Anya van Wagtendonk | Vox Our world has too much noise and too little context. Vox helps you understand what matters. 2021-03-22T17:08:32+00:00 https://www.vox.com/authors/anya-van-wagtendonk/rss https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/vox_logo_rss_light_mode.png?w=150&h=100&crop=1 Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[Lawmakers, activists, and protesters are speaking out against anti-Asian hate]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/3/21/22343366/atlanta-shooting-protests-against-anti-aapi-hate 2021-03-21T16:18:47-04:00 2021-03-21T16:30:00-04:00
Demonstrators rally in Atlanta, Georgia on March 20, protesting anti-Asian hate. | Nicole Craine/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Across the country this weekend, lawmakers and citizens alike have been condemning violence against Asian Americans and calling for greater solidarity with the community, after six Asian women were killed in Atlanta on Tuesday in shootings that also left two others dead.

Korean American Reps. Michelle Steel and Young Kim, both Republicans representing districts in southern California, spoke on CNN’s State of the Union about the rise in violence against Americans of Asian descent in recent months.

“It has been heartbreaking to see the rise in anti-Asian American hate and harassment over the last year,” Steel said.

The remarks are in response not only to Tuesday’s shootings, in which Asian-owned businesses were targeted, but to a significant increase in violence against Americans of Asian descent over the last year.

According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that tracks anti-Asian sentiment, there have been at least 3,795 anti-Asian incidents — both physical and verbal — in the United States since March 2020.

Some observers tie the increase in violence to anti-Chinese rhetoric perpetuated throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic is believed to have originated in China, and some political leaders, including former President Donald Trump, referred to Covid-19 using derogatory language, such as calling it the “kung flu” or “the China virus.”

“That was very insensitive, to bring all these hateful comments and attack, and call out the Asian American community as the community as what’s responsible for what we’re facing right now … this is completely wrong,” Kim told State of the Union. “The words of the leaders have consequences. They need to be careful about what they say, because people really take that to heart.”

Speaking in Atlanta on Friday, President Joe Biden expressed support for a COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, a bill authored by Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) which would expand federal hate crime laws and require expedited federal review of coronavirus-related hate crimes.

Steel introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning hateful acts against Asian Americans, and on Sunday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) highlighted the House’s bipartisan efforts on the issue, while lamenting the fact that no Republican senators have cosponsored the Hate Crimes Act. “Where can you be that you would not be willing to vote on a bill that would condemn violence against any group of Americans?” Duckworth asked on Face the Nation.

It is still unclear whether the alleged shooter, who now faces eight murder charges, will also be charged with a hate crime, either in Georgia — where that charge would extend his sentence — or federally. To be charged with a federal hate crime, the suspected shooter would need to have explicitly articulated a racist or misogynistic motivation; for example, by saying a slur.

Speaking on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Rep. Judy Chu, a Democrat also from southern California, said that she believed the attack was a hate crime.

“He specifically went to those Asian spas, where it was clear in all three spaces there would be many Asian women,” she said.

Chu, the first Chinese-American woman elected to Congress, acknowledged that it would be difficult to clear the legal bar for defining the shootings as hate crimes, because people who might have heard the suspect express a motivation “spoke another language, they may not have heard him, they may be dead.”

“But In my mind, in the minds of many, this is an anti-Asian hate crime,” she said.

Rallies were held around the US in support of those killed — and against anti-Asian sentiment

Rallies have also taken place throughout the week in solidarity with Asian Americans and to call for an end to bigotry and violence against people of Asian descent in cities and towns across the United States.

During the week, rallies took place in Minneapolis, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Over the weekend, local leaders and officials addressed crowds.

In Atlanta, where the killings took place, hundreds of people rallied on Saturday. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff spoke, as did Georgia state Rep. Bee Nguyen, who the Associated Press describes as the “first Vietnamese American to serve in the Georgia House.”

“This was an attack on the Asian community,” said Nguyen. “Let’s join hands with our ally community and demand justice for not only these victims but for all victims of white supremacy.”

In San Francisco, which has been the site of several attacks on residents of Asian descent, locals described their encounters with racist violence. Rallies also took place in Los Angeles County, San Diego, and Oakland, among other cities in California — the state with the largest Asian American population.

Korean Canadian actress Sandra Oh spoke at a rally in Pittsburgh.

“One thing I know: many of us in our community are very scared, and I understand that, and one way to get through our fears is to reach out to our communities,” Oh said.

In New York, a vigil was held Friday night, and people marched from Times Square to Manhattan’s Chinatown on Saturday. On Sunday, community groups in different parts of the city organized a solidarity bike ride, a unity vigil, and rallies.

That activism was fueled in part by reports of additional, recent attacks on Asian New Yorkers. A man was attacked on a subway on Friday afternoon, and a 66-year-old man was assaulted on Saturday.

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[As Biden’s immigration policy faces scrutiny, the DHS chief says the border is “closed”]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/3/21/22343184/as-bidens-immigration-policy-faces-scrutiny-the-dhs-chief-says-the-border-is-closed 2021-03-21T18:31:28-04:00 2021-03-21T15:20:00-04:00
Children play in Tijuana, Mexico, at a camp near a border crossing into the United States. | dpa/Picture Alliance/Getty Images

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas repeatedly argued on Sunday that the United States’ border with Mexico is “closed,” amid a marked increase in immigrant arrivals, particularly of unaccompanied minors.

Reports emerged Sunday that the administration has at least 15,500 unaccompanied minors in custody — 10,500 in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and 5,000 detained by US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).

The minors being held by HHS are being housed in emergency shelters and facilities licensed for child care, according to CBS News, while the roughly 5,000 children and teenagers in CBP care are being kept in crowded, “jail-like facilities,” according to a CNN report that cites case managers, lawyers, and law enforcement.

That report describes a setting in which “children are alternating schedules to make space for one another in confined facilities, some kids haven’t seen sunlight in days, and others are taking turns showering, often going days without one.”

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Children are spending an average of five days in those facilities, and more than 600 ofthe children have been in custody for longer than 10 days, the report states. By law, unaccompanied children are supposed to be processed and sent to HHS shelters within 72 hours.

Officials have blamed the delay on the crowding at the border, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, and Sunday, Mayorkas also said the Trump administration is responsible for the increase in arrivals at the border.

“The entire system was dismantled by the prior administration,” Mayorkas said on CNN’s State of the Union. “There was a system in place in both Republican and Democratic administrations that was torn down during the Trump administration.”

Former President Donald Trump made radical changes to immigration policy, including fighting for funding for a US-Mexico border wall; instituting the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico as they awaited hearings; and signing agreements to send some Central American migrants back to their countries of origin.

President Joe Biden has ended these policies, arguing they run counter to his administration’s pledge to offer a more “humane” approach to immigration than under the previous Trump and Obama administrations.

In February, the Biden administration began accepting unaccompanied children. Many such children have been stranded in Mexico for a year under Trump’s “remain-in-Mexico” policy, and are now seeking protection under federal law and to reunite with US-based family.

And earlier this month, the administration said that it would restart the Central American Minors program — halted under the Trump administration — which allows children in danger to apply to enter the US from their home countries instead of having to first arrive at the US-Mexico border.

Critics of the administration argue that the uptick in immigration stems from this decision. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) told ABC’s This Week on Sunday, “The messaging is that if you want to come, you can stay.” But allies, like former Obama administration DHS official John Sandweg, have argued that Trump administration policy like the Migrant Protection Protocols created a backlog of cases, and that those policies are “artificially increasing the numbers,” as he told CNN.

Sister Norma Pimentel, who leads the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, told Politico the problem doesn’t lie with any one administration, but all of them: “It’s caused by the fact that nobody has ever done something to address it before and that’s why we still have the situation.”

The Biden administration has made key changes to immigration — but is asking immigrants not to come

Regardless of where the fault lies, there has been an increase in unaccompanied children and teenagers crossing the southern border, with about 9,400 entering border custody in February. This month, an average of 500 minors per day have entered the country, according to government data.

Officials have opened three emergency facilities for the children, and will soon open a fourth, according to CBS News; the Trump administration operated three such facilities.

In many ways, the Biden administration appears to have been caught flat-footed by the increase in migration — even though administration officials were reportedly briefed by DHS officials in advance that such an increase was likely.

On Friday, Mayorkas visited El Paso alongside Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI), Rob Portman (R-OH), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). In a tweet, Murphy described crying and frightened children, while Portman called for policy changes to “discourage migration & provide safer alternatives to making the dangerous journey north.”

While unaccompanied minors — and some families with young children, due to a recent change to immigration rules in Mexico — are being allowed to stay, Mayorkas stressed on Sunday that adults and families are being expelled, “because we are in the midst of a pandemic, and that is a public health imperative.”

“We are encouraging children not to come,” he said. “The journey is dangerous.”

The Biden administration is working to find solutions for the situation at the border

Sunday, Mayorkas made several references to having a plan for addressing the needs of unaccompanied minors — and the uptick in immigrants in general.

Thus far, that plan has seemed to include sending FEMA to help HHS and CBP with caring for unaccompanied minors, and striking a deal with Mexico, trading coronavirus vaccines for more assistance limiting immigration.

Since taking office, Biden has said he wants to take a humane approach to immigration, including with unaccompanied minors. When he was vice president, Obama was referred to by immigration advocates as the “deporter-in-chief,” and the Trump administration border policies gave rise to protests against “kids in cages.”

If Biden wants to achieve a different outcome for immigrants — and legacy for himself — he will need to establish different policies, and quickly. Sweeping and lasting reforms would need to come through Congress, but as Vox’s Nicole Narea has reported, the crowding can be addressed by a president through streamlining the relationship between DHS and border patrol.

“One potential solution is co-locating US Department of Health and Human Services staff in CBP facilities to speed up screening of migrant children and swiftly release them to sponsors. Some of this coordination and information sharing can be done from Mexico, before the child enters the United States,” she writes.

And Mayorkas has outlined other ideas for unaccompanied minors, Narea reports:

He said that the administration is working on a new regulation that would speed up asylum adjudications such that the process would take months, rather than years, while “ensuring procedural safeguards and enhancing access to counsel.” It’s not clear what mechanisms the administration will use to do so, but it’s the kind of reform that immigrant advocates have been calling for — so long as it does not infringe on asylum seekers’ due process rights.

…

The administration is also planning to help Mexico expand its capacity to accept more migrant families. Last month, Mexico stopped accepting some families with children under the age of 12 due to a change in its laws concerning the detention of children, so they have been released into the US instead on a case-by-case basis. But, problematically, that could lead more families to simply send their children to the border unaccompanied, knowing that the US will accept them, but leaving them more vulnerable to drug cartels and human traffickers.

In addition to collaborating with Mexico, the administration is seeking to work with Central America’s “Northern Triangle” countries — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — to create processing centers in those countries that would screen migrants to see if they are eligible for humanitarian protections, including asylum.

Legislation is pending on immigration reform for certain groups, including undocumented “DREAMers” who came to the US as children, as well as farmworkers and those facing humanitarian crises back home.

These bills have yet to pass the Senate, however, and even if they do, they will not affect the swelling border facilities, including those full of children attempting to enter the US, after making a dangerous journey north and weathering a year of policy changes amid a deadly pandemic.

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[Miami Beach imposes a spring break curfew amid crowding and Covid-19 concerns]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/3/21/22343000/miami-beach-spring-break-curfew-crowding-fights-covid-19 2021-03-22T11:55:11-04:00 2021-03-21T10:23:03-04:00
Miami Beach police officers stand on the city’s Ocean Drive during the 2021 spring break season. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Citing crowds, violence, and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Miami Beach city officials declared a state of emergency and issued a curfew for the thousands of people who have crowded into the famed party town for spring break festivities.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber issued the order on Saturday, after several days in which revelers got into fights in the popular spring break destination’s streets and eateries, and as thousands of people were crowding beaches and nightlife locations.

Gelber told USA Today that the decision was caused by “a confluence of challenging circumstances.”

“It’s like a triple threat: We’ve got too many people, too many coming with a desire to go wild, and we have the virus,” Gelber said. “It really poses a multifaceted peril for us.”

The curfew will be in place for at least 72 hours, and requires all businesses to close at 8 pm. It also creates a “high impact zone” — an area most affected by the crowding and brawling — within which several roads will be closed overnight as well. Miami Beach interim city manager Raul Aguila told the Miami Herald that he recommends keeping the rules in place through at least April 12.

The order comes in addition to the Covid-19 state of emergency that has been in place in the city for a year, as well as a countywide midnight curfew.

“At the peak of spring break, we are quite simply overwhelmed in the entertainment district,” Aguila said at a news conference on Saturday. “Folks, this is not an easy decision to make, we are doing that to protect the public health and safety.”

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While Miami Beach has taken its own local precautions against the coronavirus, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, lifted most restrictions statewide in September, and limited the extent to which local governments could enforce tighter restrictions, including mask mandates and lockdowns. As a result, Florida has seen much more normal activity than elsewhere in the country, with businesses and schools largely open.

But in Miami Beach, officials and residents say the last few weeks have brought a new level of chaos. According to USA Today, local police made 163 arrests over seven days.

According to local news reports, the Clevelander Hotel, a popular party spot, will close its restaurant and bar for several days after fights broke out. Last week, 150 partiers were arrested at a party that turned riotous at the Kantina Restaurant, according to NBC Miami. And an employee of the Social Club, a restaurant and bar next to the Clevelander, described a “stampede” that led to property being trashed. 

“Last weekend there was a stampede very close to us and people spilled onto our property, running inside, into the restaurant, into our kitchen, into our lobby,” Jessica Francos, vice president of operations for Jesta Hotels, told the Miami Herald. “We’ve seen the situation getting out of control and then yesterday it happened again.”

CNN reported on Sunday that “at least a dozen” people had been arrested following the start of the curfew. And the Daily Beast reported that SWAT teams and pepper spray were deployed to break up street parties on Saturday night.

There are concerns spring break festivities may have a negative public health impact

The situation in Miami Beach comes as a new and more fatal variant of Covid-19, known as B.1.1.7, has begun emerging across Florida, where more than 32,000 residents have died from the virus.

First detected in the United Kingdom, B.1.1.7 is more contagious and, according to two recent studies, more fatal among people over the age of 30.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, at least 41 of the state’s 67 counties have been infected with a mutated strain of Covid-19, and there have been hundreds of variant cases in southern Florida, including at least 129 in Miami-Dade County. Most of the state’s 912 variant cases are from the B.1.1.7 strain, that paper reports.

According to the New York Times, Florida may have the densest share of B.1.1.7 cases in the United States, with about 30 percent of all coronavirus cases being caused by that strain. This has not led to a surge in total new coronavirus cases overall, the Times notes.

“I’ve been watching Florida closely, which has the highest share of B.1.1.7.,” Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, told the Times. “Case counts have plateaued there in recent days but are not resurging. The longer we can hold the line, the more time we have to roll out vaccines, which will protect individuals, particularly those at highest risk of severe illness, and slow transmission over all.”

But Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned that plateaus in cases could cause people to become complacent, especially as the vaccine rollout has created new optimism among many Americans.

“History has shown us that when you have that plateauing, that’s usually the forerunner of another surge,” he told Today, pointing to recent surges in Europe that have led to new lockdown orders in France and Poland, and tighter restrictions in Italy and Hungary.

“If we can just hang on a bit longer, the more people get vaccinated, the less likelihood that there is going to be a surge,” Fauci said.

On Friday, Fauci said during a White House press briefing that existing vaccines appear to protect people against the strain, but cautioned that people still needed to exercise standard avoidance measures.

“The way we can counter [B.1.1.7], which is a growing threat in our country, is to do two things: To get as many people vaccinated as quickly and as expeditiously as possible with the vaccine that we know works against this variant and, finally, to implement the public health measures that we talk about all the time … masking, physical distancing, and avoiding congregant settings, particularly indoors,” he said.

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[The partisan divide on vaccination, explained in 3 charts]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/3/21/22342184/democrats-republicans-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-polls 2021-03-22T13:08:32-04:00 2021-03-21T08:00:00-04:00
A woman who has just been vaccinated gives a thumbs-up in California. | Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram/Getty Images

The United States’ vaccination rate has been increasing — and as of Saturday morning, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 16.7 percent of US adults are fully vaccinated.

That’s still far from the 75 to 85 percent of Americans experts estimate need to be vaccinated in order to get the coronavirus pandemic under control, but recent research indicates that goal is within reach: a February survey by the Pew Research Center found 69 percent of American adults either have received at least one dose of vaccine or intend to be vaccinated when they can.

That’s an improvement over recent months; in November, before vaccinations had been rolled out, about 60 percent of Americans said they planned to be vaccinated.

But there remains a deep partisan divide in willingness to be vaccinated — and in how Americans view the danger caused by the pandemic. Pew’s work, and other recent surveys, have found Democrats are more likely than Republicans to be willing to take the vaccine, and are more likely to be concerned about the public health ramifications of the pandemic.

As Zeeshan Aleem recently wrote for Vox:

CBS News released a poll conducted between March 10 and 13 which found 33 percent of Republicans say they won’t get the vaccine when it becomes available to them, while just 10 percent of Democrats said the same. In that survey, 47 percent of Republicans said they’ve already received the vaccine or plan to do so, compared to 71 percent of Democrats. 

Those findings follow a recent poll from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist which found that 47 percent of people who supported former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election say they won’t choose to be vaccinated (versus 10 percent of Biden supporters), as well as a Monmouth University poll released earlier in March that found 59 percent of Republicans either wanted to wait and “see how it goes” before getting vaccinated, or said they were likely to never get one. By contrast, 23 percent of Democrats felt the same way.

Similarly, Pew found 83 percent of Democrats have been vaccinated, or plan to be, compared to 56 percent of Republicans.

The Kaiser Family Foundation and Washington Post recently discovered that partisan vaccine hesitancy extends to the medical profession. A survey they conducted from February 11 to March 7 found 40 percent of Republican health care workers — including doctors, nurses, and staff — feel available vaccines may not be safe and effective. That view was held by 28 percent of Democrat health care workers.

Why this is the case is not completely clear — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the United States, told Meet the Press that the divide “makes absolutely no sense.”

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Republicans appear to be far less worried about — and frightened by — Covid-19 than Democrats

One thing polls have made clear of late is that people’s political inclinations tend to correspond with how worried they are about the virus in general, something that could influence how likely they are to take measures to prevent exposure and infection.

According to the Pew survey, for instance, 82 percent of Democrats say that the coronavirus outbreak is a major threat to the health of the American population, compared to 41 percent of Republicans. That divide has been fairly steady since last March, when 33 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Democrats were worried about the threat Covid-19 posed to public health.

Pew also found Republicans to be much less concerned about the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus — 40 percent of Republicans said they worry these variants, some of which are more transmissible and deadly, could lead to “a major setback” in progressing toward the end of the pandemic, compared to 60 percent of Democrats. Members of both parties largely agree that the virus is a threat to the economy, however, with 83 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Republicans sharing that sentiment.

A Franklin Templeton/Gallup study conducted in December 2020 — when confirmed daily cases regularly topped 200,000 (compared to the 50,000 to 60,000 confirmed cases seen for most of March 2021) — found Republicans far less likely to believe a coronavirus infection posed a hospitalization risk than Democrats. Members of both parties were found to vastly overestimate an infected person’s chances of being hospitalized, with 28 percent of Republicans, 41 percent of Democrats, and 35 percent of independents believing the hospitalization rate was at least 50 percent. Far more Republicans than Democrats — 26 percent to 10 percent — correctly responded that about 1 to 5 percent of those infected must be hospitalized.

According to more recent polling from CBS/YouGov (conducted from March 10 to 13), 51 percent of Republicans said they weren’t concerned about being infected with Covid-19, compared to the 17 percent of Democrats who weren’t concerned. When asked why they weren’t concerned, most Republicans said the risk of infection was exaggerated or declining.

These numbers suggest that at least a portion of Republican vaccine hesitancy may stem from some Republicans feeling as if the coronavirus is not something that is overly dangerous — or something to fear.

The results come as a majority of Americans express optimism about the state of the pandemic. About 60 percent of Americans say that the “coronavirus situation” is getting better, and 26 percent said it’s staying the same, according to a Gallup poll taken February 14 to 21. Only 14 percent say it’s getting worse, the lowest response to that question since July. For the pandemic to end, however, more people than are currently willing to do so will need to take a vaccine — and key to making that happen will be overcoming hesitancy among all groups, Republican voters included.

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[A 6,000-year-dormant Icelandic volcano just erupted — and it’s awesome]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/3/20/22341888/iceland-dormant-volcano-erupted-fagradalsfjall-reykjavik 2021-03-22T12:45:25-04:00 2021-03-20T16:35:00-04:00
The March 20 eruption near Mount Fagradalsfjall in Iceland. | Vilhelm Gunnarsson/Getty Images

After months of earthquakes, a long-dormant volcano in the southwest of Iceland erupted on Friday night, leading to dramatic videos and splendid red skies near the country’s capital city.

According to the Icelandic Meteorological Office, the eruption near Mount Fagradalsfjall, about 20 miles southwest of Reykjavik, took place at 8:45 pm. Though considered small, the eruption created a fissure about 1,640 feet long, and spewed more than 10 million square feet of lava, sometimes in fountains reaching heights of more than 300 feet.

It was the first volcanic eruption in this part of Iceland — the Reykjanes Peninsula, home to Reykjavik, where most of the country’s residents live — in 781 years. And it was the first time this particular volcano had gone off in about 6,000 years.

The eruption, in the Geldinga Valley, was remote enough that evacuations were not necessary, and no structures were endangered.

“As of now it is not considered a threat to surrounding towns,” said Iceland’s prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, on Twitter on Friday night. “We ask people to keep away from the immediate area and stay safe.”

Experts warned residents to beware emissions of dangerous gases, including carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, and there were some resulting traffic jams. Drones were temporarily prohibited from flying over the area, to allow scientists first access, but flights in and out of the international Keflavik Airport have not been affected.

The head of emergency management in the country told people to close their windows and stay inside to avoid volcanic gas pollution, which could spread as far as Thorlákshöfn, a city about 30 miles south of Reykjavik.

But on Saturday, the meteorological office said, “Currently, gas pollution is not expected to cause much discomfort for people except close up to the source of the eruption.”

The eruption is ongoing, and could last for “a day or a month,” Magnús Tumi Gudmundsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, told RÚV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

That makes this latest Icelandic geologic event starkly different from the large-scale earthquake at the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010, which caused more than 100,000 flights across Europe to be canceled for weeks afterward as ash spread across northern Europe and Great Britain. That was described as the largest shutdown of airspace since WWII.

“The more we see, the smaller this eruption gets,” Páll Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, told the Associated Press on Saturday.

Despite the relatively small size, the eruption provided residents with unique views — and people across the region shared photos of the skies, as scientists set up a livestream of the flowing lava.

Iceland’s location makes it particularly susceptible to earthquakes — and eruptions

Iceland is no stranger to volcanic activity. There is usually an eruption every four or five years because the island is in a region that is particularly susceptible to seismic activity. The most recent one, in 2014, was at Holuhraun, a lava field in the Icelandic Highlands.

Earthquakes are a familiar experience, too; since 2014, the country registered between 1,000 and 3,000 earthquakes per year. But since December 2019, that number has dramatically increased, according to the New York Times; scientists are still working to understand why.

In the last week alone, Iceland experienced more than 18,000 earthquakes, with more than 3,000 on Sunday. At least 400 had taken place in the area of the volcano the day before the eruption — and that was a relatively calm day, according to state meteorologists.

“This is somewhat less seismic activity in comparison to previous mornings where the numbers have been around 1,000 earthquakes,” the meteorological office said.

Many of those earthquakes were undetectable to ordinary people, but some were of magnitude 3 and greater, so that they could be felt. The largest was a 5.7-magnitude quake on the morning of February 24, followed by a magnitude 5 tremor 30 minutes later.

“I have experienced earthquakes before, but never so many in a row,” Reykjavik resident Audur Alfa Ólafsdóttir told CNN earlier this month. “It is very unusual to feel the Earth shake 24 hours a day for a whole week. It makes you feel very small and powerless against nature.”

According to Thorvaldur Thórdarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland, the cause of this dramatic increase in seismic activity is still being studied.

“We are battling with the ‘why’ at the moment. Why is this happening?” he told CNN. “It is very likely that we have an intrusion of magma into the [Earth’s] crust there. It has definitely moved closer to the surface, but we are trying to figure out if it’s moving even closer to it.”

Icelanders were warned about possible volcanic activity as a result of the earthquakes beginning on March 3. Officials at the time did not expect the event to be life-threatening or affect property.

Iceland’s location along a series of tectonic plates — known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge — has made it uniquely susceptible to activity.

As the Times’s Elian Peltier writes, “The country straddles two tectonic plates, which are themselves divided by an undersea mountain chain that oozes molten hot rock, or magma. Quakes occur when the magma pushes through the plates.”

Officials, including Justice Minister Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir, the Coast Guard, and first responders shared overhead images of bright lava spilling through the fissure.

And many Icelanders shared images on social media of the eruption’s aftermath, which cast an orange hue into the sky. At night, from certain angles, its glow merged with the famed green and blue of the northern lights.

Pop star Björk — perhaps Iceland’s most famous resident — was one of those expressing excitement about the historic event and ensuing beauty.

“YESSS !! , eruption !!” she wrote on Instagram on Friday. “We in iceland are sooo excited !!! we still got it !!! sense of relief when nature expresses herself !!!”

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[As police consider hate crime charges, Biden condemns violence against Asian Americans]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/3/20/22341774/police-hate-crime-biden-atlanta-violence-against-asian-americans 2021-03-20T14:38:14-04:00 2021-03-20T12:28:48-04:00
President Joe Biden speaks in Atlanta, Georgia following shootings at Asian-owned businesses. | Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images

A presidential trip to Atlanta, Georgia originally intended to promote federal Covid-19 recovery efforts instead focused largely on the killing of eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at Emory University on Friday, following Tuesday’s mass shootings that targeted three Atlanta-area spas. Although the targeted businesses were Asian-owned and largely staffed by Asian and Asian American women, federal and local law enforcement have been hesitant to say the shootings were racially motivated. Biden and Harris, however, tied the attack directly to an increase in violence against people of Asian descent across the United States.

“Too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying, waking up each morning the past year feeling their safety and the safety of their loved ones are at stake,” Biden said. “They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated, and harassed. They’ve been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed.”

“It’s been a year of living in fear for their lives just to walk down the street,” he said.

As Vox’s Terry Nguyen has reported, violence against Asian Americans has increased in the last year. “In 16 of America’s biggest cities, the number of reported anti-Asian hate crimes increased nearly 150 percent in 2020, according to an analysis from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at CSU San Bernardino,” Nguyen wrote. “Certain Asian community members — women and elderly people — also appear to be more vulnerable than others to attacks and harassment.”

Much of this violence has been blamed on racist rhetoric and xenophobia that has accompanied the spread of the coronavirus, which scientists believe originated in China. According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that tracks anti-Asian sentiment, there have been at least 3,795 anti-Asian incidents — both physical and verbal — in the United States since March 2020.

Harris said Friday that it has been “people with the biggest pulpits spreading this kind of hate,” a statement seen as a reference to Republican members of Congress and the Trump administration — including former President Donald Trump — who have used derogatory language to describe the coronavirus, including calling it the “kung flu.”

Harris also described the history of racism against people of Asian descent in America, from 19th century exclusion laws that sharply limited Chinese immigration, to the internment camps where Japanese Americans were held in the 1940s. She said this history has led to deep-seated bias and is part of what has given rise to recent violence.

And she specifically highlighted the nearly 3,800 reported incidents of assault and harassment against Asian Americans — two-thirds of which targeted women — while Biden said that many incidents go unreported. 

“There are simply some core values and beliefs that should bring us together as Americans. One of them is standing together against hate, against racism — the ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation,” Biden said.

And addressing the fact the the shooting has brought together concerns about gun violence and misogyny as well as racism, Biden also referred to shootings as “another example of public health crisis, of gun violence in this country.”

He named two pieces of legislation — the Violence Against Women Act, which was recently renewed by the House of Representatives, and the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would expand federal hate crime laws and require expedited federal review of coronavirus-related hate crimes — as needing rapid approval. Both bills are pending in Congress. Beyond legislation, he added, a cultural shift is also necessary to end the targeting of people based on race and gender.

An investigation into the Atlanta shooting is ongoing

The White House’s remarks came as authorities continue their investigation into the 21-year-old suspect in the killings. He is being investigated for eight counts of murder, but it has not yet been determined whether he will also be charged under a new hate crime law in Georgia.

The state’s new hate crime law was enacted last summer, after Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, was gunned down by neighborhood vigilantes while he was out for a run. His death was captured on video, and the white men who killed him were charged with murder.

At the time, Georgia was one of just four states to not have a hate crime penalty. Now, although Georgia still lacks a standalone hate crime charge, one can be added to another charge — in this case, murder — to increase the punishment. The law applies if the crime targeted someone based on sex, gender, race, religion, national origin, sexuality, or a disability. If a person is convicted of a felony, the additional charge would add at least two years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000. 

Law enforcement officials in Cherokee County, the site of two of the three shootings, drew some criticism after a sheriff’s deputy said that the alleged shooter’s stated motivation was not racism, but rather the eradication of sexual temptation. Advocates say that the association of Asian women and Asian-owned spas with sexual temptation is rooted in historic racism, fetishization, and misogyny.

As Vox’s Li Zhou has written, “attacks against Asian Americans can’t be divorced from race and gender”:

The central problem with this stereotype is that it dehumanizes Asian American women and reduces them solely to sexual objects. That dehumanization, in turn, perpetuates violence toward these groups, and condones it.

This dynamic, coupled with the pervasiveness of the “model minority myth,” which seeks to drive a wedge between minority groups and treats the Asian American experience as an exceptional and homogenous one, renders the pain and violence that Asian American women endure invisible.

“Dehumanization creates a climate that makes violence excusable,” says Morgan Dewey, the development coordinator for the National Network to End Domestic Violence. “Forty-one to 61 percent of Asian women report experiencing physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime. This is significantly higher than any other ethnic group.”

If Georgia prosecutors do not bring hate crime charges, however, the alleged shooter could still face federal hate crime charges. According to the Associated Press, federal investigators have not yet acquired enough evidence to pursue those charges. The bar is high, and generally requires explicit articulation of hateful motivations such as professed white supremacist beliefs.

In an interview with NPR on Thursday, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, said his team was supporting local law enforcement, and echoed officials in Cherokee County, saying the FBI does not have evidence the shootings were a racist attack.

“While the motive remains still under investigation at the moment, it does not appear that the motive was racially motivated,” Wray said. “But I really would defer to the state and local investigation on that for now.”

That same day, however, Atlanta’s Deputy Police Chief Charles Hampton said his team has not ruled out a possible hate crime classification in a news conference.

“Nothing is off the table for our investigation,” he said.

The Atlanta investigation is separate from that in Cherokee County, according to an Atlanta police spokesperson.

The alleged shooter is being held in Cherokee County’s jail, and faces a minimum life sentence if convicted of even one murder; he has been charged with eight counts. Georgia also still has the death penalty, but prosecutors have not yet said whether they will seek that.

According to a separate AP report, some local leaders are calling for the hate crime designation. Democratic state Sen. Michelle Au, who is of Chinese descent, said that the charge would bring visibility to the ways that Asian Americans are targeted.

“People feel like they’re getting gaslighted because they see it happen every day,” said Au. “They feel very clearly that it is racially motivated, but it’s not pegged or labeled that way. And people feel frustrated by that lack of visibility and that aspect being ignored.”

“It is important that the law calls things what they are,” said Republican state Rep. Chuck Efstration. “It’s important for victims, and it’s important for society.”

A hate crime investigation would also require additional data to be collected. Advocates told the AP that could lead to increased resources aimed at investigating and preventing future hate crimes.

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[10 GOP senators ask Biden to promote bipartisanship by backing a smaller Covid-19 relief bill]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/1/31/22259102/10-gop-senators-smaller-coronavirus-relief-bill-bipartisan 2021-02-01T13:09:29-05:00 2021-01-31T17:00:00-05:00
GOP Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Rob Portman (OH), two of the 10 Republican senators who say they have a counterproposal to Biden’s coronavirus relief plan, at the US Capitol in December 2020. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc./Getty Images

A group of 10 Republican senators sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Sunday proposing a smaller coronavirus relief package than his $1.9 trillion plan, and asking him to negotiate with them to find a compromise on new Covid-19 stimulus efforts.

The number of signatories is significant, because any bill taken up under normal Senate rules would need at least 10 GOP senators in order to be successful. This renders the letter, in effect, an offer to work with Democrats to pass new stimulus measures — with certain conditions.

In the letter, the Republican lawmakers — a group that includes Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as well as other relative moderates — argued that their proposal, which they promised to release in full on Monday, would be able to receive bipartisan support, given that it mirrors Biden’s call for $160 billion for coronavirus testing, tracing, treatment, and protective supplies.

The lawmakers also said their bill will include funding for direct payments to “families who need assistance the most,” a reference to some lawmakers’ desire to needs-test direct payments; assistance for small businesses and child care; and $4 billion for mental health and substance use.

They did not provide specifics, but the Washington Post reports the GOP proposal would cut the cost of new stimulus by $1.3 trillion, to around $600 billion, and that it would make major cuts to a number of Democratic priorities.

For instance, Democrats have pushed for another round of direct payments of $1,400 to single people making $75,000 or less per year, and to couples making $150,000 or less. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) pointed out on ABC’s This Week Sunday, Democrats promised there would be another round of direct payments of at least $1,400 if they won both Senate seats in January’s Georgia runoff races — and they did.

“You can’t campaign on a series of issues, and then, after the election, when you get power, say, ‘Oh, well, you know what, we’re changing our mind,’” Sanders said.

Accepting the new Republican proposal would force Democrats to do just that, however — it would reduce the direct payments to $1,000 per person, the Post reports.

And those payments would likely be sent out to a much smaller group of people under the new Republican plan. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, one of the letter’s signatories, said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday that direct payments should be capped at individuals earning $50,000, or families earning $100,000. “Let’s focus on those who are struggling,” Portman said.

Portman also said that the Democratic proposal to extend federal unemployment insurance — currently valued at $300 per week — through September was premature, and that the program should also be better targeted.

Democrats have proposed not just extending the program, but expanding it, by bumping up weekly payments to $400. The Post reports that the GOP plan envisions keeping the weekly allowance at $300, and extending the program, currently set to expire in March, until June.

The GOP plan also reportedly gets rid of the Democratic proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, and would likely reduce the amount of aid available to state and local governments.

The GOP signatories argue in their letter — and in television appearances Sunday — that their proposal will give Biden a chance to make good on his promise for “unity,” a theme of his inaugural address.

“In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a COVID-19 relief framework that builds on prior COVID assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support,” the letter reads. “We request the opportunity to meet with you to discuss our proposal in greater detail and how we can work together to meet the needs of the American people during this persistent pandemic.”

And they claim that Democrats’ current plans to push their preferred proposal through Congress through a process known as reconciliation, which allows for legislation related to budgetary matters to be passed in the Senate with a simple majority vote (a majority Democrats now have due to their victories in Georgia), would — in Portman’s words — “poison the well” for any future attempts at bipartisan legislating.

State of the Union host Dana Bash asked Portman why he had supported Republicans using reconciliation to advance controversial legislation in the past, noting it had been used both in the Republican effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act and to pass former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts into law. Portman replied that “reconciliation is not meant for the purposes that they are trying to use it for,” and argued Democrats should not use reconciliation as their first resort.

Democrats, however, have long been stymied in their efforts to pass a sweeping stimulus package, agreeing to a compromise bill in late 2020 after months of Republican refusals to consider a $3 trillion bill that passed the House in May 2020.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he is willing “to work with our Republican colleagues to advance” coronavirus relief, but that Democrats are “keeping all our options open, on the table, including budget reconciliation.”

What reception the new GOP proposal will receive from Biden remains to be seen. Appearing on State of the Union on Sunday, Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, told Bash, “We welcome input to say where we may have not gotten everything right,” but argued, “The cost of doing too little right now far outweighs the cost of doing too much.”

There’s an urgency to pass a new relief package as federal coronavirus programs face expiration

Given that many federal coronavirus programs are set to expire in the coming months, there is an urgent need to work on the next round of stimulus. As Vox’s Emily Stewart has reported, delays in passing the last round meant coverage gaps for many unemployed people.

Biden stressed on Friday the importance of getting a coronavirus stimulus bill passed, saying, “I support passing Covid relief with support from Republicans if we can get it, but the Covid relief has to pass. There are no if, ands, or buts.”

Given the House’s Democratic majority, and the fact that legislation can pass in that chamber by a simple majority vote, the Senate is where any difficulty in quickly passing aid will arise. There, Democrats have been faced with either finding 10 Republicans to support their proposal, compromising with moderate Republicans on a plan like that advanced by the 10 GOP senators on Sunday, or passing legislation through reconciliation.

For any of these routes to work in the Senate, Democrats would need to be a united front. As it stands, they hold the narrowest possible majority in the evenly split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaker.

And a united front is not a given, since there are some right-leaning Democrats in the Senate who have not fully embraced all the proposals in Biden’s plan, something that ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked Sanders about on Sunday.

Specifically, she asked Sanders about West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who has said that bipartisan lawmaking is important to him and has not offered full-throated support of a $15 minimum wage. He has also not said whether he would go along with Democrats if they choose to pursue reconciliation. Sanders expressed faith that “all Democrats understand the need to go forward” with coronavirus relief.

“The question is not bipartisanship, the question is how to address these crises right now,” said Sanders. “If Republicans want to work with us, they have better ideas on how to address those crises, that’s great. But to be honest with you, I have not yet heard that.”

Sanders added that there would be other opportunities for bipartisanship in the future, especially around issues like prescription drug reform and infrastructure. “But right now, this country faces an unprecedented set of crises,” he said.

One of the GOP letter’s signatories, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, suggested Sunday that Republicans hadn’t been given enough of a chance to work on a bipartisan agreement.

“If you want unity, you want bipartisanship, you ought to start with the group that’s willing to work together,” Cassidy said on Fox News Sunday.

As Republicans have pointed out, Biden has stated a desire to work with Republicans on legislation. But as Vox’s Ella Nilsen has written, Biden’s ambitions to work across the aisle and to pass his relief package may be at odds with one another — particularly given the more limited scale of relief the 10 GOP senators now propose.

And Democrats seem to believe that if they can only fulfill one of the president’s ambitions, the priority is on getting the package done. As Nilsen writes:

While Republicans in the bipartisan group are the ones advocating for cutting back on Biden’s Covid-19 bill, Democratic senators in the centrist group haven’t been as eager to scale back. Democrats remember that Senate Republicans used the budget reconciliation mechanism to pass their massive tax cut bill in 2017, and some in the Democratic caucus think they should give their priorities the same treatment now that they hold the majority.

Sanders, the Senate Budget Committee chair, and House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth have each told reporters their committees are working on drafting budget reconciliation resolutions for the Covid-19 relief bill, which could pass in a matter of days if Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi give them the green light.

Those reconciliation resolutions are now expected as early as this week. Republicans can also sign onto them if they desire.

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[Trump’s legal team is disintegrating ahead of his Senate trial]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/1/31/22258795/trump-legal-team-disintegrating-ahead-senate-impeachment-trial 2021-02-01T11:20:00-05:00 2021-01-31T12:06:01-05:00
Former President Donald Trump in South Carolina in 2017. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

With just over a week until his Senate impeachment trial, former President Donald Trump’s defense team is disintegrating, with at least five lawyers departing or declining to join it, including a South Carolina attorney selected just last week to lead the defense effort.

That attorney, Karl “Butch” Bowers Jr., will no longer represent Trump when the former president faces the Senate on February 9 over his alleged role in inciting the violent insurrection at the US Capitol. Politico reports that Bowers and another South Carolina-based attorney, Deborah Barbier, were confirmed on Saturday to have departed from the team.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins then reported on Saturday night that lawyer Josh Howard, a recent addition to the defense effort, also would not be part of the team.

These resignations came, Collins’s sources said, because “Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and it was stolen from him rather than focus on proposed arguments about constitutionality.”

Finally, two other South Carolina attorneys who reportedly planned to be part of Trump’s team, Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris, have exited as well, according to the New York Times.

The news comes after Trump reportedly struggled to find lawyers to represent him.

Oral arguments are due to begin on February 9, a date chosen after some negotiation among party leaders. House Democrats serving as impeachment managers have their first filing in the proceedings due on Tuesday. Trump has until the day before the arguments begin to file his briefs.

Bowers, who previously successfully defended former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford in a 2009 impeachment hearing, was considered a measured alternative to the more bombastic Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s longtime attorney who oversaw the Trump campaign’s failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in court.

Giuliani had suggested that he might lead Trump’s defense, after representing Trump during a special counsel investigation into his 2016 campaign. However, he later said he can’t represent Trump in this case, as his presence at the Trump rally that proceeded the insurrection makes him a “witness.”

The departure of Barbier and Bowers was described to Politico as a “mutual decision.” Trump reportedly did not feel that he had chemistry with Bowers, “a quality the former president generally prizes in his relationships,” reported the Times’s Maggie Haberman. Additionally, Bowers does not maintain a significant media presence, another quality that Trump likes in his lawyers, according to Haberman.

Bowers is a longtime friend of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who first announced the hiring during a Senate GOP meeting on January 21. At the time, Graham suggested that the defense’s legal strategy might hinge on the idea that the impeachment proceedings should be considered unconstitutional, coming, as they will, weeks after Trump left office.

However, as Vox’s Ian Millhiser has explained, a majority of legal scholars say that holding an impeachment trial for a former president would be constitutional. Nevertheless, following the dissolution of Trump’s legal team, a spokesperson for the president again made the claim that the trial is unconstitutional, while also saying that Trump’s defense is still being finalized.

“The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country,” Trump spokesperson Jason Miller said. “In fact, 45 senators have already voted that it is unconstitutional. We have done much work, but have not made a final decision on our legal team, which will be made shortly.”

Here, Miller was referring to a motion led by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky last Tuesday to force a vote on whether impeaching a former president would be constitutional. Paul, who has declined to admit that the November election was not stolen, was attempting to demonstrate that there will not be sufficient GOP support for conviction.

An impeachment trial conviction requires the support of two-thirds of the Senate, which means at least 17 Republicans would need to vote in favor of convicting Trump for the effort to be successful. There is little indication that many GOP senators will be willing to do so.

It is not clear who will now step up to represent Trump in the historic proceedings, which come after he was impeached in the House on January 13 for “incitement of insurrection,” after a mob of his supporters violently attacked the US Capitol building shortly after a Trump-led rally on January 6. The attack left five people, including a Capitol Police officer, dead.

Giuliani has said he cannot. And Trump’s lawyers from his first impeachment, including former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, have signaled that they will not represent him in this one.

Democrats are finalizing their impeachment trial strategy

Even as Trump works to quickly reassemble his legal team, Democrats are moving full speed ahead with their prosecution.

According to the Washington Post, House Democrats have made plans to bring evidence linking Trump to the injuries sustained by police officers during the insurrection, and are using cellphone footage taken on January 6 to “build an emotionally compelling impeachment case.”

At least 140 Capitol Police officers were injured during the day’s events, according to their union. One is in danger of losing an eye, one was stabbed with a metal fence stake, and others have suffered spinal and brain damage, Gus Papathanasiou, the chair of the Capitol Police Labor Committee, said this week.

One officer died from injuries sustained during the attack, and two other police officers who responded to the attack have died by suicide in the days since. Four of the rioters also died on January 6; one was shot by police, while three others died in separate medical emergencies, according to DC Metropolitan Police at the time.

Democrats appear poised to use video evidence of the day’s dramatic and bloody events to make the case that it was Trump who incited this level of violence, and that he did so in an undemocratic attempt to maintain his hold on the presidency.

Democrats may also attempt to leverage the fact that members of Congress and their staffs were witnesses to the storming of the Capitol, and are reportedly considering calling police officers who tried to repel the insurrectionists to testify as witnesses.

As painstaking as Democrats’ preparations are, and as chaotic as Trump’s have been, for many observers it is all but a foregone conclusion that Trump will not be convicted.

While a handful of Senate Republicans have been critical of Trump in the wake of the attempted coup, most still support the former president, and have either signaled or said outright that they will not vote to convict. Many do not believe the proceedings should be allowed to go forward at all.

Both parties have suggested that they want the trial to be speedy — preferably lasting a week — as the country continues to face down a roiling pandemic and related economic calamity. However, the trial may not be the end of potential consequences for Trump’s role in attempting to overturn the election: If the Senate does not vote to convict, Democrats are also beginning to weigh a censure resolution, proposed by Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[SNL’s cold open asks if anything in America still works]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/1/31/22258785/snl-cold-open-john-krasinski-kate-mckinnon-gamestop-marjorie-taylor-greene 2021-02-01T11:42:09-05:00 2021-01-31T09:49:34-05:00 After a year that seemed to last a decade, the month of January has somehow also managed to pack a lifetime’s worth of major historic events into a few weeks.

That was the premise of Saturday Night Live’s cold open for its January 30 show, which featured a spoof of gentle morning talk shows, called What Still Works?

Kate McKinnon played the host, and began the segment with the question: “It’s a new year and we have a new president, so some things should work. But do they?”

A range of characters came out to answer that question by speaking on topics including politics, finance, technology, and health — each touching on the fact that in the past few weeks, a new Congress has been sworn in, there was an attempted insurrection at the US Capitol, former President Donald Trump became the first president to be impeached twice, an internet community helped drive a major stock market squeeze, and the pandemic continues to take thousands of lives per day.

Out first was QAnon adherent Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (played by Cecily Strong) to talk about the government. McKinnon prompted her to review her week, which included the surfacing of previous incorrect statements, ranging from her claim that California’s 2018 forest fires were caused by Jewish-controlled space lasers to her suggestions that school shootings aren’t real.

“And those are real things you believe and tell other people about? And you’re a US representative?” McKinnon asked, to which Strong replied, “Mmhm, yep.”

“People can Google you and it’ll say, ‘She’s a real member of the US government?’” McKinnon asked.

“That may not be the first thing that comes up, but yes,” Strong replied.

“So, government doesn’t work,” McKinnon concluded.

Next, McKinnon turned to talking about the stock market. “That usually works, right? That’s where people invest all their retirement money, so it should probably work.”

Out came Pete Davidson as Derrick Boner, introduced as the new majority shareholder of GameStop. This week, that company saw its share prices soar after an army of small investors, largely encouraged by a Reddit forum, turned that stock into a valuable meme.

When asked if the stock market still works, Davidson — attired in a GameStop shirt, an enormous gold chain, and a gaudy wristwatch — replied, “Hell yeah.”

But McKinnon questioned whether GameStop, which currently relies on an increasingly obsolete business model at a time when many people download or stream games, will be able to maintain its sky-high share prices.

“So now it seems like — ” she prompted Davidson.

“The entire system is a joke?” he replied.

“Exactly,” she said. “So, the stock market no longer works.”

Next, McKinnon questioned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (played by Mikey Day), and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (played by Alex Moffat), quickly concluding that social media is broken, too, after each reflected on the role the major tech platforms played in amplifying far-right voices ahead of the violent siege of the Capitol.

In focusing on the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, McKinnon brought out Kenan Thompson as O.J. Simpson, who received an inoculation this week.

“Get your shot. I got mine!!!” the 73-year-old, whose age puts him in his state’s priority group, posted on Twitter on Friday. The post drew backlash from some who felt the former football star was getting special treatment, as millions of vulnerable Americans still have not received theirs amid a bumpy and disorganized distribution scheme.

“Teachers can’t get vaccines, but you did? People with long-term lung conditions can’t get the vaccine, but you did?” McKinnon asked. “Among the first 3 percent of Americans given the vaccine was O.J. Simpson?”

“Hey, guilty as charged,” Thompson’s Simpson laughed. “About the vaccine!”

Finally, McKinnon brought out Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, played by the show’s host, John Krasinski.

“You might be the only thing in America that still works,” McKinnon said. “So I guess everyone must be rooting for you, right?”

“Almost no one,” Krasinski replied.

McKinnon said she’d root for him, because “it’s not like you’re a weird Trump guy or anything, right?”

Brady has long faced such questions over his relationship with Trump, and at that, Krasinski left.

McKinnon ended the segment by joking that she’s been “slowly losing my mind with all of you,” and with a more sober acknowledgment that amid all the news, it is okay to sometimes feel overwhelmed.

]]> Anya van Wagtendonk <![CDATA[Trump’s environmental legacy suffers two major court losses]]> https://www.vox.com/2021/1/30/22258030/trump-environmental-legacy-epa-court-losses-ozone-secret-science 2021-02-01T13:17:56-05:00 2021-01-30T18:00:00-05:00
California’s Otay Mesa Energy Center, a natural gas-fired power plant. | Bing Guan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump’s environmental agenda suffered two significant losses in court this week, as federal judges struck down rules that would have made regulating pollution more difficult.

On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked a rule passed in the final days of the Trump administration that would have limited the use of so-called “secret science,” a term used by conservatives to refer to data kept confidential due to patient privacy concerns, in the regulation of pollutants by the Environmental Protection Agency.

And on Friday, a panel of three judges in Washington, DC’s circuit court abolished rules that loosened the EPA’s implementation of ozone standards under the Clean Air Act, as the panel found that the Trump-era policy “contravene[s] the statute’s unambiguous language,” and “rests on an unreasonable interpretation of the statute.”

The first case hinged on the timing of the rule change — it was put in place on January 6 under former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, himself a former coal lobbyist. Wheeler argued that the rule would increase transparency by ensuring public health policy was grounded in data reviewable by all.

But critics of the rule said that it would limit the power of agencies like the EPA to protect public health, as much of the agency’s science relies on work that includes confidential patient data that cannot legally be made publicly available.

For example, a landmark Harvard study from 1993, which found direct links between exposure to pollutants and mortality rates, has for years formed the basis of the EPA’s regulation of fine particulate matter. But because that study used anonymized health data, the Trump rule would have barred it, and any similar studies, from being used to create regulations.

On Wednesday, US District Judge Brian Morris, an Obama appointee in Montana, sided with the rule’s critics, saying that the Trump administration’s decision to pass the rule two weeks before Trump left office was “capricious.”

He ordered that the rule’s implementation be delayed until February 5 so that President Joe Biden’s administration can assess whether to go forward with the rule or not.

In the Friday case, three judges on the United States Court of Appeals for Washington, DC — Judges Harry Edwards, David Tatel, and Gregory Katsas, appointed by former Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Trump respectively — found that parts of rules relaxing ozone regulations were not lawful.

The rules, adopted in 2015 and 2018, allowed polluters and officials flexibility in meeting ozone regulations under the federal Clean Air Act. One key rule change gave polluters leeway in the production of compounds that serve as precursors to ozone, which can be toxic. This rule allowed polluters to swap the emission of a given ozone precursor with another known ozone precursor. Two other rules allowed states flexibility in meeting ozone requirements, and a fourth gave areas that failed to meet ozone mitigation thresholds cover from consequences if they showed that they’d had a plan to meet those targets.

Environmental groups that brought challenges to each of these provisions, which included the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, called those changes “loopholes.”

Biden has pledged to undo Trump’s environmental policy

The Trump administration rolled back nearly 100 environmental protections in just four years. On the campaign trail, Biden promised to reverse many of these actions, and has spent part of his first days in office doing so, using executive orders.

As Vox’s Ella Nilsen reported:

On Wednesday, Biden signed a set of executive actions meant to begin making this plan a reality. In them, he directed his administration to take a “whole-of-government approach” to combat climate change, which includes — among other initiatives — ordering federal agencies to purchase electricity that is pollution-free, as well as zero emission vehicles, and directing the US Department of Interior to pause entering into new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore.

These new orders come on top of Biden’s day one executive actions to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and directing his agencies to reverse a number of former President Trump’s actions slashing environmental regulations and emissions standards.

Biden has signaled that climate policy will be a centerpiece of his economic agenda, too.

“Biden’s economic agenda is his climate agenda; his climate agenda is his economic agenda,” Sam Ricketts — co-founder of the climate policy group Evergreen and a senior fellow at the progressive Center for American Progress think tank — told Nilsen.

In the short term, this means finding ways to create new jobs, according to the president. And that focus was on display in one of the executive orders he signed Wednesday, which, among other initiatives, directed his administration to investigate ways to convert fossil fuel hubs into communities centered on renewable energy.

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