Trump Is Leading His Church-Going Fans Into The Arms Of The Virus

Butte County in northern California has about 220,000 people. The closest towns that could pass for cities are Chico (pop-103,301) and Oroville (pop-20,737). After the devastation of the 2018 Camp Fire, the city of Paradise went from a population of 26,218 to just 4,476.Now Butte has another problem its residents never imagined they would have to confront: a pandemic. About a month ago, writing to the L.A. Times, Laura Newberry reported about a Butte County church at the nexus of the county's pandemic. Pastor Mike Jacobsen of Palermo Bible Family Church defied public health officials and held an in-person Mother’s Day service exposing 180 congregants to the coronavirus (71 were infected). In a Facebook post Jacobsen said that an asymptomatic congregant who attended the May 11 service woke up the next morning "needing medical attention," was tested that day and confirmed positive two days later.

While local health officials began attempting to notify every person who attended the service and instruct them to self-quarantine, Danette York, Butte County public health director, issued a statement noting that "At this time, organizations that hold in-person services or gatherings are putting the health and safety of their congregations, the general public and our local ability to open up at great risk... Moving too quickly through the reopening process can cause a major setback and could require us to revert back to more restrictive measures."

Butte County leans Republican-- but not overwhelmingly so. Trump won there is 2016 with 48% of the vote to Hillary's 44%. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian got nearly 5%. Butte was one of the counties Gavin Newsom gave permission to open too early. There is little social distancing in the county and, as in the rest of California, no endorsement of "mandatory" mask rules.

Newberry reported that the pastor "said it’s important for Palermo Bible’s many young, new believers to be supported in their fledgling faith-- and part of that is being able to attend church in person. He compared the act of depriving these congregants of in-person worship to taking 'an infant out of the arms of its mother. We’ve really tried to raise the bar and do a good job with what we’ve been given,' Jacobsen said of virtual services, 'but it’s not the same as being together in fellowship with one another.'"

As of Saturday, just 2 people had died in Butte. Of the 143 COVID cases in the county, only 47 are still active. Coronavirus has spread among church congregations all over the world, famously in Germany and South Korea, but most notoriously here in the U.S., where a dozen churches have sued to overturn restrictions on their freedom of worship.

Reporting for Politico Sunday, Gabby Orr wrote about how Trump has made-- as is his wont-- a bad situation worse. Just a month after the self-serving sociopath ordered all governors "to immediately reopen churches, his administration is facing a difficult dilemma. Clusters of Covid-19 cases are surfacing in counties across the U.S. where in-person religious services have resumed, triggering questions about whether his administration should reassess its campaign to treat houses of worship the same as other essential businesses, or leave them alone and risk additional transmission of the deadly coronavirus-- including in communities that are largely supportive of the president."

An outbreak at a Pentecostal church in Oregon, where hundreds of worshipers resumed gathering over Memorial Day weekend, forced an entire county to return to phase one of its reopening after local officials traced 258 cases of Covid-19 back to the facility. In West Virginia, six health departments across the state have reported coronavirus outbreaks linked to churches. One of them, a Baptist church in Greenbrier County, had 34 congregants test positive for the virus. And in Texas, which hit an all-time high of new cases last week, health officials have received numerous reports of church-related exposures.

The disturbing trend did not stop Trump and other senior administration officials from visiting an Arizona mega-church this week for a “Students for Trump” rally, where MAGA ball caps were far more ubiquitous than face masks. Images from the event-- showing hundreds of mask-less teenagers sitting in close quarters for the president’s remarks-- embodied the predicament Trump now faces: Many of his Christian supporters rushed to embrace the country’s reopening, which has included the return of in-person worship services in many states. Now, re-imposing previous restrictions to protect other Americans could impair the president’s relationship with his own base.

"I just encourage every American to continue to pray. Pray for all the families that have lost loved ones. Pray for our health care workers on the front lines. Pray that by God’s grace, every single day, will each of us do our part to heal our land."

So far, administration officials have declined to single out church-related outbreaks as problematic.

A senior administration official briefed on the discussions said members of the White House coronavirus task force began expressing serious concerns this week about rising infection rates in a dozen states, particularly after Florida reported record-breaking cases last Wednesday-- leading to the task force’s first briefing in two months on Friday. But the same official said the task force does not consider churches to be super-spreaders, or hotspots for Covid-19 transmission, at this time.

Others, including Trump, have chalked up the rising number of cases in places like Arizona, Texas, North Carolina and Florida to expanded testing capabilities, even as White House officials privately acknowledge the volume of newly confirmed cases exceeds that which increased testing would account for.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which intervened in several states to seek equal treatment for churches in the reopening process, declined to comment on whether the agency plans to change its current approach pushing to reopen houses of worship.

...Previous guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-- which urged churches to suspend choir activities, eucharistic sharing, the recitation of creeds and other programming-- had roiled Trump aides late last month who felt the public health agency was burdening faith communities with unnecessary restrictions. In updated guidance posted shortly after Trump demanded that states allow churches to reopen, the CDC said its recommendations were “not intended to infringe on rights protected by the First Amendment.”




“Some governors have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential. It’s not right, so I’m correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential,” Trump had said at the time, following public complaints from some of his top allies on the religious right about ongoing church closures.

On the same day Trump pronounced churches “essential” businesses, the lead pastor at Lighthouse Pentescostal, the Oregon church now at the center of the state’s worst coronavirus outbreak, wrote in an Instagram post that he would begin in-person services that weekend “in accordance with President Trump.”

Other religious institutions filed lawsuits against state officials who declined to lift restrictions on church gatherings, calling the rules unconstitutional since other businesses were permitted to resume service.

Now Trump is grappling with the fallout-- unforeseen or not-- of his aggressive push to reopen churches at a time when he can’t afford to agitate his religious supporters.

Polls conducted since the coronavirus pandemic began have shown a steady decline in his favorability rating among white Catholics and white evangelicals, demographics that helped carry him to victory in 2016 and whose backing he will need to defeat Joe Biden, his expected Democratic challenger, this fall.

Despite the outbreaks occurring in churches and elsewhere, the president’s response lately has been to double down on his effort to jumpstart the U.S. economy and reopen houses of worship, restaurants, manufacturing facilities and retail suppliers.

As part of the White House’s efforts to maintain its indispensable bond with religious conservatives, Pence has visited two churches in the past month in Maryland and Pittsburgh, and-- despite postponing campaign events-- still has a planned appearance Sunday at First Baptist Dallas in Texas, which is run by Rev. Robert Jeffress, one of the president’s most visible evangelical advisers.

Republican operatives are starting to circulate a rumor that Typhoid Mary may find an excuse to not run for reelection

Protecting Women's Choice From The Trumpists

Trump doesn't give a whit about women's Choice one way or the other and the only thought he ever put into it before being persuaded it can be used as a potent political weapon against his enemies, was when he was relieved legal abortion could be used to get rid of fetuses in women he had knocked up. But as a political weapon... now you're talking his language! Yesterday NPR reported his regime was defeated in court over the "Conscience Rule," another bogus attempt by the far right to infringe on Choice.

In a blow to the Trump administration, a federal court in Manhattan has knocked down a rule that would make it easier for doctors and other health care workers to refuse care for religious reasons.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled Wednesday that the Department of Health and Human Services, which issued the regulation earlier this year, exceeded its authority and "acted arbitrarily and capriciously" in promoting it.

The department's violations of federal law, according to the judge's opinion, were "numerous, fundamental, and far-reaching"-- and he vacated the rule entirely, just over two weeks before it was set to take effect Nov. 22.

...The rule's critics... saw it as a means of allowing health care workers to circumvent rules against discrimination. And they quickly took the Trump administration to court-- with more than two dozen states, cities and organizations such as Planned Parenthood filing lawsuits against Severino and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. Those suits were later consolidated into one case, which Engelmayer oversaw.

There's also another lawsuit against this rule, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs in that consolidated case include the state of California, Santa Clara County, and organizations such as Lambda Legal. It wasn't immediately clear what Wednesday's ruling means for the case in California.

As NPR has reported, this rule was part of a big push from the Office for Civil Rights to bolster "religious freedom" in health care. Severino, who is Catholic and formerly of the conservative Heritage Foundation, has argued that previous administrations did not fully enforce existing law that protected what supporters call health care workers' "conscience rights."

To remedy that, Severino created a Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom in January 2018, and in May of this year, his office issued this rule.

The rule was designed to bolster the rights of providers to opt-out of care, even without prior notice of their objections to their employer. It also expanded the type of workers who are able to file complaints about rights violations to include billing staff and receptionists and anyone else who in any way "assist[s] in the performance" of a procedure.

Complaints of such violations are relatively rare-- for a decade, the office would receive an average of one complaint like this each year. Severino frequently pointed to a jump in those complaints to 343 last year as proving the need for this rule. He attributed that increase to a strong message from his office that they were "open for business" when it came to issues of religious freedom.

However, that increase in the number of complaints is "demonstrably false," according to Englemayer's ruling. Nearly 80% of all the complaints given to the court were about vaccinations-- unrelated to health care workers and their religious beliefs in providing care.

The judge writes that only 21-- or 6%-- of the complaints the government provided the court are even potentially related to providers' moral or religious objections. During oral arguments, the government's attorney conceded that the real number of complaints were "in that ballpark."

"This conceded fact is fatal to HHS's stated justification for the Rule," Englemayer writes. "Even assuming that all 20 or 21 complaints implicated the Conscience Provisions, those 20 or 21 are a far cry from the 343 that the Rule declared represented a 'significant increase' in complaints."

In a statement to NPR, the government said, "HHS, together with DOJ, is reviewing the court's opinion and so will not comment on the pending litigation at this time."

Eva Putzova is running for Congress in an Arizona congressional district occupied by a conservative Blue Dog and former Republican legislator, Tom O'Halleran. He's as anti-Choice fanatic, just like his GOP colleagues. "I believe," Eva told us this morning, "in the absolute right to a safe, legal abortion. I support the court's ruling against the DHS rule allowing providers to violate reproductive rights under the guise of so-called "religious freedom." There is no "religious freedom" to deny constitutional rights to individuals or protected groups such as those seeking abortions. Too often, Democrats allow reactionary anti-choice groups to set the terms of debate when it comes to women and others seeking to control their own bodies. Each year, the Congress votes to pass the Hyde amendment which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion and way too many Democrats roll over with barely a peep of public opposition. This is personal for me. My own grandmother died from a botched abortion in 1946 leaving my 2-year old mother to grow up without her mother. When I am in Congress I will fight for full reproductive freedom and I will not stay quiet until we achieve it."

Jon Hoadley, the progressive Michigan state Rep. running for the southwestern Michigan House seat held by anti-Choice Trump enablers Fred Upton told me yesterday that "Today's court ruling is a step in the right direction to protect a woman’s right to choose. Women should be able to make their own decisions about their bodies and their family planning-- without interference from their bosses or the government."

Kathy Ellis' opponent, Jason Smith, is an anti-Choice fanatic and in their rural southeast Missouri district women's Choice is constantly under threat. "Everyone-- regardless of zip code, age, sex, or income-- should have access to basic healthcare, including abortion access." Using 'religious liberty' as an excuse for denying folks' access to healthcare is wrong and quite honestly, shameful."

Jason Butler is a progressive Wade County, North Carolina pastor vying for a House seat with anti-Choice extremist and Trump enabler George Holding. In an informal discussion, he told me that "one thing that evangelicals have been arguing for years is that they should not have to serve the public if that service violates their faith convictions. On its own, this sounds ok-- but the problem becomes that different people believe vastly different things about other people. While a baker refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple is one thing (which no one should do-- but honestly, they probably have the right to do)-- this can reach into life-threatening situations. Should an EMS deny life-saving CPR to a transgender woman if they disagree with their 'sexuality'? Should a doctor refuse to care for an undocumented minor because their faith teaches them to 'obey the law'… this is the danger of 'religious freedom.' It knows no end. We have a variety of faiths, and some pretty crazy belief systems within faiths-- anyone can get away with whatever they want to do and just call it their 'religious right.' While the constitution guarantees that we may practice our religion without persecution or interference from the state-- those protections should not be extended to the responsibilities of one's professional duties within my public job. If a part of one's job violates the principles of their faith, then they have every right to resign and find another job-- but not to refuse the service that is central to that job."

Lauren Ashcraft is a progressive congressional candidate for a New York City district occupied by garden variety Democrat and Wall Street ally Carolyn Maloney. This morning, Lauren told us that "It’s difficult to follow the logic in using 'religious liberty' to force your personal religious beliefs (or the positions you are being lobbied to have) on an entire country. I say this as a proud member of a Christian congregation in my district. I look forward to the very real possibility that the ERA will soon be ratified and everyone will be equal according to federal law, regardless of gender. I support the right to bodily autonomy and hope to get past when reproductive rights are always on the chopping block as political sport."