theintercept--2020-07-20--Rep. Lacy Clay’s Clash With Obama Administration Over Wall Street Reform Haunts His Reelection Fight

Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. and the Obama administration over a key Wall Street reform rule is set to reemerge as a flashpoint in the final weeks of the St. Louis congressman ’ s fight for an 11th term , courtesy of a six-figure ad buy from an anti-monopoly group .
Clay is locked in a rematch with nurse and Black Lives Matter leader Cori Bush , a would-be member of the so-called Squad who lost the 2018 Democratic primary to Clay by a 20-point margin .
In 2009 , as the Obama administration was working with Congress to rewrite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the predatory behavior that helped fuel the financial crisis , the Department of Labor zeroed in on what became known as the fiduciary rule .
Put simply , there was no rule that required financial advisers to have the best interests of their clients at heart when making investment decisions or recommendations .
Instead , advisers could offer clients high-fee , low-performing investments that would do more to benefit the adviser than the client : a problem that particularly plagued workers at the lower end of the income scale , given their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who are generally chosen for them by employers .
The Obama administration proposed a rule that would require financial advisers to have the best interests of their clients in mind , the so-called fiduciary rule .
Lobbyists for the investment industry immediately began an assault from all sides on the proposed rule , leading a drawn-out , six-year battle .
Central to that strategy was allying with key Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee , who could give a bipartisan gloss to the effort .
Clay , a senior member of that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the effort .
In return , he was flooded with campaign cash from donors in the investment industry , many of whom hadn ’ t given to his campaign previously .
Clay ’ s work on behalf of the financial industry came amid a battle within the Congressional Black Caucus over whether to defend Wall Street reform ’ s gains .
One CBC member on the Financial Services committee , speaking confidentially at the time , said that his colleagues ’ work with Wall Street and the GOP had become a glaring contradiction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re doing , ” he said .
“ Some things are just uncharacteristic of certain people .
Everybody here has a brand .
If your brand is down with the people , standing up for the little guy , then all of a sudden you ’ re on some bills that have got you helping Goldman Sachs have looser regulations on derivatives ?
It ’ s like — wait , what the hell is that ?
” Among other efforts , Clay organized his Democratic colleagues to join Republicans around a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scrap its rule and start over .
He signed a similar letter in 2013 , arguing that the new rule would drive investment advisers simply to stop working with some clients , disproportionately hitting Black savers..
In April 2016 , over the objection of Clay and a bloc of other Democrats , Labor Secretary Tom Perez issued the final rule : a watered-down version , but a significant step forward nonetheless .
It was to take effect in April 2017 .
The drawn-out process , however , would ultimately be the rule ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it from taking effect , investment advisers took it to court , and with the administration declining to defend it , it was killed by the conservative 5th Circuit .
“ The controversial rule requiring advisers to act in their clients ’ best interests when it comes to managing retirement accounts is officially dead , ” MarketWatch eulogized .
That puts Clay in the awkward position of being on the same side as President Donald Trump against Obama in a fight over whether investment advisers should be able to scam retirees .
Indeed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the issue became purely partisan , Clay sided with the other Democrats on the committee in opposing the rollback of the rule — a rollback he had previously called for .
The Clay campaign declined to comment for this story .
A new anti-monopoly group , Fight Corporate Monopolies , is launching a six-figure ad buy this week focusing on Clay ’ s role in fighting against Obama ’ s conflict-of-interest rule , according to Faiz Shakir , an adviser to the group and the former presidential campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the American Economic Liberties Project , a policy shop focused on monopoly power run by Sarah Miller , a former Treasury Department official and Shakir ’ s spouse .
Two former insurgent candidates , Morgan Harper and Lillian Salerno , are also advising FCP .
problems too .
A poll of the race conducted by the progressive firm Data for Progress found Clay is polling under 50 percent , a crucial threshold , according to people who ’ ve seen it .
DFP head Sean McElwee said he wasn ’ t able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ reasons to believe he is vulnerable.
” Ahead of the Missouri primary on August 4 , significant firepower is headed for St. Louis in support of the insurgent Bush , according to sources familiar with the planning .
Sunrise Movement , fresh off an election victory in Texas and a near miss in Kentucky , is placing its next big bet on St. Louis , throwing in behind Bush .
The youth-led climate group also has a well-funded independent expenditure arm that may spend on the race .
The advent of such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a relatively new feature of congressional primary politics , making incumbents less safe than they otherwise would be .
This is Bush ’ s second challenge to the Clay dynasty in Missouri .
Clay was first elected to Congress in 2000 , taking over the seat from his father , a civil rights activist , who was elected in 1968 .
Collectively , the Clays have held a congressional seat in the region for 52 years .
Bush was one of the first candidates backed by the progressive PAC Justice Democrats in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and was a major character in the documentary “ Knock Down The House , ” in which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played a starring role .
Bush ’ s part in the film , however , was circumscribed by her 57 to 37 percent loss to Clay , who trumped her by nearly 30,000 votes .
In all of 2018 , Bush raised just $ 177,000 , and getting her name in front of enough voters to win was a major challenge .
The race led to something of a falling out with Justice Democrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ initially planned to assist an entire slate of candidates , made a decision that spring to go all-in on Ocasio-Cortez ’ s primary race .
After Ocasio-Cortez ’ s June upset victory , the group pivoted to focus on the campaigns of Kerri Harris for Senate in Delaware and Ayanna Pressley for a House seat in Boston , Massachusetts .
That left Bush underfunded and outmatched in her August primary .
( The campaign manager for Amy Vilela , another of the film ’ s candidates , is now communications director for Bush @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around , Bush has the backing of Justice Democrats , though the group again has not prioritized her race , and doesn ’ t yet have an endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez , who had campaigned for Bush in 2018 .
But Bush may be better positioned for a win .
This cycle , she had already raised just shy of half a million dollars by the end of June , compared to Clay ’ s $ 730,000 .
This has given her the ability to send $ 85,000 worth of mailers so far , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and digital ads in the final weeks , on top of a planned TV ad buy of $ 50,000 this week .
Drivers in St. Louis are also more likely to learn who she is : The campaign has eight billboards around the region , plus 50 4-by-8-foot signs .
Nothing remotely similar happened in 2018 , as her campaign was unable to spend on digital ads , direct mail , billboards , or TV , scrounging enough together for some two weeks of radio ads .
Toppling a 50-year dynasty without name @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a different gloss on the 37 percent she managed to pull .
Her unique profile could also make for a sizable advantage in this moment : She ’ s a nurse running in the middle of a pandemic , and a leading Black Lives Matter activist running amid a radical rethinking of the role of police in America .
Bush rose to political prominence as a leader of protests following the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson .
Those protests — and the forceful , militarized police response — launched the Movement for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the worldwide protests following the May 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis .
Evan Weber , political director for Sunrise , said that Bush ’ s race would be a significant priority , and the group would push its volunteers to make contact with voters , help get out the vote , and donate to her campaign .
The added resources are part of a two-pronged strategy : persuade voters who ’ ve sided with Clay in the past to switch to Bush , and find voters who would be supportive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidacy .
Earlier this month , Sunrise claimed a significant victory , having gone all-in in Texas for civil rights attorney Mike Siegel , who is running for Congress on the Green New Deal with labor support in a district shot through with fossil fuel production .
In the final week of the runoff , the group made more than 100,000 calls in the district .
The organization had also made the nomination of Charles Booker for Kentucky senator a major priority .
Booker , a state legislator , was also propelled by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mail-in voting started a week later , they likely would have won the June primary .
The entry of Sunrise into Bush ’ s race means that many more voter contacts between today and the end of voting on August 4 .
( Absentee ballots must be requested by July 22 . )
Most voting is likely to be in-person , given Missouri laws that make it difficult to vote by mail .
Sunrise ’ s top political priorities for the remainder of the summer are Alex Morse and Sen. Ed Markey , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mayor of Holyoke , is challenging Rep. Richie Neal , the chair of the Ways and Means Committee in the primary on September 1 .
Markey is the lead Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution and is being challenged by Rep. Joe Kennedy .
The group is also watching the primary challenges to Reps. Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Ihan Omar in Minnesota , both of whom are significantly ahead of their rivals .
targeting Clay in St. Louis , Fight Corporate Monopolies , is also spending $ 300,000 against Neal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argument , that Neal did the bidding of corporate interests and benefited by reaping campaign cash .
If the group is successful in either race , it could dramatically alter the political ecosystem in Washington for Democrats .
For years , Democrats have been able to sign on to letters calling for this or that industry to be deregulated , cash checks from that industry , and never face a reckoning back home .
If such work starts to come with a steep electoral price tag , Democrats are likely to pause before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of March , Clay reported having just over $ 450,000 cash on hand , much of that gathered from the types of financial interests that have benefited not just from his efforts to roll back the conflict-of-interest rules , but other behind-the-scenes moves he ’ s made on behalf of industry .
Retirement advising firm Charles Schwab and the insurance brokers New York Life , Assurant , and State Farm began giving to Clay for the first time after he began his push against the conflict-of-interest rule , giving him a combined $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2014 and 2017 , firms that had only given him small amounts began majorly upping their giving , including JP Morgan Chase , Citigroup , Goldman Sachs , AFLAC , Edward Jones , Bank of America , and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisers .
PACs directly implicated by the fiduciary rule gave him some $ 150,000 overall during the time he fought the rule .
Early last year , the American Financial Services Association held a fundraising summit for Clay .
As HuffPost reported previously , more than $ 500,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first quarter of 2020 came from political action committees , with nearly four of every five dollars coming from a corporate PAC .
Nearly $ 300,000 of it came from the financial industry generally .

A clash between Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. and the Obama administration over a key Wall Street reform rule is set to reemerge as a flashpoint in the final weeks of the St. Louis congressman’s fight for an 11th term, courtesy of a six-figure ad buy from an anti-monopoly group.
Clay is locked in a rematch with nurse and Black Lives Matter leader Cori Bush, a would-be member of the so-called Squad who lost the 2018 Democratic primary to Clay by a 20-point margin.
In 2009, as the Obama administration was working with Congress to rewrite the rules of the economy to strip out the predatory behavior that helped fuel the financial crisis, the Department of Labor zeroed in on what became known as the fiduciary rule. Put simply, there was no rule that required financial advisers to have the best interests of their clients at heart when making investment decisions or recommendations. Instead, advisers could offer clients high-fee, low-performing investments that would do more to benefit the adviser than the client: a problem that particularly plagued workers at the lower end of the income scale, given their reduced power in relation to advisers, who are generally chosen for them by employers.
The Obama administration proposed a rule that would require financial advisers to have the best interests of their clients in mind, the so-called fiduciary rule. Lobbyists for the investment industry immediately began an assault from all sides on the proposed rule, leading a drawn-out, six-year battle. Central to that strategy was allying with key Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee, who could give a bipartisan gloss to the effort. Clay, a senior member of that committee, played a leading role in the effort. In return, he was flooded with campaign cash from donors in the investment industry, many of whom hadn’t given to his campaign previously.
Here's the anti-corruption ad running against Rep. Lacy Clay starting this week pic.twitter.com/8ms0VcbXG1 — Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 20, 2020
Clay’s work on behalf of the financial industry came amid a battle within the Congressional Black Caucus over whether to defend Wall Street reform’s gains. One CBC member on the Financial Services committee, speaking confidentially at the time, said that his colleagues’ work with Wall Street and the GOP had become a glaring contradiction. “People are sick about what they’re doing,” he said. “Some things are just uncharacteristic of certain people. Everybody here has a brand. If your brand is down with the people, standing up for the little guy, then all of a sudden you’re on some bills that have got you helping Goldman Sachs have looser regulations on derivatives? It’s like — wait, what the hell is that?”
Clay is in the awkward position of being on the same side as Trump against Obama in a fight over whether investment advisers should be able to scam retirees.
Among other efforts, Clay organized his Democratic colleagues to join Republicans around a 2015 letter asking the Obama administration to scrap its rule and start over. He signed a similar letter in 2013, arguing that the new rule would drive investment advisers simply to stop working with some clients, disproportionately hitting Black savers..
In April 2016, over the objection of Clay and a bloc of other Democrats, Labor Secretary Tom Perez issued the final rule: a watered-down version, but a significant step forward nonetheless. It was to take effect in April 2017. The drawn-out process, however, would ultimately be the rule’s undoing. The new administration delayed it from taking effect, investment advisers took it to court, and with the administration declining to defend it, it was killed by the conservative 5th Circuit. “The controversial rule requiring advisers to act in their clients’ best interests when it comes to managing retirement accounts is officially dead,” MarketWatch eulogized.
That puts Clay in the awkward position of being on the same side as President Donald Trump against Obama in a fight over whether investment advisers should be able to scam retirees. Indeed, once Trump was in office and the issue became purely partisan, Clay sided with the other Democrats on the committee in opposing the rollback of the rule — a rollback he had previously called for. The Clay campaign declined to comment for this story.
A new anti-monopoly group, Fight Corporate Monopolies, is launching a six-figure ad buy this week focusing on Clay’s role in fighting against Obama’s conflict-of-interest rule, according to Faiz Shakir, an adviser to the group and the former presidential campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders. FCP is an electoral offshoot of the American Economic Liberties Project, a policy shop focused on monopoly power run by Sarah Miller, a former Treasury Department official and Shakir’s spouse. Two former insurgent candidates, Morgan Harper and Lillian Salerno, are also advising FCP.
Clay has other problems too. A poll of the race conducted by the progressive firm Data for Progress found Clay is polling under 50 percent, a crucial threshold, according to people who’ve seen it. DFP head Sean McElwee said he wasn’t able to share the survey, but it offered “reasons to believe he is vulnerable.”
Ahead of the Missouri primary on August 4, significant firepower is headed for St. Louis in support of the insurgent Bush, according to sources familiar with the planning. Sunrise Movement, fresh off an election victory in Texas and a near miss in Kentucky, is placing its next big bet on St. Louis, throwing in behind Bush. The youth-led climate group also has a well-funded independent expenditure arm that may spend on the race. The advent of such big money outside spending from the left is a relatively new feature of congressional primary politics, making incumbents less safe than they otherwise would be.
This is Bush’s second challenge to the Clay dynasty in Missouri. Clay was first elected to Congress in 2000, taking over the seat from his father, a civil rights activist, who was elected in 1968. Collectively, the Clays have held a congressional seat in the region for 52 years. Bush was one of the first candidates backed by the progressive PAC Justice Democrats in its inaugural campaign cycle in 2018, and was a major character in the documentary “Knock Down The House,” in which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played a starring role.
In 2018, Bush was unable to spend on digital ads, direct mail, billboards, or TV. This cycle, she had raised just under half a million dollars by the end of June.
Bush’s part in the film, however, was circumscribed by her 57 to 37 percent loss to Clay, who trumped her by nearly 30,000 votes. In all of 2018, Bush raised just $177,000, and getting her name in front of enough voters to win was a major challenge. The race led to something of a falling out with Justice Democrats, as the group, which had initially planned to assist an entire slate of candidates, made a decision that spring to go all-in on Ocasio-Cortez’s primary race. After Ocasio-Cortez’s June upset victory, the group pivoted to focus on the campaigns of Kerri Harris for Senate in Delaware and Ayanna Pressley for a House seat in Boston, Massachusetts. That left Bush underfunded and outmatched in her August primary. (The campaign manager for Amy Vilela, another of the film’s candidates, is now communications director for Bush’s campaign.)
This time around, Bush has the backing of Justice Democrats. Though the group again has not prioritized her race relative to candidates like Jamaal Bowman in New York, they have raised some $40,000 for her campaign. Bush doesn’t yet have an endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez, who had campaigned for Bush in 2018. But Bush may be better positioned for a win.
This cycle, she had already raised just shy of half a million dollars by the end of June, compared to Clay’s $730,000. This has given her the ability to send $85,000 worth of mailers so far, with another $33,000 budgeted for radio and digital ads in the final weeks, on top of a planned TV ad buy of $50,000 this week. Drivers in St. Louis are also more likely to learn who she is: The campaign has eight billboards around the region, plus 50 4-by-8-foot signs.
Nothing remotely similar happened in 2018, as her campaign was unable to spend on digital ads, direct mail, billboards, or TV, scrounging enough together for some two weeks of radio ads. Toppling a 50-year dynasty without name recognition is effectively impossible, which puts a different gloss on the 37 percent she managed to pull.
Her unique profile could also make for a sizable advantage in this moment: She’s a nurse running in the middle of a pandemic, and a leading Black Lives Matter activist running amid a radical rethinking of the role of police in America. Bush rose to political prominence as a leader of protests following the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson. Those protests — and the forceful, militarized police response — launched the Movement for Black Lives in August 2014, building to the worldwide protests following the May 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Evan Weber, political director for Sunrise, said that Bush’s race would be a significant priority, and the group would push its volunteers to make contact with voters, help get out the vote, and donate to her campaign. The added resources are part of a two-pronged strategy: persuade voters who’ve sided with Clay in the past to switch to Bush, and find voters who would be supportive of Bush if they learn about her candidacy.
Earlier this month, Sunrise claimed a significant victory, having gone all-in in Texas for civil rights attorney Mike Siegel, who is running for Congress on the Green New Deal with labor support in a district shot through with fossil fuel production. In the final week of the runoff, the group made more than 100,000 calls in the district.
The organization had also made the nomination of Charles Booker for Kentucky senator a major priority. Booker, a state legislator, was also propelled by BLM protests in Louisville. Had the mail-in voting started a week later, they likely would have won the June primary. The entry of Sunrise into Bush’s race means that many more voter contacts between today and the end of voting on August 4. (Absentee ballots must be requested by July 22.) Most voting is likely to be in-person, given Missouri laws that make it difficult to vote by mail. “Sunrise Movement started with just a small group of young activists dreaming of a better world,” Bush said in a statement. “When we face unprecedented crises like a global pandemic, climate change, and the violence of racism, we must reimagine what’s possible.”
Sunrise’s top political priorities for the remainder of the summer are Alex Morse and Sen. Ed Markey, both Massachusetts politicians. Morse, the mayor of Holyoke, is challenging Rep. Richie Neal, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee in the primary on September 1. Markey is the lead Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution and is being challenged by Rep. Joe Kennedy. The group is also watching the primary challenges to Reps. Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Ihan Omar in Minnesota, both of whom are significantly ahead of their rivals.
The same group targeting Clay in St. Louis, Fight Corporate Monopolies, is also spending $300,000 against Neal in his primary, making a similar argument, that Neal did the bidding of corporate interests and benefited by reaping campaign cash.
If the group is successful in either race, it could dramatically alter the political ecosystem in Washington for Democrats. For years, Democrats have been able to sign on to letters calling for this or that industry to be deregulated, cash checks from that industry, and never face a reckoning back home. If such work starts to come with a steep electoral price tag, Democrats are likely to pause before allying with industry so quickly.
As of March, Clay reported having just over $450,000 cash on hand, much of that gathered from the types of financial interests that have benefited not just from his efforts to roll back the conflict-of-interest rules, but other behind-the-scenes moves he’s made on behalf of industry.
Retirement advising firm Charles Schwab and the insurance brokers New York Life, Assurant, and State Farm began giving to Clay for the first time after he began his push against the conflict-of-interest rule, giving him a combined $27,500 over the same period. Between 2014 and 2017, firms that had only given him small amounts began majorly upping their giving, including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, AFLAC, Edward Jones, Bank of America, and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisers. PACs directly implicated by the fiduciary rule gave him some $150,000 overall during the time he fought the rule. Early last year, the American Financial Services Association held a fundraising summit for Clay.
As HuffPost reported previously, more than $500,000 of Clay’s money through the first quarter of 2020 came from political action committees, with nearly four of every five dollars coming from a corporate PAC. Nearly $300,000 of it came from the financial industry generally.


theintercept--2020-07-20--Trump Holds Up a Chart on Fox News That Shows He's Lying, Then Lies About What It Says

of Donald Trump ’ s presidency — his inability to accept facts that are not flattering to him , his resort to lying to cover up his mismanagement of the federal government , his staff ’ s desperate efforts to manufacture evidence to help him mislead the country and the conservative media ’ s role in enabling all of this — was on full display in just one 63-second exchange with the Fox News anchor Chris Wallace broadcast on Sunday .
Less than two minutes into the interview , Wallace confronted Trump with a damning statistic about his failure to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other nations .
“ We have the seventh-highest mortality rate in the world , ” Wallace noted , accurately .
“ Our mortality rate is higher than Brazil , it ’ s higher than Russia and the European Union has us on a travel ban.
” As I explained last week , Trump has spent the past three months trying to disguise his failure to keep Americans from dying of Covid-19 by telling the same lie : that the per capita death toll in the United States , known as the mortality rate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world .
As of Friday , the day Wallace sat down with Trump , there were indeed just six countries in the world with more than 100,000 citizens that had more per capita deaths than the U.S. according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center .
( Over the weekend , Chile moved up the rankings , so the U.S. currently has the eighth-highest mortality rate in the world , excluding the tiny states of San Marino and Andorra . )
Trump , however , refused to let Wallace ’ s completely accurate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ When you talk about mortality rates , I think it ’ s the opposite , ” he said .
“ I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.
” When Wallace replied , “ That ’ s not true , sir , ” Trump demanded that his press secretary , Kayleigh McEnany , produce the misleading chart she has been using to try to prove , through sleight-of-hand , that the seventh-worst mortality rate in the world is really something to be proud of .
“ Can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
” Trump asked .
“ Kayleigh ’ s right here , ” he explained to Wallace .
“ I heard we have one of the lowest , maybe the lowest mortality rate anywhere in the world , ” he added .
“ Do you have the numbers , please ?
” he asked McEnany .
“ Because I heard we had the best mortality rate.
” The president ’ s reference to an important metric , the percentage of his population that has been lost to the pandemic so far , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was not exactly reassuring .
At that point , McEnany stepped into frame and handed the president a chart .
She was not wearing a microphone , but appeared to say : “ This is the case fate– deaths in all these different eight countries , as Dr. Birx points out.
” The reference to Dr. Deborah Birx , the White House coronavirus response coordinator , suggested that the chart McEnany handed to Trump had come from his closest medical advisor on the pandemic .
It was Birx who had first focused attention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , when she stood next to Trump in the White House briefing room and presented a bar chart that showed that six European nations had higher per capita death rates from the disease than the U.S. at that point .
Trump glanced at the chart quickly , realized that it was upside down , and then displayed it for a fraction of a second before pronouncing , falsely , that it was proof that the U.S. had the “ number one low mortality rate.
” The chart , however , proved nothing of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was not a measure of global mortality rates at all .
It was , as the title visible in a freeze-frame showed , a chart looking at an entirely different metric : the “ Case Fatality Rate of Covid-19.
” While the mortality rate is a straight-forward measure of how many citizens per capita have died from a disease , the case-fatality rate is something entirely different : the ratio between deaths from a disease and the total number of confirmed cases .
As the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s case-fatality rate has indeed gone down , to just 3.8 percent , but that number is still higher than in dozens of other countries .
It is also essentially meaningless , since nations are testing at different rates and researchers warn that the case-fatality rate is unknowable until after a pandemic ends , when the full death toll is known .
In the meantime , it is a misleading way of measuring the lethality of a disease unless an entire population has been tested for it .
In recent weeks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Alyssa Farah , the White House director of strategic communications , have claimed incorrectly that a chart showing the U.S. case-fatality rate declining means that “ our mortality rate is going down.
” According to a version of the chart Trump held up that was displayed on-screen by Fox News later , the White House had created it using a tool on the University of Oxford ’ s Our World in Data website to compare the U.S. case-fatality rate to that of the global average and six other nations : Italy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Korea and Iceland .
A note on the chart from the Oxford researchers warns against assigning too much importance to the metric .
“ During an outbreak of a pandemic , ” the warning reads , “ the CFR is a poor measure of the mortality risk of the disease.
” What the chart showed was that the U.S. ratio of deaths to cases on Friday was squarely in the middle of those selected countries : lower than Italy , Spain and Germany , but higher than Brazil , South Korea and Iceland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump held up as proof that the U.S. had the lowest mortality rate in the world included no information about per capita mortality at all , and merely showed that the U.S. had a lower case-fatality rate than three randomly selected countries , and so was not “ number one ” in that category either .
The comparison of the U.S. case-fatality rate to that of Germany helps explain how irrelevant the statistic is , since there is no doubt which country is handling the pandemic better .
While the U.S. has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Germany ’ s 4.5 percent , America ’ s mortality rate of 428 deaths per million citizens is nearly four times higher than Germany ’ s of 110 per million .
As the U.S. exceeded 140,000 dead on Sunday , Germany , which has about one quarter the population of the U.S. has suffered 9,091 deaths .
What this means is that more than 100,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19 this year would still be alive today had the federal government in Washington had been as successful as the one in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. mortality rate , just 359 new cases of Covid-19 are being diagnosed each day in Germany , and deaths there are down to an average of five a day .
The U.S. by contrast is currently discovering an average of 63,281 new cases each day , and losing 756 lives .
While he was bluffing Wallace about what was the piece of paper he flashed for the camera , Trump pressed the Fox anchor to make sure he included it in his broadcast , “ because it shows what fake news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Fox would “ put our stats on , ” Trump erupted .
“ You said we had the worst mortality rate in the world and we have the best !
” he complained .
When the interview was broadcast , Fox briefly cut away from the exchange at that point to fact-check the issue .
Unfortunately , Wallace and his producers made a complete mess of that , by also confusing the Covid-19 mortality rate with the case-fatality rate .
So , as the Fox anchor presented what he said was , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hit by the virus , ” the image on-screen was a chart from the Johns Hopkins coronavirus website showing case-fatality rates instead .
That data showed , Wallace said , that “ the U.S. ranked seventh — better than the United Kingdom , but worse than Brazil and Russia.
” This statement , echoing what he had said at the start of his interview with Trump , suggests that the anchor , like the president , had gone into the taping with no idea that the per capita mortality rate and the case-fatality @ @ @ @ @ @

The whole pathology of Donald Trump’s presidency — his inability to accept facts that are not flattering to him, his resort to lying to cover up his mismanagement of the federal government, his staff’s desperate efforts to manufacture evidence to help him mislead the country and the conservative media’s role in enabling all of this — was on full display in just one 63-second exchange with the Fox News anchor Chris Wallace broadcast on Sunday.
Less than two minutes into the interview, Wallace confronted Trump with a damning statistic about his failure to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, relative to other nations. “We have the seventh-highest mortality rate in the world,” Wallace noted, accurately. “Our mortality rate is higher than Brazil, it’s higher than Russia and the European Union has us on a travel ban.”
Chris Wallace is getting praise for trying to fact-check Trump during an interview, but he let Trump blatantly lie about the U.S. mortality rate being the world's lowest while holding up a chart that showed the U.S. being 4th best of 7 countries *in a totally different category* pic.twitter.com/B58aLmawiP — Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) July 19, 2020
As I explained last week, Trump has spent the past three months trying to disguise his failure to keep Americans from dying of Covid-19 by telling the same lie: that the per capita death toll in the United States, known as the mortality rate, is among the lowest in the world. As of Friday, the day Wallace sat down with Trump, there were indeed just six countries in the world with more than 100,000 citizens that had more per capita deaths than the U.S. according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. (Over the weekend, Chile moved up the rankings, so the U.S. currently has the eighth-highest mortality rate in the world, excluding the tiny states of San Marino and Andorra.)
Trump, however, refused to let Wallace’s completely accurate statement go unchallenged by alternative facts. “When you talk about mortality rates, I think it’s the opposite,” he said. “I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.”
When Wallace replied, “That’s not true, sir,” Trump demanded that his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, produce the misleading chart she has been using to try to prove, through sleight-of-hand, that the seventh-worst mortality rate in the world is really something to be proud of.
“Can you please get me the mortality rate?” Trump asked. “Kayleigh’s right here,” he explained to Wallace. “I heard we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest mortality rate anywhere in the world,” he added. “Do you have the numbers, please?” he asked McEnany. “Because I heard we had the best mortality rate.”
The president’s reference to an important metric, the percentage of his population that has been lost to the pandemic so far, as something he vaguely “heard” somewhere was not exactly reassuring.
At that point, McEnany stepped into frame and handed the president a chart. She was not wearing a microphone, but appeared to say: “This is the case fate– deaths in all these different eight countries, as Dr. Birx points out.”
The reference to Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, suggested that the chart McEnany handed to Trump had come from his closest medical advisor on the pandemic. It was Birx who had first focused attention on the Covid-19 mortality rate in mid-April, when she stood next to Trump in the White House briefing room and presented a bar chart that showed that six European nations had higher per capita death rates from the disease than the U.S. at that point.
Trump glanced at the chart quickly, realized that it was upside down, and then displayed it for a fraction of a second before pronouncing, falsely, that it was proof that the U.S. had the “number one low mortality rate.” The chart, however, proved nothing of the kind.
That’s because it was not a measure of global mortality rates at all. It was, as the title visible in a freeze-frame showed, a chart looking at an entirely different metric: the “Case Fatality Rate of Covid-19.”
Photo: Fox News via YouTube
While the mortality rate is a straight-forward measure of how many citizens per capita have died from a disease, the case-fatality rate is something entirely different: the ratio between deaths from a disease and the total number of confirmed cases.
As the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. has skyrocketed, the nation’s case-fatality rate has indeed gone down, to just 3.8 percent, but that number is still higher than in dozens of other countries. It is also essentially meaningless, since nations are testing at different rates and researchers warn that the case-fatality rate is unknowable until after a pandemic ends, when the full death toll is known. In the meantime, it is a misleading way of measuring the lethality of a disease unless an entire population has been tested for it.
In recent weeks, at least two Trump aides, McEnany and Alyssa Farah, the White House director of strategic communications, have claimed incorrectly that a chart showing the U.S. case-fatality rate declining means that “our mortality rate is going down.”
According to a version of the chart Trump held up that was displayed on-screen by Fox News later, the White House had created it using a tool on the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data website to compare the U.S. case-fatality rate to that of the global average and six other nations: Italy, Spain, Germany, Brazil, South Korea and Iceland. A note on the chart from the Oxford researchers warns against assigning too much importance to the metric. “During an outbreak of a pandemic,” the warning reads, “the CFR is a poor measure of the mortality risk of the disease.”
Photo: Fox News via YouTube
What the chart showed was that the U.S. ratio of deaths to cases on Friday was squarely in the middle of those selected countries: lower than Italy, Spain and Germany, but higher than Brazil, South Korea and Iceland. In other words, the chart Trump held up as proof that the U.S. had the lowest mortality rate in the world included no information about per capita mortality at all, and merely showed that the U.S. had a lower case-fatality rate than three randomly selected countries, and so was not “number one” in that category either.
The comparison of the U.S. case-fatality rate to that of Germany helps explain how irrelevant the statistic is, since there is no doubt which country is handling the pandemic better. While the U.S. has a case-fatality rate of 3.8 percent, compared to Germany’s 4.5 percent, America’s mortality rate of 428 deaths per million citizens is nearly four times higher than Germany’s of 110 per million.
As the U.S. exceeded 140,000 dead on Sunday, Germany, which has about one quarter the population of the U.S. has suffered 9,091 deaths. What this means is that more than 100,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19 this year would still be alive today had the federal government in Washington had been as successful as the one in Berlin.
While Trump misleads Americans about the U.S. mortality rate, just 359 new cases of Covid-19 are being diagnosed each day in Germany, and deaths there are down to an average of five a day. The U.S. by contrast is currently discovering an average of 63,281 new cases each day, and losing 756 lives.
While he was bluffing Wallace about what was the piece of paper he flashed for the camera, Trump pressed the Fox anchor to make sure he included it in his broadcast, “because it shows what fake news is all about.”
When Wallace replied that Fox would “put our stats on,” Trump erupted. “You said we had the worst mortality rate in the world and we have the best!” he complained.
When the interview was broadcast, Fox briefly cut away from the exchange at that point to fact-check the issue. Unfortunately, Wallace and his producers made a complete mess of that, by also confusing the Covid-19 mortality rate with the case-fatality rate. So, as the Fox anchor presented what he said was, “the mortality rate for 20 countries hit by the virus,” the image on-screen was a chart from the Johns Hopkins coronavirus website showing case-fatality rates instead.
Photo: Fox News via YouTube
That data showed, Wallace said, that “the U.S. ranked seventh — better than the United Kingdom, but worse than Brazil and Russia.” This statement, echoing what he had said at the start of his interview with Trump, suggests that the anchor, like the president, had gone into the taping with no idea that the per capita mortality rate and the case-fatality rate are completely different things.


theintercept--2020-07-20--The Right Way to Honor John Lewis: Restore and Extend the Voting Rights Act

carried a double blow .
First came notice that civil rights activist Rev .
C.T .
Vivian had died and then , later that evening , that Rep. John Lewis had also joined the ancestors .
The internet was awash in selfies with Lewis and tributes for the good trouble the two had caused .
A chorus began to call for renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma , Alabama , where Lewis had been beaten on Bloody Sunday , in 1965 , along with other marchers .
( Pettus was a Confederate general , a U.S. senator , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
But a number of people who had participated in the events of Bloody Sunday or the voting campaigns in Selma were wary .
Lynda Lowery , who , like Lewis , had been beaten on the bridge , explained , “ I left my blood and tears in the cement of that bridge .
So did John .
So did a lot of other people … if we ’ re going to try to fix things that are broken , then fix the things that are broken.
” There were reasons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on February 27 , 2013 , in a rare moment of bipartisanship , then-House Speaker John Boehner , Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell , Rep. Nancy Pelosi , Lewis , and others joined President Barack Obama to dedicate a statue of Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capitol ’ s Statuary Hall — the first full-size statue of a Black person to be installed there .
Obama praised Parks ’ s “ singular act of courage , ” while McConnell celebrated : “ What a story , what a legacy , what a country.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the street , the Supreme Court heard arguments in Shelby County v. Holder .
The case brought by Shelby County , Alabama , challenged two portions ( Section 4b and Section 5 ) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act dealing with something called federal preclearance , which requires new voting laws in certain states and municipalities to preempt restrictive local voting laws if it was their intent to discriminate against Black and minority voters .
In June of that year , the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the law ( Section @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be subject to preclearance , saying it had “ no logical relation to the present day.
” They left the provision allowing preclearance ( Section 5 ) , but Congress would have to come up with a new formula of which municipalities would be subject .
But seven years later ( under Obama and now Trump ) , there is not yet one in place , meaning voters — especially Black and minority voters — are not protected against increasing local restrictions on their rights .
In other words , on the day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to honor Rosa Parks , a key part of the voting rights protection that Parks and her comrades had fought for decades to ensure was under siege and ultimately lost .
There ’ s a dangerous bait-and-switch these kinds of honors can perform .
While they celebrate the courage and lifetime service freedom fighters like Rosa Parks and John Lewis embodied , they place the struggle firmly in the past and center the public ’ s task on memorializing , papering over contemporary struggles and present-day suffering .
Erecting statues ( and changing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ends themselves .
Political leaders soothe us with these accomplishments , providing cover for those who eschew the hard work of racial justice to seem like they ’ re doing something .
Such honors risk individualizing the movement , overlooking the myriad of people who fought and risked their lives from civil rights to the present day .
“ To make it about one person would be to forget all that Ms. Baker taught us…and that we reflected in all the organizing we SNCC folks did , ” fellow Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vivian , and Parks fought to the end of their lives , insistent that the struggle was far from over .
The way to honor them is to fix what is broken : voting rights , health care , and the criminal justice system from policing to incarceration .
the House passed a bill to restore the Voting Rights Act by introducing a new formula that requires preclearance for 11 states : nine in the South , plus California and New York , found to discriminate against Latinos and Asian Americans .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The bill would also require all states to get federal approval for election changes that are known to disproportionately affect voters of color , such as strict voter ID laws , tighter voter registration requirements , and polling place closures in areas with large numbers of minority voters.
” That bill has sat on Mitch McConnell ’ s desk for more than 200 days .
States With New Voting Restrictions Enacted Since 2016 States With New or Additional Voting Restrictions And it doesn ’ t go nearly far enough .
From 2010 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ documents , 25 states have passed voting rights restrictions .
In the 2016 election , 14 states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time : Alabama , Arizona , Indiana , Kansas , Mississippi , Nebraska , New Hampshire , Ohio , Rhode Island , South Carolina , Tennessee , Texas , Virginia , and Wisconsin .
In 2017 , Arkansas , Missouri , North Dakota , Texas passed new voter restrictions , and Georgia , Iowa , Indiana , and New Hampshire passed additional ones .
In 2018 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hampshire , North Carolina , and Wisconsin enacted new restrictions and in 2019 , Arizona , Florida , Indiana , Tennessee , and Texas passed more restrictions .
Half the states in the country have enacted voter restrictions in the past decade ; most of them are outside the deep South .
Given how widespread voter suppression is across the U.S. , we need a new formula that applies to every state , and makes each state ’ s voting rules suspect .
All changes should be inspected for how they will impact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ registration , early voting , and Election Day as a national holiday .
Further , we need national legislation restoring voting rights to current and formerly incarcerated people .
Incarcerated people are counted for reasons of political apportionment within the municipalities in which they are incarcerated — a modern three-fifths compromise , as the towns where prisons are located get more representation , while the people incarcerated typically can ’ t vote .
In many states , even when people have served out their sentences , they are deprived of their right to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kinds of poll taxes .
The day before Lewis and Vivian died , the Supreme Court refused to let Florida felons who completed their sentences vote in a primary without first paying fees , fines , and restitution .
A poll tax was deemed legal by the Supreme Court last week .
And let ’ s be clear , McConnell is not the only problem .
Most of these new voting restrictions are being enacted at the state level .
So the way to honor Lewis , Vivian , and so many others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and our state legislatures — turn this ship around and begin to protect and extend voting rights .
also be careful that honoring these two civil rights heroes , who died of natural causes , doesn ’ t distract us from seeing all the people dying today who didn ’ t have to .
Two weeks before Lewis died , Pamela Rush died of Covid-19 .
Rush had exposed the racism , poverty , and environmental degradation she and her neighbors of Lowndes County , Alabama , were experiencing in a 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Poor People ’ s Campaign .
In tears before the committee , Rush had described open sewage , predatory schemes , lack of health care , and the courage it took to overcome the shame to speak out : “ They charged me over $ 114,000 on a mobile home that ’ s falling apart .
I ’ ve trapped about four possums in my house .
… And I got raw sewage .
I don ’ t have no money .
I ’ m poor.
” The average per capita income @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 72 percent of its residents are Black , and it has Alabama ’ s highest Covid-19 rates and no hospital .
“ As a pastor , I can no longer say that God called them home , ” Rev .
William Barber explained in eulogizing Rush and other poor people who died from Covid-19 .
“ The systems of this world are unjust.
” The structures of racism — from unequal access to health care to environmental racism to being clustered in “ essential jobs ” — have made the numbers of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ novel coronavirus disproportionately high .
In 1965 , the Selma to Montgomery march passed through Lowndes County , where not a single Black person was registered to vote due to voter suppression .
The day before Rush died , the Supreme Court overturned an Alabama trial judge ’ s decision which would have made it easier to vote absentee during the pandemic .
One of the dangers in the ways the nation tends to honor civil rights heroes like Parks and Lewis is to relegate such glorious courage to the distant past , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to chastise and correct young activists .
But with the protests against the death of George Floyd at the hands of police constituting the largest wave of civil rights activism in the country ’ s history and 2.5 million people nationwide participating in the Poor People ’ s Campaign Moral Gathering on June 20 , yesterday ’ s issues are just as urgent today .
Today ’ s activists are picking up the baton with the kind of courage , persistence , and belief in disruption these elders showed .
Let ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jeanne Theoharis will be donating her fee for this article to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition , which is paying off the fines so people can vote , and to the Poor People ’ s Campaign .

Photo: By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Friday, July 17 carried a double blow. First came notice that civil rights activist Rev. C.T. Vivian had died and then, later that evening, that Rep. John Lewis had also joined the ancestors. The internet was awash in selfies with Lewis and tributes for the good trouble the two had caused.
A chorus began to call for renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Lewis had been beaten on Bloody Sunday, in 1965, along with other marchers. (Pettus was a Confederate general, a U.S. senator, and grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.) But a number of people who had participated in the events of Bloody Sunday or the voting campaigns in Selma were wary. Lynda Lowery, who, like Lewis, had been beaten on the bridge, explained, “I left my blood and tears in the cement of that bridge. So did John. So did a lot of other people … if we’re going to try to fix things that are broken, then fix the things that are broken.”
There were reasons to worry. Seven years earlier, on February 27, 2013, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, then-House Speaker John Boehner, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Lewis, and others joined President Barack Obama to dedicate a statue of Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall — the first full-size statue of a Black person to be installed there. Obama praised Parks’s “singular act of courage,” while McConnell celebrated: “What a story, what a legacy, what a country.”
On that very same day, across the street, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Shelby County v. Holder. The case brought by Shelby County, Alabama, challenged two portions (Section 4b and Section 5) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act dealing with something called federal preclearance, which requires any changes affecting voting by certain states and municipalities to be precleared by the Department of Justice before being enacted to see if they will affect voting rights or voter participation. In June of that year, the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the law (Section 4b) that decided which municipalities would be subject to preclearance, saying it had “no logical relation to the present day.” They left the provision allowing preclearance (Section 5), but Congress would have to come up with a new formula of which municipalities would be subject. But seven years later (under Obama and now Trump), there is not yet one in place, meaning voters — especially Black and minority voters — are not protected against increasing local restrictions on their rights.
In other words, on the day Congress and the president dedicated a statue to honor Rosa Parks, a key part of the voting rights protection that Parks and her comrades had fought for decades to ensure was under siege and ultimately lost.
There’s a dangerous bait-and-switch these kinds of honors can perform. They place the struggle firmly in the past.
There’s a dangerous bait-and-switch these kinds of honors can perform. While they celebrate the courage and lifetime service freedom fighters like Rosa Parks and John Lewis embodied, they place the struggle firmly in the past and center the public’s task on memorializing, papering over contemporary struggles and present-day suffering. Erecting statues (and changing bridge names) too often become the ends themselves. Political leaders soothe us with these accomplishments, providing cover for those who eschew the hard work of racial justice to seem like they’re doing something. Such honors risk individualizing the movement, overlooking the myriad of people who fought and risked their lives from civil rights to the present day. “To make it about one person would be to forget all that Ms. Baker taught us…and that we reflected in all the organizing we SNCC folks did,” fellow Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist Judy Richardson explained.
Lewis, Vivian, and Parks fought to the end of their lives, insistent that the struggle was far from over. The way to honor them is to fix what is broken: voting rights, health care, and the criminal justice system from policing to incarceration.
In December 2019, the House passed a bill to restore the Voting Rights Act by introducing a new formula that requires preclearance for 11 states: nine in the South, plus California and New York, found to discriminate against Latinos and Asian Americans. As Ari Berman summarizes in Mother Jones, “The bill would also require all states to get federal approval for election changes that are known to disproportionately affect voters of color, such as strict voter ID laws, tighter voter registration requirements, and polling place closures in areas with large numbers of minority voters.” That bill has sat on Mitch McConnell’s desk for more than 200 days.
States With New Voting Restrictions Enacted Since 2016
Year States With New or Additional Voting Restrictions 2016 Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. 2017 Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Texas. 2018 Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. 2019 Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas.
And it doesn’t go nearly far enough. From 2010 to 2019, as the Brennan Center documents, 25 states have passed voting rights restrictions. In the 2016 election, 14 states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time: Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In 2017, Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota, Texas passed new voter restrictions, and Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, and New Hampshire passed additional ones. In 2018, Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Wisconsin enacted new restrictions and in 2019, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas passed more restrictions. Half the states in the country have enacted voter restrictions in the past decade; most of them are outside the deep South.
Given how widespread voter suppression is across the U.S., we need a new formula that applies to every state, and makes each state’s voting rules suspect. All changes should be inspected for how they will impact voter participation. We need automatic voter registration, early voting, and Election Day as a national holiday.
Further, we need national legislation restoring voting rights to current and formerly incarcerated people. Incarcerated people are counted for reasons of political apportionment within the municipalities in which they are incarcerated — a modern three-fifths compromise, as the towns where prisons are located get more representation, while the people incarcerated typically can’t vote. In many states, even when people have served out their sentences, they are deprived of their right to vote through felon disfranchisement laws or new kinds of poll taxes. The day before Lewis and Vivian died, the Supreme Court refused to let Florida felons who completed their sentences vote in a primary without first paying fees, fines, and restitution. A poll tax was deemed legal by the Supreme Court last week.
And let’s be clear, McConnell is not the only problem. Most of these new voting restrictions are being enacted at the state level. So the way to honor Lewis, Vivian, and so many others means being unceasing in insisting that Congress — and our state legislatures — turn this ship around and begin to protect and extend voting rights.
We should also be careful that honoring these two civil rights heroes, who died of natural causes, doesn’t distract us from seeing all the people dying today who didn’t have to.
Two weeks before Lewis died, Pamela Rush died of Covid-19. Rush had exposed the racism, poverty, and environmental degradation she and her neighbors of Lowndes County, Alabama, were experiencing in a 2018 congressional hearing and across the country through the Poor People’s Campaign. In tears before the committee, Rush had described open sewage, predatory schemes, lack of health care, and the courage it took to overcome the shame to speak out: “They charged me over $114,000 on a mobile home that’s falling apart. I’ve trapped about four possums in my house. … And I got raw sewage. I don’t have no money. I’m poor.”
The average per capita income in Lowndes County today is $19,491, 72 percent of its residents are Black, and it has Alabama’s highest Covid-19 rates and no hospital. “As a pastor, I can no longer say that God called them home,” Rev. William Barber explained in eulogizing Rush and other poor people who died from Covid-19. “The systems of this world are unjust.” The structures of racism — from unequal access to health care to environmental racism to being clustered in “essential jobs” — have made the numbers of Black people affected and dying of the novel coronavirus disproportionately high.
In 1965, the Selma to Montgomery march passed through Lowndes County, where not a single Black person was registered to vote due to voter suppression. The day before Rush died, the Supreme Court overturned an Alabama trial judge’s decision which would have made it easier to vote absentee during the pandemic.
One of the dangers in the ways the nation tends to honor civil rights heroes like Parks and Lewis is to relegate such glorious courage to the distant past, at times misusing the civil rights movement to chastise and correct young activists. But with the protests against the death of George Floyd at the hands of police constituting the largest wave of civil rights activism in the country’s history and 2.5 million people nationwide participating in the Poor People’s Campaign Moral Gathering on June 20, yesterday’s issues are just as urgent today. Today’s activists are picking up the baton with the kind of courage, persistence, and belief in disruption these elders showed. Let’s not settle for a bridge name.
Jeanne Theoharis will be donating her fee for this article to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which is paying off the fines so people can vote, and to the Poor People’s Campaign.
Correction: July 21, 2020
This article has been updated to more accurately describe federal preclearance.


theintercept--2020-07-21--Brazil's Coronavirus Catastrophe Is Spreading Into the Country's Vulnerable Interior

24 years old when he caught the coronavirus in the Brazilian Amazon town of Altamira .
He played soccer , practiced martial arts , studied physical education at a local university , and was active in a group that protested environmental and social damage caused by the region ’ s hydroelectric dams , such as the notorious Belo Monte .
According to Brazil ’ s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro — a populist pandemic denier who attacks isolation measures and dismissed the pandemic as a “ little flu ” — Silva ’ s age and physical condition should have protected him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is 65 , claimed his own athletic background would protect him from Covid-19 .
After revealing he had caught the disease on July 7 , he said young people had no reason to fear it .
Instead , Silva got sicker and sicker .
He tried to go to the hospital but was only admitted after four visits to a local health center and a social media campaign by friends and family .
Just days after arriving at hospital , on July 6 , Silva died .
“ I will always remember how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and kind he was , ” said his girlfriend Victória Paes , a student who worked with Silva delivering lunches .
“ He gave out a positive energy that infected anybody nearby.
” With 2.098 million confirmed cases and 79,488 deaths , as of July 20 , Brazil ’ s Covid-19 catastrophe is the world ’ s second worst , after the United States .
Silva ’ s death is part of the latest — and troubling — wave of casualties to the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil .
After ravaging major cities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s sprawling interior .
Brazilians like Silva are dying in remote towns whose health systems can ’ t handle the caseload .
And doctors and health specialists say Bolsonaro ’ s dismissal of the pandemic has confused Brazilians , eroded lockdowns , and helped propagate Covid-19 .
“ When you don ’ t communicate in a scientific and technical way , you confuse less educated people , and transform a pandemic that needs a technical response into a political struggle , ” said Julio Croda , a professor of medicine who until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Transmissible Diseases and Immunization Department .
“ It ’ s very detrimental.
” In Brazil , those states that were hit hard with the coronavirus as it began to spread throughout the country are seeing obits slow down .
These areas are ramping down isolation measures and opening up parks , restaurants , and gyms .
In the interior of the country , however , deaths are rising .
The city of Dourados had 3,7279 cases as of July 20 , nearly a quarter of all the infections in its interior state of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an infectious diseases specialist working for its state health service , said hospitals may soon be unable to handle the load .
Bolsonaro ’ s stance “ did not help anything , ” she said .
“ We see it as a big problem.
” especially vulnerable to the coronavirus .
According to government research institute Fiocruz , in February , 90 percent of Brazilian municipalities did not have intensive care beds and 59 percent did not have respirators .
In Altamira , two hospitals serve nine municipalities around them ; the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for 340,000 people – but had just 18 when Silva died .
As Latin America became a Covid-19 hotspot , Brazil ’ s neighbor Argentina locked down .
Though Argentina has a quarter of Brazil ’ s 212 million population , it has only 6 percent of its caseload .
Bolsonaro , on the other hand , argued isolation measures would cause economic damage and unemployment , and instead fought against lockdown .
“ The collateral effects of the measures to fight the coronavirus can not be worse than the actual illness , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in March .
Mask-less , he repeatedly mingled with crowds of far-right supporters , even riding a horse among them .
Tasked over Brazil ’ s towering number of victims , he said : “ So what ?
” Bolsonaro is popular in Amazon towns like Altamira , where 63 percent of voters cast their ballots for him in the 2018 election .
Last month , business owners there demonstrated against closures .
“ The president ’ s posture is a big part of why the population doesn ’ t practice social isolation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doctor in Altamira .
“ He has a lot of supporters here.
” Jason Silva was appalled , his girlfriend said , by the amount of people in town without masks ( for instance , crowding supermarkets ) , as well as the president ’ s pandemic denial .
He first got sick on June 16 .
When admitted to the municipal hospital , he had a fever over 102 degrees , a scan that showed 25 to 30 percent of his lung compromised , and a low readout of 87 percent blood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Two days later , Silva was transferred to a state government-run hospital — the only one in the region with intensive care beds .
“ There is always a queue for both hospitals , ” said Granato , the doctor in Altamira who trained as a surgeon but is now working in intensive care .
“ The beds in wards and intensive care are at maximum capacity.
” On June 19 , construction was finished on a field hospital in Altamira which will have 60 beds — including 10 for intensive care — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ The municipality of Altamira currently faces problems with intensive care beds , ” a spokesperson for the city government said in an email on July 10 .
He said the city ’ s legal obligation was “ basic care ” and that Silva was given oxygen in the municipal hospital as he waited for an intensive care bed .
“ The municipality profoundly regrets the loss of another life , ” he said .
head start on the pandemic .
Its first Covid-19 cases were reported in February .
In March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ São Paulo closed schools and shops and introduced isolation measures pushed by Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta , a doctor .
In March , Bolsonaro declared that less than 800 people would die of coronavirus in Brazil .
His health ministry , though , circulated a six-figure death toll projection if nothing was done , said Croda , the professor and former ministry official .
Official warnings were watered down .
In mid-March , the Health Ministry put out a bulletin .
Shortly after , it was amended and now reads “ recommendation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never came : Until days ago , Ministry ’ s site still said it was “ updating guidance on isolation and social distancing ” and has recently removed the phrase — without providing the guidance .
As the Brazilian summer turned to fall , in March , Bolsonaro issued a decree giving him powers to decide what could and could not stay open .
Brazil ’ s Supreme Court overruled him and decided states and towns could take their own decisions and that Bolsonaro did not have the power to “ exercise a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judge put it .
A Health Ministry spokesperson suggested to The Intercept that the federal government was now behind a more regional approach .
“ The actions should be taken in accord with the needs of each region , ” the spokesperson said in an email .
She added that the Health Ministry has funded 9,200 intensive care beds and contracted over 6,000 health professionals .
Mandetta , the health minister , was giving detailed daily briefings that public health experts applauded .
Before March came to a close , however , Bolsonaro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set up a “ crisis cabinet ” and installed his chief of staff , retired Army Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto , to lead public policy on the pandemic .
“ The health ministry was no longer leading Covid actions , ” said Croda .
The shift caused him to leave his post .
In April , Mandetta was sacked .
Mandetta ’ s successor was Nelson Teich , an oncologist who resigned a month later after refusing to back Bolsonaro ’ s insistence on pushing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine treatment — a drug @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. President Donald Trump , and which has not been proven to help Covid-19 patients .
In May , Brazil recommended the drugs for even mild Covid-19 cases .
On July 7 , after testing positive , Bolsonaro appeared in one video with a pill in his hand and declared : “ I trust hydroxychloroquine , and you ?
” The health ministry said it has distributed 4.4 million chloroquine pills , millions of which were produced by the army .
Meanwhile , the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has revoked the emergency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ known and potential risks ” — some of which can be fatal “ They are focused on treatment with no scientific proof , ” said Croda .
“ The Ministry is doing nothing from the technical point of view.
” Bolsonaro ’ s government is adrift was confirmed for many in May , when video of an expletive-filled ministerial meeting was released by order of a Supreme Court judge .
The pandemic was barely mentioned .
Human Rights Minister Damares Alves alleged Indigenous people in the Amazon were being deliberately infected with Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claim other participants ignored .
Bolsonaro seemed more worried about the future of his own government .
“ We still don ’ t know… where our boat is going , ” he said , citing the virus .
“ It could be heading toward an iceberg.
” Brazil still has no health minister .
Interim Minister Gen. Eduardo Pazuello is one of a number of military officers now in the ministry but has no health experience .
“ What ’ s most frightening is the quantity of military officers they put there .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , captain , and sergeant , ” Mandetta told the O Globo newspaper in comments published July 15 .
“ It ’ s absurd.
” Brazil ’ s Covid-19 statistics have also come under scrutiny because of widespread underreporting .
Brazil has performed 2.1 million antibody tests — 945,000 of them in private laboratories — the health ministry said , and 2.6 million less accurate “ fast ” tests – less than one-tenth of what Teich had promised to buy .
The United States , by contrast , has done 40 million tests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Control and Prevention .
In June , Brazil ’ s health ministry even stopped publishing total numbers of deaths and cases , until a Supreme Court judge intervened and ordered the reporting to resume .
Jesem Orellana , an epidemiologist with Fiocruz , said he believes Brazil ’ s total deaths could already be as high as 90,000 to 100,000 , because many victims are buried without tests or even reaching a hospital .
He and four other researchers calculated 22,000 excess deaths in just four cities — Rio de Janeiro , São @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from February 23 to June 13 , compared to the averages from 2015 to 2019 for the same periods .
In the Amazon city of Manaus , where Orellana is based , overloaded hospitals turned sick people away and victims were buried in mass graves when cases peaked in April .
Deaths at home in Manaus and outside hospitals increased 363 percent from February 9 to May 10 , compared to 2019 , he said , a rise driven by Covid-19 .
Some of the excess deaths from other causes , here , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scared to go to overloaded hospitals .
“ This shows the size of the collapse , ” Orellana said .
Brazil ’ s public health service , called SUS , serves 70 percent of the population who don ’ t have health plans .
In 2016 , under President Dilma Rousseff , Brazil won plaudits for its handling of a Zika epidemic blamed for thousands of cases of the birth defect microcephaly .
Now an epidemiologist at Fiocruz in Brasília , Cláudio Maierovitch was one of the Health Ministry officials in charge of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bolsonaro , Brazil ’ s government has failed .
“ There is no national plan , ” he said .
“ This has been a flagrant omission by the government.
” In some parts of Brazil , civil society , private companies , and NGOs have stepped up to fill the gap , building field hospitals and buying respirators and protective equipment .
When Covid-19 cases spiked in May , the isolated Amazon town of Tefé improvised its own “ semi-intensive care ” beds with respirators .
Doctors Without Borders has helped train @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ill patients in the town .
The region had seen 81 deaths as of July 19 .
“ Towns and states had to act for themselves , ” said Laura Crivellari , a doctor in Tefé .
“ We felt very alone.
” As of July 19 , Altamira had reported 2,708 Covid-19 cases and 75 deaths .
“ The cases are rising , ” Granato said .
Jason Silva ’ s death showed the cost of local communities needing to fend for themselves in an uphill battle .
His mutual aid work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go unnoticed by the community : Silva was widely mourned in Altamira .
“ I ’ ll never forget how he loved to help people , ” said Victória Paes .
“ He made a difference .
”

Jason Silva was 24 years old when he caught the coronavirus in the Brazilian Amazon town of Altamira. He played soccer, practiced martial arts, studied physical education at a local university, and was active in a group that protested environmental and social damage caused by the region’s hydroelectric dams, such as the notorious Belo Monte.
According to Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro — a populist pandemic denier who attacks isolation measures and dismissed the pandemic as a “little flu” — Silva’s age and physical condition should have protected him from the virus. Bolsonaro, who is 65, claimed his own athletic background would protect him from Covid-19. After revealing he had caught the disease on July 7, he said young people had no reason to fear it.
Instead, Silva got sicker and sicker. He tried to go to the hospital but was only admitted after four visits to a local health center and a social media campaign by friends and family. Just days after arriving at hospital, on July 6, Silva died.
“I will always remember how amazing, intelligent, smart, lively, and kind he was,” said his girlfriend Victória Paes, a student who worked with Silva delivering lunches. “He gave out a positive energy that infected anybody nearby.”
Brazil’s Covid-19 catastrophe is the world’s second worst, after the United States.
With 2.098 million confirmed cases and 79,488 deaths, as of July 20, Brazil’s Covid-19 catastrophe is the world’s second worst, after the United States.
Silva’s death is part of the latest — and troubling — wave of casualties to the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil. After ravaging major cities, the virus is spreading to Brazil’s sprawling interior. Brazilians like Silva are dying in remote towns whose health systems can’t handle the caseload. And doctors and health specialists say Bolsonaro’s dismissal of the pandemic has confused Brazilians, eroded lockdowns, and helped propagate Covid-19.
“When you don’t communicate in a scientific and technical way, you confuse less educated people, and transform a pandemic that needs a technical response into a political struggle,” said Julio Croda, a professor of medicine who until March ran Brazilian Health Ministry’s Transmissible Diseases and Immunization Department. “It’s very detrimental.”
In Brazil, those states that were hit hard with the coronavirus as it began to spread throughout the country are seeing obits slow down. These areas are ramping down isolation measures and opening up parks, restaurants, and gyms. In the interior of the country, however, deaths are rising.
The city of Dourados had 3,729 cases as of July 20, nearly a quarter of all the infections in its interior state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Andyane Tetila, an infectious diseases specialist working for its state health service, said hospitals may soon be unable to handle the load.
Bolsonaro’s stance “did not help anything,” she said. “We see it as a big problem.”
Brazil’s interior is especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. According to government research institute Fiocruz, in February, 90 percent of Brazilian municipalities did not have intensive care beds and 59 percent did not have respirators. In Altamira, two hospitals serve nine municipalities around them; the town now has 28 intensive care beds for 340,000 people – but had just 18 when Silva died.
As Latin America became a Covid-19 hotspot, Brazil’s neighbor Argentina locked down. Though Argentina has a quarter of Brazil’s 212 million population, it has only 6 percent of its caseload. Bolsonaro, on the other hand, argued isolation measures would cause economic damage and unemployment, and instead fought against lockdown.
“The collateral effects of the measures to fight the coronavirus cannot be worse than the actual illness,” he said during a television address in March. Mask-less, he repeatedly mingled with crowds of far-right supporters, even riding a horse among them. Tasked over Brazil’s towering number of victims, he said: “So what?”
Bolsonaro is popular in Amazon towns like Altamira, where 63 percent of voters cast their ballots for him in the 2018 election. Last month, business owners there demonstrated against closures.
“The president’s posture is a big part of why the population doesn’t practice social isolation,” said Renan Granato, a doctor in Altamira. “He has a lot of supporters here.”
Jason Silva was appalled, his girlfriend said, by the amount of people in town without masks (for instance, crowding supermarkets), as well as the president’s pandemic denial.
Left/Top: Photo of Jason alone was taken on Day of the Tree in the municipality of Brasil Novo, state of Pará on Sept 21, 2019. Right/Bottom: Jason (right) and Welinton Freitas (left) on June 6, 2020, at the Água Azul settlement in Altamira, state of Pará. Photos: Coletivo de Comunicação do MAB
As coronavirus cases grew, Silva and fellow activists from the Movement of Those Affected by Dams, a national network that deals with the ill environmental and societal effects of hydroelectric and industrial dams, distributed food to poorer Brazilians who lost work or income during the pandemic. Coronavirus hit poorer Brazilians living in densely packed communities especially hard. Local and national networks have sprung up to help them.
Amid his mutual aid work, Silva washed his clothes every time he got home and isolated as much as he could.
“There is always a queue for both hospitals. The beds in wards and intensive care are at maximum capacity.”
He first got sick on June 16. When admitted to the municipal hospital, he had a fever over 102 degrees, a scan that showed 25 to 30 percent of his lung compromised, and a low readout of 87 percent blood oxygen saturation level, Paes said. Two days later, Silva was transferred to a state government-run hospital — the only one in the region with intensive care beds.
“There is always a queue for both hospitals,” said Granato, the doctor in Altamira who trained as a surgeon but is now working in intensive care. “The beds in wards and intensive care are at maximum capacity.”
On June 19, construction was finished on a field hospital in Altamira which will have 60 beds — including 10 for intensive care — but it only opened on July 17.
“The municipality of Altamira currently faces problems with intensive care beds,” a spokesperson for the city government said in an email on July 10. He said the city’s legal obligation was “basic care” and that Silva was given oxygen in the municipal hospital as he waited for an intensive care bed. “The municipality profoundly regrets the loss of another life,” he said.
Brazil had a head start on the pandemic. Its first Covid-19 cases were reported in February. In March, states like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo closed schools and shops and introduced isolation measures pushed by Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta, a doctor.
In March, Bolsonaro declared that less than 800 people would die of coronavirus in Brazil. His health ministry, though, circulated a six-figure death toll projection if nothing was done, said Croda, the professor and former ministry official.
Official warnings were watered down. In mid-March, the Health Ministry put out a bulletin. Shortly after, it was amended and now reads “recommendation excluded for technical revision.” The revision never came: Until days ago, the ministry’s site still said it was “updating guidance on isolation and social distancing” and has recently removed the phrase — without providing the guidance.
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As the Brazilian summer turned to fall, in March, Bolsonaro issued a decree giving him powers to decide what could and could not stay open. Brazil’s Supreme Court overruled him and decided states and towns could take their own decisions and that Bolsonaro did not have the power to “exercise a genocidal public policy,” as one judge put it.
A Health Ministry spokesperson suggested to The Intercept that the federal government was now behind a more regional approach. “The actions should be taken in accord with the needs of each region,” the spokesperson said in an email. She added that the Health Ministry has funded 9,200 intensive care beds and contracted over 6,000 health professionals.
Mandetta, the health minister, was giving detailed daily briefings that public health experts applauded. Before March came to a close, however, Bolsonaro’s government would intervene. He set up a “crisis cabinet” and installed his chief of staff, retired Army Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto, to lead public policy on the pandemic.
“The health ministry was no longer leading Covid actions,” said Croda. The shift caused him to leave his post. In April, Mandetta was sacked.
Brazil’s Covid-19 strategy began to fall apart.
Mandetta’s successor was Nelson Teich, an oncologist who resigned a month later after refusing to back Bolsonaro’s insistence on pushing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine treatment — a drug pushed by Bolsonaro’s ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, and which has not been proven to help Covid-19 patients. In May, Brazil recommended the drugs for even mild Covid-19 cases. On July 7, after testing positive, Bolsonaro appeared in one video with a pill in his hand and declared: “I trust hydroxychloroquine, and you?”
“They are focussed on treatment with no scientific proof. The Ministry is doing nothing from the technical point of view.”
The health ministry said it has distributed 4.4 million chloroquine pills, millions of which were produced by the army. Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has revoked the emergency authorization for both drugs because of “known and potential risks” — some of which can be fatal
“They are focused on treatment with no scientific proof,” said Croda. “The Ministry is doing nothing from the technical point of view.”
The sense that Bolsonaro’s government is adrift was confirmed for many in May, when video of an expletive-filled ministerial meeting was released by order of a Supreme Court judge.
The pandemic was barely mentioned. Human Rights Minister Damares Alves alleged Indigenous people in the Amazon were being deliberately infected with Covid-19 to hurt the president: an extraordinary claim other participants ignored. Bolsonaro seemed more worried about the future of his own government. “We still don’t know… where our boat is going,” he said, citing the virus. “It could be heading toward an iceberg.”
A worker from the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health assists 19-year-old Janete Vasconcelos da Silva, an indigenous woman from the Tupinamba tribe and 8 months pregnant and who has been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, after bringing her to a hospital in Santarem, Para State, Brazil on July 17, 2020. Photo: Tarso Sarraf/AFP via Getty Images
Brazil still has no health minister. Interim Minister Gen. Eduardo Pazuello is one of a number of military officers now in the ministry but has no health experience. “What’s most frightening is the quantity of military officers they put there. Career technicians were removed to nominate colonel, captain, and sergeant,” Mandetta told the O Globo newspaper in comments published July 15. “It’s absurd.”
(The ministry “has a technical staff of qualified employees who maintain the normality of its activities,” the spokesperson said.)
Brazil’s Covid-19 statistics have also come under scrutiny because of widespread underreporting. Brazil has performed 2.1 million antibody tests — 945,000 of them in private laboratories — the health ministry said, and 2.6 million less accurate “fast” tests – less than one-tenth of what Teich had promised to buy. The United States, by contrast, has done almost 50 million tests, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In June, Brazil’s health ministry even stopped publishing total numbers of deaths and cases, until a Supreme Court judge intervened and ordered the reporting to resume.
Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist with Fiocruz, said he believes Brazil’s total deaths could already be as high as 90,000 to 100,000, because many victims are buried without tests or even reaching a hospital. He and four other researchers calculated 22,000 excess deaths in just four cities — Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Manaus, and Fortaleza — from February 23 to June 13, compared to the averages from 2015 to 2019 for the same periods.
In the Amazon city of Manaus, where Orellana is based, overloaded hospitals turned sick people away and victims were buried in mass graves when cases peaked in April. Deaths at home in Manaus and outside hospitals increased 363 percent from February 9 to May 10, compared to 2019, he said, a rise driven by Covid-19. Some of the excess deaths from other causes, here, occurred when people were unable or too scared to go to overloaded hospitals.
“This shows the size of the collapse,” Orellana said.
Brazil’s public health service, called SUS, serves 70 percent of the population who don’t have health plans. In 2016, under President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil won plaudits for its handling of a Zika epidemic blamed for thousands of cases of the birth defect microcephaly. Now an epidemiologist at Fiocruz in Brasília, Cláudio Maierovitch was one of the Health Ministry officials in charge of that response. He believes that under Bolsonaro, Brazil’s government has failed. “There is no national plan,” he said. “This has been a flagrant omission by the government.”
In some parts of Brazil, civil society, private companies, and NGOs have stepped up to fill the gap, building field hospitals and buying respirators and protective equipment.
When Covid-19 cases spiked in May, the isolated Amazon town of Tefé improvised its own “semi-intensive care” beds with respirators. Doctors Without Borders has helped train primary care staff to care for seriously ill patients in the town. The region had seen 81 deaths as of July 19.
“Towns and states had to act for themselves,” said Laura Crivellari, a doctor in Tefé. “We felt very alone.”
As of July 19, Altamira had reported 2,708 Covid-19 cases and 75 deaths. “The cases are rising,” Granato said.
Jason Silva’s death showed the cost of local communities needing to fend for themselves in an uphill battle. His mutual aid work amid a crisis of resources did not go unnoticed by the community: Silva was widely mourned in Altamira.
“I’ll never forget how he loved to help people,” said Victória Paes. “He made a difference.”