14 August 21
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he drama and attention surrounding the infrastructure bill has focused almost entirely on the Senate, which has seen an unusual, high-profile bipartisan coalition. But the measure can’t be enacted without also passing the House of Representatives, which was not a party to the negotiations, and has a large number of Democrats much less invested in its success than their Senate counterparts. This provides an opportunity for the progressives: The left can and should refuse to support the bipartisan deal until moderate Democrats assure them of support for the much larger, more important reconciliation bill that will follow.
It’s not unusual for progressive Democrats to threaten to withhold their votes in an effort to win concessions. They make these threats all the time, and almost always have to go along in the end with whatever deal the moderates have signed onto. But this time, progressives have real leverage.
The unusual power House progressives hold at the moment is the product of the unique political circumstances of the moment, which has several factors.
To begin with, the bipartisan infrastructure bill is nice, but hardly crucial. It has some useful spending on mass transit, environmental remediation, and other Democratic priorities. The symbolism of a bipartisan bill operating in broad daylight (unlike the under-the-radar maneuverings of the Secret Congress) would provide political validation for President Biden.
But the infrastructure bill is much less important than the far larger Democratic budget bill that is coming next. That bill is many times larger, and its fate will both define Biden’s domestic-policy legacy and play a major role in shaping his 2024 campaign message. Biden and his party will have the chance to run on a combination of popular middle-class benefits (universal child tax credits, enhanced Medicare, and others), financed by an also-popular tax hike on the very wealthy.
The barrier they’re facing is the reluctance of moderate Democrats to raise taxes on the rich. That reluctance is not grounded either in public opinion (which supports soaking the rich) or in economics (even conservative models find Biden’s progressive tax hikes would have barely any effect on economic growth). It’s rooted instead in the deep influence of the ultrawealthy, who would generally prefer not to pay much higher tax rates, and who have enormous levels of access and influence on lawmakers.
Moderate Democrats sent a letter to their party leadership simultaneously asking that the House pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill right away, and preemptively raising doubts about the reconciliation bill:
That’s where the leverage comes in. The moderate Democrats are irrationally worried about passing a big tax hike on the rich, but they really want to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill. They see the bipartisan bill as their golden ticket to showing Republican-leaning voters in their districts that they can work across party lines. If that bill doesn’t pass, instead of getting to talk about how they helped pass a big infrastructure bill with Republican support, their message will be that they tried to pass a big bipartisan bill but failed. If the bipartisan infrastructure bill fails, the moderate Democrats are screwed.
The progressive goal shouldn’t be to sink the infrastructure bill or even to alter it, but to pressure moderate Democrats to support the reconciliation bill. The House progressives have been demanding a vote on the reconciliation bill before passing the infrastructure bill, but the sequence itself is probably not the important thing. What matters is getting private assurances on the contours of a deal from the moderates before the left supplies the votes to pass the infrastructure bill.
Democrats only control the House by a handful of votes. The bipartisan infrastructure bill will probably get some Republican support — 29 Republicans in the “Problem Solvers Caucus” seem likely to support it — but the 94 members of the House Progressive Caucus have more than enough votes to control its fate.
Historically, most partisan bills are shaped by the preferences of the members of Congress closest to the middle, and their colleagues on the political extreme simply have to go along with it. When progressive Democrats threatened to vote against bills like Obamacare and the American Rescue Plan because they weren’t liberal enough, the threats were empty, because moderates preferred to vote for nothing than a more liberal bill. There was no real room to push the bills further left.
This time, the left has real power. Progressives can credibly threaten to sink a priority that moderates care about more than they do. The Democratic Party’s left flank has devoted much of its energy under Biden to making demands that are either substantively unrealistic or politically dicey. Now they have the opportunity to push for a policy that is neither, and which will help advance the goal of a successful Biden presidency. The House progressives’ moment has arrived.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
he crowd gathered under a tent at the water’s edge, their tables decorated with the Stars and Stripes and checked tablecloths. In their midst in Austin county, Texas, last Saturday was the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, laughing with delight and playing the fiddle.
With the coronavirus roaring through the state and hospitals near breaking point, comparisons with Nero fiddling while Rome burned were irresistible, although journalist Alisha Grauso pointed out on Twitter: “Nero actually enacted sweeping relief efforts to try to quell the fire and also offer his people aid in the aftermath, particularly the lower class, so Abbott is somehow worse than a Roman emperor known today as being a psychotic tyrant.”
But Abbott, who has banned mask requirements, is far from an outlier in a Republican party which, having long sought to downplay the climate crisis, is now offering a confusing, incoherent and anti-scientific response to the biggest public health crisis for a century.
Some Republican leaders are seeking to support Joe Biden’s efforts to beat the pandemic by encouraging the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible. But others are actively trying to undermine the president’s offensive by embracing what critics regard as lethal mix of ignorance, irrationality and nihilism.
These Republicans seem intent on scoring political points by appealing to a pandemic-weary’s public yearning to get back to something like normal life. Still in thrall to former president Donald Trump, they fiercely oppose mask or vaccine mandates by invoking traditional party tenets of individual freedom, personal responsibility and resisting state interference.
But with America now averaging about 113,000 cases a day, an increase of nearly 24% from the previous week, and hospitalizations up 31% from the week before, Republicans stand accused of causing the deaths of their own voters as the highly contagious Delta variant scythes through red states where vaccination rates are low.
Elaine Kamarck, a Democrat who served in the Bill Clinton administration, said bluntly: “They’ve gone out of their minds. There’s just no other way to describe this. This is about the dumbest thing you could imagine because the only people listening to them are their voters. So this is the first time I’ve ever seen a political party advocating things that would harm their voters, maybe even kill their voters.”
For six months the vaccine program was an example of American ingenuity, energy and can-do spirit, but more recently it has become yet another case study in the self-inflicted wounds of polarization, reviving a sense of anxiety, uncertainty and pessimism. In the past week Florida and Texas, states whose leaders take pride in riling the Biden administration, have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country.
Abbott banned mask mandates yet pledged to bring in extra healthcare workers from out of state and ask hospitals to postpone elective surgeries. The Austin and Dallas independent school districts have said they will defy Abbott’s ban and require masks.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has also outlawed mask requirements in the state and threatened to withhold the salaries of superintendents and county school board members who issue them for students. As infections soar among children, some of the state’s biggest school districts vowed to flout the governor’s order.
Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, welcomed hundreds of thousands of people to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally where no masks or vaccines are required, while Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, declared: “Mandating masks is not the answer. Personal responsibility is the answer, common sense is the answer. And we have an abundance of both in South Carolina.”
At the White House on Thursday, Biden expressed frustration with governors prolonging the pandemic. “I know there are lot of people out there trying to turn a public safety measure – that is, children wearing masks in school so they can be safe – into a political dispute,” he said. “And this isn’t about politics. This is about keeping our children safe.”
Critics say the governors have abandoned the conservative principle that decisions should be made at a local level but they have support from prominent Republican senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Paul, a licensed physician and senator for Kentucky, urged civil disobedience against coronavirus restrictions, saying in a video: “It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us.” He has been banned from YouTube for a week over a post that questioned the efficacy of masks.
Biden’s effort is also being undercut by prominent conservative media figures including the Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who have challenged the safety and questioned the effectiveness of the vaccine, as well as online conspiracy theories that falsely suggest that it harms fertility, contains microchips or even creates vampires.
Democrats are dismayed by such willingness to turn even a matter of life and death into a partisan issue. They note that a minority of the population is hampering the entire nation’s recovery and needlessly endangering more lives, including children.
Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist, said: “They share a profound irresponsibility. What they’re doing will sicken people and some people will die. In my view DeSantis and Abbott are both doing it for political purposes to satisfy the base. DeSantis, at least, is too smart to not know what he’s doing or not know what he should be doing but that’s what we’ve come to in this country.”
The resurgent pandemic has also exposed fault lines in the Trump-era Republican party, a contradiction embodied by the former president himself. He continues to trumpet his success in developing the vaccines, and quietly received one in January, yet often seems reluctant to encourage his supporters to follow suit.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader frequently at odds with Trump, has paid for ads in Kentucky urging his constituents to get vaccinated, citing his own childhood struggle with polio and the decades it took to develop a polio vaccine.
Kay Ivey, the governor of Alabama, has spoken out about her frustrations with the unvaccinated. “Folks supposed to have common sense, but it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks,” she said last month. “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”
Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, has admitted that he regretted signing a ban on mask mandates in schools and asked the state legislature to reverse the decision. “I signed it for those reasons that our cases were at a low point,” he said. “Everything has changed now. And yes, in hindsight I wish that had not become law.”
Sarah Sanders, a former White House press secretary who is running for Arkansas governor, published an opinion column about why she decided to get vaccinated, citing Trump and his family’s own shots as one reason – “If getting vaccinated was safe enough for them, I felt it was safe enough for me” – but stopped short of telling others to do likewise, advising: “Pray about it, discuss it with your family and your doctor.”
DeSantis and Abbott are both facing re-election contests in 2022, and seen as potential presidential contenders in 2024, which might help explain why their responses are targeted at the Trump base while Hutchinson and Ivey are more pragmatic. Other Republicans have an eye on next year’s congressional midterm elections, which they hope to turn into a protest vote against Biden.
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman turned Trump critic and radio host, said: “It’s where their voters are. I interact with the Republican base every day. They are still highly skeptical or resistant to vaccines. They’re up in arms against any sort of mask wearing and mask mandates. So I hear that every day from the base. If I’m hearing that, then you know these Republican officeholders are hearing that as well, so they’re just going to cater to that.”
Asked why voters feel this way, Walsh added: “They’re predisposed to believe a lot of this shit, but it’s also said to them every day by people like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and talk radio – the world I come from. Like Republican elected officials, they know where their audience is so they fuel this every day and they feed it every day. So they bounce back off of each other.
“Look, typically midterm elections are all about turnout and if Republican elected officials go squishy on masks and even vaccines people are not going to come out and vote. So they can’t do that.”
But Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, argues that such a strategy will prove counterproductive in the long term.
“Never before in the history of our country where we’ve had to confront national crises have elected officials behaved so badly, so disingenuously and with so much disregard for the safety and security of the American people,” he said.
Steele added: “Individuals like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and others are out here selfishly proclaiming that somehow I’m more free if I don’t wear a mask. Well, that’s just bullshit and the only freedom you get from not wearing a mask is death.”
Ady Barkan outside his home in Santa Barbara, California. (photo: Alex Welsh/The Intercept)
e end today’s show with one of the most remarkable healthcare activists in the country. His name is Ady Barkan. He’s a 37-year-old lawyer and father who’s dying of terminal ALS. Since his diagnosis in 2016, Ady has dedicated his life to pushing for Medicare for All. He’s continued to speak out even after losing his voice. He now uses a computerized system that tracks his eye movements and turns them into spoken words. Ady’s story is told in the new documentary Not Going Quietly. This is the trailer.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Now, I want to have a chance to tell the story about my friend Ady Barkan.
JON FAVREAU: He’s been an activist and an organizer all of his life.
REP. JIM McGOVERN: With us today is Ady Barkan. I can’t do Ady’s story justice. I will let him tell it.
ADY BARKAN: After Carl was born, we felt like we had reached the mountaintop.
Say hi.
And then, out of the clear blue sky, we were struck by lightning.
I was diagnosed with ALS today.
The knowledge that I was dying was terrible, but dealing with my insurance company was even worse. I wanted to spend every moment I had left with Rachael and Carl, but then Congress came after our healthcare. I couldn’t stay quiet any longer.
BROOKE BALDWIN: My next guest made headlines when he confronted a Republican senator on an airplane.
ADY BARKAN: This is your moment to be an American hero.
All right, ready to rumble.
We decided to start a movement.
To urge people to stand up, confront the elected officials.
Paul Ryan, I’m going to knock on your door!
REPORTER: Did you just get out of jail? Are you going to keep protesting on Monday?
ADY BARKAN: [bleep] yeah!
PROTESTERS: What do we want? Healthcare!
ADY BARKAN: I am willing to give my last breath to save our democracy. What are you willing to give?
Liz, I’m having trouble breathing.
LIZ JAFF: I think we have to stop.
ADY BARKAN: Our time on this Earth is the most precious resource we have.
Carl, I love you so much.
Movement building allows me to transcend my body. And that’s the beauty of democracy, that together we can be more than our individual selves.
AUDIENCE: Ady! Ady! Ady!
ADY BARKAN: The paradox of my situation is, the weaker I get, the louder I become.
RACHAEL SCARBOROUGH KING: Who’s that?
CARL BARKAN: Abba!
AMY GOODMAN: The trailer to the new documentary Not Going Quietly. It premiered last night in Los Angeles and tonight at the Angelika theater here in New York.
On Thursday, just before the L.A. premiere, I had a chance to speak over Zoom with Ady Barkan, who was at his home in Santa Barbara, California.
AMY GOODMAN: Ady, I wanted to start off by saying this is one of the great honors of my life to be talking to you. So thank you so much for making this time, right before the documentary is airing about your life.
Let me start off by asking you about the enormous emphasis on healthcare in this country right now, even in the corporate media, because of the pandemic. Yet there is very little talk about Medicare for All, an issue you have dedicated your life to. Can you talk about why you have dedicated yourself to this issue?
ADY BARKAN: That is so generous, Amy. Thank you for your career of leadership.
Only a truly radical departure from our exploitative, for-profit model to one that guarantees healthcare as a right for all will ensure that we no longer live in a nation where people go bankrupt on account of their medical bills. Take this last year as a prime example of the breadth of cruelty possible in our for-profit healthcare system. COVID disproportionately devastated poor communities and communities of color. Death rates in Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities were over twice that of their white counterparts. Millions lost their jobs and, as a result, their health insurance. Hospitals that primarily serve Medicaid patients shut down, prioritizing profits over people. Meanwhile, private insurers saw their profits double, because Americans delayed much-needed care. A system that profits off of death and people forgoing medical care is a system that is beyond repair. We need Medicare for All now.
AMY GOODMAN: What gives you the strength, Ady, to be the relentless activist that you are?
ADY BARKAN: You know, building a progressive movement means having your heart broken all the time. This comes with the territory. We organize for a better world, not in spite of our own pain, but because of it. We push forward because we are faced with no other option but to struggle for our freedom.
These last five years have been really tough, both personally and also collectively as a society. But take a breath and look around. You will find evidence of the profound beauty that our society has forged from the depths of pain, especially this past year. Of course, there is a lot of work to be done. But placed in this context, it means there is also more community, more creation and more healing that is bound to emerge from our labor.
AMY GOODMAN: Ady, what gives you hope?
ADY BARKAN: I’ve learned that hope is not a lottery ticket that we cling to. It’s a hammer that we use in an emergency to break the glass, sound the alarm and spring into action. I am asked this question a lot, and so I want to be clear here. I don’t believe in latent hope. Hope, as I have come to know it, is the result of hard work. Hope is action in the face of despair. Hope is born out of our insistence that a better world is possible, and formed in our coming together in collective action to realize this better world of our imagination.
AMY GOODMAN: I’ll just say once again, Ady, what an incredible honor it is to be able to speak with you and to just say what an enormous difference you have made, not only in this country, but around the world, as the persistent, compassionate, brilliant and extremely funny activist that you are, about an issue of life and death, that you face every day. So, thank you so much.
ADY BARKAN: Thank you. I am grateful for your solidarity.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s healthcare activist Ady Barkan, speaking from his home on Thursday in Santa Barbara just before the premiere of the new documentary, Not Going Quietly. In a moment, we’ll speak with the film’s director. But first let’s turn to an excerpt of the film, where Ady testifies before Congress in April 2019.
ADY BARKAN: Chairman McGovern and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am 35 years old, and I live in Santa Barbara, California, with my brilliant wife Rachael and our beautiful toddler Carl.
RACHAEL SCARBOROUGH KING: Who’s that?
CARL BARKAN: Abba!
ADY BARKAN: Every month since my diagnosis, my motor neurons have died out, my muscles have disintegrated, and I have become increasingly paralyzed. I am speaking to you through this computer, because my diaphragm and tongue are simply not up to the task.
Although my story is tragic, it is not unique. In many ways, it is not so rare. Every family is eventually confronted with serious illness or accidents. On the day we are born and on the day we die and on so many days in between, all of us need medical care.
And yet, in this country, the wealthiest in the history of human civilization, we do not have an effective or fair or rational system for delivering that care. Our time on this Earth is the most precious resource we have. A Medicare for All system will mean more time giving high-quality care. And for patients and our families, it will mean more time doing the things we love together.
And so, my closing message is not for the members of this committee; it is for the American people. Join us in the struggle. Be a hero for your family, your communities, your country. Come give your passion and your energy and your precious time to this movement. It is a battle worth winning, for my son Carl, for your children and for our children’s children. This is our Congress. This is our democracy. And this is our future for the making.
AMY GOODMAN: Ady Barkan, testifying before Congress in 2019. He’s since had a second baby, Willow. That clip featured in the new documentary, Not Going Quietly.
We’re joined now by the film’s director, Nicholas Bruckman. He’s joining us from Los Angeles, where the film premiered last night, premiering tonight at the Angelika here in New York.
Nicholas, congratulations on this magnificent work about a magnificent man and movement. Talk about why you took this on.
NICHOLAS BRUCKMAN: Yes. I met Ady in early 2018, actually to make a short film to launch the Be a Hero campaign. And within a few minutes of meeting him, I saw just a little bit of the spark of what I think we all now see in Ady. And I pitched him, that first day that I met him, on making a feature documentary. And that’s not normally the way this goes. Normally when making documentaries, you spend years or months building access and trust. And we just didn’t have that time with Ady, because when I had met him, he had already been diagnosed for a year and he only had about six months left to speak, and so we needed to get him to say everything that he would say with his natural voice really quickly.
And I think Ady really intuitively understood, having just confronted Jeff Flake, the power of his own story. A year prior to that, he had been in a lot of despair, reckoning with what had happened to him and the implications for his family. But that confrontation with Flake and how it really put him on the national spotlight and changed so many people’s lives, I think, gave him and his wife Rachael the understanding that stories have power.
And what transpired from there is we went on the road with Ady for 40 days —
AMY GOODMAN: I want to — I want to interrupt you quickly. I want to interrupt you quickly to go to a clip from Not Going Quietly, where Ady Barkan leads a protest in Washington in an effort to pressure Republican Senator Jeff Flake over his support of a Republican tax bill.
ADY BARKAN: We’re here in Washington, D.C., trying to stop this bill. Why? I have ALS, which is causing me to become paralyzed quite quickly. And as a result, I’m using a wheelchair. My voice is no longer as melodious as it used to be.
To Senator Jeff Flake, you don’t have to do this this way. I understand that you want a tax cut. I understand that you are conservative and I am not, and that’s OK. But you can get a tax cut without ripping healthcare away from tens of millions of people.
UNIDENTIFIED: This is Ady Barkan.
ADY BARKAN: Hi. How are you?
CONGRESSIONAL AIDE: How are you?
ADY BARKAN: My name is Ady.
So, can I ask — as you know, this bill is going to cut Medicare and destabilize the entire national health insurance system.
CONGRESSIONAL AIDE: Sure. He’s still in the process of reviewing it. He hasn’t made a conclusive decision one way or the other. So, we’re grateful for you guys stopping by, though.
ADY BARKAN: Well, so, let me tell him this. A, we are human beings. We have dreams and hopes and love and relationships, just like he does and just like you do. And message number two is, if he votes for this bill, he will lose his job in 10 months. So that’s his choice.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Ady at the offices. And, Nicholas, you’re talking about when he met him on the plane. Explain. Was that just after this?
NICHOLAS BRUCKMAN: Yes, this was just after he had met Jeff Flake. Ady had been on a — had gone to D.C. to protest the tax bill, and he had essentially struck out. His voice wasn’t heard. He didn’t feel recognized. And he had just experienced this massive loss.
And incredibly, on the airplane back, the woman next to him on the plane points out that Jeff Flake himself is sitting up front. They go and confront him, and Liz films it on camera. And that video goes viral before the plane even lands.
And that spark, that moment of serendipity, becomes the launch of the Be a Hero movement, where they go across country telling people’s stories to congresspeople and confronting them in their offices, the way you see in that clip.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, of course, we’re seeing him speaking with his own voice, and that’s not the case now, as we saw in my interview, as his eyes now trigger what he says. It’s just phenomenal, with this computer voice, the technology and the power of his expression.
NICHOLAS BRUCKMAN: Yeah. The film tracks this incredible parallel between the loss of his physical voice and physical body and his growing of this huge national platform. And Ady says ALS has given him this newfound power. It’s given him — it’s become a weapon that he’s used to fight for healthcare and to fight for his children. And that power is what the film is about.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, where do we stand now with Medicare for All and the Be a Hero campaign? Explain the concept of Be a Hero, Ady’s organization.
NICHOLAS BRUCKMAN: Yeah, so, Ady’s organization, Be a Hero, is still active today. The film charts, I think, an incredible chapter in Be a Hero, but I believe that Ady’s best work is ahead of him. Ady and Liz and the entire Be a Hero team continue to use this tactic of storytelling to power. And so they capture the stories of people who’ve been impacted by our healthcare system. They tell those stories to our representatives. They confront them. They find them in their offices, wherever they can, capture on cellphone video, and really shame them into seeing the impacts of their policy decisions. And this has built a national, people-powered movement, all started from that encounter on the plane. And it’s been incredibly impactful. We saw the impact in the film. We see the impact Ady has single-handedly with his team on the 2018 elections. He was instrumental in the 2020 elections and in organizing the progressive base. He interviewed all of the candidates and spoke to Joe Biden directly. And now we see, because of the efforts, like Ady, that is 69% of Americans support Medicare for All. Even within the Republican Party, there’s a huge support of expanding Medicare and Medicaid. And it’s largely from the efforts like Ady’s.
AMY GOODMAN: Nicholas, I want to end with another clip from your phenomenal film, Not Going Quietly, where Ady reflects on his own mortality due to ALS.
NURSE: Blow as hard as you can. Blow, blow, blow, blow, blow. Keep going. Go, go, go, go! It was 44%.
ADY BARKAN: Wow.
NURSE: Yeah.
ADY BARKAN: That’s a huge decline.
NURSE: Is it?
ADY BARKAN: Yeah, I was at 70.
My whole body is going paralyzed. But losing my voice is far more consequential for me than losing my ability to walk. I’ve got a lot to say and not a lot of time left to say it in.
CARL BARKAN: What Abba doing?
RACHAEL SCARBOROUGH KING: What is Abba doing?
CARL BARKAN: Medicine.
ADY BARKAN: Hey, Carl.
RACHAEL SCARBOROUGH KING: Medicine.
ADY BARKAN: Yeah, medicine.
CARL BARKAN: Whoa!
RACHAEL SCARBOROUGH KING: Whoa.
ADY BARKAN: I’m not sure how many more months I have where I can speak well enough that I can be understood, but I plan to spend every one of those months doing everything I can. As my life is coming to the end, I want to make my son proud. Rachael knows that this may be one of the last times that I can bird-dog a senator or speak at a rally. She’s sacrificing so that we can do this. I admire her and appreciate her so much.
AMY GOODMAN: Ady Barkan, speaking in a clip from the new documentary Not Going Quietly, premiering this weekend in L.A., in New York and beyond. And we want to thank Nicholas Bruckman, the film’s director.
Undocumented immigrants from El Salvador wait to be deported on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flight bound for San Salvador. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Title 42, a regulation approved by the Trump administration, allows CDCs to prevent the entry of undocumented immigrants to the United States.
In July, nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children crossed the border, while 76,000 parents and children crossed the border together as families, the second-highest total ever and a significant jump from June.
The CBP data only includes the number of arrests and does not account for people who made it across the border without being apprehended, typically single adults in search of work who do not intend to ask for asylum.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) complained about transferring undocumented immigrants from the U.S. border to the Mexican border with Guatemala. This happens because of the application of Title 42, a regulation approved during the Donald Trump administration (2017-2021) that allows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent the entry of undocumented immigrants to the United States.
What extending Title 42 accomplishes:
— Human Rights First (@humanrights1st) August 13, 2021
Hurts refugees
Separates families
Violates our laws & international treaties@POTUS: Uphold U.S. law and protect refugees fleeing violence & persecution. End Title 42 NOW. pic.twitter.com/o9J1e272gv
According to the United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR), Title 24 prevents migrants from accessing asylum processes because it allows the authorities the return "in chain" of the migrants to third countries. This, however, contradicts the "Non-Refoulement" principle that prohibits returning people to a territory where their life or integrity is in danger.
On Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began transferring families expelled under Title 42 to the interior of Mexico. She explained that the measure seeks to reduce the possibility that deportees try to re-offend and return to the United States.
Following the Trump-era rule, some 240 Guatemalans deported from McAllen (Texas) arrived on Thursday at the Tapachula Airport in Chiapas to be later transferred to the Mexico-Guatemala border.
A police officer. (photo: Adobe Stock)
Christopher Jacobs, 28, had been charged with manufacturing methamphetamine. He could not bear to go back to jail, he told his family, but he also feared the police would shoot him — even though he had been childhood friends with officers now patrolling this remote stretch of eastern Kentucky.
So when a state trooper and a sheriff’s deputy — brothers — pulled into the Jacobs family driveway on Hemp Patch Road on Nov. 1, 2017, Jacobs’ first move was to crawl under a mobile home and hide, police records show.
His second was to start yelling, “Don’t kill me!” He jumped into his Chevrolet Impala and tried to flee. There was a scuffle, and the officers fired Tasers as he struggled to start the car. Then he rammed an empty police cruiser.
Leo Slone, a trooper who had grown up with Jacobs and once helped save his life after a drug overdose, shot him three times. Jacobs died at the scene.
As police shootings have become a flashpoint in U.S. cities, The Marshall Project and the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting spent a year examining those urban killings’ little-publicized counterparts in rural America.
Officers in rural areas fatally shot about 1,200 people from 2015 through 2020, while in cities there were at least 2,100 such deaths, according to the news organizations’ analysis of data compiled by The Washington Post; no comprehensive government database exists.
The data analysis found that, although the rate of rural police shootings was about 30% lower than the urban rate when adjusted for population, the rural incidents mirrored many of the dynamics of police shootings that have come under scrutiny in cities.
And even as deadly police shootings declined in cities and rural communities during this time, according to the analysis, the rural decrease was more modest: about 9% versus 19%.
High-profile urban police shootings such as the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, have set off protests, prompted widespread calls for change and led to new policies in some law enforcement agencies. But rural deaths seldom attract attention from the public or the national press. Police shootings in isolated areas are rarely captured on video, and many rural officers do not wear body cameras.
Rural shootings by the Kentucky State Police, the agency with the largest number of such deaths in the six-year period, illustrate both what distinguishes these encounters from other police killings and how they fit within broader patterns nationwide.
Kentucky state troopers shot and killed at least 41 people during that period, including 33 in rural areas. To examine these deaths, reporters interviewed more than 100 people and reviewed dozens of court cases and thousands of pages of police investigative reports, in addition to conducting the data analysis.
One big difference was that most of the people killed in the rural shootings, in Kentucky and elsewhere, were white. White people make up the rural majority in nearly every state, and two-thirds of the people fatally shot by law enforcement in rural areas across the country were white, the data analysis shows; about 10% were Black. (In cities, 37% were Black and 31% white.)
Nevertheless, in some states, a disproportionately high number of Black people were shot and killed by the police relative to their share of the rural population. These include Alabama, Virginia and — the starkest example — Louisiana, where Black people accounted for about 20% of rural residents but almost 37% of rural police shootings.
Other characteristics of the rural Kentucky incidents were closely aligned with both rural and urban police shootings across the country. Most of the people shot in rural Kentucky were men, and two-thirds were armed with guns, according to police records. A majority had drug addiction or mental health problems, including some in the throes of crises that troopers did little to de-escalate, police records show. And many of the shootings occurred in the state’s poorer counties.
Like most other police shootings across the country, those in rural settings seldom lead to indictments or prosecutions of the officers involved, the data show. This holds in Kentucky, where the state police investigate their own shootings without an independent review.
The Kentucky State Police declined to be interviewed but provided a written statement. Without commenting on individual cases, the agency defended its record on public safety, training and the use of deadly force.
The agency takes “any use of force seriously, trains troopers in de-escalation and reviews the use of force to ensure the force is justified to protect the public and the trooper or officer,” its public affairs commander, Sgt. Billy Gregory, said in the statement.
More than half of the rural Kentucky shootings examined occurred at residences. About 55% of households in the state have guns, according to estimates from the Rand Corp. And in at least nine of the 33 rural Kentucky deaths during the period reviewed, troopers fatally shot someone who had fired at law enforcement.
During that time, one Kentucky trooper was shot to death while on duty. His killing offered a cautionary tale for other officers contending with a frequent reality of the job: working alone.
Sometimes, policing experts said, solo officers may be more inclined to shoot because they feel at risk knowing that backup could be many miles away. Working alone “affects the mindset of the officer on the scene,” said Ralph Weisheit, a professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University.
Working alone is one of several challenges the state police face, former agency officials said. Another factor is methamphetamine use, which was involved in about half of the 22 rural deaths for which toxicology reports were available.
Since 2019, the agency said, it has required training for cadets in “mental health first aid.” But it has not adopted practices that some big-city departments now use to try to prevent violence, including employing body cameras. In the absence of video, there have been conflicting accounts from troopers and witnesses about how fatal police encounters played out.
Of the 33 rural Kentucky shootings reviewed, at least 20 were presented to a grand jury. None of the officers involved were indicted.
When officers encountered Bradley Grant on May 20, 2018, he was struggling: After years of sobriety, he had relapsed and — like roughly one-quarter of the people shot by Kentucky troopers in rural areas, according to the data analysis — had recently threatened suicide, police records show.
Troopers were looking for a man accused of beating and molesting a child when they arrived at a house where they thought he might be staying. Instead, they found Grant, pressure-washing the porch. The child’s mother was riding with one of the officers and told him that Grant was not the abuser.
Still, when Grant went inside, the officers followed — even though they did not have a search warrant.
There, Detective Aaron Frederick broke down a locked door and found Grant pointing a shotgun at his own chin and saying, “Shoot me.” Frederick later said he had told the man more than once to drop the weapon before firing at him. Grant died soon after.
Frederick declined to comment.
A federal judge dismissed a claim of excessive force, agreeing with the officers that the circumstances justified the shooting. But the judge also ruled that the troopers had violated Grant’s constitutional rights by entering the house without consent or a warrant. The state police are appealing.
Deaths at the hands of troopers in rural Kentucky have not sparked protests or widespread distrust of the agency. But families including the Grants have raised concerns about the agency’s investigations into shootings by its own officers. The friends and family of Jacobs said they shared those doubts.
Less than three months after Jacobs’ death, a grand jury declined to indict the trooper.
Jacobs’ mother, Terrie Jacobs, said this spring that she was still mourning her son. “I’m going to have this hurt with me all my life,” she said. “Till they bury me.”
Women wearing face masks in Tehran. (photo: Ebrahim Norooz/AP)
Sanctions come as talks stall between the Biden administration and Iran on restoring the nuclear deal.
he United States imposed sanctions on an Omani businessman and companies linked to him over allegations of involvement in an oil-smuggling network that supports Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC-QF).
The measures, announced on Friday, come as talks to revive the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers have stalled with a new administration led by conservative President Ibrahim Raisi coming into office in Tehran earlier this month.
The sanctions targeted Mahmood Rashid Amur Al Habsi, described by the US Department of the Treasury as a “foreign broker” and accused of partnering with senior Quds Force officials to “facilitate shipments of Iranian oil to foreign customers, including buyers in East Asia”.
“The IRGC-QF is using revenues from its Iranian petroleum sales to fund its malign activities at the expense of the Iranian people,” Andrea M Gacki, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury, said in a statement.
“These sales rely on key foreign intermediaries to obscure the IRGC-QF’s involvement, and Treasury will continue to disrupt and expose anyone supporting these efforts.”
The US Department of State echoed Gacki’s statement, welcoming the sanctions on Friday.
“As part of his oversight of shipping operations, Al Habsi has tampered with the automated identification systems that are onboard vessels, forged shipping documents, and paid bribes, circumventing restrictions related to Iran,” the Treasury Department said.
Sanctions will apply to four companies in Al Habsi’s business network – two firms based in Oman, one in Liberia and one in Romania.
The measures were based on Executive Order 13224, a 2001 decree meant to target the financing of foreign “terrorist” organisations. Former US President Donald Trump designated the IRGC – an Iranian state entity – as such an organisation in an unprecedented move in 2019.
The sanctions will freeze the assets of Al Habsi and his blacklisted companies in the US, cut him off from the US financial system and bar Americans from doing business with him.
New US sanctions targeting Iran have been rare since President Joe Biden took office in January.
The US administration says it is seeking a return to the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The deal saw world powers lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for the country scaling back its nuclear programme.
Trump nixed the accord in 2018 and started a maximum pressure campaign of sanctions against Tehran. In response, Iran started loosening its commitments to the agreement.
Several rounds of talks in Vienna have failed to restore the JCPOA earlier this year, with disagreements remaining over the sequencing of mutual compliance with the deal and what US sanctions will be lifted.
Late last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington is prepared to resume negotiations with the new Iranian administration but warned that talks “cannot go on indefinitely”.
A sea turtle in Key West, Florida. (photo: Pier House)
omething strange is happening to sea turtles in the Florida Keys, and scientists and conservationists are working together to understand why.
Stranded green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the Southernmost island chain in the United States are showing high rates of internal and external tumors — 51.5% to be exact. This is more than double the 22.6 percent incidence rate for green sea turtles in Florida overall.
The tumors are caused by fibropapillomatosis (FP), a "transmissible tumor disease of ecological importance," said Bette Zirkelbach, the manager at The Turtle Hospital in Marathon, FL who coordinated the study. Every species of sea turtle is affected, but green sea turtles, especially in the Florida Keys and around other developed islands, seem particularly prone. The wildlife rescue expert and education specialist explained how the tumors grow internally in sea turtles as well as externally on their eyes, flippers, necks and more. Tumors can inhibit critical activities such as foraging, swimming, ingestion, breathing and more, leading to hunger, distress and even death if untreated.
The Turtle Hospital has been treating sea turtles with FP tumors for more than 35 years. Now, they're collaborating with Annie Page-Karjian, an assistant research professor & clinical veterinarian at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University, and Force Blue, an organization that trains combat veterans and military divers for new ocean conservation missions, to complete the Florida Keys Sea Turtle Health Study and find the root of the disease.
Page-Karjian, a marine disease ecology and sea turtle health expert, led the study. The goal was to conduct a health assessment of free-ranging juvenile green sea turtles in the Florida Keys. The waters are an exemplary foraging ground for these turtles, Zirkelbach added. Despite this, little is known about the movement, foraging ecology, and health of the local population.
"We are studying this disease in the region of the world where it is thought to have originated, to learn more about the epidemiology and pathophysiology of FP," Page-Karjian said. "This disease is enzootic in Florida's green sea turtles, a federally protected species, and can be debilitating or even fatal in some cases."
"Understanding the habitats of green turtles with this alarming FP rate is a crucial step toward elucidating factors that may contribute to the disease," Zirkelbach said. Because the Florida Keys waters host green sea turtles as they forage and grow, the waters are "of particular concern," she added.
Currently, threats to sea turtle health globally include environmental degradation, infectious diseases, biotoxins and chemical contaminants. FP has been observed in turtles around Florida, Texas, Hawaii, Africa, Australia, Cuba, Costa Rica, the Caribbean Islands and the Bahamas. It is primarily observed in sea turtles around developed coastlines, and studies suggest a link between FP and human impacts on the environment. Scientists believe the disease, which is related to a herpes virus, might be linked to warmer seas and polluted waters, Zirkelbach said. If this is the case, increases in ocean temperatures linked to the climate crisis could increase disease range and/or prevalence.
The Force Blue team provided primary funding and manpower for the study. The organization's mission is to redeploy Special Operations veterans into the world of marine conservation. As part of this project, the team trained for and participated in the capture and release of sea turtles on the water for this project. In South Florida, the group has contributed to other notable conservation work, including reattaching 100-year-old coral heads ripped up by hurricanes and helping to restore endangered corals ahead of Super Bowl LV.
The work also serves as a type of in-field, mission-based "therapy" for these warriors and military divers, Zirkelbach added. The veterans enjoy "a new mission and a sense of continued service" in fighting for the planet, Force Blue Executive Director Jim Ritterhoff said.
Over 10 days, the field team collected, sampled, tagged and released 38 green sea turtles. All work was conducted pursuant to NMFS ESA Permit No. 21169 and FWC MTP 204.
Next, blood and tissue samples will be processed and analyzed to understand turtle diet, disease prevalence, biotoxins present and everything in between. The research team wants to know what is going on with turtles and what that can teach us about the health of the oceans.
For vulnerable and endangered species like sea turtles, emerging wildlife diseases like FP and other consequences of increased human activities threaten their future. Scientists and conservationists like the study team must come up with "innovative approaches" to help maintain healthy populations until the chronic underlying causes of these issues can be addressed, Zirkelbach said, quoting another study that the Turtle Hospital collaborated on.
So, what's the takeaway?
Page-Karjian explained. She said, "Sea turtles are considered suitable indicators of ecosystem health, so by understanding their health status, we can get a sense of things that are going right (and wrong) in their preferred habitat — coastal seagrass ecosystems."
Because turtles are a sentinel for the seas, and due to the connectivity of planetary systems, we can extrapolate to the overall health of the oceans and the planet as we analyze the general state of wellness of sea turtles, Zirkelbach noted. She said, "Sea turtles have survived our planet for over 100 million years. What is happening to the health of sea turtles will eventually affect all life. Important data collected from projects like the Florida Keys Sea Turtle Health Study can help policy makers to better manage our marine ecosystems" for the benefit of all.
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