Newest 2020 dropout Elizabeth Warren alleges “some really ugly stuff” went on at the hands of Bernie Sanders’ supporters.
Speaking to Rachel Maddow Thursday, Sen. Warren (D-Mass.), who earlier in the day dropped out of the race, claimed that so-called Bernie Bros, as Sanders’ staunchest supporters have come to be known, posted the home addresses and phone numbers of numerous women of color who worked for or ran groups that had either endorsed her or not endorsed Sanders.
The move, she said, led to an “onslaught of online threats.”
“Working Families Party, two women there, women of color … were attacked right after they endorsed me,” the Massachusetts progressive said.
Warren told the MSNBC host that the Bernie Bros made women who did not align with their campaign feel unsafe online.
“[Bernie supporters] actually published the phone numbers and home addresses of the two women, the executive director and the communications director [of the UNITE HERE labor union in Nevada]…and really put them in fear for their families,” she said.
Warren described the victims as “tough women, tough women who’ve run labor organizing campaigns, and really earned their jobs and their union I mean the hard way, and yet, said for the first time because of this onslaught of online threats, that they felt really under attack.”
Warren’s comments marked the first time she had spoken out so aggressively about Sanders and his supporters since bowing out of the race on Thursday.
The Massachusetts senator was adamant that the candidate himself bore some responsibility for his supporters, who are acting in an effort to support Sanders.
“I wanna say this for all of the candidates, back when there were lots of us, we are responsible for the people who claim to be our supporters and do really threatening, ugly, dangerous things,” she remarked.
When asked by Maddow if this was a particular problem with the Democratic socialist’s supporters, Warren answered with an adamant yes.
“It is, it just is.”
Warren has declined to endorse any of her remaining competitors since suspending her campaign. She is currently considering her options before making a final endorsement decision.
In the two days leading up to her final decision to withdraw from the race, Sanders supporters sent thousands of hateful messages toward the senator. Messages included snake emojis — a way of referring to Warren as a snake — and calls for other Democrats to launch a primary challenge for her senate seat, all for remaining in the race.
A spokesman for Sanders did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on Warren’s allegations about their supporters.
Fox News Correspondent-at-Large Geraldo Rivera told ‘Fox & Friends’ Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s ‘appalling’ behavior was ‘thuggish,’ did not steam from Brooklyn upbringing.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning with hosts Pete Hegseth, Jedediah Bila, and Steve Doocy, Rivera said he thought Schumer’s behavior this week was “thuggish.”
“I am appalled by his bald-faced attack on specific Supreme Court justices,” he stated, arguing that it seemed like the New York senator was trying to create headlines.
“I want to tell you, [Neil] Gorsuch. I want to tell you, [Brett] Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Schumer warned. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Rivera said that while he knows abortion rights are a highly “emotional” and “personal” topic, Schumer’s threats and “obvious blatant [attacks]” against justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch were reprehensible.
“Come on, where do you stop?” he asked. “You’re going to give out their addresses next? You’re going to attack their family? You’re going to become Antifa, Senator Schumer?”
“This is appalling,” he told the “Friends” hosts. “It’s almost like he’s jealous that Nancy Pelosi got all the publicity during impeachment and the Senate and his minority status was left out and he played second banana and now he’s trying to catch up.”
“It’s really distasteful, you know, to do it on the steps of the Supreme Court is an attack on the separation of powers that are sanctioned and the Constitution of the United States, and shame on Chuck Schumer for that appalling lack of good manners,” he admonished.
We’re ending our live coverage for the day, thanks for following along. Some highlights and links:
Trump used a freewheeling CDC press conference, intended to provide updates on the coronavirus, as an opportunity to attack Democrats, praise his own intelligence, lash out at CNN and spread false and misleading information about the status of the outbreak.
Trump’s re-election campaign sued CNN for publishing an opinion piece that argued Trump did not stop Russia from helping the campaign during the presidential election.
In a newly released documentary, Bill Clinton claimed the reason for his 1995 extramarital affair with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky was “to manage [his] anxieties”.
The next debate will be Biden v Sanders, with the latest qualifications ensuring Tulsi Gabbard, who is still a candidate, will not join them on the stage.
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SXSW, the annual tech, music, and film meetup held in downtown Austin, is the latest major conference to be canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak, and just one week before it was slated to start. It is the first time in the event’s 34-year history that it’s been canceled. The festival was scheduled to take place from March 13th to March 22nd, yet Austin Mayor Steve Adler today announced that, amid an increasing number of high-profile speaker and company withdrawals and growing public health concerns, the festival will no longer be taking place.
“I’v issued an order that effectively cancels South by Southwest,” Adler said, referencing an emergency order put in place Friday over the coronavirus. The decision will almost certainly be a harsh blow to the city’s economy, as SXSW brings in hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism, ticket sales, and other revenue streams every year. Last year, the festival made $355.9 million for the city of Austin, SXSW said in November of last year.
The private company that organizes SXSW, which has yet to detail its refund policies, made clear in a statement issued on Twitter and its website that this was a decision made by Austin city officials and out of its hands. Yet the festival may end up taking place in some form or another later this year. “We are exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible for 2020 participants, starting with SXSW EDU,” reads the full cancellation note on the SXSW website.
For weeks leading up to the event, there were growing concerns about whether it was a smart decision for Austin leaders and the festival organizers to host SXSW, which brings nearly half a million people to a concentrated section of the Texas city’s downtown. The situation became more complicated as US coronavirus cases began spiking in Washington state, where there have so far been 11 reported deaths, and rapidly spreading to other parts of the country, including California and New York.
A petition on the website Change.org calling for the event’s cancellation amassed more than 55,000 signatures, and high-profile speakers like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey pulled out ahead of the announcement. Amazon, Apple, and Netflix all said they would no longer premiere new film and TV projects at the show, and countless companies — including tech firms Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Intel and news organizations like CNNand Mashable — also withdrew from having official, on-the-ground presences at the festival.
All cited health concerns and internal company policy related to non-essential travel restrictions put in place to help reduce employee risk. Some notable attendees had announced that they wouldn’t be attending the show, either, including entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss and musicians like the Beastie Boys, Ozzy Osbourne, and Trent Rezor. Yesterday, Variety reported that the three major music groups — Sony, Universal, and Warner Music — have advised employees not to travel to the festival.
As of Monday, the SXSW organizers said the event would proceed as normal. “As a result of this dialogue and the recommendations of Austin Public Health, the 2020 event is proceeding with safety as a top priority,” the organizers said in a statement given to USA Today. “There is a lot about COVID-19 that is still unknown, but what we do know is that personal hygiene is of critical importance. We hope that people follow the science, implement the recommendations of public health agencies, and continue to participate in the activities that make our world connected. That’s our plan.”
The company also shared a statement on Twitter the same day echoing its commitment to hold the event and linking to a webpage featuring the festival’s preparations for the event and an FAQ detailing its responses to various public concerns.
On Tuesday, the conference even announced additional keynote speakers, including actors Chris Evans and Kumail Nanjiani.
Fox News Correspondent-at-Large Geraldo Rivera told ‘Fox & Friends’ Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s ‘appalling’ behavior was ‘thuggish,’ did not steam from Brooklyn upbringing.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning with hosts Pete Hegseth, Jedediah Bila, and Steve Doocy, Rivera said he thought Schumer’s behavior this week was “thuggish.”
“I am appalled by his bald-faced attack on specific Supreme Court justices,” he stated, arguing that it seemed like the New York senator was trying to create headlines.
“I want to tell you, [Neil] Gorsuch. I want to tell you, [Brett] Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Schumer warned. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Rivera said that while he knows abortion rights are a highly “emotional” and “personal” topic, Schumer’s threats and “obvious blatant [attacks]” against justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch were reprehensible.
“Come on, where do you stop?” he asked. “You’re going to give out their addresses next? You’re going to attack their family? You’re going to become Antifa, Senator Schumer?”
“This is appalling,” he told the “Friends” hosts. “It’s almost like he’s jealous that Nancy Pelosi got all the publicity during impeachment and the Senate and his minority status was left out and he played second banana and now he’s trying to catch up.”
“It’s really distasteful, you know, to do it on the steps of the Supreme Court is an attack on the separation of powers that are sanctioned and the Constitution of the United States, and shame on Chuck Schumer for that appalling lack of good manners,” he admonished.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government has collected persuasive intelligence that the Taliban do not intend to honor the promises they have made in the recently signed deal with the United States, three American officials tell NBC News, undercutting what has been days of hopeful talk by President Donald Trump and his top aides.
“They have no intention of abiding by their agreement,” said one official briefed on the intelligence, which two others described as explicit evidence shedding light on the Taliban’s intentions.
Trump himself acknowledged that reality in extraordinary comments Friday, saying the Taliban could “possibly” overrun the Afghan government after U.S. troops withdraw.
“Countries have to take care of themselves,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “You can only hold someone’s hand for so long.” Asked if the Taliban could eventually seize power, Trump said it’s “not supposed to happen that way, but it possibly will.”
The intelligence described by the American officials is consistent with what Taliban sources have been saying in Pakistan. Those Taliban representatives say the group views the peace process as a way of securing the withdrawal of American “occupiers,” after which it will attack the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.
“‘We will ask the Afghan leadership and other political factions that since the U.S. has accepted us and recognized our position, it is time for you to accept us and give us the country peacefully,” said one Taliban member, who was not authorized to speak to the media.
The agreement signed Saturday envisions something very different. In exchange for an American pledge to withdraw all troops in 14 months, the Taliban promised to stop harboring terrorists and to enter into peace talks with an Afghan government-led delegation.
“Look, we all hope they follow through with their side of the agreement, but we believe we know their true intentions,” one official familiar with the intelligence said.
A former U.S. official directly familiar with planning acknowledged that the administration understands the risks of a “Vietnam War” style ending to the war in Afghanistan, in which the Taliban renege on the deal and overrun the country. But no one is saying that publicly.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers remarks to the media at the State Department in Washington on March 5, 2020.Yuri Gripas / Reuters
Asked about the prospects for peace Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “We still have confidence the Taliban leadership is working to deliver on its commitments,” despite their fighters having carried out more than 70 attacks on Afghan government forces since the agreement was signed Feb. 29.
He added that that pact will not go forward if Taliban leaders break their promises, and he called for a reduction in violence without explicitly condemning the group.
Two defense officials said that according to a recent intelligence assessment, the Taliban will continue to attack Afghan forces as a means of pressuring the government to carry out a prisoner swap.
“We know that the road ahead will be difficult,” Pompeo said. “We expected it. We were right.”
“The upsurge in violence in parts of Afghanistan over the last couple days is unacceptable. In no uncertain terms, violence must be reduced immediately for the peace process to move forward.”
Defense and intelligence officials said they believe Trump is determined to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan regardless of what the Taliban do.
“[Zalmay] Khalilzad is trying to give Trump cover to get him through the election,” said former CIA official Doug London, who studied the Taliban closely while conducting counterterrorism operations.
Khalilzad, Trump’s special envoy, signed the deal in Qatar with a Taliban representative, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who co-founded the Taliban but spent more than eight years in prison in Pakistan until the U.S. engineered his release in 2018. London and other experts question whether Baradar and his fellow negotiators can still speak for the Taliban’s fighting forces.
Trump confirmed he spoke by phone Tuesday with Baradar, a remarkable moment after nearly two decades of war with the group that sheltered Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the U.S.
Trump called it a “very good talk.” The Taliban said in a statement that Trump called Afghans a “tough people” who “have a great country and I understand that you are fighting for your homeland.”
The Taliban sources say the group will continue to train fighters but plans to wait for the outcome of the intra-Afghan dialogue before officially announcing a spring offensive.
“Presently we are training around 15,000 fighters in our dozens of training centers across Afghanistan,” one commander said. “As per our agreement with the U.S., we will not carry out attacks in the cities and district headquarters in Afghanistan. But we will continue our attacks in the rural areas of the country.”
The Taliban are suspicious that Trump could back out of the withdrawal plan after the U.S. presidential election in November, multiple Taliban sources said.
“President Trump is straightforward but then unpredictable and you can expect anything from him,” one Taliban representative said.
Both Republican hardliners and former Obama administration officials have criticized the deal, saying it could allow Afghanistan to turn into a sanctuary for terrorists again.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Saturday the agreement “includes concessions that could threaten the security of the United States” and lacks a “disclosed mechanism to verify Taliban compliance.”
Former White House national security adviser John Bolton called the agreement “an unacceptable risk to America’s civilian population.”
“This is an Obama-style deal,” he tweeted. “Legitimizing Taliban sends the wrong signal to ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists, and to America’s enemies generally.”
Susan Rice, who was President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, was also critical of the agreement, saying it’s not a deal the Obama administration could have countenanced.
Signing this agreement with Taliban is an unacceptable risk to America’s civilian population. This is an Obama-style deal. Legitimizing Taliban sends the wrong signal to ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists, and to America’s enemies generally.
The pact suggests the U.S. is likely to withdraw all troops before a lasting Afghan peace is achieved, she wrote Wednesday in The New York Times, which means “abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban wolves.”
“Worse, after 14 months, the United States will be left without any military or counterterrorism capacity in Afghanistan, effectively subcontracting America’s security to the Taliban,” she added.
Seth Jones, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who consults frequently with the Pentagon, said the Taliban’s leadership in Pakistan is not going to be satisfied with a power-sharing arrangement with the Afghan government.
“Most of the people that matter on the Quetta Shura are not going to be happy until they get Kabul,” he said, referring to the Taliban leadership council.
The Afghan government, which was not a party to the U.S.-Taliban deal, is also skeptical. Afghan political leaders fear the U.S. is ready to abandon the country to the Taliban without guarantees it will keep up military and financial support for Kabul or keep its troops in place until a peace treaty is agreed upon, a senior Afghan official said.
The agreement is already facing serious headwinds.
The Afghan government said it was not ready to release up to 5,000 captured Taliban fighters before the start of peace talks with the insurgents, as the deal proposed. Then the Taliban said it was not ready to extend a partial truce with the Afghan government as U.S. officials had hoped, and the insurgency promptly launched attacks on Afghan security forces. On Wednesday, the U.S. military carried out its first airstrike since the deal was clinched, coming to the aid of Afghan forces under fire in the country’s south.
Trump has made it clear he wants to end America’s foray in Afghanistan, the nation’s longest war.
Last fall, NBC News reported that the Pentagon had begun drawing up plans for an abrupt withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in case Trump surprised military leaders by ordering an immediate drawdown as he did in Syria.
There is broad consensus among American foreign policy makers and legislators that the war should end as quickly as possible through a political solution. But many Pentagon and intelligence officials argue that if the U.S. withdraws all troops without a peace settlement, it will make it much more difficult to detect and destroy terrorist activity by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State militant group or ISIS.
Some experts have expressed skepticism that the Taliban will ever stop harboring terrorists, regardless of any paper agreement.
Former CIA official London points out that Al Qaeda figures have married into Taliban families, cementing ties between the two groups.
In October, when a joint U.S. and Afghan team hunted down and killed Asim Umar, Al Qaeda’s South Asia chief, they found him embedded with the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, officials said at the time.
“The Taliban could not assure its followers’ abandonment of their terrorist guests even if they wanted,” London said. “Many of these groups are inextricably tied through marriage, tribal ties and military interdependence.”
Former U.S. diplomats and Western officials briefed on the Taliban talks say Trump’s special envoy, Khalilzad, has made a good-faith effort at trying to hammer out a way for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan. But Trump’s impatience has meant Khalilzad has had to work under an almost impossible deadline, all the while fearing that a single presidential comment could upend the deal.
In September, with a draft agreement ready, Trump derailed the deal in a tweet, saying the pact would be called off due to an attack that killed a U.S. service member.
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar sign a peace agreement during a ceremony in the Qatari capital of Doha on Feb. 29, 2020.Karim Jaafar / AFP – Getty Images
At the signing ceremony at a five-star hotel in Doha on Saturday, American officials mingled with bearded Taliban negotiators clad in black turbans. Pompeo said the U.S. withdrawal would hinge on whether the Taliban kept their word.
“We will closely watch the Taliban’s compliance with their commitments and calibrate the pace of our withdrawal to their actions. This is how we will ensure that Afghanistan never again serves as a base for international terrorists,” Pompeo said.
As a Republican congressman from Kansas, Pompeo in 2014 blasted the Obama administration for exchanging five detained Taliban leaders in return for the release of a U.S. soldier, Bowe Bergdahl.
But in an interview with Fox News on Monday, Pompeo rejected criticism that the deal was driven by Trump’s re-election campaign and said that it was aimed at ensuring the Taliban cut ties with terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda.
“I met with them myself when I was in Doha. I looked them in the eye. They revalidated that commitment,” to break with Al Qaeda, Pompeo said.
“Now they’ve got to execute it. Now we’ll be able to see, the world will be able to see, if they truly live up to that obligation.”
Passengers on a Grand Princess cruise ship linked to the first death from coronavirus in California remained off the coast on Thursday as the first two cases were confirmed in San Francisco.
A coast guard helicopter was delivering test kits to the cruise ship waiting to dock in the port of San Francisco before flying them back to a laboratory. While the ship has 2,422 passengers and 1,111 crew onboard, according to the cruise line, fewer than 100 have thus far been identified for testing.
“The ship will not come on shore until we appropriately assess the passengers,” said Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, in a news conference Wednesday.
The death of a 71-year-old man on Wednesday was the first US fatality reported outside of Washington state.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has cleared the way for an investigation into possible war crimes in Afghanistan.
Peter Dejong/AP
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Peter Dejong/AP
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has cleared the way for an investigation into possible war crimes in Afghanistan.
Peter Dejong/AP
The International Criminal Court has cleared the way for its prosecutor to investigate possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, including those allegedly committed by U.S. forces and the CIA.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted the decision, calling it a “breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution, masquerading as a legal body.”
“We’re going to take all the appropriate actions to ensure that American citizens are not hauled before this political body to settle political vendettas,” Pompeo said. The U.S. is not a party to the court in The Hague, Netherlands, and has long criticized it.
A panel of judges from the court’s Appeals Chamber decided unanimously on Thursday to allow the ICC prosecutor to investigate possible crimes on Afghan territory since May 2003 and other alleged crimes linked to the situation there since July 2002. It comes just days after the U.S. and the Taliban signed a historic deal, raising hopes for peace in the country after nearly 20 years of war.
Indiana University associate professor David Bosco, who has written a book about the ICC, tells NPR’s Michele Kelemen that the Trump administration has take a much more confrontational approach to the court than the Obama administration did.
“This does represent a kind of crossing of the Rubicon for the court in its relationship with the United States,” he says. “Because we now are going to have an active investigation by the court that could ultimately lead to indictments of U.S. personnel, even potentially U.S. senior officials.”
This judgment represents a course reversal for the court. Last April, an ICC panel of judges blocked a probe into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. The judges said that even though the crimes were serious enough for the case to move forward, “the current circumstances of the situation in Afghanistan are such as to make the prospects for a successful investigation and prosecution extremely limited.”
The court also said last April that it needed to prioritize investigations that had better chances of success, adding that the parties involved weren’t willing to cooperate with the probe.
ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda appealed that decision. She said the pretrial panel’s assessment that an investigation would not be in the interests of justice overstepped its discretion, and on Thursday, the appeals chamber judges agreed.
Bensouda has said that she wants to investigate alleged crimes by the Taliban and other armed groups, Afghan forces, U.S. forces and the CIA.
According to court documents, she plans to investigate alleged Taliban attacks against civilians, including murders and abductions.
Bensouda also wants to look into methods that the U.S. military and CIA used to interrogate detainees. The prosecution has said, “There is reasonable basis to believe that, since May 2003, members of the US armed forces and the CIA have committed the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape and other forms of sexual violence pursuant to a policy approved by US authorities.”
Human rights groups are applauding the ICC’s decision. Amnesty International’s head of international justice, Solomon Sacco, said the court “reversed a terrible mistake.”
“The ICC represents the first true hope of justice for the victims of conflict, who have been shamefully ignored for years, including in the recent peace agreement that has nothing to say about the crimes committed against them,” he said in a statement.
The ICC was established when the Rome Statute took effect in 2002. It prosecutes crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.
“Senator Romney has expressed his concerns to Chairman Johnson, who has confirmed that any interview of the witness would occur in a closed setting without a hearing or public spectacle,” Romney’s spokeswoman Liz Johnson said. “He will therefore vote to let the chairman proceed to obtain the documents that have been offered.”
Romney has said in recent days that the committee’s investigation into the Bidens has the “appearance” of being politically motivated, given Biden’s resurgence in the Democratic presidential primary. Romney was the only Republican who voted to convict President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial last month, saying he believed Trump violated his oath of office when he pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens.
“There’s no question the appearance is not good,” Romney told reporters on Thursday, later adding: “I would prefer that investigations are done by an independent, nonpolitical body.”
The subpoena seeks documents from a former consultant forBlue Star, a Democratic public affairs firm, as part of the committee’s investigation into conflict-of-interest claims surrounding the younger Biden’s role on the board of Burisma. The ex-consultant, Andrii Telizhenko, has leveled unsubstantiated claims of coordination between the Ukrainian government and the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
The committee has an 8-6 Republican majority, meaning that if Romney were to oppose the subpoena, it would not be issued. The other seven GOP members of the panel are likely to vote in support of the subpoena.
Democrats have said such an investigation is politically motivated and could even aid Russian disinformation efforts. Some Republicans, too, have raised concerns about the type of information the committee receives as part of its probe, including the possibility that some of it is connected to Russian intelligence.
Johnson has insisted that his probe has nothing to do with the presidential election. But on Wednesday, a day after Biden’s Super Tuesday rout, he said he would likely release an interim report on the investigation within one to two months.
“If I were a Democrat primary voter, I’d want these questions satisfactorily answered before I cast my final vote,” Johnson said.
And Trump heightened Democrats’ criticisms of the effort when the president said in a Fox News interview earlier this week that he would use the Burisma issue against Biden in the general election if the former vice president becomes the Democratic nominee.
A medic drives an ambulance at the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash., which has been linked to most of the deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus disease COVID-19 so far.
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A medic drives an ambulance at the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash., which has been linked to most of the deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus disease COVID-19 so far.
David Ryder/Reuters
Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET
The number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. continues an alarming rise, as Washington state reports 79 cases and California reports at least 60. The coronavirus is also affecting more Americans abroad, as a church group from Alabama is now under quarantine in a Palestinian hotel.
A Seattle-area hospital confirmed an additional coronavirus death Friday, raising the Washington state total to 14 and the U.S. death toll to 15.
More than 20 states are reporting cases of the respiratory virus.
New cases in the U.S.
There are at least 260 coronavirus cases in the U.S., according to a tracking tool created by the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering. That figure includes more than 40 people who were repatriated from outbreak sites in China and Japan.
New York has 33 confirmed coronavirus cases, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday, adding that roughly 4,000 people are under “precautionary quarantine” because of possible exposure or their medical circumstances.
Indiana announced its first presumed case on Friday. That case involved an adult who had visited Boston, member station WFYI reports.
The California county that reported the state’s first death is reporting more COVID-19 cases. Placer County officials say the three people diagnosed with COVID-19 had all traveled on the same Grand Princess cruise as the resident who died: a voyage from San Francisco to Mexico that lasted from Feb. 11-21.
In Nevada, one of two cases that were recently reported is a Reno man who is also linked to the Grand Princess — which has been prevented from docking along the California coast after a former passenger died from COVID-19. The Nevada man’s “condition is stable and he is self-isolating at home,” according to the Washoe County Health District, which includes Reno.
The other Nevada case is in Clark County. Both of the Nevada cases involve men who are in their 50s, health officials say.
Worldwide, the number of coronavirus cases has surpassed 100,000, including more than 80,000 in China.
To avoid spreading any virus, the World Health Organization recommends people wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if a sink isn’t available. Face masks should only be used by people who are either sick or caring for someone who is, the WHO says.
Alabama church members quarantined in Bethlehem
More than a dozen members of an Alabama church have been placed under quarantine orders during a tour of the Holy Land, after the Bethlehem hotel where they were staying was informed that a former guest had tested positive for the coronavirus in Greece. The group includes the leadership of the 3Circle Church; they initially arrived in the area on March 1.
Church members say they were initially told to leave the hotel — but were then told to return. When they did, they faced a quarantine, along with the hotel staff.
“So far, 7 hotel employees have tested positive for the coronavirus,” a church pastor said in a statement sent to NPR’s Daniel Estrin.
Hotel staff echoed the church members’ description of local authorities taking a confusing approach to the quarantine, according to The Jerusalem Post. The manager of the Angel Hotel told the newspaper that the Americans had looked for other lodging in the area, but were turned away by every hotel.
The group is now being told to stay in their rooms for 14 days; Estrin adds that Israel has “sealed off movement in and out of Bethlehem.”
The pastor tells Estrin that the group has reached out to the U.S. Embassy about their predicament.
“The hotel employees have been incredibly helpful to the team during this process,” the pastor said. “The 3Circle team is asking for help and clarity, but most importantly, prayers.”
In an update posted to the church’s Facebook page, the group said the mayor of Beit Jala, on the western outskirts of Bethlehem, had ensured that their medications were delivered to the hotel.
“We are deeply grateful, and are so humbled by the incredible hospitality and kindness we have experienced from the people in this area,” the church members said.
Washington state grapples with outbreak
EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, Wash., says its 12th patient has died from COVID-19. Most of the patients who died had been residents of the Life Care Center of Kirkland, a nursing home identified as the site of a coronavirus outbreak.
In addition to the 12 people who have died at EvergreenHealth, two people have died elsewhere in Washington state and one person in California has died.
The University of Washington is halting all in-person classes due to the coronavirus outbreak, telling students they should attend online sessions instead, starting Monday and lasting through the end of the winter quarter on March 20.
The school says all final exams “will not be conducted in person, but may be conducted online when feasible, and at the instructor’s discretion.”
The university’s move is meant to support social distancing – maintaining roughly 6 feet of personal space. The CDC says that in areas experiencing an outbreak, the practice can “limit exposure by reducing face-to-face contact and preventing spread among people in community settings.”
After announcing the decision, the school said one of its staff members has tested positive for the coronavirus and is in self-isolation.
Cruise ship stays away from San Francisco docks
U.S. officials are closely watching for a potential outbreak on a cruise ship currently in limbo some 50 miles off the California coast.
A former passenger on the Grand Princess died from COVID-19 in California, and Gov. Gavin Newsom says at least 21 people aboard the ship have symptoms of the disease.
The Grand Princess had been returning to San Francisco after a cruise to Hawaii, but it’s being kept away from port while a small portion of the roughly 3,500 people on board are tested for the coronavirus.
Coast Guard helicopters have been ferrying coronavirus test kits back and forth from the ship; the initial results of those tests were expected to emerge Friday.
Samples were collected from 45 people Thursday, according to Princess Cruises.
Officials are also working to track down thousands of people who were on an earlier cruise from San Francisco to Mexico and might have been exposed to the coronavirus.
U.S. coronavirus testing had ‘missteps’
More laboratories around the U.S. are finally gaining the ability to test for the coronavirus disease, after what Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, calls “missteps” in the federal government’s plan to create, produce and distribute tests.
Six U.S. states — Alabama, Maine, Ohio, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming — currently have no labs with the verified ability to run COVID-19 diagnostic tests, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday afternoon.
“We’re not there yet, but soon,” Fauci said of the effort to make testing more widely available.
As NPR’s Allison Aubrey reports, “Some academic hospitals are developing their own tests and commercial options are expanding really quickly.” The results, she adds, “can take three or four days” before they’re reported to local health officials and the CDC.
Vice President Pence acknowledged a shortage of tests on Thursday, saying, “We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.”
To address the growing crisis, President Trump signed an emergency funding package worth some $8 billion Friday morning. The president had been scheduled to sign the coronavirus bill at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, but instead he opted to sign it at the White House before leaving on a trip to Tennessee and Florida.
The money will help fund authorities already fighting to contain the outbreak and others as they gear up to protect themselves from it.
For states already battling more advanced outbreaks, like California and Washington, the funds should serve as much needed relief. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Thursday night her state will receive $11.5 million in funding to help the Washington State Department of Health respond to the crisis. Eleven deaths from COVID-19 occurred in the state. The money will go to supporting public lab testing, isolation and quarantine costs, sanitization of public areas and tracking the virus, she said.
“I can tell you we need these funds. We need them now,” Cantwell said in a statement.
The bill will also pay states through grant funding, some of which will be based on a population-based CDC formula.
The bill also includes more than $3 billion in vaccine research
For the federal government, though, much work remains ahead as counts of the illness rack up and it continues to spread throughout the country. As of Friday morning, at least 233 U.S. cases have been confirmed, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The CDC and state health officials have counted 14 deaths.
A slew of legislative issues remain for Congress, including addressing whether workers without paid time off can stay at home and how to handle U.S. companies’ reliance on foreign manufacturing.
By Friday morning, legislators were already introducing new legislation.
Sen. Patty Murray D-Wash., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro D-Conn., introduced emergency paid sick days legislation requiring all employers to allow workers to accrue seven days of paid sick leave and an additional 14 days available immediately in the event of any public health emergency.
There was also a discussion on the Hill that further investment may yet be needed.
“House Democrats will continue to prioritize public health,” said Rep. Nita Lowey D-NY. “If the coronavirus spreads further, we will not hesitate to augment this funding with additional resources.”
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report from Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
This undated photo from the Alabama Department of Corrections shows Nathaniel Woods. Woods was executed late Thursday in Alabama.
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This undated photo from the Alabama Department of Corrections shows Nathaniel Woods. Woods was executed late Thursday in Alabama.
AP
Nathaniel Woods, who was convicted in the 2004 killings of three Birmingham, Ala., police officers, was put to death by a lethal cocktail of drugs late Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court denied him reprieve.
Woods, 43, reportedly had no last words as the drugs flowed into his body. He was pronounced dead at 9:01 p.m. CST.
The three officers, Harley A. Chisholm III, Carlos “Curly” Owen and Charles R. Bennett, were killed in a hail of bullets as they sought to arrest Woods and another man, Kerry Spencer, at a suspected drug house in Birmingham.
Although prosecutors said Spencer was the gunman, Woods was convicted as an accomplice on capital murder charges.
Immediately after Woods’ death, Gov. Kay Ivey released a statement saying no argument was made during his trial that he had “tried to stop the gunman from committing these heinous acts.”
“A jury of Mr. Woods’ peers convicted him of four counts of capital murder. In the past 15 years, his conviction has been reviewed at least nine times, and no court has found any reason to overturn the jury’s decision,” Ivey said.
The case garnered national attention and advocates for Woods, including Martin Luther King III, the son of the late civil rights leader, fought to block the execution, arguing that Spencer was solely responsible for the slayings.
In a letter to Ivey, King said Woods’ case “appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts” and could result in “an irreversible injustice.”
“Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?” he asked the governor.
Hours before the lethal injection, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary stay to consider final appeals in the case — but ultimately denied the inmate’s petitions.
In a letter late Thursday to Woods’ attorney, Lauren Faraino, before the execution was carried out, the governor’s general counsel, William G. Parker, Jr., said Ivey did not “intend to exercise her powers of commutation or reprieve in this case.”
Alabama ranks seventh among states with the most executions since 1976, having put to death 67 inmates in that period. Texas tops the list, with 566 executions, followed by Virginia, with 113.
WASHINGTON – Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in an interview Thursday night that she has faith a woman will be elected to the White House because women “persist.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pressed Warren about how people may feel about her dropping out, whether they were supporters or not.
“If Hillary Clinton can’t win when she gets the nomination, and then you can’t get the nomination, and neither can Kamala Harris and neither can Amy Klobuchar, and neither can Kirsten Gillibrand, I mean, I think part of what’s going on today, is women are the country are like, ‘OK, honestly, if it’s not one going to be any of them, let’s get real.’ Is it just that it can’t be woman ever?” Maddow asked. “Are we just going to run, you know, white men in their late seventies against each other, both parties, and that’s all we can agree to do?”
Maddow said Warren dropping out felt like a “death knell” of having a woman president in “our” lifetimes.
Warren responded: “Oh god. Please no. That can’t be right.”
“This cannot be the right answer,” she continued.
Warren said she realized the importance of her campaign and eventually having a female president when she saw talked to all the women working her campaign headquarters Thursday after she dropped out.
They said, “Thank you for being smart and making that OK. Thank you for talking over men sometimes, because I’m damn tired of always having it go the other way.”
Warren said it’s going to be “a little longer” before a woman is elected president.
“We’ll know we can have a woman in the White House when we finally elect a woman to the White House!” she exclaimed, later noting that critics in the past dismissed a Catholic being elected until former President John F. Kennedy and they claimed the United States would not elect a black man until former President Barack Obama.
It is a nod to the tagline “Nevertheless she persisted,” a comment by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., referring to Warren’s objection to Trump’s appointment of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. It became a rallying cry for many Democrats.
“We can’t lose hope over this. We can’t lose hope because the only way we make change is we get back up tomorrow we get back in the fight,” Warren said of her ending her candidacy
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-HI., is the only female candidate left in the 2020 race, though she only has received two delegates since the primary season has started from American Samoa. She has not polled above 1% in any recent national surveys.
When Warren gaggled with reporters shortly after she dropped out Thursday morning, she said said a question about sexism playing a role in her leaving the race was a “trap question” for any woman to answer.
“If you say, ‘Yeah, there was sexism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner.’ And if you say, ‘No, there was no sexism,’ about a bazillion women think, ‘What planet do you live on?’ I promise you this: I’ll have a lot more to say on that subject later on.”
South Korea has the largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases outside of China, with nearly 6,300 by Friday, while Japan has confirmed more than 1,000, including roughly 700 from an infected cruise ship. However, the South Korean government has tested far more widely than Japan and many other nations, often evaluating more than 10,000 potential cases each day.
“We are proceeding with the investigation whether Biden is in or out,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Finance Committee, who co-signed numerous requests with Mr. Johnson. “This investigation is about conflicts of interest, not political candidates.”
In addition to the Burisma matter, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Grassley are investigating whether Democrats conspired with Ukrainian officials to harm Mr. Trump’s campaign in 2016. Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has previously warned his fellow chairmen in private that any investigation that turned on information from Ukraine should be handled delicately because it could advance Russian efforts to spread disinformation, according to two officials familiar with the discussions, which were first reported by Politico. (Mr. Burr said this week that he had no objection to Mr. Johnson’s investigation.)
It is unclear how far the Burisma investigation has advanced. The senators indicated they had received documents from multiple individuals in recent weeks, and the State Department has handed over 2,800 pages of records.
Mr. Johnson sought approval for the subpoena from Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat in the Homeland Security Committee, but Mr. Peters refused, citing concerns similar to Mr. Burr’s.
In a letter to committee members on Sunday informing them of the subpoena vote next week, Mr. Johnson stressed that his staff was going to “great lengths” to consult with intelligence and law enforcement officials first.
“I share the ranking member’s interest in ensuring that the Senate and this committee not be used to advance disinformation,” he wrote in the letter, which came the day after Mr. Biden won the South Carolina primary.
Facebook has announced it will remove a series of misleading ads from Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
The Trump Make America Great Committee posted 2,000 iterations of an ad this week, asking users to respond to the “Official Congressional District Census”. Instead of information at the Census Bureau, however, the posts linked to a push-poll survey on the GOP fundraising site action.donaldjtrump.com, which also requests personal information for the campaign.
One of the misleading ads on Facebook. Photograph: Facebook
Advocates said this could interfere with the actual census, which begins for most Americans with mailers in mid-March. The census is a once-in-a-decade event that seeks to count every person in the country, with drastic consequences for resource allocation and government representation nationwide.
Trump’s campaign had sponsored and posted the misleading ads on 2 and 3 March, according to Facebook’s ad library, which archives political ads. Most of the posts have fewer than 2,000 impressions, or times it was on someone’s screen, but several reached tens of thousands. The vast majority of those viewed by the Guardian cost less than $100.
After asking questions such as “Do you think Nancy Pelosi and the Radical Left are putting their personal anti-Trump agenda ahead of what’s best for the American people?” the site asks for a user’s contact information.
Terms of that website say that “by providing your phone number, you are consenting to receive calls and SMS/MMS messages, including autodialed and automated calls and texts, to that number from each of the participating committees in the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, Donald J Trump for President and the Republican National Committee.”
A spokesperson for the Census Bureau refused to comment directly on the ads, but pointed to official guidelines that recommend Americans “fight 2020 census rumors” by reporting “any advertisement on social media sharing fake 2020 census websites and inaccurate information”.
Facebook’s stated policy on census misinformation bans “misrepresentation of the dates, locations, times and methods for census participation.”
A Facebook spokesperson told the Guardian: “There are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official US census and this is an example of those being enforced.”
But the ads still made it through the initial vetting process and the company initially doubled down, saying that it was clear the ad wasn’t referring to the “official census”, according to journalist Judd Legum. Facebook only began removing the posts Thursday after media inquiries and pressure from civil rights advocates such Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Facebook announced last year it was doubling down on election-time misinformation. Since the midterm elections in 2018, Facebook’s policy has prohibited content that easily leads to voter suppression and automatically prevents posts like that from being visible. The network said federal agencies and state election chiefs can tell the company directly about such posts, and took down a handful on Super Tuesday.
But some experts say Facebook still is not equipped to handle election year misinformation.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time the Trump administration’s efforts have affected the census. Trump had originally attempted to include a question in the census of whether a respondent was a citizen – leading to fears the census could be used to intimidate people related to undocumented immigrants. That was overturned in a June 2019 supreme court decision, but census workers are still likely to deal with the residual effects.
“The Trump administration has already sowed significant confusion about the census when it decided to push the now-dead citizenship question,” said Tom Wolf, counsel at the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “We’re still cleaning up that mess.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to request for comment.
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