May 30

ACLU Of Oregon: Mayor's Attempt To Stop Pro-Trump, Anti-Sharia Rallies Is ‘Unconstitutional’

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The mayor of Portland, Oregon, has made an “unconstitutional” attempt to shut down upcoming rallies against sharia and in support of President Donald Trump, according to the ACLU of Oregon.  

Following a deadly hate-fueled attack last week, Mayor Ted Wheeler said Monday that the city would not issue permits to groups organizing “alt-right events” scheduled for early June. He also called on the federal government, which operates the plaza where the events are supposed to take place, to “immediately revoke” a permit issued to organizers of one rally and to not issue a permit for the other one. 

But the ACLU of Oregon warned that the mayor could impede upon a “core, fundamental freedom of the United States” by censoring “unpopular speech.” 

Tensions have been mounting in Portland in the days following a knife attack on the city’s MAX light-rail train. Jeremy Joseph Christian, a 35-year-old with white supremacist ties, is accused of fatally stabbing passengers Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche on Friday after they attempted to confront him for harassing two teenage girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab.

“Our City is in mourning, our community’s anger is real, and the timing and subject of these events can only exacerbate an already difficult situation,” Wheeler wrote in a statement. 

Mat dos Santos, the legal director of the ACLU of Oregon, said he doesn’t disagree that the Portland community is mourning. But he called the mayor’s decision to block the protests “a pretty clear case of government overreach.”

“We fundamentally believe that when the government acts to silence the speech of somebody whose speech we disagree with it has long-term problematic consequences for everyone,” dos Santos said. It violates both the U.S. and Oregon constitutions for a protest to be shut down solely because the government disagrees with participants’ viewpoints, he added. 

Dos Santos said he was “shocked” by Wheeler’s statement on Monday, claiming he had advised members of the mayor’s staff not to block the rallies unless there were concerns for public safety. He said he wasn’t aware of any safety issues pertaining to either the “Trump Free Speech Rally” or “March Against Sharia,” set for June 4 and June 10, respectively.

“Of course, the First Amendment does have some limits,” dos Santos said. “If the government has concrete evidence of an imminent threat to public safety, they can and should address it, but they should do it in a restrictive way that eliminates the threat while protecting the First Amendment rights of others.”

The Trump Free Speech Rally plans to feature “live music, flags, and an uplifting experience to bring back strength and courage to those who believe in freedom” in “one of the most liberal areas on the West Coast,” according to the event’s Facebook page. The organizers of the March Against Sharia event say they intend to protect the freedom of religion by protesting “Sharia Law and its impact on Muslim women and children including honor killing and Female Genital Mutilation.”

It would have been “wholly appropriate” for Wheeler to reach out to the groups himself and ask them to reschedule, dos Santos said.

Michael Cox, Wheeler’s director of communications, said the mayor did not mean to “hamper political speech” and that his request to the federal government was based on security concerns, not differing political viewpoints.

“The mayor’s only goal is to keep this community safe,” Cox told HuffPost. “He believes that this rally is scheduled for the wrong time at the wrong place. While it may be constitutional, it is highly irresponsible.”

Violent altercations have threatened several public demonstrations in Portland in recent months. In April, the city’s annual Rose Festival parade was canceled after two anti-fascist groups threatened to “drag and push” those marching with the Republican Party. Earlier this month, self-described anarchists set fires and threw objects at police during a May Day protest.

Cox said the city is planning security measures as if the events will take place, but that it’s up to the federal government to decide whether they will. The Portland Police Department is also “collecting information about potential threats of violence,” he added, but would not comment on specific threats. 

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May 30

Men Made Baby Alligator Chug Beer And Posted Pics On Snapchat, Officers Say

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Two South Carolina men are facing charges after posting photos showing then shotgunning beers down a baby alligator’s throat.

The state’s Department of Natural Resources charged Joseph Andrew Floyd Jr., 20, and Zachary Lloyd Brown, 21, with misdemeanor harassment of wildlife after getting numerous complaints on Thursday, according to The Post and Courier newspaper.

The incident happened Wednesday on the side of a dirt road in Jasper County, SCDNR said.

Photos originally posted on Snapchat show the baby alligator’s neck being tightly squeezed as the beer is poured down its throat, according to local station WYFF. Another picture appears to show smoke being blown into the gator’s mouth. 

The department contacted Floyd and Brown after getting numerous complaints in response to the photos.

The suspects admitted to officers that they picked up the alligator after they saw it crossing the road, according to an SCDNR press release.

They also admitted to pouring beer into its mouth and taking photos to post on social media before putting the sudsed-up gator into a pond, the department said.

If convicted, the accused face a maximum fine of $300.

Although federal laws prohibit alligators from being legally harvested for international trade, no federal protection applies in cases like these, according to SCDNR Alligator Program Coordinator Jay Butfiloski.

“Alligators are protected under state law and even federal law where they are still listed as threatened solely due to their similarity of appearance to other endangered crocodilians worldwide,” Butfiloski said in the release.

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May 30

New Map Tracks Germs' Travels Around Hospitals

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In the first study of its kind, researchers have conducted a yearlong survey of the bacteria in a newly constructed hospital, starting two months before the facility opened and continuing over the next 10 months.

Initial results of the Hospital Microbiome Project, published today (May 24) in the journal Science Translational Medicine, provide an unprecedented map of the microbial communities that inhabit a hospital — on the patients, the staff and the surfaces. The study also gives researchers foundational information that could improve the understanding of hospital-acquired infections, the researchers said.

“We are mapping a new world in the hospital so that we can understand the trade routes, if you will, of microbes moving in that space,” said study senior author Jack Gilbert, director of the Microbiome Center at the University of Chicago. [Body Bugs: 5 Surprising Facts About Your Microbiome]

The map of the hospital, the Center for Care and Discovery at the University of Chicago Medicine, is not a typical two-dimensional projection of a physical space, Gilbert said. Rather it is a “multidimensional, mathematical hypervolume of interactive space.”

The map shows not only where the microbes are, but also how they tend to move around. “It helps me to see the pathway by which things move, so I can use that information to understand the dynamics of interacting organisms much more readily.”

Those dynamic interactions occur because in general not a day goes by when a person is not picking up organisms from one place and dumping them in another, Gilbert said. In the microscopic world of microbial communities, some organisms gain a foothold in one place and die in another, and they can even evolve into antibiotic-resistant organisms, such as Staphylococcus aureus andStaphylococcus epidermidis, he said.

Over the course of the year at the hospital, Gilbert and his team focused on 10 noncritical carerooms on two different floors and two nurse stations, one that provided care to surgical patients and another that provided care to cancer patients. In the rooms, the researchers collected samples from multiple surfaces, including the floor, bed rail, door handles and phones.

Patients who gave consent were also swabbed, with samples taken from hands, nostrils and armpits. Finally, the nursing staff allowed samples to be taken from their hands, gloves and shoes, as well as from countertops, pagers, shirts, chairs, computers, landlines and cellphones.

In all, the researchers collected 6,523 microbial samples from 252 patients.

From the very beginning, the team saw interesting trends, the researchers said. Before the hospital opened on Feb. 23, 2013, most of the bacterial organisms in the building were those commonly found in the soil and water, such as Acinetobacter and Pseudomonas.

But after the hospital opened, the soil and water microbes were quickly replaced by those typically found on human skin, such as Corynebacterium, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus.

The staff disinfected rooms daily with an ammonium cleaning solution, and after a patient wasdischarged, the room was cleaned with bleach. Despite this, some microbes survived. [5 Ways Gut Bacteria Affect Your Health]

“You’ve got this horribly alien environment. It’s basically raining humans and animals and plants down onto a volcanic island,” Gilbert said. “It’s a horrible environment, and only a few [microbes] are ever going to survive.”

Those that lived tended to move from a room’s surfaces onto a new patient on that person’s first day in the hospital, the study found. By the second day, though, the patient’s own microbes began colonizing the room’s surfaces, replacing the bacteria from the previous person. 

Gilbert and his team said they encountered a couple of surprises: During the heat and humidity of summer, staff members shared more bacteria with one another.

The scientists also found that different surfaces contained different kinds of microbes. The organisms on telephones were different from those on door handles and computer mice. This shows that although bacterial organisms come from common sources, each of the microenvironments somehow selects for distinct microbes, Gilbert said.

“That helps us consider the different surface materials and what their impact could be on the ecosystems,” he said.

This information could provide a foundation for future studies that look specifically at infections that patients acquire after being admitted to a hospital, Gilbert added. 

For 92 patients in the study who were in the hospital for months, some potentially harmful bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis, acquired genes associated with antibiotic resistance, the study said. Although the patients did not acquire infections, microbes with antibiotic resistance genes were present in the room in numbers that were greater on surfaces than on skin. [6 Superbugs to Watch Out For]

Most of the microbes that Gilbert and his team found were benign, though, and unlikely to cause any problems. 

“If anything, this study is an education to all of the germaphobes out there,” Gilbert said. “You’re swimming in bacteria and most of them are dead, but there’s a lot of them that are alive and there’s not much you can do about it.”

Originally published on Live Science.

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May 30

This Is How The GOP Health Care Bill Will Affect Insurance Premiums Next Year

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The health care reform bill approved by House Republicans would make a lot of big changes to the health insurance market ― and one of the biggest would be felt in just months if President Donald Trump gets his wish to sign into law.

As the Congressional Budget Office found in its analysis of the American Health Care Act, the health insurance premiums paid by those who get their coverage directly from an insurer or via an exchange like HealthCare.gov would rise by an average of 20 percent in 2018.

To illustrate what that would look like in local communities, the Century Foundation, a self-described progressive think tank, created an interactive map showing how the House-passed bill would affect unsubsidized insurance prices in every county for a 40-year-old consumer. The think tank conducted its analysis using the CBO report and pricing data compiled by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

In Alaska, where health insurance premiums already are among the highest in the nation, rates would increase by more than $2,200 a year in every county, according to the Century Foundation. Several counties in Arizona and Nebraska would be in line for hikes of more than $1,500. In northern and eastern Maine, premiums would rise by $1,254.

Under the American Health Care Act, major parts of the Affordable Care Act ― the 2010 law enacted by President Barack Obama ― would remain in place until 2020, including the health insurance exchanges and its tax credit subsidies for low- and middle-income households.

But because the GOP bill would retroactively rescind the ACA’s individual mandate to 2016, the Congressional Budget Office expects fewer healthy people with low medical costs would buy coverage, leading insurance companies to increase premiums to cover the higher costs of those older and sicker people who would continue to purchase policies.

The Affordable Care Act’s tax credits would shield the lowest-income consumers from these premium increases ― as they have since 2014 ― so people who receive smaller tax credits or no financial assistance at all would bear the full brunt of the higher prices. This, too, would lead fewer people to get covered.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Trump and other Republicans supportive of the American Health Care Act have strongly emphasized the rate increases that consumers experienced under the Affordable Care Act, and highlight the Congressional Budget Office findings that average premiums would be lower after 2020 under the GOP legislation.

Both of those things are true, and the reasons reflect the very different priorities of the Democrats and Republicans who wrote those respective bills.

Premiums rose for ACA-regulated plans relative to those available on the market before mostly because insurers can’t reject people with pre-existing conditions or charge them extra and must provide a robust set of basic medical benefits.

In other words, prices rose under the Affordable Care Act because more comprehensive insurance became available to more people, including those in greatest need.

Premiums eventually would come down under the AHCA, according to the CBO, because the bill would allow states to permit insurers to resume charging sick people extra, driving them from the market and into uninsurance, and leaving a pool of younger, healthier people with lower health care costs behind to pay lower prices. The Republican bill also would allow states to let insurers go back to selling bare-bones policies that exclude major benefits, including prescription drugs and maternity care. And the bill’s tax credits are much smaller for most people than the ACA’s, and are pegged to age, not income, making them far less valuable to poor families.

In other words, prices would fall because skimpier insurance would return to the market and be available to fewer people, which wouldn’t include those with the greatest need.


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May 30

WHO Says India Reports Cases Of Zika Virus

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India has reported cases of the Zika virus, the World Health Organization said, adding that efforts should be made to strengthen surveillance.

The WHO said that on May 15 India’s health ministry reported three confirmed cases from the western state of Gujarat. Cases were detected during testing in February and November last year, while one was detected in January this year, according to the statement, which was released on Friday but did not gain public attention until Saturday.

A federal health ministry official said states were following standard protocols and there was “nothing to worry” about. The ministry had in March cited one confirmed case of Zika – from January of this year in Gujarat – while answering a question in India’s parliament.

“These findings suggest low level transmission of Zika virus and new cases may occur in the future,” the WHO said in the statement on its website.

“Zika virus is known to be circulating in South-East Asia Region and these findings do not change the global risk assessment.”

In its most recent outbreak, Zika, which is mainly a mosquito-borne disease, was identified in Brazil in 2015 and has been spreading globally.

When the virus infects a pregnant woman, it can cause a variety of birth defects including microcephaly, where the baby’s head is abnormally small.

 

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Tom Lasseter and Andrew Bolton)

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May 30

Afro-Feminist Festival Organizers Call Out Paris Mayor For Accusing Them Of Racism

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A black feminist festival slated to begin on July 28 in Paris has already been subject to scrutiny and an attempt to be cancelled by the city’s mayor.

The Nyansapo Festival ― organized by the Mwasi Collective, an Afro-feminist group ― aims to be a safe space for black feminists to curate sociopolitical strategies to overcome their marginalization and oppression. But the event ruffled feathers, with far-right and anti-racism organizations calling foul after it came out that most of the event’s activities would occur in racially exclusive spaces. 

According to the event’s website, 80 percent of the activities at the festival will be reserved for black women; another will be dedicated to all black people, while a third component will be for all women of color. The last segment will be “open to all” races and genders. 

TeleSur reports the outcry began when organizations such as the far-right National Front Party and anti-racism groups like The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) discovered the festival’s intention to only reserve one of its activities for all races. On Friday, LICRA tweeted that “Rosa Parks would be turning in her grave,” if she knew of the Nyansapo’s decision to give black women a safe space to share in their experiences with marginalization. 

Needless to say, when Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo learned that white people would only be encouraged to attend a small percentage of the event’s activities, she attempted to halt the festival by calling police officials. 

A translated tweet from the mayor on Sunday revealed she took issue with the festival being “forbidden to whites” and that she would even consider prosecuting the event organizers for discrimination. 

But, after what she claimed to be a “firm” discussion with the Mwasi Collective, on Monday, the mayor said a “clear solution” was reached. 

Yet, TIME cites social media backlash to the mayor’s earlier tweets which condemned the festival, as one of the reasons she retracted her stance. 

“The festival organized in a public place will be open to all. Non-mixed workshops will be held elsewhere, in a strictly private setting,” reads a translated version of one of Hidalgo’s tweets on Monday.  

Yet, according to the Mwasi Collective, the set-up didn’t change as a result of a conversation with Hidalgo; they’d already intended for the “non-mixed” workshops to take place on private property. 

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“After lying about the Afro-feminist festival ‘banning whites,’ [the] Mayor of Paris lied again, claiming she forced us to change the event,” a representative for the Mwasi Collective said in a statement sent to HuffPost. “We already planned to hold workshops for black women in a private space ― [the] mayor falsely [took] credit for our plan.” 

So, as of now, the Nyansapo Festival will go on as initially planned, and white fragility seemingly remains alive and well in the City of Lights. 

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May 30

U.S. Refugee Interviews To Pick Back Up As Trump Ban Falters In Court

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The United States appears to be resuming its longstanding efforts to resettle refugees after the program was derailed and almost completely upended abroad for several months.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “has begun to expand its interview schedule in the 3rd quarter of the fiscal year,” public affairs officer Marilu Cabrera told HuffPost in a statement on Friday. The Department of Homeland Security is working with the State Department to plan for a “further expansion” through the end of fiscal year 2017, she added.

President Donald Trump signed two executive orders ― one during his first week in office, the second in March ― intended to halt the entire refugee resettlement program for 120 days and ban travel from some Muslim-majority nations. The first order also indefinitely banned Syrian refugees; the second, revised order backed away from that provision.

Even though both orders were blocked in federal court, the administration quietly pumped the brakes on various steps of the resettlement process that occur overseas. Vetting and screening refugees is an 18- to 24-month process, involving interviews with many branches of the U.S. government as well as various security and medical clearances. 

USCIS noted in its statement that circuit rides ― a technical term that refers to DHS agent travel to different countries to conduct refugee interviews ― were suspended on Jan. 25, just prior to Trump’s first executive order, and continued on a reduced schedule from January through March. 

In addition to stalled DHS interviews, security and medical checks expire after several months and “none of them [were] being re-run, said Jen Smyers, the associate director of immigration and refugee policy at Church World Service, one of nine domestic resettlement agencies. “Also, our understanding is that for a while, [medical clearances] were not happening, with some exceptions for emergency cases.”

Because both of Trump’s executive orders attempted to lower the refugee admissions quota from 110,00 to 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year, “the State Department and USCIS assessed that it was not necessary to interview large numbers of refugee applicants in order to meet the new ceiling,” the USCIS statement said.

The number of refugees entering the United States has plummeted in all states but four in the last few months, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center data.

Almost 10,000 refugees were resettled in October of 2016, the first month of the 2017 fiscal year. That number dropped to 3,316 in April 2017 ― and so far, 3,119 refugees have arrived this month, as of May 25. It’s the longest consecutive monthly decline on record, Pew said.

Resettlement experts said they’re cautiously optimistic about the expanded interview schedule. 

“We’re waiting to celebrate until we see the pipeline of refugee processing look healthier,” Smyers said. “All of this is really preliminary.”

But they are already in the process of hiring back some of the almost 600 staffers they had to lay off worldwide during the executive order legal limbo.

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the administration has been ignoring what the courts have instructed, and they’re going to continue to find every means at their disposal to decrease the number of people who are admitted to the U.S.,” warned Noah Gottschalk, Oxfam America’s senior humanitarian policy adviser.

“The question is now what’s going to happen next,” he added.

Congress recently passed a budget with enough funding to resettle a total of 75,000 refugees through the end of the fiscal year. This should mean significant increases in the number of refugee arrivals in the coming weeks.

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May 30

Sean Spicer Can't Answer Whether Trump Believes In Man-Made Climate Change

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WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sean Spicer claims to be in the dark about what his boss believes about climate change, even though Donald Trump has dismissed it as a Chinese-perpetrated hoax and, in a 2014 tweet, “bullshit.”

Asked at Tuesday’s press briefing if the president thinks human activity is contributing to global climate change, Spicer said, “Honestly, I haven’t asked him that. I can get back to you.”

A longtime climate skeptic, Trump in a Saturday post to Twitter said he would announce this week whether the U.S. will withdraw from the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump vowed to “cancel”  the pact.

In signing the accord, nearly 200 countries committed to slashing carbon emissions in an effort to prevent global temperatures from spiraling to the 2 degrees Celsius mark.

Earlier this month, White House sources told HuffPost that Trump was leaning toward an exit from the accord. And the president recently told “confidants,” including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, that he intends to walk away from the agreement, Axios reported on Saturday. 

Spicer said Trump met Tuesday with Pruitt — who has called the Paris pact a “bad business deal” for the U.S. — to discuss the matter, and an announcement will be made “shortly.” 

“Ultimately, [Trump] wants a fair deal for the American people,” Spicer said.

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May 30

Trump's Presidency Has Normalized A New Meanness In America

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Last Wednesday, on the eve of his election to the House of Representatives, Montana Republican Greg Gianforte attacked Ben Jacobs, a reporter for the Guardian newspaper.

What prompted the violence? Jacobs had asked Gianforte for his reaction to the Congressional Budget Office’s report showing that the House Republican substitute for the Affordable Care Act would result in 23 million Americans losing their health insurance.

Then, in the words of a Fox News team who witnessed the brutal attack:

“Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him. … Gianforte then began punching the reporter. As Gianforte moved on top of Jacobs, he began yelling something to the effect of, ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ Jacobs scrambled to his knees and said something about his glasses being broken…. To be clear, at no point did any of us who witnessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward Gianforte, who left the area after giving statements to local sheriff’s deputies.”

After the attack, Jacobs was evaluated in an ambulance at the scene and taken to Bozeman Health Deaconess Hospital. Several hours later he left the hospital wearing a sling around his arm. Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault.

Donald Trump’s reaction? He praised Greg Gianforte’s election as a “great win in Montana.”

For years, conservatives warned that liberals were “defining deviancy down” by tolerating bad social behavior.

Donald Trump is actively defining deviancy down in American politics. He’s also making America meaner.

Last year, Trump said of a protester at one of his campaign rallies: “I’d like to punch him in the face.” He added “in the old days, protesters would be carried out on stretchers.“

In a different era, when decency was the norm, the members of the U.S. House of Representatives would not seat a thug like Gianforte in the chamber. But House Republicans seem eager to have another kindred spirit.

Charlie Sykes, a conservative former talk-show host in Wisconsin, says “every time something like Montana happens, Republicans … normalize and accept previously unacceptable behavior.”

In America, candidates or officials didn’t beat up reporters who posed questions they didn’t like. That kind of thing occurred in dictatorships.

Gianforte’s attack on Jacobs was shameful enough. Almost as shameful was Gianforte’s  press release about what occurred, which blamed Jacobs. “It’s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ.”

It was a blatant lie, as evinced by the Fox News team and the charge against Gianforte. But under Trump, blatant lying is the new normal. And a “liberal journalist” is the enemy.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, says Donald Trump “has contributed to a climate of discourse consistent with assaulting a reporter for asking an inconvenient question.”

It used to be that candidates and elected officials were supposed to answer reporters’ questions. We thought democracy depended on it. But we’re now in the era of Donald Trump, who calls the press the “enemy of the American people.”

In America, candidates or officials didn’t beat up reporters who posed questions they didn’t like. That kind of thing occurred in dictatorships.

More generally and menacingly, Trump has licensed the dark side of the American psyche. His hatefulness and vindictiveness have normalized a new meanness in America.

Since Trump came on the scene, hate crimes have soared. America has become even more polarized. Average Americans say and do things to people they disagree with that in a different time would have been unthinkable.

“I’d submit that the president has unearthed some demons,” says Rep. Mark Sanford, a Republican Representative from South Carolina.  “I’ve talked to a number of people about it back home. They say, ‘Well, look, if the president can say whatever, why can’t I say whatever?’ He’s given them license.”

The new meanness is also finding its way into public policy, where Trump wants unprecedented cuts in Medicaid, Social Security disability, and food stamps, and to shove 23 million Americans off health insurance – all so the rich and corporations can get big tax cuts.

I recall a time in America where this kind of proposal would be considered an affront to decency. Now it’s the baseline for negotiations.

A president contributes to the norms of our society. He sets the moral tone. Trump is setting them at a new low.

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May 30

'Genital Jousting' takes its phallic silliness to the beach

Posted in: Today's Chili

If you didn’t think Devolver Digital’s Genital Jousting’s phallic gameplay was ridiculous enough, you’re in for a treat. The studio has released a Wet Hot Summer Update (what else would they call it?) for the title that adds season-appropriate modes…

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