." Colombia halted the controversial spraying program in 2015. In 2018, Colombia's then-new President Ivan Duque vowed to resume the program but has yet to restart the aerial spraying The country faced increasing pressure from the United States to restart the program. "You're going to have to spray," former US President Donald Trump told Duque at the White House during a March 2, 2020 meeting. Aerial fumigation had been a central component of Plan Colombia, the 2005 multi-billion dollar U.S. program to finance the Colombian government war on coca cultivation and their war on FARC, which was Colombia's largest rebel group before being disbanded in 2017. But in 2015, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled that the spraying must end if the spraying of glyphosate was creating health problems. Also, in 2015, the World Health Organization found that glyphosate—also known as "Roundup"—was harmful to the environment and health, potentially causing cancer. In 2014, ending aerial fumigation was central to peace negotiations with FARC, with the Colombian government agreeing with FARC negotiators that it would transition away from aerial spraying. The Colombian government was also facing significant pressure from the rural poor, who were organizing national protests against aerial fumigation and other forms of forced eradication. "National level protests blocking access roads and inhibiting movement were a major hindrance to manual eradication's ability to operate in major coca-growing regions, and also bedeviled aerial eradication operations," the US State Department reported in 2014. VICE News is reporting: More than 150 experts on drugs, security, and environmental policy in the region have written an open letter to Biden, saying Duque's spraying campaign is "misguided" and Biden's decision "could not have come at a worse time." "The recently announced decision sends an unfortunate message to the Colombian people that your administration is not committed to abandoning the ineffective and damaging war on drugs internationally, even as your administration takes bold steps to mitigate its multiple impacts on Black, Indigenous, and people of color in the United States," says the letter, spearheaded by the Center for Studies on Security and Drugs at the Bogotá-based Los Andes University. "By backing fumigation, your administration is implicitly endorsing former President Trump's damaging legacy in Colombia," the letter says. "It was your predecessor who, shortly after taking office, intensified demands on our country to resume spraying with glyphosate, which has been shown to pose significant health and environmental risks to affected populations." The experts point to how aerial spraying with glyphosate can cause serious health problems, such as cancer, miscarriages, and respiratory illness, and environmental destruction—biodiversity loss, soil damage, and contamination of water sources. The aerial fumigation program using glyphosate in Colombia continued throughout the US presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. VICE quoted José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch: "Many peasants grow coca because it is their only profitable crop, given weak local food markets, inadequate roads, and lack of formal land titles," he said. "Sustainable progress in reducing coca production can only be achieved by ensuring that farmers have a profitable alternative. And there's no amount of glyphosate that can achieve that."

When Bayer, the giant German chemical and pharmaceutical maker, acquired Monsanto two years ago, the company knew it was also buying the world’s best-known weedkiller. What it didn’t anticipate was a legal firestorm over claims that the herbicide, Roundup, caused cancer. Now Bayer is moving to put those troubles behind it, agreeing to pay more than $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims while continuing to sell the product without adding warning labels about its safety. The deal, announced Wednesday, is among the largest settlements ever in U.S. civil litigation. Negotiations were extraordinarily complex, producing separate agreements with 25 lead law firms whose clients will receive varying amounts. “It’s rare that we see a consensual settlement with that many zeros on it,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford University Law School.

Clumps of dandelions have popped up in your yard, so you reach for a bottle of Roundup, the popular weed killer. It is known for being very effective, but its main ingredient, glyphosate, is getting a lot of attention because of lawsuits alleging links to cancer. Last week, a federal jury ordered Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, to pay $80 million to a 70-year-old man with cancer who had used it for three decades on his 56 acres in Sonoma County, Calif. The jury found that Roundup was a “substantial factor” in his illness. Bayer AG, which bought Monsanto last year, said it would appeal the decision. Glyphosate is by far the most widely used herbicide in the United States Last year, a California superior court jury in San Francisco reached a similar verdict against Monsanto in favor of a groundskeeper with the same disease — non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a potentially fatal cancer of the immune system. Monsanto also appealed that decision. Glyphosate is by far the most widely used herbicide in the United States, and probably worldwide. It is used on nearly every acre of corn, cotton and soybeans grown in the U.S. You may have sprayed it on your lawn or garden. But many jurisdictions, in more than two dozen countries, have banned or restricted its use. Among the latest: Los Angeles County announced last month that it was suspending use of glyphosate on county property until more is known about its health effects. Bayer says on its website that the weed killer has been thoroughly tested, and “an extensive body of research” shows that products containing it “can be used safely and that glyphosate is not carcinogenic.” Cynthia Curl, an environmental health scientist at Boise State University in Idaho who studies the chemical, said, “many assumptions have been made about the safety of glyphosate that are now being actively questioned. We will see an explosion of information about glyphosate, and it’s about time. We’re really playing catch-up on this one.” Let’s try to provide a few answers: Q: What is glyphosate, and what is it used for? First sold commercially by Monsanto in 1974 under the name Roundup, glyphosate kills weeds by blocking enzymes that regulate plant growth. Over the four decades after its launch, use of Roundup increased a hundredfold. Monsanto genetically engineered crops to tolerate glyphosate in 1996, and these “Roundup Ready” seeds paved the way for the weed killer to be used on farm fields around the world. Q: Roundup isn’t the only weed killer with glyphosate, right? Right. Over 750 glyphosate-containing products are sold in the United States, either in solid or liquid form. In addition to Roundup, common ones include Ortho GroundClear, DowDuPont’s Rodeo, Compare-N-Save Concentrate Grass and Weed Killer, RM43 Total Vegetation Control and Ranger Pro Herbicide, also made by Monsanto. If you don’t know whether a weed killer contains glyphosate, read the label. It would be listed under active ingredients. Q: How extensive is human exposure to glyphosate? Because of its widespread use, glyphosate is in water, food and dust, so it’s likely almost everyone has been exposed. And human exposure, through food and water, will probably increase in tandem with growing use of the weed killer, according to a 2016 study published in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe. But little is known about the magnitude of human exposure, because food and water are not regularly tested for glyphosate residue. However, a few years ago, researchers tested the urine of a small group of people across the United States and found glyphosate residue in 93% of them. Curl said she is launching a project that will compare the exposure of pregnant women who live in farm areas and non-farm areas, then introduce organic diets to try to tease out how much of the glyphosate comes from food. Q: What do we really know about the human health risks of glyphosate? For decades, it was thought that glyphosate posed a risk only to plants, not people. That’s because it inhibits an enzyme that humans don’t even have. Its possible link to cancer has prompted a blizzard of claims and counterclaims over the past several years, and major public health agencies disagree about it. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has called glyphosate a “probable human carcinogen,” and in 2017, the state of California added it to its list of cancer-causing chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency, however, decided in late 2017 that glyphosate was “not likely” to cause cancer in humans. But evidence is mounting that people who are heavily exposed to it — farmworkers and landscapers, for example — have an increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A review led by University of Washington scientists published in February found that agricultural workers who used a lot of glyphosate had a 41% higher risk of contracting non-Hodgkin lymphoma over their lifetimes than people who used it infrequently or not at all. On average, about 2 out of every 100 Americans develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma. For people who are highly exposed to glyphosate, the disease rate jumps to 2.8 per 100. That means they still have a relatively small chance of contracting the disease, but their risk is substantially higher because of glyphosate use. Monsanto has submitted more than 800 studies to the EPA and European regulatory agencies suggesting that glyphosate is safe, according to Bayer. Q: What about the risks to the rest of us, who only occasionally use glyphosate — and only on a small scale? No one knows. “The data is really starting to suggest that there is a correlation between high glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” said Curl. “But we have a lot of unanswered questions about the rest of us. We don’t know what that means for people who don’t have high exposures, and we don’t know what it means with a chemical that is so widely used.” Q: Should people still use glyphosate at home, or are there safer substitutes? All chemical pesticides are toxic. Some gardeners have limited success using vinegar or homemade remedies. The best non-toxic solution for killing weeds is good old elbow grease: Get a trowel and dig them out. “From a personal perspective, I prefer to use caution and avoid pesticides in my own garden,” said Rachel Shaffer, a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health and co-author of the university’s study on glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. “Our understanding of the health effects of glyphosate will continue to evolve as the science advances,” said Shaffer, who blogs on her findings. “Individuals who are particularly concerned in the interim may want to take steps to reduce use in their home gardens.” Q: If I use glyphosate products, what precautions should I take? Carefully follow label instructions and warnings. Wear gloves and don’t let the chemical come in contact with your skin, clothing or eyes. Use it only on calm, rain-free days to prevent drift. Do not let it run off into waterways or gutters. Pets and people should wait until treated areas are dry before entering them. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with KaiserPermanente. You can view the original report on its website. This story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.

President Joe Biden's COVID-19 stimulus bill, which he signed into law on Thursday, is going to directly and significantly improve the lives of millions of Americans. First things first: This is a very important moment in American history. Make no mistake about it, Biden's bill is a historic achievement. After the major left-wing social and economic achievements of the Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson presidencies, Democratic presidents became increasingly timid and centrist in their approach. (I've argued, however, that both Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama are in many ways underrated.) One of the concerns about Biden when he ran in the 2020 Democratic primaries was that, because he presented himself as a moderate alternative to more left-wing opponents like Bernie Sanders, he would not do enough to help ordinary people. Advertisement: The COVID-19 stimulus bill indicates that Biden may actually be listening to his left-wing critics. As Salon's Amanda Marcotte recently pointed out, the bill provides $27 billion in rental assistance, helps make the Affordable Care Act health plans less expensive and assists states that need to be fiscally healthy to properly care for their citizens during the pandemic. It also extends unemployment assistance until Sept. 6, provides nearly $30 billion in aid to restaurants and invests nearly $20 billion in COVID-19 vaccinations, with Biden later instructing states to open vaccinations to all adults by May 1. While the bill did not raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour (as many progressives hoped it would), reduced weekly unemployment checks from $400 to $300 each week and moved up the date at which those checks expire, it is still a much more progressive measure than many anticipated. Here are the three policies in the legislation — formally known as the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 — that are likely to directly help you and your loved ones. The bill includes $1,400 stimulus checks Advertisement: Do you, as an individual, make less than $75,000 per year? When your income is lumped in with that of your spouse, do you make less than $150,000 per year? If so, this stimulus bill will give you a check of either $1,400 (if you're single) and $2,800 (if you're married). People who annually earn $80,000 individually or $160,000 with their spouses will also receive stimulus checks, but with lower amounts. The same standard applies for children and other people who are dependent on income earners. If you are a dependent for an individual who annually makes less than $75,000 or a couple that earns less than $150,000, you will also receive a $1,400 stimulus check. What's more, this plan differs from predecessors in that it includes adult children who are students. The White House says Americans may start receiving these as soon as this weekend. Advertisement: The bill makes it easier for unemployed people to maintain health insurance To understand this provision of the bill, you must first know about COBRA. COBRA, which is an acronym for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, was passed by Congress in 1986 so that eligible workers who lose their jobs or have their hours reduced can continue to receive their original health insurance for a limited period of time. There are some conditions: Generally, COBRA coverage only lasts for 18 to 36 months and companies need to have 20 or more full-time employees (or the equivalent thereof) to be required to extend COBRA coverage. Most importantly, it is usually expensive — indeed, often prohibitively so — because the worker or ex-worker in question has to pay the entire cost for their insurance. Advertisement: The new COVID-19 stimulus plan will make things much easier for Americans who want to use COBRA to help with their health insurance. Under the relief bill, the government will subsidize the COBRA expenses of laid-off workers so they can remain on their employer-sponsored insurance plans from the start of April through the end of September. If people lose their jobs or have their hours reduced — or already had these things happen and would have been eligible for COBRA at the time — they can inform their employers that they wish to use COBRA. The employers who pay for their premiums will then be reimbursed by the government. The only groups to whom this does not apply are those who quit their jobs or were fired for gross misconduct. It is unclear how many people this will help since, as of 2017, it was estimated that only around 130,000 unemployed working-age adults had health insurance through COBRA. (Again, it was extremely expensive before this new bill.) That said, millions of people who lost their jobs during the pandemic may sign up as a result of Biden's new subsidy. The bill's reformed Child Tax Credit (CTC) that will help lift children out of poverty. It is also a small step toward universal guaranteed income Advertisement: If you're not familiar with the concept of a universal basic income, it is the idea that the government should automatically provide each citizen with a certain amount of money every year to make sure that no one falls below the poverty line. The reformed CTC does not go that far — not even close — but it is still a step in that direction. As David Wessel, director of The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at The Brookings Institution, told CBS News, "It's a big deal. It's one of the most significant steps we've taken to lift children out of poverty." The CTC used to provide a tax credit of up to $2,000 per child as long as the child was under the age of 17, with the amount being reduced by 5 percent of adjusted income for single parents who made over $200,000 annually and married couples who made over $400,000. (If the credit is greater than the amount owed by a family in taxes, families were only eligible for a refund of up to $1,400 for each child.) Children who are 17 to 18 and full-time college students who are 19 to 24, as well as other dependents, were eligible for nonrefundable credits of up to $500. The COVID-19 stimulus bill's changes to the CTC are only temporary (although some Democrats want to make them permanent), but they are drastic. The reformed CTC will be extended to all children under the age of 18, meaning 17-year-olds are now included. For another, single parents who make up to $75,000 a year and married couples who make up to $150,000 will receive a $3,600 credit for children under the age of six and $3,000 for children between six and 17. Parents who make more than that amount will find their credits reduced by $50 for every extra $1,000 they earn in adjusted gross income. It is also fully refundable, even for taxpayers whose credit is larger than what they owe in taxes, and extends even to people who are unemployed. In its earlier incarnation, the CTC was not given to people who earned less than $2,500 each year and was only offered in limited amounts to families with very low incomes. Advertisement: The old credit will still be available to parents who are not eligible under the current system. While matters are complicated for divorced parents, and there will likely be snags that have to get worked out, under the old rules the credit goes to the parent who has custody of the child for more time. For parents who split custody 50/50, the credit is given to the one with the higher adjusted gross income. But this bill is still not enough As The New York Times recently noted in a harrowing report on how the pandemic has caused massive economic suffering in Nevada, this bill is not going to immediately solve the poverty crisis that long preceded the pandemic but has been made much worse by it. On a deeper level, the problem is that America lives in a capitalist society. Wealthy individuals and businesses have rigged the system to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else, leading to a growth in income inequality since the 1970s as well as other major social ills (climate change and our inadequate response to COVID-19 come to mind). This bill does not address any of those deeper structural flaws. There are millions of people who have been struggling to survive during the pandemic because government relief simply isn't enough, and the bill is not going to fill a lot of those gaps. It does, however, provide some meaningful relief in the short term. This bill was passed without any Republican support, with Democrats pushing it through Congress using the budget reconciliation process. Republicans are attempting to spin away its likely success by arguing that any upcoming economic benefits will have been Donald Trump's doing. Trump had absolutely nothing to do with shaping the bill and the economy suffered immensely during his pandemic stewardship.

The election of President Donald Trump will likely define this decade, but the breakdown in our political system which sowed deeper partisan divisions and ultimately paved the way for his White House victory can be traced back to a single January day almost exactly ten years ago. On Jan. 21, 2010, then-Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy cast the deciding vote in the Citizens United case, which was brought by a group chaired by David Bossie, who would later serve as Trump’s deputy campaign manager. Advertisement: Kennedy wrote in the majority decision that limits on independent expenditures violated the First Amendment rights of corporations and other groups, effectively overturning spending restrictions dating back more than a century. The decision allowed corporations to spend unlimited money on campaign ads as long as they did not formally coordinate with candidates or political parties. According to Kennedy, there could not be corruption, because “an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate.” Some have argued that the ruling was the “logical next step” after the court’s 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, which said election spending limits may violate the First Amendment. But the Supreme Court ruled in favor of corporate limits in 1990 and then upheld limits on corporate and union spending in 2003. Advertisement: The Citizens United ruling was later compounded by Republican efforts to block transparency rules, Federal Election Commission rulings and further court decisions like McCutcheon v. FEC, paving the way for the creation of super PACs, or committees which can spend unlimited sums of money to promote or oppose candidates while hiding the identities of their donors. The impact of the Citizens United ruling and subsequent campaign finance changes are undeniable. In 2010, the biggest Republican donor of the election cycle spent $7.6 million to support conservative candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CPR). Just eight years later, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, donated $122 million to support GOP candidates, or more than 15 times as much. Democrats pumped big money into elections, too. Presidential contender Mike Bloomberg spent $95 million during the last election cycle, while fellow billionaire candidate Tom Steyer spent more than $73 million, according to CPR data. Advertisement: There was certainly loads of money pumped into elections prior to Citizens United. The 2008 presidential election, which was the last national contest before the Supreme Court decision, saw about $338 million in outside spending. But the amount of outside cash injected into the presidential race skyrocketed to more than $1 billion in 2012 and $1.4 billion in 2016. Such massive expenditures are not limited to presidential races. The 2018 midterm election cycle was the first in history to see more than $1 billion in outside spending — up from $69 million just four cycles earlier and $567 million in 2014, according to the CPR. Advertisement: Super PACs quickly became the biggest outside spenders. In 2018, the House Republican-linked Congressional Leadership Fund spent $136 million, the Senate Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC spent $112 million and the Mitch McConnell-connected Senate Leadership Fund spent $94 million, according to the CPR. Though both parties have raised and spent hundreds of millions in outside money — and the Citizens United ruling has been criticized by both former President Barack Obama and Trump — researchers at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and the London School of Economics and Political Science found that the rise of dark money has resulted in a huge advantage for Republicans in state legislature races, particularly in “states with weak unions.” “We find that Citizens United increased the GOP’s average seat share in the state legislature by five percentage points. That is a large effect — large enough that, were it applied to the past twelve Congresses, partisan control of the House would have switched eight times,” the researchers wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “In line with a previous study, we also find that the vote share of Republican candidates increased three to four points on average.” Advertisement: The result has been a shift much further to the right in numerous state legislatures and an increase in “ideological extremism,” which was more prevalent among Democrats, according to the study. In the 2010 election, the first to see a massive upswing in outside money, Republicans captured two dozen state legislative chambers ahead of a game-changing nationwide gerrymandering effort, which made it harder than ever for Democrats to win back the seats they lost. “Without Citizens United every frontline Congressional race of the last two cycles are TOTALLY different,” Fordham Law Professor Zephyr Teachout tweeted. “A billion in outside spending in 2018. And that is just a tiny fraction of the impact.” Advertisement: Despite Kennedy’s insistence that there could be no corruption because candidates cannot coordinate with super PACs, the ruling has also led to corruption as candidates flout rules preventing them from coordinating with the PACs. “The supposed barrier between candidates and unrestricted super PACs is flimsier than ever,” Roll Call reported just four years after the ruling. “As midterm elections approach, complaints are rolling into the FEC from both parties about super PACs that share vendors, fund-raisers and video footage with the politicians they support.” GOP leaders like Paul Ryan devised ways to solicit money directly from billionaires like Adelson by using go-betweens. The New York Times reported in 2015 that Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina had “aggressively” exploited loopholes to allow a super PAC to effectively run her campaign. And the corruption is not merely limited to exploiting loopholes in the law. Obama warned in a State of the Union speech that the Citizens United ruling could lead to foreign interference in U.S. elections. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito could be seen mouthing the words, “Not true.” Advertisement: But Obama's foreshadowing turned out to be remarkably true. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the two associates of Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, were recently indicted on charges that they illegally funneled foreign money to Republican politicians, including a $325,000 contribution to a pro-Trump super PAC. George Nader, an adviser to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who was linked to efforts to aid Trump’s campaign during the election, was also indicted for allegedly funneling $3.5 million into elections, including a $1 million contribution to a Democratic super PAC. In 2012, a foreign-owned company made a $1 million contribution to a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC. Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have premised their campaigns on driving big money out of politics. Sanders has long called for a constitutional amendment to repeal Citizens United, which was echoed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and others at the party's December primary debate. Advertisement: But it may be nearly impossible to meet the high threshold to ratify a constitutional amendment. There has only been one amendment ratified since 1971. While House Democrats voted to approve H.R. 1, which called for the ruling to be repealed, there appears to be little to no support for the legislation from Republicans in the upper chamber. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have decried these efforts as attempts to “ban political speech.” “In our view, the answer to that problem is to expand — not limit — the resources available for political advocacy. Thus, the ACLU supports a comprehensive and meaningful system of public financing that would help create a level playing field for every qualified candidate,” the organization said. “We support carefully drawn disclosure rules, we support reasonable limits on campaign contributions and we support stricter enforcement of existing bans on coordination between candidates and super PACs.” Some local governments have tried to counter the rise of dark money with public financing. Seattle’s “democracy vouchers” give voters $100, which they can donate to any campaign in a local election. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has proposed a similar “Democracy Dollars” program, which would expand this initiative across the country. Advertisement: But while cities, states and federal lawmakers grapple with the rise of dark money in politics, one thing that is clear is that Citizens United irrevocably changed politics over the course of the last decade — and beyond. Kennedy himself admitted in 2015 that the disclosure requirement he believed would fix any potential issues of corruption was “not working the way it should.” FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel quit in 2017 over the state of campaign finance, writing in her resignation letter that “our political campaigns have been awash in unlimited, dark money" since the Citizens United decision. “Most of the funding comes from a tiny, highly unrepresentative segment of the population,” she wrote. “Disclosure laws need to be strengthened, the broken jurisprudence of Citizens United re-examined, public financing of candidates ought to be expanded to reduce reliance on the wealthy and commissioners who will carry out the mandates of the law should be appointed.” A Brennan Center report pointed out that a small wealthy group of Americans now wields “more power than at any time since Watergate, while many of the rest seem to be disengaging from politics.” “This is perhaps the most troubling result of Citizens United: in a time of historic wealth inequality,” report author Daniel Weiner wrote, “the decision has helped reinforce the growing sense that our democracy primarily serves the interests of the wealthy few and that democratic participation for the vast majority of citizens is of relatively little value.”

HOW DID IT HAPPEN? In the early 1970s, Western governments, academia, and the media understood the relationship between the state and the market according to the same liberal consensus that had been in place since the end of World War II. During what is commonly called the “golden age of capitalism,” government, capital, and labor had reached the uneasy agreement that markets produced social ruin when left to their own devices. The state was needed to mitigate inequality, to provide basic services, and — through a combination of monetary and fiscal means — to even out capitalism’s boom-bust cycle. By the early 1980s, all that had changed: the British and American governments, joined by large segments of the media and intelligentsia, declared that the state was the root of social evil, that free markets could do nearly everything better than government, and that the economic crises of the past were the result of state meddling. This view is often called “neoliberalism,” a term first used by interwar continental and British economists and philosophers to describe an economic doctrine that favors privatization, deregulation, and unfettered free markets over public institutions and government. These philosophers saw themselves as championing the values of classical liberalism in a mid-20th century world threatened by unchecked state power — a threat vividly embodied in the totalitarian societies of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Writers like Ludwig von Mises and Karl Popper saw hope in the liberalism of J.S. Mill and Adam Smith. They shared the earlier philosophers’ skepticism about the capacity of human reason to design functional and ethical social orders, and were committed to processes of “liberated” or open exchange to create knowledge and distribute wealth. Advertisement: The meaning of the prefix has aroused a great deal of debate. For thinkers on the left, “neo” signals a liberalism shorn of many of the features that made classical liberalism plausible and effective. Recent scholarship on Adam Smith, for example, has emphasized the extent to which neoliberal thinkers such as F. A. Hayek focus on Smith’s celebration of self-organizing markets in The Wealth of Nations while neglecting Smith’s argument, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, for the importance of non-market values in sustaining social orders. Indeed, the neoliberal embrace of the prospect of a social world almost wholly organized by market relations strongly distinguishes this thought from the classical liberal tradition, which fostered a capitalism embedded in the institutions of civil society, the norms of civilized communication, and state regulation of the economy. There are two popular accounts of how this philosophy of free markets and minimal government came to determine the economic policies of the US and UK. For the right, including the heirs and acolytes of Milton Friedman, the failures of both state socialism and the Keynesian welfare state made the political triumph of neoliberal ideas inevitable. For the left, including figures like the Marxist geographer David Harvey and the activist-journalist Naomi Klein, neoliberal policies were the expression of the interests of capital, which systematically infiltrated government in order to reverse postwar regulations. In Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics, the economic historian Daniel Stedman Jones persuasively argues that both these popular accounts are wrong. That neoliberalism won out was due neither to the failures of the welfare state nor to a “master plan” pushed by the agents of capital. The story Stedman Jones tells is considerably more nuanced. He shows neoliberalism’s ascendance to be the result of a series of more or less ad hoc moves on the part of politicians, activists, media figures, and economists in response to a series of political and economic shocks that began in the 1970s. The image of a dramatic face-off between neoliberals and proponents of the postwar center-left consensus is largely an artifact of retrospective right-wing propaganda, which the left seems to have accepted in its essential features. Advertisement: ¤ The main lines of Stedman Jones’s narrative are as follows: The appearance of stagflation in the 1970s, and the perceived inability of conventional economic wisdom to account for or mitigate it, made left governments in the US and UK receptive to certain technical policy adjustments, collectively known as “monetarism,” to combat inflation. Monetarists believe that control over the money supply should be the chief means that governments use to moderate the fluctuations of a national economy, as opposed to the view (derived from John Maynard Keynes) that both monetary and fiscal intervention could (and should) be used to tame the business cycle. The intellectual sponsors of these monetarist policies, Milton Friedman and his acolytes at the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the University of Chicago economics department, also tended to believe in the power of free markets to organize society more efficiently than the state. But if both Jimmy Carter’s Democratic and James Callaghan’s Labor administrations accepted the monetarist policies, and began to implement them, they rejected the free market philosophy. The application of these monetarist policies tamed inflation, but not before deepening the recession and contributing to the ouster of the Democrats and Labour. The conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan that succeeded them claimed that neoliberal free market thinking had rescued America and Britain, and that these ideas should be systematically implemented to solve a range of economic and social questions going forward. This narrative, that neoliberalism emerged victorious from Keynesianism’s inability to deal with stagflation, won widespread acceptance. Advertisement: Pushing against this dominant account, Stedman Jones disassembles the monolithic neoliberalism of left and right myth into several conceptually and historically separate elements, which he shows came together in a “lucky” way at a particular moment in history. These elements are: A) A network of intellectuals joined by belief in the power of free markets, initially centered on F. A. Hayek’s Mont Pelerin Society, later exerted force through conservative and libertarian think tanks and economics departments in Chicago and Virginia. Advertisement: B) Milton Friedman’s development of monetarism into a viable economic policy rival to the reigning Keynesian approach. C) The economic crises of the 1970s, ranging from the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement, to the OPEC oil shocks, culminating in runaway inflation and high unemployment. Stedman Jones quotes Friedman’s statement that “the role of thinkers […] is primarily to keep options open, to have available alternatives, so when the brute force of events make a change inevitable, there is an alternative available.” When the worst postwar economic crisis discredited Keynesian orthodoxy, Friedman was ready with an attractive technical solution. In turn, a transatlantic network of intellectuals and journalists — figures like Ed Fuelner of the Heritage Foundation, Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times, and Peter Jay of the BBC — was ready to cast the distinction between these policies, not only in technical terms, but also as an epochal choice between the welfare state and the free market. Advertisement: Rather than emerging from any sort of “master plan,” it was, in fact, a series of local choices — in the face of unyielding inflation, the Carter administration’s appointment of Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1979, or the reluctant decision of Hayekian free marketeers to make uneasy peace with social conservatives — that led to the neoliberal breakthrough. Stedman Jones traces the rise of neoliberalism to the decision of left-leaning governments to adopt monetarist policies. His description of this decision is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of his account. To understand how his argument challenges what we think we know of neoliberalism, we need to take a step back, and take a closer look. Discussions of neoliberalism, on both the left and the right, suffer from what Paul Krugman and others have called “zombie” ideas. These are economic concepts that have been long discredited, but continue to shamble on. On the right, a central zombie idea is that reduced state regulation of markets leads to sustainable economic growth. If you believe this, then the rise of neoliberalism is a no-brainer. Neoliberalism is simply the economic philosophy that works. But why should anyone believe this? The idea that unleashing free markets then leads to good economic times should never have survived the Great Depression, and should surely be killed for good by the Great Recession and its aftermath. Advertisement: Meanwhile, a new generation of leftist economists has discovered that their progressive brethren suffer from a zombie idea of their own. Mike Beggs, for example, has recently argued that the Marxist economics many on the left continue to find attractive has a fatal flaw. Marx believed in the labor theory of value, the idea that a commodity’s value is equal to the labor that goes into it. Generations of Marxist thinkers have built on this foundation to form a picture of the way the world’s economy works. Thinkers like David Harvey have used this theory to create a sophisticated explanation of neoliberalism as the natural response of capital to changing conditions. If you subscribe to Harvey’s Marxist theory, then the rise of neoliberalism is, again, a no-brainer. But as Beggs points out, the concept underlying theories like Harvey’s was decisively disproved over a century ago, and no one has ever come up with a persuasive defense. Once we see that the no-brainer explanations of neoliberalism are in fact zombies, then the question becomes truly interesting. How did the governments of the Western world come to embrace this radical free market philosophy? Stedman Jones answer is: they didn’t. What they did accept was monetarism. Monetarism — the idea that one can smooth out economic cycles by controlling the money supply — was invented by Milton Friedman, a neoliberal. And virtually everyone on both the left and the right associates monetarism with the neoliberal commitment to free markets. But, as Stedman Jones argues, these are two very different things, and history turns on this difference. Monetarism is a government policy for manipulating the economy. The free market is the vision of an economy liberated from government control. Understanding how a rather technical policy approach came to be identified with the love of free markets opens an entirely new approach to the fundamental economic and political transformation of our time. And understanding how this identification came to be resisted allows us to understand the longevity of the biggest zombie of all: the tendency to blame government for everything that’s wrong with the economy. The story of monetarism begins with the way in which Keynesian orthodoxy came to dominate economic policy in the English-speaking democracies. The basic logic of this orthodoxy is familiar. The Great Depression spectacularly illuminated capitalism’s tendency to periodically implode, but the problem was not just that the cyclical busts seemed to be getting worse and that the resulting unemployment threatened social stability. Keynes argued that even the eventual recoveries could not be relied on to productively employ the population. He saw a basic gap between social goals and the outcomes produced by markets. Government, however, could overcome this gap. Through loose monetary policy and spending by the state, we could counter the cyclical waning of demand, restoring full employment. Then, when the economy threatened to overheat, we could raise taxes and tighten the money supply to control inflation. Advertisement: Vast wartime spending reversed America’s unemployment problem and fueled the prestige of the Keynesian approach. A Keynesian “technocratic elite” rose to control the levers of fiscal and monetary policy, hoping to ensure the country would never again suffer a devastating depression. This Keynesian faith in the power of government to solve social problems meshed with broader liberal goals — to invest in the nation’s infrastructure, to create a health care safety net, to defeat poverty — that were pursued by successive Democratic and Republican administrations. And while virulent racists and anticommunists increasingly protested these social programs, when it came to economic policy, as Nixon famously said, everyone was a Keynesian. But the economic technocrats had an Achilles’ heel. Stedman Jones points out that although Keynes doubted that managing supply and demand could ever become an exact science, his heirs came to believe that advances in statistics gave them access to fine-grained, timely economic data, which they could use to strike the sweet spot of low unemployment and low inflation. However, events were soon to prove their confidence hubristic. Milton Friedman, meanwhile, had been developing an alternative mode of government control over markets, one with “much more modest goals,” and animated by skepticism about the ability of any centralized administration to gather accurate and up-to-date information about a complex modern economy. He dismissed the Keynesian technocrats’ idea that one could achieve low inflation and full employment, arguing that the application of inevitably crude fiscal tools to lift employment would always tend to increase inflation. It was far better, he thought, to restrict central economic policy to what it could do well: control inflation by controlling the supply of money. The coming of stagflation, and the seeming incapacity of economic orthodoxy to deal with it, discredited the Keynesians and lifted the monetarists. Economic policy didn’t seem to be working, and as the 1970s progressed, the pressure to make a change became irresistible. Monetarists ascended to key policy positions, but this ascent did not mark the capitulation of center-left governing practices to the neoliberal faith in free markets, as right-wingers like to claim. The idea that accepting monetarism meant accepting free markets is the result of a retrospective “conflation of monetarism with a theoretically separate set of arguments about the supposed superiority of markets over government intervention in the economy.” Advertisement: At first glance, this seems a strange claim, given both Friedman’s status as a prime exponent of free-market thinking, and the fact that — compared with Keynesianism — monetarism represents a relatively restricted mode of government economic intervention. Isn’t opting for monetarism simply a form of opting for greater freedom for markets? But in fact, as Stedman Jones argues, monetarism is not the same as the neoliberal faith in markets. Monetarism is not — nor did it appear to policy makers in the 1970s to be — a laissez-faire program. Rather, it is a program for government control of economic volatility. Given stagflation, the choice between monetarism and Keynesianism looked less like an ideological choice and more like a choice between two techniques of state intervention. The fact that people, at the time, could clearly perceive a distinction between monetarist policy and neoliberal philosophy is illustrated in Hayek’s extreme reaction to Friedman’s plan. Hayek advocated the abolition of legal tender, and the spontaneous, market-driven creation of private currencies. From the other direction, Democratic and Labour governments with little interest in freeing markets from government could adopt monetarist policy solutions without believing they were admitting the bankruptcy of the welfare state. The latter interpretation was strictly rear-view, Stedman Jones claims. And had events like the Iran hostage crisis not intervened, he argues, the story of liberal capitulation and failure might never have served to justify the implementation of genuinely neoliberal policies in the 1980s and 1990s. ¤ Advertisement: Stedman Jones’s careful history offers us a genuinely new account of the rise of neoliberalism by demonstrating that the link between monetarism and free markets was not obvious — it was forged in the fires of conservative ideology. But a flaw in his historical analysis prevents him from drawing the full implications of this fact. This flaw becomes visible in his conclusion, when he dismisses the desire for the free market as a delusion and calls for a return to “sanity” in economic policy. His plea finds many echoes in today’s center-left observers of our political scene. But while Stedman Jones judges the enthusiasm for free markets as essentially inexplicable, a boundless faith in free market logic keeps welling up in the story he tells, thus undercutting his effort to present the rise of neoliberalism as the result of rational decisions. One can, of course, easily sympathize with his assessment of the desire for a free market. This enthusiasm doesn’t seem to have an obvious source. Every historical event — from the advent of the Great Depression under laissez-faire policies, to the advent of the Golden Age of Capitalism under Keynesian statism, to the financial panic of 2008 under deregulation — seems to undercut it. Still, he acknowledges that the conservative success in framing the economic story of the late 1970s and early 1980s as the triumph of markets over states, for example, drew upon a broad and deep existing enthusiasm for free markets in the population. Stedman Jones never accounts for why. Even more troubling, the love of free markets won’t stay in the right political box. In his chapter on neoliberal housing policy, for example, he initially contrasts the conservative, proto-neoliberal emphasis on single-family suburban home ownership with the leftist urban vision of Jane Jacobs. But he soon suggests that the idea of curing urban ills with free market “enterprise zones” was inspired by the pro-commerce, anti-planning vision of… Jane Jacobs. One comes away from Masters of the Universe with the unsettling impression that many of the players in his story — on both sides of the political spectrum — are somehow predisposed to enthusiasm about the prospect of free markets. This doesn’t exactly undercut his narrative of neoliberalism’s political triumph, but it does alter our sense of the social and cultural context of this triumph in ways the book only fleetingly acknowledges. Stedman Jones shows us the gap between the monetarist manipulation of the economy and the commitment to free markets. One might argue that this gap is more widely intuited today than Stedman Jones recognizes. Moreover, skepticism about the proposition that monetarism is a “free market” solution to economic crisis applies to other neoliberal policies that are said to promote free exchange. Many on the left, and the right, saw that what was being marketed as free market policy by Reagan and Thatcher was, in fact, an insidious form of government manipulation. Much of the political resistance of the past three decades has focused on distance between a social world, organized by genuinely free exchange, and the forms of government control identified with free markets by successive neoliberal administrations. The sense of this distance enables people on both the far right and the far left to claim, with justice, that the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions were founded on lies, that neoliberalism’s ascent witnessed not the retreat of government, but its insidious extension. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s attempt to claim the slogan “down with big government” for the left, and the “end the fed” signs that appeared at both Occupy and Tea Party rallies, are symptoms of a pervasive belief that free exchange has yet to triumph over the state. Clearly, a work of political history like Stedman Jones’s does not — nor should it — pretend to delineate the shape of popular free market utopias, to analyze why the idea of free markets is so widely appealing, or to trace the routes of its cultural dissemination. Yet he leaves us with too many unanswered questions to justify his concluding dismissal of it as insanity. We may very well conclude not that free market ideology has coopted the left, but that resistance to actually existing capitalism now takes a form inassimilable to the political positions of the early postwar period. Perhaps Jane Jacobs is different from Milton Friedman after all. Perhaps there are two visions of the free market, left and right, and we will one day look back on the postwar period as the emergence of a new form of ideological struggle. For now, the scale of the problem is visible only in the distortions it causes in so sober a history as this one.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) made false claims about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's actions during the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Ohio Republican claimed that Pelosi initially denied the Capitol police request for National Guard assistance, and then waited nearly an hour to approve a second request -- but a Washington Post fact-checker found that's not what happened. Three key figures involved in Capitol security, each of whom resigned under pressure following the riot -- former Capitol police chief Steven Sund, former House sergeant-at-arms Paul Irving and former Senate sergeant-at-arms Michael Stenger -- testified before Congress last week about what went wrong. Sund wrote Feb. 1 to Pelosi that he approached two sergeants-at-arms to ask for help from the National Guard, which he didn't have authority to do without an emergency declaration by the Capitol police board, but Irving -- who had been appointed in 2012 by former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), not Pelosi -- said he was concerned about the optics of that and didn't feel there was enough evidence to support additional security. Stenger, however, suggested that Sund should find out how quickly the National Guard support could be ready in case that was needed, and the former Capitol police chief contacted Gen. William Walker, commanding officer of the D.C. National Guard, who said he could have 125 troops ready to act quickly, once approved. "There is no indication that Pelosi was at all involved," wrote the Post's Glenn Kessley. "Irving supposedly had made a vague reference to 'optics,' but there is no indication what that means. Moreover, the Stenger, the Senate sergeant-at-arms, was also reluctant to support an immediate dispatch of National Guard troops. So there is little reason to suggest Irving, acting under Pelosi's direction, only was responsible. It appeared to have been a joint decision." Irving testified last week that he did not care about the appearance of National Guard troops guarding the Capitol, and did not see the need to alert House leadership that he may request that assistance until early on Jan. 6, the same Stenger notified former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's staff. A spokesman for Pelosi said there had been no discussions between Irving and the House speaker or her staff about the National Guard before Jan. 6, saying security professionals are expected to make decisions about security. "Without evidence, Jordan asserted that House Speaker Pelosi had denied a request for National Guard troops two days before the insurrection," Kessley concluded. "Instead, public testimony shows she did not even hear about the request until two days later. Jordan also tried to pin the blame on House sergeant-at-arms, but testimony shows the Senate sergeant-at-arms also was not keen about the idea."

Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party's presidential and Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats' leaders are abandoning their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future. Here is the present scene. Leading Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have decided to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the giant health insurance companies like Aetna and United Healthcare to "cover recently laid-off workers and those who purchase their own coverage," as The New York Times reported. There are no price restraints on the gouging insurance premiums or loophole-ridden policies. That is why giant corporate socialist insurers love the "American Rescue Plan," which gives them socialist cash on the barrelhead. The law lets insurers decide how and whether they pay healthcare bills with co-pays, deductibles, or grant waivers. All these anti-consumer details are buried in the endless and inscrutable fine print. Whatever happened to the Democrats' (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, etc.) demand for single-payer – everybody in, nobody out – with free choice of doctors and hospitals instead of the existing cruel, and profiteering industry for which enough is never enough? Senator Sanders often mentioned a Yale study, published on February 15, 2020, that found: Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to repeal the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than $450 billion annually…." (See the study: Improving the Prognosis of Health Care in the USA, February 15, 2020). Well, House Speaker Pelosi is discouraging House Democrats from supporting Representative Pramila Jayapal's H.R. 1384, Medicare for All Act of 2019, the gold standard for single-payer. News reports indicate that Representative Jayapal (D-WA) and Representative. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) will reintroduce their Medicare for All bill next week. Speaker Pelosi is telling Democrats in the House to focus instead on the modest expansion of Obamacare with its corporate welfare, utter complexity and seriously inadequate coverage. Almost eighty million Americans are presently uninsured or underinsured – a level that will not be significantly reduced for deprived workers by tweaking Obamacare during the Covid-19 pandemic. A modified Obamacare, with no price ceilings, will hardly reduce the tens of thousands of American deaths every year because people cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time to prevent fatalities. The Yale study also found that: "ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo." Tweaking Obamacare does little to stem the relentless surge in healthcare prices and profits in our country, which is unique for not placing billing ceilings on medical procedures and drugs. This "get whatever you can" behavior by the vendors is so uncontrolled that healthcare billing fraud and abuse is costing people one billion dollars A DAY! Malcolm Sparrow, who is an applied mathematician at Harvard, estimates medical billing fraud amounts to at least ten percent of all healthcare expenses each year. Obamacare does nothing to limit the perverse incentives of a fee-for-service system that includes unnecessary operations, over-diagnosis, and over-prescribing all of which increase the risks of preventable casualties. A Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine peer-reviewed study in 2016 estimates that close to 5000 lives are lost weekly due to such "preventable problems" just in hospitals (see: Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S., May 3, 2016). It gets worse. Year after year, the corporate Democrats, along with the Republicans, are facilitating expanding corporate takeovers of Medicare and Medicaid. The giant and widening attack on Medicare is called "Medicare Advantage," which more accurately should be called "Medicare [Dis]advantage." Our corporatized government, under both Parties, has been allowing deceptive promotional seductions of elderly people to take Medicare [Dis]advantage – now fully 40% of all Medicare beneficiaries – which is just a corporate insurance plan with multiple undisclosed tripwires. Former President Trump worsened what he inherited from the Democrats in outsourcing Medicare. He launched something called "direct contracting" that, "could fully turn Medicare over to private health insurers" declared Diane Archer, former chair of Consumer Reports, in her article on March 8, 2021. Medicare Advantage premiums can be pricey. According to Kay Tillow, Executive Director of the Nurses Professional Organization, "The Medicare Advantage Plans are smiling all the way to the bank. In 2019 each Medicare Advantage beneficiary cost taxpayers $11,822 while those in original Medicare cost $10,813 each – that's over $1,000 more and over 9% more per person for the for-profit insurers!" Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the corporate takeover of Medicare? Last year, many Democratic candidates pontificated about the need for single-payer health insurance, but now in Congress, we are scarcely hearing a peep about this vital human right. Their campaign rhetoric is just distant memory. Tragically, it is now harder than ever for the elderly to get out of Medicare [Dis]advantage and go back to traditional Medicare. Millions of elderly people are deceived by televised marketing lies and slick brochures. The hapless Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should investigate and end the deceptions. Congressional investigations and hearings are long overdue. As the authoritative Dr. Fred Hyde says about the so-called Medicare Advantage: "It's not what you pay, it's what you get." That is, the corporate health plan works until they get sick, until "they want their doctor and their hospital." Dr. Hyde was referring to the narrow networks where these companies park their beneficiaries. More astonishing in this story of the rapacious corporate takeover of Medicare is that AARP promotes these flawed plans to their members, takes paid ads by big insurers in AARP publications, and derives income from this collaboration. Imagine, over 50,000 SEIU retirees are automatically placed by their unions in these Medicare [Dis]advantage traps without first being allowed to choose traditional Medicare. This whole sordid sabotage of the nineteen sixties Democrats' dream, under President Lyndon Johnson, of taking the first step toward universal healthcare coverage for everyone, begs for more exposes. It begs for more clamor by the progressive Democrats in Congress who are strangely passive so far. I'm speaking of Representatives Jayapal, Raskin, Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and the receding "Squad," as well as Senators Warren and Sanders. If we can't expect these stalwarts to start the counterattack that will save lives, save trillions of dollars over the years, focus on prevention not just treatment, and diminish the anxiety, dread, and fear, that the citizens of Canada and other western nations do not experience because they are insured from birth on, who is left to defend the American people against the arrogant health insurance corporate barons? I'm sending this column to these self-styled progressive Democrats along with a two-page specific critique of corporate Medicare from the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) website. PNHP's membership counts over 15,000 pro-single-payer physicians. In a comment on the PNHP site, Don McCanne, M.D., says, "Remember, the mission of private, for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers is to make money, whereas the mission of our traditional Medicare program is to provide health care. We are supporting a program that deferentially caters to the private insurers and their interests when we should be supporting a program that is designed to take care of patients. Those being deceived by the private Medicare Advantage marketing materials really do not realize the bad deal they may be getting until they face the private insurer barriers to needed care. Silver Sneakers won't take care of that." (See: https://pnhp.org/news/russell-mokhiber-explains-why-private-medicare-advantage-plans-are-a-bad-deal/) If you care about this issue, tell your Members of Congress it is time to pass Medicare for All represented by H.R. 1384.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday directly confronted an influential health policy aide for attempting to undercut the Democratic caucus's push for Medicare for All. Jayapal, author of the Medicare for All bill H.R. 1384, demanded to know at a meeting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus why Wendell Primus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's top health policy adviser, derided her proposal in discussions with insurance executives. "I think it's really inappropriate for staff representing the Speaker's office to be undercutting members of our caucus," Jayapal told Politico after the meeting. As was multiple outlets including Common Dreams reported, Primus spoke with executives and health policy experts on November 30 at a meeting where he called proposals like Jayapal's and the broader push toward Medicare for All an "unhelpful distraction." While last year's meeting was private, attendees told Politico in reporting published Tuesday that Primus had given the impression that those present should work to steer public sentiment away from a single-payer system and toward propping up the for-profit health insurance sector. As one single payer advocate pointed out on Twitter, Primus entirely misrepresented the reality of Medicare for All's broad support. He claimed that single-payer healthcare would be "very expensive," despite the fact that it's projected to cost $2 trillion less than the current for-profit model in its first decade; that "stakeholders" are against it, ignoring polls showing the at least 70 percent of Americans including more than half of Republicans back the plan; and creates "winners and losers," suggesting that the current system—which allows profit-driven insurance corporations to regularly refuseto cover medical expenses and kick Americans off their insurance plans—is more equitable than a proposal to expand the broadly popular Medicare program to the entire country. In Tuesday's closed-door caucus meeting, Jayapal reportedly reminded Primus of the slides he had shown and rejected his claim that his remarks in November had been taken out of context or misinterpreted. "We took some things out of the slides and said, these are some of the things you said—it's not a matter of perception," Jayapal told Politico. National Nurses United (NNU), which has long been a leader in the fight for single-payer and Medicare for All, also spoke out against Primus for his behavior, noting that he undermined not only a member of Congress but also the voters who had turned out just weeks earlier to vote for many representatives who support universal healthcare. "The fact that it occurred last November, shortly after the Democrats recaptured the House majority in an election that was fought largely on the issue of health care, is a clear betrayal to the American people who had just voted overwhelmingly in favor of improved health care," NNU President Jean Ross said in a statement. Jayapal told Politico she has felt supported by Pelosi as she's pushed her Medicare for All proposal, but that Primus's actions have signaled that the House Speaker's office is working against her goals and those of other progressives in Congress. "She is respectful of me in leading this effort, and I would expect her staff to at least follow that," the congresswoman said. Ross noted that centrists' attempts to undercut the Medicare for All push will only embolden those who believe the government should provide healthcare to all Americans, and who are prepared to fight for the proposal. "We nurses are listening, even if our Congressional leaders aren't," Ross said. "Nurses will not be silenced by Big Pharma or other industry opposition, but will continue to fight for what we know is the best solution: Medicare for All."

With the Covid-19 pandemic raging and recognition of the inadequacy and injustice of America's for-profit healthcare system at a possible zenith, a new study released Tuesday reveals that projections of large and costly usage increases under a single-payer program have been overstated, bolstering the case that Medicare for All would save both lives and money. In a paper published Tuesday in Health Affairs, Drs. Adam Gaffney, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhander of Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School and James Kahn of the University of California San Francisco—all associated with Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for Medicare for All—analyze the relationship between universal healthcare and the use of medical services. What the researchers find is that most estimates of the effect of universal coverage expansion on healthcare utilization are overblown, adding to a growing consensus that Medicare for All is less costly than previously thought due to lower administrative costs and usage rates that increase only slightly or not at all. The authors anticipate that "debate over public coverage expansion and its costs" is likely to grow as a result of the pandemic's exposure of the problems with employment-based insurance and the return of a Democratic administration to the White House. In contrast to most models of the relationship between coverage expansions and utilization changes, the authors' findings, based on examining the history of past coverage expansions in the U.S. and 10 other affluent countries, are more modest. While demand for medical services is elastic, meaning that "people use more healthcare when the price they pay is lower and less care when prices rise," the authors contend that prior research documenting the effect of coverage expansions on healthcare use and costs have underestimated the impact of "supply-side constraints." Although the number of physicians and hospital beds is malleable in the long-run, current limitations on supply can provoke a reduction in the provision of low-value services and yield a more egalitarian prioritization of care, the authors say. As Dr. Gaffney explained in a statement Tuesday, "Our findings clash with the traditional economic teaching: that giving people free access to care would cause demand and utilization to soar." "That traditional thinking ignores the 'supply' side of the health care equation: doctors' and nurses' time and hospital beds are limited, and mostly already fully occupied," Gaffney added. "When doctors get busier, they prioritize care according to need, and provide less unnecessary care to those with minimal needs to make way for patients with real needs." Between 1973 and 2020, various models have projected utilization increases ranging from 2% to at least 21%, but according to the authors, "nearly all predictions of utilization surges stemming from universal coverage expansions are overestimates." There are a handful of studies that have sought to quantify how extending coverage to individuals affects healthcare consumption, but "the effect of universal coverage on society-wide utilization may differ from the effects of providing coverage for individuals," the authors write. "Past society-wide coverage expansions haven't caused surges in healthcare use, so analysts who've confidently projected a tsunami of healthcare use and costs after Medicare for All are ignoring history," said Dr. Woolhandler. According to the authors' review of the historical record, "universal coverage expansion would increase ambulatory visits by 7-10% and hospital use by 0-3%," while "modest administrative savings could offset the costs of such increases." Notwithstanding discrepancies about the extent to which usage rates change in relation to coverage expansions, one finding shared by all analyses, the authors emphasize, is that "utilization-related cost increases would be partially or fully offset by savings on drug prices or reductions in provider fees, waste, and administrative costs." As Common Dreams reported last month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that implementing a single-payer health insurance program in the U.S. would reduce overall healthcare spending nationwide by about $650 billion per year. Between the CBO's finding that Medicare for All's administrative cost savings have been underestimated and Gaffney et al.'s finding that the effects of universal coverage reforms on healthcare utilization and costs have been overestimated, it is becoming increasingly clear that in addition to saving lives, Medicare for All would be less expensive than previously acknowledged. "In projecting the impacts of coverage expansions, analysts who fail to accurately account for supply-side factors will overestimate the costs of reform," the authors write. "Such errors may cause policymakers to mistakenly conclude that reforms that would cover millions of Americans are unaffordable." "Conversely," they continue, "policies that increase the supply of medical resources are likely to increase utilization, even without coverage expansions... Supply expansions that are not tailored to need could have the unintended consequences of boosting the provision of low-value care and costs." The authors insist that like other countries, the U.S. can constrain "utilization and cost growth without resorting to cost barriers while achieving universal coverage and a more equitable distribution of care." As Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project wrote last month, "The barriers to the policy are not technical deficiencies or costs, but rather political opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats who would rather spend more money to provide less healthcare."

Amid debate over rising medical costs, surprise hospital bills and high prescription drug prices, health care remains a top priority for voters in the 2020 presidential election. Here are the candidates who have put out proposals so far and what we know about those who have yet to do so. The list doesn't include every Democratic candidate, but highlights candidates who have significant positions or experience that sets them apart. Where Democrats stand on a single-payer system that eliminates private insurance The debate on Medicare for All, which would overhaul the nation's current health care system, has begun to sow division in the 2020 field. According to Politifact, eliminating the private insurance market would "shake up nearly a fifth of the nation's economy." Some candidates are rallying behind the concept, others are against it and some have suggested forming a hybrid system that would call for universal health care while at the same time allowing people to chose private insurance if they want it. Former Vice President Joe Biden released a plan in July that his campaign said would make the Affordable Care Act easier to navigate with more choices for Americans. The plan would expand upon the Affordable Care Act passed under the Obama-Biden administration and provide a public, government-run insurance option for consumers to purchase on the existing exchanges with the goal on keeping costs down and expanding access for patients to buy into. This proposal differs from a Medicare for All system that several of Biden's 2020 rivals advocate for -- a contrast the former vice president has already started to draw on the campaign trail. "We should not be starting from scratch. We should be building from what we have. There is no time to wait. And I that's why I think, what I'm proposing -- and we can do it -- is to keep Obamacare, restore the cuts that have been made, and add a public option," Biden said during an event in Dover, New Hampshire, in July. "If they like their employer-based insurance, you get to keep it. The fact of the matter is, all the other proposals make you -- you lose it. Period." The Biden campaign estimates that the plan will cost $750 billion over 10 years. Senior advisers said Biden would rescind President Donald Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy, raise the maximum tax bracket to 39% and get rid of the capital gains tax loophole for wealthy families with incomes greater than $1 million a year in order to cover the hefty price tag. Dr. Phil Verhoef, a board member of Physicians for a National Health Program, told ABC News that he does not believe that building on the Affordable Care Act is the solution to solving a troubled health care system. "Bidens' proposal is effectively let's fix the way the ACA was weakened under the Trump administration and then let's add a public option on top of that for people to be able to buy in Medicare," Verhoef said. "The reason that I think this is problematic is it preserves how complex our health care system is right now." Shortly after his announcement, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., countered Biden via Twitter. "I fought to improve and pass Obamacare. I traveled all over the country to fight the repeal of Obamacare," Sanders wrote. "But I will not be deterred from ending the corporate greed that creates dysfunction in our health care system. We must pass Medicare for All." In April, Sanders again introduced his signature health care legislation, which if passed and signed into law, would provide government-run, Medicare-style health insurance for all Americans and outlaw most duplicative private insurance in the process. "The Medicare for All Act will provide comprehensive health care to every man, woman and child in our country without out of pocket expenses. No more insurance premiums, deductibles or co-payments. Further, this bill improves Medicare coverage to include dental, hearing and vision care," Sanders' team wrote in a summary of the bill distributed ahead of a press conference on Capitol Hill. Sanders has introduced the bill several times in the last decade, but the latest version is more sweeping. It now calls for expanded coverage to include and pay for long-term care, as well as no co-pays for doctors visits. One study last year from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University estimated that Sanders' legislation could cost the federal government more than $32 trillion dollars over 10 years. His plan offers few concrete deals on how to pay for the expanded federal system, but in the past the senator has backed significantly higher income taxes for wealthy Americans and businesses in the country. Fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand signed on as cosponsors for Sanders' Medicare for All bill in the Senate. Gillibrand dropped out of the presidential race on Aug. 28. While Harris is a supporter of Sanders' legislation, his campaign says the plan that she released in July stops short of what the Vermont senator envisions for Americans. The key distinction between the two senators' plans is that Harris still sees the private system playing a role. Her plan is more of a hybrid health insurance system that allows private companies to be able to offer health insurance plans within the Medicare system for consumers. Harris' plan also calls for a 10-year transition to a single-payer system while Sanders plan calls for four years. Harris also pointed out that she views Sanders plan as too tough on the middle-class. She said that she doesn't like Sanders' options to tax households making above $29,000 an additional 4% income-based premium. Instead, she is proposing to exempt households making below $100,000, along with a higher income threshold for middle-class families living in high-cost areas. Sanders' campaign manager Faiz Shakir criticized Harris' plan saying it centers on Medicare privatization, insurance executives and introducing more corporate greed and profiteering into the Medicare system."Call it anything you want, but you can't call this plan Medicare for All." Biden's campaign also criticized the plan. "This new, have-it-every-which-way approach pushes the extremely challenging implementation of the Medicare for All part of this plan ten years into the future, meaning it would not occur on the watch of even a two-term administration," Kate Bedingfield, a Biden deputy campaign manager, said in a statement. "The result? A Bernie Sanders-lite Medicare for All and a refusal to be straight with the American middle class, who would have a large tax increase forced on them with this plan." Verhoef said the plan Harris proposed is flawed for a few reasons, most notably is that it still has a role for private insurance companies and is effectively creating Medicare-Advantage plans for everybody. "She's basically saying let's keep private insurers in here and lets heavily regulate what they provide and give people the option of purchasing these heavily regulated Medicare-Advantage plans," Verhoef said. "The idea that we are really going to regulate insurance companies this much I think is a little bit pie in the sky itself." However, Maura Calsyn, managing director of health policy at the Center for American Progress, told ABC News that while there might be political backlash to Harris' proposal that medical experts like herself view her proposal as a serious one that deserves consideration. "The vast majority of Americans have private insurance and I think it's very easy in the abstract to say that everybody should just not worry about transitioning from those plans and that everything will be just fine," Calsyn said. "I do think that a plan like Kamala Harris', giving people a choice, is really an important feature and I don't think its importance can be overstated." During the first presidential debate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., vocalized her support for a hybrid plan which allows uninsured Americans to sign up for a public plan. The public option plans would essentially allow individuals to choose between public insurance plan, like Medicare or Medicaid, or a private insurance plan. "It's something Barack Obama wanted to do, which is a public option," Klobuchar said. "I'm concerned about kicking half of America off their health insurance." Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke echoed a similar sentiment saying that he would "preserve choice" by not eliminating private insurance. Sen. Julian Castro, Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet, John Delaney and Marianne Williamson have also expressed that they would support private insurance playing some role in the health care system. An issue that affects candidates and voters nationwide Candidates supporting a complete overhaul of the health care system might have a tough time winning over voters on this issue. According to a recent Gallup poll, most Americans are happy with their current health coverage. The poll found that 69% of Americans rate the coverage and 80% rate the quality of the health care they personally receive as "excellent" or "good." However, the same poll found that only 34% of Americans view health care coverage in the U.S. in general as positive. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released in April, 19% of Americans said that health care is one of the most important issues when voting for president in the 2020 election. Among leaned Democrats, health care ranked as the most important issue with voters, with 29% responding. The poll also found that Americans, by a 17-point margin, say President Donald Trump's handling of health care makes them more likely to oppose than support him for a second term. ABC News' Libby Cathey contributed to this report.

A new study shows that while states led by Democratic governors were overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic in the early months of the crisis, per-capita rates of Covid-19 cases and deaths eventually became most severe in states with Republican governors—a finding the researchers attribute to diverging approaches to public health policies that affected the spread of the virus. "From March to early June, Republican-led states had lower Covid-19 incidence rates compared with Democratic-led states. On June 3, the association reversed, and Republican-led states had higher incidence," reads the study, conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina. "For death rates," the authors added, "Republican-led states had lower rates early in the pandemic, but higher rates from July 4 through mid-December." According to the researchers, "The early trends could be explained by high Covid-19 cases and deaths among Democratic-led states that are home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020"—such as Seattle and New York City. "However," they continued, "the subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus." The study, published this week in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined Covid-19 "incidence, death, testing, and test positivity rates from March 15 through December 15, 2020," when there were more than 16 million confirmed cases and 300,000 deaths in the U.S. Making statistical adjustments to account for population density, the analysis focused on per-capita infection and death rates in the 26 GOP-led states and 25 Democratic-led jurisdictions, including Washington, D.C. As the researchers noted, the response to the pandemic "became increasingly politicized in the U.S.," and according to the study, the "political affiliation of state leaders may contribute to policies affecting the spread of the disease." The new paper cited other recent studies, which found that "Republican governors... were slower to adopt stay-at-home orders, if they did so at all," while "Democratic governors had longer durations of stay-at-home orders." In addition, the researchers pointed out that having a Democratic governor was "the most important predictor of state mandates to wear face masks." In a March 23, 2020 appearance on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) claimed that reopening the economy was more important than adhering to public health guidelines, even though abandoning social distancing requirements and other disease mitigation measures meant exacerbating the deadly Covid-19 pandemic. After consulting a group of Wall Street titans last March, then-President Donald Trump ignored the advice of epidemiologists and followed through with his call for a premature end to coronavirus-related restrictions. The U.S. will "soon be open for business," Trump said at the time, aiming for an Easter reopening date. The study suggested that "decisions by Republican governors in spring 2020 to retract policies, such as the lifting of stay-at-home orders on April 28 in Georgia, may have contributed to increased cases and deaths." In a statement, Sara Benjamin-Neelon, a professor at Johns Hopkins and co-author of the paper, said that "governors' party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus." As NBC News reported: Bruce Y. Lee, a professor of health policy and management at the City University of New York School of Public Health, who was not involved in the review, called it "a very enlightening and well-done study." While the study doesn't necessarily show "cause and effect," it does suggest "there were associations" between a governor's political party and the spread of the virus, he said. "The actual spread of the virus is more complex than general correlations, but those can show us more gross general insight," Lee said, adding that the report bolsters the evidence that measures like masks and social distancing can help stop the spread of the virus. "One of the most concerning things last year is the politicization of public health restrictions," Lee said. "They're not opinions, they're based on evidence." The Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. surpassed 530,000 on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization's declaration of a pandemic. The global death toll is now over 2,634,000. Earlier this month, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott tried to defend his widely condemned decision to scrap the Lone Star State's mask mandate with only 7% of residents fully vaccinated, a move that critics characterized as reckless. Several experts, as Common Dreams reported last week, are once again warning against lifting statewide mask mandates and other coronavirus-related precautions, given that a premature rollback of public health measures threatens to derail progress in curbing the pandemic just as the potential of widespread vaccination grows. "Despite a more coordinated federal response this year, governors still play a key role in the pandemic response," said Benjamin-Neelon. "As we're seeing, several states have lifted mask requirements even though we have yet to make substantial progress in controlling the spread of the virus." "These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics," Benjamin-Neelon said of the paper.

Introduction: The response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic became increasingly politicized in the U.S. and political affiliation of state leaders may contribute to policies affecting the spread of the disease. This study examines differences in COVID-19 infection, death, and testing by governor party affiliation across 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Methods: A longitudinal analysis was conducted in December 2020 examining COVID-19 incidence, death, testing, and test positivity rates from March 15 through December 15, 2020. A Bayesian negative binomial model was fit to estimate daily RRs and posterior intervals (PIs) comparing rates by gubernatorial party affiliation. The analyses adjusted for state population density, rurality, Census region, age, race, ethnicity, poverty, number of physicians, obesity, cardiovascular disease, asthma, smoking, and presidential voting in 2020. Results: From March to early June, Republican-led states had lower COVID-19 incidence rates compared with Democratic-led states. On June 3, the association reversed, and Republican-led states had higher incidence (RR=1.10, 95% PI=1.01, 1.18). This trend persisted through early December. For death rates, Republican-led states had lower rates early in the pandemic, but higher rates from July 4 (RR=1.18, 95% PI=1.02, 1.31) through mid-December. Republican-led states had higher test positivity rates starting on May 30 (RR=1.70, 95% PI=1.66, 1.73) and lower testing rates by September 30 (RR=0.95, 95% PI=0.90, 0.98). Conclusion: Gubernatorial party affiliation may drive policy decisions that impact COVID-19 infections and deaths across the U.S. Future policy decisions should be guided by public health considerations rather than political ideology. INTRODUCTION Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in a global public health crisis. As of December 15, 2020, there have been >16 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 300,000 deaths in the US.1 In response to the pandemic, the governors of all 50 states declared states of emergency. Shortly thereafter, states began enacting policies to help stop the spread of the virus. However, these policies vary and are guided, in part, by decisions from state governors. Through state constitutions and laws, governors have the authority to take action in public health emergencies. In early 2020, nearly all state governors issued stay-at-home executive orders that advised or required residents to shelter in place.2 Recent studies found that Republican governors, however, were slower to adopt stay-at-home orders, if they did so at all.3,4 Moreover, another study found that Democratic governors had longer durations of stay-at-home orders.5 Further, researchers identified governor Democratic political party affiliation as the most important predictor of state mandates to wear face masks.6 Although recent studies have examined individual state policies, such as mandates to socially distance, wear masks, and close schools and parks,3,4,6–8 multiple policies may act together to impact the spread of COVID-19. Additionally, the pandemic response has become increasingly politicized.7,9,10 As such, political affiliation of state leaders, and specifically governors, might best capture the omnibus impact of state policies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to quantify differences in incidence, death, testing, and test positivity rates over time, stratified by governors’ political affiliation among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. METHODS Study Sample A longitudinal analysis examined COVID-19 incident cases, death rates, polymerase chain reaction testing, and test positivity from March 15 (March 24 for testing and test positivity) through December 15, 2020 for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Based on prior studies,3,4,6,7 it was hypothesized that states with Democratic governors would have higher incidence, death, and test positivity rates early in the pandemic due to points of entry for the virus,11,12 but that the trends would reverse in later months, reflecting policy differences that break along party lines. The IRBs at the Medical University of South Carolina and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health deemed this research exempt. Measures Governor party affiliation was documented for each U.S. state; for the District of Columbia, mayoral affiliation was used. Daily incident cases and deaths were obtained from the COVID Tracking Project.13 Polymerase chain reaction testing and test positivity data came from the HHS.14 Potential confounders included state population density,15 Census region,15 state percentage of residents aged ≥65 years,15 percentage of Black residents,15 percentage of Hispanic residents,15 percentage below the federal poverty line,15 percentage living in rural areas,16 percentage with obesity,17 percentage with cardiovascular disease,18 percentage with asthma, percentage smoking,9 number of physicians per 100,000 residents,16 and percentage voting Democratic (versus Republican) in the 2020 presidential election.19 Statistical Analysis Bayesian negative binomial models were used to examine incident case, death, testing, and test positivity rates. The models included penalized cubic B-splines for the fixed and random temporal effects. Models adjusted for the above covariates. Ridging priors were assigned to the fixed and random spline coefficients.20 Posterior computation was implemented using Gibbs sampling.18,21 Model details, including prior specification, computational diagnostics, and sensitivity analyses, appear in the Appendix. Models were stratified by governors’ affiliation, and posterior mean daily rates were graphed with their 95% posterior intervals (PIs). Adjusted RRs and 95% PIs were calculated to compare states, with RRs >1.00 indicating higher rates among Republican-led states. Analyses were conducted using R, version 3.6. RESULTS Figure 1 (A) COVID-19 incidence rates per 100,000 individuals by governor affiliation; (B) adjusted RRs and 95% posterior intervals (PIs). RRs >1 indicate higher rates for Republican governors. Show full caption Dem, Democratic; Rep, Republican; Apr, April; Aug, August; Sep, September; Oct, October; Nov, November; Dec, December. Figure 2 (A) COVID-19 death rates per 1 million individuals by governor affiliation; (B) adjusted RRs and posterior intervals (PIs). RRs >1 indicate higher rates for Republican governors. Show full caption Dem, Democratic; Rep, Republican; Apr, April; Aug, August; Sep, September; Oct, October; Nov, November; Dec, December. Figure 3 (A) PCR testing rates per 1,000 individuals by governor affiliation; (B) adjusted RRs and posterior intervals (PIs). RRs >1 indicate higher rates for Republican governors. Show full caption Dem, Democratic; Rep, Republican; Apr, April; Aug, August; Sep, September; Oct, October; Nov, November; Dec, December. Figure 4 (A) PCR test positivity rates per 100 tests by governor affiliation; (B) adjusted RRs and posterior intervals (PIs). RRs >1 indicate higher rates for Republican governors. Show full caption Dem, Democratic; Rep, Republican; Apr, April; Aug, August; Sep, September; Oct, October; Nov, November; Dec, December. The sample comprised 26 Republican-led and 25 Democratic-led states. Figure 1 A–B present incidence trends (cases per 100,000) and adjusted RRs by gubernatorial affiliation. Republican-led states had fewer cases from March to early June 2020. However, on June 3, the association reversed (RR=1.10, 95% PI=1.01, 1.18), indicating that Republican-led states had on average 1.10 times more cases per 100,000 than Democratic-led states. The RRs increased steadily thereafter, achieving a maximum of 1.77 (95% PI=1.62, 1.90) on June 28 and remaining positive for the remainder of the study, although the PIs overlapped 1.00 starting on December 3. A similar pattern emerged for deaths shown in Figure 2 A–B. Republican-led states had lower death rates early in the pandemic, but the trend reversed on July 4 (RR=1.18, 95% PI=1.02, 1.31). The RRs increased through August 5 (RR=1.80, 95% PI=1.57, 1.98) and the PIs remained >1.00 until December 13 (RR=1.20, 95% PI=0.96, 1.39). Testing rates ( Figure 3 A–B) tracked similarly for Republican and Democratic states until September 30 (RR=0.95, 95% PI=0.90, 0.98). By November 27, the testing rate for Republican-led states was substantially lower than Democratic states (RR=0.77, 95% PI=0.72, 0.80). The test positivity rate ( Figure 4 A–B) was higher for Republican-led states starting on May 30, and was 1.70 (95% PI=1.65, 1.74) times higher on June 23. DISCUSSION In this longitudinal analysis, Republican-led states had fewer per capita COVID-19 cases, deaths, and positive tests early in the pandemic, but these trends reversed in early May (positive tests), June (cases), and July (deaths). Testing rates were similar until September, when Republican states fell behind Democratic states. The early trends could be explained by high COVID-19 cases and deaths among Democratic-led states that are home to initial ports of entry for the virus in early 2020.11,12 However, the subsequent reversal in trends, particularly with respect to testing, may reflect policy differences that could have facilitated the spread of the virus.3,4,6–9 Adolph et al.3,6 found that Republican governors were slower to adopt both stay-at-home orders and mandates to wear face masks. Other studies have shown that Democratic governors were more likely to issue stay-at-home orders with longer durations.4,5 Moreover, decisions by Republican governors in spring 2020 to retract policies, such as the lifting of stay-at-home orders on April 28 in Georgia,22 may have contributed to increased cases and deaths. Democratic states also had lower test positivity rates from May 30 through December 15, suggesting more rigorous containment strategies in response to the pandemic. Thus, governors’ political affiliation might function as an upstream progenitor of multifaceted policies that, in unison, impact the spread of the virus. Although there were exceptions in states such as Maryland and Massachusetts, Republican governors were generally less likely to enact policies aligned with public health social distancing recommendations.3 Limitations This is the first study to quantify differences over time based on governor party affiliation. There are, however, limitations. This was a population-level rather than individual-level analysis. Although analyses were adjusted for potential confounders (e.g., rurality), the findings could reflect the virus's spread from urban to rural areas.11,12 Additionally, as with any observational study, causality cannot be inferred. Finally, governors are not the only authoritative actor in a state; governors in states like Wisconsin may have been limited by Republican-controlled legislatures. Future research could explore associations between party affiliation of state or local legislatures, particularly when these differ from governors. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that governor political party affiliation may differentially impact COVID-19 incidence and death rates. Attitudes toward the pandemic were highly polarized in 2020.7,9,10,23–25 Future state policy actions should be guided by public health considerations rather than political expedience26 and should be supported by a coordinated federal response within the new presidential administration. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dr. Neelon is a part-time employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The content of this article does not represent the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the U.S. government. The article represents the views of the authors and not those of the Department of Veterans Affairs or Health Services Research and Development. Dr. Mueller was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of NIH under Award Number K01HL141589 (Principal Investigator: Mueller). The funder had no influence on the study design, implementation, or findings. Author contributions are as follows: BN had full access to all data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. BN, NTM, JLP, and SEB-N contributed to the concept and design of the study. BN and FM contributed to acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of the data. BN and SEB-N drafted the manuscript, and all NTM, JLP, and FM provided critical revisions. A preprint of this manuscript is posted on MedRχiv at www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.08.20209619v1 . No financial disclosures were reported by the authors of this manuscript. No financial disclosures were reported by the authors of this paper. 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Econ Disaster Clim Chang. 2020;4:503−514. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41885-020-00073-0 6 Adolph C, Amano K, Bang-Jensen B, et al. Governor partisanship explains the adoption of statewide mandates to wear face coverings. medRxiv. 2020:2020.08.31.20185371. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.31.20185371 7 Grossman G, Kim S, Rexer JM, Thirumurthy H. Political partisanship influences behavioral responses to governors’ recommendations for COVID-19 prevention in the United States. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020;117(39):24144−24153. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007835117 8 Matzinger P, Skinner J. Strong impact of closing schools, closing bars and wearing masks during the Covid-19 pandemic: results from a simple and revealing analysis. medRxiv. 2020:2020.09.26.20202457. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.26.20202457 9 Christensen SR, Pilling EB, Eyring JB, Dickerson G, Sloan CD, Magnusson BM. Political and personal reactions to COVID-19 during initial weeks of social distancing in the United States. PloS One. 2020;15(9):e0239693. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239693 10 Jiang J, Chen E, Lerman K, Ferrara E. Political polarization drives online conversations about COVID-19 in the United States. Hum Behav Emerg Technol. In press. Online June 18, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.202/v2/response1 11 Paul R, Arif AA, Adeyemi O, Ghosh S, Han D. Progression of COVID-19 from urban to rural areas in the United States: a spatiotemporal analysis of prevalence rates. J Rural Health. 2020;36(4):591−601. https://doi.org/10.1111/jrh.12486 12 Wang Y, Liu Y, Struthers J, Lian M. Spatiotemporal characteristics of COVID-19 epidemic in the United States. Clin Infect Dis. In press. Online July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa934 13 The Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC. The COVID Tracking Project. https://covidtracking.com/data . Published 2020. Accessed December 16, 2020. 14 HHS. COVID-19 diagnostic laboratory testing (PCR testing) time series. https://healthdata.gov/dataset/covid-19-diagnostic-laboratory-testing-pcr-testing-time-series . Published 2020. Accessed December 16, 2020. 15 United States Census Bureau. County population totals: 2010−2019. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-counties-total.html . Published 2019. Accessed September 1, 2020. 16 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. County health rankings & roadmaps: rankings data & documentation. https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/explore-health-rankings/rankings-data-documentation . Published 2020. Accessed August 8, 2020.\ 17 CDC. BRFSS prevalence & trends data. https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/brfssprevalence/index.html . Published 2020. Accessed February 15, 2021. 18 Dadaneh SZ, Zhou M, Qian X. Bayesian negative binomial regression for differential expression with confounding factors. Bioinformatics. 2018;34(19):3349−3356. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/bty330 19 Cook C. 2020 national popular vote tracker. The Cook Political Report. https://cookpolitical.com/2020-national-popular-vote-tracker . Published 2020. Accessed December 16, 2020. 20 Kneib T, Konrath S, Fahrmeir L. High dimensional structured additive regression models: Bayesian regularization, smoothing and predictive performance. J R Stat Soc Ser C Appl Stat. 2011;60(1):51−70. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9876.2010.00723.x 21 Pillow J, Scott J. Fully Bayesian inference for neural models with negative-binomial spiking. In: Bartlett P, Pereira FCN, Burges CJC, Bottou L, Weinberger KQ, eds. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 25. MIT Press; 2012:1907−1915. 22 Each state's COVID-19 Reopening and reclosing plans and mask requirements. https://www.nashp.org/governors-prioritize-health-for-all/ . Updated February 8, 2021. Accessed September 30, 2020. 23 Leventhal AM, Dai H, Barrington-Trimis JL, et al. Association of political party affiliation with physical distancing among young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. JAMA Intern Med. In press. Online December 14, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.6898 24 Havey NF. Partisan public health: How does political ideology influence support for COVID-19 related misinformation? J Comput Soc Sci. 2020(3):319−342. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-020-00089-2 25 Wang VH, Pagán JA. Views on the need to implement restriction policies to be able to address COVID-19 in the United States. Prev Med. 2021;143:106388. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.106388 26 Guest JL, Del Rio C, Sanchez T. The three steps needed to end the COVID-19 pandemic: bold public health leadership, rapid innovations, and courageous political will. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2020;6(2):e19043. https://doi.org/10.2196/19043 Appendix. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick received a lot of attention Monday night when, according to many progressives, he seemed to tell Tucker Carlson that he was willing to die in order to preserve the American economy. But this economy is damned. Merriam-Webster defines "damned" as "to bring ruin on," or "to condemn to a punishment or fate." "I will give up a ventilator for a younger person, more than willingly, if it comes to that. But if it does come to that—if I'm forced to die for this economy—I'll curse the people who made it happen with my dying breath." This damned economy. And we, the damned who live within it. Here's what Patrick said: " … (No) one reached out to me and said, "As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?" He went on: " .. And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in. And that doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children. And I want to live smart and see through this, but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed. And that’s what I see." Patrick said he turns 70 next week, that he's a "small businessman," and that pandemic precautions are causing an "economic collapse." I’m a few years younger than Patrick, but I’m also likely to be at much higher risk because I have a chronic lung condition. I spoke to a pulmonologist this weekend, and when I said, "Needless to say, if I catch this thing …" He said, "Don’t finish that sentence." Was Patrick really saying that seniors should willingly die to preserve this economy? It looks like it, but there’s some ambiguity in his wording. The truth seems to be that Patrick shares the longstanding American belief that commerce and freedom are inseparable. But, in the modern economy, commerce is dominated by corporate monopolies, which even traditional conservatism would not consider "free." That nuance gets lost, often deliberately, in today’s corporate-funded politics. Patrick went on to say: "… my heart is lifted tonight by what I heard the president say, because we can do more than one thing at a time. We can do two things. So my message is that let's get back to work. Let’s get back to living. Let's be smart about it. And those of us who are 70 plus, we'll take care of ourselves, but don't sacrifice the country. Don't do that. Don't ruin this great America." The president's plan is considered reckless by health professionals. So, yes, at least in one sense, Patrick is saying that seniors and other vulnerable people should risk death in order to get the economy back on its feet. But whose economy? Are we being asked to sacrifice our lives for our families, our communities, and the future? Or are we being put at risk for the sake of corporations who might, just might, hire a few workers back? Give working people money. And workplace democracy. If I do die, it's likely to happen because we didn't plan for the longstanding possibility of a pandemic like this one. Why not? Because in this economy, the one that now asks the ultimate sacrifice of us, human life was less important than quarterly profits. That sounds like hollow rhetoric, but it is also objective reality. Not only will I not die to save this economy, I will live to change it. At least, that's the plan. I will give up a ventilator for a younger person, more than willingly, if it comes to that. But if it does come to that—if I'm forced to die for this economy—I'll curse the people who made it happen with my dying breath. Carlson answers Patrick: "You're basically saying that this disease could take your life, but that's not the scariest thing to you? There's something that would be worse than dying?" And Patrick says, "Yeah." Here's something worse than dying: knowing you've lived a life without purpose. I think most people want that. In his own way, maybe Dan Patrick wants it, too. But I'm not willing to lay down my life for the S&P500. Changing this economy—this damned economy—now, that's what I call a purpose. This article is part of a series called, Covid Days, a journal of the plague months from the perspective of a high-risk individual. If you have a story, please let me know. Stay safe, well, and connected.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal editorial board argued for quickly lifting social-distancing health measures because these were hurting “the economy” — i.e., corporate profits. On Sunday, Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein echoed this call. And now it appears that the White House may be willing to heed their advice: On Sunday evening, President Trump announced that he’ll soon consider lifting our country’s already inadequate social-distancing measures. It’s hard to imagine a starker illustration of the contradiction between public health needs and capitalist profit-making. The US government’s too-delayed, too-limited response to the coronavirus potentially put millions of lives at risk. For weeks, Trump downplayed the virus and delayed taking action because he didn’t want to take any measures that might disrupt the economy. As the New York Times reports, “only when the disruption came anyway, in the form of a historic stock market sell-off, was he convinced to act.” Those delays have cost countless lives. We have now reached the point where, according to some experts, only a five-week national lockdown can avoid a public health catastrophe. Yet the Wall Street Journal and the Lloyd Blankfeins of the world are proposing the exact opposite: ending lockdowns rather than extending them. Even the limited governmental measures taken so far are apparently too much for Wall Street to stomach. Vice President Pence disclosed yesterday that some people exposed to the virus will soon be allowed to return to work if they wear masks. And according to Trump, WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020 This disregard for public health is being sold through rhetoric about protecting the livelihoods of ordinary Americans. As the Wall Street Journal editorial put it, If this government-ordered shutdown continues for much more than another week or two, the human cost of job losses and bankruptcies will exceed what most Americans imagine. This won’t be popular to read in some quarters, but federal and state officials need to start adjusting their anti-virus strategy now to avoid an economic recession that will dwarf the harm from 2008-2009. It’s true that a looming pandemic-induced economic depression could inflict tremendous damage upon millions across this country and the world. But allowing the virus to continue to spread not only threatens the physical survival of these very same people — failing to flatten the curve could result in the breakdown of essential supply chains and even deeper economic and social crisis. Billionaire rhetoric about protecting jobs is a smokescreen. There’s no reason to believe that the Wall Street Journal, Goldman Sachs, or Donald Trump actually care about the well-being of ordinary Americans. If they did, they would have already supported Bernie Sanders’s plan to issue monthly cash payments of $2,000 to every person in this country and grant paid sick leave to all, or propose something like the United Kingdom’s plan to cover 80 percent of all citizens’ income. Instead, corporations are profiteering off the crisis and the Republicans are proposing a trillion-plus bailout for corporate America. They don’t care if we lose our jobs — and they don’t care if we die. As always, all that matters for them is their bottom line. If Trump or Wall Street actually cared about us, they would have already advocated using the Defense Production Act to ensure that large industries immediately start producing the masks, ventilators, and protective equipment we so desperately need to avoid a health catastrophe in the coming weeks. Instead, the president at Sunday’s press conference explicitly rejected this proposal, arguing that “the concept of nationalizing our businesses is not a good concept.” He left out who exactly it’s not good for: capitalists and their profits. Unless we take action, Wall Street may get its way. Stopping Trump from scrapping our existing public health measures is literally a matter of life and death. We need to do everything possible to force the White House and its corporate backers to take the urgent measures that experts agree are necessary to prevent a public health catastrophe. Our lives are on the line.

“America will again and soon be open for business — very soon,” Trump said at the daily White House news conference. “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” As he watches stock prices plummet and braces for an expected surge in unemployment, Trump has received urgent pleas from rattled business leaders, Republican lawmakers and conservative economists imploring him to remove some of the stringent social distancing guidelines that he put in place for a 15-day period ending March 30, according to several people with knowledge of the internal deliberations. The consensus among experts — including infectious disease expert Anthony S. Fauci and other senior officials on Trump’s coronavirus task force — is that restaurants, bars, schools, offices and other gathering places should remain closed for many more weeks to mitigate the outbreak, the worst effects of which are yet to be felt in the United States. AD AD But Trump has been chafing against that notion and impatient to get American life back to normal. “If it were up to the doctors, they’d say let’s keep it shut down, let’s shut down the entire world . . . and let’s keep it shut for a couple of years,” Trump said Monday. “We can’t do that.” Trump predicted “we’re going to be opening our country” in a shorter time frame than months. He announced that the administration was developing new protocols to allow local economies outside of what he called “hot spots” of the coronavirus spread to resume activity and would make a decision at the conclusion of the current 15-day period. Trump drew parallels to the flu season, which he said was on pace to be responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Americans, as well as to car crashes — comparisons that Fauci and other experts have dismissed as examples of false equivalency. AD AD “You look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we’re talking about,” Trump said. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to tell everybody no more driving of cars.” Trump’s deliberations — detailed in interviews with more than 20 senior administration officials, outside advisers and other people briefed on the internal discussions, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid assessments — present to a nation already on edge about the pandemic a remarkable portrait of a president in limbo. Inside the White House, tensions are growing over how quickly people can return to work. Trump’s pending decision sets up a clash between the scientific experts advocating strict restrictions and the political and economic advisers who share and encourage the president’s impatience. AD AD In his public comments, Trump has conveyed uncertainty about how to protect the public’s health while simultaneously staving off economic calamity — and, especially, about the period of time during which Americans’ lives will remain upended. Trump tweeted his indecision in all-caps at 11:50 p.m. Sunday, a message he reiterated to his followers midday Monday after news of his pending pivot was widely reported: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!” Trump has cast himself as a “wartime president” but has publicly vacillated about the severity and length of restrictions. Last week, he said guidelines may be in place until July or August, but the messages he wrote or shared Monday on Twitter covered the gamut, from a video featuring Fauci explaining the benefits of “physical separation of people” to complaints from ordinary citizens that they were under “house arrest.” AD AD Democrats criticized Trump for his scattershot messaging. President Trump’s administration has contradicted its coronavirus message at least 20 times over the past two months. (The Washington Post) “He’s a notion-monger, just tossing out things that have no relationship to a well-coordinated science-based government-wide response to this,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. Even with much of the country adopting social distancing measures, such as remaining six feet apart from other people outside their household and working from home if possible, the number of coronavirus cases has surged as testing becomes more readily available to people experiencing symptoms. More than 42,000 people in the United States have tested positive for covid-19, the disease the virus causes, and the death toll surpassed 500 on Monday, when more than 100 deaths were reported in a single day for the first time. The spread nationally is expected to dramatically increase in coming days as access to testing expands and results are processed. Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, and other leading public health experts have told administration officials that prematurely scaling back social distancing could not only hamper mitigation efforts, but also overwhelm hospitals. AD AD Still, Trump is fixated on the economy — alarmed by the effects of the coronavirus so far and concerned about the impact of long-term contraction and surging unemployment on his reelection chances in November, according to people familiar with his discussions. There is a growing fear inside the administration that an effective freeze on an array of major sectors of the economy for an indefinite period could be economically unsustainable no matter what stimulus package Congress passes or what monetary levers the Federal Reserve pulls. Though restrictions on restaurants and other business have been set by state governments, the president could influence practices if he changed the federal government’s guidelines about social distancing and business closures. AD The push for Trump to do so has come from broad swaths of his political coalition, from prominent economists and media figures to key lawmakers in the Senate and the House. AD The Wall Street Journal’s influential editorial board published an editorial late last week calling on the administration, as well as governors, to rethink their coronavirus mitigation strategies. “No society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its overall economic health,” the board wrote. Conservative economists Stephen Moore and Art Laffer have been lobbying the White House for more than a week to strongly consider scaling back the recommendation that restaurants, stores and other gathering spots be closed, although exactly what that would entail remains unclear. AD Financial titans, including former Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, and conservative media figures also have embraced the idea. “In one week we need to be heading back to work, school, stores, restaurants and churches with new protocols in place,” Laura Ingraham, a conservative commentator whose show on Fox News Channel the president is known to watch regularly, tweeted Monday. AD Conservatives close to Trump and numerous administration officials have been circulating an article by Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution, titled “Coronavirus Perspective,” that plays down the extent of the spread and the threat. The article, published last week, had predicted that deaths would peak at 500, the milestone surpassed Monday. AD Trump has been canvassing his advisers, Republican lawmakers and other allies about what his course of action should be, and in his deliberations, a natural tension has emerged between the advice of Fauci and other medical experts and that of business leaders, such as those in the hospitality industry, which included Trump before he entered politics. One senior administration official said that there is a widespread understanding among government officials about the need to reopen the economy but that proposals have not yet been presented to Trump. Officials have considered options including allowing people to go back to work if they are able to avoid public transportation or to return to their jobs if they are not in areas with high infection rates. The coronavirus task force led by Vice President Pence has sought to take the economic and health ramifications of the outbreak seriously and worked to balance the two priorities, officials have said. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and officials from the Office of Management and Budget are seen internally as conduits for the business community and have been pushing to get the economy back on track as quickly as possible, according to people familiar with the matter. AD “The president is right. The cure can’t be worse than the disease,” Kudlow said Monday on Fox News. “And we’re going to have to make some difficult trade-offs.” One option under consideration is a gradual scaling back of current restrictions, where people younger than 40 who are healthy go back to work on a certain date, followed by people ages 40 to 50, according to one person briefed on the discussions. Describing the overall dynamic, Moore said in an interview, “You have a classic case of the public health people saying, ‘We have to keep everyone sequestered for as long as this takes without any regard to the economic cost.’ The economics team is saying, ‘If this lasts seven to 10 weeks, there won’t be much of an economy to save.’ ” Moore added, “I’m not in any way disparaging the public health people. They are vital to this process. But you can’t have a policy that says we’re going to save every human life at any cost, no matter how many trillions of dollars you’re talking about.” There is dissent within the Republican Party, however, including from some close allies of the president. “It would be a major mistake to suggest any change of course when it comes to containment,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said in an interview. “I just spoke with Dr. Fauci — he believes that, if anything, we should be more aggressive and do more. . . . You can’t have a functioning economy if you have hospitals overflowing.” While Trump has focused on the 15-day timeline, health experts said that is not expected to be enough time to defeat the virus’s spread. Cases in the United States are still rapidly increasing and have not yet reached their peak, but already hospitals are experiencing severe shortages of protective equipment and ventilators to treat the increasing numbers of patients. Because of the delays expanding testing capabilities, the country still does not have comprehensive data about the spread of the virus and its mortality rate. Public health experts have strongly warned against any loosening of social distancing measures. Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiology professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of Harvard’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, said, “Now is the time to tighten restrictions on contacts that could transmit the virus, not loosen them.” “If we let up now, we can be virtually certain that health care will be overwhelmed in many if not all parts of the country,” Lipsitch said. “This is the view of every well-informed infectious epidemiologist I know of.”

Even as calls grow for stricter national measures to help contain the surging coronavirus pandemic sweeping the United States, President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he thinks it would be "beautiful" to see the nation's churches packed for Easter Sunday less than three weeks from now—the latest in a series of troubling statements that betray the dire warnings from public health experts and frontline medical workers. "At this point you have to wonder if he wants people to die." Ahead of the formal press briefing with the Coronavirus Task Force at the White House on Tuesday evening, the president earlier participated in a televised town hall event with Fox News—his favorite right-wing cable network. The town hall itself was denounced by CNN's in-house media critic Brian Stelter as the "Fox News Presidency at its very worst," complete with rosy scenarios about the virus by Trump who said he wants to get "people back to work" by Easter Sunday, which falls next month on April 12—just nineteen days away. In response to that comment, Fox News' Bill Hemmer said it might seen as a "great American resurrection" if workers were sent back to work and restrictions lifted by the Christian holy day: Trump on ending social distancing: "I would love to have it opened by Easter." (That's April 12) "That would be a great American resurrection," host Bill Hemmer replies. pic.twitter.com/G1AhP1biNI — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 24, 2020 "Easter is a very special day for me," Trump later responded to Hemmer when asked to explain why he thought Easter would be a good deadline—despite the warnings from public health officials—to lift national restrictions. "I saw wouldn't it be great to have all of the churches full—you know the churches aren't allowed to have much of a congregation there. And most of them, I watched on Sunday online—and it was terrific, by the way—but online is never going to be like being there. So I think Easter Sunday and you'll have packed churches all over our country—I think it will be a beautiful time. And it's just about the timeline that I think is right." This comment reveals that the president doesn't have a clue how public health crises work. He think it'll be a good idea for churches to be packed in 16 days. It's absurdly irresponsible. https://t.co/qFPwgfALux — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 24, 2020 Critics found the comments horrifying. "Trump is excited about the prospect of packed churches for Easter Sunday," said political commentator Joshua Potash. "At this point you have to wonder if he wants people to die." The president's latest statements came just hours after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo expressed frustration with the failed response of the Trump administration, demanding to know "where are the ventilators" for his state—now the epicenter of the national outbreak. With New York's case count doubling every three days at this point, Cuomo said the urgency for action is intensifying, not lessening. In his critique of both Trump and the Fox reporters involved in Tuesday's town hall event, Stelter said it was "pathetic" for the president to continue providing misleading information about the outbreak to the American people and a "failure" for journalists to enable it:

March 10, 2021 As Cases Spread Across U.S. Last Year, Pattern Emerged Suggesting Link Between Governors' Party Affiliation and COVID-19 Case and Death Numbers Starting in early summer last year, analysis finds that states with Republican governors had higher case and death rates The per-capita rates of new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths were higher in states with Democrat governors in the first months of the pandemic last year, but became much higher in states with Republican governors by mid-summer and through 2020, possibly reflecting COVID-19 policy differences between GOP- and Democrat-led states, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina. For their study, the researchers analyzed data on SARS-CoV-2-positive nasal swab tests, COVID-19 diagnoses, and COVID-19 fatalities, for the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. After adjusting for confounding factors such as state population density, they found that Republican-governed states began to have consistently higher rates of positive swab tests in May, of COVID-19 diagnoses in June, and of COVID-19 mortality in July. The results, published online March 10 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggest that policy differences between Republican- and Democrat-governed states, including mitigation measures such as mask mandates and social distancing requirements, may have led to systematic differences in COVID-19’s impact on public health, the researchers say. “Governors’ party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus,” says study senior author Sara Benjamin-Neelon, PhD, professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society. “These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics.” The analysis covered March 15 to December 15, 2020, and included the number of SARS-CoV-2 tests, positive tests, COVID-19 case diagnoses, and COVID-19 fatalities. The researchers used a sophisticated statistical tool called a Bayesian negative binomial model to estimate, for each day in the nine-month study window, the relative risks or chances of getting tested, testing positive, getting COVID-19, or dying of COVID-19, for people in 26 GOP-governed vs. 25 Democrat-governed states. Washington, D.C. was treated as Democrat-governed. The researchers were aware that many other factors, including the natural progression of the pandemic from early waves in urban areas, such as New York City and Seattle, to later waves in rural areas, might have contributed to differences between Republican- and Democrat-led states. However, they attempted to correct for these confounding factors in their analysis. Their findings, even when factoring in these confounders, revealed a clear pattern in which Democrat-led states were hardest-hit early in the pandemic, but after a few months Republican-led states on average began to have more positive tests, COVID-19 cases, and more COVID-19 deaths. The transition occurred for testing-positivity on May 30, for COVID-19 case diagnoses on June 3, and for COVID-19 deaths on July 4. The differences between the two groups of states peaked in the period from late June to early August—for example, on August 5 the relative risk of dying of COVID-19 was 1.8 times higher in GOP-led states. Testing rates were similar for the two sets of states until late September when Republican-led states began to have lower testing rates. Other studies have found evidence that Republican governors in 2020 were broadly less strict than their Democrat counterparts in setting policies on mask-wearing, social distancing, and other pandemic-related measures. The researchers say that those studies, along with the links they found between Republican governorship and greater COVID-19 impact, are consistent with the idea that the political polarization of the COVID-19 response has contributed to less effective COVID-19 policies and worse case-related statistics in some states. “Despite a more coordinated federal response this year, governors still play a key role in the pandemic response,” says Benjamin-Neelon. “As we’re seeing, several states have lifted mask requirements even though we have yet to make substantial progress in controlling the spread of the virus.” Brian Neelon, PhD, professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, is the paper’s lead author. “Associations between governor political affiliation and COVID-19 cases, deaths, and testing in the United States” was written by Brian Neelon, Fedelis Mutiso, Noel Mueller, John Pearce, and Sara Benjamin-Neelon. # # # Media contacts: Carly Kempler at [email protected] and Barbara Benham at [email protected].

The Republican governor of Texas issued an executive order Tuesday lifting the populous state's mask mandate and other remaining coronavirus-related restrictions, a move public health experts and Democratic critics characterized as dangerously premature particularly given the state's low vaccination rate. "It's still too early," Dr. Philip Huang, the health director of Dallas County, said shortly before Gov. Greg Abbott triumphantly declared on Twitter, "Texas is OPEN 100%." "Clearly this announcement is a desperate distraction from the governor's dereliction of duty during the massive power and water outage." —Rep. Joaquin Castro The governor's office said in a press release that Abbott's new executive order rolls back most of his earlier unilateral actions related to the coronavirus pandemic. "Effective next Wednesday, all businesses of any type may open to 100% capacity," the statement reads. "Additionally, this order ends the statewide mask mandate in Texas. Businesses may still limit capacity or implement additional safety protocols at their own discretion." Pointing out that Texas has vaccinated less than 7% of its population, Texas Democratic Party chair Gilberto Hinojosa called Abbott's order "extraordinarily dangerous" and warned, "This will kill Texans." "Our country's infectious disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn't care," Hinojosa continued. "Make no mistake: opening Texas prematurely will only lead to faster Covid spread, more sickness and overcrowding in our hospitals, and unnecessary deaths. There is no economic recovery without beating the coronavirus pandemic. This will set us back, not move us forward." Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) echoed that message, declaring in a statement Tuesday night that "Governor Abbott’s failure to listen to science and medical advice will cost Texans their lives." "The easiest thing everyone can do to slow the spread of Covid is to wear a mask and keep a social distance," said Castro. "It's reckless and dangerous for Governor Abbott to intentionally undermine public safety because he thinks it's good politics. Clearly this announcement is a desperate distraction from the governor's dereliction of duty during the massive power and water outage." Governor Abbott’s failure to listen to science and medical advice will cost Texans their lives. This decision is reckless and dangerous—and a desperate distraction from the Governor’s dereliction of duty during the power outages. He’s putting politics above the people of Texas. pic.twitter.com/dMQI2c0e9K — Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) March 2, 2021 While Abbott presented his order as an effort to help businesses that have struggled to stay afloat during the deadly pandemic—which has taken the lives of more than 44,000 Texans—some small business owners cautioned that the governor's move could make it more difficult for companies to operate safely. "As a small business owner, it's putting us in the firing line where you have to make the best decision for you and your business and you're going to be fighting people who are literally celebrating in the streets," Danette Wicker, the owner of a boutique shop in Fort Worth, told The Texas Tribune. "Here in Fort Worth people are having temper tantrums, knocking stuff off counters. People have had to be physically removed from businesses around here." Wicker said she intends to continue requiring customers to wear masks while other businesses—including the grocery chain H-E-B—indicated in response to Abbott's order that they will drop such mandates. Noting that "Covid spread isn't neatly contained by state borders," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) warned Tuesday that Abbott's order could have far-reaching implications for the fight against the pandemic. "This endangers the entire country and beyond," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "Explosions in Covid cases can increase the likelihood of new Covid variants to develop or spread to new places." 93.2% of Texans aren’t fully vaccinated. The state just endured one disaster worsened by selfishness + denial of basic science, and now conditions are being set for another. Repealing the mask mandate now endangers so many people, especially essential workers & the vulnerable. https://t.co/3lntlh7zxH — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 2, 2021 The Union of Concerned Scientists pointed out Tuesday that just last week, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stressed that "it is not the time to relax restrictions." "Masks and social distancing are among the best tools we have to combat Covid-19," the group said following Abbott's announcement. "This is incredibly dangerous."

As Covid-19 continues its deadly march throughout the world, several experts in the United States are warning against lifting statewide mask mandates and other coronavirus-related precautions, given that a premature rollback of public health measures threatens to derail progress in curbing the pandemic just as the potential of widespread vaccination grows. "I understand the need to want to get back to normality, but you're only going to set yourself back if you just completely push aside the public health guidelines." —Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIAID During a Wednesday night appearance on CNN, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said the decision to rescind pandemic-related regulations at this point is "ill-advised... from a public health standpoint." Referring to the recent plateau in cases, Fauci said that "we've been to this scene before months and months ago when we tried to open up the country and open up the economy. When certain states did not abide by the guidelines, we had rebounds, which were very troublesome." "What we don't need right now," he continued, "is another surge, so just pulling back on all of the public health guidelines that we know work... is inexplicable." "I understand the need to want to get back to normality, but you're only going to set yourself back if you just completely push aside the public health guidelines—particularly when we're dealing with anywhere from 55,000 to 70,000 infections per day in the United States," he added. "That's a very, very high baseline." Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Wednesday in an appearance on CBS News that "we are at a critical nexus in the pandemic. So much can turn in the next few weeks." While President Joe Biden's announcement Tuesday that the U.S. is "on track" to have an adequate supply of vaccine doses "for every adult in America by the end of May" has raised hopes about the possibility of a return to normalcy, Walensky cautioned viewers that the ill-considered loosening of restrictions in some states at precisely the moment when more contagious variants are spreading puts the country "on the cusp" of another potential resurgence of the virus. "Stamina has worn thin," Walensky admitted. "Fatigue is winning, and the exact measures we have taken to stop the pandemic are now too often being flagrantly ignored." It would be an especially tragic mistake to relax public health guidelines like mask-wearing and social distancing when "we are just on the verge of capitalizing on the culmination of a historic scientific success—the ability to vaccinate the country in just a matter of three or four more months," she added. "How this plays out is up to us." As The Hill reported Thursday, Thomas Tsai, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that within a few months, "I think we can have a much more, I don't want to say normal, but at least a 'new normal' summer." Likening "the current situation to the seventh inning stretch of a baseball game," Tsai acknowledged that "progress has been made [and] it's okay to take stock of that." But, he added, "how we play the next two innings determines if this is a single game or turns into a doubleheader." Biden on Wednesday denounced the Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi for lifting mask requirements and maximum capacity limits at all businesses in their states just as mass inoculation is within reach. There are now 16 states without mask mandates, according to CNN. "The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime everything's fine, take off your mask, forget it," the president said. "It still matters." Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday tried to defend his widely condemned decision to scrap the Lone Star State's mask mandate and other coronavirus-related regulations with only 7% of residents fully vaccinated, a move that critics characterized as reckless. "At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we've gained." —Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC In an appearance on Fox News, Abbott claimed that "the mask requirement being eliminated isn't going to make that big of a change in the state of Texas," but the GOP official's assertion could not be more wrongheaded, according to public health experts concerned about the spread of more contagious variants. As Walensky said Wednesday, "The B117 hyper-transmissible variant looms ready to hijack our successes to date." The B117 variant, first detected in the United Kingdom, "has now been found in 44 U.S. states, as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.," according to CNN. "A person with that variant can infect 43% to 90% more people than the older versions of the virus, according to evidence published Wednesday by researchers the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine." High rates of community transmission are also affecting other continents. Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization's Europe director, said Thursday that the "rapid spread of variants requires increased vigilance, improved testing and isolation of cases, tracing and quarantining contacts, and care." And the devastating spread of the highly contagious P1 variant throughout Brazil portends danger for the entire world, as the New York Times reported Wednesday. "Please hear me clearly," Walensky said earlier this week. "At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we've gained." In a Twitter thread on Thursday, epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding explained the risks associated with failing to address the "cycle of surges and mutations."

Who would have imagined that the conman responsible for the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history could be so … corrupt? Way back in 2012, then-Gov. Rick Scott made headlines with a weird new policy: Any claim for unemployment could no longer be done by phone or in person—it had to be filed online using his new website. The website, which cost $77.9 million, was a disaster right out of the gate. For the first quarter of 2012, over 60,000 workers were denied benefits for “procedural” reasons—an increase of more than 200% from the year before. This wasn’t another display of Scott’s well-established incompetence. No, the system did exactly what it was designed to do: Fail. People complained, but were ignored; I mean, who cares what the unemployed say? Now that the system has collapsed under the weight of the coronavirus layoffs, even Republicans have admitted that failure was the entire point of the scheme. But why, you might ask, would anyone design a website to fail? Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel offers an explanation. [Florida’s unemployment website] was created in 2011 by former Gov. Rick Scott and GOP legislators who wanted to cut benefits so Florida businesses could pay less in unemployment taxes. Their scheme worked. By 2015, Florida ranked No. 1 in denying benefits ... and 50th in unemployment tax rates. The unemployment tax rate in Florida is already the lowest in the nation, at $50 per person per year. But for most, it is effectively zero, because the unemployed can’t access their benefits. Scott’s own adviser admitted to this when he told Republican legislators that Scott was interested in “controlling the outflow of benefits,” as opposed to asking Big Business to pay their fair share. That’s why this monstrosity of a website was built. Going back several years, state auditors and the media documented hundreds of technical system errors that repeatedly booted users from the system. Those who got exasperated and tried to contact the state agency by phone were also out of luck. One state document said workers only took 2% of the incoming calls. Gov. Scott won re-election in 2014, and a Senate seat in 2018, campaigning on the low unemployment rate, which he measured by how many people were on the intentionally-inaccessible unemployment benefits. Even more sinister? Rick Scott coupled this online disaster with a reduction to the benefit period, cutting down the state’s maximum from 26 weeks to 12 weeks. The benefits were already notoriously stingy—always in the bottom five among all states. Florida’s state average is $254 per week, while the national average is $372 per week. Even now, as a senator, Rick Scott is still cruel to the jobless. He was one of four Republican senators to oppose the temporary increase in unemployment benefits in the coronavirus stimulus package—because he thought that $600 per week in additional aid was far too generous. But none of this is the worst of it. From 2010, when Rick Scott first took office, the U.S. Department of Labor gave Florida almost 1.6 BILLION DOLLARS to help implement unemployment benefits. Florida took the money, which leaves us with a (1.6) billion-dollar question: Where did the money go? That $1.6 billion doesn’t even account for the tens of millions Florida was given since the outbreak of the pandemic. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a Democrat serving the northeast Orlando area, has been swamped with thousands of phone calls from people who can’t get their benefits. Murphy is now demanding a federal investigation.  Yes, the Inspector General should investigate, and the guilty should be put in prison. It is unlikely this will happen, of course, since this current administration is not interested in investigating crimes done by Republicans. This is another reason it is critical to throw the GOP out of power in November. There is something of a silver lining to this scandal: Rick Scott’s meticulous plan to run for president in 2024 has likely been killed at last. He went from Trumpian star to pariah in the span of weeks: even Gov. Ron DeSantis is furious with Scott, as are tons of Republican operatives who see Florida slipping away from Trump’s grasp. The unemployment debacle cannot in any way be blamed on “both sides”: The liability is completely owned by the GOP, and Floridians know it. DeSantis has been scrambling, and even tried to switch to paper applications, but that’s been a disaster, like everything else he’s ever done. Even the chairman of the state party, Republican state Sen. Joe Gruters, is furious— but not on behalf of the average Florida citizen. Rather, Gruters’ own mother was laid off, and she has tried over 100 times to get benefits over the past few weeks. So now, suddenly, Gruters sees there is a problem. Of course, DeSantis could call a special legislative session—not only to fix the website issues and launch an investigation, but to increase the pathetic pittance that unemployed Floridians receive. He won’t, of course—because the GOP says we just can’t afford this right now. Please do keep that in mind once the well-connected industries in the Sunshine State start getting several billions in bailout funds. When this fiasco started over eight years ago, I recall defenders of then-Gov. Scott arguing that not getting unemployment benefits might even be a good thing for people who just lost their job. After all, Scott had already refused the Medicaid expansion for our state, so if a single mom with two kids made just over $3,200 a year, she was already ineligible for Medicaid, because $267 a month for a family of three was just too much money. Since unemployment counts as income, it was better for Mom not to work at all and let her kids starve—hey, at least they’d have healthcare. That was the GOP plan, and Democrats begged Scott to take the expansion, which would have increased the annual income threshold to over $25,000, with the federal government picking up the tab. They were told to shove it. Yet Rick Scott still wasn’t done screwing Florida over. Scott also completely gutted the state health department; Florida’s capacity to deal with a massive outbreak was dismantled, thanks to our previous governor and his allies. To be fair, previous Republican governors made cuts to this department over the years, but no one came close to the damage done by Scott. He cut a whopping $130 million in just two years, and eliminated about 3,700 health department jobs. Worst of all, Scott closed Florida’s only specialized tuberculosis treatment facility—during a the largest tuberculosis outbreak in the nation! The Center for Disease Control and Prevention slammed Scott for doing that, but he just didn’t care. He never does. As a direct result, the state agencies most able to help during this current crisis are flailing, and Floridians are suffering. Bottom line: We are screwed. Any short-sighted savings the state received by viciously hurting our own citizens have been completely wiped out over this past month. The state is now bleeding money. Worse, Florida’s economy is also collapsing, according to Wall Street research firm Moody’s Analytics. Our largest industry by far is tourism, which traditionally contributes $50 billion to our economy. The second largest is agriculture. Our already-suffering farmers are being devastated by falling commodity prices, but it’s even worse for our tourism industry, since Florida has the highest concentration of service sector jobs in the country. Tourism has always been a poor excuse for a stable economy, mostly because there are hardly any benefits and workers have zero protections, but it’s what Florida’s got. So as long as tourists and snowbirds kept coming, people could scrape by. Unfortunately, with the pandemic, people aren’t traveling, and our large elderly population is staying indoors. Layoffs have skyrocketed across the state as hotels, restaurants, and attractions have shut down, and nearly all events have been cancelled. Unemployment in Florida is expected to reach 20%. Florida food bank lines literally stretch for miles. Right now, more than 825,000 people in Florida have filed for unemployment benefits--a state record. However, that’s not even close to the number of people who need them. Hundreds of thousands more have been unable to file because the state’s system is so jammed. Even worse, only 35,000 of those who filed have had their claims processed so far. At the very least, Ron DeSantis could declare a moratorium on evictions, as some other Democratic governors have done. But he hasn’t, and he won’t. Florida apartment managers are sending outright nasty letters to tenants, telling them that if they are expecting any relief because of the pandemic, they are sorely mistaken. Business owners here are in particularly bad shape, due to the fact that our most populous regions are packed with small and micro-businesses, with just a few employees. These types of businesses are the least protected because they don't have access to the lines of credit they need, and most carry no leverage to exert on the commercial landlords for rent. Many will likely go under this month. The bridge loan program that Ron DeSantis touted to save Florida businesses has already maxed out--only 1,000 Florida businesses got any help. Perhaps Republicans will finally realize that giving small businesses and workers no protections is not only immoral, but bad fiscal policy. If Floridians could at least have accessed the benefits they rightly deserve, we might have been able to alleviate so much unnecessary suffering by our people and our economy. Instead, it will take years for us to recover, and with the inevitable loss of life, some families will never recover. Republicans are scrambling now, but not out of concern for any of our citizens. They know the populace is angry at both our state’s Republican Party overlords and Donald Trump. Joe Biden has an 11-point lead over Trump in the latest CNN poll, and it’s only going to get worse for Republicans. Trump isn’t as reviled as Sen. Scott, who has now dropped to a 37% approval rating … yet. Trump knows this fiasco hurts him, as his re-election is the only thing he’s been focused on. You might have noticed that Florida is getting all of the medical supplies it’s requested. In fact, we got everything Ron DeSantis asked for and more, while other blue states, where Trump has no chance of winning, are getting less than 10% of requested supplies. Yet stocking Florida with masks and ventilators is not enough. People here who don’t have the virus but have lost their jobs, or most of their business, are furious at Trump’s inept response. You’d also be hard-pressed to find anyone here extolling the leadership of DeSantis. After all, DeSantis refused to give a shelter-at-home order until he got permission from Donald Trump. DeSantis also declared the freaking WWE an “essential service” so they could host wrestling events. He did this the exact same day that the WWE owner’s wife announced spending $18.5 million for pro-Trump television advertising through her super PAC; surely the two aren’t connected. Floridians, meanwhile, are remarkably resilient. We will get through this, like most disasters, even if this level of suffering was avoidable and is Scott-inflicted. The Republican leadership has barely concealed their contempt for workers, nor their outright Ayn Randian hatred for those who are unable to work. This selfishness may have worked while the economy was good, but now that it’s been decimated, Floridians have finally awakened to the monsters they have put in office. Now, it’s a matter of inspiring them to vote them all out.

President Donald Trump is reportedly furious at one of his allies for taking his advice. According to Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, the president is angry that he can’t hold any of his trademark campaign rallies in Florida amid its weeks-long surge in COVID-19 cases. What’s more, Sherman’s sources say Trump is putting the blame for this predicament at the feet of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been eager to follow the president’s commands to reopen state economies even as the country records more than 50,000 infections and 1,000 new deaths from the novel coronavirus every day. “He thinks Ron has made it a lot worse,” one Republican who spoke with Trump said. Trump was forced to cancel his planned RNC acceptance speech in Jacksonville after public health officials told him there was no way to safely hold a mass gathering in the city without risking mass COVID-19 infection. Nonetheless, one aid tells Sherman that “rallies are his jam” and that “Trump won’t be happy until he is doing multiple rallies a day.

(CNN) President Joe Biden is barreling into his first science-vs.-politics showdown with powerful Southern Republican governors, one that could define the outcome of the race to vaccinate enough Americans before variants take hold. Biden on Tuesday warned the country to dig in for a while longer as he flexed sweeping wartime powers under the Defense Production Act in another big leap forward in the inoculation drive, announcing there would be enough doses for all US adults by the end of May . He unveiled a pioneering plan for pharmaceutical giant Merck to make a vaccine developed by its rival Johnson & Johnson. "There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we cannot let our guard down now to ensure victory is inevitable; we can't assume that. We must remain vigilant, act fast and aggressively and look out for one another," the President said. But the governors of Texas and Mississippi defied federal government warnings to not relax restrictions and open their economies too fast, going it alone as new infections plateau at high levels and fears grow over a huge spike in the coming weeks. On Monday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had warned that with variants spreading, "we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained." The looming openings are paradoxically a symptom of Biden's success as confidence grows in the availability of vaccines, which have rolled out fast since he took office. But experts are warning that opening too quickly could provide the vast petri dish that new variants of Covid-19 need to thrive. Those variants are often not just more infectious, but they also could make the vaccines that are expected to pave the way out of the yearlong crisis less effective. That means that states like Texas and Mississippi, which were slow to adopt steps like mask wearing, are not just risking their own citizens but all other Americans too. If new infections take hold before enough Americans are vaccinated, a desire to play into political sentiment that sees government scientific advice as tantamount to an infringement on individual freedom could delay a return to normal life. "I have to be honest with you, this fight is far from over," Biden said at the White House, warning that the pandemic could begin to get worse as new variants, like those first found in the UK and South Africa, spread. Yet in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was taking exactly the opposite tack, announcing that grave economic pain and a fall in infections were leading him to lift a mask mandate and all restrictions on business from next week. "It is now time to open Texas 100%," Abbott said. The Texan is an ally of Donald Trump and one of a group of Southern governors who last year heeded the then-President's demands to reopen while flouting scientific advice, helping to trigger a summer infection surge that swelled the national death toll from the pandemic, which is now more than half a million. 'A gigantic mistake' In some ways, these early openings are a case of those who ignore history being doomed to repeat it, with yet more premature declarations of victory over the virus -- after previous celebrations helped secure for the US the dubious distinction of having the most infections and most deaths from Covid-19. "This is a gigantic mistake," Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN's Erin Burnett. "They are not doing well ... we have seen this movie and it doesn't turn out well," Reiner said, referring to the state of the pandemic in Texas. Another Southern Republican, Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi, also announced an end to all county mask mandates and said businesses can open from Wednesday at 100% capacity. "Our hospitalizations and case numbers have plummeted, and the vaccine is being rapidly distributed. It is time!" Reeves tweeted Tuesday. The Republicans are not the only governors easing restrictions as new cases of Covid-19 and deaths from the virus have fallen following a holiday spike. Some states and cities run by Democrats are also doing so, but unlike Texas and Mississippi, they are not acting as though the virus has simply gone away. The early openings are causing frustration in the White House, as Biden tries to make good on his vow to stamp out the virus and as new breakthroughs in manufacturing vaccines mean that relative safety could be just months away. "We certainly understand the pressure governors are under and we appreciate the working relationship we have with Gov. Abbott," Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House Covid-19 response team, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "But at the same time, we think it's a mistake to lift these mandates too early. Masks are saving a lot of lives. I'm really hoping that the businesses and the community and people in Texas, the mayors, the counties, will rethink this. I hope the governor rethinks this. Hopefully states will stick with this until such a time as we get through all the vaccinations and see the other side of this." Medical experts described the premature openings as nonsensical at a moment when there are signs that infections may be about to rise again from already high levels and as vaccines mean the end may even be in sight. Easing restrictions almost certainly means that people will die who could have been alive in just a few months when vaccines hit critical mass. "It's just irresponsible," Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner, said on CNN's "The Situation Room." "It could undo all the incredible work that we have done thus far," Wen said, adding that mask mandates would allow schools to reopen and businesses to get back on their feet -- and were a path toward freedom, not an infringement on it. 'No longer needed' Abbott said it was now time for Texans to be trusted to take their own precautions to stop Covid-19 and government enforcement was not necessary. "Make no mistake, Covid-19 has not disappeared, but it is clear from the recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations and safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed," he said. "With this executive order, we are ensuring that all businesses and families in Texas have the freedom to determine their own destiny." But the idea that vaccinations have changed the game already is undermined by the fact that only 6.5% of Texans have been fully vaccinated -- far short of the figure needed to ensure herd immunity to stop the virus from spreading. In Mississippi, only 7.4% of residents have been fully vaccinated, according to figures calculated by CNN. Many local officials in Texas reacted negatively to Abbott's announcement. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, a Democrat, accused the governor of trying to distract from his failures during a winter storm last week in the state that blacked out much of the power grid. "You should focus on what doctors, facts and science say is safe; not on what Gov. says is legal!" Jenkins wrote on Twitter. Judge Ricardo Samaniego , a Democrat from El Paso County, which has been pummeled by Covid-19, said his authorities had 280 bodies in the county's holding facility and warned that Abbott's directive was equivalent to lifting the requirement to wear seat belts. "Our community would have appreciated his condolences to the families who have lost loved ones, and public health would have appreciated if he would have focused on the dangers of a new variation of the virus which is quickly emerging," Samaniego tweeted. Science vs. politics rumbles on The clash between Washington and several states shows that the duel between science and politics did not end when Trump left the White House. Many conservatives have balked at scientific advice to keep nonessential businesses closed on the grounds that they are an unacceptable infringement of basic rights. Others have cast doubt on the science and branded leaders like Biden as desperate to keep Americans locked down in order to flex their own liberal powers -- even though the President would seem likely to reap a political dividend if he is able to conquer the virus. There is no doubting the savage economic and social costs of lockdowns, business closures and restrictions. Tens of millions of Americans are hurting financially, have been stuck at home for months and separated from their families. A generation of school kids is paying a terrible price for the virus. The country is desperate to get back to some semblance of normality. Biden argued Tuesday that such deprivation is one reason why Congress must quickly pass his $1.9 trillion Covid rescue package, which contains extended unemployment benefits, help for small business and cash to get schools open and seeks to quickly expand the infrastructure for putting vaccinations in arms. The bill did not get one Republican vote when it passed the House last week and it may require Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a deciding vote to get the measure through the 50-50 Senate in the coming days.

The coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 526,000 people in the U.S. and cost the economy tens of millions of jobs. Americans have looked to leaders to act, but one year in, voters and lawmakers continue to be split on how best to navigate the country out of these crises. How people think the country should approach the pandemic, and what it should prioritize, continues to fall along deep political lines, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act passed this week by Congress was designed to help stabilize the country’s sagging economy while further supporting state and local governments amid sinking tax revenues and aiding in vaccine distribution. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the legislation into law and millions of Americans stand to benefit from some of its programs. Many, about 37 percent, are happy with what the legislation will provide. But a majority of the country either thinks the act goes too far or not enough. The U.S. stands at a pivotal moment in the pandemic where actions taken now could either help contain the virus and restore normal life or lead to a disastrous fourth surge of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and death. New, more easily transmissible variants of COVID-19 have been identified in almost every state in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday, and 51 percent of Americans think their state must prioritize controlling the spread of the virus, even if it hurts the economy. But 43 percent of Americans think restarting the economy should take precedence over trying to contain the virus’ spread, and multiple governors have either already lifted mask mandates and restrictions on businesses in their states, or have announced plans to do so in the coming days. Thirty-six percent of adults know someone who has died of COVID, while 30 percent say they don’t want to be vaccinated. U.S. split on how robust COVID-19 relief package should be Months in the making, the relief package Biden is expected to sign this week provides for a third round of economic impact payments — $1,400 one-time payments to individuals earning $75,000 or less annually. It also earmarks $350 billion to help state and local governments and $14 billion for vaccine distribution. And it offers a per-child tax credit of up to $3,600, depending on age, and boosts weekly jobless benefits by $300 through Sept. 6. Thirty-seven percent of Americans said they were satisfied with the size of the stimulus package, including 62 percent of Democrats. But 21 percent of Americans don’t think it goes far enough, while another 34 percent say it goes too far, including 69 percent of Republicans. Those divisions were mirrored in Congress, where the aid package was passed by Democrats without winning over a single Republican lawmaker. After years of political gridlock, most Americans are hungry for solutions and ready for lawmakers to broker change. In this latest poll, 68 percent of them said they wanted Biden to compromise with Congress. That includes 82 percent of Republicans, 72 percent of independents and 59 percent of Democrats. Only 21 percent said the president should not yield on issues, even if that means creating a legislative bottleneck. Roughly one in 10 Americans weren’t sure of the best course of action. That desire for politicians to do more to work together was reflected in a previous PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll from Dec. 9, in which two-thirds of Americans said they preferred compromise among government officials rather than gridlock. What matters most to Americans during the pandemic The challenges of combating the pandemic and its economic fallout have spurred the desire for action and for compromise. But Americans are split on which issues to tackle first. Forty-three percent said vaccine distribution is their top priority while 21 percent said reopening schools was more important. More than 2 million people in the U.S. are getting vaccinated each day, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who directs the CDC, during the White House COVID-19 Task Force briefing Monday. So far, more than 62 million people have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. But it will still be many months before most of the population is vaccinated, and there’s huge pressure to reopen schools, many of which have conducted remote learning for the last year. Throughout the pandemic, child advocates have raised concerns about how remote learning worsened existing disparities in education and health outcomes for millions of children, while many teachers feared for their own safety if they were forced to return to their classrooms without a vaccination. Securing public health and the economy doesn’t have to be a choice, said Katherine Baicker, a health economist and dean of the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. But politics has corrupted the way many people perceive their options, she said. In this latest poll, 78 percent of Democrats said they think their states should stop the spread of coronavirus, even if it hurts the economy. But 74 percent of Republicans said states need to prioritize the economy over the pandemic. How Americans view the vaccine rollout The coronavirus has amplified an issue that communities of color have raised for generations: Systemic racism creates barriers to accessing or trusting health care, which has also led to worse outcomes and persistent disparities for many people of color in the U.S. Bottlenecks in the coronavirus vaccine rollout have been no exception to that trend. States have painted an incomplete picture of who gets vaccinated for COVID-19, with only 53 percent reporting race and ethnicity data. That makes it difficult to monitor how equitable the nation’s vaccine response is and where communities need more access to life-saving vaccines. So far, Black, Latino and Asian people have been under-represented among those vaccinated compared to white people, according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker. “These disparities do not correct themselves. There needs to be intentional effort,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a professor at George Washington University and an emergency physician. While two-thirds of U.S. adults said they are either willing to get vaccinated or already have been, Wen said that’s not enough to reach herd immunity. It will be months before children 12 years or older will be eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and until then, Wen said far more adults need to roll up their sleeves if the nation hopes to contain the virus. Those who want to get vaccinated but have not yet received a shot include 52 percent of Latino Americans, 48 percent of Black Americans and 43 percent of white Americans. But 30 percent of Americans said they do not plan to get vaccinated, including 41 percent of Republicans and 49 percent of Republican men. Trusted messengers will need to relay the urgency of getting vaccinated, Wen said, and that could be a role for former President Donald Trump, who urged people to get vaccinated during his Feb. 28 address at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Miami. If people don’t get vaccinated, those pockets could give a place for the virus to hide and cause future outbreaks that spill over into bigger communities, said Lawrence Gostin, who serves as a director for both the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National & Global Health Law. The virus’ stealth nature and potential for outbreaks have been its greatest assets, Gostin said. “As soon as we let our guard down, this virus takes advantage of it.” PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist Poll conducted a survey March 3-8 that polled 1,227 U.S. adults (margin of error of 3.4 percentage points) and 1,082 registered voters (margin of error of 3.6 percentage points).