Whose Freedom Counts?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/freedom-liberty-hierarchy.html

The words freedom and liberty have been invoked breathlessly in recent weeks to bolster the case for “reopening.” Protesters of state public safety measures readily locate in the Bill of Rights the varied and assorted freedom to not be masked, the freedom to have your toenails soaked and buffed, the freedom to open-carry weapons into the state capitol, the freedom to take your children to the polar bear cage, the freedom to worship even if it imperils public safety, and above all, the freedom to shoot the people who attempt to stop you from exercising such unenumerated but essential rights. Beyond a profound misunderstanding of the relationship between broad state police powers and federal constitutional rights in the midst of a deadly pandemic, this definition of freedom is perplexing, chiefly because it seems to assume not simply that other people should die for your individual liberties, but also that you have an affirmative right to harm, threaten, and even kill anyone who stands in the way of your exercising of the freedoms you demand. We tend to forget that even our most prized freedoms have limits, with regard to speech, assembly, or weaponry. Those constraints are not generally something one shoots one’s way out of, even in a pandemic, and simply insisting that your own rights are paramount because you super-duper want them doesn’t usually make it so. 

The very idea that it doesn’t matter what happens to the larger community, so long as the individual has unfettered freedom to do as he pleases, is not just a vestige of the slaveholder ethos. As Charlie Warzel points out this week, this has been the core animating theory behind the American gun rights movement: reduce the debate to an absolutist fight about freedom that eventually narcotizes an entire population into believing that the cost of true liberty is tens of thousands of avoidable gun deaths each year. Any effort to regulate anything within the vast space between “assault weapons for everyone on demand” and “reasonable gun safety” is cast as a dire step toward tyranny. As Warzel puts it, this leads to another version of freedom to, in this case, the freedom to either do mass harm or the freedom to insist that nothing be done about it:

KKK 'leader' charged for attack on Black Lives Matter protesters

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52973398

A self-described Ku Klux Klan leader has been arrested for allegedly driving his car into a group of Black Lives Matters protesters gathered on Sunday in the US state of Virginia.

Jewish Ohio health official resigns after anti-Semitic backlash to virus orders

https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-ohio-health-official-resigns-after-anti-semitic-backlash-to-virus-orders/

Amy Acton, state’s Department of Health Director, faced armed protesters, Nazi comparisons, anti-Jewish slurs after supporting stay-at-home orders to stem coronavirus outbreak

 

Don’t Listen to Fox. Here’s What’s Really Going On in Seattle’s Protest Zone.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/15/dont-listen-to-fox-heres-whats-really-going-on-in-seattles-protest-zone-321507

  It seems I live in a city undergoing a “totalitarian takeover” that will lead to “fascist outcomes” and could “metastasize across the country.” Its government “has handed over an entire portion of the city to domestic terrorists.” This “group of rogue protesters” is attempting “to get a stranglehold on the city.” This radical “army” of “conquistadors” has “rolled over the police like Cortez rolling over the Aztecs.”

Welcome to our world, out here in Seattle—at least according to the hosts and commentators of Fox News. Lesser voices on the digital right have announced even more dire supposed developments: “Rapper-turned-warlord rules commune streets with the iron fist of a privatized police force.” But it’s Fox that has been all over the story of the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or CHAZ (which its Black Lives Matter organizers on Saturday renamed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, CHOP): four-plus blocks of street and sidewalk in Seattle’s traditional gay and bohemian nightlife district, surrounding a boarded-up police precinct headquarters that the mayor ordered vacated last Monday to dampen a week-and-a-half of escalating confrontations between police and protesters. From there, the fluid protests, spearheaded by BLM but involving a wide spectrum of activists and ordinary citizens, coalesced with surprising rapidity into something like a provisional government.

 

Donald Trump’s iron grip on the GOP: Why Republicans stick with him

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-12/republican-officials-fear-trump

“Members of Congress are not afraid of Trump; they are afraid of their voters and constituents,” said Buck. “As long as he has a stranglehold on them and is able to communicate directly with them, this is not going to change.”

 

Report: Trump peace plan could leave Jewish heritage sites under Palestinian control

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/281933

Currently, the overwhelming majority of antiquities sites in Judea and Samaria suffer from constant vandalism and looting, with a sorely understaffed and underfunded department of the Civilian Administration responsible for law enforcement and prevention measures. To make matters worse, the Palestinian Authority has recently stepped up its activities in this area, dedicating tremendous effort and resources to re-writing and re-defining the history of these sites, turning them into "Palestinian heritage sites" and erasing or obscuring Jewish history, while curtailing access to the sites for Israeli tourists, archaeologists and other visitors.

 

DeSantis defies critics as coronavirus spreads in Florida

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/16/trump-florida-coronavirus-321600

DeSantis’ moves to return his state to normal have been as aggressive as any governor, but there’s one inconvenient fact: Florida’s coronavirus cases are rising to record levels and the percentage of positive tests has been steadily climbing ever since the state fully implemented the first phase of its reopening May 18.

On Friday, when DeSantis first spoke to reporters about the GOP convention moving to Florida in August, the state was setting new records for the number of coronavirus cases reported each day. But he downplayed the severity of coronavirus’s spread, partly because hospitalization and death rates remained relatively low and stable. And he framed the convention as an economic shot in the arm, rather than a petri dish of infection as some detractors contended.

Members of Congress took small-business loans — and the full extent is unknown

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/16/congress-small-business-loan-320625

And there are almost certainly more, according to aides and lawmakers. But only the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department have that information, and the Trump administration is refusing to provide any details. That leaves it entirely up to business owners — including elected officials — to decide whether to come forward about a loan, which can be as large as $10 million.

 

Why Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch protected LGBTQ rights

Americans Learn First-Hand The Burdens Of Post-Policy Politics | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

Fox News runs digitally altered images in coverage of Seattle’s protests, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/fox-news-runs-digitally-altered-images-in-coverage-of-seattles-protests-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone/

The image was actually a mashup of photos from different days, taken by different photographers — it was done by splicing a Getty Images photo of an armed man, who had been at the protest zone June 10, with other images from May 30 of smashed windows in downtown Seattle. Another altered image combined the gunman photo with yet another image, making it appear as though he was standing in front of a sign declaring “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.”

 

Fox News Removes Digitally Altered, Misleading Photos of Seattle 'Autonomous Zone' From Website

https://time.com/5853408/fox-news-altered-photo-seattle/

As of Saturday, Fox News included an editors note posted at the top of at least three stories on its website covering the protest zone, saying it replaced a “home page photo collage” because it “did not clearly delineate between these images” and that it mistakenly included a St. Paul, Minnesota, photo in a slideshow about Seattle.

The Seattle Times reports Fox News’ website featured at least two photos on Friday that inserted an image of a man standing with a military-style rifle, and that there were no disclaimers on how they were manipulated when featured on the network’s website for most of the day Friday.

The image of the gunman is from a Getty Images photo that was taken on June 10 at what is known as the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” protest area. The original photo showed an unidentified man wearing a green mask who was carrying a weapon while standing in front of a car.

 

Treasury Sec. Mnuchin plays Hide and Seek with taxpayer dollars

Trump's wish for an end to the pandemic contradicts reality

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/16/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-politics-oklahoma-election-2020/index.html

Despite pleas from health authorities in Oklahoma to postpone his upcoming rally to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus, the President is doing the opposite -- talking about organizing a second mass rally indoors to showcase what his campaign says is an overwhelming response to the event. Trump's campaign said it will test temperatures of rallygoers and offer masks and hand sanitizer. But thousands of people are set to be crammed together in a hot arena for hours in conditions that are ideal for the spread of the virus.