Mike Baker
@ByMikeBaker
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National correspondent for @nytimes. Author of zero books. Signal: 646-394-3002. On Bluesky: https://t.co/o0GitgQpYI
Cascadia
Joined August 2010
Another huge crowd tonight in Portland, including a new "wall" on the front lines: a Wall of Vets. Here's a look at the line of military veterans getting set up here in front of the federal courthouse. Behind them, the Wall of Moms and the Wall of Dads are arriving.
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I have spent the past few days researching the training of Uvalde officers, including the tactics they were expected to use to halt school shooters. The documents are jarring. Here’s a thread of our findings so far. 1/9.
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Student calls to 911:.12:03—whispered she's in room 112.12:10—said multiple dead.12:13—called again.12:16—says 8-9 students alive.12:19—student calls from room 111.12:21—3 shots heard on call.12:36—another call.12:43—asks for police.12:47—asks for police.
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With leaf blowers, the protesters appear to be winning this battle with the feds, who have launched an immense amount of tear gas
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The guidelines provide sobering clarity: The first officers may be risking their lives. But, it says, innocent lives take priority. “A first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider another career field.". 5/9
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The protest crowds in Portland continue to grow in response to the arrival of the feds. There are probably about 2,000 people here right now in front of the Justice Center, with moms in yellow lined up in front, stretching across a whole block.
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Hello again from Portland. The "Wall of Moms" just arrived at the federal courthouse, and their numbers have grown substantially once again.
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Here is Marine Corps veteran Duston Obermeyer talking about the Wall of Vets. He mentions Chris David, a Navy veteran that went up to speak with federal officers last week and got brutally hit with a baton. That backstory/video here:
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South Dakota has launched a campaign to combat meth. With this new logo.
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EXCLUSIVE: .For weeks, thousands of flu samples sat in Seattle as researchers sought to test and flag them for coronavirus. The C.D.C. wouldn’t allow it. When testing did happen, it was too late. The virus was upon us. w/ @sherifink.
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Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler says the tear gas stings. Says egregious overreaction from feds. Calls it urban warfare.
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The Uvalde training session 2 months ago relied on guidelines that give explicit expectations for officers responding to an active shooter. The training is clear: Time is of the essence. The “first priority is to move in and confront the attacker.”. 3/9
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The man in this Portland video is Christopher David. A Navy veteran, he tells us he went to the protests for the first time to ask officers about the constitution. He said his fingers are broken and he needs surgery. MORE:
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But how should officers confront the gunman? With a tactical team? The training says that's probably not feasible, because the urgency is so high. A SINGLE OFFICER, the training says, may need to confront the suspect on their own. 4/9
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I'm out in the Portland suburbs, where hundreds of Trump supporters are gathering for an event. They say they will be driving into Portland later tonight.
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The training expectations are obviously in stark contrast to what we are seeing in Uvalde. Police officials have said that officers were reluctant to engage the gunman because “they could’ve been shot.”. 6/9.
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The Proud Boys are ecstatic tonight about getting mentioned in the debate tonight. "Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy," writes one prominent Proud Boy.
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It’s clear that officers did not follow that scenario this week. 19 officers staged outside the classroom. 78 minutes elapsed before they entered. Children repeatedly called 911 from inside. “It was the wrong decision,” top officer says. 8/9.
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A new threat reaches the United States: A massive hornet with mandibles that rip bees to shreds and a stinger so potent that one unfortunate victim likened it to "having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh.".
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We are continuing to scrutinize the Uvalde response. Meanwhile, here’s a look at nationwide training for active shooters. “If you know children are being murdered, why do you wait? Get in there.”. 9/9.
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The guidelines actually provide scenarios in which officers are shot, including one modeled after the Santa Fe High School shooting, also in Texas. The scenario explains that if one officer is shot, the second “is expected to go on responding solo.”. 7/9
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Clashes. Trump people unload paintballs and pepper spray. They shot me too.
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In the past two years, the Uvalde school district has hosted at least two active-shooter training days. One of them was just two months ago. The trainings included both classroom teachings and role-playing scenarios inside school hallways (below). 2/9
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Army veteran Clint Hall says the federal presence here is wrong. He says it has only served to inflame tensions.
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Total confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases at end of each Tuesday:.• Jan. 14 — 0.• Jan. 21 — 1.• Jan. 28 — 5.• Feb. 4 — 11.• Feb. 11 — 14.• Feb. 18 — 25.• Feb. 25 — 59.• Mar. 3 — 125.• Mar. 10 — 1,004.• Mar. 17 — 5,902.• Mar. 24 — 53,478.
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There are also a whole bunch of nurses who are here in blue scrubs. The overall crowd appears to me to be the largest yet. With the caveat that I'm terrible at estimating crowd sizes, I would guess 4,000 people.
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I have shifted up to Seattle today to follow a large demonstration that's in solidarity with Portland. I'd estimate a crowd of 2,000 already. They just torched construction buildings at the site of a new youth detention center. Meanwhile, feds are here
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Reported coronavirus deaths yesterday:.• France: 0.• United Kingdom: 0.• Canada: 4.• Germany: 6.• Italy: 6.• United States: 1,450.
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A distillery in Portland realized they had the equipment and alcohol needed to make hand sanitizer. Now they are producing it and giving it away to customers.
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She applied to 15 baseball teams and didn't get a response. So she changed her name on her résumé from Rachel to Rae and cut the word "softball" from the description of her as a Division 1 catcher. “I got a ton of responses.". Now she's with the Yankees.
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People in the protest crowd react to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler saying he won't commit to abolishing the police.
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A Black family in Seattle got their home appraised: $670,000. 3 weeks later, they took down their family photos and African art. A white neighbor stood in for the family when a new appraiser arrived. New value: $929,000.
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What a photo. In Manhattan last night. 📸 by Hiroko Masuike.
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This morning, authorities in Portland arrested Proud Boys member Alan Swinney. He faces a dozen charges, including assault, unlawful use of weapon, and menacing.
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NEW: Documents show that Uvalde had done extensive preparations for active shooters, including a training that brought together officers from five agencies who roamed hallways with their guns drawn, role-playing how to stop a killer. It didn’t help.
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It wasn't just Trump pressuring Raffensperger. Here's what Mark Meadows had to say on the call, per @bluestein .
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The feds go on the offensive while protesters play the Imperial March on a speaker.
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Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is entering the protest crowd right now. People are already confronting him.
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Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of Oregon's attempt to clear a sperm-whale carcass off the beach. The method? Obliteration via 20 cases of dynamite. It's an event that led to what is surely one of the greatest local TV news segments of the century:.
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Seattle: I hope you can step back and appreciate this moment. Not only have your communal efforts over the past month saved lives locally, those ongoing efforts are now helping save lives in other states.
Washington State received 500 ventilators from the national stockpile. The state is returning most of those so they can go to other locations with more dire needs.
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There's another huge crowd out in Portland tonight. I'd estimate 2,000 right now. To get things started, here's a sampling of some of the signs in the crowd.
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Biden's lead in Michigan has grown to more than 34,000 votes. That's about three times larger than Trump's victory there in 2016.
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"Go back to your bunker," Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan tells Trump after he demands that she reclaim the city's streets.
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Here's video of James Mattis wearing a mask, urging others to do the same and saying: "Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that divisiveness will never work in defeating an enemy."
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NEW:. An autopsy has found that Manuel Ellis, a black man who died in police custody in Tacoma, was killed as a result of oxygen deprivation and the physical restraint used in his arrest. "I can't breathe," he said before he died.
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Emails and interviews show that after the weeks of C.D.C. rejections, researchers in Seattle decided to defy regulators and test anyway. They ended up finding and reporting the first case of community-transmission in the region.
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Here's is more complete footage of what happened in Seattle, with the car speeding in, an apparent shooting, and the man getting out with a gun.
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NEW: A man who knew Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar tells us that Jabbar had converted to Islam and then began acting erratically in recent months. The concerning behavior led to him having limited contact with his children.
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Total number of confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases at each Tuesday:.Jan. 14 — 0.Jan. 21 — 1.Jan. 28 — 5.Feb. 4 — 11.Feb. 11 — 14.Feb. 18 — 25.Feb. 25 — 59.Mar. 3 — 125.Mar. 10 — 1,004.
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We spent much of today interviewing a series of people who knew New Orleans attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar, including his brother, who spoke to Jabbar recently. “I would have never imagined him doing something like this,” he told us. 1/8.
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Incredible scene. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler overcome with another volley of federal tear gas.
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The feds have retreated. The protesters are back at the fence
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The moms were placed up front last night. Tonight they are behind a line of young people with shields.
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Asked if Letlow had any underlying conditions that would have made his death more likely, Dr. G.E. Ghali said: "None. All COVID related." .
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This guy has a bag of beans and is throwing them over, a few beans at a time, and saying "Here's your Goya beans."
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60 people showed up for a choir practice earlier this month. 45 got sick. 1 has died. A remarkable window into how contagious coronavirus can be, even when it appears nobody is symptomatic:.
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I spoke with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. She said she spoke with Chad Wolf, the Homeland Security secretary, and asked that he remove federal agents from the streets of Portland. She said he refused.
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Earlier this year, the feds signed an agreement that let Boeing executives off the hook for the 737 MAX catastrophes, which killed 346 people. The lead prosecutor, Erin Nealy Cox, then took a job with the firm that leads Boeing's criminal defense.
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Nearly a dozen Liberty University students are sick with symptoms that suggest coronavirus.
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Hundreds of protesters are out in Portland tonight for the 100th night of demonstrations. Police have blocked the road. We are already seeing molotov cocktails from protesters and riot-control munitions from police.
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A crowd has surrounded some Black Lives Matter advocates. The crowd is chanting "All Lives Matter"
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This is absolutely breathtaking. There were 121,200 new coronavirus cases identified in the United States today alone. That's more infections than Japan has found over the course of the entire pandemic.
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After getting much of their own tear gas blown back at them last night, it looks like the feds went to the hardware store and got leaf blowers of their own.
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Turn up the volume and watch as thousands of people march in silence through the rainy streets of Seattle . via @lieberschnitzel.
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BREAKING: The University of Washington, with more than 50,000 students, is closing classrooms and moving to remote learning amid the coronavirus outbreak.
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NEW: After a federal task force gunned down antifa activist Michael Reinoehl last month, Attorney General Bill Barr reported that Reinoehl was shot after he had "produced" a gun. But it turns out the gun was found in Reinoehl’s pocket.
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All the Proud Boy vehicles have tape over their license plates.
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The Proud Boys are now sharing the group's logo with the president's words emblazoned like a slogan.
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200 left-wing protesters are on the streets in Portland right now, with anti-Biden and anti-police messages. "We are ungovernable," one sign says.
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NEW: After pushback from the mayor's office in Seattle and protests that stayed away from federal buildings, the feds have informed city officials that the CBP tactical team brought into Seattle last week has left town.
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NEW: An internal Homeland Security memo warned this past week that tactical teams sent to control unrest in Portland had no training in managing such demonstrations. w/ @KannoYoungs and @MrOlmos .
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This isn't the official route of the Trump rally, but there is still an endless stream of Trump vehicles coming in to downtown Portland.
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Please consider reading this story about Craig Coyner, a former mayor who spent decades serving the less fortunate and shaping the city he loved before ending up homeless and frostbitten, surrounded by the prosperity he helped create.
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Trump updates.• He fell asleep on Air Force One on Wed.• They learned of Hope Hicks infection Thur.• Trump still went ahead with in-person fundraiser.• At event, he seemed lethargic.• Now has coldlike symptoms.• Pence negative.• Biden negative.More:.
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An update from Seattle area:.• Hospitals still seeing "manageable" caseloads.• Data models suggest transmission rate has dropped from 2.7 to 1.4.• Deaths on slower trajectory than many states.• “It would be grossly irresponsible to stop" distancing.
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More than 4,000 (!) new cases in the U.S. today. Total tally at end of each Thursday:. • Jan 16 — 0.• Jan 23 — 1.• Jan 30 — 6.• Feb 6 — 12.• Feb 13 — 15.• Feb 20 — 27.• Feb 27 — 60.• Mar 5 — 227.• Mar 12 — 1,667.• Mar 19 — 12,326.
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"FED GOONS OUT OF PDX" is now projected on the Justice Center
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A man just drove through a crowd of demonstrators in Seattle and then appeared to shoot someone. Authorities say the man is in custody, one person shot is in the hospital in stable condition. Here's a capture from a FB livestream, via twitch
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Stuck in a snowstorm with a batch of vaccines that would expire in 6 hours, a team of health care workers in Oregon began knocking on car windows, giving impromptu shots to stranded drivers.
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There are about 150 protesters in Portland marching right now toward an ICE facility, chanting "Fuck Joe Biden."
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People have surrounded the mayor, cursing him and calling for resignation.
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NEW: 1 man has been shot and killed in Portland. The man was wearing a hat with insignia for Patriot Prayer, a far-right group.
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Elections administrators in Clark County, Wash. just sent these images of ballots burned in Vancouver's ballot box arson. Officials are drying out the ballots, then sorting through them to identify voters who have yet to seek a replacement ballot.
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There it is. Wow. After being down EIGHT POINTS on election night, Seattle's socialist councilmember, Kshama Sawant, is winning later ballots by such a large margin that she's moved ahead. What a remarkable rebuke to Amazon's effort to alter the council.
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~140 police officers were injured in the U.S. Capitol siege, including brain injuries, smashed spinal discs and one officer who is likely to lose his eye. "another was stabbed with a metal fence stake”.
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The decision not to tap the existing flu study for monitoring was just one in a series of missed chances by the federal government during the early days of the outbreak, when containment would have been easier. Tonight, there are 973 cases in 37 states.
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With the usual caveat that I'm terrible at crowd estimates, I'd say about 1,000 people are here throughout the parking lot right now and maybe like 1 million flags. The current plan is to drive into Portland as a huge caravan at 6 p.m.
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Police are pleading with the right-wing crowd, which includes many Proud Boy members, to move back to where their rally was supposed to be
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Holy smokes look at the size of the crowd in Portland tonight — on the 7th day of protests.
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Just now: For the first time in Oregon history, lawmakers have voted to expel a colleague: Rep. Mike Nearman, who helped a far-right crowd breach the state Capitol in December. 59-1 vote. All Republicans (except Nearman) voted for expulsion. Background:
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I have to pause and give a shout out to the sign language interpreter working to capture this moment behind the mayor.
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Here's our team's video investigation of the federal crackdown in Portland. It includes some incredible footage, and the producers did an outstanding job capturing the scene here. I hope you take some time to watch it.
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Some of the remaining moms have their hands up at the fence
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By that point, we now know, the virus had already spread undetected. Two people had already died. A nursing home now linked to 19 deaths hadn’t yet learned that their sickness troubles were coronavirus.
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BREAKING: Sources tell us that Michael Reinoehl, the man being investigated for the killing of a right-wing activist in Portland, has been killed by authorities in Lacey, Wash.
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