This week’s good account.

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Brad Freedberg

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You ARE the news. Tell your story today.

The afternoon’s note-worthy news report.

by Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

On Dec. 19, President Donald Trump blasted out a tweet to his 88 million followers, inviting supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest.

Earlier that week, one of his senior advisers had released a 36-page report alleging significant evidence of election fraud that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory. “A great report,” Trump wrote. “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

The tweet worked like a starter’s pistol, with two pro-Trump factions competing to take control of the “big protest.”

On one side stood Women for America First, led by Amy Kremer, a Republican operative who helped found the tea party movement. The group initially wanted to hold a kind of extended oral argument, with multiple speakers making their case for how the election had been stolen.

On the other was Stop the Steal, a new, more radical group that had recruited avowed racists to swell its ranks and wanted the President to share the podium with Alex Jones, the radio host banned from the world’s major social media platforms for hate speech, misinformation and glorifying violence. Stop the Steal organizers say their plan was to march on the Capitol and demand that lawmakers give Trump a second term.

ProPublica has obtained new details about the Trump White House’s knowledge of the gathering storm, after interviewing more than 50 people involved in the events of Jan. 6 and reviewing months of private correspondence. Taken together, these accounts suggest that senior Trump aides had been warned the Jan. 6 events could turn chaotic, with tens of thousands of people potentially overwhelming ill-prepared law enforcement officials.

Rather than trying to halt the march, Trump and his allies accommodated its leaders, according to text messages and interviews with Republican operatives and officials.

Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign official assigned by the White House to take charge of the rally planning, helped arrange a deal where those organizers deemed too extreme to speak at the Ellipse could do so on the night of Jan. 5. That event ended up including incendiary speeches from Jones and Ali Alexander, the leader of Stop the Steal, who fired up his followers with a chant of “Victory or death!”

The record of what White House officials knew about Jan. 6 and when they knew it remains incomplete. Key officials, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, declined to be interviewed for this story.

The second impeachment of President Trump focused mostly on his public statements, including his Jan. 6 exhortation that the crowd march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Trump was acquitted by the Senate, and his lawyers insisted that the attack on the Capitol was both regrettable and unforeseeable.

Rally organizers interviewed by ProPublica said they did not expect Jan. 6 to culminate with the violent sacking of the Capitol. But they acknowledged they were worried about plans by the Stop the Steal movement to organize an unpermitted march that would reach the steps of the building as Congress gathered to certify the election results.

One of the Women for America First organizers told ProPublica he and his group felt they needed to urgently warn the White House of the possible danger.

“A last-minute march, without a permit, without all the metro police that’d usually be there to fortify the perimeter, felt unsafe,” Dustin Stockton said in a recent interview.

“And these people aren’t there for a fucking flower contest,” added Jennifer Lynn Lawrence, Stockton’s fiancee and co-organizer. “They’re there because they’re angry.”

Stockton said he and Kremer initially took their concerns to Pierson. Feeling that they weren’t gaining enough traction, Stockton said, he and Kremer agreed to call Meadows directly.

Kremer, who has a personal relationship with Meadows dating back to his early days in Congress, said she would handle the matter herself. Soon after, Kremer told Stockton “the White House would take care of it,” which he interpreted to mean she had contacted top officials about the march.

Kremer denied that she ever spoke with Meadows or any other White House official about her Jan. 6 concerns. “Also, no one on my team was talking to them that I was aware of,” she said in an email to ProPublica. Meadows declined to comment on whether he’d been contacted.

A Dec. 27 text from Kremer obtained by ProPublica casts doubt on her assertion. Written at a time when her group was pressing to control the upcoming Jan. 6 rally, it refers to Alexander and Cindy Chafian, an activist who worked closely with Alex Jones. “The WH and team Trump are aware of the situation with Ali and Cindy,” Kremer wrote. “I need to be the one to handle both.” Kremer did not answer questions from ProPublica about the text.

So far, congressional and law enforcement reconstructions of Jan. 6 have established failures of preparedness and intelligence sharing by the U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI and the Pentagon, which is responsible for deploying the D.C. National Guard.

But those reports have not addressed the role of White House officials in the unfolding events and whether officials took appropriate action before or during the rally. Legislation that would have authorized an independent commission to investigate further was quashed by Senate Republicans.

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would create a select committee to investigate Jan. 6 that would not require Republican support. It’s not certain whether Meadows and other aides would be willing to testify. Internal White House dealings have historically been subject to claims of “executive privilege” by both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Our reporting raises new questions that will not be answered unless Trump insiders tell the story of that day. It remains unclear, for example, precisely what Meadows and other White House officials learned of safety concerns about the march and whether they took those reports seriously.

The former president has a well-established pattern of bolstering far-right groups while he and his aides attempt to maintain some distance. Following the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump at first appeared to tacitly support torch-bearing white supremacists, later backing off. And in one presidential debate, he appeared to offer encouragement to the Proud Boys, a group of street brawlers who claim to protect Trump supporters, his statement triggering a dramatic spike in their recruitment. Trump later disavowed his support.

ProPublica has learned that White House officials worked behind the scenes to prevent the leaders of the march from appearing on stage and embarrassing the president. But Trump then undid those efforts with his speech, urging the crowd to join the march on the Capitol organized by the very people who had been blocked from speaking.

“And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said.

One Nation Under God

On Nov. 5, as Joe Biden began to emerge as the likely winner of the 2020 presidential election, a far-right provocateur named Ali Alexander assembled a loose collection of right-wing activists to help Trump maintain the presidency.

Alexander approached the cause of overturning the election with an almost messianic fervor. In private text messages, he obsessed over gaining attention from Trump and strategized about how to draw large, angry crowds in support of him.

On Nov. 7, the group held simultaneous protests in all 50 states.

Seven days later, its members traveled to Washington for the Million MAGA March, which drew tens of thousands. The event is now considered by many to be a precursor of Jan. 6.

Alexander united them under the battle cry “Stop the Steal,” a phrase originally coined by former Trump adviser Roger Stone, whom Alexander has called a friend. (Stone launched a short-lived organization of the same name in 2016.) To draw such crowds, Alexander made clear Stop the Steal would collaborate with anyone who supported its cause, no matter how extreme their views.

“We’re willing to work with racists,” he said on one livestream in December. Alexander did not return requests for comment made by email, by voicemail, to his recent attorney or to Stop the Steal PAC’s designated agent.

As he worked to expand his influence, Alexander found a valuable ally in Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist at the helm of the popular far-right website InfoWars. Jones, who first gained notoriety for spreading a lie that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, had once counted more than 2 million YouTube subscribers and 800,000 Twitter followers before being banned from both platforms.

Alexander also collaborated with Nick Fuentes, the 22-year-old leader of the white nationalist “Groyper” movement.

“Thirty percent of that crowd was Alex Jones’ crowd,” Alexander said on another livestream, referring to the Million MAGA March on Nov. 14. “And there were thousands and thousands of Groypers — America First young white men. … Even if you thought these were bad people, why can’t bad people do good tasks? Why can’t bad people fight for their country?”

Alexander’s willingness to work with such people sparked conflict even within his inner circle.

“Is Nick Fuentes now a prominent figure in Stop the Steal?” asked Brandon Straka, an openly gay conservative activist, in a November text message, obtained exclusively by ProPublica. “I find him disgusting,” Straka said, pointing to Fuentes’ vehemently anti-LGBT views.

Alexander saw more people and more power. He wrote that Fuentes was “very valuable” at “putting bodies in places,” and that both Jones and Fuentes were “willing to push bodies … where we point.”

Straka, Fuentes and Jones did not respond to requests for comment.

Right-wing leaders who had once known each other only peripherally were now feeling a deeper sense of camaraderie. In an interview, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio described how he felt as he walked alongside Jones through the crowds assembled in Washington on Nov. 14, after Jones had asked the Proud Boys to act as his informal bodyguards.

“That was the moment we really united everybody under one banner,” he said. “That everyone thought, ‘Fuck you, this is what we can do.’” According to Tarrio, the Proud Boys nearly tripled in numbers around this time, bringing in over 20,000 new members. “November was the seed that sparked that flower on Jan. 6,” he said.

The crowds impressed people like Tom Van Flein, chief of staff for Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. Van Flein told ProPublica he kept in regular contact with Alexander while Gosar led the effort in Congress to shoot down the election certification. “Ali was very talented and put on some very good rallies on short notice,” Van Flein said. “Great turnout.”

But as Jan. 6 drew nearer, the Capitol Police became increasingly concerned by the disparate elements that formed the rank and file of the organization.

“Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence, may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike,” the Capitol Police wrote in a Jan. 3 intelligence assessment.

Yet the police force, for all its concern, wound up effectively blindsided by what happened on Jan. 6.

An intelligence report from that day obtained by ProPublica shows that the Capitol Police expected a handful of rallies on Capitol grounds, the largest of which would be hosted by a group called One Nation Under God.

Law enforcement anticipated between 50 and 500 people at the gathering, assigning it the lowest possible threat score and predicting a 1% to 5% chance of arrests. The police gave much higher threat scores to two small anti-Trump demonstrations planned elsewhere in the city.

However, One Nation Under God was a fake name used to trick the Capitol Police into giving Stop the Steal a permit, according to Stop the Steal organizer Kimberly Fletcher. Fletcher is president of Moms for America, a grassroots organization founded to combat “radical feminism.”

“Everybody was using different names because they didn’t want us to be there,” Fletcher said, adding that Alexander and his allies experimented with a variety of aliases to secure permits for the east front of the Capitol. Laughing, Fletcher recalled how the police repeatedly called her “trying to find out who was who.”

A Senate report on security failures during the Capitol riot released earlier this month suggests that at least one Capitol Police intelligence officer had suspicions about this deceptive strategy, but that leadership failed to appreciate it — yet another example of an intelligence breakdown.

On Dec. 31, the officer sent an email expressing her concerns that the permit requests were “being used as proxies for Stop the Steal” and that those requesting permits “may also be involved with organizations that may be planning trouble” on Jan. 6.

A Capitol Police spokesperson told ProPublica on April 2, “Our intelligence suggested one or more groups were affiliated with Stop the Steal,” after we asked for a copy of the One Nation Under God permit, which they declined to provide.

Yet 18 days later, Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told congressional investigators that she believed the permit requests had been properly vetted and that they were not granted to anyone affiliated with Stop the Steal. Pittman did not respond to ProPublica requests for comment.

Last week, a Capitol Police spokesperson told ProPublica, “The Department knew that Stop the Steal and One Nation Under God organizers were likely associated,” but added that the police believed denying a permit based on “assumed associations” would be a First Amendment violation. “The Department did, however, take the likely association into account when making decisions to enhance its security posture.”

Kenneth Harrelson, an Oath Keeper who allegedly ran the far-right group’s “ground team” in D.C. on Jan. 6, went to Washington to provide security for Alexander, according to Harrelson’s wife. Harrelson has pleaded not guilty to felony charges in connection with the riot and is one of the Oath Keepers at the center of a major Department of Justice conspiracy case.

Harrelson’s wife, Angel Harrelson, said in an interview with ProPublica that her husband was excited to visit Washington for the first time, especially to provide security for an important person, but that he lost Alexander in the chaos that consumed the Capitol and decided to join the crowd inside.

“Historic Day!”

As the movement hurtled toward Jan. 6, what started as a loosely united coalition quickly splintered, dividing into two competing groups that vied for power and credit.

On one side, Alexander and Jones had emerged as a new, more extreme element within the Republican grassroots ecosystem.

Their chief opposition was the organization Women for America First, helmed by Kremer and other veterans of the tea party movement, itself once viewed as the Republican fringe. Kremer was an early backer of Trump, and her tea party work helped get Mark Meadows elected to the House of Representatives in 2012.

The schism was rooted in an ideological dispute. Kremer felt Alexander’s agenda and tactics were too extreme; Alexander wanted to distinguish Stop the Steal by being more directly confrontational than Kremer’s group and the tea party. “Our movement is masculine in nature,” he said in a livestream.

Trump promoted both groups’ events online at various times.

Stop the Steal, through its alias One Nation Under God, obtained a Capitol Police permit to rally on Capitol grounds, while Kremer and Women for America First controlled the National Park Service permit for a large gathering on the White House Ellipse.

Alexander and Jones wanted to speak at the Ellipse rally, but Kremer was opposed. The provocateurs found a powerful ally in Caroline Wren, an elite Republican fundraiser with connections to the Trump family, particularly Donald Trump Jr. and his partner, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Wren had raised money for the Ellipse rally and pushed to get Alexander and Jones on stage, according to six people involved in the Jan. 6 rally and emails reviewed by ProPublica.

Pierson, the Trump campaign official, had initially been asked by Wren to help mediate the conflict. But Pierson shared Kremer’s concern that Jones and Alexander were too unpredictable. Pierson and Wren declined to comment.

On Jan. 2, the fighting became so intense that Pierson asked senior White House officials how she should handle the situation, according to a person familiar with White House communications. The officials agreed that Alexander and Jones should not be on the stage and told Pierson to take charge of the event.

The next morning, Trump announced to the world that he would attend the rally at the Ellipse. “I will be there. Historic day!” he tweeted. This came as a surprise to both rally organizers and White House staff, each of whom told ProPublica they hadn’t been informed he intended to speak at the rally.

That same day, a website went live promoting a march on Jan. 6. It instructed demonstrators to meet at the Ellipse, then march to the Capitol at 1 p.m. to “let the establishment know we will fight back against this fraudulent election. … The fate of our nation depends on it.”

Alexander and his allies fired off these instructions across social media.

While Kremer and her group had held legally permitted marches at previous D.C. rallies and promoted all their events with the hashtag #marchfortrump, this time their permit specifically barred them from holding an “organized march.” Rally organizers were concerned that violating their permit could create a legal liability for themselves and pose significant danger to the public, said Stockton, a political consultant with tea party roots who spent weeks with Kremer as they held rallies across the country in support of the president.

Lawrence and Stockton’s fellow organizers contacted Pierson to inform her that the march was unpermitted, according to Stockton and three other people familiar with the situation.

While ProPublica has independently confirmed that senior White House officials, including Meadows, were involved in the broader effort to limit Alexander’s role on Jan. 6, it remains unclear just how far the rally organizers went to warn officials of their specific fears about the march.

Another source present for communications between Amy Kremer and her daughter and fellow organizer, Kylie Kremer, told ProPublica that on Jan. 3, Kylie Kremer called her mother in desperation about the march.

Kylie Kremer asked her mom to escalate the situation to higher levels of the White House, and her mother said she would work on it, according to the source, who could hear the conversation on speakerphone. “You need to call right now,” the source remembered the younger Kremer saying.

The source said that Kylie Kremer suggested Meadows as a person to contact around that time.

The source said that in a subsequent conversation, Amy Kremer told her daughter she would take the matter to Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump. The source said that Kremer was in frequent contact with Lara Trump at the time.

Stockton said that he was not aware of Kremer talking to the family about Jan. 6, but added that Kremer regularly communicates with the Trump family, including Lara Trump. He also said that Kremer gave him the distinct impression that she had contacted Meadows about the march.

Through his adviser Ben Williamson, Meadows declined to comment on whether the organizers contacted him regarding the march.

Lara Trump, who spoke at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, did not immediately respond to a voicemail and text message asking for comment or to an inquiry left on her website. Eric Trump did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Kremer did not answer questions from ProPublica about communications with Lara Trump. Donald Trump’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House, at the time, was scrambling from one crisis to the next. On Jan. 2, Trump and Meadows called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” that would swing the state tally his way. On Jan. 3, the president met with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and urged him to do what he could to protect Trump’s supporters on the 6th.

Meanwhile, Wren, the Republican fundraiser, was continuing to advocate for Jones and Alexander to play a prominent role at the Ellipse rally, according to emails and multiple sources.

A senior White House official suggested to Pierson that she resolve the dispute by going to the president himself, according to a source familiar with the matter.

On Jan. 4, Pierson met with Trump in the Oval Office. Trump expressed surprise that other people wanted to speak at the Ellipse at all. His request for the day was simple: He wanted lots of music and to limit the speakers to himself, some family members and a few others, according to the source and emails reviewed by ProPublica. The president asked if there was another venue where people like Alexander and Roger Stone could speak.

Pierson assured him there was. She informed the president that there was another rally scheduled the night before the election certification where those who lost their opportunity to speak at the Ellipse could still do so. It was meant as an olive branch extended between the competing factions, according to Stockton and two other sources.

Chafian, a reiki practitioner who’d been working closely with Alex Jones, was put in charge of the evening portion of the Jan. 5 event.

The speakers included Jones, Alexander, Stone, Michael Flynn and Three Percenter militia member Jeremy Liggett, who wore a flak jacket and led a “Fuck antifa!” chant. (Liggett is now running for Congress.) Chafian had invited Proud Boy leader Tarrio to speak as well, but Tarrio was arrested the day before on charges that he had brought prohibited gun magazines to Washington and burned a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a church.

Tarrio told ProPublica that he did not know the flag was taken from a church and that the gun magazines were a custom-engraved gift for a friend. He has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of property destruction; the gun magazine charge is still pending indictment before a grand jury.

“Thank you, Proud Boys!” Chafian shouted at the end of her speech. “The Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters — all of those guys keep you safe.”

Wren, however, would not back down. On the morning of Jan. 6, she arrived at the Ellipse before dawn and began arranging the seats. Jones and Alexander moved toward the front. Organizers were so worried that Jones and Alexander might try to rush the stage that Pierson contacted a senior White House official to see how aggressive she could get in her effort to contain Wren.

After discussing several options, the official suggested she call the United States Park Police and have Wren escorted off the premises.

Pierson relayed this to Kylie Kremer, who contacted the police. Officers arrived, but ultimately took no action.

By 9 a.m.,Trump supporters had arrived in droves: nuns and bikers, men in American flag suits, a line of Oath Keepers. Signs welcomed the crowd with the words “Save America March.”

Kylie Kremer greeted them gleefully. “What’s up, deplorables!” she said from the stage.

Wren escorted Jones and Alexander out of the event early, as they prepared to lead their march on the Capitol.

At 11:57 a.m, Trump got on stage and, after a rambling speech, gave his now infamous directive. “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong,” he said. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Lawrence, Dustin Stockton’s fiancee and co-organizer, remembers her shock.

“What the fuck is this motherfucker talking about?” Lawrence, an ardent Trump supporter, said of the former president.

In the coming hours, an angry mob would force its way into the building. Protesters smashed windows with riot shields stolen from cops, ransacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chambers, and inflicted an estimated $1.5 million of damage. Roughly 140 police officers were injured. One was stabbed with a metal fence stake and another had spinal discs smashed, according to union officials.

The Stop the Steal group chat shows a reckoning with these events in real time.

“They stormed the capital,” wrote Stop the Steal national coordinator Michael Coudrey in a text message at 2:33 p.m. “Our event is on delay.”

“I’m at the Capitol and just joined the breach!!!” texted Straka, who months earlier had raised concerns about allying with white nationalists. “I just got gassed! Never felt so fucking alive in my life!!!”

Alexander and Coudrey advised the group to leave.

“Everyone get out of there,” Alexander wrote. “The FBI is coming hunting.”

In the months since, the Department of Justice has charged more than 400 people for their actions at the Capitol, including more than 20 alleged Proud Boys, over a dozen alleged Oath Keepers, and Straka. It’s unclear from court records whether Straka has yet entered a plea.

In emails to ProPublica, Coudrey declined to answer questions about Stop the Steal. “I just really don’t care about politics anymore,” he said. “It’s boring.”

Meadows, now a senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a think tank in Washington, appeared on Fox News on Jan. 27, delivering one of the first public remarks on the riot from a former Trump White House official. He encouraged the GOP to “get on” from Jan. 6 and focus on “what’s important to the American people.” Neither Meadows nor anyone else who worked in the Trump White House at the time has had to answer questions as part of the various inquiries currently proceeding in Congress.

Alexander has kept a low profile since Jan. 6. But in private, texts show, he has encouraged his allies to prepare for “civil war.”

“Don’t denounce anything,” he messaged his inner circle in January regarding the Capitol riot. “You don’t want to be on the opposite side of freedom fighters in the coming conflict. Veterans will be looking for civilian political leaders.”

Internships are available. Contact us for more info.

This season’s compelling chronicle.

It doesn’t appear that Smith & Wesson did anything significant at first glance. The only difference in the micro-compact handguns is the “PLUS” text on the slide. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other guns in the gun. S&W has taken its Shield pistol platform to a whole new level. The M&P9 SHIELD Plus increases the magazine capacity by up to two digits without any significant increase in size. This makes an old design a formidable competitor to some of today’s most innovative handguns.

The M&P Shield was launched in 2012 to capitalize on a booming concealed-carry market. NRA led a national movement to expand concealed carry laws at the state and federal levels. More than 40 states had passed right-to-carry legislation by 2012. A decade ago, there were far fewer options for those who needed a small handgun that could be used as a self-defense weapon. With its single-stack magazine and slim profile, the original M&P Shield offered a balance between pocket-sized semi-automatics and double-stack compacts. The M&P Shield was a huge success, and it has been expanded to include add-ons and enhancements. However, competitors soon caught up and launched guns like the SIG Sauer P365 and Springfield Armory Hellcat. Smith & Wesson’s Shield Plus addresses a market shortcoming, but retains and sometimes even enhances many of the details that made the gun so popular.

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The Shield Plus magazine is the most significant change. S&W did not improve upon the original Shield’s single stack magazine. This is because the gun used a single-stack. The Shield has a slightly stubbed column, which reduces the overall height but doesn’t reduce the width. Smith has created a Shield Plus that is “stack and a half” in design. This can be seen by the Shield Plus magazine’s wider dimensions than the original Shield. The difference in width between the M&P Shield Plus and the original Shield is minimal. It measures 1.1 inches at its widest, compared to the original Shield’s 0.95″. The extra 0.15″ allows for a greater magazine capacity, ranging from a seven-round flush fit and an eight-round extended mag to a 10-round flush fit and a thirteen-round extended mag. The magazine body has a single-feed column at its top, as is the case with most handgun magazines. This particular point is visible on both the Shield Plus and the original Shield. It’s obvious that the original design was not a true single-stack. There’s still a taper to the magazine’s top column where the top round is given for battery. Each Shield Plus includes two stamped-steel magazines, one 10-rounder and one 13-round magazine. The latter has a flush-fit baseplate. Each magazine has witness holes on its right side that indicate the capacity of four to ten rounds at two-round intervals. The extended magazine also includes an additional hole that indicates full capacity at 13 rounds. The magazine spring is topped by a bright orange follower. This makes it easy to verify an empty magazine through the slide lock’s ejection port.

The M&P Shield Plus (l.), offers five additional rounds of 9mm Luger over M&P Shield M2.0(r.), with very little difference in grip width.

The new trigger is another major plus, despite the fact that the “Plus” moniker emphasizes the increased capacity of the new design. The Shield plus is the most notable difference from an exterior view. It’s the first M&P handgun to have a bladed trigger safety. S&W’s hinged trigger safety is a significant improvement over other striker-fired handguns. Instead of using the index finger of a shooter to press a blade, like the Glock system’s, S&W’s trigger safety disengaged when the shooter applied pressure to the trigger bow to release the safety. The trigger then travels rearward. While some prefer the feeling of a hinged safety to feel, others find it unnecessary travel and a spongy pull. With the Shield Plus, S&W seems to be moving along with the rest of pack towards the blade-in safety. The trigger face is also different. Shooters loved and hated the curved bow of the hinged safety triggers. Due to the strong aftermarket for S&W M&P triggers it was not surprising that many people didn’t like the design. They even spent extra money on drop-in parts to make the trigger feel better. The Shield Plus is a result of Smith & Wesson’s love for their Apex triggers.

S&W decided to abandon the hinged trigger design, but it was clear that they wanted to provide a balance with the new OEM trigger. The result is a beast. Although it isn’t a flat-faced trigger, it’s still not what most would consider a curved bow. It’s a combination of both worlds that creates a comfortable and intuitive touch point. The safety blade covers the trigger face and provides some resistance, before being flush with the trigger body. The entire assembly will move backwards smoothly once the safety blade is removed. It will eventually hit a wall. A little more pressure and you’ll feel a sudden break, followed by some overtravel. Shooters will feel and hear the short-reset point after a controlled release. Like the original hinged S&W design, both the trigger body and blade safety are made from polymer. The Shield Plus has a completely new trigger design. This means that any aftermarket parts originally designed for the M&P Shield won’t work with it. The Shield Plus trigger is much more reliable than the original M&P Shield. However, this may help to deter tinkerers.

• THE M&P9 SHIELD PLUS FEATURES IS EXTREMELY THIN AND LIGHTWEIGHT WHICH CAN BE COMFORTABLY CARRIED ALL DAY. IT FEATURES THE M&P’S PATENTED TAKE-DOWN LEVER AND SEAR DEACTIVATION SYSTEMS ALL FOR DISASSEMBLY WITHOUT PULLING THE TRIGGER. ITS FLAT FACE TRIGGER IS FOR CONSISTENT TRIGGER FINGER PLACEMENT WHICH ALLOWS FOR MORE ACCURATE AND REPEATABLE SHOOTING. ENHANCED GRIP TEXTURE ALLOWS THE USER TO MANAGE RECOIL, KEEP A FIRM GRIP AND DELIVERS COMFORT WHEN CONCEALING. THE SHIELD PLUS ALSO FEATURES AN OPTIMAL 18-DEGREE GRIP ANGLE FOR NATURAL POINT OF AIM AND ARMORNITE DURABLE CORROSION RESISTANT FINISH.

  UPC	022188885118
  CALIBER	9 MM LUGER
  ACTION	STRIKER FIRED
  CAPACITY	10 + 1 ROUNDS
  BARREL LENGTH	3.1″ BARREL
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The evenings’s note-worthy report.

The Effect of Constitutional Provisions on Education Policy and Outcomes, a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, examines the potential effects of amending education clauses contained in states’ constitutions.

Bruce D. Baker of Rutgers University reviewed the report and found its conclusions to be overly simplistic, despite using excessively complex analyses to make its case.

The apparent intent of the Federal Reserve Bank report is to provide an empirical justification for amending the education clause of Minnesota’s constitution. Specifically, the report lays out four independent empirical analyses in an attempt to advance a theory of action for improving education quality. This theory of action asserts that amending these education clauses to include strong language regarding a legislative duty to fund schools leads to increased citizen leverage, potential judicial intervention, and adopted legislation—all of which lead to better school quality and student outcomes.

Unfortunately, the four analyses presented in the report use methods and models that exceed the capacity and quality of the data. In addition, these methods and models are inadequately linked to one another or to the theory of action.

Professor Baker concludes that the report provides little evidentiary basis for the proposed theory of action or for the current campaign to amend the Minnesota constitution.

Baker writes:

A recent report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis examines the poten- tial effects of amending the education clauses contained in states’ constitutions. The appar- ent intent of this report is to provide an empirical justification for amending the education clause of Minnesota’s constitution. Specifically, the report lays out four independent empir- ical analyses in an attempt to advance a theory of action for improving education quality. This theory of action asserts that amending state constitutional education clauses to include strong language regarding a legislative duty to fund schools leads to increased citizen lever- age, potential judicial intervention, and adopted legislation which leads to better school quality and student outcomes. Unfortunately, the four analyses presented in the report use methods and models that exceed the capacity and quality of the data. In addition, these methods and models are inadequately linked to one another or to the theory of action. Ul- timately, the report provides little evidentiary basis for the proposed theory of action or for the current campaign to amend the Minnesota constitution.

The April 2021 report includes four distinct empirical analyses intended to support its the- ory of action regarding constitutional amendments and school quality. In keeping with that theory, and drawing on the findings, the report concludes, “Our results show that strength- ening education clauses results in higher per-pupil spending, an increase in teacher salaries, smaller class size, and improvement in reading and math test scores” (p. 26). As explained in this review, however, the main problem is that the report’s four separate analyses do not clearly establish the connections laid out in its theory of action. The report’s conclusions are not justified. With little regard for the content or purpose of amendments, the report links counts and timing of amendments to school resources and student outcomes. Next, it links amendments by broad categories to counts of legislation and judicial activity. Separately, it links constitutional strength to likelihood of judicial intervention, but without regard for whether that intervention led to real change in school resources, quality, and student out- comes.

All in all, the report presents a juggernaut of four discrete analyses, which (a) use methods and models that exceed the capacity and quality of the data, (b) are inadequately linked to one another or to the theory of action, and (c) ultimately provide little evidentiary basis for the proposed theory of action or for the current campaign to amend the Minnesota constitution.

In terms of the equity and adequacy of financing schools—the desired end result of all of this—Illinois remains one of the least equitably funded states in the country,28 and Florida and Colorado are among the least adequately funded state systems.29 Recall that Colorado is among the only states with recent funding-related amendments.30

While I remain skeptical that any sufficient statistical model can predict legislative or judi- cial behavior in the way the authors wish, this particular report is thwarted by its failure to consider several relatively well-understood constraints and conditions. Among other things, in its attempt to cast constitutional amendments as mainly positive and progressive, the re- port brushes aside constitutional amendments that are reactionary and destructive to public services such as constitutional tax and expenditure limits, such as Colorado’s TABOR31 and California’s Proposition 13.32 A vast body of literature in public economics points to the detrimental influence of such amendments on public service quality, including schools.33 All constitutional amendments are not created equal, which is acknowledged in the report’s fourth analysis.

see the full report here: https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/reviews/NR%20Baker_1.pdf

Please report errors and omissions.

The morning’s good narrative.

Air and Marine Operations (AMO) National Air Security Operations Center of the border patrol, P-3 Long Range Tracker and Airborne Early Warning crews partnered with Joint Interagency Task Force-South and federal authorities to stop transnational smuggling of almost six tons of narcotics between April 16 and April 24 in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, denying narcotics traffickers an estimated $156 million in illicit proceeds.

Over an eight-day period, AMO P-3 aircrews conducted detection and sustained tracking operations that led law enforcement partners to detain 15 individuals and seize a total of 7,805 pounds of cocaine and 3,588 pounds of marijuana in the Pacific Source and Transit Zone for illicit drugs.

• On April 16, a Long Range Tracker crew identified a suspect vessel while on patrol. A United States Coast Guard (USCG) team aboard The Royal Canadian Navy’s HMCS Saskatoon detained five crew members and seized more than two tons of cocaine.
• On April 17, a Long Range Tracker crew located a suspect vessel. A Colombian law enforcement team intercepted the vessel, detained three crew members, and seized 1.7 tons of marijuana and 40 pounds of cocaine.
• On April 20, a P-3 Airborne Early Warning crew detected a suspect vessel and maintained observation of the vessel’s activity. USCG Cutter Tahoma launched interceptor vessels to interdict the suspect vessel crew. The USGC team seized 2,403 pounds of cocaine and detained four crew members.
• On April 24, a P-3 Long Range Tracker crew worked with a USCG HC-130 aircrew to monitor a suspect vessel and guide partner nation aircraft and vessel teams for interdiction. The Panamanian boarding team detained three crew members and seized 1,323 pounds of cocaine and 200 pounds of marijuana.

National Air Security Operations Center P-3 capabilities continue to prove essential to United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Counter Narcotics Operations, coordinated by Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-S), contributing to an increased law enforcement presence in narcotics transit zones. This partnership bolsters the effectiveness of U.S. and international law enforcement by sharing information and intelligence to increase interdictions. Key SOUTHCOM partners have been involved in over 60 percent of drug disruptions since April 2020.

AMO has two P-3 National Air Security Operations Centers located in Jacksonville, FL and Corpus Christi, TX. These P-3 aircraft operate throughout North, Central and South America in defense of the borders of the United States and to prevent attempts to smuggle persons or contraband.

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The evenings’s note-worthy report.

 In a joint law enforcement effort, Laredo Sector Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and Laredo Police Department (LPD) worked together to shut down an alleged stash house that contained a large group of individuals being guarded by smugglers in south Laredo.

The incident occurred during the morning of June 10 when over 100 undocumented individuals were found inside the alleged stash house.  The individuals were identified as nationals of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.

All the undocumented individuals were taken into custody for further investigation.  None of the individuals were wearing any personal protective equipment (PPE) and all were medically screened.

The smuggling and housing of large groups of individuals in stash houses has not been deterred by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  Stash house incidents such as this pose a threat not only to the people exploited by human smuggling but also to the people and safety of our Nation.

Take a stand against these criminal organizations and other potentially dangerous acts by reporting suspicious activity in our neighborhoods

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The afternoon’s good report.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the Brownsville Port of Entry intercepted alleged narcotics in two separate enforcement actions that have a combined estimated street value of $809,710.

“As these two significant enforcement actions aptly illustrate, our frontline CBP officers use multiple enforcement tools and methods to help them carry out the mission of securing our borders and preventing these dangerous narcotics from coming in,” said (A) Port Director Bob Parker, Brownsville Port of Entry.

Packages containing nearly 70 pounds of cocaine
seized by CBP officers at Veterans International Bridge
in Brownsville, Texas.

The first seizure took place on Thursday, May 20, at the Gateway International Bridge when a 29-year-old female United States citizen from Brownsville, Texas, applied for entry into the United States driving a 2012 Volkswagen.  The vehicle was referred to CBP secondary for further examination after a primary inspection.  In secondary, with the aid of a canine unit, CBP officers discovered 15 packages hidden within the vehicle.  CBP officers removed the packages, which contained a total of 35.25 pounds of alleged cocaine.

The second seizure took place on Wednesday, May 26, at the Veterans International Bridge when a 27-year-old male Mexican citizen from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, applied for entry into the United States driving a 2013 Freightliner.  The traveler was referred to CBP secondary for further examination after a primary inspection.  In secondary, with the aid of a non-intrusive imaging system (NII) and a canine unit, CBP officers discovered 29 packages hidden within the 2013 Freightliner.  CBP officers removed the packages, which contained a total of 69.75 pounds of alleged cocaine.

The estimated street value of the narcotics from the seizures is approximately $271,830 and $537,880 respectively.

CBP officers seized the narcotics along with the vehicles, arrested the drivers and turned them over to the custody of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents for further investigation.

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The morning’s note-worthy story.

Vaccinated people are well protected from getting sick, but could they inadvertently transmit the coronavirus?
Noam Galai/Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images

Sanjay Mishra, Vanderbilt University

Takeaways:

• Vaccines can be great at preventing you from getting sick, while at the same time not necessarily stopping you from getting infected or spreading the germ.
• Preliminary evidence seems to suggest the COVID-19 vaccines make it less likely someone who’s vaccinated will transmit the coronavirus, but the proof is not yet ironclad.
• Unvaccinated people should still be diligent about mask-wearing, physical distancing and other precautions against the coronavirus.

When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidelines about mask-wearing on May 13, 2021, plenty of Americans were left a little confused. Now anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing.

Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, said the new guideline is “based on the evolution of the science” and “serves as an incentive” for the almost two-thirds of Americans who are not yet fully vaccinated to go ahead and get the shot.

But some people cannot be vaccinated because of underlying conditions. Others with weakened immune systems, from cancer or medical treatments, may not be fully protected by their vaccinations. Children aged 12 to 15 became eligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine only on May 10, 2021. And no COVID-19 vaccines are yet authorized for the nearly 50 million children in the U.S. younger than 12.

As restrictions are lifted and people start to leave their masks at home, some people worry: Can you catch COVID-19 from someone who’s vaccinated?

Vaccines don’t always prevent infection

Researchers had hoped to design safe COVID-19 vaccines that would prevent at least half of the people vaccinated from getting COVID-19 symptoms.

Fortunately, the vaccines have vastly outperformed expectations. For example, in 6.5 million residents of Israel, aged 16 years and older, the Pfizer–BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was found to be 95.3% effective after both shots. Within two months, among the 4.7 million fully vaccinated, the detectable infections fell by 30-fold. Similarly in California and Texas, only 0.05% of fully vaccinated health care workers tested positive for COVID-19.

Vaccine developers often hope that, in addition to preventing illness, their vaccines will achieve “sterilizing immunity,” where the vaccination blocks the germ from even being able to get into the body at all. This sterilizing immunity means someone who’s vaccinated will neither catch the virus nor transmit it further. For a vaccine to be effective, though, it doesn’t need to prevent the germ from infecting an immunized person.

The Salk inactivated polio vaccine, for instance, does not completely stop polio virus from growing in the human gut. But it is extremely effective at preventing the crippling disease because it triggers antibodies that block the virus from infecting the brain and spinal cord. Good vaccines provide effective and durable training for the body’s immune system, so when it actually encounters the disease-causing pathogen, it’s ready to mount an optimum response.

When it comes to COVID-19, immunologists are still figuring out what they call the “correlates of protection,” factors that predict just how protected someone is against the coronavirus. Researchers believe that an optimum amount of “neutralizing antibodies,” the type that not only bind the virus but also prevent it from infecting, are sufficient to fend off repeat infections. Scientists are also still assessing the durability of immunity that the COVID-19 vaccines are providing and where in the body it’s working.

Vaccination can mean far fewer infections, but it’s not clear it will stop transmission by those who are vaccinated.
Ethan Miller/Getty Images News

Can a vaccinated person spread coronavirus?

Immunologists expect vaccines that protect against viral illnesses to also reduce transmission of the virus after vaccination. But it’s actually tricky to figure out for sure if vaccinated people are not spreading the germ.

COVID-19 poses a particular challenge because people with asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infections can spread the disease – and insufficient contact tracing and testing mean those without symptoms are rarely detected. Some scientists estimate that the number of asymptomatic COVID-19 infections in the overall population could be 3 to 20 times higher than the number of confirmed cases. Research suggests that undocumented cases of COVID-19 in people who either were asymptomatic or experienced very mild disease could be responsible for up to 86% of all infections, though other studies contradict the high estimates.

In one study, the CDC tested volunteer health care personnel and other front-line workers at eight U.S. locations for SARS-CoV-2 infections weekly for three months, regardless of symptoms or vaccination status. The researchers found that fully immunized participants were 25 times less likely to test positive for COVID-19 than were those who were unvaccinated. Findings like this imply that if vaccinated people are so well protected from getting infected at all, they are also unlikely to spread the virus. But without contact tracing to track transmission in a larger population, it’s impossible to know if the assumption is true.

What we know for sure is that if someone does get sick with COVID-19 after vaccination, in what is called a “breakthrough infection,” symptoms will be milder. Studies have found that people who tested positive for COVID-19 after getting just their first vaccine dose had lower levels of virus in their bodies than unvaccinated people who tested positive. The researchers believe the decreased viral load hints that vaccinated people who do contract the virus will be less infectious because they will have much less virus that could be spread to others.

A preprint study which has not yet been peer-reviewed suggests that the Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine can produce coronavirus-fighting antibodies in the oral and nasal fluid. Since that’s where SARS-CoV-2 makes its entry, antibodies in the mouth and nose should block the virus from getting into the body, effectively providing “sterilizing immunity.” This would also mean vaccinated people probably wouldn’t spread the virus through respiratory droplets.

These bits of evidence are promising. But without more studies, scientists cannot yet conclude that COVID-19 vaccines really do protect against all transmission. Studies attempting to directly answer this question through contact tracing are just beginning: Researchers will track COVID-19 infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated volunteers and their close contacts.

CDC guidance still calls for those who are not yet vaccinated to mask up and maintain physical distance.
Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Protection and prevention go hand in hand

Vaccines help slow down the spread of an infectious disease by breaking the chain of infection. Those who are infected eventually have fewer and fewer unprotected people to pass the virus on to. This is how a vaccine increases herd immunity – susceptible and not-yet-immunized people are surrounded by a “herd” of people who have become immune, thanks to vaccination or previous infection. But studies suggest that, for a combination of biological and social reasons, vaccination alone is unlikely to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 and fully contain the coronavirus.

In fact, vaccination alone can take a long time to eradicate any disease. Even diseases that are nearly “eliminated” – such as chickenpox, measles and pertussis – can resurface with waning immunity and declining vaccine rates.

The recent outbreak of infections among the vaccinated New York Yankees shows that vaccinated people not only can still get infected, they might also transmit the coronavirus to close contacts. Highly tested groups, such as professional sports teams, spotlight the fact that mild, asymptomatic infections among the vaccinated in the general population might actually be more frequent than reported. A similar outbreak in airport workers in Singapore shows that, even among the fully vaccinated, new and more infectious variants can spread fast.

The CDC’s relaxed guidelines on masking are meant to reassure vaccinated people that they are safe from serious illness. And they are. But the picture is less clear-cut for the unvaccinated who interact with them. Until near herd immunity against COVID-19 is achieved, and clear evidence accumulates that vaccinated people do not spread the virus, I and many epidemiologists believe it is better to avoid situations where there are chances to get infected. Vaccination coupled with continued masking and social distancing is still an effective way to stay safer.

Sanjay Mishra, Project Coordinator & Staff Scientist, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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This week’s note-worthy article.

Each headstone in Minneapollis’ ‘Say Their Names’ cemetery represents a Black American killed by police – deaths that create a ripple effect of pain felt in Black communities nationwide.
Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Denise A. Herd, University of California, Berkeley

It’s been one year since George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer set off the largest protests in U.S. history and a national reckoning with racism.

Beyond the protests, every police killing – indeed, every violent act by police toward civilians – can have painful and widespread consequences.

Each year, U.S. police kill about 1,000 people, which equals approximately 8% of all homicides for adult men. This risk is greater for Black men, who are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men.

The effects of these killings ripple from the individual victim to their families and local communities as they cope with the permanence of injury, death and loss. People victimized by the police have demonstrated higher-than-usual rates of depression, psychological distress and even suicide risk.

But the pain doesn’t stop there.

Public health research I am conducting with my research team at the University of California, Berkeley finds that the harm from police killings of Black people goes beyond the people and places directly involved in these incidents to affect Black Americans far from the site of the killing, who may have never met the victim.

Evidence shows that many Black Americans across the U.S. experience police killings of other Black people as traumatic events, and that this trauma diminishes the ability of Black communities to thrive.

Protest march marking the anniversary of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, Minn., May 23, 2021.
Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images

The ripple effect

One of the key studies illustrating this ripple effect of police killings on the mental health of Black Americans was published in the medical journal The Lancet in 2018.

Boston University researchers surveyed 103,710 people in the U.S. to measure the relationship between police killings and Americans’ mental health.

Among survey respondents, each police-related fatality of an unarmed Black person in the state where they lived was associated with an increase in the number of days when they reported poor mental health relating to stress, depression or emotional issues.

The authors estimated that the cumulative impact of U.S. police killings of unarmed Blacks could add up to 55 million additional poor mental health days for the U.S.‘s 44 million Black people.

Police killings of armed Black people did not elicit the same distress among Black Americans. And white Americans suffered no additional poor mental health days, as defined by the researchers, after exposure to police killings – no matter the circumstances or race of the victim.

The authors speculated that historical and institutional patterns of systematic, targeted violence against Black people – combined with a general lack of legal consequences when police officers commit such crimes – make the killings of unarmed Blacks particularly stressful for Black Americans.

“Racism, like trauma, can be experienced vicariously,” they concluded.

A 2021 study substantiates the Boston University’s mental health findings.

Scouring emergency department admission records in 75 counties in five U.S. states, researchers found that within three months following a police killing of an unarmed Black person in the county in which they reside, Black Americans sought treatment at local emergency departments for depressive symptoms 11% more frequently than in other months.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump hugs Sequita Thompson, grandmother of Stephon Clark, who was shot and killed by Sacramento police in 2018 in Sacramento, Calif.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Prenatal and childhood trauma

Black women experience acute fear that their children will be harmed by the police.
Those who expressed beliefs that Black youth are at higher risk for having negative police experiences were 12 times more likely to report symptoms of depression during their pregnancy than other women, according to one study from 2017.

Depression during pregnancy can increase the risks for health problems for both parent and child, including newborns with low birth weight or premature delivery – both major causes of infant death. Depression during pregnancy also puts new mothers at higher risk for postpartum depression, which may negatively affect their ability to nurture their children.

Police killings can also directly harm the mental health of young people of color. According to Brendesha Tynes’ 2019 study, exposure to viral videos of police killings is associated with symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among adolescents of color.

Health effects

Police killings and other negative encounters with police create a climate of fear in Black communities that takes a physical toll on residents.

For example, aggressive policing can cause fear and excessive watchfulness among Black Americans that, at elevated levels, are associated with high blood pressure. A New York City-based research team found in 2016 that in neighborhoods where police engaged in the invasive practice of “stop and frisk,” residents were more likely to have not only high blood pressure but to also suffer from diabetes, get asthma attacks and be overweight.

Black teenagers in Washington, D.C., listen to city council youth testimony about being stopped and frisked by police, July 2018.
Calla Kessler/The Washington Post via Getty Images

A 2016 study conducted in 75 metropolitan areas across the U.S. found that a police killing of a Black person in the area the year prior was associated with a 7.5% rise in local syphilis rates and a 4% rise in gonorrhea rates – perhaps, the authors suggest, because the associated psychological stress leads to riskier sexual behavior. Fear of a police run-in and distrust of institutions might also lead people in these areas to avoid medical services.

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Police violence in a given neighborhood is also linked to lower trust in government, less frequent voting and higher crime rates. It decreases residents’ perception of their ability to stand together and control what happens in their neighborhood.

Policing seen as racism

Many people in heavily policed neighborhoods see negative police encounters as forms of discrimination or racism – both of which are scientifically documented to worsen the health of Black people.

“People understand that this system is filled with all sorts of inequality and injustice, and that implicit bias and just outright racism is embedded in the way that policing is done in this nation,” said Opal Tometi, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, in a recent interview with the New Yorker. It amounts to “a war on Black life.”

Ultimately, the cumulative impact of harmful policing can shred the social fabric of Black neighborhoods and drain Black people and their communities of the health and social resources they need to live healthy lives.

Denise A. Herd, Professor of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The afternoon’s must-read article.

remarks by Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard

Strong fiscal support and increasing vaccination rates drove a strong rebound in activity in the first quarter, and the second quarter looks to be even stronger. The outlook is bright, but uncertainty remains, and employment and inflation are far from our goals. While more balanced than earlier this year, risks remain from vaccine hesitancy, deadlier variants, and a resurgence of cases in some foreign countries. The latest jobs report is a reminder that the path of reopening and recovery—like the shutdown—is likely to be uneven and difficult to predict, so basing monetary policy on outcomes rather than the outlook will serve us well.

With the renewal of fiscal support, real disposable personal income surged 61 percent on an annualized basis in the first quarter after a decline of 10 percent in the fourth quarter. Real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) jumped 10.7 percent, supporting a robust 6.4 percent growth rate in real gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter, despite a large runoff of inventories amid supply chain bottlenecks.

The second quarter appears primed to exceed the strong first quarter as progress on vaccinations continues, and more consumers return to the sectors adversely affected by COVID-19.2 The combination of fiscal support and depressed discretionary services spending during the shutdown have enabled households to accumulate considerable savings that could continue to fuel spending. Personal savings rose to 21 percent in the first quarter, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data, on top of the $2.1 trillion increase in household liquid assets reflected at the end of last year.3

While the incoming spending data, elevated household savings, and progress on vaccinations point to a very strong modal outlook, there is greater than usual uncertainty about the economy’s path. For instance, the strength of domestic demand this year relative to next will depend on how quickly or slowly a large share of accumulated household savings is spent out. This, in turn, hinges in part on the distribution of household savings and how much is concentrated among households who are less likely to spend, perhaps because their services consumption returns only to pre-COVID levels or their near-term demand for durable goods has largely been satiated.4

There is also uncertainty about how much of the strong domestic aggregate demand will leak abroad rather than translating into domestic output. As supply chain and shipping bottlenecks ease, international spillovers could lead to some slippage between the increase in domestic demand and domestic resource utilization.

In addition, some of this year’s tailwinds are likely to become next year’s headwinds. While the fiscal support provided to households is raising consumer spending and GDP this year, the absence of similar transfers will lower the growth rate of spending next year relative to this year. The boost to spending from pent up demand this year as the economy reopens is also unlikely to be repeated next year.

The latest jobs report reminds us that while there are good reasons to expect the number of jobs and the number of people wanting to work will make a full recovery, it is unlikely they will recover at the same pace. Over the past few months, the demand for workers has strengthened as COVID-affected sectors have reopened. Labor supply has also improved, with many people coming back into the labor force and others extending their hours of work, but there are indications that many other workers still face virus-related impediments. Although the fraction of the population ages 25 to 54 that is employed has improved in each month of this year, the current prime-age employment-to-population (EPOP) ratio of 76.9 percent is still far from the 80 percent level reached during both of the past two expansions.5

On the demand side, we saw a welcome increase of 331,000 jobs in the hard-hit leisure and hospitality sector in April following a 206,000 increase in March. But bottlenecks on inputs such as semiconductors appear to be limiting production and hiring in industries such as motor vehicles, contributing to a decline of 18,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector. The increase in average hours worked and the reduction in people who are working part time but would prefer full-time work suggest some employers are responding to the increase in demand by lengthening workweeks.

On the supply side, the number of people entering the labor force strengthened for the second month in a row in a welcome sign that more people are actively seeking work as job opportunities and vaccinations increase. But we are also hearing anecdotal accounts that many people face virus-related impediments in returning to full-time work, and many businesses face hiring challenges. With less than one-in-four individuals ages 18 to 64 fully vaccinated at the end of the survey period for the April jobs report, health and safety concerns remain important for in-person work and for people relying on public transport, and childcare remains a challenge for many parents.6

Childcare remains an impediment for many parents because the return to fully in-person school is still incomplete and childcare options are still limited in many areas.7 At the time of the April jobs report, nearly two-thirds of students had yet to return to fully in-person schooling, and this share had only increased by 8 percentage points since March.8 Consistent with this, the labor force participation rate of women ages 25 to 45 was unchanged in April, after an increase in March that coincided with a surge in education hiring and school reopening. Similarly, April saw a small increase in the number of women who reported that they wanted a job but were out of the labor force for family responsibilities, following a large decline in March.9 Recent research shows that the pandemic has taken a particularly significant toll on the labor market status of many Black and Hispanic mothers and mothers with lower incomes.10

Aggregate average hourly earnings increased by 0.7 percent in April in a positive development for workers. Wage increases were broadly distributed across sectors, including an increase of more than 1-1/2 percent, month over month, in hourly earnings in the leisure and hospitality sector.

While labor market conditions have improved in aggregate, significant disparities persist. Although the prime-age EPOP ratio has increased for all racial groups over the past four months, the ratio for Black prime-age workers, at 72.1 percent, is still over 6 percentage points lower than the white prime-age EPOP ratio, while the gap for Hispanic prime-age workers relative to white workers is almost 5 percentage points.

Job losses are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage, high-contact sectors, suggesting that the workers least able to shoulder the economic effect of job loss have faced the greatest challenges. Despite the more than 900,000 jobs gained in the leisure and hospitality sector in the first four months of 2021, jobs in this sector remain nearly 3 million below their pre-COVID level. The leisure and hospitality sector alone accounts for 41 percent of the net loss in private payrolls since the onset of the pandemic.

There is good reason to expect a strong rebound in employment over coming quarters, although the different forces affecting demand and supply may lead to uneven rates of progress. But today, by any measure, employment remains far from our goals. The unemployment rate remains elevated at 8.9 percent when we adjust the narrow 6.1 percent U-3 measure of unemployment to also reflect workers who have left the labor force since the pandemic started and those who are misclassified. As of the latest reading, there is an employment shortfall of 8.2 million relative to the pre-pandemic level, and the employment shortfall is over 10 million if we take into account the secular job growth that would have occurred over the period since February 2020 in normal circumstances.11

The path of inflation is also difficult to predict, although there are a variety of reasons to expect an increase in inflation associated with reopening that is largely transitory. Most immediately, base effects are likely to contribute substantially to the 12-month readings of headline and core PCE inflation in April and May as the price declines of March and April 2020 roll out of the 12-month calculation. I also anticipate that the recent surge in energy prices, which contributed about 1/2 percentage point to the March 12-month headline PCE reading, will fade over time, although recent pipeline disruptions add some uncertainty.

It is much more difficult to predict the size and duration of supply-side bottlenecks and how these will interact with the pattern of demand to feed through into inflation. The production of certain semiconductors may take some time to ramp up, and the feedback effects between shipping delays and container shortages appear to be only slowly working themselves out. In contrast, the manufacturing capacity taken offline by the harsh weather in Texas in February is coming back online rapidly. If past experience is any guide, production will rise to meet the level of goods demand before too long. The supply–demand imbalances in the in-person services sector are expected to be resolved within a few quarters with progress on virus control and the return of in-person schooling. And demand growth itself is expected to moderate after a reopening surge, broadly coinciding with the time when some of the current tailwinds from fiscal support and makeup consumption turn to headwinds. Of course, there may be additional demand and supply surprises that could further complicate the inflation picture.

To the extent that supply chain congestion and other reopening frictions are transitory, they are unlikely to generate persistently higher inflation on their own. A persistent material increase in inflation would require not just that wages or prices increase for a period after reopening, but also a broad expectation that they will continue to increase at a persistently higher pace. A limited period of pandemic-related price increases is unlikely to durably change inflation dynamics. Past experience suggests many businesses are likely to compress margins and to rely on automation to reduce costs rather than fully passing on price increases.12 In the December Duke CFO Survey, roughly one-half of chief financial officers from large firms and about one-third of those from small firms reported “using, or planning to use, automation or technology to reduce reliance on labor.”13The pandemic-induced shift to virtual, or contactless, versions of many previously in-person interactions is likely to lead to some durable shifts in the use of technology.

Thus, there are compelling reasons to expect the well-entrenched inflation dynamics that prevailed for a quarter-century to reassert themselves next year as imbalances associated with reopening are resolved, work and consumption patterns settle into a post-pandemic “new normal,” and some of the current tailwinds shift to headwinds.14

I will be carefully monitoring measures of longer-term inflation expectations to ensure they are well anchored at 2 percent. To date, various measures suggest inflation expectations remain well anchored and broadly consistent with our new framework. The Index of Common Inflation Expectations moved back to 2 percent in the first quarter, returning to its level in 2018, which is lower than its level prior to 2014.15 In addition, the term structure of market-based measures of inflation compensation is consistent with market participants expecting a limited period of inflation above 2 percent. A straight read of the difference between the forward nominal Treasury curve and the forward Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities curve implies inflation compensation is expected to be higher for the next two years and to decline subsequently and remain stable 5 and 10 years into the future.

I will remain attentive to the risk that what seem like transitory inflationary pressures could prove persistent as I closely monitor the incoming data. Should this risk manifest, we have the tools and the experience to gently guide inflation back to our target. No one should doubt our commitment to do so.

But recent experience suggests we should not lightly dismiss the risk on the other side. Achieving our inflation goal requires firmly anchoring inflation expectations at 2 percent. Following the reopening, there will need to be strong underlying momentum to reach the outcomes in our forward guidance. Remaining patient through the transitory surge associated with reopening will help ensure that the underlying economic momentum that will be needed to reach our goals as some current tailwinds shift to headwinds is not curtailed by a premature tightening of financial conditions.

The outlook is bright, but risks remain, and we are far from our goals. The latest employment report reminds us that realized outcomes can diverge from forward projections and underscores the value of patience. As the economy reopens fully and the recovery gathers momentum, it will be important to remain patiently focused on achieving the maximum-employment and inflation outcomes in our guidance.

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