12 April 21
We Need a Few Donors to Step Up, "Today"
Of the 20,000 readers that will visit RSN today we need 50 to donate. Sorry to make this personal, but I want you to be one of them.
Thank you sincerely in advance.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
12 April 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Bess Levin | "Yippee!!!": Emails Show Trump Appointees Celebrating Lying to the Public About COVID-19
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "In February 2020, Donald Trump took some time away from his busy schedule of watching multiple hours of TV a day and insisting the coronavirus was fake news to have a little chat with journalist Bob Woodward."
Because of course they did.
n February 2020, Donald Trump took some time away from his busy schedule of watching multiple hours of TV a day and insisting the coronavirus was fake news to have a little chat with journalist Bob Woodward. Naturally, one of the things they discussed was the very scary virus that had gained a foothold in the United States. “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said during a February 7 call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu,” he said, repeating for emphasis, “This is deadly stuff.” Of course, at the time, Trump had been actively telling the country that COVID-19 was not at all a big deal, that it wasn’t as bad as the flu, that it would “miraculously” go away on its own by April, and that anyone suggesting otherwise was a liar and a fraud. Then in March, a week after the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Trump had another conversation with Woodward, in which he admitted something else: that he had been purposely lying to the public about the highly contagious virus the whole time. “I wanted to always play it down,” he said.
Given that the literal leader of the free world is on the record copping to lying about COVID-19—which killed 400,000 on his watch—it’s not entirely surprising to learn that his foot soldiers in the federal government did everything they could to mislead the public as well. But it’s still colossally messed up and something that should follow them around for the rest of their careers, hence this important report from The Washington Post:
Trump appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with then president Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators. The documents provide further insight into how senior Trump officials approached last year’s explosion of coronavirus cases in the United States. Even as career government scientists worked to combat the virus, a cadre of Trump appointees was attempting to blunt the scientists’ messages, edit their findings, and equip the president with an alternate set of talking points.
Then science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to then HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, 2020, touting two examples of where he said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak. Pointing to one change—in which CDC leaders allegedly changed the opening sentence of a report about the spread of the virus among younger people after Alexander pressured them—Alexander wrote to Caputo, calling it a “small victory but a victory nonetheless and yippee!!!”
In the same email, Alexander excitedly referenced another example of a change to a weekly report from the CDC that he bragged the agency had made thanks to his demands. Two days later, he asked then White House adviser Scott Atlas—the guy who wanted the U.S. to adopt a “herd immunity” strategy by letting millions get the virus on purpose—to help him discredit a forthcoming CDC report on COVID-19-related deaths among young people. “Can you help me craft an op-ed,” Alexander wrote to Atlas on September 11, claiming the report was “timed for the election” to hurt Trump, as though that was the priority of the scientists at the agency. “Let us advise the President and get permission to preempt this please for it will run for the weekend so we need to blunt the edge as it is misleading.”
Alexander and other officials also strategized on how to help Trump argue to reopen the economy in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, despite scientists’ warnings about the potential risks.
“I know the President wants us to enumerate the economic cost of not reopening. We need solid estimates to be able to say something like: 50,000 more cancer deaths! 40,000 more heart attacks! 25,000 more suicides!” Caputo wrote to Alexander on May 16, 2020, in an email obtained by the subcommittee.
“You need to take ownership of these numbers. This is singularly important to what you and I want to achieve,” Caputo added in a follow-up email, urging Alexander to compile additional data on the consequences of virus-related shutdowns. Atlas, Alexander, and Caputo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Incidentally, neither Alexander nor Caputo were doctors; for his part, Caputo seemingly got his job in the administration by writing wildly racist tweets that likely impressed the president. Of course, that didn’t stop them from demanding that the actual health experts change their guidance to the public.
For instance, Alexander said he had won changes to the “key opening sentence” of an August report about a coronavirus outbreak at a Georgia summer camp. The draft report’s opening line argued that understanding youth transmission of the coronavirus was “critical for developing guidance for schools and institutes of higher education,” according to Alexander’s email. But that language was removed from the final report and a caveat was inserted to specify that there was “limited data” about spread of the virus among people under the age of 21. The CDC said that the change had been made because of “thoughtful comments” from Alexander and the agency’s leaders.
The Trump appointee continued to demand more revisions, calling for changes to a September MMWR report that concluded that children who contracted the coronavirus in child-care facilities later transmitted the virus to their family members. “In my view, the parents got it more likely when they picked up the kids and came into contact with the school personnel or teachers as happens with my wife and I when we pick our kids form [sic] school,” Alexander wrote to Caputo on Sept. 13.
Elsewhere, Alexander emailed Atlas on September 3 proposing an “op-ed on possible damage to children immune systems with lock downs and masks,” writing, “I do think locking down our kids (and healthy adults) and masking them can dampen their functional immune systems.” Scientists, of course, have said there is no evidence whatsoever that wearing masks is harmful to children’s immune systems.
In a letter to Atlas sent on Friday, Representative James Clyburn, chairman of the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, wrote, “Our investigation has shown that Trump Administration officials engaged in a persistent pattern of political interference in the nation’s public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, overruling and bullying scientists and making harmful decisions that allowed the virus to spread more rapidly.” The subcommittee has requested additional documents from Alexander, Atlas, and others, and asked Alexander and Atlas to sit for interviews with the subcommittee by May 3.
A Texas Republican has been going around claiming Texas could secede from the United States
Never mind the fact that that’s...not actually true at all. Per CNN:
Texas Republican Party chairman Allen West falsely suggested that Texas could secede from the United States and become an independent country, a CNN KFile review of his comments in recent months shows. In radio interviews after the 2020 presidential election, West suggested Texas could vote to again become a republic, as it was before joining the United States in 1845. “This is something that was written into the Texas Constitution,” the former congressman said in one late-December radio broadcast. “Or it was promised to Texas when we became part of the United States of America—that if we voted and decided, we could go back to being our own republic.”
West’s comments on secession come as he repeatedly and baselessly questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and pushed debunked claims of massive voting fraud, including the lie that Dominion Voting Software changed votes. Following President Joe Biden’s election, West has claimed the U.S. is in an “ideological civil war” and agreed with a radio host who suggested that an actual civil war would be “worth it.”
Which obviously is completely terrifying given the willingness of people like the ones who stormed the Capitol on January 6 to engage in actual violence when things—like the 2020 presidential election—don’t go their way. (As for the claim that Texas can actually secede, CNN’s KFile notes that no, it can’t; there is a resolution asserting that Texas can choose to divide itself into five separate states, but it can’t leave the U.S. and declare independence.)
Leon Black forgot to mention one thing when he abruptly quit the firm he cofounded last month
Strange how this didn’t make the press release:
Leon Black’s surprise exit from the helm of Apollo Global Management last month came just days after several directors on the private-equity giant’s board learned of accusations of sexual harassment against him by a woman he claimed was trying to shake him down over a “consensual affair,” the Post has learned.... Black—who Apollo earlier this year revealed had paid millions to dead pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein following the latter’s 2008 convictions for procuring an underage girl for prostitution—cited his wife’s ailing health and his own health problems for the sudden change in plans.
Neither Black nor Apollo mentioned at the time that days leading up to the resignation, at least four of Apollo’s 12 board members had become aware of a series of little-noticed but explosive tweets by Güzel Ganieva, a former model who claimed to have been “forced to sign an NDA in 2015” relating to allegations that Black “sexually harassed and abused” her, according to sources close to the situation.
In a statement to the Post, Black denied the accusations while acknowledging that he was well acquainted with Ganieva. “I foolishly had a consensual affair with Ms. Ganieva that ended more than seven years ago,” he said. “Any allegation of harassment or any other inappropriate behavior towards her is completely fabricated.” Black added that he had “made substantial monetary payments” to Ganieva “based on her threats to go public concerning our relationship, in an attempt to spare my family from public embarrassment.” That, he now believes, amounted to him being “extorted,” and he said he has referred the matter to “the criminal authorities.” (Ganieva did not immediately respond to the Post regarding Black’s extortion allegations.) Black separately paid Epstein $158 million, allegedly for tax advice and estate planning, despite being worth roughly $8 billion and having access to the best lawyers and accountants in the world, while Epstein was a college dropout with no formal training in taxes and estate planning.
People protested at the Brooklyn Center Police Station in Minneapolis after the shooting on Sunday. (photo: Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty Images)
Minnesota National Guard Deployed After Protests Over a Man's Death Following a Police Shooting During a Traffic Stop
Keith Allen, Adrienne Broaddus, Hollie Silverman and Joe Sutton, CNN
Excerpt: "Hundreds of people protested Sunday night after a Black man in Minnesota was shot by a police officer and died following a traffic stop."
The shooting happened Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb of about 30,000 people. The city is about 10 miles from where former police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial for the killing of another Black man, George Floyd.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz identified the man killed in Sunday's incident as Daunte Wright.
"Gwen and I are praying for Daunte Wright's family as our state mourns another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement," Walz tweeted.
Around 2 p.m. local time (3 p.m. ET), police said they were trying to take a man into custody after learning during a traffic stop that he had outstanding warrants.
The man got back into his vehicle, and an officer shot him, police said. The man then drove several blocks before striking another vehicle, police said.
Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said police and medical personnel attempted life-saving measures following the crash, but the man died at the scene.
Protesters gathered Sunday evening and marched toward the police department, leading to what the city's mayor described as "growing civil unrest."
Aerial footage from CNN affiliate KARE showed several police cars around the Brooklyn Center crash site swarmed by crowds. The video showed people attempting to damage police cars.
The state deployed the Minnesota National Guard, and Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott issued a curfew until 6 a.m. Monday (7 a.m. ET).
Wright called his mother during the traffic stop
Wright's mother, Katie Wright, told CNN affiliate WCCO her 20-year-old son called her as he was getting pulled over.
"He said they pulled him over because he had air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror," the mother said, crying. "A minute later, I called and his girlfriend answered, which was the passenger in the car, and said that he'd been shot."
"He didn't deserve to be shot and killed like this," Wright said.
Body camera footage of the incident exists, but has not yet been released, authorities said.
Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) is on the scene and will investigate, the Brooklyn Center police chief said.
Schools are closed
Brooklyn Center Community Schools are closed Monday and will have remote learning "out of an abundance of caution," Superintendent Dr. Carly Baker wrote in a message posted on the school's website.
"I haven't entirely processed the tragedy that took place in our community and I'm prioritizing the safety and wellbeing of our students, families, staff members and community members."
A crowd marched toward the police department
As anger over the shootings spread, about 100 to 200 people marched toward the Brooklyn Center Police Department, Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS) commissioner John Harrington said.
After nightfall, a crowd gathered around the police department, CNN crews on scene reported. Officers held a line outside of the department, with some officers positioned on top of the building.
Harrington said there were reports of people throwing rocks and other objects at the police department building. There were also reports of shots fired in the area, he said.
While one group stayed at the police department, a second group was seen at the Shingle Creek Mall, where around 20 businesses were broken into, Harrington said.
A majority of the crowd at the police department was later dispersed, Harrington said.
A police representative announced over a speaker that it was an unlawful assembly, and at 9:30 p.m. gave the group a 10-minute warning to disperse.
Five minutes later, the crowd was given another warning to leave before a loud boom went off and people took off running. Some of the crowd remained.
In nearby Minneapolis, a strike team was deployed to deal with reports of break-ins and shots fired, Harrington said.
He said authorities will keep a strong presence in the area in the coming days.
"You will see a robust assortment of National Guard, state and local police departments working together over the next two or three days," Harrington said.
'The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries.' (photo: Erre Gálvez/Guardian UK)\
The Facebook Loophole That Lets World Leaders Deceive and Harass Their Citizens
Julia Carrie Wong, Guardian UK
Wong writes: "Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents despite being alerted to evidence of the wrongdoing."
The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries of politically manipulative behavior that was proactively detected by company staff.
The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries. The company acted quickly to address political manipulation affecting countries such as the US, Taiwan, South Korea and Poland, while moving slowly or not at all on cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Mexico, and much of Latin America.
“There is a lot of harm being done on Facebook that is not being responded to because it is not considered enough of a PR risk to Facebook,” said Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook who worked within the company’s “integrity” organization to combat inauthentic behavior. “The cost isn’t borne by Facebook. It’s borne by the broader world as a whole.”
Facebook pledged to combat state-backed political manipulation of its platform after the historic fiasco of the 2016 US election, when Russian agents used inauthentic Facebook accounts to deceive and divide American voters.
But the company has repeatedly failed to take timely action when presented with evidence of rampant manipulation and abuse of its tools by political leaders around the world.
Facebook fired Zhang for poor performance in September 2020. On her final day, she published a 7,800-word farewell memo describing how she had “found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry” and lambasting the company for its failure to address the abuses. “I know that I have blood on my hands by now,” she wrote. News of the memo was first reported in September by BuzzFeed News.
Zhang is coming forward now in the hopes that her disclosures will force Facebook to reckon with its impact on the rest of the world.
“Facebook doesn’t have a strong incentive to deal with this, except the fear that someone might leak it and make a big fuss, which is what I’m doing,” she told the Guardian. “The whole point of inauthentic activity is not to be found. You can’t fix something unless you know that it exists.”
Liz Bourgeois, a Facebook spokesperson, said: “We fundamentally disagree with Ms Zhang’s characterization of our priorities and efforts to root out abuse on our platform.
“We aggressively go after abuse around the world and have specialized teams focused on this work. As a result, we’ve taken down more than 100 networks of coordinated inauthentic behavior. Around half of them were domestic networks that operated in countries around the world, including those in Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and in the Asia Pacific region. Combatting coordinated inauthentic behavior is our priority. We’re also addressing the problems of spam and fake engagement. We investigate each issue before taking action or making public claims about them.”
Facebook did not dispute Zhang’s factual assertions about her time at the company.
With 2.8 billion users, Facebook plays a dominant role in the political discourse of nearly every country in the world. But the platform’s algorithms and features can be manipulated to distort political debate.
One way to do this is by creating fake “engagement” – likes, comments, shares and reactions – using inauthentic or compromised Facebook accounts. In addition to shaping public perception of a political leader’s popularity, fake engagement can affect Facebook’s all-important news feed algorithm. Successfully gaming the algorithm can make the difference between reaching an audience of millions – or shouting into the wind.
Zhang was hired by Facebook in January 2018 to work on the team dedicated to rooting out fake engagement. She found that the vast majority of fake engagement appeared on posts by individuals, businesses or brands, but that it was also being used on what Facebook called “civic” – ie political – targets.
The most blatant example was Juan Orlando Hernández, the president of Honduras, who in August 2018 was receiving 90% of all the known civic fake engagement in the small Central American country. In August 2018, Zhang uncovered evidence that Hernández’s staff was directly involved in the campaign to boost content on his page with hundreds of thousands of fake likes.
One of the administrators of Hernández’s official Facebook Page was also administering hundreds of other Pages that had been set up to resemble user profiles. The staffer used the dummy Pages to deliver fake likes to Hernández’s posts, the digital equivalent of bussing in a fake crowd for a speech.
This method of acquiring fake engagement, which Zhang calls “Page abuse”, was made possible by a loophole in Facebook’s policies. The company requires user accounts to be authentic and bars users from having more than one, but it has no comparable rules for Pages, which can perform many of the same engagements that accounts can, including liking, sharing and commenting.
The loophole has remained open due to a lack of enforcement, and it appears that it is currently being used by the ruling party of Azerbaijan to leave millions of harassing comments on the Facebook Pages of independent news outlets and Azerbaijani opposition politicians.
Page abuse is related to what Russia’s Internet Research Agency did during the 2016 US election, when it set up Facebook accounts purporting to represent Americans and used them to manipulate individuals and influence political debates. Facebook called this “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (CIB) and tasked an elite team of investigators, known as threat intelligence, with uncovering and removing it. Facebook now discloses the CIB campaigns it uncovers in monthly reports, while removing the fake accounts and Pages.
But threat intelligence – and numerous Facebook managers and executives – resisted investigating both the Honduras and Azerbaijan Page abuse cases, despite evidence in both cases linking the abuse to the national government. Among the company leaders Zhang briefed about her findings were Guy Rosen, the vice-president of integrity; Katie Harbath, the former public policy director for global elections ; Samidh Chakrabarti, the then head of civic integrity; and David Agranovich, the global threat disruption lead.
The cases were particularly concerning because of the nature of the political leaders involved. Hernández was re-elected in 2017 in a contest that is widely viewed as fraudulent. His administration has been marked by allegations of rampant corruption and human rights violations. Azerbaijan is an authoritarian country without freedom of the press or free elections.
Hernández did not respond to queries sent to his press officer, attorney and minister of transparency. The ruling party of Azerbaijan did not respond to queries.
It took Facebook nearly a year to take down the Honduras network, and 14 months to remove the Azerbaijan campaign. In both cases, Facebook subsequently allowed the abuse to return. Facebook says that it uses manual and automated detection methods to monitor previous CIB enforcement cases, and that it “continuously” removes accounts and Pages connected to previously removed networks.
The lengthy delays were in large part the result of Facebook’s priority system for protecting political discourse and elections.
“We have literally hundreds or thousands of types of abuse (job security on integrity eh!),” Rosen told Zhang in an April 2019 chat after she had complained about the lack of action on Honduras. “That’s why we should start from the end (top countries, top priority areas, things driving prevalence, etc) and try to somewhat work our way down.”
Zhang told Rosen in December 2019 that she had been informed that threat intelligence would only prioritize investigating suspected CIB networks in “the US/western Europe and foreign adversaries such as Russia/Iran/etc”.
Rosen endorsed the framework, saying: “I think that’s the right prioritization.”
Zhang filed dozens of escalations within Facebook’s task management system to alert the threat intelligence team to networks of fake accounts or Pages that were distorting political discourse, including in Albania, Mexico, Argentina, Italy, the Philippines, Afghanistan, South Korea, Bolivia, Ecuador, Iraq, Tunisia, Turkey, Taiwan, Paraguay, El Salvador, India, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Ukraine, Poland and Mongolia.
The networks often failed to meet Facebook’s shifting criteria to be prioritized for CIB takedowns, but they nevertheless violated the company’s policies and should have been removed.
In some of the cases that Zhang uncovered, including those in South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine, Italy and Poland, Facebook took quick action, resulting in investigations by staff from threat intelligence and, in most cases, takedowns of the inauthentic accounts.
In other cases, Facebook delayed taking action for months. When Zhang uncovered a network of fake accounts creating low-quality, scripted fake engagement on politicians in the Philippines in October 2019, Facebook left it to languish. But when a tiny subset of that network began creating an insignificant amount of fake engagement on Donald Trump’s Page in February 2020, the company moved quickly to remove it.
In several cases, Facebook did not take any action.
A threat intelligence investigator found evidence that the Albanian network, which was mass-producing inauthentic comments, was linked to individuals in government, then dropped the case.
A Bolivian network of fake accounts supporting a presidential candidate in the run-up to the nation’s disputed October 2019 general election was wholly ignored; as of Zhang’s last day of work in September 2020, the network was continuing to operate.
Networks in Tunisia and Mongolia were similarly left uninvestigated, despite elections in Tunisia and a constitutional crisis in Mongolia.
Amid mass protests and a political crisis in Iraq in 2019, Facebook’s market specialist for Iraq asked that two networks Zhang found be prioritized. An investigator agreed that the accounts should be removed, but no one ever carried out the enforcement action, and on Zhang’s final day, she found approximately 1,700 fake accounts continuing to act in support of a political figure in the country.
Ultimately, Zhang argues that Facebook is too reluctant to punish powerful politicians, and that when it does act, the consequences are too lenient.
“Suppose that the punishment when you have successfully robbed a bank is that your bank robbery tools are confiscated and there is a public notice in a newspaper that says, ‘We caught this person robbing a bank. They shouldn’t do that,’” Zhang says. “That’s essentially what’s going on at Facebook. And so what’s happened is that multiple national presidents have made the decision that this risk is enough for them to engage in it.
“In this analogy, the money has already been spent. It can’t be taken back.”
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, December 08, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
CDC Declares Racism a 'Serious' Public Health Threat
Peter Wade, Rolling Stone
Wade writes: "Racism 'negatively affects the mental and physical health of millions of people,' the agency said when announcing an initiative to address health inequities."
he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared racism a “serious threat” to public health. In a statement announcing a health equity initiative on Thursday, the agency acknowledged that racism “negatively affects the mental and physical health of millions of people, preventing them from attaining their highest level of health, and consequently, affecting the health of our nation.”
As part of the initiative to address racism’s impact on public health, the agency plans to study how social determinants (the environments in which we live and work) affect health outcomes for Americans. The CDC said it will also make “new and expanded investments in racial and ethnic minority communities” to address health inequities related to Covid-19 and other health conditions. That includes a $300 million program to fund community health workers to reach out to marginalized communities. The agency has also created a web portal called Racism and Health, which it hopes will spark public discourse. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky wrote in a commentary on the site that she hopes these investments will create a “durable infrastructure that will provide the foundation and resources to address disparities related to Covid-19 and other health conditions.”
The pandemic has exposed many existing inequities in our country and healthcare system, Walensky wrote: “The disparities seen over the past year were not a result of Covid-19. Instead, the pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism.”
Public health specialist and physician Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones explained to Scientific American in 2020 how racism, public health and the pandemic have intersected to cause these inequities. “Race doesn’t put you at higher risk. Racism puts you at higher risk,” Phyllis Jones said. “It does so through two mechanisms: People of color are more infected because we are more exposed and less protected. Then, once infected, we are more likely to die because we carry a greater burden of chronic diseases from living in disinvested communities with poor food options [and] poisoned air and because we have less access to health care.”
The CDC has $2.25 billion in funding to address health inequities exacerbated by the pandemic, and Walenski wants to use this as a way to make an impact on other health disparities caused by structural racism.
“We are making a concerted national effort to reach those who have not been reached because we are making ties to local folks and trusted messengers,” she told Time in an interview. “I just really want to make sure that as long as we are doing that effort, and reaching people where they are, that we do so in a way that will allow us to not only vaccinate them for COVID-19 today but vaccinate their children for any missed immunizations and treat their blood pressure and screen them for cancer and do all the things that have been long neglected because they lacked access.”
Alan Hostetter, the teacher's husband, speaking at a Trump rally last November. (photo: Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images)
A Teacher Marched to the Capitol. When She Got Home, the Fight Began.
Matthew Rosenberg, The New York Times
Rosenberg writes: "Kristine Hostetter was a beloved fourth-grade teacher. Then came the pandemic, the election and the Jan. 6 riot in Washington."
ord got around when Kristine Hostetter was spotted at a public mask-burning at the San Clemente pier, and when she appeared in a video sitting onstage as her husband spoke at a QAnon convention. People talked when she angrily accosted a family wearing masks near a local surfing spot, her granddaughter in tow.
Even in San Clemente, a well-heeled redoubt of Southern California conservatism, Ms. Hostetter stood out for her vehement embrace of both the rebellion against Covid-19 restrictions and the stolen-election lies pushed by former President Donald J. Trump. This was, after all, a teacher so beloved that each summer parents jockeyed to get their children into her fourth-grade class.
But it was not until Ms. Hostetter’s husband posted a video of her marching down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol on Jan. 6 that her politics collided with an opposite force gaining momentum in San Clemente: a growing number of left-leaning parents and students who, in the wake of the civil-rights protests set off by the police killing of George Floyd, decided they would no longer countenance the right-wing tilt of their neighbors and the racism they said was commonplace.
Ana Maria Nogueira and her husband, Eraldo, sit in their home in Jardim Keralux, a poor neighbourhood in Sao Paulo's sprawling eastern zone. (photo: Avener Prado/Al Jazeera)
'Tragic Combination': Millions Go Hungry Amid Brazil COVID Crisis
Sam Cowie, Al Jazeera
Cowie writes: "As Brazil's COVID-19 crisis gets worse by the week with record-high death tolls, packed hospitals and climbing caseloads, another crisis is unfolding: hunger and food insecurity."
19 million Brazilians have gone hungry during the pandemic, new study finds, as food insecurity is also on the rise.
ao Paulo, Brazil – Ana Maria Nogueira adds one bacon-flavoured seasoning cube to the pot of rice simmering on the stove.
In the wooden shack that she and her husband, Eraldo, who is disabled, call home in Jardim Keralux, a poor neighbourhood in Sao Paulo’s sprawling eastern zone, the coronavirus that has killed more than 351,000 Brazilians seems like a faraway problem.
The couple has more pressing priorities. “This year, we’re going hungry,” Ana, 56, told Al Jazeera.
As Brazil’s COVID-19 crisis gets worse by the week with record-high death tolls, packed hospitals and climbing caseloads, another crisis is unfolding: hunger and food insecurity.
Ana and Eraldo are two of 19 million Brazilians to have gone hungry during the pandemic, according to a new study, while nearly 117 million – more than half the population – live with some level of food insecurity.
Experts point to high unemployment exacerbated by the coronavirus, cuts and reductions to social programmes and sharp price increases on basic food staples as some of the reasons behind the problem.
“It’s a tragedy that was totally foreseeable,” said Renato Maluf, president of the Brazilian Food Sovereignty and Nutritional Security Research Network (PENSSAN Network) that coordinated the study, conducted in December when Brazilians were still receiving emergency coronavirus cash payments from the government.
“Certainly things have gotten worse since then,” Maluf said.
‘Tragic combination’
Brazil was taken off of the United Nation’s world hunger map in 2014 after years of concerted effort to reduce hunger through successful social programmes and public policies.
The country’s then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who now appears to be making a political comeback, famously said at his 2003 swearing-in ceremony that, “as long as there is a Brazilian brother or sister going hungry we will have reason to be ashamed”.
But in 2015, recession and political crisis struck. Austerity measures were introduced and unemployment soared. Three years later, before presidential elections that far-right populist firebrand Jair Bolsonaro would go on to win, extreme poverty and hunger were already raising alarms.
“The situation has been getting worse in recent years,” said Marcelo Neri, an economist at Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation. “Definitely food insecurity has grown in 2021.”
Alexandre Padilha, a congressman with the left-wing Workers’ Party and a former health minister, said rising hunger and food insecurity was especially troubling during the COVID-19 pandemic as people pushed to find work or food were exposing themselves to the virus.
They could also be more vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 because their immune systems are weakened due to a lack of sustenance, Padilha said.
“It’s a tragic combination that reinforces the worst human tragedy in the history of Brazil,” he told Al Jazeera. “It compromises future generations for our country.”
Price increases
Brazil is a major food exporter and Sao Paulo is South America’s wealthiest city. But for citizens living in the city’s impoverished periphery neighbourhoods like Jardim Keralux, eating three nutritious meals a day is increasingly an unaffordable luxury.
The situation is even worse in rural areas. “A poor person in the city can go out in the street and ask for food, a poor rural person can’t,” said Maluf at the PENSSAN Network.
Ana collects and sells recyclable goods three times a week, but she is lucky if she makes $3.50 (BR$20) a day. Meanwhile, the 5kg bag of rice she currently has to feed herself and her husband – and that was a donation from a local Catholic church – costs $4.40 (BR$25) at the local supermarket.
Basic food prices have rocketed during the pandemic, which has had a disproportionate effect on poorer citizens. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, in one year, the price of a kilogramme of rice shot up by nearly 70 percent, while black beans, potatoes, red meat, milk and soybean oil rose by 51, 47, 30, 20 and 87 percent, respectively.
The price of bottles of cooking gas commonly used in Brazil rose by 20 percent in the past year, the institute also reported.
Edilson Lino Bastos, vice-president of the Keralux Institute, a local neighbourhood association, said he is inundated with requests for food help. “The demand is always growing and there is never enough,” he said.
Bastos told Al Jazeera the association received 1,000 food packages from one of Brazil’s biggest insurance companies at the start of the pandemic. Now, those donations have dried up.
“Poorer Brazilians count on solidarity and the help of friends and family,” said Neri, the economist. “The problem is now people are tired… Resources are running out.”
Emergency aid
Just a five-minute walk from Ana and Eraldo’s wooden shack in Jardim Keralux, Danila Oliveira, 27, sits on a plastic chair on an unpaved dirt road outside a friend’s home, breastfeeding her one-month-old baby.
Oliveira said without help and donations she and her three young children would go hungry. “I had to stop buying fruit for them because the price of rice and beans went up,” she said.
Giane Santos, 29, who lives in a concrete house next door to Ana and Eraldo, said that since losing her job in a local restaurant four months ago, she and her husband have been forced to skip some meals to keep her young son fed.
“We don’t eat red meat any more, we eat eggs instead,” she said.
Her husband also lost his job as a delivery driver and now goes out each day looking for odd jobs to pay the bills, which further exposes him to the coronavirus.
She said that the emergency payment of between $105 and $210 (BR$600 and BR$1,200) paid by Brazil’s government monthly to individuals and families last year, meant that the family did not have to go hungry.
According to data from the Getulio Vargas Foundation at the peak of the emergency aid, in August 2020 extreme poverty fell to its lowest level in history, affecting just 4.5 percent of Brazilians. But the payments were reduced gradually and then stopped at the end of the year.
Now, the projection for extreme poverty from January to March of this year is 12.8 percent.
Last week, as Brazil hit grim new records for COVID-19 deaths, lawmakers passed a new emergency aid measure, but for a smaller amount: just $43 (BR$250) on average per month.
Padilha, the congressman, said opposition members would push for a vote in the lower house this week to reinstate the aid to $105 (BR$600). But for Ana and Eraldo, even if that measure passes in Congress, their food troubles will continue.
They both lost all of their identification documents two weeks ago when their wooden shack collapsed during heavy rains and fell in the river, meaning they will struggle to access any benefits. They have since rebuilt the shack and sleep together on a single mattress.
The double mattress they had before is still floating in the river.
“I have nothing,” Ana said.
Joe Biden. (photo: Washington Post/Getty Images)
Clean Energy Bonanza: Biden's Budget Tries to Undo Trump's Damage
Shannon Osaka, Grist
Osaka writes: "For four years straight, President Donald Trump tried to gut the budgets of federal agencies focusing on climate and the environment."
The 'skinny budget' asks Congress for $14 billion to address the climate crisis.
or four years straight, President Donald Trump tried to gut the budgets of federal agencies focusing on climate and the environment. The former president proposed canceling clean energy research, cutting federal support to prevent flooding, and winnowing down crucial federal agencies. In 2019, he even went so far as to ask Congress to slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, by a whopping 31 percent — returning it to spending levels not seen since 1993.
Now, President Joe Biden is poised to go in the exact opposite direction. On Friday, just two weeks after Biden announced his climate-friendly infrastructure plan, the White House released its “skinny budget” — a sort of budgetary blueprint for where the president hopes to spend money in the coming year. (Think of it as a planned allowance for federal agencies.) And the $1.5 trillion proposal couldn’t be more different than those of the past four years.
While Trump’s 2020 budget proposal didn’t mention the word “climate” once, Biden’s plan mentions it 146 times. It asks Congress for $14 billion “across nearly every agency” to advance clean energy and zero out U.S. emissions by 2050. The president hopes to direct $10 billion toward clean energy innovation and research, $1.7 billion toward energy efficiency in homes and buildings, and $600 million to electrifying federal vehicles, including at the U.S. Postal Service.
The budget also aims to bolster agencies that were left in tatters after the Trump administration. The EPA lost nearly 1,000 employees during the Trump years; the Biden administration plans to restore those positions and boost EPA funding by 21 percent. If the budget is enacted, the EPA will receive $11.2 billion in total — more federal funding than ever before.
“We are very encouraged by the Biden administration’s budget outline,” said Michelle Roos, the executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a group of EPA alumni formed in reaction to the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks, in a statement. “The EPA’s budget has declined or remained stagnant for decades, so the 2022 budget proposal is an excellent first step in rebuilding funding and strengthening the agency.”
The White House is also signaling an end to the “America First” foreign policy that characterized Trump’s approach to climate. The Biden team is asking Congress to approve a $1.2 billion contribution to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations-backed fund that funnels money to help developing countries adapt to climate change and expand solar and wind power. Even that, however, may not be enough: The U.S. has not contributed to the fund since 2017, and currently owes $2 billion of its initial $3 billion promise. Policy experts also warn that the current U.S. pledge is far too small for what’s needed.
And the budget faces many hurdles ahead. The $1.5 trillion proposal for 2022 represents a 16 percent increase in funding compared to 2021, and that’s on top of President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act. With all those zeroes stacking up, even fairly progressive Democrats may start to get sticker shock. Congress never adopts a president’s spending plan in full, instead using it as a starting point for discussion and debate. That’s why — despite President Trump’s best efforts — some funding was maintained for clean energy research and the EPA during his administration.
For now, however, the skinny budget is the latest entry in President Biden’s “whole-of-government” approach to tackling climate change. “Responding to the climate crisis depends on helping communities transition to a cleaner future,” wrote Shalanda Young, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a letter to Congress announcing the plan. “This moment of crisis is also a moment of opportunity.”
