New research conducted by the Trust for Public Land finds that “communities of color in the US must make do with smaller, more overcrowded public parks compared with white Americans, as the country struggles to cope with record-breaking heatwaves and Covid-19 restrictions on swimming pools, beaches and communal cooling centres. Public parks in majority black and brown neighborhoods are half the size and almost five times as crowded… Spending time in green spaces reduces stress and improves physical and psychological wellbeing for adults and children, but shady spots can also protect people from deadly extreme heat. In addition, the study of 14,000 towns and cities around America found that parks serving majority low-income households are on average four times smaller and four times more crowded than parks that serve mostly high-income households.”
New York Attorney General Leticia James filed a lawsuit this week that seeks to dissolve the National Rifle Association, arguing that corruption within the organization has disqualified its nonprofit standing. “The lawsuit sets up a legal confrontation that could take years to play out and will leave the 148-year-old N.R.A. — long the nation’s most influential gun-rights lobby but recently hobbled by financial woes and infighting — fighting for its survival. The attorney general’s office previously presided over the dissolution of President Trump’s scandal-marred charitable foundation, but the N.R.A., with more than five million members, is a far larger organization that is expected to put up a more prolonged fight.”
The New York Times reports on the potential fallout for demographic research from shortening the Census data-collection period. “The Census Bureau’s decision to cut its collection period short by one month in the midst of an already challenging pandemic has made pollsters and other statisticians nervous that this year’s census could deliver faulty data. That would leave pollsters without the baseline population portrait they use when crafting surveys and analyzing results.“Every demographic survey I’m aware of, they use the census,” John Thompson, a former director of the Census Bureau, said in an interview. “If there’s undercounts in the 2020 census, and they’re large, that means that these surveys and these polls won’t be as accurate, because they’ll be under-representative.” Observers have been quick to point out the immediate implications of a census undercount, both statistically and politically. It would most likely affect the representation of non-English speakers and low-income people, who are typically among the hardest for demographers to reach, and who tend to tilt Democratic. But it also appears likely that an undercount would disproportionately affect rural communities, a group that is part of President Trump’s political base.”
Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, and The New York Times examine the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks, finding that the administration has reversed or revoked almost 70 environmental protections, with more than 30 additional policy rollbacks in progress as of the summer of 2020. “After three years in office, the Trump administration has dismantled most of the major climate and environmental policies the president promised to undo. Calling the rules unnecessary and burdensome to the fossil fuel industry and other businesses, his administration has weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks, and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water and toxic chemicals. Several major reversals have been finalized in recent months as the country has struggled to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.”
The Guardian reports on the history of “civil death,” with a focus on US policies suppressing the votes of African-Americans. “Civil death is a form of punishment that extinguishes someone’s civil rights. It’s a concept that has been reshaped and reinterpreted over many generations, persisting in the form of felony disenfranchisement, through which a citizen loses their right to vote due to a felony conviction. There are an estimated 6 million Americans who cannot vote in the country’s elections because of some form of civil death. Depending on the state they live in, they might even lose their right to vote permanently, or for years after they are released from prison. While the US has come to see this form of civil death as status quo, it is actually rare for a democratic country to take away a citizen’s voting rights after they leave prison, let alone forever. Countries like Germany and Denmark allow prisoners to vote while incarcerated, while others restore their rights immediately after release.”