03 December 21
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Conservatives bark at CRT like junkyard dogs. But what are they protecting?
Unfortunately, scare tactics work. Mostly against children and those who think like children.
But who wants to scare Americans? Anyone who wants to manipulate people in order to get their money and/or their vote. Televangelists shriek about the devil and hell to frighten the dollars out of their terrified viewers. Politicians cry out about immigrants, trans people, vaccinations, and Critical Race Theory (CRT). And it brings in millions in donations and panicked votes.
Critical Race Theory is the new Red Threat, echoing back to when politicians promised that Communists were everywhere trying to hand the country over to Russia. Any protest was considered communist-inspired, which is why J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI branded Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement as communist and worked tirelessly to discredit them. Today, that same tactic is employed, except using “socialist” in place of communist. Every time a conservative pundit says “socialism,” their audience nods in fear and loathing—and reaches for their credit card.
Back during Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s congressional hearings, in which people were encouraged to turn in their friends and family members under threat of imprisonment, there were only 50,000 Communists out of 150 million people. Yet, politicians ranting against them frightened people into giving them votes. Compare that to today when over 12 million people believe that lizard people run the U.S. Yet, there are no hearings, no investigations, no legislation banning these creepy lizard people. However, the number of states banning critical race theory is increasing daily, with Republicans using it as a major fund-raising talking point.
And it worked a few weeks ago in Virginia where Republican Glenn Youngkin was losing the race for governor until he zeroed in on CRT and scared the white women of the state, who at first supported former governor Democrat Terrance McAuliffe. The fear of CRT shifted white women’s support from 53 percent to 43 percent, though Black women voted for McAuliffe at 86 percent and Latino women at 75 percent. That disparity tells us who is frightened, but not exactly why.
Like the lizard people, CRT is a non-existent threat similar to the boogey man under the bed or the monster in the closet. But the U.S. has a history of over-reacting to non-existent threats from people who don’t look like, love like, or worship like the supposed societal norm. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned the immigration of Chinese laborers and the 1942-45 internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II are examples of our default hysteria. In the 1850s, in reaction to the wave of Irish immigrants, the American Party formed on the ideals of being anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. Their party elected 8 governors, 100 congressmen, and mayors of Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, among others. They mandated the reading of the King James Bible in public schools, confiscated weapons from the Irish, and deported almost 300 Irish back to Europe. All that is part of our history, and knowing about it should make it less likely that we will do it again.
We do have the capacity to learn, to rise above our fears. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest police killings of Blacks—and President Trump frothed at the mouth, the NFL blacklisted Kaepernick, and rich, white people tweeted condemnations of his anti-American behavior. Four years later, up to 26 million Americans agreed with Kaepernick and marched in the streets in support of Black Lives Matter, the largest protest movement in U.S. history.
In truth, CRT means nothing more than teaching this: racism has been such a consistent part of American history that it has leached into all of our most cherished institutions, from the justice system to the education system to the health system. It is a destructive rust that is just as dangerous to our country as actual rust is to our decaying infrastructure. Bridges between people are just as necessary for a healthy country as bridges between shores. And bridges between the past and the present guide us to a better future. But those waving the anti-CRT flag want to burn all those bridges.
Systemic racism in our society still affects People of Color in a profound way. Every major study supports that conclusion. The evidence from reputable sources is so overwhelming that it can’t logically be disputed (except by the lizard people). And yet, in an effort to increase systemic racism by ignoring it, states are trying to ban their children from learning the truth. From building those bridges.
New Hampshire passed a law this past summer that places restrictions on how teachers can discuss race in their classrooms. Within days, a conservative group called Moms for Liberty tweeted: “We’ve got $500 for the person that first successfully catches a public school teacher breaking this law. Students, parents, teachers, school staff … We want to know! We will pledge anonymity if you want.” If a student doesn’t like a lesson, they can collect $500 by turning in their teacher. In 1850, the U.S. offered bounties for turning in runaway slaves. Anyone remember that the Nazis offered bounties for turning in Jews? The governor denounced the Moms for Liberty’s bounty incentive. Looks like those Moms could have used some CRT when they went to school.
The irony is that CRT is barely taught anywhere. Most states that pass laws banning CRT admit that they are doing so as a preventative measure. Conservative media will blare occasional headlines that it’s rampant in our schools and our white children are coming home weeping in guilt over past atrocities. Soon watermelon will replace turkey at Thanksgiving. Tap dancing will be required at proms. The National Anthem will be rapped. Run for the hills—Beverly Hills.
CRT to politicians is a means to scavenger votes—nothing more. To parents, it’s a means to control their children’s education, not so the quality is higher, but to prevent them from thinking on their own. They don’t want children who are critical thinkers that might lead them to happier, more successful lives. They want clones of themselves who think, worship, and vote the same as they do. An educated child might do all that on their own eventually, but by limiting the information their kids get, they are more likely to brainwash them into intellectual obedience. At graduation, instead of diplomas, they should just hand out pillows with needlepoint that says, “Ignorance Is Bliss.”
I get it: no parent wants to hear their child disagree with them about some political issue—and be smarter, more articulate, and more persuasive. But that’s the price you sometimes pay for your children’s happiness. And if they are all those things, maybe you should listen to their opinions for a change.
Parents are not educators. Having gone to school doesn’t make them experts in curriculum or in teaching methods. In 1981, in response to parental pressure due to sex education classes in public schools, Congress passed the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA), also known as the “chastity law,” that promoted teaching Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM). Conservatives hailed this as a victory for parent involvement in schools. Unfortunately, a 2017 review of U.S. sex education programs by 13 leading experts on adolescent sexuality research and policy, including one from the Guttmacher Institute, concluded that AOUM programs, which the U.S. has spent over $2 billion on over the past two decades, are ineffective, stigmatizing, and unethical. A 2019 study showed that AOUM programs, promoted by former President Trump, increased teen pregnancy in conservative states. Withholding knowledge from children is never a good education policy.
Life expectancy in America has dropped by nearly two years because of COVID-19. The murder rate in the U.S. went up 30 percent, the highest in 60 years. The richest Americans became 40 percent richer during the pandemic. The Canadian pipeline company Enbridge paid police $2.4 million to surveil and arrest protestors. Each of these stunning facts should be enough to bring Americans’ outrage to a boiling point. Instead, what many Americans will actually get worked up enough to shout and write nasty emails and comments about is Critical Race Theory. Conservative politicians use this trigger phrase to distract people from the fact that they are amassing personal wealth while doing almost nothing to help their constituents economically. It’s a bit like someone standing on your porch telling you your neighbors are plotting against you, while their buddies are inside stealing your valuables. Sadly, it’s working.
But it doesn’t have to. Don’t let school boards be overwhelmed by the uninformed and fearful. Be active in supporting educators committed to providing education that includes critical thinking and our real history. Pointing out the potholes on your street doesn’t mean you hate your neighborhood, just that you want to improve it.
Pro-life and pro-choice demonstrators argued outside the Supreme Court earlier this year as it considered a Louisiana law that imposed restrictions on abortion doctors. (photo: Reuters)
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One expert thinks there is a “1 million percent” chance that the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
“I now put that at a 70 percent chance,” said the Case Western Reserve University law professor, who specializes in reproductive rights.
Mary Ziegler, who studies the legal history of reproduction at Florida State University College of Law, thought the justices had an even higher chance of overturning Roe.
“1 million percent,” she said. “1 million. I can’t emphasize that enough.”
Given that the Supreme Court is now dominated 6-3 by conservatives—three of them handpicked by former President Donald Trump—abortion rights supporters had never been exactly hopeful about what Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization may mean for abortion rights. But the arguments on Wednesday were particularly disappointing for many on the left, as many of the justices eagerly explored the idea of entirely rewriting U.S. abortion law.
Now, Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 Supreme Court decision that affirmed the right to abortion, are up in the air. If Roe goes, more than half of U.S. states would have no legal protections for abortion, an analysis by the Center for Reproductive Rights found. Twelve states have “trigger laws” that would ban all or almost all abortions once Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion restrictions.
What happens next?
In a word: waiting.
The Supreme Court’s current term ends in June 2022, and the justices usually deliver their most significant opinions at the end. But if the justices follow that timeline, their decision to overturn Roe could be a grenade tossed right into the middle of the 2022 midterms.
Historically, abortion has influenced Republicans’ votes much more than it has driven Democrats’, but there are already signs that that’s changing. After Texas enacted a law to ban abortion as early six weeks into pregnancy, just 39 percent of Trump backers said that they considered abortion a very important issue. Among supporters of President Joe Biden, 51 percent said the same.
Before the law took effect, just eight percent of Democratic women said issues like abortion and contraception are their biggest concerns when voting, according to polling by Morning Consult. A week afterward, 14 percent of Democratic said those issues had risen into their top concerns.
No matter the outcome of the 2022 elections, however, it’s unlikely that Congress will move to legalize abortion nationwide anytime soon.
“In the Congress, we will not be enacting laws that tread on the purview of the 50 states,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican, said outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Asked if Congress would allocate money toward helping people who may be forced into having babies they can’t pay for, Wicker said, “I think we have a safety net. It hasn’t always worked very well under current law, so that’s an entirely different issue that’s much broader. But I don’t think that’s an argument in favor of maintaining the very non-mainstream position of Roe v. Wade.”
But Wicker is wrong: Support for Roe is mainstream. Abortion polling can be complex, given the lack of public knowledge around how abortion works both in practice and in law. But just 32 percent of Americans support overturning Roe, according to Gallup polling last summer. In fact, since the late 1980s, most Americans have backed the idea of keeping Roe. Major medical organizations, like the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, also support abortion rights.
Will the justices definitely overturn Roe?
Before Wednesday, Ziegler believed that the justices had “some real anxiety about image management, about managing political backlash.” But afterward, she said, “These were not justices to me who sounded concerned about that sort of thing at all.”
Both Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer repeatedly tried to draw attention to the importance of maintaining the Supreme Court’s legitimacy and respect for precedent. Sotomayor wasn’t subtle about it. Since passing its 15-week ban in 2018, Mississippi more recently passed a six-week abortion ban, she said.
“The newest ban that Mississippi has put in place, the six-week ban, the Senate sponsor said we're doing it because we have new justices on the Supreme Court,” Sotomayor said. “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, however, drew on a different judicial lineage. He rattled off a list of cases where the Supreme Court has overturned its past precedents—an apparent signal that he’s ready to do the same here.
“If we think that the prior precedents are seriously wrong, if that, why then doesn't the history of this Court's practice with respect to those cases tell us that the right answer is actually a return to the position of neutrality and not stick with those precedents in the same way that all those other cases didn't?” Kavanaugh asked.
Sotomayor pointed out that, in virtually all those cases, the Supreme Court was trying to hand individuals more rights, not less—the opposite of the impact of overturning Roe and Casey. But both Ziegler and Nicole Huberfeld, a health law professor at Boston University School of Public Health, were struck by Kavanaugh’s repeated mention of “neutrality.”
“I thought what was particularly troubling was Justice Kavanaugh’s ‘scrupulous neutrality’ language, as if somehow withdrawing protection of an individual right is neutral on the part of the Court. It is not,” Huberfeld said. “That ‘scrupulous language’ sort of seemed like it was designed to provide cover for exploring the possibility of no longer protecting this particular individual right.”
But she cautioned against totally writing off Roe and Casey. Although the oral arguments seemed dismal for supporters of abortion rights, it’s impossible to know what’s going on behind justices’ closed doors.
What if the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn Roe? What could they do?
The only conservative justice who didn’t seem totally sold on overturning Roe was Roberts, Hill said. In his questioning, Roberts repeatedly asked about the importance of the so-called viability line. Under past abortion jurisprudence, states are blocked from banning abortion ahead of fetal viability, the developmental benchmark at which fetuses are able to survive outside the womb. That typically occurs at around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
But even if the justices technically keep Roe alive on paper, abolishing the viability standard would be tantamount to “gutting Roe,” Hill said.
“It would just be a walk back from that most basic holding,” she said. “Casey opened the door to all sorts of regulations and burdens on abortion access, but still always seemed to hold the line that you cannot ban abortion before viability.”
Plus, if the Supreme Court eviscerates the viability standard, they’ll need to either set a new standard by which to test the legality of abortion restrictions—or leave it up to the lower courts to battle it out.
“I think it invites significantly more litigation,” Huberfeld said. “Is it 15 weeks? Is it six weeks? Is it eight weeks? Every state is going to come up with their version of what they think that is.”
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, are other rights in danger?
One of the biggest questions at arguments on Wednesday was whether if the justices start to unwind the right to abortion, they may be on a path to walk back other protections—such as gay rights and access to birth control. Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart insisted that abortion is “unique,” and that overturning Roe and Casey has nothing to do with other rights.
But none of the experts who spoke to VICE News were convinced.
“I think people should worry that their states are gonna ban birth control by calling it an abortion-inducing drug,” Ziegler said. Anti-abortion advocates often believe that IUDs and emergency contraception, like Plan B, cause abortions. (They do not.) “Simply by criminalizing abortion, they may be sweeping in some birth control anyway. The same goes for some aspects of infertility treatment.”
Hill believes that the Supreme Court will take up Stewart’s reasoning in its majority opinion and proclaim that abortion is “different” from other rights.
“That being said, I do think contraception is absolutely next on the horizon,” Hill said. “The folks who are behind this movement, that have been so successful so far, that’s gonna be their next target.”
At least one brief, by the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life, explicitly called for the justices to use the Dobbs case to doom Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case that abolished sodomy laws, and Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case that granted same-sex couples the right to marry, as approaching the guillotine.
“Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are as lawless as Roe,” the group wrote, urging the Supreme Court to write a decision that leaves Lawrence and Obergefell “hanging by a thread.”
Legislation from New York congresswoman would help states erase criminal records for weed-related offenses. (photo: Getty)
Legislation from New York congresswoman and Ohio Republican would help states erase criminal records for weed-related offenses
The bipartisan measure from the Democratic congresswoman and Mr Joyce, an Ohio Republican and co-chair of the House Cannabis Caucus, would create a new federal programme through which the US Attorney General would help state and local governments “reduce the financial and administrative burden” of clearing convictions for cannabis-related offenses, according to a statement from Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s office.
The bill, to be named the Harnessing Opportunities by Pursuing Expungement (HOPE) Act, would set aside $20m to help “pave the way for expanded economic opportunities to thrive alongside effective investments to redress the consequences of the War on Drugs”, Mr Joyce said in a statement on 2 December.
“Having been both a public defender and a prosecutor, I have seen first-hand how cannabis law violations can foreclose a lifetime of opportunities ranging from employment to education to housing,” he said. “The collateral damage caused by these missed opportunities is woefully underestimated and has impacted entire families, communities, and regional economies.”
Previous congressional efforts to erase cannabis convictions have been limited to federal crimes, despite state and local law enforcement handling more pot charges.
Last month, Republican representative Nancy Mace introduced a House bill to federally decriminalise cannabis and expunge federal convictions in nonviolent cases.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has also introduced the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act in the upper chamber.
In 2019, the federal government was involved in only a fraction of the 545,000 cannabis offenses charged in the US that year, according to lawmakers; the FBI charged only 5,350 people with a top-line charge for any drug offense, not just cannabis, that year.
An overwhelming majority of the more than 350,000 Americans arrested by state and local law enforcement for weed-related crimes in 2020 were charged with simple possession, according to FBI crime reports.
The grants from the HOPE Act would be used to update technology to automate the process for expungements and to support legal clinics to help people manage their cases, among other measures.
“There is no justification for continuing to prevent tens of millions of Americans from fully participating in their community and workforce simply because they bear the burden of a past marijuana conviction,” said Justin Strekal, political director of national advocacy group NORMAL, which has endorsed the legislation.
Cannabis remains illegal under federal law, while 36 states have allowed it for medical use, and 18 states and Washington DC have introduced measures to regulate its nonmedical use.
National public opinion has shifted dramatically over the years to favour cannabis legalisation while a majority of US states have legalised its use in some form.
A recent Pew Research poll found that as many as 91 per cent of Americans support marijuana legalisation, with 60 per cent believing it should be legal to use recreationally, and 31 per cent believing it should be allowed only for medicinal use.
"Vaccines are mandated because Covid is contagious. No one ever says 'can you put a mask on your belly, I don't want to catch baby.'" (photo: CBS)
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Our Lives and Our Stories."
Late-night hosts discussed the attempt to dismantle Roe vs Wade and the latest unhinged Omicron conspiracy theories
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert started by discussing one of the week’s biggest stories: the possible dismantling of abortion laws in the US. The supreme court has been discussing the landmark case Roe v Wade, in relation to a Mississippi case brought in front of them. He remarked that “it is looking rough for Roe”.
Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s final appointee to the supreme court, used mandated Covid vaccinations as a comparison to comments about abortion. “Vaccines are mandated because Covid is contagious,” Colbert said. “No one ever says, ‘Can you put a mask on your belly? I don’t want to catch baby.’”
Colbert summed up the issue of a heavily right-tilting court by saying: “I don’t want to get too technical but we, what’s the word, don’t live in a democracy.”
He reminded his audience that five of the nine justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.
The rise in Omicron cases has had anti-vaxxers coming out with their latest theories, an excuse to “make up crazy crap” such as noting that it must be a hoax because the letters can be reassembled to make the word moronic.
“That theory is incredibly Omicron,” he joked.
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel spoke about congress trying to avoid a shutdown due to finance issues. “I don’t understand this,” he said. “Donald Trump isn’t president any more – why are we still running the country like one of his businesses?”
This week has also seen the German government institute a new lockdown for those who refuse to get vaccinated. “It’s always a bit scary when you hear the words Germany and lockdown in the same sentence,” he said.
Trump appeared on Fox … Friends this week to give “a lesson in revisionist history” as he claimed that people were fighting to get the vaccine while he was in office, despite the fact that the vaccine became available after he was no longer president.
“The only thing people were fighting over when you were president was toilet paper,” Kimmel joked.
But he added that “it hardly seems possible, but there’s an even dumber Donald Trump out there” before showing footage of Donald Trump Jr, also on Fox, making wild claims about Fauci and the economy.
“He sure does talk about the economy a lot for someone who never had to go out and get a job,” Kimmel said.
Trevor Noah
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah hosted a segment about German chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been “underestimated by everybody”.
Before she rose to power, she was often the butt of jokes because of her appearance and supposed fragility, which Noah said must sting “because Germans only make one joke a year, and they saved it for her”.
But she proved everyone wrong, and Noah said that “if there’s one thing we’ve learned from movies it’s that you should never underestimate the shy, mousy woman: She’s All That, The Devil Wears Prada, The Blair Witch Project”.
He showed a montage of male leaders trying to disrespect Merkel, from Putin to Trump. “The way these leaders treated her is embarrassing,” he said before remarking that it’s a tough situation to sort as “there’s no HR for world leaders”.
“Luckily as a German, Merkel wasn’t fazed by the sausage-fest,” he said before saluting her: “You kept things stable, you stood up for democracy and you never once appeared on Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs.”
Clashes at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. (photo: Evekyn Hockstein)
Researchers fear the new ban on posts sharing people’s private information will be ‘emboldening to the fascists’ eager to keep their identities concealed. ‘Things now unexpectedly work more in our favor,’ one Nazi sympathizer wrote.
Advocates said they worry the new policy will suppress efforts to document the activities of the far right and will prove to be a gift to members of hateful movements eager to keep their identities concealed.
“It’s going to be emboldening to the fascists,” said Gwen Snyder, an anti-fascist researcher and organizer in Philadelphia.
Snyder’s Twitter account was suspended early Thursday after someone reported a 2019 tweet of hers showing photos of a local mayoral candidate attending a public rally alongside the extremist group the Proud Boys. After The Washington Post asked about the suspension, Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy said the tweet was not in violation and that “our teams took enforcement action in error.”
On Tuesday, Twitter said its new “private information policy” would allow someone whose photo or video was tweeted without their consent to request the company take it down.
Twitter said the rule would help “curb the misuse of media to harass, intimidate and reveal the identities of private individuals, which disproportionately impacts women, activists, dissidents, and members of minority communities.”
The rule, company officials said Tuesday, would not apply to photos that added “value to public discourse” or were of people involved in a large-scale protest, crisis situation or other “newsworthy event due to public interest value.”
In the days since, however, white supremacists on channels such as the encrypted chat service Telegram have urged supporters to use the new policy against activists and journalists who have shared their information or identified them in photos of hate rallies or public events.
“Due to the new privacy policy at Twitter, things now unexpectedly work more in our favor as we can take down Antifa … doxing pages more easily,” a white nationalist and Nazi sympathizer wrote to followers on Telegram on Wednesday night, referring to the anti-fascist political movement whose members often clash with far-right protesters and to the practice of publishing people’s personal information online.
He included a list of nearly 50 Twitter accounts and urged people to report them for suspension under the new rule. At least one of the accounts was suspended by Thursday. Twitter did not respond to a question about why the account had been taken down.
The Telegram post has been viewed more than 10,000 times. After it was shared on Twitter by anti-extremism researcher Kristofer Goldsmith, the Telegram user wrote, “Yeah and we’ll do it again.”
How Twitter will enforce the new policy remains contentious. A Twitter spokesman told The Post this week that the policy would help prevent the unauthorized sharing of photos of rape victims or women in authoritarian countries who could face real-world punishment for going outside without a burqa.
The company said that each report will be reviewed case-by-case and that flagged accounts can file an appeal or delete the offending posts to resolve their suspensions.
Snyder, the Philadelphia anti-fascist researcher, said she believed her reported tweet did not break the rules but deleted it anyway, worried that any appeal she filed would take too long or ultimately fail. She suspects the rule could have a “catastrophic” chilling effect on other researchers working to expose extremists.
Since the violent white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, anti-extremism activists have used Twitter to identify previously anonymous members of far-right militias, neo-Nazis and other hate groups, sharing their photos, names and other information.
In some cases, the exposed people have lost jobs, been reported to law enforcement or faced consequences with co-workers, friends or family. Activists and researchers who have shared their information have also faced death threats and online attacks.
Goldsmith, a researcher with the Innovation Lab at Human Rights First who tracks the far right, said the rule could undermine Twitter’s front-line role in distributing critical information about online and real-world hate campaigns.
Amateur investigators known as “sedition hunters” openly used Twitter to identify rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Other researchers did the same after Charlottesville, he said. A jury last week ruled that more than a dozen white supremacists and hate groups should pay more than $26 million in damages for acts of intimidation and violence during the rally that left one woman dead.
“A large portion of the evidence that has been presented in these cases came from what Twitter now says is protected or ‘private’ information,” Goldsmith said.
Anti-extremism researchers and photojournalists on Twitter have in recent days posted reports showing suspension notices they’d received related to the new rule, even for months-old tweets of people in public places for whom the rule would not appear to apply.
Far-right activists have also worked to exploit their newfound power. On Telegram, one far-right activist shared tips on how to find potentially reportable images, using Twitter search queries such as “images fascist exposed.”
On other sites, like the fringe social network Gab, far-right activists said they were aggressively hammering out reports in hopes of taking down anti-fascist Twitter accounts. One said he had filed more than 50 reports in a day, adding, “It’s time to stay on the offensive.”
Some have also attempted to organize on Twitter, with one account saying they had submitted dozens of reports under the rule against anti-fascist accounts, tweeting, “[Right-wing] Twitter, it is time. I told you yesterday and you had reservations. No more excuses. We have work to do.” The account has since been suspended.
Goldsmith said he worried that Twitter’s moderators would not be prepared for a flood of reports from bad actors who could organize on other sites in hopes of blocking or hindering researchers’ work.
“Twitter simply does not have the human power to make these judgment calls,” he said.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, said Twitter needs to provide more clarity into how these rules will be enforced.
“If the intention of the new rules is to help stop doxing and harassment, that is important. But exposing extremists is also important,” Segal said. “Accountability is important. And sunlight can be the best disinfectant when done responsibly.”
iPhones of at least nine U.S. State Department employees were hacked using sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group. (photo: Shutterstock)
The hacks, which took place in the last several months, hit U.S. officials either based in Uganda or focused on matters concerning the East African country, two of the sources said.
The intrusions, first reported here, represent the widest known hacks of U.S. officials through NSO technology. Previously, a list of numbers with potential targets including some American officials surfaced in reporting on NSO, but it was not clear whether intrusions were always tried or succeeded.
Reuters could not determine who launched the latest cyberattacks.
NSO Group said in a statement on Thursday that it did not have any indication their tools were used but canceled the relevant accounts and would investigate based on the Reuters inquiry.
"If our investigation shall show these actions indeed happened with NSO's tools, such customer will be terminated permanently and legal actions will take place," said an NSO spokesperson, who added that NSO will also "cooperate with any relevant government authority and present the full information we will have."
NSO has long said it only sells its products to government law enforcement and intelligence clients, helping them to monitor security threats, and is not directly involved in surveillance operations.
Officials at the Uganda embassy in Washington did not comment. A spokesperson for Apple declined to comment.
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the intrusions, instead pointing to the Commerce Department's recent decision to place the Israeli company on an entity list, making it harder for U.S. companies to do business with them.
NSO Group and another spyware firm were "added to the Entity List based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers," the Commerce Department said in an announcement last month.
EASILY IDENTIFIABLE
NSO software is capable of not only capturing encrypted messages, photos and other sensitive information from infected phones, but also turning them into recording devices to monitor surroundings, based on product manuals reviewed by Reuters.
Apple's alert to affected users did not name the creator of the spyware used in this hack.
The victims notified by Apple included American citizens and were easily identifiable as U.S. government employees because they associated email addresses ending in state.gov with their Apple IDs, two of the people said.
They and other targets notified by Apple in multiple countries were infected through the same graphics processing vulnerability that Apple did not fix until September, the sources said.
Since at least February, this software flaw allowed some NSO customers to take control of iPhones simply by sending invisible yet tainted iMessage requests to the device, researchers who investigated the espionage campaign said.
The victims would not see or need to interact with a prompt for the hack to be successful. Versions of NSO surveillance software, commonly known as Pegasus, could then be installed.
Apple's announcement that it would notify victims came on the same day it sued NSO Group last week, accusing it of helping numerous customers break into Apple's mobile software, iOS.
In a public response, NSO has said its technology helps stop terrorism and that they've installed controls to curb spying against innocent targets.
For example, NSO says its intrusion system cannot work on phones with U.S. numbers beginning with the country code +1.
But in the Uganda case, the targeted State Department employees were using iPhones registered with foreign telephone numbers, said two of the sources, without the U.S. country code.
A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said the threat to U.S. personnel abroad was one of the reasons the administration was cracking down on companies such as NSO and pursuing new global discussion about spying limits.
The official added that they have seen "systemic abuse" in multiple countries involving NSO's Pegasus spyware.
Historically, some of NSO Group's best-known past clients included Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense must approve export licenses for NSO, which has close ties to Israel's defense and intelligence communities, to sell its technology internationally.
In a statement, the Israeli embassy in Washington said that targeting American officials would be a serious breach of its rules.
"Cyber products like the one mentioned are supervised and licensed to be exported to governments only for purposes related to counter-terrorism and severe crimes," an embassy spokesperson said. "The licensing provisions are very clear and if these claims are true, it is a severe violation of these provisions."
Robert Beauchamp and his crew are gathering cones for CALFIRE, who will use the seeds to replant land that has been burned in the state's fires. (photo: Christie Hemm Klok/National Geographic)
Climbing trees, stealing from squirrels—skilled collectors are becoming rarer, undermining the nation’s ambitious tree planting goals.
Grandorff has been a seed forager for 45 years, and he spots the signs of a squirrel’s hidden cache immediately: clusters of green pine needles fanned out on the forest floor; a newly nibbled cone; and a long, shallow dirt trail that disappears under a log.
He points to the canopy, where a gap in the needles at the tip of the branches reveal that a squirrel has been through. “Most people don’t seem to be able to [see it],” says the 74-year-old as he weaves between pines, their auburn bark scaly like alligator skin.
Grandorff’s parents taught him as a teenager how to read the forest. They were part of a niche network of cone collectors whose heyday dates back to President Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. Trailing behind him enthusiastically now is Matthew Aghai, senior director of biological research and development at the Seattle-based reforestation company DroneSeed, along to learn traditional gathering skills.
Grandorff stops: “See, right down there.” Nestled between two big rocks on the bank of a brook is what he came for: a cache of pine cones worth $15 a bushel. These woody cones are in steep demand. Tucked inside each one are up to 10 pearly-white seeds, each no bigger than a lentil, which one day could grow to over 200 feet tall and absorb at least 48 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
Across the western United States, the seeds are in high demand. Over the next 20 years, the U.S. aims to plant billions more trees in order to restore millions of acres of scorched forest and help offset planet-warming carbon emissions. In the West alone, some 10 million acres of recently burned land are waiting to be replanted. In the past few decades, however, the number of skilled seed collectors in the U.S. has been dwindling, though it’s not clear by how much, since the work is seasonal; it’s also gruelling, for not much pay. Fewer collectors means fewer seeds, and ultimately, trees.
As drought and fires intensify due to worsening climate change, the backlog of land to be reforested is increasing at an unsustainable rate, experts say.
The nation’s ambitious tree-planting goals aren’t achievable, says Aghai, “unless we start thinking in a really big way about seed.”
‘A fickle business’
U.S. seed capacity—or lack thereof—will be brought to the attention of Congress in a report commissioned by the Bureau of Land Management, scheduled to be released next spring.
Presaging that, an interim report on native seed supply commissioned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and published in October 2020 states, “There is no agency-wide native plant restoration program … [and the] supply chain is generally inadequate to meet these large demands.”
That’s partly because of how trees reproduce.
Seeds, the embryos for future offspring, begin to form after spring pollination. As part of a species’ survival strategy, the abundance of the seeds varies by year. Seeds are energy-intensive for trees to produce, and after several low-seed years there may be a sudden oversupply. It’s impossible for animals to eat and disburse all of them, ensuring some sprout into seedlings. It’s thought that the timing of these bumper crops—known as masts—are synchronized, with the trees communicating through airborne chemical signals or via underground root networks.
As a result, a good seed crop happens only once every three to seven years, depending on the plant species, given the irregular reproduction schedules. So 2020 was a good Douglas fir year; noble fir was big in 2016. This year across the area known as Cascadia, the tips of Ponderosa pine branches are heavy with cones.
“When there's a mast this big … it's quite unique,” says Aghai. “It would be irresponsible of us not to take advantage of it.”
These seeds are good candidates for restoring the more than 413,000 acres burned in July by the Bootleg fire in southern Oregon—the state’s third largest wildfire since 1900. To reforest that land with 150 trees per acre via seedlings sprouted in a greenhouse—enough, according to Aghai, to allow the trees to rebound quickly without overcrowding the forest—would require 18,000 pounds of Ponderosa pine seeds, he estimates. If the seeds were simply dumped from the sky by aircraft, a conventional method with a low rate of successful germination, it would take an estimated 400,000 pounds to ensure enough seeds would make it to adulthood.
Timing is everything, says Aghai; the longer it takes to reforest post-fire, the more likely that invasive weeds and shrubs take over. But it’s often difficult to find the right seed for a specific landscape—whether it’s the type, quantity, or quality. And it’s even harder when there’s a need to move quickly, such as after a natural disaster.
The risk is that the land isn’t returned to the same ecosystem it once was. "Failures are made again and again,” says Kayri Havens, director of plant science and conservation at the Chicago Botanic Garden, who co-authored the interim report.
Collectors must go into the wild to get high-quality seeds from enough species, which is vital for healthy land restoration. But there’s a science to doing this properly, from predicting the exact week the seeds will be ready to understanding how to collect ample supply without depleting the system.
On average, two collectors can gather 50 pounds of Ponderosa cone into at least 20 burlap sacks a day—about 10 bushels—(double that on a good day) for a total daily earnings of between $150 to $300. One bushel produces roughly half a pound of seed.
The roughly 50 collectors across 15 regional sites that work with DroneSeed, including Grandorff’s network of around six people, collected just under 10,000 bushels this season, less than half of Aghai’s goal of 25,000 bushels—a steep target for a season that lasts just two or three weeks.
The key is to grab the cone while it’s still closed with the seeds safely stored inside; if the woody wings open up and release the seeds—like most of the cones a passerby might pluck from the ground—it’s too late.
Once the pine cones are bagged and tagged to record the species, region, and elevation, they’re trucked to a processing facility—in this case Droneseed’s newly acquired Silvaseed in Roy, Washington—where the seeds will be extracted, cleaned, and stored until it’s time to plant them.
The government estimates that 100 million acres of public land need restoring. But there aren’t enough facilities to store the estimated billion pounds of plant seeds it would take to do that, says Havens. “We don't have that capacity for restoration seed in the country right now.”
At the federal level, from trees to wild grasses, the BLM has “a total storage capacity for 2.6 million pounds of seed,” according to BLM’s interim seed report. In a bad fire year, though, the BLM needs over seven million pounds of seed to restore the burned landscape.
CALFIRE—a firefighting unit under the California Natural Resources Agency—is one of three operations responsible for the entire state’s supply of tree seed for restoration (along with the Forest Service and the company Siskiyou Seed). Aghai says the state has about 20,000 pounds of tree seed stored at the moment. That’s enough to restore more than 458,000 acres of forest with seedlings.
Outside of California, however, the bulk of seed production for restoration is done by commercial companies—which, according to that interim report, the federal government is becoming increasingly reliant on for “rapid procurement of large quantities.”
Among private operators, Silvaseed is perhaps the largest in the Pacific Northwest when it comes to conifer species. Currently, it stores about 12,000 pounds of tree seed. Four decades ago Silvaseed was one of four or five companies in the Pacific Northwest dealing with seed. But over the years the others closed, leaving it the only regional player collecting, cleaning, and selling seed to everyone from Native American tribes, timber companies, and state agencies to international customers. In March, the 130-year-old family business was bought by DroneSeed.
“It’s such a fickle business,” says Mike Gerdes, Silvaseed’s former owner and operator. The unpredictability of dealing with nature means withstanding lean years, he says. On top of that, finding and retaining skilled workers in a field that’s physically demanding and “not the highest paid,” he says, is a major challenge.
The art of seed collection is largely learned by doing. But there are programs for becoming a certified arborist, and all BLM-funded contractors receive the Seeds of Success training, according to Havens. There’s even a national tree climbing course provided by the Forest Service in Oregon. And while there aren’t hard numbers for how many skilled seed collectors exist—mostly because it’s seasonal work—everyone agrees a lot more people are needed who understand the forest and can climb trees.
The shallow labor pool includes arborists and seasonal agriculture crews, along with individuals like Grandorff, who’s been working with Silvaseed for 20 years. The rest of the year he’s busy foraging for other forest products like mushrooms or making and selling Christmas wreaths with his wife..
“Our contractor climber base is very narrow,” echoes Jessica Huang, CALFIRE’s seed bank manager. Her agency’s main hurdle is a lack of labor, meaning there’s only so much seed that can be collected, even in a good year. And often seed collection coincides with fire season, so crews who could collect are fighting wildfires instead. But rather than the various players competing for collectors, she adds, “everyone wants to work together, because we can't keep up with the rate of fires and drought. We're all just, all hands on deck.”
Fighting fire
As climate change-associated drought lengthens wildfire season, the stakes are higher than ever. And collectors must balance their immediate safety needs with catching the fleeting window to collect a rare bounty.
This year’s collection season began mid-summer, with scouting missions to figure out when picking should start. In July, Aghai and his team drove around the Pacific Northwest, meeting the collectors, studying the trees and cutting open the cones to test their ripeness—if the seed embryo is too milky, it’s not ready yet. But in southern Oregon they hit a roadblock.
“The smoke was thick,” recalls Aghai. They doubled back and set up camp to regroup. “Ashes were falling on the camp, and we’re like, it’s apocalyptic,” he says—but they couldn’t stop their search. For some, the experience can be disheartening. “For me,” says Aghai, “it’s only motivating me to go faster because there’s no one doing anything about this, our climate catastrophe.”
Some sites earmarked for CALFIRE’s cone collection were also too close to the fires, says Huang. “I was uncomfortable having people in trees.”
“It's really difficult to let go of a potential collection,” she says. “We're really running out of seed; we can't keep up. And as more things burn, we're kind of like, ‘Well, now we can't collect because there's nothing to collect.’”
It’s a reality Grandorff has witnessed unfold rapidly. “In the hard-burned areas,” he says, “nothing lives.” It can take up to 20 years for the trees to mature and the squirrels to return.
Searching for a solution
To help boost the amount of seed collected, Aghai envisions using average citizens in addition to skilled workers—a commercial network where collectors bring cones to third-party distribution centers, which would purchase and deliver them to DroneSeed’s facilities.
Havens suggests more government involvement, “a national system that’s a compilation of regional hubs that address the seed need for their region.”
“Seed has been really undervalued in terms of its importance as a natural resource,” she says. When she lobbied officials on this issue 15 years ago, “they kind of looked at me like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And now they're all nodding their heads.”
By shadowing traditional collectors this year, Aghai hopes to engage them in “the technological revolution that's going to come for reforestation.” This includes using digital modeling tools to determine seed zones and where to plant based on elevation and climate conditions, as well as deploying drone swarms to strategically disperse the seeds.
Standing in the middle of the forest with the stream rushing below, Grandorff says, “The collection itself hasn’t really changed much; it’s probably never going to change.”
That includes tracking the squirrels. “I’ve gotten six or eight bushels out of one stream cache before,” he says, illustrating the potential payoff of stealing from squirrels instead of trees.
A small black squirrel with a reddish belly scampers along fallen logs, a pine cone held tightly in its mouth. “I’ll have to remember that,” chuckles Grandorff, plotting his next raid. “He’s probably got a pocket up there.”
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