OHIO POLITICS | Non-violent, heavily armed demonstration forms at Statehouse

 By Jake Zuckerman

Armed men stand outside the Ohio Capitol Jan. 17.

A cohort of armed men stood at the Statehouse steps calling for unity yesterday.

A conspiracy theorist with a megaphone yelled about dangerous vaccines, 9/11 and the 2020 election.

A Black Lives Matter activist simply waved a flag in celebration of the looming inauguration of a new president.

The entire Sunday crowd of roughly 100 stood, braving a sometimes-heavy snowfall, outside a Statehouse fortified with Humvees, National Guardsmen, and police barriers.

Exactly who came out for what reason is unclear. Despite stark warnings from Gov. Mike DeWine and a coterie of state and local officials, there was no violence on display Sunday. There were, however, dozens of armed, masked civilians in combat fatigues with assault rifles. A crowd forcefully shouted down an interview between a reporter and a man in a “Make America Great Again” hat.

The gathering formed in the context of two related events; Biden’s inauguration scheduled for Jan. 20, and a violent mob raid at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6 as part of a last-ditch effort to force Congress to overturn the results of the presidential election. The raid came after months of President Donald Trump and his allies baselessly claiming the election was fraudulent.

Around 11:30 a.m., more than 15 men with assault rifles (many had holstered pistols as well) arrived identifying themselves as members of the Boogaloo Movement — an anti-government group focused on gun rights and civil liberties, some of whom anticipate an incipient civil war. More joined them later in the day.

A group of Boogalu Bois staging before the Jan. 17 demonstration. Several officers on horseback stopped by. Source: Jake Zuckerman.

Despite the weaponry and facial coverings, one man with the group who declined to provide his name said they were there for what he called a “unity rally.”
“If we look at the unarmed completely peaceful protests that have happened across America in this recent year, a majority of them get shut down by police force — brutal police force,” he said. “If you look at your armed marches, they last all day. Everybody gets to speak, and everybody gets to ensure they have a platform, and they are heard.”
Sitting in a lawn chair outside, Dan Wertz said he came out with a megaphone to counter-protest an expected pro-Donald Trump crowd that never materialized. He wound up in an amplified, public debate with another man with a megaphone.
The other man offered a torrent of baseless conspiracies: debunked claims that vaccines cause autism, that elections infrastructure companies rigged the presidential contest, that 9/11 was an inside job, and similar ideas.
Wertz said despite officials’ concerns about an armed and possibly violent protest, he didn’t want to let right-wing extremists chill his free speech rights.
“If I chose not to come out here because they’re armed, that would give them everything they want,” he said.
The conspiracy theorist then hurled a number of anti-trans insults at Wertz, prompting many of the Boogaloo Bois to stand with Wertz and distance themselves from the conspiracy theorist.
One man wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat would only identify himself as “Todd” and said he came out to stand up for Trump, repeating the lie that Trump won the election. Variations of this claim have been dismissed by dozens of courts, elections officials from both parties around the country, and the Trump administration’s ranking elections security chief (who Trump later fired).
A crowd slowly gathered around the man and a reporter, accusing the man of being a racist and the reporter of giving him a platform.
“Stop giving racists platforms! Stop giving racists platforms! Stop giving racists platforms!” they chanted, seeking to overpower a voice recorder and derail the interview.
The relative peace of the day came in contrast to warnings from DeWine, based on evidence he declined to make public, of threats of violence Sunday.
Alongside the violence in Washington D.C., several fights including a full-fledged brawl broke out Jan. 6 in Columbus between BLM activists and members of the Proud Boys — a group of all male, right-wing extremists known for engaging in fistfights with liberal groups.

A Black Lives Matter flag furls outside the Ohio Statehouse Jan. 17. Source: Jake Zuckerman.

Other factors may have worked against the violence: The day proved cold and wet; a rare Cleveland Browns playoff game kicked off at 3 p.m.; the robust security acted as a deterrence; and a sweeping prosecutorial effort related to the Jan. 6 raid may have weighed down any would-be instigators.

Maurice Carpenter of Columbus avoided the thick of the crowd and waved a Black Lives Matter flag at passing traffic.

“I’m just here ‘cause we’re celebrating, our president just won, we’ve been fighting all year,” he said. “They’re the ones who are sore losers. So hey, you lost, get over it. He had four years.”

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This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.

Cleveland, Columbus among 11 cities White House privately warns must take “aggressive” action against coronavirus

New red flags about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak come after Trump focused on upsides in televised briefing

 By Liz Essley Whyte, Reporter and Alex Ellerbeck, American University Fellow

 

This article about coronavirus aggressive action was originally published by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit newsroom based in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Deborah Birx, a leader of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, warned state and local leaders in a private phone call Wednesday that 11 major cities are seeing increases in the percentage of tests coming back positive for COVID-19 and should take “aggressive” steps to mitigate their outbreaks. 

The cities she identified were Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.

The call was yet another private warning about the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreaks given to local officials but not the public at large. It came less than a week after the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the White House compiled a detailed report showing 18 states were in the “red zone” for coronavirus cases but did not release it publicly.

Increasing test positivity — an indicator that a community does not have an outbreak under control — should be expected in areas that reopened and grew more relaxed about social distancing measures, said Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage. He said the warnings and data from the White House should be made public. 

“This is a pandemic. You cannot hide it under the carpet,” he said. “The best way to deal with a crisis or a natural disaster is to be straight with people, to earn their trust and to give the information they need to make decisions for themselves and their communities.”

Birx told hundreds of emergency managers and other state and local leaders that they should act quickly to stem the outbreaks. Among her recommendations were to trace the contacts of patients testing positive for COVID-19 in areas where test positivity is going up.

“When you first see that increase in test positivity, that is when to start the mitigation efforts,” she said in a recording obtained by Public Integrity. “I know it may look small and you may say, ‘That only went from 5 to 5-and-a-half [percent], and we’re gonna wait and see what happens.’ If you wait another three or four or even five days, you’ll start to see a dramatic increase in cases.”

Birx said the federal government was seeing encouraging declines in test positivity in places like Phoenix and San Antonio but warned that the outbreak in the Sunbelt was moving north.

“What started out very much as a southern and western epidemic is starting to move up the East Coast into Tennessee, Arkansas, up into Missouri, up across Colorado, and obviously we’re talking about increases now in Baltimore,” she said. “So this is really critical that everybody is following this and making sure they’re being aggressive about mitigation efforts.”

It’s unclear who heard the warnings and was invited to the call, which was hosted by the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and closed to the press. Baltimore and Cleveland were two of the cities Birx warned were facing rising test positivity, but a spokeswoman for the Cleveland mayor’s office, Nancy Kelsey-Carroll, said they did not participate in the call. And Baltimore health department leaders didn’t know about it, agency spokesman Adam Abadir said in an email. That city today announced a mask mandate and new restrictions on indoor dining.

The test positivity rates may not have been news to some elected officials. For example, Pennsylvania already publicly reports that data by county.

Birx’s warning came a day after President Donald Trump resumed his televised coronavirus briefings. The president offered a rosier picture of the pandemic than Birx, focusing on examples of improvements in the fight against the virus, such as better treatment with the drug remdesivir.

Her call also came the same day that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor that he and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi had insisted on greater data transparency in a meeting with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Schumer said they would push for legislation to “ensure that COVID-19 data is fully transparent and accessible without any interference from the administration.”   

And on Tuesday, former CDC Director Tom Frieden and colleagues released a list of data points they would like states to publish in real-time, standardized, to give officials and residents better information.

“It’s not just people who are holding office who need to make decisions,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, on a call with reporters. “The more that we can provide information to people to keep themselves and their families safe, the better off we’ll be.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Birx’s warnings, nor did it answer repeated questions over several days from Public Integrity on why it had not made the “red zone” report public. Birx said on the call that the weekly report had been sent to governors for four weeks. One staffer for a governor said his boss received only the section of the report related to his state, not the entire report.

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