Court documents: Monroe police find baby dead in motel room trash can

Court documents: Monroe police find baby dead in motel room trash can

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  • The Next COVID-19 Nightmare for People of Color Is Proving They Got the Shot

    Octavio Jones/GettyAs we near the one-year anniversary of stay-at-home orders in the United States, COVID-19 vaccine distribution has begun, albeit in rather messy fashion. In the U.S. to date, over 49 million people have received at least one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, and over 24 million have received their second dose as well, according to the CDC. Despite promises of smooth and widespread vaccine distribution from the Trump administration in the fall of last year, the vast majority of vaccinations have only been administered under the direction of President Biden’s COVID-19 Task Force. And stories of people skipping the line, political favoritism, and wealthy individuals gaming the system continue to taint the process nationwide.Soon, though, with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on the way, anyone who wants to get a vaccine will (in theory) be able to get one—if their job and other circumstances permit. This, in turn, has led technocrats to recommend the use of vaccine passport apps to enable safe re-opening of public spaces by this summer. This isn’t the first time app-based solutions have been recommended during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contact-tracing apps first hit the digital marketplace by the summer of last year, yet have struggled to find their feet in part due to issues regarding privacy and surveillance—issues that vaccine passport apps share as well.Anti-Vaxxers Melt Down Over Vaccinated People Giving BloodHowever, concerns regarding privacy rights are not a luxury that all can afford, including the socioeconomically disadvantaged, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees, and the formerly incarcerated—all of whom have historically been over-surveilled by the government. No matter the slew of assurances from tech giants, vaccine app adoption will continue to encounter hesitancy among marginalized communities where individuals have routinely been forced to renounce their right to privacy, often in order to qualify for government assistance or in the name of public safety. Ignoring this “poverty of privacy rights” means ignoring a sizable subset of the population who are less willing to give up what privacy they have left, less trusting of institutional authorities, and less likely to be afforded equitable healthcare to receive the vaccine in the first place.Equity in vaccine distribution is a major hurdle to achieving herd immunity—a hurdle even for those who are already eligible. Low-income communities, communities of color, and immigrants are thus far among the least likely to have received the vaccine, and yet have been more likely not only to get sick with COVID-19 but to die from it, too. Adequate access to health care remains a barrier, and the ability to schedule and show up for a vaccination appointment remains contingent on internet access, flexibility from employers, and reliable transportation.Additionally, vaccine hesitancy that exists in subsets of these communities is due both to a long history of systemic discrimination and abuse by medical institutions—such as the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee and forced sterilization of Black, Latina, and Indigeneous women across the country—and to ongoing disparities in quality of care for minority groups in health-care settings today. Misinformation campaigns by anti-vaxxers have also specifically targeted these communities, exacerbating the situation further.In response to such hesitancy, one might argue that uptake may improve if individuals are unable to participate in indoor activities, such as going to the grocery store or movie theater, without a vaccine passport app in hand. And such an argument wouldn’t be without precedent. For instance, SB-277 in California outlawed personal exemptions from vaccination requirements for entry into both private and public schools following the 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak. And under immigration laws, the Department of Homeland Security mandates that those entering the U.S. for the first time or current foreign nationals applying for residency must be vaccinated based on recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services. Required immunization “cards” for commercial travel have also existed for quite some time, and the evolution to developing an “e-vaccination certificate” system for travel post-pandemic is unsurprising. Though vaccinated individuals currently receive a CDC-issued paper COVID-19 vaccine record, plans are already underway in the private sector to attempt a nationwide app for immunization status.Black Doctors Try to Get Through to Vaccine ResistersHowever, while the public may support some form of vaccination verification to enable safer participation in indoor activities, a recent survey by Brookings pointed to concern that apps have a higher potential for violations of privacy and civil liberties than paper cards, particularly since U.S. law does little to protect against discrimination based on proof of immunity. Additionally, not only would these apps face challenges in terms of varying enforcement mechanisms, e.g. entering a school versus a grocery store, but aforementioned hesitancy—with respect to both vaccination and app adoption—remains a major obstacle to overcome. Countering vaccine misinformation and distrust of public health authorities, as well as ensuring privacy protections, will be an ongoing battle. Furthermore, even those who want to use a vaccine passport app may not be able to because of limited access to smartphones.Ultimately, relying solely on vaccine passport apps to reopen society will translate primarily into privileged communities being afforded a return to normalcy. Such apps can be of use in very limited circumstances, like commercial air travel, but these efforts are essentially trivial to the more pressing consideration of vaccinating the general public equitably. The focus must remain on addressing the underlying concerns of marginalized communities by improving government engagement with community leaders to promote vaccine accessibility and uptake and providing alternatives to signing up for vaccine appointments for those without smartphone or Internet access (like landline phone and mail-in scheduling).Concentrating on vaccine passport apps as a silver bullet for getting back to normal is a mistake so long as an equitable vaccine rollout remains out of reach, and marginalized communities continue to be left behind.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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  • Trump at CPAC Shows Why He Doesn’t Need a New Party

    Elijah Nouvelage/GettyHe was a one-term “loser.” He helped lose his party the White House, the Senate, and the House. He left office with a domestic body count in the hundreds of thousands, and an economy in the toilet.Just last month, he instigated a deadly riot on Capitol Hill that endangered the lives of senior members of his own party, as he sat back and smirked from the comfort and safety of the West Wing. And his administration ended in such a historically disastrous state of his own making that fellow leaders in the Republican Party were directly blaming him for the deaths and anti-democratic mob violence, and some of his former senior advisers were openly accusing him of attempting to stage a coup or pleading with him to disappear to Florida “and stay” there.But that was a whole month ago. On Sunday, former President Donald Trump re-emerged at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held this year in his new home base of Florida, where he was greeted as the beloved, unequivocal leader in the GOP. Whatever blood there was on the 45th U.S. president’s hands, the Republican Party and conservative movement had already done their best to rinse it all away. And they were more than happy to try.“Actually you know, [the Democrats] just lost the White House,” Trump said—obviously incorrectly—on stage early Sunday evening. “Who knows? I might decide to beat them for a third time,” he added, dangling a potential 2024 presidential run.Much of the former president’s CPAC speech was a lazy, predictable retread of grievance and his perennial whining. “They’re the biggest fakers there are,” he alleged, bashing his enemies in the press. “Never let [Democrats and the Biden administration] take the credit” for the coronavirus vaccines, Trump said, regurgitating his concerns dating back to November that a President Joe Biden would get credit for ending the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. He again took his shots at foes like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Biden, yet again accusing the latter of having mental difficulties.Trump harangued trans women for competing in sports as women. He kept peppering his speech with lies that he triumphed in the 2020 election. He used those lies to call on Republicans to enact more and more restrictions on legitimate voting, and did so to rapturous applause from the audience. He repeatedly trashed the U.S. Supreme Court—which has a sizable conservative majority of his presidency’s creation—for lacking the “courage” to obliterate democracy at his behest last year. He baselessly alleged that the Democratic Party was trying to bring on “communism.” He bleated over and over about “cancel culture” and Big Tech. He rattled off a list of Republican lawmakers (Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, and so on…) whom he found insufficiently subservient to him and his ego.And he had the nerve to claim that “Trumpism” means “no riots in the streets.”In the days of the conference prior to Trump’s address, the content and mood of the annual gathering reflected the sentiment pervading the national GOP, its base of voters, Republican honchos in Washington, D.C., state parties, and the influential hubs of conservative media: that this twice impeached president, as well as Trumpism, are the dominant present and future of American conservatism. And for this, they’re enthusiastically frontloading many of Trump’s policy and messaging priorities.For instance, much of this year’s CPAC was devoted to pushing Trump’s lie that he actually won the 2020 presidential contest against Biden, an election Trump clearly lost. That lie fueled Trump and Republicans’ months-long legal crusade during the presidential transition period to groundlessly throw out countless votes in key states, in a failed effort to overturn the will and decision of the electorate. Top Trump allies publicly flirted with the concept of martial law, and other authoritarian power-grabbing ideas that thankfully went nowhere, despite Trump’s sustained attempts. This broad push culminated in the bloody Jan. 6 riot.And yet various major players in the Republican Party still refuse to admit publicly that Biden won, and Trump himself has privately said he’d prefer the candidates and primary challengers he supports in the future to publicly back the Big Lie—both rhetorically and in the writing of laws and crackdowns on voting—to his satisfaction.And as Trump charts the path of his post-presidency, he’s keen on snuffing out dissent to the devotion to his cult of personality that is now the most integral element of his party. In recent weeks, the former president, tucked away at his Palm Beach club of Mar-a-Lago, has repeatedly complained about several prominent Republicans who had crossed him (even mildly) over the Jan. 6 riot, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Nikki Haley, Trump’s one-time ambassador to the United Nations. Trump has told multiple confidants that if Haley runs for the presidency in 2024, he wants to ensure she is crushed and humiliated in the GOP primary, according to three people familiar with the matter.This despite Haley’s attempts earlier this month to execute some damage control and to reconnect with Trump. Even others who have more aggressively sought to crawl back to Trump following the riot haven’t been spared the ex-president’s suspicions or trash talk. A month ago, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) visited Trump in Florida, on a mission to preserve party unity, as they gear up for the 2022 midterm elections. Prior to that he’d already jumped on the phone with Donald Trump Jr., solidifying his deference to the Trump brand and family, ahead of the former president’s second Senate impeachment trial.Still, in recent days Trump has privately told some of those close to him that he’s not sure if he can trust McCarthy in the long run, two of the sources said. One of the things that Trump has griped about during his post-presidency is McCarthy’s public acknowledgement that Biden indeed won the election, following weeks of McCarthy cheering on or excusing Trump’s months-long endeavor to cling to power.But at CPAC on Sunday night, the ex-president and current leader of the Republican Party had the courtesy to, for now at least, take one tactic for keeping the GOP in line off the table. “I am not starting a new party,” Trump said on stage, affirming his continued support for the party that once made him leader of the free world.And why should he? The party and movement keep showing him, again and again, since Biden’s inauguration that the GOP remains a willing and wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump brand name.And soon after he left the stage, Trump’s political operation was back to doing what it does best: milking his supporters for big money, often by deceptive means. “Pres. Trump: Did you miss me? I just finished my CPAC speech! My team’s handing me the 1ST donor list in 1 HR. Can I count on you? Donate,” the Trump team texted supporters on Sunday evening.During the 2020 campaign, the Trump campaign would often ask supporters to donate, alleging that doing so could give small-dollar donors a chance at getting their names in front of an appreciative Trump. Several sources familiar with the practice say that this was so often done with absolutely zero intention of bothering Trump with any lists of his faceless fans’ names.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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