Maternity ward massacre shakes Afghanistan and its peace process

Orooj Hakimi, Abdul Qadir Sediqi, Hamid Shalizi MAY 13,2020
Newborn children who lost their mothers during the yesterday's 

attack lie on a bed at a hospital, in Kabul, Afghanistan May 13, 2020. 

REUTERS/Omar Sobhani 

KABUL (Reuters) - After struggling to get pregnant for years, Zainab, 27, gave birth to a baby boy on Tuesday morning at a small hospital in the southwestern corner of Kabul. She was overjoyed and named the boy Omid, meaning ‘hope’ in Dari.
At around 10 a.m. (0530 GMT), an hour before she and her family were set to return home to neighbouring Bamiyan province a three-hour drive away, three gunmen disguised as police burst into the hospital’s maternity ward and started shooting.

Zainab, who rushed back from the washroom after hearing the commotion, collapsed as she took in the scene. She spent seven years trying to have a child, waited nine months to meet her son and had just four hours with him before he was killed.

“I brought my daughter-in-law to Kabul so that she would not lose her baby,” said Zahra Muhammadi, Zainab’s mother-in-law, unable to contain her grief. “Today we’ll take his dead body to Bamiyan.”

No group has claimed responsibility for the massacre of 24 people, including 16 women and two newborns. At least six babies lost their mothers in an attack that has shaken even the war-torn nation numbed by years of militant violence.

“In my more than 20-year career I have not witnessed such a horrific, brutal act,” said Dr. Hassan Kamel, director of Ataturk Children’s Hospital in Kabul.

The raid, on the same day that at least 32 people died in a suicide bomb attack on a funeral in the eastern province of Nangarhar, threatens to derail progress towards U.S.-brokered peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.


President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attacks and ordered the military to switch to offensive mode rather than the defensive tactics it adopted while U.S. troops withdraw from the country after a long, inconclusive war.

The Taliban, the main militant group, has denied involvement in both attacks, although trust among officials and the broader public has worn thin. An offshoot of Islamic State is also among the suspects: it admitted it was behind the Nangarhar bloodshed.

WE NAMED HIM ‘HOPE’

Muhammadi, the mother-in-law, said she saw one of the attackers firing at pregnant women and new mothers, even as they cowered under hospital beds.

“We gave him the name Omid. Hope for a better future, hope for a better Afghanistan and hope for a mother who has been struggling to have a child for years,” she told Reuters by telephone in Kabul.

The gunmen then turned to target the cradle where Omid had been asleep. As the sound of bullets reverberated through the ward, Muhammadi said she fainted in fear.

“When I opened my eyes, I saw that my grandson’s body had fallen to the ground, covered in blood,” she recalled, as she wailed with grief.

The Kabul attack began in the morning when gunmen entered the Dasht-e-Barchi hospital, throwing grenades and shooting, government officials said. Security forces had killed the attackers by the afternoon.

The 100-bed, government-run hospital hosted a maternity clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Just hours before the attack, MSF had tweeted a photo of a newborn in his mother’s arms at the clinic after being delivered safely by emergency caesarean section.

On Wednesday, the group condemned the attack, calling it “sickening” and “cowardly”.

“Whilst fighting was ongoing, one woman gave birth to her baby and both are doing well,” MSF said in a statement. “More than ever, MSF stands in solidarity with the Afghan people.”

Deborah Lyons, head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, condemned the hospital assault in a tweet. “Who attacks newborn babies and new mothers? Who does this? The most innocent of innocents, a baby! Why?”

‘LITTLE POINT’ IN PEACE TALKS

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday condemned the two attacks, noted the Taliban had denied responsibility and said the lack of a peace deal left the country vulnerable to such violence.

Pompeo also described the stalled peace effort, which planned for intra-Afghan peace talks to begin on March 10, as “a critical opportunity for Afghans to ... build a united front against the menace of terrorism.” Talks have yet to start.

The Pentagon declined to comment on Ghani’s stated intent to restart offensive operations, saying only that the U.S. military continued to reserve the right to defend Afghan security forces if they are attacked by the Taliban.

Relations between the government in Kabul and the Taliban movement, which was ousted from power in 2001 by a U.S.-backed assault in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, are already frayed, and Tuesday’s events will make any rapprochement harder.

“There seems little point in continuing to engage Taliban in ‘peace talks’,” Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib said in a tweet.

For Afghanistan, the hospital attack also risks further disrupting a healthcare network that is creaking amid the challenges of dealing with the new coronavirus pandemic.

More than a third of the coronavirus cases in Kabul have been among doctors and healthcare staff, Reuters reported in early May.

The high rate of infection among healthcare workers has already sparked alarm among medics and some doctors have closed their clinics. At least 5,226 people have been infected by the coronavirus and 132 have died, according to the health ministry.

KABUL MEDICAL COMMUNITY SHAKEN

The attack has shaken the small medical community in Kabul to its core.

Nurses and doctors who survived the hospital attack said they were in shock, and resuming duties would be an emotional challenge on top of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

“Last night I could not sleep, as scary scenes of the attack kept crossing my mind,” said Masouma Qurbanzada, a midwife who saw the killings.

“Since yesterday my family has been telling me to stop working in the hospital, nothing is worth my life. But I told them ‘No, I will not stop working as a health worker’.

Officials at MSF said they were working to try to normalise operations and had received support from other hospitals to treat dozens of infants and adults wounded in the attack.

Some medics at the hospital, however, said it would be hard to move on.

“The gunmen blew up a water tank and then started shooting women. I saw a pool of water and blood from the small gap of a safe room where some of us managed to lock ourselves,” said a nurse with MSF, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I saw patients being killed even as they begged and pleaded for their life in the holy month of Ramadan. It is very hard for me to work now.”

Additional reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad, Ahmad Sultan in Jalalabad; Writing by Rupam Jain; Editing by Euan Rocha and Mike Collett-White

Outbreak at German slaughterhouse reveals migrants’ plight

- Iulian, Romanian worker who stands behind the fence that was set up at the entrance of a housing of Romania slaughterhouse workers in Rosendahl, Germany, Tuesday, May 12, 2020. Hundreds of the workers were tested positive on the coronavirus and were put on quarantine. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

COESFELD, Germany (AP) — Big white trailers adorned with pictures of juicy roasts and the wholesome slogan “Straight from the farmer” sit idle in northwestern Germany, their usual pork hauls disrupted by a coronavirus outbreak at one of the country’s biggest meat processing companies that has put the industry in the spotlight.

At least 260 workers at Westfleisch’s slaughterhouse in the city of of Coesfeld have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days, causing alarm at a time when the country is trying to slowly relax the restrictions that were imposed to curb the pandemic.

As authorities scrambled to contain the growing outbreak over the weekend, it emerged that many of those infected were Eastern European migrants working for subcontractors who also provide them with accommodation and shuttle buses to work.

“If one person is infected then basically everybody else that sits on the bus or lives in the shared houses is infected,” said Anne-Monika Spallek, a Green Party representative in Coesfeld who has campaigned against the meat industry’s practice of outsourcing much of its back-breaking work to migrants working under precarious conditions.

Among them is Iulian, a trained carpenter from Bacau in Romania’s poor northeast who previously worked for a German courier company . He recently got a job at Westfleisch that promised several times what he would make back home.

The 48-year-old, who declined to give his last name fearing repercussions, said he still must pay his employer rent for a room he shares with a colleague, but he doesn’t know if he will receive pay while he isn’t working.

Standing behind a metal fence erected to stop workers from leaving the house they share about a 15-minute drive from Coesfeld, Iulian waited Tuesday for results from a coronavirus test. Residents inside also awaited results from tests taken four days earlier.

“Like a jail,” he said of his current situation. “Like a lion in a cage.”

Authorities had stopped the men from going to a nearby supermarket but subsequently groceries had been delivered.

“Water, food, salami, it’s OK for now,” Iulian said. As for medical care, so far there is none. “If we do have problem, we call,” he said hopefully.

Westfleisch declined a request for an interview. But in a statement, the company said it was “deeply affected” by what had happened in recent days.


“We are fully aware of our responsibility,” Westfleisch said, adding it now requires workers at facilities that remain open to wear face masks on site, have their temperature taken at the gate and work in clearly separated small groups. The company said it is also trying to impress upon workers “the importance of hygiene and behavior measures in the company and in private settings.”

The outbreak has caused consternation in Berlin, where German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged Wednesday the “alarming news” about the situation at Westfleisch.

“There are significant shortcomings in accommodation – we have all seen that now – and it has to be seen who is held responsible,” Merkel said. “I can tell you in any case that I am not satisfied with what we have seen there.”

The outbreak began shortly before Germany’s federal and state governments agreed to trigger an “emergency brake” on relaxing restrictions when the number of new infections passed 50 per 100,000 inhabitants in a week — a threshold that Coesfeld has far surpassed.

Authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia, where Coesfeld is located, have ordered all 20,000 workers in the meat industry tested for the new coronavirus and delayed the reopening of bars and restaurants in the region by another week.

Some enraged restaurant owners have threatened to sue for lost earnings, though it is unclear who they would take to court: Westfleisch, the subcontractors, the workers or regional officials now being accused of acting too slowly.

Olaf Klenke of the NGG union, which represents workers in the food industry, says the outbreak could be the right moment to clamp down on outsourcing in the meat industry.

“The corona crisis simply reveals the situation that exists in this area,” he said. “We often talk about animal welfare in the industry,“but what happens to the people who work there is at least as important.”

While the outbreak in Coesfeld has drawn the most attention, there have been smaller clusters of cases at slaughterhouses across the country in recent days. And though there’s been no death yet among abattoir workers, a 57-year-old farm worker from Romania died of COVID-19 in Germany last month.

In the United States, which has also seen a spate of infections at meatpacking plants, experts have cited extremely tight working conditions that make factories natural high risk locations for contagion.

Klenk blamed a lack of public interest in the issue and price pressure from large supermarket chains for promoting cut-throat competition in the slaughterhouse business. At a market stall in Coesfeld’s town square, a pork cutlet from a pig butchered by hand costs 15.50 euros per kilogram ($7.63 a pound), compared with 3.29 euros per kilogram ($2.32 a pound) for an industrially processed portion of the same cut at a nearby supermarket.

Amid mounting pressure to act, Labor Minister Hubertus Heil pledged late Wednesday to “clean up” conditions in German slaughterhouses.

“We as a society mustn’t continue to look on as people from Central and Eastern Europe are exploited,” he said, adding that the subcontractors were the “root of the problem.”

Spallek, the Green party politician, said the outbreak has prompted sympathy for the migrants among many Germans who had previously taken little notice of the problem.

“Everybody wants these miserable conditions to finally end,” she said. “On the other hand the people are really mad at Westfleisch and at the county official for not closing (the factory) sooner.”

Spallek voiced fears that a number of workers might develop serious illnesses in the coming days.

“I’m convinced that we’ve yet to see the consequences, including in the hospitals,” she said.

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Kerstin Sopke in Berlin, and Vadim Ghirda in Bucharest, Romania, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

THIRD WORLD USA
Faxes and email: Old technology slows COVID-19 response

 In this Feb. 13, 2020, file photo, Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaks to the media in regards to the novel coronavirus, while standing in front of a map marked with areas having reported cases, inside the Emergency Operations Center in Atlanta. In the United States, the nation with the most pandemic deaths, the reporting of vital coronavirus case and testing data is not keeping pace with its speedy spread. Public health officials nationwide lean too heavily on faxes, email and spreadsheets, sluggish and inefficient 20th-century tools. (AP Photo/John Amis, File)By FRANK BAJAK AP MAY 13, 2020

On April 1, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emailed Nevada public health counterparts for lab reports on two travelers who had tested positive for the coronavirus. She asked Nevada to send those records via a secure network or a “password protected encrypted file” to protect the travelers’ privacy.

The Nevada response: Can we just fax them over?

You’d hardly know the U.S. invented the internet by the way its public health workers are collecting vital pandemic data. While health-care industry record-keeping is now mostly electronic, cash-strapped state and local health departments still rely heavily on faxes, email and spreadsheets to gather infectious disease data and share it with federal authorities.

This data dysfunction is hamstringing the nation’s coronavirus response by, among other things, slowing the tracing of people potentially exposed to the virus. In response, the Trump administration set up a parallel reporting system run by the Silicon Valley data-wrangling firm Palantir. Duplicating many data requests, it has placed new burdens on front-line workers at hospitals, labs and other health care centers who already report case and testing data to public health agencies.

There’s little evidence so far that the Palantir system has measurably improved federal or state response to COVID-19.

Emails exchanged between the CDC and Nevada officials in March and early April, obtained by The Associated Press in a public records request, illustrate the scope of the problem. It sometimes takes multiple days to track down such basic information as patient addresses and phone numbers. One disease detective consults Google to fill a gap. Data vital to case investigations such as patient travel and medical histories is missing.

None of this is news to the CDC or other health experts. “We are woefully behind,” the CDC’s No. 2 official, Anne Schuchat, wrote in a September report on public health data technology. She likened the state of U.S. public health technology to “puttering along the data superhighway in our Model T Ford.”

HOLES IN THE DATA

This information technology gap might seem puzzling given that most hospitals and other health care providers have long since ditched paper files for electronic health records. Inside the industry, they’re easily shared, often automatically.


But data collection for infectious-disease reports is another story, particularly in comparison to other industrialized nations. Countries like Germany, Britain and South Korea — and U.S. states such as New York and Colorado — are able to populate online dashboards far richer in real-time data and analysis. In Germany, a map populated with public data gathered by an emergency-care doctors’ association even shows hospital bed availability.

In the U.S., many hospitals and doctors are often failing to to report detailed clinical data on coronavirus cases, largely because it would have to be manually extracted from electronic records, then sent by fax or email, said Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo.

It’s not unusual for public health workers to have to track patients down on social media, use the phone book or scavenge through other public-health databases that may have that information, said Rachelle Boulton, the Utah health department official responsible for epidemiological reporting. Even when hospitals and labs report that information electronically, it’s often incomplete.

Deficiencies in CDC collection have been especially glaring.

In 75% of COVID-19 cases compiled in April, data on the race and ethnicity of victims was missing. A report on children affected by the virus only had symptom data for 9%of laboratory-confirmed cases for which age was known. A study on virus-stricken U.S. health care workers could not tally the number affected because the applicable boxes were only checked on 16% of received case forms. In another study, the CDC only had data on preexisting conditions — risk factors such as diabetes, heart and respiratory disease — for 6% of reported cases.

Missing from daily indicators that CDC makes public is data such as nationwide hospitalizations over the previous 24 hours and numbers of tests ordered and completed — information vital to guiding the federal response, said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

“The CDC during this entire pandemic has been two steps behind the disease,” Jha said.

REINVENTING THE WHEEL

Instead of accelerating existing efforts to modernize U.S. disease reporting, the White House asked Palantir, whose founder Peter Thiel is a major backer of President Donald Trump, to hastily build out a data collection platform called HHS Protect. It has not gone well.

On March 29, Vice President Mike Pence, who chairs the task force, sent a letter asking 4,700 hospitals to collect daily numbers on virus test results, patient loads and hospital bed and intensive care-unit capacity. That information, the letter said, should be compiled into spreadsheets and emailed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would feed it into the $25 million Palantir system.

On April 10, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar added more reporting requirements for hospitals.

Those mandates sparked a backlash among stressed stressed hospitals already reporting data to state and local health departments. Producing additional cumbersome spreadsheets for the federal government “is just not sustainable,” said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

HHS Protect now comprises more than 200 datasets, including reporting from nearly three-quarters of the roughly 8,000 U.S. hospitals, according to Katie McKeogh, an HHS press officer. It includes supply-chain data from industry, test results from labs and state policy actions.

But due to limited government transparency, it’s not clear how accurate or helpful HHS Protect has been. Asked for examples of its usefulness, McKeogh mentioned only one: White House task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx receives a nightly report based on what the system gathers that provides “a common (nationwide) operating picture of cases at a county level.”

”We will continue to work to improve upon the common operating picture,” McKeogh said when asked about holes in HHS data collection. Neither HHS nor the CDC would provide officials to answer questions about HHS Protect; Palantir declined to discuss it on the record.

FIXING THE PROBLEM

Farzad Mostashari, who a decade ago oversaw the federal effort to modernize paper-based medical records, said it would be far more efficient to fix existing public-health data systems than to create a parallel system like HHS Protect.

“We have a lot of the pieces in place,” Mostashari said. A public-private partnership called digitalbridge.us is central to that effort. Pilot projects that automate infectious disease case reporting were expanded in late January. Overall, 252,000 COVID case reports have been generated so far, said CDC spokesman Benjamin N. Haynes. In December, Congress appropriated $50 million for grants to expand the effort, which is already active in Utah, New York, California, Texas and Michigan.

Going forward, the CDC is evaluating how to spend $500 million from March’s huge pandemic relief package to upgrade health care information technology.

In the meantime, public-health officers are still doing things the hard way. Up to half the lab reports submitted for public health case investigations lack patient addresses or ZIP codes, according to a May 1 Duke University white paper co-authored by Mostashari.

“We’re losing days trying to go back and collect that information,” said Hamilton of the epidemiologists’ council. “And then we’re reaching out to hospitals or physicians’ offices that, quite frankly, are saying ‘I’m too busy to tell you that.’”

Virus consipracy-theory video shows challenges for big tech

FILE - In this Feb. 28, 2011, file photo, Director of research Judy Mikovits talks to a graduate student and research associate in the lab, at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease, in Reno, Nev. Tech companies scrambled to take down a 26-minute documentary-style video called “Plandemic” of Mikovits promoting a string of questionable, false and potentially dangerous coronavirus theories. (David Calvert for AP Images, File)

By AMANDA SEITZ and BARBARA ORTUTAY MAY 13, 2020

CHICAGO (AP) — One by one, tech companies across Silicon Valley scrambled to take down a slickly produced video of a discredited researcher peddling a variety of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.

It was all too late.

The 26-minute documentary-style video dubbed “Plandemic,” in which anti-vaccine activist Judy Mikovits promotes a string of questionable, false and potentially dangerous coronavirus theories, had already racked up millions of views over several days and gained a massive audience in Facebook groups that oppose vaccines or are protesting governors’ stay-at-home orders.


Its spread illustrates how easy it is to use social media as a megaphone to swiftly broadcast dubious content to the masses, and how difficult it is for platforms to cut the mic.

Mikovits’ unsupported claims — that the virus was manufactured in a lab, that it’s injected into people via flu vaccinations and that wearing a mask could trigger a coronavirus infection — activated a social media army already skeptical of the pandemic’s threat.

Amid uncertainty and unanswered questions about a virus that has upended everyone’s lives, and a growing distrust of authoritative sources, people shared the video again and again on the likes of YouTube, Facebook and Instagram until it took on a life of its own even after the original was taken down.

“The other video has already been deleted by YouTube. … Let’s get it to another million! Modern day book burning at its finest,” read one post on a private Facebook group called Reopen California.

“Once it’s available, it has an infinite lifespan,” said Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media at Carnegie Mellon University.

In a matter of days, two of Mikovits’ books became best-sellers on Amazon. Conservative radio talk show hosts and dozens of podcasts available on platforms like Apple began airing the audio from “Plandemic” to their listeners. Fringe TV streaming channels invited Mikovits on for interviews.

Mikovits did not respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment.

Her sudden fandom and notoriety come nearly a decade after she pushed a discredited theory that a virus in mice known as XMRV causes chronic fatigue syndrome. Other researchers were unable to recreate her findings.

She was later fired from a medical institute and then arrested in 2011 on felony charges of stealing computer equipment and data belonging to her former employer. She wrongly claims in the recent documentary that she was held without charges, though the felony charges were later dropped.

Efforts by social media platforms to delete and ban “Plandemic” have given rise to further dubious claims and theories about a supposed coverup by tech companies regarding how the coronavirus started and is spread.

“It sort of increases its fandom or allegiance among followers and adds credence to their rallying cry that there’s a conspiracy theory out there that people are trying to shut down,” Lightman said.

Facebook said it is removing full versions of the video that include Mikovits’ suggestion that masks can make you sick, because that claim could “lead to imminent harm.” YouTube and Vimeo both said it violated their rules on harmful misinformation. Twitter said Monday it had prevented “Plandemic” from being displayed prominently and trending on the platform.

Michael Coudrey, CEO of Yukosocial.com and a verified Twitter user popular among supporters of Donald Trump, said that while he’s not anti-vaccine and does not believe in conspiracy theories, he doesn’t think the platforms should wipe out the video.

“Information is continuously being updated about the virus,” said Coudrey, who has more than 256,000 followers. “Censoring a doctor’s opinion sets a very dangerous and unnecessary precedent.”

Facebook user Benjamin Romberger first saw the video when three friends posted it last week.

“I immediately groaned and thought, ‘Oh no, not another video filled with false information that I will have to spend time and energy explaining basic science, biology and medicine to others,’” said Romberger, a Southern California resident.

He sent information debunking the video to his friends and flagged it to Facebook, but it was still up the next morning.

Clips of the video are still possible to find on some of the major platforms with just a few clicks, and the full version is readily available on lesser-known sites notable for lax policies on questionable or harmful material.

“Imagine a flood of more and more of these things,” said Tristan Harris, a former Google ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Tech. “The solution isn’t just, ‘Gosh, we need to get better at taking this stuff down after a million people saw it.’”

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AP writer David Klepper contributed to this story from Providence, R.I.

Virus restrictions fuel anti-government ‘boogaloo’ movement

In this May 2, 2020, file photo, people, including those with the boogaloo movement, demonstrate against business closures due to concern about COVID-19, at the State House in Concord, N.H. It's a fringe movement with roots in a online meme culture steeped in irony and dark humor. But experts warn that the anti-government boogaloo movement has attracted a dangerous element of far-right extremists. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN MAY 13, 2020

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — They carry high-powered rifles and wear tactical gear, but their Hawaiian shirts and leis are what stand out in the crowds that have formed at state capital buildings to protest COVID-19 lockdown orders. The signature look for the “boogaloo” anti-government movement is designed to get attention.

The group, which uses an ’80s movie sequel as a code word for a second civil war, is among the extremists using the armed protests against state-at-home orders as a platform. Like other movements that once largely inhabited corners of the internet, it has seized on the social unrest and economic calamity caused by the pandemic to publicize its violent messages.

In April, armed demonstrators passed out “Liberty or Boogaloo” fliers at a statehouse protest in Concord, New Hampshire. A leader of the Three Percenters militia movement who organized a rally in Olympia, Washington, last month encouraged rally participants to wear Hawaiian shirts, according to the Anti-Defamation League. On Saturday, a demonstration in Raleigh, North Carolina, promoted by a Facebook group called “Blue Igloo” — a derivation of the term — led to a police investigation of a confrontation between an armed protester and a couple pushing a stroller.

Another anti-lockdown rally is planned for Thursday at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, site of an angry protest last month that included armed members of the Michigan Liberty Militia. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has been the target of violent threats on Facebook forums, including a private one called “The Rhett E. Boogie Group.”

One user said Whitmer should be “guillotined” after another suggested another governor should be hanged from a noose, according to a screenshot captured by the Tech Transparency Project research initiative.

The coronavirus pandemic has become a catalyst for the “boogaloo” movement because the stay-at-home orders have “put a stressor on a lot of very unhappy people,” said J.J. MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. MacNab said their rhetoric goes beyond discussions about fighting virus restrictions — which many protesters brand as “tyranny” — to talking about killing FBI agents or police officers “to get the war going.”


“They are far more graphic and far more specific in their threats than I’ve seen in a long time,” she said.

The violent rhetoric is dramatic escalation for a online phenomenon with its roots in meme culture and steeped in dark humor. Its name comes from the panned 1984 movie “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” which has become slang for any bad sequel. Another derivation of “boogaloo” is “big luau” — hence the Hawaiian garb.

Far-right gun activists and militia groups first embraced the term before white supremacist groups adopted it last year. And while some “boogaloo” followers maintain they aren’t genuinely advocating for violence, law-enforcement officials say they have foiled bombing and shooting plots by people who have connections to the movement or at least used its terminology.

A 36-year-old Arkansas man whose Facebook page included “boogaloo” references was arrested on April 11 by police in Texarkana, Texas, on a charge he threatened to ambush and kill a police officer on a Facebook Live video.

“I feel like hunting the hunters,” Aaron Swenson wrote on Facebook under an alias, police say.

An April 22 report by the Tech Transparency Project, which tracks technology companies, found 125 Facebook “boogaloo”-related groups that had attracted tens of thousands of members in the previous 30 days. The project pointed to coronavirus crisis as a driving factor.

“Some boogaloo supporters see the public health lockdowns and other directives by states and cities across the country as a violation of their rights, and they’re aiming to harness public frustration at such measures to rally and attract new followers to their cause,” the project’s report says.

Facebook has since updated its policies to prohibit use of “boogaloo” and related terms “when accompanied by statements and images depicting armed violence,” the company said in a statement.

In March, a Missouri man with ties to neo-Nazis was shot and killed when FBI agents tried to arrest him. Timothy Wilson, 36, was planning to bomb a hospital in the Kansas City area on the day that a COVID-19 stay-at-home order was scheduled to take effect, authorities said. Wilson told an undercover FBI agent that his goal was “to kick start a revolution” and referred to his plans as “operation boogaloo,” according to an agent’s affidavit.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued an alert that said a white supremacist group was inciting followers to shoot through their doors at FBI agents and police officers, federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing. The warning related to “associates” of Bradley Bunn, a 53-year-old U.S. Army veteran who was arrested on May 1 after FBI agents allegedly found four pipe bombs at his house in Loveland, Colorado, the filing said.

Authorities haven’t publicly linked Bunn to any group or movement, but a federal prosecutor said agents intercepted Bunn on his way to an armed protest at the state Capitol against COVID-19 restrictions.

Bunn told investigators that he would be willing to “take out a few” officers to “wake everyone up,” the prosecutor said during a court hearing.

While the anti-lockdown protests have provided the spotlight on the “boogaloo” movement, a police shooting in Maryland has galvanized its supporters.

Duncan Lemp, 21, was shot and killed by police on March 12 as officers served a search warrant at his family’s home. An eyewitness said Lemp was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house, according to an attorney for his family. Police said he was armed with a rifle and ignored commands.

On his Instagram account, Lemp had posted a photograph that depicts two people holding up rifles and includes the term “boogaloo.” His death spawned a hashtag campaign within the movement.

“A lot of individuals are very upset at the way this country is being run and the laws that are getting passed that criminalize law-abiding citizens,” said Mike Harts, a U.S. Army infantry veteran who befriended Lemp through social media.

Harts, 27, says “boogaloo” started as a funny meme but has evolved into a deeper symbol for the “liberty movement.”

Lemp’s family appreciates the outpouring of support but doesn’t want “any violence or unlawful actions to be taken in his name,” family attorney Rene Sandler said in a statement.

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Follow Associated Press reporter Michael Kunzelman at http://twitter.com/Kunzelman75

THIS IS THE ORIGINAL GOT MY BOOGALOO

Trump ramps up expulsions of migrant youth, citing virus
FILE - In this May 4, 2020, file photo, Guatemalans deported from the U.S., wave from a bus after arriving at La Aurora airport in Guatemala City. U.S. border agencies quickly expelled about 600 child migrants in April after federal agencies began prohibiting asylum claims at the southern border, citing the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)

MAY 13, 2020

HOUSTON (AP) — The young migrants and asylum seekers swim across the Rio Grande and clamber into the dense brush of Texas. Many are teens who left Central America on their own; others were sent along by parents from refugee camps in Mexico. They are as young as 10.

Under U.S. law they would normally be allowed to live with relatives while their cases wind through immigration courts. Instead the Trump administration is quickly expelling them under an emergency declaration citing the coronavirus pandemic, with 600 minors expelled in April alone.

The expulsions are the latest administration measure aimed at preventing the entry of migrant children, following other programs such as the since-rescinded “zero tolerance” policy that resulted in thousands of family separations.

Border agencies say they have to restrict asylum claims and border crossings during the pandemic to prevent the virus’ spread. Migrants’ advocates call that a pretext to dispense with federal protections for children.

MORE STORIES:
– Origins of family separation issue stretch back many years

– Official: Strict US border policy may remain as virus eases

In interviews with The Associated Press, two recently expelled teens said border agents told them they wouldn’t be allowed to request asylum. They were placed in cells, fingerprinted and given a medical exam. Then, after four days, they were flown back to their home country of Guatemala. The AP is withholding the teens’ last names to protect their privacy.

Brenda, 16, left Guatemala in hopes of reaching the U.S. to eventually work and help her family. Her father works on a farm, but it’s not enough.

“We barely eat,” she said.

Her family borrowed $13,000 to pay a smuggler and months later she crossed illegally. Authorities later took her into custody in April at a Texas stash house, she said.

“I did ask to talk to my brother because he wanted to get a lawyer, because he wanted to fight for my case,” she said. “But they told me they were not letting people talk to anyone. No matter how much I fought, they were not letting anyone stay.”

She is now under quarantine at her family’s home.

Similarly, Osvaldo, 17, said agents wouldn’t let him call his father. He was held with other children in a cold room and issued a foil blanket as well as a new mask and pair of gloves each of the four days he was in custody.

Someone took his temperature before he was deported, but he wasn’t tested for the coronavirus until he was back in Guatemala. Osvaldo was given no immigration paperwork, just the medical report from his examination.

“I thought they would help me or let me fight my case,” Osvaldo said, “but no.”

A 10-year-old boy and his mother, whom the AP is not identifying because she fears retribution for speaking publicly, spent months at a squalid camp in Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas, waiting for their immigration court dates under the Trump administration program known as “Remain in Mexico.”

When she lost an initial decision, she decided he would be better off temporarily with her brother in the United States. She watched him swim across the Rio Grande.

The woman expected he would be be treated the same as before, when such children were picked up by the U.S. Border Patrol and taken to Department of Health and Human Services facilities for eventual placement with a sponsor, usually a relative.
Full Coverage: Immigration

But the mother heard nothing until six days later, when her family received a call from a shelter in Honduras.

“They had thrown him out to Honduras,” she said. “We didn’t know anything.”

The boy now lives with a family member in the capital, Tegucigalpa. Another relative has agreed to take him back to the family’s rural village, if the mother returns to care for him. But she fears her former partner, who abused and threatened both of them.

“He doesn’t want to eat. All he does is cry,” the woman said. “I never imagined they would send him back there.”

Their case was first reported by CBS News.

Amy Cohen, a psychiatrist who works with the family and leads the advocacy group Every Last One, criticized the government’s treatment of the boy and other children.

“This boy has gone through multiple traumas, ending with the experience of being placed on a plane by himself and flown to a country where no one knew he was coming,” she said.

Under a 2008 anti-trafficking law and a federal court settlement known as the Flores agreement, children from countries other than Canada and Mexico must have access to legal counsel and cannot be immediately deported. They are also supposed to be released to family in the U.S. or otherwise held in the least restrictive setting possible. The rules are intended to prevent children from being mistreated or falling into the hands of criminals.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection began the expulsions in late March, using the emergency as justification for disregarding the Flores rules. CBP said it processed 166 children last month as “unaccompanied” minors, meaning they would be taken to HHS youth holding facilities and allowed to stay in the U.S. at least temporarily, and the remaining 600 were expelled.

But HHS says it received just 58 unaccompanied minors in April. Spokesmen for both agencies were not immediately able to address the discrepancy.

CBP says it exempts children from expulsion on a “case-by-case basis, such as when return to the home country is not possible or an agent suspects trafficking or sees signs of illness.” An agency spokesman declined to provide more specifics.

CBP acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said last week that the U.S. may keep expelling migrants even as states begin to ease coronavirus restrictions.

Meanwhile, as the virus has spread through immigration detention facilities, the U.S. has deported at least 100 people with COVID-19 to Guatemala, including minors.

Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, said the virus is an excuse for expelling children, and the Trump administration could admit them and still counter its spread through measures like temperature checks and quarantines.

“At the very heart of it,” she said, “it has always been about trying to block access to protection for children and families and asylum seekers.”

__

Pérez D. reported from Guatemala City.

WHITE COPS KILL A HERO
Louisville police conducting a drug bust charged into Breonna Taylor's house and shot her 8 times. Her family says they were at the wrong address.

Rhea Mahbubani MAY 13, 2020 INSIDER

Tamika Palmer, left, embraced her daughter Ju'Niyah Palmer during a vigil for her other daughter, Breonna Taylor, in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 19. Sam Upshaw Jr./Courier Journal/Reuters

Breonna Taylor, 26, was shot and killed by the police in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13 during a narcotics bust.

The police said someone inside the apartment opened fire at them, injuring an officer.

But a defense attorney for Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said in a court filing that the police didn't announce themselves while entering, so Walker thought someone was breaking into the apartment.

Taylor's family is being represented by Benjamin Crump, a well-known civil-rights attorney who has represented other black shooting victims, including Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin.

The shooting death of yet another black person has been thrust into the national spotlight.

This time it's the case of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was killed by the police in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, during a narcotics bust in the early hours of March 13.

The police said they returned fire after someone in the apartment shot at them, injuring an officer, The Associated Press reported.

Rob Eggert, a defense attorney for Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said in a recent court filing that the police team — two officers and one sergeant — didn't knock or announce themselves when entering the apartment, the Louisville Courier Journal reported on Tuesday.

"While police may claim to have identified themselves, they did not," Eggert wrote in the filing seen by the Courier Journal. "Mr. Walker and Ms. Taylor again heard a large bang on the door. Again, when they inquired there was no response that there was police outside. At this point, the door suddenly explodes. Counsel believes that police hit the door with a battering ram."

Photos of Taylor were displayed during a vigil for her on March 19. Sam Upshaw Jr./Courier Journal/ReutersA complaint filed late last month by attorneys representing Taylor's family said that Walker fired one round in self-defense but that officers "failed to use any sound reasonable judgment whatsoever when firing more than 25 blind shots into multiple homes."

Eggert said that he later inspected the building where the pair lived and found evidence of at least 20 gunshots, eight of which hit Taylor, killing her, the Courier Journal reported.

The complaint said that Taylor "was shot at least eight times by the officers' gunfire and died as a result," adding that she "had posed no threat to the officers and did nothing to deserve to die at their hands."

Her family initially had a hard time finding out what happened

Taylor's family described her as a kind and honest person who loved helping people in her role as an EMT.

Tamika Palmer, Taylor's mother, told the news website The 19th that a phone call from Walker roused her from sleep in the middle of the night on March 13.

"I think they shot Breonna," Walker told her, prompting Palmer to throw on some clothes and race out of her house for Taylor's apartment.

Palmer recalled that the police were tight-lipped, seeking information on Taylor's enemies and whether she was having issues with Walker.

Palmer drove from the apartment to the hospital and back to the apartment in search of information about her child — only to realize that Taylor had died.

Palmer said she struggled to reconcile her concern for her daughter's safety while she was working on the front lines of the pandemic with her death in her own home.

"She was an essential worker. She had to go to work," Palmer said The 19th. "She didn't have a problem with that ... To not be able to sleep in her own bed without someone busting down her door and taking her life ... I was just like, 'Make sure you wash your hands!'"
An attorney who's also representing Ahmaud Arbery's family is on the case

In the lawsuit filed in late April, Taylor's family alleged that officers weren't looking for Taylor or Walker — they said the police executed the raid at the wrong address, despite having already taken a suspect into custody earlier that day.

The Courier Journal identified the suspect as Jamarcus Glover. The lawsuit said that he was detained more than 10 miles from Taylor's house and that officers identified Glover before executing the search warrant at Taylor's house, where they didn't find any drugs.

Police Chief Steve Conrad said that the police department's Criminal Interdiction Squad, which was involved in the shooting, does not use body cameras, so there's no footage of the incident, according to the Courier Journal.

The three officers involved in the case have been placed on administrative leave, the Courier Journal said, while Walker, a licensed gun owner, was arrested and faces charges of first-degree assault and attempted murder of a police officer, according to The 19th.

"Not one person has talked to me. Not one person has explained anything to me," Palmer told The 19th. "I want justice for her. I want them to say her name. There's no reason Breonna should be dead at all."

Having accused the officers of wrongful death, excessive force, and gross negligence, Taylor's family on Monday enlisted the help of Benjamin Crump, a well-known civil-rights and personal-injury attorney.

Crump issued a statement to news outlets, describing Taylor's killing as "inexcusable."

Attorney Ben Crump discussing the results of a forensic examination. Jay Reeves/AP"We stand with the family of this young woman in demanding answers from the Louisville Police Department," Crump said. "Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding her death, the Department has not provided any answers regarding the facts and circumstances of how this tragedy occurred, nor have they taken responsibility for her senseless killing."

Crump is among the lawyers working with the family of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was shot dead while jogging in southern Georgia on February 23 after being pursued by Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, both of whom are white.


The pair told the police that Arbery resembled a burglary suspect. They were arrested last week, more than two months after Arbery died; they face charges of murder and aggravated assault.

The delay of justice in Arbery's case has triggered waves of unrest and protests, as well as investigations into and calls for the resignations of local prosecutors.

Crump also represented the family of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer, in Florida in 2012.

Meanwhile, it's been nearly two months since Taylor was killed, but her death gained more attention after the activist Shaun King shared her story on social media.


King has pushed for charges to be brought against the officers and called on Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear to intervene.

A Change.org petition seeking justice for Taylor had amassed over 11,000 signatures as of Tuesday evening.

"For weeks, the city treated Breonna like she was a criminal, calling her a 'suspect' before finally admitting that she was an innocent, crimeless victim," the petition said. "She had no drugs. She committed no crime. Yet, she is dead, and the perpetrators are facing no charges."

Taylor's sister, Ju'Niyah Palmer, has been posting pictures of the two on social media and using the hashtag #JusticeForBre.

She told The 19th that her goal was to remind people that Taylor was a victim — she didn't have so much as a criminal record.

"I'm just getting awareness for my sister, for people to know who she is, what her name is," she said.

Nebraska health officials stop reporting COVID-19 confirmations at meatpacking plants as case counts continue to rise

Haven Orecchio-Egresitz BUSINESS INSIDER MAY 13, 2020

Workers leave the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Indiana, on May 7, 2020. Michael Conroy/AP Photo
Meatpacking plants around the US are hotspots for coronavirus cases.
As of early May in Nebraska alone, public health officials reported 96 at the Tyson plant in Madison, 237 at the JBS plant in Grand Island, and 123 arising from the Smithfield plant in Crete, The Washington Post reported.

As the cases climbed, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts announced the state would stop reporting infection numbers.

Hundreds of employees at Nebraska meatpacking plants have fallen ill — and some have died — from COVID-19, according to the Washington Post.

As of the first week of May, public health officials reported 96 infections at the Tyson plant in Madison, 237 at the JBS plant in Grand Island, and 123 arising from the Smithfield plant in Crete.

Then, as the numbers continued to rise, the state stopped releasing them.

Gov. Pete Ricketts announced at a news conference last week that state health officials would no longer share how many workers have been infected at each plant. The plants weren't releasing the numbers either, and employees and their families were left in the dark, The Post reported.

"What are you hiding?" Vy Mai, whose grandfather died of the novel coronavirus told The Post. "If the 'essential' workers are being treated fairly and protected at meatpacking plants, why aren't we allowed to know the numbers?"

Mai's grandfather was exposed to coronavirus by her aunt and uncle who were employed at a Smithfield plant in Crete, The Post reported.

Meatpacking plants have produced clusters of coronavirus outbreaks around the country. President Donald Trump has ordered the facilities to stay open to ensure the food supply isn't interrupted, but employees have told Business Insider that a lack of safeguards and a systemic work-while-sick culture puts their lives at risk.

When Ricketts stopped announcing the cases, has said he was doing so because the numbers can be unreliable, according to The Post.

He recommended that local health departments withhold the case counts unless they get permission from the plants.

The company officials declined to share numbers, citing privacy concerns and the fast-moving nature of the virus. They note that they are implementing worker protections at their plants, The Post said.

Shortly after The Post story was published, however, Tyson and Elkhorn Logan Valley health officials announced the results of testing at the company's plant in Madison, Nebraska.

Of the employees and contractors who work there, 212 tested positive for the coronavirus, The Post reported.

A white man ran through a Florida neighborhood carrying a TV to prove that looking 'suspicious' wasn't an excuse for killing Ahmaud Arbery

Haven Orecchio-Egresitz  INSIDER May 11, 2020,
Snapchat

Richard Demsick said he carried a TV while running to prove that looking "suspicious" didn't justify Ahmaud Arbery's killing in February. Richard Demsick
Richard Demsick, @jestertotheking on TikTok, filmed himself running through his neighborhood carrying a television.

The 34-year-old former pastor wanted to prove that looking like a suspect wasn't an excuse for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was shot dead while out jogging in February.

Demsick's video has gotten more than 1.2 million views and spurred conversations about social justice.

Demsick said that while he was running and carrying the TV, shirtless with a backward hat, his neighbors smiled and waved.

He made the 2-mile jog on Friday as a part of the #IRunWithMaud movement.

When Richard Demsick learned of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, he immediately thought about the privilege he had as a white man.

Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was shot dead while jogging in February after being chased by two men — Gregory and Travis McMichael — who said he looked like a break-in suspect.

In a video that trended after Arbery's death, the McMichaels could be seen pursuing Arbery in their truck while Arbery ran. Travis McMichael left the truck holding a gun and, after a brief struggle, Arbery was dead. The McMichaels later told the police they believed Arbery resembled a man behind a string of residential break-ins. They were charged with murder last week.

Demsick, 34, a former pastor in Vero Beach, Florida, said he felt that it didn't matter what he wore or how "suspicious" he looked — his whiteness alone was enough to protect him from meeting the same fate as Arbery.

He decided to prove that on Friday as part of the #IRunWithMaud movement, a virtual protest in honor of what would have been Arbery's 26th birthday.

"I just started crying when I just saw this poor young man running — as I have thousands of times in my life — get shot down," Demsick told Insider. He said he thought: "Maybe I should run with a TV to show that being a suspicious character isn't enough that someone should be shot down. Being a white person, that's just not going to happen to me."

So he did.

On Friday, Demsick ran 2.23 miles through his neighborhood while carrying a flat-screen TV.

His neighborhood, he said, recently did have a string of thefts. Despite that, his neighbors waved and smiled while he jogged.

"Not a soul" even approached him afterward to ask what he was doing, he said.

Demsick recorded parts of his run for a TikTok video that has been viewed more than 1.2 million times.

"All right, I figured it out. I've got my hat on backwards, I'm shirtless, like I'm on some episode of 'Cops.' I'm running with a TV. Someone's going to stop me now, for sure," Demsick in the video. "'Cause if not, what was the problem with Ahmaud?"

In a follow-up video on Mother's Day, Demsick asked his mom whether she was afraid for him while he went on the run with the TV, or whether she thought the police would be called.

"No, of course not," she said.

"Huh, I wonder why that is," he responded.

Black mothers, Demsick told Insider, would likely feel differently.

Demsick knows he'll never truly understand what it's like to walk in the shoes of a black man

Demsick is passionate about social-justice issues.

He grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and attended dance competitions in the city. Most of the friends he danced with were black, and many came from impoverished neighborhoods, he said. Even though Demsick was the "unique duck" in that community, he was welcomed with open arms and started to learn about the struggles his friends faced.

After becoming a pastor at what he described as a primarily upper-class conservative church in Florida, Demsick launched an outreach ministry made up of people who were struggling with homelessness and other issues.

In it, he talked about racism and the political divide.

Demsick said one of the most powerful things his parents taught him was to take the time to listen to people who come from different backgrounds and beliefs.

Supporters of the Georgia NAACP protesting Arbery's shooting death in Brunswick, Georgia. Reuters

When doing so, though, it's important to resist owning the struggles as your own, he said.

For example, he said that in discussions about the Arbery case with some white acquaintances, they had offered what they thought they would do if they were confronted with a gun as he was.

Some told him that they wouldn't have struggled with the gun and would have instead waited for the police to sort out the confusion.

But Demsick said that no matter how much people might try to understand what that would be like, for a white person, that's not possible.

"If you're a white person trying to put yourself in black people's shoes, you're just a white person in a black person's shoes," he said.
The response to the video has been overwhelmingly positive

Demsick said that after he had the idea about the run, he almost backed out because he was worried that people would misunderstand it as him making light of a tragic situation.

When he woke up for the run on Friday, he felt like he had to do it, he said.

So far, the responses have been overwhelmingly positive, Demsick said.

The videos have sparked conversations, and over the weekend he was invited to be a guest in a video conference that discussed the treatment of African-Americans in the United States.

"It was a privilege to be in that conversation," he said.

"People have been incredibly kind, undeservedly kind," Demsick added. "There are people who are daily working trying to correct the injustice. I just made a video."

Still, Demsick said he was interested in continuing to use his social-media platform for good.

One idea he has is to film himself picking a lock at someone's home — after getting permission first — to see whether the neighbors react.

"Nobody would call the cops," he hypothesized. "We all know that if I looked different, that would be a very different story."

Read more:

Gregory McMichael, who is charged in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, worked for years in DA Jackie Johnson's office without required gun training

In a 2014 letter, DA Jackie Johnson called his longstanding lapse of training a "great embarrassment to me and to Investigator McMichael.

Investigators who arrested a father and son in connection with the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery say 'probable cause was clear to our agents pretty quickly'

Gregory and Travis McMichael arrested in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot dead while jogging unarmed in Georgia

2 men were arrested in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. The attorney for Arbery's father says if it were Arbery and his father who killed a white jogger they would have been arrested on the spot.

Family and friends of shooting victim Ahmaud Arbery are honoring his life with a 2.23-mile run after public outrage over his death led to 2 arrests

LeBron James enraged by the shooting death of an unarmed 25-year-old black man in southern Georgia, says: 'We're literally hunted everyday'

COVID-19 PUSHES BIDEN LEFT

'Not paid later, forgiveness': Joe Biden calls for rent and mortgage payments to be canceled amid the pandemic

BUSINESS INSIDER MAY 13, 2020

Joe Biden is calling for federal rent and mortgage forgiveness during the pandemic.
In an interview on Snapchat's "Good Luck America" political show, the likely Democratic presidential nominee said that rent and mortgage postponements aren't enough.
He also proposed a $15,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers.

Likely Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called for federal rent and mortgage forgiveness in an interview on Snapchat's "Good Luck America" political show.

Biden said that postponing housing payments isn't enough. "Forgiveness. Not paid later, forgiveness," Biden said in the interview, which was also published by Vanity Fair. "It's critically important to people who are in the lower-income strata."

Policies like outright rent and mortgage forgiveness could help Biden as he seeks to court progressive supporters of former candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The issue has largely been left up to state leaders, with governors moving to postpone rent or mortgage payments.

In March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom struck a deal with major banks to push mortgage payments back 90 days. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently extended a ban on evictions until August.

But homeowners and renters who have lost their income due to the coronavirus will likely need tangible financial relief to recover from the economic fallout.

Biden said he understands why governors have been unable to provide forgiveness, rather than deferrals, due to funding shortfalls, saying that it's up to the federal government to step in.

Lower-income people, who typically spend more of their income on housing costs and are unlikely to have enough savings to make up for lost wages, are more highly impacted.

Tenants around the United States went on a rent strike earlier this month, asking for rent forgiveness and arguing that many have no choice but to not pay rent. 

More broadly, Biden said that "nobody should be paying more than 30% of their income for rent."

He also said that as president he would provide a $15,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers.