Dear Commons Community,

CNN had a special report yesterday covering the devastation of the coronavirus in India.  The disturbing video above shows the desperation of the situation as people struggle just to cremate the dead.  The Associated Press reported:

“India set another global record in new virus cases yesterday.

With 379,257 new infections, India now has reported more than 18.3 million cases, second only to the United States. The Health Ministry also reported 3,645 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 204,832. Experts believe both figures are an undercount, but it’s unclear by how much.

India has set a daily global record for seven of the past eight days, with a seven-day moving average of nearly 350,000 infections. Daily deaths have nearly tripled in the past three weeks, reflecting the intensity of the latest surge. And the country’s already teetering health system is under immense strain, prompting multiple allies to send help.

A country of nearly 1.4 billion people, India had thought the worst was over when cases ebbed in September. But mass public gatherings such as political rallies and religious events that were allowed to continue, and relaxed attitudes on the risks fed by leaders touting victory over the virus led to what now has become a major humanitarian crisis, health experts say. New variants of the coronavirus have partly led the surge.”

Where is help from the rest of the world?

Tony 

Dear Commons Community,

In what has become an annual disappointment, once again, tiny numbers of Black and Latino students received offers to attend New York City’s top public high schools.   

Only 9 percent of offers made by elite schools like Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science went to Black and Latino students this year, down from 11 percent last year. Only eight Black students received offers to Stuyvesant out of 749 spots, and only one Black student was accepted into Staten Island Technical High School, out of 281 freshman seats.  The numbers represent the latest signal that efforts to desegregate those schools while maintaining an admissions exam are failing.

Over half of the 4,262 offers this year went to Asian students. The schools have enormous significance for thousands of low-income Asian-American students who attend them, many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants. Efforts to change the admissions system have been seen by some as disregarding the accomplishments of those vulnerable students. Accusations of bias from Asian-American New Yorkers have made the debate over whether to keep the exam as the sole means of entry into the schools extremely fraught.  As reported by The New York Times.

“Though Black and white students made up the same percentage of test takers — about 18 percent each — less than 4 percent of Black students received offers, compared with nearly 28 percent of white students, a clear sign that having large numbers of Black students take the exam is not leading to more equitable outcomes.

The admissions exam was given earlier this year amid the pandemic, with 4,300 fewer students sitting for the test compared with the previous year.

The numbers are a grim symbol of the entrenched inequality that New Yorkers are confronting as the city begins to emerge from the pandemic. A year of profoundly disrupted learning for the city’s roughly 1 million students may make it even more challenging to address the lack of diversity in the specialized schools, though city officials are just beginning to understand the academic toll of what will be roughly 18 months of remote learning for many city students.

Black and Latino students have chosen remote learning at higher rates than their white classmates, in part because nonwhite New Yorkers have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

The numbers of Black and Latino students at the specialized schools are declining despite enormous focus on this issue over the last several years. Mayor Bill de Blasio has unsuccessfully lobbied the State Legislature to eliminate the admissions exam and replace it with a system that admits top performers at each city middle school.

The disappointing results released on Thursday show just how profoundly segregated the nation’s largest school system still is and will no doubt lead to fresh calls for the state, which controls entry into some of the schools, to get rid of the entrance exam.

Specialized school alumni have expressed dismay at the dwindling number of Black and Latino students. The percentage of Black and Latino enrollment at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Technical High School has hit its lowest point in the city’s recorded history in the last 10 years, a trend that has accelerated during the last several years in particular.

On Thursday, Dr. Uché Blackstock, a Black Stuyvesant graduate, said on Twitter, “I grieve for my high school. These numbers are abysmal.” She added: “The test has got to go.”

Horace Davis, a Black Brooklyn Tech graduate who is on the board of the school’s alumni organization, which has vigorously opposed changes to the admissions system, said the poor quality of some city schools, rather than the test, was responsible for the latest numbers.

“I’m not sure you’re going to see a change year over year,” he said of the numbers. “The system itself is broken.”

He added: “So much is being placed on the entrance exam, but it should not be viewed as a scapegoat.”

Current specialized school students and recent graduates have said it has been extremely upsetting to absorb the admissions numbers, year after year.

“We are outraged but not surprised at the alarming 2021 results,” Brianna Gallimore, a student at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College and an organizer at Teens Take Charge, a student-led group that supports eliminating the exam, said in a statement on Thursday. “The exam should not have been administered, especially during a pandemic. It should never be administered again.”

Aside from his effort to overhaul specialized school admissions, Mr. de Blasio has not made school integration of the roughly 1,800 schools he does control a top priority during his two terms as mayor. Disagreements between the mayor and Richard A. Carranza, the former schools chancellor, about how aggressively to pursue desegregation policies helped prompt Mr. Carranza’s resignation earlier this year.

The city’s new chancellor, Meisha Porter, called on the state to eliminate the exam in a statement Thursday. “I know from my 21 years as an educator that far more students could thrive in our specialized high schools, if only given the chance,” she said. “Instead, the continued use of the Specialized High School Admissions Test will produce the same unacceptable results over and over again.”

Brooklyn Tech and the Brooklyn Latin School, both specialized high schools, tend to enroll slightly higher numbers of Black and Latino students than the other six schools, and this year was no exception. Brooklyn Tech made offers to 76 Latino students and 64 Black students, out of a total freshman class of 1,607, by far the largest of any specialized school.

Mr. de Blasio’s push to get rid of the test failed in Albany in 2018, but the pandemic ramped up pressure on the mayor to take some action on desegregation before he leaves office at the end of the year.

Late last year, he announced sweeping changes to how hundreds of academically selective middle and high schools admit students. Standardized testing data and grading information was not available during the pandemic, which made it impossible for many schools to sort through students as they usually do.

City Hall controls admissions to all schools in New York City except for three of the specialized high schools, which are controlled by Albany. Changes to admissions at selective middle and high schools, along with gifted and talented programs for elementary school students, would do much more to actually desegregate the school system than eliminating the specialized school admissions exam, experts have said.”

But the paltry numbers of Black and Latino students at places like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, considered the crown jewels of the system, have become a potent symbol of the obstacles many city students face in trying to access top-quality schools.

The latest data also shows clearly how ineffective recent efforts to diversify the specialized schools under the current admissions system have been.

New York City cannot get this admissions process right and New York State has no will to change it.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It has been more than a year since the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools, businesses, eateries and everything else in New York City and much of the rest of the country.  Mayor Bill de Blasio announced yesterday (see video above) that he foresees the city would “fully reopen” on July 1.

“We can see that light at the end of the tunnel,” he said at a press conference. “This is going to be the summer of New York City.”  As reported by The New York Times:

“The mayor’s promise brought hope that after more than a year of restrictions, New Yorkers and tourists could once again swarm shops and galleries, baseball fans could watch games at sports bars, and sweaty revelers could dance until the wee hours at nightclubs.

Yet restoring the city to its earlier state, before it was stifled by the virus and scarred by profound losses, will pose a significant challenge.

Many of the city’s large employers have set their sights on a fall return, which will keep workers away from Manhattan’s business districts until then. The hospitality industry does not expect tourism, a key economic engine of the city, to return to pre-pandemic levels for years. Transit officials do not believe ridership on the subway, which is still closed for two hours each night, will completely rebound until 2024.

The city’s devastated cultural sector has yet to bounce back. Mr. de Blasio hailed the impact a reopening would have on the theater industry, but full-scale productions on Broadway — one of the city’s crown jewels and a key draw for tourists — will not return until September at the earliest, the Broadway League confirmed in a statement.

Mr. de Blasio’s authority to lift virus-related restrictions, which were imposed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, is also limited. But should the reopening proceed, its success will still depend on the willingness of wary residents and workers to return to crowded spaces.

“Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be fully open again,” said Miguel de Leon, the wine director at Pinch Chinese in SoHo. “But I just want to make sure that these lines that they are drawing don’t feel so arbitrary.”

Even as the spring has brought New Yorkers back out of their homes, many shared Mr. de Leon’s cautious view. They were thrilled by the possibility of reopening but unsure whether Mr. de Blasio’s vision could be realized or his timeline met.

“Part of me is excited, part of me is overwhelmed,” Max Barrett, a musician, said as he sat on a bench in Union Square. “I feel like a lot of people who aren’t vaccinated will start flocking to the city, and I’m a little bit nervous about entering society.”

In some cases, residents worried that the mayor, who has frequently criticized the governor for pushing to reopen too quickly, was himself moving too fast.

“It’s a little too soon,” said Bwezani Manda, who was trying to get people to sign up for vaccine appointments in the Corona section of Queens, an early epicenter of the pandemic. “But people need to make a living.”

Santi Dady, who works at Please Don’t Tell, a windowless cocktail bar in Manhattan’s East Village, said that she was concerned about serving customers at full capacity but she had no choice.

“I am partially vaccinated and extremely broke,” Ms. Dady said.

The reopened New York City that Mr. de Blasio envisions will be strikingly different from the one that was shut down last year. More than 32,000 New Yorkers have died. Thousands of businesses have closed, and hundreds of thousands of jobs have vanished and have yet to return.

Officials and business leaders have said that tourism would be key to the city’s full recovery, but travel to the city, which ground to a halt at the start of the pandemic, has not yet recovered. New York is heavily reliant on travelers to fill hotels and occupy seats in restaurants, theaters and stadiums.

According to Cirium, an aviation data firm, the number of flights scheduled into New York in July is expected to be down about 31 percent from 2019. Nationwide, a decrease of only about 14 percent is expected.

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Vijay Dandapani, the president of the Hotel Association of New York City, said that hotels were still years away from returning to normal capacity, especially with many major conferences and events still canceled.”

A July 1 reopening would be “a very positive step,” he said. “But you have just about begun to crawl when there’s a long way walking and running.”

I would love to see New York City reopen fully again in July but Mayor de Blasio may be a bit over optimistic about where we are with the pandemic recovery.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Federal investigators raided and executed search warrants at the Manhattan home and office of former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, a law enforcement official told the news media yesterday.  As reported by the Associated Press.

The former New York City mayor has been under investigation for several years over his business dealings in Ukraine. Details of the search were not immediately available, but it comes as the Justice Department continues its investigation into the former New York City mayor and staunch Trump ally.

The official could not discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The federal probe into Giuliani’s overseas and business dealings stalled last year because of a dispute over investigative tactics as Trump unsuccessfully sought reelection, and amid Giuliani’s prominent role in subsequently disputing the results of the contest on Trump’s behalf.

The full scope of the investigation is unclear, but it at least partly involves the Ukraine dealings, law enforcement officials have told the AP.

Giuliani was central to the then-president’s efforts to dig up dirt against Democratic rival Joe Biden and to press Ukraine for an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter — who himself now faces a criminal tax probe by the Justice Department. Giuliani also sought to undermine former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was pushed out on Trump’s orders, and met several times with a Ukrainian lawmaker who released edited recordings of Biden in an effort to smear him before the election.

A message left for Giuliani’s lawyer wasn’t returned. Giuliani had previously called the investigation a  “pure political persecution.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.”

An analysis of the significance of this action was given by Preeti Bharara, a former prosecuting attorney in the Southern District of New York (see video above.)   Bharara thinks that Giuliani may be in deep legal trouble.

Things just keep getting worse for Giuliani!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden delivered his first address (see video above) to Congress last night in a one-hour long speech that touched on a lot of issues and proposals that were received well by Democrats and less so by Republicans.  One of his main themes was expanding America’s social safety net.  The New York Times reviewed this aspect of his address (see excerpt below).

His agenda is ambitious and it will encounter stiff resistance by Republicans in both the House and the Senate.   

One other major takeaway for me was Biden’s delivery which was subdued and at times quiet and calm. I appreciated this.

Tony

————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

“President Biden’s $1.8 trillion spending and tax plan is aimed at bolstering the United States’ social safety net by expanding access to education, reducing the cost of child care and supporting women in the work force. His proposal is funded by raising taxes on wealthier Americans, and it is likely to encounter Republican resistance for that reason.

Free Pre-K and Community College

Mr. Biden’s plan promises universal free preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds, as well as two years of free community college for young adults.

The plan outlines a $200 billion investment in free universal preschool and another $109 billion over 10 years to make two years of community college free. On top of that, the president is proposing an $85 billion investment in Pell grants, vouchers that low- and moderate-income students use to pay for tuition, fees, books, room and board.

The universal free preschool includes children from affluent families. That follows a model that cities like Washington and New York City have used, but some education experts favor programs targeted to helping low-income children.

Experts call the plan to fund college education the “biggest expansion in federal support for higher education in at least half a century.”

Even though it is broadly popular, free college across 50 states with unique systems and tuition costs, is complicated to carry out. The Biden plan would require states to eliminate tuition for community colleges to receive funding.

The president’s pitch is that a high school diploma is no longer enough to ensure success and that making a federal investment in education will increase earnings long term. During the pandemic, unemployed workers without college credentials are having a much harder time finding jobs.

Funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Mr. Biden’s proposal singles out historically Black colleges and universities, known as H.B.C.U.s, as well as institutions that serve members of Native American tribes and other minority groups, for specific funding.

Addressing racial equity is a theme that runs through Mr. Biden’s agenda, and the 15-page memo outlining his spending plans notes the extent to which historically Black colleges and universities outperform. While they account for only 3 percent of four-year universities, their graduates account for 80 percent of Black judges and half of Black lawyers and doctors. (Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to hold the role, is a graduate of Howard University.)

Mr. Biden’s plan calls for $39 billion over the next decade to fund two years of subsidized tuition for students from families earning less than $125,000 enrolled in a four-year program at H.B.C.U.s, or institutions that serve members of Native American tribes or other minority groups.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden promised to invest more than $70 billion in such schools, including $20 billion to build research facilities on their campuses.

Affordable Child Care

Mr. Biden’s plan seeks to invest $225 billion to make child care more affordable and allow parents to stay in the labor force and work outside their homes.

The plan would give child care providers funding to maintain small class sizes and classrooms that can help children with disabilities. It would also cover all child care costs for working families who are struggling. Administration officials did not say exactly who would qualify to have all child care costs covered, only that it would be a sliding scaled based on earnings compared with the state’s median income. Under the plan, families earning 1.5 times their state median income would pay no more than 7 percent of their income for child care.

The plan also seeks to increase wages of early child care providers, who are by and large women of color who currently earn about $12.24 an hour without any benefits. Mr. Biden’s plan would include a $15 minimum wage for early childhood staff.

National Paid Leave

Mr. Biden is proposing a $225 billion investment over 10 years to cover a nationally mandated 12 weeks of paid parental, family and personal illness leave. The program seeks to provide workers up to $4,000 a month in paid leave, rising to 80 percent for the lowest wage workers.

President Donald J. Trump also called for paid family leave in his State of the Union address last year, the first Republican president to take up what has long been a popular Democratic cause.

In contrast to Mr. Biden’s approach, the Republican-backed proposal only covered leave for parents of babies or newly adopted children under 6, excluding care for sick family members or leave for personal medical problems. It also did not propose a new source of funding to pay for it. Instead, people could dip into their own future federal benefits, and receive smaller benefits later.

Nutrition

Mr. Biden’s plan proposes $45 billion over the next 10 years to combat food insecurity among children.

The program would make permanent a summer food program that allows families eligible for free and reduced-price meals during the school year access to meals during the summer at the same rates. Mr. Biden’s plan allocates more than $25 billion to make the program permanent and available to all 29 million children who receive free and reduced-priced meals.

The plan also includes $17 billion to expand healthy school meals at high-poverty schools. The proposals would provide free meals to an additional 9.3 million children, about 70 percent of whom are in elementary school.”

Juan Williams

Dear Commons Community,

Juan Williams, co-host of The Five on Fox News, blasted his network on yesterday for its recent repeated coverage of false stories. This was in the context of discussing the as-of-yet unsubstantiated story that recently broke about former Secretary of State under President Obama, and current Climate Czar John Kerry, allegedly giving classified Israeli information to Iran when he was Secretary of State, which Kerry denies. Williams suggested using caution when reporting on the story, pointing to two recent narratives that got a lot of airtime on Fox News that turned out to be untrue.

One such story was the false claim that President Biden plans to limit the amount of red meat Americans can consume as part of his climate plan. The story was first printed in British tabloid The Daily Mail, which combined Biden’s goal of cutting down on greenhouse gasses with a year-old study out of the University of Michigan which suggested cutting down on red meat as a way of doing just that. The story blew up among conservative groups, right wing media and Republican elected officials at all levels of government. After reporting on Biden’s nonexistent plan for days, on Monday, Fox News issued a correction.

“To me, when you talk about, you know, ‘Oh, is this right wing going after John Kerry. They don’t like John Kerry.’ It just worries me,” Williams said. “Like last week we had the hamburger story. ‘Oh, Biden’s gonna take your hamburger.’”

Williams also pointed to another bogus story, that Vice President Harris’s children’s book was being given out at a migrant shelter. Once again, many in right wing media, including Fox News, jumped on the story, some suggesting the book, Superheroes Are Everywhere, was part of an official welcome package handed out to every child. But in reality, only one copy of Harris’s book was given to a child at a migrant shelter in Long Beach, California, and that particular book was a one-time donation during a charity drive. The New York Post reporter responsible for the story resigned on Tuesday, claiming she was ordered to write it.

“Or, you know, it’s always, ‘Kamala Harris’s book is being given to immigrants.’ These stories are false,” Williams said, “but the right wing echo chamber starts going crazy because you can go after a Democrat.”

As for the Kerry story, Williams pointed out that even staunch Republican Lindsey Graham is unsure of the validity of the allegations.

“On this story, I think it’s important that you notice that people like Lindsey Graham, you know, strong Republican voice out of South Carolina, says he doesn’t know whether or not we can trust this so-called tape,” Williams said. “The State Department saying that the timeline is way off.”

Fox News has no shame! 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday issued new guidelines for wearing masks at outdoor gatherings and events.  According to the CDC, fully vaccinated people can attend small gatherings, attend live events, and dine outside without wearing a mask.  The above video, courtesy of ABC News, explains the new guidelines.

A welcome sign that we are edging back to normal.

Tony

Laura Italiano and Kamal Harris

Dear Commons Community,

Laura Italiano, a veteran New York Post reporter posted on twitter yesterday that she had resigned after being ordered to write a false story that claimed migrant children were being given copies of a book authored by Vice President Kamala Harris in “welcome kits.”

The story, published last Friday, set off a days-long misinformation cycle among Republican leaders and on conservative media. The Washington Post debunked the claims, demonstrating that the article appeared to be based entirely on one image of a single copy of Harris’ 2019 children’s book that was propped on a bed at a Long Beach, California shelter.

According to The Washington Post, Italiano’s been writing for the New York tabloid since the 1990s. Neither she nor the Post responded to requests for comment.

The article, which was published both online and in print, featured the front-page headline “Kam On In” in the print edition. The tabloid used a Reuters image of Harris’ book, Superheroes Are Everywhere, on a cot at a migrant shelter to suggest that the vice president’s work was being distributed en masse to undocumented kids.

Multiple high-profile Republicans amplified the story, suggesting that Harris was using taxpayer funds to profit off the situation at the southern border. A Fox News reporter even quizzed White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki about the book during a press briefing last week.

Fox News published its own version of the article over the weekend. The story was mentioned on its airwaves during at least five different programs. 

In reality, Harris’ book was one of hundreds donated as part of a citywide book and toy drive, a spokesperson for the city of Long Beach told The Washington Post.

After the Post published its fact-check, the NYC tabloid took down its false article. It was later restored, with an editor’s note: “The original version of this article said migrant kids were getting Harris’ book in a welcome kit, but has been updated to note that only one known copy of the book was given to a child.”

Ms. Italiano is to be commended for her decision to leave the NY Post.  I don’t understand how any reporter would want to work for this Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

For those of us who enjoy reading op-eds, Kathleen Kingsbury, the Opinion Editor of The New York Times, announced yesterday that her newspaper will no longer use the term “op-od” and instead will use “guest essay.”  Below is her explanation for the change.

Tony

———————————————————————————–

Why The New York Times Is Retiring the Term ‘Op-Ed’

Kathleen Kingsbury

April 26, 2021

The first Op-Ed page in The New York Times greeted the world on Sept. 21, 1970. It was so named because it appeared opposite the editorial page and not (as many still believe) because it would offer views contrary to the paper’s. Inevitably, it would do that, too, since its founders were putting out a welcome mat for ideas and arguments from many points on the political, social and cultural spectrums from outside the walls of The Times — to stimulate thought and provoke discussion of public problems.

That important mission remains the same. But it’s time to change the name. The reason is simple: In the digital world, in which millions of Times readers absorb the paper’s journalism online, there is no geographical “Op-Ed,” just as there is no geographical “Ed” for Op-Ed to be opposite to. It is a relic of an older age and an older print newspaper design.

So now, at age 50, the designation will be retired. Editorials will still be called editorials, but the articles written by outside writers will be known as “Guest Essays,” a title that will appear prominently above the headline.

“Op-Ed” has had a great run. It became a standard for the rest of our industry, and enormously popular among readers and contributors alike. It’s hard now to recall that the original editors were actually nervous at its inception and worried whether anyone would be moved to contribute. But as an essay marking the page’s 20th birthday observed, “It was as if the Gray Lady had hit the dance floor.” Contributions poured in, and by its 40th, nearly 15,000 Op-Ed pages had been printed.

The impulses that made Op-Ed successful from the get-go are still in play. One is the allure of clashing opinions well expressed. As Herbert Bayard Swope, an editor at the New York World newspaper in the 1920s who was a pioneer of the concept of an op-ed page, once said, “Nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting.” Or in the words of John B. Oakes, a long-ago predecessor of mine who drove the creation of Op-Ed, “Diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of democracy. … The minute we begin to insist that everyone think the same way we think, our democratic way of life is in danger.”

That remains true, at a critical moment when the geography of the public square is being contested. In many ways, that square is more representative. Everyone has an outlet, from Facebook to Substack to Twitter. That is to be welcomed, even if the volume of voices is sometimes overwhelming. What is disappearing, though, are spaces where voices can be heard and respected, where ideas can linger a while, be given serious consideration, interrogated and then flourish or perish.

To champion thoughtful discussion, Times Opinion insists on a set of principles. We enforce rules for grammar and style. We demand certain standards of cogent argument, logical thought and compelling rhetoric. We require transparency about the identities of writers and their motives.

At the same time, we are not an unthinking assembly line or disinterested referees: We want not only individual essays to have intention, but also the collective report itself to have intention. We like the people we invite to write essays for us to sometimes be surprised by the offer. We like to experience the same surprise when we read submissions from voices who are new to us, on topics we may not yet understand. And we have our thumb on our scale in the name of progress, fairness and shared humanity.

We also work hard to keep our readers engaged. Opinion writing in 2021 is a collaborative project, one that is dynamic and not static.

Hence the new Guest Essay label. Readers immediately grasped this term during research sessions and intuitively understood what it said about the relationship between the writer and The Times. It reflects our mission to invite and convene a wide range of voices and views.

It may seem strange to link changes in our design to the quality of the conversation we are having today. Terms like “Op-Ed” are, by their nature, clubby newspaper jargon; we are striving to be far more inclusive in explaining how and why we do our work. In an era of distrust in the media and confusion over what journalism is, I believe institutions — even ones with a lot of esteemed traditions — better serve their audiences with direct, clear language. We don’t like jargon in our articles; we don’t want it above them, either.

A half century ago, Times editors made a bet that readers would appreciate a wider range of opinion. We are making much the same bet, but at a time when the scales of opinion journalism can seem increasingly tilted against the free and the fair, the sober and honest. We work every day to correct that imbalance.

Dear Commons Community,

CNN’s Brianna Keilar yesterday explained increased hesitancy about the COVID-19 vaccine among white evangelicals with footage of prominent pastors downplaying the pandemic.

White evangelicals “are most skeptical about taking the vaccine,” noted Keilar, with almost half saying they definitely or likely won’t receive the jab.

Keilar recalled many high-profile pastors — including Guillermo Maldonado, Jesse Duplantis, Paul Daugherty and Kenneth Copeland — dismissing or spreading misinformation about the contagion during the early weeks of the global public health crisis.

“Experts say what some evangelical pastors preached from the pulpit for months and months likely had a profound effect on shaping their opinions,” the “New Day” anchor explained.

“The loss this country has experienced over the past year has been overwhelming and many Americans have turned to family and to friends and to faith for comfort and answer,” Keilar concluded. “Unfortunately for many evangelical congregations, they are getting the wrong message and in some cases lies from pastors they have entrusted with their faith and with their lives.”

There will be a special in the hereafter for these demagogues who prey on the religious beliefs of others.

Tony