#and what if Greg Abbott takes away her social security and her rights | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

Link

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 27, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

America is in a watershed moment. Since the 1980s, the country has focused on individualism: the idea that the expansion of the federal government after the Depression in the 1930s created a form of collectivism that we must destroy by cutting taxes and slashing regulation to leave individuals free to do as they wish.

Domestically, that ideology meant dismantling government regulation, social safety networks, and public infrastructure projects. Internationally, it meant a form of “cowboy diplomacy” in which the U.S. usually acted on its own to rebuild nations in our image.

Now, President Joe Biden appears to be trying to bring back a focus on the common good.

For all that Republicans today insist that individualism is the heart of Americanism, in fact the history of federal protection of the common good began in the 1860s with their own ancestors, led by Abraham Lincoln, who wrote: “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves---in their separate, and individual capacities.”

The contrast between these two ideologies has been stark this week.

On the one hand are those who insist that the government cannot limit an individual’s rights by mandating either masks or vaccines, even in the face of the deadly Delta variant of the coronavirus that is, once again, taking more than 1000 American lives a day.

In New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio has required teachers to be vaccinated, the city’s largest police union has said it will sue if a vaccine is mandated for its members.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday issued an executive order prohibiting any government office or any private entity receiving government funds from requiring vaccines.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has also forbidden mask mandates, but today Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper ruled that DeSantis’s order is unconstitutional. Cooper pointed out that in 1914 and 1939, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that individual rights take a back seat to public safety: individuals can drink alcohol, for example, but not drive drunk. DeSantis was scathing of the opinion and has vowed to appeal. Meanwhile, NBC News reported this week that information about the coronavirus in Florida, as well as Georgia, is no longer easily available on government websites.

On the other hand, as predicted, the full approval of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration has prompted a flood of vaccine mandates.

The investigation into the events of January 6, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, also showcases the tension between individualism and community.

Yesterday, after months in which Republicans, including former president Donald Trump, called for the release of the identity of the officer who shot Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt, Capitol Police officer Lieutenant Michael Byrd, the 28-year veteran of the force who shot Babbitt, gave an interview to Lester Holt of NBC News.

Right-wing activists have called Babbitt a martyr murdered by the government, but Byrd explained that he was responsible for protecting 60 to 80 members of the House and their staffers. As rioters smashed the glass doors leading into the House chamber, Byrd repeatedly called for them to get back. When Ashli Babbitt climbed through the broken door, he shot her in the shoulder. She later died from her injuries. Byrd said he was doing his job to protect our government. “I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd told Holt. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

The conflict between individualism and society also became clear today as the House select committee looking into the attack asked social media giants to turn over “all reviews, studies, reports, data, analyses, and communications” they had gathered about disinformation distributed by both foreign and domestic actors, as well as information about “domestic violent extremists” who participated in the attack.

Representative Jim Banks (R-IN) immediately responded that “Congress has no general power to inquire into private affairs and to compel disclosure….” He urged telecommunications companies and Facebook not to hand over any materials, calling their effort an “authoritarian undertaking.” Banks told Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson that Republicans should punish every lawmaker investigating the January 6 insurrection if they retake control of Congress in 2022.

Biden’s new turn is especially obvious tonight in international affairs. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, a country we entered almost 20 years ago with a clear mission that became muddied almost immediately, has sparked Republican criticism for what many describe as a U.S. defeat.

Since he took office, Biden has insisted on shifting American foreign policy away from U.S. troops alone on the ground toward multilateral pressure using finances and technology.

After yesterday’s bombing in Kabul took the lives of 160 Afghans and 13 American military personnel, Biden warned ISIS-K: "We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

Tonight, a new warning from the State Department warning Americans at the gates of the Kabul airport to “leave immediately” came just before a spokesman for CENTCOM, the United States Central Command in the Defense Department overseeing the Middle East, announced: "U.S. military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties."

Biden’s strike on ISIS-K demonstrated the nation's over-the-horizon technologies that he hopes will replace troops. Even still, the administration continues to call for international cooperation. In a press conference today, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby responded to a question about U.S. control in Afghanistan by saying: “It’s not about U.S. control in the Indo-Pacific. It’s about protecting our country from threats and challenges that emanate from that part of the world. And it’s about revitalizing our network of alliances and partnerships to help our partners in the international community do the same.“

Meanwhile, this afternoon, news broke that the Taliban has asked the United States to keep a diplomatic presence in the country even after it ends its military mission. The Taliban continues to hope for international recognition, in part to claw back some of the aid that western countries—especially the U.S.—will no longer provide, as well as to try to get the country’s billions in assets unfrozen.

A continued diplomatic presence in Afghanistan would make it easier to continue to get allies and U.S. citizens out of the country, but State Department spokesman Ned Price said the idea is a nonstarter unless a future Afghan government protects the rights of its citizens, including its women, and refuses to harbor terrorists. Price also emphasized that the U.S. would not make this decision without consulting allies. “This is not just a discussion the United States will have to decide for itself.… We are coordinating with our international partners, again to share ideas, to ensure that we are sending the appropriate signals and messages to the Taliban,” he said.

Evacuations from Afghanistan continue. Since August 14, they have topped 110,000, with 12,500 people in the last 24 hours.

Perhaps the news story that best illustrates the tension today between individualism and using the government to help everyone is about a natural disaster. Hurricane Ida, which formed in the Caribbean yesterday, is barreling toward the U.S. Gulf Coast. When it hit western Cuba today, it was a Category 1 storm, but meteorologists expect it to pick up speed as it crosses the warm gulf, becoming a Category 4 storm by the time it hits the U.S. coastline. The area from Louisiana to Florida is in the storm’s path. New Orleans could see winds of up to 110 miles an hour and a storm surge of as much as 11 feet. Louisiana officials issued evacuation orders today.

The storm is expected to hit Sunday evening, exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina did. But this time, there is another complication: this is the very part of the country suffering terribly right now from coronavirus. Standing firm on individual rights, only about 40% of Louisiana’s population has been vaccinated, and hospitals are already stretched thin.

Today, President Biden declared an emergency in Louisiana, ordering federal assistance from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the region ahead of the storm, trying to head off a catastrophe. The federal government will also help to pay the costs of the emergency.

—-

Notes:

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/pentagon-officials-hank-taylor-john-kirby-press-briefing-transcript-august-27-afghanistan-update

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/weather/tropical-storm-ida-friday/index.html

https://apnews.com/article/health-louisiana-coronavirus-pandemic-1a2264b5a43033ed70fe9790c2e89437

NYPD story is from the New York Post, but a citation from them always stops the delivery of lots of letters, so I’m going to suggest people look for it themselves.

https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/EO-GA-39_prohibiting_vaccine_mandates_and_vaccine_passports_IMAGE_08-25-2021.pdf

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/27/president-joseph-r-biden-jr-approves-louisiana-emergency-declaration-2/

://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/27/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/#link-KFQMWZKFSNH4DBBMK2VAJMAZF4

Meredith Lee @meredithlleeCENTCOM: "U.S. military forces conducted an over-the-horizon counterterrorism operation today against an ISIS-K planner. The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangahar Province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties."

78 Retweets151 Likes

August 28th 2021

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/08/27/afghanistan-live-updates-taliban-kabul-news/5611093001/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1277715

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-education-florida-coronavirus-pandemic-1908088a0b5c5b02d89fd7e007822408

Ryan Struyk @ryanstruykThe United States is now reporting 1,194 new coronavirus deaths per day, the highest seven-day average since March 19, according to data from @CNN and Johns Hopkins University.

246 Retweets677 Likes

August 27th 2021

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-who-shot-ashli-babbitt-during-capitol-riot-breaks-silence-n1277736

Jim Banks @RepJimBanksRead my letter to 1/6 Chair @BennieGThompson about his norm shattering decision to spy on his colleagues. @ATT @Verizon @TMobile @Facebook @Twitter @FCC

136 Retweets311 Likes

August 27th 2021

/photo/2

https://news.yahoo.com/gop-rep-jim-banks-republicans-195845753.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/politics/us-military-airstrike-isis-k-planner-afghanistan/index.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#letters from an american #heather cox richardson #political #capital riots #Federal Government #US History

3 notes · View notes

phroyd · 4 years

Link

HOUSTON — Over the past week, Dr. Aric Bakshy, an emergency physician at Houston Methodist, had to decide which coronavirus patients he should admit to the increasingly busy hospital and which he could safely send home.

To discuss questions like these, he has turned to doctors at hospitals where he trained in New York City that were overwhelmed by the coronavirus this spring. Now their situations are reversed.

Thumbing through a dog-eared notebook during a recent shift, Dr. Bakshy counted about a dozen people he had treated for coronavirus symptoms. His colleagues in Houston had attended to many more. Meanwhile, friends at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens told him that their emergency department was seeing only one or two virus patients a day.

As Houston’s hospitals face the worst outbreak of the virus in Texas, now one of the nation’s hot zones, Dr. Bakshy and others are experiencing some of the same challenges that their New York counterparts did just a few months ago and are trying to adapt some lessons from that crisis.

Like New York City in March, the Houston hospitals are experiencing a steep rise in caseloads that is filling their beds, stretching their staffing, creating a backlog in testing and limiting the availability of other medical services. Attempts to buy more supplies — including certain protective gear, vital-sign monitors and testing components — are frustrated by weeks of delays, according to hospital leaders.

Methodist is swiftly expanding capacity and hiring more staff, including local nurses who had left their jobs to work in New York when the city’s hospitals were pummeled. “A bed’s a bed until you have a staff,” said Avery Taylor, the nurse manager of a coronavirus unit created just outside Houston in March.

But with the virus raging across the region, medical workers are falling ill. Dr. Bakshy was one of the first at Methodist to have Covid-19, getting it in early March. As of this past week, the number of nurses being hired to help open new units would only replace those out sick.

Methodist, a top-ranked system of eight hospitals, had nearly 400 coronavirus inpatients last Sunday. Nearly a week later — even as physicians tried to be conservative in admitting patients and discharged others as soon as they safely could — the figure was 575. The flagship hospital added 130 inpatient beds in recent days and rapidly filled them. Now, administrators estimate that the number of Covid-19 patients across the system could reach 800 or 900 in coming weeks, and are planning to accommodate up to 1,000.

Other Houston hospitals are seeing similar streams of patients. Inundated public hospitals are sending some patients to private institutions like Methodist while reportedly transferring others to Galveston, 50 miles away.

“What’s been disheartening over the past week or two has been that it feels like we’re back at square one,” Dr. Mir M. Alikhan, a pulmonary and critical care specialist, said to his medical team before rounds. “It’s really a terrible kind of sinking feeling. But we’re not truly back at square one, right? Because we have the last three months of expertise that we’ve developed.”

Houston’s hospitals have some advantages compared with New York’s in the spring. Doctors know more now about how to manage the sickest patients and are more often able to avoid breathing tubes, ventilators and critical care. But one treatment shown to shorten hospital stays, the antiviral drug remdesivir, is being allocated by the state, and hospitals here have repeatedly run out of it.

Methodist’s leaders, who were planning for a surge and had been dealing with a stream of coronavirus patients since March, pointed to the most important difference between Houston now and New York then: the patient mix. The majority of new patients here are younger and healthier and are not as severely ill as many were in New York City, where officials report that over 22,000 are likely to have died from the disease.

But so far, the death toll has not climbed much in Texas and other parts of the South and West seeing a surge.

“We are having to pioneer the way of trying to understand a different curve with some very good characteristics versus the last curve,” said Dr. Marc Boom, Methodist’s president and chief executive.

But he cautioned, “What I’m watching really closely is whether we see a shift back in age — because if the young really get this way out there and then start infecting all of the older, then we may look more like the last wave.”

Dr. Sylvie de Souza, head of the emergency department at Brooklyn Hospital Center, which on Friday reported no new coronavirus admissions and no current inpatient cases, said that she was receiving distressing text messages from doctors elsewhere in the country asking for advice. “It’s disappointing,” she said. “It sort of brings me back to the end of March, and it’s like being there all over again.”

One of the most worrisome trends, hospital administrators said, is the increased politicization of public health measures against the virus. The hospitals in Houston are operating in a very different environment now compared with during New York’s peak in the spring, when federal, state and local leaders agreed to a national pause.

Here in Texas, political leaders have been at odds with one another, and residents sharply disagree about the danger the virus poses and what precautions are necessary. At some Houston hospitals, visitors and patients have refused to wear masks, creating conflicts with security guards at entrances.

As the Fourth of July holiday approached, Methodist spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a public information campaign — including full-page ads wrapped around a local newspaper, social media efforts and billboards. “Stay Safe and Stay Home This July 4th,” the signs say. Methodist also sent a text message to about 10,000 patients providing safety tips. In response, the hospital system received some angry phone calls and texts. “How about you stay at home and quit telling me what to do,” was how one hospital official described them.

The economy in Texas remains open, with only bars shuttered, but Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday issued an order requiring Texans to wear face coverings in public after long opposing such a mandate.

“There is a glimmer of some optimism,” Dr. Boom told the health system’s physicians this past week, reporting that county testing figures showed some signs of improvement.

Many hospitals in New York during the earlier crisis essentially became all-Covid units and endured billions of dollars in losses.

But Methodist and some other private Houston institutions are trying to operate differently now after taking a financial beating from shutting down elective surgeries and procedures this spring.

With safety protocols and expansion plans in place, they are trying to maintain as many services as possible for as long as possible while contending with the flood of coronavirus cases. “No one’s ever done that before,” Dr. Boom said. “We were seeing all the harm from patients delaying care.”

Doctors and nurses have combed through lists of surgical patients, choosing whom to delay. The easiest surgeries to maintain are those that do not require a hospital stay, like treatment for cataracts. Some surgeons who used to keep patients overnight after knee and hip replacements are now allowing them to leave the same day.

The most agonizing decisions concern the hospital’s robust transplant program, in part because its recipients often require a stay in intensive care. Dr. A. Osama Gaber, the program’s director, spoke with a dialysis patient whose kidney transplant had been postponed from March. “She was in tears,” he said. “She almost wanted me to swear to her we’re not going to put her off again.” For now the surgeons plan to continue cautiously.

A key strategy to maintain services is increasing what hospital officials call throughput — discharging patients as quickly as is safely possible. Yet it is not always clear who is ready to leave. Alexander Nelson-Fryar, a 25-year-old treated for coronavirus pneumonia at Methodist, was discharged from the hospital this past week. Hours after he left, he said, he began laboring to breathe and an ambulance sped him back to Methodist. By the end of the week, he was in intensive care receiving a high dose of pressurized oxygen.

As cases began rising in New York, some overwhelmed emergency departments sent home coronavirus patients only to see them return gravely ill or die. “We realized there was no way of predicting which direction a patient would go,” said Dr. de Souza, the emergency department director in Brooklyn. As a result, she said, she came to believe that any patient aside from those with the mildest symptoms should be admitted to the hospital or otherwise monitored.

But doctors in Houston are tightening criteria for admission. Dr. Bakshy, the Methodist emergency room doctor, who trained at Bellevue and Mount Sinai in New York, said that he was conferring with his former colleagues.

“We all have questions about who truly needs to be hospitalized versus not,” he said. “If we had unlimited resources, of course we’d bring people in just to make sure they’re OK.”

Now, he said, a patient has to have low oxygen levels or serious underlying conditions “to really justify coming into the hospital,” although exceptions can be made.

Another challenge in New York and Houston has been determining who is infected and needs to be isolated from others. Nearly 40 percent of all emergency room patients at Methodist are now testing positive; some of them lack symptoms.

Because test results are sometimes delayed by more than a day, Dr. Bakshy and his colleagues have had to make their best guesses as to whether someone should be admitted to a ward for coronavirus patients.

Hospitals in New York tended to move patients within their own systems to level loads. In Houston, the wealthier institutions have joined together to aid those least able to expand capacity.

This past week, Methodist sent a team to a nearby public hospital to accept transfer patients. Top officials from Methodist and the other flagship hospitals that make up the Texas Medical Center, normally competitors, consult regularly by phone. They have been coordinating for days with the county’s already overwhelmed safety-net system, Harris Health, taking in its patients. The private institutions have also agreed to take turns, with others in the state, accepting patients from rural hospitals.

Better Treatments

One morning this past week, Molly Tipps, a registered nurse, brought some medications to an older patient at the Methodist ward outside Houston. “I have the dexamethasone for your lungs,” she told the patient, Dee Morton. Preliminary results of a large study, released last month but not yet peer-reviewed, showed that the drug, a common steroid, saved lives among those who were critically ill with Covid-19 or required oxygen.

Ms. Morton, 79, said she was confident she would recover. “I’m going to make it to 80,” she said. A much lower proportion of patients have been dying from the virus locally and nationally than they were several months ago.

The ward where Ms. Morton is being treated is inside a long-term acute-care facility and is known as the Highly Infectious Disease Unit. Created to treat Ebola several years ago, it now serves as a safety valve for the Methodist system. It takes in coronavirus patients who are improving but for various reasons — from lacking housing to living in a nursing home that will not accommodate them — cannot go home. In Ms. Morton’s case, she was too weak, and after transferring to the unit, some signs of infection, including a fever, rebounded.

At Methodist’s flagship hospital in central Houston, Rosa V. Hernandez, 72, a patient in the intensive care unit, has pneumonia so severe that if she had fallen sick several months ago, she would probably have been put on a ventilator and made unconscious.

But doctors, based on the experiences of physicians in New York and elsewhere, are avoiding ventilators when possible and are maintaining Ms. Hernandez on a high flow of oxygen through a nasal tube. She is on the maximum setting, but can talk to the clinical team and exchange text messages with her daughter, who is also a Methodist inpatient with the coronavirus.

“I took it seriously,” Ms. Hernandez said of the virus. But she joined a small party of eight people for her granddaughter’s birthday, a decision she now described with regret. “Just a birthday cake. What’s a birthday cake without health?”

She is getting remdesivir, an antiviral that was tested in clinical trials in New York and Houston, among other cities, and a new experimental drug.

Methodist was part of two remdesivir trials. But because the research has ended, it and other hospitals now depend on allotments of the drug from the state. As virus cases increased, the supplies ran short, said Katherine Perez, an infectious-disease specialist at the hospital. “In Houston, every hospital that’s gotten the drug, everyone’s just kind of used it up,” she said.

The hospital received 1,000 vials, its largest batch ever, a little over a week ago. Within four days, all the patients who could be treated with it had been selected, and pharmacists were awaiting another shipment.

A new chance to test remdesivir in a clinical trial in combination with another drug may provide some relief. As cases rise, Methodist researchers are being flooded with offers to participate in studies, with about 10 to 12 new opportunities a week being vetted centrally. Without solid research, “your option is to do a bunch of unproven, potentially harmful, potentially futile, interventions to very sick people who are depending on you,” said Dr. H. Dirk Sostman, president of Methodist’s academic medicine institute.

Convincing the Public

Dr. Boom, the Methodist chief executive, said if he could preserve one thing from the New York experience in March, it would be how the country came together as it had in previous disasters.

When cases began rising again in Texas, hospital officials here spent close to a month trying to educate the public about the risks of contagion. “It didn’t work,” Dr. Boom said.

“How do you get the message out there when certain people just don’t hear it and then you’re dealing with quarantine fatigue and it’s summer and I’m done with school and I just believe I’m 20 and I’m invincible?” he asked. “We told everybody this is all about the sick, vulnerable population, which was the truth, but they heard the message of ‘Well, therefore I’m fine.’ And now we’re doing the re-education on that.”

But even some of Methodist’s physicians, like many Texans, take issue with measures promoted by most public health experts. “A lot of the masks that people are wearing in public don’t do very much,” said Dr. Beau Briese, director of international emergency medicine, contradicting studies that point to a substantial benefit with universal face coverings.

Dr. Briese, 41, believes the soundest approach is to keep opening businesses but have the population at highest risk, including older people, stay apart from the broader public. Some of Methodist’s patients find even those measures objectionable.

One patient on Dr. Bakshy’s emergency room shift, Genevieve McCall, 96, came to the hospital with a satchel full of nightgowns because her legs had swollen, a sign of worsening heart failure. Dr. Bakshy asked about any exposure to the coronavirus. She said her caregiver had been out since the previous day with a fever and a sore throat.

Born five years after the 1918 flu, Ms. McCall, a retired nurse, said that until the coronavirus, she told people she thought she had seen everything. “I question a lot of things,” she said of the safety restrictions. “They’ve been too tight about it. And every time that there is a little bit of a spike, then we’re restricted more.”

Ms. McCall, who tested negative for the virus, added: “This is a political year. I think that politics has a lot to do with the way this has been handled. And I think it’s been mishandled.”

She said that it was difficult to be stuck in her apartment in an independent-living complex that was prohibiting visitors, canceling many activities and delivering meals to rooms instead of serving them in the dining room. “It’s very depressing,” she said. “Until this afternoon, when my daughter walked in the door to come and pick me up and bring me here, I had not been able to see her or touch her for three months, more.”

#new york city #texas #covid

15 notes · View notes

dipulb3 · 4 years

Text

Why some transgender voters have an even bigger challenge to casting their ballots

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/why-some-transgender-voters-have-an-even-bigger-challenge-to-casting-their-ballots/

Why some transgender voters have an even bigger challenge to casting their ballots

Ozias, a transgender man from Corpus Christi, Texas, couldn’t afford to legally change his name or update his ID before he went to vote in state elections in November 2013.

He brought his old ID — with a name he no longer used and a photo that no longer resembled him — to the polls that year.

Poll workers grilled him on his identity. They attempted to stop him from voting, he told Appradab. He insisted he was the person in his picture.

Ozias, who’s been a poll worker and a member of provisional ballot voting boards, eventually cast his vote after the initial resistance.

“I am lucky enough that I’ve worked around the electoral process and knew what my rights were,” said Ozias, who’s had challenges voting since. “My concern has always been with people who don’t.”

Voter ID requirements, purportedly put in place to prevent voter fraud, typically end up keeping Black, indigenous and transgender voters from voting at all if they don’t have the proper identification, critics say.

Transgender people make up an estimated 1.4 million people in the US, according to the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law at UCLA. More than 965,000 of those trans people are eligible to vote, but over 378,000 of them — around 40% — don’t have accurate IDs, according to the institute.

Voter ID laws could create a particular challenge for trans voters this election cycle since the coronavirus pandemic has made it tougher to get new IDs.

It’s rare to hear about a transgender person being turned away at the polls, trans advocates told Appradab. It’s much more likely that the barriers to voting, be it an ID issue or fear of discrimination, keep trans people from even attempting to vote.

“It hurts trans people when trans people don’t vote,” said Mara Keisling, founder and executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “If we want the government to take us into account better, we have to take the government into account. We have to vote. We have to participate.”

The trouble with IDs

Much of the issue for trans voters boils down to their ID. If a transgender person’s name or gender identity no longer matches their government-issued ID, they’ll face added scrutiny at the polls in most states.

As of 2020, 35 states require voters to present ID to vote. The lawmakers who put voter ID requirements in place say they’re intended to prevent voter fraud. But voter fraud is rare, small-scale and almost always caught by election officials. There’s little evidence in states that “significant voter impersonation” takes place, said Chad Dunn, a voting rights attorney and co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

“These laws were designed and structured to benefit some people with certain IDs more than others,” Dunn said. “There’s no doubt that a law requiring you to have an ID has a discriminatory effect on transgender people.”

Transgender people whose name and appearance no longer matches their ID may be given a provisional ballot, which should be provided to every voter if there’s a question about their eligibility or registration, Dunn said.

Provisional ballots are later considered by a “ballot board,” or a local committee of election officials who determine whether the vote is counted, Dunn said.

But poorly trained poll workers may not provide a voter with a provisional ballot, Dunn said. If that voter doesn’t know to ask for one, they may not end up voting at all.

Trans voters who want to legally change their name and gender and then update their ID face a lengthy process that involves paying court fees, submitting to background checks and presenting extensive medical documentation, said Arli Christian, a campaign strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The coronavirus adds an additional wrinkle to the name-change process, causing months-long closures of courts, DMVs and Social Security offices where those name changes and ID updates take place. Even now that many offices are reopening, backlogs have clogged up the process and appointments aren’t available for months, Christian said.

Trans voters have sued over discrimination

Some transgender voters who’ve been challenged while voting have sued election boards and states to prevent discrimination in the future.

Earlier this year, a voter in Cornelius, North Carolina, sued the state elections board and others for what she described in the suit as a humiliating voting experience.

She was voting from her car, an accommodation the county made for voters with disabilities, in local elections last November. She filled out her ballot and signed it with her legal birth name, a name she no longer uses as a transgender woman, she said in the suit.

The poll worker who picked up her ballot asked the voter to pronounce her name out loud, so she did. She again signed her legal name upon request. She pronounced her name aloud again, too, according to the lawsuit.

After some back and forth, another election official approached her car and demanded the voter show her ID.

“For YOU, ID is required because your face does not match your name,” the election official said, according to the voter, who is not named in the lawsuit.

At the time, there wasn’t a voter ID law in effect in North Carolina, and a court order has blocked ID requirements in the current election. It was illegal, the lawsuit alleges, for the election official to request the voter’s ID.

Eventually, after the voter “reluctantly” handed over her ID, she was allowed to vote. The poll worker noted aloud that her name and gender didn’t match what was listed on her ID, according to the lawsuit.

The experience, the voter says in the lawsuit, caused her severe emotional distress.

The suit was dismissed, but the voter and her attorney, Faith Fox, have filed an appeal. She’s updated her ID, too, Fox said, and is prepared to vote in person in the general election.

Ozias, the Corpus Christi voter, was one of several transgender plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought against the state of Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott, among others, for discriminatory voting practices. Dunn was one of the attorneys who represented Ozias.

Ultimately, Dunn and the team of attorneys successfully proved the voter ID law was discriminatory. But Ozias says he knows he won’t be the last trans person to be interrogated before being allowed to vote in Texas.

Voting while trans is already a challenge

Much of the barriers to voting are baked into being trans, said Bri Barnett, director of development at Trans Lifeline, a trans-led nonprofit that provides “microgrants” to trans people to legally change their names and IDs.

“There are so many non-ID-based barriers to trans people’s voting,” she told Appradab, pointing to a lack of economic opportunity for transgender people as among those factors.

Trans people often don’t have stable housing — one in five trans people has been homeless, per the National Center for Transgender Equality — so they may not have an address to register to vote.

Trans people are also twice as likely to live in poverty as the general US population and work lower paying jobs, according to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, the most recent data available on the experiences of trans people in the US. A lower income can hold them back from going ahead with legal name changes.

Those obstacles can keep trans voters from ever making it to a polling place, said Keisling, founder of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

“Most of the cases of any kind of voter suppression aren’t ever going to be known,” she said. “We’ve had very few cases of trans people coming forward saying, ‘I was denied the right to vote.’ But we’ve heard from people who’ve said they shouldn’t vote because they fear they’ll be disrespected or turned away.”

Keisling said she expects trans voters to show up in droves this year to make themselves heard, even if there’s a chance they could be interrogated or discriminated against.

Ozias’ attorneys won their suit, but he still says he needs to be strategic about voting. He hasn’t legally changed his sex on his ID because he can’t afford the cost. He usually brings his passport with him, which is updated to accurately reflect his gender, to vote instead. Not every poll worker is used to confirming someone’s identity through a passport, though, he said.

“It’s a balancing act, depending on where I go and who’s working there that year and how much training they’ve had,” he said.

When he votes again this year, he’ll face another obstacle. He’s lost weight since his last ID photo was taken, and he hasn’t been able to take hormone injections due to the pandemic, so he’ll look “significantly different than what my ID picture looks like,” he said.

What trans voters should know before they vote

Vote early or by mail. Voting by mail bypasses the potential for being misgendered or questioned about an ID, and early voting should be less crowded, Keisling said. There’s also more time to rectify any mistakes or discrepancies at polling places during early voting, she said.

Bring a plus-one. Barnett encourages trans voters to go to the polls with a friend — someone who can back them up if they’re questioned or face cruelty.

“It’s a lot harder to discriminate when you have support systems there, when people know that other people are watching,” she said. “It discourages bad behaviors.”

Know your rights. It’s not legal for poll workers to deny a ballot to a trans person based on their gender, Dunn said. If voters are turned away because they’re transgender, they should call the Election Protection Helpline, a nonpartisan resource to ensure fair voting, to make sure their ballot is cast.

Poll workers also shouldn’t ask trans voters about their medical history, Hall said — that falls into sex discrimination. That would merit another call to the Election Protection Helpline.

Bring additional documentation. If you fear a poll worker will challenge your ID, bring some additional documents to prove you are who you say you are, like a utility bill, student ID, credit card or passport, the National Center for Transgender Equality suggests.

What trans voters should do if their vote is challenged

It’s possible you could be challenged at a polling place. The National Center for Transgender Equality, through its Transform the Vote campaign, offers advice:

Look for a lawyer. If an election official denies you a ballot based on your ID, look for an attorney volunteering at the polls. They may be able to assist you in your discussion with the official and tell you what rights you have as a voter.

Request a provisional ballot. If election officials take issue with your identification, request a provisional ballot. Election officials will decide whether it can be counted after the election.

Call the Election Protection Helpline. If you’re at an impasse at a polling place and aren’t allowed to vote, contact the Election Protection Helpline at 866-OUR-VOTE. Lawyers can answer questions you have and tell you what your options are.

0 notes

lakotasafeco-blog · 4 years

Text

Six (6) Seconds At Church of Christ In White Settlement, TX

Gunman kills 2 at White Settlement Church Before Member Fatally Shoots Him News Source: Dallas Morning News By Dana Branham, Nataly Keomoungkhoun, Tom Steele and LaVendrick Smith 12:56 PM on Dec 29, 2019 — Updated at 9:09 PM on Dec 29, 2019 Clarification, 4:30 p.m., Dec. 31, 2019: This article has been updated to reflect that while authorities initially said two members of the church congregation fatally shot the gunman, they later confirmed that only one member shot the gunman. A gunman killed two people during a Sunday morning service at a church in White Settlement before a member of the congregation fatally shot him, authorities say. Police in White Settlement, about eight miles west of Fort Worth, were called before 11 a.m. to the West Freeway Church of Christ at 1900 South Las Vegas Trail after one member, who is part of the church’s security team, opened fire on the gunman. MedStar spokeswoman Macara Trusty soon reported that the gunman and one of his victims had died at a hospital. The second victim was resuscitated after going into cardiac arrest on the way to a hospital, but authorities announced at an evening news conference that the person died later. Authorities have not released the names of the gunman and the people he killed, but the daughter of one of the victims told KXAS-TV (NBC 5) that her father, Anton “Tony” Wallace, was killed in the church shooting. Tiffany Wallace told the station she ran to her father after she realized he had been shot. “I was just holding him, telling him I loved him and that he was going to make it,” she told KXAS-TV. Two other people were treated at the scene for minor injuries they suffered when they hit their heads while they were ducking for cover, Trusty said. “We lost two great men today, but it could have been a lot worse, and I am thankful our government has allowed us the opportunity to protect ourselves,” said Britt Farmer, the church’s senior minister. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, speaking at the evening news conference, highlighted changes in state law that ensured the right to carry concealed weapons in churches. He credited the church’s volunteer security team for protecting their fellow members. “The heroism today is unparalleled,” Patrick said. “This team responded quickly, and within six seconds the shooting was over.” The FBI said Sunday evening that the gunman had been arrested in different jurisdictions but declined to go into detail about any charges he’d faced. Although the man had roots in the area, it appears he may have been transient. ‘Today evil walked boldly among us’ White Settlement police Chief J.P. Bevering said the Texas Department of Public Safety will lead the investigation into the shooting. Authorities did not release any information about a possible motive. Law enforcement officials said there was no ongoing threat to the public, and they praised the the church’s security team for ending the attack within seconds. Officials initially said that two members of the security team were responsible for taking down the gunman, but on Monday Bevering confirmed that only one person shot the gunman. Jeoff Williams, regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said there was an enormous police response Sunday morning to learn more about what led to the shooting. He said the nation has seen so many shootings “that we’ve actually gotten used to it.” “I would like to point out that we have a couple of heroic parishioners,” Williams said. “Our hearts are going out to them and their families as well.” He said their quick actions had saved the lives of many other churchgoers. “The citizens in this community have a lot to be proud of,” Williams said. Matthew DeSarno, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas office, said the agency was offering its resources to help with the investigation. “We are working very hard to find motive to get to the bottom of what happened,” DeSarno said. “As you see from the group assembled behind me, an incident like this does not get solved and we don’t get to the bottom of it without significant partnership.” Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn said Sunday was “a horrific day in Tarrant County.” “Today evil walked boldly among us,” he said. “But let me remind you, good people raised up and stopped it before it got worse.” Bevering, the police chief, offered his condolences to the victims as well as the churchgoers who survived the shooting. “We’re all hurting right now, and I just want your prayers for everybody at this time,” he said. Hours after the shooting, as churchgoers left the scene, John Richardson stood next to his wife, Diana, outside a Waffle House near the church. The couple have been married 47 years and have attended West Freeway Church of Christ for more than half of that time, he said. Richardson said that in the years since his wife suffered a brain injury in a car crash, he has learned to keep such tragedies in perspective. “Once you’ve been through something traumatic like that, you already appreciate life that much more,” he said. He said he had no hate for the gunman, whom he called one of God’s creations. “You can’t have hate for these people," Richardson said. "You can’t have hate for anybody.” Livestream Captures Shooting A livestream video that captured the shooting appeared to have been removed from the church’s YouTube page shortly after the attack, but copies are circulating on social media. View It Here: Livestream Video In the video, the gunman, who is wearing what seems to be a dark-colored hood, gets up from a pew in the back of the room and walks up to a man in a suit who is standing in the corner. As the two speak and the man points to his right, the gunman reaches into his jacket and pulls out a shotgun. A man sitting nearby stands up and reaches toward the back of his waistband as several others start to take cover, but most people in the sanctuary appear to be unaware of what is happening. The gunman fires twice while stepping backward down the aisle, striking the man who stood up and then the man he first approached. Another man then pulls out a handgun and fires once, striking the gunman just as he turns toward the front of the room. Six seconds have elapsed since the gunman pulled out his gun. "I KILLED EVIL" - JACK WILSON View It Here: Church Security Guard Interview After the gunman’s first shot, nearly everyone in the room startles, trying to find the source of the noise. As the gunman fires again, most of the worshippers begin ducking behind the pews, and a church leader standing on stage dives onto the floor. Several people in the opposite corner run up the aisle toward an exit, leaving papers and a book scattered in their wake. One woman crawls. An older man, who has turned to watch what’s happening, hardly moves. Screams fill the air as the gunman is shot and falls to the ground. A woman runs shrieking toward the victims as someone tries to help the first man who was shot, who is out of view. The second victim, who tumbled onto what appears to be a bench after he was shot, sits up. Meanwhile, at least five other worshippers pull out handguns and slowly approach the gunman. The man who shot the gunman kicks away the gunman’s firearm and picks it up. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that church elder Mike Tinius said the gunman had drawn the suspicion of church security shortly before the shooting. He said he’d never seen the man and had no idea what his motive for the attack might have been. “By the sequence of events, it should be assumed that he came in with an idea,” he said. State officials react Gov. Greg Abbott called the shooting an “evil act of violence” in a statement Sunday afternoon. “Places of worship are meant to be sacred, and I am grateful for the church members who acted quickly to take down the shooter and help prevent further loss of life,” Abbott said. “Cecilia and I ask all Texans to join us in praying for the White Settlement community and for all those affected by this horrible tragedy.”

Gov. Greg Abbott ✔@GovAbbott Statement on shooting at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office asked for prayers for the victims and their families and said the office will assist in any way needed. Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said details about the shooter are under investigation. “No one should be subjected to gunfire in a house of worship,” Nealy Cox said in a tweeted statement. Sunday’s attack came just over 20 years after a gunman walked into a Wednesday evening prayer service at Fort Worth’s Wedgwood Baptist Church and killed four teenagers and three adults before fatally shooting himself. Seven more people were injured in the September 1999 attack. A state law went into effect in September 2017 that allows churches to have armed volunteer security. Licensed handgun owners may legally bring firearms into a place of worship as long as the church allows it, and a law passed earlier this year requires churches to give notice to their congregations if they want to ban guns. Churches, synagogues and mosques previously had been off-limits to gun owners, but lawmakers decided to lift the restriction as a response to the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting in which 26 victims were fatally shot and 20 more were wounded. The gunman in that attack killed himself after being shot by two men who chased him until he crashed his vehicle. Correction. 9:55 p.m. A previous version of this story said that a 2017 Texas law allowed churches to have armed security. The law allowed armed volunteer security. Read the full article

#gunvote #2A #babyyoda #ccw #floridaccw #pewpew #pewpewtactical #thepewpewlife

0 notes

supertrendingnewsarticles · 4 years

Link

Donald Trump’s allies in conservative media have a new villain in the coronavirus fight: contact tracing, the rigorous efforts to track the virus’s spread that public health experts say is essential to safely restarting society. Fox News host Laura Ingraham devoted much of her show Thursday night to raising questions about contact tracing, the process where interviewers try to figure out who has been exposed to the virus by literally figuring out whom the infected had contact with. As a Fox News chyron warned that contact tracing should “concern all Americans,” Ingraham claimed that calls for more contact tracers were just an “excuse” to keep businesses closed, and compared being interviewed by a contact tracer to being groped by a Transportation Security Administration agent.“Instead of rummaging through your luggage, these contact tracers will be prying through the most intimate details of your life,” Ingraham said. A wide range of public health officials and experts have insisted that the country needs to vastly expand contact tracing, with one Johns Hopkins study calling for the hiring of at least 100,000 additional contact tracers. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said earlier this month that coronavirus deaths will “of course” increase without additional tracing and testing. Workplace contact tracing is included in the White House’s own reopening plan. But Ingraham isn’t alone on the right in sowing doubts about contact tracing. Conservative columnists Andy and John Schlafly—best known as the sons of late right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly—co-authored a column at Townhall.com criticizing Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) for budgeting nearly $300 million for contact tracing. The Schlaflys laid out a dystopian vision of contact tracing, comparing it to a “dark episode in the history of the communist Soviet Union” and claiming that contact tracing could be used to separate children from infected parents. They even imagined contact tracing details being used to embarrass Republican candidates. “The real goal of the contact tracing is to use COVID-19 as a pretext to monitor the whereabouts of every American, perhaps through our smartphones, and take away our liberties,” the Schlaflys wrote. “Republican political candidates will be tracked and leaks of their private information to the media would be inevitable under this scheme, while Democrats such as Joe Biden are given a pass on their far greater misconduct.” Instead, the Schlaflys called for Abbott to flood the state with hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug that’s become a darling of Trump supporters as a potential coronavirus treatment—even as clinical studies suggest it has no effect on the virus and actually increases mortality.“The $295 million that Abbott is spending on contact tracing could have purchased HCQ treatments for half of the entire State of Texas, to reopen the state without the need for oppressive monitoring,” the Schlaflys wrote. Emerald Robinson, the White House correspondent for conservative Newsmax TV, which is run by a close Trump confidant, compared contact tracing to “mandatory vaccination” and 5G towers, which conspiracy theorists have claimed spread coronavirus. Pro-Trump activist Tom Fitton, the head of conservative activist group Judicial Watch, put contact tracing on a list of his coronavirus grievances, declaring: “I’m done with it.”Other concerns on the fringe right about contact tracing have been driven by outright hoaxes about H.R. 6666, legislation from Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) that would put $100 billion into coronavirus testing and contact tracing. The bill’s number alone puts it perilously close to the supposedly Satanic number “666,” right as conspiracy theorists have become convinced that any coronavirus vaccine would be the “Mark of the Beast.” Prominent conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars declared that the bill was the “Bill of the Beast,” while rumors spread on social media claiming that the bill would authorize contact tracers to abduct children.Privacy watchdogs have raised legitimate concerns about how contact tracing data could be used, especially when the data is collected through apps. On Monday, the ACLU called for additional safeguards to protect contact tracing data. A report on a North Dakota contact tracing app found several privacy flaws. But much of the fearmongering about contact tracing seems to be driven by ignorance of what it actually is. Failed Republican congressional candidate and QAnon conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, whose call to “FireFauci” Trump retweeted in April, has urged her fans to not get tested for COVID-19. She also appears to misunderstand contact tracing, claiming that contact tracers go through phone “contact” lists, rather than in-person contacts. “I don’t want people to get tested, because I don’t want to be in their phone, in their contact list, and if you guys are all following me on Twitter and following me on YouTube, then I’m probably going to be in your contact list,” Tesoriero told her fans in a video. “So I would prefer not to be there. They specifically said if they find one person, then they’re going to make sure they call all of that person’s contacts, whether they have 5,000 contacts or 5 contacts. And I really don’t feel like being called, I want to get off the grid of this system.”On her Thursday night show, Ingraham positioned herself as perhaps conservative media’s leading contact tracing skeptic. But her guests went even further than her, with Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman adopting what was meant to be a German or Russian accent to imitate a contact tracing interviewer. Ingraham guest Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, claimed that contact tracing meant that the “French revolution is attacking the American revolution.” Ingraham agreed, comparing contact tracers to radical French revolutionaries. “The Jacobins, they’re back,” she said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2AU6JYl

#Blogger #World News

0 notes

ngulliepija · 4 years

Link

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2AU6JYl

#Blogger

0 notes

newslegendry · 4 years

Quote

http://newslegendry.blogspot.com/2020/05/trumpsters-are-already-revolting.html

#news #newspaper #googlenews #breakignnews #newstody #foxnews #sportsnews

0 notes

ralphmorgan-blog1 · 7 years

Text

Powerful Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas

(CNN)Hurricane Harvey made landfall Friday night between Port Aransas and Port O'Connor, Texas, as a Category 4 storm with winds of 130 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

Harvey is the first Category 4 hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Charley in 2004.

The storm is poundng the Texas coast and its millions of residents with hurricane-force winds knocking down trees, power poles and signs, and with torrential rain deluging streets.

In its 11 p.m. ET update, the National Hurricane Center said the center of the storm had passed over San Jose Island, bringing with it a dangerous and powerful eye wall.

The hurricane center warns that some areas will see as much as 13 feet of storm surge and large, destructive waves.

And there's the rain that the slow-moving storm is expected to produce. Because it is expected to come to a near halt inland, Harvey could drop as much as 40 inches of rain in some places, and up to 30 inches in others, by Wednesday.

The combination of wind and water could leave wide swaths of South Texas "uninhabitable for weeks or months," the National Weather Service in Houston said.

Such daunting language hasn't been seen by CNN's experts since Hurricane Katrina, which left more than 1,800 people dead in 2005.

The threat has prompted officials in at least one town to ask residents who stay behind to write their Social Security numbers on one of their arms in case. It will make identifying bodies easier.

"Texas is about to have a very significant disaster," said Brock Long, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Gov. Greg Abbott warned of record-setting flooding and called on people to flee the area before the storm hits.

"My top goal is to be able to make it through this storm in a way in which we lose no lives," Abbott said. "Put your life first and your property second."

TRACK THE STORM

Residents were urged to evacuate. A mass exodus from the coast caused extensive traffic jams along the state's highways, while other people boarded up windows and stocked up on food and water ahead of the storm, the effects of which are expected to last for days.

The storm will stall and dump rain on South Texas and parts of Louisiana into the middle of next week, forecasters predicted.

Latest developments

-- Rockport, Texas, officials are advising residents who refuse to evacuate to write their names and Social Security number on a forearm, Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Rios told CNN. Rios said it will "help out first responders should they find a body."

-- The National Weather Service in Corpus Christi issued an extreme wind warning for portions of the Texas coast. "Widespread destructive winds of 115 to 145 mph will produce swaths of tornado-like damage," the agency said.

-- Texas' governor requested additional federal help with a presidential disaster declaration. The White House is considering the declaration.

-- President Donald Trump, who will visit the area next week, has signed a disaster declaration for the state.

FEMA prepared for 'significant disaster'

What Hurricane Harvey looks like from space

Those who stay should "elevate and get into a structure that can withstand potentially Category 3 winds from a hurricane," said Long, the FEMA director.

"The bottom line message is, right now, if people have not heeded the warning, again, their window to do so is closing," Long said. "If they refuse to heed the warning, that's on them."

Long said he is "very worried" about storm surge, or "wind-driven water," slamming coastal areas, saying it has the "highest potential to kill the most amount of people and cause the most amount of damage."

Trump tweeted that he has spoken with the governors of Texas and Louisiana, saying he is "closely monitoring Hurricane Harvey developments and here to assist as needed."

Record flooding expected

Officials worried that Harvey's deluge of rain will drench Texas and the region for several days.

"We could see this storm park for almost five days in some places, and we hear three feet of rain," said Bill Read, the former director of the National Hurricane Center. "That's just going to be a huge problem for these areas."

"The water is going to be the issue," Corpus Christi Mayor Joe McComb said. "We've never had anything like this."

Harvey is also causing concern in New Orleans, where heavy rain could usher in as much as 20 inches of rain through early next week and overwhelm the city's already-compromised drainage system.

Storm nears shore

Joey Walker, 25, works with the Galveston Island Beach Patrol and is riding out the storm from a house on Galveston Island. He posted video of near-white out conditions overlooking Stewart Beach.

Hurricane Harvey isn't playing around, can't even see the beach! 🌀👀 #storm #hurricane #wind #rain #powerful #hurricaneharvey #windy

A post shared by Joey Walker🚶🏽 (@joeywalker.9) on Aug 25, 2017 at 11:58am PDT

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said anyone not leaving should plan to stay off the roads once the storm starts.

"People need to know, this is not a one-, two-day event and done," Turner said.

'I'm trying to be strong'

The threat of Harvey became evident Thursday when several coastal Texas counties issued evacuation orders, leading to hordes of residents sitting bumper to bumper for miles.

Rose Yepez told CNN it took her twice as long as usual to drive 140 miles from Corpus Christi to San Antonio, en route to Texas Hill Country.

Private vehicles -- along with city buses packed with adults and children carrying backpacks -- jammed roads for hours.

"I'm shaking inside, but for them, I'm trying to be strong," a Corpus Christi woman who was waiting with her two daughters to board a bus out of town told CNN affiliate KRIS.

Workers at 39 offshore petroleum production platforms and an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico also evacuated Thursday, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said.

First responders such as Brittany Fowler stayed behind and waited for the storm.

"Hopefully, it doesn't do any damage, but if it does, we've prepared," Fowler, a firefighter in Corpus Christi, wrote on Instagram.

Fowler's family helped by boarding up windows and doors at her home, and she bought plenty of water, food and a small power generator.

Special thank you to my Dad, brother and Marz for boarding up the house and getting it squared away for #Harvey! Hopefully it doesn't do any damage but if it does we've prepared. #HurricaneHarvey #WeatherChannel #CorpusChristi #hurricane #gulfcoast

A post shared by Brittany Fowler (@bafowler1) on Aug 24, 2017 at 1:56pm PDT

Despite the warnings, Elsie and David Reichenbacher prepped supplies and planned to stay put in Corpus Christi.

"I've gone through a lot of hurricanes. I've lived here most of my life," Elsie Reichenbacher said. "I'd rather take care of my home and my animals and be safe here. I'm on high ground with my house."