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The post Joe Biden tries to take faith voters from Donald Trump appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden, branded a fake Catholic at the Republican National Convention, has launched an all-out blitz to engage faith-based voters — many of whom have shown unfailing loyalty to President Trump.
The campaign’s offensive aims to prove that Mr. Biden is not “against God,” as Mr. Trump put it this month.
Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala D. Harris, helped kick off what the campaign billed as a “Believers for Biden” push this weekend designed to engage Florida’s Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.
“When it comes to our Jewish community, Kamala and Joe have never wavered in their support,” said Mr. Emhoff, who is Jewish.
Doug Pagitt, executive director of the group Vote Common Good, said he thinks there is a decent number of White evangelical and Catholic “faith” voters who are looking for an exit off the Trump train.
“We’re not going to move 100% of them; we’re not going to move 50% of them,” Mr. Pagitt said. “But we do really believe that 5-15% is available. There is so much passion from so many faith leaders to speak out for the first time ever. I think that’s a real indicator [of] what’s happening inside the faith communities.”
Mr. Biden, who makes frequent references to his Catholic faith, would be the second Catholic president. In 1960, some voters feared John F. Kennedy would effectively take his marching orders from the Vatican.
Former Notre Dame Football Coach Lou Holtz said at the RNC that people of faith will have trouble supporting someone whose stance on abortion runs counter to Christian values.
“The Biden-Harris ticket is the most radically pro-abortion campaign in history,” Mr. Holtz said. “They and other politicians are ‘Catholics in name only’ and abandon innocent lives.”
Mr. Biden said that is ridiculous.
“I never miss Mass. It’s part of who I am,” he said on MSNBC. “My private beliefs relative to how I would deal with the church doctrine is different than my imposing that doctrine on every other person in the world.”
Notre Dame, a Catholic university, tried to distance itself from Mr. Holtz’s remarks.
Exit polling suggested that Mr. Trump carried a bare majority of the Catholic vote over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Mr. Trump carried roughly 80% of the evangelical vote. Despite some cracks, there are few signs of an exodus of evangelicals from Mr. Trump.
“The Republican Party platform mentions God 15 times,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said recently as part of his group’s “Pray, Vote, Stand” campaign, although the Republican Party did not approve a new platform this year. “By contrast, the Democratic platform has the word God one time, as a descriptor: ‘God-given potential.’”
The president has generally championed pro-life and religious liberty policies and has received high marks from faith-minded conservatives for his judicial picks, including Supreme Court Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Still, top Democrats such as Sen. Christopher A. Coons of Delaware, a Biden ally, and former 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg have tried to make the case that their party shouldn’t be afraid to expound on issues of faith.
“His faith is strong, and it’s personal and private,” Mr. Coons said of Mr. Biden in his Democratic National Convention address. “For Joe, faith isn’t a prop or a political tool.”
At a recent campaign event geared toward Jewish voters, Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida introduced Mr. Emhoff as the “next Jewish mensch.”
“Our Jewish engagement team is fighting for every Jewish vote in every swing state,” Mr. Deutch said.
Mrs. Clinton carried about 70% of the Jewish vote in 2016, according to exit polling, but Mr. Trump has made overtures by emphasizing his strong relationship with Israel and moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Trump administration also brokered the recent agreement to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Tony Blinken, a foreign policy adviser for the Biden campaign, said Mr. Trump ceded authority on issues important for Jewish voters with his response to the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
“You know what’s not good for the Jewish people? Condoning the worst acts of anti-Semitism, as President Trump did in Charlottesville,” Mr. Blinken said. “That’s no myth, and again, that is disqualifying.”
Some Democrats are skeptical that the party can make a dent among the broader demographic of religious-minded voters.
“I think it’s important to make some kind of effort, but honestly you go where the ducks are in campaigns, and the ducks aren’t there for Biden-Harris,” said party strategist Brad Bannon. “I think the opportunities for Democrats among faith-based voters are pretty slim.”
Mr. Trump said at a stop in Ohio this month that Democrats like Mr. Biden want to “hurt God.”
“He’s following the radical left agenda: take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything,” the president said. “Hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God, he’s against guns, he’s against energy.”
Mr. Pagitt said that statement is absurd coming from Mr. Trump, who used the Bible “literally as a prop” during his march in front of St. John’s Church near the White House in June.
“When you’re taking swings at other people’s quality of their faith … that you’re having to do that in late August really shows you’re in trouble,” he said. “They misunderstand faith voters. The Trump administration has never gotten them.”
A Pew poll released last month found that 72% of White evangelical Protestants said they approve of the way the president his handling his job, a 6-point drop from April.
“I promise you this: Trump wouldn’t be spending money on organizing evangelicals and Catholics for Trump if he thought he had them in the bag,” Mr. Pagitt said.
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The post Joe Biden is a man of faith. That could help him win over some White evangelicals. appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The post Faith Hill, a Mississippi native, urges state lawmakers to change its flag: It’s ‘a direct symbol of terror’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Faith Hill is joining in on the calls for change in her native state of Mississippi.
The country star, 52, took to her Twitter on Thursday to urge the state’s legislature to vote for a new flag that reflects the citizens of today. The current flag features the Confederate emblem, which has led to many citizens and officials in the Southern state pushing for a replacement.
“To the Mississippi legislature: It’s time to change the state flag. I am a proud MS girl and I love my home state. When I think of Mississippi, I think of my mom and dad, the church I grew up in, high school football, and where I fell in love with music,” the “Wild One” crooner wrote.
TIM MCGRAW REVEALS THE ONE THING HE DOES IN QUARANTINE THAT ANNOYS HIS WIFE FAITH HILL
She continued in a series of tweets: “Now, it is time for the world to meet the Mississippi of today and not the Mississippi of 1894 (when the MS legislature voted on the current flag). I understand many view the current flag as a symbol of heritage and Southern pride, but we have to realize that this flag is a direct symbol of terror for our black brothers and sisters.”
The singer urged lawmakers to vote against the current flag on Friday, stressing that the state’s symbol should represent “ALL of the citizens of Mississippi.”
MISSISSIPPI LAWMAKERS DRAFTING RESOLUTION TO REMOVE CONFEDERATE EMBLEM FROM STATE FLAG: REPORT
She added the hashtags #takeitdownMS and #msleg.
Singer Faith Hill and her husband Tim McGraw arrive at the 48th ACM Awards in Las Vegas April 7, 2013.
(Reuters)
Hill’s push comes weeks after a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Mississippi began drafting a resolution to change the state’s flag. It’s is the last state with the Confederate symbol on its flag, Mississippi Today reported.
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The state’s college teams are also directly impacted by the current pennant, as the NCAA recently banned states with prominent Confederate symbols from hosting its sponsored events.
University of Mississippi football coach Lane Kiffin told ESPN that the flag does not represent Ole Miss and by removing the emblem from Mississippi’s flag, they are creating a “more welcoming environment.” Mississippi State coach Mike Leach told the outlet that the current flag doesn’t “elevate” the community.
Fox News’ Brie Stimson and Paulina Dedaj contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Live updates: Faith community takes center stage on 10th day of D.C. protests; Mitt Romney becomes first GOP senator at demonstrations appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The Washington region’s faith community stood front and center Sunday as thousands of protesters again converged in the nation’s capital in the 10th straight day of protests against racism and police brutality. After Saturday’s demonstration in the District drew more than 10,000 participants — the biggest crowd since protests in the city began May 29 — Sunday brought more peaceful mass gatherings.
Here are some significant developments:
• Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) marched outside the Capitol on Sunday as people around him chanted, “Do justice! Do justice!” Romney, the first GOP senator to attend the protests that have been disparaged by President Trump and other members of his party, embraced the week’s mantra, saying he wants to find “a way to end violence and brutality and to make sure that people understand that black lives matter.”
• In addition to the religious tone of Sunday’s protests, references to the civil rights era also were evident across Washington. Along the closed-down streets leading to the White House, several hundred people marched in a demonstration meant to recall the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery.
• Despite the enormous crowd that massed near the White House on Saturday, Trump on Sunday sought to play down the gathering while announcing he was decreasing the heavy presence of federal security forces on D.C. streets. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and others had criticized the president’s deployment of heavily armed federal officers in the District, without name tags or other identifying insignia, to quell protests that have been mostly peaceful.
• Across the Washington suburbs, meanwhile, thousands more took part in demonstrations. In Maryland, protests were held in Takoma Park, Clarksburg, Silver Spring, Gaithersburg and Germantown, while in Virginia, gatherings were held in Falls Church and in Fairfax and Arlington counties.
June 8, 2020 at 9:01 AM EDT
Bowser says she hasn’t heard from the White House on ‘Black Lives Matter’ street painting
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that she has not heard from the White House about her move to paint “Black Lives Matter” in large, yellow letters on 16th Street NW in downtown Washington near the executive mansion.
She said she had the message painted to show that the District is a “place for healing.” Bowser said black Americans want to “be recognized [as] human beings and show that our lives matter.”
She said the city had seen “federal forces used in a political stunt to attack peaceful protesters.”
“We saw the American military moved around like toy soldiers to try to intimidate our citizens,” she said. “The American military should not be used like that.”
DC Mayor Bowser discusses why she had “Black Lives Matter” painted on the street that leads to the White House:
“The BLM mural is a representation of an expression of our saying no, but also identifying and claiming a part of our city that had been taken over by federal forces.” pic.twitter.com/NlFMUX5TRE
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 8, 2020
By Dana Hedgpeth
June 8, 2020 at 8:06 AM EDT
Anger, defiance and desperate hope: Behind the scenes of the D.C. protests
For more than a week, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Washington, D.C., to protest police brutality following the death of George Floyd. A city that felt occupied by federal authorities and National Guard troops earlier in the week has since given way to throngs of peaceful — and at times festive — demonstrators. Here are stories from amid the crowds throughout the week, from a violent crackdown in Lafayette Square on Monday to dancing in the streets on Saturday.
By Washington Post Staff
June 8, 2020 at 6:19 AM EDT
D.C.’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ street art inspires similar giant murals in cities nationwide
The sun had only been up for about an hour Sunday morning when Charman Driver and about a dozen other people convened on a street in downtown Raleigh, N.C., for another day of protesting against racism. But instead of signs and banners, the group showed up with a different means of spreading their message: paint.
Within hours, three giant words written out in marigold yellow block lettering stretched the length of a city block near the Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh.
“End Racism Now.”
“This is what I’m doing for my child,” Driver, a community activist and local business owner, told WRAL. “Her and her friends need to know the real truth about this country that we live in.”
By Allyson Chiu
June 8, 2020 at 6:11 AM EDT
Federal authorities offer $15,000 reward in arson at AFL-CIO building
Federal authorities have announced a $15,000 reward in the May 31 arson at the AFL-CIO headquarters during protests in the District.
The Washington office of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms & Explosives said on Twitter on Saturday that the incident at the building in the 800 block of 16th Street NW caused about $1 million in damage.
According to the federal law enforcement agency, a fire was set in the front lobby around 10:15 p.m. May 31 after about two dozen people vandalized and burglarized the building.
The structure is one block north of Lafayette Square, which has been the site of confrontations between law enforcement officers and demonstrators protesting police brutality and racism following the death of George Floyd in the custody of the Minneapolis police.
The fire was part of a wave of violent acts that broke out near the end of the protest at the square on May 31. Arson also occurred at the nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church, the bureau said, and a reward of $10,000 was offered in that incident earlier last week.
By Martin Weil
June 8, 2020 at 6:07 AM EDT
Perspective: Mayor Bowser is besting Trump in tug of war over what ‘law and order’ means in D.C.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) is winning her high-profile tug-of-war with President Trump over how to preserve what the president calls “law and order” on District streets.
Bowser has drawn nationwide attention and support because she understands there are multiple ways to defend law and order. Trump only cares about one, which is preventing violence such as looting and arson.
At least three other kinds of law and order are also at stake, and each is just as important as the one preoccupying Trump.
First is the need to guarantee citizens’ First Amendment rights to protest peacefully. With a few exceptions, Bowser and D.C. police have protected that bedrock democratic freedom. The Trump administration violated it on live television June 1 when federal officers used gas and projectiles to clear nonviolent protesters from Lafayette Square for the president’s awkward, Bible-lifting photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
By Robert McCartney
June 8, 2020 at 6:04 AM EDT
Pentagon outlines withdrawal of troops from nation’s capital after Trump’s announcement
President Trump said Sunday he had ordered the National Guard to start the process of withdrawing from Washington, D.C., “now that everything is under perfect control,” as tens of thousands of people descended on the city for a weekend of protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
In a tweet, the president warned that the guardsmen could return. “They will be going home, but can quickly return, if needed. Far fewer protesters showed up last night than anticipated!” he said.
Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy confirmed later Sunday that all out-of-state National Guardsmen would be withdrawn from the nation’s capital within 48 to 72 hours and all active-duty U.S. troops that had been put on alert outside the city earlier in the week had gone home. He said officials were working on a plan to deactivate D.C. National Guardsmen as well but expected they would still help local police and federal law enforcement in the coming days.
By Paul Sonne
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]]>The post Faith, family and plasma: How one man survived ‘the horror of COVID-19’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Room 5 of the COVID-19 critical care unit was largely silent, save for the occasional alarms from machines keeping Ron Panzok alive.
Few people entered the room. Physical examinations were limited to once per day to reduce the chances of spreading the coronavirus responsible for putting Panzok, 66, of New York City, in North Shore University Hospital, part of Northwell Health, on Long Island in mid-March. Hospital restrictions prevented his family from visiting.
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It’s unlikely that the silence bothered Panzok; he was in a coma, responding to neither doctors nor the therapy meant to help him beat the virus wreaking havoc in his body.
Several times a day, though, Panzok’s room would fill with the sound of familiar, loving voices, often singing familiar, happy songs.
“Sweeeeet Caroline! Bah bah bahhhh… Good times never seemed so good. (So good! So good!)”
Panzok’s large extended family — his wife, children, siblings, cousins — called his room multiple times a day to sing, to pray, to talk about nothing in particular, and sometimes, yes, to play his favorite Neil Diamond song.
A nurse would put the phone on speaker, leaving the line open for an hour or more.
During Passover, the family serenaded him with “Dayenu,” a traditional and jubilant song from the holiday’s seder. “Who could forget ‘Dayenu’?” Panzok’s daughter, Amy Harel, said as she chuckled at the memory. “We would try anything just to see what would help wake him up.”
Panzok’s physician at North Shore University Hospital said strong connections to family or friends are an important component of intensive care, even for patients in a coma.
“I am a firm believer in a positive environment and family being at the bedside encouraging the patient. The horror of COVID-19 is that it took away most of that,” said Dr. Hugh Cassiere, director of the hospital’s cardiothoracic intensive care unit, which has been transformed into a COVID-19 ICU.
‘If the alternative is death, it doesn’t matter’
Panzok was one of the first COVID-19 patients Cassiere treated. He arrived by ambulance March 19, just 18 days after New York health officials had announced the state’s first case. The week before he was hospitalized, Panzok had symptoms typical of the coronavirus: fever, cough, weakness, muscle aches, nausea, diarrhea.
The virus had spread to at least five other family members, including Harel, but it was Panzok who deteriorated, developing shortness of breath. When he arrived at the emergency room, his kidneys had started to fail. His lungs were so stiff and hard that physicians had to use three sedatives — essentially paralyzing his body — to get him on a ventilator.
I am a firm believer in a positive environment and family being at the bedside encouraging the patient. The horror of COVID-19 is that it took away most of that.
There was no clear treatment strategy. Another doctor had already given Panzok hydroxychloroquine, which studies at the time hinted might benefit COVID-19 patients. It didn’t work. (Later studies found the drug did not help and may, in fact, harm patients.)
Panzok’s damaged kidneys meant he wouldn’t qualify for an experimental antiviral drug, remdesivir, because it had been shown to impact renal function.
Cassiere told Harel he needed her to help prepare the family for Panzok’s death. Harel refused to accept such an outcome.
“He was not ever the kind of person who would give up. So we were never going to give up on him, ever,” Harel said.
She described for Cassiere the reasons why her father needed to live, including six grandchildren he adored, plus a set of twin grandkids due any day. She described a kind, generous man who worked two jobs so Harel, 33, of Fairfield, Connecticut, could go to school to become an orthodontist.
“We need to do anything we possibly can to try and keep him alive,” Harel recalls saying. “Even if there are risks to trials or drugs, we need to try it, because if the alternative is death, it doesn’t matter.”
“I was distraught by the end of the conversation,” said Cassiere, who has more than two decades of experience with families whose loved ones are at the end of their lives. That emotional conversation, plus the ensuing deluge of COVID-19 patients in his critical care unit, has lead to many sleepless nights for the doctor.
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“It’s a constant emotional bombardment,” Cassiere said. “You can’t detach yourself. It’s impossible.”
Before the pandemic, Cassiere’s department was focused on critically ill people with major heart problems, such as aortic aneurysms and heart attacks that required surgery. He estimated that 75 percent of his critically ill patients were eventuallywell enough to be discharged.
“I’m used to taking care of medically complex patients,” Cassiere said.
His skills were prepared for a pandemic. His emotions were not.
Once the coronavirus took hold, he said, “100 percent of patients” were like Panzok, with slim odds of ever getting off the ventilator.
“It’s a constant emotional bombardment,” Cassiere said. “You can’t detach yourself. It’s impossible.”
The one-two punch
Cassiere recalled a study published just a month earlier in The Lancet, which suggested high doses of a steroid called dexamethasone could help patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome get off ventilators more quickly, and reduce deaths.
But he was concerned steroids would do more harm than good. Some research from the 2003 SARS outbreak suggested that coronaviruses linger longer in patients who received steroids to reduce inflammation in their lungs.
To counter that possibility, Cassiere decided to explore using convalescent plasma, the antibody-rich blood product of recovered COVID-19 patients. That just might be enough to counter the virus, he thought.
“I call it the one-two punch,” he said. He started Panzok on the steroids and waited. Panzok would need to show an improvement on the drugs before moving onto the convalescent plasma.
“If he didn’t improve, there’s really no other option, and we would have to just make him comfortable,” he said.
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Cassiere wasn’t certain he’d see improvement; he’d tried the steroids in other patients in similar situations, and they only worked about half the time. But Panzok’s lungs, it turned out, responded dramatically. Even so, he still wasn’t reacting to simple commands, like squeezing a doctor’s hand.
Before doctors moved to the convalescent plasma, they did an MRI on Panzok’s brain to make sure he hadn’t suffered irreversible damage.
“COVID-19 can cause devastating strokes,” Cassiere said. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t dealing with a patient that, although he responded to steroids, had had a stroke” that would make any further treatments useless.
The MRI showed a partial clot in one of the veins in Panzok’s brain, but it wasn’t dire. It was something doctors could treat. They moved ahead with the convalescent plasma, asking the Food and Drug Administration for authorization to use the treament, as the plasma is considered experimental.
Within a week of the plasma infusion, Panzok went from COVID positive to COVID negative.
‘He would not wake up’
The medications had done their job. He was weaned off the sedatives. But Panzok remained unresponsive.
“He would not wake up from the medically-induced coma,” Harel, Panzok’s daughter, said. “He was off of the sedation about a week or two, and he wasn’t waking up.”
In order for physicians to get Panzok off the ventilator, he needed to follow simple commands to prove he could breathe on his own.
Once again, his doctors spoke with his family about the possibility that there was nothing more they could do, other than place a tracheotomy tube into his throat as an alternative to the ventilator.
Harel recalled that physicians told her that in general, “Either the patients wake up right away, or they never wake up again.”
Either the patients wake up right away, or they never wake up again.
“I refused to give in. I refused to give up,” Harel said. The family enlisted large prayer groups. And they made sure Panzok, perhaps on some level, knew it.
That’s when every day, multiple times a day, Panzok’s nursing team would open up the phone line, providing the auditory tie to his family.
“We just kept trying” to connect with him, Harel recalled. The family even spoke in Hebrew, Panzok’s first language. The prayers continued.
“I think if you are the kind of person who believes in God or has faith,” Harel said, “you like to think there is a higher being.”
Five weeks into his coma, Panzok started to move.
“First, he moved his hand. Then he moved his foot,” Harel said. Doctors then capped the tracheotomy incision in his neck so he could speak.
A nurse called Panzok’s wife, Bonnie, who was with Harel at the time, and asked him to say something to his family.
“He said, ‘I love you, baby,'” and that was exactly what my father would always say,” Harel said. He was back.
Eight weeks after he entered the hospital, Panzok was ready to leave.
The road ahead
It’s going to take many weeks and months for Panzok to regain his previous strength. An avid cyclist, he used to go on 40-mile bike trips. He loved exercise and working out in the gym. All of that is gone.
He is now relearning to do the basics on his own: getting out of bed, swallowing. He’s being weaned off of supplemental oxygen.
That is typical of most patients who’ve been in intensive care for many weeks, with little to no physical activity.
“We’re seeing a lot of weakness, a lot of numbness, difficulty walking,” said Dr. Susan Maltser, medical director of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Glen Cove Hospital on Long Island, where Panzok is currently in rehabilitation.
Maltser’s facility typically has 65 beds available for acute rehab patients, but has been able to expand to 75. Half are designated for post-ICU COVID-19 patients.
“The hospitals saw their peaks about three weeks ago,” Maltser said. “We’re seeing our peak right now because people who were in the ICU intubated are just getting to us.”
Patients like Panzok get about three hours of rehabilitation therapy each day, for about three weeks. His doctors say he is getting stronger. But there is a long way to go, and he is acutely aware of that fact.
“He just said to me, ‘I was a bull of a man. I drove a truck, and I carried boxes. Now, it’s hard for me to move my arm all the way,'” Maltser said, recalling a conversation she had with Panzok this week.
But, she added, he is motivated to do the hard work necessary to get back to independence.
Harel, too, has faith. “He’s not a complainer, ever,” she said. “He has that ‘can-do spirit.’ He’s a very hard working, positive person.”
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