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The Christian Persecution Narrative Rings Hollow

The New York Times – Opinion

The Christian Persecution Narrative Rings Hollow

By David French, Opinion Columnist – August 25, 2024

Students, seen from behind, bow their heads in prayer in a classroom in Texas in 1962. — Credit…Bettmann/Getty Images

This June, I was invited on a friend’s podcast to answer a question I’ve been asked over and over again in the Trump era. Are Christians really persecuted in the United States of America? Millions of my fellow evangelicals believe we are, or they believe we’re one election away from a crackdown. This sense of dread and despair helps tie conservative Christians, people who center their lives on the church and the institutions of the church, to Donald Trump — the man they believe will fight to keep faith alive.

As I told my friend, the short answer is no, not by any meaningful historical definition of persecution. American Christians enjoy an immense amount of liberty and power.

But that’s not the only answer. American history tells the story of two competing factions that possess very different visions of the role of faith in American public life. Both of them torment each other, and both of them have made constitutional mistakes that have triggered deep cultural conflict.

One of the most valuable and humbling experiences in life is to experience an American community as part of the in-group and as part of the out-group. I spent most of my life living in the cultural and political center of American evangelical Christianity, but in the past nine years I’ve been relentlessly pushed to the periphery. The process has been painful. Even so, I’m grateful for my new perspective.

When you’re inside evangelicalism, Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat — of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid, when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship.

Combine those stories with the personal tales of Christians who faced death threats, intimidation and online harassment for their views, and it’s easy to tell a story of American backsliding — a nation that once respected or even revered Christianity now persecutes Christians. If the left is angry at conservatives for seeking the protection of a man like Trump, then it has only itself to blame.

But when you’re pushed outside evangelicalism, the world starts to look very different. You see conservative Christians attacking the fundamental freedoms of their opponents. Red-state legislatures pass laws restricting the free speech of progressives and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. Christian school board members attempt to restrict access to books in the name of their own moral norms. Other conservatives want to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, to bring legal recognition of same-sex marriages to an end.

Combine those stories with personal tales of progressives and other dissenters experiencing threats from and intimidation by conservative Christians, and you begin to see why the Christian persecution narrative rings hollow. And if conservative Christians are angry at progressive Americans for believing they are hateful hypocrites, then they have only themselves to blame.

After living inside and outside conservative evangelicalism, I have a different view. While injustice is real, the Christian persecution narrative is fundamentally false. America isn’t persecuting Christians; it’s living with the fallout of two consequential constitutional mistakes that distort our politics and damage our culture.

First, for most of American history, courts underenforced the establishment clause of the First Amendment. It wasn’t even held clearly applicable to the states until 1947. Americans lived under what my colleague Ross Douthat calls the “soft hegemony of American Protestantism.” It was “soft” in part because America never possessed a national church on par with European establishments, but it was certainly hard enough to mandate Bible readings and prayer in schools and to pass a host of explicitly anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments that were intended to blunt Catholic influence in the United States.

This soft hegemony wasn’t constitutionally or culturally sustainable. Mandating Protestant Scripture readings is ultimately incompatible with a First Amendment that doesn’t permit the state to privilege any particular sect or denomination. Culturally, the process of diversification and secularization makes any specific religious hegemony impossible. There simply aren’t a sufficient number of Americans of any single faith tradition to dominate American life.

In the 1960s the Warren court began dismantling the soft Protestant establishment by blocking school prayer and Scripture reading. A series of cases limited the power of the state to express a religious point of view. But then state and local governments overcorrected. They overenforced the establishment clause and violated the free speech and free exercise clauses by taking aim at private religious expression.

The desire to disentangle church and state led to a search-and-destroy approach to religious expression in public institutions. Public schools and public colleges denied religious organizations equal access to public facilities. States and public colleges denied religious institutions equal access to public funds.

I started my legal career in 1994, when equal access was very much in doubt. I spent the better part of two decades filing lawsuit after lawsuit that made essentially the same claim: State actors must treat religious speech the same as they treat secular speech. The proper interplay between the free exercise clause and the establishment clause ought to mean that private religious speech should neither be favored nor disfavored by the government. The state can’t run the church, and the church can’t run the state.

The Supreme Court has spent much of the past two decades correcting the overcorrection that began in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, religious liberty proponents haven’t lost a significant Supreme Court case in 14 years. During that time, the court has established (often through supermajorities that include justices from the left and the right) that people of faith enjoy equal access to school facilities, equal access to public funds (including tuition assistance to fund private religious education) and extraordinary independence from nondiscrimination laws that would otherwise interfere with the hiring and firing of ministerial employees.

Conservative and liberal justices have created a different, sustainable equilibrium, but the religious liberty culture war rages on anyway — in part because millions of Americans don’t want to strike a balance. They actually prefer domination to accommodation. Many conservative evangelicals miss the old Protestant establishment, and they want it back. This is part of the impulse behind the recent Ten Commandments law in Louisiana, for example, or the recent effort in Oklahoma to establish a religious charter school, a public school run by the Catholic Church.

Combine these efforts at religious establishment with red-state legislation aimed at progressive and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, and one could fairly assert that Christians are persecuting their opponents.

But there’s more to it than that. There are secular Americans who do take aim at Christian expression and at Christian institutions. They don’t want separation of church and state so much as they seek regulation of the church by the state, to push the church into conformance with a secular political ideology.

Then both sides tear into each other with an inexcusable level of fury and malice. When I was representing conservative Christian organizations, I could regale Christian audiences with stories of extreme secular intolerance, and I never ran out of material — especially when discussing religious liberty on college campuses.

Then conservative evangelicalism ejected me from its ranks, and I experienced a level of anger and malice that eclipsed anything I experienced from the most vitriolic secular progressives. I started to hear from others who’d experienced the same thing, and my eyes opened. Christians are wrecking lives in the name of righteousness.

Every culture war battle has casualties. Take a 2022 Supreme Court case about a praying high school football coach. He was seeking the right to pray on the field, and he won. The Supreme Court said his personal prayer was constitutionally protected. But that’s not the entire story.

Employees in the coach’s school district endured their own ordeal. I was struck by the opening sentence of an essay I read by a former teacher in the district: “‘That was another death threat,’ our high school secretary said to me after hanging up the phone.” A legal dispute isn’t proof of persecution, but threats most definitely count.

Christians who bemoan cultural hostility to their faith should be humbled by a sad reality. When it comes to inflicting pain on their political adversaries, conservative Christians often give worse than they get.

David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.”

A stark social divide: Adults without a college degree more likely to have no close friends, survey finds

NBC News

A stark social divide: Adults without a college degree more likely to have no close friends, survey finds

Aria Bendix – August 25, 2024

People swim at the Astoria Pool on the opening day (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) — For those without a college degree, there may be fewer opportunities to engage in social activities.

The Summary

In a survey, nearly a quarter of U.S. adults without a college degree said they had no close friends.
People without a college degree also reported less participation in social activities like going to parks or restaurants than college-educated adults.
The findings come amid a documented rise in loneliness and social isolation.

Nearly all U.S. adults used to have close friends.

In 1990, the share of the population that said they didn’t was low and roughly the same no matter one’s education level: just 2% for people with college degrees and 3% for those without.

But a recent survey suggests that share has risen overall, particularly among those who did not graduate college — creating a kind of class divide in people’s level of social engagement and connection. Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults with a high school diploma or lower education level said they had no close friends. The number was even higher for Black adults in that group: 35%.

Just 10% of those with a college degree said the same.

The findings come from a survey of around 6,600 adults conducted by the Survey Center on American Life, a nonprofit that researches how people’s lives are shaped by culture, politics and technology.

“Our social fabric seems to have two layers now,” said Daniel Cox, the center’s director and a co-author of a report published this week summarizing the findings. “It has one for college-educated folks that seems to be relatively intact, and then one for those without college degrees, which seems to be in tatters.”

The findings come amid a documented rise in social isolation nationwide. Around 30% of adults say they’ve felt lonely at least once per week over the past year, and 10% say they’re lonely every day, according to a January poll from the American Psychiatric Association.

The U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic last year, citing its links to heart disease, stroke, dementia and premature death. San Mateo County, California, which includes part of Silicon Valley, subsequently declared a public health emergency over high rates of loneliness among residents.

“There’s been considerable decline and atrophy in American social connection,” said Cox, who is also a senior fellow of polling and public opinion at the conservative Washington think tank American Enterprise Institute, adding that although the pandemic helped bring the issue to light, “this decline had gone on for decades before.”

He offered a few ideas that might explain the trend. One is that being alone is less boring now, thanks to video games and streaming services, so people may be less likely to join social groups or spend time with friends or family. Another is that for those without a college degree, there are fewer opportunities to engage in social activities, perhaps because their access to free public spaces is more limited or they lack the time or money to frequent venues like bars and restaurants.

Cox’s survey found that college-educated adults were more likely to go to restaurants or coffee shops and to strike up conversations with neighbors, compared to people without a college degree. They were also more likely to be members of a neighborhood association, sports league or hobby group (like a book club or regular poker game).

“We put so much of the onus of creating and maintaining friends on individuals instead of institutions,” Cox said. “We’ve shifted all the work, all the effort, onto individuals who now have to coordinate, organize, schedule their social engagements, as opposed to having them occur organically out of the things that they’re already doing.”

People with a college degree were also more likely to be part of a labor union or to regularly attend church, the survey found — two venues that have historically given people with less formal education opportunities to socialize.

The survey even found an educational divide when it comes to free public venues like libraries and parks. Nearly 4 in 10 college-educated adults said they had visited a park or community garden at least once a month in the past year, compared to less than a quarter of those without a college education. And nearly half of college graduates said they had visited a library at least a few times in the past year, compared with a quarter of adults with a high school diploma or less.

“The places that are legitimately free — community centers and libraries — their hours of operation aren’t regular enough for a lot of folks,” Cox said. “Many of those places are closed in the evenings, and then there’s just not enough of them to meet the need.”

Part of the issue may have to do with geography: A 2022 study found that neighborhoods with higher poverty rates have fewer public gathering spaces. And many communities don’t have the money to invest in their public spaces, Cox said.

Limited free time and poor access to transportation likely play a role, as well, said Adam Roth, an assistant professor of sociology at Oklahoma State University, who wasn’t involved in the survey.

“If you live out in the suburbs and you have to change buses or trains or get in your car and do that however-long commute, that is going to be a prohibitive factor,” Roth said.

The story isn’t entirely bleak, though. A collection of surveys from 2022 and 2023 found that even though people in the U.S. desired to be closer to their friends, less than 3% reported having no friends at all. The surveys looked at both close friendships and casual acquaintances.

“Our data didn’t really spell doom and gloom,” said Amanda Holmstrom, a communication professor at Michigan State University who conducted that research. “People have friends — they feel like they don’t necessarily have the time to nurture those friends.”

Casual friendships still offer benefits, of course. Roth said that people report better psychological well-being on days when they have more interactions with a wider variety of people, including ones they barely know. Social interactions in general help reduce or stave off symptoms of anxiety and depression. Face-to-face interactions and engagement in community events have even been linked to lower levels of inflammation.

“The bottom line is, all types of social interactions and relationships matter, particularly for health and well-being,” Roth said. “But the probability of actually experiencing certain types of social interactions is at least partially dependent on the communities we live in.”

Putin Is Getting Rattled

The New York Times

Putin Is Getting Rattled

By Serge Schmemann – August 23, 2024

A picture of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, sitting at a table. — Credit…Pool photo by Gavriil Grigorov

Mr. Schmemann is a member of the editorial board and a former Moscow bureau chief for The Times.

In purely military terms, Ukraine’s surprise incursion of Russia earlier this month is a dubious gamble. Moscow has not diverted forces from its grinding advances on the Donetsk front, a main focus of the current fighting, and the physical cost in dead or captured troops and evacuated citizens does not concern Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

The more significant potential of the invasion lies on the other front — that of information, propaganda, morale, image and competing narratives. That is where the fight is being fought to keep the West involved, to keep Ukrainians hopeful and to get Russians worried about the toll of the war in lives and treasure. And this is where Ukraine may see an advantage.

The very invocation of Kursk, the region where Ukraine made its advance, is familiar to every Russian as the site of not only a great World War II Soviet triumph but also the catastrophic accident that sank a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine in 2000. By moving into Kursk, Ukraine’s military has loudly advertised its boldness just when it looked like its troops might never regain the initiative.

The surprise and speed of the Ukrainian attack and the flaccid Russian response have given new strength to calls by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for the United States and his other Western supporters to abandon their insistence that he not use their weapons to attack Russian territory. Mr. Zelensky calls this the “naïve illusion of so-called red lines,” and so far, his allies have not complained about the Kursk invasion. They may see little value in scolding Ukraine, the plucky David in this war, right after he has landed an audacious strike against a plodding Goliath.

Just as important, Ukraine’s move into Kursk highlights the inherent contradiction in Mr. Putin’s propaganda, which portrays the conflict as a proxy war against Western powers trying to deny Russia its destiny, and one in which a calm, united and prosperous Russia is certain to prevail. But that illusion falls apart once Ukrainian forces have succeeded in slicing into Russia and forcing tens of thousands of Russians to flee their homes.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

The overriding imperative of Mr. Putin’s propaganda, inherited from the Soviet Union, is to enforce the belief that whatever is happening, however grave it may seem and whatever the cost, the Kremlin — Vladimir Putin, to be precise — is in full control. The depth of the disaster precipitated by Russia’s war is revealed by the intensity of the effort — the euphemisms, insinuations, scapegoats and excuses — marshaled toward propaganda.

Mr. Putin, a product of the old K.G.B., is well practiced in this dark art. From the moment the war against Ukraine began in February 2022, he has been ruthless in enforcing a ban against even calling it a war. Russians are subject to arrest if they fail to call it a “special military operation,” even though Mr. Putin himself has occasionally slipped. When the Russian caterer and warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a suspicious plane crash after sending his mercenaries who were fighting in Ukraine to march on Moscow, Mr. Putin kept a straight face as he offered his condolences, noting only that his latest victim had “made serious mistakes in life.”

So when the Ukrainian army launched its unexpected drive into the Kursk region on Aug. 6, the Kremlin propaganda mill got to work. There was no invasion, of course, only an “armed provocation,” a “situation,” a “terrorist attack” or “events in the Kursk region.” And of course, the insidious West was to blame. At a televised meeting at his residence with security chiefs and regional governors six days into the Kursk invasion, Mr. Putin declared that once again, it was “the West fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians.” He insisted that Russian forces would retaliate appropriately and still accomplish “all our goals.”

When the acting governor of the Kursk region, speaking over a video link, began giving some actual details of the invasion, including the number of towns and villages affected and the amount of territory seized by the Ukrainian army, Mr. Putin sharply cut him off, saying he should leave such detail to the military and focus on the humanitarian response. The poor governor, who probably never imagined having his remote province invaded by anyone, must have assumed that his president wanted to learn what was really happening. Perhaps he was unaware that his job was not to worry the population with facts, but only to show that the government was in control and taking care of its people.

Mr. Putin has so far held firm to the line “We have everything under control.” He has not bothered to visit Kursk, and he has not delivered a rousing speech calling for a grand defense of the motherland. The state-controlled media has focused on showing the government ensuring that evacuees are safe and cared for and that the nation was rallying with an outpouring of humanitarian aid. The latest report from Russia’s emergencies ministry on Tuesday said more than 122,000 civilians had been relocated, including more than 500 in the previous 24 hours, many to shelters across Russia.

At the same time, the Kremlin has not reined in bellicose bloggers and commentators who are demanding a brutal retaliation for Kursk or shaming evacuees for not standing and fighting against the foreign invaders. Such critics actually serve a purpose for Mr. Putin. Hawks who call on an authoritarian ruler to be even more authoritarian are a useful foil, presenting the ruler as relatively reasonable.

Though public opinion is hard to gauge in a country where candor is dangerous, some discontent over Kursk has been gleaned on social media, and it does seem that Mr. Putin has been rattled. His irritation with the acting governor was one sign; another was his display of anger when he declared that the Ukrainian initiative undermined the possibility of negotiations. “What kind of negotiations can we talk about with people who indiscriminately attack the civilian population and civilian infrastructure, or try to create threats to nuclear power facilities?” he asked, oblivious to the rich irony of his words.

Whether the rant revealed that Mr. Putin was considering negotiations or that he was warning the West that it has to keep Ukraine in check if it wants negotiations is unclear. Mr. Zelensky has said only that the goal was to push the Russians further back from Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have made little headway in Kursk after the initial assault, while to the south, Russian troops are advancing on their next major target, the city of Pokrovsk.

Whatever happens next in this unpredictable war, the importance of the information front must not be underestimated. Any operation that raises Ukrainian morale, bolsters Western support and jolts Mr. Putin’s narrative is a battle won.

Serge Schmemann joined The Times in 1980 and worked as the bureau chief in Moscow, Bonn and Jerusalem and at the United Nations. He was editorial page editor of The International Herald Tribune in Paris from 2003 to 2013.

Fed’s Powell says ‘time has come’ for interest rate cuts

Yahoo! Finance

Fed’s Powell says ‘time has come’ for interest rate cuts

Myles Udland and Jennifer Schonberger – August 23, 2024

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sent a straightforward message to markets in a key speech on Friday, saying “the time has come” for the central bank to begin lowering interest rates.

Speaking at the Kansas City Fed’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Powell said: “The time has come for policy to adjust.”

“The direction of travel is clear,” Powell added, “and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”

Powell’s speech comes just over three weeks out from the Fed’s Sept. 17-18 meeting, which should see the central bank announce its first interest rate cut since 2020.

Powell acknowledged recent softness in the labor market in his speech and said the Fed does not “seek or welcome further cooling in labor market conditions.”

The July jobs report rattled markets earlier this month, revealing that there were just 114,000 jobs added to the economy last month while the unemployment rate rose to 4.3%, the highest since October 2021. Data earlier this week also showed that 818,000 fewer people were employed in the US economy as of March, suggesting reports have been overstating the strength of the job market over the last year.

“It seems unlikely that the labor market will be a source of elevated inflationary pressures anytime soon,” Powell said.

Ahead of Powell’s speech, investors had priced in nearly 100% odds the Fed would lower rates next month, with odds on a cut of 0.25% vs. 0.50% standing at roughly two to one.

“Four and a half years after COVID-19’s arrival, the worst of the pandemic-related economic distortions are fading,” Powell said.

“Inflation has declined significantly … Our objective has been to restore price stability while maintaining a strong labor market, avoiding the sharp increases in unemployment that characterized earlier disinflationary episodes when inflation expectations were less well anchored. While the task is not complete, we have made a good deal of progress toward that outcome.”

Powell’s remarks on Friday were reminiscent of those he delivered at Jackson Hole in 2022, in which the Fed chair offered a direct assessment of the economic outlook and, at the time, the need for additional rate increases.

FILE PHOTO: Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve walks in Teton National Park where financial leaders from around the world gathered for the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium outside Jackson, Wyoming, U.S., August 26, 2022. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart — Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, walks in Teton National Park, where financial leaders from around the world gathered for the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on Aug. 26, 2022. (REUTERS/Jim Urquhart) (Reuters / Reuters)

“At this podium two years ago, I discussed the possibility that addressing inflation could bring some pain in the form of higher unemployment and slower growth,” Powell said.

“Some argued that getting inflation under control would require a recession and a lengthy period of high unemployment. I expressed our unconditional commitment to fully restoring price stability and to keeping at it until the job is done.”

Friday’s speech more or less suggests that the job is indeed done.

“All told, the healing from pandemic distortions, our efforts to moderate aggregate demand, and the anchoring of expectations have worked together to put inflation on what increasingly appears to be a sustainable path to our 2% objective,” Powell said.

Wet Winter Whirlwind; What Farmers’ Almanac Predicts for the 2024-2025 Winter

WJET Erie

Wet Winter Whirlwind; What Farmers’ Almanac Predicts for the 2024-2025 Winter

Joshua Hallenbeck – August 23, 2024

(WJET/WFXP) — Farmers’ Almanac has released its 2024-25 Winter Outlook, describing this winter as a “Wet, Winter, Whirlwind.”

Overall, this description perfectly fits the general trend predicted in the outlook, no region is expected to see higher-than-normal snowfall. This, however, is just a general prediction broken down by regions. A more area-specific list will be released alongside the release of the 2025 edition of the Farmers’ Almanac on August 27th.

It is important to look at the accuracy, or inaccuracy, of these predictions. A study conducted by John E. Walsh and David Allen, published in the 1981 edition of Weatherwise, showed that only 50.7 percent of the monthly temperature forecasts and 51.9 percent of the precipitation forecasts were verified with the correct sign. This is essentially the same as flipping a coin for each day.

Why are the tropics eerily quiet right now? | Tracking the Tropics

This year’s winter outlook is largely affected by a major climate pattern known as La Niña which can cause a major shift in winter weather. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, compared to El Niño, which is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.

La Niña [Click to Expand] || Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

El Niño [Click to Expand] || Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

During a La Niña year, winter temperatures are warmer in the Southeast and cooler in the Northwest. La Niña brings cooler waters off the West Coast, which brings cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. These cold waters push the Polar Jet Stream northward, increasing the chance of drought in the Southern U.S., and heavy rain and flooding in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. According to the National Weather Service, El Niño and La Niña are typically strongest during the period from December to April because the equatorial Pacific sea-surface temperatures are normally warmest at this time of the year

NOAA data reveals July 2024 ranked hottest on record

A La Niña year is also associated with a more severe hurricane season, which is a concern this hurricane season. NOAA previously predicted an 85% chance for an above-normal hurricane season. However, some of the strongest recorded hurricanes occurred during a period known as the neutral phase. Neutral indicates that conditions are near their long-term average.

Despite the atmospheric cooling this pattern presents, the Earth’s average temperatures continue to rise with 2024 on track to be one of the warmest years ever recorded.

Crime has declined since Donald Trump was president. He insists on lying about that.

USA Today – Opinion

Crime has declined since Donald Trump was president. He insists on lying about that.

Chris Brennan, USA TODAY – August 22, 2024

Former President Donald Trump, in his weeklong attempt to counterprogram the Democratic National Convention, visited Michigan on Tuesday to accuse Vice President Kamala Harris of being soft on crime.

Hold on.

I get that your first thought here might be, “Why would a convicted felon like Trump think he can go after a former prosecutor like Harris on crime?”

Here’s why: Trump has a sliver of statistics to offer and a national sentiment that tends to see crime as a much larger issue than it really is. So first, let’s get a few simple truths out here in the conversation:

Crime rates have been steadily falling in America since the early 1990s but did see a significant increase, especially in murder, in 2020 during Trump’s last year as president as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country. The decline in crime rates resumed after he left office.

That’s great for America, but not so great for Trump’s nonstop melodramatic claims that the country is some dystopian hellscape and only by returning him to power can we live in peace and prosperity again.

That’s bunk. Here’s why.

Trump and his campaign pick pieces out of a larger crime puzzle

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives to deliver remarks on crime and safety at the Livingston County Sheriff's Office in Howell, Mich., on Aug. 20, 2024. — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives to deliver remarks on crime and safety at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Mich., on Aug. 20, 2024.

Trump on Tuesday claimed that Harris, as vice president, “presided over a 43% increase in violent crime.”

His campaign later told me that he referred to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report that showed a 42% increase in nonfatal violent crime in 2022. That September report, which is now nearly a year old, also noted that the particular rate of crime had just reached “a 30-year low” during President Joe Biden’s first year in office.

No surprise that Trump left that part out of his speech.

Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania is gone. Vance’s solution: Just don’t believe it. No, really.

Crime statistics are gathered two ways in America: The FBI collects reports from local law enforcement agencies while the Bureau of Justice Statistics conducts surveys each year of a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 people.

Trump really grabbed hold of the second method this week. Why? Because the first method, conducted by the FBI, debunks his lies about America being caught in some terrible, prolonged crime wave.

The FBI data shows crime rates falling in 2022. The bureau’s report for 2023 is expected to be released this October.

Of course, Trump then attacks the FBI for reporting factually about crime

If you’re Trump and a federal agency’s data disproves your claim, what do you do? You attack the agency, of course.

Trump has repeatedly derided the FBI data as “fake numbers” because of a change the agency made in 2021 in how those reports are compiled. That change was long in the planning but happened in the middle of a pandemic, and some law enforcement agencies didn’t immediately switch to the new way of reporting to the FBI.

Will your vote count? Trump supporters are already working against 2024 election results.

Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center For Justice, told me the FBI faced “a data hiccup in 2021” and addressed the problem by collecting information through its previous system and the new system for 2022 and 2023.

Grawert noted that the murder rate is a reliable data point in this discussion because, unlike other crimes, “murder is pretty much always reported.” And “murder is one of the offenses that’s falling fastest nationwide,” he said.

“We have very, very good reason to believe that violent crime is falling in 2023 and 2024 very fast, offsetting much, if not all, of the increase in violence we saw in 2020,” Grawert told me. “And nothing President Trump said (in Michigan Tuesday) really undermines that.”

Truth is crime reporting happens at a slower pace than political rhetoric

Trump won’t let facts get in the way of a horrible story. He suggested on Tuesday that the average American out shopping for a loaf of bread faces a threat of being robbed or shot or raped.

Do you have a loaf of bread in your house right now? If so, did you face an arduous and dangerous journey to obtain it?

Trump is leaning hard on a standard American perception that has been true since long before he entered politics. We tend to believe that the national crime rate is worse than the data shows, even when we don’t see crime as a major threat closer to home.

Democrats are surging: Kamala Harris flexes muscles in Milwaukee and Chicago while Trump campaign goes limp

John Gramlich, an associate director at Pew Research Center, told me that long-standing sentiment was typically stronger in Republicans but has recently become more bipartisan, even as the data shows crime rates are falling.

“Republicans are almost always more likely than Democrats to be concerned about crime or to prioritize the crime issue,” Gramlich said. “But what’s interesting is that people in both parties have become more concerned about it since the beginning of the Biden administration.”

One factor might be helping to prompt that: Crime data takes time to compile. Politics is happening around us every day. Gramlich said a temporary “vacuum” of data can allow “misperceptions to fill the void.”

“An election is a very fluid discussion about what’s happening right now,” he told me, and the lag for the data to catch up “can sometimes be filled with misinformation or fear or any number of other things.”

Are you safe buying groceries?

That’s why Trump was in Michigan this week claiming that Harris “will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death” if she is elected president.

He held what looked like a healthy lead in the race until last month, when Biden dropped his bid for a second term and endorsed Harris.

Trump, now watching Harris surge with momentum, has been counterprogramming this week by prophesizing America’s doom. The politician who used to say “only I can fix it” is on the ropes and now is road-testing the rhetoric of “only I can save America.”

Trump was president when the crime rates spiked in 2020. That doesn’t mean he’s to blame for that. He certainly wouldn’t accept responsibility for it (or anything else).

Now he’s trying to hang one sliver of statistics on Harris as she pulls ahead of him in the presidential race. Think about that and then ask yourself this: Do you feel safe shopping for a loaf of bread right now in your community? If you do, consider the possibility that people all across America probably feel that way, too.

Scientists warn grocery shelves may soon be missing pantry-staple food because of poor crop conditions: ‘Emphasizing the importance of sustainable farming’

The Cool Down

Scientists warn grocery shelves may soon be missing pantry-staple food because of poor crop conditions: ‘Emphasizing the importance of sustainable farming’

Susan Elizabeth Turek – August 22, 2024

Strawberries are synonymous with the start of longer days and warmer weather, served up on tables as part of popular summer desserts. But scientists are warning this popular staple may be harder to come by soon because of warming global temperatures.

What’s happening?

A study from the University of Waterloo predicts that strawberry yields could see a dramatic reduction of 40% if temperatures rise by just 3 degrees Fahrenheit. This potentially threatens an industry that brought in more than $3 billion to the United States economy in 2022, according to a media release from the university.

Farmers in California could be hit particularly hard by changes in the industry. The analysis notes that the Golden State grows more than 80% of the country’s fresh strawberries.

According to the release, the data model provided “the most accurate findings to date” after linking air temperature anomalies to strawberry yields.

Why is this important?

While it isn’t too late to lower average temperatures, the Earth has been warming at an accelerated rate since the preindustrial era. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the 10 hottest years on record all occurred in the past decade.

It isn’t uncommon for extreme weather events to occur from time to time — and natural weather patterns such as El Niño and La Niña make them more likely to occur in certain regions. However, scientists overwhelmingly agree that supercharged weather events are one of the effects of warming temperatures primarily linked to the burning of dirty fuels such as coal, oil, and gas.

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“This research shows how climate change can directly impact the foods we love, emphasizing the importance of sustainable farming practices to maintain a stable food supply for everyone,” Department of Systems Design Engineering postdoctoral fellow Dr. Poornima Unnikrishnan said in the University of Waterloo’s media release.

Other popular products that have become more scarce or expensive amid challenging weather conditions include chocolate, olive oil, and tomato-based items such as ketchup.

What can be done about reduced food yields?

The University of Waterloo researchers advocated for the continued adoption of sustainable farming practices to ensure there are no severe disruptions in the global food supply, and they believe their analysis can help.

“We hope the better understanding of the influence of rising temperatures on crop yield will help in the development of sustainable agriculture responses from the government and farmers,” Dr. Kumaraswamy Ponnambalam said in the media release. “There is an urgent need for farmers to adopt new strategies to cope with global warming.”

The Waterloo team also listed existing strategies that have been successful in varying climates, including drip irrigation (which more effectively delivers water to plants’ roots) and shading structures to protect crops from extreme heat.

Agrivoltaics is one such solution to the latter recommendation. Not only do the solar panels provide clean, low-cost energy to farmers, but they also aid crop productivity.

Officials offer critical warning after US state confirms cases of rare but serious infection spread by animals: ‘It is transmitted by various rodents’

The Cool Down

Officials offer critical warning after US state confirms cases of rare but serious infection spread by animals: ‘It is transmitted by various rodents’

Doric Sam – August 19, 2024

Health officials in Arizona have grown concerned after seeing an increase in a rare virus spread by rodents that can cause serious health issues.

What’s happening?

As explained by Physician’s Weekly, the Arizona Department of Health Services announced in an alert that the state has seen an uptick in hantavirus infections, with seven confirmed cases and three deaths over the past six months.

“Hantavirus is a rare but important cause of serious, even fatal respiratory infection,” Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in New York, told NBC News, per Physician’s Weekly. “It is transmitted by various rodents, especially the deer mouse, and can cause mild disease, but it does cause fatal illness in a significant percentage of people who acquire this illness.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most cases of hantavirus in the U.S. are reported in western and southwestern states, but Arizona is among the leaders in reported infections in the country. Health officials reported that there have been 11 hantavirus cases in Arizona between 2016 and 2022, per Physician’s Weekly.

Why is this important?

Hantavirus is spread when particles containing the virus get into the air from urine, saliva, or feces from deer mice. An infection can lead to hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS).

Symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Without treatment, the infection can spread to the lungs and cause shortness of breath, chest tightness and cough, according to the American Lung Association and summarized by Physician’s Weekly. Around 38% of those who experience lung symptoms may die from the infection.

Though it is a rare disease in the U.S., with the CDC reporting 850 cases between 1993 and 2021 (about 30 per year), the increase in hantavirus cases is an indication of a deeper problem.

According to Physician’s Weekly, experts theorized that “climate change, such as the extreme heat waves that have been sweeping across the county this summer, may also be partly to blame” for the rising number of infections.

Trish Lees, public information officer at Coconino County Health and Human Services in Arizona, told NBC News that cases are seen more frequently in the summer because of increased rodent activity and people coming into contact with rodents more often.

Dr. Camilo Mora, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, explained that rising temperatures cause rodents to seek shelter in similar ways that humans do.

“Many carrying-disease species get on the move with climate change — so while for any specific case it is difficult to conclude the role of climate change, climate change has all the attributes to cause outbreaks of vector-borne diseases,” Mora said, per Physician’s Weekly.

What’s being done about this?

Officials warned that the best way to protect yourself against hantavirus is to wear N95 masks, gloves, and protective clothing when entering an area that is dirty or riddled with rodents. Anyone who experiences symptoms should seek immediate medical attention.

“The best way to prevent infection with this illness is by carefully disinfecting and cleaning up any waste products from the rodents and by not coming into contact with them,” Glatt told NBC News.

$15 million Ohio State study takes aim at molecule at the heart of Long COVID

The Columbus Dispatch

$15 million Ohio State study takes aim at molecule at the heart of Long COVID

Samantha Hendrickson, Columbus Dispatch – August 14, 2024

COVID-19 is here to stay, and for some, that means symptoms last months, even years after developing the little-understood Long COVID — but a team at the Ohio State University has received millions to find out more.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded $15 million over the next five years to fund the university’s efforts, including developing new ways to treat COVID-19 and to further understanding of why Long COVID happens and how to fend it off.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that millions of adults and children have suffered — and continue to — suffer from Long COVID.

Dr. Amal Amer, center with glasses, stands with fellow Ohio State University researchers, who have been granted $15 million over five years to study Long COVID. The research is personal for Amer, who suffered from Long COVID herself.

The disease can be present for as short as three months, but can also last years after someone is first infected. It’s defined as a chronic condition that occurs after a COVID-19 infection with a wide range of debilitating symptoms such as severe fatigue, brain fog, heart and lung problems, bodily pain or exacerbating already existing health issues, all of which can impact someone’s daily life.

“It’s just unacceptable, you can’t just let that happen,” said Dr. Amal Amer, a professor of microbial infection and immunity at OSU and a principal investigator in the project, “We have to understand it, and if somebody, not just us, anybody, happens to have a clue or the beginning of the story, we have to follow it.”

Tiny creatures lead to big discoveries

This massive undertaking started with simple mice and a single molecule.

An OSU study published in 2022 found that mice infected with COVID-19 reacted differently to the disease depending on if they had a certain enzyme-producing molecule known as caspase 11.

More: Steady ‘summer surge’ sees Ohio COVID cases nearly triple in July

Research showed that blocking this molecule in the infected mice resulted in lower inflammation, tissue injury and fewer blood clots in the animals’ lungs.

Humans have their own version of this molecule, or caspase 4, Amer said, and researchers discovered high levels of the enzyme in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in intensive care units — a direct link to severe disease.

“It starts getting high because it has useful functions, but any molecule, when it gets too high, then these useful functions start becoming harmful,” Amer said.

The new work funded by the NIH will go beyond the study of the lungs and into how this molecule may impact the brain and the rest of the body, interfering with immune responses and possibly resulting in more blood clots in pathways leading to the brain and other vital organs – an entertained explanation for why Long COVID impacts people differently from case to case.

Currently, there are over 200 serious symptoms associated with Long COVID, according to the CDC.

Understanding how Long COVID comes to be is the first step in creating a treatment, Amer said. “Once you know the mechanism, then you can design what to target, where to target it and how to target it in order to reduce the damage being done.”

No one left behind

For Dr. Amer, finding that mechanism is an incredible research opportunity, but it’s also personal.

She herself contracted Long COVID during the pandemic. For three months, the leader in cutting edge research in her field suffered from terrible brain fog and other neurological symptoms after her second, thought seemingly mild, COVID-19 infection.

Amer has traveled all over the world, and confessed she’s gotten sick in many countries, including contracting the often deadly malaria. But nothing compared to Long COVID.

Amer would receive emails from her students, and read one sentence, but not remember what it said after reading it. She started having trouble typing on a keyboard. She couldn’t recall things people had just said to her moments before.

“I started thinking, ‘what’s gonna happen to my life?’ My job is a brain job. I lose my job, then what’s gonna happen to me?” Amer recalled. Now, she’ll head the brain-focused part of the project.

This continued for three months, before she gradually started to recover. Around six months, Amer said she began to feel normal again. Though she can’t be certain that she’s back to where she was before Long COVID, she acknowledges some people aren’t as lucky as she is.

“I have to find out, and I have to understand it, and I’m not going to let anybody be left behind,” she said.

Senators urge better access to disability payments for Long COVID patients

Michigan Advance

Senators urge better access to disability payments for Long COVID patients

Casey Quinlan – August 14, 2024

People with symptoms of long COVID attend a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on long COVID in January. A group of senators is now urging the Social Security Administration to grant greater access to disability payments for people with long COVID symptoms. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Several U.S. senators have called on the Social Security Administration to take steps to make it easier for people with long COVID to access disability benefits, actions that disability rights advocates and patients say are desperately needed.

Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Tina Smith (D-MN), Angus King (I-ME), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) signed the letter released on Monday. They said the agency should make the process more transparent, track and publish data on long COVID applications, and consider expanding the listing of impairments the SSA considers in applications for benefits.

“In some situations, these symptoms can be debilitating and prevent an individual from being able to work, take care of their family, manage their household, or participate in social activities,” the senators wrote to SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley.

Long COVID is a chronic health condition, which often includes fatigue, brain fog, and shortness of breath, following a COVID-19 infection. About three in 10 American adults have had long COVID at some point according to KFF’s April analysis of long COVID data. About 17 million people had it in March 2024. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released guidance on long COVID as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Kaine has been outspoken about his own experience with long COVID and Sanders introduced legislation this month to provide $1 billion in funding each year for 10 years to support long COVID research by the National Institutes of Health.

Lisa McCorkell, co-founder of the Patient Led Research Collaborative, a group of long COVID patients and patients with associated illnesses, told States Newsroom, “Creating a ruling or listing would be a huge improvement — having that specific guidance for how to document long COVID, its related diagnoses, and its associated impairment would assist physicians who may not be as knowledgeable about long COVID.”

The SSA administers disability benefits through Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs. The former program requires past employment payment into Social Security. The latter one does not have those restrictions and is based on financial need but to receive benefits, applicants have to prove they qualify as having a disability. The average monthly disability benefit for Social Security Disability Insurance is $1,538.

Long COVID’s economic cost

Researchers and economists are still trying to understand the full impact of COVID-19 infections and long COVID on the workforce. A 2023 study estimated that COVID-19 brought down the labor force by 500,000 people and that the average loss of labor is equivalent to $9,000 in earnings. More than 25% of people with long COVID said their condition had an impact on their employment or work hours, according to a 2022 Minneapolis Fed paper.

Long COVID is not going to go away, particularly as government protections on the federal, state, and local level to reduce the spread of COVID are “severely lacking,” said Marissa Ditkowsky, who serves as the disability economic justice counsel at the National Partnership for Women & Families, an organization focused on health, economic justice, and reproductive rights for women and families.

“While COVID continues to be a reality, we know that COVID disproportionately impacts women, disabled folks, and people of color, and the folks who are most impacted already have issues with access to appropriate health care, access to employment, and access to equitable wages,” said Ditkowsky, who has long COVID herself. “A lot of folks might be working in low-wage jobs where they’re in the service industry and constantly out there and more likely to contract COVID. It starts not just with the programs for how to deal with folks with long COVID, but how to prevent people from getting long COVID.”

In the meantime, she said people with long COVID, as well as other people with disabilities, would benefit from the changes senators are advocating, such as restoring the treating physician rule, which was repealed in 2017. The rule allowed the agency to give greater weight to medical evidence from a physician who treated a patient for years compared to, say, a doctor who examines a patient once.

“Giving your own doctor the weight [they] deserve is huge,” Ditkowsky said.

Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the disability justice initiative at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said there is an opportunity for the Biden administration or the next administration to revamp how the agency administers disability benefits. She said that given the aging population, there is more reason than ever for the agency to make significant improvements to the application process. Advocates for people with disabilities say it’s also imperative to boost funding for the agency.

“Not only are we seeing an increase in disability in younger folks, but we’re also looking at the big boomer generation getting older … We’re going to see a huge pressure on the [SSA] and we need to see real changes and funding and think of ways to manage the wide variety of experiences that people have in order to deal with differences in applying for these benefits,” she said.