US reaches two grim milestones
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Evan McMullin & Mindy Finn
In one of those “while you weren’t looking” stories that are easy to miss in this time of 24/7 coronavirus reporting, political operatives have shifted into high gear online to drive support for their candidate. Much like in 2016, both Democratic and Republican campaigns are hyper-personalizing content and relying heavily on Facebook and mobile to run sophisticated persuasion and turnout operations. This time, they're taking advantage of pandemic-era reduced prices and testing variations on coronavirus messaging. Unlike TV attack ads that leave no room for ambiguity, these stealthy tactics to inform, win over, and turnout voters rely much more on psychology and group behavior. And they’ve been proven to work.
—Mindy Finn
1. 'The food supply chain is breaking'
That ominous statement was made by board chairman John Tyson of Tyson Foods in a full-page advertisement in Sunday editions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The meat-packing industry has been hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic. Farmers have been forced to cull their livestock, as the world’s biggest meat suppliers, including Smithfield Foods, Cargill, JBS USA, and Tyson, have halted operations at slaughterhouses and processing plants due to workers falling ill with COVID-19. Fears of a global meat shortage prompted President Trump to sign an executive order yesterday, invoking the Defense Production Act to keep meat processing plants open. Incidentally, it was the same day that U.S. deaths from COVID-19 surpassed the total lost in the Vietnam War, and cases topped 1 million. —TIME
— Mike Pence, unmasked. The vice president and chair of the White House's coronavirus task force took some well-deserved heat yesterday for showing up to tour the Mayo Clinic without a mask, in direct violation of the medical center's policy. Mayo tweeted that it had informed Pence of its mask policy prior to his arrival (the tweet was later removed). Pence explained his decision by stressing that he has frequently tested negative for the virus. —Associated Press
— What's the (West) Point? The U.S. Military Academy has announced it will proceed with plans for Trump to deliver the commencement address at an in-person graduation ceremony on June 13 on the school's campus—just outside hard-hit New York City. Nearly 1,000 graduating cadets will travel back to West Point from their homes, where they have been distance-learning since spring break, and undergo up to three weeks of quarantine at campus barracks and a nearby training site. —The Washington Post
— Dark economic news. The U.S. economy shrank at a 4.8% annual rate in the January-March quarter, the government estimated today, as the coronavirus pandemic triggered a recession that will end the longest expansion on record. The first-quarter drop is only a precursor of a far grimmer report to come on the April-June period, with business shutdowns and layoffs striking with devastating force. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that economic activity will plunge this quarter at a 40% annual rate. —Associated Press
More: Inside Donald Trump and Jared Kushner's two months of magical thinking (Vanity Fair)
2. Mounk: Don't expect a miracle
"Some of what we have learned over the past few weeks has been positive. The fatality rate from COVID-19 is likely to be significantly lower than early estimates suggested. Americans have followed social distancing guidelines to an impressive degree. So far, we have succeeded in flattening the curve, and have not had to turn thousands of people in desperate need of medical treatment away from the emergency room. Even in New York City, the American epicenter of the pandemic, the number of new infections and new fatalities is ebbing. We are not in the worst of all possible timelines. And yet, our hopes for the pandemic's quick resolution should clearly be shelved." —The Atlantic
Ed. Note: Yascha Mounk is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and a senior adviser at Protect Democracy. He is the author of "The People vs. Democracy".
More: Gilead virus-drug trial signals hope, and Fauci sees 'good news' (Bloomberg)
3. Political advertisers never stopped
If you're a Facebook user in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina, you may have seen a sequence of political ads in your news feed in the past six months. Perhaps you've taken a survey or two. This specific experience is an intentional and coordinated effort to reach persuadable voters in critical presidential battlegrounds at a time when digital advertising has become one of the only viable avenues for reaching them.
— This real-time testing project is the obsession of James Barnes, a former Facebook employee who was heralded as an MVP of the 2016 Trump campaign and has since dedicated his life to undoing the results of that election. His team has co-opted the political ad function on Facebook to perform sophisticated persuasion message testing, to get a sense of how voters are reacting to ads as they see them.
— The project has run a variety of tests on messaging during real-time news events, including the impeachment trial and the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian military commander. The results haven't always been as expected. Nearly all messaging about impeachment was received poorly.
— Now it's all about COVID-19. With most voters at home and on screens during the coronavirus pandemic, there is ample opportunity to expand a digital advertising operation, which, not surprisingly, focuses on the outbreak. Ads have highlighted President Trump's handling of the crisis, showcasing past statements in which he played down the risk, and news clips of health care professionals running out of personal protective equipment. —The New York Times
More: Can the Trump campaign rewrite the story of the Trump presidency? (The New York Times)
4. Stanton & Hasen: Avoiding a 'nightmare scenario'
"How do we ensure that elections are not only conducted fairly, but that people have confidence in them, when recent public opinion polling shows up to 40% of the public is not convinced that elections are conducted fairly? I think there's a role to play for elected leaders, social media companies, traditional media companies, lawyers, members of Congress, state and local election officials—there are steps that all can take to try to minimize the chances of a meltdown. And that's really where we have to focus our efforts, especially now in this COVID-19 era." —Politico
Ed. Note: Zack Stanton is the digital editor of Politico Magazine. Rick Hasen is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of "Election Meltdown".
5. Roger Stone has friends in low places
Newly unsealed search warrants reveal a deep web of contacts between Trump confidant Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange is currently free, awaiting a date to begin serving his sentence of nearly three-and-a-half years in prison for lying to House investigators and impeding their Russian interference probe.
— In 2017, Stone told Assange that if U.S. prosecutors pursued Assange, Stone would "bring down the entire house of cards." In another message, Stone told Assange that he was his only hope for a pardon from the president, if Assange was extradited and prosecuted in the U.S. Ultimately, prosecutors did not charge Stone for his dealings with Assange.
— The messages also reveal some of Stone's other previously unknown contacts, suggesting, for example, that he was in touch with high-ranking Israeli officials, who were attempting to arrange meetings with Donald Trump in 2016. In other messages, Stone and his contacts seem to accept the fact that the Trump campaign was doomed and that it needed outside intervention.
— "Although there are private communications contained in the warrants, they prove no crimes," Stone said in a statement. "There is, to this day, no evidence that I had or knew about the source or content of the WikiLeaks disclosures prior to their public release." —Politico
More: Judges worry Trump position on McGahn testimony could force Congress into extreme measures (Politico)
6. COVID-19 is no friend of human rights
As his first year in power comes to a close, El Salvador's popular President Nayib Bukele is fighting both the coronavirus and the country's street gangs with tactics some say put the young democracy at risk. Crime is down, but questionable detentions are up. The supreme court ruled such detentions unconstitutional without the legislative assembly passing a due process law. Bukele has ignored the court, leading to heightened concerns about the fate of the separation of powers in the Latin American nation. —ABC News
— Brazil. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, perhaps the most dismissive of all world leaders of the dangers of the coronavirus, faces another problem in addition to mounting COVID-19 cases. The country's supreme court has authorized an investigation of accusations of alleged corruption and obstruction of justice against him—lodged by his own outgoing justice minister. —The Washington Post
— Malaysia. The Rohingya refugees are not only dealing with fears of infection and loss of income, they've lost support in the broader Malaysian community because of controversial social media posts by a self-styled leader of the refugee group. A coalition of Rohingya organizations strongly rebuked the statements, but the damage was already done. —The Diplomat
— China. The communist nation was already well known for its surveillance tactics, so it's no surprise that it is using a digital "health code" system to control people's movements and decide who should go into quarantine. To enforce quarantine, local authorities have again resorted to technology, installing surveillance cameras outside—and in some cases, inside—citizens' homes. —CNN
More: Democracy 'weakened and undermined' worldwide: study (Deutsche Welle)
7. Nakagawa: Pandemic is a boon for authoritarians
"We've already seen authoritarians around the world—Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Narendra Modi of India—take advantage of the pandemic to broaden their powers. Here in the United States, Trump has talked of nationalizing industries and appears to have hopes of using the COVID-19 stimulus package to present himself as a benign dictator. If the white nationalist right surges as the pandemic winds down, and waves of violence result, the authoritarian opening will only grow bigger." —The Nation
Ed. Note: Scot Nakagawa focuses on nationalism, authoritarianism, and race at ChangeLab.
More: War for Eternity: Philosophical roots of Steve Bannon's populism (The Irish Times)
8. 2020 contest gets a new challenger
Independent Rep. Justin Amash announced yesterday via tweet that he has launched an exploratory committee to seek the Libertarian Party's 2020 presidential nomination. The former Republican from Michigan was once a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, but was disowned by the group for his sharp criticisms of President Trump. Amash was the only non-Democratic lawmaker in the House of Representatives to vote in favor of impeaching Trump. —Business Insider
— Clinton endorses Biden. At a virtual town hall with former Vice President Joe Biden yesterday, Hillary Clinton officially gave his nomination her blessing. "I am thrilled to be part of your campaign, to not only endorse you but to help highlight a lot of the issues that are at stake in this presidential election," the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said. —CNBC
— Flake bucks party on Trump. Amash or Biden may have a supporter in former Sen. Jeff Flake. The Republican has indicated that he did not vote for Trump in 2016 and will not vote for him in November, citing a multitude of concerns. He also said that a second Trump term could turn younger voters away from the GOP, particularly on issues such as immigration and the environment. —The Washington Post
9. Rubin: What effect would Amash have?
"The worry for NeverTrump Republicans such as Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller is that a third-party contender with some national profile would 'tend to give those people who weren't going to vote for Trump anyway an excuse to vote for someone else [other than the Democrat], while not pulling many voters from the Trump column.' In a razor-close race, Joe Biden would need every single vote he can get, even from voters who dislike both him and Trump. (Trump carried those who disliked both him and Hillary Clinton in 2016 handily.)" —The Washington Post
10. An American Story: Alone but not lonely
The coronavirus has upended normal life for millions of people, including Bill Brennan, who used to donate his time to cheer up sick kids in Boston hospitals. Through volunteering, Brennan developed a friendship with Nancy Kleiman, the harpist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The pair now FaceTime daily, maintaining their friendship and holding onto a bit of normalcy.
— For Brennan, and millions of other elderly Americans, staying healthy means staying home, oftentimes with very little to do and very little contact with others. "[Kleiman] brings me back. As soon as she starts to talk, I come right back. That whole day of sitting around doing nothing, it's all gone."
— Kleiman also looks forward to her daily chat with Brennan. "It's just pure love. We're like buddies. There's this feeling of somebody's going to call you at 5 (o'clock), and somebody cares about you, (that) somebody loves you," Kleiman said.
— As Brennan prepares to celebrate his 90th birthday next month, he can feel good knowing that he has somebody who cares about him and needs him. Living during the coronavirus pandemic can be awfully lonely for some, but it does not have to be. —ABC News
Ed. Note: We are spotlighting ways that Americans are helping each other through the coronavirus crisis. Would you like to suggest an "American Story" from your local news? If so, please forward a link to the story to editor@topline.com. Thank you!
Approximately 58,200 American lives were lost during the Vietnam War over a period of 20 years. We've now lost the same number of lives in this country in a little over two months! This administration's arrogant and willful negligence in ignoring the potential threat and failing to make any preparations is an appalling dereliction of duty. This lack of preparation is the primary cause for drastic stay-at-home measures nationwide. These actions—taken by states with little federal assistance—have saved lives, but have also set back our national economy by 10 years and resulted in record numbers of unemployed Americans. History will consider this both a public health crime and an economic crime perpetrated by our federal government. Enough is enough—do your job!
—Mark M., Ohio
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