A short history of how Black women have been impacted by police violence — and what they're doing to combat it
Keisha N. Blain, The Conversation Jun 13, 2020

Balloons and a drawing for Breonna Taylor who would have turned 27, but was killed by police officers, hangs at the fence of Lafayette Square near the White House, to protest police brutality and racism, on June 7, 2020 in Washington, DC. JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AFP via Getty Images

In March, Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Kentucky, was killed by police officers.

There is a perception that Black women that have been shielded from police violence, but that is not true.

Black women have also been key voices in the struggle to end police brutality, from Fannie Lou Hamer to "Mothers of the Movement."

Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers who raided her home.

The officers had entered her home without warning as part of a drug raid. The suspect they were seeking was not a resident of the home – and no drugs were ever found.

But when they came through the door unexpectedly, and in plain clothes, police officers were met with gunfire from Taylor's boyfriend, who was startled by the presence of intruders. In only a matter of minutes, Taylor was dead – shot eight times by police officers.

Although the majority of Black people killed by police in the United States are young men, Black women and girls are also vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. The #SayHerName campaign has worked to bring greater awareness to this issue.

Police violence against Black women is marginalized in the public's understanding of American policing. There is a perception among many Americans that Black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence.

This perception could not further from the truth.

Breonna Taylor's story is reminiscent of countless others, and reflects a long-standing pattern: For decades, Black women have been targets of police violence and brutality.

And for decades, their stories have been sidelined in public discussions about policing. Many scholars point to misogyny to explain the continued marginalization of Black women in mainstream narratives on police violence. As Andrea Ritchie, one of the authors of the groundbreaking #SayHerName report, explains, "Women's experiences of policing and criminalization and resistance [have] become unworthy of historical study or mention, particularly when those writing our histories are also men."

Despite, or perhaps because of, their own vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence, Black women have been key voices in the struggle to end it.

Fannie Lou Hamer confronts police violence

Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the most vocal activists against state-sanctioned violence.

Born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1917, Hamer was a sharecropper who joined the civil rights movement during the early 1960s.

After learning that she had the right to vote under the U.S. Constitution, Hamer became active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an interracial civil rights organization. The organization worked on the grassroots level to help Black residents in Mississippi register to vote at a time when only 5% of the state's 450,000 Black residents were registered.
In 1963, Hamer and a group of other activists were traveling back home after attending a voter's workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. They stopped at a restaurant in Winona, Mississippi, to grab a bite to eat.

The restaurant owners made it clear that Black people were not welcome. Hamer returned to the bus, but then reemerged when she noticed officers shoving her friends into police cars. An officer immediately seized Hamer and began kicking her.

Later at the police station, white officers continued to beat Hamer. As she later recalled, "They beat me till my body was hard, till I couldn't bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That's how I got this blood clot in my left eye — the sight's nearly gone now. And my kidney was injured from the blows they gave me in the back."

Despite the fear of reprisals, Hamer told this story often. In 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, she recounted her story before a live, televised audience of millions.

In doing so, Hamer brought attention to the problem of police violence. Her efforts would pave the way for many other Black women activists who boldly confronted police violence and brutality by telling their stories — and the stories of their loved ones.

From lynch mob to violent police
During the 1980s, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry led a grassroots initiative in New York City to combat police violence in Black communities.

In 1984, Mary Bumper's 66-year-old mother, Eleanor Bumpurs, was shot and killed by New York City police while resisting eviction from her Bronx apartment. A year later, in June 1985, Veronica Perry's 17-year-old son, Edmund Perry, was shot and killed by a plainclothes police officer.

Both cases drew widespread media coverage and public outcry from Black leaders, who demanded tangible changes in policing.

United by their similar experiences, Mary Bumpers and Veronica Perry joined forces to combat police brutality in New York City — an epicenter of police violence and anti-brutality organizing. Transforming their grief into political action, both women politicized their roles as mothers and daughters to challenge police violence. They organized local demonstrations and pushed for legislation that would help to curb police violence in the city.

On Sept. 24, 1985, they were keynote speakers at the Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem. Both women delivered rousing speeches before an audience of community members and religious leaders.

"We will not stand for the KKK in blue uniforms … we will not stand for it," Veronica Perry insisted.

Her comments emphasized Black activists' recognition that the fight for Black rights was interconnected with the struggle against racist violence — whether at the hands of a lynch mob of ordinary citizens or at the hands of a police officer.




The struggle continues

In October 1986, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry appeared together at a memorial service at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. They were joined by several other Black women, including Carrie Stewart, the mother of graffiti artist Michael Stewart, who died in police custody in 1983.

Also joining them was Annie Brannon, whose 15-year-old son Randolph Evans was killed by New York police in 1976.

At the service, they lit candles in memory of their loved ones and called on community members to take seriously the escalating police violence in the city and across the nation. "We as a people have to stand together," Mary Bumpurs explained. "It takes each of us banding together," Veronica Perry added.

Today many remember the Eleanor Bumpurs and Edmund Perry cases. Fewer might recall these two women's grassroots organizing during the 1980s.


Their efforts, and the earlier work of Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi, offer a glimpse of the significant role Black women play in challenging police violence.

These women's political work continues today through the "Mothers of the Movement," a group of Black mothers whose sons and daughters have been killed while in police custody.

This group, which includes Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, are working tirelessly to push for legislation that would fundamentally change American policing.

In recent years, Fulton, along with Democratic Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, and Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, have run for public office. In the wake of recent protests, these women are calling for greater police accountability and joining the chorus of voices demanding the end of police killings of Black people in the United States.


Keisha N. Blain, Associate Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The history of how Black Americans were deprived of land ownership — and why it might be time to revisit Black commons

Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone,  The Conversation

Civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer created Freedom Farms, a cooperative model designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest Black farmers in the American South. GHI Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Following emancipation, there was no redistribution of land or reparations — and that has led to fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power for Black Americans.
One way to redress this inequity could be through "Black commons," with both shared land and economic, cultural, and digital resources.

There is a long history of collective ownership in the United States, and today there are digital commons as well.

This could be an opportunity to look at the idea of collective Black action and land ownership beyond just the accumulation of wealth.

Underlying the recent unrest sweeping US cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed Black lives since the end of slavery in the US.

The "40 acres and a mule" promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor.
June 19 is celebrated by Black Americans as Juneteenth, marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of Black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how Black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the "Black commons" — based on shared economic, cultural, and digital resources as well as land — could act as one means of redress. As professors in urban planning and landscape architecture, our research suggests that such a concept could be a part of undoing the racist legacy of chattel slavery by encouraging economic development and creating communal wealth.

Land grab

The proportion of the United States under Black ownership has actually shrunk over the last 100 years or so.

At their peak in 1910, African American farmers made up around 14% of all US farmers, owning 16 to 19 million acres of land. By 2012, Black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land. Another study shows a 98% decline in Black farmers between 1920, and 1997. This contrasts sharply with an increase in acres owned by white farmers over the same period.

In a 1998 report, the US Department of Agriculture ascribed this decline to a long and "well-documented" history of discrimination against Black farmers, ranging from New Deal and USDA discriminatory practices dating from the 1930s to 1950s-era exclusion from legal, title and loan resources.

Discriminatory practices have also affected who owns property as well as land. In 2017, the racial homeownership gap was at its highest level for 50 years, with 79.1% of white Americans owning a home compared to 41.8% of Black Americans. This gap is even larger than it was when racist housing practices such as redlining, which denied Black residents mortgages to buy, or loans to renovate, property were legal.

The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has hollowed out the Black middle class and continues to plague Black America — making it harder to accrue wealth and pass it on to future generations.

A 2017 report found that the median net worth for non-immigrant Black American households in the greater Boston region was just $8, but for whites it was $247,500. This was due to "general housing and lending discrimination through restrictive covenants, redlining and other lending practices."

Nationally, between 1983 and 2013, median Black household wealth decreased by 75% to $1,700 while median white household wealth increased 14% to $116,800.
Freedom farms

Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming. The Jamaican social theorist Sylvia Wynter called this land "the plot."

Wynter has explained how that these parcels of land were transformed into communal areas where slaves could establish their own social order, sustain traditional African folklore and foodways — growing yams, cassava, and sweet potatoes. Plots were often called "yam grounds," so important was this staple food.


The connection between food, land, power, and cultural survival was subversive in its nature. By appropriating physical space to support collective growing practices within the brutal constraints of slavery, Black people also demonstrated the need for common, shared mental space to enable their survival and resistance. Herbalism, medicine, and midwifery, and other African American healing practices were seen as acts of resistance that were "intimately tied to religion and community," according to historian Sharla M. Fett.

With the end of slavery, these plots disappeared.

The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery Black America. It was central to civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farms, a cooperative model designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest Black farmers in the American South.

In Hamer's view, the fight for justice in the face of oppression required a measure of independence that could be achieved through owning land and providing resources for the community.

This idea of a Black commons as a means of economic empowerment formed a focus of W.E.B. DuBois' 1907 "Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans." DuBois believed that the extreme segregation of the Jim Crow era made it necessary to ground economic empowerment in the cultural bonds between Black people and that this could be achieved through cooperative ownership.

Credit unions and co-ops

The accumulation of wealth was not the only desired consequence of a Black commons.

In 1967, social critic Harold Cruse argued for a "new institutionalism" that would create a "new dynamic synthesis of politics, economics, and culture." In his view, economic ventures needed to be grounded in the greater aspirations of Black communities — politically, culturally, and economically. This could be achieved through a Black commons.

As the political economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard has noted in reference to Black credit unions and mutual aid funds, "African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefited greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation's history."

The nonprofit Schumacher Center for a New Economics is working to rejuvenate the idea of Black commons. In a 2018 statement, the center proposed to adopt a community land trust structure "to serve as a national vehicle to amass purchased and gifted lands in a Black commons with the specific purpose of facilitating low-cost access for Black Americans hitherto without such access."

Meanwhile, shared equity housing schemes and community land trusts continue to grow, helping Black families own property, advance racial and economic justice, and mitigate displacement resulting from gentrification.
Digital commons

The disproportionate effects of the coronavirus pandemic and unrest over police brutality have highlighted deeply embedded structural racism. Organizations such as Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives are demonstrating a renewed vigor around collective action and a blueprint for how this can be achieved in a digital age. At the same time, Black Americans are also forging a cultural commons through events such as DJ D-Nice's Club Quarantine — a hugely popular online dance party. Club Quarantine's success indicates the potential for using online platforms to facilitate community building, pointing toward future economic cooperation.

That's what organizations like Urban Patch are trying to do. The nonprofit group uses crowdsourced funding to build community spaces in inner city areas of Indianapolis and encourage collective economic development that echoes the Black commons of years past.


The long history of racism in the United States has held back Black Americans for generations. But the current soul searching over this legacy is also an unrivaled opportunity to look again at the idea of collective Black action and ownership, using it to create a community and economy that goes beyond just ownership of land for wealth's sake.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]

Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University and Kofi Boone, Professor of Landscape Architecture, College of Design, North Carolina State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read the original article on The Conversation. Copyright 2020. Follow The Conversation on Twitter.

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SEE ALSO: A short history of how Black women have been impacted by police violence — and what they're doing to combat it

Trump appears to threaten protesters with harsh policing ahead of his controversial rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Mia Jankowicz

President Donald Trump tweeted Friday what appears to be a threat of harsh treatment for people who might protest in Oklahoma, where he has a campaign rally planned for the weekend. 

He warned "protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes" that they would find a "much different" scene to New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. 

Those Democratic-controlled cities have brokered a more cooperative stance between protesters and police as Black Lives Matter activism continues — though not without violent clashes.

Trump has repeatedly spoken harshly of protesters at his rallies. At a 2016 rally, he memorably praised authorities who treated protesters "very, very rough."

President Trump has tweeted to protesters and "lowlifes" ahead of hia Saturday rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, promising "a much different scene" to other hotspots of protest like New York, Seattle or Minneapolis.

"Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!" he wrote.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020

The tweet, though vague, appeared to be a threat of harsher policing than has been seen in those cities.

Trump has previously referred to himself as an "ally of peaceful protesters" in response to the protests at George Floyd's death. However, in the tweet he appeared to conflate protest — which is protected under the First Amendment — with looting and rioting.

Mayors in the cities he tweeted about have recently attempted to rein in their police forces and work cooperatively with protesters, although not after earlier violent clashes.

After tear gas was used in Seattle over the weekend of June 6, police have abandoned attempts to move protesters from the self-described "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone," a largely peaceful protest camp.

Seattle's Democratic mayor Jenny Durkan has defended the camp, in opposition to Trump's characterization of them as "terrorists" and his threats to send the military in to clear it.

New York and Minneapolis, both in Democratic-controlled states, have also taken measures to de-escalate encounters between police and protesters.

On Friday, New York's City Council approved a suite of police reforms, Politico reported. On June 8, Minneapolis' city council pledged to dismantle its police department.

Trump's tweet came on Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the freeing of Black slaves in the US.

Trump's rally — his first within the coronavirus pandemic — had originally been planned for Juneteenth but was moved back one day after widespread criticism.

The president has repeatedly romanticized harsh treatment of protesters, specifically at his rallies. During an appearance, also in Oklahoma, in 2016, Trump riffed on "the good old days" when authorities would treat protesters "very, very rough."


To cheers from the crowd, Trump noted that in the past "when they protested once, you know, they would not do it again so easily."

One of the highest-ranking Black women in the Trump administration resigns over Trump's response to racial injustice, saying it 'cut sharply against my core values and convictions'

Lauren Frias

Mary Elizabeth Taylor. US Department of State


Mary Elizabeth Taylor resigned from her post as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in light of President Donald Trump's response to the rising racial tensions in the US.

Taylor, one of the highest-ranking Black officials in the Trump administration, submitted her resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, writing that her departure followed the "dictates of my conscience."

"Moments of upheaval can change you, shift the trajectory of your life, and mold your character," Taylor wrote in the letter, according to The Washington Post. "The President's comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and Black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions."

A lifelong Republican, Taylor had worked for the Trump administration since he took office in January 2017, and she previously worked with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Taylor's resignation appears to be the first high-profile departure prompted by Trump's response to demands to address police reform and racial inequality.

A senior State Department official resigned Thursday in light of President Donald Trump's response to racial injustice, The Washington Post reported.

Mary Elizabeth Taylor had served as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs since Trump assumed office in January 2017. She was one of the highest-ranking Black officials in the Trump administration.

Taylor submitted her resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, writing that her departure followed the "dictates of my conscience."

"Moments of upheaval can change you, shift the trajectory of your life, and mold your character," Taylor wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Post. "The President's comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and Black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions."

Taylor went on to say she was "deeply grateful" to Pompeo for "empowering me to lead this team and strategically advise you over these last two years."

"You have shown grace and respect in listening to my opinions, and your remarkable leadership has made me a better leader and team member," she wrote in the letter. "I appreciate that you understand my strong loyalty to my personal convictions and values, particularly in light of recent events."

Taylor's resignation appears to be the first high-profile departure prompted by Trump's response to demands to address police reform and racial inequality.

Black Lives Matter protests have erupted across the country since the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.

While Trump called Floyd's death a "grave tragedy," the president has also name-dropped Floyd when touting the recovering economy and condemned protesters and their calls to defund police departments.

Earlier this month, Taylor wrote a message to her team at the State Department about Floyd's death, writing that her heart "is broken, in a way from which I've had to heal it countless times," The Post reported, which obtained the message as well.

"George Floyd's horrific murder and the recent deaths of other Black Americans have shaken our nation at its core," she wrote. "Every time we witness these heinous, murderous events, we are reminded that our country's wounds run deep and remain untreated."

"For our team members who are hurting right now, please know you are not alone," she said. "You are seen, recognized, heard, and supported. I am right here with you."

People who believe wild coronavirus conspiracy theories rely on YouTube for most of their information on the pandemic

Isobel Asher Hamilton
Reuters


Researchers at King's College London surveyed over 2,000 people in the UK to study how likely people are to believe conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.

People who got their news primarily from social media were more likely to believe conspiracy theories, and the researchers found consuming information on YouTube had the strongest correlation with believing them.

People who got their news from social media were also more likely to break quarantine and lockdown rules.
YouTube viewers are more likely to buy into weird conspiracy theories about the coronavirus than other people who get their news via social media.

That's according to a new report from researchers at King's College London delving into the public health risks posed by online conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

The peer-reviewed study was published in the journal Psychological Medicine and surveyed 2,254 people in the UK aged 16-70 in late May.

It asked respondents whether they believed a range of conspiracy theories to be true or false, including:

There is no hard evidence coronavirus exists.
Coronavirus is linked to 5G (a popular internet conspiracy).
The number of people dying from coronavirus has been deliberately hidden or exaggerated by authorities.

The study found that people who got their news primarily from social media were far more likely to believe conspiracy theories and to break lockdown rules.

"YouTube had the strongest association with conspiracy beliefs, followed by Facebook," the study's authors added.

Of the respondents who said they believe there is a link between COVID-19 and 5G, 60% said they get a lot of their information from YouTube.

People relying on social media for news also tended to break lockdown

France softens lockdown rules during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Reuters
The study also found that people breaking lockdown and quarantine measures are much more likely to be relying on social media for their news.

Respondents who said they'd gone to work or outside while showing coronavirus symptoms were three times more likely to get a "great deal" of their information from YouTube and Facebook.

Similarly people who said they don't follow the two-meter social distancing rules put in place by the government were twice as likely to get most of their information from YouTube and Facebook.

Although people who get their news from social media were more susceptible to conspiracy theories, the majority of respondents said they got most of their news from traditional outlets.

The physical danger posed by conspiracy theorists in the UK has already been in the press due to a series of arson attacks on cell phone towers, motivated by the belief that 5G mobile technology is spreading the coronavirus.

Some telecoms engineers reported finding razor blades and needles left as booby traps behind posters on telephone poles, and one engineer was reported to have been stabbed and hospitalized in April.

AHA! THE TRUTH COMES OUT
Trump says he thinks some Americans are wearing masks to show they disapprove of him and not as a preventive measure during the pandemic

IT'S ALL ABOUT HIM

Sonam Sheth 22 hours ago

President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal that he believes that some Americans are wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic to express their disapproval of him and not as a preventive measure.

The president also said his issue with masks was that people sometimes touch them, increasing the risk of infection.

He went on to say he thought that "testing is overrated," adding, "I created the greatest testing machine in history."

Trump also said, however, that more testing in the US had led to an increase in confirmed cases. "In many ways, it makes us look bad," he said.

President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal that he believes that some Americans are wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic not to protect others but simply to show that they disapprove of him.

Trump's interview with The Journal's Michael C. Bender was published on Thursday, a day after troubling accounts — contained in a bombshell book by John Bolton, his former national security adviser — emerged of Trump's handling of foreign affairs and competence.

Trump also told The Journal that his issue with masks was that people sometimes touch them, increasing the risk of infection.

"They put their finger on the mask, and they take them off, and then they start touching their eyes and touching their nose and their mouth," the president said. "And then they don't know how they caught it?"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends "wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission."

Trump has repeatedly been photographed going to public events without a mask on.

Last month, he was seen touring a Ford manufacturing plant in Michigan without a mask despite being told by the state's attorney general that he had a "legal responsibility" to wear one. The president told reporters that he wore one behind the scenes but "didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it."

He was also criticized earlier in May for failing to wear a mask while visiting a Honeywell plant in Arizona. The Associated Press reported that the president didn't want to wear one because he was afraid that he'd look ridiculous and that it would harm his reelection chances.

The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a pandemic in March. As of Thursday, nearly 8.4 million people around the world had been infected, and about 450,000 people had died.

The US had nearly 2.2 million confirmed cases and about 118,000 deaths.

Trump has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the US outbreak and blamed China, where the global outbreak originated late last year. He and his allies have also accused China and WHO of not acting quickly enough to contain the spread of the disease when it began to spread.

In April, the US intelligence community determined that China intentionally misrepresented statistics about the spread of the disease within its borders.

Bloomberg News, which first reported on the findings, described its sources as saying that the report's main conclusion was that China's public reporting of coronavirus cases was "intentionally incomplete."

Two officials told the outlet that it found that China's numbers were fake. China has denied that it concealed the extent of the initial outbreak.

"There's a chance it was intentional," Trump told The Journal.

The president later said he thought that "testing is overrated," adding, "I created the greatest testing machine in history."

He also said, however, that more testing in the US had led to an increase in confirmed cases. "In many ways, it makes us look bad," he said.

It isn't the first time Trump has made the claim. The president said last week during a roundtable event for seniors that "if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, actually."

Several US states have reported spikes in confirmed cases as they've relaxed social-distancing guidelines and begun to reopen their economies.

New York, Washington, and California were initially hot spots in the US outbreak, but the states saw a gradual decline in new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths as their governors shut down their economies and imposed strict stay-at-home orders for nonessential employees.

Public-health experts have said that as states ease lockdown measures and reopen businesses, increases in confirmed cases will follow. They're also likely to be exacerbated because of nationwide protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in police custody on Memorial Day.

There have been significant increases in new infections in parts of the US over the past several weeks, particularly in the Sun Belt and the West.

According to NPR, Oklahoma has seen a more than 100% increase in new cases compared with two weeks ago; Trump is scheduled to hold his first rally since March in Tulsa on Saturday.

South Carolina, Arizona, Oregon, Florida, and Nevada have all seen increases of more than 100% compared with two weeks ago, while Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, North Carolina, and Utah had increases of 30% to 90%.

Fauci calls 'anti-science bias' in the US problematic

Sarah Al-Arshani Business Insider•June 18, 2020

Anthony Fauci, director of National Institutes of Health Infectious Disease, speaks to reporters about Trump administration efforts in regards to the coronavirus outbreak in China, at the White House in Washington, D.C., January 31, 2020

Leah Millis/Reuters


Dr. Anthony Fauci said that "anti-science bias" in the US is problematic.

He suggested that actions taken by President Donald Trump further pushed the bias.

Trump has gone against expert advice in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, from pushing for a swift reopening, to not wearing a mask, and even touting unproven treatments.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading infectious disease expert, said that "anti-science bias" in the US is problematic.

"One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are -- for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable -- they just don't believe science and they don't believe authority," Fauci said on a US Department of Health and Human Services' podcast "Learning Curve."

Fauci, who is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also stood by the measures he's continuously advised for limiting the spread of the coronavirus including stay-at-home orders, which he said helped save millions of lives.

As the country reopens, Fauci has warned of a reemergence of cases and the need for testing and contact tracing to prevent more infections and deaths. He's advised people to avoid crowded areas and wear masks in public to avoid further spreading the virus.

On the podcast, he said that reasoning for choosing to willfully ignore science despite obvious risks to health is "inconceivable."

"So when they see someone up in the White House, which has an air of authority to it, who's talking about science, that there are some people who just don't believe that — and that's unfortunate because, you know, science is truth," Fauci said.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed to reopen the country despite experts warning that cases will go up. Trump will host a rally on June 20 in Tulsa, which is feared to become a super-spreading event for the virus. While attendees have to sign a waiver that they won't sue the campaign if they contract coronavirus, they will not be required to wear masks, and socially distancing is virtually impossible.

The president has refused to wear masks while in public and suggested they gave off an appearance of weakness, despite evidence that they can reduce the risk of transmission.

He's also pushed for the use of hydroxychloroquine and even said he personally began taking it even when there was little evidence to suggest it worked at preventing or treating coronavirus. Its temporary authorization to be used on COVID-19 patients in hospital settings was rescinded by the Federal Food and Drug Administration.

Trump has also suggested that people ingest disinfectant to cure themselves of the coronavirus, but later said he was joking.

Fauci said that science was the "attempt, in good faith, to get to the facts," and said it was a "self-correcting" process.

He drew parallels between people who refuse to abide by evidence-based health advice during this pandemic, to anti-vaxxer who deny the benefits of vaccines despite research that proves they're safe and effective.

"If you go by the evidence and by the data, you're speaking the truth and it's amazing sometimes, the denial there is," Fauci said. "It's the same thing that gets people who are anti-vaxxers—who don't want people to get vaccinated, even though the data clearly indicate the safety of vaccines. That's really a problem."

PENCE LIES 

Leaked CDC document contradicts Pence claim that U.S. coronavirus cases 'have stabilized'

Pence says Oklahoma has flattened the curve, but cases have been going up in June


Sharon Weinberger D.C. Bureau Chief, Yahoo News•June 17, 2020

WASHINGTON — Even as Vice President Mike Pence wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday that coronavirus cases in the U.S. “have stabilized,” a document produced that same day by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and circulated to the other government agencies warns that infections in the U.S. have increased more than 18 percent.

“Cases have stabilized over the past two weeks, with the daily average case rate across the U.S. dropping to 20,000 — down from 30,000 in April and 25,000 in May,” Pence wrote Tuesday in his op-ed, which defended President Trump’s response to the pandemic.

Yet the CDC’s June 16 COVID-19 Response Update appears to paint a darker portrait of the state of the pandemic, with maps showing many counties in the U.S. experiencing increasing rates of the coronavirus. Of the figures highlighted, a chart shows that the U.S. rate of increase for the coronavirus using a three-day average is 18.3 percent. By comparison, two of the hardest-hit countries have declining rates based on this same three-day average: Brazil’s cases came down 27 percent, and Russia’s have decreased by almost 7 percent.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Neither the CDC nor Pence’s office responded to a request for comment. Pence remains the head of the White House coronavirus task force, which has all but faded from view in recent weeks. The task force’s last public briefing was in late April, though its members still meet regularly.

In a press briefing Friday, CDC Director Robert Redfield indicated that some of the increasing case numbers result from more widespread testing at facilities that have had large outbreaks, such as nursing homes, prisons and meat-processing facilities, but even that is “not explaining everything.”

The CDC update is marked as an “internal” government document, meaning it is not intended to be released to the public. Yahoo News obtained a copy of the report, which was distributed within the government the same day Pence’s op-ed was published.

The explanatory text accompanying the CDC maps also appears to contradict Pence’s optimistic message about the coronavirus. “There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow or are in an elevated incidence plateau, including in Wyoming, Iowa, Washington, California and in parts of the Southwest and Southeast,” the CDC document reads in a caption accompanying a map showing large swaths of the country as either in “elevated incidence” or “rebound” for coronavirus cases.

A separate map showing the number of new cases notes that “elevated incidence of disease during the past 2 weeks remains widespread, including in the Northeast (and the New York City area), the Southwest, the Southeast, DC, areas around Chicago, and parts of California, Minnesota, Iowa, Washington.”
 

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Pence’s op-ed also appeared on the same day the Wall Street Journal ran an article based on an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, who sounded a far more pessimistic view about the country’s progress than the vice president.

“People keep talking about a second wave,” Fauci told the newspaper. “We’re still in a first wave.”

Fauci also disputed the idea that testing alone accounts for the recent rise in U.S. cases, a claim regularly made by President Trump.

Despite the divergence regarding whether COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have “stabilized,” Pence and the CDC appear to be in sync when it comes to figures showing significantly declining death rates. Pence wrote that “in the past five days, deaths are down to fewer than 750 a day, a dramatic decline from 2,500 a day a few weeks ago — and a far cry from the 5,000 a day that some were predicting.”

According to the CDC documents, death rates have declined by about 22 percent, based on the prior three-day average. New deaths are down to 646, even lower than Pence noted, though the average number of new deaths, the CDC document says, is at 829.

Jana Winter contributed reporting to this story.


Cover thumbnail photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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

Tom LoBianco

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coronavirus changed the Trump-Pence relationship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Pence's stock is way up'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Fauci contradiction and a Biden slam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Felipe Trueba Friday 17 April 2020 23:00

Hunting for dinosaurs at the tip of South America
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The valley is a rich source of ancient dinosaur, insect and plant fossils

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

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

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

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