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Trump must be stopped and his history of racism and current racist policies must be exposed. It's time to vote out racism

Column: History in the remaking

By Rick Holmes
Opinion/Mass Political Editor

Posted Jun 28, 2020

We must not let the rhetoric and tactics of extremists distract from what is really happening here. America is coming to grips with its history, with a seriousness we haven’t seen in 50 years.

Columns share an author’s personal perspective and are often based on facts in the newspaper’s reporting.

America’s reckoning with historic memory has taken some strange turns in this season of disease and discontent. Monuments long ignored are falling every day, mostly for good reasons, though some of it has been messy.

Confederates are in retreat across the map. Statues of Confederate leaders are being dismantled, mostly on the orders of local officials whose constituents no longer want to celebrate the champions of a white supremacist rebellion. Portraits of four former House speakers who served the Confederacy were just exiled from the U.S. Capitol. The Confederate battle flag has been banned from NASCAR events and Walmart stores in Mississippi are refusing to fly the state flag because it includes the Confederate stars-and-bars.

The Confederates’ ideological soulmates are joining them in exile. The Lost Cause historians have been sent packing. It’s a new day, especially in the South.

Confederates aren’t the only ones taking a beating. Columbus was decapitated in Boston and will be dismantled in Philadelphia. A statue of Juan de Ornate, a particularly nasty conquistador, is being removed in Albuquerque. Protesters are coming after Andrew Jackson who, to be honest, deserves it.

People are taking a fresh look at statues that have gone unnoticed for decades. They are questioning the individuals the monuments exalt, the events they celebrate, the cultural and historical context in which they were erected, the aesthetics of the statuary. American history teachers and art historians must be thrilled.

For some monuments, the problem isn’t the subject, but the presentation. A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York is being moved because TR’s placement on a horse makes the figures walking alongside, a Native American and a Black man, look subservient. The Freedman’s Memorial in Washington, was built with money donated by former slaves, dedicated in 1876 with a speech by Frederick Douglass. It honors Lincoln and celebrates emancipation, but the pose – Lincoln standing over a Black man rising from his knees – while common in Abolitionist imagery, is uncomfortable to some modern eyes.

Evaluating each monument’s history, message and aesthetics can be tricky. Communities that do it right empanel committees, consult with historians, listen to activists and community members, weigh alternatives. Elected officials make the decisions and courts consider legal challenges. The result isn’t just the removal of a statue; it’s a sharpened understanding of the community’s historic record and contemporary values. That’s how democracy is supposed to work, by giving everyone a voice.

Then again, you could skip the boring democratic procedures and use chains to tear the statues down. That’s how a tiny minority of impatient activists – or provocateurs – are expressing themselves. 

In Philadelphia, someone defaced the statue of abolitionist Matthias Baldwin. In Madison, Wisconsin, a breakaway group that first told peaceful protesters to go home toppled a statue of abolitionist Hans Christian Heg, who died fighting for the Union. In San Francisco, where tributes to the Confederacy are hard to find, a mob toppled a bust of U.S. Grant, who defeated the Confederate armies, suppressed the first Ku Klux Klan and got the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing voting rights for all, put into the Constitution.

Who decided U. S. Grant must be toppled from his perch? How representative were they of the communities on whose behalf they choose to act? Where was the discussion of Grant’s life and legacy, of the origin, context and meaning of the statue in Golden Gate Park? Even anarchist collectives give all members a chance to speak before deciding what to order for breakfast or what to blow up. Where was the vote to tear down the statue of a hero in America’s struggle for racial justice?

Regrettable and undemocratic, to be sure. But every party needs a fringe and every movement has a vanguard. We must not let the rhetoric and tactics of extremists distract from what is really happening here. America is coming to grips with its history, with a seriousness we haven’t seen in 50 years.

This focus on America’s history of racism, violence and injustice is a sign that the movement we’re seeing is deeper than calls for police reform. The breadth of the protests, seen in every state, in small towns as well as big cities, points to a turning of the tide. The diversity of the people who have taken to the streets – “Black Lives Matter” being shouted by Americans of every race, every age, every background – and polls showing they are supported by a strong majority of voters, make this a historic moment.

The Rev. William J. Barber, a grassroots leader based in North Carolina, calls it “the third reconstruction.” Like the first two reconstructions, the Civil War era and the Civil Rights era, this is a fusion movement, powered by people of all races and backgrounds building a more righteous future together. “If we are willing to see ourselves as we are and have been,” Barber writes, “we will also see our potential for prophetic resistance, even in times like these.”

In Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, people have for years called for a huge statue of Robert E. Lee to be taken down. City officials supported the change, but the state Legislature blocked them. But in the last few years Democrats have taken over the governor’s office and the Legislature, which enacted a new law giving municipalities authority over such decisions.

But something interesting has happened on Lee Circle while Virginians wait for the courts to make way for deconstruction crews. Over the last six weeks, Lee’s statue has become a gathering spot for Black Lives Matter protesters. Its stone pedestal has become a canvas for graffiti artists. At night, images of African-American heroes are projected on its surfaces. It has become a site for music and dance, conversation and selfies, an ongoing celebration of Black lives.

It’s enough to make ol’ Bobby Lee fall off his horse in amazement, and it’s another sign of history in the remaking.

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Neil Young Takes on Donald Trump in New Concert

Andy Greene, Rolling Stone
Greene writes: "It seems like Neil Young feels that Trump is a less sympathetic figure than even W., a man who inspired him to write 2006's 'Let's Impeach the President.'"
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The Alamance County Confederate Monument, erected in 1914. (photo: Colleen Jenkins/Reuters)

A North Carolina City Bans Protests, Protecting Confederate Monument
Aída Chávez, The Intercept
Chávez writes: "A North Carolina city is using a restrictive ordinance to outlaw protest, threatening to arrest anyone who even attempts to peacefully protest without a permit, as part of an effort to protect a Confederate monument that sits outside its courthouse."

EXCERPT:

The Alamance County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post on Friday that permits to protest in the city of Graham will not be granted for the foreseeable future, adding that anyone who attempts to protest without a permit will be in violation of the order and arrested. There has been a heavy police presence around the monument, which features a statue of a Confederate soldier with a rifle, located in downtown Graham, for several days now. Graham, whose population is around 15,000, also declared a state of emergency and set a 9 p.m. curfew over the weekend, which was then canceled on Monday night.

(In a follow-up post, the sheriff’s office clarified that it isn’t involved in the permitting process itself, which is up to the Graham Police Department, but is spreading word of the Graham ordinance. The Graham Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

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Protesters hold hands in front o

Seattle Police Move in Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Zone at Daybreak, Clear Out Demonstrators
David K. Li and Ben Kesslen, NBC News
Excerpt: "Seattle police, under orders from Mayor Jenny Durkan, cleared demonstrators out of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Zone (CHOP) on Wednesday, after a series of shootings marred the ongoing protest movement."
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Donald Trump is trying to sue to stop the publican of his niece, Mary Trump, from publishing a tell-all book about him. (photo: Getty)

Judge Temporarily Halts Publication of Trump Niece's Tell-All Book
Elliot Hannon, Slate
Hannon writes: "A New York judge halted the publication of a tell-all book by President Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump, granting a temporary injunction Tuesday after a court filing claimed the book violates a decades-old nondisclosure agreement signed by Mary Trump as part of an inheritance settlement."
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Black Lives Matter protest. (photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP)

Rebecca Gordon | Can Making Black Lives Matter Rescue a Failing State?
Rebecca Gordon, TomDispatch
Gordon writes: "If the U.S. is to break its headlong rush into failed statehood, it must begin by addressing the legitimate demands of the people this country has failed from its very inception."
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US military vehicles in northern Syria. (photo: AFP)

Trump's Record on Foreign Policy: Lost Wars, New Conflicts, and Broken Promises
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Donald Trump claims he's ending the 'era of endless wars.' But over the course of his first term, he has come closer to starting new wars than ending the wars he inherited."

EXCERPTS:

President Barack Obama entered the White House with a pledge to bring home US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and to shrink the US military footprint, but his presidency was a triumph of symbolism over substance. He won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize based on a few speeches, a lot of wishful thinking, and the world’s desperate hopes for peace and progress. But by the time Obama stepped down in 2017, he had dropped more bombs and missiles on more countries than Bush did, and had spent even more than Bush on weapons and war.

The major shift in US war policy under Obama was to reduce politically sensitive US troop casualties by transitioning from large-scale military occupations to mass bombing, shelling, and covert and proxy wars. While Republicans derisively dubbed Obama’s doctrine “leading from behind,” this was a transition that was already underway in Bush’s second term, when he committed the United States to completely withdrawing its occupation troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Obama’s defenders, like Trump’s today, were always ready to absolve him of responsibility for war crimes, even as he killed thousands of civilians in air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria and drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, including the gratuitous assassination of an American teenager in Yemen. Obama launched a new war to destroy Libya, and the United States’ covert role in the war in Syria was similar to its role in Nicaragua in the 1980s, for which, despite its covert nature, the International Court of Justice convicted the United States of aggression and ordered it to pay reparations.

Many senior US military and civilian officials deserve a share of the guilt for America’s systematic crimes of aggression and other war crimes since 2001, but the principle of command responsibility, recognized from the Nuremberg principles to the US Uniform Code of Military Justice, means that the commander in chief of the US armed forces, the president of the United States, bears the heaviest criminal responsibility for these crimes under US and international law.

Trump famously summed up his policy as “bomb the shit out of” the Islamic State. He appeared to give a green light to the military to murder women and children, saying, “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.” Iraqi troops described explicit orders to do exactly that in Mosul. Middle East Eye (MEE) reported that Iraqi forces massacred all the survivors in Mosul’s Old City.

“We killed them all,” an Iraqi soldier said. “Daesh (IS), men, women, children. We killed everyone.” An Iraqi major told MEE,

After liberation was announced, the order was given to kill anything or anyone that moved . . . It was not the right thing to do . . . They gave themselves up and we just killed them . . . There is no law here now. Every day, I see that we are doing the same thing as Daesh. People went down to the river to get water because they were dying of thirst and we killed them.

By October 2017, Raqqa in Syria was even more totally destroyed than Mosul in Iraq. Under Obama and Trump, the United States and its allies have dropped more than 118,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria in their campaign against the Islamic State, while US HIMARS rockets and US, French, and Iraqi heavy artillery killed even more indiscriminately.

The 49 percent increase to more than $100 billion for R&D on new weapons systems in 2020, part of the enormous $718 billion Pentagon budget, is a down payment on trillions of dollars in future revenue for the merchants of death unless these programs are stopped.

Before President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961, he remarked, “God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn’t know the military as well as I do.” Trump is obviously as dazzled by chests full of medals and whizz-bang technology as every other president since Eisenhower, so he will keep giving the Pentagon everything it wants to keep spreading violence and chaos around the world.

The US peace movement has always had huge passive public support, but it will take mass collective action, not just passive support, to secure a peaceful future for our children and grandchildren. Public outrage and activism are starting to take away the license to kill black and brown people with impunity from the militarized RoboCops on our streets. The same kind of collective political action can defund and disarm the US military and take away its license to kill black and brown people everywhere.

Building a new anti-war movement that is connected to the domestic anti-police struggle is the only thing that can rein in US militarism. Because reelecting a president with as much blood on his hands as Trump — or simply transferring the command of the war machine to Joe Biden — certainly won’t.

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Protesters chant in front of the Oak Brook, Illinois, headquarters of Sterigenics in September 2018. (photo: Mark Black/Getty)

Activists Shut Down These Cancer-Causing Plants. COVID Is Bringing Them Back.
Susan Cosier, Grist
Cosier writes: "Jeanne Hochhalter has had health problems since she was a teenager. First came the respiratory issues, then the gastrointestinal and endocrine troubles. But the heaviest blow came in 2013 when a doctor diagnosed her with breast cancer. Since then she's endured 16 surgeries, as well as chemotherapy."

Hochhalter, a 52-year-old real estate agent who grew up in Burr Ridge, Illinois, 25 miles west of Chicago, is now in remission. She couldn’t chalk her cancer up to anything in particular until her mom returned from a town hall meeting in August 2018 with a pamphlet. It detailed the health problems associated with exposure to ethylene oxide, a chemical used to sterilize medical equipment. And a plant doing just that was located fewer than 5 miles away.

“My God, Jeanne, this could have your picture,” Hochhalter’s mom told her as she handed over the sheet. The plant, owned by the company Sterigenics and operating in Willowbrook, had been emitting huge amounts of the carcinogen, known as EtO, for three decades. “I was being continuously poisoned,” Hochhalter said.

An Environmental Protection Agency report published in 2016 listed the devastating health effects of exposure to ethylene oxide: a higher likelihood of developing cancers — including breast cancer, lymphoma, and leukemia — as well as a host of other health issues, like breathing problems and neurological effects. When the Chicago Tribune covered the latest update of the EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment two years later, its story compared cancer rates in seven census tracts near the Willowbrook plant to areas in Louisiana’s notorious “Cancer Alley.” The article caused an uproar and prompted the town hall meeting Hochhalter’s mom attended. According to the assessment, the likelihood of getting cancer was 9 times higher than the national average in a census tract located close to the plant. Hochhalter had lived in that tract as a child.

“Epidemiologists did a very eloquent, clear study of this,” said Peter Orris, an expert on environmental exposures and chief of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago, in reference to the EPA’s findings. “They came back saying the people living around there, their risk of breast cancer was off the wall.”

Subsequent analysis by the Illinois Department of Public Health would reveal a cancer cluster near Willowbrook, showing that its 19 cases of Hodgkin’s lymphoma in women occurring between 1995 and 2015 was nearly double what the county and state would have predicted. The census tract closest to the Sterigenics plant, where Hochhalter lived and worked for decades, also had nearly 10 percent more breast cancer cases than would have been expected. Hochhalter believed she had found the cause of her breast cancer.

Hochhalter and her neighbors would channel their outrage into a positive outcome for their community. They researched, organized, and protested, demanding the Sterigenics plant be shut down. They formed community groups like Stop Sterigenics and EtO Sleuths and pressured their elected officials. Illinois lawmakers passed legislation in June that requires each facility to limit its ethylene oxide emissions by 99.9 percent. Just over a year after the town hall, in September of 2019, the Willowbrook Sterigenics plant shuttered for good. Residents were elated.

“It just made us all feel very justified,” Hochhalter said. “No, we weren’t making this up, no this wasn’t political.”

But the fight against ethylene oxide-emitting facilities would soon become political, thanks to the coronavirus’s arrival in a country whose government was ill-prepared to fight off a global pandemic. With COVID cases on the rise and hospitals concerned about being deluged with patients, the sterilization plants were suddenly in demand to help bolster the supply of personal protective equipment — like N95 masks, which are needed to protect health care workers from COVID-positive patients. That’s despite warnings from scientists and government agencies about the facilities’ hazards to their surrounding communities — and health care workers.

The Willowbrook community’s success rippled through the state and then spread south. Members of a group in Waukegan, an hour north of Chicago, took aim at a Medline Industries sterilization facility they hoped to see shut down. Another Stop Sterigenics chapter in Cobb County, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, followed in Willowbrook’s footsteps and successfully pushed a plant to stop work.

Yet just as momentum was building to further curb ethylene oxide emissions throughout the U.S. — including legislation passed in the Georgia Assembly and changes to EPA pollution standards — coronavirus infections began to rise. And medical sterilization companies like Medline and Sterigenics are citing the pandemic as a reason to ramp up operations.

Though the Willowbrook Sterigenics plant remains closed, the plant in Georgia is up and running. And companies like Sterigenics and Medline are also advocating to either sterilize more equipment or operate without government intervention. In the case of the Georgia plant, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urged state officials to allow it to reopen, much to the frustration of those concerned about its emissions.

“We got them closed down,” said Janet Rau of Stop Sterigenics in Georgia. “Then they were allowed to reopen under the emergency orders of the pandemic. It’s ridiculous.”

EtO is used to sterilize 50 percent of all medical equipment from plastic tubing to gowns, efficiently killing nearly every germ in sight without hurting the materials. (EtO is also used in industrial manufacturing facilities that make ethylene glycol, a product used in antifreeze and polyester.) Companies blast the gas into chambers where gear sits on palates. Before heading to hospitals, the newly sterilized supplies off-gas. Of course, the plants themselves emit EtO into the atmosphere, and potential leaks are also a concern. In the EPA’s 2018 report, the agency stated that people living in more than 100 locations in the U.S. are at risk from EtO emissions originating at medical supply sterilizing plants.

The closer you live to a facility, the greater the threat of EtO exposure. Last year, researchers looked into the health risks around the Medline facility in Waukegan, a majority-minority enclave identified by the Illinois EPA as an area of concern for environmental justice, a designation that a community is predominantly made up of people of color, significantly impoverished, or both. Blood samples taken from 93 people showed that EtO concentrations were 50 percent higher in those who lived within a half-mile of the plant compared to those who lived farther away, according to the University of Illinois Chicago’s Susan Buchanan, who directs the Great Lakes Center for Children’s Environmental Health and oversaw the study. Though preliminary, she said, her conclusions offer a clear warning: “I think it’s a pretty easy statement to make that industry should not be emitting carcinogen out into our air.”

Some facilities, including the Medline and the Georgia Sterigenics plants, recently installed emissions controls. In the case of Medline, the facility is now allowed to emit 150 pounds of EtO each year compared to the 3,058 pounds released in 2014. Negative pressure systems keep fugitive gases from escaping from the buildings and scrubbers reduce the amount of EtO that billows from the plants’ stacks. (A Sterigenics spokesman says that the Georgia plant is safe and complies with local emissions regulations.)

But community members are skeptical the controls are making a meaningful difference. The Lake County Health Department tested the air around the Waukegan Medline plant this spring, but the agency has yet to publicly release its findings. And Rau of Stop Sterigenics in Georgia said that her group still doesn’t know if there are dangerous levels of EtO in the air around the plant.

Even if emissions do decrease thanks to the new control equipment, using EtO to sterilize certain personal protective equipment could introduce a new risk to health care professionals who later wear them. Medline Industries officials now say the company can sterilize N95 masks, which were in short supply early in the pandemic, at the Waukegan plant. In fact, CEO Charlie Mills met with President Trump in March and is pushing for emergency authority from the FDA to disinfect the masks. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and one of the world’s largest N95 mask manufacturers, 3M, advise against using EtO to disinfect them — because of the risk of off-gassing to those wearing the sterilized masks. Many consider treating the masks with hydrogen peroxide a safer alternative.

Doctors and nurses inhaling EtO from recently sterilized protective masks is akin to first responders inhaling toxins in the wake of the attacks on 9/11, said Syed Karim, an ER doctor who testified against the Illinois Sterigenics facility last year. We don’t know the risks associated with using N95 masks treated with EtO. Exposing health care workers, he said, “is extremely premature and irresponsible.”

Meanwhile companies like Sterigenics and Medline are likely to face lawsuits from people who have either already gotten sick or may develop cancer in the future likely as a result of chronic inhalation of EtO. A jury will hear Hochhalter’s case against Sterigenics next spring; it’s one of more than 70 filed against the company’s Willowbrook facility.

Shawn Collins, an environmental lawyer in Naperville, a western suburb of Chicago, represents more than a third of those cases. For the companies, he said, “polluting was the plan, not the mistake.”

Even though government officials say that sterilizing medical equipment with ethylene oxide is necessary — at least while the country grapples with a pandemic now responsible for close to 130,000 deaths in the U.S. alone — community groups say plants should either stop operations or relocate away from residential areas to avoid poisoning the surrounding communities.

“I don’t think all of these agencies are good actors,” Jeanne Hochhalter told Grist. “I think the FDA is either unaware or complicit.”

And there’s reason to be concerned that communities living near these facilities aren’t aware of the risks. As recently as March, the EPA inspector general stated that the agency wasn’t adequately warning people who lived near EtO plants of the health issues posed by exposure to the chemical. Ultimately, said Orris of the University of Illinois Hospital, “from a public health policy point of view, we ought to be moving away from using it for sterilization.”

For organizers like Rau, who appeared to have won a crucial battle against a medical equipment sterilization plant that threatened her community, the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly made these facilities viable again is an insult to injury. But as the activists did once before, she’s trying to channel her outrage toward a positive outcome.

“We’re hoping that the silver lining of this cloud of COVID is that the manufacturing industries and hospitals realize that there are better ways of sterilizing materials, rather than using something that’s as toxic as ethylene oxide,” Rau said.

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: How racism became a kitchen table issue

By Maya King and Renuka Rayasam

With help from Myah Ward SICK AND TIRED — In the two weeks since George Floyd died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, the conversation about race in America has made its way to the polls. Priorities have shifted among an overwhelming number of voters from issues like health care or the economy to racial tensions in the country. A plurality (42 percent) of registered voters surveyed by CNN said that race relations would be an “extremely important” factor in who they vote for in November — 11 percentage points higher than those who said the coronavirus was their top election priority (31 percent) and two percentage points above those who said they were most concerned about the economy (40 percent). So what changed? Racism has become a kitchen table issue. Floyd was laid to rest in Houston this afternoon and civil rights leaders weren’t the only ones who marked the occasion. Texas conservatives including Gov. Greg Abbott, Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz condemned his death. Monuments to Confederate leaders are being removed from public spaces. Politicians and big-name corporations have released statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, in exchange for good will among consumers of color. Vice President Mike Pence is being pushed to address institutional racism more widely, an issue he once brushed off in public forums. On Capitol Hill, Congress is floating legislation that could dramatically change police practices. Minneapolis’ city council voted to begin the process of disbanding the city’s police force. All the while, the protests against police violence towards black men and women enter their third week across the country against the backdrop of a global pandemic that disproportionately kills African-Americans. There are major implications for November, which is quickly turning into a referendum on race relations in the country. And President Donald Trump, who has championed tough policing and been slow to criticize white nationalist movements, while antagonizing protesters on Twitter, is losing ground among several key demographics: non-college educated white voters, 60+ voters and women. It’s opened up a window for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden to fill those key gaps by riding a wave of enthusiasm stoked by the current social climate and given rise to a bloc both Republicans and establishment Democrats once counted out: young people of color, who have been at the frontlines of the protests. Low enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket helps explain why so many black voters stayed home in 2016. While Hillary Clinton won an overwhelming majority of black support, black turnout was at a 20-year low. Feeling overused and unenthused by Democrats, the black voters who didn't vote for Clinton either supported Trump or stayed home altogether. If the pattern repeats itself this November, that spells trouble for Democrats up and down the ballot. But that was 2016: The coronavirus didn’t exist, police violence was not front of mind for voters and unemployment was not in double-digits. Though some worry that polling problems, like the kind seen in Georgia today , could keep black voters from casting their ballots in November.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Check out this Twitter thread from Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein to see what primary voting looked like in Georgia today, featuring cameos from my hometown Jonesboro and LeBron James! Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

HAPPENING TOMORROW AT 9 a.m. EDT – "A WORLD TRANSFORMED” PART III: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. RAJIV SHAH: Join Global Translations author Ryan Heath for a virtual interview with Dr. Rajiv Shah, president, The Rockefeller Foundation and former Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to discuss the Foundation’s work in expanding Covid-19 testing, the role that philanthropy and partnerships can play in recovery, and lessons learned fighting the spread of Ebola while serving in the Obama administration. REGISTER HERE.     Pallbearers bring the casket into the church for the funeral for George Floyd at The Fountain of Praise church in Houston today. | Getty Images First In Nightly RURAL AMERICA VS. COVID — Coronavirus outbreaks among farm workers are popping up in rural communities across the country , sparking fears within the agriculture industry that cases will skyrocket as harvest season stretches into summer. In the coming weeks, more crews will be sent into fields to pick, pack and ship ripening crops. About a quarter of the 2.5 million-person workforce follows the harvest into other regions, bringing concerns that migratory workers could spread the disease to more farms and states. Like meatpacking plant employees, farm workers have been deemed essential for their role in the nation’s food supply. But the federal government has not made safety rules mandatory, agriculture reporter Liz Crampton reports, leaving it to farmers’ discretion whether to enact any safety measures at all. Advocates for the low-income, mostly immigrant workforce say not enough farming operations have taken steps to protect workers, warning that pickers of the nation’s fruits and vegetables could trigger Covid-19 contagions in new places just as they are reopening their economies. “It’s very concerning given that there have been several outbreaks at farm labor camps this early in the season in North Carolina,” said Lori Johnson, managing attorney of the Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid of North Carolina. On The Hill MORE TWEETS, MORE SIGHS — If there was ever a tweet from Trump that Senate Republicans didn’t want to touch, it’s this one. Trump’s tweet this morning attacking a 75-year old protester in Buffalo — who was shoved by the police and bled from his head after falling — stunned some in a caucus that’s grown used to the president’s active Twitter feed. After examining a print-out of the tweet, Sen. Lisa Murkowski gasped: “Oh lord, ugh.” “Why would you fan the flames?” she said of the president’s tweet. “That’s all I’m going to say.” But though the moderate Murkowski was nearly rendered speechless, the missive mostly failed to get a rise out of Senate Republicans, congressional reporters Marianne LeVine and Burgess Everett write. Many know Trump will tweet something else soon they will be asked to respond to, even if the Buffalo tweet seemed a new frontier for Trump’s insult-laden social media persona. But few senators spoke out. Even Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who marched with Black Lives Matters protesters and voted to oust Trump from office in the impeachment trial, seemed exasperated. “I saw the tweet,” Romney said. “It was a shocking thing to say and I won’t dignify it with any further comment.” Covid-2020 HOW DEFUND SHOOK UP 2020 — Biden says he opposes the growing movement to defund police departments amid national outrage over police brutality. But Trump is still using it as a rallying cry against the Democratic nominee. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, national correspondent Natasha Korecki explains what defunding really is — and how it’s forcing Biden to tread a fine line between scaring off moderates and alienating activists. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast ‘We cannot turn away’ — In a video message that played during Floyd’s funeral in Houston, Biden urged Floyd’s family and friends to allow their pain to fuel a push for racial justice in America. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation to so many people for so long,” Biden said. The former vice president, who has seldom left his Wilmington, Del., home over the past few months amid the coronavirus pandemic, on Monday flew to Houston, where he met with Floyd’s family ahead of today’s funeral. Ask The Audience This week’s question: If there's a second wave, which pandemic restriction do you hope doesn't come back? Please write us and we’ll include some answers in our Friday edition. Around the Nation PANDEMIC, PROTESTS AND POT — The cannabis industry started the year with hopes that Congress would reform banking laws, but instead it got the pandemic and protests. Pot sales are soaring and calls to end the war on drugs have gotten more vocal. About two-thirds of Americans now support marijuana legalization, according to Gallup, a figure that’s doubled over the last 20 years. But even as more states have loosened marijuana laws, racial disparities in arrests remain as stark as ever. Black people are still almost four times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana-related crimes, even though blacks and whites use the drug at roughly the same levels, according to the ACLU. In Minnesota, where Floyd was killed, black people are nearly 5.5 times as likely as whites to be arrested for marijuana-related offenses. Renu spoke with cannabis editor Paul Demko about whether the industry is facing a watershed moment and how ultra-conservative Oklahoma has become an unlikely beacon of cannabis reform. This conversation has been edited. How has the pandemic affected cannabis sales? Most evidence suggests that this industry is proving to be recession resilient. There was a huge spike in sales just as the economy was shutting down and people panic shopped because they didn’t know if pot shops would be shuttered. But almost all dispensaries were allowed to remain open across the country and sales have remained robust. But there have been downsides too, right? Hasn’t federal cannabis legislation taken a backseat to pandemic aid? Absolutely. The industry had been hopeful that it might get some federal relief, particularly on access to banking. Many cannabis companies have to operate primarily as cash businesses and have very limited access to loans. But hopes for that happening have cratered. Cannabis lobbyists are still hoping that cannabis banking might get attached to a must-pass coronavirus relief bill. It was in the most recent House bill, but Republicans — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — have ridiculed its inclusion. On the federal level, it’s probably stasis for the time being — at least until we see how the election pans out. Why is it so tough to move the needle on the war on drugs, even as George Floyd’s death has put a focus on criminal justice reform? That’s a challenging puzzle to unlock. The drug war is highly entrenched, and it’s only relatively recently that there’s been growing resistance to locking people up who commit crimes primarily related to their addiction problems. On this one, in particular, there’s also a generational divide. Many older lawmakers are less comfortable with marijuana legalization than their younger counterparts, regardless of political party. As long as Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, it seems highly unlikely that you’ll see significant loosening of federal restrictions on marijuana. Is this a watershed moment? At the state level, it seems like we’ve already passed the watershed moment. Look at a staunchly conservative state like Oklahoma, which traditionally has had some of the harshest criminal drug penalties in the country. It now has the biggest medical marijuana program in the country — and it’s not even close — with nearly 300,000 people enrolled in the program, and looks poised to enact recreational legalization soon. And you’ve already seen a Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma tout taxing recreational marijuana as a way to bolster the state’s sagging revenues, arguing that they could raise $100 million in taxes annually. From the Health Desk WALKING IT BACK — The World Health Organization has walked back a top official’s claim that asymptomatic spread of coronavirus is “very rare” after it sparked controversy and confusion worldwide, writes health care reporter Brianna Ehley. The remarks Monday by epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove — the WHO’s technical lead on the pandemic — contradicted advice given by health experts and policymakers in most countries, who have based calls for social distancing and mask wearing on the idea that people without symptoms can unwittingly spread infection. And several prominent Republicans jumped on Van Kerkhove’s initial statements as evidence the country could safely, and completely, reopen. The initial comments — and later retraction — reignited a debate over how prevalent asymptomatic spread is and what it even means. Most public health experts believe that such asymptomatic spread is a driving force behind the pandemic. One study showed that 40 percent to 45 percent of those infected don’t exhibit symptoms, but could be spreading the virus. Other studies have put the share of asymptomatic cases at around 20 percent. There’s even confusion over what counts as an asymptomatic case. Some infected people have mild symptoms or unusual symptoms and don’t realize they have Covid. Others may be spreading the virus before they even become sick themselves. Another study showed that 44 percent of secondary cases come from people before they show Covid symptoms. The Global Fight EUROPE’S FIGHT WITH RACISM — It took the killing of a black man in the U.S., choked under the knee of a white police officer, to bring people out into the streets in Europe, writes assistant editor Esther King . The continent doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to tackling racism — or even admitting it exists. Despite the prevalence of racial profiling, police brutality and discrimination against non-white citizens in labor and housing markets, Europe hasn’t seen a tide-turning civil rights movement capable of making an impact on the political sphere. Now, after an angry week that saw unprecedented protests across the continent, some activists see reason for hope: that Europe is finally ready to start grappling with racial injustice on its soil. Racism in Europe "might be less visible," said Tunde Adefioye, who is from L.A. and works at the Brussels theater KVS, "but it’s not true that it’s less intense.” Nightly Number 10,000 The record-high mark the Nasdaq Composite briefly hit today, fueled by tech stocks and hopes on the economic reopening. The Nasdaq closed 0.3 percent up at 9,953.75. Parting Words Matt Wuerker LOVE AND THE LOCKDOWN — Spending countless hours with loved ones has turned into … some less than loving feelings. Divorces in China surged in March, as couples emerged from two months of isolation. Incidents of domestic violence around the globe have multiplied. And in the U.S., lawyers and counselors report an uptick in inquiries from couples in distress. Some of that can be explained by closed courthouses and couples having more time, a lot more, to think about their relationships. But all of the numbers add up to a warning for U.S. couples. “You've got just the complete emotional uncertainty that people are feeling, just as a result of being isolated and in a world where people are sick and now you've got people that are peacefully protesting, and rioting,” said Los Angeles-based family law attorney Laura Wasser, who’s worked with a number of high net worth clients, including Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian and Stevie Wonder. Clients have come to her with annoyances about their partners, complaints about their spouses chewing too loud, or irritating them with loud phone calls in their home offices. Couples already separated are confronting a new set of problems: Some can no longer pay child support. Custody disputes have taken on another dimension, with parents concerned about ex-partners exposing their children to the virus. Psychologists Julie and John Gottman, co-founders of the Gottman Institute, which provides resources to help strengthen relationships and offers training to clinicians, have both seen a 30 percent spike in their respective couples therapy clients in recent months. Juggling child care and economic uncertainty means couples are facing “a circle of increasing stress,” said John Gottman. “It’s kind of like couples are in a pressure cooker,” Julie Gottman said, “and the pressure is building, building and building, and there’s really no escape.” It’s not all bad news for relationships. Couples who went into quarantine with a strong relationship may come out stronger, said D.C.-based Life Coach Sara Oliveri Olumba, who has also seen a spike in clients seeking couples coaching. “My observation is that the restrictions associated with the pandemic have actually really helped people to improve their relationships.”   JOIN TOMORROW AT 4 p.m. EDT - WOMEN AND COVID-19, SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS IN CRISIS PART II : What if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016? Join Women Rule editorial director Anna Palmer for a virtual interview with Curtis Sittenfeld, author of “Rodham,” to discuss the novel that reimagines Hillary Clinton’s life and political career without a marriage to Bill Clinton. Curtis will also share the process of releasing a book in the midst of global pandemic and how she is working with independently owned bookstores struggling as a result of this crisis. REGISTER HERE.     Did someone forward this email to you? 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