SoylentNews

You will all now be aware that there are changes afoot to the management and structure of SoylentNews. Many of you are pleased to see that some action is being taken, and in many ways I also support that concept. But it is obvious to me that many of you don't understand the possible implications of what is currently happening. I would like to discuss this further. First, it is necessary to have some background.

The Board

The Board of SoylentNews was created very early on in the site's life and originally comprised of 3 people. NCommander, Matt Angel, and mrcoolbp (aka Ben Prentice). Ben stepped down many years ago from his post as Board Secretary, which was a role that covered many different things. So for at least 6 years, the Board has comprised of only 2 people. Matt Angel does not, as far as I know, have a nickname on this site. He is the Board Treasurer; a job he has done quietly and efficiently in the background. NCommander you should all know well by now.

You may think that the Board is there to look after your interests, but nowhere in the founding documents or bye-laws does it say any such thing. One of its primary duties is to look after the interests of the shareholders. They do not have to consult the community, or inform them of any decisions that they make, nor are they accountable to any other external authority or individual. They do not have to provide you with written records. They should provide direction to the site but not be involved in any aspect of how that is achieved or managed. There are 2 shareholders - NCommander and Matt Angel. You can read into that anything you wish. I am not telling you what to think, I am simply telling you something that many of us only learned relatively recently.

The Board can, however, wind up the site without any consultation or prior warning. That is entirely within their powers and legal rights.

The Hardware

Since the site began it has been hosted on Linode (now part of Akamai) hardware. It is not the cheapest around but you get what you pay for. The hardware has been managed by the sysops team, the names of whom you will also know and you have seen them commenting on the site recently. There were multiple people who had need of access to the hardware starting at the top with NCommander. Ideally, the sysops team would all have individual specialities and areas of responsibility, but that is simply not possible for a small team such as we have had for several years. Therefore they all contribute where they can to address whatever issues they must attend to.

There are some advantages to this arrangement. There are checks and balances that what is being implemented is sensible and will not adversely affect other areas of the system. If it does, they can each be aware of the problem areas and they can be addressed logically and systematically to bring the work to a conclusion. This requires communication, trust and access to the hardware.

The Data

The data I am referring to is the database which, in addition to your individual personal and account data, contains every story, journal, moderation, comment etc. The most valuable asset that this site has is its community. Without it there is simply no site. And the most important asset from the community's point of view is the data that has been accumulated. It is so valuable that we have alway pledged to protect it to the fullest extent possible. We have successfully done this for over 9 years.

The Third Person

Kolie approached, or was approached by, the Board to be contracted to provide new hardware to host a containerised site. He is for the moment a contractor. He has been generous in providing the hardware that has been gathered so far for free. Nobody other than the Board or kolie himself knows what exactly is in that contract. They are not obliged to reveal it to us, and this is perfectly normal and legal. I am not suggesting that anything otherwise.

Kolie is the CTO of several companies, the one that he has discussed most of all is Ennwise (ennwise.com) but there is also an Ennwise consulting company too, and probably others. The hardware that he is currently using is located in Ennwise company facilities (Freemont, CA, FMT2 facility. Linux OS on a iSCSI array.) but it is being moved later on this month. I do not know where to. He describes the company as "Ennwise is more accurately a consulting, custom software, and MSP/ISP" and "[...] ennwise mostly does vCIO work for businesses in the 1-10B range". He describes himself as "I'm in vc, tech, construction verticals so it's basically a product of lessons learned in focusing on your product and not managing servers." He therefore has an abundance of relevant experience and seems to have made a successful career out of it.

Some Missing Pieces

This site has always been entirely open in its dealings with the community. Many of us know each other at an almost personal level. We do not usually hide what we have done or are planning to do - in fact we often consult with the community beforehand to get a majority approval. There are some things that must be kept private - handling you personal data is one of them. I make no apologies for having withheld personal data belonging to one person from others who do not need to know it. Some time back I was given a copy of our policy document from 2014 after somebody managed to recover it before it was lost for ever. It was published in the site Wiki and was there for everyone to read. I am proud to say that I do not know of any contraventions to the policy decisions stated in it. The privacy passage in particular has never be contravened.

As a contractor kolie is perfectly entitled to keep the details of his contract private. He does no have to share it with anyone. But to be a valid contract I believe that there must be a payment of some kind - either monetary or in kind. Otherwise it is not a contract but an obligation or promise. If it is monetary then it might have been paid for by your subscriptions. Although that places no obligation on the Board I would have hoped that, being the community that we are, somebody would have at least mentioned it. They do not have to seek your approval for a payment but it would seem to be a reasonable action to be made aware of it. This is purely a personal view. If it is not monetary, then what is it? What reward will kolie receive for the expensive hardware that is being procured to run the site? I have acknowledged that so far it appears to be costing us nothing but that does not guarantee it will always be that way in the future. I will return to this point later.

kolie has told us that there are 'milestones' built within the contract that trigger the next stage of activity, and presumably a partial payment. Again this is simply a guess because I am not party to exactly what the contract says. None of us are.

The Potential Problem

At the moment the entire future of this site rests in the hands of the Board, and in particular NCommander. I understand exactly where he is coming from in wanting to see his work move forward into the future. But during the last month or so that future has been uncertain with statements from 'I am closing the site down' to 'the site will continue and I am planning for the next 5 to 10 years'. And with each change we do not have to be consulted, your views do not matter, and it is causing a lot of damage to our community. I have been criticised for even raising some issues that I think have been obvious from the start but are unappreciated or simply not understood by many. I ask blunt questions and time is very short I expect to receive more criticism for this journal entry. The place were we are supposed to be able to raise topics that interest us personally.

I have no crystal ball. I cannot say what will happen in the future. I know that the first 'milestone' occurs towards the end of this month. That is only a few weeks away. And most people are sat back just waiting for it to happen. Let me tell you what could happen:

1. At the end of the month the new hardware is stood up and the site switches over to it. We don't know where that hardware will be, how secure an environment it will be in, what is the expected up-time, and how much it will cost to run it.

2. The 'milestone' reward might be that kolie will receive a seat on the Board for it. He has said that he gets a seat at some point but it is not clear when that might be. He is immediately elevated from contractor to Board Management. You do not have to approve that action or even be told about it taking place.

3. One person, now a Board member, has total control over the hardware. But unlike in the past where the access has been shared between the sysops team, which resulted in checks and balances, there is no indication that such access will be granted. We have been told by NCommander that there will be NO shell access to the new hardware. If the cost of access to the hardware for the community increases - perhaps a form of compulsory subscription fee - then there is little more you can do except to pay up or leave.

4. Your data, which we have protected for over 9 years, has also moved completely under the same person's control. We cannot copy it, you cannot change it, you have simply lost the right to control your data. In the EU this is already illegal, and it doesn't matter where the data is held. If it contains the data of EU people there are already existing laws in place. Once that data is gone, this site can never be recreated.

I repeat, I haven't got a crystal ball and cannot say what will happen. But I can say that once it has happened you have already lost everything. How that data is used will be for the Board to decide, not you. If they want to monetize it they can do so providing that they do not break US law in doing so. If they want the site to be covered in advertising they may do so. If they want to invite other 'investors' to join the Board they can do so. Unless community members are on the board then it is all over.

I have no reason to doubt koli's sincerity today, but I also never imagined that NCommander would just shut the site down as he intended to do. If koli's interests are rather more monetary than community spirited, then he may view things differently in the years ahead. Today he is working hard to create a site, and giving generously of his time and money, but it might not be the site you imagined it would be.

This is what some of you are enthusiastically cheering for. This is what I am trying to prevent. If it looks like it will happen then I cannot guarantee the safety of your data or influence what the site will become. This might be the most important time ever for you to say what you want to happen - even if they are not listening.

I don't care whether you think this journal is the right thing to do or not, or whether you think it is sour grapes or just stirring the pot - as long as you are no longer running blindly into the unknown then it will have served its purpose.

This is my community too.

NCommander is publishing a Meta story today: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=22/11/20/0342250 It will be published on the front page with all of the restrictions that apply to such stories and discussions.

In it NCommander explains how he sees the future of the site developing with regards to software, hardware and administration. Some of those views are different now from the views that many of us held in 2014. The requirement for some of our servers is no longer justified, and there are better technologies available for achieving what we are trying to do thus also reducing our running costs. The administration of the site is placing an increasing burden on the relatively few administrators that remain in the support team. Society has also changed. Some discussion has been replaced by intimidation and threats. It is much more polarised than it was in 2014. In many ways this is the same as for numerous other web sites. However, the abuse and toxic atmosphere created by a small number of Anonymous Cowards is unacceptable and must be reversed if the site is to survive. The responsibility for some of the problems that we are experiencing, and the resulting actions that we have had to take, is placed entirely at their feet.

A few months ago the majority of the community opted - albeit very reluctantly - to remove AC posts from the front pages of the site. This action has successfully removed the vast majority of the abuse from our discussions. We are seeing a slow increase in the number of comments week-on-week and the signal-to-noise ratio is now much higher. It is only right that we also reconsider the implications of that change.

This journal entry is to enable anyone who wishes to remain anonymous to express their views. I promise that I will read it and will ensure that genuine views are considered when the community decides which path it wishes to follow. I cannot make any assurances that other members of the site's administration will read it - although I expect that at least some will. If you have an account then I strongly encourage you to leave your views under NCommander's Meta story and not here.

I further my promise that I will try to represent your views as honestly and fairly as I can.

If you abuse this journal then you are simply giving more support to the alternative options that might be considered than you are to the status quo. I encourage you to expresses sensible, logical and considered views but should you decide that abuse is what you prefer then this journal entry can simply be removed. You are being given an opportunity - do not throw it away.

About 18 months after he lost the 2020 election, Election Conspiracist in Chief Donald Trump sued Hillary Clinton and dozens of other Democrats over the election he had won nearly six years earlier.

That lawsuit went nowhere. But going nowhere meant tying up a lot of the court’s time, what with Trump’s lawyers dumping 193-page complaints onto the docket and targeting more than 30 defendants with a bizarre set of allegations claiming the election, that Trump won, had been rigged. That such an alleged rigging would result in Trump’s victory suggests either the defendants secretly wanted Trump to win or, more logically, that the plaintiff was full of shit.

The district court ruled against Trump roughly six months after the lawsuit was filed, finding that it was not only not the RICO (yes, that was in there too), but it wasn’t anything else either, no matter how many words Trump’s lawyers had tossed together in exceedingly long legal filings.

The lawyers representing Trump in this ridiculous waste of publicly funded time are now being hit with sanctions by the court that had the misfortune of handling this lawsuit. They will join a long list of other lawyers currently or formerly employed by the former president who have been fined or sued for engaging in baseless lawsuits over election results.

The sanction order [PDF] helpfully lists the offending legal professionals right up front, allowing readers to avoid accidentally seeking representation from this group of lawyers who decided to shed their respectability to engage in extremely performative litigation.

Defendant Charles Dolan has moved for sanctions pursuant to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Upon review of the motion (DE 268), Plaintiff’s response (DE 270) and Defendant’s reply (DE 276), and for the reasons explained below, the motion is granted. Accordingly, sanctions shall be awarded jointly and severally against Alina Habba, Michael T. Madaio, Habba Madaio & Associates, Peter Ticktin, Jamie Alan Sasson, and The Ticktin Law Group.

That’s who is getting sanctioned. Here’s why: mainly it’s all the lying.

The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth. The following examples are indicative.

When suing someone it helps to know where they live, as this can have subject matter or personal jurisdiction significance. In this case for instance, Mr. Dolan argued that he engaged in no activities in Florida that made him susceptible to suit here. He filed an affidavit stating under oath that he lived in Virginia. His lawyers advised Mr. Trump’s lawyers of that. Moreover, the summons in this case indicated an Arlington, Virginia address and the return of service indicated he was served there. Yet the Amended Complaint alleged that Mr. Dolan was a resident of New York. The Trump lawyers’ answer:

[I]t must be noted that Charles Dolan is an incredibly common name, and Plaintiff’s counsel’s traditional search methods identified countless individuals with said name across the country, many of whom reside in New York.

While alone not of great significance, this response reflects the cavalier attitude towards facts demonstrated throughout the case.

Just one of many problems with the allegations. Those are things in court cases that are supposed to be factual. These weren’t. Trump’s legal reps couldn’t seem to decide whether Dolan was the head of the Democratic National Committee, a senior Clinton Campaign official, or just someone who happened to be in the racketeering business of keeping Trump out of office. The lawsuit cherry-picked information from a government indictment in an attempt to portray Dolan’s statements to investigators as deliberate lies deployed to further a conspiracy against Trump. None of this was true and pretty much everything alleged was either provably false or entirely inaccurate.

The court sums it up this way:

In short, I find that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were warned about the lack of foundation for their factual contentions, turned a blind eye towards information in their possession, and misrepresented the Danchenko Indictment they claim as their primary support. The lawyers failed to conduct a pre-filing inquiry into the allegations against Mr. Dolan and have continued to advance Plaintiff’s false claims based upon nothing but conjecture, speculation, and guesswork. This is precisely the conduct Rule 11 is intended to deter.

[It continues....]

upstart writes:

The Gig Law Causing Chaos in California Strip Clubs:

Teddy earned what she considers good money as a self-employed dancer working in California's strip clubs. Yes, there were slow nights when wages slumped, says Teddy, who asks to use a pseudonym because not everyone in her life knows she is a sex worker. But the slow nights balanced out with evenings when the club was crammed full of customers. She says on average she never took home less than California's minimum wage (currently $15 per hour).

Teddy now refers to this period as the "era before AB 5"—a California state law officially called Assembly Bill 5, which aimed to reclassify self-employed workers as employees. Under this law, more workers are entitled to benefits such as overtime and minimum wage. The law's supporters, such as US Senator Elizabeth Warren, described the law as an answer to exploitation in the gig economy. But a controversial 2020 public vote meant the rules have not yet been applied to companies such as Uber and Lyft. Instead AB 5 reshaped a raft of other industries, from yoga studios to theater productions and trucking.

The debate about AB 5's impact on industries beyond the gig economy is in the spotlight again, as the Biden administration explores a new federal law to protect workers from misclassification. Although the US House of Representatives passed a federal version of AB 5—called the "Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act"—back in March 2021, it has since stalled in the Senate. Last week, the Department of Labor proposed a new law designed to turn more self-employed Americans into employees entitled to the minimum wage.

"The Department of Labor's proposal does not go nearly as far as AB 5," says Keith Cunningham-Parmeter, a law professor at Willamette University in Oregon who studies the impact of gig work regulation on offline workers. "AB 5 created a presumption that most workers hired by firms were employees," he says, while the Department of Labor's new rule effectively creates a test to be used in court to understand if a  worker should be considered an employee by considering a series of factors, including how much control they have over their earnings and the way they do their jobs.

Yet the unintended impact that AB 5 is having on strip clubs serves as a warning to policymakers who focus too much on misclassification in the gig economy. Since AB 5, that trade has experienced some of the most dramatic changes in the state. Dancers are divided about whether they want to become employees. But there is a growing consensus that strip clubs' interpretation of the law has resulted in dancers' pay being slashed and their jobs becoming more precarious. Although there are similarities between dancers and gig workers, dancers also believe there are important differences that mean they deserve tailored legislation. They say they do not want to be regulated like gig workers.

"AB 5 has been implemented in an absolutely horrific way throughout clubs in California, in ways that pushed a lot of people out of the industry and made it a way less lucrative and way less viable job than it was before," says Teddy, who is now a member of the activist group Strippers United. "AB 5 was meant to protect gig workers and it just happened to catch dancers in a technicality."

[...] Workers and researchers warn the gig economy is warping the debate about employee status, meaning that the problems faced by independent contractors in different industries are being lumped together. "Everyone talks about these bills as gig worker bills. But when you look at them, they apply to workers across industries, digital and analog," says Cunningham-Parmeter. "Even today, in 2022, the vast majority of low wage workers are not gig workers."

Other industries are divided about whether AB 5 had a positive impact on self-employed workers. Writers and typists are among those who have campaigned to repeal the law, claiming it hurts their ability to find work. "Due to California law AB 5, SpeakWrite cannot accept applications from California residents," says one job advert posted by transcription service SpeakWrite. Truckers have also complained about AB 5's changes. In July 2022, a convoy of truckers blockaded the port Port of Oakland to protest AB 5, arguing their new status as employees meant they have less flexibility in when and how they work.

Before AB 5, California employment officials estimated that companies misclassified up to 500,000 workers as independent contractors, says Cunningham-Parmeter. He believes the introduction of minimum wage and overtime protection was a positive development for the vast majority, even if  some companies abuse the spirit of the new law.

"Studies indicate that companies can save up to 30 percent of payroll and labor costs by misclassifying their workers as independent contractors," he says. "Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when some businesses, like strip clubs, were forced to finally treat their workers as employees, many such firms passed those new costs on to workers in the form of reduced wages or hours."

In a first, Ukrainian and Russian human rights officials met Monday during a prisoner exchange between the two sides.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, met with Tatyana Moskalkova, Russian Human Rights Commissioner, during the swap of more than 200 prisoners of war.

Moskalkova posted video of the meeting on Telegram. It is unclear where exactly the exchange took place.

In the video, Lubinets and Moskalkova approach each other on a deserted highway, shake hands, and have a brief exchange.

Today is the day that our civilian sailors will be coming home, Moskalkova told Lubinets. It's also important that we ensure that safe corridors exist for our work with the evacuated. We have a Iot of questions, but the most important is returning all their documents to them. So that's what I am coming to you today for, and I'm here to help in the case that an evacuee or refugee needs a specific document or confirmation of their identity.

It's an important humanitarian aspect in terms of social rights, she said.

Lubinets replied that we are exchanging lists, and I request that you will work through it and be in touch on what's possible.

Most importantly, we have activated the process of exchanging civilians of our countries. I'm sure that you want this as much as we do.

Moskalkova said that certainly everyone is interested in this path forward.

In a summation of the meeting posted on Telegram, Moskalkova said that she met for the first time with Commissioner for Human Rights of Ukraine Dmitry Valeryevich Lubinets. We had a constructive dialogue and agreed to continue working to ensure the proper treatment of prisoners, keep working for future exchanges, to protect the rights of civilians, and learn the fate of missing persons.

Lubinets,on his Telegram account, said that the need for negotiations is the humanitarian sphere.

In particular, we talked about the need to intensify the repatriation of prisoners of war and the release of civilian hostages, he said.

He said that the two discussed, among other things, the need to develop ways to visit prisoners of war, inspect places of their detention, both on the territory controlled by the Russian Federation and in Ukraine and thorough searches for missing persons.

They also discussed Ukraine's desire to visit prisoners of war held in Olenivka, which is in an occupied portion of the Donetsk region.

At the end of the meeting, it was agreed to send official letters for the implementation of the discussed tasks involving the protection of human rights, Lubinets said.

upstart writes:

Federal gig worker proposal tanks Uber, Lyft and DoorDash stocks:

The stock prices of Uber, Lyft and DoorDash slid on Tuesday after the Department of Labor announced proposed changes to how workers should be classified. The prospective guidance is intended to "combat employee misclassification," the federal agency said in a statement.

Soon after, Uber's share price dropped by more than 10% to $24.61, while Lyft's tanked more than 12% to $11.22 and DoorDash's fell more than 5% to $44.98 at the time of writing.

The rule could make it easier for contractors to gain full employment status if they are "economically dependent" on a company. However, the scope of the proposal itself would be limited to areas such as minimum wage enforcement.

Uber, Lyft and DoorDash depend extensively upon gig workers, who haul people and meals around on their behalf but do not receive many hard-won benefits of employment — such as employer contributions toward their Social Security and Medicare taxes. Despite pressure from labor organizers and some lawmakers, some tech firms have fought to continue classifying their workers as independent contractors, arguing the status benefits their businesses, other local businesses and workers themselves.

Ride-hail and meal-delivery companies say that changing how gig workers are classified would threaten their businesses, yet these firms — Uber, Lyft and DoorDash — have also posted hefty net losses under the status quo.

Attempts to alter gig worker classification in the U.S. include a recently rejected ballot measure in Massachusetts, which could have explicitly defined such workers as independent contractors.

In California, an effort to secure benefits for gig workers — AB-5 — passed in 2019. A year later, app-based gig workers in California were excluded from the law via Proposition 22, which itself was deemed unconstitutional in the state in 2021. However, app-based gig companies have appealed that ruling and continue to operate in California under the guidance of Prop 22. (Every day is a winding road.)

[...] The Labor Department's proposal is subject to a public comment period, which runs from from October 13 to November 28.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Goes Completely Rogue, Blocks Inspector General's Access To Files, Facilities:

Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Goes Completely Rogue, Blocks Inspector General's Access To Files, Facilities

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department has been problematic pretty much ever since its inception. Its prior iteration — headed up by Sheriff Lee Baca — was an abhorrent mess. The LASD was (and still is!) home to gangs formed by deputies — cliques that encouraged members to violate rights and abuse those incarcerated in the county jail. Baca's department became infamous for its internal corruption, something manifested by its obstruction of federal investigations and rogue jailhouse informant program.

Enter Sheriff Alex Villanueva. Elected after promising to clean up the troubled department, Villanueva soon showed he was more interested in shielding his officers from public scrutiny and ignoring the internal rot that had turned the agency into a menace to Los Angeles society.

The new sheriff created a handpicked "Public Integrity Unit," an entity whose name seemed to indicate Villanueva would be cleaning up the department. Shortly thereafter it became apparent the unit was far more interested in targeting the department's critics in the Los Angeles government.

Villanueva only amped things from there. He threatened county leaders with defamation suits for continuing to (accurately) portraying the department as infested with cliques of rogue deputies. He also sent his officers out to raid the homes of two prominent critics involved in civilian oversight of the department under the pretense the LASD was investigating fraudulent acquisition of county contracts.

With members of the county's civilian oversight sufficiently cowed by legal threats, non-compliance, and seizure of their electronic devices, the sheriff has moved on to shutting down the internal remnants of LASD accountability, as Alene Tchekmedyian reports for the Los Angeles Times.

This astounding display of power follows Villanueva's (unfounded) assertions that IG Huntsman is a "Holocaust denier" and his still-unproven claim that the Inspector General has committed crimes of his own, such as "stealing" confidential files on LASD officials from the department. The Inspector General has responded his access was limited to his office's investigations and was lawfully obtained.

This suggests the LASD is doing nothing more than concocting criminal charges to bypass internal and external oversight — an impression that isn't helped by the LASD's failure to move forward with charges against the Inspector General, despite making these claims for more than three years.

Original Submission

quietus writes:

We've talked a bit, in the past, about the possibility of a nuclear bomb signal/demonstration by Russia, in its conflict with Ukraine and the West. The thought there has always been about a demonstration explosion, probably with a low-yield weapon, on or off the battlefield, or a nuclear power plant 'incident'.

Now, Global Times, a mouthpiece for the more right-wing within China's CCP, has described an alternative scenario. That scenario is provocatively titled Note to the US - a nuclear war can be won by rivals

The scenario looks simple: detonating one or multiple nuclear bombs in the stratosphere, creating an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), that would cause nationwide electrical grid anomalies, cascading systems failures, and ultimately unravel the fabric of American society. (Or, more likely, European society -- but then the Global Times is rather obsessed with the US, and counts the EU among future third-world nations anyway.)

Even non-state and rogue state actors could defeat the US with only a small number of EMP weapons, is noted, and one of the advantages of such an attack is that attribution is rather hard to do:

At least 15 nations can access low earth orbit, and many have access to geosynchronous orbit. The real nature of every object launched cannot be known with certainty. Nuclear weapons can also be concealed in and called down from the clutter of the super-synchronous graveyard orbit for surprise use.

And thus the MAD aspect is removed from nuclear weapons, argues Global Times: it's hard to bomb the real culprit back to the Stone Age, if you don't know who to blame in the first place. To end with some good news: luckily,

... the electrical infrastructure designs of Russia and others have spared no expense in applying Cold War civil defense lessons. Command economies, long range planning, hardened grids, and stability of centralized leadership further aid their societies in surviving any potential EMP attack. Given their histories and traditions, those cultures are probably more adept at continued functionality in the absence of amenities and infrastructure than the US.

Pfewww.

Original Submission

Republicans suffered from a significantly higher COVID-19 excess death rate during the pandemic than Democrats, according to a new study.

For much of the early phase of the pandemic, voters from the two parties endured a somewhat comparable excess death rate, with Republicans sustaining about 22% higher excess deaths. However, when the pandemic shifted into the vaccine phase, a much more drastic dichotomy between the two parties emerged, with Republicans sustaining 76% more excess deaths than Democrats, the study found.

"Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats," the study said. "The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available."

The excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats jumped from 1.6 percentage points to 10.4 percentage points after vaccines became available, according to the study.

"This sharp contrast in the excess death rate gap before and after vaccines were available suggests that vaccine take-up likely played an important role," the NBER study explained. "Data on vaccine take-up by party is limited and unavailable in our dataset, but there is evidence of differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake based on political party affiliation."

The NBER study noted it was able to obtain voting data from Florida and Ohio but that it was not able to receive information on a person’s vaccination status.

Other studies and polling found that Democrats were more likely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine or undergo more stringent pandemic prevention measures than Democrats. For example, a recent Morning Consult poll found that only 64% of Republicans were vaccinated or planned to get vaccinated compared to 87% of Democrats.

In Florida, 69.3% of residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 59.6% of Ohioans are fully vaccinated against the virus, according to Our World In Data. The national average is 68.4% fully vaccinated for COVID-19.

upstart writes:

Justice Department demands Trump return more classified documents:

Trump still has classified documents in his possession and must return them, the Justice Department demands.

In numerous court filings, prosecutors indicated they had concerns that classified records were possibly still missing. For instance, the Justice Department described the need to determine if other classified records still hadn't been collected, and pointed to the empty envelopes with classified banners that were seized in the August Mar-a-Lago search. ...

Late last week, the Biden administration was tight-lipped on whether Trump had turned over all of the records.

"With respect to the second issue concerning whether former President Trump has surrendered all presidential records, we respectfully refer you to the Department of Justice in light of its ongoing investigation," the National Archives told the House Oversight Committee, which had raised the question.