Dating Before the Election - The New York Times

Dating Before the Election - The New York Times
Geraldo Cadava On The Latino Vote And Hispanic Republicans : Code Switch - NPR
Limos to the Polls! - RADIO.COM
Federal Prosecutors' Unprecedented Push to Jail Protesters - The Intercept
Scarlett Johansson has married Colin Jost! | Entertainment - Idaho County Free Press

Posted: 29 Oct 2020 02:00 AM PDT

Rebecca Cibbarelli, 23, was texting with a man on Hinge while Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence debated on her TV screen in early October. When she told her match what she was watching, he said he didn't know who either of the people in the debate were, or which political office they were running for.

"We've been in a global pandemic for eight months, and there's been so much social and political change," said Ms. Cibbarelli, a mental health worker in Princeton Junction, N.J. "How have you not even taken interest in it when you're stuck in the house? I was working 60 hours a week, I started school and I'm still keeping up." Suffice it to say, things didn't work out.

In a year marked by partisan debates over the coronavirus pandemic, widespread protests for Black Lives Matter and a presidential election, politics is reaching deep into the lives of Americans, affecting not only their families, schools, taxes and health care but also their dating habits.

Some singles want to know if their potential matches are civically engaged, even on a basic level. Others see their dates' politics as indicators of compatibility.

A few daters expressed frustration about people who "virtue signal" — add phrases like Black Lives Matter to their profiles to show support for a cause — but do not seem to engage with the issues beyond their bios.

"You ask if they were at a protest, and it turns out that they weren't or they give some sappy excuse for not being there," said Jorge Clavo Abbass, 23, a graduate student and instructor at the Ohio State University.

Data on Daters

In a survey, the dating app Bumble found that out of 50 factors women considered in a potential match, politics ranked ninth. (It came in behind smoking habits, family plans, life goals and relationship intent.) About 33 to 35 percent of all users said the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement have made them care more about the political views of their potential match, said Jemma Ahmed, Bumble's head of insights.

"The conversations we have aren't just about how our days are going anymore. They're about unavoidable topics, like police brutality," said Ashley Mack, 27, an aesthetician and surgery consultant in Sarasota, Fla.

Ms. Mack said that inaction in the face of this summer's protests led her to end some of her platonic relationships. She also reassessed the qualities she looks for in a potential partner. "I'm more aware of things that are deal breakers for me and what I'll tolerate," Ms. Mack said. "You think long-term. What would they instill in your kid?"

On OkCupid, a dating site known for lengthy questionnaires that help people pin down potential partners, politics has become the most popular category. More than 1.2 million people who use OkCupid said they prefer to date people who share their political views. Women were more likely to say so than men. The platform recently began offering users a "voter badge," a digital equivalent of an "I Voted" sticker.

People who have been out of the dating pool for a while may see this as a sea change. "For my generation and most generations before me, it was, 'Do not talk politics until you're down the path of a relationship,'" said Melissa Hobley, 40, OkCupid's chief marketing officer. "Now it's 'I don't even want to see you in my lineup of potential people to chat with if your politics on certain issues don't align with mine, or if you are not a voter.'"

Political Deal Breakers

When Richard Schmitz, 31, a founder of a marketing agency, moved from New York to Scottsdale, Ariz., he said he was screened by a match. "I had a Hinge date who texted me, 'Good morning, I think we need to get this out of the way,'" he said. She told him that most of her beliefs are very conservative, that she plans to vote for President Trump, and that if her preference offends him, it is best for them not to meet.

Mr. Schmitz was pleasantly surprised. "In New York, it's very normal and common to see a girl who has 'If you vote Trump swipe left. Liberals only,'" he said. In Manhattan, he found his dating pool limited and turned to Filter Off, a platform that offers virtual speed dating sessions for people with specific interests, like veganism, the ketogenic diet or a political party. After his struggles in New York City, he said the text he received in Scottsdale was "refreshing."

Living in New York, Pat Cassidy, 27, who works in investment banking, has found that a common deal breaker for potential dates is not necessarily his conservatism but whether he helped elect the current president. "The screening question is, 'Did you vote for Trump or are you a Trump supporter?" he said.

Mr. Cassidy finds himself having to explain his politics, which are "right of center." "Looking back five years, I do not know if I would have tried to explain myself that much pre-Trump," he said. "I think the political climate generally has made me feel the need to be a bit more nuanced or tactical about how I position myself."

As a proud Trump voter in New York City, Sam Baron, 31, who works in tech development, said he does not care about his dates' politics, but they seem to care about his. "I dated a liberal once," he said. "When she saw online that I loved Trump, she went way off the deep end on me."

Recently, Jessica Zimmerman, 42, who owns a group practice for mental health counseling, has been rejecting men who do not see eye-to-eye with her on certain issues, like the separation of migrant children from their families at the U.S. border.

"I'm a single mom and a business owner," Ms. Zimmerman said. "I'm busy, and I hold my time somewhat sacred. I wouldn't go on a date with someone who thinks that's a policy we should uphold."

Her political views have made dating a challenge in Indiana, a state Mr. Trump won easily in 2016. "I'm probably the minority where I live," Ms. Zimmerman said. "In the past it didn't profoundly affect dating. But the extreme divisiveness and the extreme policies have really brought a spotlight on politics."

Finding Common Ground

Janine Owens, 38, who lives near Philadelphia and works in finance, will not categorically refuse to date someone based on their politics; though she is a registered Democrat, she does not always agree with the party's policies. But early on, she will inquire how engaged her date is in local and national politics.

"Growing up, there were those unwritten rules of a first date," she said. "Years ago I probably wouldn't have brought up politics. Now, we're definitely bringing it up in the first few weeks of dating."

The pandemic, with its various pressures and the blue-versus-red debate around its management, has only sharpened existing political divisions.

"The pandemic has really impacted the way I date," said Ann Nguyen, 25, who works in communications in Washington, D.C. "I've spent more time just talking to people."

And what else is there to talk about? As Sarah Bettman, 31, who works in biotech in Santa Monica, Calif., put it, the pandemic "has to come up to a certain extent. When you're talking about your day-to-day and your perspective on it, the politics and how it's handled are an inevitable part of the conversation."

Those conversations can make or break an early-stages relationship. "Dating during Covid, I'm putting myself at risk," Ms. Cibbarelli said. "If we're not in agreement to some extent, I'm not interested in breathing your air."

For Elly Shariat, 38, a publicist in D.C. whose father and sister work at a hospital, the coronavirus has been a lightning rod in dating. "If I match with you and I see that you're posting about attending an anti-mask rally, or you post something about masks being harmful and saying that we need to open up sports, that's not just wrong and factually inaccurate," Ms. Shariat said. "It's a sign that someone is selfish. That lets me know that you won't be giving in our relationship."

Ms. Shariat, who did not take the role of politics in her dating life seriously before 2016, said she now leads with her values in her online profiles. "I've worked on Capitol Hill," her bio reads. "I believe Black Lives Matter. I believe Covid-19 is real. And if you disagree with any of those we're not a good match."

She said some men have taken that as an invitation to troll her. "This guy told me that my own father and sister were lying to me about cases in the hospital," Ms. Shariat said. "He said they must be getting money from big pharma." When she told him that she did not think they were a good fit, he responded that she would never find love. Recently Ms. Shariat has been asking herself: "Do I take a pause until after this election? Do I move to another country to date?"

Nonetheless, she has no intention of hiding her opinions, nor of compromising her views. "I'm not necessarily looking for someone who mimics my beliefs," she said. "But if you're not actively speaking out against things going wrong and not working to make this world better, I don't even want to have a drink with you."

Geraldo Cadava On The Latino Vote And Hispanic Republicans : Code Switch - NPR

Posted: 30 Oct 2020 12:31 PM PDT

Geraldo Cadava, author of The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, From Nixon to Trump Steve Castillo/HarperCollins hide caption

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Steve Castillo/HarperCollins

Geraldo Cadava, author of The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, From Nixon to Trump

Steve Castillo/HarperCollins

Every 30 seconds, a Latino turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote — and that's a huge reason why this year, for the first time, Latinos are projected to become the largest nonwhite voting demographic. This week's episode of Code Switch focused on these Generation Z Latinos — a fast-growing group of voters who could have a huge impact on the 2020 presidential election.

And yet, for decades, pundits and politicians alike have predicted that Latinos will have a huge impact on elections — and that's never quite panned out. (Latinos have, historically, had lower turnout rates in elections than other racial and ethnic demographics.)

So to understand how the Latinx vote has played a part in past election cycles, we talked to Geraldo Cadava, a history professor at Northwestern University and author of the book The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, From Nixon to Trump. Here's the extended cut of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Your book is all about how Latinos have arrived at their politics throughout history — specifically Republican Latinos. How would you sum up how that process works?

Latinos became increasingly politically active after the World War II years; many Latinos served in World War II, and that gave them expectations about how they should be included in all aspects of American society: socially, economically and politically. Many more Latinos went to college, bought homes and also began to vote and become politically active.

And the parties really started to reach out to Latinos after World War II, because the Latino population started to grow in areas like Texas, California, Arizona and Florida, which were becoming more and more electorally important. That's also the moment when Latinos themselves become more politically active as part of their drive for civil rights.

There was a moment in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the Latino population was growing, and Time magazine had a cover story that projected that the 1980s were going to be the "decade of the Hispanic." And there's an argument that Latinos are the "sleeping giant" who are about to awaken and control American politics in the late 20th and 21st century.

It's kind of amazing to me that every four years, there's this idea that Latinos are about to break out of their shell and really determine elections; it's like pundits and politicians rediscover them every four years.

Like you said, every election cycle, there's this idea that this metaphorical "sleeping giant" of Latinos will somehow come out of the woodwork and have a huge impact. Has it ever really panned out?

I should say, first of all, that the image of the sleeping giant feels like not a great image. There are all of these caricatures of Mexicans dating back to the early to mid-20th century, of us wearing serapes and sombreros, leaning against a wall with a bottle of tequila. We're always asleep and lazy, and it plays into this idea that we're apathetic. So I think the whole image is not great.

There is this perennial argument that we hear every four years, that Latinos are going to be the critical voters in this election. And I think that idea mainly comes from the fact that our population is growing. In 2020, we're projected to be the second-largest group of American voters, and the largest nonwhite group of voters. We are going to represent about 14% of the American electorate. This year, a Latino becomes eligible to vote every 30 seconds. And they're going to be a million more Latino voters this time than four years ago. So for all of these reasons, there's this idea that there's a lot of political momentum, and politicians had better start paying attention to us because we hold political power. But there has also been this ongoing sense that we're, to put it crudely, punching below our weight. We're not reaching our full potential because we don't register to vote in as high numbers as other groups.

But [high Latino turnout] has panned out in certain elections, like the 1964 election. For example, when Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter won in Texas. This was the last time that a Democrat won Texas. But he won by a very slim margin, and largely his victory in Texas was attributed to his success among Mexican Americans. I think we can point to the 2000 election in Florida, where George W. Bush won in Florida by a mere few hundred votes. And there was the Elian Gonzalez story, where George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, his brother who was the governor of Florida at the time, took a strong stance, saying that there's no way that Elian Gonzalez should be returned to his family in Cuba. And that really kind of galvanized Cuban American support for George W. Bush. And in 2012, by all accounts, Mitt Romney woke up on Election Day thinking that he was going to win the election — but Obama won. And in the days after the election, many made the argument that Obama's success among Latinos in swing states like Colorado and New Mexico and Virginia had made the difference and tipped the election in favor of him.

So if [the "sleeping giant" prediction] has ever panned out, it has panned out in particular elections, and in particular swing states, when they're very narrowly contested. But I think that many Latino get-out-the-vote organizers are still waiting for the moment when Latinos are going to realize their full political power. We know that Latinos vote at fairly low rates compared with other groups of Americans. So I think there is still a sense that our political potential is not yet fully realized.

Why haven't those voting turnout rates been higher?

For a long time, the [conventional] answer was that Latino voters are apathetic, and they don't care about politics. And that's the main argument that political scientists have tried to argue against for a long time. What they increasingly point to is a few different factors. One is that Latinos feel alienated from the political process. We've read reports that as late as August or July, some 60% of Latinos said they'd had no candidate reach out to them. And this is a kind of historical phenomenon. Latinos have argued for a long time that American politics and electoral politics wasn't made for them.

Black And Latino Voters Flooded With Disinformation In Election's Final Days

There are some other explanations about how many Latinos live in noncompetitive states, like California, Illinois and New York. And so they don't feel like their votes matter because they're not making a difference. And more generally, when we talk about elections and presidential politics, we are paying so much attention to Latinos in Arizona, Texas and Florida, critical battlegrounds. So Latinos in those states are hyper-visible, while Latinos everywhere else are ignored and invisible.

Apart from the idea that Latinos are apathetic, what are the biggest misconceptions that people have about Latinos and voting?

This is so tricky, because there's both a lot of truth and a lot of misconceptions. I mean, there's the way that people segment the Latino population in their minds. There's the idea that Florida is all Cubans and Cuban Americans when, in fact, Florida is incredibly diverse. There are large Mexican and Puerto Rican populations. And they have so many different interests and issues that they care about. So it's really hard to stereotype them. And there's the idea that the whole Southwest is Mexican American when, in fact, there are many Central Americans who live there.

Latinos are truly a national population and a growing population everywhere we live, but the way that we get talked about is still very much about the Cuban vote in Florida, the Mexican American vote in California or the Puerto Rican vote in New York. And, you know, there's almost like this hierarchy of our politics, from more conservative to less conservative — that Cuban Americans are the most conservative, Mexican Americans are somewhere in the middle and then Puerto Ricans are the most liberal of Latino voters. And there's a degree of truth to that; Cuban Americans vote for Republicans at higher rates than Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, but Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans still vote for Republicans in really large numbers.

Let me tell you one fact that always astounds me: California has the largest number of eligible Latino voters: 8 million. Recent polls have shown that Donald Trump is earning somewhere between 25% to 30% of their support. That means that if all of those 8 million eligible Latino voters vote, more than 2 million Latino voters in California — the state of Proposition 187, the state where the Republican Party is dead — there will be more than 2 million Latinos who vote for Donald Trump. Compare that with Florida, which has 3.1 million Latino eligible voters. In 2016, 35% of Latinos in Florida voted for Donald Trump: That's around 1 million votes. And if that holds true in 2020, there will be more Latinos who vote for Donald Trump in California than in the state of Florida. And that's just one example of how, if you really dig in to individual communities and the politics of individual states, there's a lot that you would be surprised to learn.

And as you've been watching this election cycle, what do you see pundits and candidates misunderstand about this voting bloc?

When I hear pundits talk about the Latino vote, they're still assuming that all Latinos are out there are reachable by Democrats. And it's just a matter of committing more time, committing more energy and resources; Latinos are just waiting to be given a reason to vote for Democrats.

Many Latino Men Are Supporting President Trump This Election

And I think that that completely misses the point that Hispanic Republicans have developed their partisan identities and their loyalty to the Republican Party over a long period of time. There are a handful of issues, like school choice or religious freedom or the ghost of anti-socialism and anticommunism, that continue to draw Hispanics into the Republican Party. There's a real diversity of political beliefs, and we need to acknowledge that Latinos are fully human, complicated political actors, rather than just kind of pawns that are easily poached or persuaded, just because a politician talks to them.

In your research, you've found that both Republicans and Democrats have called Hispanics "natural" Democrats or "natural" Republicans — but you disagree with this premise. Can you lay out why they say that, and why you disagree?

I don't think Latinos are naturally anything; that would mean that we're born with these fully formed political identities. To call them naturally liberal or conservative comes from a place of ignorance and not knowing much about who Latinos are as political actors.

Reagan is probably the most famous example of someone who tried to argue that Latinos are natural conservatives. And it was a statement that he apparently delivered to one of his Hispanic campaign organizers, an advertising executive named Lionel Sosa from San Antonio. Reagan told him, you know, you're going to have the easiest job ever, because Latinos are Republicans who just don't know it yet. And it was his campaign that, for the first time, tried to articulate these core values that supposedly brought together all Latino conservatives; they talked about family values, a hard work ethic, patriotism, belief in the free enterprise system and anti-communism, and all of the kinds of military sacrifices that Latino families had made for the United States. These are ideas we still hear them today uttered by the Latinos for Trump campaign. So they've been kind of remarkably persistent in their message over a long period of time.

I'm always reminded this year of that Joe Biden line that "if you're Black and support Donald Trump, you ain't Black." Democrats have had plenty of those moments when it comes to Latinos, too. In 2010, Harry Reid from Nevada said that he couldn't understand how even a single Hispanic could be a Republican. So I think you have both parties taking for granted that Latinos are naturally one way or the other. And I think when they do that, they risk not taking Latinos seriously as individuals and communities with deeply held political beliefs.

Limos to the Polls! - RADIO.COM

Posted: 30 Oct 2020 08:30 AM PDT

Dating back to the 1960's Black funeral homes have played an important role in voter registration drives and getting people to the polls to vote. The National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association has partnered with the National Urban League to bring that tradition to the present day and provide free limos to the polls nationwide this Tuesday November 3rd for the presidential election. I talked to NFDMA president Hari Close who gave us details on how you can get picked up and taken to the polls and returned back home so you can cast your vote. Listen in and for more details, visit http://www.NFDMA.com

Ride Pick-Up Request Form HERE

Federal Prosecutors' Unprecedented Push to Jail Protesters - The Intercept

Posted: 30 Oct 2020 04:00 AM PDT

Shamar Betts never thought of himself as a radical. Last year, when he was 18 years old, he had a minimum-wage job at a camp for preschoolers in Urbana, Illinois, teaching them to play chess and explore nature. In a parents' handbook, Betts described himself as a vegetarian who didn't "believe in harming any living being."

As Covid-19 spread, Betts's hours were reduced to zero, leaving him with more free time. When a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd on May 25, resulting in a flood of civil unrest, he felt called to action; his best friend had been killed by Chicago police in 2017. He attended a small march where there were more white people in attendance than Black; the crowd's energy didn't reflect the rage and pain that he felt.

So the next morning, Betts posted a flyer on his Facebook page, calling for a riot at a local shopping mall in Champaign on May 31. "Ya'll don't think we suffer through inequality here EVERYDAY," Betts wrote. "They didn't listen when we were peaceful so we gone hit em where it hurts," he added. The flyer asked participants to bring "friends & family, posters, bricks, bookbags etc."

At the shopping mall, he broadcast himself on Facebook Live as people around him took items from an Old Navy, boasting that he had "started" the riot. Twenty-seven people were taken into custody and an estimated 50 businesses were damaged. That same day, U.S. Attorney General William Barr denounced nationwide rioting as "domestic terrorism" linked to "Antifa and other similar groups," and said that federal law enforcement was working with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces to apprehend people.

Days later, U.S. marshals located Betts, who was staying at his uncle's home in Tchula, Mississippi. They banged on the door at 6 a.m., Betts said, and forced him to crawl toward them as they held assault rifles. He was charged in both Illinois and federal courts but detained under federal authority for "using a facility of interstate commerce" — the internet, specifically Facebook — to incite a riot; he faces up to five years in prison. He's never been convicted of a crime.

Betts was far from the only one charged in connection with events that occurred during the first explosive week after Floyd's death, or over the rest of the summer. U.S. attorney's offices across the country working under Barr brought federal charges against more than 300 people on a range of alleged crimes related to the unrest, according to the Prosecution Project, which tracks felony cases involving political violence. The Intercept and Type Investigations reviewed the cases of 271 people charged through October 15; at least 107 of those cases are felony prosecutions for crimes allegedly committed that first week.

The charges were filed almost exclusively against protesters and others whose actions, legal and otherwise, could reasonably be identified as supportive of the movement for police accountability; we did not analyze about a dozen federal cases involving members of far-right groups or individuals who sympathize with those ideologies.

Analyzing court documents for each of these cases, we uncovered a pattern of aggressive federal prosecutions for crimes not usually in the purview of U.S. attorney's offices. Charges for civil unrest, such as burning a police vehicle, looting, or property destruction, might typically be handled by state prosecutor's offices, according to experts we spoke with. During Barack Obama's entire presidency, we could only identify 11 cases related to protests and uprisings prosecuted by U.S. attorneys, and only one in which someone was charged with promoting or encouraging a riot. By comparison, we identified at least five charges of inciting a riot — under a rarely used statute dating back to 1968 — during this one week in Donald Trump's term, including those against Betts.

Apart from filing what critics consider excessive charges, federal prosecutors made a concerted push to detain the defendants before their trials. The Intercept and Type Investigations did a closer analysis of the 151 felony cases stemming from the unrest that had been filed as of early September and found that federal judges agreed to detain more than 50 people until trial, concurring with prosecutors' arguments for detention.

"This is a clear example of using federal prosecution power to further a political agenda that the administration has."

Under the Bail Reform Act, pretrial incarceration without bail is generally reserved for those who judges believe present a danger to the community or a demonstrated risk of fleeing; it is supposed to be the exception, not the rule, experts told us. Yet there's been a sharp increase in federal prosecutors requesting pretrial detention since 2018, starting under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and continuing under Barr. Overall for fiscal year 2019, federal district courts detained 61 percent of defendants pretrial, excluding immigration-related offenses.

In some of the civil unrest cases we reviewed, federal judges expressed disbelief that prosecutors were trying to have protesters detained. One judge said he was "at a loss" for why prosecutors were trying to hold a protester in jail until trial.

Even when judges were ready to release defendants, prosecutors kept seeking detention, appealing judges' decisions in at least 18 cases. Prosecutors appealed the release of at least three defendants all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals, a rare move, according to two former federal prosecutors and two former public defenders interviewed for this story.

Keeping people in jail was especially risky this past summer. By early October, more than 5,000 people in federal pretrial custody across the country had tested positive for the coronavirus. At least one person charged in the aftermath of unrest and detained pretrial has contracted Covid-19, according to our investigation.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a list of questions from The Intercept and Type Investigations about the degree to which these prosecutions were directed by high-level officials, including Barr.

Decisions to charge — and how aggressively — are made by individual U.S. attorneys; the same is true for detention requests. But the department's priorities significantly influence which cases are pursued, and Barr has made it clear that curbing "violent rioters and anarchists" is a priority for the department. Trump has also been highly critical of protesters (this reporter was one of more than 200 people who were arrested and charged during the protests against his inauguration in Washington, D.C., but later had their charges dropped).

Some of the prosecutors asking for harsh penalties against protesters and detention without bail have shown a willingness to pursue the administration's political goals. A few of the most aggressive prosecutors either held or were nominated for positions at the DOJ in which they assisted with counter-investigations into Ukraine and Russian election-meddling involving close associates of Trump.

For Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy and a former deputy chief in the criminal section of the DOJ's civil rights division, these prosecutions also have a political motive.

"The Department of Justice has a lot of discretion in deciding what kinds of cases to bring or not bring and what kinds of pretrial detention to seek or not seek," she said. "This is a clear example of using federal prosecution power to further a political agenda that the administration has."

In nearly all of their appeals regarding the detention of protesters, prosecutors were unsuccessful in keeping people locked up until trial. There were only three defendants for whom prosecutors succeeded in overturning a lower court's order of pretrial release. Among them was Shamar Betts.

Shamar Betts co-leads a reading group at the Preschool Nature Camp in July 2019.

Photo: Provided to The Intercept

Sending a Message

When Betts arrived at the jail in Madison County, Mississippi, after his arrest on June 5, officers placed him alone inside a pod large enough to hold more than two dozen people, he recalled.

During his physical exam, he was shackled and accompanied by two officers, Betts said in an interview by phone last month. He had no television or access to a phone, he said, and one guard told him he was being looked at as "a type of activist." The jail directed questions about his incarceration to the U.S. Marshals Service.

In response to questions about Betts's account, the U.S. Marshals Service did not respond to individual allegations but emailed a statement describing security precautions as "for the safekeeping of all prisoners and facility staff based on information available at the time of detention."

Betts, who had never heard of the charge "inciting a riot" before his arrest, was terrified. "I didn't know exactly what they would do to me," he said.

After his detention in Mississippi, Betts was herded onto a transport plane loaded with other shackled prisoners that went on to pick up people from several other states.

Later in June, he was brought to a jail in Grady County, Oklahoma, and held in a 42-person pod. Before he arrived, at least one prisoner at the facility reportedly died from Covid-19. The U.S. Marshals Service did not test prisoners for the virus before loading them onto planes or buses at that time, the Marshall Project reported.

Betts's aunt Ashley Morris said it's "devastating" that her nephew is still in jail. She helped raise him in Jackson, Mississippi, where he moved from Chicago after his mother died from complications caused by a muscle disease when he was 11. He never fully adjusted to that loss, Morris said; earlier this year, Betts posted photos of his mother on Facebook, writing, "I think about how much happier my life would've been with you here."

Compounding his misery in Mississippi were humiliating encounters with the police, who Betts said referred to him using racial slurs. During one incident, Betts recalled, an officer arbitrarily stopped him and a friend while they were walking, stood on his foot so he wouldn't run, and forced him to place his hands on a scorching hot police vehicle while he was searched.

After a few years in Mississippi, Betts moved with his older brother to Champaign two years ago.

"You took this one incident and blew it extremely out of proportion," Morris said of Betts's prosecution. "You're not understanding the frustration that they have because they see all these killings, and this mistreatment, and nothing is done about it. As if we're not even human."

In early July, the court appointed Betts an attorney, Liz Pollock, a federal public defender whose child had coincidentally been supervised by Betts at the camp where he worked. The same day she was appointed, U.S. attorneys pressed a magistrate judge to keep Betts detained until trial.

Pollock convinced the judge to delay making a decision so she could prepare a defense for Betts's detention hearing to try to get him released from jail.

Most of the prosecutions examined by The Intercept and Type Investigations involved property damage, arson, and possessing devices such as Molotov cocktails. Many of these cases could have been handled by state prosecutor's offices rather than the federal government, and traditionally are, according to Rob Singer, who worked as a federal prosecutor for eight years, including under the George W. Bush administration.

"When I was a federal prosecutor, the first thing I'd do is write up a memo to my boss [describing why] we should prosecute a case under federal charges," Singer said. "That vetting process is not something that happens overnight. It usually takes weeks, sometimes several months, to resolve."

In the months after Floyd's killing, Trump blamed the widespread looting and arson on "anarchists and agitators," while Barr derided Black Lives Matter protesters as "essentially Bolsheviks" bent on revolution. An analysis by the Associated Press found that "very few" of those charged seemed to have links to highly organized extremist groups. None of the charging documents reviewed by The Intercept and Type Investigations indicated defendants' ties to anarchist or anti-fascist ideologies as motivating factors in alleged criminal behavior.

Such inflammatory statements from top officials, along with the mass prosecutions of protesters, are "completely unprecedented," according to Roy Austin, a former deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division. "To even be prosecuting these cases federally," he said, "it's purely for message sending."

Misconstruing Bail Laws

To keep protesters in jail pending trial, federal prosecutors across the country are telling judges to ignore mitigating factors that typically weigh in favor of release.

Richard Donoghue, who was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York when the office opened a case against Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman, two lawyers accused of torching a cop car in Brooklyn, approved an appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking judges to detain the defendants before trial. Neither has a criminal record and both have extensive community ties, but federal prosecutors argued these facts shouldn't matter because the defendants' positive attributes did not prevent them from committing the alleged crime.

This reasoning was a "misconstruing of bail laws," according to Brian Jacobs, a former assistant U.S. attorney who disputed the "novel" reasoning in an amicus brief co-signed by 56 other former federal prosecutors.

Donoghue was promoted by Barr in July to top deputy for Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen, who had assigned Donoghue to supervise all DOJ investigations into Ukraine following Trump's impeachment. The person Barr picked to replace him, Seth Ducharme, worked with Barr as his counselor to investigate the Mueller investigation.

In Cleveland, the U.S. attorney's office sought pretrial detention for at least four defendants charged with crimes related to the protests. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, Justin Herdman, was nominated by Trump in May to oversee the U.S. attorney's office in D.C., which handles both local and federal cases.

Pretrial incarceration without bail is supposed to be the exception, not the rule.

One of the Cleveland cases involves T'Andre Buchanan, a 22-year-old man who was arrested after smashing the window of a cupcake shop during unrest on May 30. A pretrial services report recommended that Buchanan be released, but federal prosecutors still tried to have him detained.

In an appeal of Buchanan's release by a magistrate judge, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Zarzycki argued that Buchanan's redeeming personal characteristics — his employment as a customer service representative with Spectrum, his lack of criminal record, and his stable family and community ties — paled in comparison to his alleged crimes. District Judge Pamela Barker denied the government's motion and ordered Buchanan free on bond with a GPS monitor, noting simply that "the court was not persuaded by the government's arguments."

In the case of Cyril Lartigue, a 25-year-old arrested in Austin, Texas, after a surveillance camera filmed him fiddling with what prosecutors argued was a Molotov cocktail, Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Henneke argued that Lartigue should be detained. He showed up to the protest with "gloves and goggles and a hard hat," Henneke said, signaling confrontational intent.

The magistrate judge, Andrew Austin, grew sour, questioning how prosecutors could argue that Lartigue, who had "no criminal history" and a "stable family," should remain imprisoned until trial.

"I'm frustrated," Austin said. "I have defendants in here with significant criminal histories the government agrees to release, who sell drugs to children and other things, because they'll cooperate."

Before the hearing ended, Henneke requested that Austin stay the release order, citing guidance from his supervisors in the U.S. attorney's office to appeal the decision to a higher court. A district judge upheld Austin's decision in a one-page ruling the next day.

The U.S. attorney who initiated Lartigue's prosecution, John Bash, resigned in early October to work in the private sector after cultivating a close relationship to the Trump administration. He was previously a special assistant to the president and tapped by Barr in May to investigate the "unmasking" of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI about his phone call with a Russian diplomat in December 2016. The DOJ is now seeking to have Flynn's charges dismissed.

The advocacy for pretrial detention by U.S. attorney's offices in unrest cases may signal a broader shift in the DOJ, according to Jacobs.

"Bail is supposed to be the rule," he said. "The question is whether at any point the pendulum has swung too far to the point where detention is becoming the norm rather than bail."

Shamar Betts's graduation from Henry Kirksey Middle School in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2015.

Photo: Courtesy of Ashley Morris

Alone and at Risk

In July, Shamar Betts was transferred from Oklahoma to a jail in nearby Macon County, Illinois.

His prosecution in the Central District of Illinois is being overseen by U.S. Attorney John Milhiser, who Trump appointed in 2018. Milhiser declined to respond to a list of written questions, but earlier this year, he was interviewed by NPR about a call for Barr's resignation by two former U.S. attorneys in Illinois, who cited Barr's request for leniency for Roger Stone, an ally of the president. "Politics plays no part in anything we do in the office," Milhiser said.

Days before Betts's detention hearing on July 13, his lawyer secured assurance from his former boss at the camp that she would house him during his pretrial wait. During the hearing, held over videoconference, the teen listened as Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene Miller made the case before Magistrate Judge Eric Long to keep Betts locked up.

"In looking at the nature and circumstances to this offense, thinking about this case, I cannot recall any other single incident — in the last 20 years at least that I've been a federal prosecutor — that has endangered the safety of the entire Champaign-Urbana community more than this offense," Miller said.

Betts's lawyer, Liz Pollock, pushed back, arguing that there was no way of knowing the degree to which his post propelled people into the streets.

"I'm still confused how they could look at me as a threat to the community."

"Is it not possible that the unrest that has scoured the country after the murder of George Floyd has caused many people to become upset about the state of criminal justice and the state of institutional racism that Black men have been dealing with … for years and years and years?" Pollock stated.

Long ruled for Betts's release, citing his past employment and clean criminal record. Betts was then transferred to the Champaign County Satellite Jail, where he could be released on a $100,000 state bond. An activist group had already volunteered to pay it.

But the next day, after U.S. attorneys filed an emergency motion appealing Betts's release, District Judge Michael Mihm overruled Long's decision and ordered Betts detained until trial.

Today, Betts remains on a federal hold in a jail where at least 16 detainees have contracted Covid-19 since May; he is diabetic and asthmatic and worries about being exposed to the virus. Before being jailed, he was a committed vegetarian, but the lack of healthy options forced him to start eating meat again.

Betts's trial is scheduled for November, but it could be postponed due to Covid-19 closures. In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit curtly denied his lawyer's appeal of Mihm's order of detention. On October 1, Pollock filed a motion to dismiss his indictment, citing constitutional challenges to the federal riot statute under which Betts is charged.

Like many of the other protest-related cases reviewed by The Intercept and Type Investigations, Betts's case elicited fierce and polarizing opinions in his community as the Trump campaign stoked fears of unrest. After the local press picked up his case, several people sent angry emails to his former employer, demanding that the camp publicly denounce him.

For Betts, the experience has been as perplexing as it has been difficult. On October 4, he turned 20; his family tried sending him extra funds for his birthday, but he says he had trouble receiving them through the jail's commissary.

"I wouldn't consider myself as a dangerous activist," Betts maintains. "I'm still confused how they could look at me as a threat to the community."

Research assistance by Nina Zweig.

Scarlett Johansson has married Colin Jost! | Entertainment - Idaho County Free Press

Posted: 29 Oct 2020 12:36 PM PDT

Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost have tied the knot.

The 'Black Widow' actress and the 38-year-old comedian have been dating for over three years and got engaged in May 2019, and have now taken their relationship to the next level by officially getting married.

The Instagram account for non-profit organization Meals on Wheels America announced the news on Thursday (29.10.20), when they posted a picture of the Staten Island Ferry with the words "Jost Married" written on the image.

The charity - which fights hunger and isolation in the senior citizen community by providing meals across the country - wrote: "We're thrilled to break the news that Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost were married over the weekend in an intimate ceremony with their immediate family and love ones, following COVID-19 safety precautions as directed by the CDC. Their wedding wish is to help make a difference for vulnerable older adults during this difficult time by supporting @mealsonwheelsamerica. Please consider donating to celebrate the happy couple by clicking the link in our bio. (sic)"

The happy news comes after Scarlett, 35, previously said her new spouse "killed it" when he proposed with "a whole James Bond situation".

Gushing over Colin's proposal, Scarlett said: "It was surprising - he's got a lot behind that news desk he's hiding. He's very charming and very thoughtful and romantic. But yeah, I was surprised. Even if you kind of imagine what that moment's gonna be like, it's still a beautiful moment."

Meanwhile, Colin previously admitted he was "so scared" of marriage before getting engaged to the Hollywood actress.

He said: "I'm getting married and it's such a crazy thing. I was so scared of marriage for so long because every time I talked to someone who just got married, or was about to get married, is like, 'Oh my God, you got to do it ... What could go wrong?' Then you talk to someone who's been married for five years, and they're like, 'Don't rush into it ... you have your whole life ahead of you. Don't have kids. They're the worst.'"

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