https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html

American public opinion can sometimes seem stubborn. Voters haven’t really changed their views on abortion in 50 years. Donald J. Trump’s approval rating among registered voters has fallen within a five-point range for just about every day of his presidency.

But the Black Lives Matter movement has been an exception from the start.

Public opinion on race and criminal justice issues has been steadily moving left since the first protests ignited over the fatal shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. And since the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25, public opinion on race, criminal justice and the Black Lives Matter movement has leaped leftward.

Over the last two weeks, support for Black Lives Matter increased by nearly as much as it had over the previous two years, according to data from Civiqs, an online survey research firm. By a 28-point margin, Civiqs finds that a majority of Americans support the movement, up from a 17-point margin before the most recent wave of protests began.

The survey is not the only one to suggest that recent protests enjoy broad public support. Weekly polling for the Democracy Fund’s U.C.L.A./Nationscape survey shows a significant increase in unfavorable views of the police, and an increase in the belief that African-Americans face a lot of discrimination.

Perhaps most significant, the Civiqs data is not alone in suggesting that an outright majority of Americans agree with the central arguments of Black Lives Matter.

A Monmouth University poll found that 76 percent of Americans consider racism and discrimination a “big problem,” up 26 points from 2015. The poll found that 57 percent of voters thought the anger behind the demonstrations was fully justified, while a further 21 percent called it somewhat justified. Polls show that a majority of Americans believe that the police are more likely to use deadly force against African-Americans, and that there’s a lot of discrimination against black Americans in society. Back in 2013, when Black Lives Matter began, a majority of voters disagreed with all of these statements.

At least it’s not Orlando

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/us/politics/republican-national-convention-jacksonville-florida.html

Republicans expect to move their national convention from Charlotte, N.C., to Jacksonville, Fla., a shift planned after President Trump told officials in North Carolina that he did not want to use social distancing measures aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus, according to three senior Republicans.

The decision could change, the Republicans cautioned, but as of now, officials are on track to announce the new location as early as Thursday.

Jacksonville has been Republicans’ top choice for days, after Mr. Trump told the governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, a Democrat, that he needed an answer about whether Charlotte could accommodate the convention in August with a promise that there would not be social distancing.

Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida, where Ron DeSantis, a Republican and an ally of Mr. Trump, is the governor. Jacksonville’s mayor, Lenny Curry, is a longtime Republican official.

Once they decided to uproot the convention, Mr. Trump’s aides and Republican officials had wanted to relocate to a state, and a city, controlled by Republicans. Jacksonville also may have enough hotel rooms to accommodate the gathering, people familiar with the discussions said, and it is a comparatively easy drive from Charlotte.

New reported cases of the coronavirus are on the rise in both North Carolina and Florida.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/detained-migrants-say-they-were-forced-clean-covid-infected-ice-n1228831

Asylum-seeking migrants locked up inside an Arizona Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center with one of the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases say they were forced to clean the facility and are “begging” for protection from the virus, according to a letter obtained exclusively by NBC News.

“This is a life or death situation,” said a translation of their message, dated May 18, and sent to the Florence Immigrants & Refugees Rights Project, a legal advocacy group that has filed a lawsuit on behalf of migrants in the facility.

More good news from WV

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rosemary-ketchum-elected-west-virginia_n_5ee0796bc5b6a6b09fc4e4e4

West Virginia elected its first out transgender official on Tuesday, a victory civil rights groups said would help bolster representation and political power for LGBTQ Americans.

Rosemary Ketchum won her bid for the Wheeling City Council on Tuesday and will represent the city’s Ward 3. When she assumes her role on July 1, Ketchum will be one of just four out LGBTQ officials in the state to hold public office.

“I’m incredibly excited and grateful. I know this was a close race,” Ketchum told The Wheeling News-Register on Tuesday, noting that while she didn’t campaign on her identity, the win “matters a lot.”

Ketchum works at the National Alliance for Mental Illness and is an active community organizer.

“I believe that we must work WITH our community members to solve problems rather than without them or worse – against them,” she wrote on her campaign site. “But all too often, what we have seen is a lack of focus, a lack of drive, and most notably, a lack of presence regarding our elected community leaders.”

The LGBTQ Victory Fund, which backed Ketchum’s bid, noted her win is a landmark moment in the fight for representation. There are just 26 out transgender officials in the United States, and the group said Ketchum’s victory “will resonate well beyond her state.”

https://thehill.com/policy/international/501922-us-faces-allegations-of-human-rights-abuses-over-treatment-of-protesters

The U.S. treatment of protesters is coming under the scrutiny of the international community and advocacy groups, with some alleging that certain police actions against demonstrators qualify as human rights abuses.

Multiple violent conflicts between police and protesters have erupted over the past week and a half over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis.

Law enforcement’s general policing practices and police officers’ use of force tactics to help manage or quell unrest with protesters are facing condemnation. And some groups are questioning if the U.S. justice system is prepared to handle such cases.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Monday wrote an open letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council calling for an emergency session of the global body and an investigation into police violence and repression of protests in the U.S.

“It is time the United States face the same scrutiny and judgement it is quick to pass on to other countries,” Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, said in a statement.

“As communities in the United States call on their leaders to divest from policing and end structural racism, the United Nations must support these domestic demands by holding the United States accountable for its human rights violations,” Dakwar added.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/10/new-york-city-protesters-detained-abysmal-conditions

Protesters in New York have been unnecessarily arrested and detained for as long as 48 hours in “abysmal” conditions without access to masks, food and water, according to legal experts.

Since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis just over two weeks ago, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of New York City in protest over police brutality.

More than 2,000 people had been arrested in the city as of Thursday – around a fifth of the total of over 10,000 arrested nationally – on charges such as resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and violating the now cancelled city-wide curfew. New York Police Department (NYPD) declined a request for updated arrest figures, saying they will be available “in the near future”.

Lawyers say the NYPD is also denying many of those arrested their right to a phone call, leaving their friends and families fearful for their lives. Details of arrests are not publicly available, but anecdotally, lawyers said protesters are facing charges for disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration and for violating the curfew, which was considered a Class B misdemeanour, carrying a maximum sentence of up to three months imprisonment.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, they said most police officers do not wear masks and in some cases confiscate those of protesters who are being “packed” into cells with no regard for social distancing.

Corey Stoughton, head of the special litigation unit at the Legal Aid Society, said: “We have heard from our clients who have been arrested that the conditions in the holding cells that they are held in, in many cases for 10-20 hours, are abysmal. Especially following some of the larger demonstrations and mass arrests, that there are extremely crowded conditions, that the cells are dirty and unsanitary and unsafe.”

Police officers, she added, “rarely” wear masks. “So really an arrest is a decision by the police department to put protesters into a situation that is dangerous for their health and safety.”

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/10/873509374/joe-biden-has-come-a-long-way-on-criminal-justice-reform-progressives-want-more

Two members of a task force charged with pulling Biden’s campaign platform to the left are encouraged by Biden’s initial statements and demands but remain hopeful the onetime author of tough-on-crime bills will embrace even broader policing and criminal justice reforms.

“I’m encouraged that he’s getting specific and trying to meet the moment,” said Chiraag Bains, who worked in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tapped Bains to co-chair the criminal justice reform committee the Sanders and Biden campaigns set up at the end of their primary contest as part of a broader effort to try to reach more policy consensus between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party.

“It’s not enough to speak to people’s pain and utter the right words,” said Bains, who emphasized he was speaking for himself, not the task force.

Bains said Biden’s statements and speeches have been the right start and have been well-received — especially when contrasted to the president. “But we need a specific agenda and it needs to be bold,” he said. “I do see that the vice president is moving that direction. I just think we need to do more.”

Bains wants Biden to expand on already-announced proposals on ending mandatory-minimum prison sentences and ramping up the use of clemency. He’s also pushing for the restoration of federal parole and the legalization of marijuana, among other policies.

Progressives see this moment of national protests and calls to action — a moment where even a former Republican presidential nominee is marching and declaring that “black lives matter” — as a once-in-a-generation chance for substantial reforms.

Stacey Walker, a fellow Sanders appointee to the criminal justice task force and chairman of Iowa’s Linn County Board of Supervisors, called the worldwide protests against police violence and racism “a global liberation movement” that could open the door for massive policy changes.

“I think the vice president totally understands that we are at a moral moment in history,” Walker said. “The policies that he is supporting certainly is a step in the right direction, and it’s going to help move the dialogue along on the issues we seek to address. Now, there are a lot of advocates in the criminal justice reform space who believe that we can do more, who believe that this is a moment, unlike any other, in the fight for freedom for black Americans in this country.”

The task force, divided between Sanders and Biden appointees, meets online once a week, with constant smaller phone calls and emails between members in between sessions. Along with the other committees working on climate change and other policy areas, it aims to present proposals ahead of August’s Democratic National Convention.

One example of the push and pull between Biden’s instincts and those of the progressives who flocked to Sanders, and would need to back Biden in order for him to win this fall: how to lessen federal marijuana penalties. Biden has called for decriminalizing marijuana. Bains is hoping Biden shifts to a call for full legalization.

“Decriminalization typically means that you don’t have a criminal penalty, but you could still be issued a civil fine. And then there are other kinds of consequences that could follow from that,” Bains explained. “It’s still illegal conduct. If possession of marijuana is just decriminalized and that is the hook for extensive police involvement in people’s lives, and if you haven’t addressed the underlying systemic problems in policing and the justice system overall, then people could continue to be stopped and searched and frisked and so forth.”

Still, a call for decriminalizing — if not fully legalizing — marijuana marks a notable shift for Biden, who as a senator authored and voted for several tough-on-crime measures in the 1980s and 1990s that strengthened penalties for drug-related crimes in particular.

But despite Biden’s shifts, some progressives still view him with skepticism on criminal justice and have watched warily as Biden promises to take on policing abuses amid an unprecedented national focus on police violence and racism.

“This is an opportunity for him to come to account for his role in promoting the crime bill back in the ’90s that led to a lot of federal support of local police departments, federal arming of police departments and a lot more expectations and money that goes toward them,” progressive organizer Aimee Allison told NPR’s Morning Edition.

Allison is particularly frustrated at how quickly Biden rejected calls for “defunding” police departments.

“We understand the phrase ‘defund the police’ to be shorthand for a range of serious policy proposals that will end the cycle of police violence against black people and put public safety before violence,” Allison said. “But if Joe Biden is not serious about ending that cycle, he’s risking the success of his campaign. I mean, this is the make-or-break moment for him.”

Stacey Walker supports police defunding, too, though he conceded “we may have a marketing and branding issue on our hands” when it comes to selling nonprogressives on the idea of shifting government resources away from law enforcement and toward social services, education and other areas.

Walker doesn’t see Biden shifting ground on the issue. But ultimately, he doesn’t think that will hurt Biden with the progressives who have embraced the push.

“We all understand that Donald Trump poses an existential risk to our democracy, to the American project and to everything Democrats hold dear,” Walker said. “So while you know, we’re not going to get to a point where everyone is happy, although that is the goal, I think Democrats are going to be united.”

Meanwhile, we even have 30 idiot House Dems signing a letter warning about deficits

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/upshot/coronavirus-economic-crisis.html

But there are clear signs that the collapse of economic activity has set in motion problems that will play out over many months, or maybe many years. If not contained, they could cause human misery on a mass scale and create lasting scars for families.

The fabric of the economy has been ripped, with damage done to millions of interconnections — between workers and employers, companies and their suppliers, borrowers and lenders. Both the historical evidence from severe economic crises and the data available today point to enormous delayed effects.

“There’s a lot of denial here, as there was in the 1930s,” said Eric Rauchway, a historian at the University of California, Davis, who has written extensively about the Great Depression. “At the beginning of the Depression, nobody wanted to admit that it was a crisis. The actions the government took were not adequate to the scope of the problem, yet they were very quick to say there had been a turnaround.”

Though it may not attract the attention that reopening beaches and a soaring stock market might, the evidence is everywhere if you look closely.

Consider those seemingly great new employment numbers. It is clear that many workers who were temporarily laid off in March and April returned to work in May, such as employees at once-closed restaurants that opened up, or construction workers who returned to job sites.

But it still left the economy with 19.55 million fewer jobs than existed in February. And the rebound came in part thanks to more than $500 billion in federal aid to small businesses offered on the condition that workers be retained, under the Paycheck Protection Program.

Other data points to a severe but slower-moving crisis of collapsing demand that will affect many more corners of the economy than those that were forced to close because of the pandemic.

New orders for manufactured goods, for example, remained in starkly negative territory in May, according to the Institute for Supply Management; its index came in at 31.8, far below the level of 50 that is the line between expansion and contraction.

And despite the net gain in employment in May, there have been many announced layoffs at companies outside sectors directly affected by the pandemic. This suggests that the forced shutdown of travel, restaurant and related industries is rippling out into a broad-based shortage of demand in the economy.

Consider just a partial list of large well-known companies unaffected by the direct first-round effects of pandemic-induced shutdowns, but which have since announced layoffs: Chevron, I.B.M. and Office Depot.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office tried to put a number on the aggregate economic activity that will be lost over the next decade compared with what was projected at the start of the year. That number is $15.7 trillion, reflecting both less economic activity and deflationary forces that reduce prices.

It is against this backdrop that some of the most influential — and fiscally conservative — voices in economic policy are saying that further aggressive spending is needed to prevent this shock from causing long-lasting damage to the economy.

“This is the time to use the great fiscal power of the United States to do what we can to support the economy and try to get through this with as little damage to the longer-run productive capacity of the economy as possible,” Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair and a longtime fiscal hawk, said at a news conference in late April.

“Please, spend wisely, but spend as much as you can!” Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, implored the world’s governments at an event in May. “And then, spend a bit more for your doctors, for your nurses, for the vulnerable people in your society.”

Both the Fed and the I.M.F. more typically act as brakes on fiscal profligacy. For Mr. Powell and Ms. Georgieva to effectively beg elected officials to stop a spiraling crisis reflects the unusual circumstances of this moment and the extraordinary risk they see if government action is inadequate to the job. Their comments are the equivalent of a normally debt-averse financial adviser urging a family to borrow more money to ride out a period of illness without suffering long-term financial damage.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/10/lethal-inequality-new-study-shows-millions-high-risk-covid-19-us-lack-adequate

More than 18 million U.S. adults at severe risk of Covid-19 infection due to age and existing medical conditions either lacked adequate health insurance or were completely uninsured when the pandemic hit, spotlighting the extent to which America’s fragmented for-profit healthcare system may have exacerbated the deadliness of the virus.

That’s according to a new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine Wednesday by researchers from Harvard and the City University of New York’s Hunter School. The study found that among U.S. adults over the age of 65 and non-elderly adults with conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and heart disease, at least 18.2 million were uninsured or underinsured at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, distinguished professor of Public Health at CUNY’s Hunter College and another of the study’s authors, said the new research bolsters the case for both an emergency expansion of Medicare to the uninsured—as proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—and an eventual transition to Medicare for All.

“It’s not just Covid care that’s unaffordable,” said Woolhandler, co-founder of PNHP. “Patients with heart disease, asthma, and diabetes need protection too. Medicare for All is the long-term answer. But in the meantime, passage of the stopgap Medicare expansion bills introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal would ensure that patients can get the care they need during the crisis, regardless of their diagnosis.”