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Column: How Trump is pushing politics into pandemic policy – Los Angeles Times

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A small consolation in the upheaval created by the coronavirus is that disease is a public health issue, not a political one; it should transcend the partisanship that has so bitterly divided us. The virus, we’ve heard repeatedly, can’t tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

In fact, however, COVID-19 and the governmental actions to subdue it are now giving rise to bitter social strife playing out along familiar red-blue fault lines, a gulf deepened in particular by organized animosity toward government.

The president himself is the impresario of these toxic developments. His initial pooh-poohing of the virus, with the aid of far-right media, has helped promote a striking bifurcation between the cultural camps as to just how dangerous the virus is. A Washington Post/University of Maryland poll last week found that 71% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say that public events won’t be safe until June; only 51% of Republicans agree, and they continue to push for the resumption of normal life.

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On Friday, in what may be the most reckless demagoguery ever from a sitting president, Trump instructed his most diehard supporters to “LIBERATE” states with stay-at-home orders. It was no surprise that the demonstrations and protesters the president decided to tweet about, and cheer on, were in three states with swing potential — Virginia, Minnesota and Michigan.

Worse, the government agencies Trump has shaped in his image are in direct formation behind him, exploiting the virus to advance preexisting ideological agendas and, not incidentally, the president’s reelection.

One of Trump’s “LIBERATE” tweets specifically exhorted citizens of Virginia to “save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege.” The reference was to a gun law in Virginia requiring background checks, which the state’s new Democratic leadership had managed to pass early this year. The tweet was a bumper-sticker shout-out to extreme gun rights partisans all over the country.

It was also a back-pat to the NRA, which had already successfully lobbied the administration to amend its stay-at-home guidance to include gun stores within the exceptions for essential businesses. Although the change is not binding on states, the effect of the switch was to push several into amending their own essential business orders to include gun stores. Los Angeles is among the cities that held firm; the NRA sued in federal court; L.A. won.

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Charging that “religious liberty” is under attack from secular society is another mantra Trump partisans are trotting out during the pandemic. Some church pastors have alleged that curtailing services under stay-at-home orders represents intentional government action against the faithful and the curtailment of their 1st Amendment rights.

“Free exercise” doesn’t exempt churches, mosques and synagogues from generally applicable laws, but it does mean that religious groups and institutions can’t be singled out by government rules. The basic pandemic orders we’ve seen ought to pass 1st Amendment muster in the courts because cities and states aren’t burdening religious institutions with harsher lockdown rules than, say, bars and restaurants. Two such cases in federal courts in Kentucky and New Mexico have so held.

In an eye-catching gesture, the Department of Justice stepped into one such case, Temple Baptist Church vs. Greenville, Miss., issuing a “statement of interest,” a supporting brief. In this instance, the statement’s effect was to strike a blow for Trump’s side of the culture wars, yet again in a state that will be important in November. (It is the only time the DOJ has seen fit to weigh in on a virus-related matter since the president declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency.)

The city of Greenville sought to shut down drive-in services after receiving complaints that Temple Baptist and other churches weren’t complying with social distance requirements. The church immediately filed a federal lawsuit alleging that its worshipers were staying in their cars with their windows up and that the city was discriminating against it — and trespassing on religious freedom — in enforcement measures aimed expressly at a church.

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The dispute hinged primarily on facts — was Temple Baptist complying with social distancing requirements or wasn’t it? It is not normally the province of the Department of Justice to take sides in a factual dispute. But Atty. Gen. William Barr’s department parachuted in, declaring that if the church’s assertions were proven, the complaint would amount to a violation of the free exercise of religion.

Well, sure, if. The DOJ’s recitation of the law was scarcely controversial. The statement of interest, however, acted as a sort of grenade in the middle of a local lawsuit. The brief, with its avowals of support for the church rather than the city’s orders, made national news, and the mayor of Greenville (a self-described “devout Christian”) caved.

The whole thing played out primarily as a victory for red state faithful against the forces of liberal secularization. Then Barr sent another shot across the red-blue divide when he threatened to sue states that don’t relax their stay-at-home orders sufficiently in his, and his boss’s view, a warning all the more striking because it is empty. The Department of Justice lacks the tools to comply with the president’s preferred course.

There is no sensible reason for the government’s responses to COVID-19 to smack of red-blue issues and the culture wars. We’ve seen governors of both parties and scientists trying to keep politics at bay in their briefings, actions and policies. But at a time when the federal government’s most important function is to coordinate and unite, the president, his followers and enablers, and his executive branch are hell-bent on dividing. All of us are at risk in this pandemic, but when it comes to protecting Americans from COVID-19, the president can only see red.

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Twitter: @harrylitman

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Recall Gondek group planned to launch its own petition before political novice did – CBC.ca

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The third-party group helping promote the recall campaign against Mayor Jyoti Gondek had devised plans to launch its own petition drive, as part of a broader mission to make Calgary council more conservative.

Project YYC had planned with other conservative political organizations to gather signatures demanding Calgary’s mayor be removed, says group leader Roy Beyer. But their drive would have begun later in the year, when nicer weather made for easier canvassing for supporters, he said.

Those efforts were stymied when Landon Johnston, an HVAC contractor largely unknown in local politics, applied at city hall to launch his own recall drive in early February. Since provincial recall laws allow only one recall attempt per politician per term, Project YYC chose to lend support to Johnston’s bid.

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“Now we have to try to do door-knocking in the winter, and there’s a lot of preparation that you have to contemplate prior to starting. And Landon didn’t do that,” Beyer told CBC News in an interview.

Project YYC has helped gather signatures, created a website and erected large, anti-Gondek signs around town. It has supplied organizational heft that Johnston admits to lacking.

Their task is daunting.

According to provincial law, in order to force a recall plebiscite to oust the mayor before the term is up, they have two months to gather more than 514,000 signatures, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population in 2019.

They have until April 4 to collect that many signatures, and by March 21 had only 42,000.

Beyer criticizes the victory threshold for recall petition as so high that it’s “a joke,” and the province may as well not have politician recall laws.

So if he thinks it’s an impossible pursuit, why is he involved with this?

“You can send a message to the mayor that she should be sitting down and resigning … without achieving those numbers,” Beyer said.

Project YYC founder Roy Beyer, from a Take Back Alberta video in 2022. He is no longer with that provincial activist group. (royjbeyer screenshot/Rumble)

He likened it to former premier Jason Kenney getting 52 per cent support in a UCP leadership review — enough to technically continue as leader, but a lousy enough show of confidence that he announced immediately he would step down.

Gondek has given no indication she’ll voluntarily leave before her term is up next year. But she did emerge from a meeting last week with Johnston to admit the petition has resonated with many Calgarians and is a signal she must work harder to listen to public concerns and explain council’s decisions.

The mayor also told the Calgary Sun this week that she’s undecided about running for re-election in 2025. 

“There used to be this thing where if you’re the mayor, of course you’re going to run for another term because there’s unfinished business,” Gondek told the newspaper.

“And yes, there will be unfinished business, but the times are not what they were. You need to make sure you’re the right leader for the times you’re in.”

The last several Calgary mayors have enjoyed multiple terms in office, going back to Ralph Klein in the 1980s. The last one-term mayor was Ross Alger, the man Klein defeated in 1980.

Beyer and fellow conservative organizers launched Project YYC before the recall campaign. The goal was to elect a conservative mayor and councillors — “a common-sense city council, instead of what we currently have,” he said.

Beyer is one of a few former activists with the provincial pressure group Take Back Alberta to have latched themselves to the recall bid and Project YYC, along with some United Conservative Party riding officials in Calgary. 

Beyer’s acknowledgment of his group’s broader mission comes as Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet ministers have said they want to introduce political party politics in large municipalities — even though most civic politicians have said they don’t want to bring clear partisanship into city halls.

Although Beyer admits Project YYC’s own recall campaign would have been a coalition effort with other conservative groups, he wouldn’t specify which ones. He did insist that Take Back Alberta wasn’t one of them.

A man in a grey baseball cap speaks to reporters.
Calgary business owner Landon Johnston speaks to reporters at City Hall on March 22 following his 15-minute conversation with Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (Laurence Taschereau/CBC)

Johnston says he was approached by Beyer’s group shortly after applying to recall Gondek, and gave them $3,000 from donations he’d raised.

He initially denied any knowledge of Project YYC when documents first emerged about that group’s role in the recall, but later said he didn’t initially realize that was the organizational name of his campaign allies.

“They said they could get me signatures, so I said, ‘OK, if you can do it by the book, here’s some money.’ And it’s worked,” he said.

Johnston has said he’s new to politics but simply wants to remove Gondek because of policies he’s disagreed with, like the soon-to-be-ended ban on single-use plastics and bags at restaurant takeouts and drive-thrus.

He’s no steadfast conservative, either. He told CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener that he voted for Rachel Notley’s NDP because one of its green-renovation incentives helped his HVAC business.

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


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Trump's claims on crime rates clash with police data – NBC News

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Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and “migrant crime.”

Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.

But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels.

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FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

NBC News analyzed crime data to evaluate Trump’s assertions about the topic.

U.S. and big city crime rates

Trump’s campaign often refers to crime levels, regularly pointing the finger at Biden.

“On Joe Biden’s watch, violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city,” the campaign said in a news release published this month on its site.

Trump himself has made similar remarks.

“Four years ago, I told you that if crooked Joe Biden got to the White House, our borders would be abolished, our middle class would be decimated and our communities would be plagued by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime,” Trump said in a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We were right about everything.”

Government figures don’t support that characterization.

Reported violent crime dropped 6% across the board when comparing the last three months of 2022 to the same period in 2023, the FBI reported.

The reported drops were especially pronounced in the big cities that Trump often assails, many of which have Democratic mayors. Violent crime dropped by 11% in cities with populations of 1 million or more, according to FBI data, while murders dropped by 20%, rape was down 16%, and aggravated assault fell by 11%.

Reached for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to other reports indicating that certain types of crimes increased in specific cities.

At the national level, the reported rate of violent crime in 2022, the most recent full year with comprehensive FBI data, was 380.7 offenses per 100,000 people. That’s lower than the overall reported violent crime rate from 2020 — the last full year Trump was in office — when the figure was at 398.5.

The lowest reported violent crime rate of Trump’s presidency was in 2019, when the metric was at 380.8 — in line with the 2022 rate.

The FBI said it will release more comprehensive 2023 crime data in October, just before the election.

The Trump campaign, reached for comment, cited certain categories of violent crime, such as motor vehicle theft, as having increased during the Biden administration, according to FBI figures.

“Joe Biden is trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes,” campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that “Democrats have turned great American cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”

New York City crime

Trump, who was born and raised in New York but now lives in Florida, often rails against what he portrays as an increasing crime rate in his former hometown.

Those references to soaring violence have only increased as he faces criminal charges in New York accusing him of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in that case, must also post a $175 million bond to prevent state Attorney General Letitia James from collecting the judgment from a New York civil fraud case.

“I did nothing wrong, and New York should never be put in a position like this again,” Trump posted on Truth Social about the civil judgment in all capital letters. “Businesses are fleeing, violent crime is flourishing, and it is very important that this be resolved in its totality as soon as possible.”

In a separate post, he claimed that “murders & violent crime hit unimaginable records” in the city.

However, major crimes in New York City are down this year by 2.3%, according to police department data comparing year-to-date figures to the same period in 2023.

Those figures for last year were also far below the highs from recent decades. In 1990, more than 527,000 major crimes were reported, compared to more than 126,000 last year, according to New York police data — a drop of more than 75%.

In 2001, more than 162,000 major crimes were reported in New York. The figure dropped by more than 20% over the next two decades.

At the same time, New York City data indicates that the number of major crimes increased in the past few years, though reported violent crimes like murder and rape were down last year from previous years.

‘Migrant crime’

Trump’s dehumanizing language about migrants has become a mainstay of his political speeches since he first sought office in 2015.

In a news release this month, his campaign said the “border Crisis has created a tragic surge in violent crime against innocent American citizens at the hands of some of the world’s most violent criminals.”

Trump has also focused his energy on high-profile cases such as the death of Laken Riley, who was killed in Georgia while jogging. The suspect is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.

“Every day, innocent citizens are being killed, stabbed, shot, raped and murdered because of Biden migrant crime,” Trump said in a video posted to his campaign’s X account last week.

However, there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the U.S., according to local police department data.

Crime reports have decreased in several major cities targeted by Texas’ Operation Lone Star, a program backed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that flies or buses migrants from the state to Democratic-run cities across the U.S.

Several of those cities — New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia — have had decreases in year-to-date reported crime totals compared to the same period last year.


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