A Top Trump health official warns of 'draconian measures' if America doesn't mask up
In other coronavirus news: Trump sidelined experts early in pandemic, there are too many new cases in Philadelphia to track, and teens and tweens are volunteering for Covid-19 vaccine test trials.

Coronavirus testing czar: 'Nobody's waving the white flag' to pandemic

OCT. 28, 2020  05:38



Oct. 28, 2020, By Corky Siemaszko

The Trump administration’s Covid-19 testing czar warned Wednesday that local governments may be forced to impose “draconian measures” if Americans don’t start taking safety precautions seriously and the coronavirus crisis worsens.

“We still can control this” by wearing masks, social distancing and being careful around the holidays, Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health, said on NBC’s “Today” show.


“But if we don’t do those things, it may force local officials or government officials in the states to have more draconian measures because cases will go up if we don’t make a change.”

Admiral Brett Giroir, U.S. assistant secretary for health, demonstrates a Covid-19 test during an event in the Rose Garden of the White House on Sept. 28, 2020.

Ken Cedeno / Pool via Getty Images

Giroir, who spoke out as Covid-19 was spreading across the United States at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic, also contradicted President Donald Trump’s repeatedly false claims that increased testing is the reason for the uptick in reported coronavirus cases.

“Yes, we’re getting more cases identified, but the cases are actually going up, and we know that too because hospitalizations are going up,” Giroir said. “Now, the (daily) peak was in the 70,000s, in July, we’re at about 42, 43,000 now, so we’re much less in July. But those are going up, those are real. And we do know that deaths are increasing, unfortunately.”

Actually, the current level of new cases is eclipsing the July levels, according to the latest NBC News analysis.

Nearly 74,000 cases were reported on Tuesday. And the U.S. has been averaging 71,000 new cases per day over the past week, which is the most in any seven-day stretch since the crisis started.

Giroir’s dire words came with Election Day less than a week away and as Trump, whose re-election chances have been imperiled by his administration’s much-criticized response to the pandemic, has been campaigning hard in states like Wisconsin and Nebraska that are currently coronavirus hot spots.

Trump, who contracted Covid-19 along with first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron, has continued to downplay the dangers of a virus that has infected 8.9 million in the U.S. and killed nearly 228,000, according to the latest NBC News statistics.

“Covid, covid, covid, covid, covid, covid cases,” Trump fumed Tuesday before a tightly packed, mostly mask-less crowd Tuesday in Michigan. “Do you ever notice they use the word ‘cases?’ Like Barron Trump has a case, sniffles, one Kleenex and he was better.”

Trump has also been insisting without evidence that “we are rounding the turn” on the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy listed the battle to “defeat” Covid-19 as one of the Trump administration’s “accomplishments from first term.”

“From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry and government to understand, treat and defeat the disease,” it said.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called Trump's handling of the pandemic "backward" and said that pushing for the economy to reopen before the crisis was contained has made a bad situation worse.

“He doesn't understand that in order to fix the economy, first you have to control the virus," Trumka said on MSBNC. "And to control the virus, you have to protect workers so that you don't continue to spread the virus and continue to have hot spots. He thinks, if you open the economy, everything will go away and be great for everyone.”

Trump has been accused of dragging his feet on dealing with the virus, dismissing the advice of experts, promoting unproven cures and politicizing the use of masks by refusing until just recently to wear them in public.

Asked by NBC’s Savanah Guthrie if he was frustrated by Trump’s mixed messaging on masks, Giroir answered, “Look, I have a job to do, like the other docs.”

“We’re going to try to give the American people the best evidence possible,” he said.

“And what I want to emphasize is that we will have a vaccine,” Giroir added. “We will have a safe and effective vaccine. It may be this month, it may be next month, it may be in December, this will not go on forever.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a frequent Trump target, made some of the same points Giroir did in a Tuesday interview on Diane Rehm’s “On My Mind” podcast.

“We’ve had 80-plus thousand infections the other day, and we’re averaging between, on a seven-day basis, over 60,000 infections,” Fauci said. “And if you look at the map of the country, of the counties, states and cities in which you have an increase in test positivity, that more than 30 of those states are going in the wrong direction.”

The White House itself has not been immune. Besides the first family, more than a dozen Trump aides, allies and others came down with infections after Trump hosted a Sept. 26 gathering in the Rose Garden to introduce Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee for Supreme Court justice.

Fauci said that when it comes to masks, the White House doesn’t practice what it preaches.

"I believe what we’re seeing is that the White House is saying to wear masks,” Fauci said. "The only trouble is, when you look at what actually happens at these congregate settings, not a lot of people are wearing the masks.”

Corky Siemaszko is a senior writer for NBC News Digital.

Biden vows to pass LGBTQ rights legislation in first 100 days
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to make the Equality Act a "top legislative priority" should he win Tuesday’s election.

Joe Biden speaks in Wilmington, Del., on Oct. 28, 2020.

Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images

Oct. 29, 2020, By Reuters

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to make passing the LGBTQ rights legislation known as the Equality Act a top priority, hoping to sign what would be a landmark civil rights law within 100 days should he win Tuesday’s election.

Biden, a leading voice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer rights as vice president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, also pledged in an interview with the Philadelphia Gay News to expand queer rights internationally by making equality a centerpiece of U.S. diplomacy should he win the election and assume office in January.

Biden has championed the Equality Act before, but his priority for the issue is significant given the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic and a host of other executive orders and regulatory actions that would compete for attention in the early days of a Biden administration.

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He outlined his agenda for LGBTQ rights in an email interview with Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal, a nationally known advocate for gay rights since the 1970s.

“I will make enactment of the Equality Act a top legislative priority during my first 100 days - a priority that Donald Trump opposes,” Biden said of the Republican incumbent he is challenging.

The Trump administration opposed the Equality Act, saying it would “undermine parental and conscience rights,” and has also restricted queer rights in the name of religious liberty. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Biden’s interview.

The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equality Act in 2019, but the legislation stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Biden would need the Democrats to hold the House and take control of the Senate to ensure passage.

The Equality Act would protect U.S. citizens from discrimination based on sexual identity and gender identity by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most revered accomplishments of the civil rights movement, which banned discrimination based on race, religion, sex and national origin.

On the international front, Biden also promised to defend American diplomats who speak out for LGBTQ rights in countries that are hostile to queer people and promised to use “America’s full range of diplomatic tools,” including private diplomacy, public statements and United Nations agencies, to promote equality.

“I’ll stand up to bullies and once more put human rights at the center of America’s engagement with the world,” Biden said.

New Zealand votes to legalize euthanasia but likely not marijuana use

NOT SO FAST VOTES ARE STILL COMING IN

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday after the results were released that she had voted in favor of both referendums.

New Zealanders voted to legalize euthanasia in a binding referendum, results released Friday showed. Mark Baker / AP

Oct. 30, 2020, 3:53 AM MDT
By The Associated Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealanders voted to legalize euthanasia in a binding referendum, but preliminary results released Friday showed they would likely not legalize recreational marijuana use.

With about 83 percent of votes counted, New Zealanders emphatically endorsed the euthanasia measure with 65 percent voting in favor and 34 percent voting against.

The "No" vote on marijuana was much closer, with 53 percent voting against legalizing the drug for recreational use and 46 percent voting in favor. That left open a slight chance the measure could still pass once all special votes were counted next week, although it would require a huge swing.

The two referendums represented significant potential changes to New Zealand's social fabric, although the campaigns for each ended up being overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and a parallel political race, in which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her liberal Labour Party won a second term in a landslide.

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern wins 2nd term in election landslide

OCT. 19, 202002:08

In past elections, special votes — which include those cast by overseas voters — have tended to track more liberal than general votes, giving proponents of marijuana legalization some hope the measure could still pass.

Proponents of legalizing the drug were frustrated that Ardern wouldn't reveal how she intended to vote ahead the Oct. 17 ballot. Many believed an endorsement by Ardern could have boosted support for the measure, but she said she wanted to leave the decision to New Zealanders.

Ardern said Friday, after the results were released, that she had voted in favor of both referendums.

Conservative lawmaker Nick Smith, from the opposition National Party, welcomed the preliminary marijuana result.

"This is a victory for common sense. Research shows cannabis causes mental health problems, reduced motivation and educational achievement, and increased road and workplace deaths," he said.

But liberal lawmaker Chlöe Swarbrick, from the Green Party, said they had long assumed the vote would be close and they needed to wait until the special votes were counted.

"We have said from the outset that this would always come down to voter turnout. We've had record numbers of special votes, so I remain optimistic," she said. "New Zealand has had a really mature and ever-evolving conversation about drug laws in this country and we’ve come really far in the last three years."

Proponents had argued the measure would reduce profits for gangs and improve social outcomes for indigenous Maori.

  

A cyclist rides past a sign in support of making marijuana legal in Christchurch, New Zealand. Preliminary results on Friday showed it was unlikely the measure would pass. Mark Baker / AP

The marijuana measure would allow people to buy up to 14 grams (0.5 ounce) a day and grow two plants.

Other countries that have legalized or decriminalized recreational marijuana include Canada, South Africa, Uruguay, Georgia plus a number of U.S. states.

The euthanasia measure, which would also allow assisted suicide and takes effect in November 2021, would apply to adults who have terminal illnesses, are likely to die within six months, and are enduring "unbearable" suffering.

Other countries that allow some form of euthanasia include the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Belgium and Colombia.

Typhoon Goni: Philippines orders evacuations as world's strongest storm of 2020 approaches
"The strength of this typhoon is no joke," said Gremil Naz, a local disaster official.

Philippine Coast Guard personnel evacuate residents from the coastal villages of Buhi town ahead of Typhoon Goni's landfall.- / AFP - Getty Images

Oct. 31, 2020, By Reuters

MANILA — Philippine officials ordered the evacuation of thousands of residents in the southern part of the main Luzon island on Saturday as a category 5 storm, that is the world's strongest this year, approached the Southeast Asian nation.

Typhoon Goni, with 133 miles sustained winds and gusts of up to 164 mph, will make landfall on Sunday as the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines since Haiyan, which killed more than 6,300 people in 2013.

Pre-emptive evacuations have started in coastal and landslide-prone communities in the provinces of Camarines Norte and Camarines Sur. While Albay provincial government also said it would order residents in risky areas to leave their homes.

"The strength of this typhoon is no joke," Gremil Naz, a local disaster official, told DZBB radio station.

Last week, Typhoon Molave killed 22 people in the country, mostly through drowning, in provinces south of the capital Manila, which is also in the projected path of Goni.

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Authorities are facing another hurdle as social distancing needs to be imposed in evacuation centers to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The Philippines has the second highest Covid-19 infections and deaths in southeast Asia, next only to Indonesia.

Relief goods, heavy machinery and personal protective equipment are already positioned in key areas, Filipino Grace America, mayor of Infanta town in Quezon province, told DZBB radio. "But because of the Covid-19 pandemic, our funds for calamity concerns and expenses are insufficient."

Local officials canceled port operations and barred fishers from setting sail.

Typhoon Goni, moving westward at 12 mph from the Pacific Ocean, will bring intense rains over the capital and 14 provinces nearby on Saturday evening, and threats of floods and landslides.

Another typhoon, Atsani, is gaining strength just outside the Philippines. Around 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year.

GOP DIRTY TRICKS 

Pot candidate upends tight U.S. House race even after his death

Adam Weeks left a voicemail in which he said he was recruited by Minnesota Republicans solely to siphon votes away from Democratic Rep. Angie Craig

Craig first ran for the seat in 2016, losing to a Republican by two points with a third-party candidate drawing nearly 8%. Two years later, without a third-party candidate, Craig beat the same Republican by 5 points in a rematch.

Democratic Rep. Angie Craig is in a tight re-election race in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District. Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP file


Oct. 28, 2020, 2:50 PM MDT / Source: Associated Press
By The Associated Press


MINNEAPOLIS — Adam Weeks was never going to win Minnesota’s 2nd District seat in Congress, but the deceased Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate has had an outsized effect on the race.

His death in September from an apparent accidental fentanyl overdose set off a legal battle over whether the contest should be delayed until February. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that it won't be. Now, according to a published report, Weeks left a voicemail for a friend in which he said he was recruited to the race by Republicans solely to siphon votes away from Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in a competitive suburban-to-rural district south of Minneapolis.

The Star Tribune obtained a voicemail that Weeks left for his friend, Joey Hudson, four weeks before Weeks died last month. In the recording, which the newspaper said Hudson gave them, Weeks said Republican operatives approached him in the hopes he’d “pull votes away” from Craig and give an advantage to the “other guy,” Tyler Kistner, the GOP-endorsed candidate.

Democrats have accused GOP operatives of recruiting third-party candidates such as Weeks to siphon off votes that would otherwise go to Democratic candidates in a number of races across Minnesota and the rest of the country. Hip-hop star and fashion mogul Kanye West, a fan of President Donald Trump, got on the presidential ballot in Minnesota and several other states with help from GOP operatives but denied being a spoiler.

“I swear to God to you, I’m not kidding, this is no joke,” the man the Star Tribune identified as Weeks said. The paper said his voice was confirmed by his cousin and through independent comparison to other videos he posted online before his death. “They want me to run as a third-party, liberal candidate, which I’m down. I can play the liberal, you know that.”

Hudson did not immediately return a message Wednesday from The Associated Press. Spokesmen for the Craig and Kistner campaigns declined to comment.

But Brian Evans, a spokesman for Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, told the AP that Republicans have recruited or are suspected of recruiting several candidates to run as Legal Marijuana Now or other third-party candidates across Minnesota. Legal Marijuana Now has major party status in the state and is thus entitled to ballot spots.

“There are not that many third-party candidates running, and if you look at where they're running it's disproportionately in some of the most competitive districts in Minnesota,” Evans said. “It's clear that Republicans are recruiting a lot of these folks. It's beyond clear.”

The party put out a statement Wednesday listing several races in which Democrats believe, based on media reports, that Republicans have engaged in a coordinated effort to recruit third-party candidates to pull votes away from Democrats in close races.

“Running fake candidates to trick people out of their votes is a new low and shows how desperate Minnesota Republicans are,” Evans said.

Condemning the GOP tactic as “unconscionable” were leaders of three of the top pro-legalization groups in the state, Minnesotans for Responsible Marijuana Regulation, Sensible Change MN and MN NORML.

“The efforts of the marijuana legalization parties has been hijacked by Republican operatives seeking to game the system,” they said. “Placing Republican foils on the ballot under the guise of serving as legalization advocates sows distrust of what is supposed to be a democratic system.

A Minnesota GOP spokesman did not immediately return messages seeking comment Wednesday.

Craig first ran for the seat in 2016, losing to a Republican by two points with a third-party candidate drawing nearly 8%. Two years later, without a third-party candidate, Craig beat the same Republican by 5 points in a rematch.

Asian American and Pacific Islanders could be tiebreakers in key swing states, survey and early voting results show

THE ROCK ENDORSES BIDEN

About a third of all AAPI voters live in the 10 most competitive states. More politically engaged than four years ago, they have an outsize influence on the election.


Oct. 30, 2020, By Claire Wang

Asian American and Pacific Islanders could provide the margin of victory in the country’s 10 most contested states, which are scattered across the Midwest, South and Southwest, according to a new report commissioned by the National Education Association.

The survey, conducted in July and September with 875 Asian constituents, finds new insight into an overlooked community that holds an outsize influence on Senate and presidential races. A majority of the study respondents are of Chinese, Indian and Filipino descent.

The report highlighted the fact that a third of registered AAPI voters, more than 2 million in total, live in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.

“When there’s national polling done on the AAPI electorate, states like California, Texas, New York and New Jersey are overrepresented,” Carrie Pugh, the national political director at the NEA, the nation's largest teachers union, told NBC Asian America.

Because the racial group is “most populous in places that aren’t battleground states,” she said, national voter data rarely provides candidates accurate profiles of more obscure populations, such as Pennsylvania’s Vietnamese residents.

The survey is among the first to explore the politics of Asian Americans who live in areas targeted in the “race to 270 electoral votes,” Pugh said.

 Based on 2016 exit polls cited in the research, a higher AAPI turnout could have propelled Hillary Clinton to victory in several swing states. In Michigan, where she lost by 10,000 votes, more than 50,000 eligible AAPI voters chose not to cast a ballot. In Pennsylvania, where the margin of victory was 44,000 votes, nearly 100,000 people abstained.

Voting among 18-29 year-old Asian Americans is up nearly 400 percent compared to 2016.

But this year, more than 50 percent of swing state constituents say they feel “much more enthusiastic” about voting than before, suggesting that Asian Americans could make a bigger impact on Election Day.

 Early turnout seems to support this idea: The group has so far cast about a half-million more absentee and early ballots than it did four years ago, according to the data consulting firm Catalist. Of the 1.8 million people who voted, a third abstained in 2016. This growth is most pronounced among 18- to 29-year-olds, who have cast roughly 330,000 ballots — a nearly 400 percent increase from 2016.

This willingness to participate in the political process, the survey shows, can be partly attributed to a fraught socioeconomic climate. Asian Americans in the 10 competitive states rank jobs and health care as the top two election issues. Immigration, college affordability and voter suppression — concerns that typically occupy top spots — are still considered important but have been superseded by the pandemic. At the same time, respondents find more abstract concepts, like a sense of civic duty, moral responsibility and faith in democracy, to be stronger motivators to vote than displeasure toward President Donald Trump and his perceived policy failures.

“It’s clear AAPI voters don’t like Trump,” said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster and partner at the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, the polling firm that conducted the study. “But their dislike of Trump is not enough to make them vote.”

In general, respondents favor former Vice President Joe Biden over Trump by wide margins. But mobilizing young people to vote, Pugh and Yang say, can be the key to turning swing states blue. Nearly 70 percent of young Asian Americans support Biden, compared to just 49 percent of seniors. “We need to motivate young people to vote more because they’re more likely to vote Democrat,” Yang said, adding that one goal of the study was to hone in on messaging that fuels youth turnout.

Pugh credits the Biden campaign for aggressively ramping up in-language outreach to AAPI communities, which has been instrumental in generating interest in civic participation. His staff has invested in a host of creative and culturally sensitive initiatives, from running targeted ads in local ethnic media to hiring bilingual Asian outreach directors across the country. “I’ve been doing politics for three decades and have never seen this robust level of engagement,” Pugh said. “It’s kind of our time.”

Ultimately, she said, gathering data on AAPI constituents, especially those in regions with smaller Asian populations, should be an ongoing effort to ensure every community feels seen. The NEA has been collecting data for a post-election national poll, which is expected to be released next month. Along with general turnout numbers, it’ll provide a snapshot of the issues and circumstances that motivated most people to vote—points that can inform future outreach.

“Our community has been overlooked and underresourced for way too long,” Pugh said. “Having the data element is an important part in running more sophisticated programs and highlighting us in a way that should be more commensurate with our population growth.”

Federal wildland firefighters say they're burned out after years of low pay, little job stability

As record fire years continue, USFS “forestry technicians” push for better working conditions.

Among those problems is their classification as forestry technicians, instead of being fully recognized for their firefighting work.

“What the federal government is doing is asking 20-year-olds to risk their lives for $13 to $15 and say, ‘Sayonara,’ with no retirement benefits, nothing,” 

United States Forest Service “forestry technicians” are pushing for fairer wages and better working conditions. Cornelia Li / for NBC News

Oct. 31, 2020, 
By Cyrus Farivar and Alicia Victoria Lozano

What started as a single tree fire in the mountains of Idaho in 2012 quickly escalated into a smoke-filled inferno that surrounded United States Forest Service helicopter rappeller Jonathon Golden and his small team.

Capable of accessing land that is too rugged or steep to reach by foot, rappel crews are the first to respond to wildfires buried deep within forests. Their goal is simple: stop small fires before they balloon out of control.

Golden, who retired from the agency in 2019, was the first of his four-person team to rappel into the smoldering ridge. He remembers the smoke being so thick that not even the whirl of the helicopter improved visibility on the ground.

“One tree turned into five, five trees turned into 20. It was this cascade of fire erupting,” Golden said. “You could hear the unmistakable sound of a freight train of fire roaring up at you.”

A forest service helicopter returns to the south fork of the Payette River on Aug. 6, 2012, after dropping water on the Springs Fire, east of Banks, Idaho.

Joe Jaszewski / The Idaho Statesman via AP

Golden, who was 30 years old at the time, had heard about previous firefighter fatalities in the region and didn’t want to take any chances. He was working to establish an escape route when one of his crew members went “rogue,” compromising the team’s ability to stay together.

Using his radio, Golden asked for additional air support but other crews were tied up with their own attack plans. His team was forced to find its own way out.

“I thought we were done, frankly,” Golden said. “I thought we were going to die.”

Eight years later, Golden still cannot shake the experience. He was forced to leave behind his equipment and pack, including his wallet and many of his belongings. They were all destroyed in what was later named the Mustang Fire, which incinerated more than 300,000 acres in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

Golden was a temporary seasonal forestry technician at the time and never received treatment for what he thinks could be post-traumatic stress. He took just one day off to order a new bank card and was back at work the next day. When he tried to talk to his supervisor about the experience, he was told to move on: “You might as well forget about it.”

Missing birthdays and other special events is one of the many drawbacks wildland firefighters like Jonathon Golden face.

Courtesy of Jonathon Golden

Golden is just one of thousands of federal wildland firefighters who work six months out of the year and whose part-time status doesn’t come with the typical benefits or job security given to state and city firefighters.

NBC News spoke with 27 current and former USFS firefighters with similar stories. Nearly all of them said they are grossly underpaid to perform life-threatening work. Many don’t have access to health care and other benefits, particularly during the off-season. They are not even considered to be firefighters, instead falling into a bureaucratic quagmire that designates them as forestry technicians. Some grimly joke that only in death does the agency recognize them as bona fide firefighters.

“It takes us dying to get their attention,” said Riva Duncan, a forest management officer.

Despite the low pay and benefits, many wildland firefighters said they can’t imagine a life outside fire. For some, the adrenaline rush becomes a kind of compulsion. For others, sleeping under the stars and protecting federal land is a higher calling.

“For those of us who stick it out, our love for what we do outweighs everything,” said Duncan, who has been with the USFS for 37 years. “The sacrifices we have made — it’s because we believe in the mission.”

Amid escalating fire threats fueled by climate change and forest mismanagement, these workers are now organizing and lobbying Congress in new ways. They are finding bipartisan support among some Western lawmakers, but many worry the federal agency that employs them is ill-equipped to provide adequate pay and benefits despite the dangerous nature of their jobs.

A plane drops repellant on a forest fire Jonathon Golden was fighting.

Jonathon Golden

According to the Congressional Research Service, as of Oct. 1, over 44,000 wildfires have burned nearly 7.7 million wildland acres this year alone. That’s more than 12,000 square miles, or an area about 1 1/2 times the size of New Jersey.

Over the last decade, fire seasons have gradually turned into fire years. This year, more than 4 million acres have already burned in California alone, forcing thousands of evacuations and power outages across the state. Longer-burning fires have also resulted in more dangerous work. In September, a Hotshot squad leader was killed battling the El Dorado Fire in San Bernardino County, California.

The USFS declined to make anyone in leadership available for an interview and did not directly address many of NBC News’ detailed questions.

Babete Anderson, a spokeswoman for the USFS, said in a statement that the agency is “working to identify solutions by listening to our firefighters to ensure their needs are met.”

“We need to treat the landscape at a much larger scale, 2-3 times what we do now, together with our partners,” she wrote. “Only then will we significantly reduce the threat of wildfire to communities, ensure our forests endure into the future and provide firefighters the safe spaces they need to respond.”

Low pay, few benefits

It’s difficult to fully appreciate how large the American West is, and most don’t realize how much of it is federally owned and managed. Most states west of Kansas have substantial portions of their territory controlled by the federal government.

The U.S. Forest Service, which operates under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is responsible for roughly 30 percent of all federal land: 193 million acres, or over 301,000 square miles, the overwhelming majority of it in the West. The total area of USFS-managed land is larger than the entire state of Texas by approximately 30,000 square miles.

Western federal lands managed by five agencies.

Congressional Research Service

To oversee all of that land, and the 28,000 employees that work on it, the agency has an annual budget of $5.3 billion. Nearly half ($2.4 billion) of that budget is currently spent on “wildland fire management.” A 2015 USFS report estimated this cost will rise to over two-thirds of the agency’s annual budget by 2025, to the detriment of nearly all other agency priorities, including vegetation and watershed management, facilities maintenance and more.

Every fire season, in the spring, USFS ramps up and hires an additional 12,000 seasonal employees, hired primarily for firefighting, most of whom have to reapply for their job each season.

This seasonal employment model is one that many younger firefighters who spoke with NBC News lament: In the off-season, they seek work in fields as diverse as construction to farming to photography, and some even receive unemployment benefits.

In the parlance of the agency, the bulk of the USFS firefighters are “1039s,” referring to the number of work hours they are capped at in a given season. That is just a single hour shy of six months of paid work, which means the federal government can classify those workers as temporary. They are not able to receive automatic health care, retirement or other benefits afforded to permanent employees.

In practice, firefighters battling an active fire often end up working well beyond the 1,039 base hours with overtime, sometimes accruing up to additional 1,000 hours.

One current forest service employee, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said his low pay means he sometimes can’t afford basic necessities for his kids.

“I struggle to put new shoes on my children as a temporary firefighter,” he said. “I had to look at my 6-year-old and tell her I couldn’t afford brand-new shoes for her while we were shopping at a thrift store after a complete season of firefighting.”USFS firefighter pay is dictated by the federal pay scale, where most start at the GS-3 level and where pay tops out at around $31,000 annually for full-time employees. By comparison, a first-year firefighter with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as Cal Fire, makes nearly double that amount.

Most rank-and-file temporary seasonal workers are starting at an hourly base salary of approximately $13 per hour plus overtime and hazard pay. One current USFS firefighter posted to Reddit recently showing that after eight years of service his gross pay topped out at around $30,000 annually.

“What the federal government is doing is asking 20-year-olds to risk their lives for $13 to $15 and say, ‘Sayonara,’ with no retirement benefits, nothing,” said Brandon Dunham, a former USFS and Bureau of Land Management firefighter. “That is a human tragedy right there.”

  

U.S. Forest Service firefighters monitor a back fire while battling to save homes at the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Nov. 8, 2018.Stephen Lam / Reuters file

Dunham and others recently sent a letter to top senators seeking to “advocate for fair pay and wage equality,” among other requests for their ilk.

The former “helitack” crew member — a type of wildland firefighter specializing in helicopter operations — has given up firefighting after 11 years, in favor of working construction, spending more time at home with his wife and hosting a podcast by and for wildland firefighters called “The Anchor Point Podcast.” He decided to leave the field as he felt there was no future for him there.

When asked if he would like to return to wildland firefighting, with an agency like Cal Fire, Dunham did not hesitate.

“I would go jump on a Cal Fire engine in a heartbeat,” he said.

Larger fires, increasing demand

The Reno, Nevada, resident left the USFS at a time when, according to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service, an average of nearly 7 million acres of federal land has burned every year since 2000, more than double the average annual acreage burned during the 1990s.

Beginning in the USFS 2019 Budget Justification document, even the USFS itself began remarking on the fact that there is now “year-round fire activity” rather than a traditional fire season. “ 

The Nation is experiencing more extreme fire behavior and high risk, high cost wildfire suppression operations in the wildland-urban interface have progressively become the new normal over the last two decades,” the fiscal year 2021 document stated.

 “It is estimated that 63 million acres of National Forest System lands and 70,000 communities are at risk from uncharacteristically severe wildfires. Annually, there are typically more than 5,000 fires on National Forest System lands.”

There is a rapidly increasing disconnect between the fiscal realities of firefighting (they are paid relatively little) and the ground truth: Fires are burning larger areas than ever before and these firefighters are in higher demand.

“The bureaucracy of the federal government does not match the speed with which fire is changing,” said one USFS firefighter based in Oregon who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.

As fires have increased in frequency and intensity in recent years, fatalities among wildland firefighters have also increased. A 2014 Quadrennial Fire Review commissioned by the USFS and the Department of the Interior Office of Wildland Fire found that the 10-year moving average of wildland firefighter fatalities had nearly doubled in 40 years.

Juggling family and firefighting

Despite the increased fire threat, many wildland firefighters say they are not given the resources or protections necessary to continue working with the U.S. Forest Service year after year.

It took Mike West a decade to become a full-time employee with the agency and even then finding treatment for his PTSD was difficult.

“I had too many close calls,” he said. “I didn’t really want to be out in the field anymore.”
 

Mike West at the Gasquet Fire on the Six Rivers National Forest in 2015.

Courtesy of Mike West

In 2013, a childhood friend who worked as a smokejumper was killed by a limb from a burning tree. The loss devastated West and triggered an onslaught of symptoms — including anxiety, nightmares and depression — he later learned were caused by PTSD.

“I just sort of covered it up,” he said. “At the time I thought it would be weak if I said anything, so I didn’t tell anybody.”

Three years later the symptoms were worse. He developed short-term memory loss and decided to seek treatment through the USFS. The first counselor assigned to him did not have the necessary background to treat PTSD, West said. He found another doctor that could address his trauma but that therapist was located 90 miles away in Reno, Nevada.

For six months West made the commute, which only exacerbated problems at home. He had two small children that he rarely saw and a wife who grew increasingly tired of juggling child care and her own full-time job.

One night, after working an 18-hour shift as a dispatcher, West had enough.

“It got to the point where I had to choose: Do I want to be a good family man and a bad firefighter or do I want to be a really good firefighter and bad with my family? I couldn’t find a balance,” he said.

“More often than not, people leave because of the strain,” he added. “I don't know too many people who are married and still do the work.”

West finally resigned from the Forest Service in July after 17 years with the agency and became a teacher. His final pay scale as a dispatcher came out to $21.50 an hour plus overtime. In his resignation letter, West pointed to “systemic problems” within the service that made it impossible to continue working for the agency.

Among those problems is their classification as forestry technicians, instead of being fully recognized for their firefighting work.

“You’re a firefighter if you’re thinking about applying, a forestry technician while you’re fighting fires, and if you die you’re a firefighter again?” West wrote in the letter. "I didn’t want to risk my children growing up without a dad because I died fighting fire for an agency that didn’t even consider me a firefighter."

‘A tipping point’

Communication breakdowns and department mismanagement have persisted for over a generation — and it’s frustrating the dwindling ranks of seasonal firefighters, as retirements are outpacing hiring. This is especially problematic at a time when wildland fires continue to burn larger, faster and stronger than ever before.

In April, 11 U.S. senators sent a letter to U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen warning that the confluence of Covid-19 and high levels of drought in many Western states could make for volatile firefighting conditions, including a 6 percent "'cumulative mortality rate' at large fire camps."

The warning was not passed down to those on the front lines. Instead, it was circulated among crews after someone found it on Reddit.

“I am more than happy to put my life in danger for the work that I do but it felt like a stab in the back,” a current wildland firefighter, who asked to remain anonymous, said.

Jonathon Golden and crew responding to a wildfire.

Courtesy Jonathon Golden

When asked about the breakdown in communication between USFS and its employees, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who signed the letter, said, “I’m not just angry about that. I’m furious.”

“We’re going to get through this fire season, but we’re not going through another fire season where there is this kind of fragmented, poorly coordinated policy that our very own firefighters aren’t even getting adequate information from Washington, D.C.,” he said. “It’s unacceptable.”

The seasonality of the work, coupled with the low wages and risk, has made recruitment more difficult over the last two decades — and the government has done little to fix the problem.

In 1999, the Government Accountability Office told a House subcommittee it had found that the “firefighting workforces” of both the USFS and the Bureau of Land Management “are shrinking” as a result of retirement.

Over a decade later, the USDA’s Office of Inspector General, the department’s internal watchdog, reached a similar conclusion, warning of a wave of retirement without a corresponding increase in new hires.

In addition to the firefighter recruitment concerns, there’s also a budgetary shortfall for the agency to perform adequate year-round forest management work aimed at reducing wildfire risk.

In 2015, in a USFS paper, the agency warned that absent new large-scale funding, it had been forced to reallocate its budget toward firefighting and away from other priorities, concluding that the agency was now “at a tipping point.”

“As more and more of the agency’s resources are spent each year to provide the firefighters, aircraft, and other assets necessary to protect lives, property, and natural resources from catastrophic wildfires, fewer and fewer funds and resources are available to support other agency work—including the very programs and restoration projects that reduce the fire threat,” the paper stated.

Mike Rogers, a former Angeles National Forest supervisor and board member of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, said forest management was originally the cornerstone of the agency’s work.

“Our workforce was never a fire department,” he said, underscoring that he began at the agency in 1957. “In the old days, everyone put out the fire when we had a fire but then we went back to our jobs and that was managing the forest. We didn’t have specialized firefighters.”

Despite these stark warnings, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, there has been little has been little substantial progress on increasing the Forest Service’s budget, nor has there been substantive movement on reclassification of forestry technicians as firefighters, expanding fuel reduction and other preventative efforts.

However, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., collaborated with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on the Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act of 2020, which aims to reduce fire risk in their respective states.

In a recent letter to Senate leadership, the two senators had a dire warning.

“If we don’t take strong action now, we worry that what’s happening to California and Montana will soon become the new normal in every state in the West,” they wrote.

Cyrus Farivar is a reporter on the tech investigations unit of NBC News in San Francisco.

Alicia Victoria Lozano is a Los Angeles-based digital reporter for NBC News.

Top GOP official says cyber attackers stole $2.3 million from Republican Party of Wisconsin
Bill Glauber and Patrick Marley, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 


MILWAUKEE – The top official of the Republican Party of Wisconsin said Thursday that hackers stole $2.3 million during a crucial phase of the presidential campaign.

© Republican Party of Wisconsin Andrew Hitt

Party Chairman Andrew Hitt said the loss was attributed to a phishing attack that has been reported to the FBI.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office would not confirm or deny they were investigating, citing their protocols.

"It was a devastating moment," Hitt said of when the discovery was made.

Hitt said the party discovered the attack Oct. 22 and by Friday morning realized the money was taken from accounts and the FBI was notified. The money had been earmarked to pay vendors working on President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, Hitt said.

Hitt said the Republican National Committee made the initial contact with the FBI and then he was called by the FBI's Madison Field Office.

"The sophisticated criminal began with a phishing attack," Hitt said. "Once in the system, they were able to manipulate information in our emails and on invoices and documents that then resulted in them obtaining $2.3 million."




Hitt said the attackers "were able to change invoices, wire instructions ... The money was wired to the hackers instead of the vendors."

"Obviously, the hackers were extremely skilled and knowledgeable," he said. "They came into one of the most vital battleground states at the perfect time when resources are being spent."

Hitt said the hackers "targeted only vendors that were working for the president's campaign."

He emphasized the party was not wiped out financially and still has resources to move forward in the closing days of the campaign.

"The president's re-election plan is in place," he said. "It's an extremely strong plan moving forward and being implemented. A lot of those things are in place."

Even prior to the alleged attack, the RPW was operating at a significant financial disadvantage in this election cycle. The party was vastly behind in fundraising to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Contributing: Molly Beck, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Top GOP official says cyber attackers stole $2.3 million from Republican Party of Wisconsin

A GOP reckoning? If Trump loses his reelection bid, the party may face an identity crisis

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is something few could have imagined when he launched what seemed an unlikely bid for the 2016 nomination.

But even if Trump loses reelection Tuesday, his grip on the GOP is now strong enough that it could take some time before the party figures out a path forward.

“I do not think this is a party that is ready to grapple with what it’s been doing or reassess itself anytime soon,” said GOP consultant Brendan Buck, who worked for the past two Republican House speakers and does not support Trump.

Trump’s takeover of the GOP was swift. While he was front and center during the 2016 primary debates, Trump was initially slow to consolidate support. Even as late as the convention, the possibility of a floor fight loomed over his nomination.

© Joe Raedle, Getty Images Supporters of President Donald Trump demonstrate together outside where Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is holding a campaign rally at the Broward College North Campus on October 29, 2020 in Coconut Creek, Florida.

Once Trump was elected, however, he reshaped the party in his image and GOP officeholders have been judged – by him and by voters – primarily on their loyalty to the president.


“Until that changes,” Buck said, “it’s going to be hard to have a real conversation about changing who we are as a party.”

That’s despite the fact that the headlines have been filled with former GOP officeholders who reject Trump – even as the party's base remains passionate about the president.

Trump's promises: Which has he kept and what is he still working on?

USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll: Ahead of Election Day, 3 of 4 voters worry about violence in a divided nation

Ninety-five percent of Republicans approve of how Trump is doing his job, a figure similar to George W. Bush’s standing before his 2004 re-election, according to Gallup.

But Trump has generally been viewed much less favorably than Bush was among independents and Democrats in the months leading up the election.
Loss of older voters, women

Some of the worst erosion has been among older voters, those with a college education and women.

Trump to women at Michigan rally: 'We're getting your husbands back to work'

Such changes could force a long-term political realignment, according to William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked in the Clinton administration. Voters who are breaking their ties with the GOP to back Democratic challenger Joe Biden could make a temporary move permanent if they like what they see in a Biden presidency.

“This could be an extremely significant election in that regard because that would mean a shift in the plate tectonics of politics in the United States,” Galston said. “This could be a big one.”

One group of former Republicans who are giving up on reshaping the party is the Lincoln Project, which has run some of the toughest ads against Trump as well as gone after Senate Republicans on the ballot.

“There are a lot of folks who might be very interested in rebuilding the Republican Party,” said Reed Galen, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project who worked for President George W. Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain. “We are not them.”

Galen sees the Lincoln Project as being a “coalition partner” with a Biden administration.

“If you want to get the country healthy and back to work and back to school, it’s going to take a broad-based, bipartisan, nationwide effort to make it happen,” he said. “To the extent that we can be helpful to a President Biden in that regard, we want to do that.”

The Lincoln Project gleefully tweeted recently that its 2.6 million followers had surpassed the Republican National Committee’s 2.5 million.

To Republicans like Buck, that just proves the group won’t have a voice at the conservative table.

“I think they are a bunch of guys who are effectively leading a Democratic political organization and their followers are Democrats who are happy to see them take out Republicans for them,” he said.
Can Trump supporters and Never Trumpers co-exist?

In fact, it’s not clear whether conservatives who have pushed back against Trump and the changes he’s brought to the party are a significant force, said Vanessa Williamson, co-author of “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.”

"The question I think that remains open is how much support those individuals have either institutionally or in terms of voter support," Williamson said during a recent discussion at the Brookings Institution, where she is a senior fellow. “It is not, I think, at the level where I would describe it as a faction, even, for the Republican Party, in terms of its level of organization or power within the party."

Trump campaign stops: Coronavirus cases surged in his wake in at least five places.

© SAUL LOEB, AFP via Getty Images US President Donald Trump throws a MAGA hat into the crowd as he arrives fora Make America Great Again campaign rally at Altoona-Blair County Airport in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, October 26, 2020.

At the conservative American Enterprise Institute, scholar Yuval Levin has been bringing together policy advisers to politicians to discuss how to change what conservatives are offering voters.

Levin, who worked on domestic policy for Bush, was among those arguing “well before Trumpism” that base tenants of Reaganism – lowering taxes and letting market forces rule – that drove the party for many years are not delivering for working families.

“That’s very much a debate within the right,” he said. “I think that Republican politicians still are deeply perplexed about what happened in 2016.”

Similarly, a new think tank, the American Compass, is trying to make it clear that “post-Trumpism needs to be very different from pre-Trumpism.”

“Trump just proved wrong virtually everything that the right-of-center thought it knew about what its politicians were supposed to be saying, what it’s constituents actually cared about,” said executive director Oren Cass, a former adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.

Cass argues conservative public policy became too dominated by libertarian impulses, a hands-off approach that has left a lot of needs unaddressed.

“We see a much more substantial role for public policy to play in making the market work well,” he said.
A big tent?

In order to recalibrate, Republicans will have to first wander in the wilderness, said Sarah Longwell, founder of Republicans for the Rule of Law and Defending Democracy Together.

“It comes down to how tight a grip does Donald Trump retain on the party,” she said. “Because one of the things that’s really important to understand about Donald Trump is that he cares less about beating Democrats than he does about owning the Republican Party.”

For that reason, Longwell thinks voters have to "absolutely annihilate" Republicans on Nov. 3.

But the groups she leads aren’t actively working to defeat any Republicans except Trump, as the Lincoln Project is.

For Defending Democracy Together’s $30 million campaign aimed at giving Republicans the “permission” to vote against Trump through testimonials of Republicans who are doing just that, Longwell wanted as big a tent as possible.

“Ninety percent of the people in our project explicitly endorse Biden and are probably going to vote straight ticket,” she said. “But lots of others might not. And we wanted to have a project that gave everybody in that space a home.”

John Pudner, a former adviser to Romney who supports Trump, said the “Never Trumpers” lost credibility with rank-and-file Republicans when they started going after senators.

“I just don’t see how a conservative thinks we’re better off with every branch being controlled by Democrats,” he said.

© MANDEL NGAN, AFP via Getty Images Nuns wearing masks displaying Trump's MAGA slogan listen as US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pickaway Agriculture and Event Center in Circleville, Ohio on October 24, 2020.

Tom Nichols, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, said it’s laughable to argue that Republicans should keep the Senate to serve as a check-and-balance on Democrats, if they lose the White House.

“I don’t remember, over 40 years, anybody ever saying, `Now we’re on the verge of a landslide…but we’d better leave some Democrats in power so that we don’t go crazy,” said Nichols, author of “The Death of Expertise.”

And since it’s “pretty rare for parties to die,” he said, the most likely future is some kind of reconstituted Republican Party.

“But it needs to have new people in it,” he added.

Even if Trump loses, it’s impossible to predict what things will feel like after Nov. 3, Levin said.

But, soon enough, he said, “these conversations will be happening everywhere on the right.”

“I mean,” Levin added, “it will be all we have to do.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A GOP reckoning? If Trump loses his reelection bid, the party may face an identity crisis

 

DONALD TRUMP'S FIRST TERM: The graphic novel

Josh Adams and Anthony Del Col 

Josh Adams for Business Insider

This story is about two moments that revealed President Donald Trump's character to the world: his reaction to the tragedy at Charlottesville and then, just more than three years later, his response to widespread demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd.

Part one is called "You Never Apologize." Part two is called "Always Dominate."

August 2017 and even June 2020 seem like a very long time ago. Our aim is to bring those moments back to life as America finishes voting in the 2020 election.

Insider is proud to present "Never Show Weakness: Trump in Power." https://www.insider.com/donald-trumps-first-term-graphic-novel-2020-10#-1