truthout--2020-06-25--Progressive Candidates Surge Again as Trump Drags GOP Down

There are times in this business when all you can do is sit back and let the “ wow ” hop all over you like a jubilant pack of kangaroo mice turned loose upon the world .
Why ?
Because I get to type this sentence : New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated her main primary opponent , conservative Democrat Michelle Caruso-Cabrera , by the razor-thin margin of 72-19 .
AOC and “ The Squad ” she came in with in 2018 were supposed to be a fluke , a one-off caused by the daily nonsense from an unpopular president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , long-serving establishment Democrat and ally of Speaker Pelosi , but we were told not to read too much into it .
There ’ s no way progressives are actually getting organized at this level , right ?
The not-so-freshman-anymore House Rep. sure made somebody nervous , though .
That somebody , of course , was the money .
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera was a Republican until 2015 , is a former CNBC analyst , and previously lived at the Trump International Hotel and Tower before moving to Cortez ’ s 14th District only last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Blackstone and Goldman Sachs , along with billionaire investors Stanley Druckenmiller , Paul Tudor Jones and Nelson Peltz , poured money into Caruso-Cabrera ’ s campaign in an effort to oust Ocasio-Cortez .
They failed .
“ Wall Street CEOs , from Goldman Sachs to Blackstone , poured in millions to defeat our grassroots campaign tonight , ” said AOC on the night of her victory .
“ But their money couldn ’ t buy a movement.
” AOC , like Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts , lives in a district where the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ general election .
Her victory over money power and establishment Democrats was so complete that even Pelosi endorsed her this time around .
Beat that with a stick .
Ocasio-Cortez is not the only progressive candidate storming the establishment walls in New York .
Jamaal Bowman , a former middle school principal from the Bronx , currently holds a commanding 62-35 lead over eternal incumbent Eliot Engel .
Engel , long seen as detached from the district he represents , all but charbroiled his own campaign with an open-mic gaffe in early June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-decapitation forever .
Bowman , a long-time advocate for racial and social justice , was driven by that deep motivation toward a career in education , and now , in politics .
“ Our children and families work as hard as anyone else , ” he said on Tuesday night .
“ Poverty is by political design , and it ’ s rooted in a system that has been fractured and corrupt and rotten from its core , from the inception of America , especially over the last several decades.
” The New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 100 percent of the vote has been tallied in the Bowman-Engel contest , but as of this writing , no victor has been officially declared .
“ Get used to it , ” reports the Associated Press .
“ Slow vote counts and delayed results are a feature of elections during the pandemic and are likely to continue into the general election in November.
” A similar waiting game is underway in Kentucky , where the Democratic senate primary to determine who gets to try and unemploy Mitch McConnell remains too close to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many mail-in ballots yet to be counted , retired Marine lieutenant colonel Amy McGrath holds a 44-37 lead over state Rep. Charles Booker .
McGrath , another conservative Democrat , appeared to have the race in the bag only weeks ago .
She received endorsements from establishment heavyweights like Hillary Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer .
These political blessings fell to the wayside , however , when the uprising after the police murder of George Floyd , combined with the outrage in Booker ’ s home town of Louisville over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new momentum to his campaign .
“ A lot of y ’ all have been yelling out Breonna ’ s name , ” Booker said at a recent event .
“ She hung out with my cousin T.J. , and when he was murdered , she was there .
And her death , her killing , felt like losing him all over again .
And we stood up in the streets because we had no other choice.
” Across the country , incumbent Senate Republicans are looking at increasingly dire poll numbers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Michigan , Arizona and North Carolina .
The reason for this can be summed up in two words : Donald Trump .
“ President Trump ’ s erratic performance in office and his deteriorating standing in the polls is posing a grave threat to his party ’ s Senate majority , ” reports The New York Times , “ imperiling incumbents in crucial swing states and undermining Republican prospects in one of the few states they had hoped to gain a seat.
” Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has run an essentially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him from himself while giving Trump room to burn his own house down .
This strange strategy appears increasingly wise , as Biden now enjoys substantial polling leads nationally , in all the battleground states , and across a broad spectrum of voters .
Many white voters , who represent the backbone of Trump ’ s support , are now fleeing him in droves .
Polls are polls are polls , and it ’ s 130 long days until the election … but when the money starts quacking about a looming GOP wipeout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ On Tuesday , the market advisory group Signum Global informed its clients of its belief that the Democrats may well run the table in November .
“ Signum ’ s flip suggests that firms on Wall Street and in the financial industry could start preparing for the end of Republican control , ” reports CNBC , “ both in the White House and Senate.
” “ If we had ham , we could have ham and eggs , if we had eggs.
” This is what I tell anyone who asks me to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election has more wild cards than a pomegranate has pips , not the least of which is a deadly pandemic that has , as predicted , exploded into new virulence thanks in large part to the deliberate malfeasance of Trump and his co-conspirators .
Still , I ’ m wondering today how comfortable most elected Republicans are with their fateful decision to hitch their wagons to Trump ’ s dimming star .
Many of them appear to be very much on the run , while progressive candidates are surging , again .
Not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

There are times in this business when all you can do is sit back and let the “wow” hop all over you like a jubilant pack of kangaroo mice turned loose upon the world. Why? Because I get to type this sentence: New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated her main primary opponent, conservative Democrat Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, by the razor-thin margin of 72-19.
Ha. Wow. Hop hop hop.
AOC and “The Squad” she came in with in 2018 were supposed to be a fluke, a one-off caused by the daily nonsense from an unpopular president. Sure, she toppled Joe Crowley, long-serving establishment Democrat and ally of Speaker Pelosi, but we were told not to read too much into it. There’s no way progressives are actually getting organized at this level, right?
The not-so-freshman-anymore House Rep. sure made somebody nervous, though. That somebody, of course, was the money. Michelle Caruso-Cabrera was a Republican until 2015, is a former CNBC analyst, and previously lived at the Trump International Hotel and Tower before moving to Cortez’s 14th District only last year. Wall Street titans from firms like Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, along with billionaire investors Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones and Nelson Peltz, poured money into Caruso-Cabrera’s campaign in an effort to oust Ocasio-Cortez.
They failed. “Wall Street CEOs, from Goldman Sachs to Blackstone, poured in millions to defeat our grassroots campaign tonight,” said AOC on the night of her victory. “But their money couldn’t buy a movement.” AOC, like Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts, lives in a district where the Democratic primary may as well be the general election. Her victory over money power and establishment Democrats was so complete that even Pelosi endorsed her this time around. Beat that with a stick.
Ocasio-Cortez is not the only progressive candidate storming the establishment walls in New York. Jamaal Bowman, a former middle school principal from the Bronx, currently holds a commanding 62-35 lead over eternal incumbent Eliot Engel. Engel, long seen as detached from the district he represents, all but charbroiled his own campaign with an open-mic gaffe in early June that will redound through the annals of self-decapitation forever.
Bowman, a long-time advocate for racial and social justice, was driven by that deep motivation toward a career in education, and now, in politics. “Our children and families work as hard as anyone else,” he said on Tuesday night. “Poverty is by political design, and it’s rooted in a system that has been fractured and corrupt and rotten from its core, from the inception of America, especially over the last several decades.”
Ocasio-Cortez is not the only progressive candidate storming the establishment walls.
The New York Times’s election tracker reports 100 percent of the vote has been tallied in the Bowman-Engel contest, but as of this writing, no victor has been officially declared. “Get used to it,” reports the Associated Press. “Slow vote counts and delayed results are a feature of elections during the pandemic and are likely to continue into the general election in November.”
A similar waiting game is underway in Kentucky, where the Democratic senate primary to determine who gets to try and unemploy Mitch McConnell remains too close to call. With 62 percent reporting and many mail-in ballots yet to be counted, retired Marine lieutenant colonel Amy McGrath holds a 44-37 lead over state Rep. Charles Booker.
McGrath, another conservative Democrat, appeared to have the race in the bag only weeks ago. She received endorsements from establishment heavyweights like Hillary Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. These political blessings fell to the wayside, however, when the uprising after the police murder of George Floyd, combined with the outrage in Booker’s home town of Louisville over the police murder of Breonna Taylor, gave new momentum to his campaign.
“A lot of y’all have been yelling out Breonna’s name,” Booker said at a recent event. “She hung out with my cousin T.J., and when he was murdered, she was there. And her death, her killing, felt like losing him all over again. And we stood up in the streets because we had no other choice.”
Across the country, incumbent Senate Republicans are looking at increasingly dire poll numbers. Democratic challengers are leading in vital states like Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina. The reason for this can be summed up in two words: Donald Trump.
“President Trump’s erratic performance in office and his deteriorating standing in the polls is posing a grave threat to his party’s Senate majority,” reports The New York Times, “imperiling incumbents in crucial swing states and undermining Republican prospects in one of the few states they had hoped to gain a seat.”
Across the country, incumbent Senate Republicans are looking at increasingly dire poll numbers.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has run an essentially quiescent campaign that (mostly) saves him from himself while giving Trump room to burn his own house down. This strange strategy appears increasingly wise, as Biden now enjoys substantial polling leads nationally, in all the battleground states, and across a broad spectrum of voters. Many white voters, who represent the backbone of Trump’s support, are now fleeing him in droves.
Polls are polls are polls, and it’s 130 long days until the election … but when the money starts quacking about a looming GOP wipeout, it is worthy of note. On Tuesday, the market advisory group Signum Global informed its clients of its belief that the Democrats may well run the table in November. “Signum’s flip suggests that firms on Wall Street and in the financial industry could start preparing for the end of Republican control,” reports CNBC, “both in the White House and Senate.”
“If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.” This is what I tell anyone who asks me to predict the outcome this fall. This election has more wild cards than a pomegranate has pips, not the least of which is a deadly pandemic that has, as predicted, exploded into new virulence thanks in large part to the deliberate malfeasance of Trump and his co-conspirators.
Still, I’m wondering today how comfortable most elected Republicans are with their fateful decision to hitch their wagons to Trump’s dimming star. Many of them appear to be very much on the run, while progressive candidates are surging, again. Not one bit of this is a fluke.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
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truthout--2020-06-25--Leadership That Neglects Science Led to Worst COVID Crises in US and Brazil

As coronavirus infections worldwide approach 10 million , nearly half can be found in the two largest countries in the Americas : the United States and Brazil , which now has the worst infection rate in the world and could surpass the U.S. death toll next month .
“ What we see in the country is a reflection of the leadership that we have , ” says Marcia Castro , professor of demography , chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H .
Chan School of Public Health and co-chair of Harvard ’ s Brazil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bolsonaro has downplayed the pandemic ’ s severity and undermined efforts to enforce protective measures .
We also discuss the country ’ s participation in vaccine trials , the impact of the crisis on Brazil ’ s Indigenous population , and the spike in COVID in the three most populous U.S. states of California , Texas and Florida .
This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nermeen Shaikh broadcasting from her home .
Hi , Nermeen .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Good morning , Amy .
And welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , as COVID-19 cases soar in the United States to a new single-day high , we look at how the pandemic is devastating the hemisphere ’ s two largest countries : the United States and Brazil .
We ’ ll start south in Brazil .
As the number of confirmed coronavirus infections worldwide approaches 10 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them can be found in the Americas , in part because of an explosion of cases in Brazil , which now has the worst infection rate in the world .
Some epidemiologists say the death toll of the pandemic in Brazil could pass the United States by next month .
This comes as a judge has ordered Brazil ’ s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to wear a mask in public , or he ’ ll face a fine of nearly $ 400 per violation .
Bolsonaro continues to attend massive political rallies across @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the World Health Organization ’ s Marcos Espinal said Brazil is not doing enough testing .
AMY GOODMAN : Meanwhile , Brazil is joining other countries in testing an experimental coronavirus vaccine created by Oxford University .
But the country ’ s health minister says the government has yet to strike a deal to get the vaccine if it works .
Well , for more , we ’ re joined by Marcia Castro .
She ’ s professor of demography and chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Health .
She also co-chairs the Brazil Studies Program at Harvard ’ s Center for Latin American Studies .
Professor Castro , we welcome you to Democracy Now !
Why don ’ t you start off by talking about the scope of the problem in Brazil , approaching only the United States , which is number one in the world when it comes to these coronavirus cases of infection and deaths .
We ’ ll talk about the U.S. in a minute , but talk about what ’ s happening in your country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Good morning , Amy .
So , I just want to start by saying that the frustrating thing about this story is that Brazil could be teaching a lesson to the entire world on how to respond to a pandemic by leveraging its history , its network of primary care , which is one of the largest in the world , and by using its universal healthcare system .
And yet , what we see in the country is a reflection of the leadership that we have , so a leadership that has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus , that neglects science — and that ’ s an important point , as well — and that creates a situation that mayors and governors who want to give the right response to implement actions , they face this situation that they are doing something that goes against what the president says .
So it makes it hard for the population to adhere to what they are trying to do .
And it also is a failure because we could have our community health agents — and we have almost 300,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the response .
And yet , the primary care and the community health agents are not being used as part of the response .
So , Brazil is not testing enough , as you said .
Well , we are not doing contact tracing , either .
So , the community health agents could be doing the contact tracing .
They could be identifying the elderly , the people that are more vulnerable .
They could identify those people that don ’ t have water at home .
That ’ s the other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country with lots of inequalities .
We can not expect that you ’ re just going to take whatever countries in Europe or high-income countries have done , and implement in Brazil and it ’ s going to work .
It really has to be adapted to those inequalities of informal labor , people that can ’ t stop working ; people that live in very high-density households , so there is no way they can do self-isolation ; and people that don ’ t have access to water .
And we keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospital beds and physicians per population .
Those numbers are worse in the states in the Amazon region .
It ’ s not by chance that we see the regional pattern of deaths in cases in Brazil that we are observing .
And it ’ s a shame that they could be very different if we actually use what we have .
We don ’ t have to reinvent the wheel , but just use the network of healthcare resources the country has .
And we are neglecting to do this .
NERMEEN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve mentioned — you just talked about these community health centers and how they could be used for this , to combat this pandemic .
But I ’ d like to ask about , first of all , the region that ’ s been the worst affected by the pandemic in Brazil , namely the Amazon , and whether such community health centers exist in the region .
I mean , the situation is so bad .
We spoke to world-renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado last month , and he said that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facing a genocide , if the government doesn ’ t intervene .
They are so vulnerable and have died in such large numbers .
So , could you talk about access to health services in the Amazon , why the region has been disproportionately affected , and also the accelerated rate of deforestation that ’ s presently occurring and how that ’ s impacting the spread of the virus ?
MARCIA CASTRO : Yeah , that ’ s a very important point , Amy .
So , what we have is , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terms of health services .
So , it is the place in Brazil where you have the lowest numbers of hospital beds per person , physicians per person .
Many municipalities don ’ t have hospitals and ICU beds ; then it ’ s even worse .
So , you already start the pandemic having fewer resources in those places .
In addition , we have several communities in the region that have the other inequalities that I mentioned .
Overall in the Amazon region , 43 % of the population don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in some states , it ’ s even higher than that .
Then there is a completely separate healthcare for the Indigenous populations , and those have lost a lot of the physicians in the past few years when a large program that existed in Brazil that brought foreigner physicians to work in those underserved areas was completely dismantled .
So , again , you keep adding those layers , right ?
So , since this new president took term , there is not a lot of attention in terms of preserving the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we saw rampant deforestation , a horrible fire season .
And this year , we already overpassed the deforestation from last year , and we still have about a month and a half to go of the cutting season .
So , whenever you have this deforestation , you have contacts of those people that want to exploit the land with Indigenous areas .
We see that it ’ s exactly in the Indigenous reserves where we are seeing most of the damage .
And those areas are supposed to be preserved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So , you have Indigenous people dying because of this encounter , but , on top of this , now they are being infected because those — the people that come into the area may bring the virus , as well .
They can bring any pathogen .
And it ’ s not just deforestation , we have to remember .
There ’ s also mining , which is another activity that exposed Indigenous people to that .
So , over all Brazil , we have 110 Indigenous areas that have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 7,200 Indigenous people that have been infected , and the number keeps rising , and about 330 deaths that already have been reported .
Now , what happens also is that because a lot of municipalities don ’ t have hospitals , don ’ t have beds , the health system work with a sort of regionalization scheme .
So , whenever people need hospital care , need to be hospitalized , there is a reference municipality that takes all those people .
What we saw in Manaus , which was the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had a completely overloaded of the health system , is that once the capital is completely overloaded and they can not even provide hospitalizations for people living in the capital , they can ’ t serve all the municipalities that depend on them .
So , the very high number of deaths that we observed in those areas , part of them could have been avoided if we had enough hospital services available .
But , above all , they could have been avoided if we provided a better response .
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all over Brazil .
They basically act on the community .
They know the people they serve .
And each team has about one physician , one nurse and around six community health workers .
They go to house by house to provide care .
And they have very good coverage in the poor and vulnerable areas , so in the north and northeast .
But again , once the pandemic started , those community health agents were not provided with protective equipment , so they can ’ t go on the street @ @ @ @ @ @ @ training , either .
So , those people that could be right there on the ground helping to identify symptoms , helping to isolate people , and therefore helping to do contact tracing , and therefore helping to flatten the curve so we could have avoided this overload in the hospital system , they were not working .
So , it ’ s not just about the inequalities .
They do play a role .
It ’ s not just about the low provision of health services in the area .
They also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s about the completely chaotic response that basically exacerbated all those inequalities , all of them combined , and created the situation we saw in Manaus , then we saw in Belém .
And right now Porto Velho , another capital in the Amazon , it has more than 90 % occupancy of hospital beds , so we can start hearing from this capital pretty soon .
Now , I also want to make a point that the fire season is about to start in about a month or so .
And if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the fires will come , because that ’ s usually the process .
The wood now is on the floor .
Whatever they couldn ’ t sell , they are going to burn .
And whenever we have the fire season , we have an increase in respiratory conditions .
We have an increase in the demand for hospitalizations because of respiratory conditions .
And we have an increase in the mortality of children under the age of 10 .
Now , this is a very — it ’ s a horrible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people more susceptible to a severe COVID-19 infection .
So , we can have an overlay of two huge problems that will create , again , another collapse in the hospital system .
So , we ’ ve been trying to raise awareness of this and try to avoid a fire season like we had last year , because this would be devastating .
And the effects wouldn ’ t stay just in the Amazon .
What happens in the Amazon does not stay in the Amazon .
And as we saw last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all the particulates that comes from the forest fires , they can travel .
And they can go to other areas , and therefore affect other people in Brazil , as well .
AMY GOODMAN : Professor Castro , earlier this month , the iconic Amazon Indigenous Kayapó Chief Paulinho Paiakan died of COVID-19 .
He was 66 years old .
He was a lifelong defender of the Amazon rainforest , who in the 1980s led the resistance against the Belo Monte hydroelectric project , an environmentally destructive massive complex of dams planned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the heart of the Amazon , the project successfully suspended at the time but later reinstated .
In recent years , Paiakan had warned against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ’ s calls to open the Amazon for agriculture and mining , which brings us back to the president and his policies and now the fact that he ’ s being fined by a judge for himself not protecting himself , very similar to his ally , President Trump .
But his policies in the Amazon and what they ’ re doing now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Well , it ’ s unfortunate because when you see what ’ s being done in the Amazon now , we ’ re basically losing about 20 years of achievements , of really being able to make protected reserve forests , protected Indigenous areas .
We had a forest code that was really a model .
We were able to reduce deforestation to the lowest levels and maintain them there .
And we are losing this .
We are losing this at rampant rates .
That ’ s bringing a lot of deaths @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local leaders , Indigenous peoples or people that are just trying to protect the forest are not even advertised .
So , the situation is very complicated , because those are big business people .
They are making money by clearing the forest .
And the local producers , the local communities , it ’ s very hard for them to fight against those people , especially when they are backed up by the government .
Recently , the government basically pardoned fines that people had to pay because of deforestation .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if you ’ re not going to be penalized , if you ’ re not going to be held accountable , let ’ s go ahead and do more .
So , what we are seeing in the environmental agenda in Brazil is very concerning .
Recently , there have been different groups that wrote letters to international people that basically import agro — related to the agribusiness in Brazil , import products from Brazil .
And now I hope this is going to create some discussion at the federal level , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t want to damage , it ’ s the agribusiness in Brazil .
And if the big importers decide to stop buying the products because they are causing a lot of deforestation or a lot of changes in the balance , in the environmental balance , in the Amazon , then that could create a reaction .
But if nothing happens , if they just can profit in ways that are really not understandable , because we have enough data to show that during the years when deforestation is going down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the agribusiness was extremely productive .
So we can make the Amazon to be productive and profitable without having to remove more forest cover .
But again , they are big fish , and it ’ s hard for local communities to fight against them .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well , Professor Castro , you mentioned earlier that Brazil has , of course , less resources to be able to do the kinds of things , to take the measures that countries in Europe have taken , like social distancing and quarantines and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now , of course , COVID is spreading at an accelerated rate in developing countries and the poorer countries of Latin America , South Asia and Africa , where there is also a massive shortage of medical equipment , including the most urgent for fighting COVID , namely oxygen .
And in one country in Latin America , and perhaps not the only one , in Peru , now oxygen is being sold on the black market for up to a 1,000 % markup .
Meanwhile , Yemen , which was already the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Saudi-led coalition bombing of the country , COVID is also spreading there , and unlike most of the world , 25 % of the people who contract COVID-19 in Yemen die .
That ’ s five times more than the global average .
So , if you could talk a little bit about — you ’ ve been working , attending a conference that looks at the development of a vaccine for COVID-19 and how to ensure access to the vaccine in the countries that have been most vulnerable to its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could you tell us where that stands now ?
MARCIA CASTRO : Yes .
That ’ s a very good question .
So , Brazil now is going to test two vaccines .
So , there is an agreement that was signed with a Chinese pharmaceutical company and with a vaccine from Oxford .
And then there are also groups in Brazil developing different types of vaccines .
So there ’ s a different effort in different fronts .
Now , the key issue for low- and middle-income countries will be , if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that we get a good vaccine — whatever “ good ” means , that ’ s a different discussion — and it ’ s ready to be produced at scale and then for a vaccination at scale .
So , the first item , production at scale , right ?
So , if the production is going to be restricted to the high-income countries , it does raise the question : Who is going to get it first ?
And we saw this before , when we had the H1 and N1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccine first , because they could pay for it or they were producing it , and then the others had to wait .
That is the first discussion .
That ’ s why it ’ s so important for those agreements , international agreements , that are being made , so that countries can have access to all the science behind the vaccine development , but they also can have access to the vaccine being produced .
Brazil is unique in the sense that they do have at least two public institutions — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this point in a moment — but they have Butantan Institute , and they have a FIOCRUZ , that they already produce most of the vaccines distributed in the country .
They can do it .
However , it depends what type of coronavirus vaccine we ’ re going to have .
There are different types of them , and each one of them demands a different type of industrial plant to be able to produce .
So , again , what countries should be doing now — and there are some European @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that have the industrial capacity to produce the vaccine , they should be trying to find ways to expedite the industrial production , so the moment something is ready , they can do it .
Again , not every country will be able to do this , and they will depend on the countries producing the vaccine to have access to it .
The second thing is , it depends on how the vaccine will be distributed .
Is it a type of vaccine that is very stable and easy to carry ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not very stable and it ’ s going to be much more tricky to go around the country and to the very isolated areas to distribute ?
We don ’ t know that yet .
But that can bring challenges to the whole logistic process of doing vaccination at scale .
The other thing is , we don ’ t know how many doses we ’ re going to need .
And we don ’ t know how countries , inside each country , they will prioritize who is going to get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case of Brazil is interesting because we do have a universal health system .
Everybody gets access to care and to vaccination for free .
You don ’ t pay a penny for it .
So , in theory , every person in Brazil will be eligible to receive this vaccine once it ’ s available .
But if it takes a long period of time to produce the vaccines— right ?
We have 8 billion people in the world .
So , how long is it going to take to produce 8 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can only produce 1 billion per year , you can imagine that we ’ re going to have to set priorities , both on inside each country who is going to get first and how countries will make agreements on how many doses they are going to receive .
So , the vaccination at scale is going to be extremely complicated .
And I think that with the support from Gavi , from WHO , we have to find ways to make this as equitable as possible , so we don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ takes the heavier burden in the vaccination scheme .
AMY GOODMAN : Professor Castro , we only have a minute , and I want to ask you about this massive spike of coronavirus infections in the United States .
In the most populous states , in Texas , California and Florida , which make up a quarter of the U.S. population , they ’ re seeing the largest spike in the history of this pandemic .
This comes as the White House now says it will no longer fund federal testing sites .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ wear a mask in public .
You have dozens of Secret Service agents who were with him in Tulsa , now in self-isolation .
That ’ s just one example .
A spike in Tulsa , where he was .
Very quickly , if you can say what you think needs to happen in this country ?
MARCIA CASTRO : Well , honestly , what we need is better leadership , because if we keep putting people , through rallies , in a closed environment where people don ’ t wear masks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s no big deal , while people are dying — and dying a lot — then , you know , I can ’ t think of any way to solve the problem of the only two countries that have more than a million cases , other than having better leadership , a leadership that can trust in science .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , Professor Marcia Castro , we want to thank you for being with us , professor of demography and chair of the Department of Global Health and Population @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Public Health , also co-chairs the Brazil Studies Program at Harvard ’ s Center for Latin American Studies .
When we come back , the Reverend William Barber , co-founder of the Poor People ’ s Campaign .
Stay with us .
AMY GOODMAN : “ Hold On Just a Little While Longer , ” the Virtual Choir during the Mass Poor People ’ s Assembly and Moral March on Washington on Saturday , organized by our next guest , Reverend William Barber .

As coronavirus infections worldwide approach 10 million, nearly half can be found in the two largest countries in the Americas: the United States and Brazil, which now has the worst infection rate in the world and could surpass the U.S. death toll next month. “What we see in the country is a reflection of the leadership that we have,” says Marcia Castro, professor of demography, chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-chair of Harvard’s Brazil Studies Program, noting far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has downplayed the pandemic’s severity and undermined efforts to enforce protective measures. We also discuss the country’s participation in vaccine trials, the impact of the crisis on Brazil’s Indigenous population, and the spike in COVID in the three most populous U.S. states of California, Texas and Florida.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman here in New York, with Nermeen Shaikh broadcasting from her home. Hi, Nermeen.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Good morning, Amy. And welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, as COVID-19 cases soar in the United States to a new single-day high, we look at how the pandemic is devastating the hemisphere’s two largest countries: the United States and Brazil. We’ll start south in Brazil.
As the number of confirmed coronavirus infections worldwide approaches 10 million, nearly half of all of them can be found in the Americas, in part because of an explosion of cases in Brazil, which now has the worst infection rate in the world. Some epidemiologists say the death toll of the pandemic in Brazil could pass the United States by next month.
This comes as a judge has ordered Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to wear a mask in public, or he’ll face a fine of nearly $400 per violation. Bolsonaro continues to attend massive political rallies across Brazil.
During a virtual briefing Wednesday, the World Health Organization’s Marcos Espinal said Brazil is not doing enough testing.
MARCOS ESPINAL: [translated] Brazil is a country that has many resources, that could increase the number of tests it’s conducting. Over the past few weeks, Brazil has made progress in increasing its testing for COVID, but Brazil still doesn’t arrive at 10,000 tests for each million residents, and it’s necessary that they do more.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Brazil is joining other countries in testing an experimental coronavirus vaccine created by Oxford University. But the country’s health minister says the government has yet to strike a deal to get the vaccine if it works.
Well, for more, we’re joined by Marcia Castro. She’s professor of demography and chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She also co-chairs the Brazil Studies Program at Harvard’s Center for Latin American Studies.
Professor Castro, we welcome you to Democracy Now! Why don’t you start off by talking about the scope of the problem in Brazil, approaching only the United States, which is number one in the world when it comes to these coronavirus cases of infection and deaths. We’ll talk about the U.S. in a minute, but talk about what’s happening in your country, in Brazil.
MARCIA CASTRO: Good morning, Amy. So, I just want to start by saying that the frustrating thing about this story is that Brazil could be teaching a lesson to the entire world on how to respond to a pandemic by leveraging its history, its network of primary care, which is one of the largest in the world, and by using its universal healthcare system. And yet, what we see in the country is a reflection of the leadership that we have, so a leadership that has and continues to downplay the importance of the virus, that neglects science — and that’s an important point, as well — and that creates a situation that mayors and governors who want to give the right response to implement actions, they face this situation that they are doing something that goes against what the president says. So it makes it hard for the population to adhere to what they are trying to do.
And it also is a failure because we could have our community health agents — and we have almost 300,000 of those — being the backbone of the response. And yet, the primary care and the community health agents are not being used as part of the response. So, Brazil is not testing enough, as you said. Well, we are not doing contact tracing, either. So, the community health agents could be doing the contact tracing. They could be identifying the elderly, the people that are more vulnerable. They could identify those people that don’t have water at home.
That’s the other thing. So, Brazil is a country with lots of inequalities. We cannot expect that you’re just going to take whatever countries in Europe or high-income countries have done, and implement in Brazil and it’s going to work. It really has to be adapted to those inequalities of informal labor, people that can’t stop working; people that live in very high-density households, so there is no way they can do self-isolation; and people that don’t have access to water. And we keep going with inequalities — the number of hospital beds and physicians per population. Those numbers are worse in the states in the Amazon region. It’s not by chance that we see the regional pattern of deaths in cases in Brazil that we are observing.
And it’s a shame that they could be very different if we actually use what we have. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but just use the network of healthcare resources the country has. And we are neglecting to do this.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Castro, you’ve mentioned — you just talked about these community health centers and how they could be used for this, to combat this pandemic. But I’d like to ask about, first of all, the region that’s been the worst affected by the pandemic in Brazil, namely the Amazon, and whether such community health centers exist in the region. I mean, the situation is so bad. We spoke to world-renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado last month, and he said that the Indigenous population of the Amazon are effectively facing a genocide, if the government doesn’t intervene. They are so vulnerable and have died in such large numbers. So, could you talk about access to health services in the Amazon, why the region has been disproportionately affected, and also the accelerated rate of deforestation that’s presently occurring and how that’s impacting the spread of the virus?
MARCIA CASTRO: Yeah, that’s a very important point, Amy. So, what we have is, the region already has the worst indicators in terms of health services. So, it is the place in Brazil where you have the lowest numbers of hospital beds per person, physicians per person. Many municipalities don’t have hospitals and ICU beds; then it’s even worse. So, you already start the pandemic having fewer resources in those places.
In addition, we have several communities in the region that have the other inequalities that I mentioned. Overall in the Amazon region, 43% of the population don’t have access to water. But in some states, it’s even higher than that. Then there is a completely separate healthcare for the Indigenous populations, and those have lost a lot of the physicians in the past few years when a large program that existed in Brazil that brought foreigner physicians to work in those underserved areas was completely dismantled. So, again, you keep adding those layers, right?
So, since this new president took term, there is not a lot of attention in terms of preserving the environment. In fact, last year, we saw rampant deforestation, a horrible fire season. And this year, we already overpassed the deforestation from last year, and we still have about a month and a half to go of the cutting season. So, whenever you have this deforestation, you have contacts of those people that want to exploit the land with Indigenous areas. We see that it’s exactly in the Indigenous reserves where we are seeing most of the damage. And those areas are supposed to be preserved, and then they used to be. So, you have Indigenous people dying because of this encounter, but, on top of this, now they are being infected because those — the people that come into the area may bring the virus, as well. They can bring any pathogen. And it’s not just deforestation, we have to remember. There’s also mining, which is another activity that exposed Indigenous people to that.
So, over all Brazil, we have 110 Indigenous areas that have been affected with COVID. We have about 7,200 Indigenous people that have been infected, and the number keeps rising, and about 330 deaths that already have been reported.
Now, what happens also is that because a lot of municipalities don’t have hospitals, don’t have beds, the health system work with a sort of regionalization scheme. So, whenever people need hospital care, need to be hospitalized, there is a reference municipality that takes all those people. What we saw in Manaus, which was the first capital in the Amazon region that really had a completely overloaded of the health system, is that once the capital is completely overloaded and they cannot even provide hospitalizations for people living in the capital, they can’t serve all the municipalities that depend on them. So, the very high number of deaths that we observed in those areas, part of them could have been avoided if we had enough hospital services available.
But, above all, they could have been avoided if we provided a better response. So, the community health agents, they are all over Brazil. They basically act on the community. They know the people they serve. And each team has about one physician, one nurse and around six community health workers. They go to house by house to provide care. And they have very good coverage in the poor and vulnerable areas, so in the north and northeast. But again, once the pandemic started, those community health agents were not provided with protective equipment, so they can’t go on the street. And they were not provided with training, either. So, those people that could be right there on the ground helping to identify symptoms, helping to isolate people, and therefore helping to do contact tracing, and therefore helping to flatten the curve so we could have avoided this overload in the hospital system, they were not working.
So, it’s not just about the inequalities. They do play a role. It’s not just about the low provision of health services in the area. They also play a role. But it’s about the completely chaotic response that basically exacerbated all those inequalities, all of them combined, and created the situation we saw in Manaus, then we saw in Belém. And right now Porto Velho, another capital in the Amazon, it has more than 90% occupancy of hospital beds, so we can start hearing from this capital pretty soon.
Now, I also want to make a point that the fire season is about to start in about a month or so. And if we had this high level of deforestation, the fires will come, because that’s usually the process. The wood now is on the floor. Whatever they couldn’t sell, they are going to burn. And whenever we have the fire season, we have an increase in respiratory conditions. We have an increase in the demand for hospitalizations because of respiratory conditions. And we have an increase in the mortality of children under the age of 10. Now, this is a very — it’s a horrible combination. Increasing respiratory conditions may make people more susceptible to a severe COVID-19 infection.
So, we can have an overlay of two huge problems that will create, again, another collapse in the hospital system. So, we’ve been trying to raise awareness of this and try to avoid a fire season like we had last year, because this would be devastating. And the effects wouldn’t stay just in the Amazon. What happens in the Amazon does not stay in the Amazon. And as we saw last year, the smoke, and therefore all the particulates that comes from the forest fires, they can travel. And they can go to other areas, and therefore affect other people in Brazil, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Castro, earlier this month, the iconic Amazon Indigenous Kayapó Chief Paulinho Paiakan died of COVID-19. He was 66 years old. He was a lifelong defender of the Amazon rainforest, who in the 1980s led the resistance against the Belo Monte hydroelectric project, an environmentally destructive massive complex of dams planned to be built on the Xingu River in the heart of the Amazon, the project successfully suspended at the time but later reinstated. In recent years, Paiakan had warned against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s calls to open the Amazon for agriculture and mining, which brings us back to the president and his policies and now the fact that he’s being fined by a judge for himself not protecting himself, very similar to his ally, President Trump. But his policies in the Amazon and what they’re doing now, Professor Castro?
MARCIA CASTRO: Well, it’s unfortunate because when you see what’s being done in the Amazon now, we’re basically losing about 20 years of achievements, of really being able to make protected reserve forests, protected Indigenous areas. We had a forest code that was really a model. We were able to reduce deforestation to the lowest levels and maintain them there. And we are losing this. We are losing this at rampant rates. That’s bringing a lot of deaths. A lot of the deaths of local leaders, Indigenous peoples or people that are just trying to protect the forest are not even advertised.
So, the situation is very complicated, because those are big business people. They are making money by clearing the forest. And the local producers, the local communities, it’s very hard for them to fight against those people, especially when they are backed up by the government. Recently, the government basically pardoned fines that people had to pay because of deforestation. That sends a bad message. So, if you’re not going to be penalized, if you’re not going to be held accountable, let’s go ahead and do more.
So, what we are seeing in the environmental agenda in Brazil is very concerning. Recently, there have been different groups that wrote letters to international people that basically import agro — related to the agribusiness in Brazil, import products from Brazil. And now I hope this is going to create some discussion at the federal level, because if there’s one thing they don’t want to damage, it’s the agribusiness in Brazil. And if the big importers decide to stop buying the products because they are causing a lot of deforestation or a lot of changes in the balance, in the environmental balance, in the Amazon, then that could create a reaction. But if nothing happens, if they just can profit in ways that are really not understandable, because we have enough data to show that during the years when deforestation is going down, the Amazon was extremely productive, the agribusiness was extremely productive. So we can make the Amazon to be productive and profitable without having to remove more forest cover. But again, they are big fish, and it’s hard for local communities to fight against them.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Professor Castro, you mentioned earlier that Brazil has, of course, less resources to be able to do the kinds of things, to take the measures that countries in Europe have taken, like social distancing and quarantines and wearing masks and so on. And now, of course, COVID is spreading at an accelerated rate in developing countries and the poorer countries of Latin America, South Asia and Africa, where there is also a massive shortage of medical equipment, including the most urgent for fighting COVID, namely oxygen. And in one country in Latin America, and perhaps not the only one, in Peru, now oxygen is being sold on the black market for up to a 1,000% markup. Meanwhile, Yemen, which was already the poorest country in the world before 2015, the Saudi-led coalition bombing of the country, COVID is also spreading there, and unlike most of the world, 25% of the people who contract COVID-19 in Yemen die. That’s five times more than the global average. So, if you could talk a little bit about — you’ve been working, attending a conference that looks at the development of a vaccine for COVID-19 and how to ensure access to the vaccine in the countries that have been most vulnerable to its spread, including Brazil. So, could you tell us where that stands now?
MARCIA CASTRO: Yes. That’s a very good question. So, Brazil now is going to test two vaccines. So, there is an agreement that was signed with a Chinese pharmaceutical company and with a vaccine from Oxford. And then there are also groups in Brazil developing different types of vaccines. So there’s a different effort in different fronts.
Now, the key issue for low- and middle-income countries will be, if we imagine a scenario, hypothetical scenario, that we get a good vaccine — whatever “good” means, that’s a different discussion — and it’s ready to be produced at scale and then for a vaccination at scale. So, the first item, production at scale, right? So, if the production is going to be restricted to the high-income countries, it does raise the question: Who is going to get it first? And we saw this before, when we had the H1 and N1, that the rich countries got the vaccine first, because they could pay for it or they were producing it, and then the others had to wait. That is the first discussion. That’s why it’s so important for those agreements, international agreements, that are being made, so that countries can have access to all the science behind the vaccine development, but they also can have access to the vaccine being produced.
Brazil is unique in the sense that they do have at least two public institutions — and I’ll go back to this point in a moment — but they have Butantan Institute, and they have a FIOCRUZ, that they already produce most of the vaccines distributed in the country. They can do it. However, it depends what type of coronavirus vaccine we’re going to have. There are different types of them, and each one of them demands a different type of industrial plant to be able to produce. So, again, what countries should be doing now — and there are some European countries doing this — is the ones that have the industrial capacity to produce the vaccine, they should be trying to find ways to expedite the industrial production, so the moment something is ready, they can do it. Again, not every country will be able to do this, and they will depend on the countries producing the vaccine to have access to it.
The second thing is, it depends on how the vaccine will be distributed. Is it a type of vaccine that is very stable and easy to carry? Is it a type of vaccine that is not very stable and it’s going to be much more tricky to go around the country and to the very isolated areas to distribute? We don’t know that yet. But that can bring challenges to the whole logistic process of doing vaccination at scale.
The other thing is, we don’t know how many doses we’re going to need. And we don’t know how countries, inside each country, they will prioritize who is going to get first. Now, again, the case of Brazil is interesting because we do have a universal health system. Everybody gets access to care and to vaccination for free. You don’t pay a penny for it. So, in theory, every person in Brazil will be eligible to receive this vaccine once it’s available. But if it takes a long period of time to produce the vaccines— right? We have 8 billion people in the world. So, how long is it going to take to produce 8 billion doses? Well, if you can only produce 1 billion per year, you can imagine that we’re going to have to set priorities, both on inside each country who is going to get first and how countries will make agreements on how many doses they are going to receive.
So, the vaccination at scale is going to be extremely complicated. And I think that with the support from Gavi, from WHO, we have to find ways to make this as equitable as possible, so we don’t see another situation where the most vulnerable takes the heavier burden in the vaccination scheme.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Castro, we only have a minute, and I want to ask you about this massive spike of coronavirus infections in the United States. In the most populous states, in Texas, California and Florida, which make up a quarter of the U.S. population, they’re seeing the largest spike in the history of this pandemic. This comes as the White House now says it will no longer fund federal testing sites. And you have President Trump refusing to wear a mask in public. You have dozens of Secret Service agents who were with him in Tulsa, now in self-isolation. That’s just one example. A spike in Tulsa, where he was. Very quickly, if you can say what you think needs to happen in this country?
MARCIA CASTRO: Well, honestly, what we need is better leadership, because if we keep putting people, through rallies, in a closed environment where people don’t wear masks, if we keep sending the message that that’s no big deal, while people are dying — and dying a lot — then, you know, I can’t think of any way to solve the problem of the only two countries that have more than a million cases, other than having better leadership, a leadership that can trust in science.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Professor Marcia Castro, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of demography and chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, also co-chairs the Brazil Studies Program at Harvard’s Center for Latin American Studies.
When we come back, the Reverend William Barber, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Hold On Just a Little While Longer,” the Virtual Choir during the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington on Saturday, organized by our next guest, Reverend William Barber.


truthout--2020-06-26--Florida Reports 9,000 New Coronavirus Cases In Biggest Daily Surge

Florida officials announced on Friday the largest single-day increase of new coronavirus cases in the state , eclipsing the previous record set just one day prior by a count of several thousand .
Out of 71,433 tests conducted within a 24-hour period in Florida , 8,942 cases came back positive for COVID-19 , a rate of 13.05 percent .
Both numbers were higher than the previous day ’ s announced findings , when 5,508 cases came back positive , representing a rate of 8.72 percent of all cases tested on that day .
Addressing reporters on Thursday , before the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ron DeSantis said that the state , which is presently in Phase 2 of its reopening plans , would not move onto the third phase at this time .
“ We are where we are , ” DeSantis added .
The governor also seemed to put much of the blame for the steep rise in coronavirus cases on his own citizens ’ behavior , suggesting that people in the state didn ’ t realize reopening businesses required them to remain responsible .
“ You got into kind of Memorial Day , you had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and it kind of fell off the front pages , and I think that folks , you know , thought , you know , ‘ Hey , let ’ s move on to the next thing.
’ And I think we know that it ’ s not something that just goes away , ” DeSantis said .
Those comments were a stark departure to what he had said in May , when he appeared to complain about the state ’ s stay-at-home order lasting too long .
“ There are millions and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anyone who ’ s been affected by coronavirus , but they ’ ve sure been affected by these mitigation efforts , ” DeSantis said last month .
Florida was among the first states to phase out stay-at-home orders , beginning its process in the first week of May .
At the start of June , the state entered into its Phase 2 part of the plan , which allows for 50 percent capacity inside bars and restaurants , as well as the reopening movie theaters .
Florida ’ s big increase in new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in cases .
On Wednesday , 38,115 new cases were reported in the U.S. , breaking the nation ’ s previous single-day record of 34,203 set on April 25 .
Higher numbers are being reported in a number of states besides Florida as well , including Texas , Arizona and California .
On Friday , Texas Gov .
Greg Abbott ordered bars to shut back down , and scaled back restaurant capacity to 50 percent .
He also banned river-rafting trips and outdoor activities of 100 people or more .
Texas , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states , with Governor Abbott allowing his state ’ s stay-at-home order to expire at the end of April .
Texas ’ reopening process is considered one of the quickest , and earliest , to have happened in the nation .
On Thursday , the state announced 5,996 new cases .
It was the second-highest spike in new cases , which was exceeded by the previous day ’ s numbers , when new cases topped 6,100 .
As of 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday afternoon , 2.4 million Americans overall have contracted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University ’ s Coronavirus Resource Center .

Spikes in states that reopened early are contributing to a resurgence of COVID-19 across the nation.
Florida officials announced on Friday the largest single-day increase of new coronavirus cases in the state, eclipsing the previous record set just one day prior by a count of several thousand.
Out of 71,433 tests conducted within a 24-hour period in Florida, 8,942 cases came back positive for COVID-19, a rate of 13.05 percent. Both numbers were higher than the previous day’s announced findings, when 5,508 cases came back positive, representing a rate of 8.72 percent of all cases tested on that day.
Addressing reporters on Thursday, before the new numbers were announced, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that the state, which is presently in Phase 2 of its reopening plans, would not move onto the third phase at this time.
“We are where we are,” DeSantis added.
The governor also seemed to put much of the blame for the steep rise in coronavirus cases on his own citizens’ behavior, suggesting that people in the state didn’t realize reopening businesses required them to remain responsible.
“You got into kind of Memorial Day, you had a lot of protests for two weeks, and it kind of fell off the front pages, and I think that folks, you know, thought, you know, ‘Hey, let’s move on to the next thing.’ And I think we know that it’s not something that just goes away,” DeSantis said.
Those comments were a stark departure to what he had said in May, when he appeared to complain about the state’s stay-at-home order lasting too long.
“There are millions and millions of Floridians who may never know anyone who’s been affected by coronavirus, but they’ve sure been affected by these mitigation efforts,” DeSantis said last month.
Florida was among the first states to phase out stay-at-home orders, beginning its process in the first week of May. At the start of June, the state entered into its Phase 2 part of the plan, which allows for 50 percent capacity inside bars and restaurants, as well as the reopening movie theaters.
Florida’s big increase in new COVID-19 cases comes amid a nationwide spike in cases. On Wednesday, 38,115 new cases were reported in the U.S., breaking the nation’s previous single-day record of 34,203 set on April 25.
Higher numbers are being reported in a number of states besides Florida as well, including Texas, Arizona and California.
On Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered bars to shut back down, and scaled back restaurant capacity to 50 percent. He also banned river-rafting trips and outdoor activities of 100 people or more.
Texas, like Florida, began reopening earlier than most states, with Governor Abbott allowing his state’s stay-at-home order to expire at the end of April. Texas’ reopening process is considered one of the quickest, and earliest, to have happened in the nation.
On Thursday, the state announced 5,996 new cases. It was the second-highest spike in new cases, which was exceeded by the previous day’s numbers, when new cases topped 6,100.
As of 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday afternoon, 2.4 million Americans overall have contracted the disease, and 124,509 have died, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
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Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-06-26--Supreme Court Sides With Trump Administration on Fast-Tracking Deportations

WE CAN ’ T DO THIS ALONE The reality is , less than 1 percent of readers ever donate to @ @ @ @ @ people are giving .
We urgently need your help to publish journalism that doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ challenges we ’ re facing , from racism and police violence to attacks on democracy @ @ @ @ @ White House .
Please give what you can so we can amplify the voices of @ @ @ @ @ and changemakers working tirelessly to turn things around .

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a major victory Thursday when it ruled the government can fast-track deportations of asylum seekers without first allowing them to fight for their cases in front of a judge. The ACLU’s Lee Gelernt argued the case in court on behalf of Tamil asylum seeker Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam. “It’s a very serious decision and will adversely affect many, many asylum seekers,” says Gelernt. “We’re likely to see more people fail their hearings, and now they don’t have a backstop in the federal courts.”
Please check back later for full transcript.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.


truthout--2020-06-26--20 Million Could Lose Health Coverage As Trump Aims to End Obamacare

The Trump administration filed a late-evening briefing to the United States Supreme Court on Thursday , joining a number of states urging justices to overturn the Affordable Care Act ( ACA ) , the signature health care law passed by the Obama administration .
Repeal of the ACA , which is sometimes called “ Obamacare , ” could cause significant harm to the American people , particularly those who depend on the program to access health insurance through state exchanges .
If the law were to end suddenly , it ’ s estimated that 20 million Americans could lose their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individuals who would otherwise be denied coverage due to having “ preexisting health conditions.
” Repealing the law would enable insurance companies to resume denying care to individuals on the basis of previous treatments or ailments .
Republicans , including President Donald Trump , have tried multiple times to end the ACA , stating their intention to “ repeal and replace ” the law with something of their own design .
However , such rhetoric has oftentimes failed to provide Americans with an idea of what would replace the ACA , if it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The administration has not offered a potential replacement if the law is viewed as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court .
The 82-page brief submitted by the Trump administration before the midnight deadline formally enjoins the president with a lawsuit set to be heard by the Court in its next term , sometime this fall .
The lawsuit was brought forward by Republican officials from Texas and 17 other states .
The legal argument by states and the administration contends that Congress , when it was controlled by Republican lawmakers in 2017 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the penalty for violating the individual mandate — the tax penalty for not buying insurance — zero dollars .
“ Nothing the 2017 Congress did demonstrates it would have intended the rest of the ACA to continue to operate in the absence of these three integral provisions , ” Solicitor General Noel Francisco ’ s brief states on behalf of the administration .
“ The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate.
” The Supreme Court has already heard two cases on the ACA .
On both occasions , the Court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the law from the books , although it has altered portions of it .
The move by the administration to challenge the legitimacy of the law comes in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic , when more than 120,000 Americans have already died and millions have become infected with the disease .
It also comes just a few months before the presidential election is set to take place .
Indeed , Trump ’ s Democratic opponent in the race , former Vice President Joe Biden , spoke out against the current president ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after news broke about it , promising to end his “ senseless crusade ” toward limiting access to health coverage .
Biden also raised the possibility that , if the law is ruled unconstitutional , millions of Americans could be denied coverage due to exposure from or treatment of coronavirus .
“ If Donald Trump prevails in court , insurers would be allowed to strip away coverage or jack up premiums — simply because of [ a person ’ s ] battle with the coronavirus , ” he said .
Siding against the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reelection chances .
The law remains popular across the country , with a Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking poll in May of this year demonstrating 51 percent of Americans giving Obamacare a favorable rating .
Only 41 percent said they viewed the law unfavorably .
Those numbers have been consistent for the past two years .

The Trump administration filed a late-evening briefing to the United States Supreme Court on Thursday, joining a number of states urging justices to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the signature health care law passed by the Obama administration.
Repeal of the ACA, which is sometimes called “Obamacare,” could cause significant harm to the American people, particularly those who depend on the program to access health insurance through state exchanges. If the law were to end suddenly, it’s estimated that 20 million Americans could lose their health coverage.
The law also protects individuals who would otherwise be denied coverage due to having “preexisting health conditions.” Repealing the law would enable insurance companies to resume denying care to individuals on the basis of previous treatments or ailments.
Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have tried multiple times to end the ACA, stating their intention to “repeal and replace” the law with something of their own design. However, such rhetoric has oftentimes failed to provide Americans with an idea of what would replace the ACA, if it is indeed repealed legislatively or removed judicially. The administration has not offered a potential replacement if the law is viewed as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The 82-page brief submitted by the Trump administration before the midnight deadline formally enjoins the president with a lawsuit set to be heard by the Court in its next term, sometime this fall. The lawsuit was brought forward by Republican officials from Texas and 17 other states.
The legal argument by states and the administration contends that Congress, when it was controlled by Republican lawmakers in 2017, rendered the law unconstitutional after it made the penalty for violating the individual mandate — the tax penalty for not buying insurance — zero dollars.
“Nothing the 2017 Congress did demonstrates it would have intended the rest of the ACA to continue to operate in the absence of these three integral provisions,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco’s brief states on behalf of the administration. “The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate.”
The Supreme Court has already heard two cases on the ACA. On both occasions, the Court declined to take action that would remove the law from the books, although it has altered portions of it.
The move by the administration to challenge the legitimacy of the law comes in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, when more than 120,000 Americans have already died and millions have become infected with the disease. It also comes just a few months before the presidential election is set to take place.
Indeed, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the race, former Vice President Joe Biden, spoke out against the current president’s aims to invalidate the law immediately after news broke about it, promising to end his “senseless crusade” toward limiting access to health coverage. Biden also raised the possibility that, if the law is ruled unconstitutional, millions of Americans could be denied coverage due to exposure from or treatment of coronavirus.
“If Donald Trump prevails in court, insurers would be allowed to strip away coverage or jack up premiums — simply because of [a person’s] battle with the coronavirus,” he said.
Siding against the ACA could hurt the president’s reelection chances. The law remains popular across the country, with a Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking poll in May of this year demonstrating 51 percent of Americans giving Obamacare a favorable rating. Only 41 percent said they viewed the law unfavorably. Those numbers have been consistent for the past two years.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
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truthout--2020-06-26--With COVID Spiking in Sun Belt, Trump Leads GOP Governors Toward Electoral Ruin

President Trump traveled to Wisconsin on Thursday to tour a naval shipyard , where he bragged that he had the Navy steer a big contract Wisconsin ’ s way , which can only be construed as an order to boost his electoral chances in the swing state .
I suppose it ’ s not surprising that he is so open about such things .
After all , he was impeached for trying to extort a foreign ally into produce damaging information on his presumptive opponent , and every Republican senator except Mitt Romney backed him to the hilt .
Why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ military contract for his own benefit would be a problem ?
Frankly , it probably isn ’ t .
Trump ’ s corruption is now the norm and most people just shrug when he openly brags about it .
Apparently , they believe everyone does it and it ’ s just the usual partisan fighting .
But the way he ’ s dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic is something else again .
The latest polling is devastating for his re-election prospects and it ’ s very much tied to the fact that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and refuses to change course .
The New York Times/Siena College poll released this week had plenty of bad news for the president : Only the true believers think he ’ s done a good job on the worst crisis of his presidency , and that ’ s largely because they get all their news from suspect sources .
The Washington Post published an article about several studies showing that right-wing media has played a major role in misinforming its audience about the virus : On Thursday night , Trump appeared with Hannity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repeated his daft line that if we didn ’ t do so much testing we wouldn ’ t have so many cases .
He ’ s said that so often I think we can assume that his followers have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this nonsensical concept .
Joe Biden described the problem perfectly in the speech he gave on Thursday : He ’ s like a child who can ’ t believe this has happened to him , with all his whining and self-pity .
This pandemic didn ’ t happen to him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
His job isn ’ t to whine about it .
His job is to do something about it .
The president wants us to believe there ’ s a choice between the economy and public health .
Amazingly , he still hasn ’ t grasped the most basic fact of this crisis : to fix the economy , we have to get control over the virus .
No , he can ’ t grasp this simple fact and I suspect that even if he could , he would be incapable of making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that happen .
He trusts no one but his gut , and his gut keeps on telling him that this will all just “ go away ” and everything will be fine .
He ’ s now taken to bragging that the “ mortality rate ” in the U.S. is something to be proud of , which is just bizarre .
The 126,000-plus dead human beings and their families don ’ t see it as such a great accomplishment , and Trump is signaling clearly that he has no intention of changing course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this week that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents ( 61 % ) agree that when it comes to coronavirus , ‘ the worst is behind us . '
” I ’ m afraid they are in for a rude awakening .
Those “ embers or flare-ups , ” as Trump calls them have turned into a wildfire that ’ s now out of control .
Twenty-nine states are currently aflame , with rising caseloads and hospitalizations , as we see the largest national numbers of the pandemic , surpassing the worst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in New York and a few other large cities .
His favorite Republican governors — Greg Abbott of Texas , Ron DeSantis of Florida and Doug Ducey of Arizona — are in a particular bind , having followed Trump ’ s lead and opened up their states early , even seizing authority from local officials while arrogantly proclaiming their superior handling of the crisis .
DeSantis was particularly insolent and overbearing .
Recall that on May 20 , Vice President Mike Pence paid DeSantis a visit and they conspicuously dined in a burger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after which DeSantis delivered a Trumpian rant to the assembled media .
He spoke much too soon .
On Wednesday the state set a new single-day record , with 5,508 new cases of COVID-19 .
There were another 5,004 on Thursday .
In fact , Florida has had more cases in June than in the previous three months combined .
When asked about the surge this week DeSantis said , “ We are where we are , ” and tried to act as though everything was going fine and it ’ s all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now punted all the tough decisions to individual businesses and local officials , so it looks as though he plans to ride the wave wherever it takes him , all while pretending that was the plan the whole time .
In Arizona , Ducey has also loosened his grip and allowed mayors to require masks in public , while in Texas , Abbott has actually begun to slow down the state ’ s reopening and may even roll back toward a partial lockdown .
But all these Republican state executives are stuck in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to insist that the pandemic is “ fading away ” while they have to face the sickness and death that ’ s crashing all around them .
He is an albatross around their necks .
Aside from the massive human carnage , the political ramifications are profound .
The Atlantic ’ s Ron Brownstein has been tracking the slow transformation of the Sun Belt from solid GOP to purple to potentially Democratic for a while .
He believes the pandemic may be hastening the process and putting Republicans in a bind of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is competitive in all those states at the moment , and the question is whether that will hold up until November .
According to the New York Times poll , a majority of voters strongly favor the government prioritizing the pandemic over a hasty reopening of the economy .
Unfortunately , Republican voters , no doubt listening to Trump and Hannity , say they believe the opposite .
Or at least they did .
One has to wonder if those attitudes will hold now that the virus is no longer something that happens @ @ @ @ @ @

President Trump traveled to Wisconsin on Thursday to tour a naval shipyard, where he bragged that he had the Navy steer a big contract Wisconsin’s way, which can only be construed as an order to boost his electoral chances in the swing state. I suppose it’s not surprising that he is so open about such things. After all, he was impeached for trying to extort a foreign ally into produce damaging information on his presumptive opponent, and every Republican senator except Mitt Romney backed him to the hilt. Why would he think interfering in a domestic military contract for his own benefit would be a problem?
Frankly, it probably isn’t. Trump’s corruption is now the norm and most people just shrug when he openly brags about it. Apparently, they believe everyone does it and it’s just the usual partisan fighting. But the way he’s dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic is something else again. The latest polling is devastating for his re-election prospects and it’s very much tied to the fact that he has so thoroughly mishandled the government response and refuses to change course.
The New York Times/Siena College poll released this week had plenty of bad news for the president:
Nearly three-fifths of voters disapprove of Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including majorities of white voters and men. Self-described moderate voters disapproved of Mr. Trump on the coronavirus by a margin of more than two to one.
Only the true believers think he’s done a good job on the worst crisis of his presidency, and that’s largely because they get all their news from suspect sources. The Washington Post published an article about several studies showing that right-wing media has played a major role in misinforming its audience about the virus:
The end result, according to one of the studies, is that infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences.
On Thursday night, Trump appeared with Hannity for a “town hall” and repeated his daft line that if we didn’t do so much testing we wouldn’t have so many cases. He’s said that so often I think we can assume that his followers have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this nonsensical concept.
Joe Biden described the problem perfectly in the speech he gave on Thursday:
He’s like a child who can’t believe this has happened to him, with all his whining and self-pity. This pandemic didn’t happen to him. It happened to all of us. His job isn’t to whine about it. His job is to do something about it. The president wants us to believe there’s a choice between the economy and public health. Amazingly, he still hasn’t grasped the most basic fact of this crisis: to fix the economy, we have to get control over the virus.
No, he can’t grasp this simple fact and I suspect that even if he could, he would be incapable of making the kinds of decisions necessary to make that happen. He trusts no one but his gut, and his gut keeps on telling him that this will all just “go away” and everything will be fine.
He’s now taken to bragging that the “mortality rate” in the U.S. is something to be proud of, which is just bizarre. The 126,000-plus dead human beings and their families don’t see it as such a great accomplishment, and Trump is signaling clearly that he has no intention of changing course in any way.
Pew Research reported this week that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (61%) agree that when it comes to coronavirus, ‘the worst is behind us.'” I’m afraid they are in for a rude awakening. Those “embers or flare-ups,” as Trump calls them have turned into a wildfire that’s now out of control.
Twenty-nine states are currently aflame, with rising caseloads and hospitalizations, as we see the largest national numbers of the pandemic, surpassing the worst weeks of April when cases were concentrated in New York and a few other large cities. His favorite Republican governors — Greg Abbott of Texas, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Doug Ducey of Arizona — are in a particular bind, having followed Trump’s lead and opened up their states early, even seizing authority from local officials while arrogantly proclaiming their superior handling of the crisis.
DeSantis was particularly insolent and overbearing. Recall that on May 20, Vice President Mike Pence paid DeSantis a visit and they conspicuously dined in a burger joint without masks or social distancing, after which DeSantis delivered a Trumpian rant to the assembled media.
He spoke much too soon. On Wednesday the state set a new single-day record, with 5,508 new cases of COVID-19. There were another 5,004 on Thursday. In fact, Florida has had more cases in June than in the previous three months combined.
When asked about the surge this week DeSantis said, “We are where we are,” and tried to act as though everything was going fine and it’s all just as expected. He’s now punted all the tough decisions to individual businesses and local officials, so it looks as though he plans to ride the wave wherever it takes him, all while pretending that was the plan the whole time.
In Arizona, Ducey has also loosened his grip and allowed mayors to require masks in public, while in Texas, Abbott has actually begun to slow down the state’s reopening and may even roll back toward a partial lockdown. But all these Republican state executives are stuck in the Trump maelstrom in which he continues to insist that the pandemic is “fading away” while they have to face the sickness and death that’s crashing all around them. He is an albatross around their necks.
Aside from the massive human carnage, the political ramifications are profound. The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein has been tracking the slow transformation of the Sun Belt from solid GOP to purple to potentially Democratic for a while. He believes the pandemic may be hastening the process and putting Republicans in a bind of their own making:
Until the 2016 election, Republicans had maintained a consistent advantage in the region’s big metros — including Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and Phoenix — even as Democrats took hold of comparable urban centers in other parts of the country. But under Trump, the GOP has lost ground in these diverse and economically thriving communities. And now, a ferocious upsurge of COVID-19 across the Sun Belt’s population hubs — including major cities in Florida and North Carolina where Democrats are already more competitive — is adding a new threat to the traditional Republican hold on these places.
Polling shows that Biden is competitive in all those states at the moment, and the question is whether that will hold up until November. According to the New York Times poll, a majority of voters strongly favor the government prioritizing the pandemic over a hasty reopening of the economy. Unfortunately, Republican voters, no doubt listening to Trump and Hannity, say they believe the opposite. Or at least they did. One has to wonder if those attitudes will hold now that the virus is no longer something that happens to other people far away.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.


truthout--2020-06-26--Sanders Unveils Amendment to Slash Pentagon Budget by $74 Billion

With the Senate preparing to vote on an annual defense policy bill calling for $ 740.5 billion in military spending for fiscal year 2021 , Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday delivered a floor speech in support of his new amendment aiming to cut the proposed Pentagon budget by 10 % — around $ 74 billion — and devote those resources to funding healthcare , housing , jobs , and education in impoverished U.S. communities .
“ At this pivotal moment in American history , we have to make a fundamental decision , ” Sanders said on the Senate floor .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ more on endless wars in the Middle East , or do we want to provide decent jobs to millions of unemployed Americans here at home ?
Do we want to spend more money on nuclear weapons or do we want to invest in decent jobs and childcare and healthcare for the American people most in need ?
” Sanders ’ amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act ( NDAA ) — which the Vermont senator filed Thursday alongside Sen. Ed Markey ( D-Mass . )
— would take $ 74 billion in Pentagon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ program to fund healthcare , housing , childcare , and educational opportunities for cities and towns experiencing a poverty rate of 25 % or more , ” according to a summary released by Sanders ’ office .
Reps. Barbara Lee ( D-Calif. ) and Mark Pocan ( D-Wis. ) filed a companion amendment in the House .
“ Under this amendment , ” Sanders said , “ distressed cities and towns in every state in the country would be able to use these funds to create jobs by building affordable housing , schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , public hospitals , libraries , sustainable energy projects , and clean drinking water facilities.
” “ Now at this moment of unprecedented national crises — a growing pandemic , an economic meltdown , the demand to end systemic racism , and police brutality , and an unstable president — it is time for us to truly focus on what we value as a society and to fundamentally transform our national priorities , ” Sanders continued .
“ Cutting the military budget by 10 percent and investing that money in human needs is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Following Sanders ’ remarks , the Senate late Thursday easily cleared a procedural hurdle and paved the way for a final vote on the NDAA .
Just seven senators voted against the motion : Sens .
Sanders , Markey , Elizabeth Warren ( D-Mass . )
, Kamala Harris ( D-Calif. ) , Jeff Merkley ( D-Ore. ) , Chris Murphy ( D-Conn. ) , and Ron Wyden ( D-Ore. ) .
“ Year after year Democrats and Republicans , who disagree on almost everything , come together with minimal debate to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now higher than the next 11 nations combined , and represents more than half of our discretionary spending , ” Sanders said on the Senate floor .
“ Incredibly , after adjusting for inflation , we are now spending more on the military than we did during the height of the Cold War or during the wars in Vietnam and Korea.
” If approved , Sanders ’ amendment “ would apply a blunt 14 percent cut to all of the accounts authorized by the bill except for Defense Department and military payroll , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to The Intercept , which obtained draft text of the amendment ahead of its official introduction Thursday .
“ Why do we spend more on the military than the next 11 nations combined ?
” Sanders asked on Twitter .
“ I have a better idea : Cut Pentagon spending by 10 % and invest it in the fight to end homelessness , hunger , and poverty in the richest country on Earth .
”

The Pentagon budget is higher than the next 11 nations combined and represents over half of U.S. discretionary spending.
With the Senate preparing to vote on an annual defense policy bill calling for $740.5 billion in military spending for fiscal year 2021, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday delivered a floor speech in support of his new amendment aiming to cut the proposed Pentagon budget by 10% — around $74 billion — and devote those resources to funding healthcare, housing, jobs, and education in impoverished U.S. communities.
“At this pivotal moment in American history, we have to make a fundamental decision,” Sanders said on the Senate floor. “Do we want to spend billions more on endless wars in the Middle East, or do we want to provide decent jobs to millions of unemployed Americans here at home? Do we want to spend more money on nuclear weapons or do we want to invest in decent jobs and childcare and healthcare for the American people most in need?”
Sanders’ amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — which the Vermont senator filed Thursday alongside Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — would take $74 billion in Pentagon savings and “create a federal grant program to fund healthcare, housing, childcare, and educational opportunities for cities and towns experiencing a poverty rate of 25% or more,” according to a summary released by Sanders’ office.
Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) filed a companion amendment in the House.
“Under this amendment,” Sanders said, “distressed cities and towns in every state in the country would be able to use these funds to create jobs by building affordable housing, schools, childcare facilities, community health centers, public hospitals, libraries, sustainable energy projects, and clean drinking water facilities.”
“Now at this moment of unprecedented national crises — a growing pandemic, an economic meltdown, the demand to end systemic racism, and police brutality, and an unstable president — it is time for us to truly focus on what we value as a society and to fundamentally transform our national priorities,” Sanders continued. “Cutting the military budget by 10 percent and investing that money in human needs is a modest way to begin that process.”
Watch Sanders’ full speech:
Following Sanders’ remarks, the Senate late Thursday easily cleared a procedural hurdle and paved the way for a final vote on the NDAA. Just seven senators voted against the motion: Sens. Sanders, Markey, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
“Year after year Democrats and Republicans, who disagree on almost everything, come together with minimal debate to support an exploding Pentagon budget which is now higher than the next 11 nations combined, and represents more than half of our discretionary spending,” Sanders said on the Senate floor. “Incredibly, after adjusting for inflation, we are now spending more on the military than we did during the height of the Cold War or during the wars in Vietnam and Korea.”
Good News: Senate Democrats blocked the GOP’s woefully inadequate police “reform” bill Bad News: The Senate voted 90-7 to proceed to a bill to increase the Pentagon budget to $740B Under Trump, defense spending has gone up by more than $100B while 40M Americans live in poverty — Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) June 26, 2020
If approved, Sanders’ amendment “would apply a blunt 14 percent cut to all of the accounts authorized by the bill except for Defense Department and military payroll, and the Defense Health Program,” according to The Intercept, which obtained draft text of the amendment ahead of its official introduction Thursday.
“Why do we spend more on the military than the next 11 nations combined?” Sanders asked on Twitter. “I have a better idea: Cut Pentagon spending by 10% and invest it in the fight to end homelessness, hunger, and poverty in the richest country on Earth.”
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.