Greg Abbott

Dear Commons Community,

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has tested positive for COVID-19, his office said in a statement issued yesterday.

“Governor Greg Abbott today tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. The Governor has been testing daily, and today was the first positive test result,” the statement read. “Governor Abbott is in constant communication with his staff, agency heads, and government officials to ensure that state government continues to operate smoothly and efficiently.”

The Texas Republican, who has signed legislation banning vaccine and mask mandates in his state, gave what he described as a “standing room only event in Collin County” Monday night. Photos of the event show few people wearing masks at the indoor gathering.

Like former President Donald Trump, Abbott was receiving a monoclonal antibody treatment, the statement from his office said. But unlike Trump, who entered Walter Reed hospital in reportedly dire health, Abbott is asymptomatic and has already been vaccinated.

“The Governor will isolate in the Governor’s Mansion and continue to test daily. Governor Abbott is receiving Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment,” the statement read.

Abbott had reportedly told others that he had received a booster shot, NBC News reported.

This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a recommendation that Americans with compromised immune systems receive a booster shot for COVID-19. The U.S. plans to advise most Americans to receive a booster shot eight months after being fully immunized for COVID-19.

Breakthrough infections of COVID-19 remain very rare. In the U.S., 193,204 cases of COVID-19 have been reported among fully vaccinated people between Jan. 1 and early August, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Abbott’s wife, Cecilia, tested negative for the virus, the statement said, and those who had recently come in close contact with the governor have been notified of his positive test result.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Biden addressed the nation (see video above) last night and stood by his decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan.  I saw his address and he had no regrets.  His speech captured the futility of prolonging the U.S. mission but offered little reflection on how the Taliban were able to so swiftly take over the country.  Here is an analysis courtesy of NBC News.

“President Joe Biden said yesterday that the stunning collapse of the 20-year American project in Afghanistan proved he was correct to end the U.S. mission, arguing that the Taliban’s takeover of the country vindicated his decision to bring home the U.S. troops stationed there.

“I stand squarely behind my decision,” Biden said. “After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.” 

The president conceded that the success of the militants “did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated,” over a two-week blitz of Taliban offensives. That will not sway his plans, however: After the 6,000 troops Biden recently deployed to Afghanistan evacuate Americans and U.S. allies in the coming days, “we will conclude our military withdrawal and we will end America’s longest war,” he said.

Biden’s gamble that his defense of his policy will resonate with Americans reflects how war-weariness and skepticism of U.S. foreign policy have gained ground nationally ― a big change from the years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, which prompted then-U.S. leaders to invade Afghanistan, dislodge the Taliban regime, and aggressively, often illegally, pursue other perceived national security threats. 

Earlier this year, Biden set an Aug. 31 deadline for pulling American forces out of Afghanistan, under the terms of a deal that former President Donald Trump signed with the Taliban in 2020. Anti-war lawmakers and organizers see Biden’s decision to follow through on Trump’s plan as a major bipartisan victory in their bid to restrain America’s propensity for costly, brutal foreign military interventions.

“Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it’s always been: preventing a terrorist attack on America’s homeland,” Biden said, adding that he opposed the idea of “nation-building” to establish a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan. He noted that he was the fourth president to oversee a U.S. deployment there: “I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth president.”

He said simply continuing the existing mission was not an option, a view many experts share: His realistic choice was to either pull out or double down, given the Taliban’s strength and willingness to attack Americans if the Trump-era deal fell apart.

But the president’s speech offered little reflection on how America had mis-stepped and created the conditions for repressive Taliban forces to reestablish their control over millions of Afghans. And Biden did not address broad, bipartisan criticism of how his team has handled the withdrawal amid the surprisingly fast Taliban advance ― an approach that has caused many Afghans to panic and fueled scenes of desperation at Kabul airport, currently the last American stronghold in the country.

“Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country,” the president said. “The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight … what we could not provide them was the will to fight for their future.” 

National security analysts say U.S. officials should have realized far sooner that they were pumping American taxpayer dollars into a deeply corrupt system that many Afghans had little interest in defending and that they designed the Afghan military to operate along American lines ― a critical vulnerability once the U.S. drawdown began.

Washington also overlooked how its military operations and lack of accountability for excesses drove some Afghans into the Taliban’s arms. In Biden’s telling, the U.S. sent troops to “fight Afghanistan’s civil war” — an absurd depiction given that American choices shaped the war.

Members of Congress and humanitarian groups say that Biden must now focus intensely on Afghans who could be targeted by the Taliban, such as people who worked with the U.S., women in public life and human rights activists.

Biden said his team will work to remove the vulnerable Afghans but blamed others for their plight.

“Some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier,” he claimed, adding that Afghan officials “discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus.”

In fact, thousands of Afghans remain trapped in a bureaucratic backlog as the U.S. has been slow to process their applications for visas despite the Taliban onslaught. The State Department opened up a new visa category for Afghan refugees this month ― but that status is only available to people who have already managed to leave Afghanistan and was announced with little time for most eligible Afghans to apply.

Focusing on what he described as the most important considerations to the U.S., including other terror threats and competition with China, Biden offered few words to the Afghans and others afraid of a newly empowered Taliban ― even, as he said, “human rights must be at the center of our foreign policy.”

“I’m deeply saddened by the facts we now face,” Biden said. “But I do not regret my decision.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

CNN’s Chris Cillizza had an op-ed entitled, The Titanic Hubris of Lindsey Graham, who thinks that he alone can fix Trump and make him a unifying figure for the Republican Party.  Here is the entire piece.

“The following two paragraphs were written about Graham in a lengthy New York Times profile over the weekend:

“He alone can fix the former president, he believes, and make him a unifying figure for Republicans to take back both houses of Congress next year and beyond. To that end, he says, he is determined to steer Mr. Trump away from a dangerous obsession with 2020.

“‘What I say to him is, ‘Do you want January the 6th to be your political obituary?’ he said. ‘Because if you don’t get over it, it’s going to be.'”

Lindsey Graham thinks he can “fix” Donald Trump, turning the former president from a narcissistic obsessive about nonexistent fraud in the 2020 election into a powerful force for good within the Republican Party.

Which, in a word, HA!

There’s lots of reasons why Graham’s belief that he can fundamentally alter Trump is deeply misguided. Let’s go through them.

1) Trump remains totally focused on nonexistent election fraud: While the former president no longer has Twitter — he was permanently banned from the platform after his reaction to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol — he is still issuing a slew of statements every week via his “Save America” PAC. And the common theme in the majority of them is that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from him — and that the truth will emerge sometime soon.

“It is time for Joe Biden to resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan, along with the tremendous surge in COVID, the Border catastrophe, the destruction of energy independence, and our crippled economy,” Trump said Sunday. “It shouldn’t be a big deal, because he wasn’t elected legitimately in the first place!”

“Why are RINOs standing in the way of a full Forensic Audit in Michigan?” Trump said late last week. “The voters are demanding it because they have no confidence in their elections after the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election Scam.”

Yeah, that totally seems like a guy who is ready to move on! He’s totally coming to terms with losing the 2020 election!

2) There is NO Trump 2.0: Remember when Trump promised — after it became clear he would be the Republican nominee in 2016 — that he would be “so presidential [that] you will be so bored. You’ll say, ‘Can’t he have a little more energy?'” How’s that promise looking with five years of hindsight?

The truth is — and always has been — that there is no pivot possible. There is not other gear that Trump can go to, some other side of his personality he hasn’t shown yet. He’s a 75-year-old man who has behaved the same way — boorishly, crudely and utterly without introspection — for his entire adult life. The idea that he will suddenly change — because Lindsey Graham told him to! — is beyond ridiculous.

3) Graham isn’t the boss of their relationship: Even if you discount the two points above — and you shouldn’t — there’s still no chance that Graham can bring his vision of Trump to fruition. Why? Because even by Graham’s own admission, he’s not that guy!

This, from the Times, is illuminating on that point:

“Mr. Graham, 66, has from his school days chosen to ally himself with protective figures he calls ‘alpha dogs,’ men more powerful than himself…

“…’To be part of a football team, you don’t have to be the quarterback, right?’ Mr. Graham said in the interview. ‘I mean, there’s a value in being part of something.'”

Sure! But the left guard doesn’t tell the quarterback what to do. Or suggest how the QB can change himself in order to be a better team player.

That Graham thinks he can change Trump, then, speaks to two things: His own towering sense of self-importance and his fundamental misreading of who Donald Trump is (and always has been). There is no “new” Trump waiting to be discovered by Graham (or anyone else). There’s just Trump. Take him or leave him.”

For those of us who live in New York, we have seen for decades the low character of Donald Trump.  For all his billions, his hotels, and his name in lights,  he was always regarded as a selfish, self-promoting boor.

Tony

Ashraf Ghani

Dear Commons Community,

Afghanistan’s embattled President Ashraf Ghani  left the country yesterday, joining his fellow citizens and foreigners in a stampede fleeing the advancing Taliban and signaling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan.  As reported by the Associated Press.

The Taliban, who for hours had been on the outskirts of Kabul, announced soon after they would move further into a city gripped by panic where helicopters raced overhead throughout the day to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents. Several other Western missions also prepared to pull their people out.

Civilians fearing that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights rushed to leave the country as well, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings. The desperately poor — who had left homes in the countryside for the presumed safety of the capital — remained in their thousands in parks and open spaces throughout the city.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected comparisons to the U.S. pullout from Vietnam, as many watched in disbelief at the sight of helicopters landing in the embassy compound.

President  Ghani flew out of the country, two officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief journalists. Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the Afghan National Reconciliation Council, later confirmed that Ghani had left.

“The former president of Afghanistan left Afghanistan, leaving the country in this difficult situation,” Abdullah said. “God should hold him accountable.” 

In a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces. Just days earlier, an American military assessment estimated it would be a month before the capital would come under insurgent pressure.

Instead, the Taliban swiftly defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swaths of the country, even though they had some air support from the U.S. military. But a peace deal with the U.S. limited direct military action targeting them, allowing them to prepare and move quickly to seize key areas when President Joe Biden announced his plans to withdraw all American forces by the end of this month. 

Many quickly drew comparisons between the fall of Kabul — helicopters rumbling overhead evacuating American diplomats — to the aftermath of the Vietnam War, which saw even more chaotic airborne rescues. Pressed on CNN about it, Blinken said: “This is not Saigon.” However, he acknowledged the “hollowness” of the Afghan security forces.

“From the perspective of our strategic competitors around the world, there’s nothing they would like more than see us in Afghanistan for another five, 10, 20 years,” he said. “It’s simply not in the national interest.”

On Sunday, the insurgents entered the outskirts of Kabul but initially remained outside of the city’s downtown. Meanwhile, Taliban negotiators in Kabul discussed the transfer of power, said an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. It remained unclear when that transfer would take place and who among the Taliban was negotiating.

The negotiators on the government side included former President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah, who has been a vocal critic of Ghani. 

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the closed-doors negotiations, described them as “tense.” Karzai himself appeared in a video posted online, his three young daughters around him, saying he remained in Kabul.

“We are trying to solve the issue of Afghanistan with the Taliban leadership peacefully,” he said, while the roar of a passing helicopter could be heard overhead.

Afghanistan’s acting defense minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, didn’t hold back his criticism of the fleeing president.

“They tied our hands from behind and sold the country,” he wrote on Twitter. “Curse Ghani and his gang.”

The insurgents tried to calm residents of the capital, insisting their fighters wouldn’t enter people’s homes or interfere with businesses. They also said they’d offer an “amnesty” to those who worked with the Afghan government or foreign forces.

“No one’s life, property and dignity will be harmed and the lives of the citizens of Kabul will not be at risk,” the insurgents said in a statement. 

But there have been reports of revenge killings and other brutal tactics in areas of the country the Taliban have seized in recent days. 

And yesterday, panic set in as many rushed to leave the country through the Kabul airport, the last route out of the country as the Taliban now hold every border crossing. NATO said it was “helping to maintain operations at Kabul airport to keep Afghanistan connected with the world.”

One Afghan university student described feeling betrayed as she watched the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy.

“You failed the younger generation of Afghanistan,” said Aisha Khurram, 22, who is now unsure of whether she’ll be able to graduate in two months’ time. “A generation … raised in the modern Afghanistan were hoping to build the country with their own hands. They put blood, efforts and sweat into whatever we had right now.”

The U.S. decided a few days ago to send in thousands of troops to help evacuate some personnel, and two officials said Sunday that American diplomats were being moved from the embassy to the airport. Military helicopters shuttled between the embassy compound and the airport, where a core presence will remain for as long as possible given security conditions. 

The officials were not authorized to discuss diplomatic movements and spoke on condition of anonymity. 

The flights began a few hours after the Taliban seized the nearby city of Jalalabad — which had been the last major city besides the capital not in their hands. 

Meanwhile, wisps of smoke could be seen near the embassy’s roof as diplomats urgently destroyed sensitive documents, according to two American military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation. The smoke grew heavier over time in the area, home to other nation’s embassies as well.

Afghan officials said the militants also took the capitals of Maidan Wardak, Khost, Kapisa and Parwan provinces on Sunday.

The insurgents also seized the land border at Torkham, the last not in their control, on Sunday. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told local broadcaster Geo TV that Pakistan halted cross-border traffic there after the militants seized it. 

Later, Afghan forces at Bagram air base, home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, surrendered to the Taliban, according to Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi. The prison at the former U.S. base held both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters.

The United States did not learn its lesson in Vietnam and suffered the consequences in Afghanistan!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last evening while on our lake enjoying wine and yogurt, Elaine and I were treated to a “Belt of Venus” sunset.  It completely surrounded the lake 360 degrees. If you are not familiar with it, here are some facts.

The “Belt of Venus” is an atmospheric phenomenon that creates a pink band in the sky at sunrise and sunset. It is actually the area between Earth’s shadow and the blue sky. The belt is similar to alpenglow, which creates a reddish glow just over the horizon.

Facts about the Belt of Venus

• The Belt of Venus is an atmospheric optical phenomenon, but could also be considered a space phenomenon.
• The pink color in the belt is sunlight that is shining through denser atmosphere near the Earth’s surface, and being reflected off of atmosphere at the opposite end of the sky.
• The dark blue layer in the sky below the pink belt is Earth’s “shadow” being cast onto the atmosphere.
• It is visible at sunrise or sunset, but is more pronounced at sunset.
• It is best seen during the summer months, on clear and slightly hazy evenings.
• The Belt of Venus has several names, including antitwilight arch.

It is named the “Belt of Venus” due to an association with the Roman goddess Venus. It is not associated with the planet Venus.

Quite beautiful!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A Georgia county has shut down all 11 of its public schools just over a week after classes began, amid a “sharp increase” in student coronavirus cases.

Schools in Ware County in southeastern Georgia are now closed until at least Aug. 27, and students won’t be allowed back until Sept. 7 at the earliest, according to officials. Schools will not offer virtual classes during that time, according to WSAV-TV.

Four other small school districts in Georgia suspended in-person instruction earlier in the week, as COVID-19 cases among students soared.

“Initially, we thought we were going to have a normal start,” Ware County schools Superintendent Bert Smith told WJXT-4 TV.

The biggest problem quickly became staffing, he said, as teachers had to split their time between in-person classes and and virtual teaching for students in quarantine. “There’s not enough time in the day,” Smith said.

As for sick and at-risk children, “our nursing clinics are overwhelmed with kids having to quarantine,” he said. “Right now every day is a challenge.”

As of Friday in Ware schools, 76 students had tested positive for COVID-19, and another 679 students were quarantined, out of a total of 5,900 students. Smith said 353 students were quarantined because of exposure outside of school, according to WJXT.

Among the district’s 950 school employees, 67 have tested positive and an additional 150 have been quarantined.

Only 29% of people in Ware County have been fully vaccinated. Georgia ranks among the bottom eight states in terms of vaccination rates, with just 39.4% of its population fully vaccinated.

Across the nation, at least 10,000 students have already been quarantined due to COVID-19 exposure just days into the new school year.

The situation is particularly dire in states with low vaccination rates, and where Republican governors and state legislatures have banned mask mandates in schools. Health experts warn such conditions are certain to contribute to the spread of the dominant delta variant of the virus, which is affecting far more children and with more serious symptoms than the initial form of the disease.

Ware, like most Georgia counties, has a mask-optional policy in schools, though masks “were strongly recommended,” according to WSAV.

I am afraid we are going to see many more schools closing down because of COVID over the next several weeks and months.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press has an article this morning describing the rising toll that COVID-19 is now taking on younger people especially those under the age of 65. Here is an excerpt.

“A young mother had just celebrated her first wedding anniversary and was one of six members of a Jacksonville church to die over a 10-day span. 

Another Florida woman had just given birth to her first child, but was only able to hold the newborn girl for a few moments before dying. 

A California man died a few weeks shy of his 53rd birthday while his wife was on a ventilator at the same hospital in Oakland, unaware of his passing on Aug. 4. 

The COVID-19 death toll has started soaring again as the delta variant tears through the nation’s unvaccinated population and fills up hospitals with patients, many of whom are younger than during earlier phases of the pandemic.

The U.S. is now averaging about 650 deaths a day, increasing more than 80 percent from two weeks ago and going past the 600 mark on Saturday for the first time in three months.

Data on the age and demographics of victims during the delta surge is still limited, but hospitals in virus hotspots say they are clearly seeing more admissions and deaths among people under the age of 65.

Florida hospital officials are seeing an influx of young, healthy adults filling their wards across the state, many requiring oxygen. In the past week in Florida, 36% of the deaths occurred in the under-65 population, compared with 17% in the same week last year when the state was experiencing a similar COVID surge. Florida is the national leader in coronavirus deaths, averaging more than 150 a day in the past week.

The younger patients mark a shift from the elderly and frail, many living in nursing homes, who succumbed to the virus a year ago before states made seniors a priority to get inoculated first. More than 90 percent of seniors have had at least one shot, compared to about 70 percent for Americans under 65.

At a predominantly Black church in Jacksonville with a hipster vibe, contemporary music, and a strong social media presence reflective of its young, energetic congregation, six members died over 10 days starting in late July. All were under the age of 35.

They were “all healthy, all unvaccinated,” laments Pastor George Davis of Impact Church, who knew each one personally and has struggled with his own grief at the funerals. He’s held two vaccination events for his congregation of about 6,000 where over 1,000 received shots.

Among the church members who died were a 24-year-old man Davis watched grow up since he was a toddler, and a woman from his worship team who celebrated her first wedding anniversary only weeks before she died. Her husband recovered.

Davis said the young woman was “just the picture of health, vibrant.”

“There is a sense among younger people that they are somehow invincible,” said Dr. Lena Wen, public health professor at George Washington University and former Baltimore Health Commissioner. “Unfortunately, though, some people who are hospitalized are going to die and that’s going to mean some people who are younger; and as you’ve seen these are people in some cases who are leaving behind young children.”

Among those parents are Kristen McMullen, who had decorated her baby’s room with rainbows and suns, fully embracing her favorite season, summer — after which she would name her first child. 

The 30-year-old woman fell ill three weeks before her due date and was admitted to a hospital in West Melbourne, Fla., with COVID-19.

After an emergency cesarean section, McMullen was able to hold her baby girl for a few moments before being rushed off to an intensive care unit, where she later died.

“She would say that she was scared and that she didn’t want to die,” her aunt Melissa Syverson said, struggling to talk in between sobs. “She was fighting to get back to the baby.”

McMullen’s aunt said her family did not want to disclose whether McMullen was vaccinated.

Carlos Reyes was skeptical of the vaccine and so was his wife, Maria — until they and their two teenage children had to be rushed to the hospital in Oakland.

Their 14-year-old son, Sergio, did not need to stay after getting oxygen while 19-year-old Emma joined her parents in the intensive care unit. She was released after a few days, and the parents were put on ventilators.

Their 32-year-old daughter who has an auto-immune disease was the only one vaccinated when they fell ill.

“We were all just a little hesitant at the beginning,” said the couple’s oldest daughter, Jasmine Rivas Fierro, 34.

Their four children didn’t want to break their mother’s heart by telling her while she was still in intensive care that Carlos had died a day after their 22nd anniversary. 

“She loved him so much,” Rivas Fierro said of her mother, who is still in the hospital.

The family is telling people that they must be fully vaccinated to attend Carlos’ funeral next week. 

Cindy Dawkins also left behind four children, ranging in age from 12 to 24. She died Aug. 7, less than a week after she celebrated her 50th birthday with her family at Universal Studios in Orlando. She had a cough and seemed tired that day before her condition quickly deteriorated and she had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.

Her family believes she contracted the virus at her waitressing job at a bistro in their hometown of Boynton Beach, Fla., where her coworkers have also tested positive. She was healthy and had been getting tested regularly but was still mulling over getting the vaccine.

“Maybe the vaccine would have helped fight it, but I don’t know if it would have completely stopped it,” her 20-year-old son, Tre Burrows, said. 

As the family wrestles with grief and sorts out guardianship of Dawkins’ youngest children, they are also saddened by what could have been. Dawkins came to the U.S. from the Bahamas when she was in high school and her children say she was close to becoming an American citizen, an event the family planned to celebrate with a trip over Thanksgiving.

“Everything was finally going right,” her daughter Jenny Burrows said. “And then this happened.”

Please take the vaccine!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article this morning entitled, Behind the Surprising Jump in Multiracial Americans, describing how  families across the country have grown more diverse. A design change in the US Census Form also allowed the government to report people’s identity in greater detail.  Here is an excerpt from the article.

“The Census Bureau released a surprising finding this week: The number of non-Hispanic Americans who identify as multiracial had jumped by 127 percent over the decade. For people who identified as Hispanic, the increase was even higher.

The spike sent demographers scrambling. Was the reason simply that more multiracial babies were being born? Or that Americans were rethinking their identities? Or had a design change in this year’s census form caused the sudden, unexpected shift?

The answer, it seems, is all of the above.

Multiracial Americans are still a relatively small part of the population — just 4 percent — but the increase over the decade was substantial and, the data shows, often surprising in its geography. The number of Americans who identified as non-Hispanic and more than one race jumped to 13.5 million from 6 million. The largest increase in non-Hispanic Americans of two or more races was in Oklahoma, followed by Alaska and Arkansas.

Americans who were mixed race recorded a wide range of identities. People who identified themselves as both white and Asian made up about 18 percent of the total number of non-Hispanic multiracial Americans in 2020. Those who reported their race as both white and Black accounted for 20.5 percent. Americans who were both white and Native American were 26 percent of the total, according to Andrew Beveridge, who founded Social Explorer, a data analytics company.

Part of the rise in people identifying as multiracial was simply the growing diversity of the American population. As the newest immigrants, largely from Asia and Latin America, have children and grandchildren, and those Americans form families, they are much more likely to marry outside their racial or ethnic groups than their parents were. Among newlywed Hispanic people who were born in the United States, about 39 percent marry someone who is not Hispanic, according to the Pew Research Center. For Asian people, that number is about the same.

But the increase can also be attributed in part to changing ways in which Americans identify themselves — and the ways the government categorizes them.”

This bodes well for our country and its diversity.

Tony

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) recounts screaming “This is because of you!” at Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) during January 6th insurrection. pic.twitter.com/XX0Phdb7uN

— The Recount (@therecount) August 13, 2021

Dear Commons Community,

As the House select committee begins investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, one key line of inquiry will be the role Republican members of Congress played in helping set the stage for the violence.

Yesterday, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., recounted how he vented his anger at Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., as the rioters stormed the Capitol and halted the certification of the Electoral College vote. In a video interview posted to Twitter (see above) by the Recount, Phillips recalled that “Rep. Gosar, from Arizona, was objecting to the Arizona slate of electors” when a Capitol Police officer “announced that we should take cover.”

Phillips said he stood up at the back of the gallery, on the second floor of the House chamber, and “at that moment, I simply shouted out at the top of my lungs, ‘This is because of you!’ I screamed it.”

Audio of Phillips’s outburst was captured on video as members led by Gosar and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had begun debating a challenge to Arizona’s 2020 election results.

A Minnesota Reformer article from Jan. 6 described the eruption by Phillips as Capitol Police moved to lock down the House floor.

“This has been brewing for four years,” Phillips said, according to a pool report, when asked about his comments after he and other lawmakers had been evacuated from the chamber as a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol. “And the collective dereliction of duty manifests itself in that moment for me.”

Trump had publicly pressured Republican lawmakers to help him undo his defeat in the 2020 election by challenging the Electoral College results in six key states. Gosar played a major role in that effort. Before voting to block Joe Biden’s electoral victory in Arizona, he repeatedly promoted Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud in the weeks following the November election. In December, he attended a “Stop the Steal” rally at the Arizona state Capitol and promised a crowd of Trump supporters that “Once we conquer the Hill, Donald Trump is returned to being the president.”

On the morning of Jan. 6, Gosar tweeted a photo of a crowd of pro-Trump protesters already gathered in front of the Washington Monument with the message: “Biden should concede. I want his concession on my desk tomorrow morning. Don’t make me come over there.”

In the months since, Gosar has attempted to downplay the severity of the attack on the Capitol and to deflect blame for the violence away from Trump supporters. He has claimed that Ashli Babbitt, a pro-Trump rioter who was fatally shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer while trying to climb through the broken window of a door to the speaker’s lobby, was “executed.” His campaign office has also promoted an unfounded conspiracy theory that the FBI “might have had a hand” in carrying out the riot.

The insurrection on January 6th was because of Gosar and the Trump sycophants in the Republican Party.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Arizona’s three public universities announced on Wednesday that they would be instituting face-mask requirements in certain settings, possibly defying legislation that prohibits universities and community colleges from mandating several public-health measures to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Arizona State University was the first institution to push back, announcing it would be requiring face coverings in all classrooms and labs and in “close-quarter environments where physical distancing may not be possible.” Northern Arizona University followed soon after, requiring masks in all classrooms, labs, and indoor and outdoor settings where social distancing is not possible. Then the University of Arizona announced a mask requirement, with President Robert C. Robbins stating that masks would be required in all indoor settings where social distancing is not possible.

On Thursday, Maricopa County Community College District also joined in, announcing face masks would be required indoors across its 10 member campuses. Last semester, the system enrolled more than 86,000 students around the Phoenix metropolitan area.

On June 15, Arizona’s Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order preventing public universities and community colleges from requiring students to get the Covid-19 vaccine or submit proof of vaccination. The order also prohibits these institutions from requiring students to wear masks or get tested in order to attend class.

Later in June, the state legislature approved a higher-education budget bill — which Ducey signed into law — that included an amendment similar to his executive order. The bill is not supposed to take effect until September 29 — the 91st day after the end of session — but GOP lawmakers and Ducey have claimed that the ban is retroactive to July 1.

In an email statement to The Chronicle, a spokesman for Ducey emphasized that mask-wearing is an individual decision and that no law is stopping people from wearing masks.

“Ultimately, these mandates are toothless, unenforceable, and will not hold up in court,” said C.J. Karamargin, communications director for the Republican governor. “As we’ve said repeatedly, the game changer in this discussion is the vaccine. It works, it’s widely available, and we strongly encourage every eligible Arizonan to get their shot.”

Bridging gaps between countries, cultures and information, learn how Collaborative Online International Learning projects are innovating the approach to teaching and learning by broadening students’ understanding through group coursework.

The conflict between the Arizona GOP’s attempts to prohibit mask mandates and the universities’ and community colleges’ actions potentially sets the stage for a legal fight, said Peter F. Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University.

“We’re in a bit of a standoff right now, which I think can only be refereed by the judicial system, ultimately,” Lake said, referring to Norwegian Cruise Line’s successful challenge to a Florida law banning companies from requiring proof of vaccination. In Texas, several of the state’s largest school districts have issued mask mandates in defiance of Gov. Greg Abbott’s May executive order prohibiting schools from doing so, and a nonprofit education group has sued to block the order.

Congratulations to these college and university administrators who are putting the safety of students, faculty, and staff over politics.

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