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Referendum Seeks to Mend the Open Wound at Australia’s Coronary heart

Referendum Seeks to Mend the Open Wound at Australia’s Heart

MELBOURNE, Australia—When Capt. James Cook sailed to Australia in 1768, he did so with instructions that he should “show every kind of civility and regard” to the land’s indigenous people and get their consent before possessing their land. He did neither.

The brutal colonization that followed has set the tone for how Aboriginal people have been treated throughout the nation’s history. To this day, a treaty has never been signed with Aboriginal people, and they are not recognized in the Australian Constitution.

Now, a newly elected Labor government has started the process of repairing the open wound at the heart of the nation. Last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese kick-started the process of holding a referendum to enshrine in the Constitution a body to advise the government on Indigenous issues, to be known as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

“We are seeking a momentous change, but it is also a very simple one,” Mr. Albanese said in announcing the draft ballot question. “Enshrining a voice in the Constitution gives the principles of respect and consultation strength and status.”

In the month since, the prime minister has worked to build support for the referendum, consulting with Aboriginal leaders and even holding an unusual news conference on Saturday in Sydney with Shaquille O’Neal.

But the effort faces many challenges. After decades of stalled discussions about Indigenous recognition, the previous two conservative prime ministers opposed a referendum, and the current conservative political opposition has not yet said whether it will support the proposal. A referendum has never succeeded in Australia without bipartisan backing.

Critics have seized on the fact that Mr. Albanese has not yet fully explained what the Aboriginal voice would entail. He sought to answer the criticism on Saturday, saying that while it would ensure that Indigenous people were consulted on issues that affect them, it would not “usurp” Parliament.

Advocates say the proposal would be both a symbolic and structural change in a country that still struggles to acknowledge the bloodiest parts of its colonial history and the legacy of that past.

The Voice to Parliament, its supporters say, is a simple proposal.

“What it’s saying is: You need to better include Aboriginal and Torres Strait people in political and legal decision-making in their own affairs,” said Dani Larkin, the deputy director of the Indigenous Law Center at the University of New South Wales.

The proposal is the result of a consultation process undertaken in 2017 by Indigenous leaders with Aboriginal communities around Australia. They sought to find a solution for the powerlessness, stemming from the history of colonization, that had entrenched disadvantage in their communities.

Given the absence of a treaty with Aboriginal peoples, “it was particularly cruel and unjust the way the dispossession happened here, and the lack of redress to this date has been appalling,” said Hannah McGlade, an associate professor of law at Curtin University and a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Indigenous people’s lives remain drastically worse than those of other Australians and are even deteriorating in some areas. Indigenous people have shorter life spans and poorer health. The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is “actually widening in relation to incarceration, child removal and suicide rates,” Professor McGlade said.

While symbolic gestures acknowledging Aboriginal peoples are common in Australia, much of the population is reluctant to do more. Last year, a proposal to include more Indigenous history in school curriculums was slammed by the education minister at the time as promoting an “overly negative view” of Australia.

Eddie Synot, a law lecturer at Griffith University who was involved in the proposal for the Voice to Parliament, said, “In Australia, there’s very much been an emphasis throughout our history on just assimilating into the rest of Australian society and forgetting the past. ”

The proposal seeks to address the forces that relegate Indigenous people to second-class status. The plan developed by Aboriginal leaders, outlined in 2017 in a document called the Uluru Statement From the Heart, includes three demands: Voice, Treaty and Truth.

The Voice advising governments would “really give effect to Indigenous representation and reflect Indigenous self-determination,” Professor McGlade said.

As for the other two pillars, “the treaty-making process will go some way to redress this wrongful acquisition of land,” she said, “and truth telling is fundamental because there is still such denial of the deep violence of our history — the violence of colonization, the systemic discrimination of Indigenous people face today.”

Constitutional change is difficult in Australia. It can be done only through a referendum, one that requires a “double majority” — a majority of voters nationwide, as well as majority support in a majority of states.

When Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister from 2015 to 2018, was in power, he said that there was not enough support among Australians to amend the Constitution on this issue, as critics voiced fears that a Voice to Parliament would act as a “third chamber of Parliament.” His successor, Scott Morrison, made a similar argument.

Mr. Albanese, who became prime minister in May, took a different view. Before the election, he promised that his Labor Party would put the voice to a referendum.

The issue was about “common courtesy,” he said, which dictates that “where you are implementing a policy that affects a group — in this case the oldest continuous civilization on the planet, something we should be proud about — you should consult, you should involve them.”

That could be achieved, he said, by adding just three sentences to the Constitution, creating a Voice to Parliament whose composition, functions and powers would be decided by Parliament.

The simplicity of the proposal seeks to avoid the failings of Australia’s last referendum, in 1999, when a majority of the public supported the idea of ​​making the country a republic but rejected the ballot question because of disagreements about the new model of governance.

But the lack of detail with the new referendum — whose date has not yet been set — has given critics an opening. A former conservative prime minister, Tony Abbott, said it meant that “a particular group will have an unspecified say about unspecified topics with unspecified ramifications.”

Anne Twomey, a constitutional expert at the University of Sydney, said that arguments framed around the need for more detail were often disingenuous.

If the debate stays in the realm of principles, where Mr. Albanese is trying to keep it, the referendum has a good chance of success, she said. But a debate about the details of the voice and how it could be used in the future could prove more challenging.

Some Indigenous people say that no matter the details, a Voice to Parliament would not be enough.

“I really don’t see how this is going to bring justice to our people by providing advice,” said Lidia Thorpe, an Indigenous senator. “We’ve had many, many advisory bodies.”

Still, she said, if the referendum fails, “it will set Australia back as a nation, and it will have an impact on the health and well-being of First Nations people.”

dr Larkin, of the University of New South Wales, said that Australia should embrace its chance at a long-overdue reckoning with its treatment of Aboriginal people.

“We’re inviting the Australian people to walk with us because we believe in the Australian people’s humanity and compassion,” she said.

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Health

Mississippi seeks docs, nurses, ventilators as Covid sufferers pack ICU beds

Mississippi seeks doctors, nurses, ventilators as Covid patients pack ICU beds

A prisoner at the Bolivar County Correctional Facility receives a Covid-19 vaccination administered by medical workers with Delta Health Center on April 28, 2021 in Cleveland, Mississippi.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves pleaded Friday with residents to get vaccinated as the state scrambles to hire hundreds of temporary doctors, nurses and EMTs.

He’s also requested ventilators from the Strategic National Stockpile as the spread of the delta variant fills hospitals in the state with mostly unvaccinated patients. The state even asked federal officials to send a medical U.S. Navy ship but was turned down, he said.

“When you look across the country, to a certain extent, this current wave is the pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Reeves said at a press conference, adding that the state was headed toward a new peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. “We continue to see more and more data, and the data is becoming more and more clear. Those who received the vaccine are significantly less likely to contract the virus.”

For the few breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated people the state has seen so far, “they’re much less likely to spread the virus and it is highly unlikely that if you have the vaccine that you end up in the hospital or that you end up in an ICU bed,” he said.

Mississippi extended a state-of-emergency order on Thursday that was set to expire this week after the state hit a record of more than 5,000 new Covid cases in one day, said Reeves, a Republican. The spike in cases will likely be followed by an increase in hospitalizations and deaths.

The state requested 65 physicians, 920 nurses, 41 nursing aides, 59 advanced practice nurses, 34 physician assistants, 239 respiratory technicians and 20 EMTs, according to Reeves. The extra help would open up 771 medical surgery beds and 235 ICU beds, he said.

About 97% of people currently hospitalized for Covid in the state are unvaccinated, a trend seen throughout the country. This week, Mississippi’s daily hospitalization rate reached numbers higher than any the state has seen throughout the pandemic.

In the last four days, “we’ve lost four healthy people in their 20s, two of whom were pregnant, zero vaccinated,” Mississippi state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during the briefing. “In the past four days, we’ve lost 10 people in their 30s, and these aren’t people who are chronically ill cancer patients.” None in their 30s who died were vaccinated.

In other age groups, the number of deaths in unvaccinated people continued to overwhelmingly eclipse the number of deaths in vaccinated people.

“I mean, there’s a pattern here … by and large the vaccines have been incredibly protective and helpful and especially for people who are under 50,” Dobbs said.

The state has one of the lowest vaccination rates per capita in the United States, but daily vaccination rates have tripled over the past month amid the spread of the dominant delta variant, according to state health officials.

The governor said he has no intention of mandating masks or vaccines for state employees “or for anyone else” and emphasized that he believes those things are personal choices.

“I have no intention based upon the data that I have seen of issuing a statewide mask mandate,” Reeves said in a press briefing on Friday.

Reeves said he does not plan to impose mask mandates on schools either, saying that school districts “have every right” to encourage mask use if they deem it necessary.

More than 5,000 children are currently quarantining after positive cases were detected in just the first couple of weeks of schools reopening, some without mask mandates.

In total, Mississippi has recorded 381,147 Covid cases and 7,761 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health.

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Politics

Conservative Group, Seizing on Crime as an Concern, Seeks Recall of Prosecutors

Conservative Group, Seizing on Crime as an Issue, Seeks Recall of Prosecutors

WASHINGTON – A Republican-affiliated group said Monday it is launching a recall campaign, backed by unknown donors, to criminalize Democrats and their allies for being gentle by targeting progressive prosecutors.

It will initially focus on three prosecutors elected in 2019 in the affluent suburbs of Washington, northern Virginia, amid a national wave of pledges from Democrats to make law enforcement fairer and more humane.

The Virginians for Safe Communities group said the targets of the recall were Buta Biberaj of Loudoun County, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti of Arlington County and Steve Descano of Fairfax County, all of whom are Commonwealth counsel.

The campaign is faced with uncertain prospects, starting with the clarification of signature collections and legal hurdles.

However, organizers identified it as part of a broader national push to capitalize on voter concerns over rising urban crime and a backlash against sentiment against the police.

“There is a time for all things politics, and now is the time to wake up people who are in favor of law enforcement,” said Sean D. Kennedy, a Republican agent and president of Virginians for Safe Communities. He called the Northern Virginia recall effort a “test case for a nationwide launch.”

He said the group raised more than $ 250,000 and received commitments of nearly another $ 500,000. He would not reveal the identity of the donors to the group, which is registered under a section of the Tax Code that allows nonprofit groups to protect their donors from disclosure.

Mr. Kennedy, who has worked on Republican campaigns and committees, is an officer with the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, but he said the new group is independent from them. Others involved in the new group include former FBI officer Steven L. Pomerantz and Ian D. Prior, who was appointed to the Justice Department during the Trump administration and previously worked on well-funded Republican political committees.

Mr. Kennedy has used Virginians for Safe Communities as an antidote to a political committee funded by billionaire George Soros, a leading democratic donor. His group, Justice and Public Safety PAC, has spent millions of dollars in recent years to assist candidates in local prosecutorial elections who supported the decriminalization of marijuana, relaxation of bail rules, and other progressive-favored changes.

The spending turned many of the races on their heads, which previously had drawn relatively little money and attention from major national interests.

Mr Soros’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

His PAC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars each in 2019 to support the campaigns of Ms. Dehghani-Tafti, Mr. Descano and Ms. Biberaj as they took office and promised a new approach to criminal justice.

Their victories came at a time when politicians from both parties were scrutinizing harsh crime policies, imposing harsh penalties for drug-related crimes, and laying the groundwork for mass incarceration that disproportionately affected black communities. In late 2018, President Donald J. Trump signed the most momentous reduction in criminal law in a generation. The next month, Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was preparing to run against Mr. Trump, apologized for portions of the anti-crime legislation he championed as a senator in the 1990s.

Skepticism about law enforcement and the criminal justice system was further catalyzed by the police murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020. Many Democrats, including President Biden, have opposed the Defund the Police movement.

But a year and a half after Mr. Floyd’s death, American cities are facing a surge in gun violence and murder that began during the pandemic and has continued into this year.

Republicans have tried to blame the Democrats and their allies, and have tried to regain the cloak of law and order that politicians from both parties embraced in the 1980s and 1990s, but later because of concerns about police and police misconduct the inequalities in the criminal justice system.

The Conservatives “basically sat on the sidelines on this issue,” said Kennedy. “It was dominated by one side, and our side had basically disarmed unilaterally.”

He accused the three Northern Virginia prosecutors of “taking dangerous measures” that “undermine public confidence in our judicial system.” He cited an increase in the murder rate in Fairfax Counties and Arlington Counties.

Ms. Dehghani-Tafti, the chief prosecutor for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church, said in an email that she “does exactly what I have promised my community – what I was chosen to do – and do it well: that To make the system fairer, more responsive and more rehabilitative and at the same time guarantee our safety. “

Some of the more progressive planks on their campaign platform, and those of Ms. Biberaj and Mr Descano – who are ending law enforcement for marijuana possession and not applying for the death penalty – were at least partially codified across the country this year. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed law abolishing the death penalty and legalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Ms. Dehghani-Tafti accused Mr. Kennedy’s group of using undisclosed “dark money” and “relying on misinformation” to “overturn a valid election through a non-democratic recall”.

Recalls are rare in Virginia and require the collection of signatures from a group of voters equal to 10 percent of the number who voted for the office in question in the last election, followed by a trial to prove that the officer has acted in a manner that constitutes incompetence, negligence or abuse of office. In the prosecutor’s case, the signature requirement would range from about 5,500 in Arlington to 29,000 in Fairfax.

Kennedy said his group intends to start paying people to collect signatures starting this week, with the goal of hitting the thresholds by Labor Day.

Recent efforts to defeat or dismiss progressive prosecutors have so far not been successful in other jurisdictions, including Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and an upcoming grassroots effort to recall the three Virginia prosecutors has apparently not met with much resonance.

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Health

Biden Seeks to Revive Vaccine Effort With New Guidelines and Incentives

Biden Seeks to Revive Vaccine Effort With New Rules and Incentives

WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday sought to revive the nation’s stalled push to vaccinate Americans against the surging Delta variant of the coronavirus, announcing new requirements for federal workers to be vaccinated and urging local and state governments to offer $100 to anyone willing to get a shot voluntarily.

His announcement included only federal civilian employees, but hours later the Pentagon said members of the military would also be subject to the same rules: Get vaccinated or face regular testing, social distancing, mask wearing and limits on official travel.

Although those steps fall short of a mandate, Mr. Biden also ordered the Defense Department to move rapidly toward one for all members of the military, a step that would affect almost 1.5 million troops, many of whom have resisted taking a shot that is highly effective against a disease that has claimed the lives of more than 600,000 Americans.

The announcement marked the first time he has suggested that a mandate could come for active-duty members of the military before any of the three federally authorized vaccines receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

In a speech from the East Room of the White House, Mr. Biden effectively conceded that the worst-in-a-century viral scourge he once thought was under control had come roaring back, threatening public health and the economic recovery that is central to the promise of his presidency.

But after months of trying to persuade and cajole, the president on Thursday cast the crisis as one that pits the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, and said those refusing to get a coronavirus shot should expect inconveniences as long as they decline a vaccine that protects them and others from illness and death.

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Mr. Biden said, calling it an “American tragedy” and talking directly to the 90 million Americans who are eligible for a vaccine but have not gotten one. “People are dying and will die who don’t have to die. If you’re out there unvaccinated, you don’t have to die. Read the news.”

Mr. Biden said that federal workers who remained unvaccinated would have to submit to the extra inconveniences — essentially creating a two-tier system for the government’s more than four million employees and hundreds of thousands of private contractors who work at federal facilities around the world.

The president’s move stopped short of a vaccine mandate for federal workers. But the president said he hoped that by imposing new requirements on daily work life, more unvaccinated federal employees will choose to get a shot.

Mr. Biden said he was ordering agencies to find ways to ensure that all federal contractors — even those working for private businesses out of their own offices — could be required to be vaccinated as a condition of their work with the federal government. That could extend the president’s plan to millions more workers, including those in places where vaccination rates are stubbornly low.

“If you want to do business with the federal government, get your workers vaccinated,” the president said bluntly.

Mr. Biden urged companies and local governments to mimic his new vaccine requirements for federal employees, which he noted had the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The group said on Thursday that the president’s new rules were “prudent steps to protect public health.”

But the administration’s move quickly sparked consternation from some of the federal government’s largest unions representing teachers, police officers and postal workers, who called for negotiations on the subject.

“Forcing people to undertake a medical procedure is not the American way and is a clear civil rights violation no matter how proponents may seek to justify it,” Larry Cosme, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said in a statement.

The president also announced that small and medium-size businesses would be reimbursed for providing paid leave so employees and their families could get vaccinated. He called on school districts to host a “pop-up vaccination clinic” to get children vaccinated before the start of school. And he urged private businesses, sport leagues and other institutions to get their employees vaccinated.

Appealing directly to Americans who are “unvaccinated, unbothered and unconvinced,” Mr. Biden asked them to recall the depths of the lockdowns during 2020 and to “really remember just how dark that winter was.”

“With incentives and mandates, we can make a huge difference and save a lot of lives,” he said.

Coronavirus vaccines are available to Americans ages 12 and older. But as of Thursday, just 57.7 percent of those eligible were fully vaccinated, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The figure is much higher among the oldest Americans; nearly 80 percent of Americans 65 or older are fully vaccinated.

Updated 

July 29, 2021, 10:02 p.m. ET

During his campaign against former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden promised that he could vanquish the virus despite the polarized politics of the country he inherited. Just weeks ago, Mr. Biden hosted a Fourth of July party at the White House to declare “independence” from the virus. Now, he must reckon with rising caseloads and hospitalizations that are threatening a return to work and school in the fall.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Biden’s top public health officials have been deliberating for weeks, including in daily calls, about the best way to push more people to get vaccinated without prompting legal challenges or an anti-vaccine backlash.

A July 27 internal assessment for the senior leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services delivered the grim news about the trajectory of the pandemic: deaths up 45 percent from the previous week, hospitalizations up 46 percent and cases surging. “Since the lowest value observed on June 19, 2021, cases have increased 440 percent,” the assessment concluded.

Aides said the president hoped his solution could become a model for state and local governments and businesses around the country. But his announcement on Thursday lagged the efforts of many of those very institutions, which moved more quickly than the Biden administration to grapple with the issue.

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California both announced on Monday that they would require hundreds of thousands of government workers to get inoculations or face weekly testing. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York soon followed suit.

Numerous businesses — including Netflix, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Washington Post, Ascension Health, Lyft, Google and Morgan Stanley — all announced get-tough policies that require their workers to get shots as a condition of employment. Unvaccinated workers at MGM casinos will be tested regularly, at their own cost, and if they test positive they will be required to quarantine.

In a joint statement this week, dozens of medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, called for all health care and long-term care workers to be vaccinated. The Department of Veterans Affairs became the first federal agency to require many of its employees to get a shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its earlier stance and recommended that vaccinated people wear masks indoors in areas where rates of transmission are high.

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

“This is a very fluid situation,” said Dr. Richard E. Besser, the chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former acting director of the C.D.C. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and change.”

Few in Mr. Biden’s administration doubted that the president could force federal employees to take the vaccine as a condition of employment. But a heavy-handed mandate was more likely to backfire, most argued.

The solution Mr. Biden announced on Thursday is aimed at sidestepping accusations that the president is using the power of his office to force shots in people’s arms. Instead, officials hope the new workplace rules will make employees want to become vaccinated.

When it comes to the military, Mr. Biden signaled that he could take a tougher stance, placing the armed forces firmly at the center of an escalating debate over vaccine mandates.

As commander in chief, the president has the authority to order the troops to take an experimental vaccine — a move that would have a deep reach into areas of the country with low rates of vaccination. The bulk of federal workers live in the Washington region, including the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, where rates of vaccination are already high.

“I think it would have a much bigger impact in parts of the country that have low vaccination rates and also get into populations that have been reluctant and hopefully show them that getting a vaccine is not problematic,” said Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who advised Mr. Biden during his transition.

Members of the military are regularly given vaccines, and unvaccinated service members are sometimes not allowed to deploy abroad and face other restrictions. But as a political matter, forcing vaccines on the military would be all but certain to set off a firestorm among Mr. Biden’s critics.

Many members of the military have been reluctant to take coronavirus vaccines. Dr. Besser said he was surprised the administration has not required them to do so sooner. Military leaders cannot require the shots because they are currently authorized on an emergency basis. Mr. Biden could order them, but has been reluctant to exercise that authority.

The White House was already taken aback, some military officials said, by the blowback to its door-to-door vaccine information campaign and has since treaded carefully on mandates, especially for troops.

Younger troops have been most hesitant to get the shot, calculating that their symptoms would be mild if they caught virus. But the Delta variant has been hitting younger patients, and with more force.

Dr. Besser said Mr. Biden’s move “makes sense,” adding, “It’s highly contagious, people in the military are in very close quarters with each other, and in terms of force readiness you wouldn’t want to see Covid ripping through unvaccinated soldiers.”

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and a polio survivor, encouraged people to get the vaccine. With the virus on the rise in conservative swaths of the country, Mr. McConnell is among a handful of Republican leaders who are now explicitly calling for vaccination.

“Honestly, it never occurred to me we’d have difficulty getting people to take the vaccine,” he said.

Dr. Patrick Godbey, the president of the College of American Pathologists, which is advocating for greater use of Covid-19 testing, said even before Mr. Biden spoke that the events of this week had changed the discussion. His own medical institution, in Brunswick, Ga., has not yet required workers to get vaccinated, he said.

“People are now looking at it; they are evaluating it in their own institutions, and that’s an important step forward,” he said, adding, “It’s a real line in the sand when the federal government comes out and does it.”

Jennifer Steinhauer and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.

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Politics

Pentagon Seeks to Soften Blow of U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan

Pentagon Seeks to Soften Blow of U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan

The August date also gives the government more time to find places to relocate thousands of Afghans and their family members who helped Americans during the Twenty Years’ War. The White House has come under severe pressure to protect its Afghan allies from Taliban revenge attacks and to speed up the lengthy and complex process of issuing special immigrant visas.

“We cannot turn our backs and let them die,” said Texas MP Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Fox News Sunday. “They are being slaughtered by the Taliban.”

Administration officials previously said they would consider Guam as a possible location, but State Department officials say they will need multiple locations. The Foreign Ministers of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were in Washington last week and the issue of Afghan security was raised at their meetings with Mr. Austin and Foreign Secretary Antony J. Blinken.

After all, General Miller’s stay for a few more weeks and the extension of the security umbrella at least until August should give the oppressed Afghan troops a boost. Pentagon officials said leaving Bagram Air Base and leaving General Miller at the same time would have been a devastating blow to Afghan morale.

“A safe, orderly exit allows us to maintain an ongoing diplomatic presence, assist the Afghan people and government, and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven again for terrorists threatening our homeland,” Kirby said.

The White House joined the calming campaign on Friday – up to a point. Mr Biden said that while the United States still retained the ability to conduct air strikes in order to protect the Afghan government, no withdrawal of the withdrawal was on the table.

“We have developed a capacity beyond the horizon,” he said, speaking of American fighter jets and armed Reaper drones stationed mostly in the Persian Gulf, “but the Afghans have to do it themselves with the air force that they have.” . “

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Politics

Rising From Pandemic, New York Seeks a New Mayor to Face Looming Crises

Rising From Pandemic, New York Seeks a New Mayor to Face Looming Crises

The New York City mayor’s race began in the throes of a pandemic, in a shuttered city convulsed by a public health catastrophe, economic devastation and widespread protests over police brutality.

Now, with voters heading to the primary polls on Tuesday, New York finds itself in a very different place. As the city roars back to life, its residents are at once buoyed by optimism around reopenings, but also anxious about public safety, affordable housing, jobs — and the very character of the nation’s largest city.

The primary election marks the end of an extraordinary chapter in New York’s history and the start of another, an inflection point that will play a defining role in shaping the post-pandemic future of the city. The leading mayoral candidates have promoted starkly divergent visions for confronting a series of overlapping crises, making this primary, which will almost certainly determine the next mayor, the most significant city election in a generation.

Public polling and interviews with elected officials, voters and party strategists suggest that on the cusp of Tuesday’s election, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is the front-runner, fueled by his focus on public safety issues and his ability to connect in working- and middle-class communities of color.

Yet even on the last weekend of the race, the contest to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio appears fluid and unpredictable, and credible polling remains sparse.

Two other leading candidates, Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia, campaigned together on Saturday in Queens and Manhattan, a show of unity that also injected ugly clashes over race into the final hours of the election, as Mr. Adams accused his rivals of coming together “in the last three days” and “saying, ‘We can’t trust a person of color to be the mayor of the City of New York.’”

Mr. Yang, at a later event, noted that he had been “Asian my entire life.” (Mr. Adams later clarified that he meant that Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia were trying to prevent a Black or Latino candidate from becoming mayor.)

The primary election will ultimately offer a clear sense of Democratic attitudes around confronting crime, a major national issue that has become the most urgent matter in the mayoral primary.

The outcome will also show whether New Yorkers wanted a political outsider eager to shake up City Hall bureaucracy, like Mr. Yang, or a seasoned government veteran like Ms. Garcia to navigate staggering challenges from issues of education to evictions to economic revival.

And it will reveal whether Democrats are in the mood to “reimagine” a far more equitable city through transformational progressive policies, as Maya D. Wiley is promising, or if they are more focused on everyday municipal problems.

In recent polls and last-minute fund-raising, Ms. Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, and Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, seem to be gaining late traction, while Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, remains a serious contender even amid signs that his momentum may have stalled.

But other factors may muddy the outcome.

For the first time in New York City, the mayoral nominee will be determined by ranked-choice voting, which allows New Yorkers to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Some New Yorkers remain undecided about how to rank their choices, and whether to rank at all.

And with many New Yorkers accustomed to a primary that usually takes place in September, it is not at all clear what the composition of a post-pandemic June electorate will look like.

For such a high-stakes election, the contest has felt at once endless and rushed. For months, it was a low-key affair, defined by dutiful Zoom forums and a distracted city.

But if there has been one constant in the last month, it has been the centrality of crime and policing to the contest.

“Public safety has clearly emerged as a significant issue,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, New York’s highest-ranking House member, when asked to name the defining issue of the mayor’s race. “How to balance that aspiration with fair, respectful policing, I think has been critical throughout the balance of this campaign.”

Six months ago, few would have predicted that public safety would be the top issue of the race, only a year after the“defund the police” movement took hold in the city. Crime rates are far lower than in earlier eras, and residents are confronting a long list of challenges as the city emerges from the pandemic.

But amid a rise this spring in shootings, jarring episodes of violence on the subways, bias attacks against Asian Americans and Jews — and heavy coverage of crime on local television — virtually every public poll shows public safety has become the biggest concern among Democratic voters.

Mr. Adams, Ms. Garcia, Mr. Yang and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, vigorously disagree with the “defund the police” movement. But no one has been more vocal about public safety issues than Mr. Adams, a former police captain who has declared safety the “prerequisite” to prosperity.

Mr. Adams, who had a complex career at the Police Department and battled police misconduct as a leader of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, an advocacy group, says that he was once a victim of police brutality himself, and argues that he is well equipped to manage both police reform and spikes in violence.

In recent weeks, however, Mr. Adams has come under growing scrutiny over questions of transparency and ethics tied to taxes and disclosures around real estate holdings. That dynamic may fuel doubts about his candidacy in the final days, as his opponents have sharply questioned his judgment and integrity.

If he wins, it will be in part because of his significant institutional support, as a veteran politician with union backing and relationships with key constituencies — but also because his message connects at a visceral level in some neighborhoods across the city.

“Mr. Adams! You got my vote!” Blanca Soto, who turns 60 on Monday, cried out as she walked by an Adams event in Harlem on Thursday.

“I am rooting for him because he’s not going to take away from the police officers,” said Ms. Soto, a health aide, who called safety her top issue. “I do want to see more police, especially in the subways. We had them there before. I don’t know what happened, but everything was good when that was going on.”

Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller; Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary; Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive; and Ms. Wiley have taken a starkly different view on several policing matters. They support varying degrees of cuts to the Police Department’s budget, arguing for investments in communities instead. The department’s operating budget has been about $6 billion. Ms. Wiley, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Morales have also been skeptical of adding more police officers to patrol the subway.

Ms. Wiley argues that the best way to stop violence is often to invest in the social safety net, including in mental health professionals, violence interrupters and in schools.

Understand the N.Y.C. Mayoral Race

Ms. Wiley, who has been endorsed by some of the most prominent left-wing leaders in the country, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, is seeking to build a coalition that includes white progressives as well as voters of color across the ideological spectrum.

Rival campaigns have long believed that she has the potential to build perhaps the broadest coalition of voters in the race, but polls suggest that she has not yet done so in a meaningful way.

Mr. Jeffries, who has endorsed Ms. Wiley and campaigned with her, said that she offers change from the status quo, “a fresh face” who is both prepared “and is offering a compelling vision for investing in those communities that have traditionally been left behind.”

Mr. Jeffries has said that he is ranking Mr. Adams second, and that if Mr. Adams were to win, it would be on the strength of Black and Latino communities “who have increasingly felt excluded from the promises of New York City, as it has become increasingly expensive.”

A number of campaigns and political strategists see Latino voters as the crucial, late-breaking swing vote, and the leading candidates all see opportunities with slices of that diverse constituency, with candidates including Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley airing new Spanish-language ads in recent days — an Adams spot criticizes Ms. Garcia in Spanish — and Mr. Yang spending Thursday in the Bronx, home to the city’s largest Latino population.

Mr. Yang, who would be the city’s first Asian American mayor, is betting that he can reshape the electorate by engaging more young, Asian American and Latino voters as he casts himself as a “change” candidate.

Mr. Yang was a front-runner in the race for months, boosted by his strong name identification and air of celebrity, as well as a hopeful message about New York’s potential and an energetic in-person campaign schedule.

But as New York reopened and crime became a bigger issue in voters’ minds — and as Mr. Yang faced growing scrutiny over gaffes and gaps in his municipal knowledge — he has lost ground.

His tone in the homestretch is a striking departure from the exuberant pitch that defined his early message, as he sharpens his criticism of Mr. Adams and tries to cut into his advantage on public safety issues. Mr. Yang, who has no city government experience, has also sought to use that outsider standing to deliver searing indictments of the political class.

Ms. Garcia has moderate instincts — she was one of the few leading mayoral candidates to favor President Biden as her first choice in the presidential primary — but she is primarily running as a pragmatic technocrat steeped in municipal knowledge.

She has been endorsed by the editorial boards of The New York Times and The New York Daily News, among others, and has generated palpable traction in politically engaged, highly educated corners of the city, like the Upper West Side, even as Mr. Stringer and Mr. Donovan have also vied for the government experience mantle.

“I don’t think New York does that well, as progressive as I am, with a series of progressives who think that we should spend more time dealing with those kinds of issues rather than actual stuff that needs to be done,” said William Pinzler, 74, as he prepared to vote for Ms. Garcia at Lincoln Center. “Kathryn Garcia picked up the garbage.”

But Ms. Garcia, who has struggled to deliver a standout moment during several televised debates, is in many ways still introducing herself, and it is not yet clear whether she can attract the same kind of support citywide.

Asked what lessons national Democrats may take from the results of Tuesday’s contest, Representative Grace Meng, who has endorsed Mr. Yang as her first choice and Ms. Garcia as her second, and appeared with them on Saturday, pointed to questions of both personal characteristics and policy visions.

“How much people prioritize a leader with experience or vision to get us out of the pandemic, but also to address issues like public safety and education — I think that it’ll kind of be a filter through which we see the next round of elections nationally,” she said. “Wherever they may be.”

Categories
Health

Moderna Seeks Full F.D.A. Approval for Covid Vaccine

Moderna Seeks Full F.D.A. Approval for Covid Vaccine

Moderna was the next pharmaceutical company to file with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday for full approval of its coronavirus vaccine for use in people aged 18 and over.

Last month Pfizer and BioNTech filed with the agency for full approval of their vaccines for use in people 16 years and older.

“We look forward to working with the FDA and will continue to submit data from our Phase 3 study and complete the ongoing filing,” said Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, in a statement.

Moderna’s emergency vaccine was approved in December, and by Sunday more than 151 million doses had been administered in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I think there are a lot of people on the fence who are worried that things are moving too fast and about possible side effects,” said Dr. William Schaffner, National Foundation for Infectious Diseases medical director and vaccine expert. “But those concerns are allayed as they see more of their friends and acquaintances celebrating their vaccination.”

Jan Hoffman contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Health

Mount Sinai Seeks to Develop Faculty Virus Testing Program

Mount Sinai Seeks to Expand School Virus Testing Program

Every week, students at KIPP Infinity Middle School, in West Harlem, file into a large auditorium and take their places on the designated floor markings, making sure to stand six feet apart. Then they pull down their masks and fill sterile tubes with their spit.

The school’s teachers try to make the experience fun, running competitions to see who can fill their tube fastest and holding dance contests while students wait for their classmates to finish.

“It’s kind of enjoyable,” said Bradley Ramirez, a seventh grader at the school who likes math and Minecraft. “It’s way better than just sticking a stick up your nose.”

Bradley and his classmates are participants in a coronavirus testing pilot program created by the Mount Sinai Health System, the nonprofit Pershing Square Foundation and KIPP NYC, a network of 15 local charter schools. Since early March, the program has conducted more than 13,000 saliva-based tests of KIPP students, teachers and staff members, identifying several dozen cases of the virus.

Now Mount Sinai and Pershing Square are hoping to expand. On Tuesday they announced the Mount Sinai Covid Lab initiative, inviting additional charter schools, as well as local businesses and organizations, to sign up for the saliva-based testing program. They are putting the finishing touches on a new laboratory that they say will be capable of processing as many as 100,000 coronavirus tests a day and are preparing a formal proposal to take the program to New York City’s public schools this fall.

The announcement comes the day after Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city planned to fully reopen schools, eliminating remote learning, in the fall.

“The way you keep a school safe, the way you make teachers feel comfortable with the reopening of schools, the way you make parents feel comfortable sending their kid, is you have a testing program,” said William A. Ackman, a hedge fund manager who founded the Pershing Square Foundation.

The testing program originated in December, when Mr. Ackman decided that he wanted to find a way to get New York City children back to school and approached Mount Sinai with a proposal: What if he provided funding for the hospital to build a laboratory that could process 100,000 coronavirus tests a day? The hope was that the lab could devote some of that capacity to corporate clients, such as businesses that wanted to test their employees, and use the revenue to fund wide-scale testing for New York City schoolchildren.

Mount Sinai quickly agreed. “We began on a concerted effort that people at Mount Sinai have really rallied around,” said Dr. David Reich, president and chief operating officer of Mount Sinai Hospital. “It’s just one of those projects where you never have to worry about people wanting to show up for your Zoom meeting — they’re all there, and they’re all smiling.”

The Pershing Square Foundation, whose trustees are Mr. Ackman and his wife, Neri Oxman, agreed to provide $20 million, and Mount Sinai began to convert an old laboratory space at its downtown campus into a high-volume coronavirus test processing center.

At the time, scientists at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine were among a number of groups across the country that were working to develop saliva-based coronavirus tests. The gold standard diagnostic tests are known as P.C.R. tests, which can detect even minute amounts of the virus in biological specimens. During the early months of the pandemic, these tests generally required medical professionals to stick a swab deep into a patient’s nasopharynx, a procedure that can be deeply uncomfortable and put clinicians at risk.

Saliva-based P.C.R. tests, many scientists came to believe, would be safer and less invasive. They would also be much more suitable for young children than the deep, nasopharyngeal swabs. “A brain scoop, for a kid? Really? That’s a no-no,” said Dr. Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi, a pathologist at Mount Sinai who led development of the new saliva test.

As the partnership between Mount Sinai and Pershing Square began to take shape, Dr. Paniz-Mondolfi and his colleagues accelerated their work, validating their saliva test in 60 adult patients. But they knew that in the real world, children could not always be relied upon to follow clinical procedures to the letter.

“When we start getting this from the schools, we’re going to have pieces of pretzels, old gum floating in the saliva,” Dr. Paniz-Mondolfi said.

Updated 

May 25, 2021, 8:22 p.m. ET

So Dr. Paniz-Mondolfi and his colleagues asked their own children to make a sacrifice for science: to snack on an array of junk food, including pizza and Oreos, and then spit into some testing tubes. Using these samples, the researchers confirmed that even if a student’s sample was contaminated with one of these foods, the tests should still work properly.

“This was practical science, designed by parents to get their kids back to school,” Dr. Paniz-Mondolfi said.

Then it was time to pilot the tests in a real school environment. In January, Mount Sinai connected with KIPP NYC, which had been offering remote instruction since last spring. But it was hoping to reopen its schools in March, and administrators knew they would need to do some kind of in-school virus testing.

“One of the biggest fears that we had was around what it would mean to keep students safe,” said Glenn Davis, the principal of KIPP Infinity Middle School.

Mount Sinai and KIPP NYC agreed to begin a pilot saliva-testing project at five schools. The testing program, which eventually grew to include nine KIPP schools, was free for the schools and mandatory for all students who opted to return to in-person learning. (Some families chose to continue with remote education.)

Students, teachers and staff members are tested once a week. Medical assistants from Mount Sinai supervise the saliva collection and pack the bar-coded tubes into coolers for transportation back to the laboratory. (The samples are currently being processed at an existing Mount Sinai lab, but will be sent to the new lab when it opens next month.)

During the pilot project, 99.2 percent test results were returned within 24 hours, Mount Sinai says. Students or staff members who test positive typically have to quarantine for 10 days.

If a student tests positive, Mount Sinai also offers to send a team of “swabbers” to his or her home to administer free coronavirus tests to their family members and close contacts.

“We’ve detected a few mini outbreaks in that fashion, and hopefully prevented them from spreading by virtue of this screening program in the schoolkids,” Dr. Reich said.

Between March 10, when the pilot project began, and May 9, Mount Sinai conducted 13,067 tests and identified 46 coronavirus cases, a positivity rate of 0.4 percent. There have been no false positives and no known false negatives, Mount Sinai says.

The Mount Sinai team has submitted the data to the Food and Drug Administration, hoping to receive an emergency use authorization for the test.

Later this week, Mount Sinai will submit a formal proposal to New York City to take its testing program to the city’s public schools when they reopen in the fall. Mount Sinai declined to disclose the terms of the proposal, including what it plans to charge schools for the tests, but says it hopes to attract commercial clients to help defray, or possibly even eliminate, costs for schools.

In the meantime, it is approaching other charter school organizations in the city about using its tests during their summer sessions and programs.

“We can’t just sit there when this lab goes live in June and say, ‘OK, we’re waiting for September,’” Dr. Reich said. “Before the fall, we need to be doing a lot of tests.” The lab will initially have the capacity to run 25,000 tests a day, with the ability to scale up to 100,000 if there is sufficient interest.

For its part, KIPP NYC plans to expand the program to all of its schools in the fall, although the testing frequency may change, said Efrain Guerrero, managing director of operations for KIPP NYC. “I think parents see it and staff see it as just an additional safety measure that they appreciate,” he said. “For us it’s a no-brainer to continue to test at some frequency.”

Olga Ramirez, Bradley’s mother, had not initially wanted him to return to in-person learning. “I was very afraid at first,” she said. But Bradley, who desperately wanted to go back to school, managed to convince her, with the help of an informational video about the Mount Sinai testing program.

Ms. Ramirez now thinks that returning to school was the right decision. Bradley’s virus tests have all come back negative, and his grades are up since returning to in-person learning.

“I’ve seen his grades improve quite a lot, and I feel that my son is in good hands,” she said. She’s not alone, she added. “There’s so many mothers who are feeling the way I do.”

Elda Cantú contributed translation.

Categories
Politics

G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Ballot Watchers, Elevating Intimidation Worries

G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Poll Watchers, Raising Intimidation Worries

HOUSTON – Der rote Punkt eines Laserpointers umkreiste die Innenstadt von Houston auf einer Karte während eines virtuellen Trainings von Wahlbeobachtern durch die Harris County Republican Party. Es wurden dicht besiedelte, hauptsächlich schwarze, lateinamerikanische und asiatische Viertel hervorgehoben.

“Hier findet der Betrug statt”, sagte ein republikanischer Beamter des Landkreises fälschlicherweise in einem durchgesickerten Video des Trainings, das im März stattfand. Als Vorsitzender des Bezirks in den nordöstlichen, größtenteils weißen Vororten von Houston sagte er, er habe versucht, Menschen aus seiner Region zu rekrutieren, “um das Vertrauen und den Mut zu haben”, bei den bevorstehenden Wahlen als Wahlbeobachter in den eingekreisten Gebieten zu fungieren.

Eine Frage in der unteren Ecke der Folie zeigte an, wie viele Wahlbeobachter die Partei mobilisieren wollte: „Können wir eine 10K Election Integrity Brigade bauen?“

Während republikanische Gesetzgeber in großen Schlachtfeldstaaten versuchen, die Abstimmung durch ein Netz neuer Wahlgesetze schwieriger und verwirrender zu gestalten, unternehmen sie gleichzeitig einen konzertierten gesetzgeberischen Vorstoß, um mehr Autonomie und Zugang zu Partisanen-Wahlbeobachtern zu gewähren – Bürgern, die durch einen Wahlkampf oder eine Partei geschult wurden und von örtlichen Wahlbeamten ermächtigt, den Wahlprozess zu beobachten.

Diese Bemühungen haben Wahlbeamte und Wahlrechtsaktivisten gleichermaßen alarmiert: Es gibt eine lange Geschichte, in der Wahlbeobachter eingesetzt werden, um Wähler einzuschüchtern und Wahlhelfer zu belästigen, häufig auf eine Weise, die auf demokratisch geprägte Farbgemeinschaften abzielt und Ängste schürt, die den Gesamteffekt haben Wählerunterdrückung. Während der Wahlen im Jahr 2020 förderte der Wahlkampf von Präsident Donald J. Trump wiederholt seine „Armee“ von Wahlbeobachtern, als er öffentlich Anhänger anflehte, sich in stark schwarze und lateinamerikanische Städte zu wagen und nach Wahlbetrug zu suchen.

Die Republikaner haben wenig Beweise dafür vorgelegt, dass Wahlbeobachter einen erweiterten Zugang und mehr Autonomie benötigen. Wie bei anderen Wahländerungen – einschließlich reduzierter vorzeitiger Abstimmungen, strengeren Anforderungen an Briefwahl und Beschränkungen für Dropboxen – haben sie ihre Argumentation auf Argumente gestützt, dass ihre Wähler sicherere Wahlen wünschen. Dieser Wunsch entstand größtenteils aus Mr. Trumps wiederholten Lügen über den letztjährigen Präsidentschaftswettbewerb, der Beschwerden über unzureichenden Zugang zu Wahlbeobachtern beinhaltete.

Angesichts der Streitigkeiten über die Regeln für die Stimmabgabe droht der Ansturm, Wahlbeobachter zu befähigen, weitere Spannungen in die Wahlen zu bringen.

Sowohl parteipolitische als auch unparteiische Wahlbeobachtungen sind seit Jahren ein wichtiger Bestandteil der amerikanischen Wahlen, und Republikaner und Demokraten haben routinemäßig geschulte Beobachter zu den Wahlen geschickt, um den Prozess zu überwachen und über etwaige Sorgen zu berichten. In den letzten Jahrzehnten haben Gesetze oft dazu beigetragen, aggressives Verhalten in Schach zu halten, Wahlbeobachter daran zu hindern, Wählern oder Wahlbeamten zu nahe zu kommen, und eine relativ niedrige Schwelle für die Ausweisung von Personen beizubehalten, die sich schlecht benehmen.

Aber jetzt haben republikanische Gesetzgeber in 20 Staaten mindestens 40 Gesetzentwürfe eingeführt, die die Befugnisse von Wahlbeobachtern erweitern würden, und 12 dieser Gesetzentwürfe in sechs Bundesstaaten werden laut dem Brennan Center for Justice derzeit gesetzlich verabschiedet.

In Texas treibt die von den Republikanern kontrollierte Gesetzgebung Gesetze voran, die es ihnen ermöglichen würden, Wähler, die Unterstützung erhalten, zu fotografieren und auf Video aufzuzeichnen, und es Wahlbeamten äußerst schwer machen, die Entfernung von Wahlbeobachtern anzuordnen.

Die Videoaufzeichnungsmaßnahme hat besonders Stimmrechtsgruppen alarmiert, die argumentieren, dass dies zur unerwünschten Identifizierung eines Wählers in einem in sozialen Medien veröffentlichten Video führen oder die Verwendung isolierter Vorfälle durch Partisanen-Nachrichtenagenturen zur Erstellung einer weit verbreiteten Erzählung ermöglichen könnte.

“Wenn Sie zum Beispiel eine Situation haben, in der Menschen, die Wahlhelfer sind, nicht in der Lage sind, jemanden bei den Wahlen, der störend ist, oder jemanden bei den Wahlen, der die Wähler einschüchtert, rauszuwerfen, ist dies im Wesentlichen eine Ermöglichung der Einschüchterung der Wähler”, sagte er Jon Greenbaum, Chefanwalt des überparteilichen Anwaltsausschusses für Bürgerrechte.

Die Republikaner waren in den letzten Jahren zunehmend offen für ihre Absicht, Legionen von Anhängern aufzustellen, um die Umfragen zu überwachen. In Anlehnung an Herrn Trump haben sie häufig die Beobachtungsrolle in militaristischen Tönen umrahmt und ihre Argumente für ihre Notwendigkeit durch falsche Behauptungen über weit verbreiteten Betrug verstärkt. Noch vor drei Jahren hoben die Gerichte ein Zustimmungsdekret auf, das das Republikanische Nationalkomitee seit mehr als drei Jahrzehnten daran gehindert hatte, eine aktive Rolle bei der Beobachtung von Umfragen zu übernehmen. 2020 sprang der Ausschuss wieder in die Praxis ein.

In Florida haben die Republikaner in der staatlichen Gesetzgebung am Donnerstag ein neues Wahlgesetz verabschiedet, das eine Bestimmung enthält, die es einem Wahlbeobachter pro Kandidat auf dem Stimmzettel während der Stimmabgabe erlaubt. Die Maßnahme birgt das Potenzial, Wahlbeamte erheblich zu überfüllen. Die Gesetzesvorlage sieht auch keine Entfernung vor, die Wahlbeobachter von Wahlhelfern einhalten müssen.

In Michigan würde ein GOP-Gesetz den Herausforderern ermöglichen, nahe genug zu sitzen, um Wahlbücher, Tabulatoren und andere Wahlunterlagen zu lesen, und sie würden die Wahlberechtigung eines Wählers in Frage stellen, wenn sie „einen guten Grund“ hätten.

Das Bestreben der Republikaner, Wahlbeobachter zu befähigen, trägt zu den zunehmenden Beweisen bei, dass ein Großteil der Partei die Wahlen im Jahr 2020 weiterhin aus der gleichen Perspektive betrachtet wie Herr Trump, der wiederholt argumentiert hat, dass seine Verluste in Schlüsselstaaten auf Betrug zurückzuführen sein müssen.

“Es scheint, als ob das Hauptziel dieser Gesetze darin besteht, die große Lüge aufrechtzuerhalten”, sagte Dale Ho, der Direktor des Stimmrechtsprojekts an der ACLU Wahlen und Leute sagen: “Nun, das wird nicht erkannt”, sagen die Lieferanten dieser Lügen: “Das liegt daran, dass wir nicht beobachten konnten.”

Nach den Wahlen im vergangenen Jahr führten Beschwerden darüber, dass Wahlbeobachter nicht genügend Zugang erhalten hatten oder dass ihre Anschuldigungen wegen nicht ordnungsgemäß abgegebener Stimmzettel ignoriert wurden, zu zahlreichen Klagen, die von der Trump-Kampagne und ihren republikanischen Verbündeten eingereicht wurden und fast alle scheiterten.

In Texas erinnerte das durchgesickerte Video der Ausbildung der Republikanischen Partei von Harris County, das von der Stimmrechtsgruppe Common Cause veröffentlicht wurde, an eine ähnliche Episode aus den Zwischenwahlen 2010.

In diesem Jahr sandte eine mit der Tea Party verbundene Gruppe in Houston, bekannt als King Street Patriots, Wahlbeobachter zu Wahllokalen in der Innenstadt. Die Flut der meist weißen Beobachter in die schwarzen Viertel verursachte Reibereien und tauchte nicht allzu weit entfernte Erinnerungen wieder auf, als rassistische Einschüchterungen bei den Wahlen im Süden an der Tagesordnung waren.

Die King Street Patriots würden sich schließlich zu True the Vote entwickeln, einer der größten nationalen Organisationen, die jetzt mehr Abstimmungsbeschränkungen anstreben. Letztes Jahr schloss sich True the Vote mehreren Gerichtsverfahren an, in denen Betrug bei den Wahlen behauptet wurde (alle gescheitert), und führte landesweite Bemühungen an, mehr Wahlbeobachter zu rekrutieren.

Der Zugang für Wahlbeobachter wird von den Republikanern in Texas als heilig angesehen. In der Legislatur nannten sie die Schwierigkeit, Beobachter für die Durchfahrtsabstimmung und die 24-Stunden-Abstimmung zu finden, als einen ihrer Gründe für den Vorschlag, solche Abstimmungsmethoden zu verbieten.

“Beide Parteien wollen Wahlbeobachter haben, müssen Wahlbeobachter anwesend sein”, sagte der Republikaner Bryan Hughes, ein Republikaner, der die Version des Gesetzentwurfs der Kammer gesponsert hat, in einem Interview im vergangenen Monat. “Das schützt alle.”

Während die antagonistische Sprache der Trump-Kampagne über ihre Wahlbeobachter bereits im November ein Brennpunkt war, befürchten Demokraten und Stimmrechtsgruppen, dass lockere Regeln zu mehr Berichten über aggressives Verhalten führen werden.

Im Jahr 2020 gab es nach Angaben der New York Times mindestens 44 Berichte über unangemessenes Verhalten von Wahlbeobachtern in Harris County.

An einem Wahllokal am Stadtrand von Houston berichtete Cindy Wilson, die verantwortliche unparteiische Wahlbeamtin, von zwei aggressiven Wahlbeobachtern, von denen sie sagte, sie hätten die Wähler gestört und das Personal wiederholt herausgefordert.

“Zwei Wahlbeobachter standen in der Nähe der schwarzen Wähler (weniger als einen Meter entfernt) und beschäftigten sich mit dem, was ich als einschüchterndes Verhalten bezeichne”, schrieb Frau Wilson in einer E-Mail an den Angestellten von Harris County, die The Times durch offene Aufzeichnungen erhalten hatte Anfrage.

Frau Wilson sagte, sie sei sich nicht sicher, welche Kampagne oder Partei die Beobachter vertraten.

Natürlich verliefen viele Interaktionen mit Wahlhelfern reibungslos. Merrilee C. Peterson, eine Wahlbeobachterin für einen lokalen republikanischen Kandidaten, arbeitete an einem anderen Ort, der NRG Arena, und berichtete über keine nennenswerten Spannungen.

“Wir hatten immer noch einige Probleme, nicht zu glauben, dass wir nah genug heran dürfen, um zu sehen”, sagte sie. “Aber als die kleinen Probleme gelöst waren, haben wir ehrlich gesagt sehr gut mit den Wahlhelfern zusammengearbeitet.”

In Florida war das Gedränge das Hauptanliegen der Wahlbeamten.

Mark Earley, der Vizepräsident der Florida Supervisors of Elections, sagte vor den Senatoren des Bundesstaates aus, dass “wir als Verband sehr besorgt sind” über die Anzahl der Wahlbeobachter, die nun den Prozess der Vervielfältigung des beschädigten Wählers beobachten dürfen oder falsch gekennzeichneter Stimmzettel. Er sagte, es stelle “sehr schwerwiegende Sicherheitsrisiken” dar.

Herr Earley wurde von mindestens einem Republikaner, dem Senator Jeff Brandes, unterstützt, der die Bereitstellung von Wahlbeobachtern für unnötig und gefährlich hielt.

“Ich denke nicht, dass wir Riser in der Aufsicht von Wahlbüros oder Bars installieren müssen, an denen sie kopfüber hängen können, um einen transparenten Prozess zu gewährleisten”, sagte Brandes.

Aber vielleicht hatte kein anderer Staat einen Konflikt mit Wahlbeobachtern, die in Kabelnachrichten ausbrachen, wie Michigan. Am Wahltag und übermorgen im November wurden republikanische Wahlbeobachter im TCF Center in Detroit, wo Briefwahlstimmen gezählt wurden, zunehmend störender, als klar wurde, dass Herr Trump im Staat verlor.

Es begann mit einer Ansammlung republikanischer Beobachter gegen Mittag des 4. November, laut eidesstattlichen Erklärungen von demokratischen Wahlbeobachtern, unparteiischen Beobachtern und Wahlbeamten.

Bald darauf “fingen die Republikaner an, sich im Raum zu bewegen”, schrieb Dan McKernan, ein Wahlhelfer.

Dann verstärkten sie ihre Einwände und beschuldigten die Arbeiter, falsche Geburtsjahre eingegeben oder Stimmzettel zurückdatiert zu haben. In einigen Fällen reichten die Wahlbeobachter pauschale Ansprüche wegen Fehlverhaltens ein.

“Das Verhalten im Raum änderte sich am Nachmittag dramatisch: Die Wut der republikanischen Herausforderer im Raum war nichts, was ich jemals in meinem Leben erlebt hatte”, schrieb Anjanette Davenport Hatter, eine andere Wahlhelferin.

Herr McKernan schrieb: „Die Republikaner forderten an den beiden Tischen, die ich sehen konnte, alles heraus. Wenn der Stimmzettel geöffnet wurde, sagten sie, sie könnten ihn nicht klar sehen. Als der nächste Umschlag geöffnet wurde, reichten sie dieselbe Beschwerde ein. Sie haben ohne guten Grund gegen jeden einzelnen Schritt auf der ganzen Linie Einwände erhoben. “

Das Chaos bildete eine Grundlage für die Beamten in Michigan, um zu debattieren, ob die Ergebnisse bescheinigt werden sollten, aber ein State Board tat dies in diesem Monat.

Jetzt schlägt die von den Republikanern kontrollierte Legislatur in Michigan vor, unparteiische Beobachter daran zu hindern, als Wahlbeobachter zu fungieren, und dies nur parteipolitischen Herausforderern zu erlauben.

Während im vergangenen Jahr weit verbreitete Berichte über Einschüchterungen nie veröffentlicht wurden, sagen Stimmrechtsgruppen, dass die Atmosphäre nach den Wahlen eine gefährliche Verschiebung der amerikanischen Wahlen darstellt.

“Im Allgemeinen ist das seit Jahrzehnten nicht mehr so, obwohl es eine lange und geschichtsträchtige Geschichte gibt”, sagte Michael Waldman, Rechtsexperte am Brennan Center. Aggressive Beobachter von Partisanenumfragen seien „ein langjähriges Hindernis für die Stimmabgabe in den Vereinigten Staaten, und es sei auch weitgehend gelöst worden. Und das könnte es zurückbringen. “

Categories
Politics

Biden Seeks Shift in How the Nation Serves Its Folks

Biden Seeks Shift in How the Nation Serves Its People

Having struggled to respond to a surge in migrants on the southwest border since taking office, the president promoted his planned overhaul of the immigration system and spoke about his goals to curb climate change by cutting carbon emissions in half over the next decade.

While Mr Biden endorsed his decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by September 11 after nearly 20 years of war, he said little new about how he would approach the challenges of increasingly antagonistic opponents such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea than his intention to repeat, drawing a hard line if necessary, and looking for collaboration where possible.

But as striking as anything else in the speech was Mr. Biden’s vision of a profound lynchpin in America’s eternal debate about the role of government in society. Four decades after President Ronald Reagan declared that government was the problem, not the solution, Mr Biden wanted to turn that thesis on its head and use the state as a catalyst for reshaping the country and restoring the balance between the richest and the rich strengthen the rest.

The American Families Plan, as he called his latest $ 1.8 trillion proposal, would follow the American Rescue Plan, a $ 1.9 trillion spending package on pandemic relief and economic incentives that he already has and the American Jobs Plan, a $ 2.3 trillion program for infrastructure, home health care, and other priorities that is outstanding.

The family plan includes $ 1 trillion in new spending and $ 800 billion in tax credits. It would fund the universal preschool garden for all 3- and 4-year-olds, a federal paid family and sick leave program, efforts to make childcare more affordable, a free community college for all, aid to students at colleges that historically serve non-white communities, and expanded subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

The plan would also extend key tax breaks that are included as temporary measures in the coronavirus relief package and benefit low- and middle-income workers and families, including the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, and the child and dependent care tax credit.

To pay for this, the president proposed raising the marginal tax rate for the top 1 percent of American income earners from 37 percent to 39.6 percent. It would also increase capital gains and dividend tax rates for those who earn more than $ 1 million a year. And he would remove a provision in the tax code that reduces capital gains on some inherited assets, such as vacation homes, that largely benefit the rich.