theatlantic--2020-09-29--Why Is Uber Begging Me to Vote?

Why Is Uber Begging Me to Vote?

Brands ’ pivot to registering voters has made similarly strange bedfellows of some companies and their new messages .
Facebook , a company whose platform is a limitless abyss of antidemocratic disinformation , is asking its users to do their duty to democracy before fully addressing the ways in which the company ’ s products have eroded it , both in America and abroad .
( Facebook did not respond to a request for comment . )
Read : Brands have nothing real to say about racism Now , in the face of a contentious election that ’ s just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the chorus seemingly every day .
No matter what they sell or how they sell it , they all seem to be comfortable marketing themselves as advocates of democracy and civic engagement , so long as their customers are willing to do the heavy lifting .
Having the right to vote become fodder for corporate marketing is bleak enough .
What ’ s worse is the reminder that even at a time when millions of people are fearful for their future and unsure of their safety , companies will nonetheless find a way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in America is really , really hard , and no matter who sends the emails , they can do only so much to move the dial .
Relatively few people vote in America , because exercising the right can be onerous and confusing .
In the 2016 presidential election , a little less than 56 percent of voting-age Americans cast a vote , a rate that lags behind that of recent national elections in Germany , Mexico , South Korea , and most developed countries .
The proportion of nonvoters is even higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the working class , and immigrants .
Tactics to encourage voting take many different forms , with varying levels of efficacy .
Christopher Mann , a political scientist at Skidmore College who studies voting and elections , says that there is a reliable hierarchy of maneuvers to mobilize voters : The most effective is face-to-face canvassing , followed by personal phone calls .
These are things that , by their very nature , brands are unlikely to engage in , because of the resources and manpower necessary to pull them off .
Getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most of these brands have elected to do , isn ’ t totally ineffective , but its impact is far smaller .
Mann says he ’ s not aware of any research on how effective it might be for consumer brands to send out voting information in emails or pop-up notifications .
But based on how things go when political organizations use the same tactics , he ’ d expect it to have a marginally positive effect if done consistently and with links to resources—maybe a 1 to 2 percent bump in registrations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a quarter of a percent increase in actual votes .
But in order to achieve even this level of effectiveness , companies would ideally be targeting people who are poorly served by more traditional voter outreach—poor and working-class people who don ’ t feel included and generally don ’ t participate in American politics .
For many of the brands most vocal about voting , those people simply aren ’ t their customers .
“ There ’ s some perverse incentives here , ” Mann told me .
“ The brands for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for being a good citizen in this regard may have the least impact ” on actually registering or motivating voters .
That ’ s because brands that think that these kinds of messages will be beneficial to their image are likely targeting a pool of people who are already well acquainted with the electoral process—people wealthier , whiter , and more formally educated than the population at large .
Facebook , a free service with more than 200 million American users , is better positioned to do real good than Sweetgreen , which @ @ @ @ @

I have recently been reminded, asked, or commanded to vote approximately 6 million times. These nudges have come from the people and places I’d expect—candidates, local officials, civic and political organizations—but also, more so than in any other election year I remember, from the places I wouldn’t. Uber, Nike, Postmates, the ticket service AXS, the New York Mets, and the fast-casual restaurant chain Dig have all reminded me to check my voter registration, at least once in the past two weeks. Others, including Amazon and the home-decor retailer Lulu and Georgia, have nestled links to voting information in their usual marketing emails. Seemingly every time I open Facebook or Instagram, I am greeted by a notification about the importance of voting.
Voting advocacy from people outside of traditional politics isn’t particularly new in the United States—the nonprofit Rock the Vote first partnered with MTV in 1990, producing videos with celebrities such as Madonna and Janet Jackson that implored the network’s young audience to go to the polls. But efforts from brands to get out the vote among their own customers are a recent-enough phenomenon that none of the experts I spoke with knew of any data on how common they are. The trend seems to be a logical outgrowth of the widespread activist marketing that reached a fever pitch this year. All summer, after the killing of George Floyd, brands that sell everything from lipstick to digital surveillance technology weighed in on racism and police violence—even those that profit from the abuse of Black Americans.
Brands’ pivot to registering voters has made similarly strange bedfellows of some companies and their new messages. Facebook, a company whose platform is a limitless abyss of antidemocratic disinformation, is asking its users to do their duty to democracy before fully addressing the ways in which the company’s products have eroded it, both in America and abroad. (Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.)
Read: Brands have nothing real to say about racism
Now, in the face of a contentious election that’s just five weeks away, new companies join the chorus seemingly every day. No matter what they sell or how they sell it, they all seem to be comfortable marketing themselves as advocates of democracy and civic engagement, so long as their customers are willing to do the heavy lifting. Having the right to vote become fodder for corporate marketing is bleak enough. What’s worse is the reminder that even at a time when millions of people are fearful for their future and unsure of their safety, companies will nonetheless find a way to profit.
Getting out the vote in America is really, really hard, and no matter who sends the emails, they can do only so much to move the dial. Relatively few people vote in America, because exercising the right can be onerous and confusing. In the 2016 presidential election, a little less than 56 percent of voting-age Americans cast a vote, a rate that lags behind that of recent national elections in Germany, Mexico, South Korea, and most developed countries. The proportion of nonvoters is even higher among young people, poor people, the working class, and immigrants.
Tactics to encourage voting take many different forms, with varying levels of efficacy. Christopher Mann, a political scientist at Skidmore College who studies voting and elections, says that there is a reliable hierarchy of maneuvers to mobilize voters: The most effective is face-to-face canvassing, followed by personal phone calls. These are things that, by their very nature, brands are unlikely to engage in, because of the resources and manpower necessary to pull them off. Getting out the vote via email, as most of these brands have elected to do, isn’t totally ineffective, but its impact is far smaller.
Mann says he’s not aware of any research on how effective it might be for consumer brands to send out voting information in emails or pop-up notifications. But based on how things go when political organizations use the same tactics, he’d expect it to have a marginally positive effect if done consistently and with links to resources—maybe a 1 to 2 percent bump in registrations among people who receive the information, and a quarter of a percent increase in actual votes.
But in order to achieve even this level of effectiveness, companies would ideally be targeting people who are poorly served by more traditional voter outreach—poor and working-class people who don’t feel included and generally don’t participate in American politics. For many of the brands most vocal about voting, those people simply aren’t their customers. “There’s some perverse incentives here,” Mann told me. “The brands for whom there’s the most payoff for being a good citizen in this regard may have the least impact” on actually registering or motivating voters. That’s because brands that think that these kinds of messages will be beneficial to their image are likely targeting a pool of people who are already well acquainted with the electoral process—people wealthier, whiter, and more formally educated than the population at large. Facebook, a free service with more than 200 million American users, is better positioned to do real good than Sweetgreen, which sells $13 salads.
Read: Fashion’s racism and classism are finally out of style
Emails and pop-up notifications may have a negligible impact on voting when used by most companies, but they have some significant upsides for brands: They’re fast, cheap, and well liked. “Encouraging registration is a way for a corporation to project a civic-minded, nonpartisan image at little cost,” Donald Green, a political scientist at Columbia University who studies voting, told me in an email. Although messages around how to vote have become more explicitly political during the 2020 presidential campaign, Green told me, the encouragement of voting as a concept is generally unlikely to incite real rage among a company’s customer base, as long as it doesn’t endorse a candidate. So far, none of the major companies has, even though many of them lace their statements with references to the vaguely progressive values likely held by their clientele. Nike, for example, has spent years aligning itself with left-leaning causes in advertising, and its voter-outreach email simply said, “No more sitting on the sidelines. You can’t stop our voice.” The messages end up mealymouthed—these companies are willing to gesture at the maintenance of a minimally functional democracy, but are not willing to say it with their chests. Republicans buy sneakers too.
All of these feel-good public efforts elide what many American corporations are: an impediment to voting, not a facilitator of it. More than 2 million people told the Census Bureau that they didn’t vote in the 2016 election because they didn’t have the time, and state laws vary widely on what kinds of accommodations employers are required to make in order to allow their employees to vote. In some states, in-person voting is restricted to a single date, lines can take hours, polls close as early as 6 p.m., and people who leave work to vote are generally not paid for that time. For those who work low-wage service jobs—people who are more likely to be younger, poorer, and from minority racial groups than the average enthusiastic voter in America—those circumstances are enough to make exercising their right to vote very difficult.
Many companies that blast out emails telling customers to vote are less forthcoming with details of what, if anything, they’re doing to help their own workers get to the polls, even though that can have much more than a marginal impact. A year-long 2018 campaign by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, for example, ended with 88 percent of its employees voting, more than 30 percentage points higher than the nationwide voting rate. But these types of voluntary efforts depend on the benevolence of the company in question. Uber recently announced that it is giving all its employees Election Day off to make sure they can vote, but that accommodation isn’t being extended to drivers, whom the company has fought vehemently to prevent from being categorized as employees. An Uber spokesperson confirmed to me that although the company has made efforts to encourage voter registration among drivers, they will not receive any reimbursement for time they spend voting.
Read: How capitalism drives cancel culture
This is all a choice, of course. If they wanted to, American politicians could do the things many other rich nations do: make voter registration automatic for all citizens, allow lengthy early-voting periods, end restrictions on voting by mail, and make Election Day a federal holiday. They could restore the Voting Rights Act to continue the fight against the country’s long history of voter suppression against Black Americans. They could open more polling places and return voting rights to people who have completed prison sentences for felonies. They could do any number of things to meaningfully address the actual reasons so few people in the United States vote, and none of them would require an email from a store that once sold me throw pillows.
As long as America’s leaders decline to make the system-wide changes that would help more people vote, corporations with something to sell will seep into the void. And they’ll act out of self-interest. After all, it’s hard to continue business as usual in a country where the economy and social order are breaking down, as American companies that have also begun voting advocacy in Western Europe have admitted. Even when the people leading some of these companies feel a real moral obligation to encourage participatory democracy, simple corporate outreach efforts won’t fix the structural problems that mar American voting—but they can form the inexpensive basis of a nice little marketing campaign.


theatlantic--2020-09-29--Republicans Are Trapped on Preexisting Conditions

Trump , along with House and Senate Republicans , has insisted that the GOP intends to protect patients with preexisting conditions even if the Court strikes down the ACA ; the president signed an executive order last week that , without offering any specifics , affirmed his commitment to that goal .
Almost all the Senate Republicans facing voters this fall are running ads touting their commitment to ensuring coverage for Americans with preexisting health problems , and many of them have co-sponsored legislation that they say will do just that .
Read : Democrats ’ SCOTUS message could really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of experts I spoke with agree that none of these initiatives will protect patients with preexisting health needs nearly as effectively as the ACA does , because the GOP plans still allow insurers to treat them differently from healthy patients , sometimes overtly and sometimes more subtly .
“ When you look at all of the components of reform that the Republicans , including Trump , have advocated for years and years now , every single one of them would … separate the health-care costs of the healthy from the sick to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law , ” said Linda Blumberg , a fellow at the Urban Institute ’ s Health Policy Center .
More than 40 percent of U.S. households are estimated to have someone with a preexisting condition .
Before Barack Obama signed the ACA into law in 2010 , people who were older or had greater health needs often found it impossible or unaffordable to buy coverage in the individual insurance market .
Insurers would charge older consumers much more than younger consumers and women much more than men ( because of the possibility that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often excluded coverage altogether for people who had serious health conditions such as cancer or diabetes .
The ACA virtually ended all of that .
It required insurers to offer coverage to people with preexisting conditions at affordable rates ; blocked them from charging consumers more based on their health status ( with an exception only for smokers ) ; ended gender disparities in insurance pricing ; limited how much more insurers could charge older people ; barred annual and lifetime limits on costs ( which previously had the effect of cutting off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; and required all plans to offer a broad package of essential benefits to every consumer ( preventing insurers from charging extra for services needed mostly by people with serious medical problems ) .
Levitt told me that these provisions have proved extremely effective : “ The ACA has far exceeded expectations in protecting people with preexisting conditions.
” That success , though , has come at a cost .
Healthy Americans are paying higher premiums than the law ’ s architects anticipated—or at least hoped for .
“ Democrats certainly don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that were involved in the ACA , ” Levitt said .
“ But covering people with preexisting conditions isn ’ t free .
It had to come from somewhere , and it came from higher premiums from people who are younger and healthier .
”

There’s a reason Donald Trump has never produced a health-care plan that protects consumers with preexisting medical conditions: Ending protections for the sick is the central mechanism that all GOP health-care proposals use to try to lower costs for the healthy.
Every alternative to the Affordable Care Act that Republicans have offered relies on the same strategy—retrenching the many ACA provisions that require greater risk- and cost-sharing between healthy and sick Americans—to lower the cost of insurance for healthier consumers. Put another way: Reducing protections for patients with greater health needs isn’t a bug in the GOP plans; it’s a key feature.
“Lowering premiums was a big theme of the Republican effort to repeal and replace the ACA, and central to their idea of lowering premiums was rolling back protections for people with preexisting conditions,” says Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The contrast between the parties over health care is certain to come into sharper relief in the weeks leading up to Election Day, starting with tonight’s first presidential debate between Trump and Joe Biden. Trump’s nomination to the Supreme Court of Amy Coney Barrett, who has openly questioned the ACA’s legality and could provide a decisive vote on the Court against it, ensures that the Senate debate over her confirmation will focus intently on a Trump-backed lawsuit from Republican state attorneys general to strike down the law. With oral arguments for that case beginning before the Court shortly after the election, Biden and other Democrats have stressed Barrett’s potential threat to the ACA, and warned that if the Court overturns the law’s protections for preexisting conditions, insurers would likely treat long-term complications from the coronavirus as a reason to deny coverage.
Trump, along with House and Senate Republicans, has insisted that the GOP intends to protect patients with preexisting conditions even if the Court strikes down the ACA; the president signed an executive order last week that, without offering any specifics, affirmed his commitment to that goal. Almost all the Senate Republicans facing voters this fall are running ads touting their commitment to ensuring coverage for Americans with preexisting health problems, and many of them have co-sponsored legislation that they say will do just that.
Read: Democrats’ SCOTUS message could really work in swing states
But an array of experts I spoke with agree that none of these initiatives will protect patients with preexisting health needs nearly as effectively as the ACA does, because the GOP plans still allow insurers to treat them differently from healthy patients, sometimes overtly and sometimes more subtly. “When you look at all of the components of reform that the Republicans, including Trump, have advocated for years and years now, every single one of them would … separate the health-care costs of the healthy from the sick to a greater extent than we have under current law,” said Linda Blumberg, a fellow at the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center. More than 40 percent of U.S. households are estimated to have someone with a preexisting condition.
Before Barack Obama signed the ACA into law in 2010, people who were older or had greater health needs often found it impossible or unaffordable to buy coverage in the individual insurance market. Insurers would charge older consumers much more than younger consumers and women much more than men (because of the possibility that they would become pregnant). Insurers often excluded coverage altogether for people who had serious health conditions such as cancer or diabetes.
The ACA virtually ended all of that. It required insurers to offer coverage to people with preexisting conditions at affordable rates; blocked them from charging consumers more based on their health status (with an exception only for smokers); ended gender disparities in insurance pricing; limited how much more insurers could charge older people; barred annual and lifetime limits on costs (which previously had the effect of cutting off those with the greatest health needs); and required all plans to offer a broad package of essential benefits to every consumer (preventing insurers from charging extra for services needed mostly by people with serious medical problems).
Levitt told me that these provisions have proved extremely effective: “The ACA has far exceeded expectations in protecting people with preexisting conditions.” That success, though, has come at a cost. Healthy Americans are paying higher premiums than the law’s architects anticipated—or at least hoped for. “Democrats certainly don’t like to talk about the trade-offs that were involved in the ACA,” Levitt said. “But covering people with preexisting conditions isn’t free. It had to come from somewhere, and it came from higher premiums from people who are younger and healthier.”
The ACA’s approach to health care follows the Democrats’ philosophical guideposts. It involves a heavy role for government in regulating private-insurance companies, and it encourages—even demands—a high level of social solidarity. It asks younger and healthier adults to pay more, not only so that older and sicker Americans can have access now, but so that today’s young people can themselves have access later in life. (The single-payer proposals popular among many liberals, but not embraced by Biden, extend risk-sharing to its conceptual limit by placing all Americans in a single, government-run system and funding it with tax dollars rather than premiums.) The Democratic approach “is redistributive,” Blumberg said. “There is no way around it. When you force people to pool health-care costs, you are going to increase the costs for people when they would otherwise be perfectly healthy.”
The GOP health-care plans start from the opposite philosophical pole, stressing individual autonomy over solidarity and free-market competition over government regulation. While Trump hasn’t issued his own specific plan, he has offered a clear picture of his approach by endorsing both the ACA-replacement bill that House Republicans passed in 2017 and a contemporaneous proposal from GOP Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Trump endorsed the Graham-Cassidy approach again in the budget he released in 2019. “The president’s vision of health-care reform has been quite clear even if he hasn’t put out a detailed plan,” Levitt said.
Read: Did Obamacare repeal hurt the Republicans?
Each of those plans was centered on the same core belief that the ACA went too far in requiring the sharing of cost and risk between the healthy and the sick. “Essentially, the [Republican] view is, your premiums should reflect the risk you pose to the insurer, and insurers should be able to assess that risk and then set a rate accordingly,” says Sabrina Corlette, a professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “I think the problem with that is, ultimately, it means older, sicker folks, women of childbearing age, will pay more under that system.”
The House GOP and Graham-Cassidy plans unraveled most of the ACA’s risk-sharing requirements, including by allowing insurers to impose greater surcharges on older consumers. The House plan also expanded tax-free health savings accounts that encourage healthier people to ditch comprehensive coverage and buy bare-bones insurance plans. Most important, both GOP plans empowered states to free insurers from the ACA’s requirements to cover preexisting conditions and offer a robust package of benefits.
Each of those provisions would have advanced the GOP’s goal of reducing premiums for the healthy, but at the price of making coverage more expensive or unavailable for Americans with greater health needs.
While the House and Senate plans did include funds for states to create “high-risk pools,” which would subsidize coverage for those requiring more medical care, such pools have been tried in about 30 states and have uniformly failed. States found that they could not allocate anywhere near the amount of money necessary to make coverage affordable for patients with preexisting conditions, and experts say the plans’ funding was equally inadequate. “The cost would have to be tremendous, and that is precisely because of the skewed distribution of health-care spending,” Blumberg said. “In order to make that coverage affordable for the people who need it, you would have to throw huge amounts of money at those pools.”
More recently, many Senate Republicans have rallied behind 2019 legislation from Senator Thom Tillis, who is facing a tough reelection fight in North Carolina. His bill declares that insurers must continue selling coverage to patients with preexisting conditions at comparable prices to what they charge other consumers. But the bill contains huge loopholes that undermine that promise. It allows insurers to limit the benefits provided in such coverage, which could exclude the treatments a patient needs. It also doesn’t maintain the ACA’s limits on out-of-pocket costs, or its ban on annual and lifetime benefits caps, which means those with substantial health problems could easily generate bills that exceed their coverage. All of those provisions provide insurers “another way of excluding coverage of preexisting conditions,” Sarah Lueck, a senior policy analyst for health care at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told me.
Meanwhile, with repeal of the ACA again wending its way through the courts, Trump has tried to advance the GOP goal of unraveling risk-sharing through regulatory action. His administration has authorized insurance companies to sell more short-term plans that are exempt from the ACA’s requirements to cover patients with preexisting conditions and offer comprehensive benefits. Those plans provide an escape route for healthier consumers to buy cheaper coverage, which could tilt the general individual market more toward the sick, raising their premiums.
Noah Bookbinder: I worked on 5 SCOTUS confirmation hearings. Rushing the process will be a disaster.
The paradox in the contrasting GOP and Democratic approaches, as I’ve written, is that the Democratic plans ask more of the young—who mostly vote for Democrats—while the Republican plans impose greater costs on older Americans, most of whom are white and have leaned toward the GOP for the past few decades.
Biden’s proposals to significantly increase federal subsidies for consumers purchasing insurance in the ACA marketplaces represent a tacit admission that the law’s original design may have asked healthier consumers to shoulder too much of the cost of ensuring coverage for those who are older and sicker. Expanding subsidies could also entice more younger and healthier people into the insurance market, which would help restrain costs. By contrast, Trump and other Republicans are still resolutely denying the inescapable reality that their proposals will increase costs and reduce access for the sick, not as an unintended consequence, but as the central lever to lower premiums for the healthy.
Those Republican denials haven’t convinced most voters. In the 2018 election, exit polls found that a solid 57 percent of voters said they trusted Democrats more than Republicans to protect patients with preexisting conditions, and they overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates, fueling the party’s midterm gains. Similarly, polling released last week by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund found that voters in all 10 major swing states strongly preferred Biden over Trump on protecting such patients.
The contrasts between Trump and Biden on the issue are sure to surface at tonight’s debate. And by fast-tracking the confirmation process for Amy Coney Barrett, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has triggered another dynamic. He’s guaranteed that every vulnerable Republican senator will now spend weeks debating how to replace the protections for patients with preexisting conditions that would be lost if an expanded conservative Supreme Court majority invalidates the ACA.


theatlantic--2020-09-29--Should I Help Incarcerate the Man Who Tried to Sexually Assault Me?

He was the first stranger to enter our house in 105 days .
It was 4:13 a.m. on a Friday , and my husband , who works at night in an office in our backyard , was listening to music with headphones .
He didn ’ t hear the stranger pass through the gate , walk up the back steps , and enter through the back door of our house .
I woke when the man switched on the bedroom light .
For an instant , I was simply confused , befuddled by sleep .
The stranger was standing by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wide , protuberant eyes stared down at me , and there seemed to be something like a smile on his face .
I asked the obvious questions .
I can ’ t remember my exact words , but they were the questions of someone whose bewilderment was turning rapidly to terror .
Who are you ?
What are you doing ?
The stranger told me he had permission to be in my room .
You said it would be all right .
He took a step closer to the bed .
He slipped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I felt the shock of his fingers sliding up my leg .
That is when I started to scream , though the word scream doesn ’ t really convey the animal sound , deep and ragged , that ripped loose from my chest .
For two weeks , my voice was hoarse , my throat raw .
It hurt to speak .
The howl woke our two teenage children , my younger daughter and son , who ran down the hall .
They confronted the stranger they found standing by their parents ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to think .
My daughter grabbed him by his sweatshirt , jerked him out of the bedroom , and shoved him down the stairs .
With her brother ’ s help , she pushed him out the door .
I called 911 .
In a strange coincidence , this was not the first 911 call I had made that week .
The previous Monday morning , a man in his early 20s had knocked on our door , begging for help .
He couldn ’ t remember his name , he said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a large bump on his head .
His clothes were filthy , and there was a hole in the toe of one of his Vans , but he was dutifully wearing a mask .
He said he didn ’ t know where he was going , or why he had decided to come to our house .
The eyes above the mask looked wild and afraid .
That time , I did not , at first , call 911 .
I live in Berkeley , California , which , unlike many cities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of mental-health emergency .
The team ’ s hours are limited , however : 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. , five days a week .
When I called , no one picked up .
I felt I had no choice but to call 911 .
I told the dispatcher who answered that we had a stranger at our house who seemed to be in the midst of some kind of psychiatric crisis , perhaps caused by an evident head injury .
He seemed vulnerable rather than dangerous , I said , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police—and definitely not armed police .
The dispatcher informed me that I did not have the right or authority to dictate what kind of action the situation demanded .
I slammed the phone down .
By now the young man had drifted from the porch to the front yard , where my daughter and husband were trying by turns to reassure , placate , and find out what they could about him—to little effect .
Every so often some clarity about his predicament seemed to overwhelm him , but he couldn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words .
He looked to be about the age of my eldest child—I could have been his mother .
Keeping six feet away , speaking in the same kind of soothing tone I used to calm my kids when they were small , I invited him to sit down in an Adirondack chair and urged him to count his breaths .
At the same time , I tried to think of someone , anyone , who could help without the threat of force .
Finally , I called 911 again , hoping for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my best sensible , obliging lady voice , a pleading rather than demanding Karen , if you will .
The second dispatcher promised that she would make it clear to the responder that the young man needed assistance , not violent intervention .
My husband and I sat with him until the police arrived , and at one point he asked us to read to him .
He greeted my husband ’ s recitation of Thomas Gray ’ s “ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ” with a request for a “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I was frantically Googling happy poem when the officer showed up .
Her response was initially gruff , but when the man panicked , and we asked her to be more gentle , she complied .
Eventually EMTs arrived and transported this fragile young man to an ER .
Afterward , my husband and I discussed the incident with our kids , in light of the recent push to defund the police .
We noted that the officer in our affluent , mostly white Berkeley neighborhood had acquiesced when we insisted that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the young man became agitated—first when he saw her , and then when the ambulance pulled up—she respected our request that she not escalate the matter .
No doubt , we told our children , her accommodating approach had a lot to do with the fact that both we and the stranger were white .
Days later , with an invader in my house , I did not set any preconditions when I called 911 .
Sobbing , shaking , I just shouted , “ There ’ s a man in my house @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my house !
” Within minutes , multiple units responded to the call .
One officer took my statement , another took my husband ’ s , and others fanned out across the area .
Two more interviewed my children in different rooms , and they gave detailed , congruent descriptions of the intruder : skinny , jumpy , bug eyes , loose hoodie , shorts , beat-up sneakers , black backpack .
Old enough to have lines on his face .
His skin was brown , they said .
Perhaps he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ description out over the radio , and a few minutes later got a call : Officers had detained a suspect .
My children were loaded into separate squad cars and driven past the man whom the police had grabbed and cuffed .
He was a Black man , with nothing in common with the intruder but his backpack .
My daughter was so infuriated that she started to cry .
My son could not stop thinking about the way the man had looked back at him as the police car rolled by , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how many times he ’ d been stopped by the cops over the past years , months , or even days .
Ten minutes later , the police picked up another guy .
It was past five in the morning by now .
Again they bundled my son and daughter , exhausted and wired , into separate cruisers and drove them past the suspect .
It was the intruder ; neither of them had any doubt .
He was taken to jail and charged with two felonies .
I ’ ve been immersed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of law enforcement since early in my career , when I worked as a public defender , law professor , and drug-policy reformer , and served on the board of a prison-reform organization .
I was also part of the team that created the recent Netflix show Unbelievable , which examined the police response to sexual assault .
Taken together , my two encounters offer an ( almost too ) ideal platform to consider what law enforcement looks like now , and what a fundamental reimagining of it might consist of .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ straightforward—a clear example of when weapon-wielding cops can easily do more harm than good .
The NYU law professor Barry Friedman , among others , argues that police functions should be “ disaggregated ” : Mental-health professionals should respond to incidents involving people like the young man ; substance-abuse counselors should deal with drug-related crises ; experienced mediators should address situations that require conflict resolution ; and so on .
As for the second guy , the best-case scenario is more complicated .
A few weeks after this invasion , Donald Trump posted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an empty office .
An answering machine clicks on and a female voice ominously intones , “ Due to defunding of the police department , we ’ re sorry , but no one is here to take your call .
If you ’ re calling to report a rape , please press 1 .
To report a murder , press 2 ... ” The last image is Joe Biden ’ s face , superimposed over a city on fire , with the words “ You won ’ t be safe in Joe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misleading as the ad is ( for one thing , Biden does not support defunding the police ) , it plays on a frequently expressed fear , one perhaps particularly common among white women : What about sex crimes ?
If we dramatically downsize the police , who will deal with the violence against women endemic in our culture ?
Mariame Kaba , an anti-criminalization organizer , wants us to shift our focus .
No matter the system , she told me , there will always be violence .
The question Kaba believes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforcement , an institution that nominally exists to keep us safe , so often does the opposite .
For years , decades , centuries , Black people have wrestled with whether to bring in the authorities for serious and not-so-serious crimes , and often rejected the option as too dangerous—for themselves , for the perpetrator , or for others in their community .
Many people who ’ ve been sexually assaulted have experiences like Unbelievable ’ s Marie , who was raped and then victimized again and again by misogynist , incompetent cops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In fact , she was one of the early victims of a serial rapist who went on to attack at least half a dozen other women .
More generally , the police are remarkably ineffective at catching the perpetrators of violence , especially sex offenders .
According to RAINN ( the Rape , Abuse & Incest National Network ) , an arrest is made in only 20 percent of reported sexual assaults , and only 10 percent of those arrested end up serving time .
From the August 2019 issue : An epidemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Policing Project , argues that investigating crimes is not a natural function for police , at least not as they ’ re currently recruited and trained .
“ Recent breakthroughs in forensic science suggest we need way less police and much more dispassionate evidence collection and evaluation to get things right , ” he has written .
Investigators need scientific expertise , as well as sophisticated interviewing skills characterized by “ a certain combination of skepticism and emotional intelligence ” : the ability to make people feel comfortable opening up while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hang together .
Even the pursuit and apprehension of offenders would be better served by a rightsized public-safety response team , it seems , a corps perhaps screened for racist bias and trained in de-escalation and the avoidance of force .
Dialing 911 was the first decision I had to make after I discovered the man by my bed—if you can describe my frantic call as a “ decision.
” The second came a day later , when a police investigator contacted me to ask whether I wanted to prosecute .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ busy underestimating ( “ I ’ m fine .
I ’ m fine .
Really , I ’ m fine ” ) , I tried to balance a host of considerations .
For starters , would my children and I be willing to testify if he went to trial ?
I ’ ve seen what a competent defense attorney can do to a witness .
I was a competent defense attorney , setting traps for people , tying them up in their own words , doing my best to trigger confusion and even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stand up to that ?
Would rekindling the trauma be worth it ?
Knowing that the majority of criminal cases end in a plea bargain , no court required , somewhat alleviated my anxieties , but it didn ’ t make the decision appreciably easier .
How could I consign someone to the brutalities of incarceration when I ’ ve long advocated for the abolition of prisons ?
I even edited a book called Inside This Place , Not of It : Narratives From Women ’ s Prisons , a collection of first-person @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violations that plague prisons in the United States .
Granted , my family and I would feel safer while the man was confined .
Since he stole into my bedroom , I ’ ve been startling awake multiple times a night , terrified .
Before we go to bed , I repeatedly ask my husband if he ’ s locked the doors and turned on the alarm .
For weeks , my son saw the man out of the corner of his eye in dark rooms , and he took to sleeping with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what about when my attacker got out—was there a chance he ’ d be less of a threat , to me or someone else ?
According to the investigating detective , his record includes at least one psychiatric hold , suggesting that his violent behavior might stem in part from some form of mental illness .
He definitely seemed unbalanced when he leeringly insisted that he ’ d been invited into my house , that everything was fine .
Though a significant number of people in American prisons are mentally ill , very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The harsh conditions of confinement could just as easily make him less stable rather than more .
Some prisons have programs targeted specifically at rehabilitating sex offenders , but their effectiveness has been the subject of much debate over the years .
It doesn ’ t have to be this way .
Though hardly perfect , Scandinavian penal systems , for example , are premised on rehabilitation .
They provide treatment and therapy , with the goal of releasing better citizens into the world .
In America , we focus on punishment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will deter offenders .
In fact , the severity of punishment does little to deter crime .
What deters criminals is the certainty of being apprehended , but as I ’ ve said , this is not a certainty the American justice system even begins to provide .
The upshot is that if I prosecuted , I would be participating in a deeply unjust system , one that I ’ ve worked years to get rid of .
Yet if I failed to do so , the guy who came into my bedroom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Marie been taken at her word , at least half a dozen other women might not have been raped .
I went forward .
There was one last bad choice I had to make .
The deputy district attorney called to ask me what kind of plea I would be willing to accept .
Was I adamant that the guy plead guilty to the sexual offense : breaking and entering for the purpose of committing a sexual crime ?
Or would I approve of a plea to burglary alone ?
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four years , with the expectation that the perpetrator will serve half of the time ; the former requires 15 years to life .
“ California law , ” the deputy DA told me , “ does not like burglary for the purpose of sexual assault.
” Two to four years behind bars .
Fifteen years to life .
Again , how can I weigh my fear for myself and others against the fact that prisons are dehumanizing , virtually useless for rehabilitation , and usually spit out people who are in far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Over the years , I ’ d heard that 60 to 80 percent of sexual-assault perpetrators commit additional sex crimes , but when I looked at the data , I discovered that this is a wild exaggeration , a kind of urban myth .
The best estimates peg recidivism at 5 percent three years after an offense , and at 24 percent 15 years out .
But still .
Those numbers aren ’ t nothing , and they come with the caveat that many sex crimes go unreported , so who knows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I tried to think of an alternative path available to me , a “ third way ” that envisioned a transformed criminal-justice system , better for all .
But I couldn ’ t come up with anything .
As Mariame Kaba points out , this wretched system has “ disciplined our imaginations.
” So I split the difference .
Let him plead to the burglary , I told the assistant DA .
( At the time of publication , he hadn ’ t yet responded to the prosecutor ’ s plea offer .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ his sentence be much shorter , but when he gets out , he won ’ t have to be listed on a sex-offender registry .
Registries are notoriously worthless for preventing future sex crimes and , because of strict limits on where people can live and work and with whom they can associate , virtually guarantee that former prisoners aren ’ t able to create better lives for themselves .
The night after the break-in , I made my husband switch sides of the bed with me .
After 28 years , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the one farther from the door .
In this case , that ’ s as close to a transformation as any of us is likely to get .

He was the first stranger to enter our house in 105 days. It was 4:13 a.m. on a Friday, and my husband, who works at night in an office in our backyard, was listening to music with headphones. He didn’t hear the stranger pass through the gate, walk up the back steps, and enter through the back door of our house.
I woke when the man switched on the bedroom light. For an instant, I was simply confused, befuddled by sleep. The stranger was standing by the side of my bed. His wide, protuberant eyes stared down at me, and there seemed to be something like a smile on his face. I asked the obvious questions. I can’t remember my exact words, but they were the questions of someone whose bewilderment was turning rapidly to terror. Who are you? What are you doing? The stranger told me he had permission to be in my room. You said it would be all right. He took a step closer to the bed. He slipped his hands under the covers, and I felt the shock of his fingers sliding up my leg.
That is when I started to scream, though the word scream doesn’t really convey the animal sound, deep and ragged, that ripped loose from my chest. For two weeks, my voice was hoarse, my throat raw. It hurt to speak.
The howl woke our two teenage children, my younger daughter and son, who ran down the hall. They confronted the stranger they found standing by their parents’ bed. They didn’t stop to think. My daughter grabbed him by his sweatshirt, jerked him out of the bedroom, and shoved him down the stairs. With her brother’s help, she pushed him out the door. I called 911.
In a strange coincidence, this was not the first 911 call I had made that week. The previous Monday morning, a man in his early 20s had knocked on our door, begging for help. He couldn’t remember his name, he said, or where he lived. He had a large bump on his head. His clothes were filthy, and there was a hole in the toe of one of his Vans, but he was dutifully wearing a mask. He said he didn’t know where he was going, or why he had decided to come to our house. The eyes above the mask looked wild and afraid.
That time, I did not, at first, call 911. I live in Berkeley, California, which, unlike many cities, maintains a crisis team for precisely this kind of mental-health emergency. The team’s hours are limited, however: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., five days a week. When I called, no one picked up. I felt I had no choice but to call 911.
I told the dispatcher who answered that we had a stranger at our house who seemed to be in the midst of some kind of psychiatric crisis, perhaps caused by an evident head injury. He seemed vulnerable rather than dangerous, I said, and we needed an ambulance, not the police—and definitely not armed police. The dispatcher informed me that I did not have the right or authority to dictate what kind of action the situation demanded. I slammed the phone down.
By now the young man had drifted from the porch to the front yard, where my daughter and husband were trying by turns to reassure, placate, and find out what they could about him—to little effect. Every so often some clarity about his predicament seemed to overwhelm him, but he couldn’t put the source of his fear into words. He looked to be about the age of my eldest child—I could have been his mother. Keeping six feet away, speaking in the same kind of soothing tone I used to calm my kids when they were small, I invited him to sit down in an Adirondack chair and urged him to count his breaths.
At the same time, I tried to think of someone, anyone, who could help without the threat of force. Finally, I called 911 again, hoping for a more cooperative dispatcher. I used my best sensible, obliging lady voice, a pleading rather than demanding Karen, if you will. The second dispatcher promised that she would make it clear to the responder that the young man needed assistance, not violent intervention. My husband and I sat with him until the police arrived, and at one point he asked us to read to him. He greeted my husband’s recitation of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” with a request for a “happy poem.” Good luck with that. I was frantically Googling happy poem when the officer showed up.
Her response was initially gruff, but when the man panicked, and we asked her to be more gentle, she complied. Eventually EMTs arrived and transported this fragile young man to an ER. Afterward, my husband and I discussed the incident with our kids, in light of the recent push to defund the police. We noted that the officer in our affluent, mostly white Berkeley neighborhood had acquiesced when we insisted that she avoid a confrontation. Even when the young man became agitated—first when he saw her, and then when the ambulance pulled up—she respected our request that she not escalate the matter. No doubt, we told our children, her accommodating approach had a lot to do with the fact that both we and the stranger were white.
Days later, with an invader in my house, I did not set any preconditions when I called 911. Sobbing, shaking, I just shouted, “There’s a man in my house! There’s a man in my house!” Within minutes, multiple units responded to the call. One officer took my statement, another took my husband’s, and others fanned out across the area. Two more interviewed my children in different rooms, and they gave detailed, congruent descriptions of the intruder: skinny, jumpy, bug eyes, loose hoodie, shorts, beat-up sneakers, black backpack. Old enough to have lines on his face. His skin was brown, they said. Perhaps he was Filipino. The responding officer sent the description out over the radio, and a few minutes later got a call: Officers had detained a suspect. My children were loaded into separate squad cars and driven past the man whom the police had grabbed and cuffed.
He was a Black man, with nothing in common with the intruder but his backpack. My daughter was so infuriated that she started to cry. My son could not stop thinking about the way the man had looked back at him as the police car rolled by, not angry but resigned. Who knows how many times he’d been stopped by the cops over the past years, months, or even days.
Ten minutes later, the police picked up another guy. It was past five in the morning by now. Again they bundled my son and daughter, exhausted and wired, into separate cruisers and drove them past the suspect. It was the intruder; neither of them had any doubt. He was taken to jail and charged with two felonies.
I’ve been immersed in issues related to the proper role of law enforcement since early in my career, when I worked as a public defender, law professor, and drug-policy reformer, and served on the board of a prison-reform organization. I was also part of the team that created the recent Netflix show Unbelievable, which examined the police response to sexual assault. Taken together, my two encounters offer an (almost too) ideal platform to consider what law enforcement looks like now, and what a fundamental reimagining of it might consist of.
The case of the troubled young man is straightforward—a clear example of when weapon-wielding cops can easily do more harm than good. The NYU law professor Barry Friedman, among others, argues that police functions should be “disaggregated”: Mental-health professionals should respond to incidents involving people like the young man; substance-abuse counselors should deal with drug-related crises; experienced mediators should address situations that require conflict resolution; and so on.
As for the second guy, the best-case scenario is more complicated. A few weeks after this invasion, Donald Trump posted a campaign ad showing a phone ringing in an empty office. An answering machine clicks on and a female voice ominously intones, “Due to defunding of the police department, we’re sorry, but no one is here to take your call. If you’re calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2 ...” The last image is Joe Biden’s face, superimposed over a city on fire, with the words “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” Crude and misleading as the ad is (for one thing, Biden does not support defunding the police), it plays on a frequently expressed fear, one perhaps particularly common among white women: What about sex crimes? If we dramatically downsize the police, who will deal with the violence against women endemic in our culture?
Mariame Kaba, an anti-criminalization organizer, wants us to shift our focus. No matter the system, she told me, there will always be violence. The question Kaba believes we need to ask is why law enforcement, an institution that nominally exists to keep us safe, so often does the opposite. For years, decades, centuries, Black people have wrestled with whether to bring in the authorities for serious and not-so-serious crimes, and often rejected the option as too dangerous—for themselves, for the perpetrator, or for others in their community.
Many people who’ve been sexually assaulted have experiences like Unbelievable’s Marie, who was raped and then victimized again and again by misogynist, incompetent cops who refused to believe her story. In fact, she was one of the early victims of a serial rapist who went on to attack at least half a dozen other women. More generally, the police are remarkably ineffective at catching the perpetrators of violence, especially sex offenders. According to RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), an arrest is made in only 20 percent of reported sexual assaults, and only 10 percent of those arrested end up serving time.
From the August 2019 issue: An epidemic of disbelief
Friedman, who heads NYU’s Policing Project, argues that investigating crimes is not a natural function for police, at least not as they’re currently recruited and trained. “Recent breakthroughs in forensic science suggest we need way less police and much more dispassionate evidence collection and evaluation to get things right,” he has written. Investigators need scientific expertise, as well as sophisticated interviewing skills characterized by “a certain combination of skepticism and emotional intelligence”: the ability to make people feel comfortable opening up while simultaneously probing to make sure their stories hang together. Even the pursuit and apprehension of offenders would be better served by a rightsized public-safety response team, it seems, a corps perhaps screened for racist bias and trained in de-escalation and the avoidance of force.
Dialing 911 was the first decision I had to make after I discovered the man by my bed—if you can describe my frantic call as a “decision.” The second came a day later, when a police investigator contacted me to ask whether I wanted to prosecute. In the throes of a trauma that I was busy underestimating (“I’m fine. I’m fine. Really, I’m fine”), I tried to balance a host of considerations. For starters, would my children and I be willing to testify if he went to trial? I’ve seen what a competent defense attorney can do to a witness. I was a competent defense attorney, setting traps for people, tying them up in their own words, doing my best to trigger confusion and even fear. Could my kids and I stand up to that? Would rekindling the trauma be worth it?
Knowing that the majority of criminal cases end in a plea bargain, no court required, somewhat alleviated my anxieties, but it didn’t make the decision appreciably easier. How could I consign someone to the brutalities of incarceration when I’ve long advocated for the abolition of prisons? I even edited a book called Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives From Women’s Prisons , a collection of first-person stories designed to illuminate the countless human-rights violations that plague prisons in the United States.
Granted, my family and I would feel safer while the man was confined. Since he stole into my bedroom, I’ve been startling awake multiple times a night, terrified. Before we go to bed, I repeatedly ask my husband if he’s locked the doors and turned on the alarm. For weeks, my son saw the man out of the corner of his eye in dark rooms, and he took to sleeping with a hammer beside his pillow.
But what about when my attacker got out—was there a chance he’d be less of a threat, to me or someone else? According to the investigating detective, his record includes at least one psychiatric hold, suggesting that his violent behavior might stem in part from some form of mental illness. He definitely seemed unbalanced when he leeringly insisted that he’d been invited into my house, that everything was fine. Though a significant number of people in American prisons are mentally ill, very few receive any kind of psychological care. The harsh conditions of confinement could just as easily make him less stable rather than more. Some prisons have programs targeted specifically at rehabilitating sex offenders, but their effectiveness has been the subject of much debate over the years.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Though hardly perfect, Scandinavian penal systems, for example, are premised on rehabilitation. They provide treatment and therapy, with the goal of releasing better citizens into the world. In America, we focus on punishment, in the misguided belief that it will deter offenders. In fact, the severity of punishment does little to deter crime. What deters criminals is the certainty of being apprehended, but as I’ve said, this is not a certainty the American justice system even begins to provide.
The upshot is that if I prosecuted, I would be participating in a deeply unjust system, one that I’ve worked years to get rid of. Yet if I failed to do so, the guy who came into my bedroom might hurt someone else. Had Unbelievable’s Marie been taken at her word, at least half a dozen other women might not have been raped. I went forward.
There was one last bad choice I had to make. The deputy district attorney called to ask me what kind of plea I would be willing to accept. Was I adamant that the guy plead guilty to the sexual offense: breaking and entering for the purpose of committing a sexual crime? Or would I approve of a plea to burglary alone? The latter carries a sentence of up to four years, with the expectation that the perpetrator will serve half of the time; the former requires 15 years to life. “California law,” the deputy DA told me, “does not like burglary for the purpose of sexual assault.”
Two to four years behind bars. Fifteen years to life. Again, how can I weigh my fear for myself and others against the fact that prisons are dehumanizing, virtually useless for rehabilitation, and usually spit out people who are in far worse shape than when they went in? Over the years, I’d heard that 60 to 80 percent of sexual-assault perpetrators commit additional sex crimes, but when I looked at the data, I discovered that this is a wild exaggeration, a kind of urban myth. The best estimates peg recidivism at 5 percent three years after an offense, and at 24 percent 15 years out. But still. Those numbers aren’t nothing, and they come with the caveat that many sex crimes go unreported, so who knows what the true picture really is?
I tried to think of an alternative path available to me, a “third way” that envisioned a transformed criminal-justice system, better for all. But I couldn’t come up with anything. As Mariame Kaba points out, this wretched system has “disciplined our imaginations.”
So I split the difference. Let him plead to the burglary, I told the assistant DA. (At the time of publication, he hadn’t yet responded to the prosecutor’s plea offer.) This way, not only will his sentence be much shorter, but when he gets out, he won’t have to be listed on a sex-offender registry. Registries are notoriously worthless for preventing future sex crimes and, because of strict limits on where people can live and work and with whom they can associate, virtually guarantee that former prisoners aren’t able to create better lives for themselves.
The night after the break-in, I made my husband switch sides of the bed with me. After 28 years, I now sleep on “his” side, the one farther from the door. In this case, that’s as close to a transformation as any of us is likely to get.


theatlantic--2020-09-30--Why Can’t He Just Say It?

Why Can’t He Just Say It?

The question Chris Wallace posed to President Donald Trump was direct .
“ Are you willing , tonight , to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say they need to stand down ?
” The president shrugged his left shoulder .
“ Sure , I ’ m willing to do that .
But I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing , not from the right wing.
” Trump continued to say words , and to say nothing .
“ I ’ m willing to do anything .
I want to see peace.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then , do it , sir.
” Former Vice President Joe Biden jumped in .
“ Say it .
Do it .
Say it.
” For what seemed like the first time during last night ’ s debate , Trump paused .
“ What do you want to call them ?
” Trump gestured at Wallace .
“ Give me a name , give me a name.
” White supremacists , Wallace answered .
“ The Proud Boys , ” Biden added , referring to the far-right group of self-described “ Western @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violence at protests .
America has seen this before .
It happened when Trump said there were “ some very fine people on both sides ” of the white-supremacist march in Charlottesville , Virginia .
It happened when he pretended not to know who David Duke is , and that the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard had endorsed his presidential bid .
In moments of direct confrontation , Trump refuses to state clearly that he condemns white supremacy .
White nationalists notice , and remember .

The question Chris Wallace posed to President Donald Trump was direct.
“Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say they need to stand down?”
The president shrugged his left shoulder. “Sure, I’m willing to do that. But I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing.” Trump continued to say words, and to say nothing. “I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.”
Wallace pressed the question. “Well, then, do it, sir.” Former Vice President Joe Biden jumped in. “Say it. Do it. Say it.”
For what seemed like the first time during last night’s debate, Trump paused.
“What do you want to call them?” Trump gestured at Wallace. “Give me a name, give me a name.” White supremacists, Wallace answered. “The Proud Boys,” Biden added, referring to the far-right group of self-described “Western chauvinists” who often engage in armed violence at protests.
“Proud Boys, stand back, and stand by,” Trump said.
America has seen this before. It happened when Trump said there were “some very fine people on both sides” of the white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia. It happened when he pretended not to know who David Duke is, and that the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard had endorsed his presidential bid. In moments of direct confrontation, Trump refuses to state clearly that he condemns white supremacy. White nationalists notice, and remember.
Read: The nationalist’s delusion
Last month, Kellyanne Conway, who recently left her senior position at the White House, told Fox & Friends that Trump benefits when America is turbulent. “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” she said. While Trump, Conway, and the rest of Trumpworld blame left-wing activists for the recent unrest, they seem to relish images of a violent America.
The Republican National Committee gave prime-time convention slots to Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who have each been charged with a felony for pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who marched past their house. Trump defended Kyle Rittenhouse, who has been charged with homicide for allegedly shooting and killing two people during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, saying the 17-year-old may have acted in self-defense. One particularly vivid Trump campaign ad shows hooded protesters carrying Black Lives Matter signs before cutting to Biden kneeling with Black parishioners of an African Methodist Episcopal church in Delaware. “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Vice President Mike Pence warns in a voice-over.
Read: White nationalism’s deep American roots
If Trump wants chaos, he may be in luck. On the social-media platform Telegram last night, the Proud Boys posted a Photoshopped version of their logo surrounded by the words stand back and stand by. The group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, denied that the group supports white supremacy in a post on another platform, called Parler, but said he was “extremely PROUD of my Presidents performance tonight.”
After the debate, the Trump campaign’s Twitter account posted a thread pointing out that Trump said “Sure” when asked whether he would condemn white supremacy. And at several points during his presidency, Trump has explicitly condemned racism. “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated,” Trump said in a speech at the White House after the deadly 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Trump’s most vocal supporters, including a number of his evangelical advisers, claim that the media have pushed a false narrative that the president is racist.
And yet more often, in unscripted moments, Trump equivocates. Perhaps the question comes down to loyalty. Wallace “was asking the president to do something he knows the president doesn’t like to do,” former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said on CNN last night, “which is [to] say something bad about people who support him.”