03 August 21
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he House select committee on the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, according to chairman Bennie Thompson, should “not be reluctant” to include on its witness list Republicans including the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan and others who have knowledge of or may have been implicated in the attack.
Those who would be requested to testify spoke with Donald Trump before, during and after the assault, attended strategy meetings and held rallies to promote the 6 January “Stop the Steal” event, and are accused by Democrats of conducting reconnaissance tours of the Capitol for groups of insurrectionists.
But committee members and legal scholars are grappling to find precedent.
“I don’t know what the precedent is, to be honest,” said Adam Schiff.
There is one.
After a bloody insurrection was quelled, a congressional committee was created to investigate the organization of the insurrection, sources of funding, and the connections of the insurrectionists to members of Congress who were indeed called to testify. And did.
On the morning of 16 October 1859, John Brown led a ragtag band of armed followers in an attack on the US arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to attract fugitive slaves to his battle, take refuge in the Allegheny mountains and conduct raids on plantations throughout the south, raising a slave army to overthrow the government and replace the constitution with one he had written.
Brown became notorious as pro- and anti-slavery forces fought over how Kansas would be admitted to the Union. Brown committed a massacre and rampaged out of control. Radical abolitionists idealized him as an avenging angel of Puritan virtue. Some of the most prominent and wealthiest, known as the Secret Six, funded him without being completely clear about how the money was going to be used.
Brown confided his plan on the eve of his raid to the great Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass and asked him to join. Douglass told him he would be entering “a perfect steel-trap and that once in he would never get out alive” and refused the offer. Brown was undeterred.
Within hours of the assault Brown and his band were cornered in the engine room of the armory, surrounded by local militia. Then the marines arrived under the command of Col Robert E Lee and Lt Jeb Stuart. At Brown’s public trial, his eloquent statements against slavery and hanging turned him into a martyr. John Wilkes Booth, wearing the uniform of the Richmond Grays and standing in the front ranks of troops before the scaffold on which Brown was hanged on 2 December, admired Brown’s zealotry and composure.
Nearly two weeks later, on 14 December, the Senate created the Select Committee to Inquire into the Late Invasion and Seizure of the Public Property at Harpers Ferry. Senator James M Mason of Virginia, the sponsor of the Fugitive Slave Act, was chairman. He appointed as chief prosecutor Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.
Davis was particularly intent on questioning Senator William H Seward of New York, the likely Republican candidate for president.
“I will show before I am done,” Davis said, “that Seward, by his own declaration, knew of the Harpers Ferry affair. If I succeed in showing that, then he, like John Brown deserves, I think, the gallows, for his participation in it.”
In early May 1858, Hugh Forbes, a down-at-heel soldier of fortune, a Scotsman who fought with Garibaldi in the failed Italian revolution of 1848, a fencing coach and a translator for the New York Tribune, knocked on Seward’s door with a peculiar tale of woe. He had been hired by Brown to be the “general in the revolution against slavery”, had written a manual for guerrilla warfare, but had not been paid. Seward sent him away and forgot about him.
Forbes wandered to the Senate, where he told his story to Henry Wilson, a Republican from Massachusetts. Wilson, who later became Ulysses S Grant’s vice president, was alarmed enough to write to Dr Samuel Gridley Howe, a distinguished Boston physician and reformer, founder of the first institution for the blind, and Massachusetts chairman of the Kansas committee. Wilson relayed that he had heard a “rumor” about John Brown and “that very foolish movement” and that Howe and other donors to the Kansas cause should “get the arms out of his control”.
But Howe, a member of the Secret Six, continued to send Brown money.
The investigating committee called Seward and Wilson. On 2 May 1860, Seward testified that Forbes came to him, was “very incoherent” and told him Brown was “very reckless”. Seward said he offered Forbes no advice or money, and that Forbes “went away”.
Davis pointedly asked Seward if he had any knowledge of Brown’s plan to attack Harpers Ferry.
Seward replied: “I had no more idea of an invasion by John Brown at that place, than I had of one by you or myself.”
Wilson also testified, producing his correspondence with Howe, his recollection of strangely encountering Brown at a Republican meeting in Boston, and denying any knowledge of Brown’s plot. Other witnesses were subpoenaed and warrants were issued for the arrest of those who failed to appear. Howe testified that he knew nothing in advance of the raid.
The Senate committee concluded its report citing the fourth section of article four of the constitution: “The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on the application of the legislature or of the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) against domestic violence.”
Eight months after submitting the report, Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy, assuming command of the greatest insurrection against the United States in its history.
His legacy as a senator before the civil war, however, established the precedent of a congressional committee calling members of Congress to testify about their knowledge of or participation in an insurrection: a precedent that can be used to investigate one in which for the first time the Confederate flag was carried through the Capitol.
Cullen Veasley, 17, receives his second dose of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at a mobile pop-up vaccination clinic hosted by the Detroit Health Department with the Detroit Public Schools Community District at Renaissance High School in Detroit, Michigan, July 26, 2021. (photo: Emily Elconin/Reuters)
Unvaccinated people still make up the vast majority of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
he last week’s headlines were not comforting for Americans vaccinated for Covid-19.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidance to recommend everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in Covid-19 hot spots. A study of an outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts, found around three-quarters of people infected there were vaccinated. As cases increase nationwide, it’s understandable to think that breakthrough cases (infections in vaccinated people) are now a main driver of the ongoing Covid-19 surge.
But the evidence is clear: The problem is the unvaccinated population. If more people got the vaccines, the current surge wouldn’t be as big; it certainly wouldn’t lead to the levels of hospitalization and death now seen across the US. This was true months ago, and remains true today.
Unvaccinated people still make up the vast majority of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. They’ve made up more than 94 percent of reported Covid-19 cases in states with available data, a report last week from the Kaiser Family Foundation found. They’ve also made up similar, or higher, shares of hospitalizations and deaths.
Then there’s what really happened in the Provincetown outbreak. The headlines noted three-fourths of people infected by the virus were vaccinated. But among the more than 900 cases tracked as a result of the outbreak, just seven led to hospitalization — and there were zero deaths. If this was 2020, when there were no vaccines, closer to 90 people would have been hospitalized and about nine would have died, based on hospitalization and death rates over the last year.
“The vaccines are upholding their promise to massively prevent serious disease, hospitalizations, and death,” Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases doctor at the University of California San Francisco, told me. “That’s the main message I get from that outbreak.”
If every outbreak in the country today looked like the one in Provincetown, the coronavirus would be defanged. The virus would make a small number of people seriously ill, but, like the seasonal flu or a common cold, would mostly produce relatively mild symptoms or none at all.
That’s not to say that America can throw caution to the wind. For one, Massachusetts, where more than 72 percent of all people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, leads every other state but Vermont on vaccination. Some states, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest and West, still have one-dose rates below 50, 45, or even 40 percent. So an outbreak in Provincetown looks very different from one in Jackson, Mississippi.
There are also genuine unknowns about breakthrough cases. We still don’t know just how likely a vaccinated person is to get infected and transmit the virus to someone else. Nor do we know how many vaccinated people with breakthrough infections will suffer longer-term effects (colloquially known as long Covid) that aren’t unique to the coronavirus but can be detrimental or even life-changing.
Nor is there enough research and data to draw final conclusions about the role of the delta variant, which spreads more easily and may evade the body’s immune response better than past versions of the virus. Future variants could complicate matters even further.
Still, the vaccines are very effective. The evidence continues to show the vaccines reduce the virus’s rate of spread, delta or not. Even when a vaccinated person is exposed to the coronavirus, the chances of hospitalization and death are near zero. In fact, experts said, the vast majority of breakthrough cases are likely to produce no symptoms whatsoever.
“This was a hard week,” Gandhi said. “But my conclusions are relatively unchanged.” She emphasized: “We need to get a lot more people vaccinated.”
What we know and don’t about breakthrough cases
The vaccines aren’t perfect. When the news broke last year that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines reported more than 90 percent efficacy, that was certainly much better than the 50 percent or so efficacy rate that some experts and officials expected. But that’s not 100 percent. In fact, there’s no such thing as a perfect, 100-percent-effective vaccine for any illness.
Given that, some breakthrough cases were always expected, even before the delta variant.
Here’s what we know about breakthrough cases: They do happen, but the majority produce no symptoms and the vast majority cause no serious symptoms, hospitalizations, or deaths. According to a review of the evidence by the CDC, data from the UK, Canada, and Israel shows the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is still more than 90 percent effective against hospitalization or death, even with the delta variant. Based on data in the US, unvaccinated people are eight times as likely to get the virus and experience disease symptoms, 25 times as likely to be hospitalized, and 24 times as likely to die, compared to people who are vaccinated.
Although not every state, nor the CDC, is attempting to track all reported breakthrough cases, the data we do have from about 25 states suggests the vast majority of serious cases, hospitalizations, and deaths still involve the unvaccinated. In Virginia, for example, 99 percent of cases and 98 percent of hospitalizations and deaths this year, as of July 30, were among people who weren’t fully vaccinated. The total reported breakthrough case rate among vaccinated people was 0.034 percent. The hospitalization rate among reported breakthrough cases was 0.0032 percent. The breakthrough death rate was 0.0009 percent.
The report from the Kaiser Family Foundation found similar numbers for other states that reported Covid-19 breakthrough data for at least a month.
“The overwhelming conclusion of all this evidence is that breakthrough events are extremely rare,” Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “They’re not the driver.”
It’s also very likely that the vaccines reduce rates of spread, perhaps quite significantly. Brown University School of Public Health dean Ashish Jha succinctly summarized what I heard from experts time and again over the past week: “Vaccinated people are far far far less likely to spread the virus than unvaccinated people.” Since vaccinated people are less likely to get infected by the virus to begin with, they’re less likely to spread it to others, too.
But we don’t know exactly how much the vaccines reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus among the infected, including those without symptoms. Before the Provincetown study, experts widely believed that there was very little, perhaps even no, risk of spread by vaccinated people. Provincetown’s outbreak indicated that isn’t the case, in part due to the topline number: 74 percent of recorded cases were among fully vaccinated people. That high share suggested that there was at least some transmission among the vaccinated.
Still, it’s possible to make too much of that topline number. For one, Provincetown during the Fourth of July isn’t representative of the country in typical times. The events that likely turned into a superspreading situation were a huge, citywide party, with bars packed and lots of close contact, physical intimacy, and sex. It’s a far cry from the risk of exposure that most people face during occasional trips to the grocery store, bars and restaurants, or movie theaters.
But the more concerning finding in the Provincetown study is that, among those tested, the vaccinated people with breakthrough cases had the same level of virus in their noses as the unvaccinated people who were infected. Federal officials over the last week cited this to justify the changes in masking guidelines, arguing that it’s proof the delta variant could be potent enough that even the vaccinated are spreading it.
Yet there are still unanswered questions, and several reasons that this finding might not be as alarming as it seems. First, only a tiny minority of vaccinated people get breakthrough cases to begin with, especially compared to the rate of unvaccinated people getting sick in hot spots or superspreading events. That means a vaccinated person’s chances of getting to the point measured in the CDC study are much lower than an unvaccinated person’s.
Second, the metric in this case was virus detected in the nose. But it’s possible viral loads would be different in, say, the lungs, since a vaccine-induced immune response could cut off the virus before it spreads far. This could reduce a vaccinated person’s capacity to infect others: If a person has less virus in her lungs, she could spread less of it when she exhales through her mouth, talks, or laughs.
Third, we don’t know if the virus detected is an actual threat. It’s possible the virus in noses of vaccinated people is severely weakened after a vaccine-induced immune response. If that’s the case, then it’s not going to spread as easily or get people as sick. “The presence of those viral particles does not necessarily mean infectious virus,” Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University, told me. But the test used in the study only tried to estimate the amount of virus, not its potency.
For now, the best guess is that vaccinated people can spread the virus — likely more so with delta than was possible before — but nowhere to the extent the unvaccinated do. But this needs more research and data to confirm, which is why many experts are pushing on federal and state officials to do a better job tracking and studying breakthrough cases.
None of this would be a big concern if everyone was vaccinated
Another way to look at the data is even more favorable to the vaccines: If everyone was vaccinated, we wouldn’t need to be so concerned about how much the virus still spreads among those who got the shot.
Imagine that, contrary to much of the current evidence, the vaccines don’t slow the rate of transmission, but that every person in the country is vaccinated.
The US would essentially be a bunch of Provincetown outbreaks. There would be infections. A few people would still get sick, typically experiencing cold- or flu-like symptoms. But, due to the vaccines, almost no one would be sent to the hospital and even fewer would die.
A clear visual from Kristen Panthagani, a science blogger and doctor-in-training, shows that, as more people get vaccinated, a higher share of people who end up in the hospital will be vaccinated, since there would just be fewer unvaccinated people to get sick at all. But even as this occurs, the number of hospitalizations would drop.
This is now likely the best-case scenario for curbing the pandemic: The coronavirus becomes endemic, and the country moves on. The threat isn’t totally vanquished, but it’s along the lines of seasonal flu — a disease we’d be better without, and one that still leads to occasional tragic outcomes, but a risk that we ultimately accept without changing much of American life.
“That is actually why we did shut down,” Gandhi said, pointing to the high rates of serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths that Covid-19 produced in an unvaccinated world. But now, she added, the vaccines “are defanging the virus.”
In more highly vaccinated places around the world, Covid-19 spikes don’t lead to soaring hospitalization or death rates. In the United Kingdom, for example, a huge surge of cases due to the delta variant has come and gone with only small increases in hospitalizations and deaths. (And even in the UK, just 69 percent of people have gotten at least one dose, which leaves plenty of room for improvement.)
There are major caveats to this hypothetical scenario. Not everyone — particularly kids under 12 — is eligible for the vaccines yet, making 100 percent vaccination impossible right now. Even once everyone is eligible, there’s still a lot of apathy to outright resistance toward the vaccines. And there are some, especially people who are immunocompromised, who may not get full or much protection from the vaccines. Protecting these groups may require other precautions, like masking, until overall vaccination rates climb much higher and case rates drop, experts said.
There are also a lot of unknowns about the vaccines’ ability to reduce the incidence of long Covid, which could warrant continued concern about the virus even in a highly vaccinated world.
And the continued mutation of the virus, especially as it keeps spreading outside the US, could eventually lead to a variant that better evades vaccine-induced immunity, requiring further action once again.
Even with all those caveats, the hopeful hypothetical of a country that only sees Provincetown-like outbreaks provides a very clear message: Breakthrough cases are concerning, but the vaccines work, and they truly are the way out of the pandemic and back to normal.
The eviction moratorium is ending. (photo: Getty Images)
As of 5 July, roughly 3.6 million said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to US Census Bureau
abe Imondi, a 74-year-old landlord from Rhode Island, had come to court hoping to get his apartment back. He was tired of waiting for federal rental assistance and wondered aloud: “What they’re doing with that money?”
Hours later, Luis Vertentes, in a different case, was told by a judge he had three weeks to clear out of his one-bedroom apartment in nearby East Providence.
The 43-year-old landscaper said he was four months behind on rent after being hospitalized for a time.
“I’m going to be homeless, all because of this pandemic,” Vertentes said. “I feel helpless, like I can’t do anything even though I work and I got a full-time job.”
Scenes like this are playing out from North Carolina to Virginia to Ohio and beyond this week as the eviction system, which saw a dramatic drop in cases before a federal moratorium expired over the weekend, rumbled back into action.
Activists fear millions will be tossed on to the streets as the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges.
The Biden administration allowed the federal moratorium to expire over the weekend and Congress was unable to extend it.
Historic amounts of rental assistance allocated by Congress had been expected to avert a crisis. But the distribution has been painfully slow: only about $3bn of the first tranche of $25bn had been distributed through June by states and localities. Another of $21.5bn will go to the states.
More than 15 million people live in households that together owe as much as $20bn to their landlords, according to the Aspen Institute.
As of 5 July, roughly 3.6 million people in the US said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the US Census Bureau’s household pulse survey.
In Columbus, Ohio, Chelsea Rivera showed up at Franklin county court Monday after receiving an eviction notice last month.
A single mother, she’s behind $2,988 in rent and late fees for the one-bedroom apartment she rents for herself and three young sons.
The 27-year-old said she started to struggle after her hours were cut in May at the Walmart warehouse where she worked. She applied to numerous agencies for help but they were either out of money, had a waiting list, or were not able to help until clients end up in court with an eviction notice.
Rivera said she’s preparing herself mentally to move into a shelter with her children.
“We just need help,” she said, fighting back tears. “It’s just been really hard with everyday issues on top of worrying about where you’re going to live.”
But there was more optimism in Virginia, where Tiara Burton, 23, learned she would be getting federal help and wouldn’t be evicted. She initially feared the worst when the moratorium lifted.
“That was definitely a worry yesterday,” said Burton, who lives in Virginia Beach. “If they’re going to start doing evictions again, then I’m going to be faced with having to figure out where me and my family are going to go. And that’s not something that anyone should have to worry about these days at all.”
She was relieved to learn she was approved for assistance through the Virginia rent relief program. Her court hearing was postponed 30 days, during which time she and her landlord can presumably work things out.
“I’m grateful for that,” she said. “That’s another weight lifted off of my shoulders.”
For some tenants, getting assistance has proven impossible.
After her landlord refused federal assistance to cover $5,000 in back rent, Antoinette Eleby, 42, of Miami, expects an eviction order within two to three weeks. She is sending her five children to live with her mother in another county.
“My main concern is that now that I have an eviction, how will I find another place? Some places will accept you and some will not,” said Eleby, whose entire family got Covid-19 earlier this year.
Around the country, courts, legal advocates and law enforcement agencies were gearing up for evictions to return to pre-pandemic levels. Before Covid, 3.7 million people were displaced from their homes every year, or seven every minute, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
Among the cities with the most cases, according to the lab, are Phoenix with more than 42,000 eviction filings, Houston with more than 37,000, Las Vegas with nearly 27,000 and Tampa with more than 15,000. Indiana and Missouri have more than 80,000 filings.
While the moratorium was enforced in much of the country, there were states like Idaho where judges ignored it, said Ali Rabe, executive director of Jesse Tree, a nonprofit that works to prevent evictions in the Boise metropolitan area. “Eviction courts ran as usual,” she said.
That was much the way things played out in parts of North Carolina as well, where on Monday Sgt David Ruppe knocked on a weathered mobile home door in Cleveland county, a rural community an hour west of Charlotte.
“We haven’t seen much of a difference at all,” he said.
He waited a few minutes on the porch, scattered with folding chairs and toys. Then a woman opened the door.
“How are you?” he asked quietly, then explained that her landlord had started the eviction process. The woman told Ruppe she’d paid, and he said she’d need to bring proof to her upcoming 9 August court date.
Ruppe, who has two young sons, said seeing families struggle day after day is tough.
“There’s only so much you can do,” he said. “So if you can offer them a glimmer of hope, words of encouragement, especially if there’s kids involved. Being a father, I can relate to that.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo. (photo: Albany Times Union)
The report from Attorney General Letitia James found a culture “filled with fear and intimidation” and that Cuomo's harassment was “normalized.”
ew York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women by groping, hugging, engaging in unwanted kisses, and making inappropriate comments to them, a report from the New York attorney general’s office concluded Tuesday.
Cuomo not only sexually harassed current and former employees, but also harassed members of the public and other New York state employees, including a state trooper on his protective detail, the 165-page report found. When one former Cuomo aide, Lindsey Boylan, came forward with her story, Cuomo’s staffers retaliated against her.
“The Executive Chamber’s culture—one filled with fear and intimidation, while at the same time normalizing the Governor’s frequent flirtations and gender-based comments—contributed to the conditions that allowed the sexual harassment to occur and persist,” concluded the report, which was led by independent investigators and has been in the works for months.
Nearly 180 people were interviewed in the probe, and more than 74,000 records, texts, pictures, and emails were used as evidence.
Cuomo denied to investigators that he had ever touched anyone inappropriately, although he didn’t dispute that he regularly hugged people and kissed them on the forehead, as well as commented on staffers’ appearance. The report’s investigators said that they found Cuomo’s “denials and explanations around specific allegations to be contrived.”
“In his testimony, the Governor suggested that the complainants were—and must be—motivated by politics, animosity, or some other reason,” the report reads. “He also expressed his view that this investigation itself—and the investigators conducting the investigation—were politically motivated, an assertion that we saw in the documentary evidence and other witnesses’ testimony was part of the planned response to the investigation almost as soon as it commenced.”
Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement that the release of the report marked a “sad day.”
“I am grateful to all the women who came forward to tell their stories in painstaking detail, enabling investigators to get to the truth. No man—no matter how powerful—can be allowed to harass women or violate our human rights laws, period,” she said.
Although several of the women named in the report have previously come forward, the report does include new accusations against Cuomo, including how the governor harassed a female trooper. Shortly after meeting her in November 2017, Cuomo asked to have her added to his protective detail—even though she didn’t have enough expertise to join.
Once she joined, Cuomo ran his hand across her stomach as she held the door open for him at an event, according to the report. He also ran his finger down her neck and back while she stood in front of him in an elevator, kissed her on the cheek in front of another trooper, and made suggestive comments such as asking why she didn’t wear a dress and wondering why she would get married when, he said, marriages means “your sex drive goes down.”
He also asked for her help finding a girlfriend and said he wanted to date someone who “[c]an handle pain,” according to the report.
These interactions were offensive and uncomfortable for the trooper, who noticed that Cuomo treated her differently than he treated the men. Other troopers corroborated the female trooper’s allegations.
The report also found that Cuomo asked women in his employ to help him find a girlfriend and about their relationships, groped at least two female staffers’ butts, and exclusively called one “sweetheart” or “darling.”
He also groped the breast of one state employee, who said she’d planned to take the incident “to the grave”—but came forward after she saw Cuomo declare publicly that he’d never touched anyone inappropriately, according to the report.
Cuomo asked one woman “to look up car parts on eBay on his computer, which she had to bend over to do, while wearing a skirt and heels, as the governor sat directly behind her in his office, which made her feel uncomfortable,” the report found.
He instructed that same employee to soak up information like a sponge, then took to calling her “sponge.” The nickname, the report said, was “embarrassing, condescending, and demeaning” in the eyes of the employee.
“I think that he definitely knew what he was doing and it was almost as if he would do these things and know that he could get away with it because of the fear that he knew we had,” one staffer told investigators.
Asylum-seeking migrant families from Central America disembark from an inflatable raft after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico in Roma, Texas, U.S., July 28, 2021. (photo: Go Nakamura/Reuters)
he number of migrant children in Border Patrol facilities has been steadily rising, an analysis of U.S. government data shows, as record numbers crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in July, renewing a politically sensitive issue for President Joe Biden.
On Aug. 1 there were more than 2,200 unaccompanied children in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody, more than double the number just a month earlier, according to daily statistics provided by the government since March and compiled by Reuters.
A CBP spokesperson said that number includes Mexican children who are quickly returned to their home country, as well as Central American children who are transferred to U.S. federal shelters.
The average time unaccompanied children are spending in CBP custody is around 60 hours, according to one source familiar with matter, which is just within the limits set by a long-standing court settlement.
(For a graphic on the number of migrant kids in custody: https://tmsnrt.rs/3j9VwWl)
The recent rise is alarming migrant advocates, who say the facilities are not appropriate for young children, even though levels are still below those seen in mid-March when CBP held more than 5,700 unaccompanied kids at border stations.
"Everyone is worrying about the numbers and how it is going to be for the kids moving through the system," said Jennifer Podkul, from the nonprofit Kids in Need of Defense, which provides legal representation for migrant children.
Record numbers of unaccompanied children, more than 19,000, were likely encountered by border patrol agents in July, said David Shahoulian, a top U.S. Department of Homeland Security official, in a court declaration filed on Monday.
At the same time, overall apprehensions, including of families and single adults, are on pace to be the highest ever recorded this fiscal year, he said. The numbers include individuals who may cross multiple times.
The situation is straining resources, Shahoulian said, with Border Patrol facilities filled way over capacity limits set during COVID across the southwest border and more than 10,000 people in custody in the Rio Grande Valley alone as of Aug. 1.
(For graphics on border apprehensions:
Children traveling on their own are supposed to be transferred from CBP custody to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shelters, where they wait to be released to U.S. sponsors, often parents or other family members.
There are now more than 14,400 kids in HHS shelters, the daily government data showed.
CBP said its ability to transfer unaccompanied children out of its facilities depends on HHS capacity. HHS said in a statement that the agency is "not currently experiencing any delays that prevent prompt identification of an appropriate placement within our shelter network."
Earlier this year the Biden administration came under intense pressure from advocacy groups and fellow Democrats to transfer children more quickly from overcrowded CBP border facilities not designed to hold them. The government set up more emergency shelters and the number of kids in CBP border facilities quickly dropped.
But some large convention centers converted to house children have shut down since then and there are now only four emergency shelters left, along with an existing network of state-licensed facilities and foster homes. read more
Several whistleblowers raised complaints about one of the emergency sites still open at Fort Bliss in Texas, saying "organizational chaos" and bad management by private contractors resulted in conditions that endanger children. HHS' Office of Inspector General said on its website on Monday that it will investigate "case management challenges at Fort Bliss that may have impeded the safe and timely release of children to sponsors."
HUNDREDS ON RAFTS
Over the course of two nights last week, hundreds of mostly Central American migrants, including families with young children and kids traveling unaccompanied, arrived on rafts after crossing the Rio Grande river near Roma, Texas, according to a Reuters witness.
They turned themselves over to border agents, who were handing out masks, forming long lines for processing. Most carried no belongings and some were from countries like Haiti, which is experiencing renewed political turmoil.
Under a Trump-era public health policy that Biden has kept in place, many face immediate expulsion. However, Biden exempted unaccompanied children from the policy. Families are still subject to the policy - on paper, but in practice most are allowed in to pursue immigration cases in U.S. courts. read more
Images posted on Twitter over the weekend showed hundreds of people crowding under a bridge in Mission, Texas, where agents were holding migrants outside. With concerns rising about the rapid spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, the accumulation of migrants in custody is worrying local officials.
The Texas Border Coalition, which groups mayors, county judges and economic development commissions along the Texas-Mexico border, said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that absent more immediate attention, "there is growing potential for the situation to spin out of control."
Jovenel Moise in February of 2020. (photo: Dieu Nalio Chery/AP)
There’s little doubt the US helped install Haiti’s new prime minister following the assassination of the country’s president. So here we are again: the US is arrogantly shaping Haiti’s affairs rather than allowing Haitians to rule themselves.
n July 20, longtime Haitian politician Ariel Henry was sworn in as the nation’s prime minister. Henry’s appointment ended a brief power struggle between himself and interim prime minister Claude Joseph, who assumed the post following the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse by foreign mercenaries earlier this month.
Henry enters not only a political crisis, but a potentially revolutionary one. Prior to his assassination, Moïse’s administration had been buffeted by demonstrations against state corruption and repression. Now, supporters of the former president accuse opposition “oligarchs” of being responsible for Moïse’s death. Meanwhile, long-simmering unrest in Haiti’s vast shanty towns threatens to upend the state altogether.
Kim Ives, the English-language editor of Haiti Liberté, believes that Henry was advanced by the United States and its allies for two reasons: first, to fast-track elections, sidelining the opposition; and second, to unleash police violence to quell the would-be revolutionaries in the shanty towns. Jacobin contributor Arvind Dilawar spoke with Ives about Haiti’s new prime minister and his relationship with the previous president, opposition groups, and US imperialism. Their conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AD: Who is the new prime minister of Haiti?
KI: Ariel Henry is a longtime political operator, who has been selected, we believe, by the US Embassy and its allied embassies known as “the Core Group.” He first came to prominence on the political scene as a member of the Council of Sages, which was established by Washington after the February 29, 2004 coup d’etat against former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Henry became a clear tool of US foreign policy at that point.
Henry was a member of the Fusion Party, a social-democratic group, and transitioned to the party of former president René Préval, known as Inite. Henry was part of the health ministry under Préval and played a fairly prominent role in the aftermath of the earthquake of January 12, 2010. But after Préval was supplanted by Michel Martelly, he quickly moved into the Martelly government, where he served in several ministries.
Henry checks all the key boxes the US Embassy needs for a good puppet. He has provided valuable service in the past, he has been in parties across the political spectrum, and he has government experience.
Henry was also appointed by Jovenel Moïse to be the prime minister two days before his untimely death. This was the result of negotiations not only with the US Embassy, surely, but with the opposition. However, when he was appointed, the opposition immediately, and maybe reflexively, rejected his appointment.
Then, after the killing of Moïse and the ensuing power struggle between interim prime minister Claude Joseph and Henry, the opposition quickly embraced Henry, hoping that he was going to create a more diverse government with their representation. He did not. The government he proposed mostly leaned in the direction of Moïse’s previous ministers.
The US Embassy accepted Henry’s cabinet and did not complain. This is because their main interest is the organization of elections — not because they truly care about the Haitian people’s democratic yearnings, but because they want to stabilize Haiti and stop the terrible optics of supporting an authoritarian government, as they were with Moïse, and now, a completely unelected, illegitimate government.
They are anxious to hold elections as soon as possible, and they’re hoping that Henry can be the midwife of those elections.
AD: You mentioned selections and appointments. Was there any electoral mechanism that ushered in Henry as the new prime minister?
KI: No, nothing at all. One could say that Moïse had been elected in 2016 and therefore his appointment of Henry on July 5 gives Henry a slight veneer of electoral approbation.
But many legal experts, including the Haitian Bar Association and the Haitian Supreme Court, did not recognize the position of Moïse: that his term was supposed to go until February 7, 2022. They felt, as did the opposition and many in the Haitian population, that his term ended, as the constitution shows, on February 7, 2021. So even that appointment of Henry is compromised by this disagreement over whether Moïse’s presidency was legitimate or not.
AD: What is Henry’s relationship to the potentially revolutionary movement in Haiti?
KI: The Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies were accused of proposing Henry, but when I called their spokesman and leader, Jimmy Cherizier, he said they didn’t even know who Henry was. They completely disavowed any involvement in his selection or appointment, and I have no reason to doubt their position on that. There’s no evidence whatsoever that they had any hand or input into his selection as prime minister. I don’t think he’s sympathetic to their project of revolutionary change in Haiti.
Daniel Foote has been appointed Washington’s special envoy to Haiti, and US advisors are going to be helping the Haitian police combat gangs. We assume that it’s going to be, first and foremost, Cherizier’s alliance of groups. Henry will clearly be expected to support this police offensive against the gangs aspiring to revolution, so I think there will not be any love lost between the Cherizier sector and Henry.
AD: What are your other expectations for Henry’s tenure?
KI: Henry will be tasked by the “international community” — that is, the US and its allies who put him in his post — to carry out elections, which are the principal window-dressing Washington wants to put in place in Haiti to mask their neocolonial direction. This will be his biggest challenge.
Many in the opposition — and that includes not only the traditional bourgeois opposition, but also a sort of insurgent civil society/political party opposition, which is merging under the banner of the Commission for a Haitian-led Solution — do not want fast-track elections. They see a more long-term process, on the order of possibly a year or even three.
I think the US and its allies will be pushing for much quicker and faster elections. So Henry’s principal role will be delivering that and creating some kind of participation from sectors of the opposition who may object to elections being done on a rapid basis.
AD: You recently returned from Haiti. What are the conditions on the ground there?
KI: The population is traumatized by the grisly assassination of Moïse, and it is divided. Moïse did have support from many sectors in the countryside due to his infrastructure projects — the paving of roads, fixing of airports, building of dams, electrification of towns. There have been large demonstrations, including one at the funeral of Moïse last Friday, where people were showing their support and clamoring for the arrest and identification of the people behind the killing — who they see as the sector of the bourgeoisie that Moïse was feuding with.
Politically, the sentiment that you feel in the air of Port-au-Prince — which is where I was primarily — is one of people being dazed and uneasy and very disgusted. There are no Haitians who are cheering Moïse’s grisly murder. It was an affront to people, especially in that it was carried out by foreign mercenaries and that there seems to have been a very large international hand in it.
Economically, the country is also in a real state of collapse. Markets are continuing, there is still commerce. The government of Moïse had very little state authority, so people are continuing to go about their business as they largely have for the past years. But there is definitely a sense that there is a storm coming and a lot more turmoil, struggle, and violence ahead.
Earth's horizon seen from the International Space Station as it orbits above the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile, on Nov. 21. (photo: NASA)
Researchers studying Earth's absorption of the sun's energy found a less than 1 percent probability that the recent changes occurred naturally.
or decades, Earth’s energy system has been out of whack.
Stability in Earth's climate hinges on a delicate balance between the amount of energy the planet absorbs from the sun and the amount of energy Earth emits back into space. But that equilibrium has been thrown off in recent years — and the imbalance is growing, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.
The changes to Earth's energy system have major ramifications for the planet's future climate and humanity's understanding of climate change. The Princeton University researchers behind the paper found that there's a less than 1 percent probability that the changes occurred naturally.
The findings undercut a key argument used by people who do not believe human activity is responsible for the bulk of climate change to explain trends in global warming, demonstrating that the planet's energy imbalance cannot be explained just by Earth's own natural variations.
The research also offers important insights into how greenhouse gas emissions and other consequences of human-caused climate change are upsetting the planet's equilibrium and driving global warming, sea-level rise and extreme weather events.
"With more and more changes to the planet, we've created this imbalance where we have surplus energy in the system," said Shiv Priyam Raghuraman, a graduate student in atmospheric and oceanic sciences at Princeton and lead author of the study. "That surplus manifests as different symptoms."
Emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases from human activities trap heat in the atmosphere, meaning the planet absorbs infrared radiation that would normally be released into space. Melting sea ice, changing cloud cover and differences in the concentration of tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols — all of which are affected by climate change — also mean Earth is reflecting less of the sun's radiation back into the cosmos.
"There isn't this equilibrium between energy coming in from the sun and energy going out," Raghuraman said. "The question is: Are these natural planetary variations, or is it us?"
The researchers used satellite observations from 2001 to 2020 to determine that Earth's energy imbalance is growing. They then used a series of climate models to simulate the effects on Earth's energy system if human-caused climate change was taken out of the equation.
The scientists found that natural fluctuations alone could not explain the trend observed over the 20-year period.
"It was almost impossible — a less than 1 percent probability — that such a large increase in the imbalance was from Earth's own oscillations and variations," Raghuraman said.
The study focused on cause and effect, but Raghuraman said the findings have critical societal and policy implications.
Oceans store approximately 90 percent of the planet's excess heat, which causes rising seas and can trigger hurricane formation and other extreme weather events. The remaining heat is taken up by the atmosphere and land, which increases global surface temperatures and contributes to melting snow and ice.
If Earth's energy imbalance continues to grow, consequences that are already being felt today will likely be exacerbated, said Norman Loeb, a physical scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, who was not involved with the study.
"We're going to see temperatures rise, sea levels rise, more snow and ice melting," Loeb said. "Everything you see in the news — forest fires, droughts — those just get worse if you add more heat."
Loeb led a joint study by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that found Earth's energy imbalance approximately doubled from 2005 to 2019. The paper was published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Loeb said the Princeton study confirms what was outlined in his own research, which used 14 years of observations from satellite sensors and an array of instruments in the ocean. He added that human activities, or what's known as anthropogenic forcing, are undeniably having an effect but some natural variation is likely also at play. For instance, some planetary oscillations can operate on cycles that last multiple decades, which can make it tricky to tease out the fingerprints of climate change.
"Anthropogenic forcing is there for sure," he said, "but the ocean is a key player in climate and it operates on much slower time scales. Ideally, you really want to be able to have these types of measurements over 50 years or more."
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