newrepublic--2020-04-15--Trump’s War on VA Workers Is Exposing Them to the Coronavirus

“ America will again , and soon , be open for business , ” President Trump had said .
“ We can not let the cure be worse than the problem itself.
” That was on March 23 , the same day that the Norfolk-based Virginian-Pilot published a letter from Sheila Elliott , a long-time pharmacist at the nearby Hampton Veterans Affairs hospital , criticizing the Department of Veterans Affairs for “ the haphazard way in which COVID-19 is being handled.
” The VA , she wrote , “ was at the front lines of providing invaluable assistance ” to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ epidemic , but “ this time , VA workers are facing a scarcity of everything from masks to hand sanitizer to test kits.
” As the coronavirus pandemic rips through America , the VA is preparing to fulfill its statutory role as a backup civilian healthcare system when the private sector becomes overloaded .
Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie announced last week that the department would open up 1,500 hospital beds across the country for civilians diagnosed with Covid-19 .
But as the VA ramps up this critical support , its clinicians must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ veterans , many of whom are particularly susceptible to the coronavirus due to their age and underlying conditions , including respiratory illnesses brought on by exposure to Agent Orange or burn pits .
There ’ s reason to be hopeful that the VA can meet these challenges .
Contrary to popular belief , the department generally delivers care that ’ s as good or better than the private sector ’ s .
As for-private hospitals continue to schedule lucrative tummy tucks and other non-essential services , the VA has swiftly canceled elective procedures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resources for emergency care .
While the private sector system is furloughing staff , the VA is expediting hiring practices and ramping up compensation .
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had to strong-arm private hospitals to coordinate on care and equipment , but the VA has long run a highly integrated national network where staff and supplies can be shifted quickly to help quell the virus .
But the VA ’ s many strengths are being undercut by the Trump administration ’ s attacks on federal workers ’ rights .
Elliott—who , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for 30 years , is the daughter of a World War II Navy veteran and president of the American Federation of Government Employees ( AFGE ) Local 2328—told me that VA leaders were ignoring labor leaders ’ concerns and recommendations for workplace safety .
As a result , decisions were being made seemingly arbitrarily , some staff assigned to Elliott ’ s hospital ’ s Covid-19 unit were not properly trained , and safety protections had not been ensured .

“America will again, and soon, be open for business,” President Trump had said. “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” That was on March 23, the same day that the Norfolk-based Virginian-Pilot published a letter from Sheila Elliott, a long-time pharmacist at the nearby Hampton Veterans Affairs hospital, criticizing the Department of Veterans Affairs for “the haphazard way in which COVID-19 is being handled.” The VA, she wrote, “was at the front lines of providing invaluable assistance” to victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Ebola epidemic, but “this time, VA workers are facing a scarcity of everything from masks to hand sanitizer to test kits.”
As the coronavirus pandemic rips through America, the VA is preparing to fulfill its statutory role as a backup civilian healthcare system when the private sector becomes overloaded. Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie announced last week that the department would open up 1,500 hospital beds across the country for civilians diagnosed with Covid-19. But as the VA ramps up this critical support, its clinicians must also continue treating more than nine million veterans, many of whom are particularly susceptible to the coronavirus due to their age and underlying conditions, including respiratory illnesses brought on by exposure to Agent Orange or burn pits.


newrepublic--2020-04-15--Congress Has Abandoned the Country

Congress Has Abandoned the Country

Early English parliaments bore little resemblance to the legislative body that exists today in London .
It began as a consultative gathering of feudal lords and high-ranking bishops , summoned by the king from time to time to approve statutes or , more often , raise funds through taxation .
Only after many centuries did those occasional parliaments become Parliament , a full-fledged legislature capable of standing up to the British monarchy—and eventually taming it .
The United States is now playing out that process in reverse .
Two branches of the federal government persist .
The presidency still functions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did before the coronavirus pandemic upended the nation and killed more than 25,000 Americans .
The Supreme Court ’ s nine members are sequestered in their homes but continue to issue decisions and orders .
On Monday , the justices announced that they would even hold some oral arguments next month by phone .
But Congress , the legislature that once drafted the New Deal and investigated Watergate , is effectively dissolved .
Only a skeleton crew of lawmakers remain in and around the District of Columbia ; they occasionally gavel in for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that block President Donald Trump from making any recess appointments .
The other five-hundred-plus legislators are scattered across the country in their respective homes , riding out the storm .
Congressional leaders have no intent to summon them back any time soon .
In a letter to House members on Monday , House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that the House is “ not expected ” to meet again before the fourth of May “ absent an emergency.
” Exactly what Hoyer defines as an “ emergency ” in this context is unclear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
“ Members are further advised that if the House is required to take action on critical legislation related to the coronavirus response or other legislative priorities , Members will be given sufficient notice to return to Washington , DC , ” he added .
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a similar announcement on Tuesday .

Lawmakers’ inability to cast votes remotely has only compounded the problem. More than 60 House lawmakers asked the chamber’s Rules Committee in March to consider temporary changes that would remedy the situation. “There may be a definition of ‘present’ that reflects new technology where we can be sure that it is an accurate vote by a member of the Congress and is being done in remote fashion,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin said last month on the Senate floor. “It’s time for the Senate to wake up to the 21st century and make sure we’re using technology that allows us to communicate with each other without any danger or risk to public health.”
Leadership from both parties has categorically resisted the change. “The leader doesn’t want it to happen,” Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, told reporters last month. “It’s not going to happen. We are going to continue to vote in person.” Pelosi, who also categorically ruled it out, later suggested that she feared that the Supreme Court would strike down any legislation passed by remote voting, a point also made by the House Rules Committee in a recent report. While Congress probably couldn’t get away with never gathering in person again, it’s also hard to imagine the high court not granting them some leeway to adopt remote voting in the middle of a pandemic, especially when the justices themselves are conducting all of their business from their own homes.
The U.S. Congress is hardly the only deliberative body in the world that’s been forced to face these challenges. Foreign legislatures have taken similar steps in recent months to reduce their activities. The Canadian parliament temporarily suspended itself outright last month after authorizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to spend money until it returns on April 20. So did the British parliament, which is planning to restore some functions next week by working remotely. Countries with Westminster-style governments, where the executive and legislative branches are more intermingled, have more flexibility to ensure they can continue to function during a crisis like this.


newrepublic--2020-04-15--A New York Garbage Map Reveals the Virus of White Supremacy

Earlier this week , The City , a nonprofit news organization covering New York , published a map detailing the drastic decline in trash collection in certain areas in Manhattan—specifically neighborhoods with higher concentrations of wealth , including the Upper East Side , Upper West Side , and East Village .
Whereas working class neighborhoods in Queens , Brooklyn , and Staten Island saw increases in their weekly hauls upwards of ten percent—the likely byproduct of more people sheltering in place—the tony Manhattan zip codes actually dipped in their trash output .
A porter in one such neighborhood guessed that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where he worked had left the city for second homes .
“ I do see a lot less garbage than what I normally would see when they ’ re there , ” he explained .
It ’ s a small detail among many unfolding around the country right now , all telling a version of the same story : The demarcations that have decided who can and can not protect themselves against the global pandemic of Covid-19 .
In Queens Community District 7 , which saw a surge of 9.9 percent in waste @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with Latinx residents making up another 20 percent .
Brooklyn Community District 8 , with an increase of 8.6 percent , is 58 percent Black and 12 percent Latinx .
The pickup on the Upper East Side in Manhattan Community District 3 , which is 75 percent white ?
Dropped 3.6 percent .
The experience of the pandemic in the city—who ’ s still riding the subway , who ’ s working the checkout at the grocery , who ’ s living and who ’ s dying—is highly raced and classed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York .
An analysis from The Guardian found that Wayne county , which is home to Detroit , has seen more than 700 Covid-19 deaths—a death rate that is 250 percent higher than the statewide average .
As Anne Branigin wrote last month at The Root in a piece about the racist housing , environmental , and health disparities that make Black people particularly vulnerable to the worst impacts of the coronavirus , “ In America , the policies and circumstances that governed our families and neighborhoods can be mapped in our @ @ @

In New York, Black and Latinx residents are dying at twice the rate of their white neighbors. In Oregon, among those with positive test results, 29 percent are Latinx whereas they make up just 13.3 percent of population. ProPublica reported earlier this month that within a single week in March, “Milwaukee went from having one case to nearly 40. Most of the sick people were middle-aged, African American men.” Come the first week of April, that number had spiked to “945 cases countywide, with the bulk in the city of Milwaukee, where the population is 39 percent black.” Young and old have gotten sick, and “about half are African American.” Last Tuesday, Indian Country Today reported that Zia Pueblo and San Felipe Pueblo—both located a short drive outside of Sante Fe, New Mexico—had two of the highest infection rates in the entire country at 3.4 and 2.4 percent, respectively.
This is just what we know. As author Ibram X. Kendi pointed out in The Atlantic on Tuesday, the reporting underway by the state and federal governments has left a massive hole when it comes to tracking these cases and deaths by race. Tracking 194,000 reported positive cases made by 29 states as of Sunday, 38 percent lacked any racial data. The Idaho Statesman reported on Monday that community leaders in Latinx neighborhoods across the state are concerned their residents aren’t getting adequate information, leading to mass confusion as to who is an essential worker, what kind of travel is allowed, and the breadth and risk of the pandemic. “My biggest concern at the beginning was that we have so many isolated communities that have high concentrations of Hispanic families, so isolated that we can’t even guarantee that they have radio,” Margie Gonzalez, executive director of the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs, told the paper. “That was my biggest fear.”
Messages of “We’re all in this together,” have become ubiquitous in recent weeks, from the cast of High School Musical, USA Today, The Guardian, the World Health Organization. But we aren’t. We are stuck in the same nightmarish feedback loop of racist policy. And the results are predictable and deadly.


newrepublic--2020-04-15--Don’t Fear the Anti-Biden Socialist

Don’t Fear the Anti-Biden Socialist

Most advocacy groups promise those who offer their engagement and money an opportunity to get closer to the political system .
The reward for backing the Sierra Club or the NRA is the knowledge that your issue of interest is being advanced through traditional channels by lobbyists and others with plenty of access to politicians , their campaigns , and the policymaking process .
The DSA has promised its members exactly the opposite—that it is an organization not only working to build a movement outside the political system , but also bent on tearing that system down .
On this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ members and in prominence over the past several years—from a state of total political irrelevance to a position of enough significance that mainstream political commentators can declare themselves upset about its pronouncements .
The modicum of influence the DSA has is derived entirely from being the kind of organization that would never endorse Joe Biden , who has promised to not advance socialism in America .
Were it to do so , it would see its membership splinter and dissipate among however many dozen small sectarian leftist groups remain in this country , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trouble but the Biden campaign ’ s disavowal of the organization and socialism , broadly speaking .
The DSA is detached enough from conventional politics that its endorsement of Sanders this year , after not formally endorsing him in 2016 , was the subject of an internal debate .
Opponents of the move were concerned not only by Sanders ’ s positions on various issues , including his opposition to reparations for slavery , but by the possibility that campaign work might divert resources from the organization ’ s other work , including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaigns .
The fact that casting a ballot for a candidate is the only form of concrete political engagement most non-activists engage in goes some way towards explaining why rhetoric about voting and endorsements is often colored by more emotion than sense .
At the opposite end of those who insist that not voting amounts to a vote cast for Donald Trump are conservative figures and GOTV strategists who will spend the next several months insisting the very same action by Republican voters amounts to a vote for Joe Biden .
Neither assertion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t vote for anybody , then you don ’ t vote for anybody ; the act is no more an endorsement of Trump or Biden than it is an endorsement of whoever the Libertarian or Green Parties might decide to run this year .
Some who sit out the election in November will argue that there are no meaningful differences between the two major candidates .
They will be wrong .
Others will argue that while one might be preferable , neither will be worthy of their vote .
And in elections , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nothing logically incoherent about looking at an option you consider bad , looking at an option some degree better , and deciding that neither meets whatever personal threshold might be necessary for an affirmative choice that one does not actually have to go out and make .

The modicum of influence the DSA has is derived entirely from being the kind of organization that would never endorse Joe Biden, who has promised to not advance socialism in America. Were it to do so, it would see its membership splinter and dissipate among however many dozen small sectarian leftist groups remain in this country, and get nothing in return for its trouble but the Biden campaign’s disavowal of the organization and socialism, broadly speaking. The DSA is detached enough from conventional politics that its endorsement of Sanders this year, after not formally endorsing him in 2016, was the subject of an internal debate. Opponents of the move were concerned not only by Sanders’s positions on various issues, including his opposition to reparations for slavery, but by the possibility that campaign work might divert resources from the organization’s other work, including support for labor organizing and local issue campaigns.
The fact that casting a ballot for a candidate is the only form of concrete political engagement most non-activists engage in goes some way towards explaining why rhetoric about voting and endorsements is often colored by more emotion than sense. At the opposite end of those who insist that not voting amounts to a vote cast for Donald Trump are conservative figures and GOTV strategists who will spend the next several months insisting the very same action by Republican voters amounts to a vote for Joe Biden. Neither assertion is right. When you don’t vote for anybody, then you don’t vote for anybody; the act is no more an endorsement of Trump or Biden than it is an endorsement of whoever the Libertarian or Green Parties might decide to run this year.
Some who sit out the election in November will argue that there are no meaningful differences between the two major candidates. They will be wrong. Others will argue that while one might be preferable, neither will be worthy of their vote. And in elections, as in life, there’s nothing logically incoherent about looking at an option you consider bad, looking at an option some degree better, and deciding that neither meets whatever personal threshold might be necessary for an affirmative choice that one does not actually have to go out and make.


newrepublic--2020-04-15--Pleading for Clemency in a Pandemic

Pleading for Clemency in a Pandemic

As the coronavirus rips through prisons and jails across the United States , much of the attention has been focused on Rikers Island , the New York City jail which , with an infection rate that reached 7.8 percent as of April 13 , is now responsible for the single largest concentration of coronavirus cases in the world .
But across New York , incarcerated people serving out sentences in state prisons face the same grave risks—and attorneys are racing to file emergency petitions for their release , appealing to Governor Andrew Cuomo ’ s executive power to grant clemency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with The New Republic ( redacted to preserve privacy , as they include details of medical histories ) .
“ As a group , these individuals are particularly vulnerable to the devastating effects of Covid-19 or are close to the point at which they would otherwise be entitled to release , ” David E. Loftis , attorney-in-charge of post-conviction litigation at The Legal Aid Society , said in a statement .
“ Releasing these individuals from prison will drastically diminish the risk that they will be exposed to the coronavirus.
” The petitions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that is often the hallmark of other court documents .
In a handful of pages , attorneys attempt to tell the story of a life that doesn ’ t translate to their criminal records .
In these documents , there are snapshots of lives that existed before incarceration , and what might exist after .
As part of their petitions , people in state prisons shared what little they can do to protect themselves from contracting the coronavirus .
One told his attorney , by phone , that “ many people in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their fever is 104 or higher , they are not isolated because of the lack of space.
” Another said in her prison , “ she has seen one civilian wearing a mask , ” but “ none of the corrections officers wear them , despite the increasing rates of infection among corrections staff.
” As of April 13 , according to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision ( DOCCS ) , 581 staff across the system have tested positive for Covid-19 , along with 139 incarcerated people .

Others who have approaching release dates are very sick, and attorneys see no reason for them to suffer inside where they are at greater risk. There is a 63-year-old man who suffers from a chronic inflammatory lung disease, asthma, and high blood pressure, among other conditions, who has already been given a conditional release date of May 11. A 61-year-old woman imprisoned at Taconic Correctional Facility, who has Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and high blood pressure, is to be released August 22. She then plans to live with her father, her attorney wrote, where she will have her own bedroom and bathroom so she can self-quarantine post-release.
“This has nothing to do with me requesting clemency,” a 61-year-old man, suffering from a severe respiratory condition, wrote in a letter for the New York City Board of Corrections, “but I also want the Board to understand that I don’t want to waste the few years I could have if I take care of myself, doing the same things I did in the past.” The parole board has already approved him for release on July 17. He plans to live with his daughter, who was born after he was arrested, and who now has a daughter of her own.
Most of the petitioners describe the family waiting for them with a place to live. A 61-year-old man at Five Points Correctional Facility, with asthma, heart disease, and other conditions putting him at increased risk, plans to live in a home he co-owns with his siblings, including his sister, who is a minister. A man with a weakened immune system, who has served 10 years of a 13-year sentence at Franklin Correctional, has an uncle who offered to support him. He also plans to enter an apprenticeship program with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. A man who immigrated to the United States from Ecuador in 2004, who has been in prison since 2013, suffers from a medical condition which makes him prone to seizures and strokes, and he has been hospitalized twice in recent months as a result. If released, he plans to live with his wife and daughter in Queens.


newrepublic--2020-04-14--The Coming Ecosystem Collapse Is Already Here for Coral

The Great Barrier Reef is in the midst of its third mass-bleaching event in the last five years .
This year ’ s heat-induced bleaching—which occurs during the region ’ s summer season—is more severe than the previous two , with 25 percent of the reefs experiencing widespread bleaching .
At this point , over 15 percent of the world ’ s largest reef system has turned a ghostly , skeletal white .
We stand at the very beginning of a long fight for the survival of coral .
“ Even if we stopped emitting CO2 today , the ocean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 40 years , ” Stephen Palumbi , a coral researcher and professor of biology at Stanford University , told me .
“ It ’ s hard to conclude anything but that this ecosystem is in serious trouble.
” As the ecosystem becomes more and more unstable , possible solutions become scarcer and increasingly expensive .
High-tech measures like geoengineering , assisted evolution , and robot-assisted reproduction are quickly turning into scientists ’ best bets .
The current reality of coral reefs is a clear warning about the future of the climate crisis .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ecosystems under pressure become harder and more expensive to recover , eventually reaching a point where the only viable solutions could involve highly resource-intensive technology with uncertain outcomes .
Coral reefs can show us what a losing battle the climate crisis could feel like once we reach a certain point .
Climate “ tipping points ” are thresholds where a tiny change in conditions pushes a system into a completely new state .
While scientists say we ’ re not there yet with coral , we ’ re frighteningly close .
Nearly 50 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has died in the last 30 years ; climate change is the primary culprit .
Surface water temperature just a few degrees warmer than normal for several weeks is enough to drive widespread bleaching .
Abnormally hot waters are more common every year .

Manufacturing and deploying massive fleets of underwater robots, while absurd on the surface, has quickly become one of the more scalable and easily controlled options when it comes to restoring dying reefs. In 2018, scientists at two Australian universities deployed robots to to re-seed reefs with millions of baby corals and help them grow back faster than they are bleaching.
The emissions fight has never been more important: It’s the only way to avoid these battles of diminishing returns with other ecosystems down the line.
The problem with coral restoration is the one we could soon be facing with multiple ecosystems: Its right to invest billions of dollars in protecting coral—without fighting to preserve these structures, we risk of the complete collapse of coral ecosystems, involving massive environmental and economic fallout. But focusing on coral-restoration technology can also draw attention away from the culprit driving this change to begin with: emissions.
The most important step for saving coral is moving away from a reliance on fossil fuels. “The future trajectory of reef health is entirely dependent on how soon we act,” Camp said. “The sooner we reduce emissions, the more likely we are to have healthy reefs in the future.” While scientists are increasingly wearing multiple hats as activists and communicators, the dialogue around restoring reefs can sometimes glance over the more important truth: Stopping emissions is the best and surest way to guarantee that reefs survive the century. Scientists have only turned to these alternative solutions because the world won’t act. “Our biggest tool to save coral, reducing emissions, isn’t working. So we have to think about the other tools in our toolbox like assisted evolution and geoengineering,” Camp said. But, at the same time, the emissions fight has never been more important: It’s the only way to avoid these battles of diminishing returns with other ecosystems down the line.


newrepublic--2020-04-14--The Case for Single-Payer in a Pandemic

The Case for Single-Payer in a Pandemic

Single-payer supporters , myself included , have argued that the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the flaws of America ’ s private insurance system , and that this system is hampering the nation ’ s ability to fight the virus .
Conversely , single-payer opponents like Joe Biden have repeatedly argued that single-payer will not “ solve ” the coronavirus pandemic .
On Twitter , the president of the Center for American Progress , Neera Tanden , recently admonished a pro-Medicare for All commenter : “ You might want to check out the death rate in France before you think the form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” In another tweet , Tanden said she doesn ’ t “ think the health care payment system and the ways a country fight [ sic ] the virus is correlated.
” This is exactly the sort of hand-waving deflection you would expect from people whose campaigns or careers depend on defeating single-payer and the politicians who support dramatically reforming our own broken system .
It ’ s true that it ’ s hard to see direct correlations between a country ’ s health care payment system and its success in fighting a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States ’ health care system is so uniquely insane and unequal among developed nations .
You can certainly say that single-payer wouldn ’ t by itself ensure that the United States ’ coronavirus response was adequate , since there are other factors that are just as important .
Social distancing measures have proven to be a vital part of the coronavirus mitigation strategy , as have testing regimes and broader questions of pandemic preparedness .
Perhaps having Donald Trump as your head of state renders any best practice moot .
Nevertheless , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coverage , something that Biden ’ s plan explicitly does not ensure , would not improve our ability to respond to this crisis , if for no other reason than the fact that it would provide the means by which a gravely sick person could go to a doctor or a hospital emergency room to get treatment without going into bankruptcy .
The same could be said of a health care system that would have broadly assured that people could receive comprehensive treatment for any of the number of pre-existing medical conditions that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the high deductibles that perversely incentivize consumers to not seek medical advice .
It would have improved our response to the pandemic , as well as society more broadly , if these barriers—which are for all intents and purposes additional taxes on the working and middle classes—did not exist .
Single-payer advocates would indeed be hard-pressed to argue that such a reform would be some sort of silver bullet against the coronavirus .
Similarly , paid sick leave would be similarly unable to “ fix ” the coronavirus pandemic on its own—yet you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same resistance .
The two policies share this in common , however : There is no reason to think things would not have been vastly better had they been in place before all this happened .

More savvy proponents of the public option method at least pretend to think that the latter is possible, that everyone agrees single-payer is the goal but a public option is the smartest way to “get there.” This is what Elizabeth Warren argued when she proposed passing a strong public option first, then trying again to pass Medicare for All in her third year as president. It’s even what Pete Buttigieg claimed to believe, at least initially, describing his public option as a “glide path” to Medicare for All. Others state flatly that single-payer is not attainable, even if it would be preferable, and a public option is the best America can reasonably expect. It is not often that leftists put more faith in America’s ability to achieve things than liberals.
Biden and his allies don’t make these arguments; they simply criticize single-payer on the merits, whether that’s by saying it would cost too much or by reiterating that it would not by itself have prevented coronavirus. (Meanwhile, the Republican president mused about how “unfair” it is that 30 million people are uninsured during the pandemic, and added expanding Medicaid or Medicare to his list of things he was Looking At Very Strongly, along with birthright citizenship and low-flow toilets.) But it is plainly true that addressing the virus would have been easier if everyone had high-quality health insurance that they could actually use. It is equally obvious that if you want to address a pandemic, a system in which there are no cracks for people to fall through is better than one in which we ensure that such mile-wide cracks persist solely for the sake of keeping private health insurers profitable.
A few idiots, including Madonna, Politico, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, have referred to the virus as the “great equalizer.” This is very stupid, and the more data we obtain, the stupider we realize it is: New York City’s low-income areas are being hit harder, for example, and there are shocking racial disparities in Covid-19 cases so far. In Chicago, 72 percent of those who have died from the virus were black, despite black people making up less than a third of the population there. Health problems like diabetes and heart disease that make patients more vulnerable to complications from the virus are more prevalent among black people.


What Causes Schizophrenia?

Thanksgiving 1972 was a bad one for Mimi Galvin .
When she and her husband Don went out to dinner with his Air Force colleagues and their wives , she liked to project the image of a proud mother of an all-American brood .
But Mimi was on the brink of losing control .
The two eldest of her 12 children were fighting , and she could only watch as their brawl spilled into the dining room and upended her perfect holiday table .
She walked into the kitchen and smashed her special Thanksgiving gingerbread house into bits .
Mimi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the gingerbread house are among the many broken things in Robert Kolker ’ s new book Hidden Valley Road .
Named for the street the Galvins lived on in Colorado Springs , Kolker ’ s book splices the history of their family with an account of the gradual rise of genetic research in studying and treating mental illness .
The Galvins present an extraordinary case : Six of Mimi and Don ’ s ten boys developed schizophrenia , striking at the heart of a debate over whether nature or nurture determines who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Manual of Mental Disorders , 5th Edition ( DSM-5 ) states that a schizophrenic person must experience at least two of the five qualifying symptoms : delusions , hallucinations , disorganized speech , grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior , and negative symptoms like apathy or anhedonia .
That loose definition is the result of a century of argument , experiment , and loss .
In 1903 , a German judge named Daniel Paul Schreber published Memoirs of a Nervous Illness , an account of his psychotic break and subsequent treatment in an asylum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people along “ divine rays.
” The Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined the term “ schizophrenia ” at around the same time .
( Schizo is Latin for “ splitting , ” but Bleuler meant it to refer to the split between the inner and outer lives of the patient , not split personalities—a woefully long-standing misinterpretation that Kolker corrects . )

When the Galvin family began to fall apart, they fell straight into the arms of a medical profession ready to blame their mother. When the eldest son Donald began to believe he was the child of an octopus, Mimi took him to the doctor. What she heard was that it was all her fault. Her solution was to look after her boys herself, with heavily-medicated spells in the local mental hospital sprinkled in when one of them got violent.
HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD by Robert Kolker. Doubleday, $29.95, 400pp.
In every way, the Galvin boys’ courses of treatment reflect the conventional thinking of the last century, often much to their detriment. Schizophrenia drugs have only been through three major rounds of development, with first-generation antipsychotic drugs invented in the 1940s, and second-generation “atypical” antipsychotics in the 1960s and ’70s. These can be extremely effective in treating schizophrenia’s symptoms, but are now well-known to cause tardive dyskinesia (the jerky tics and stiffness one associates with a bad stereotype of an “insane person”) and a range of other deleterious effects. There’s only one third-gen drug, Abilify, and that’s not free of side effects either.
Schizophrenia ransacked six of the Galvin boys’ minds: Their hallucinations turned to full delusion, and some of the boys’ anger transformed into violent rage and paranoia. Meanwhile, the treatments they received damaged their health severely. Two died of heart problems. As young men they were all handsome; in their middle age, the surviving schizophrenic brothers had limited physical mobility because the drugs had made them obese. Mimi was emotionally scarred by the blame laid at her feet by the psychiatric profession. Worst of all, her unwell children distracted her so badly that she missed the fact that more than one of her sons was sexually abusing her two daughters. (To be clear, and Kolker is not clear enough in the book, sexual predation is not an inevitable feature of schizophrenia.)


newrepublic--2020-04-14--Out of Prison With Nowhere Safe to Go

Out of Prison With Nowhere Safe to Go

John Mele didn ’ t expect to get out of jail so soon .
The 48-year-old had three months left in his sentence , serving time for theft , burglary , and driving with a suspended license , when he was released from Ocean County Jail in Toms River , New Jersey , in late March .
He is among thousands of incarcerated people being released nationwide amid an accelerating push to reduce overcrowding as the novel coronavirus spreads rapidly inside prisons and jails .
“ When I saw the news that they were releasing prisoners , I didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Mele said in a phone interview .
“ I thought it would be people with less time left , or who were in there for a DUI or something .
But they said , ‘ pack up and go.
’ ” The warden ’ s decision relieved Mele , who worried about his health .
Corrections officers weren ’ t wearing masks , he said , even though they went in and out of the facility .
And he feared that others incarcerated with him downplayed their symptoms .
“ Nobody wants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cell all by themselves , ” he said .
( According to the Ocean County Jail warden , the facility was still in the process of procuring masks for staff in the lead-up to Mele ’ s release . )
His first day of freedom wasn ’ t easy , though .
In New Jersey , jails are instructing those who have been released to quarantine for 14 days , and individuals set for release from Ocean County Jail were given the option to contact a relative or friend by phone , free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nowhere to go .
“ I didn ’ t have any I.D.
, no wallet , nothing , ” Mele said .
Others said they planned to go to the nearest homeless shelter .
But Mele , who has a history of drug use , was concerned that he might relapse without a stable place to stay and support in his sobriety .
“ If it ’ s a shelter or jail , I might as well be in jail , ” he said .
With 2.3 million people locked up nationwide , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s largest incarcerated population , detained in facilities that are notoriously crowded and unsanitary .
The prison population is also rapidly aging , and even before the novel coronavirus , the system faced an escalating health care crisis .
Institutional policy and neglect deprive them of essentials like soap , hand sanitizer , and paper towels , and people detained in Washington , D.C. , and Texas have recently taken legal action , demanding basic supplies .
In California , as the Los Angeles Times recently reported , people incarcerated at the California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make masks .
These conditions have fueled Covid-19 infections in jails across the country in recent weeks .
At Rikers Island in New York , confirmed cases jumped from one to 200 in just 12 days , with that number reaching 319 by Monday .
Ross MacDonald , the jail ’ s top doctor , called the situation a “ public health disaster unfolding before our eyes.
” ( As of last week , there were 1,324 confirmed coronavirus cases connected to prisons and jails , according to The New York Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ )

John Mele didn’t expect to get out of jail so soon. The 48-year-old had three months left in his sentence, serving time for theft, burglary, and driving with a suspended license, when he was released from Ocean County Jail in Toms River, New Jersey, in late March. He is among thousands of incarcerated people being released nationwide amid an accelerating push to reduce overcrowding as the novel coronavirus spreads rapidly inside prisons and jails. “When I saw the news that they were releasing prisoners, I didn’t think it would be me,” Mele said in a phone interview. “I thought it would be people with less time left, or who were in there for a DUI or something. But they said, ‘pack up and go.’”
The warden’s decision relieved Mele, who worried about his health. Corrections officers weren’t wearing masks, he said, even though they went in and out of the facility. And he feared that others incarcerated with him downplayed their symptoms. “Nobody wants to end up contained in a cement cell all by themselves,” he said. (According to the Ocean County Jail warden, the facility was still in the process of procuring masks for staff in the lead-up to Mele’s release.)


newrepublic--2020-04-13--Trump’s Women Are Trapped in a Cult of “Empowerment”

At the end of the second week of April , Women for Trump , an auxiliary arm of the Trump campaign , hosted another of its trademark “ Hour to Empower ” sessions to rally the female faithful .
In keeping with traditions that the newly housebound have adopted since the coronavirus pandemic dropped on the country with its full force , the women broadcasted from home .
The president ’ s daughter-in-law , Lara Trump , served as the de facto host for GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel , Michigan GOP chair Laura Cox , and Ben Carson ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a screen split into quadrants .
“ We are so fortunate to have a wartime president to lead us through this global challenge !
” Lara Trump announced from the upper left corner of the screen , a blueish potted plant over her right shoulder , giant glass candelabra over her left .
Carson praised the recently passed stimulus package to the heavens .
Collectively , they discussed how “ most Democrat governors ” have shown their gratitude to Trump during the crisis , with the exception of Michigan ’ s Gretchen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politicizing in time of crisis.
” They concluded with some banter about how they ’ re handling all their home time .
Veteran viewers of the “ Hour to Empower ” might have experienced it all as a wan attempt at keeping up appearances during the president ’ s crisis year .
It hardly matched the optimistic fervor of the last edition , which took place in Sandy Springs , Georgia , and featured red-clad White House allies Kimberly Guilfoyle and Katrina Pierson regaling a roomful of Peachtree State women about the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ humming .
Guilfoyle and Pierson drew the loudest applause from the assembled by enthusing about the number of federal judges Trump had already appointed—judges who , it needed no reminding , were vetted for their extreme anti-choice positions .
Women for Trump have always proclaimed that no matter how misogynistic Trump appears to be , no matter how many women have accused him of abuse , and no matter that he supports policies to abolish women ’ s liberty , he is in fact “ empowering ” women .
In fairness , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flexible terms—akin to that other right-wing go-to word , “ liberty ” —that ’ s strayed far from its original meaning .
But for these women , theirs is a hobbled empowerment , literally and figuratively .

Branding women has been his avocation. He opened his “T Model” agency at a time when model industry practices were just a few legalities removed from human trafficking. Jeffrey Epstein is not the only one of Trump’s running buddies to be credibly accused of pedophilia. Trump not only attended parties for aspiring models, many of them underage girls; he hosted them, on his yacht and in halls at his hotel in New York. The goal of all the New York “modelizers” was to interact sexually with as many nubile out-of-towners as physically possible. Ambitious, disoriented young girls would submit to, if they were lucky, just a thorough ogling or manhandling; and if unlucky, rape.
Loyalty and discretion are the two chief job qualifications required for anyone to rise in Trumpworld, but especially so for women intimately connected to him, who might be familiar with whatever really lies behind the orange mask and coif de greffe de cheveux. The supposed empowerment of Trump women has been amplified by access journalists, whose work routinely normalizes daughter Ivanka and wife Melania as political figures. Ivanka plays the media like a fiddle, carefully choosing outlets—The Financial Times, The Washington Post—for rare interviews, but mostly appearing on the Fox News Channel or remaining silent. The more guarded Melania forces journalists to become adept at “reading” her fashion choices—choices that really are one man’s full time job. One CNN reporter assigned to the FLOTUS beat has speculated that Melania’s habitual look of steely suffering is not a reflection of the inner torment of a woman in a transactional relationship with an oleaginous obese oaf, but rather a cultural holdover from her Slovenian youth, where “a non-genuine smile isn’t really a thing.”
No one masks Trump’s malevolence toward women more effectively than his “empowered” female clone, Ivanka. In her senior adviser role she traipses around the world collecting the home numbers of corporate and political leaders (need those numbers on hand if Dad goes to jail) all while spewing bromides about women’s empowerment at ridiculous events like February’s Dubai women’s conference, held just days before a British court accused the Dubai sheikh of kidnapping and torturing his own adult daughters.


newrepublic--2020-04-13--The Problem With Shrimp

The Problem With Shrimp

In 2015 , a bombshell story from the Associated Press reported that Burmese migrants , including children , were spending upwards of 16 hours per day peeling shrimp in Thailand , helping to sustain the country as one of the biggest providers of the crustacean in the world .
Five years later , it looks like little has changed , with Human Rights Watch calling the country ’ s adjustments to the industry “ cosmetic ” in early 2018 .
Thailand remains the world ’ s largest exporter of shrimp .
The human cost of the world ’ s obsession @ @ @ @ @ @ @ full quarter of the seafood consumption in the U.S. , and it ’ s estimated that the average American eats four pounds per year—hasn ’ t changed either eating or production behavior .
And amazingly , there is yet another ethical issue to consider with shrimp and prawns : the greenhouse gas emissions of farming them .
According to Our World in Data , farmed prawns ( “ prawn ” and “ shrimp ” are commonly used interchangeably in the culinary and agricultural world despite technically being two different types of animals ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chocolate in non-methane greenhouse gas emissions .
Yet they are rarely discussed in the same manner as beef , which is broadly acknowledged in food media and by environmentalists as a food to be consumed rarely and consciously .
Seafood generally has a health and sustainability halo because it does , when wild-caught , require less resources for its production .
But farmed seafood has been outpacing wild catch in recent years , making up the majority of the global market starting in 2014 .
Farmed prawns now account for 55 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place in the tropical and subtropical areas of Asia and South America .
Jennifer Kaplan , who teaches food systems at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena California , said the reason for those high emissions has to do with the destruction of carbon-rich mangroves and the deforestation that occurs when clearing out space for farming .
Cutting down trees both removes a natural means of capturing greenhouse gases and also releases what they ’ ve stored .
“ That ’ s why those farmed prawns have such a big footprint @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detrimental impact of shrimp farming on humans and the environment has been reported for quite a long time without a widespread response .
In 2003 , the Environmental Justice Foundation issued a report tracking how shrimp farms have blocked native people from accessing their own coast and its resources , and how the loss of mangroves increases the risks from tidal waves and cyclones for rural communities .
A 2017 publication on the relationship between mangroves and shrimp cultivation noted that some shrimp-producing countries have seen an uptick in disease outbreaks owing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ operations .

In 2015, a bombshell story from the Associated Press reported that Burmese migrants, including children, were spending upwards of 16 hours per day peeling shrimp in Thailand, helping to sustain the country as one of the biggest providers of the crustacean in the world. Five years later, it looks like little has changed, with Human Rights Watch calling the country’s adjustments to the industry “cosmetic” in early 2018. Thailand remains the world’s largest exporter of shrimp. The human cost of the world’s obsession with this specific seafood—it accounts for a full quarter of the seafood consumption in the U.S., and it’s estimated that the average American eats four pounds per year—hasn’t changed either eating or production behavior. And amazingly, there is yet another ethical issue to consider with shrimp and prawns: the greenhouse gas emissions of farming them.
According to Our World in Data, farmed prawns (“prawn” and “shrimp” are commonly used interchangeably in the culinary and agricultural world despite technically being two different types of animals) follow only beef, coffee, and chocolate in non-methane greenhouse gas emissions. Yet they are rarely discussed in the same manner as beef, which is broadly acknowledged in food media and by environmentalists as a food to be consumed rarely and consciously. Seafood generally has a health and sustainability halo because it does, when wild-caught, require less resources for its production. But farmed seafood has been outpacing wild catch in recent years, making up the majority of the global market starting in 2014.


newrepublic--2020-04-13--How Donald Trump Ruined the Navy

How Donald Trump Ruined the Navy

No communications firm , pressed to design a case study on public-relations disasters , could likely top the Navy ’ s recent bungling of a coronavirus epidemic on the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the firing of the aircraft carrier ’ s outspoken commander , Captain Brett Crozier .
Crozier gained fame for his three-and-a-half-page memo pleading for the service to evacuate its crew from the ship , where safe isolation of the crew was impossible .
His civilian boss , then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly , gained notoriety for relieving Crozier of command , making an ill-advised quarter-million-dollar trip to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trashing Crozier to his crew as “ too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer , ” and ultimately resigning his own post amid the backlash .
As the number of infected sailors among the Roosevelt ’ s crew rose this weekend past 550 , a majority of the blame for the saga ’ s most ridiculous moments continues to fall on Modly .
But this crisis was ultimately not of his own making .
He merely brought to light the deepening dysfunction within the Department of Defense brought about by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collapse has been driven by President Trump , who has demonstrated repeatedly that he has no compunctions about subverting the military chain of command , often via tweet , in pursuit of overtly political goals , from his ban on transgender service members and Syria withdrawal to his clemency for convicted and accused war criminals who now support his reelection campaign .
This tendency has unfortunately been enabled by a string of Pentagon appointees who may have once thought that they could defend the nation while keeping an impetuous president in check , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disrupt and degrade the armed forces .
The Navy ’ s senior uniformed leadership in recent years has been racked by high-profile bribery scandals and deteriorating fleet conditions , with fatal consequences , but the Roosevelt incident has revealed starkly the leadership climate among those political appointees above them .
That climate can only be described as sycophantic fear ; Modly admitted as much in an interview justifying his decision to fire Crozier last week .
“ I put myself in the president ’ s shoes , ” he told the Washington Post @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considered how the president felt like he needed to get involved in Navy decisions .
I didn ’ t want that to happen again .
”

The prerogative of civilian leaders to decide military matters is a key tenet of American constitutional governance and healthy civilian-military relations, but how this is done and for what reasons matters greatly to military readiness. It’s been historically rare, and taboo, for political leaders to involve themselves in lower-level personnel decisions or ongoing military investigations. This president observes no such restraints, and his appointees at the Department of Defense appear increasingly at peace with his interventions. “I thought it was terrible what [Crozier] did,” Trump said of the fired ship’s captain in a press conference on April 4. “To write a letter? I mean, this isn’t a class on literature.” The captain, Trump added, “shouldn’t be talking that way in a letter.”
Modly obviously knew how to anticipate the president. So, too, has his boss, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who not only sided with Trump’s political impulses over uniformed military leaders but—in the lexicon of the honor code at West Point, his alma mater—“quibbled” in trying to give a misleading impression of uniformed support for Crozier’s firing, which runs counter to the video footage of adoring Roosevelt sailors cheering Crozier as he departed the ship (as well as the crew’s profane reaction to Modly’s justification of the firing).
Since Crozier was relieved of his command, three elements have arisen in his case that warrant a reevaluation of the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense. The first is the prescience of Crozier’s decision to sound the alarm, as coronavirus infections have quintupled among his crew since he penned his letter. The second is the obvious unfitness of men like Modly for high Pentagon responsibilities, and the doubt this affair casts on Esper.


newrepublic--2020-04-13--Bailouts Won’t Save the Economy. More Coronavirus Tests Will.

No sooner had the ink dried on the last $ 2 trillion round of economic relief from the devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic than President Trump and Congress began contemplating the next bill to address the crisis .
There is , after all , crisis to spare .
You might think the emergency on Washington ’ s mind is the rapidly escalating number of U.S. infections and deaths , or perhaps the shortage of lifesaving personal protective gear and medical equipment such as ventilators and the ongoing dearth of reliable and available tests .
But the disaster that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to media accounts , is the same as the last one : the financial losses to businesses and workers caused by the social distancing measures put in place to limit the spread of the new coronavirus .
The severity of current social distancing restrictions is necessitated in part by the United States ’ lack of capacity to identify the infected , trace and test their social contacts , and quarantine the sick .
If you can ’ t be sure that everyone outside isn ’ t contagious , then you must stay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ treat the symptoms , rather than the illness .
On Wednesday , Newsday reported , “ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this week proposed adding $ 250 billion for the popular small-business loan programs already in the recently enacted $ 2.2 trillion CARES Act relief and stimulus package .
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded Wednesday that that interim bill also include $ 150 billion for state and local governments ... and $ 100 billion for hospitals and a 15 % increase in the maximum benefit to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other words , Republicans and Democrats both just more of the very same things they got last time .
In fact , Pelosi explicitly pointed to the last bill as “ a good model ” because it managed to draw bipartisan support .
It is true that some of these expenditures , such as aid to hospitals and state and local governments , will partly aid the essential efforts to treat the sick .
And putting money in people ’ s pockets goes hand-in-hand with social distancing policies , by defraying some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which in turn threatens the reliable paychecks of thousands of workers .
But this approach , while vital , has at best only slowed the virus ’ spread .
The disease must be halted in its tracks to allow the economy to be reopened .
The only answer is to rapidly ramp up widespread public testing for Covid-19 and its antibodies .

What would such a federal effort look like? For one thing, it would involve a lot more aid to state and local governments earmarked for the purpose. “It means a massive infusion at the state and local level, because the people who are going to do the testing, do the contact tracing, are all state and local people,” said Gregg Gonsalves, a professor of public health at Yale. “The last bill has $150 billion to state and local governments, but they’re losing sales and income tax revenue, so $150 billion doesn’t even begin to meet the lost revenue gap. Money has to flow to the states to do the shoe leather epidemiology.”
Congress also needs to direct the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to give proper guidance and assistance to the state and local governments. “Contact tracing would have to be implemented by states,” said Jha. “But Congress could say, ‘You do it, we’ll fund it and put in some metrics to make sure it’s actually happening.’” The state and local departments of health would then, with federal dollars and oversight, hire staff of testers covered in personal protective gear such as masks and gowns.
We also simply must produce vastly more tests and build the lab capacity to turn them around quickly. Currently, patients can wait up to a week for results because the private labs that perform the tests often have a massive backlog. Jha estimates that, based on the current level of outbreak, roughly 500,000 to 600,000 Americans per day should be getting testing, which is roughly five times as many tests as we’re currently performing. It would also be helpful, since so many people who have been sick recently with flu-like symptoms don’t know if they had Covid-19, and many people who had it were asymptomatic, to develop and widely deploy a serological tests, which measure the disease’s antibodies in the blood. Then we’d have some idea of who can safely go back to work without risk of infection.


newrepublic--2020-04-13--The Rise of the Lurker

The Rise of the Lurker

If you ’ re over a certain age and you were ever on Facebook , you ’ re on your way off it .
Every time Mark Zuckerberg does something creepy or bows to pressure from the Trump administration , one acquaintance or another announces that they ’ re quitting , and every time you think : Yeah , maybe this is the moment for me to get out .
After all , what used to seem to you a vibrant , garrulous hangout space , or at least a reasonable simulation of one , has become a ghost town @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are only the tip of an even larger iceberg , one consisting of people who never deactivated their account but log on largely to message others , to like the occasional birth announcement , to respond when tagged .
I am one of them .
We are the lurkers .
And now there ’ s a book about us .
I ’ m sure the experience of Facebook as one of lurking is not universally true ( after all , the number of people signing up for Facebook accounts still seems to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ late 2019 ) , but when it happens among your network , the implosion is fairly swift .
It ’ s a form of ecosystem collapse .
If the people you enjoyed on Facebook are no longer on Facebook , why would you hang around ?
It ’ s an interesting moment , as an active community doesn ’ t so much quit as it simply ceases to post , becoming instead a community of observers with increasingly little to observe besides the pure gyration of an algorithm with less and less to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment when you deprive the network of the one thing it thrives on—your data .
As Joanne McNeil points out in her new book , Lurking , young people with an interest in how Facebook algorithms work have used this technique since the beginning : They deprived their Facebook profiles of data and watched which friends it recommended , which posts the algorithm pushed on them .
Perhaps , they hoped , starving the mill of its grist would reveal how the gears turned at 1 Hacker Way , how Facebook ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , network , etc .
When we abandon a playground like Facebook without truly leaving it , we all get to see what the machinery looks like without the shiny , reflective cladding of the content we create .
We get to witness ourselves , transformed and repackaged as something else .
McNeil defines lurking as “ listening and witnessing on the internet , rather than opining and capturing the attention of others.
” Her book represents a record of a sustained act of lurking .
Just as the nineteenth-century flaneur gets intoxicated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detachment , the lurker sees their historic moment by being above it and very much ensconced in it .
And , as McNeil points out , it can be thrilling .
She likens learning from a Twitter hashtag to “ passing a kaleidoscope around a campfire , ” describes how early blogs provided “ a departure from the sanctitude and solitude of writing , ” and points to the gorgeous artifacts of early Google Street View , such as Leonard Cohen on a lawn chair in L.A .
Fellow travelers of hers from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thrills only too well .

And that makes Lurking the perfect book for our historic moment. Because the last few weeks have turned us all into lurkers: Those of us who don’t go out and fight the virus, those of us who can afford to let a computer interface between us and a dangerous outdoors, have become silent, frequently muted heads in Zoom galleries and anxious presences on social media, fearful of whatever the timeline washes into our purview. At certain points and in certain situations, being a lurker is a sane, ethical, thoughtful response to a moment of crisis.
There used to be a time when you could be a person on the internet without being an internet user. Back then the caricature of an internet user was a pimply white guy who hung out in chat rooms or kept a blog. Users weren’t people who went online; their being online made them the kind of people they were. McNeil points out that this picture always distorted the truth of who used the internet and how. But it came apart on its own terms, because in the meantime—and certainly with the advent of the iPhone—being a user became a universal condition.
The internet user of yore ambled to his parents’ basement and fired up the modem; the modern user can walk down the street with an infinitely more powerful tiny computer in their pocket. The user is always doing something more and something less than they think they’re doing. The user becomes one of millions of “unique impressions” by which websites measure their advertising rates; becomes their face, or simply eyeballs or clicks or whatever other metaphors or metonymies by which we dissolve as persons and get reconstituted as something else. They’re clicking through Captchas to “prove you’re not a robot,” and help Google develop driverless cars. They call the short-lived, long-forgotten 1-800-GOOG-411 service that was intended to collect voice samples for AI research. In the 2000s, a community of transgender individuals used a time-lapse technology and a platform (in this case YouTube) to document their transition; a computer science professor used their images as a data set for facial recognition. And just like that, McNeil writes, “a community of users expressing care for one another became useful bits to an outsider.” “Users,” as she puts it, “get used.”


newrepublic--2020-04-11--An Airline Bailout Should Have More Strings Attached Than a Harp

Airlines and airports got $ 50 billion worth of loans and grants in the stimulus approved by Congress last month , along with a tax break that also extends to private jets .
They might get more soon ; the White House suggested he could announce further bailout measures this weekend .
Top Democrats are urging Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin , as he hands out bailout funds , not to impose any “ unreasonable conditions ” on the $ 2.7 trillion industry .
The irony there is that airlines in the United States and around the world—now in a fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conditions of their own .
Reporting this week by Greenpeace ’ s investigative journalism publication Unearthed revealed that the International Air Transport Association ( IATA ) is instructing its members to lobby governments for a grab bag of tax exemptions and deregulatory measures as the pandemic unfolds , and which would stretch on well after it ends .
One page of a letter sent out to IATA members urges them to seek a “ collaborative approach ” on “ cost-cutting measures ” with governments , for example mass firings .
Unearthed also found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pushing to avoid any new taxes through 2022 .
IATA has further called for amending and scaling back its only international framework for reducing industry emissions so as to “ avoid an inappropriate economic burden on the sector.
” If these companies get their wishes granted , it could be a disaster both for their employees , and , potentially , the planet .
America ’ s airline industry is already forty-plus years into a radical experiment with deregulation that ’ s gone off the rails .
Airlines were formerly regulated as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which regimented routes and ticket prices .
They were then part of the first waves of deregulations that began during Jimmy Carter ’ s administration and exploded under Ronald Reagan , in tandem with Margaret Thatcher ’ s administration overseas .
Deregulation was supposed to spur efficiency , with less expensive tickets for consumers .
But within a few years companies were consolidating , and ticket prices had dropped by less than what they would have if the CAB had remained in control .
This last decade , in particular , has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of baggage fees , which brought in $ 5 billion for airlines in 2018 .
They ’ ve funneled the extra funds from nixing meals and seatback entertainment into boosting share prices .
The biggest U.S. airlines poured 96 percent of their free cashflow into stock buybacks between 2010 and 2019 .
These airlines are also notorious tax dodgers .
In The American Prospect , Alexander Sammon has argued that this should all be grounds for nationalizing the airlines , or at the very least bringing them back under the kind of stringent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of air travel .
This wouldn ’ t be unprecedented ; the U.S. government nationalized airport security several months after 9/11 in forming the TSA .
“ The nationalization of the American airline industry could not only deliver travelers from the horrors of air travel , ” Sammon writes , “ but it could also forge a path out of our 2008-grade thinking when it comes to public intervention in the market .
”

Between 2013 and 2019, meanwhile, airline emissions grew by 26 percent. Air travel remains a relatively small chunk of emissions, although is one of the world’s fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gasses. It accounts for 12 percent of transportation in the United States, and air travel worldwide has been projected to double in the next 20 years. Its emissions are projected to triple by 2030, although its footprint could be growing even faster, threatening to account for as much as a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050. Low-carbon alternatives in aviation are theoretically possible but could be decades away, requiring substantial investment for research and development to make biofuels or electric planes, for instance, functional and scalable. A provision from Nancy Pelosi—for airlines receiving aid to cut their emissions in half by 2050, and invest in alternative fuels—was stripped out of the final stimulus package last month.
The 50,000-member Association of Flight Attendants-CWA demanded that the bailout prioritize airline industry workers over shareholders, ensuring airline workers receive full pay and benefits for the duration of the crisis by awarding grants that can only be used to maintain payroll. Working with House Democrats, they got that provision built into the most recent stimulus, the CARES Act. Along with Representative Katie Porter, AFA-CWA International President Sara Nelson has now called for those protections to be extended to all workers by applying the same terms to assistance Mnuchin hands out through the $500 billion Economic Stabilization Fund the CARES Act gave him authority over. He could do this, they write, by “using his authority to convert loans into payroll grants—like the aviation sector—or to forgive any portion of loans used for payroll.” A likeminded measure proposed by Representative Pramila Jayapal would extend these Denmark-style protections to the rest of the economy, committing the government to cover 100 percent of payroll as long as the crisis lasts, up to $100,000 per person.
Whatever Trump announces this weekend, the U.S. now has more leverage over the airline industry than it has since deregulation. As some progressives have recognized, if there are no atheists in a foxhole, there’s also no laissez-faire in a pandemic. No one in the airline industry, at least, seems to think there is anymore. The question now is whether government interventions in aviation are made on behalf of workers and the planet, or against them.


newrepublic--2020-04-10--God Save the Florida Governor From His Stupidity

Ron DeSantis , Florida ’ s Republican governor , had heard the recommendations to hunker down from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and looked on as other major coastal states from California and Washington to New York and New Jersey issued stay-at-home orders .
He went another way .
Egged on by corporate lobbyists and inclined to defer to Donald Trump ’ s uninformed whims , DeSantis kept the state open for business as long as he could , refusing to tell Florida ’ s 21 million residents to hole up in their houses .
His rationale—that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives—was “ the dumbest shit I have heard in a long time , ” said one Democratic state senator from Miami .
By April Fools ’ Day , after his state had recorded more than 7,000 cases of Covid-19 and 100 coronavirus-related deaths , DeSantis had to concede his failure .
“ Obviously in Florida , the tourism is totally shot right now , ” he said , and then he ordered Floridians to stay put .
Unless they wanted to go to church .
“ I don ’ t think the government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” he said .
“ I ’ m certainly not going to do that.
” DeSantis , along with the governors of at least a dozen other virus-saturated states , has declared worship services an “ essential activity.
” Never mind that mainstream Jewish , Muslim , and Christian denominations—the ones who ’ ve moved beyond Ptolemaic cosmology , at least—strongly recommend holding online services or just praying at home .
A good number of rock-ribbed evangelicals insist that Jesus wants their butts on pews , socially distanced or not .
On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center Arena church in Orlando was soliciting money online while Pastor Rich Vera pranced around in person on a stage in front of scores of worshippers , “ healing ” people by smacking them in the face with his bare palm .
( To be fair , Vera did spritz some hand sanitizer before he channeled the Holy Spirit . )
Besides the 12 states that have exempted religious gatherings from their quarantine orders , a half-dozen states still have no stay-at-home orders at all , and a few more are letting counties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in-person Easter services in these states could become “ super-spreading events , ” deepening the coronavirus crisis—and highlighting the extent to which religion and commerce override science across much of the nation .
But then , there ’ s also the potential for more conspicuous health violations by churches in the states and counties where stricter rules have been implemented .
In Louisiana , a coronavirus hot spot with at least 12,000 cases and more than 400 deaths , Brother Tony Spell gave out “ anointed handkerchiefs ” to protect his flock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bounty of his collection plates ) at Baton Rouge ’ s Life Tabernacle .
“ We have a mandate from the word of the Lord to assemble together , ” he said .
Louisiana ’ s Democratic governor did not exempt church services from his stay-at-home order , so Spell has been charged with six misdemeanor counts of violating public orders .
( Spell says he plans to hold Easter services , and police don ’ t plan to interfere . )

Florida, like the rest of the country, has always had a vexed relationship with science. For a nation born out of the Enlightenment principles of reason and free thought, a shocking number of Americans in the twenty-first century lurch between wide-eyed admiration for penicillin, computers, or manned lunar missions and hostility to anything that undermines their sense of exceptionalism or causes them even slight discomfort: vaccines, climate change, evolution. Much of that hostility is rooted in American, especially Southern, Christianity, typified by the nineteenth-century Virginia theologian and proslavery philosopher Robert Lewis Dabney’s attacks on geologist Charles Lyell, who showed that the earth is subject to natural processes and not just a static entity winked into being on October 23, 4004 BCE—a date for the universe’s birth long accepted by many Christians and still cherished by Young Earth Creationists today. Dabney was predictably horrified by Darwin, too: Natural selection undermined humans’ divine design and encouraged “materialism, godlessness, and sensuality.”
As of last year, only 33 percent of Americans thought humans evolved without the help of a divine power: The rest of us either insist that God made Adam and Eve exactly as described in Genesis, or that we did evolve over time, but God allowed or guided the process. Floridians have been fighting over evolution for nearly 100 years, thanks to William Jennings Bryan. The golden-tongued three-time presidential candidate famously prosecuted the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in 1925, but two years earlier, he’d persuaded the Florida Legislature to pass a resolution against the teaching of evolution. In the 1920s, Bryan flirted with a run for Senate in Florida and settled in Coconut Grove, where he preached a progressive social gospel combined with Biblical literalism, every Sunday morning in Miami’s Royal Palm Park.
Florida’s government still has its doubts about evolution. State Senator Dennis Baxley, an evangelical funeral director famous for sponsoring the state’s Stand Your Ground law and favoring white supremacist conspiracy theories, sponsored a bill last year that would mandate the teaching of “different worldviews” to Florida schoolchildren on the settled science of evolution and climate change. Baxley defended his bill by noting, without any hint of irony, the fallibility of human knowledge: “If you look at the history of human learning, for a long time the official worldview was that the world was flat.” This year, Republicans tried to push through a “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” backed by a right-wing anti-textbook group that would have allowed little Madison’s mommy and daddy to exempt their precious little one from salacious government “brainwashing” efforts like sex-ed classes, knotty Civil War history lessons, and book reports on Toni Morrison. It failed, probably because the coronavirus caused the legislature to stampede out of the Capitol as fast as possible, but sponsors have vowed to bring the bill back.


newrepublic--2020-04-10--Bringing Out the Dead in New York City

Bringing Out the Dead in New York City

In one of the world ’ s largest churches , just north of Central Park , the pews have been replaced by beds .
A sprawling tennis complex that hosts the U.S. Open likewise has been converted into a field hospital—as has a pocket of Central Park itself .
Parking lots across the city meanwhile serve as temporary morgues , their spaces occupied by refrigerated trucks and shipping containers .
And then there are the bodies themselves , glimpsed around corners or across the street by residents willing to brave the outdoors : wrapped in white , being briskly shuttled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is New York City today , the world ’ s top coronavirus hotspot .
Health care workers are overwhelmed by the epidemic , and even as the curve appears to be flattening , the death toll keeps climbing by the hundreds every day ( while likely being undercounted ) .
The city of 8.6 million people has now recorded more than 87,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths—nearly double the number of people who died in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 .
There have been 20,474 hospitalizations , with untold tens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come .
At a press conference on Thursday , Governor Andrew Cuomo reported that funeral directors were “ being brought in ” to handle the bodies .
Even as the city is utterly transformed , it ’ s hard for New Yorkers to feel the true scale of this loss while we ’ re confined indoors .
But photographer Jordan Gale says it ’ s crucial that we do .
“ I find it of the utmost importance to face the extreme horrors of this global pandemic , ” he told me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ resources we have , these pieces of documentation will help shape how we remember this historic period.
” All the photographers in this essay witnessed the magnitude of the crisis up close , so that we could all see what ’ s happening out there .

In one of the world’s largest churches, just north of Central Park, the pews have been replaced by beds. A sprawling tennis complex that hosts the U.S. Open likewise has been converted into a field hospital—as has a pocket of Central Park itself. Parking lots across the city meanwhile serve as temporary morgues, their spaces occupied by refrigerated trucks and shipping containers. And then there are the bodies themselves, glimpsed around corners or across the street by residents willing to brave the outdoors: wrapped in white, being briskly shuttled from one place to another.
Such is New York City today, the world’s top coronavirus hotspot. Health care workers are overwhelmed by the epidemic, and even as the curve appears to be flattening, the death toll keeps climbing by the hundreds every day (while likely being undercounted). The city of 8.6 million people has now recorded more than 87,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths—nearly double the number of people who died in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. There have been 20,474 hospitalizations, with untold tens or hundreds of thousands more still to come. At a press conference on Thursday, Governor Andrew Cuomo reported that funeral directors were “being brought in” to handle the bodies.
Even as the city is utterly transformed, it’s hard for New Yorkers to feel the true scale of this loss while we’re confined indoors. But photographer Jordan Gale says it’s crucial that we do. “I find it of the utmost importance to face the extreme horrors of this global pandemic,” he told me. “With the lack of information and resources we have, these pieces of documentation will help shape how we remember this historic period.” All the photographers in this essay witnessed the magnitude of the crisis up close, so that we could all see what’s happening out there.


newrepublic--2020-04-10--Democrats Decide, Again, Not to Try Anything New

In normal times , their jobs are to be none of those things .
What makes Pelosi ’ s and Schumer ’ s grip on power so secure is , in fact , their parochialism .
They don ’ t offer up grand visions for the future .
Their jobs , at least as they understand them , are to protect the members of their caucuses , especially those in the most vulnerable seats .
Protecting them does not mean making sure they are associated with a popular and ambitious political project .
It mainly means keeping them well funded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safe from potentially dangerous votes .
Pelosi whips votes for legislation she deems passable .
Schumer protects centrists in red states from ever having to take a stand .
That is what they do , and by the standards they set for themselves , they are very good at it .
If you have found their responses—or , as the case may be , nonresponses , since Congress won ’ t be doing anything for another 10 days or so—to our multiple concurrent national crises underwhelming , it is probably because you expect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as part of their job description .
That would be , to borrow a phrase from a presidential candidate who , long ago , ran a campaign based primarily on his long experience in government and association to a more popular president , “ the vision thing.
” This lack of imagination explains why Congress responded to a completely unprecedented economic freeze-up resulting from a national , viral pandemic by passing an economic stimulus that was built around loans to small businesses , temporary expansion of our rickety unemployment benefits , and one-time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ creative options .
It is why Pelosi ’ s first instinct when thinking of what else to do was tax relief for her wealthiest constituents .
The Democratic nominee for the presidency was supposed to step into this void of creative thinking .
But he or she was also supposed to have some claim to being an agent of change .
It would be his or her job , if elected , to make Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer make their members fall in line behind some agenda—an agenda none of those members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with , and which some of them could even safely stand against , in order to continue being seen as Moderates .

Pelosi whips votes for legislation she deems passable. Schumer protects centrists in red states from ever having to take a stand. That is what they do, and by the standards they set for themselves, they are very good at it. If you have found their responses—or, as the case may be, nonresponses, since Congress won’t be doing anything for another 10 days or so—to our multiple concurrent national crises underwhelming, it is probably because you expect from them something they do not see as part of their job description. That would be, to borrow a phrase from a presidential candidate who, long ago, ran a campaign based primarily on his long experience in government and association to a more popular president, “the vision thing.”
This lack of imagination explains why Congress responded to a completely unprecedented economic freeze-up resulting from a national, viral pandemic by passing an economic stimulus that was built around loans to small businesses, temporary expansion of our rickety unemployment benefits, and one-time checks to households, without considering more creative options. It is why Pelosi’s first instinct when thinking of what else to do was tax relief for her wealthiest constituents.
The Democratic nominee for the presidency was supposed to step into this void of creative thinking. But he or she was also supposed to have some claim to being an agent of change. It would be his or her job, if elected, to make Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer make their members fall in line behind some agenda—an agenda none of those members would face any responsibility for coming up with, and which some of them could even safely stand against, in order to continue being seen as Moderates.


newrepublic--2020-04-10--The New American Death Sentence

The New American Death Sentence

Worldwide , New York ’ s jail complex at Rikers Island has the highest rate of cases of the novel coronavirus—as of April 8 , 287 in total .
That ’ s 6.65 percent of people jailed there .
Two people have died .
The New York Times counts 1,324 cases among people jailed in prisons and jails across the country , while acknowledging this is likely an undercount .
“ Quick action is necessary for three reasons , ” wrote Peter Wagner and Emily Widra at the Prison Policy Initiative .
“ Correctional staff and incarcerated populations are already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has health conditions that make them more vulnerable , and the staffing resources required to make policy changes will be depleted long before the pandemic peaks.
” Rather than take action , officials have dug in , passing executive orders criminalizing people for violating social distancing guidelines .
Police arrest people for allegedly threatening to transmit the virus .
Some of those arrested have faced high bond , remaining in crowded jails unable to pay .
Given what we know about the spread of the virus in prisons and jails , incarcerating someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exposing them .
To leave them there is a possible death sentence .

“NYPD Makes Arrests for Social Distance Violations as More Officers Call Out Sick”
As first reported at The Intercept, one woman arrested by police on March 27 for having “failed to maintain social distancing” was held for 36 hours in a cell with two dozen other women. “There was no soap, and the cell was dirty, but at one point an officer went around distributing drops of hand sanitizer to the women held there.” She said the arresting officers were not wearing masks. Later, a law enforcement source told Gothamist that people in the group the woman was with were drinking and “particularly aggressive,” but, as the blog pointed out, “no one was charged with public intoxication, possessing an open container of alcohol, or resisting arrest.”
“[Alaska State Trooper] arrests woman accused of shoplifting, making false claims of coronavirus”
After troopers detained a woman allegedly shoplifting at a grocery store, they say she told them she had tested positive for Covid-19, TV station KTUU reported on March 26. Her arrest “could’ve ended with the woman facing charges of terroristic threats. She rescinded her claim, however, and instead of facing a felony is imprisoned for lesser charges.”
“A Texas woman was arrested for threatening to spread coronavirus, police say”
An 18-year-old woman was arrested on April 7 and charged with making a terroristic threat and a third-degree felony, CNN reported, after police say she threatened to “willfully spread” coronavirus in a Snapchat video. She was transferred to Denton County Jail with a $20,000 bond. Police say she later told them she had tested negative.


newrepublic--2020-04-10--The Staggeringly Complicated Ethics of Ventilating Coronavirus Patients

On Wednesday , STAT News published an influential story asking whether ventilators are being overused for Covid-19 patients .
The United States is facing a dire shortage of ventilators for coronavirus patients .
In that context , a complex debate within critical care medicine has become a matter of urgent public interest .
How many ventilators are needed is already a politicized issue : Donald Trump and his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner have opined , seemingly baselessly , that New York doesn ’ t need as many ventilators as Governor Andrew Cuomo and his experts predict .
“ If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to this problem we ’ re wasting a whole bunch of time and effort , ” tweeted journalist Dave Dayen , author of The American Prospect ’ s Covid-19 blog , Unsanitized , in response to the STAT story .
“ Do Ventilators Help ?
” asked National Review .
The “ yes ventilators ” versus “ no ventilators ” frame is an overly simplistic take on a complex debate within critical care medicine .
Some doctors think that a subset of Covid-19 patients would do better if they went on a respirator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s a far cry from saying that ventilators are “ not the best solution ” or that efforts to increase the ventilator supply are a waste of time .
The debate over when to intubate , however , also has tricky ethical dimensions .
One pressing issue is whether ventilators will be allocated on a top-down basis by hospitals , hospital systems , or public officials—or whether bedside physicians will retain control over these decisions .
The argument for top-down allocation is that it increases fairness and allocates resources more rationally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a list of objective criteria that predict who is most likely to benefit from a ventilator .
But Dr. Lisa Moreno , president-elect of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine , who treats patients with severe Covid-19 at her hospital in New Orleans , told me that we simply don ’ t know enough about this new virus to reduce these decisions to algorithms .
The fact that someone is young , thin , and healthy doesn ’ t necessarily mean they ’ re a better candidate than someone who ’ s older @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preexisting condition like diabetes .
This disease affects people so differently that someone who looks good “ on paper ” may not be the strongest candidate for ventilator support .
When deciding whether to put a Covid-19 patient on a ventilator , Moreno says she takes into account various factors , including how well they ’ re breathing and how clearly they ’ re thinking ( an indication of whether their brain is getting enough oxygen ) .
“ This has nothing to do with their age and even , in some cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ underlying condition , ” Moreno said .

“The interesting thing that we’re seeing with Covid is that patients still seem to be able to get carbon dioxide out,” Moreno said. “And we’re seeing, because people are not retaining carbon dioxide, that they are much more comfortable at lower oxygen levels.”
Most patients start getting distressed when the oxygen saturation of their blood falls to 88 percent, Moreno explained. All over the world, doctors are seeing coronavirus patients tolerating oxygen saturations as low as 80 percent, she said, with some places reporting patients tolerating oxygen saturation of 60 percent or lower. But it’s excess carbon dioxide, not low oxygen, that triggers our desire to breathe and makes us uncomfortable when we can’t expel it. And with Covid-19, the two don’t seem to be as closely linked as doctors might expect. “Because of that we are looking at different ways of treating these patients and a different timetable of intubating them,” Moreno said.
The standard of care for Covid-19 pneumonia is based on protocols developed to treat acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, a devastating lung disorder that can be triggered by sepsis, trauma, or pneumonia. In a recent editorial in Intensive Care Medicine, Luciano Gattinoni of the Medical University of Göttingen and colleagues noted that Covid-19 pneumonia patients differ from classic ARDS patients in key respects. Specifically, Covid-19 patients may have dangerously low levels of oxygen in their blood despite their lungs expanding almost normally under pressure, a state known as high pulmonary compliance. Compliance is a measure of how readily lung tissue expands under pressure. The less compliant the lungs, the harder it is to breathe. ARDS patients tend to have stiff lungs that are very difficult to inflate.


newrepublic--2020-04-10--Joe Biden’s New Podcast Is So Bad

Joe Biden’s New Podcast Is So Bad

The message doesn ’ t quite come across , partly because Biden is a clumsy podcast host .
Despite being a major feature of his coronavirus-hobbled campaign , Here ’ s the Deal sounds cheap and thrown together .
Biden ’ s odd speech patterns are sometimes heavily edited , giving them a chopped feel , like a grandpa appearing in a Tik Tok video .
At other times , Biden speaks in paragraphs that are the verbal equivalent of someone falling down a rocky hill .
I know it sounds corny , but I ’ m so damn proud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how people are coming together in this country .
After—being—after appealing to their prejudices for three years and you know , that folks from that part of the world is not a good person , and we don ’ t want anybody Muslim , we don ’ t want this , we don ’ t want that divi—look what they ’ re doing .
You have these first responders showing up and going into homes and taking people out into ambulances .
You watch the things that are spontaneously happening .
Thank God @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As an interviewer , no one will mistake Biden for Terry Gross or Marc Maron .
There ’ s no conversation , no sense of drawing his guest out .
Biden throws two or three softballs , and his guests answer with extreme deference .
The interviews on Here ’ s the Deal are not conversations—they ’ re something between a ( very low-energy ) campaign event and a poorly cut advertisement .
The podcast resembles Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine ’ s instantly forgettable campaign book Stronger Together , in that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beyond Biden ’ s milquetoast talking points .
The show ’ s unbearable dullness does bolster one of Biden ’ s core arguments : that he is not Donald Trump .
Here ’ s the Deal is careful to keep Biden out of the mud .
It tries to project the kind of calm and normalcy he claims he will bring back to the country if elected in November .
But that only makes the podcast a missed opportunity .
Whenever Klain attacks the Trump administration ’ s horrific and incompetent response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I ’ m determined that this should not be political , ” he says at one point .
“ It ’ s not about partisan politics .
It ’ s about how rapidly we can put in motion the initiatives that are going to save people ’ s lives and get us through this process.
” This steadfast determination to present Biden as above the fray , however , undercuts the point of the podcast itself , which is to keep him in the news .
Biden does backflips to avoid saying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to write or talk about—except , that is , how boring the podcast is .

I know it sounds corny, but I’m so damn proud to be an American. Look at how people are coming together in this country. After—being—after appealing to their prejudices for three years and you know, that folks from that part of the world is not a good person, and we don’t want anybody Muslim, we don’t want this, we don’t want that divi—look what they’re doing. You have these first responders showing up and going into homes and taking people out into ambulances. You watch the things that are spontaneously happening. Thank God the networks are putting them on television.
As an interviewer, no one will mistake Biden for Terry Gross or Marc Maron. There’s no conversation, no sense of drawing his guest out. Biden throws two or three softballs, and his guests answer with extreme deference. The interviews on Here’s the Deal are not conversations—they’re something between a (very low-energy) campaign event and a poorly cut advertisement. The podcast resembles Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine’s instantly forgettable campaign book Stronger Together, in that it is terrified to stray too far beyond Biden’s milquetoast talking points.
The show’s unbearable dullness does bolster one of Biden’s core arguments: that he is not Donald Trump. Here’s the Deal is careful to keep Biden out of the mud. It tries to project the kind of calm and normalcy he claims he will bring back to the country if elected in November. But that only makes the podcast a missed opportunity. Whenever Klain attacks the Trump administration’s horrific and incompetent response to the coronavirus, Biden pulls back. “I’m determined that this should not be political,” he says at one point. “It’s not about partisan politics. It’s about how rapidly we can put in motion the initiatives that are going to save people’s lives and get us through this process.”
This steadfast determination to present Biden as above the fray, however, undercuts the point of the podcast itself, which is to keep him in the news. Biden does backflips to avoid saying anything incendiary, leaving nothing for people to write or talk about—except, that is, how boring the podcast is.