Tag: hit&run

Eight of the top 10 hotspots for the COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are connected to jails and prisons, according to data from The New York Times.

The largest COVID-19 cluster in the country is at Marion Correctional Institution in Marion, Ohio, where there are 2,197 infected inmates—more than 80 percent of the prison’s population.

“As recently as yesterday, we have inmates in here that can’t even walk and breathe because of the virus,” Austin Cooper, an inmate at the prison, told local news outlet ABC News 5. “Medical just keeps sending them back out here to the camp, talking about they can’t do nothing for them.”

Other clusters include Lakeland Correctional Facility in Michigan, where more than 600 inmates have tested positive; the Cook County Jail in Illinois, which is nearing 1,000 positive cases; and Pickaway Correctional Institution in Ohio—the second-largest COVID-19 cluster in the country with 1,629 cases.

The only two hotspots on the top 10 list that aren’t prisons or jails are a pork processing plant in South Dakota and the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier.

The numbers and dire news stories underscore what civil liberties groups and correctional officer unions have been trying to warn local, state, and federal agencies about since COVID-19 reached the country: that jails and prisons were woefully unprepared to handle an epidemic, and that those institutions would inevitably spread the virus into nearby communities unless drastic measures were taken.

WBUR reported Tuesday that COVID-19 has infected nearly 15,000 inmates and corrections staff across the country and killed more than 130.

More worryingly, the infection numbers above are likely undercounts because of the lack of widespread testing in federal, state, and local lockups.

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released new epidemiological models estimating that, unless jail populations are dramatically reduced, COVID-19 could kill 100,000 more people than current projections, even with social distancing protocols.

“We are likely facing massive loss of life—both in jails and in communities around the country—if dramatic steps aren’t taken to reduce the incarcerated population in this country,” Udi Ofer, director of the ACLU’s Justice Division, said in a press release. “Mass incarceration was a major public health crisis before the outbreak of COVID-19, but this pandemic has pushed it past the breaking point. The revolving doors of jails make them a tinderbox for COVID-19 spread within our communities. This data is a wakeup call as to the true cost of 50 years of mass incarceration and its impact on communities across the nation, disproportionately communities of color.”

Many district attorney’s offices, jails, and prisons took unprecedented steps to halt the flow of more people into the criminal justice system and get some at-risk inmates out of harm’s way, but it still hasn’t been enough to stop the virus from tearing through many facilities.

In the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), 1,314 inmates and 335 staff have tested positive for the virus. Federal Medical Center Fort Worth, a federal prison in Texas, announced on Monday that 234 inmates had tested positive, following expanded testing.

“We live shoulder to shoulder,” Coty Franks, an FMC Fort Worth inmate, told NBC DFW. “Literally the only time I’m not standing or sitting next to someone is in the shower.”

As Reason reported, the BOP announced the first female federal inmate died Tuesday. She was 30 years old and delivered a child via an emergency cesarean section while ventilated.

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A New York Times analysis of mortality data from seven states concludes that the “coronavirus death toll” is “far higher than reported.” During the five weeks from March 8 through April 11, the Times found, there were nearly 50 percent more deaths in those states than the average for the same period in the last five years. Comparing those excess deaths to the number of COVID-19 deaths reported in each state, the analysis finds a total difference of 9,000, which is about 50 percent higher than the official tallies suggest.

Like an earlier Times analysis of excess deaths in 11 countries, these calculations call attention to fatalities associated with the COVID-19 epidemic that do not show up in the provisional numbers reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those omitted fatalities include not just overlooked deaths caused by COVID-19 (e.g., those involving people who died at home and were never tested) but deaths from other causes that might have been prevented in the absence of the epidemic.

The latter category could include people who did not get adequate treatment because hospitals were flooded by COVID-19 cases, people who avoided hospitals because they were afraid of catching the disease, and people who died because of lockdown-related bans on “elective” surgeries. As former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey noted in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, those prohibited surgeries have included potentially lifesaving procedures such as diagnostic biopsies and treatments for cancer and heart disease.

Looking at excess deaths therefore helps illuminate the full impact of the epidemic, which goes beyond deaths directly caused by COVID-19. It also includes deaths due to strained health care systems in places such as New York and New Jersey, deaths caused by fear of the disease (which may have led people to eschew medical care), and even deaths caused by policies aimed at curtailing the epidemic.

At the same time, equating excess deaths with the “coronavirus death toll” is potentially misleading. While COVID-19 deaths that have been overlooked obviously are relevant in figuring out what percentage of people infected by the virus will be killed by it, deaths that were not actually caused by COVID-19 are not. Four months into this pandemic, the infection fatality rate (IFR) remains unclear. It hinges not just on the true number of deaths (the point emphasized by the Times) but also on the true number of infections, which is bound to be far higher than the number of confirmed cases because testing in the United States so far has been skewed toward people with severe symptoms, who are not representative of people who have been infected.

The ratio of total infections to confirmed cases is a matter of much controversy. Antibody studies in the United States have generated estimates ranging from around 10 times more total infections than confirmed cases in New York to something like 70 times more in Santa Clara County, California (a result that critics of that study view as impossibly high). Furthermore, it seems likely that the ratio, and therefore the IFR, varies from one part of the country to another, depending on local conditions such as age demographics, the prevalence of preexisting medical conditions, testing rates, and the quality and capacity of the health care system.

Still, it seems clear that when it comes to crude case fatality rates (reported deaths as a percentage of confirmed cases), the error in the denominator is much bigger than the error in the numerator. Even if we (inaccurately) attribute all the excess deaths counted by the Times to COVID-19, a death toll that is off by 50 percent affects the IFR calculation much less than a case tally that is off by a factor of 10 (as suggested by antibody tests in New York).

Another question raised by the Times analysis is the extent to which its findings for these seven states (Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York) reflect the experience in other states or the country as a whole. The CDC keeps a weekly tally that compares “deaths from all causes” to expected deaths based on data for the same week in 2017 through 2019. Perhaps coincidentally, all of the states that the Times chose for its analysis had excess deaths in the week ending yesterday. Most states did not.

According to the CDC, for example, California, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington all had fewer deaths in the week ending on April 28 than would be expected based on the 2017–19 average. The same was true, on average, for the United States, which had 6 percent fewer deaths than expected. In the weeks ending on March 28, April 4, and April 11, by contrast, the country as a whole did have excess deaths, ranging from 2 percent to 15 above the 2017–19 average. But those percentages are far lower than what the Times found in the seven states it considered.

Maybe those snapshots are misleading, and maybe the states that are not seeing excess deaths right now will in the future, depending on the stage of their epidemics and the impact of loosening lockdown restrictions. But it sure looks like the Times picked states that would generate impressive excess-death counts—in particular, New York and New Jersey, which together account for more than 70 percent of the gap between official COVID-19 death tolls and excess deaths described by the Times.

The newspaper’s interpretation of these data is questionable in another way. “These increases belie arguments that the virus is only killing people who would have died anyway from other causes,” it says. That formulation is a strawman, since it is obviously not true that everyone who is killed by COVID-19 “would have died anyway” (except in the long term). But since COVID-19 deaths are concentrated among people who are elderly and/or have serious preexisting medical conditions, the extent to which the epidemic will increase excess deaths this year remains unclear.

That point has been raised by experts such as British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, whom no one would accuse of trying to minimize the threat posed by COVID-19. “By the end of the year, what proportion of those people who’ve died from COVID-19 [in the U.K.] would have died anyhow?” Ferguson asked during parliamentary testimony last month. “It might be as much as half to two-thirds of the deaths we’re seeing from COVID-19, because it’s affecting people who are either at the end of their lives or in poor health conditions. So I think these considerations are very valid.”

Since the Times analysis covers just five weeks, it does not address that issue. And even if Ferguson’s estimate is wrong, the distribution of deaths matters. Although some people think broaching the subject is unseemly, inhumane, or uncivilized, the number of life-years lost to COVID-19 is clearly relevant in assessing the costs and benefits of policies aimed at containing it.

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An unintended consequence of states’ emergency closures of restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic is that the truck drivers rushing food, medicine, and masks across the country aren’t able to find a decent meal on the road.

To make these drivers’ lives easier, federal regulators have temporarily eased existing restrictions on food trucks operating at highway rest stops. But that move has faced resistance from truckstop owners and state governments who’ve long opposed any commercialization of rest stops, and who are not keen on peeling back their own protectionist regulations.

Stories of restaurant closures frustrating truckers‘ attempts to grab lunch have been a staple of local media’s coverage during the pandemic. While truck stops remain open, many of the restaurants at those stops are closed; allowing traditional restaurants to offer delivery, carryout, and drive-thru doesn’t help truckers whose rigs are too large for restaurant parking lots and drive-thru windows.

“That access to food, access to bathroom facilities, those are two of the things we heard about very early on in all of this. And it’s still is a concern,” says John Espinoza, president of the Texas Trucking Association (TXTA). “I’m in Austin Texas. All the places I have picked up food, none of the places a truck could get in and out of.”

“Let’s say if you have a Taco Bell that’s only doing drive-thru and trucks can’t fit through there, and they have a policy of not providing service to anyone not in a vehicle, that’s going to be a problem,” Norita Taylor of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association told Reason back in March.

To be eligible for federal highway funding, states are prohibited from allowing commercial activity at Interstate Highway rest stops. In early April, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) announced that it would be waiving this regulation for the duration of the national emergency President Donald Trump declared on March 13.

“Food trucks may provide vital sustenance for interstate commercial truck drivers and others who are critical to the Nation’s continued ability to deliver needed food and relief supplies,” said the FHWA in an April 3 announcement. “Vending machines may not be adequate to provide the necessary sustenance, and in many cases the vending machines may not be regularly stocked at the present time.”

This announcement, while welcomed by many in the trucking industry, still requires states to take action to lift the food truck prohibitions they’d imposed at the behest of federal regulators.

According to the Institute for Justice, 10 states have followed through and lifted their own restrictions on food trucks, including California, Idaho, Arizona, and Arkansas. Louis Campion of the Maryland Motor Truck Association says Maryland had lifted restrictions at rest stops along I-95 as well.

Other states have yet to act, however, and there is already some resistance to federal highway regulators’ move from associations representing truck stops and restaurants.

In early April, a coalition including the National Association of Truck Stop Owners (NATSO) and the National Restaurant Association (NRA) sent a letter to the agency asking that the waiver of enforcement against commercial activity at rest stops not expand beyond food trucks, and that it be swiftly withdrawn at the end of the emergency.

“We hope that FHWA’s non-enforcement directive does not result in foodservice transactions being redirected to food trucks from nearby rest area vending machines or struggling off-highway businesses, but rather that food trucks operate solely at rest areas that are located on stretches of the Interstate where there are no open foodservice operations in close proximity that are available to truck drivers,” reads the coalition’s letter.

NATSO has long been a critic of commercialized rest stops, saying on its website that “interchange businesses cannot compete with commercialized rest areas, which are conveniently located on the highway right-of-way, and would create a de facto monopoly in favor of businesses operated out of rest areas.”

Concerns that allowing food trucks at rest stops would lead to a loss of business for truck stops—particularly now when many are seeing a drop off in business or being forced to close their dining areas—is causing some state departments of transportation (DOTs) to shy away from lifting their own restrictions on food trucks.

Crystal Collins, president of the North Carolina Trucking Association, says there was some discussion about allowing food trucks at rest stops in her state, while potentially limiting their operations to areas with few other food service options.

However, she says there was little interest in this idea at the state’s DOT because of its potential to take business away from established truck stops, and because it would require an act of the legislature. “They don’t want to hinder or take business away from the truck stops that are open,” Collins says.

A spokesperson for the North Carolina DOT wrote in an email that the department “will not pursue allowing food trucks at rest areas because state law prohibits commercial activities inside the right of way.”

Jessica Gandy, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, says that according to her analysis, North Carolina’s DOT could waive food truck restrictions on their own initiative. “It’s fully in the purview of their DOT to do it. They do have the power to waive that ban if they choose to, but also the governor could do it by issuing an executive order,” she says.

In addition to being bad policy, Gandy argues that bans on food truck service could be unconstitutional as well.

“There is a protectionist element. Their concerned that if other economic activities start happening at those rest areas, other nearby businesses, existing businesses will suffer, because customers may prefer to eat at food trucks,” Gandy says. “Restricting consumer choice so a private party can make money is plainly unconstitutional.”

The Institute for Justice has sued local governments over their protectionist food truck restrictions prior to the pandemic. Last week, they sent letters to a number of state DOTs asking them to suspend food truck restrictions at rest stops.

Lifting these restrictions is only part of the battle. Food truck operators and their advocates have said there is still a need for coordination with state DOTs to get temporary permits and secure parking at rest stops.

“Who cares if Ohio opens up spots, if they don’t have any sort of registry, schedule or way to get the information out to drivers. There has to be coordination. No state wants to do that,” Matt Geller of the National Food Truck Association said to Transportation Topics.

Logistical concerns about parking have factored into Texas regulators deliberations on allowing food trucks at rest stops, Espinoza says. The TXTA has been in talks with regulators about opening up rest stops for food service for several weeks now, and he expects some sort of regulatory waiver to be issued within the next week.

That will allow some more choices for drivers.

“What we are talking about is giving the truckers some more choices,” Espinoza says. “the truck driver hasn’t changed what he or she is doing. They’re out there delivering every day anyway. Let’s get these men and women more options.”

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New York City remains one of the United States’ biggest hotbeds of COVID-19 infections and deaths. More than 12,000 deaths have been attributed to the virus in the Big Apple, or about 20 percent of the estimated deaths in the United States so far.

So it’s easy to see why leaders (and citizens) might be very upset about a group of Hasidic Jews violating bans on large gatherings, congregating in public, on the street, in Brooklyn for the funeral of a rabbi who died from COVID-19 complications.

It would take a very insensitive leader, however, to decide to target their anger and frustration at Jews as a collective group, singling them out. And it would be a very stupid and ill-advised response to threaten such people with arrest, given that New York City’s jails are incubators for the coronavirus.

So, ladies and gentlemen, here’s New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio:

My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.

— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) April 29, 2020

The New York Times reports that these Hasidic Jews had gathered Tuesday evening to mourn the death of Rabbi Chaim Mertz. New York Police Department (NYPD) officers were on hand to try to control the flow of crowds and keep people distant from each other, but they didn’t fully succeed. This clip from CBS shows most of the people at the gathering were wearing masks, but they were still frequently standing too close to one another:

De Blasio’s response has been rightfully blasted by members of New York’s Jewish community. First, the obvious: He’s singling out Jews as though their violations of gathering guidelines are somehow special or different from when other groups of people do the same thing. Second, some important context: On this same day, groups of New Yorkers watched the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds soar overhead in a White House-ordered display honoring essential workers. Images posted on social media and shared by news outlets show people gathering in clumps and not engaging in proper social distancing. So de Blasio’s response leaves the impression that it’s wrong for Jews to gather to mourn the death of a religious leader, but totally fine to gather to watch our government masters waste our tax dollars on air shows.

Should de Blasio actually attempt to single out Jews for NYPD enforcement, he potentially runs afoul of religious freedom protections. Enforcement of these social gathering rules is supposed to be applied neutrally. For the city to target gatherings of Jews but not other gatherings would be similar to attempted bans on drive-in church services in Kentucky and Mississippi. A federal judge in Kentucky stopped the Louisville mayor’s ban because this rule restricted religious gathering in a way that didn’t seem to apply to other types of gatherings of a similar nature. It wasn’t neutral.

Finally, de Blasio’s response shows he is more interested in enforcing his will than effectively preventing the spread of the coronavirus. He’s threatening people with arrest for violating social distancing rules, but New York’s jails themselves are massive violators of social distancing rules and are spreading COVID-19 among both inmates and staff. Nearly 10 percent of the population at Rikers Island has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. That’s much higher than the infection rate among free New Yorkers (though researchers are still trying to get a handle on how many people might have been infected and didn’t develop symptoms, and the infection rate in the city might be much higher than what has been recorded).

Threatening people with arrest for violating stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines doesn’t show power or leadership; it’s a sign of weakness, an inability of a leader to convince the public to trust him or her to manage a crisis. When people engage in activity that puts them at a higher risk of developing the coronavirus, it’s completely absurd to threaten them with imprisonment that most definitely increases that very same risk.

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Recently I have been thinking a lot about the way the pandemic has necessitated all sorts of substitutes for ordinary experiences: You still go to church, but on Skype. You still have happy hours, but on Zoom. You still take an exercise class, but it’s on a laptop. You still bake bread, but now it’s with sourdough starter. And you still watch big, dumb action movies, but on Netflix. 

Movies like Extraction, which, at its best, serves as a tolerable substitute for the theatrical experience. The thing about substitutes is not that they’re great, but that they work well enough. You can make do with them when the thing you really want isn’t available. That’s Extraction.

Starring Chris Hemsworth’s jawline, last seen as attached to the Marvel superhero Thor, it’s the product of a script by Avengers: Endgame co-director Joe Russo, and first-time director Sam Hargrove, who is mainly known for his work as a Marvel stunt coordinator. Russo and his brother Anthony were presumably too busy to take on a relatively small project like this; Hargrove, like so many substitutes, was what they had on hand. 

As it turns out, he works fairly well: The story—about a mercenary who takes a job rescuing (hence, extracting) the son of an Indian crime lord who’s been kidnapped by a rival—is as thin as the generic brand toilet paper you’ve probably been stocking up on, but Hargrove’s action scenes exude real energy and dynamism. There’s an exuberance to the movie’s best moments, and a sense of speed and physical heft. It sometimes seems like Hargrove’s goal was to film cinematic punching and shooting as if no one had ever filmed punching or shooting before. 

The standout sequence is a 12-minute single-take fight that moves through narrow buildings and out onto city streets: The camera moves furtively, in panicked bursts, like an endangered man looking around for signs of trouble, of which there are many. But despite the frantic motion and all the whips and pans, the continuous shot means it’s admirably clear and coherent; when Chris Hemsworth slams a stuntman’s head into something (and then slams it again, and again, and so forth), there’s never any question about what’s going on: Yes, you will think, that’s definitely Chris Hemsworth slamming a stuntman’s head into something. The single take isn’t a real single take of course, but a series of 36 smaller shots strung together to look like one; it’s a substitute, but an effective one. 

As for Hemsworth, he’s the closest thing the movie offers to a genuine article, a non-substitute good: There are other, lesser Hemsworths available (Liam, for example), but Chris is the one you really want. As the ridiculously named Tyler Rake—which is perilously close to something like Jake Mancrush—he alone embodies the full qualities of Hemsworthiness, the sense of scale and fortitude, the glowering ruggedness, the consistent lack of vocal intonation.

Early in the movie, he leaps off a cliff into a placid lake, pausing at the bottom to strike a meditative pose, as if contemplating his own meaning, and inviting viewers to do the same. Extraction is a deep dive into his being: At times, his physical presence threatens to overwhelm the movie’s action: Here is a Hemsworth Hemsworthing, as only this particular Hemsworth can. 

Still, he acts as a sort of substitute for the old action stars of the 1980s and ’90s, the hunks of muscle and brooding menace who were more bicep than man. With some small differences, Extraction is the sort of film some burly dude hoping to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger might have made in 1986. It’s an old-school Dolph Lundgren picture, with slightly better choreography. 

Even before the pandemic, Netflix sometimes seemed to specialize in resurrecting these lost genres, the sorts of competent but mostly forgettable films that studios churned out on the regular before superhero movies and animated fare took over their slates. From rom-coms to thrillers to kids-at-camp adventures, these genre throwbacks are substitutes, fill-ins for something lost to a changing world. And if they aren’t always quite as good as their predecessors, they are frequently pretty decent—and far better than nothing at all. 

The summer movie season usually kicks off in earnest around this time of year, with studios showing off their latest sequels. This year, we were supposed to see new a new James Bond, Black Widow’s first solo outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the ninth film in the Fast & Furious franchise. 

But to a first approximation, no one in America has seen a movie in a theater in over a month. And even if states allow theaters to reopen in the near future, it’s unlikely that most theaters will open their doors before July, when the next wave of non-delayed studio blockbusters is set to arrive on big screens. In the meantime, we’ll have to subsist on substitutes like Extraction, the Zoom happy hour of action movies. It’s definitely not the real thing, but it’ll do.

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Difficult circumstances are said to bring people together. But, if anything, COVID-19 has widened political and cultural fracture lines in the U.S., giving us more to fight over and less reason to trust each other in times to come.

In an election year dominated by two worn-out, mutually loathing legacy political parties, there’s no reason to think any of these tensions will be resolved by the outcome of the vote.

Sorted by culture, lifestyle, and political affiliation into two dominant tribes—“red” Republicans and “blue” Democrats—most Americans have declining contact with those outside their own camp, less in common with those who live differently, and slumping opinions of one another to match. Urban and suburban blues disdain those who don’t share their values, politics, and way of life, and rural and exurban reds return the sentiment.

Last year, U.S. News & World Report pointed out that “Democrats and Republicans don’t just disagree, they hate each other.” Sad to say, the polling bears that out.

As of last fall, 80 percent of Democrats described the Republican Party as controlled by racists, according to Public Religion Research Institute polling. A similar percentage of Republicans see the Democratic Party as controlled by socialists.

Half of surveyed Democrats and Republicans alike consider each other “ignorant” and “spiteful” Axios found. More strongly, 21 percent of Democrats said Republicans were “evil,” and 23 percent of Republicans said the same about Democrats.

Worse, 18 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans said that “violence would be justified” if the opposing party wins the 2020 presidential election, according to Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, political scientists at Louisiana State University and the University of Maryland. But the prospect of themselves winning the election actually increased support for violence. And that’s before Americans started arguing over the seriousness of COVID-19 and the proper way to handle the pandemic.

Now, we know the disease is just one more thing for us to argue about.

A working paper by economists from Stanford, Harvard, and New York University finds “substantial gaps between Republicans and Democrats in beliefs about the severity of COVID-19 and the importance of social distancing.” Specifically, “Democrats were consistently more concerned than Republicans about the spread of coronavirus.” The authors link the difference of opinion to the concentration of Democrats in densely populated urban areas, while Republicans tend to live in more lightly settled communities. That squares with other polling finding an urban/rural divide in experiences of the pandemic.

Democrats and Republicans also disagree over whether the worst is over, and over the wisdom of restrictive lockdown orders. Kaiser Family Foundation finds that “four in ten Republicans (38%) say such orders do more harm than good,” compared to five percent of Democrats.

So it’s no surprise that the resulting protests against stay-at-home orders around the country have become yet another partisan flashpoint setting Team Red against Team Blue. Participants who want to return to something resembling normal life, including making a living, are tagged as “covidiots,” while their opponents who prefer extended mandatory social-distancing efforts to battle contagion are charged with “pandemic panic.”

“Controversy over lockdowns has drawn people on both sides to demonize one another,” writes Arnold Kling, who in 2017 authored The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides. “In Demonization Mode, we divide the world into people trying to do good and people trying to do evil, and we characterize those with whom we disagree as trying to do evil.”

And the thing about evil people is that you really don’t want to be under their control. Losing an election to somebody you disagree with on a few issues is disappointing. Being defeated by evil, though, is a threat to your very existence.

Politicians, being the creatures they are, have done their best to fulfill all of the fears of their enemies.

President Donald Trump, by his own admission, advised Vice President Mike Pence to ignore calls for help from Democratic governors who criticize administration pandemic efforts.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened to steal ventilators from hospitals located in upstate counties where voters tend to oppose him and deliver them to New York City and its suburbs, where his supporters are concentrated.

Come November, in elections across the U.S., the partisans of one side or the other will lose to opponents they increasingly see as evil, ignorant, and spiteful. They will have to concede power to people they consider wrong on every important issue, including the response to COVID-19. And they will contemplate the prospect of continuing to be governed by people they know return the contempt, and who they’ve recently watched abuse position and authority to punish enemies and reward friends. Forget coming together—Americans will be more resentful of each other than ever.

To give those who say disaster brings us together their due, that may be true for discrete events.

“It may be that ‘acute’ stress, i.e. a one-time stressful experience may lead to social bonding, as shown in the study, but that ‘chronic’ stress, i.e. repeated exposure to stress over a long period, might wear us out,” wrote Emma Seppala of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education in Scientific American.

America’s division into hostile factions isn’t a recent occurrence; the fractures have been deepening and the disagreements growing more bitter for years. This year, instead of being a one-off crisis, the pandemic became a continuation of an ongoing conflict. That’s as “chronic” as it gets, and there’s nothing to suggest that the stress is going away anytime soon.

The United States, write Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is one of several politically divided countries where “the pandemic has amplified the already dangerous effects of polarization, with serious ramifications for public health, democratic governance, and social cohesion.”

Americans will survive and overcome the pandemic, as they have so many other challenges in the past. Whether they can continue to put up with each other isn’t so certain.

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Given the COVID-19 pandemic, some officials have rolling back enforcement of low-level offenses. But many police continue to use force against nonviolent offenders, social distancing be damned.

A video shows one such interaction between a California cop and a teenager. The teen’s crime: possessing “tobacco products.”

The short clip shows a deputy with the Rancho Cordova Police Department (RCPD) detaining a 14-year-old on Monday. The deputy, who is already on the ground with the teenager, is seen attempting to flip the boy onto his stomach. When faced with resistance, the deputy shoves the boy’s face into the ground and then punches him repeatedly.

RCPD brutally tackled and hit my best friend’s 14 year old brother today over a swisher sweet! The officer had no reason to brutalize and traumatize this boy like this! He has a pre existing health condition which could be fatal under this kind of stress! Unjustifiable! pic.twitter.com/94fqyu3J28

— De$???? (@destiinoo_) April 28, 2020

New York criminal defense attorney Rebecca Kavanagh shared the video, saying that the deputy accused the boy of smoking marijuana earlier. A woman identifying herself as the teen’s older sister tweeted that he has a “serious heart condition that could be triggered very easily by being hit in his chest/back.”

Reason reached out to the RCPD on Tuesday for further explanation. The request went unanswered, but the department subsequently released a statement on its website and social media platforms.

“These are the facts as we understand them at this time,” the department wrote, adding that an investigation was underway and the story was “subject to change.” The officer (not named) had reportedly been “proactively patrolling” the area between Mills Station Road and Mather Field Road, due to complaints about the sale of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco to minors. Believing he witnessed such an exchange, the deputy approached the teen. (The statement says he lost sight of the adult conducting the sale.) The boy initially refused to provide identifying information, then later told the deputy he was 18. When the deputy tried to detain him, the teen knocked the deputy’s handcuffs out of his hands; the deputy then restrained him without handcuffs while waiting for his partners to arrive.

The teen was ultimately found to possess some “tobacco products,” and he was subsequently cited and released.

Because of the unique threat the COVID-19 pandemic poses to corrections facilities, several counties have reprioritized enforcement of low-level, nonviolent offenses. Evidently, the call has not extended far enough.

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Edited and produced by Austin Bragg. Performed by Austin Bragg and Andrew Heaton. Written by Austin Bragg, Meredith Bragg, and Andrew Heaton. Cameras by Andrew Heaton and Austin Bragg.

Music: “Wholesome,””Marty Gots a Plan,” “Anamalie,” “Anguish,” and “The Cannery” by Kevin MacLeod used under an Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license.

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After a half-century of existence, the Libertarian Party (L.P.) this morning wakes up to a situation it has never before experienced—with a sitting member of Congress proudly waving the Libertarian flag.

“I will be the first,” Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) told me late Wednesday night, just after announcing his candidacy for the Libertarian presidential nomination. “And I’m happy to do that.”

Amash is not the only person smiling. In an email, Libertarian Party Chair Nicholas Sarwark said, “I’m happy to see that Representative Amash has come home to the political party most closely aligned with his views,” adding: “If more members of the House who are tired of being marginalized by the GOP and Democratic leadership joined him, we could see a caucus of legislators who are able to work for the American people instead of conflicting teams of special interests. My DMs are open.”

Amash, a persistent critic of President Donald Trump who left the Republican Party to became an independent last July 4, was facing a competitive reelection campaign in his 3rd District of Michigan, a state whose straight-ticket ballot option disfavors candidates outside the two major parties. Yet he says his seat could have been defended.

“That was one of the hardest parts of this decision,” he said. “When I’m looking at my polling, and fundraising, and other aspects with respect to the congressional campaign, I felt I was in the driver’s seat. I felt that I was in a very strong position to win it….But I just think this is too important.”

Amash, who is six-for-six in general elections (five in Congress, once in the Michigan House of Representatives), claims that the 2020 presidential contest is a “winnable race” for a Libertarian Party whose previous high-water mark, in 2016, was 3.3 percent of the vote.

“When I look at these candidates, I think most Americans see the same thing I’m seeing, which is these two candidates aren’t up to being president of the United States, and we need an alternative,” he said. The botched and expensive federal response to the COVID-19 outbreak only makes that clearer, he said. “Millions of Americans are seeing that the government spent trillions of dollars and still didn’t get it right. They didn’t get help to the people who need it most. Instead, most of the assistance went to people who have great connections, who run big corporations.”

I talked to Amash about his late entry into the Libertarian race, his policy objections to Joe Biden, his position on abortion, charges that he would “spoil” the effort to dethrone President Donald Trump, and more. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

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Reason: What took you so long?

Amash: Well, I’ve been spending time with my family, with friends; I wanted to spend substantial time thinking about it carefully. And up until the past month or so, let’s say, I couldn’t really think about it that carefully. There were a lot of things going on in Congress, there were a lot of things going on in life.

Around February I decided I would pause my congressional campaign and really focus on the presidential race. And that meant at the time just researching things, seeing if it was a situation where I could come in as a candidate and win the race. And then over the past few weeks, I really sat down to dig into it and got to the point where I was confident that this was a winnable race. Because I don’t believe you should just run for fun or for messaging. I believe you should run to win, and to make an impact at the ballot box.

So I’m at that place, and I’m in.

Reason: So you start in mid-February—that’s not coronavirus o’clock, but the coronavirus came up by the beginning of March. So explain a little bit how that affected your deliberations, if at all.

Amash: Well, it certainly extended the deliberations. So if not for the COVID-19 situation, I would have been able to focus on it more carefully earlier. In other words, the really aggressive focus on the campaign—where I could think “Is it time to get in or not?”—had to be put on hold a little bit. I was already in the process of researching things, talking to people, talking to family and friends. But when the coronavirus came up, I had to slow that down, because that obviously affects the entire race, and obviously it affects my job, too. I’m in Congress trying to help constituents, making sure that they are getting the resources they need, and so it affected my ability to move forward quickly.

Reason: I look at the coronavirus thing in particular, and you see a lot of 388-5 votes in the House about various phases of this happening. Do you look at a situation in which $3 trillion has walked out of Congress in the last, I don’t know, six weeks—and basically overwhelmingly, near-unanimously, despite Thomas Massie’s best efforts. Is that a fruitful backdrop from which to run a limited-government campaign?

Amash: I think so. I mean, millions of Americans are seeing that the government spent trillions of dollars and still didn’t get it right. They didn’t get help to the people who need it most. Instead, most of the assistance went to people who have great connections, who run big corporations. Those people, they got it really fast; [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin couldn’t act fast enough to help those people.

But for millions of Americans who are unemployed or struggling right now, they couldn’t get relief to those people, because they have a massive convoluted system, and they doubled and tripled down on it. They said, “Hey, how can we take our bad system and make it worse? Let’s add a whole bunch of restrictions, let’s add a whole bunch of qualifications, let’s try to get money to small businesses, but then make it so that the money is not all that useful to them. Let’s put banks in the middle of it to slow down the process.”

And the banks are trying; they’re trying, I’m not blaming the banks. I blame Congress and the administration for creating such a system….The Los Angeles Lakers applied for relief as a small business, and you know, under the terms of the deal that Congress put together with the White House, that’s actually allowed. But they never thought through this thing, really.

Reason: So you said that you had to think about this in terms of “Can I win? Can I compete meaningfully?” (But you said “win.”) Explain how that calculation works; explain the path. Because I look at the same thing, and in times of high polarization and high partisan interest, you oftentimes see a kind of Death Valley for third parties and independents trying to run for everything. So how do you look at this thing and see a win?

Amash: I look at the candidates running and I see two candidates that are not qualified for the office. Yeah, they have long resumes, different resumes. The president as a reality [TV] star, and as a sometimes successful, sometimes failed businessman; and Joe Biden as a longtime member of Congress who’s on his third run for president, and frankly, doesn’t seem to be up to it.

So when I look at these candidates, I think most Americans see the same thing I’m seeing, which is: These two candidates aren’t up to being president of the United States, and we need an alternative. And I’m confident that I can be that alternative.

What people are really looking for is practicality. They see these two sides in Washington, Red and Blue, fighting with each other every day. When it comes to most pieces of legislation, they’re highly polarized. And then when it comes to the really bad stuff that gets passed, all of a sudden they become best friends. So they’re fighting each other day and night on stuff that often doesn’t impact people directly, and then when you get something that really hurts the American people, they get unified all of a sudden.

This is not the system the American people want. It’s not the system the framers designed. And we need to trust the people. We need to have humility regarding the process of government. And that means allowing legislators to legislate, and keeping the executive branch in check, and having a court that does its job interpreting and deciding cases. We can’t have this system where these two parties just run amok and hurt Americans every day.

Reason: Are you getting out of the race for reelection in Congress, or are you waiting to see what happens at the Libertarian National Convention?

Amash: My campaign is paused, but frankly, I’m running this campaign for president, and I don’t intend to return to my congressional campaign.

It’s been an honor to represent the 3rd District, and that was one of the hardest parts of this decision. When I’m looking at my polling, and fundraising, and other aspects with respect to the congressional campaign, I felt I was in the driver’s seat. I felt that I was in a very strong position to win it. And as I’ve gone around the district, I’ve had tremendous support from constituents everywhere I go, and from all across the political spectrum. So that was a very tough decision to say that I’m going to run for another office. But I just think this is too important.

And I do think we need someone who’s going to govern with some humility, and I don’t just mean personal humility. I think when people hear the word humility, they think of a person who is kind, or gracious, or whatever. That’s not the kind of humility I’m talking about. I’m talking about humility with respect to the process. Humility with respect to how much one individual knows about things.

What you really have right now are two presidential candidates who think they know everything, and want to run everything. And you see the mess that’s happening right now just with the coronavirus relief, where you get this one person thinking they know everything, instead of using the type of knowledge that exists out among the public, which is the knowledge of time and circumstances, things that only people on the ground know, that no one in Washington can know, or no one in the state Capitol can know.

Reason: Members of the Libertarian Party who like you, and have preferred you, and in fact have wanted you to run for a long time, have expressed some irritation of, “Jesus, Hamlet, get off the fence! We’ve been out here trying to build a party, and go to state conventions, and engage in debates, and this is a little bit late in the game.” What do you say to those people as you try to win a majority of a thousand delegates?

Amash: Well, I want to earn their support. I respect the process, I respect the delegates. If it were up to me, and everything had run smoothly, I would have made a decision earlier. But life comes up, things come up. The COVID-19 situation came up, for example, and there are other things that have come up over the past year. And I don’t control all those things.

But I took the time I needed to make a decision. I feel confident about the decision, and I want to go and earn the support of the Libertarian Party. And I don’t think that any person running simply deserves the support. I think they have to go earn it. And I’ll spend a lot of time over the next several weeks speaking to Libertarians, speaking to delegates, and trying to win their support.

Reason: Do you plan on, or have you thought about seeking a vice-presidential copacetic kind of nominee? As you well know, the nominating process is kind of peculiar to the Libertarian Party in this sense, but other candidates such as Jim Gray have reached out to Larry Sharpe, for example. Do you have an approach like that?

Amash: I haven’t reached out to any V.P. candidates or potential candidates to ask them to come on as part of any ticket or anything like that. I want to take the time to talk to people, and I want to be respectful of the process; I want to be respectful of the delegates. I believe that the delegates should have a real say in who the V.P. is on the ticket.

The only thing I ask is if I’m the nominee, I think it’s important that the V.P. be someone who shares a lot of my philosophy, understands the messaging, and can go out there and earn the respect of the entire public. Because running a race for president is not just about one party or one ideology. We have to win lots of people. And we can stay true to our principles while doing that, but it’s important that we expand our reach, and so I think it’s important to have a vice president who understands that.

Reason: Your positions, as I know them, and the Libertarian Party’s platform, as I know it, have a lot of overlap; they’re pretty congruent in many ways. A strong exception to that would be abortion. Can you explain your position on that, as it intersects with federal government policy? What are your preferences on what the federal government should do, or what a Supreme Court should do, having to do with abortion?

Amash: Well, I’m pro-life, and I believe the 14th Amendment provides a strong federal basis for protecting life. But I think the most important thing the federal government can do is not fund abortion. And I think that there is probably broad support for that in the Libertarian Party, to ensure that the federal government is not funding abortions because the federal government shouldn’t be funding something that is that controversial to millions of Americans.

Reason: You had, on either Twitter or on your Amash for America rollout, an emphasis on seeking to represent all Americans. It almost felt italicized in that sense—all Americans. Why that particular emphasis? What does that mean to you?

Amash: It means that there are a lot of people right now who don’t feel represented. When you go around just to my district, for example, and talk to people, they don’t feel that the Republican Party or the Democratic Party really cares about them. And it’s not surprising why they feel that way.

When you look at what the two parties talk about in Washington, they’re hyper-focused on relatively small constituencies, but the ones who are politically active, and get them to win at the ballot box. There’s a large group of Americans that have been forgotten, and we need to reach out to those people, and we need to be the party that represents people from all backgrounds, that brings people together.

And there’s a strong message for bringing people together, which is that the purpose of government is to secure our rights. It shouldn’t matter what your background is; you want your rights secured. Many people right now feel that the government has forgotten them, and doesn’t care about its purpose, and is focused on minutiae, or the politics of the moment, and has forgotten totally about the essential purpose of government, which is to secure the rights of the people.

Reason: Take a swing at Joe Biden in terms of policy. You’ve talked previously that he doesn’t seem like he’s got it all there, which I think we can observe. What’s wrong with him as someone who executes policy, who’s been in public life for a half-century?

Amash: Well, first, he’s held just about every position, which is something that Trump does week to week, but Joe Biden has also held multiple positions over his lifetime. It’s okay to change your mind about things—I’ve changed my mind on things, everyone has changed their mind on things. But when you do it over and over again about multiple big issues, you start to question whether the person’s changing their mind, or whether they’re just doing it for political expediency.

A few examples might [include] the Iraq War. He’s got some wild explanation for why he voted for the authorization but didn’t really support the war. He was one of the architects of a lot of the surveillance that we have today. Back in the day, he was heavily pushing programs that evolved into things like the PATRIOT Act, and FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], and he’s been wrong on criminal justice reform time and again. So it’s nice to see that he’s changed his mind on some of these things, or says he’s changed his mind. But at this point, it’s time to pass the baton to a new generation and have other people taking the lead on these issues.

And there are other issues where I don’t think he’s changed his mind. Look at this coronavirus relief [approach]. You hear about him saying, “Oh, well maybe this isn’t how I would have done it,” but he’s still applauding [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell and President Trump, essentially, as they passed this kind of thing that doesn’t directly help the people; it’s another corporate welfare scheme in many respects.

So he hasn’t been good on those issues, and I don’t think he’ll be good on those issues going forward. When you look at some of the potential V.P. candidates he’s thinking about, you’ll probably get the same kind of thing—someone who isn’t very good on civil liberties issues, and hasn’t been good on other issues that progressives and many libertarians and many moderates across the political spectrum care about.

Reason: I don’t know why you gotta be so mean to Kamala Harris there.

Amash: I think you know who I was talking about.

Reason: There are quite a few people who agree with you about Trump, or agree with your critiques of Trump over the past year, over the past three years, who are saying, “Jesus Christ, man, not now! Why would you do this? You are jeopardizing—there’s been one poll in Michigan done with you in it and with you out of it, and you knock six points off Biden’s lead—why would you get in the way of removing someone who is uniquely unfit for office?” How do you respond to those people?

Amash: Well, first I would say with respect to the polling, that a poll taken a year ago when you don’t even have the Democratic deal decided, and where I still have very low name ID, doesn’t really mean that much. So I wouldn’t put too much stock into it. Especially when you’re taking a poll around the time that impeachment and other things were going on, and maybe some people on the left thought I was going to be on their side on every issue under the sun because I was in favor of impeachment. And that’s just not correct.

I think the greater likelihood is that I draw from a lot of dissatisfied Republicans, but even if you set aside the two parties, Republicans or Democrats, there are millions and millions of independent and libertarian-minded voters who either are forced to vote for one of these two if they don’t have other choices on the ballot, or who aren’t going to vote at all if they’re required to choose between those two candidates.

And I believe there are enough votes out there to win this race. I wouldn’t be running if there weren’t enough votes to win this race. So people can talk about the “spoiler” thing—I think it’s all academic; it’s hard to say which pot of voters you pull from. But I don’t think it matters that much; I don’t think you’d ever figure it out. And in any case, there are millions of people who want an alternative, and that’s important. We shouldn’t deny them an alternative, deny them a chance to vote for someone who will be practical and have common sense. Why should we force them to vote for one of these other two candidates?

Reason: All right, final question. Are you going to be a Libertarian in Congress?

Amash: I am, yes.

Reason: You are. So you’re going to be the first Libertarian member of Congress.

Amash: I expect so, yeah. I don’t think there’s been another Libertarian in Congress, so I will be the first, and I’m happy to do that.

I do think that the Libertarian Party is important. I spent the past almost year, not quite a year, as an independent…and I’ve learned a lot about the process, a lot about the system. I think most people agree that we’d like to get to a place in this country where political parties don’t matter, but we’re not there yet. That is more of a long-term project. I think we can get there. I don’t think it’s in the distant, distant future, but I think it is still in the distant future. So one distant, but not two distants, in distances.

But right now, these two parties need a strong competitor. And the Libertarian Party has that opportunity because there are so many Republicans who are disenchanted with what’s going on with the Republican Party. There are so many Democrats who are disenchanted with what’s going on with the Democratic Party. And then on top of that, there are millions of Americans who aren’t closely affiliated to the parties, who want to have the opportunity to vote for an alternative. And over the last couple cycles, you’ve seen the Libertarian Party votes pick up, and I want to help it go further. I want to help the Libertarian Party win.

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When writers at Vox Media staged a walk-out as part of their unionization efforts, Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, responded with a joke on Twitter.

FYI @fdrlst first one of you tries to unionize I swear I’ll send you back to the salt mine

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) June 7, 2019

There’s no evidence anyone at The Federalist thought this was anything other than a topical joke, responding to a current event. Yet as Domenech recounts in the WSJ, a progressive writer and lawyer responded by filing unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, and the NLRB pursued these claims with vigor, resulting in this decision against Domenech and The Federalist.

The National Labor Relations Board informed me that the leftist writer Matt Bruenig had filed a formal complaint about my tweet. He withdrew it, but Joel Fleming, a Massachusetts lawyer, filed another.

Mr. Fleming alleged I had violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Wagner Act, which states that “it shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7″—namely the rights “to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”

The accusation was laughable. No employee had expressed a desire to unionize. If anyone had, my joke wouldn’t have stood in the way. Mr. Fleming was an interloper anyway—he had no association with the Federalist. But according to the NLRB, anyone can file such a complaint against any company.

The NLRB General Counsel pressed the case against Domenech and The Federalist, and the NLRB prevailed in front of an Administrative Law Judge. Because Domenech is publisher, his light-hearted tweet was a prohibited unfair labor practice because, according to the ALJ, it could reasonably interpreted as a threat to impose worse working conditions on any employees who sought to unionize—not that any employees who had ever even considered the possibility (or desirability) of unionizing were ever identified.

The free speech implications of this case are troubling for multiple reasons. First, this episode shows haw well-intentioned regulations can be weaponized for political purposes. The complainants had no interest in “protecting” Federalist workers—if they even know any. Their clear aim was to harass and punish ideological adversaries (a tactic Fleming has expressly endorsed in other contexts—albeit in tweets directed at Domenech’s wife).

More broadly, any regulatory scheme which allows a regulatory agency to punish comments about public policy matters, particularly when there is no evidence the comments have any relation to actual or potential unionizing activity, is itself problematic.

Beyond that, there’s also reason to be concerned that the NLRB is less than even-handed in its censoriousness. Threats and derisive comments made on a union Facebook page are no problem, even when made contemporaneously with picketing efforts and when other employees complained. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that Domenech’s lone tweet is a more serious concern? And who can forget that the NLRB once tried to claim that it would be an unfair labor practice for employers to bar workers from making abusive and threatening comments (including racial and sexual epithets) on the job. In those cases there were actual labor disputes, not here—and that’s part of the problem.

Domenech and The Federalist will appeal, represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Among other things, the NCLA will press the argument that the NLRB process cannot be triggered by any random twitter lurker who wants to sic federal bureaucrats on those they don’t like. I hope the resolution in court will be more sensible. I wish them luck.

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