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As Congress prepares to wade into a contentious debate over legislation to address police brutality and systemic racial bias, a long-simmering dispute in the Senate over a far less controversial bill that would for the first time explicitly make lynching a federal crime has burst into public view.

The bill, called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act after the 14-year-old black teen from Chicago who was tortured and killed in 1955 in Mississippi, predates the recent high-profile deaths of three black men and women at the hands of white police and civilians that have inspired protests across the country. It passed the House this year by a vote of 410-4 and has the backing of 99 senators, who have urged support for belated federal recognition of a crime that once terrorized black Americans.

But the private objections of one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, have succeeded for months in preventing it from becoming law. At a time when lawmakers are looking at an array of other, potentially more divisive proposals to respond to a spate of recent killings of black Americans, the impasse illustrates the volatile mix of raw emotion and political division that has often frustrated attempts by Congress to enact meaningful changes in the law when it comes to matters of racial violence.

The issue erupted on the Senate floor Thursday, when Paul sought to narrow the bills definition of lynching and push the revised measure through without a formal vote, drawing angry rebukes from two of the bills authors, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, both black Democrats.

Paul argued that the lynching bill was sloppily written and could lead to yet another injustice excessive sentencing for minor infractions unless it was revised.

This bill would cheapen the meaning of lynching by defining it so broadly as to include a minor bruise or abrasion, he said. Our national history of racial terrorism demands more seriousness of us than that.

Paul said that he takes lynching seriously, but this legislation does not.

Harris rose to object, delivering a seething broadside against Paul as she noted that even as they debated, mourners were gathering to honor George Floyd, the black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.

The idea that we would not be taking the issue of lynching seriously is an insult an insult to Senator Booker and Senator Tim Scott and myself, she said on the chamber floor, referring to the South Carolina Republican who helped write the bill and is the GOPs lone black senator.

To suggest that lynching would only be a lynching if someones heart was pulled out and displayed to someone else is ridiculous, she added. It should not require a maiming or torture for us to recognize a lynching when we see it and recognize it by federal law and call it what it is, which is that it is a crime that should be punishable with accountability and consequence.

At issue is what, exactly, counts as lynching under federal law. The bill would add a new section called lynching to the civil rights statute to deal with group violence meant to intimidate people of color or other protected groups. The offense would be classified as a conspiracy by two or more people to cause bodily harm in connection with a hate crime, with penalties up to life in prison if convicted. Paul proposed to raise the bar beyond the standard in federal hate crimes statutes, to serious bodily injury, so that only crimes involving conspiracy to cause substantial risk of death and extreme physical pain could be charged as lynching, according to aides.

Such crimes can already be considered hate crimes under state and federal law. But the term lynching has deep historical significance, and the fact that it has never been formally outlawed has been an enduring symbol of Congress inability to fully reckon with the nations history of racial violence. The issue has taken on even greater significance in recent days.

Harris called the recent killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man jogging in Georgia who was chased down and shot by white men, a modern lynching. In court Thursday, one of the men charged with murder in the case said he heard another use a racial slur as Arbery lay dying.

Members of Congress have been fighting in one way or another to pass federal anti-lynching laws for more than a century, introducing nearly 200 such bills in the first half of the 20th century.

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Sen. Rand Paul holds up anti-lynching legislation - Minneapolis Star Tribune

National Guard troops stand with bayonets fixed as African-American sanitation workers peacefully march by while wearing placards reading "I AM A MAN." The nonviolent march contrasted with a similar demonstration the day before, when there was a racial outburst and a black teenager was slain by police. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had left town after the first march, would soon return and be assassinated.

Attacking The Press

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker received reports of more than 300 violations of press freedoms between May 25 and June 3. The violations include physical assault, arrest, damage or seizure of equipment. According to TIME Magazine, the organization usually receives 100-150 claims per year. Its a scale that we have not seen before, Kirstin McCudden, managing editor of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, told TIME. Its unprecedented in scope without a doubt.

The Spies Are Spooked

CIA veterans who spent their careers monitoring social breakdown come at us like a firehose, spraying information, disinformation and quotable tweets. And that was before the pandemic. Now with more than 100,00 dead, staged presidential photo ops and protests proclaiming black lives matter and decrying systematic racism in all 50 states, theres even more news flying under the radar. The team at BillMoyers.com brings you the news you need to know some of it good, some of it outrageous, all of it important that you may have missed.

Say Their Names

While all four officers involved in killing George Floyd now face charges, Black Americans who have been killed or injured by police continue to wait for justice. These are two of the names you should know:

Breonna Taylor, a 26 year-old EMT, was shot and killed in her Louisville, KY home by police officers with a no-knock warrant on March 13. None of the officers involved in her death currently face charges. Friday, June 5 would have been her 27th birthday.

Manuel Ellis, a musician and father of two, was detained by police on March 3 in Tacoma, WA. While he was restrained he told the arresting officers he could not breathe and he subsequently died. The medical examiner found that his death was a result of oxygen deprivation and the physical restraint used on him and ruled it a homicide. The four officers involved were placed on paid administrative leave. abroad see unnerving parallels in President Trumps handling of the nationwide protests. The Washington Post reports: In interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S. intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations. Ive seen this kind of violence, said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.

Weapons of War

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to end a Pentagon program that transfers military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. President Obama placed limitations on the program in 2015, but President Trump overturned those limits, claiming that law enforcement needed the equipment, which includes grenade launchers, armoured vehicles and explosives to protect themselves and their communities.

Historic Low

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) prevented the historic Emmett Till Antilynching Act from passing Congress yesterday. The bill passed the House in February with wide bipartisan support, but Paul claims its definition of lynching is too broad. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), who introduced the bill with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), called Pauls claim ridiculous. In a passionate speech from the Senate floor, Harris said That we would not be taking the issue of lynching seriously is an insult, an insult to Sen. Booker, an insult to Sen. Tim Scott and myself, and all of the senators past and present who have understood this is part of the great stain of Americas history. The Senate could simply hold a roll call vote to pass the legislation but, Politico reports, GOP leadership has no plans to devote floor time to the bill.

The Rich Are Different

More than 11,000 people have been arrested since the George Floyd protests began last week, but Buzzfeed reports that prosecutions of white collar crime are way down just 359 white-collar crimes were federally prosecuted in the entire month of January, down 25% from 2015 levelsIf prosecutions continue at the same pace for the remainder of 2020, they are projected to fall to 5,175 almost half the level of their Obama-era peak, according to TRAC, a research group at Syracuse University that tracks federal law enforcement patterns.

At the same time, the IRS has failed to pursue almost a million high-income individuals who have failed to pay taxes: The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that 879,415 high-income individuals who didnt file returns cumulatively failed to pay $45.7 billion in taxes from 2014 to 2016 and that the agency hasnt tried to collect from many of those taxpayers. The IRS didnt put 326,579 of the cases into its enforcement system, and it closed 42,601 of the cases without ever working on them. In addition, the remaining 510,235 high-income nonfilers, totaling estimated tax due of $24.9 billion, are sitting in one of the collection functions inventory streams and will likely not be pursued as resources decline, said the report, released Monday.

No Country For Old Men

Nearly 26,000 nursing home residents have died from COVID-19 and more than 60,000 have fallen ill, according to recently released federal data. However, these figures only reflect numbers for about 80 percent of nursing homes nationwide so the real total is likely much higher.

Eye On The Bailout

Deputy Treasury Secretary Justin Muzinich is the Treasury official in charge of overseeing the federal coronavirus bailout and ProPublica found that A major beneficiary of that bailout so far: Muzinich & Co., the asset manager founded by his father where Justin served as president before joining the administration. He reported owning a stake worth at least $60 million when he entered government in 2017. Today, Muzinich retains financial ties to the firm through an opaque transaction in which he transferred his shares in the privately held company to his father. Ethics experts say the arrangement is troubling because his father received the shares for no money up front, and it appears possible that Muzinich can simply get his stake back after leaving government.

And this week the Senate confirmed Brian Miller, a White House lawyer, as special inspector general for pandemic recovery. Miller will act as a watchdog for the $5 billion passed in the CARES Act.

Meanwhile, NBC News reports that private jet owners could receive a subsidy from coronavirus relief funds. And Bloomberg found Almost one-third of unemployment benefits estimated to be owed to the millions of Americans who lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus slump havent been paid yet.

The Power Of The Pen

President Trump protected restrictions on student loan forgiveness issued by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos by vetoing a measure that would have overturned them. Axios reports several veterans groups have argued that the rules, which make it more difficult for student borrowers to prove that a college defrauded them, will harm former service members cheated by for-profit colleges.

And the EPA issued a final rule gutting section 401 of the Clean Water Act which will limit states ability to block pipeline projects that cross their waterways.

Primary Results

Nine states and D.C. held primary elections on Tuesday. The elections resulted in historic wins for women of color across the country. Ella James was elected mayor of Ferguson, MO, the first woman and the first Black person to lead the city. Her election comes six years after protests in Ferguson over the police killing of Michael Brown, a Black teenager, brought the Black Lives Matter movement to nationwide prominence.

And nine-term Republican Rep. Steve King, known for his racist language and ideas, lost his primary race in Iowa.

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In Other News: Rand Paul Blocked the Emmett Till Antilynching Act - BillMoyers.com

If youre supposed to make hay when the sun is shining, what do you do when skies unexpectedly darken?

Thats largely the question facing Visit Durango, the destination marketing organization for Durango and La Plata County.

Rachel Brown, Visit Durango executive director, said the agency has suspended paid advertisements seeking to attract tourists to the region, but that doesnt mean it has completely ceded efforts to boost visitors when restrictions that discourage nonessential travel are lifted in Colorado and across the country.

Obviously, when things closed down and safer-at-home went into place, we did stop advertising and promoting people to visit. But were still engaging with our consumer audiences on social media and building kind of like a pent-up demand around Durango, she said.

Destination marketing management organizations like Visit Durango are caught between a rock and a hard place dedicated to promoting tourism, they now must balance public health into the advertising plan and judge when it is safe to resume efforts to bring in visitors.

And at some point, visitors will be necessary to heal the tourism-dependent economy in Southwest Colorado.

Brown said 48% of customers at Durangos restaurants in an average year are visitors and 62% of retail shop patrons are out-of-towners. Tourism accounts for 30% of La Plata Countys economy.

Social media focusVisit Durango is currently in what it calls a triage phase of its recovery marketing plan. Paid advertising has ceased in order to preserve the groups $140,000 advertising budget for later in the year, when COVID-19 restrictions are expected to ease.

Not all recreation is in hibernation. Vallecito Reservoir saw plenty of action May 29. But Visit Durango paid advertisements to boost tourism arent planned to resume until later in summer.

Jerry McBride/Durango Herald

Not all recreation is in hibernation. Vallecito Reservoir saw plenty of action May 29. But Visit Durango paid advertisements to boost tourism arent planned to resume until later in summer.

Jerry McBride/Durango Herald

While paid spending, predominantly pay per click advertisements on social media, has ceased, other forms of free marketing efforts are underway.

On social media, Visit Durango is pushing a #DurangoDreaming campaign encouraging locals to tout the benefits and attractions of the area until the situation with COVID-19 allows greater travel.

The campaign is designed to inspire people to come visit Durango in the future. Its kind of building that pent-up demand for when it is safe to travel again, well be in the forefront of peoples minds, Brown said.

The campaign is geared toward engagement with visitors who will be the most likely to return early on when traveling resumes young people looking for outdoor adventures.

Were asking people to submit their photos and videos of wide-open vistas, mountain views. Last week, we were promoting photos that had no people in them. And this past week we started including people in the shots. So its a gradual shift in what were doing, she said in mid-May.

Beyond the #DurangoDreaming campaign, Visit Durango is working to maintain contacts with tour operators, state tourism officials and other industry entities to ensure when travel becomes more widespread, logistics for group tours and other tourist sector functions are immediately ready to resume.

Landon Kennedy, left, and Mike Canterbury, both with the Pine River Irrigation District, put up a large banner May 29 at the Vallecito Reservoir marina reminding people to wear masks.

Jerry McBride/Durango Herald

Landon Kennedy, left, and Mike Canterbury, both with the Pine River Irrigation District, put up a large banner May 29 at the Vallecito Reservoir marina reminding people to wear masks.

Jerry McBride/Durango Herald

Visit Durango is launching a safety-focused campaign, #CareForDurango. This campaign will highlight extra precautions businesses are taking to keep their properties clean and customers and residents safe. It will highlight all public health order recommendations including: wearing a mask in public, not traveling if you feel sick, discouraging travel for at-risk populations and maintaining a social distance of 6 feet from others.

The group also is compiling a list of businesses that are open, and it is providing best practices to businesses to ensure they are following the latest health guidelines recommended by San Juan Basin Public Health and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The group is also working with families and small groups to postpone and rebook events, such as weddings, family reunions and other gatherings.

Three-phase planLater this month, Visit Durango plans to begin a three-phased approach to gradually return to normal tourism marketing.

In Phase 1, which will begin when nonessential travel is no longer discouraged, Brown said, Visit Durango plans to spend 10% of its tourism advertising budget to target other Coloradans and people within Southwest Colorados traditional regional drive markets to come visit.

Phase 1 will emphasize what local businesses are doing to combat the spread of COVID-19, and marketing will emphasize measures in place to protect everyone visitors and locals from the novel coronavirus.

Im not very happy about all the people showing up here and not wearing masks, said Troy McGovern a 23-year resident of the Vallecito Reservoir community. Recently, Pine River Irrigation District employees put up a large banner at the marina reminding people to wear masks and sanitize frequently.

Jerry McBride/Durango Herald

Im not very happy about all the people showing up here and not wearing masks, said Troy McGovern a 23-year resident of the Vallecito Reservoir community. Recently, Pine River Irrigation District employees put up a large banner at the marina reminding people to wear masks and sanitize frequently.

Jerry McBride/Durango Herald

Heavy emphasis in Phase 1 will be placed on the regions hiking, biking, kayaking, camping and other outdoor pursuits viewed as safer activities. Marketing for outdoor recreation will come under a new advertising campaign called Find Your Escape.

Regional marketingIn Phase 2, tentatively set to begin in July, advertising campaigns will extend beyond Southwest Colorados regional drive markets with an emphasis on markets with direct flights to Durango. Brown said she plans to spend 50% of her advertising budget during this period, which should extend through August.

So we will be promoting the fact that were remote and were rural because people will be avoiding urban environments and then well be promoting the safety messaging. Well be pushing some sustainability initiatives like Leave No Trace, she said.

As Purgatory Resort, Mesa Verde National Park and the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad come back online, their openings will be integrated into advertising.

A survey conducted in April of 1,400 people examining a trip to Southwest Colorado by Visit Durango, found 1,352 people had trips to the region altered by COVID-19.

Six hundred and seventy-one people said their trips were canceled all together. However, most people said they would feel safe traveling to the area within six months after health restrictions are lifted.

Brown said the survey also found the vast majority of people would feel more safe driving to a destination rather than flying, and that is something that plays to Southwest Colorados favor as it is principally a drive-to destination.

Find Your EscapePhase 3 of the recovery marketing plan, which Brown plans to begin in September, would return paid advertising to the international market. During this phase of the campaign, Visit Durango plans to spend about 29% of its advertising budget. Phase 3 will feature a campaign designed around the theme Find Your Escape.

A lot of international travelers will fly to Denver and then drive to Durango in fall, and well be promoting the fall colors. Well be targeting millennials, adventure-seekers and high-value travelers. We do predict that the first groups of people that will be traveling will be a younger, more adventurous segment, Brown said. Well be promoting wellness, sustainability and just kind of the general small-town pace of Durango, which we think will be appealing to people at that point.

parmijo@durangoherald.com

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COVID-19 throws tourist marketers a curveball - The Durango Herald

And those arrested could be hanged.

When the new American government was formed, the Second Congress enacted the Militia Act, a more limited law governing unlawful assembly. Federal authorities could use force to break up assemblies only if they amounted to insurrectionsand the act had to be invoked by the president himself, not by his appointees.

The right of assembly had a rough go for the first century and a half of the Constitution. By the end of the 19th century, no less an authority than Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (the son of a founder of this magazine, and then a state judge) briskly dismissed the idea of expressive rights on public property. Public property belonged to the government, Holmes said, not to the people at all. For the legislature absolutely or conditionally to forbid public speaking in a highway or public park is no more an infringement of the rights of a member of the public than for the owner of a private home to forbid it in his house. The U.S. Supreme Court tersely affirmed Holmess opinion. Peaceful assembly be damned. The people were not to come out of doors without the permission of their rulers.

Nora Benavidez: First Amendment rightsif you agree with the President

Only half a century later, in a case about the rights of labor organizers, did Justice Owen Roberts, writing for a plurality, cleanse the law of Holmess view of government as the owner and citizens as guests. Roberts wrote:

Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens. The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication of views on national questions may be regulated in the interest of all . . . but it must not, in the guise of regulation, be abridged or denied.

The people own the streetsnot the police, not the military, and not Donald Trump. And regulation of their use of the streets must be conducted with the greatest care, recognizing that occasional inconvenience caused by demonstrations is the price America pays for free government. The fact that some demonstrations are violent cannot be used to strip all Americans of their right to assemble.

That right has been under assault since the day Trump took office. As outlined in a new report by PEN America, red-state legislatures have been indefatigable in debating and passing laws designed to penalize protesters for disfavored causes. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last year approved a grotesque opinion holding that anyone who organizes a protest can be suedand thus possibly bankruptedif someone else present commits an illegal act.

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Trumps Grotesque Violation of the First Amendment - The Atlantic

We checked and there is no permission given to the government to shoot members of the press with rubber bullets under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Yet, thats been happening.

Two Los Angeles Times journalists covering the protests in Minneapolis recently Molly Hennessy-Fiske and photographer Carolyn Cole were targeted along with colleagues from other outlets. The two Times journalists were fired upon with rubber bullets and tear gas, then pursued when they sought shelter.

In an editorial, the LA Times reported, The medias job is complicated by a president who routinely refers to the media as the enemy of the people, a freighted designation that historically has come with official crackdowns and persecutions.

Here are some of the incidents listed in the Times:

The Nieman Lab, which covers trends in journalism, reported Monday that journalists had been attacked by police officers more than 110 times since May 28.

Nick Waters, who reports for the online investigative news site Bellingcat, has been keeping a running compilation of reports on Twitter of journalists attacked as they cover protests around the nation.

A photographer in Indianapolis was threatened by a police officer brandishing a rifle that fires less than lethal ammunition. A TV crew was targeted with rubber bullets while broadcasting live in Louisville.

Adding an international dimension, the Australian government has launched an investigation into the police tear gas assault on an Australian TV crew airing live from outside the White House.

CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested, also live on the air, in Minneapolis, as was a local TV crew two among a series of abuses there.

African American journalists have reported being singled out, including a reporter for the Detroit Free Press approached by a police officer as he stood amid a small group of white journalists.

Protesters, themselves, have targeted the media. A throng vandalized CNN headquarters in Atlanta. Protesters battled a Fox TV crew outside the White House.

A mob assaulted a photographer in Fayetteville, N.C. as he took video of them looting a store.

As dispiriting as it is for journalists to be attacked by members of the public, it is even more problematic and dangerous for democracy when the attackers are sanctioned by the government.

Its not paranoid to think that attacks in those and scores of them nationwide are acts of government intimidation intended to dissuade those who would bear witness.

America is a far better place when media employees can do their jobs protected by the First Amendment without facing the personal dangers from government officials, law enforcement workers and overreacting individuals.

The democratic foundation established for the people who live in the United States should be powerful enough to protect all its citizens.

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First Amendment to the US Constitution | Editorial | avpress.com - Antelope Valley Press