The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Trump-loving conspiracy theorists have moved beyond just targeting Kemp and are now going after his entire family.
While speaking with reporters on Thursday, Kemp revealed that some Trump fans had been sending hateful messages to his 19-year-old daughter, Lucy Kemp, featuring conspiracy theories about her longtime boyfriend Harrison Deal, who died in a traffic accident earlier this month.
“It has gotten ridiculous -- from death threats, [accusations of] bribes from China, the social media posts that my children are getting,” Kemp explained. “We have the 'no crying in politics rule' in the Kemp house. But this is stuff that, if I said it, I would be taken to the woodshed and would never see the light of day."
Kemp also told reporters that any Trump supporters upset about the 2020 election need to leave his family out of it and take up their complaints with him directly.
"If anybody has an issue with something I’ve done, they need to come see me and I’ll talk to them about it," he said. "They don’t need to bother my wife or my children or anybody."
A bipartisan coalition of dozens of attorneys general on Thursday launched an antitrust lawsuit against Google—a move that followed another filing targeting the tech giant by a smaller group of AGs earlier this week as well as a U.S. Department of Justice case initiated in October.
Attorneys general from 35 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico filed (pdf) the latest suit in U.S. District Court for D.C., accusing Google LLC of anti-competitive conduct in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The complaint charges that the company "has methodically undertaken actions to entrench and reinforce its general search services and search-related advertising monopolies by stifling competition."
The new suit follows an investigation into Google that was led by an executive committee made up of the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. In a statement, Phil Weiser, the Democratic AG of Colorado, explained the goal of their case.
"Our economy is more concentrated than ever, and consumers are squeezed when they are deprived of choices in valued products and services. Google's anti-competitive actions have protected its general search monopolies and excluded rivals, depriving consumers of the benefits of competitive choices, forestalling innovation, and undermining new entry or expansion," Weiser said. "This lawsuit seeks to restore competition."
According to the complaint:
As the gateway to the internet, Google has systematically degraded the ability of other companies to access consumers. In doing so, just as Microsoft improperly maintained its monopoly through conduct directed at Netscape, Google has improperly maintained and extended its search-related monopolies through exclusionary conduct that has harmed consumers, advertisers, and the competitive process itself. Google, moreover, cannot establish business justifications or pro-competitive benefits sufficient to justify its exclusionary conduct in any relevant market.
Today, Google enjoys virtually untrammeled power over internet search traffic that extends to every state, district, and territory in the United States, and, indeed, into nearly every home and onto nearly every smartphone used in the United States.
As New York Attorney General Letitia James, another Democrat, put it: "Google sits at the crossroads of so many areas of our digital economy and has used its dominance to illegally squash competitors, monitor nearly every aspect of our digital lives, and profit to the tune of billions."
"Through its illegal conduct," she said, "the company has ensured that hundreds of millions of people turn to Google first when looking for an answer, but it doesn't take a web search to understand that unchecked corporate power shouldn't have disproportionate control over our data and information."
"For decades now, Google has served as the gatekeeper of the internet and has weaponized our data to kill off competitors and control our decision making—resulting in all of us paying more for the services we use every day," added James, who is also leading an antitrust case filed last week against Facebook.
While Weiser's office said that the complaint he spearheaded with James and 36 other attorneys general "goes beyond the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and other states on October 20," the Washington Post reported that the coalition behind the new suit will "seek to consolidate their lawsuit with the Justice Department's earlier complaint so that the cases would be argued together."
Google pushed back Thursday with a blog post directed at users in which economic policy director Adam Cohen wrote that the states' complaint "suggests we shouldn't have worked to make search better and that we should, in fact, be less useful to you." Cohen claimed that redesigning the search feature as the lawsuit requests "would harm the quality of your search results. And it would come at the expense of businesses like retailers, restaurants, repair shops, airlines and hotels whose listings in Google help them get discovered, and connect directly with customers."
However, the new case was welcomed by Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at Open Markets Institute.
"The state attorneys general make strong allegations against Google for illegally monopolizing several digital advertising markets in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act," she said. "Google's power over the entire ad-tech stack, including the buyer side, the seller side, and the exchange itself, amounts to insider trading and should not be tolerated."
"The complaint's allegations of an illegal agreement with Facebook to restrain trade, though heavily redacted, indicate that Google may have violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, as well," Hubbard added. "While the states seek divestiture, Congress should pass legislation to structurally separate digital platforms, akin to the Glass-Steagall Act, as called for by Chairman David Cicilline's House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust's Big Tech report."
The subcommittee led by Cicilline (D-R.I.) released its report in early October, after a 16-month investigation. As Common Dreams previously reported, the lawmakers involved concluded that there is a "pressing need for legislative action and reform" to address the monopoly power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.
The coronavirus pandemic may be raging in the Houston area, but tens of thousands of students in one district are headed back to the classroom in January because of poor results while learning from home.
The plight of the town of Pasadena is being repeated across America, as educators fret that online learning for children because of the health crisis simply might not work.
Until now families in Pasadena could choose between sending their kids to school or keeping them home for remote learning. Nearly half of the nearly 50,000 students in the school district, from kindergarten to highschool, stayed home.
But their test results after the autumn period of school were disappointing -- 40 percent failed at least one subject, compared to 18 percent of those who attended class in person.
In the 2019-2020 school year, that proportion was 13 percent for all the district's students.
"Both groups are worrying me as far as their ability to get the curriculum basics successfully. But those virtual kids, that’s something that we’re concerned about at this time," said DeeAnn Powell, superintendent of the Pasadena Independent School District.
That district covers a small part of Houston itself, plus the towns of South Houston and Pasadena, which are overwhelmingly Latino.
Powell says the pandemic has made life worse for this already economically challenged demographic.
"Our kids of course are majority low-income," she said in an interview via Zoom.
"When both parents are working, they are less likely to stay home and monitor that the kids are engaged," said Powell. "So I think it is a struggle."
"Sometimes, we find that because of safety reasons the kids aren’t left at home. They might be taken to work with their parents or taken to run errands or engaged in different activities during the day and that’s keeping them away from their assignments," said Powell.
And some adolescents have simply dropped out of school and taken jobs in supermarkets or fast-food restaurants.
To help the poorest families, the districts provides computers and pays for their internet.
But the real problem is getting kids engaged in their classes.
"I’m gonna be real honest. Sleeping in and doing school in your pajamas is easier than getting dressed every day for a day's work at school," said Powell.
'All six feet apart' -
Other school districts in the Houston area have already halted online learning. Others reserve the option, but only for kids with medical reasons to stay home or who get good grades.
In Houston itself, the fourth largest city in the US, parents can still opt for online learning for their children.
As agreed with his parents, one 15-year-old named Lucas Donalson is preparing -- unenthusiastically -- to go back to in person class in January, even if the pandemic is pushing hospitals back to overstretched levels seen during in the summer.
"I don’t think that my safety would have any harm going back to school because we are all six feet apart and I’m already seeing my friends right now," said Lucas.
Schools are taking precautions, with mandatory wearing of masks, social distancing, readily available hand sanitizer and regular cleaning of school facilities.
Lucas admits he did not turn in all of his homework assignments on time while taking his classes online.
But he says teachers are partly to blame -- some are not good at working with computers and communicating with students online.
"In online school, some of my friends did miss some assignments just because there wasn’t anyone to tell them 'you got to do this,' any bells to tell them it’s time to switch classes," said Lucas.
"They sort of fell asleep at the end of the class."
Though African Americans are being hospitalized for COVID-19 at more than triple the rate of white Americans, wariness of the new vaccine is higher in the Black population than in most communities. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlighted communities of color as a “critical population” to vaccinate. But ProPublica found little in the way of concrete action to make sure that happens.
It will be up to states to make sure residents get the vaccine, but ProPublica reviewed the distribution plans of the nine states with the most Black residents and found that many have barely invested in overcoming historic mistrust of the medical establishment and high levels of vaccine hesitancy in the Black community. Few states could articulate specific measures they are taking to address the vaccine skepticism.
And it could be hard to track which populations are getting the vaccine. While the CDC has asked states to report the race and ethnicity of every recipient, along with other demographic information like age and sex, the agency doesn’t appear ready to apply any downward pressure to ensure that such information will be collected.
In state vaccination registries, race and ethnicity fields are simply considered “nice to have,” explained Mitchel Rothholz, chief of governance and state affiliates for the American Pharmacists Association. While other fields are mandatory, such as the patient’s contact information and date of birth, leaving race and ethnicity blank “won’t keep a provider from submitting the data if they don’t have it.”
In the initial stages, vaccines will go to people who are easy to find, like health care workers and nursing home residents. But barriers will increase when distribution moves to the next tier — which includes essential workers, a far larger and more amorphous group. Instead of bringing the vaccine to them, it’s more likely that workers will have to seek out the vaccine, so hesitancy and lack of access will become important factors in who gets the shots and who misses out.
“There are individuals who are required to be on the front line to serve in their jobs but perhaps don’t have equitable access to health care services or have insurance but it’s a challenge to access care,” said Dr. Grace Lee, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine and member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is tasked with issuing guidance on the prioritization of COVID-19 vaccine distribution. “We can build equity into our recommendations, but implementation is where the rubber meets the road.”
Hesitancy is rooted in medical exploitation and mistreatment.
About a quarter of the public feels hesitant about a COVID-19 vaccine, meaning they probably or definitely would not get it, according to a December poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Hesitancy was higher than average among Black adults in the survey, with 35% saying that they definitely or probably would not get vaccinated.
Mistrust of the medical community among people of color is well-founded, stemming from a history of unscrupulous medical experimentation. The infamous Tuskegee study, conducted from 1932 to 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service, still looms large in the memories of many Black Americans, who remember how researchers knowingly withheld treatment from African American sharecroppers with syphilis in order to study the disease’s progression.
But the injustices aren’t confined to the past. The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine has found that minorities tend to receive lower-quality health care than white counterparts, even when adjusting for age, income, insurance and severity of condition. Black Americans are also more likely to be uninsured and utilize primary care services less often than white Americans.
“It’s not just about history. It’s about the here and now,” said Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. “People point to racial injustice across the system. It’s not just hospitals; people don’t trust the government, or they ask about the pharmaceutical industry’s profit motive. From the very beginning, Black and brown people are marginalized from the enterprise of research. They think: ‘So few people look like us in research, industry and academia, why should we trust that someone at that table is thinking of our interest?’”
When it comes to vaccinations, the consequences can be grave. Black and Hispanic people are less likely to get the flu shot than white people, according to the CDC. At the same time, Black Americans have the highest rate of flu-associated hospitalizations, at 68 people per 100,000 population, compared to 38 people per 100,000 in the non-Hispanic white population.
Health officials have tried to assuage vaccine concerns in the traditional way, by publicizing specific individuals receiving the shot. The U.S. began its mass immunization effort by injecting a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine into the left upper-arm of Sandra Lindsay, a Black woman and critical care nurse in New York.
Meanwhile, an onslaught of memes and conspiracy theories characterizing the vaccine as harmful are making the rounds on social media. One reads, “Just had the covid-19 vaccine. Feeling great,” along with the picture of the character from the 1980 movie “The Elephant Man.” Another image circulating on Twitter features the photos of three Black people and claims they are suffering from Bell’s palsy due to the vaccine. The Twitter user who shared the image asked followers, “still want those Tuskegee 2.0 genocide vaccines?”
It may only take one or two negative headlines to further sow fear, said Komal Patel, who has 16 years of experience as a pharmacist in California. After two health care workers in the United Kingdom experienced allergic reactions to Pfizer’s vaccine, Patel said she saw anxiety spike on social media, even though regulators have said that only people with a history of anaphylaxis — a severe or life threatening immune reaction — to ingredients in the vaccine need to avoid taking the shot. “Just two patients, and here we go, there’s all this chatter.”
Key states lack concrete plans to promote vaccines in Black communities.
It falls to states to make sure their residents of color are vaccinated. But the speed at which the vaccine needs to be disseminated means that states haven’t had much time to plan communications efforts, said Lee, from CDC’s advisory group. “How do we make sure messaging is appropriate? You may want to emphasize different messages for different communities. We don’t have the time for that.”
ProPublica found that few states can articulate specifically what they are doing to address vaccine skepticism in the Black community.
Texas, Georgia and Illinois’ state plans make no mention of how they plan to reach and reassure their Black residents. Black communities make up between 13% and 33% of the population in the three states, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. None of the three states’ health departments responded to requests for comment.
California’s state plan includes “a public information campaign … to support vaccine confidence,” but does not provide details apart from the state’s intention to use social media, broadcast outlets and word of mouth. In an email, the California Department of Public Health did not provide additional information about outreach to Black residents, only saying, “this is an important issue we continue to work on.”
New York also broadly suggests it would use public education events and media campaigns to reach vulnerable, underserved and vaccine-hesitant groups, but gives no details. A spokesperson said he would supply more information, but hadn’t responded by Thursday.
“Media outreach is not enough,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “TV ads are one thing, but usually public service announcements are at midnight when nobody is listening, because that’s when they’re free.” Normally, public health officials go to barber shops, beauty salons, bowling alleys and other popular locales to hand out flyers and answer questions, but due to the pandemic and limits on congregating, that’s not an option, Benjamin said, so officials need to plan a serious social media strategy. That could involve partnering with “influencers” like sports figures and music stars by having them interview public health figures, Benjamin suggested.
Dr. Mark Kittleson, chair of the Department of Public Health at New York Medical College, said he’s not surprised to hear how vague some of the state health plans are, because states often focus on providing high-level guidance while county or regional level health departments are left to execute the plan. But he said specific efforts need to be undertaken to reach residents of color. “Spokespeople for the vaccination need to be a diverse group,” Kittleson said. “Dr. Tony Fauci is fantastic, but every state needs to find the leading health care experts that represent the diversity in their own state, whether it’s Native American, African American or Latino.” Kittleson also suggested partnering with churches.“Especially in the African American community, when the minister stands up and says, ‘Folks, you need to take your blood pressure medication and take care of yourself,’ people listen to that,” he said. “The church needs to be brought into the fold.”
Maryland’s state plan acknowledges the distrust among Black and Latino communities as well as rural residents, and says it will aim to tailor communication to each group by working with trusted community partners and representatives of vulnerable groups. A Department of Health spokesperson said in an email that “as vaccination distribution continues to ramp up, we urge all individuals to get the vaccine.”
Florida’s written plan includes a messaging strategy for everyone in the state, but does not specifically address the Black community. A “thorough vaccination communication plan continues to be developed in order to combat vaccine hesitancy,” a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health said in response to ProPublica’s queries.
In North Carolina and Virginia, however, health officials started preparing months ago to reassure residents about potential vaccines. North Carolina formed a committee in May with leaders from marginalized communities to guide the state’s overall response to the pandemic. Vaccine concerns were a priority, said Benjamin Money, deputy secretary of health services for North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services.
The politicization of the pandemic has mobilized the Black and brown medical scientific community to dig into the research and how the vaccines work, Money said, “so that they can feel assured that the vaccine’s safe and it’s effective and they can convey the message to their patients and to their community constituents.”
The development and deployment of a vaccine will affect everybody on the planet. Help us identify and tell important stories.
The committee is advising North Carolina officials on their vaccine messaging and hosting a webinar for Black religious leaders. Similarly, the Virginia Department of Health has staff devoted to health equity across racial and ethnic groups and is putting on a series of town hall-style meetings speaking to specific communities of color.
Black residents in Virginia have expressed concerns about how rapidly the early vaccines were developed, said Dr. Norman Oliver, Virginia’s state health commissioner.
“It all boils down to telling people the truth,” Oliver said. “The first thing to let folks know is that one of the reasons why these vaccines were developed so quickly is because of the advances in technology since the last time we did vaccines; we’re not trying to grow live virus and keep it under control or do attenuated virus and develop a vaccine this way.”
In addition to promoting reliable information, Virginia health officials hired a company to monitor the spread of vaccine misinformation in the state and to locate where falsehoods appear to be taking hold, Oliver said. The state hopes to target its communications in places where distrust is most intense.
The CDC has set aside $6.5 million to support 10 national organizations, according to spokesperson Kristen Nordlund. The funds are “to be disbursed by each organization to their affiliates and chapters across the country so they may do immunization-focused community engagement in the local communities they serve,” Nordlund said in an email. She didn’t respond to questions on whether the funds had already been disbursed and to which organizations.
Data collection on the race of vaccine recipients is likely to be incomplete.
Every state has a vaccination registry, where data on administered shots is routinely reported, from childhood vaccinations to the flu shot. What’s new in this pandemic is that the CDC has requested all the data be funneled up to the federal level, so it can track vaccination progress across the nation.
“Race and ethnicity data should be recorded in states’ immunization data, but we do not know how reliably it is collected,” said Mary Beth Kurilo, senior director of health informatics at the American Immunization Registry Association. “We really don’t have good data on how well it’s captured out there across the country.”
Many immunization records are fed into the state’s registry directly from a doctor’s electronic health record system, Kurilo said, which can present technological stumbling blocks: “Is [the data] routinely captured as part of the registration process? Can they capture multiple races, which I think is something that’s become increasingly important going forward?”
When asked about historic rates of compliance and how they planned to gather information on race and ethnicity of vaccine recipients this time, health departments from Georgia, Texas, Illinois, New York, Florida and California didn’t respond.
Maryland’s state plans indicate it intends to use information gathered through its vaccine appointment scheduling system, including demographic data gathered from recipients, to direct its communication outreach efforts. The Maryland Department of Health, which didn’t provide more detailed information, said it is “currently exploring all options as far as vaccine data reporting.”
North Carolina’s immunization records system routinely collects race and ethnicity information, and a spokesperson told ProPublica it has that type of demographic data for 71% of people in the system. Stephanie Wheawill, director of pharmacy services at the Virginia Department of Health, said that providers will be “asked to record that information” but didn’t elaborate on how the department planned to encourage or enforce compliance.
“You’ve got to have the data to compare,” said Martha Dawson, president of the National Black Nurses Association and an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s nursing school. “Because if you don’t have the data, then we’re just guessing. There’s no way to know who received it if you don’t take the data.”
There is tension between gathering enough data to understand the extent of the rollout and the possibility that asking for too much information will scare away people who are already leery of the vaccine.
“The biggest concern people have is how will this information be used?” said Lee, from the CDC’s advisory group. “People need to trust that the data will be used with a good intent. “
Rothholz, with the American Pharmacists Association, said there could be ways apart from state registries to estimate vaccine uptake among minorities. “If I’m a community pharmacy in a predominantly African American community, if I’m giving away 900 or 1000 vaccines, you can track penetration that way,” he said. Geographic-based analysis, however, would depend on the shots being distributed via community pharmacies rather than by mass vaccination sites — a less likely scenario for the Pfizer vaccine, the first to be administered, which requires ultracold storage that will be difficult for many small pharmacies to manage.
It will be up to doctors and community leaders to encourage trust.
Sandra Lindsay, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, was the first person to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, on Dec. 14. (Mark Lennihan/Pool/Getty Images)
The best way to help a worried individual, whether scared about data collection or the vaccine itself, is a conversation with a trusted caregiver, according to Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association.
“Time and again it’s been shown that one of the most valuable things to encourage a patient to undertake a change, whether it’s stopping smoking or losing weight, is a one-on-one conversation with a trusted caregiver — having your physician saying, ‘I took it and I really want you to take it too,” she said. “But patients have to have the opportunity to ask questions, and not to be blown off or belittled or feel troublesome for asking all their questions.”
“If someone says that they’re afraid of being a guinea pig, maybe drill a bit deeper,” Bailey suggested. “Ask, ‘What are you concerned about? Are you concerned about side effects? Are you concerned that not enough people have taken it?’”
The American Academy of Family Physicians uses the mnemonic “ACT” to guide their members in conversations with patients of color, president Dr. Ada Stewart said in an email: “Be Accountable and Acknowledge both historical and contemporary transgressions against Black, brown and Indigenous communities. … Communicate safety, efficacy and harms such that individuals can weigh their own personal risk to potential benefits, and exercise Transparency with regard to the development of vaccines and the distribution process.”
David Hodge, associate director of education at Tuskegee University’s National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, urges Black and brown leaders such as pastors and community organizers to take control of the messaging right now and not wait for their local governments to tackle the issue.
“We’re not in a position right now to be patient. We’re not in a position to sit on the sidelines, we have to make it happen.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has for months stonewalled a new round of coronavirus emergency relief, specifically digging in on liability protections for businesses as a "red line" in negotiations with House Democrats and the Trump administration. But with a government shutdown looming at midnight on Friday, negotiations on a new bill have in recent days inched forward, with McConnell signaling he would yield on his key sticking point, apparently in part because he fears another failed attempt would damage the two Republican senators facing tight runoff elections in Georgia early next month.
Still, McConnell will almost certainly not abandon his crusade for corporate immunity, which for months has stood in the way of much-needed relief for tens of millions of Americans struggling under the health and economic burdens brought about by the woefully uncontained coronavirus pandemic.
During that time, the issue has stymied talks not only with House Democrats, but also with the Trump White House. Observers expect that even if McConnell relents on the demand for now, he'll pocket it for leverage in future negotiations under Joe Biden's administration.
Last week, Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., attacked McConnell's demands as callous.
"These lawsuits represent the worst of the worst examples of disregard for human life — cases filed on behalf of nursing home patients and grocery store workers who died because the company in charge of keeping them safe prioritized cutting costs over protecting them," Porter wrote on Twitter. "The same McConnell who said that President Trump is '100% within his rights' to pursue baseless lawsuits alleging election fraud is now refusing to pass urgently-needed relief unless it strips those same rights from the most vulnerable among us. This must be exposed."
The same question was also raised in May, in a New York Times op-ed written by a trial lawyer, entitled, "Why Is Mitch McConnell Protecting Nursing Homes?":
While thousands of Americans perish daily from Covid-19, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has chosen a scapegoat to distract from our government's failures. Claiming that the disease will become "the biggest trial lawyer bonanza in history," Mr. McConnell is drafting legislation to protect the nursing home industry from lawsuits — even though home residents and workers represent a third of the country's coronavirus deaths.
In October, the man who affectionately calls himself the "Grim Reaper" made a show of securing an extra $5.3 million in emergency relief for long-term care facilities in Kentucky. Just last week he announced that nursing homes in the state would see another $10 million.
"With promising signs of a vaccine on the horizon, now is not the time to lose focus on slowing the spread of this virus. I'm proud my CARES Act is continuing to invest in protecting Kentucky seniors and frontline workers," McConnell said in a statement.
In all, Kentucky nursing homes have received more than $180 million in federal coronavirus relief funds.
This issue, it turns out, happens to be of particular concern to one of McConnell's most loyal and longstanding allies: a prominent businessman and Republican donor in Kentucky named Terry Forcht.
Forcht is the founder and CEO of Forcht Bancorp, one of the largest financial conglomerates in the state, and casts a long shadow in Kentucky Republican politics. His empire, the Forcht Group, is the parent company of 95 entities and employs more than 2,400 people, and extends to commercial real estate, insurance, retail and radio stations. He has a sprawling horse farm just outside Lexington.
The self-made multimillionaire has thrown money at local, state and federal conservatives for decades, racking up well over a million dollars in contributions in that time. But perhaps even more important than the cash is Forcht's influence in the Republican stronghold of eastern Kentucky, home base to the Forcht enterprise, os well as his political connections to national heavyweights, including such as McConnell and legendary GOP strategist Karl Rove.
Forcht has been one of McConnell's top backers for decades, and in 2014 the majority leader offered a tribute to Forcht on the Senate floor. In fact, the two men are so close that McConnell penned the foreword to a biography of Forcht published earlier this year, a propaganda piece co-written by the Forcht Group's chief marketing officer. In it, the U.S. Senate's leader lauded Forcht as "a model Kentuckian and indeed, a model American."
One former Kentucky Democratic official described Forcht to Salon as "a devil of a motherfucker — as rapacious, insistent, hardcore a right-wing Republican as you can get."
"That's not an unexpected characterization," another state Democratic official told Salon. "He's no Joe Craft," the official continued, referencing a powerful Kentucky coal magnate, "but he's certainly plugged in. He can get a phone call answered any time."
That description seems accurate. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported in 2014 that Forcht's family and employees had given $1.1 million in political donations over the previous 11 years, almost exclusively to Republicans. Forcht contributed $3 million to create the Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship in the School of Business at the University of Louisville, and donated another $300,000 to finish a set of murals in the State Capitol rotunda in Frankfort.
In 2010, when Rove's American Crossroads super PAC had to set up its first checking account, it did not turn to a major national institution or a familiar bank in Washington, but went with regional Forcht Bank. According to a contemporaneous report in the Washington Post, the decision fell to Rove associate Mike Duncan, a former Bluegrass State banker and chair of the Republican National Committee.
The true font of Forcht's political influence, however, is his nursing homes. He started his first one in 1972 and today owns nine of them, but even at age 81 is by all accounts in no danger of needing to move into one himself. Forcht reportedly wakes up at 3 a.m. every day but Sunday, when he rises at 5. For his epitaph, Forcht has said he's considering: "I wish I could have worked one more day."
As of 2009, those nine homes were still Forcht Group's largest income stream. But in the era of the COVID pandemic, those facilities, as well as Forcht's insurance outfits, suddenly loom large as liabilities — especially in Kentucky.
"He would certainly want to limit his exposure. He's in both long-term care and insurance, so he's got a keener awareness for the dynamics," a Kentucky Democratic official told Salon. "And he's vertically integrated, with the homes, the banking and insurance. He built his empire like that over time, owning these franchises in rural areas, then slowly moving into Lexington. He's pleasant, and portrays himself as a homegrown east Kentucky guy, but he's got a patrician air."
Earlier this month, with McConnell dug in on liability protections, 96 residents and 42 staff members tested positive amid an outbreak at a Forcht home in Hazard, Kentucky, which had already seen at least four deaths. State statistics and national Medicare database show that Forcht's facility in Williamsburg has seen at least 66 cases and 12 deaths so far. Forcht's Knott County facility has reported at least 45 cases and eight deaths, while another in Hillcrest registered at least 198 cases and nine deaths. This fall, Forcht homes saw a series of outbreaks that have made Kentucky news.
Troublingly, one outbreak in Knox County this October led to a spike of cases in the greater community, which continued for weeks.
There has already been at least one large, multimillion-dollar negligence civil suit filed against an elderly care facility in the state. Additionally, the price of nursing home care in Kentucky this year rose faster than national trends, and business costs and risks are expected to lead to rate hikes in 2021, according to an annual survey from Genworth, an insurance firm that specializes in long-term care.
All the while, Mitch McConnell has held a national relief package hostage to five-year extended business liability protections.
Although Forcht's multiple insurance assets also stand at increased risk, nursing home liability is an especially sore spot — his facilities have a troubled history.
In 2010, when Karl Rove's American Crossroads opened its Forcht Bank account, then-Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway was investigating allegations of sexual abuse at one of the facilities. Conway, a Democrat, was concurrently challenging Republican nominee Rand Paul for an open U.S. Senate seat — a race Paul would go on to win, boosted by the nearly $2 million that American Crossroads poured into attacking Conway, including radio spots. (Forcht owns 22 radio stations.)
On separate occasions in 2009, two male residents in Forcht's Hazard Health and Rehab home sexually assaulted a 91-year-old Alzheimer's patient, once within sight of one of the home's supervisors. The home escaped criminal liability by paying a $20,000 fine. In the same home, a dementia patient fell 11 times, breaking a hip before she was moved out. Another Hazard resident died in 2006 with "a gaping pressure ulcer and bedsores," according to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.
The cases went to court. One was settled for an undisclosed sum. A jury awarded the family of the dementia patient $300,000, including $225,000 for the home's "reckless disregard."
In another negligence case, also settled in 2010, a jury awarded $7 million to a former resident of Forcht's Hillcrest Health & Rehab who ruptured fresh sutures around her knee when she fell trying to reach the restroom. A home employee had reportedly refused to help her, and placed the call button out of reach.
"The nurse who came in and found her said that it was a horrific sight," said an attorney representing the resident, who had to be resuscitated due to blood loss and spent two months in the hospital.
Following that spate of suits, Forcht tried to change the state's medical liability laws. For the next several years, he pushed Republican lawmakers to pass legislation that would require all claims to be vetted by panels of "health care providers."
In 2017, he got his wish. But it didn't last: One year later, the Kentucky state Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional.
"Republicans in the state have sort of kept a distance from him since then," a Democratic official told Salon. "They feel a little burned, a little embarrassed at how quickly that fell apart."
That did not diminish Forcht's influence in the state. In 2019, amid outgoing Republican Gov. Matt Bevin's spree of more than 400 pardons and commutations, Forcht helped convince Bevin to pardon convicted murderer Patrick Baker — and his involvement made national news.
"Letters show Forcht twice recommended Baker for a pardon and Bevin obliged, over the advice of former state Rep. Denny Butler, an investigator looking into Baker's case on Bevin's behalf," according to The Courier Journal.
Forcht had hosted a fundraiser for Bevin in March of that year at his London, Kentucky, home, which raised $33,150. Four years earlier, he had contributed $100,000 to Bevin's 2015 inaugural.
Asked about the decision in an interview on Kentucky's WHAS, Bevin praised Forcht as a philanthropist and "one of the most generous people in Kentucky."
"Why vilify a guy like that simply because he had an opinion of somebody who was incarcerated?" Bevin wondered.
McConnell, by that time back on the ballot for the 2020 election, expressed disgust at what he called the "completely inappropriate" pardons, which extended to rape, murder and drug offenses.
"I expect he had the power to do it, but looking at the examples of people who were incarcerated as a result of heinous crimes — no, I don't approve of it," he said.
Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause Kentucky, a group that advocates for accountability and equity in government, has stood opposite McConnell on most issues for decades, specifically campaign finance. He told Salon that Forcht and McConnell likely have a broader long-term goal, and may be trying to wrap otherwise untenable liability protections in the bunting of the pandemic.
"These liability protections might help someone like Forcht, but many more people who may be accidentally injured, they're sort of out of luck," Beliles said.
Indeed, McConnell wants the shield to last for five years, longer than even some of his Republican colleagues, though last week he appeared to back off. If Republicans and Democrats can't come together on a package by midnight on Friday, the government will shut down, with only a month to go until President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration.
"I'm hoping that maybe now, with Biden coming in, [McConnell] can do everything right for this issue that affects the needy in this country," Beliles said. "I know we really need it, the people of Kentucky need it."
"I guess I sound like an optimist, in terms of cooperation between the Democrats and Republicans," Beliles added. "But if we're this close, I don't want to offend him."
Neither the Forcht Group nor McConnell's office replied to Salon's requests for comment.
Ohio juvenile court Judge Timothy Grendell has been outspoken about his belief that the COVID-19 pandemic is overblown.
At a protest rally in May, just steps away from where he presides over family court, Grendell proclaimed that public health restrictions to contain the pandemic were unconstitutional and “we should be allowed to get back to our lives.” The following month, he testified to state lawmakers in Columbus that health authorities and a “drumbeat” of media coverage had “created an atmosphere of fear” surrounding the virus.
But Grendell hasn’t confined his views to the public square. A few weeks after he testified to lawmakers, he referred to the pandemic as a “panic-ademic” in the midst of a custody proceeding in his courtroom in Geauga County, outside Cleveland. And he has claimed that 15 mothers in his court have used the virus as an excuse in custody cases to “mess with” their exes’ parenting time.
Then, on Oct. 2, Grendell made an order that legal experts call unheard of, and medical experts say could cause harm. The judge banned two parents, who were wrangling over custody of their young boys, from having the “children undergo COVID-19 testing” without his approval, according to the court record.
A doctor subsequently ordered a coronavirus test for one of the boys before admitting him to a children’s hospital for severe breathing problems. When Grendell found out, he threatened to find the mother in contempt of court, a move that could lead to her being thrown in jail.
Legally, judges have wide discretion to resolve disputes between parents. Some courts have issued standing orders that general concerns about COVID-19 should not disrupt established parenting schedules. But medical experts told ProPublica that a COVID-19 test is often essential for health care providers to protect themselves and to decide on the best course of treatment for a patient.
“We are unable to provide the right kind of care without it,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s basically blindfolding us or asking us to take care of someone with an arm tied behind our back.”
Judges around the country have received media attention for their rulings related to the pandemic. ProPublica reported in July that a Michigan judge sent a 15-year-old girl to juvenile detention, ruling she violated her probation by failing to complete her homework while remote learning. The Michigan Court of Appeals ordered her immediate release later that month.
In April, a judge in South Florida temporarily took custody away from a doctor because she treated patients with COVID-19, the Miami Herald reported. In Iowa, a judge sentenced a mother to 10 days in jail for refusing to follow a child visitation ruling due to COVID-19 concerns, according to the Sioux City Journal. And another judge in South Florida required a mom to wear a mask if she wanted to see her child, wrote the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
The conflict between public health precautions and individual freedoms has been extreme in Ohio, which was among the first states to issue sweeping health orders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Rising discontent with the orders this spring led angry citizens to march on the Ohio Statehouse, chanting “Open Ohio” and breaking several windows. Protesters showed up at the suburban Columbus home of Amy Acton, then the director of the Ohio Department of Health. Some carried rifles. One woman carried a sign with an anti-Semitic message aimed at Acton, who is Jewish. Acton later resigned and some conservative lawmakers turned their attention to Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, with some demanding his impeachment and his arrest, to no avail.
Infection numbers were low early on in Ohio, but since October the seven-day average of new daily COVID-19 cases has spiked tenfold, to about 10,000 on Dec. 13. Daily deaths and hospitalizations also have jumped to record highs.
Timothy Grendell, a Republican former legislator who has been on the bench for more than a decade, has long been a polarizing figure in Ohio political and legal circles. That reputation extends to his courtroom. ProPublica has spoken to mothers and grandmothers in four additional cases who said Grendell has been unfair to them. Some said they have filed complaints against him. Investigations are confidential until concluded; Grendell has not been disciplined by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Ohio.
In May, Grendell sent Stacy Hartman’s two teenage sons to juvenile detention after they refused a court-ordered visit with their father. The judge also threatened to hold Hartman in contempt of court and jail her if she didn’t take them to the visit, according to a court transcript. Hartman told ProPublica that she begged that her two boys not be locked up during a pandemic. After the local ABC television affiliate reported on the story, Hartman said mothers and some grandmothers started to call her with stories about their cases in Grendell’s courtroom. Each of the cases was different. But Hartman was struck by one similarity: “Everybody is scared about what he is going to do.”
The judge also has been embroiled in public spats, sometimes with other elected or political officials. In one high-profile example, in 2014, he threatened to hold the chairwoman of the Geauga County Republican Party in contempt of court after he learned she had privately characterized him as a “narcissist and mentally ill.” The matter was dropped.
Several family law attorneys told ProPublica that they refuse to take cases in Grendell’s court because they do not believe he treats parties in cases fairly. They asked to speak on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to risk the judge filing a complaint against their licenses.
Grendell declined ProPublica’s request to be interviewed for this story. In his most recent judgment entry, on Dec. 9, he said the mother at the center of the COVID-19 testing case had failed to return the children on several occasions, “using COVID-19 or her concerns about the children and COVID-19 as the reason for not complying with the Court’s orders.”
Through his court administrator, Grendell said that he was prohibited from commenting on pending cases, or about broader accusations related to his conduct. He said his decisions are “always in the best interest of the children” and “based on sound law and the actual facts in the case.” Grendell reiterated that he has seen situations where one parent repeatedly misuses COVID-19 testing and quarantining to prevent the other parent from spending court-ordered time with children.
“The court is fully cognizant of the seriousness of COVID and understands the need for all members of the public to be careful and to engage in the necessary and recommended safeguards,” Grendell said.
Amplifying a Dispute
The pandemic had exacerbated an already tense parenting arrangement between Richard Sherrick and Kimberly Page, who were never married but have two boys who are 6 and 4. The two have lobbed accusations and counteraccusations against each other. Page felt ongoing anxiety about her health and the health of the boys. Medical records she provided to ProPublica document the boys’ chronic conditions, including asthma, autism and other ailments. The boys’ Cleveland Clinic pediatrician had deemed them high risk if they became exposed to the coronavirus.
On four occasions since April, Page said, the boys were quarantined or they had to be taken to the doctor or hospital for treatment, which delayed their return to Sherrick. The delays were typically brief, she said. She said that she communicated with her ex each time, and that there have been times in the past when he had delayed returning them to her.
Sherrick and his attorney, Robert Zulandt, did not return multiple requests from ProPublica to comment. In court, Sherrick has accused Page of using visits to doctors and hospitals as an excuse to keep the boys longer than her allotted parenting time. He also has alleged that his ex is obsessive to the point that it creates fear and anxiety for the children and that she has had the children overtreated and tested for COVID-19 and other illnesses. She has disputed those characterizations.
After Grendell issued his ruling prohibiting a COVID-19 test without his permission, Page contacted Geauga County Health Commissioner Tom Quade to talk about it. Quade told ProPublica that he reached out to his agency’s lawyer but ultimately decided not to get involved because the order didn’t apply to his agency, which does not provide COVID testing.
Quade said he did not have all the details about the judge’s order, but it seemed consistent with Grendell’s “this is a big nothingburger” feeling about COVID-19. In their mostly rural county of about 90,000 people, the judge and his wife have repeatedly made public comments that minimize the health threat of the pandemic, he said.
The judge’s order banning the two parents from having their sons tested for COVID-19 without court approval.
Family court judges like Grendell have wide discretion to make decisions in the best interests of children in the middle of custody or abuse cases, experts say.
There are times a judge could issue orders that either require medical treatment or forbid it, like if a child had terminal cancer and the parents disagreed about treatment, said Sharona Hoffman, co-director of the Law-Medicine Center at Case Western Reserve University. But those types of decisions are generally made after a judge hears evidence from both sides on the issues, Hoffman said. In this case, Grendell made the order on his own motion, without a specific request from either parent to ban the test.
“There is no downside to getting a COVID test,” Hoffman said.
The danger of the judge’s order, if followed, is that it might lead to one of the boys not getting medical treatment he needs, said Michelle Mello, a health law and policy professor at Stanford University. What’s striking from a medical-legal perspective, Mello said, is that the child’s test was given during a hospital visit. “It’s standard of care,” Mello said. “Nobody gets into a hospital and around other patients without a COVID test. There’s a public health reason.”
Page said her attorneys warned her against taking her child to the hospital on Nov. 2 for fear of violating the judge’s order. But her son’s breathing was so labored that she and her new husband, a doctor, believed he had to go to Akron Children’s Hospital. The child was administered a COVID-19 test before being admitted and treated during an overnight stay. The test was negative.
The hospital declined to comment about the case, but said in a statement that it performs COVID-19 tests when they are deemed medically necessary and on patients who are admitted with respiratory symptoms.
Saying Page had failed to return the children on time, Sherrick filed an emergency motion with the judge for custody of the children. The next day, Grendell suspended Page’s custody and sent his constable to the hospital to retrieve the child and hand him off to his father. The child’s younger brother was picked up from the home of Sherrick’s mother.
About a week later, Grendell ordered Page to appear before him “to show cause why you should not be held in Contempt of Court for failing to abide by parenting time … and for failing to abide by the order prohibiting COVID-19 testing, unless approved by the Court first.”
On Nov. 20, Grendell issued a new interim order that the children could be tested if they had symptoms and if their pediatrician recommended it. That same day the court ordered supervised visitation. Page has disagreed about the parameters suggested for visitation, so she still has not seen her children.
Page’s attorney said she could still be held in contempt of court, for violating the original order not to have the children tested for COVID-19. Hearings in the case have been delayed until January.
“Panic-ademic”
Grendell’s no-testing order wasn’t the first time COVID-19 had been a point of contention in the case.
Page accused Sherrick of failing to provide adequate medical care for the boys, and her parenting time included multiple visits to doctors and emergency rooms. Page’s medical records show they have undergone five tests for COVID-19 between them.
In a June 29 hearing, Grendell dismissed the virus as a relevant factor: “There is zero evidence that COVID is a danger to 6-year-olds — zip,” Grendell said, according to the court reporter’s transcript of the hearing.
Page had a fever the day before the hearing, a possible symptom of COVID-19, so she sat in her car. Grendell accused her and other mothers — at least 15 total, he said — of improperly using the virus as “a reason to mess with” the parenting time of fathers. “So this is like the cause du jour,” Grendell said. “Hey, you know, I want to mess with the ex or with the dads, since most of these people never married, and COVID-19 gives me an excuse to mess with his parenting schedule.”
Earlier in the pandemic, the COVID-19 “fear factor” made sense, Grendell continued. But now that it was “almost July 1st, it’s not doing much for me,” he said.
Before COVID-19, people brought home colds and diseases every day, he said, branding the pandemic a “panic-ademic.”
The transcript from a June 29 hearing shows Grendell expressing views on the pandemic in court.
Near the conclusion of the hearing, Grendell issued a threat: “I’m going to make this crystal clear,” he said. “The next person who doesn’t follow the orders is going to see a contempt citation coming their way.”
Friction between Page and Sherrick continued. She thought it was too risky for her elder son to attend school in person. He wanted her to stop scheduling so many medical appointments for the children, which delayed their return to him. On Sept. 23, Page went to Sherrick’s home and picked up the child to take him to the hospital, according to a court filing, and was late returning him to Sherrick. Sherrick filed a handwritten motion the next day, claiming Page had a pattern of not returning the boys, and asking for custody.
Grendell then personally called Page’s cellphone, and left a voicemail, saying Sherrick said the child needed to be returned, and instructing her to call him. “I certainly would like an explanation, and I don’t believe COVID at this time period is a legitimate one,” he said on her voicemail, which was provided to her attorneys and ProPublica. It is highly unusual for a judge to call a litigant in a proceeding directly. Grendell did not return ProPublica’s request to comment about the voicemail.
Grendell’s order prohibiting testing for COVID-19 came about a week later. The evidence in the dispute still has not been heard in court.
“He Knows He Makes the Rules”
Page said she reached a breaking point after losing custody of her children and being accused of contempt of court. One set of attorneys warned her not to speak publicly about her case and withdrew from representing her after she ignored their advice.
As a mother, Page said she felt she had to speak out because attorneys have been reluctant to challenge Grendell and without that, she can’t see the case getting resolved fairly. “This judge needs to be held accountable to somebody other than our family,” Page said.
Lax states are attracting shoppers and students from stricter neighbors — and sending back COVID-19 cases. The imbalance underscores the lack of a national policy.
Page’s new attorney, Lee Potts, said when he took over the case he understood it was complicated. But the blanket order prohibiting COVID-19 testing seemed to “come out of nowhere.”
Since Grendell himself made the motion, it made Potts wonder: “Who is telling you this stuff? How are you getting this information?”
Though Sherrick did not respond to requests for comment, his mother, Bonnie Sherrick, lamented the effect the case is having on her grandchildren. She said that her son, as well as Page and Grendell, have all contributed to the problems, but that there’s no reason Page should be penalized for properly managing the medical conditions of the children. “She has been a good mother,” Sherrick said of Page.
Nobody seems to be able to stop Grendell, Bonnie Sherrick said of the judge. “He knows he makes the rules.”
As apprehension about the pandemic intensifies, more Americans — nearly three-quarters — say they wear masks every time they leave the house, according to a poll released Friday.
The poll from KFF also found that 68% of American adults were worried someone in their family will get sick from the coronavirus, the highest level since the nonprofit began tracking the question in February. The public was least worried in April, when 53% were concerned the infection might strike their family. Since April, fewer than half of Republicans have consistently expressed fear that a family member will be sickened by COVID-19. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.)
The latest survey, conducted among 1,676 adults from Nov. 30 to Dec. 8, found that 51% of Americans believed the worst is yet to come from the pandemic, which has claimed more than 300,000 lives in the U.S. The height of optimism occurred in September, when 38% of adults expected things to get worse.
Public support has risen for consistent use of masks, which has been a highly politicized marker of partisan affiliation. The poll found 73% of people said they wear a mask every time they leave home, an increase of 21 percentage points since May due to greater compliance among all partisan and age groups. The same percentage of 73% of respondents said they believe wearing a mask is part of the communal responsibility to prevent the spread of COVID, though nearly half of Republicans view it primarily as a personal choice.
While 87% of Democrats said they always wear a mask out of the house, 71% of independents and 55% of Republicans said the same.
Seven in 10 adults said they are prepared to adhere to physical distancing guidelines for another half-year or more until vaccines are widely available. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats said they had the wherewithal but only half of Republicans did.
Political leanings polarized people in their views about whether their states have enacted enough restrictions to limit the spread of COVID-19. Half of Republicans thought their state had too many restrictions on businesses, while only 7% of Democrats and 24% of independents did. Four of 10 Republicans thought the state had too many restrictions on individuals, while only 3% of Democrats and 19% of independents did.
About half of Americans said stress related to the coronavirus has affected their mental health. The concerns are most widespread among women, young adults, minorities and people who have lost income, either personally or via their spouse, since the start of the outbreak.
The Biden administration should avoid perpetuating the culture of impunity at the apex of U.S. leadership that undoubtedly emboldened President Donald Trump to commit human rights crimes both at home and abroad, argues one Guantánamo Bay defense attorney in an op-ed published Thursday by Business Insider.
"Take it from someone who knows the corrosive effect of impunity. I represent tortured detainees at Guantánamo Bay, where the US government has perpetrated human rights violations shrouded from public view for nearly 19 years."
—Alka Pradhan, Guantánamo defense lawyer
Alka Pradhan, human rights counsel at the Military Commissions Defense Organization at Guantánamo Bay, writes that failure to hold government officials accountable for their criminal policies and actions seriously harms U.S. national security and foreign relations.
For example, writes Pradhan, "during the Bush administration, our use of torture wrecked our national security by weakening international alliances, degrading military operations, and even contributing to troop deaths (pdf)."
"When he took office in 2009, [Former President Barack] Obama almost immediately declared he was ending the United States' torture program," she notes. "Yet the Obama administration refused to hold anyone from the Bush administration accountable, insisting that 'we're going to look forward, not backward.'"
Not only did Obama break a campaign promise by failing to prosecute any of the Bush administration officials who planned, authorized, and implemented the global CIA and military torture regime, his administration actively shielded them from ever having to face justice for their crimes. Obama's refusal to prosecute officials he knew committed torture-related crimes is itself a war crime under the Convention Against Torture.
While none of the Bush torturers ever faced the "reckoning" Obama promised, his administration did prosecute and imprison whistleblowers John Kiriakou and Chelsea Manning for revealing U.S. torture. As Pradhan notes:
Gina Haspel, who destroyed torture evidence at one of the CIA's black sites, is now director of the CIA. Steven Bybee, who authored Justice Department memoranda permitting the use of torture on detainees, is now a 9th Circuit judge who ruled in favor of government immunity for torture. John Yoo, who infamously championed the president's absolute power to crush the genitals of a child and now teaches at Berkeley Law, recently reappeared to apply his theory of absolute power to President Trump.
All of this, asserts Pradhan, has exacerbated a climate of impunity in which "the Trump administration has flouted the law on a nearly daily basis." She writes:
"While these most recent events are shocking, they are also the direct consequences of the lack of government accountability committed under the guise of 'national security' that has been running rampant for decades," writes Pradhan.
While Pradhan does not mention specific examples here, President Gerald Ford's 1974 pardoning of his immediate predecessor, the Watergate criminal and former President Richard Nixon, as well as former President George H.W. Bush's pardons of several convicted Iran-Contra felons, illustrate her point.
"When a 'nation of laws' refuses to apply those laws to people in power, the law dissolves into a matter of opinion... Nearly 20 years after 9/11, half the country still approves of torture—one of the most serious international crimes."
—Pradhan
Pradhan says the incoming Biden administration "will have a chance to account for past and present crimes and they need to take it. That means a long and detailed look backwards at how America has evaded responsibility in the name of 'national security.'"
However, Biden has given no indication that he intends to hold Trump or any members of his administration accountable for their crimes and other misdeeds. To the contrary—and in strikingly similar language to Obama and Ford—Biden transition team insiders recently claimed that the president-elect has said that he "just wants to move on." And as Pradhan notes, "Biden is even considering the nomination of Mike Morell, a torture apologist, to the CIA."
"It seems that the country has learned no lessons," she laments.
"Take it from someone who knows the corrosive effect of impunity," writes Pradhan. "I represent tortured detainees at Guantánamo Bay, where the U.S. government has perpetrated human rights violations shrouded from public view for nearly 19 years."
Pradhan warns:
When a "nation of laws" refuses to apply those laws to people in power, the law dissolves into a matter of opinion. Our leaders try to avoid assigning accountability so assiduously that they twist themselves into knots trying to create suitable euphemisms for heinous acts. That's how we got "enhanced interrogation" instead of torture; "racially tinged" instead of "racist"; and "border security" out of illegally separating families and traumatizing their children...
Nearly 20 years after 9/11, half the country still approves of torture—one of the most serious international crimes. The illegal indefinite detention of brown-skinned men at Guantánamo Bay barely elicits a shrug from most members of Congress, despite the continued condemnation of our allies. This culture of impunity has never been so dangerous.
"The only way to demonstrate that America believes in the rule of law, and to achieve eventual unity, is to hold people accountable," concludes Pradhan, "whether by investigations, truth commissions, or prosecutions. Otherwise, a 'more perfect union' will forever be out of reach."
Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election was (once again) confirmed by the Electoral College on Monday. Congress will meet in early January to certify Biden's victory, and on Jan. 20 he will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.
Donald Trump has been vanquished — but unfortunately, either does not believe that or refuses to admit it. As some general, somewhere, once observed in a war long forgotten, it is hard to truly defeat an enemy who does not know he has been beaten.
There is no quit in him…. This is the reality that we're going to face until he becomes disabled or deceased…. The storyline is going to be that there is a pretender in the White House and that Washington is more corrupt than it was when Trump arrived there, and that there needs to be a crusade to restore the leader. This is far from over.
Even after he is forced from office in January, Donald Trump will likely continue to claim that he is America's "real president" and try to rule in "exile," ginning up violence and other social upheaval by his political cult leaders and other deplorables. The power of this group of dead-enders to cause mayhem is not to be underestimated: Trump received 74 million votes in this election, 11 million more than in 2016.
The professional centrists and others desperate for a return to "normalcy" in the mainstream news media and the political class continue to downplay the damage already done by Donald Trump's fascist and authoritarian regime and by the reality of his coup attempt.
Why is that happening? Because the hope-peddlers, stenographers of current events, and other members of the Church of the Savvy are emotionally, financially, cognitively and professionally committed to the fictions of American folk democracy. These include the disproved belief that the American people are fundamentally good, and that fascism is something that only happens "over there." They are applying an outmoded and obsolete framework that fails to grasp how fascism and authoritarianism have evolved to fit 21st-century society.
Writing at the Atlantic, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explores the problematic terminology of this moment:
Coup may not quite capture what we're witnessing in the United States right now, but there's also a danger here: Punditry can tend to focus too much on decorum and terminology, like the overachieving students so many of us once were, conflating the ridiculous with the unserious. The incoherence and incompetence of the attempt do not change its nature, however, nor do those traits allow us to dismiss it or ignore it until it finally fails on account of that incompetence.
Our focus, she continues, should not be "a debate about the proper terminology," but rather "the frightening substance of what we're facing":
If the Republican Party, itself entrenching minority rule on many levels, won't stand up to Trump's attempt to steal an election through lying and intimidation with the fury the situation demands; if the Democratic Party's leadership remains solely focused on preparing for the presidency of Joe Biden rather than talking openly about what's happening; and if ordinary citizens feel bewildered and disempowered, we may settle the terminological debate in the worst possible way: by accruing enough experience with illegitimate power grabs to evolve a more fine-grained vocabulary.
Act like this is your first coup, if you want to be sure that it's also your last.
What will the long-term impact of Trump's coup attempt be on American democracy and the rule of law? Is this attempted coup and abuse of the legal and political system a trial run for more effective and efficient efforts to overturn future elections? Are Trump and his allies guilty of sedition and treason as defined by the Constitution and the law? How should Joe Biden's administration proceed in terms of investigating or prosecuting Trump and members of his administration?
Painter is a frequent political commentator and analyst on CNN, MSNBC and other news networks. He is also a professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota
This conversation has been edited, as usual, for clarity and length.
Donald Trump has no respect the rule of law and has engaged in a coup attempt against democracy by trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Even if he fails, the precedent is a threat to the United States and a type of victory for fascism in this country. As an expert on constitutional law, how are you making sense of these events?
The jig is up. Trump is not going to try a real coup. But the message, the warning to the United States, is that we better get our act together pretty damn fast. The next person who follows Trump's example is going to be much smarter. He's an incompetent dictator. On Twitter, for example, he is always talking about himself well over half the time. Whereas a real dictator is always talking about "the people." The next person who has Trump's aspirations to power may be a lot shrewder, more manipulative and therefore more effective.
Trump is also transparent as a self-centered crybaby. As a country we have to figure out: Do we believe in facts? We can have ideological differences. We can have different preferences and different views on public policy. But we should be able to look at facts and then have an opinion based on roughly the same reality. Of course, there will be some differences of opinion. But are we going to have wild deviations from the truth? If we do, I believe that the United States is going to be very vulnerable to a dictatorship or a successful coup.
There's all this celebration of the courts and the law and the country's "institutions" because even Republican judges have dismissed Trump and his allies' scheme to overturn the 2020 election. That is premature and misguided. They made those decisions not out of principle but out of pragmatism, because Biden won by such a large margin. If the election were closer, I have no doubt that Republican judges from the Supreme Court on down would have sided with Trump against Joe Biden.
What Trump and his attorneys have been trying is so ridiculous that I do not think even the most conservative court would have gone for it. What we are seeing is not a Bush v. Gore situation — and I do not agree with what the court did in Bush v. Gore. The Supreme Court should have left it alone. But what Trump is trying with the 2020 election is so far out that you would have had to have Supreme Court justices who were subject to removal by the president, or in fear of the president, for it to have worked.
In a close-call election, however? Yes, they probably would have given the election to Trump and the Republicans. But they were not going to give him the 2020 election. If the country keeps going in this direction, we are going to have someone in the future who is much shrewder than Donald Trump, who gets more respect from the military and the like, who could engineer a coup quite easily. That is my ultimate concern.
Trump's coup attempt is an effort to overthrow the people's will in the context of a decades-long extremist push by the Republicans to take total control by ending democracy and replacing it with one-party rule. The Republican Party knows that they cannot win if they allow everyone to vote.
We're either committed to democracy or we are not. We are committed to one person, one vote, or we are not. But what is happening now is that Trump and the Republicans are just trying to further polarize our society.
There are legal scholars, historians and other political observers who are warning that Trump's coup attempt, however ridiculous it may look to some people, is a test run, a prototype for the future. Republicans and other elements of the right wing see what works now and then perfect it for later. What is your assessment?
What is happening is a test of how much can one get away with in the courts. Moreover, how much can one get away with in the court of public opinion by distorting facts and reality?
Donald Trump and his Republican Party's coup attempt has been described by some people as sedition or treason. What does the law actually say on these matters?
I don't think you can prosecute him. If you ask, "What is treason, in the broader sense of the word?" Donald Trump is betraying his country. He has held the highest office in the land for four years. If he were smart, Trump would consider that an honor. I think he wasted those four years. He is a narcissist with an obsession about himself and his own ego.
He tried to undermine and attack the government. I am not a big fan of using sedition statutes and so forth, because that is what Joe McCarthy did. The problem with Trump and the Republicans now is that we are dealing with people who really do believe that there is this "deep state." They want to completely transform the United States government and country to make it conform to their ideology. This is all very dangerous, because through Trump they have power at the highest levels of the government.
Are Trump and his agents engaging in sedition as defined by the Constitution?
I would not use that kind of criminal statute. But I would certainly use obstruction of justice and the false statements statutes. I think there are crimes which are yet to be prosecuted. If you want to talk about what sedition is, in a broader sense, it is a repudiation of our republican form of government and of the country's Constitution and history of constitutional rule.
Many House Republicans have participated in Trump's coup attempt. Should Speaker Nancy Pelosi not allow them to be seated, under the 14th Amendment?
I would not do it. I would just go ahead and let them be seated and shoot their mouths off. The Republicans are trying to use the power that you have as president, and in other high government positions, to suppress dissent by the Democrats and others. This is what the Republican Party wants to stand for? Filing crazy lawsuits, writing crazy letters, and saying things that are completely false? We have had people in the Congress who have said crazy things in the past. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of them now.
Joe Biden wants there to be "healing." He wants us to put this dark episode behind us. I fundamentally disagree. I am of the thinking that Trump and his administration, as well as their supporters and allies, should be investigated, and if merited, punished for their crimes. What advice would you give Biden on that question?
If Joe Biden wants to pardon Trump, he can pardon Trump. The only discretion the president has is a pardon. Otherwise, the Justice Department should prosecute anyone who committed a crime. I don't care if it's Donald Trump or if it's the guy next door. We're all equal. The mandate for the attorney general is that we prosecute anyone who committed crimes.
I think if there are accusations made against high-ranking people in the Trump administration, or high-ranking people in the Biden administration, or any members of the president's family, have an independent counsel investigate it and make the professional decision with professional prosecutors. It should never be a political decision as to whether someone gets prosecuted or not.
Trump and his administration are actively trying to sabotage Biden's presidency by putting key Trump agents in positions at the highest levels throughout the United States government. What can be done by Biden to remove them?
Many of these people are presidential appointees. Biden can remove an awful lot of people. Trump and his people are trying various games by putting people into career slots. It is called "burrowing," where you take a political appointee and stick them into career slots. It is hard to get rid of them.
Why are the Republican attorneys general, members of Congress and others going along with Trump's coup attempt? Especially since it appears doomed to fail in the short term.
It is money. Trump has raised a lot of money for them. It is all about ideology and appealing to the right wing and getting airtime on right-wing talk radio. They are going along to not be targeted by other right-wingers. Now Republicans will do one of two things. They'll lay low and try to have nothing to do with it — those are the smart ones. There are other Republicans, such as Ted Cruz, who will play along and go for the ride. Cruz is trying to get Trump's supporters to love him so he can be the leading candidate in 2024.
Should the attorneys general who tried to overturn the election be disbarred?
They may want to run for Senate. Texas Attorney General [Ken] Paxton, he probably wants to run for senator. State attorneys general always have political ambitions. It's a steppingstone to the next and more powerful job. These attorneys general want attention. They know that they are not going to be disbarred. They probably should be, but the Texas bar is not going to disbar Paxton.
How do you think this coup attempt, and Trump's authoritarian behavior more generally, has impacted the United States?
It is polarizing our country. We have got much work to do to bring the United States back together. I trust Joe Biden is going to be able to do that. I'm a political independent: Biden was never my favorite candidate in the primaries, but he is a good guy. We as Americans need to realize that we have so much more to benefit from being together in this country. We may disagree on some things, but our political system has worked for over 200 years.
Yes, we had the Civil War. Yes, we have been through great challenges. But we do have a system that works. I was never a big fan of Ronald Reagan, I was a moderate Republican. But the one thing I liked about Reagan was his optimism and how much he believed in America. Reagan never had the cynicism that underlies Trumpism with this idea of the "deep state" and that somehow "the establishment" is evil. With Trumpism, I see too many similarities with the fascist movements in Europe in the 1930s.
The Lincoln Project and other Never Trump conservatives were hoping that the 2020 election would bring a blue tsunami so massive that Trumpism would be repudiated across the board, but it didn't work out that way. Although President-elect Joe Biden enjoyed a decisive victory — winning 306 electoral votes and defeating Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote — the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives will be smaller in 2021. And it remains to be seen whether Democrats or Republicans will be the majority in the U.S. Senate in 2021. Moreover, Trump's MAGA base is still fired up. Reed Galen, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, discusses the future of Trumpism in an op-ed published by the Washington Post this week — and he warns that the battle against Trumpism will not end when Trump leaves the White House on January 20.
"While President Trump will leave office as a failed, one-term president, the fight against Trumpism is just beginning," Galen explains. "A year ago, The Lincoln Project launched with two stated goals. First, Defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box. Second, ensure Trumpism failed alongside him. We are proud to have been a part of the broad and deep coalition that helped elect Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris to the White House. Trumpism, however, is far from extinction."
Galen adds that since the election, "much of the Republican Party" has decided to "turn fully against American democracy" and keep Trump in the White House even though he clearly lost the election.
"Trump's allies and abettors, including more than 100 lawmakers and 18 Republican state attorneys general, tried to poison our political system in the service of a personality cult," Galen writes. "Theirs is a veneration driven not by high ideals but by fear, resentment and a transparent desire to maintain power for its own sake. Even now, many Republicans in Congress continue to try, by ludicrous and quixotic means, to overturn the will of more than 80 million voters. This week, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) privately warned Republicans not to disrupt the official opening of electoral votes on January 6."
Trumpism, Galen laments, is alive and well "despite Biden's clear and overwhelming victory"—and that was evident when the Proud Boys recently "rampaged in Downtown Washington, reminding us that violence is their next iteration."
"Trump's camp followers, such as Stephen K. Bannon, Alex Jones, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax and many others, will not stop actively injecting disinformation into the country's air supply," Galen stresses. "They are highly skilled, and we must not underestimate their ability to pull us apart and keep us divided. Trump's helpmates have called for honorable public officials to be beheaded, drawn and quartered and taken outside to be shot. They are living proof of what former President Ronald Reagan said: 'Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction."
A wide variety of Trump critics rallied around Biden this year, from veteran conservatives like George Will, Carly Fiorina, Bill Kristol, Mona Charen and Cindy McCain to self-described "democratic socialists" like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — all of whom agreed that Trump's presidency has been a disaster. And Galen wraps up his op-ed by emphasizing that in 2021, Democrats and Never Trumpers will need to join forces and remain vigilant against Trumpism, policy differences and all.
"Those of us who voted for Biden and Harris must remember that our coalition is our best offense and defense," Galen writes. "Though we will not agree on everything, we must march forward together against the forces of authoritarianism."
A video that shows a Texas Republican elector and State Republican Executive Committee official spinning a blatantly false tale is going viral on social media, with outraged conservatives insisting it is proof the U.S. Supreme Court, and especially Chief Justice John Roberts, are compromised. Some are even calling for the Chief Justice to be arrested.
GOP presidential elector Matt Patrick of Dallas, who cast his vote for President Donald Trump on Monday at the Texas State House, also took to the floor and delivered an easily-debunked fake news story about why, he says, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's frivolous lawsuit – joined by 17 other state attorneys general and 126 Republican members of Congress.
Had it been successful that lawsuit would have voided the votes of voters in four battleground states that Joe Biden won.
Remember, all nine justices said they would have voted against the case had they taken it, but they refused to hear in for lack of standing.
Before you listen to Matt Patrick's speech, know that conservative attorney Ed Whelan – who clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, is the President of the right wing Ethics and Public Policy Center think tank, was deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, and is a National Review contributor – totally debunked Patrick's claims as "an absurd fantasy."
Why?
Patrick's entire story focuses on a supposed meeting the nine justices had in a "closed room" with no computers or phones at the Supreme Court to debate whether or not to take the Texas case.
As several experts have noted, the Supreme Court justices have not met in person in months, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Patrick refers to a report he claims to have read "online," describing it as something that "was written by someone who was a current staffer for one of the current Supreme Court justices," he says in the C-SPAN video also posted to Twitter by producer Howard Mortman:
"I’ll just describe for you the report that I read, and you can make of it what you will," Patrick tells the Texas group of electors. "He said that the justices, as they always do, went into a closed room to discuss cases they're taking or do debate. There’s no phones, no computers, no nothing. No one else is in the room except for the nine justices. It’s typically very civil. They usually don’t hear any sound, they just debate what they are doing. But when the Texas case was brought up, he said he heard screaming through the walls, as Justice Roberts and the other liberal justices were insisting that this case not be taken up."
"And the reason – the words that were heard through the wall when Justice Thomas and Justice Alito were citing Bush vs. Gore, from John Roberts were, 'I don’t give a ____ about that case, I don’t want to hear about it. At that time, we didn’t have riots.'"
"So what he was saying was that he was afraid of what would happen if they did the right thing. And I’m sorry, but that is moral cowardice. And we in the SREC [State Republican Executive Committee], I am an SREC member, we put those words in there very specifically because the charge of the Supreme Court is to ultimately be our final arbitrator, our final line of defense for right and wrong, and they did not do their duty. So I think we should leave these words in because I want to send a strong message to them.
(It's unclear what "words" he's referring to, but immaterial to his false story.)
Here's Whelan weighing in:
And here's Andrew Feinberg, Managing Editor of Breakfast Media:
Well-known political scientist Norman Ornstein:
Here's a conservative going ballistic, rather than checking Patrick's absurd story. This is Dan Gainor, who works for a right wing media "watchdog" yet can't fact check this speech:
Of course the story is now showing up in right wing media, again, because they can't bother to fact-check:
President Donald Trump lashed out at former Sen. John McCain on Thursday.
Trump's latest complaints came after the release of new text messages sent by former FBI agent Peter Strzok.
"The new Strzok texts reveal that journalist Carl Bernstein, who helped expose the Watergate scandal in the 1970s and is a regular guest on CNN, told the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs that he received the 'dossier' from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)," Breitbart reported Thursday.
That paragraph appeared in the ninth paragraph of the story, but was singled out by Trump in a tweet sent after 10 pm.
"Check out last in his class John McCain, one of the most overrated people in D.C.," Trump tweeted.
President Donald Trump continues to have trouble accepting the fact he lost the 2020 presidential election.
Trump was humiliated when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against his scheme to steal the election. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were all appointed to the court by President Trump -- and they all ruled against his attempted coup.
As Trump and his allies continue to push conspiracy theories about election fraud, the president remains angry over his court losses.
"I am very disappointed in the United States Supreme Court, and so is our great country!" Trump complained on Twitter after 10 p.m. on Thursday evening.
