Mike Pence was celebrated as the Trump administration's coronavirus truth teller. Here's how the vice president has abruptly shifted course.

Tom LoBianco

Vice President Mike Pence speaks in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, March, 10, 2020, about the coronavirus outbreak. Carolyn Kaster/AP


Vice President Mike Pence won plaudits for his early handling of the US response to the coronavirus. 

Behind the scenes, people close to Pence said he encouraged people in the White House Coronavirus Task Force meetings "to speak their mind."

"Pence's stock is way up," said Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who is close to the White House.

But Pence has made a dramatic shift in both style and substance by aligning himself with President Trump to downplay public health concerns about the deadly pandemic.

Back in late February, Vice President Mike Pence's closest aides recognized that his new role leading the federal government's COVID-19 response would be his biggest presidential assignment yet.

Pence had helped with top initiatives for Trump before. Some were successful, like his work to launch the Space Force and high-dollar campaign fundraising for the president's reelection. Other Pence-led efforts ended with anything but good results for his boss, including the failed bid to repeal Obamacare.

But managing the White House Coronavirus Task Force marked the first time President Donald Trump had delegated his No. 2 with any serious executive authority. Pence would be chairing meetings with the country's top national security and public health officials, corralling big personalities, and delivering grim updates to the public. He'd be the face of the United States as it handled what would become the worst public health crisis facing the planet in a century.

It was heady stuff, and it meant Pence would be back on some familiar terrain as a chief executive. The former Indiana governor had largely avoided that kind of portfolio since arriving in Washington in 2017, but the task force offered him the high-profile chance to show off his own crisis management skills ahead of what's expected to be a 2024 run for the White House.

Not long before the pandemic struck, one Pence confidant told Insider that the vice president didn't deserve the reputation he'd gotten as someone who was tired of carrying all of Trump's negative baggage. In fact, Pence actually enjoyed not having to make hard calls on the fly the way he used to when back in the state house in Indianapolis. The painful moments of the Trump presidency were Trump's alone, and the confidant said Pence welcomed the job he had of only having to explain them.

But with COVID-19, Pence was back to being the leader on a tough issue, and the three months that would follow provided the best picture yet of both his agility for surviving in the tumultuous Trump era and also how he'd run the country if he won the White House in another four years. 

Coronavirus changed the Trump-Pence relationship

Delegating Pence to the COVID task force job marked an important moment in his relationship with Trump. It also further cemented their own links both personally and for their long-term legacies.

Trump and Pence barely knew each other when they first teamed up in the summer of 2016. Their alliance, the byproduct of a slapdash courtship that was as much about political convenience as anything else, centered around Pence helping placate conservative and religious voters concerned that the thrice-married, foul-mouthed Trump didn't have the moral compass to lead the country.

Once in office, the two men struggled to find a rhythm. Pence ran into stiff headwinds on Capitol Hill trying to fulfill the president's campaign promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. He also worked overtime to stay out of legal trouble as special counsel Robert Mueller probed whether the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.

By last fall, Trump was even entertaining the idea of replacing Pence on the ticket for 2020.

But Trump's own escape from impeachment in January helped the two US leaders turn a corner and cement a fairly strong relationship. And as the severity of the coronavirus slowly dawned on Trump and his team, the president turned to Pence to coordinate the federal government's response across more than a dozen agencies and with the states.

"The president knew immediately what an important position of trust, confidence and competence the head of the task force would be, and that is why he chose the vice president," Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House adviser who worked with Pence long before he joined the Trump administration, told Insider in an interview.

Pence brought "familiarity, empathy and perspective" to the job, Conway said. He also had a way of connecting with the nation's governors because of his own four-year stint running Indiana.

At the daily COVID-19 task force meetings, Pence provided a calm, measured style built on listening and processing information and ideas from various corners of the administration, Conway said. It's a skill that people who know the vice president say he's honed over a career path that went from failed congressional candidate to conservative radio host to a seat in the US House and also by studying management books like Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and Jim Collins' "Good to Great."

"He is passionate but not excitable," Conway said. "This really mattered in coordinating a response that required urgent action from all different parts of the federal government."

A senior Trump administration official familiar with the task force meetings said Pence played the role of referee during meetings that involved the government's top scientists, public health, immigration and national security officials. When someone offered an idea the vice president didn't like or disagreed with, he asked them to expand on their position instead of snapping at them or attacking them.

"You want diversity in opinion. There's always good robust discussion. I haven't seen acrimony," the official said. "I will give credit to the vice president, because I think he's very masterful at encouraging people to speak their mind. He's very encouraging. Makes everybody feel very good."

Pence's quiet, steady style also won increasing plaudits inside the DC beltway as his regular appearances created a stark contrast to the president's erratic briefings and tweets.

After Trump attacked reporters during one of his frequent press briefings on the pandemic, Pence pulled an NBC journalist aside to offer his condolences for one of their colleagues who died after testing positive for the coronavirus. When Trump caused a media firestorm by saying he had started taking hydroxychloroquine, a potentially harmful anti-malarial drug, Pence simply said he wouldn't be taking the medicine himself.

The vice president's relatively normal handling of the coronavirus briefings and his command of the facts even led POLITICO media columnist Jack Shafer to suggest Pence be named the new White House press secretary.

"I want to trust Pence, but doubt that anyone so devoted to the president's elephantine ego can be relied on to give the truth," Shafer wrote. "But Pence's best moments on the dais this month allow us to recall a time when expecting the government to give it to us straight about matters of life and death was not unreasonable."

Vice President Mike Pence stands among television soundmen, radio reporters and other media personnel all wearing protective masks because of the coronavirus disease pandemic as he listens to Donald Trump speak during an event in honor of National Nurses Day in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 6, 2020. Tom Brenner/REUTERS 

'Pence's stock is way up'

Pence allies maintain that the vice president's work on the COVID task force provided an ideal platform to showcase his governing skills.

Immediately after taking its reins, the vice president dropped all Trump campaign activities to focus on fighting the pandemic, said David McIntosh, the former Indiana GOP congressman and close friend of Pence's since the early 1990s who now runs the Club for Growth, a conservative nonprofit group.

"He views this as, 'I'm going to focus on whatever it takes to implement the president's decisions on how to battle the coronavirus,'" McIntosh said.

With a boss like Trump, there are the obvious messaging challenges. "That's always a delicate balance when you've got all these experts saying one thing and the president saying something else," McIntosh said.

People close to the vice president also say his role atop the task force forced him to remain a presence when he otherwise might have followed a different route of drifting in and out of an issue if it wasn't going well. "The biggest difference is he was given direct responsibility," McIntosh said.

Pence's handling of the COVID issue has also helped with his standing among right-leaning activists.

"Pence's stock is way up," said Stephen Moore, the conservative economist who is close to the Trump White House. "He's seen by conservatives as a strong leader. He's done really well in the press conferences and been universally praised."

Even among a furtive band of NeverTrump conservatives that often chided Pence for enabling Trump — George Will famously labeled the vice president "oleaginous," which is a clever term for ass-kissing — Pence has found some support.

"It's self-evident that Pence would have handled the pandemic better," opinion columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote earlier this week in the Los Angeles Times. "His stewardship of the White House coronavirus task force was marked by quiet, assured and reassuring, professionalism. If he hawked hydroxychloroquine or bleach as potential miracle cures, I missed it." 

A Fauci contradiction and a Biden slam

But Pence's public stance on the coronavirus has recently taken a more abrupt political turn that mimics the president's overall messaging that it's time to restart the economy — even if the public health crisis hasn't abated.

On a Monday call with the nation's governors, the vice president urged the state leaders to tell their residents that recent increases in cases were due to more testing, a position undercut by scientists and epidemiologists who say the spikes are not just because of better testing.

A day later, he published an op-ed in one of his favorite publications, The Wall Street Journal, arguing there would be no "second wave" of the coronavirus as epidemiologists had predicted for the fall. The vice president also accused the press of fabricating the continued danger of the pandemic.

"The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and these grim predictions of a second wave are no different. The truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success," Pence wrote.

Pence on Tuesday also defended Trump's decision to hold his first major campaign rally since the pandemic shut down large swaths of the country. Oklahoma, the host for Trump's upcoming event on Saturday, had "flattened the curve," Pence said, even though new coronavirus cases were actually spiking there.

And the vice president this week continued showing up in public without wearing a mask. Back in early May, Pence said he regretted not donning a protective face covering during a visit to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. While he later did wear a mask when traveling outside Washington, he's since dropped the routine during campaign stops out at restaurants with state GOP leaders in potential 2020 battlegrounds like Iowa, Georgia and Florida.

The same thing happened again Thursday. "Every single day, we're one day closer to putting the coronavirus in the past," Pence said during a mask-less visit to a steel plant in the Detroit suburbs.

Pence's public shifts have prompted some pushback. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, rebutted Pence's "second wave" comment by saying the country was still very much in the grips of the first wave of the pandemic.

Fauci also contradicted Pence on the suggestion the country is ready for sizable public gatherings. "When I look at the TV and I see pictures of people congregating at bars when the location they are indicates they shouldn't be doing that, that's very risky," Fauci told The Wall Street Journal.

The vice president's move toward a decidedly political stance on COVID has also opened him up to new attacks from Trump's 2020 rival. While Joe Biden once took heat from his party's base for calling Pence a "decent guy," the presumptive Democratic president nominee on Wednesday singled out his successor as vice president for his optimistic take on the pandemic.

"Yesterday, the head of the White House task force on coronavirus, the vice president, claimed success because deaths are quote, 'down to fewer than 750 a day,'" Biden said during a campaign stop near Philadelphia. "More than 20,000 a month. That's greater than World War II-level casualties each month. That's more than five 9/11s each month. And this administration is engaging in self congratulations?"

Tom LoBianco is the author of "Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House." It comes out in paperback June 30.

Finding fossils: An expedition deep into the heart of Chilean Pa

Felipe Trueba Friday 17 April 2020 23:00

Hunting for dinosaurs at the tip of South America
Show all 14




The valley is a rich source of ancient dinosaur, insect and plant fossils

The Las Chinas valley near the southern tip of Chile, dubbed the Rosetta Stone of palaeontology in the southern hemisphere, is proving to be a treasure trove of fossils.

Located in this valley, Estancia Cerro Guido is one of the largest estates in the country. While dedicated to cattle farming, its mountains are also home to important dinosaur fossils. Findings here include the well-preserved remains of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants from the Cretaceous period. They could be the key to unlocking significant tracts of the common past of South America and Antarctica.

Every year the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH) and the University of Chile organise a palaeontological expedition to shed light on the end of the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaurs became extinct. To mark the 10th anniversary of the expedition, a group of 20 researchers from various disciplines embarked on a two-week journey to this region deep in the heart of Chilean Patagonia.

This team, along with another group of palaeontologists, has discovered duck-billed dinosaurs (Hadrosauridae) as well as armoured dinosaurs (Ankylosauria) and even parts of large predators. These complement earlier findings and are allowing scientists to fill in the gaps of what we know about the period.

An underground dark-matter experiment may have stumbled on the 'holy grail': a new particle that could upend the laws of physics

ANOTHER GODDAMN PARTICLE 

Morgan McFall-Johnsen), Business Insider•June 18, 2020

Experts constructing the top array of photomultiplier tubes, which detect flashes of light from particle interactions.The XENON Experiment

A dark-matter experiment in an underground Italian lab may have discovered a new particle called the solar axion.

If that's indeed what was detected, it would be the first direct evidence of a particle that shouldn't exist according to the known laws of physics.

Alternatively, the data could also reveal new and surprising qualities of mysterious particles called neutrinos.

Larger, more sensitive experiments in the next year will help scientists figure out whether they have indeed discovered a new particle.

An underground vat of liquid xenon in Italy may have just detected a new particle, born in the heart of the sun.

If that's indeed what happened, it could upend laws of physics that have held fast for roughly 50 years.

Researchers created the underground vat to search for dark matter, the elusive stuff that makes up 85% of all matter in the universe. Scientists know dark matter exists because they can measure the way its gravity affects faraway galaxies, but they've never detected it directly before.

That's why an international group of researchers built the experiment at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory. The vat is filled with 3.2 metric tons of liquid xenon, and those atoms interact with tiny particles when they collide. Each interaction, or "event," produces a flash of light and sheds electrons.

In theory, this experiment is sensitive enough to detect interactions with particles of dark matter.

The XENON Experiment underground. At left is the water tank with a poster showing what's inside; at right is the three-story service building. The Xenon Experiment

In the latest version of the experiment, researchers expected the machine to detect 232 events within a year, based on known particles. But instead, it detected 285 events — 53 more than predicted.

What's more, the amount of energy released in those extra events corresponded with the predicted energies of a yet-undiscovered particle called the solar axion: a type of particle that physicists have hypothesized exists but never observed.

"The hypothetical particle that could potentially explain the XENON data is one that is much too heavy to be dark matter, but could be created by the sun," Sean Carroll, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology who is not affiliated with XENON, told Business Insider. "If that were true, it would be hugely important — it would be a Nobel Prize-winning finding."

It's also possible, however, that the interactions were anomalies, which pop up all the time in highly sensitive physics experiments like XENON.
A new particle forged in the heart of the sun

A huge, handle-shaped prominence erupting from the sun on September 14, 1999.
ESA/NASA/SOHO

Particle physicists study the smallest, most fundamental components of the universe: elementary particles like quarks and gluons, along with forces like gravity and electromagnetism.

"Particle physics is an important part of modern physics, but it's also been stuck for a long while," Carroll said. "The last truly surprising discovery in particle physics was in the 1970s."

That's when what's known as the Standard Model was established — a set of all the rules known to particle physics, which describe all the particles scientists have detected and how they interact with one another.

"With it we can essentially explain every single thing we see in a particle-physics laboratory," Aaron Manalaysay, a dark-matter physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who is unaffiliated with XENON, told Business Insider. "It's probably the most accurate scientific model in history. But we also have good reason to think that it's not the most fundamental model of nature that exists."

Engineers assembling the XENON experiment's electric-field cage.
The XENON Experiment

Physicists have hints that the model doesn't fully capture the way our universe behaves — their indirect observations of dark matter are among those hints. But they have yet to directly detect a particle that lies beyond the Standard Model.

That's why it would be a big deal if XENON really has found a solar axion.

"That would be the first concrete discovery of something beyond the Standard Model," Manalaysay said. "That's kind of the holy grail right now of particle physics."

Carroll agreed — but he added that the unprecedented nature of the potential discovery "is one of the reasons we think it's probably not there."

In other words, without further evidence, nobody is celebrating yet.

For now, several other theories could also explain the extra events XENON researchers saw.

Misbehaving neutrinos could point to a 'new physics'

The top array of photomultiplier tubes on the XENON experiment, with the electric cables.
The XENON Experiment

Another possible explanation for XENON's 53 extra events is that neutrinos — a subatomic particle with no electrical charge — could have driven the interactions.

That would also defy the known laws of physics, though, since it would mean that neutrinos have a magnetic field much larger than what the Standard Model predicts.

"That could point potentially to new physics beyond the Standard Model," Manalaysay said.

A cryostat hanging from the support structure within the water tank of the XENON experiment. The XENON Experiment

It wouldn't be the first time neutrinos have broken the rules. According to the Standard Model, neutrinos shouldn't have mass — yet they do. The discovery that they have a sizable magnetic field would be yet another clue that something is missing from the model.

"Neutrinos are really strange beasts, and we don't really understand them," Manalaysay said.
Larger, more sensitive dark-matter experiments are coming
 

The XENON1T data-acquisition system room at the Gran Sasso lab in Italy.
The XENON Experiment

It's also possible that XENON's extra events didn't happen at all — though that's unlikely. The researchers calculated a chance of two in 10,000 that the detected events were due to random fluctuation.

The signals may have come from other mundane particle interactions, however, making their explanation far less interesting than axions or neutrinos. The extra events could have come from tiny amounts of tridium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, decaying inside the vat. Argon isotopes would produce a similar effect, according to Manalaysay.

"It wouldn't take much. It would just take a few atoms," he said, adding that a number of other things unknown to the researchers could also be responsible for the excess interactions.

"We've gone down this road before, where there's a little bit of an anomaly that you aren't expecting ... and then it goes away," Carroll said. "So this is clearly a place where you need to do a better experiment, and they're planning to do exactly that."

The XENON1T Time Projection Chamber after assembly.
The Xenon Experiment

A new generation of XENON-like experiments, currently in the works in the US and Europe, should help researchers study these extra events and determine which particles are causing them. That's because the new experiments will be larger and significantly more sensitive.

"If this is real, we will absolutely see it in our next generation of experiments," Manalaysay said. He has worked with one such effort, called the Large Underground Xenon dark-matter experiment. "It's like you're going into a quieter and quieter room ... You start hearing new things you couldn't hear in a louder room."

Whereas XENON picked up 53 unexplained events, the successor to LUX — called LUX-ZEPLIN — could detect 800, according to Manalaysay. Despite delays caused by the coronavirus, he added, new experiments will likely be running and returning results "within the next year."

"It's like a teaser," he said. "The season's finale ends on a cliff-hanger, and you've got to wait until the next season."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Trump says he's heard 'interesting' things about Roswell

AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press•June 18, 2020

President Donald Trump says he’s heard some interesting things about Roswell, but he’s not sharing even with his eldest child.

Trump made the comments Thursday in a Father’s Day-themed interview with his son Don Trump Jr., hosted by the president's reelection campaign. Don Jr. wound down his interview by jokingly asking his Dad/President if he would ever divulge more information about Roswell, the New Mexico city known for its proximity to arguably most famous UFO event — “and let us know what’s really going on.”

Trump responded, “I won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting.”

In 1947, a rancher discovered unidentifiable debris in his sheep pasture outside Roswell. Air Force officials said it was a crashed weather balloon, but skeptics questioned whether it was in fact at extraterrestrial flying saucer. Decades later the U.S. military acknowledged the debris was related to a top-secret atomic project. Still, the UFO theory has flourished.

The president in the past has spoken skeptically about the possibility that there is something out there. Last year Trump said he received short briefing on UFO sighting, but also offered: “People are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”

After his father offered that he heard some “interesting” things about Roswell, Trump Jr. asked the president might declassify that information someday.

“Well, I’ll have to think about that one,” the president responded.


ACTUAL US NAVY SCREEN CAPTURE 2014 INCIDENT WITH UFO

Trump also divulged that he watched “a couple” of episodes of Netflix’s “Tiger King.” Joseph Maldonado-Passage, known as Joe Exotic, the star of the popular docuseries, is serving a 22-year prison sentence after he was convicted for hiring a hit man to murder a rival, the animal-rights activist.

Trump said during a April press briefing he was unfamiliar with the “Tiger King” when asked about Don Jr. jokingly saying on a radio show that he was lobbying the president for a pardon for Maldonado-Passage.

The president on Thursday did not say when he was considering a pardon but sounded intrigued by Maldonado-Passage.

“That’s a whole strange deal going on,” Trump said. “I’ll tell you that’s a strange guy and a lot of strange people surrounding him.”

NAACP And 60 Other Groups Call On Congress To Cancel Student Debt

Adam S. Minsky, Esq.Senior Contributor
Personal Finance
I’m an attorney focused on helping student loan borrowers.


GETTY

A coalition of over 60 organizations including the NAACP, American Federation of Teachers, and the National Consumer Law Center are calling on Congress to cancel student loan debt as part of the next stimulus package.

In a letter addressed to congressional leaders of both parties in the House and the Senate, the coalition noted that the economy remains in grim shape, while student loan protections under the CARES Act are scheduled to expire in just a few months.

“Without a comprehensive long-term solution, the CARES Act suspension of federal student loans for eighty percent of borrowers merely kicks the problem down the road to this fall,” the organizations wrote. “Many [student loan borrowers] will face the daunting prospect starting in October of choosing between paying for necessities including food, medical care, and rent, or making their student loan payment. The next stimulus package must take the necessary steps to ensure economic recovery down the line: this means federal student debt cancellation.”
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The coalition of organizations noted that 43 million Americans would benefit from student loan forgiveness. The letter endorsed various proposals already put forth by House and Senate Democrats to cancel student debt.

Citing academic and economic research, the groups noted that, “Canceling student debt would also boost the economy for everyone in the medium-to-long term. It would boost GDP by up to $108 billion a year, and add up to 1.5 million jobs per year. Research by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that federal student debt cancellation increases borrowers’ incomes by about $3,000 over a three-year period.”

Other organizations that signed on to the letter include the Center for Responsible Lending, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and the National Women’s Law Center, along with various other consumer protection organizations.

In May, the House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act, a massive second stimulus bill that provided for targeted student loan forgiveness for both federal and private student loans, along with hundreds of billions of dollars in additional economic relief. The bill passed the House largely on a party-line vote. But Senate GOP leaders rejected the bill, declaring it to be “dead on arrival” before it even passed.

Republican leaders in the Senate, as well as Trump administration officials, have indicated an openness to another stimulus bill, although a second round of relief is unlikely to be passed until July at the soonest. Republican congressional leaders have not said much recently about student loan relief, but they have not supported the idea of student loan forgiveness to date.
Further Reading

Will There Be A Second Student Loan Stimulus Package?

The CARES Act Was Supposed To Help Student Loan Borrowers, But For Many, It Has Failed

Student Loan Borrowers In CARES Act Forbearance Can’t Buy Or Refi Homes

Veterans’ And Consumer Groups “Heartbroken” After Trump Vetoes Student Loan Relief Bill

House Passes HEROES Act With Limits On Student Loan Relief – What’s Next?

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Adam S. Minsky, Esq.
I’m an attorney with a unique practice devoted entirely to helping student loan borrowers. I provide counsel, legal assistance, and direct advocacy for borrowers on a variety of student loan-related matters including repayment management, default resolution, and servicing troubleshooting. I have been interviewed by major national media outlets including The New York Times, NPR, and The Washington Post, and I’ve been named a Massachusetts Super Lawyer “Rising Star” every year since 2015. I regularly present to companies, schools, and professional associations about the latest developments in higher education financing, and I’ve published three handbooks to help student loan borrowers manage their debt. I’m also a contributing author to the National Consumer Law Center’s manual, Student Loan Law, as well as various law review articles. I received my undergraduate degree, with honors, in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, and my law degree from Northeastern University School of Law.

Trump Releases Ad Claiming Osama Bin Laden ‘Endorsed’ Biden

Andrew SolenderForbes Staff

Business

I cover politics and the 2020 election

TOPLINE

 

President Trump appeared on his son Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast ‘Triggered’ on Thursday, where he released an ad claiming Osama Bin Laden “endorsed” Joe Biden, predicted Democrats would work with him if wins a second term, and said there would be “tremendous bedlam” if Biden wins in November.

WASHINGTON, DC - June 18: President Donald Trump joins son Donald Trump Jr. on his podcast, ... [+]

 DONALD J. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT, INC.

KEY FACTS

Asked about reports that documents seized in a raid on Bin Laden’s compound revealed a plan to assassinate former President Obama to install Biden as president, which Obama officials said was never a serious threat, Trump said “we’re going to immediately make a commercial out of that if that’s true.”

Trump Jr. then unveiled an ad as a “Father’s Day present,” approved by Trump, which claimed Biden was “endorsed” by Bin Laden and called Biden “China’s candidate, Iran’s candidate and Osama’s candidate.”

Trump called Biden “unequipped” and “in no condition” to be president, and described him as “China’s dream,” just a day after former National Security Adviser John Bolton released an excerpt from his forthcoming book in which he claims Trump pleaded with Chinese President Xi Jinping to help Trump win reelection and praised Xi’s plan to build concentration camps for Uighur Muslims.

Trump predicted Democrats in Congress “are gonna say let’s work with the president” if he wins reelection and said if the Democrats win in November, “we are literally going to end up in a recession/depression the likes of which you’ve never seen. There will be tremendous negative growth. There will be tremendous bedlam all over the place,” adding “the whole country will be Minneapolis.”

Trump touted his “law and order” response to the George Floyd protests, saying he prevented other cities from looking like Minneapolis by “sending the troops in” and calling the deployment of National Guard troops in Minneapolis “so beautiful.”

TANGENT

Donald Trump Jr. asked his father if he would “open up Roswell,” referring to conspiracy theories that claim the government covered up the crash of an alien UFO in Roswell, N.M., in 1947. "So many people ask me that question,” Trump replied. “There are millions and millions of people who want to go and see it. I won't tell you what I know about it, but it's very interesting." Trump also said he’ll “think about” declassifying the Roswell files.

BIG NUMBER

12%. Trump claimed that in the 2016 election, he “got a lot of Bernie Sanders voters. A very good percentage. People were shocked,” adding that it was “Mostly because of trade. Because the one thing Bernie Sanders was right on was trade.” Trump won 12% of Sanders voters in 2016, according to one survey of 50,000 voters. Trump also predicted “I think I'm gonna have it again this time." An ABC poll in March found that 15% of Sanders’ 2020 supporters–a smaller group than in 2016–would vote for Trump if Biden became the nominee. Sanders has since dropped out and endorsed Biden.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

Asked about his post-presidency plans, Trump said he’s going to “sit back, relax and enjoy watching a great country,” adding “hopefully we’ll have someone in who can keep it great.”

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Andrew Solender

Rookie trader kills himself after seeing a negative balance of more than $700,000 in his Robinhood account


Published: June 18, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

It's a scary time to be a rookie trader. GETTY

The stock market, particularly in its current state, is no place for amateurs.

Sullimar Capital analyst Bill Brewster delivered that message to followers in a heartbreaking Twitter TWTR, -0.90% thread in which he shared a family member’s tragic foray into trading.

Here’s the full story

Alex Kearns, just 20 years old, left this note, which Forbes posted on Wednesday: “How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars worth of leverage?”

Robinhood declined to share any details of the trading account and how such outsized losses piled up but did say that the company was aware of the situation.

“All of us at Robinhood are deeply saddened to hear this terrible news and we reached out to share our condolences with the family,” the spokesperson told MarketWatch on Sunday.

Here’s a screenshot of his account:

The balance displayed in red, as Forbes explained, may not have represented uncollateralized indebtedness at all, but rather a temporary balance until his option trades settled.

The death serves as a reminder that trading stocks can have devastating real-life consequences. This has perhaps never been more true than when it comes to using borrowed cash to leverage positions in a stock market where the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.15% can be down almost 2,000 points one session, like last week, then rebound nearly 500 points the next.

Inexperienced traders have been cited as a driving factor in the big bounce of the market’s late-March lows and the recent volatility. Deutsche Bank analyst Parag Thatte suggests that Wall Street professionals are being forced to chase amateurs who continue to bid up equities.

Read:It’s like the Wild West with ‘get-rich-quick crowd’ vs. Wall Street pros, but it’s too easy to blame retail investors for ‘rampant speculation’

CNBC’s Jim Cramer last week also addressed the dangers of the current climate.

“It got too easy, and now we all have to suffer as the get-rich-quick crowd gets blown out,” he said on his “Mad Money” show, describing the current environment as one of “rampant speculation.”

20-Year-Old Robinhood Customer Dies By Suicide After Seeing A $730,000 Negative Balance

Sergei Klebnikov Forbes Staff 6/18/2020 Antoine Gara Forbes Staff


Alexander E. Kearns. KEARNS FAMILY

With additional reporting by John Dobosz and Jeff Kauflin

The note found on his computer by his parents on June 12, 2020, asked a simple question. “How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars worth of leverage?” The tragic message was written by Alexander E. Kearns, a 20-year-old student at the University of Nebraska, home from college and living with his parents in Naperville, Illinois. Earlier that day, Kearns took his own life.

Like so many others, Kearns took up stock investing during the pandemic, signing up with Millennial-focused brokerage firm Robinhood, which offers commission-free trading, a fun and easy-to-use mobile app and even awards new customers free shares of stock. During the first quarter of 2020, Robinhood added a record 3 million new accounts to its platform. As the Covid-19 stock market swung wildly, Kearns had begun experimenting, trading options. His final note, filled with anger toward Robinhood, says that he had “no clue” what he was doing.

In fact, a screenshot from Kearns’ mobile phone reveals that while his account had a negative $730,165 cash balance displayed in red, it may not have represented uncollateralized indebtedness at all, but rather his temporary balance until the stocks underlying his assigned options actually settled into his account.

Silicon Valley-based Robinhood is not sharing details of Kearns’ account, citing privacy concerns: “All of us at Robinhood are deeply saddened to hear this terrible news and we reached out to share our condolences with the family over the weekend.”

It’s impossible to know all of the factors contributing to suicide, especially in young people. Still, the tragic demise of Alexander Kearns is a cautionary tale of the serious risks associated with the race to the bottom in the brokerage business. Robinhood, E-Trade, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Interactive Brokers, Fidelity and even Merrill Lynch have all embraced commission-free trading and zero-minimum balances in an effort to attract younger customers, many of whom have little understanding of the securities and markets they are dabbling in.

“I thought everything was going fine,” says Bill Brewster, Kearns’ cousin-in-law and a research analyst at Chicago-based Sullimar Capital Group. His father said he was loving the markets and really enjoying investing, Brewster told Forbes, “and then on Friday night, we got this call from his mom, and he had died.”

Kearns apparently fell into despair late Thursday night after looking at his Robinhood account, which appeared to have $16,000 in it but also showed a cash balance of negative $730,165. In his final note, seen by Forbes, Kearns insisted that he never authorized margin trading and was shocked to find his small account could rack up such an apparent loss.

“When he saw that $730,000 number as a negative, he thought that he had blown up his entire future,” says Brewster. “I mean this is a kid that when he was younger was so conscious about savings.”

Although Robinhood won’t release the details of his account, it‘s possible that Kearns was trading what’s known as a “bull put spread.” Put options give buyers the right to sell the stock at the strike price anytime until expiration, while put-sellers are on the hook to buy the underlying stock at the strike price, if assigned. This happens automatically at expiration if the price of the underlying stock closes that day at a price one penny or more below the strike price.

In Kearns’ note, he says that the puts he bought and sold “should have cancelled out,” because normally a bull put spread involves selling put options at a higher strike price, and buying puts at a lower strike price, both with the same expiration. The trade generates a net credit, which the options trader keeps if the stock price stays above the higher strike price through expiration. It’s generally considered a limited risk strategy because the simultaneous purchase and sale of put options means the maximum loss on a per-share basis is the difference between the strike prices, less the amount earned when the puts are sold initiating the trade.

There can be wrinkles, however, when the price of the underlying stock at expiration is between the two strike prices, or in the case of early assignment, which may have occurred in Kearns’ account.

Here’s an example of how a bull put spread could produce an unexpectedly large stock position in your portfolio. On June 16, Amazon (AMZN) trades at $2,615 per share. If you’re neutral to bullish on Amazon, you could sell put options that expire on July 17 with a $2,615 strike price for $28 per option. To limit your risk, the other leg of the trade is to purchase puts at a lower strike price, $2,610, for a cost of $26. That two-dollar differential (multiplied by 100) generates $200 for every contract you sell. Do three contracts and you generate $600. If Amazon closes on July 17 above $2,615, you’re in the clear and keep all of the proceeds, as both puts expire worthless. If the stock closes below $2610, you will encounter your maximum loss of $900: $5.00 (difference between strike prices) minus $2.00 (proceeds earned up front) times three contracts.

When the stock closes between the two strike prices, the put you bought at the lower strike price expires worthless, but the one you sold is in the money and legally binds you to buy the stock at the strike price. In the case of three contracts of $2,615 Amazon puts, that would be $784,500 to purchase 300 shares. Over a weekend, say, you may see a –$784,500 debit to buy the stock, but you would not see the stock among your holdings until Monday.

Kearns may not have realized that his negative cash balance displaying on his Robinhood home screen was only temporary and would be corrected once the underlying stock was credited to his account. Indeed it’s not uncommon for cash and buying power to display negative after the first half of options are processed but before the second options are exercised—even if the portfolio remains positive.

“Tragically, I don’t even think he made that big of a mistake. This is an interface issue, they have slick interfaces. Confetti popping everywhere,” says Brewster referring to the shower of colorful confetti Robinhood routinely deploys after customers make trades. “They try to gamify trading and couch it as investment.”

Says Robinhood: “We are committed to continuously improving our platform and are reviewing our options offering to determine if any changes may be appropriate.”

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741.


Sergei Klebnikov
I am a New York—based reporter for Forbes covering breaking news, with a focus on financial topics. Previously, I wrote about investing for Money Magazine  

Antoine Gara
I’m a staff writer and associate editor at Forbes, where I cover finance and investing. My beat includes hedge funds, private equity, fintech, mutual funds, mergers, 

'Robinhood is not behind the rally,’ Barclays says as retail demand surges

Ethan Wolff-Mann Senior Writer Yahoo Finance June 12, 2020

Unemployment may be at 13.3% — and maybe even up to 5 percentage points higher — but retail investors, the regular folks of the investing world, are jumping into the market, channelling their inner Warren Buffett to be greedy when others are fearful.

Many narratives have emerged both on Wall Street and in the financial media that these new investors, using zero-cost brokerages like Robinhood to trade stocks, could be joining the Federal Reserve and the government’s coronavirus response in pushing the stock market up.

But in a research note circulated to clients Friday, Barclays said no, “Robinhood is not behind the rally.” Using the popular Robintrack database that offers insight on most popular positions and changes, analysts from Barclays Investment Sciences wrote that since March 2020, when the market bottomed out, stocks have generally done worse when Robinhood users get interested.

“We have seen the opposite of the conventional wisdom—all else equal, more Robinhood customers moving into a stock has corresponded to lower returns, rather than higher,” the analysts wrote.

Though the Robinhood user holdings of S&P 500 ETF jumped in-line with the market’s gains, spikes in holdings of those ETFs didn’t correspond with spikes in the market.

If there isn’t a relationship between Robinhood activity and the overall market, what about individual stocks?

“It is undeniable that there are many examples of big stock gains coming along with big increases in Robinhood customer holdings. For example, Amazon has been a strong performer, gaining 45% since mid-March 2020 vs roughly flat for the S&P 500,” the Barclays note said. “But just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean one causes the other.”

Furthermore, they wrote, low-performing stocks have also seen big bumps.

“COTY has been the worst performing name in the S&P 500 since mid-March 2020. But the number of Robinhood accounts that hold COTY has increased sixfold, a much bigger gain than that for Amazon,” the note said.

UKRAINE - 2020/05/02: In this photo illustration a Robinhood logo seen displayed on a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Still, many disagree

Influential investor and billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach, speaking in an online presentation this week, said there was "something unnerving that's going on in this rally," and it "seems to be driven by a lot of rampant speculation." 

Yes, Gundlach was talking about Robinhood. The “bond king” brought up a chart from Robintrack data and pointed to the rise of accounts and activity to the coronavirus lockdown, with a particular acceleration when the stimulus checks hit.

To Gundlach, this is an explanation, or at least part of one, to what’s driving the market, especially in the big tech stocks, because money just isn't flowing from institutional investors.

Other market watchers, like analysts at Goldman Sachs, have highlighted surges in new accounts, noting the "continued surge in retail investor trading activity has helped boost the growth stocks most popular with hedge funds."

Deutsche Bank’s Parag Thatte, who also looked at Robintrack data, mused that there seems to be a lot of evidence that retail investors are getting in on this rally and, like, Gundlach, saw flows markedly different for retail investors than other groups. In particular, Thistle noted that Robinhood accounts holding mega cap stocks (at least $200 billion market cap) rose by 50% during the lockdown.
Robinhood is not Vanguard

The focus on Robinhood activity makes some sense given the company’s role as a disruptor. It established free trades — making others do the same — and is pretty, modern, and millennial- and mobile-friendly. But does it deserve the constant callouts in analyst notes? 


Maybe, since its data is available via Robintrack, which might be useful to someone. And anecdotally, its 3 million accounts added so far this year (as of May 4) and its adoption of fractional shares mean that a lot of people may end up using the app.

But is Robinhood activity enough to move the market? Judging from the popularity of the ability to buy less than a share at a time — the volumes just might not be that big. Although Robinhood’s assets under management is not public, it likely is miniscule compared to the big players of retail money: BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab. 
However, what if Robinhood’s popularity is a proxy for something else? 

Nicholas Colas, a former hedge fund manager who writes the DataTrek newsletter, said Google Trends will tell you what the retail market is thinking. “It’s certainly a thing,” he wrote. “If you use Google Trends, look at search volumes for ‘buy stocks’ over the last year. Huge interest pickup.”

One likely scenario is the internalized message of “buy low, sell high,” something that my colleague Myles Udland has also wondered. That, combined with everybody knowing the Buffett aphorism about when to be greedy might have affected some people’s behavior.

It sure worked for 401(k) shops like Fidelity, Vanguard, and T. Rowe Price, who told their investors to “stay the course”: Most of them followed the advice.

Just like how people didn’t panic and sell their 401(k)s holdings, perhaps they saw stocks with prices that seemed really low and decided to jump in.

Colas also pointed out that while it’s hard to know the effects of fractional share ownership — you can own less than a share on SoFi, Robinhood, Schwab, and others — it might have an outsized effect, especially given people aren’t always shy about using margin on these platforms.

This, he added, “probably” has contributed to the market run-up.

“The system isn’t really tuned to accommodate lots of small orders,” he wrote. “Market making algos only know the recent past, so seeing higher order volumes and fewer limit orders suddenly appear may have had an impact.”

Robinhood users have increasingly become interested in struggling stocks that are even going bankrupt, like J.C. Penney and Hertz, wading past day-trading into outright speculation given the volatility of these companies’ prices.

In addition to trading with bankrupt companies, a Sundial Capital Research note that examined Robinhood user behavior found a 13.1% rise in accounts with short ETF positions versus a 1.2% drop in accounts that had their long counterpart and a 13.1% rise in short ETFs, the largest net difference in two years.

“Maybe Robinhood will stick around and this can develop into a reliable indicator of retail sentiment,” wrote Sundial Capital’s CEO Jason Goepfert. “More likely, volatility will pick up, users will move on to their regular jobs and sports betting, and interest in the platform will wane.”

--

Rio Tinto to review policy amid furor over caves

By David Winning WSJ 6/18/2020

SYDNEY--Rio Tinto PLC said it will review how its iron-ore division tackles issues related to the heritage of indigenous people, after blasting ancient rock shelters during an expansion of its operations in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

On Friday, Rio Tinto said the board-led review would focus on the destruction of the 46,000-year-old caves at Juukan Gorge and appraise its internal heritage standards. It aims to publish a final report in October, and would seek input from employees and indigenous group.

Rio Tinto is facing mounting pressure over the destruction of the caves that are sacred to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people.

On June 11, lawmakers in Western Australia state said they would investigate the destruction of the caves, including decisions made by Rio Tinto's management and the extent to which it consulted with indigenous people beforehand. The inquiry's terms of reference also takes in how approvals for mining activities are provided under the nearly 50-year-old Aboriginal Heritage Act.


Rio Tinto has apologised to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people and said it would fully cooperate with the inquiry in Western Australia.

"The decision to conduct a board-led review of events at Juukan Gorge reflects our determination to learn lessons from what happened and to make any necessary improvements to our heritage processes and governance," Rio Tinto Chairman Simon Thompson said on Friday.

Twitter again slaps ‘manipulated media’ label on a Trump tweet

Tweet was shoddily manipulated to resemble a CNN video


Published: June 18, 2020 at 10:38 p.m. ET By Mike Murphy

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Twitter Inc. flagged a tweet by President Donald Trump that featured doctored video as “manipulated media” Thursday night.

Trump posted the minute-long video, which was shoddily manipulated to resemble a CNN video, with the headline “Terrified todler [sic] runs from racist baby.”



“You may not deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm,” Twitter TWTR, -0.90% said in the link from its warning label. “In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context.”

Twitter has been more forceful recently in challenging Trump’s tweets, first flagging one of his tweets featuring a doctored video of Joe Biden as “manipulated media” in March.

Thursday’s move by Twitter came the same day that Facebook Inc. FB, +0.17% removed a Trump-Pence campaign ad that prominently displayed a symbol used by Nazi Germany.

Some on social media speculated that Trump is looking to provoke another headline-grabbing showdown with social-media companies amid a flurry of bad news for his campaign, including sinking poll numbers, disturbing allegations from former adviser John Bolton, rising coronavirus cases and continued tension over racial injustice.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department proposed rolling back legal protections that internet companies such as Twitter and Facebook have had for more than two decades, though such a change would have to be approved by Congress

AMERIKA
From Columbus to Confederates, Anger About Statues Boils Over

Sarah Mervosh, Simon Romero and Lucy Tompkins,

The New York Times•June 17, 2020

Workers remove the statue of Juan de Oñate from outside the Albuquerque Museum in Albuquerque, N.M., on Tuesday, June 16, 2020. (Adria Malcolm/The New York Times)The boiling anger that exploded in the days after George Floyd gasped his final breaths is now fueling a national movement to topple perceived symbols of racism and oppression in the United States, as protests over police brutality against African Americans expand to include demands for a more honest accounting of all American history.

In Portland, Oregon, demonstrators protesting against police killings turned their ire to Thomas Jefferson, toppling a statue of the Founding Father who also enslaved more than 600 people.

In Richmond, Virginia, a statue of Italian navigator and colonizer Christopher Columbus was spray-painted, set on fire and thrown into a lake.

And in Albuquerque, New Mexico, tensions over a statue of Juan de Oñate, a 16th-century colonial governor exiled from New Mexico over cruel treatment of Native Americans, erupted in street skirmishes and a blast of gunfire before the monument was removed Tuesday.

Across the country, monuments criticized as symbols of historical oppression have been defaced and brought down at warp speed in recent days. The movement initially set its sights on Confederate symbols and examples of racism against African Americans but has since exploded into a broader cultural moment, forcing a reckoning over such issues as European colonization and the oppression of Native Americans.

In New Mexico, it has surfaced generations-old tensions among indigenous, Hispanic and Anglo residents and brought 400 years of turbulent history bubbling to the surface.

“We’re at this inflection point,” said Keegan King, a member of Acoma Pueblo, which endured a massacre of 800 or more people directed by Oñate, the brutal Spanish conquistador. The Black Lives Matter movement, he said, had encouraged people to examine the history around them, and not all of it was merely written in books.

“These pieces of systemic racism took the form of monuments and statues and parks,” King said.

The debate over how to represent the uncomfortable parts of American history has been going on for decades, but the traction for knocking down monuments seen in recent days raises new questions about whether it will result in a fundamental shift in how history is taught to new generations.

“It is a turning point insofar as there are a lot of people now who are invested in telling the story that historians have been laying down for decades,” said Julian Maxwell Hayter, a historian and associate professor at the University of Richmond.

He said that statues removed from parks and street corners could be teaching points if they are placed in museums, side-by-side with documents and first-person accounts from the era.

“Let’s say you put a Columbus statue in a museum and you show students the way Columbus was lionized in a history textbook and you have them read ‘Devastation of the Indies’ by de Las Casas,” he said. “Then you have to ask, why were people invested in telling this particular version of Christopher Columbus’ history?”

The calls to bring down monuments have spanned far and wide, in large cities like Philadelphia and rural places like Columbus, Mississippi, touching both relatively obscure historical figures and deeply revered cultural symbols.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, the statue of a former newspaper publisher who was also a white supremacist was removed on Tuesday. In Sacramento, a tribute to John Sutter, a settler famous for his role in the California gold rush who enslaved and exploited Native Americans, was taken down this week. And in Dallas, construction crews recently removed a statue of a Texas Ranger, long seen as a mythical figure in Texas folklore, amid concerns over historical episodes of police brutality and racism within the law enforcement agency.

The push has largely been welcomed by activists from the Black Lives Matter movement who see Confederate and other monuments as reminders of the oppressive history that created the reality they are battling today. But some of them worried that the focus on historic symbols would do little to keep attention on the more pressing issue of ending the brutal treatment of many African Americans by the police.

“I don’t know if I would say a distraction, because I think people definitely have the ability to be nuanced,” said Alisha Sonnier, a 24-year-old mental health advocate from St. Louis who is concerned that taking down statues could be an “easy appeasement.”

“The statue being removed is not going to keep anyone from dying,” she said. “It’s not going to save a life.”

Cleon Jones, a 77-year-old activist in Africatown, Alabama, formed on Mobile Bay by the last known shipment of slaves to the United States from Africa, said he felt frustrated by the notion that progress toward equality could be stalled by rancor over Confederate monuments.

“We’ve got to move forward, not look back,” he said. “As long as we are dealing with these statues, we’re not moving forward.”

The focus on removing statues has revealed deep civil divisions far outside the Black Lives Matter movement that are hundreds of years in the making. It has spurred a backlash among Italian Americans who have long regarded Columbus as a point of pride, and also among some Hispanics in New Mexico, who celebrate an era when Anglos did not dominate public life in New Mexico.

“We need to have a broader discussion about our history,” said Christine Flowers, a 58-year-old Italian American immigration lawyer, who was among a group that gathered to protect a statue of Columbus in Philadelphia.

But she added, “It is indefensible to try to erase that history by pulling down something that is very dear and very symbolic for the culture of Italian Americans in Philadelphia.”

In Columbus, Mississippi, a largely African American town, county officials voted Monday to keep a towering monument to Confederate soldiers — “our heroes,” it calls them — on the courthouse lawn despite mounting calls for its removal.

“It’s a good time to learn some history,” said Trip Hairston, a white county supervisor who opposed removing the monument. “I don’t agree with all that history, of course, but it is what it is — it’s history.”

It was an argument that left many of those pushing to remove the statue perplexed. “It’s commemorating and celebrating a lost battle — I don’t understand,” said David Horton, 28, a lifelong resident of Columbus who first fought against a Confederate monument as a seventh grader at Robert E. Lee Middle School.

“These are things I have to endure all my life as a young African American man living in Mississippi,” he said. “It’s always made me feel inferior, it’s always made me feel like I shouldn’t hold my head up.”

Symbols of the Confederacy and its legacy of slavery have long been at the center of the reckoning over historic racism in the country.

At least 114 Confederate symbols were removed in the years after a white supremacist killed nine people at a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, according to a 2019 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The killing of Floyd in Minneapolis reenergized that movement, as demonstrators chipped away at a 52-foot Confederate obelisk in Birmingham, Alabama, and toppled a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, in Richmond.

The statues debate has once again focused attention on Columbus, the voyager who emerged as a symbol of Italians’ contribution to American history in the late 1800s, a time when discrimination against Italians was rampant. But many in recent days are also talking about how his arrival signaled the beginning of a violent European colonization that resulted in a cross-Atlantic slave trade and the genocide and displacement of many indigenous peoples.

Columbus statues from Boston to Miami have been brought down or defaced by protesters. A large Columbus statue was defaced with red graffiti in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York defended a towering monument to the explorer at Columbus Circle in Manhattan.

“I understand the feelings about Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which nobody would support,” the governor said this week. “But the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian American contribution to New York. So for that reason, I support it.”

In Philadelphia, supporters went to court to block the removal of a Columbus statue after another statue, of Frank Rizzo, a former mayor known for discriminatory policies, was removed by the city this month in the middle of the night. “You just can’t let the mob rule,” said George Bochetto, a lawyer who filed the petition.

Tensions over the Oñate monument came to a boil Monday night in Albuquerque, when dozens of protesters engaged in shouting matches, some seeing the brutal Spanish governor as a symbol of repression, while others saw him as a positive symbol of a time before Anglos came to dominate the Southwest. Then a group of white militia members, on a self-appointed mission to protect the statue, showed up with guns.

In the mayhem that ensued, a man pulled out a weapon and shot one of the protesters, critically injuring him.

On Tuesday, the authorities in Bernalillo County filed a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon against the man with the gun, identified as Steven Baca, 31. Baca ran unsuccessfully for the Albuquerque City Council last year.

The authorities promptly removed the Albuquerque statue on Tuesday, a day after another Oñate statue was taken down in northern New Mexico.

In Minneapolis, where the demonstrations over Floyd’s death ignited new protest movements in dozens of cities, many said they never expected them to grow into an international reckoning over racist symbols. Still, they said, it was only a matter of time before the latest police killing of a black man led to something more lasting than previous protests.

“It’s kind of like a wound that has a scab,” said Teron Carter, 49, standing across the street from Cup Foods, the deli near Floyd’s fatal encounter with the police. “A wound that has a scab is still a wound, it’s just that the scab is on top. And if you scrape that scab a certain way, it reopens the wound.”

He attributed the scope of the burgeoning movement to built up grief and to the energy of young people who simply are not willing to put up with walking by Confederate and other statues each day.

“It’s not just an isolated city event,” Carter said. “Now everybody saw the opportunity and said, ‘If we don’t get in there and talk like Minneapolis is talking, then we aren’t going to be heard.’”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company