It’s the Monday edition of Progressives Everywhere and there’s all kinds of chaos happening!
If you didn’t get a chance to read yesterday’s big newsletter (how dare you!), you should definitely check it out — I interviewed a really impressive candidate in Pennsylvania who is running against that lunatic legislator who was diagnosed with COVID-19 and didn’t tell Democrats for an entire week. It's the dream scenario for me: awesome and inspiring progressive candidate in a tight race against a Republican sociopath.
Atlanta Mayor tests positive for COVID-19
Keisha Lance Bottoms, a rising star (and mainstream Democrat) who earned strong reviews for her handling of the anti-police murder protests in Atlanta, announced this evening that she has coronavirus.
You can’t exactly quarantine yourself when you’re running a big city, but Bottoms took as many precautions as she could, including wearing a mask.
“It leaves me for a loss of words because I think it really speaks to how contagious this virus is,” she told MSNBC. “And we've taken all of the precautions that you can possibly take ... I have no idea where and when we were exposed.”
There were over 2,000 new cases of COVID-19 reported in Georgia on Monday and the state is now approaching the 100,000 case milestone. Hospitalizations in Georgia continued to rise over the weekend and in response, Gov. Brian Kemp is promoting some weaksauce campaign that is as stupid as it sounds:
Kemp, after flying around the state last week to encourage people to voluntarily wear a mask, announced a new voluntary program called the Georgia Safety Promise. The Republican governor says businesses can pledge that they are committed to hand washing, social distancing, mask wearing and surface cleaning. In exchange, state government will provide businesses with “a full digital toolkit of resources to share your commitment” including signs and social media posts.
Experts in the story suggest that simply asking people to voluntarily wear masks is destined to fail and infect more people. Presumably, Kemp sees it as an opportunity to remove even more Georgians from the voting rolls without those troublesome lawsuits over disenfranchisement.
North Carolina protest ban overturned
On June 25th, Graham Mayor Jerry Peterman, who is probably a racist and at the very least hates the Constitution, issued an emergency ordinance that temporarily eliminated protests in the city. Already, activists were required to obtain a permit to assemble in the city at least 24 hours before any planned protests, and with the ordinance, the mayor declared that the city would not be granting any permits to protestors for an indefinite amount of time. Not only that, but anyone caught protesting in public would be subject to arrest.
Why would he do such a thing, you ask? Well, there were some people protesting a Confederate monument outside the county courthouse, and Peterman just couldn’t have that. The statue was just too historic, having been built 50 years after the Civil War, dedicated by a KKK leader, and built on the spot of a KKK riot that killed the city’s first black councilman. Stuff we really need to commemorate, you know?
The ordinance was a blatant violation of the First Amendment, which guarantees the "right of the people peaceably to assemble,” and the ACLU immediately reacted, demanding that the order be rescinded. Tensions were ratcheted up even higher after the police arrested a protestor on the 27th:
Following the imposition of the protest ban, Matthew Edwards of Burlington held a sign reading “Black Lives Matter” next to the Confederate monument on June 27. Photographer Tony Crider reported that Graham police grabbed Edwards’ sign and arrested him, while ordering everyone else including media, to leave. Two police officers forced Edwards to the ground as they placed him under arrest. He faces misdemeanor charges of resisting a public officer and fail to disperse on command.
Other protesters asked why monument supporters were allowed to display the Confederate and Gadsden flags in their truck bed during the state of emergency while antiracists were arrested or threatened with arrest for holding signs.
Huh, I wonder why!
Peterman lifted the state of emergency on July 1st, at which point more than 50 Black Lives Matter protestors gathered at the courthouse. A day later, the ACLU sued the town over the various ordinances Peterman has issued — he also instituted a curfew and gave the town’s police chief the power to deny permits for almost any reason. On Monday, a federal judge issued a restraining order that suspends the rule for two weeks and set a hearing for July 20th.
Texans don’t wanna die
Texas surpassed 200,000 cases of COVID-19 on Monday, and let me tell you, the people down there in the Lone Star State are getting mighty steamed about the government’s inability to control the virus. In a poll that was conducted in late June and released on Monday, a clear majority of Texas say that they’re worried about the coronavirus and are willing to shut the state down again to get it under control.
This is a victory for sane people everywhere. Hopefully Texas Gov. Greg Abbott uses it to justify further measures to contain the virus.
Here are two very instructive graphs, via the Texas Tribune.
OK, ready to be disturbed?
Other relevant numbers:
The share of Texans who say that efforts to deal with the pandemic in Texas are going badly increased sharply between April and June, from 29% to 51%, while those who said it was going well fell from 66% to 29%.
The share reporting being “extremely” or “very” concerned about either themselves or family members contracting the virus decreased from 54% to 48%, while those who reported being “not very” or “not at all” concerned increased from 17% to 27%.
The share of Texans who reported that they were only leaving their residence when they “absolutely” had to saw a dramatic decrease from 63% in April to 37% in June, with those who reported “living normally, coming and going as usual” more than doubling from 9% to 19%.
That middle one is a head-scratcher!
Quibis
That name is available, right?
As I noted last week, New York rolled back part of its bail reform law in April, right at the height of the city’s struggle with the coronavirus pandemic, and let the rollback go into effect on July 2nd. A new study puts numbers to just how terribly New York treats its prisoners, and given the fact that NYC jails have been even bigger death traps than usual during the pandemic, allowing the rollback to be implemented right now is a flat-out murderous.
Speaking of death traps, Florida is looking to kill as many of its children and teachers as possible, it seems.
Major League Baseball released the schedule for its shortened season today, but I still can’t fathom how they’re going to get a full season in. Players are dropping out one by one, including some big names. I’m a diehard Mets fan (as in politics, I pick the team that constantly defeats itself) and would love to watch games every night, but it’s hard for me to feel OK about the risk so many people are taking in order to make it happen.
Like everything else in Washington, the PPP turned out to be a way to enrich the already rich and powerful!
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