11 January 21
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11 January 21
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RSN: Marc Ash | In the Middle of the Rubicon
Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
Ash writes: "Republicans in Congress would have the country believe that the Constitution will remove Donald Trump on January 20th. But Trump's contempt for the Constitution casts a deep, dark shadow of doubt."
Trump has made clear from the start of his first presidential campaign in 2015 that he had no patience with any law that would constrain him and the only law he saw fit to follow was his own. We have been reminded of his willingness to trample the law and the Constitution on countless occasions over the past four years. His literal assault on the Capitol being the just most recent and consequential example.
President-elect Joe Biden called what occurred at the American Capitol in Washington, DC, an “insurrection.” Many global security analysts are describing it as a coup d'état, if a failed one. Both terms adequately convey the gravity of what occurred and make clear what may await us in the remaining roughly nine days of Trump’s still not dead presidency.
It would seem that Trump is hung up on a sandbar in the middle of the Rubicon with his ragtag white American militias in tow, having begun a treasonous crossing, failed, but remaining still in power. Unable to retreat from what he has attempted and thwarted from completing his coup, he cannot go forward or back.
Who believes that Trump has seen the light and will now quietly let power slip from his grasp? It’s not very likely. He has the same three options now that he has had all along in terms of circumventing the November election and maintaining his grip on power. The first is a military takeover. The second is a legal or legislative coup. The third is a literal coup by means of a popular uprising.
A military takeover would require the participation, unsurprisingly, of the military. Fortunately for American Democracy, the people at the Pentagon seem quite a bit more fond of the Constitution than Trump does. The signals Pentagon officials are sending would appear to indicate they are willing and able to maintain their position until January 21st.
Meanwhile, back at the never dull Capitol, there are Trump loyalists in Congressional member’s clothing who lurk about. Lacking a majority, they too seem to sit beside their commander on the Rubicon sandbar searching for a way to complete the crossing.
Which leaves the popular uprisers. This was always the greatest danger. The self-styled, self-regulated militias, often comprised of military veterans but acting without formal military oversight, are capable of much and controlled by little.
As the invaders of the Capitol were heard to say as they left, “We’ll be back.” Back to the Capitol in Washington, DC? Salem, Oregon? Lansing, Michigan? Phoenix, Arizona? There have already been multiple incursions at all of those places. Always armed.
So it would seem necessary for government installations, federal and state, to be on a heightened state of alert. Those are the most likely targets between now and January 20th, and perhaps beyond.
Trump should never have attempted the crossing of the Rubicon. But now that he’s hung up in the middle, it is imperative to keep him there.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
New York Air National Guard Security Forces airmen board buses at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, as they deploy to Washington, D.C., on January 8, 2021. (photo: Eric Durr/Army National Guard)
National Guard Troops Deploying to DC Will Come With Lethal Weapons
Richard Sisk, Yahoo! News
Sisk writes: "Army and Air National Guard members deploying to Washington, D.C. to help guard the capital and stay through the Jan. 20 inauguration will have access to lethal weapons at their commanders' discretion, Guard commanders said Friday."
"There's no hiding the fact that soldiers and airmen do have lethal force with them," Army Brig. Gen. David Wood, joint staff director of the Pennsylvania National Guard, said at a virtual roundtable with defense reporters.
"How those rules of the use of force are engaged is just dependent on the scenario and in that situation. We are going to try to deescalate as much as we can [before taking up weapons]," Wood said. "The way we deploy it will depend on the situation and the commander's intent."
The Associated Press reported earlier that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy will make decisions in the coming days on whether Guard units will be armed on the District's streets.
Wood joined Army Maj. Gen. Timothy E. Gowen, adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard, and Army Col. Lisa Hou, interim adjutant of the New Jersey National Guard, at a virtual roundtable with defense reporters to describe the issues involved with their emergency deployments to Washington.
All three officers said they already had been planning to send units to the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-Elect Joe Biden, but had had to scramble Wednesday, following the pro-Trump mob assault on the Capitol, to resolve problems with the various jurisdictions and command authorities involved.
Because Washington is a federal district and not a state, District Mayor Muriel Bowser does not have authority to call out D.C.'s National Guard on her own as state governors can, but must first request activation from McCarthy.
McCarthy also must coordinate with state governors to bring in National Guard units from outside the District.
As a result, Gowen said, there was initial confusion Wednesday before Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan got clearance. Gowen said he received the order to deploy troops around 5:30 p.m., well after Trump supporters had been cleared from the Capitol building.
Then it was decided with the D.C. National Guard to wait until Thursday morning to bring in the Maryland troops, Gowen said.
"Everyone wants to help right away, but sometimes you can't," Gowen said. "We've got to accept the notion that the National Guard is not a first-responder force."
Gowen said Maryland initially planned to send about 500 troops to the District; Wood said Pennsylvania was sending about 1,000; and Lou said New Jersey was sending 500.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
How to Impeach a President in 9 Days: Here's What It Would Take
Nicholas Fandos, Yahoo! News
Fandos writes: "After President Donald Trump incited a mob of his supporters who violently stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, Congress is once again weighing whether to impeach him, this time with only days remaining in his term."
It is an extraordinary circumstance raising political, constitutional and logistical questions rarely contemplated in American history. No president has ever been impeached twice or in his waning days in office, and none has ever been convicted.
Given the brevity of his time left in the White House and the gravity of his conduct, lawmakers are also looking at a provision in the Constitution’s impeachment clauses that could allow them to bar Trump from ever holding federal office again.
Democrats are driving the process so far, but some Republicans have indicated they would be open to hearing a case. Here is what we know about how the process might work.
Congress can remove a president for high crimes and misdemeanors.
The Constitution allows Congress to remove presidents, or other officers of the executive branch, before their terms are through if lawmakers believe they have committed “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Impeachment is a two-part process, and deliberately difficult. First, the House votes on whether to impeach — the equivalent of indicting someone in a criminal case. The charges are codified in articles of impeachment detailing the allegations of offenses against the nation.
If a simple majority of the House votes in favor of pressing charges, the Senate must promptly consider them at a trial. The House prosecutes the case, appointing impeachment managers to argue before senators, who act as the jury, and the president is traditionally allowed to mount a defense. The chief justice of the Supreme Court oversees the trial.
In the Senate, the threshold for conviction is much higher. Two-thirds of the senators seated at any given moment must agree to convict; otherwise, the president is acquitted. If all 100 senators were seated at the time of trial, that means 17 Republicans would have to join Democrats to obtain a conviction — a high bar to clear.
Impeaching Trump now could bar him from public office in the future.
While it may seem pointless to impeach a president just as he is about to leave office, there could be real consequences for Trump beyond the stain on his record. If he were convicted, the Senate could vote to bar him from ever holding office again. Following a conviction, the Constitution says the Senate can consider “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”
Only a simple majority of senators would have to agree to successfully disqualify Trump, who is contemplating another run for president in 2024, an appealing prospect not just to Democrats but to many Republicans who are eyeing their own runs.
There’s nothing preventing a second impeachment of Trump.
The House impeached Trump in December 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to his attempts to pressure Ukraine to smear his political rival at the time, Joe Biden. The Senate voted to acquit him of both charges.
Only three American presidents have ever been impeached, including Trump. None has ever been impeached twice.
But there appears to be nothing in the Constitution stopping Congress from impeaching a president again on a new set of charges.
The timing is tight, but not impossible.
With Trump set to leave office on Jan. 20, one of the biggest political and logistical hurdles is the calendar. Past presidential impeachments, including the one the House undertook in 2019, have typically been drawn-out affairs with investigations, hearings and weeks of public debate.
This deliberate process is in part meant to build consensus for such a drastic action, but it is not necessary under the rules. If Democrats and some Republicans are in agreement they must act, they can move in a matter of days, bypassing the House Judiciary Committee, to draw up charges, introduce and proceed directly to a debate and vote on the floor of the House. In this case, since Congress is just beginning and committees have not yet even formed, doing so may be the only practical option.
As soon as the House votes to adopt articles of impeachment, they can immediately transmit them to the Senate, which must promptly begin a trial.
Under one theory being discussed, the House could impeach Trump and hold onto the articles for a few days to wait until Democrats take over control of the Senate, which will occur after Biden is sworn in. The length of a trial, and the rules governing it, are determined by the members of the Senate.
In a memo circulated to senators late Friday, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, suggested it may be practically impossible to convene a trial before Jan. 20, when Trump leaves office and Biden is sworn in. The Senate is currently not in session because of the looming inauguration, and all 100 senators would have to agree to change the schedule.
Trump can still be impeached as an ex-president.
History gives little guide on the question of whether a president can be impeached once he leaves office, and House lawyers were racing to understand the legal and constitutional issues.
There is precedent for doing so in the case of other high government officers. In 1876, the House impeached President Ulysses S. Grant’s war secretary for graft, even after he resigned from his post. The Senate at the time considered whether it still had jurisdiction to hear the case of a former official, and determined that it did. Ultimately, the secretary was acquitted.
Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional scholar at the University of North Carolina who testified in the last impeachment proceedings, wrote on Friday that he saw no reason Congress could not proceed.
“It would make no sense for former officials, or ones who step down just in time, to escape that remedial mechanism,” he wrote. “It should accordingly go without saying that if an impeachment begins when an individual is in office, the process may surely continue after they resign or otherwise depart.”
Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testifies before House lawmakers in July 2019. (photo: Congressional Quarterly/CQ Roll Call/AP)
Outgoing Capitol Police Chief: House, Senate Security Officials Hamstrung Efforts to Call in National Guard
Carol D. Leonnig, Aaron C. Davis, Peter Hermann and Karoun Demirjian, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Two days before Congress was set to formalize President-elect Joe Biden's victory, Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund was growing increasingly worried about the size of the pro-Trump crowds expected to stream into Washington in protest."
To be on the safe side, Sund asked House and Senate security officials for permission to request that the D.C. National Guard be placed on standby in case he needed quick backup.
But, Sund said Sunday, they turned him down.
In his first interview since pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol last week, Sund, who has since resigned his post, said his supervisors were reluctant to take formal steps to put the Guard on call even as police intelligence suggested that the crowd President Trump had invited to Washington to protest his defeat probably would be much larger than earlier demonstrations.
House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving said he wasn’t comfortable with the “optics” of formally declaring an emergency ahead of the demonstration, Sund said. Meanwhile, Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger suggested that Sund should informally seek out his Guard contacts, asking them to “lean forward” and be on alert in case Capitol Police needed their help.
Irving could not be reached for comment. A cellphone number listed in his name has not accepted messages since Wednesday. Messages left at a residence he owns in Nevada were not immediately returned, and there was no answer Sunday evening at a Watergate apartment listed in his name. A neighbor said he had recently moved out.
Stenger declined Sunday to comment when a reporter visited his Virginia home. “I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
It was the first of six times Sund’s request for help was rejected or delayed, he said. Two days later on Wednesday afternoon, his forces already in the midst of crisis, Sund said he pleaded for help five more times as a scene far more dire than he had ever imagined unfolded on the historic Capitol grounds.
An army of 8,000 pro-Trump demonstrators streamed down Pennsylvania Avenue after hearing Trump speak near the White House. Sund’s outer perimeter on the Capitol’s west side was breached within 15 minutes. With 1,400 Capitol Police officers on duty, his forces were quickly overrun.
“If we would have had the National Guard we could have held them at bay longer, until more officers from our partner agencies could arrive,” he said.
Just before 2 p.m., the pro-Trump mob entered the Capitol, sending lawmakers and staff scrambling for safety. D.C. police had quickly dispatched hundreds of officers to the scene. But it wasn’t enough. At 2:26 p.m., Sund said, he joined a conference call to the Pentagon to plead for additional backup.
“I am making an urgent, urgent immediate request for National Guard assistance,” Sund recalled saying. “I have got to get boots on the ground.”
On the call were several officials from the D.C. government, as well as officials from the Pentagon, including Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, director of the Army Staff. The D.C. contingent was flabbergasted to hear Piatt say that he could not recommend that his boss, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, approve the request.
“I don’t like the visual of the National Guard standing a police line with the Capitol in the background,” Piatt said, according to Sund and others on the call.
Again and again, Sund said, “The situation is dire,” recalled John Falcicchio, the chief of staff for D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser. “Literally, this guy is on the phone, I mean, crying out for help. It’s burned in my memories.”
Pentagon officials have emphasized that the Capitol Police did not ask for D.C. Guard backup ahead of the event or request to put a riot contingency plan in place with guardsmen at the ready, and then made an urgent request as rioters were about to breach the building, even though the Guard isn’t set up to be a quick-reaction force like the police.
“We rely on Capitol Police and federal law enforcement to provide an assessment of the situation,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said during a news conference last week. “And based on that assessment that they had, they believed they had sufficient personnel and did not make a request.”
Despite Sund’s pleas, the first National Guard personnel didn’t arrive at the Capitol until 5:40 p.m. — after four people had died and the worst was long over.
Sund, 55, offered his resignation the next day, telling friends he felt he had let his officers down. Many lawmakers, infuriated by the breach and angry that they had been unable to reach Sund at the height of the crisis, were only too happy to accept it.
Under pressure from lawmakers, Stenger and Irving also resigned.
In a wide-ranging interview, Sund sought to defend his officers, who, he said, had fought valiantly. And with threats of violence looming ahead of Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, he said he remains worried.
“My concern is if they don’t get their act together with physical security, it’s going to happen again,” he said.
As he prepared for last week’s demonstrations, Sund drew on decades of experience. Hired as chief in 2019, two years after joining the Capitol Police, he worked for 23 years on the D.C. police force, leaving as commander of the Special Operations Division. Widely respected in the District and among leaders of U.S. Secret Service and Park Police, he had helped to run 12 national security events, including Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration. He also served as incident commander during the 2013 Navy Yard shooting.
Last Monday, Sund said, he began to worry about the Jan. 6 demonstration.
“We knew it would be bigger,” Sund said. “We looked at the intelligence. We knew we would have large crowds, the potential for some violent altercations. I had nothing indicating we would have a large mob seize the Capitol.”
Sure, there were claims that alt-right instigators had discussed storming the building and targeting lawmakers. But Sund said such threats had surfaced in the past.
“You might see rhetoric on social media. We had seen that many times before,” he said. “People say a lot of things online.”
Still, he decided to call Irving and Stenger to ask for permission to request that the National Guard be put on emergency standby. Irving didn’t like the idea, Sund said; he said it would look bad because it would communicate that they presumed an emergency. He said he’d have to ask House leaders.
On the way home that evening, Sund did as Stenger suggested, calling Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the head of the 1,000-member D.C. National Guard, to tell him that he might call on him for help. “If we can get you leaning forward,” Sund said, “how long do you think it would take to get us assistance?”
Walker said he thought he could send 125 personnel fairly quickly. Over the weekend, Sund had also conferred with D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III, who also had offered to lend a hand if trouble arose.
On Tuesday, Sund said he briefed Irving and Stenger, who said that backup seemed sufficient.
Just before noon Wednesday, Sund was monitoring Trump’s speech to the crowd on the Ellipse when he was called away. There were reports of two pipe bombs near the Capitol grounds. So Sund didn’t hear the president call on protesters to “fight” against lawmakers preparing to confirm Biden’s victory. Nor did he hear Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, urging the crowd to engage in “trial by combat,” an eerie reference to battles to the death in the series, “Game of Thrones.” Sund said he now suspects that the pipe bombs were an intentional effort to draw officers away from the Capitol perimeter.
The first wave of protesters arrived at the Capitol about 12:40 p.m.
“As soon as they hit the fence line, the fight was on,” Sund said. “Violent confrontations from the start. They came with riot helmets, gas masks, shields, pepper spray, fireworks, climbing gear — climbing gear! — explosives, metal pipes, baseball bats. I have never seen anything like it in 30 years of events in Washington.”
Using video footage from the Capitol and radio transmissions from his incident commanders, Sund could see his officers trying to hold the line. But the rioters immediately yanked the barricade fence out of the way and threw it at his officers’ heads.
“I realized at 1 p.m., things aren’t going well,” he said. “I’m watching my people getting slammed.”
Sund immediately called Contee, who sent 100 officers to the scene, with some arriving within 10 minutes. But at 1:09 p.m., Sund said he called Irving and Stenger, telling them it was time to call in the Guard. He wanted an emergency declaration. Both men said they would “run it up the chain” and get back to him, he said.
Minutes later, aides to the top congressional leaders were called to Stenger’s office for an update on the situation — and were infuriated to learn that the sergeants at arms had not yet called in the National Guard or any other reinforcements, as was their responsibility to do without seeking approval from leaders.
“What do you mean that there’s no National Guard, that there’s no reinforcements coming?” aides demanded to know. “Why haven’t you ordered them, why aren’t they already here?”
Sund said he called Irving twice more and Stenger once to check on their progress. At 1:50 p.m. — nine minutes before the Capitol was breached — Sund said he was losing patience. He called Walker to tell him to get ready to bring the Guard. Irving called back with formal approval at 2:10 p.m. By then, plainclothes Capitol Police agents were barricading the door to the Speaker’s Lobby just off the House chamber to keep the marauders from charging in.
Sund finally had approval to call the National Guard. But that would prove to be just the beginning of a bureaucratic nightmare to get soldiers on the scene.
At 2:26 p.m., Sund joined a conference call organized by D.C’s homeland security director, Chris Rodriguez. Among those on the screen were the District’s police chief, mayor and Walker.
Unlike anywhere else in the country, the D.C. Guard does not report to a governor, but to the president, so Walker patched in the office of the Secretary of the Army, noting that he would need authorization from the Pentagon to order soldiers to the Capitol.
Piatt noted the Pentagon still needed authorization from Capitol Police to step foot on Capitol grounds. Sund ticked through details on the severity of the breach, but the call got noisy with crosstalk as officials asked more questions.
Contee sought to quiet the din. “Wait, wait,” he said, and then directed attention to Sund. “Steve, are you requesting National Guard assistance at the Capitol?”
Sund said he replied: “I am making urgent, urgent, immediate request for National Guard assistance.”
But Piatt, dialed in from across the river at the Pentagon, pushed back, according to Sund, saying he would prefer to have Guard soldiers take up posts around Washington, relieving D.C. police, so that they could respond to the Capitol instead of guardsmen. Sund’s account is supported by four D.C. officials on the call, including Bowser.
Bowser told The Washington Post that Sund had “made it perfectly clear that they needed extraordinary help, including the National Guard. There was some concern from the Army of what it would look like to have armed military personnel on the grounds of the Capitol.”
Falcicchio said that once Contee confirmed that Sund wanted the National Guard, D.C. officials echoed his request.
“Contee was definitely — I hate to use this term, but there’s no other term for it. He was pleading,” Falcicchio said. “He was pleading with them to fulfill the request that Capitol Police was making.”
But the entire discussion was in vain. Only McCarthy, the secretary, could order the Guard deployed — and only with the approval of the Pentagon chief. McCarthy has since said that, at the time of the call, he was busy taking the requests to activate more Guard to acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller.
At one point, according to a defense official, Contee said, “Let me be clear, are you denying this?” To which Piatt responded that he wasn’t denying the request; he simply didn’t have the authority to approve it.
“It was clear that it was a dire situation,” the defense official said. “He didn’t want to commit to anything without getting approval.”
At 3:45 p.m., Stenger told Sund that he would ask his boss, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for help getting the National Guard authorized more quickly. Sund never learned the result. More of Contee’s officers had arrived and were helping remove rioters from the grounds. Capitol Police worked with other federal authorities, including the Secret Service, the Park Police and the FBI, to secure lawmakers, eject rioters and sweep the building so lawmakers could return to finish counting the electoral college votes that would allow them to formally recognize Biden’s victory later that night.
According to a timeline the Defense Department published Friday, Miller verbally authorized the activation of the entire D.C. Guard at 3:04 p.m. It would take two more hours for most of the citizen soldiers to leave their jobs and homes, and pick up gear from the D.C. Armory.
Sund, who was officially replaced as chief Friday, said he is left feeling that America’s bastions of democracy need far more security. He said the violent crowd that mobbed the Capitol was unlike anything he has ever seen.
“They were extremely dangerous and they were extremely prepared. I have a hard time calling this a demonstration,” he said.
“I’m a firm supporter of First Amendment. This was none of that,” he added. “This was criminal riotous activity.”
Sund blamed Trump for putting his officers at risk, saying “the crowd left that rally and had been incited by some of the words the president said.” Sund said he fears what may come next.
On Sunday, the Capitol’s rolling green lawn was ringed by high black fencing and patrolled by personnel in green camouflage keeping the public at bay.
“This is the people’s house. Congress members have always prided themselves on having an open campus,” Sund said. But now, “I’m not sure that will continue to be defensible.”
Registered nurse Valerie Massaro administers the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to health care workers at the Hartford Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut, this week. (photo: Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images)
'I'm Not an Anti-Vaxxer, but ...' US Health Workers' Vaccine Hesitancy Raises Alarm
Amanda Holpuch, Guardian UK
Holpuch writes: "Susan, a critical care nurse based in Alaska, has been exposed to COVID-19 multiple times and has watched scores of people die from the illness. But she did not want to get the vaccination when she learned it would soon be available."
With up to 40% of frontline workers in LA county refusing Covid-19 inoculation experts warn that understanding and persuasion are needed
“I am not an anti-vaxxer, I have every vaccine known to man, my flu shot, I always sign up right there, October 1, jab me,” said Susan, who didn’t want to give her last name for fear of retaliation. “But for this one, why do I have to be a guinea pig?”
The two authorized vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, are safe according to leading experts and clinical trials – for one thing they contain no live virus and so cannot give a person Covid – and with tens of thousands of patients, they have had about 95% efficacy. But across the country, health workers with the first access to the vaccine are turning it down.
The rates of refusal – up to 40% of frontline workers in Los Angeles county, 60% of care home workers in Ohio – have prompted concern and in some cases, shaming. But the ultimate failure could be dismissing these numbers at a critical moment in the US vaccination campaign.
Dr Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, told the Guardian if these early figures coming from healthcare workers are not addressed: “It could mean after all this work, after all this sacrifice, we could still be seeing outbreaks for years, not just 2021, maybe 2022, maybe 2023.”
Vaccine hesitancy is common – 29% of healthcare workers said they were vaccine-hesitant, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation published last month. And it’s not exclusive to the US – up to 40% of care workers in the UK might refuse to have the vaccine, the National Care Association said in mid-December.
The numbers coming from hospital and care homes are unique in that they give a more specific picture of who is refusing the vaccine and why. Once vaccines are available to the general public, patterns will be more difficult to identify because the US does not have a centralized system to track vaccinations.
“If we don’t understand the patterns of who is not vaccinated, it will be hard to predict where outbreaks might spring from and how far they might spread,” Robinson said.
It will also leave underfunded public health agencies scrambling to identify and respond to hesitancy in the community.
“We can’t just write off somebody’s decisions and say, well that’s their personal decision,” Robinson said. “Because it’s not just their personal decision, it’s an infectious disease. As long as we have pockets of coronavirus anywhere in the world, until we have mass global vaccination, it’s a threat.”
Some employers and unions are seeing the numbers for what they are: an alarm in need of a response.
In New York City, the firefighters union found last month that 55% of 2,000 firefighter members surveyed said they would not get the vaccine.
But Covid cases are climbing at the FDNY. Twelve members have died and more than 600 were on medical leave in late December.
So, the Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA) president, Andrew Ansbro, collected questions from some of the roughly 8,200 firefighters his union represents. A virologist friend had been helping Ansbro shape the union’s response to Covid-19 and answered their questions in a recorded video. The 50-minute video has now been viewed about 2,000 times.
“I actually received a couple dozen phone calls and messages from members that said it changed their mind,” said Ansbro, who was vaccinated on 29 December. “I think the vaccination numbers are definitely going to be higher than 45%.”
He said people were concerned about how new the vaccine was, had read misinformation online and were worried about long-term effects. In other workplace surveys, people have shared concerns about how it could affect fertility or pregnant women. Some healthcare workers infected with Covid don’t think it’s necessary while they still have antibodies.
Each of these questions can be answered. And national surveys have shown that in general, vaccine hesitancy is decreasing.
But these surveys also suggest action is still needed to address populations more likely to be distrustful because of the country’s history of medical abuse.
Recent surveys show that Black people are the most vaccine-hesitant. In mid-November, 83% of Asian Americans said they would get the vaccine if it was made available to them that day. That sentiment was shared by 63% of Hispanic people, 61% of white people but just 42% of Black people, according to a Pew Research report.
Dr Nikhila Juvvadi, the chief clinical officer at Loretto hospital in Chicago, told NPR that conversations with vaccine-hesitant staff revealed mistrust was an issue among African American and Latino workers.
She said people specifically mentioned the Tuskegee Study, when federal health officials allowed hundreds of Black men with sexually transmitted diseases to go untreated to study disease progression. The study lasted from 1932 to 1972.
“I’ve heard Tuskegee more times than I can count in the past month – and, you know, it’s a valid, valid concern,” Juvvadi said.
Juvvadi, who administered vaccines at the hospital, said one-on-one conversations validating these concerns and answering questions had helped people be more comfortable with the vaccine.
Vaccine hesitancy in healthcare workers has also put pressure on health systems intent on getting doses to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
Georgia’s public health commissioner, Kathleen Toomey, announced last week that the state would expand vaccine access to adults 65 and older and first responders because healthcare workers were declining to take it.
Dr Toomey said that while hundreds of healthcare workers were on waiting lists to get the vaccine in the state’s urban center, Atlanta, in rural areas the vaccine was “literally sitting in freezers” because healthcare workers there did not want to take it.
At one of the Texas hospitals hardest hit by the virus, Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in the Rio GrandeValley, workers contacted local EMTs, paramedics and medical workers from outside the hospital to distribute their remaining vaccines because of their limited shelf-life.
Susan, the nurse in Alaska, said her preference would be for her parents to get the vaccine first because they are more vulnerable.
She has made peace with the vaccine and plans to get it the next time it is offered. She said she was ultimately convinced to get it after speaking to other health professionals who did not dismiss her concerns and listened to her questions.
Now, however, there is another hurdle. Susan has declined the vaccine twice because of logistics. She is currently on a temporary crisis assignment in rural Texas and the travel meant both times she was offered the vaccine, she would be in a different state when it was time to take the second dose. Susan said: “I feel terrible I’ve said no.”
Prime minister has centered focus on vaccination program ahead of latest nationwide vote. (photo: Reuters)
Israelis Resume Corruption Protests Against Netanyahu Amid Third COVID-19 Lockdown
Middle East Eye
Excerpt: "Thousands of Israelis have restarted protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling on the long-serving leader to resign over corruption charges against him and his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic."
Protests taking place as trial approaches and with race on to deliver vaccine ahead of March election
Demonstrators were pictured in Jerusalem on Saturday night holding placards calling on Netanyahu to "go" and "let my people go".
The protests took place near the prime minister's residence as the country continues to vaccinate its population in the middle of its third national pandemic lockdown.
Netanyahu has faced weekly protests calling on him to resign over bribery allegations, fraud, and breach of trust connected to three long-running investigations.
His trial on the three cases was set to resume this week but was postponed due to tightened restrictions because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Court proceedings are now due to resume next month.
The 71-year-old leader denies the corruption charges and has described the campaign against him as a "witch-hunt".
On Saturday, Israel recorded four new cases of the Covid-19 variant first detected in South Africa, from travellers from the African country.
The South African variant, like the British variant, is reported to be more infectious than previous variants of the virus.
In the past few weeks, Netanyahu has fronted a vaccination drive that has given the first of two vaccine doses to nearly 20 per cent of the population.
He has put the vaccination drive at the forefront of his re-election campaign building towards voting that is due on March 23. It will be Israel's fourth general election in two years, and Netanyahu struggled to put together a stable coalition after elections in April and September last year.
On Thursday, Netanyahu said he had secured enough vaccines to vaccinate the whole adult population by the end of March.
Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the Brooks Range as a backdrop. (photo: USFWS)
Arctic Refuge Lease Sale Goes Bust, as Major Oil Companies Skip Out
Tegan Hanlon and Nathaniel Herz, Alaska Public Media
Excerpt: "One of the Trump administration's biggest energy initiatives suffered a stunning setback Wednesday, as a decades-long push to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ended with a lease sale that attracted just three bidders - one of which was the state of Alaska itself."
Alaska’s state-owned economic development corporation was the only bidder on nine of the tracts offered for lease in the northernmost swath of the refuge, known as the coastal plain. Two small companies also each picked up a single parcel.
Half of the offered leases drew no bids at all.
“They held the lease in ANWR — that is history-making. That will be recorded in the history books and people will talk about it,” said Larry Persily, a longtime observer of the oil and gas industry in Alaska. “But no one showed up.”
The sale generated a tiny fraction of the revenue it was projected to raise.
It was a striking moment in a 40-year fight over drilling in the coastal plain, an area that’s home to migrating caribou, polar bears, birds and other wildlife. It also potentially sits atop billions of barrels of oil, according to federal estimates.
But amid a global recession, low oil prices and an aggressive pressure campaign against leasing by drilling opponents, oil analysts have for months been predicting little interest in the sale, and their forecasts were confirmed Wednesday.
Persily took the sale as evidence that while drilling in the refuge remains a long-held dream of some politicians, it is no longer treasured by oil companies.
“It was, in the oil industry terms, a dry hole. A bust,” he said. “They had the lease sale, the administration can feel good about it, but no one’s going to see any oil coming out of ANWR.”
Even Kara Moriarty, head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, acknowledged that the sale results weren’t as “robust” as expected. But she said the industry still supports future access to the coastal plain.
“Today’s sale reflects the brutal economic realities the oil and gas industry continues to face after the unprecedented events of 2020, coupled with ongoing regulatory uncertainty,” she said in a statement.
The lease sale raised a total of $14.4 million in bids, according to the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that held the sale. Nearly all of that came from Alaska’s state-owned economic development corporation, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.
Half of the cash will go to the federal government, and half will go back to the state of Alaska.
The amount raised is nowhere near what was projected when a Republican-led Congress officially opened the coastal plain to drilling in 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
The bill ordered two lease sales, the first by the end of this year, with the revenue aimed at offsetting massive tax cuts.
Despite the low interest, Alaska’s Congressional delegation applauded the sale on Wednesday, and so did officials with the Bureau of Land Management, describing it as historic and a success.
Opponents blasted the sale.
“I laughed out loud. It was a joke. A joke to the American people,” said Desirée Sorenson-Groves, director of the Arctic Refuge Defense Campaign.
She said it feels like the government is basically giving away the rights to land that’s important to Indigenous people, and critical habitat for wildlife. The fight is not over, she said.
“I’ll tell you, I have a message to those who bid today, there were only three,” she said. “But here’s the message: ‘You will never ever drill in the Arctic Refuge. We’ll stop you.’”
The land that received no bids on Wednesday will not be leased in this sale.
Of the two small companies that did win leases, one is Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of Australia-based 88 Energy. The other is Knik Arm Services, a small Alaska company managed by an investor named Mark Graber.
The state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, which dominated the sale, has never held federal oil leases before.
But Alaska politicians, including former Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski, recently pushed the corporation to bid, citing the lack of industry interest. Murkowski, in an interview Wednesday, said he expects the corporation to eventually partner with companies to do the actual drilling.
“We’ll see how good an investment it is when we see what the interest is from some companies to negotiate,” he said.
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority declined a phone interview request on Wednesday.
The oil leases auctioned off in the refuge will last 10 years, and can be renewed.
But they are not yet finalized.
That process, which includes an anti-trust review by the U.S. Department of Justice, typically takes about two months. The Trump administration is expected to rush to issue the leases formally before the president leaves office in two weeks.
Even if it succeeds, additional oil leasing and drilling in the refuge will face headwinds, said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., a longtime drilling opponent.
He said his next step will be pushing for “permanent protection” for the Arctic refuge. He’s likely to have support from a Biden administration. The president-elect and his appointee to lead the Interior Department have both said they oppose drilling there.
Huffman said he‘s open to a compromise with drilling boosters — from the state of Alaska to Indigenous Iñupiaq leaders in Kaktovik, the only community inside the refuge’s boundaries — that would provide them with alternative paths toward economic development.
“We’re not hostile to taking care of the interests here, and helping put folks on a path of economic development that makes sense and that’s sustainable,” Huffman said.
“But whether it’s the climate crisis or the market factors or the extreme logistic and environmental impropriety of drilling in this place, it’s not going to happen,” he said. “It’s just not. And so I think the state of Alaska and the folks in Kaktovik should cut a deal.”
Roger Herrera, a retired BP executive and longtime lobbyist for an Alaska group that pushed Congress to open the refuge, said he was “hugely disappointed” in the results of the sale.
“Alaska is a natural resource state. You take away its natural resources and it has basically nothing,” he said in a phone interview. “Alaska’s motto of ‘North to the Future,’ should be re-examined, because I don’t think it has much meaning now.”
Some opponents were still deeply upset to see the lease sale go forward, even without much industry interest. The act of selling off leases will make it more difficult to stop development from happening, said Nauri Toler, an Iñupiaq woman from Nuiqsut and Utqiagvik who works as the Arctic Slope environmental organizer for an organization called Native Movement.
“It’s hard to go back after the lease sales — it’s a whole different game after that happens,” she said during a protest Wednesday morning outside the Bureau of Land Management’s downtown Anchorage office. “It’s pretty heart-wrenching.”
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