motherjones--2020-06-17--The Cruise Industry Is Donald Trump Personified

If Donald Trump could build a city from scratch , it would have a casino and a golf course and all the cheeseburgers you could eat .
The city ’ s residents would be old , with money to spend and nothing but free time .
The workers would be poor , foreign , and always on the clock .
They would literally live beneath you .
There would be doctors , but not very many , and there would be cops , sort of , but who exactly they were there to protect and serve would remain ambiguous .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ speak of .
The city and its services would be run by a corporation , and you would sign away your rights to a billionaire in his 70s with a tan and bad hair , in exchange for a promise of a good time—art auctions , live music , waterfalls of champagne .
The city would pay no taxes but avail itself of the services funded by those who do .
It would look , in other words , a lot like the Carnival Corporation ’ s 18-story , 952-foot-long Diamond Princess as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after a voyage through Southeast Asia for the Chinese New Year .
Some people would find this city tacky .
But it would be an altogether pleasant place for many people , much of the time .
However , you would not want to be there during a pandemic .
As the cruise approached port , the coronavirus was confined almost entirely to the Chinese city of Wuhan .
Trump ’ s top public health concern was vaping .
But on February 1 , a passenger who had disembarked from the Diamond Princess @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days later , passengers quarantined .
While customers took their meals in their cabins , the vessel ’ s crew—more than 1,000 people from 48 countries—continued to go about their work .
The number of cases onboard would ultimately grow to 712 , and 14 people would die .
The ship , flying the flag of the United Kingdom and owned by a company—registered in Panama—that ’ s chaired by one of the richest men in Miami , saw the first major outbreak of COVID-19 outside of Wuhan .
The pandemic has penetrated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It has burned through nursing homes and choir practices .
It has preyed on the elderly and the immunocompromised , people without access to reliable health care , and the young and perfectly healthy who never saw it coming .
It ’ s killed more than 100,000 people in the United States in big cities and small towns .
But for several weeks , before life as we know it shut down , you could turn on CNN and watch your own dismal future , adrift at sea .
After the Diamond Princess @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out on dozens of other cruise ships—sometimes weeks after it was clear that these vessels were sitting ducks .
The Costa Luminosa ( owned by Carnival subsidiary Costa Cruises ) was waylaid off of France .
The Grand Princess ( owned by Princess Cruises—also Carnival ) detoured to Oakland .
The Zaandam ( part of Holland America , a.k.a .
Carnival ) floated aimlessly for days while Florida ’ s governor debated whether he would accept its passengers .
Cruise ships are uniquely vulnerable when something goes awry—be it an outbreak , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knocks out the power system and fills the decks with raw sewage ( google it ) .
But the industry ’ s explosive growth and skyrocketing profits over the last 50 years have been driven , in part , by a freedom to circumvent health , labor , and safety requirements that bind companies back on shore .
The industry , typified by Carnival ’ s billionaire chair , Micky Arison , has spent decades smoothing over bad experiences with booze and vouchers , insulating itself from the obligations of corporate citizenship in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and cultivating allies in Washington with free vacations and campaign cash .
Long before the pandemic , cruise lines glided over sexual assaults , deaths , outbreaks , illegal dumping , and complaints of worker exploitation while hardly deviating from their course .
The pandemic put that steel hull of invincibility to the test , placing Carnival and the other giants of the industry in the crosshairs of government watchdogs in multiple countries .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scolded cruise companies for their slow response .
Australia launched an investigation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19-afflicted Ruby Princess .
Lawsuits piled up .
Congress hinted at hearings .
Decadent , tax-avoiding , gas-guzzling , low-wage—the industry might have been headed for a reckoning in a different political environment .
But the White House struck a different note .
Trump treated the human victims of the virus with detachment , rarely acknowledging the toll it was taking on American families , and treating stranded passengers as little more than a nuisance that unfairly marred his sterling record .
But in Carnival he seemed to find a victim he could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we know it—the round-trip voyage to nowhere , the booze , the buffets , the Apprentice-themed group packages—began in the early 1970s , when an immigrant from Israel got a good deal on a boat .
The age of air travel was making big ocean liners obsolete , and Ted Arison , a second-generation shipping magnate , was fishing around Miami for the next big thing .
With a businessman from Oslo , he co-founded what is now Norwegian Cruise Line , but they soon fell out .
On the way out the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s funds to purchase a secondhand ship for himself .
The vessel was called the Empress of Canada , but Arison wanted to convey good times , not grandeur .
He renamed it the Mardi Gras .
He called the new company Carnival .
Like many corporate juggernauts—and Carnival would devour so many competitors that rivals would call it “ Carnivore ” —Carnival ’ s rise is shrouded in myth .
As the story goes , on its maiden voyage , with hundreds of travel agents onboard , the Mardi Gras ran aground @ @ @ @ @ @ @ land .
For 28 hours .
Anxious to salvage the event , staff plied guests with free liquor .
When it finally got going , the aging Mardi Gras had to creep along to conserve fuel .
The idea was born : Carnival would be what Arison ’ s son and successor , Micky , called “ the fun ship.
” Instead of treating the cruise as a way of getting to a destination , the cruise would be the destination .
But the company ’ s success story is not just one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the product of an elaborate legal scaffolding .
Take the ships themselves .
During World War II , the United States embraced flags of convenience to keep the flow of supplies going to Europe while nominally staying neutral .
Ships that were American in all other ways could fly the colors of any nation that would have them .
After the war , shipowners rushed to register their fleets in small countries that were happy to absolve these companies of corporate tax obligations , regulations , and oversight in return for a filing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ example , flies the flag of the United Kingdom , but it ’ s owned by Princess Cruises , which is headquartered in Southern California and incorporated in Bermuda .
Princess ’ parent company , Carnival , a company so clearly ensconced in Miami that taxpayers helped fund a new cruise terminal for the company and a basketball arena ( Micky Arison owns the Heat ) , is officially Panamanian .
The itinerary of many cruises is even dictated by the need to preserve this system .
US law prevents foreign-flagged ships from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a workaround , a ship leaving Florida must visit at least one foreign destination before turning around .
Cruises surged in popularity because they are affordable for middle-class families and senior citizens but still offer luxury trappings .
Foreign-registered companies can offer such prices because of how little they have to pay for anything else .
While relying on the services of roughly 20 different federal agencies , Carnival saved $ 600 million last year by paying virtually no US corporate taxes .
( The company points out that last year it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ port fees and various federal , state , and local taxes . )
But the offshoring of the business also boosted the industry ’ s bottom line in another big way—it allowed companies to skirt US labor laws .
Instead of adhering to American minimum wage , overtime , and safety standards , cruise lines simply have to abide by those of places like Liberia , Panama , and Bermuda , which take a hands-off approach to their corporate citizens .
And the cruise companies aren ’ t afraid to play rough .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ aboard two Carnival ships in Miami in 1981—upset about 12-hour days , sardine-like living conditions , and wages as low as $ 100 a week—Micky Arison hired a private security firm to get them off the ship .
Vans of immigration agents stood by to deport them .
Cruise ships are crewed overwhelmingly by workers from countries like the Philippines and Indonesia .
The companies argue that the wages on a cruise ship are considerably greater than those in the workers ’ home countries .
That ’ s true .
But , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take-home pay might add up to just a few bucks an hour .
Workers who feel wronged by cruise companies are left with shockingly little recourse because contracts force cruise-ship employees into arbitration .
Ross Klein , a Memorial University of Newfoundland sociologist whose cruise research cost him his press access to trade shows , told me that if a crew member from South Africa sought arbitration with Carnival , they would have to attend a hearing in Monaco— “ and you ’ d have to share the cost of the arbitration with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Try paying for all that on tips .
No one embodies the lengths the industry will go to in order to hold onto its money like the Arisons .
For a long time , the elder Arison , a dual citizen of the United States and Israel , shielded his personal income from the IRS by reinvesting it in the company .
After the IRS closed that loophole , the billionaire had the company reimburse him—in the form of a dividend—for whatever he happened to owe that year .
Then , in 1990 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so that his estate would transfer to his children tax-free .
He just needed to live another 10 years to qualify .
He made it nine years and change .
There ’ s a famous story about how the cruise industry gets its way in Washington .
Sometime in the early 1990s , Rep. Gene Taylor , then a Mississippi Democrat , was on his way to the House floor to vote on an amendment opposed by the industry when he encountered the cruise industry trade association ’ s lobbyist—a former congressional staffer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years , repeatedly introducing legislation designed to bring maritime jobs back to American shores .
The lobbyist had an idea on how to change his mind : a complimentary cruise— “ so that you get to know us , ” Taylor later recalled .
Taylor turned down the free vacation , but plenty of his colleagues didn ’ t .
Alaska Rep. Don Young brought his wife ( and two colleagues and their wives ) on a 1987 cruise .
Former Montana Sen. Max Baucus once took a four-day Caribbean vacation at sea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ five-day sojourn in South Florida , compliments of industry lobbyists .
Members of Congress insisted these junkets were fact-finding expeditions .
“ I know this may not look great , ” an unlucky staffer explained after one such story broke , “ but it ’ s not like they spent the whole time playing shuffleboard.
” Shilling for Panamanian cruise companies isn ’ t exactly popular , but you don ’ t need a lot of friends in Washington if you just have the right ones .
And no one has been friendlier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who has represented Alaska ’ s at-large district since 1973 .
A snarling , bearded ex–tugboat operator who once brandished a walrus penis during a debate and pulled a knife on a speaker of the House , Young picks his fights—usually over money—and never backs down .
Cruises are the lifeblood of Alaskan tourism .
About 5 percent of all global cruise traffic goes through the state , according to industry data .
Communities along the state ’ s Inside Passage have long struggled to balance the economic boost of millions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that come with it .
It has never been much of a dilemma , though , for Young , who has received more cruise industry campaign money over the years than any other member of Congress .
Young amended a Coast Guard appropriations bill in the 1990s to safeguard the industry from liability lawsuits .
Critics argued the measure would make it harder for sexual assault victims to seek damages .
The final bill blocked all claims of “ emotional distress ” and “ mental suffering ” unless caused by physical injury , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( When Congress was at an impasse , Arison traveled to Washington to make the industry ’ s case in person . )
Young added an amendment to a different bill legalizing gambling on Alaskan cruises .
An Alaska colleague got Bill Clinton ’ s secretary of the interior to expand the number of ships allowed into Glacier Bay National Park , but it was Young who , over the protests of the state ’ s small fleet of domestic cruise ships , tweaked yet another piece of legislation—as chair of the House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great feat—to give foreign cruise companies a monopoly on a lucrative cruise route through the park .
( In 2019 , Carnival paid a $ 20 million criminal penalty for doctoring ship logs to cover up illegal dumping in Glacier Bay and other waterways . )
“ Cruise lines are a very powerful industry with a lot of sway in DC , ” says Sen. Richard Blumenthal ( D-Conn. ) , who has pushed legislation that would require new safety standards on ships .
“ They are a formidable foe.
” “ They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jamie Barnett , president of the International Cruise Victims Association , an organization that lobbies for stricter safety regulations on cruise ships , says of her meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill .
“ We come in and we have pictures and stories and they listen—every one of them listen—but then the lobbyists for the [ industry ] come right behind us with their money and they forget about us.
” Despite the implication of the ICVA name , ships aren ’ t necessarily more dangerous than the mainland .
But crime victims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they might onshore .
Victims report their crimes to private ship security .
And although the industry has improved its reporting policies over the last decade , stories abound of victims being offered perks to keep quiet , or of crime scenes being cleaned up .
By the time American authorities get involved—if they do—agencies in friendly foreign ports sometimes have had a first pass .
Evidence gets lost .
Culprits abscond .
When an American woman sued Carnival in 1999 alleging she ’ d been raped by a crew member , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the airport and out of the country before the FBI could interview him .
( The company claimed there was a miscommunication . )
In the course of that case , a Florida judge ordered the company to release statistics on how many sexual assaults had been committed by crew members over the previous five years .
The answer : 108—including 22 alleged rapes .
None of which were successfully prosecuted .
The slow-burning scandal on HBO ’ s Succession—in which Logan Roy ’ s cruise division covered up years of sexual assaults @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For a long time , the only people publicizing these cases were academics like Klein , the sociologist .
Eventually , a law written by California Rep. Doris Matsui forced cruise lines to report statistics on violent crimes and suspicious deaths .
In 2013 , after a disastrous year that saw 32 people die aboard the wrecked Costa Concordia ( run by a Carnival subsidiary ) and the infamous “ poop cruise ” ( when sewage flowed down the halls of the Carnival Triumph ) , the industry was dragged before Congress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ avoidance .
But little came of the grilling , and companies have continued to resist safety measures such as a requirement to equip ships with motion sensor devices to alert crew when someone has fallen overboard .
Barnett , like many members of ICVA , was driven to activism by personal tragedy .
In 2005 , her 25-year-old daughter , Ashley , died suddenly onboard a ship from an overdose of methadone—a substance she says her daughter would not have knowingly taken .
Barnett said the first phase of the investigation was handled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police took over .
It was only once the cruise docked in the US that the FBI began to investigate .
A century-old law called the Death on the High Seas Act sets the amount of damages a family can receive from an offshore wrongful death as equivalent to lost lifetime earnings , minus taxes and expenses .
Cruise lines have successfully lobbied to keep the cap on the books , even helping BP shoot down an effort to secure money for the families of Deepwater Horizon victims .
“ My daughter , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t support me , ” Barnett says .
“ So her life was worth nothing.
” Ships have always been important nodes in the spread of contagion .
The word “ quarantine ” comes from the 40 days that ships were required to sit tight in Italian ports during the Black Death .
In 1918 , the “ Spanish ” influenza was dispersed around the globe by American troop carriers .
According to the CDC , there were 13,000 cases of norovirus ( which is highly contagious , causing vomiting and diarrhea ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2008 and 2014 alone .
Dr. Anthony Fauci may have been joking around when he said in March that “ personally ” he would never go on a cruise , but an epidemiologist writing for NBC News last August was not .
“ What I see when contemplating such an excursion , ” she wrote , “ is the potential to be trapped with thousands of others in a confined space , suffering from gastrointestinal ailments like norovirus and E. coli , respiratory infections including influenza and chickenpox , or as a recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and measles .
What ’ s not to love ?
“ A cruise ship is a small town—at least by Connecticut standards , ” says Blumenthal , the Connecticut senator .
But unlike a comparably sized place on the mainland , there ’ s no legal requirement for medical professionals onboard to be certified in the United States .
Coronavirus screening aboard the Grand Princess and other vessels consisted of a simple questionnaire , not a medical evaluation .
“ The lack of proper medical care and facilities exacerbated the crisis and showed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how abysmally inadequate health care on cruise ships can be , ” he adds .
( Carnival spokesperson Roger Frizzell said the company ’ s coronavirus protocols , which included a restriction on passengers who had been in China within the last two weeks , went “ well beyond ” comparable venues and noted the company ’ s on-ship medical facilities were “ mandated and closely regulated by the CDC and other health authorities with strict oversight.
” ) Blumenthal and Matsui have pushed legislation to raise the health care standards of ships @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gotten out of committee .
When Blumenthal has included variations of the bill in spending measures , another lawmaker blocked it .
That would be Dan Sullivan , a Republican from cruise-friendly Alaska—the same senator who single-handedly saved the industry $ 70 million a year with a timely amendment to the 2017 tax reform law .
Despite the frequency with which ailments like norovirus afflict cruise passengers , the industry was ill-prepared for the inevitable outbreaks .
In the case of the coronavirus pandemic , the result was a timeline that mirrored the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Costa Luminosa ’ s passengers were not notified for more than a week that an Italian man had been discharged ashore with COVID-19-like symptoms ( he later died ) .
When the ship finally docked in Marseille , nearly half of the 75 passengers tested were positive .
( “ It is easy to look backward , but we were relying on medical experts and the best information available at the time to make our decisions , ” Frizzell said .
“ It is revisionist history to…suggest we should have acted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US at the time.
” ) In a recent lawsuit , a woman whose husband died after contracting the virus aboard the Grand Princess recalled arguing with the ship ’ s staff as it stalled in responding to her requests for medical help .
How did she know he really had a fever ?
they wanted to know .
( Carnival said it does not comment on ongoing litigation . )
Crew members on some ships—sometimes given paper napkins in lieu of PPE—had it even worse , as the living conditions and rigors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In a class-action lawsuit filed in April , Alexandra Nedeltcheva , a Bulgarian server on Royal Caribbean ’ s Celebrity Apex who contracted the virus , alleged that workers continued to eat from a buffet belowdecks and participated in mandatory drills more than a week after the company “ acquired reason to suspect the presence of COVID-19 ” onboard .
Two days after the ship held a party for crew members , seven of them tested positive .
Onboard the Diamond Princess , 15 of the 20 crew members who tested positive were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would eventually fall ill on cruise ships , according to the Miami Herald .
On March 6 , as the Grand Princess was quarantined off California , Trump told reporters he was keeping the ship offshore because he didn ’ t want its 21 active cases to count toward the national total .
He seemed ready , on the other hand , to help the ships ’ owners to terra firma .
At a reelection fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago retreat that night , the Washington Post reported , he promised a room of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would stay open for business .
Of course Donald Trump and Micky Arison , chair of the world ’ s largest cruise company , are friends .
It would almost be weird if they weren ’ t : two hospitality billionaires who inherited their fathers ’ businesses and have a passion for tax avoidance and a flair for showmanship .
They go way back .
Trump attended a Heat game with Arison in 2005 , the same year Carnival hosted an Apprentice-themed cruise .
Carnival later sponsored a two-part finale of Celebrity Apprentice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump renovated his golf club in Doral , Florida , Arison sent him a congratulatory note .
Trump has frequently singled out Arison for praise on Twitter .
Their circles have increasingly overlapped as Carnival ’ s business navigates Trump ’ s Washington swamp .
Last year , to curry favor with Trump on trade policy , the company hired Pam Bondi , the former Florida attorney general and Trump associate , and Brian Ballard , one of the president ’ s biggest fundraisers , billed by Politico as “ the most powerful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Bondi ’ s sister-in-law , Tandy Bondi , was already a Carnival lobbyist . )
When Pam Bondi ’ s work was done , she joined Team Trump as an impeachment counsel .
As Carnival ’ s stock plummeted this spring , it turned to Trump ’ s friend , Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia , who stabilized the free fall by purchasing 43.5 million shares in the company via the Gulf nation ’ s sovereign wealth fund .
Trump could not keep the cruise business open—under pressure from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new cruises on March 13 , the same day Trump declared a national emergency .
But Arison and Trump spoke several times during the crisis .
In mid-March he called the president to offer up his ships for use as hospitals .
Carnival even volunteered its crews to continue cleaning the ships—all it asked was that the government cover “ the essential costs of the ship ’ s operations while in port.
” There was a familiar note to the offer—after Hurricane Katrina , FEMA gave Carnival a $ 236 million contract to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but the ships sat mostly empty for weeks .
Trump plugged Carnival at his press conference later that day , saying , “ It was a very generous offer ” that he was taking under consideration , but he sent an actual Navy hospital ship to New York .
Still , Arison ’ s offer put the company in the news for something positive , which might have been the point .
The company ’ s stock briefly rallied .
Trump showered the industry with attention , dispatching Pence to Tampa to meet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to discuss handling COVID-19 outbreaks .
For a few weeks , he seemed to consider a cruise industry bailout .
It was a “ prime candidate ” for a financial rescue , Trump said on March 18 .
“ We can ’ t let the cruise lines go out of business , ” he declared a few days later .
The cruise line rescue never gained traction in Congress , and the industry insisted it wasn ’ t asking for one .
The final version of the CARES Act gave the Treasury secretary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only to companies based in the United States .
When CNBC reported that the cruise lines were talking with a group of senators about a “ legislative fix , ” even some Republicans balked .
“ Come back to America , ” tweeted Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley , “ and pay your taxes.
” Nick Ayers , Mike Pence ’ s former chief of staff , suggested they “ go to where [ their ] ship flies her flag and ask them for help.
” ( Bermuda Premier David Burt told me no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ financial assistance . )
Trump himself changed course after apparently learning that “ our cruise industry ” was not , in fact , ours .
“ They ’ re based in different places , I won ’ t tell you where—I could tell you exactly where they ’ re based , but I won ’ t do that , but they ’ re based in actually more than one place , as you know , ” he said .
But in another sense , the cruise industry got what it needed .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fund the ships directly because other aspects of the rescue package did the job for it .
In Carnival ’ s case , it was the Federal Reserve ’ s decision to juice the credit market that allowed the company—which had gotten desperate enough to start negotiating with hedge funds—to secure a more hospitable loan through its friendly neighborhood banker , JP Morgan .
The aid package may have left restaurants in limbo and furloughed workers struggling to make rent , but for larger corporations , the system worked—increased liquidity was enticing enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raft .
In early May , Norwegian announced that it was on the verge of bankruptcy .
Within a day , though , it had cobbled together enough capital from investors to fund the company for 18 more months without revenue .
The cruise giants aren ’ t totally in the clear , but when you have well-placed friends and make your money offshore , the fundamentals are always strong .
Shortly after signing the cruiseless bailout into law , Trump announced the members of his advisory council on reopening the economy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and bankers .
And one Micky Arison , of Carnival Corp. By the time passengers aboard the Diamond Princess and other ships finally returned home , life onshore increasingly resembled the purgatory they ’ d left behind .
“ The whole world feels like a cruise ship now , ” one passenger mused to NBC News .
He meant that the whole world was in quarantine .
But if the world felt like a cruise ship , it was also because , while many people were now in lockdown , many others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cruise ship outbreak was the American pandemic in miniature ; the virus fed off the inequities and deficiencies of health , labor , and housing systems .
Cruise ships , with their Parasite-like layering of workers and pleasure seekers , are like massive floating models of extreme inequality , of what a society looks like when its leaders cut the “ social ” out of the social contract .
Carnival maintains it acted appropriately , perhaps even nobly .
“ Each ship is a mini-city , ” the company ’ s CEO , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after the Diamond debacle .
Had it really acted so much differently than New York ?
But there wasn ’ t much time to worry about what went wrong .
In May , as more than 100,000 crew members remained stuck onboard otherwise empty cruise ships in foreign ports , so desperate to return home that Royal Caribbean ship hands launched a hunger strike , Carnival announced some good news : Cruises would start up again , perhaps as early as August .
Rooms start at just $ 298 .
Face masks not @ @

If Donald Trump could build a city from scratch, it would have a casino and a golf course and all the cheeseburgers you could eat. The city’s residents would be old, with money to spend and nothing but free time. The workers would be poor, foreign, and always on the clock. They would literally live beneath you. There would be doctors, but not very many, and there would be cops, sort of, but who exactly they were there to protect and serve would remain ambiguous. There would be no proper government to speak of. The city and its services would be run by a corporation, and you would sign away your rights to a billionaire in his 70s with a tan and bad hair, in exchange for a promise of a good time—art auctions, live music, waterfalls of champagne. The city would pay no taxes but avail itself of the services funded by those who do.
It would look, in other words, a lot like the Carnival Corporation’s 18-story, 952-foot-long Diamond Princess as it entered Yokohama Bay in early February after a voyage through Southeast Asia for the Chinese New Year. Some people would find this city tacky. But it would be an altogether pleasant place for many people, much of the time. However, you would not want to be there during a pandemic.
As the cruise approached port, the coronavirus was confined almost entirely to the Chinese city of Wuhan. Trump’s top public health concern was vaping. But on February 1, a passenger who had disembarked from the Diamond Princess tested positive for the virus. Three days later, passengers quarantined. While customers took their meals in their cabins, the vessel’s crew—more than 1,000 people from 48 countries—continued to go about their work. The number of cases onboard would ultimately grow to 712, and 14 people would die. The ship, flying the flag of the United Kingdom and owned by a company—registered in Panama—that’s chaired by one of the richest men in Miami, saw the first major outbreak of COVID-19 outside of Wuhan.
The pandemic has penetrated nearly every corner of the globe. It has burned through nursing homes and choir practices. It has preyed on the elderly and the immunocompromised, people without access to reliable health care, and the young and perfectly healthy who never saw it coming. It’s killed more than 100,000 people in the United States in big cities and small towns. But for several weeks, before life as we know it shut down, you could turn on CNN and watch your own dismal future, adrift at sea.
The cruise ship outbreak was the American pandemic in miniature; the virus fed off the inequities of health, labor, and housing.
After the Diamond Princess went into lockdown, the pattern played out on dozens of other cruise ships—sometimes weeks after it was clear that these vessels were sitting ducks. The Costa Luminosa (owned by Carnival subsidiary Costa Cruises) was waylaid off of France. The Grand Princess (owned by Princess Cruises—also Carnival) detoured to Oakland. The Zaandam (part of Holland America, a.k.a. Carnival) floated aimlessly for days while Florida’s governor debated whether he would accept its passengers.
Cruise ships are uniquely vulnerable when something goes awry—be it an outbreak, a navigation error, or a fire that knocks out the power system and fills the decks with raw sewage (google it). But the industry’s explosive growth and skyrocketing profits over the last 50 years have been driven, in part, by a freedom to circumvent health, labor, and safety requirements that bind companies back on shore. The industry, typified by Carnival’s billionaire chair, Micky Arison, has spent decades smoothing over bad experiences with booze and vouchers, insulating itself from the obligations of corporate citizenship in a maze of contracts and loopholes, and cultivating allies in Washington with free vacations and campaign cash. Long before the pandemic, cruise lines glided over sexual assaults, deaths, outbreaks, illegal dumping, and complaints of worker exploitation while hardly deviating from their course.
You can also listen to Tim Murphy's story read aloud:
The pandemic put that steel hull of invincibility to the test, placing Carnival and the other giants of the industry in the crosshairs of government watchdogs in multiple countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scolded cruise companies for their slow response. Australia launched an investigation into Carnival’s handling of the COVID-19-afflicted Ruby Princess. Lawsuits piled up. Congress hinted at hearings. Decadent, tax-avoiding, gas-guzzling, low-wage—the industry might have been headed for a reckoning in a different political environment. But the White House struck a different note. Trump treated the human victims of the virus with detachment, rarely acknowledging the toll it was taking on American families, and treating stranded passengers as little more than a nuisance that unfairly marred his sterling record. But in Carnival he seemed to find a victim he could empathize with.
The cruise industry as we know it—the round-trip voyage to nowhere, the booze, the buffets, the Apprentice-themed group packages—began in the early 1970s, when an immigrant from Israel got a good deal on a boat. The age of air travel was making big ocean liners obsolete, and Ted Arison, a second-generation shipping magnate, was fishing around Miami for the next big thing. With a businessman from Oslo, he co-founded what is now Norwegian Cruise Line, but they soon fell out. On the way out the door, Arison used the company’s funds to purchase a secondhand ship for himself. The vessel was called the Empress of Canada, but Arison wanted to convey good times, not grandeur. He renamed it the Mardi Gras. He called the new company Carnival. Like many corporate juggernauts—and Carnival would devour so many competitors that rivals would call it “Carnivore”—Carnival’s rise is shrouded in myth. As the story goes, on its maiden voyage, with hundreds of travel agents onboard, the Mardi Gras ran aground while it was still in sight of land. For 28 hours. Anxious to salvage the event, staff plied guests with free liquor. When it finally got going, the aging Mardi Gras had to creep along to conserve fuel. The idea was born: Carnival would be what Arison’s son and successor, Micky, called “the fun ship.” Instead of treating the cruise as a way of getting to a destination, the cruise would be the destination.
But the company’s success story is not just one of branding; it’s also the product of an elaborate legal scaffolding. Take the ships themselves. During World War II, the United States embraced flags of convenience to keep the flow of supplies going to Europe while nominally staying neutral. Ships that were American in all other ways could fly the colors of any nation that would have them. After the war, shipowners rushed to register their fleets in small countries that were happy to absolve these companies of corporate tax obligations, regulations, and oversight in return for a filing fee. The Diamond Princess, for example, flies the flag of the United Kingdom, but it’s owned by Princess Cruises, which is headquartered in Southern California and incorporated in Bermuda. Princess’ parent company, Carnival, a company so clearly ensconced in Miami that taxpayers helped fund a new cruise terminal for the company and a basketball arena (Micky Arison owns the Heat), is officially Panamanian. The itinerary of many cruises is even dictated by the need to preserve this system. US law prevents foreign-flagged ships from traveling directly between American ports, so as a workaround, a ship leaving Florida must visit at least one foreign destination before turning around.
Cruises surged in popularity because they are affordable for middle-class families and senior citizens but still offer luxury trappings. Foreign-registered companies can offer such prices because of how little they have to pay for anything else. While relying on the services of roughly 20 different federal agencies, Carnival saved $600 million last year by paying virtually no US corporate taxes. (The company points out that last year it paid more than $700 million in port fees and various federal, state, and local taxes.) But the offshoring of the business also boosted the industry’s bottom line in another big way—it allowed companies to skirt US labor laws.
Trump treated the human victims of the virus with detachment. But in Carnival he seemed to find a victim he could empathize with.
Instead of adhering to American minimum wage, overtime, and safety standards, cruise lines simply have to abide by those of places like Liberia, Panama, and Bermuda, which take a hands-off approach to their corporate citizens. And the cruise companies aren’t afraid to play rough. When Honduran crew members organized a strike aboard two Carnival ships in Miami in 1981—upset about 12-hour days, sardine-like living conditions, and wages as low as $100 a week—Micky Arison hired a private security firm to get them off the ship. Vans of immigration agents stood by to deport them.
Cruise ships are crewed overwhelmingly by workers from countries like the Philippines and Indonesia. The companies argue that the wages on a cruise ship are considerably greater than those in the workers’ home countries. That’s true. But, for the hours workers put in, the take-home pay might add up to just a few bucks an hour. Workers who feel wronged by cruise companies are left with shockingly little recourse because contracts force cruise-ship employees into arbitration. Ross Klein, a Memorial University of Newfoundland sociologist whose cruise research cost him his press access to trade shows, told me that if a crew member from South Africa sought arbitration with Carnival, they would have to attend a hearing in Monaco—“and you’d have to share the cost of the arbitration with the employer,” he added. Try paying for all that on tips.
No one embodies the lengths the industry will go to in order to hold onto its money like the Arisons. For a long time, the elder Arison, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, shielded his personal income from the IRS by reinvesting it in the company. After the IRS closed that loophole, the billionaire had the company reimburse him—in the form of a dividend—for whatever he happened to owe that year. Then, in 1990, Ted Arison renounced his American citizenship so that his estate would transfer to his children tax-free. He just needed to live another 10 years to qualify. He made it nine years and change.
There’s a famous story about how the cruise industry gets its way in Washington. Sometime in the early 1990s, Rep. Gene Taylor, then a Mississippi Democrat, was on his way to the House floor to vote on an amendment opposed by the industry when he encountered the cruise industry trade association’s lobbyist—a former congressional staffer. Taylor had fought the industry for years, repeatedly introducing legislation designed to bring maritime jobs back to American shores. The lobbyist had an idea on how to change his mind: a complimentary cruise—“so that you get to know us,” Taylor later recalled.
Taylor turned down the free vacation, but plenty of his colleagues didn’t. Alaska Rep. Don Young brought his wife (and two colleagues and their wives) on a 1987 cruise. Former Montana Sen. Max Baucus once took a four-day Caribbean vacation at sea (gratis), along with a five-day sojourn in South Florida, compliments of industry lobbyists. Members of Congress insisted these junkets were fact-finding expeditions. “I know this may not look great,” an unlucky staffer explained after one such story broke, “but it’s not like they spent the whole time playing shuffleboard.”
“Cruise lines are a very powerful industry with a lot of sway in DC,” says Sen. Richard Blumenthal. “They are a formidable foe.”
Shilling for Panamanian cruise companies isn’t exactly popular, but you don’t need a lot of friends in Washington if you just have the right ones. And no one has been friendlier to the foreign cruise industry than Young, who has represented Alaska’s at-large district since 1973. A snarling, bearded ex–tugboat operator who once brandished a walrus penis during a debate and pulled a knife on a speaker of the House, Young picks his fights—usually over money—and never backs down.
Cruises are the lifeblood of Alaskan tourism. About 5 percent of all global cruise traffic goes through the state, according to industry data. Communities along the state’s Inside Passage have long struggled to balance the economic boost of millions of sightseers with the environmental and political sacrifices that come with it. It has never been much of a dilemma, though, for Young, who has received more cruise industry campaign money over the years than any other member of Congress.
Young amended a Coast Guard appropriations bill in the 1990s to safeguard the industry from liability lawsuits. Critics argued the measure would make it harder for sexual assault victims to seek damages. The final bill blocked all claims of “emotional distress” and “mental suffering” unless caused by physical injury, but made exceptions for sexual misconduct. (When Congress was at an impasse, Arison traveled to Washington to make the industry’s case in person.) Young added an amendment to a different bill legalizing gambling on Alaskan cruises. An Alaska colleague got Bill Clinton’s secretary of the interior to expand the number of ships allowed into Glacier Bay National Park, but it was Young who, over the protests of the state’s small fleet of domestic cruise ships, tweaked yet another piece of legislation—as chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, it was no great feat—to give foreign cruise companies a monopoly on a lucrative cruise route through the park. (In 2019, Carnival paid a $20 million criminal penalty for doctoring ship logs to cover up illegal dumping in Glacier Bay and other waterways.)
“Cruise lines are a very powerful industry with a lot of sway in DC,” says Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who has pushed legislation that would require new safety standards on ships. “They are a formidable foe.”
“They get to ’em—every time,” Jamie Barnett, president of the International Cruise Victims Association, an organization that lobbies for stricter safety regulations on cruise ships, says of her meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “We come in and we have pictures and stories and they listen—every one of them listen—but then the lobbyists for the [industry] come right behind us with their money and they forget about us.”
Cruise lines have successfully lobbied to limit liability claims, even helping BP shoot down an effort to secure money for the families of Deepwater Horizon victims.
Despite the implication of the ICVA name, ships aren’t necessarily more dangerous than the mainland. But crime victims have far less recourse at sea than they might onshore. Victims report their crimes to private ship security. And although the industry has improved its reporting policies over the last decade, stories abound of victims being offered perks to keep quiet, or of crime scenes being cleaned up. By the time American authorities get involved—if they do—agencies in friendly foreign ports sometimes have had a first pass. Evidence gets lost. Culprits abscond. When an American woman sued Carnival in 1999 alleging she’d been raped by a crew member, the cruise line escorted its just-fired employee to the airport and out of the country before the FBI could interview him. (The company claimed there was a miscommunication.) In the course of that case, a Florida judge ordered the company to release statistics on how many sexual assaults had been committed by crew members over the previous five years. The answer: 108—including 22 alleged rapes. None of which were successfully prosecuted. The slow-burning scandal on HBO’s Succession—in which Logan Roy’s cruise division covered up years of sexual assaults and other crimes—wasn’t that far-fetched.
For a long time, the only people publicizing these cases were academics like Klein, the sociologist. Eventually, a law written by California Rep. Doris Matsui forced cruise lines to report statistics on violent crimes and suspicious deaths. In 2013, after a disastrous year that saw 32 people die aboard the wrecked Costa Concordia (run by a Carnival subsidiary) and the infamous “poop cruise” (when sewage flowed down the halls of the Carnival Triumph), the industry was dragged before Congress for hearings on shipboard safety and tax avoidance. But little came of the grilling, and companies have continued to resist safety measures such as a requirement to equip ships with motion sensor devices to alert crew when someone has fallen overboard.
Barnett, like many members of ICVA, was driven to activism by personal tragedy. In 2005, her 25-year-old daughter, Ashley, died suddenly onboard a ship from an overdose of methadone—a substance she says her daughter would not have knowingly taken. Barnett said the first phase of the investigation was handled by ship security; then the Mexican police took over. It was only once the cruise docked in the US that the FBI began to investigate. A century-old law called the Death on the High Seas Act sets the amount of damages a family can receive from an offshore wrongful death as equivalent to lost lifetime earnings, minus taxes and expenses. Cruise lines have successfully lobbied to keep the cap on the books, even helping BP shoot down an effort to secure money for the families of Deepwater Horizon victims. “My daughter, when she died, she didn’t support me,” Barnett says. “So her life was worth nothing.”
Ships have always been important nodes in the spread of contagion. The word “quarantine” comes from the 40 days that ships were required to sit tight in Italian ports during the Black Death. In 1918, the “Spanish” influenza was dispersed around the globe by American troop carriers. According to the CDC, there were 13,000 cases of norovirus (which is highly contagious, causing vomiting and diarrhea) on cruise ships plying US waters between 2008 and 2014 alone. Dr. Anthony Fauci may have been joking around when he said in March that “personally” he would never go on a cruise, but an epidemiologist writing for NBC News last August was not. “What I see when contemplating such an excursion,” she wrote, “is the potential to be trapped with thousands of others in a confined space, suffering from gastrointestinal ailments like norovirus and E. coli, respiratory infections including influenza and chickenpox, or as a recent Scientology cruise demonstrated, measles.” Scientology and measles. What’s not to love?
“A cruise ship is a small town—at least by Connecticut standards,” says Blumenthal, the Connecticut senator. But unlike a comparably sized place on the mainland, there’s no legal requirement for medical professionals onboard to be certified in the United States. Coronavirus screening aboard the Grand Princess and other vessels consisted of a simple questionnaire, not a medical evaluation. “The lack of proper medical care and facilities exacerbated the crisis and showed the American public very clearly and dramatically how abysmally inadequate health care on cruise ships can be,” he adds. (Carnival spokesperson Roger Frizzell said the company’s coronavirus protocols, which included a restriction on passengers who had been in China within the last two weeks, went “well beyond” comparable venues and noted the company’s on-ship medical facilities were “mandated and closely regulated by the CDC and other health authorities with strict oversight.”)
Blumenthal and Matsui have pushed legislation to raise the health care standards of ships five times, but it has never gotten out of committee. When Blumenthal has included variations of the bill in funding measures, another lawmaker blocked it. That would be Dan Sullivan, a Republican from cruise-friendly Alaska—the same senator who single-handedly saved the industry $70 million a year with a timely amendment to the 2017 tax reform law.
Despite the frequency with which ailments like norovirus afflict cruise passengers, the industry was ill-prepared for the inevitable outbreaks. In the case of the coronavirus pandemic, the result was a timeline that mirrored the slapdash federal response that was unfolding concurrently. The Costa Luminosa’s passengers were not notified for more than a week that an Italian man had been discharged ashore with COVID-19-like symptoms (he later died). When the ship finally docked in Marseille, nearly half of the 75 passengers tested were positive. (“It is easy to look backward, but we were relying on medical experts and the best information available at the time to make our decisions,” Frizzell said. “It is revisionist history to…suggest we should have acted any different than any others in the US at the time.”)
Hundreds of workers would eventually fall ill on cruise ships.
In a recent lawsuit, a woman whose husband died after contracting the virus aboard the Grand Princess recalled arguing with the ship’s staff as it stalled in responding to her requests for medical help. How did she know he really had a fever? they wanted to know. (Carnival said it does not comment on ongoing litigation.) Crew members on some ships—sometimes given paper napkins in lieu of PPE—had it even worse, as the living conditions and rigors of the job made distancing impossible. In a class-action lawsuit filed in April, Alexandra Nedeltcheva, a Bulgarian server on Royal Caribbean’s Celebrity Apex who contracted the virus, alleged that workers continued to eat from a buffet belowdecks and participated in mandatory drills more than a week after the company “acquired reason to suspect the presence of COVID-19” onboard. Two days after the ship held a party for crew members, seven of them tested positive. Onboard the Diamond Princess, 15 of the 20 crew members who tested positive were food service workers. Hundreds of workers would eventually fall ill on cruise ships, according to the Miami Herald.
On March 6, as the Grand Princess was quarantined off California, Trump told reporters he was keeping the ship offshore because he didn’t want its 21 active cases to count toward the national total. He seemed ready, on the other hand, to help the ships’ owners to terra firma. At a reelection fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago retreat that night, the Washington Post reported, he promised a room of high-roller Republican donors that the cruise industry would stay open for business.
Of course Donald Trump and Micky Arison, chair of the world’s largest cruise company, are friends. It would almost be weird if they weren’t: two hospitality billionaires who inherited their fathers’ businesses and have a passion for tax avoidance and a flair for showmanship. They go way back. Trump attended a Heat game with Arison in 2005, the same year Carnival hosted an Apprentice-themed cruise. Carnival later sponsored a two-part finale of Celebrity Apprentice. The Washington Post reported that when Trump renovated his golf club in Doral, Florida, Arison sent him a congratulatory note. Trump has frequently singled out Arison for praise on Twitter.
Their circles have increasingly overlapped as Carnival’s business navigates Trump’s Washington swamp. Last year, to curry favor with Trump on trade policy, the company hired Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general and Trump associate, and Brian Ballard, one of the president’s biggest fundraisers, billed by Politico as “the most powerful lobbyist in Trump’s Washington.” (Bondi’s sister-in-law, Tandy Bondi, was already a Carnival lobbyist.) When Pam Bondi’s work was done, she joined Team Trump as an impeachment counsel. As Carnival’s stock plummeted this spring, it turned to Trump’s friend, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who stabilized the free fall by purchasing 43.5 million shares in the company via the Gulf nation’s sovereign wealth fund.
Trump himself changed course after apparently learning that “our cruise industry” was not, in fact, ours.
Trump could not keep the cruise business open—under pressure from the CDC, the industry postponed all new cruises on March 13, the same day Trump declared a national emergency. But Arison and Trump spoke several times during the crisis. In mid-March he called the president to offer up his ships for use as hospitals. Carnival even volunteered its crews to continue cleaning the ships—all it asked was that the government cover “the essential costs of the ship’s operations while in port.” There was a familiar note to the offer—after Hurricane Katrina, FEMA gave Carnival a $236 million contract to provide floating lodging to relief workers, but the ships sat mostly empty for weeks. Trump plugged Carnival at his press conference later that day, saying, “It was a very generous offer” that he was taking under consideration, but he sent an actual Navy hospital ship to New York. Still, Arison’s offer put the company in the news for something positive, which might have been the point. The company’s stock briefly rallied. Trump showered the industry with attention, dispatching Pence to Tampa to meet with Arison and other cruise industry executives to discuss handling COVID-19 outbreaks. For a few weeks, he seemed to consider a cruise industry bailout. It was a “prime candidate” for a financial rescue, Trump said on March 18. “We can’t let the cruise lines go out of business,” he declared a few days later.
The cruise line rescue never gained traction in Congress, and the industry insisted it wasn’t asking for one. The final version of the CARES Act gave the Treasury secretary broad power to distribute funds, but only to companies based in the United States. When CNBC reported that the cruise lines were talking with a group of senators about a “legislative fix,” even some Republicans balked. “Come back to America,” tweeted Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, “and pay your taxes.” Nick Ayers, Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, suggested they “go to where [their] ship flies her flag and ask them for help.” (Bermuda Premier David Burt told me no cruise companies had asked his government for financial assistance.)
Trump himself changed course after apparently learning that “our cruise industry” was not, in fact, ours. “They’re based in different places, I won’t tell you where—I could tell you exactly where they’re based, but I won’t do that, but they’re based in actually more than one place, as you know,” he said.
But in another sense, the cruise industry got what it needed. The Trump administration didn’t need to fund the ships directly because other aspects of the rescue package did the job for it. In Carnival’s case, it was the Federal Reserve’s decision to juice the credit market that allowed the company—which had gotten desperate enough to start negotiating with hedge funds—to secure a more hospitable loan through its friendly neighborhood banker, JP Morgan. The aid package may have left restaurants in limbo and furloughed workers struggling to make rent, but for larger corporations, the system worked—increased liquidity was enticing enough for investors to toss them a life raft. In early May, Norwegian announced that it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Within a day, though, it had cobbled together enough capital from investors to fund the company for 18 more months without revenue. The cruise giants aren’t totally in the clear, but when you have well-placed friends and make your money offshore, the fundamentals are always strong.
Shortly after signing the cruiseless bailout into law, Trump announced the members of his advisory council on reopening the economy. Among them were sports commissioners, restaurateurs, and bankers. And one Micky Arison, of Carnival Corp.
By the time passengers aboard the Diamond Princess and other ships finally returned home, life onshore increasingly resembled the purgatory they’d left behind. “The whole world feels like a cruise ship now,” one passenger mused to NBC News.
He meant that the whole world was in quarantine. But if the world felt like a cruise ship, it was also because, while many people were now in lockdown, many others were not allowed to be. The cruise ship outbreak was the American pandemic in miniature; the virus fed off the inequities and deficiencies of health, labor, and housing systems. Cruise ships, with their Parasite-like layering of workers and pleasure seekers, are like massive floating models of extreme inequality, of what a society looks like when its leaders cut the “social” out of the social contract.
Carnival maintains it acted appropriately, perhaps even nobly. “Each ship is a mini-city,” the company’s CEO, Arnold Donald, told Bloomberg two months after the Diamond debacle. Had it really acted so much differently than New York? But there wasn’t much time to worry about what went wrong. In May, as more than 100,000 crew members remained stuck onboard otherwise empty cruise ships in foreign ports, so desperate to return home that Royal Caribbean ship hands launched a hunger strike, Carnival announced some good news: Cruises would start up again, perhaps as early as August. Rooms start at just $298. Face masks not included.


motherjones--2020-06-17--John Bolton’s Book Claims Trump Called Muslim Concentration Camps in China the “Right Thing to Do”

President Donald Trump reportedly said China ’ s decision to detain Uighur Muslims in concentration camps was “ exactly the right thing to do ” and encouraged Chinese leader Xi Jinping to “ go ahead with building the camps , ” according to a book excerpt published Wednesday by John Bolton , Trump ’ s former national security adviser .
Over the past few years , Trump has frequently oscillated between threatening China and lathering on praise for Xi , but Bolton ’ s revelation , if true , documents one of the more shocking examples of Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for authoritarian leaders .
The excerpt , which Bolton published in the Wall Street Journal , contains numerous instances of Trump downplaying human rights concerns in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland .
Last year , when Hong Kong saw massive protests in response to a controversial extradition bill that chipped away at the semiautonomous region ’ s tenuous independence from China , Trump reportedly said , “ I don ’ t want to get involved , ” and , “ We have human-rights problems too.
” ( Note this is something of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an interview back in 2017 , the president responded to Bill O ’ Reilly calling Vladimir Putin a “ killer ” by saying , “ There are a lot of killers .
You think our country ’ s so innocent ?
” ) Bolton also claims that Trump refused to issue a White House statement to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre , when Chinese forces killed scores of pro-democracy demonstrators .
“ That was 15 years ago , ” he reportedly said .
“ Who cares about it ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ deal .
I don ’ t want anything.
” Still , an even more disturbing anecdote captured by Bolton , who was fired in September 2019 after a series of policy disputes with Trump , concerns the treatment of Uighur Muslims , who have undergone systemic detention , repression , and surveillance under Xi .
Here ’ s how Bolton describes it in the Journal excerpt : At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019 , with only interpreters present , Xi had explained to Trump why he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ According to our interpreter , Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps , which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do .
The National Security Council ’ s top Asia staffer , Matthew Pottinger , told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China .
Trump has made no secret of his disinterest in upholding the traditional role for the United States as a defender of human rights .
But this conversation with Xi , if true , would mark a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the torture and cultural genocide of millions of Muslims .
It would also , in a less surprising turn of events , be yet another instance of Trump contradicting his own administration ’ s policy in private .
Only last year Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the Chinese treatment of Uighurs the “ stain of the century.
” The treatment of the Uighurs has been a bipartisan concern among lawmakers too .
Last month , Congress near-unanimously passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act , which imposes sanctions on Chinese officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that include the use of “ indoctrination camps ” and “ intrusive surveillance.
” Earlier today , Trump signed it into law .

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
President Donald Trump reportedly said China’s decision to detain Uighur Muslims in concentration camps was “exactly the right thing to do” and encouraged Chinese leader Xi Jinping to “go ahead with building the camps,” according to a book excerpt published Wednesday by John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser.
Over the past few years, Trump has frequently oscillated between threatening China and lathering on praise for Xi, but Bolton’s revelation, if true, documents one of the more shocking examples of Trump’s cavalier approach to human rights and reverence for authoritarian leaders.
The excerpt, which Bolton published in the Wall Street Journal, contains numerous instances of Trump downplaying human rights concerns in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. Last year, when Hong Kong saw massive protests in response to a controversial extradition bill that chipped away at the semiautonomous region’s tenuous independence from China, Trump reportedly said, “I don’t want to get involved,” and, “We have human-rights problems too.” (Note this is something of a common theme for Trump; in an interview back in 2017, the president responded to Bill O’Reilly calling Vladimir Putin a “killer” by saying, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”)
Bolton also claims that Trump refused to issue a White House statement to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when Chinese forces killed scores of pro-democracy demonstrators. “That was 15 years ago,” he reportedly said. “Who cares about it? I’m trying to make a deal. I don’t want anything.”
Still, an even more disturbing anecdote captured by Bolton, who was fired in September 2019 after a series of policy disputes with Trump, concerns the treatment of Uighur Muslims, who have undergone systemic detention, repression, and surveillance under Xi. Here’s how Bolton describes it in the Journal excerpt:
At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.
Trump has made no secret of his disinterest in upholding the traditional role for the United States as a defender of human rights. But this conversation with Xi, if true, would mark a stunning endorsement by a sitting American president of the torture and cultural genocide of millions of Muslims. It would also, in a less surprising turn of events, be yet another instance of Trump contradicting his own administration’s policy in private. Only last year Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the Chinese treatment of Uighurs the “stain of the century.”
The treatment of the Uighurs has been a bipartisan concern among lawmakers too. Last month, Congress near-unanimously passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, which imposes sanctions on Chinese officials for “gross human rights abuses” that include the use of “indoctrination camps” and “intrusive surveillance.” Earlier today, Trump signed it into law.


motherjones--2020-06-18--The Anti-Vax Movement’s Radical Shift From Crunchy Granola Purists to Far-Right Crusaders

When the pandemic hit , many American parents found themselves muddling through homeschooling for the first time—but Elizabeth Beall is an old pro : She ’ s been teaching her 13-year-old daughter from home since kindergarten .
Over the years , Beall , who lives in California , has learned that homeschooling works best when it doesn ’ t just happen at home , so she slowly built up a network of parents—mostly moms—who share ideas in Facebook groups and sometimes get the kids together in person for educational and social activities .
Beall has formed tight bonds with many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the Facebook groups are handy places to swap tips and information .
So in late April , when Beall noticed that a few of the moms had posted a video of two physicians talking about the coronavirus , she gamely clicked .
The two doctors , emergency medicine specialists from Bakersfield , California , said that social distancing to stop the spread of the virus could dangerously weaken the immune system .
A former epidemiologist , Beall noticed right away that something was off : The doctors seemed to be cherry-picking data @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disease and recovered , and their math just didn ’ t make sense .
She was shocked to hear them advise parents to intentionally expose children to the coronavirus to achieve herd immunity—it seemed reckless , maybe even deadly .
So , she waded into the comments and calmly pointed out the flaws .
Beall was pretty sure she knew where the video came from : Many of the roughly 200 moms in her groups , she said , also belonged to Facebook groups that opposed vaccines , and occasionally , the moms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the anti-vaccine groups had taken up the cause of opposing states ’ shelter-in-place orders , claiming the lockdown violated their personal freedoms .
In the past , Beall , a strong believer in vaccines , would often respectfully challenge any inaccurate information the other members shared .
In pre-pandemic days , her friends had thanked her for her perspective and moved on .
This was how things went for homeschool moms : Even when they disagreed , they were still a tribe .
But this time , the comments took a different turn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beall ’ s remarks were met with vitriol .
It was “ this flood of beliefs around public health measures being an assault on freedom and liberty , and slavery and Holocaust analogies , and conspiracy theories , and 5G and Bill Gates , ” she recalls .
“ It just went on and on with an endless flood of anger toward public health in general and me personally for not going along with this narrative in the video.
” The biggest shock came when an old friend of Beall ’ s weighed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost all of the other moms in her circle , was “ appalled when Donald Trump was elected president , ” Beall remembers , saying “ she cried tears over it.
” Beall didn ’ t expect her to be so defensive of the video , and when she tried to explain that it was “ being used by people on the very far right to promote a narrative that ’ s going to kill people , ” she says the friend laid it all out in pretty harsh terms : “ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told Beall , “ with those people who care about freedom , instead of someone like you , who wants to have us controlled and dominated by our government.
” Beall is still reeling from the encounter—and she can ’ t shake the feeling that something frightening has happened to her old friends .
She ’ s almost certainly not alone ; what she has experienced is actually representative of a broader trend .
Back when I started covering the anti-vaccination movement more than a decade ago , the loudest voices came from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affluent enclaves—think famously hippie places like Marin County , California , or Boulder , Colorado—where parents worried about the side effects of what they perceive as toxins in vaccines .
Anti-vaxxers in these places tended to pride themselves on the purity of their lifestyles—they bought organic groceries , railed against genetically modified food , and were suspicious of the electromagnetic waves emitted by cellphones .
In a 2012 Parade magazine article , Seth Mnookin , author of The Panic Virus : A True Story of Medicine , Science , and Fear , described @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are often focused on being environmentally conscious and paying close attention to every aspect of their children ’ s development.
” For baby advice , many turned to attachment parenting guru Dr. Bob Sears , who encourages parents to skip or delay their babies ’ vaccines to limit their exposure to toxins .
When it came time for school , many chose Waldorf—the network of private schools that promotes the progressive and somewhat eccentric educational ideas of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner ; these schools have had some of the lowest vaccination rates in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time have had outbreaks of whooping cough and chickenpox ) .
“ Breastfeeding , eating organic foods , insular communities—it was this archetype of a person , ” says Rupali Limaye , a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist who has studied the movement against mandatory vaccines .
But over the last few years , Limaye has observed a subtle rightward shift : Online anti-vax communities , most of which are on Facebook , have taken on a very different tone .
Instead of fretting over unwholesome additives in vaccines , members now rant about government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rules as an assault on their freedom , and they swap theories about how Bill Gates is working with the government to control citizens with microchips , says Limaye .
They ’ re “ railing against the government and pharma companies controlling the population.
” Since the start of the pandemic , suspicion of the government has converged with a broad refusal to accept scientific evidence—one that has been enabled by President Trump—and it ’ s given the groups new points of reference : They ’ ve railed against shelter-in-place orders and masks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misinformation thrives .
Members share articles about how to cure the virus with vitamin C , and they pass around conspiracy videos like “ Plandemic , ” which argues that the virus is a moneymaking scheme perpetrated by an exclusive group of elites .
Some individuals speculate that there is no virus at all .
Limaye worries that the cross-pollination between the anti-vax community and far-right groups could eventually cause an epidemic of vaccine skepticism .
And if that happens , we ’ ll be in real trouble .
Vaccines rank with indoor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public health breakthroughs of modern history .
They prevent millions of deaths worldwide every year .
Yet experts warn that if global vaccination rates drop , we could see a resurgence of deadly diseases such as measles and polio .
The anti-vax movement is “ spilling over to the hesitant folks , ” she says .
“ These folks might have been on the fence but leaning toward vaccination , and now that they hear about the overreach , they ’ re going to decide not to vaccinate.
” Most of us think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spectrum—on one side is the far left , and way on the other is the far right .
But occasionally , the spectrum is more of a circle , with the two extremes joining up in a strange middle point around back .
Jennifer Reich , a University of Colorado Denver sociologist who studies the spread of misinformation about health , noticed this dynamic in vaccine hesitancy when she was first starting out in the field , back in 2007 .
“ This was one of those places where right meets left , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a long time , ” she said .
In a 2017 study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior , Saad Omer , a Yale University epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist , studied this phenomenon , asking parents of about their values , political affiliation , and beliefs about vaccines .
His team found that people who were skeptical of vaccines tended to list “ purity ” and “ liberty ” as important values .
“ Purity overlaps substantially with the ‘ crunchy granola ’ crowd , ” Omer explained .
But “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ The left interpretation of liberty is human rights , and the right is libertarianism.
” Yet some experts believe that voices from the far right are beginning to drown out those of the crunchy granola crowd .
Reich says that she started noticing the shift during the Obama presidency , right after the Affordable Care Act passed .
Reich was working on a study about small business owners ’ attitudes toward paying for employee health insurance .
“ When I suggested that Obamacare might help , they started talking about ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” she said .
“ I was definitely not expecting that.
” Soon after , she started noticing comments about government overreach in anti-vax groups .
She also observed a rising tide of anti-science sentiment .
Members of the groups she followed seemed to believe that they could become self-made experts by doing their own research , medical degrees and study design be damned .
In her 2016 book Calling the Shots : Why Parents Reject Vaccines , Reich describes an encounter with one mother who introduced herself as a “ vaccine researcher.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ scientist—she had simply read up on vaccines , the way one might research a product before buying it .
“ In calling herself a ‘ vaccine researcher , ’ a term usually referring to immunologists or microbiologists who spend decades in laboratories after years of postgraduate training , she challenges the very meaning of expertise and considers her qualification as a vigilant parent to be equivalent , ” Reich wrote .
Meanwhile , Devin Burghart , executive director of the anti-white-nationalism think tank the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was elected president and the newly emboldened extremist groups found their way into the mainstream .
“ If there was really one thing to point to that was a transformative moment , it was Trump ’ s flirtation with anti-vax messaging that signaled to the MAGA base that this was something to be concerned about , ” he said .
Since taking office , Trump has supported the federal immunization program , but that ’ s a departure from a much longer history .
As he was gearing up to run , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ autism , and he once said a vaccine “ looks like it ’ s meant for a horse , not for a child.
” The Trump administration has actively encouraged this kind of science denial : Doctors and scientists are intellectuals to be regarded with suspicion .
By May 2019 , Trump himself had publicly attacked science 100 times by Scientific American ’ s count .
And the coronavirus has thrown a spark into that powder keg , as Americans watch scientists learn about the disease in real time , sometimes making big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s clear that science is messy , ” Reich said .
“ If you ’ re being told you can ’ t go to a grocery store without a mask , and you ’ re reading conflicting reports , it becomes easy to question the validity of science.
” Burghart has documented the rightward shifts in many of the Facebook groups he monitors .
He points to the influential Stop Mandatory Vaccination group , which was founded five years ago by California naturopath Larry Cook as a kind of clearinghouse for the alternative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the toxins in vaccines could supposedly harm children .
In one recent post , a member shared a link to a documentary called Sacrificial Virgins about the dangers of the HPV vaccine ; in another , Cook proclaims , “ Children ’ s Lives Matter : Defund the Vaccine Industry Killing Machine.
” Earlier this year , Cook launched a spinoff group called Medical Freedom Patriots .
The goal—to convince the world that vaccines are dangerous—was the same , but the new group was different in that its strategy was explicitly political : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new website how his thinking evolved on spreading his anti-vaccine message .
“ The Democrats are actually the ones pushing the vaccine mandate agenda , ” he says .
“ I am of the opinion that now , especially with COVID-19 , the Republican elected officials are going to get hit really , really , really hard to capitulate to vaccine mandates.
” He goes on to explain that the goal of his new group is to reach his “ target demographic , ” the far right : Cook ’ s group isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political right : Members of Facebook anti-vax groups now regularly post pro-Trump messages and videos .
The group Michigan for Vaccine Choice shared a Trump campaign video that reassures voters that the president wouldn ’ t force Americans to get a coronavirus vaccine once it ’ s developed .
The group Indiana Coalition for Vaccine Choice invited users to a Memorial Day “ Freedom Raly ” cosponsored by the Conservative Alliance and the local chapter of the tea party .
And many groups are littered with references to QAnon , the conspiracy theory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things , that a secretive elite group wants to unseat Trump .
Anti-vaccine groups ’ efforts to court Republicans have started to pay off .
In the last few years , conservative lawmakers in several states have introduced legislation that seeks to weaken rules around vaccination .
In 2017 , a group of Republican Texas state reps who called themselves the Freedom Caucus sought to block the state ’ s effort to track the number of parents who sought exemptions for schools ’ vaccine requirements .
The Freedom Caucus passed an amendment that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from biological parents before vaccinating children in foster care .
A Pennsylvania state senator , Daryl Metcalfe , sponsored a bill in 2019 that would prohibit doctors from refusing to care for unvaccinated patients .
In January , Colorado state Sen. Dave Williams introduced legislation that would require health care workers to give parents a list of ingredients and rare side effects before administering vaccines ; it would also forbid them from even recommending a vaccine to a teenager without parental consent .
It didn ’ t pass , but it wasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the days leading up to the vote , the admins of the Facebook group People for Informed Consent exhorted members to “ spend the next few days working the halls and working the phones like it is your only job .
You must secure every Republican Senator and flip three Democrats.
” In 2018 , researchers from Drexel University in Pennsylvania reviewed 175 proposed pieces of legislation about states ’ vaccine exemption laws .
They found that bills that sought to make it easier to opt out of vaccines were more likely to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 13 bills that ultimately passed , 12 weakened existing laws around vaccine requirements .
The experts I talked to fell short of saying that right-wingers have entirely co-opted the movement—the crunchy old guard is still there , they assured me .
Yale ’ s Omer pointed to left-wing politicians and celebrities—including lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and late-night host Bill Maher—who have continued to vociferously oppose vaccines .
“ I don ’ t think that the left side of the movement is going anywhere , ” he says .
Still , he sees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government funding for research on the ideology behind vaccine refusal is scarce .
Brendan Nyhan , a Dartmouth College political science professor who studies the politicization of health information , pointed out that the majority of Americans still vaccinate their children .
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , 92 percent of 19-to 35-month-olds are up to date on their measles , mumps , and rubella vaccines .
A 2017 Pew poll found that 82 percent of Americans believe that parents should be required to vaccinate healthy children .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ differences in opinion , and some experts warned me to be careful about characterizing vaccines as a partisan issue—if mainstream Republicans begin to see vaccines as part of the Democrats ’ agenda , they said , we ’ ll be in real trouble—especially going into a presidential election that could coincide with the introduction of a vaccine for COVID-19 .
“ The prospect of a change ” toward partisanship on vaccines , said Nyhan , “ is worrisome.
” A few days after I spoke to Nyhan , as I was finishing up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and ABC released the results of a poll .
It found that 27 percent of Americans say they wouldn ’ t get a coronavirus vaccine .
But when those numbers were broken down to include political affiliation , 80 percent of Democrats said they would “ definitely or probably ” get vaccinated , compared to just 60 percent of Republicans .
For Beall , the burgeoning divide has become personal : The experience in her homeschool Facebook groups was a turning point .
After having enjoyed time spent with other members and their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family ’ s real-life interaction with parents whose belief in conspiracies and suspicion of science she considers dangerous .
“ I don ’ t want my daughter to go back there , even though she ’ s made friends and had a great time , ” she says .
“ I no longer trust that the adults in that community have any ability to model critical thinking skills for her .
I just feel like that is a place so out of touch with reality .
”

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
When the pandemic hit, many American parents found themselves muddling through homeschooling for the first time—but Elizabeth Beall is an old pro: She’s been teaching her 13-year-old daughter from home since kindergarten. Over the years, Beall, who lives in California, has learned that homeschooling works best when it doesn’t just happen at home, so she slowly built up a network of parents—mostly moms—who share ideas in Facebook groups and sometimes get the kids together in person for educational and social activities. Beall has formed tight bonds with many of the moms—and they’ve found that the Facebook groups are handy places to swap tips and information. So in late April, when Beall noticed that a few of the moms had posted a video of two physicians talking about the coronavirus, she gamely clicked.
The two doctors, emergency medicine specialists from Bakersfield, California, said that social distancing to stop the spread of the virus could dangerously weaken the immune system. A former epidemiologist, Beall noticed right away that something was off: The doctors seemed to be cherry-picking data about how many people had contracted the disease and recovered, and their math just didn’t make sense. She was shocked to hear them advise parents to intentionally expose children to the coronavirus to achieve herd immunity—it seemed reckless, maybe even deadly. So, she waded into the comments and calmly pointed out the flaws.
Beall was pretty sure she knew where the video came from: Many of the roughly 200 moms in her groups, she said, also belonged to Facebook groups that opposed vaccines, and occasionally, the moms cross-posted memes or information. Recently, the anti-vaccine groups had taken up the cause of opposing states’ shelter-in-place orders, claiming the lockdown violated their personal freedoms.
In the past, Beall, a strong believer in vaccines, would often respectfully challenge any inaccurate information the other members shared. In pre-pandemic days, her friends had thanked her for her perspective and moved on. This was how things went for homeschool moms: Even when they disagreed, they were still a tribe.
But this time, the comments took a different turn. Instead of the friendly back-and-forth, Beall’s remarks were met with vitriol. It was “this flood of beliefs around public health measures being an assault on freedom and liberty, and slavery and Holocaust analogies, and conspiracy theories, and 5G and Bill Gates,” she recalls. “It just went on and on with an endless flood of anger toward public health in general and me personally for not going along with this narrative in the video.”
“I would rather align myself with those people who care about freedom, instead of someone like you, who wants to have us controlled and dominated by our government.”
The biggest shock came when an old friend of Beall’s weighed in, a woman who, like almost all of the other moms in her circle, was “appalled when Donald Trump was elected president,” Beall remembers, saying “she cried tears over it.” Beall didn’t expect her to be so defensive of the video, and when she tried to explain that it was “being used by people on the very far right to promote a narrative that’s going to kill people,” she says the friend laid it all out in pretty harsh terms: “I would rather align myself,” she told Beall, “with those people who care about freedom, instead of someone like you, who wants to have us controlled and dominated by our government.”
Beall is still reeling from the encounter—and she can’t shake the feeling that something frightening has happened to her old friends. She’s almost certainly not alone; what she has experienced is actually representative of a broader trend.
Back when I started covering the anti-vaccination movement more than a decade ago, the loudest voices came from politically liberal, mostly white, and affluent enclaves—think famously hippie places like Marin County, California, or Boulder, Colorado—where parents worried about the side effects of what they perceive as toxins in vaccines. Anti-vaxxers in these places tended to pride themselves on the purity of their lifestyles—they bought organic groceries, railed against genetically modified food, and were suspicious of the electromagnetic waves emitted by cellphones. In a 2012 Parade magazine article, Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear, described anti-vax clusters as places “where parents are often focused on being environmentally conscious and paying close attention to every aspect of their children’s development.”
For baby advice, many turned to attachment parenting guru Dr. Bob Sears, who encourages parents to skip or delay their babies’ vaccines to limit their exposure to toxins. When it came time for school, many chose Waldorf—the network of private schools that promotes the progressive and somewhat eccentric educational ideas of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner; these schools have had some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country (and at the same time have had outbreaks of whooping cough and chickenpox). “Breastfeeding, eating organic foods, insular communities—it was this archetype of a person,” says Rupali Limaye, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist who has studied the movement against mandatory vaccines.
But over the last few years, Limaye has observed a subtle rightward shift: Online anti-vax communities, most of which are on Facebook, have taken on a very different tone. Instead of fretting over unwholesome additives in vaccines, members now rant about government overreach. They describe schools’ immunization rules as an assault on their freedom, and they swap theories about how Bill Gates is working with the government to control citizens with microchips, says Limaye. They’re “railing against the government and pharma companies controlling the population.”
Since the start of the pandemic, suspicion of the government has converged with a broad refusal to accept scientific evidence—one that has been enabled by President Trump—and it’s given the groups new points of reference: They’ve railed against shelter-in-place orders and masks. And in these radicalized spaces, misinformation thrives. Members share articles about how to cure the virus with vitamin C, and they pass around conspiracy videos like “Plandemic,” which argues that the virus is a moneymaking scheme perpetrated by an exclusive group of elites. Some individuals speculate that there is no virus at all.
Limaye worries that the cross-pollination between the anti-vax community and far-right groups could eventually cause an epidemic of vaccine skepticism. And if that happens, we’ll be in real trouble. Vaccines rank with indoor plumbing as one of the most important public health breakthroughs of modern history. They prevent millions of deaths worldwide every year. Yet experts warn that if global vaccination rates drop, we could see a resurgence of deadly diseases such as measles and polio. The anti-vax movement is “spilling over to the hesitant folks,” she says. “These folks might have been on the fence but leaning toward vaccination, and now that they hear about the overreach, they’re going to decide not to vaccinate.”
Most of us think of political culture in America as a spectrum—on one side is the far left, and way on the other is the far right. But occasionally, the spectrum is more of a circle, with the two extremes joining up in a strange middle point around back. Jennifer Reich, a University of Colorado Denver sociologist who studies the spread of misinformation about health, noticed this dynamic in vaccine hesitancy when she was first starting out in the field, back in 2007. “This was one of those places where right meets left, and that’s been true for a long time,” she said. In a 2017 study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, Saad Omer, a Yale University epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist, studied this phenomenon, asking parents about their values, political affiliation, and beliefs about vaccines. His team found that people who were skeptical of vaccines tended to list “purity” and “liberty” as important values. “Purity overlaps substantially with the ‘crunchy granola’ crowd,” Omer explained. But “liberty” is where things get interesting: “The left interpretation of liberty is human rights, and the right is libertarianism.”
“When I suggested that Obamacare might help, they started talking about ‘womb to tomb’ government tracking. I was definitely not expecting that.”
Yet some experts believe that voices from the far right are beginning to drown out those of the crunchy granola crowd. Reich says that she started noticing the shift during the Obama presidency, right after the Affordable Care Act passed. Reich was working on a study about small business owners’ attitudes toward paying for employee health insurance. “When I suggested that Obamacare might help, they started talking about ‘womb to tomb’ government tracking,” she said. “I was definitely not expecting that.” Soon after, she started noticing comments about government overreach in anti-vax groups.
She also observed a rising tide of anti-science sentiment. Members of the groups she followed seemed to believe that they could become self-made experts by doing their own research, medical degrees and study design be damned. In her 2016 book Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines, Reich describes an encounter with one mother who introduced herself as a “vaccine researcher.” The woman wasn’t a scientist—she had simply read up on vaccines, the way one might research a product before buying it. “In calling herself a ‘vaccine researcher,’ a term usually referring to immunologists or microbiologists who spend decades in laboratories after years of postgraduate training, she challenges the very meaning of expertise and considers her qualification as a vigilant parent to be equivalent,” Reich wrote.
Meanwhile, Devin Burghart, executive director of the anti-white-nationalism think tank the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, noticed the trend around the time Trump was elected president and the newly emboldened extremist groups found their way into the mainstream. “If there was really one thing to point to that was a transformative moment, it was Trump’s flirtation with anti-vax messaging that signaled to the MAGA base that this was something to be concerned about,” he said. Since taking office, Trump has supported the federal immunization program, but that’s a departure from a much longer history. As he was gearing up to run, he regularly repeated the myth that vaccines cause autism, and he once said a vaccine “looks like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child.”
The Trump administration has actively encouraged this kind of science denial: Doctors and scientists are intellectuals to be regarded with suspicion. By May 2019, Trump himself had publicly attacked science 100 times by Scientific American’s count. And the coronavirus has thrown a spark into that powder keg, as Americans watch scientists learn about the disease in real time, sometimes making big mistakes publicly. “Now it’s clear that science is messy,” Reich said. “If you’re being told you can’t go to a grocery store without a mask, and you’re reading conflicting reports, it becomes easy to question the validity of science.”
Burghart has documented the rightward shifts in many of the Facebook groups he monitors. He points to the influential Stop Mandatory Vaccination group, which was founded five years ago by California naturopath Larry Cook as a kind of clearinghouse for the alternative medicine community to share theories about how the toxins in vaccines could supposedly harm children. In one recent post, a member shared a link to a documentary called Sacrificial Virgins about the dangers of the HPV vaccine; in another, Cook proclaims, “Children’s Lives Matter: Defund the Vaccine Industry Killing Machine.” Earlier this year, Cook launched a spinoff group called Medical Freedom Patriots. The goal—to convince the world that vaccines are dangerous—was the same, but the new group was different in that its strategy was explicitly political: Cook explains in a video on the new website how his thinking evolved on spreading his anti-vaccine message. “The Democrats are actually the ones pushing the vaccine mandate agenda,” he says. “I am of the opinion that now, especially with COVID-19, the Republican elected officials are going to get hit really, really, really hard to capitulate to vaccine mandates.” He goes on to explain that the goal of his new group is to reach his “target demographic,” the far right:
Cook’s group isn’t the only one targeting the political right: Members of Facebook anti-vax groups now regularly post pro-Trump messages and videos. The group Michigan for Vaccine Choice shared a Trump campaign video that reassures voters that the president wouldn’t force Americans to get a coronavirus vaccine once it’s developed. The group Indiana Coalition for Vaccine Choice invited users to a Memorial Day “Freedom Rally” cosponsored by the Conservative Alliance and the local chapter of the tea party. And many groups are littered with references to QAnon, the conspiracy theory group whose adherents believe, among other things, that a secretive elite group wants to unseat Trump.
Anti-vaccine groups’ efforts to court Republicans have started to pay off. In the last few years, conservative lawmakers in several states have introduced legislation that seeks to weaken rules around vaccination. In 2017, a group of Republican Texas state reps who called themselves the Freedom Caucus sought to block the state’s effort to track the number of parents who sought exemptions for schools’ vaccine requirements. The Freedom Caucus passed an amendment that requires the state to obtain parental consent from biological parents before vaccinating children in foster care. A Pennsylvania state senator, Daryl Metcalfe, sponsored a bill in 2019 that would prohibit doctors from refusing to care for unvaccinated patients. In January, Colorado state Sen. Dave Williams introduced legislation that would require health care workers to give parents a list of ingredients and rare side effects before administering vaccines; it would also forbid them from even recommending a vaccine to a teenager without parental consent. It didn’t pass, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. In the days leading up to the vote, the admins of the Facebook group People for Informed Consent exhorted members to “spend the next few days working the halls and working the phones like it is your only job. You must secure every Republican Senator and flip three Democrats.”
In 2018, researchers from Drexel University in Pennsylvania reviewed 175 proposed pieces of legislation about states’ vaccine exemption laws. They found that bills that sought to make it easier to opt out of vaccines were more likely to come from Republican lawmakers. Of the 13 bills that ultimately passed, 12 weakened existing laws around vaccine requirements.
The experts I talked to fell short of saying that right-wingers have entirely co-opted the movement—the crunchy old guard is still there, they assured me. Yale’s Omer pointed to left-wing politicians and celebrities—including lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and late-night host Bill Maher—who have continued to vociferously oppose vaccines. “I don’t think that the left side of the movement is going anywhere,” he says. Still, he sees a need to track the political dynamics—and government funding for research on the ideology behind vaccine refusal is scarce.
“I don’t think that the left side of the movement is going anywhere.”
Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth College political science professor who studies the politicization of health information, pointed out that the majority of Americans still vaccinate their children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 92 percent of 19-to 35-month-olds are up to date on their measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. A 2017 Pew poll found that 82 percent of Americans believe that parents should be required to vaccinate healthy children. The survey didn’t find meaningful partisan differences in opinion, and some experts warned me to be careful about characterizing vaccines as a partisan issue—if mainstream Republicans begin to see vaccines as part of the Democrats’ agenda, they said, we’ll be in real trouble—especially going into a presidential election that could coincide with the introduction of a vaccine for COVID-19. “The prospect of a change” toward partisanship on vaccines, said Nyhan, “is worrisome.”
A few days after I spoke to Nyhan, as I was finishing up writing this piece, the Washington Post and ABC released the results of a poll. It found that 27 percent of Americans say they wouldn’t get a coronavirus vaccine. But when those numbers were broken down to include political affiliation, 80 percent of Democrats said they would “definitely or probably” get vaccinated, compared to just 60 percent of Republicans.
For Beall, the burgeoning divide has become personal: The experience in her homeschool Facebook groups was a turning point. After having enjoyed time spent with other members and their kids, she decided to limit her family’s real-life interaction with parents whose belief in conspiracies and suspicion of science she considers dangerous. “I don’t want my daughter to go back there, even though she’s made friends and had a great time,” she says. “I no longer trust that the adults in that community have any ability to model critical thinking skills for her. I just feel like that is a place so out of touch with reality.”