Flagstaff Mayor Paul Deasy announced Wednesday that he contracted COVID-19, despite being fully vaccinated. According to members of the Flagstaff City Council in remarks to the Arizona Daily Sun, Deasy had been getting tested secretly all week and knew his family had several COVID-19 exposures — yet decided to attend Tuesday’s meeting anyway.
Councilman Austin Aslan criticized Deasy for deciding to put people at risk. Aslan added that Deasy shopped at the outdoor recreational store, REI, on Sunday.
“This all seems very ironic for a person that has been almost theatrical in his protestations about the needs for COVID safety protocols and aggressive funding,” observed Aslan.
Deasy claimed that he didn’t know he had COVID-19, and called accusations from the council “pretty ridiculous.” He explained that he normally takes COVID-19 tests several times a week to ensure he’s not infected.
“I tested positive for Covid this morning after waking up with a mild sore throat. Thankful to be vaccinated so symptoms are mild,” wrote Deasy. “Please get tested if you have any symptoms whatsoever. What is mild to you can be deadly to others.”
I tested positive for Covid this morning after waking up with a mild sore throat. Thankful to be vaccinated so symptoms are so mild.
Please get tested if you have any symptoms whatsoever. What is mild to you can be deadly to others.
Later on the same day he tested positive, Deasy shared the claim from Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) that unvaccinated individuals were 31.1 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the vaccinated.
Our latest report on #COVID19 outcomes by vaccination status offers even more evidence that vaccines are saving lives. In November, those who weren’t vaccinated were 31.1 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the fully vaccinated. Our blog has more: https://t.co/FcF9tAIpHmpic.twitter.com/pQTuJgrlXl
ADHS also noted that unvaccinated individuals were nearly five times as likely to test positive for COVID-19.
As AZ Free News reported, the latest death totals for COVID-19 reached over 24,300. Nearly zero percent of deaths occurred in those under 20 years old; the majority of deaths came from individuals over 65 years old.
Last September, Deasy offered some advice to Flagstaff’s visitors with the “WTF” acronym — a version void of explicit language, instead reading “Welcome To Flagstaff[;] Wear The Face mask.”
Following Deasy’s test results, Flagstaff City Council decided to convene in a special meeting on Thursday to discuss returning to completely virtual meetings.
Councilman Adam Shimoni said it was “embarrassing” that the council had to inform attendees, including a group of high school students, that they’d been exposed to COVID-19 at Tuesday’s meeting. He urged stricter safety protocols to mitigate the spread, especially with the outbreak of Omicron.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
On Wednesday, the Maricopa County Elections Department issued over 90 pages of a counter report to the Arizona Senate’s audit conducted by Cyber Ninjas, as well as nearly 30 exhibits to support their response. The county dismissed all claims by Cyber Ninjas and affiliated auditors: CyFIR, EchoMail, and the Senate’s audit liaisons.
According to their breakdown of the auditors’ claims, 22 were misleading, 41 were inaccurate, and 13 were false.
Misleading claims related to audit interferences, missing subpoena items, subpoenaed equipment not yet provided, voter registration system audit access, tally results for the presidential and senate races (counted as three misleading claims), machine counts, real-time provisional ballots, internet connections to the REWEB and REGIS, dual boot system discovery, failure to follow basic cybersecurity, management of software, patch, and credentials, lack of baseline for host and network activity, duplicate early ballot images, more envelopes processed and submitted than identified by EchoMail, daily duplicate numbers, ballots stamped in signature region or behind envelope triangle, and two different voter IDs on record.
Inaccurate claims related to no record of certain voters in the commercial database, commingling of damaged and original ballots, purging of EMS database, deletion of election files or user logs, corrupted or missing ballot images, no preservation of EMS logs, election data found from other states, no signatures, scribbles, and bad signature rates, and increase in envelopes but decrease in signature rejections.
False claims related to bleed-through rates on papers, improper paper being used, ballot printers out of calibration, questionable ballots, early votes not counted for in the EV33 file, batch discrepancies, inaccurate identification of Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) ballots, anonymous logins to operating system logs, internet connections to election equipment and EMS, and early ballot envelope image canvass requirements. The report noted further that no allegations about the election survived court scrutiny.
Officials from the county elections department presenting on the report were Director of In-Person Voting and Tabulation Scott Jarrett, Assistant Director of Early Voting Celia Nabor, Senior Director of Voter Registration Janine Petty, and Information Technology Director Nate Young.
During the four and a half hour presentation hosted by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, elections officials explained their contention with 53,000 questionable ballots pointed out by the Senate’s audit report. They walked through the 90-plus page report at length. Their report claimed they found 37 potentially fraudulent votes total, and 50 ballots that were potentially counted twice. In all, the county reported finding less than 100 potentially questionable ballots out of the 2.1 million cast in the 2020 election.
Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates expressed a desire for public conversation of Arizona’s 2020 election to come to a close.
“Now, it’s my hope that this will be the last word on the 2020 election, because you’re going to hear the facts today in detail,” said Gates.
The report explained that the county’s elections were reliable based on approval of their tabulation equipment by a federally accredited voting system laboratory, in-depth pilot and stress testing on Dominion Voting Systems equipment, and the bipartisan makeup of poll workers and central boards.
The county classified the false, misleading, and inaccurate claims as “faulty claims.” Their report said the roots of those claims were either: inaccurate methodology and analysis (e.g., soft data matching or use of the commercial database, or incorrect use of voter files), a lack of understanding of federal and state voting laws (e.g., protected voters, voter registration requirements for voters that move, or election management system patching), or lack of independence and objectivity (accusations of deleted data, paper and printer claims, and accusations of double-counted UOCAVA ballots).
The county also released a short video to promote their report, titled “Facts Not Anomalies: Maricopa County Responds to Flawed #azaudit Report.” The video focused primarily on the frequent usage of the word “anomaly” by the Arizona Senate and Cyber Ninjas auditors to describe findings they found concerning.
“It’s all an anomaly if you don’t understand what you’re looking at,” stated the video. “Maricopa County hires and trains election experts. We’re fighting misinformation to protect your vote.”
In a press release, Gates — voted Man of the Year by the Arizona Republic last week — criticized the state senate for backing a partisan audit.
“The people who have spent the last year proclaiming our free and fair elections are rigged are lying or delusional. Unfortunately, the Senate’s inquiry made things worse by giving partisan auditors a platform to make damaging false claims based on their inexperience and biases,” said Gates. “I’m proud of our team for correcting the record with this comprehensive report; for looking deeply into each claim made by Senate contractors so that voters who choose to learn the truth can; and for a commitment to continued improvement that will make a strong election system even stronger.”
The remainder of the supervisors added various statements that summarily insisted that the county conducted near-perfect operations that resulted in a free and fair elections.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Ahead of the anniversary of January 6, the Arizona Democratic Party’s (ADP) tone concerning the fateful rally-turned-riot shifted from somber to opportunistic. The ADP sent out a fundraising email this week requesting $10 or more donations to flip voters like the January 6 incident did, they said.
The ADP informed recipients that over 20,000 Arizona voters switched from Republican to Democrat following the January 6 riot, which they referred to as an insurrection. They emphasized the importance of financing their grassroots efforts ahead of Thursday’s anniversary.
“Starting today, just before the one-year anniversary of the insurrection, we’re using our Project 15/30 organizing program to reach out to every single one of those 20,000. We want to thank them for their courage and for standing up for our democracy,” read the email. “Team, efforts like this show that through Project 15/30, we’re fighting for every single vote in AZ. But running special programs like this takes people and resources to work. Can you donate $10 today so voter outreach programs like this one are successful?”
Project 15/30 intends to increase voter registration and strengthen party numbers in the 15 counties and 30 legislative districts across Arizona. The ADP launched the initiative early last August.
ADP’s latest messaging conflicts with its previous rhetoric on the subject of the Capitol Hill riot. Throughout last year, the ADP honored the Capitol police officers that responded to the break-in.
“We will never forget the events that took place in our Capitol on January 6, 2021,” wrote the state affiliate. “We stand with the heroic officers who risked their lives.”
We will never forget the events that took place in our Capitol on January 6th, 2021. We stand with the heroic officers who risked their lives. https://t.co/QjbYqKQLtN
The ADP also called for the punishment of Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ-04) repeatedly.
President Joe Biden plans to give an address on Thursday to commemorate last year’s riot. During the White House daily briefing on Wednesday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki promised that President Joe Biden would speak extensively on how former President Donald Trump was solely to blame for the January 6 riot.
“The president is going to speak to the truth of what happened, not the lies that some have spread since — and the peril opposed to rule of law and our system of democratic governance. He will also speak to the work that we need to strengthen our democracy and our institutions to reject the hatred and lies we saw on January 6 to unite our country. I’d also note that President Biden has been clear-eyed about the threat the former president represents to our democracy and how the former president works to undermine basic American values and rule of law. And President Biden has spoken repeatedly about how the president has abused his office, undermined the Constitution, and ignored his oath to the American people in an effort to amass more power for himself and his allies. He sees January 6 as the tragic culmination of what those four years under President Trump did to our country and they reflected the importance to the President of winning. What he has called many times the battle for the soul of our nation. So just as you heard him say on January 6 of last year, I would expect that President Biden will lay out the significance of what happened at the Capitol and the singular responsibility that President Trump has for the chaos and carnage we saw, and he will forcibly push back on the lies spread by the former president in an attempt to mislead the American people and his own supporters, as well as in respect to his role in what happened.”
Psaki couldn’t answer as to whether Biden will call out Trump by name because they were finalizing the speech.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Jelena McWilliams, the Trump-appointed chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and only Republican on the board of directors, is resigning her position after accusing three Democratic directors of engaging in “a hostile takeover” of the agency responsible for maintaining stability and public confidence in the nation’s financial system.
News of McWilliams’s unexpected resignation effective February 4 was buried in a press release issued on New Year’s Eve. She took the helm of the FDIC in June 2018 after being confirmed by Congress to serve a five-year term as chair of what is supposed to be an independent agency that examines and supervises more than 5,200 banks and financial institutions for safety, soundness, and consumer protection. It also manages receiverships and insures deposits.
McWilliams’ announcement came just two weeks after she submitted an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal warning of the politization of America’s banking system.
The former executive vice president for Fifth Third Bank wrote of how for nearly 90 years day-to-day FDIC operations were delegated to its chairman, who controlled the board agenda and “worked collaboratively with other board members” regardless of political difference.
But that collegiality ended in late October, according to McWilliams, when the three Democratic-appointed members teamed in an effort to begin a FDIC review of the standards used for bank mergers without McWilliams’ assent.
Those other members are Michael Hsu, acting Comptroller of the Currency; Michael Hsu. Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and Martin Gruenberg, former FDIC chairman who is serving on a temporary basis because the Biden Administration has not moved to fill two vacant board positions.
The FDIC may not have more than three directors of the same political affiliation. President Joe Biden, by keeping one of the five seats open throughout his first year in office, has been able to impede McWilliams’ inherent powers as chair.
McWilliams, who previously served as chief counsel on the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, initiated a program at the FDIC called Trust through Transparency in an effort to make the FDIC more accessible, understandable, and responsive. As part of that initiative, she visited in person with stakeholders in 30 states prior to COVID-19 then continued the visits on a virtual basis, including a meeting with the Arizona Bankers Association.
The Republicans on the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services tweeted Monday about concerns with McWilliams’ resignation.
“The attempted power grab by CFPB Director Chopra and Interim Chair Gruenberg raises serious concerns about @FDICgov‘s independence. Dems’ support for this unprecedented action exposes their ongoing effort to politicize our regulators for their own gain.”
The attempted power grab by CFPB Director Chopra and Interim Chair Gruenberg raises serious concerns about @FDICgov's independence.
Dems’ support for this unprecedented action exposes their ongoing effort to politicize our regulators for their own gain.https://t.co/xcsF3GZDIy
McWilliams also continues to have the public support of industry groups due to her efforts to ensure all stakeholders were heard. One such supporter is Richard Hunt, the CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association.
“A total class act who always sought balance—much to my chagrin at times,” Hunt said after learning of McWilliams’ resignation. “The FDIC cannot operate where the minority is not represented.”
In an effort to reassure students and parents, Gov. Doug Ducey announced Tuesday that he is making up to $7,000 available for families who may face financial or educational barriers due to unexpected school closures.
Ducey described his new $10 million Open for Learning Recovery Benefit program as a “preemptive action” to ensure in-person learning remains an option for all K-12 students in Arizona. Funds can be used by eligible students and families toward childcare approved by the Arizona Department of Economic Security, as well as school-coordinated transportation, online tutoring, and school tuition.
“In-person learning is vital for the development, well-being and educational needs of K-12 students,” Ducey said. “With the new Open for Learning Recovery Benefit program, if a school closes for even one day, students and families who meet the income requirements will have access to instruction that best meets their needs.”
Families at or below 350 percent of the federal poverty line will be eligible to apply online for benefits later this month. Data shows such families are more likely to be negatively impacted by school closures due to limited daycare options, limited access to technology for remote learning, and less flexibility with work schedules.
The governor’s announcement of the new funding program came just days after some members of RedforEd, a teachers’ union / activist group, called on school districts to require students to utilize remote learning in place of in-person classroom instruction for the next few weeks, at a minimum. Ducey and many K-12 professionals have rejected the option, citing performance gaps and other harms brought on by school closures.
“We will continue to work with families, public health experts and school leaders to ensure our kids can stay in the classroom and parents have a choice – always.” Ducey said Tuesday.
The Open for Learning Recovery Benefit program is the latest effort by Ducey to show his seriousness toward requiring schools to resume teacher-led, in-person instruction. Since March 2021, various funding options have been made available by the state, including the Education Recovery Benefit program and the Education Plus Up Grant program announced in August to provide grant fundings for district and charter schools that kept their doors open and followed all state laws.
Another K-12 funding program implemented last year addressed K-12 literacy, adult education, and expanded teacher professional development. Monies were also set aside to promote after-school programs, to support school choice opportunities for students in rural communities, and to fund Arizona Transportation Modernization Grants to improve reliable and safe transportation options.
In an apparent response to the push from teachers’ unions to revert to remote learning for at least two weeks if not more, Governor Doug Ducey announced Monday that all of Arizona would continue with in-person learning.
In a thread, Ducey reminded Arizonans of President Joe Biden’s stance on keeping schools open, as well as the past actions of unions striking for higher pay after being promised higher pay. For the latter reference, Ducey was citing his promise of a 20 percent raise.
“IN-PERSON LEARNING WILL CONTINUE IN ARIZONA[.] ‘The science is clear, and overwhelming. We know how to keep our kids safe from COVID-19 in school. K through 12 schools should be open.’ That’s from President Joe Biden. And public health experts agree. Yet union leaders are telling parents to prepare for remote learning. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, this is the same union that encouraged a teacher strike well after a teacher raise was proposed. Once again, teacher unions are playing political games with no regard for the social and emotional impact on our kids. Parents shouldn’t stand for it — and will remember these antics at the ballot box. And at the state level, we’ll be working to ensure in-person learning continues. From recruiting more substitute teachers, to ensuring that if a student is turned away for even one day of in-person learning, parents have a choice and the resources to take their child to a school that better meets their needs.”
IN-PERSON LEARNING WILL CONTINUE IN ARIZONA
"The science is clear, and overwhelming. We know how to keep our kids safe from COVID-19 in school. K through 12 schools should be open." 1/
Twitter tagged the following warning to the governor’s thread: “Some conversations get heavy[;] Don’t forget the human behind the screen.”
Ducey issued a similar Twitter thread announcement last March several weeks before the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 being announced as a national emergency. That thread announced Ducey’s executive order for all schools to continue March 15 — several days after the one-year anniversary of former President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration.
“ANNOUNCEMENT: Getting kids back in the classroom is one of the most important things we can do as we see #COVID19 cases drop and vaccinations underway. A majority of Arizona public schools are already open, and school leaders have demonstrated in-person instruction is possible to do safely. The @CDCgov has laid out a path for every school to open safely. Public health experts nationally have spoken about the importance of getting kids back in school. In Arizona, teachers have been prioritized for the vaccine, and many school districts are reporting that nearly all of their educators have received both doses. Today, I’m issuing a new Executive Order. It requires public schools to get back to teacher-led, in-person instruction by March 15, or after Spring Break. I know not every parent feels comfortable sending their kids back to school. So virtual learning will continue to be an option for those families. But many do want to go back, and this will require schools to provide that opportunity. The science is clear, and so are the social and behavioral impacts. It’s time to get kids back in the classroom. I’m confident that Arizona has made better progress on this to date than many other states, and today’s action will speed up that process even more.”
ANNOUNCEMENT: Getting kids back in the classroom is one of the most important things we can do as we see #COVID19 cases drop and vaccinations underway. 1/
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) at the time of this report, there have been 1861 reported workplace fatalities from COVID-19. OSHA issued an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) requiring employers to report employees that were hospitalized or died from COVID-19, “regardless of the amount of time between the exposure to COVID-19 in the work environment and the death or in-patient hospitalization.
These OSHA reports are given within eight hours of a fatality, or 24 hours of a hospitalization.
According to the latest counts, there have been over 24,300 deaths related to COVID-19 in Arizona. In the last six months, a total of over 6,300 deaths have occurred. Nearly 72 percent of deaths occurred in individuals over 65 years old. Nearly 16 percent of deaths occurred in individuals aged 55 to 64 years old.
Nearly 8 percent of deaths came from individuals aged 45 to 54 years old. 5 percent of deaths came from individuals 20 to 44 years old. Nearly 0 percent of deaths occurred in individuals under the age of 20: .2 percent, to be exact.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
