Good morning, RVA! It's 76 °F, and today's forecast looks a lot like yesterday's: Expect hot heat and a chance of rain late this evening. If you encounter someone getting around by foot, bike, or bus, (me yesterday) give them a little grace as even a couple blocks in this kind of weather makes one a sweaty mess. Looks like we're in for cooler temperatures and hurricane-remanent rain for a big chunk of the weekend.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,121↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 12↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 147↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 31, Henrico: 84, and Richmond: 32). Since this pandemic began, 314 people have died in the Richmond region. Shoutout to VDH's data dashboard which got an upgrade over the last couple of days and now includes the number of new reported cases that day right at the top.
After two weeks of on-campus instruction, VCU has reported 110 total cases—students account for 98 of those—and 167 people are in either isolation or quarantine. Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch writes that, across the state, "more than 550 positive cases of the coronavirus have been reported among students, faculty and staff at Virginia colleges and universities." As we all now know from months of watching coronadata, this likely undercounts the actual amount of virus on our college campuses. But, this number will most likely get more accurate as colleges continue to spin up their testing machines and get used to reporting this kind of data on a regular basis. Although, Liberty University just isn't reporting anything at all, so that's great.
Chris Suarez at the RTD has the details on yesterday's first ever meeting of the Central Virginia Transportation Authority. This meeting totally slipped from my calendar, and I had at least three people text me "ARE YOU WATCHING THIS?" No, I was not!, and I am thankful for Chris's coverage. While this first meeting sounds like it was mostly procedural, I am excited to see Frank Thornton, one of Henrico's democrats, elected chair. Chesterfield Supervisor Kevin Carroll was elected vice chair, and, I'm not going to lie, I'm nervous about having two suburban counties make up the Authority's leadership. One of my ongoing concerns about this new regional transportation money is that the vast, vast majority of it will go towards building/widening suburban roads and creating more sprawl. That'd be a generational mistake and a climate disaster—whether our regional neighbors want to admit that or not.
The Commonwealth Institute's Chris Duncombe has a worrying post about the impacts the Governor's proposed budget amendments will have on education: "schools across the commonwealth would see $722 million less from the state than initially anticipated at a time when more resources not fewer are needed to meet the educational needs of students, and federal aid falls far short." Duncombe also points out that the state's rainy-day reserve funds remain untouched. Like, y'all! If a terrifying pandemic does not count as a rainy day for Virginia's economy, what does?? Zombie apocalypse, maybe? Collapse of the government and a turn toward Cormac McCarthy-level barbarism?
The Virginia Employment Commissions reports that 261,181 people filed for unemployment insurance the week ending in August 22nd. That's a 7.3% drop compared to the previous week, and, according to the press release, "initial claims...fell to near the average weekly volume in 2009." That's pretty good considering where those numbers sat a couple months ago, but remember 2009 was the last enormous peak in unemployment in this country and pretty terrible all on its own. But, I think we're making progress? Here's the chart of unemployment claims in Virginia because I can't stop making charts.
Richard Hayes at RVAHub has a Critters of the Week feature where he posts pictures of critters found in and around Richmond. This week he's got a pretty incredible picture of a Blue Grosbeak spotted near the T-Pot Bridge. Wikipedia tells me that it's totally normal to see this kind of bird around these parts, which is definitely news to me. Anyway, birds kind of gross me out, but pictures like this make me want to get into birding.
This morning's Patron longread
What Is Qualified Immunity, and What Does It Have to Do With Police Reform?
Submitted by Patron Casey. Yesterday, I mentioned Del. Bourne's bill to end qualified immunity in some situations. Below you'll find an explainer from the semi-technical Lawfare blog. But, also, a reader wrote in with this great explainer, that I do want to quote a bit from: "Qualified immunity does not attach if a government official/employee knowingly violated a clearly established right. That squishiness is what makes qualified immunity so effective: the right has to be clearly established. Courts have interpreted this into meaning that there has to be legal precedent (i.e. another court ruling) stating the exact same scenario resulted in a violation of a citizen's rights. So, for example, in the recent shooting of Jacob Blake, qualified immunity could protect the officer who shot Mr. Blake from civil liability if a court determines that it was not obvious that Mr. Blake had a right to walk away from the officer and get in his car. Typically, a court would say "we don't know of any other cases where a man was trying to break up a fight then got shot trying to leave the scene when police arrived and a court found this violated the man's rights, so the right wasn't clearly established." This is why this concept is under so much scrutiny right now: Courts have interpreted this standard incredibly broadly."
Here's Lawfare explaining exactly that concept:
First, in order to show that the law was “clearly established,” the court has generally required plaintiffs to point to an already existing judicial decision, with substantially similar facts. As a result, as Julian Sanchez wrote succinctly on Twitter, “the first person to litigate a specific harm is out of luck” since the “first time around, the right violated won’t be ‘clearly established.’” A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit illustrates this point. In that case, a SWAT team fired tear gas grenades into a plaintiff’s home, causing extensive damage. And while the divided three-judge panel assumed that the SWAT officers had in fact violated the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights, it nonetheless granted qualified immunity to the officers because it determined that the precedents the plaintiff relied on did not clearly establish a violation “at the appropriate level of specificity.” (The Supreme Court could decide to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision in this case as soon as Monday, June 8.)
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