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Singapore opens door for more governments to use covid data for other purposes

InternationalFeb 02. 2021The TraceTogether contact-tracing phone app. After countries from the U.S. to Australia to Israel collected reams of data during the pandemic, they may start to see uses for that information beyond the original intent. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Lauryn Ishak

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jamie Tarabay

In early 2020, as the coronavirus began to ricochet around the world with terrifying consequence, Harish Pillay decided to do whatever he could to help stop the spread.

The software engineer, who lives in Singapore, heard the government was designing an app to track the virus so he emailed the minister in charge and asked how he could help. He was part of a fellowship of developers and engineers who volunteered their services, ready to pitch in on a solution.

“The problem was being solved by creating this tool, but there were aspects of trust and confidentiality which also needed to be addressed,” said Pillay, who has worked on Red Hat’s open-source software much of his career and fervently believes in transparent technologies. “We understand all of these things. Let the community help you do the right thing.”

In the beginning, Singapore was held up as a model for other nations. As the government encouraged people to download the TraceTogether app to their smartphones, it published the source code and promised strict limits on data use. Developers from around the world pitched in to hone and debug it in real time.

Now the early optimism is fading. Public support took a hit after authorities disclosed in January that police had used the app’s data in a murder investigation — only months after the minister in charge vowed it would be used only for covid containment. The government issued a rare apology. But rather than back down, it plans to formalize the ability of police to access such data in specific cases, introducing the proposed legislation in parliament Monday.

Pillay had put aside his politics as a member of the opposition Progress Singapore Party to be part of the TraceTogether campaign, but he’s become concerned.

“I felt disappointed,” he told Bloomberg News. “The trust factor that was there was reduced.”

Now Singapore could become a very different kind of model. After countries from the U.S. to Australia to Israel collected reams of data during the pandemic, largely with public support, they may start to see uses for that information beyond the original intent.

“Singapore is saying to other governments, with a wink and a nod, that we’ve done it and you can do it too,” said Phil Robertson, the deputy director in Asia for Human Rights Watch. “Many countries look to Singapore as a success story, so they think whatever Singaporeans do must be good, and that’s a problem.”

Singapore has tried to explain the changes. The legislation would allow access to contact tracing data under seven categories of serious crime including murder, rape and drug trafficking. In response to queries, a government spokesperson referred to Minister Vivian Balakrishnan’s comments in January.

“The police must be given the tools to bring criminals to justice, and protect the safety and security of all Singaporeans,” he said at the time. “Especially in very serious cases, and where lives are at stake, it is not reasonable for us to say that certain classes of data should be out of reach of the police.”

He added that TraceTogether data is automatically purged after 25 days and that the whole program will be retired once the covid-19 pandemic is over.

A government minister said in January TraceTogether is used by about 78% of Singapore’s residents, or about 4.2 million people. A smartphone app and token use Bluetooth technology to gauge the distance between users, allowing the government to notify them if they’ve been in contact with someone who’s tested positive for the virus.

Initial acceptance from the general public was sluggish, with downloads of the app hovering at around 20%. The slow pace paralleled a general wariness that coursed through the region, amplified by breaches in data security that governments in other countries struggled to address.

In South Korea, private sector contact tracing apps became increasingly invasive – one provided the exact location of every place of business or home visited by a positive case – and government workers are able to review hundreds of hours of surveillance camera footage and go through mobile phone and credit card transactions to track people down.

In China, a digital website reported last December that hackers were able to breach Beijing’s health code system and access government ID numbers and sell them online; such ID numbers are used to access a person’s coronavirus test records.

There has been pushback from the public. In Thailand, the government was forced to back off of a threat from the spokesman for the government pandemic center that anyone found to have tested positive without downloading the virus tracking app would face jail time.

In Malaysia, the health ministry mandated businesses destroy the personal records of visitors to their premises within six months after government-ordered tracing ended.

In Israel, the Supreme Court banned the country’s intelligence agency from using technology to track covid-19 cases.

In Australia, federal legislation was passed to prevent data collected in the country’s covid app from being used for any purposes beyond contact tracing.

The World Health Organization has issued guidelines to governments on the “ethical” considerations of using tracking technologies for contact tracing. Member states are obliged to develop surveillance systems to capture “critical data” to monitor the virus, “while ensuring that such systems are transparent, responsive to the concerns of the communities, and do not impose unnecessary burdens, for example infringements on privacy,” the guidance issued in May 2020 reads.

One major risk from governments seeking to expand their use of covid-19 tracking data is that people will be deterred from participating.

“Is this one of the laws of unintended consequences where it reduces the usage rate and be worse for society?” said Troy Hunt, an information security expert and the creator of the data-breach aggregation service, “Have I Been Pwned.”

He points out that governments can present virus technologies as benign and then reverse legislation or regulations later. The risk of Singapore’s move is that it shows not just governments, but citizens as well, how easily changes can be made.

“There is a slippery slope, where data retention periods are increased because it does add value to law enforcement, and suddenly the scope of the privacy risk changes so much more,” he said.

Singaporeans tend to be sanguine about such moves when it comes to their government, but unusually forceful arguments have broken out over the proposed legislation. When one local posted online that he thought concerns were overblown and privacy overrated, he triggered fierce blowback.

“The government is using covid-19 as an excuse to put in place social engineering and public surveillance platforms and policies that ordinarily would never have been considered nor publicly palatable,” wrote Andy Wong, a 27-year-old freelance defense writer and risk analyst. “I wonder how many sane foreigners will want to work in a country like that.”

He wrote that Singapore, with its high quality of life and tough government, is sometimes described as Disneyland with the death penalty, but he worries it will become “North Korea with a smile.”

The episode is “a massive betrayal of trust for ordinary citizens like myself,” he told Bloomberg News.

Jonathan Kok, an intellectual property lawyer in Singapore, said there was limited value to the data that police could get from the contact tracing app for their investigations. A person’s interaction history provided circumstantial evidence at best, he said.

“So, the data has really limited use. I’m just surprised why the police want to go through all that trouble to collect data when it only shows you who that person was with within the last few weeks or so,” he said.

“Many people have written in and said they may just turn on the device when they need to go out instead of having it run all the time. That’s not going to help the national effort to contain the virus,” he added.

As for Pillay, he spent his compulsory national service as a police officer, so he understands the context of using the data in rare and exceptional cases. But police have plenty of other ways to get data for their investigations, including CCTV footage and cellphone tower records.

“It’s less than ideal to have specific instances where the TraceTogether data could be accessed,” he said. “This will be a tarnished gold standard.”

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Japan considers extension of covid emergency as economy sputters

InternationalFeb 02. 2021Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Yoshiaki Nohara

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga looks set to extend a state of emergency for major metropolitan areas that will inflict more pain on the economy, as he tries to stem the latest wave of covid-19 cases and reverse a fall in public support.

The emergency covering 11 areas including Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya has helped halt a rapid acceleration of virus cases threatening the developed world’s oldest population. While infection numbers have started to drop under the guidelines, Suga’s government has said the number of cases remains worryingly high.

Suga will extend the emergency by one month to March 7, after consulting with an advisory panel on Tuesday, Kyodo News reported, citing an unnamed official with knowledge of the situation. The measure will remove Tochigi prefecture from the original 11 areas after cases there dropped sharply this month, it said.

Parliament’s lower house separately on Monday approved measures to add teeth to emergency orders including fines for bars and restaurants that defy instructions to close early. The legislation was expected to gain final approval later this week in the upper house, which is also controlled by Suga’s ruling coalition.

Japan’s current measures including a request that people work from home are far less stringent and enforceable than the lockdowns of some European nations. But they have already caused a sea change in the view of economists. Instead of the year starting with a slowing recovery, some of them now see a double-digit contraction looming.

The prime minister, who runs the risk of being replaced by the ruling party ahead of an election that must be held by October, has seen his support slide since he took office about four months ago. Critics contend his focus on propping up the economy has slowed efforts to stem infections.

Extending the emergency will prolong the distress for businesses, but Suga looks to have little choice if he is to control the virus, shore up his leadership and keep alive the hope of holding the Olympic Games in summer.

“The damage to businesses would be enormous,” said sushi restaurant owner Mamoru Sugiyama, referring to an extension. Bars and eateries are among the firms hardest hit by the guidelines. He has temporarily closed his restaurant, which boasts a history of 130 years in the swanky Tokyo shopping district of Ginza.

“Some businesses are about to use up their loans and I think if the emergency continues through February, firms may start going bust one after another, even in Ginza,” said Sugiyama, who also heads a coalition of about 370 local restaurants and bars.

A Nikkei/TV Tokyo survey suggests the public is in favor of an extension. The Jan. 29-31 poll showed 90% of respondents supported the lengthening of the emergency.

The government has said the emergency can end when the virus crisis eases to Stage 3 on a four-stage scale that draws on six data points.

In Tokyo, that would mean daily infections falling below 500 and staying there. Tokyo reported 393 new infections on Monday, the first reading below 500 since Dec. 28 and well below the city’s daily record of 2,447 on Jan. 7.

As of Jan. 27, the capital’s hospital bed occupancy rate was 73% and critical care units were at 113% of capacity, according to the health ministry. Both numbers would have to come down below 50% to reach Stage 3.

“We can see that the state of emergency has had an impact, but it’s been too weak,” said Yoshihito Niki, a professor of clinical infectious diseases at Showa University’s School of Medicine in Tokyo, indicating a need to prolong the measures. “The government will need to exercise patience at least through February.”

Parliament’s powerful lower house on Monday approved measures to add teeth to emergency orders including fines for bars and restaurants that defy instructions to close early. The legislation was expected to gain final approval later this week in the upper house, controlled by Suga’s ruling coalition.

Since the declaration of the emergency in early January, economists warned that the less stringent advisories compared with the first emergency in April, risked being insufficient and causing more damage over time. This time, schools remained open and streets continued to see foot traffic, albeit smaller than during normal times, despite repeated calls from officials to stay home.

Toshihiro Nagahama, economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute, sees an emergency extended to two months shaving about 3 trillion yen off the economy.

While the consensus among analysts is for the economy to shrink an annualized 2.5% this quarter, economists Yoshimasa Maruyama and Koya Miyamae at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., now see a stronger finish to 2020 whiplashing into an 11.5% contraction in the three months through March.

Still, an unemployment rate of just 2.9% and year-on-year falls in the number of bankruptcies show that spending and loan support from the government and the Bank of Japan have helped cushion the economic blow of the pandemic so far. Suga’s administration got a third extra budget through parliament last week offering another round of help for businesses, medical facilities and the economy.

The concern going ahead is how much longer companies can hang on if the emergency is extended and consumer spending remains subdued.

Yasuhide Yajima, chief economist at NLI Research Institute, warns there won’t be a dramatic revival of growth even when the emergency ends unless there’s more concrete reassurance for the public.

“Regardless of the state of emergency, consumption isn’t going to come back until we see the impact of vaccination,” Yajima said.

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Biden to meet with Senate Republicans offering pandemic relief counterproposal

InternationalFeb 01. 2021US President Joe Biden

By The Washington Post · Erica Werner, Jeff Stein, Seung Min Kim

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden intends to meet on Monday with 10 GOP senators who are calling on him to make a bipartisan deal instead of forging ahead with a party-line vote on his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan.

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The group announced plans Sunday to release an approximately $600 billion coronavirus relief package as a counterproposal to Biden’s much larger plan, posing a test for the new president who campaigned on promises to unify Congress and the country.

The senators, led by Susan Collins, R-Maine, said that they would formally unveil the plan Monday, and that they requested a meeting with Biden. Biden and Collins subsequently spoke, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced late Sunday that the president had invited the 10 Republican lawmakers to the White House “for a full exchange of views.”

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The meeting will take place Monday, according to two people with knowledge of the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official announcement had yet to be made.

The planned meeting comes as Democrats prepare to move forward this week to set up a partisan path for Biden’s relief bill, which Republicans have dismissed as overly costly because of Congress has already committed to spending $4 trillion to fight the pandemic, including $900 billion in December.

The GOP proposal jettisons elements that have drawn Republican opposition, such as increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

It would also reduce the size of a new round of checks Biden wants to send to Americans, from $1,400 per individual to $1,000 – while significantly reducing the income limits that determine eligibility for the stimulus payments.

A $600 billion plan that is a small fraction of Biden’s proposal probably will not draw much, if any, Democratic support. However, the GOP offer presents a challenge for Biden, who campaigned on promises of bipartisanship and must decide whether to rebuff the overture or make a genuine effort to find common ground across the aisle.

“We want to work in good faith with you and your administration to meet the health, economic and societal challenges of the covid crisis,” the Republican lawmakers wrote, adding that they were responding to his “calls for unity.”

Top Biden economic adviser Brian Deese said on CNN’s “State of the Union” before the meeting was announced that Biden was open to an exchange of views on his plan. But Deese emphasized that speed was of the essence and refused to say whether Biden was willing to entertain a smaller overall cost.

“The president is uncompromising when it comes to the speed that we need to act at to address this crisis,” Deese said.

“The provisions of the president’s plan, the American Rescue Plan, are calibrated to the economic crisis that we face,” Deese said.

The White House is pushing its plan amid signs of a broader economic slowdown and a continued wave of enormously high unemployment claims of close to 1 million a week. The emergence in the U.S. of highly transmissible coronavirus variants has also intensified fears that another wave of lockdowns will be necessary.

Because the Senate is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, it is significant that Republicans assembled 10 lawmakers to get behind the proposal. That means that, if Democrats were to join them, they could reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to pass legislation under regular Senate procedures.

Democrats are planning to skirt the 60-vote requirement using special budget rules that would allow the Biden package to pass with a simple majority vote. Democrats control the Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tie-breaking votes.

Democratic aides said the GOP proposal would not change their plans to move forward with the budget bill this week that would set the stage for party-line passage of Biden’s plan.

Psaki’s statement said Biden also spoke to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Sunday as they prepare to push his relief package.

“The key to getting robust job opportunities is to cease any delay, any inaction, any wait-and-see around this rescue plan,” Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“The American people could not care less about budget process. . . . They need relief and they need it now,” Bernstein said.

Biden’s plan would send $1,400 payments to individuals with incomes up to $75,000 per year, and couples making up to $150,000.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, one of the signers of the letter, said the GOP plan would lower those thresholds to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for couples. Instead of $1,400 checks, the GOP plan would propose $1,000 checks, according to Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., another member of the group.

The GOP plan would also reduce Biden’s proposal for extending emergency federal unemployment benefits, which are set at $300 a week and will expire in mid-March. The Biden plan would increase those benefits to $400 weekly and extend them through September. The GOP plan would keep the payments at $300 per week and extend them through June, according to three people with knowledge of the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement.

Portman criticized Democrats for their plans to go it alone, saying this approach would “jam Republicans and really jam the country.”

The signers of the letter include eight Republican senators who are part of a bipartisan group that has conferred with Biden administration officials about the relief bill. In addition to Collins, Portman and Cassidy, these are Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Jerry Moran of Kansas. Also signing are Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Cassidy strongly criticized Biden for not soliciting broader input from senators in both parties. Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Cassidy said the Republican package amounted to $600 billion and was “targeted to the needs of the American people.”

Cassidy also said Biden’s push to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost millions of jobs.

“You don’t want bipartisanship. You want the patina of bipartisanship. … The president’s team did not reach out to anybody in our group, either Democrat or Republican, when they fashioned their proposal,” Cassidy said. “They’ve never reached out to us – that’s the beginning of the bad faith.”

Democrats bristled at Republican accusations that Biden’s relief proposal would give too much in federal aid to affluent Americans, pointing to GOP support for the 2017 tax law that nonpartisan analysts cut taxes substantially for the wealthiest Americans.

“Reasonable people can have honorable differences on the precise income limits of emergency tax relief. But there’s a degree of chutzpah in the GOP suddenly on their high horse on this point when they were just fine with permanently giving people who make over $5 million more tax relief than the bottom 60% of American taxpayers combined,” said Gene Sperling, an economist who advised the Biden presidential campaign and served as former director of the White House National Economic Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The $900 billion relief bill Congress passed in December included $600 stimulus payments to individuals. Biden’s plan to issue a new round of $1,400 checks would bring that figure to $2,000 – making good on promises he and other Democrats made that helped the party win two Senate seats in Georgia in early January. Those victories gave Democrats the majority in the Senate, and Democrats including the two new senators from Georgia have insisted they must make good on those promises.

“The entire Democratic Party came together behind the candidates in Georgia – we made promises to the American people,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on ABC. “If politics means anything – if you’re going to have any degree of credibility – you can’t campaign on a series of issues … and then change your mind. That’s not how it works. We made promises to the American people; we’re going to keep those promises.”

In addition to a new round of checks, a higher minimum wage and increased unemployment benefits, Biden’s plan includes rental assistance and eviction forbearance, an increased child tax credit, some $130 billion to help schools reopen, hundreds of billions of dollars for cities and states, and $160 billion for a national vaccination plan, more testing and public health jobs.

Money for vaccinations – which Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said recently was key to helping the economy – has emerged as the one real area of bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill. The GOP plan would match Biden’s call to devote $160 billion to vaccines, testing and related health care spending.

“With your support, we believe Congress can once again craft a relief package that will provide meaningful, effective assistance to the American people and set us on a path to recovery,” the GOP senators wrote.

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Legal team exits as Trump fixates on false claims

InternationalFeb 01. 2021Donald Trump boards Marine One to leave the White House for the last time as president on Jan. 20, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary

By The Washington Post · Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger, Amy Gardner

WASHINGTON – The implosion of former president Donald Trump’s legal team comes as Trump remains fixated on arguing at his second impeachment trial that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a defense that advisers warn is ill-conceived and that Republican strategists fear will fuel the growing divide in the GOP.

South Carolina lawyer Butch Bowers and four other attorneys who recently signed on to represent the former president abruptly parted ways with him this weekend, days before his Feb. 9 Senate trial for his role in inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Sunday evening, Trump’s office announced that two new lawyers were taking over his defense.

Two people familiar with the discussions preceding the departure of the original legal team said Trump wanted them to make the case during the trial that he actually won the election. To do so would require citing his false claims of election fraud – even as his allies and attorneys have said that he should instead focus on arguing that impeaching a president who has already left office is unconstitutional.

That approach has been embraced by many Republican senators, many of whom cited it when they cast a test vote against impeachment last week.

Trump’s attorneys had initially planned to center their strategy on the question of whether the proceedings were constitutional and on the definition of incitement, according to one of the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal conversations.

But the former president repeatedly said he wanted to litigate the voter fraud allegations and the 2020 race – and was seeking a more public defense of his actions. Bowers told Trump that he could not mount the defense that Trump wanted, the person said.

“It truly was mutual,” the person said. “The president wanted a different defense. The president wanted a different approach and a different team.”

Trump spokesman Jason Miller also said Sunday that the split with his lawyers was mutual, but he rejected the notion that the former president wants to focus on election fraud in the Senate trial, calling that account “fake news.”

“The only guidance offered has been to focus on the unconstitutional nature of the impeachment to which 45 senators have already voted in agreement,” Miller wrote in a text message.

Bowers and the other lawyers who quit Trump’s defense team did not respond to requests for comment. CNN first reported that Trump wanted his attorneys to focus his defense on his claims of election fraud.

On Sunday evening, Trump’s office announced in a statement that Atlanta-based trial attorney David Schoen and Bruce Castor, a former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., would lead his defense team. The two lawyers will bring “national profiles and significant trial experience in high-profile cases to the effort,” the statement said.

Schoen served as a lawyer for Trump adviser Roger Stone when he sought to appeal his conviction for lying and witness tampering in a congressional investigation. He also was in discussions with financier Jeffrey Epstein about representing him days before his death while awaiting sex-trafficking charges, and has said he does not believe Epstein killed himself. During his time as district attorney, Castor had declined to prosecute actor Bill Cosby and was later sued by accuser Andrea Constand in a case that was settled.

The disarray inside Trump’s circle comes as the House Democratic impeachment managers focus intensely on building a powerful and emotionally compelling argument that the president’s words led his supporters to ransack the Capitol.

The House impeachment article charges Trump with “incitement of insurrection” in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by a pro-Trump mob.

The Democrats have been working round-the-clock in preparation for the trial – including on Saturday night, when the news broke of Trump’s legal team collapsing, according to people familiar with their activities.

The impeachment managers are compiling footage from Jan. 6, including cellphone recordings of protesters attending Trump’s rally that morning and video from inside the Capitol after protesters breached it.

Their aim is to present evidence of how Trump’s words and actions – including his long-running attacks on the integrity of the election – influenced the rioters. The insurrection left five dead, including one member of the U.S. Capitol Police. Two officers, one with the D.C. police, have since died by suicide.

Both sides face tight deadlines to prepare for the trial. The House team must file its briefs Tuesday. Trump’s defense lawyers must file their briefs on Feb. 8.

Democrats face a difficult task in persuading enough GOP senators to join them in voting to convict the former president. During a key test vote last week, all but five Republicans backed Trump in an objection to the proceeding, lodged by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

But Trump’s determination to mount a defense centered on the false claims that fraud tipped the outcome to Joe Biden could rattle GOP senators at a time when some in the party are facing pressure from donors and more-moderate voters to reject such conspiracy theories.

“Trump went 0 for 60 in trying to make the voter fraud argument,” said veteran GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg. “Republican senators have no desire to be put on the spot in having to judge his unproven allegations of voter fraud.”

Ginsberg warned that Democrats have “so much raw material” that will allow them to “paint a picture of Trump that’s never been painted before of his involvement in the violence and insurrection.”

“And Trump plays right into their hands in talking about the fraud, for which he has been unable to produce any proof,” he said. “Which is why it’s a completely perilous defense. I can’t imagine any lawyer agreeing to present that case.”

It is also unclear whether Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who will preside at the trial, will permit the president’s team to introduce claims of alleged voter fraud.

The collapse of Trump’s legal team could “force the president now to turn to a better strategy,” one that would save him “from self-immolation,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who declined an offer to represent the president at the impeachment trial.

If Trump insists on arguing that the election was stolen, he would be on a destructive path, Turley said.

“That claim is viewed by many senators as one of open contempt for their institution,” he said. “As it stands now, he would be acquitted by a fair margin. If he pursued that path, it could change the view and the votes of some senators.”

The former president’s allies have also urged him to move forward with a defense based on constitutional questions.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post before Trump split with his lawyers, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the legal team planned to argue that impeaching a president who had already left office was unconstitutional, without getting into any battle over who won the election.

“It’s a simple case, really,” he said.

But Trump, who has been ensconced at his private estate in Florida since leaving the White House, has continued to insist that he won the election, according to people familiar with his comments.

As the trial nears, the former president’s circle of advisers has shrunk. He is continuing to talk with his attorney Rudy Giuliani, who led his efforts to subvert the election results. But former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, outside lawyer Jay Sekulow and former campaign lawyer Justin Clark have made clear that they want no part of his defense strategy over the Capitol attack.

Some advisers have told Trump that he should testify in his own defense, but that is broadly seen as a bad idea and probably will not happen.

Cipollone and Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment.

With the help of Graham, Trump had assembled a team of five lawyers led by Bowers, an ethics and campaign law expert in South Carolina who had worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush.

The group included three former federal prosecutors in the state – Deborah Barbier, Johnny Gasser and Gregory Harris – as well as a North Carolina lawyer, Josh Howard. All left the Trump defense team Saturday, according to people familiar with the situation.

Miller said that only Barbier and Bowers had officially been named to the team.

The selection of a South Carolina-based legal team was a shift from Trump’s previous impeachment last year, when he was charged with abusing his power and obstructing Congress in pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his family.

During that trial, Trump was defended by lawyers experienced on the national stage. They included Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor whose work led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment; Sekulow, who had defended Trump in other cases; and Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor known for his work in high-profile cases.

Losing his legal team days before the upcoming Senate trial presents a serious challenge, said Norm Eisen, an attorney who served as co-counsel to the Democratic managers during Trump’s first impeachment.

“This is a total disaster,” he said. “These are real trials, even if they are being litigated in the U.S. Senate and, I can tell you, the defense team needs to be prepared for what’s ahead.”

He said the decision by Trump’s legal team to withdraw was a sign that the lawyers faced a deep ethical conundrum.

“It is anathema under our code of ethics to pull out on a client on the eve of a trial – unless that client places you in an impossible situation,” Eisen said.

If the Trump legal team had argued Trump’s claim that the election was stolen, “they would be arguing an out-and-out lie, and these lawyers were looking at the consequences of that,” he said, noting that other Trump lawyers are now facing ethics complaints, court sanctions and libel suits for pursuing fraud claims with no basis.

“I believe they were unwilling to expose themselves to years of repercussions for doing that,” Eisen said.

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Ten Senate Republicans propose compromise covid relief package, posing challenge for Biden

InternationalFeb 01. 2021

By The Washington Post · Erica Werner, Jeff Stein, Seung Min Kim

WASHINGTON – Ten Republican senators announced plans Sunday to release an approximately $600 billion coronavirus relief package as a counter-proposal to President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan, posing a test for the new president who campaigned as a bipartisan deal-maker.

The senators, led by Susan Collins, R-Maine, said they would formally unveil the package on Monday. In a letter to Biden, they requested to meet with him and said they were offering their proposal in recognition of his “calls for unity.”

Biden spoke to Collins and has invited the 10 Republican lawmakers to the White House “for a full exchange of views” early this week, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a Sunday night statement.

The potential bipartisan discussion comes as Democrats prepare to move forward on Monday to set up a partisan path forward for Biden’s relief bill, which Republicans have dismissed as overly costly given some $4 trillion Congress has already committed to fighting the pandemic, including $900 billion in December.

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The GOP proposal jettisons certain elements that have drawn Republican opposition, such as increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

It would also reduce the size of a new round of checks Biden wants to send to Americans, from $1,400 per individual to $1,000 – while significantly reducing the income limits that determine eligibility for the stimulus payments.

A $600 billion plan that is a fraction of the size of Biden’s proposal is unlikely to draw much if any Democratic support. However, the GOP offer presents a challenge for Biden, who campaigned on promises to unify Congress and the country and must decide whether to ignore the GOP overture or make a genuine effort to find common ground across the aisle.

“We want to work in good faith with you and your administration to meet the health, economic and societal challenges of the covid crisis,” the Republican lawmakers wrote.

Top Biden economic adviser Brian Deese said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the White House had received the Republicans’ letter and would review it. But he emphasized that speed was of the essence, and refused to say whether Biden was open to entertaining a smaller overall price tag.

“The president is uncompromising when it comes to the speed that we need to act at to address this crisis,” Deese said.

“The provisions of the president’s plan, the American Rescue Plan, are calibrated to the economic crisis that we face,” Deese said.

The White House is pushing its plan amid signs of a broader economic slowdown and a continued wave of enormously high unemployment claims of close to 1 million a week. The emergence in the U.S. of highly transmissible coronavirus variants has also intensified fears that another wave of lockdowns will be necessary.

Because the Senate is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, it is significant that Republicans assembled 10 lawmakers to get behind the proposal. That means that, if Democrats were to join them, they could reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to pass legislation under regular Senate procedures.

Democrats are planning to skirt the 60-vote requirement using special budget rules that would allow the Biden package to pass with a simple majority vote. Democrats control the Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tie-breaking votes.

Democratic aides said the GOP proposal would not change their plans to move forward with the budget bill this week that would set the stage for party-line passage of Biden’s plan.

Psaki’s statement said Biden also spoke to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Sunday as they prepare to push his relief package.

“The key to getting robust job opportunities is to cease any delay, any inaction, any wait-and-see around this rescue plan,” Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“The American people could not care less about budget process. . . . They need relief and they need it now,” Bernstein said.

Biden’s plan would send $1,400 payments to individuals with incomes up to $75,000 per year, and couples making up to $150,000.

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Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, one of the signers of the letter, said the GOP plan would lower those thresholds to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for couples. Instead of $1,400 checks, the GOP plan would propose $1,000 checks, according to Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., another member of the group.

The GOP plan would also reduce Biden’s proposal for extending emergency federal unemployment benefits, which are set at $300 a week and will expire in mid-March. The Biden plan would increase those benefits to $400 weekly and extend them through September. The GOP plan would keep the payments at $300 per week and extend them through June, according to three people with knowledge of the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement.

Portman criticized Democrats for their plans to go it alone, saying this approach would “jam Republicans and really jam the country.”

The signers of the letter include eight Republican senators who are part of a bipartisan group that has conferred with Biden administration officials about the relief bill. In addition to Collins, Portman and Cassidy, these are Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Jerry Moran of Kansas. Also signing are Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Cassidy strongly criticized Biden for not soliciting broader input from senators in both parties. Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Cassidy said the Republican package amounted to $600 billion and was “targeted to the needs of the American people.”

Cassidy also said Biden’s push to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost millions of jobs.

“You don’t want bipartisanship. You want the patina of bipartisanship. … The president’s team did not reach out to anybody in our group, either Democrat or Republican, when they fashioned their proposal,” Cassidy said. “They’ve never reached out to us – that’s the beginning of the bad faith.”

Democrats bristled at Republican accusations that Biden’s relief proposal would give too much in federal aid to affluent Americans, pointing to GOP support for the 2017 tax law that nonpartisan analysts cut taxes substantially for the wealthiest Americans.

“Reasonable people can have honorable differences on the precise income limits of emergency tax relief. But there’s a degree of hutzpah in the GOP suddenly on their high horse on this point when they were just fine with permanently giving people who make over $5 million more tax relief than the bottom 60% of American taxpayers combined,” said Gene Sperling, an economist who advised the Biden presidential campaign and served as former director of the White House National Economic Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The $900 billion relief bill Congress passed in December included $600 stimulus payments to individuals. Biden’s plan to issue a new round of $1,400 checks would bring that figure to $2,000 – making good on promises he and other Democrats made that helped the party win two Senate seats in Georgia in early January. Those victories gave Democrats the majority in the Senate, and Democrats including the two new senators from Georgia have insisted they must make good on those promises.

“The entire Democratic Party came together behind the candidates in Georgia – we made promises to the American people,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on ABC. “If politics means anything – if you’re going to have any degree of credibility – you can’t campaign on a series of issues … and then change your mind. That’s not how it works. We made promises to the American people; we’re going to keep those promises.”

In addition to a new round of checks, a higher minimum wage and increased unemployment benefits, Biden’s plan includes rental assistance and eviction forbearance, an increased child tax credit, some $130 billion to help schools reopen, hundreds of billions of dollars for cities and states, and $160 billion for a national vaccination plan, more testing and public health jobs.

Money for vaccinations – which Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said recently was key to helping the economy – has emerged as the one real area of bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill. The GOP plan would match Biden’s call to devote $160 billion to vaccines, testing and related health care spending.

“With your support, we believe Congress can once again craft a relief package that will provide meaningful, effective assistance to the American people and set us on a path to recovery,” the GOP senators wrote.

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Myanmar leader held amid fears of military coup

InternationalFeb 01. 2021

By The Washington Post
Shibani Mahtani, Kyaw Ye Lynn

HONG KONG – Myanmar’s military said Monday that it took control of the country and declared a state of emergency for a year, hours after detaining civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of her ruling National League for Democracy in a predawn operation, staging a coup against the democratically elected government.

The raids came hours before a new session of parliament was scheduled to open and members who won the November elections were set to take their seats. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won those elections in a landslide, capturing 396 of 476 seats. It was Myanmar’s second democratic election since the country’s fragile transition from military rule to democracy.

NLD spokesman Myo Nyunt told The Washington Post that Suu Kyi, Myanmar President Win Myint and all chief ministers from their party, representing more than a dozen states and regions in the country, were taken at gunpoint. A spokesman for his party was also detained, he said.

“I expect that soldiers will arrive for me soon,” Myo Nyunt said. “This is very likely a coup, but we hope that there will also be negotiation between our leaders and the military.”

Several hours after the raids, the military in a television broadcast said that a state of emergency had been declared in Myanmar, and that power would be transferred to the commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing. Myint Swe, a former general and the military-backed vice president, will become the president, the broadcast added.

The sweep included other prominent democracy activists who have been fighting against military rule for decades, leaders of other political parties and NLD lawmakers, according to social media posts and news reports.

Communications appeared to be down or patchy in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, as well as Yangon, the country’s largest city and commercial hub. The state-run broadcaster Myanmar Radio and Television said in a Facebook post that it was not able to broadcast “due to communication problems.” Websites were also down; the Internet monitoring service Netblocks said national connectivity had fallen to 75% of normal levels.

The military has alleged voter fraud in the November vote, but Myanmar’s election commission has said there is no evidence to support its claims. The military’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, alleged voter fraud after winning 33 seats.

Political tensions and fears of a military takeover have prompted alarm in the international community.

In a statement sent late Sunday in Washington, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was alarmed by the reports and urged Myanmar’s military to adhere to the rule of law and release those detained, or face consequences. “The United States opposes any attempt to alter the outcome of recent elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition, and will take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed,” she said.

On Friday, diplomatic missions in Myanmar affirmed their support for the country’s democratic transition and urged the military to respect the results of the elections.

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, said diplomats were making “unwarranted assumptions” and denied that it was impeding the democratic transition.

Myanmar’s military ruled the country for half a century before beginning a transition to democracy in 2010 and allowing elections that ushered Suu Kyi and her party to power in 2015. But the current military-drafted constitution enshrines power for military generals, who have a quarter of seats in parliament and maintain control over key ministries.

Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest before her release in November 2010, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her resistance to military rule. The military-drafted constitution prevents her from leading Myanmar as president, but she is unequivocally the nation’s leader, revered as a deity, and rules through proxies. The military-drafted constitution also allows the army to step into a situation that may “disintegrate” the county and national solidarity.

Since taking power, Suu Kyi has disappointed old allies in the West, particularly for defending Myanmar – and its military in particular – against charges of genocide over the persecution of the Rohingya ethnic minority. Suu Kyi has in recent years moved closer to powers such as China and India, and grown increasingly estranged from countries such as the United States and Britain, which once led advocacy efforts to get her out of house arrest.

The historian and writer Thant Myint-U said Monday that “the doors just opened to a very different future.”

“I have a sinking feeling that no one will really be able to control what comes next,” he tweeted. “And remember Myanmar’s a country awash in weapons, with deep divisions across ethnic & religious lines, where millions can barely feed themselves.”

– – –

The Washington Post’s Kyaw Ye Lynn in Yangon, Myanmar and Timothy McLaughlin in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

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Myanmar leader is detained; party says army staged ‘coup’

InternationalFeb 01. 2021Aung San Suu Kyi on Jan. 27.Photographer: Thet Aung/AFP/Getty Images

By Bloomberg
Philip J. Heijmans, Max Zimmerman

Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi and other top leaders have been detained in an early-morning raid in an apparent “coup,” her party’s spokesperson Myo Nyunt said, a move that came after the country’s military disputed its landslide win in a November election.

Ever since Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory in a Nov. 8 poll, the second general election after decades of army rule, the military and its political factions have demanded that authorities investigate its allegations of mass voting fraud. Myanmar’s election commission last week had labeled the vote transparent and fair, and the United States, the United Nations and the European Union urged the military to respect the results.

Top military leaders had hinted at seizing power while saying they pledged to work in accordance with the law. In a statement on Sunday, Myanmar’s military – known as the Tatmadaw – denied objecting to the outcome of the election and said it “finds the process of the 2020 election unacceptable.”

Myanmar’s military had retained wide powers under the constitution even after a shift to democracy a decade ago, which prompted the United States and the European Union to lift sanctions on the Southeast Asian country. But initial optimism that sparked a wave of interest from foreign investors quickly dissipated due to a violent crackdown against Muslim Rohingyas that prompted accusations of genocide against Suu Kyi’s government.

The treatment of the Rohingya has tainted the international image of Suu Kyi, who had won the Nobel Peace Prize while under house arrest during a military regime that effectively cut off Myanmar from the world.

In November’s election, Suu Kyi’s NLD won 396 seats in the national assembly, more than the 322 needed to form a government. Turnout was an estimated 70% of the nation’s 37.3 million people eligible to vote. The ruling party has won 524 seats in elections held for state and regional parliaments, official data showed.

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Biden’s secret weapon to cleaning up energy is spelled FERC

InternationalFeb 01. 2021The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission seal in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 20, 2018. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Ari Natter, Naureen S. Malik

President Joe Biden outlined ambitious new plans for taking on climate change on Wednesday, but the most potent weapon may already be in his arsenal.

The five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is poised to play a pivotal role fulfilling Biden’s clean-energy ambitions, including his vow to strip greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector over the next 14 years. FERC could help Biden deliver on those promises by fostering carbon prices on electricity, propelling a massive build-out of high-voltage power lines and making it harder to build natural gas pipelines.

“Transforming the American electric sector to produce power without carbon pollution will be a tremendous spurt of job creation and economic competitiveness in the 21st century,” the president said Wednesday, as he signed a series of climate directives.

Biden can’t count on help from Congress. With Democrats having only a narrow hold on the House and Senate, it’s unlikely both chambers will pass broad clean energy legislation, including a nationwide renewable power mandate.

Enter FERC, which can accomplish many of the same goals, said Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative.

“FERC will be an indispensable player in the Biden administration’s clean energy agenda,” Peskoe said. “It’s the federal regulator of two major energy industries — the power sector and the natural gas industry — so it matters a lot in how this energy transition plays out.”

The commission has a big say in the nation’s energy mix because of its role overseeing gas pipelines, liquefied natural gas export facilities and wholesale power markets. The agency dictates how electricity is bought and sold in those wholesale markets, which are where most utilities get their power. And the commission’s decisions governing natural gas pipelines can give developers a green light to invoke eminent domain and install the projects on private land.

Biden has designated Richard Glick as chairman, giving one of the panel’s two Democratic members a chance to immediately steer the agenda. The remaining three seats are set to be occupied by Republicans through mid-year.

There are signs already of FERC’s new approach. Glick complained in a meeting earlier this month that the commission has not paid enough attention to how local, often disadvantaged communities are affected by the natural gas projects FERC scrutinizes. “I have been at the commission for three years, and I’ve seen little in the way of orders to do more than give lip service to environmental justice,” Glick said. “That needs to change .”

And in her opening remarks as a Democratic commissioner, Allison Clements stressed she planned to consider “the grave threat of climate change” in her decisions for the panel.

Environmentalists are counting on FERC to make major changes pushing the nation away from fossil fuels. Activists have already briefed Biden officials on how FERC can impose a climate litmus test to effectively block future natural gas projects. They also are urging policies to encourage state programs rewarding emission-free renewable and nuclear power.

And they have outlined ways FERC can help deliver on Biden’s promise “to build the next generation of electric grid transmission,” with high-voltage power lines that can deliver low-cost renewable power from the Midwest to customers in big coastal cities.

That is critical to meeting Biden’s 2035 goal of carbon-free electricity, said Rob Gramlich, a former FERC policy adviser and founder of Grid Strategies. “You just can’t achieve significant decarbonization without major changes to the grid,” Gramlich said.

FERC’s past transmission efforts have mostly spurred small, local projects, said Jeff Dennis, managing director of Advanced Energy Economy, an association of clean energy businesses. Now, the commission can reform planning processes to encourage big transmission projects that cross multiple jurisdictions and “are really critical to unlocking more capacity for renewables,” Dennis said.

Even a small shift in FERC’s approach to renewable energy could buttress state efforts to subsidize emission-free nuclear, wind and solar power.

States are “a real driver of decarbonization policy,” and FERC policy can ensure they have the power to “to go further and faster,” Dennis said.

Already nearly three dozen states in FERC-regulated markets have adopted clean-power goals.

“A lot of the actions are going to be taking place at the state level in the absence of federal leadership,” said FERC commissioner Neil Chatterjee, a Republican whose term expires at the end of June. “That is going to put FERC squarely in the epicenter of that debate.”

FERC had a mixed record enabling a clean energy transition under former president Donald Trump. On the one hand, it imposed regulations making it easier to integrate battery storage into the grid and explored ways to spur transmission lines critical to support offshore wind farms. However, it also created hurdles for renewable electricity while helping to sustain natural gas power plants, including by imposing a minimum price floor for sales of state-subsidized renewable power in capacity auctions run by the largest U.S. grid.

FERC also is expected to shift its approach to natural gas projects. Glick has argued the panel needs to better consider the climate change consequences of approving natural gas pipelines and export facilities.

“FERC has not kept up with the challenge and the real imminent threat of climate change,” said Joan Walker, an activist with Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign. “The fossil fuel industry is going to find every opportunity to keep perpetuating their business model so it’s absolutely essential and urgent that these changes be made.”

(The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael R. Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP.)

Under federal law, FERC is supposed to weigh the potential benefits of proposed natural gas pipelines against their potential negative impacts on landowners and the environment, said Sierra Club staff attorney Elly Benson.

“If a pipeline will be pumping a lot of gas and therefore is going to have a lot of downstream emissions, FERC should really be taking a close look,” Benson said. “That should weigh against approving a new gas pipeline.”

Big shifts in FERC’s approach would probably come only after Democrats hold a three-member majority on the commission, and there’s a lull in proposals now pending before the panel. But changes could have lasting impact, said John Moore, who directs a Natural Resources Defense Council project focused on FERC.

The agency is using “a 21-year-old policy on assessing gas projects that we have long argued is way outdated and needs to be replaced,” Moore said. “That is going to definitely be up to the next chair to tackle.”

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Olive oil is becoming one of the hottest ingredients in Asia

InternationalFeb 01. 2021Bottles of olive oil move along the production line ahead of labeling at the Borges Agricultural & Industrial Edible Oils plant in Tarrega, Spain, on Dec. 5, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Angel Garcia.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Joanna Ossinger

Twenty years ago, when chef Shinobu Namae cooked at the acclaimed Italian restaurant Acqua Pazza in Tokyo, he had trouble selling dishes made with olive oil, one of the cuisine’s featured ingredients. Customers frequently asked him to omit it from their order.

Today, says Namae, “people in Tokyo love olive oil.” At his Michelin three-star L’Effervescence, the chef can now source locally made oil from Souju, a farm in the Kagawa prefecture that once grew Bonsai plants. Because the owners were expert at pruning, Namae says they can control the growth of the olive trees to sustainably “harvest good fruits constantly.”

Japan’s increasing taste for olive oil has spurred local producers. The country won eight awards, including four gold ones, at the 2020 NYIOCC World Olive Oil Competition. A big winner, Green Basket Japan, has olive groves in Odawara, about an hour outside Tokyo.

In 2019, Japan exported 276.23 metric tons of olive oil, a 209 % increase from 2018 and a 545% increase from 2014.

China is also committing to the olive oil business. In 2020, the extra-virgin, organic oil Xiangyu Coratina won double gold at the Athena International Olive Oil Competition out of 430 entrants. The company that produced it, Xiangyu Oil Olive Development Co., hired an Argentine agronomic engineer, Pablo Canamasas, to produce the winning oil.

“Extra-virgin olive oil consumption in China is increasing at a significant pace,” said Canamasas via email. “Particularly in big cities and in a segment of the population aged 25-35 that has traveled abroad and is more exposed to the Mediterranean diet or has heard of it.”

Xiangyu’s olives are grown in the Wudu District in China’s western Gansu province. The climate has enough similarities to the Mediterranean coast to produce quality olives, including slightly alkaline soil and plenty of sun, according to Xiaoyong Bai, chairman of Garden City Olive Technology Development Co. His Garden Taste oil won a gold medal for quality at the 2018 International Olive Council’s Awards, where it was recognized for its “ripe fruitiness.”

Bai has been growing olives for 23 years; his plantation now encompasses more than 3.7 million acres. A retired civil servant and committed environmentalist, Bai said that he’s helped plant trees “on many barren mountains” via a translator over email. He added: “At present, China consumes 6,000 tons of olive oil every year, with an annual growth rate of 18%.” In 2020, his company exported a batch of olive oil to South Korea, the first time he sold product outside China.

The Asia-Pacific olive market is expected to record a annual growth rate of 4.2% from 2020 through 2025, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence. Mordor sees the region’s market for olive oil growing rapidly to meet surging demand from consumers because of its health benefits.

In Singapore, Sebastien Lepinoy is likewise pushing world-class oil, but he’s not using local olives. The chef at Michelin three-star restaurant Les Amis spent five months developing a blend to complement his modern French cooking for such dishes as Langoustine de Loctudy-giant shrimp with zucchini and an extra-virgin emulsion.

“I needed an olive oil to match with my cuisine and also, for cheese,” Lepinoy says. He used five kinds of olives from Château d’Estoublon, in Provence, France, to create a blend that he imports, uses, and markets to customers.

Lepinoy has enough confidence in the market for olive oil in Singapore that he’s selling bottles of his smooth, subtly peppery oil for $36 ($48 Singapore). He says there has been good demand for a more healthful fat as an alternative to his restaurant’s famed butter.

Although travel restrictions have kept away tourists who might buy souvenir bottles of oil, restrictions have also kept the city-state’s well-off residents home, and they’ve shown a lot of interest in the olive oil, Lepinoy says.

Still, there is some resistance to olive oil in Asia. “Crazy as it may sound,” says Canamasas, who helped produce Longnan Xiangyu’s award-winning oil, “the Chinese public have the same view we outsiders have on Chinese products: that they are of poor quality.”

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Dozens of restaurants in Michigan defy virus restrictions

InternationalFeb 01. 2021Diners eat indoors at the Sunrise Family Diner in Howell, Mich., on Jan. 18, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Ed Ou for The Washington Post

By The Washington Post · Kayla Ruble, Robert Klemko

HOWELL, Mich. – It’s a Monday morning and the Sunrise Family Diner is full. Retirees in jeans and plaid sit by the window, chatting over coffee and the local newspaper. A sign posted at the entrance urges customers to wear masks, but some don’t. They get seated anyway, within arm’s length of strangers in other booths.

Michigan is under shutdown, but inside Sunrise Family Diner, you might assume there is no pandemic.

This is the other rebellion. While armed extremists gathered outside the statehouse in Lansing a week after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud, dozens of restaurateurs across Michigan held their own protests against reality.

The restaurants are operating in open defiance of the state’s polarizing governor and the restrictions she ordered in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The businesses say the science on which the rules are based – pushed by the state health department, World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – is politicized and untrustworthy.

“I don’t think it’s as bad as they’re saying it is,” diner owner David Koloski said. “The whole thing with the coronavirus is political. I think Democrats are dug in and unwilling to move on this.”

Their protests have thrived for weeks thanks to law enforcement officers who support their cause and state residents willing to travel hours in some cases to patronize businesses where they can flaunt their distaste for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and her rules. So far, cease-and-desist orders and fines have done little to dissuade the businesses, and state officials have declined to discuss what recourse they have for dealing with the revolt.

But the consequences are clear, some health professionals say: Even as Michigan’s coronavirus rates have declined, many of the state’s hospitals remain at capacity because of covid-19 patients.

Less than 40 miles away from Sunrise Family Diner, Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital has exceeded 90% capacity since April, even with multiple ICU expansions. Since last winter, more than 100 hospital caregivers have tested positive for the coronavirus and two have died. The hospital has lost more than 160 patients to covid since the pandemic began.

Sparrow president Alan Vierling describes driving past open restaurants and bars – and even more often the obvious house party or big family gathering – and how angry it makes him.

“You see that and you know that there’s a percentage of these folks, once they get covid, some of them will die. And it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Vierling, a registered nurse. “This isn’t like getting leukemia, where you can do everything right and get leukemia and die. With this, you have a choice.”

The scenario here in Michigan is one that is expected to play out increasingly around the country as the pandemic drags on, presenting a challenge for the Biden administration and its plans to use a science-based approach to combating the virus after the previous administration spent much of the past year downplaying its severity and refusing to mandate restrictions – or even model medically recommended protocols.

Koloski, 39, said he can’t afford to abide by the state’s guidelines that limit restaurants to takeout service only.

“If we didn’t open, we would have shuttered. Doors closed. Out of a house, out of a job, out of a car. Me and the rest of my staff,” said Koloski, who has seven employees.

Besides, he said, “I’m not holding a gun to anybody’s head and making them come here.”

So the diner reopened earlier this month, advertising with a group known as Stand Up Michigan. The group, organized by several western Michigan business owners, has held rallies and demonstrations against pandemic-related restrictions across the state, including at the state Capitol.

Restaurants “can’t live on takeout,” said group co-founder Ron Armstrong, whose business manufactures displays and exhibits for trade shows. “Some people said: ‘Either I’m going to have them come and take my keys or I’m going to have to give my keys to the bank. Those are my two choices, but I will not not be open anymore.’ “

Meanwhile, hospitals such as Sparrow are reeling from the consequences of such decisions.

On any given day, the hospital typically has five to 10 ICU beds available – and 30 to 40 patients who need them.

Vierling has been forced to supplement his staff with 90 traveling nurses who work 12-hour shifts, five days a week and live in nearby long-term-stay hotels.

The hospital turned its break rooms into respite rooms after seeing caregivers, one after another, retreat to the rooms to weep. It added massage chairs to soothe and distract.

“If you’d have told me before the pandemic that massage chairs would be one of the biggest, smartest decisions I’d make in this job, I’d say you were crazy,” Vierling said. “We have to try to provide some comfort. We’re trying to save as many lives as possible, and every time we lose somebody, that’s devastating. It’s like watching somebody drown slowly for 10 days.”

– – –

Whitmer announced on Jan. 22 that the state would allow restaurants to resume limited dine-in service beginning Monday. Seating will be limited to 25% of capacity and tables must be six feet apart with no more than six people per table. They also must close at 10 p.m.

“I know that it has not been easy,” Whitmer said, referring to the roughly 2½ month ban.

But, she said, data shows that the state’s actions have worked, and that if people continue to follow the recommendations of the scientific community, further restrictions might not be necessary.

“The science around this virus is settled, and if we can all wear masks and be very smart about congregating, and not do it unless it’s necessary, washing our hands, doing that social distancing, we will be in a strong position in a few weeks,” Whitmer said. “And we’ll be able to do more. That’s the hope.”

But even the loosening of some of the rules isn’t enough for the members of Stand Up Michigan, many of whom said they would continue operating at full capacity.

At All Star Coney Island, it was a full house on a recent Sunday night, with all but one booth filled. That tabletop was reserved for a large sheet of paper on which customers had written thank-you messages to the owners.

“Freedom is given by God. God bless this business!” one customer wrote.

“Thank you for being Patriots! Freedom!” wrote another.

“People need to use common sense. It’s been too long,” said a maskless Kathy Holcomb, 67, as she left the restaurant. “We stay safe. We wash our hands. We wear our masks – well, not just now,” she added, laughing.

Stand Up Michigan keeps a running list of restaurants that are open in defiance of the ban, posting weekly updates for its members, who also swap intel among themselves on the group’s social media site about restaurants they’ve discovered and businesses that allow customers to walk freely through their establishments unmasked.

The number fluctuates, but has more than 60 restaurants in 33 counties spread across the state from the Ohio border to the northernmost reaches of the Upper Peninsula.

The group’s online messaging goes beyond promoting open restaurants to disseminating false information and deceptive data to downplay the risks of the virus. For example, when discussing the risks of indoor dining, Armstrong claims that it is safer to be in a restaurant than it is to be in your home, saying more cases of coronavirus are contracted in small indoor gatherings in people’s homes than in restaurants. He does not provide any data to back up his claim.

Hospital admissions have dropped significantly in recent weeks, but 18 of the restaurants in Stand Up Michigan are in places where hospitals remain above 90% capacity.

As of Friday, Michigan had more than 557,883 confirmed coronavirus cases and 14,497 deaths, according to data from the state health department. Positivity rates were dropping as well, with more than half the state’s counties reporting seven-day positivity averages of less than 6%. But 17 of the state’s hospitals remain at 90 to 100% capacity, including the two in Lansing that serve several surrounding counties.

On Nov. 15, when new restrictions were announced, including the ban on indoor dining, Michigan was at 733 cases per million, according to health department spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin. “Two months in, the current number on our dashboard is 207 per million, a decline of more than 70 percent,” Sutfin said.

“You’d like to think if people could see the results and know they’re possibly putting people in harm’s way, they wouldn’t do it,” said Vierling, the hospital president. “But with this virus, it’s very likely large numbers of people are responsible for deaths of other people and never know it.”

Since mid-November, the state liquor control commission has suspended the licenses of 34 establishments for violating the emergency orders. Two restaurants have received fines of several thousand dollars, including a former Big Boy restaurant that was forced to give up its franchise agreement – and the iconic Big Boy statue – over its continued refusal to shut down.

State health officials declined to discuss what recourse they have for dealing with restaurants that continue to defy orders, or their plans for future enforcement.

Restaurants such as Jimmy’s Roadhouse, on the west side of the state in the town of Newaygo, have continued to operate through cease-and-desist orders and without a liquor license. It’s become a symbol of the restaurant defiance movement.

Jimmy’s also has become a destination for indoor-dining tourists, people who travel from all over the state seeking a place to publicly display their disdain for masks and social distancing.

“On the weekends, that’s one of the tourist attractions. And people drive three, four hours, with their families, elderly people,” owner Jimmy Cory said, noting that one of his “regulars” is an elderly couple that drives two hours from the northern Michigan town of Traverse City.

Cory says the restrictions are merely rules, not laws, and he doesn’t plan to follow them.

“Anything outside of the food code and the liquor code that I’ve been following my entire restaurant career is bull—t and unconstitutional,” he said, adding that “curfews are for comrades.”

Restaurants in many communities appear to have the support of local police, which is complicating enforcement efforts. OSKAR Scots restaurant in the village of Caledonia, was hit with a cease-and-desist order from Kent County’s health department on Jan. 11. A sheriff’s deputy visited to let the owner know that the department’s phone had been blowing up with reports about the business being open in defiance of the restrictions.

“I said, ‘Well what happens next with you?’ And he goes, ‘Nothing.’ He goes, ‘I’ll be seeing you tomorrow for coffee and breakfast,’ ” owner Randall Scot recalled.

The sheriff’s department did not respond to requests for comment. The county health department said it could not comment on specific cases.

Scot, 52, said a trip to Florida convinced him to ignore the state restrictions. His family visited the Sunshine State, where restaurants are allowed to remain open at 100% capacity, over Christmas.

“I decided at that point of time I’ll never shut my dining room down again,” he said.

Scot, who received a second cease-and-desist order from the county health department on Jan. 19, said operating at 25% of capacity simply isn’t enough.

“I have the right to not be deprived of my life, liberty or property without due process of law,” Scot said via a text message. “I have fantastic representation and will fight if I have to. I am STANDING UP.”