Opinion | Tucker Carlson and White Replacement - The New York Times

Tucker Carlson and White Replacement

"This racist theory is rooted in white supremacist panic.

April 11, 2021, 7:47 p.m. ET

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

On Thursday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson caused an uproar by promoting the racist, anti-Semitic, patriarchal and conspiratorial “white replacement theory.” Also known as the “great replacement theory,” it stands on the premise that nonwhite immigrants are being imported (sometimes the Jewish community is accused of orchestrating this) to replace white people and white voters. The theory is also an inherent chastisement of white women for having a lower birthrate than nonwhite women.

As Carlson put it:

“I know that the left and all the gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters, from the third world. But, they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually. Let’s just say it: That’s true.”

Carlson continued, “Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.”

The whole statement is problematic. First, what is the third world? This label originated as a way to categorize countries that didn’t align with Western countries or the former Soviet bloc. It’s now often used to describe poor countries, or developing countries, and by extension, mostly nonwhite majority countries.

When Carlson worries about immigrants from the third world, he is talking about Hispanic, Asian and Black people who he worries will outnumber “current” voters. Current voters, in this formulation, are the white people who make up the majority of the American electorate.

Second, and revealingly, he is admitting that Republicans do not and will not appeal to new citizens who are immigrants.

But although white replacement theory is a conspiracy theory, the fact that the percentage of voters who are white in America is shrinking as a percentage of all voters is not. Neither is the fact that white supremacists are panicked about this.

White supremacists in this country have long worried about being replaced by people, specifically voters, who are not white. In the post-Civil War era, before the current immigrant wave from predominantly nonwhite countries, most of that anxiety in America centered on Black people.

Judge Solomon Calhoon of Mississippi wrote in 1890 of the two decades of Black suffrage following the Civil War, “Negro suffrage is an evil.”

Calhoon worried that white voters had been replaced, or outnumbered, by Black ones, writing: “Shall the ballot remain as now adjusted, the whole country in the meantime taking the chances of the rapid increase of the blacks, and leaving, in the meantime, the whites as they now are in those localities where they are outnumbered?”

Calhoon would go on to become the president of the state’s constitutional convention that year, a convention called with the explicit intention of codifying white supremacy and suppressing the Black vote. States across the South would follow the Mississippi example, calling constitutional conventions of their own, until Jim Crow was the law of the South.

The combination of Jim Crow voter suppression laws and the migration of millions of Black people out of the South during the Great Migration diluted the Black vote, distributing it across more states, and virtually guaranteed that white voters would not be outnumbered by Black ones in any state. The fear of “Black domination” dissipated.

Indeed, as extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was being debated in 1969, The New York Times made note of the fact that Attorney General John Mitchell, a proponent of a competing bill, was well aware that even if all the unregistered Black people in the South were registered, their voting power still couldn’t overcome the “present white conservative tide” in the South. As The Times added, “In fact, Mr. Mitchell is known to believe that Negro registration benefits the Republicans because it drives the Southern whites out of the Democratic Party.”

A reporter at the time asked an aide of a Republican representative, “What has happened to the party of Lincoln?” The aide responded, “It has put on a Confederate uniform.”

But now, in addition to Black voters voting overwhelmingly Democratic, there is a wave of nonwhite immigrants who also lean Democratic. And tremendous energy is being exerted not only by white supremacists in the general population, but also Republican office holders, to attack immigrants, curtail immigration, disenfranchise Black and brown voters and assail abortion rights.

One of the surest ways of preventing a Black person from voting is to prevent them from living. As The Times reported in 1970, Leander Perez, a man who had been a judge and prosecutor and “led the last stand against integration” in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, once famously linked Black birth control to racial dominance, stating: “The best way to hate a [expletive] is to hate him before he’s born.”

I would even argue that the bizarre obsession with trans people is also rooted in part in white anxiety over reproduction.

The architects of whiteness in America drew the definition so narrowly that it rendered it fragile, unsustainable, and in constant need of defense. Replacement of the white majority in this country by a more multiracial, multicultural majority is inevitable. So is white supremacist panic over it."

Opinion | Tucker Carlson and White Replacement - The New York Times

How Cuba Beat the Pandemic: From Developing New Vaccines to Sending Doctors Overseas to Help Others | Democracy Now!

 

"Since last year, approximately 440 Cubans have died from COVID-19, giving Cuba one of the lowest death rates per capita in the world. Cuba is also developing five COVID-19 vaccines, including two which have entered stage 3 trials. Cuba has heavily invested in its medical and pharmaceutical system for decades, in part because of the six-decade U.S. embargo that has made it harder for Cuba to import equipment and raw materials from other countries. That investment, coupled with the country’s free, universal healthcare system, has helped Cuba keep the virus under control and quickly develop vaccines against it, says Dr. Rolando Pérez Rodríguez, the director of science and innovation at BioCubaFarma, which oversees Cuba’s medicine development. “We have long experience with these kinds of technologies,” he says. We also speak with Reed Lindsay, journalist and founder of the independent, Cuba-focused media organization Belly of the Beast, who says U.S. sanctions on Cuba continue to cripple the country. “Cuba is going through an unbelievable economic crisis, and the sanctions have been absolutely devastating,” says Lindsay."

How Cuba Beat the Pandemic: From Developing New Vaccines to Sending Doctors Overseas to Help Others | Democracy Now!

Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms | US voting rights | The Guardian

Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms

"Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, said on Sunday he intends to give Joe Manchin a lesson in US history as he attempts to clear a path for Joe Biden on voting rights and infrastructure.

Manchin, a moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia, has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s ambitious proposals by insisting he will not vote to reform or end the Senate filibuster, which demands a super-majority for legislation to pass, to allow key measures passage through the 50-50 chamber on a simple majority basis.

His stance has drawn praise from Republicans: Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, hailed Manchin as the politician “almost singlehandedly preserving the Senate”.

But Democrats appear to be losing patience – and none more vociferously than Clyburn.

“I’m going to remind the senator exactly why the Senate came into being,” Clyburn, from South Carolina, told CNN’s State of the Union, refreshing criticism of Manchin that has included saying he feels “insulted” by his refusal to fully embrace voting rights reform.

“The Senate was not always an elective office. The moment we changed and made it an elective office [was because] the people thought a change needed to be made.

“The same thing goes for the filibuster. The filibuster was put in place to extend debate and give time to bring people around to a point of view. The filibuster was never put in place to suppress voters … It was there to make sure that minorities in this country have constitutional rights and not be denied.”

Clyburn has assailed Manchin for promoting a bipartisan approach to voting rights and refusing to endorse the For the People Act, a measure passed by the US House and intended to counter restrictive voting laws targeting minorities proposed by Republicans in 47 states and passed in Georgia last month.

“You’re going to say it’s more important for you to protect 50 Republicans in the Senate than for you to protect your fellow Democrat’s seat in Georgia? That’s a bunch of crap,” Clyburn told Huffpost this month, referring to Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election battle that supporters feel has become much harder due to the new voting laws.

On Sunday Clyburn also reached into history to repeat his contention that the Georgia law is “the new Jim Crow”, a claim repeated by Biden but which Republicans say is unfair.

“When we first started determining who was eligible to vote and who was not,” Clyburn said, “they were property owners. They knew that people of colour, people coming out of slavery did not own property.

“…And then they went from that to having disqualifiers. And they picked those offences that were more apt to be committed by people of colour to disqualify voters.

“The whole history in the south of putting together those who are eligible to vote is based upon the practices and the experiences of people based upon their race. So, I would say to anybody, ‘Come on, just look at the history … and you will know that what is taking place today is a new Jim Crow. It’s just that simple.”

Senator Joe Manchin removes his mask to speak. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Despite the urging of Clyburn and others, Manchin remains steadfast in his belief bipartisanship is Biden’s best path to implementing his agenda. In a CNN interview last week, the senator said the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol “changed me”, and said he wanted to use his power as a swing vote in the 50-50 Senate “to make a difference” by working with Republicans and Democrats.

“Something told me, ‘Wait a minute. Pause. Hit the pause button.’ Something’s wrong. You can’t have this many people split to where they want to go to war with each other,” he said, of watching a riot mounted by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn his election defeat on the grounds it was caused by voter fraud – a lie without legal standing.

Manchin said he had a good relationship with the White House and wanted to meet Warnock and Georgia’s other Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, to discuss voting rights.

On Sunday, Clyburn said the riot also had “a tremendous effect” on him.

“When I saw that Capitol policeman complain about how many times he was called the N-word by those people, who were insurrectionists out there, when I see [the civil rights leader] John Lewis’s photo torn to pieces and scattered on the floor, that told me everything I need to know about those insurrectionists, and I will remind anybody who reflects on 6 January to think about these issues as well,” he said.

Clyburn was among the first major figures to endorse Biden last year, helping nurse him through bleak times after rejections in early primaries.

The congressman has Biden’s ear and in an interview with the Guardian in December promised to keep pressure on his friend to fulfill a promise in his victory speech directed to African Americans: “They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”

“I think he will,” Clyburn said. “I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.”

I said what Clyburn said today in my last YouTube video below:

Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms | US voting rights | The Guardian

Body camera footage shows Windsor traffic stop by savage, racist police.

Young Migrants Crowd Shelters, Posing Test for Biden - The New York Times

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Young Migrants Crowd Shelters, Posing Test for Biden

By

 

Eileen Sullivan Zolan Kanno-Youngs Michael D. Shear,  

The New York Times

The administration is under intensifying pressure to expand its capacity to care for as many as 35,000 unaccompanied minors, part of a wave of people crossing the border.

A group of migrants waiting in La Joya, Texas, to board a bus from Customs and Border Protection after crossing the Rio Grande in March. Last month, border agents encountered nearly 19,000 children at the border.Credit...Adrees Latif/Reuters

By and

WASHINGTON — The desperate plea landed this week in the email inboxes of employees in government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and NASA: Will you consider taking a four-month paid leave from your job to help care for migrant children in government-run shelters packed with new arrivals at the border?

The request to much of the federal work force came from the Department of Health and Human Services, which is at the heart of a frantic effort by the Biden administration to keep up with a surge in young people crossing the southwestern border hoping to reunite with relatives already in the United States.

The numbers are daunting. In March, border agents encountered nearly 19,000 children at the border — the largest number recorded in a single month — most of them fleeing poverty and violence in Central America. And the flow of migrant children is expected to only increase in coming weeks.

More than 20,000 children and teenagers are in the custody of a government system that is already at “103 percent of capacity,” including nearly 17,000 in shelters run by the health department, according to briefing materials from Operation Artemis, a response to the border crisis led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Government projections obtained by The New York Times show there could be more than 35,000 migrant children to be cared for by June — a prospect that one former senior health and human services official called “terrifying.”

Over 4,100 minors were stuck in border facilities this week, far more than the 2,600 detained in border jails under the Trump administration at the peak of a similar surge in 2019.Credit...Adrees Latif/Reuters

Over 20,000 children and teenagers are in the custody of a government system that is already at “103 percent of capacity,” according to briefing materials from Operation Artemis, a federal response to the border crisis.Credit...Dario Lopez-Mills/Associated Press

The ability of the Department of Health and Human Services to build shelters, move children quickly into them and then unite them with relatives and other sponsors in the United States is the first major test of whether the Biden administration can respond swiftly and effectively to a growing immigration crisis that has far-reaching political and human ramifications.

The pressure is producing tension inside the White House. President Biden expressed frustration with Xavier Becerra, his new secretary of health and human services, in a White House meeting on March 30, for what the president views as bureaucratic holdups in increasing capacity, according to two administration officials familiar with the exchange.

Susan Rice, the director of the Domestic Policy Council, and Amy Pope, the president’s senior adviser for migration issues, have been aggressively pressing officials from the health department and other immigration agencies for explanations about the failure to quickly move more than 4,000 migrant youths out of jail-like detention facilities run by Border Patrol, according to several people familiar with the meetings.

When they first cross the border, unaccompanied children and teenagers are taken to border jails. By law, they are supposed to be held there for no more than three days before being moved to about 150 shelters and other facilities and group homes overseen by the Health and Human Services Department.

But because of a lack of available space in the shelters, the young people are often being held for far longer in the often-harsh conditions of the border facilities. When they eventually are shipped to the health department’s shelters around the country — where they are required to receive schooling, medical care, psychological services and recreation while officials vet family members, friends or foster parents who can take them in — they typically face further long waits.

“Despite inheriting a broken immigration system decimated by four years of neglect and poor policy decisions, the Biden administration continues to remain focused on expanding capacity and bed space,” said Vedant R. Patel, a White House spokesman.

The images of cramped cells full of teenagers and toddlers in border jails intended for adults are the direct result of an urgent lack of space in shelters that were originally meant as short-term facilities but during other immigration surges have typically ended up housing migrant children for at least a month and often longer.

The number of children border agents encountered at the border in March — nearly 19,000 — is the largest number recorded in a single month.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images

Unaccompanied children in a playpen area at a border processing facility in Donna, Texas. By law, they are supposed to be held there for no more than three days before being moved to about 150 shelters and other facilities.Credit...Pool photo by Dario Lopez-Mills

The latest surge, on pace to be larger than those that prompted crises for President Barack Obama in 2014 and 2016 and for President Donald J. Trump in 2019, has administration officials racing to erect facilities and recruit staff for them.

Officials have opened a dozen emergency shelters in vacant spaces like convention centers in Dallas and San Diego, an expo center in San Antonio, and a military site and a former camp for oil workers in Texas.

They have also moved to cut the time it takes to conduct background checks for parents in an effort to release the young migrants from the shelters more quickly and open up spots for those being held in border jails. But even with the early signs of progress, over 4,100 minors were stuck in border facilities earlier this week, far more than the 2,600 detained in border jails at the peak of the surge in 2019.

Republicans have seized on the issue to claim that Mr. Biden did not act swiftly enough to expand the shelter system even as he focused on unwinding his predecessor’s restrictive border policies.

A flurry of executive orders issued weeks after Mr. Biden took office targeted other parts of his immigration agenda, including reviewing the Trump administration’s policies that limited asylum and halting border wall construction. And the president waited until March to call on FEMA to assist in the effort to find shelter space for the children, after the number of minors stuck in border jails surpassed 3,000.

Former health officials under Mr. Trump — whose policies were intended to make conditions for migrants at the border bad enough to deter more people from coming — said they had pushed during the last two years of his administration to expand the number of available beds for migrant children and to reduce the amount of time that children spend in the department’s care.

Two senior former officials said that by the time Mr. Trump left office, the department was on track to expand the system’s ability to deal with further surges by adding thousands of beds over time that could be quickly activated in an emergency.

A temporary processing center in Donna, Texas. The pressure to build more shelters and move children through the system faster is producing tension inside the White House.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images

An oilfield housing facility in Midland, Texas, was leased by the federal government. Because of a lack of available space in the shelters, the young people are often being held for far longer in the often-harsh conditions of the border facilities.  Credit...Justin Hamel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“The United States has the capacity to be compassionate,” said Lynn Johnson, the former assistant secretary of the health department’s Administration for Children and Families under Mr. Trump. “But we’re not compassionate when we don’t have a process in place and we let what’s happening, happen. We have got to fix this.”

Aides to Mr. Trump said career officials warned the incoming Biden team of the likely surge of arrivals in the spring, but said the new administration did not move quickly to begin reactivating emergency facilities for added space.

Biden administration officials reject that criticism, saying they were not given enough information during the transition and they notified Congress of the need to begin adding emergency capacity in early February.

They said they were also hampered by a decision by Trump administration officials during the pandemic to freeze hiring at the health department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the shelters. And they accused their predecessors of merely relying on the existence of Mr. Trump’s harsh policies that blocked migrants from entering the country.

“They were turning away unaccompanied migrant kids so they were not taking efforts to expand the shelter system,” said Cecilia Muñoz, one of Mr. Biden’s top immigration officials during the transition.

With the permanent shelters out of space, the administration is increasingly turning to temporary spaces that are more like hurricane shelters, with cots rather than beds and few of the more school-like services that the health department offers at its licensed facilities.

Mr. Biden’s aides are scouting additional locations, including a convention center in Long Beach, Calif., and a Navy boot camp in Illinois. Officials are also planning on expanding the number of tent camps attached to the border jails. Government documents show the administration also still needs to ramp up hiring of medical officials and case managers.

A Honduran migrant waiting to be transported to a facility after crossing the Rio Grande. The United States has long struggled to quickly move children out of the government’s care to make room for new arrivals.Credit...Adrees Latif/Reuters

The United States has long struggled to quickly move children out of the government’s care to make room for new arrivals.Credit...Go Nakamura/Reuters

Government projections obtained by The New York Times show there could be more than 35,000 migrant children to be cared for by June.Credit...Adrees Latif/Reuters

A briefing memo sent to administration officials this week directed the health department to “identify and deploy all available federal volunteers to support” the effort to address the increase of minors, a drive reflected by the email seeking government workers to help. As of Friday, 2,722 employees across the government have volunteered, in most cases with their salaries being picked up by the health department. Some are caring for children at shelters. Others are helping with case management, I.T. services, food delivery, transportation and other logistics.

Officials said hiring for the shelters was often a challenge because the care of migrant children has become a highly charged, political issue, with critics often making no distinction between Border Patrol jails and the health department’s shelters.

Government contractors who run many of the shelters on behalf of the government have struggled to find staff willing to endure criticism. And the intense immigration debate has made it harder to recruit foster parents.

Chris and Kristen Umphlett, who have welcomed migrant children to their home in Lansing, Mich., since last year, said the requests for help from organizations working on behalf of the government were becoming more urgent as the crisis worsened.

“They’ve made explicit asks. ‘Do you know anyone? Tell people about this. Refer people to us,’” said Mr. Umphlett, a data analyst at a software company. “Part of the problem is they need to get people into the funnel of qualifying for foster care.”

The United States has long struggled to quickly move children out of the government’s care to make room for new arrivals.

Most are eventually matched with a parent who is already in the country. But others are handed over to more distant relatives, friends or foster parents. The more distant the connection, the longer the children are typically held in the shelters while health officials do background checks to ensure their safety.

Of the roughly 2,000 minors released to sponsors in the past week, about half were reunited with parents or legal guardians after an average of 23 days. Those with more distant relatives had to wait on average nearly two months.

Health department officials acknowledged that the vetting process was arduous. Officials require the families, many with limited English, to provide specific documents proving their relationship and to send in fingerprints of certain relatives for background checks.

The administration has made efforts to streamline that process, rescinding a Trump-era program backed by Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, which had sought to determine legal status of relatives before children could be placed with them. Under Mr. Miller’s policy, the health department was required to share background check information on all adults in a child’s prospective household with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would then determine their legal status.

Critics said the policy discouraged some relatives from coming forward to retrieve migrant children from the health department. Under Mr. Biden, the department no longer routinely shares the information with ICE and does not require such extensive background checks to other members of the household.

Migrants walking to turn themselves into the Customs and Border Protection to request asylum.Credit...Edgard Garrido/Reuters

But speed must be balanced with security concerns for the children, officials said, particularly after a 2016 Senate report revealed that more than a dozen immigrant children were forced into labor at an egg farm or placed into trafficking rings after the health department failed to conduct background checks of caregivers.

“From the outside it may not appear to be an ideal system but at its core it is one that emphasizes safety, which is critical when it comes to vulnerable children,” said Krish Vignarajah, the president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which helps unite minors with sponsors.

The Biden administration has made progress in recent days, bringing the number of minors in border detention facilities down by more than 1,000 from the height of 5,000 last month. But the internal documents show that to handle a surge that the administration has said will continue to grow into the summer, the health department will need to release more than 800 minors a day by June, compared with the roughly 300 children currently being released daily.

Officials are also looking to reduce the flow of migrants from Central America, including children, with diplomatic outreach, new immigration programs and financial investment in the region. But Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico who has been spearheading diplomacy with the region, announced on Friday that she would leave the administration at the end of April as planned."

Young Migrants Crowd Shelters, Posing Test for Biden - The New York Times

Parents speak out after day care accused of feeding white children before Black children – WSB-TV Channel 2 - Atlanta

Parents speak out after day care accused of feeding white children before Black children

Kids R Kids daycare Day care shut down after video appears to show white children being fed before Black children. 

"ROSWELL, Ga, — Parents are coming forward after a picture that appeared to show white children being fed lunch before their Black classmates at a metro Atlanta day care.

Channel 2′s Audrey Washington was at the Kids ‘R’ Kids day care in Roswell, where soon after the picture went viral, the location shut down.

The sign is already covered up and the children have been moved to other facilities.

Washington talked to several parents in a group interview Saturday.

“When I first saw it, I was very upset,” Diona Howard said.

“It was sickening. When I saw, it was just disappointing,” Adryan McCauley said. “It’s disheartening. You think your kids are safe.”

The parents say staff at the Kids ‘R’ Kids Learning Academy purposefully fed their children, who are all Black, lunch after the white children.

McCauley said one of his family members noticed the scene on the day care’s video livestream and snapped a picture. McCauley then posted that picture to Instagram.

“I felt like light needed to be exposed on this situation,” McCauley said.

“I’m looking at the picture, like, ‘That’s my daughter!’” Tony Murrell said. “I was livid. I was very much displeased.”

The attorney representing the parents, Mawuli Davis, thinks that what the children experienced was damaging. Davis has already met with a child psychologist about the incident.

“At this age, the idea of preference is already in play. So out of that, children begin to question their own value, even at this young age,” Davis said. “They went from table to table serving the white children and not serving the Black children. That’s what the picture shows.”

Washington reached out to the president of Kids ‘R’ Kids International. In a statement, he said, in part that the interactions captured on video were disturbing and “…not in accordance with the inclusive culture that we promote at Kids ‘R’ Kids amongst our families, their children or our staff. After further review and much consideration of the photo/video in question, our company has decided to terminate that franchisee’s Kids ‘R’ Kids contract and branding, effective immediately, leaving them to operate independently.”

“We apologize to the family, the community and all of those impacted by this situation and will use this as a learning tool to remind our Kids ‘R’ Kids staff on the importance of diversity and inclusivity,” he added.

All of the parents pulled their children out of the day care immediately.

Davis said the investigation is just starting.

“We’re going to continue to investigate and see if there is a pattern at this particular day care, throughout Georgia or throughout the country,” Davis said."

Parents speak out after day care accused of feeding white children before Black children – WSB-TV Channel 2 - Atlanta

Kemp’s Georgia 'Opening' Message Causes Confusion Over State’s COVID-19 Rules | 90.1 FM WABE

Kemp’s Georgia ‘Opening’ Message Causes Confusion Over State’s COVID-19 Rules

Sam WhiteheadApr 8, 2021

In a video statement, Gov. Brian Kemp said that he was “loosening the remaining restrictions on our economy here in Georgia,” which, he said, among other changes, means “distance requirements for bars, restaurants and other places of business will be a thing of the past.” But the 34-page executive order, which went into effect Thursday and expires at the end of April, still includes some distance requirements.

Credit Brynn Anderson /  Associated PRess

"On Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp scaled back many of Georgia’s COVID-19 restrictions that had been in place for months. But messaging around the regulatory changes led to confusion about what guidelines actually remain in place. 

Dozens of regulations remain on the books. 

A press release from the governor’s office late Wednesday titled “Georgia is Open for Business” highlighted the recently signed executive order “rolling back the remaining COVID-19 restrictions on Georgia’s economy.”

In a video statement, Kemp said that he was “loosening the remaining restrictions on our economy here in Georgia,” which, he said, among other changes, means “distance requirements for bars, restaurants and other places of business will be a thing of the past.”

But the 34-page executive order, which went into effect Thursday and expires at the end of April, still includes some distance requirements.

The executive order keeps in place distancing rules for movie theaters (3 feet) and group classes at fitness centers (6 feet). It mandates seats at bars and restaurants be spaced at least 3.5 feet apart. 

And while the order does eliminate a number of restrictions that had been in place for months –such as those banning gatherings of a certain size and mandating vulnerable populations to shelter in place –it still includes dozens of rules impacting health care facilities, schools and businesses. 

“There was a slight error in the Governor’s recorded video message,” Cody Hall, the governor’s director of communications, said in a statement Thursday. 

“Bars and restaurants will still be expected to observe distancing between seated groups, which is typically recommended by public health officials,” he continued. 

“Fitness facilities and theatres will also be required to observe minimal distancing between patrons or groups as outlined by the order. The Governor’s order does significantly reduce, or roll back, the remaining restrictions on businesses – including those mentioned above,” Hall said. 

Most importantly, he said, “under this executive order, all businesses will be able to resume operations safely.”

Signs of confusion about the state’s COVID-19 rules were apparent Thursday.

The conservative group Tea Party Patriots Action sent out a release applauding Kemp for “lifting all Covid restrictions.” The Democratic Party of Georgia sent out a petition for signatures that claimed “Brian Kemp is rolling back ALL of Georgia’s COVID-19 restrictions.”

Misinformation about the restrictions also spread on social media, like in this Facebook group where members have called for months for Georgia’s COVID-19 rules to be relaxed.

Regardless of whether or not people fully understand the state’s new rules, many public health experts say they’re being scaled back too soon.

“The announcement sends a signal to Georgians that the pandemic is over when it is very much not over,” said Amber Schmidtke, a public health researcher who tracks the pandemic in the state. “I fear the governor’s announcement will encourage Georgians to give up on masks, social distancing, etc., when we can least afford to do so.”

Last week, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met with governors around the country to encourage them to press pause on rolling back COVID-19 restrictions as newly confirmed cases have been rising nationwide.

While Georgia’s coronavirus statistics have been steadily improving, Schmidtke says there is still good reason to be cautious as infection rates remain high and Georgia continues to fall behind other states when it comes to vaccinating residents.

“I would just remind people to make good choices because the virus is just looking for the next person to infect. When we get together, we give the virus the opportunity to infect others.”

Kemp’s Georgia 'Opening' Message Causes Confusion Over State’s COVID-19 Rules | 90.1 FM WABE

Do The Needs Of The Many Outweigh The Needs Of The Few?

Merrick Garland Should Investigate Voter Suppression Efforts, Says Rep. ...

Proud Boys and other far-right groups raise millions via Christian funding site | The far right | The Guardian

Proud Boys and other far-right groups raise millions via Christian funding site

Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.

- Zora Neale Hurston

"A data breach from Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo has revealed that millions of dollars have been raised on the site for far-right causes and groups, many of whom are banned from raising funds on other platforms.

It also identifies previously anonymous high-dollar donors to far-right actors, some of whom enjoy positions of wealth, power or public responsibility.

Some of the biggest beneficiaries have been members of groups such as the Proud Boys, designated as a terrorist group in Canada, many of whose fundraising efforts were directly related to the 6 January attack on the United States Capitol.

The breach, shared with journalists by transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets, shows the site was used for a wide range of legitimate charitable purposes, such as crowdfunding medical bills, aid projects and religious missions.

But the site’s permissive stance towards far-right actors meant groups who had been banned from other fundraising platforms and payment processors following episodes of hate speech and violence have also used the platform.

Across at least 11 crowdfunding campaigns associated with the Proud Boys, members of the group, including some now facing conspiracy charges related to the Capitol attack, raised over $375,000. Some of these fundraisers netted large amounts of money in a short period.

After the Proud Boys chairman, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested on 4 January on charges related to firearms and the vandalism of a black church at a previous rally, a fundraiser billed as a “defense fund” made $113,000 in just four days.

A large proportion of that money came from a number of high-dollar donors who elected to be anonymous on the website, but whose identifying details were nevertheless preserved by GiveSendGo.

The anonymous donations included $1,000 from an email address associated with Gabe Carrera, a Florida-based personal injury lawyer who bills himself as the attorney who rides. Another $1,000 which came to Tarrio was associated with an email address belonging to Paul C Gill, a Honolulu-based Hawaiian Airlines employee and former pilot who has previously made donations to Donald Trump’s campaigns and to the Republican party, and who has offered public political commentary in the form of letters to the editor in local newspapers.

Of Tarrio’s donors, none immediately responded to requests for comment except for Gerardo G Gonzalez, who anonymously donated $1,000 to Tarrio on 7 January.

Public records show that Florida-based Gonzalez is a former pharmacist who owns at least six properties in Miami Beach and Homestead, Florida. His apartments, apartment buildings and an acreage lot have an assessed value in excess of $2.4m, and in prior decades has sold other properties worth millions more.

In a telephone conversation, Gonzalez said that his support of the Proud Boys was motivated by his belief that “there is no systemic racism in this country”, and his opposition to “BLM and Antifa” who he said represented “the real extremism” in the United States. He also used derogatory terms for Latinos and Democrats.

Other Proud Boy fundraisers raised large amounts, and attracted a similar range of high-value anonymous donations.

Following the Capitol riots, a fundraiser in the name of “Medical Assistance to DC Proud Boy victims” made $106,107 on just 6 and 7 January. One anonymous donation for $5,000 was associated with an email address belonging to Ou Yin Lu, a Hacienda Heights, California, resident and businesswoman who had previously donated $14,640 to Trump’s campaign funds, the Republican National Committee and a former California state representative Bob Huff during the 2020 campaign funding cycle.

Also, after charges were laid on the Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs for his alleged role in the Capitol attack, an anonymous donation for $1,000 came from an email address belonging to a New York woman whose social media accounts list her as a state-employed special education teacher. Overall, Biggs raised over $6,000 on the site.

Other Proud Boy-related fundraisers included one for North Carolina Proud Boy, Jeremy Bertino, also known as Noble Beard, who was stabbed at a contentious rally in Washington DC on 12 December. Between 16 and 19 December, the effort netted $61,355.

Several parallel fundraisers sought to finance travel and equipment for Proud Boys who sought to attend the 6 January rally in person.

Two separate fundraisers asked patrons to fund protective gear and communications equipment for regional Proud Boys chapters, raising $4,876 and $12,900 respectively.

Later, fundraisers were mounted in the name of individual activists who are now facing serious charges arising from the events of 6 January.

One that netted $6,475 in just one day was for the benefit of the Washington state Proud Boy and national elder Ethan Nordean also known as Rufio Panman. Another for Nick Ochs, the self-described leader of the Proud Boys’ Hawaiian chapter, brought in $19,687 between 8 and 13 January.

Candyce Kelshall, the president of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies-Vancouver, who at at Simon Fraser University researches violent transnational social movements, said that far-right crowdfunding on GiveSendGo was just “the tip of the iceberg”, and similar efforts were happening across up to 54 other crowdfunding sites that her research had revealed.

She said, however, that GiveSendGo was “particularly insidious” due to its presentation of such crowdfunding in the guise of religion-based charity.

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Proud Boys and other far-right groups raise millions via Christian funding site | The far right | The Guardian