newrepublic--2020-05-22--The Two Lives of Norma McCorvey

The Two Lives of Norma McCorvey

The law is written in words , and words are not the same thing as people .
In the 1973 landmark lawsuit Roe v. Wade , for example , the plaintiff “ Jane Roe ” was not the same person as Norma McCorvey .
The latter was a poor young woman , 21 years old and long inured to abuse , seeking an end to her third pregnancy when attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington found her , in Texas , in 1969 .
Vulnerable , scared , and rebuffed by Texan doctors , Norma was the perfect plaintiff .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ raw material of Norma .
At the Supreme Court , their creation eventually enshrined the right of American women to reproductive freedom .
But in the four years during which the case made its way through the legal system , Norma McCorvey continued to live .
She never attended any of the hearings or , indeed , underwent any abortions .
It wasn ’ t long after giving birth that Norma met Connie Gonzalez , her female partner for decades to come—an ironic twist in the case law of heterosexual reproduction that I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Roe v. Wade ruling was handed down , there were two McCorveys : Jane , the symbol of women ’ s inalienable reproductive rights in the face of male chauvinism , and Norma , the tough , funny young woman who found some stability in a queer relationship .
Such is the fate of people the law turns into symbols : Their real selves disappear , overshadowed by the forces that use them .
The two different versions of McCorvey collided this week , with the release of the documentary AKA Jane Roe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ final years that includes several brand-new interviews with her .
Although she had stumped for abortion rights activists in the 1970s and ’ 80s , McCorvey later flipped to the anti-abortion side and became a powerful counter-symbol to the woman at the heart of Roe .
In a deathbed confession , she revealed to the documentarians that evangelicals paid her to switch sides .
She also said she had resented being treated snobbishly by left-wing feminists , who thought she was too uneducated to give speeches in public .

AKA Jane Roe is dedicated to giving McCorvey the last word in a conversation she was long shut out of, and it does clarify some of the details of her story. But it isn’t exactly a revelation that cash greased the wheels of Norma’s conversion. It is new, however, to see Flip Benham yell, “She chose to be used!” on-screen, his televangelist grin wizened with age. The mask of twentieth-century-style televangelism has slipped all the way off, revealing the dark egos of its preacher-leaders. McCorvey is dead, and AKA Jane Roe frames itself as her final legacy. If she died wanting to tarnish some evangelical reputations, then she certainly got her wish.
The white, college-educated leaders of the 1970s abortion rights lobby get a bruising here, too. Amid the litany of horrors McCorvey experienced, their disdain ranks pretty high. In Nathan’s 1996 piece about McCorvey, for example, she described her as a “rough-spoken, uneducated, unsophisticated woman,” who displayed “disturbing neediness and impulsiveness.” But what else could be expected of the ideal candidate for Roe v. Wade, which hinged on the plaintiff’s vulnerability and lack of options? “She couldn’t discuss feminist theory or the details of abortion legislation,” Nathan wrote, but she could “tell a powerful tale of what it was like to be poor, ignorant, and unwillingly pregnant in 1969.”
The way Nathan puts it, the “authenticity” of McCorvey’s story invalidated her political voice, and vice versa. She was caught in a paradox. That’s what the courts do when they make general rulings based on individual cases: They cut a story out of a person’s life, make a law out of it, and then leave the pieces on the floor. Once we understand that, McCorvey’s anti-abortion rebellion makes perfect sense. A chance to make some cash and piss off Gloria Steinem? No wonder she made the leap.


newrepublic--2020-05-25--Is Email the Future of Journalism?

Is Email the Future of Journalism?

Last year was an extinction-level event in journalism .
More than 3,000 jobs were lost in an industry that was already in rough shape .
There were layoffs in every type of news organization : At BuzzFeed , The Atlanta Journal-Constitution , Sports Illustrated , and countless other newsrooms .
And thanks to the coronavirus lockdown , this year is shaping up to be even worse .
Digital and traditional media outlets have laid off thousands of workers .
Last week alone saw drastic cuts at Vice , Quartz , and The Atlantic .
Local news has been hit particularly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ papers have been decimated .
The union representing The Cleveland Plain-Dealer had nearly 350 members two decades ago ; today it has 14 .
No one is immune .
Old stalwarts and new startups alike are struggling .
The Atlantic gained nearly 100,000 subscribers since March , but without its lucrative events business it nevertheless shed nearly a fifth of its workforce .
Some properties , like Vox , have furloughed large portions of their staff .
Many of the thousands of journalism jobs that have been lost will not be coming back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A wave of seed capital offset some of the damage of the 2008 recession , but few investors are keen on journalism now .
Journalism ’ s advertising model is all but dead , strangled by Google and Facebook .
Many outlets , including The Atlantic , are increasingly relying on subscriptions for revenues , alongside a host of sidelines , including podcasts and events .
But these strategies may not be enough , even in rosier economic circumstances .
A number of large news organizations have begun lobbying Congress for bailouts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tuesday , the News Guild launched its # SaveTheNews campaign , aimed at immediate relief and long-term stability ( and ensuring that private equity giants don ’ t end up hoovering up any public money ) .

In a blog post published on the company’s website earlier this week, Substack founder Hamish McKenzie made the case that there “are early signs that we are witnessing the emergence of a new media economy.” Some Substack writers, he noted, were bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The new model, he said, had spawned “a rapidly growing middle class, with writers and podcasters netting incomes that range from pocket money to high five figures.”
On the phone, McKenzie was a bit more cautious. “Substack provides an avenue for a new generation of publications,” he told me. “It’s not going to be the only path. Hopefully it’s an alternative path. It’s a model that works.” In this newsletter model, a subscription is often higher than a magazine subscription. I just subscribed to Ryan O’Hanlon’s excellent soccer newsletter for the cost of a print subscription to Bloomberg Businessweek.
The appeal for individual journalists is that a relatively low number of paid subscribers can provide a decent living; and those who enjoy high subscription rates are more than merely comfortable. For corporations, the model is less proven. “There are some publications, even of the stature and historical success of The Atlantic, that will struggle to cross over into a new realm,” McKenzie told me. “If you have to carry around a bunch of the legacy from previous generations of how magazines and newspapers were published, it’s like starting the race with a penalty.” Substack, in other words, is best positioned for new, small, and nimble publications, not bloated ones with sizable overheads.


Sounding It Out

When my daughter began homeschooling earlier this year—a string of words that , even now , causes me to rub my eyes with disbelief—I went through something like the stages of grief , landing at acceptance only after a protracted battle with denial .
How could I juggle a full-time job while teaching a five-year-old the basics of reading , writing , and arithmetic ?
It seemed impossible , absurd , like asking me to be in two places at once .
Yet the defining characteristic of the coronavirus crisis is how quickly the absurd can overtake reality .
My @ @ @ @ @ @ @ duties , and a typical morning goes like this : I wake up early , make my daughter breakfast , and sprint through the assignments that are listed in Google Classroom .
A couple writing tasks , some drawing , a few math exercises , a science video—done .
Scan the pages of her gangly script onto my iPhone , AirDrop them into the iMac , upload to the cloud , throw the pages into the trash .
Then I log on for work , and she spends the rest of the morning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ screen time .
Every so often she participates in a Google Hangout with her classmates , a madhouse of 20 kids trapped in tiny boxes blabbing to everyone and no one at the same time .
Is it the finest education taxpayer money can buy ?
No .
Do we sometimes pretend to complete assignments we can ’ t be bothered to do ?
Yes .
( Try doing “ gym ” in a Brooklyn apartment . )
Is it the logistical nightmare I feared ?
She is only in kindergarten , after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that have inundated the lives of older children and their families .
Homeschooling has become a chore , distinct from other chores in that it occasionally reminds me how much I have forgotten of my own education .
( It amazes me that there was once a time when I knew what a rhombus looked like . )
There is one aspect of her quarantine education , however , that does interest me—that has , in fact , become something of a fascination .
It is the 20 to 30 minutes set aside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ read .

It obviously doesn’t help that I have no idea what I’m doing, falling back on some trusty all-purpose tools: encouragements and threats, bribery and blackmail. It is not at all like teaching her how to speak, which involved almost no active participation on my part, since children largely learn to speak through osmosis, absorbing the rudiments of language as if they drift about in the air. (Which, in a sense, they do, in that the sounds of speech are all around them.) Reading is different. Reading requires focus, ambition, and a lot of work.
When my daughter and I first began this regimen, curling up on the couch with a book, it was an inversion of our usual routine: She would be reading the book to me. There were other inversions, too: This normally loquacious child was having trouble with her words. They came out slowly, haltingly, sometimes not at all. The finger tracing the page would hover for a ponderous moment over what was, apparently, a senseless jumble of letters. Sometimes, frustrated, she would have to reset her brain to proceed: “OK,” she’d sigh, then vigorously shake her head clean of its confusion like an Etch A Sketch.
Nothing she has been taught can prepare her for a word like would. Even a small word like said is tricky.
You can hardly blame her. From a student’s point of view, the English language makes no real sense. She has been taught that English is a phonetic language, that certain letters laid out in certain combinations make certain sounds, but the truth is that there are so many exceptions and quirks that the so-called rules are useless half the time. There are words she can read by sounding the letters out: his, tree, eggs, bunny. There are others that seem to only get more obscure the longer she strains to unlock their meaning, and often these words are the most common, their idiosyncrasy enduring through sheer use. Nothing she has been taught can prepare her for a word like would. Even a small word like said is tricky. (She doesn’t understand why it rhymes with dead—and by all rights, it shouldn’t.) The word ocean—so lovely to look at, so strangely evocative of the thing it represents—is a phonetic catastrophe, the c suddenly switching to the “sh” sound, the ea inexplicably approximating a u.


newrepublic--2020-05-26--American Cities Are Built for Cars. The Coronavirus Could Change That.

In a world where few will want to pack into a crowded restaurant for quite some time , even small cities understand that a creative reimagining of streets is the key to their economic survival .
Vilnius , Lithuania has turned its sidewalks and plazas into vast outdoor cafes so that restaurants can offer patrons food and drink at a responsible social distance .
Tel Aviv is pedestrianizing 11 streets to encourage foot traffic and outdoor dining .
American cities , which historically charge high fees for business owners wishing to operate a sidewalk café , are catching on , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or even an actively pro-outdoor dining approach might be the ticket to making it to the other side of this crisis with their tax base intact .
Cincinnati , Ohio recently converted parking lanes and streets in its Over-the-Rhine neighborhood into makeshift pedestrian plazas and dining patios , allowing restaurants a chance to serve customers and keep their businesses afloat .
Hoboken , New Jersey is employing a similar tactic , with its mayor , Ravi Bhalla , encouraging the development of “ steateries ” : tables and chairs set up in parking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ takeout food and drinks .
In Washington D.C. , business-owners are begging the city to turn bar-heavy 18th Street into a pedestrian and bike zone so that the neighborhood ’ s restaurants and watering holes can re-open .
And some seem to think this might make sense even after the pandemic is over : “ This is something we believe in , not just for today but to create something that ’ s different and can help businesses grow and prosper for the future , ” Adams Morgan Commercial Development Coalition co-founder Matt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will hopefully help cities and the people who live in them endure the pandemic in greater health , happiness , and financial security .
But they also offer a kind of proof of concept for climate-friendly lifestyle shifts .
The recent pedestrian and cyclist-oriented changes have shown that society can pivot practically on a dime and remake itself in better and more sustainable ways .
Having walked or cycled on mostly car-free streets during lockdown-related open streets events , people returning to work as restrictions ease might start to wonder why so many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parked cars rather than wide sidewalks or truly protected bicycle lanes .
With traffic all but vanished from most of the world ’ s roads and clear blue skies over cities from Los Angeles to Delhi , people have gotten a taste of what the world can be like with fewer automobiles .
It remains to be seen what will happen when a vaccine is found and the coronavirus crisis ends .
But in the wake of the pandemic ’ s seismic economic and social upheaval , many axioms of modern city life—office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and more—are likely to be revisited and reimagined .
Now that people have seen streets ’ potential as vibrant social spaces as well as tools for economic and environmental resilience , they may not want to let the cars return .

In a world where few will want to pack into a crowded restaurant for quite some time, even small cities understand that a creative reimagining of streets is the key to their economic survival. Vilnius, Lithuania, has turned its sidewalks and plazas into vast outdoor cafés so that restaurants can offer patrons food and drink at a responsible social distance. Tel Aviv is pedestrianizing 11 streets to encourage foot traffic and outdoor dining.
American cities, which historically charge high fees for business owners wishing to operate a sidewalk café, are catching on, understanding that adopting a more laissez-faire, or even an actively pro-outdoor, dining approach might be the ticket to making it to the other side of this crisis with their tax base intact. Cincinnati, Ohio, recently converted parking lanes and streets in its Over-the-Rhine neighborhood into makeshift pedestrian plazas and dining patios, allowing restaurants a chance to serve customers and keep their businesses afloat. Hoboken, New Jersey, is employing a similar tactic, with its mayor, Ravi Bhalla, encouraging the development of “steateries”: tables and chairs set up in parking spots, from which people can enjoy takeout food and drinks. In Washington, D.C., business owners are begging the city to turn bar-heavy 18th Street into a pedestrian and bike zone so that the neighborhood’s restaurants and watering holes can reopen. And some seem to think this might make sense even after the pandemic is over: “This is something we believe in, not just for today but to create something that’s different and can help businesses grow and prosper for the future,” Adams Morgan Commercial Development Coalition co-founder Matt Wexler told The Washingtonian.
These changes will hopefully help cities and the people who live in them endure the pandemic in greater health, happiness, and financial security. But they also offer a kind of proof of concept for climate-friendly lifestyle shifts. The recent pedestrian- and cyclist-oriented changes have shown that society can pivot practically on a dime and remake itself in better and more sustainable ways. Having walked or cycled on mostly car-free streets during lockdown-related open-streets events, people returning to work as restrictions ease might start to wonder why so many of our urban thoroughfares are lined with parked cars rather than wide sidewalks or truly protected bicycle lanes. With traffic all but vanished from most of the world’s roads and clear blue skies over cities from Los Angeles to Delhi, people have gotten a taste of what the world can be like with fewer automobiles. It remains to be seen what will happen when a vaccine is found and the coronavirus crisis ends. But in the wake of the pandemic’s seismic economic and social upheaval, many axioms of modern city life—office commutes, certain real estate patterns, and more—are likely to be revisited and reimagined. Now that people have seen streets’ potential as vibrant social spaces as well as tools for economic and environmental resilience, they may not want to let the cars return.


newrepublic--2020-05-26--The Crumbling Cult of Jamie Dimon

The Crumbling Cult of Jamie Dimon

Under the most extraordinary circumstances imaginable , Jamie Dimon , the chairman , CEO , and president of JPMorgan Chase , has noticed an incredibly obvious thing : Everything might not be going great ; perhaps the economy is not working as intended .
In a shareholder memo released last week , Dimon wrote , “ The last few months have laid bare the reality that , even before the pandemic hit , far too many people were living on the edge.
” Clarifying that he didn ’ t mean “ living on the edge ” in some sort of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on “ business and government ” to “ confront the structural obstacles that have inhibited inclusive economic growth for years.
” The memo—unsurprisingly—did not conclude with an announcement that JPMorgan Chase would voluntarily close up shop and hand off whatever actually productive and useful business it engages in to community banks or credit unions or the United States Postal Service .
It contained an account of the many people the bank had helped by delaying mortgage payments or extending credit but was silent on whether and how the bank ’ s normal way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to confront those obstacles to more equitable growth .
Dimon is a serial Noticer That Things Could Be Better , but he has always remained quite vague on why those things could be better or what might be required to improve them .
The mere act of noticing tends to be enough to win him not just plaudits in the press but the respect and solicitousness of politicians from both political parties .
( He has been named in the press as a plausible treasury secretary for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positive coverage for using his annual report to shareholders to ask such unusual questions as “ Why have productivity and economic growth been so anemic ?
” and “ Why have income inequality and so many other things gotten worse ?
” These are important questions , but they are also obvious ones .
If it was newsworthy that a titan of American finance was asking them , it ’ s mainly because our titans of finance generally make a point of not noticing anything inconvenient about their line of work .

Shareholder primacy has dominated business thinking more or less ever since, and today it is often blamed for all sorts of modern ills, such as corporate short-termism, the decline of organized labor, disinvestment, and outsourcing. Perhaps those problems were an inevitable result of capital seeking ever greater returns and not specifically caused by a well-known Milton Friedman memo, but there is no denying that the form of capitalism described by that memo has been less than responsive to the needs of most non-capital-owning Americans. As Doug Henwood explained in 2018: “Since 2012, nonfinancial corporations have made net investments—net meaning after allowing for the depreciation of existing assets—of $2 trillion. Over the same period, they distributed $6 trillion to shareholders in the form of dividends, stock buybacks (intended to boost share prices), and takeovers. Instead of providing investment funds to businesses (which is what most people think it does, but it really doesn’t, and never has very much), the stock market has served as an instrument of value extraction for the last 35 years.”
Last week, almost a year after Dimon and company placed the desires of stakeholders above their other duties of responsible corporate governance, and in the midst of a global pandemic that exposed, for Dimon, the shortcomings of our current economic arrangement, we got to see an example of JPMorgan’s new commitment to stakeholders over shareholders at work. At this year’s virtual shareholders’ meeting, activist shareholder groups campaigned for the passage of a resolution calling on the bank to “describe whether it will align its lending with the Paris goal of maintaining global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius and how it plans to do so.” They were not, to be clear, actually demanding the bank divest from fossil fuels—merely demanding it produce a report explaining whether it would ever partially or mostly do so. The resolution failed, barely, with the bank—the world’s largest fossil fuel financier—urging shareholders to vote against it.
According to the new rules of stakeholder capitalism, of course, that vote should hardly matter. A slim majority of JPMorgan Chase shareholders wish for that destructive financing of extraction to continue, for the sake of their bottom lines. Stakeholder-responsible corporate governance would surely deny them what they want. Unless the bank’s most important stakeholders do not include “everyone on the planet” but, instead, tar sands pipeline operators.


newrepublic--2020-05-26--The Intolerable Cruelty of Our Eldercare System

Residents and employees of nursing homes have emerged as one of the hardest-hit groups of the coronavirus pandemic , with a third of overall deaths taking place within nursing home walls .
The facilities that mostly care for black and Latino people are even harder hit than those that mostly house white people .
The terrible loss of life in nursing homes is partly attributable to huge delays and gaps in oversight of cases : It took until April 19 for the Trump administration to begin tracking the relevant numbers , and many states have failed to report , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is also attributable to policy decisions , like those made by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo , who ordered hospitals to send coronavirus patients to nursing homes .
The data we do have is likely to be an undercount , so the bad news is , in all likelihood , going to get worse .
The coronavirus has revealed a deep vein of callousness in our society , clarifying who is cared for most and least .
On the top , getting by just fine , are the rich and powerful : celebrities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ access to early testing ; people who can comfortably work from home while an army of delivery drivers and Amazon workers leave stuff at their doorsteps ; residents of the Upper East Side of New York who fled the city to their second homes .
Lower down the ladder , there are the essential workers who were required to keep going to work .
As we reach the bottom , we see the most ignored : Prisoners , the homeless , the Native American population , and those who receive nursing and institutional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In Texas , for example , the state is testing everyone in a nursing home—except for its own , state-run institutions for people with disabilities .
When you have the governor of New York sending coronavirus patients into cramped facilities—buildings full of the exact demographic most at risk of dying of the disease—you might start to wonder whether these homes exist to care for the elderly or to shove them out of sight to die .
But it should have been clear long ago that people in these facilities—people who definitionally need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it should not have taken tens of thousands of deaths to highlight the urgent condition of these places .
Our government simply does not do enough to ensure a decent , happy life for either the people who need to be cared for by others or the people tasked with providing the care .
The people who do this care are underpaid or not paid at all ; the people who receive the care are neglected and abused ; and the way we have chosen to pay for it , or not pay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basic fact is that everyone is likely to need some kind of care in their old age .
About half of those aged 65 will need daily help later in life ; others will need help less often but still frequently .
This is a problem we have chosen not to address .
We do not provide universal long-term care for the elderly , even though it is far too expensive for most people to afford .
Instead , we encourage people to spend their life savings until they die or are poor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which point they will either attempt to squeeze enough home care hours from their state or , if their needs are too great , be sent to a nursing home .
To qualify for Medicaid long-term care , in most states , you need to have assets of less than $ 2,000 .
If the only thing you own is a 2007 Hyundai Elantra , you may not be eligible .

Understandably, most elderly people prefer to stay at home instead of moving to a nursing home. Medicaid is required to pay for institutional care like nursing homes for eligible low-income people, but states have a lot of latitude in deciding how to cover home-based care. Even though a majority of Medicaid spending now goes to home-based care and states must cover home health aides, they don’t have to cover “personal” care, like assisting people with eating or bathing. In 2018, more than 800,000 people were on state waiting lists for Medicaid home-based and community care services; most of those are people with developmental disabilities, and a huge chunk of those reside in Texas. Three-quarters of states apply limits to the number and length of home health visits paid for by Medicaid, and 16 states do not provide personal care benefits. Some states limit how many hours they will pay for: Kansas will only pay for 12 personal care hours per 24 hours, for example. Disabled people spend countless hours fighting with their states over how much care they need and how much money the state will provide.
When personal care aides help someone dress, feed, or bathe themselves, this is not considered a “medical” intervention. It is nevertheless health care; the major problems that arise if a person cannot eat, such as dying, are definitely “health” problems. Yet Medicare does not cover the cost of long-term care, except for short stays in skilled nursing facilities; it will only pay for “medical” care in the home, and only if prescribed by a doctor. (Perhaps consider getting your doctor to write a prescription for “food.”) Medicaid will cover nursing home costs and some at-home care, but only for the very poor; the income and asset limits are very low, leading some elderly or divorced couples to divorce to qualify for the care they need. If you die in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid, the state may put a lien on your house to recover the cost of keeping you alive, to punish your family for the crime of not having $100,000 a year to spare to pay for your care.
Obviously, the incentive is to provide as little as they can get away with, to cut costs.
States use assessment tools, usually contracted out to the private managed care companies that run Medicaid programs in most states, to determine whether someone is sick enough to require help and how many hours they need. Obviously, the incentive is to provide as little as they can get away with, to cut costs. Last year, The Washington Post wrote about a 108-year-old woman in Southeast Washington with dementia, who is bedridden and “prone to choking,” whose approved home care hours were reduced from 24 to 19. Clearly, it is very important for the District to claw back those extra five hours of unnecessary choking-supervision time from that greedy centenarian, at a time of a budget surplus. The District’s new assessment tool also recommended that another elderly woman have her hours reduced from 24 to eight, then to four; her daughter told the paper that when her mother was left alone for 15 minutes between care shifts on one occasion, she wandered to a department store and was arrested and hospitalized. These are the processes by which we decide whether and how to care for the people who once provided for us.


newrepublic--2020-05-26--Dominic Cummings’s Very Trumpian Response to His Very English Scandal

Not since Thomas Becket has a counselor to the government of Britain caused so much controversy .
Dominic Cummings , the chief adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson , was revealed over the weekend to have broken quarantine rules while sick with Covid-19 in April , including driving from London to Durham , in the north of England , to stay with his family .
Cummings is roughly the British equivalent of Steve Bannon—seen by liberals as a sort of frighteningly impressive-but-evil Blog Genius who is untethered from the usual rules of politics , willing to adopt populist rhetoric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , only too happy to be found palling around with racists , and an owner of terrible clothes .
But , as of Tuesday night , it seems there is one characteristic he doesn ’ t share with Bannon : For now , he is sticking around .
The story unfolded over the holiday weekend with many Iannucci-esque twists and turns .
First , it was revealed Cummings broke social distancing rules by driving to his parents ’ house in Durham , while sick with Covid-19 .
Next came the absurd details of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including his visit to a local castle with his family .
Finally , at a press conference on Monday , Cummings trotted out even more absurd defenses : that he drove to the castle to “ test his eyesight , ” for example .
( Conservative minister Michael Gove tried to defend Cummings on the radio by saying he has done the same thing . )
Cummings also protested that while he did walk outside while sick , the walk was on his father ’ s estate—meaning his father owns rolling fields @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his dad lives in a public housing project , the other meaning of “ estate ” in the U.K .
The outrage in Britain has been remarkably universal , particularly for such a divided nation .
Even The Daily Mail , a thoroughly conservative and despicable tabloid that usually loves Tory governments ( and particularly Brexit Boris ) , called for Cummings to resign .
Footage on Twitter showed members of the public mocking Cummings as he walked down the street .
It ’ s easy to see why the story has caused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second-highest number of coronavirus deaths , after the United States , and implemented social distancing measures later than similar countries , likely causing thousands more deaths than if it had acted early : The Times reported last week that infections “ rocketed from an estimated 200,000 to 1.5 million in the nine days before lockdown while the prime minister agonised over how and when to act.
” Many thousands of people have been unable to see their family members in their final moments or visit relatives who are sick with other illnesses .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the British that makes this story perfectly primed to rile people up .
As the writer Christopher Hooks pointed out on Twitter , Brits hate nothing more than a queue-jumper .
We love to get mad about People Breaking the Rules ; we are a nation of curtain-twitching busybodies , and there ’ s no greater occasion for such behavior than a pandemic .
British society is also much more class conscious than the U.S. , for better and for worse .
( In the U.S. , “ middle class ” is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ huge group encompassing the really-quite-rich and the really-quite-poor , and politicians rarely talk about the “ working class ” ; in Britain , “ middle class ” is usually an insult that mainly means “ bougie.
” Buying nice olive oil and sending your kids to private school is middle class . )

Not since Thomas Becket has a counselor to the government of Britain caused so much controversy. Dominic Cummings, the chief adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was revealed over the weekend to have broken quarantine rules while sick with Covid-19 in April, including driving from London to Durham, in the north of England, to stay with his family. Cummings is roughly the British equivalent of Steve Bannon—seen by liberals as a sort of frighteningly impressive-but-evil Blog Genius who is untethered from the usual rules of politics, willing to adopt populist rhetoric to achieve the goals of the elite, only too happy to be found palling around with racists, and an owner of terrible clothes. But, as of Tuesday night, it seems there is one characteristic he doesn’t share with Bannon: For now, he is sticking around.
The story unfolded over the holiday weekend with many Iannucci-esque twists and turns. First, it was revealed Cummings broke social distancing rules by driving to his parents’ house in Durham, while sick with Covid-19. Next came the absurd details of exactly what happened when he broke lockdown, including his visit to a local castle with his family. Finally, at a press conference on Monday, Cummings trotted out even more absurd defenses: that he drove to the castle to “test his eyesight,” for example. (Conservative minister Michael Gove tried to defend Cummings on the radio by saying he has done the same thing.) Cummings also protested that while he did walk outside while sick, the walk was on his father’s estate—meaning his father owns rolling fields of green English glory and not that his dad lives in a public housing project, the other meaning of “estate” in the U.K.


newrepublic--2020-05-26--I Was Already Underwater as a Cab Driver in New York. Then the Pandemic Hit.

I live in Woodside , Queens .
I ’ m originally from Ecuador , but I ’ ve been living in New York for 24 years and driving a cab in the city for almost 19 years .
I realized that the coronavirus was going to be a serious problem for taxi drivers as soon as I saw what was happening in China on the news .
That ’ s when I thought , Drivers are going to be in trouble if they shut down the city like they did over there .
And soon there was almost no one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m not working .
I live with and take care of my mother .
She receives dialysis three days a week , so I need to be careful—I don ’ t want to put her at risk by going out and driving .
A lot of other cab drivers aren ’ t working at the moment , either , because people just aren ’ t out , and no one can pick up fares .
I ’ ve been hearing from some drivers who are still working that right now they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to $ 60 each day .
Some of us drivers have a group chat , and most of the guys are in exactly the same situation—they can ’ t work .
I ’ ve tried to apply for unemployment a couple of times .
I first applied online at the beginning of April and didn ’ t receive a call or any kind of response from the Labor Department .
I was finally able to get in touch with them at the end of April , and even though I had already applied @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t have any of my information on file .
So I had to complete the application all over again .
I received one payment of $ 600 maybe two weeks ago , but that ’ s it .
The other day someone from the Labor Department called me again and said my application was still incomplete in their system .
I told them that I ’ ve been doing the certifying process every Sunday , but I still haven ’ t received any other payments .
Right now I barely have money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ niece are helping my mother and I , and bringing us food—they ’ re basically supporting us right now .
I own a taxi medallion , but I ’ m in foreclosure .
Even before the pandemic , I was already underwater , as a medallion owner , and behind on payments because the streets were so slow .
I had to spend more and more hours working in order to make money .
When the city opens up again , I ’ m thinking of looking for other jobs .
But I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Maybe I could work in construction .
It ’ s hard to even think about right now .

I live in Woodside, Queens. I’m originally from Ecuador, but I’ve been living in New York for 24 years and driving a cab in the city for almost 19 years. I realized that the coronavirus was going to be a serious problem for taxi drivers as soon as I saw what was happening in China on the news. That’s when I thought, Drivers are going to be in trouble if they shut down the city like they did over there. And soon there was almost no one out on the streets.
Right now I’m not working. I live with and take care of my mother. She receives dialysis three days a week, so I need to be careful—I don’t want to put her at risk by going out and driving. A lot of other cab drivers aren’t working at the moment, either, because people just aren’t out, and no one can pick up fares. I’ve been hearing from some drivers who are still working that right now they’re only earning around $40 to $60 each day. Some of us drivers have a group chat, and most of the guys are in exactly the same situation—they can’t work.


newrepublic--2020-05-27--How Corporations Make Pandemics Deadlier

In early 2009 , a toddler named Édgar Hernández , of La Gloria , Mexico , came down with a fever and a nasty , persistent cough .
Doctors told his parents he was suffering from a mysterious respiratory ailment , and his illness would set off a series of containment measures that now feel intimately familiar , with emergency press conferences and schools closing all over Mexico .
Just a few miles from where Hernández grew up , in La Gloria , sits one of the eight industrial hog farms Smithfield Foods set up in that part of Mexico @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American conglomerates south , seeking cheaper labor and looser environmental standards .
By 2009 , the La Gloria plant was producing nearly 1 million pigs every year , many of them drinking water polluted with their own blood and feces .
After Hernández fell ill , reports began circulating that the hogs on the farm had spread the disease , a lethal swine flu .
Within weeks , nearly 400 people across the state had contracted the disease .
Two babies had died .
And in Washington , the pork industry lobbied the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with its more technical moniker , H1N1 .
The outbreak , they insisted , was an “ unfortunate coincidence.
” That may have been true within the single outbreak in La Gloria—but six of H1N1 ’ s 8 genetic segments could be traced to industrial hog operations in North Carolina .
H1N1 wasn ’ t the first disease to jump from animals to humans—the Black Death , for instance , was spread by rats—but over the past several decades , alarmingly , these interspecies transfers have become far more frequent .
Starting in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re known , began to move from species to species at a rapid pace , triggering an uptick of plagues from AIDS to Ebola and now , to Covid-19 .
( As with several of these illnesses , the coronavirus is believed to have come from bats , although scientists are still debating how it jumped from those winged creatures to humans , with many thinking that pangolins , a scaly species of anteater , were the intermediary . )
All manner of conspiracy theories have been floated to explain these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spuriously linked to the Chinese Communist Party , 5G , and the CIA .
The simpler and more frustrating answer is that globalized capitalism itself is a petri dish for disease .
As corporations raze forests , slaughter animals , and spew out greenhouse gasses , they ’ re bringing us closer to a future that could well bring outbreaks even deadlier than the coronavirus pandemic .
Following science ’ s triumph over polio , smallpox , and rheumatic fever , two prominent virologists , David O .
White and MacFarlane Burnet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against infectious diseases would likely be “ very dull.
” That confidence wouldn ’ t last long .
Starting in 1981 , for the first time since such records were kept , more people were dying of infectious disease than had the previous year—mainly of AIDS .
As Laurie Garrett details in The Coming Plague , at a three-day conference in 1989 , American researchers began sounding the alarm that there was a dangerous wave of infectious disease building .
The AIDS epidemic—which sprung from the consumption of bush meat—had already killed thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but a sign of things to come .

In fact, animal agriculture would prove a reliable vector for many of these diseases. As zoonotic diseases exploded, so too did global meat consumption, doubling between 1961 and 2014 as trade policy, subsidies, and ramped-up labor exploitation made meat impossibly cheap.
The unceasing quest for market efficiency has trickled down into microbiology—making illnesses more lethal.
Seeking boosted profits and productivity, gargantuan livestock corporations such as Smithfield and Tyson bunched animals up in ever more concentrated and specialized corporate facilities, where workers loaded them with antibiotics that undermined their immune systems. When the avian flu broke out at the Thai facilities of the massive agribusiness conglomerate CP Foods, the company actually collaborated with the Thai government to increase its poultry production, paying off contract farmers to keep quiet about the sick birds. Factory farming techniques aligned with regulatory capture to form a perfect vessel not just for zoonotic illness but all types of diseases. Malaria, for instance, thrives in marshy deforested areas. As corporations, especially cattle farming conglomerates, have razed the Amazon in recent years, they caused a global increase in the disease. One 2019 study found that malaria had risen more than 3 percent over the previous decade, and rates were much higher in communities that bordered the Amazon.
Hellishly, rising temperatures will only make this phenomenon worse. Deforestation is one of a few factors sapping the world’s tropical forests of their ability to absorb greenhouse gases. Released into the atmosphere, those extra emissions drive up temperatures and help destroy animal habitats, forcing more species to butt up against another and swap contagions. In other words, the climate crisis is not only making our weather more chaotic as temperatures rise; it’s also helping to create new strains of dangerous diseases. The unceasing quest for market efficiency has trickled down into microbiology—making illnesses more lethal, and providing them more opportunities to jump from one animal species to another before landing on us humans. And the economic status quo is preventing solutions from taking hold, too.


newrepublic--2020-05-27--The Case for Liberal Arts Education in a Time of Crisis

Well before Covid-19 arrived on the scene , pundits were sounding the death knell for higher education—and now many are proclaiming that the pandemic has dealt the final blow .
They may even be planning a memorial for when it is once again safe to gather in large groups .
I will not be attending .
Neither will millions of people around the world whose own lives have been enriched beyond measure through higher education .
It ’ s true that public and private education have long been under scrutiny and stress—at least since strained state revenues decimated the once-robust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highly competitive admissions helped escalate costs at private schools .
Other long-term trends have fueled widespread suspicion of higher education and its aims : Consumers question our value relative to cost .
Declining birth rates push us ever closer to a demographic reckoning that will lead to further revenue declines .
The continuing denigration of science at the national level fosters corrosive skepticism of academia .
Reduced funding restricts our ability to provide high-quality teaching , research , and co-curricular experiences , especially to underserved communities .
Pervasive nationalism and white-hot rhetoric around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ students seeking education in the United States .
So , yes , the pandemic has us on edge .
But we can turn the present moment to our advantage—and by extension , to everyone ’ s advantage .

This is how students begin to understand and appreciate the differences and the commonalities that exist across cultures, races, ethnicities, gender, and histories. They begin to recognize that, even though there are borders, we must embrace the borderless. This ultimately involves knowing and understanding science and mathematics, the humanities, the arts, and the social sciences by doing them. It is the “what” of education—the content of any civic curriculum worthy of the name.
And the logic of this curriculum always leads back to participating effectively in public life—to developing the discipline and habits of mind involved in pursuing the common good. In engaging with this core mission, we also develop the skills and resources we need in order to work with others beyond the academy to solve what seem like intractable challenges. This collaborative model of enterprise actually fueled many of the great innovations that have since become identified with private-sector success, from the idea of the internet to the development of landmark vaccines. It is indeed no accident that much of the work behind the effort to treat and contain Covid-19 is grounded in pioneering university-directed research.
We must change the all too prevalent but false narrative that academics value theory over practice, that ivy-covered walls separate us from real-world problems.
At a moment of crisis such as this one, and as advocates for higher education, we need to broaden our case far beyond our accustomed in-groups of administrators, researchers, and faculty and student bodies. We must change the all too prevalent but false narrative that academics value theory over practice, that ivy-covered walls separate us from real-world problems. We can do this by more effectively engaging communities beyond our campus. Like many other schools, for example, Lewis & Clark participates in the nationwide Inside-Out Prison Exchange. The program brings undergraduates and incarcerated students together for a semester-long college course held inside a correctional facility. Undergraduates learn some of the reality of the criminal justice system. Prisoners may recover the personal voice often taken from them in incarceration.


newrepublic--2020-05-27--The U.S. Can’t “Win” an Arms Race With Russia and China

The president who told the American people that “ trade wars are good , and easy to win ” now appears equally confident about “ winning ” a nuclear arms race .
Last week , Donald Trump made a half-baked , ill-advised decision to pull the U.S. out of its Open Skies Treaty with Russia ; now , his administration is signaling plans to blow up the last major security accord standing , the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ( New START ) with Russia , and thus open the door to an arms race .
In a streaming Q-and-A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Marshall Billingslea , Trump ’ s arms-control envoy , conceded that major-power nuclear accords were vital to human security , but he added that if New START fell apart , everything would be fine .
“ The president ’ s made clear that we have a tried-and-true practice here , ” Billingslea said .
“ We know how to win these [ arms ] races .
And we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion.
” In a little over seven months , New START is set to expire , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agreement ’ s five-year extension provision—a no-brainer extension that would be routinely approved under a normal administration—unless China joins the talks and Russia makes additional concessions .
If Washington blocks New START ’ s extension , then as of February 5 , 2021 , the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia will be without legal limits for the first time in decades .
In that world , the treaty ’ s verification measures—the sort that allowed American inspectors to see Russia ’ s fancy new hypersonic boost-gliding intercontinental ballistic missile warhead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russian President Vladimir Putin has already offered to extend the treaty without preconditions , but skeptics in the administration see Putin ’ s eagerness on the matter as weakness , interpreting it as evidence that their hard-line stance is working to raise anxieties in Moscow .
If the U.S. is willing to let New START collapse , the onus remains on Washington to show what will come after it .
But just as there was no Trump plan to actually “ win ” a trade war with China , there isn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a new post-treaty arms race .

But more troublingly, Billingslea’s assertion that the U.S. “know[s] how to spend the adversary into oblivion” seems slightly deranged in the middle of a once-in-a-century global pandemic that’s caused the highest U.S. unemployment rate since the Great Depression, which lawmakers have tried to slow with $3 trillion in economic relief, with trillions more likely needed.
Of course, Billingslea knows a thing or two about spending into oblivion. After starting his career as a defense adviser to the late Senator Jesse Helms, Billingslea worked in the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration, helping to spend an estimated $6.4 trillion on post-9/11 overseas wars that have killed 800,000 people worldwide and displaced 21 million. (His arms-control duties for Trump are a consolation prize, granted to him after his nomination to the State Department’s top human rights post stalled out over his role in Bush-era torture of detainees.) If spending without results is what’s being promised, Billingslea might have a case.
Even if the U.S. weren’t facing a second Depression and suffering from epochal deficit expansion following Trump’s 2018 tax cuts, as an unelected presidential envoy, Billingslea simply has no standing to argue that the U.S. will spend lavishly on nuclear weapons “if we have to”—that is, if he fails at his primary job, negotiating. Those fiscal priorities are up to Congress, which has spent heavily on defense in recent years only to pull back from an increasingly contentious Middle East, fight to a stalemate in Afghanistan, and suffer corruption and civil unrest at home. Nuclear arsenal notwithstanding, the U.S. is looking more like the late-stage Soviet Union than an unconstrained hegemon.


newrepublic--2020-05-27--Twitter Can’t Rein In Donald Trump

Twitter Can’t Rein In Donald Trump

“ President Trump on Tuesday tweeted to his nearly 80 million followers alluding to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss , former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough , ” Timothy Klausutis wrote in a letter sent to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week and published by The New York Times .
“ Please delete those tweets .
My wife deserves better.
” Trump ’ s cruel lies about Joe Scarborough ’ s involvement in Klausutis ’ s wife ’ s death have been widely condemned by the media , Democrats , and some Republicans .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ human cost of Trump ’ s vicious tweets .
Reading his letter you can come to only one conclusion : The president is a monster .
But what do you do about it ?
Klausutis has a solution , one that is supported by Kara Swisher , who first reported on the letter in the Times : When the president lies and spreads fake news , Twitter should delete the tweets .
Twitter , indirectly addressing the backlash that followed Klausutis ’ s letter , took a different approach , unveiling a new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s tweets and that , unsurprisingly , led to Trump threatening to “ close them down.
” These are understandable , if grossly belated ( in Twitter ’ s case anyway ) , responses to a thorny problem .
The president tweets conspiracy theories , cruel and often false personal attacks , and complete nonsense .
But the possible solutions are far from straightforward and are often counterproductive .
Dorsey could theoretically kick Trump off Twitter , but unfortunately the president of the United States can not be de-platformed .
He would @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Klausutis’s letter highlights a larger problem with coverage of Trump. Although the media has covered Trump’s lurid attacks on Scarborough with appropriate severity, there remains a strong element of political theater to the controversy. Trump rose to prominence in part thanks to Scarborough, whose ratings saw a boost when he featured Trump on his show. Now the two are on the outs. It’s practically a boxing match: Round 4,000 of Trump vs. The Media.
Klausutis depicts the president’s actions as a human travesty, rather than a political one. The president doesn’t care at all about people who are grieving; all he cares about is a television host who was mean to him. That these tweets have been sent out in the midst of a pandemic that has killed 100,000 Americans only underscores the president’s blatant disregard for anyone who isn’t himself.
But deleting these tweets, or “fact-checking” them, doesn’t change Trump’s fundamental awfulness. There is an understandable fixation on the president’s Twitter feed, a direct window into his state of mind. (It is also a venue for policy pronouncements: It was only a few months ago that he appeared to declare war on Iran in a tweet.) But it is far from the only medium in which Trump acts like a deranged person. He has suggested that injecting disinfectant could kill coronavirus, in a press conference. He has implied that Megyn Kelly was on her period in a Fox News–hosted debate. I could go on.


newrepublic--2020-05-27--The Biggest Threat to a Coronavirus Vaccine Is the American People

President Donald Trump claims that a coronavirus vaccine will be available by the end of the year .
Anthony Fauci , the country ’ s top infectious disease expert , expects one within 18 months .
Most other experts believe those are optimistic timelines at best , even as countries and companies pour resources into programs to find one .
Until one is developed by researchers and approved by regulators , the pandemic will not truly be over .
To make matters worse , developing a coronavirus vaccine will only be half the battle .
The other half will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A survey released Wednesday by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research suggests that it may be an uphill fight .
Only 49 percent of Americans said they planned on getting a coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available , according to the poll , while 31 percent said they were unsure .
Perhaps the most troubling finding was that 20 percent of Americans said they would not get the vaccine at all .
If large numbers of Americans opt out of getting a coronavirus vaccine , states may feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local health officials to order mandatory vaccinations .
The Supreme Court has long upheld such orders , concluding that the states ’ duty to safeguard public health in a pandemic outweighs the infringement upon an individual ’ s personal liberty .
But not all of the constitutional questions around mandatory vaccinations are settled , including the role that religious exemptions might play .
In today ’ s political and cultural environment , such a challenge might find a more receptive audience on the Roberts court—and among the Trump-aligned right .
In theory , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constitutional footing to compel vaccinations in the interest of public health .
In 1902 , health officials in Cambridge , Massachusetts , ordered mandatory smallpox vaccinations after a local outbreak of the disease .
Henning Jacobson , a local pastor , refused them for himself and his son .
After his arrest , he questioned the safety and efficacy of the smallpox vaccine and claimed that forcing him to receive it violated the Fourteenth Amendment .
Three years later , the Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that mandatory vaccination was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police powers .

Jacobson was one of the earliest major cases to discuss police powers, which the court defined as the state’s ability to make “such reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety.” In the 1922 case Zucht v. King, the court sided with a San Antonio school district that refused to admit a student who hadn’t been vaccinated. Justice Louis Brandeis, writing for the court, said that Jacobson had “settled” that it fell “within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination.” Zucht laid the legal groundwork for today’s requirements that students receive a slate of vaccinations before attending public schools.
The high court has not heard a major case on mandatory-vaccination orders of any kind since Zucht, and for good reason.
The high court has not heard a major case on mandatory-vaccination orders of any kind since Zucht, and for good reason. Thanks to medical advancements in the twentieth century, infectious diseases that once periodically struck American cities, such as cholera and yellow fever, are no longer endemic on this continent. Smallpox, the scourge that prompted Cambridge officials to order Jacobson’s vaccination more than a century ago, was eradicated in 1980. Many states still retain the power to compel mass vaccinations in a public health emergency; the Florida Department of Health recently reasserted its authority to do so in an executive order issued last month by Governor Ron DeSantis.
Even before the coronavirus, however, states wrestled with a newer challenge to public health: the resurgence of the anti-vaccine movement. Fueled by a discredited study claiming a link to autism, as well as a deluge of misinformation on the internet, anti-vaxxers in the U.S. and Europe have contributed to a decline in overall vaccination rates. As a result, some childhood diseases that had previously been kept in check by herd immunity have begun to make a resurgence. In 2018 and 2019, New York experienced its worst measles outbreak in almost three decades, which infected hundreds of children and spread to other states.


newrepublic--2020-05-28--The Implausibility of an “Explosive” Economic Rebound by November

On Tuesday , Politico reported a growing anxiety among Democratic policy experts that a dramatic economic recovery could boost President Trump in November ’ s election .
Jason Furman , who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration , has been pushing the argument hard and reportedly shocked “ a large bipartisan group of top officials ” with a presentation on the subject last month .
“ Instead of forecasting a prolonged Depression-level economic catastrophe , ” Politico ’ s Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman wrote , “ Furman laid out a detailed case for why the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump the chance to brag—truthfully—about the most explosive monthly employment numbers and gross domestic product growth ever.
” Those explosive figures , the thinking goes , will be produced by an end to the coronavirus lockdowns later this year as the pandemic subsides .
The Biden campaign is taking the possibility seriously , and White House officials like National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow have happily endorsed Furman ’ s analysis .
“ I totally agree , ” Kudlow told Lizza and Lippman by text message .
“ Q3 may be the single @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2nd half super big growth , transitioning to 4 percent or more in 2021.
” These predictions clash with some of the data we ’ re being given now .
Twenty states reported an increase in new cases last week , an uptick from the 13 states that reported increases in the week prior .
That spike happened to coincide with the easing of lockdown restrictions around the country , and the list of states with the highest surges includes Missouri , where viral videos and images were taken of vacationers swarming pools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over Memorial Day weekend .
This is the kind of behavior that might make a large second wave of infections more likely , and epidemiologists have long said that restrictions should be reinstated if the virus begins spreading rapidly again .
If that happens before the election , the growth and employment numbers won ’ t be anything for Trump to crow about .
But consider the voters who will find themselves on the wrong side of an economic recovery , even if we really do see one by November .
More than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since March , and millions more are at risk .
Will the owners of shuttered shops and restaurants be jumping for joy at the latest quarterly GDP figures ?
What about those running businesses that might reopen to fewer customers if wary Americans avoid going out and shopping unnecessarily well into the remainder of the year ?
How might they assess the state of consumer confidence on Election Day ?
And what about the workers who will remain unemployed—those who won ’ t snap back to work because the businesses that employed them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left will be too hard up to hire again anytime soon ?
What about the currently employed workers who might join them or face pay cuts as broke firms and state and local governments take hard looks at their balance sheets in the months ahead ?
Will they be passing charts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics around the dinner table in the fall , reassuring their families and themselves that the economy has been set right again ?

It has been widely noted that voters in 1918 did not seem eager to punish their leaders for that year’s flu outbreak—scholars have had some difficulty discerning whether the pandemic had any real political impact at all. “[T]he connection between pain and electoral punishment requires voters to imagine—however plausibly or implausibly—that incumbent leaders could have prevented or ameliorated their pain,” the political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels wrote in a 2004 paper. “In the case of the flu pandemic, that crucial attribution of political responsibility was lacking.”
It is not lacking today. A 53 percent majority of Americans disapproves of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, and that number has been increasing steadily since early last month. But approval of Trump overall has remained stable. In fact, FiveThirtyEight’s average shows that his approval rating is a touch higher today than it was exactly a year ago, 42.6 percent to 41.2 percent. For that, you can thank polarization—public opinion is directed less by facts and figures than by political allegiance, and the size and composition of the two major political camps in our country hasn’t changed significantly at all. So economic growth, which Americans usually credit presidents with erroneously, did little to boost Trump’s numbers before the pandemic, and impeachment and scandal did little to bring them down. There are millions of Americans who will never abandon the president—including some willing to acknowledge that his response to the pandemic has been disastrous. And there are millions more who will never back him. Since taking office, Donald Trump has never enjoyed a day’s worth of support from the majority of the American people.
All that said, the broad composition of the American electorate will matter less in November than the preferences of the constituencies that will be key to an Electoral College victory. And as we wait to see whether Furman’s dubious speculations play out, we should avail ourselves of some of the numbers we already have in hand. Right now, Joe Biden is seemingly ahead in almost every swing state. He’s also made eye-popping gains among some of the most reliable and reliably conservative voters—the elderly. A Fox News poll last week found him ahead with voters over 65 by 17 points. Trump won the category by seven points in 2016. The picture may well change in the months ahead, but Biden will probably be in good shape on Election Day. The same probably cannot be said for the economy.


newrepublic--2020-05-28--The Pandemic Is the Right Time to Defund the Police

The pandemic has slowed much American police work , but police are still working .
“ As of May 17 , 375 people had been shot and killed by on-duty police officers in 2020—about the same rate as other recent years despite the coronavirus pandemic , ” Wesley Lowery , who helped track killings at The Washington Post , observed on Tuesday .
Just a day before , a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the ground , kneeling on his neck for five minutes .
Floyd ’ s last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Facebook : “ Don ’ t kill me ” and “ I can not breathe.
” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey swiftly fired the four officers involved and has called for criminal charges .
For all of the promises made post-Ferguson , after ( now former ) Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown nearly six years ago , police continue to kill at an undisturbed pace .
Each year , police on duty claim the lives of between 900 and 1,100 people , according to the Police Integrity Research Group at Bowling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , on average , resulting in indictments and even fewer convictions .
“ The only Minneapolis police officer to be convicted in an on-duty , fatal shooting was Mohamed Noor , who shot and killed Justine Ruszczyk in 2017 , ” reports Minnesota Public Radio .
“ Noor is black .
Ruszczyk was white.
” While police kill , their unions rally to their defense .
Before Mayor Frey fired the officers involved in Lloyd ’ s death , the Minneapolis Police Federation , the local police union , had openly defied him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warrior ” trainings , which encourage officers to regard their job as if they were engaged in military combat .
One representative course is called “ On Killing.
” These are less a training than an immersion in an alternate reality , in which , as Craig Atkinson , director of the police militarization documentary Do Not Resist , described it , “ every single traffic stop could be , might be , the last stop you ever make in your life.
” Mayors like Frey , as well as city councils , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the police .
But even when oversight is exercised , police continue to kill and keep their jobs .
Now some cities are being urged to take a broader view : to shrink the police force altogether through the power of the budget , particularly at a moment when so many other social programs and essential services are at risk of being cut during a pandemic .

The coronavirus pandemic has also led to such a drop in policing and in crimes—one reason why the Policing & Social Justice Project has called for the city to cut the current $5.6 billion NYPD budget by $1 billion over four years. Police overtime accounted for $728 million in 2019, wrote the project’s coordinator, Alex Vitale, in the New York Daily News, while “New York City spends more on policing than it does on the Departments of Health, Homeless Services, Housing Preservation and Development, and Youth and Community Development combined.” The pandemic only helps make the case that money spent on police work that does not keep the city safe is far better spent on protecting New Yorkers by improving health care and housing.
It’s not an unprecedented restructuring of city priorities: For the last few years, activists in Austin, Texas, including groups like the Austin Justice Coalition (AJC), have pressed the city to cut police budgets and reduce the number of police. They pushed for the city council to vote down the police association’s contract, launching their campaign during the budget session, wrote Sukyi McMahon and Chas Moore of AJC, “so that our demands would interrupt the flow of money into the department.” The contract the council later passed “priced out at $44 million, half of the [police] association’s $82.5 million bid.” They continue to push the city council, advocating that it assign emergency medical services to respond to mental health calls instead of the police and reallocate $1.75 million from the police budget to emergency services—which would also cut 30 police officers.
In Durham, North Carolina, activists successfully campaigned through the city budget process and won “zero police expansion,” as the coalition Durham Beyond Policing described it. “We crafted a strong proposal for why we need Durham to invest in life-affirming services, not an unjustified expansion of the police force,” its spokeswoman Manju Rajendran told Indy Week. The group’s proposal begins by asking, “What does public safety look like?” This is the shift needed in debates over police killings. In delegating “safety” to cops, what communities really want and need gets left out. Durham Mayor Pro Tempore Jillian Johnson has echoed their points, writing of the decision not to fund new police officers, “The safest communities don’t have the most cops; they have the most resources.”


newrepublic--2020-05-28--Unionizing the Office in an Age of Remote Work

Before it was mandated for millions of workers by the coronavirus , remote work was an occasionally controversial practice .
While some management studies have claimed that working from home increased employees ’ productivity and happiness , and others have indicated the exact opposite , company policies around remote work have usually been the result of something a bit more capricious .
For instance , former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer—who infamously claimed to have logged 100-hour workweeks and slept under her desk during her tenure as a Google programmer—banned Yahoo employees from working remotely after she suspected employees were slacking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Companies like Dell , on the other hand , have encouraged some employees to work remotely to cut down on overhead .
Since a wide range of so-called office work in the digital age can be performed almost anywhere with an internet connection , office guidelines around working from home—like most other workplace rules—depend less on what ’ s practical or desirable for employees and more on the particular management philosophies ( or pathologies ) of the person in charge .
I ’ ve worked in white-collar offices where employees could work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they pleased with nothing more than a simple “ WFH today ” dispatch to co-workers , and I ’ ve worked in other offices , doing the exact same job , where working from home was strictly prohibited , and a receptionist marked , to the minute , the precise time you walked in the door each morning .
That ’ s to say that the sweeping power of employers—more than the various pros and cons of remote work itself—is perhaps what we should foreground when thinking about the pandemic-induced turn to working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
While there are benefits to remote work—no commute , relative flexibility , sweatpants—certain drawbacks are apparent now that we ’ re a few months into the situation .
With no physical office to leave at the end of the day , and particularly with the threat of layoffs hanging , many office workers are now putting in longer hours and watching work quickly bleed into life .
In some ways , that ’ s just an intensification of the pressures they have been facing for years , as employers have increasingly required @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and email at all hours .
“ The WFH Forever revolution promises to liberate workers from the chains of the office , ” New York Times columnist Charlie Warzel wrote this week .
“ In practice , it will capitalize on the total collapse of work-life balance.
” One other especially troubling consequence of the disappearance of the office is that a potentially permanent increase in remote work will almost certainly make it harder for workers to fight against those very conditions .
Grace Reckers , an organizer with the Office and Professional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worked on a number of union campaigns at tech companies and nonprofits , told The New Republic that organizing offices with a mix of on-site and remote workers , or workers across several locations , has always presented certain challenges .
For one , remote workers aren ’ t physically part of the daily “ water cooler talk ” that often seeds a union drive in an office .
And as more and more workers go ( or stay ) remote in the wake of the coronavirus , those types of informal conversations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I do think there ’ s a lot of conversation that gets lost when people aren ’ t physically interacting , aren ’ t walking to lunch together or passing each other in the halls , ” Reckers said .
“ And what a lot of people have mentioned since Covid is that they don ’ t feel as comfortable reaching out to their co-workers as they would have in the past , because they haven ’ t spoken with them in a few months now .
Even though they used to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , now there ’ s no natural point of connection.
” And even as messaging services like Slack and email become a growing part of contemporary union campaigns , employer surveillance—on company laptops or phones—presents real risks to workers hoping to keep campaigns private in early stages .

One other especially troubling consequence of the disappearance of the office is that a potentially permanent increase in remote work will almost certainly make it harder for workers to fight against those very conditions. Grace Reckers, an organizer with the Office and Professional Employees International Union, who’s worked on a number of union campaigns at tech companies and nonprofits, told The New Republic that organizing offices with a mix of on-site and remote workers, or workers across several locations, has always presented certain challenges. For one, remote workers aren’t physically part of the daily “water cooler talk” that often seeds a union drive in an office. And as more and more workers go (or stay) remote in the wake of the coronavirus, those types of informal conversations could very well dwindle for everyone. “I do think there’s a lot of conversation that gets lost when people aren’t physically interacting, aren’t walking to lunch together or passing each other in the halls,” Reckers said. “And what a lot of people have mentioned since Covid is that they don’t feel as comfortable reaching out to their co-workers as they would have in the past, because they haven’t spoken with them in a few months now. Even though they used to sit near each other in the office, now there’s no natural point of connection.” And even as messaging services like Slack and email become a growing part of contemporary union campaigns, employer surveillance—on company laptops or phones—presents real risks to workers hoping to keep campaigns private in early stages.
At the same time, the evaporation of any sense of job security in the wake of the economic crash also has the potential to generate new interest in organizing. The years following the Great Recession, for instance, saw a wave of unionization across industries like digital media, academia, and tech, as budgets were frozen or slashed, and employees in once-prestigious fields were laid off en masse or asked to do more for less. Though unions in fields like tech and media sometimes seem like a different species from their industrial counterparts, most of the reasons why office workers choose to unionize in the first place—job security, pay and benefits, better working conditions, and greater dignity and autonomy on the job—in the end aren’t terribly different. “There’s no guarantee that from one Monday to the next we will have a job,” Josh Borden, a member of a group of Pittsburgh-based Google contractors who unionized last year, told The Guardian. “It feels like being on the edge of a cliff all the time.”


newrepublic--2020-05-28--The End of the Backlash to Big Tech

The End of the Backlash to Big Tech

Don ’ t trust anyone who gets rich during a pandemic .
Jeff Bezos , whose world-straddling fortune was built largely on the backs of immiserated warehouse workers around the planet , has seen his net worth increase to over $ 140 billion since the beginning of 2020 .
The nominal cause is a growing societal dependence on Amazon , which , for many people stuck at home , has proven nearly indispensable as a way to score everything from basic foodstuffs to the soothing narcotic of streaming video .
As America suffers , Amazon prospers .
The company is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in its own Covid-19 testing program .
Amazon ’ s Web Services division faces enormous demand as housebound Americans require more technical infrastructure for shopping , gaming , Twitching , and the like .
And Amazon is not alone in enjoying the strange fruits of the pandemic .
Apple and Google have announced development of a contact-tracing smartphone technology that will alert users of possible exposure to the novel coronavirus .
A number of facial recognition companies—including the farcically villainous Clearview AI—are now pivoting their products to track coronavirus patients , while temperature-reading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theater are being sold to law enforcement agencies worldwide .
In May , New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt would lead a commission to reimagine how the state does business , focusing on remote education , telehealth—and , of course , expanded access to the internet .
Big Tech ’ s newfound role as all-purpose savior marks something of a turnaround for the industry , which not long ago was facing serious political scrutiny for the first time in its young life .
Both Democrats and Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competition , privacy , data security , and political advertising .
Members of both parties had also floated the possibility of breaking up Silicon Valley ’ s monopoly power , treating tech CEOs like the robber barons of the Gilded Age .
At Facebook , Congress ’ s favorite target , Mark Zuckerberg , fretted to company insiders about the potential influence of Senator Elizabeth Warren , while , in a possible attempt to complicate a breakup , the company ’ s engineers worked to merge the back-end technologies powering its suite of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assembled armies of lobbyists to win favor on Capitol Hill , even as back home they saw their traditional talent pipelines begin to dry up .
In a couple of antic months , all of that has changed .
The Covid-19 pandemic has rolled back the tide of congressional inquiry , as both the public and lawmakers have grown even more reliant on the technologies of Silicon Valley .
From messaging to food delivery to video chats to online shopping , the dial of our tech dependency has been turned to 11 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the presence of Big Tech in our lives , says Eric Schmidt .
Critics like Warren and Republican Senator Josh Hawley will presumably continue to press the issue , but there is less incentive to aggressively investigate an industry that , despite its obvious defects , is suddenly responsible for keeping hundreds of millions of people connected , fed , working , and entertained .
If , as some hope , Silicon Valley can provide important technologies and engineering and production capacity to help fight the viral epidemic , so much the @ @

If the political backlash to Big Tech has been relegated to the past tense, it’s worth considering what kind of world will emerge in its wake. Tech’s monopolist torchbearers like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) seem not only secure but ready to extend their dominion as they respond to growing corporate and government demands for surveillance of people and goods, tracking the sick and securing supply chains. Who controls the apps that watch over and serve us? Will we allow a self-interested set of tech giants to become the dominant forces in our lives? So far, the answers seem to be as obvious as they are depressing.
It’s worth considering, too, what we would be giving up—what the techlash intended to achieve by way of creating a society that was more equal and more diverse. The wholesale reordering of the economy along lines favorable to Silicon Valley speaks to both the growing, likely unstoppable power of Big Tech and our inability to think outside a narrow technocratic mindset, in which any problem can be solved with more data, surveillance, and coercion. What we really need now is what we’ve always needed: political solutions to political problems like inequality, climate change, lack of health care access, generational warfare, and, indeed, the Covid pandemic.
Silicon Valley’s most pressing ideological blind spot is that it has never been able to think in these terms. It has always assumed its inherent beneficence and innovative thinking would make politics superfluous. Tech aspires to build frictionless systems, but the welter of human affairs, especially of governance, has never been frictionless, nor should it be. The techlash helped to declare that we have other important values, especially when people’s lives are concerned. If, for instance, a Saudi-subsidized taxi app threatens to clog cities, upend the market, and drive scores of mostly immigrant men into bankruptcy, and even some to suicide, then perhaps the cut-rate efficiencies of Uber just aren’t worth it. And, perhaps, the law and regulatory bodies should respond in kind to protect consumers and workers from this kind of economic predation.


newrepublic--2020-05-29--My Life on Rent Strike

My Life on Rent Strike

I moved up to Philly from North Carolina , just south of Charlotte , about two years ago for school .
I loved it but had to drop out in 2018 because it ’ s hard to manage going to school and keeping up with a full-time job and paying rent .
In March , when the city started shutting down because of the pandemic and around the time that I started organizing with other tenants , I had recently been furloughed from my job at a local cinema .
I didn ’ t know what was gon na happen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to pay , and knew a lot of people were in far worse places than I was .
I live in a building owned by New Age Real Estate , a huge management company here in West Philadelphia .
They manage over 900 units , which is absurd .
Before I got involved with the New Age Tenants Council , I had started posting flyers around the building and in our neighborhood , asking people what their concerns are during this time , if they are able to afford rent , and how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ After that , I started going door-to-door , trying to get people to sign petitions in advance , trying to do it in the most socially distanced , quarantine type of way .
I was trying to have productive organizing conversations .
Things like : How are you going to take care of your family at this time ?
How about in two to three months from now ?
A lot of people have huge concerns about all that , but some were still very hesitant about helping organize , mostly because they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rent again from these people or being otherwise blacklisted .
Some people wouldn ’ t even open the door .
But right now we have about 100 members , and it ’ s still growing .
We ’ re still reaching out to new people every day , and new people are reaching out to us .
Some folks are much more willing to get involved than others .
And I think what a lot of it boils down to is the illusion of choice .
Not everyone has a choice of whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some , it ’ s mandatory—they just can ’ t pay .

When you go to your landlord as an individual, they can just say no. And that’s the end of the story. But if you go to your landlords as 10, 15, 20, or in this case 100, they can talk to those management companies and those landlords as huge collectives, as bodies that are essentially larger than the management properties themselves.
We want full rent relief across the board. We were willing to work with New Age on how that looks. We also want them to pledge to not process evictions for the duration of the pandemic, which, the courts are closed here anyways, but what we really want is for them to not pursue evictions after the courts reopen, either. We are trying to center our demands and struggles around queer people, trans people, Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color. It’s so important we protect marginalized groups during this time because not only are they the most at-risk during the pandemic, but marginalized groups are going to be the first ones to face evictions when courts reopen.
New Age has asked us to reveal private financial information to help us on an individual basis, which we are totally opposed to. And then last week, they drafted up a letter that said, “Contrary to [New Age Tenant Council’s] mantra, the pandemic has not left everyone unable to pay rent, and sadly, some see the pandemic as an opportunity for a handout.” We’re not asking for handouts. We’re asking for genuine human compassion during this time.


newrepublic--2020-05-29--The Trump Administration Has Abandoned Worker Safety at the Worst Moment

As “ essential workers ” labor under dangerous conditions through the coronavirus pandemic , they might be curious to learn that the terms of their employment are in technical violation of federal law .
For half a century now , it ’ s been illegal for any U.S. business to expose its employees to “ recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.
” But a law is only as good as the government ’ s willingness to enforce it , and the agency that supposedly enforces that one , the Occupational Safety @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t want to .
At a congressional hearing Thursday , Democrats demanded to know why OSHA has yet to issue a single citation related to Covid-19— “ not one !
” exclaimed Rep. Alma Adams , chair of the House Workforce Protections subcommittee -- during the two and a half months since the president declared the pandemic to be a national emergency .
There ’ s no good answer—beyond , that is , the priorities of a Republican administration that ’ s resistant to the idea that workers possess any rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforceable rules for what businesses must do to protect workers from a virus that ’ s now killed more than 100,000 Americans .
Congressional Democrats want OSHA to issue an emergency temporary standard that would penalize employers who failed to comply , and a House-passed coronavirus bill now stalled in the Senate would require OSHA to do so .
But Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia , whose Cabinet department includes OSHA , has stated repeatedly that the tools already at OSHA ’ s disposal are sufficient .
( Scalia is the son of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and he shares his father ’ s dim view of government regulation . )
The idea that OSHA ’ s existing apparatus is all that ’ s needed to punish employers who willfully expose their workers to Covid-19 is hard to square with OSHA ’ s record of never having done so , not even once .
It ’ s also a poor match for the deaths by coronavirus of 299 healthcare workers , according to the Centers for Disease Control , and 68 grocery workers , according to the United Food and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network .

Scalia says the only tool OSHA needs to punish bad actors is the language quoted above from the legislation that created the agency in 1970: “Each employer shall furnish to each of his employees” a workplace “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.” This is known as the “duty clause”—and, as Rebecca Rainey reported earlier this month in Politico, it’s a very cumbersome litigation tool that OSHA has seldom used to punish scofflaws in the past. (In fiscal year 2018, it was applied in only 1.5 percent out of a total of roughly 60,000 OSHA citations, according to the National Safety Council.) Scalia himself, Rainey noted, when he was a management-side attorney for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, argued in 2013 that the duty clause was “particularly inappropriate” for OSHA to rely on in holding SeaWorld Orlando accountable for the fatal injury of a trainer by a killer whale. (In that instance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed with Scalia and held that the duty clause prevailed.)
Guidance is bureaucratese for “advice,” not “rules.” And advice can be ignored.
At Thursday’s hearing, Sweatt emphasized that OSHA has issued a lot of industry-specific “guidance” related to Covid-19. But guidance is bureaucratese for “advice,” not “rules.” And advice can be ignored. Under the law, OSHA can issue an emergency temporary standard if “employees are exposed to grave danger.” A lawsuit recently brought by the AFL-CIO argues that, under present circumstances, OSHA must issue such a standard—that is, set firm rules that industry must obey.
“Do you think that Covid-19 presents a grave danger to workers?” Adams asked Sweatt at the hearing.


newrepublic--2020-05-29--The Coronavirus Was Here

The Coronavirus Was Here

I live three miles from ground zero for coronavirus-shaming in America .
Eons ago , in early March , the reality of the pandemic was taking hold , and public officials—at least , the ones who hadn ’ t dismissed the virus as fake news—began to prescribe “ social distancing ” and limiting travel as preventive measures .
Spring-breaking students , however , had already made hotel reservations and plans to live forever ; they flocked to Fort Lauderdale , my home , as they do every year , and they writhed together on the beach like hogs in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the scene spread across social media , outraging people who were—one assumes—already doing their part to contain the spread of the virus .
That beach bacchanalia wasn ’ t just a focal point for national anger .
It was a literal viral moment , contributing to the spread of the novel coronavirus across the country .
Fort Lauderdale officials raced to shut down the beach and limit bar crowds before a possible St. Patrick ’ s Day super-spreading event .
That was a week before Florida ’ s dithering Trumpesque governor , Ron @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Lauderdale coastline has been empty ever since—at least until its reopening on Tuesday , when I decided to swing by for a brief tryst with the Atlantic .
I grew up on this beach , swimming miles up the shore , drinking underage at the grody bars , skin-diving with friends off rocky outcroppings in the ocean .
But I was scared to go there on Tuesday .
I had read about the crowded scenes elsewhere at reopened beaches from North Florida and Southern California .
A beach reopening in Jacksonville , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hordes of humanity pressed together in the sand , had led # FLORIDAMORONS to trend on Twitter .
What if thousands of other South Floridians had the same idea ?

Here in Broward County, nearly half of Covid-related deaths occurred in about two dozen senior care centers. Sixteen people died in a nursing home near me that’s about five minutes’ drive from the beach. Killing the elderly without repercussions is a pastime for Florida governments: As governor during Hurricane Irma, Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator, famously deleted desperate voicemails on his personal phone from a Broward senior home where power outages ultimately killed 12 patients. But there’s been a widespread lack of concern for elderly care amid this crisis, while beachgoer photos get thousands of viral hate-shares online. “For months, New York sent more than 4,300 recovering elderly COVID patients back to nursing homes because of a [Cuomo] directive,” sociologist Zeynep Tufekci complained on Twitter. “I don’t get how this isn’t the biggest news. The core issues aren’t the beaches, the parks or the unmasked joggers passing by.”
That said, beach access is always a core issue for the state’s coastal residents. “A lot of people who grew up here think of it as, ‘That’s my beach,’” says longtime Tampa Bay–area reporter Craig Pittman. “If you can’t go to the beach, what is Florida?” It’s long been a point of pride among the citizenry that there’s no such thing as a truly, legally private beach in Florida. According to the state Constitution, ownership of “beaches below mean high water lines, is held by the state, by virtue of its sovereignty, in trust for all the people.”
Conservative land barons have learned the hard way that Floridians cherish public beach access more than the wealthy’s property rights. In 2018, his last year as Florida’s richest-ever governor, Scott was forced to reverse himself after signing a bill that would have made it harder for local governments to maintain public access to beaches abutting private homes. (Scott’s main residence is a Naples beachfront manse currently valued at $16 million by Zillow.)


newrepublic--2020-05-29--David Frum’s Hold Over the Center

David Frum’s Hold Over the Center

I will grudgingly admit that I underestimated the Never Trump conservatives .
Like many on the left , I shared the view summarized by Jeet Heer in The New Republic on the eve of the 2016 election—that this small but vocal clique of conservative operatives and pundits vastly overstated its own importance .
The Never Trumpers failed to block Donald Trump ’ s nomination , and their prediction that he would marginalize the Republican Party has been thoroughly discredited by events .
But judged by a different metric , we should give the Never Trumpers their due .
They may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOP , but they ’ ve enjoyed considerably more sway over the Democratic Party ; more , one can argue , than the party ’ s insurgent left wing .
For the past four years , these self-styled dissidents—including Max Boot , Jennifer Rubin , Matthew Dowd , Rick Wilson , Ana Navarro , and Bill Kristol , to name just a few of the most prominent voices—have ingratiated themselves with the liberal establishment , becoming mainstays of cable news and respectable opinion pages , publishing books , and piling up likes and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preferred Joe Biden to Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee for president—and as The Daily Beast reports , the Biden campaign is preparing to use them as surrogates .
Should Biden defeat Trump this fall , the resulting administration is at least as likely to consult with these avowed conservatives on policy as with anyone who supported the democratic socialist runner-up in the primaries .
David Frum , a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and current staff writer at The Atlantic , is one of the best known Never Trumpers , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ having made his break with the GOP long before Trump .
In 2008 , Frum harshly criticized the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain ’ s running mate—a choice that , in hindsight , foreshadowed Trump ’ s run—though he ultimately still voted for McCain .
His subsequent criticisms of the GOP for blocking Barack Obama ’ s health care reform efforts , as well as of right-wing media organizations like Fox News , eventually got him fired from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute and marked him as an outcast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Harvard-educated Canadian , a perfectly decent writer , and a fixture of the Washington social circuit , Frum has been one of liberals ’ favorite conservatives for a long time .
Meanwhile , on the left , he is best known as the speechwriter who coined the phrase “ Axis of Evil , ” which was deployed in Bush ’ s 2002 State of the Union address and helped pave the way for the invasion of Iraq the following year .
Frum ’ s current position seems to be that the Iraq @ @ @ @ @ @ @ failure , and , above all , not his fault .
But he is well aware that it is a legacy he will continually have to account for .

It’s become evident over the Trump years that there exists a militant progressive constituency who regard Trump as a much lesser evil than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. This constituency may be small, but in 2016 it proved sufficient to tip a close election to Trump. Trump is hoping the trick can be repeated. You are either helping Trump—or stopping Trump.
Later, he writes “The people who most vociferously cheered for Edward Snowden and Julian Assange in the first half of the 2010s made clear they preferred Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the second half,” as though Glenn Greenwald represents an appreciable slice of the U.S. electorate. This is a very broad brush with which to paint the left, and one that reveals little attempt to understand or reckon with its perspective on the shortcomings of a Clinton or a Biden—or to help the presumptive Democratic nominee do anything to earn its support. Frum’s online brushes with the left have no doubt colored his impressions. “Twitter is in danger of becoming the Fox News of the Left, policed by pile-ons by angry Twitter mobs,” he warns early on. It’s true Frum can hardly tweet anything without being deluged with replies calling him a war criminal, but he ought to at least consider whether that has less to do with the left than with his own decisions.
But Frum understands who his real base is. Of the Democratic victories in the 2018 midterms, he writes, “They won because unhappy suburban moderates voted anti-Trump from the top of the ticket to the bottom.” He runs through some of the affluent and once staunchly Republican House districts that went blue because of Trump, then crows about how Trump rallies invariably take place far from SoulCycle and Equinox gyms, which he characterizes as “sophisticated, urban, and inclusive.” The point is clear: Never Trumpers actually do exist in the electorate, and not just in the media. By and large, they are comfortable suburban white people across the country who have migrated to the Democrats out of personal distaste for Trump, and they hold—and moreover, deserve to hold—the balance of political power nationally. Trumpocalypse is a book for them, meant to express their worldview and flatter their very specific notions of right and wrong.
I would love to be able to dismiss this argument, but as I said at the beginning of this review, the Never Trumpers—the actual demographic, as well as its media champions—have managed to exert a significant amount of influence over the Democratic Party. Joe Biden will be their president, if he is to be president at all. Where that leaves the left—by which I mean the third of Democratic primary voters, most of them under the age of 45, who supported Sanders and who are distinctly unenthusiastic about Biden—I can only guess, but the question doesn’t seem to trouble Frum at all. For all he and his cohort style themselves refugees from the two major parties, they are actually quite adept at working with the elites of either to maintain a set of policies that comfort the comfortable. Trumpocalypse is Frum’s tenth book, and no matter what happens this November, he is likely to find an audience and a nice advance for the eleventh.