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It was caught on tape. A Seattle police officer lunged into the backseat of a patrol car. The Black woman detained inside had been combative, but she already had her hands cuffed behind her back. Still the cop punched her in the face, breaking an orbital bone.

The Seattle Police Department moved to fire the officer for excessive force, but in November 2018, the cops union lawyer was able to convince an arbitrator to overturn the termination.

The implications of the incident went beyond the officer. The entire Seattle Police Department was under an agreement reached with the Obama administration Department of Justice because its officers had a pattern of abuse similar to the incident in the patrol car. That agreement, known as a consent decree, forced the department under tight federal oversight until it reformed itself. The Seattle police had already made a string of changes, including ending unconstitutional stop-and-frisk and improving training.

But the inability to easily fire the officer from the patrol car incident called the citys progress into question. If the department couldnt even get rid of officers it thought should be fired, then its disciplinary system potentially violated the settlement agreement, the judge assigned to oversee the consent decree said. The court-appointed independent monitor for the consent decree agreed.

But instead, the Justice Department of President Donald Trump took an unusual stance in court: It argued that the citys disciplinary system was fine the way it was.

District Judge James Robart was shocked. In a filing, he accused the federal government of reversing its position on the old accountability systems inadequacy and doing so for the sake of political expediency.

In Seattle and jurisdictions across the country, the Trump administrations Department of Justice has pulled back on policing the police. It has not entered into a single new consent decree with any law enforcement agency suspected of systemic abuses of constitutional rights. It has only announced the completion of one investigation into such abuses.

But the pullback goes deeper. The Justice Department has also been undermining the existing agreements between the federal government and abusive police forces across the country, according to interviews with court-appointed monitors and former Justice Department officials.

The Obama Department of Justice entered into 15 consent decrees with law enforcement agencies, up from three under the Bush Justice Department. The settlement agreements, which come after a lawsuit by the federal government alleging unconstitutional policing, compel police agencies to fix themselves while under the close watch of Justice Department attorneys and an outside independent court monitor.

The Department of Justice was still overseeing all of these agreements when Trump entered the Oval Office in 2017. Supporters of the increased oversight worried that the Trump Justice Department would try to pull out of them entirely. It did so in Chicago just before an agreement was to be finalized and tried to in Baltimore. But instead of pulling out completely of those already well underway, it has eased up on enforcing them, managing to avoid negative attention and the ire of uncooperative judges, according to court-appointed monitors and former Justice Department lawyers.

The Justice Department has taken a similar approach in places like Cleveland, Los Angeles County and Newark, New Jersey, as it did in Seattle, with attorneys for the federal government failing to push for reforms, refusing to publicly back up frustrated monitors and not pressing local police forces to meet the requirements they agreed to.

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The Justice Department declined to comment for this story.

As excessive force and killings by police have led to one of the biggest social justice movements the country has ever seen, the Trump administration has embraced police departments and attacked protesters as lawless and violent. Trump has taken on the law and order mantle as a centerpiece of his campaign. And top Trump officials, including then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, have questioned whether the federal government should play an active role in reforming bad law enforcement agencies.

If the city knows youre not going to litigate because the head of the Justice Department is saying they dont believe in consent decrees, then they know youre not going to get the authority and they call your bluff, said Sharon Brett, a former DOJ attorney who worked on investigations and consent decree enforcement during the Obama and Trump administrations.

People involved in these cases said career attorneys at the Justice Departments civil rights division are acting cautiously, seeking not to draw the attention and ire of the politically appointed bosses in Washington. The chill has led to an exodus of attorneys from the unit that handles consent decree enforcement since the start of the Trump administration. (The DOJ would not share personnel numbers with ProPublica.)

Court-appointed monitors tasked with examining the progress being made by local police forces have noticed the shift.

You would never know theyre party to the consent decree, one monitor said, asking for anonymity to avoid angering the Justice Department. Ive never seen DOJ lawyers be so passive.

Consent decrees are a relatively recent tool for reforming troubled police departments.

They were made possible by the Clinton administrations 1994 crime bill, the same piece of legislation that has become radioactive among criminal reform advocates for contributing to over-incarceration. A provision of the law empowered the Justice Department to sue cities and counties for unconstitutional practices by their cops and prosecutors.

The process begins with civil rights attorneys from the Justice Department opening whats known as a pattern or practice investigation into a police department or other law enforcement agency. They examine whether the rights of residents are being violated either through excessive force, racially biased stops, unjustified arrests or other misconduct. On occasion, the Justice Department will sue those local jurisdictions or, in the most serious cases, enter into consent decrees.

Those agreements require the local jurisdictions to work with the Justice Department for years to complete a list of reforms and to prove to a judge those reforms are working. The court-appointed monitors, typically a police practices expert or former law enforcement official, examine how well the police force is implementing the changes in a series of public reports. If the local agency refuses to take required steps, or is too slow, it can be sanctioned by the judge on the case. The sanctions can include fines or even jail time for an obstructive police chief or other city official.

The process can be invasive and burdensome for local jurisdictions, particularly cash-strapped ones. After the shooting of Michael Brown, the unarmed Black teen whose death launched nationwide protests, Ferguson, Missouri, entered into a consent decree with the Obama administration Justice Department in 2016. The community has struggled to hire experts in data analysis and other fields that the agreement demands.

But experts believe the process is one of the most effective for righting wayward police forces.

Its a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You get to fix things institutionally, said Peter Harvey, the former New Jersey attorney general and the current court-appointed monitor for the consent decree in Newark. Once if you fix it organically, that culture persists.

One consent decree widely considered a success is the 2001 agreement reached with the Los Angeles Police Department. The complaints of racist and brutal policing went back decades, prompting riots, like after the 1991 Rodney King beating, and major scandals, including when officers in the Rampart anti-gang division were discovered to be planting evidence and carrying out unprovoked shootings.

The federal oversight in Los Angeles lasted what local officials complained was an interminable 12 years, but in the end, even longtime LAPD veterans praised its outcome. In 2013, Chief Charlie Beck credited the consent decree with making this a department that I am proud to hand over to my children. A Harvard study on the reforms found that the police reduced incidents of serious force and that public satisfaction with the force rose to 83%.

From the beginning, the Trump administration took a hostile stance on these types of reform efforts. Trumps first attorney general, Sessions, set the tone when he said the investigations undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing their work consistent with fidelity to law and fairness. He pulled out of a consent decree effort in Chicago, leaving it to the state attorney general to pick up, and tried to pull out of an agreement in Baltimore, which a federal judge blocked. Just before he resigned in 2018, Sessions issued a memo requiring high-level approval for any new consent decrees and raising the standard that staff attorneys needed to meet before opening a new investigation.

In Los Angeles County, the Justice Department entered into a settlement agreement with the Sheriffs Department in 2015 after finding that cops assigned to the desert towns on the countys northern outskirts were discriminating against Black and Latino residents.

According to the complaint the Justice Department filed in court, rank-and-file deputies were stopping and searching Black residents at higher rates, even though they were found to have contraband half as often as white residents. Even people who posed no obvious danger including domestic violence victims and minor traffic offenders were routinely being detained in the back of patrol cars. The agencys deputies were assisting affordable housing inspectors in searches that intimidated Black residents and forced them from their homes.

Members of the department didnt do much to hide their bias. During a tour with federal investigators, a sheriffs supervisor remarked that all newly arrived Black residents in the area were current or former gang members. A sheriffs captain suggested that affordable housing residents were offering shelter to gang member relatives from South Central a neighborhood on the other end of the county with a large percentage of Black residents..

But five years into the settlement agreement, the agency has not overhauled its data collection system to track its interactions with the public to see if people of color are still being disproportionately stopped or harassed, one of the key reforms the agency agreed to with the Justice Department.

It is fundamental, said Joseph Brann, the co-chair of the team in charge of monitoring the agreement.

Both chairs, Brann and Angela Wolf, said the Sheriffs Department resisted an expensive fix. The settlement agreement only applied to part of the sheriffs jurisdiction, but an overhaul would require the sheriff to change his data collection agencywide.

In 2018, they pressured sheriffs officials to act. Their response was, Were gonna make some phone calls, were gonna see, Wolf told ProPublica.

The monitors took that as sheriffs officials suggesting they would appeal to Justice Department supervisors to try to get around the requirement.

It wasnt quite a threat, Wolf said. But it was an uh huh, well see if youre right about that.

The staff-level attorneys are committed to enforcing the deal, but we get the sense that higher up, supervisors are sometimes working in opposition to the mission, Wolf said. We do know there were times when sheriffs officials made a phone call to higher-ups at DOJ, she said, adding, We do know that level of influence was being offered.

And the department has still not revamped its system. The Sheriffs Department did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

The monitors concerns go beyond the data issue. For a year and a half during the settlement agreement, sheriffs officials ignored requests to make agreed-upon changes to their use-of-force policy. Only recently did the office begin to engage again with the monitor. But to this day there is still not an approved new policy.

Cleveland entered into a consent decree in 2015 after the Justice Department found its officers were using excessive force on residents, shooting at people who didnt pose an immediate threat and using guns carelessly, including hitting people on the head with them. Cleveland cops were also using Tasers and pepper spray on people who were already handcuffed, at times not based on any threat they posed in the moment, but to punish them for earlier remarks. Officers who investigated their colleagues shootings admitted their goal was to cast accused officers in the most positive light possible.

In the consent decree with the Justice Department, Cleveland agreed that a judge would have the final say on a body cam policy. The city, with support from the police union, proposed that officers would not need to wear body cams if they were moonlighting.

When police officers worked as security at a Cavaliers game, for example, getting paid by a private entity, they werent required to wear cameras, even though they would be armed, wearing their uniforms and functionally acting as police officers. The police union was determined not to bend on this. When the city tried a voluntary pilot program to encourage moonlighting officers to wear cameras, the union distributed a letter instructing its members that it is the OFFICIAL UNION POLICY to refrain from VOLUNTEERING for anything with regard to work.

The monitor objected to the moonlighting carve out.

A system where one set of rules applies to officers working a city shift while another set of rules applies to officers working for a private employer fosters confusion, not confidence, among the community, Matthew Barge, the monitor in Cleveland, argued in court.

The judge assigned to the case also signaled he agreed: When youre a police officer and youre policing, whether its a bar or restaurant or whatever, people see you as a police officer. He expressed concern that officers were not encouraged but discouraged to volunteer.

But at a June 2017 hearing, the Justice Department did not strongly support the monitor. The attorney told the judge that DOJ was hopeful that the officers will see that using cameras on secondary employment is going to be beneficial for them and not burdensome.

The Justice Department, she added, looks forward to hearing about the progress of the pilot program as the rest of the months go on. At that point, however, the pilot program had zero volunteers and was functionally dead.

Today, moonlighting Cleveland cops go about their duties without body cams.

Justice Department lawyers in Newark have taken a similar approach.

The city entered into a consent decree with the federal government in 2016. The Justice Department had alleged that a whopping 75% of the pedestrian stops Newark police made did not have a legitimate basis. Even though just about half the citys residents are Black, they made up about 80% of stops and arrests.

Last year, as the consent decree was ongoing, a Newark cop shot repeatedly at a moving car, even as his partner urged him to Relax! Relax bro! He killed the driver, a Black man, and seriously injured the passenger. The officer had fired three separate times during a short pursuit, while the suspects car was in motion, a discouraged practice because of the danger it puts innocent bystanders in. The shooting was considered particularly reckless because the suspects windows were heavily tinted.

The monitor on the case repeatedly asked for video footage of the shooting in order to assess whether the departments use-of-force policy needed revisions. He was repeatedly denied.

The City and (Newark Police Departments) response in refusing to produce the requested information violated the letter and spirit of Consent Decree, the monitor wrote in one report. He only received the footage later, after it was aired on the local news.

The monitor could have used help from the Justice Department. But federal attorneys never spoke up.

Not a word out of DOJ, said someone involved in the case. No email, no phone call, nothing.

Continued here:
The Obama Justice Department Had a Plan to Hold Police Accountable for Abuses. The Trump DOJ Has Undermined It. - ProPublica

The Daily Beast

It looks like we now know how Team Trump will handle the fallout over President Donald Trumps refusal to condemn white supremacists at Tuesdays debate: Say Trump actually did condemn white supremacy multiple times.Trump campaign spokesperson Hogan Gidley showed up on CNNs New Day on Wednesday morning in an attempt to spin the presidents disastrous and chaotic performance, which even his owsupporters conceded was too hot while likening the president to a feral animal.While news anchors and analysts trashed the entire debate, calling it a hot mess and a shitshow, much of the medias attention has been focused on the president outright refusing to disavow far-right extremism and white nationalism when confronted by debate moderator Chris Wallace. Even Trumps favorite morning show Fox & Friends said that Trump blew the biggest layup in the history of debates.During their interview, CNN anchor John Berman immediately confronted Gidley with that debate moment, noting that the president also told far-right group Proud Boys to stand back and stand bysomething the violent extremist organization has celebrated and embraced on social media.When the president asked them last night to stand by, what does he want them to stand by for? Berman wondered aloud.He wants them to get out of the way, Gidley insisted. He wants them to not do the things they say they want to do. This is a reprehensible group. The president in the clip you just played, when asked by Chris Wallace if he would condemn the groups, he said sure. He said it many times, not just last night, in the past as well.The CNN host pointed out that Gidley went 10,000 times further than the president did last night, adding that Trump didnt call the Proud Boys reprehensible and that the group has rallied behind Trumps stand by order. He then asked Gidley if he personally condemns the Proud Boys.I absolutely do, but it doesnt matter what I do, the Trump flack replied. Im not running for President of the United States. The president does and he did call them out. He has condemned them.He didnt call them out last night, Berman shouted back. He didnt call them out last night!Gidley, however, insisted that Trump actually disavowed white supremacists three times during the debate, referencing when Trump said sure after Wallace asked if he was willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups.One way you can do it, Hogan, is say I condemn them, Berman quickly pushed back. So what Chris Wallace did in this exchange, he said, Will you condemn them? And the president said, Yes, I will. Then Wallace said, Okay, then do it. And then the president didnt.The Trump spokesperson, despite the remedial explanation from Berman, reiterated that the president did it three times, prompting Berman to cut in and call for the control room to replay the clip of Wallace and Trump from the debate.The segment, meanwhile, soon devolved into a shoutfest as the Trump spokesperson emulated his boss from the debate and repeatedly interrupted Berman while refusing to answer his questions. The interview completely went off the rails when Gidley invoked Charlottesville.In fact, the predicate for Joe Biden running for the race is the Charlottesville conversation which Joe Biden knows is a lie, Gidley exclaimed, causing Berman to shoot back: Whats the lie about it?Gidley embraced Trumpworlds revisionist history over Trumps very fine people on both sides remarks after a white supremacist killed one person and injured many others in Charlottesville, insisting that Trump didnt equivocate when it came to white nationalists.Eventually, as Gidley tried to steamroll Berman while portraying Biden as a racist, Berman attempted to interject and remind that this wasnt Tuesdays debate and the Trump spokesman will talk when I ask a question.The former White House deputy press secretary then provided the perfect coda to the trainwreck segment.Thats not the way it works! Ill talk when I want to talk, Gidley huffed.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Ex-Obama official on the 'most troubling' difference between Ebola and COVID responses - Yahoo Money

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined President Barack Obama for lunch in his private dining room in July 2013, the White House sought to keep the event quiet the meeting called for discretion.

Mr. Obama had asked his White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, to set up the lunch so he could build a closer rapport with the justice, according to two people briefed on the conversation. Treading cautiously, he did not directly bring up the subject of retirement to Justice Ginsburg, at 80 the Supreme Courts oldest member and a two-time cancer patient.

He did, however, raise the looming 2014 midterm elections and how Democrats might lose control of the Senate. Implicit in that conversation was the concern motivating his lunch invitation the possibility that if the Senate flipped, he would lose a chance to appoint a younger, liberal judge who could hold on to the seat for decades.

But the effort did not work, just as an earlier attempt by Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who was then Judiciary Committee chairman, had failed. Justice Ginsburg left Mr. Obama with the clear impression that she was committed to continuing her work on the court, according to those briefed.

In an interview a year later, Justice Ginsburg deflected questions about the purpose of the lunch. Pressed on what Mr. Obama might think about her potential retirement, she said only, I think he would agree with me that its a question for my own good judgment.

With Justice Ginsburgs death last week, Democrats are in a major political battle, as Republicans race to fill her seat and cement the courts conservative tilt.

Mr. Obama clearly felt compelled to try to avoid just such a scenario, but the art of maneuvering justices off the court is politically delicate and psychologically complicated. They have lifetime appointments and enjoy tremendous power and status, which can be difficult to give up.

Still, presidents throughout American history have strategized to influence the timing of justices exits to suit various White House priorities.

President Trumps first White House counsel, Donald McGahn II, the primary architect of the administrations success in reshaping the judiciary, helped ease the way for Justice Anthony Kennedys retirement in 2018, which allowed Mr. Trump and a Republican-controlled Senate to lock down his seat for another generation.

Mr. McGahn sought to make the justice comfortable with the process by which a successor would be chosen, according to people briefed on their conversations, by seeking his advice on potential picks for lower-court vacancies and recommending that Mr. Trump nominate one of his former clerks, Neil Gorsuch, to fill an earlier vacancy. (Brett Kavanaugh, whom Mr. McGahn recommended to fill Justice Kennedys seat, was also one of his clerks.)

Justices, however, often bristle at any impingement of politics or other pressures in their realm. Robert Bauer, who served as Mr. Obamas White House counsel for part of his first term, said he recalled no discussions then of having Mr. Obama try to nudge Justice Ginsburg to step aside. Mr. Bauer said asking a judge any judge to retire was hypersensitive, recalling how in 2005 he wrote an opinion column calling for Congress to impose judicial term limits and require cameras in the courtroom, only to have Justice Sandra Day OConnor blast his column in a speech on threats to judicial independence.

The OConnor episode reflects the sensitivity that justices can exhibit toward pressure from the outside about how the Court runs, Mr. Bauer said, including showing resistance to any questions about how long they serve. He added, White Houses are typically mindful of all this.

Resistance aside, Democrats outside the White House also strategized about how to raise the topic of retirement with Justice Ginsburg. Several senior White House staff members say they heard word that Senator Leahy had gingerly approached the subject with her several years before the Obama lunch.

He was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees Supreme Court nominations; he also had a warm relationship with Justice Ginsburg, a bond forged over their shared enjoyment of opera and visits to the Kennedy Center. Asked through a spokesman for comment, Mr. Leahy did not respond.

One of the former Obama administration staff members who heard discussion of the roundabout outreach by Mr. Leahy was Rob Nabors, who served in a series of White House policy and legislative affairs positions under Mr. Obama from 2009 to 2014. But Mr. Nabors said he recalled hearing that it wasnt clear that the message was entirely transmitted effectively, or that it was received in the manner it was delivered.

While Mr. Obamas own talk with the justice was tactful, changing conditions should have made his implicit agenda clear, according to the two people briefed about the meeting, who spoke only on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the topic. Democrats were worried about the prospect of losing the Senate. And the president had invited no other justices to lunch.

But the failure of that conversation convinced the Obama team that it was pointless to try to talk to her of departure. The next summer, when another Supreme Court term closed without a retirement announcement from her, the administration did not try again.

Neil Eggleston, who became White House counsel in April 2014, said that he did not remember anyone proposing that another attempt to ease Justice Ginsburg toward resignation would do any good.

I think it is largely not done, he said. Suggesting that to a Supreme Court justice she is as smart as anyone; she doesnt need the president to tell her how old she is and what her timelines are.

Given his previous tenure as chief counsel to the Judiciary Committee, Justice Stephen Breyer might have been a more pragmatic target of overtures. Walter Dellinger, a former solicitor general, mentioned to the White House counsels office during the Obama administration a plan he conceived to motivate Justice Breyer, a known Francophile, to start a next chapter.

My suggestion was that the president have Breyer to lunch and say to him, I believe historians will someday say the three greatest American ambassadors to France were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Stephen G. Breyer, recalled Mr. Dellinger, who recently joined Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.s campaign team.

Although it is not clear how, word of Mr. Dellingers idea made its way to Justice Breyer.

Mr. Dellinger said that when he ran into Justice Breyer at a holiday party not long after Mr. Trump was elected, the justice pulled him aside. So Walter, he asked, do you still want to ship me off to France? Mr. Dellinger, who sensed the justice was ribbing him, responded, Mr. Justice, I hear Paris isnt what it used to be.

Mr. Dellinger added that he now thought Justice Breyer was correct to resist the idea, saying he has made a tremendous contribution in the ensuing years. Justice Breyers office declined to comment.

In making that suggestion to lure Justice Breyer with an ambassador position, Mr. Dellinger was harking back to similar ideas from Lyndon B. Johnson, a master strategist. Mr. Johnson lured Justice Arthur Goldberg, whom he wanted to replace with his friend Abe Fortas, off the court by offering him the role of ambassador to the United Nations, saying that he would have tremendous power in negotiating the end of the Vietnam War.

Justice Goldberg never did have that authority and regretted his decision. I asked Goldberg, why did you leave the bench? said Laura Kalman, professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He answered her in one word: Vanity.

President Johnson also played on the paternal pride of the Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, by appointing his son, Ramsey Clark, attorney general in March 1967. Johnson, who wanted to replace Justice Clark with Thurgood Marshall, played up the notion that his continued presence on the court while his son ran the Justice Department created a conflict of interest, and Justice Clark stepped down that June.

But presidents cannot force justices to leave the court. Franklin Roosevelt floated a plan to pack the court by expanding the number of justices in frustration because aging conservatives kept striking down his New Deal programs. President William Taft could not push out Justice Melville Fuller, whom he deemed senile after the justice bungled Tafts swearing-in, the biographer David Atkinson wrote; Taft had to wait until Fuller died of a heart attack a year later. (In a book about Taft, Henry Pringle wrote, The old men of the court seldom died and never retired.)

Democratic leaders had precious few cards they could have played as they contemplated their options with Justice Ginsburg. She made it clear in several interviews that she had no intention to retire; widowed in 2010, she was devoted to her work, determined to have a voice and appreciated the platform her celebrity offered her as an icon liberals liked to call the Notorious R.B.G.

She was clearly annoyed at any public suggestions that she step down. In 2014, Erwin Chemerinsky, now dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote articles, appearing in The Los Angeles Times and Politico, declaring that for the long-term good of progressive values, Justice Ginsburg should step aside to make way for a younger Obama appointee.

It was certainly conveyed to me that she was not pleased with those who were suggesting that she retire, Mr. Chemerinsky said.

Randall Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School, had also written a column in 2011 in The New Republic calling for Justices Ginsburg and Breyer to step down immediately, suggesting that they should not stay on the court so long that they risked conservatives inheriting their seats.

I didnt feel at all apologetic about saying something which frankly seemed to me quite clear, Mr. Kennedy said. Ive been praying praying that Id be able to look back and say I was wrong. It didnt turn out that way.

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Ginsburg, Obama and the Lunch That Could Have Altered Supreme Court History - The New York Times

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At the onset of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that he inherited a bare Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) that lacked an adequate supply of ventilators from the administration of former President Barack Obama, hindering Trumps ability to adequately respond to the growing number of coronavirus cases across the nation. We revisited the timeline of the pandemic and the various (and contradictory) statements issued by Trump and his administration to check the accuracy of this claim.

The SNS is overseen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is allocated as a resource to supplement state and local authorities in their response to public health emergencies. In addition to many state stockpiles, the federal stockpile includes medicines, supplies, and devices needed for life-saving care that are strategically located at secret warehouse locations around the country.

According to a timeline published by the Department of Health and Human Services, the stockpile has been used at least 13 times since its 1999 creation, including during responses to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

A mechanical ventilator is a breathing machine used to assist a patient suffering from respiratory distress, or a condition that makes it difficult for them to breathe on their own. SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for the 2020 pandemic, causes COVID-19, one such respiratory condition that can make it difficult for an infected person to breathe on their own.

Concern over whether the U.S. had enough ventilators took center stage in early 2020 shortly after the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11. When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked the federal government for additional ventilators, Trump responded by criticizing Cuomos handling of the pandemic, saying that the state should have stockpiled ventilators.

During a March 26 press briefing, Trump tried to buck the blame for a shortage of ventilators, saying that he had taken over an empty shelf. The president reiterated the claim just over a week later, adding that the depleted stockpile he supposedly inherited impacted his administrations ability to respond to the pandemic.

Hey, I inherited we, this administration we inherited a broken system, both militarily, but weve rebuilt our military where we now have so much ammunition, whereas you remember a very important general said, Sir, we have no ammunition. They wanted to save money on ammunition.

They didnt want to save money because they spent money like nobody ever spent money. But you know what? We now have a great military rebuilt. And we have so much ammunition, we dont know what to do with it. Okay? And thats a nice feeling to have.

But they also gave us empty cupboards. The cupboard was bare. Youve heard the expression: The cupboard was bare. So we took over a stockpile where the cupboard was bare and where the testing system was broken and old. And we redid it.

Though Trump repeatedly blamed the Obama administration for leaving behind an empty stockpile and falsely took credit for restocking the ventilator supplies, he said on more than one occasion that the U.S. had enough ventilators in the weeks following the pandemic declaration. In the April 7 press briefing, Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of HHS, said that the number of ventilators is not a number that we give out but said that there were thousands remaining in the stockpile. Trump quickly added that there were 9,000 breathing machines.

In an April 8 Tweet, the White House said that it had shipped out 8,000 ventilators and had an additional 10,000 ready to go. An op-ed written by Vice President Mike Pence added that the SNS hadnt been refilled since the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, and it had only 10,000 ventilators on hand in March an inadequate number given the extent of the pandemic but that by the June 16 publication of his piece, there were more than 30,000 ventilators in the SNS and that the administration was well on [its] way to building 100,000 ventilators in 100 days. It appeared that the Trump administration initially recognized that the ventilator supply was inadequate to respond to the pandemic, but failed to supplement the limited inventory despite promises to do so.

The discrepancy continued well into 2020. Some references:

While it is true that the Trump administration had inherited a depleted supply of some personal protective equipment (PPE) like N95 respirator masks, it is not accurate to say that the stockpile was left bare or depleted of ventilators. The SNS had 16,600 ventilators immediately available for use at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a spokesperson with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who spoke with FactCheck.org in June 2020:

[T]here were 16,660 ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) inventory immediately available for use when the SNS began deploying ventilators in March 2020 in support of the COVID-19 response. All of these ventilators were serviced, recertified and operable. An additional 2,425 ventilators were in maintenance at that time as part of the normal and routine maintenance process. Every ventilator and resupply kit in the SNS is serviced regularly by a contracted commercial vendor to meet or exceed the manufacturers recommended maintenance schedule. In general, prior to March of this year, the SNS stored approximately 19,000 ventilators in its inventory for many years, and this number fluctuated on any given day depending on the number of ventilators in scheduled maintenance. [I]n January 2017 the total number of ventilators in the SNS inventory immediately available for use would not have been much different than what the SNS had immediately available for use in March 2020.

The spokesperson added that the stockpile would likely have held the same number of ventilators in January 2016 when Trump was inaugurated, suggesting that ventilator stock left by the Obama administration was considered adequate by HHS when Trump took office. Snopes contacted the HHS to confirm the above figures, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

However, given the nature of the 2020 pandemic, health experts argued that ventilator inventory at the onset of the outbreak was inadequate, and the Trump administration should have immediately taken measures to increase the inventory of ventilators and other emergency medical supplies.

As part of the COVID-19 response, the SNS deployed more than 14,500 tons of cargo to states, according to data published on Sept. 16, 2020. An HHS document submitted to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform criticized the low number of ventilators that had been distributed from the stockpile in April 2020, suggesting that the outsourced 7,920 ventilators wereinadequate compared with the estimated need of 139,000 machines.

Now that the national stockpile has been depleted of critical equipment, it appears that the Administration is leaving states to fend for themselves, to scour the open market for these scarce supplies, and to compete with each other and federal agencies in a chaotic, free-for-all bidding war, said committee chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a statement.

In late September 2020, the SNS noted that under the joint direction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and HHS, it had deployed all remaining PPE in its inventory but for a reserve of 10% for the critical needs of frontline healthcare workers serving in federal response efforts. However, the specific number of ventilators distributed as of this writing is not known. In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, health experts warned that the SNS had too few ventilators to adequately respond to a large-scale outbreak.

Although the ventilators werent depleted when Trump came into office, there had already been warnings that there was an inadequate supply during the Obama administration. A 2016 report found that during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, 19.6 million pieces of PPE were deployed across the country, including the disbursement of 85.1 million N95 respirators considered depleted in 2020.

The National Institutes of Health study also published a study in January 2011 concluding that the current ventilator supply in the United States is nowhere near sufficient to meet the projected needs of a pandemic. An April 2015 study published in the journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases, added that the next pandemic would likely produce a surge in patients that would require mechanical ventilation caused by a severe flu pandemic, which would suggest that the U.S. would likely need up to 60,000 additional ventilators for an extreme outbreak.

It is not known how many ventilators are in inventory in late September 2020, but the HHS said that it maintains at least $8 billion in antibiotics, vaccines, antitoxins, and antivirals, among other medications.

Continue reading here:
Did Trump Inherit a 'Depleted' Stockpile of Ventilators From Obama? - Snopes.com

Candy Woodall| USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania Capitol Bureau

Sarah Eagan was 11 years old when then-Sen. Barack Obama defeated Sen. John McCain to become the first Black president of the United States.

She was still seven years away from being old enough to vote during that historic election.

"I'm Generation Z," said Eagan, a 23-year-old Montgomery County resident. "I don't really remember the Obama presidency."

And she certainly doesn't remember Joe Biden's vice presidency.

Eagan was 19 when Obama and Biden were finishing their second term in office, and she was more focused on the two presidential candidates on the ballot in 2016: Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Now, as the Pennsylvania press secretary for NextGen America, she is working to organize young voters who will help Biden win.

"But we are still getting to know him," Eagan said.

That's why the presidential debates are so important, she said.

The first of three presidential debates will be held at 9 p.m. Tuesday in Cleveland, and young voters will be watching, Eagan said.

"The Democratic debates were popular among young viewers, and I think the presidential debates will be, too," she said. "With the latest news about Trump's taxes, I believe there is renewed interest in the debates."

What these young voters want to hear in the presidential debate

Kaila Cantens, Emily Carter and Zachary Michener spend most of their days helping young voters get registered to vote and then following up to make sure they have a plan to vote.

That work can go on until 7 p.m. most days.

On Tuesday night, they'll make sure they are done in time to watch the first presidential debate, and they are all waiting to hear something specific.

Cantens, a 25-year-old from the Lehigh Valley, said she wants to Biden's "climate change plan, including green energy, and that he's signing onto the Paris climate agreement on day one."

Michener, a 28-year-old from Hummelstown, said he wants to hear Biden "talk about raising the minimum wage."

Carter, a 24-year-old from Allentown, "would love to see Biden address the Supreme Court nomination and how he thinks Senate Democratic leadership should proceed, and if he's willing to add more members if the GOP pushes the nomination through."

What do Pa. voters want?: Some say Biden, some say Trump, some want a better choice

More: Ginsburg's death is raising the stakes in the Pa. presidential election: 'It's enormous'

More: Biden said he will win Scranton. Trump said he will only lose if it's rigged. Who's right?

Why the young vote matters in Pa.

The young vote matters in Pennsylvania because every vote matters in Pennsylvania.

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by 44,000 votes, or less than 1 percentage point. Some analysts have suggested he won in part because some voters, particularly young voters, chose a third-party candidate instead of voting for Clinton.

Eagan said she expects most young voters in Pennsylvania will back the Democrat this year.

Recent polls show Biden leading Trump in Pennsylvania, but the lead is within the margin of error.

Eagan believes young people could help him win the state and presidency.

While Biden wasn't as progressive as Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, his policies are more in line with young people than Trump's, she said.

"The more we learn about Biden, the more we like and we think he's at least willing to listen to the things that are important to us," Eagan said. "Trump doesn't seem willing to listen."

Issues that are most important to young voters are affordable health care, affordable college, and racial equity and justice. That's according to NextGen's polling of young voters.

That polling last month showed 77 percent of young, registered voters are "extremely motivated and had a voting plan," Eagan said.

That enthusiasm has climbed from 70 percent in July, and it's 8 points higher than the same time period in 2016.

"Traditional campaigns don't really talk to young people or don't target our issues, but we have power in numbers," Eagan said. "Young people make up 40 percent of the electorate nationwide."

Most of those voters are leaning toward voting for a Democrat or likely voting for a Democrat, she said.

And consider this: 15 million people turned 18 since 2016.

"Having four years of Trump during very formative points in our identity and politics really shapes the way we vote," Eagan said.

The question is not whether they will vote for Biden but whether they will vote at all.

While there's a lot of enthusiasm in polls, it won't be clear until Election Day if young people show up and vote.

"Voting can be perceived as complicated to some young people," Eagan said. "This year we're trying to make sure they know if they need to bring ballots to drop boxes or polling places."

There's also a "very real dissatisfaction of the system itself," she said.

NextGen has been working to reach young voters early and often, passing out masks that say "vote" and helping voters make sure they're registered.

Eagan is hoping the debate Tuesday night further energizes young voters.

"There's still some room here for us to learn more about Biden," she said. "Maybe the debate will fill in the gaps."

How to watch the presidential debate

President Donald J. Trump, the Republican incumbent, will face off against former Vice President Joe Biden at 9 p.m. Tuesday at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. It is the first of three debates and will be moderated by "Fox News Sunday" hostChris Wallace.

The 90-minute debate will air on every major network and news network. It will also be livestreamed. You can find it onABC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, Telemundo and Univision. The debate can also be found through Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV,Roku, Xbox One, YouTube and many more apps.

Wallace will cover multiple topics during the debate: the Trump and Biden Records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in U.S. cities and the integrity of the election, according tothe Commission on Presidential Debates. Each of those segments is slated to last 15 minutes until the debate ends at 10:30 p.m.

Pence in Pa. while Trump and Biden debate

Vice President Mike Pence during the debatewill lead a campaign stop and debate watch partyin southcentral Pennsylvania.

Pence will be watching with a group of supporters at Meadow Spring Farm in Lititz. Doors open at 5 p.m., and the "Make America Great Again!" event starts at 7 p.m.Go to Trump's campaign website to register for tickets.

The Trump and Biden campaigns have been making multiple stops in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that some analysts say could decide the 2020 presidential race.

Candy Woodall is a reporter for the USA Today Network. She can be reached at 717-480-1783 or on Twitter at @candynotcandace.

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This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: 'I don't really remember the Obama presidency': Why Trump and Biden debate matters in Pa.

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'I don't really remember the Obama presidency': Why Trump and Biden debate matters in Pa. - Pocono Record