Officials confirm first fatal case of mosquito-borne virus in nearly two decades: ‘A stark reminder’
Juliana Marino – September 3, 2024
County officials in the Bay Area confirmed a death related to a mosquito-borne disease for the first time in nearly 20 years, according to a report published by the San Francisco Chronicle.
What’s happening?
Officials in Contra Costa County announced that a resident died from West Nile virus in July. It was the first death from West Nile in Contra Costa since 2006.
Mosquitoes can carry West Nile virus after feeding on an infected bird. Though many cases of West Nile virus do not lead to any symptoms, some patients experience a fever, headache, body aches, and vomiting.
While most cases of West Nile virus are not fatal, officials in Contra Costa viewed the death as a wake-up call.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of a Contra Costa County resident to West Nile virus,” Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District general manager Paula Macedo told the Chronicle. “This tragic event serves as a stark reminder of the importance of protecting ourselves from mosquito bites and supporting community efforts to control mosquito populations.”
Increasing global temperatures have created more ideal conditions for disease-spreading mosquitoes. The tragic death of the Contra Costa resident is a reminder to take necessary precautions to prevent mosquito bites, especially during summer months.
Using insect repellent and wearing loose-fitting clothing that covers your arms and legs are ways you can protect yourself from bug bites.
What’s being done about West Nile in the Bay Area?
Moving toward a more sustainable future to keep the planet’s temperatures in balance not only helps protect the environment but also global health. Simple actions to reduce pollution causing Earth to warm at an accelerated rate include switching to LED light bulbs and unplugging appliances when they aren’t in use.
In Contra Costa, officials are still investigating the cause of the disease, per the Chronicle. While they have not provided updates on where the infection happened, they have detected additional cases of West Nile virus in a bird and five chickens, according to district spokesperson Nola Woods.
NH man fights for life with 3 mosquito viruses, including EEE
Paul Burton – September 3, 2024
KENSINGTON, N.H. – A New Hampshire man is fighting for his life because of a mosquito bite. Fifty-four-year-old Joe Casey of Kensington has tested positive for three mosquito-borne viruses, including eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) and West Nile Virus.
“He’s my brother. It’s very difficult, especially because it’s from a mosquito,” his sister-in-law Angela Barker told WBZ-TV, fighting back tears. “He was positive for EEE, for West Nile, and St. Louis Encephalitis, but the CDC, the infectious disease doctors, they don’t know which one is making him this sick.”
Barker said Casey started to feel sick back in early August. He now has swelling in the brain and is barely able to communicate at Exeter Hospital.National & World NewsLatest U.S. and global stories
“My brother-in-law is not a small man, and to see someone that you love be as sick as he is and not be able to talk, to move, to communicate for over three weeks is terrifying and gut-wrenching,” Barker said.
Joe Casey. / Credit: Family Photo
Casey and his wife Kim have four children. They believe he will have a long road to recovery ahead of him. His family has set up an online fundraising page and they’ve received an outpouring of support from the community.
“It could happen to anybody”
“Joe is going to have to go a long-term care and patient rehabilitation, that’s going to be 24-hour care, and really want to get the word out to help this incredible family,” Barker said. “He just got bit by a mosquito and it could happen to anybody.”
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services said Kensington has had at least one mosquito pool test positive for EEE. The town has sent out postcards notifying residents and the threat level has been raised to high.
Casey’s family wants people to be careful.
“Be safe, cover up, wear bug spray. It can happen to anybody, and that’s the scariest thing. Be careful and take proper precautions,” Barker said.
How long do we have until sea level rise swallows coastal cities? This fleet of ocean robots will help find out
Laura Paddison, CNN – September 3, 2024
A team of NASA rocket scientists is developing autonomous underwater robots able to go where humans cannot, deep beneath Antarctica’s giant ice shelves. The robots’ task is to better understand how rapidly ice is melting — and how quickly that could cause catastrophic sea level rise.
In March, scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory lowered a cylindrical robot into the icy waters of the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska to gather data at 100 feet deep. It was the first step in the “IceNode” project.
The ultimate aim is to release a fleet of these robots in Antarctica, which will latch on to the ice and capture data over long periods in one of the most inaccessible places on Earth.
There is an urgent need to better understand this remote, isolated continent; what happens here has global implications.
A slew of recent research suggests Antarctica’s ice may be melting in alarming new ways, meaning the sea level rise forecast might be vastly underestimated. If Antarctica’s ice sheet were to melt entirely, it would cause global sea level rise of around 200 feet — spelling complete catastrophe for coastal communities.
Scientists are particularly keen to understand what’s happening to Antarctica’s ice shelves, huge slabs of floating ice which jut out into the ocean and are an important defense against sea level rise, acting as a cork to hold back glaciers on land.
The “grounding line” — the point at which the glacier rises from the seabed and becomes an ice shelf — is where the most rapid melting may be happening, as warm ocean water eats away at the ice from underneath.
But getting a detailed look at the grounding line in the treacherous Antarctic landscape has been exceptionally difficult.
“We’ve been pondering how to surmount these technological and logistical challenges for years, and we think we’ve found a way,” said Ian Fenty, a climate scientist at JPL and IceNode’s science lead.
NASA’s plan to release around 10 IceNode robots, each around 8 feet long and 10 inches in diameter, into the water from a borehole in the ice or a ship off the coast. They have no propulsion but will ride ocean currents, directed by special software, to their Antarctic destination where they will activate their “landing gear” — three legs which spring out and attach to the ice.
Once in place, their sensors will monitor how fast the warmer, salty ocean water is melting the ice, as well as how quickly the cold meltwater is sinking.
The fleet could operate for up to a year, capturing data across the seasons, NASA said.
Once they have finished monitoring, the robots will detach themselves from the ice, drift to the surface of the ocean and transmit data by satellite. This data can then be fed into computer models to improve the accuracy of sea level rise projections.
“These robots are a platform to bring science instruments to the hardest-to-reach locations on Earth,” said Paul Glick, JPL robotics mechanical engineer and IceNode principal investigator.
The team is currently focused on developing the robots’ technical capabilities and there are more tests planned. There is currently no exact timeline for when they will be deployed in Antarctica, Glick told CNN, “but we’d ideally like it to be as soon as possible.”
An IceNode prototype beneath the frozen surface of Lake Superior, off Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, during a field test in 2022. – NASA
Robots have been used to look beneath Antarctica’s ice before. A recent research project used a torpedo-like robot called Icefin, a remotely operated vehicle which recorded information about ocean heat, saltiness and currents.
But where Icefin included a propulsion system and remained attached to a tether, through which it was controlled and could send back data, the IceNodes will be entirely autonomous.
Both systems complement each other, said Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey, which was part of the research project using Icefin.
Where Icefin can release data in real time, deployments are limited by how long a borehole can be kept open before freezing over, usually a matter of days. IceNodes will be able to collect data over much longer periods but won’t transmit until its mission is over.
Deployment of both machines is challenging and involves substantial risk to sophisticated equipment, Larter told CNN, “but such innovative approaches and risk taking are necessary to find out more about the critical hidden world beneath ice shelves.”
Katie Phang: Voters can reject Donald Trump and his misogyny at the ballot box
Katie S. Phang, Traci Tillman, Ivy Green and Allison Detzel
September 2, 2024
This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 29 episode of “Alex Wagner Tonight.”
Just one month before Election Day in 2016, the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was leaked. It was a shocking and despicable 70-second video that will surely have its own wing in the future Donald J. Trump Museum of Sexism.
In the wake of that offensive “hot mic” audio, panicked talks ensued to replace Trump at the top of the Republican ticket. At that moment, the GOP had the chance to do the right thing and replace him as the nominee. But, of course, that didn’t happen and he eventually became the president of the United States.
This turn of events sent a very depressing reminder to women across America: Even someone as lewd and misogynistic as Trump can rise to the highest office in our country. In other words, sexism is acceptable.
Now, in 2024, Trump is once again running for president; his opponent is, once again, a woman; and his gross sexism is, once again, in overdrive and on full display.
On Wednesday, Trump went on a Truth Social rampage, reposting QAnon slogans, altered images and calls to jail his political rivals. In a period of just 30 minutes, he reposted 30 times … and I’m supposed to believe women are the emotional ones?
In the midst of this vomitous social media spew, Trump reposted a photo of arguably the two most accomplished female politicians in America, Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris. The photo was accompanied by a caption that is almost unspeakably vile, suggesting that the vice president of the United States slept her way to the top. A Trump campaign senior adviser laughably tried defending the former president by suggesting that Trump had not read the caption.
But that’s only just the latest example of Trump’s sexism in this election cycle. He and his supporters have been making gender-based attacks on Harris for weeks now.
All of that is in addition to the racist attacks Trump and Fox News have made about Harris’ mixed-race identity, including calling her a “DEI hire.” There’s also the fact that just last year, a jury of Trump’s peers found him liable for the sexual abuse of columnist E. Jean Carroll.
We have a chance to redo that moment from 2016. Back then, despite Trump’s sexism and misogyny, he still became president. But now in 2024, we have the chance to show that in America sexism will not be tolerated. It’s time for us to show we’re better than that. We’re better than Trump.
It’s not hard to see why most women despise Trump, a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women on tape. On the policy front, of course, Trump is the single person most responsible for the overturn of Roe v. Wade. The published agenda for his second term, Project 2025, includes plans for a national abortion ban and restrictions on contraception. Not only does Trump not try to hide his misogyny, but his campaign makes it a selling point in a bid to win over bitter male voters. On Wednesday, Trump posted a sexually explicit comment about Harris to Truth Social, accusing her of selling sex because she dated other men before she met her husband. As Anderson Cooper noted on CNN, this is not “out of character” for Trump, who usually calls women “pigs,” “dogs” and “nasty” for showing anything but submission to him.
Trump’s campaign is in danger if he can’t get at least a few skeptical women to vote for him. So on Friday, Trump is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the third annual Moms for Liberty summit in Washington, D.C. It’s another sign that his campaign has run out of ideas to appeal to women. Moms for Liberty’s fall from political grace has been as rapid as their rise to prominence. Associating with the group is more likely to hurt Trump with female voters than to help him.
Moms for Liberty was founded in January 2021. Initially, the group found success in helping Republicans claw back support from suburban women that had been lost during the Trump presidency. By channeling the frustrations parents felt over pandemic school closures, Moms for Liberty positioned itself as a moderate-seeming “parental rights” organization. In reality, the group was controlled by far-right activists with deep ties to Christian nationalism. When Moms for Liberty-linked school board members started taking actions like banning books and vilifying LGBTQ teachers, it provoked a nationwide backlash, with parents in affected communities coming together to kick Moms for Liberty members off their school boards.
“DeSantis and MfL appear to have lost their juice,” journalist Kelly Weill wrote in her recent MomLeft newsletter. “In 2022, the group claimed to have elected approximately half of its 500-plus school board candidates,” reaching an 80% success rate in Florida. In 2023, however, the group only won 35% of its races, and that’s after dramatically scaling back the number of candidates they were running. This month, Moms for Liberty got another shellacking, as only 6 out of 23 candidates backed by DeSantis and Moms for Liberty in Florida even won a primary.
“Big losses across the state for candidates who advanced the group’s agenda, including efforts to ban library books and restrict lessons about race, sex and gender, pointed to mounting dissatisfaction with an organization that had quickly gained sway with powerful Republicans amid the anti-mask, parental rights politics of the pandemic,” reports the Tampa Bay Times.
Despite this, Politico reports, “Republicans show no signs of changing their strategy.” Last year, Trump’s speech before Moms for Liberty drew heavily on plans outlined in Project 2025 to gut public education altogether, starting with abolishing the Department of Education. This year, Moms for Liberty head Tiffany Justice said she hopes “to hear some more plans” regarding this, because “it’s a little more complicated than just waving a magic wand and making it go away.” Democrats no doubt agree they’d like to hear more about Trump’s plan to end the Department of Education, as 64% of Americans oppose the idea.
That Trump and Republicans are sticking with Moms of Liberty suggests they’re desperate. Polling shows that since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the nominee, there’s been a major uptick in female support for the Democratic ticket. On Tuesday, Democratic research firm TargetSmart published a new report chronicling the surge of voter registrations since Harris joined the race, including a whopping 175% spike in registrations from Black women under 30.
Harris’ appeal is a huge part of this, but it’s also driven by women’s outrage over Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. Vance can’t seem to pull his nose out of women’s uteruses. New quotes of Vance painting childless women as “miserable cat ladies” and “sociopathic” are released practically every day. Like Trump, he has a special zeal for attacking hardworking schoolteachers, claiming teachers who do not have biological children “disorient and really disturb” him.
This rhetoric seems like it will only further alienate female voters, especially mothers who tend to have close relationships with local teachers and know they don’t need to be parents to be skilled professionals. (For one thing, most start teaching full-time at age 22. That’s five years younger than the average age of a first-time parent, and 12 years younger than when Vance had his first child.) It just reinforces the accusation of the Harris campaign that Vance is “weird” and out of touch with how normal Americans live.
But it’s not like Trump and Vance have a lot of options for reaching out to female voters. Moms for Liberty’s brand is failing and their views are unpopular, but they do have “Moms” in their name and female leaders for Trump to be photographed with. If you squint hard enough, that could look like Trump playing nice with women. Moms for Liberty doesn’t offer much, but it’s the best the Trump campaign can do.
Where Does Biden’s Student Loan Debt Plan Stand? Here’s What to Know.
Zach Montague – August 29, 2024
President Joe Biden discusses his administration’s actions to cancel or reduce student loan debts, at the Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., Feb. 21, 2024. (Al Drago/The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s latest effort to wipe out student loan debt for millions of Americans is in jeopardy.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to allow a key component of the policy, known as the SAVE plan, to move forward after an emergency application by the Biden administration.
Until Republican-led states sued to block the plan over the summer, SAVE had been the main way for borrowers to apply for loan forgiveness. The program allowed people to make payments based on income and family size; some borrowers ended up having their remaining debt canceled altogether.
Other elements of Biden’s loan forgiveness plan remain in effect for now. And over the course of Biden’s presidency, his administration has canceled about $167 billion in loans for 4.75 million people, or roughly 1 in 10 federal loan holders.National & World NewsLatest U.S. and global stories
But Wednesday’s decision leaves millions of Americans in limbo.
Here is a look at what the ruling means for borrowers and what happens next:
Who was eligible for SAVE?
Most people with federal undergraduate or graduate loans could apply for forgiveness under SAVE, which stands for Saving on a Valuable Education.
But the amount of relief it provided varied depending on factors such as income and family size. More than 8 million people enrolled in the program during the roughly 10 months that it was available, and about 400,000 of them got some amount of debt canceled.
The plan has been on hold since July, when a federal appellate court issued a ruling temporarily blocking the program. The Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request by the Biden administration to lift that injunction.
What happens next?
SAVE is on hold and interest on loans will not accrue while lower courts consider the merits of the legal challenges.
If those challenges succeed, millions of students will most likely be forced to revert to other plans with significantly higher monthly payments.
The Supreme Court said it expected a lower court to move quickly on the case and “render its decision with appropriate dispatch.” The Education Department has said it will provide regular updates for borrowers on its website.
Who can still apply for debt relief?
There are still pathways for people who want to apply for debt relief, including those who borrowed money to attend schools that misled or took advantage of them financially.
Another program is aimed at people working in public service — including teachers, firefighters and members of the military — who had been paying down loans for at least 10 years.
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program was established in 2007, but it had been plagued by years of bureaucratic delays and other problems.
A report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2017 found that federal loan servicers routinely failed to inform borrowers about their eligibility for the program and systematically miscounted payments that could count toward forgiveness.
The Biden administration revived the program, which has led to debt relief for nearly 1 million people.
The administration has also approved $14.1 billion in forgiveness for about 548,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability that prevents them from working, a group that includes many military veterans.
Why is this issue tangled up in the courts?
Surveys have consistently found that a majority of Americans support some form of debt relief. But Republican attorneys general and conservative groups have tried to block Biden’s plans in court, saying he is overstepping his authority.
Critics of the debt relief plan characterize it as a taxpayer-funded giveaway.
The legal challenges have steadily chipped away at Biden’s ambitions.
At the beginning of his presidency, Biden promised to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt for more than 40 million borrowers. The Supreme Court struck that down in June 2023, ruling that his administration did not have the authority to do so.
Cumulatively, this campaign has succeeded in maintaining a comparatively high level of support from ordinary Russians for a fight that has lasted much longer and exacted a much heavier toll than authorities in Moscow originally advertised. But since mid-July, Ukraine’s unexpected incursion into Russia’s Kursk region — and Moscow’s inability to marshal a serious response to it — has shaken public sentiment within Russia.
By just how much? This is documented in a new study by OpenMinds, a Ukrainian data analytics and communications firm. By extensively parsing Russian social media and news outlets, it chronicles that the events in Kursk have impacted popular support for the war among ordinary Russians, as well as increased their dissatisfaction with the Kremlin.
Specifically, it notes a surge of content relating to the war as a result of Ukraine’s raid, as well as a significant decline in positive sentiment in posts, broadcasts and messages regarding the broader conflict. This, the study attributes to two causes.
First, it notes, “there have been fewer cheerful publications about the war” by Russia’s extensive state propaganda organs. Second, “there were more grievances compared to the previous two months … [both] blaming the Russian authorities and general panic regarding the incursion.”
Local fears are indeed rising. Russia’s September 2022 “partial mobilization,” as Vladimir Putin’s domestic conscription effort was euphemistically known, proved to be profoundly unpopular at home, sparking a mass exodus of citizens eager to avoid the draft. Now, worries are rising anew that Moscow’s ongoing struggles on the Ukrainian front could prompt the Kremlin to launch a new effort to beef up its military ranks.
The study documents “a growing concern” for renewed mobilization to respond to Ukraine’s incursion. During the first week of Ukraine’s offensive, it notes, “approximately 39 percent of the publications about mobilization mentioned the Kursk incursion” as a potential precipitating factor. So significant was the furor that Russian lawmakers were forced to speak out publicly to refute rumors that plans for a new conscription drive were in the works.
All this has profoundly constrained the Kremlin’s options. Ordinarily, Moscow would be quick to rally the country around Kyiv’s incursion, which it would invariably depict as an “existential threat” to its sovereignty. However, it hasn’t yet done so — something the OpenMinds study suggests is because “the Russian government understands the sociopolitical risks of a new wave of mobilization and fears the potential consequences related to it.”
What all this might mean for Russia is still too early to tell. Policymakers in Moscow have initiated an array of measures in response to the Ukrainian incursion, ranging from declaring a state of emergency in Kursk as well as the neighboring Belgorod region, surging troops into the area, and creating new administrative units to manage the crisis). Still, as NATO officials have noted, Russia’s official response has been “slow and scattered” — at least so far.
Whether it stays that way is still an open question. It’s already clear, however, that Ukraine has accomplished one of the principal aims of its daring military raid: to bring the conflict home to ordinary Russians and underscore that the war of choice embarked upon by their president carries potentially dire consequences for them personally.
Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe tore into former President Donald Trump following visit to Arlington National Cemetery that has sparked outrage among veterans. In addition to Trump’s awkward thumbs up photo on Monday it was later reported that two Trump campaign staffers got in a physical altercation with cemetery workers who tried to stop the candidate from using the occasion to attack his political rivals, arguing that it violates federal law.
“I know a lot of military veterans were very uncomfortable with the idea that Trump was there at all,” correspondent Jonathan Lemire, who was filling in for Joe Scarborough said Wednesday morning. “Some of these veterans were sort of just aghast that even in any way, shape, or form, our Arlington National Cemetery, arguably the most sacred place in our country, was being used as a backdrop for political purposes.”
“Is nothing sacred?” added contributor Mike Barnicle about Trump’s behavior at the ceremony. “That is sacred ground. And the idea that any candidate of any party would, intentionally or unintentionally, use that sacred ground as a prop for a political campaign is beyond condemnation.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/hPdWaNanrrw
Barnicle continued, “It’s terribly upsetting, obviously, to people who have buried loved ones in Arlington National Cemetery. It’s terribly upsetting to many veterans. It’s terribly upsetting to people who view it as a spectacle.”
Most importantly, Barnicle argued, “It ought to be terribly upsetting to any American who values what the military does for this country worldwide, and has done for this country for centuries, and will continue to do for this country.”
Lemire also noted that this scandal “comes just days after Trump suggested that a civilian medal, the Medal of Freedom, was better than the Medal of Honor, because the army soldiers who receive the Medal of Honor are often either killed or wounded.”
“And of course,” he continued, “we’ve been reminded of late how Trump used to refer to veterans, even deceased soldiers, as ‘suckers and losers,’ a comment confirmed by his own chief of staff.”
Amidst the backlash, Trump released a statement of support from family members of the Marines whose grave he was photographed smiling and giving the thumbs up this week. Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told The Daily Beast on Wednesday, “There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.” He did not reply to requests for the footage.
“Sick and tragic”: Veterans, Democrats criticize Trump for “incident” at Arlington National Cemetery
Nicholas Liu – August 28, 2024
Donald Trump Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Two members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff pushed and verbally abused an official at Arlington Memorial Cemetery while the former president was participating in a wreath-laying ceremony on Monday, NPR first reported.
A source with knowledge of the incident told NPR that the official tried to prevent staffers from filming and photographing in Section 60, a restricted area where recent U.S. military casualties are buried. According to the source, officials had already made clear that only cemetery staff were permitted to film and photograph in that area, and when one of the officials tried to prevent Trump campaign staffers from entering, the staffers verbally abused and pushed the official aside.
Arlington National Cemetery, in a statement to NPR, said it “can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed.”
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” the statement continued. “Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”
Trump was in Arlington to mark the third anniversary of a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate at Kabul Airport in 2021 during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in an attack, which Trump has cited to criticize President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over the administration’s handling of the evacuation.
On Tuesday, Trump posted a statement from relatives of two service members killed in the bombing. “We would like to express our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to president Donald J. Trump for his presence at the recent Section 60 gathering, honoring our children and their fallen brothers and sisters,” the Truth Social post read. “On the three-year anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing, the president and his team conducted themselves with nothing but the utmost respect and dignity for all of our service members, especially our beloved children.”
The statement also said that the family members accepted the presence of an official videographer and photographer at the event, though their approval does not override existing rules by the cemetery that regulate behavior near the grave sites of many other veterans. In the end, Trump got his photo, which depicts the former president smiling widely and giving a thumbs-up behind the graves of the two Marines.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung pushed back on the altercation story in a statement to NPR, saying that “we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.” (As of Wednesday morning, no such footage has been released.)
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung claimed.
Predictably, reports of an altercation on hallowed ground sparked outrage from veterans and veterans’ groups. Liberal veterans organization VoteVets demanded that Trump take action against the staffers who took part in the incident. “If Donald Trump respects the fallen (he doesn’t) he will fire the people who fought with Arlington National Cemetery staff,” the group said in a statement on social media. “The fact is, Trump staff did this because he wanted them to do it. He sees Section 60 as Suckers and Losers too,” the group said, referring to Trump’s past alleged comments about veterans.
Former Rep. Max Rose, D-N.Y., who fought in Afghanistan, called the photograph and the alleged altercation that made it possible a “sick and tragic” affair. “Trump and his team care only about using the military as a prop,” he wrote on X. “No respect for our nation’s fallen heroes. Trump only cares about himself.”
Rep. Mickie Sherrill, D-N.J., a former Navy lieutenant, said that the former president using Arlington National Cemetery as a “photo-op” was to be expected from Trump, as “disrespecting veterans is par for course.”
Criticism over Trump’s comments about veterans exploded in 2020 after multiple Trump White House sources provided examples of him disparaging veterans for a report by The Atlantic. According to one story, he resisted visiting the grave sites of American World War I veterans in Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France because “it’s filled with losers” who were “suckers” for getting killed. At a briefing given by then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joe Dunford, Trump reportedly turned to aides and said: “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”
Trump has denied those claims, but some public statements he’s made are more difficult to dismiss: In 2015, he described former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as “not a war hero” because he was shot down and captured by North Vietnamese forces.
It’s not just words that have put a spotlight on Trump’s record with veterans. During his administration, Trump gave authority over Department of Veterans’ Affairs policy to a trio of business executives with memberships at his Mar-a-Lago club and personal ties to him, sparking a 2021 investigation by congressional Democrats that found the arrangement “violated the law and sought to exert improper influence over government officials to further their own personal interest.” Investigations by ProPublica also found that Trump’s Veterans Affairs officials enriched large companies while imposing longer waits for benefits on veterans, weakened the department by cutting its staff and retaliated against whistleblowers over reported abuse and malpractice at VA facilities.
If Trump was sometimes reluctant to visit military cemeteries during his presidency, some commentators observe that he now sees the political benefits of putting it in his schedule.
“The idea that any candidate of any party would use, intentionally or unintentionally, use that sacred ground as a prop for a political campaign is beyond condemnation,” journalist Mike Barnicle said on MSNBC. “It’s terribly upsetting, obviously, to people who have buried loved ones in Arlington National Cemetery.”
Trump team involved in ‘incident’ with staff at Arlington cemetery
Paul McLeary – August 28, 2024
Members of the Trump campaign were involved in a confrontation with Army staff at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday while the former president took part in a photo session in a section for troops who have died in recent conflicts.
The incident, which reportedly involved pushing an employee and verbal abuse, came as former President Donald Trump visited the cemetery to mark the three-year anniversary of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, where 13 service members were killed in a bombing at the Kabul airport.
NPR first reported that families of two of the Marines killed at the airport invited Trump to Section 60 of the cemetery, where federal law prohibits political or campaign-related photography. NPR, citing a person with knowledge of the incident, said Trump’s team verbally abused and pushed a staffer when that person attempted to block the photographer who was with the campaign.
The photos came after Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
The cemetery released a statement confirming there was an “incident,” and added that “federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities” at any military cemetery, including photography “in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign. Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”
Trump adviser Chris LaCivita said in a statement to POLITICO that “for a despicable individual to physically prevent President Trump’s team from accompanying him to this solemn event is a disgrace.”
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, confirmed that an incident occurred but denied there was any altercation.
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung said.
Cheung posted on X Wednesday what appeared to be communicationbetween the campaign and Arlington staff that recommended against bringing additional photographers “outside the main media pool,” but allowed a Trump photographer to accompany him. The communication does not specify the photographer can follow Trump to the gravesite. Staff at the cemetery had worked for days to coordinate the visit with the Trump campaign.
Appearing on CNN Wednesday, former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the incident “should be investigated” and that the cemetery “has a lot of rules” for what people can or cannot do there. The “principle is that no person or party [on] either side should ever use Arlington National Cemetery or any of our cemeteries or battlefields for partisan political purposes, or break the so-called rules.”
The incident is the latest in a string of controversies involving Trump and veterans. On Aug. 15, he said the civilian President Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the military’s Medal of Honor because recipients of the military’s highest award for valor are “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”
The Veterans of Foreign Wars, which has 1.5 million members, called the comments “asinine” and said they not “only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.”
