Violence flares in tense Paris suburbs as heavy-handed lockdown stirs ‘explosive cocktail’April 21, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


Three nights of unrest in the French capital’s northern suburbs have stoked fears of a major flare-up in deprived neighborhoods where weeks of lockdown have exacerbated the simmering tensions between restless youths and police.

Six weeks into France’s nationwide lockdown, Zouhair Ech-Chetouani is an increasingly worried man. In more than 20 years of social work, the community leader says the restive northern suburbs of Paris have never felt quite so tense.

According to Ech-Chetouani, the strict confinement rules to halt the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with tough policing enforcing those rules, have mixed up an “explosive cocktail” in areas already blighted by poverty, unemployment and now a worsening health crisis.

“The spark has been lit,” he says, referring to the unrest that has swept through several northern suburbs of Paris in recent nights.

The trouble in Villeneuve-La-Garenne first flared late on Saturday after a motorcyclist collided with the open door of an unmarked police car during a pursuit. Witnesses said the officers had deliberately opened the door into the motorcyclist’s path, a claim denied by police.

The skirmishes lasted into the early hours of Sunday before calm was restored but unrest broke out again the following two nights, spreading to other suburbs north of Paris. Police said fireworks were aimed at them and several cars were torched while officers fired tear gas to disperse the troublemakers.

A history of violence

Relations between police and residents have long been a fraught issue in France’s economically poor and ethnically diverse suburbs, where men of African and North African origin complain about being routinely stopped and searched simply because of the colour of their skin.

A study by France’s National Centre for Scientific Research has shown that blacks are 11.5 times more likely to be checked by police than whites, and those of Arab origin are seven times more likely.

>> Racism, sex abuse and impunity: French police’s toxic legacy in the suburbs

In what has become a depressing cycle of violence and resentment, such routine checks can lead to violent altercations and eventually riots, a daunting prospect the French government is desperate to avoid as it grapples with a health emergency.

When President Emmanuel Macron imposed a nationwide lockdown starting March 17, police officers privately expressed concerns that tough restrictions on public life could amplify tensions and spark unrest.

In late March, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé, a leading source of investigative journalism, reported that the Interior Ministry had quietly asked police chiefs to adopt a light touch as they seek to enforce the lockdown in restive suburbs so as not to inflame tensions.

However, activists on the ground say the police approach has been anything but light.

Disproportionate force

On the first day of confinement, the Seine-Saint-Denis department northeast of Paris – home to France’s poorest districts – accounted for 10 percent of all fines handed out for breaching the lockdown despite comprising just over 2 percent of the country’s population.

Since then, videos of heavy-handed arrests have circulated widely on French social media, along with calls for revenge.

“You’re much less likely to see police fining and harassing parents who play with their children in the Bois de Boulogne,” says Echi-Chetouani, referring to the park that borders the 16th arrondissement (district) of Paris in the French capital’s affluent west.

The social worker says the situation has considerably worsened since the start of the lockdown, which he argues has only heightened a sense of power and impunity among the police.

“When there are people out in the streets, police abuses are less likely to go unnoticed,” he explains. “But with residents locked up at home, the police have become more violent and arbitrary.”

He adds: “Of course, most officers do their work conscientiously. But it only takes a few bad apples eager to settle scores for things to get out of hand very fast.”

In late March, a coalition of rights groups including Human Rights Watch released a statement denouncing the police’s “unacceptable”, “illegal” and “sometimes dangerous” practices.

“The current state of sanitary emergency should not be in breach of the rule of law and does not justify discriminatory checks or unjustified and disproportionate force,” the statement read.

Police unions, which did not return FRANCE 24’s requests for comment, have rejected the accusations, noting that officers are constantly targeted and provoked by youths in tense suburbs.

‘All we got was an order to stay home’

Critics of police tactics say they reflect a wider failure to take into account the specificities of the impoverished and densely populated suburbs as they grapple with the twin challenges of a health emergency and home confinement.

While Seine-Saint-Denis was hit by Covid-19 later than other territories, health officials have since declared it one of four French departments suffering from an “exceptional” spike in deaths.

The combination of large families in cramped quarters and the lack of doctors and hospital beds has left the local population particularly exposed to the virus. And while many Parisians fled to countryside homes or switched to working from home, the capital’s poorer suburbs have supplied most of the workers who keep the metropolis running.

“Nurses, cashiers, caregivers, street cleaners, security agents, delivery men… Basically all the people who prop up the country today, all those who hold the front line and put themselves in danger, they come from the working-class districts, from [Seine-Saint-Denis]!” said Stéphane Peu, a local communist lawmaker, in an interview with Le Monde.

The French newspaper notes that several other factors conspire to make the coronavirus lockdown more challenging in banlieue high-rises than elsewhere in France, including the dearth of food outlets. In northern Bondy, for instance, there is just one supermarket for a population of 21,000.

Seine-Saint-Denis is also home to France’s youngest population, with 30% of inhabitants aged under 20.

“By and large, the lockdown is being respected in the suburbs, but there comes a point when restless youths in overcrowded homes need a breath of fresh air,” says Echi-Chetouani, lamenting the authorities’ failure to prepare for lockdown.

“There has simply been no outreach, no attempt to explain to the locals how the virus spreads and why social distancing is important to protect vulnerable family members,” he adds. “All we got was an order to stay home, followed by repression.”

Police clash with residents in Paris suburbs amid lockdown

Issued on: 20/04/2020

The tensions were ignited in the early hours of Saturday when a motorcyclist was injured during a police check GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT AFP

ALL VIDEOS ARE AT THE END

Paris (AFP)

Police fought running battles overnight in Paris's low-income northern suburbs with residents alleging heavy-handedness by officers enforcing France's strict coronavirus lockdown.

Residents burned trash and cars and shot fireworks at police, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas in the suburbs of Villeneuve-la-Garenne and Aulnay-sous-Bois, witnesses and police said on Monday.

The tensions were ignited in the early hours of Saturday when a motorcyclist was injured during a police check in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, prompting about 50 angry bystanders to gather.

A police statement said the group targeted officers with "projectiles" in a near two-hour standoff.

The motorcyclist, 30, was hospitalised with a broken leg and had to undergo surgery after he had crashed into the open door of a police car.

Residents allege the door was opened deliberately so that the rider would smash into it.

The man will lodge a complaint against the officers, his family and a lawyer told AFP, while prosecutors have opened an investigation.

By Monday morning, calm had returned to Villeneuve-la-Garenne after a second night of riots marked by suburban fires and explosions, an AFP journalist observed.

The trouble had also spread to nearby Aulnay-sous-Bois, where police claimed they were "ambushed" by residents in a district of dense, high-rise social housing of mainly immigrant occupants who claim they are regularly the victims of harsh police treatment.

Police said they were targeted by residents using fireworks as projectiles. Four were arrested.

- 'Confinement and tensions' -

After the motorcyclist was injured on Saturday, rights group SOS Racisme issued a statement calling on authorities to shed full light on the incident, and urging police restraint "in this time of confinement and tensions".

Earlier this month, prosecutors opened an investigation into the death in detention of a 33-year-old man arrested for allegedly violating the home confinement measures imposed by the government to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Police said the man resisted arrest. According to his sister, he had suffered from schizophrenia.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Sunday police had carried out 13.5 million checks since the lockdown started on March 17, with people allowed outside only for essential purposes, and then with a self-certified letter explaining their reasons for leaving their home.

More than 800,000 people were written up for violations.

Several complaints of brutality were lodged against French police during recent months of pension reform protests and "yellow vest" anti-government rallies.

© 2020 AFP

Anti-lockdown riots break out in Paris amid anger at police 'heavy-handed' treatment of minorities after Macron extends social distancing to fight COVID-19 until May 11

Tear gas and baton charges were used by police in northern suburb of Paris

Squads of Republican Security Company officers were called in to tackle dissent

Comes after 30-year-old motorcyclist was critically injured by police car 

By PETER ALLEN FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED:  19/20 April 2020

Riots have broken out in Paris amid anger over police 'heavy-handed' treatment of ethnic minorities during the coronavirus lockdown.

Police used tear gas and baton charges in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, northern Paris, in the early hours this morning as fireworks exploded in the street.

Armed police were seen moving through the area as groups of protesters congregated.

It comes after a 30-year-old was critically injured in the neighbourhood in a collision with an unmarked police car.

President Emmanuel Macron has extended France's social distancing measures until May 11. Its daily death toll from the virus fell to the lowest level in three weeks today as 395 deaths were recorded, bringing the total to 19,718, though deaths are typically under-reported over the weekend.

Riots have broken out in the Parisian suburb of Villeneuve-la-Garenne following allegations of heavy handedness against ethnic minorities by police forces. (Pictured: An officer asks a journalist to step back in the suburb early on Monday morning)

A firework explodes in the middle of the street in the French suburb early this morning

Des unités de police répondent aux feux d’artifices par des tirs de grenades lacrymogènes.#VilleneuveLaGarenne pic.twitter.com/A7CP6hRCjS— Taha Bouhafs (@T_Bouhafs) April 19, 2020

Protesters fired fireworks at buildings and into police officers in early hours of this morning

A car waits at a cross roads in the neighbourhood as fireworks explode overhead
Overnight anti-lockdown riots in Paris suburb leave streets on fireFireworks dyed the sky red above the Parisian suburb early this morning, videos posted on social media show.

Bins were also filmed blazing and filling the air with smoke as armed police moved into the area.

Videos of the trouble posted by the French journalist Taha Bouhafs, who is from an Algerian background, includes one of him being manhandled by police – leading to allegations of racism.

Mr Bouhaf’s earlier images show tear gas canisters being fired by the police, who were hit my numerous fireworks.

The early morning violence followed prosecutors opening an enquiry after a 30-year-old motorcyclist was critically injured following a collision with an unmarked police car in Villeneuve-la-Garenne.

Friends of the victim, who have not been named, claimed the incident on Saturday night was an example of police heavy-handedness against ethnic minority communities during the lockdown.

‘The very badly injured man comes from an Arab Muslim background,’ said a source close to the case.

‘He is critical in hospital, and people in the area have reacted very badly to what has happened.’

A local police spokesman said: ‘Police and their reinforcements have been the target of rioters, who have thrown stones and fireworks.

‘The violence started in Villeneuve-la-Garenne and has spread to other towns and estates nearby.’


Protesters let off fireworks. The riots were triggered after a 30-year-old man was severely injured in a collision with an unmarked police car in the area

Police threw tear gas and baton charges as they moved to disperse protesters in the area

A police officer was seen carrying a large gun as they moved through the neighbourhood

Last week prosecutors in Béziers, in the south of France, announced that officers were facing criminal charges after a father-of-three died while under arrest for breaching the Coronavirus lockdown.

Three officers were videoed dragging Mohamed Gabsi, 33, along the ground during a curfew.

They are suspected of ‘intentional violence by a public official leading to manslaughter’ and ‘non assistance of a person in danger’.

The offences come with a potential combined prison sentence of 15 years plus, said local prosecutors.

The case is particularly sensitive because Mr Gabsi was a Muslim, and Béziers is run by a far-Right mayor who is supported by the National Rally party, which used to be called the National Front.

Mr Gabsi had suffered a heart attack by the time he arrived at a local police station, and witnesses saw two of the officers sitting on top of him in their patrol car.

Mr Gabsi’s suspicious death follows numerous complaints about police racism as forces across France enforce one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe.

A spokesman for France’s Human Rights League described the death of Mr Gabsi, who was from an Arab background, as a ‘scandal that shows how the poor are being killed’ by the lockdown.

French journalist Taha Bouhafs, who is from an Algerian background, is manhandled by police

Two officers hold the journalist's arms behind his back. He was reporting on the protests

France on Tuesday reported a total of 19,718 deaths from coronavirus since the start of the health emergency. A total of 152,894 cases have also been detected in the country.

Its stringent lockdown measures are 'working', Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told a press conference today.

French authorities have said they will publish plans for ending the lockdown 'within two weeks', and begins to air their strategy 'in the coming days'.

'It is likely that we are not going to see an end to confinement that would happen in one move everywhere and for everyone,' Mr Philippe said, revealing details of the strategy.

The French lockdown could lead to a 10 per cent contraction in the French economy this year.

The country has been in lockdown from March 17, and this will continue until at least May 11.

Coronavirus Underscores Injustices in France's Working-class Suburbs
By Lisa Bryant April 17, 2020

FILE - Housing blocks are seen in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, France.

PARIS - On a national discrimination hotline that she helps manage, Rafaelle Parlier hears troubling reports: a veiled woman fined by police for using her veil as a face mask, and a man of North African descent similarly sanctioned for picking up his wife, a nurse, from her hospital shift — although both had appropriate justifications.

“These are practices we usually denounce,” said Parlier, who works for anti-discrimination coalition En finir avec les contrôles au faciès (End Racial Profiling). “The confinement just makes it easier.”

A woman walks in front of a hotel of the Accor group in Paris, April 16, 2020, during a nationwide confinement to counter the coronavirus. The Accor facilities are taking in people with COVID-19 who show no symptoms but risk infecting others.

If COVID-19 touches all of France, its effects are not being felt equally. Poor, ethnically diverse residents are suffering disproportionately, rights activists and local officials say. The fallout varies, from reports of police intimidation and violence to more arduous conditions under lockdown and potentially more coronavirus cases than elsewhere in the country.

“The problem with this epidemic is that it underscores all the other pre-existing inequalities,” said Laurent Russier, mayor of Saint-Denis, a working-class Paris suburb with a large immigrant population. “And Saint-Denis is marked by sharp inequalities.”

Few areas manifest the national disparities more sharply than the broader Seine-Saint-Denis department, France’s poorest region, where Russier’s town is located. A recent government report found a sharp spike in deaths during the last half of March, when the COVID-19 lockdown began — higher than in neighboring departments.

While the government has not linked the uptick to coronavirus, local officials list a raft of underlying weaknesses in the banlieues, as the gritty, working-class suburbs are called.

Disparities ‘that kill’

In an op-ed piece, Russier joined a half-dozen mayors and elected officials in outlining several disparities “that kill” in the Seine-Saint-Denis department — in justice, security, health, education and jobs.

While some Parisians headed to country houses to wait out the pandemic, and a number are telecommuting for work, many of Russier’s residents have "front-line" jobs as health aides, supermarket cashiers and delivery workers, sometimes without protective masks. Peeling housing projects sometimes pack large, intergenerational families into tiny, unhealthy spaces, creating coronavirus clusters in some cases.

“So if someone catches COVID-19 in an apartment that’s multigenerational, the contagion is more rapid,” Russier said, “and the confinement is harder.”

Some banlieue graveyards report they are close to saturation, a situation that has not been helped by the recent uptick in deaths.

“Usually, I sign three or four burial certificates a week. But over the last few weeks, I’m signing three or four a day,” Sylvine Thomassin, mayor of another working-class suburb, told Le Monde newspaper.

FILE - A family watches French President Emmanuel Macron's televised speech, April 13, 2020, in Lyon, central France. Macron announced an extension of France's nationwide lockdown until May 11.

The message seems to have hit home with the French government. Addressing the nation Monday, President Emmanuel Macron — who has earned underwhelming marks for addressing banlieue grievances — promised nearly $1 billion more in financial aid for poor families.

France’s banlieues have long been considered flashpoints for unresolved social and economic grievances. In 2005, they exploded into rioting — a theme of the recent hit movie “Les Miserables” — revealing the tense and violent relationship between police and banlieue youngsters.

Old story, new context
 Today, the coronavirus simply offers a new context for discriminatory treatment, some activists say. Several videos posted on social media show police slapping and otherwise harassing youngsters for allegedly violating tough lockdown measures. In some cases, the young people have filed legal complaints.

“The issue of police violence is not new. It’s the usual targets, this time with the pretext of enforcing the confinement,” said Lanna Hollo, senior legal officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative in Paris.

"There are young people terrified to go out,” she added. “They may be the ones charged with the shopping or who have to go to work, and they’re afraid of being abused.”

In the Seine-Saint-Denis department, mayors and other officials say residents are largely following lockdown measures. Russier is among them.

But he denies excessive police behavior — at least in his town.

"There are some youngsters who don’t respect confinement, in some cases, defiantly,” he said. “But police are being careful. The idea is to avoid confrontation. They are very, very vigilant not to pour oil into the fire.”

FRANCE DISPATCH NEW YORK TIMES

‘Like a Prison’: Paris Suburbs Simmer Under Coronavirus Lockdown

A combination of cramped quarters, economic stress and accusations of police abuse is inflaming tensions in the poorer districts around the city.

Clichy-sous-Bois, an eastern suburb of Paris, is one of four French areas hit by “an exceptional excess” of coronavirus deaths, France’s national health director said Tuesday night.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

By Adam Nossiter
Published April 10, 2020 Updated April 13, 2020

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France — The young men, immigrants with no papers and nowhere to go, chatted at close quarters outside the shopping strip, social distancing be damned. Above loomed the shabby facade of one of France’s most notorious housing blocks, packed with families waiting out confinement.

The pain of the moment is concentrated in this dense, impoverished district of the Paris immigrant suburbs, one of four French areas, including Paris and Alsace, hit by “an exceptional excess” of coronavirus deaths, France’s national health director said this week.

Much of Paris — perhaps a quarter of the population — packed up and went off to the countryside when the French government announced strict confinement rules on March 16. But just across the line in Seine-Saint-Denis, France’s poorest department, people didn’t have that choice.

Inside the Paris city limits, the streets are now as quiet as any French provincial town on a Sunday; in the suburbs the streets are mostly empty too. But the apartments are full.

Handing out food on Tuesday.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

The grim and tired faces of the residents, lining up to get into the post office or the supermarket in the worn shopping strip, tell the story: small public housing apartments packed with families, jobs that have disappeared and an aggressive police force clamping down on youth restless with the confinement rules.

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The combination of cramped quarters, acute economic stress and tough policing has made Paris’s poorer suburbs a more dangerous place for the virus to spread, as well as a special source of tension during the epidemic.

Relations between residents and the police, with their undercurrent of racial discrimination, are often fraught even in the best of times, and the current lockdown is not one of them.

Over and over, residents compared the confinement rules to conditions in a prison, and they charged that the police were taking advantage of their mandate to keep the streets clear by harassing, even beating, youths, no questions asked. Some are warning that the pressures are ripe to explode.

“We’ve got a lot of young people in big families, shut up in tiny apartments, and it’s difficult to close them up like that,” said Bilal Chikri, a filmmaker who lives in the neighborhood. “There’s a lot of clashes with the police, lots of police missteps, lots of abuse of power.”
The approach has left residents vulnerable to both the police and the virus. Paris had 732 virus deaths compared with 402 in Seine-Saint-Denis as of April 8, but the city has half again the population of the suburb, where many of the metropolis’s cashiers, deliverymen, transit workers, nurses and couriers live.

“This is getting really tough,” said Larry Karache, an out-of-work shopkeeper, standing outside Chêne Pointu, the housing project where France’s 2005 urban riots were born, and which was depicted in last year’s hit film “Les Misérables.” “We’re actually in prison here.”

“People can’t support their families anymore,’’ he added. “And with the cops now, it’s all about score-settling.”

A residential compound reflected in a window of a food donation outpost.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

The stresses, from a lack of money and small spaces, were accumulating.

“It’s like a prison. There are three of us in two rooms,” said Drissa Fofana, an out-of-work construction worker. “But we’ve got to accept it. If this goes on, the little that we’ve got saved up will be all gone,” he said.

Another resident, Mama Traoré, echoed the complaint. “It’s hard,” she said, grimacing as she bent over her shopping cart outside the post office at Chêne Pointu. “I’ve got four kids and three rooms. Too small. With all the noise, I’ve always got a headache.”

Outside the apartment blocks, small groups gather, here and there, mostly at bus stops. But the wide streets are largely quiet.

“On the whole, people are respecting the confinement rules,” said Hamza Esmili, a sociologist who has studied the Paris suburbs. “There isn’t a sort of collective indiscipline about it.”

“But the illness has the potential to continue spreading,” Mr. Esmili warned.

The real danger comes not from people congregating outside, but from the cramped apartments where extended families are packed.
“On the exterior, the confinement is being observed,” said Frédéric Adnet, head of emergency services in the Seine-Saint-Denis department. “It’s not there that the problem is playing out.”



Playing at a housing complex.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

“We’re seeing whole families arrive in the emergency rooms,” he said. “There’s familial contamination. People live, five or six, in little, little apartments.”

Paris had its exodus to country homes. “We didn’t see that in the Seine-Saint-Denis,” Mr. Adnet said. “They don’t have country homes here. So we didn’t benefit from that drop in the population.”

In the last few days the pressure on the area’s three public hospitals has eased a little, officials said. But the tension inside the tired old apartment blocks is spilling into the streets.

The French police have come down hard, in the accounts of several residents, responding to perceived lapses in the confinement rules with beatings, harassment, humiliation and intimidation.

A coalition of rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, denounced “unacceptable and illegal behavior” by the police in the Paris suburbs in a March 27 statement, saying the health crisis “doesn’t mean a break with the rule of law and doesn’t justify discriminatory checks or unjustified force.”

It noted that these abuses “are common, and rarely punished” in France.



Inside a residential building.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times


A leading police union, in a post on Twitter, called the residents’ accounts “fables,” and blamed them on “little Dzerjinskis” — a reference to a celebrated Bolshevik revolutionary — who are “holed up in the Latin Quarter, or their country homes.”

But the accounts are consistent, widespread and tied to the French government’s confinement rules. Since March 17 authorities have demanded a self-signed interior ministry release form giving one of four preapproved reasons for being outside.

In the Paris suburbs, if the police catch you without the form, or if there is an error on it, you are in trouble, residents said.

“The police just jump in, just like that, with force,” said Fiston Kabunda, who works as a mediator for the city of Clichy-sous-Bois. “There’s no discussion.”

“It’s an abuse of power: ‘We’re going to beat up some black and Arab,’” he added.

“Look, it’s like this: The police come, and they start to beat up on the kids,” he said. “They’re not even checking them. It’s brutality, no questions asked.”

A spokesman for the police prefecture of Paris, which is responsible for Seine-Saint-Denis, said the police would not comment on accusations that were “not specific.”



A commercial area in Clichy-sous-Bois.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Mr. Chikri, the filmmaker, said he had forgotten his release form in his car when a group of police surrounded him last week, threw him to the ground, handcuffed him, kicked him and squeezed his carotid artery. “You can stuff your release form,” the police told him, Mr. Chikri recalled.

“With these guys, it’s all hatred and violence,” he said.

The police in Paris did not respond to a specific inquiry about Mr. Chikri’s accusations.

In a video widely circulating on French social media, a young man in the suburb of Les Ulis can be heard screaming in pain during a police “check” for a missing release form.

“He was savagely beaten with truncheons, fists and kicks until he fell to the ground, but the punishment continued,” said a criminal complaint filed on behalf of Sofiane Naoufel El Allaki, a 21-year-old deliveryman for Amazon, by a Paris human rights lawyer, Samim Bolaky.

“The screams of Mr. El Allaki penetrated the whole neighborhood,” the complaint said.

“This is not about confrontation,” Mr. Bolaky said. “This is not urban violence. The streets are deserted. They didn’t even ask him for his release form. He didn’t resist at all.”

The police in the Essone department, where the incident took place, did not respond to a specific inquiry about Mr. El Allaki’s claims. Mr. El Allaki’s case is one of several involving police violence being investigated by prosecutors.

Mr. Esmili, the sociologist, warned that the way the authorities were enforcing the lockdown was only reinforcing the worst expectations of many in France’s poorest areas.

“Look, the state is completely ignoring how people live in these neighborhoods,” he said. “Its only response to them is an excess of authoritarianism. And the people are beginning to understand, the only response is police force.”


Clichy-sous-Bois is in Seine-Saint-Denis, France’s poorest department.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Constant Meheut contributed reporting.


Adam Nossiter is the Paris bureau chief. Previously, he was a Paris correspondent, the West Africa bureau chief, and led the team that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for coverage of the Ebola epidemic.
A version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2020, Section A, Page 5 o

The Quiet Hand of Conservative Groups in the Anti-Lockdown Protests

Groups in a loose coalition have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals and financed lawsuits, polling and research to combat the stay-at-home orders.


WHITE People protested at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia on Sunday. Organizers see the events as unifying social and fiscal conservatives as well as civil libertarians.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

By Kenneth P. Vogel, Jim Rutenberg and Lisa Lerer NY TIMES April 21, 2020

WASHINGTON — An informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the White House, has been quietly working to nurture protests and apply political and legal pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Groups in the loose coalition have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals, dispatched their lawyers to file lawsuits, and paid for polling and research to undercut the arguments behind restrictions that have closed businesses and limited the movement of most Americans.

Among those fighting the orders are populist groups that played pivotal roles in the beginning of Tea Party protests starting more than a decade ago, such as FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots. Also involved are a law firm led partly by former Trump White House officials, a network of state-based conservative policy groups, and an ad hoc coalition of conservative leaders known as Save Our Country that has advised the White House on strategies for a tiered reopening of the economy.

The initiatives, powered by a mix of grass-roots activism and well-funded groups with ties to the White House, are emerging as President Trump is pushing governors to open their states, with one eye on his own re-election prospects.

The effort picked up some influential support on Tuesday, when Attorney General William P. Barr expressed concerns about state-level restrictions potentially infringing on constitutional rights, and suggested that, if that occurred, the Justice Department might weigh in, including by supporting legal challenges by others. Separately, in Wisconsin, Republicans in the state legislature sued to block the Democratic governor’s order extending stay-at-home rules through May 26.

Those helping orchestrate the fight against restrictions predict the effort could energize the right in the same way the Tea Party movement did in 2009 and 2010. But the cause has yet to demonstrate that kind of traction. Polls show a majority of Americans are more concerned about reopening the country too quickly than they are about the damage to the economy. And coronavirus protests have drawn smaller crowds ranging from a few dozen to several thousand at a rally in Michigan last week.

Conditions are hardly ideal for a protest movement related to the virus. In addition to the health risks, demonstrators potentially face legal exposure for violating the very measures they are protesting. Plus, some key Republican leaders have embraced the types of restrictions being targeted, while powerful grass-roots mobilizing groups, including those spearheaded by the billionaire activist Charles Koch, have so far not embraced the protests.


Still, the fight has emerged as a galvanizing cause for a vocal element of Mr. Trump’s base and others on the political right. Organizers see it as unifying social conservatives, who view the orders as targeting religious groups; fiscal conservatives who chafe at the economic devastation wrought by the restrictions on businesses; and civil libertarians who contend that the restrictions infringe on constitutional rights.

“Groups are united in purpose on this,” said Noah Wall, advocacy director for FreedomWorks, which in 2009 organized a Tea Party protest that drew tens of thousands of people or more to Washington. He described the current efforts as appealing to a “much broader” group. “This is about people who want to get back to work and leave their homes,” he said.

More than 10 protests are planned for this week, Mr. Wall said, adding that elected officials “are going to see a lot of angry activists, and I think that could change minds.”

Trump merchandise was for sale at a protest in Harrisburg, Pa., 

on Monday.Credit...Rachel Wisniewski/Reuters

The protests mostly appear to have been organized by local residents, and are framed primarily as pushback against what they view as government overreach. But some rallies have prominently featured iconography boosting Mr. Trump and Republicans and denouncing Democrats, as well the occasional Confederate flag and signs promoting conspiracy theories.

As was the case with the Tea Party movement, established national groups that generally align with the Republican Party have sought to fuel the protests, harnessing their energy in a manner that can increase their profiles and build their membership base and donor rolls.

Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about protests across the country.

Most of FreedomWorks’s 40 employees are working remotely on the effort, helping to connect local protesters and set up websites for them. The group is considering paid digital advertising to further increase turnout, and has been conducting weekly tracking polls in swing suburban districts that it says show support for reopening parts of country. It is sharing the data with advisers on the president’s economic task force and other conservative allies on Capitol Hill.

While social media has been a key platform for organizing the protests, those efforts have drawn scrutiny. Facebook removed some posts devoted to the protests on Monday for encouraging violations of social distancing laws. And similarities in online organizing efforts behind different protests have sparked accusations that they are not, in fact, organic grass-roots campaigns, but “astroturfing” efforts that are manipulated by Washington conservatives to appear locally driven.

Organizers of recent protests in Oklahoma acknowledged that FreedomWorks helped arrange the events and said they hoped the “rolling protests,” which were intended to keep people in their vehicles, helped Mr. Trump politically. But they stressed that the events reflected real concerns from real people about the economic damage inflicted by mitigation measures.

Carol Hefner, an Oklahoma co-chair of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign who helped organize a protest last week in Oklahoma City, cited the state’s flat terrain as a factor in any decision to ease restrictions. “We have a lot of wind and the wind has pretty much helped us here,” she said. “We are in a much better position than many of the other states to go ahead and open back up.”

Ronda Vuillemont-Smith, an Oklahoma HVAC contractor who helped with the capital rally and another one on Monday in Tulsa, said she encouraged protesters to remain in their vehicles. But Ms. Vuillemont-Smith, who serves on FreedomWorks’s activist advisory council, added, “I see absolutely no risks whatsoever” for open-air protests. “We are adults. We assume personal responsibility for the decisions that we make,” she said.

The Oklahoma organizers and Mr. Wall, as well as the White House and the Trump campaign, said there was no coordination between the protests and Mr. Trump’s team.

Ronda Vuillemont-Smith, who helped with two protests in 

Oklahoma, said she encouraged protesters to remain in

 their vehicles.

Credit...Matt Barnard/Tulsa World, via Associated Press

But the protests coincide with messages from Mr. Trump, and have been helped and organized by his supporters, some of whom have begun new ventures to advance the cause.

One of them is Reopen America Political Action Committee, which aims to bring small business owners to Washington to lobby lawmakers to reopen, starting with a 24-hour rally at the White House on May 1 — the target Mr. Trump set for reopening.

The group, which was created this month, has yet to report any financial activity. But its founder, Suzzanne Monk, who is active on Twitter with the handle @Trumpertarian, called the idea for the rally “pushback against these governors who want to stay shut down far beyond their economic capacity to do so.”

Support for the protests features more direct ties to the White House than simply support for Mr. Trump. The administration recently formed an advisory group for reopening the economy that included Stephen Moore, the conservative economics commentator. Mr. Moore had been coordinating with FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Patriots and the American Legislative Exchange Council in a coalition called “Save Our Country,” which was formed to push for a quicker easing of restrictions.

At the same time, Mr. Moore was communicating with a group of local activists in Wisconsin involved in organizing a protest at the State Capitol set for Friday. On a conservative YouTube program that went online the day Mr. Trump named him to the task force, Mr. Moore said he had “one big donor in Wisconsin” who had pledged financial support for the protesters, telling him, “‘Steve, I promise, I will pay the bail and legal fees of anyone who gets arrested.’”

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Moore declined to identify the donor, but said, “I do think you’re going to see these start to erupt.”

He said he would probably turn down an invitation to speak at the protest in Wisconsin, because “it’s important that no one be under the impression that it’s sponsored or directed by national groups in Washington.”

A legal offensive against the restrictions is also being waged by groups and individuals supportive of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Barr’s comments on Tuesday came a few days after a letter sent by groups including FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots and the anti-abortion-rights group Susan B. Anthony List urging the Justice Department to consider intervening to block restrictions that the officials said were unconstitutional infringements on civil liberties.

Lawyers aligned with socially conservative causes have filed their own lawsuits against governors.

Many are focused on allowing smaller churches to keep holding services, but the objections cover a range of other activities. In Michigan, a lawsuit is challenging provisions of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order banning travel to vacation homes and gatherings of non-household members.


People protested from their cars outside California’s Capitol building in Sacramento on Monday.Credit...Josh Edelson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A law firm that advises the Trump Organization, Michael Best & Friedrich, is representing members of a new protest group in North Carolina called ReOpenNC. Michael Best’s ranks include the former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus, the former deputy White House counsel Stefan C. Passantino and the current senior counsel at the Trump campaign, Justin Clark.

ReOpenNC had told its members that a “generous donor” had arranged to pay for buses to bring protesters to Raleigh from around the state. But, in a sign of how loath the groups are to be viewed as “astroturf” creations, the group said it had scrapped the plan when a news station, WRAL, asked about it. (Afterward, a former defense contractor and perennial North Carolina political candidate, Tim D’Annunzio, stepped forward on Facebook to say he was the donor and was still hoping to run the buses.)

On Friday, Anthony J. Biller, a Raleigh-based lawyer with Michael Best, wrote to Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, on behalf of a ReOpenNC’s co-founder, Kristen Elizabeth, and a member who was arrested at a protest last week, seeking dismissal of the charges. In an interview, Mr. Biller said he hoped the state would agree to allow ReOpenNC to demonstrate safely without fear of arrest, adding, “What is sufficient safety to buy toilet paper at Costco should be sufficient safety to practice one’s fundamental rights, particularly about these issues.”

He said that he was working pro bono but that there was “no coordination with the Trump administration, as some bozos have implied.”

One force in conservative politics that has kept its distance from the stay-at-home protests is the network of groups backed by the billionaire Mr. Koch. The largest Koch-backed group, Americans for Prosperity, which played a leading role in facilitating the Tea Party movement, has remained on the sidelines of the coronavirus protests.

GoDaddy records show that a public relations firm tied to the Koch network, In Pursuit Of LLC, registered the domain name “reopenmississippi.com.” An official said the group had planned to use the site to highlight a nuanced approach being developed by the network to reopen the economy while balancing health concerns.

“The question is — what is the best way to get people back to work?” said Emily Seidel, the chief executive of Americans for Prosperity. “We don’t see protests as the best way to do that,” she said, adding that “the choice between full shutdown and immediately opening everything is a false choice.”

More on Protests Against Coronavirus Restrictions

Gretchen Whitmer Isn’t Backing DownApril 18, 2020

Trump Encourages Protest Against Governors Who Have Imposed Virus RestrictionsApril 17, 2020

What’s Driving the Right-Wing Protesters Fighting the Quarantine?April 17, 2020

Trump Says States Can Start Reopening While Acknowledging the Decision Is TheirsApril 16, 2020


Ken Vogel covers the confluence of money, politics and influence from Washington. He is also the author of “Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp — on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics.” @kenvogel • Facebook


Jim Rutenberg is a writer-at-large for The Times and the Sunday magazine. He was previously the media columnist, a White House reporter and a national political correspondent. He was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2018 for exposing sexual harassment and abuse. @jimrutenberg


Lisa Lerer is a reporter based in Washington, covering campaigns, elections and political power. Before joining The Times she reported on national politics and the 2016 presidential race for The Associated Press. @llerer

Stirrings of unrest around the world could portend turmoil as economies collapse

BEIRUT —As more than half the people in the world hunker down under some form of enforced confinement, stirrings of political and social unrest are pointing to a new, potentially turbulent phase in the global effort to stem the coronavirus pandemic.

Already, protests spurred by the collapse of economic activity have erupted in scattered locations around the world. Tens of thousands of migrant laborers stranded without work or a way home staged demonstrations last week in the Indian city of Mumbai, crowding together in defiance of social distancing rules.

In locked-down Lebanon, which was confronting financial collapse even before the coronavirus paralyzed the economy, angry people have swarmed onto the streets in Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli on at least three occasions. In Iraq, where a six-month-old protest movement demanding political reforms fizzled in the face of the country’s coronavirus curfew, there have been spontaneous but brief outbursts of rage in the city of Nasiriyah and the impoverished Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City.

For now, fears of infection are keeping most people indoors. Strict controls imposed by governments and security forces deter the kind of organized protests that were sweeping the world from Hong Kong to Chile before the pandemic struck. The health crisis has come as a boon for some authoritarian leaders, empowering them to introduce the kind of controls on their citizens they could only have dreamed of before the spread of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

In Kenya as of Saturday, as many people had died in police crackdowns on citizens defying curfew as of covid-19, according to human rights groups and government statistics.

But the restrictions aimed at halting the coronavirus are also causing new poverty, new misery and new rumblings of discontent among the world’s working poor, for whom hunger can appear to be a more immediate threat than being infected.

“I’d rather die of the virus than die of hunger, or see my son or my wife go hungry, but I can’t provide them with food,” said Hussein Fakher, 20, who used to earn a little less than $20 a day driving a tuk-tuk in a now-shuttered market in Baghdad. He got into a fight with police who tried to fine him for violating Iraq’s curfew when he went out to seek work. “What should I do?” he asked. “Beg? Steal?”

The United Nations and the International Monetary Fund are among those that have warned in recent days that the pandemic could unleash what U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called “a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security.”

With the IMF forecasting the worst global recession in nearly a century, there is a risk of “an increase in social unrest and violence that would greatly undermine our ability to fight the disease,” Guterres said.

Wealthier countries where workers are losing jobs by the millions are not immune. Conservative groups in the United States are organizing protests against lockdowns in several states, including Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. In Germany, courts have ruled in favor of groups seeking to stage demonstrations in several towns and cities against coronavirus restrictions.

In Italy’s relatively impoverished south, the lifting of restrictions earlier this month led to a crime wave that obliged police to guard supermarkets targeted for robberies by hungry citizens.

But it is the world’s poorer nations, which can’t afford subsidies for those who lose jobs, that are most vulnerable to heightened unrest, said Cátia Batista, professor of economics at Lisbon’s Nova University. More than 2 billion people worldwide depend on daywork to survive, according to the International Labor Organization, and for many of them, not working often means not eating.

A recent study by a U.N. think tank, the World Institute for Development Economics Research, warned that 500,000 people could slide into absolute poverty as a result of the pandemic’s restrictions, reversing three decades of progress in the war on poverty.


“If people don’t work, they don’t get paid, and there is a risk of hunger,” said Batista. “The natural response is unrest.”


The emerging economies of Africa will also be badly hit, she said. Relatively few coronavirus cases have been reported there so far, largely because of the lack of testing, but many Africans will be questioning why they are unable to work when there appears to be no immediate threat to their lives.

The Middle East, already ravaged by war, could be a key flash point, analysts say. The Arab Spring revolts of nearly a decade ago are still playing out in the ongoing conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Libya. A second wave of protests in Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria over the past year was tamped down by the restrictions aimed at halting the pandemic, but that quiet may not last.

Hardship has already triggered several individual acts of desperation. A video circulating on social media in Lebanon showed a man setting fire to his taxi after police ticketed him for breaking the lockdown. Another showed the flaming figure of a Syrian refugee running in a field, after he set himself on fire because he was unable to feed his family.

Another man died after setting himself on fire in Tunisia, where the spark of the Arab Spring was lit nearly a decade ago by the self-immolation of a fruit seller told by a police officer that he was not allowed to sell on the streets.

The next round of unrest in the Arab world could be uglier and more violent than the organized protest movements that have sought political reforms, said Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

“I fear social explosions,” he said. “This will not be about democracy. This will be about abject poverty. This is where the danger lies. This will be about starvation.”






a group of people walking down the street: Several hundred Lebanese people protest in the northern city of Tripoli on April 17, despite the country’s coronavirus lockdown.3 SLIDES © Ibrahim Chalhoub/AFP/Getty Images

Several hundred Lebanese people protest in the northern city of Tripoli on April 17, despite the country’s coronavirus lockdown.

Much will depend on how long the coronavirus pandemic lasts, said Ali Fathollah-Nejad of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. Fathollah-Nejad studies Iran, where anti-government protests that erupted last fall have subsided in the face of the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in the Middle East. A report by Iran’s parliament publicized last week suggested Iran could have 10 times the official number of coronavirus cases, currently put at 79,494, and twice as many deaths as the 4,958 officially reported.

The dangers are deterring people from taking to the streets, and the authorities can point to the health risk posed by large gatherings to discourage people from participating. “But the root causes of the protests — the economy, poverty and corruption — are not going away,” Fathollah-Nejad said.

A second or third wave of coronavirus infections could rattle even authoritarian states such as China, where the ruling Communist Party has maintained a tight grip on its citizens for the past three decades by delivering soaring prosperity in return for political loyalty.

The announcement by the Chinese authorities on Friday that the Chinese economy had shrunk by 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, marking the country’s first recession since capitalist-style reforms unleashed explosive growth in the 1990s, was a reminder that the social contract could be at risk, said Yasheng Huang, a professor with the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dozens of people in the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus first emerged late last year, took to the streets to demand rent forgiveness after lockdown restrictions were lifted earlier this month. Violent clashes erupted between police and protesters on the border between the provinces of Hubei and Jiangxi after lockdown restrictions were lifted in Hubei and police in the neighboring province refused to allow Hubei residents to enter.

Trust in the government is key for maintaining the loyalty of citizens who are forced to endure severe setbacks to their livelihoods for the sake of quelling the spread of infections for the populace at large, Huang said. That trust was eroded by clear evidence that the government sought to hide the initial severity of the coronavirus’s spread, perhaps prolonging and deepening the economic costs to the country as a whole.

The struggle of the United States in managing its coronavirus outbreak, however, has tempered much of the frustration Chinese were feeling with their own government, he said. “The fact that the United States is failing at such a colossal level is actually helping the Chinese narrative, that they have the best system in the world to deal with this,” Huang said.

liz.sly@washpost.com

Mustafa Salim in Baghdad contributed to this report.

America has descended into coronavirus chaos because there is madness and incoherence at the top

 April 21, 2020 By Michael Winship, Common Dreams- Commentary

ALEX JONES FAN CLUB

As we all know, Donald J. Trump sees the entire world as one big television show—about him. Everything is weighed against the success of his former NBC reality show “The Apprentice,” and frankly, as far as Trump’s concerned, the world just isn’t measuring up.

Nearly 2.5 million afflicted globally, and 170,000 deaths? Nearly 750,000 sick in the United States and more than 42,000 dead? Faulty lines of supply and insufficient testing? No, no, no. Ignore or deny them. This is not the scenario—or the numbers—Trump had in mind.

Avoiding the tragic truth, shifting blame and lying, he instead brags about the ratings for the daily press briefings of his coronavirus task force. He refuses to believe or understand that the Nielsen points are not so much for him as they are because viewers are desperate for information about the pandemic. They want to know what to do and when it will end and they want to hear from the top medical experts who too often are ridiculously forced to stand silently on the dais behind Trump as he bloviates for most of the sessions, each usually more than two hours long.
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During this crisis, those doctors could be doing better and more helpful things with their time and so could we. I’ve actually stopped watching in real time these campaign rallies posing as news conferences, and you should, too. There came a point a few weeks ago when they made me so outraged and angry, my head and stomach ached. Healthier to see excerpts later on if you must and to read the Twitter recaps from CNN’s Daniel Dale than to have my head come to a point even sharper and more painful than it already is.

Dale believes Trump sees these daily exercises “as a vehicle for self-congratulation, self-defense, and deception.” And so they are, as Trump mangles the facts, wallows in self-praise, harangues the press and the nation’s governors, mocks those he sees as enemies and treats the White House like a sandbox where he’s Bully #1. And all the while, people die.

Remember that back in late 2017, The New York Times reported, “Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals. People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted, marinating in the no-holds-barred wars of cable news and eager to fire back.”

For Trump, as the Times headlined in a separate 2017 story, “the reality show has never ended.” And so, with nauseating regularity, Trump makes appointments to government jobs based not on expertise but on how he thinks someone will appear on TV. And he makes major decisions that ignore policy recommendations from experts but embrace the latest dumbass thing he heard on Fox News.

(Note, as John Oliver did Sunday on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” how both “the cure is worse than the disease” trope that has fueled the rush to reopen America despite the pandemic, and Trump’s embrace of the lupus medication hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure came fresh off the Fox airwaves.)

“This has exceeded what would have been allowed on ‘The Apprentice,’” Laurie Ouellette, a University of Minnesota communications professor, told the Times. “It’s almost a magnification. It’s like reality TV unleashed. Yes, he was good at it, but I always felt like he had to be reined in in order not to mess up the formula. Here, he doesn’t have that same sort of constraint.”

She said that two-and-a-half years ago and it’s only gotten worse. Much worse.

An aside: In late 2018, in The New Yorker, Patrick Radden Keefe wrote that while “The Apprentice” was still in production, “Sometimes a candidate distinguished herself during the contest only to get fired, on a whim, by Trump.” Video editors “were often obliged to ‘reverse engineer’ the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage to emphasize the few moments when the exemplary candidate might have slipped up, in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense.”

One of those editors, Jonathon Braun, said, “I find it strangely validating to hear that they’re doing the same thing in the White House.”

In fact, the Washington Post reported on April 11 that in Trump’s pushing America back into business as usual, “One senior administration official worried that some in the White House are trying to reverse-engineer their desired outcome. ‘They already know what they want to do and they’re looking for ways to do it,’ this person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid insights. ‘They think it’s time to reopen because some thought it was never time to close, and they’ve made that up in their minds.’”


You don’t think some of those same geniuses aren’t involved in stirring up the current spate of angry demonstrations in state capitals around the country? The ones demanding a reopening of bars and beauty salons, science and health be damned? Sure, there is genuine rage and distress—the economy’s shot and 22 million people are out of work—but the numbers of these defiant protesters are small compared to the majority of Americans—Republicans and Democrats—who believe we must not rush back to our lives as they were before. More will sicken and die.

Much of the demonstrators’ ire has been roiled and ginned up by the extreme right, including militias, anti-vaxxers, Proud Boys, Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists, gun groups, GOP politicians and assorted Astroturf efforts masquerading as grassroots. That includes three brothers—Ben, Christopher and Aaron Dorr—described as pro-gun “provocateurs” who are behind a number of bogus Facebook groups encouraging the protests. Together these groups have more than 200,000 members.




Reality TV isn’t real and a large amount of these protests aren’t real either. The guilty are leading the gullible. On April 17, The Washington Post noted, “[T]he right-wing media has amplified the protests and conservative groups have formed plans to jointly press for a reopening of the economy. The groups include several veterans of the tea party era, activism that was powered by a network of right-wing and corporate financiers interested in reducing taxes and regulations on industry.” These include at least one group linked to the family of Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, funds tied to the Koch Brothers and the Castle Rock foundation, initially funded by the Coors brewing family.

Add to this toxic mix overmagnification by a media eager for pictures, the disinformation of Russian troll farms plus the president’s own tweets and public remarks. He told his addled base to “liberate” Democratic states and egged on the demonstrators – even though their protests violate the very guidelines ordered by the White House under Trump’s name—social distancing, staying at home, avoiding gatherings of more than ten people, and on and on.

These ill-considered protests could trigger a second wave of illness and death that would make the economy even worse than it already is. ”Unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen,” Anthony Fauci said on “Good Morning America.” “So what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re going to set yourself back.” And by the way, demonstrators, although the symptoms vary, if you know anyone who has been slammed by it, the virus is devastating, painful and debilitating beyond expectation. It could happen to you.

COVID-19 is Trump’s 9/11. And his Katrina. And his Charlottesville. Again. Because he has repeated the same thoughtless recklessness he displayed in 2017 in the wake of those racially charged and deadly demonstrations in Virginia. The “bigotry and violence,” he said, “was on many sides” as neo-Nazis attacked. There were “very fine people on both sides,” he declared as bigots marched and shouted, “Jews will not replace us!”

This year’s version—as Trump watches the marchers recreate TV’s “The Walking Dead” —“I’ve seen the people, I’ve seen the interviews of people. These are great people,” he said. “Look they want to get ― they call cabin fever, you’ve heard the term ― they’ve got cabin fever… “I think these people are ― I’ve never seen so many American flags.” But there were Nazi and Confederate flags, too, although Trump says he didn’t see them, and the tea party’s “Don’t Tread on Me.” And guns, although so far, the rallies have remained peaceful.

We’ve all been watching a lot of television during these housebound days—more than usual even for Teevee Trump, who is said to seethe as he views those like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo he believes unfairly are getting more favorable coverage than he.

One thing I just watched for the umpteenth time: The classic “Network,” written by the amazing Paddy Chayefsky. First released in 1976, it was on Turner Classic Movies the other night and remains stunningly prescient about what television would become.

Toward the end, I was struck by a speech William Holden’s character makes to Faye Dunaway, who plays a conniving and heartless TV executive. Holden – and Chayefsky – could have been talking about you-know-who.

“You are television incarnate,” Holden says, “… indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. The daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split-seconds and instant replays. You are madness… virulent madness, and everything you touch dies with you.”

We have descended into chaos because there is madness and incoherence at the top. This president makes an endless series of contradictory declarations because if you believe in nothing, you’ll say anything. If there is such a thing as a victory in this pandemic, it will have been achieved by the kindness and intelligence of most of our people, not the so-called commander-in-chief.

All that he touches, dies. Tune in tomorrow, as thanks to him, America continues its fade to black. Please don’t let him succeed.

Battelle awarded $415M to decontaminate N95 masks for reuse


Medical and fire department personnel distribute self-testing coronavirus kits to residents who made appointments near Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on March 28. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

April 14 (UPI) -- The Pentagon has awarded $415 million to Battelle Memorial Institute to decontaminate used N95 respirator systems amid the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the DoD, which awarded the contract on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, the deal should allow Battelle to decontaminate up to 80,000 used N95 respirators per system per day -- allowing masks to be reused up to 20 times.

"I remain extremely proud of the selfless efforts of Department of Defense personnel who continue to do everything they can to help provide medical masks, test kits, medicine and meals to support America's military, medical, emergency services and law enforcement professionals who are on the front lines and need them most," Under Secretary of Defense Ellen Lord said in a statement. "This procurement includes a service contract to cover operations and maintenance."

Battelle -- which develops products across a range of disciplines including robotics and oil drilling and has already set up decontamination sites in several American cities -- announced last week that it would be providing decontamination services to healthcare providers at no charge.

RELATED DoD to spend $133M for 39M N95 masks under Defense Production Act order


According to its website, Battelle uses concentrated, vapor phase hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate masks, and is investigating using the same process to sterilize other medical equipment.

According to the DoD, six systems already deployed should provide health care systems the ability to sterilize 3.4 million masks each week -- reducing the demand for new masks by the same number.

By early May, a total of 60 systems should be available for distribution by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and HSS, allowing 4.8 million masks to be sterilized per day or 34 million per week.

RELATED Face masks intended to prevent COVID-19 spread, experts say

Over the weekend, the Pentagon announced a $133 million order meant to produce over 39 million N95 masks in 90 days.

The department has also pledged 10 million masks from its stockpiles to the Department of Health and Human Services.