Dear Commons Community,

Drawn by a caisson, the body of John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Ridge yesterday.

See video above.

Tony

Tom Cotton

Dear Commons Community,

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas describes slavery as a “necessary evil” in an attack on a New York Times project exploring the legacy of slavery in the US. 

Cotton in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette defended a bill he intends to introduce to Congress, which proposes cutting federal funding to schools which adopt The Times’s 1619 Project as part of their history curricula.

The project was launched in a special edition of the Times magazine last August, marking the 400th anniversary of the start of slavery in the US.

It seeks to place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

Cotton said he disputed what he claimed to be the premise of the project “that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable.”

He said: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country.

“As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction,” he said.

“America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it,” he said. 

The 1619 Project has generated political controversy amid America’s ongoing struggle with its history of racism. California Senator Kamala Harris praised it as “a powerful and necessary reckoning of our history.”

But it’s attracted criticism from Republicans who claim it is ideologically driven. Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and ally of President Donald Trump said in a 2019 tweet: “the NY Times 1619 Project should make its slogan ‘All the Propaganda we want to brainwash you with.'”

Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who came up with the idea for the project and won a Pulitzer for her introductory essay on it, hit back at Cotton’s claims in a tweet on Sunday. 

“If chattel slavery — heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit — were a “necessary evil” as @TomCottonAR says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end,” she wrote. 

Some historians have questioned whether any of the Founding Fathers said that slavery was a “necessary evil.”

Cotton subsequently claimed he had been describing “the views of the Founders,” rather than citing them with direct quotation.

But Hannah-Jones challenged him to repudiate the view he ascribed to the founders, that slavery was a “necessary evil.”

“Were the Founders right or wrong … when they called slavery a ‘necessary evil upon which the Union was built”? Because either you agree with their assessment of slavery as necessary or you admit they were lying and it was just an evil and dishonorable choice. Which?” she wrote.

Cotton’s statements are evil and dishonorable.

Tony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIp1WwbPUDI

Dear Commons Community,

John Oliver, the “Last Week Tonight” host, ripped Sean Hannity and others at Fox News for the network’s portrayal of the Portland protests after President Donald Trump sent federal law enforcement agents to the city.  (See video above – Oliver’s comments start at the 00.01 second mark and continue to the 1.27 mark).

Portland is among a number of cities where protesters have been demonstrating against police violence on Black people since the May 25 killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. 

Yesterday, Oliver said “things weren’t actually especially dire in Portland” and were de-escalating until the feds arrived. In some cases, those federal agents were seen wearing little to no identification, seizing people off the streets and dragging them into unmarked vehicles. 

Oliver called such actions the opposite of a de-escalation. 

“Masked individuals throwing people into an unmarked van is never a good idea if you want to de-escalate a situation,” he said. “It’s not even a good idea for a surprise bachelorette party.” 

But it was the Fox News coverage of the situation that really got Oliver fired up. Viewers of the network might think “it’s the end of America as we know it,” Oliver said as he shared clips of Fox hosts playing up violence.

One clip showed Hannity speaking as a scrolling list of alleged crimes in Portland rolled past him. The list was mostly graffiti. 

“In fact, graffiti is listed 12 times in a row there under the headline ‘Violence in Portland,’ which is a huge overstatement,” Oliver said. “And at that point, it would have been just as accurate if that heading had said ‘cannibalism in Portland’ or ‘Texas-chainsaw massacres in Portland’ or ‘9/11s in Portland.’”

Hannity told viewers about an alleged “firebombing” incident, which Oliver said was a significantly less dramatic situation involving either a firework or a small fire. Hannity also described the situation in Portland as “insane,” and Oliver agreed, just for a different reason altogether. 

“Yeah, it is insane,” said Oliver. “Because that tone does not honestly reflect the conditions on the ground.”

Oliver said Trump was using Portland as a staging ground “to put on an authoritarian show of force” and warned it “could end very badly.” Then, he offered a basic cognitive test for those who support Trump’s crackdown.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” he asked.

Tony 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2ePQBENPc0

Dear Commons Community,

A group of military veterans showed up (see video above) at protests outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, on Friday night, saying they were there to support demonstrators.

“Our veterans are here specifically to support the rights of the protesters to protest,” Marine Corps veteran Duston Obermeyer told The New York Times.

Footage from The Oregonian showed most of the “Wall of Vets” members lined up ahead of the protests.

Most held their hands behind their backs, though two in the video can be seen holding signs, one reading “Black Lives Matter” and one reading “Disabled Veterans 4 BLM.” The veterans remained until tear gas dispersed most of the crowd of protesters, according to the Times.

The group’s name is an apparent nod to the “Wall of Moms,” a group of several dozen women who were seen in viral footage last week linking arms, surrounding protesters and chanting slogans such as, “Feds stay clear, the moms are here.” Other groups at the demonstrations in recent days have included a “Wall of Dads” and a “Wall of Grandparents.”

The protective human “walls” have gained traction as President Donald Trump deployed federal officers to Portland amid the ongoing protests against police brutality and racial injustice. Federal forces have been seen grabbing at least one person off the street and dragging him into an unmarked van, and federal officers fractured the skull of one man they hit in the head with a so-called “less lethal” weapon.

Trump has defended deploying federal agents, characterizing protesters as violent extremists and arguing that Portland has “lost control of the anarchists and agitators.” But state and local officials in Oregon have widely condemned the feds’ presence, and Gov. Kate Brown said they’re “adding gasoline to a fire.”

The Wall of Vets appeared about a week after Navy veteran Chris David was seen on video approaching federal officers in Portland only to be repeatedly hit with a baton and pepper-sprayed in the face.

Friday was the first night that many of the veterans participated in the Portland protests, Jonathan Fisher, a U.S. Coast Guard veteran, told local news station KATU.

“We believe in something; it’s time to stand,” he said.

God bless those supporting peaceful protesters!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a call to reopen schools in a statement listing numerous benefits of being in school and downplaying the potential health risks (see video clip above commenting on the CDC guidelines – courtesy of MSNBC).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the statement, along with new “resources and tools,”  two weeks after Mr. Trump criticized its earlier recommendations on school reopenings as “very tough and expensive.” His words ratcheted up what was already an anguished national debate over how soon students and teachers should return to classrooms.

“Reopening schools creates opportunity to invest in the education, well-being, and future of one of America’s greatest assets — our children — while taking every precaution to protect students, teachers, staff and all their families,” the agency’s new statement said.

Mr. Trump, pummeled with criticism over his handling of the pandemic, sees reopening the nation’s schools this fall as crucial to reinvigorating the economy and to his re-election. While many public health experts and pediatricians agree that returning children to classrooms is critically important, they warn that it has to be done cautiously, with a plan based on scientific evidence. They, along with teachers’ unions, have accused the president of putting children and the adults who supervise them at school at risk by politicizing the subject. 

At the same time,  the school attended by President Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron, will not fully open for in-person instruction when classes resume, officials announced in a letter to parents.  As reported by the Huffington Post.

“St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, a private kindergarten-through-12th-grade  school in Potomac, Maryland, a Washington suburb, will provide either online-only “distance learning” or a hybrid model of students “learning both on and off campus,” according to the letter Thursday from Head of School Robert Kosasky. A final decision will be announced the week of Aug. 10. 

When asked earlier this month if the president and first lady would send their 14-year-old son back to the classroom this fall, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway responded that it was a “personal decision.“ He has attended St. Andrew’s for the last three years.

In both teaching scenarios being considered at St. Andrew’s, “our top priority is to support the safety and well-being of our entire community of students, faculty and staff, and families,” Kosasky stated in the letter to parents. “We are continuing to pay close attention to current guidance from state and county health officials, as well as the CDC, as the health status of our region evolves.”

The school has continued to improve its online instruction, Kosasky added, but he also noted: “We are hopeful that public health conditions will support our implementation of the hybrid model in the fall.”

It appears that each student would still have a choice to opt for remote learning only. “The hybrid model permits students to learn either on campus with rigorous social distancing standards, or remotely,” Kosasky said. The hybrid model would “allow students, families, and faculty and staff with medical concerns to be able to learn, teach, and work remotely throughout the pandemic, while facilitating safe, in-person learning for everyone else.”

Trump has repeatedly said that children must return to their classrooms in the fall.

Florida’s education commissioner earlier this month ordered schools to reopen for in-person instruction in August, even as coronavirus cases jam hospitals in the state.

The Florida Education Association, a teachers union representing about 140,000 school employees, filed a lawsuit Monday against several state officials to block schools from reopening for in-person instruction. The rush to open is failing to provide a safe and secure environment as required in the state constitution, the suit argues. 

Randi Weingarten, president of the national American Federation of Teachers, told The New York Times after the St. Andrew’s news that she hopes now the president will have a “scintilla of empathy and consideration for what Americans are going through now that he is experiencing it himself.”

Why anyone would listen to Trump on anything to do with the coronavirus at this time borders on the absurd after he pushed governors to reopen in places like Florida, Texas, and Arizona.  Opening schools without safeguards will plunge the country further into the pandemic abyss.

Tony

The producer Sam Khoze with Erica, the android star of the film “b.”

Dear Commons Community,

Matthew Helderman, the chief executive of BondIt Media Capital, was meeting with the leading lady of “b,” a $70 million film his company is backing.

Only the actress, Erica, was not, in fact, a woman but an android.

Erica was created by Hiroshi Ishiguro, a roboticist at Osaka University in Japan, to be “the most beautiful woman in the world” — he modeled her after images of Miss Universe pageant finalists — and the most humanlike robot in existence. But she’s more than just a pretty face: Though “b” is still in preproduction, when she makes her debut, producers believe it will be the first time a film has relied on a fully autonomous artificially intelligent actor.

Yet despite her flawless features and easy smile, her pupils are clearly plastic. Her synthesized British voice has a slight metallic tone that sounds like she’s speaking into a pipe. When she walks, the motion of her air compressor joints makes it look as though she’s performing either a sped-up or slowed-down version of the robot. For that reason, a majority of her scenes will be filmed while she’s sitting down.  As reported by the New York Times.

“Hiroshi Ishiguro has a dream, and in it, the world is filled with Ericas.

The barista who hands you your morning coffee. The anchor who delivers the nightly news. The receptionist at the doctor’s office.

He can make artificially intelligent androids that walk and talk, of course. But he’d rather you forget they aren’t human.

To that end, his goal is to understand what makes humans, well, human. “Erica does not understand or operate in the same system as humans,” the 56-year-old director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University said by email. “So she always makes believe to be human.”

Ishiguro developed Erica with the goal of creating an android that people wouldn’t just relate to, but also confide in and feel affection for. The more humanlike he could make her appear, he said, the more people would trust her.

When he unveiled her in 2015, she was the most advanced of the dozens of androids he had produced over his career that have performed in plays, sung in malls and even delivered the news.

So when one of the “b’s” producers, Sam Khoze of LIFE Productions, was looking for an android to headline a feature film in 2017, he entertained pitches from several robotics companies. But the moment he met Erica, Khoze said he knew she was their star.

“She really looks like a human,” Khoze said. “Even down to such small details as her tongue and eyelids.”

When Khoze pitched the project to Helderman and BondIt Media Capital, about two years ago, its android actor was unquestionably the selling point.

Helderman, whose company’s credits include the 2017 Netflix movie “To the Bone,” said the film had a dime-a-dozen sci-fi plot that wouldn’t have made it on his radar if it hadn’t been for the star. (In addition to BondIt, the Belgium-based Happy Moon Productions has also committed to back the film.) But video calls with Ishiguro and Kohei Ogawa, an assistant professor at Osaka University who had joined the Erica project in 2016, convinced Helderman that the project was more than slush-pile material.

In the story, which was written by Khoze, Eric Pham, the visual effects supervisor, and Tarek Zohdy, Erica plays an artificially intelligent woman, b, who can surge into the body and mind of any human host. The film follows her creators’ efforts to gain control of her as she becomes self-aware.

Erica had originally been set to star in a project directed by Tony Kaye (“American History X”), but scheduling issues led the producers to abandon it. No director or human co-stars are attached to “b” yet (Khoze said they have interviewed several filmmakers and will make their choice in the next few weeks), but some of Erica’s scenes were filmed in Japan last year. They hope to finish the rest in Europe next summer.

But while she awaits her human counterparts, Erica is rehearsing. There’s just one problem: She has no emotional memories.

Helderman said that when he initially met her, Erica’s acting chops were nonexistent. “At first, she didn’t understand what acting was,” Helderman said. “It was like teaching a child why we respond the ways we do.”

The team taught her how to perform over more than two years of daily sessions using what Helderman calls a “Marlon Brando” method. Some stars might draw on their own experiences to create a character, but they instructed Erica to emulate other actors’ performances. Actors explained out loud how they were feeling in each scene to Erica.

“She’d ask questions like, ‘Why am I saying this line more loudly or more softly?’” Helderman said. “Or, ‘Why am I doing this thing when the camera is there, but not when it isn’t?’”

Their biggest challenge, he said, was hardly memorization — she immediately mastered her lines. But it took her months to grasp the concept of not just reciting a line, but speaking it softly or in full voice depending on the context, and bolstering the words with body language. Khoze said they taught her the dialogue for a scene in one session, then worked on the emotions, character development and body language in another.

Of course, there are limits to her capabilities: She cannot improvise. Well, she can, within limits, Helderman clarifies, it just wouldn’t be nearly as clean a performance as a practiced sequence.

And unlike a human actor, she’ll have to convince the audience not to reject her as creepy or repulsive.

The Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed a theory in 1970 known as the “uncanny valley,” which says that the more humanlike a robot appears, the more positively humans will react to it — but only to a point. If the resemblance is too strong, the robot can trigger a sense of revulsion or eeriness. It’s still unclear exactly what triggers the uncanny valley, said Karl MacDorman, an associate professor of human-computer interaction at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis: factors might include facial and body proportions, the pace and naturalness of speech, and the fluidity or jerkiness of movement.

He said that lack of sympathy in the face of adversity can be a plus for uncanny computer-animated or robotic villains like Gollum from “Lord of the Rings,” using viewers’ unsettledness to their advantage. “You’re not supposed to relate to or feel empathy for Gollum — though sometimes, we do,” he said. “But when we can’t relate to a protagonist we’re supposed to want to succeed, that’s where the uncanny valley can become disruptive.”

While she awaits co-stars, Helderman said, Erica continues to run lines with amateur local actors. “The coronavirus is a double-edged sword,” he said. “We don’t know when production can begin again, but she’ll be ready when it does.”

The script calls for three supporting human lead actors, but Khoze said they’re also looking at several other robots for supporting roles and are in negotiations to hire a robot for a crew position.

But Erica still has a way to go in the quest to not just masquerade as humans, but to emulate them. She speaks both English and Japanese, and can talk to a stranger in Japanese for 10 minutes on more than 80 topics. But Ishiguro said they’re still working toward conversations that are deeper or involve multiple people.

“The machines that humans use become more human,” he said. “So the most important question for us is, ‘What is a human being?’

Good question!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

“Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”  Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview that he had to remember those words as part of a test that he said demonstrated his “mental acuity.”  During the interview, he repeated the words about six times. But the test, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, is meant to detect signs of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or other conditions. Cable news had a field day on Trump’s interview and his mental acuity.  Here is reporting courtesy of the New York Times.

“Presidents and those who would be president often boast of their qualifications — their education, their experience, their achievements. And then there is President Trump, who is boasting about his dementia test.

Even for a president who has rewritten the political rule book so many times before, the spectacle of a commander in chief repeatedly touting his performance on a cognitive examination to prove that he has not lost a step paves new ground in the history of campaigns for the highest office in the land.

Rather than dispensing with the issue, Mr. Trump drew new ridicule this week when he declared it nothing short of “amazing” that he did so well on a test that, among other things, required him to identify an elephant. To demonstrate just how hard he said the test really was, he went on television to recite, over and over, the words that he had been asked to remember in the right order: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

Cable television played the president’s performance on a virtual loop on Thursday, and those five words trended online. A group of anti-Trump Republicans instantly produced an online ad mocking the president. T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and other clothing with “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” emblazoned on them were quickly offered for sale. They have in effect become the haiku of the 2020 campaign.

The reaction was not quite what the president was seeking. In repeatedly bringing up his cognitive test in recent weeks, he has been trying to bolster his strategy of questioning the mental acuity of his presumptive Democratic presidential opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom he has portrayed as a doddering old man propped up by his staff.

But in doing so, the president who has called himself a “very stable genius” reinforced concerns about his own capacity, leaving voters who are already confronting the oldest matchup of presidential candidates in American history to decide which septuagenarian is still with it — Mr. Trump at 74 or Mr. Biden at 77.

Mr. Biden has sought to fend off questions about his state of mind for months, going back to the primary campaign when fellow Democrats pointed to gaffes, misstatements and stumbles over words. At one debate, an opponent jabbed him by suggesting he could not remember something he had said only two minutes earlier.

Mr. Biden’s camp was happy to jump on Thursday on the president’s latest comments. Kate Bedingfield, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager, pointed out that Mr. Trump recently suggested injecting disinfectant to counter the coronavirus and he has been reported to once ask aides about using nuclear weapons to disrupt hurricanes.

“He has shunned the advice of doctors, medical experts and scientists throughout the pandemic and promised that the virus will magically ‘disappear,’” she said. “His erratic and unstable leadership has given Americans tremendous doubts about his fitness to hold the office before you even get to him continually and pointedly raising doubts about his own cognitive ability.”

Mr. Biden has the edge upstairs in the view of the public. In a poll by The Hill newspaper with the HarrisX research firm released this week, 56 percent of voters said the former vice president was mentally fit to lead the nation, while just 45 percent said that of Mr. Trump.

Other American presidents have struggled with cognitive or psychological issues but rarely addressed them publicly the way Mr. Trump has. A Duke University study in 2006 found that nearly half of presidents suffered from mental illness at some point in their lives. Nearly 25 percent of presidents met the criteria for depression, according to the study, including James Madison, Abraham Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge. Ronald Reagan’s aides were concerned enough that he was slipping late in his presidency that they secretly considered whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him for incapacity before deciding he was still fit enough to finish his tenure.

Mr. Trump has been unclear about when he took the cognitive test he has recently been eager to discuss. Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, who was then his White House physician, reported in 2018 that the president had taken the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MOCA, and scored a perfect 30 points. Lately, Mr. Trump has said he took a test “a little less than a year ago,” but White House officials would not clarify whether he took a second test or was referring imprecisely to the one Dr. Jackson reported two years ago.

In unscripted moments before the camera, the president sometimes wanders from topic to topic without completing a train of thought, repeats himself or falls back on the same familiar phrases when questioned. He makes statements that defy common sense, like insisting that if there were not so many coronavirus tests conducted, there would not be so many cases of the virus, which as skeptics have pointed out is roughly equivalent to saying that there would not be as many pregnancies if there were not as many pregnancy tests administered.

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment is meant to test for signs of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or other conditions, but the president talked about it on Fox News on Wednesday night as if he had aced an IQ test proving his intelligence. Experts said that reflected a misunderstanding about the purpose and value of the exam.

“It is good that he has a good score, and it’s very good that he has a higher than average score, so this is reassuring in terms of cognitive dysfunction,” Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, the neurologist who created the test, said in an interview. “It obviously does not measure whether a person is fit to be president.”

“Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

“Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

“Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

If Donald Trump reads Fox News’ op-eds, he is not going to like what Judge Andrew Napolitano has to say about his policy of sending federal agents into Portland.  What was a small and withering protest has turned into a growing flashpoint as demonstration grow in response to the presence of federal agents.   Entitled, Portland is in America, right? What’s going on here?, Napolitano comments.

“Portland has been the center of anti-police demonstrations this summer. The neighborhood around the state Capitol has endured nearly two months of nighttime demonstrations. Most of these are peaceful; some are destructive.

Last weekend, with no notice or local consent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent teams of agents — untrained in crowd control and wearing military fatigues — onto Portland’s streets. Their uniforms bore no governmental, administrative or personal names, just the word “Police” on masking tape. They descended upon the city in unmarked SUVs and began grabbing people indiscriminately off the streets, without regard to the person’s lawful presence or personal behavior.

According to the account of one victim, he was walking peacefully in the downtown area, observing the chaos, when five masked men in fatigues exited an unmarked SUV, grabbed him and pulled him into the car. They tied his hands with plastic behind his back. They pulled his cap over his face. They kept him for two hours and then released him. They filed no charges against him.

They had no basis for this kidnapping.

It was a kidnapping, not an arrest. An arrest is a lawful restraint by a legitimate government authority pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge specifically naming the person to be arrested, or pursuant to probable cause of crime personally observed by the arresting officers. Neither of these was the case in Portland.

And some victims were even less fortunate than those kidnapped. They were assaulted with pepper spray and hit with nonlethal exploding bullets that stun, hurt and disorient. The bullets can harm the eyes, heart and liver. I saw a video of a young man riding a bicycle away from the chaos. Yet, he was attacked by five of these feds.

An Annapolis graduate and Navy veteran asked a small group of the feds by what constitutional authority they were present in Portland. They responded by pepper-spraying his face and beating his hand with a baton, shattering numerous bones in his hand.

Portland is in America, right? What’s going on here?

This is how totalitarianism begins

On Monday, DHS acknowledged that these thugs are its police and said their behavior somehow will bring stability to downtown Portland. The phrase that Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf used — mimicking his boss— was “law and order.”

But there is nothing lawful or orderly about what these agents did. Their activities in Portland are unlawful, unconstitutional and harmful.

They are unlawful because federal agents are selectively arresting folks and not even pretending to be enforcing local and state laws. Under federal law, the feds may not deploy police or military domestically unless the state Legislature or the state governor requests it. Neither has done so for Portland.

The feds’ activities are unconstitutional because they are using government force to arrest people without probable cause or arrest warrants. We know there is no legal basis for these “arrests,” as they have not charged anyone.

Moreover, this is so harmful and terrifying — being kidnapped, handcuffed, blindfolded, not spoken to and then released, all for no stated reason —  it will chill others from public dissent.

The First Amendment to the Constitution requires the government to protect speech, not assault those who exercise it. If these indiscriminate beatings and kidnappings are intended to deter folks from publicly dissenting, it is profoundly unconstitutional, counterproductive and will be costly to the federal government.

Under the Constitution, the ability to regulate for health and safety belongs to the states and local governments. The feds simply do not have the lawful authority to fill in gaps in local law enforcement, no matter how offended they may be.

This is how totalitarianism begins. The feds claim that federal property needs protection and the folks assigned to do so need help. When help arrives, it does so by surprise, under cover of darkness and shielded by anonymity. Then, the reinforcements beat and arrest and harm protestors because their bosses in Washington do not approve of the protestors’ message.

Public dissent against the government is a core personal freedom. It is as American as apple pie. It was integral to the creation of our republic. Government repression of dissent is totalitarian. It is as un-American as the governments against which we fought world wars to preserve our core freedoms.”

Trump and his loyal supporters at Fox News should read this carefully.

Tony

Governor Gavin Newsom

Dear Commons Community,

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in California has passed New York’s total for the most in the United States.

California had 415,763 total cases as of Wednesday, compared to 415,094 in New York, according to COVID-19 data compiled by NBC News.

New York’s coronavirus death toll far exceeds that of California. The virus had killed more than 33,368 people in New York, while 7,892 had died in California, according to NBC News’ tally.

On Tuesday, California recorded 12,807 cases, the largest daily increase since the pandemic began, Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters Wednesday. He said 115 people died.

“It’s another reminder, if we needed to remind anybody, of the magnitude of impact that this virus continues to have,” he said.

In March, Newsom became the first governor to order a statewide lockdown, leading to a dip in new cases and deaths as restaurants, bars, theaters and other businesses were told to close or shift their operations.

But in California, as in other states, new cases soared as counties began lifting the measures — which Newsom said Wednesday wasn’t surprising given the state’s massive size and how easily the virus moves from person to person. In June, as cases continued to rise, Newsom began ordering businesses like bars to close once again.

The disease has had an outsize impact on health care workers, prison inmates, the homeless and others who remain in close contact with people who may have been exposed, he said.

Latinos have also been hit hard, Newsom said. According to state data, they represent 55 percent of the state’s positive cases — nearly 147,000 — and 45 percent of its deaths, or 3,455.

Experts have attributed the disproportionate affect to Latinos’ role in the workforce — they are more likely to work in jobs in which telecommuting isn’t possible — as well as how they get around and where they live: They’re more likely to use public transportation and to live in smaller spaces where physical distancing is difficult.

Newsom said Wednesday that the state needs to “focus its supports” in those hard-hit communities.

Our prayers are with Governor Newsom, the people in California, and all those in the the country fighting the coronavirus scourge.

Tony