A plan to turn the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine into an overflow facility for COVID-19 patients has been called off, following an ideological impasse between the fundamentalist evangelical organization tapped to run the facility and leaders of the Manhattan cathedral.

Samaritan's Purse, led by the homophobic and anti-Muslim preacher Franklin Graham, has drawn criticism from many New Yorkers, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, since opening a 68-bed field hospital in Central Park. The group demands all health care workers and volunteers adhere to an anti-gay statement of faith, and has allegedly turned away people over their sexual preferences.

Leaders of St. John the Divine told Gothamist the church "did not quite understand how strict their tenets were" when they agreed to partner with Samaritan's Purse on a temporary hospital for overflow patients from Mount Sinai.

Although efforts to erect the medical facilities in the massive Morningside Church already begun, the project was called off on Thursday, "given how important the cathedral is to many different constituencies, including LGBTQ community," according to Lisa Schubert, the cathedral’s vice president of programming and external relations. The church has a history progressive activism, including humanitarian work during the AIDs crisis. Its altarpiece was designed by Keith Haring.

The Court will hear oral arguments by telephone conference on May 4, 5, 6, 11, 12 and 13 in a limited number of previously postponed cases. The following cases will be assigned argument dates after the Clerk’s Office has confirmed the availability of counsel:

18-9526, McGirt v. Oklahoma
19-46, United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V.
19-177, Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, Inc.
19-267, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, and 19-348, St. James School v. Biel
19-431, Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, and 19-454, Trump v. Pennsylvania
19-465, Chiafalo v. Washington
19-518, Colorado Department of State v. Baca
19-631, Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, Inc.
19-635, Trump v. Vance
19-715, Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP, and 19-760, Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG

In keeping with public health guidance in response to COVID-19, the Justices and counsel will all participate remotely. The Court anticipates providing a live audio feed of these arguments to news media. Details will be shared as they become available.

The Court Building remains open for official business, but most Court personnel are teleworking. The Court Building remains closed to the public until further notice.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/press/pressreleases/pr_04-13-20

With Joe Biden the last man standing in the Democratic primary race for president, there is increasingly anxious discussion within the party about how — or even if — the former vice president can win over disappointed progressives. Of particular concern are the younger voters whose energy and idealism fueled the campaign of Bernie Sanders.

On April 8, just hours after Mr. Sanders suspended his campaign, a collection of eight progressive groups “building political power for young people” sent Mr. Biden a four-page letter detailing how he could win their support. Their to-do list called on him to embrace a range of progressive policies — including Medicare For All, the “frameworks of the Green New Deal” and a wealth tax — as well as to add progressive advisers to his campaign and, later, his administration. “With young people poised to play a critical role deciding the next president, you need to have more young people enthusiastically supporting and campaigning with you to defeat Trump,” they wrote.

The next day, the former candidate Tom Steyer added his voice to the call, urging Mr. Biden to pursue young progressives. “There’s going to have to be a process to convert” them, Mr. Steyer told Politico.

This is a daunting challenge. Mr. Biden is a 77-year-old moderate who has spent his entire adult life in politics and in many ways embodies The Establishment. So far, he has been running on a backward-looking platform of restoration — not exactly a message to electrify the youth vote. Yet regardless of how hard Mr. Biden might try to overhaul his image, the unfortunate electoral reality — dramatically spotlighted by the Sanders campaign — is that betting on the youth vote remains a losing proposition. An enduring truth of politics is that, whether in presidential years or midterm races, younger voters consistently turn out at a lower rate than older ones. (The 18-29 year olds trail the 30-44-year-olds, who trail the 45-59- year-olds. Voters 60 and up are the Election Day rock stars.) Until that changes, young people will have a tough time getting their concerns taken as seriously as they deserve.

It’s no mask, no ride on NJ Transit’s trains and buses while the state remains on coronavirus lockdown.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Saturday issued an executive order requiring all transit riders to wear protective face coverings or else be denied service.

The requirement also applies to all NJ Transit personnel, but children under the age of 3 and people who say they cannot wear a mask due to a medical condition are exempt.

Murphy’s executive order goes further than face-wear, requiring NJ Transit and private transportation services to carry no more than 50% of their usual capacity and to supply their workers with gloves and face coverings.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213275811

Unlike leftist policy more broadly, this theory of the electorate has utterly failed. First, it turns out that in Democratic primaries, most voters actually like the Democratic Party! Second, as a bevy of political science studies have already shown for years, “independents” are something of a misnomer: they are a divided group that tend to vote almost exactly like partisans, but simply don’t choose to affiliate officially with a party. They aren’t in any significant sense to the left of base Democrats. Third, whatever the secret formula is for turning out voters under 45 in large numbers, the Sanders campaign didn’t find it. Certainly, Sanders won voters under 45 decisively (with Warren coming in a consistent if distant second), but didn’t turn them out in anything like the numbers needed to win. It is possible that a more explicitly generational politics might have done so, but Marxist constructs tend to eschew generational politics as yet another distraction from working-class solidarity politics–despite the fact that a “working-class” Baby Boomer who bought a suburban house in 1995 is much likelier to be financially stable than a “professional managerial class” Millennial struggling to pay rent in an urban studio apartment. Fourth, culturally conservative whites did not cross over in remotely the numbers leftists might have hoped.

Proponents of Marxist electoral theory have a range of excuses for all of this–all of them unpersuasive. There is nothing surprising, immoral or even unsavory about moderates who were fractured and losing to a candidate consolidating 30% of the vote, uniting to beat a candidate with only 30% of the vote. Cable news wasn’t exactly friendly to Sanders or Warren, but that didn’t stop Sanders from winning the first three states–nor did it have even a fraction of the effect that the Clyburn endorsement and moderate consolidation did. Finally, Marxist theory proponents like to argue that their strategy would work in a general election if only the Democratic Party would let them win the primary. But this ignores the reality that Justice Democrats like Randy Bryce did win their primaries in many areas all around the country in 2018, only to lose their general elections. And while many leftists argue that Brexit politics are somehow not comparable to American politics around immigration and globalization (they are), the reality is that Corbyn’s experience does provide a sobering test case for how persuasive class revolutionary politics is in winning over white working class neighborhoods in a contest with a far-right xenophobic clown candidate. If the future really does come down to socialism or barbarism, cultural conservatives have made it quite clear that they will be perfectly content with barbarism until they reach their deathbeds.

So where does the left go from here? The answer seems simple enough. Instead of using political campaigns as a proxy for testing industrial-era Marxist theories of social alignment, those who want to see leftist policy actually enacted should meet voters where they are and maximize gains within the partisan reality that actually exists. This means, among other things:

1) Embracing the Democratic Party and its voters as a positive force for change. Rather than seeing the party and its voters as an obstacle in the way of transforming society and the country, work to persuade Democrats that candidates who espouse more leftist policy while embracing the liberal side of modern cultural divides can and will win in general elections;

Biden cannot afford to screw this up. A lot of names are already being thrown around; many Biden supporters are pushing Kamala Harris for the role. But it’s become increasingly clear to me that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar are his best possible choices.

An ideal running mate brings two things to the ticket. First, they give voters confidence that they are ready to step into the job and do it well, should a tragedy befall the president. If the coronavirus pandemic has revealed anything, it’s that having knowledgeable, experienced leaders can save lives. The Trump administration’s slow response to the pandemic, in which they failed to swiftly mobilize to make testing accessible, procure supplies, and encourage social distancing, is one of the reasons America has more cases than any three other countries combined despite having more than a month to prepare. The presidency is simply not a job for a relative newcomer who lacks executive experience, or someone who has not successfully managed crises before. Second, the right vice presidential candidate also helps the presidential nominee win a state—or collection of states—that the party might not otherwise. By that criteria, Whitmer and Klobuchar are the most likely candidate to help Biden defeat Trump.

Whitmer is a seasoned legislator with executive experience. She served in the state legislature for more a decade, including as Senate Majority Leader for four years before being elected governor in 2018. She has shown her mettle during the pandemic, quickly declaring a state of emergency in Michigan on March 10, closing schools, barring large gatherings, and expanding the state’s unemployment benefits. She then put a moratorium on evictions shortly after. She also called out Trump for forcing states to bid against each other for critical equipment. In other words, Whitmer uniquely suited to convince voters that the Trump administration failed when it mattered most.

Most importantly, though, Whitmer can help Biden win. In 2016, Trump narrowly won Michigan by less than one quarter of one percent. Whitmer’s presence on the ticket could help shift the state’s 16 electoral votes to Biden. In a close election, they could be the difference between victory and defeat.

Amy Klobuchar would bring similar strengths to Biden’s ticket. She has been in the Senate for more than a decade and consistently ranks as one of Congress’s most effective legislators. In an era of partisanship and gridlock, Klobuchar may be better equipped than anyone to help Biden push his agenda through Capitol Hill. Furthermore, Klobuchar could virtually guarantee Biden victory in Minnesota—a state Hillary Clinton narrowly won in 2016—which would allow him to devote more resources to other key states. And though Biden’s gain would be the Senate’s loss if he chooses Klobuchar, at least Democrats would not lose that seat to a Republican. Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz would appoint her replacement. That gives Klobuchar an edge over Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, whose seat would be filled by special election rather than gubernatorial appointment.