Indiana’s attorney general has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that allows same-sex couples to both be listed as parents on their child’s birth certificate.
The ruling came after a four-year legal battle fought by two lesbian parents, Ashlee and Ruby Henderson, who sued county health officials when they refused to include them both on their son’s birth certificate.
Their lawsuit argued that it was discriminatory to force one mother from a same-sex marriage to fork over $4,000 to $5,000 to legally adopt their child.
Seven additional couples joined the suit as plaintiffs, and in January 2020 the courts finally ruled that since Indiana law presumes a husband to be the biological father of a child born in wedlock, a same-sex spouse should also be considered a parent on the birth certificate.
Ten months later, Indiana attorney general Curtis Hill is seeking to overturn it all.
He’s submitted a brief asking the Supreme Court to review the landmark decision — a move that had the Hendersons’ attorney wondering why state officials “continue to fight against families headed by same-sex spouses,” Indystar said.
Hill’s 46-page brief argues that upholding the lower court’s decision would violate common sense and throw into jeopardy parental rights based on biology.
“A birth mother’s wife will never be the biological father of the child, meaning that, whenever a birth-mother’s wife gains presumptive ‘parentage’ status, a biological father’s rights and obligations to the child have necessarily been undermined without proper adjudication,” he wrote.
When a similar case from Arkansas came before the Supreme Court in 2017, judges determined that precluding one parent from a birth certificate infringes upon their rights as a married couple. But the courts could reach a very different outcome in Indiana now that Trump has stacked the judiciary in his favour.
It’s among the first cases submitted to the Supreme Court dealing with same-sex marriage since the confirmation of justice Amy Coney Barrett, and is likely to be a test of things to come.
Deb Price, a trailblazing lesbian journalist who helped open America’s eyes to LGBT+ lives, has died aged 62.
Price made history when she started writing a column for the Detroit News in 1992 exclusively focusing on gay issues, becoming the first columnist nationwide to do so.
The legendary journalist died on 20 November in Hong Kong from interstitial pneumonitis, an autoimmune condition that causes damage to the lungs.
Price’s wife, Joyce Murdoch, told the Bay Area Reporter that she was diagnosed with the condition 13-years-ago and that it “gradually diminished her lung capacity”.
Murdoch said Price “lived life fully” and continued working at the South China Morning Post right up until she was hospitalised in September as her condition worsened.
There has been an outpouring of grief after trailblazing lesbian journalist Deb Price died.
There has been an outpouring of grief from those who knew and loved Price, with many former co-workers and editors praising her as a trailblazing figure unafraid to tackle LGBT+ issues in her work.
Bob Giles, the editor and publisher who commissioned Price’s first gay-themed column, told the Detroit News: “She gave us a stack [of columns] that were really well done and they seemed to fit into the idea that it was a changing world and Deb had a capacity for expressing that.”
Reflecting on her incredible legacy, Joshua Benton, founder of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter: “I am very sorry to report the death of Deb Price, a tremendous journalist, a Nieman Fellow (Class of 2011), and a real trailblazer for LGBTQ people in newsrooms and around the country.”
Benton said it was “hard to overestimate” how significant her column was.
“This was long before the internet gave Americans a window into any topic or community they wanted. Most people got a huge share of their information about the world from the local daily and local TV news.
“Most Americans in 1992 said they didn’t know a single gay person. Then suddenly there was Deb, on the breakfast table next to the sports section.
“She wasn’t just running in New York City and San Francisco, either – she was reaching people in red states too.”
Your brave work impacted many in ways you might never have imagined. A life well-lived.
Benton shared images of just some of the abuse Price received in letters to the editor written in response to her column, with one reader saying she was “breaking God’s laws”, while another said the newspaper was “morally wrong” to publish her words.
However, he also shared letters written to the editor showing the love LGBT+ readers showed her, while other straight readers thanked the newspaper for educating them on a topic they had not previously understood.
Dana Nessel, attorney general of Michigan, also mourned Price’s death, writing on Twitter: “I was one of your regular readers. Thank you for making me feel less alone and hopeful for a world that might one day embrace LGBTQ people instead of loathing us.
“Your brave work impacted many in ways you might never have imagined. A life well-lived.”
Nate Hurst, a political journalist, also heaped praise on Price’s legacy, writing: “Deb Price was the first coworker I came out to – before I had the courage to tell my friends and family. She also showed me the ropes on Capitol Hill. Deb was a fierce reporter, a humble trailblazer, and an unstoppable force for good in the world.
“She is very much missed.”
Price and her wife later compiled her columns and published them in a book titled And Say Hi to Joyce. They dedicated the book to “all the gay readers who’ve put 25 cents in a newspaper box and found nothing reflecting their own lives inside.”
Speaking to Associated Press in 1992 about her first column, Price said she asked readers how she should “introduce Joyce” to others. A reader suggested that she should introduce Joyce as her “partner in perversity”.
“I think it’s really important for me to remember (and) for other people to remember that if there weren’t hostility and if there weren’t misunderstandings about gay people, there would be no point in doing this column,” she said at the time.
The autumn COVID-19 surge has now spread not only through major urban areas like Los Angeles but across California and even to the far northern rural reaches of the state, a troubling sign as the state faces its greatest challenge from the pandemic yet.
A Los Angeles Times data analysis found that most California counties are now suffering their worst coronavirus daily case rates of the entire COVID-19 pandemic, surpassing even the summer surge that had forced officials to roll back the state’s first reopening in the late spring.
The data suggest California will face new problems in December if the unprecedented rise in cases continues. In earlier phases of the pandemic, different parts of California could help harder-hit areas, like San Diego County and San Francisco taking in patients from Imperial County. But that could be difficult in this wave, with the pandemic worsening in most places across California simultaneously.
“We can’t depend on our counties next to us because they are under the same stress and strain,” said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the Santa Clara County COVID-19 testing officer. “They can’t provide us with beds in their counties. So we are on our own. And our hospitals are hurting at this point.”
The Times analysis also demonstrates how the coronavirus has managed to break free from densely packed neighborhoods in urban areas and farming communities in agricultural valleys, where the virus infected essential workers — many of them Latino — who had no choice but leave home to work.
Now, infections are spreading faster in other communities. In Marin County, health officer Dr. Matt Willis said the pandemic has moved from just hitting predominantly Latino communities. Now, in just the last month, “the majority of cases are among our white residents,” Willis said.
“We’re finding a greater proportion of those cases among people who are gathering indoors, and might have a more reasonable option to avoid those exposures, because they’re based on personal choices,” Willis told the Board of Supervisors. “It’s most discouraging that that’s what is driving it — but also encouraging because we think those are behaviors that people have more control over, because it’s not a matter of economic necessity.”
In just the last week, record average daily coronavirus case rates have hit L.A. and other hot spots like San Bernardino and San Diego counties, the Times’ analysis found, which have already received much attention in recent weeks as hospitals have begun to fill and where, in some cases, the daily death toll has risen. The crisis has only become exponentially worse in recent weeks.
Many other counties are also seeing record highs in their average daily case rate observed just the last week, according to the Times analysis, including Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Sacramento, San Mateo, Solano, and Santa Cruz. Counties across Northern California have also posted record highs in recent days, such as Napa County; Yolo County, home of the University of California, Davis; Nevada, Placer and El Dorado counties, which sprawl from the state capital’s suburbs to Lake Tahoe; and sparsely populated Mariposa County, home to Yosemite Valley.
In all, more than 23 million Californians, living in 31 counties, are currently in what’s shaping up to be the worst wave of the pandemic, the Times analysis found.
Across California, the seven-day average of daily coronavirus cases have more than quadrupled since mid-October, from less than 3,000 a day to nearly 14,000 a day as of Wednesday. In just two weeks, average daily deaths have doubled: every day, 74 Californian COVID-19 deaths are reported on average as of Wednesday, up from an average of 38 a day.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been running for 96 years, but 2020 saw the first-ever performance for an all LGBT+ marching band.
The Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps (LGBAC) was formed in 1979, a decade after the Stonewall uprising, and has been applying to take part in the New York parade for years.
However this year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade organisers made the decision to limit the number of participants and only select local bands from New York and the tri-state area to perform.
The restrictions meant that the LGBAC finally got their chance to perform in the parade, watched by more than 20 million people across the country, with one band member describing the opportunity as “bucket list material”.
The all-queer band performed “Dancing Queen” by ABBA.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=lilylwakefield&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1331995857156263936&lang=en-gb&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinknews.co.uk%2F2020%2F11%2F28%2Flgbt-marching-band-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade-lesbian-gay-big-apple-corps%2F&siteScreenName=PinkNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=500px
The marching band’s artistic director Marita Begley told NBC New York: “There are families out there in middle America, throughout the country, that are going to see this and it’s going to give hope to young people who are questioning their sexuality, their gender.”
Founding band member Joe Avena added: “People will see that we’re part of them, and part of their lives, and part of what they love.”
Begley, who joined the LGBT+ marching band in the 1980s, described the LGBAC’s brand of “quiet activism” in an interview with The Atlantic.
She said: “We were quiet activists. No one would invite ACT UP to their parade. But small towns were inviting the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps to march in their Fourth of July parade.”
Begley described attending local parades, and how it would slowly dawn on those watching that the marching band had all LGBT+ members. Some, she said, would give a thumbs down, but others just kept clapping.
She said: “It was almost subversive to use the most mom-and-apple-pie, all-American of mediums, the marching band, to open minds. It really is.”
A gay staffer has been appointed to a powerful role by president-elect Joe Biden.
The incoming leader, who this week received the official go-ahead for his transition to power, has been hard at work setting up the team of top officials who will fill his White House.
As he makes a number of cabinet posts and high-profile appointments, Biden has tapped a prominent gay staffer for an important role.
Gay staffer Carlos Elizondo tapped for top White House role
Carlos Elizondo has been named the social secretary for the incoming White House, after previously filling a similar role for Biden for all eight years of his vice presidency under Barack Obama.
The role places him in charge of planning, coordination and execution of official social events at the White House.
Biden said in a statement dated Friday (20 November): “I’m proud to name additional members of our team who will help deliver the change America needs in these difficult times. Their dedication to overcoming the challenges facing our country today are rooted in their diverse backgrounds and experiences. They will serve the American people and help build back better, creating a more just, equitable, and united nation.”
Incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain added: “To bring president-elect Biden and vice president-elect Harris’ agenda to life you must have a boundless team of experts ready for day one.
“Today’s appointees are respected leaders who will bring a commitment to serving the American people each and every day. They will support our work to build an administration and White House that represents America and delivers results.”
Elizondo, who has previously worked in events at Georgetown University and Walt Disney World, currently lives with his partner in Washington DC.
Joe Biden administration could have a number of high-ranking LGBT+ staffers
The staffer is likely to be far from the only out figure in a senior White House role. Karine Jean-Pierre, currently chief of staff to vice president-elect Kamala Harris, could become the first out lesbian and first Black woman to be named White House press secretary.
Dr Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s secretary of health and one of the most senior trans officials in the US, has also been touted as an outside chance at a healthcare role.
Meanwhile, former presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is said to be in the running for a potential cabinet appointment, though several of the higher-ranking roles he was initially touted for, such as ambassador to the United Nations, have since been filled with picks prioritising policy experience.
Germany’s government has approved legislation that will offer €3,000 in compensation for gay military personnel who have experienced discrimination.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defence minister, said: “I know that we can’t make up for the personal injustice they suffered but, with the lifting of verdicts and the payment of lump-sum compensation, we want to send a signal of redress.”
The new legislation aims to “restore the dignity of these people who wanted nothing other than to serve Germany”, according to Kramp-Karrenbauer.
The legislation still requires paliamentary approval, but Kramp-Karrenbauer is optimistic about getting the support of lawmakers. She hopes to “rehabilitate and compensate those affected next year”.
The ministry previously commissioned a study and found “systemic discrimination” in the military from 1955 to 2000. This included both West Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr, and the military of reunited Germany from 1990.
The study found that homosexuality was “viewed as a security risk in the Bundeswehr until the turn of the millennium and made a career as an officer or non-commissioned officer impossible”.
The new legislation will also cover victims of discrimination in East Germany’s National People’s Army. Kramp-Karrenbauer said this was “an important signal” because 2020 marks 30 years since the reunification of Germany.
The government will offer €3,000 in compensation to personnel who received military court verdicts for consensual gay sex. Soldiers who were dismissed, denied for promotions or put under investigation will also be eligible for compensation.
In September, Kramp-Karrenbauer apologised to those who suffered discrimination.
The defence minister said: “I very much regret the practice of discrimination against homosexuals in the Bundeswehr, which stood for the policy of that time. I apologize to those who suffered because of it.”
This comes after the UK Ministry of Defence apologised for similar policies in January. However, the UK has not yet introduced an official compensation scheme for those dismissed from the military on grounds of their sexual orientation.
More than 150 people have sought compensation in the UK, though its thought the true number affected is likely to run into the thousands.
Rudolf Scharping, previously Germany’s defence minister, ended official discrimination in 2000 after an officer took a legal case to Germany’s highest court having been removed from his position. Scharping stated: “Homosexuality does not constitute grounds for restrictions in terms of assignment or status.”
A constitutional amendment before the Hungarian Parliament would effectively ban LGBTQ people from adopting, drawing the ire of human rights activists.
Draft language submitted to parliament this month by Justice Minister Judit Varga states that children must be raised “in accordance with the values based on our homeland’s constitutional identity and Christian culture.”
“The basis for family relations is marriage,” it reads in part. “The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”
Under the amendment, only opposite-sex married couples would be eligible to adopt children, with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis by Minister of Family Affairs Katalin Novák. The bill effectively bans gay couples, single people and unmarried straight couples from adopting.
It also asserts that the government “protects children’s right to the gender identity they were born with.”
LGBTQ advocates view the proposals, which are expected to pass next month, as yet another assault by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s right-wing party, Fidesz, which has been in power since 2010 and maintains a two-thirds majority in Parliament.
A new constitution enacted in 2012 defines marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman and asserts that the traditional family is “the basis of the survival of the nation.”
Gay people “can do what they want, but they cannot get their marriages recognized by the state,” Orbán said in 2016 interview. “An apple cannot ask to be called a pear.”
In 2019, the speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly, László Kövér, compared same-sex couples wanting to adopt or marry to pedophiles. “Morally, there is no difference,” said Kövér, a founding member of Fidesz and a close ally of Orbán.
Senior party officials even called for a boycott of Coca-Cola when it launched an LGBTQ-inclusive ad campaign that summer. In May, the government reversed regulations allowing transgender and intersex citizens to change the gender listed on legal documents. The new regulations redefined the word “nem” — which in Hungarian can mean either “sex” or “gender” — to refer specifically to a person’s biological sex at birth “based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes.”
The law puts trans and intersex people “at risk of harassment, discrimination, and even violence in daily situations when they need to use identity documents,” according to Human Rights Watch.
Another new proposal would abolish the Equal Treatment Authority, an autonomous agency tasked with investigating discrimination based on sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and other factors.
Some responsibilities would be taken over by the commissioner for fundamental rights, Ákos Kozma, an Orbán loyalist who’s been largely silent on LGBTQ issues. ILGA-Europe, a leading European rights group, said the sole purpose of transferring control to Kozma is to “reduce the efficacy” of anti-discrimination policies.
These measures come as Hungary, like the rest of the world, is battling a deadly pandemic. Tamás Dombos, a board member for the Hatter Society, Hungary’s oldest and largest gay rights group, said the timing is strategic.
“Now the debate focuses on this issue rather than how bad the government is handling the pandemic or the changes they want to make to the electoral process,” Dombos told NBC News. “They create this noise so the opposition can’t focus on one issue.”
The ban on legal recognition of transgender people was passed just as the pandemic’s first wave hit Hungary. To date, the country of 9.8 million has reported 157,000 cases of Covid-19 and 3,380 deaths.
“The government has used the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext to grab unlimited power and is using Parliament to rubber-stamp problematic nonpublic-health-related bills,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday.
The new amendments were presented on Nov. 10, the same day Parliament voted to extend a coronavirus-related state of emergency that Orbán had declared a week earlier.
Not only do they further stigmatize transgender people and same-sex couples raising children, Dombos said, they also make outreach to LGBTQ youth nearly impossible.
But the attacks on the LGBTQ community aren’t limited to the corridors of the Hungarian Parliament. “A Fairy Tale for Everyone,” a Hungarian children’s book with well-known tales incorporating gay people and other marginalized groups, was met with a barrage of homophobic vitriol when it was published in September. A leading Fidesz politician tore apart a copy page by page at a news conference, and a petition demanding it be removed from stores garnered more than 85,000 signatures.
“Hungarians are patient and tolerant” of homosexuality, he said. “We also tolerate provocation well, but there is a red line that cannot be crossed.”
The book’s authors, Dorottya Redai and Boldizsár Nagy, said they were disturbed by Orbán’s rhetoric. “When a prime minister says something like this … others will think they can also,” they told Time magazine.
Dombos said while he hasn’t seen physical violence, people on the street are getting more vocal. “Now you get called names. They shout, ‘Hey f—-t!’ That never happened before,” he said. “They feel encouraged now.”
Last month, Redai told Time that a large poster declaring, “Homosexual propaganda publication, which is dangerous for children, is sold here,” was draped outside a bookstore selling “A Fairy Tale for Everyone.”
Even a cosmopolitan city like Budapest, one of the first in Eastern Europe to hold a Pride march, hasn’t been immune. In August, a rainbow flag displayed outside City Hall was ripped down and thrown in the garbage.
Előd Novák, party leader of the extremist group Mi Hazánk, took credit for the vandalism, declaring that the “anti-family symbol has no place on the street.”
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony had been the first to fly the symbol of the LGBTQ community on city property.
Days earlier, nationalist football fans calling themselves Aryan Greens reportedly set fire to a Pride flag outside another municipal building and replaced it with a banner for their favorite team.
The increasing homophobia has had a chilling effect on Hungary’s LGBTQ community.
“The general strategy for people is to stay in the closet,” Dombos said. “More than half aren’t out to their family, and only about 20 percent are out at work.” It has also pushed some to leave the country.
“The reasons why people emigrate are complex, but many LGBTQ people say dealing with discrimination and homophobic language day after day was an important factor,” Dombos said. “It’s quite easy to leave within the E.U. — you can go to Germany or other European countries where the jobs are better and there’s more acceptance.”
For those who stay and fight, countering a party with two-thirds majority is difficult under normal circumstances. During the pandemic, activists can’t have demonstrations, meet with politicians or even even hold in-person gatherings.
“We try to gather online, but it’s just not the same,” Dombos said.
Just days after Hungary announced the latest proposed amendments, the European Union’s executive commission announced its first formal strategy to protect the rights of LGBTQ citizens.
“We will defend the rights of LGBT people against those who have more and more appetite to attack them from an ideological point of view,” E.U. Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said Nov. 13 at a news conference. “This belongs to the authoritarian playbook, and it does not have a place in the E.U.”
The strategy proposes adding anti-gay hate crimes to the list of offenses for which the E.U. could set minimum penalties, including terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering. It would also protect the legal status of same-sex married couples in all member states and tie funding to compliance with E.U. anti-discrimination laws.
Varga, the justice minister, condemned the strategy on Twitter, saying Hungary would “not accept any financial threats for protecting the traditional role of family and marriage.”
In any event, the guidelines aren’t binding on member countries. When dozens of Polish cities declared themselves “LGBT-free zones,”the commission could only deny small amounts of funding to a half-dozen towns.
Orbán has forged ideological ties with Poland in rejecting what he sees as an E.U. agenda. At a World War I memorial ceremony in August, Orbán called on central Europe to unite around its Christian roots.
“Western Europe has given up on a Christian Europe,” he warned, “and instead experiments with a godless cosmos, rainbow families, migration and open societies.”
So far, Hungary’s response to European Union pressure over human rights has been to veto E.U. legislation. Last week, Hungary and Poland united to veto the E.U.’s trillion-euro budget and coronavirus recovery package, because access is linked to countries’ adherence to the rule of law and European values.
Orbán previously vetoed ratification of an E.U. treaty on violence against women and an agreement to prevent discrimination against LGBTQ people.
The prime minister, according to Dombos, enjoys the political theatrics and “likes the idea that he’s shaping the E.U.”
Fidesz actually began as a progressive, youth-oriented party in the late 1980s, Dombos added, but then the political landscape changed and the party filled the vacuum in the right-wing space.
“More and more they became extreme, with statements not just about LGBT people, but about homeless people, Roma, Jews, migrants and asylum-seekers,” Dombos said. “Their strategy is to come up with an enemy, create a campaign around it and pass a law, and then tell us how they’ve rescued us from disaster.”
Mauree Turner made history this month by becoming the country’s first openly nonbinary state legislator. Turner, 27, was elected to represent District 88 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives on Nov. 3 with more than 70 percent of the vote and assumed office last week. Turner is also thought to be the first Muslim lawmaker to serve in the Oklahoma Legislature.
Turner, who uses both they/them and she/her pronouns, grew up in Ardmore, a city of 25,000 people that sits smack in between Oklahoma City to the north and Dallas to the south. Turner said their childhood was relatively idealistic: They had a supportive and involved mother and grew up singing in the choir and participating in their school band. They attended college at Oklahoma State University and then spent time organizing for various civil rights projects in Oklahoma, including an American Civil Liberties Union criminal justice reform campaign.
“While I never wanted to be in politics in this aspect, community organizing is always about answering a call to action, and that’s what my community was doing,” Turner said.
Turner hopes their election victory and presence in the Legislature will help LGBTQ people in Oklahoma and beyond see themselves reflected and represented.
“I’m still reading so many messages from folks around the world that are just happy to have some sort of representation,” said Turner, whose district represents central Oklahoma City. “We’ve been able to create a space where folks can not only see themselves but also feel a little more empowered to show up, either fully as themselves or even just a little more fuller.”
Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a national organization that trains and advocates for LGBTQ political candidates, called Turner a “trailblazer,” saying, “Their courage to run openly will inspire more nonbinary people to pursue careers in elected office.”
“Of all the states to achieve a milestone political moment for nonbinary people, few would have thought it would be Oklahoma, where there are so few LGBTQ elected officials,” Parker said in a statement. “But Mauree ran a tireless campaign focused on the issues that matter to their district while also being authentic and open about who they are.”
As for the issues that matter to Turner, their campaign platform focused on criminal justice reform and more access to health care and public education.
Criminal justice is an issue that’s particularly personal for Turner.
“My father and my grandfather were incarcerated up until I was ’round 12 or 13,” they said. “That was all I knew growing up — going to see my dad or granddad in prison or jail.”
Last year, Gov. Kevin Stitt released nearly 500 inmates in the largest commutation in U.S. history. But this month, to Turner’s dismay, Oklahomans voted against State Question 805, which sought to end sentence enhancements for repeat nonviolent offenders, by 61 percent to 39 percent.
“It was devastating for a lot of reasons for me on a personal level, and I think for Oklahoma’s growth as a whole,” Turner said. “Honestly, I don’t blame the people in how the vote ended up. What I blame is institutions that benefit from keeping Oklahomans incarcerated.
“Right now in Oklahoma, we’ve got mothers sitting in prison for 30-plus years because they wrote bad checks to be able to provide food for their families,” Turner said.
Another more local issue Turner is focused on in District 88 — one of the most liberal districts in deep red Oklahoma — is power lines. An ice storm last month left many in their district without power for weeks. Turner noted that power lines are underground in many more affluent districts but not in District 88, which Turner said is unacceptable. Turner wants to get those power lines underground in the next 10 to 15 years.
Turner said they think part of their campaign’s appeal was their belief in “people- and community-based solutions.” Now that they’re in office, Turner is starting to lay the groundwork for what they hope will be a long and successful political career.
“Politics is a place where you figure out not necessarily what you can and can’t do but what is within your bandwidth in the immediate [future] and what is in your bandwidth to do in the long run,” they said. “You have to continuously figure out what helps you continuously show up to this work in the best version of you, so that you have that longevity of being able to do this work.”
California’s average daily number of coronavirus cases has tripled in the last month, a Times analysis has found, as pandemic conditions deteriorated dramatically around the state.
The coronavirus is now infecting more Californians daily than at any previous point in the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns about a new peak in coronavirus-related deaths by Christmas.
As of Saturday night, California was averaging more than 11,500 new coronavirus cases a day over the last seven days, more than triple the number a month earlier, on Oct. 21, which was nearly 3,200, according to a Times analysis.
Even during the summertime surge, which led to the season with California’s worst COVID-19 death toll, the average daily number of coronavirus cases over a seven-day period never exceeded 10,000.
COVID-19 hospitalizations have doubled in the last month, the analysis found. And COVID-19 deaths have suddenly begun to climb in recent days. In the last week, an average of 65 Californian deaths have been reported daily, a more than 50% increase from two weeks ago, when 43 fatalities were reported daily on average.
The rate at which Californians are testing positive for the coronavirus was up dramatically in the last week — a troubling indication of the rapid spread of the highly contagious virus. On Saturday, the coronavirus positivity rate hit 6.1%, double the percentage it was on Nov. 1, when the rate was 2.98%.
On Saturday, San Diego and San Bernardino counties both recorded their highest single-day coronavirus case totals in the history of the pandemic, according to health officials.
Saturday continued a disturbing trend of daily case counts surpassing 4,000. On Saturday, 4,387 coronavirus cases were reported, according to an independent Times tally of coronavirus cases; on Friday, 4,158 were reported; and on Thursday, 4,943 were tallied, a single-day record.
If L.A. County averages 4,000 cases daily over a five-day period, officials have said they will plan to require the closure of outdoor restaurant dining areas, which would restrict eateries to serving food only by takeout and delivery for the first time since May. Officials said they plan to give three days’ notice before such a new health order would become effective.
And should L.A. County average 4,500 cases daily over a five-day period, officials have warned that they will impose a springtime style stay-at-home order.
Daily deaths are also starting to climb in L.A. County. On Saturday, an average of 23 residents in Los Angeles County were reported to be dying from COVID-19 daily over the previous seven days; that’s double the figure from early November, when about 11 people were dying a day.
There are a number of reasons for the sudden surge in coronavirus cases in California, where a surge began in late October.
They include the colder weather, which encourages people to stay indoors; increased travel from other harder-hit states; gatherings to watch the NBA Finals and the World Series, won by the Lakers and Dodgers, respectively; Halloween; protests and celebrations related to the election; a general increase in social gatherings; an increase in workplace outbreaks; a premature feeling that the danger of the pandemic had passed; and fatigue and even resentment of continuing with COVID-19 safety precautions, according to state and local health officials.
Cumulatively, California has recorded 1.1 million coronavirus cases and more than 18,700 deaths. Nationally, more than 12 million coronavirus cases have been diagnosed and more than 255,000 people in the U.S. have died.
Federal, state and local authorities are urging people to stay home for Thanksgiving and abandon Thanksgiving travel plans, whether it be a cross-country plane flight or a drive across town, to avoid spreading the virus at celebrations. The virus can be transmitted by people who seem perfectly healthy and never fall sick.
A travel advisory issued by California in mid-November implored residents to avoid nonessential out-of-state travel and asks those who arrive from outside of the state to quarantine for 14 days, meaning they should stay at home or other lodging as much as possible during that time and order food by delivery.
L.A. County’s director of public health, Barbara Ferrer, urged college students living on campus to not return home just for the Thanksgiving holiday. Students who do end up returning home for a month or more, she said, should quarantine in separate rooms for as much as possible for a 14-day period. If they haven’t yet returned home, she advised that it’s too late for them to partake in communal Thanksgiving celebrations, which risks spreading the virus to the rest of the family and friends.
Officials say it’s safest to keep Thanksgiving celebrations just among people in the household. For people who do intend to invite others from outside their household to gatherings, a state health order
COVID-19 has already killed more than double the number of people in L.A. County than died from the flu in the last cold-and-flu season. “This should serve as a severe demonstration of how much more dangerous COVID-19 is than the flu,” L.A. County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis said Thursday.
Last week, Los Angeles County issued an advisory urging people to stay home as much as possible for the next two to three weeks. On Friday, a new health order went into effect that ordered nonessential businesses and restaurants with outdoor dining areas to shut their doors to the public between 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.; although takeout and delivery services may continue during those overnight hours.
On Saturday, California’s new limited overnight stay-at-home order went into effect in counties in the most restrictive COVID-19 tier, which covers 94% of California’s population. It’s aimed at being far less intrusive than the statewide stay-at-home order implemented in the spring, and designed to curb late-night drinking and group gatherings, where inhibitions are lowered, masks are taken off and the virus can easily spread.
The order prohibits all gatherings between 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. among people from different households and all nonessential activities outside the home with people from other households.
The order does allow people to leave their homes in the overnight hours to go grocery shopping, pick up takeout food, walk the dog, and work for essential businesses, which includes working for restaurants serving food for takeout and delivery.
Experts say similar government-ordered limits on late-night activity in Europe have helped drive down surges in the coronavirus there.
The surge in cases has been seen across the state. Here is an analysis by region among selected counties in California’s most populated areas as of Saturday night. More detailed analysis for all of California’s 58 counties can be found on The Times’ California coronavirus tracker website