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Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Democrats in the U.S. Senate appear to be closing in on an agreement to create a new tax system for the country's richest people and families, and even centrists like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) appear to be onboard, according to The Washington Post.
Key Facts
The "Billionaires Income Tax" plan would create a new tax system solely targeting billionaires and those earning more than $100 million in income for at least three consecutive years.
Billionaires would be required to pay taxes annually on the increased values of stocks and bonds under the plan, even if they don't sell the assets, and could also pay more taxes on their real estate and other long-held assets that are not easily tradable, according to The Washington Post.
Senate Democrats are reportedly coalescing around the proposal, which could be included as part of a spending plan still being negotiated as centrists try to cut down a $3.5 trillion package that largely targets beefing up social and environmental programs.
Big Number
724. That's how many billionaires are in the U.S., according to the 2021 Forbes "World's Billionaires List."
What To Watch For
House Democrats are reportedly not keen on the tax plan, which is being drafted by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), preferring another that has already passed the House chamber that would raise tax rates on wealthy Americans and corporations.
Key Background
The reported understanding between Democratic factions over taxing billionaires is in stark contrast to where things stand when it comes to spending tax dollars. Manchin and Sinema still remain apart from the rest of the party when it comes to the $3.5 trillion spending package, with the two demanding its price be slashed significantly. Negotiations remain ongoing, with President Joe Biden saying he believes a deal can be reached on a slimmed-down package costing between $1.9 trillion and $2.2 trillion. In the meantime, a vote in the House to approve a $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal remains on hold, as progressive Democrats in the chamber say they will not vote until there is agreement on the social spending package. Manchin and Sinema are key to moving the spending package forward, since Democrats are using the reconciliation process to pass it without any Republican support. Since the party controls the Senate by the thinnest possible majority, losing the support of either Manchin or Sinema would be enough to kill the package's chance of passing.
Tangent
Many of the wealthiest U.S. citizens have gone years without paying any federal income taxes, according to a bombshell ProPublica report released in June, citing leaked Internal Revenue Service documents.
Outside of the Glynn County Courthouse, Ahmaud Arbery's aunt, Thea Brooks, joins a group during a demonstration calling for the conviction of the three men who face charges in the death of Ahmaud Arbery and other county officials they say were complicit in his death. (photo: Riley Bunch/Georgia Public Broadcasting)
We go to Brunswick, Georgia, for an update as jury selection began this week in the trial of three white men who fatally shot 25-year-old unarmed man Ahmaud Arbery while he was out for a jog last year. Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael claim they were attempting a “citizen’s arrest” of Arbery last February when they pursued him in their pickup truck. Their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the pursuit in his own truck and recorded a cellphone video that would later be released as evidence and spark nationwide outcry. Travis McMichael fired two shots, killing Arbery. Theawanza Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery’s aunt, remembers Arbery as “an amazing young man … they took away from us,” and discusses ongoing protests outside the courthouse and racial dynamics in the case. “It’s impossible to find anyone in that small community who has not heard about what happened to Ahmaud,” adds Lee Merritt, civil rights attorney representing the Arbery family, who also addresses key aspects of the defense’s argument, including the citizen arrest law the McMichaels used as an excuse to stop Arbery.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: In Georgia, jury selection began this week in the trial of three white men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, the unarmed 25-year-old Black man who was chased down and shot to death while out for a jog last year in the suburbs of Brunswick, Georgia. Many have compared his death to a modern-day lynching.
A warning to our viewers and listeners: This segment contains graphic descriptions of violence.
On February 23rd, 2020, Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael saw Arbery jogging, grabbed guns and pursued him in a pickup truck. Their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the pursuit in his own truck, recording the video on a cellphone. The McMichaels claim they were attempting a citizen’s arrest of Ahmaud Arbery. Travis McMichael fired two shots, killing Ahmaud.
The elder McMichael was a former Glynn County police officer and investigator for the Brunswick judicial circuit prosecutor Jackie Johnson. She was recently indicted for directing police not to arrest Travis McMichael and then steering the case to a sympathetic prosecutor. It was a third prosecutor who ultimately filed the murder charges in the case, after the video evidence became public, sparking widespread outcry.
We’re joined now by two guests. Lee Merritt is a civil rights attorney representing the family of Ahmaud Arbery, and Thea Brooks is the aunt of Ahmaud Arbery. She’s been leading rallies outside the Glynn County Courthouse in Georgia since Monday.
I want to thank you so much, Thea Brooks, for being with us. Our deep condolences on the death of your nephew. I know he lived with you at the end of his life. And you’ve been monitoring closely what’s happening this week in the courtroom. Can you talk about the kind of community support? People have come all over the country to Brunswick to see what’s happening in the courtroom.
THEAWANZA BROOKS: Well, first, let me clear up: He never lived with me. I heard you say that he lived with me, but he never lived with me, so I’m not sure where that came from.
AMY GOODMAN: Sorry.
THEAWANZA BROOKS: But the support that has come to Brunswick has been amazing. People have rallied from all over the world to come and support and help be the eyes and ears to help focus on what’s going on at hand and to help support us and push us through to get justice for Ahmaud.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I was wondering if you can talk about that level of support and what it means. I was just reading a story about how the judge was responding to the defense attorneys demanding that all the signs be taken down outside, the judge noting the courthouse grounds are a public space. He suggested the objecting defense attorneys draft a legal motion, quote, “walking me through the First Amendment rights you seek to infringe upon and how you intend to do this,” he said. Can you tell us about the scene outside and the signs people are carrying, the T-shirts people are wearing, and why this, you feel, has captured the attention of so many?
THEAWANZA BROOKS: Well, the signs outside the courthouse are just really what they are. There’s signs that say “Justice for Ahmaud.” There’s signs that say “Find these men who killed Ahmaud guilty.” And there’s support signs. You see this so many other places. You saw it in Minneapolis. You saw it when Philando Castile was killed. You’ve seen it so many places. So I’m not understanding what the issue is here in Brunswick, Georgia.
But I do understand that we face a lot of injustices here, and this is just another part of the injustices that we face. The signs are support. I don’t see what the issue is. And these people came from Washington, Pennsylvania, Virginia, all over the world, just to be here in support. So, you know, when they file these type of motions, it just makes me question our judicial system and the things that we’re still facing today.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us about Ahmaud? Tell us who he was. Describe this young man who was cut down in the prime of his life.
THEAWANZA BROOKS: Well, Ahmaud and I spent a lot of time together in his younger years, his infant, toddler years. As he got older, his mom, she moved to another part of Brunswick, and we kind of lost connection. A couple of months before Ahmaud was killed, we spent a lot of time together out at his house. His mom was working out in Texas.
And so, we never missed a beat. If I ran into him on his jog, if I saw him out at Blue Beacon, where he was working, he was still a bright young man. He had a beautiful smile. He was amazing. He always offered. He was a giver. He would see me and say, “Can I buy you lunch?” or, you know, “Do you have money? If not, I can give.” And I would always tell him, “You know, you keep your money, and I’ll buy lunch.”
But he was just such an amazing young man. He was bright. He had a bright future. He had a dream. He loved to rap. He loved to spend time with his cousins, who were like his brothers. He loved his brother and sister. But, most of all, he loved his mom. His mom was everything to him. She was a jewel in his eyesight. And he was just an amazing young man.
And that was something that they took away from us, you know? You don’t find many times where you can say that the younger people now that are coming up are just these remarkable people. And no matter what they do in their past, they’re still a great people. And Ahmaud was loved. And that’s all I can really say about him. He was loved. He was that child that everybody would want.
AMY GOODMAN: We also have Lee Merritt with us, attorney for the family of Ahmaud Arbery. Lee, this story is not often talked about as a story about law enforcement. They talk about three white men, right? The McMichaels, father and son team, and Roddie Bryan. But, in fact, Gregory McMichael and his son Travis, who got in that pickup truck and hunted down Ahmaud and ultimately killed him, the elder McMichael was a former Glynn County police officer and investigator for the Brunswick judicial circuit prosecutor Jackie Johnson. And she was recently indicted for directing police not to arrest the son and then steering the case to a sympathetic prosecutor. Can you take us through this prosecution, Lee Merritt?
LEE MERRITT: Yes. The — when you say take you through the prosecution, you want —
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, I mean, talk about the connection to law enforcement and how long this took, actually, to bring charges and the final release of that video, amazingly, by the third man who’s been arrested here.
LEE MERRITT: Sure. So, in February of 2020, this all happened. It took 74 days before anyone was arrested. And that was only after one of the defendants decided that this video would help clear up some of the rumors that were going on about how Ahmaud was murdered. And so he released it — under the direction of his attorney, he released it to a local radio station. By then, Wanda had been contacting the then-appointed prosecutor in the case — which, by the time that happened, we were on our third prosecutor — to get the case before a grand jury to arrest these men. And when the video was released, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation got involved because of the national outcry. It went almost immediately viral. And then the dominoes began to fall.
AMY GOODMAN: And the fact that Gregory McMichael was in law enforcement, was a police officer, was an investigator —
LEE MERRITT: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — and then that connection to Jackie Johnson, who herself, this Brunswick judicial circuit prosecutor, has just been charged.
LEE MERRITT: So, Greg McMichael worked in law enforcement in Glynn County for decades. His most recent job, that he had just retired from the year previously, was an investigator for Jackie Johnson, the then-Glynn County prosecutor. Right after Ahmaud was murdered, before he actually received medical care, Gregory McMichael was on the phone with his old boss saying that he needed help.
Now, it was Jackie Johnson’s responsibility at that point to conflict out of the case, to let the attorney general of the state know that there was a murder that took place in her region and she didn’t have the jurisdiction because of her conflict to deal with it. Instead, she moved the prosecution, as you mentioned, to a sympathetic prosecutor, George Barnhill, and she continued to sort of put her thumbs on the scale of justice. She let law enforcement know these men should not be arrested. She instructed them not to arrest the McMichaels.
And ever since then — you know, that community is so small. We’re learning how small it is from the jury selection process. But that community, it’s — George Barnhill, for example, his son also worked for Jackie Johnson. And there was a lot of inappropriate relationships that were allowed to continue despite the obvious conflicts.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about this citizen arrest law that the McMichaels used as an excuse to stop Ahmaud, which has been repealed by Georgia state lawmakers? How does that change the defense?
LEE MERRITT: Yeah, so, the citizen’s arrest law, which is an old civil rights-era law on the books, that ultimately was designed to keep Black people out of traditionally white neighborhoods. And that’s how it had been used. In order to successfully avail themselves of even that law, they would have to first prove that they witnessed Ahmaud during the course of a crime, a felony, or that he committed a crime or felony within their immediate knowledge.
Here, they said that they saw Ahmaud running and had a gut instinct that he may have been involved in some other car — taking items out of a car. I’m not sure the exact criminal statute for that, but taking items out of a car. That would not suffice under the law. It is the defense that they’re still fighting for. And of note, the people of Georgia elected to remove that defense from the books. It is still available for the McMichaels and Mr. Bryan for his defense, but, ultimately, that law is no longer available.
AMY GOODMAN: Thea Brooks, can you talk about how often you, how often Ahmaud was in that neighborhood of Brunswick? And can you talk about the description of the community and the division between white and Black, kind of informal segregation?
THEAWANZA BROOKS: Well, Ahmaud not only jogged in that community, Ahmaud jogged all over Glynn County. That was his thing. He spent a lot of time. Well, he jogged a lot out that way because that’s where he lived. He ultimately was, like, literally — if he would have been able to get out of the neighborhood on the road that he was jogging on, to escape those gentlemen, all he had to do was literally jog across the highway, and he would have been in his neighborhood. So, I found it — at one point, I thought it would be safer when he was jogging out there through the neighborhoods, because the main highway that leads to his route is a very busy highway. It’s considered Highway 17, which we call 82 here. There are a lot of tractor-trailers that drive out there. There is actually a truck stop out there. So it’s a very busy highway that leads to Interstate 95. So, you would think that jogging in the neighborhoods would be a safer place to jog because of the traffic and how heavy the traffic is out there. So, Ahmaud’s jog was a daily jog, unless it was pouring down rain and he just couldn’t get out. But he ran every day.
And so, ultimately, you’re talking about what we experience here. There’s a lot of injustice that happens here in Glynn County. We’ve seen it in many other cases, not just Ahmaud’s case. This community is somewhat in some ways — there are areas still that, just like Ahmaud’s situation, that we go and we get questioned for being in the neighborhoods, because it’s predominantly a white neighborhood or it’s an all-white neighborhood. And so, when we go into these neighborhoods, they do question it. I find myself sometimes running into it even on my job, because I’m the only person of color at my job. So, there are days where it’s questioned, you know, about me even being here. So we deal with it on a regular basis. It’s nothing that just started, but it’s something now that people are paying attention to.
AMY GOODMAN: The running community, Thea, has come out in support of Ahmaud — tons of “Run for Ahmaud” T-shirts and signs.
THEAWANZA BROOKS: Yes. That’s actually happening all over the world. When Ahmaud was killed, once the video dropped, you saw signs, you saw T-shirts. There are signs in yards, people wearing shirts every day. They’ve even — this week, a lot of people have turned their photos on their Facebook, their profile photos, to pictures of Ahmaud in support of the “I run with Maud.” So, there is no longer a campaign called “I Run with Maud.” That has been — it’s gone, no 2.23 Foundation. So, people now are just predominantly individually continuing to run for Maud on their own.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Lee Merritt, can you talk about how jury selection is going, what you see here? And you’ve got the new hate crime laws that have been passed by the Georgia state Legislature. What role will this play in the trial?
LEE MERRITT: The jury selection process in Glynn County is going to be difficult. It’s always a challenge to find neutral jurors. But in a place like Glynn County, for one of the most high-profile cases in the history of Georgia, if not of the country, it’s impossible to find anyone in that small community who has not heard about what happened to Ahmaud. The prosecutors and the defense, the judge, as well, they’ve kind of accepted this as reality, that they’re going to be dealing with jurors who are not blank slates like we prefer. The jurors that have come in, however, many of them went to school with the accused.
At least one of the jurors, who, to my surprise, was actually qualified to sit on the jury, works in the office of Jackie Johnson, works in the Glynn County Prosecutor Office, was hired by Jackie Johnson, campaigned for Jackie Johnson after the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and knows Greg McMichael personally. In court, she referred to him sort of casually as Greg. And the court said that somebody with that many connections, whose job it was — she was basically the custodian of the records, which means a lot of the evidence that we’re reviewing in court was signed by her. And the court said, despite the fact that she could be called as a witness, that she was qualified to sit on the jury. I’m sure the prosecution will use a peremptory strike later on down the line to remove her from the jury, but the fact that she wasn’t disqualified for what is called cause is beyond me.
So far, they’ve been able to get together 23 qualified jurors of over 600 subpoenas that were sent out, or jury summons that were sent out. Of those 23, the number that they’re — the magic number they’re trying to get to is 64. And then the jury selection process actually begins, where the prosecution and defense can begin selecting and striking jurors.
AMY GOODMAN: So, with the video documenting that the McMichaels used the N-word after killing Ahmaud, how do you see race playing in this?
LEE MERRITT: Well, the video does not document that the McMichaels used the N-word. The documentarian, one of the defendants, William “Roddie” Bryan, in his attempt to disassociate with the McMichaels, he offered into evidence, during the preliminary trials, that the McMichaels used the N-word. Race is going to be a central theme in this case because the prosecution — and I believe rightfully so — has acknowledged that race is at the center of these men’s actions.
They’re going to claim, of course, that they targeted Ahmaud because they suspected him of crimes, specifically of going into that open dwelling. What you’ll also hear from them, and what we’ve seen already, is that many, many people are seen on camera going into the open dwelling. That was not —
AMY GOODMAN: You mean a house that was being built.
LEE MERRITT: That’s correct, the house that was still under construction. Many people were seen on camera going into that dwelling. Ahmaud had been there more than once. He had never committed any crimes there. He was the only person criminalized for his place, for just being on the premises. And we believe — and the evidence, we believe, will show — that he was targeted because of his race, and that these men were deeply racist. And there are social media posts and text messages that center around the issue of race. And even after Ahmaud was killed, some of the banter that we see on social media between the McMichaels and the community was celebratory concerning the fact that they had killed a Black man in that community.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Lee Merritt, attorney for the family of Ahmaud Arbery, and thank you so much to Thea Brooks, aunt of Ahmaud Arbery. And again, our deepest condolences.
Coming up, as President Biden campaigns for his Build Back Better agenda, we’ll look at the records of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, fighting Biden at every turn. Stay with us.
Lev Parnas. (photo: NBC)
Lev Parnas was on trial for more than two weeks as prosecutors accused him of using other people’s money to pose as a powerful political broker and cozy up to some of the nation’s star Republicans.
One part of the case alleged that Parnas and an associate made illegal donations through a corporate entity in 2018 as they tried to jump-start a new energy company, including a $325,000 donation to America First Action, a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump.
Another part said he used the wealth of a Russian financier, Andrey Muraviev, to donate to Republicans in Nevada, Florida and other states, ostensibly in support of an effort to launch a legal, recreational marijuana business.
Parnas, 49, was convicted on all six counts after about five hours of jury deliberations.
The Soviet-born businessman had insisted through his lawyer that he never used the Russian’s money for political donations. He briefly closed his eyes and shook his head as the verdict was read.
“I’ve never hid from nobody. I’ve always stood to tell the truth,” Parnas said as he emerged from the courtroom. His lawyer, Joseph Bondy, promised an appeal Parnas said it was “not the end of the story.”
“I’m sad. But at this time, I just want to get home to my wife and kids,” he said.
A co-defendant, Ukraine-born investor Andrey Kukushkin, was convicted of being part of the effort to use Muraviev’s money for political contributions. He had also denied any wrongdoing. Kukushkin and his attorney left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.
The case had drawn interest because of the deep involvement of Parnas and a former co-defendant, Igor Fruman, in Giuliani’s efforts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden’s son during Biden’s campaign for president.
Giuliani remains under criminal investigation as authorities decide whether his interactions with Ukraine officials required him to register as a foreign agent, but he wasn’t alleged to have been involved in illegal campaign contributions and wasn’t part of the New York trial.
The case did, though, give an up-close look at how Parnas entered Republican circles in 2018 with a pattern of campaign donations big enough to get him meetings with the party’s stars.
“In order to gain influence with American politicians and candidates, they illegally funneled foreign money into the 2018 midterm elections with an eye toward making huge profits in the cannabis business,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement following the verdict. “Campaign finance laws are designed to protect the integrity of our free and fair elections – unencumbered by foreign interests or influence – and safeguarding those laws is essential to preserving the freedoms that Americans hold sacred.”
In addition to the $325,000 donation to America First Action, prosecutors said Parnas and Fruman orchestrated donations to U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, of Texas, and to other committees supporting House Republicans.
Giuliani and Trump were sparsely mentioned during the trial, although a photograph featuring Parnas with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, was one of the first exhibits shown to jurors during closing arguments.
DeSantis was among those who received campaign contributions that prosecutors said were traced to $1 million that Parnas and Fruman received from Muraviev, who has been involved in several U.S. cannabis ventures.
About $100,000 of Muraviev’s money went toward campaign contributions in what Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten called a conspiracy to secretly bring his “wealth and corruption into American politics” in violation of laws barring foreign donations to U.S. political candidates.
“The voters would never know whose money was pouring into our elections,” Scotten said.
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, now a candidate for U.S. Senate, testified during the trial that a blustering Parnas suggested he could raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for him in 2018. He eventually came through only with a $10,000 check that Laxalt’s lawyers told him to reject.
Bondy, representing Parnas, had called the allegations against his client “absurd.”
He insisted in his closing argument that Muraviev’s money went toward supporting legal marijuana businesses looking to expand. Muraviev was not charged in the case.
Kukushkin’s lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, sought to portray his client as an unknowing dupe who was mocked behind his back by other participants as mentally challenged.
Following the verdict, prosecutors asked for immediate incarceration of Parnas and Kukushkin, citing a risk of flight, but the judge allowed them to remain free on bail while awaiting sentencing.
The charges against Parnas collectively carry the potential for decades behind bars, but any prison sentence would likely be measured in years, rather than decades.
Fruman pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single count of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national. He awaits sentencing.
Another co-defendant, David Correia, also pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to a year in prison for crimes including defrauding investors in an insurance company that had paid Giuliani a $500,000 consulting fee.
Parnas awaits a second trial in connection with that scheme.
Giuliani barely factored in the trial, though a video of him with Parnas was among exhibits jurors could view during deliberations.
The former New York mayor insisted he knew nothing about potentially illegal campaign contributions and has said everything he did in Ukraine was done on Trump’s behalf and there is no reason he would have had to register as a foreign agent.
Giuliani’s company and attorney didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the verdict.
Children from the KU Kids Deanwood Childcare Center complete a mural celebrating the launch of the Child Tax Credit on July 14, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (photo: Jemal Countess/Getty Images)
Most U.S. welfare programs are either targeted or means-tested — the Child Tax Credit breaks this mold.
“It was about what somebody else thinks we should have,” Gillespie says. No one ever asked her what she needed.
In July, Gillespie received a $750 child tax credit (CTC) payment after Democrats increased the benefit and offered it to more families. The money didn’t stretch far, but Gillespie used it for bills and toiletries, back-to-school supplies and a haircut.
Most importantly, Gillespie says, “I didn’t have to jump through hoops just to get something.”
The CTC payments are already having a marked impact for poor parents. The program pushed 3 million children out of poverty and reduced hunger by 3 percentage points in its first month alone. For those in constant financial upheaval, the payments “provide some stability,” says Chuck Marr, senior director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, especially as the funds roll into bank accounts every month.
The new credit marks a major policy departure for the United States. Congress established the cash benefit program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children as part of the New Deal, but in the 1980s, conservatives (most prominently President Ronald Reagan) ginned up the idea that “welfare queens” were taking advantage of it.
Even some Democrats promoted the idea that the money made poor people lazy. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which took the promise of cash assistance for those who qualified and turned it into an obstacle course of requirements and restrictions in an attempt to ferret out who is and is not “deserving.”
“After that, the conversation has been very much about what do you do to push parents — force them, in some ways — to act a certain way,” says LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for family income support policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Enrollment in TANF has since fallen to less than a quarter of eligible families.
Until now, the underlying idea driving policymaking has continued to be that poor people need to be threatened into working. But “that’s just so not how human beings operate,” Marr says. Research is clear that the stress of poverty — of constantly worrying about how to pay for basics— leads people to perform worse in life and work.
Through the end of the year, the new CTC payments give over 90 percent of American families with children — including, for the first time, those with little to no earnings — up to $300 a month for every child younger than 6, and $250 for those 6 – 17. Most other U.S. antipoverty programs are targeted — food stamps for hunger, Medicaid for healthcare. But “every family situation is different,” Marr says. “What cash does is to recognize that and to allow people to really take control and to adjust to their particular circumstances.”
Marr also cautions, “This is no panacea for people under those circumstances.”
For Gillespie, the money is nowhere near what she needs. “That’s not enough money to feed anybody or to do anything or to even prepare for the future,” she says.
When Gillespie had her hospital job, she had some financial stability. But now she is unemployed. She’s also been homeschooling out of fear of the coronavirus. She hopes to eventually save enough to move, as her current house is so deteriorated she has to fill buckets with water to bathe, but she hasn’t been able to put any money away.
With the CTC ending soon (although an extension is currently in the reconciliation infrastructure bill), Gillespie wants Congress to increase the benefit and make it permanent.
“That would give people enough of an option to do what they need to do,” Gillespie says.
Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian boy in the occupied West Bank. (photo: Majdi Mohammed/AP)
Israel designated six leading Palestinian human rights groups “terrorist organizations,” but refused to reveal any evidence to prove the accusation.
Israeli law criminalizes providing funds to groups designated as terrorist organizations and authorizes the police “to prevent activities by or in support of terrorist organizations, including organizing meetings, marches, or training.”
The rights groups uniformly rejected the charge — made in an unsigned statement from Israel’s internal security service and its bureau of counter-terror financing — that all six are secretly run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out bombings and hijackings starting in the late 1960s.
Because the Israeli agencies said the designations were based on secret evidence that was “concealed for security reasons,” the rights groups were given no opportunity to rebut an accusation that struck their many international and Israeli partners as transparently false.
“Through these designations, Israeli authorities are, once again, joining a long list of repressive States that use measures purportedly designed to counter terrorism as a pretext to crack down on legitimate human rights work,” Said Benarbia of the International Commission of Jurists said in a statement.
“This appalling and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement,” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a joint statement. “The decades-long failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to act in this brazen manner.”
News of the crackdown became public as Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, was in Russia, praising President Vladimir Putin, whose government compels nongovernmental organizations to declare themselves “foreign agents” if they receive any support from abroad.
The rights activists branded terrorists by the defense minister, Benny Gantz, work on a range of uniformly peaceful civil society projects to improve life in the occupied territories run by Israel’s military.
The six groups are: Defense for Children International Palestine, which defends Palestinian children in Israeli military courts and has documented abuses and killings by Israeli forces; Al-Haq, which documents violations of Palestinians’ rights in the West Bank and is an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva; Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, which advocates for Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli and Palestinian prisons; the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), an agricultural development group; the Bisan Center for Research and Development, an academic institute whose Ramallah offices were raided by Israeli forces in July; and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, a women’s rights organization.
Shawan Jabarin, the director of Al-Haq, was jailed by Israel in the 1980s for his alleged ties to the Popular Front, a charge he denied at the time and rejected again in an interview with The New York Times on Friday. “This is a false claim, completely,” Jabarin said. He added that his group was being tarred by the Israeli government for working to have its abuses tried by the International Criminal Court.
Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, posted a photograph of himself with Jabarin and a message of support.
Omar Shakir, Israel director for Human Rights Watch posed with Jabarin on Friday night in Amman, Jordan.
“We reject the recent designation as another unjust action by Israeli authorities to criminalize and eliminate our lawful human rights and child protection work,” Khaled Quzmar, the general director of Defense for Children International Palestine, said in a statement. “We defend Palestinian children in the Israeli military courts and expose grave violations against Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli forces. When years of delegitimization and disinformation campaigns against us have failed to silence our work, Israeli authorities choose to now escalate repressive tactics by labeling civil society organizations as terrorists.”
Defense for Children International Palestine is one of several groups that have been subjected to raids and harassment from Israeli soldiers enforcing military rule in the occupied West Bank this year.
The group’s documentation of abuse by both Israeli forces and settlers has drawn international attention to the brutality of the open-ended military occupation.
Criticism of the Israeli attack on the rights groups came from their supporters and partners in Palestine, Israel and abroad, including some members of Congress.
“Silencing, intimidating [and] criminalizing Palestinian civil society [organizations and] human rights defenders are Israel’s way of covering up its abuses while maintaining its impunity,” the veteran Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi tweeted. “It’s the occupation that must be held to account.”
“If a regime designates human rights organizations terroristic, then that tells all those wavering minds all they need to know about the values of said regime,” Tareq Baconi, a former analyst for the International Crisis Group, observed. “It also – by the way – reveals the regime’s deep insecurity.”
The designation is an “unprecedented attack on human rights defenders who are exposing and resisting the Israeli occupation and its apartheid policies in the West Bank,” Adalah, a Palestinian legal justice group based in the Israeli city of Haifa, said in a statement. “These groups are among the most prominent human rights organizations in Palestine that daily challenge and expose severe violations of human rights before the international community.”
Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, called the decision to designate the rights group “a declaration of war” on the entire human rights community in Palestine, in Israel and around the world. “It is an act the Netanyahu governments did not dare to carry out, and it was executed without presenting the public with any proof for the allegations made. It is difficult to escape the impression that this is a tyrannical move meant to annihilate the Palestinian civil society for its commitment to the struggle against Israeli occupation and apartheid.”
B’Tselem, which monitors abuses in the occupied territories, noted bitterly that this move was taken by the post-Netanyahu government, which was supposed to bring about a change from the previous, ultranationalist coalition.
“Israel’s ‘change’ government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organizations as ‘terror organizations’ is an act characteristic of totalitarian regimes, with the clear purpose of shutting down these organizations,” the group said in a statement. “But war is not peace, ignorance is not strength – and the current Israeli government is not one of change, but rather of a continuation of the violent apartheid regime, in place for many years between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. B’Tselem stands in solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues, is proud of our joint work over the years – and is steadfast to continue so.”
“Labeling human rights groups as ‘terrorists’ is a very typical move of authoritarian regimes (which the occupation is) and a prelude to increased repression,” observed Matt Duss, foreign policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders. Duss also called for “strong pushback” from the State Department, “followed by an offer to meet with these groups for their protection.”
A State Department spokesman, Ned Price, was more guarded, telling reporters: “We’ll be engaging our Israeli partners for more information regarding the basis for these designations. The Israeli Government did not give the U.S. advance warning that they would be designated.”
Progressive members of Congress were more outspoken in their outrage at the designations. Rep. Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, noted the important role of Defense for Children International Palestine in her effort to ban Israel from using military assistance it receives from the United States to pay for the detention, interrogation, or torture of Palestinian children living in the occupied West Bank.
“Israel should rescind their blanket decision to label Palestinian civil rights organizations as terrorist groups,” Rep. Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat, wrote on Twitter. “Many of these organizations are working to bring peace in the region and are vocal critics Hamas” and the Palestinian Authority, he added.
“The apartheid regime’s labeling of award-winning human rights groups as terrorist organizations—just because they speak truths about Israel’s violence & its human impact—is grossly antidemocratic and dangerous,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American Democrat from Michigan, tweeted. “The U.S. must end funding for human rights abuses. Enough.”
As Diala Shamas, a human rights lawyer with The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, observed on Twitter, the order criminalizes groups Israel’s government has tried and failed to cut funding to for decades.
While concealing all evidence to support its claims, Israel made no secret of its determination to cut off funding from international organizations for these groups which make it more difficult to conceal the abusive nature of the occupation that has kept millions of Palestinians under military rule for 54 years. The statement from the Israeli government claimed that “the declared organizations received large sums of money from European countries and international organizations, using a variety of forgery and deceit ways” and diverted it from good works to a terrorist group.
The absence of any proof of that led some close observers to speculate that the decision might have been based on research done by a hyperpartisan Zionist group, NGO Monitor, which has successfully lobbied foreign donors to cut funding to Palestinian rights groups by claiming some of their employees are connected to Palestinian political parties with armed wings.
“NGO Monitor is [an] extremist group whose entire purpose is attacking Israeli/Palestinian/US human rights/civil society groups based on false information & tenuous connections,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, tweeted on Friday, as the Zionist group gloated. “Their reports should not be trusted,” Jacobs added.
Israel’s anger at European nations for providing financial and material backing to Palestinian civil society and rights groups has simmered for decades.
In 2017, reporters overheard Israel’s then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, telling the leaders of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia that it was “crazy” for the European Union to insist that Israel honor Article 2 of an association agreement signed in 1995, which makes trade with the bloc conditional on Israel’s “respect for human rights and democratic principles.”
The late historian Tony Judt had explained in 2010 that economic and cultural ties to Europe were of vital importance to Israel.
“Israel wants two things more than anything else in the world. The first is American aid. This it has. As long as it continues to get American aid without conditions it can do stupid things for a very long time, damaging Palestinians and damaging Israel without running any risk,” Judt told The London Review of Books. “However, the second thing Israel wants is an economic relationship with Europe as a way to escape from the Middle East. The joke is that Jews spent a hundred years desperately trying to have a state in the Middle East. Now they spend all their time trying to get out of the Middle East. They don’t want to be there economically, culturally or politically – they don’t feel part of it and don’t want to be part of it. They want to be part of Europe and therefore it is here that the EU has enormous leverage.”
A gray wolf. (photo: National Geographic)
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost ruled the way the DNR applied Wisconsin's wolf hunt law is unconstitutional.
In his ruling Friday, Frost said he's not overruling the state's wolf hunt law and thinks it can be lawfully applied. But, the judge said the DNR didn't do that because the agency failed to adopt a permanent rule enforcing the law and update its wolf management plan.
"The DNR needs to stop it. They need to actually comply with the law. They need to regulate the hunt. They need to develop a wolf management plan. They need to implement rules so they can regulate the hunt. They need to be part of that oversight process that keeps the law constitutional," Frost said.
The ruling comes just two weeks before the fall wolf hunt was set to begin on Nov. 6. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a law in 2012 that requires a wolf hunt each year when the animal isn’t listed as a federally endangered species.
In August, a coalition of wildlife advocacy groups including the Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance filed the lawsuit to stop the fall wolf hunt, saying the law violates the Wisconsin Constitution because permanent rules enforcing the hunt were never adopted.
Melissa Smith, executive director of the alliance, said she's celebrating the judge's ruling.
"We do know, and the science proves, and the DNR does not dispute: they do not know the damage that occurred in February," said Smith. "And we don't think, because of the lack of rules and emergency rules, that this couldn't happen again with trappers and hunters this fall."
Hunters killed nearly double their quota in the February wolf hunt, harvesting 218 wolves in less than 72 hours. The DNR has said the law’s 24-hour notice requirement prior to closing the season, the high number of licenses sold and the use of hunting hounds made it difficult to properly manage the hunt.
Luke Hilgemann, president and CEO of Kansas-based Hunter Nation, said he's frustrated with the judge's ruling. He called on Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers to immediately appeal the judge's order so the fall hunt can move forward.
"I think that the laws or the rules are very clear. We have a current wolf management plan in place," said Hilgemann. "Yes, the wolf management plan needs to be updated. But, at the same time, I think that's a shallow argument for (the judge) to say that we should just shut down the hunt because we don't have a set of rules in place. We have a set of rules in place. He just doesn't agree with them."
A DNR spokesperson said the agency is reviewing the ruling and declined to comment further.
Wildlife advocacy groups filed the lawsuit after the Natural Resources Board approved a quota of 300 wolves in August, which the DNR pared down to 130 wolves for this fall. Six Wisconsin tribes are arguing in a separate lawsuit that their treaty rights are being violated through state management of wolves, which they say isn’t based on sound biological science.
Gussie Lord, an attorney for the tribes, applauded the judge's ruling.
"We also understand that it may not be the last word on this issue in the Wisconsin court system," said Lord, an Earthjustice attorney, in a statement. "We intend to pursue every opportunity to protect the Ojibwe tribes and the Wisconsin wolf population."
Wisconsin tribes claimed 56 of the 130 wolves that were allowed for harvest prior to the judge's ruling. The state’s Chippewa tribes view the wolf as a brother and have declined to harvest the animal. A hearing is set in that case for Friday, Oct. 29.
The animal has become a focal point in a battle for control over management between the DNR under the Evers’ administration and the board’s conservative majority appointed by Walker.
The DNR originally planned to hold a single hunt this fall after the Trump administration announced its decision to delist gray wolves across most of the country last year. Hunter Nation sued the DNR in February to force a hunt, and a Jefferson County judge ordered the agency to immediately hold a season, which it did.
Researchers and conservation groups have feared the February wolf hunt and the fall season could dramatically reduce the number of wolves and threaten the sustainability of the state’s population. A recent University of Wisconsin-Madison study concluded that hunters and poachers might have killed a third of the wolf's population since the animal's delisting.
Hunters, farmers, tribes and wolf advocates have been at odds over wolf management. Hunters say it’s their right to control a population that has grown from just 25 animals in 1980 to more than 1,100 wolves prior to the February wolf hunt. Farmers and hound owners have pointed to increasing conflicts between wolves, pets and livestock as the population has grown.
Wolf advocacy groups say the law doesn’t give the DNR discretion to properly manage the population.
Tribes and environmental and wildlife groups want the Biden administration to restore protections for the animal nationwide. The administration has defended the delisting as part of a lawsuit challenging the decision.
Gray wolves have been delisted multiple times in the Great Lakes region since 2007. Hunters killed 528 wolves during the three seasons a hunt was held in Wisconsin prior to a federal judge’s ruling that placed the animal back on the endangered species list in 2014.
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