DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA

THE FIFTY

The far left (BY RIGHT WING AMERICAN STANDARDS)

 looks to seize one of the most prominent political jobs in the country

The latest iteration of the movement will face its first citywide test.



The far-left movement is making gains in New York two years after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toppled a congressional power broker and challenged the state’s political conventions. | Paul Sancya/AP Photo


By SALLY GOLDENBERG

08/12/2020 

NEW YORK — New York City’s old political guard is getting elbowed aside.

A 16-term Bronx congressman who routinely snagged prime State of the Union seats was trounced by a middle-school principal in June. A state lawmaker from Brooklyn who’d ascended to the role of assistant Assembly speaker during his 26 years in office lost to a first-time candidate with a background in tenant organizing. And in the voter-rich Southeastern section of Queens, a 24-year-old community organizer defeated the county-backed favorite for state Assembly.

Two years after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toppled a congressional power broker and challenged New York’s political conventions, the far-left movement that boosted her to the national stage has demonstrated it is here to stay.

Now, after turning away sitting politicians in Congress and Albany, the latest iteration of the movement will face its first citywide test.

New Yorkers will elect a new mayor in 2021, when term limits force out Bill de Blasio. The race provides a chance for the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party to seize its biggest electoral prize yet — one of the most prominent political jobs in America at a moment of unrivaled turmoil. The next mayor, almost certain to be a Democrat given the party’s 7-1 registration advantage in the city, will at once contend with a national call for police reform and the fallout from Covid-19, which has frozen tourism and decimated an economy that was booming only six months ago.

Negotiations on a new round of Covid relief have stalled. And that means no renewal of the eviction moratorium. We break down what could happen if the government doesn't take action quickly.

The job also provides automatic national relevance. It has a built-in bully pulpit, with the person elected to the office leapfrogging virtually every other politician in the state for regular coverage in one of the country's richest media markets.

The mayor also oversees a workforce of more than 300,000 people and a budget nearing $90 billion, providing resources to drive policies that could serve as a model for the rest of the nation. While de Blasio himself was a left-leaning candidate who won without much support from the Democratic establishment, he and the left wing of the party have grown further apart during his time in office, most recently and notably over police reform.

The Democratic Socialists of America, which backed Ocasio-Cortez’s insurgent win, claimed four new seats in the state Legislature in June’s primaries. The more established Working Families Party, another arm of the left, backed 31 winners, three of whom routed incumbents.

The slate of newcomers see their entrance into politics as their best shot at reforming the criminal justice system, increasing taxes on the wealthy, expanding social programs and restricting rent increases. Their victories mark the sharpest left turn the Democratic party has taken in New York City since the Working Families Party dominated competitive primaries in 2009.

Candidates have already begun courting a new, racially diverse set of political players who appeal to the activist movement. At a time when those looking to become mayor would be calling union leaders and influential congressional representatives, new and newly influential politicians say their phones are also ringing off the hook.

Jessica Ramos, a Queens state senator who in 2018 defeated a Democrat who had caucused with Republicans, and Public Advocate Jumaane Wiliams, who beat a sitting city councilman in an anti-establishment wave 11 years ago, have been approached for their support, they said. The Working Families Party, which veered left after its divorce from more politically conservative unions, has also been fielding candidates’ calls, a spokesperson said.

Candidates are also eying support from Jamaal Bowman, who defeated long-time Rep. Eliot Engel in the recent primary, and Alessandra Biaggi, who sent a longtime Albany powerbroker packing in 2018.

“Just a few years ago, people were leaving me out of pictures when I was running for lieutenant governor,” Williams said. “That’s a hell of a swing.”

Williams — who is running for re-election to a job that serves as a check on executive authority — said he hasn’t decided who to back. An outspoken critic of the NYPD, he said he will weigh leadership bonafides alongside reform credentials.

He was one of two dozen interviews POLITICO conducted with politicians, labor leaders and strategists that, taken together, paint a picture of shifting political winds and a group of candidates running to keep up with the changes.

The mayoral candidates are still making the usual calls to the coveted influence peddlers — union leaders, congressional representatives, pastors. The backing of 1199SEIU — the large healthcare workers union that took a risk in backing de Blasio when he was trailing the pack in 2013 — is still viewed as a prize. But now people hoping to occupy Gracie Mansion must navigate a new terrain with people who don’t play by the old rules.

“This is about regular, everyday voters who want something different, who are exhausted by just any Democrat,” said Camille Rivera, a progressive consultant with the firm New Deal Strategies. “They want Democrats who are going to speak truth to power; they want Democrats who are going to be fighting for them every single day.”

“Anyone who’s thinking that they can go middle-of-the-road in the Democratic primary now needs to change their strategy,” Rivera, who is not working for any of the candidates, said.

Politicians scrambled to recalibrate after Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, and the ensuing deep blue wave that delivered Ramos and Biaggi to Albany. They started swearing off real estate donations — something they had long been content receiving — and began calling for widespread reforms to the NYPD.

But what would otherwise be a linear strategy to win votes is complicated by an anticipated desire for a strong municipal manager during a time of profound crisis and voters who, in prioritizing that, want a message of governance over values. Covid-19 lay bare inequities in the health care system, flattened the city’s cultural and tourism sectors and left nearly a million people unemployed. Crime is on the rise and budget constraints threaten municipal layoffs.

The city’s business community, hardly a force in local elections despite their resources, is hoping to influence the conversation.

“There is great concern about the divisive politics that have characterized the Democratic primary elections that most of [the] business [community] think is counter-productive to economic recovery,” said Kathy Wylde, head of a prominent business consortium and the gatekeeper to the city’s Wall Street executives. “I do believe that there will be a number of efforts to try and mobilize greater voter participation under the theory that that will result in a more centrist approach to the challenges facing the city.”

Jordan Barowitz, spokesperson for developer Douglas Durst, suggested candidates are appealing exclusively to the left at their own peril.

“People running for office in New York City spend more time talking to the Democratic Socialists of America than they do to the business community about getting people back to work,” Barowitz said. “What is our concern? The collapse of New York’s economy, collapse of the city’s budget and ability to provide services, high unemployment, poverty.”

Maya Wiley. | D Dipasupil/Getty Images
“To run the city, especially in a crisis, everybody needs a seat at the table,” he added.

But for all their resources, New York’s business executives long ago lost their influence in mayoral races. They aren’t politically organized and they represent values anathema to many Democrats — particularly after the Occupy Wall Street movement. The city’s strict campaign finance laws further limit their leverage. And the new 8-to-1 match in the city’s public campaign finance system makes it much easier for candidates to swear off big dollar donors.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Socialists of America has no public plans to back a citywide candidate.

In a note to members obtained by POLITICO, a Queens organizer emphasized the need to build DSA’s membership beyond its stronghold in Western Queens and fortify its internal structure. “To this end, I do not think we have the capacity to endorse a candidate where we’d be the primary source of institutional support and infrastructure this year,” it concludes.

But, whether or not the group endorses a mayoral hopeful, the movement aligned with the DSA now encompasses tens of thousands of voters who are newly focused on local races.

Ahead of the Feb. 14 deadline to change party registration, 52,587 people joined the Democratic Party out of 103,093 changes in the city, according to a memo prepared by a consultant who specializes in voting data and trends.

Two-thirds of the new Democrats were previously unaffiliated with any party, meaning they could only vote in general elections, limiting their influence over city races that are largely determined in primaries. Another 18 percent of new Democrats had been Republicans, according to the memo, which was shared with POLITICO.

All told, Democrats doubled their loss of 32,020 departing voters over the prior year, according to the memo, which was prepared several months ago.

“While this is an incomplete picture of the entire state, it does point to a strong grassroots effort in key areas where progressives have gained strength and voters under 40 have increased their vote share; as well as in moderate, college-educated centers where Democratic registration is also growing,” the memo concludes.

“There's a newer portion of Democratic voters that are engaged, paying attention and informing themselves and they tend to be a little more anti-establishment and a little more left than the traditional primary voters in New York,” said Luke Hayes, who ran Bowman’s campaign.

He said newer voters are concerned about climate change, college debt and health care costs and began tuning into local politics after the 2016 election. Even if they aren’t affiliated with the DSA, they are not turned off by the Socialist label, he added.

“Post Trump, I think a lot of people were like, how did it come to this?” Hayes said.

That tension between the organized, energized far left and the more traditional forces in the city’s Democratic establishment is scrambling candidates’ strategies. They will need to marry the values of the left with the pragmatism more centrist Democrats are hungering for, strategists say. That could prove challenging in a crowded field with limited time for contenders to define themselves. Voters are unlikely to tune into the race before the presidential election in November, leaving just seven months until the primary.

Right now the top tier of the field is split among three career politicians and a former de Blasio attorney likely to jump into the race:

— Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a Black former cop, has close ties to the county Democratic machine but has seen his electoral prowess diminished considerably in recent years. He’s a relative moderate who has made unabashedly pro-gun comments and touts his law-and-order credentials.

— City Comptroller Scott Stringer has been assiduously courting support among political newcomers with early endorsements that are paying off. Ramos, for example, said she is all but certain to endorse him. He also hails from Manhattan’s influential political network on the Upper West Side, and has been making inroads in Black communities.

— City Council Speaker Corey Johnson has a charisma and New York pride that have served him well, but become less significant as the state of the city declines. He was the first candidate to publicly refuse donations from real estate executives. He recently emerged from a bloody budget negotiation and is reassessing his strategy heading into campaign season.

— Maya Wiley, who served as de Blasio’s lead attorney and an MSNBC legal analyst, is Black, would break ground as the city’s first female mayor, and also ran the city’s police accountability panel — the Civilian Complaint Review Board — under de Blasio. Her ties to the mayor — who is under fire from the left for his handling of police protests — are an electoral liability. 

— Shaun Donovan, who ran agencies in the administrations of Obama and former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, has been fundraising and hiring staff for his own bid. Bill Hyers, who managed de Blasio’s 2013 campaign, and Amelia Adams, who worked for former Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, have signed on.

Both Johnson and Stringer are counting on the advent of ranked-choice voting, which will make its debut in the city next year. The two Manhattan Democrats are angling to win a plurality of white liberals and at least come in second-place among Black voters, who are pivotal to any citywide election.

Meanwhile Open Society Foundations president Patrick Gaspard, one of de Blasio’s oldest and closest allies, has been calling people on Wiley’s behalf, according to four people familiar with his entreaties. Among his first calls was 1199, where he previously worked as political director before becoming President Barack Obama’s ambassador to South Africa.

City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, de Blasio’s pinch hitter in times of crisis, is considering jumping in on account of her extensive government experience, according to three people familiar with her thinking. Other lesser-known candidates include Dianne Morales, who runs a nonprofit, and Loree Sutton, de Blasio’s former veterans affairs commissioner.

Lupe Todd-Medina, a Democratic consultant who is so far unaffiliated with any of the candidates, said older Black voters are wary of unabashedly progressive positions. The divide, which has played out in elections throughout the country, was amplified by the recent debate in the City Council over how to rein in the budget of the NYPD. Calls to “defund” the agency — sounded by protestors following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis — were rejected by members of the Council’s Black, Latino & Asian Caucus.

Todd-Medina said the power of Black churches is a mainstay in local races and a place where moderate voices are still well received. “Technically pastors can’t endorse, but you know which ones are with who,” she said. “Everyone comes to church but there’s always one person who comes a little bit more.”

Nevertheless, the emergence of the left has sustained beyond Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset.

“People have been fed up for a while and in 2018 I think that it finally boiled over and enough people said that they weren’t going to take it anymore. And that’s why we saw a wave,” Ramos said. “This is the first city election since that wave started and I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to have an outsized influence on who our next mayor is going to be.”

This article is part of The Fifty, a new POLITICO series that looks at how state and local leaders are responding to current national challenges, from the pandemic to the economic crisis to the reckoning with race. More coverage of these issues here.

State Department watchdog finds Trump’s U.K. ambassador ‘made inappropriate or insensitive comments’

But the envoy, Woody Johnson, rejected the inspector general’s findings and recommendation.


U.S. Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson, left, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month. | Matt Dunham/AP Photo

By QUINT FORGEY
08/12/2020

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded that President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom made offensive remarks to staff at the U.S. Embassy in London, according to a report released Wednesday.
The inspector general’s office “learned, through employee questionnaires and interviews, that the Ambassador,” billionaire New York Jets co-owner Woody Johnson, “sometimes made inappropriate or insensitive comments on topics generally considered Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)-sensitive, such as religion, sex, or color.”

Such “offensive or derogatory comments, based on an individual’s race, color, sex, or religion, can create an offensive working environment and could potentially rise to a violation of EEO laws,” the IG report states, deeming that a “more thorough review by the Department is warranted.”

The IG report also found that some embassy staff “were impacted by the Ambassador’s demanding, hard driving work style,” which it stated “had a negative effect on morale in some embassy sections.”

The revelations from the department’s independent watchdog come after CNN reported last month that Johnson, a prominent Republican donor and heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, was investigated by the inspector general for his alleged remarks, as well as for allegedly using his official position to attempt to benefit the president’s personal business interests in the U.K.

The New York Times also reported last month that Johnson had discussed with Scotland’s secretary of state in 2018 the possibility of hosting the British Open golf tournament at the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland. Johnson told colleagues at the time that the president had asked him to help secure the choice of venue, the Times reported.
Johnson issued an apparent response to the media reports in a tweet last month, writing that he had “followed the ethical rules and requirements of my office at all times. These false claims of insensitive remarks about race and gender are totally inconsistent with my longstanding record and values.”

The ambassador was similarly reluctant to acknowledge any wrongdoing in Wednesday’s IG report, which recommended that the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs — in coordination with the Office of Civil Rights — assess Johnson’s “compliance with Department Equal Employment Opportunity or leadership policies” and, “based on the results of the review, take appropriate action.”

In Johnson’s response to a draft of the IG report, which he sent to the inspector general’s office in May, the ambassador asserted that throughout his government tenure, “and indeed for the entirety of my professional life,” he had “respected both the law and the spirit of EEO principles and have ensured that all employees under my direction do the same.”

“If I have unintentionally offended anyone in the execution of my duties, I deeply regret that, but I do not accept that I have treated employees with disrespect or discriminated in any way. My objective is to lead the highly talented team at Mission UK to execute the President’s policies and to do so in a way that is respectful of our differences, with zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind,” Johnson wrote.

“In order to address the concerns documented in your report, perceived or real, I have reviewed an S/OCR course on discrimination in the workplace and have instructed the entire Mission UK country team to do the same, with 100% compliance by the end of May,” he continued.

But Johnson wrote that “I respectfully disagree” with the IG report’s recommendation for an assessment of his EEO compliance, and the inspector general’s office stated that the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs also “disagreed with this recommendation” in its own response to the draft IG report last month.

“The bureau stated, that given the concern expressed, the Ambassador has viewed the Office of Civil Rights video on workplace harassment and has instructed all section and agency heads to do the same. He has also encouraged all staff to take the Foreign Service Institute training on mitigating unconscious bias,” according to the final IG report.

“The bureau also represented that the Ambassador ‘is well aware of his responsibility to set the right tone for his mission and we believe his actions demonstrate that,’” the IG report states, and the bureau “reported it did not believe a formal assessment was required.”

Instead, the bureau “proposed that, in coordination with the embassy, it would instead work with the Office of Civil Rights to provide advice and additional training to all staff, including the Chief of Mission, to heighten awareness on these important issues.”

Replying to the responses from Johnson and the bureau, the inspector general’s office stated that it “considers the recommendation unresolved,” and argued that the embassy’s actions and the bureau’s proposal “do not address the recommendation” outlined in the IG report.

The investigation by the inspector general’s office was conducted from September-December 2019, according to the IG report, and it did not appear to address the allegations against Johnson regarding Trump’s Scotland resort.

Growing number of voters oppose Trump demand to fully reopen schools

TRUMP SACRIFICES AMERICAN CHILDREN TO MOLOCH

A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll showed more than half of surveyed voters oppose reopening daycares, K-12 schools and full in-person instruction at colleges and universities.

A first-grader gets off the bus in August for his first day back to school in Saltillo, Miss. | Adam Robison/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP

By NICOLE GAUDIANO

08/12/2020 

A growing majority of voters oppose the Trump administration's demand that schools and colleges fully open for in-person instruction, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

In the survey of nearly 2,000 registered voters, 59 percent said they oppose fully reopening K-12 schools for the beginning of the academic year. Those numbers are up from polling last month that showed 53 percent opposed. 

With slightly less resistance to the idea of in-person learning for younger and older students, 56 percent of respondents said this month that they are against fully reopening daycares, in contrast to 53 percent in July's survey. For reopening colleges and universities, 57 percent said they were opposed, up from 50 percent in the previous poll.

While Senate Republicans have proposed setting aside tens of billions of dollars in new funding for schools that reopen, pluralities of registered voters believe federal money for schools should neither be increased nor decreased, regardless of whether they open virtually or for in-person instruction.

If schools resort to virtual instruction, 42 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of Republicans said federal funding should remain unchanged. Another 23 percent of Republicans said, however, that federal dollars should be decreased for those schools.

During now-stalled negotiations over what the next round of coronavirus relief could entail, GOP lawmakers have argued that schools that reopen during the coronavirus pandemic would need more funding than those that remain closed.

The new polling results come as President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos continue to push for reopening schools, even as the spread of coronavirus worsens in many regions. During a Monday briefing, Trump suggested coronavirus cases among kids make up a "tiny, tiny fraction of death" and said children "get better very quickly."

“I think it's a very important thing for the economy to get the schools going,” he said.

As Trump woos suburban voters, the new poll shows 60 percent of that electorate said they are against fully opening K-12 schools for in-person instruction this fall, with similar opposition to reopening daycares and colleges.

“Over half of suburban voters oppose the idea of reopening K-12 schools in person for the new academic year, at odds with President Trump encouraging the contrary,” said Kyle Dropp, co-founder and chief research officer at Morning Consult. “Three-quarters of suburban voters also think federal funding should be either maintained or increased for schools choosing to open virtually.”

The poll also examined student loan policies as Congress debates action to help those borrowers during the pandemic. While 85 percent of Democrats said they support allowing borrowers to defer payments — interest-free — for six months, a lesser 78 percent of independents support that plan and 75 percent of Republicans back it.

Trump on Saturday signed an executive action continuing the pause on monthly payments and interest for many federal student loan borrowers until the end of the year.

A narrower majority of voters, at 53 percent, support a plan presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has endorsed to cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt for each borrower. The poll showed most Democrats support that plan, but independents and Republicans are split.

A group of 16 Democratic lawmakers and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent a letter Tuesday to Senate leaders, calling for the pause on student loan payments to be extended to another 8 million borrowers who have not been granted relief during the pandemic and for the next coronavirus relief package to extend the payment freeze for the duration of the economic crisis.

Morning Consult is a global data intelligence company, delivering insights on what people think in real time by surveying tens of thousands across the globe every single day.

More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents: Toplines | Crosstabs

Juan Perez Jr. contributed to this story.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY


Congressman accuses State Department official of lying about weapons sales

The controversy involves Pompeo's decision to use his emergency authorities to approve the sale of military equipment worth $8 billion.


Rep. Andy Levin, shown on Capitol Hill in 2018, is questioning Mike Pompeo's decision to initiate a major arms sale in the Middle East. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo


By LARA SELIGMAN
08/12/2020

A Democratic member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is accusing a State Department official of lying to lawmakers about the nature of a major arms sale to Middle Eastern countries last year.

The controversy involves Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's decision to use his emergency authorities to approve the sale of military equipment worth $8 billion, including precision-guided weapons, to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Pompeo cited urgent threats from Iran to justify the transfer, which bypassed lawmakers who had blocked some of the deals over concerns that the weapons could be used to kill civilians in places such as Yemen.

But Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) on Tuesday night raised questions about whether an emergency ever existed, citing an inspector general report on the arms transfer released earlier in the day.

During a June hearing last year, Levin asked R. Clarke Cooper, the assistant secretary of State for political-military affairs, whether an emergency arose that necessitated the arms sale in the days between May 20 and 21, when Pompeo briefed lawmakers in a classified setting, and May 24, when the department declared the emergency. Cooper responded affirmatively.

However, an unredacted version of the IG report on the transfer shows that Pompeo told the department to start prepping the emergency declaration much earlier on May 4.

“In short: Mr. Cooper lied. Secretary Pompeo directed the invention of an emergency more than two weeks before he briefed Congress. One did not arise over the course of three days, as Mr. Cooper told me," Levin said in a statement. “This report confirms what we already know: this Administration has no qualms about lying to the American people. Rarely, however, are those lies so blatant and so dangerous as this one. If they’re willing to lie about national security, what’s next?”

A State Department spokesperson did not directly respond to Levin's accusation that Cooper lied, and instead said the situation in the Persian Gulf at the time "very clearly justified" the use of emergency authorities.

"It is clear the IG also agrees that statutory requirements were complied with, as they found no wrongdoing in the emergency arms sales and stated clearly that the Secretary properly executed the certification and complied with the requirements outlined in the Arms Export Control Act," said the spokesperson, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

The unclassified version of the report published online Tuesday concluded that, technically speaking, Pompeo acted within his authority to declare the emergency, given that the regulations involved give him considerable discretion. Yet the IG also determined the department did not fully consider the risks of civilian casualties surrounding the transfer.

The report released online gives the impression that Pompeo moved quickly on an urgent issue, briefing Congress on Iranian threats on May 21 and approving the paperwork two days later. But an unredacted version shared with lawmakers Tuesday reflects a much longer timeline, showing, for instance, that State Department staffers proposed using the emergency authorities on April 3.

The unredacted report also shows that by the time the IG began reviewing the sale in October, foreign partners had received only four of the 22 arms transfer cases included in the emergency. The low number of deliveries also raises questions about the nature of the emergency.

“The report released today is alarming for a whole host of reasons," Levin said. “But this report also holds particular significance for me personally. It proves that, on June 12, 2019, the State Department lied to me — and, by extension, to Congress and to the American people.

The report drew headlines even before its release, when Pompeo this year engineered the firing of Steve Linick, the inspector general who initiated the investigation. Linick was simultaneously looking into whether Pompeo and his wife, Susan, improperly used State Department funds for personal reasons.

Since then the State Department has tried to tightly control the narrative about the IG's conclusions, demanding major redactions ahead of the report's Tuesday release. And on Monday, the department held a background briefing with reporters designed to highlight the finding that Pompeo acted appropriately in issuing the emergency declaration, but made no mention of the shifting timelines or the determination regarding civilian casualties. The department did not release the full report until the next day.

House Foreign Affairs Chair Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) blasted the effort to put an early spin on the IG's findings before the report was released, comparing it to the Russia election interference investigation.

"The people briefing the press were the subjects of the IG’s probe, not the report’s authors," Engel said in a statement. "This obvious pre-spin of the findings reeks of an attempt to distract and mislead. Mike Pompeo is pulling directly from the Bill Barr playbook."

They saw record profits under Trump. Bankers are backing Biden anyway.

Bankers' preference for the former vice president comes even as the Trump administration has delivered in a significant way for the banks.


Former Vice President Joe Biden is a known entity to Wall Street and benefits from his longtime closeness to the financial industry. | Scott Olson/Getty Images

By ZACHARY WARMBRODT
08/11/2020

Executives and employees at the nation’s biggest banks are giving a boost to former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign for the White House, despite economic policies under President Donald Trump that produced record profits for the industry.

Contributions from individuals affiliated with the six largest lenders total $907,216 for Biden and $293,434 for Trump, according to a POLITICO review of campaign finance data. Biden has a significant fundraising advantage at every one of the banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Their preference for the former vice president comes even as Trump's administration has delivered in a significant way for the banks — making them among the main beneficiaries of his 40 percent cut in the corporate tax rate and easing Obama-era regulations. Biden has pledged to repeal some of those tax cuts and impose new fees on large financial institutions.

But in an era of growing social and racial unrest, as well as income inequality, many bankers are voting beyond their wallets in the belief that Trump is stoking those divisions, industry experts say. Many in the industry are embracing Biden’s approaches to racial equity, foreign affairs and other areas where his tone is more aligned with the leaders of global financial institutions.

"These contributions speak to the deep unease Democrats and many independents have with national policy on personal priorities such as equality, civility and constitutionality," said Federal Financial Analytics managing partner Karen Petrou, who advises bank executives on policy. The bankers, she said, are "expressing themselves as well as their company’s priorities when they make contributions."
To be sure, Biden is also a known entity to Wall Street and benefits from his longtime closeness to the financial industry. While representing Delaware in the Senate, he supported bankruptcy legislation that made it harder for consumers to escape credit card debt. More recently, he attracted controversy for telling wealthy donors at a 2019 fundraiser that "no one's standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change" for them.

And employees at the megabanks also showed a preference for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016 — she outraised him by more than 10 to 1 among these same companies. But they put their money behind Republican Mitt Romney when he ran against President Barack Obama and Biden in 2012.
The figures, aggregated by the Center for Responsive Politics, cover not only high-profile executives but also other employees at the sprawling, international corporations. They underscore a view in the banking industry that Biden would govern as a moderate despite the influence of Wall Street watchdogs like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
The contributions analyzed for this story came from individual donors at the banks and were not directed by the companies themselves, which operate separate political action committees that help fund congressional campaigns.

The wave of contributions has emerged as Biden, who will accept the Democratic presidential nomination during the party's convention next week, takes the lead over Trump in national and battleground state polls.

Trump campaign spokesperson Samantha Zager said the president is counting on ordinary voters to win reelection.

“President Trump’s campaign is powered by everyday Americans who have benefited from his bold leadership," she said. "Joe Biden has Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Banks in his pocket, and the Trump campaign still outraised him in July — not to mention we have real voter enthusiasm in our corner. President Trump will continue to prioritize hardworking Americans while Joe Biden looks out for himself.”

Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs at FreedomWorks, a conservative group, had another explanation for Biden's popularity with bankers: "It's no secret that big businesses, including big financial institutions, tend to benefit from big government policies. They're able to insulate themselves from regulation to some degree because they can afford the cost of compliance that leaves smaller institutions out in the cold."

Several senior leaders at the big banks have contributed money to Biden’s campaign, including Goldman Sachs CFO Stephen Scherr and JPMorgan general counsel Stacey Friedman. Goldman Sachs Japan Vice Chair Kathy Matsui contributed $54,600 to the Biden Victory Fund, Biden's joint fundraising operation with the Democratic National Committee. Morgan Stanley Vice Chair Thomas Nides and Wells Fargo Vice Chairman of Public Affairs Bill Daley — both former Obama administration officials — have also contributed to Biden's campaign.

While Biden has shied away from demonizing Wall Street like Warren and some other Democrats, he has pledged to raise taxes on large financial institutions and other corporations after Trump slashed the rate to 21 percent from 35 percent in 2017, helping deliver a 44 percent surge in banking industry profits in 2018. That’s the top concern of bank lobbyists who are starting to game out how Washington would approach the industry if Democrats take back power.

Yet Paul Thornell, former managing director for federal government affairs at Citigroup, said banking executives aren’t just focused on things like tax policy when it comes to showing their support for a candidate.

“They’re looking at character and how these two conduct themselves as leaders,” said Thornell, now a principal at government relations firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. “They’re looking at the issues that Trump has decided to align himself with versus the issues they think Biden would give voice to, which are probably more in line with where they are personally, the brand and reputation of their firms and the issues their employees care about.”

Still, any perceived coziness between Biden and bankers is a potential political problem as the former vice president faces pressure from progressives to crack down on big business. One Biden official said teachers are the top profession that donates to his campaign.

"Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers didn't build this country — the American middle class did," Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates said. "Donald Trump has turned his back on families struggling to get by throughout his presidency, passing a multitrillion-dollar tax giveaway to the wealthy and plunging manufacturing into a recession while creating new incentives for outsourcing American jobs — whereas Joe Biden is running to ensure that our economy rewards work, not just wealth, which is why his campaign is powered by small, grassroots donations."

Indeed, a Biden administration will likely pursue stricter banking regulation than has Trump, though it's not expected to be the kind of sea change that occurred under Obama. At that time, the global economy was reeling from a financial crisis created by Wall Street, and Democrats responded by overhauling bank regulation with the landmark 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

Now, bank lobbyists say the Biden campaign’s recent economic proposals, including those released in partnership with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), haven’t been that surprising or threatening.

Bank representatives see lots of issues where they can have constructive conversations with Democrats. They include responding to climate change, improving corporate diversity and supporting small business.

Big banks have also joined the fight against Big Tech by lobbying to stop technology companies from obtaining bank charters. Lobbyists expect Democrats to put more pressure on private equity firms than big banks, which were public enemy No. 1 when Biden became vice president in 2009.

The dynamic was on display last month when Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) — who proposed breaking up the banks after the 2008 crisis — spoke on a Goldman Sachs-hosted Zoom call commemorating the graduation of entrepreneurs from the company's “10,000 Small Businesses” program. Brown, who would likely chair the Senate Banking Committee if Democrats won back the Senate, appeared with Goldman CEO David Solomon.

Brown scolded Solomon for stock buybacks the bank pursued thanks to the Trump tax cuts but he also praised the bank’s small business efforts in Ohio.

“I hope you’ll follow up with a commitment to invest more of your, I would say, immense resources in the real economy and communities that often get overlooked by Wall Street,” Brown said. “This is an example of Goldman doing that.”

Capital Alpha Partners director Ian Katz said there are competing forces at play when it comes to how the banking industry views Biden. Biden and his regulators would generally favor tighter regulation. But Trump has been harder for banks to predict because of his populist tendencies.

“There's also the possibility that while bankers prefer Trump on matters affecting their industry, they may prefer Biden on most other things,” Katz said. “If that's the case, they could lean toward Biden because they prefer him on most matters, and while he may be less friendly than Trump is to banks, they don't think he'll be dangerously unfriendly. So when they take everything into account, they may lean toward Biden.”

FINANCE
'It means nothing': Trump’s pledge to aid tenants won’t halt evictions

Donald Trump's executive order wouldn't do much to immediately help the 20 million or so Americans who face losing their homes in the next few months.

President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020. | AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

By KATY O'DONNELL
08/11/2020

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order Saturday to shield tenants from the threat of eviction, he said it would “solve that problem largely, hopefully completely.”

Yet not only would his action fail to halt evictions, it wouldn't do much of anything to immediately help the 20 million or so Americans who face the loss of their homes in the next few months amid the coronavirus crisis.

Trump’s order does not extend the lapsed four-month eviction moratorium, which itself covered only about a quarter of the nation’s 44 million rental units. Instead, it merely directs the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control to “consider whether any measures temporarily halting residential evictions” are necessary to halt the spread of Covid-19.

Negotiations on a new round of Covid relief have stalled. And that means no renewal of the eviction moratorium. We break down what could happen if the government doesn't take action quickly.

It also provides no direct money to aid tenants in distress, who will eventually have to pay months of back rent. The departments of the Treasury and Housing and Urban Development were instructed to identify sources of funding. Neither could provide details Tuesday on how they would do that.

“It’s nothing but a political ploy,” said House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who dismissed the “so-called executive order” as a stunt designed to deflect criticism from the president. “It means nothing."

But housing advocates argue that the measure may actually be worse than doing nothing at all, by easing the urgency to reach a deal with Congress and giving renters a false sense of security.

The order will “mislead renters into believing that they are protected when they are not,” National Low Income Housing Coalition President and CEO Diane Yentel said in a statement.

“This executive order is reckless and harmful, offering false hope and risking increased confusion and chaos at a time when renters need assurance that they will not be kicked out of their homes during a pandemic,” she added.

The four-month CARES Act moratorium ended July 25, and most states are letting their own temporary protections lapse. At the same time, the federal enhancement to unemployment benefits — a $600-a-week boost that has helped struggling tenants pay at least some of their rent — has also expired.

The expiration of those benefits means somewhere between 19 million and 23 million people — about one in five renters in the U.S. — will be at risk of eviction by the end of next month, according to an analysis by the Aspen Institute. Negotiations to renew both measures as part of the next relief package broke down late last week.

Trump, questioned at his Tuesday press conference about the prospect of mass evictions, said, "We are not allowing that to happen.”

“We are stopping evictions," he added, referring to the executive order.

Waters, speaking with housing advocates on Monday, called for the urgent “passage of a statutory extension of the eviction moratorium and the creation of an emergency rental assistance fund.”

The House has passed two bills that would provide $100 billion to help tenants pay their rent, but the Senate has not moved on either piece of legislation.

Saturday’s order hints at rental assistance without specifying an amount or where Treasury and HUD should draw the money from.

HUD twice declined to provide details on what the agency plans to do differently as a result of the order. Treasury said it had no comment.

“We are in close contact with the White House and other federal agencies on the Executive Order and its implementation,” HUD spokesperson Brad Bishop said Tuesday. “We will provide additional information as these discussions continue.”

EMPLOYMENT & IMMIGRATION
‘Can’t possibly be serious’: Trump’s bid to shore up jobless aid falls short
BY REBECCA RAINEY AND MEGAN CASSELLA

The White House, meanwhile, is insisting the new order will prevent people from losing their homes.

“There will be no evictions,” economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

When the CNN anchor pressed him on whether the order actually stops evictions as some struggling tenants may believe, Kudlow said it will provide a “mechanism” to do that.

“We're setting up a process, a mechanism, OK? I can't predict the future altogether,” he said.

Could massive numbers of nursing home deaths have been prevented?

One system — California’s Veterans Affairs Department — has dramatically reduced death rates through organization, access to PPE and full staffing.

THIS IS A GLOBAL CRISIS, IN CANADA IT HIT BOTH QUEBEC AND ONTARIO ESPECIALLY HARD AS WELL.

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF NURSING AND CARE HOMES UNDER HEALTH CARE

END PRIVATIZED NURSING CARE

California Gov. Gavin Newsom gestures as CalVet Secretary Vito Imbasciani listens during a news conference at the Veterans Home of California. | Eric Risberg/Pool/AP

By MAGGIE SEVERNS

08/10/2020 

While the vast numbers of nursing home deaths have been the greatest horror of the coronavirus crisis, the system operated by California’s Department of Veterans Affairs has been a rare bright spot.

Across the country, at least 43,000 nursing home residents have died of the coronavirus. In California, at least 3,400 have passed away. But at the eight CalVet veterans’ homes, it’s been a different story: Among 2,100 residents, half of whom require round-the-clock care, including hospice patients and Korean and Vietnam war veterans with complicated health conditions, only two have died of the coronavirus.

An average nursing home patient in California is 31 times more likely to die from the coronavirus than a resident of a CalVet home.

Months ago, city hospitals were fighting over essential medical supplies as Covid cases surged. That’s not happening anymore. But doctors, nurses and caregivers say they’re still struggling with resources.

The diligence with which CalVet has fought the coronavirus — a battle which leaders characterize more as trench warfare than a blitzkrieg — stands in sharp contrast to the failures of the many privately owned, loosely regulated homes that have seen residents die by the dozens. While more than 300 California nursing homes asked for waivers exempting them from the state’s minimum-staffing rules prior to the pandemic, for example, CalVet kept its homes fully staffed and hired extra professionals such as full-time doctors and nurses. Its facilities stockpiled masks, ensuring they wouldn't run short when the rest of the world did.

All in all, CalVet’s experience suggests that the sweeping losses of elderly victims and people with disabilities across the country weren’t inevitable — a better system of care might have saved tens of thousands of lives.

In addition to the two residents who died, CalVet homes have seen six others get the coronavirus and recover. More than a dozen staff members have contracted the virus, threatening to infect the homes — but through a rigorous program of testing, contact tracing and encouraging employees who think they may have Covid-19 to stay home from work, CalVet has kept the virus mostly out of its campuses.

The secret of CalVet’s success has been leadership, quick efforts to obtain protective equipment, extensive testing and advance planning — the lack of which have long been cited in the homes with the most serious coronavirus outbreaks.

A POLITICO investigation involving interviews with California state officials and outside experts, along with a review of state documents and data, found that while CalVet homes benefited from greater resources than the typical nursing home, the key to their success was more in effective management and planning. As soon as word of the coronavirus appeared in China, CalVet leaders kept one eye on the virus, and carefully charted a consistent, unified response, based around the idea that one slip-up — be it an employee failing to wash his hands or an administrator falling to issue a test — could cost a resident his or her life.


“We should be doing everything we can to prevent coronavirus and help people recover if we can, and not just give up on an entire group of Americans because some people believe it’s inevitable,” said David Shulkin, former VA secretary. | Jose Luis Magana/AP

“It’s important to have a plan,” said David Shulkin, secretary of Veterans Affairs in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2018. “And secondly, you have to stick to your plan. And I don't think we’ve consistently seen that throughout the country. We’ve seen 50 different plans, and we’ve seen a lack of consistency and a lack of people sticking with a plan.”

Shulkin ticked off a litany of problems facing nursing homes around the country, from lack of access to protective equipment to lengthy lag times in receiving test results. Indeed, nursing homes across America spent much of June and July arguing that they should be treated more like hospitals when it comes to testing, rather than receiving a second-tier prioritization that can cause delays in obtaining test results of five to seven days.

“We should be doing everything we can to prevent coronavirus and help people recover if we can, and not just give up on an entire group of Americans because some people believe it’s inevitable,” Shulkin said. “In our nursing homes, we have to provide the highest level of protection and prevention.”

California Veterans Affairs secretary Vito Imbasciani keeps up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website like some people do the weather, scanning it daily for reports of outbreaks in faraway countries.

Viruses are a particular area of concern for Imbasciani, a urologist by training who served with the U.S. Army during the Gulf War. He got an education in infectious diseases starting in second grade, when he contracted polio and spent four months in the hospital, followed by years of physical therapy and specialized camps, working to regain the strength in his legs, which can still limp when he's tired. As a young gay man, he started medical school in 1981, the same year the AIDS epidemic hit the U.S.


Viruses are a particular area of concern for Vito Imbasciani, secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs. | Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

“I lived in fear of becoming antibody positive,” Imbasciani said in an interview.

This past winter, around New Year's Eve, as nursing homes in the CalVet system were readying for the annual flu season, Imbasciani noticed a report on an unusually infectious new disease in China, Covid-19, during one of his trolls of the CDC website.

“I said to my team, ‘We have to prepare not only for influenza, but for the possible spread of this,’” Imbasciani said. “I knew people who leave China and are coming into the United States come in through L.A. and Seattle.”

As parts of the state government, homes in the CalVet system were required to take precautions that private facilities were not: They had to maintain extensive emergency preparedness plans in the event of an earthquake or other natural disaster, including stockpiles of N95 masks. They also had taken formal steps to protect against viral diseases such as hantavirus, a deadly rodent-born disease that appeared in California and other states in the last decade. By contrast, while federal law requires that all nursing homes have some sort of emergency plan in place, a whopping 43 percent have been caught violating that requirement, and the long-term care industry strongly opposed the Obama administration-era rule that created it.

By Jan. 21, when a 35-year-old man outside Seattle became the United States’ first known Covid-19 diagnosis, Imbasciani and his team had been monitoring Covid-19 for weeks and advising staff to stay home and let them know if they felt sick. By early February — a month before the first person died from the coronavirus in the U.S. — the administrators for the system’s eight veterans homes were dialing into a video conference call each day at 11 a.m. to discuss the potential pandemic, retraining their staff on how to prevent infections and auditing residents’ emergency contact information. Working with the governor’s Office of Emergency Services, each nursing home built up a stockpile of 50,000 N95 masks and other PPE, in preparation for a scenario in which the homes would have to completely lock down.

Each CalVet home followed a 38-point action plan, designed to help them prepare for the worst. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

As the number of Covid-19 cases slowly grew in the United States, CalVet’s leaders issued more directives: By Feb. 26, the homes enacted plans to clean their common areas every 30 minutes. By March 3 — still more than a week before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic, and ten days before President Donald Trump declared a national emergency — every CalVet nursing home had a detailed protocol for what to do if they suspected a case of Covid-19. Soon, group activities were suspended, residents were required to eat and live in their rooms and staff and residents were given instruction in how to keep social distance. Each CalVet home followed a 38-point action plan, designed to help them prepare for the worst.

And March 15, four days before California’s Gavin Newsom became the first governor in the country to order California residents to shelter in place, CalVet decided to close its doors to outsiders. It marked the start of months of challenging isolation for residents, who were divided into halls and barred from leaving their designated areas.

“There’s a lot of sadness that goes along with our record,” said Imbasciani. “These are veterans who are in their seventh, eight, ninth, tenth decade of life. And we’re restricting visits and access to hugs. There’s not been any birthdays, and even the traditional Memorial Day party. They can’t eat in their congregate dining halls — it’s sad.”

For administrators who run the CalVet homes, vigilance is top priority. CalVet has not invented any new ways of fighting the coronavirus. But its nursing homes are presenting a united front, something the rest of the country is struggling with.

“If you let your guard down, you are in trouble with this virus,” said Thomas Bucci, director of long term care at the California Department of Veterans Affairs. “We are only as good as our weakest employee who decides they are not going to wear a mask and just gave a resident a bath and breathed all over him.”




“I think at that time, during the end of February and beginning of March, there was a sense of, ‘This isn’t coming here.’ But with the tone of the department, there was also a sense of, ‘Well, what will we need to do if it does come?’”

Chris Walter, acting administrator of CalVet’s West Los Angeles veterans home

CalVet nursing homes have benefited greatly from their ties to state and federal government. Such was the case in early April, when Chris Walter, acting administrator of CalVet’s West Los Angeles veterans home, a 396-bed facility close to the University of California, Los Angeles, had a dangerous scenario on his hands: a potential case of the coronavirus at a time when tests were still in extremely short supply.

Walter’s problem was solved by the local VA office, which sits across the street from his nursing home. The VA leader offered to run tests at the veterans home, quickly determining that Covid-19 had not spread far within the facility.

Walter is, for legal reasons, restricted from discussing individual results of Covid-19 testing, but said his building has been able to quickly obtain and run tests, both for surveillance and when there were suspected infections, since April. He’s now run multiple rounds of tests for all residents of the West Los Angeles home, in accordance to rules established in June by the state of California. The West Los Angeles home has had at least one case of Covid-19 among its staff, and accounts for at least one of the two deaths in the CalVet system.

Like other CalVet homes, Walter's home in Los Angeles houses some residents in assisted living, and some in skilled nursing. Overall, roughly half of CalVet residents are in skilled nursing, including hospice patients. The homes have had three Covid-19 cases and one death among residents in assisted living, and three cases and one death among residents in skilled nursing.

Walter recalled having early meetings with his on-staff medical director and infection control nurse, both of whom work full-time at his facility, and discussing the possibility that the coronavirus would come to Los Angeles in February.

“I think at that time, during the end of February and beginning of March, there was a sense of, ‘This isn’t coming here.’ But with the tone of the department, there was also a sense of, ‘Well, what will we need to do if it does come?’” Walter said.

As the coronavirus spread to Los Angeles, one of Walter’s chief concerns was how to prevent staff from carrying germs into the building. In addition to wearing masks, staff at the West Los Angeles home, like all CalVet homes, are screened when they arrive for work, and asked to answer questions that extend beyond whether they’ve had any recent coronavirus symptoms. They’re quizzed about whether they’ve come from another facility, and, if so, whether they’ve changed clothes. And they’re asked if they’ve taken any Tylenol or other drugs that could, inadvertently or not, mask a fever when they have their temperatures taken at the door.

And unlike many nursing home operators across the country, Walter and other CalVet operators give their employees sick leave. This is both a workplace benefit and a tactic for fighting the virus because it encourages people not to show up to work if they aren’t feeling well. If employees come down with a cough or have any reason to think they might have been exposed to Covid-19, they are paid to stay home while awaiting test results, and given sick leave if the test comes back positive. CalVet officials say this approach has helped foster better communication with staff and enabled their facilities to do robust contact tracing if someone does contract the virus.

“If our doc says they are at risk, we will pay them to stay home so they don’t lose their rent payment,” said Bucci, the director of long term care. “When all of these [practices] work together in a system, it can work. All of these can be weaknesses in other facilities, and other homes.”

Experts in the nursing-home industry note that CalVet’s approach is run with near-military precision, relying on strict protocols and chains of command to get things done. Many of the country’s nursing homes have no comparable sense of order. In many homes, workers and residents feel abandoned by corporate owners. Owners point to a lack of leadership and money from government. And watchdogs say there’s been too little direction from both to help the millions of vulnerable people on the front lines.

A patient is evacuated from the Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riverside, Calif. Below, warning notices are posted on a door at an entrance to the Cedar Mountain Post Acute nursing facility in Yucaipa, Calif. | Chris Carlson/AP Photo

In California alone, 43 percent of the state’s coronavirus deaths were tied to nursing homes, according to a New York Times analysis. That number is even higher in some areas such as Contra Costa county, where 65 percent of deaths were linked to nursing homes after massive outbreaks in some facilities. But compared to some other states, California is a relatively safe place to be in a nursing home. Residents of Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut nursing homes are more than twice as likely to die from the coronavirus, according to data reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Other veterans homes haven't fared as well as CalVet. Forty-two residents died during an outbreak at the Pennsylvania-based Southeastern Veterans’ Center. The facility hadn't followed federal and state recommendations on quarantining sick residents and providing staff with PPE, among other issues, state inspectors later found.

Other issues that can allow the coronavirus to slip into nursing homes, like mask shortages and five-day or weeklong wait times for test results, are still plaguing nursing homes, nursing home employees and advocates told POLITICO.

About 30 miles southeast of the West Los Angeles CalVet home, at the 270-bed Windsor Palms Care Center of Artesia, staff members wear N95 face masks for multiple days, even if they are dirty, and sometimes there are only size "small" masks left that may not fit, two employees told POLITICO. Residents at Windsor Palms — especially those with dementia — often don’t wear masks, the employees said.

More than two dozen cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed at Windsor Palms, and workers have both quit and called out sick, leading to staffing shortages, the employees said. Patricia Koibita, a nurse's aide at Windsor Palms, said that on one recent day she'd had to walk to a different wing of the facility to wash her hands — a key step in preventing the coronavirus — because the building maintenance was too short-staffed to keep soap and paper towels in the bathrooms.



Left: Phylene Sunga, administrator at Lone Tree Convalescent Hospital, stands near the entrance of the facility in Antioch, Calif. Right: A driver expresses their support of nurses protesting lack of N95 masks and PPE.

“It’s not a fun environment, it’s not a clean environment, it’s not a safe environment. It’s a very stressful environment and an unsafe environment,” Koibita said.

In a statement to POLITICO, Windsor Palms Care Center of Artesia said that it follows federal and state recommendations and "is committed to protecting its residents and staff from Covid-19." Additionally, Windsor Palms said, it has "ample supplies of personal protective equipment including masks and face shields" and that "all restrooms and hand washing stations have considerable amounts of soap and towels available."

Even nursing homes that are working aggressively to keep the coronavirus at bay face steep challenges. At Antioch Convalescent Hospital outside San Francisco, a 99-bed facility with no Covid-19 cases among its residents, administrator Phylene Sunga said she has for months been struggling to obtain proper PPE, leading her to informally band together with administrators at other homes to barter for lower prices from vendors. Still, she regularly pays double the usual rate for masks and other equipment and has to place large bulk shipments, she said.

Last week, Antioch was forced to use unapproved N95 masks when the home ran out of surgical masks, Sunga said. The shortages have been happening since mid-March, when the coronavirus began to spread in San Francisco.

“We all ordered PPE, and you couldn’t get any,” Sunga said.

Free from the pressure to turn a profit and aided by additional state funding, CalVet nursing homes had more built-in advantages than the average private nursing home at the pandemic’s start.

Perhaps most crucially, CalVet homes have full-time doctors on staff and full-time infection control specialists, two positions that are rarely filled at private nursing homes.

While more than half of all nursing homes in California have requested waivers from state-approved staffing levels over the past two years, a requirement that industry leaders say is difficult to meet because of a lack of qualified staff and low government funding for nursing homes, the CalVet homes have not.

And all but one CalVet home — the facility in West Los Angeles, which has some two-room suites — house all their residents in single or double rooms, giving them more protection from the virus than nursing homes with large semi-private rooms separated by cloth barriers.

“There has never ever been enough daily dollars to actually give the level of care that is expected regulatorily,” said Bucci, California’s director of long term care, who was a senior living facility operator for 19 years before working at CalVet. “There’s no doubt that our service has been geared more around having a full-time infection control nurse on staff, a full-time doctor on staff — you can’t afford that under the typical model of a nursing home in America.”

As the pandemic unfolded, California added new requirements for nursing homes. They had to test all of their residents at least once and follow up with regular testing of 25 percent of the home every 7 days. The government mandated that homes come up with plans for how to fix staffing shortages, and to provide enough masks and other PPE to residents. And the state increased its Medicaid reimbursement rates by 10 percent.

In an effort to boost testing at nursing homes, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced it would begin sending testing machines to nursing homes in coronavirus hot spots. In addition, HHS has distributed at least $10 billion in coronavirus aid for nursing homes.

The nursing home industry has said that the funding increase comes nowhere close to meeting its needs, and has asked for billions more in Covid-19 relief funding in Congress' next stimulus bill, including a $5 billion fund to help pay for testing and increasing federal reimbursement rates for nursing homes with coronavirus patients by 30 percent.

But one crucial issue, said Molly Davies, who oversees ombudsman services for Los Angeles County, is nursing home operators’ willingness to invest their own money in their facilities.

“These other nursing homes do have the resources, but they chose to not use them,” Davies said. “CalVet, it sounds like, is doing what other facilities should be doing but are not doing. Like paying people and encouraging them to stay home when they have a sore throat.”


California’s Gavin Newsom became the first governor in the country to order California residents to shelter in place. | Eric Risberg/Pool/AP

Imbasciani, the state Veterans Affairs secretary, was responsible for many of the recommendations for homes in the CalVet system, namely to “test often” and carefully screen workers and anyone else who enters the building. But he insisted that the work he’s done at CalVet has been the product of common sense, nothing more or less.

“We managed [the homes] to think proactively, what can we do to keep the virus out?” Imasciani said. “Any high school graduate who took a health course and had common sense on what to do with an unseen contagion would have done what we did.”

In June, Imbasciani and his team started to talk about letting visitors — who hadn’t laid eyes on their loved ones for month — back into CalVet homes. But that conversation is on hold for now, as coronavirus cases in California tick back up, surpassing half a million in the Golden State alone.

“I’m very, very nervous,” Imbasciani said. “I don’t want to lose the success we’ve gotten.”

Trump administration steps in as advocacy groups warn of Covid ‘death panels’

Concern about discrimination is rising as the pandemic swamps more states and tests hospitals and health systems in its path.


Questions about allocating ventilators, staff and other scarce resources were circulating long before the coronavirus pandemic. | David J. Phillip/AP Photo

By SUSANNAH LUTHI
08/10/2020

State policies for rationing health care during the coronavirus pandemic could allow doctors to cut off treatment for some of the sickest patients in hot zones and revive the specter of so-called death panels, say disabled rights groups who are urging the Trump administration to intervene.

The effort has recently gained urgency due to guidelines in Texas and Arizona that let doctors base treatment decisions on factors like a patient’s quality of life if they survive, or the odds they’ll live at least five years. The advocacy groups since March have filed an unprecedented 11 complaints with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights, which has mediated four cases and could add more as Covid-19 continues to spread across most of the country.

The administration's point person is Roger Severino, an anti-abortion conservative who heads the civil rights office and has expressed concern about the way health providers measure disabled patients' odds of survival.

"They've been a real partner since the beginning in immediately responding to these concerns — not just considering but immediately responding and saying, ‘This is our issue too,’" said Shira Wakschlag, director of legal advocacy for The Arc. She said Severino's policies have "sent a message to states across the country."

Questions about allocating ventilators, staff and other scarce resources were circulating long before the pandemic and factored prominently in the debate over Obamacare, when conservatives tried to whip up controversy over the idea of bureaucrats on “death panels” deciding who was worthy of care.

But the issue gained new resonance in June, when an Austin, Texas, hospital halted treatment of a quadriplegic patient who contracted Covid-19 and moved him to hospice care, where he died. ADAPT of Texas filed a complaint to HHS in late July seeking an investigation into the decision-making about the patient, Michael Hickson, which ran counter to his wife's wishes.

CORONAVIRUS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW


TOP DEVELOPMENTS
A growing majority of voters oppose Trump's demand to fully reopen schools.
The Paycheck Protection Program is in limbo amid the collapse of relief negotiations.
Trump's pledge to aid tenants won't stop evictions.
The Big Ten and Pac-12 have canceled the fall football seasons.
Read all coronavirus coverage »

HHS' most sweeping action so far centered on Tennessee's crisis standards of care. The state in late June agreed to update triage plans and clarify that providers consider only a patient's chance of survival, not quality of life or issues strictly related to their disability. The policy — which HHS says applies to patients with conditions like advanced neuromuscular disease, metastatic cancer, traumatic brain injury and dementia — is viewed by advocates as a blueprint for other states.

The groups are now setting their sights on Arizona, one of the nation's Covid-19 hot spots, which issued a triage policy in June that critics say allows doctors to reject critically sick patients if they think they won’t live five years after a successful Covid-19 treatment.

Severino, who's been involved in high-profile efforts to lift protections for LGBTQ patients and back health care entities that refuse to cover abortion services, said in an interview that protecting the disabled from discrimination during the pandemic is a defining part of his agenda.

“It sends a message on who we are as a nation, it’s a reflection of our national character — how we treat the vulnerable,” he said. The lack of clear guidelines in some states "puts an unfair burden on medical professionals and opens the door to discrimination.”

The civil rights office is largely limiting itself to instances where advocacy groups file formal protests. Early during the pandemic, it reminded states that it would enforce federal anti-discrimination laws. But advocates say violations still occur, often out of ignorance. And because not all hospitals are open about their triage policies and some states lack clear standards, the groups sometimes have to rely on anecdotal evidence.

Concern about discrimination is rising as the pandemic swamps more states and tests hospitals and health systems in its path.

“Someone like myself who is disabled, who has a job — I contribute to society, I’ve done good things for the world — if I am going against someone who visited the Poconos and got Covid, they’ll automatically assume my life is less valuable,” said Steven Spohn, a 39-year-old disability rights advocate with spinal muscular atrophy.

Most disability rights advocates acknowledge that a national standard for all the country’s hospitals isn't practical, and that states need to act. Their goal is clear guidance that would discourage withholding care based on a provider's idea about a patient's quality of life or guesses about long-term survival. Disabilities should also be accommodated over the course of immediate and follow-up treatment, as guaranteed by the Americans With Disabilities Act and Obamacare, they say.

But many states — even in virus hot spots — are dragging their feet. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to respond to an April appeal to set ground rules for triaging patients, in case hospitalization rates outpace the supply of beds. In early July, as caseloads surged and some overwhelmed hospitals started turning away patients, the groups tried again, writing that “what might have seemed unnecessary in April is, we believe, clearly urgent today.” Abbott's spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.

It's been left to some local medical bodies to fill the gaps. A health advisory panel for the Dallas-Fort Worth area — home to nearly a third of the state’s population and comprising its second-highest case count — released care rationing guidelines that disability rights groups quickly condemned. Under the policy, doctors could reject outright patients with certain medical conditions, or penalize anyone they think has a grim long-term prognosis — regardless of the person's short-term outlook for surviving Covid-19. Discrimination based on disability, age or race and ethnicity was not expressly prohibited.

The guidelines were pulled without explanation almost immediately after Disability Rights Texas complained to Severino's office late last month. The website of the panel that wrote the policy now says it’s under revision.

Meanwhile, Rio Grande City, a border town with a surge in cases had already decided to adopt those Dallas-area triage measures. Jose Vasquez, the health authority of Starr County, Texas, defended the decision to local media, saying rising infections had made the situation “desperate.” The local hospital is tiny, with an eight-bed Covid-19 unit, but had admitted nearly 30 patients with the virus, including three on ventilators and life support, and Vasquez said it wouldn’t be able to keep functioning at that rate.

Vasquez did not respond to a request for comment, but Kevin Reed, an attorney for the hospital district, said the guidelines aren't being followed and haven't been necessary — even though the hospital is still at capacity with Covid-19 patients — because they've been able to add makeshift bed capacity and the state has sent in contract staff.

Reed noted that the hospital district weighed adoption of the triage guidelines before they'd heard of Disability Rights Texas' concerns — but that they're currently discussing the issue with the advocacy groups and medical experts.

"This is a complex issue and, if the district adopts guidelines in the future, it wishes to do this right," Reed said.

The Arizona triage policy is shaping up to be the next big fight, because of the way it could allow doctors to reject critically ill patients and prioritize people based on their “opportunity to experience life stages.” It also allows health workers to pull ventilators or beds from patients who develop conditions while hospitalized that change their prognosis.

Arizona's chapter of The Arc appealed to to the HHS civil rights office late last month. The state insists its guidelines won’t “categorically” deny care to anyone “based on stereotypes, assumptions about any person’s quality of life, or judgment about a person’s ‘worth’ based on the presence or absence of disabilities.”

But against this backdrop, Arizona’s hospitals also asked officials to waive the state’s discrimination laws so they can’t be sued if they have to start rationing care.

“Giving physicians and triage committees these kinds of predisposed discriminatory factors to ‘break ties’ is going to bleed over into all kinds of situations that are not necessarily in the writing,” said Matt Valliére, executive director of the Patients’ Rights Action Fund. “They would be immune from any poor decision-making that’s even more discriminatory than what is in this [guidance], because that’s what happens in crisis scenarios.”

Front-line doctors have become embroiled in the debate. Beyond having to make life-or-death decisions they face the possibility of lawsuits over triage decisions.

“Rationing is already here,” a group of 10 physicians wrote in late May in the New England Journal of Medicine. They argued that priority should be given to the critically ill Covid-19 patients who are young — or as they put it, “who are sick but who could recover with treatment.”

But leaders of the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians have taken a different tack, pointing to the way the pandemic has laid bare long-time inequities in the system. The groups rejected any triage measures that could discriminate against whole swathes of people like the elderly as “not ethically defensible.”

“The pandemic has revealed a need for a much more thoughtful and ethically, medically justifiable approach to the clinical aspects of preparedness planning,” ACP President Jacqueline Fincher and AMA President Patrice Harris wrote in a June op-ed in Modern Healthcare.

Amazon’s ruthless business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

Sweden wants Amazon’s cutthroat efficiency to adapt to its labor and sustainability protections.

A sign is lit on the facade of an Amazon fulfillment center. | Kathy Willens/AP Photo

By MELISSA HEIKKILÄ
08/11/2020

It's Sweden's storied worker protections and climate-conscious citizens welcoming Amazon's ruthless drive for low prices. What could go wrong?

Stockholm is preparing for a tug-of-war with one of the world’s most powerful companies — which just announced its entry into the Swedish market — and hopes that its arrival will mean the country of 10 million will be able to change Amazon, instead of being changed by it.

Amazon's plans — dubbed “Project Dancing Queen,” after the hit song by Swedish pop group Abba — don't have a lot of detail, but analysts believe its Swedish store will go live in the fall, in time for November’s Black Friday online shopping bonanza.

“Amazon has been supporting Swedish customers and selling partners across our different European stores for many years, but the next step is to bring a full retail offering to Sweden and we are making those plans now,” said Alex Ootes, Amazon’s vice president for EU expansion, in a statement.

Amazon’s turbo-capitalism corporate culture goes against the grain of Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries, which pride themselves in their strong labor unions and sustainability.

But the country also has an affluent, internet-savvy market ripe for Alexa, Kindles, Prime and the thousands of items on Amazon's online store, the company believes. Around 68 percent of Swedes shopped online in 2018, and they spent an average of €200 per online transaction. In total, the Nordic countries spent over €22 billion online in 2018, according to a study by PostNord, the country’s postal service.

There's not a lot of competition in online marketplaces, and nobody can match Amazon’s massive cornucopia of goods.

“Swedish e-commerce is still like regular retail without shopping malls,” said Jonas Arnberg, the CEO of HUI, a market research company.

Amazon will change that, and force local players to adopt e-commerce faster than they would have otherwise.

“It’s a perfect storm in e-commerce now. The COVID-19 impact took us two to three years forward in digitalization. With Amazon’s entry it is going to go even further,” said Kristoffer Väliharju, the CEO of CDON, a Nordic online marketplace. Väliharju is optimistic about CDON’s chances of taking on the tech giant, but said companies without a strong e-commerce game will likely take a big hit.

Initially, Swedish and Nordic clients will be mainly served from German warehouses — known as fulfillment centers in Amazon-speak — with trucks driving up to Sweden through Denmark, and a fulfillment center operated by local partner Kuehne + Nagel in the Swedish town of Eskilstuna, near Stockholm.

Analysts believe local warehouses are inevitable if Amazon is to offer one of its most unique selling points: quick delivery.

When in Stockholm

Establishing a local operation will be a major challenge for the company. American Amazon’s anti-union stance and working culture is the antithesis of pro-union Sweden. (Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's political career is rooted in union activism dating from his time as a welder.)

The Swedish labor market is regulated by collective agreements between companies and unions, giving workers plenty of power over corporate decisions. Approximately 70 percent of Swedish workers belong to a union.

“If Amazon wants to succeed in Sweden, they need to work very closely with unions,” said Arne Andersson, an e-commerce expert at PostNord.

Amazon has not yet contacted Handels, the union representing warehouse workers, its political coordinator Emelie Wärn told POLITICO.

“Amazon is welcome to Sweden, but they have to sign a collective agreement. We will work very hard to get them to do that,” Wärn said.

“The fact that international companies takes interest in the Swedish market place is a positive thing. As an employer in Sweden you are obliged to follow Swedish labor legislation, which includes regulations regarding collective bargaining,” said Eva Nordmark, Sweden’s minister of employment, adding that approximately 90 percent of the employees in Sweden are covered by collective bargaining agreements.

The minimum wage for a card-carrying Swedish warehouse worker is 142.50 Swedish krona (€13.85) per hour before tax, according to Handels. In contrast, Amazon’s Polish warehouse workers who serve the German market earn 20 zlotys (around €4.50). Amazon said its workers in Germany earn a base pay of €11.10 an hour.

But the union is confident it will be able to negotiate with the tech goliath. Handels has done similar deals with Japanese fashion chain Uniqlo, Wärn said as an example.

But Uniqlo is not Amazon, and Handels' confidence might be misplaced, according to Markus Varsikko, a retail consultant at Dash Retail, which helps businesses use Amazon's marketplace.

“Amazon is a realist. If they can operate in Germany, they can operate in Sweden. It is an American company with American culture and thinking, and it is far from what we are used to here,” Varsikko said, arguing that Sweden's companies and workers might have to adapt — not the tech giant.

Handels and Greta

Amazon might also have to polish its sustainability credentials to appease Swedish consumers.

“What makes the Swedish market unique is that there is a great focus on companies to do good, be transparent and sustainable. For many Swedes, this is even more important than a wide range and low price,” said Niclas Eriksson, the CEO of electronics retailer Elgiganten. And thanks to local activist Greta Thunberg, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the carbon footprint of services like next-day delivery.

Plus Amazon's insistence on lower prices might not be its winning ticket.

The foray into the Swedish market by another e-commerce company, Wish, may serve as a cautionary tale. The American online marketplace, which mostly sells cheap items from China, tried and failed to take over the market a few years ago. The company first wooed consumers with dirt-cheap products such as electronics and clothes, only for Swedes to be disappointed by the quality of the products and frustrated by not being able to return products to sellers.

"[Wish] was cheap, it was a great marketplace, but it was also crap,” said PostNord’s Andersson. Wish did not respond to a request for comment.

Amazon's had troubles with quality control too. European consumer groups have slammed the company for selling dangerous and illegal products such as toxic toys and exploding power banks on its platform. The European Commission also put pressure on online platforms to control scammers and price gouging during the coronavirus pandemic.

CDON’s Väliharju said Swedish customers are very quality-conscious, and aware of their rights as consumers. Consumer groups and brands have criticized Amazon and others for not holding sufficient information about their sellers, especially for products that come from outside the European Union that could be dangerous or counterfeit.

“Amazon absolutely could be well met by Swedish consumers in the beginning,” said Arnberg, the CEO of HUI, citing Amazon’s promise of low prices, a big range of products and fast delivery.

“But in the long run they will have to adjust to Sweden."