Republicans refuse to strike down marriage amendment for the most offensive reason possible

Virginia's constitutional ban on same-sex marriages was deemed unconstitutional years ago, but the state GOP isn't finished spewing out disgusting stereotypes.

By Bil Browning 

Wednesday, February 9, 2022



While legislation passed in both chambers of the Virginia legislature last year that would repeal the state’s constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages, with Republicans in control of the House, the effort appears to have come to a sputtering halt. A House subcommittee voted down the measure on Tuesday that would have advanced the repeal to the ballot box for voters to decide.

Republican delegates say they don’t like the language that would replace the ban in the amendment, saying that marriage is “inherent in the liberty of persons,” will lead to polygamy and child marriages. The stereotypes of LGBTQ people as promiscuous and dangerous to children live on in the GOP.

While marriage equality was legalized nationwide in 2015, Republicans in several states have either slow-walked or refused to repeal constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriages.

To repeal a constitutional amendment in Virginia, legislation must pass through both chambers twice and be approved by voters.

Virginia’s repeal language passed both chambers in the last General Assembly when controlled by Democrats, but Republicans took the House and governor’s office in the last election after running on a platform that demonized transgender and Black Americans.

“Our Marshall-Newman Amendment was no longer enforceable,” Del. Mark D. Sickles (D), the sponsor of the legislation to repeal the amendment, said. “Yet it sits in its utter ugliness in our constitution.”

Sickles bill would replace the ban with language that reads, “The right to marry is a fundamental right, inherent in the liberty of persons, and marriage is one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness.”

But Republicans are throwing up faux concerns about polygamy and child marriage as a red herring to appeal to the religious right and conservative extremists. Democrats pushed a ban on child marriage through the legislature in 2016; until then children as young as 13 could get married in the state. Only Republicans opposed the ban on forced marriages and child trafficking.

Republican legislators nationwide have refused to ban child marriages, often using anti-LGBTQ reasoning to do so.

“Polygamy is against the law in Virginia,” Sickles said. Republicans “admitted to me afterward that they wouldn’t support this … regardless of that language. They make this stuff up to make what they’re doing seem more reasonable.”

Gov. Glenn Youngkin ( R) won the last election by constantly decrying “critical race theory” and teaching children about America’s history of racism. He also joined forces with the religious right to demonize transgender people by accusing them of trying to enter restrooms that align with their gender identity for nefarious reasons and attempting to ban transgender children from playing school sports.

The GOP has also played a large role in recent attacks on school board members, teachers, administrators, and school librarians; they’ve burned books, banned curriculum topics, and passed laws that would make it illegal for teachers to mention gay people in the classroom.

Virginia rejects proposals for voting rights, gay marriage

A Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee voted along party lines Tuesday not to let voters decide whether to remove language prohibiting same-sex marriage from the state’s constitution or giving voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences.  File Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Virginia lawmakers decided Tuesday against letting voters decide whether to remove language barring same-sex marriage from the state's constitution or giving voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences.

A House of Delegates subcommittee voted 5-4 against the constitutional amendment, which would have given the right to vote to convicted felons who have completed their sentences.

The panel also voted 6-4 to reject a proposed amendment that would remove language baring same-sex marriage from the state constitution.

The measure proposed removing language in the constitution referring to marriage as only a union between a man and woman, instead calling it a fundamental right for all

Had they passed, the measures would have gone to voter referendums in the fall.

The votes fell along partisan lines in the Republican-controlled subcommittee.

Both measures passed through the state's General Assembly last year under a Democrat-controlled legislature. They needed to pass a second time in order to get to the voter referendum stage. Republicans now hold a slim margin in the House.

Spokespeople from more than 12 advocacy groups spoke in favor of the voting measure. No one spoke in opposition.

There was also little debate in the subcommittee.

The state's former Democratic governor called the outcome "shameful

"Virginians who have paid their debt to society deserve to have their voices heard at the ballot box. We won't stop fighting until we fully reverse this Jim Crow era law and make restoration of voting rights automatic," tweeted former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Russian atomic cannons move closer to Ukraine’s border

NEWSARMY
ByDylan Malyasov

Feb 8, 2022

Russia has not let up with a military build-up along the border with Ukraine and deployed to border areas its 203-mm self-propelled guns, that could fire tactical nuclear shells.

Social media users posted videos showing 2S7 Pion self-propelled artillery guns at Vesela Lopan, Belgorod region, just 17 kilometers (10 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Some experts said that this ic could be an upgrade version of an artillery system, called 2S7M “Malka”.

The 2S7 self-propelled gun, known popularly as the “Soviet atomic cannon”, can carry up to four 203 mm nuclear shells that could eliminate targets at a range of 37.5 km.




According to GlobalSecurity.org, 2C7 “Peony” is designed to suppress and eliminate nuclear weapons (SJA), artillery, mortars, equipment, rear, command posts, enemy manpower.

The main purpose of this self-propelled gun, which went into operation in 1975, was the suppression of enemy rear lines, the destruction of particularly important nuclear weapons and facilities in tactical depths up to 50 kilometers away.

The 2S7 ‘Pion’ self-propelled gun developed in the 1980s and still considered as one of the most powerful cannons in the world.

On top of that, Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday warned a nuclear war could break out if Ukraine joins NATO and accused the West of ‘complete disregard for our concerns’ hours after talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Moscow.

About this Author
Dylan Malyasov
U.S. defense journalist and commentator. Aviation photographer. Dylan leads Defence Blog's coverage of global military news, focusing on engineering and technology across the U.S. defense industry.

Far-right conspiracy theorists are warning the Super Bowl halftime show is 'Satanic': report
Matthew Chapman
February 09, 2022

Wendy Rogers during a 2016 interview. (Screenshot/YouTube)

On Wednesday, in a Daily Beast podcast with Asawin Suebsaeng, reporter Kelly Weill explored how far-right conspiracy theorists are warning about the "Satanic" threat from the Super Bowl halftime show.

"With Stop-the-Steal fanatics like Arizona wingnut Wendy Rogers hyperventilating that the Super Bowl show exposes children to 'evil, wicked, Satanic' things (her words), there’s a very real 'performance-related Satanic Panic that’s been brewing for a little while now in the U.S.,' Weill says, adding that the same fears bubbled up after the deadly Travis Scott concert at Astroworld in December," said the report. "Of course it’s not hard to map the influence of QAnon onto the latest anti-Super Bowl crusade, nor the longstanding backlash from the right when Black artists perform at the halftime show (like when Beyonce’s backup dancers were criticized as supposed Trojan horses for Communism)."

"In fact, this backlash 'happens every time there’s a major Black artist performing at the Super Bowl,' Weill points out," said the report. "'They’re not explicitly linked but somehow whenever a Black artist takes the field… it’s evil, it’s Satanic, and I don’t think there’s any doubt that the people pushing the Travis Scott Satanic Panic conspiracy theories were also not reacting one of the most popular Black artists of the current moment.'"

Rogers, who has previously called for the arrest of Democrats for an imagined plot to rig the election, has also suggested that the Canadian truckers behind the anti-vaccine siege of Ottawa could storm the Super Bowl as a punishment for Colin Kaepernick kneeling to protest police brutality.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Increased sex trafficking during the Super Bowl is a dangerous myth, these L.A. sex workers say


Illustration (iStock/Washington Post illustration) (WaPo)

Abigail Higgins, Special To The Washington Post
Tue, February 8, 2022, 

Ahead of Super Bowl LVI on Sunday, the city of Los Angeles has been taking the usual steps to prepare to host the event: painting the field at SoFi Stadium, setting up equipment for the halftime show.

As part of that effort, there have been campaigns to stop human trafficking: Last month, signs started popping up in hundreds of Los Angeles airport bathrooms; and solemn video messages from National Football League stars have been playing on loop in the terminals, warning that offenders will face prosecution.

Almost every year, a swell of media reports and law enforcement news conferences ahead of the Super Bowl sound the alarm about sex trafficking. It's been a long-held idea that major sporting events, including the Super Bowl, the World Cup and the Olympics, trigger a surge in trafficking.

But several academic studies have found no causal relationship between large sporting events and an increase in sex trafficking. (Human trafficking refers to the use of force, fraud or coercion to obtain labor or commercial sex. Reliable statistics about human trafficking are hard to find, especially when it comes to sex trafficking.)

In recent years, sex workers' rights groups have more vocally criticized the idea that there's increased sex trafficking during the Super Bowl. Although some anti-trafficking organizations have distanced themselves from the notion, as well, it persists - and continues to give law enforcement a reason to expand their budgets and make dozens of arrests, sex workers' rights groups argue. These arrests are often a crackdown on sex workers who aren't being trafficked but are trying to do their jobs, advocates say.

In the lead-up to Super Bowl LIV two years ago, the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office said it made dozens of trafficking-related arrests and recovered 20 trafficking victims. An investigation by Miami New Times found that many of the arrests were of sex workers who were "simply looking to make ends meet."

It's an issue about which Los Angeles activists say they are particularly concerned, given that the sporting event will be held in the city's Inglewood neighborhood, which is predominantly Black and Latino but rapidly gentrifying. Advocates point to the recent clearing of homeless encampments in the neighborhood as a sign that the needs of the city's most marginalized are not being prioritized as the city prepares for an event that is projected to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars.

"There's going to be an excess of vulnerable people in jail as opposed to receiving services," said Soma Snakeoil, a sex worker and co-founder of the Sidewalk Project, an advocacy and direct services organization that works with houseless people in Los Angeles. "Sex work is not human trafficking and human trafficking is not sex work, and conflating the two and then using the idea of human trafficking as a way to arrest sex workers is incredibly, incredibly dangerous."

This year's messaging around increased trafficking during the Super Bowl started at a mid-January news briefing, when Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva warned that the Super Bowl was "one of the major events that draws human traffickers to the region," as Fox 11 Los Angeles reported.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department told The Washington Post that its Human Trafficking Task Force (HTTF) will be working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and several local police departments to respond to human trafficking during the Super Bowl.

Trafficking "doesn't just get you a penalty; it gets you time behind bars," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference in January. He appeared with the It's a Penalty campaign, the anti-trafficking organization behind the signage at Los Angeles airport. This is the organization's fifth Super Bowl campaign and its 12th during a global sporting event, said It's a Penalty chief executive Sarah de Carvalho at the same news conference.

"The implication that a major sporting event is a sole reason for human trafficking and exploitation to occur in a city is harmful and misleading," said Anisa Easterbrook, communications and marketing manager for It's a Penalty. "However, our experience of running these campaigns during sporting events - survivor stories and hotline data show that there can be a correlation between a high influx of people into a city and traffickers using this as an opportunity for exploitation."

Sex workers' rights advocates, meanwhile, argue that this messaging does more harm than good.

"People are going to be getting arrested at high rates, and those disruptions are going to continue the cycles of poverty that people are stuck in because of criminalization," said Alex Makulit of US PROS, one of the advocacy groups organizing Stop the Raids, an awareness campaign and online symposium focused on the risks they say sex workers face ahead of the Super Bowl.

The U.S. government commits large amounts of money to combating human trafficking. In December 2021, the Department of Justice announced nearly $87 million "to combat human trafficking, provide supportive services to trafficking victims throughout the United States, and conduct research into the nature and causes of labor and sex trafficking."

But the government's approach has been criticized by some. A 2021 report by the USC Gould International Human Rights Clinic found that anti-trafficking efforts rely primarily on law enforcement "raids" or "sweeps." These are "largely ineffective" at preventing trafficking or protecting survivors, the report found, even though law enforcement typically portrays them as successful.

According to a statement by Kristina Rose, director of the Office for Victims of Crime at the Department of Justice, the U.S. government also funds direct services such as housing and legal assistance to trafficking victims.

"Trafficked minors often first interact with criminal justice authorities through arrests, and may not readily be identified as crime victims," Rose said. "This is especially true for Black, homeless, and LGBTQI+ youth, who report being targeted for arrest as a result of profiling on the basis of race, sexuality, and gender nonconformity."

Rose added that OVC hopes to "generate innovative approaches" to address this problem.

According to Snakeoil, police raids "disproportionately target already marginalized communities," including immigrants, unhoused folks and trans sex workers. "The trauma that people experience when they are put in jail is just incredible," said Snakeoil, adding that a criminal record can affect future employment and housing prospects.

The California Department of Justice said in a statement that "survivors of trafficking shouldn't have to worry about being penalized just because they may have been involved in commercial sex work."

Kristen DiAngelo, executive director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project - Sacramento, said that housing insecurity and poverty are what drove her into the grip of a trafficker. As a teenager living in Los Angeles, she supported herself through in-person sex work and porn. When she was pushed out of this work amid a citywide law enforcement crackdown on underage workers, she said, she was put in touch with a man who would eventually traffic her for 10 years.

"Ten years of my life I lost," DiAngelo said. "Nobody from the outside world gets to tell me how horrible it is."

But throughout her life, she said, "I was more afraid of the police than my trafficker."

DiAngelo alleged that she has suffered violence at the hands of police. In her work at SWOP, she said, she regularly receives calls from sex workers with similar experiences. Research by the American Civil Liberties Union has found that sex workers "are often physically or sexually coerced by police through threat of detention, violence (including rape), or extortion."

As it relates to increased police presence around the Super Bowl, it's not that sex trafficking isn't a concern, said DiAngelo - it's that advocates like her don't believe law enforcement is the right answer. What sex workers need, she said, is stable housing, access to basic resources, and the kind of safety she believes that decriminalizing sex work can bring. Research by the ACLU and Amnesty International have found that decriminalization would help reduce violence against sex workers, who face disproportionately high homicide rates.

Most anti-trafficking organizations do not support decriminalization, but many do support a shift some law enforcement agencies are making toward targeting clients rather than sex workers.

DiAngelo is working with the University of California at Davis on a research project about people who are victims of sexual exploitation for profit.

A pattern emerging in her research, she said, is that young people are forced to enter the sex trade because of poverty or an abusive home life. When they can't afford what they need - food, rent and other basic necessities - they end up relying on someone they know for those needs, and that person ends up trafficking them.

"If we want to protect people who are being trafficked, we need to protect sex workers because they are the most vulnerable for that happening to them next," DiAngelo said.

Diverting some of the money that goes toward Super Bowl-related law enforcement into concrete resources for sex workers could go a long way in helping, she added.

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BUSTED: American conservatives caught spreading lies about Canada’s trucker convoy
Bob Brigham
February 09, 2022

Screengrab.

Conservatives in America are spreading four major lies as they hype the protests by some truck drivers in Canada who are protesting coronavirus vaccines, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale reported Wednesday.

"Canadian protests against vaccine mandates, Covid-19 restrictions and the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have captured attention in the US and abroad -- and prompted a flurry of misinformation, including a false claim that was promoted by prominent podcaster Joe Rogan and on Fox," Dale reported. "First, here's some quick background:The protests involve a minority of Canada's truck drivers, some far-right activists and a variety of other citizens. The demonstrations began in late January as a 'Freedom Convoy' of trucks and other vehicles. The convoy then turned into an ongoing demonstration in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, whose mayor declared a state of emergency on Sunday."

CNN explained that only a small percentage of truck drivers are participating in the protest.'"

"The convoy started after Canada began requiring truckers who cross the US border to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or have two-week quarantines upon returning home. The Canadian Trucking Alliance, the primary advocacy group for Canadian truckers, has opposed the protests and has said that more than 85% of Canadian truckers who regularly cross the border were fully vaccinated as of late January," CNN reported.

Dale noted the false reports of the number of trucks involved.

"The number of trucks involved in the protest was never anywhere close to 50,000; such a number of trucks would have taken up hundreds of miles more road space than this protest occupied. Canadian journalists put the number of trucks in the hundreds in late January," CNN reported. "Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told reporters on January 31 that it was impossible to provide exact crowd-size figures but that he had 'heard' numbers as high as 18,000 total demonstrators -- not just truckers -- present in the city at the peak of the protest on January 29. No credible source has reported that the number of participating trucks in particular ever approached tens of thousands, let alone '50,000.'"

Dale noted backers of the protest have falsely captioned photos and videos.

CNN reported, "One video that has been shared on various social media platforms was captioned to claim that it showed South Carolina truckers heading to Ottawa to join the convoy -- but it actually showed an August 2021 truck parade in support of the Special Olympics, USA Today reported. A video of honking Brazilian truckers that circulated on Facebook was from a May 2021 demonstration in support of President Jair Bolsonaro, not a demonstration in solidarity with the Canadian truckers as some captions claimed, USA Today also reported. A photo of a massive protest crowd, shared in Twitter posts in both English and Spanish as if it were from Ottawa this year, actually depicted a 1991 demonstration in Moscow against the Communist government of the Soviet Union, Reuters reported. And another photo, which has been described in Facebook posts as a group of Amish people driving to support the convoy, is a shot of Old Order Mennonites simply going to church, PolitiFact reported."

Dale noted some supporters will also pushing the false claim that 50% of the Ottawa police force tendered their resignations.

"These claims were entirely false. Ottawa police spokesperson Constable Amy Gagnon said in Monday emails to CNN that 'there have been no resignations in relation to the Demonstration' and 'all available officers are working.' And the Canadian Armed Forces have not made any vow of "allegiance" in relation to the protests nor issued any dramatic statements of any kind about this issue. 'In short, no, we have not made any such comment,' a military spokesperson said in a Monday email to CNN," the network reported.

And there have also been false reports that the government had instructed Ottawa hotels to not rent rooms to protesters.

"The employees who took CNN's calls at the downtown Marriott and five other Ottawa hotels on Monday said their establishments had not been given any anti-protester instruction by any government; Patrick Champagne, press secretary to Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, told CNN that the claim 'is categorically false'; Alexander Cohen, spokesperson for Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, called the claim 'ludicrous' and said that 'no one from the federal government has done that'; Steve Bell, president of the Ottawa Gatineau Hotel Association, said that 'to my knowledge there is no truth to this rumour.' As for the Marriott in particular, it had rooms available at the time of Subramanya's tweet on Sunday evening and again on Monday evening," CNN reported.

Read the full fact-check.

Working Conditions for Border Patrol Getting More Attention From Biden Administration

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the Border Patrol, laid out 19 ways to address working conditions after frosty receptions by agents

By Ben Fox • Published 

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, Pool
In this Oct. 8, 2021, file photo, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas speaks during a U.S.-Mexico High Level Security Dialogue at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Friday, Oct. 8, 2021, in Mexico City.


A strained Border Patrol is getting increased attention from the Biden administration after tense meetings between senior officials and the rank-and-file while the agency deals with one of the largest spikes in migration along the U.S.-Mexico border in decades.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the Border Patrol, laid out 19 ways to address working conditions after frosty receptions by agents, said Chris Magnus, the new commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

Mayorkas also issued a memo vowing to push for more prosecutions of people accused of assaulting CBP personnel in the course of their duties, an issue raised at a recent meeting in Laredo, Texas, and elsewhere, Magnus said Tuesday.

“That’s something that agents in the field want to hear because assaults are on the uptick,” Magnus told The Associated Press. “We are not just seeing folks who are fleeing to the U.S. to get away from conditions. We are seeing smugglers, members of cartels, and drug organizations that are actively engaged in doing harm.”

Efforts to deal with working conditions for agents come as President Joe Biden has been criticized across the political spectrum over immigration. He has sought to reverse many hardcore policies of his predecessor but has come under fire over the situation at the border that could cause trouble for Democrats in the midterm elections.

CBP encountered migrants from all over the world about 1.7 million times along the U.S.-Mexico border last year. The total, among the highest in decades, is inflated by repeated apprehensions of people who were turned away, without being given a chance to seek asylum, under a public health order issued at the start of the pandemic.

Immigration advocates have condemned the administration for not repealing the public health order, known as Title 42, while critics, including many Border Patrol agents, say a Biden policy of allowing children and families to stay in the country and pursue asylum has encouraged irregular migration.

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‘Robot Dogs' Will Help Protect US-Mexico Border: CBP

Magnus said the agents, and the administration, are just trying to manage a complicated situation.

“We’re seeing folks that are encountering political conditions and violence, unsafe conditions to live and work, at unprecedented levels," the former police chief of Tucson, Arizona, said in an interview, the first since he was sworn in Friday. “We’ve seen, for example, in places, earthquakes or other environmental conditions. We’re seeing unprecedented levels of poverty. All of these are things that are in many ways, you know, pushing migrants again at high levels to this country.”

The administration has sought to address the cause of migration, including by increasing aid to Central America and re-starting a visa program that was ended under President Donald Trump. It has also sought assistance from other countries, including Mexico, to do more to stop or take in migrants.

As the overall numbers have increased, and the administration has decided to allow many families to stay and seek asylum in a process that can take years, some Border Patrol agents have grown disenchanted as they spend their shifts processing and transporting people, not out in the field.

That frustration boiled over in Laredo as agents met late last month with Mayorkas and Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who acknowledged morale was at an “all-time low,” according to a leaked video published by the Washington Examiner. One agent complained about “doing nothing” except releasing people into the United States, referring to the practice of allowing migrants to remain free while their cases wind through immigration court.

At another meeting, in Yuma, Arizona, Mayorkas told agents he understood that apprehending families and children “is not what you signed up to do” and that their jobs were becoming more challenging amid an influx of Cubans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, according to video published by the conservative website Townhall. One of the agents turned his back on the secretary.

Magnus has heard similar concerns raised in meetings. "I think it has been difficult for many of them who spent most of their careers or anticipated that their careers would be largely working in the field, on the border," he said.

The commissioner declined to specify the 19 areas where Mayorkas “wants to see improvement,” because they have not been publicly released. But another official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an internal document, said they include expanding the role of a new class of civilian employees to add tasks such as transporting migrants to medical facilities so agents can return to other duties.

Another point calls for faster decisions on asylum cases at the border. Agents have expressed frustration that asylum-seekers are freed in the U.S., often for years, while their claims make their way through a system backlogged with about 1.6 million cases.

Magnus said he hopes to expand mental health services for agents and provide additional resources to help them and their families cope with a stressful job that requires them to move often.

“There is never one simple solution to addressing morale at any organization, but I absolutely appreciate the very challenging conditions that the men and women of the Border Patrol and CBP in general have been have been working under,” he said.

Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed.

Poll: Trump voters now twice as likely as Biden voters to say Russia-Ukraine conflict is 'none of America’s business'

Andrew Romano
·West Coast Correspondent
Tue, February 8, 2022, 

With President Biden’s top security adviser warning that Russia could invade Ukraine “any day now,” a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Donald Trump voters are now more than twice as likely as Joe Biden voters to say “the conflict is none of America’s business” — a striking role reversal after decades of right-wing hawkishness toward Moscow.

The shift presumably reflects the influence of GOP figures such as Trump and top Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who have long rationalized and even praised the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson at an event in Hungary in 2021.

 (Janos Kummer/Getty Images)

The poll of 1,628 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Feb. 3 to 7, found that a full 42 percent of Trump voters now say the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is none of America’s business — 6 points more than the share who say “it’s in America’s best interests to stop Russia and help Ukraine” (36 percent).

In contrast, 60 percent of Biden voters now insist that it is in America’s best interests to help Ukraine, while just 20 percent disagree and claim the conflict doesn’t concern the U.S.

By the same token, more Trump voters now say the U.S. should take “neither” country’s side in the clash (49 percent) than say the U.S. should side with Ukraine (46 percent). Biden voters say the opposite, with more than two-thirds (67 percent) insisting the U.S. should side with Ukraine, compared with just 29 percent who prefer neutrality.

To some degree, this gap may arise from America’s usual partisan patterns. As more than 130,000 Russian troops mass on the Ukraine border, it has been Biden, not Trump, who has been trying to defuse the situation by threatening “swift and severe” economic sanctions and sending arms and troops to the region. It is not surprising that Americans who voted for the current president would be more inclined to favor his approach than those who backed his predecessor.

Yet the new poll results also suggest that partisanship isn’t the only — or even the major — force at work here. Conservatives are also divided among themselves, signaling a larger rift between traditional Republicans and their Trumpier counterparts that could complicate America’s efforts to respond to Russia.

LEFT WING Demonstrators against U.S. military involvement with Russia over Ukraine at a rally on Saturday in New York City. 

(Chery Dieu-Nalio/AFP via Getty Images)

One key factor is where people get their news.

By and large, Republican leaders in Congress have encouraged Biden to get tougher on Russia by imposing immediate sanctions on Russian energy exports and sending more lethal aid to Ukraine’s military.

But Fox’s Carlson has repeatedly questioned U.S. support for Ukraine, asking on Nov. 10 why the U.S. would “take Ukraine’s side and not Russia’s side” and arguing in December that Putin was justified in building up troops along the border.

Ukraine is “strategically irrelevant to the United States,” Carlson added in January. “No rational person could defend a war with Russia over Ukraine.”

Sure enough, poll respondents who name Fox as their most-watched cable news network say the U.S. should take neither country’s side rather than Ukraine’s by 48 percent to 44 percent. Among those who watch CNN, the split is 53 percent to 37 percent in favor of Ukraine; MSNBC viewers, meanwhile, are 70 percent pro-Ukraine to 24 percent pro-neutrality. As Carlson steers rank-and-file Republicans toward Russia, his liberal counterpart, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, appears to be having the opposite effect on her audience.

Yahoo Tabs Ukraine | PDF | World Politics | Vladimir Putin (scribd.com)

Another important factor is the strength of party identification. On the question of which side to take in the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, self-described Democrats look a lot like independents who lean Democratic. Less than a quarter of both groups — 22 percent and 24 percent, respectively — say the conflict is none of America’s business.

But on the right it’s a different story. There, independents who lean Republican (57 percent) are 7 points more likely than self-described Republicans (50 percent) to insist that the U.S. should stay neutral. They’re also 9 points less likely — 30 percent vs. 39 percent — to say it’s in America’s best interests to help Ukraine and stop Russia.

The implication is clear: On the right, the less strongly someone identifies as a Republican, the more skeptical they tend to be of intervening on Ukraine’s behalf.

Age and income seem to contribute as well. Hawkishness prevails among older Republicans, with those over 45 favoring Ukraine (51 percent) over neutrality (48 percent) and those under 45 favoring neutrality (53 percent) over Ukraine (32 percent) The same goes for Republicans who make more or less than $50,000 a year; the former side with Ukraine by 4 points, while the latter side with “neither” by 24.

Protesters in Union Square in New York City at a rally against Russian aggression. 

(Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The picture that emerges is of a significant faction of non-establishment-oriented conservatives — younger, less wealthy and less engaged with Washington politics — who now favor a softer stance toward Russia.

Their views were likely shaped by several years of sympathetic statements from Trump, who said in 2016 that Putin “has been a leader far more than” then-President Barack Obama, and who continued to defend and praise his Russian counterpart throughout his presidency, particularly as evidence emerged that Putin had meddled in the 2016 election to benefit him.

As political commentator William Saletan recently pointed out in Slate, “In Gallup polls before 2016, Republicans generally viewed Russia less favorably than Democrats did. Now it’s the other way around.”

Polls taken in June of last year also showed that Putin enjoys a better net favorable rating among Republicans than Biden does, by anywhere from 16 to 22 percentage points. In a January Yahoo News/YouGov survey, 62 percent of Republicans said Putin was “a stronger leader” than Biden.

As a result, there is little consensus among Americans as a whole about how to proceed. Just 40 percent, for instance, say it’s in America’s best interests to stop Russia and help Ukraine, while 33 percent say the conflict is none of America’s business and 27 percent are unsure. Similarly, more Americans now say the U.S. should stay neutral (49 percent) rather than take Ukraine’s side (46 percent).

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

 (Alexei Druzhinin /Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Meanwhile, not one of a list of potential U.S. policy responses garners majority support. The most popular — “continue diplomacy with Russia to avoid an invasion” (43 percent) and “implement severe economic sanctions to counter an invasion” (39 percent) — fall short by several points. None of the rest — “send arms to Ukraine” (24 percent); “send troops to the region to bolster defenses, including to Ukraine” (19 percent); ​​“send troops to the region to bolster defenses, but not to Ukraine” (19 percent); “avoid further foreign conflict by agreeing to Putin’s demands” (6 percent) — appeal to more than a quarter of the public.

Yet on the question of Putin’s demands for NATO to withdraw from Eastern Europe and bar Ukraine from joining the alliance, Trump voters (14 percent) are nearly twice as likely as Biden voters (8 percent) to describe them as “reasonable.”

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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,628 U.S. adults interviewed online from Feb. 3 to 7, 2022. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2020 presidential vote (or nonvote) and voter registration status. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7 percent.

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Johnson & Johnson reportedly pauses COVID vaccine production, raising vaccine access concerns

The company's one-dose COVID-19 vaccine has been the only option in some parts of the world.

Jessica Rendall
Feb. 8, 2022

Joao Paulo Burini/Getty Images

Johnson & Johnson has temporarily stopped making its COVID-19 vaccine at the only facility producing usable doses, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the situation. Production has reportedly been paused since late last year.

The facility, located in the city of Leiden in the Netherlands, is now producing an experimental and potentially more profitable vaccine for a different virus, according to the Times. The pause is expected to last only until next month, the news outlet said, and it's unclear how or whether it'll affect vaccine supplies. Sources told the Times that the break at the plant could potentially reduce supply by a few hundred million doses over the next several months.

A Johnson & Johnson spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied the production pause, telling CNET that the company currently has millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines in inventory. Johnson & Johnson also continues to supply doses to all of its "fill and finish sites," which bottle the vaccine for distribution, the spokesperson said.

Johnson & Johnson's one-dose vaccine is easier to refrigerate and store, and therefore easier to distribute than Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines. It's also cheaper, and health officials have said it makes for a better option in harder-to-reach communities, where people may not always be able to return weeks later for a second dose. Countries in Africa, in particular, have relied on Johnson & Johnson's vaccine as protection against severe COVID-19 disease.

"This is not the time to be switching production lines of anything, when the lives of people across the developing world hang in the balance," Dr. Ayoade Alakija, a co-head of the African Union's vaccine delivery program, told the Times.

Johnson & Johnson's spokesperson said the company "continues to fulfill our contractual obligations in relation to the COVAX Facility and the African Union." One of J&J's fill and finish sites is in South Africa. COVAX is a program dedicated to equitable vaccine access, and it buys vaccines and distributes them to many lower-income countries.

In the United States, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines over Johnson & Johnson's for most people, citing concerns over a rare but dangerous blood-clotting disorder seen with J&J, and because the other two vaccines are widely available and accessible now in the US. Some health officials have also argued that though one dose does provide protection against severe disease, Johnson & Johnson should actually be a two-dose vaccine because a second shot raises that protection to a level more comparable to the mRNA vaccines.

Other countries don't have access to additional vaccine choices. According to Our World in Data, a little more than 10% of people living in low-income countries have had a dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

A source told the Times that the experimental vaccine being produced at the Netherlands plant is for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and that it'll be tested in a clinical trial for older adults in wealthy countries. Johnson & Johnson didn't confirm or deny the vaccine being made at Leiden to CNET.

Cultivating conspiracy: how Boris Johnson amplified the far right

Prime minister follows Donald Trump playbook by tacitly endorsing wild conspiracy theory to score points

The Labour leader Keir Starmer was mobbed by angry people shouting ‘traitor’ and ‘paedophile protector’. Photograph: Resistance GB/Guardian

Dan Sabbagh
Tue 8 Feb 2022

What started out as a conspiracy meme on the outer reaches of the internet has, with the help of Boris Johnson, swiftly established itself amid the cocktail of ideas and conspiracies that define the new extreme right.

The protesters who surrounded Keir Starmer on Monday night mostly shouted the word “traitor” – once a term of abuse against pro-EU MPs during the Brexit crisis – as well as “paedophile protector”, a reference to false claims about the Labour leader’s links to the Jimmy Savile case.

The amalgam of thinking draws in anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine tropes, which police believe has created a fertile space for conspiracist ideas to circulate widely during the two long years of the pandemic – with uncertain consequences.

“We have seen an increase in the volume of online extremism and hatred, much of which sits below a criminal threshold, but which creates a permissive environment which makes it easier for extremists to peddle their brand of hatred,” counter-terror police said, citing materials from a briefing given last year.

But until Johnson’s attack at prime minister’s questions just over a week ago, the false claims about Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, had only a relatively limited circulation in far-right groups on the lightly regulated social network Telegram.

Adam Hadley, executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, said he wondered “how No 10’s team got hold of this in the first place” as it was, he said, “a fairly niche conspiracy theory being propagated by far-right conspiracy theorists and extremists on Telegram”.

Amplifying such extreme concepts is a phenomenon more familiar in the US, where Donald Trump – before, during and after his presidency – has been willing to lean into the QAnon conspiracy theory, which pushed the blatantly false idea that Trump was fighting a group of Satan-worshipping paedophiles who secretly run the government.

When asked about the theory in August 2020, Trump responded: “Well, I haven’t heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?” That culminated, arguably, in the storming of the Capitol after Trump’s election defeat.

The website of Resistance GB, whose co-editor in chief, the former Conservative councillor Will Coleshill, filmed and shouted at Starmer as he walked through Westminster, features occasional videos of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. The group claims to be focused “on resisting erosion and abolition of British culture”.

One such film shows Robinson speaking at a rally in Telford at the end of January, where he claims he is speaking for “justice for victims of sexual exploitation”. But a few moments later, in response to another shouted question, Robinson goes on to make an unjustifiable anti-Muslim slur.

Another video, filmed in October after a group of anti-vax extreme right protesters had tried to run after Michael Gove, the communities secretary, in the street, demonstrates the breadth of ideas. A somewhat bemused Gove had been bundled to safety by police before the demonstrators could arrive in numbers.

“Very interesting … When people won’t speak, they are usually guilty,” says one woman, referring to Gove. “Children are dying, children are being seriously harmed, the [Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation] said children don’t need to be vaccinated.” Another man added menacingly: “If we was really this angry as what these people think we are, we’d have strung him up by the closest tree.”

Two academics who have studied extremism, Bettina Rottweiler and Paul Gill from University College London, believe “a stronger conspiracy mentality leads to increased violent extremist intentions” based on a study conducted in Germany, although they caution that “the effects are much stronger for individuals exhibiting lower self-control”.

Counter-terror police in the UK have similar concerns, warning that a similar fusing-together of ideas is used by Islamist terror groups to try to radicalise people online. Even before Monday’s incident in Westminster, officers were concerned about the subcultures that are emerging.

Student petition calls for reinstatement of COVID safety policies at Baylor

Chase Lawrence
WSWS.ORG

A student at Baylor University, a private Christian university in Waco, Texas launched a petition that has gained close to 400 signatures as of this writing calling for the reinstatement of modest safety measures at the school in response to the Omicron surge. Baylor started classes in person on January 18, as many universities did in Texas and across the US, with little to no virtual options available for students nor safety measures in place. The student, Madi Snow, said she was at high risk of contracting COVID and developing severe illness, according to the campus newspaper the Baylorlariat.

According to Baylor's dashboard, over 9,000 people have been infected since the start of the pandemic at the 20,000-student university.

Baylor is in Waco, which has a population of some 136,000. Surrounding McLennan County has been ravaged by the pandemic, with 46,000 cases and 827 deaths from COVID-19 to date, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Only a few weeks ago hospitals in McLennan County had to restrict non-emergency procedures.'

Baylor University (Source: Baylor U)

Texas’ COVID-19 death toll has exceeded total American combat deaths in the Vietnam War and Korean war combined, with 81,413 deaths, according to Worldometer. The current seven-day average estimate is over 25,000 people being infected per day.

The state of Texas, as with the Biden administration nationally, has repudiated virtually all COVID safety measures. Republican state governor Abbott banned mask mandates last year, though this was challenged in court with some school districts ignoring the governor’s anti-mask mandate.

The main demands of the petition are the reinstatement of Baylor's pandemic attendance policy and for online options for students. The petition states that the university makes “no exceptions for students who test positive for COVID-19 or are exposed and need to quarantine” and that “any student attending fewer than 75% of a course automatically receives no credit. This amounts to an average of 3 to 6 absences in most courses.” That is, students who are sick as a result of COVID-19 may fail courses as a result. No doubt many students may feel compelled, out of academic considerations, to attend school sick in order to avoid failing as a result of the university’s policy, posing a risk both to themselves and others.

Baylor also sent out an email on January 12 cited by the Baylorlariat that “requires faculty to work with students who are absent because of ‘serious illness, accident, or death in the family,’” and that “if a student were to test positive for COVID-19 or be quarantined by the University, the University Attendance policy requires faculty to work with these students,” raising the prospect of faculty working with sick students and further spreading the disease.

The petition also calls for online options, which as it notes “w[ere] offered pre-vaccine, and the new policy is being framed as reasonable in light of decreased mortality and reportedly mild cases.” The petition continues, “Forgotten here is the reality that many high-risk people have an insufficient immunoresponse to the vaccine, or comorbidities that would exacerbate even a mild case of COVID-19 to be dangerous.”

The petition also points to cases standing “well above the average from Fall 2021” and the risk it poses it “high risk people” and those that live with and care for them, as well as the lack of guidance on campus on proper masking, reiterating the fact that Baylor previously offered remote and that it could do it again.

The petition, while correctly calling out the risk to those with comorbities, so-called high-risk populations, does so while overlooking the risk posed both to other students as well as the broader population.

It should be noted that the 9,000 infections at the university no doubt contributed to the spread in the broader community. To be blunt, the measures Baylor previously embraced that the petition calls to be reinstated were woefully inadequate then and are even more so now, with the more infectious and vaccine resistant Omicron variant.

COVID-19 creates a plethora of debilitating and life-threatening issues in healthy vaccinated people as well as in those who are at high risk that students should be aware of.

COVID is known to damage several organ systems including the lungs, heart, kidneys, and brain. COVID can cause blood clots which can lead to stroke and heart damage, as well as a drop in IQ often worse than lead poisoning or a stroke. It can also cause long-term breathing problems, heart complications, chronic kidney impairment, stroke, Guillain-Barre syndrome, as well as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in both children and adults (MIS-C and MIS-A respectively) that can lead to permanent organ damage and death. In children, COVID-19 has been known to cause diabetes .

A quarter of the people who die from COVID-19 have no comorbidities, meaning people under the age of 65 with no preexisting health conditions are at risk.

The reference to “high risk people,” is a misleading suggesting only a small minority composed of those with rare genetic disorders or other very rare disorders or diseases are vulnerable, but that simply isn’t the case.

According to John Hopkins research published in JAMA 33 percent and 23 percent of Americans ages 18 to 25 are obese or overweight, respectively, putting them at risk for a variety of health problems including high blood pressure, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, and cancer. This is a comorbidity, and those in this category are “high risk people.” Only a minority, 38 percent, in the same age range have a healthy BMI.

The CDC states on its website “People with Certain Medical Conditions” and that overweight, obesity, or severe obesity “can make you more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19,” adding that the “risk of severe COVID-19 illness increases sharply with elevated BMI.”

One in four young adults (ages 19-34) have prediabetes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One study concluded that “Prediabetes could act as a risk factor for the severity of COVID-19.”

The university, in line with the Biden administration’s anti-scientific vaccine-only policy, has used vaccinations to justify removing COVID safety measures.

Baylor President Linda Livingstone pointed to the high vaccination rate towards the end of January, which stood at 80.1 percent of students and 92.9 percent of employees in an email in order to justify removing weekly testing of students. This no doubt contributed to a fall in officially recorded cases.

Livingstone made the oft-repeated claim of a supposedly “mild” Omicron virus, saying in an email quoted by the Baylorlariat, “While this semester began with several days of high case counts, those cases have generally been mild and short-lived, allowing us to manage the campus health environment effectively.” That is, infecting students, staff, and the broader community with a debilitating and lethal virus is the policy of Baylor. One might be mistaken to take the President’s idiotic comments for an advertisement for a chicken-pox party.

Much of this has to do not with health concerns, but financial considerations. A major component of a typical university’s revenues come from parking passes, on-campus housing, sports and other in-person-only activities. Many universities in Texas suffered a decline in revenue as a result of the turn to remote learning around March 2020.

Baylor does not mention in its justifications fully reopening that a student has already died at the university from COVID-19, Alicia Martinez, a 21-year-old graduate student who was studying at the School of Social Work and about to graduate. Also not mentioned are the tens of thousands of other young people and young adults across the US who have died of COVID-19.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality calls for schools to go virtual as part of a broader strategy to fight and defeat the pandemic. Students must join with workers as part of a mass socialist movement to put an end to the pandemic, itself a product of the ruling class policy of mass infection pursued to keep workers on the job producing profits to enrich the financial oligarchy. All students seeking to fight for safe schools should sign up to join the IYSSE, and faculty and staff seeking the same should join the Texas Educators Rank and File Committee.