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Former Fox anchor exposes network's fake news and conspiracies Gretchen Carlson accused her former employer of actively "eradicating any other point of view" when it comes to everything from the 2020 election, to January 6th, to science and vaccines.
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To support the Republican narrative that our elections are rife with misconduct, someone needs to take the fall.
When I met with Crystal Mason recently at her home in Rendon, Texas, we sat on a wide couch that served as the center of her domain, with plenty of space for children, grandchildren, nephews, and nieces. Their photographs filled the house. Mason’s mother called to her from another room, needing advice; later, her eight-month-old grandson, Carter, joined us on the couch after waking up from an afternoon nap. For hours that day, Mason spoke candidly about the illegal-voting case that has consumed her life for half a decade. With us was one of her lawyers, Alison Grinter Allen.
If there is an individual in America who epitomizes one central aspect of our political moment, it might well be Crystal Mason. The story of Mason, a Black woman, illuminates the extraordinary efforts the Republican Party has made to demonstrate that fraud is being committed by minority voters on a massive scale. That false notion is now an article of faith among tens of millions of Americans. It has become an excuse to enact laws that make voting harder for everyone, but especially for voters of color, voters who are poor, voters who are old, and voters who were not born in the United States.
Mason watches the news diligently and can recount the details of prosecutions that have resulted thus far from the attack on the Capitol on January 6—an attack that was stoked by conspiracy theories about fraudulent voters. She can’t help but wonder about punishments meted out for the insurrection as compared with the one she has already received for, she says, unwittingly violating a Texas voting law. “These people,” Mason said of the participants in the January 6 assault, “came to do and commit dangerous crimes.” When she and I spoke, only two of them had been sentenced to jail or prison, and neither for more than eight months. Mason was sentenced to five years. She is currently out on bond while she appeals her conviction.
The idea that systemic fraud has subverted the democratic process demands a search for evidence of such fraud. The point of this effort is not merely to support spurious claims that Donald Trump won the 2020 election or to stockpile spurious arguments in advance of 2024. It is to lay a foundation for the resurgence of a specific form of Jim Crow–style disenfranchisement. Jim Crow relied on outright bans at the ballot box and threats of violence to ensure white political power. But eliminating the Black vote during that era was accomplished in subtler ways as well: by undermining community cohesion, by sapping time and energy, by sheer frustration. The modern effort relies on similar tactics. The so-called Big Lie is built on small lies, about the actions and intentions of individuals—the kinds of lies that can destroy lives and families.
Crystal Mason’s role in this story began during the 2016 presidential election. She was 41 and readjusting to life at home after serving most of a five-year sentence in federal prison for tax fraud. Mason had run a tax-preparation business with her then-husband and had been charged with inflating their clients’ refunds. Mason pleaded guilty and paid the penalty; after four years, a supervised-release program allowed her to return to her home. She has publicly “owned up,” as she has said, to her mistakes.
Mason has three adult children, and cares for other members of the family. She had been putting her life back together, working at a Santander bank in nearby Dallas and taking classes to become an aesthetician. Around this same time, Donald Trump was making his ascent: calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” brandishing casual racism and xenophobia, and asking Black voters what the hell they had to lose by voting for him. Texas was not expected to be a swing state, but in this menacing atmosphere, Mason’s mother told Crystal it was her duty to vote.
On Election Day, Mason drove to her polling place, the Tabernacle Baptist Church. She was coming from work, and almost didn’t make it. “It was raining,” Mason told me, remembering the night. “It was right at 7 o’clock, when it was about to be closing up. I went with my name and my ID—who I was—to where I was supposed to go.” But a volunteer there, a 16-year-old neighbor of hers named Jarrod Streibich, couldn’t find her name on the rolls, which happens sometimes. Streibich suggested that she use a provisional ballot. “They offered it to me,” Mason recalled, “and I said, ‘What’s that?’ And they said, ‘Well, if we’re at the right location, it’ll count. If you’re not, it won’t.’ ” There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the interaction. Like tens of thousands of Texas voters, and millions of Americans across the country, Mason cast a provisional ballot, and went home.
Mason’s provisional ballot was destined to be rejected, however. Texas law requires all terms of any felony sentence to be completed before a person once again becomes eligible to vote, and Mason had not fully completed her sentence for the tax-fraud conviction. Mason says she didn’t know that ineligibility extended to the period of supervised release; she made a simple mistake. Many provisional ballots are rejected because of ineligibility, often for reasons potential voters are unaware of. Mason was sent a letter after the election stating that her provisional ballot had been disallowed.
By any reasonable measure, Mason’s experience at the polls amounted to a meaningless misunderstanding that had no effect on anything. Donald Trump carried Tarrant County, which includes Rendon, and all of Texas by a healthy margin on his way to winning the White House in 2016. Republicans in Texas retained control of most of the political system in the state. Trump was inaugurated in January. Mason continued her court-mandated check-ins with her supervision officer.
Without realizing it, however, Mason had become the subject of an investigation. After the polls closed, Streibich, the neighbor who had suggested that she use a provisional ballot in the first place, told an election judge on the scene—who was also a neighbor of Mason’s—something he had just remembered: that he thought Mason might still be on supervised release for a federal offense. The judge, Karl Dietrich, a local Republican Party official, informed the Tarrant County district attorney, Sharen Wilson. On February 16, 2017, Crystal Mason was arrested for illegal voting.
Fear of voter fraud, or at least the pretense of fear, has been a centerpiece of conservative objections to the expansion of voting rights going back, in the modern era, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Taking steps to curb alleged illegal voting tends to boost Republican electoral fortunes by disenfranchising people of color.
In 2008, the increase in Black turnout that helped put Barack Obama in office—and raised hopes among Democrats for a “demographic revolution” that would aid their cause for years to come—gave voter suppression new urgency. Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder granted states more power to keep people from the polls. The decision effectively eliminated the system of preemptive federal oversight that had been in place since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. In the absence of new legislation at the national level, state laws restricting the right or ability to vote could now be blocked only if courts found them to be discriminatory after their passage. In other words, governments could be elected under legal regimes that might ultimately prove to be unconstitutional; once in office, they would be free to further restrict voting.
Meanwhile, the Court made clear in other cases that it was inclined to take states at their word if they said restrictive voting laws were simply intended to combat fraud and had no racist intent—even if the predictable consequence of those laws was to create greater burdens for voters of color. Taking states at their word provided a lot of cover. The result was a surge of democracy-limiting measures in Republican-led states: restrictive voter-ID laws, tighter guidelines for registration, and wholesale purges of voters from the electoral rolls, conducted in such a way that people of color have been disproportionately affected. According to the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, 33 restrictive laws were passed in 19 states in the first nine months of 2021. The laws, which will make casting a ballot more difficult in 2022, reveal how central voter suppression has become as a mobilizing issue for the GOP.
It must be underscored: There is no evidence that illegal voting of any kind occurs at a level capable of influencing elections. Nor is there evidence that the scattered violations that do take place have been increasing in frequency or severity. Common kinds of election violations include local candidates fudging signatures to get on the ballot, partisans politicking too close to polling places, and people accidentally voting at the polls after forgetting that they had already mailed in a ballot—a glitch easily corrected by administrative procedures that already exist.
Most of the new laws, however, are aimed at violations that are exceedingly rare: impersonation of one person by another, or noncitizens attempting to vote. Such violations are already illegal, yet their specter is raised to make the case for, among other measures, voter-ID laws. Voting-rights advocates and federal courts have agreed that such laws tend to target and disenfranchise people of color, older folks, and students—groups less likely to have identification documents of the kind that many of the new laws require.
In 2012, before Shelby County allowed Texas to implement a strict new voter-ID law without federal oversight, Greg Abbott, then the Texas attorney general, railed against a decision by the Department of Justice to block the law from going into effect. “I know for a fact that voter fraud is real, that it must be stopped,” he said. When he made that statement, the official rate of alleged election violations reported to his office over the previous decade—allegations, not convictions—was seven for every 1 million votes cast in the state. Data from Abbott’s own office showed that, over the same period, in all Texas elections at every level, 26 people had been convicted of some form of election violation. Only two of those cases involved someone impersonating another voter, which is what the voter-ID law was ostensibly supposed to address. Rather than attempting to prove the impossible—that illegal voting was truly a problem—Abbott and other GOP officials across the country chose to make public examples of the very few cases of alleged voter fraud they could find.
Abbott was elected governor in 2014. His successor as attorney general, Ken Paxton, eagerly took up the cause. One of Paxton’s allies was District Attorney Sharen Wilson. In 2015, she began investigating Rosa Maria Ortega, a 35-year-old mother of four who lived in the Dallas suburbs. Ortega had been born in Mexico and came to the U.S. as a baby. She held permanent-resident status. As a noncitizen, she was not eligible to vote, but she had registered (as a Republican) and had cast ballots in several elections in Dallas County, including for Paxton as attorney general, before she moved to Tarrant County. Her new voter-registration application was rejected because she had correctly indicated her citizenship status. Ortega then sent in another application, this time identifying herself as a citizen. She had done the same thing in Dallas County, and voted without issue; she has said that when Tarrant County accepted her registration, she assumed she was allowed to vote again.
Ortega was indicted and declined a plea deal, which, her lawyers warned, would likely result in deportation. In court, the defense cited Ortega’s professed misunderstanding of election law as it applied to permanent residents, and her lack of a motive for purposefully breaking the law. The prosecution presented her actions as part of a disturbing statewide pattern. As Wilson said after Ortega’s indictment, “People insist this kind of thing doesn’t happen, but it’s happening right here at home.”
Wilson’s office has denied in the past that its work has been politically motivated or employed as a “scare tactic.” In a statement, a spokesperson for the district attorney wrote that Wilson “didn’t go out looking for the voter fraud cases against Crystal Mason and Rosa Maria Ortega.” The spokesperson also noted that Ortega had been offered probation, but had turned it down. In February 2017, she was convicted of illegal voting and sentenced to eight years in prison. When the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reviewed hundreds of voting-related cases in Texas from 2005 to 2018, it found that Ortega’s sentence was the longest one handed down. A prosecutor praised the jury, saying it had secured the “floodgates” that kept illegal voting under control. Ortega’s case fit a familiar narrative: that immigrant voters are subverting democracy. She served nine months in prison before being paroled, then spent nearly two months in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She is currently on parole and living in Dallas, according to Wilson’s office.
One week after Ortega’s conviction, Crystal Mason was arrested, and found her life newly upended. Mason’s family had often been in conflict with other residents in their predominantly white community—for a variety of reasons, including, Mason and her lawyers believe, outright racism. When her children were younger, she told me, a neighbor had once brandished a shotgun as her son passed by; her then-husband reported the incident, and she said that local authorities added a bus stop closer to her home so that her children could keep away from the neighbor’s house. Now she faced charges brought by the local district attorney. There was no way to keep a low profile. She lost her job.
The district attorney offered a deal: 10 years’ probation. But the deal required an admission of guilt, which Mason could not accept. It also would have put her back in prison: The mere fact of a conviction would mean that she had violated the terms of her supervised release. The only way for Mason to remain free was to prove her innocence. She chose a trial before a judge.
As prosecutors presented it, Mason was a felon who had ignored notifications sent by election officials to her home, warning that she was no longer a registered voter. Despite those warnings, she had nevertheless signed an affidavit when accepting her provisional ballot, affirming that she was indeed a registered voter. Her crime was not accidental, prosecutors argued, but a purposeful subversion of democracy.
Mason’s legal team countered that the notices about illegal voting had been sent to her home while she was in prison, and therefore she had never received them. They argued, too, that, unlike people returning from state prisons on parole or probation, who typically receive official instruction about voting eligibility, as a federal inmate, she had been given no such instruction when starting her supervised release. (The person who oversaw the officer responsible for Mason’s supervision confirmed this in court testimony: “That’s just not something we do.”) As Mason recalled when I spoke with her, the affidavit was just another thing to sign, and she hadn’t really read it closely. She was focused on providing the personal information that the same sheet of paper was requesting. She said to me, “Do you have a mortgage? Have you read all your mortgage papers and all the closing [documents]?” What bothers her most is that there was no serious attempt to establish any sort of criminal motive. “They said I tried to circumvent the system,” Mason said. “And for what? For a sticker?” Alison Grinter Allen, her attorney, echoed the point: “Why would you risk two to 20 years in the penitentiary in order to shout your opinion into the wind, basically?”
The arguments on Mason’s behalf proved unavailing. She was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. The prosecution had argued for “a stern prison sentence” in order to “send a message.” Mason subsequently appealed to a three-judge panel, which upheld her conviction. Her case is now under review by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
The ACLU of Texas has been assisting with Mason’s defense, and its data suggest a racial double standard in cases like hers. A 2021 study by the group found that nearly three-quarters of prosecutions by the state’s Election Integrity Unit appear to have been brought against people of color. Almost half of the total cases appear to have been brought against Black and Latina women, two of the core groups of Democratic voters in the state.
Of course, facts and circumstances differ from case to case, and rules and procedures differ from one legal setting to another. But it is worth recalling the treatment accorded to some white officials who have had encounters with election law. In 2018, Russ Casey, a Republican judge in Tarrant County, pleaded guilty to falsifying signatures in order to get his name on the ballot. Casey held a position of public trust, his actions were egregious, and he admitted that the accusations were true. In a plea deal, he received five years’ probation, with no prison time. In 2016, Sharen Wilson herself was accused of an election-related violation: using the personal information of her subordinates in the D.A.’s office to invite them to a fundraiser and solicit donations from them for her reelection campaign. Her case was dismissed by the district attorney in a nearby county for “insufficient evidence of criminal intent.” Wilson has acknowledged that including her employees on the invitation list for the fundraiser was a mistake.
In Mason’s case, the ACLU of Texas argues that the illegal-voting charge is inappropriate on its face because Mason did not, strictly speaking, ever vote. Her provisional ballot was not counted. According to Tommy Buser-Clancy, an ACLU staff attorney, Mason’s prosecution could theoretically open the door to felony charges against any potential voter whose provisional ballot is rejected: “If you start to criminalize people who make mistakes, [who think] they’re eligible and then find out they’re not, then that guts the provisional-balloting system—turns it into a trap.” The D.A.’s office has publicly dismissed the possibility that Mason’s prosecution poses any danger of precedent to people who make simple mistakes or act unknowingly; the decision by the three-judge panel in the Mason case articulated a different view. It declared that, under Texas law, prosecutors did not need to establish that Mason knew she was ineligible.
Because of her conviction, Mason’s supervised release was revoked, and in September 2018 she was returned to prison. One of Mason’s lawyers launched a crowdfunding effort to help provide for her immediate and extended family; health insurance was a particular concern. (She has been able to raise $81,000.) “It was devastating,” Mason told me. “I was like, ‘Are you serious? I’m a mother.’ ” She recalled her original experience of emerging from prison into the supervised-release program. “I was embarrassed. I was. Because when I got out of prison, I wanted my kids to know that, yeah, I hit that bump in the road. But you can get your life back on track. And that’s what I did.” She was working. She was going to school. And then she was back in prison. Mason was released in May 2019 and was able to return home in June.
As we spoke, the practiced cheerfulness in her voice drained away. “This isn’t supposed to be happening to me. This is not right.”
Only days after his inauguration in 2017, Trump declared that millions of fraudulent votes had been cast, implying that many had been cast by noncitizens or by citizens of color mobilized by Democrats to vote more than once. His evidence for widespread fraud was nonexistent, and his anecdotal accounts, and those of others, collapsed under scrutiny. Gregg Phillips, a Texas businessman and self-proclaimed voter-fraud sleuth, tweeted that he and the Tea Party–associated group True the Vote had identified 3 million noncitizen voters. The source of this information was an unnamed private database, and Trump declared that he would order a full investigation. I spoke with Phillips at the time, and in that conversation he provided no supporting evidence and backed away from any specific number of illegal voters. He told me, “The work that we’re doing could create a foundation for looking at elections moving forward.” I interpreted his statement to be a kind of face-saving fallback. Now I understand it to have been prophetic.
Crystal Mason’s lawyers believe that Trump’s claim of mass voter fraud created an environment in which actions against Mason could be especially punitive. Clark Birdsall, a lawyer for Rosa Maria Ortega, made the same argument, describing Trump’s comments about millions of fraudulent voters as “the 800-pound gorilla sitting in the jury box.”
Trump established a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, an ostensibly bipartisan body designed to uncover “those laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of voting processes used in Federal elections.” It fell apart in 2018 after it tried to push states to turn over massive amounts of voter data—including Social Security numbers, party affiliations, and voting histories. Even many Republican politicians believed that the voter data might be used for nefarious purposes. Resistance to handing over the data helped kill the commission.
It had found no evidence of any widespread election violations. But in Republican-led states, investigations proliferated. Kris Kobach, then the Kansas secretary of state and a vice chair of the presidential commission, had provided a blueprint. Even before Trump’s election, he had claimed that there were thousands of fraudulent or dead voters on the rolls in Kansas. He would later claim to have identified more than 100 noncitizen voters in his state. In 2015, leveraging the hysteria he had begun to create, Kobach persuaded the state legislature to give him the power to directly prosecute election-violations cases. (In every other state, only an attorney general or a local district attorney has such authority.) Yet over a period of four years, Kobach brought forward just 15 illegal-voting cases, most of which involved people who had accidentally voted in two places. He secured a single conviction involving a noncitizen voter.
In Texas, besides Ortega’s case, there has been only one other successful prosecution by the state attorney general for voting as a noncitizen since 2005. Five people have been successfully prosecuted for impersonating other voters. Fourteen people—including Crystal Mason—have been successfully prosecuted for voting as felons with unresolved sentences. Only 11 people have been sent to prison by the state for voting violations of any kind. In 2020, Paxton’s office almost doubled the working hours spent on election-violations cases and resolved only 16 of them. All stemmed from voters giving false addresses. (Paxton’s office did not respond to multiple queries related to this article.)
Since 2005, nearly 90 million votes have been cast in Texas. Even if the true number of fraudulent voters is double what the state has prosecuted, the prevalence of election violations—the majority of which involve bad addresses—is about three ten-thousandths of a percent. As for voter impersonation, it is more common for a person to be struck by lightning twice than it is for voter impersonation to happen in Texas.
Those involved in investigating allegations of voter fraud argue that the detection of a small number of violations just means we aren’t as good at detecting the larger number that must be out there somewhere—thus the need for new laws. But laws that make the process of registering and casting a ballot even more convoluted also increase the likelihood that people will make mistakes—the kinds of mistakes that can land them in jail.
It’s a vicious cycle—which is exactly the point. First gin up fear about fraud, then use that fear to aggressively prosecute voting infractions, then use those prosecutions to create stricter laws, then use the stricter laws to induce more examples of fraud, then use those examples to gin up even more fear. The potential impact on turnout is bad enough. But the cumulative effect of restrictive laws corrodes the democratic process itself. In Texas, the narrative fueled in part by Mason’s conviction has given Republicans the momentum to pass laws that restrict voting by mail, permit forms of interference by partisan poll watchers at election sites, and create new classes of felonies for engaging in common forms of voter assistance, such as explaining written instructions to people who don’t speak English. (This last measure is currently facing a lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice.)
Crystal Mason is not the same person she was in 2017, when she was indicted. At the time, she was fearful; her impulse was to lie low. She eventually came to realize that her unwanted notoriety could be leveraged, not only for her own cause but for the cause of voting rights nationwide. When I spoke with her at her home, she had just gotten back from a voting-rights rally in Washington, D.C. She wore a shirt that read Crystal Mason: The Fight Against Voter Suppression.
If she serves her five-year sentence, her infant grandson, who was sitting on her lap, will be reading and at school by the time she gets out. She is thinking about how to prepare family members for what may lie ahead. Her adult children have been deputized to run the house in her absence.
Demagogues and insurrections are not the only—or even the primary—threats to our democracy. The slow, relentless erosion of individual civic agency is at least as dangerous, and perhaps more so. Most of the people accused of “voter fraud” have made mistakes with no provable malicious intent as they navigate voting systems that grow ever more byzantine and frustrating. Their lives may be derailed by reputational damage, by time and money spent in court, by prohibitive fines, and by jail or prison. The people who bear this burden may be the cornerstones of their social worlds. Their fates stand as warnings to others in already fragile communities. In a country where the influence of Black and Latino voters is purposefully diluted by gerrymandering, and where poorer, overworked folks must contend with long lines and short hours at sparse polling locations, the fear of being caught up in a punitive administrative labyrinth adds another variable to the calculus of deciding whether to vote at all.
That is why there is something in this moment reminiscent of the insidious bureaucratic character of Jim Crow. As all-encompassing as we know it to have been, Jim Crow was not imposed by a single stroke. It was built community by community, year by year, ruined life by ruined life, law by law, and lie by lie.
In a last-ditch attempt to rescue Democrats from their own worst instincts, Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent from Vermont) is working to try to limit the party’s politically toxic initiative to enrich wealthy property owners in liberal locales. If his maneuver fails, Republicans will have a potent political weapon heading into the 2022 midterms, as evidenced by a new video the GOP just released on Monday.
At issue is corporate Democrats’ proposal to raise the amount of state and local taxes (SALT) that can be deducted from households’ federal taxes. The $275 billion proposal is now the second largest part of the Build Back Better legislation, even though it would only benefit the 13 percent of Americans who itemize their tax returns.
For months, our reporting has warned that a repeal of the $10,000 cap on such deductions would be a massive tax cut for the superrich, including for key Democratic lawmakers who are championing the measure. The GOP has been hammering Democrats over the proposal, saying it proves Democrats are trying to help the wealthy. Their new video previews how Republicans will depict themselves as populist critics of regressive tax cuts ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, if Democrats pass their current SALT initiative.
But that’s where Sanders — a longtime critic of raising the SALT deduction cap — comes in.
After House Democrats last week passed President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill with provisions raising the SALT caps to $80,000, the Vermont senator joined with New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez to propose a more limited version. Though their proposal is not finalized, it is intended to phase out the new tax breaks for those making more than $400,000 a year. The proposal broadly mimics a plan released by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
A new study from the Tax Policy Center (TPC) shows how the plan stacks up.
As the TPC graph illustrates, one of these proposals is clearly better from a policy and messaging standpoint — while all of them would deliver most of their benefits to the wealthiest quintile of the country, the Sanders-Menendez compromise (represented by the yellow bars) would specifically reduce the amount of tax breaks given to the richest of the rich.
“The big difference would be at the very top of the income distribution,” wrote TPC’s Howard Gleckman. “Nearly one-third of the benefit of the $80,000 cap would go to the top 1 percent of households (those making nearly $870,000 or more). But the top 1 percent would get only 0.1% of the benefit if the $10,000 SALT cap is gradually restored starting at $400,000.”
Corporate Democrats Keep Lying
Democratic proponents of simply raising or repealing the cap have continued to deliberately promote fact-free misinformation about their proposal’s effects, pretending the new deductions would mostly help firefighters, teachers, and other middle-class households. Tax data prove that assertion is a flagrant Donald Trump–esque lie — the vast majority of the benefits of proposed new SALT deductions would flow to the very rich.
In addition to blatant lying, Democrats promoting a higher SALT deduction cap have refused to embrace the ITEP plan. That refusal suggests that corporate Democrats’ real goal in raising the SALT cap isn’t to protect the middle class, but is instead to enrich the wealthy blue-state donor class — a charge that Republicans will no doubt intensify if nothing changes.
For his part, Sanders has called the House-passed proposal “bad policy” and “bad politics” — and his initiative seems designed to make the politics at least a bit better, although his plan is hardly perfect.
“If you actually cared about (the middle class), you could set the cutoff at say, $150,000,” Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “That would still mean the biggest benefit would go to people making $150,000, but it would address that actual middle class population. If you’re setting the [cutoff] at $400,000 or $500,000, you’re not doing this for the middle class.”
The higher caps would be designed to simultaneously limit the benefits to the rich, but also keep enough wealthy-district Democratic lawmakers from voting to kill the entire Build Back Better legislation. And if the Senate adopts the Sanders-Menendez proposal, it would at least deprive Republicans of their new talking points that depict Democrats as more focused on enriching their billionaires than on helping the country.
“Democrats Now Are Easier On Millionaires”
The recent Republican criticism of Democrats’ SALT proposals already has salience amid polls showing most Americans see Democrats as out of touch with the country. At least some of Sanders’s Democratic colleagues seem to see the political problem with passing the $80,000 SALT cap increase, which would give an average tax cut of $16,000 to two-thirds of Americans who make more than $1 million a year.
“Republicans are making the argument vociferously and repeatedly that they’re going to say that Democrats now are easier on millionaires than they were in 2017,” Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat from Oregon) told NBC News.
“It would be preposterous if this legislation ends up cutting taxes for the wealthiest people in America,” Democratic senator Michael Bennet of Colorado told Business Insider.
If Senate Democrats adopt the Sanders-Menendez provision as part of that chamber’s version of the Build Back Better legislation, it would force corporate Democrats into the position of either accepting the measure and letting Biden’s bill pass, or holding up the legislation and fighting exclusively for tax breaks for households that make more than $400,000.
In that scenario, Republican lawmakers and the wealthy would be hoping corporate Democrats choose the latter course. If they do, the GOP would get its political bailout — and wealthy donors would get their financial one, too.
A painted mural of Ahmaud Arbery is displayed on May 17, 2020, in Brunswick, Ga., where the 25-year-old man was shot and killed in February. Arbery was shot and killed by two men who told police they thought he was a burglar. (photo: Sarah Blake Morgan/AP)
Three men were convicted of murder Wednesday in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision when the white strangers chased him, trapped him on a quiet street and blasted him with a shotgun.
The February 2020 slaying drew limited attention at first. But when video of the shooting leaked online, Arbery’s death quickly became another example in the nation’s reckoning of racial injustice in the way Black people are treated in their everyday lives.
Now the men all face a mandatory sentence of life in prison. The judge will decide whether their sentences are served with or without the possibility of parole.
As the first of 23 guilty verdicts were read, Arbery’s father had to leave the courtroom after leaping up and shouting. At the reading of the last criminal count, Arbery’s mother dropped her head and quietly pumped her fists.
“He didn’t do nothing but run and dream,” Marcus Arbery Sr. said of his son. Outside the courthouse, dozens of Black supporters hugged and cried.
The jury deliberated for about 10 hours before convicting Greg McMichael, son Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan.
The McMichaels grabbed guns and jumped in a pickup truck to pursue the 25-year-old Arbery after seeing him running outside the Georgia port city of Brunswick. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own pickup and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael fatally shooting Arbery.
The father and son told police they suspected Arbery was a fleeing burglar. But the prosecution argued that the men provoked the fatal confrontation and that there was no evidence Arbery committed any crimes in the neighborhood.
“We commend the courage and bravery of this jury to say that what happened on Feb. 23, 2020, to Ahmaud Arbery — the hunting and killing of Ahmaud Arbery — it was not only morally wrong but legally wrong, and we are thankful for that,” said Latonia Hines, Cobb County executive assistant district attorney.
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski added: “The jury system works in this country. And when you present the truth to people and they see it, they will do the right thing.”
Travis McMichael, 35, stood for the verdict, his lawyer’s arm around his shoulder. At one point, he lowered his head to his chest. After the verdicts were read, as he stood to leave, he mouthed “love you” to his mother in the courtroom gallery.
Greg McMichael, 65, hung his head when the judge read his first guilty verdict. Bryan, 52, bit his lip.
Speaking outside the courthouse, Ben Crump, attorney for Arbery’s father, repeatedly said that “the spirit of Ahmaud defeated the lynch mob.”
“It’s been a long fight. It’s been a hard fight. But God is good,” she said, adding that her son would now rest in peace.
Travis McMichaels’ attorneys said both he and his father feel that they did the right thing, and that they believed the video would help their case. But they also said the McMichaels regret that Arbery got killed.
“I can tell you honestly, these men are sorry for what happened to Ahmaud Arbery,” attorney Jason Sheffield said. “They are sorry he’s dead. They are sorry for the tragedy that happened because of the choices they made to go out there and try to stop him.”
They planned to appeal.
Bryan’s attorney, Kevin Gough, said his team was “disappointed with the verdict, but we respect it.” He planned to file new legal motions after Thanksgiving.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley did not immediately schedule a sentencing date, saying that he wanted to give both sides time to prepare.
In a statement, President Joe Biden said Arbery’s killing was a “devastating reminder” of how much more work the country has to do in the fight for racial justice.
“While the guilty verdicts reflect our justice system doing its job, that alone is not enough. Instead, we must recommit ourselves to building a future of unity and shared strength, where no one fears violence because of the color of their skin,” Biden said.
Though prosecutors did not argue that racism motivated the killing, federal authorities have charged them with hate crimes, alleging that they chased and killed Arbery because he was Black. That case is scheduled to go to trial in February.
The disproportionately white jury received the case around midday Tuesday.
Soon after returning to court Wednesday morning, the jury sent a note to the judge asking to view two versions of the shooting video — the original and one that investigators enhanced to reduce shadows — three times apiece.
Jurors returned to the courtroom to see the videos and listen again the 911 call one of the defendants made from the bed of a pickup truck about 30 seconds before the shooting.
On the 911 call the jury reviewed, Greg McMichael tells an operator: “I’m out here in Satilla Shores. There’s a Black male running down the street.”
He then starts shouting, apparently as Arbery is running toward the McMichael’s idling truck with Bryan’s truck coming up behind him: “Stop right there! Damn it, stop! Travis!” Gunshots can be heard a few second later.
The graphic video emerged two months later, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case, quickly arresting the three men.
Defense attorneys contend the McMichaels were attempting a legal citizen’s arrest when they set off after Arbery, seeking to detain and question him after he was seen running from a nearby home under construction.
Travis McMichael testified that he shot Arbery in self-defense. He said Arbery turned and attacked with his fists while running past the truck where McMichael stood with his shotgun.
The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, speaks at the 6 January rally in support of Donald Trump in Washington. 'We will not quit fighting,' he said. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Watchdogs and ex-prosecutors have strongly criticised the Republican Attorneys General Association’s $150,000 donation
A key group of Republican attorneys general that donated $150,000 to co-sponsor the 6 January rally where Donald Trump pushed his false claims of election fraud before the Capitol attack could draw scrutiny from a House committee investigating the events on or in the lead-up to the riot.
The group – a part of the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga) called the Rule of Law Defense Fund – has attracted strong criticism from watchdogs and ex-prosecutors even as Raga looks forward to next year’s midterm elections and many of its members are fighting on numerous fronts against Joe Biden’s agenda.
The controversy around Raga appears to be yet another way that Trump and his supporters have increased their grip on more mainstream elements of the Republican party, and involved them in efforts to further their agenda.
The RLDF, the policy arm of Raga, ponied up $150,000 for the 6 January rally, and arranged robocalls the day before informing people that “we will march to the Capitol and tell Congress to stop the steal,” a message that was probably reinforced by Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, who told Trump’s rally: “We will not quit fighting.”
Watchdog criticism of the Raga policy arm that backed the rally stresses that the group’s funding and robocalls occurred after dozens of court rulings rejected Trump’s claims of fraud. They say it undermines respect for the nation’s laws, as well as departing from the group’s main focus of helping get Republican attorneys general elected.
Further, the rally funding and robocalls by the RLDF sparked resignations of high-level officials, including the Raga chairman, the Georgia attorney general, who broached concern about the group’s direction when he stepped down.
The controversies about Raga’s rally activities come as the group has received a hefty $5.5m from the dark money Concord Fund since the start of 2020, which can help Republican attorneys general in the 2022 elections, and as many Republican attorneys general including Paxton have filed lawsuits to thwart Biden’s energy, immigration and vaccine policies.
The $150,000 check that the RLDF donated to the rally came from the Publix supermarket heir Julie Jenkins Fancelli, funds that ProPublica reported were arranged by the Republican fundraiser Caroline Wren, a “VIP adviser” to the rally who has been subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack.
Asked about scrutiny of Raga and its big donation for the rally, a House select committee spokesperson told the Guardian that it “is seeking information about a number of events that took place in the lead-up to the 6 January attack, including details about who planned, coordinated, paid, or received funds related to those events”.
Some watchdog groups deplore Raga’s role in the rally. “It was clear before 6 January that the planned rally was based on lies, partisanship, and disrespect for the rule of law,” Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight said in a statement.
“That’s what Raga and its corporate sponsors chose to fund. The fact that the rally turned into a violent assault on democracy itself makes Raga’s involvement worse … Raga and its funders should be held accountable.”
Likewise, some ex-prosecutors express strong concerns about the message that the robocalls by Raga’s political arm conveyed.
“Attorneys general are supposed to support adherence to the law,” said Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the fraud section at the DoJ. “By the time of the rally every court in the country had affirmed the lawfulness of the election results and had specifically rejected charges of fraud. At that stage, it seems Raga, by urging protesters to ‘stop the steal’, was simply promoting an unlawful attack on our democracy – the antithesis of their mission.”
Raga’s then executive director, who resigned soon after the Capitol attack, denounced the violence by the mob, which resulted in several deaths and ore than 140 injured police officers, and in a sweeping denial stated that neither Raga nor the RLDF had any “involvement in the planning, sponsoring or the organization of the protest”.
But campaign finance watchdogs don’t buy Raga’s denial.
“Raga’s policy arm and other groups helped organize a rally that preceded a riot and an attack on democracy,” said Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of Open Secrets.
The fallout at Raga over its 6 January role increased in April when Chris Carr, the Georgia AG who chaired the overall group, announced suddenly he was stepping down as chair, and noted a “significant difference of opinion” about Raga’s direction in a resignation letter.
Later in April, Raga announced that Peter Bisbee, who had overseen the RLDF when the robocalls occurred, was being promoted to become Raga’s executive director.
Since Biden took office many Raga members, including Paxton and others from Missouri and Louisiana, have filed a wave of lawsuits to block several Biden priorities.
The surge of lawsuits is seen as potentially helpful in the runup to 2022 campaigns when 30 Republican and Democratic attorneys general will be running for re-election after serving four-year terms. In the 2020 elections, Raga for the first time targeted incumbent Democratic attorneys general with ads, and may try to oust Democratic attorneys general who were key Biden allies last year in states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan where Trump and his allies pushed false claims of fraud.
While Raga this year witnessed some corporate backers hold back checks after 6 January, its fundraising was bolstered when it pulled in $2.5m, by far its largest contribution and more than a third of the total raised for the first half of 2021, from the dark money Concord Fund, which the Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo helped create.
Raga also received $3m in 2020 from the Concord Fund.
Raga roped in low-six-figure checks in 2021 from oil and gas giants like Koch Industries and the Anschutz Corp and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity.
Over the years, Raga has garnered financial support from industries, including fossil fuels and pharmaceuticals, which GOP AGs have backed in major litigation.
Trump himself is slated to host a fundraiser next month at his Mar-a-Lago club for Paxton, which appears to underscore his gratitude and the tough re-election campaign the former Raga chairman is facing as three Republican challengers to him have emerged. Those opponents are focusing on Paxton’s legal problems: he was indicted on securities fraud six years ago and the FBI reportedly has been investigating allegations of bribery and other misconduct.
Last fall, some of Paxton’s former deputies accused him of improperly helping an Austin real estate developer and donor, prompting more FBI scrutiny.
Paxton, who has not been charged, has broadly denied any wrongdoing. Paxton’s office this August released an unsigned 374-page report rebutting the charges of former aides and claiming he was exonerated, but attorneys for the ex-employees responded the report was “full of half truths, outright lies and glaring omissions”.
“Just left Mar-a-Lago a little while ago and he should never have been put through that. That was prosecutorial misconduct,” the former president said
Donald Trump wasted no time inviting Kyle Rittenhouse to his resort at Mar-a-Lago. The former president appeared in a Fox News interview Tuesday night in which he revealed that the teen and his mother met with him, mere days after he was acquitted of homicide and other charges for shooting three people, killing two, at a racial justice protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“I got to know him a little bit,” Trump said. “He called, he wanted to know if he could come over and say hello. He was a fan. He came over with his mother. That was prosecutorial misconduct. He should not have had to suffer through a trial like that. He was going to be dead. … He’s a really good, young guy. He’s 18 years old. Just left Mar-a-Lago a little while ago.”
Donald Trump Jr. posted an image of the meeting on Twitter. “GOATs,” he wrote.
Trump also cheered when the teen — who has been photographed flashing an “OK” white power sign with the Proud Boys — was acquitted. “If that’s not self defense, nothing is!” he wrote in a statement.
Rittenhouse appeared in a Tuesday night interview as well, on NewsNation Now with Ashleigh Banfield. He said that when he flashed a white power sign, he didn’t know what the sign meant. He also blamed his attorneys for introducing him to the Proud Boys.
“I didn’t know that the ‘OK’ hand sign was a symbol for white supremacy, just as I didn’t know that those people in the bar were Proud Boys,” he said. “They were set up by my former attorney who was fired for putting me in situations like that with people I don’t agree with.”
Coastal GasLink is likely trying to weaken Indigenous claims to the land, experts say.
Wet’suwet’en land defenders fighting a pipeline in their territory say the oil and gas company behind the pipeline is asking two people who’ve been arrested to “prove” they’re Indigenous.
Coastal GasLink (CGL), a subsidiary of TC Energy, is asking Sleydo’, or Molly Wickham, to “provide documentation to ‘prove’ she is Wet’suwet’en, and is seeking conditions that would bar her from returning to her home,” says a statement released by Wet’suwet’en Gidimt’en camp.
The statement says the company is also challenging the status of Hereditary Chief Woos’ daughter, Jocelyn Alec, as a Wet’suwet’en person.
TC Energy told VICE World News in an email that “under no circumstances” would CGL ask people to prove they’re Indigenous. But the company then confirmed its lawyers asked “relevant contemnors,” a person found guilty of contempt, to confirm to the courts that they are Wet’suwet’en.
“This was to ensure access to allow the relevant contemnors to practice their Indigenous rights while under the court’s conditions,” the company said. (VICE World News asked TC Energy what this means and will update the story if we hear back.)
Sleydo’ and Alec are two of about 30 people arrested last week after a two-day RCMP raid on Wet’suwet’en territory. Earlier this month, pipeline resistance leaders with the Wet’suwet’en Gidimt’en Clan evoked an eviction order against CGL workers, giving them eight hours to “peacefully” leave the territory. After the deadline passed, they seized a Coastal GasLink excavator and dug up a road—the only route that gave access to several work sites and camps.
Four days later, police moved in and enforced a B.C. Supreme Court injunction order, which protects the pipeline’s development, and made the arrests. Multiple people, including Sleydo’ and Alec, are appearing in court Tuesday, where they’ll face conditions of their release.
“Coastal GasLink’s proposed conditions of release are punitive, unreasonable, and, in targeting Sleydo’ and Jocelyn, completely racist and sexist,” said Jennifer Wickham, a Wet’suwet’en spokesperson and Molly Wickham’s sister.
“Allowing a private corporation to determine two Indigenous women’s identities and allowing this corporation to deny our inherent rights to be Wet’suwet’en on our territory is a very dangerous precedent,” she said.
Staff lawyer Eugene Kung with West Coast Environmental Law told VICE World News that he doesn’t know CGL’s exact motivations, but he said, “it would be my guess they are trying to weaken a claim to being on the land, and any restrictions resulting from the (legal) proceedings, including conditions, could be challenged on that basis.”
“My guess is that they are nervous and trying to throw anything at the wall and hope it sticks, which to me shows a little bit of desperation,” Kung said.
University of Alberta professor Kim TallBear told VICE World News it’s not Coastal GasLink’s place to ask whether a person is Indigenous, unless it's for hiring purposes.
“Who is CGL to ask? If they were offering a job to somebody who was Indigenous and there was a preference for that, but this is not their place to ask,” TallBear said. “I don't even know why anyone is entertaining this demand or request… Settlers will stick their noses into this stuff wherever they can, but it’s not their business.”
According to Jennifer Wickham, Sleydo’ and Alec are facing charges of civil contempt for breaking the injunction, while CGL is seeking conditions of release, including a vast exclusion zone that would deny arrestees access to a large portion of their Wet’suwet’en territory.
TC Energy said it respects individual rights to “lawfully, safely, and peacefully express their point of view.” The company said it relies on authorities to safeguard individual rights in the area when others “act outside the law.”
“When the safety of our workforce is compromised and our ability to build our fully authorized and permitted project is stopped by individuals acting outside the law, we must rely on the authorities to ensure that the rights of all individuals in the area are respected and protected,” the statement says.
But Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs never ceded or surrendered their territory to settlers, and Wet’suwet’en people maintain that colonial courts have no jurisdiction over their territory.
Many, including Gidimt’en Clan, also say Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have a constitutional right to reject energy projects on their territory anyway. The Supreme Court of Canada’s 1997 Delgamuukw decision affirmed Wet’suwet’en land title rights, but also said they are “not absolute.”
For years, Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, land defenders, and allies have been on the front lines, blocking the $6.6 billion natural gas pipeline. Wet'suwet'en elected officials have approved the pipeline project, but hereditary chiefs, viewed by many as the rightful leaders, haven’t.
Last week’s RCMP raids mark the third year in a row of militarized police enforcement—by canine units and assault rifles—targeting resistance camps on site.
The Kremlin’s propaganda campaign at home is getting people ready for a ‘reluctant’ move into Ukraine.
Domestic propagandists and state TV pundits are promoting the idea of an inevitable confrontation with the West as Russia’s military posture grows increasingly hostile, causing major concern for its nearest neighbors and NATO. Ukraine remains the crown jewel for the Kremlin and the Russian public is being primed for the intended absorption of more territories under the umbrella of the Russian Federation, while NATO is being accused of fomenting the potential escalation.
“World War III is knocking at our door,” warned one top propagandist.
Whether or not the Kremlin is planning to speed up its creeping assault against Ukraine’s Donbas region in the near future is a mystery even to the most knowledgeable experts with close access to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Nonetheless, they eagerly fulfill the Russian leader’s express intent to keep NATO—and the West in general—in a state of hypervigilance.
Ukraine’s non-affiliation with NATO remains at the top of the Kremlin’s long wish list, with Putin demanding “serious long-term guarantees that ensure Russia’s security” in the region. The real issue is not that NATO presents an acute threat to the Kremlin, but rather that its involvement stands in the way of Russia swallowing additional Ukrainian territories. Putin’s objectives with respect to subverting Ukraine remain the same, with two different paths to getting there: by securing Ukraine’s submission and undermining its sovereignty through unwarranted concessions from the West, or by escalating Russia’s military aggression.
State TV propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov—notorious for boasting that “Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash”—explained that Moscow’s moves are explicitly designed to affect the U.S. and NATO. On his Sunday show, Vesti Nedeli, Kiselyov said that Russia’s tests of its Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missile and its recent anti-satellite test were “arguments” to reinforce Russia’s “red lines” with respect to Ukraine.
Kiselyov boasted: “By stepping over the “red line,” NATO risks losing all 32 GPS satellites at once, which will blind all their missiles, planes and ships, not to mention the ground forces. Americans are paying attention to this—they can’t afford not to.”
State TV experts equivocate between two conflicting messages: on one hand, claiming that Russia is not planning to invade Ukraine, but then immediately pointing out that “the Ukrainian problem” could be solved “very quickly,” due to Russia’s superior military might. They argue that the U.S.-led NATO needs to be taught a lesson and brag that “underpaid and underfed American soldiers” are no match for the Russians. Blustery proclamations are promptly followed up by the claim that none of the participants are interested in a hot war.
Igor Korotchenko, a member of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Public Council and editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, said the military movements that concerned Western and Ukrainian officials served as an intentional signal, designed to elicit a reaction. In a message addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the state TV show 60 Minutes this Monday, Korotchenko said about Russia’s military buildup: “If your satellites are seeing this, that means it is being shown to you. Any American military analyst at the Pentagon can tell you that. You don’t know—and won’t know—Russia’s real plans and goals. Your HUMINT [intelligence gathered by means of interpersonal contact] is either blocked, neutralized, or is feeding you disinformation, in course of the operations conducted by Russian intelligence services. You need to relax and aim towards constructive interaction.”
Calling out the U.S. for being concerned with Russia’s activities, the rabidly anti-American host of 60 Minutes, Olga Skabeeva, insisted: “Mind your own business.” However, Russian state media does not abide by the same principles, with obsessive interest in American elections and internal affairs, dwelling on everything from QAnon and turkey prices to the sentencing of Jacob Chansley and the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. America is at the forefront of the Kremlin’s attention, so resorting to provocation in order to be acknowledged as an equal and to extract concessions would almost make sense.
During a speech to Russian diplomats last week, Putin complained: " We understand that our partners are very peculiar and, to put it mildly, do not take all our warnings and talks on red lines seriously." He added: “Our recent warnings have had a certain effect, tensions have risen... It is important for them to remain in this state for as long as possible.”
Russian state TV pundits and propagandists took Putin’s message to heart and snapped into action. Appearing on 60 Minutes the day after Putin’s speech, Igor Korotchenko warned: “Let’s be straightforward about it: World War III is knocking at our door. It will come from the direction of Poland and Ukraine.” Korotchenko argued that Russia can fight back against alleged Western provocations by demonstrating its military might: “We need to grab the West by the udders, they should feel our hand and we should feel their fearful pulse... The best defense is an offense... Our military fist should be at the face of every Western politician.”
On state TV show Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, lawmaker Oleg Morozov asserted: “The level of relations is so catastrophically low... that the possibility of a local hot conflict in the Ukrainian region is higher than ever. If this conflict takes place, it will break the entire construct of world relations. It will redraw the geographical map of Europe and change its political lines. The result will be what was promised by our president: the end of Ukrainian statehood... It will lead to total sanctions against Russia and the breakdown of all negotiations.”
Adding fuel to the fire, host Vladimir Soloviev asked: “Then why should we stop at Ukraine? Why not solve all of our problems at once?” Soloviev argued that since it’s unlikely that the major world powers would resort to nuclear war, Russia can move forward with achieving its objectives undeterred: “If we have to end up behind the Iron Curtain, why not collect some more lands and peoples first?”
The head of the State Duma Committee on Defense, Andrei Kartapolov, suggested on the same show that the Ukrainian problem could be solved militarily in a matter of hours. He said: “If they intend to turn us into a pariah, there is no reason to stop at Ukraine... If they want to make us tremble, we should make them tremble.” Morozov chimed in with a sly grin: “Which is what Putin said. Keep them on the edge of their seat.”
Janis Elliott lives in the unincorporated Iowa town of Avon. She put a reverse osmosis system in her home after she found nitrate levels almost double the EPA health standard.(photo: Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio)
Janis Elliott started testing the private well water that comes out of the faucets in her home for nitrates after she attended an environmental meeting more than five years ago. Elliott lives in the small unincorporated town of Avon, Iowa not too far south of Des Moines.
Nitrate finds its way into surface and groundwater that eventually becomes drinking water. Studies have linked ingesting too much nitrate in drinking water to cancer and that concerns the retired teacher. Too much nitrate also can cause blue-baby syndrome and birth defects.
She points to neighbors' houses where people have died from cancer. Her husband had prostate cancer (and overcame it).
One year, the nitrate level got up to 19 parts per million.
"Which is almost double the federal legal limit for drinking water," Elliott says. "So, we were drinking poison for a year."
Elliott invested in a $1,000-reverse osmosis system in her home to treat the water her family drinks. She questions whether the nitrates in the water caused cancer among her husband and neighbors.
"Who knows? I do know that drinking that water for years did not help," she says.
Climate change and polluted sources for drinking water are creating an increasingly challenging problem in farm country. Des Moines Water Works is preparing for a very wet spring after almost two years of drought. While nitrate occurs naturally, it is also a byproduct of nitrogen fertilizer and farmers in the Midwest use lots of it to grow corn and soybeans. That finds its way into surface and groundwater.
The drought makes it more difficult for utility companies to source water
Larger water utilities – like Des Moines Water Works – have been treating nitrate for years. In the 1990s, the utility built a facility to extract nitrates from the rivers. Water Works gets most of its water for its 600,000 ratepayers from the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers, which converge downtown.
"The drought obviously makes it more difficult for us to source water," Des Moines Water Works CEO and General Manager Ted Corrigan says. "This summer, especially we had concerns about toxins on the Des Moines River and we had concerns about available flow on the Raccoon River."
Add to that, swings in the weather brought on by climate change are adding another problem.
"We also see issues with the quantity of nutrient that is stored on the landscape because of the drought," Corrigan says. He says all that excess nutrient stored in the soil upstream makes for the potential for extremely high nitrates flushing into the rivers.
"It's not a sustainable situation," Corrigan says.
Dozens of other public water utilities in Iowa also treat drinking water for nitrates. Water Works has upgraded its facility and constructed deep wells to store more water and it's looking at building additional groundwater wells. Federal clean water laws exempt agricultural runoff. The utility filed a lawsuit five years ago to try and amend the Clean Water Act, so farmers would have to implement more environmental practices but it was ultimately dismissed.
Farmers know what tools to use but they are costly and cumbersome
More than 90 miles upstream from Des Moines, Mark Schleisman farms with his father and kids in Calhoun County near the Raccoon River. He has a number of water quality projects on his diversified farm. He has buffer strips and plants cover crops. He even has a wetland on his property that is hooked up to an irrigation system so he can re-use water from his fields.
"It helps the river because we're keeping nitrates here, reducing them, but also helps me because I'm getting water on this field and I'm reusing the nitrogen," Schleisman says.
He says farmers know what tools to use but they are costly and can be cumbersome.
Politicians in Iowa say the state's farmers are making progress since 2013 when the state issued the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy: a list of environmental practices farmers are encouraged to implement.
"We've got a long ways to go and I don't sugar coat that at all," Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and Land Stewardship Mike Naig said earlier this year on the Iowa PBS show Iowa Press. "The strategy calls for a 45% reduction in nitrogen and phosphorous loss off of Iowa farms and landscape but the evidence is moving in the right direction."
University of Iowa geographical and sustainability sciences professor, Silvia Secchi, says the reduction from farms is not moving fast enough. She argues that the federal farm bill essentially subsidizes farmers to pollute.
"What we need to do is we need to ask for some environmental outcome for all the money we give to farmers," Secchi says. "That will reduce the load so that the utilities don't have to spend so much money cleaning up the water that we drink."
And Secchi says it's a bigger concern for utilities in smaller cities and residents who rely on their private wells that may have nitrate-tainted water. The challenges in Iowa could soon be felt in other cities surrounded by farmland especially as they increasingly face drastic weather swings that effect drinking water.
