vox--2020-10-18--Trump keeps on holding rallies even as Covid-19 cases surge

As US coronavirus cases begin to climb again for the third time this year — and after being hospitalized after testing positive for Covid-19 himself — President Donald Trump continues to eschew basic public health facts , instead choosing to push a false narrative that the US is at long last “ coming around the corner ” when it comes to the coronavirus .
That particular line , that the US is rounding the metaphorical pandemic corner , is one Trump falls back on with some regularity — as of Friday , 28 times in the last 46 days , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — but it ’ s just not true .
In reality , the US reported its third-highest single-day case count ever on Friday — 70,451 new cases , according to the New York Times .
And many states , including both Dakotas , Idaho , Michigan , Montana , Nebraska , and Wisconsin , to name just a few , are reporting all-time high daily case numbers .
Nonetheless , Trump held a pair of crowded campaign rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin on Saturday .
Despite the surge in cases , there were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and many attendees did not wear masks .
And on Sunday , Trump attended an indoor church service in Las Vegas , Nevada .
Neither he nor the pastor wore masks , and in the state cases are ticking upward , approaching a level not seen since mid-August .
The president also has a rally in Carson City , Nevada , scheduled for later in the day Sunday .
At many of his recent events , Trump and his supporters have , often as not , seemed to revel in violating public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — who has falsely boasted that he is now “ immune ” to Covid-19 after his first bout with the disease — told supporters that he could “ jump into the audience and give you all a big kiss .
The women and the men .
I ’ ll kiss those big powerful men down there.
” As Vox ’ s Aaron Rupar has reported , that particular bit has become a mainstay of Trump ’ s post-hospitalization rally routine , seemingly , and it ’ s most definitely not a good idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s mishandling of the pandemic extends far beyond his Covid-19 roadshow , however .
On Sunday , Twitter took down a tweet by one of the president ’ s top coronavirus advisers , Scott Atlas , in which he argued mask wearing is not effective at stopping the spread of the coronavirus .
The tweet , according to Twitter , violated the site ’ s rules on spreading coronavirus misinformation .
Atlas supported this assertion with a link to a paper Brown University School of Public Health dean Ashish Jha called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jha and many other public health experts pointed out in responding to Atlas , do work — but mask skepticism isn ’ t the only fringe public health strategy that Atlas , who is not an epidemiologist , has boosted since he joined the Trump ’ s coronavirus team .
Atlas has reportedly also floated “ herd immunity ” as a strategy , incorrectly arguing that allowing most of the population to become infected would neutralize the coronavirus .
Experts are skeptical that this would work as Atlas imagines , and say even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a far greater death toll than the nearly 220,000 Americans who have already died of Covid-19 .
On Sunday , Dr. Michael Osterholm , who , unlike Atlas , is an expect on infectious diseases , told NBC ’ s Chuck Todd that attempting herd immunity through any other route besides vaccination is “ the most amazing combination of pixie dust and pseudoscience I ’ ve ever seen.
” In September , more than 100 Stanford University faculty “ in the fields of epidemiology , infectious disease and health policy ” — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Hoover Institution — wrote a letter criticizing Atlas ’ s public health prescriptions , according to the Stanford Daily .
Atlas responded by threatening a lawsuit .
Trump himself has also kept up a steady drumbeat of false information about Covid-19 .
As recently as Sunday , he again claimed that “ the United States shows more CASES than other countries ... because it TESTS at such a high ( and costly ) level , ” which isn ’ t really true .
But the cases would exist even if testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because of lack of testing capacity , or in some cases , a refusal to be tested , current confirmed case counts are believed to be lower than the actual number of cases .
The falseness of the president ’ s assertion can be seen in data as well .
For example , look at Wisconsin : The number of people tested in the state per day has remained relatively steady , around 15,000 , but the number of positive results has climbed as the coronavirus outbreak surges .
If the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ load should be as flat as its testing numbers .
With fewer than three weeks until Election Day , however , Trump ’ s continued Covid-19 denialism isn ’ t likely to do him any favors .
As Vox ’ s Aaron Rupar wrote on Wednesday , Trump ’ s recent comments about Covid-19 are “ unlikely to persuade anyone who isn ’ t already wearing a MAGA cap that the president has done a good job handling the pandemic — or even that he has a grasp on the underlying science.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plans to keep up his hectic travel schedule despite the public health risk his rallies pose .
According to Axios , the president has “ asked his campaign to put him on the road every single day from now until Nov. 3 , ” so be on the lookout for more false claims about the US “ coming around the corner.
” Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
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As US coronavirus cases begin to climb again for the third time this year — and after being hospitalized after testing positive for Covid-19 himself — President Donald Trump continues to eschew basic public health facts, instead choosing to push a false narrative that the US is at long last “coming around the corner” when it comes to the coronavirus.
That particular line, that the US is rounding the metaphorical pandemic corner, is one Trump falls back on with some regularity — as of Friday, 28 times in the last 46 days, according to Forbes’s Andrew Solender — but it’s just not true.
In reality, the US reported its third-highest single-day case count ever on Friday — 70,451 new cases, according to the New York Times. And many states, including both Dakotas, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, to name just a few, are reporting all-time high daily case numbers.
Nonetheless, Trump held a pair of crowded campaign rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin on Saturday. Despite the surge in cases, there were no visible social distancing measures in place, and many attendees did not wear masks.
And on Sunday, Trump attended an indoor church service in Las Vegas, Nevada. Neither he nor the pastor wore masks, and in the state cases are ticking upward, approaching a level not seen since mid-August. The president also has a rally in Carson City, Nevada, scheduled for later in the day Sunday.
At many of his recent events, Trump and his supporters have, often as not, seemed to revel in violating public health guidelines. On Saturday, Trump — who has falsely boasted that he is now “immune” to Covid-19 after his first bout with the disease — told supporters that he could “jump into the audience and give you all a big kiss. The women and the men. I’ll kiss those big powerful men down there.”
Trump once again insinuates that Gold Star families gave him Covid, then says, "I got better fast. I can now jump into the audience and give you all a big kiss. The women and the men. I'll kiss those big powerful men down there." pic.twitter.com/z9wNo4jDyT — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 18, 2020
As Vox’s Aaron Rupar has reported, that particular bit has become a mainstay of Trump’s post-hospitalization rally routine, seemingly, and it’s most definitely not a good idea in the middle of a pandemic.
A top Trump adviser keeps spreading Covid-19 misinformation
Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic extends far beyond his Covid-19 roadshow, however. On Sunday, Twitter took down a tweet by one of the president’s top coronavirus advisers, Scott Atlas, in which he argued mask-wearing is not effective at stopping the spread of the coronavirus. The tweet, according to Twitter, violated the site’s rules on spreading coronavirus misinformation.
Atlas supported this assertion with a link to a paper Brown University School of Public Health dean Ashish Jha called “incoherent junk.”
Masks, as Jha and many other public health experts pointed out in responding to Atlas, do work — but mask skepticism isn’t the only fringe public health strategy that Atlas, who is not an epidemiologist, has boosted since he joined the Trump’s coronavirus team. Atlas has reportedly also floated “herd immunity” as a strategy, incorrectly arguing that allowing most of the population to become infected would neutralize the coronavirus. Experts are skeptical that this would work as Atlas imagines, and say even if it did, it would lead to a far greater death toll than the nearly 220,000 Americans who have already died of Covid-19.
On Sunday, Dr. Michael Osterholm, who, unlike Atlas, is an expert on infectious diseases, told NBC’s Chuck Todd that attempting herd immunity through any other route besides vaccination is “the most amazing combination of pixie dust and pseudoscience I’ve ever seen.”
In September, more than 100 Stanford University faculty “in the fields of epidemiology, infectious disease and health policy” — Atlas is a fellow at the university’s Hoover Institution — wrote a letter criticizing Atlas’s public health prescriptions, according to the Stanford Daily. Atlas responded by threatening a lawsuit.
Trump himself has also kept up a steady drumbeat of false information about Covid-19. As recently as Sunday, he again claimed that “the United States shows more CASES than other countries ... because it TESTS at such a high (and costly) level,” which isn’t really true.
The United States shows more CASES than other countries, which the Lamestream Fake News Media pounces on daily, because it TESTS at such a high (and costly) level. No country in the world tests at this level. The more you TEST, the more CASES you will be reporting. Very simple! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2020
But the cases would exist even if testing isn’t done — in fact, because of lack of testing capacity, or in some cases, a refusal to be tested, current confirmed case counts are believed to be lower than the actual number of cases.
The falseness of the president’s assertion can be seen in data as well. For example, look at Wisconsin: The number of people tested in the state per day has remained relatively steady, around 15,000, but the number of positive results has climbed as the coronavirus outbreak surges. If the president were correct, Wisconsin’s caseload should be as flat as its testing numbers.
With fewer than three weeks until Election Day, however, Trump’s continued Covid-19 denialism isn’t likely to do him any favors. As Vox’s Aaron Rupar wrote on Wednesday, Trump’s recent comments about Covid-19 are “unlikely to persuade anyone who isn’t already wearing a MAGA cap that the president has done a good job handling the pandemic — or even that he has a grasp on the underlying science.”
Politically beneficial or not, Trump reportedly plans to keep up his hectic travel schedule despite the public health risk his rallies pose. According to Axios, the president has “asked his campaign to put him on the road every single day from now until Nov. 3,” so be on the lookout for more false claims about the US “coming around the corner.”


vox--2020-10-18--Sen. David Perdue’s racist treatment of Sen. Kamala Harris’s name was all too familiar

Sen. David Perdue ( R-GA ) — in an attempt to gin up the crowd at President Donald Trump ’ s rally in Macon , Georgia , on Friday — took the opportunity to mock Sen. Kamala Harris ’ s name .
“ The most insidious thing that Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden are trying to perpetrate , and Bernie , and Elizabeth , and KAH-mah-la , or Kah-MAH-la , or KAH-mah-la or Kamala-mala-mala , I don ’ t know , whatever , ” he said .
It ’ s a move that was blatantly racist , and one that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black woman and first South Asian American woman to be a major party vice presidential nominee — as someone who ’ s different .
A Perdue spokesperson pushed back on this interpretation after the senator received extensive blowback for his actions .
“ Senator Perdue simply mispronounced Senator Harris ’ name , and he didn ’ t mean anything by it , ” said Perdue ’ s campaign communications director , John Burke , in a tweet .
Perdue ’ s behavior , however , was all too familiar for many people of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other ” Harris because she has a name that may be less common than his , or more difficult to pronounce .
As BuzzFeed News ’ s Clarissa-Jan Lim reported , Twitter users began using the hashtag # MyNameIs to share their names and the meanings behind them , emphasizing that pronouncing them correctly was simply a “ basic form of respect.
” “ # MyNameIs is giving me life .
Your name is the prayer your parents breathe into you .
It is a promise , a hope , and a gift @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President Sherrilyn Ifill .
“ It should be respected.
” Perdue ’ s statements echoed Trump ’ s rhetoric against immigrants and people of color Perdue ’ s actions , ultimately , were very much in line with Trump ’ s own rhetoric about immigrants and people of color .
Among other things , Trump has described asylum seekers as an “ invasion , ” called Black Lives Matter protesters “ thugs , ” and told progressive congresswomen of color that they should “ go back ” and “ fix the ... places @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently declined to condemn white supremacists , instead telling the Proud Boys , a far-right hate group , to “ stand back and stand by.
” Perdue ’ s statement also mirrors the way the president has made light of Harris ’ s name in recent weeks , including at rallies .
It was the president Perdue was echoing in his attempt to demean Harris — one of his Senate colleagues for the last four years — and to denigrate her candidacy .
He ’ s also far from the only one who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way to undercut Harris .
Earlier this year , Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson mispronounced her name as well and bristled when a guest urged him to correct it .
“ Out of respect , for somebody who ’ s going to be on the national ticket , pronouncing her name right is actually kind of a bare minimum , ” Democratic strategist Richard Goodstein said at the time .
Making fun of the way someone ’ s name sounds or is pronounced has been a longstanding way to “ other ” someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clear message about how little effort a person is willing to put in to treat someone else with dignity .
As a KUOW public radio report noted , research done by Rita Kohli and Daniel Solórzano at the University of California found that , in school settings , the mispronunciation of names creates feelings of “ anxiety and alienation ” — as well as pressure for people to adapt their names and conform to expectations that others may set for them .
Perdue ’ s actions have since garnered swift backlash : Following @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Democratic Senate competitor , Jon Ossoff , who criticized his statements as “ bigoted mockery , ” has raised $ 1 million , according to his campaign .
Ossoff and Perdue are locked in a tight race , with the RealClearPolitics polling average showing the two within 1 percentage point of one another , and Cook Political Report rating the race as a toss-up , meaning each is looking for ways to gain a late advantage .
In making fun of Harris ’ s name , Perdue appears to have given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unnecessarily creating an embarrassing situation for himself .
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Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), in an attempt to gin up the crowd at President Donald Trump’s rally in Macon, Georgia, on Friday, took the opportunity to mock Sen. Kamala Harris’s name.
“The most insidious thing that Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden are trying to perpetrate, and Bernie, and Elizabeth, and KAH-mah-la, or Kah-MAH-la, or KAH-mah-la or Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever,” he said.
It’s a move that was blatantly racist, and one that framed Harris — who is the first Black woman and first South Asian American woman to be a major party vice presidential nominee — as someone who’s different.
A Perdue spokesperson pushed back on this interpretation after the senator received extensive blowback for his actions. “Senator Perdue simply mispronounced Senator Harris’ name, and he didn’t mean anything by it,” said Perdue’s campaign communications director, John Burke, in a tweet.
Perdue’s behavior, however, was all too familiar for many people of color who recognized his attempts to “other” Harris because she has a name that may be less common than his, or more difficult to pronounce. As BuzzFeed News’s Clarissa-Jan Lim reported, Twitter users began using the hashtag #MyNameIs to share their names and the meanings behind them, emphasizing that pronouncing them correctly was simply a “basic form of respect.”
“#MyNameIs is giving me life. Your name is the prayer your parents breathe into you. It is a promise, a hope, and a gift,” wrote NAACP Legal Defense Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill. “It should be respected.”
Perdue’s statements echoed Trump’s rhetoric against immigrants and people of color
Perdue’s actions, ultimately, were very much in line with Trump’s own rhetoric about immigrants and people of color. Among other things, Trump has described asylum seekers as an “invasion,” called Black Lives Matter protesters “thugs,” and told progressive congresswomen of color that they should “go back” and “fix the ... places from which they came.” Trump also recently declined to condemn white supremacists, instead telling the Proud Boys, a far-right hate group, to “stand back and stand by.”
Perdue’s statement also mirrors the way the president has made light of Harris’s name in recent weeks, including at rallies.
Trump mispronounces Kamala Harris's name, which he repeats numerous times like it's an incantation or something pic.twitter.com/CUtgyKe8QW — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 8, 2020
It was the president Perdue was echoing in his attempt to demean Harris — one of his Senate colleagues for the last four years — and to denigrate her candidacy.
He’s also far from the only one who’s used this tactic in a way to undercut Harris. Earlier this year, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson mispronounced her name as well and bristled when a guest urged him to correct it. “Out of respect, for somebody who’s going to be on the national ticket, pronouncing her name right is actually kind of a bare minimum,” Democratic strategist Richard Goodstein said at the time.
Making fun of the way someone’s name sounds or is pronounced has been a long-standing way to “other” someone and disrespect their identity, sending a clear message about how little effort a person is willing to put in to treat someone else with dignity. As a KUOW public radio report noted, research done by Rita Kohli and Daniel Solórzano at the University of California found that, in school settings, the mispronunciation of names creates feelings of “anxiety and alienation” as well as pressure for people to adapt their names and conform to expectations that others may set for them.
Perdue’s actions have since garnered backlash: Following his appearance at the rally, Perdue’s Democratic Senate competitor, Jon Ossoff, who criticized his statements as “bigoted mockery,” has raised $1 million, according to his campaign.
Ossoff and Perdue are locked in a tight race, with the RealClearPolitics polling average showing the two within 1 percentage point of one another, and Cook Political Report rating the race as a toss-up, meaning each is looking for ways to gain a late advantage. In making fun of Harris’s name, Perdue appears to have given his opponent a fundraising victory, while unnecessarily creating an embarrassing situation for himself.


vox--2020-10-18--The return of “lock her up”: Trump won’t stop attacking Gretchen Whitmer

Michigan Gov .
Gretchen Whitmer has called on President Donald Trump to stop “ inspiring and incentivizing and inciting ” domestic terrorism against her , in a plea that came just 10 days after the FBI revealed a right-wing plot to abduct her .
Her statement , made Sunday on NBC ’ s Meet the Press , comes after Trump told supporters at a Saturday rally in Muskegon , Michigan , to “ be careful of ” the governor and their state ’ s attorney general , and after he criticized Whitmer ’ s attempts to stem the rising number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time the president attacked the governor , his supporters took up a “ lock her up ” chant .
It ’ s not a new theme for Trump : He ’ s long made a point of going after Whitmer , both before and after the FBI arrested six men for planning to kidnap and potentially murder her .
In March , he told Vice President Mike Pence , head of the White House coronavirus task force , not to call “ the woman in Michigan ” because Whitmer criticized his response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plot was revealed in early October , Trump sent three tweets about Whitmer , briefly noting that he condemns “ ANY extreme violence , ” while also accusing her of doing “ a terrible job ” as governor and criticizing her for not thanking him personally for the FBI ’ s role in stopping a domestic terrorism scheme .
Trump has also attacked Whitmer using nearly the same rhetoric as the members of the far-right militia — who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen — who were arrested .
“ [ Whitmer ] wants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Trump told a Fox Business host Friday , “ and they can ’ t stand her.
” According to an affidavit by FBI agent Richard Trask , the Michigan conspirators repeatedly referred to Whitmer as a “ tyrant ” and said she had “ no checks and balances at all.
” Whitmer isn ’ t the only elected official who has become the target of would-be right-wing violence over Covid-19 restrictions — which are well-supported by science .
In Wichita , Kansas , on Friday , a man was arrested for plotting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Whipple because of a mask mandate , according to a report by the Wichita Eagle .
And the same group that planned violence against Whitmer had also contemplated kidnapping Virginia Gov .
Ralph Northam .
Northam and Whitmer both run states Trump tweeted his supporters should “ LIBERATE ” — along with Minnesota — in April .
And as as Vox ’ s Fabiola Cineas has documented , Trump ’ s rhetoric against Whitmer — and his “ LIBERATE ” tweets — are not one-off events .
He has a long history of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Trump has seemed especially quick to attack female opponents Trump , needless to say , isn ’ t selective about who he attacks .
At the slightest criticism , he ’ s just as likely to turn his fire on a member of his own party — like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse — as he is to go after anyone else .
And Whitmer has criticized him : In March , she said that “ we , as a nation , were not as prepared as we should have been ” for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Meet the Press , said the “ Trump virus response is the worst in the globe.
” But while Whitmer isn ’ t alone in pointing out the shortcomings of the federal Covid-19 response — even Gov .
Larry Hogan , the Republican leader of Maryland , has also done so , for instance — she has become the unique target of a sustained campaign of vitriol by the president .
There ’ s a straightforward explanation for that .
As Vox ’ s Anna North explains , Whitmer isn ’ t just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what to do — she ’ s also a woman telling people what to do .
That ’ s never been particularly popular with a certain subset of Americans , and it ’ s especially unpopular now that Trump and others have introduced a gendered element into the politics of Covid-19 response , peddling the idea that it ’ s manly to ignore the risk of the virus .
Indeed , it ’ s no accident that Whitmer is being called a tyrant and a bitch .
The attacks on her feed into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stereotypes that are especially dangerous now as they undermine some of the very leaders who are trying to stop the spread of Covid-19 and keep Americans safe .
Ultimately , Trump ’ s attacks on Whitmer are just part of a history of misogyny on the part of the president .
In 2016 , Hillary Clinton was also the target of “ lock her up ” chants .
Just this month , Trump attacked Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a “ monster.
” And while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s tweets , House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is almost invariably labeled “ Crazy Nancy ” when Trump tweets about her .
According to Barbara Res , a former Trump Organization executive who oversaw the construction of Trump Tower , Trump ’ s sexism is by no means new .
But , she reportedly writes in an upcoming book , “ his regard for himself had increased exponentially ” over time , “ as had his contempt for women.
” And Trump ’ s treatment of Whitmer would appear to be a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has called on President Donald Trump to stop “inspiring and incentivizing and inciting” domestic terrorism against her, in a plea that came just 10 days after the FBI revealed a right-wing plot to abduct her.
Her statement, made Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, comes after Trump told supporters at a Saturday rally in Muskegon, Michigan, to “be careful of” the governor and their state’s attorney general, and after he criticized Whitmer’s attempts to stem the rising number of Covid-19 cases in Michigan. Each time the president attacked the governor, his supporters took up a “lock her up” chant.
For the second time in a single speech, Trump fans in Michigan direct "lock her up!" chants toward Gretchen Whitmer, who just weeks ago was the target of a kidnapping/assassination plot hatched by Trump supporters pic.twitter.com/wh7ts1Cqf5 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2020
It’s not a new theme for Trump: He’s long made a point of going after Whitmer, both before and after the FBI arrested six men for planning to kidnap and potentially murder her.
In March, he told Vice President Mike Pence, head of the White House coronavirus task force, not to call “the woman in Michigan” because Whitmer criticized his response to the pandemic.
Immediately after the kidnapping plot was revealed in early October, Trump sent three tweets about Whitmer, briefly noting that he condemns “ANY extreme violence,” while also accusing her of doing “a terrible job” as governor and criticizing her for not thanking him personally for the FBI’s role in stopping a domestic terrorism scheme.
Governor Whitmer of Michigan has done a terrible job. She locked down her state for everyone, except her husband’s boating activities. The Federal Government provided tremendous help to the Great People of Michigan. My Justice Department and Federal Law Enforcement announced... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2020
...today that they foiled a dangerous plot against the Governor of Michigan. Rather than say thank you, she calls me a White Supremacist—while Biden and Democrats refuse to condemn Antifa, Anarchists, Looters and Mobs that burn down Democrat run cities... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2020
...I do not tolerate ANY extreme violence. Defending ALL Americans, even those who oppose and attack me, is what I will always do as your President! Governor Whitmer—open up your state, open up your schools, and open up your churches! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2020
Trump has also attacked Whitmer using nearly the same rhetoric as the members of the far-right militia — who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen — who were arrested.
“[Whitmer] wants to be a dictator in Michigan,” Trump told a Fox Business host Friday, “and they can’t stand her.”
According to an affidavit by FBI agent Richard Trask, the Michigan conspirators repeatedly referred to Whitmer as a “tyrant” and said she had “no checks and balances at all.”
Whitmer isn’t the only elected official who has become the target of would-be right-wing violence over Covid-19 restrictions — which are well-supported by science. In Wichita, Kansas, on Friday, a man was arrested for plotting to kidnap and kill Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple because of a mask mandate, according to a report by the Wichita Eagle.
And the same group that planned violence against Whitmer had also contemplated kidnapping Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.
Northam and Whitmer both run states Trump tweeted his supporters should “LIBERATE” — along with Minnesota — in April.
LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2020
And as as Vox’s Fabiola Cineas has documented, Trump’s rhetoric against Whitmer — and his “LIBERATE” tweets — are not one-off events. He has a long history of “encouraging hate groups and political violence.”
Trump has seemed especially quick to attack female opponents
Trump, needless to say, isn’t selective about who he attacks. At the slightest criticism, he’s just as likely to turn his fire on a member of his own party — like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse — as he is to go after anyone else.
And Whitmer has criticized him: In March, she said that “we, as a nation, were not as prepared as we should have been” for the coronavirus pandemic, and Sunday on Meet the Press, said the “Trump virus response is the worst in the globe.”
But while Whitmer isn’t alone in pointing out the shortcomings of the federal Covid-19 response — even Gov. Larry Hogan, the Republican leader of Maryland, has also done so, for instance — she has become the unique target of a sustained campaign of vitriol by the president.
There’s a straightforward explanation for that. As Vox’s Anna North explains,
Whitmer isn’t just a Democrat or a governor telling people what to do — she’s also a woman telling people what to do. That’s never been particularly popular with a certain subset of Americans, and it’s especially unpopular now that Trump and others have introduced a gendered element into the politics of Covid-19 response, peddling the idea that it’s manly to ignore the risk of the virus. Indeed, it’s no accident that Whitmer is being called a tyrant and a bitch. The attacks on her feed into age-old stereotypes about women in power — stereotypes that are especially dangerous now as they undermine some of the very leaders who are trying to stop the spread of Covid-19 and keep Americans safe.
Ultimately, Trump’s attacks on Whitmer are just part of a history of misogyny on the part of the president. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was also the target of “lock her up” chants. Just this month, Trump attacked Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a “monster.” And while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is characterized as “cryin’” in Trump’s tweets, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is almost invariably labeled “Crazy Nancy” when Trump tweets about her.
According to Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive who oversaw the construction of Trump Tower, Trump’s sexism is by no means new. But, she reportedly writes in an upcoming book, “his regard for himself had increased exponentially” over time, “as had his contempt for women.” And Trump’s treatment of Whitmer would appear to be a clear example of that.


vox--2020-10-18--Nancy Pelosi sets a 48-hour deadline for getting a stimulus deal before the election

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just set a tight timeline for getting a new stimulus deal done before the election : 48 hours .
During an appearance on ABC ’ s This Week on Sunday , Pelosi suggested there likely won ’ t be time to pass a new package prior to November 3 if lawmakers don ’ t reach an agreement within the next 48 hours .
“ The 48 [ hours ] only relates to if we want to get it done before the election , which we do , ” she said .
Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stimulus package since the summer , but the effort has been stymied by disagreements over provisions on state and local funding , as well as Republican pushback over the scope of spending .
Their talks were also briefly derailed by President Donald Trump , who in early October announced the White House was ending negotiations , before changing course and demanding the parties proceed quickly .
Drew Hammill , Pelosi ’ s deputy chief of staff , tweeted Saturday that there are “ an array of additional differences ” between what Democrats want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would need to be worked out in the next two days .
Pelosi noted Sunday , for example , that language over funds for coronavirus testing was an ongoing sticking point .
Whether the Tuesday deadline helps spur some much-needed progress , however , is an open question .
As House Democrats negotiate with the White House , Senate Republicans , it seems , are on a parallel track .
Even as Pelosi and Mnuchin continue talks about an expansive package — with a recent White House proposal suggesting a bill worth $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adamant that any stimulus be much smaller .
On Saturday , Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the Senate would vote on a narrower $ 500 billion bill this week .
The new bill is a reminder that even if Pelosi and Mnuchin reach an agreement , there ’ s a great deal of uncertainty around whether Senate Republicans would support it , particularly given concerns many GOP lawmakers have expressed about adding to the national debt .
“ That ’ s not what I ’ m going to put on the floor , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 1.8 trillion White House offer .
The new Senate bill , however , isn ’ t expected to get the Democratic votes it needs in either the House or the upper chamber : The targeted $ 500 billion bill includes only a fraction of the spending House Democrats demanded in the latest version of their stimulus package , the HEROES Act , which calls for $ 2.2 trillion in aid ( down from the $ 3 trillion bill passed in May ) .
These developments are the latest continuation of a monthslong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next for stimulus spending .
It ’ s an argument that has seen House Democrats ’ proposals blocked by ongoing disagreements over aid for states and expanded unemployment insurance , along with diverging concerns about the debt .
In the meantime , millions of people are grappling with evictions , unemployment , and business closures as the economic fallout from the pandemic continues .
What ’ s next for the stimulus The next steps depend on whether Pelosi and Mnuchin can actually come to an agreement in this 48-hour window — and if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Currently , a push for their own measure by Senate Republicans and negotiations between House Democrats and the White House are happening simultaneously , albeit separately .
The Senate on Tuesday is scheduled to vote on a standalone bill to boost funding for the Paycheck Protection Program , which provides aid to struggling small businesses .
On Wednesday , the body is set to vote on a roughly $ 500 billion stimulus bill that would include funding for schools , expanded unemployment insurance , and coronavirus testing .
“ This is half @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can do right now , ” McConnell said in a statement Saturday .
The legislation , which is much narrower than what Democrats want , is not expected to garner support from Senate Democrats and will likely fail to reach the 60-vote threshold it needs to pass .
Much like they did earlier this fall , Republicans are pushing this legislation to send a message : By voting on it , they ’ re putting pressure on vulnerable Democratic members who block the bill by making it appear as though they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , meanwhile , have pointed to the House ’ s passage of significantly more comprehensive packages in both May and October as signs they ’ re committed to getting something done .
Given McConnell ’ s opposition to the earlier $ 1.8 trillion proposal , Senate Republicans could still pose a major obstacle even if Pelosi reaches an agreement with the White House .
McConnell on Saturday noted the Senate would “ consider ” an agreed-upon deal , however .
“ If Speaker Pelosi ever lets the House reach a bipartisan agreement with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course consider it , ” he said .
The outstanding issue — which has been the problem for months — is whether House Democrats , the White House , and Senate Republicans can all ultimately get on board with the same bill .
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That is our mission at Vox .
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday set a tight timeline for getting a new stimulus deal done before the election: about 48 hours.
During an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Pelosi suggested there likely won’t be time to pass a new package before November 3 if lawmakers don’t reach an agreement by Tuesday. “The 48 [hours] only relates to if we want to get it done before the election, which we do,” she said. (Her office later clarified to CNN the deadline is set for the end of Tuesday.)
Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been negotiating over a new stimulus package since the summer, but the effort has been stymied by disagreements over provisions on state and local funding, as well as Republican pushback over the scope of spending. Their talks were also briefly derailed by President Donald Trump, who in early October announced the White House was ending negotiations, before changing course and demanding the parties proceed quickly.
Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, tweeted Saturday that there are “an array of additional differences” between what Democrats want and what Mnuchin has offered, which would need to be worked out in the next two days. Pelosi noted Sunday, for example, that language over funds for coronavirus testing was an ongoing sticking point.
... address the virus’ disproportionate impact on communities of color. There remains an array of additional differences as we go provision by provision that must be addressed in a comprehensive manner in the next 48 hours. Decisions must be made by the White House... (2/3) — Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) October 18, 2020
Whether the Tuesday deadline helps spur some much-needed progress, however, is an open question.
As House Democrats negotiate with the White House, Senate Republicans, it seems, are on a parallel track. Even as Pelosi and Mnuchin continue talks about an expansive package — with a recent White House proposal suggesting a bill worth $1.8 trillion — Senate Republicans have been adamant that any stimulus be much smaller. On Saturday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the Senate would vote on a narrower $500 billion bill this week.
The new bill is a reminder that even if Pelosi and Mnuchin reach an agreement, there’s a great deal of uncertainty around whether Senate Republicans would support it, particularly given concerns many GOP lawmakers have expressed about adding to the national debt.
“That’s not what I’m going to put on the floor,” McConnell previously said of the recent $1.8 trillion White House offer.
The new Senate bill, however, isn’t expected to get the Democratic votes it needs in either the House or the upper chamber: The targeted $500 billion bill includes only a fraction of the spending House Democrats demanded in the latest version of their stimulus package, the HEROES Act, which calls for $2.2 trillion in aid (down from the $3 trillion bill passed in May).
These developments are the latest continuation of a months-long back-and-forth between lawmakers on what should be next for stimulus spending. It’s an argument that has seen House Democrats’ proposals blocked by ongoing disagreements over aid for states and expanded unemployment insurance, along with diverging concerns about the debt.
In the meantime, millions of people are grappling with evictions, unemployment, and business closures as the economic fallout from the pandemic continues.
What’s next for the stimulus
The next steps depend on whether Pelosi and Mnuchin can actually come to an agreement in this 48-hour window — and if they do, how the Senate responds.
Currently, a push for their own measure by Senate Republicans and negotiations between House Democrats and the White House are happening simultaneously, albeit separately.
The Senate on Tuesday is scheduled to vote on a standalone bill to boost funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, which provides aid to struggling small businesses. On Wednesday, the body is set to vote on a roughly $500 billion stimulus bill that would include funding for schools, expanded unemployment insurance, and coronavirus testing. “This is half a trillion dollars of good that Congress can do right now,” McConnell said in a statement Saturday.
The legislation, which is much narrower than what Democrats want, is not expected to garner support from Senate Democrats and will likely fail to reach the 60-vote threshold it needs to pass.
Much like they did earlier this fall, Republicans are pushing this legislation to send a message: By voting on it, they’re putting pressure on vulnerable Democratic members who block the bill by making it appear as though they’re the ones obstructing more relief. Democrats, meanwhile, have pointed to the House’s passage of significantly more comprehensive packages in both May and October as signs they’re committed to getting something done.
Given McConnell’s opposition to the earlier $1.8 trillion proposal, Senate Republicans could still pose a major obstacle even if Pelosi reaches an agreement with the White House. McConnell on Saturday noted the Senate would “consider” an agreed-upon deal, however. “If Speaker Pelosi ever lets the House reach a bipartisan agreement with the administration, the Senate would of course consider it,” he said.
The outstanding issue — which has been the problem for months — is whether House Democrats, the White House, and Senate Republicans can all ultimately get on board with the same bill.
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vox--2020-10-19--One Good Thing: This animated miniseries perfectly captures the loneliness of autumn

One Good Thing is Vox ’ s recommendations series .
In each edition , we ’ ll tell you about something from the world of culture that we think you should check out .
I grew up on a hog farm in rural South Dakota .
It wasn ’ t quite the middle of nowhere — it was situated along a major highway — but it was close .
The sounds of semis barreling by in the middle of the night had a ghostly quality , passing us by between other lands .
The worst times were when my family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or another , and I would have to wander out into the dark , flashlight in hand , to make sure the pigs ’ water containers were working properly .
( Pigs , with their muddy noses , often clogged up the pipes with that mud , so the containers had to have the mud scraped out of them twice daily to keep them working their best . )
On fall evenings , with a chill settling in , the handful of trees between the hog lots and my house stood like roadmaps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the moon .
I would conjure things that might live among the trees , ghosts or Sasquatch or other monsters that could haunt my farm and my childhood .
But the trees didn ’ t hide monsters in their shadows .
They just hid the house I grew up in .
Few artworks have captured the feeling of those chilly autumn evenings in the dark so well as Over the Garden Wall , a 10-episode Cartoon Network miniseries from 2014 about two brothers lost in a foreboding wood , trying to stay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( It ’ s now available on HBO Max and Hulu . )
Widely acclaimed at the time of its release and the winner of two Emmy Awards , Over the Garden Wall has become a cult classic and an annual favorite for the many fans who watch it each and every October .
Since each episode is 11 minutes long , you can watch the whole series in under two hours , and there are few better times to watch it than right now — now , during this specific October @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaves trapped by the wind on a fence to a musical score full of wistful melancholy , Over the Garden Wall captures something intrinsic about the dying embers of fall before winter spreads its chill across the sky .
( Here , I will note that the series is appropriate for older children but might be a little too much for younger ones .
If your kid is into monsters and other creepy things , however , you might as well give it a shot . )
That autumnal feeling stems from creator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that has slipped out of common usage .
In particular , many of the series ’ images are taken from vintage postcards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries , which were exchanged by friends and family on occasions such as Halloween and Christmas .
Thus , the series looks like a dream you maybe had once because it captures not images you ’ ve seen a million times before , but the much older images that inspired the more familiar ones .
It ’ s like seeing the original after enjoying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ storytelling accomplishes the same .
It has the feeling of a fairy tale or folktale , with numerous nods to stories you ’ ve maybe heard before .
People are turned into animals or trees , Brothers Grimm-style , and the Beast , who is only seen in shadow , is a man with antlers sprouting from his head , similar to mythological figures like Herne the Hunter .
Becoming lost in the woods is a primeval story in almost all cultures but particularly in the United States , where the earliest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saw enormous , deep , dark woods and were intimidated by their shadows .
( Nathaniel Hawthorne ’ s famous short story “ Young Goodman Brown , ” in which a young man enters the woods to perhaps meet Satan himself captures that creeping terror well . )
There is something more unsettling about emptiness than a more overtly scary creature .
While Over the Garden Wall only rarely offers actually scary creatures , its core story is unnerving in a way that will hang with you .
The story is mostly a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Brothers Wirt and Greg are lost in the woods and need to get home .
Along the way , they meet a frog and a talking bluebird named Beatrice .
In each episode , the two meet more people who live out there , in the woods ( or as the series would have it , “ in the Unknown ” ) , and they have to be clever to avoid the various fairy tale traps awaiting them in the woods .
If you find yourself wondering along the way whether these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and if something tragic befell Wirt and Greg to send them into the Unknown , well , that ’ s a logical assumption .
The series clears everything up in the end , tying up its surprisingly large number of storylines in a fashion that proves satisfying but not overly neat .
The reasons behind the brothers ’ travels are revealed , and the woods themselves give up their secrets .
I haven ’ t been back to the place I grew up in several years , and the hog lots where I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ containers are long since gone , after my family got out of hog farming in the late 1990s .
I do not know when I will return , and I like to think that now , walking along in the dark , I would not be so unsettled by the thought of what might lie lurking in the trees .
But old habits die hard .
October returns each and every year , not as spooky as it was in my youth but still with an echo of an echo of what once @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reach their final destination , but the Unknown is still out there , waiting to pull the unsuspecting into a great , cavernous mouth lined with trees .
Over the Garden Wall is streaming on Hulu and HBO Max .
The first episode of the miniseries and the short film that inspired it , “ Tome of the Unknown , ” are available on YouTube .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 3 .

I grew up on a hog farm in rural South Dakota. It wasn’t quite the middle of nowhere — it was situated along a major highway — but it was close. The sounds of semis barreling by in the middle of the night had a ghostly quality, passing us by between other lands.
The worst times were when my family would get home late from some function or another, and I would have to wander out into the dark, flashlight in hand, to make sure the pigs’ water containers were working properly. (Pigs, with their muddy noses, often clogged up the pipes with that mud, so the containers had to have the mud scraped out of them twice daily to keep them working their best.)
On fall evenings, with a chill settling in, the handful of trees between the hog lots and my house stood like roadmaps to some other world, lit up by the moon. I would conjure things that might live among the trees, ghosts or Sasquatch or other monsters that could haunt my farm and my childhood. But the trees didn’t hide monsters in their shadows. They just hid the house I grew up in.
Few artworks have captured the feeling of those chilly autumn evenings in the dark so well as Over the Garden Wall, a 10-episode Cartoon Network miniseries from 2014 about two brothers lost in a foreboding wood, trying to stay one step ahead of a fearsome beast. (It’s now available on HBO Max and Hulu.) Widely acclaimed at the time of its release and the winner of two Emmy Awards, Over the Garden Wall has become a cult classic and an annual favorite for the many fans who watch it each and every October.
Since each episode is 11 minutes long, you can watch the whole series in under two hours, and there are few better times to watch it than right now — now, during this specific October. From jack-o’-lanterns to dying leaves trapped by the wind on a fence to a musical score full of wistful melancholy, Over the Garden Wall captures something intrinsic about the dying embers of fall before winter spreads its chill across the sky. (Here, I will note that the series is appropriate for older children but might be a little too much for younger ones. If your kid is into monsters and other creepy things, however, you might as well give it a shot.)
That autumnal feeling stems from creator Patrick McHale’s use of Americana that has slipped out of common usage. In particular, many of the series’ images are taken from vintage postcards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which were exchanged by friends and family on occasions such as Halloween and Christmas. Thus, the series looks like a dream you maybe had once because it captures not images you’ve seen a million times before, but the much older images that inspired the more familiar ones. It’s like seeing the original after enjoying several generations of copies.
The series’ storytelling accomplishes the same. It has the feeling of a fairy tale or folktale, with numerous nods to stories you’ve maybe heard before. People are turned into animals or trees, Brothers Grimm-style, and the Beast, who is only seen in shadow, is a man with antlers sprouting from his head, similar to mythological figures like Herne the Hunter.
Becoming lost in the woods is a primeval story in almost all cultures but particularly in the United States, where the earliest European colonizers who landed on these shores saw enormous, deep, dark woods and were intimidated by their shadows. (Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous short story “Young Goodman Brown,” in which a young man enters the woods to perhaps meet Satan himself captures that creeping terror well.) There is something more unsettling about emptiness than a more overtly scary creature. While Over the Garden Wall only rarely offers actually scary creatures, its core story is unnerving in a way that will hang with you.
The story is mostly a string to hang beautifully designed vignettes upon. Brothers Wirt and Greg are lost in the woods and need to get home. Along the way, they meet a frog and a talking bluebird named Beatrice. In each episode, the two meet more people who live out there, in the woods (or as the series would have it, “in the Unknown”), and they have to be clever to avoid the various fairy tale traps awaiting them in the woods.
If you find yourself wondering along the way whether these woods aren’t a real place and if something tragic befell Wirt and Greg to send them into the Unknown, well, that’s a logical assumption. The series clears everything up in the end, tying up its surprisingly large number of storylines in a fashion that proves satisfying but not overly neat. The reasons behind the brothers’ travels are revealed, and the woods themselves give up their secrets.
I haven’t been back to the place I grew up in several years, and the hog lots where I used to scrape mud out of watering containers are long since gone, after my family got out of hog farming in the late 1990s. I do not know when I will return, and I like to think that now, walking along in the dark, I would not be so unsettled by the thought of what might lie lurking in the trees.
But old habits die hard. October returns each and every year, not as spooky as it was in my youth but still with an echo of an echo of what once scared me. Wirt and Greg might reach their final destination, but the Unknown is still out there, waiting to pull the unsuspecting into a great, cavernous mouth lined with trees.
Over the Garden Wall is streaming on Hulu and HBO Max. The first episode of the miniseries and the short film that inspired it, “Tome of the Unknown,” are available on YouTube. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.


vox--2020-10-19--Hybrid school might be the worst of both worlds

Hybrid learning was supposed to be an improvement .
When school buildings closed in the spring due to the pandemic , students , teachers , and families all struggled with remote classes .
But come fall , the virus was still raging across much of America .
So many districts — including the nation ’ s largest , New York City — struck a compromise .
They would bring kids into buildings , but only for part of the day or week .
That way , they ’ d reduce the number of students in schools at any one time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ giving students crucial in-person time with their teachers and peers .
That was the idea , anyway .
In practice , however , hybrid models could turn out to be the worst of both worlds , as David Zweig predicted at Wired in July .
To begin with , hybrid schedules don ’ t really solve one of the pandemic ’ s biggest problems for parents : the lack of child care .
While having kids in school a few days a week or a few hours a day might give parents a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ the benefits of being able to work a little less part-time and a little less erratically are not going to be anything like what you ’ d be getting from full-time school , ” Michael Madowitz , an economist at the Center for American Progress who studies the impact of child care , told Vox .
And while some parents may be able to stay home with their kids on the days they ’ re out of school , others will need outside child care .
That means kids will spend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ centers , camps , pods , or other group arrangements — all of which increase their potential exposure to the virus , which they can then bring into their schools .
“ I do wonder if we are actually creating more problems through the hybrid model because now we are allowing more time for more exposures to occur , ” Jennifer Nuzzo , an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins , told Vox .
Hybrid models appear to do one thing they ’ re supposed to do : They give kids a little bit of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the spring .
But some say there are better ways of achieving that goal , from outdoor classrooms to prioritizing in-person school for younger students , who often struggle the most with remote learning .
Education during the pandemic is an incredibly difficult problem — “ people are trying really , really hard to solve this , ” Madowitz noted .
But it may be a case where the compromise solution is far from the best one .
Hybrid models are supposed to limit the spread of Covid-19 .
Experts worry they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began weighing the idea of hybrid instruction in the late spring and early summer , when it became clear that Covid-19 would be far from gone at the start of the fall semester .
Ultimately , about 12 percent of districts around the country were planning on a hybrid start as of late August , according to a survey by the Center on Reinventing Public Education .
That percentage amounts to thousands of schools nationwide — New York City alone has over 1,800 , serving more than 1.1 million students .
Hybrid models @ @ @ @ @ @ @ students coming in only a few days per week , while others split students into morning and afternoon groups .
But however they work , the idea is roughly the same : A hybrid schedule reduces the number of kids in each classroom at once to better allow for social distancing .
It may also reduce the number of people each student interacts with in-person , since students often stay with cohorts that are smaller than their normal classes .
And many districts are setting aside time in their hybrid schedules to deep-clean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raise questions about how much surface cleaning really matters when it comes to reducing viral spread , Nuzzo noted .
Beyond questions about the efficacy of cleaning , there are a couple of potential problems with hybrid schedules .
For one thing , hybrid education doesn ’ t necessarily reduce the number of students each teacher has contact with , since they may teach multiple cohorts .
That ’ s concerning because adults are at much greater risk of serious illness or death from the virus than children are .
“ Really , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in terms of reducing risk in a school environment is the teacher , ” Nuzzo said .
Then there ’ s the question of what happens during the days or hours when students are remote .
While some parents are caring for children at home during that time , others are enrolling kids in camps or child care centers — some of which are adapting to care for more school-aged kids .
Still other families are bringing kids together in informal groups sometimes called “ pods ” to share child care responsibilities .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ together with friends without adult supervision .
Overall , if kids “ are in some other care environment where they are now exposed to another group of people , then we may have effectively increased the number of people all having contact with each other over the course of a week , ” Nuzzo said .
That , in turn , increases the likelihood that a student could bring Covid into school and infect others .
A number of epidemiologists have raised this concern in recent months .
For example , William Hanage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Harvard T.H .
Chan School of Public Health , wrote in an August op-ed in the Washington Post that “ hybrid school plans make it easier for the virus to transmit into schools , simply by producing more links between schools and families along which the virus can travel.
” So far , there ’ s little comprehensive data on Covid-19 and schools in the US , let alone on hybrid models , but some data does show troubling hints .
For example , the Covid-19 Schools Response Dashboard , which pulls together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ selection of schools around the country , found that , as of September 22 , staff infection rates were actually higher at schools using hybrid learning than at schools with fully in-person instruction .
There could be reasons for this beyond the model itself — for example , dashboard co-creator Emily Oster told Vox that schools might be more likely to use a hybrid schedule if Covid-19 transmission rates in the area are already high .
Still , there ’ s little evidence in the data so far that hybrid schedules make schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there ’ s a lot of cause for concern .
With kids home for much of the week , parents still face child care struggles The other , related problem of hybrid models is one of child care .
In the spring , the closure of schools and day care centers caused a crisis for working parents around the country .
The problem was most severe for women , who still shoulder the majority of caregiving responsibilities .
Women also lost a majority of the millions of jobs shed by the American economy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economists feared that without a solution to the child care problem , even more women would be pushed out of the workforce .
Mothers , especially those who are primary breadwinners , faced the prospect of “ having to choose between making a living and taking care of their families , ” Nicole Mason , president of the Institute for Women ’ s Policy Research , told Vox this summer .
Some economists — and families — looked to fall as a possible respite , when a resumption of school would allow moms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t happen .
Instead , many districts started the fall either in hybrid mode or fully remote .
Hybrid models may have provided some parents with a bit of a break — as Madowitz put it , “ for a lot of parents , anything is better than nothing.
” But for many others , a few days of child care and supervision isn ’ t that much better than no child care at all .
That may be especially true for parents in low-wage service jobs who don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schedules .
Hybrid models may also pose a particular problem for families that rely on grandparents or other older relatives for child care , Madowitz said , since the virus exposure of a partial week at school could put those relatives at risk .
Indeed , more than half of New York City families have chosen all-remote rather than hybrid learning this fall , with some citing older family members as the reason .
With millions of kids still at home for at least part of the week , then , millions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — haven ’ t been able to return to their normal working hours .
Instead of rebounding with the return of school , women ’ s employment plummeted this fall , with 865,000 women dropping out of the labor force in September , compared with just 216,000 men .
And while hybrid learning may be helping some parents get a bit more work in , “ when you look at what ’ s been going on with jobs , its really hard to believe you ’ re gon na get this huge pop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hybrid schooling alone , Madowitz said .
Not to mention , any child care break that parents get from hybrid schooling may be short-lived if schools have to return to remote instruction due to rising Covid-19 cases in the area .
That ’ s already happened at more than 100 schools in New York City , which closed earlier this month due to growing clusters of the virus in Brooklyn and Queens .
And New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that the entire school system will close if the city @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seven-day period .
That means any parents who have been banking on school to facilitate their work schedules will have to scramble for another solution — or quit .
When it comes to women ’ s employment in particular , “ I ’ m just deeply scared , ” Madowitz said .
Hybrid models may benefit students , but there may be more creative solutions that would work better The biggest benefits of hybrid models are likely educational .
“ At least in the hybrid education models , the students are getting some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well as interaction with peers , which is important for social and emotional development , Emiliana Vegas , co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution , told Vox .
“ We know that students really thrive when they learn to collaborate , ” she explained .
“ That ’ s really much harder to do in a remote setting , particularly for the younger children.
” While there ’ s little data so far on the effectiveness of hybrid models , there is data showing significant learning losses during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low-income and Black and Latinx students .
Experts hope that having at least some in-person time will mitigate these losses , Vegas said .
And some families have seen the benefits for their kids .
Amy , a New Jersey mom who asked that her last name not be used , told Vox that remote school in the spring for her two sons , then 8 and 3 , was “ like a nightmare.
” But with both boys in school on a hybrid model now , “ this fall has been a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ son , who has an autism spectrum diagnosis , “ really needs the in-person guidance ” and is getting occupational therapy and speech therapy during his four days at school .
With him out of the house , it ’ s also a bit easier for his older brother to focus on remote school .
He ’ s at home three days a week and in school for two , and though he was recently diagnosed with a visual processing disorder that can make Zoom lessons challenging , overall “ things are pretty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic parameters , ” Amy said .
While families like Amy ’ s are benefiting from hybrid schedules , in some districts the model doesn ’ t actually guarantee much in-person instruction .
For example , Nuzzo said that one plan floated by her child ’ s district would have students come into classrooms for online lessons .
“ I ’ m not sure that that ’ s worth the hassle of leaving the house , ” she said .
“ I don ’ t want him to be on a screen anymore @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a school building.
” And some fear that the educational benefits of a hybrid model could be negated by the sheer logistical challenges of bringing students into schools in the midst of a pandemic .
New York City , for example , has been forced to put all its energy into health and safety , leaving little time to help teachers with the challenges of hybrid education , Tom Liam Lynch , editor-in-chief of the website InsideSchools , and a parent of a New York City sixth grader , told Vox .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ about actual pedagogy have gone unheard , Lynch said : “ Parents are asking for the plan for high-quality instruction , and the city ’ s saying we have sanitizer.
” Now it ’ s October , and there ’ s still “ no leadership in terms of what constitutes high-quality learning and teaching , ” he said .
Given these and other concerns , some are pushing for different solutions to the problems of pandemic education .
For example , a lot of districts chose hybrid models because it was the only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their school buildings , Nuzzo said .
But districts could use outdoor space or temporary structures to make room for more kids .
Alternatively , younger children could be brought back first , freeing up larger high-school buildings to host elementary-school classes .
Overall , there ’ s been a lack of creativity around physical space when it comes to schools , Nuzzo argues : “ Think about places that were able to create hospitals and have tents and things like that , and yet we haven ’ t applied that level of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s also the potential for rethinking what school buildings are for .
In New York City , a lot of the conversation around reopening schools ( and closing them in the first place ) has been around the crucial social services schools provide , from child care to meals for food-insecure students .
Instead of trying to reopen schools on a hybrid model , the district could have focused on delivering those face-to-face services while keeping instruction remote , Lynch said .
Such a solution “ would have freed up building principals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions of square footage of New York City school building space for tons of non-academic services , ” Lynch said .
“ You could have child care at your local school in some form ; you could have access to guidance , to meals , to a nurse ; you could have even informal clubs and other kinds of activities that students could come in for.
” But so far , such a solution isn ’ t on the table in New York City .
And overall , in a time when policymakers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schools can often feel like an afterthought .
“ I am very frustrated about governments that have made faster decisions to reopen restaurants and bars and movie theaters and public gatherings well in advance of opening schools , ” Nuzzo said .
“ It just feels like very short-term thinking.
” Will you help keep Vox free for all ?
The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes .
It ’ s essential that all Americans are able to access clear , concise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election could mean for their lives , and the lives of their families and communities .
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Hybrid learning was supposed to be an improvement.
When school buildings closed in the spring due to the pandemic, students, teachers, and families all struggled with remote classes. But come fall, the virus was still raging across much of America. So many districts — including the nation’s largest, New York City — struck a compromise.
They would bring kids into buildings, but only for part of the day or week. That way, they’d reduce the number of students in schools at any one time, limiting viral spread, while still giving students crucial in-person time with their teachers and peers.
That was the idea, anyway. In practice, however, hybrid models could turn out to be the worst of both worlds, as David Zweig predicted at Wired in July.
To begin with, hybrid schedules don’t really solve one of the pandemic’s biggest problems for parents: the lack of child care. While having kids in school a few days a week or a few hours a day might give parents a bit more flexibility to do their jobs, “the benefits of being able to work a little less part-time and a little less erratically are not going to be anything like what you’d be getting from full-time school,” Michael Madowitz, an economist at the Center for American Progress who studies the impact of child care, told Vox.
And while some parents may be able to stay home with their kids on the days they’re out of school, others will need outside child care. That means kids will spend part of the week in child care centers, camps, pods, or other group arrangements — all of which increase their potential exposure to the virus, which they can then bring into their schools. “I do wonder if we are actually creating more problems through the hybrid model because now we are allowing more time for more exposures to occur,” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, told Vox.
Hybrid models appear to do one thing they’re supposed to do: They give kids a little bit of the in-person interaction they missed out on in the spring. But some say there are better ways of achieving that goal, from outdoor classrooms to prioritizing in-person school for younger students, who often struggle the most with remote learning.
Education during the pandemic is an incredibly difficult problem — “people are trying really, really hard to solve this,” Madowitz noted. But it may be a case where the compromise solution is far from the best one.
Hybrid models are supposed to limit the spread of Covid-19. Experts worry they might do the opposite.
American schools began weighing the idea of hybrid instruction in the late spring and early summer, when it became clear that Covid-19 would be far from gone at the start of the fall semester. Ultimately, about 12 percent of districts around the country were planning on a hybrid start as of late August, according to a survey by the Center on Reinventing Public Education. That percentage amounts to thousands of schools nationwide — New York City alone has over 1,800, serving more than 1.1 million students.
Hybrid models vary in their execution — some have students coming in only a few days per week, while others split students into morning and afternoon groups. But however they work, the idea is roughly the same: A hybrid schedule reduces the number of kids in each classroom at once to better allow for social distancing. It may also reduce the number of people each student interacts with in-person, since students often stay with cohorts that are smaller than their normal classes. And many districts are setting aside time in their hybrid schedules to deep-clean schools, although some have begun to raise questions about how much surface cleaning really matters when it comes to reducing viral spread, Nuzzo noted.
Beyond questions about the efficacy of cleaning, there are a couple of potential problems with hybrid schedules. For one thing, hybrid education doesn’t necessarily reduce the number of students each teacher has contact with, since they may teach multiple cohorts. That’s concerning because adults are at much greater risk of serious illness or death from the virus than children are. “Really, who we’re concerned about most in terms of reducing risk in a school environment is the teacher,” Nuzzo said.
Then there’s the question of what happens during the days or hours when students are remote. While some parents are caring for children at home during that time, others are enrolling kids in camps or child care centers — some of which are adapting to care for more school-aged kids. Still other families are bringing kids together in informal groups sometimes called “pods” to share child care responsibilities. Finally, older children may be getting together with friends without adult supervision.
Overall, if kids “are in some other care environment where they are now exposed to another group of people, then we may have effectively increased the number of people all having contact with each other over the course of a week,” Nuzzo said.
That, in turn, increases the likelihood that a student could bring Covid into school and infect others. A number of epidemiologists have raised this concern in recent months. For example, William Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote in an August op-ed in the Washington Post that “hybrid school plans make it easier for the virus to transmit into schools, simply by producing more links between schools and families along which the virus can travel.”
So far, there’s little comprehensive data on Covid-19 and schools in the US, let alone on hybrid models, but some data does show troubling hints. For example, the Covid-19 Schools Response Dashboard, which pulls together case counts and other data from a selection of schools around the country, found that, as of September 22, staff infection rates were actually higher at schools using hybrid learning than at schools with fully in-person instruction. There could be reasons for this beyond the model itself — for example, dashboard co-creator Emily Oster told Vox that schools might be more likely to use a hybrid schedule if Covid-19 transmission rates in the area are already high.
Early data from New York City, the largest district in the country to use a hybrid model, is more reassuring — out of 10,676 results received by the city in its first round of random Covid-19 testing, just 13 staff members and five students tested positive, according to the New York Times. Still, some experts have cautioned that it’s still very early in the school year, which began just three weeks ago in New York, while others say the city would have to regularly test far more people to be sure of spotting outbreaks.
Overall, there’s not much evidence so far that hybrid schedules make schools safer, and according to experts, there’s a lot of cause for concern.
With kids home for much of the week, parents still face child care struggles
The other, related problem of hybrid models is one of child care. In the spring, the closure of schools and day care centers caused a crisis for working parents around the country. The problem was most severe for women, who still shoulder the majority of caregiving responsibilities.
Women also lost a majority of the millions of jobs shed by the American economy early in the pandemic, and many economists feared that without a solution to the child care problem, even more women would be pushed out of the workforce. Mothers, especially those who are primary breadwinners, faced the prospect of “having to choose between making a living and taking care of their families,” Nicole Mason, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told Vox this summer.
Some economists — and families — looked to fall as a possible respite, when a resumption of school would allow moms to get back to work. That didn’t happen. Instead, many districts started the fall either in hybrid mode or fully remote.
Hybrid models may have provided some parents with a bit of a break — as Madowitz put it, “for a lot of parents, anything is better than nothing.” But for many others, a few days of child care and supervision isn’t that much better than no child care at all.
That may be especially true for parents in low-wage service jobs who don’t have a lot of control over their schedules. Hybrid models may also pose a particular problem for families that rely on grandparents or other older relatives for child care, Madowitz said, since the virus exposure of a partial week at school could put those relatives at risk. Indeed, more than half of New York City families have chosen all-remote rather than hybrid learning this fall, with some citing older family members as the reason.
With millions of kids still at home for at least part of the week, then, millions of parents — a majority of them moms — haven’t been able to return to their normal working hours. Instead of rebounding with the return of school, women’s employment plummeted this fall, with 865,000 women dropping out of the labor force in September, compared with just 216,000 men.
And while hybrid learning may be helping some parents get a bit more work in, “when you look at what’s been going on with jobs, its really hard to believe you’re gonna get this huge pop” in women’s employment from hybrid schooling alone, Madowitz said.
Not to mention, any child care break that parents get from hybrid schooling may be short-lived if schools have to return to remote instruction due to rising Covid-19 cases in the area. That’s already happened at more than 100 schools in New York City, which closed earlier this month due to growing clusters of the virus in Brooklyn and Queens. And New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that the entire school system will close if the city reaches 3 percent test positivity over a seven-day period. That means any parents who have been banking on school to facilitate their work schedules will have to scramble for another solution — or quit.
When it comes to women’s employment in particular, “I’m just deeply scared,” Madowitz said.
Hybrid models may benefit students, but there may be more creative solutions that would work better
The biggest benefits of hybrid models are likely educational. “At least in the hybrid education models, the students are getting some real-time, in-person instruction,” as well as interaction with peers, which is important for social and emotional development, Emiliana Vegas, co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, told Vox.
“We know that students really thrive when they learn to collaborate,” she explained. “That’s really much harder to do in a remote setting, particularly for the younger children.”
While there’s little data so far on the effectiveness of hybrid models, there is data showing significant learning losses during all-remote school this spring, concentrated among low-income and Black and Latinx students. Experts hope that having at least some in-person time will mitigate these losses, Vegas said.
And some families have seen the benefits for their kids. Amy, a New Jersey mom who asked that her last name not be used, told Vox that remote school in the spring for her two sons, then 8 and 3, was “like a nightmare.” But with both boys in school on a hybrid model now, “this fall has been a lot better.”
Amy’s younger son, who has an autism spectrum diagnosis, “really needs the in-person guidance” and is getting occupational therapy and speech therapy during his four days at school. With him out of the house, it’s also a bit easier for his older brother to focus on remote school. He’s at home three days a week and in school for two, and though he was recently diagnosed with a visual processing disorder that can make Zoom lessons challenging, overall “things are pretty good if you’re looking at pandemic parameters,” Amy said.
While families like Amy’s are benefiting from hybrid schedules, in some districts the model doesn’t actually guarantee much in-person instruction. For example, Nuzzo said that one plan floated by her child’s district would have students come into classrooms for online lessons. “I’m not sure that that’s worth the hassle of leaving the house,” she said. “I don’t want him to be on a screen anymore if he’s going to be in a school building.”
And some fear that the educational benefits of a hybrid model could be negated by the sheer logistical challenges of bringing students into schools in the midst of a pandemic. New York City, for example, has been forced to put all its energy into health and safety, leaving little time to help teachers with the challenges of hybrid education, Tom Liam Lynch, editor-in-chief of the website InsideSchools, and a parent of a New York City sixth grader, told Vox.
Starting in the summer, parent concerns about actual pedagogy have gone unheard, Lynch said: “Parents are asking for the plan for high-quality instruction, and the city’s saying we have sanitizer.” Now it’s October, and there’s still “no leadership in terms of what constitutes high-quality learning and teaching,” he said.
Given these and other concerns, some are pushing for different solutions to the problems of pandemic education. For example, a lot of districts chose hybrid models because it was the only way to allow for social distancing within their school buildings, Nuzzo said. But districts could use outdoor space or temporary structures to make room for more kids. Alternatively, younger children could be brought back first, freeing up larger high-school buildings to host elementary-school classes.
Overall, there’s been a lack of creativity around physical space when it comes to schools, Nuzzo argues: “Think about places that were able to create hospitals and have tents and things like that, and yet we haven’t applied that level of thinking with respect to schools.”
There’s also the potential for rethinking what school buildings are for. In New York City, a lot of the conversation around reopening schools (and closing them in the first place) has been around the crucial social services schools provide, from child care to meals for food-insecure students. Instead of trying to reopen schools on a hybrid model, the district could have focused on delivering those face-to-face services while keeping instruction remote, Lynch said.
Such a solution “would have freed up building principals to be able to very creatively use millions of square footage of New York City school building space for tons of non-academic services,” Lynch said. “You could have child care at your local school in some form; you could have access to guidance, to meals, to a nurse; you could have even informal clubs and other kinds of activities that students could come in for.”
But so far, such a solution isn’t on the table in New York City. And overall, in a time when policymakers are faced with many competing priorities, schools can often feel like an afterthought.
“I am very frustrated about governments that have made faster decisions to reopen restaurants and bars and movie theaters and public gatherings well in advance of opening schools,” Nuzzo said. “It just feels like very short-term thinking.”