How Florida’s massive Covid-19 spike got so bad

“It’s no mystery what’s happening in Florida right now — or why.

The state is experiencing its worst surge of the pandemic. Last week, it was averaging nearly 25,000 new cases every day. The previous high, in January, was about 18,000. More than 17,000 Floridians are hospitalized with Covid-19, another record; around 230 people are dying every day. Florida leads all states in the number of hospitalizations and deaths per capita.”

“In some ways, what’s happening in Florida right now is a microcosm of the current surge across America: a middling vaccination rate has collided with a more contagious version of the virus. And it’s doing so in a state where political leaders continue to insist people should act as if the pandemic is over — even as more people are dying every day than any point in the past year.”

Biden’s globe-spanning foreign policy problems awaken his GOP opponents

““Ted Cruz is making it very hard on him,” Murphy said bluntly of the Texas Republican senator. “Ted Cruz is holding up every single State Department nominee right now, so the Republican strategy is to try to make it as hard as possible for President Biden to manage crises around the world.”

Cruz, who is widely considered a possible candidate in the next presidential cycle, has held up Biden’s nominees to key national-security positions. He says it’s an effort to encourage the administration to fully implement congressionally mandated sanctions for the controversial Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline known as Nord Stream II.”

“Biden has declined to fully impose those sanctions — which could have crippled the pipeline — as the German government pushes for its completion. The president has said he wants to patch up U.S. alliances with European allies like Germany, which suffered under Trump.”

Why a Debt Relief Program for Farmers Matters for Racial Equity in America

“In March, when Congress passed its $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus package, the legislation included a $4 billion loan forgiveness program targeted at Black and other minority farmers. Based on strong evidence that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had perennially discriminated against certain groups, placing them at much higher risk of foreclosure than white farmers, the program offered a one-time emergency payout to alleviate debt for what it called “socially disadvantaged” farmers.

The policy represented a worthy and long-overdue attempt to redress historic and ongoing discrimination by USDA. But now the program is under legal siege.

Over the past few months, white farmers and ranchers have filed about a dozen lawsuits against USDA, alleging that they were victims of racial discrimination because, unlike several minority groups, white people did not automatically qualify for the emergency debt relief. While the lawsuits have been filed in multiple states, a class action has been certified in a case in Texas, where five farmers sued with backing from Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s former adviser. To the chagrin of Black and other minority farmers long awaiting relief, several federal courts have issued temporary injunctions blocking payments while these cases are decided.

Now, the Biden administration must decide whether to soldier on in court to defend the program or seek legislative fixes to inoculate it from legal challenges.”

“In the near term, the results of the white farmers’ lawsuits could have a significant impact on farmers of color across the country. In particular, without relief payments that USDA was supposed to begin distributing this summer, some Black-owned farms inevitably will collapse”

‘This Is Actually Happening’

“The latest domino to fall to the Taliban was the northern commercial hub of Mazar-e-Sharif. It was becoming clear that Kabul was next. Seasoned military officers expressed disbelief that the Afghan forces appeared ready to give up their capital city without a fight.

“Email was blowing up left and right [with people saying] ‘Wow, this is actually happening right now,’” a defense official said. “This thing just fell apart over the weekend.”

Pentagon officials were realizing far too late that the Taliban had waged an effective influence campaign in addition to the physical one, taking advantage of tribal dynamics to build ties with village elders and others who played key roles in the group’s mostly bloodless march across the country.

At the same time, the U.S. military had fewer than 2,500 troops left — not enough to understand just how fast the Afghan national army’s morale and cohesion was crumbling.”

“Biden’s cabinet members and their deputies had held some three-dozen “scenario planning” meetings following the president’s April announcement that U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11.

They covered everything from how to secure the U.S. Embassy and handle Afghan refugees to how to best position the U.S. military in the region in case things spun out of control. Many more sessions were held at the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command in Tampa, the State Department, and other agencies.

But it still wasn’t enough to prepare for the utter collapse, in a matter of days, of America’s two-decade, $2 trillion effort designed to prop up the Afghan government. Biden had insisted the Afghan military would fight; it largely hadn’t. Blinken had scoffed at the notion that Kabul would fall over a weekend; and yet it did. The “Saigon moment” Biden feared had arrived.”

Why some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

“My sense is that social media in particular — as well as a broader range of internet technologies, including algorithmically driven search and click-based advertising — have changed the way that people get information and form opinions about the world.

And they seem to have done so in a manner that makes people particularly vulnerable to the spread of misinformation and disinformation.”

“What we’re concerned about is the fact that this information ecosystem has developed to optimize something orthogonal to things that we think are extremely important, like being concerned about the veracity of information or the effect of information on human well-being, on democracy, on health, on the ecosystem.”

“The printing press came out and upended history. We’re still recovering from the capacity that the printing press gave to Martin Luther. The printing press radically changed the political landscape in Europe. And, you know, depending on whose histories you go by, you had decades if not centuries of war [after it was introduced].”

“Housing discrimination is alive and well”: Watchdog group sues 36 realtors and landlords in New York

““When real estate companies say no to Section 8 tenants, what they’re really saying is you can’t work here, you can’t get food here, and your child can’t go to school here,” Carr said. “Housing discrimination doesn’t just impact one thing — it impacts literally everything.””

The Supreme Court leaves the Voting Rights Act alive — but only barely

“Brnovich upholds both Arizona laws — a provision that disenfranchises voters for casting a ballot in the wrong precinct, and another that prevents most third parties from delivering another voter’s absentee ballot to a polling place. But Alito’s opinion most likely preserves civil rights plaintiffs’ ability to challenge many of the most odious provisions of the voter suppression laws currently being pushed by Republican state lawmakers in other states.”

“the opinion is limited in scope. Brnovich does not apply to all Voting Rights Act cases, or even to all cases involving the law’s “results test” — the specific provision of the Voting Rights Act at issue in the case. Rather, the opinion limits its analysis to “cases involving neutral time, place, and manner rules” governing elections. Thus, while Brnovich does shrink the Voting Rights Act considerably, it primarily does so in this limited context.”

“Alito lays out five factors that govern future “time, place and manner” lawsuits (more on this five-factor test below). One of the practical upshots of these five new factors is that states will largely be free to enact voting rules that were common in 1982, when a key amendment to the Voting Rights Act became law. But novel restrictions on the right to vote are less likely to survive judicial scrutiny.”

“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is the seminal law that broke the back of Jim Crow, along with the previous year’s Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is arguably the most successful civil rights law in American history, and it was this nation’s first serious legislative attempt since Reconstruction to build a pluralistic democracy rooted in the principle of racial equality.”

“Under a 1982 amendment to the law, the Voting Rights Act has three prongs, but the Supreme Court has either deactivated or severely weakened two of these prongs. The first is “preclearance,” which required states with a history of racist voting practices to “preclear” any new voting practices with officials in Washington, DC — in order to ensure that those practices did not discriminate on the basis of race.
The Supreme Court gutted preclearance in Shelby County v. Holder (2013).

The second prong of the Voting Rights Act is known as the “intent test,” and it prohibits state voting practices enacted with racist intent. But, in Abbott v. Perez (2018), the Supreme Court held that lawmakers enjoy such a high presumption of racial innocence that it is nearly impossible to prove invidious intent, except in the most egregious cases.

That leaves the third prong of the law, known as the “results test,” which derives from the Voting Rights Act’s language forbidding a state election practice that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right … to vote on account of race or color.””

“Alito’s opinion is vague, and it leaves as many questions open as it answers. When courts are faced with “time, place, and manner” cases under the Voting Rights Act, he writes, “any circumstance that has a logical bearing on whether voting is ‘equally open’ and affords equal ‘opportunity’ may be considered.” Nevertheless, he also provides a non-exhaustive list of five factors that “should be mentioned.””

“One impact of this decision, in other words, is that many laws that have a disparate impact on voters of color will be upheld — though it is not yet clear just how severe a law’s impact on minority voters must be before the courts will intervene.”

“The upshot of Brnovich, in other words, is that it gives states tremendous power to roll back expansions of voting rights such as early voting and expanded access to absentee ballots, although that power may be limited if such restrictions are imposed in ways that clearly target voters of color.”

States gripped by Delta variant face case surge with fewer health workers

“Hospitals and lawmakers in states gripped by the Delta variant are offering nurses tens of thousands of dollars in signing bonuses, rewriting job descriptions so paramedics can care for patients and pleading for federal help to beef up their crisis-fatigued health care workforces.

The alarming spread of new cases is draining the pool of available health workers in ways not seen since the pandemic’s winter peak, forcing officials to improvise and tear up rules dictating who cares for whom. Governors and hospital directors warn that the staffing crisis is so acute that patients, whether suffering from Covid-19, a heart attack or the effects of a car accident, can no longer expect the level of care that might have been available six weeks ago.”

” Hospitals can respond by adding beds and ordering more protective gear. But they’re stuck fighting over the same finite pool of nurses, lab techs, nurse assistants and front desk workers, whose ranks have already been depleted by retirements and resignations. The Delta variant’s transmissibility — the U.S. is averaging 140,000 cases per day, up from 12,000 six weeks ago — is leaving few regions untouched, making it harder to call for reinforcements.”

“Some nurses say hospitals facing surges are paying more to recruit new nurses, or hire temps from a staffing agency, than to retain the current staff. Some new hires can receive $20,000 signing bonuses while current staff get a $500 retention bonus, said Jamie Lucas, the executive director of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, which is bargaining with multiple hospitals for bigger retention bonuses.”

3 winners and 3 losers from the just-completed Supreme Court term

“Roberts has spent much of his career crusading against voting rights, specifically the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark civil rights law that ended Jim Crow practices disenfranchising Black voters and prohibiting race discrimination of all kinds in elections.

As a young Justice Department lawyer, Roberts fought unsuccessfully to convince President Ronald Reagan to veto an important 1982 amendment to the law, which overturned a previous Supreme Court decision making it very difficult to win Voting Rights Act lawsuits. As a justice, Roberts wrote the Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which neutralized much of the law. He also joined two other opinions severely weakening the rest of the law — the latter of which, Brnovich v. DNC, was decided on the last day of this term.

The practical impact of this trilogy is that the Voting Rights Act is barely alive. Under Brnovich, for example, states are likely to have carte blanche to roll back early voting and absentee voting, as well as other, similar innovations that became common in the last four decades. And most challenges to the latest wave of Republican voter suppression laws are likely to fail.”

“in a term gravid with extraordinarily aggressive arguments made by right-wing lawyers, conservatives and Republicans had an exceptionally good run. They convinced the Court to hobble the Voting Rights Act, to open a new line of attack on donor disclosure laws, to expand property rights, to attack unions, and to rewrite the rules governing when religious objectors are exempt from the law.

And that’s after just one term with a 6-3 Court. Next term, the Court will hear a case that could overrule Roe v. Wade.”