In Brief: May 17, 2020

Democrats investigating Trump firing of State Dept. watchdog

WASHINGTON — Democrats demanded on Saturday that the White House hand over all records related to President Donald Trump’s latest firing of a federal watchdog, this time at the State Department, and they suggested Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was responsible, in what “may be an illegal act of retaliation.”

“We unalterably oppose the politically-motivated firing of inspectors general and the President’s gutting of these critical positions,” the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote in a letter to the administration announcing their investigation.

Trump announced late Friday that he was firing the inspector general, Steve Linick, an Obama administration appointee whose office was critical of what it saw as political bias in the State Department’s management. The ouster was one more move by the president against independent executive branch watchdogs who have found fault with his administration.

New York Rep. Eliot Engel and New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez sent letters to the White House, the State Department and the inspector general’s office asking that administration officials preserve all records related to Linick’s dismissal and provide them to the committees by this coming Friday. They promised to “look deeply into this matter” and said they would seek to interview White House officials. They said they “trust that the White House will cooperate fully with our investigation.”

A senior department official said Trump removed Linick from his job on Friday but gave no reason for the action. In a letter to Congress, Trump said Linick, who had held the job since 2013, no longer had his full confidence and that his removal would take effect in 30 days. Trump did not mention Linick by name in his letter.

Local health agencies struggle to ramp up virus tracking

ATLANTA — As state after state begins to reopen, local health departments charged with tracking down everyone who has been in close contact with those who test positive for the new coronavirus are still scrambling to hire the number of people they need to do the job.

They are often hundreds — even thousands — of people short of targets for their contact tracing programs. Public health experts have consistently said robust programs to test more people and trace their contacts are needed for states to safely reboot their economies and prevent a resurgence of the virus.

Cook County, Illinois, has just 29 contact tracers serving 2.5 million people living in suburban communities around Chicago. Los Angeles County, which at more than 10 million people has a population slightly greater than Michigan, has just 400 of the estimated 6,000 contact tracers it will need under California’s criteria for a broader reopening.

With 2.7 million residents and roughly 100 to 300 new COVID-19 cases a day, Miami-Dade County has 175 people tracking down people who were potentially exposed to the virus.

From wire sources

“The whole point of the lockdown was to buy time to have a better way to keep numbers down,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the humanitarian response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa during the Obama administration. “And that’s why so many of us are screaming ourselves hoarse about testing and tracing.”

Restaurants and racing can resume, but new rules abound

NEW ORLEANS — Restaurants can reopen in New Orleans, a city famous for its cuisine, but they must take reservations and limit the number of diners. Auto and horse racing tracks in New York can resume competitions but without spectators.

Officials cautiously eased more restrictions Saturday on eateries, shops and outdoor venues as they tried to restart economies without triggering a surge in new coronavirus infections. But the reopenings came with new rules designed to curb the spread of the disease — another indication that the familiar ways of dining out or watching sporting events are gone for now.

Public health experts warn that the pandemic, which has killed more than 88,000 people in the U.S. and 300,000 worldwide, could pick up again if precautions are not taken or officials move too quickly to get people back to work.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said horse racing tracks and the Watkins Glen International auto track can reopen with “no crowds, no fans.” He also said he could envision a return of Major League Baseball in New York, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, also without spectators.

“If it works economically, that would be great,” he said.

Hundreds demand justice for Arbery at Georgia rally

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Justice for Ahmaud Arbery, a black man killed during a pursuit by a white man and his son in Georgia, isn’t just prison time for his killers — it’s changes in a local justice system that never charged them with a crime, rallygoers said Saturday.

Hundreds of people came to the Glynn County courthouse demanding accountability for a case in which charges weren’t filed until state officials stepped in after a leaked video sparked national outrage.

Arbery, 25, was killed Feb. 23 just outside the port city of Brunswick. Gregory McMichael, 64, told police he and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, pursued Arbery because they believed he was responsible for recent break-ins in the neighborhood.

The McMichaels weren’t arrested and charged with murder until May 7, after a video of the shooting was publicly released to a local radio station and less than 48 hours after state agents took over the case.

“Justice for Ahmaud is more than just the arrests of his killers,” said John Perry, president of the Brunswick NAACP chapter at the Saturday rally. “Justice is saying that we’ve got to clean up the house of Glynn County.”

Obama criticizes virus response in online graduation speech

WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama on Saturday criticized U.S. leaders overseeing the nation’s response to the coronavirus, telling college graduates in an online commencement address that the pandemic shows many officials “aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

Obama spoke on “Show Me Your Walk, HBCU Edition,” a two-hour event for students graduating from historically black colleges and universities broadcast on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. His remarks were unexpectedly political, given the venue, and touched on current events beyond the virus and its social and economic impacts.

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said. “A lot them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

Later Saturday, during a second televised commencement address for high school seniors, Obama panned “so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs” who do “what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy.”

“Which is why things are so screwed up,” he said.

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Trump’s emergency powers worry some senators, legal experts

WASHINGTON — The day he declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency, President Donald Trump made a cryptic offhand remark.

“I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about,” he said at the White House.

Trump wasn’t just crowing. Dozens of statutory authorities become available to any president when national emergencies are declared. They are rarely used, but Trump last month stunned legal experts and others when he claimed — mistakenly — that he has “total” authority over governors in easing COVID-19 guidelines.

That prompted 10 senators to look into how sweeping Trump believes his emergency powers are.

They have asked to see this administration’s Presidential Emergency Action Documents, or PEADs. The little-known, classified documents are essentially planning papers.

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Coronavirus masks a boon for crooks who hide their faces

CHICAGO — The way the FBI tells it, William Rosario Lopez put on a surgical mask and walked into the Connecticut convenience store looking to the world like a typical pandemic-era shopper as he picked up plastic wrap, fruit snacks and a few other items. Then, when the only other customer left, he went to the counter, pulled out a small pistol, pointed it at the clerk and demanded that he open the cash register.

The scene, the FBI contends in a court document, was repeated by Lopez in four other gas station stores over eight days before his April 9 arrest. It underscores a troubling new reality for law enforcement: Masks that have made criminals stand apart long before bandanna-wearing robbers knocked over stagecoaches in the Old West and ski-masked bandits held up banks now allow them to blend in like concerned accountants, nurses and store clerks trying to avoid a deadly virus.

“Criminals, they’re smart and this is a perfect opportunity for them to conceal themselves and blend right in,” said Richard Bell, police chief in the tiny Pennsylvania community of Frackville. He said he knows of seven recent armed robberies in the region where every suspect wore a mask.

Across the United States, masks have become more and more prevalent, first as a voluntary precaution and then as a requirement imposed by governmental agencies and businesses. And people with masks — as well as latex gloves — have found their way into more and more crime reports.

Just how many criminals are taking advantage of the pandemic to commit crimes is impossible to estimate, but law enforcement officials have no doubt the numbers are climbing. Reports are starting to pop up across the United States and in other parts of the world of crimes pulled off in no small part because so many of us are now wearing masks.

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Puerto Rico to hold statehood referendum amid disillusion

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Gov. Wanda Vázquez announced on Saturday that she will hold a nonbinding referendum in November to decide whether Puerto Rico should become a U.S. state, a move that comes amid growing disillusion with the island’s U.S. territorial status.

For the first time in the island’s history, the referendum will ask a single, simple question: Should Puerto Rico be immediately admitted as a U.S. state?

It’s an answer that requires approval from U.S. Congress and a question that outraged the island’s small group of independence supporters and members of the main opposition Popular Democratic Party, which supports the status quo. But it’s a gamble that members of the governor’s pro-statehood party are confident will pay off given that Puerto Rico has struggled to obtain federal funds for hurricanes Irma and Maria, a string of recent strong earthquakes and the coronavirus pandemic amid growing complaints that the island does not receive fair and equal treatment.

“Everything important in life carries some risk,” said former Puerto Rico governor Carlos Romero Barceló, a member of the Progressive New Party.

Previous referendums have presented voters with more than one question or various options, including independence or upholding the current territorial status, but none have been so direct as the one scheduled to be held during the Nov. 3 general elections.