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19 October 20
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Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance | A Rap Sheet for a Former President
Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "If Trump is prosecuted, obstruction of justice, bribery and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. could be among the charges."
he next attorney general of the United States faces two daunting decisions: whether to investigate possible criminal conduct by a former president and members of his administration, and if so, whether to file charges.
The Justice Manual directs federal prosecutors to bring charges if they believe that an offense has been committed, if the admissible evidence is enough “to obtain and sustain a conviction,” and if prosecution will serve a substantial federal interest.
It will be up to the attorney general to decide whether filing criminal charges against Donald Trump and his aides best serves justice, but public reporting suggests there is evidence that could support such charges. State prosecutors also may have evidence of illegal conduct. The statute of limitations for most federal offenses is five years. That means crimes that occurred as far back as 2016 could be charged until their anniversary date in 2021. Older offenses may also be charged if the conduct was part of an ongoing conspiracy — for instance, if a coverup continued within the five-year period covered by the statute. Trump has engaged in other deplorable conduct that probably does not amount to criminal activity. Hiding accurate information about the coronavirus epidemic, for example, may have contributed to the deaths of Americans, but the causal connection is probably too tenuous to charge him with crimes such as negligent homicide or manslaughter. Some say Trump’s conduct toward Russia is treason — including his silence following reporting about Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan — but this is a nonstarter. Conduct cannot amount to treason unless a person provides aid and comfort to an enemy with whom our nation is engaged in armed conflict.
Here are categories of possible crimes that prosecutors could consider — what the rap sheet of an ex-president might look like.
Obstruction of justice
The gist of this crime is impeding an investigation for a corrupt purpose. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election developed evidence of 10 instances when Trump was involved in obstruction. In at least four of those instances, Mueller laid out evidence sufficient to prove each element of the offense: Trump’s efforts to limit Mueller’s investigation to future elections; to dissuade his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, from cooperating with prosecutors; to fire Mueller; and to cover up the attempt to fire Mueller. It is not necessary to show that any underlying crime was committed to establish obstruction of justice. Intentional interference in an investigator’s work is crime enough.
Although some critics dismiss obstruction of justice as “mere process crimes,” prosecutors consider this a serious offense because it goes to the heart of the criminal justice system’s truth-finding mission.
False statements and perjury also fall within the obstruction family. During Mueller’s investigation, Trump refused to submit to an in-person interview but agreed to answer written questions. A less-redacted version of Mueller’s report released this summer revealed that the special counsel examined whether Trump lied in his written answers when he denied he had advance knowledge of the release of stolen emails by WikiLeaks, which is inconsistent with other evidence.
Family members and associates of Trump are suspected of committing perjury, or lying under oath, at congressional hearings. Lawmakers have pointed to discrepancies between the testimony of certain witnesses and the testimony of Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Stephen Bannon and Erik Prince.
Bribery
Asking for a thing of value in exchange for the performance of an official act violates the federal bribery statute. When Trump threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine in 2019, he was arguably doing just that. The evidence at his impeachment trial included Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asking for a “favor” in the form of finding dirt on a political opponent, Joe Biden. A witness at the impeachment inquiry testified that announcing an investigation that could implicate Biden was a quid pro quo for receiving the military aid. Although the Senate acquitted Trump in his impeachment trial, the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause should not bar criminal charges, because Trump did not face a loss of liberty over impeachment but rather loss of the presidency.
Trump also uses his properties to generate revenue from parties doing business with the government, which could justify a bribery investigation. Recent reporting indicates that lobbyists and foreign government officials pay to get into the Trump International Hotel in Washington and the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to obtain access to Trump. If the president rewarded those spending money at his hotels and resorts with favorable official decisions in office, he could be criminally liable.
Conspiracy to defraud the United States
This occurs when individuals agree to obstruct the work of a federal agency. If members
of the Trump administration sabotaged the U.S. Postal Service to influence the outcome of the 2020 election, this charge could be considered for anyone who conspired to achieve the illegal objective, even those who took no personal action. This way, the law can reach people who give illegal orders as well as those who carry them out.
Campaign finance violations
In August 2018, Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions to Trump’s presidential campaign to buy the silence of adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had had an affair with Trump. According to the government’s sentencing memo, Cohen set up a shell corporation to make a $130,000 payment to prevent Daniels from making public statements that would harm Trump’s candidacy. As stated in court documents in Cohen’s case, the payments assisted the campaign by preventing the publication of negative stories about candidate Trump that
might influence the election. His payment exceeded the legal limit of $2,700 for campaign contributions and violated the law prohibiting corporate contributions. The government stated that Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1” — identified as someone who ran “an ultimately successful campaign for President of the United States.” It appears that the Justice Department has already reached the conclusion that there is sufficient evidence to charge Trump.
Pre-presidency crimes
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has stated in public documents that the subpoenas he served to obtain Trump’s tax and financial records are part of an investigation into possible crimes committed before Trump became president. Cohen testified before Congress that Trump would alter statements of his wealth and assets to suit his purposes. When seeking a loan to buy the Buffalo Bills, for example, Trump overstated his
net worth to boost the appearance of his creditworthiness, Cohen said. On his tax returns, according to Cohen, Trump would understate the value of his assets to lower his tax bill. Potential crimes include bank, insurance and tax fraud; money laundering; and preparing false business records.
Similar allegations led a court to order Trump’s son Eric to appear for a deposition in a civil investigation brought by the New York attorney general. The deposition occurred Oct. 5. Among the topics reportedly probed was a $21 million deduction taken by the elder Trump on a property known as Seven Springs, outside New York City. The deduction was claimed because Trump donated an easement on the forest surrounding the retreat to a public land trust for conservation purposes. Some have questioned the appraisal of the property as sketchy. While those proceedings are civil in nature, they may further illuminate any criminal conduct in the business practices of Trump and the Trump Organization.
Hatch Act violations
The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from engaging in certain political activities. The idea is to keep governance separate from campaigning and to protect workers from being intimidated into supporting a particular candidate as a condition of their employment. While the president is not bound by the Hatch Act, it is a crime for him to command or coerce others to violate the law. Criminal violations of the Hatch Act are punishable by up to three years in prison.
When Trump schedules campaign events at the White House, as he has recently, he is commanding federal employees to violate the Hatch Act by setting up the room, admitting the guests or otherwise performing tasks to support the event. When the president spoke from the White House at the Republican National Convention and recognized uniformed Border Patrol agents who were in attendance, he arguably was soliciting or conspiring with them to violate the Hatch Act.
Crimes for another day?
In his report, Mueller avoided accusing Trump of a crime because Justice Department policy prohibited him from filing charges against a sitting president. Mueller reasoned that making the accusation when no trial could occur would deprive Trump of the opportunity to defend himself in court. He made clear, however, that his report was intended to “preserve the evidence” obtained in his investigation because “a President does not have immunity after he leaves office.”
Biden has said he would leave the business of the Justice Department to his attorney general. So it would fall to a future attorney general to decide whether to accept Mueller’s invitation to investigate and charge the 45th president with crimes. Charging a former president is fraught. We do not want to become a country where presidents are routinely charged after they leave office with crimes stemming from policy decisions, but we also do not want to be a country where a president can commit crimes with impunity, knowing he will not be held accountable.
A cutout of U.S. President Donald Trump stands on a balcony in the Northampton County borough of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 2, 2020. (photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
In 2016, Trump Won These Rust Belt Counties on the Economy. In 2020, He Might Lose Them Over Coronavirus
Ernest Scheyder, Nick Brown and Jason Lange, Reuters
Excerpt: "Tanya Wojciak, a lifelong Republican and suburban mom from northeast Ohio, is the kind of battleground state voter President Donald Trump can't afford to lose - but already has."
She is angry at Trump’s handling of the novel coronavirus crisis that has killed more than 219,000 Americans, the largest death toll of any country. She lost a friend to COVID-19 in April.
Wojciak, 39, said Trump’s spotty use of masks and repeated attempts to downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus - even after being hospitalized for it himself - is “not presidential at all.” She said she regrets voting for him four years ago. A hand-painted Biden sign now graces her front lawn in Cortland.
Some 340 miles (547 km) east, in Bangor, Pennsylvania, Leo Bongiorno says he, too, is voting for Biden after sitting out the 2016 contest.
Customers at Bongiorno’s brewery and eatery, Bangor Trust Brewing, remained scarce even after Pennsylvania began to ease its bar-and-restaurant restrictions in June. Daily COVID-19 infections in the state reached their highest totals since mid-April this month, and Bongiorno says many of his regulars are too nervous to go to bars.
The federal relief loan he received was less than he would have made collecting unemployment checks, and the brewery’s monthly bills dwarf sales. He said the country needs a president who understands what small businesses need to survive a pandemic - and that isn’t Trump. “At this point we’re just sitting here waiting for the creditors to come collect,” Bongiorno said.
Rust Belt battleground states including Ohio and Pennsylvania handed Trump the White House in 2016, and they will again help decide the Nov. 3 election. Four years ago, Trump’s message of economic revitalization won votes from many white, working-class voters who had cast ballots for Democrat Barack Obama in 2012.
Many of those voters remain loyal to the president. Still, support for Trump is slipping in these states this year, and the pandemic is a big reason why. Polling data show the 2020 race is increasingly becoming a referendum on the president’s handling of COVID-19.
Reuters/Ipsos polling, conducted Oct. 9-13, showed 50% of likely voters nationwide feel Biden would be better at managing the pandemic response, compared to 37% for Trump.
Opinion polling in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin shows that voters there, too, think Biden is the better candidate to lead on the coronavirus.
Recent polls by Reuters/Ipsos and others show Biden tied with Trump in Ohio and leading in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, albeit by narrower margins than Biden’s double-digit lead nationally.
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Mandi Merritt said Trump has taken “swift and decisive action on the coronavirus every step of the way.”
“While Democrats continue to play politics with the coronavirus and a vaccine, President Trump continues to lead the country on a path to recovery,” Merritt said in a statement to Reuters.
TUG OF WAR
Voter Wojciak lives in Trumbull County, Ohio; brewery owner Bongiorno resides in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. A Republican presidential candidate had not carried either county in decades until Trump prevailed there in 2016.
Many residents liked Trump’s protectionist trade philosophy, strong defense of gun rights and hard-line stance on immigration. They helped Trump win Trumbull by about 6 percentage points, and Northampton by about 4 percentage points.
Now some have had enough. In September, likely voters in Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district, which includes Northampton County, said they would vote for Biden over Trump 51% to 44%, according to a Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll. A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted Oct. 2-6 showed likely voters favoring Biden 49% to 43% over Trump in Ohio’s industrial north, a region that includes Trumbull County.
COVID-19 appears to be a factor. Reuters interviews with more than 50 voters across Trumbull and Northampton counties revealed deep-seated frustration with Trump over his downplaying of the disease, and his failure to wear masks consistently and to encourage all Americans to do likewise.
Northampton County has seen more than 300 COVID-19 deaths, or about 100 per 100,000 residents - well above the national average of about 66 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people. At least 76 of the county’s fatalities occurred at a single nursing home in Upper Nazareth Township, a community of around 7,000 inhabitants.
Life in Northampton looks almost normal at first glance, with restaurants offering outdoor dining and schoolyards ringing with the crack of baseball bats. But workers here are still feeling the pain of furloughs and lost paychecks; the county’s August unemployment rate was 10.2%, up from 4.9% a year earlier.
Located in eastern Pennsylvania on the New Jersey border, the county has defied the typical Rust Belt narrative. Recent decades have brought industrial losses, including the 2003 dissolution of Bethlehem Steel, once the world’s largest steelmaker. Still Northampton has managed to attract other industries, including medical device manufacturing plants. An influx of warehouses brought additional new jobs, and the county is also home to Lehigh University in Bethlehem and Lafayette College in Easton.
Today, the county is a tug of war between competing political bases. Urban centers Easton and Bethlehem lean left. The so-called Slate Belt to the north - a mix of farms and factories surrounding quaint town centers - is Trump country. Driving its meandering roads early this month, a Reuters reporter counted 77 Trump campaign signs, to just 24 for Biden.
Ohio’s Trumbull County is another once-mighty manufacturing hub that has seen factory jobs flee in the past 30 years. It’s an area Trump claimed in 2016 with promises of economic revival.
Employment in the county, part of the so-called “Steel Valley” that hugs the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, suffered after closures of factories run by General Electric Co, General Motors Co and others. Along quiet streets in communities across the county, some single-family homes, once the pride of the middle-class, blue-collar workforce, are now in disrepair.
Today, the local economy is in limbo, suffering from the forces of globalization, the opioid epidemic - and now the coronavirus. More than 130 people in Trumbull County have died from COVID-19, or about 68 per 100,000 residents.
The August unemployment rate was 11.4%, up from 6.3% in the same month last year. Strict social distancing guidelines from Republican Governor Mike DeWine have limited customers in the county’s stores, restaurants and hotels.
A former light-bulb plant on the outskirts of Warren, the Trumbull County seat, sits vacant and derelict, its hundreds of rectangular glass windows cracked and shattered by passers-by hurling rocks at the building.
TRUMP ‘TOTALLY BOMBED’
Locals in these communities debate who’s to blame for the pandemic. Few give Trump a free pass, but his failures are not as damning to some as to others.
In Cortland’s Iron House bar, a crowded watering hole filled with Trump and Biden supporters alike - few of them wearing masks - furniture salesman Bill Bevec said the president lost his vote when he understated the deadly nature of the virus last winter. In taped conversations with journalist Bob Woodward released last month, Trump acknowledged that he had played down the danger despite having evidence to the contrary in order not to panic the American public.
“Don’t you think we had a right to know how bad the disease was?” said Bevec, 66, who voted for the president in 2016. “Four years ago, I was Trump’s biggest cheerleader. But I think he totally bombed on coronavirus.”
Trump has repeatedly defended his handling of the crisis. Courtney Parella, the Trump campaign’s deputy national press secretary, said the president has faced the pandemic “head on.” She cited his restrictions on travel from China, and claimed the administration produced a COVID-19 vaccine “in record time,” though no vaccine has yet been approved for use in the United States.
“President Trump is continuing to fight to save American lives, and he will not stop until we’ve beaten the coronavirus and Americans feel safe again,” Parella said in a statement.
The Biden campaign has its eye on older voters like Bevec who polls show are frightened of the virus, but who either voted for Trump or sat out in 2016, campaign officials told Reuters. Trump won the 55-plus age group by 13 percentage points in 2016, according to exit polls.
Biden appears to have made major inroads among older voters. The two candidates now split American voters aged 55 years and older almost evenly: 47% say they will vote for Biden, while 46% back Trump, according to Reuters/Ipsos national surveys in September and October. [nL1N2GZ05X]
American Bridge 21st Century, a Super PAC that supports Democratic candidates, has spent $40 million on ads in swing districts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, specifically targeting white, working-class voters and seniors who supported Trump in 2016.
For some former Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania, though, Trump’s missteps on coronavirus are not proving a turn-off.
Roshaun Kerdzaliev, who twice voted for Obama before flipping to Trump in 2016, manages Jaid’s Lounge, his family’s sports bar in Wind Gap, Pennsylvania. Kerdzaliev, standing alongside rows of taped-off barstools, said sales have fallen more than a third thanks to the pandemic.
He said Trump could have done more to prepare the country for COVID-19. But now that the damage is done, he said, Trump is the better leader to fix it.
“If I want someone who I think is actually going to rebuild the economy after all this, that’s Trump,” said Kerdzaliev, 40.
Shonna Bland, owner of Cortland’s Top Notch Diner, has plastered a 20-foot “TRUMP” banner on the side of her building and taped a not-so-subtle note to patrons on the door: “We will NOT force any mask/facial coverings at our establishment!!!!!!”
Bland, 45, said she voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, then defected to Trump in 2016. She plans to vote for him again.
“People with pre-existing conditions maybe should stay home, but the rest of us should be free to go about our lives, and Trump gets that,” Bland said.
Trump loyalists like Bland and Kerdzaliev mean battleground states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania are still within Trump’s reach.
Still, by some measures, the pandemic has made the election Biden’s to lose. In northeast Ohio, Wojciak, the disgruntled Republican, said she now plans to vote for Democrats for the rest of her life. She’s encouraging her teenage son Max Matlack to vote Democratic, too.
Matlack, 18, has been avoiding most public spaces since the spring out of fear that his asthma puts him at risk for serious illness if he contracts the coronavirus. He cast his vote for Biden on Oct. 12 in a former bank that the Trumbull County Board of Elections has turned into a socially distanced polling place.
“He’s better than what we have now,” Matlack said.
A car with US President Trump in it drives past supporters outside Walter Reed Medical Center on Oct. 4. (photo: Alex Edelman/Getty)
Andrew Bacevich | Reframing America's Role in the World: The Specter of Isolation
Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch
Bacevich writes: "Only by genuinely democratizing the formulation of foreign policy will real change become possible."
A family shopping for food. (photo: US Department of Agriculture/Flickr)
Federal Judge Strikes Down Trump Plan to Slash Food Stamps for 700,000 Unemployed Americans
Spencer S. Hsu, The Washington Post
Hsu writes: "A federal judge on Sunday formally struck down a Trump administration attempt to end food stamp benefits for nearly 700,000 unemployed people, blocking as 'arbitrary and capricious' the first of three such planned measures to restrict the federal food safety net."
federal judge on Sunday formally struck down a Trump administration attempt to end food stamp benefits for nearly 700,000 unemployed people, blocking as “arbitrary and capricious” the first of three such planned measures to restrict the federal food safety net.
In a scathing 67-page opinion, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of D.C. condemned the Agriculture Department for failing to justify or even address the impact of the sweeping change on states, saying its shortcomings had been placed in stark relief amid the coronavirus pandemic, during which unemployment has quadrupled and rosters of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have grown by more than 17 percent, with more than 6 million new enrollees.
The rule “at issue in this litigation radically and abruptly alters decades of regulatory practice, leaving States scrambling and exponentially increasing food insecurity for tens of thousands of Americans,” Howell wrote, adding that the Agriculture Department “has been icily silent about how many [adults] would have been denied SNAP benefits had the changes sought . . . been in effect while the pandemic rapidly spread across the country.” The judge concluded that the department’s “utter failure to address the issue renders the agency action arbitrary and capricious.”
Howell’s ruling granted summary judgment to a coalition of 19 states, D.C., New York City and private groups that sued to stop the new rule, finalized in December, to eliminate states’ discretion to waive work requirements in distressed economic areas.
Howell temporarily enjoined the proposal on March 13, the same day President Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency. Congress then waived the requirement for the duration of the emergency as part of economic relief legislation, and the Trump administration suspended its planned April implementation date.
However, the Agriculture Department appealed the judge’s earlier order, and absent court intervention the rule would have taken full effect at the end of the state of emergency. Spokesmen for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James called the decision “a win for common sense and basic human decency,” adding that the rule “would have not only made it harder for thousands to feed their families and risk them going hungry, but would have exacerbated the public health crisis we face and the economic recession we are still in the midst of under President Trump.”
Attorneys general from D.C., Maryland, Virginia, New York, California and numerous other states alleged that the change — to slash nearly $5.5 billion from food stamp spending over five years — would require “drastic cuts” for adults without children, ignored local labor market conditions and was based on no evidence.
States are in the best position to evaluate local economic circumstances and the effectiveness of work requirements, they argued, warning against the elimination of “essential food assistance for benefits recipients who live in areas with insufficient jobs.”
Able-bodied adults without dependents, between the ages of 18 and 49, can receive benefits for a maximum of three months during a three-year period, unless they are working or enrolled in an education or training program for 80 hours a month.
States have been able to waive this time limit to ensure access to food stamps during the ups and downs of reentering the workforce. Before this rule, counties with an unemployment rate as low as 2.5 percent were included in waived areas.
The new rule would have tightened the criteria for states applying for such waivers, making 6 percent the minimum unemployment rate for a county to receive a waiver.
In announcing the change last year, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said it was “about restoring the original intent of food stamps . . . moving more able-bodied Americans to self-sufficiency.”
Perdue cited the economic expansion as a basis for tightening states’ waivers. He said the number of Americans receiving benefits under SNAP has grown from 17 million to more than 36 million since 2000, although the unemployment rate was lower at the time.
Two other proposed rule changes, not yet final, aim to cap deductions for utility allowance and to limit access to SNAP for working poor families.
A study by the Urban Institute indicated the combined impact of these rules would cut 3.7 million people from SNAP in an average month. Benefits would be reduced for millions more, and 982,000 students would lose automatic access to free or reduced-price school meals.
Students attend class at Yung Wing School P.S. 124 in New York City on October 1. (photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Hybrid School Might Be the Worst of Both Worlds
Anna North, Vox
Excerpt: "Part-time school during the pandemic might create as many problems as it solves."
EXCERPT:
Hybrid models are supposed to limit the spread of Covid-19. Experts worry they might do the opposite.
American schools began weighing the idea of hybrid instruction in the late spring and early summer, when it became clear that Covid-19 would be far from gone at the start of the fall semester. Ultimately, about 12 percent of districts around the country were planning on a hybrid start as of late August, according to a survey by the Center on Reinventing Public Education. That percentage amounts to thousands of schools nationwide — New York City alone has over 1,800, serving more than 1.1 million students.
Hybrid models vary in their execution — some have students coming in only a few days per week, while others split students into morning and afternoon groups. But however they work, the idea is roughly the same: A hybrid schedule reduces the number of kids in each classroom at once to better allow for social distancing. It may also reduce the number of people each student interacts with in-person, since students often stay with cohorts that are smaller than their normal classes. And many districts are setting aside time in their hybrid schedules to deep-clean schools, although some have begun to raise questions about how much surface cleaning really matters when it comes to reducing viral spread, Nuzzo noted.
Beyond questions about the efficacy of cleaning, there are a couple of potential problems with hybrid schedules. For one thing, hybrid education doesn’t necessarily reduce the number of students each teacher has contact with, since they may teach multiple cohorts. That’s concerning because adults are at much greater risk of serious illness or death from the virus than children are. “Really, who we’re concerned about most in terms of reducing risk in a school environment is the teacher,” Nuzzo said.
Then there’s the question of what happens during the days or hours when students are remote. While some parents are caring for children at home during that time, others are enrolling kids in camps or child care centers — some of which are adapting to care for more school-aged kids. Still other families are bringing kids together in informal groups sometimes called “pods” to share child care responsibilities. Finally, older children may be getting together with friends without adult supervision.
Overall, if kids “are in some other care environment where they are now exposed to another group of people, then we may have effectively increased the number of people all having contact with each other over the course of a week,” Nuzzo said.
That, in turn, increases the likelihood that a student could bring Covid into school and infect others. A number of epidemiologists have raised this concern in recent months. For example, William Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote in an August op-ed in the Washington Post that “hybrid school plans make it easier for the virus to transmit into schools, simply by producing more links between schools and families along which the virus can travel.”
So far, there’s little comprehensive data on Covid-19 and schools in the US, let alone on hybrid models, but some data does show troubling hints. For example, the Covid-19 Schools Response Dashboard, which pulls together case counts and other data from a selection of schools around the country, found that, as of September 22, staff infection rates were actually higher at schools using hybrid learning than at schools with fully in-person instruction. There could be reasons for this beyond the model itself — for example, dashboard co-creator Emily Oster told Vox that schools might be more likely to use a hybrid schedule if Covid-19 transmission rates in the area are already high.
Still, there’s little evidence in the data so far that hybrid schedules make schools safer, and according to experts, there’s a lot of cause for concern.
With kids home for much of the week, parents still face child care struggles
The other, related problem of hybrid models is one of child care. In the spring, the closure of schools and day care centers caused a crisis for working parents around the country. The problem was most severe for women, who still shoulder the majority of caregiving responsibilities.
Women also lost a majority of the millions of jobs shed by the American economy early in the pandemic, and many economists feared that without a solution to the child care problem, even more women would be pushed out of the workforce. Mothers, especially those who are primary breadwinners, faced the prospect of “having to choose between making a living and taking care of their families,” Nicole Mason, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told Vox this summer.
Some economists — and families — looked to fall as a possible respite, when a resumption of school would allow moms to get back to work. That didn’t happen. Instead, many districts started the fall either in hybrid mode or fully remote.
Hybrid models may have provided some parents with a bit of a break — as Madowitz put it, “for a lot of parents, anything is better than nothing.” But for many others, a few days of child care and supervision isn’t that much better than no child care at all.
That may be especially true for parents in low-wage service jobs who don’t have a lot of control over their schedules. Hybrid models may also pose a particular problem for families that rely on grandparents or other older relatives for child care, Madowitz said, since the virus exposure of a partial week at school could put those relatives at risk. Indeed, more than half of New York City families have chosen all-remote rather than hybrid learning this fall, with some citing older family members as the reason.
With millions of kids still at home for at least part of the week, then, millions of parents — a majority of them moms — haven’t been able to return to their normal working hours. Instead of rebounding with the return of school, women’s employment plummeted this fall, with 865,000 women dropping out of the labor force in September, compared with just 216,000 men.
And while hybrid learning may be helping some parents get a bit more work in, “when you look at what’s been going on with jobs, its really hard to believe you’re gonna get this huge pop” in women’s employment from hybrid schooling alone, Madowitz said.
Not to mention, any child care break that parents get from hybrid schooling may be short-lived if schools have to return to remote instruction due to rising Covid-19 cases in the area. That’s already happened at more than 100 schools in New York City, which closed earlier this month due to growing clusters of the virus in Brooklyn and Queens. And New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that the entire school system will close if the city reaches 3 percent test positivity over a seven-day period. That means any parents who have been banking on school to facilitate their work schedules will have to scramble for another solution — or quit.
When it comes to women’s employment in particular, “I’m just deeply scared,” Madowitz said.
Hybrid models may benefit students, but there may be more creative solutions that would work better
The biggest benefits of hybrid models are likely educational. “At least in the hybrid education models, the students are getting some real-time, in-person instruction,” as well as interaction with peers, which is important for social and emotional development, Emiliana Vegas, co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, told Vox.
“We know that students really thrive when they learn to collaborate,” she explained. “That’s really much harder to do in a remote setting, particularly for the younger children.”
While there’s little data so far on the effectiveness of hybrid models, there is data showing significant learning losses during all-remote school this spring, concentrated among low-income and Black and Latinx students. Experts hope that having at least some in-person time will mitigate these losses, Vegas said.
And some families have seen the benefits for their kids. Amy, a New Jersey mom who asked that her last name not be used, told Vox that remote school in the spring for her two sons, then 8 and 3, was “like a nightmare.” But with both boys in school on a hybrid model now, “this fall has been a lot better.”
Amy’s younger son, who has an autism spectrum diagnosis, “really needs the in-person guidance” and is getting occupational therapy and speech therapy during his four days at school. With him out of the house, it’s also a bit easier for his older brother to focus on remote school. He’s at home three days a week and in school for two, and though he was recently diagnosed with a visual processing disorder that can make Zoom lessons challenging, overall “things are pretty good if you’re looking at pandemic parameters,” Amy said.
While families like Amy’s are benefiting from hybrid schedules, in some districts the model doesn’t actually guarantee much in-person instruction. For example, Nuzzo said that one plan floated by her child’s district would have students come into classrooms for online lessons. “I’m not sure that that’s worth the hassle of leaving the house,” she said. “I don’t want him to be on a screen anymore if he’s going to be in a school building.”
And some fear that the educational benefits of a hybrid model could be negated by the sheer logistical challenges of bringing students into schools in the midst of a pandemic. New York City, for example, has been forced to put all its energy into health and safety, leaving little time to help teachers with the challenges of hybrid education, Tom Liam Lynch, editor-in-chief of the website InsideSchools, and a parent of a New York City sixth grader, told Vox.
Starting in the summer, parent concerns about actual pedagogy have gone unheard, Lynch said: “Parents are asking for the plan for high-quality instruction, and the city’s saying we have sanitizer.” Now it’s October, and there’s still “no leadership in terms of what constitutes high-quality learning and teaching,” he said.
Given these and other concerns, some are pushing for different solutions to the problems of pandemic education. For example, a lot of districts chose hybrid models because it was the only way to allow for social distancing within their school buildings, Nuzzo said. But districts could use outdoor space or temporary structures to make room for more kids. Alternatively, younger children could be brought back first, freeing up larger high-school buildings to host elementary-school classes.
Overall, there’s been a lack of creativity around physical space when it comes to schools, Nuzzo argues: “Think about places that were able to create hospitals and have tents and things like that, and yet we haven’t applied that level of thinking with respect to schools.”
There’s also the potential for rethinking what school buildings are for. In New York City, a lot of the conversation around reopening schools (and closing them in the first place) has been around the crucial social services schools provide, from child care to meals for food-insecure students. Instead of trying to reopen schools on a hybrid model, the district could have focused on delivering those face-to-face services while keeping instruction remote, Lynch said.
Such a solution “would have freed up building principals to be able to very creatively use millions of square footage of New York City school building space for tons of non-academic services,” Lynch said. “You could have child care at your local school in some form; you could have access to guidance, to meals, to a nurse; you could have even informal clubs and other kinds of activities that students could come in for.”
But so far, such a solution isn’t on the table in New York City. And overall, in a time when policymakers are faced with many competing priorities, schools can often feel like an afterthought.
“I am very frustrated about governments that have made faster decisions to reopen restaurants and bars and movie theaters and public gatherings well in advance of opening schools,” Nuzzo said. “It just feels like very short-term thinking.”
Luis Arce, centre, celebrates with his running mate, David Choquehuanca, right, on Monday. (photo: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)
Socialists Claim Massive Victory in Bolivia, One Year After Being Ousted
Tom Phillips and Dan Collyns, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Evo Morales's leftwing party is celebrating a stunning political comeback after its candidate appeared to trounce rivals in Bolivia's presidential election."
The official results of Sunday’s twice-postponed election had yet to be announced on Monday afternoon, but exit polls projected that Luis Arce, the candidate for Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas), had secured more than 50% of the vote while his closest rival, the centrist former president Carlos Mesa, received about 30%.
Mesa conceded defeat on Monday lunchtime, telling supporters that a quick count showed a “very convincing and very clear” result. “There is a large gap between the first-placed candidate and us … and, as believers in democracy, it now falls to us … to recognise that there is a winner in this election,” Mesa said
Arce, a former finance minister under Morales, had earlier claimed victory in a late-night broadcast from La Paz. “We have reclaimed democracy and above all we have reclaimed hope,” said the 57-year-old UK-educated economist, who is widely known as Lucho.
Arce vowed to end the uncertainty that has plagued his bitterly divided nation since October 2019, when hotly disputed claims of vote rigging against his party resulted in mass street protests, the presidential election being scrapped and Morales being forced from the country by security forces in what his supporters call a racist, rightwing coup.
“We will govern for all Bolivians … we will bring unity to our country,” said Arce, who should be sworn in as president in the first half of November.
Fireworks echoed around La Paz as news of the forecast victory spread, although a Mas spokeswoman called on Arce’s supporters to await the official result. “We know there are high expectations but we must comply with the rules in order to have a good celebration,” said Marianela Paco.
Morales, who has towered over the election rerun despite living in exile in Argentina, hailed “a resounding victory” for his party. “Sisters and brothers: the will of the people has prevailed,” tweeted Bolivia’s first indigenous president, a key member of Latin America’s leftwing pink tide who governed from 2006 until his dramatic downfall last year.
Even Morales’s nemesis, the rightwing interim president, Jeanine Áñez, conceded that the left had come out on top. “We do not yet have the official count, but the data we do have shows that Mr Arce [has] … won the election. I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern thinking of Bolivia and of democracy,” Áñez tweeted.
Leading members of the Latin American left, who hope Arce’s apparent triumph may help revive their fortunes, celebrated the result. “Viva the Bolivian people! Viva democracy!” tweeted Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of the Brazilian Workers’ party (PT).
Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, tweeted: “A great victory! United and aware, the Bolivian people have used votes to defeat the coup they carried out against our brother Evo.”
If confirmed, the victory would represent a sensational political fightback for Mas, which was left reeling last year when its leader was forced to flee the country after trying to secure an unprecedented fourth term as president.
“It’s a return to the kind of mandate they had when Evo was first elected in 2005,” said Jim Shultz, the founder of the Bolivia-focused Democracy Centre.
For Áñez’s outgoing conservative interim government, which took power after Morales’s banishment, it was a stinging rebuke. “It tells us that the rightwing in Bolivia has no broad political support – not even close,” Shultz said. “The rightwing was given a chance to govern and proved that it is only interested in its own power and in itself and has contempt for the indigenous and poor of the country. They demonstrated that by pretending they had legitimacy that they didn’t, by overseeing real human rights abuses and impunity, and by being incompetent and corrupt in their governance. And people weren’t going to have it.”
One exit poll suggested Arce had achieved a thumping victory, winning a majority in five of Bolivia’s nine departments. The poll said Arce secured more than 65% of the vote in La Paz, 63% in Cochabamba, 62% in Oruro and 51% in Potosí.
It may be several days before the official result is confirmed. On Monday afternoon electoral authorities said that with nearly 20% of votes counted, 36% had gone to Arce and nearly 43% to Mesa.
In Washington, a state department spokesperson said: “We are awaiting the official results, but President Trump and the United States look forward to working with whomever the Bolivians elect. We will continue to promote democracy, human rights and prosperity in Bolivia and throughout the region.”
Opponents of Mas claim Arce is little more than a puppet for Bolivia’s exiled former president, who they suspect will now seek to return home. But Arce sought to publicly distance himself from Morales during the campaign, and on Monday allies said the man poised to become Bolivia’s next president was beholden to no one.
“Categorically, Evo will not interfere in the government of brother Luis Arce,” said David Apaza, a Mas leader in El Alto, a high plateau city above La Paz. “Comrade Evo Morales in his time was the vital element, the principal protagonist ... [But] now we believe our comrade should rest, while brother Luis Arce takes the lead.”
A worker pouring out chemicals. (photo: USDA)
The US Still Uses Dozens of Hazardous Pesticides Banned in Other Countries
Pramod Acharya, Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Acharya writes: "Phorate, for example - the 'extremely hazardous' insecticide that is most used in the U.S. - is banned in 38 countries, including China, Brazil and India."
total of about 400 different agricultural pesticides were used in the United States in 2017, the latest year data is available. More and more pesticides have been used because they “contribute to higher yields and improved product quality by controlling weeds, insects, nematodes, and plant pathogens,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
However, the USDA noted, pesticides pose consequences for people’s health and the environment.
About 150 agricultural pesticides that the World Health Organization considers “hazardous” at some level to human health were used in the United States in 2017, according to a review of U.S. Geological Survey data.
The geological survey estimated that at least one billion pounds of agricultural pesticides were used in 2017. Of that, about 60 percent – or more than 645 million pounds – of the pesticides were hazardous to human health, according to the WHO’s data.
Many “hazardous” pesticides that have been used in the U.S. for decades are banned in many other countries.
Twenty-five pesticides that are banned in more than 30 countries were still used in the United States in 2017, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Pesticide Action Network International, which keeps track of banned pesticides around the world.
The action network’s data show that about 70 of the 150 hazardous pesticides used in the U.S. are banned in at least one country.
For instance, phorate, the most used “extremely hazardous” insecticide in the U.S. in 2017, is banned in 38 countries, including China, Brazil and India. None of the “extremely hazardous” pesticides can be used in the 27 nations of the European Union.
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