California adds $315 million to mask contract from China-based BYD, Gov. Newsom announces

California is extending its agreement with China-based manufacturer BYD to buy hundreds of millions more masks to protect essential workers from the coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday.

The state will buy an additional 120 million N95 masks and 300 million surgical masks, Newsom said, adding to the hundreds of millions the state has already purchased and received from the company. The state will pay BYD $315 million: $255 million for the N95s and $60 million for the surgical masks, according to the new contract.

California will pay $2.13 per N95 mask, a decrease in price from the $3.30 the state paid BYD for the first batch of shipments.

California’s contracts with BYD have faced significant scrutiny from lawmakers and the public since Newsom first announced the deal in April on MSNBC. At the time, he said the state had agreed to buy 200 million masks per month, mostly N95s, which are thought to be the most effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19.

California paid nearly $500 million up front for the N95s, but did not receive any for months because BYD did not secure federal certification for them until June.

BYD twice failed to obtain federal certification for its N95 masks in time for deadlines laid out in its contract with California and had to refund half of California’s upfront payment because it missed the first deadline.

Despite the initial delays, Newsom said the deal with BYD and the state’s overall strategy for securing masks has “been a success.” So far, the state has received hundreds of millions of surgical and N95 masks from BYD.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article244413712.html

Lawsuit seeks to halt Newsom’s school closure order

A conservative group that has fought California’s stay-at-home orders is suing Gov. Gavin Newsom over his school-closure mandate for counties with high rates of COVID-19.

The lawsuit announced Tuesday by the Center for American Liberty is aimed at halting Newsom’s order, announced Friday, that forbids all public and private schools from reopening for in-person learning in counties on the state’s COVID-19 watch list until those counties meet certain criteria.

The lawsuit accuses Newsom of putting politics ahead of children and denying children access to a meaningful education. It says school closures will disproportionately hurt students of low-income families, students with disabilities and students of color.

“In Defendants’ rush to enact these new restrictions, they have placed politics ahead of the wellbeing of children, and children’s important — indeed, fundamental — interest in receiving equal access to meaningful education,” the lawsuit states.

The Center for American Liberty is headed by attorney and Republican Party official Harmeet Dhillon and has sued Newsom multiple times for actions he’s taken during the pandemic.

For example, the group has sued on behalf of people whose high school graduations, weddings and surgeries were allegedly disrupted by the stay-at-home orders, and it has sued Newsom for creating a $75-million fund for undocumented Californians affected by COVID-19.

The governor’s office said Newsom ordered schools closed based on science.

“As the Governor has explained, science drives the state’s decisions in this pandemic,” said Jesse Melgar, spokesman for the governor’s office, in a statement. “We will defend this challenge to the Governor’s exercise of emergency authority in this crisis as we have all others, and we note that every federal court to rule on such a challenge to date has ruled that the exercise of authority is lawful.”

The lawsuit was also filed against the attorney general, the state superintendent of schools and the state public health officer.

The plaintiffs are nine parents with children attending public and private schools in the state, as well as one student.

All the parents said their children had suffered in some way due to the school closures, including declines in mental health because of a lack of interaction with teachers and peers, declines in discipline when it came to completing schoolwork, and poor-quality distance learning, according to the lawsuit. Some of the parents said they had to pay for private school or tutoring because the distance learning their public schools provided was insufficient.

One Los Angeles-area parent in the lawsuit said her son, who has autism, had received no special education services since schools closed, so she hired a tutor to help him learn. Another parent, from Orange County, said her children had received no live instruction, only work packets, from her district school, so she moved her children to a private school.

Another plaintiff, Lacee Beaulieu, is a La Jolla mother of students who says the increased screen time due to distance learning has harmed her children. Her children are depressed, have trouble sleeping and suffer from a lack of social interaction with their peers, according to the lawsuit.

School and state leaders who support keeping schools closed acknowledge that students need in-person learning, but they say closures are needed for student and staff safety amid a continued COVID-19 surge.

The lawsuit points out that the state is allowing child-care programs to remain open and questions why schools are held to stricter standards. The lawsuit also cites several studies from other countries that suggest children and schools do not play a large role in transmitting the coronavirus.

Research about children and schools amid the coronavirus outbreak is mixed; other studies have suggested that children do play a significant role in virus transmission.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-22/lawsuit-seeks-halt-newsom-california-school-closure-order

‘When you are setting a fire, you mess with the message’: a dispatch from a long night in Portland

A slender white man, helmeted and in black clothing, lit a torch and tried to ignite splintered shards of protective plywood tacked onto the front of the U.S. District Courthouse building.

“There is no such thing as a peaceful protest,” chanted one man standing nearby.

“No justice, no peace,” cried another.

From out of the crowd, a Black man stepped forward with a contrarian voice.

“When you are setting a fire, you mess with the (expletive) message,” he yelled. “How are you defending us when you are setting a (expletive) fire?”

His remarks, made around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, touched off a stormy conversation in front of this federal building, that in July has become a target of unruly protests challenging federal policing policies under President Donald Trump, whose portrait was stamped on toilet paper wrapped around a pillar.

The protester’s question also resonates more broadly.

Plenty of Americans are angry over Trump’s policies that have included deploying federal Customs and Border Protection agents on tasks of domestic law enforcement, but many also are unsettled by the images of protesters emerging from the angry streets of downtown Portland.

In Oregon’s largest city, other questions are asked with increasing urgency as tension escalates, including: How will this all end?

The protests began more than 50 days ago in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police but now involves a faceoff with the Trump administration, whose Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, has declared federal law enforcement will continue to be on the streets in Portland to protect the courthouse.

On Tuesday evening and into the early morning hours of Wednesday, a series of intense skirmishes broke out between federal law enforcement and protesters. Some on the front lines of the protests were repeatedly trying to tear, pound away and ignite the plywood attached to the courthouse front.

… For both the protesters and the Trump administration, Portland is providing a treasure trove of images that both seek to use to expand support for their actions.

Trump tries to portray all protesters as anarchists, and flames make great video for campaign aids.

In the meantime, nightly video highlights from the protests are posted on social media, including by those – such as the Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front (YLF) – that do embrace anarchism.

A retweet from YLF points to a history of riots as helping, along with nonviolent protests, to spur political change in the United States. They make no apologies for their tactics, and, in tweets, urge critics to shut up.

But the protester who challenged the 1:30 a.m. Wednesday arson fire would not yield his opposition. He got into a lengthy discussion with another man who tried to calm him down. He stayed firm.

Eventually, the circle around the two men dispersed.

But no one, at least on that morning, picked up a torch to resume the attempt to set the courthouse plywood on fire.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/when-you-are-setting-a-fire-you-mess-with-the-message-a-dispatch-from-a-long-night-in-portland/

Sierra Club director cancels founder John Muir — should parks, schools, be renamed?

The Sierra Club has called founder John Muir America’s most influential naturalist. His work inspired the preservation of such wonders as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.

But in a stunning turn this week, the 128-year-old club’s current executive director, Michael Brune, said “it’s time to take down some of our own monuments” and called out Muir for having made “derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes.”

Such remarks, Brune wrote, and Muir’s association with white supremacists who were early members and leaders of what would become the country’s largest environmental organization, “continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.”

The club’s reassessment of its founder — coming at a time when the country is reevaluating how it honors a host of historical figures with racist pasts, from Confederate generals to former presidents — swiftly called into question the widespread honors to the man known as the father of our national parks.

A linked article notes Muir (1838-1914) “has at least one high school, 21 elementary schools, six middle schools and one college named after him, as well as a glacier, a mountain, a woods, a cabin, an inlet, a highway, a library, a motel, a medical center, a tea room and a minor planet.”

In the Bay Area, they include Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, the John Muir National Historic Site near Martinez and John Muir Health system in Walnut Creek. There are John Muir elementary schools in San Francisco, Berkeley, Martinez and San Jose, where a middle school also is named after him, as is one in San Leandro.

Already, it’s sparked a torrid debate on over renaming. John Muir Health said Wednesday its name originated as part of an elementary school naming contest when the Walnut Creek Medical Center was being built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and that its board will “examine the history and legacy of the John Muir name” and consider “recommendations on this complex topic.”

“The views of John Muir in no way reflect the mission and values of John Muir Health,” the company said in a statement. “We stand for equity, diversity, inclusion, dignity and mutual respect.”

Joshua Frank, an editor at political magazine and website CounterPunch, tweeted “we must rename the John Muir Wilderness,” the 100 miles in the Inyo National Forest from Mammoth Lakes to Mount Whitney.

But others rejected the idea as “cancel culture” run amok, arguing Muir’s contributions outweigh his racial views that were hardly unusual in his day, and which the Sierra Club’s Brune noted “evolved later in his life.”

“Canceling Muir would be a travesty to everything the environmental movement stands for,” tweeted Mark Topaz, a graphic designer and businessman.

According to an Atlas Obscura article Brune linked to his post, Muir described Cherokee homes he encountered as “wigwams of savages,” and indigenous people in California as “superstitious,” “lazy” and “dirty.” He made similar remarks about Blacks during a trip through the South in the late 1860s, referring to them as “Sambos” who didn’t work hard.

The Atlas Obscura article notes however that those “hateful words” were “not the sum total of Muir’s perspective,” adding that in his trip through the South, he “bemoans the bigoted mindset he encounters amongst whites.”

Chantal DeGuzman of Concord, who visited the Muir National Historic Site with her daughter Amanda DeGuzman and her granddaughter Jade Guzman, 4, was still trying to process it all Wednesday.

“We heard it on the news this morning, but I didn’t know this about John Muir,” DeGuzman said. “So I’m learning.”

Loretta J. Ross, associate professor of women and gender at Smith College, likened it to the recent decision of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removing the name of founder Margaret Sanger over her “harmful connections to the eugenics movement.”

“I believe every generation has the human right to make the decisions in the struggle for freedom that are right for them, so I don’t disagree with removing Muir’s statue no more than I disagree with removing Sanger’s name from that Planned Parenthood building in New York City,” Ross said. “These are decisions that are made by the people on the front lines of activism who I refuse to second guess.”

But she added, “I also don’t believe in repudiating people who had large impacts on the struggle for freedom and justice just because they were imperfect people. Judging people in the distant past by modern standards lifts them out of the context of their times and sometimes lacks nuance and reinforces the ‘cancel culture,’ which I oppose.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/22/sierra-club-director-cancels-founder-john-muir-should-parks-schools-be-renamed/

Oregon requires kids 5+ to wear COVID-19 masks, bars and restaurants to close by 10 p.m.

Starting Friday, children five and older will be required to wear masks in indoor public places and in outdoor spaces where physical distancing can't be maintained, Gov. Kate Brown announced Wednesday.

Brown is also ordering bars and restaurants to close earlier — 10 p.m. instead of midnight.

And she is reducing the number of people who can be in indoor venues like large restaurants, houses of worship, gyms, movie theaters and community centers to 100, down from the previous cap of 250.

Outdoor venues can still host up to 250 people.

When it comes to private parties, indoor social gatherings are still limited to 10 people. And if you go to the gym, you'll have to wear a mask even while exercising.

The new requirements come as the number of coronavirus cases in the state continues to rise. Brown and the state epidemiologist, Dr. Dean Sidelinger, briefed reporters Wednesday morning.

There are now about 15,000 presumed and confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Oregon. On Tuesday, the state reported seven deaths, which matched the all-time high during the pandemic, said Sidelinger.

Hospitals have enough intensive care beds and ventilators right now, but "we can't ignore the looming danger," Sidelinger said.

"If left unchecked, Oregon is on a trajectory to overwhelm our health care system with coronavirus in the future," Sidelinger said.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Brown has repeatedly described the slow process of "reopening" public life as venturing out onto the ice. She said Wednesday that the spread of cases show that the ice has started to crack.

"The COVID-19 virus is continuing to spread too quickly across Oregon," Brown said. "So it's time for further actions to stop the spread of this disease."

As July comes to a close, it's still not apparent exactly what the coming school year will look like for Oregon kids.

Brown said that state health and education officials are drafting clear metrics for school reopening to help local school districts decide whether to reopen in the fall.

"School in the fall will not look like a normal year," Brown said. "Many, if not most, Oregon students are in districts that will focus on online distance learning or have a hybrid model of some online education and limited in-person classroom time."

However, Brown also announced that the state will allow outdoor visits at long-term care facilities, like nursing homes, where there are no COVID-19 cases.

https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/22/covid-oregon-mask-order-kids-bars-restaurants-kate-brown-coronavirus/5488532002/#

California State University sets ethnic studies requirement

Trustees of California State University, the nation’s largest four-year public university system, voted on Wednesday to make ethnic and social justice studies a graduation requirement.

It would take effect in three years and would be the first change to the school’s general education curriculum in over 40 years, coming amid a national reckoning over racism and police brutality.

Meanwhile, the state Legislature is on the verge of passing a bill to require ethnic studies, a more narrowly focused proposal that wouldn’t count social justice classes. If signed by the governor, it would overrule the school’s action, a scenario denounced by school leaders as an intrusion into academia.

The Assembly has to review minor amendments before sending the bill Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has final say. Some trustees said if the Legislature’s proposal is also approved, it might result in students being required to take two 3-credit courses in course topics.

The plan approved by California State University’s trustees allows students to choose from a wider array of ethnic studies topics to fulfill the course requirement than the Legislature’s bill. It allows students to take courses on social justice that explore issues such as the criminal justice system and public health disparities.

“It’s grounded in ethnic studies, but it is broader, more inclusive, gives students choice,” said California State University Chancellor Timothy White before voting in favor on Wednesday.

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a San Diego Democrat and former professor, authored the Legislature’s bill. While trustees and legislators agree on the need for more ethnic studies, Weber and supporters of her proposal say the mandate adopted by the university system is weaker because it allows social justice classes.

“This is not a requirement for ethnic studies,” said trustee Silas Abrego ahead of Wednesday’s vote. He was one of the few members to vote against the university’s plan, saying the ethnic studies faculty was not consulted on the school’s proposal. He favors Weber’s bill.

Her bill would take effect sooner, in the 2021-2022 academic year, and require students to take one course focusing on Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans or Latina and Latino Americans.

The university system’s proposal would take effect in the 2023-2023 academic year and offers a greater selection of topics than the Legislature’s bill, which critics said does not include some courses such as Jewish studies. The university’s plan would cost $3 million to $4 million, while the bill is estimated to need $16 million for implementation.

Tony Thurmond, who as State Superintendent of Public Instruction sits on the board, voted against the university’s proposal. He spoke in favor of the bill’s tailored approach to four ethnic groups.

As chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, Weber wrote earlier this week her legislation was prompted because the university was too slow on setting a requirement after announcing ethnic studies plans almost five years ago.

She noted the California Faculty Association supports her bill. The association, which represents 29,000 faculty members at California State University, has said the aim should be teaching students about the experiences of minorities and people of color in the U.S.

rustee Lateefah Simon called the school’s proposal “exhaustive” and “thoughtful,” but voted against it, saying its “social justice umbrella” approach might allow students to “forgo ethnic studies curricula.”

https://www.times-standard.com/2020/07/22/california-state-university-sets-ethnic-studies-requirement/