Notes and Highlights of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s Live Update September 24, 2020
Notes by mr_tyler_durden and Daily Update Team
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Headlines

• 64,158 Cases (+745), 1,137 Deaths (+13)
• New cases by county: 124x Jefferson, 86x Fayette, 58x Christian, 39x Warren, 28x Barren, 23x Franklin, 23x Laurel, 18x Hardin, 16x Madison, 11x Bullitt, 11x Kenton, 10x Daviess, 10x Pulaski, 10x Woodford, 9x Estill, 9x Whitley, 8x Calloway, 8x Jackson, 8x Montgomery, 8x Muhlenberg, 7x Boyd, 7x Boyle, 7x Breckinridge, 7x Carter, 7x Letcher, 7x Marshall, 7x Meade, 7x Oldham, 6x Allen, 6x Harlan, 6x Knott, 6x Spencer, 5x Greenup, 5x Henderson, 5x Hopkins, 5x McCracken, 5x Pike, 5x Rowan, 5x Shelby, 5x Wayne, 4x Boone, 4x Caldwell, 4x Campbell, 4x Floyd, 4x Graves, 4x Logan, 4x McCreary, 4x Russell, 4x Union, 3x Clay, 3x Grayson, 3x Jessamine, 3x Lincoln, 3x Livingston, 3x Mercer, 3x Nelson, 3x Pendleton, 3x Simpson, 2x Anderson, 2x Bourbon, 2x Clark, 2x Elliott, 2x Hart, 2x Knox, 2x Lyon, 2x Metcalfe, 2x Morgan, 2x Scott, 2x Taylor, 2x Trimble, 1x Adair, 1x Ballard, 1x Cumberland, 1x Edmonson, 1x Fleming, 1x Fulton, 1x Garrard, 1x Grant, 1x Green, 1x Harrison, 1x Hickman, 1x Larue, 1x Lawrence, 1x Magoffin, 1x Marion, 1x Martin, 1x Owen, 1x Perry, 1x Powell, 1x Webster, 1x Wolfe
• New deaths by county: 97 F Jefferson, 69 M Warren, 96 F Fayette, 82 M Perry, 97 M Warren, 88 M Warren, 84 F Warren, 62 F Warren, 97 F Bell, 94 F Warren, 89 F Warren, 86 F Christian, 90 F Jefferson
• Alright, what do you think about including or not including University cases in considering community spread? -- You know I believe a university is a part of a community. Those kids go to restaurants, they go to bars, they go to different places in the community. Now, there is a challenge here, and it's one that we've got to discuss and it especially impacts where I went to school, Fayette County Public Schools. Right now, UK has so many cases that it may push Fayette County red, and if UK stays open and continues to have those amount of cases, they could potentially keep it red and then you've got Fayette County Public Schools saying “Wait. No, we need a, we need a community spread that our kids can go to school” that is a real issue. I talked to the superintendent about it the other day and we're continuing to have discussions. I talked to Mayor Gordon about it as well. And the answer, can't be “the university cases just don't count” because they are in the community. The question is how we can make sure we're taking the right steps so K-12 students don't miss out on opportunities because of other decisions. But this also makes us rise up, elevate our thinking, that it's more than just the institution or institutions we serve, it's the communities around us that can be impacted.
• You have recently loosen some restrictions on visitations for long term care homes, is there any discussion about loosening in-person visitations for state inmates?-- The question is, given that we have loosened restrictions on visitation for long term care facilities, is their discussion on loosening it for inmates? There is discussion, it hasn't moved beyond any of those stages yet, so we don't have any step to announce, nor should it suggest that we're going to have a step to announce but it is being discussed, understanding that people very much especially in that situation rely on those personal interactions.
• Governor, are you still looking at the release of your guidance on Trick or Treating by the end of the week? -- We are still working on releasing our guidance for Halloween. And, part of that's everything going on at the moment. But the other part is trying to find a safe way to do it, given the CDC said “don't do trick or treating at all.” And so we still want to give our kids an opportunity, and we're trying to figure out what that opportunity can be. You know, Halloween, I used to say my kids look forward to that 364 days a year, they're a little bit older now, I will again reiterate though- No adult parties, no block parties, that's something that we can't do and if you do that we can't try to create a trick or treating experience because then we brought even more people together in a close area.
• The churches and civic groups that do those trunk or treating in parking lots. That would be ok? -- So one one option that we're looking at is to have civic groups do things outside in a way to where kids can get individually wrapped, you know bags would be better, if you think about it like some people give out birthday parties, at the end. And having our civic groups step up to do that in a safe way that they have really thought through, is one of the best ways we believe that that there could be that experience, but again we don't want to bring a whole bunch of people inside for it, either. COVID makes everything, not difficult but can make everything dangerous and it seems to attack the things that we like and love the most.
• Slides from Update

Full Notes

• Alright, It is 4pm, that time we provide our update on our battle against COVID-19, each and every day. Today, I'm representing the Caywood Comets, this is a school in the Kenton County School District. I know they are working to get back safely to the classroom. Now we're going to jump right into the report today, go pretty quickly open it up for questions.
• Positive cases today: 745
• Probable cases: 7,550
• Total confirmed cases: 64,158
• Children Under 18: 107 - Again, it seems like we are seeing a larger and larger and larger portion of positive cases being our young people.
• New cases by county: 124x Jefferson, 86x Fayette, 58x Christian, 39x Warren, 28x Barren, 23x Franklin, 23x Laurel, 18x Hardin, 16x Madison, 11x Bullitt, 11x Kenton, 10x Daviess, 10x Pulaski, 10x Woodford, 9x Estill, 9x Whitley, 8x Calloway, 8x Jackson, 8x Montgomery, 8x Muhlenberg, 7x Boyd, 7x Boyle, 7x Breckinridge, 7x Carter, 7x Letcher, 7x Marshall, 7x Meade, 7x Oldham, 6x Allen, 6x Harlan, 6x Knott, 6x Spencer, 5x Greenup, 5x Henderson, 5x Hopkins, 5x McCracken, 5x Pike, 5x Rowan, 5x Shelby, 5x Wayne, 4x Boone, 4x Caldwell, 4x Campbell, 4x Floyd, 4x Graves, 4x Logan, 4x McCreary, 4x Russell, 4x Union, 3x Clay, 3x Grayson, 3x Jessamine, 3x Lincoln, 3x Livingston, 3x Mercer, 3x Nelson, 3x Pendleton, 3x Simpson, 2x Anderson, 2x Bourbon, 2x Clark, 2x Elliott, 2x Hart, 2x Knox, 2x Lyon, 2x Metcalfe, 2x Morgan, 2x Scott, 2x Taylor, 2x Trimble, 1x Adair, 1x Ballard, 1x Cumberland, 1x Edmonson, 1x Fleming, 1x Fulton, 1x Garrard, 1x Grant, 1x Green, 1x Harrison, 1x Hickman, 1x Larue, 1x Lawrence, 1x Magoffin, 1x Marion, 1x Martin, 1x Owen, 1x Perry, 1x Powell, 1x Webster, 1x Wolfe
• Total tests conducted: 1,301,407 (PCR: 1,226,385, Serology: 52,994)
• Positivity Rate: 4.57%
• Total hospitalized: 5,119
• Currently hospitalized: 543
• Total in ICU: 1,499
• Currently in ICU: 122
• On a ventilator: 71
• Total recovered: 11,570
• New deaths today: 13
• Total Deaths: 1,137
• New deaths by county: 97 F Jefferson, 69 M Warren, 96 F Fayette, 82 M Perry, 97 M Warren, 88 M Warren, 84 F Warren, 62 F Warren, 97 F Bell, 94 F Warren, 89 F Warren, 86 F Christian, 90 F Jefferson
• Toughest part of today's report: 13 new deaths. These are 13 individuals whose families will be mourning them. It's a hard number for any given day, 13 individuals, and note on here's a friend of mine from Northern Kentucky that I just learned about an hour and a half ago had passed away after a multi-month battle with COVID-19. Remember this virus is very real and it's still out there. So let's make sure that we light our homes up green. We ring those bells at 10am, and that we try to reach out to these families that may be needing help or other families that while they might not have had somebody passed away, may be suffering from food insecurity, you may be worried about a child in that household, there may be a domestic violence situation, let's make sure that we are thinking about what we can do for others who need our help at all times during this virus. This is a time that takes more compassion than any in my lifetime and that's with every challenge we face right now. So, let's remember that. We've got to listen to each other. We've got to help each other. And every day that we have a lot of cases, 745 today. We know that they're going to result in a lot of deaths. Thankfully, our mortality rate continues to creep down, but still higher the volume of the cases, the more Kentuckians we lose. So let's make sure we wear that mask, we socially distance, we cut our contacts down, we do what it takes.
• Racial breakdown of all cases: 80.10% Caucasian, 11.88% Black or African-American, 1.62% Asian, 5.90% Multiracial
• Ethnicity breakdown of all cases: 89.08% non-Hispanic and 10.92% Hispanic
• Racial breakdown of all deaths: 83.27% Caucasian, 12.98% Black or African-American, 1.15% Asian, 2.60% Multiracial
• Ethnicity breakdown of all deaths: 96.41% non-Hispanic and 3.59% Hispanic
• Long Term Care Facilities (PDF): 40 new residents and 37 new staff positive from yesterday, and 14 more deaths, 3 new facilities.
  • Total facilities: 332
  • Total deaths: 647
  • Active cases: 573 residents, 421 staff
  • Total cases: 4171 residents, 2754 staff
• K-12 Update (PDF): 166 new students and 59 new faculty/staff positive from yesterday, 177 new schools.
  • Total facilities: 527
  • Active cases: 577 students, 288 faculty/staff
  • Total cases: 956 students, 342 faculty/staff
• K-12 schools, a big jump here as you all know, I think we have close to seven high school football teams that are under quarantine multiple other sports, we are seeing a significant number of cases, some that we wouldn't have known about but for a different injury. You can get our full report online, remember it is behind the news that you would get. And coming up on Monday is when every school has to report to that dashboard that will go live on that Monday with a school having to update that every day so people should be able to get, not in real time, but every day, an update of what the situation is in their school, and in surrounding schools
• University Update (PDF): 33 new students and 0 new faculty/staff positive from yesterday, 8 new facilities
  • Total facilities: 58
  • Active cases: 1395 students, 45 faculty/staff
  • Total cases: 2919 students, 84 faculty/staff
• Before we open it up for questions. one I mentioned, the two LMPD officers last night that were shot. They are LMPD major Aubrey Gregory, he has been released from the hospital, I got a chance to talk to him personally last night. He was surrounded by family and friends, he's going to have a full recovery at least to my knowledge. The other is officer Robin, and I think it's this Desroches? and I apologize to him if I mispronounced his last name- he is stable and recovering, I talked to his mom last night- during a period where they were still working to ensure his stability. I want to condemn this act of violence in the most stark terms, it is absolutely wrong. And the answer to violence can never be violence. And we want to make sure that these individuals that were out there last night and will be out there again tonight are safe. And we need to ensure that any type of activity or demonstrations remain non-violent and remain peaceful. We have to understand just one person can mar something that otherwise is done the right way. And that means we need to make sure those around us are also doing things the right way.
• Alright. With that, we'll open it up to, to questions started over here yesterday I think Shelby we'll start with you.

QUESTIONS

• President Trump tweeted and said he spoke to you, can you give us some insight into the conversation with him? -- Right. So, last night after I learned of the injuries to our two law enforcement officers I returned to the Capital where I was here for several hours ensuring that they were okay, that we had the situation under control. Talked to the Mayor, talked to the Chief of Police, talked to one of the individuals that had been shot and then the family members of the other, also talked to the President of the United States, who initiated the call. His comments were that it appeared that we had things under control. He did make an offer, if at a later point we needed additional assistance, he would provide it. But, he stated and I agree that at this time we have appropriate levels of law enforcement or peacekeepers there, and that if necessary, we have the ability on the state level, to increase that level of support. It was a good call. I appreciate him, making it.
• For tonight, what is the level of National Guard troops that are available in Louisville? -- The question is, how are we preparing for tonight? What's the number of National Guard troops in Louisville? We're not going to disclose the number, that's part of the operational security of those individuals, we will again be conducting limited missions, that are there for public safety and to protect critical infrastructure, like our hospitals. We will adjust accordingly to ensure our people are safe and we can keep other people safe. I want to say again that presence is in no way intended to stifle people's first amendment rights to give voice to any anger, frustration; but it is there to both keep people safe and ensure things, like our hospitals, can continue to operate when last night they were absolutely needed for these two officers and for those that might be suffering from COVID, or other injuries. It's important that those that do want to give voice, and do want to do that outside and in Louisville, do so before the curfew. And I would ask everyone to respect that curfew, the curfew is being applied to anyone that is out, I know that it was applied last night to one of the militia groups that showed up as well. And remember that those and other groups are also in the city, and I'm not sure it's them but there are always individuals that might want to turn something that is peaceful into something that's not, that may just like everybody, including law enforcement and demonstrators, and we got to make sure that that that that we don't allow that to happen. And that does take a sufficient presence, which will be out tonight.
• You have recently loosen some restrictions on visitations for long term care homes, is there any discussion about loosening in-person visitations for state inmates?-- The question is, given that we have loosened restrictions on visitation for long term care facilities, is their discussion on loosening it for inmates? There is discussion, it hasn't moved beyond any of those stages yet, so we don't have any step to announce, nor should it suggest that we're going to have a step to announce but it is being discussed, understanding that people very much especially in that situation rely on those personal interactions.
• Governor, given the indictment yesterday, does this give you any more impetus to equip the KSP with the body cameras?-- Now the question is, given the indictments yesterday. Is it any more impetus for KSP and body cameras? I mean that's a question we absolutely have to address, as we see more and more law enforcement out there wearing them. We've got to talk with the Kentucky State Police about it, I believe that body cameras can protect an officer, or in this case it would be a trooper, as much as anything else. I can tell you, aside from some of these tragic situations where body camera footage is needed just to know what happened, in many instances there can be complaints against an officer or trooper that if you have the body camera footage, you can dismiss them pretty quickly. Remember these sometimes are heated exchanges and sometimes having the video with that officer being professional, which is almost always the case, can be very helpful. The other thing that it can be is a tool, whereby supervisors can ensure that people are following the training they've had. I remember being in Washington DC for a national Attorney General's Association meeting and the then chief of the DC police, she talked about how she would take that footage home and watch it and see that there were instances- She talked about one domestic violence situation where one of the officers turned their back. Now, that wasn't anything between the individuals, but could have compromised their safety. And so it was a check on different ways that she thought that she could use to improve the department. I am for body cameras where appropriate, there are some instances where I don't think that they would be, based on the particular mission of that individual unit.
• I want to ask about some comments you made on MSNBC earlier today in regards to your request for the Attorney General to publish more information about the Breonna Taylor investigation online. You said the release of those details wouldn't impact the federal civil rights investigation. How is that possible to not impact that investigation by making some of those details public? -- So today, the question is on one of the cable news shows, I talked about how I believe that the Attorney General can release the information from his criminal investigation, without impacting the federal civil rights investigation. I believe that there are very different investigations that set out to determine very different things, I don't think a ballistics report, for instance, is going to have an impact on a civil rights investigation. And if they believe that it does, I think that that the federal prosecutors can come forward and explain the specifics of that; but at this point with the Attorney General saying he is not pursuing certain things, then I believe it makes it appropriate to provide the facts, the information, the evidence, and It's about trusting the people of Kentucky. I trust them, that if they have all the facts, the evidence, and maybe some explanation, if needed, that they can process it. And I know the Attorney General talks about the truth, and I talk about the truth, I think we ought to let the people of Kentucky see all of that, evaluate, and come to the truth. I believe that it is fully appropriate to do at this point in time, I've been a prosecutor, I withheld judgment on that until we've reached the stage but at this point, put it all online. Put everything that would not impact, now there has been one indictment with three charges in it, put everything online that wouldn't impact that and that's really about apparently shooting into a different apartment building, and let people see it, and it's been done in other places. It was done several months later in Ferguson; it's been done by other prosecutors; it's an attempt to be transparent. And I've seen firsthand, that when you are willing to be transparent with the people of Kentucky, they will look at the information, they will try to understand the decisions you've made, they may disagree, but at least it's not a vacuum, where different emotions, or theories, or others can come into play. I'm sorry we made you wait, is it John? Okay, welcome.
• I had a question for you about coronavirus: cases are higher now than earlier in pandemic when we've had more severe restrictions. But over the past two months those restrictions have been rolled back a little bit. So, I'm just curious to know, you know what would it take for you to include new restrictions for the things like public gatherings and things that you had earlier? -- So the question is with us now being at a higher level of total cases than we were earlier, but obviously we've gotten better at treating when we look at it, we also follow our hospital data, and right now I would say we are at a place where we can handle more cases than previously. We're also testing more to find more people who have it and that's a good thing, but you are right and that with loosening restrictions, that means people have more contacts, and we will see the virus spread more. What it would take for me to implement new restrictions would be what we saw when we had to cut restaurants for a period of time, and bars, and that is a proof of, or indications of, a real escalation. And not something that might be, you know, kind of up and down- and remember, our plateaus aren't entirely flat, and not something just very gradual where it'll take a couple weeks to see, but if we started seeing what looked like an escalation especially one, that looks like it could turn into a severe escalation like we saw in Florida and Arizona, once you start seeing that curve, that's when we would take additional action, that's when the White House would ask us to take additional action. And they're keeping track like we are, we use somewhat different data but we're in about the same place right now in that, mainly what we need people to do is be a little bit better, more people wearing the mask [holds up mask] and the white house again says we not only should have a mask mandate but I should be encouraging it every day, engaging in that social distancing, and remember, moderation, and not moderation like we had before March, but moderation in, on the same day if you're going to work, and going to the gym, and going to dinner that's just too many contacts. We got to spread them out. And make sure that those gatherings, which we still have that 10 person limit, we keep at that level. We do see a lot of spread and those. It's not necessarily backyard barbecue but it's house parties and as it gets colder and people drive inside that's going to be more important than ever.
• So many parents are at home helping their children with virtual school but history is unfolding outside. How can they explain what is happening to their children? -- The question is with so many kids at home but history going on outside, how do they explain what's happening to their children? First, I was worried I was going to be a little late, because I was dealing with sixth grade geometry, with my son Will. Being governor doesn't stop your obligations, nor your duty as a parent. And boy, we certainly appreciate our teachers, when we're asked to step up and take a bigger role. I think that parents need to be able to have age-appropriate conversations with their children, and that they ought to be based in values, about the type of world that we think we should have, about true dignity for all people, about the fact that I believe that God calls on us to build a world that is free of inequities and oppression and racism. And then need to be able to talk to their kids about our country's history and the fact that we have had to make changes and take strides and many points in our history, and right now that we're being called on to do more. You know it's a conversation with what's going on there and also with what's going on in COVID-19 that's going to shape so much. But I'd like to think that every challenge gives us an opportunity to build a better day, and maybe to raise better people. Part of that calls on us to recognize what we're living through, both the pandemic and calls for a more equitable society, and then to make sure we're instilling the right values in our kids. And I just remind people, because I have to remind myself, that our kids are always listening, and my kids are always hiding behind the door listening to everything. And so, we got to really make sure in our heart and in our mind, we're not just saying the right things, but we believe them. And if we start feeling ways that we think “Wait a minute, I shouldn't” I mean that's the time that we're called on to be a little better. And so much of what we see, because we are inside, is on Facebook and Twitter which, I mean, it's turned into poison in so many ways, let's remember that if we're writing something down that contains hate or anger or making enemies out of one another, our kids are gonna read that one day too. And maybe if we write it, we ought to look at it, we outta realize that we need to change too, and be a little better, and maybe we just need to turn it off entirely.
• Alright, what do I think about including or not including University cases in considering community spread? -- You know I believe a university is a part of a community. Those kids go to restaurants, they go to bars, they go to different places in the community. Now, there is a challenge here, and it's one that we've got to discuss and it especially impacts where I went to school, Fayette County Public Schools. Right now, UK has so many cases that it may push Fayette County red, and if UK stays open and continues to have those amount of cases, they could potentially keep it red and then you've got Fayette County Public Schools saying “Wait. No, we need a, we need a community spread that our kids can go to school” that is a real issue. I talked to the superintendent about it the other day and we're continuing to have discussions. I talked to Mayor Gordon about it as well. And the answer, can't be “the university cases just don't count” because they are in the community. The question is how we can make sure we're taking the right steps so K-12 students don't miss out on opportunities because of other decisions. But this also makes us rise up, elevate our thinking, that it's more than just the institution or institutions we serve, it's the communities around us that can be impacted.
• What’s your reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling that historical corporations are gambling devices are essentially no different than slot machines and illegal. -- The Supreme Court today ruled that certain types of instant racing games are not parimutuel, and therefore, I believe that they believe that they were unlawful. I will tell you that I believe that decision, while not criticizing the legal aspects of it, not having analyzed it, is devastating for so many Kentucky jobs, for the horse industry, and for the budget, the state budget, which it adds about $21M to every year and that's growing. So, I've already begun discussions with various partners about finding a path forward. We've now had this in the Commonwealth for several years, we have not seen the ills that people claim would come from it, coming from it. There is widespread gaming, much more than this over just about every single one of our borders right now. If it's going to take a legislative change we need to make the legislative change to keep our horse industry competitive but to keep our Commonwealth competitive. Listen, we need a lot more types of gaming to compete with those around us. I mean, Indiana, using our money to build the roads, and other states around us, Missouri, they can pay for their health care costs. And in this period of COVID-19, revenue from those sources, for the most part, hasn't gone down or not nearly as much once things reopened. And so we're gonna find ourselves at not being competitive in what is otherwise a free market that's out there. And so I hope that we will get the necessary changes to move forward, and when we make them, I hope that maybe we can make a lot more.
• Jesse Jackson just called for athletes to boycott the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, and other economic boycotts in Louisville over the grand jury not deciding How do you respond to that? -- I'm told that Jesse Jackson has asked athletes to boycott UK/UofL because of the grand jury decision. I respect Reverend Jackson, but they didn't have any control, UK or UofL, over what the grand jury did. I believe that they are trying, through programs and efforts, to build a better world. And so while I very much respect Reverend Jackson, I don't agree with a boycott of those that have had no control over this. Now, what I do think we ought to do is see all the information. I think the Attorney General can post it online, if he if there is some that needs to be held back because of the one indictment then that's a discussion and an explanation he can provide, but it's time to give the information. And I think that if he did this call for a boycott wouldn't have happened yet because I think everybody would be sitting down, and would be trying to process the true facts and evidence that's out there, and I think everybody benefits from the truth.
• Governor Holcomb in Indiana has issued an order that beginning Saturday, all restaurants and bars can fully open in Indiana. Do you have anything that's, you know, in the works for our bars and restaurants here in Kentucky? -- So I haven't seen, it's apparently an order from Holcomb further opening bars and restaurants, that's something I'll have to talk to him about. With us just about to start opening schools, we've got to get that done first concern, or any other capacities.
• Let's see this is wanting a response to this quote about AG releasing more info: “We appreciate governor Beshear’s team providing assistance to our office in the Commonwealth over the last few days in preparation for yesterday's announcement. However, releasing that information would compromise the federal investigation and violate a prosecutor, prosecutors ethical duties.” -- We did work well with the attorney general's office in communication leading up to it. I don't have an argument there. I've tried not to criticize the other parts, having not seen the file myself, but I've been a prosecutor, and I've been in that role and if you are no longer pursuing those charges there is not a duty, there is not a jury, that you could compromise. There is no criminal investigation there that you can compromise and so I do not think there can be a violation of those duties. I'm not the only one in my office, I have the former Deputy Attorney General and a former district judge, and he agrees too. I just, I don't agree with, with that view other prosecutors have done it. Let's just put it out there and let people see it.
• Do you feel like the nine o'clock curfew is actually effective at minimizing the tension in Louisville in regards to the protests that are happening out there. -- The question is on the 9pm curfew in Louisville, and I think it’s necessary. I know a lot of people may not like it but as we see that the nights go further along there is just more of an opportunity for, for those that would want to incite violence, or take advantage of an opportunity, and I believe that it's necessary. But remember, it applies to everybody. And so for instance, these groups that claim that they are keeping the peace that are heavily armored, walking around Louisville with, what I understand is, no tactical training at all, and no specific mission, it makes them go home too. And from somebody that has dealt with them firsthand I think then going home is a really good idea. I just don't think that they ought to show up in Louisville, in the first place.
• We mentioned schools just now and I wanted to ask, are we still on track to have the successful real thing that you're envisioning and are there any trends that could put that at risk that you guys have spotted? -- (Can we, if we do have the incident map for today, James if we don't, that's okay.) Every day we update our incident rate map on http://kyCOVID19.ky.gov/. What that shows is we have many counties that are in the yellow, or the green, that are we think in a good position to start some in-person class activities. We have others in the orange that need to be careful. And small groups would be best, a hybrid model after that. And then we have those in the red- that I do not think should be starting in person class and if they are in in-person class, they ought to move to virtual until they can move out of the red. I believe that in many places there can be a successful reopening but what a successful reopening is in COVID doesn't look like what it did before. It's our kids in masks all day long, because that's going to be required to lessen the spread, it's going to be fewer kids in a classroom, it may be them not being there as many hours of the day. But it is more direct interaction with their teachers, which we know is important. But the other thing is we got to be fluid, and we got to be flexible. We have seen, as we've been here, that there are counties that will have very few cases and then boom, you know 60, 90, 100 in just a couple days or over a week. And so we got to understand that you could even be in the green or in the yellow and by this time next week you could be in the red and you got to be prepared to move from that in-person back to NTI and then come back again. The two things we got to continue to defeat this virus is to be strong, to have the endurance to do this, as long as it takes. But number two, to be flexible, and knowing the conditions on the ground in your county, and your area can change really quickly so we've got to be able to change our approach.
• I'll do one more set if you all have them, let's see, Did I respond to the President's offer for federal assistance to respond to the protests? -- The president and I agreed that right now we had sufficient assets, didn't need that help, and again, it was a positive conversation about what was already in place.
• Last week, nursing homes were given federal guidelines saying they could resume indoor visits, and now if they're in a red zone, that county’s in a red cell, how does that affect them? Who do they follow the state or federal?-- On nursing home visits, The or long term care facilities, they have to follow the state guidelines that have been put out there. We think that they are very reasonable following the incident rate map as well. And I think it also allows our communities to know how safe or unsafe, it could be. You know, just because someone tells you you can do something, sometimes you shouldn't do something and this also gives more information to two family members. I know so many Kentuckians that will choose not to go see somebody in-person at different times because they love them. And that's a hard thing to grasp that you wouldn't see somebody in person because you love them, but you don't want to have even that potential of exposing them, depending on what you do. And you might want to think about it, depending on on your regular day and how many people you come into contact with. If you've got a job that has significant contact with other people, again you might want to be more careful.

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Ever since i started playing regularly, i've researched anonymity in places. Here is what i have for each state plus a bunch of other countries. If anything is outdated or incorrect, please comment.
United States
Alabama: No current lottery. Source: https://www.wtvy.com/content/news/Lottery-bill-other-legislation-is-likely-dead-in-Alabama-legislature-569059451.html
Alaska: No current lottery/Not Anonymous. "Unlike most other states, Alaska doesn’t have a state-sponsored lottery." Source: https://www.lotterycritic.com/lottery-results/alaska/ Alaska does permit charities to run lotteries, the largest one is Not Anonymous. Source: http://www.lottoalaska.com/
Alaska's governor has proposed a bill to create an official Alaska State Lottery. Source: https://apnews.com/78cacca5137f6b47e41be2de37600044
American Samoa: No current lottery. Source: https://simonsblogpark.com/onlinegambling/simons-guide-to-gambling-in-american-samoa/amp/
Arizona: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner for all wins of $100,000 and over. Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arizona-becomes-latest-state-shield-lottery-winners-names-n995696
Arkansas: Not Anonymous/Other entities unclear. "Winner information is subject to disclosure under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A winner who receives a prize or prize payment from the ASL grants the ASL, its agents, officers, employees, and representatives the right to use, publish (in print or by means of the Internet) and reproduce the winner’s name, physical likeness, photograph, portraits, and statements made by the winner, and use audio sound clips and video or film footage of the winner for the purpose of press releases, advertising, and promoting the ASL". Source: https://www.myarkansaslottery.com/claim-your-prize
California: Not Anonymous/Only individuals can claim. “ The name and location of the retailer who sold you the winning ticket, the date you won and the amount of your winnings are also matters of public record and are subject to disclosure. You can form a trust prior to claiming your prize, but our regulations do not allow a trust to claim a prize. Understand that your name is still public and reportable”. Source: https://static.www.calottery.com/~/media/Publications/Popular_Downloads/winners-handbook-October%202018-%20English.pdf
Colorado: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust. “As part of the Open Records Act, we are required to release to the public your name, hometown, amount you won and the game you played. This information will be posted on coloradolottery.com and will be furnished to media upon request.” Source: https://www.coloradolottery.com/en/games/lotto/claim-winnings/ Source: https://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/01/15/in-colorado-and-other-states-lottery-winners-can-keep-names-secret/
Connecticut: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via a trust or LLC, "Certain information about our winners is public information: Winner's name and place of residence, date of claim, game played, prize amount won, and the selling retailer's name and location. While most winners claim prizes using their individual names, some winners come forward using other legal entities (i.e., trusts, business partnership) to claim their prizes. In those instances, the Lottery will promote the win using that legal entity's name. For more information about such instances, please consult your personal accountant or legal advisor.” Source: https://www.ctlottery.org/Content/winner_publicity.aspx
Delaware: 100% Anonymous if requested by winner. "Many winners have chosen to remain anonymous, as allowed by state law, but their excitement is yours to share!" Source: https://www.delottery.com/Winners and https://www.delottery.com/FAQs
DC: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via a trust or LLC. Anonymous question is not directly answered on lottery website. "In the District of Columbia, specific lottery winner information is public record." However, a Powerball Jackpot win was claimed via a LLC in 2009. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/04/AR2009050402008.html
Florida: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via LLC. "Florida Lottery winners cannot remain anonymous. Florida law mandates that the Florida Lottery provide the winner's name, city of residence, game won, date won and amount won to any third party who requests the information; however Florida Lottery winners' home addresses and telephone numbers are confidential." Source: http://www.flalottery.com/faq
The Florida Lottery allows trusts to claim it, however winner information is still released in compliance with the law. A $15 Million jackpot was claimed by an LLC. Source: https://www.fox13news.com/amp/consumehit-the-lottery-remain-anonymous-not-in-florida Source: http://flalottery.com/pressRelease?searchID=199128
Georgia: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner for all prizes over $250,000. Source: https://www.stl.news/georgia-governor-signs-bill-allowing-lottery-winners-remain-anonymous/121962/
Guam: Anonymity appears to be an option. Source: https://www.kuam.com/story/11218413/guamanian-wins-big-in-sportsbingo-but-has-yet-to-claim-2m-prize
Hawaii: No current lottery. Source: https://www.kitv.com/story/40182224/powerball-or-mega-millions-lottery-in-hawaii
Idaho: Not Anonymous."By claiming a winning lottery ticket over $600, winners become subject to Idaho’s Public Records Law. This means your “win” becomes an offcial Idaho public record. Your full name, the town where you live, the game you won, the amount you won (before and after taxes), the name of the retailer where you bought the ticket, and the amount the retailer receives for selling the ticket are all a matter of public record." Can seek anonymity if you have specific security concerns (rarely granted). Source: https://www.idaholottery.com/images/uploads/general/winnersguideweb.pdf
Illinois: Not Anonymous/Anonymous if requested by winner for all wins over $250,000 however info will be released to a FOIA request. "However, Murphy also cooperated with the Illinois Press Association in adding an amendment that ensures that Freedom of Information Act, an act designed to keep government agencies transparent by allowing the public to access any public record by request, supersedes the privacy law, according to attorney Don Craven, the press association’s legal counsel." Source: https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Hidden-riches-Big-lottery-winner-in-Beardstown-13626173.php
Indiana: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via LLC or trust. "Indiana law allows lottery jackpot winners to remain anonymous, with the money being claimed by a limited liability company or legal trust." Source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-indiana-mega-millions-winners-20160729-story.html
Iowa: Not Anonymous/Can use a trust to claim but information will be released. "When you win an Iowa Lottery prize of $600 or more, you have to fill out a winner claim form that includes your name, address and Social Security number before you can claim your winnings. Iowa law makes the information on that claim form public, meaning that anyone can request a copy of the form to see who has won the prize. We redact sensitive information, such as your Social Security number, from the form before we release it, but all other details are considered public information under Iowa law (Iowa Code Section 99G.34(5)." Source: https://www.ialotteryblog.com/2008/11/can-prize-winne.html.
For group play, "Prizes can be paid to players who play as a group. A check can be written to an entity such as a trust or to a single individual." Source: https://ialottery.com/pages/Games/ClaimingPrizes.aspx
Kansas: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. "Kansas is one of a handful of states that does not have this requirement. If you win a prize in Kansas, you may request that your identity not be released publicly." Source: https://www.kslottery.com/faqs#faq-8
Kentucky: Anonymity appears to be an option. Anonymity or who can claim is not addressed on lottery website. But multiple instances of winners claiming anonymously have been reported in the news. "Kentucky Lottery spokesman Chip Polson said the $1 million Powerball winner claimed the prize on May 15 and the Mega Million winner claimed the prize on May 12. He confirmed that both players wanted their identity to remain a secret." Source: https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2017/05/19/two-1-million-lottery-winners-who-bought-tickets-louisville-want-privacy/101870414/
Louisiana: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust. "Under the Lottery's statute, all prize payment records are open records, meaning that the public has a right to request the information. Depending upon the amount won and public or media interest in the win, winners may NOT be able to remain anonymous. The statute also allows the Lottery to use winners' names and city of residence for publicity purposes such as news releases. The Lottery's regular practice is not to use winner information in paid advertising or product promotion without the winner's willingness to participate. Source: https://louisianalottery.com/faq/easy-5#35 Source: https://louisianalottery.com/article/1050/the-williams-trust-claims-share-of-50-million-powerball-jackpot
Maine: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust. "In the event that Maine does have a Mega Millions winner, he or she can opt to remain anonymous — but Boardman says that’s never happened. “What a winner could do in Maine is they could file their claim in the name of a trust, and the trust becomes the winner. So that’s how a winner could claim their ticket anonymously,” he says." Source: https://www.mainepublic.org/post/lottery-official-reminds-mainers-they-re-exceedingly-unlikely-win-16-billion-jackpot
Maryland*: Not Anonymous by Law, Anonymous in Practice. "However, the legal basis for this anonymity in Maryland is thin. The Maryland Lottery does not advertise that lottery winners may remain anonymous, but it posts articles on its website about winners and notes those winners who have “chosen to remain anonymous:” Source: https://www.gw-law.com/blog/anonymity-maryland-lottery-winners
*"Please note that this anonymity protection does not apply to second-chance and Points for Drawings contests run through the My Lottery Rewards program. Those contests are run as promotions for the Lottery. As such, they are operated under a different set of rules than our draw games and scratch-off games. The rules of participating in our second-chance and Points for Drawings contests state that winners' identities are published."" Source: https://www.mdlottery.com/about-us/faqs/
Massachusetts: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust "Lottery regulations state that a claimant's name, city or town, image, amount of prize, claim date and game are public record. Therefore, photographs may be taken and used to publicize winnings." Source: https://www.masslive.com/news/2018/05/lottery_sees_increase_in_winne.html
Michigan: Not Anonymous for Powerball and Mega Millions/100% Anonymous if requested by the winner for all other winners over $10,000. "Winner Anonymity. Michigan law requires written consent before disclosing the identity of the winner of $10,000 or more from the State lottery games Lotto47 and Fantasy 5. You further understand and agree that your identity may be disclosed, and that disclosure may be required, as the winner of any prize from the multi-state games Powerball and Mega Millions." Source: https://www.michiganlottery.com/games/mega-millions
Minnesota: Not Anonymous. Anonymity or who can claim is not addressed on lottery website but lottery blog states "In Minnesota, lottery winners cannot remain anonymous. A winner's name, city, prize amount won and the place that the winning ticket was sold is public data and will be released to media and posted on our website." Source: https://www.mnlottery.com/blog/you-won-now-what
Mississippi: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. "In accordance with the Alyce G. Clarke Mississippi Lottery Law, the Mississippi Lottery will not disclose the identity of the person holding a winning lottery ticket without that person's written permission." Source: https://www.mslotteryhome.com/players/faqs/
Missouri: Not Anonymous. "At the Lottery Headquarters, a member of the Lottery's communications staff will ask you questions about your win, such as how many tickets you bought, when you found out that you won and what you plan to do with your prize money. This information will be used for a news release. You will also be asked, but are not required, to participate in a news conference, most likely at the store where you purchased your winning ticket." Source: http://www.molottery.com/whenyouwin/jackpotwin.shtm
A Missouri State Legislator has submitted a bill to the State House to give lottery winners anonymity. Source: https://www.kfvs12.com/2020/02/25/mo-house-considers-legislation-protect-identity-lottery-winners/
Montana: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust. "In Montana, by law, certain information about lottery winners is considered public. That information includes: the winner's name, the amount won and the winner's community of residence. Winners may choose to claim as an individual or they may choose to form a trust and claim their prize as a trust. If a trust claims a lottery prize, the name of the trust is considered public information. A trust must have a federal tax identification number in order to claim a Montana Lottery prize." Source: https://www.montanalottery.com/en/view/about-faqs
Nebraska: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via LLC. Anonymity or who can claim is not addressed on lottery website but a winner created a legal entity to claim anonymously in 2014. "Nebraska Lottery spokesman Neil Watson said with the help of a Kearney lawyer, the winner or winners have created a legal entity called Carpe Diem LLC." Source: https://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska/m-nebraska-powerball-winner-to-remain-anonymous/article_a044d0f0-99a7-5302-bcb9-2ce799b3a798.html
A Nebraska State Legislator has now filed a bill to give 100% Anonymity to all winners over $300,000 who request it. Source: https://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska/anonymity-for-lottery-winners-bill-would-give-privacy-to-those/article_1cdba44d-c8bb-5971-b73f-2eecc8cd4625.html
Nevada: No current lottery. Source: https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/casinos-gaming/heres-why-you-cant-play-powerball-in-nevada/
New Hampshire: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via a trust. Anonymity or who can claim is not addressed on lottery website but a winner successfully sued the lottery and won the right to remain anonymous in 2018. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/12/winner-of-a-560-million-powerball-jackpot-can-keep-the-money-and-her-secret-judge-rules/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bec2db2f7d2c
New Jersey: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.nj.com/politics/2020/01/win-big-you-can-claim-those-nj-lottery-winnings-anonymously-under-new-law.html
New Mexico: Not Anonymous. “Winners of $10,000 or more will have name, city, game played, and prize amount and photo on website.” Can seek anonymity if you have specific security concerns (rarely granted). Source: https://www.nmlottery.com/uploads/FileLinks/82400d81a0ce468daab29ebe6db3ec27/Winner_Publicity_Policy_6_1_07.pdf
New York: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via a LLC. Anonymity or who can claim is not addressed on lottery website but per Gov. Cuomo: "For the past 40 years, individuals wishing to keep their name and information out of the public view have created LLCs to collect their winnings for them." Source: https://nypost.com/2018/12/09/cuomo-vetoes-bill-allowing-lotto-winners-to-remain-anonymous/
North Carolina: Not Anonymous. "North Carolina law allows lottery winners' identity to remain confidential only if they have an active protective order against someone or participate in the state's "Address Confidentiality Program" for victims of domestic violence, sexual offense, stalking or human trafficking." Source: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article54548645.html
North Dakota: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.kfyrtv.com/home/headlines/ND-Powerball-Winners-Have-Option-to-Remain-Anonymous-364918121.html
Northern Mariana Islands: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.nmsalottery.com/game-rules/
Ohio: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust. Anonymity or who can claim is not addressed on lottery website but appears to have an anonymous option. "The procedure from there was a little cumbersome. I needed to create two separate trusts. One trust was to appoint me, as the trustee on behalf of the winner, to contact the Lottery Commission and accept the Lottery winnings. The secondary trust was set up for me as trustee of the first trust, to transfer the proceeds to the second trust with the winner as the beneficiary. This enabled me to present the ticket, accept the proceeds, and transfer it to the winner with no public record or disclosure." Source: https://www.altickcorwin.com/Articles/How-To-Claim-Lottery-Winnings-Anonymously.shtml
Oklahoma: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust or LLC. In accordance with the Oklahoma Open Records Act and the Oklahoma Education Lottery Act, the name of any individual, corporation, partnership, unincorporated association, limited liability company, or other legal entity, and their city of residence will be made public. Source: https://www.lottery.ok.gov/playersclub/faq.asp Source: https://oklahoman.com/article/5596678/lottery-winners-deserve-some-anonymity
Oregon: Not Anonymous. "No. Certain information about Lottery prizes is public record, including the name of the winner, amount of the prize, date of the drawing, name of the game played and city in which the winning ticket was purchased. Oregon citizens have a right to know that Lottery prizes are indeed being awarded to real persons. " Source: https://oregonlottery.org/about/public-interaction/commission-directofrequently-asked-questions Can seek anonymity if you have specific security concerns (rarely granted). Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3353432/Man-living-Iraq-wins-6-4-million-Oregon-jackpot.html
Pennsylvania: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust. Source: https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/trust-that-won-powerball-no-relation-to-manheim-township-emerald/article_29834922-4ca2-11e8-baac-1b15a17f3e9c.html
Puerto Rico: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rico-powerball-winner-claims-prize-chooses-stay-anonymous-n309121
Rhode Island: Not Anonymous/Anonymous if requested but all info is subject to FOIA. "While the Lottery will do everything possible to keep a winner's information private if requested by the winner, in Rhode Island and most other states, this information falls under the Freedom of Information Act, and a winner's name and city or town of residency must be released upon request." Source: https://www.rilot.com/en-us/player-zone/faqs.html
South Carolina: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Anonymity or who can claim is not addressed on lottery website but appears to have an anonymous option based on prior winners. Source: https://myfox8.com/2019/03/15/the-anonymous-south-carolina-winner-of-the-largest-lottery-jackpot-is-donating-part-of-it-to-alabama-tornado-victims/
South Dakota: Not Anonymous for draw games and online games/100% Anonymous for Scratchoffs if requested by the winner. "You can remain anonymous on any amount won from a scratch ticket game. Jackpots for online games are required to be public knowledge. Play It Again winners are also public knowledge." Source: https://lottery.sd.gov/FAQ2018/gamefaq.aspx.
Tennessee: Not Anonymous/Can use a trust but info subject to open records act. Anonymity is explicitly noted as not being allowed on the official lottery website. Source: https://www.tnlottery.com/faq/i-won
However if it is claimed via a trust then the lottery will not give out your information unless requested to do so. "The TN lottery says: "When claiming a Lottery prize through a Trust, the TN Lottery would need identity documentation for the grantor and all ultimate beneficiaries. Once we are in possession of these documents and information, records are generated. If a formal request is made by a citizen of Tennessee, the Trust beneficiary's name, city and state must be made available under the Tennessee Open Records Act." Source: https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/in-tennessee--can-a-lottery-jackpot-be-claimed-whi-2327592.html
Texas: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner for $1 million or more IF the winner claims it as an individual AND chooses the Cash option. Not Anonymous if claimed by a trust or LLC or if the winner chooses the Annuity option. Source: https://www.txlottery.org/export/sites/lottery/Documents/retailers/FAQ_Winner_Anonymity_12112017_final.pdf
Utah: No current lottery. Source: https://www.lotterycritic.com/lottery-results/utah/
Vermont: Not Anonymous/Anonymous via trust. “The name, town and prize amount on your Claim Form is public information. If you put your name on the Claim Form, your name becomes public information. If you claim your prize in a trust, the name of the trust is placed on the Claim Form, and the name of the trust is public information.” Source: https://vtlottery.com/about/faq
Virginia: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner for prizes over $10 million. "A new law passed by the Virginia General Assembly and signed by the Governor prohibits the Virginia Lottery from disclosing information about big jackpot winners." "When the bill goes into effect this summer, the Virginia Lottery will not be allowed to release certain information about winners whose prize exceeds $10 million, unless the winner wants to be known." Source: https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/virginia/new-virginia-law-allows-certain-lottery-winners-to-keep-identity-private/291-c33ea642-e8fa-45fd-b3a4-dc693cf5b372
US Virgin Islands: Anonymity appears to be an option. A $2 Million Powerball winner was allowed to remain anonymous. Source: https://viconsortium.com/virgin-islands-2/st-croix-resident-wins-2-million-in-latest-power-ball-drawing/
Washington: Not Anonymous/Can use a trust but info subject to open records act. "As a public agency, all documents held by Washington's Lottery are subject to the Public Records Act. Lottery prizes may be claimed in the name of a legally formed entity, such as a trust. However, in the event of a public records request, the documents forming the artificial entity may be released, thereby revealing the individual names of winners." https://www.walottery.com/ClaimYourPrize/
West Virginia: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner for prizes over $1 million and 5% of winnings remittance. "Effective January 1, 2019, House Bill 2982 allows winners of State Lottery draw games to remain anonymous in regards to his or her name, personal contact information, and likeness; providing that the prize exceeds one million dollars and the individual who elects to remain anonymous remits five percent of his or her winnings to the State Lottery Fund." Source: https://wvlottery.com/customer-service/customer-resources/
Wisconsin: Not Anonymous/Cannot be claimed by other entities. "Pursuant to Wisconsin’s Open Records law (Wis. Stats. Secs. 19.31–19.39), the Lottery is required to disclose a winner’s name, likeness and place of residence. If you win and claim a prize, the Lottery may use your name, likeness and place of residence for any purpose without compensation to you.
Upon claiming your prize, you waive any claims against the Lottery and its representatives for any and all liability which may result from the disclosure or use of such information." "The original winning ticket must be signed by a single human being. For-profit and non-profit entities, trusts, and other non-human beings are not eligible to play or claim a prize." Source: https://wilottery.com/claimprize.aspx
Wyoming: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. "We will honor requests for anonymity from winners. However, we certainly hope winners will allow us to share their names and good news with other players." Source: https://wyolotto.com/lottery/faq/
Other countries
Australia: 100% Anonymous if requested by winner. "The great thing about playing lotto in Australia is that winners can choose to remain anonymous and keep their privacy, unlike in the United States where winners don't have such a choice, and are often thrown into a media circus." Source: https://www.ozlotteries.com/blog/how-to-remain-anonymous-when-you-win-lotto/
Bahamas: No current lottery. Source: https://thenassauguardian.com/2013/01/29/strong-no-vote-trend-so-far-in-gaming-referendum/
Bahrain: Not Anonymous. Source: https://bdutyfree.com/terms-conditions1#.X8ru92lOmdM
Barbados: Not Anonymous. "No. Barbados Lottery winners cannot remain anonymous. The Barbados Lottery mandates the winner’s name, address, game won, date won and amount won be provided; however Barbados Lottery winners' home addresses and telephone numbers are confidential." Source: https://www.mybarbadoslottery.com/faqs
Brazil: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.lotterycritic.com/lottery-results/brazil-lottery/
Canada: Not Anonymous. Every provincial lottery corporation in Canada requires winners to participate in a publicity photo shoot showing their face, their name and their municipality. Can seek anonymity if you have specific security concerns (rarely granted). Source: https://consumers.findlaw.ca/article/can-lottery-winners-remain-anonymous/
Carribbean Lottery Countries (Antigua/Barbuda, Anguilla, St. Kitts/Nevis, St. Maarten/Saba/St. Eustatius, and Turks/Caicos): Not Anonymous. "No. Caribbean Lottery winners cannot remain anonymous. The Caribbean Lottery mandates the winner’s name, address, game won, date won and amount won be provided; however Caribbean Lottery winners' home addresses and telephone numbers are confidential." Source: https://www.thecaribbeanlottery.com/faqs
China: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Must appear in a press conference and photo but allowed to wear disguise. Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/01/22/china-lottery-winners-mask/22108515/
Cuba: No current lottery. Source: https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba/society-cuba/cuban-traditions/lottery-the-national-game-infographics/
EuroMillions Countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and UK*): 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.euro-millions.com/publicity
*United Kingdom: Excludes
*Caymen Islands, and Falkland Islands: No current lottery. Source: https://calvinayre.com/2018/11/02/business/cayman-islands-move-illegal-gambling-doesnt-address-real-issue/ Source: https://simonsblogpark.com/onlinegambling/simons-guide-gambling-falkland-islands/amp/#lottery-falkland-islands
*Anguilla, and Turks & Caicos: Not Anonymous. Source: https://www.thecaribbeanlottery.com/faqs
EuroJackpot Countries (Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands*, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden): 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.euro-jackpot.net/en/publicity
*Netherlands: Excludes
*St. Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius: Not Anonymous. Source: https://www.thecaribbeanlottery.com/faqs
Fiji: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://fijisun.com.fj/2012/11/08/3m-lotto-win-here/
Georgia (Kartvelia): Anonymity appears to be an option. "2.9.1. Prizes and Winners. Each Bidder shall provide details of:....how winners who waive their right to privacy will be treated;" Source: https://mof.ge/images/File/lottery/tender-documentation.pdf
Greece: Anonymity appears to be an option. "The bearer of the ticket shall keep the details of the ticket confidential and not reveal them to any third party." Source: https://www.opap.gen/identity-terms-of-use-lotto
Guyana: Not Anonymous. Source: https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2013/05/16/winner-says-he-was-too-busy-to-collect-78m-lotto-prize/
India*: Not Anonymous. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35771298
*: Only available in the states of Kerala, Goa, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim, Nagaland and Mizoram. Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/lottery-mizoram-nagaland-sikkim-kerala-975188-2017-05-04
Indonesia: No current lottery. Source: https://apnews.com/45eb94ff1b1132470a7aa5902f0bc734
Israel: Not Anonymous by Law, Anonymous in Practice. “[A]lthough we have this right, we have never exercised it because we understood the difficulties the winners could encounter in the period after their win. We provide details about the winner, but in a manner that doesn’t disclose their identity,” Dolin Melnik, then-spokesperson for Israel’s Mifal Hapayis lottery told Haaretz in 2009." Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-the-israeli-lottery-gives-winners-masks/
Jamaica: Not Anonymous. First initial and last name of winner was released but winner was allowed to wear a mask for photo. Source: https://news.e-servicis.com/news/trending/lottery-winner-takes-prize-in-scream-mask.1S/
Japan: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/09/08/business/japans-lottery-rakes-declining-revenues-younger-generation-gives-jackpot-chances-pass/#.XRYwVVMpCdM
Kenya: Not Anonymous. "9.1 When You claim or are paid a prize, You will automatically be deemed to grant to O8 LOTTO an irrevocable right to publish, through all types of media broadcasting, including the internet, for the purposes of promoting the win, Your full name (as well as Your nick name), hometown, photograph and video materials without any claim for broadcasting, printing or other rights" Source: https://mylottokenya.co.ke/terms-conditions
Malaysia: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://says.com/my/news/a-24-year-old-malaysian-woman-just-won-more-than-rm4-million-from-4d-lottery
Nagorno-Karabakh: Not Anonymous. Source: http://asbarez.com/120737/artsakh-lottery-winner-claims-car-prize/
New Zealand: 100% Anonymous if requested by winner. Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10383080
North Korea: Not Anonymous. Source: https://www.nknews.org/2018/11/north-korean-sports-ministry-launches-online-lottery/
Northern Cyprus: Anonymity appears to be an option. Source: https://www.pressreader.com/cyprus/cyprus-today/20181124/281590946615912
Oman: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: http://www.omanlottery.com/
Philippines: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.rappler.com/nation/214995-ultra-lotto-winners-claim-winnings-pcso-october-2018
Qatar: Not Anonymous. Source: https://www.qatarliving.com/forum/qatar-living-lounge/posts/qatar-duty-free-announces-latest-us1-million
Romania: Anonymity appears to be an option. Source: https://www.thelotter.com/win-lottery-anonymously/
Russia: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: http://siberiantimes.com/otheothers/news/siberian-scoops-a-record-184513512-roubles-on-russian-state-lottery/
Samoa: Not Anonymous. Source: https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/191796/samoa%27s-lotto-winner-still-a-mystery
Saudi Arabia: No current lottery. Source: https://www.arabnews.com/police-arrest-lottery-crooks-victimizing-expats
Singapore: Anonymity appears to be an option. Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/did-you-win-here-are-results-of-136m-toto-hongbao-draw
Solomon Islands: No current lottery. Source: http://www.paclii.org/sb/legis/consol_act/gala196/
South Africa: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/powerball-results/powerball-winner-r232-million-found-lottery-details/
South Korea: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: https://elaw.klri.re.keng_mobile/viewer.do?hseq=38378&type=sogan&key=5
Sri Lanka: Anonymity appears to be an option. Source: http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2010/01/31/where-do-all-the-lottery-winners-go/
Taiwan: 100% Anonymous if requested by the winner. Source: http://m.focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201806250011.aspx
Trinidad and Tobago: Anonymity appears to be an option. Source: https://trinidadexpress.com/news/local/student-wins-the-million-lotto/article_3f3c8550-570d-11e9-9cc3-b7550f9b4ad4.html
Tuvalu: No current lottery. Source: http://tuvalu-legislation.tv/cms/images/LEGISLATION/PRINCIPAL/1964/1964-0004/GamingandLotteries_1.pdf
United Arab Emirates: Not Anonymous. Source: https://www.ndtv.com/indians-abroad/shojith-ks-in-sharjah-uae-wins-abu-dhabi-duty-free-big-ticket-4-million-jackpot-rejects-calls-2032942
Vatican City: Anonymity appears to be an option. Source: https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2018/12/04/popes-white-lamborghini-up-for-raffle-winner-gets-trip-to-rome/
Vietnam: Anonymity appears to be an option. Source: https://ampe.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnamese-farmer-identified-as-winner-of-4-million-lottery-jackpot-3484751.html
Windward Lottery Countries (Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines): Not Anonymous. "Prize winners asked to do so by Winlot must give their name and address, and satisfactory establish their identity. All winners of the Jackpot (Match 6) prize will be photographed. Note that Winlot and CBN reserve the right to publish the names, addresses and photographs of all the winners." Source: http://www.stlucialotto.com/snl/super6_rules_regs.php

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
Announcement: After consideration, I am going to try to do a weekly round-up of the administration's coronavirus response. I'm not sure what day this will be posted, perhaps Thursdays. I debated if (1) I'll have time/energy to do it regularly and (2) if it will do more harm than good (eg putting too much negativity out there). So we'll try it out this week, see what happens. The sign up form now has an option to choose to receive an email when the coronavirus-focused round up is posted.
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Let’s dig in!

Purge quietly continues

Counterterrorism purge

Acting DNI and Trump loyalist Richard Grenell fired the top two officials (non-paywalled version) at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) on Wednesday. Acting Director Russell Travers and his deputy Peter Wall were “resistant to pressure to cut personnel” at the center, which was set up after 9/11 to protect the country from further terror attacks.

One of the former officials said that Travers walked into a meeting on Wednesday expecting to brief Grenell on the center when he was told that he was out. He had no intention or desire to retire, they said.
In the meeting, Grenell told Travers he would like to know “how long it would take you to leave,” according to one of the former officials, who was briefed on the meeting. Travers replied that he would need “a few weeks” to complete the administrative work, the official recounted.
“They said, ‘Great, we’ll afford you the opportunity to retire,’ ” the former official said.

While some inside the intelligence community say the diminishing threat from Al Qaeda and ISIS should lead to a downsizing of the center, others argue that it should keep its current size and instead take up the fight against far-right extremist groups.
There are reports that the NCTC is understaffed already and further downsizing will only bring chaos:

The NCTC’s biggest problem right now, officials say, is that it is understaffed. Of its roughly 1,000 employees, about 700 are full-time government workers and 300 are contractors. About 30 percent of the government workers are supposed to be loaned by the CIA and other agencies. But a significant number of these interagency transfer positions are vacant, an NCTC veteran said, weakening the cross-government mission. With Grenell’s hiring freeze, and the reluctance of the CIA and other agencies to send transfers, the personnel shortage is becoming more severe.

Former intelligence chiefs sound alarm
The following former intelligence chiefs wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post (non-paywalled summary) warning that “[w]e cannot let the covid-19 pandemic be a cover for the deeply destructive path being pursued by the Trump administration.”

Travers and his deputy, a career National Security Agency officer, were the epitome of what we strive for in national security: nonpartisan experts who serve the president and the American people with no regard to personal politics. Now both are gone, to be replaced by as-yet-unnamed acting heads who will undoubtedly know less and who will be more beholden to the intelligence community’s politicized leadership.
...Congress must reinvigorate the strictest of oversight to preserve what is left of the country’s prized, apolitical intelligence community. Post-9/11 reforms happened for a critical reason: The U.S. bureaucracy wasn’t prepared for a new era of threats. Indeed, the NCTC is a model of how the government should work in close coordination and with unity of effort in response to a crisis. It provides critical lessons for today’s challenge. The administration’s continued politicization of intelligence pulls the nation further from this goal, making us more vulnerable to the next national security threat regardless from where it emanates.

OPM resignation

The Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Dale Cabaniss, resigned suddenly last week after reportedly experiencing “poor treatment” from the parachuted-in head of the Office of Presidential Personnel (OPP), John McEntee, and White House liaison Paul Dans. The OPM is in charge of processing and approving/denying security clearances and functions as the human resources management policy shop for the federal government’s civil service.
McEntee was a Fox News production Assistant who joined the Trump campaign to organize and execute Trump’s rallies. At only 27 years old, he joined Trump’s administration as his body man (personal aide who accompanies the president everywhere). However, in 2018 McEntee was forced to resign due to gambling debts that prevented him from gaining a security clearance. Trump’s re-election campaign immediately hired him. Then, in January 2020, McEntee returned to the White House to direct the OPP, where Trump tasked him with identifying and purging officials throughout the administration who were not thought to be loyal enough to the president.

McEntee's return to the White House has roiled the administration with some officials criticizing the former Trump campaign staffer for what they see as an effort to stock the administration with his friends, including at least three college seniors… James Bacon, 23 and a senior at George Washington University, was hired to be one of McEntee’s righthand men as he tries to fill the Trump administration with loyalists and fire anyone who they suspect of disloyalty.

DOJ drops Concord case

Early last week, the Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the charges against Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering, both companies run by “Putin’s chef” Yevgeny Prigozhin. The original indictment was filed by Mueller against the two Concord companies, 13 Russian individuals, and the Internet Research Agency for conspiring to defraud the U.S. by interfering in the 2016 election. While the Concord companies will no longer be prosecuted, the Justice Department will continue to pursue the charges against the other entities and individuals, including Prigozhin himself.
Prosecutors explained that going forward with the trial would risk national security because Concord has been gaming the system to Russia’s benefit:

DOJ attorneys involved in the case, [Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the Justice Department's National Security Division] said, reached the decision by evaluating "the risk versus the reward. Who are you going to hold accountable? They have nobody except an outside attorney. So what are you getting in return for all of this information that we're providing that details how we conduct investigations into foreign interference?"

Others have raised questions about the decision to drop the case, especially in light of Attorney General Barr’s continued interference in Mueller’s cases.

"I don't buy it," tweeted Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who worked on the assessment of Russian election interference that was partially released to the public. "DOJ does this all the time with CIA info. There's a process for this. Something smells..."
"This is highly irregular," said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor. "These decisions are made before indictment."

Trump cases

Trump-appointed judge Trevor McFadden again put the Ways and Means Committee lawsuit for Trump’s taxes on hold last week. McFadden issued the stay for the same reason as he did the first time: to wait until a final decision is reached in the case for Don McGahn’s testimony. The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear the McGahn case at the end of April, but the coronavirus outbreak could postpone the proceedings indefinitely.

McGahn presents several threshold questions that bear heavily on the Executive’s motion to dismiss here... The subpoena-enforcement issue is unsettled for now. And piecemeal litigation would be an inefficient use of resources. These reasons alone favor a stay… Thus, the Court will await further proceedings in McGahn before it acts...

• Reminder: McFadden donated to Trump’s campaign before he was nominated and confirmed to the Court of Appeals.

Also due to the coronavirus outbreak, the Supreme Court will be delaying oral arguments for the foreseeable future. This includes the three cases seeking Trump’s financial records: Manhattan DA Vance’s subpoena to Mazars, the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena to Mazars, and subpoenas issued by two House committees to Deutsche Bank and Capital One. The hearings were scheduled for this week. It is not clear when arguments will take place.

McConnell presses judges to retire

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pressing (non-paywalled) sitting judges who are eligible to retire to quickly step aside so Trump can nominate and confirm their replacements before the November elections. There are about 90 Republican judges (ie appointed by Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr.) who have the choice to retire.
According to the New York Times, “Republicans are reminding the judges that it could be another eight years — 2029 — before they could leave under a Republican president.” This gives the impression that Republicans are increasingly worried about Trump’s prospects for re-election.

Judicial advocacy group Demand Justice’s Executive Director Brian Fallon: Mitch McConnell is directly pressuring sitting judges to retire to manufacture new vacancies for Trump to fill with younger nominees. This is conservative court packing.

Texas upholds voter fraud sentence

A three-judge panel of the Fort Worth appeals court upheld a lower court’s sentence of 5 years in prison for illegal voting. Crystal Mason cast a ballot while on supervised release because she did not know that she couldn't vote after she was released from jail; according to the law, felons must finish their sentences entirely, including probation. Mason cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 election that was not counted. When taken to trial in 2018, Mason’s probation officers testified to the court that they never told Mason that she couldn’t vote.

“Contrary to Mason’s assertion, the fact that she did not know she was legally ineligible to vote was irrelevant to her prosecution,” Justice Wade Birdwell wrote for a three-judge panel on Texas’ second court of appeals.

According to The Guardian: “The decision to prosecute Mason was unusual. Since 2014, at least 12,668 people have voted using a provisional ballot in Tarrant county and 88% of them have been rejected because the voter was not eligible. Mason is the only voter who used a provisional ballot who was prosecuted for illegal voting.”
Mason’s attorneys intend to ask the full court of appeals to rehear the case.

Duncan Hunter sentenced

Last Tuesday, former California Rep. Duncan Hunter (R) was sentenced to 11 months in jail and three years of probation after pleading guilty to misusing more than $200,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses.

Federal prosecutors charged that Hunter had fraudulently spent more than $200,000 on expenses that included a $14,000 Italian vacation and thousands of dollars on routine items like groceries, bedding and other household items.
Margaret pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring with her husband to use $25,000 in campaign funds for personal use, and is yet to be sentenced. Duncan Hunter appeared to blame his wife for the then-alleged crimes in a television interview at the time, saying she was the one handling his finances.

Border wall still being built

Despite the pandemic sweeping America, causing severe shortages everywhere, the Trump administration is continuing to spend resources on building a wall at the southern border. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Patrol announced a plan to build over 91 miles of barriers along the Arizona-Mexico border, waiving a series of federal laws in order to speed up construction.

DHS published a notice on Monday in the Federal Register waiving 37 environmental and cultural laws to expedite construction of the 91.5 miles in Arizona, plus 86 miles along other parts of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Environmentalists warn that the 30-foot-high steel fencing will close all remaining wildlife corridors that the few jaguars still active in the United States use to wander their habitat: “The new border walls will mean the end of jaguar recovery in the United States,” said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This tragedy’s all the more heartbreaking because walling off these beautiful wildlands is completely unnecessary and futile. It has nothing to do with border security and everything to do to with Trump’s racist campaign promise.”
Cost of border wall vs cost of ventilators
Out of curiosity, I calculated how many ventilators could be purchased with the money Trump is pouring into the border wall this year. Taking into account just the $7.2 billion in military funds Trump transferred to the wall project earlier this year, the administration could buy 144,000 ICU-grade ventilators for the nation.
Currently, the U.S. emergency medical stockpile has only 13,000 ventilators according to the coronavirus task force. Hospitals are reportedly avoiding ordering ventilators themselves because they can’t afford the $25,000-50,000 price tag per machine.

Border Patrol didn’t keep records of families

A report by the Government Accountability Office revealed that Customs and Border Patrol agents consistently failed to record when children were separated from family units at the southern border:

GAO found Border Patrol did not initially record 14 of the 40 children as a member of a family unit (linked to a parent’s record) per Border Patrol policy, and thus did not record their subsequent family separation.
GAO found an additional 10 children among the 40 whose family separations were not documented in Border Patrol’s data system as required by CBP policy during this period. Border Patrol officials were unsure of the extent of these problems, and stated that, among other things, data-entry errors may have arisen due to demands on agents as the number of family unit apprehensions increased

Bennie Thompson, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee:
“Not only was this administration’s family separation policy heartless — they bungled its implementation at every turn," Thompson said in a statement. "The Acting DHS Secretary claims no children have been lost — but is withholding documents on this matter from Congress. It’s time for the Administration to come clean and provide these so we can get a full accounting of this policy.” (Source)

Trouble at Trump Doonbeg

A local Irish planning board denied the Trump Organization’s request to build a sea wall to protect its Doonbeg golf resort from coastal erosion. The board said it was “not satisfied beyond reasonable scientific doubt that the proposed development would not adversely affect the integrity of the Carrowmore Dunes special area of conservation.”
The Trump Organization may close the resort if it is not allowed to build the sea wall, it says. Local residents and businesses are upset with the ruling because the Doonbeg course provides jobs for roughly 300 locals.
The struggling Irish resort has had one steady source of income, though: American taxpayers paid Trump’s company $15,144.94 for Secret Service lodging during Vice President Mike Pence’s September 2019 trip to the resort, according to CREW.

We can now say definitively that Pence’s detour not only cost taxpayers extra due to large transportation costs, but also that the bill subsidized one of Trump’s struggling businesses. Despite Trump spending $41 million to buy, renovate, and operate the property, Doonbeg has never turned a profit. That hasn’t stopped (and some suggest it has encouraged) Trump making a visit to the property.
...To accommodate Pence’s stay at Doonbeg, taxpayers also had to foot the bill for extensive travel. In September, CREW reported that government contracts for limousine transportation associated with the visit amounted to $599,454.36. The new documents show a $222,764.05 bill for the same limo service, but it is unclear whether that is in addition to the previously reported contracts, or a part of that cost.

Trump Jr.’s donor party

Don Jr.’s girlfriend, Fox News-alum Kimberly Guilfoyle, had a “lavish” birthday party at Mar-a-Lago last Sunday, attended by dozens of Trump family and friends. The party-goers reportedly picked up the tab, included at least four financial supporters of the president’s re-election campaign. The New York Times reported (non-paywalled) that the attendees paid a signifcant amount of the $50,000 total cost.

Brendan Fischer, an official at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, called the party “an illustration of the blurred lines between Trump’s presidency, his campaign, and his family’s personal and financial interests.”
...Donald Trump Jr. reportedly joked that Ms. Guilfoyle would be soliciting contributions for his father’s re-election from party attendees.
“You are in this room for a reason,” he said, according to The Washington Examiner. “You guys have been the warriors, the fighters, the people who have been there every time we have made a call, every time we made a request.”

Kentucky voting restrictions

While the nation has been distracted with the pandemic, Kentucky lawmakers approved new photo ID requirements that make it harder for Americans to vote. Previously, a voter only had to sign an affidavit swearing that they were unable to obtain acceptable identification for whatever reason. Now, lawmakers will only accept specific approved reasons for lacking an ID and require that only Kentucky IDs can be used to vote.

DMV offices, one of the most common places people would obtain a photo ID throughout the state are also closed as Kentucky deals with 47 cases of Covid-19 thus far. The Kentucky primary is scheduled to take place on 23 June (the state postponed it from 19 May amid the coronavirus outbreak) and the deadline to register is 20 April.

While Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear, is a Democrat and can veto the bill, the state’s legislature is controlled by Republicans and can vote to override the veto. It is likely they will override a veto because the Republicans want the new law in place for Mitch McConnell’s re-election this November.

DHS IG’s office

The Washington Post reports that the Inspector General’s office of DHS is essentially dormant under Trump:

The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog division has been so weakened under the Trump administration that it is failing to provide basic oversight of the government’s third-largest federal agency, according to whistleblowers and lawmakers from both parties.
DHS’s Office of the Inspector General is on pace to publish fewer than 40 audits and reports this fiscal year, the smallest number since 2003 and one-quarter of the agency’s output in 2016, when it published 143, records show. The audits and reports cover everything from contracts and spending to allegations of waste and misconduct.

Meanwhile, DHS has an unprecedented amount of vacancies:

It has been nearly a year since the Department of Homeland Security has had a Senate-confirmed leader. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, the fourth person to lead the agency in three years, has been on the job less than six months.
In addition, 65 percent of top jobs in the department are vacant or filled by acting appointees, more than in any other federal agency, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that advocates for more effective government. Among the vacancies are the No. 2 official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the department's top lawyer and the head of the country's immigration system.

Environmental sabotage continues

• Centers for Biological Diversity: The Trump administration has proposed to approve genetically engineered crops on national wildlife refuges throughout the southeastern United States, a step likely to increase use of glyphosate and other pesticides known to harm wildlife. The Obama administration acted in 2014 to phase out GE crops on all national wildlife refuges following a successful decade-long campaign by the Center for Food Safety and others. The Trump administration reversed that decision in 2018...
  
• Huffington Post: The Trump administration has hired Anna Seidman, formerly a longtime lawyer at the trophy hunting advocacy group Safari Club International, to lead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s international affairs program… The Safari Club has close ties to the administration ― its political action committee donated $11,000 to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign ― and is one of several groups that successfully lobbied Trump’s Interior Department to roll back prohibitions on importing the trophies of lions and elephants killed for sport in certain African countries.
  
• Huffington Post: [On Wednesday] the Trump administration widened what critics call one of its most aggressive assaults on science, auctioned drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico and greenlit the expansion of a mine…. the Interior Department wrapped up an auction to sell oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, offering up some 78 million offshore acres ― an area roughly the size of New Mexico. It proved to be a bust, bringing in approximately $93 million for just shy of 400,000 acres, the smallest total for an offshore auction since 2016.
  

Far right threat

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports that there has been a 55% increase in the number of far-right extremist groups since 2017. Several of these groups identify themselves as “accelerationists," who believe "mass violence is necessary to bring about the collapse of our pluralistic society,” according to the report.

Much of the movement’s energy lies in the growing accelerationist wing, which, for the most part, is organized in informal online communities rather than formal groups.

Also last week, Yahoo News revealed an intelligence brief written by the Federal Protective Service warning that white supremacists on the encrypted messaging app Telegram have discussed plans to weaponize the coronavirus via “saliva,” a “spray bottle” or “laced items.”

According to the Federal Protective Service intelligence brief, the discussion of spreading the coronavirus occurred in a channel on the app Telegram that is devoted to the “siege culture” philosophies of neo-Nazi author James Mason and “accelerationism.” Mason wrote a series of newsletters titled “Siege” in the 1980s that advocated for acts of racial terrorism in order to hasten a war that would cause the breakdown of society.

Pompeo threatens ICC

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to news that the International Criminal Court will investigate alleged war crimes committed by United States forces in Afghanistan by bashing the decision and threatening court staff and their family members:

"It has recently come to my attention that the chef de cabinet to the prosecutor, Sam Shoamanesh, and the head of jurisdiction, complementarity, and cooperation division, Phakiso Mochochoko, are helping drive ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's effort to use this court to investigate Americans," the secretary of state said. "I'm examining this information now and considering what the United States' next steps ought to be with respect to these individuals and all those who are putting Americans at risk."
"We want to identify those responsible for this partisan investigation and their family members who may want to travel to the United States or engage in activity that's inconsistent with making sure we protect Americans," he continued.

Amnesty International condemned Pompeo’s statement:

“Perpetrators the world over now have a clear message from the United States: they too may demand impunity when their nationals are accused of the gravest of crimes… Secretary Pompeo’s open threat against family members of ICC staff is an ominous move. If there remained any doubt that the Trump Administration’s hostility towards the court is fundamentally punitive and callous in nature, these doubts have now been dispelled.”

By John McNeillJohn McNeill is a professor of history at Georgetown University.August 21, 2020 at 12:07 p.m. EDTAdd to list
In October 2016, I asked how fascist Donald Trump was as a presidential candidate, comparing his campaign with the movements in Italy and Germany using a four-point scale. I awarded Trump "Benitos" for how closely his campaign resembled those movements. A few weeks before his election, Trump earned 59 percent of possible Benitos, which made him "the most dangerous threat to pluralist democracy in this country in more than a century" — but not a genuine fascist. As a candidate, Trump was an amateurish imitation of the real thing.
Four years later, we can assess how fascist Trump has been in power. I have expanded the scale to include new criteria that were not relevant before he took office: governance, consolidation of power and various policy arenas. Instead of a possible 44 Benitos, as in 2016, the maximum is now 76. Does Trump earn more than 59 percent on his record in the White House?
In 2020, as in 2016, many observers declare Trump fascist, especially after his call for "total domination" of American cities, his glee over federal police actions against Black Lives Matter protesters and his efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the upcoming election should he lose.
But are we there yet? No. In a federal, decentralized state with constitutional checks and balances, it's harder to govern as a fascist than to run as one. Trump's political outlook and behavior bear many similarities to those of fascist leaders, but he has not ruled like an authentic fascist. We can thank "the swamp": The courts, the military, the media, voters and his own appointed officials (now mostly fired) have kept him in check.
Hyper-nationalism. Trump's nationalistic rhetoric in office is little changed from his first campaign. He promotes a view of America as unfairly victimized by foreigners and in need of renewal and purification from treasonous enemies within. He has occasionally indulged in saber-rattling toward North Korea and Iran. 2016: 2; 2020: 2
Militarism. Despite the occasional saber-rattling, Trump's foreign policy is far from militaristic: He does not advocate war and conquest as a way to rejuvenate the nation. His intermittent habit of castigating China appears intended for domestic consumption, lately to distract attention from his pandemic response. But Trump has ramped up the militarization of homeland security agencies, using them first against immigrants and then against protesters. 2016: 2; 2020: 3
Glorification of violence and readiness to use it in politics. Trump cheered on as Immigration and Customs Enforcement took at least 1,700 children from their parents and put them behind fences. His use of armed force against protesters earns him a new Benito, although on this crucial component of fascism, he falls well behind Benito Mussolini and especially Adolf Hitler, who unleashed illegal and deadly violence against their citizens on a far greater scale. 2016: 1; 2020: 2
How fascist was Trump as a candidate?
Fetishization of youth. This has never been a feature of Trump's politics. Mussolini and Hitler were in early middle age when they came to power, making it easier for them to try to embody youthful vigor. Mussolini liked to be seen jogging with his entourage at the outset of public appearances. Trump, in his golden years, wisely does not try to play this card. 2016: 0; 2020: 0
Fetishization of masculinity. Trump still tries to swagger and boast of his vigor and continues to mock his opponents as lacking stamina. But he is not urging men to exert authority over women and family anywhere close to the way authentic fascists did. Nor is he trying to confine women to the home and raise the birthrate. 2016: 4; 2020: 3
Leader cult. Trump never tires of posing as the decisive man of action, a genius and savior of the nation. He extols his instincts above mere rationality. He would have the world believe he is strong, hard-working and devoted to the interests of the ordinary citizen. He takes credit for every favorable development and denies responsibility for everything else. He expects his appointees to lavish public praise upon him. 2016: 4; 2020: 4
Lost-golden-age syndrome. Fascism was predicated on notions of victimization and lost national greatness that Il Duce or Der Führer alone could restore. Trump played this tune en route to the White House and has continued in office. Since the pandemic took hold, he has seemed more restrained about restoring greatness, perhaps aware that most people would happily settle for making America normal again. But much of his policy aims at turning back the clock to a time when White Americans were 85 percent of the population, when America was feared and respected abroad, and when coal and oil companies could make money without the hassles of federal regulations. Obsessed with a politics of nostalgia, he even signals sympathy for those whose mourned-for golden age is the Confederacy. 2016: 4; 2020: 4
Self-definition by opposition. Fascists had no difficulty explaining what they were against: socialism, labor unions, democracy, traditional elites, foreigners — particularly those judged racial inferiors. Trump's peeves are central to his politics, just as rousing resentments is central to his popularity. His political essence is opposition — to immigration, the media, the swamp — even if in office he has (so far) persecuted his targets far less brutally than did authentic fascists. 2016: 3; 2020: 4
Mass mobilization and mass party. Mussolini and Hitler built their own parties that enjoyed considerable popularity, and once in power, they enrolled millions of new members. Trump has with remarkable success suborned the Republican Party, making it his own. But he has shrunk it in the process, losing seats in Congress. 2016: 2; 2020: 1
Don’t compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. It belittles Hitler.
Hierarchical party structure and tendency to purge the disloyal. Fascists in power tried to marginalize the party rank and file that carried them into office and purged anyone suspected of insufficient devotion to the leader. Trump, as president, has done little for the White working class that voted him into power. He has done his best to eliminate from positions of authority anyone but fawning supporters. His purges obviously lack the murderous violence of Hitler's Night of the Long Knives, but they may prove no less effective in quashing dissent in the GOP. 2016: 1; 2020: 3
Theatricality. Fascists in power retained their fondness for rallies, parades, and dramatic claims of the biggest this and greatest that in history. Trump has, too. He hasn't been able to get all the parades and flyovers he's wanted, but he works hard for dramatic moments, even risking coronavirus infections among his supporters to stage events in Tulsa and at Mount Rushmore. 2016: 3; 2020: 3
How does Trump stack up against fictional dictators? Pretty well, actually.
Those 11 attributes characterized fascist movements on the rise. Fascism in power demonstrated several additional features. They are not unique to fascism, but they are important characteristics of fascist rule.
Chaotic administration. Mussolini and Hitler pretended to run tight ships, but their governance was shambolic and improvisational. They surrounded themselves with sycophants and encouraged squabbling among underlings.
Trump's administration shares this feature. Its consistent policy goals (fewer immigrants, less environmental regulation) are few. Major policy positions (let's work with China) are reversed (China is the root of all evil) in hopes of retaining power. By all accounts except the official one, Trump's White House has been a team of vipers, with officials often working at cross-purposes to try to give shape to the president's pronouncements. Its handling of the coronavirus pandemic is a showpiece of inconsistency, mixed messages and internal conflict that is responsible for the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans — despite Trump's effort to appear the resolute leader. Four Benitos.
Information and media policy. Fascists lied constantly, seeking political advantage. They were privately contemptuous of the intelligence of the public. They undermined independent sources of information — and later banned them. Mussolini spent as much time reading newspapers as Trump does watching cable TV, and he liked to telephone editors to tell them what to print. He tried to convince Italians that fascism was the envy of the world. Both Mussolini and Hitler became self-delusional when confronted with real crises, choosing to believe their own hype and the flattery of lickspittles.
Trump has set records for presidential dishonesty and seems to regard information as true only when it helps him politically. He has threatened to revoke broadcast licenses, tried to prevent the publication of books and dubbed the media "the enemy of the people." But unlike Mussolini and Hitler, he has not closed down newspapers, TV channels or media platforms. He has not jailed journalists or arranged their murder. His strategy has been to discredit — not destroy — uncooperative media. Two Benitos.
Consolidation of power. This is central to fascist rule. Inherited constitutional powers were not enough for Mussolini and Hitler: Hitler destroyed the rule of law, suborned the judiciary and leading cultural institutions, banned rival political parties, arranged the imprisonment or murder of thousands of opponents, seized a monopoly over media, and won the grudging allegiance of the military within 19 months of becoming chancellor in 1933. Mussolini, in contrast, led coalition governments for three years and almost fell from power after fascists murdered a leading anti-fascist parliamentarian. It took him nearly four years to secure a dictatorship in which no one dared defy him.
Trump started slowly and met considerable resistance. He still has not tamed the media, the military or the intelligence services, despite lavishing money on the Pentagon and appointing loyalists of dubious qualifications to high posts. Attorney General William Barr has assisted mightily in Trump's attempts to consolidate power. In recent months, the president has redoubled those efforts, and with increasing success. But after 43 months, he has done far, far less than Hitler and a good deal less than Mussolini. Two Benitos — but if he is still in office next year, he'll probably earn a third in a hurry.
Pecuniary and institutional corruption. Mussolini and Hitler tolerated gluttonous corruption among loyalists while restraining their own venality. But they wantonly corrupted institutions as part of their efforts to consolidate power. They required loyalty over competence among lawyers, judges, professors, police captains and, to an extent, military officers.
Trump and his family use the power of the presidency to advance their business interests. He has ousted five inspectors general, including one looking into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's alleged peccadillos. He's converted Barr's Justice Department into a political branch that protects his allies, investigates his opponents and supports voter suppression. He calls into question the legitimacy of elections unless he likes the results, and he seeks to undermine public faith in the electoral process, for example by claiming that voting by mail invites fraud. He has less leeway than Mussolini or Hitler in corrupting many institutions because U.S. society is less centralized than theirs were: Trump doesn't have much say over who is a police captain or a professor. But he's doing his utmost, with consequences that will surely outlive him. Three Benitos.
Economic policy. Fascists had no particular economic doctrine aside from preparing for war. They wanted to build autarkic economies that could withstand blockade and did not rely on foreign trade except for bilateral deals with weaker countries. They built up military industries through debt that they intended to repay by looting conquered lands. They quickly reached deals with big business, heavy industry especially, without which they could not build their arsenals.
Trump, too, likes protectionism and has sacrificed the common interest to serve his business supporters. But, crucially, he has not geared the economy for war. One Benito.
Foreign policy. Fascists in power distrusted international agreements, disdained alliances (except with one another) and sought to revise the international order that, they felt, unfairly held them down. Fundamentally, they intended to use aggressive warfare to achieve their goals. Foreign affairs were important to both Mussolini and Hitler, and they eagerly sought successes they could tout.
Trump doesn't care (or understand) much about foreign policy aside from his eagerness to sign trade deals. He uses foreign affairs mainly for theatrical purposes, hoping for something to trumpet, as with his early efforts to intimidate, then court, North Korea. Like fascists, he hates international agreements and eagerly disrupts the status quo, but he does not seek war. Two Benitos.
Cultural policy. Mussolini and Hitler took pains to install fascism in the broader culture and to ally with religious authorities. Once in power, Mussolini, who had been anticlerical, pushed laws that suited the Catholic Church and was eventually rewarded with a papal pronouncement that he was a "man sent by Providence." Hitler, no more of a believer than Mussolini, won the acquiescence of the Vatican, the cooperation of many Protestant leaders and the support of the largest youth organization in Germany, the evangelical youth clubs. Both installed reliable fascists as rectors of universities, who systematically replaced anti-fascist professors. They appointed lap dogs to academies of sciences. They decided what was acceptable and authentic — and what was decadent and deserving of destruction — in art, architecture, music and literature. They pretended to have cultural expertise: Hitler in art and architecture, and Mussolini in almost everything from Platonic philosophy to Shakespearean drama.
Trump invokes culture, heritage and history frequently, but he has no coherent cultural policy. He wants Confederate monuments to stay on their pedestals. He encourages, usually in dog-whistle fashion, racism as a cultural attitude. Aside from claiming an innate talent for science, though, he makes no claims to expertise in realms of learning or culture, and reveals no interest in them, either. Trump showed no inclination to faith or observance before seeking office. In power, he cultivates evangelical leaders, who mostly agree to ignore his irreligious past and his crudely un-Christian conduct in exchange for anti-Muslim, anti-gay and anti-feminist policies, as well as judicial appointments. Two Benitos.
Racial policy. Hitler believed in the superiority of a (fictional) Aryan race and considered Jews and Slavs inferior. In power, he enacted the anti-Jewish Nuremburg Laws of 1935. Racism motivated the Holocaust. Mussolini at first didn't care about race. But after more than a decade in power, with the war against Ethiopia and his tightening bond with Hitler, he showed increasingly militant racism against Arabs, Africans and Jews.
Trump has not enshrined racism in law. Nor has he enacted wide-ranging discriminatory policies. But he has tried to make immigration policy more racist, stoked White grievance as a political tactic and courted white supremacists. He refers to majority-Black cities as slums and calls some immigrants "animals, not people." Racism is more central to Trump's governance than it was to Mussolini's early years, but much less so than it was to Hitler's. Two Benitos.
So where does Trump's administration stand as he is nominated for a second term? He earned 47 of a possible 76 Benitos, or 62 percent. He remains the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War, but his exercise of power only partly resembles that of real fascists. He still faces checks and balances in Washington. He hasn't shut down rival parties or uncompliant media.
He has not directed the armed might of the state against citizens on anything like the scale used by Mussolini, let alone Hitler. He does not have his own obedient "squadristi" eager to beat up foes, even if plenty of his followers advocate (and sometimes indulge in) violence against minorities and Trump's opponents. He has not arranged the murder of prominent political opponents. The cult of violence is integral to fascism but far less central to Trump. He is not ruling like a genuine fascist.
But he has shown pronounced fascistic leanings. In the right circumstances — a crisis he could manage triumphantly, a more sympathetic military — perhaps he would try to extend his rule beyond whatever the voters allow him and convert the United States into a repressive, racist dictatorship. Or perhaps stage phony elections that hand the reins to Ivanka and Jared. At least a few members of Congress would probably support him, just as many parliamentarians voted to give Mussolini and Hitler emergency powers. Those lawmakers did not know at the time just where fascism might lead. We have a clearer idea.

Based on the rhetoric of the 2016 Trump campaign, numerous racially charged tweets, anti-immigrant policies, and even the lack of diversity within his own staff, it doesn't seem surprising to say that Donald Trump is a bigot.
Bear in mind that this will be quite long. It'll be broken down into three categories: pre-presidency, 2016 candidacy, and presidency. I should note that this post won't contain everything, so at the end I'll add other compilations of his remarks towards different groups.

Pre-Presidency

The 1970s:

• 1973 - Under the Nixon administration, the Dept. of Justice sued Trump Management Co. for violating the Fair Housing Act; evidence showed that Trump had refused to rent to black tenants and lied to black applicants about whether apartments were available. Trump fought the suit, claiming the federal government was "forcing him to rent to welfare recipients" and that if he gave in, a "massive fleeing from the city of not only our tenants, but communities as a whole" would occur.
  • In 1975, an agreement was signed stating Trump would not discriminate against renters of color. (Of course, Trump never admitted to being guilty.)
  • [Original headline for this story.]
• 1978 - The federal government filed a motion for supplemental relief, charging the Trump company because of failure to comply with the 1975 agreement. Roy M. Cohn, a lawyer for the company, stated “The Trumps performed so perfectly under two‐year consent decree, which expired last June, that the Government made no move to extend it. Today's motion is nothing more than a rehash of complaints by a couple of planted malcontents, not'. one of which has the slightest merit.” It is unclear what happened with the government's request for further action.

The 1980s

• “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” said Kip Brown, former employee at Trump's Castle in Atlantic City, NJ. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”
• 1988 - Donald Trump was invited to Lehigh University to give a commencement speech. He spent much of his time attacking countries such as Japan of "stripping the United States of economic dignity."
• 1989 - The Central Park Five were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Donald Trump took charge in this case and ran an ad in the papers demanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” Trump claims that this had nothing to do with race; rather, he has been a big believer of the death penalty for horrendous crime.

The 1990s

• 1991 - John O'Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, quoted Trump's criticism of a black accountant:“Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. …I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”
  • In a 1997 Playboy interview, Trump said that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”
• 1992 - In order to accommodate a gambler's prejudices, the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino transferred black and women dealers off the tables. Trump Plaza was ordered to pay a $200,000 fine.
• 1993 - During a congressional testimony, Donald Trump said that some Native American reservations operating casinos should not be allowed because "they don't look like Indians to me."

The 2000s

• 2000 - Trump secretly ran attack ads against the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, suggesting that they had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.” He saw the tribe - and their proposed casino - as a threat to his casinos in Atlantic City. The ad campaign warned that Indian casinos would bring evils such as "increased crime, broken families, bankruptcies and, in the case of the Mohawks, violence.”
  • The ads came from a grassroots anti-gambling group called the New York Institute for Law and Society created and run by longtime Trump friend and consultant, Roger Stone.
  • Here are some of the ads used by Trump and Roger Stone. ('Roger - this could be good!")
• 2004 - Trump fired Kevin Allen, a black contestant on season two of The Apprentice, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say ‘That’s enough.'”
• 2005 - Because Trump wasn't particularly happy with the latest season of The Apprentice, he pitched "an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world."

The 2010s

• 2010 - National controversy sparked over the "Ground Zero Mosque" proposal, which would place a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump offered to buy out one of the investors in the project. In an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, Trump argued, "I think it's very insensitive to build it there. I think it's not appropriate, I think it's insensitive and it shouldn't be built there." In reference to Muslims, he also said “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”
• 2011 - Trump played a huge role in the birtherism movement pushing false rumors that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He sent investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama's birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate (not that it ever stopped the conspiracy).
  • August 2012, Trump via Twitter: "An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud."
  • September 2012, Trump via Twitter: "Wake Up America! See article: "Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake"" [I didn't include the article linked in the tweet because it was removed.]
  • September 2013, Trump via Twitter: "@obamafraudulent: @realDonaldTrump @d18mt2 The birth certificate that you forced Obama to show is a computer generated forgery."
  • June 2014, Trump via Twitter: "Always remember, I was the one who got Obama to release his birth certificate, or whatever that was! Hilary couldn't, McCain couldn't."
  • Even in private, Trump continues to push this conspiracy theory.
    • The article linked also shows research linking "birtherism" and racism.
• 2011 - In addition to the birtherism conspiracy, Trump also argued that Barack Obama wasn't a good enough student to have attended Columbia or Harvard Law, and demanded that he released his university transcripts. He claimed, “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”

2016 Candidacy

• 2015 - Donald Trump launches his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexicans "rapists" who are "bringing crime and drugs" into the United States.
• 2015 - Trump claimed that if he were elected president, he would build a wall around the US-Mexico border and demanded that Mexico would pay for it.
• 2015 - Trump called for a ban of all Muslims attempting to enter the United States.
  • Though it was watered down, his administration eventually implemented a Muslim ban.
  • A 2016 Trump ad called for a "shutdown of Muslims entering the US."
• 2015 - During an appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump said, "Look, I'm a negotiator like you folks; we're negotiators."
• 2015 - When pressed repeatedly for details on his immigration platform, Trump vowed that his administration would create a "humane deportation force." He declined to go into specifics, but claimed that he would deport millions of illegal immigrants, and that it would be doable and cheap.
  • He claimed that it would be similar to President Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" initiative, which deported 1.5 million illegal immigrants by bus, truck, and boat and dropped them off at remote parts of the US-Mexico border.
• 2016 - During a Republican debate, Trump was asked about his claim, "Islam hates us." When asked if 1.6 billion Muslims hate the US, he responded, "I mean a lot of them."
  • The claim originates from this CNN interview which aired the day before the debate.
• 2016 - Trump argued that Judge Gonzalo Curiel - who presided over the Trump University lawsuit - should recuse himself due to his Mexican heritage and membership with the Latino lawyers association.
• 2016 - Trump declines to condemn support and endorsements from former KKK leader David Duke and other white supremacists. "Honestly, I don't know David Duke. I don't believe I've ever met him. I'm pretty sure I didn't meet him. And I just don't know anything about him."
  • Trump regularly retweeted messages from neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
• 2016 - At the Republican convention, Trump officially declared himself the "law and order" candidate.
• 2016 - Trump tweeted (and later deleted) an image showing Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money and the Star of David that said, "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" Despite the backlash, Trump insisted that the Star of David was really a sheriff's badge, and that the campaign shouldn't have taken it down.
  • This image was later reposted to Twitter, replacing the Star of David with a circle.
  • One of the biggest conspiracies among the alt-right is that politicians are controlled by Jewish money. This article explains how it became huge.
• 2016 - In a pitch to black voters, Trump said, “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
• 2016 - During a campaign rally, Trump pointed out a black man in the crowd and said, "Look at my African-American over here!"

Presidency

• 2017 - President Trump said during a meeting that Haitians "all have AIDS", and that Nigerian immigrants would never "go back to their huts" in Africa.
• 2017 - During a White House event to honor the World War II Navajo Code Talkers, Trump went on the attack and referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas."
  • Family members of the Navajo Code Talkers resented this racist jab.
• 2017 - Trump asked April Ryan, a veteran black journalist, to help set up a meeting between him and the Congressional Black Caucus by asking her, "Are they friends of yours?" Prior to this, Trump denounced conditions in inner cities by saying that African-Americans are "living in hell."
  • The CBC tweeted: "Hi, @realDonaldTrump. We’re the CBC. We sent you a letter on January 19, but you never wrote us back. Sad!"
    • Here is the letter they wrote to President Trump.
• 2017 - Trump repeatedly attacked NFL players who protested during the national anthem, claiming that this is "hurting the game."
  • He fired off a series of tweets defending the US flag and calling for a boycott of the NFL.
    • Tweets in question: [1], [2], [3], [4]
• 2017 - A week after the violent protests in Charlottesville, VA, Trump claimed that "many sides" were responsible for the clashing that ensured. He also claimed that there were "very fine people" on "both sides" - equating the white supremacists to the counter-protestors fighting against racism. Trump's briefing was nothing more than a dog whistle to white supremacists.
  • White nationalist Richard Spencer praised the president's remarks and thanked him for "defending the truth."
  • Here is the White House transcript containing Trump's remarks.
  • The White House tried to clarify the president's statement by saying that he condemns hate groups.
  • In 2019, Trump was asked if he still thought there were "very fine people on both sides." He responded, "Oh, I’ve answered that question. And if you look at what I said, you will see that that question was answered perfectly. [...] And I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general. Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals."
• 2018 - Trump held a meeting in the Oval Office with lawmakers about protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal. Referring to these countries, Trump grew frustrated and asked, "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?"
  • Trump denied making this comment.
  • On the other hand, the White House suggested that this comment and his remarks about the NFL would resonate with his base.
• 2019 - Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign in a tweet, referring to her as "Pocahontas" and saying, "See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!"
  • The capitalization of "TRAIL" refers to the Trail of Tears, an act of ethnic cleansing which forcibly relocated Native Americans and resulted in thousands of deaths.
• 2019 - Trump fired a series of tweets directed at Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, claiming they are “from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and that they should "go back."
  • Tweets in question: [1], [2], [3]
• 2020 - Trump has referred to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus/China virus" and "kung flu." Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has defended his usage of this rhetoric, claiming that these names simply connect the virus with its place of origin.
  • Trump has been defending his usage of the phrase "Chinese virus" since mid March.
  • Since April, Trump has posted and shared multiple tweets containing the phrases "Chinese virus" and "China virus."
  • Stop AAPI Hate, an organization dedicated to tracking self-reported hostile anti-Asian instances since late March, says it has received over 2,000 reports since the project began. The group says it saw a surge in reports after Trump began using this rhetoric.
    • The group found that many anti-China comments were frequently associated with verbal and physical assault.
• 2020 - Trump went on a Twitter rant bashing NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag (and defended the history of the flag), and lashed out at both the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians for considering changing team names.
  • This sparked Trump's new series of ads claiming that a Biden administration would defund the police.
  • Via Twitter, he then accused Chicago and New York City of protecting criminals under the "Sanctuary City" title.
  • Trump also attacked Bubba Wallace, the only black NASCAR driver, claiming he was promoting a "hoax" by reporting the finding of a noose in his garage.

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Some compilation articles: 86 Times Trump Displayed or Promoted Islamophobia |Donald Trump's Long History of Clashes with Native Americans | Why Trump Dishonors Native Americans | Trump Keeps Being Racist to Native Americans and Getting Away With It | Trump's Attacks on the Legal Immigration System Explained | Trump's Most Insulting - and Violent - Language Is Often Reserved for Immigrants | The Collected Quotes of Donald Trump on "The Blacks" | The Ever-Growing List of Trump's Most Racist Rants | The Trump Administration's Record of Racism
An interesting find: Woody Guthrie wrote about his contempt for his landlord, Fred Trump

Trailer - https://youtu.be/GlKkj_aHMXk
In 2017, explosive allegations first emerged that the authorities of the Chechen Republic were reportedly interning gay men in concentration camps. After a three year period of dormancy, the accusations have resurfaced in a new feature length documentary by HBO Films entitled Welcome to Chechnya. Shot between mid-2017 and early last year, the film has received widespread acclaim among Western media and film critics. Shortly after its release last month, the Trump administration and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an increase in economic sanctions and imposed travel restrictions against Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his family, citing the putative human rights abuses in the southern Russian republic covered in the film.
Most of the boilerplate reviews of Welcome to Chechnya have heaped particular praise upon the documentary’s novelty use of ‘deepfake’ technology to hide the identities of alleged victims in the cinematic investigation. Yet at the closing of the film, one subject who previously appears with his likeness concealed by AI reveals himself at a news conference without the disguise—rendering the prior use of synthetic media fruitless. Maxim Lapunov, who is not even ethnically Chechen but a Russian native of Siberia, is still the only individual to have gone public with the charges. Despite the obvious credibility and authenticity questions regarding the use of such controversial technology, it has not prevented critics from lauding it unquestioningly. Unfortunately, even some in alternative media have been regurgitating the film’s propaganda such as The Intercept, a slick online news publication owned by billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar whose financial ties to the national security state and U.S. soft power institutions conflict with the outlet’s purported mission. Notably, The Intercept’s glowing review of Welcome to Chechnya was written by Mehdi Hasan, a journalist who also works for Al-Jazeera, a news agency owned by the ruling emirs of Qatar, a theocratic dictatorship where homosexuality is actually illegal .
The documentarians follow the work of a purported network of activists who evacuate individuals like Lapunov out of the Caucasian republic. This is the film’s primary source of drama, despite their encountering seemingly no difficulty from the local authorities in doing so. We are then subjected to random cell phone clips of apparent hate crimes and human rights abuses going on, but at no point does the film crew even visit the Argun prison where the anti-gay pogroms are alleged to have taken place. In 2017, the imperial hipsters at Vice news were given unrestricted access to the facility where nothing was found and the warden adamantly denied the allegations — but not without expressing his own disapproval of homosexuality which was assumed by his interrogators to be evidence of the detentions having occurred. In the HBO documentary, a similar hatchet job is done to Ramzan Kadyrov, whose uncomfortable denial of the existence of homosexuality in the deeply conservative and predominantly Muslim republic is implied to be proof that the purges must be happening. One may recall this same sort of smear tactic was previously done to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, Kadyrov and the warden’s predictable responses to the subject serve only as confirmation bias, not confirmation.
The selective outrage in response to the alleged purges, like all things Russia-related, is highly politicized. Western viewers would have no idea that of the 74 countries worldwide where homosexuality is still criminalized, Russia isn’t among them. In more than a dozen of those nations, same-sex activity is punishable by death, a few of which happen to be close strategic allies of the United States, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As recently as 2017, the U.S. was one of 13 countries to vote against a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution condemning countries with capital punishment for same-sex relations to avoid falling-out with those allies, most of which have legal systems established on their respective interpretations of Sharia law. While the local authorities of the Muslim-majority Chechen Republic have been allowed to introduce some elements of the fundamentalist religious code by the Russian government such as the banning of alcohol and gambling and requiring the wearing of hijab by women, as a federal subject it is still ultimately beholden to Russia’s secular constitution. In fact, it was Kadyrov’s predecessor, Alu Alkhanov, who hoped to govern Chechnya with Sharia law, not the current administration. Credulous audiences would have no clue that Kadyrov actually represents the more moderate wing of Chechen politics because there is absolutely no history or context provided, a deliberately misleading choice on the part of the filmmakers.
The absence of any historical background deceptively suggests that theanti-gay sentiment in the mostly Muslim North Caucasus is somehow an extension of the homophobia in Russia itself, despite the autonomous differences in religion, culture, and society. In the last decade, the weaponization of identity politics has been central to Washington’s ongoing demonization of Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, with the issue of LGBT rights particularly given significant attention. While homosexuality is decriminalized, there is admittedly no legal prohibition of discrimination against the LGBT community in Russia. In particular, human rights groups have condemned the notorious federal law passed in 2013 known as the ‘gay propaganda law’ that forbids the distribution of information promoting “non-traditional sexual relations” to minors, which entails the banning of gay pride parades and other LGBT rights demonstrations. However, the measure enjoys widespread support among the Russian people whose social conservatism has been resuscitated by the Orthodox Church since the breakup of the Soviet Union. It is rather ironic and hypocritical that the West has since taken issue with this turn, considering it facilitated that political transformation.
In reality, the reason for the relentless vilification of Putin has absolutely nothing to to do with the exaggerated plight of gays in Russia and a lot more to do with the reversal of policies under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. In the nineties, the mass privatization of the former state-owned enterprises during Russia’s conversion to capitalism resulted in the instant impoverishment of millions and the rapid rise of the notorious ‘oligarchs’ which the West characterized at the time as progression towards democracy. In the loans-for-shares scheme, a new ruling class of bankers and industrialists accumulated enormous wealth overnight and by the middle of the decade, owned or controlled much of the country’s media outlets. The oligarchs held enormous power and influence over the deeply unpopular Yeltsin, who would surely have lost reelection in 1996 without their backing and the assistance of Western meddling in the form of massive loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
While economic disparity and corruption persists today, overall the Russian economy has been rebuilt after its energy assets were re-nationalized and brought back under state control by the Putin administration, resulting in improved living standards and income levels for the last two decades. By the same measure, the Russian people can hardly be blamed for associating homosexuality with the unbridled neoliberalism, vulture capitalism and draconian austerity imposed on their country by Western capital. It is also truly paradoxical that the notion of “Russian oligarchs” has become synonymous with Putin in the minds of Westerners when many of the most obscenely wealthy oligarchs of the Yeltsin era now live in exile as his most ardent political opponents after they faced prosecution for their financial crimes. Not coincidentally, the initial reports of the ‘gay gulags’ in Chechnya were published in Novaya Gazeta, an anti-Putin newspaper partly owned by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the very man who ushered in the economic liberalization which auctioned off the state assets to oligarchs like co-owner Alexander Lebedev.
Gorbachev’s reforms, particularly that of perestroika (“restructuring”), also had destructive consequences for the national question and ethno-regional interests. V.I. Lenin had famously called the Russian Empire a “prison house of nations”, in reference to its heterogeneous range of nationalities and ethnic groups. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 especially re-agitated ethno-national conflicts in the Caucasus, a region that had enjoyed several decades of relative harmony and stability under socialism with rights and representation that did not exist in pre-revolutionary Russia. While Azerbaijan and Georgia were granted independence, Chechnya and many other municipalities remained under federal control of the Russian Federation, as sovereignty did not constitutionally apply because it had never been an independent state. Not to mention, its oil and gas reserves are essential to Russia’s very economic survival.
The jihadism which plagued the Caucasus was an outgrowth of the U.S.-backed ‘holy war’ in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the brainchild of Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor in the Jimmy Carter administration. It was the Polish-born Brzezinski who not only authored the geostrategy of arming the mujahideen against the Soviets but the efforts to turn Russia’s own large Muslim minority community against them. This was mostly unsuccessful as the majority of its 20 million Muslims (10% of the population) are harmoniously integrated into Russian society, but the Atlanticists did fan the flames of a militant secessionist movement in Chechnya that erupted in a violent insurgency and became increasingly Islamist as the conflict dragged on. For Washington, the hope was that the West could gain access to Caspian oil by encouraging the al-Qaeda-linked separatists rebranded as “rebels” vulnerable to its domination in the energy-rich region. The collapse of the USSR already escalated hostilities between the intermingling ethnic communities of the region, but the antagonisms were intensified by CIA soft power cutouts like the Jamestown Foundation fomenting the secessionist insurrection. As the separatist movement grew increasingly Wahhabist thanks to U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia, its more moderate nationalist faction led by Akhmad Kadyrov eventually defected back to the Russian side. The elder Kadyrov would pay the price when he was assassinated in a 2004 stadium bombing in Grozny during an annual Victory Day celebration, with his son becoming one of his successors.
The Kremlin’s support for the Kadyrovs should be understood as a compromise which prevented the more radical Islamists from taking power, which apparently Washington would be happier with running the North Caucasus. What a human rights utopia Chechnya would be as a breakaway Islamic state, under the salafists which during the Chechen wars committed unspeakable acts of terrorism including the taking of hospital patients, theater goers, and even hundreds of schoolchildren as hostages. One can be certain that if there aren’t anti-gay pogroms going on in Chechnya now, there definitely would be without the likes of Kadyrov in power. In the documentary, what the Chechen leader does implicitly acknowledge may be occurring are individual honor killings within families and clans, a social problem common in other Muslim countries such as Pakistan, and certainly not a human rights issue particular to Chechnya. Many instances of honor killings in the Muslim world have included homosexuality as a motive for the extrajudicial killings by relatives of victims believed to have betrayed the family honor. On the other hand, Kadyrov himself has overseen the establishment of unprecedented reconciliation commissions to address the issue of honor culture, blood feuds and vendetta codes of Caucasian tribes. Kadyrov’s promotion of reconciliation has made significant progress in reducing such killings which were rampant during the Chechen Wars as family members would often seek to avenge the deaths of loved ones. Now that the region is in a period of relative stability, peace and economic recovery, with the once devastated city of Grozny now known as the ‘Dubai of the North Caucasus’, the West is suddenly feigning concern over human rights.
The swift end brought to the conflict by Putin was another reason for his becoming a target of Washington who had been counting on the balkanization of southern Russia. In a pinnacle of imperial projection, the explanation for Putin’s rise to power has since been revised by the Atlanticists to his having somehow secretly masterminded the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings while director of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the KGB’s successor), as if the neocons hope to deflect all of the longstanding rumors about the Bush administration and the 9/11 attacks onto the Kremlin. Except this Machiavellian conspiracy would be a lot more believable if the Chechen wars had not been going on since the early nineties, with much worse terrorist attacks already having been committed by the separatists, such as the taking of thousands of hospital patients as hostages in southern Russia. Since the end of the Chechen Wars, on the flip side the U.S. has also backed Russian opposition figure and Putin critic Alexei Navalny, a right-wing Islamophobe who has pledged to secede the North Caucasus while comparing its Muslim inhabitants to cockroaches. Despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric and minuscule 2% support among Russians, Navalny has been depicted as a “pro-democracy” and “anti-corruption” campaigner in Western media, who have been crying foul over his recent suspected poisoning in Russia and ensuing comatose airlift to Germany. If only the naive American liberals who read The New York Times and The Washington Post had any idea that Mr. Navalny has far more in common with the dreaded Mr. Trump than Putin does.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has already experienced blowback for its nurturing of terrorism in the Caucasus in the form of the Boston Marathon bombings, which recently returned to the news when convicted Chechen-American perpetrator Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence was vacated on appeal last month. In the aftermath of the April 2013 attacks, it was revealed that Tsarnaev’s deceased older brother and co-conspirator Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been radicalized attending seminars financed by the Jamestown Foundation while traveling abroad in Tblisi, Georgia, and the brothers’ uncle Ruslan Tsarni had previously been married to the daughter of high-ranking U.S. intelligence officer Graham Fuller, Brzezinski’s CIA station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the Afghan-Soviet war. It also came to light that ‘Uncle Ruslan’ had previously worked for the CIA-linked United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and established a company called the Congress for Chechen International Organizations which funded Islamic militants in the Caucasus. Despite the astounding ‘coincidences’ surrounding the Tsarnaev clan, Uncle Ruslan was never considered a person of interest by the FBI, who had ignored warnings by the Russian FSB of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s extremism prior to the attacks.
Two years before Putin’s election, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the prime mover of the West‘s plan to dominate the globe by using Islam to bring down the USSR in delivering the Soviet equivalent of the Vietnam War, wrote in The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997):
“…The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power.”
Those words were written before the return of both Russia and China on the world stage, developments that have thrown a monkey wrench into Washington’s plans which the Russophobic Warsaw-native did not anticipate in his blueprint for Western hegemony. When the U.S.-backed headchoppers in the Syrian war nearly had control of Damascus, just a thousand miles or so from Sochi, the threat of jihadism returning to the Caucasus became very real. Beginning at the Munich Conference in 2007, Putin had begun to criticize the monopolistic expansion of NATO on Russia’s borders — but after the subsequent overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi where Moscow witnessed Libya transformed into a hotbed of terrorism like post-Saddam Iraq, the prospect of the same happening in Syria was an existential threat that could not be tolerated. In mainstream media, reality has been inverted where Moscow’s self-defense has been portrayed as expansionism, even though the so-called “annexation” of Crimea was virtually nonviolent compared to the Nazi junta initiated by Washington in Ukraine and the Russian-speaking people of Donetsk and Luhansk who voted to join Russia did not wish to end up like those massacred in Odessa. Besides, is the U.S. not currently annexing northeast Syria? The Crimean parliament and Syrian government invited Moscow, while the same cannot be said for the US presence in violation of international law.
Those with no respect for the sovereignty of nations in Washington would prefer Americans to see Russia as an adversary. During the Cold War, the threat was communism, but with capitalism restored in Eastern Europe, it became necessary to manipulate liberals into perceiving Russia as a ultra conservative regime. They must also keep Americans from knowing the true history of US-Russia relations — that Russia was the first nation to recognize American independence when Catherine the Great’s neutrality during the Revolutionary War indirectly aided the Thirteen Colonies in their victory against the Loyalists and Great Britain. During the War of Independence, the Russian Empress had maintained relations with the U.S. and rebuffed British requests for military assistance. The Russian Empire also later helped secure the Union victory during the Civil War, with an Imperial Navy fleet off the shores of the Pacific preventing the Confederates from landing troops on the west coast and deterring intervention by the British and the French. Then as Allies in WWII, while the U.S. was victorious in the Pacific, it was the Soviets who truly won the war in Europe, a feat the Anglo-Americans are still trying to take credit for to this day. Unfortunately, despite his promising rhetorical embrace of détente with Moscow that has made him the subject of political persecution, Donald Trump has proven to be every bit as hostile toward Russia as his forerunners. With the latest actions taken by his state department regarding Chechnya that are right out of the Brzezinski playbook, the idiom that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” certainly applies to Washington and US-Russia relations.
*Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at [email protected]