More than 2 weeks after start of nationwide protests, little sign of COVID spike, but officials remain cautious

Hunter Walker and Sean D. Naylor Correspondents, Yahoo News•June 19, 2020

Fauci on George Floyd protests: 'I'm concerned' about the possible spread of the coronavirus

When protests started after the May 25 killing of George Floyd, health experts worried that the large gatherings could spark outbreaks of the coronavirus. Yet more than two weeks since those protests hit their peak, there is little evidence that has happened, though officials caution it is far too early — and the circumstances far too complicated — to draw any broad conclusions.

“We’re not seeing an increase in cases associated with the demonstrations (as of yet),” New York City Department of Health spokesman Michael Lanza wrote in an email to Yahoo News on Tuesday.

Between June 3 and June 14, New York City reported an average decline of approximately 8.3 percent in the number of positive cases each day. In the seven days immediately preceding potential post-protest incubation, New York City reported an average increase of roughly 11 percent in the number of positive cases each day.

The question of health risks from mass gatherings is a fraught one, because supporters of President Trump have claimed a double standard, in which some public health officials who have pushed for closures of businesses have recently expressed public support for the protests. While it’s hard to know why the Floyd protests haven’t caused a spike, at least not yet, supporters point to the fact that the protests were outdoors and encouraged the widespread use of face coverings, which organizers even helped distribute.

Analyzing the effect of the demonstrations is complicated by many variables, including irregularities in how daily numbers are reported, overall progress on the coronavirus and protesters from outside the various cities. Also, the demonstrations coincided with reopening measures and warmer weather, which have led more people to venture outside, including in defiance of social distancing recommendations.

Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, noted recent crowds at city restaurants and concurred that it is too soon to determine the effect the protests may have had.

“We’re keeping a close eye on the metrics, but at the moment it’s too soon to say what effect things like last weekend’s restaurant crowding or the protests will have, if any. Stay smart, wear a mask and wash your hands,” Azzopardi told Yahoo News.

Anti-police-brutality protesters in New York City earlier this month. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

In Minneapolis, where large protests began shortly after Floyd was killed and are ongoing, Casper Hill, a spokesman for the city, also cited variables, and he said it is too early to draw definitive conclusions about any impact the protests may have had there.

“It is too soon to report on that given the delay in reporting and the testing timeline. Additionally, we only have access to Minneapolis data and protesters came from other places so the State may be a better source of information overall,” Hill wrote in an email to Yahoo News on Wednesday evening.

Julie Bartkey, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Health, said it may take 42 days from the end of the protests to be clear about their impact.

“Because of the potential for asymptomatic spread of this virus, giving an ‘all-clear’ time frame is difficult,” Bartkey said in an email on Tuesday. “We need to allow about 21 days for the first generation of infections to appear (i.e. 21 days from exposure to test result – 14-day incubation plus another few days to seek health care or get tested and for the result to come to us); but if there is asymptomatic spread in a household, it could be another 14-21 days for those secondary cases to appear.”

For now, however, Minnesota has not seen a high positivity rate in tests from protesters. Bartkey said Health Partners, a health care provider in the state that is conducting testing, has conducted coronavirus tests on 8,500 people at its sites “where the person is confirmed to have been at a protest, vigil or clean up mass event.” Of this, Bartkey said there has been “a 1-percent positivity rate.”

Protesters in Minneapolis on Saturday. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)

Washington, D.C., saw some of the largest protests in the country, particularly between May 29 and the first week of June. In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, director of the D.C. Department of Health, said it was too early to tell what impact the demonstrations may have had.

“I cannot give you trends on that,” Nesbitt said in response to a question from a reporter. “We would expect again, because of the incubation period of the virus, that it would be too early to start to make any inference about trends that we’re seeing being related to people’s participation in First Amendment demonstrations.”

Nesbitt also pointed to “complicating epidemiological factors,” which included the phased reopening taking place at the same time as the protests.

At that same press conference, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said that, as of Wednesday, the city had “achieved 13 days of sustained decline in community spread” of the virus.

Chicago has also been a site of major protest activity since Floyd’s death. Kim Junius, a spokesperson for the Cook County Department of Health, which covers Chicago, said it is not possible to draw a conclusion about the protests, although officials there are monitoring the situation.

“We have not seen any increases as of yet related to protests,” Junius said in an email. “We are monitoring COVID-like illness using emergency room chief complaints, which is often used to detect potential issues before formal diagnoses are made or clusters are reported.”

The county, she added, is “keeping a watchful eye on it.”

Erica Duncan, a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Public Health, provided a similar response. “At this time we haven’t seen any impact on cases due to the protests,” Duncan wrote on Wednesday.

On the West Coast, there have been large protests in multiple cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. “We don’t have any information about positive cases conclusively linked to the protests,” a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Department of Health wrote in an email.

In response to questions about potential cases of the coronavirus linked to the protests, San Francisco’s Department of Health issued a statement that expressed support for the demonstrations while also encouraging protesters to get tested by their health care provider or at two free sites run by the city.

“We support the right to protest injustice, and doing so safely is critically important, especially in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic,” the statement read, adding, “San Francisco supports the community in taking civic action, and also supports continued vigilance against the coronavirus. We are offering free COVID-19 testing for people who have been to recent protests and want to be tested.”

The San Francisco Department of Health also specified that “the two testing sites mentioned above do not ask people getting tested if they recently have participated in any demonstrations. Therefore, we do not know the data for protesters who have tested positive.”

“We are monitoring closely for any correlation between the protest demonstrations and the [number] of positive cases,” the statement read.

Demonstrators near the White House on June 6. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Along with concerns about the spread of COVID-19 among protesters, there is also risk for the police and law enforcement who responded, though data on police is not easily available from the cities with the biggest protests.

In New York, the NYPD did not respond to a request for comment about the number of coronavirus cases in the department and whether any were linked to protests.

In Minneapolis, John Elder, the public information officer for the city’s police force, noted it has had an increase, but the total number of cases remains in the single digits.

“We have increased by one,” Elder said in a phone conversation on Wednesday. “We have had four cases, and we have increased up to five at this time.”

Elder noted that this small number of cases makes Minneapolis an “anomaly” compared with other “major city departments” that have seen hundreds of cases.

“A lot of the protesters were wearing masks, a lot of our officers were wearing masks,” Elder said of the demonstrations. “We did have a very, very proactive approach to this. We had a COVID task force put together. We did everything we could to get … supplies in the hands of our staff.”

That equipment included personal protective gear like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer, as well as supplies to clean uniforms.

While large protests are ongoing in Minneapolis, Elder said they are now largely peaceful, eliminating the “face to face contact” between officers and demonstrators that occurred during more violent clashes in the early days of the protests.

In Washington D.C., the Metropolitan Police Department is reporting 142 cases of the coronavirus among “sworn personnel.” That figure includes three new cases since June 4, or a spike of 2.2 percent in the period when incubation could have occurred following the protests.

In Chicago, the police department said that, as of Wednesday morning, there were 569 total cases of the coronavirus among civilian and sworn personnel. The department’s public information officer, Sally Brown, said “there has not been a spike in cases” among Chicago’s police force since the protests.

A protester confronts a New York City police officer on May 28. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

On the West Coast, Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a public information officer for the San Francisco Police Department, told Yahoo News that, as of Thursday, it had “six members” who tested positive for COVID-19. “There is nothing to indicate that any of these cases are related to recent protests,” Andraychak added.

The Los Angeles Police Department has reported a pronounced spike in new coronavirus cases. According to Officer Norma Eisenmann, as of Wednesday there were 177 cases among the department’s sworn and civilian personnel. That’s an increase of 35 cases, or about 24.6 percent, since June 3, though it’s difficult to know whether that was a result of protests, or the recent record-setting increases in the city at large.

Alex Comisar, deputy communications director for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garceitti, responded to questions about the increase in coronavirus cases among LAPD officers with a statement on Friday that emphasized the steps the city has taken to protect its police force.

“COVID-19 is as dangerous today as it was the moment we experienced our first case, and Mayor Garcetti is taking every possible step to protect Angelenos from this deadly illness. Los Angeles was the first city in the country to make free testing available to our essential workers, including police officers,” Comisar said. “These officers and first responders are on the front lines of this crisis, and the Department is taking extensive precautions to keep them safe.”

Along with local police forces, the National Guard was deployed to cities around the country to respond to protests. As the Guard took up its protest missions, there was a concern that not only might its members get infected, but their deployment could shift resources away from COVID-19 testing. Neither appears to be the case, according to spokespeople from multiple states’ Guard bureaus.

National Guard Bureau spokesman Army Maj. Rob Perino said that as of June 5, around the height of many of the protests, the National Guard had 41,506 personnel supporting civil unrest missions across 33 states and the District of Columbia, while another 37,485 Guardsmen were conducting COVID-19 missions.

“It’s not going to appear that states are sacrificing one mission for another,” Perino said. “We have a very deep bench of 450,000 troops nationwide.”

Of 18 states that Yahoo News queried, officials in 12 – New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin — said they had not been forced to cut the number of Guard personnel working on COVID-19 missions in order to provide forces to support local law enforcement during the protests.

Members of the California National Guard outside Los Angeles City Hall on May 31. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)
A spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard said fewer than five personnel had to move from one task to the other, while a spokesperson for the Georgia National Guard acknowledged there had been “a lot of juggling” involving the more than 2,000 Guard personnel who had been conducting COVID-19-related missions immediately prior to the civil unrest, but she was unable to immediately say how many of the more than 3,000 Guard troops who Georgia now counts as being involved in either COVID-19 or domestic unrest missions had to be shifted from the former to the latter. “We never stopped working COVID-19,” she said.

However, a spokesperson for the Florida National Guard said that of the 550 Florida Guardsmen who conducted civil unrest missions, “a couple of hundred” had been redirected from COVID-19 duty. “The Soldiers who were conducting COVID-19 missions prior to being redirected to civil unrest missions were primarily involved in the operation of Community Based Testing Sites,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Caitlin Brown. ”Those Soldiers were backfilled, and any COVID-19 mission that was affected was fully operational again within 24 hours.”

Spokespersons for the California and District of Columbia National Guards did not respond to queries.

Army Lt. Col. Brad Leighton, a spokesman for the Illinois National Guard, disputed a news account that stated that the state’s Guardsmen had been reassigned from COVID-19 testing sites “to help local police departments reduce violence and protect property.” That did not happen, he said, in part because the COVID-19 missions were being paid for by the federal government, with any support to law enforcement coming out of the state’s coffers.

There also did not appear to be any known sharp increases of cases among Guardsmen in those states contacted by Yahoo News.

Demonstrators in Los Angeles on June 3. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP)

Spokespeople for Guardsmen who deployed from other states to support law enforcement authorities in handling the protests in Washington, D.C., said that for the most part they wore masks and took all possible precautions to avoid catching or spreading the coronavirus.

For the 400 Mississippi National Guardsmen who deployed to D.C., “the guidance provided for the staging area and the on-site mission was to maintain social distancing wherever and whenever possible, and to don masks whenever social distancing was not a viable option in maintaining mission focus,” said Army Lt. Col. Deidre Smith, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Guard, in an email to Yahoo News.

The Mississippi Guardsmen were screened for the virus before departing Mississippi and daily during the mission, and were placed in quarantine while completing their military orders upon their return to their home state, according to Smith. As of June 12, none of them had tested positive for COVID-19.

The Idaho National Guard also deployed “just over 400” troops to D.C., according to Air Force Lt. Col. Chris Borders, a spokesperson for the Idaho Guard. All the Idaho Guardsmen were issued masks and screened for COVID-19 before they left for D.C., according to Borders, who added that their mission, which was to protect the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, meant they avoided close contact with protesters.

The Idaho Guardsmen wore masks on their flights to and from Washington, and were sent home to self-isolate upon their return, according to Borders. As of June 12, “we have no positive tests in the Idaho National Guard,” he said.

Trump global media chief faces GOP backlash over firings

MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press•June 18, 2020


The Voice of America building, Monday, June 15, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new chief of U.S.-funded global media is facing a conservative backlash over his decision to fire the heads of two international broadcasters, adding to concerns about the direction of the agency, which oversees the Voice of America and other outlets.

The criticism of Michael Pack, who defended his personnel moves, is unusual because it’s coming from supporters of President Donald Trump who had backed his controversial nomination to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media over staunch Democratic objections.

Trump allies, including former adviser Sebastian Gorka, have offered public support for the ousted head of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Alberto Fernandez, while others have taken issue with the firing of the head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Jamie Fly.

Pack, a conservative filmmaker and onetime associate of Trump adviser Steve Bannon, sacked both of them late Wednesday in a purge of USAGM’s outlets, which also include Radio Free Asia and the Cuba-focused Radio/TV Marti. Those moves have alarmed Democrats who fear Pack intends to turn the agency into a Trump administration propaganda machine.

“Every action I carried out was — and every action I will carry out will be — geared toward rebuilding the USAGM’s reputation, boosting morale, and improving content,” Pack said in a statement released by the new agency's new public affairs staff.

The statement called the moves “significant and long-overdue” and said Pack and his team are “committed to eradicating the known mismanagement and scandals that have plagued the agency for decades."

In addition to the agency chiefs, Pack dismissed veteran broadcast news executive Steve Capus, who had been a senior adviser to the organization and its leadership, according to two congressional aides and an AGM employee, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Capus, who was previously president of NBC News for nearly eight years, did not respond to a query sent to an AGM work email address.

And, he ousted the head of the Open Technology Fund, a non-broadcast arm of the AGM that works to provide secure internet access to people around the world. Last week, Fund chief Libby Liu submitted her resignation, effective in mid-July, but she was removed with the others.

There was no public explanation of why Pack would dismiss any of the officials, let alone those favored by conservatives beyond the general statement of improving the agency.

The firing of Fernandez, in particular, has raised conservative hackles. A former career diplomat fluent in Arabic, Fernandez had been hailed by conservatives for bringing what they saw as balance to the Arabic-language outlets AlHurra television and Radio Sawa.

“Ambassador Fernandez was the greatest asset America had in foreign broadcasting,” Gorka wrote on Twitter shortly after the dismissals became public.

Michael Doran, a former National Security Council and State Department official during President George W. Bush's administration, called Fernandez's ouster “asinine" and said that without him, "Pack will be as effective as a drugged bug in a bottle.”

David Reaboi, a noted conservative national security analyst, was even more critical, calling Fernandez's removal “shameful." “It was unusual for the pro-American side to get represented, and Alberto always made sure it did," he told the AP. "It was a model for recapturing territory from the far left and righting the ship.“

“Michael Pack gets confirmed by the Senate and, rather than take stock and talk to people who know what’s happening, he fired everybody," Reaboi wrote. “Michael Pack destroyed that because he was too dumb to listen — or too dumb to be able to figure out the difference between friends and enemies.”

The dismissal of Fly, a former staffer for Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also attracted criticism, including from Mark Dubowitz, a well-known advocate of the Trump administration's hawkish policies on Iran. “Poor decision to fire (Fernandez) and (Fly) whose exemplary leadership of MBN and RFE/RL respectively, made America’s public diplomacy more effective, more persuasive and more consistent with American interests and values,” he wrote.

Juan Zarate, a Republican former NSC and Treasury staffer, agreed, calling the two dismissals “incomprehensible." “I’ve watched both for years work with integrity to promote US interests abroad," he wrote.

In addition to Fernandez and Fly, Pack also removed the head of Radio Free Asia, Bay Fang, and the acting chief of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting on Wednesday. He replaced each outlet's corporate board of directors with allies and installed himself as chairman of each.

One of the people added to the board of Radio Free Asia, Jonathan Alexandre, attracted particular concern from Democrats who noted that he is also director of public policy for the conservative Liberty Counsel, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group for opposing gay rights.

The director and deputy director of the Voice of America, Amanda Bennett and Sandy Sugawara, resigned from their positions on Monday. Taken together, top House Democrats who oversee AGM funding said Pack's moves were dangerous.

“That Mr. Pack took this drastic measure in his first week on the job is shocking, and we have deep concerns that he takes the helm of a critical agency with the intent to prioritize the Trump administration’s political whims over protecting and promoting independent reporting, which is a pillar of freedom and democracy," said Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Nita Lowey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, denounced the firings as an “egregious breach” of the agency’s mission. Menendez had led an unsuccessful fight to block or at least delay Pack’s confirmation.

On Juneteenth, a look back at how America perfected the ‘art of demonizing black men’
Juneteenth on June 19 is the observance of the ending of slavery in the U.S.

Published: June 19, 2020 By Quentin Fottrell

African American men say they are not surprised by the police killing of George Floyd or a white woman in Central Park to calling 911 to falsely claim that a black man, Christian Cooper, was threatening her life. CEPHAS WILLIAM\

‘A child cannot, thank Heaven, know how vast and how merciless is the nature of power, with what unbelievable cruelty people treat each other. He reacts to the fear in his parents’ voices because his parents hold up the world for him and he has no protection without them.’ — James Baldwin, ‘Letter from a Region in My Mind’ (1962)

When Cephas Williams, a London-based artist, visited the House of Lords last year, he went through all the usual security procedures and was asked to take a seat. Williams, a black man, was then approached by a white woman who asked him why he was sitting there. She asked him to move and, believing that he was sitting in a restricted area, he agreed.

“I got up to leave, and she immediately went from 0 to 100,” Williams said. “She said, ‘Why are you raising your voice?’ ” She approached the armed security guards, a white man and a black woman. Williams said he was calm throughout. “I wanted to report what just happened, but they said, ‘There’s no point. She’s one of the most senior people in the House.’ ”

‘Whether it’s your skin color or the place, they reserve the right to police you and police your presence.’— Rich Benjamin, author of ‘Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America’

In 2018, Williams created a campaign called 56BlackMen, a series of stark portraits of black men from all walks of life wearing hoodies to show, in his words, “I am Not My Stereotype.” He said it happens on the street, in the school, the workplace, in white-tablecloth restaurants and, yes, even in the venerated House of Lords. “There are people who see the black man as angry or threatening,” he said.

A U.K. Parliament spokesperson told MarketWatch: “We are very sorry to hear of the experiences reported by Cephas Williams. Parliament is working hard to improve its processes for reporting and handling bullying and harassment. We know there is still work to be done, and we would encourage anyone who has experienced bullying or harassment in Parliament to report their experience to our Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.”

Given such experiences, Williams was not surprised by recent events in the U.S. The country has been rocked, and also inspired, by protests over the death of George Floyd. Floyd, who was black, died on May 25 after a white Minneapolis policeman kneeled on his neck with the full weight of his body for nearly nine minutes. This week, prosecutors added a second-degree murder charge in addition to the third-degree charge already filed against former officer, Derek Chauvin.

Also see:‘America just really needs to start being honest with itself’: How money and the slave trade shaped policing in the U.S.

Earlier that same day in New York, Amy Cooper, a white woman who was walking her dog without a leash in Central Park, called 911 on a bird watcher, Christian Cooper, who is no relation, after he asked her to put her dog on a leash. “I’m going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life,” she said on a video recording Cooper made on his smartphone. They both left the rambles in the park before the police arrived.

The video may have been unpleasant to watch, but it was not something seen as unfamiliar to many black men. “I was mortified by the Amy Cooper incident, but struck by a bit of recognition when you have a white person who perceives you to have less rights than they, and they to have more rights than you,” said Rich Benjamin, author of “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America.”

“Whether it’s your skin color or the place, they reserve the right to police you and police your presence, and that implies that it’s a white space, and the condition for you being there is their comfort,” he said. “This is prevalent and more common than everyone suspects. It’s not surprising. It’s not new. It’s not rare. The only difference is that this was caught on an iPhone.”

‘A perfected art of demonizing black men’

Terence Fitzgerald, a clinical associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California and author of “Black Males and Racism: Improving the Schooling and Life Chances of African Americans,” said Amy Cooper’s 911 call is a prime example of the kind of leverage that white people can use any time they see fit. “She knew exactly what strings to pluck,” Fitzgerald said.

“It goes beyond just calling her a racist or saying what she did was racist,” he said. “We’re talking about systemic racism, and relying upon a story that has been morphed, honed and perfected throughout time. Politicians have used language with roots in that fear. We are recycling it over and over and over. It’s become a perfected art of demonizing black men.”

‘We’re talking about systemic racism, and relying upon a story that has been morphed, honed and perfected.’— Terence Fitzgerald, author of ‘Black Males and Racism: Improving the Schooling and Life Chances of African Americans’

Fitzgerald said the U.S. media did not put the Central Park video in context. “I watched the reaction of newscasters. It really underestimated the situation. It really didn’t give her the credit or due diligence for what she was doing,” he said. “It’s the tactic that has been used since 1619, the tactic of playing the victim, and knowing that the system would look at her like the innocent one.”

“It goes all the way back to ‘Birth of a Nation’ in 1915, the portrayal of the white woman as the victim,” he said. “She needed a knight to protect her from this dastardly devil, this black man. It was played in the White House for Woodrow Wilson. This false narrative was passed down from generation to generation. The hypersexed black male, known for violence against white women.”

Fitzgerald said the protests over George Floyd’s death and other such incidents, including the one between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper, represent a moment that Americans should not just walk away from. “That does a disservice to the thousands of black men who have been lynched in the United States,” he said. “This idea of protecting the chastity of white women was the No. 1 reason for lynchings.”


Cephas Williams: ‘I am not my stereotype.’ LIMA CHARLIE

In 2015, the Equal Justice Initiative documented 4,075 racially motivated lynchings of African-Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 — at least 800 more lynchings of black people in these states than had previously been reported.

One such murder: that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago, who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her parents’ grocery store. The all-white, all-male jury took 67 minutes to acquit the two men accused of the crime. One juror reportedly said, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken that long.”

Black women and men are significantly more likely than white men and women to be killed by police.

According to a news report at the time, one of the defense lawyers, J. W. Kellum, told the jury that they were “custodians of American civilization,” adding, “I want you to tell me where under God’s shining sun is the land of the free and the home of the brave if you don’t turn these boys loose; your forefathers will absolutely turn over in their graves.”

Last year, police in the U.S. killed 1,099 people, according to Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group. Black people accounted for 24% of those killed, it found, despite being only 13% of the population; they are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, and 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed than white people.

“Black women and men and American Indian and Alaska Native women and men are significantly more likely than white women and men to be killed by police,” a recent study by researchers from Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and Washington University in St. Louis found. “Latino men are also more likely to be killed by police than are white men.” They wrote, “Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police.”

The Pew Research Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., last year released a survey of more than 6,637 adults in English and Spanish that concluded: “Blacks are considerably more likely than whites, Hispanics or Asians to say that people have acted as if they were suspicious of them; that they have been treated unfairly by an employer; or that they have been unfairly stopped by police.”

George Floyd, meanwhile, is one of 44 people that Minneapolis police rendered unconscious with neck restraints in the last five years, according to an NBC News analysis of police records, and three-fifths of them were black. The Minneapolis police define “neck restraints” as any time an officer uses an arm or a leg to press someone’s neck without directly pressuring the airway.

Related:What the 1921 Tulsa race massacre can teach us about the racial wealth gap in 2020


Rich Benjamin: ‘This is prevalent and more common than everyone suspects. It’s not surprising. It’s not new. It’s not rare.’

The narrative of ‘the other’

It is an age-old narrative, Fitzgerald said. “When someone is considered ‘the other,’ naturally we do not see them as one of us or carrying the same morals and values,” he said. “We see them as less than and below us on this imaginary apex and this hierarchy of supremacy. We treat them worse, and not as someone valuable and not a reflection of ‘me.’ ”

Cases in which fictitious black men were accused of crimes are too numerous to list, but some have caught the mainstream public’s attention more than others. In 1994, Susan Smith, a South Carolina mother of two, told police a black man had driven off with her young children strapped into the back of the car. After her car was found in a lake, she was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murders of her 3- and 1-year-olds.

Other fictitious allegations caught on like wildfire. In 1989 in Boston, a pregnant Carol Stuart was killed and her husband, Charles, was shot after he said they were set upon by an African-American man. During the manhunt, police were accused of harassing black men in their search for the killer, while some politicians called for the death penalty.

Mike Barnicle, then a Boston Globe columnist, defended the dragnet: “Where, after everything they had been told, would they expect the cops to start looking? The Myopia Hunt Club?” Charles Stuart, it would soon be revealed, had cashed in his wife’s $82,000 life-insurance policy, bought a new car and, before he could be charged with his wife’s murder, jumped off a bridge to his death.

“The police and citizens were screaming for retribution,” Fitzgerald said. “Police were harassing black males and even publicly humiliating them, and there was this lynch mob in the city. Every black male the police had run into were seen as guilty, [with] particular men [told] to strip down in public as they were searching them. It was about humiliation and control.”

“People walk around with these intergenerational images and stereotypes in this locked closet within their minds, their souls,” he added. “Whenever they are exposed to the language of ‘the other,’ this locked closet opens up, and all of these images come out. It could even come out as policies and programs that discriminate, and stop one having access to resources.”


Never forget. CEPHAS WILLIAMS

“Racial and ethnic inequalities loom large in American society,” according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank founded by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. “People of color face structural barriers when it comes to securing quality housing, health care, employment, and education. Racial disparities also permeate the criminal justice system.”

What can be done to undo years of systemic discrimination? Understanding how deep it goes is a start, observers say. “For decades, our researchers have called attention to the role of race and racism in our public and private institutions and offered evidence-based solutions for how to address these inequities,” the Urban Institute added.

“A good number of black people I know are fed up educating people who are not black about what it means to be black,” Williams said. “Most of the time when you see black men in the media or newspapers, if they’re not a victim of knife crime or a perpetrator of violence, they’re a rapper or a football player. It’s a conversation about racism, but it’s also about economics.”

‘A good number of black people I know are fed up educating people who are not black about what it means to be black.’— Cephas Williams, London-based artist

In New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, black and Latino people are being hospitalized at twice the rate of Caucasians, data released last month by the City of New York showed. Black New Yorkers were hospitalized at a rate of 632 per 100,000 people, followed by Latinos (570 per 100,000 people), while Caucasians were hospitalized at a rate of 284 per 100,000 people. “This virus is not hitting New Yorkers equitably,” Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot said.

“We’re seeing this around the country,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said when the figures on racial disparity began trickling out at the beginning of the public-health crisis. He said the same pattern was found in major cities across the U.S., some worse than New York City. “You know, it always seems that the poorest people pay the highest price. Why is that?”

Some point to cases like those of George Floyd and Christian Cooper as merely a glimpse into the disparities people of color face in other aspects of American life, including health care, housing, the media, schools and corporations. Seventy-five percent of all frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic are people of color, according to the New York City comptroller.

Others say elementary and high schools are places of systemic discrimination. Black students are three times more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled, according to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Research in Texas found that suspended students are more likely to be held back a grade and drop out of school, the Justice Policy Institute reported.

The economic disadvantages continue long after people of color have graduated from college. Twelve years after entering, white men have paid off 44% of their student-loan balance on average, according to an analysis released last year by Demos, a left-leaning think tank. Black men see their balances grow 11%, and black women by 13%.

White fragility in ‘Whitopia’

“Redlining” housing policies, the refusal of financial services to neighborhoods typically populated by people of color, are still felt today. The term refers to how the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation drew up color-coded maps that designated how risky it was for lenders to originate mortgages in different neighborhoods across the country.

Common in the first half of the 20th century, redlining was outlawed through legislation in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet many of America’s largest cities, particularly in the northern part of the U.S., remain heavily segregated by race or ethnicity. The practice continues to this day, and housing in many redlined areas is still worth significantly less than similar homes in a nonredlined neighborhood.

In his book, “Searching for Whitopia,” Benjamin spent two years traveling 27,000 miles around the U.S., spending time in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Forsythe County, Ga.; and St. George, Utah — the areas with the country’s fastest-growing white populations. “I wanted to see why white flight was happening, and how and why white conservatism was developing.”

Housing in many redlined areas is still worth significantly less than similar homes in a nonredlined neighborhood.

They were different in some ways: Georgia was more Baptist than Idaho or Utah, for example, and Utah was more Mormon than Idaho or Georgia. “As the country gets more demographically diverse, all kinds of fears on political issues like taxes, so-called national security, public school funding and immigration are fueled by this fear of white decline,” Benjamin said.

During his travels, from 2007 to 2009, he attended a three-day white separatist retreat with links to Aryan Nations in northern Idaho and in exurban megachurches in the South. “Call these places White Meccas,” he writes in the book. “Or White Wonderlands. Or Caucasian Arcadias. Or Blanched Bunker Communities. Or White Archipelagos. I call them Whitopia.”

“The key commonalities that stuck out was the divide between what was going on in these places and what was going on in Washington,” Benjamin said, who is on record as correctly predicting the result of the 2016 presidential election. “There was a tin ear in Washington and the coast about how violently these places opposed immigration and taxes, and the backlash to the Obama presidency, and a rabid defense of the Second Amendment.”

Last week, one week after the killing of George Floyd, prosecutors charged three more police officers with aiding and abetting, and filed a new, tougher charge against the officer at the center of the case. Protesters lauded the charges, while lamenting that it had taken nearly 10 days to charge all the officers involved. The charges were sought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who called the protests unleashed by the death “dramatic and necessary.”

So what happens now? What can you do? “Your greatest challenge as individuals is, and in perpetuity will be, to hold yourself accountable and to teach your children to do the same," Tiara Darnell, a writer and audio producer based in Buffalo, N.Y. and Portland, Ore., wrote in the latest edition of Portland Monthly magazine. “Your everyday actions and inactions are threads in the larger narrative playing out right now in cities and towns here and around the world.”

‘I no longer have the patience or desire to be deferential to those who get instinctively defensive and lean into their white fragility to gaslight me.’— Tiara Darnell, a writer based in Buffalo, N.Y. and Portland, Ore., writing in Portland Monthly magazine.

Darnell suggests her essay, “Can White Portland’s Fragility Handle a Megaquake?” could also have been entitled, “Can White America’s Fragility Handle a Megaquake?” She writes, “To borrow a term from the lexicon of pandemic, be your own contact tracer: investigate how your inner thoughts and your past and present interactions with the Black people you encounter in your everyday life upholds the values of white supremacy and the white dominant status quo.”

“Maybe, you’re not sure how to talk to your children about racism, but it hasn’t occurred to you that their toys, favorite shows and movies, and maybe even their school, aren’t representative of the diversity of the world,” she added.

Darnell added, “This is the last piece I will ever write and spend my sacred Black energy on that centers whiteness in this way. I no longer have the patience or desire to be deferential to those who get instinctively defensive and lean into their white fragility to gaslight me into believing what I’m seeing and feeling doesn’t exist or ‘can’t be that bad.’”

“So, you hired one or two new Black employees, made (highly problematic) bias training mandatory for everyone, instituted a well-meaning but misguided mandate to use “lunch and learn” instead of brown bag lunch,’ but Black employees are still disillusioned with your internal culture and unwillingness to change. How is that working out?” she wrote.

Racial-justice campaigners say systemic change is needed in the justice system, in law enforcement, the health-care system, the media, education system and throughout American society, adding that undoing a 400-year-old system of systemic racism in a society that built its economy off the slave trade will not happen overnight.

Pernicious racist beliefs and language permeate most people’s language, values upbringing that provide he invisible architecture for a predominantly white society to function. “It can be very difficult to address and tackle racism when it’s not so overt,” Williams said. He said change will have to come in all aspects of society. “There’s a lack of progression in the corporate world and in society, in roles that dictate economic advancement.”

“You have to appreciate the differences and commonalities,” Williams added. “In the cases of George Floyd and Christian Cooper, it was the idea of one race being perceived as superior to the other. There’s a commonality between me as a black man seeing every other black man that has been killed and abused in America and around the world, and feeling that connection.” What can’t happen, he said, is for George Floyd to become just another hashtag.


56 Black Men.

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New York City declares Juneteenth an official holiday
BBC•June 19, 2020

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that Juneteenth - the 19 June date which marks the end of US slavery - will become an official holiday.

It comes as millions of Americans plan to commemorate, with marches and personal observances, the 1865 date when the last US slaves were freed.

Several states already observe the day as an official holiday and there is a push to declare it a national holiday.

The date's significance has grown this year amid Black Lives Matter protests.

Mayor de Blasio said in a press conference on Friday that the date would be marked as an official city holiday beginning in 2021, and will also be a public school holiday.

"We'll work with all the unions to work through the plan, give this day the importance and recognition it deserves," Mr de Blasio said. "Every city worker, every student will have the opportunity to reflect the meaning of our history and the truth."

Earlier this week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an order making Juneteenth - also known as Emancipation Day and Freedom Day - a paid holiday for state workers.

Mr Cuomo said he would introduce legislation to make the day a holiday for all New Yorkers by 2021.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam also promised to make Juneteenth a holiday by 2021 in the former capitol of the Confederacy which rebelled against the US during the Civil War for the legal right to enslave black people.

In Pennsylvania, Gov Tom Wolf has also signed an order making Juneteenth a holiday for state workers.

"In recent weeks, people around the nation have joined together to demand an end to systemic racism and oppression of African Americans," he said in the statement.

"Freedom for all is not fully realised until every person is truly free. This Juneteenth we have an opportunity to unite against injustice and create lasting change," he continued.

Texas was the first US state to declare Juneteenth a holiday in 1980. Now all but four US states observe or recognise the date in some form.

This year, the date has become particularly prominent in the public consciousness amid a wave of protests over racial inequality following the deaths of several unarmed African Americans. Juneteenth rallies are planned in Washington DC and across the country.

A large group holds a Juneteenth prayer in Atlanta on Friday

A large group holds a Juneteenth prayer in Atlanta on Friday

Explaining the history behind Juneteenth day

What is Juneteenth?

On 19 June, 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas received the news that slavery had been abolished by President Abraham Lincoln two years earlier.

The news took so long to reach slaves in Texas in part due to fighting that continued even after the surrender of the Confederacy that ended the Civil War, according to historians.

The US National Archives said on Thursday that the original handwritten decree is believed to have been recently discovered, after a researcher was tasked with unearthing it due to heightened interested in the holiday.

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, 'all slaves are free,' " the military order reads.

"This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labour."

The elaborately written note was found in a book of formal orders in Washington DC.

"I think it's terrific. I think the timing is just amazing," David Ferriero, the head librarian of the Archives, told the Washington Post.
What else is happening?

Corporate America is also treating the holiday with more reverence than in previous years, with employees from Nike, Uber, and Twitter being given a paid day off.

Google has asked employees to cancel non-urgent meetings and instead "create space for learning and reflection".

Amazon told employees to "take some time to reflect, learn and support each other".

In Washington, the most senior Republican in the Senate said on Thursday that he would introduce a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Four Democrats have also announced a similar proposal.

In the House of Representatives, the Texas congresswoman who has been pushing for a national holiday for two decades, told CBS that the chances of a holiday becoming a reality are growing.

"The potential of having this national holiday opens a whole world of discussion for America, a whole reckoning with racism and the systemic racism that permeates the nation," said Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, adding that the House proposal now has the endorsement of 204 lawmakers.

"It's delayed freedom, but it is the only recognition of the original sin of this nation," she continued.

Former President Barack Obama, the first and only ever black US president, said in a statement that the holiday "has never been a celebration of victory", but is instead a "celebration of progress".

"It's an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible - and there is still so much work to do."

His wife, Michelle Obama - whose ancestors were slaves - said that for her, the delayed communication that freed Texas' slaves and the slow pace of equality for black Americans, show that "even in that extended wait, we still find something to celebrate".


Here's what #Juneteenth means to me: pic.twitter.com/KlOoYwdzD5
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) June 19, 2020

100 years ago, Tulsa endured a racial massacre

AFP•June 19, 2020

This image obtained from the American National Red Cross photograph collection at the US Library of Congress, shows Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the May 31 and June 1, 1921, riots when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses (AFP Photo/-)
    

This image obtained from the US Library of Congress, shows Tulsa, Oklahoma aflame during the 1921 during a mob attack on the black district of Greenwood by white residents (AFP Photo/-)

A monument in Tulsa to a 1921 massacre in which a black neighborhood was burned to the ground and as many as 300 peolple were killed (AFP Photo/WIN MCNAMEE)

This image obtained from the American National Red Cross photograph collection at the US Library of Congress, the smoldering ruins of Tulsa, Oklahoma's black Greenwood district after white mobs attacked May 31-June 1, 1921

Tulsa (United States) (AFP) - Tulsa bears the scars of a racial massacre in 1921 that left up to 300 blacks dead, 1,200 buildings burned to the ground and none of the white rioters that committed the violence ever charged.

It started when a young black shoeshiner was accused of assaulting a white woman working as an elevator operator.

As newspapers jumped on the story and rumors spread, the white community in the Oklahoma city became enraged. Hundreds of whites demanding justice gathered outside the courthouse where the black suspect was being held.

Black men, some of them armed veterans of World War I, feared he would be lynched and raced to the courthouse to intervene.

Shots were fired, and bedlam broke out as white mobs attacked the black neighborhood known as Greenwood on May 31 to June 1, 1921.

"Some type of confrontation between blacks and whites was inevitable because of racism that existed because of the presence of Ku Klux Klan members that were part of our local city government, that were on the rosters of the police department and fire department," said Michelle Brown, program coordinator of the Greenwood Cultural Center. An exhibit there commemorates the massacre.

A commission of inquiry formed in 2001 concluded that local authorities armed some white people and named them police deputies and that they added to the violence rather than curb it.

A night of bloodshed ensued as gunfire rang out from both sides, black-owned stores were looted and torched, and homes of black families were shot up.

Many accounts say planes piloted by white men dropped incendiary bobs on Greenwood, which was known at the time as the Black Wall Street because it was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in America. For whites it was a source of envy and jealousy.

For many years, the massacre was not widely known among average white Americans. But the orgy of violence was depicted last year in the TV series "Watchmen" on HBO, and several documentaries on it are being produced, including one by basketball great LeBron James.

The chaos lasted 24 hours and ended only when the National Guard arrived in Tulsa. One of the first things it did was lock up 6,000 black people in internment camps.

At the exhibit on the massacre at the cultural center, there are photos of all the death and destruction.

"There are about 15 or 20 of these photographs that were taken by white photographers that were used as postcards and were sent around the country because many of them were proud of what they had accomplished," said Brown.

The exact number of blacks killed in the massacre is not known because many bodies were thrown into a river, burned or buried in mass graves.

SACRED SOLSTICE

SOLAR ECLIPSE 2020: RARE SUMMER SOLSTICE 'RING OF FIRE' TAKES PLACE THIS WEEK
Annular eclipse coinciding with longest day of the year will not happen again until 2039

Anthony Cuthbertson@ADCuthbertson 6/18/2020

A rare type of solar eclipse will coincide with the longest day of the year this week, marking only the second time since 1982 that these astronomical events take place on the same day.

The annular solar eclipse will see the Sun, Moon and Earth align on Sunday, 21 June, creating a spectacular effect for sky gazers to witness across large parts of the world.

The Moon is at its furthest stage of its orbit around the Earth, known as its apogee, meaning it appears slightly smaller in the sky.

This means it is not able to completely block out the Sun, thus creating what some astronomers refer to as a "ring of fire".

At its maximum point of total eclipse, the Moon will block approximately 99.4 per cent of the Sun, though this will only last for a fraction of a second.
Read more

SpaceX is building Mars spaceports, Elon Musk reveals

Nasa has mapped the trajectory of the annular solar eclipse, which sees its path pass over the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, India, Nepal, China, Taiwan and Guam.


The eclipse will not be visible for people in the southern hemisphere, nor in more northerly latitudes like the UK.
The path of the annular solar eclipse on 21 June, 2020 (Nasa/ Google Maps)

It will also be impossible to view from North America, while travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic mean that people will be unable to fly to locations where it will be visible.


For those unable to see it in person, Timeanddate.com will be hosting a live stream of the eclipse on its website.

Solar eclipse 2017
Show all 12





The eclipse occurs on the day that the Sun is at its most northerly point during the year, known as the Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere and the Winter Solstice in the southern hemisphere.

For those north of the equator, the solstice is the longest day of the year and is often celebrated by watching sunrise or sunset.

In the UK, the sun will rise at 4.43am and set at 9.22pm, meaning people will enjoy 16 hours and 39 minutes of daylight.

More northerly latitudes will experience 24 hours of daylight, including regions of Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

It is the first time since 2001 that the solstice coincides with a solar eclipse, and will not happen again until 2039.

Sunday’s “Ring Of Fire” Solar Eclipse Brings Positive Change


Elizabeth Gulino June 19, 2020, REFINERY29


This weekend, we’ll be experiencing quite the astrological event. Not only is the summer solstice occurring, but we’ll also be undergoing the new moon solar eclipse on June 21 at exactly 12:47 a.m. ET. It won’t be a total eclipse, though: There will still be some surface area of the sun peaking out from behind the moon, creating a stunning “ring of fire” effect.

“Solar eclipses are extra powerful lunar events, rallying the energy of three new moons in one,” Narayana Montúfar, senior astrologer at Astrology.com and Horoscope.com, tells Refinery29. “This one, in particular, is even more important because it happens the same day as the summer solstice and the day the sun enters Cancer.” Montúfar says that this solar eclipse is a turning point in human history, poised to accelerate social change. This particular eclipse is happening at zero degrees Cancer, meaning it will bring emotional needs to the surface.

Montúfar says that at this eclipse, both the sun and the moon will be forming a tense quincunx aspect to task-master Saturn in Aquarius. “At its worst, Saturn represents the rules and limitations that have been imposed on us and that over time have turned corrupt and oppressive,” she explains. “Although Cancer is a sign that would normally want to stay home and feel cozy, this link to Saturn says that the actions we take during this new moon have long-term has consequences.”

These rules and limitations from Saturn may relate directly to the police brutality and abuse of power we’ve been seeing not just recently, but for years. This isn’t the time to sit idly by and let bygones be bygones — this solar eclipse marks the time to take action and use your voice. What you choose to do this weekend in terms of social justice might just have a long-lasting effect.

And, thankfully, the planets are here to back us up. “Mars and Jupiter will be on our side, forming a beautiful sextile,” Montúfar explains. “They will lend us the courage, ambition, and good judgment we need to keep going and keep fighting for what we believe in.”

This particular eclipse also has an interesting Sabian symbol attributed to it. In astrology, images derived from Spiritualist-medium Elsie Wheeler give a description of each of the 360 separate degrees of the zodiac, notes Leslie Hale, psychic astrologer at Keen.com. “The Sabian symbol for zero degrees Cancer is, ‘on a ship the sailors lower an old flag and raise a new one,'” Hale says. This can be interpreted as a change brought about by all of the societal unrest we’re currently experiencing concerning racism, police brutality, and inequality in general.

This celestial event will only be visible across central Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan, Northern India, and South Central China — but if you’re not in those areas, that doesn’t mean you can’t still take partake in harnessing its power.

“Solar eclipses mark new beginnings. Because of all of the intense energy, it’s important to be clear on your intention in order to manifest your truest desires,” astrologer Lisa Stardust tells Refinery29. “I like to do bath magic when the moon is in a water sign because that way we can harness the power of the element, which in this case is water.”

Interested in performing your own bath magic? Stardust lays it out. “First, write the intention you wish to achieve down on a piece of paper. Be clear and concise. Add a cup of Epsom salt, a dash of cinnamon, rose petals, and charge a rose quartz crystal under the moon to absorb its potency. While in the bath, place the crystal on your heart chakra to heal your emotions and to open yourself to new possibilities,” she says.

Astrologer and occultist Shawntee Cato agrees: Water rituals are the way to go for this particular solar eclipse. “Cancer is a highly nurturing and protective energy,” she explains. “Water is one of the best ways to engage with our spiritual nature as well as ground our energy.”

Cato’s solar eclipse bath ritual looks a little different than Stardust’s — and is simpler. She recommends salt, Florida water (which can be bought through Amazon, Walmart, and other online stores), and a white candle. Crystals are also great to add, especially smoky quartz, black tourmaline, or clear quartz, if you have them. These stones will help maximize your zen under June’s ring of fire eclipse.

This solar eclipse is about taking action. Raise your voice, say what needs to be said, and do what needs to be done. Only good things can come from speaking up for justice.

Trump snubs former EPA chief Pruitt in Tulsa visit

Alexander Nazaryan National Correspondent, Yahoo News•June 19, 2020

WASHINGTON — When President Trump comes to Tulsa on Saturday for his first campaign event since the coronavirus shut down the United States, he will be joined by Oklahoma’s most prominent Republican leaders, as well as rising GOP stars from other parts of the country.

Those expected to stand with the president at the BOK Center are Kevin Stitt, the state’s governor, as well as its two U.S. senators, James Lankford and Jim Inhofe, its four Republican members of the House of Representatives and Sen. Tom Cotton from neighboring Arkansas. Also present will be Reps. Lee Zeldin and Elise Stefanik, ardent defenders of the president who are both from the New York delegation.

One person won’t be there, at least not onstage with Trump and his allies: Tulsa’s own Scott Pruitt, the former Environmental Protection Agency administrator. His absence is a reminder that former Trump Cabinet members rarely leave the administration unscathed.

Pruitt did not return calls from Yahoo News. The Trump campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The mere mention of Pruitt’s name evokes, for some, the freewheeling early days of the Trump presidency, a pre-impeachment, pre-pandemic time when Pruitt’s search for a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel could credibly pass as the biggest story in Washington.

Then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt in 2018. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

Pruitt was dismissed by Trump shortly after the mattress incident was made public, but the president had clearly been fond of Pruitt, arguing that he was treated unfairly by the media. Yet whatever sympathy Trump may have had for him appears to have expired. That may prove unfortunate for Pruitt, who is only 52 and is widely known to have political ambitions. During the heyday of his tenure, some even suspected he would run for president.

For all the scandal he caused in Washington, Pruitt retained the goodwill of his fellow Sooners. “I think Oklahomans still love him, support him and trust him,” the chairwoman of the Oklahoma GOP told the Associated Press after Pruitt’s dismissal by Trump.

Although he did not seek the governorship of Oklahoma in 2018, as some expected him to do, he was also once rumored to be after a more coveted prize: Inhofe’s seat in the U.S. Senate. At 85, Inhofe is the fifth-oldest member of the entire Congress. Inhofe said in March he would run again, but that was before the coronavirus and anti-racism protests upended virtually every political calculation across the land.
IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS 

Pruitt with President Trump in the White House Rose Garden in 2017. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Once in the news on a near-daily basis, Pruitt has been functionally invisible for the better part of a year. “Where in the world is Scott Pruitt?” wondered one headline a year ago. The article noted that he had been spotted at a high-end Tulsa gym, running slowly on a treadmill. He had also registered as an energy lobbyist. There wasn’t much else.

Pruitt’s lonely fate is similar to that of many other top former administration officials. No longer part of Team Trump, removed from the intrigues of Capitol Hill, “formers” like Ryan Zinke (Interior Department) and Reince Priebus (White House chief of staff) are caught in political purgatory.

Some, like Pruitt, Zinke and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, were quickly undone by attempts to replicate the lifestyle befitting a high-net-worth administration. Living luxuriously on the taxpayers’ dollar angered the public, members of Congress and a president always sensitive to bad news.

Others, like Priebus and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, succumbed to the chaos and infighting that have characterized the Trump administration from the very start.

Few of the now-formers survived with their reputations intact. Most notable in that category is former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who always kept his distance from Trump and, most recently, criticized the president for clearing peaceful protesters from Washington’s Lafayette Square in the midst of the anti-racism protests that swept the nation.

Others have tried to claw their reputations back and exact revenge, often by writing books. Among them is David Shulkin, the former Department of Veterans Affairs head and the lone Obama holdover in the original Trump Cabinet. In his book, Shulkin claims that wealthy conservative allies of the president tried to sabotage his efforts and tried to privatize the agency’s operations.

And then, of course, there is John Bolton, who was dismissed as national security adviser in 2019. The scorned Bolton’s new book contains harsh assessments of the president and his policymaking style.

Pruitt is almost certainly not writing a tell-all book, but he did leave the Trump administration with a flourish, penning a fulsome resignation letter to the boss who fired him. “My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people,” Pruitt wrote. “I believe you are serving as President today because of God’s providence.”
Being ignored by the Trump campaign is still probably preferable to what happened to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general Trump blamed for the investigation into Russian electoral interference. Fired by Trump, Sessions returned to Alabama and declared he would seek to regain the Senate seat he’d held before joining the Trump administration. 

Trump has instead endorsed former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, also running for the Republican nomination. For good measure, the president lambasted Sessions, the first sitting senator to endorse his improbable White House bid back in early 2016, for having “no courage.