vox--2020-07-10--Trump just commuted Roger Stone’s sentence

President Donald Trump has commuted Roger Stone ’ s prison sentence in a stunning exercise of presidential power that is not altogether unexpected .
Stone , a longtime Republican operative , was convicted in November 2019 for obstructing a congressional investigation , lying to Congress , and witness tampering in a trial that stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller ’ s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election .
On February 20 , Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison .
Trump ’ s commutation landed just days before Stone was expected to report to prison on July @ @ @ @ @ @ @ short of a full pardon .
The conviction will remain on Stone ’ s record — for now , at least .
But the Trump ally won ’ t have to serve his approximately three-year prison term .
The White House issued a very long statement on the commutation late Friday that attacked the Russia investigation and the prosecutors in the case .
The statement claimed that Stone “ maintains his innocence and has stated that he expects to be fully exonerated by the justice system ” and that the president didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ At this time , however , and particularly in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution , arrest , and trial , the President has determined to commute his sentence , ” the statement read .
“ Roger Stone has already suffered greatly .
He was treated very unfairly , as were many others in this case .
Roger Stone is now a free man !
” Trump has long disdained the Mueller investigation and claimed it has unfairly targeted him and his associates — not just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paul Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn .
Trump and his attorneys dangled pardons during the Russia investigation .
With Stone , Trump has finally gone beyond complaining to explicitly intervening to erase his associates ’ convictions .
Trump repeatedly signaled that he might grant clemency to Stone .
It ’ s the most definitive example yet of his use of the power of the presidency to protect friends or advance his interests , Jim Pfiffner , a professor at George Mason University , said .
“ A willingness to use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and supporters sends a signal to others who might be willing to break the law in support of the president , ” Pfiffner wrote in an email .
The controversy leading up to Stone ’ s commutation Prosecutors made the case that Stone obstructed the House Intelligence Committee ’ s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election by lying to the committee about his attempts to contact WikiLeaks , and by intimidating and trying to get another witness to lie for him about those efforts .
During the trial , witnesses such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe and cooperated with prosecutors ) and Steve Bannon testified that Stone claimed to the campaign that he had inside information about WikiLeaks ’ access to damaging information about Hillary Clinton , which Mueller ’ s investigation found was obtained through hacking by Russian military intelligence .
Prosecutors did not actually prove that Stone had any inside information during the trial .
But , as Vox ’ s Andrew Prokop has written , prosecutors during the trial argued that “ Stone ’ s motivation for his lies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looked bad for Donald Trump.
’ ” So it ’ s not a surprise that Trump has closely followed this case — and appeared to publicly pressure the Justice Department to lessen his sentence .
In February , as Stone ’ s sentencing date approached , federal prosecutors recommended that Stone serve between 87 and 108 months ( about seven to nine years ) in prison , a range prosecutors said adhered to federal guidelines and “ would accurately reflect the seriousness of his crimes and promote respect for the law.
” But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a horrible and very unfair situation , ” the president tweeted on February 11 .
“ The real crimes were on the other side , as nothing happens to them .
Can not allow this miscarriage of justice !
” Later that same day , the Justice Department began signaling that it would intervene , with an anonymous official suggesting that was not the sentence recommendation that had been briefed to the department .
Things escalated from there , as four prosecutors handling the case abruptly withdrew their involvement .
Aaron Zelinsky @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team , filed a memo withdrawing himself from the case .
Next came prosecutor Jonathan Kravis , who said he was leaving the team because he had resigned as an assistant US attorney .
Two more followed : Adam Jed and Michael Marando said they would also remove themselves from the case .
The mass exodus came as the Justice Department submitted a memo in the Stone case that said its first sentencing statement did “ not accurately reflect the Department of Justice ’ s position on what would be a reasonable sentence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the DOJ believes “ incarceration is warranted ” but that 87 to 108 months isn ’ t appropriate and doesn ’ t “ serve the interests of justice in the case.
” If this all gave the impression that the Justice Department had caved to pressure from Trump , and that prosecutors resigned in protest of this interference , well , Trump has done little to dispel that troubling notion .
“ Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump tweeted .
He went on to claim the “ Mueller Scam ” was improperly brought .
That ’ s a wholesale mischaracterization of the inspector general ’ s report on the Russia investigation , which said the case was appropriately predicated .
Mueller took over the Russia investigation almost a year after the FBI had opened it , and there ’ s no evidence the former FBI director lied to Congress .
Many months later , Zelinsky also told the House Judiciary Committee in June that political interference played a role in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president , ” he testified .
Ultimately , Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 40 months ( about three years ) in prison for his conviction .
It ended up falling below the sentencing guideline recommendations , but then again , that could have happened anyway — it was always up to the judge .
Now that Trump has granted Stone a commutation , the sentence doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barr ’ s apparent intervention on Stone ’ s behalf in an even more unforgiving light — a sign that all along , this was about trying to help the president ’ s cronies .
A president ’ s use of clemency also can ’ t be thought of in isolation .
“ They have to be thought of alongside all of the other mechanisms for presidential enforcement or non-enforcement of different laws , ” Bernadette Meyler , a law professor at Stanford University , told me .
The commutation is the last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Trump didn ’ t use a full pardon , so Stone isn ’ t absolved of his crimes .
But he won ’ t face the consequences for them either .
Trump ’ s commutation effectively rewards Stone for his deceptions , which prosecutors say were intended to protect the president .
The message : Try to protect the president , and you ’ ll be rewarded .
Will Trump face any fallout for this ?
Trump ’ s commutation of Stone ’ s sentence is , at the most basic level @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essentially unchecked power when it comes to granting clemency for federal crimes .
That does not mean it ’ s wise .
This could very well be a precarious moment in Trump ’ s presidency , especially as his administration faces pressure for his handling of the coronavirus and nationwide protests against police brutality .
Trump isn ’ t the first president to use his clemency power controversially , of course .
George H.W .
Bush pardoned those caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal , which implicated Bush himself .
Bill Clinton ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raised questions of influence peddling , specifically whether Clinton had rewarded a prominent donor , leading to a congressional investigation .
And in 2007 , George W. Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice .
But both of those examples came in the final weeks and days of the presidents ’ terms in office ; they were leaving the presidency for good , which dulled the political fallout .
Trump took this risky move months before he ’ s up for reelection for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time , Trump didn ’ t fully absolve Stone , and only erased his sentence , which might have been an attempt to dull the political impact .
Either way , the only real check on Trump ’ s pardon power is political — whether voters reject his actions or Congress investigates and denounces it .
That includes Republicans , too .
Experts told me the country ’ s founders very much worried that the pardon power could be abused by presidents .
They saw impeachment as a possible check on this .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ belt , and it proved that his defenders in Congress are simply unwilling to break with him .
Trump already has a handful of controversial pardons on his list , too , including a string of pardons and commutations for former politicians and business leaders engaging in corrupt acts .
Mark Osler , a law professor at the University of St. Thomas and a former federal prosecutor , said past presidents have used their pardon powers in a principled way , even when it was unpopular , such as President Gerald Ford ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ draft dodgers .
They can also use it to signal what they value , like President Barack Obama ’ s use of clemency for nonviolent drug offenders .
But Trump has largely used his pardon power to forgive others who felt unfairly accused , to benefit popular right-wing figures , and to reward and benefit his friends — and Stone , a longtime and faithful associate of the president , fits right in .
“ With President Trump , in the 2016 election , we all knew how much he valued loyalty , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was completely predictable how he would use clemency.
” The question with Stone ’ s commutation is whether Trump feels emboldened enough to lessen or wipe out the convictions of others implicated in the Mueller probe , separate from his Justice Department .
For his detractors , it will be an alarming breach of the rule of law and another norm shattered .
But for Trump and his supporters , this will be yet another triumphant assault on the “ Russia hoax.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

President Donald Trump has commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence in a stunning exercise of presidential power that is not altogether unexpected.
Stone, a longtime Republican operative, was convicted in November 2019 for obstructing a congressional investigation, lying to Congress, and witness tampering in a trial that stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. On February 20, Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison.
Trump’s commutation landed just days before Stone was expected to report to prison on July 14.
The commutation stops short of a full pardon. The conviction will remain on Stone’s record — for now, at least. But the Trump ally won’t have to serve his approximately three-year prison term.
The White House issued a long statement on the commutation late Friday that attacked the Russia investigation and the prosecutors in the case. The statement claimed that Stone “maintains his innocence and has stated that he expects to be fully exonerated by the justice system” and that the president didn’t want to interfere in those efforts.
“At this time, however, and particularly in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution, arrest, and trial, the President has determined to commute his sentence,” the statement read. “Roger Stone has already suffered greatly. He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”
Trump has long disdained the Mueller investigation and claimed it has unfairly targeted him and his associates — not just Stone, but his former campaign chair Paul Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Trump and his attorneys dangled pardons during the Russia investigation.
With Stone, Trump has finally gone beyond complaining to explicitly intervening in one of his associates’ convictions.
Trump repeatedly signaled that he might grant clemency to Stone. It’s the most definitive example yet of his use of the power of the presidency to protect friends or advance his interests, Jim Pfiffner, a professor at George Mason University, said. “A willingness to use the pardon power to protect his friends and supporters sends a signal to others who might be willing to break the law in support of the president,” Pfiffner wrote in an email.
The controversy leading up to Stone’s commutation
Prosecutors made the case that Stone obstructed the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election by lying to the committee about his attempts to contact WikiLeaks, and by intimidating and trying to get another witness to lie for him about those efforts.
During the trial, witnesses such as Rick Gates (a Manafort associate who pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe and cooperated with prosecutors) and Steve Bannon testified that Stone claimed to the campaign that he had inside information about WikiLeaks’ access to damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Mueller’s investigation found that information was obtained through hacking by Russian military intelligence.
Prosecutors did not actually prove that Stone had any inside information during the trial. But, as Vox’s Andrew Prokop has written, prosecutors during the trial argued that “Stone’s motivation for his lies and obstruction was that ‘the truth looked bad for Donald Trump.’”
So it’s not a surprise that Trump has closely followed this case — and appeared to publicly pressure the Justice Department to lessen his sentence. In February, as Stone’s sentencing date approached, federal prosecutors recommended that Stone serve between 87 and 108 months (about seven to nine years) in prison, a range prosecutors said adhered to federal guidelines and “would accurately reflect the seriousness of his crimes and promote respect for the law.”
But not according to Trump. “This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” the president tweeted on February 11. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”
Later that same day, the Justice Department began signaling that it would intervene, with an anonymous official suggesting that was not the sentence recommendation that had been briefed to the department. Things escalated from there, as four prosecutors handling the case abruptly withdrew their involvement.
Aaron Zelinsky, who worked on Mueller’s team, filed a memo withdrawing himself from the case. Next came prosecutor Jonathan Kravis, who said he was leaving the team because he had resigned as an assistant US attorney. Two more followed: Adam Jed and Michael Marando said they would also remove themselves from the case.
The mass exodus came as the Justice Department submitted a memo in the Stone case that said its first sentencing statement did “not accurately reflect the Department of Justice’s position on what would be a reasonable sentence in this matter.”
The document said the DOJ believes “incarceration is warranted” but that 87 to 108 months isn’t appropriate and doesn’t “serve the interests of justice in the case.”
If this all gave the impression that the Justice Department had caved to pressure from Trump, and that prosecutors resigned in protest of this interference, well, Trump has done little to dispel that troubling notion.
“Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought,” Trump tweeted. He went on to claim the “Mueller Scam” was improperly brought. That’s a wholesale mischaracterization of the inspector general’s report on the Russia investigation, which said the case was appropriately predicated. Mueller took over the Russia investigation almost a year after the FBI had opened it, and there’s no evidence the former FBI director lied to Congress.
Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2020
Many months later, Zelinsky also told the House Judiciary Committee in June that political interference played a role in Stone’s sentencing. “What I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president,” he testified.
Ultimately, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 40 months (about three years) in prison for his conviction. It ended up falling below the sentencing guideline recommendations, but then again, that could have happened anyway — it was always up to the judge.
Now that Trump has granted Stone a commutation, the sentence doesn’t matter so much. It also puts Barr’s apparent intervention on Stone’s behalf in an even more unforgiving light — a sign that all along, this was about trying to help the president’s cronies.
A president’s use of clemency also can’t be thought of in isolation. “They have to be thought of alongside all of the other mechanisms for presidential enforcement or non-enforcement of different laws,” Bernadette Meyler, a law professor at Stanford University, told me. The commutation is the last step in a troublesome list of interventions.
Trump didn’t use a full pardon, so Stone isn’t absolved of his crimes. But he won’t face the consequences for them either. Trump’s commutation effectively rewards Stone for his deceptions, which prosecutors say were intended to protect the president. The message: Try to protect the president, and you’ll be rewarded.
Will Trump face any fallout for this?
Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence is, at the most basic level, constitutional. The president does have essentially unchecked power when it comes to granting clemency for federal crimes. That does not mean it’s wise. This could very well be a precarious moment in Trump’s presidency, especially as his administration faces pressure for his handling of the coronavirus and nationwide protests against police brutality.
Trump isn’t the first president to use his clemency power controversially, of course. George H.W. Bush pardoned those caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal, which implicated Bush himself. Bill Clinton’s pardon of financier Marc Rich also raised questions of influence peddling, specifically whether Clinton had rewarded a prominent donor, leading to a congressional investigation. And in 2007, George W. Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice.
But both of those examples came in the final weeks and days of the presidents’ terms in office; they were leaving the presidency for good, which dulled the political fallout. Trump took this risky move months before he’s up for reelection for a second term. At the same time, Trump didn’t fully absolve Stone, and only erased his sentence, which might have been an attempt to soften the political impact.
Either way, the only real check on Trump’s pardon power is political — whether voters reject his actions or Congress investigates and denounces it. That includes Republicans, too.
Experts told me the country’s founders very much worried that the pardon power could be abused by presidents. They saw impeachment as a possible check on this. Trump already has one impeachment under his belt, and it proved that his defenders in Congress are simply unwilling to break with him.
Trump already has a handful of controversial pardons on his list, too, including a string of pardons and commutations for former politicians and business leaders engaging in corrupt acts.
Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas and a former federal prosecutor, said past presidents have used their pardon powers in a principled way, even when it was unpopular, such as President Gerald Ford’s decision to grant amnesty to Vietnam draft dodgers. They can also use it to signal what they value, like President Barack Obama’s use of clemency for nonviolent drug offenders. But Trump has largely used his pardon power to forgive others who felt unfairly accused, to benefit popular right-wing figures, and to reward and benefit his friends — and Stone, a longtime and faithful associate of the president, fits right in.
“With President Trump, in the 2016 election, we all knew how much he valued loyalty,” Osler said. “And it was completely predictable how he would use clemency.”
The question with Stone’s commutation is whether Trump feels emboldened enough to lessen or wipe out the convictions of others implicated in the Mueller probe, separate from his Justice Department.
For his detractors, it will be an alarming breach of the rule of law and another norm shattered. But for Trump and his supporters, this will be yet another triumphant assault on the “Russia hoax.”


vox--2020-07-10--Amazon walks back its order for employees to delete TikTok from their phones

Amazon says its request that its employees delete TikTok from their cellphones on Friday was made in error .
The company ’ s IT department on Friday morning ordered its employees to delete TikTok from their cellphones in an email sent to staff , saying the popular video app posed “ security risks ” and that employees would lose mobile access to their work email if they did not comply .
By Friday afternoon , the company had walked back that order .
“ This morning ’ s email to some of our employees was sent in error .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now with regard to TikTok , ” a spokesperson for Amazon said in an email to Recode on Friday afternoon .
The earlier rule , which Amazon has now said does not apply , was only meant for employees using mobile phones to access their Amazon work email accounts , according to an email reviewed by Recode .
Since Amazon ’ s hundreds of thousands of US warehouse employees don ’ t appear to have mobile access to corporate email , it was unclear how this rule would apply to them .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that the Trump administration was considering banning TikTok , which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance , for all US users .
Pompeo said the potential ban is being prompted by concerns that the company shares users ’ private data with the Chinese government , which has been expanding its surveillance state in recent years .
TikTok has denied sharing data with the Chinese government .
A day after Pompeo ’ s remarks , President Trump confirmed his administration is considering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ retaliation for the Chinese government ’ s handling of the coronavirus pandemic .
It ’ s not yet clear how the US government would execute such a ban .
In late June , TikTok users also attracted attention after they claimed to have pranked President Trump ’ s rally in Tulsa , Oklahoma , by registering thousands of tickets that they didn ’ t end up using , creating a disparity between expected attendance and the relatively smaller number of people that actually showed up .
And some TikTok users are again planning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ upcoming rally in New Hampshire by registering empty seats .
Trump ’ s reelection campaign chair Brad Parscale downplayed the impact of “ online trolls ” impacting rally attendance in a statement to the New York Times .
In the internal Amazon email obtained by Recode , Amazon told employees they could still access TikTok from their laptop browsers .
The email said employees who use their mobile devices to access work email will have to delete the app .
Amazon ’ s decision is notable because it could lay the groundwork for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decisions about TikTok .
A statement from TikTok to Recode read in part : There are still a lot of unknowns about this ban and its subsequent walkback .
What were the “ security concerns ” that Amazon said it had about its employees using TikTok ?
How was the email sent in error ?
Will there be an Amazon employee ban on TikTok in the future ?
Another question is around enforcement .
TikTok is a widely popular , fast-growing app with tens of millions of US users .
How would Amazon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ban , and would its IT departments monitor the apps on all of its employees ’ phones ?
While we don ’ t yet know the answers to those questions , Amazon ’ s email about an internal ban on TikTok is another sign that the app that ’ s gained popularity in the US as an innocuous app for fun-loving , lip-syncing teens is increasingly controversial as concerns grow that its parent company ’ s ties to the Chinese government pose a security risk .
Update June 10 , 6 pm : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ walking back the email banning employees using TikTok on their phones .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Amazon says its request that its employees delete TikTok from their cellphones on Friday was made in error.
The company’s IT department on Friday morning ordered its employees to delete TikTok from their cellphones in an email sent to staff, saying the popular video app posed “security risks” and that employees would lose mobile access to their work email if they did not comply. By Friday afternoon, the company had walked back that order.
“This morning’s email to some of our employees was sent in error. There is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok,” a spokesperson for Amazon said in an email to Recode on Friday afternoon.
The earlier rule, which Amazon has now said does not apply, was only meant for employees using mobile phones to access their Amazon work email accounts, according to an email reviewed by Recode. Since Amazon’s hundreds of thousands of US warehouse employees don’t appear to have mobile access to corporate email, it was unclear how this rule would apply to them.
The move inside Amazon comes just a few days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that the Trump administration was considering banning TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, for all US users. Pompeo said the potential ban is being prompted by concerns that the company shares users’ private data with the Chinese government, which has been expanding its surveillance state in recent years. TikTok has denied sharing data with the Chinese government. A day after Pompeo’s remarks, President Trump confirmed his administration is considering a ban on the app as possible retaliation for the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s not yet clear how the US government would execute such a ban.
In late June, TikTok users also attracted attention after they claimed to have pranked President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by registering thousands of tickets that they didn’t end up using, creating a disparity between expected attendance and the relatively smaller number of people that actually showed up. And some TikTok users are again planning to try to sabotage Trump’s upcoming rally in New Hampshire by registering empty seats. Trump’s reelection campaign chair Brad Parscale downplayed the impact of “online trolls” impacting rally attendance in a statement to the New York Times.
In the internal Amazon email obtained by Recode, Amazon told employees they could still access TikTok from their laptop browsers. The email said employees who use their mobile devices to access work email will have to delete the app. Amazon’s decision is notable because it could lay the groundwork for other US tech giants to make similar decisions about TikTok.
A statement from TikTok to Recode read in part:
User security is of the utmost importance to TikTok — we are fully committed to respecting the privacy of our users. While Amazon did not communicate to us before sending their email, and we still do not understand their concerns, we welcome a dialogue so we can address any issues they may have and enable their team to continue participating in our community.
There are still a lot of unknowns about this ban and its subsequent walkback. What were the “security concerns” that Amazon said it had about its employees using TikTok? How was the email sent in error? Will there be an Amazon employee ban on TikTok in the future?
Another question is around enforcement. TikTok is a widely popular, fast-growing app with tens of millions of US users. How would Amazon ensure that its employees follow a potential ban, and would its IT departments monitor the apps on all of its employees’ phones?
While we don’t yet know the answers to those questions, Amazon’s email about an internal ban on TikTok is another sign that the app that’s gained popularity in the US as an innocuous app for fun-loving, lip-syncing teens is increasingly controversial as concerns grow that its parent company’s ties to the Chinese government pose a security risk.
Update June 10, 6 pm: Updated to include Amazon’s statement walking back the email banning employees using TikTok on their phones.


vox--2020-07-10--Unpacking the twisty genre of political fanfiction through Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham

Welcome , book clubbers !
This July , the Vox Book Club is delving into Rodham , Curtis Sittenfeld ’ s alternate history that explores a world in which Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton .
Instead , Sittenfeld ’ s Hillary becomes a senator on her own — and she ends up running for president against Bill .
There are a lot of possible approaches to take with a book like Rodham , so this month , we ’ re changing up our usual discussion format to investigate the book theme by theme as opposed to chapter by chapter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talking about Rodham as a form of political RPF .
RPF , or Real Person Fiction , refers to any fiction written about real people , as opposed to fiction written about fictional characters .
There ’ s a long tradition of RPF in the historical novels that frequently appear on the New York Times bestseller list , but there ’ s also a plethora of communities on the internet where amateur writers share stories they ’ ve written about contemporary celebrities , influencers , and even politicians .
To fully understand Rodham @ @ @ @ @ @ @ murky genre , I decided to call in an expert .
So for this week ’ s discussion , Vox ’ s fandom expert Aja Romano has graciously agreed to lend their considerable knowledge of political RPF to the book club .
Aja Romano !
Thank you very much for joining the Vox Book Club this week to share your expertise .
Let ’ s start off with a basic question : What is the appeal , as you understand it , of political RPF ?
I think we have to first broaden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s the appeal of all RPF ?
There ’ s a primal human desire to turn the lives of public figures and celebrities into a spectator sport .
You see this everywhere in culture , from the mythologizing of real Greek historical figures to tabloid journalism and reality TV — this desire to elevate the lives of celebrities into larger-than-life fictional archetypes .
Because celebrities have cultural capital in a way that the rest of us don ’ t , and because they benefit directly from our interest in them , we often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as extensions of what ’ s happening in the culture itself .
We write new myths around their lives — so , for example , the myth of the Knowles-Carters is a myth of modern Black excellence .
The myth of the Kennedys is about the underlying tragedy of the American dream .
But we also want to insert ourselves into the minutiae of the daily lives of famous people ( or obscure historical figures , we ’ re not picky ) — to get into their heads , walk around in their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ RPF is a mode of fiction , it allows you to distance yourself from any icky discomfort you might feel if you tried to peer this deeply into the life of someone you know personally .
And we assume as a culture that the celebrity persona is a fabricated construct to begin with .
When you fictionalize it further , you have a way to project your own ideas , beliefs , and desires onto the “ narrative ” of these “ characters ” — a narrative that ’ s usually about celebrity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case , politics .
There are three main kinds of political RPF : fictionalized biographies , like Alison Weir ’ s historical novels ; regular fanfiction , like the kind I and my friends have written where the “ characters ” are just hanging out and doing tropey fanfiction stuff — having wacky White House shenanigans or working at a bakery or starting a rock band , the usual ; and RPF in the form of political satire .
Most mainstream media thinks of political RPF as primarily satire , because that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skits on Saturday Night Live , for example , or parodies in the Onion .
But there ’ s increasingly an interesting blurring of all these categories : for instance , two recent plays about Hillary Clinton , Soft Power and Hillary and Clinton , both have elements of biography and satire but seem to fall more firmly in the realm of fanfiction in terms of where they take Hillary Clinton as a character .
That ’ s so fascinating !
And Hillary certainly seems to be the political figure who gets this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more so than the oft-parodied Donald Trump .
Perhaps that ’ s because she ’ s been in the public eye , and heavily criticized within the public eye , for so long that she ’ s come to feel like not quite a real person to us anyway .
She ’ s just a pantsuited silhouette you can put a slogan on top of .
One of the elements of fanfiction-y political RPF that tends to draw rubbernecked gawking from outside of the fanfic community is the centrality of sex to some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ included .
And I have to admit , when I got to the sex scenes in Rodham , I found myself clutching my pearls a bit .
That was Bill Clinton talking about Hillary Rodham-not-yet-Clinton ’ s “ honey pot ” that I was reading !
I had this reflexive feeling of getting icked out by how explicit the scenes were .
But I also ultimately found them helpful for thinking about the connection between fictional Hillary and fictional Bill .
Part of Sittenfeld ’ s interpretation of their relationship is that Hillary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexless brain by most of the men she is attracted to , and so when she finds herself forging a connection with Bill that is both intellectual and sexual , she is grateful to him for the affirmation he has given her .
And it ’ s this sense of affirmation , ultimately , that makes it so difficult for Hillary to leave Bill , even after a woman accuses him of rape : With Bill , she is both desirable and intelligent .
Without him , she is a dowdy smart girl @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The storyline was ultimately humanizing , even though I also found it shocking .
How do you think about the function of sex in political RPF ?
Is it inherently intrusive ?
Is it humanizing ?
Both ?
So this is a super-controversial question !
Many people find the whole idea of RPF to be a giant disgusting social taboo , especially when it involves sex .
Those people are wrong !
I ’ m very biased here because I see RPF as so completely divorced from the real people it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Hillary is a fictional construct that ’ s based on another fictional construct , Clinton ’ s carefully cultivated public persona .
I ’ m assuming she ’ s never seen Billary be intimate together , never seen what Hillary is like at the end of the day when she stops performing a role and reverts to herself .
Everything Sittenfeld writes about that other Clinton , including her sexual proclivities , is made up .
The only relationship her fictional sexual practices have to the actual Hillary Clinton is that we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perception of “ Hillary Clinton ” and “ Bill Clinton ” into those scenes , and reconsider our assumptions about those personas accordingly .
That ’ s just what you did while you were reading , and it sounds like , to that end , the story was effective .
I ’ m interested in your statement that the belief that RPF is a disgusting social taboo is wrong .
Could you say more about that ?
I think a lot of people who aren ’ t familiar with the genre see the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former president and first lady ” and immediately respond , “ Gross and intrusive ; these people still have a right to privacy.
” As someone who has spent much more time thinking about RPF than I have , how do you respond to that knee-jerk criticism ?
I ’ d remind them that they see such depictions of real people all the time , all across media , from The Tudors to The Kennedys to recent seasons of The Crown that showed real members of the royal family — people still currently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ zero problems with that , culturally , because the act of casting actors to play those roles removes our association with the real people being depicted .
But it ’ s all RPF .
The only difference is that when we see the actors having sex , we picture the actors in our heads rather than the real people they represent .
If the RPF is textual , then without that extra fictional layer of cinema , we usually just picture the real celebrities , which probably makes such sex scenes feel more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s something else to consider , frankly : Fantasizing about celebrities is typically healthy and normal , whether you ’ re fantasizing a sexual encounter or whether you ’ re fantasizing , as countless fans do , about befriending the celebrity or being related to them or just getting to meet them and have a personal encounter with them one day .
Like other social taboos , we don ’ t typically have a problem with people fantasizing about public figures as long as it stays under wraps and in your head @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of reality , and to some extent we recognize this as a culture .
That ’ s why we collectively created ” the Exception , ” or “ the Hall Pass.
” You know — the one celebrity you ’ re allowed to cheat on your partner with .
Culturally , we sexualize politicians as well — just look at the Kennedys or sexy Joe Biden .
Many , many celebrities commodify their sexual appeal as a part of commodifying their persona in general .
And most celebrities are open about the difference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and they operate with the knowledge that their public face doesn ’ t entirely belong to them — that the public claims a stake in the construction of their public personas .
After that persona is constructed , we might want to take it all back if things get sexy , but I ’ d argue by that point the persona we ’ ve all built together is its own nearly independent entity , and the sexualization of that persona is divorced from the real person we can never truly know .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t definite lines that shouldn ’ t be crossed , like sexualizing real underage people , or the entirety of the celebfakes and deepfakes porn craze — that , to me , is essentially AI revenge porn being enacted aggressively upon celebrities ( near-universally women ) .
But there ’ s a huge broad spectrum of ways we sexualize real people long before we reach those extremes , and people tend to focus on the parts that shock them while totally normalizing all the other parts .
That ’ s such a nuanced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Hillary is not one of the politicians we consistently sexualize , in spite of the fact that the broader public sexualized Bill quite a bit even before his plethora of scandals .
Our understanding of Hillary as a sexless public figure only adds to the impression of scandal and transgression in these scenes .
Moving away from the sex question , it strikes me that political RPF is also a way of writing about power : who gets to wield it , what kinds of personalities are attracted to the pursuit of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from them .
Rodham is particularly concerned with the question of charisma and its relationship to political acumen .
In real life , Hillary “ you ’ re likable enough ” Clinton is consistently dinged for her perceived charmlessness .
And in Rodham , Sittenfeld ’ s Hillary is continuously evaluating her own lack of sparkle when compared to natural politicians like Bill .
She argues — without all that many specifics — that she is better at the hard work of legislating and executing policy than Bill is .
But she also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaigner than she is .
And one of the major questions of the book is whether Bill ’ s charm entitles him to more power than Hillary can amass .
Are these the kinds of questions that political RPF is particularly good at helping us think through ?
Do you think they would have the same urgency were Sittenfeld to “ file off the serial numbers ” and write Rodham about a generic fictional political romance turned sour ?
You ’ ve just hit on the key to RPF .
I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is divorced from its subject , but the subject ’ s relationship to society , mediated by the public , is crucial to making RPF work .
For example : There are a little over 450 Bill/Hillary fics in the online fanfic archive AO3 , and the most popular ones tend to involve them negotiating their post-Lewinsky scandal relationship both publicly and privately .
That dynamic could still exist if they were a fake first couple , but as a reader , you wouldn ’ t have the direct added cultural context from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Clinton .
The fictional wife might be a hardworking woman who stays loyal to her husband , but we wouldn ’ t have the indelible image of Clinton saying , “ I ’ m not standing by my man like Tammy Wynette ” to contextualize what that loyalty looks like in real life .
Through fiction , we as members of the public can really explore and drill down into the way Clinton ’ s version of “ soft power ” has so often been wielded to protect and shield her husband from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the more powerful of the two .
And if you actually ship Bill and Hillary and want them to live romantically ever after , you may have the interesting conundrum of choosing which era of Bill and Hillary you want to try to repair .
That ’ s an additional commentary on their respective political and social evolutions , and on the way we ’ ve read them over the years .
It all ties into the idea that the “ character ” has a real history that ’ s unfolded before you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it has some relationship to your own history , your own reality .
So you take the heightened emotional intensity of fiction and combine it with the layers of meaning and context around the real character fiction is working with , and you as a writer or reader now have a personal stake in that character and that real context that you didn ’ t have before .
I love this .
And Sittenfeld is absolutely critiquing the way Hillary ’ s soft power protects Bill .
In real life , Hillary ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bill winning the Democratic nomination and then the presidency .
But in Rodham , Bill has to face down that 60 Minutes interview without Hillary at his side .
And Sittenfeld posits that in this scenario , he crashes and burns so hard that he leaves politics altogether — until he decides to throw his hat back into the ring just as Hillary is gearing up for her presidential run .
But how do you feel about Rodham , book clubbers ?
Does RPF strike you as a worthy genre ?
And do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Let us know in the comments , and then meet us back here on July 24 to discuss Rodham ’ s alternate history .
And on July 30 , we ’ ll be talking with Curtis Sittenfeld live on Zoom !
RSVP now , and be sure to sign up for the Vox Book Club newsletter to make sure you don ’ t miss anything .

Welcome, book clubbers! This July, the Vox Book Club is delving into Rodham, Curtis Sittenfeld’s alternate history that explores a world in which Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton. Instead, Sittenfeld’s Hillary becomes a senator on her own — and she ends up running for president against Bill.
There are a lot of possible approaches to take with a book like Rodham, so this month, we’re changing up our usual discussion format to investigate the book theme by theme as opposed to chapter by chapter. This week, we’re talking about Rodham as a form of political RPF.
RPF, or Real Person Fiction, refers to any fiction written about real people, as opposed to fiction written about fictional characters. There’s a long tradition of RPF in the historical novels that frequently appear on the New York Times bestseller list, but there’s also a plethora of communities on the internet where amateur writers share stories they’ve written about contemporary celebrities, influencers, and even politicians.
To fully understand Rodham’s place in this strange and murky genre, I decided to call in an expert. So for this week’s discussion, Vox’s fandom expert Aja Romano has graciously agreed to lend their considerable knowledge of political RPF to the book club.
Constance Grady
Aja Romano! Thank you very much for joining the Vox Book Club this week to share your expertise. Let’s start off with a basic question: What is the appeal, as you understand it, of political RPF?
Aja Romano
I think we have to first broaden that question to ask: What’s the appeal of all RPF? There’s a primal human desire to turn the lives of public figures and celebrities into a spectator sport. You see this everywhere in culture, from the mythologizing of real Greek historical figures to tabloid journalism and reality TV — this desire to elevate the lives of celebrities into larger-than-life fictional archetypes. Because celebrities have cultural capital in a way that the rest of us don’t, and because they benefit directly from our interest in them, we often see their lives and their public personas as extensions of what’s happening in the culture itself. We write new myths around their lives — so, for example, the myth of the Knowles-Carters is a myth of modern Black excellence. The myth of the Kennedys is about the underlying tragedy of the American dream.
But we also want to insert ourselves into the minutiae of the daily lives of famous people (or obscure historical figures, we’re not picky) — to get into their heads, walk around in their imagined shoes for a while. Because RPF is a mode of fiction, it allows you to distance yourself from any icky discomfort you might feel if you tried to peer this deeply into the life of someone you know personally. And we assume as a culture that the celebrity persona is a fabricated construct to begin with. When you fictionalize it further, you have a way to project your own ideas, beliefs, and desires onto the “narrative” of these “characters” — a narrative that’s usually about celebrity, fame, and, in this case, politics.
There are three main kinds of political RPF: fictionalized biographies, like Alison Weir’s historical novels; regular fanfiction, like the kind I and my friends have written where the “characters” are just hanging out and doing tropey fanfiction stuff — having wacky White House shenanigans or working at a bakery or starting a rock band, the usual; and RPF in the form of political satire.
Most mainstream media thinks of political RPF as primarily satire, because that’s what they see the most — skits on Saturday Night Live, for example, or parodies in the Onion. But there’s increasingly an interesting blurring of all these categories: for instance, two recent plays about Hillary Clinton, Soft Power and Hillary and Clinton, both have elements of biography and satire but seem to fall more firmly in the realm of fanfiction in terms of where they take Hillary Clinton as a character.
Constance Grady
That’s so fascinating! And Hillary certainly seems to be the political figure who gets this particular not-quite-satirical treatment most often, even more so than the oft-parodied Donald Trump. Perhaps that’s because she’s been in the public eye, and heavily criticized within the public eye, for so long that she’s come to feel like not quite a real person to us anyway. She’s just a pantsuited silhouette you can put a slogan on top of.
One of the elements of fanfiction-y political RPF that tends to draw rubbernecked gawking from outside of the fanfic community is the centrality of sex to some of these stories, Rodham perhaps especially included. And I have to admit, when I got to the sex scenes in Rodham, I found myself clutching my pearls a bit. That was Bill Clinton talking about Hillary Rodham-not-yet-Clinton’s “honey pot” that I was reading! I had this reflexive feeling of getting icked out by how explicit the scenes were.
But I also ultimately found them helpful for thinking about the connection between fictional Hillary and fictional Bill. Part of Sittenfeld’s interpretation of their relationship is that Hillary is used to being treated as a sexless brain by most of the men she is attracted to, and so when she finds herself forging a connection with Bill that is both intellectual and sexual, she is grateful to him for the affirmation he has given her. And it’s this sense of affirmation, ultimately, that makes it so difficult for Hillary to leave Bill, even after a woman accuses him of rape: With Bill, she is both desirable and intelligent. Without him, she is a dowdy smart girl no one wants to have sex with. The storyline was ultimately humanizing, even though I also found it shocking.
How do you think about the function of sex in political RPF? Is it inherently intrusive? Is it humanizing? Both?
Aja Romano
So this is a super-controversial question! Many people find the whole idea of RPF to be a giant disgusting social taboo, especially when it involves sex. Those people are wrong! I’m very biased here because I see RPF as so completely divorced from the real people it’s being written about. Sittenfeld’s Hillary is a fictional construct that’s based on another fictional construct, Clinton’s carefully cultivated public persona. I’m assuming she’s never seen Billary be intimate together, never seen what Hillary is like at the end of the day when she stops performing a role and reverts to herself.
Everything Sittenfeld writes about that other Clinton, including her sexual proclivities, is made up. The only relationship her fictional sexual practices have to the actual Hillary Clinton is that we’re meant to project our own perception of “Hillary Clinton” and “Bill Clinton” into those scenes, and reconsider our assumptions about those personas accordingly. That’s just what you did while you were reading, and it sounds like, to that end, the story was effective.
Constance Grady
I’m interested in your statement that the belief that RPF is a disgusting social taboo is wrong. Could you say more about that? I think a lot of people who aren’t familiar with the genre see the words “explicit sex scene between a former president and first lady” and immediately respond, “Gross and intrusive; these people still have a right to privacy.” As someone who has spent much more time thinking about RPF than I have, how do you respond to that knee-jerk criticism?
Aja Romano
I’d remind them that they see such depictions of real people all the time, all across media, from The Tudors to The Kennedys to recent seasons of The Crown that showed real members of the royal family — people still currently alive — having sex. We have zero problems with that, culturally, because the act of casting actors to play those roles removes our association with the real people being depicted. But it’s all RPF. The only difference is that when we see the actors having sex, we picture the actors in our heads rather than the real people they represent. If the RPF is textual, then without that extra fictional layer of cinema, we usually just picture the real celebrities, which probably makes such sex scenes feel more like direct sexual fantasies.
And that’s something else to consider, frankly: Fantasizing about celebrities is typically healthy and normal, whether you’re fantasizing a sexual encounter or whether you’re fantasizing, as countless fans do, about befriending the celebrity or being related to them or just getting to meet them and have a personal encounter with them one day.
Like other social taboos, we don’t typically have a problem with people fantasizing about public figures as long as it stays under wraps and in your head. But age-appropriate fantasies are a part of reality, and to some extent we recognize this as a culture. That’s why we collectively created ”the Exception,” or “the Hall Pass.” You know — the one celebrity you’re allowed to cheat on your partner with. Culturally, we sexualize politicians as well — just look at the Kennedys or sexy Joe Biden.
Many, many celebrities commodify their sexual appeal as a part of commodifying their persona in general. And most celebrities are open about the difference between their public and private face, and they operate with the knowledge that their public face doesn’t entirely belong to them — that the public claims a stake in the construction of their public personas. After that persona is constructed, we might want to take it all back if things get sexy, but I’d argue by that point the persona we’ve all built together is its own nearly independent entity, and the sexualization of that persona is divorced from the real person we can never truly know.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t definite lines that shouldn’t be crossed, like sexualizing real underage people, or the entirety of the celebfakes and deepfakes porn craze — that, to me, is essentially AI revenge porn being enacted aggressively upon celebrities (near-universally women). But there’s a huge broad spectrum of ways we sexualize real people long before we reach those extremes, and people tend to focus on the parts that shock them while totally normalizing all the other parts.
Constance Grady
That’s such a nuanced point. It’s also interesting that Hillary is not one of the politicians we consistently sexualize, in spite of the fact that the broader public sexualized Bill quite a bit even before his plethora of scandals. Our understanding of Hillary as a sexless public figure only adds to the impression of scandal and transgression in these scenes.
Moving away from the sex question, it strikes me that political RPF is also a way of writing about power: who gets to wield it, what kinds of personalities are attracted to the pursuit of it, and what we can expect from them.
Rodham is particularly concerned with the question of charisma and its relationship to political acumen. In real life, Hillary “you’re likable enough” Clinton is consistently dinged for her perceived charmlessness. And in Rodham, Sittenfeld’s Hillary is continuously evaluating her own lack of sparkle when compared to natural politicians like Bill. She argues — without all that many specifics — that she is better at the hard work of legislating and executing policy than Bill is. But she also knows that he’s a better campaigner than she is. And one of the major questions of the book is whether Bill’s charm entitles him to more power than Hillary can amass.
Are these the kinds of questions that political RPF is particularly good at helping us think through? Do you think they would have the same urgency were Sittenfeld to “file off the serial numbers” and write Rodham about a generic fictional political romance turned sour?
Aja Romano
You’ve just hit on the key to RPF. I’ve spent all this time arguing that RPF is divorced from its subject, but the subject’s relationship to society, mediated by the public, is crucial to making RPF work.
For example: There are a little over 450 Bill/Hillary fics in the online fanfic archive AO3, and the most popular ones tend to involve them negotiating their post-Lewinsky scandal relationship both publicly and privately. That dynamic could still exist if they were a fake first couple, but as a reader, you wouldn’t have the direct added cultural context from knowing how society perceives the real Hillary Clinton. The fictional wife might be a hardworking woman who stays loyal to her husband, but we wouldn’t have the indelible image of Clinton saying, “I’m not standing by my man like Tammy Wynette” to contextualize what that loyalty looks like in real life.
Through fiction, we as members of the public can really explore and drill down into the way Clinton’s version of “soft power” has so often been wielded to protect and shield her husband from backlash even though he’s ostensibly the more powerful of the two. And if you actually ship Bill and Hillary and want them to live romantically ever after, you may have the interesting conundrum of choosing which era of Bill and Hillary you want to try to repair. That’s an additional commentary on their respective political and social evolutions, and on the way we’ve read them over the years. It all ties into the idea that the “character” has a real history that’s unfolded before you, and that history is real — it has some relationship to your own history, your own reality.
So you take the heightened emotional intensity of fiction and combine it with the layers of meaning and context around the real character fiction is working with, and you as a writer or reader now have a personal stake in that character and that real context that you didn’t have before.
Constance Grady
I love this. And Sittenfeld is absolutely critiquing the way Hillary’s soft power protects Bill. In real life, Hillary’s Tammy Wynette line was instrumental to Bill winning the Democratic nomination and then the presidency. But in Rodham, Bill has to face down that 60 Minutes interview without Hillary at his side. And Sittenfeld posits that in this scenario, he crashes and burns so hard that he leaves politics altogether — until he decides to throw his hat back into the ring just as Hillary is gearing up for her presidential run.
But how do you feel about Rodham, book clubbers? Does RPF strike you as a worthy genre? And do you think the execution pays off here?
Let us know in the comments, and then meet us back here on July 24 to discuss Rodham’s alternate history. And on July 30, we’ll be talking with Curtis Sittenfeld live on Zoom! RSVP now, and be sure to sign up for the Vox Book Club newsletter to make sure you don’t miss anything.


vox--2020-07-10--Housing segregation left Black Americans more vulnerable to Covid-19

One thing hasn ’ t changed as a new surge of coronavirus cases has swelled across the United States : Black Americans continue to disproportionately get infected by and die from this novel pathogen .
The Los Angeles County health department reported this week that Black residents were dying at twice the rate its white residents were .
The same is true of Black Alabamans .
In Florida , Black people account for a higher share of Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths than their share of the population .
The George Floyd protests forced a difficult conversation about the trade-offs of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the urgency of fixing structural inequities .
But more than a month later , there is little evidence the protests contributed to a significant acceleration of the coronavirus ’ s spread .
The health consequences of US inequality , however , are still being felt by Black ( and Hispanic and Native ) Americans during the worst pandemic of our lifetimes .
Health disparities predate Covid-19 , of course , as Jamila Taylor recently reviewed for the Century Foundation : Black Americans live shorter lives than white Americans , they have higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worse mental health , they have less health care access , etc .
“ Whether it ’ s from violence in the street or violence in the health care system , Black Americans have been dying for not just the last three months but the last three centuries , ” Utibe Essien , a practicing physician who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh ’ s medical school , told me .
Let ’ s start with the obvious problem : interpersonal racism , whether tacit or explicit , directly harms Black people ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it has created between Black Americans and American institutions .
This problem goes back centuries : US slaves were experimented on , and more recently , there are horrifying stories like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment .
Numerous studies , some of them conducted as recently as 2016 , have foundBlack people were less likely to be given pain medication in an emergency department .
And in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis , a new report found that Black people who reported Covid-like symptoms — namely , fever and cough — were less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus compared to white people with the same symptoms .
In all these ways , internalized and interpersonal racism lead to worse health outcomes for Black Americans .
But structural racism is also usually , and correctly , proposed as a critical explanation for these inequities .
After speaking last month with half a dozen Black scholars , I came to believe the best place to start in understanding how structural racism breeds racial health disparities is residential segregation .
Where a person lives has direct health effects and , maybe as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economic success or failure for the rest of their lives — which we also know is an important determinant for health .
This analysis isn ’ t meant to be comprehensive .
That would require a whole book .
But if you want to better understand how structural racism translates to the health disparities that have left Black Americans prone to Covid-19 , those factors should be a good place to start .
Residential segregation is one of the primary causes of health disparities Every scholar I spoke with included residential segregation as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — taken together , they identified it as maybe the primary driver .
“ I think of residential segregation by race as one of the upstream drivers , ” David Williams , a professor of public health and sociology at Harvard , told me .
As he wrote in a May 2020 editorial for JAMA on Covid-19 and health equity : “ Social inequities are patterned by place , and opportunities to be healthy vary markedly at the neighborhood level.
” The culprit for racial housing segregation is what was called “ redlining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ d like to read a book about it , I would recommend Richard Rothstein ’ s The Color of Law for the full story .
But in brief , redlining meant that certain neighborhoods were given preference by the Federal Housing Administration .
To receive loans to build housing developments or mortgages to buy one of those homes , real estate developers and homebuyers were directed to areas with “ harmonious ” racial groups ( i.e .
Black or white ) .
Red lines were drawn around black communities ; white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or buy houses in them , while black people were only given loans to build or buy houses there .
And though racial discrimination is no longer enshrined in official government policy , its legacy is still felt among Black homebuyers today .
“ There is a direct line from US government-led discrimination against Black people in housing — also known as redlining — to racism against Black buyers in housing in real estate today , ” Belinda Archibong , an economics professor at Columbia University , told me .
She cited a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 that found half of Black homebuyers on Long Island faced some kind of discrimination from real estate agents .
That helps explain why housing segregation persists .
As the Economic Policy Institute reviewed earlier this year , just 13 percent of white students attend a school that has a majority of Black students , while nearly seven in 10 Black students do .
How does that discrimination affect black people ’ s health ?
If you ’ re well-versed in health wonk lingo , you know the phrase “ the social determinants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those determinants reflect where a person lives .
Williams , in his JAMA piece , ticked through all the ways in which the simple location of a person ’ s residence can affect their health : During Covid , we have seen black neighborhoods in New York City bear the brunt of infections and deaths .
These disparities are even found in testing sites ; News 5 in Cleveland reported this week that many chain pharmacy locations inside the city were not offering coronavirus testing , while the stores situated in the suburbs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ available .
So place , determined in large part by residential segregation set in motion long ago , affects Black people ’ s health to this day .
But its effect is more pernicious than that .
It ’ s not just how the environment affects one ’ s health .
It ’ s how your place of residence affects your economic opportunities , which in turn can also have an outsized impact on a person ’ s health .
“ Homeownership was and has been the way that Americans build wealth and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Jessie Marshall , who studies health disparities at the University of Michigan ’ s medical school , told me .
“ With these government-subsidized mortgages being made available to whites and not so for Blacks , that really further set the stage for income inequality .
“ As a result of that , there was continued investment into those communities that benefited from the subsidized government mortgages .
The building of wealth but then also the building of public K-12 education of good quality , ” Marshall continued .
“ In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of that red line , essentially neighborhoods of largely Black folks who did not have those same opportunities , they were not able to build or pass down wealth and were left to be in neighborhoods that were poorly funded for K-12 public education.
” The second and third-order effects have continued to ripple out over the last 75 years .
As of 2018 , Black Americans had accumulated just 10 cents of wealth for every dollar of wealth possessed by white Americans .
In their incomes , Black Americans make just 59 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paid .
Research has indicated that if residential segregation were to be ended , many of those economic disparities would be dramatically reduced .
Instead , segregation preserves economic and education inequities , which in turn have perverse health effects .
Returning to Williams ’ s JAMA op-ed , he wrote : “ Segregation is a critical determinant of economic status , which is a strong predictor of variations in health.
” People who live in lower-income neighborhoods typically have more tobacco shops in their neighborhood ( which drives up smoking ) and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( which drives up obesity ) .
Both smoking and obesity are precursors to the higher rates of diabetes and heart disease seen among Black Americans .
As Health Affairs covered in a 2018 article , a person ’ s income can influence their health in disturbingly literal ways : Something as simple as insurance coverage , which correlates to better health outcomes , follows from one ’ s economic well-being .
The uninsured rate among white Americans is 8 percent ; among Black Americans , it ’ s 11 percent .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans and Native Americans . )
Black Americans are less likely to receive health insurance through their work and they are more likely to depend on Medicaid than white Americans .
Black Americans have also been disproportionately harmed by mostly southern states refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act .
More than 2 million people have been left without any health insurance because of that policy choice , and “ uninsured Blacks are more likely than Whites to fall in the coverage gap in states that have not expanded Medicaid , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; 15 percent of all uninsured Black Americans would qualify for Medicaid coverage if their state accepted the expansion Race , place , income , and health , as should be obvious by now , are inextricably linked .
And the health consequences of these inequities have been especially evident during the Covid-19 pandemic , as Williams covered : Black Americans have been squeezed from both sides by the coronavirus crisis : Many of them work in the industries enduring serious layoffs , and they are also more likely to work in jobs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which requires them to go into work and risk exposure to the coronavirus .
Either way , their health is at risk .
And we are seeing the consequences in the Covid-19 death rates .
“ It ’ s America ’ s institutions and laws , replicated cumulatively over time , that have led to more Black Americans being disproportionately — relative to the rest of the population — classified as essential workers , ” Archibong told me , “ and concentrated in low-wage service sectors that have placed them at higher risks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

One thing hasn’t changed as a new surge of coronavirus cases has swelled across the United States: Black Americans continue to disproportionately get infected by and die from this novel pathogen.
The Los Angeles County health department reported this week that Black residents were dying at twice the rate its white residents were. The same is true of Black Alabamans. In Florida, Black people account for a higher share of Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths than their share of the population.
The George Floyd protests forced a difficult conversation about the trade-offs of congregating in large groups during a pandemic and the urgency of fixing structural inequities. But more than a month later, there is little evidence the protests contributed to a significant acceleration of the coronavirus’s spread. The health consequences of US inequality, however, are still being felt by Black (and Hispanic and Native) Americans during the worst pandemic of our lifetimes.
Health disparities predate Covid-19, of course, as Jamila Taylor recently reviewed for the Century Foundation: Black Americans live shorter lives than white Americans, they have higher rates of chronic disease, they report worse mental health, they have less health care access, etc.
“Whether it’s from violence in the street or violence in the health care system, Black Americans have been dying for not just the last three months but the last three centuries,” Utibe Essien, a practicing physician who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh’s medical school, told me.
Let’s start with the obvious problem: Interpersonal racism, whether tacit or explicit, directly harms Black people’s health. So does the distrust it has created between Black Americans and American institutions. This problem goes back centuries: US slaves were experimented on, and more recently, there are horrifying stories like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Numerous studies, some of them conducted as recently as 2016, have found that Black people were less likely to be given pain medication in an emergency department.
And in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis, a new report found that Black people who reported Covid-like symptoms — namely, fever and cough — were less likely to be given a test for the virus compared to white people with the same symptoms. In all these ways, internalized and interpersonal racism lead to worse health outcomes for Black Americans.
But structural racism is also usually, and correctly, proposed as a critical explanation for these inequities.
After speaking last month with half a dozen Black scholars, I came to believe the best place to start in understanding how structural racism breeds racial health disparities is residential segregation. Where a person lives has direct health effects and, maybe as importantly, it will situate them for economic success or failure for the rest of their lives — which we also know is an important determinant for health.
This analysis isn’t meant to be comprehensive. That would require a whole book. But if you want to better understand how structural racism translates to the health disparities that have left Black Americans prone to Covid-19, those factors should be a good place to start.
Residential segregation is one of the primary causes of health disparities
Every scholar I spoke with included residential segregation as a primary driver of racial health disparities — taken together, they identified it as maybe the primary driver.
“I think of residential segregation by race as one of the upstream drivers,” David Williams, a professor of public health and sociology at Harvard, told me. As he wrote in a May 2020 editorial for JAMA on Covid-19 and health equity: “Social inequities are patterned by place, and opportunities to be healthy vary markedly at the neighborhood level.”
The culprit for racial housing segregation is what was called “redlining” during the mid-20th century. If you’d like to read a book about it, I would recommend Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law for the full story. But in brief, redlining meant that certain neighborhoods were given preference by the Federal Housing Administration. To receive loans to build housing developments or mortgages to buy one of those homes, real estate developers and homebuyers were directed to areas with “harmonious” racial groups (i.e. Black or white). Red lines were drawn around Black communities; white people did not get loans to build or buy houses in them, while Black people were only given loans to build or buy houses there.
And though racial discrimination is no longer enshrined in official government policy, its legacy is still felt among Black homebuyers today.
“There is a direct line from US government-led discrimination against Black people in housing — also known as redlining — to racism against Black buyers in housing in real estate today,” Belinda Archibong, an economics professor at Columbia University, told me. She cited a three-year investigation published by Newsday in late 2019 that found half of Black homebuyers on Long Island faced some kind of discrimination from real estate agents.
That helps explain why housing segregation persists. As the Economic Policy Institute reviewed earlier this year, just 13 percent of white students attend a school that has a majority of Black students, while nearly seven in 10 Black students do.
How does that discrimination affect Black people’s health? If you’re well-versed in health wonk lingo, you know the phrase “the social determinants of health.” First and foremost, those determinants reflect where a person lives. Williams, in his JAMA piece, ticked through all the ways in which the simple location of a person’s residence can affect their health:
Segregation also adversely affects health because the concentration of poverty, poor-quality housing, and neighborhood environments leads to elevated exposure to chronic and acute psychosocial (eg, loss of loved ones, unemployment, violence) and environmental stressors, such as air and water pollution. Exposure to interpersonal discrimination is also linked to chronic disease risk. Greater exposure to and clustering of stressors contributes to the earlier onset of multiple chronic conditions (eg, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, asthma), greater severity of disease, and poorer survival for African American individuals than white persons. For example, exposure to air pollution has been linked to hypertension and asthma, as well as more severe cases of and higher death rates due to COVID-19.
During Covid, we have seen Black neighborhoods in New York City bear the brunt of infections and deaths. These disparities are even found in testing sites; News 5 in Cleveland reported this week that many chain pharmacy locations inside the city were not offering coronavirus testing, while the stores situated in the suburbs were much more likely to make tests available.
So place, determined in large part by residential segregation set in motion long ago, affects Black people’s health to this day. But its effect is more pernicious than that.
Residential segregation also helps determine economic opportunity, which strongly influences health
It’s not just how the environment affects one’s health. It’s how your place of residence affects your economic opportunities, which in turn can also have an outsized impact on a person’s health.
“Homeownership was and has been the way that Americans build wealth and are able to pass that wealth down,” Jessie Marshall, who studies health disparities at the University of Michigan’s medical school, told me. “With these government-subsidized mortgages being made available to whites and not so for Blacks, that really further set the stage for income inequality.
“As a result of that, there was continued investment into those communities that benefited from the subsidized government mortgages. The building of wealth but then also the building of public K-12 education of good quality,” Marshall continued. “In contrast to those on the other side of that red line, essentially neighborhoods of largely Black folks who did not have those same opportunities, they were not able to build or pass down wealth and were left to be in neighborhoods that were poorly funded for K-12 public education.”
The second and third-order effects have continued to ripple out over the last 75 years. As of 2018, Black Americans had accumulated just 10 cents of wealth for every dollar of wealth possessed by white Americans. In their incomes, Black Americans make just 59 cents for every dollar white Americans are paid. Research has indicated that if residential segregation were to be ended, many of those economic disparities would be dramatically reduced.
Instead, segregation preserves economic and education inequities, which in turn have perverse health effects. Returning to Williams’s JAMA op-ed, he wrote: “Segregation is a critical determinant of economic status, which is a strong predictor of variations in health.”
People who live in lower-income neighborhoods typically have more tobacco shops in their neighborhood (which drives up smoking) and they have less access to fresh food (which drives up obesity). Both smoking and obesity are precursors to the higher rates of diabetes and heart disease seen among Black Americans. As Health Affairs covered in a 2018 article, a person’s income can influence their health in disturbingly literal ways:
A robust literature links chronic stressors, including financial hardship, to deleterious genetic and hormonal changes—such as impaired DNA repair mechanisms and higher cortisol and adrenaline levels—that increase the risk of chronic disease. The negative cardiometabolic effects of poverty seem to start early and continue throughout the life course.
Something as simple as insurance coverage, which correlates to better health outcomes, follows from one’s economic well-being. The uninsured rate among white Americans is 8 percent; among Black Americans, it’s 11 percent. (It’s even higher for Hispanic Americans and Native Americans.) Black Americans are less likely to receive health insurance through their work and they are more likely to depend on Medicaid than white Americans.
Black Americans have also been disproportionately harmed by mostly southern states refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. More than 2 million people have been left without any health insurance because of that policy choice, and “uninsured Blacks are more likely than Whites to fall in the coverage gap in states that have not expanded Medicaid,” according to the Kaiser Family Foundation; 15 percent of all uninsured Black Americans would qualify for Medicaid coverage if their state accepted the expansion
Race, place, income, and health, as should be obvious by now, are inextricably linked. And the health consequences of these inequities have been especially evident during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Williams covered:
Economic status matters profoundly for reducing the risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Lower-income and minority workers are overrepresented among essential service workers who must work outside the home when shelter-in-place directives are given. Many must travel to work on buses and subways.
Black Americans have been squeezed from both sides by the coronavirus crisis: Many of them work in the industries enduring serious layoffs, and they are also more likely to work in jobs that are considered “essential,” which requires them to go into work and risk exposure to the coronavirus.
Either way, their health is at risk. And we are seeing the consequences in the Covid-19 death rates.
“It’s America’s institutions and laws, replicated cumulatively over time, that have led to more Black Americans being disproportionately — relative to the rest of the population — classified as essential workers,” Archibong told me, “and concentrated in low-wage service sectors that have placed them at higher risks from infection and mortality from Covid-19 today.”