Independent News

This post was originally published on this site

On Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri attempted to get a vote passed on a straight $1,200 “stimulus check” for Americans making up to $75,000. There are tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) of Americans that would benefit from this insufficient but meaningful amount of money, especially during a global economic and public health crisis. GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has spent most of his time trying to dig a grave for our democracy in service of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, blocked  the proposal.

Following Sen. Johnson’s truly grotesque speech, where he didn’t wear a mask because he’s an asshole, claimed he was “not heartless,” and said that he was worried about the … deficit, Sen. Sanders spoke. He was firm, direct, and absolutely, justifiably finished with the Republican Party’s monstrous display of sociopathy.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: The senator from Wisconsin talks about Democrats not taking yes for an answer. So let me tell you what we did not take for an answer. We did not take for an answer the Republican bill, which did not have a nickel for unemployment benefits. We did not take yes for an answer for a bill that did not have a nickel for direct payments. The senator from Wisconsin talks about the deficit. Yet the senator from Wisconsin voted for over a trillion dollars in tax breaks for billionaires and large profitable corporations. That’s okay. The senator from Wisconsin voted for a bloated military budget, $740 billion. That’s okay. The senator from Wisconsin supports hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare.

The senator from Wisconsin threw out some numbers. Let me throw out some other numbers. Half of the people in this country are living paycheck to paycheck. Millions of workers are trying to survive on starvation wages of $10 or $12 buck an hour. 90 million people are uninsured or underinsured, can’t afford to go to a doctor. 19 million families spending half of their limited incomes on housing. Madam president, today we have the most severe hunger crisis in America that we have had in decades. Children in this country are going hungry while a half million people are homeless and many millions more fear eviction. Today, as a result of the pandemic, not only do we have the worst health care crisis in 100 years, but the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
So, madam president, I say to my colleague from Wisconsin, yeah, I will not support proposals that do not provide a nickel in unemployment benefits, not a nickel in direct relief to tens of millions of low-income and middle-income families. So, madam president, I would hope very much that this Congress appreciates the pain that is out there and that instead of worrying about tax breaks for billionaires or corporate welfare, let’s pay attention to the needs of working families and let us pass legislation which includes $1,200 direct payment to working-class families as we did in the CARES Act, $500 bucks to their kids, and certainly not taking a nickel away from unemployment and other important provisions that are currently being negotiated.

Fuck you Ron Johnson. You are now and always have been a stain of greed and ignorance.

This post was originally published on this site

Back in January, researchers at Moderna’s Cambridge, Massachusetts headquarters pulled off something that still seems amazing. Within 48 hours of China releasing the full genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, they had created a proposed vaccine. It’s that vaccine—after making its way past in vitro testing, animal trials, three phases of human testing, and an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA—that is rolling out to sites across the country. Starting on Monday, thousands of Americans will have an opportunity to  be injected with this vaccine.

Also in January, over in Mainz, Germany, other researchers were pulling off a similar feat. They created not one, but a whole series of candidate vaccines. Those vaccines were also first synthesized within days of the data becoming available from scientists in Wuhan. One of the resulting candidates, a vaccine known both as BNT162b2 and by the name Tozinameran, is now being manufactured in the U.S. by Pfizer. It has already shipped to all fifty states, though not in the quantities that Operation Warp Speed had predicted. 

With two vaccines heading for the arms of Americans … what’s the difference? Is there any reason to prefer one over the other?

For both Moderna and BioNTech, these vaccines are critical, game-changing drugs. Not just in the sense that they can save millions of lives. but in that they can generate billions in revenue. For Moderna in particular, the creation of a COVID-19 vaccine is a moment that can literally save the company.

That’s because both companies bet on technologies involving messenger RNA (mRNA) as a means of creating new vaccines and therapies. Rather than the familiar double-helix form of DNA, RNA is a single strand—a chain of the same four nucleotides that provide the coding for all living things. Some viruses (including the coronavirus) are actually RNA-based. Some use DNA, but produce RNA during the process of replication. Messenger RNA in particular interacts with a special enzyme called RNA polymerase. The result of that interaction between mRNA and the enzyme is the creation of a specific protein; for example, the spike protein used by SARS-CoV-2 when it attaches to and invades human cells.

An mRNA vaccine uses a synthetic copy of just the code for a specific protein. Injected into the body, the mRNA is absorbed into cells. There it can generate a immune response to the resulting protein, without ever creating a full, working virus.

This technology holds tremendous promise, not just against COVID-19, but against a whole swatch of diseases that have proven difficult to control with normal vaccines. For example, this past spring researchers at Brown University made significant progress toward developing an mRNA vaccine for malaria. MRNA vaccines have been developed in the lab that seem to be effective against the Zika virus. They may prove more effective in protecting against the flu and rabies than traditional treatments. They have even been promising early results against several forms of cancer.

Messenger RNA vaccines are a big deal. However, they’re also a new deal. Under ordinary circumstances, they might have been expected to walk slowly through various trials, garnering extraordinary levels of observation expressly because this technology is so new. On the surface, the technology appears safe. In fact, like monoclonal antibodies, the highly specific targeting involved in mRNA vaccines would seem to make them ideal for developing an immune response without generating unwanted side effects. Still, people worried about unlikely scenarios. For example, what if the mRNA was itself incorporated into human cells? Particular concern was applied to rapidly replicated cells in cancers, or to a developing fetus. What might happen then?

For BioNTech, and especially for Moderna—which literally bet everything it had left on this technology—COVID-19 offered an opportunity to advance the technology under the umbrella of a global emergency, gaining approval in months that might have taken a decade. That’s why, if you were insightful enough to buy Moderna stock in January, it’s value has since gone up by 900% (for the record, I did not buy stock in any of the companies working on a vaccine).

Fortunately, both vaccines appears to be both safe and effective, at least over the period of study. What’s the difference?

Well, each uses a slightly different form of mRNA tech and while both package their invisible mRNA packets in little capsules of lipids (fatty acid that are common in the blood), each is slightly different.

The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine needs to be stored at ultra-cold temperatures below -94 Fahrenheit. It’s thawed and delivered at a warmer temperature (thank goodness), but it can last in a refrigerator for just five days. That’s why shipping it around the nation has put a strain on the dry ice supply.

Moderna’s vaccine can be stored at just -4 Fahrenheit. That’s a temperature the freezer in your kitchen can easily reach. It will also last in a refrigerator for 30 days. This makes Moderna’s vaccine much easier to distribute, and much more suitable for areas without the infrastructure needed to support the Pfizer vaccines.

And that … is about it. When it comes to safety and efficacy, both vaccines are very, very similar. And that’s about as you might expect, because both vaccines include a piece of mRNA that codes for exactly the same protein. It’s as if both companies are selling the same software program. It just comes in slightly different packaging.

During their Phase 3 trial, Moderna did do regular screening of their volunteers. So they can say that their vaccine prevents infection. Pfizer waited for symptoms to develop before testing volunteers for COVID-19, so they can only say that it prevents disease. But it’s a very good bet that what’s true of the Moderna vaccine when it comes to halting coronavirus infection, is also true of the Pfizer vaccine.

During their phase 3 trial, Pfizer tested their vaccine on patients below 18. Which means that, for now at least, they’re the only choice if a doctor wanted to give a vaccine to a patient who is 16 or 17 but has some special circumstances putting them at risk. Dougie Houser, MD, Pfizer is your only choice. But again, don’t really expect much difference here.

Both vaccines are around 95% effective. Both vaccines have a low incidence of side effects that are very close to the level generated by placebo in each study. 

And if you can get either, you should.

This post was originally published on this site

Republicans hoped that this would be the year they captured Minnesota’s electoral votes for the first time since Richard Nixon in his 1972 landslide, but it was not to be. Joe Biden won it 52-45 four years after Hillary Clinton took it by a tight 47-45 margin, though this is likely another state where Democrats benefited from a decline in third-party voting.

Biden, who improved on Clinton’s margin in all eight seats, also flipped the 2nd District in the Twin Cities suburbs, while Donald Trump again won the other four constituencies. The news wasn’t all good for Team Blue, though, as longtime Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson badly lost reelection in the 7th District, which was Trump’s best seat in the state. (You can find a larger version of our map here.)

We’ll start with the 2nd, which was very close in the prior two presidential contests: Barack Obama took it by an extremely narrow 49.07-49.01 (a margin of 226 votes), while Trump won it 47-45 in 2016. The area swung left in 2018, though, as Democrat Angie Craig unseated freshman Republican Rep. Jason Lewis 53-47 two years after losing an open-seat contest to him.

2020 was another good year for Team Blue, though the area still has a long way to go before Democrats can feel safe here: Biden took the 2nd 52-46, while Craig held off Republican Tyler Kistner by a smaller 48-46 in a contest that was briefly postponed following the death of Legal Marijuana Party Now candidate Adam Weeks.

The neighboring 3rd District also began the decade as a swing seat that Obama took only 50-49, but Trump’s toxicity with well-educated suburbanites has radically altered its electoral landscape. Clinton won 51-41 here in 2016, and two years later, Democrat Dean Phillips ousted Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen 56-44. The seat got worse for Republicans this year, with Biden winning in a 59-39 landslide as Phillips turned in another 56-44 victory.

The 4th and 5th Districts have long been Team Blue’s strongest areas in Minnesota, and that did not change this year. Rep. Betty McCollum’s 4th District in St. Paul backed Biden 68-30, compared to 62-31 for Clinton. Fellow Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s 5th District in Minneapolis, meanwhile, supported Biden 80-18 four years after going for Clinton 74-18.

We’ll turn now to the four Trump seats, starting with the GOP’s pickup in the 7th District. This slice of rural western Minnesota has long been red turf, with Mitt Romney taking it 56-42, but it handed Peterson decisive wins as recently as 2014, even amidst the GOP wave. That all began to change in 2016, however, when Trump carried the district 62-31 and Peterson only held off an underfunded Republican named Dave Hughes 52-47.

A similar Peterson performance two years later in a rematch with Hughes served as a warning sign, especially when Republicans landed a far stronger nominee in former Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach for 2020. This time, Trump took the 7th District 64-34, only a slightly smaller margin than four years earlier and more than enough to power Fischbach to a strong 53-40 victory over the 15-term incumbent.

Republicans also retained their hold on two other seats that had swung from Obama to Trump in 2016 and elected GOP members two years later. The 1st District in the southern part of the state went from 50-48 Obama to 53-38 Trump. It swung back the following cycle, when Democratic Rep. Tim Walz left two years later to wage a successful bid for governor, and Republican Jim Hagedorn beat Democrat Dan Feehan in a very close 50.1-49.7 contest.

Feehan sought a rematch this year, and Democrats were encouraged by polls showing Biden in position to return this district to the blue corner. However, while Trump’s 54-44 showing wasn’t quite as strong as it was four years ago, it was enough for Hagedorn to prevail 49-46.

The 8th District, located in the Iron Range in the northeastern corner of the state, was a reliably blue area for decades, but those days are long gone. The seat swung from 52-46 Obama to 54-39 Trump in 2016, and Trump took it by an only slightly smaller 56-42 this time. Republican Pete Stauber won the 2018 race to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan 51-45 and prevailed 57-38 this year.

The final seat in Minnesota is the 6th District in the northern Twin Cities exurbs, a longtime Republican bastion held by NRCC chair Tom Emmer. The district backed Trump 59-39 this year, a smaller margin than his 59-33 showing in 2016, but still better for Team Red than Romney’s 56-42 performance.

Neither party has enjoyed control of the redistricting process in decades, and courts have had to draw boundaries after the legislature and governor failed to agree on a map. Democrats control the governor’s office and the state House while Republicans have the Senate, so we’re likely in for another deadlock this time.

P.S. If you haven’t done so yet, you’ll want to bookmark our complete data set with presidential results by congressional district for all 50 states, which we’re updating continuously.

This post was originally published on this site

Ron Brownstein/Atlantic:

Does Joe Biden Understand the Modern GOP?

The president-elect insists he can work with Republicans. Some fellow Democrats have doubts.

The big question his remarks raise is whether the Republican Party that Biden described in the speech’s first half is truly open to the kind of cooperation and partnership he promised in the second.

A sad tale of having it hit home for politicians:

Remember, to the modern GOP, it’s all just a game.

There is so much more work to be done….

Cathy Young/ARC uses a Noah Rothman piece as a springboard to unload on whataboutism:

The Republican Mutiny and 2016 Whataboutism

No, the Republicans of 2020 are not the Democrats of 2016

Case in point: Noah Rothman’s December 14 Commentary post titled “The Last Time They Tried to Steal an Election.” …..

So, when all is said and done, Rothman’s claim of an attempted “election steal” in 2016 amounts to ten electors pushing for the Electoral College to annul Trump’s victory; one or two high-level Democratic officials expressing cautious sympathy for this effort; Martin Sheen and some other celebrities making videos urging Trump electors to defect; opinion pieces in prominent publications making the same plea; and an unspecified number of people trying to pressure the electors, sometimes in ways that crossed the lines of civilized behavior. At a stretch, you could also include the Clinton campaign signing on to participate in the Wisconsin recount initiated by Stein.

This is stacked up against :

• the president of the United States repeatedly and consistently claiming that he won the election and that his victory was stolen through fraud
• over 50 lawsuits trying to get thousands of votes thrown out in several battleground states Joe Biden won
• the Republican Attorney General of Texas filing a lawsuit before the Supreme Court to overturn the election results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania as “unlawful and constitutionally tainted”
• the attorneys general of 17 other Republican-led states signing on to the Texas lawsuit (which the Supreme Court ultimately refused to hear)
• over half of the House Republican conference — 126 out of 249 members — signing on to a brief supporting the lawsuit
• aggressive efforts by Republican legislators in several battleground states to overrule voters from their state and appoint pro-Trump electors by fanning baseless claims of fraud
• harassment and threats toward Republican state officials whom Trump supporters accused of complicity in covering up supposed fraud, with at least tacit encouragement by the president, some of his attorneys, and campaign officials
• Republicans in six states where Trump has groundlessly disputed Biden’s victory creating “alternate” slates of electors who met and cast their votes for Trump, with encouragement from senior White House advisor Stephen Miller in a Fox News appearance. (In Michigan, the faux electors actually showed up at the state capitol entrance during the certification with the ostensible intent of submitting their votes.)

In other words, there is simply no comparison between the Democratic mutiny in 2016 and the Republican mutiny in 2020 — whether in terms of scope, intensity, or participation by mainstream political figures.

Reid Wilson/The Hill:

Legislative survey shows deep GOP divide on election

Republican state legislators are torn between moving past an election that President Trump lost and fighting tooth and nail to get him a second term, even if that means calling for Congress to overturn the certified results of an election.

The Hill asked every Republican legislator in the country for their thoughts on the election, including whether they recognized President-elect Joe Biden as the winner.

About half of the 200 or so Republican legislators who responded to The Hill acknowledged Biden as the winner, while about a quarter said they did not believe Trump had lost his election, or that Biden’s win was legitimate.

That sounds about right. Roughly a quarter of the country supported Nixon at resignation. Maybe another quarter deserted him because he got caught.

Politico:

‘This is ridiculous’: Congress avoids shutdown but deadlocks on stimulus

Lawmakers will work through the weekend in an attempt to reach a deal before the Sunday spending deadline.

Congress bought itself two more days to negotiate a coronavirus package on Friday evening even as lawmakers stumbled in their efforts to seal the deal on a $900 billion relief agreement.

Still, the day did not turn into the total debacle it once seemed. The House overwhelmingly approved the 48-hour stopgap spending bill to avoid a shutdown, and Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) relented on threats to shut the government down in their bid for larger stimulus checks than the $600 under consideration.

A positive day for the Republican Senate is a day it’s not another debacle.

Stanford prioritized attending radiologists over interns and residents, and no, this should not surprise you (WaPo):

Stanford apologizes for coronavirus vaccine plan that left out many front-line doctors

Stanford Health Care apologized Friday for a plan that left nearly all of its young front-line doctors out of the first round of coronavirus vaccinations. The Palo Alto, Calif., medical center promised an immediate fix that would move the physicians into the first wave of inoculations.

Stanford’s turnaround followed a raucous demonstration by some of those doctors, who demanded to know why other health-care workers — including pathologists and radiologists who do not attend to covid-19 patients — would be vaccinated before they are.

The protest at Stanford could foreshadow similar disputes nationwide as the federal government and states begin the arduous process of distributing limited supplies of the first vaccines.

James Dickerson, a 28-year-old internal medicine resident who has cared for covid-19 patients, predicted the controversy at Stanford will unfold around the country: “The devil is in the details,” he said.

Interns and residents are the bottom of the pecking order for most things and tend not to be at the boardroom meetings. The supervisor is often there on the floor or by phone for support but with exceptions (ER, trauma) make no mistake about who does the work, especially at 1 a.m.  It’s the residents and nurses. Been there, done that, both sides.

AJC:

Turnout in Georgia US Senate runoff approaches presidential levels

Almost as many Georgians have voted in the U.S. Senate runoffs as at the same point before the presidential election, a huge turnout that reflects the high stakes of the race.

Over 1.1 million people had voted through Thursday, most of them at early voting locations that opened across the state this week, according to state election data.

Such high turnout is unusual for a runoff, especially when compared to presidential elections that get the most voter interest. About 5 million people voted in last month’s election…

Of voters who participated in June’s primary election, Democrats outnumber Republicans in the runoff.

About 59% of runoff voters so far who also voted in the primary requested Democratic Party ballots. About 39% pulled Republican Party ballots.

However, one-third of runoff voters didn’t show up for the primary, leaving no record this year of which party they prefer, according to voter history data analyzed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In addition, nearly 76,000 new voters registered since the presidential race. These voters are first-time registrants, many of whom recently either turned 18 years old or became Georgia residents.

This post was originally published on this site

Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

33 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

Felipe de la Hoz at The New Republic writes—Trump’s Most Vicious Cultists Aren’t Done With America. They gleefully enabled a corrupt president for years. How will they satisfy their destructive appetites in the years to come? 

When spent nuclear fuel rods are removed from their reactor and cooled, they are typically surrounded in inert gas and sealed into thick steel and concrete casks that are intended to last for decades. We do this because we know that the material taken out of the reactor core is a dangerous by-product of the material used to power the reactor, and it retains a vast destructive potential. It doesn’t require a degree in nuclear physics to understand why such extreme measures are taken to safeguard this material: Everyone knows that you shouldn’t leave radioactive waste unattended, lest it make its way to where it doesn’t belong.

And the same can be said for the fuel that has powered the Trump administration’s greatest misdeeds: its annihilation of the administrative state, its rollback of protections for immigrants and the environment, and the systematic razing of social protections and guarantees. President Donald Trump may have been the figurehead behind all of this destruction, but we all know he wasn’t the person sitting at the Resolute Desk until the late hours, personally drawing up plans for deregulating industrial methane use or new asylum restrictions. No, this activity was powered by people like White House adviser Stephen Miller, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, Attorney General Bill Barr, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Now that the Trump administration is getting ejected from the White House, these flunkies will probably spend some time cooling in the fuel pools of consulting, big law, and academia; perhaps, in time, they will fade somewhat from the public eye and our memories. But you can be assured that their capacity for harm is far from spent. As America prepares to inaugurate a new president, it can be easy now to dismiss these bad actors with a lusty “Good Riddance!” or marvel at the depths of their debasement and sycophancy to an inane and temperamental leader. Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering that to some of Trump’s underlings, the president was always more of a means to an end. We can take satisfaction in the fact that they won’t be getting four more years to wreak havoc, but if we’re not careful, they’ll be back, running for office themselves or glomming onto the campaigns of perhaps more competent despots.

THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING

• Could This Pandemic End Up Making Our Healthcare System Stronger? by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian T. Warren. The poor Black and brown communities hit hardest by Covid-19 have the most to gain from an overhaul of how this country administers care. 

• How US media manipulates Iran’s nuclear program into a sinister myth, by Ben Armbruster. A prominent NYT journalist got called out for sloppy reporting on Iran’s nuclear program; but the offenses go far beyond the paper of record.

• Russia’s Hacking Frenzy Is a Reckoning, by Lily Hay Newman. Despite years of warning, the US still has no good answer for the sort of “supply chain” attack that let Russia run wild. 

TOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES

QUOTATION

“Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life—that to the white man is an ‘unbroken wilderness.’ But for us there was no wilderness, nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly. Our faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings. For us, the world was full of beauty; for the other, it was a place to be endured until he went to another world. But we were wise. We knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard.”
            ~~Chief Luther Standing Bear, Sicangu and Oglala Lakota 

TWEET OF THE DAY

BLAST FROM THE PAST

At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—The failure of Austerity:

The current fad is to declare that austerity, in the form of slashed budgets, slashed jobs, a slashed tax based and so on will magically produce the opposite of all those things, as wealthy benefactors rush in to spend all the new money you have given them, create jobs creating new products nobody can afford to buy, and, I don’t know, start rebuilding infrastructure out of the goodness of their hearts. It is never clear, and nor is it honest: it is predicated on the danger of the Scary Deficit Monster, who was not at all scary during the time he was being fed by these same politicians and think-tank prophets, but who, like any false god, just happens to hate all the same things that his worshippers do.

In this case, the Scary Deficit Monster hates helping unemployed people, hates regulations (regardless of whether or not they save money), hates government in every form save the military, and especially hates it when well-off citizens are asked to pay the same rates they did a few decades ago, back during the dark, nearly apocalyptic 1980s or 1990s. That is damn nuanced policy for a mindless, frothing Deficit Monster, but it is consistent: the Deficit Monster hates anything Democrats might want and just happens to love all the ideas of the Heritage Foundation, etc., etc. And why not? Even a Deficit Monster ought to love its mother.

This post was originally published on this site

A grandmother of 12 contracted COVID-19 in April and spent 20 days in the hospital at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. KTLA reports that Margarita Montañez was unable to see her family during this time, which included almost two weeks spent on a ventilator. On Thursday, Montañez tried to give a little back to the many medical staff, because she says she “appreciated the doctors and the nurses that helped me.” It took her five days, but the 73-year-old San Fernando Valley resident made 800 tamales and brought them to the staff.

Cedars-Sinai nurse David Karther said the staff was “so grateful” for the tamales, adding that “They couldn’t have come at a better time.” Margarita’s daughter Cindy helped deliver the tamales and spoke with KLTA, telling them about how frightening it was to leave her mother with nurses at the ER back in April. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to see my mom again. But thanks to the Cedars-Sinai medical team, my mom is here today, and we are forever grateful for that.”

Cindy went on to say that “People may not remember her but she remembers the medical staff every single day because of what they did to save her life and the lives of literally thousands of people. So they are the heroes and they deserve the best tamales in the world, which are my mom’s tamales.”

I’m not crying. You are!

En español y en English abajo!

This post was originally published on this site

Internal emails show that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorney said that the group of unaccompanied children who were last month expelled just as a federal judge had issued a ruling blocking such expulsions should have been returned to the U.S. in compliance with that order, BuzzFeed News reports. But the group of 32 children were deplaned and turned over to Guatemalan officials. The attorney’s email, the report said, appears to have been sent after that happened.

A judge’s ruling last month blocking the public health policy that the Trump administration has used as an excuse to quickly expel children without an immigration court hearing should have immediately stopped the plane sending kids back to Central America that same day, but BuzzFeed News reported last month that officials continued on with that flight anyway. ICE claimed agents just weren’t aware of it.

BuzzFeed News now reports that order came 10 minutes before takeoff, with ICE since claiming in court documents that it found out about the ruling nearly 15 minutes after it had already handed over the children. Internal documents reported by BuzzFeed News state that an official overseeing ICE’s deportation flights frantically emailed the ICE attorney, Adam Loiacono, to find out what to do. It seemed pretty clear, at least to us.

“’In light of the district court’s order enjoining expulsion of unaccompanied minors under T42 [the public health order the judge blocked] issued this morning, [the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor] strongly recommends that the T42 unaccompanied minors be returned on this flight and not deplane in Guatemala,’ he wrote, according to the source who described the email to BuzzFeed News,” the report said.

But the returns to the U.S. never happened. “There is no question that the injunction applied even if the plane took off and landed in Guatemala after the court issued the injunction,” Lee Gelernt told BuzzFeed News. He’s an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the administration over the expulsion policy. “ICE officials maintained that they would never ignore a court order,” the report continued.

But ICE lies, and as BuzzFeed News also notes, top Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials have admitted they in in fact expelled 34 children from the U.S. in violation of the court order, including a U.S. citizen who was later allowed to return. CBS News reported that CBP, just like ICE, feigned ignorance, saying, staff were “unaware of guidance issued by headquarters,” the report said. Nine of those children have reportedly been returned to the U.S.

The remaining children must be returned to the U.S. as well if they choose it, as well as the children expelled by ICE. The agency appears to have the information needed to immediately begin that process, with BuzzFeed News reporting that ICE officials “obtained contact information for the adults to whom the children were released in Guatemala.” 

“It is so tragic,” Migration Policy Institute analyst Sarah Pierce told BuzzFeed News. “You’re talking about one of the most vulnerable populations. These children had an opportunity to stay in the US and apply for humanitarian benefits for which they may well qualify. This administration took it away from them.”

This post was originally published on this site

Conservative groups have long railed against government assistance, including even against economic stimulus during the coronavirus pandemic, but—surprise!—that hasn’t stopped many of them from taking millions in the aid themselves, an analysis conducted as part of Accountable.US’s CovidBailoutTracker.com project shows.

Back in May, a long list of right-wing groups signed a Conservative Action Project letter opposing “federally funded bailouts for states and local governments.” At least eight of those groups were just fine with federally funded bailouts for their own bank accounts, though: They collectively took more than $2.25 million in CARES Act aid, with three taking money both from the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) (But Kos Media wasn’t a giant hypocrite about it.)

Overall, at least 75 conservative organizations took COVID-19-related aid, most of it from the PPP, but with at least 14 organizations also getting EIDL money, for a combined amount of more than $18 million. Not all of them had specifically spoken out against the CARES Act or other coronavirus-related relief, but for instance, in March Liberty Counsel complained that “the $2 trillion-dollar spending bill is still being written as members of Congress are being pressured to pass it. Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Chuck Schumer have inserted funding totally unrelated to the virus.” The organization then went on to get a $428,100 PPP loan, followed by another one for $10,000.

Just as the Trump and Kushner family businesses got PPP loans, so too did a lot of right-wing groups with deep Trump ties. Like Jay Sekulow’s group, the American Center for Law and Justice, which provided some of Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyers and has been paid more than $250,000 by the Republican National Committee in recent years—it got $1.23 million. The Remembrance Project, which specializes in providing Trump events with victims of crimes committed by immigrants, got $75,000 from the EIDL and $15,600 from the PPP.

American Majority and American Majority Action trained legions of tea partiers to rail against government aid, back in the tea party era. In the COVID-19 era they took a combined $130,000 in government aid.

“It’s always fascinating to see people who’ve made careers out of bashing what they see as ‘big government’ being among the first in line for a taxpayer handout during a crisis,” said Jeremy Funk, spokesman for Accountable.US, the nonpartisan government watchdog that put together the COVID Bailout Tracker. “They wave their finger at federal relief spending for local governments and working families, but don’t seem to mind when it benefits them. But this goes way beyond hypocrisy. These groups join the long list of rich and well-connected supporters of Donald Trump who were allowed to take millions from a program intended for struggling small businesses. It’s an insult to all the mom-and-pops in communities of color that couldn’t access a penny from the PPP under the Trump administration’s poor design and management.”  

That may not be the worst of it, though—$4.8 million in PPP and EIDL money went to 25 organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This post was originally published on this site

An unpublished report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general has found that nearly a dozen immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were held in solitary confinement, which is considered to be torture, for periods of over two months, BuzzFeed News reports. According to the report, two of those people were kept in solitary for more 300 days.

The draft report said that officials at the privately operated Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California, further lied about the one hour of free time immigrants held in solitary are supposed to get. “Our examination of segregation records showed the facility inaccurately reported to ICE that detainees were receiving recreation time when, in fact, they were not,” inspectors wrote according to the report.

“Detainees can request protective custody at any time,” BuzzFeed News reported. “ICE also allows detainees to be placed in solitary confinement, called ‘administrative segregation’ for those isolated for nonpunitive reasons, if their presence would pose a threat to the lives of other detainees or themselves.” But human rights advocates have slammed solitary as torture—and especially in the kinds of conditions described by the inspector general’s report.

“Considering the severe mental pain or suffering solitary confinement may cause, it can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment, during pre-trial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles,” UN Special Rapporteur on torture said in 2011 according to UN News. “The practice should be used only in very exceptional circumstances and for as short a time as possible, he stressed,” UN News continued at the time.

Yet ICE already has a history of using solitary confinement for punishing immigrants, punishing detained people for speaking out against abuse, and using it to threaten others for daring to ask for medical care. In a horrific report earlier this year, the House Oversight Committee said that an officer at another privately operated immigration camp also falsified records for one man who had been thrown into solitary confinement and then later died after the officer failed to properly check on him.

“CoreCivic detention staff were supposed to check on [Huy Chi Tran] every 15 minutes, but the detention officer on duty left Mr. Tran unsupervised for 51 minutes just before Mr. Tran’s cardiac arrest that led to his death,” the committee said an internal ICE report found. Tran had been a U.S. resident for over 30 years. “Investigators found that the officer falsified observation logs to hide the fact that he had failed to conduct welfare checks over that 51-minute period.”

Other abuses uncovered in the inspector general’s report were piles of spoiled food intended for detainees. This has also been an ongoing abuse in detention camps. “The inspectors reported finding expired frozen tortillas, turkey bologna, and moldy zucchini in the food preparation and storage area,” BuzzFeed News continued. “The facility’s officials said that they had not marked frozen food and produce packages with expiration dates.”

ICE’s abusive treatment of detained people is the norm and not a one-off by a bad apple, so excuse me if I skip the excuses claimed by the out-of-control agency and private prison profiteer Management & Training Corporation (but you’re certainly welcome to go check them out yourself). They do it because they get away with it, especially during the past four years. Yet Congress keeps throwing billions at them. 

“Since the creation of DHS in 2003, ICE spending has nearly tripled, from $3.3 billion to $8.4 billion today,” American Immigration Council said this year. “Much of this funding has gone to increasing the agency’s ability to hold immigrants in detention in locations around the country.” In conditions like what the inspector general’s report describes.

This post was originally published on this site

Just throwing together the briefest of posts to cover the breaking news this Friday evening: Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine got emergency approval from the FDA, and Congress passed a two-day continuing resolution to keep the government funded. Stories below. 

Stay safe out there, folks! 

And at least Congress managed to keep the lights on for themselves…