Thursday, October 08, 2020

'Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking.': Highlights from Kamala Harris and Mike Pence's vice presidential debate


Mike Pence interrupted Kamala Harris twice as often during the 2020 vice presidential debate, CBS News finds
Sarah Al-Arshani 

Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris during the vice presidential debate on October 7, 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah.. ERIC BARADAT,ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

Vice President Mike Pence interrupted Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, twice as many times during Wednesday's debate, CBS News found.

Pence interrupted Harris 10 times, while she interrupted him 5 times. 
The debate was the first and only vice presidential debate for the 2020 campaign.

Vice President Mike Pence interrupted Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, twice as many times during Wednesday's debate, CBS News found. 

Pence, the Republican vice presidential nominee, interrupted Harris ten times, while Harris interrupted him only five times, according to the CBS News count. 

"Mr. Vice President, I am speaking," Harris said after Pence interrupted one of her responses on the coronavirus pandemic.

Women on Twitter, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pointed out the imbalanced gender dynamics at play during the debate. Pence not only interrupting Harris but the moderator Susan Page (while dodging questions).

As Business Insider's Marguerite Ward pointed out after last week's presidential debate between two men — which was characterized by chaotic crosstalk — for some women watching the interruptions were reminiscent of what they go through in the workplace. And research backs it up, as Ward writes:

"In addition, a 2014 study by George Washington University found that men interrupted women 33% more than they did men. Women were significantly less likely to interrupt men.

"And a 2017 Northwestern University study looking at over a decade's worth of transcripts of the US Supreme Court found that the trend of men interrupting women continued even at the highest position of law in the US.

"In that study, men interrupting women accounted for 32% of interruptions, while female justices interrupting others (men and women included) accounted for 4% of interruptions."

According to CNN, Harris spoke for only 3 seconds less than Pence throughout the debate: while Pence spoke for 36 minutes and 27 seconds, Harris reportedly spoke for 36 minutes and 24 seconds. 

CBS News, however, found that Harris spoke for 35 minutes and 20 seconds compared to Pence's 38 minutes and two seconds.

Pence and Harris faced off in the only vice presidential debate of the 2020 campaign season, which focused heavily on President Donald Trump's administration's handling of the coronavirus. The debate also touched the economy, climate change, healthcare, and racial justice. 

Pence told Harris to "stop playing politics with people's lives" after she said she criticized Trump's administration handling of the pandemic. 

"The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country," Harris said. "And here are the facts ... 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months ... one in five businesses are closed. We're looking at frontline workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers."


WATCH: Rick Santorum interrupts only woman on CNN panel to defend Mike Pence’s interruptions of Kamala Harris
Published on October 7, 2020 By David Edwards
Gloria Borger and Rick Santorum appear on CNN (screen grab)

Conservative pundit Rick Santorum on Wednesday interrupted CNN’s Gloria Borger in an effort to defend Vice President Mike Pence, who was also accused of interrupting women.

Following the 2020 vice presidential debate, Borger reflected on Pence’s habit of interrupting both Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and moderator Susan Page.

But before Borger could make her point, Santorum interrupted.

“Don’t make the claim that he interrupted repeatedly!” Santorum shouted.

“I’m speaking,” Borger pointed out. “He did.”

“He interrupted the moderator and her,” CNN host Anderson Cooper agreed.

“He went on really long,” Borger asserted.

“Not any more than you would see in any other debate!” Santorum complained.




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THE WINNER OF THE US VP DEBATE?

BEELZEBUB!!! 

LORD OF THE FLIES



SAT ON PENCE'S HEAD FOR TWO MINUTES


Twitter is abuzz: Fly on Mike Pence's head during US Vice Presidential debate
8 Oct, 2020 

Fly on Mike Pence's head during US Vice Presidential debate. Video / CBSN
NZ Herald

There seems to be a fly on the wall at the US Vice Presidential debate and it has taken a liking to Vice President Mike Pence.

While Republican Pence and Democratic challenge Senator Kamala Harris were discussing debate topics, a fly swooped in and landed on top of Pence's head.

The fly set up shop on the Vice President's head for a few minutes.

Twitter was quick to react, and the fly became an internet sensation, even having its own twitter account.

Which now has over 2.4k followers and is now verified on Twitter.

A fly has landed in the spotlight during the VP debate. Photo / AP

Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden turned to Twitter to comment on the star of the show.

Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly. https://t.co/CqHAId0j8t pic.twitter.com/NbkPl0a8HV— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 8, 2020


Til I die-ie-ie-ie, ie-ie, ie-ie pic.twitter.com/bWCbXQncUo— Mike Pence's Head Fly (@Kno) October 8, 2020

I think the fly won this debate— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) October 8, 2020

Give that fly a SAG Award.— dan levy (@danjlevy) October 8, 2020

A fly landed on Vice President Mike Pence's head during the debate pic.twitter.com/2oViyQfHAX— SnapStream (@SnapStream) October 8, 2020

Shout out to that fly. The hero we all needed.— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) October 8, 2020

During the debate, the candidates were separated by plexiglass barriers in an auditorium where any guest who refuses to wear a face mask would be removed, an extraordinary backdrop for the only Vice-Presidential debate of 2020.

The debate was held at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Harris, 55, is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. She is also a former prosecutor whose pointed questioning of US President Donald Trump's appointees and court nominees helped make her a Democratic star.

Pence is a 61-year-old former Indiana governor and ex-radio host, an evangelical Christian known for his folksy charm and unwavering loyalty to Trump. And while he is Trump's biggest public defender, the VP does not share the President's brash tone or undisciplined style.





A fly landed on Mike Pence's head during the debate and rested there for nearly two minutes

BY CAITLIN O'KANE

UPDATED ON: OCTOBER 7, 2020 / 11:50 PM / CBS NEWS

Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence took the stage Wednesday night for the only vice presidential debate with moderator Susan Page of USA Today – but a fourth, uninvited guest briefly joined the group, too. Toward the end of the debate, a fly landed on Pence's head and stayed there for about two minutes.

The vice presidential candidates were in a serious moment when the black bug landed on Mr. Pence's stark white hair. Most viewers' attention then turned to the fly – and stayed there until the pest flew away. Viewers joked about the fly that just wouldn't buzz off. 
Vice President Mike Pence listens to Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris during the vice presidential debate on Wednesday, October 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City.PATRICK SEMANSKY / AP

"Not Pence's fault, but that fly is becoming the story of the evening," wrote Los Angeles Times legal affairs columnist Harry Litman. 

Author and journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner tweeted "pretty fly for a white guy!" 

Within minutes, the Biden Campaign jumped in on the fly jokes, tweeting a photo of the Democratic presidential nominee with a fly swatter. "Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly," the tweet on Biden's page read. 

He also obtained the flywillvote.com domain within minutes of the viral moment.

Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly. https://t.co/CqHAId0j8t pic.twitter.com/NbkPl0a8HV— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 8, 2020

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also made a fly joke on her Twitter, as did countless others.

In the post-debate coverage, "CBS This Morning" anchor Gayle King also took a moment address the fly in the room. "At one point, when they were talking about systemic racism, I think it's very interesting timing that a fly would land on Mike pence's headed at that particular time, when he said there wasn't systemic racism. I saw the fly say, 'Say what?' It was very interesting," King said.

"I don't want to call that a highlight, but that was certainly a memorable moment," she continued. 

This is not the first time a fly has landed on a candidate during a debate. During a 2016 presidential debate, a fly landed on Hillary Clinton's forehead. Like Pence, the Democratic nominee also continued with what she was saying, seemingly unfazed.

During a primary debate in 2019, former 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg also appeared to have an unidentified and very distracting smudge on his face. The spot also gained widespread attention on social media, as viewers debated what it was exactly. 

Much like other viral inanimate objects, Pence's fly soon had his own parody Twitter accounts. Following "Angelina Jolie's Leg" and "Obama's Tan Suit," the "Mike Pence's Fly" Twitter accounts began instantaneously serving snarky commentary. 

First published on October 7, 2020 / 11:21 PM
© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Caitlin O'Kane

Caitlin O'Kane is a digital content producer covering trending stories for CBS News and its good news brand, The Uplift.


Joe Biden posed with a swatter after a fly landed on Mike Pence's head during the VP debate
Tom Porter 
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a fly swatter in a campaign photo published on October 7, 2020. Biden campaign

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's campaign was quick to capitalize from the bizarre moment in Wednesday's vice-presidential debate when a fly landed on Mike Pence's head for about two minutes.

Shortly after, Biden tweeted out a picture of himself holding a fly swatter, with the caption: "Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly."

The Biden campaign also released a $10 fly swatter with the slogan "Truth Over Flies" — a play on the Biden slogan "Truth Over Lies." It sold out within hours.

The Trump and Biden campaigns are vying to influence the online conversation with memes and spin capitalizing on viral moments. 

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wasted no time in fundraising off the bizarre moment during Wednesday's vice-presidential debate, when a fly landed on Vice President Mike Pence's head and sat there for nearly two minutes as he continued to speak. 

"Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly," Biden tweeted, with a link to his campaign fundraising page and a picture of himself holding a fly swatter. 
—Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 8, 2020

During the debate Pence and Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, discussed the issues that have defined the presidential campaign — but it was the moment the fly landed on Pence's head that attracted most attention on social media. 

Within minutes someone had made a Twitter account for the fly, and people started sharing memes and jokes under the #PenceFlyHead hashtag.


The Biden campaign was also quick to seek political advantage from the moment, with Biden's tweet shared 234,000 times at the time of publication. 

It followed up with campaign merchandise, with Biden tweeting out a link to a $10 fly swatter, with the slogan "Truth Over Flies" — a play on one of Biden's campaign slogans, "Truth Over Lies" — on the handle. At time of publication, it has sold out.

Quipping on the moment Biden also tweeted out a link to voter registration site IWillVote.com with the message "FlyWillVote.com."

Republicans and Democrats have been seeking to influence the online conversation about the presidential election with memes and spin about viral campaign moments, conveying campaign messages in an irreverent way to reach out to voters.

Read more:
The biggest moment of the Pence-Harris debate was a fly landing on Pence's head, which sums up how calm it was without Trump

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An explosive new documentary details how Jared Kushner's coronavirus task force consisted mainly of 20-something volunteers buying PPE with personal email accounts
White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and counselor Kellyanne Conway on April 30. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

For several weeks in March and April, Max Kennedy Jr., then 26, served on Jared Kushner's White House COVID-19 Supply Chain Task Force.

Kennedy, who is Robert F. Kennedy's grandson, quit the task force in April. Soon after, he wrote an anonymous whistleblower complaint to Congress accusing the task force of corruption and ineptitude.

According to Kennedy, most members of the task force were young, inexperienced volunteers "cold emailing" Chinese factories from their personal email accounts.

When Max Kennedy Jr. volunteered to help out on Jared Kushner's White House COVID-19 Supply Chain Task Force, he thought he'd be helping out senior staff with rote tasks like data entry.

"My old boss called me and said he heard Kushner's task force needed younger volunteers who had general skills and were willing to work seven days a week for no money," Kennedy, now 27, said in the forthcoming documentary about the Trump team's coronavirus response, "Totally Under Control." The film, which was made in secret over the past five months, is slated for on-demand release on October 13.

Official poster for "Totally Under Control." Courtesy of Neon

Despite his "apprehension" about working for the Trump administration, Kennedy volunteered because he felt like it was the right thing to do, he said.

So Kennedy traveled to Washington, DC, and showed up at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Once there, he said volunteers were led to Conference Room A, a windowless underground meeting space. TVs covered the walls, all blaring Fox News.

After they sat down, Kennedy said representatives from FEMA and the military came in and gave them a "pep talk." The officials told volunteers they needed to procure "the stuff" for the US government — Kennedy said they were referring to personal protective equipment, or PPE.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence at a meeting at FEMA headquarters on March 19. AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool

Then the officials left, leaving Kennedy and the other volunteers. Slowly, they realized what was happening.

"We thought we'd be auxiliary support for an existing procurement team," Kennedy, who is the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, said in the film. "Instead, we were the team."

Kennedy said he and a dozen inexperienced volunteers had become a core component of the US government's efforts to procure PPE.

A severe shortage of PPE across the US

Kushner formed the COVID-19 Supply Chain Task Force in March to address what had become a pressing issue: the US's severe shortage of PPE and other medical equipment. Already, hospitals in many regions were running out of masks and ventilators, and workers were making single-use masks last over several days. One surgeon in Fresno, California, told The New York Times it was like being "at war with no ammo."

Pop-up signs on the lawn of the Capitol Building showing the faces of nurses and frontline healthcare workers pleading for adequate PPE on April 17. Paul Morigi/Getty Images for MoveOn

There were multiple reasons for these shortages, including a lack of preparations by previous administrations — many of the Strategic National Stockpile's 12 million N95 masks were expired, for instance. But in February, the Trump administration created the "CS China COVID Procurement Service," which existed partly to encourage American producers like 3M to sell their entire inventories of N95 masks to China.

One month later, when American hospitals desperately needed N95 masks, they were forced to import them and pay up to 10 times more than the price that American producers would have charged, according to the documentary.
Using personal email accounts to buy critical supplies

For the rest of March and well into April, Kennedy sat in Conference Room A with the other volunteers, whom he said had no experience in supply chains or medical issues. With very little direction, the team members opened up their personal laptops and got to work, Kennedy said.

"We started cold emailing people we knew who had business relationships in China, looking for factories online, and emailing them from our personal Gmail accounts," Kennedy said in the film.

The group was also told to prioritize leads from "VIPs," which mostly consisted of well-connected and wealthy Trump supporters, BuzzFeed News and The New York Times previously reported. The task force kept track of such leads in a spreadsheet called "VIP Updates."

One "VIP," the Silicon Valley engineer Yaron Oren-Pines, received a $69 million contract to provide 1,000 ventilators to New York state after he tweeted at the president, Business Insider previously reported. Oren-Pines never delivered, and the state has tried to get its money back.

As the team worked, the TVs kept playing Fox News 24/7, Kennedy said, adding that he remembered the channel's coronavirus-death counter ticking steadily upward.

Kennedy said nobody told the other volunteers how to buy PPE

Buying PPE without any experience or advice turned out to be difficult, largely because Kennedy said he and the other volunteers had no idea how procurement worked, and nobody would tell them.
Trump tours a Honeywell International Inc. factory on May 5 in Phoenix. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

"We would call factories and say, 'We think the federal government can send you a check in 60 days,' and they would say, 'There's someone with a briefcase of cash, and they're offering to pay me right now,'" he said in the film. "And we would run around the FEMA building looking for someone who could tell us what payment terms the government was allowed to offer, and no one ever told us."

A week into their work, Kennedy said several government employees walked into Conference Room A and told the volunteers they had to sign nondisclosure agreements. They offered an ultimatum: Sign the NDAs, or leave the room immediately, according to Kennedy.

"We all had built our own relationships with manufacturers, and it felt like if we walked away, it would negatively affect our ability to buy this critical, life-saving equipment. And so we all begrudgingly signed the NDA," he said in the film.


Kennedy quit the task force in April. That month, he also broke his NDA, sending an anonymous complaint to Congress that said the task force was "falling short."

"In my time on the task force, our team did not directly purchase a single mask," he said in the film.

Kushner's program was mostly shut down in May, even though state governments and healthcare facilities were still experiencing critical shortages of PPE and ventilators.

The White House didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the film or Kennedy's characterization of the task force.

SEE ALSO: Jared Kushner's shadow coronavirus task force used a spreadsheet called 'VIP Update' to procure PPE from inexperienced Trump allies over legitimate vendors

DON'T MISS: A volunteer on Kushner's coronavirus team filed a complaint to Congress warning the group was 'falling short' on helping health care workers



Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Nicholas Confessore, Andrew Jacobs, Jodi Kantor, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Luis Ferré-Sadurní

Published May 5, 2020Updated May 10, 2020

This spring, as the United States faced a critical shortage of masks, gloves and other protective equipment to battle the coronavirus pandemic, a South Carolina physician reached out to the Federal Emergency Management Agency with an offer of help.

Dr. Jeffrey Hendricks had longtime manufacturing contacts in China and a line on millions of masks from established suppliers. Instead of encountering seasoned FEMA procurement officials, his information was diverted to a team of roughly a dozen young volunteers, recruited by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and overseen by a former assistant to Mr. Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump.

The volunteers, foot soldiers in the Trump administration’s new supply-chain task force, had little to no experience with government procurement procedures or medical equipment. But as part of Mr. Kushner’s governmentwide push to secure protective gear for the nation’s doctors and nurses, the volunteers were put in charge of sifting through more than a thousand incoming leads, and told to pass only the best ones on for further review by FEMA officials.



Dr. Jeffrey Hendricks, a physician who had a line on millions of masks.Credit...Stephen Stinson

As the federal government’s warehouses were running bare and medical workers improvised their own safety gear, Dr. Hendricks found his offer stalled. Many of the volunteers were told to prioritize tips from political allies and associates of President Trump, tracked on a spreadsheet called “V.I.P. Update,” according to documents and emails obtained by The New York Times. Among them were leads from Republican members of Congress, the Trump youth activist Charlie Kirk and a former “Apprentice” contestant who serves as the campaign chair of Women for Trump.

Trump allies also pressed FEMA officials directly: A Pennsylvania dentist, once featured at a Trump rally, dropped the president’s name as he pushed the agency to procure test kits from his associates

Few of the leads, V.I.P. or otherwise, panned out, according to a whistle-blower memo written by one volunteer and sent to the House Oversight Committee. While Vice President Mike Pence dropped by the volunteers’ windowless command center in Washington to cheer them on, they were confused and overwhelmed by their task, the whistle-blower said in interviews.

“The nature and scale of the response seemed grossly inadequate,” said the volunteer, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity and, like the others, signed a nondisclosure agreement. “It was bureaucratic cycles of chaos.”

The fumbling search for new supplies — heralded by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner as a way to pipe private-sector hustle and accountability into the hidebound federal bureaucracy — became a case study of Mr. Trump’s style of governing, in which personal relationships and loyalty are often prized over governmental expertise, and private interests are granted extraordinary access and deference.

Federal officials who had spent years devising emergency plans were layered over by Kushner allies, working with and within the White House coronavirus task force, who believed their private-sector experience could solve the country’s looming supply shortage. The young volunteers — drawn from venture capital and private equity firms — were expected to apply their deal-making experience to quickly weed out good leads from the mountain of bad ones, administration officials said in an interview. FEMA and other agencies, despite years of emergency preparation, were not equipped for the unprecedented task of a pandemic that affected all 50 states, they said.


Jared Kushner, right, recruited a team of volunteers to sift through over a thousand leads on aid to pass to FEMA officials.Credit...Pool photo by Evan Vucci

But the officials acknowledged it was difficult to identify specific contracts the volunteers had successfully sourced.

At least one tip the volunteers forwarded turned into an expensive debacle. In late March, according to emails obtained by The Times, two of the volunteers passed along procurement forms submitted by Yaron Oren-Pines, a Silicon Valley engineer who said he could provide more than 1,000 ventilators.

Mr. Kushner’s volunteers passed the tip to federal officials who then sent it to senior officials in New York, who assumed Mr. Oren-Pines had been vetted and awarded him an eye-popping $69 million contract. Not a single ventilator was delivered, and New York is now seeking to recover the money.

“There’s an old saying in emergency management — disaster is the wrong time to exchange business cards,” said Tim Manning, a former deputy administrator at FEMA. “And it’s absolutely the wrong time to make up new procedures.”

Records and emails obtained by The Times — along with interviews with current and former FEMA officials, former task force volunteers and others briefed on the agency’s work — provide the most detailed picture yet of how the Kushner-installed personnel complicated the government response amid a deadly crisis.



The whistle-blower memo, which has been provided to lawmakers on a House oversight committee, was disclosed on Tuesday by The Washington Post.

In April, as the virus spread, the shortages continued and the volunteers struggled, Dr. Hendricks waited, eager to move forward. Some of his messages to the volunteers went unreturned, he said, as he read news reports of the government making other, questionable, deals.

“When I offered them viable leads at viable prices from an approved vendor, they kept passing me down the line and made terrible deals instead,” said Dr. Hendricks, who has since sold supplies to hospitals in Michigan and elsewhere.



FEMA, working with the National Guard, set up a field hospital at the Javits Center in New York.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

A Scramble for Supplies

The coronavirus crisis presented a unique test for FEMA, former and current officials said: a 50-state emergency in which acquiring emergency supplies, many of them from overseas, became the overriding concern, rather than efficiently distributing goods readily available in the United States. In interviews, current FEMA officials and former colleagues who have spoken with them in recent weeks conveyed mixed feelings about the Kushner team’s involvement.

Some praised Mr. Kushner for ensuring that other White House officials did not meddle further in the response effort, and for quickly enlisting the Pentagon to link FEMA with the military’s suppliers. At meetings, some said, Mr. Kushner was well prepared with data and determined to act quickly. His deputies, including a Kushner friend and Trump appointee named Adam Boehler, were responsive to questions and concerns.

In a statement, Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, the head of the supply-chain task force, said the volunteers had served an important function.

“The first thing we knew w needed to do was find more product around the globe in order to buy time to increase domestic production,” the admiral said. “This group made lots of calls, followed up on many leads. They helped wade through the hundreds of false claims and turned over a few true sources to government action officers. Their efforts saved many government man hours.”

But other officials described Mr. Kushner’s efforts as the solution to a problem of the president’s own making. Had Mr. Trump acted earlier than mid-March to assign FEMA to lead the federal government’s coronavirus response, the agency’s normal procedures might have been able to cope with the swelling demand. By the time Mr. Trump’s decision came, the Strategic National Stockpile was already running low on critical supplies. FEMA had no choice but to pursue every available lead, officials said, no matter how far-fetched.

And while the volunteers who began arriving around March 20 put eyes on the influx of tips at the agency, the officials did not understand why the White House did not recruit more manpower from the military or other agencies with logistics expertise, as FEMA typically does in a crisis. Two current and former FEMA officials briefed on the agency’s operations said the White House effort led to missed opportunities to procure personal protective gear from legitimate sources.



Jeanine Pirro, a pundit on Fox News, contacted FEMA and volunteers to share supplies with a hospital.Credit...Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Some associates of Mr. Trump sought special treatment from FEMA. In one case, Jeanine Pirro, the Trump stalwart and Fox host, repeatedly contacted task force members and FEMA officials until 100,000 masks were sent to a hospital she favored. Ms. Pirro did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Dr. Albert Hazzouri, a Pennsylvania dentist and visitor of Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private Florida club, repeatedly pressed FEMA officials to buy from his associates, after being referred by Rep. Brian Babin, a Texas Republican and fellow dentist.

He said he could help facilitate a procurement of 100,000 test kits from Mexico. Dr. Hazzouri, who has used his relationship with Mr. Trump to gain access to federal agencies in the past, repeatedly called the team of volunteers and FEMA officials, according to those involved in the agency’s operations, even invoking his friendship with the president when he was directed to a portal for submitting bids.

When reached for comment, a man who identified himself as the dentist’s brother said Dr. Hazzouri was not available and denied that the dentist had made use of his friendship with the president, received any special treatment or had a financial interest in the potential deal, saying he merely had made a few introductions. None of his tips resulted in FEMA supply deals.



Employees listened as Vice President Mike Pence spoke at FEMA’s offices last month.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

The Help Arrives

The agency’s career staff is filled with military veterans and disaster specialists whose careers trace the history of recent American catastrophes: Katrina, Sandy, Deepwater Horizon, Irene. The volunteers, most in their 20s, had different names in their résumés: Stanford, Goldman Sachs, Google. One had graduated from college just the previous spring. They were recruited from Insight Partners, from Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, from other investment firms and consulting companies in New York City.

According to the whistle-blower, they were given little initial instruction. They used personal Gmail accounts, prompting suspicion from some prospective suppliers and brokers who questioned their bona fides. A few days after they began, a government lawyer belatedly showed up with nondisclosure forms from the Department of Homeland Security.

Bottles of hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes were placed around the room, and in a nod to social distancing, sheets of paper were laid on every other chair at the long conference tables, though many of the seats were eventually occupied by volunteers. For Mr. Pence’s pep talk in late March, the televisions were switched from CNN to Fox News.

For the next three weeks, the volunteers worked 12-hour days, struggling to keep up with leads funneled through FEMA’s website and trying to navigate the federal government’s byzantine procurement rules. But their work was plagued by frequent changes in process, efforts that turned out to be wasted, poor communication and mounting dread about their lack of progress, the whistle-blower said in interviews and the blistering memo.

“These problems affect the entire chain of command, hamper our ability to respond and could result in many Americans losing their lives,” the whistle-blower wrote.

Their temporary supervisor was Rachael Baitel, a 2014 Princeton graduate who had worked as a White House assistant to Ms. Trump before moving on to a position at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Ms. Baitel told volunteers to prioritize leads from the politically connected, according to the former volunteer and documents reviewed by The Times. The senior administration officials said that the White House task force was unaware that any FEMA leads were being prioritized on a V.I.P. list. All leads judged by the volunteers to be worth pursuing, the officials said, would have been reviewed by career government officials, with a final contract decision made by FEMA procurement experts.

When Mr. Oren-Pines followed up with New York officials about his ventilator offer, he copied Ms. Baitel. BuzzFeed News first reported on the failed contract.

Many other leads came to the volunteers from Mr. Kushner’s team. There was Mr. Boehler, a former venture capitalist and Mr. Kushner’s college roommate, who was serving elsewhere in the administration, as well as Avi Berkowitz, a Kushner aide, and Ms. Trump’s chief of staff, Julie Radford. Tips also came in from Republican members of congress, conservative media personalities and Admiral Polowczyk.



When Tana Goertz, who runs Women for Trump, sent a lead for N95 masks, it circulated among top Trump appointees.Credit...Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

When Tana Goertz, the former “Apprentice” contestant who now runs Women For Trump, wrote in with a lead for N95 masks, it circulated among top Trump appointees at three federal agencies — including Mr. Trump’s top public health preparedness official, Robert Kadlec. Ms. Goertz did not reply to messages seeking comment.

In contrast, Dr. Hendricks’s messages sometimes went unanswered and were passed from person to person, even though he provided the codes and filled out the forms the government required, and sent a picture of the masks to Ms. Baitel to prove that they were real.

Weeks after the volunteers left in early April, and his tip had been passed to a Defense Department employee, Dr. Hendricks finally saw a sign of progress: notification of a possible site visit in China. “After five weeks of somewhat frustrating efforts, I’m finally hopeful,” he said.



A photo Dr. Hendricks shared with volunteers in his tip on suppliers.Credit...Dr. Jeffrey Hendricks

Other potential suppliers contacted FEMA officials after the volunteers departed, asking about lack of follow-up. FEMA officials, who were not provided with complete records on the calls made by the volunteers, were forced to restart vetting some bids.

The volunteers also worked on other aspects of Mr. Kushner’s White House effort, notably Project Airbridge, in which American taxpayers paid to ship crates of gowns, masks and gloves procured in China by large American suppliers, such as Cardinal Health, McKesson and Owens & Minor.

A supply shipment was sent in March to FEMA’s field hospital at the Javits Center.Credit...Sean Madden/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Supplies of protective gear have improved in recent weeks, administration officials said, pointing to an agreement the White House struck with 3M in early April to procure more than 160 million respirators over three months. But many medical workers across the country say that shortages remain a serious problem.

“There are health providers quitting their jobs because they are worried about getting sick,” said Dr. Valerie Griffeth, an emergency room doctor in Oregon and a founder of Get Us P.P.E., a volunteer effort to match available medical supplies with hospitals and emergency workers

She and other front-line medical workers continue to press Mr. Trump to make use of the Defense Production Act, and she criticized the administration’s reliance on the private sector to address the shortages.

“To bring in inexperienced volunteers is laughable when there are professional logistics experts in government who could have helped with procurement and distribution and get us the supplies we need,” she said.

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Christopher Flavelle contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy, Alain Delaquérière and Lauren Messman contributed research.

Nicholas Confessore is a New York-based political and investigative reporter and a staff writer at the Times Magazine, covering the intersection of wealth, power and influence in Washington and beyond. He joined The Times in 2004. @nickconfessore • Facebook

Andrew Jacobs is a health and science reporter, based in New York. He previously reported from Beijing and Brazil and had stints as a metro reporter, Styles writer and national correspondent, covering the American South. @AndrewJacobsNYT

Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and best-selling author. She and Megan Twohey are the co-authors of “She Said”, which recounts how the reporters broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, helping to ignite the #MeToo movement. @jodikantor • Facebook

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is the homeland security correspondent, based in Washington. He covers the Department of Homeland Security, immigration, border issues, transnational crime and the federal government's response to national emergencies and security threats. @KannoYoungs

Luis Ferré-Sadurní covers New York State politics in Albany. He joined The Times in 2017 and previously wrote about housing for the Metro desk. He is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. @luisferre

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Facebook bans QAnon...but can it keep up with the conspiracy theory?

QAnon officially gets the boot from Facebook. But, will believers of the conspiracy go without a fight?
IMAGE: DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY MATT BINDER

Facebook is taking a giant step in keeping dangerous QAnon content off its platforms.

On Tuesday, Facebook announced it’s officially banning all QAnon Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts. As NBC News described it, the policy update is “one of the broadest rules the social media giant has put in place in its history.”

Starting today, we'll remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even without violent content. This is an update from August when we began removing Pages, Groups and accounts associated with QAnon when they discussed potential violence. https://t.co/Gm60rwOwY9
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 6, 2020


SEE ALSO: The most effective ways to support a loved one who believes in QAnon

Facebook has previously taken action against QAnon. Back in May, it removed a network of Pages, Groups, and accounts that pushed the conspiracy. However, the company said it was removing them because they involved fake accounts and engagements, which are against its rules — not because they were spreading dangerous content.

Facebook removed one of the largest QAnon-related groups on its platform months later in August under its policies banning misinformation, harassment, and hate speech. Just days after that action, a Facebook internal investigation leaked laying bare just how bad the platform’s QAnon problem was: millions of the site’s users were joining groups supporting the conspiracy theory.

On Aug. 19, Facebook announced it was cracking down on QAnon pages and groups that discussed or promoted “potential violence.” However, Facebook stopped short of totally banning QAnon. The company said at the time that the conspiracy theory didn’t meet the “rigorous criteria” of its Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policies.

Fast-forward to today: Facebook announced an update to its policies and declared a sweeping ban on QAnon.

“While we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted attention of local officials from fighting the fires and protecting the public,” Facebook said in a statement announcing the policy change.

However, will this broad ban on all QAnon content even be enough? Can Facebook keep up with the ever-evolving conspiracy theory?

“Q has specifically asked QAnon followers to 'deploy camouflage' by dropping all references to 'Q' and 'QAnon,'" Travis View, co-host of the popular QAnon Anonymous podcast, which tracks the conspiracy theory with a critical view, said in a direct message on Twitter. “Instead QAnon followers have been replacing Q with '17,' 'Cue Anon,' or 'Save The Children.'"

Three years ago yesterday, President Donald Trump proclaimed to the press that it was “the calm before the storm” during a White House dinner with top U.S. military officials. This line laid the foundation for what would later be known as QAnon.

A few weeks after that dinner, a user known as “Q” began posting on the imageboard 4chan, claiming they were a government official with top security credentials. This anonymous entity’s posts have led followers of the QAnon conspiracy into believing that Trump has been waging a secret war against a global satanic pedophile ring run by a cabal of Hollywood elites and the members of the Democratic Party.

What individual QAnon followers believe is all over the place. Some QAnon believers think that John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and will replace Mike Pence as vice president on the Republican ticket any day now. Others think some alleged celebrity suspects in the cabal have already been executed, with clones now walking in their place.

The QAnon conspiracy has evolved further due to the pandemic lockdowns. Coronavirus deniers, anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers ... all of these groups have folded into the broader QAnon conspiracy theory in one way or another. As Travis said, the QAnon believers focused on Trump’s political enemies being involved in child sex trafficking have been especially visible, holding real-world events under the guise of the rallying cry “Save Our Children.”

“If Facebook is seeking guidance from knowledgeable online extremism researchers, and I assume that they have, then they should be able to quickly detect the most common attempts to disguise affiliation with QAnon,” said Travis.

Facebook seems to understand this aspect of QAnon, at least based on what the company wrote in its statement.

“QAnon messaging changes very quickly and we see networks of supporters build an audience with one message and then quickly pivot to another,” said the company. “We aim to combat this more effectively with this update that strengthens and expands our enforcement against the conspiracy theory movement.”

The company pointed to “Save Our Children” as an example, without explicitly mentioning it. Facebook says it “began directing people to credible child safety resources when they search for certain child safety hashtags last week,” knowing that QAnon believers use the issue to recruit.

Keeping QAnon off an entire social media platform has actually been done before. However, unlike other sites, QAnon believers undoubtedly know how key Facebook, specifically, has been to its spread. They’ll surely try to find a workaround. Facebook’s enforcement will be key here in keeping the conspiracy theory off its platform.

WATCH: How to recognize and avoid fake news
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Successful GOP repeal of Obamacare would give the richest Americans a massive tax break: report


Published on October 6, 2020 By Common Dreams
Justice Brett Kavanaugh and President Donald Trump at U.S. Supreme Court investiture ceremony (White House photo)

New research released Tuesday shows that if the Supreme Court next month sides with the Trump administration and 18 state attorneys general seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act, more than 20 million people would lose health insurance and millions more would be forced to pay more for healthcare—in the middle of a pandemic—while Big Pharma and the richest 0.1% would enjoy major tax cuts.

“The stakes in this case, always extraordinarily high”—wrote Tara Straw and Aviva Aron-Dine in one of several reports (pdf) published this week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)—”are even higher now amidst a global pandemic and an economic crisis that has caused more people to lose health insurance and become eligible for help from the ACA.”

Last week, President Donald Trump claimed on Twitter that a Supreme Court decision striking down the ACA “would be a big WIN for the USA!” Trump said that he would replace “Obamacare” with something “MUCH better,” but another new report (pdf) from CBPP shows that “none of the supposed alternatives to the ACA offered by the Trump administration or congressional Republicans” would protect people with pre-existing conditions.

Countering Trump’s assertion that eliminating the ACA would be a national victory, economist and former labor secretary Robert Reich explained exactly which class of Americans would win and who would lose were the law to be repealed during a pandemic and recession.

If Trump gets the Supreme Court to strike down ACA, the richest 0.1% would get a tax cut $198,000 a year. Big Pharma would get a tax cut of $2.8 billion.

But millions of seniors would pay billions more for prescription drugs. And 20 million would lose their health insurance.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 6, 2020

“While the legal arguments against the law are extremely weak,” Straw and Aron-Dine explained, the Republican Party’s efforts to overturn the ACA have been given a boost by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the president’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, “who has been critical of the Supreme Court’s reasoning for upholding the ACA in prior cases.”

The GOP-led Senate has made expediting Barrett’s confirmation a priority, even as an overwhelming majority of voters have indicated that they would prefer for Congress to pass an economic relief package, as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell also recommended Tuesday hours before Trump announced that he was postponing stimulus negotiations until after the election.

A disgrace: McConnell has been blocking COVID relief for 144 days but will help Trump confirm Barrett to a lifetime Supreme Court seat where she can invalidate the ACA amid the pandemic. Cruel and dangerous. Stacking the courts and entrenching power is truly all they care about. https://t.co/mmFjL12Kf3
— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) October 6, 2020

According to Straw and Aron-Dine, overturning the ACA “was expected to cause 20 million people to lose coverage” prior to the economic crisis. “If the law were struck down during a recession… millions more would likely lose coverage… with commensurately larger impacts on access to care, financial security, health outcomes, and racial disparities in coverage and access to care.”

Repealing the ACA in the midst of a pandemic “would also impede efforts to address the public health crisis,” Straw and Aron-Dine wrote, and the elimination of “the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions could make it harder for the more than 7 million people who’ve had COVID to obtain affordable, comprehensive coverage in the future.”

Not only would striking down the ACA directly harm tens of millions of Americans “covered through the ACA marketplaces or benefiting from its protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” explained CBPP senior policy analyst Jessica Schubel, but it would cause additional damage by disrupting Medicare and “jeopardizing states’ ability to administer their Medicaid programs even for those who remain eligible.”

In contrast to all of the ways that a successful GOP repeal of the ACA would hurt working class Americans by undermining their access to healthcare amid the coronavirus crisis, millionaires and Big Pharma would stand to pocket massive amounts of cash.

“This doesn’t get the attention it should,” tweeted CBPP senior health policy fellow Judy Solomon. “If the Trump administration succeeds in overturning the ACA, not only will millions lose health coverage, but millionaires will get big tax cuts.”

This doesn't get the attention it should. If Trump Administration succeeds in overturning #ACA not only will millions lose health coverage, but millionaires will get big tax cuts. https://t.co/qjRaDSiQFa
— Judy Solomon (@JudyCBPP) October 6, 2020

According to CBPP, if the ACA is struck down, the highest-income households in the country would be given a “windfall.” The richest 0.1% of households, whose annual incomes are greater than $3 million, would receive tax cuts averaging nearly $200,000 per year, while households with annual incomes over $1 million would receive tax cuts averaging over $40,000 per year.

The cost to the federal government of tax cuts for households with annual incomes over $200,000 would be $30 billion in 2020, which is more than one-third of the cost of the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults—enough to “pay for health coverage for over four million people.”

Other beneficiaries of an ACA repeal would be pharmaceutical companies, which would pay $2.8 billion less in taxes each year. Big Pharma’s victory would come at the expense of millions of seniors who would pay billions more each year for prescription drugs.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that many wealthy Americans rushed to file claims for refunds of ACA taxes paid in previous years in case the Supreme Court invalidates the law.

With Trump out of the hospital Monday and still battling his own Covid-19 infection, Reich provided a reminder that “our tax-dodging billionaire president is getting publicly-funded healthcare while his lawyers are in court trying to rip yours away.”

by Kenny Stancil
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strikers
Somalian Pirates and the Law of the Sea: International Law in Crisis
Edited by: Vishwajeet Deshmukh | Government Law College Mumbai, INHriti Parekh, a student from Hidayatullah National Law University (HNLU), Raipur, India discusses the international legal perspective of Somalian piracy activities...

“Somalia is a land that has descended so deeply into misery that “failed state” is too generous a description for the country.” –TIME Magazine

In August 2020, three Iranian hostages who had been held for five years were freed by Somalian pirates, as contradictory news emerged that another ship had been intercepted after a three-year pause. The three Iranian hostages were the last of the crew of FV Siraj, an Iranian fishing vessel intercepted by pirates on 22 March 2015. For the Somalian pirates, who’ve held over 2,300 crew between 2010 and 2019, this liberation was supposed to mark the end of almost a decade of international maritime piracy. However, in other news, six armed men hijacked the Panama-flagged Aegean II off the coast of Somalia, after it had engine problems, as mentioned by a regional governor in Somalia.

Considering this and a significant number of attacks on maritime transport vehicles in the recent past, it becomes important to understand the root causes and lack of law enforcement in order to combat Piracy and the Emergence of Modern Day Pirates. The Somalian Piracy crisis emerged many years ago and appears to pose a significant problem for the international community. Even though piracy is an international crime for which the concept of universal jurisdiction extends, states operating off Somalia’s coast face significant difficulties in prosecuting pirates (Universal jurisdiction doctrine provides that every court has the authority to prosecute criminals who have perpetrated international offenses such as piracy.) 

In order to understand the status quo of piracy off the coast of Somalia, it’s important to understand its history. The author aims to do an analysis of International Piracy and the role of the Law of the Sea in countering one of the oldest international crimes.

The nature of Somali piracy is directly related to the country’s political environment, which, since 1991 has been ravaged by civil war and where the government occupies just one portion of the capital. The issue is compounded by Somalia’s geography. About 40% of world exchange has to go across the short straight line between the Horn of Africa and the Arab Peninsula. The volatile humanitarian crisis in Somalia allows more and more citizens to conduct acts of piracy and this makes it almost impossible to enforce the law. At the same time, the wage disparity between the wealthy and the weak has greatly increased. Somalia has the world’s freest liberated open market economy, with no central bank regulating money flow, fixing interest rates, or managing inflation, which could be another reason for people to get involved in crimes like that of Piracy.

Piracy is also said to be funded by influential warlords from Somalia who maintain influence over their respective regions of power; they periodically finance and enjoy the rewards of pirate attacks in the event of a productive hijacking and ransom payment. Pirates are usually active outside the coastal towns of Somalia, where they can easily dock their own skiffs and retrieve their stolen goods and captives. Coastal towns in Somalia profit economically from piracy proceeds and so they have little reason to participate in anti-piracy operations. The government of Somalia has lost full oversight over the numerous maritime regions where pirates are running and are unable to respond with piracy, law enforcement, or any military activity to counter the same.

Nations have encountered challenges that have been exacerbated by the limited interpretation of Piracy in international law. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”), the global authority for dealing with maritime disputes, describes piracy as :

“Piracy” consists of any of the following acts: 

(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed: 

  1. on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft; 
  2. against a ship, aircraft, person or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any state; 

(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft; 

 (c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b)

The definition provided under UNCLOS has been considered to be more inclined towards customary international law. It gives a narrow interpretation of the crime of piracy in the following way.

Firstly, piracy has to occur in the high seas. If Somali pirates hijack a vessel in Somalia’s territorial waters, the attack will not count as piracy under UNCLOS. Therefore, although patrolling nations can be permitted to access territorial waters of Somalia in order to deter pirate attacks, if attacks take place in those waters, they would anyway not be considered attacks of piracy under International Law.

Secondly, an attack by pirates must include two vessels: a victim and an aggressor’s vessel. This could be problematic in situations where pirates try to board the victim’s vessel at its last port of entry, and then, later on, hijack the boat in the high seas. In this case, even though the hijacking would almost resemble piracy, it won’t be considered piracy.

Thirdly, it is necessary to commit the act of piracy for private purposes. If pirates happened to be related to a political cause or whether they were acting on behalf of a state agency, their acts would not count as piracy under international law.

Apart from the loopholes prevalent within the statute, a major issue is the applicability of the statute itself. The Convention (UNCLOS) is veiled in soft legal language. The implementation of the law relies on the member states. In other words, the law has no legally binding consequences.

A lot of nations have tied up with regional partners like Kenya, Seychelles, and Mauritius and have tried to capture and prosecute the pirates in the courts of these regional partner countries. In addition, the U.N. has also established a Piracy Contact Group, a group of state representatives that would meet several times a year and would work to find solutions to the piracy crisis in Somalia. The UN Report also recommended the creation of a Somali extraterritorial tribunal to be developed in neighboring Tanzania that would strictly apply Somali law but, for apparent security purposes, would be headquartered outside Somalia. Although this approach initially seemed appealing, it was met with opposition from Somalian people and hence, it couldn’t be implemented.

Major maritime nations need to support and deliberate to develop a wider view of UNCLOS and customary law, at the same time establish that international law does not explicitly preclude capturing states from sending pirates to third parties for trial, or by depending on certain agreements, such as the  Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation and other anti-terrorism treaties, which do not limit capturing states from initiating trial in their own courts. The most optimal solution, for now, would be to proliferate patrols in the Indian Ocean and to capture the pirates and prosecute them in the courts of the regional partners, in return of which these partners could receive monetary assistance from these nations. At the end of the day, Maritime Nations need to make sure that these pirates don’t become hostis humani generis of the modern-day.

Hriti Parekh is an undergraduate law student at Hidayatullah National Law University (HNLU), Raipur, India.

Suggested citation: Hriti Parekh, Somalian Pirates and the Law of the Sea: International Law in Crisis, JURIST – Student Commentary, October 7, 2020, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/10/hriti-parekh-somalia-piracy/

Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.

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Justices Thomas, Alito criticize same-sex marriage ruling in turning away Kentucky clerk’s case
The US Supreme Court Monday denied a petition for a writ of certiorari  filed by a former Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk who was sued for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

In the petition, Kim Davis’s lawyers argued that her refusal to issue marriage licenses did not impose a substantial burden on the plaintiffs’ right to marry. Furthermore, they argued that Davis was entitled to qualified immunity, a doctrine that immunizes government officials from lawsuits alleging infringement of constitutional rights unless the conduct violates clearly established federal law.

The Sixth Circuit already rejected Davis’s arguments, and the Supreme Court declined to revisit the issue. Justice Clarence Thomas, in a statement joined by Justice Samuel Alito, agreed not to hear the case. However, Thomas also used his concurrence to criticize the court’s previous decision in Obergefell:

Moreover, Obergefell enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss. … Obergefell was read to suggest that being a public official with traditional Christian values was legally tantamount to invidious discrimination toward homosexuals. This assessment flows directly from Obergefell‘s language, which characterized such views as “disparag[ing]” homosexuals and “diminish[ing] their personhood” through “[d]ignitary wounds.”

Thomas also criticized Sixth Circuit Judge John Bush’s concurrence in the Sixth Circuit decision, because Bush stated Davis was motivated by “anti-homosexual animus.”

Thomas’s statement caused alarm among some LGBT activists, although it is unclear whether a new court with Amy Coney Barrett would overturn Obergefell.

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