Christina Caron

“Though I will not run for president in 2020, I will continue to fight for the future of our country through the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and its affiliates,” Holder wrote in an opinion article published Monday in The Washington Post.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, formed in 2017 under Holder, aims to contest a combination of governorships, legislative seats and more obscure state offices to chip away at Republicans’ control of the redistricting process.

Holder said in a February 2018 interview with The New York Times that the group was mainly focused on denying Republicans in state governments from achieving what is known as a trifecta — a single party controlling the governorship and an entire legislature, as Republicans do in Ohio and Florida, among other critical battlegrounds.

In The Washington Post, Holder wrote that he vowed to “do everything I can to ensure that the next Democratic president is not hobbled by a House of Representatives pulled to the extremes by members from gerrymandered districts.”

So far 14 Democrats are officially planning a run for the White House. Holder did not say which candidate he planned to endorse.

“With the depth and diversity of the current field of candidates (and those who may still join), we will have a host of good options,” he wrote, adding that some of the most important issues to address included universal health coverage, immigration reform and climate change.

He left few hints as to his ideal candidate but did emphasize that age should not be a deciding factor.

“In evaluating potential nominees, we should remember that creativity is not limited to the young, nor wisdom to those who are older,” Holder wrote. “We must measure our candidates not by their age, but by the vitality of their ideas.”

Holder also wrote that it was fundamental to ensure elections are “free from foreign interference” and accused the Republican Party of using “voter ID laws, gerrymandering and purging of the voter rolls” to undermine the right to cast ballots in fair elections, “while doing nothing to protect our electoral system from another foreign attack.”

Holder, 68, who left public service in 2015 after serving for six years under President Barack Obama as the nation’s first African-American attorney general, was considered unlikely to pursue the presidency despite having emerged as a vocal critic of President Donald Trump.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/eric-holder-president.html" id="a0fd606b-49bd-3dbf-a80b-f0ac17514fef">The New York Times</a>.

Holder Won't Run for President, Saying He'll Fight Gerrymandering Instead

Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, announced Monday that he would not run for president in 2020 and would instead work to end gerrymandering.

The delegate, Mary Ann Lisanti, who represents southern Harford County, Maryland, near Baltimore, apologized Tuesday in a statement for using “an insensitive and hurtful word” several weeks ago, but declined to say what that word was.

According to The Washington Post, Lisanti, 51, told another white lawmaker that when he had been campaigning for a candidate in Prince George’s County in the fall, he had been door-knocking in a “nigger district.” The comment was described to The Post by Delegate Jay Walker, the lawmaker who represents the district in question in Prince George’s. The county is about 63 percent African-American, according to the latest census data. Walker did not respond to requests for comment this week.

The gathering took place in late January at a cigar bar in Annapolis, the state capital. Several legislators who were there told Darryl Barnes, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland, that she had used the slur, he said in an interview Wednesday. The 57-member caucus is calling for her resignation, he added.

Lisanti’s language was “totally offensive,” Barnes said, adding that it’s “just not doable” for her to remain in office.

Legislative leaders have already stripped her of a committee title. She has promised to undergo sensitivity training. But an increasing number of officials in both parties say that is not enough.

The chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party, the Maryland Republican Party, the American Civil Liberties Union’s state chapter and Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, have all called on Lisanti, a second-term delegate whose seat is up in 2022, to resign as well.

Lisanti met with the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland on Monday to explain herself. “We did not feel that her apology was remorseful,” Barnes said, adding that at times she seemed “somewhat arrogant.”

In a statement Tuesday, Michael E. Busch, the Democratic speaker of the state’s House of Delegates, said he had told Lisanti she would no longer be the chairwoman of the Unemployment Insurance Subcommittee, adding that “leaders in the House need to be able to bring people together — not tear them apart.”

Lisanti apologized, saying she was ashamed, would not repeat the word she used and that she had agreed to step down from her leadership position and participate in sensitivity training. She is part of the Economic Matters Committee and previously served on the Harford County Council.

When The Post initially questioned Lisanti about the episode, she said she did not recall using the slur. But she also said she was “sure” she had used it in the past. “I’m sure everyone has used it,” she told The Post in an article published Monday. “I’ve used the F-word. I used the Lord’s name in vain.”

In her statement Tuesday, Lisanti said that she was "sickened that word came out of my mouth.”

“It is not in my vocabulary, and it does not represent my belief system, my life’s work or what’s in my heart,” she said. She did not respond to requests for an interview this week.

Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat, stopped short of calling for resignation, but said in a statement that Lisanti “needs to be held accountable for her words” and “must consider carefully if she can still be an effective advocate for her constituents.”

The chairwoman of the state’s Democratic Party, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, said in a statement Wednesday that although Lisanti had apologized, “further insight provided by some of her African-American constituents about the kind of political positions and actions that she has taken that are consistent with the sentiment reflected in her poor choice of words underscores that an apology and promise to undergo diversity training are not enough.”

About a third of the voters in Lisanti’s district in south Harford County are African-Americans, Cummings said, and they deserve to be represented by someone who is “respectful and appreciative of diverse people.” Census data shows Harford County is predominantly white.

“For this reason, I support calls for Lisanti to resign her position,” Cummings said.

Prince George’s County, which wraps around the eastern side of Washington, has several affluent African-American neighborhoods: Its median household income, $78,607, is similar to that of Maryland’s.

With more than 900,000 residents, Prince George’s is far more populous than Harford County, which has a population of around 252,000. Both areas are highly educated: Most of the residents have graduated from high school and more than 30 percent in each county have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The county executive for Prince George’s, Angela D. Alsobrooks called Lisanti “unenlightened and ignorant” in a news conference Wednesday, and said that she should resign.

“Her opinions don’t mean anything,” Alsobrooks said. “We know who we are in Prince George’s.”

Harford’s county executive, Barry Glassman, a Republican, also echoed the widespread calls for Lisanti’s resignation Wednesday, saying in a tweet that he was “deeply disappointed” in her.

The backlash in Maryland has followed a series of revelations that politicians in Virginia, including the governor and the attorney general, had appeared in blackface in the past.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/mary-ann-lisanti-racism.html" id="23e774b0-9332-3416-a30e-a790fe6cee1c">The New York Times</a>.

A growing number of lawmakers in Maryland are calling this week for the resignation of a white Democratic state delegate over her use of a racist slur during an after-hours gathering with her colleagues.

Maryland Lawmaker's Use of Racist Slur Leads to Calls for Her Resignation

Type “vaccine” into its search bar and nothing pops up. “Vaccination” or “anti-vax?” Also nothing.

Pinterest, which allows people to save pictures on virtual pinboards, is often used to find recipes for picky toddlers, baby shower décor or fashion trends, but it has also become a platform for anti-vaccination activists who spread misinformation on social media.

It is an especially effective way to reach parents: 80 percent of mothers and 38 percent of fathers in the United States are on Pinterest, according to 2017 data from comScore. The company has more than 250 million monthly active users and is expected to go public this year.

Other companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have also been infiltrated with misinformation about vaccines. But only Pinterest, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, has chosen to banish results associated with certain vaccine-related searches, regardless of whether the results might have been reputable.

“Right now, blocking results in search is a temporary solution to prevent people from encountering harmful misinformation,” Jamie Favazza, a spokeswoman, said. The company said it was working with experts to develop a more tailored long-term approach.

The changes, which were not publicly announced, started in September and October.

Despite clear evidence that vaccines are effective and safe, some people still choose not to get vaccinated or to vaccinate their children, which has contributed to a surge in measles. The World Health Organization identified “vaccine hesitancy” as one of this year’s 10 notable threats to global health.

There are several reasons for vaccine hesitancy: worries about side effects, cost, moral or religious objections, fears about a debunked link to autism and lack of knowledge about immunizations.

“We’re just seeing all sorts of misinformation flying around on social media,” said Arthur L. Caplan, head of the Division of Medical Ethics at the New York University School of Medicine.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/health/pinterest-vaccination-searches.html" id="4919e931-4a4f-3b62-aeb1-7930d822e23e">The New York Times</a>.

Pinterest, a digital platform popular with parents, took an unusual step to crack down on the proliferation of anti-vaccination propaganda: It purposefully hobbled its search box.

Pinterest Restricts Vaccine Search Results to Curb Spread of Misinformation

Opposition to vaccinations can be traced to the introduction of the first vaccine in the 18th century. Over time most people accepted vaccines, and diseases that could be prevented by them declined. They declined so much, in fact, that the success of vaccines may have muted the dangers associated with those diseases.

The World Health Organization identified “vaccine hesitancy” as one of this year’s 10 notable threats to global health.

“I think this is stunning,” said Dr. Gregory A. Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota. “It shows the magnitude of the problem.”

Despite clear evidence that vaccines are effective and safe, some people still choose not to get vaccinated or to vaccinate their children, which has contributed to a surge in measles cases worldwide. In the United States, there have been five measles outbreaks this year and at least 127 individual cases.

One or two in 1,000 children who contract this highly contagious disease will die. Last year, measles killed 72 adults and children in the European region, where measles has reached its highest levels in two decades. While measles deaths are rare in developed countries, the illness can have severe lasting consequences, such as vision loss.

“We’re just seeing all sorts of misinformation flying around on social media,” said Arthur L. Caplan, head of the Division of Medical Ethics at the New York University School of Medicine, who has been writing about vaccine ethics and policy for 25 years.

“Fake news. Fake science,” he said Friday. “Everybody’s an expert.”

An analysis by The Daily Beast of seven Facebook pages that promote anti-vaccine posts found that the pages had bought a combined 147 Facebook ads that had been viewed millions of times. Most of them targeted women over 25, it reported.

Last week, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, asking what steps the company was taking to prevent anti-vaccine information from being recommended to users. He sent a similar letter to Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google, which owns YouTube.

“We’ve taken steps to reduce the distribution of health-related misinformation on Facebook, but we know we have more to do,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement. “We’re currently working on additional changes that we’ll be announcing soon.”

The company said it was considering reducing or removing this type of content from recommendations and demoting it in search results.

Poland, an internist who has spent 35 years in the vaccine field, said he often encountered patients who relied on social media when researching health questions.

“I will explain to a patient in detail the answer to their question and they’ll look at me and say, ‘Yeah, but I saw on Facebook that ...'” he said, his voice trailing off. “You just want to tear your hair out.”

YouTube said Thursday that it started surfacing more authoritative content in late 2017 for people searching for vaccination-related topics, and that its algorithmic changes would become more accurate over time. YouTube also said it does not permit anti-vaccine videos to show ads.

“We have strict policies that govern what videos we allow ads to appear on, and videos that promote anti-vaccination content are a violation of those policies,” a YouTube spokeswoman said Friday. “We enforce these policies vigorously, and if we find a video that violates them we immediately take action and remove ads.”

The company said it was beginning to reduce recommendations for certain anti-vaccination videos and was collaborating with experts about providing more context during searches, such as information panels with links to third-party resources.

Twitter said it had no specific policy to stem the spread of misinformation about vaccines but its real-time nature was a “powerful antidote.”

“We, as a company, should not be the arbiter of truth,” Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokeswoman, said in a statement Friday, adding that Twitter was working to surface the highest quality and most relevant content first.

For social-media companies, containing the spread of misinformation — particularly about something as emotionally charged as vaccines — will be a lasting challenge as they balance fears about censorship with the need to promote useful content, experts said.

“It’s a mess that I don’t see easily solved,” Poland said.

The man, 29-year-old Ramon Blanchett, filed a 2016 income tax return in February 2017 that included a W-2 from Bridges Nursing and Rehabilitation in Tampa, Florida, showing $17,098 in wages and $1 million of federal income tax withholding, according to a forfeiture complaint filed in January by the U.S. government in federal court in Tampa.

But Blanchett was actually paid $2,098 and no tax was withheld, according to the complaint, which was first reported by the Tampa Bay Times.

Blanchett submitted a 1040 form that also said $1 million in taxes had been withheld, and that led the IRS to issue a refund for $980,000, according to the complaint.

And he kept the money, the complaint said — until the IRS found out about the error.

The complaint did not mention how the W2 came to include incorrect information. Representatives for Bridges Nursing and Rehabilitation did not respond to a request for comment this week.

Blanchett also submitted another W2, which was accurate, showing $1,399 in income from Sizzling Platter, a restaurant in Murray, Utah, and no withholding, the complaint said.

Robert Marvin, a spokesman for the IRS, declined to answer questions about the case, citing a section of the Internal Revenue Code that prohibits the IRS from commenting on a specific taxpayer’s situation, and he did not immediately respond to queries about the systems in place to detect fraud on Friday.

Blanchett could not be reached for comment Friday, and it was unclear whether he had retained a lawyer.

The IRS’ refund processing systems should have flagged a refund this large, said Chuck Pine, who was the third-ranking criminal-enforcement officer at the agency and now oversees the risk and regulatory advisory practice at BDO USA, a global assurance, tax and financial advisory services firm.

Taxpayer refunds are sent out in batches via an expedited electronic system, Pine explained. If a refund is red-flagged, it ought to prompt a closer examination by an IRS employee who “should have immediately and proactively stopped the refund from being issued based on the obvious discrepancy between the income reported of $18,497 and the refund generated of $980,000.”

Blanchett has not been charged in federal court, Amy Filjones,spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Tampa, said Friday. A date for the next hearing has not been set, said a spokesman at the U.S. attorney’s office.

According to court records, Blanchett pleaded guilty in 2016 to possession of drug paraphernalia and resisting an officer without violence, both first-degree misdemeanors. In 2014, he was charged with possession of marijuana, also a first-degree misdemeanor, but the judge withheld adjudication, so he was not convicted of a crime.

SunTrust Bank, where Blanchett initially deposited the funds, suspected fraud and initially froze the funds, court documents said, but later returned them to Blanchett via cashier’s check. He then put the money into an account at Grow Financial, telling the bank that the money came from the estate of his deceased father, the documents said.

Blanchett shifted the money around, transferring it among different bank accounts within Grow Financial, the complaint said, eventually using some of it to purchase a silver Lexus in August. On Friday, a spokeswoman for SunTrust and a spokesman for Grow Financial declined to comment.

The complaint didn’t specify when the IRS first learned about the inaccurate refund check. But in August, Grow Financial sent the IRS the funds in Blanchett’s account in accordance with a federal seizure warrant, the complaint said. The IRS also seized the Lexus, and the government is seeking a car insurance premium of about $809 that was refunded to Blanchett when he no longer had possession of the Lexus.

From 2011 to 2013, when Pine served as director of field operations for the eastern half of the United States, and in the years before, refund fraud was “out of control” in Tampa, he said, primarily because of identity theft.

“Refund crimes may no longer be at such a high priority,” he said, adding that the number of criminal investigation special agents in the IRS was “significantly” lower than it used to be.

“Special agents aren’t on the front line of refund processing,” he said, but they play “a key role” in preventing fraudulent refunds from ultimately being negotiated.

In recent years, the IRS has cut refund fraud drastically, said Jim Buttonow, a certified public accountant who worked for 19 years as a large case team audit coordinator for the IRS until leaving in 2006. “It was a mountain to climb.”

Refund fraud is a continual challenge, he added, but Blanchett’s case was “an absolute anomaly.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/us/tax-refund-check.html" id="ac11c59c-db76-3085-a279-f5145ff363df">The New York Times</a>.

The average tax refund is usually a couple of thousand dollars, but a man in Florida who earned less than $3,500 mistakenly received a check for a much higher amount: $980,000.

A Man in Florida Mistakenly Received a $980,000 Tax Refund, and Officials Say He Tried to Keep It

If an armed intruder were to enter the campus, “we’re not looking for a fair fight,” Bill Jones, the principal, said in an interview. “We’re looking at an overwhelming advantage.”

Legislation passed after the Parkland massacre last year requires schools in Florida to have at least one “safe-school officer.” Manatee School for the Arts, a charter for 2,100 middle and high school students, is the only school in Manatee County that chose to hire guards who carry rifles, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Department, which trained the guards.

“It’s just a much more effective weapon than the handgun is,” Jones said.

The decision to patrol with long guns is “very unusual,” said Michael Dorn, the executive director of Safe Havens International, which has performed security assessments at dozens of public school systems throughout Florida, including three of the state’s largest school districts.

Dorn said he was not aware of any school guards in the United States who openly carry long guns, although it is not unusual in some areas overseas.

“It’s not something that we typically advise our clients to do for a variety of reasons,” he added, in part because someone might knock out the officer and take the weapon, and it is more difficult to subdue and handcuff an assailant while carrying a long gun.

Manatee School for the Arts is also adding a guard shack to its entrance and will raise its perimeter fencing by 2 feet.

Florida’s bill, named the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act after the school where the Parkland shooting occurred a year ago this week, gave schools the option of choosing between a school resource officer, who is employed by a law enforcement agency; a school safety officer, who is employed by either a law enforcement agency or by the district school board; or a school guardian, a school employee trained to stop lethal attacks.

Last year, an Associated Press survey found that nine of the state’s 67 countywide school districts are supplementing officers by employing full-time guardians. The survey did not specify the type of weapons the guards would be using.

“We have guardians in almost all of our elementary schools and in most of our charter schools,” said Michael Barber, a spokesman for the School District of Manatee County.

Each of the district’s public middle and high schools have school resource officers, he added.

Manatee School for the Arts hired one guardian with 15 years of infantry experience who has now been on campus for a couple of months, Jones said. A second guardian, also a combat veteran, is finishing his training and will begin working later this month, he added.

Guardians are required to complete at least 132 hours of firearm safety and proficiency training.

Jones said the school hired combat veterans because he wanted guards who would not hesitate to go after an active shooter.

“I don’t want this to be the first time they’ve had someone shooting at them,” he said.

So far, Jones said, “most parents have been very accepting.”

To assuage safety concerns about the high-powered weapons, the school requires its guardians to keep the chambers of their Kel-Tec RDB semi-automatic rifles empty, and the guns are not stored on campus.

The presence of an armed guard does not necessarily deter violence. During the shooting last February that left 17 in Parkland dead, there was an armed school resource officer standing by the door to the building who was later widely criticized for not entering. (He said he thought at the time that the shooter was outside.)

And in 2016, a teacher in Michigan was grazed in the neck by a bullet when a school resource officer negligently fired his gun. And in some cases, agitated students have grabbed officers’ guns, even while the guns were in holsters.

Jones estimated that the total cost of the new security measures would be close to $200,000 for the 2018-19 school year and said the armed guards would earn a yearly salary of about $50,000. It “substantially exceeds” the money received from the state, he added.

Despite the heightened fear over school shootings, active shooters are statistically rare.

Unintentional injury, such as traffic accidents and drowning, is the leading cause of death for U.S. school-age children.

“Our mindset is so locked into the rare but truly catastrophic active-shooter event,” Dorn said.

On school property, students and school employees are more likely to die by suicide than a mass shooting, he added.

Spending a lot of money to arm security officers addresses only one type of school safety concern, said Amanda Klinger, director of operations at the Educator’s School Safety Network, an organization that trains educators and administrators in violence-prevention measures.

“We don’t know that those security interventions will stop the things that they’re seeking to stop,” Klinger said. “My question is, what else are they doing to keep kids safe in schools? What are they doing to keep kids safe from risks or threats other than active shooters?”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/guns-in-schools.html" id="3aaf44c6-3d70-3a23-a736-ee61322763a9">The New York Times</a>.

By the end of February, students at Manatee School for the Arts in Palmetto, Florida, will see two former combat veterans in body armor roaming the grounds, each carrying a 9-millimeter Glock handgun and a semi-automatic rifle with a 17-inch barrel.

Florida School Hires 2 Former Combat Veterans to Take Down Active Shooters

News organizations sounded the alarm: “Get an IUD Before It’s Too Late,” a Daily Beast headline warned. “Here’s Why Everyone Is Saying to Get an IUD Today,” said a New York Magazine piece.

In November 2016, Sarah Christopherson, policy advocacy director at the National Women’s Health Network, told Broadly, a branch of Vice Media, that women should be “very, very worried” about birth control.

So did women rush to obtain intrauterine devices and contraceptive implants?

A study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine supports what doctors had already observed: There was an increase in the insertion rate of long-acting reversible birth control devices soon after the 2016 presidential election.

“The unique thing about IUDs and implants is that they last for so long,” said Dr. Lydia Pace, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study. Because the devices were so long-lasting, women were taking advantage of insurance coverage provided under the Affordable Care Act, and getting a birth control method with the longevity to weather potential policy changes.

The IUD, a small device placed in the uterus, has been shown to be more than 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy and can work for up to 12 years, depending on the type. But without insurance coverage, IUDs can be expensive: Out-of-pocket costs can be from $500 to $1,000. Implants are also more than 99 percent effective and last up to five years, but can cost up to $1,300 without insurance.

The study, which only looked at women enrolled in commercial health insurance, found a 21.6 percent increase in the insertion rates of long-acting reversible contraceptive methods among women ages 18 to 45 in the 30 days after Trump was elected.

When the researchers examined the 30 days before and after the election, and compared it to the same time period in 2015, they found that an additional 2.1 IUDs or implants inserted per 100,000 women per day were associated with the election, though it isn’t possible to know for sure because they did not study the motivation of the women who received them. If these results were extrapolated to the 33 million women in the United States between the ages of 18 to 45 who have employer-sponsored health insurance, it would mean that an estimated 21,000 additional devices and implants were inserted in the month after the election, Pace said, an increase she described as “impressive.”

“Was there something else that happened that could account for that rise?” Pace asked. “Not that I know of.”

There has been a gradual increase in use of IUDs and implants in recent years, which Pace’s study took into account. It also controlled for characteristics such as the location and age of the insured, and the type of health plan. The data did not provide information about the race or ethnicity of the women and did not include women who had public health insurance or no insurance at all.

The study’s findings were not surprising to Dr. Aparna Sridhar, an associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“My slots would be booked with women wanting to get IUDs,” she said. “They would specifically state that they are getting an IUD because of the political changes they are witnessing.” The requests came from privately and publicly insured patients, she said.

At the UCLA Student Health Center, the changes were especially pronounced. Sridhar and her colleagues examined the data and found the total number of long-acting reversible contraceptive insertions at the center increased to 118 in the eight weeks after the 2016 presidential election from 53 in the eight weeks before the election.

Planned Parenthood saw a higher demand as well. In the first week after the 2016 election, there was “an unprecedented surge in questions about access to health care and birth control, both online and in our health centers, and a nearly tenfold increase in appointments for IUDs,” Elizabeth Clark, director of health media at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said.

The Affordable Care Act required insurance companies to cover 18 types of contraception, including IUDs and implants, and gave millions of women access to birth control without the need for a co-payment. The Trump administration originally rolled back the birth control mandate in 2017, a move that was quickly challenged in federal court.

New Trump administration rules published in November allow employers to obtain an exemption based on their “sincerely held religious beliefs” or moral convictions. But a federal court issued a nationwide injunction in January that prevented the administration from interfering with women’s access to free birth control.

Given that the study only examined the first 30 days before and after the election, it may not have captured everyone who was planning to obtain long-acting birth control. Getting an appointment with a private doctor can sometimes take months.

Data from 2017 was not available at the time of the study, which makes it impossible to know if the increase was sustained. Another analysis conducted by Athenahealth showed a drop-off in demand in the months after election. Pace and her colleagues plan to examine trends in contraceptive use in the years after 2016.

“Our findings suggest that many women with private insurance value the contraceptive coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act,” Pace said. “In light of recent events, women may have ongoing anxiety about their coverage that may continue to influence their contraceptive choices and decision-making.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/health/iud-birth-control-trump.html" id="442b8be0-374e-3bfe-a117-1e216dfd7893">The New York Times</a>.

Demand for Long-Acting Birth Control Rose After Trump's Election, Study Shows

In the days after President Donald Trump was elected, some women saw his victory as reason to worry: Would he fulfill his campaign promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act? And if so, would it eventually become harder and costlier to obtain birth control?

Trump, responding to a Q-and-A that Warren posted on Instagram Live a couple a weeks ago, used a line referring to Wounded Knee and Bighorn that mocked Warren’s claims of Native American heritage.

In Warren’s video, posted on Dec. 31, the same day she entered the 2020 race for president, she drank a beer in her kitchen and complimented her husband, who made a brief cameo.

Trump, who has repeatedly referred to Warren as “Pocahontas,” did so again on Twitter on Sunday, then took it a step further, writing that if Warren “did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!”

He faced swift criticism from Native Americans.

“+300 of my people were massacred at Wounded Knee,” writer and tribal lawyer Ruth H. Hopkins, who is Sioux, said on Twitter. “Most were women and children. This isn’t funny, it’s cold, callous, and just plain racist.”

Hopkins said in an interview Monday that the trauma of the massacre hasn’t been erased by time.

“It happened in 1890; it’s not so far removed. Those killed are peoples’ grandparents and great-grandparents,” she said. “It’s further compounded by the fact that the soldiers who murdered Lakota at Wounded Knee received medals of honor for it and those medals have never been rescinded.”

Storm Reyes, 69, who is Coast Salishand lives on a reservation in Washington state, said Monday that Wounded Knee and other such massacres are deeply ingrained in the memories of Native Americans.

“As a Native, Trump’s tweet was equivalent to making a ‘joke’ about 9/11, Pearl Harbor or the Holocaust,” she said. “I found it awful that not only did Trump use this tragedy as a joke, weapon and insult, but that his ignorance of American history is so great that he didn’t even know that Wounded Knee was a massacre and not a battle.”

In a statement, Jefferson Keel, the president of the National Congress of American Indians, condemned, “in the strongest possible terms, the casual and callous use of these events as part of a political attack.”

“Hundreds of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people lost their lives at the hands of the invading U.S. Army during these events,'’ he said, “and their memories should not be desecrated as a rhetorical punch line.”

For those who could use a history refresher, some context:

— What happened during the Wounded Knee massacre?

The Wounded Knee massacre, one of the deadliest attacks on Native American people by the U.S. military, took place on Dec. 29, 1890. It is estimated that hundreds of Sioux Indians — men, women and children — were killed by the 7th Cavalry on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota.

By the late 1800s the buffalo population had been slaughtered and the Lakotas’ homelands had been reduced, confined to reservations “where life was hard and food was scarce,” Mark Hirsch, a historian at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, wrote in 2015, ahead of the 125th anniversary of the massacre. A new religious movement called the Ghost Dance had spread across Sioux Country; it was thought to help revive the Native American way of life, but it was perceived as a threat by the U.S. government.

Soldiers tried to arrest Lakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, and ended up killing him. Tensions grew. According to Hirsch’s account, Chief Big Foot, leader of the Minneconjou Lakota, led his people more than 200 miles toward the Pine Ridge Reservation, where another chief had invited them to seek refuge. But they were intercepted by troops who escorted them to Wounded Knee Creek. The next day, Big Foot’s people were asked to surrender their weapons. A gun suddenly fired, and the soldiers started shooting. Around 300 Sioux are estimated to have died.

Congress apologized to the victims 100 years later in a resolution that expressed “deep regret″ but did not provide any reparations to the descendants or declare the remote site a national monument.

— What was the Battle of Little Bighorn?

Trump also referenced “Bighorn,” the Battle of Little Bighorn, which was fought on June 25, 1876, in what is now Montana. At the time, the federal government was forcing tribes to move to reservations. When several tribes did not leave their land, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his troops were dispatched to attack. During the battle, Custer’s troops were outnumbered by Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in what became known as Custer’s Last Stand.

In the book “The Killing of Crazy Horse,” reporter Thomas Powers wrote: “The fighting was intense, bloody, at times hand to hand. Men died by knife and club as well as by gunfire.” More than 200 of Custer’s troops died.

— Why is Warren’s ancestry in the news?

Warren and Trump have a history of trading barbs, particularly during the 2016 election — but his references to her ethnic heritage, especially his taunts labeling her as “Pocahontas,” have drawn the most attention.

Last year Warren released the results of a DNA test that she said provided proof of her ancestry. It found that she most likely had one Native American ancestor six to 10 generations ago. Instead of neutralizing her critics, the test further inflamed criticism that she was attempting to equate DNA results with cultural kinship.

In October, a member of the Cherokee Nation condemned Warren’s analysis. But not all Native American leaders were upset about Warren’s the DNA test.

Richard Sneed, the principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, told HuffPost that Warren had always been a friend to tribes, “and we need all the allies we can get.”

— Why now?

Trump tweeted twice about Warren on Sunday. The first tweet referenced Wounded Knee and Bighorn, then, nearly 10 minutes later, Trump labeled her Instagram video “the Elizabeth Warren beer catastrophe,” and said the best line she delivered was when she told her husband: “Thank you for being here. I’m glad you’re here.”

“It’s their house, he’s supposed to be there!” Trump tweeted.

Critics of the president suggested the tweets provided a distraction from the partial government shutdown (which is now the longest ever), the increased scrutiny over his relationship with Russia and Warren’s presidential bid.

As of Monday evening, Warren had not directly responded to Trump’s taunts on social media, focusing instead on the shutdown.

“How many more before Republicans stop crushing working families and reopen the government?” she wrote on Twitter. “Time to end this.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/wounded-knee-trump-warren.html" id="5f6af513-ada5-3c70-ab97-63a16717c7b4">The New York Times</a>.

Trump's Use of Wounded Knee to Mock Elizabeth Warren Angers Native Americans

It has been more than a century since the Wounded Knee massacre and the Battle of Little Bighorn, but both these notorious conflicts were thrust into a national conversation about Native Americans and race following President Donald Trump’s Sunday night tweet directed at Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Dana Martin, 31, identified by advocacy groups as a black transgender woman, was found shot to death in a vehicle in Montgomery, Alabama, on Sunday.

Martin, who lived in Hope Hull, Alabama, about 9 miles southwest of Montgomery, was well-known in the transgender community of Birmingham and Montgomery, said Meta Ellis, director of Montgomery Pride United, an LGBT advocacy organization in Alabama.

“Our community is devastated because the murders going on — especially of trans people of color — are just happening more and more often and very little is being done about it,” she said. “And here in Alabama we don’t have laws that support hate crimes against people of other genders.”

It is still unclear why Martin was killed. There have not been any arrests in the case and there aren’t any suspects or known motives, said Capt. Regina Duckett of the Montgomery Police Department, which is investigating the crime.

“At this point, the circumstances of Dana Martin’s homicide are unknown,” Duckett said Friday. “The death is confirmed as a criminal homicide.”

Martin’s body was discovered when police and fire medics responded to a vehicle crash on Brewer Road around 11 p.m. Sunday, police said. Emergency workers found Martin in the vehicle, which was in the ditch line. Martin, the driver, had a fatal gunshot wound, police said, and it appeared as if the shooting had occurred near the vehicle.

Based on their review of legal documents and a forensic examination, police did not identify Martin as a woman in their news release, Duckett said.

How a homicide victim identifies is “a personal matter that becomes relevant to our investigation only if it is determined to be a reason the victim was killed,” Duckett added.

In Alabama, changing gender identity on a driver’s license requires gender-affirming surgery, Ellis said, something many transgender people don’t find necessary or are unable to afford.

At least 26 transgender people were killed in 2018, the majority of them black transgender women, according to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2017, advocates reported at least 29 transgender people fatally shot or killed by other violent means.

Crimes against transgender people, including harassment and sexual assault, are often underreported, which can stem from victims’ reluctance to speak with law enforcement. In addition, officials, the news media or even the victims’ family members may refer to victims by the sex they were assigned at birth rather than by the gender with which they identify.

“Sometimes their family will put them right back into their old gender and have a service and it’s heartbreaking,” said Ms. Harvey McDaniel, educational outreach director for Montgomery Pride United. “This is pretty common.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/transgender-black-woman-killed.html" id="b990e367-02f8-335b-a3b0-142f4f8766f0">The New York Times</a>.

An Alabama woman has become the first known transgender person killed this year in the United States.

Transgender Woman Is Found Shot to Death in Alabama

In May, Borden entered a plea acknowledging that there was enough evidence to convict him but that did not acknowledge guilt for taking part in the malicious wounding of DeAndre Harris at the “Unite the Right” rally. On Monday, after a monthslong postponement, he received a 20-year sentence, with all but three years and 10 months of it suspended.

Borden, 20, was one of six men who surrounded and attacked Harris, 20 at the time, in a parking garage on Aug. 12, 2017, beating him with metal pipes and wooden boards. Harris was left with a broken wrist and a head wound that required staples. The beating was captured in a video that spread widely on social media.

Two of the six men remain unidentified. Of the four who were arrested, Borden was the last man to be sentenced.

The three others — Jacob Scott Goodwin, Alex Michael Ramos, and Richard W. Preston — were sentenced in August of last year. Goodwin, 24, was sentenced to serve eight years in prison; Ramos, 35, received a sentence of six years; and Preston, 53, who was described as a Ku Klux Klan leader, was sentenced to four years in prison for firing a gun at the rally.

Borden, who is white, was initially supposed to be sentenced in October 2018, but the judge rescheduled the sentencing for January after Borden declined to speak with probation officers and his lawyer, Michael J. Hallahan II, asked to bring character witnesses to a sentencing hearing.

Hallahan could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Television station WVIR reported that Borden’s parents attended the sentencing Monday. His father insisted that his son was innocent and Borden’s mother asked the court to consider that Borden had learning issues.

Daniel Borden, one of four men convicted of beating a black man at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, was sentenced Monday to nearly four years in prison.

Christina Caron

Articles written by the author

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