Independent News
New ADL report finds 34% increase in antisemitism, with 2,717 reported incidents in 2021
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In the last several weeks, multiple reports have been released noting the rise in hate and bias against minority communities. Days after a report shared the increase in bias-based incidents against Muslim Americans in the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a report Tuesday noting the number of incidents involving assault, vandalism, and harassment targeting the Jewish community.
According to the audit report, crimes against Jewish people have reached a historic high of more than 2,700 reported incidents, a 34% increase nationwide compared to 2,026 in 2020. The actual numbers are expected to be higher due to the number of incidents that go unreported.
This isn’t the first time ADL reports have found a rise in antisemitism. The rise in antisemitism has been consistent for years. According to CNN, the ADL has been tracking such incidents since 1979. This year has been the highest the organization has seen in the past 40 years, making it a “deeply troubling indicator of larger societal fissures.”
“It is despicable and disgraceful that it happens, and there’s not enough people in authority calling it out,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
“People beaten and brutalized in broad daylight, without any provocation, attacked for the crime of wearing a kippah,” Greenblatt added.
Of the 2,717 incidents reported, 1,776 were described as harassment in which one or more Jews or those perceived to be Jewish were the targets of antisemitic slurs, stereotypes, or conspiracy theories, the report said. At least 850 incidents included vandalism of Jewish places of worship or businesses; 88 incidents were assaults.
Every state and the District of Columbia reported incidents rising, with the most occurring in New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas. The report found that nearly 60% of the total incidents were in those six states.
According to the report, New York has the highest rate of antisemitic incidents in the country. There were 416 incidents reported in New York in 2021, a 24% increase since 2020. Fifty-one were assaults, the most ever recorded with a 325% increase from 2020.
Comparatively, California reported 367 incidents of antisemitic hate and harassment in 2021, setting a record that has carried into 2022.
“In the Bay Area, notwithstanding the fact that, broadly speaking, it’s a more progressive place … we see antisemitism emanating from the far right and the far left,” Seth Brysk, director of ADL’s Central Pacific Region, told the SF Chronicle, noting that each incident targets a community rather than an individual. “Every swastika tagged on a wall can harm scores of people,” he said.
One of the solutions the ADL offered was better educating students about bias in schools.
“We need to see schools introduce anti-bias, anti-hate, Holocaust education content to their students, so we can inoculate our kids before intolerance takes hold,” Greenblatt said.
The report also indicated that the ADL plans to work with law enforcement and other officials to track trends in efforts to prevent further antisemitic incidents.
Trevor Reed's parents say Biden saved their son's life. Why can't McCarthy give credit where due?
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Wednesday brought news of a surprise prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia, with Russia releasing former Marine Trevor Reed as the U.S. released Konstantin Yaroshenko. The decision to make the exchange came amid the relentless advocacy of Reed’s parents and news of his deteriorating health, with President Joe Biden ultimately making the decision to trade Yaroshenko, who was convicted of drug trafficking in 2010.
Embattled House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy celebrated the news … with a noteworthy omission. “After being held captive by Russia’s corrupt system since 2019, Marine Corps veteran Trevor Reed will finally be returned to U.S. soil,” McCarthy tweeted Wednesday. “Securing his freedom has been a years-long process—I am relieved for his family. I invite them all to my office to celebrate Trevor’s freedom.”
Okay, Kevin. “Securing his freedom has been a years-long process,” huh? That makes it sound like you were intimately involved. But, uh, how did it ultimately happen?
Reed’s parents have answered that question: They credit Biden for saving their son’s life.
RELATED STORY: Olympic athlete and WNBA star Brittney Griner will be detained in Russia until May 19
Biden has said he raised the issue with Russia “three months ago,” CNN reports, while an administration official described “months and months of hard, careful work across the U.S. government,” with outreach not only from U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan but Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden, and others, as well. The Richardson Center, headed by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, also served as an intermediary.
The decision to commute Yaroshenko’s sentence was Biden’s, with approval from the Department of Justice.
Biden’s focus on Reed’s case came after Reed’s parents, Joey and Paula, fought to get his attention, asking for a meeting when he visited Texas in early March and, when they were turned down, standing along his motorcade route with a sign. On a phone call afterward, Biden told them he had prayed the rosary for their son and “thinks of Trevor every day.” But when they didn’t see further action, they went and stood outside the White House with a sign about their son. By the end of the day, they were inside the White House meeting with Biden. That was March 30—before which Biden and others in his administration had talked to Russian officials about releasing Reed. He still had to make the decision to do a prisoner exchange, though.
Trevor Reed and Constantin Yaroshenko were returned to the custody of their respective countries in Turkey, and Reed arrived in the U.S. in the early hours of Thursday morning.
“We are grateful beyond words,” Paula Reed tweeted. “We actually said that we believe @POTUS saved @freetrevorreed’s life by agreeing to this prisoner swap. We truly mean that!”
But Kevin McCarthy? He couldn’t unbend enough to give that tiny bit of credit for the months of work by the Biden administration. And no wonder. McCarthy has in recent days been busy groveling for Donald Trump’s forgiveness for recordings of McCarthy, in Jan. 2021, saying he was going to urge Trump to resign the presidency, and expressing what at moments sounded like real outrage at the Trump-supporting mob’s attack on the Capitol. McCarthy has gotten Trump to express public support, but praising Biden for anything, at all, however glancingly, would be the kind of tweak Trump’s ego cannot stand. So even if it was McCarthy’s instinct to acknowledge that Biden was responsible for Reed’s release—which it probably was not—there’s no way McCarthy’s current political position would allow him to do so. That’s today’s Republican Party: run by Donald Trump’s ego and the imperative to never, ever to give a Democrat credit for anything, however detached it might be from partisan policy battles.
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McCarthy does damage control with House Republicans over leaked recordings
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Kansas Proud Boy enters a guilty plea and agrees to cooperate with the Feds
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Facing up to five years in prison if he failed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Louis Colon, a “first degree” member of the Kansas City Proud Boys chapter, has pleaded guilty to obstructing police during the Jan. 6 attack.
The 45-year-old Blue Springs, Missouri, man was facing a slew of charges including felony obstruction, civil disorder, trespassing, and disorderly conduct when he was initially indicted with five other members of the neofascist group in January.
But with his plea deal struck, those counts are expected to be dismissed when Colon is sentenced. That date has not been set as of Thursday according to court records, but prosecutors have indicated it will come once they figure out how Colon’s cooperation might influence other Proud Boys in the case who have pleaded not guilty.
Two days before President Donald Trump would hit the stage at the Ellipse in D.C., back in Kansas, according to a statement of his offense, Colon and a few other Proud Boys decided they would come to Washington to show support for the outgoing president’s push to stop the certification of Electoral College votes by Congress.
Colon, members Ryan Ashlock and Christopher Kuehne, and another unnamed individual popped into a car that had two of Kuehne’s AR-15s stowed inside. The car was never brought into the nation’s capitol, however.
Once they arrived in Virginia on Jan. 5, Colon admitted the group went to a hardware store where he picked up, among other things, an ax handle. He would later modify it so it could be used as a walking stick and a weapon.
But before they left the shop, Colon said Kuehne suggested they grab a bit of bright orange tape and use it to identify each other as members of the same group in the crowd. According to the initial indictment, the Kansas Proud Boys Colon traveled with wore paramilitary gear, camouflaged uniforms, tactical vests and plates, helmets, and eye protection. They also carried radio equipment.
On the eve of the assault, Colon said his group met with Proud Boy and co-defendant William Chrestman and they discussed how to move “safely” as a group.
According to Colon, it was then that someone in the group said they didn’t come to Washington ”to just march around.”
“Do we have patriots willing to take it by force?” the person asked.
“[Colon] was shocked by this and understood that the individual was referring to using force against the government,” a statement of his offense notes.
In the moment, Kuehne, who has pleaded not guilty, said he still had his guns in his car and another member of the group piped up, saying the Proud Boys should “go in and take over.”
Meeting around the Washington Monument on the morning of Jan. 6, Colon said the group was joined by siblings Felicia Konold and Cory Konold of Arizona.
In Snapchat videos Felicia Konold posted describing the riots, she said she was recruited by the organization in Kansas. In one clip, she shows off a Proud Boys challenge coin of sorts that she received.
Her acceptance into the group would be notable given that the network is a self-professed “chauvinistic” organization steeped in misogyny. Sometimes, however, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Proud Boys have created offshoot chapters for wives or girlfriends.
According to court records, with their group amassed, Colon, Kuehne, Ashlock, Chrestman, and the Konold siblings began marching through the street toward the Capitol, chanting. Chrestman shouted to the crowd: “Do you want to take your house back?”
They would scream back, “Yes!”
Chrestman, prosecutors say, urged them on.
“Take it,” he allegedly told the mob.
Once on the west side of the Capitol, they scaled a wall, searched for higher ground, and then found a way inside. But the group was first met by police struggling to keep rioters back. As U.S. Capitol Police fired non-lethal projectiles at them, Chrestman allegedly screamed at the officers: “You shoot and I’ll take your fucking ass out!”
Konold, prosecutors say, was meanwhile urging people to keep fighting. All in the group but Ashlock made it inside of the Capitol.
Once in, Colon said they spotted retractable doors being lowered by police to keep rioters from spreading into another part of the building.
That was when Colon said he used his hands to stop the door and then put a chair in the way to keep it open. Kuehne, he said, was nearby with another person using a podium as a doorstop.
Colon admits to being inside the Capitol for roughly 50 minutes before he and co-defendants fled.
In addition to his sentence, Colon will pay $2,000 towards restoring the U.S. Capitol. The damages to the complex alone hover around $1.4 million. If he is forced to pay a fine on top of the sentence and restitution, it could total up to $250,000.
Louis Colon Plea Agreement by Daily Kos on Scribd
Another plea agreement for a different Proud Boy appears to be in the works, too.
On April 22, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an order noting that prosecutors and lawyers for Nicholas “Nick” Kennedy, also known as Squatch, have “progressed in discussions regarding pretrial resolution” and requested another status hearing be held in June.
The 41-year-old of Sikeston, Missouri, faces six counts including obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder, entering and remaining in a restricted area, disorderly conduct in a capitol building, and parading in a capitol building. Prior to the April 22 order, Kennedy pleaded not guilty.
When news of his indictment first emerged, his picture, Cash app handle, and email were posted in the Proud Boys’ Telegram channel, as noted by Jan. 6 sleuths Sedition Track last year.
An attorney for Kennedy did not immediately return a request for comment to Daily Kos on Thursday.
Biden requests $33 billion for Ukraine, giving GOP another chance to show which side it's on
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President Joe Biden has officially made his request for the next tranche of aid to Ukraine, $33 billion in military and humanitarian aid for the next five months. In addition to the funding request, he is asking Congress to amend existing criminal laws to make seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs easier.
“The cost of this fight? It’s not cheap,” Biden said in announcing the request. “But caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen.”
The funding request includes $20.4 billion for security and military aid; $8.5 billion for economic support (food, energy, health care, and agriculture); and $3 billion in global food aid to offset the losses in Ukrainian production of wheat and other commodities. It also included $500 million for U.S. food production assistance. The request is expected to last through September, as good an indication as any that U.S. defense analysts expect a long slog for Ukraine against Russia. “As long as the assaults and atrocities continue, we’re going to continue to supply military assistance,” Biden said Thursday, indicating that this request is the beginning of a transition to longer-term security assistance for Ukraine.
“The president’s funding request is what we believe is needed to enable Ukraine’s success over the next five months of this war,” an administration official told reporters on a press call ahead of the official announcement from Biden. “And we have every expectation that our partners and allies … will continue to provide comparable levels of assistance going forward.”
Coupled with that funding request is a proposal to “establish new authorities for the forfeiture of property linked to Russian kleptocracy, allow the government to use the proceeds to support Ukraine, and further strengthen related law enforcement tools,” according to a White House fact sheet.
It would streamline the process of the seizure and forfeiture of sanctioned oligarchs assets as well as expand the U.S. assets they can grab, and then to use the proceeds to support Ukraine. “Under the proposal, the Departments of Justice, Treasury, and State will work together to use forfeited funds related to corruption, sanctions and export control violations, and other specified offenses to remediate harms of Russian aggression toward Ukraine.”
As current law stands, in order to sell off seized assets, prosecutors have to demonstrate that they are the proceeds of a crime, and being a sanctioned Russian isn’t a crime and theoretically, oligarchs could sue to get their stuff back. So the White House is pursuing legislation that would create a new criminal law, “making it unlawful for any person to knowingly or intentionally possess proceeds directly obtained from corrupt dealings with the Russian government.” That might make some elected Republicans sweat just a little bit.
While that request lands on Capitol Hill, the House will vote on the updated Lend-Lease Act that eliminates some restrictions on Biden’s ability to send military equipment to Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe under the World War II-era lend-lease program. It exempts the administration from the five-year limit on the duration of any loans or leases, and from the requirement that the countries getting the equipment pay all the costs. The Senate passed the bill earlier this month, before the Easter recess.
The House took a number of votes Wednesday aimed at punishing Russia and supporting surrounding countries and former Soviet Republics. That included one to “impose entry and property-blocking sanctions against foreign persons responsible for or complicit in serious human rights abuses in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia that are occupied by Russia,” which 20 Republicans voted against.
In addition, 17 Republicans voted no on a resolution “expressing support for Moldova’s democracy, independence, and territorial integrity and strengthening United States and Moldova relations, and 8 Republicans voted against a measure very similar to what Biden is requesting, to “seize assets belonging to a foreign person whose wealth is derived in part through political support for or corruption linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
We’ll have a much better picture of just where Republicans stand—with or against Putin—when these bills come to the Senate.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland pitches boosted department budget to House Committee
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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland spoke before the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies on Thursday to discuss her agency’s budget and answer any questions members may have about what the Interior Department’s been up to as of late. That included addressing offshore leasing concerns, with Haaland admitting that three lease sales have yet to be held ahead of the department’s current five-year plan concluding on June 30. The Interior Department is working on a new plan that will extend to 2027. Five-year plans are the norm, though continued fossil fuel development is utterly incongruous to the Biden administration’s net-zero aspirations and goes against the president’s own pushes for offshore drilling bans through the Build Back Better Act.
Questions about renewable energy and the minerals needed to use them far outweighed concerns over fossil fuels, however. That’s likely because “the 2023 budget includes $476.6 million for oil and gas programs,” according to a statement released by Haaland ahead of the hearing. Meanwhile, funding for climate-related projects is expected to increase—as is the overall budget for the department—but those numbers pale in comparison to the $63.7 million more the department is requesting for oil and gas programs compared with the prior year’s budget. Haaland billed the ask as “balancing the nation’s energy portfolio,” a frustrating framing akin to Sen. Joe Manchin’s calls for “all of the above” energy initiatives.
Little was discussed during Thursday’s meeting about the difference in budgeting for climate resiliency projects compared with oil and gas programs, though lawmakers did share concerns over the extraction of minerals to be used for renewable energy. An interagency task force report about those minerals is expected to be delivered to Congress within the year, Haaland told the committee. Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada briefly discussed permitting difficulties in the state, but his concerns seemed to center on the typical Republican concerns about “rights-holders” rather than environmental impact, something he previously touched on in a Q&A with the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Minerals were discussed in Haaland’s prepared statement only insofar as how the industry can provide additional jobs as well as how the Interior Department can streamline payouts from revenue from federal and Indian mineral leases. The Bureau of Land Management is expected to receive $49.7 million for its Renewable Energy programs, which includes expanding the amount of Renewable Energy Coordination Offices, “which specialize in permitting for renewable energy projects on public lands,” Haaland noted in her prepared statement.
What was discussed during the hearing that is of particular concern to Haaland and, really, anyone invested in Indigenous rights, is the proposed $7 million to continue funding the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, which was launched last June to provide “a comprehensive review of the troubled legacy of federal boarding school policies.” During the hearing, Haaland revealed that her grandparents were forced into such schools, which she’d initially written about in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
“It’s important for me to make sure that people know that we care about this issue, that we are doing something about it, giving them a chance to heal from this inter-generational trauma,” Haaland said. “We are working on the boarding school initiative. It should be out very soon … I think the initial start in getting a full listing of exactly what federal boarding schools were in this country where burial sites are, what tribes were relegated to these various boarding schools, those are the important facts that we are working on now that we’ll get out soon.”
McCarthy does damage control with House Republicans over leaked recordings
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Despite Tucker Carlson’s rant saying he “sounds like an MSNBC contributor” in recently released recordings and is a “puppet of the Democratic Party,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appears to be hanging on to the support of his fellow House Republicans.
In January 2021, in the wake of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, McCarthy claimed he was going to pressure Donald Trump to resign. He said Rep. Matt Gaetz was “putting people in jeopardy” and that he would tell Gaetz to “cut this shit out.” He wondered, of some House Republicans, “Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?” But apparently, McCarthy has done enough sucking up over the past 15 months to convince the far right, including Trump, that he can be relied on to keep sucking up and supporting assaults on democracy.
RELATED STORY: Awkward recording of Kevin McCarthy emerges hours after his denial. What else do reporters have?
McCarthy reportedly got a standing ovation at a House Republican meeting Wednesday, after he claimed that all those comments were part of a “conversation about scenarios” and worked to focus attention on winning in November.
”McCarthy has explained that his comments about resignation were made only in the context of an anticipated impeachment conviction, and he has argued that he did not really want to kick members off Twitter,” The Washington Post reports, based on an anonymous “person familiar with the comments.” The part about the comments about resignation isn’t too far out of line with the recordings, in which McCarthy said, “This is, this is what I think. We know [the impeachment resolution will] pass the House. I think there’s a good chance it’ll pass the Senate, even when he’s gone. Um, and I think there’s a lot of different ramifications for that,” and speculated about whether Democrats would follow through on impeaching Trump if he resigned first. But the part about not really wanting Republicans kicked off Twitter is a strong case of “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying ears?” Most House Republicans are apparently willing to believe McCarthy, despite the clarity of the recording.
Gaetz remains unhappy, speaking out at the Republican meeting. But while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly called on Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, to apologize for his comments on the recordings, and said she was hurt by McCarthy’s comments, it seems that McCarthy has done enough to butter her up—Greene isn’t after his head. And all it took was McCarthy coming out of a discussion about her speaking at a white nationalist event and pledging that he’d restore her committee assignments if Republicans control the House, and—as she told her fellow Republicans on Wednesday—working on getting her reinstated on Twitter.
In addition to his Wednesday comments claiming he had just been gaming out scenarios and hadn’t meant what he said and don’t Republicans want to win in November, a large part of McCarthy’s effort to get past his recorded comments has involved further sucking up to Trump. He talked to Trump three times in the 24 hours after the first round of recordings became public, the Post reports, and Trump told The Wall Street Journal the two men’s relationship was good.
But it’s Trump, so it’s all transactional. “He will extract something from it. I’m sure of that. He will hold it over McCarthy,” someone who had talked to Trump about the recordings told the Post. Trump understands that he’s dealing with someone weak, someone he can handle:
It’s not transactional with only Trump, either—as the explanation for Greene’s muted tone about the recordings shows. McCarthy has spent 15 months making sure that Trump and Greene and everyone else understands that his ambition to be speaker is definitely more important than upholding democracy or ensuring accountability after an insurrection.
Whatever McCarthy really thinks about January 6, or about some of his members’ Twitter accounts … doesn’t matter. Because the only thing that matters for McCarthy is Republican power, and his own power within his party. And since most of his fellow Republicans share the former goal and think he can help deliver it, his barrage of phone calls to Trump and his refusal to discipline Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar for speaking at a white nationalist event, and his help with Greene’s Twitter account are enough for him to hang onto the latter.
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Kevin McCarthy is in large trouble with his fellow Republicans after more recordings released
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Lawyers in Marjorie Taylor Greene reelection suit file motion to add 'Marshall law' text as evidence
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Less than a week after appearing in a Georgia courtroom to defend herself in a reelection lawsuit, and swearing under oath to not remembering a damn thing, text messages to the contrary have been added to the slew of evidence against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The suit against Greene, filed by five voters represented by Free Speech for People, a legal nonprofit advocacy group, alleges the congresswoman cannot run for reelection because she “engaged in an insurrection to obstruct the peaceful transfer of presidential power disqualifying her from serving as a Member of Congress under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.”
During a hearing on April 22, Greene took the stand and denied involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection or having any recollection of the events surrounding that day, including conversations about martial law.
Wednesday, petitioners filed a motion to that suit to add “newly discovered evidence”:— a damning text that shows Greene’s memory while on the stand was faulty at best, and perjurious at worst.
RELATED STORY: At hearing challenging her House candidacy, Marjorie Taylor Greene testifies to remembering nothing
A text message from Greene sent on Jan. 17, 2021 to former President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reads:
“In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law. I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!”
The motion reads that the text “undermines Greene’s credibility,” and “sheds light on the meaning of her pre-January 6 statements. Eleven days after the failed insurrection, Greene was still fighting against the peaceful transfer of power by advocating extra-legal means.”
Anyone who watched Greene’s testimony doubted her honesty. Apparently, attorneys for the plaintiffs felt the same. According to the filing:
“Greene’s testimony at the hearing that she could not remember discussing martial law with anyone was already dubious. This text with President Trump’s Chief of Staff makes her testimony even more incredible because it seems like the kind of message with the kind of recipient that a reasonable person testifying truthfully would remember.”
The hysterical thing is that Greene remains confident that she doesn’t remember the text.
Even when she appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, she claimed she didn’t “recall advocating for martial law,” adding that the text is “clear and easy to read that if that’s my text message and that’s what they’re reporting, I don’t recall if they are, but if they are, those text messages do not say calling for martial law.”
In addition to her complete amnesia of any mention of martial law, Greene also mentioned never hearing of the Proud Boys. Welp … pre-Musk Twitter brought the receipts.
The uninsured are the first victims of Republican COVID-19 funding obstruction, as usual
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The White House renewed its pleas to Congress for more COVID-19 funding this week after weeks of Congress failing to get it done. One senior administration official put it bluntly: “Congressional inaction is already taking its toll—from uninsured Americans suddenly having to foot the bill for tests, treatments and vaccines, to states receiving fewer monoclonal antibodies to keep people out the hospital. Further inaction is unacceptable, and Congress must promptly provide us the funds we urgently need to protect the American people and abroad.”
That’s being backed up by providers who have had to cut back on COVID-19 care for the uninsured because the money for testing, treatment, and vaccinations has run out. “From my perspective, it’s insanity,” Neal Smoller, a pharmacist in Woodstock, New York, told Politico. Smoller ran an outreach program in underinsured communities, traveling to those communities and administering thousands of shots. He’s had to stop.
They blame Congress, and they should. The problem started with a misstep from House Democratic leadership in trying to hurry a funding bill through that hurt Democratic members’ states and cities, clawing back funding that had already been promised and budgeted. The COVID-19 funding was then stripped out of the larger omnibus funding bill that kept government operating.
Since then, though, it’s all been on Republicans who continue to not give a damn if people are dying from what it now appears is a preventable disease. From the $22.5 billion the administration first requested, it’s been whittled down to $10 billion. Republicans have blocked the funding for weeks, demanding that they get a vote on an unrelated anti-immigrant, white supremacist amendment to block President Joe Biden from ending the Trump-imposed pandemic restriction on migrants, including asylum-seekers.
Back in the middle of March, the White House warned of the consequences of funding drying up.
Without funding, the United States will not have enough additional boosters or variant specific vaccines, if needed, for all Americans. The federal government is unable to purchase additional life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments and will run out of supply to send to states as soon as late May. The federal government cannot purchase sufficient quantities of treatments for immunocompromised individuals. And, the federal government will be unable to sustain the testing capacity we built over the last 14 months, as we head into the second half of the year.
All that’s happening now with the uninsured.
“We can’t spend money like the government can. We have to make it with what we have,” said Mayela Castañon, CEO of Community Health Development, a clinic in Uvalde, Texas. “Hopefully Congress will stop fighting and think about what we’re going through.” The majority of the 11,000 people the clinic serves are Hispanic and uninsured. The clinic can only provide testing one day a week, down from six; has restricted testing; and might have to start increasing fees or laying off staff without a new injection of funding.
“The moment that we get a little bit ahead of this problem, they rip back any protections we have,” Smoller said. “I know people are fatigued, but this virus is more patient than we are.”
That’s proven by both increasing infections and hospitalizations. “The 7-day average of cases was 44,416 as of April 25, up more than 20 percent over the previous week,” Politico reports from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Hospitalizations were also up by 6.6% over the previous week.
“Making sure uninsured people have access is absolutely critical,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said during the Tuesday press briefing. “If Congress continues to not fund these urgent priorities, it’s going to get harder and harder for people to access care.”
Which means it’s going to get harder and harder to keep the disease under control. “It’s truly irresponsible of the government to take away funding for Covid when Covid is far from over and health care systems are already strained,” said Coleen Elias, CEO of Community Clinical Services in Lewiston, Maine. “We have to pay a living wage to our staff that works extremely hard.”
Republicans simply don’t care.
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Ukraine update: Mariupol has become 'a true concentration camp' and a hideous, ongoing crime scene
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Earlier this week, Russia declared that it had taken “all of Mariupol.” Which meant that they had captured all of the city except the vast collection of factories, buildings, sheds, scrapyards, and material heaps of the Azovstal complex. Established in 1930, Azovstal was one of the Soviet Union’s largest manufacturers of steel and other alloys through World War II, the Cold War, and into the present day. During all that period, the complex continued to grow, and as it did its importance to the USSR, which was marked by an increasing complex of shelters and tunnels explicitly designed to keep the factory’s 40,000 workers on site and in business, even in the middle of war.
The tunnels beneath Azovstal were designed to take a near-direct hit from a nuclear weapon. For the last two months, hundreds of Ukrainians, including families with children, have been in those shelters and tunnels as part of the resistance to the Russian invasion of their city. And for the most part, those tunnels and shelters have served their purpose, holding out against not just a constant pounding from artillery, incredibly, but against weeks of bombardment by Tupolev Tu-22M “Backfire” bombers that blanketed the area with explosions felt miles away.
But not everywhere is equally protected: On Wednesday evening, a field hospital located within the complex failed under the constant weight of the Russian air and artillery assault.
Dozens of people, including children, have reportedly died in the attack as Russia continues to bring down the boot on the last holdouts in a city already turned to rubble by weeks of constant attack. Most of those still remaining below Azovstal are fighters from the national Azov Regiment, who Russia has made into the boogeymen of this war. The regiment knows what would happen to them if they tried to surrender. They know what would happen to their families, to their wives and children.
Azovstal was built to be a shelter under the worst imaginable circumstances. Now those circumstances are here. And unless something changes soon in Mariupol, what started as a shelter will end as a tomb.
Elsewhere in Mariupol, the BBC reports that Russia has set up “filtration camps” at which local citizens are processed before being taken away to unknown locations within Russia. Some of the few to escape from those camps call conditions there “unimaginable.”
“It was like a true concentration camp,” Oleksandr, 49, says. …
Elderly people slept in corridors without mattresses or blankets, Olena says. There was only one toilet and one sink for thousands of people. Dysentery soon began to spread. “There was no way to wash or clean,” she says. “It smelt extremely awful.”
Those suspected of being “Ukrainian Nazis” or who showed any sign of protest were taken away to be tortured or killed.
“The filtration camps are like ghettos,” she says. “Russians divide people into groups. Those who were suspected of having connections with the Ukrainian army, territorial defence, journalists, workers from the government – it’s very dangerous for them. They take those people to prisons to Donetsk, torture them.”
The situation in Mariupol is intolerable for the people there. It should be intolerable for everyone who is not there.
Thursday, Apr 28, 2022 · 2:30:48 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Think of Putinism as next-stage Trumpism: Oh, sure, we’re all going to die, but that’s a good thing because we get to go out while expressing our hate for everyone else. It’s all the worst things about radical jihad, in a western suit. Oh, and with nukes.
Lawsuit: Dillard's workers search Black makeup artist's baby stroller for blue dress she didn't take
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A Florida makeup artist is suing Dillard’s department store after she was falsely accused of stealing a dress from a Jacksonville store while with her then 2-month-old baby. Destiny Aeinpour retained civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Jasmine Rand in the suit against the department store, which the noted attorneys announced at a news conference on Wednesday.
“It was definitely one of the most devastating and emotional times of my life,” Aeinpour said during the news conference.
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Aeinpour told First Coast News shortly after the encounter on Oct. 1, 2018 in Jacksonville’s Town Center that she frequently purchased makeup from the store but didn’t usually shop in the women’s department. She only visited the department on the day in question to compare a maroon dress she purchased at a boutique to Dillard’s offerings. She was looking for something to wear to her brother’s wedding.
She said as she was leaving the store a security guard ran in front of her and told her to stop. Her baby was in a stroller. “My heart completely dropped,” she told the ABC-affiliated news station. “I knew in my mind and heart that I did not do anything.”
Aeinpour said she was targeted because of the color of her skin and taken to a backroom of the store to be questioned and have her bags searched. “They began to search my stroller and my diaper bag and I told them this is not their merchandise,” she said.”I began crying because I was so overwhelmed.”
Aeinpour said employees were searching for a blue dress but they didn’t find it on her. The store’s management later apologized and let her go, First Coast News reported.
“We are looking into the matter and will respond as appropriate directly to Mrs. Aeinpour,” Dillard’s spokesperson Julie Johnson Guymon told the news station at the time.
Guymon declined comment to Daily Kos on Wednesday. “We are respectfully declining comment as a matter of policy,” she said in an emailed statement. “We do not comment on pending legal matters.“
Attorneys Rand and Crump wrote in the complaint:
DILLARD’S store employees targeted Mrs. Aeinpour based on her race, accused her of shoplifting, falsely imprisoned her and her two month old son N.A. for more than a half an hour, searched her person and possessions against her will including her stroller and diaper bag, accused her of stealing a dress, and otherwise subjected Mrs. Aeinpour and her two-month-old son to degrading and humiliating conduct with no reasonable or probable cause to suspect that she had or was in the process of committing a crime.
The attorneys also alleged a history of discrimination accusations against Dillard’s, including an incident involving Artelia Phelps, the plaintiff in another complaint filed against the department store chain last November. Phelps was accused of wearing stolen clothes at a Dillard’s store in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Nov. 3, 2020. She was handcuffed in the store, “held and publicly searched,” according to the lawsuit.
The incident began when Phelps and her sister took two evening gowns to the store’s dressing room to try on. Phelps left to go to the restroom and reportedly returned to a police officer asking a loss prevention employee: “Is this them?”
The cop demanded bags from the women withPhelps having taken her sister’s purse with her to the restroom, according to the lawsuit. And even though no stolen merchandise was discovered, the loss prevention employee allegedly suggested that the very jeans Phelps wore into the store were stolen. The officer then “reached inside” Phelps’ pants to see if the label matched that of the clothes in the store, attorneys reported in the suit. When it did not, the Dillard’s employee reportedly said: “Those look like our sneakers, too!” After checking the label of her shoes as well, the officer freed Phelps from the handcuffs placed on her previously.
Attorneys mentioned the Phelps complaint in the suit involving Aeinpour as evidence of repeated incidents of discrimination that Dillard’s is accused in. “NAACP officials have referred to DILLARDS as one of the most racist companies in America,” attorneys wrote in the Aeinpour suit, “and the NAACP has filed several lawsuits against DILLARDS alleging racial discrimination.”
Aeinpour is seeking damages in excess of $75,000, and Phelps is seeking damages of $500,000 or more.