PRISON NATION USA 

States Say They’re Decarcerating, Yet 1 in 5 Prisoners Has Had COVID

A California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officer wears a protective mask as he stands guard at the front gate of San Quentin State Prison on June 29, 2020, in San Quentin, California.  JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES

“Some of us wear masks even in our beds, but it feels futile,” said Sarah Jo Pender, incarcerated at the Rockville Correctional Facility, one of Indiana’s three women’s prisons. “There is little to do except watch the infection spread and wait my turn to suffer.” These measures did not prevent Pender and six of the 14 women in her cell from contracting COVID-19. They were not alone: As of December 18, the prison had tested 1,050 women; 302 (nearly 29 percent) tested positive.

On December 10, nearly nine months after the virus exploded across the United States, prisons reported 276,235 confirmed COVID cases, a rate more than four times as high as that among the general public. One in five prisoners has had COVID-19. Prisons have had at least 1,738 deaths from COVID. (These figures only include state and federal prisons, not jails, immigration prisons or juvenile detention.) Prisons have had at least 1,647 deaths from COVID.

And the impacts of incarceration-related COVID outbreaks extend beyond the jail walls: Guards and others traveling in and out of prisons have contributed to community spread. A new report by the Prison Policy Initiative estimated that, in the summer alone, prisons and jails contributed to more than half a million, or roughly 13 percent of, additional COVID-19 cases nationwide.

From the start of the pandemic, public health and medical officials warned that incarcerated people were uniquely vulnerable to COVID and its most severe complications. Many people enter prison with a raft of preexisting health conditions. Inside the prison, they are unable to physically distance from each other or adhere to other Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, such as frequent hand washing, using alcohol-based sanitizers or wearing masks. Many prisons did not issue masks for weeks, forcing incarcerated people to risk sanctions when they improvised masks from other pieces of clothing.

Experts’ predictions quickly came true as several jails and prisons emerged as the nation’s top hotspots. Family members and advocates, ranging from prison reformers to prison abolitionists, demanded decarceration, or the mass release of people from jails and prisons, to stem the spread.

The response varied from state to state and even county to county, but some jails and prisons did make real population reductions. Now, as a far worse second wave washes over the country, some jurisdictions are beginning to reverse their reductions.
Did Decarceration Happen?

Some jails, such as Chicago’s Cook County Jail, allowed some people awaiting trial to swap overcrowded dorms for electronic monitors (though the county quickly ran out of monitors, forcing people to remain in jail). Other jurisdictions such as Palm Beach, Florida, firmly resisted decarceration, declaring that they would not release anyone without a court order. Across the country, jail populations decreased from 738,400 in December 2018 to 575,952 in July 2020.“There is little to do except watch the infection spread and wait my turn to suffer.”

The response also varied among prison systems. Federal prisons decreased their populations by less than 20,000 — from 175,315 in March 2020 to 156,968 in August. Even these 20,000 releases are not all responses to COVID. Nazgol Ghandnoosh, senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project, noted that it is unknown what percentage were those already scheduled for release regardless of the pandemic. It is also unknown how these numbers are affected by a reduced intake of people from jails during the pandemic. In addition, as reported earlier, many people continue to languish in federal prisons across the country despite memos from then-Attorney General William Barr directing that people vulnerable to COVID complications be released from prison to home confinement.

On the state level, nearly 53,000 people were released from state prisons between December 31, 2019, and May 1, 2020. Again, it is not known how many of these numbers are from COVID-based early release and how many would have been released regardless. California’s prison system has boasted that it has reduced its prison population by 22,148 since March 11, largely by expediting the release of those scheduled to leave prison within months.

Michigan increased the number of people approved for parole by approximately 200 per week to reduce prison density. In June, its Department of Corrections reported that its prison population had decreased by 1,958 people (5 percent) since March 20. New York’s prison system allowed 3,145 people to be released early, a decrease of approximately 8.8 percent. New Jersey released more than 2,200 people, or 16 percent of its adult prison population, who had less than a year remaining on their prison sentences.

These decreases are not necessarily extraordinary, noted Ghandnoosh, especially when examined in the context of the roughly 600,000 people typically released from prisons annually.

Meanwhile, some states such as Indiana have resisted implementing early release policies.

Furthermore, population reductions have not been enough to stem the spread. California’s prisons remain at 105 percent capacity; of its 92,170 prisoners, 5,343 have active COVID cases and 93 have died. New York’s prisons reported 120 new cases in early December, bringing its total to 1,959 cases among its 35,353 state prisoners.

In Michigan, the numbers are even more stunning. With the help of the state’s National Guard, the Department of Corrections tested all 34,000 remaining prisoners. As of December 17, 19,710 have tested positive (with 6,727 active cases) and 104 have died, a dramatic increase from the 3,944 cases and 68 deaths in June. Even more alarming, 115 people who had previously tested positive for COVID have tested positive for a second time. At its Gus Harrison Correctional Facility, over 72 percent (or 1,423) of the 1,955 incarcerated men tested positive; six have died.

A Reversal in Reductions — and a Surge in COVID

As the pandemic drags on and the threat of COVID transmission becomes a normalized reality, incarceration reductions are reversing. From March to July, the majority of 514 jails surveyed by the Prison Policy Initiative had reduced the number of people behind bars by an average of 26 percent. Since July, however, 77 percent of these same jails saw increases in their populations, a trend, says the Prison Policy Initiative, “suggesting that the early reforms instituted to mitigate COVID-19 have largely been abandoned.” Some, such as the jails in Cook County, Illinois, and Jefferson, Louisiana, have managed to slightly surpass their pre-pandemic (February) populations. Others have seen dramatic increases — St. Lucie, Florida, for example jailed 808 people in February; throughout the pandemic, it has steadily increased its jail population to 1,332 people as of December 4.“Our rooms are fenced-in cubicles with 14 to 16 women per room,” she explained. “We live in bunk beds separated by three feet. Every 136 women share two bathrooms.”

State prison populations are also beginning to climb again. North Dakota’s prison population, which decreased by 19 percent between January and May 2020, is starting to inch up. From October 8 to November 19, the state increased its prison population by 3 percent. By Halloween, its prisons saw a surge in COVID: 66 of its 600 incarcerated people as well as 21 of approximately 200 staff members tested positive.

Prison intakes, previously halted in many states to prevent COVID exposure, have restarted. Each new arrival brings the potential for COVID to enter — and explode throughout the prison. New arrivals are supposed to undergo 14 days of quarantine before mixing with the general population, but this is not always the case. In New York, for instance, when prison officials first converted Adirondack Correctional Facility into a prison for men ages 65 and older, men reported not being tested or quarantined upon arrival.

Quarantine also didn’t stop COVID from exploding at Rockville, the Indiana prison where Sarah Jo Pender is incarcerated. “Our rooms are fenced-in cubicles with 14 to 16 women per room,” she explained. “We live in bunk beds separated by three feet. Every 136 women share two bathrooms.”

Rockville did not experience a COVID outbreak in the spring or summer. That changed in the fall when a few women tested positive. In response, the prison quarantined the women and their roommates in the prison gym. Then, a mental health counselor tested positive. The prison quarantined the counselor’s patients in the prison’s education building. The patients’ roommates were locked in their rooms to quarantine. “The administration requires masks to be worn when we exit our rooms, but since we are locked in our rooms all together, that really doesn’t seem like an effective tactic to prevent contagion,” Pender said.

In addition, all 136 women in one housing unit share two bathrooms. The prison continued to allow the quarantined women to use the same bathrooms as the women who were not under quarantine. Cases began to rise exponentially. “Two cooks and a food line worker tested positive,” recalled Pender. “Then a maintenance worker. Then several women in one room. Now, over half the prison is quarantined.” Still, testing was not universal. Only those who exhibit symptoms and report these symptoms to medical staff were tested.

As of December 8, 225 (nearly 24 percent) of the prison’s 954 women tested were positive. “Now,” reported Pender, “when a person tests positive, the policy is to lock the door, confining the sick person(s) together with her roommates.” She noted that, in one room, 11 of 14 women tested positive. All 14 were locked in the room under isolation. “The other three are simply shut in there and fervently praying for protection.” Similarly, when Pender and six of her roommates tested positive, the five who did not were not moved from their shared cell.

In an email to Truthout, David Bursten, chief communications officer for the Indiana Department of Correction, stated that those found to have symptoms or were exposed to a known COVID-19 person are immediately tested and screened by medical staff and receive care as needed.“The women who get sick after being quarantined do not report their symptoms, because if they do, and test positive, then the 14-day period starts over for the whole room.”

In response to Pender’s allegations, Bursten wrote, “For prisons that have dormitory-style housing, other dorms or spaces may be used for separation if available and appropriate. In some instances, incarcerated individuals who test positive have been temporarily housed with those who are negative while we have readied additional space at the facility in order to separate them. That is why we require that they wear face coverings, socially distance and practice frequent hand washing.”

“I tested positive on the 10th. Here it is, 11 days later, and neither me nor any of the dozens of women who tested positive on this section of the dorm were separated,” Pender reminded Truthout on December 21. “116 of 136 they locked in our rooms, the sick with the healthy. Four went to the infirmary. The other 16 are in one room where no one was tested, and no one reported symptoms.”

Now, the prison has started to isolate those who newly test positive into the gym, then lock down their roommates. But, added Pender, those roommates are not tested unless they exhibit symptoms.

Pender has lost her sense of smell and, with very few exceptions, says everything tastes like cardboard and mudpies. She also has an intermittent fever, headaches, extreme fatigue and brain fog. Her roommates have varying degrees of the same symptoms.

Furthermore, Pender believes the number of COVID cases are higher than those reported. “The women who get sick after being quarantined do not report their symptoms, because if they do, and test positive, then the 14-day period starts over for the whole room. So there are a LOT of unreported positive cases here.”

The failure to meaningfully decarcerate jails and prisons has also led to increased cases in the community as staff travel between work and their home communities on a daily basis.Between California, Florida and Texas, mass incarceration contributed to a quarter million new COVID cases from May 1 to August 1.

Between California, Florida and Texas, mass incarceration contributed to a quarter million new COVID cases — or 20 percent of new cases in these states — from May 1 to August 1. Despite its much-touted release of 22,148 people from prisons, the Prison Policy Initiative estimated that California’s incarceration alone contributed 113,969 COVID cases (or 291 cases per 100,000 residents).

In Indiana, where Pender and many other women wear their masks to bed in a desperate bid to avoid COVID, the state’s insistence on keeping people in prison led to 6,879 additional cases (or nearly 104 per 100,000 residents). In Parke County, where Rockville is located, 28 percent of residents tested positive. (Twenty percent of Rockville staff also tested positive.)

In Michigan, mass incarceration led to an additional 4,787 COVID cases (or 48 per 100,000 residents) throughout the state.

That was what prompted residents of Adrian, Michigan, the town where the Gus Harrison prison is located, to join family members and advocates during their December 11 protest demanding the release of aging and medically vulnerable people.

Residents of Adrian, Michigan, join family members and advocates demand the release of aging and medically vulnerable people on December 11, 2020.

COURTESY OF VICTORIA LAW

“They were worried,” Shawanna Vaughn, the rally organizer and director of Silent Cry, a nonprofit addressing the traumas of incarceration, told Truthout. “They thought that if people inside are infected, then they’ll be infected too. I explained that if incarcerated people get COVID, it comes from the staff so their community is already at risk.”

At the rally, advocates also learned that the men who had spoken out about COVID conditions had been placed in solitary confinement, a punitive form of isolation. After the rally, Vaughn spoke with others inside the prison. “They were excited,” she told Truthout. “Even though that [retaliation] is happening, nothing [advocacy-wise] was happening before.”

Now, she said, “People are asking, ‘What do we do now? Where do we go from here?’” Quoting Assata Shakur, she added, “We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

That’s not the mood among the women at Rockville. “The prison has essentially thrown up their hands and walked away from the problem for the moment,” said Pender. “I am sure that they are working on a better solution (at least, we hope so), but in the meantime, we see our neighbor get sick and we start worrying. Then they test positive, and we literally become trapped in the room with them. It’s like something out of a horror movie. In the beginning, I used to flippantly say that when the COVID finally comes here, the prison will just let us all get sick and die. I thought that I was just being dramatic, but it might have been more prescient than I know.”

Donald Trump Trying To Incite ‘White Nationalist Riot’ In D.C. The Day Election Results Certified, Pundit Says

STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGESUS POLITICS

Nathan Francis
December 27, 2020

On Sunday, Trump sent a tweet telling people he would see them on the day that Congress will formally count votes from the Electoral College and officially make Joe Biden the winner of the race.

“See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow!” Trump tweeted.

Political commentator and columnist David Frum said that with the coronavirus relief bill signed after a delay from the president, he appears to have shifted his attention to inciting violence in the nation’s capital in the coming days.

“Now Trump can focus like a laser on his top priority, inciting a white nationalist riot in Washington on January 6,” Frum tweeted.

As the Washington Post reported, Trump has already been using his Twitter feed to foreshadow a “wild” protest set to take place in the nation’s capital on that day. The report noted that the organization Women for America First had requested a protest permit for the event, the same group that organized a “Stop the Steal” rally in D.C. last month that drew thousands and led to a number of violent clashes.

As The Inquisitr noted, some Trump supporters vandalized buildings in the evening hours after the official event had ended, including some who attacked a pair of historic African American churches. Video captured the group tearing down a “Black Lives Matter” banner from one of the churches and setting it on fire in the street.

Proud Boys and other white supremacists burn a Black Lives Matter sign from the Asbury United Methodist Church in D.C. while dousing it with lighter fluid to intensify the flames. This public act is intended to terrorize and send a message to Black people. pic.twitter.com/0YNsTDaVqF

— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) December 13, 2020

The Washington Post added that there is already support among groups on the far right for the event planned for next month.

“Conversations about the January gathering have taken off on chat forums used by far-right groups, including Gab, Parler and Telegram. The Proud Boys, members of armed right-wing groups, conspiracy theorists and white supremacists all have pledged to attend,” the report noted.

The organizing group said close to 5,000 people are expected to attend next month’s rally, which is tentatively slated for Freedom Plaza.

Trump has continued to insist that he was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election, saying the victory was stole from him through massive fraud. Though his campaign and allies have failed to overturn the results through a series of court cases, Trump is reportedly still trying to change the outcome and had raised the idea that Vice President Mike Pence may not allow Biden to be certified the winner when he oversees the vote tallying.

Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA

 Is A ‘Money Laundering Organization’ 

For Donors, Alleged Former Employee Says

JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGESUS POLITICS

Tyler MacDonald

An alleged former employee of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA called into the Majority Report podcast recently and claimed that the Donald Trump-supporting conservative organization has a covert purpose.

“It’s like a money laundering organization for Republican donors,” he said during a YouTube clip of the exchange posted on Saturday.

“Right, cause I don’t know if you know this but they’re a 501(c)(3) which you know means that they are technically a tax-exempt educational charity. Which is f*cking ridiculous.”



The caller continued to claim that TPUSA is “like a tax shelter” with a “little bit” of public relations focused on Kirk. Elsewhere, he said the primary purpose of the organization is to “give the appearance of progress” so that Kirk can tell his donors that they are effectively turning young people to the conservative ideology.

Mashable reporter Matt Binder told the caller that he is the second insider from Turning Point USA who has told him the same story.
 

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Sludge previously claimed that TPUSA “blurs the line” between its charity and pro-Trump political activities. As the publication noted, the Internal Revenue Code prohibits all section 501(c)(3) organizations from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign” on behalf of a candidate for public office, such as Trump. Notably, Kirk attacked various Democratic presidential candidates at an October 2019 TPUSA-sponsored conference, which the publication suggested was “pushing the boundaries of his organization’s charitable nonprofit status.”

Last year, a leaked memo from the fellow conservative youth organization Young America’s Foundation warned students to stay away from TPUSA due to the coalition’s purported lack of honesty, integrity, judgment, and experience. Former TPUSA employee Caleb Hull notably claimed that all of the information in the memo is true. In particular, he said that the organization regularly inflates its numbers to donors. Still, Hull argued that some of the group’s activists do quality work.

The organization’s dealings have come under scrutiny on multiple occasions. As reported by Sludge, the organization in 2017 accepted $50,000 from The GEO Group Foundation — the United State’s largest private prison company. The year following the donations, former TPUSA communications director Candace Owens said that she visited a GEO Group ICE transitional facility in Broward County, Florida, which she praised after her tour.

“This place is nicer than where I went to the public school system,” she said.

Sludge noted that Owens’ claims were made amid reports of immigrant abuse at the hands of ICE employees.

Trump discusses martial law to hang to power

M Serajul Islam | Published: 00:00, Dec 26,2020

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk on the south lawn of the White House on December 23 in Washington, DC. — Agence France-Presse/Getty Images/ Tasos Katopodis

US PRESIDENT Trump’s days in the White House are fast coming to an end. The president-elect Joe Biden is now less than a month from becoming the 46th president of the United States that he will be when he puts his hand on the Bible and takes his oath of office at noon on January 20. Trump would now need something supernatural to stop the US constitution from showing him the exit door.

The president is nevertheless not giving up. He is desperate. He has done something as his latest desperate move to cling on to the White House that is the antithesis to the letter and spirit of the US constitution. He chaired a meeting in the White House on December 18 to discuss something that would have done credit to the infamous dictators and fascists of history like Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe or Muammar Gaddafi. He discussed the possibility of declaring the elections in the six swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, states where he lost on November 3, void and hold fresh elections there under martial law to return to power.

The president is close to becoming delusional. He has lost 60 cases in federal courts of the six swing states and two in the US Supreme Court 9–0 because of zero evidence to establish his claims of voter fraud, rigging and conspiracies to overturn his electoral defeats. Meanwhile, the electoral college met on December 14 and re-affirmed the same result that was ‘called’ by AP/CNN/FOX and other major news channels on November 7, four days after the elections that gave vice-president Biden 306 electoral votes against the president’s 232, sealing the president’s fate legally and constitutionally. The only legal and constitutional process related to the 2020 presidential elections that now remains but only as a formality is for vice-president Mike Pence, as the president of the Senate, to announce the result after the tabulation of the votes of the electoral college in the joint session of the Congress on January 6.

The unearthly martial law option came out of the minds of two disgraced individuals once close to the president, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, the lawyer that the president had earlier excluded from his legal team. The president appointed Michael Flynn as the National Security adviser upon coming to power and then sacked him for lying to the vice-president and the FBI under oath. He only recently pardoned him. Lieutenant General Flynn attracted the president’s attention when he stated recently on News Max, the new favourite TV station of the president and his white supremacist base, that he had powers under the constitution to declare martial law in the six states and hold fresh elections there. He cited 64 such instances from the past, all wrongly, because none of the citations was related to election and disenfranchisement of voters.

Sidney Powell was excluded from the president’s legal team because her views were outlandish and absurd even for Rudy Giuliani, the leader of the president’s legal team, during the president’s court cases. She attracted the president’s renewed attention by her campaign, after being forced out of the president’s legal team, that the electronic voting machines used in the elections in the swing states should be seized to establish her conspiracy theory that they were linked to the CIA, Iran and China and also to Hugo Chavez who died in 2013. The president seriously considered at the meeting in the White House appointing her as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud and her conspiracy theories.

The fact that the president chaired the meeting at the White House to discuss martial law to disenfranchise millions of voters with disgraced individuals not secretly but openly together with the members of his staff in the White House underlined the depth of his despair with the end of his term now staring him in the face. For the majority of Americans and the world, these actions of the president undermined seriously America’s claim as the leader of the free world. American presidents have criticised fascists and dictators and sanctioned their regimes around the world for the same sort of actions that president Trump is now considering taking, actions that his opponents in the country are calling seditious.

Trump came to power riding the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’. He would be leaving America to his successor as a country on the edge, domestically and internationally, while he ran an administration that was all about himself, an administration where narcissism motivated him in everything he did. Domestically, as the next president, Joe Biden would have to deal with the effects of an ongoing pandemic, aptly described as the pandemic of the century, with 18.2 million infected and 322,000 dead, with both counts rising, where his lack of leadership is major reason for the country’s current dire predicament. Internationally, the incoming president will inherit an America that Trump has made fragile by distancing from traditional allies and weakening traditional alliances with an isolationist foreign policy.

Many Americans outside the president’s base would like to believe that Trump is an aberration to sidetrack the national embarrassment that his anti-American and anti-democratic actions to remain in power have caused. Nevertheless, the aberrations that America and the rest of the world has seen on the country’s political stage have not been aberrations of the president’s alone. Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives have actively and willingly indulged the president in his aberrations, beginning with their refusal to accept Joe Biden as the president-elect despite not even an iota of evidence to the contrary. One hundred and twenty-six Republicans in the House supported the president’s frivolous case at the US Supreme Court even when they knew that there was zero evidence to support his claims and that his case was undemocratic and unconstitutional and it intended to disenfranchise millions of American voters.

Joe Biden will, therefore, have enormously tough domestic and international challenges as the next president, challenges that no past president for a very long time faced upon entering office. He will have an equally challenging task waiting for him that no new president in recent US history has been called to deal; to rebuild Americans’ faith in democracy and the constitution that president Trump has pushed to the edge. He will be challenged to the limits of his abilities because he will have to deal with tens of millions of his citizens in whose minds president Trump has successfully established the blatantly false narrative that he won the elections by voter fraud, rigging and conspiracies.

Postscript: The US army issued an official statement nipping the president’s outrageous martial law option in the bud. Nevertheless, Americans will do themselves a big favour if they turned to Socrates who reminded Plato in a passage in the latter’s famous book The Republic that ‘tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.’ They will do themselves another favour if they turned to another wise saying, ‘eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.’ Trump has taken them to the edge. They should look at his actions as warnings and not as aberrations to return from the brink.

M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador. He writes from Maryland, USA.

Trump discusses martial law to hang to power (newagebd.net)

Here's why Trump supporters cling to their failed coup
December 22, 2020
Amanda Marcotte, Salon

Trump supporters (Shutterstock)

For years, many liberals have been confused by why so many Donald Trump voters seem unperturbed by all his criming and cheating. To understand Trump's supporters, it's important to understand that they don't believe he's a good person. On the contrary, the appeal of Trump from the beginning was a belief that he's a liar, a cheat, and a crook — but one who would implement his evil-doing skills towards goals Republican voters support, with triggering the liberals and snagging all the government goodies for their tribe at the expense of other Americans at the top of the list.

This wasn't exactly subtle. Trump repeatedly promised his supporters during the 2016 campaign that "Nobody knows the system better than I do." He often bragged about his supposed skills at buying off and working politicians.

"My whole life I've been greedy, greedy, greedy. I've grabbed all the money I could get. I'm so greedy," Trump crowed to an adoring crowd in early 2016. "But now I want to be greedy for the United States. I want to grab all that money. I'm going to be greedy for the United States."

The key is realizing that the typical Trump supporter, as I explained in the Standing Room Only newsletter, sees himself as in on the con. Indeed, the easiest way to hoodwink someone is to convince them that they're part of the conspiracy, that they're the ones getting one over on someone else. Trump's story for his supporters was that all of politics is a rigged game, but this time he was rigging it for them.

All of which explains why Trump supporters, like their idol, are losing their minds right now. They elected a man who assured them he knew all the tricks and could get away with breaking any rule. But despite all his efforts at stealing the election from Joe Biden — and all the money he's raised from them to do so — Trump is failing. Trump's voters never believed he was an honest man, yet they got snookered by the biggest lie of all: that he had almost god-like powers to cheat the system.

The result is a nationwide tantrum from Trump's devout followers, who are raging incoherently at every opportunity, stunned and mentally wrecked by the revelation that Trump does not, in fact, have some secret plan to undo the election he lost.

On Monday, state legislators in Oregon got together to discuss proposals to mitigate the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic, a session that was closed to the public for health reasons. But outside, an armed and delusional crowd of Trump supporters — about 300 in number — gathered, screaming conspiracy theories about a "stolen" election that Trump has floated to justify his attempted coup. They also denounced restrictions on public gatherings and mask requirements that have been passed to curb the pandemic.

The protesters weren't allowed in the capitol building so they decided to storm the place with guns. They were met with state troopers in riot gear, but the troopers were understandably spooked and hesitant at times since they were dealing with an armed mob in thrall to dangerous delusions.

To make it worse, inside the capitol building, some Republican legislators were egging the armed militants on. Republican state senator Dallas Heard, in particular, went on a rant about how it was an "illegitimate session" because of the crowd restrictions and threatened that the "adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces," clearly intending to conflate people who believe in science and democracy with "adversaries of the Lord".

On the same day, across the country in Georgia, the two incumbent Republicans trying to keep their Senate seats in January's run-off election were having a bad time at what was supposed to be a campaign rally.

Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue found it was hard to be heard over throngs of Republican voters chanting "stop the steal," which has become the rallying cry for people who support Trump's efforts to steal the election. (Confusing, I know, for pro-steal people to declare they're the victims of election theft, but psychological projection is the beating heart of modern conservatism.)

It's unlikely to hurt the electoral prospects of either Senator, to be clear — conservatives may be delusional, but they still know better than to give their power away by not voting. But the situation shows that Republican voters aren't ready to "move on", and are still angry and confused about why the president they voted for, the man who assured them he knew all the tricks to cheat the system, the man who claimed he had an "elite strike force" at his disposal, can't figure out how to nullify the election.

Meanwhile, a chorus of increasingly deranged voices are pushing Trump voters further and further towards the edge.

Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, keeps demanding that Trump declare martial law and threatening violence if the president fails to comply. The military coup plan is also being pushed by the Epoch Times, a far-right conspiracy theory-laden rag that has grown in popularity as irate conservative audiences reject Fox News for not being unhinged enough. The Family Research Council, which is an incredibly powerful lobbying force in the GOP, has also been putting out "prayers" (which are really press releases) asking God to "expose all election interference and voter fraud engineered by foreign enemies."

Tuesday morning, Axios released an article detailing how Trump has gone into berserker mode, accusing "everyone around him" of being "weak, stupid or disloyal" for not supporting a plan to use military or Department of Homeland Security powers to seize voting machines. (This wouldn't work anyway, since the votes have been tallied and the Electoral College has certified Biden's victory.)

It's definitely fun to imagine the suffering of Trump and all the people who have enabled him all these years, of course. One can even hope Trump will never recover and will spend the rest of his life lost in a miserable black hole of rage and paranoia. Unfortunately, however, Trump is taking his supporters with him, and that's a problem.

We now have millions of Americans — nearly three-quarters of Republicans reject the legitimacy of the election — believing elections should only count if they win them. This is the mentality that led to the Civil War erupting in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's electoral win in 1860. But, as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie pointed out in his newsletter, the different camps are no longer divided by geography, and "we are bound to each other, whether we like it or not."

Don't believe anyone who claims to know what will happen next, now that an entire political party — one that controls most state governments, the courts, and the Senate — has embraced an anti-democratic ideology. This is uncharted territory for the country. It may be that this is a temporary delusion and Trump voters will eventually chill out and start pretending they weren't flirting with a fascist coup. Or they could become more hardened and violent with time. Or it could be that some go one way and others become terrorists. The scariest thing of all is that we won't know how this Trump-induced delusion shakes out for months, or even years to come.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

This article was originally published at Salon

While 20 Million Americans Lost Their Jobs In 2020, US Billionaires' Wealth Grew By $931 Billion

If you still need proof that the world is built for the wealthy to succeed, just take a look at how fortunes diverged this year.

Venessa WongBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on December 27, 2020,


BuzzFeed News; Getty Images

As millions of Americans end 2020 sick, jobless, hungry, indebted, or at risk of losing their homes, it’s unimaginable that at the other end of the spectrum, the wealthy, shielded from much of this misfortune, became even richer this cursed year.

But this is the reality of 2020. The same forces that made this year so awful for most people helped a select few add immense wealth.

As more than 20 million people were receiving unemployment benefits and Congress held back too long on passing a second round of stimulus, American billionaires’ wealth had increased by $931 billion by the fall — more than the entire economy of the Netherlands. This divergence underscores just how drastically financial, political, and corporate systems are built to benefit those who already have so much, even in times of widespread loss, and exclude the have-nots. People with money, assets, and stocks saw their wealth and savings rise this year while those excluded from the year’s stock market rally were too often left in dire circumstances; some tech companies powered by low-paid contract labor thrived while their workers became sick or injured; and the widespread collapse of small businesses bolstered the success of competitors with greater access to resources and capital.

Meanwhile, existing economic structures almost ensure that the benefits of any financial recovery next year will continue to be spread unequally without some deliberate intervention. “Looking ahead to the next decade, investors face a world that is more indebted, more unequal,” according to a report by UBS. While top-line metrics about an improving economy will capture all the wealth held by the richest, it is important not to overlook the fallout experienced on the other side.

Consider, for example, who has benefited during the pandemic so far and who has lost.





Samuel Rigelhaupt / Sipa USA via Getty Images, Smith Collection / Getty Images
Left: Grubhub delivery bicycles in Manhattan. Right: a restaurant in California advertises its DoorDash delivery option.

It’s hard to imagine food delivery companies thriving when their partner businesses — restaurants — are hanging by a thread, but that is how things have shaken out.

Delivery services like Grubhub and DoorDash saw a huge jump in demand as shelter-in-place orders were issued around the country and restaurants were forced to close or limit indoor dining capacity. Small, local restaurants struggling to survive the pandemic turned to these services as a lifeline, despite unsustainably being charged high fees and commissions for orders placed through these platforms. Low-paid “gig workers” delivering for these companies were arrested and assaulted during the pandemic. “We have experienced strong growth in both new consumers and increased orders from existing consumers” during the pandemic, DoorDash stated in a company filing. The company is not profitable, but its revenue more than tripled during the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same period a year ago. This trend fueled DoorDash’s successful IPO this month, making billions for executives including CEO Tony Xu. DoorDash listed at $102 on Dec. 9 and ended the day with shares up 85%. As Wall Street enjoyed this windfall, 100,000 small businesses have closed so far.

A DoorDash spokesperson said, “Our three founders are also deciding how they want to personally give back to their communities and are each finding their own ways to do so.” She added the company has committed over $200 million to help restaurants and local communities.


Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images Jeff Bezos

Amazon shareholders have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic as brick-and-mortar stores shut down; Amazon workers less so.

In the first nine months of the year, as local businesses around the country went out of business, Amazon’s profit increased by about 70% to $14.1 billion. “Prime members continue to shop with greater frequency and across more categories than before the pandemic began,” an Amazon executive told investors. The company’s rising stock price, which has nearly doubled since March, helped CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth rise by $74 billion this year to nearly $190 billion. Meanwhile, about 20,000 Amazon employees have tested positive for COVID-19, and thousands of workers protested for higher pay, paid sick leave, and better protections during the pandemic.

The company has said it spent $750 million in additional pay for its front-line workforce, $500 million on a thank you bonus earlier this year, and established a $25 million relief fund for workers facing financial hardship or quarantine. Bezos has made donations this year as well, including $791 million to fight climate change, and $100 million to Feeding America.


Mykal Mceldowney / Reuters
The Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Logansport, Indiana.

Food companies continued to produce meat despite outbreaks of the coronavirus at their processing plants.

Tyson, for example, which makes chicken, beef, and pork, saw profits rise this last fiscal year to $2.15 billion while thousands of its workers tested positive for COVID. Tyson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


View Press / Getty Images
A Walmart store in North Bergen, New Jersey.

Walmart’s revenue increased 6.5% to $407 billion from February to October compared to a year ago, with considerable growth in e-commerce, and its profit was up by about 45% — but many employees still lost their jobs.

The company laid off hundreds of corporate workers “in units including store planning, logistics, merchandising and real estate,” Bloomberg reported in July. Walmart also recently confirmed it will lay off 1,200 people in Arkansas and New Jersey in January as part of a reorganization. The company said it has hired 500,000 new associates since March across its stores and supply chain locations to meet demand. The company said in a statement that it has issued $2.8 billion in special bonuses this year, offered paid leave for workers affected by COVID-19, and increased the starting salary for some positions.


Andrew Harnik / AP   Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel.

Some pharmaceutical companies developing COVID-19 vaccines have pledged not to profit from the pandemic (like Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca) — but not all.

Moderna struck a $1.5 billion deal with the US for 100 million doses of the vaccine, which it also developed with $955 million from the government, bringing the government’s total investment to $2.48 billion. Pfizer developed its vaccine without government funding and reached a nearly $4 billion deal for the purchase of 200 million doses. Both companies stand to make billions from the vaccine, which has drawn criticism. Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Massachusetts-based Moderna, gained $4.8 billion in wealth this year as the biotech company’s share price skyrocketed. Neither Moderna nor Pfizer responded to requests for comment.


Mike Blake / Reuters UnitedHealth Group offices in Santa Ana, California.

As people were not getting routine and elective medical care during the pandemic, insurers saw their profits rise.

For example, UnitedHealth, the country’s largest insurer by members, reported an increase in net earnings of 27% to $13.4 billion in the first nine months of the year. The company’s share price has increased dramatically since March. A spokesperson for UnitedHealth said, “We have taken a number of steps to support those we serve, our employees, their families, our communities and the broader health care system. You can find a summary of those actions here.” As insurers continued to pay out fewer claims for care while collecting premiums, some people also reported trouble getting their COVID-19 tests covered — during a pandemic. It’s possible the insurance heyday may draw to an end if the economy doesn’t improve, however, with United warning that rising unemployment could reduce revenue from employer-sponsored plans next year.


Tami Chappell / Reuters Equifax Inc. corporate offices in Atlanta, Georgia.

Credit bureaus — companies that gather data about you and determine your credit score for lenders — are also doing well as inequality widened during the pandemic, with the wealthy spending their money while others lost their jobs.

Consider Equifax: On one end, Equifax has benefited from the 2020 homebuying spree. The company offers specialized credit reports to mortgage lenders, and its US mortgage revenue from the summer was up by almost 90%, Equifax CEO told investors. On the other end of the spectrum, the company also offers employers services such as unemployment claims management. The rise in joblessness was a boon to the company — with so many people newly out of work, Equifax’s unemployment insurance claims business earned $50 million in revenue in the third quarter, up by over 70%, Equifax CEO told investors. The data Equifax gets about people from such employer services has been valuable to lenders this year too, as recent pay cuts and furloughs do not immediately impact a person’s credit score, but do impact their ability to borrow. “Data is valuable in all times. But during this COVID crisis, it's become increasingly valuable,” the CEO said at a conference. Equifax did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


Jessica Mcgowan / Getty Images Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

The stock trades of wealthy politicians drew scrutiny this year when a number made transactions based on suspected access to privileged information.

The Justice Department did not pursue insider trading charges against Sens. Kelly Loeffler, James Inhofe, and Dianne Feinstein after its investigation did not find sufficient evidence that they had done anything illegal. The lawmakers all sold large amounts of stock, worth hundreds of thousands to millions, before the stock market crashed in the spring. Prolific trading by Sen. David Perdue has also raised eyebrows, as have trades by Sen. Richard Burr . As Fortune points out: “Although some suspicious trading activities have been widely condemned, the fact that no member of Congress has been prosecuted under the STOCK Act reveals the challenge in proving illegal insider trading by elected politicians. Those accused of such activity often claim that their transactions are based on public information or are managed by independent trusts. The difficulty arises from the lack of clarity in US securities law; indeed, years of legal practice in this area suggest that the boundaries of illegal insider trading are difficult to define. The fact is that the law ultimately fails to deter members of Congress from allegedly engaging in such activities.” All of the politicians deny any wrongdoing.



Amr Alfiky / Reuters  JP Morgan Chase Bank in Manhattan.

And while Congress sat on its hands instead of passing a second round of stimulus, the government paid banks billions of dollars in fees for processing PPP loans to businesses that were impacted by the pandemic.

Banks say the cost of handling PPP loans will wipe out any potential profit from the fees they’re receiving, and Bank of America, JPMorgan, Citibank, and Wells Fargo pledged not to profit from the program, the New York Times reported. While banks have laid off thousands of workers this year, overall they have remained profitable despite ongoing economic uncertainty that may affect banking customers’ ability to repay loans. They continued to pay dividends to investors and will also be able to resume stock buybacks soon, which have been criticized for enriching “shareholders, generally wealthier Americans, at the expense of workers, new plants and research, and broader economic development,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Sen. Elizabeth Warren in October said these payouts would deplete banks’ “capital buffers at a time when they should be preserving them to support lending to households and small businesses.”

A spokesperson for JPMorgan said the company has “delayed payments and refunded fees for customers on over 2 million accounts,” provided $50 million in philanthropic support, helped “business clients secure more than $45 billion in new credit and $950mm in new loans for small businesses,” helped “corporate clients raise hundreds of billions in capital,” among other efforts.

Citi said in a statement, “Throughout this crisis, we have continuously supported our customers, clients and communities while maintaining strong capital and liquidity positions.”

These are just a few of the organizations that made money during the pandemic — and as the financial crisis continues to affect millions of people across the country, 2021 is looking set to be another banner year for inequality in America.




Venessa Wong is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.