Trump VS COVID-19 Threat

[lpetrich]

Trump isn’t the only populist leader losing the battle against the coronavirus - The Washington Post

Some of the most successful countries in fighting covid-19 are democracies with well-educated populaces, high levels of trust and transparency, and governments that are run by technocrats. They have tested early and often, and they have used contact tracing to isolate carriers. Examples include New Zealand, Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan. Some autocracies with scientifically literate leaders, such as Vietnam, Hong Kong and Singapore, have also performed well.

Even China, it must be acknowledged, though China made the disastrous mistake of trying to cover it up at first. That let the disease spread outside its borders.

By contrast, governments led by populists, whether elected or not, have generally been much less successful. Populists — who claim to embody the will of the people against the corrupt elites — are suspicious of expert opinion. So they tend to ignore the advice of scientists, preferring “alternative facts” tailored to their own liking. They specialize in dividing the population, so it’s hard for them to unite against a common threat. And even more so than other leaders, they rely on economic growth for legitimacy; hence they are reluctant to suffer short-term economic costs in the interest of public health.

"President" Trump is an obvious example of this. Hungary and Poland have escaped the worst of the virus, but Belarus is another story.

But Belarus has one of Eastern Europe’s highest infection rates because populist strongman Alexander Lukashenko refuses to order a lockdown. He has allowed soccer matches and church services to proceed, and this weekend he plans to hold a military parade to commemorate the Nazis’ defeat, because he doesn’t want anyone to say that “we were scared.”

Still, due no doubt to undercounting, Belarus has only 112 confirmed deaths. It seems like paradise compared to Britain, a much richer country that just passed Italy for the highest number of confirmed coronavirus deaths in Europe — more than 30,000.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a more erudite and genteel populist than Lukashenko or Trump, but he shares their contempt for facts and their proclivity for lying.

But up there with Trump is Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

 

[lpetrich]

Other countries are winning against the virus. We are quitting. - The Washington Post

Around the world, countries are winning the battle against the coronavirus and beginning a responsible return to work, school and leisure, confident that their governments have the deadly virus in check.

But the United States plays the loser. Unwilling to do the hard work needed to beat the pandemic, we are quitting: forcing people back to work without protections people in other countries enjoy. The most powerful country in the world is failing.

About reckless reopening,

This is state-sanctioned killing. It is a conscious decision to accept 2,000 preventable deaths every day, because our leaders believe the victims are the poor schlubs who work in meat-processing plants, not “regular folks,” as Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack memorably put it this week.

It is deliberately sacrificing the old, factory workers, and black and Hispanic Americans, who are dying at higher rates.

While much of the aid so far has gone to big businesses without any strings, aid that I suspect that Trump hopes will go into stock buybacks, to inflate the stock market.

The mindless reopening is as stupid as it is immoral. Does anybody truly believe Americans will return to work while the virus rages? Send our kids to schools without tools in place to stop outbreaks? Put our parents in retirement homes that, without adequate testing, are often death traps? Enjoy a restaurant, theater, flight to Disney World or trip to the mall, knowing it could kill us? Reopening masquerades as a political cause — LIBERATE! — but it is really a lazy unwillingness to do the hard work to defeat the virus, and to restore our economy.

 

[lpetrich]

Republicans now want us to embrace mass death - The Washington Post

The message from President Trump and Republicans on the novel coronavirus has gone through multiple phases, each as misleading and/or bizarre as the last. First they told us the virus would barely touch us. Then they said it was serious but Trump’s management would quickly make it disappear. Then they said it could have been worse, and anyway it isn’t Trump’s fault.

Now they’re arriving at what may be the most appalling message of all:

Sure, hundreds of thousands of Americans may die. But suck it up, America: We’ve got to get the economy going.

Then such things as Republican governors threatening to revoke unemployment benefits for anyone who does not wish to return to work, no matter how dangerous it is. Also Rep govs seemingly willing to accept the continued spread of the virus.

Trump signed an executive order declaring meatpacking plants “critical infrastructure” so that they stay open, even though there are now 10,000 covid-19 cases associated with such plants; workers at 170 facilities in 29 states have tested positive. But the president is getting personally involved to make sure there are enough burgers at Wendy’s.

...
When you point out how insane it is to be rushing headlong into a resumption of economic and social activity while the virus continues to spread and about 2,000 Americans die from it every day, you’re likely to be told that you’re trivializing the suffering of those who have lost their incomes or their businesses.

...
It’s almost impossible to overstate what an appalling dereliction of duty it is that the Trump administration, having screwed up its pandemic response so spectacularly, is now essentially washing its hands of the whole effort, no longer bothering to try to enact a coordinated nationwide testing and tracing system, and just telling everyone to get back to work.

...
We’re moving toward an utterly horrifying partisan divide, in which Democrats want to contain the virus so that we’re able to get the economy back on its feet, while Republicans decide that the only brave and manly thing to do is to stop worrying about the virus and “get back to normal” immediately, no matter how many Americans it kills. In fact, we may soon reach the point where dismissing all those deaths is precisely how you show your loyalty to Trump.

After saying how bad Communists are because they have killed lots of people, they seem eager to imitate those villains.

 

[lpetrich]

Republicans praise Trump's pandemic response with Senate majority at risk - POLITICO

Senate Republicans are settling on their pandemic message as they fight to save their majority: President Donald Trump did a tremendous job.

The coronavirus has killed more than 70,000 Americans, tanked the once-soaring U.S. economy and shows no signs of abating. And Trump’s ineffective leadership is largely to blame, say Democrats who are growing optimistic they can seize the Senate after being relegated to the minority for six years.

Trump calls the pandemic ‘worse than Pearl Harbor’ — and declares a cease-fire - The Washington Post - rather satirical: imagining how Trump might have managed the Manhattan Project of WWII to design and build nuclear bombs.

One can imagine how things might have gone if Donald Trump had been the president who received Einstein’s letter: After two months, he would have congratulated himself for a “phenomenal job,” wound down his atomic task force and left the whole nuclear thing to the states.

Complete with being a big fat mess.

 

[lpetrich]

Revealed: major anti-lockdown group's links to America's far right | The far right | The Guardian

Leaked audio recordings and online materials obtained by the Guardian reveal that one of the most prominent anti-lockdown protest groups, American Revolution 2.0 (AR2), has received extensive assistance from well-established far-right actors, some with extremist connections.

AR2 presents itself as a grassroots network, but the recordings and other materials reveal its allies include a well-connected Tea Party co-founder and a family of serial online activists who have rolled out dozens of “reopen” websites and Facebook groups.

Its website was built and is hosted by a web designer long active in far-right circles online, and who runs a bespoke social media network for the militia movement. One of that website’s previous users bombed a mosque, and another user, now memorialized on the site, was recently shot dead by police in Maryland during a firearms raid.

The Dorr brothers - Chris, Ben, Aaron and Matthew - figure prominently in this activism. They have created a lot of "reopen" activist pages and sites and they have likely registered a lot of "reopen" domain names.

Some of these sites acted as major hubs for disinformation about the pandemic, and many were suspended by Facebook. But the Guardian was able to establish that as of Monday, at least 20 “reopen” or “American Revolution 2” pages for cities and states including Virginia, Florida and Los Angeles were running as private groups.

The pages viewed by the Guardian featured content promoting “deep state” or anti-China conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination beliefs and denialism about the danger of Covid-19. Some, such as “ReopenNC”, had tens of thousands of members.

From some recordings that The Guardian obtained:

In the recording, Ellis is heard to say he has spoken with “Mark Meckler, he’s the one who owns the openthestates.com website, and he’s super connected with [Sean] Hannity, Tucker [Carlson], [Mark] Levin, [Ben] Shapiro, Charlie Kirk” – implying Meckler could help him to connect with prominent conservative media figures.

Meckler’s openthestates.com is a slick anti-lockdown protest website that links back to another website for Convention of States (COS), a “dark money” organization attached to the big-money rightwing non-profit Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG).

Meckler’s non-profits have been widely reported as being in receipt of money from funds connected to the Koch brothers, the Coors foundation, and other rightwing megadonors.

It figures.

 

[lpetrich]

Updates on the state pacts.

Western States

Western States Pact is a promising move | The Seattle Times

Gov. Inslee’s decision to coordinate the state’s reopening decision with those in Oregon and California was a shrewd move in several ways.

The states share the Interstate 5 corridor, access to the Pacific Ocean and immense economic overlap, so pooling coronavirus data and decision-making resources to craft a plan makes sense. The Western States Pact also potentially can combine purchasing powers of the three states for economies of scale on key supplies, such as the masks, gowns and gloves hospitals need. And if social restrictions are generally the same in all three states, there will be little opening for flouters to exploit differences in rules by hopping borders.

Colorado and Nevada join Western States Pact as states work on unified coronavirus strategy - CNNPolitics

Dates:
2020 Apr 13: CA, OR, WA
2020 Apr 27: CO, NV

Northeastern States
Dates:
2020 Apr 13: CT, DE, MA, NJ, NY, PA, RI

Informal Capital States
While Northeast states form pact, Maryland coordinating coronavirus response with Virginia and Washington, D.C. - Baltimore Sun
MD, DC, VA

Northern Midwestern / Great-Lakes States
2020 Apr 16: IN, IL, KY, MI, MN, OH, WI

The US states uniting to combat coronavirus amid leadership vacuum | US news | The Guardian
Informal Northern New England:
ME, NH, VT

 

[lpetrich]

The Economy Will Not Open Up Without a Credible Plan to Address the Public Health Crisis - "Donald Trump is abandoning his own Covid-19 strategy because it got hard and he’s a quitter" -- then what he recently tweeted

I'll collect the state blocs:

Western States
2020 Apr 13: CA, OR, WA
2020 Apr 27: CO, NV

Northeastern States
2020 Apr 13: CT, DE, MA, NJ, NY, PA, RI

Northern New England States
(informal) ME, NH, VT

Capitol States
(informal) DC, MD, VT

Great Lakes States (Northern Midwest)
2020 Apr 16: IN, IL, KY, MI, MN, OH, WI

 

[bilby]

Not dodging the facts. He said it, then almost immediately corrected himself. To claim otherwise is spin. If you think misspeaking disqualifies you to run for President, I have some bad news for you. And if you think Biden is the least articulate person to have ever run for President, I have some even worse news for you. Neither is even remotely factual.



But speaking of dodging, you still have yet to provide any evidence to your claim that, "The New York Times itself has admitted that around 87% of the mainstream media is pro Dem". We can talk about dodging, if you like.

Agree to a point that every now and then one can " misspeak" , but with Creepy Pedo Joe it's an every day occurrence. Let's face it, a dude who mistakes his sister for his wife is not fit to be POTUS!

What about a dude who mistakes his daughter for his wife?

 

[angelo]

“The virus that we’re talking about having to do, a lot of people think that goes away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in, typically that will go away in April,” (Donald J. Trump, February 10, 2020)

Dateline May 7th, Phoenix Arizona.

Today's high temperature: 105.

Forecast high for tomorrow: 103.

Saturday: 102.

Still waiting for the virus to "go away."

The Chinese virus still hanging around killing Americans [ ambient temperature makes no difference to it] and many other thousands throughout the world is all the Trumps fault. Right, got it now. How could I be so stupid not to see that before!

 

[angelo]

Not dodging the facts. He said it, then almost immediately corrected himself. To claim otherwise is spin. If you think misspeaking disqualifies you to run for President, I have some bad news for you. And if you think Biden is the least articulate person to have ever run for President, I have some even worse news for you. Neither is even remotely factual.



But speaking of dodging, you still have yet to provide any evidence to your claim that, "The New York Times itself has admitted that around 87% of the mainstream media is pro Dem". We can talk about dodging, if you like.

Agree to a point that every now and then one can " misspeak" , but with Creepy Pedo Joe it's an every day occurrence. Let's face it, a dude who mistakes his sister for his wife is not fit to be POTUS!

What about a dude who mistakes his daughter for his wife?

Meaning the Trump of course. Who else! Do pray tell when that incident happened, to enlighten me as I haven't a clue!

 

[bilby]

“The virus that we’re talking about having to do, a lot of people think that goes away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in, typically that will go away in April,” (Donald J. Trump, February 10, 2020)

Dateline May 7th, Phoenix Arizona.

Today's high temperature: 105.

Forecast high for tomorrow: 103.

Saturday: 102.

Still waiting for the virus to "go away."

The Chinese virus still hanging around killing Americans [ ambient temperature makes no difference to it] and many other thousands throughout the world is all the Trumps fault. Right, got it now. How could I be so stupid not to see that before!

Trump specifically said that ambient temperature would make a difference. His error in this regard is absolutely his fault.

How you could be so stupid is entirely a matter for you.

 

[Ford]

“The virus that we’re talking about having to do, a lot of people think that goes away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in, typically that will go away in April,” (Donald J. Trump, February 10, 2020)

Dateline May 7th, Phoenix Arizona.

Today's high temperature: 105.

Forecast high for tomorrow: 103.

Saturday: 102.

Still waiting for the virus to "go away."

The Chinese virus still hanging around killing Americans [ ambient temperature makes no difference to it] and many other thousands throughout the world is all the Trumps fault. Right, got it now. How could I be so stupid not to see that before!

Trump specifically said that ambient temperature would make a difference. His error in this regard is absolutely his fault.

How you could be so stupid is entirely a matter for you.

Ah, but it goes beyond just stupidity about ambient temperature.


Trump figured his job was to throw out any possible "cure" - no matter how outlandish or unlikely - because it was a comforting or hopeful message to the American people. Rather than lean on actual science, this idiot picked up on any random thing he'd "heard that many people are saying" and threw it out there in a press briefing.

Heat. Easter. Bleach. A completely unrelated medical treatment. A "miracle."

Ambient temperature is just one of the many things he threw against the wall and hoped would stick.


Here we are in the middle of a pandemic that has killed (checks most recent numbers) 78,000 Americans and the "leader of the free world" is still stuck on stupid "many people are saying" therapies that nobody is saying are going to save us.


Anyone who is still defending this moron is a complete fucking idiot.

 

[bilby]

Trump specifically said that ambient temperature would make a difference. His error in this regard is absolutely his fault.

How you could be so stupid is entirely a matter for you.

Ah, but it goes beyond just stupidity about ambient temperature.


Trump figured his job was to throw out any possible "cure" - no matter how outlandish or unlikely - because it was a comforting or hopeful message to the American people. Rather than lean on actual science, this idiot picked up on any random thing he'd "heard that many people are saying" and threw it out there in a press briefing.

Heat. Easter. Bleach. A completely unrelated medical treatment. A "miracle."

Ambient temperature is just one of the many things he threw against the wall and hoped would stick.


Here we are in the middle of a pandemic that has killed (checks most recent numbers) 78,000 Americans and the "leader of the free world" is still stuck on stupid "many people are saying" therapies that nobody is saying are going to save us.


Anyone who is still defending this moron is a complete fucking idiot.

Many people are saying that US combat deaths in WWI were only 53,402. So an entire world war was actually less deadly than your current president.

 

[Elixir]

Many people are saying that US combat deaths in WWI were only 53,402. So an entire world war was actually less deadly than your current president.

Many people lack all sense of scale. At this rate it is fairly assured that for America the C-19 death toll will exceed the sum of deaths from WWI, WWII and 20 years in Viet Nam.
Ford tells it like it is:

Anyone who is still defending this moron is a complete fucking idiot.

 

[lpetrich]

aída chávez on Twitter: "NEW: I interview @AOC about coronavirus legislation, the pandemic’s devastating impact on her district (which is home to mostly working-class people of color), how Congress is abdicating its responsibilities, other internal dynamics, and Animal Crossing https://t.co/CWYg7EQd6b" / Twitter
noting
AOC Says She Is “Reduced to” Lobbying for Burial Costs
Very nice interview with someone who has tried to get help for her district - she has used some of her campaign funds to buy donations for the people there.

It’s really hard to understate how devastating this has been, in terms of our legislative and oversight abilities, for an average member of Congress to do their job. Even our ability to just write and submit legislation has been completely decimated because a lot of our institutions … whether it’s the Office of Legislative Counsel, which is in charge of actually formalizing the text for our bills, whether it’s being able to have hearings in person … We’re not able to do our job legislatively. At all.

Interviewer Aida Chavez asked "Is it disorienting to go out and give people food and supplies in your community, then going to work and seeing Congress bail out corporations?"

It’s devastating. I kind of went off on an Instagram story last week because I feel like I’m the cleaning crew for Congress’s neglect and mess.

... So in terms of there being disorientation, for me, on one hand it gives you whiplash, but on the other hand it also gives you an immense amount of clarity.

I could not stomach voting for that last relief bill, knowing that I had to go straight back to my community and go right back to having to fundraise for diapers and fundraise for food myself because the federal government has chosen not to.

We’re having trillions of dollars in federal response being hacked out by three to five people in a backroom. And then they bring it back to over 500 members of Congress and the only option that you get is yes or no. And I’m personally boggled as to why these bills are passing almost unanimously with almost no dissent. This is pretty unprecedented in the history of Congress.

... t’s just about these bills showing up and saying like, “Are you going to vote no on $2 for a hospital?” And doing that means that you’re going to have to allow unprecedented corporate expansion of power in the United States, and the idea that it is almost unacceptable to reject that choice is … it’s a sad state of affairs that we’re in right now frankly.

She then described how some Congresspeople vote as a bloc on various issues, giving them a lot of power.

So there’s potential here, but also we don’t know what kinda bill this is going to be, right? Is this a messaging bill that just intends on putting a bunch of things through and leaving it on [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell’s desk and having him say no to it? Or is this a serious bill where we’re going to commit to making sure that we get some key priorities?

 

[lpetrich]

She then gets into a provision about bailing out corporate lobbyists.

That one, that one, I think, is one of the most dangerous ones that I’ve heard. That one probably takes the cake. The fact that we are going to bail out lobbyists before we bail out black businesses, small businesses, in some of the most impacted ZIP codes in the country is appalling.

...
In terms of other red flags, I had heard things about a bailout of health insurance companies without actually materially expanding health care coverage, or pairing that with an expansion of Medicare or Medicaid, and that to me is extremely concerning.

... And I think it’s in the same smash-and-grab expansion of corporate power that we are seeing in a lot of other aspects of this bailout and of these relief packages.”

Then about talking to Congressional leadership about what needs to be done.

I think what we’re trying to get done is not some big bold progressive statement, I’m trying to get our families burial funds because people are losing their spouse and their child due to coronavirus in my district. Now, all of a sudden, you have a family that’s making $40,000 a year that has, you know, $35,000 of funeral expenses.

...
But on top of that, we’re also begging for city and state funding, direct funding, local funding, because we’re also talking about mass layoffs for municipal governments. OK, the state of New York, in some ways, has been certainly more progressive than the Trump administration. They will do, in the state of California and other states, what Trump will not. And we are now at the point where we are talking about cities and municipalities that may be on the brink of laying off huge portions of their municipal workers and their frontline workers and first responders.

New York City, for instance, may run out at the end of May.

And that is why one of my big concerns has been with this approach of, “We’ll get to it next time, we’ll get to it next time” — it’s not just about when you get to it, it’s about if you can get to it in time. If you show up to a person who needs CPR two minutes late, it’s too late. That’s the situation that we’re in right now. So we’re kind of fighting to see if we’re going to do enough and if we’re going to do enough in time.

Then about Animal Crossing, which she describes as "quite good actually, for my mental health."

 

[Ford]

Many people are saying that US combat deaths in WWI were only 53,402. So an entire world war was actually less deadly than your current president.

Many people lack all sense of scale.

Many people lack all sense of perspective. Here in my state (Arizona) the governor issued a "stay at home" order a little over a month ago. It isn't really so much an "order" as it is a suggestion. People can still leave their homes, go to work if they have an "essential" job, go grocery shopping, or (if my 25 minute wait at Whataburger is any indication) go out in large numbers to get a fast food meal.

Compare that to...oh...the Chilean Miners. In 2010, 33 miners were trapped 2,300 feet below ground and 3 miles from the mine's entrance for 69 days. Longer than any American has had to "shelter in place."

They didn't have Netflix. They couldn't order from Door Dash. They couldn't go out to walk the dog or protest or go outside at all because "outside" was a half mile above their heads.

Yet Covidiots are treating this minor inconvenience as if it were akin to being trapped in a mine with a side of "oppression" thrown in. Give me a break. I can't get a haircut? Oh woe is me. If this keeps up too much longer I'll look like it's 1975 again. Just, without the bell bottoms...that I'm sure I could order online and have delivered if I really wanted a pair.

 

[lpetrich]

Most Americans Think It’s Too Soon To Return To What Life Was Like Pre-Pandemic | FiveThirtyEight - unfortunately, it described an all-or-nothing scenario. It should have asked about partial-reopening scenarios, like everybody wearing surgical masks and first opening businesses with mainly outdoor service, like outdoor retail-store pickup and outdoor restaurant service. Drive-through fast-food service should be OK.

Americans Didn’t Wait For Their Governors To Tell Them To Stay Home Because Of COVID-19 | FiveThirtyEight

A favorite new debate taking place around the Twitter hearth is whether complying with social distancing guidelines is a partisan statement in and of itself. Blue states, such as Washington and New York, were initially hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis, and stay-at-home orders went into effect as early as March 19 (California was first out of the gate). A number of red states have refrained from implementing such public-safety orders, and many Republican-leaning states, particularly in the South, didn’t issue orders for weeks afterward — as late as April 3 in Florida and Georgia. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis waffled over closing the state but eventually did so under pressure from state lawmakers.

But, at least on the front end of this crisis, Americans weren’t deciding what to do based on politics. Americans living in red states appear to have taken the crisis plenty seriously; data shows that residents there were staying home well before their governors issued stay-at-home orders.

Or at least many of them. This means that one ought to be very cautious about reopening. Like what blue-state governors have been proposing. The red-state ones have been much more reckless, it must be noted.

 

[lpetrich]

Not the Apocalypse They Wanted | Adam Lee

We were promised fire and panic and blood in the streets, shambling hordes of zombies and cities disappearing in mushroom clouds. We were promised leather-clad biker gangs and the ruins of famous monuments and the Statue of Liberty half-buried on the shore. We were promised the collapse of civilization’s flimsy veneer and a resurgence of humanity’s underlying savagery, a world where the most ruthless would rise to the top.

Instead, what we got was quieter, more subtle and more slow-rolling than anyone could have guessed. It’s an apocalypse of sheltering at home and baking bread, rainbows in windows and long walks in spring and Lysol.

He continues with

It’s laid bare the fragile global supply chains and the invisible, underpaid armies of service workers we depend on. It’s exposed the tenuousness of a social safety net that was designed in the hope no one would use it and the deadly danger we put ourselves in when we elect game-show leaders who disregard science and sneer at expertise.

But certain people seem to want an end-of-the-world scenario more like some Hollywood movie. Like those armed protesters who tried to storm the Michigan statehouse and threaten elected officials.

Racist groups across the country are trying to use the coronavirus as a recruiting tool. They variously disparage the virus as a government plot to bring about totalitarianism or as a plague brought by immigrants, but either way, they’re convinced it will bring about the civil war they seek ...

Some white supremacists have even suggested deliberately spreading the coronavirus as a form of crude bioterrorism, according to an intelligence brief from the Department of Homeland Security ...

The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists - The New York Times - "White supremacists seek to stoke the fear and disruption caused by the pandemic to push their agenda and to recruit."

• Federal investigators have learned that white supremacists discussed plans to use the coronavirus as a bioweapon, Yahoo News reported, citing a weekly intelligence brief from a division of the Department of Homeland Security.
• "White Racially Motivated Violent Extremists have recently commented on the coronavirus stating that it is an 'OBLIGATION' to spread it should any of them contract the virus," the document said.
• White supremacists suggested targeting law enforcement and "nonwhite" people in particular.
• They floated options like leaving "saliva on door handles" at local FBI offices, spitting on elevator buttons, spreading the virus in "nonwhite neighborhoods," and being in public with their perceived enemies.

Federal law enforcement document reveals white supremacists discussed using coronavirus as a bioweapon - "White supremacists discussed plans to weaponize coronavirus via “saliva,” a “spray bottle” or “laced items,” according to a weekly intelligence brief distributed by a federal law enforcement division on Feb. 17."

 

[lpetrich]

Some of the Michigan protesters' targets are fighting back: Michigan lawmaker enters State Capitol flanked by armed black men - Business Insider

• Michigan Rep. Sarah Anthony was flanked by three black men toting rifles when she entered the State Capitol in Lansing on Wednesday.
• It's been less than a week since hundreds of protesters descended on the building while the legislature was in session, carrying guns and racist symbols to oppose the coronavirus lockdown.
• "It was just unnerving to me as a woman and as a person. These community volunteers today won't be needed all the time, but they wanted to have a presence today," Anthony told City Pulse.
• Michael Lynn, Jr. a community activist who organized Anthony's security detail said, "We came out here today to make sure we could provide some protection, even if it's only just to make her feel better."

Another news story mentioned 5 black men and 1 Hispanic man, and different kinds of guns.