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Rhode Island police have begun stopping cars with New York license plates, and the National Guard will soon help officials conduct house-to-house searches to force anyone who has traveled from New York to enter isolation.

Right now we have a pinpointed risk, Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) said, according to Bloomberg.That risk is called New York City.

Raimondo on Thursday issued an executive order enforceable by law mandating that anyone who has traveled to New York via any form of transportation must enter into a two-week self-quarantine.

The order applies to anyone who has been in New York within the past two weeks and will remain in place until at least April 25. The order, however, does not apply to public health, public safety or health care workers.

Raimondo announced on Friday that members of the National Guard will be present at T.F. Green Airport, train stations and bus stops to collect contact information for the state health department so they can keep track of who you may have been in contact with.

National Guard soldiers will then follow up with people at their local residences to ensure they are following through with self-quarantine orders.

Authorities will also be checking towns where many New Yorkers are known to have summer homes, according to the governor.

The maximum penalty for those found to be defying the executive orderis a fine of$500and 90 days in prison, according to Bloomberg.

The outlet reported that state police cars were stationed along Interstate 95 northbound on Friday afternoon and that signs ordered all New York passenger vehicles to pull over at the rest stop closest to the Connecticut border.

The outlet also reported that Raimondo had consulted with lawyers about the order and was confident it could be enforced.

However, the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) objected to the collection of motorists data.

While the Governor may have the power to suspend some state laws and regulations to address this medical emergency, she cannot suspend the Constitution, Rhode Island ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown said in a statement. Under the Fourth Amendment, having a New York state license plate simply does not, and cannot, constitute probable cause to allow police to stop a car and interrogate the driver, no matter how laudable the goal of the stop may be.

The group urged Raimondo not to follow through with such an ill-advised and unconstitutional plan.

New York has emerged as the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., accounting for roughly half the total number of cases in the country.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Saturday reported that 728 peoplehave died in the statebecause of the coronavirusand said there were 52,318 confirmed cases, including 7,681 new cases.

By contrast, Rhode Island reported only 203 positive coronavirus cases on Friday.

Original post:
Rhode Island police, National Guard begin stopping cars with NY plates and going door-to-door to enforce quarantine | TheHill - The Hill

The coronavirus epidemic has taken a new turn in recent days as officials from upstate counties and other states attempt to keep outsiders away. While Gov. Andrew Cuomo can overrule local officials in New York, his options are limited beyond state boundaries.

The governor has promoted a multi-state approach to battling the coronavirus in recent weeks, but his efforts have faced a new test in recent days as governors in Florida and Rhode Island with the blessing of President Donald Trump begin implementing restrictions on New Yorkers entering their states.

I have not heard that, Cuomo, who is chair of the National Governors Association, said of quarantine restrictions put in place by Democratic Gov. Gina Marie Raimondo of Rhode Island. I dont know any details about that. The governor will reach out to Raimondo later today, said Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa.

Trump also suggested on Saturday morning that he would impose a quarantine on New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut. I didnt speak to him about any quarantine, Cuomo said of his Saturday morning conversation with the president. I dont know how that could be legally enforced, and from a medical point of view I dont even know if that would be effective. I dont like the sound of it.

State troopers have set up checkpoints on the Rhode Island at entry points into the state where they are checking for New York license plates and demanding that any person coming from the state abide by a 14-day quarantine. Door-to-door searches by police and the state National Guard are also part of efforts to isolate anyone who has been in New York during the past two weeks.

While state governments have significant powers in an emergency, that does not mean the state can override the U.S. Constitution, according to the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties. Under the Fourth Amendment, having a New York state license plate simply does not, and cannot, constitute probable cause to allow police to stop a car and interrogate the driver, no matter how laudable the goal of the stop may be, reads a Thursday statement from the organization.

Raimondo began implementing the new restrictions on Friday. Similar measures have also been rolled out in Florida in the past week, with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis now requiring all people coming from New York to self-quarantine for two weeks. He also called on the National Guard to keep tabs on passengers arriving on flights from New York and then turning that information to local officials, according to Politico.

Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin, a Republican who has taken controversial stands before on issues like drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, is pursuing measures that would require people coming to the county from New York City and Westchester County to report to county health officials and quarantine for 14 days. Pandering to fear and prejudice, whether against a racial and ethnic minority or a minority coming in from elsewhere, is not helpful, said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The U.S. Supreme Court leaned on the Interstate Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution in striking down a California law in 1941, and similar laws in other states, that restricted the movement of people. The legality of similar moves during the pandemic could likewise be challenged in court, though it remains to be seen what Cuomo or civil liberties groups can do about the situation in the short term. New Yorkers are not the only target of restrictions by communities across the country. Some island communities in Maine and North Carolina are barring all visitors. What happens next is unclear considering the fast-moving pace of the epidemic.

An economic downturn, state border checkpoints and increasing desperation among people across the country suggest that as time goes by the story of coronavirus will only become more like a John Steinbeck novel whose ending no one can yet know. The bum blockade garnered attention, and criticism, throughout the state and nation, reads one history of the Great Depression in California. After the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court, (law enforcement) backed down, and the bum blockade ended. But the anti-Okie sentiment continued. Now, it is New Yorkers who are facing the wrath of their fellow Americans.

Continue reading here:
'The Grapes of Wrath,' coronavirus edition - City & State

WESTERLY A patrolman knocked on Mary Patricks Misquamicut door the other day. A neighbor had reported seeing her apparently menacing license plates in the driveway.

Having New York tags is all it takes now to draw the authorities.

The officer was very nice about it, said Patrick on Friday from the driveway of her familys summer home. The small Cape has been in the family for about 17 years. He said a neighbor had called and said we just moved back in, which wasnt true. Weve been here for about three weeks. But he wanted us to know we had to stay home for 14 days.

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In this sun-bleached coastal neighborhood, suddenly busy again with walkers and lit kitchen windows, The atmosphere is a little bit hostile, said Patrick, who is 30 and teaches 10th grade in New York City in normal times. But we understand. People are scared at the same time.

While Gov. Gina Raimondo announced on Friday that the National Guard would be going door to door in such summer colonies starting Saturday looking for New York residents and reminding them to quarantine to help blunt the spread of the coronavirus, the practice has already started in some border communities like Westerly.

Patrick, who is staying in the family house with two others and her tiny dog, Pablo, said we understand the precautions, but I would say that calling the police on us because you saw our New York license plates isnt all that neighborly or a good use of police resources. Weve been here a long time.

A few miles away in downtown Westerly, an unmarked blue cruiser with dark-tinted windows slowly circled the parking lot of McQuades Marketplace.

There had been a report of a car with New York plates in the lot, but so far the responding plainclothes officer hadnt found it. A marked cruiser with two other officers arrived as well.

A few rows away, Robert Fitz, 77, of Hopkinton, exited the grocery carrying his wifes medication and a blueberry pastry for himself, wearing a protective medical mask over his face.

Fitz said he had no problem with police stopping New York cars on the roadways as Raimondo ordered Thursday with the directive to have those residents self quarantine for 14 days if they were staying in Rhode Island.

There are a lot of people from New York who think, Let me get out of here and get to Rhode Island. But you dont know if theyve been close to it or not, he said. And I dont particularly want to catch this thing because I have a heart condition and diabetes. So go to your summer home, quarantine for 14 days and then go out and enjoy yourself when needed.

Thomas Perkins, of Charlestown, came out of the grocery wearing a mask, too, but carrying a different opinion about stopping travelers on the road.

Such a drastic action seemed an infringement of personal liberties, he said, agreeing with the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, which on Thursday questioned whether such an unprecedented move violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search.

Thats the kind of stuff we [the nation] escaped from, said Perkins, who moved to Rhode Island 10 years ago from New Yorks Hudson Valley. I can see keeping your distance and staying home. But we are one country.

Picking out the residents of one state to move against is a bit flimsy for me, he said, even if New York is a hot zone for the virus.

Around the corner, on the bridge that spans the Pawcatuck River and joins Westerly and Pawcatuck, Connecticut, Jeremy Mottala, 46, of Westerly, stopped on his walk to snap a photo of the unusual scene: an electronic sign in the middle of the road.

The sign faced the Connecticut side and flashed the message in staccato succession: Travelers out of state for residence 14 day mandated quarantine. A Westerly patrol car idled nearby.

Im a native Rhode Islander and people come here because its a beautiful place and we are glad to have them, said Mottala. But New York is a hotspot. Err on the side of caution. Im not saying were at the point where were going to put in some crazy martial law or something into effect. But Ive been quarantined for a month. And probably will for another month. So just do it.

Out on the northbound side of Route 95, between Exits 2 and 3, Rhode Island state troopers began directing vehicles with New York plates off the highway and into the parking area of the Rhode Island Welcome Center.

There, a dozen members of the Rhode Island National Guard waited by a Humvee and a white tent to question travelers. Those who said they were just passing through Rhode Island were quickly waved through. Those who said they were staying were asked to give their names and addresses.

In the first half-hour of the road stop, at least a dozen New York cars pulled in. The interchanges between the drivers and the Guard members were polite and quick.

Apparently not all the New Yorkers saw the turnoff. State police Col. James Manni was the first trooper to chase down a driver who didnt turn in, eventually stopping the car and approaching, wearing a surgical mask and blue gloves.

Responding to the ACLUs concerns, Manni said, We are not going to detain, search or violate anyones constitutional rights. We are following a lawful order by the governor.... We recognize people are scared, theyre stressed. There is a tremendous amount of anxiety out there. It is not our intention to escalate any situation or amplify their stress.

Back in Misquamicut, Mary Patrick was out for a walk.

She said shes not worried about police coming again to her door under the governors new order. They know us down here and theyve been really, really nice.

But she hopes her New York plates dont attract any more unwanted attention: These are really stressful times.

tmooney@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7380

On Twitter: @mooneyprojo

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Not all that neighborly: Police, National Guard out in Westerly, looking for New Yorkers - The Providence Journal

I write this update to you against the sobering realities of the coronavirus crisis, a profound U.S. leadership crisis and the reality that 2020 is closing down early across our society.

Turns out I am in a designated risk category by virtue of my 62 years of age, but have direct family members and people in my regular social network who fall into much higher critical risk categories due to pre-existing conditions.

In the face of the coronavirus crisis, we must increasingly look to local and global health leaders for action in the absence of any real leadership from the U.S. government.

The Trump administration order to classify updates on coronavirus developments and testing is frankly a coverup of the U.S. governments abysmal failure to protect the welfare, health and well-being of the people.

Yet key indications and warning from months ago were ignored by Trump and his administration when the coronavirus broke out.

This reminds me of the failures of the U.S. government to provide for the common defense not keeping people out of harms way on 9/11 when almost 3,000 lives perished on that fateful and tragic day, despite many years of ignored indications and warnings (including reports I helped send out in 1993 after terrorists attempted to drop the World Trade Center Towers the first time). Those indications and warnings were then covered up to hide culpability and truth about 9/11 behind a blanket of national security lies and classified secrets.

In addition, the coronavirus crisis is exposing lots of fraud and sand castles. Therefore, despite government lies and denials and too many people in high places sticking their heads in the proverbial sand (while wishing on rainbows and mirages), we must face this global health crisis together as we all live in the same global village on this planet called Earth.

As I write this, just today the Federal Reserve Bank pumped more than atrillion and a half dollarsinto the economy under the guise of market intervention and the stock market still fell some 10 percent on the day in its worst showing since 1987.

Can you imagine how far atrillion and a half dollarswould go to protect the health and well-being of people, let alone promoting the general welfare of the populace? It is one of the two primary responsibilities of government in the Preamble of the Constitution, besides providing for the common defense.

And then we have President Trumps 2020 campaign suing several media outlets for libel over opinion pieces. This is incredibly dangerous, treating the First Amendment and free expression and speech as a direct threat to his ego, personal vanity, autocratic behavior, and megalomania. It sends a most chilling message when daring to write and publish something Dear Leader doesnt like.

Trump is doing this in the form of defamation lawfare suits that abuse the court system and judiciary, while attempting to overturn and set new precedent for prior restraint.

With all these attacks on the First Amendment by the Trump administration, I am experiencing major flashbacks.

That is because the government charged me with espionage; it accused me of stealing and then disclosing government property and secrets that I then gave to the press. Government prosecutors alleged that the reporter was the only eyewitness to my apparent crime committed against the state for speaking truth about the abuse of national security state power and the mass violations of privacy and Fourth Amendment protections of people.

There is also a lot of Newspeak propaganda and disinformation operations using convenient foils and overstated bogeymen to exploit fear, sow discord and promote division while hiding the truth behind a veil of secrecy and national security state briefings. This type of executive action makes it all too easy to manipulate for political ends.

Trump continually demonstrates his contempt and hatred for democracy, preferring the rally stage of a performance-driven presidency while spreading the memes and propaganda of his own Trump-branded autocratic authoritarianism.

U.S. democracy is under assault by the Trump syndicate as he issues pardons contributing to the advancement of white-collar crime and enhanced corruption abusing his power to attack and threaten his enemies while persecuting and prosecuting those who dare to expose his massive confraud on America.

Trumps priorities are now vengeance and revenge engaging in a new series of retaliatory acts to preserve his power in violation of his constitutional oath. His vindictive actions and unlawful orders are malicious assaults on democracy as he ramps up his retribution tour against his designated enemies and those he claims betrayed him using the power of his presidency to protect his abuse of power.

And yet democracy dies in the darkness of dystopia, and there are now alarming new developments in the updated U.S. 20-22 counterintelligence strategy report for identifying and targeting hacktivists while calling them out as social media manipulators and also targeting anti-secrecy and public disclosure groups as direct threats to the national security of the United States.

These new and chilling counterintelligence threats to the U.S. also include targeting anyone else who fits an ideologically motivated entities profile as designated espionage threats to the U.S. considered equal and on par with the threats posed by existing and more traditional state and non-state actors.

The U.S. is now clearly formalizing threat monitoring of dissent and truth-telling public interest disclosures in the updated executive counterintelligence strategy recently signed by Trump.

It reminds me of when I was declared an Enemy of the State, a secrecy leaker and one who self-radicalized as alleged by the Joint DoJ/DNI National Insider Threat Task Force (NITTF) back in late 2015 in formal threat briefings.

The NITTF also pinned me up alongside Edward Snowden as a National Security State criminal on a rogues gallery of counterintelligence threats from those that have done us harm (equating me with the newly minted moniker of leaktivist in the 20-22 counterintelligence strategy) and other real spies and mass shooters in U.S. history.

What future do we want to keep? It is up to us.

I will keep on keeping on defending life, liberty and our precious freedoms and rights standing tall along that long moral arc of the universe and help bending it toward justice and mercy.

Please take care of yourselves and each other, because it so important to remember that we bring out the best of who we are in each other as human beings.

Link:
The Sobering Realities of the American Dystopia - CounterPunch

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. Ex parte Milligan, U.S. Supreme Court (1866)

During the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln thought it expedient to silence those in the northern states who challenged his wartime decisions by incarcerating them in military prisons in the name of public safety, he was rebuked by a unanimous Supreme Court. The essence of the rebuke is that no matter the state of difficulties whether war or pestilence the Constitution protects our natural rights, and its provisions are to be upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort.

This basic principle of American law our rights can only be interfered with by means of due process is being put to a severe test today in most American states.

Here is the backstory.

The coronavirus pandemic, which ravaged portions of China and Italy, has arrived in the United States and our central planners have panicked. We do not have a free market here in the health care delivery system; rather, we have thousands of pages of regulations and control at the federal, state and local levels.

That control was revealed as manifestly deficient and ignorant when the virus struck. The feds have been so protective of their control of health care an area of governance that the Supreme Court has ruled is nowhere delegated to them in the Constitution, and but for their power to tax those who defy them, would be nonexistent that they insisted that only the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta can be trusted to test for the virus.

It took weeks of begging by governors and mayors for the feds to relent. Of course, once they acknowledged that labs throughout the country are as competent as theirs to conduct the tests, they realized that their incompetence had deprived all physicians as well as most private sector and state government-owned labs of the test kits themselves.

We all know how central economic planning diminishes freedom and adds to the cost of products. Now we know that central micromanagement of health care can kill people.

But these mayors and governors were not to be outdone by the feds in their totalitarian impulses. Many of them, particularly in the Northeast and the West Coast, have issued decrees that are as profoundly unconstitutional as Lincolns efforts to silence dissent.

The governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut have all issued decrees closing most retail establishments, particularly all restaurants, bars and theaters. The governor of New Jersey is threatening to ban all travel after dark. And, the mayor of New York City is threatening to ban all travel all the time.

The fulfillment of these totalitarian impulses has put more than 1 million folks out of work, closed thousands of businesses and impaired the fundamental rights of tens of millions of persons all in violation of numerous sections of the Constitution.

The Contracts Clause of the Constitution prohibits the states from interfering with lawful contracts, such as leases and employment agreements. And the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the states from interfering with life, liberty or property without a trial at which the state must prove fault. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires just compensation when the state meaningfully interferes with an owners chosen lawful use of his property.

Taken together, these clauses reveal the significant protections of private property in the Constitution itself. Add to this the threat of punishment that has accompanied these decrees and the fact that they are executive decrees, not legislation, and one can see the paramount rejection of basic democratic and constitutional principles in the minds and words and deeds of those who have perpetrated them.

Add to all this, the protection in the First Amendment of the right to associate and the judicially recognized right to travel both of which are natural rights and it is clear that these nanny state rules are unconstitutional, unlawful and unworthy of respect or compliance.

Why is this happening? Throughout history, free people have been willing to accept the Devils bargain of trading liberty for safety when they are fearful. We supinely accept the shallow and hollow offers of government that somehow less liberty equals more safety.

This happened here with the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1790s when the Federalists feared a second revolution, during the Civil War when Lincoln feared dissent and Congress feared defeat, during World War I when Wilson suppressed the speech he hated and feared, and during the Great Depression when FDR feared economic calamity and seized property without compensation. And, after 9/11, fearing another attack, Congress secretly crafted the Patriot Acts circumvention of the Fourth Amendment and creation of the total surveillance state.

This sordid history came about when the public was fearful of the unknown and trustful of the governments bargain. But the safety offered for the liberty sacrificed never came to pass.

Moreover, liberty is natural and personal. You can sacrifice yours, but you cannot sacrifice mine. The natural nature of personal liberty Jeffersons Declaration of Independence calls our rights inalienable and Madisons Ninth Amendment reflects their nature as limitless insulates their existence and exercise in a free society from totalitarian and even majoritarian interference.

Today, the fear of contagion gives government cover for its assaults on freedom and poses a question the government does not want to answer: If liberty can be taken away in times of crisis, then is it really liberty; or is it just a license, via a temporary government permission slip, subject to the whims of politicians in power?

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Napolitano: Freedom in a time of madness - Daily Herald