Donald Trump with William Barr at the White House in July. The DoJ is investigating an alleged ‘bribery for pardon’ scheme. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP
Donald Trump with William Barr at the White House in July. The DoJ is investigating an alleged ‘bribery for pardon’ scheme. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP
The Bay Area had seen a considerable decline in deadly shootings in the past decade. Gun homicide rates fell in cities across the region, across all racial groups. The city of Richmond saw a 67% drop in gun homicide rates between 2007 and 2017, according to a 2019 Guardian analysis of homicide data. In Oakland there was a 44% decline.
Anthony Ramsey was Richmond’s first homicide victim of 2020. Since his death, 17 other people have been killed in the city, just one more than had been killed by this point last year. In neighboring Oakland, 101 people have already been murdered in 2020, 27more than the total number of homicides in the city in 2019. Most of these killings involved guns, making 2020 a worrying and unprecedented period for gun violence in California’s Bay Area.
It’s a national trend. From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Vallejo, California, in cities big and small, incidents of fatal and non-fatal gun violence are rising.
Experts say that it is too early to draw a definitive connection between the uptick and the tumultuous events of a historic year – the pandemic, the mass protests against police killings and racial injustice, the tense run-up to the presidential election. But community advocates in Richmond and Oakland agree that the loss of safe havens like schools and community centers plays a role in the rise of shootings among young Black and brown residents. And the strategies violence interrupters, police and non-profit service providers have successfully used to drive gun violence down – like targeted interventions and court-approved search warrants – have been reduced, disrupted and slowed by Covid-19.
A quick snap from Reuters here on foreign relations. The US State Department has accused China of a “flagrant violation” of its obligation to enforce international sanctions on North Korea, and said that Washington would offer rewards of up to $5 million for information about sanctions evasions.
Speaking to Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, Deputy assistant secretary for North Korea State Alex Wong accused China of “seeking to undo” the UN sanctions regime aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
The US says it has observed ships carrying coal or other sanctioned goods from North Korea to China on 555 separate occasions.
Earlier, China had urged the US to ‘correct its mistake and lift all illegal sanctions’, after Washington had imposed Venezuela-related sanctions targeting a Chinese firm on Monday.
The US has imposed sanctions on Chinese firm China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation, accusing it of supporting Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
The decentralised federal structure of the US is often cited as a strength in holding a country together over such a large geographical area and with a diverse population. However, it brings with it some disadvantages. ProPublica this morning have a report on how the lack of a central approach to tackling coronavirus is allowing the virus an opportunity to spread as states take very different – and contradictory – approaches to dealing with it.
Nowhere are these regulatory disparities more counterproductive and jarring than in the border areas between restrictive and permissive states; for example, between Washington and Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota, and Illinois and Iowa. In each pairing, one state has imposed tough and sometimes unpopular restrictions on behavior, only to be confounded by a neighbor’s leniency. Like factories whose emissions boost asthma rates for miles around, a state’s lax public health policies can wreak damage beyond its borders.
“In some ways, the whole country is essentially living with the strategy of the least effective states because states interconnect and one state not doing a good job will continue to spread the virus to other states,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “States can’t wall themselves off.”
The piece includes a case study of Jim Gilliard. The 70 year old didn’t stray far from his home during Washington state’s strict restrictions, but was eventually tempted across the border to attend the annual Panhandle Bluesfest in neighboring Idaho. On his return, he fell ill, and died in October. His death certificate lists Covid-19 as the underlying cause.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee recently called on Idaho’s leaders to show some leadership and he has blamed the virus spread in Idaho for causing demand and strain on Washington hospitals.
Ronald Brownstein has this analysis at CNN of what is going on with the Republican party over their complicit backing of Trump’s repeated baseless claims that the election was stolen – and likening it to the party’s response to the McCarthy era.
In many respects, the congressional GOP response to Trump has paralleled the party’s response to McCarthy. Whatever their private concerns about Trump’s behavior or values, the vast majority of congressional Republicans have supported Trump since his 2017 inauguration at almost every turn, brushing aside concerns about everything from openly racist language to his efforts to extort the government of Ukraine to manufacture dirt on the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.
That pattern of deference has continued since the election as Trump has raised unfounded claims that he lost only because of massive voter fraud; as an array of state and federal courts have rejected those claims as lacking any supporting evidence, Trump has only heightened his allegations.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Trump broadened his claims to suggest that the FBI and Department of Justice were part of a plot to defeat him; after weeks of excoriating Georgia’s Republican secretary of state for failing to overturn the state’s election results on his behalf, Trump this week extended his criticism to the state’s staunchly conservative Republican governor, Brian Kemp. On Monday, Trump added a new Republican target when he fired a volley of attacks against Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey after the state certified Biden’s victory there.
Through it all, as Trump’s charges have grown more and more untethered and vitriolic, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other top GOP legislators in both chambers – not to mention the vast majority of Republican governors – have raised not a peep of dissent.
Trump has raised more than $150 million with false election claims – reports
The Washington Post has this possible motivation for Donald Trump to continue the fight to overturn his overwhelming election defeat:
President Trump’s political operation has raised more than $150 million since Election Day, using a blizzard of misleading appeals about the election to shatter fundraising records set during the campaign, according to people with knowledge of the contributions.
The influx of political donations is one reason Trump and some allies are inclined to continue a legal onslaught and public affairs blitz focused on baseless claims of election fraud, even as their attempts have repeatedly failed in court and as key states continue to certify wins for President-elect Joe Biden.
Much of the money raised since the election is likely to go into an account for the president to use on political activities after he leaves office, while some of the contributions will go toward what’s left of the legal fight.
The surge of donations is largely from small-dollar donors, campaign officials say, tapping into the president’s base of loyal and fervent donors who tend to contribute the most when they feel the president is under siege or facing unfair political attacks. The campaign has sent about 500 post-election fundraising pitches to donors, often with hyperbolic language about voter fraud and the like.
“I need you now more than ever,” says one recent email that claims to be from the president. “The Recount Results were BOGUS,” another email subject line reads.
Incidentally overnight Donald Trump was again pushing his baseless claims that the election was stolen from him, and suggesting that there will be an examination of election equipment in Nevada.
A judge in Nevada has ordered Clark County officials to allow an inspection of the elections equipment and sealed containers used in the 2020 election by 1:00 P.M. tomorrow. @RichardGrenell@AdamLaxalt@mschlapp
This has left people somewhat puzzled. Attorney Sidney Powell – who has been distanced by the Trump campaign but who continues to pursue election-related lawsuits, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity about her former colleague Jess Binnall getting a “discovery order” in Nevada when asked if people had been able to examine voting machines. Binnall also retweeted the president’s message about equipment inspection.
Nevada has already certified its result. Biden won by a margin of 33,596 votes, and has the state’s six electoral college votes on 14 December.
Just a reminder: The claim the election was stolen is effectively that millions of fake votes were cast for Joe Biden across multiple states, and that this conspiracy – whether it was carried out by the Democratic party or the “deep state” or foreign actors or the ghost of Hugo Chavez or whoever is the bogeymen du jour – has left behind no evidence that can be produced in court and everyone involved has kept it a total secret.
The conspiracy against Trump, according to his lawyer Rudy Giuliani at least, also appears to encompass people in the Republican party. Yesterday he said corruption was “not all on the Democrat side”, while without evidence accusing Arizona’s Republicans in Arizona of election misdeeds.
It may be that the corruption is not all on the Democrat side?
I've always believed there is an equal distribution of virtue and vice for both Republicans and Democrats.
However it seems like it may be one rule for him, and one rule for anybody else seeking to get their appointment by Joe Biden confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate. The Daily Beast has this on Neera Tanden’s disappearing tweets.
President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for budget chief does not pull punches online. So when some of her hits aimed at top players in Congress were removed from the Internet, it was clear something was up.
Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, has deleted over one thousand tweets from her personal Twitter account since the beginning of November. A number of them, since recovered by The Daily Beast, contain comments directed at powerful lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that could turn a relationship to ice before her Senate confirmation hearing to lead the Office of Management and Budget takes place next year.
Tanden deleted some, but not all, tweets from her account lambasting prominent lawmakers like Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Sens. Joni Ernst and Susan Collins, and praising their Democratic challengers. It’s unclear when exactly Tanden deleted them.
Sen. John Cornyn told the congressional press pool that he believed “maybe” Tanden was Biden’s “worst nominee so far. I think, in light of her combative and insulting comments about many members of the Senate, mainly on our side of the aisle, that it creates, certainly, a problematic path.”
Cornyn has previously likened his relationship with Donald Trump to a marriage, and said that he was “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well. What I tried to do is not get into public confrontations and fights with him because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”
A former head of US election security who said Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden was not subject to voter fraud should be “taken out at dawn and shot”, a Trump campaign lawyer said.
Condemnation of Joe DiGenova’s remark about Chris Krebs was swift, including calls for his disbarment and the charge that he was behaving like a “mob attorney”.
Krebs was fired as head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) on 17 November, not long after he said the election, contrary to Trump’s claims, “was the most secure in American history”.
Krebs also used Twitter to publicly debunk Trump’s conspiracy theories.
DiGenova defended the president in the Russia investigation and is now involved in attempts to overturn results in battleground states. The Trump campaign has won one lawsuit – and lost 39.
DiGenova made the remark about Krebs on The Howie Carr Show, a podcast shown on YouTube and the Trump-allied Newsmax TV, on Monday.
“Anybody who thinks the election went well,” he said, “like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”
Carr did not challenge the remark.
A day earlier, Krebs told CBS 60 Minutes Trump was trying to “undermine democracy … to undermine confidence in the election, to confuse people, to scare people”.
Trump called that interview “ridiculous, one-sided [and] an international joke”.
Those scenes in Memphis, Missouri are quite a contrast to what we are going to see at the White House over the next few weeks, as the Washington Post reports that amid the pandemic, the president’s residence will be hosting a spate of indoor holiday parties. Josh Dawsey writes:
While many public health professionals have asked Americans not to congregate in large group settings and avoid travel over the holidays because of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 266,000 Americans and infected 13 million more, the White House is expected to throw more than a dozen indoor parties, including a large congressional ball on 10 December, officials say.
The parties will be paid for by the Republican Party, a person with knowledge of the planning said, and will cost millions of dollars.
The president and the first lady are determined to have a final holiday season in the White House, officials said, and concerns about spiking cases and deaths across the country have not stopped the events. Many of the administration’s supporters have taken a skeptical view of the restrictions over the virus and are choosing to attend, officials said.
Jeff Roberson and Jim Salter have been reporting for the Associated Press on the Covid situation in Missouri. They spoke to Dr. Shane Wilson who works in tiny, 25-bed hospital in the rural northeastern corner of the state.
Wilson’s coronavirus routine may look similar to that in a big hospital in a big city – making his rounds in masks and gloves, with zippered plastic walls between hallways and using hand sanitizer as he enters and exits each room. But there’s one stark difference. Born and raised in Memphis, a town of just 1,800 people, Wilson knows most of his patients by their first names.
Dr. Shane Wilson, left, talks with Covid-19 patient Glen Cowell as the 68-year-old farmer rests inside Scotland County Hospital in Memphis, Mo. Photograph: Jeff Roberson/AP
He visits a woman who used to be a gym teacher at his school, and later laughingly recalls a day she caught him smoking at school and made him and a friend pick up cigarette butts as punishment. In November, Wilson treated his own father, who along with his wife used to work at the same hospital. The 74-year-old elder Wilson recovered from the virus.
With the US now averaging more than 170,000 new cases each day, it is taking a toll from the biggest hospitals down to the little ones, like Scotland County Hospital. The tragedy is smaller here, more intimate. Everyone knows everyone.
Memphis is the biggest town for miles and miles and people come to the hospital from six surrounding counties. Scotland County Hospital’s doctors already are making difficult, often heartbreaking decisions about who they can take in. Wilson said some moderately ill people have been sent home with oxygen and told, “If things get worse, come back in, but we don’t have a place to put you and we don’t have a place to transfer you.”
Meanwhile, a staffing shortage is so severe that the hospital put out an appeal for anyone with health care experience, including retirees, to come to work. Several responded and are already on staff, including a woman working as a licensed practical nurse as she studies to become a registered nurse.
Marks are seen on the face of registered nurse Shelly Girardin as she removes a protective mask after performing rounds in a Covid-19 unit at Scotland County Hospital. Photograph: Jeff Roberson/AP
The hospital’s chief nursing officer, Elizabeth Guffey, said nurses are working up to 24 extra hours each week. Guffey sometimes sleeps in an office rather than go home between shifts.
“We’re in a surge capacity almost 100% of the time,” Guffey said. “So it’s all hands on deck.”
It’s especially difficult to watch friends and relatives struggle through the illness while a large majority of the community still doesn’t take it seriously, she said.
“We spend our time indoors taking care of these very sick people, and then we go outdoors and hear people tell us the disease is a hoax or it doesn’t really exist,” Guffey said.
