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Pentagon: China military exercises will 'further destabilize' S. China Sea

ALL YOU HAVE TO KNOW

The region is believed to have valuable oil and gas deposits.


Issued on: 03/07/2020 -


Disputed claims in the South China Sea AFP

Taking the measure of noise pollution during COVID lockdown
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

The World Health Organization (WHO) has tagged noise pollution as the second most dangerous environmental risk factor for humans after air pollution Phineas RUECKERT AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Samuel Challeat was riding his bike in the city of Toulouse in the hours before France's strict COVID-19 lockdown took hold when the thought came to him.

What impact will confinement have on the urban sound environment, and how could it be measured, he wondered.

That same day, Challeat, a geographer at the University of Toulouse II, launched an appeal to scientists and researchers around the world to measure the "unique perturbation" of city sounds during confinement.


The project, called Silent Cities, was up and running within 48 hours, and now has more than 350 participants in 40 countries around the world, including France, the United States, India and Brazil, Challeat told AFP in an interview.

Participants captured ambient sound -- recording one out of every 10 minutes -- and uploading the data into an open-source database.

Because the project is open-source, anyone can access the data and the sound files for free.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has tagged noise pollution as the second most dangerous environmental risk factor for humans after air pollution.

One in five Europeans is exposed to long-term noise pollution that is harmful to health, according to the European Environment Agency.

Confinement was the perfect natural experiment for establishing a baseline for noise pollution in cities, according to Jerome Sueur, a bioacoustician at Paris's natural history museum.

- Silent cities -

"It showed us to what extent we are in a noisy environment and allows us to quantify that," he said.

Sueur set up sound measurement instruments called magnetometers in Paris and Cachan, the suburb where he lives, as part of the Silent Cities project.

In mid-June, the magnetometer in the gardens of Paris's natural history museum had made more than 8,000 recordings and amassed 50 gigabytes of data, he said.

During confinement, noise was drastically reduced across the board in the French capital.

Environmental sound pollution dropped by as much as 90 percent in some areas of Paris during confinement, according to Fanny Mietlicki, the executive director of BruitParif, an organisation that measures urban noise pollution.

"It was an unprecedented situation over this long of a time period," she told AFP.

- Unhealthy noise levels -

As car, rail and air traffic slowed nearly to a halt, BruitParif's sound map of the Paris region -- typically red to indicate high-levels of noise pollution -- suddenly became green.

Noise pollution from automobile and train traffic alone costs the European Union -- in degraded health, lost productivity, and other impacts -- some 40 billion euros per year, according to a 2011 European Commission report.

Compared to air pollution, "noise seems to have a larger impact on indicators related to quality of life, and on mental health and well-being," said Eulalia Peris, the European Environment Agency's environmental noise expert.

Paris was the world's third most noise-polluted city, according to a 2017 report compiled by the WHO and Norwegian-based technology research group SINTEF.

The research also showed a tight statistical link between urban noise pollution and hearing loss.

Whether or not peace-and-quiet had positive effects on people is hard to say, Mietlicki cautioned.

"Not everyone had the same conditions of confinement," she said.

Challeat and his colleagues plan to publish a dataset paper at the end of the summer, and are currently seeking funding to extend the project into 2021 to measure noise pollution levels year-on-year, Challeat said.

This, he added, would be critical in showing just how unique the COVID-confinement moment was.

"We have grown accustomed to unhealthy noise levels in cities," said Peris, at EEA.

"Due to the drop in noise as a result of the lockdown, maybe people will start to realise that cities can be a lot quieter and more peaceful."

But a two- to three-month reduction in noise pollution during confinement most likely wouldn't have an effect on health, she cautioned.

"It requires societal change," she said.

© 2020 AFP

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION
Monkeys infected with novel coronavirus developed short-term immunity
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Rhesus macaques are often used in scientific experiments because of their similarities to humans JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER AFP Washington (AFP)

Test monkeys infected with the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic were protected from reinfection for up to 28 days later, a Chinese study out Thursday in the journal Science said.

While the monkeys displayed initial immunity, it's unclear how long such immunity will last in humans - it will be necessary to wait months, or even years, to know if the millions of people infected at the start of the pandemic are protected from re-infection.

Scientists from Peking Union Medical College performed an experiment on rhesus macaques, often used because of their similarities to humans, to find out if they have a short-term immunity to the virus.

Six rhesus macaques were infected in their trachea with a dose of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They developed mild to moderate symptoms, and took about two weeks to recover.

Twenty-eight days after the first infection, four of the six monkeys received another dose of virus, but this time, despite a brief rise in temperature, they showed no sign of reinfection, the study authors wrote.

By taking frequent samples the researchers discovered that the peak viral load was reached three days after the monkeys were infected.

The monkeys showed a stronger immune response after the first infection, producing more so-called neutralizing antibodies which may have protected them against short-term reinfection, the scientists wrote.

More experiments are needed to see how long this immune defense remains, the authors said.

© 2020 AFP

Current dominant strain of COVID-19 more infectious than original: study
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

The SARS-CoV-2 virus viewed under an electron microscope 

Handout National Institutes of Health/AFP/File
Washington (AFP)

The genetic variation of the novel coronavirus that dominates the world today infects human cells more readily than the original that emerged in China, according to a new study published in the journal Cell on Thursday.

The lab-based research suggests this current mutation is more transmissible between people in the real world compared to the previous iteration, but this hasn't yet been proven.

"I think the data is showing that there is a single mutation that actually makes the virus be able to replicate better, and maybe have high viral loads," Anthony Fauci, the United States's top infectious disease specialist, who wasn't involved in the research, commented to Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We don't have a connection to whether an individual does worse with this or not. It just seems that the virus replicates better and may be more transmissible, but this is still at the stage of trying to confirm that," he added.

Researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Duke University in North Carolina partnered with the University of Sheffield's COVID-19 Genomics UK research group to analyze genome samples published on GISAID, an international resource for sharing genome sequences.

They found that the current variant, called "D614G," makes a small but potent change in the "spike" protein that protrudes from the surface of the virus, which it uses to invade and infect human cells.

The scientists first posted their paper to the medical preprint site bioRxiv in April, where it received 200,000 hits, a record.

But it was initially criticized because the scientists had not proved that the mutation itself was responsible for its domination; it could have benefitted from other factors or from chance.

The team therefore carried out additional experiments, many at the behest of the editors of Cell.

They analyzed the data of 999 British patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and observed that those with the variant had more viral particles in them, but without this changing the severity of their disease.

Laboratory experiments meanwhile showed that the variant is three to six times more capable of infecting human cells.

"It seems likely that it's a fitter virus," said Erica Ollmann Saphire, who carried out one of the experiments at La Jolla Institute for Immunology.

- 'This variant is the pandemic' -

But everything at this stage can only be said to be "probable": in vitro experiments often do not replicate the dynamics of a pandemic.

As far as we know, although the variant circulating right now is more "infectious," it may or may not be more "transmissible" between people.

At any rate, said Nathan Grubaugh, a virologist at the Yale School of Public Health who was not part of the research: The expansion of the variant "whether through natural selection or chance, means that this variant now is the pandemic."

Writing in a commentary piece, Grubaugh added that, for the general public, these results don't change much.

"While there are still important studies needed to determine if this will influence drug or vaccine development in any meaningful way, we don't expect that D614G will alter our control measures or make individual infections worse," he said.

"It's more of a live look into science unfolding: an interesting discovery was made that potentially touches millions of people, but we don't yet know the full scope or impact."

USA!USA! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

The United States reported more than 55,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, the largest daily increase any country has ever reported, according to a Reuters tally.

A surge in coronavirus cases across the United States over the past week has put President Donald Trump's handling of the crisis under the microscope and led several governors to halt plans to reopen their states after strict lockdowns.

The daily U.S. tally stood at 55,274 late Thursday, topping the previous single day record of 54,771 set by Brazil on June 19.

Just two weeks ago, the United States was reporting about 22,000 new cases a day. It has now reported more than 40,000 cases for seven straight days and broken records for new cases three days in a row, according to the tally.

New infections rose in 37 out of 50 U.S. states in the past 14 days compared with the two weeks prior in early June, according to a Reuters analysis.


Florida reported the biggest increase of any state so far on Thursday, recording over 10,000 new cases in a single day. With 21 million residents, the state has reported more new daily coronavirus cases than any European country had at the height of their outbreaks.Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned earlier this week the daily increase in new U.S. cases could reach 100,000 without nationwide measures to slow the rate.

While testing rates have increased, so has the percentage of positive results. Hospitalizations have also skyrocketed.

Nationally, 7% of coronavirus diagnostic tests came back positive last week, up from 5% the prior week, according to a Reuters analysis. Arizona's positivity test rate was 24% last week, Florida's was 16%. Nevada, South Carolina and Texas were all at 15%, the analysis found.

(REUTERS)

#23SKIDOO

Activist leaves Hong Kong after new law to advocate abroad


1 of 5 https://apnews.com/c558e4d76fe232da75227f5daef2235b
FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2018, file photo, pro-democracy activist Nathan Law, along with Agnes Chow and Joshua Wong, attends a press conference in Hong Kong. Prominent Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law has left the city for an undisclosed location, he revealed on his Facebook page shortly after testifying at a U.S. congressional hearing about the tough national security law China had imposed on the semi-autonomous territory. In his post late Thursday, July 2, 2020, he said that he decided to take on the responsibility for advocating for Hong Kong internationally and had since left the city. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
Police detain a protester after spraying pepper spray during a protest in Causeway Bay before the annual handover march in Hong Kong, Wednesday, July. 1, 2020. Hong Kong marked the 23rd anniversary of its handover to China in 1997, and just one day after China enacted a national security law that cracks down on protests in the territory. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

HONG KONG (AP) — Prominent Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law has left the city for an undisclosed location, he revealed on his Facebook page after testifying to a U.S. congressional hearing about a tough national security law China had imposed on the semi-autonomous territory.

In a post late Thursday, he said that he had decided to advocate for Hong Kong internationally and had left the city.

“As a global-facing activist, the choices I have are stark: to stay silent from now on, or to keep engaging in private diplomacy so I can warn the world of the threat of Chinese authoritarian expansion,” he said. “I made the decision when I agreed to testify before the U.S. Congress.”

Law told reporters in a WhatsApp message that he would not reveal his whereabouts and situation based on a “risk assessment.”

His departure comes two days after the national security law took effect, targeting secessionist, subversive and terrorist acts, as well as any collusion with foreign forces intervening in city affairs.

The Hong Kong government said in a statement Thursday night that popular protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times” connotes a call for Hong Kong’s independence or its separation from China, meaning those using it or displaying it on flags or signs could be in violation of the new law.

Police arrested some 370 people Wednesday, 10 of whom were detained on suspicion of violating the national security law, when thousands took to the streets to protest it.

In some cases, suspects were found to be carrying paraphernalia advocating Hong Kong’s independence, police said.

“Under this legislation Beijing just passed about 24 hours ago, anyone who would dare to speak up would likely face imprisonment once Beijing targeted you,” Law told a congressional hearing via video link Wednesday. “So much is now lost in the city I love: the freedom to tell the truth.”

Law, 26, rose to prominence in Hong Kong as one of the student leaders of the pro-democracy Umbrella Revolution in 2014. In 2016, he became the youngest lawmaker elected to the city’s legislature but was later disqualified after he raised his tone while swearing allegiance to China during the oath, making it sound like a question.

He was a leader of pro-democracy group Demosisto, with fellow activists Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow. All three resigned Tuesday ahead of the national security law coming into effect. With the loss of its top members, Demosisto dissolved.

Critics say the law effectively ends the “one country, two systems” framework under which the city was promised a high degree of autonomy when it reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

The maximum punishment for serious offenses is life imprisonment, and suspects in certain cases may be sent to trial on the mainland if Beijing deems it has jurisdiction.

A 24-year-old man who was arrested for allegedly stabbing a police officer during protests on Wednesday has been charged with wounding with intent, police said Friday. He was arrested on board a plane to London, apparently trying to flee the territory. Police wouldn’t say if the man would face additional charges under the national security law.

___

Associated Press video journalist Alice Fung contributed to this report.

___

This story has been corrected to say that a Hong Kong government statement outlawing a protest slogan was issued Thursday.

First coronavirus then Trump order split Indian families

By EMILY SCHMALL and SOPHIA TAREEN

1 of 6 https://apnews.com/1105aca0ebcf61413f9bb96f2b0510f7
Karan Murgai, an IT management consultant for a multinational based in Dallas, sits in his Delhi house, in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Murgai came to Delhi in March this year after his father died. Murgai and at least 1,000 others like him, whose U.S. visas are tied to their jobs in the U.S., are now stranded in India, after an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that suspends applications for H-1B and other high-skilled work visas from abroad. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

NEW DELHI (AP) — The March day that his father died, Karan Murgai boarded a plane to India.

The coronavirus was spreading, so Murgai’s wife and their two young children stayed home in Dallas.

Their separation — due to last three weeks — became indefinite after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that suspends applications for H-1B and other high-skilled work visas from abroad.

Trump said the June 22 order would protect jobs amid high U.S. unemployment because of the pandemic.

But Murgai and at least 1,000 others like him, whose American visas are tied to their jobs in the U.S., are now stranded in India — the order’s “collateral damage,” he said.

He contacted the offices of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Rep. Van Taylor, Indian government officials and the U.S. Consulate in New Delhi. No one could help.

An IT management consultant for a multinational, Murgai handles his father’s affairs in New Delhi during the day and his U.S. job overnight, worrying about his 4-year-old daughter who has lost her appetite and started throwing fits.

India, with the world’s fourth worst-highest virus caseload, is tallying nearly 20,000 new infections each day, but restrictions on travel have begun to ease, with international commercial flights set to resume in July.

“Every day she has this one question to ask me: when am I coming back? I get heartbroken at that point. First, it was July. Now I don’t know. We’re getting hit from all sides,” Murgai said.

The H-1B visa program allows U.S. employers to hire high-skilled foreign workers, mainly for tech jobs. Employers first have to determine there are no American candidates, and then undertake a lengthy sponsorship process that costs as much as $15,000, making the program highly competitive.

Indians account for 75% of the applications for the H-1B program, U.S. government data show. Nearly 85,000 H-1B visas are awarded each year.

Nasscom, a trade association in the Indian information technology industry, called Trump’s order “misguided and harmful to the U.S. economy.”

Indian companies provide technology staff and services to U.S. hospitals, drugmakers and biotechnology companies, Nasscom pointed out. As a result, Indian companies may redirect Indian talent to Canada or Mexico.

India’s foreign ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said the order would “likely affect movement of Indian skilled professionals,” and that the government was assessing the impact on Indian nationals and industry.

Arpana Takkalapally, wife of Sandeep Vudayagiri, a big data analytics engineer in Dallas, poses with her daughter Ridhi Vudayagiri, in Hyderabad, India, Thursday, July 2, 2020. Takkalapally with her daughter are stranded in Hyderabad since February, though she holds an H-4 visa, given to immediate family of H-1B visa holders, but without a renewal stamp from a U.S. consulate, she can't go back to her husband in Dallas, following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that suspends applications for H-1B and other high-skilled work visas from abroad. (AP Photo/Bindu Takkalapally)

The H1-B program has created a pathway for a generation of skilled Indian and other foreign workers to build lives in the U.S., but the Trump order places years of investment in education, property and communities at risk, said Murgai. He arrived in Dallas with an H-1B visa in 2010 and now owns a house and land there.

“When you’re in a place for a decade, you think you’ve settled down,” he said.

“If new H-1Bs are being stopped, I get it. But then for people who already have jobs, who have already established themselves in their fields and have given the government a reason to keep them in the country, why upend lives like this?”

In surburban Dallas, Sandeep Vudayagiri, a big data analytics engineer, has been home alone since February, when his wife and daughter went to visit family in Hyderabad, India.

Vudayagiri’s wife, Arpana Takkalapally, holds an H-4 visa, given to immediate family of H-1B visa holders. Even though Takkalapally isn’t allowed to work on her visa, without a renewal stamp from a U.S. consulate, she can’t go back.

“It is indirectly punishing the people who are working here,” he said. “How is my 2-year-old an employment threat in the U.S.? Which country does this?” Vudayagiri said.

Takkalapally spends her days in Hyderabad feeding and playing with her daughter, and cooking and cleaning for her parents, bookended by morning and evening calls with her husband.

This is the longest the couple have been separated since they met as graduate students at San Jose State University in 2010.

Takkalapally watched as Indian friends and neighbors flocked to Houston last year for a rally with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump. The leaders extolled the closeness of India-U.S. ties in a stadium filled with 50,000 people.

A similar rally was staged in February in Modi’s home state of Gujarat.

“Now it seems like some backstabbing,” Takkalapally said.

Immigration attorneys in the U.S. said they have been inundated with emails and phone calls seeking help.

“The stress level that this causes on the number of people in the U.S. in legal working status is massive,” said Nell Barker, an attorney in Chicago. “It is causing mental health issues. It is causing productivity issues in a situation where businesses are already struggling to get through these shutdowns and economic downturn.”

___

Tareen reported from Chicago.

Trump’s Rushmore trip draws real and figurative fireworks



FILE - This March 22, 2019, file photo shows Mount Rushmore in Keystone, S.D. President Donald Trump will begin his Independence Day weekend on Friday with a patriotic display of fireworks at Mount Rushmore National Memorial before a crowd of thousands. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — President Donald Trump will begin his Independence Day weekend on Friday with a patriotic display of fireworks at Mount Rushmore before a crowd of thousands, but even in a part of the country where many remain supportive of the president, the event has drawn controversy and protests.

Trump is expected to speak at the event, which has issued 7,500 tickets to watch fireworks that he previewed on Thursday as a “display like few people have seen.” The president will likely enjoy a show of support, with the state Republican Party selling T-shirts that feature Trump on the memorial alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. But concern about coronavirus risk and wildfire danger from the fireworks, along with protests from Native American groups, will also greet the president.

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, a Trump ally, has said social distancing won’t be required during the event and masks will be optional. Event organizers will provide masks to anyone who wants them and plan to screen attendees for symptoms of COVID-19.

The Republican mayor of the largest city near the monument, Rapid City, said he is watching for a spike in cases after the event, the Rapid City Journal reported.

“We’re going to have thousands of people, shoulder to shoulder at these events — someone in line to see a president and being able to see fireworks at Mount Rushmore — they are probably not likely to disqualify themself because they developed a cough the day of or the day before,” Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender said.

Leaders of several Native American tribes in the region also raised concerns that the event could lead to coronavirus outbreaks among their members, who they say are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 because of an underfunded health care system and chronic health conditions.

“The president is putting our tribal members at risk to stage a photo op at one of our most sacred sites,” said Harold Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

Some Native American groups are using Trump’s visit to protest the Mount Rushmore memorial itself, pointing out that the Black Hills were taken from the Lakota people against treaty agreements.

Protests are expected in Keystone, the small town near the monument. Chase Iron Eyes, a spokesman for the Oglala Sioux president, said protesters would like to make their voice heard at the memorial itself, but it’s not clear they’ll be able to get close.

Security is expected to be tight, with the road leading up to Mount Rushmore shut down. The governor’s spokesperson, Maggie Seidel, would not say whether the South Dakota National Guard was being deployed, but said organizers are making sure it is a safe event.

But several people who once oversaw fire danger at the national memorial have said setting off fireworks over the forest is a bad idea that could lead to a large wildfire. Fireworks were called off after 2009 because a mountain pine beetle infestation increased the fire risks.

Noem pushed to get the fireworks resumed soon after she was elected, and enlisted Trump’s help. The president brushed aside fire concerns earlier this year, saying, “What can burn? It’s stone.”

The National Park Service studied the potential effect of the fireworks for this year and found they would be safe, though it noted that in a dry year, a large fire was a risk. Organizers are monitoring the fire conditions and were to decide Friday if the fireworks are safe.

Trump made no mention of the fire danger in fresh comments Thursday.

“They used to do it many years ago, and for some reason they were unable or unallowed to do it,” he said. “They just weren’t allowed to do it, and I opened it up and we’re going to have a tremendous July 3 and then we’re coming back here, celebrating the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C.”

“The Squad” Is Raising Money To Fight For Progressive Candidates

The Squad Victory Fund will allow Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib to help raise money for their campaigns and other progressives.

Kadia Goba BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC Posted on July 1, 2020

Alex Wroblewski / Getty Images
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.

WASHINGTON — Members of the Squad are launching a fundraising committee to raise money for their reelections and progressive campaigns all over the country.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib are combining their star power as outspoken first-term members of Congress to support other progressive hopefuls. The group will announce Wednesday accompanied by a short video.

As a joint fundraising committee, the Squad Victory Fund can only donate to political action committees already associated with each member’s individual campaign. Those PACs can then donate to other progressives.

At least half of the money will go to the congress members' individual campaigns to fend off opponents backed by high-spending.supporters. The Washington Post reported a slew of fundraising from the financial industry poured into Michelle Caruso-Cabrera's campaign who ran an unsuccessful primary against Ocasio-Cortez earlier this year.

The Squad has also received ire from President Donald Trump during campaign rallies and on Twitter.

Ocasio-Cortez and Omar are among the 30 strongest fundraisers in Congress; Ocasio-Cortez is the fifth-highest and has raised $2 million more this cycle than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, another prolific fundraiser. In line with their grassroots approach to fundraising, they’ll reject money from lobbyists, corporate PACs, fossil fuel companies, and — a decision arrived on the heels of George Floyd’s killing — police organizations. (Not that much would likely be coming their way from such interests, as the four Democrats push to defund the police.)


“The progressive policies that my sisters and I are fighting for — Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, racial justice, an end to mass incarceration — have never been more important,” Ocasio-Cortez told BuzzFeed News.

Omar noted the “unprecedented historical moment” facing the nation. “People in our districts and across the country are demanding solutions to crises of public health, economic, and racial justice,” she said.

The Squad’s fundraising effort comes after several long-standing congressional members have already faced tough progressive challengers during 2020 primaries and lost. Jamaal Bowman who has likely unseated House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel. (An overwhelming number of mail-in votes due to the coronavirus will significantly delay a final tally, but Bowman leads significantly with more than 50,000 votes counted.)

“Last week’s elections showed the strength of progressive candidates of color who can speak to their communities,” Omar told BuzzFeed News, referencing Bowman’s likely win. “But they also showed the length the establishment is willing to go to cling to power.”

All four members backed progressives in the presidential primaries; all but Pressley — who backed Sen. Elizabeth Warren — endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But the fervor to oust moderate Democrats in Congress — and moderate Democrats’ continued worries about being primaried — began this cycle in September 2019 when Ocasio-Cortez backed Marie Newman, a progressive, who ultimately ran a successful campaign against Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the last anti-abortion Democrats in Congress.

The Squad’s progressive movement is rooted in Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 unexpected win against Rep. Joe Crowley, a longtime incumbent and favorite to succeed Speaker Nancy Pelosi in leadership. Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib were elected at the same time and quickly became a noticeable force within the House Democratic caucus.

But even with the backing of progressive political PACs, the progressive wing of the Democratic caucus has struggled with gaining support for policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. The lawmakers are helping to level the playing field.

“Wall Street and Trump donors poured over $3 million into an attempt to defeat me and now they’re preparing to do even more to stop this progressive momentum in its tracks,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The Squad Victory Fund will help us fight back.”

UPDATE
July 1, 2020, at 8:23 a.m.


This story was updated to include more information about the Squad Victory Fund.
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Kadia Goba is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

NOT REALLY PRO LIFEThe Trump Administration Is Set To Resume Executions In Two Weeks. There’s A Last-Ditch Effort To Stop It.

Federal death row inmates are asking a judge to intervene on new legal grounds after the US Supreme Court refused to get involved. The ACLU is also suing.

Zoe Tillman BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC July 2, 2020

Handout / Getty Images
San Quentin State Prison's lethal injection facility, which was dismantled on March 13, 2019.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is set to execute Daniel Lewis Lee on July 13 by lethal injection. If it happens, it’ll be the first time in nearly two decades that the federal government has carried out an execution.

Death row inmates and death penalty opponents have less than two weeks to convince a judge to intervene before Lee’s execution, the first of four that the Trump administration has scheduled for men convicted of murdering children. On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a new lawsuit raising a novel argument — that at least one of the executions should be delayed because the coronavirus pandemic puts everyone involved in the lethal injection process at risk of exposure.


Rev. Seigen Hartkemeyer, a Zen Buddhist priest who has served as a spiritual adviser to Wesley Purkey, a death row inmate scheduled for execution on July 15, wrote in a blog post published by the ACLU on Thursday that he has a religious duty to be with Purkey. But Hartkemeyer said that because he has a history of lung illness and is 68 years old, he was being “asked to make an impossible decision.”

“The federal government’s decision to proceed with Wes’s execution burdens my religious freedom by forcing me to choose between performing my religious duties as a priest, and protecting my own life,” Hartkemeyer wrote. “Although Trump officials have repeatedly claimed the mantle of guardians of religious liberty, too often their commitment wavers when it is inconvenient for their political agenda. This appears to be one of those times.”

Late Thursday, a federal appeals court stepped in to pause Purkey's execution, issuing a decision in a separate challenge that Purkey raised about his criminal conviction. The US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled against Purkey, finding that he wasn't entitled to raise issues now related to whether his trial counsel was ineffective. But the court agreed to stay Purkey's execution until he'd had a chance to exhaust all of his legal options — he could petition the full 7th Circuit to rehear the case for instance, or ask the US Supreme Court to take the case. If Purkey does end up losing, however, the new ACLU case would come back into play.

The ACLU lawsuit isn’t the only pending legal action challenging the Trump administration’s plan. Purkey and other death row inmates have been fighting in court since the Justice Department announced last July that Attorney General Bill Barr had ordered the Bureau of Prisons to resume lethal injections for the first time since 2003. The inmates are still waiting to see if a judge will step in before Lee’s scheduled execution on July 13.


Purkey, Lee, and the other two inmates whose executions are scheduled for July and August were all convicted of murder, among other serious crimes. The Justice Department has made clear that it chose these first four inmates to execute based on the fact that their cases involved the murder of children.


“The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” Barr said in a statement released by DOJ last month. “The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws. We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

Lee was found guilty in the murder of a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl. His legal team released a video of the girl’s grandmother, Earlene Peterson, explaining that she was opposed to Lee being executed instead of serving a life sentence, which is what Lee’s codefendant received after he was found guilty.

“Yes, I believe you have to pay for what you do, but that don’t mean death,” Peterson says in the video.

Lee and the other death row inmates who went to court won an injunction in the fall from a federal judge in Washington, DC, putting a pause on their executions. But the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit reversed that decision in April, giving the Trump administration the green light to set a new schedule.


The inmates asked the US Supreme Court to order a delay and review the DC Circuit’s decision, but on June 29 a majority of the justices rejected that request; Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have delayed the executions and taken up the case, according to the order released by the court.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to get involved didn’t end the inmates’ legal fight, however. In mid-June, the inmates filed a new motion for a preliminary injunction, this time pressing different legal arguments than they did the first round. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan set a fast briefing schedule, ordering the government to respond within a week. She has yet to rule.

The first injunction was about whether the single-drug injection protocol adopted by the Trump administration violated the Federal Death Penalty Act because it didn’t match execution protocols adopted by states where the federal death row inmates were set to be executed. Chutkan ruled that the inmates were likely to win on this argument. The DC Circuit disagreed in a 2–1 decision in April.

Trump’s two appointees to the DC Circuit, judges Greg Katsas and Neomi Rao, sided with the administration in that decision. The Trump administration has made clear that it views the confirmation of conservative federal judges, especially in the appeals courts, as a central part of its policy strategy, politicizing these nominations despite protests from judges, and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., that they are nonpolitical actors.

The DC Circuit ruling noted that the inmates still had other unresolved legal claims, however, and that’s what the inmates are pressing now before Chutkan. They’re arguing that the administration’s lethal injection plan violates other federal laws, such as the Administrative Procedure Act; the inmates contend the administration failed to consider various risks associated with its lethal injection drug of choice, sodium pentobarbital, and that it represents the type of “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.


Purkey, who was convicted in 2003 of raping and killing a 16-year-old girl, has a separate lawsuit pending seeking to block his July 15 execution. His lawyers filed a request for an injunction in late June arguing that he has schizophrenia, dementia, and other mental illnesses that make him incompetent to be executed under the Eighth Amendment. That case is also assigned to Chutkan, and she set a similarly fast schedule for briefing.

“Wes Purkey is a severely brain-damaged and mentally ill man who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease,” Rebecca Woodman, one of Purkey’s attorneys, said in a statement. “He has long accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row, but as his dementia has progressed, he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him. He believes his execution is part of a large-scale conspiracy against him by the federal government in retaliation for his frequent challenges to prison conditions, and he believes his own lawyers are working against him within this conspiracy."

Purkey, Lee, and the two other inmates set for execution — Keith Nelson and Dustin Lee Honken — are held at the Terre Haute high-security federal prison facility in Indiana. In the lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Indiana by Hartkemeyer, the Buddhist priest, the ACLU lawyers noted that the Terre Haute facility had documented cases of COVID-19; state and federal jails and prisons across the US have been hot spots for coronavirus cases.

“The Federal Government’s extensive and large-scale plans for the executions amplify the risk posed by the executions. Each execution will require the travel, movement, and congregation of hundreds of individuals, including the families of the victims and the death row prisoners, scores of correctional officers, members of local and national media, as well as large numbers of witnesses and legal counsel from around the country,” the complaint states.


According to the lawsuit, there has been only one execution nationwide since March, carried out by state officials in Missouri.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 25 states still permit the death penalty. Among those states, nine haven’t carried out an execution in the past decade, and another five haven’t executed someone in the past five years, per the center’s data.


Federal executions have been even rarer. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, three federal executions took place in the early 2000s, with the last one taking place in 2003. There were a total of 37 federal executions between 1927 and 2003, with none occurring in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s.

Since 2003, the federal government’s authority to execute inmates has been tied up in court. Federal death row inmates who had execution dates on the calendar filed a lawsuit to stop any future lethal injections in 2005, and a judge delayed those executions while the case was being litigated. As the George W. Bush administration and, later, the Obama administration set additional execution dates, those inmates joined the case and their executions were also put on hold.

The litigation had been inactive since 2011, when the Obama administration began exploring changes to the lethal injection protocol, which in practice put the entire system on hold. It picked back up when the Justice Department announced last summer that it had adopted the new protocol and initially set five execution dates.


The fifth inmate who originally had an execution date, Lezmond Mitchell, is involved in the lethal injection protocol case, but he also has a separate legal challenge to his conviction pending before the 9th Circuit. A three-judge panel in April rejected Mitchell’s argument that he should be allowed to interview jurors to probe whether there was racial bias; Mitchell is Native American. He filed a request for the full court to reconsider the case on June 15.

In ruling against Mitchell, two of the judges wrote separately to express concerns they had that the Justice Department chose to pursue the death penalty against Mitchell when the Navajo Nation, as well as the victims’ family, opposed capital punishment. Mitchell was found guilty in the murder of a 63-year-old woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter; the crime took place on a Navajo reservation.

“The imposition of the death penalty in this case is a betrayal of a promise made to the Navajo Nation, and it demonstrates a deep disrespect for tribal sovereignty,” Judge Morgan Christen wrote. “People can disagree about whether the death penalty should ever be imposed, but our history shows that the United States gave tribes the option to decide for themselves.”

UPDATE
July 2, 2020, at 6:49 p.m.


Updated with information about a new 7th Circuit ruling in Wesley Purkey's case.


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Zoe Tillman is a senior legal reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Contact Zoe Tillman at zoe.tillman@buzzfeed.com.

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