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The White House's Incompetence Is Apparently Holding Up "Millions" of COVID Vaccines
Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair
Lutz writes: "Even in the worst stretch of the pandemic yet, the vaccine has been a beacon of hope for the COVID-ravaged nation."
After the Trump administration implied that states would be receiving drastically fewer doses of the COVID vaccine in their next shipments because of delays at Pfizer, the drug company fired back, saying they had “millions” of shots sitting in a warehouse.
Things are bad now, but the Pfizer vaccine that Americans have already started receiving—and the coming authorization of a second vaccine, from Moderna, and other promising candidates on deck—heralds an end to this crisis not too far down the road. Indeed, watching people cheer trucks carrying the COVID vaccine and healthcare workers take their shots has been heartening and, after the better part of a year living in the shadow of the coronavirus, somewhat surreal.
Which is why it is so maddening that Donald Trump and his administration seem to be so unprepared for the moment we’ve long been waiting for. The White House reportedly turned down “multiple” offers from Pfizer over the summer to set aside additional doses for the United States. And of the vaccines the U.S. does have, a shitload are apparently just sitting in a warehouse somewhere, ready to be delivered, if only the Trump administration would give the company the word.
“This week, we successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that we were asked to ship by the U.S. Government to locations specified by them,” Pfizer said in a statement Thursday. “We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses.”
The company's statement came after the Trump administration informed several states that they would receive up to 40 percent fewer vaccine doses next week than they’d been expecting. The White House implied the problem was on Pfizer’s end, but the company contradicted that explanation. “Pfizer is not having any production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine,” it said in the statement, “and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed.”
Pfizer says it remains confident in its manufacturing and distribution operation, but the contradictory messages from the company and the government underscore the chaotic nature of this administration, which apparently can’t be relied on to roll out the historic vaccine it has taken undeserved credit for. “President Trump...as the innovator has succeeded,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters this week, as though Trump has been in a lab somewhere the last nine months wearing a white coat.
The vaccines remain a cause for hope; the shots produced by Pfizer, Moderna, and likely other companies will gradually help bring about the end of the worst pandemic in a hundred years. But how quickly that happens will depend, in part, on how well the government and vaccine-producers handle the logistical challenges of distribution. For now, that means relying on a fundamentally disorganized administration, led by a president who has said little about the vaccine publicly, partly because he apparently doesn’t want to turn off the vaccine skeptics and COVID deniers in his base, and is mostly focused on his dead-end efforts to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden. “This is disruptive and frustrating,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee wrote Thursday after being informed his state would receive 40 percent fewer vaccine supply next week than originally promised. “We need accurate, predictable numbers to plan and ensure on-the-ground success.”
Sen. Pat Toomey, who is now leading a push from Republicans to curtail the Fed's emergency lending powers, questions Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Capitol Hill on December 10. (photo: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)
The Fed's Surprise Role in Stimulus Talks, Explained
Emily Stewart, Vox
Stewart writes: "Just as it seemed Congress might finally reach a deal on a new stimulus package, there was a new and unexpected wrinkle: Some Republicans suddenly discovered they were really worried about a handful of emergency lending programs from the Federal Reserve that most Americans have probably never even heard of."
Republicans and Democrats have reached a tentative agreement on a last-minute scuffle over the Fed.
The issue initially appeared as if it might derail talks, but senators were able to reach an agreement Saturday night amid concerns the Fed scuffle could sideline a relief package altogether.
Republicans and Democrats this week have been inching toward a $900 billion agreement to help boost the economy as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on, and they made plans to attach the deal to government spending legislation that must be passed by Sunday night to avoid a government shutdown.
Both sides made some concessions in the bill — Democrats let go of aid for state and local governments, and Republicans dropped their ask for liability shields for corporations (which would ensure companies couldn’t be sued for coronavirus-related issues). But then, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) is led a push by Republicans to try to rein in some of the Fed’s capabilities to intervene in the economy through lending programs aimed at small businesses and state and local governments.
Specifically, Toomey said he wanted to wind down emergency lending programs that were created by the CARES Act back in March; and, on top of that, include provisions in this new legislation that would stop the Fed from being able to restart those programs — or create similar ones.
Toomey’s argument is that the Fed, which has taken extraordinary actions to try to boost the economy during the pandemic, risks becoming a lender of “first resort” instead of “last resort,” as it is meant to be, if its powers are extended.
Democrats, on the other hand, cried foul and argued that this has nothing to do with when businesses and governments turn to the Fed, and that the effort actually represents an effort from Republicans to limit the economic tools available to President-elect Joe Biden before he even takes office.
“After weeks of refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory, some Republicans have now decided that sabotaging his presidency is more important than helping our economy recover,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in a statement on Friday. “Proposals to sabotage President Biden and our nation’s economy are reckless, they’re wrong, and they have no place in this legislation.”
On Saturday evening, Democrats and Republicans struck a tentative deal on the Fed lending programs. As part of the agreement, the CARES Act lending facilities will be wound down at the end of the year, the funds for them rescinded, and they won’t be restarted or duplicated without congressional approval. In a statement, Toomey said this would “preserve Fed independence and prevent Democrats from hijacking these programs for political and social policy purposes.”
Democrats had expressed concern that if the language on new Fed limits were too broad in the final legislation, this would severely weaken the Fed’s ability to do emergency lending in times of economic stress. Toomey insisted that the language is targeted and that concerns about its broader impact — both with respect to future crises and Biden’s presidency — are overblown. The tentative agreement suggests both sides now agree the language is focused enough to prevent broad overhauls to the Fed’s powers.
The situation has been a bit of an odd one. Republicans have been dead set against support for state and local governments throughout the pandemic, and this appears, in part, to be a way to make sure the Biden administration doesn’t find a workaround to get them money through the Fed.
At the same time, the CARES Act programs in question haven’t worked very well so far — localities weren’t really picking up what the Fed was putting down. Democrats say that the programs could be improved to work better under a Biden administration and therefore be used by more potential borrowers: Essentially that they may not be a panacea, but they’re not not worth trying.
Still, according to former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm, Democrats may be overly optimistic about how effective the programs might be in the future.
“Those programs had the potential to at least work better in a Biden administration than Trump,” Sahm told me, “but they were never going to do, without more Congressional authority, what Democrats wanted.”
The Fed is supposed to be there when things are really bad
In the midst of the Great Depression in 1932, Congress authorized the Federal Reserve to make direct loans in emergencies. That basically means that in big moments of economic crisis, you want the central bank to be there to make sure markets don’t go too haywire.
The Fed makes those loans under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act. In the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Congress put some restrictions around the Fed’s emergency lending powers in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which, among other things, required the central bank to go through Treasury to make loans.
So when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Congress, through the CARES Act, directed $454 billion toward the Treasury Department to backstop emergency lending programs, including one aimed at mid-sized businesses and another aimed at municipalities.
A lot of that money wasn’t used, and in November, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin asked the Fed to return it at the end of the year. Fed Chair Jerome Powell agreed to return the money, albeit begrudgingly.
As Politico’s Victoria Guida laid out on Twitter, Toomey, a longtime skeptic of the Fed’s power, wants to make sure the CARES Act-related lending programs are permanently ended, because he and other Republicans worry Democrats will give “overly generous loans” to businesses, cities, and states. Republicans want to make sure the programs are ended now to block incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (assuming she’s confirmed) from using other funds to restart the programs.
The rub here has been, in part, exactly what the language Toomey is describing would do. If it blocks new emergency lending programs for small businesses and municipalities, that’s bad for those potential loan recipients, but would just leave them in a fairly similar position to where they are now. The terms of the loans haven’t been generous enough that many states and businesses were willing to try to take them on, though Democrats argue that under Biden that could be fixed.
The larger concern was that it might hamstring the Fed’s ability to exercise its broad emergency powers and do real, lasting damage to the central bank and its role in fighting economic downturns.
Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke issued a statement over the weekend warning about the potential implications of the GOP’s proposal. He stressed that it is “vital” that the Fed be able to “respond promptly to damaging disruptions in credit markets” and that such ability not be curtailed. “The relief act should ensure, at least, that the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending authorities, as they stood before the CARES Act, remain fully intact and available to respond to future crises.”
The US doesn’t want to end up in a situation where the Fed has to ask Congress every single time it wants to use emergency lending.
On Saturday, a spokesperson for Toomey said in an email that the senator did not want to change how the Fed operates generally. The spokesperson said that a speech the Pennsylvania Republican delivered on the Senate floor on Saturday “makes clear that the intent of this language is narrow and is not a sweeping rewrite of section 13(3), as some have suggested.”
As Jordan Weissmann at Slate pointed out, however, Republicans wanted to block the Fed from restarting lending programs that are “similar” to the ones from the CARES Act. What exactly “similar” means is where the problem really was.
“If your language is very squishy, that can either mean you have a very expansive interpretation of it, or you have a very narrow interpretation of it,” Sahm said. And if the definition of “similiar” is too expansive, that could dangerously kneecap the Fed.
“These emergency facilities, that power to do emergency lending, that is more important than monetary policy, than bank regulations. This is the thing that the Fed does, it’s the thing we absolutely have to have,” she said. “These are core powers of the Fed, and so if you’re taking this away, you’re really crippling the Fed.”
“The risk is that it greatly diminishes the ability of the Fed to exercise its emergency powers and support the economy in the next crisis,” Roberto Perli a partner at Cornerstone Macro, told Bloomberg. “If I were the Fed, I would strenuously oppose this.”
This is a bit of a hostage situation using the Fed
The American people need help, and they need help now. Millions are at risk of eviction in January, millions are out of work, and millions are hungry. Congress has the power to change this, and it needs to do it. It’s not clear what the really good-faith argument is for why curbing the Fed’s emergency lending programs mid-pandemic is worth mass homelessness or stopping people from accessing basic necessities.
But on its face, this is an effort by Republicans to limit what Biden can do on the economy when he takes office. Especially in the event where Congress won’t take action — which it’s failed to do, basically, since March — you want the Fed to have all the tools in the toolbox available. And it’s reasonable to assume congressional inaction will continue into the Biden administration, making the Fed an even important part of recovery.
It is true that a lot of states and businesses weren’t falling over themselves to get loans from the Fed, but there’s an argument to be made that that’s not really the point: Just the knowledge that the Fed is there as a last-resort lender is meaningful in shoring up confidence in the economy and keeping financial markets moving. The Fed just saying it would buy corporate bonds kept the corporate bond market moving in the spring.
The fear that the Fed would help Biden get money to state and local governments is odd. Many in the GOP seem to believe that budget shortfalls are only a blue state problem and therefore have little desire to do anything to help, or, in this case, seem hell bent on blocking any potential aid. States run by Democrats are absolutely not the only ones facing tax revenue declines, but also, the point of lawmakers is to care about all Americans, not just the ones who align with them politically.
“It is clear that Republicans in Congress and the administration do not want to give money to state and local governments,” Sahm said. Why Republicans would be willing to hurt their own states in order to also hurt Democratic ones is far less clear.
The argument that the Fed should need to rely more on Congress to get the go-ahead on emergency lending programs is tough to swallow, given the events of this year. It was good back in March that Treasury and the Fed could quickly work together to really turn on emergency facilities and enact other market-stabilizing measures. Imagine them having to go through Congress, which is right now getting by on a two-day bill to fund the government, because it couldn’t meet a deadline that comes at the same time every year.
And if Republicans really do want to reform 13(3) powers, like lawmakers did for Dodd-Frank, doing so hastily seems not ideal. “To rewrite 13(3) lending law like that on the fly seems pretty disturbing,” Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission that oversees the CARES Act funds, told Slate.
He pointed out on Twitter that the GOP’s current position seems like a radical evolution of their earlier stance: In stimulus negotiations in the fall, Republicans were trying to end the current the CARES Act’s current lending programs, not permanently strip the Fed of those powers. Now, the tentative deal suggests lawmakers are basically back to where they were then.
Of course, there’s no way to know intentions here. Maybe this was another GOP-led effort to tank stimulus. Maybe Republicans just cannot stand the idea of states getting help. Maybe they really want to tie Biden’s hands. Or maybe Toomey really thinks this was his one shot at getting reforms at the Fed and so he took it.
But time is running out — a deal (or an extension) has to be passed before midnight Sunday to avoid a government shutdown — and a haphazard fix to supposed problem that a couple of weeks ago wasn’t even on the radar is a roadblock the American people don’t need. Now, there seems to be a solution. Let’s hope it sticks.
Housing activists protesting evictions in Massachusetts, which recently allowed its sweeping statewide eviction ban to expire. That leaves residents with only a much weaker eviction protection order from the Centers for Disease Control and prevention. (photo: Michael Dwyer/AP)
Why The CDC Eviction Ban Isn't Really a Ban: 'I Have Nowhere to Go'
Chris Arnold, NPR
Arnold writes: "When Tiffany Robinson heard about an order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop evictions, it seemed like the life-raft she needed."
"I thought this is going to help," said Robinson, "this is going to protect me."
But Robinson soon found out that what's often referred to as the "CDC Eviction Ban" is hardly a ban. Earlier this year after the pandemic hit, Robinson lost her job managing construction sites. She was living in Bridge City, Texas and struggling to survive and raise her three kids on unemployment benefits alone. When she started to fall behind on the rent, her landlord filed an eviction case.
The Texas court entered a judgment ordering Robinson's eviction, but she was still in her apartment when the CDC order went into effect.
So she went to the CDC's website, printed out the required form to declare that she met the the criteria, signed it and gave it to her landlord. In theory, that's supposed to stop an eviction if a renter has lost income and has no place else to go.
But on November 5, Robinson's landlord told her she and her family had 24 hours to gather their belongings and get out of the apartment. Either that, or the Sheriff's department would evict them.
Because she had filled out the CDC form, Robinson thought it might be a bluff. But she was worried enough to file a complaint and plea for help on the state Attorney General's website.
"I have nowhere to go. I meet all the criteria for protection," she wrote. "I have three kids who will be homeless tomorrow morning if I can't stop this. This is wrong."
But at 9am, two men and a woman showed up at her door. They were neighbors from the same apartment complex who she assumes were hired by her landlord.
Robinson said they took sheets and blankets off the beds, spread them out on the floor, and piled them with electronics, lamps, clothes, kids paintings.
"Everything from the room, in the comforter, tie it up like a knapsack," then she says they threw the bundles off the 2nd floor balcony down into the yard below.
While all this was happening, her 12-year-old son was doing remote schooling in his bedroom until they yanked the WiFi system out of the wall.
"I shut his bedroom door, and told them that room is last," says Robinson, "He's doing schoolwork. don't go in there."
Robinson, who recently separated from her husband, spoke to NPR from a hotel where she's staying with the kids while she tries to find another place to live.
Evictions expected to rise without more help
For people like Robinson, a lot is riding on the latest compromise relief bill in Congress. If it doesn't pass in time, some 12 million Americans are going to lose their unemployment benefits the day after Christmas.
"Tens of millions of people may lose their homes this winter during this height of covid-19," says Diane Yentel, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. "And the consequences of that would be catastrophic for kids, for families, and for our country's ability to contain the pandemic."
Already one study has attributed thousands of deaths in Texas alone to evictions because displaced families have been forced into more crowded living situations where they caught and spread COVID.
That's why the CDC issued the order, but it is set to expire at the end of the year.
The compromise COVID relief bill in Congress is expected to have $25 billion dollars for emergency rental assistance, and could extend the CDC Order through January.
Housing advocates say that's a good thing. Yentel says the rental assistance is desperately needed and the CDC order is protecting many people. But she says the order itself also needs to be beefed-up because there are many other cases where it's not working.
"One of the flaws is that it's not automatic and so renters need to know that the protection exists and they need to know what actions to take in order to receive that protection," Yentel says.
The order is also being treated differently by judges around the country so the outcomes vary wildly depending on where people live or what court they end up in.
Robinson in Texas is now well aware of that. She says her son is still shaken up since the eviction.
"He has not wanted to leave my side," she says. "Like, not even to go to the bathroom leave my side like he stands outside the door.
Her landlord said in an email to NPR that the eviction, "was completed entirely through the court system."
It's unclear exactly what happened in Robinson's case. Legal-aid attorneys say the CDC order has murky legal grey areas — and many judges often just side with the landlord.
John Pollock is an attorney who heads up the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, which advocates for renters to be provided access to a lawyer before an eviction can happen. He says the vast majority of renters don't have a lawyer. "It's basically in every case, you're going to have a massive imbalance of power."
He says because of that, the CDC should order a simple blanket ban on evictions during the pandemic, just like some states had done earlier this year.
He says if there was a federal moratorium like that, "the tenant would not have to do something affirmatively to be protected." And he says, "the courts wouldn't have to get into, 'well, does this cover this situation or that situation?'"
Pollock says he's also hearing about thousands of complaints to law enforcement and legal aid offices around the country from people who feel their landlord is evicting them improperly.
In her case, Tiffany Robinson is convinced she was treated unfairly. She's filed complaints with various law enforcement offices. She says she even called the FBI to ask for help.
"I put it on speaker-phone so that the kids could hear it." She says she wants them to know, "that I didn't just give up, because I had done everything I knew to do and I thought that was going to protect us."
'The compromised SolarWinds update that delivered the malware was distributed to as many as 18,000 customers.' (photo: Dmitry Ratushny/Unsplash)
The SolarWinds Hack Is Unlike Anything We Have Ever Seen Before
Josephine Wolff, Slate
Wolff writes: "The SolarWinds cyberespionage campaign has apparently targeted a dizzying number of government and private organizations: the State, Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Security, and Energy departments; Microsoft; the cybersecurity firm FireEye; the National Institutes of Health; and the city network of Austin, Texas, just to name a few."
It launched in the spring of this year, and it will likely last for years. I study the aftermath of cybersecurity incidents, and many large-scale breaches come with drawn-out legal battles and investigations that last for months, or even years, following the initial discovery and disclosure. But the SolarWinds compromise is different. In the coming year, we won’t just be fighting about who was responsible or figuring out how this happened or assessing the fallout or repairing affected systems. That whole time, government and private sector systems will continue to actively be breached because of the malware that was surreptitiously included in updates to the SolarWinds Orion products.
To understand the difference between the SolarWinds compromise and the other high-profile cybersecurity incidents you’ve read about in recent years—Equifax or Sony Pictures or Office of Personnel Management, for instance—it’s important to understand both how the SolarWinds malware was delivered and also how it was then used as a platform for other attacks. Equifax, Sony Pictures, and OPM are all examples of computer systems that were specifically targeted by intruders, even though they used some generic, more widely used pieces of malware. For instance, to breach OPM, the intruders stole contractor credentials and registered the domain opmsecurity.org so that their connections to OPM servers would look less suspicious coming from that address.
This meant that there were some very clear sources that could be used to trace the scope of the incident after the fact—what had the person using those particular stolen credentials installed or looked at? What data had been accessed via the fraudulent domains? It also meant that the investigators could be relatively confident the incident was confined to a particular department or target system and that wiping and restoring those systems would be sufficient to remove the intruders’ presence. That’s not to say that cleaning up the OPM breach—or Sony Pictures or Equifax, for that matter—was easy or straightforward, just that it was a fairly well-bounded problem by comparison to what we’re facing with SolarWinds.
The compromised SolarWinds update that delivered the malware was distributed to as many as 18,000 customers. The SolarWinds Orion products are specifically designed to monitor the networks of systems and report on any security problems, so they have to have access to everything, which is what made them such a perfect conduit for this compromise. So there are no comparable limiting boundaries on its scope or impacts, as has been made clear by the gradual revelation of more and more high-value targets. Even more worrisome is the fact that the attackers apparently made use of their initial access to targeted organizations, such as FireEye and Microsoft, to steal tools and code that would then enable them to compromise even more targets. After Microsoft realized it was breached via the SolarWinds compromise, it then discovered its own products were then used “to further the attacks on others,” according to Reuters.
This means that the set of potential victims is not just (just!) the 18,000 SolarWinds customers who may have downloaded the compromised updates, but also all of those 18,000 organizations’ customers, and potentially the clients of those second-order organizations as well—and so on. So when I say the SolarWinds cyberespionage campaign will last years, I don’t just mean, as I usually do, that figuring out liability and settling costs and carrying out investigations will take years (though that is certainly true here). The actual, active theft of information from protected networks due to this breach will last years.
Some of that longevity will come from the scale of the attack and the number of different companies, like Microsoft, that were then used as platforms for further attacks on new victims. All of that will require time to sort out and trace and investigate, but it’s not the only reason that coming back from this will be hard. Another element adding to the challenge of trying to clean up this mess will be the thoroughness of the compromise of each individual system.
Many cyberespionage activities begin with phishing campaigns or stolen credentials, which are then used to deliver malware to targeted systems. Those credentials, depending on whom they belong to and how much access that individual has, can be very effective ways to gain a toehold in a protected computer system, but they’re also very easy to change or reset when the compromise is discovered. Weeding out the malware that they were used to install can be trickier, especially if there are multiple types of malware being used (as was the case in the OPM breach), but that malware is also often constrained at least a little by the system’s security measures and the level of privilege of the compromised credentials—that’s why compromising the credentials of a system administrator, for instance, who has access to an entire network, is often more fruitful for attackers than compromising the credentials of an employee who can only access a smaller portion of the network for their job. It’s also why it’s important for organizations to segment their networks and make sure people only have access to the files and servers they absolutely need to be able to access for their work.
But none of that matters with a breach like SolarWinds that granted intruders broad access to the entire network of every system it was installed on. Additionally, SolarWinds had apparently persuaded many of its customers that its Orion products needed to be exempt from existing antivirus and security restrictions on their computers because otherwise it might look like a threat or be unable to function properly. (This is actually an old problem—security products identifying other security products as malware. For instance, if you try to install multiple antivirus programs on the same computer, they will sometimes recognize the malware signatures stored by the other and try to shut it down as malware. And then the other one will see that there’s a program trying to shut it down and assume that that program must be malware, since trying to turn off the antivirus program is also a typical trait of a malicious program!)
So the access that the intruders had using the SolarWinds updates goes far beyond the access granted by many initial cyberespionage compromises, and the number of potential targets is enormous—and only growing every time we learn about the ways that each of those targets may have been leveraged to access new victims. As we continue to unravel all the different strands of this compromise, the federal government would do well to assume that its computer systems are still being actively infiltrated and not imagine that, simply having discovered this breach, they are anywhere close to reaching the end of it.
Cynthia McDonald, holding a portrait of her son, Joseph Wilson. (photo: Davon Clark/Injustice Watch)
Families of Infected Inmates Kept in the Dark
Emma Lubitsch, Injustice Watch
Lubitsch writes: "Cynthia McDonald's son Joseph Wilson contracted Covid-19 in late March while serving a life sentence for first-degree murder and attempted robbery at the Stateville Correctional Center, about 40 miles southwest of Chicago. McDonald said she found out that he had been taken away from the prison in an ambulance when she received a phone call from her nephew, who'd been contacted by a prison guard who was a friend of Wilson's."
But the mother, who lives in the Auburn Gresham community on Chicago’s South Side, said prison officials never formally notified her that Wilson had been hospitalized with the deadly virus. She also has alleged that corrections officials kept her in the dark as his health waned.
“It seems like they don’t care,” she said.
Robert Eyler got infected by Covid-19 in August. His mother, Terry Zahn, told Injustice Watch that she first found out when a nurse called as a favor to Eyler after prison officials hospitalized him. He had been serving a nine-year sentence at the Jacksonville Correctional Center in Morgan County for the manufacturing of methamphetamine.
“They could have at least had the decency to call me to tell me that he had gone to the hospital,” she said of prison officials. “It’s just not right.”
McDonald and Zahn eventually lost their sons to the virus.
Covid-19 has created incredible barriers for people navigating the final moments of a loved one’s life. McDonald and Zahn had the added burden of navigating Illinois’ embattled prison health care system during a pandemic. Their accounts highlight a long-standing problem of Illinois prison officials failing to inform families when their loved ones are hospitalized or fall ill. Advocates said the pandemic has made matters worse, as prison officials deal with an increased number of inmate deaths compared to last year.
The Illinois Department of Corrections has confirmed almost 9,000 cases of Covid-19 among staff and inmates to date. Fifty-two inmates have died from Covid-19 between March 29 and December 8. More than half of those deaths have come since the beginning of October.
Injustice Watch made numerous attempts to contact David Gomez, the warden at Stateville, where more inmates have died during the pandemic than at any other Illinois prison. Gomez would not agree to be interviewed about the family notification issues that McDonald faced. Instead, a member of Gomez’s staff directed Injustice Watch’s questions to state prison spokesperson Lindsey Hess. Jacksonville Warden Gregg Scott answered the phone. But he declined to discuss policies or details about Zahn’s son’s case and also referred questions to Hess.
Injustice Watch sent Hess a list of detailed questions about the mothers’ allegations. However, she did not answer specific questions about what McDonald and Zahn went through leading up to their sons’ final moments. We also asked Hess about the agency’s policies and procedures for informing family members that their loved ones in custody were sick or dying.
In an emailed statement, Hess said the agency has adopted a policy during the pandemic that directs either wardens, assistant wardens or a designee at prisons to notify the closest relative of an incarcerated person when the inmate is hospitalized.
However, both mothers interviewed by Injustice Watch said they heard about their sons’ hospitalizations from someone other than department officials. This kind of notification is not uncommon, said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.
“The things that I’ve seen happen most commonly is either compassionate hospital staff will contact the family, or the cellmates or friends of the incarcerated person will get in touch,” she said. “Rarely do we see families being contacted directly by a prison bureau.”
Sarah Grady, head of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at Loevy and Loevy, a Chicago-based civil rights law firm, sees this as a pervasive issue. “Frankly,” she said, “this is something we run into with almost every case, and this is not just isolated to the Covid context.”
The notification issues are “an age-old problem,” said Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center. Mills has represented thousands of Illinois prisoners in lawsuits against the corrections department.
He said that, while the corrections department typically does a sufficient job of notifying family members when a loved one dies, the department is not required by law to inform them when the incarcerated individual experienced severe, even life-threatening illness.
Several experts on prison litigation and corrections interviewed by Injustice Watch said corrections department officials typically cite medical privacy or security concerns when they withhold information from families.
Authorities’ failure to notify incarcerated people’s families is not isolated to prisons in Illinois. Media reports from Maryland, Indiana and North Carolina have spotlighted the problem in other state prison systems amid the pandemic and prior to it.
Steve Martin, a leading corrections expert currently overseeing reforms at the Rikers Island prison complex in New York City, has examined prisons for nearly 50 years. He said the health notification concerns in Illinois are part of a broader pattern of failure across U.S. prison systems.
“It’s such a basic act of humanity that should be done by any governmental agency that is charged with managing confined persons,” he said. Martin said the problem is exacerbated by “a void in terms of standards and requirements on this issue.”
Neither the National Commission on Correctional Health Care nor the American Correctional Association offers any official guidance on how prison officials should communicate with sick inmates’ families.
‘They’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing’
Robert Eyler’s family knew him as “Bobby,” his mother said. He was born and raised in downstate Quincy, Illinois, and loved NASCAR. He had been serving time at the Jacksonville prison for a 2017 conviction for the possession and manufacture of methamphetamine drugs, court records show. When he died in custody at age 51, three years before his scheduled release date, he left behind four adult children and three grandchildren, including an 8-year-old granddaughter and two grandsons ages 2 and 6.
Zahn said she and her son were close. The pair spoke regularly, sometimes twice a day. But in early August, Eyler called Zahn from the Jacksonville prison, terrified by the prison’s Covid-19 response, she said.
“‘They’re going to kill us,’” Zahn recalls him saying. “‘They’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.’”
His mother said he complained that guards weren’t wearing masks at the prison, and that inmates were only given the disposable face coverings once per week.
In an amended complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in May, several incarcerated people at the Jacksonville prison complained that the corrections department was not enforcing Covid-19 protocols strictly enough, and that guards were often unmasked on duty. The lawsuit, originally filed in April, calls for improved conditions in Illinois prisons and the release of medically vulnerable individuals. Two attorneys interviewed for this article, Grady and Mills, are among the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the suit.
Zahn said Eyler also feared that the busloads of incarcerated people brought from jails around the state would spread the virus at Jacksonville, which as of early August, had seen very few cases of Covid-19. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker lifted the moratorium on jail transfers to state correctional facilities at the end of July after a Logan County judge struck down the ban, clearing the way for about 2,000 detainees to be moved into Illinois prisons. Pritzker had originally implemented the ban to slow the spread of the virus in the state’s prisons.
Before Eyler’s hospitalization, Zahn remembers that he called her complaining about shortness of breath and fatigue. The next day, Zahn said the usual call that she had come to expect from her son never came. Instead, Zahn said, a nurse at a Springfield hospital called her at Eyler’s request and said he had contracted Covid-19 and was being treated there.
Zahn recalled that she was in contact with the nursing staff at the hospital until a nurse told her to direct further inquiries to the Jacksonville prison. She then called the correctional facility’s nursing department, where staff relayed her requests to Scott, the warden.
Scott then granted Zahn permission to receive updates about Eyler’s condition directly from hospital staff, according to the mother. Zahn had power of attorney over Eyler, she said, allowing her access to her son’s medical records and updates about his condition through his monthlong hospital stay.
Zahn remembered a doctor at the hospital calling her Sept. 20 to say that her son’s condition was unstable, and that he would likely die. Eyler had been on a ventilator for 28 days, Zahn said.
Prison officials granted Zahn and her daughter permission to see Eyler at the hospital, according to the mother. When they arrived in the intensive care unit, Zahn said, the hospital staff provided them with paper gowns and masks, and they were able to spend Eyler’s final moments with him.
Zahn hosted a funeral for her son Oct. 3 with close family and friends in Quincy, Illinois. Eyler was buried in a NASCAR urn. Zahn, laughing over the phone, remembered a country music song her family played at the funeral by Merle Haggard and recited the lyrics: “‘Turned 21 in prison doing life without parole, no one could steer me right, but momma tried.’”
“And I tried for Bobby,” she said. “I really did.”
“Nobody else’s family should have to go through what I went through and what Bobby went through,” she said.
‘There were so many unknowns that I just don’t have any closure’
Joseph Wilson grew up in the Austin community, on Chicago’s West Side. Wilson had two step-children and is also survived by a wife who lives in Ohio, and his mother, McDonald, who said she was close with her son and typically spoke with him at least once per week.
McDonald described him as “a happy-go-lucky person” and said she had received an outpouring of support from Wilson’s friends in prison since his death, one of whom sent her a hand-drawn portrait of Wilson, who was 44 when he died. Wilson had been in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections since his conviction in 1998 for the August 1995 shooting of William Burra during an armed robbery on the West Side. Wilson was 19 when prosecutors said he pulled the trigger, according to court records.
The Stateville Correctional Center, where Wilson was serving a life sentence, was the site of the first major outbreak of Covid-19 in the state prison system. More people incarcerated at Stateville have died from the virus than any other Illinois prison, according to department data obtained by Injustice Watch.
McDonald said after a correctional officer at Stateville informally tipped off Wilson’s family that he was sick in late March, she called Stateville repeatedly, hoping to speak with a nurse or Gomez, the warden, to learn what hospital her son had been taken to and what condition he was in.
McDonald said staff at Stateville gave her the run-around when she called looking for answers. She alleged that she was bounced around from person to person without being given any substantive information for several days. McDonald recalled eventually finding out from his wife where her son was being treated, at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in nearby Joliet. But his wife also remembers having a hard time getting information.
Deborah Wilson, who was married to Wilson for 17 years before he died, said she was authorized to receive health information and notifications about her husband’s well-being from the Illinois Department of Corrections. But she alleged that the department never notified her of Wilson’s illness or hospitalization. Instead, Wilson said she found out from the wife of another inmate who called her to tell her the news.
McDonald and Deborah Wilson said they received news of Wilson’s eventual death from the staff at the hospital where he was being treated on April 13. McDonald remains suspicious of the circumstances around Wilson’s death, wondering whether anything more could have been done to help her son.
Coping with Wilson’s death has been especially hard for McDonald, she said, given how poorly prison officials communicated with his loved ones when he first got sick.
“I don’t think my son should be dead,” McDonald said. “There were so many unknowns that I just don’t have any closure.”
Losing a loved one can be even more challenging when people think that the deceased suffered before they died, according to experts on grief and bereavement. Dr. Katherine M. Shear, director of the Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, said, “losing a child, losing someone to Covid, and losing someone in a situation where you feel that there was an injustice” can put people at an increased risk of developing prolonged grief disorder.
In an emailed statement, department spokesperson Hess said the department “investigates any and all allegations” of facilities failing to follow policies for notifying families when their incarcerated loved one is hospitalized during the pandemic.
Corrections officials “welcome any information that would help ensure transparent communication is being provided to the families of men and women in custody,” according to the statement
But Hess did not answer questions about McDonald’s and Zahn’s specific cases or say whether the department was investigating their allegations.
Camille Bennett, director of the Corrections Reform Project at the ACLU of Illinois, said it would take pressure on the Illinois Department of Corrections from state lawmakers to force the agency to better communicate with families when their incarcerated loved ones get sick.
“In order for us to see some change with the family contact issue, there needs to be some additional legislative action or a general outcry from the public,” she said.
Injustice Watch spoke with Illinois state Rep. Kelly Cassidy of Illinois’ 14th District about allegations that prison officials failed to promptly notify incarcerated people’s loved ones that the inmates had been hospitalized with Covid-19. Cassidy is a co-sponsor of a bill that would require the Illinois Department of Corrections to notify families about the cause of death when someone dies in state custody.
Cassidy said she was not familiar with the family contact issue as it pertains to hospitalizations. But she said the concerns raised might beg an important question about the state’s Covid-19 response: “What did we do to ensure that [incarcerated] people could remain connected to their families?”
“We’re going to have a lot of these conversations in our next session about what we’ve learned from the Covid-19 crisis and how it will help us operate more humanely moving forward,” she said when Injustice Watch asked whether she’d consider addressing the family notification problem via future legislation.
McDonald said she wants to see more urgency from elected officials.
“I think that there should have been something in place already,” she said. “People die and get sick in [prison] all the time. This shouldn’t be something that they’re just thinking about now because of Covid.”
A French police officer guards a road near Charlie Hebdo's then-offices in Paris after the 2015 terrorist attacks. (photo: Lisa Kreuzmann/EPA)
Charlie Hebdo: Four Men Charged Over Paris Knife Attack
Agence France-Presse
Excerpt: "French authorities have charged and detained four Pakistanis suspected of links to a meat cleaver attack by a compatriot outside the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly that wounded two people, the national counter-terrorism prosecutor's office has said."
Arrest of Pakistanis held on suspicion of inciting attacker comes after court convicts 14 people linked to 2015 terrorist massacre
The four male suspects, aged 17 to 21, were in contact with the attacker, a source familiar with the case said on Friday.
They are suspected of being aware of the attacker’s plot and inciting him to carry it out, according to another judicial source close to the investigation.
Three of them were charged on Friday with taking part in a terrorist conspiracy and placed in pre-trial detention. The fourth had already been charged on Wednesday.
Two were arrested in the south-west Gironde department, a third in the northern port city of Caen, and the last in the Paris region.
“They share his ideology and one of them expressed his hatred of France a few days before the action,” one of the sources said.
News of the charges comes two days after a Paris court convicted 13 accomplices of the jihadist gunmen who massacred Charlie Hebdo staff in January 2015.
To mark the start of that trial in early September, the magazine had in typically provocative style reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Three weeks later a Pakistani man wounded two people outside the weekly’s former offices, hacking at them with a cleaver.
The assailant, named as Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, 25, was arrested after September’s attack on terrorism charges and remains in custody.
He told investigators that prior to the attack he had watched “videos from Pakistan” concerning the satirical magazine’s decision to republish the cartoons.
On 16 October a young Chechen refugee beheaded teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown some of the caricatures to his pupils.
Less than two weeks later three people were killed when a young Tunisian recently arrived in Europe went on a stabbing spree at a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice.
President Emmanuel Macron’s government has introduced legislation to tackle radical Islamist activity in France. The bill has sparked anger and protests in some Muslim countries.
Rohingya refugees board a Bangladesh Navy ship to be transported to the island of Bhashan Char in Chittagong on December 4, 2020. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Move of Rohingya Refugees Poses Environmental and Human Rights Concerns
Tina Gerhardt, EcoWatch
Gerhardt writes: "On December 4, about 1,600 Rohingya traveled across the Bay of Bengal in seven navy boats from Chattogram to Bhasan Char. Bangladesh plans to move 100,000 families to the island."
The move poses serious concerns, both with regard to the environment and human rights.
Located about 18.6 miles (30 km) from the mainland, Bhasan Char is low-lying and prone to flooding. Therefore, it has been uninhabited. The island only formed in the past 20 years as a result of silt buildup. Bhasan Char rests at the confluence of three large rivers, the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Meghna River, which collectively bring rich deposits of silt to the bay.
Bhasan Char rests in the Bay of Bengal subject to frequent cyclones, at risk of intensifying as they circle in the Bay's funnel shape. On average, three to four storms form in the basin and Bhasan Char lies in the historical path of cyclones. This year, Category 5 cyclone Amphan, one of the strongest on record, formed in the Bay of Bengal. Cyclone Amphan, as Refugees International reported, caused great devastation not far from Bhasan Char and such super cyclones are more likely in the future.
The move of Rohingya refugees also poses serious human rights concerns. The United Nations (UN) stated it "has not been involved in preparations for this movement or the identification of refugees and has limited information on the overall relocation exercise." It added, "The United Nations takes this opportunity to highlight its longstanding position that Rohingya refugees must be able to make a free and informed decision about relocating to Bhasan Char based upon relevant, accurate and updated information."
The government asserts that the movements to the island were and will be voluntary. However, Human Rights Watch "spoke with 12 families refugees who said their names were on the list, but that they had not willingly volunteered to relocate."
One refugee told Human Rights Watch, "My name appeared on the list so now the CiC [Camp-in-Charge, camp authority] has threatened me, saying that since my name is there, I must go. He said, even if I die, they will take my body there [to Bhasan Char]. I don't want to go to that island."
Daniel Sullivan, Refugees International, told EcoWatch, "there are troubling indications that Rohingya 'volunteers' are being coerced or misled. When I visited the camps last year, refugees told me they believed – falsely – that they would receive money or gain Bangladeshi citizenship if they volunteered to move to Bhasan Char. Other groups have reported similar misinformation today and some people on the volunteer lists say they never agreed to be relocated."
Another refugee told Human Rights Watch that he put his name on the list because camp leaders told him that those on the list would be given priority to repatriate to Myanmar and be paid 5,000 taka (US$59). But he changed his mind about relocating when he heard that those currently being detained on the island are being held in "prison-like facilities" and don't have freedom of movement.
Freedom of movement is a key right upon which the UN insists, stating "refugees who choose to move to Bhasan Char should have basic rights and services on the island, which would include effective freedom of movement to and from the mainland, as well as access to education, health care, and livelihood opportunities."
Being sequestered on an island without freedom of movement recalls the situation of refugees imprisoned on Nauru in the Pacific.
The UN also stated that any relocations should be preceded by comprehensive technical assessments to "review the safety, feasibility and sustainability of Bhasan Char as a place for refugees to live." It continued, "the United Nations is prepared to proceed with the technical and protection assessments, if permitted by the Government."
Bangladesh states that it has spent $112 million fortifying embankments to counter any future flooding, building housing, schools, roads, hospitals, mosques and shelters in case of cyclones. The island will be able to house 100,000 people.
Yet refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch say they are denied freedom of movement and have no access to sustainable livelihoods or education.
Sullivan, Refugees International told EcoWatch, "Serious questions remain unanswered about the physical safety of the island and the ability to provide adequate food, health, and protection services without proper assessments and planning with UN agencies and NGOs. Some of the 300 refugees already on the island have already reported abuse by authorities and have been unable to reunite with family in the main camps."
Sullivan states, "Bangladesh should allow safety and feasibility assessments by UN agencies and by human rights groups, as Refugees International, Fortify Rights, and other groups requested earlier this year. Without appropriate assessments and adequate information for refugees about the conditions on the island, the move is nothing short of a dangerous mass detention of the Rohingya people in violation of international human rights obligations."
The refugees were sent to Bhasan Char in early December were bussed up from Cox's Bazar in coastal Bangladesh where an estimated one million Rohingya refugees live. In August 2017 armed groups attacked military outposts in western Myanmar. Allegedly, the armed groups belonged to the Rohingya. The military of Buddhist majority Myanmar began a harsh crackdown in response. An estimated 700,000 Muslim Rohingya fled. About 300,000 had fled earlier waves of the ongoing persecution in Myanmar that started in 1978 and experienced an uptick in the 1990s.
A 1982 Citizenship Law deprives the Rohingya of citizenship. Then, in 2015, during the Obama-Biden administration, the Burmese government stripped Rohingya of temporary identification cards, leading to a forcible displacement to neighboring countries.
It remains to be seen if the new Biden Administration will work to end the violence unleashed against the Rohingya in Myanmar and work to broker peace to facilitate their safe return to their home country. Biden's agenda acknowledges the situation and states, "the systematic discrimination and atrocities against Burma's Rohingya Muslim minority is abhorrent and undermines peace and stability."
On August 15, 2020, Antony Blinken tweeted: "Today marks 3 years since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were driven from their homes in Burma. A Biden administration will work tirelessly to support justice for atrocities committed, as well as peace, security, and equal rights for the Rohingya as citizens of Burma." Blinken is now Biden's Secretary of State nominee.
While the move of Rohingya to Bhasan Char is troubling, the bigger Rohingya crisis also needs to be resolved. Sullivan of Refugees International states, "While the root causes and long-term solution to the Rohingya crisis lie in Myanmar and Bangladesh deserves great credit for hosting some million Rohingya refugees, the world cannot allow Bangladesh to pursue policies that unnecessarily endanger the Rohingya further."
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