02 August 21
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Centrist pundits and politicians are cheering the new bipartisan infrastructure bill even though it slashes a range of vital spending programs contained in the original. We don’t need continued fetishization of bipartisanship — we need measures that actually aid the working-class majority.
tweet from democratic socialist congressman Jamaal Bowman laid it out in stark terms.
Whether the “bipartisan” gutting of the infrastructure bill is all the fault of Joe Manchin or Joe Biden and his frequently professed enthusiasm for renewed bipartisan cooperation, it’s a disaster for the working class. The original bill had $387 billion for “housing, schools, and buildings.” The bipartisan version has $0. The original infrastructure bill had $400 billion for “home- and community-based care.” The bipartisan version has $0. Even “clean energy tax credits,” an absurdly inadequate response to the climate crisis, plummeted from $363 billion to $0. Other climate measures were also scrapped.
The gap between the bills is a catastrophe in human terms. What it has going for it is . . . bipartisanship.
Democrats say they’ll pass a separate bill through the reconciliation process to address the areas where the infrastructure bill does nothing. We’ll see. Powerful players have promised they won’t vote on the infrastructure bill if the reconciliation bill isn’t approved, but it’s hard to avoid the sinking feeling that we’ve seen this movie before. In 2009, for example, the House Progressive Caucus was vowing not to support any version of the Affordable Care Act that didn’t include a public option.
If the infrastructure bill does end up getting voted on before the reconciliation bill, it’s all too easy to imagine one or two moderate Democrats (which would be all it would take) having second thoughts. Separating the bills would make such a decision far less politically costly on their part. Or we could see a repetition of the grotesque farce that played out in February, when Senate Democrats pretended to be powerless in the face of the parliamentarian’s decision not to allow a minimum-wage hike to go through reconciliation — even though the parliamentarian is a low-level staffer the Democratic leadership could have fired or vice president Kamala Harris could have simply overruled.
It’s too early to know how any of that will play out. As I write, it’s still possible that the main infrastructure bill will itself run into trouble at the last minute. But whatever happens, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the absurdity of hundreds of billions of dollars of desperately needed aid being gutted from the infrastructure bill — and a chorus of politicians and media figures telling us that this is an important Biden victory because the bill is now “bipartisan.”
America’s peculiar electoral system (and antidemocratic laws) have guaranteed that there’s no separate labor or socialist party with its own ballot line, so those who would otherwise be part of such a party end up getting elected as Democrats, and labor unions and other progressive forces can sometimes exercise a (frustratingly limited) degree of influence on some elected Democrats even outside of the “Berniecrat” wing. The Democratic establishment, however, is firmly in the pocket of the ownership class. And the GOP, which lacks any equivalent to these progressive forces, is even more reliably aligned with corporate America. That’s why alleged populists like Josh Hawley are firmly opposed to universal health care, a $15 minimum wage, or any other reform that would substantially improve the lives of working people.
Given that reality, it’s no surprise that so many of the worst things that have happened in the last twenty years have been bipartisan. The invasion of Iraq was deeply bipartisan. Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and a long list of other prominent Democrats voted for it. The Patriot Act was almost unanimously bipartisan. (Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold was the only senator who voted against it.) The beginning of the forever war in Afghanistan was so bipartisan that there wasn’t a single “no” vote in the Senate.
Meanwhile, not a single Republican would ever vote for a public option — never mind the Medicare for All plan supported by even a majority of Republican voters in some polls. Some Republicans pretend to be “economic populists,” but if that minimum-wage vote had happened back in February, it would have been astonishing if even one Republican senator had been a “yes” vote — never mind that almost two-thirds of the public supports the proposal.
There’s nothing wrong with seeking out bipartisan support for beneficial reforms when it’s possible and will make such measures more likely to pass. Bernie Sanders, for example, has done so in situations ranging from improving health care for veterans to ending US involvement in the war in Yemen. But your default reaction to hearing that some new bill is bipartisan should be to worry about how the two parties of capital are ganging up to screw the rest of us this time.
After the spiraling series of catastrophes that have ravaged the working-class majority of society, we need far more than the original infrastructure bill ever promised to make things right. Instead, we’re being told we should cheer for getting much less than it promised because the process is bipartisan.
Screw that.
Congresswoman Cori Bush spoke with supporters as she spent the night sleeping outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the end of the eviction moratorium Friday night. She has experienced homelessness herself in the past. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)
e speak with Missouri Congressmember Cori Bush, who is formerly unhoused, about why she has been sleeping on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with others since Friday night to protest her colleagues’ decision to adjourn for August recess without passing an extension to the federal eviction moratorium, which expired July 31, as millions are behind on rent. Bush tells Democracy Now! she could not “walk away from this situation and go on vacation” knowing that millions of people could end up on the streets. “This isn’t easy. This is not performative in any way. I would rather be at home, but I understand the urgency and the need of this crisis right now,” Bush says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We turn now to Congressmember Cori Bush, who represents Missouri’s First Congressional District and has been sleeping on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with others since Friday night to protest her House colleagues adjourning for August recess without passing an extension on the eviction moratorium for renters, as nearly 12 million people are behind on rent. Congressmember Bush was formerly unhoused with her children. Her recent piece in Time magazine is headlined I Lived in My Car and Now I’m in Congress.
We Need to Solve America’s Housing Crisis.
Last week, Congressmember Bush introduced the Unhoused Bill of Rights, which she describes as “the first-ever federal legislation to declare the civil and human rights of unhoused individuals, particularly the right to sit, stand, sleep, or eat in public without fear of harassment or criminalization.” Earlier today, Congressmember Bush tweeted “5 AM. This morning felt cold, like the wind was blowing straight through my sleeping bag. Since Friday—when some colleagues chose early vacation over voting to prevent evictions—we’ve been at the Capitol. It’s an eviction emergency. Our people need an eviction moratorium.
Now.”
She joins us from those same Capitol steps. Congressmember Bush, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about why you have been sleeping on the steps for days now.
REP. CORI BUSH: The idea that lawmakers, the only ones—lawmakers, our government, the levels of government that have some type of jurisdiction with this type of a situation, with this crisis, chose not to do anything to stop this from becoming a crisis, on top of all of the crises we have going on in the country right now. I am out here because there is no organization that can make this decision to have this moratorium in place. There is no corporation, there is no big-name family, there’s no wealthy person. There’s none of that, that can make the decision to make sure that between seven and 11 million people don’t end up forced out of their homes. That is solely on the people in Congress, or what we have been messaging, the White House and CDC working together in collaboration to get this done. And because that didn’t happen on last Friday, the House did not get that done, I could not at all walk away from this situation and go on vacation, recess, knowing that millions of people could start to end up on the streets. So we just—I did what I know to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what it is you know to do.
REP. CORI BUSH: I am an activist. I’m an organizer. I got my start, my official start I guess I’d say, in activism after Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson in 2014. We protested more than 400 days. And even after that, we protested—we’ve protested for years against injustices related to police brutality and more. And even the housing crisis. There was no way that I could do that work at home in St. Louis, and then to come here and see an atrocity taking place that I have a hand in, and just sit by and let it go! So, this is what I asked for. I asked for the people of St. Louis to send me here to be able to represent them, every single one of them. And I asked them to send me here to bring the same energy that I had on the streets of Ferguson all of those nights, bring that here in Congress. And so that’s what I did. I know how to go ahead and say, “Look, I’m going to protest this decision. I’m going to protest something that I know that if we don’t do anything, people will be hurt.” And so that’s what we did. And we brought two chairs and set them on the steps, and took a picture and posted it out, and said, “Hey, we’re here. Come and join us.” And people did. And we have been here since Friday night.
AMY GOODMAN: You were joined by several congressmembers, is that right, Friday night? Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, all slept out on the steps?
REP. CORI BUSH: Yes, yes. Slept on the steps. And let me just say that it’s not comfortable. We cannot lay. There is a law here that you cannot lay down on the Capitol steps. So we have to sit up in a chair, or sit up on the steps. So that is how we slept, sitting up. And we have done that every night since. And it gets cold at night. It was really cold last night. Last night I feel was the coldest night since we have been out here. It was raining back and forth. And so to have other members out here at night. Representative Mondaire Jones came out here last night. We have to have more bodies, more congressmembers to show up.
This is the thing: we can’t take the glory if we are not willing to go through the grind. There is grind happening right now. So go through the grind. Don’t just start snatching glory. Because let me tell you this; this isn’t easy. This is not performative in any way. I would rather be at home but I understand the urgency and the need of this crisis right now. And so my body, it hurts physically. I am walking slow, and I lost my voice. It’s just starting to come back. I’ve got a lot of honey on board right now, and a lot of tea. I am dizzy, I’m lightheaded. I’m exhausted, emotionally and mentally! But it is nothing in comparison to what our unhoused community members face every single day, and what would happen if we send seven to 11 million people out on the streets.
AMY GOODMAN: So how did this happen, Congressmember Bush? We are not talking about a Republican-led House; we’re talking about a Democratic-led House. Nancy Pelosi went home to her house. She is the House Speaker. How did this happen? This eviction moratorium was extended several times before, but now, Congress just went out on recess? What are you saying Pelosi should be able to do right now? What do you demand of President Biden?
REP. CORI BUSH: Our message has been clear for the last four days now, that we are not just talking to one particular group or one particular person saying, “Hey, you need to act.” Because it’s such an urgent situation. So we’re saying everybody that has—everybody. We need to use all the tools in our toolbox right now. So we’ve been saying to House leadership, “Reconvene the House. Reconvene us.” Chairman Jim McGovern of the House Rules Committee came here to the steps, addressed the crowd, and he said that the Rules Committee is waiting. They are ready to come back and do the work. He said we would be back in a nanosecond if we hear that we have 218 votes. So they are ready.
And so we are saying, “Reconvene us. Let’s do the work to make sure that we get the whip count right and then come back and let us get this vote.” Also, we are still saying to the White House and to the CDC, “Give us the moratorium. Give us the eviction moratorium.” We are asking the president to pen the executive order. We need that done. And if there is a court challenge after that, we can deal with the courts. That court challenge can be dealt with. In the meantime, though, while that is happening, if it happens, we will be able to, in the House, work on getting the bill that Chairwoman Maxine Waters had introduced, which has a moratorium until December the 31st.
AMY GOODMAN: What about Pelosi calling on the CDC to extend the moratorium?
REP. CORI BUSH: Again, we have to use everything that we can. That was the route that she chose, was to say the CDC. We are saying CDC, White House, House leadership. We’re even talking about Senate. Come on. Like, we were all elected to serve the people. We didn’t sign up to say, “Oh, not people of low income. No, no, no, no. We’re not talking about you.” There was no document that I saw! And when I raised my hand, that was not a part of what I swore! So my job is to make sure that I am speaking up for the over 740,000 people in my district, to make sure that their basic needs are met, plus anything else that’s coming up that is within my wheelhouse to take care of. And the same thing for each and every one of the people that you just named.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Bush, can you talk about the Unhoused Bill of Rights, this unprecedented bill that you have introduced?
REP. CORI BUSH: Sure. The Unhoused Bill of Rights is a resolution that lays out what those civil rights protections, what dignity looks like for our unhoused neighbors. Because what we have seen is that the protections for our community members who are experiencing homelessness is it just doesn’t seem like it’s respected at all. And this has been going on for such a long time and it is going on everywhere! And so we decided to build a framework so that we can build legislation from this.
We want to make sure that we are talking about every single thing that affects someone who is living unhoused, from hostile architecture, which I think is absolutely—I just can’t believe who comes up with these things, to want to take a bus stop bench and make it to where you can’t lay down on it. Those type of things. It’s unbelievable. And I think about when I was unhoused, when I was sleeping in a car, the one thing that I did have was the park.
And I never went into a shelter. I didn’t take my children into a shelter, because I felt like at least I have a car. I have a place where we can at least lean back, where they can lay down. What about people who don’t have that? When I think about last night, we were subject to everything that the weather decided to do. That was it. We were subject to the rain, the harsh downpours, the cold, the wind, all of that, and then the heat right now.
And so making sure that people who are unhoused have access to restrooms. Going to the restroom is a huge deal. Where do you go to the restroom? Think about how many times you go to the restroom in a day, and having a place to go. But when you are unhoused and you have to go to the restroom, you go into a store, they want you to buy something before you can use the restroom. Just to clean up yourself. You can’t walk in and look a particular way and expect them to allow you to just use the facilities. So this Bill of Rights says that the rights of every single person who is living unhoused, every person who is experiencing homelessness, that their rights should be protected, they should have the same dignity of anyone who is living housed.
AMY GOODMAN: Your story alone, Congressmember Bush, as you describe in the Time magazine piece, and as you were speaking just now, you lived in your car with your infant, six months old, and your next child, not so much older. How did you go from being unhoused, living in the car, working at the same time you were living in the car, to beating a 10-term congressmember, standing on the steps of the Capitol where you are sleeping outside and working inside?
REP. CORI BUSH: I was able to basically get off the streets because my family and a family friend helped. Because they also understood that I didn’t have a place to put down on a rental application to say, “Call this landlord to see about my rental history,” which made it difficult to find a place. On top of the fact that I was very low income, trying to raise two children. So my family were helping me, but then also a family friend heard about it and just said, “Hey, I have a rental property. You can come and stay here until you all get on your feet.” And that is how we were able to finally come off the streets after living on the street and then living in one of those extended-stay hotels.
But it was through that and a few other things, just seeing how people—it took somebody to notice what was going on and it took someone to actually act. I think that is the other thing. It’s one thing to know. It’s one thing to say, “Yeah, this should happen and this should happen, this should happen.” But it’s another thing for somebody to act and change your situation. So I saw that and I pushed that forward. And I wanted to extend that to other people because it was extended to me, and it saved my life, and it saved the lives of my children.
So before Michael Brown was murdered, I was on the streets working with the unhoused community then, working in helping to fight sex trafficking in my community. I started to do that work to give back, and then Michael Brown was murdered. And I took to the streets, to lend my hand as a medic and as clergy, still trying to do the same work to help my community, and just did not like the response that was coming from those that were in power that should have been able to help us, help us fix that situation. And the community asked me to show up and to run, and so I did.
AMY GOODMAN: What would permanent housing justice look like? Even with the housing eviction moratorium, which has now expired, people owe back rent. How can they possibly pay this in this time? And as you were speaking, we were also showing video of people holding up signs—”You can’t stay at home when you don’t have a home.” We’re talking in the midst of a pandemic! If one person gets sick, we are all vulnerable.
REP. CORI BUSH: Yes, we are! We are. That is why with our Unhoused Bill of Rights, one thing that is built in is $140 billion—it’s a $200 billion bill, but it’s $140 billion that goes towards building of homes. Building of homes that are affordable for people. The kinds of homes where someone who has experienced homelessness for a very long time, this is a home that they would be able to acquire.
Not only that, if we are able to fix—because this bill talks about ending homelessness by 2025. Completely eradicating homelessness. So if we are able to eradicate homelessness with the Unhoused Bill of Rights, what we have right now, this crisis that should not be a crisis, when we have over $40 billion sitting right now that states and counties, other localities can use to help to make sure that some of this back rent is paid.
If we need to go back and try to work on getting more funding, then we can do that. But right now, what we have on the table, already out there, ready to go, that $40 billion, we have to move it. We have to move it, and we have to move it now. Because in order for people to stay in those homes, yes, we understand that landlords need to pay a mortgage company. So that is why we are also stressing to the states and to those localities to get that money moving, and get it into the hands of the people who are supposed to have it.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Bush, how long do you plan to sleep out on the Capitol
steps, and how many people are you sleeping out there with?
REP. CORI BUSH: I’m out here until change happens. I have never set a date. Let me tell you, one hour before we came out here, I didn’t know I would be out here. And each day I didn’t know if there would be another day. And so we are going moment by moment. And when change happens, we can go home. One thing that we cannot do is we cannot say, “Well, we did all that we could do,” and not apply the pressure needed to make sure that people are not forced out of their homes. That’s just our work.
AMY GOODMAN: You had Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh warning last month, when the Supreme Court allowed a one-month extension of the eviction moratorium to stand, that any further extensions would have to go through Congress. So what has the leadership said to you since they went home?
REP. CORI BUSH: What we are hearing is that yes, we are hearing that that is what the CDC and that is what the administration, what they are looking at, to say, “Okay, we can’t do this. Congress has to act.” But what we are saying is “Let’s do both. Let Congress act, and you do something that can happen immediately.” It could have happened on Friday. It could have happened before Friday. It could have happened on Saturday. We are asking them to go ahead and do that, to at least buy us some time.
We know what Brett Kavanaugh said. And as far as we are concerned, his statement was not a Supreme Court ruling. His statement, out of his mouth, that was not a Supreme Court ruling. So let the courts—if that’s what needs to happen, that’s not for us to worry about. The House, our job is to make sure that we are legislating. And right now, there is power in the pen of the president of the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much for joining us, outside of the Capitol, outside the House. You have been unhoused yourself, and now a House member. Congressmember Cori Bush represents Missouri’s First Congressional District. Since Friday, she has been sleeping on the steps of the Capitol to protest her House colleagues adjourning for August recess without passing an extension on the eviction moratorium for renters. Stay safe, Congressmember Bush.
REP. CORI BUSH: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: When we come back, we continue our conversation with the authors of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. And we will look at the connections between the pandemic and the climate crisis. We will look at a new film, The Ant and the Grasshopper. Stay with us.
Anthony Fauci. (photo: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock)
r. Anthony Fauci warned Sunday that more “pain and suffering” is on the horizon as COVID-19 cases climb again and officials plead with unvaccinated Americans to get their shots.
Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, also said he doesn’t foresee additional lockdowns in the U.S. because he believes enough people are vaccinated to avoid a recurrence of last winter. However, he said not enough are inoculated to “crush the outbreak” at this point.
Fauci’s warning comes days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed course to recommend that even vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in parts of the U.S. where the delta variant is fueling infection surges. With the switch, federal health officials have cited studies showing vaccinated people can spread the virus to others.
Most new infections in the U.S. continue to be among unvaccinated people. So-called breakthrough infections can occur in vaccinated people, and though the vast majority of those cause mild or no symptoms, the research shows they can carry about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots.
“So we’re looking, not, I believe, to lockdown, but we’re looking to some pain and suffering in the future because we’re seeing the cases go up, which is the reason why we keep saying over and over again, the solution to this is get vaccinated and this would not be happening,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.”
According to data through July 30 from Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases in the U.S. rose from 30,887 on July 16 to 77,827 on July 30. The seven-day rolling average for the country’s daily new deaths rose over the same period from 253 on July 16 to 358 on July 30, though death reports generally lag weeks after infections and even longer after hospitalizations.
Currently, 58% of Americans 12 years and older are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC’s data tracker.
However, people are “getting the message” and more are rolling up their sleeves amid the threat of the delta variant, according to the director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Francis Collins said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that vaccinations are up 56% in the U.S. in the last two weeks.
Louisiana, which has the most new cases per capita among states in the past 14 days, has seen vaccinations up threefold over that period, Collins said.
“That’s what desperately needs to happen if we are going to get this delta variant put back in its place, because right now it’s having a pretty big party in the middle of the country,” Collins said.
Collins also said that even with the prevalence of the delta variant, the shots are working “extremely well” and reduce a person’s risk of serious illness and hospitalization “25-fold.” The guidance for vaccinated people to start wearing masks indoors again in certain places with worsening outbreaks, he said, is mostly meant to protect unvaccinated and immunocompromised people.
The CDC has also recommended indoor mask-wearing for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status.
The singer Willie Nelson raises arms with Luci Baines Johnson at a rally in Austin, as Beto O'Rourke stands behind. (photo: Bob Daemmrich/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock)
Beto O’Rourke and the Rev William Barber among speakers in Austin as fight to protect ballot access goes on
Slogans included “Protect Voting Rights”, “End the Filibuster” and “Say No to Jim Crow”.
Some had just concluded a days-long, 27-mile march from Georgetown to Austin, praying with their feet in a desperate attempt to safeguard access to the vote. For hours, they withstood blistering heat to rally round a casket – a poetic nod to lawmakers in states across the country they say are trying to bury voting rights.
“When you look out here today and see the thousands, and you look at the diversity in this crowd, this is the America they are afraid of,” cried the Rev Dr William J Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.
The high-stakes protest mirrored a historic march in 1965, when voting rights advocates risked their lives in Selma, Alabama, before the Voting Rights Act was secured. More than half a century later, a new generation of activists hope to protect and expand on those victories.
“When you get out there and you leave the comfort of your home, and in this case you put on your walking shoes and you cover 30 miles in the middle of the Texas summer in central Texas – you’re saying something through that sacrifice and through that struggle,” former US representative and presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke told the Guardian before participating in the march.
Lawmakers introduced more than 400 restrictive voting bills in 49 states during the 2021 legislative cycle but Texas has emerged as a key battleground in a voting rights war that will ultimately shape the American electorate.
Its Republican leaders remain hell bent on passing laws that advocates warn will make it even harder to vote. So far, such efforts have been thwarted by a tidal wave of opposition.
“There probably are not many states, if any, that have as dark a history of voter suppression – violent voter suppression – as does Texas,” O’Rourke said. “And yet, you know, it may very well be Texas that helps us through this moment.”
Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled Texas legislature led the US in new proposals that would restrict voter access, advancing provisions to ban 24-hour and drive-thru voting, empower partisan poll watchers and target vote by mail.
At Saturday’s rally, Marilyn White said she was starting to panic.
“Texas is such a large state and there’s so many electoral votes and so many congressional seats,” she said. “So many votes that are at risk of being messed with or distorted.”
While Texans, faith leaders and politicians gave impassioned speeches, volunteers offered to register eligible voters on the crowded capitol lawn. Yet even they couldn’t ignore the culture of doubt and fear that permeates Texas elections.
“A lot of people, when they come up, they’re worried about registration because they’re worried that they’re gonna make a mistake and they might do something that would cause them to get a ticket or go to jail,” said Julie Gilberg, a captain with Powered by People, an advocacy group.
“They’re not really sure if their vote will count.”
Texas has the most restrictive voting processes in the US. Critics fear further obstacles will disproportionately affect voters with disabilities and people of color. Many believe Republicans touting “election integrity” to justify policies are politically motivated, inspired by rapid demographic change that threatens them at the polls.
“You have a lot of people here whose grandparents were effectively kept from the ballot box, who themselves have had issues trying to vote conveniently,” former US h secretary Julián Castro said.
“They understand that the legislation being proposed is gonna make it even worse, and they understand that this legislation is born of cynicism and a power grab.”
Texas Democrats have twice outmanoeuvred attempts to pass sweeping voting bills – first by walking off the state House floor in May, then by fleeing to Washington last month. They have been pushed and bolstered by activists, businesses and regular citizens, who have raised funds, written letters and testified into the night.
Yet voting rights champions can only waylay legislation for so long. And although they gathered at the Texas capitol on Saturday, they were effectively appealing to Washington, where federal voting protections have stalled in the US Senate.
“Mr President, the time to act is now,” Barber said. “Let me tell you something you might not be used to hearing from a preacher, but ain’t no need to have power if you’re not gonna use it for good.”
Frustration rippled through the crowd, where Texans fed up with their state officials demanded a response from the White House.
“President Biden I think can do a lot more,” said Tiffany Williams, an air force veteran who joined the march. “If you’re trying to be for the people, actually come down here and listen to us.”
A candidate for US citizenship holds a US flag during a naturalization ceremony for new US citizens on February 16, 2017, in Newark, New Jersey. (photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
hree years ago, amid negotiations over immigration reform, then-President Donald Trump infamously questioned why the US was taking in immigrants from “shithole countries.”
He was referring to people from African nations who often have no legal pathway to come to the US except through a program known as the “diversity visa lottery.” Every year, roughly 55,000 people from countries with low levels of immigration to the US are chosen via a lottery to apply for a visa through the program. For many of them, it’s a golden ticket to a better life.
It wasn’t the first time the program had been targeted and misrepresented by Trump. He blamed a 2017 terrorist attack in New York on the program, vowing to end it. And he presented it as antithetical to his proposal for a “merit-based” immigration system, under which the US would select visa applicants based on desirable labor market attributes — defined so as to make the immigrant population whiter and richer.
Trump never actually managed to end the program, but his administration deprioritized the applicants relative to other immigrants. President Joe Biden’s election was supposed to bring diversity visa applicants relief. He had promised on the campaign trail that he would keep the program intact, and soon after his inauguration, he pledged to expand the program by 25,000 visas annually as part of his proposed comprehensive immigration reform package.
But well into the first year of his presidency, that hasn’t come to fruition. Rather, diversity visa lottery winners who applied for visas amid the Covid-19 pandemic now risk losing their opportunity to come to the US — in part because the State Department has continued the Trump-era policy of deprioritizing their applications.
“What the Biden administration has done to the diversity visa program in deprioritizing, it contravenes those campaign promises, and we’re worse off because of it,” said Rafael Urena, an American attorney representing diversity visa applicants affected by the policy. “We really draw from the strength of our diverse population.”
In response to a request for comment, a State Department official emailed me a statement on the condition of anonymity saying that the US government’s capacity to review these applications and schedule the required interviews depends on US embassies and consulates abroad, many of which are backlogged due to closures and capacity limits amid the pandemic.
They have been prioritizing services to US citizens overseas and issuing visas in urgent or emergency situations, such as for people seeking to aid America’s response to the pandemic. Immediate family members of US citizens, international adoptions, and engaged couples are next on the priority list. Diversity visa applicants are at the very bottom.
“Because of the unpredictable nature of the pandemic, it is impossible to forecast how many [diversity visas] we will issue this year, but we want to set appropriate expectations and say that it is very likely we will not issue the full allotment allowed,” the official said.
“The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in profound reductions in the Department’s visa processing capacity,” the official added. “Additionally, a range of presidential proclamations restricting travel in response to the pandemic have resulted in further constraints on visa issuances worldwide.”
That means diversity visa applicants could miss a once-in-a-lifetime chance to come to the US. The government has to process their applications by a September 30 deadline; otherwise, they lose their spot. And they likely won’t win the lottery again — they have a less than 1 percent chance of being selected from among more than 23 million entrants.
“It’s once in a lifetime,” said Maxwell Goodluck, a diversity visa lottery winner from Ghana who applied every year for 12 years before he was eventually selected. “If we lose this opportunity, it would take the grace of God for it to come back again,” he told me, referring to himself and the other applicants in the same position. “We don’t know what to do.”
The administration’s failure to issue diversity visas has left thousands in limbo
Several lawsuits brought by roughly 25,000 diversity visa lottery winners from 141 countries altogether have argued that the federal government faces a legal obligation to review the applications of people who won the lottery and that the US’s vast resources can make that happen. But if that’s not possible, they say they should still have the opportunity to be issued a visa beyond the September 30 deadline.
For Lizbeth Rosales, a diversity visa lottery winner from Lima, Peru, that’s just what seems right. “We don’t have anything against the country or the citizens of America. We just want whatever is fair. That’s it,” she said. “We are not just case numbers. We are people. We have feelings, we have hopes, dreams. This is our only chance for a better future.”
The uncertainty as to whether diversity visa lottery winners will eventually be able to come to the US has left many putting their plans on hold and living with constant anxiety.
Rosales, who also applied for diversity visas on behalf of her husband and their two young children, was planning to move to New Orleans, where she previously spent a year working in the hospitality industry as an intern on a student visa.
She has friends there who encouraged her to apply for the visa lottery in the first place, and her husband, who works as a cook on a cruise ship, would also be able to find work. They were also hoping to pursue better educational opportunities for themselves and for their 4-year-old son and almost 1-year-old daughter.
Given that the pandemic has hit Peru particularly hard, leading to one of the highest per capita death rates in the world and a deep economic recession, Rosales said that moving to the US at this particular moment seems especially attractive. But the uncertainty has been tough to live with. She has commiserated with other diversity visa lottery winners in the region on WhatsApp groups.
“For some of them, this is their only way out. This really breaks my heart because I consider myself to be in a better position than others. It may be God making me experience all of this to better understand or value my life,” she said. “I feel affected not only for me but for the rest. You feel touched by other people’s suffering. So this definitely creates sadness and anxiety as well. I wish the reality was different.”
Goodluck, the lottery winner from Ghana, says he and others are experiencing this anxiety. “We hardly sleep these days,” he told me. “Sometimes, you can’t even concentrate. You’re thinking about it 24/7. To console ourselves, we end up crying.”
He has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and is working in the IT department for Ghana’s education department, but he says he has always wanted to pursue cybersecurity, which would require further education. He has a cousin in Colorado who has promised to support him in that goal if he moves to the US.
His backup plan is to pursue a master’s degree in computer science in Ghana. In order to study cybersecurity, he would have to take an online course. But the fees are high, and he doesn’t want to start the program without knowing whether he will stay in the country.
“It’s a nightmare,” he said.
Democrats in Congress have proposed legislation to help — but it might not go far enough
House Democrats have been trying to remedy the plight of diversity visa lottery winners from 2020 and 2021, but it’s not clear they will succeed.
Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) has put forth an amendment to a Homeland Security appropriations bill that would allow unused diversity visas from 2020 and 2021 to remain available after the fiscal year ends on September 30. That means that a portion of the 55,000 or so diversity visas allocated for next year would go to people who had applied in previous years.
Though the amendment has passed in the relevant House committee, the entire bill still has to survive a full floor vote in the House. And it has yet to be considered by the Senate, where it is likely to face opposition from GOP members.
In May, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) also introduced legislation that would aid the almost 21,000 people who were either granted diversity visas or had applied for them but were prevented from entering the country under Trump-era bans. However, it hasn’t gained any traction in the months since.
But neither of those bills addresses the lengthy wait times that diversity visa applicants are likely to face, even if they remain eligible beyond the September deadline. And diversity visa applicants from years past would take away spots from future applicants under Meng’s amendment.
“It would solve the issue of loss of eligibility,” Urena, the attorney representing diversity visa applicants, said. “But actually getting them into the country — the Biden administration would have to refocus its efforts on adjudicating diversity visas. We’re looking at long wait times and basically losing eligibility every year for [new] diversity visa applicants.”
Urena said the cost of waiting can be high. He had one client who had won the diversity visa lottery in 2020 but died while he was waiting for his visa to be issued. His older children had been hoping to come to the US on diversity visas and start a new life, but that won’t be possible now because they are no longer eligible through their father.
It’s a frustrating reality for families that are just trying to find a legal pathway to come to the US. “We didn’t do anything against the law. We just follow what is supposed to be followed,” Rosales said. “If we really are treated with fairness, we can be a good asset to the country.”
Former FBI agent Ali Soufan speaks during an interview with Agence France-Presse in New York City, on April 23, 2018. (photo: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)
eoff Golberg watched his own face flicker across the screen in disbelief. A short video clip posted to YouTube and Twitter this March characterized him as a mortal enemy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The narrator, Hussain al-Ghawi, alleged Golberg’s “entire work aims at smearing Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE” — the United Arab Emirates — “by publishing fake analytics banning patriotic accounts and foreign sympathizers.”
Posted in Arabic with English subtitles, the eight-minute video, overlaid with fiery graphics and sound effects, was part of a regular series posted by al-Ghawi, a self-proclaimed Saudi journalist. A clip showed a photo of Golberg’s face, incorrectly describing him as a CNN journalist. Al-Ghawi said that Golberg’s work mapping state-directed social media manipulation had put Golberg in league with the kingdom’s top adversaries — namely the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. It was an accusation that Golberg found shocking, as well as frightening.
“Seeing that video, with those types of accusations against me, it made me feel like my life might be in danger,” said Golberg, an expert on tracking social media manipulation and the founder of Social Forensics, an online analytics firm. “At the very least it made me feel like it’s not safe for me to be doing the type of work that I do, even in the United States.”
In the hands of an authoritarian state, social media can indeed be deadly. No more harrowing example of this was seen in the campaign of Saudi state-directed online attacks that preceded the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. In the months before he was killed inside Istanbul’s Saudi consulate, Khashoggi was the subject of an intense campaign of online harassment orchestrated by a Saudi government-backed network of political influencers and bots.
Referred to inside the kingdom as “the flies,” the network swarmed Khashoggi with threats and defamation, an effort that was documented in the 2020 documentary “The Dissident.” They painted him on social media as a treasonous enemy of the Saudi state — no small matter in a country where public discourse is tightly controlled and Twitter is the primary outlet for political conversation. Al-Ghawi himself has been accused of helping instigate the online campaign that marked Khashoggi as an enemy of the state.
The avalanche of attacks online culminated with Khashoggi’s murder at the consulate by an assassination squad believed to have been dispatched directly by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Golberg was well aware of the history. So when he showed up in al-Ghawi’s video, he was deeply alarmed: The threatening manner of the message felt not so different from the way Khashoggi was discussed before his death. Coming from a state where all media is tightly controlled, Golberg thought al-Ghawi’s video seemed calculated to send a message on behalf of the Saudi government to its perceived enemies in the United States.
Golberg said, “Characterizing my work as defending Hezbollah or Qatar — these are the types of baseless accusations from a government that has killed people for less, that make me want to look over my shoulder when I’m walking.”
Golberg wasn’t the only one to come in for al-Ghawi’s ire. The same clip characterized several Saudi activists with ties to the West as traitors and denounced a number of American activists and think-tank experts. Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, also known as DAWN, a Washington think tank focused on democratic norms in the Middle East, made an appearance, as did Ariane Tabatabai, a State Department official and American academic of Iranian descent who had worked for the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit that does frequent research work for the U.S. government.
Online harassment and disinformation have become political issues in the U.S., but in authoritarian countries the threat can be more immediately grave. Under the control of ruling regimes, the public sphere, including social media, can be completely weaponized. Saudi Arabia, ruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has in particular demonstrated a willingness to go the distance and back up its online threats and intimidation by actually abducting and killing its perceived critics, even those living abroad.
“An important thing to keep in mind is that free expression in Saudi Arabia has been totally crushed under MBS,” DAWN’s Whitson said, referring to the crown prince by his initials. “These online messages are not coming from independent actors inside Saudi Arabia. There are no independent voices left coming out of that country today.” (Neither al-Ghawi nor the Saudi embassy in Washington responded to requests for comment.)
For Whitson, the burden is particularly heavy: DAWN was Khashoggi’s brainchild and created in the wake of his assassination to carry the deceased dissident’s banner.
“There had been on a campaign to harass me for a long time even before the murder of Jamal, but it is has only escalated since then,” said Whitson. “There have been very coordinated attacks against our organization and against individual staff members.”
In many cases, such attacks start with al-Ghawi, one of a number of major pro-government Saudi influencers whose messages are amplified and shared by a network of pro-Saudi nationalists, bots, and other inauthentic accounts online.
Al-Ghawi’s video denouncing the likes of Golberg, Whitson, and others is part of a regular series posted on Twitter and YouTube called “Jamra,” or “the hot coal.” The short-form show, narrated as a monologue, is focused entirely on naming lists of enemies of the Saudi regime around the world.
There is little information online about al-Ghawi himself, whose bio on Twitter identifies him simply as a “Saudi Journalist.” The Jamra program, broadcast in Arabic with English subtitles, is published on al-Ghawi’s YouTube channel. Boasting over 120,000 subscribers, Jamra describes itself as “a political program that connects you with hidden information.” Al-Ghawi promotes the videos from the series on his verified Twitter account, where he has over a quarter of a million followers.
For Golberg, who says he does not have any interest in Middle Eastern politics, his appearance in a Jamra video indicated that he had provoked the anger of powerful people in Saudi Arabia. These actors, he suspected, were upset about his work tracking social media activity in support of the kingdom. Golberg had found analytic data showing widespread manipulation by bots and other inauthentic accounts on Twitter promoting pro-Saudi government messages.
Saudi Arabia was just one interest among many — Golberg previously published analytics studies of social media manipulation by supporters of XRP, a popular cryptocurrency, as well as supporters of President Donald Trump — but the kingdom’s pushback proved different. Nothing has triggered as much backlash or fear as his work on the Saudis, Golberg said. Worse still, when faced with these threats, which included a previous tweet from al-Ghawi in September 2020 accusing him and others of working for the government of Qatar and Hezbollah, the platforms themselves did nothing to help him.
“I wish that I were a celebrity or someone with a large, verified account, so that if I were to start sharing information about attacks against me on Twitter and YouTube, the platforms would feel compelled to remove it,” Golberg said. “People with big platforms have the power to get things like doxxing and death threats removed. But for the average person, when this happens, there is not much they can do.”
Golberg, for now, plans to keep documenting the phenomenon of online harassment networks. Yet the threats and attacks against him have had a deep psychological and emotional impact and left him conflicted about whether to continue. “I feel it’s important to keep shining light on the underbelly of platform manipulation,” Golberg said, “but the work I have been doing the past few years has really started taking a toll on me. It can be harrowing.”
In the summer of 2020, a report published in the New Yorker highlighted another target of al-Ghawi: former FBI agent Ali Soufan. After Soufan was alerted to credible threats against his life by the CIA that May, he also found himself being targeted by a virulent campaign of online threats and defamation. Soufan hired a cybersecurity firm that determined at least part of the online campaign involved officials of the Saudi government and that “the effort was started by Hussain al-Ghawi, a self-proclaimed Saudi journalist.”
According to the New Yorker, the analysis found that al-Ghawi had also played a key role in leading the online campaign against Khashoggi in the months before his death.
Soufan, who declined to comment for this story, is a decorated former FBI agent with close ties to current and former U.S. government officials. His stature and relationships might make Soufan a costly target for the Saudis. Other Americans who have come onto the radar of their defamatory social media campaigns, however, are more vulnerable, as are their families.
Mohamed Soltan is an Egyptian American who spent nearly two years in an Egyptian prison in the aftermath of a 2013 military coup, coming to the brink of death behind bars during a hunger strike that lasted over a year. Following an international outcry, he was finally released and returned to the United States in May 2015. Despite being a U.S. citizen living at home, his freedom from prison has not meant freedom from further harassment and threats, he said, whether by Egyptian officials or their Saudi allies — including Hussain al-Ghawi.
This March, al-Ghawi released a video on Twitter and YouTube as part of the Jamra series that described Soltan as an extremist who had plotted to carry out attacks against the Egyptian government. Al-Ghawi also painted Soltan as an enemy of the Saudi kingdom who was defaming its rulers through his support of U.S.-based human rights organizations. As evidence, al-Ghawi displayed an old photo of Soltan with Qatar-based cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a cleric often associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which Saudi sees as a threat.
Soltan, who had been personal friends with Khashoggi in Washington and has familiarity with the modus operandi of dictatorial Arab governments, viewed the character attacks against him by al-Ghawi and others as a straightforward attempt to retroactively justify any future harm that he may suffer.
“These attacks are pretexts that they create so that later it plants seeds of doubt in the mind of the public,” Soltan said. “They pick a target and then character assassinate them to such a degree that if anything happens later, people will refrain from speaking about it. This is what they did to Jamal. They paint as much of a negative picture as they can in order to make people later say, ‘It’s complicated’ — if and when something does happen.”
Twitter’s ties to Saudi Arabia have come under scrutiny in the past. In 2020, two employees at the company were the subjects of an FBI complaint: They were accused of spying inside the firm’s office on behalf of the Saudi government, including passing along the phone numbers and IP addresses of dissidents.
Twitter periodically launches removal campaigns of pro-Saudi accounts found to be abusing the platform. In December 2019, several thousand pro-Saudi accounts were removed for violating Twitter’s “platform manipulation policies” shortly after public allegations about the two spies came to light. Last year, another 20,000 accounts said to be linked to the Saudi, Egyptian, and Serbian governments were also purged from the site.
Both Twitter and YouTube, however, seem content to allow ongoing campaigns of pro-government platform manipulation in English. The lack of moderation is even more pronounced in Arabic and other non-English languages. Golberg, the social media analyst featured in one of al-Ghawi’s videos, estimates that the ongoing pro-Saudi information campaigns on Twitter involve “tens of thousands of inauthentic accounts.”
“I’ve identified entire Saudi-based marketing firms that are helping run inauthentic accounts for the Saudi government,” he said. “Judging from the messages they’re amplifying, they are working with the government to not just push certain narratives but also to continue character assassinating journalists and members of civil society that the government dislikes. With those prior suspensions of pro-Saudi accounts, Twitter wanted to give the appearance that they cleaned up their platform a little bit. And they did, but there is still an incredible amount of the same activity taking place today.”
Al-Ghawi has continued to regularly broadcast his Jamra program, posting it on Twitter and YouTube. In early July, he released another video targeting the Quincy Institute, a noninterventionist think tank based in Washington, D.C. Like many of the other Jamra videos, the one on Quincy obsessively listed off individuals working for the organization who al-Ghawi said were of “Iranian-origin.” He also maintained his characteristic looseness with facts, falsely accusing at least one Quincy Institute employee, Eli Clifton, of having previously worked in the Iranian capital.
“It’s concerning to see a prominent Saudi Twitter troll, who played a central role in the social-media campaign against Jamal Khashoggi, targeting staffers at a U.S.-think tank with outright lies and fabrications,” Clifton, who has contributed to The Intercept, said in response to his inclusion in the latest episode of Jamra. “But it’s downright shocking that American tech companies — Twitter and Google — are knowingly hosting and assisting in the dissemination of this content.”
“Protecting the safety of people who use Twitter is of paramount importance to us,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “We have clear policies in place on abusive behavior, hateful conduct and violent threats on the service. Where we identify clear violations, we will take enforcement action.” According to Twitter, al-Ghawi’s tweets did not violate any policies. (YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.)
In the video on Whitson, al-Ghawi accused the DAWN executive director of taking “$100,000 to criticize Saudi Arabia and Egypt” — an accusation that she described as ludicrous. Whitson said that the online campaign directed by al-Ghawi and others has been a clear attempt to silence outside criticism of the kingdom over its foreign policy and human rights abuses, including the murder of Khashoggi.
The Biden administration has made public some of its own intelligence pointing to the Saudi crown prince’s role in the Khashoggi murder, but earlier this year stopped short of directly imposing sanctions on Crown Prince Mohammed and other high-level officials believed responsible for the killing. The failure to impose serious accountability, alongside the continued threats leveled by the Saudi regime against Americans and Saudi dissidents abroad, appear to be signs that the crown prince is unchastened and potentially willing to strike out at his critics with violence again. Pro-government influencers, prominent among them Hussain al-Ghawi, seem to be favored tools.
In one Jamra video, responding to allegations that he was marking out enemies of the kingdom for future harm, al-Ghawi characterized himself as merely a journalist performing a public service. “A journalist does not threaten, nor assassinate, nor kill,” al-Ghawi said. “A journalist’s ammunition is information, and their weapon is words.”
The language of al-Ghawi’s reassurance did little to comfort the Americans and others who are on the receiving end of his online campaigns, broadcast from an authoritarian country with a track record of killing its critics, wherever they may be.
“The Biden administration should ask itself what it is going to do to protect Americans from these attacks,” said Whitson. “As long as the Saudis feel that they have this uncritical U.S. backing, they’re going to continue to believe that they have a license to attack their critics in whichever way that they like. These coordinated attacks against people they dislike that begin online have already proven that they can be deadly in the real world.”
After six-hour ordeal, the tide had risen sufficiently to allow it to refloat itself and return to the ocean. (photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Orca washed up on Prince of Wales island and was stuck in a crevice of rocks above the tide line
killer whale stranded on a rocky shore in Alaska was saved in an hours-long rescue effort by boaters, locals and wildlife officials.
The 20-ft (6 metres) orca was spotted washed up on Prince of Wales island last Thursday, apparently stuck in a crevice of rocks 4ft above the tide line.
Boaters who first saw the stranded whale alerted the US coastguard and came ashore to keep it cool with seawater and to scare away sea birds hovering for a feast.
Images posted to social media show good samaritans pouring buckets of water onto the orca to keep it hydrated.
Eventually officials from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA) arrived to relieve the volunteers. By about 2pm, almost six hours after the whale was first spotted, the tide had risen sufficiently to allow it to refloat itself and return to the ocean.
“It moved a bit slowly at first, and meandered around a little before swimming away,” NOAA spokesperson Julie Fair said in a statement.
The agency said it was awaiting confirmation that the orca, which officials say is a juvenile from the west coast’s transient population of Bigg’s killer whales, and named T146D for classification and tracking purposes, had rejoined its pod.
At least five other killer whales from the waters around Prince of Wales island had stranded over the last 20 years, and all survived, according to researcher Jared Towers of Canada’s department of fisheries and oceans, which monitors whale movements.
“They’ve all rejoined their families after stranding, and they’ve all gone on to survive and live normal, healthy lives,” he told Alaska Public Media.
“There’s a good chance it’s met up with them now, and it’s just carrying on a normal life after spending some time out of the water. I don’t think anyone knows exactly when this whale stranded, or what the circumstances were, but I would make a wager that there was harbor seal hunting as the motivating factor.”
Whales are known to chase seals and sea lions towards the shore and can become stranded in shallow waters.
Chance Strickland, a boat captain who anchored to allow his crew to come ashore and help the whale, told the New York Times he could hear it crying out to other pod members swimming nearby.
“I don’t speak a lot of whale, but it didn’t seem real stoked,” he said. “There were tears coming out of its eyes. It was pretty sad.”
The whale’s beaching came one day after an 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the Alaskan coast, briefly triggering a tsunami warning, but Fair said the event was not a factor.
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