Republican voter fraud JAMES O'KEEFE

 

FROM 2012:

James O'Keefe, the right-wing prankster who became famous for a doctored video that led to the downfall of ACORN, recently coordinated a stunt to obtain ballots in the New Hampshire primary using the names of dead people.

His goal was to prove that strict voter ID laws are necessary. However, what he and his associates did was illegal:

Hamline University law professor David Schultz told TPM that there’s “no doubt” that O’Keefe’s investigators violated the law.

“In either case, if they were intentionally going in and trying to fraudulently obtain a ballot, they violated the law,” Schultz said. “So right off the bat, what they did violated the law.”

O'Keefe and his co-conspirators were also incredibly insensitive:

Activist filmmaker James O’Keefe secretly recorded video showing his operative using Roger Groux’s name and address to obtain a Republican ballot at Manchester polls Tuesday. The U.S. Navy veteran died Dec. 31 at an assisted living home. His family held funeral services Monday, his widow said. “Oh my God, I know what he would say, ‘Call the cops, call the police,’ ” Rachel Groux said.

James O'Keefe has made a living using lies to ruin the lives of others. Now he should be investigated for a repulsive, open-and-shut case of voter fraud.

Sign the petition calling for an investigation of James O'Keefe. We are working with allies to deliver it the New Hampshire Attorney General next week.

Keep fighting,
Chris Bowers
Campaign Director, Daily Kos

RSN: James Loeffler | Charlottesville Was Only a Preview

 

  

27 December 21

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27 December 21

With 5 Days to Go in 2021, We’re In a Bit of Trouble

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Great people are helping and we deeply appreciate their efforts but we need to get going, we need a bigger push.

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27 December 21

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WITH 5 DAYS TO GO IN 2021, WE’RE IN A BIT OF TROUBLE — Normally our best chance to replenish depleted financial resources this year-end fundraiser is an uphill battle with little progress. Great people are helping and we deeply appreciate their efforts but we need to get going, we need a bigger push. Still only a small fraction of our readers have made a contribution. We need you now.
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James Loeffler | Charlottesville Was Only a Preview
James Loeffler, The Atlantic
Loeffler writes: "We have never had the national reckoning that we need over the events of August 2017."

We have never had the national reckoning that we need over the events of August 2017.

The roar was the first thing to reach Natalie Romero. “I just heard loudness, like thunder, as if the earth was growling,” the University of Virginia student later testified. Hundreds of white supremacists were marching toward her, their low dog barks alternating with rhythmic war chants: “Jews will not replace us.” “Blood and soil.” “White lives matter.” As she clutched a homemade protest banner, huddling with a small group of students around the base of a Thomas Jefferson statue, Romero feared for her life. A lit torch landed at her feet. A burst of mace hit her. “I felt like a mouse, trapped,” she said. “I felt like I’m about to be burned at the stake.”

The racist rage that enveloped Romero and other student counterprotesters on the night of August 11, 2017, erupted again the next morning in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. As white-supremacist groups convened for the “Unite the Right” rally in defense of the city’s Robert E. Lee statue, they marched defiantly into a diverse, boisterous crowd of counterprotesters composed of local clergy, students, activists, and townspeople. They used their flagpoles and riot shields to attack anyone they perceived to be a Jew or a Communist, or to be affiliated with antifa or Black Lives Matter. The rally was swiftly shut down by authorities, and the crowds began to disperse. Two blocks from the park, James Fields Jr., an alt-right foot soldier from Ohio, raced his Dodge Charger down a narrow street and directly into a crowd of people, including Romero, leaving Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, dead and several others severely injured.

Charlottesville that August offered a preview of the America that we would become: a country in which violently racist sloganeering freely mixes with absurd, carnival antics; a culture in which constitutional principles are treated as cudgels with which to crush political opponents; a society in which gun-toting extremists parade openly in the streets in search of enemies to strike, and then claim self-defense if anyone is injured; and an online ecosphere in which virtual hate escalates before spilling over into real-world terror. None of these nightmarish trends began that weekend, but Charlottesville propelled them into the heart of American public life. And then Donald Trump’s invocation of the “very fine people on both sides” ripped away one of the last remaining rhetorical guardrails separating Christian racial populism from liberal democracy.

Charlottesville’s greatest legacy, however, is its fracturing of a common set of truths. Our national conversation about race and religion has since devolved into a contest of warring slogans and dueling dates. Words fail us; we cannot even agree on the definitions of racism and anti-Semitism.

We have never had the national reckoning that we need over the events of August 2017. The closest we have come is the civil trial against the white-supremacist organizers, which concluded just before Thanksgiving. I spent a month inside the federal courthouse where that trial took place, just a mile down the road from the university where I teach Jewish history. What I heard and saw proved even more disturbing than I had anticipated. For it was not only white supremacy on trial in Charlottesville, but also the law itself, and its capacity to quarantine a virulent ideology from overwhelming our enfeebled, all-too-distracted democracy.

After four years of planning, four weeks of trial, 36 witnesses, and five terabytes of digital evidence, a Charlottesville jury found the defendants liable under Virginia law for an unlawful civil conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence. It awarded damages to the tune of some $26 million. The architects of the trial established an unassailable historical record of the moral trespass that occurred. Yet significant as they are, the verdicts represent only partial victory. The jury deadlocked on two federal conspiracy claims. The sum of the damages it did award will likely drop for technical reasons, and the money may not even be collectible from the defendants.

Of greater concern, however, is the deafening public silence surrounding the trial. Four years ago, Americans were transfixed by Charlottesville. This time around, they all but ignored it. Attention from national media outlets was surprisingly scant or, in the case of conservative outlets, practically nonexistent. Even the city of Charlottesville itself seemed to pretend that the trial was not taking place. The fall college-football games attracted thousands of visitors each week. Meanwhile, the courthouse plaza remained almost completely empty of onlookers and protesters most days of the trial. A legal reckoning works only if society pays attention.

The U.S. Federal Courthouse for the Western District of Virginia is a squat, three-story red-brick building at the far west end of downtown Charlottesville’s pedestrian mall. The courthouse sits on land that once contained Vinegar Hill, a historically Black neighborhood razed in 1964. It is steps from Emancipation Park (still known as Lee Park in 2017, while the statue stood) and Congregation Beth Israel, the town’s historic synagogue. It is also less than a five-minute walk from Fourth Street, where shortly after noon on August 12, 2017, James Fields Jr. drove into the crowd of protesters.

Fields acted alone, but he was hardly a lone wolf. He left his native Ohio for Charlottesville to answer a specific call from the organized white-supremacist movement that had convened the event they officially named “Unite the Right” and privately referred to as the “Battle of Charlottesville.” The organizers had planned the event on a Discord server, where they discussed dress code, equipment, tactics, and theoretical questions such as the legality of driving through protesters on roadways. Yet the main men of the American far right—the alt-right ideologist Richard Spencer, the shock jock Christopher Cantwell, the neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach, and a passel of other leading neo-Confederates and white nationalists—fled Charlottesville after the rally and have never faced criminal prosecution for their role in organizing the event. (In 2018, Cantwell pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and battery for pepper-spraying counterprotesters.) The Trump Justice Department evinced no interest in federal hate-crimes prosecution.

What finally brought these men back to town and into a courtroom was a lawsuit filed by nine of their victims. The victims were represented by Roberta Kaplan, who argued the landmark 2013 Supreme Court marriage-equality case United States v. Windsor, and Karen Dunn, a former federal prosecutor, who together assembled a pro bono team of expert lawyers backed by a new legal nonprofit, Integrity First for America. The plaintiffs sued the “Unite the Right” organizers and their groups, 24 individuals and corporate entities all told, for monetary damages. Seven of the defendants simply refused to cooperate at all with the legal proceedings, leading to default judgments against them. That left 17 to face trial. They were represented by five different lawyers, except for Cantwell and Spencer, who acted pro se, or in their own defense.

On the opening day of the trial, Judge Norman Moon, an 85-year-old native Virginian appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton, laid out the question at the heart of the case: Did the defendants conspire to commit racially motivated violence at the “Unite the Right” rally? Under that heading, he explained to the jurors, the lawsuit grouped a variety of violations of Virginia’s civil-conspiracy and hate-crimes statutes, including assault, battery, intimidation, harassment, and other forms of violence “motivated by racial, religious, or ethnic animosity.” Two more claims were directed specifically at Fields for intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault and battery.

The legal threshold for establishing a civil conspiracy is quite low. The law requires evidence of only a single unlawful act, even if other behaviors and objectives were completely legal (such as a permitted public protest). Individual actions before, during, or after the events in question can be used to adduce intentions. Added to that, the standard of proof in a civil case is not the more familiar criminal-trial phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt” but rather a “preponderance of evidence,” defined as 51 percent favoring the plaintiff’s outcome.

However, torts constitute a double-edged sword. Tort claims allow victims to seek recompense for their personal injuries and mental harms. The costs of litigation and potential punitive damages can bankrupt extremist groups. Monetizing liability sends a huge signal, a proxy for guilt. But a civil suit reframes bodily violence as a property dispute between two equal parties. An uncollectible debt can further deflate the value of punishment. Either way, in the end, no one goes to prison.

To compensate for those potential limitations, the plaintiffs tried an ambitious legal gambit. They drew on the 1871 KKK Act—federal legislation passed after the Civil War to stop white-supremacist terror from disenfranchising newly emancipated Black Americans and derailing the democratic electoral process—adding to the lawsuit two federal claims of unlawful “conspiracy to commit racially-motivated violence” and “failure to stop [said] conspiracy” against “Black or Jewish individuals” and their supporters. A federal civil-conspiracy charge elevated the case to federal court. The move also increased the potential for public awareness and media interest.

Equally important, the federal claims made explicit the symbolic links between our own time and the historical moment when white supremacists embraced racial violence to terrorize Black freedmen and repel immigrants whom they believed to be racially inferior, including Jews from Eastern Europe. The 1870s also saw southern American cities and towns beginning to erect monuments honoring Confederate heroes and perpetuating the false narrative of the Lost Cause. One such statue, of Robert E. Lee, was commissioned in Charlottesville in 1917 and erected in 1924. In April 2017, after years of debate and a lawsuit, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the Lee statue, providing the pretext for the “Unite the Right” march four months later.

“We’re raising an army, my liege,” Jason Kessler texted Richard Spencer in early June 2017, adding, “For free speech, and the cracking of skulls if it comes to it.” A few weeks before, Kessler, a recent UVA grad and far-right provocateur, had begun reaching out to noted white-supremacist leaders across the country to get them to rally around the Lee statue. He proposed to “unite the right,” capitalizing on the new momentum the far right felt in the early months of the Trump administration.

The next steps are documented in a stunning archive of digital evidence compiled by the plaintiffs’ legal team—texts, Discord messages, Facebook exchanges, and emails—that reveals how Kessler, Spencer, and others conspired to bait their enemies into a physical confrontation similar to the one that had taken place in the spring at the “Battle of Berkeley,” where the Identity Evropa leader Nathan Damigo punched a female counterprotester in the face. The spectacle of street violence, with the enemy drawn out and then smashed in a triumphant display of white power, was a core goal of the Charlottesville gathering. The months of planning included discussions of such violence, communications strategies, plans for enticing antifa to appear, and endless racist and anti-Semitic rants and memes.

The online talk also included crude juvenile boasts, edgy jokes, and bizarre fantasy scenarios. At the trial, the defendants insisted that this online invective bore no relationship to real-world violence. They had never conspired to do more than show up and speak at a rally. They had aimed to provoke outrage, not violence. It was their political enemies who had responded ferociously; they acted only in self-defense. Their humor was taken out of context, its import exaggerated. Holocaust jokes about gassing “kikes” were a far cry from pepper-spraying counterprotesters. Online fantasies of racial warfare hardly equaled street scrums and body blows with riot shields.

Beyond simply proving the existence of an unlawful conspiracy, the plaintiffs’ lawyers worked hard to overcome the defendants’ argument and expose their fundamental duplicity and deceit. To do so, the lawyers returned time and again to gaps between the defendants’ pretrial depositions and cross-examination testimony on the stand, snatches of online dialogue that suggested awareness of real-world plans, and the underlying ideology of genocidal extermination. The result was a damning portrait of the ugly innards of the American far right.

There were moments when the lawyers caught the defendants in obvious lies. When Spencer spoke of his lofty views on global politics and claimed that his philosophical sincerity proscribed political violence and verbal disparagement of his opponents, they countered with footage of him on the night of August 13 in which he is heard wildly screaming about his anger at “fucking kikes” and “fucking octoroons,” the latter once enslaved by his ancestors, and his desire to return to Charlottesville for more confrontation. “This, ladies and gentlemen,” Dunn remarked, “is the real Richard Spencer.” Most of the time, however, the defendants simply weaved and dodged in response to cross-examination, admitting their prejudices while disclaiming the seriousness of their online rhetoric.

There is something both noble and tragic about these efforts to reveal the true face of white supremacy. Noble because calmly discussing racism and anti-Semitism with racists and anti-Semites is hard, painful work, even in the placid confines of a courtroom. Tragic because doing so reflects the great liberal faith in the power of honesty. If you just expose the lies and hatred, then eventually the liars and haters will come clean about their intentions. Yet the law is supremely challenged by a postmodern racist ideology that deliberately blurs the line between fact and fiction.

In that regard, arguably the trial’s most important line arrived on the 17th day, during the witness testimony by Samantha Froelich, the former girlfriend of the defendant Eli Kline. When she was initiated into the movement, she recalled being told: “Welcome to the alt-right, where the Holocaust never happened and we want it to happen again.” That quote perfectly captures the strangeness of the danger that appeared in Charlottesville four years ago, and the difficulty in reckoning with it in a court of law. The architects of Charlottesville openly espoused genocidal fantasies, yet they also gleefully dissolved the line between role-playing and incitement. Part of this reflects a strategy of desensitization and deception. As the style guide of The Daily Stormer, a white-supremacist website for which many of the defendants wrote, counsels its writers, they should express themselves so that people “can’t know whether we’re joking or not.” Sometimes even the members of the alt-right who are speaking don’t know either. That, too, is the point. Contemporary white supremacists have turned paradox into operating principle, creating a world in which everything can be plausibly denied because nothing is genuine—until suddenly it becomes all too real.

What kind of reckoning, then, did the Charlottesville trial provide? As the verdicts rolled in, audible gasps greeted the announcement of the large damages awarded. Yet observers immediately spotted the wrinkles. The jury awarded $1 each to seven plaintiffs on the charge of violating Virginia conspiracy law, and $0 to two plaintiffs in terms of compensatory damages—for actual harms suffered—but then several million more for punitive damages, intended to punish outrageous conduct and deter other offenders. Yet because of a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that requires a narrow ratio between punitive and compensatory damages, the discrepancy may very well lead to a drastic reduction in the awards.

More puzzling was the jury’s decision to find for the plaintiffs on the state claims but deadlock on the two similar federal civil-conspiracy claims. Why did the jury find liability for racially motivated violence under state law but not federal law? Perhaps it found the statutes confusing, or insisted on a higher level of proof for the federal claims. Perhaps it reached a point of mental exhaustion or internal division, and compromised on a mixed verdict. Perhaps it wished to send some message; perhaps not.

Whatever the jury’s reasons, its decision highlights the sense of a necessary but incomplete victory. The trial is not over. It’s not over because the plaintiffs must still collect the money and may never do so. It’s not over because they have the option to refile the federal civil claims and may yet do so. It’s not over because the transcript and the exhibits remain under court seal, yet to be released as promised. Most of all, it is not over because America has not yet embraced the significance of Charlottesville, for what it represents and what we have become.

At the end of many trial days, those exiting the courthouse were confronted by a single person standing alone, clutching a small protest sign, in the November darkness. It was Rabbi Tom Gutherz of the local synagogue. His lonely vigil was a poignant reminder of how shockingly little attention the town was paying to the trial. Each day, Richard Spencer strolled up and down the downtown mall, retracing his fateful steps during the court’s lunch hour, as life went on around him. Tourists and office workers paid him no heed. If even a single one of the 22,000 students at UVA bothered to visit the courthouse plaza, I did not see them.

Charlottesville was evidently preoccupied with other dramas, such as the turmoil in local government involving the acrimonious departures of the mayor, the police chief, and the city manager. Perhaps apathy and exhaustion kept local activists at home. The fact that Judge Moon had closed the courtroom because of the pandemic surely also had an effect, especially in terms of media coverage.

Or perhaps, just like the rest of America, the people of Charlottesville were more transfixed by the other race-related-murder trials happening in Wisconsin and Georgia. The murderer in Charlottesville, after all, is already serving 30 life sentences for his crime. So much has happened since August 2017: police shootings, street protests and riots, political insurrection. Or maybe what riveted and horrified a nation in 2017 no longer seems all that remarkable. One of the attorneys defending the white supremacists told reporters that he deliberately repeated the word kike in his questioning in order to drain it of any shock value for the jurors. Perhaps the events of Charlottesville themselves have been normalized in the intervening years.

Yet that is precisely why Charlottesville matters. Four years on, the white-supremacist ideologues may have suffered a variety of personal setbacks, organizational failures, and legal struggles. But their ideas have successfully migrated into the mainstream in many obvious ways: the open talk of racial demography and threats to white existence in the conservative media. The moral panic about esoteric legal theories as evidence of a full-blown reverse racism sweeping the land. The frightening demand for a single American religion, Christianity, to replace the creeping atheism blamed on Jews and Communists. The winking calls for violence against political opponents, all too often racial or religious minorities, coupled with the “just joking” defense. The willful desensitization to the malice of hate speech. The skyrocketing FBI statistics about white-supremacist threats and actual episodes of violence. Above all, the unmistakable outlines of January 6, 2021, in the debris of August 11 and 12, 2017.

During the trial, Natalie Romero and the eight other plaintiffs each took the stand to testify about their injuries and experiences. More than one was asked about their motivations for joining the lawsuit. When April Muñiz, a 48-year-old Mexican American Charlottesville resident, began to explain her desire for justice and accountability, Moon quickly cut her off: “It’s not proper to come in and say you have some greater plan than the lawsuit itself.” As a point of law, he was correct. But his remark also reminds us that a trial can provide only a portion of the moral accountability involved in a reckoning. The rest must come from outside, in the work of listening, recording, and remembering.

Justice depends as much on a common public narrative as it does on the pursuit of truth and the authority of the law. We focus so much these days on the distant historical past, on debates about the American founding as an explanation for our present ills. Or we peer anxiously ahead to the elections soon to come. Yet until we can agree on a common understanding of our recent past, we have little hope of repairing our troubled present.

In his final jury instructions, Moon reiterated a theme he had offered at the outset of the trial: “Remember, at all times you are not partisans. You are judges—judges of the facts. Your sole interest is to seek the truth from the evidence of the case.” No words better convey the American faith in the law, and the crucial element of public trust. Law can fix truth, but it cannot do so by itself. The courts will not save us from ourselves, because ultimately, we are the guardians of our own justice. In this perilous moment, we must have the courage to judge ourselves honestly, and completely.

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Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall. His department patrols an area of California three times the size of Rhode Island with less than two dozen deputies. (photo: USA Today)

Marijuana Wars: Violent Mexican Drug Cartels Turn Northern California Into 'The Wild West'
Beth Warren, USA Today
Warren writes: "Mexican drug cartels are muscling in on America's burgeoning multi-billion-dollar marijuana industry, illegally growing large crops in the hills and valleys of Northern California."
READ MORE

People arrive for work at the Amazon distribution center in the Staten Island borough of New York, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. (photo: Craig Ruttle/AP)

Amazon Unionization Efforts Get a Boost Under a Settlement With US Labor Board
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Under pressure to improve worker rights, Amazon has reached a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board to allow its employees to freely organize - and without retaliation."

Under pressure to improve worker rights, Amazon has reached a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board to allow its employees to freely organize — and without retaliation.

According to the settlement, the online behemoth Amazon said it would reach out to its warehouse workers — former and current — via email who were on the job anytime from March 22 to now to notify them of their organizing rights. The settlement outlines that Amazon workers, which number 750,000 in the U.S., have more room to organize within the buildings. For example, Amazon pledged it will not threaten workers with discipline or call the police when they are engaging in union activity in exterior non-work areas during non-work time.

According to the terms of the settlement, the labor board will be able to more easily sue Amazon— without going through a laborious process of administrative hearings — if it found that the online company reneged on its agreement.

"Whether a company has 10 employees or a million employees, it must abide by the National Labor Relations Act," said NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, in a statement. "This settlement agreement provides a crucial commitment from Amazon to millions of its workers across the United States that it will not interfere with their right to act collectively to improve their workplace by forming a union or taking other collective action."

She added that "working people should know that the National Labor Relations Board will vigorously seek to ensure Amazon's compliance with the settlement and continue to defend the labor rights of all workers."

Amazon.com Inc., based in Seattle, couldn't be reached immediately for comment.

A labor scholar says the settlement is a big step by Amazon

Kent Wong, the director of the UCLA Labor Center, called the settlement "unprecedented" and said it represents a sea change in attitude at Amazon, which is known to deploy fierce measures against union activity at its warehouses.

"Amazon has been very consistent in holding a strong anti-union position, " Wong said. "This opens up a new opportunities for unionization there as well as at other companies."

Wong noted that the settlement comes as Amazon, the nation's second-largest private employer after Walmart, is on a hiring binge while facing organizing efforts at warehouses in Alabama and New York.

In November, the labor board ordered a new union election for Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, based on objections to the first vote that took place in April. The move was a blow to Amazon, which spent about a year aggressively campaigning for the Bessemer warehouse workers to reject the union, which they ultimately did by a wide margin. The board had not yet determined the date for the second election, and it hasn't determined whether it will be conducted in person or by mail.

The campaign is being spearheaded by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Amazon Labor Union, an independent group representing workers in New York's Staten Island borough, refiled its petition for a union election. The group of workers withdrew its first petition in mid-November to hold a vote to unionize after falling behind the adequate number of workers pledging support. Former Amazon employee Christian Smalls is organizing the effort in Staten Island without the help of a national sponsor.

The organizing drive is also happening during a moment of reckoning across Corporate America as the pandemic and ensuing labor shortage has given employees more leverage to fight for better working conditions and pay. Workers have staged strikes at Kellogg's U.S. cereal plants as well as at Deere & Co., to name a few.

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President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden took calls to the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Christmas Eve. (photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

The 'Let's Go Brandon' Oregonian, a New York Judge and the True Meaning of the First Amendment
Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post
Marcus writes: "This is the time of year for talk about the true meaning of Christmas. This year, it seems, we need to talk a bit about the true meaning of the First Amendment as well."

This is the time of year for talk about the true meaning of Christmas. This year, it seems, we need to talk a bit about the true meaning of the First Amendment as well.

Two otherwise unconnected Christmas week episodes bring freedom of speech to the forefront. First, an Oregon man, Jared Schmeck, who insulted President Biden on a Christmas call with the president and then complained that he was being attacked for exercising “my God-given right to express my frustrations in a joking manner.”

Next, a New York state judge, Charles D. Wood, who not only kept in place his blatantly unlawful prior restraint against the New York Times for publishing documents obtained from Project Veritas but also ordered the newspaper to turn over physical copies and destroy any electronic versions of the material.

Let me exercise my Constitution-given right to express my frustrations to suggest that neither individual understands the first thing about the First Amendment.

Schmeck had every legal right, as he says, to be rude to the president while he and the first lady were answering calls to NORAD’s Santa tracking center. Schmeck ended the call with “Merry Christmas and ‘Let’s Go Brandon’” — then insisted he meant “no disrespect” by the obviously disrespectful phrase, whose meaning no longer requires elucidation.

Here we get to the meaning of the First Amendment. It means that here, unlike in authoritarian countries, Schmeck not only has the right to say what he wants about the president, he also can say it directly to him, without fear of being jailed, being fined or being punished by the government in any way.

His freedom of speech is near absolute — just like that of the person who burns an American flag or wears a jacket emblazoned with “F--- the Draft” into a courthouse. No one can punish him — not in America. (At least not yet; see, for example, Donald Trump’s threat to “open up our libel laws.”)

But it is also fair game for others to criticize Schmeck for what he said. “I am being attacked for utilizing my freedom of speech,” Schmeck complained, utilizing his freedom of speech. Wrong. He is being attacked for being out of line, and while incivility is constitutionally protected, it is not immune from public criticism. “The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence,” Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in a famous dissent.

Enforced silence brings us to the even more dangerous — and even more ignorant — event of the past week: Wood’s order against the Times. The law here could not be clearer: Nothing is more repugnant to the First Amendment than telling a news organization what it can and can’t publish.

The Supreme Court underscored that principle in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co. v. United States, in which the government sought to prevent the Times and The Post from printing classified documents. “These disclosures may have a serious impact,” Justice Hugo Black wrote in rejecting that effort. “But that is no basis for sanctioning a previous restraint on the press.”

Now comes Justice Wood, who, it is safe to say, is no Justice Black. His ruling came in a libel suit filed against the Times by Project Veritas, the conservative group that runs sting operations to expose alleged liberal bias in various institutions, including the mainstream news media.

The Justice Department is separately investigating the possible theft of a diary belonging to President Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden; the diary ended up in the possession of Project Veritas, which didn’t publish the material and offered to return it. The Times, in the course of reporting on that probe, published quotes from memos prepared by a Project Veritas lawyer.

Although the memos were prepared years before the libel suit was filed and were not obtained in conjunction with the case, Wood last month ordered the Times not to publish any additional material from them. In the latest order, which the paper has said it will appeal, he reaffirmed that ruling and further instructed that the Times surrender the disputed material.

The opinion is jaw-dropping in its constitutional illiteracy. Project Veritas has aggressively inserted itself into the political debate; its operations are a legitimate topic for news coverage, yet Wood found that the Times’s reporting on the group’s legal strategy is not a matter of “public concern.” He also determined that Project Veritas had adequately shown that the memos were “obtained by irregular means” — what those of us in the news business generally call reporting.

“[S]ome things are not fodder for public consideration and consumption,” Wood wrote. “A client seeking advice from its counsel simply cannot be a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public. It is not the public’s business to be privy to the legal advice that this plaintiff or any other client receives from its counsel.”

And: “As important as the First Amendment’s protection against prior restraint is, on the present facts, the erosion of the attorney-client privilege is a far more imminent concern.”

No, a thousand times no. The essence of the Supreme Court’s teachings on the dangers of prior restraint is that it is not up to judges to determine in advance what is newsworthy. If the Times obtained internal memos, it is as entitled to publish them as it was to publish the classified material in the Pentagon Papers.

Schmeck at least has the defense of not having attended law school. Let us hope that a higher court will soon educate Wood in the meaning of the document he is sworn to uphold.

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People receive information as they attend a job fair in Inglewood, California, in September. (photo: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)

Black Americans Continue to See Higher Jobless Rate Despite Market Recovery
Lauren Aratani, Guardian UK
Aratani writes: "Even as economists celebrated a job market recovery seen from the beginning of the pandemic, when unemployment peaked at 14.8%, to November when unemployment was 4.2%, Black Americans have continued to see a much higher jobless rate."

Black Americans had 6.7% unemployment rate in November as economists unsurprised by disparity

Even as economists celebrated a job market recovery seen from the beginning of the pandemic, when unemployment peaked at 14.8%, to November when unemployment was 4.2%, Black Americans have continued to see a much higher jobless rate.In November, Black Americans had an unemployment rate of 6.7%, while the unemployment rate for white Americans was 3.5%. The gap is even more pronounced between men: Black men had an unemployment rate of 7.3% in November while white men saw an unemployment rate of 3.4%.

That this disparity has continued over the course of the pandemic is unsurprising to economists who have long paid attention to the racial gap in unemployment numbers.

Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, said that occupational segregation has meant that Black Americans were less likely to be able to work remotely amid lockdown orders. Many Black workers were given the choice of keeping jobs where they faced greater risks or deciding that the risk was not worth it.

“The two-to-one [disparity] has still been pretty consistent, and I think that says a lot to just how deeply entrenched those labor market inequalities are,” Willson said.

Black Americans have long faced discrimination in hiring processes. One study from 2017 showed that Black Americans who remove references to their race on their resumes are twice more likely to get interviews. The unemployment rate is even consistent across educational levels, with the unemployment rates of Black Americans who have a high school or bachelor’s degree being twice that of White Americans who hold the same degree.

Though many companies promised to reevaluate their hiring processes and focus on diverse recruitment following the massive protests after the murder of George Floyd in summer 2020, the racial gap in the unemployment rate still managed to stick. Other figures show that little progress has been made: There are just five Black CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies, and Black full-time workers are still making more than 20% less than white full-time workers.

Even the gains that Black Americans have seen in employment numbers come with caveats. In November, the unemployment rate for Black women jumped 2%, from 7% to 5% – the largest decrease for any group. While the number reflects Black women starting jobs, it also reflects tens of thousands of women who left the workforce last month, more than 90,000, according to government figures. Even while moms across the board have faced problems with childcare during the pandemic, research has shown that Black mothers in particular have faced the toughest childcare issues during the pandemic.

Wilson said there are multiple policies that need to be in place to address the unemployment rate gap but noted the complacency policymakers seem to have with the two-to-one disparity between the Black and White unemployment rates.

“Part of the challenge and difficulty in addressing it is that it sort of becomes normalized, like ‘Oh, OK – that’s just how it works’, without us actually sort of questioning and interrogating the way that we understand those disparities,” Wilson said.

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The government has enlisted the volunteer militiamen to help the army. (photo: Olympia De Maismont/AFP)

41 Killed in Attack by Armed Groups in Burkina Faso
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Dozens of people have been killed in an attack by armed groups in Burkina Faso's troubled north."

Government says the dead included members of a gov’t-backed civilian self-defence force set up to support the army.

Dozens of people have been killed in an attack by armed groups in Burkina Faso’s troubled north.

The government announced that 41 people had died in the attack that took place on Thursday.

In a statement released late on Saturday, the government said the dead included members of a government-backed civilian self-defence force known as the Volunteers for the Defence of the Motherland (VDP), set up to support the army.

According to local media, the ambush targeted a convoy of traders escorted by VDP near Ouahigouya, a town not far from the Mali border.

Among the victims was Ladji Yoro, considered a leader of the VDP in Burkina Faso, the government said, adding that the identification of the victims was still under way.

Armed groups have driven religious and ethnic tensions between farming and herding communities in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to boost recruitment among marginalised communities.

Saturday’s attack was the deadliest since mid-November when 57 people, including 53 gendarmes, were killed in an attack on a gendarmerie post.

Burkina Faso’s ill-equipped army has struggled to contain the spread of violence.

Last year, the government enlisted the help of volunteer militiamen to help the army but they have incurred retaliation by the rebels who attack them and the communities they help.

At least 2,000 people have been killed in the fighting and 1.4 million displaced.

Burkina Faso is also facing a political vacuum in the face of the escalating security crisis.

Anger at the security situation has spilled over since the attack in November, leading to street protests. The public was also enraged by news that the troops had gone two weeks without food rations.

Last week, UN agencies said the worsening violence in the wider Sahel region has led to one of the world’s most acute humanitarian crises.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso & MAP

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Joe Biden. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Joe Biden's 2021 Climate Report Card
Brian Kahn and Molly Taft, Gizmodo
Excerpt: "When elected, Joe Biden promised an 'all of government' approach to address the climate crisis. The grades are in for his first year."

When elected, Joe Biden promised an "all of government" approach to address the climate crisis. The grades are in for his first year.

We’re nearly a year into the Joe Biden presidency, a presidency the man himself declared would be devoted to combatting climate change. He arrived in office at the start of a critical decade, and the Biden years will play a major role in shaping it.

Biden started the Democratic primaries with one of the weakest climate plans before strengthening it after activists pushed him. Still, whether he, even with full control of Congress, could deliver meaningful climate policies was an open question. Nearly a year later, we have some answers.

The president alone doesn’t hold all the cards to address climate change in the U.S., let alone the world. The Republican party and fossil fuel industry have thrown their full weight behind ensuring Biden has as little help as possible. But the occupant of the White House and the federal agencies they oversee have an enormous amount of power to shape the response to the crisis we face. With that in mind, Earther has put together a report card to gauge if Biden has delivered on his “all of government” promise to fix the world’s most pressing problem. And we’re not grading on a curve because physics doesn’t believe in grade inflation.

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RSN: Robert Reich | You Want to Know a Really Dirty Secret? Here's Why Democrats Are Protecting Private Equity's "Carried Interest" Loophole

 

 

27 December 21

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We are down but not out. As bad as it looks right now, we absolutely positively can do this if we get on a roll.

The key is “you,” not someone else.

Donate folks, we are running out of time.

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26 December 21

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WE NEED A SUSTAINING-MATCHING DONATION — Right now it’s all small donations. Those work when there are a few larger sustaining donations to match them. It’s the match that’s missing this December. With respect, who can?
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News

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Robert Reich | You Want to Know a Really Dirty Secret? Here's Why Democrats Are Protecting Private Equity's "Carried Interest" Loophole
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "Well, if Democrats are willing to take another stab at tax reform, I've got just the candidate: Get rid of the 'carried interest' loophole that lets private equity managers - among the wealthiest people in America - pay a tax rate lower than most Americans."

Democrats must close it. Now's the time.

Democrats still hope they can salvage pieces of their ambitious tax agenda even after Sen. Joe Manchin blew up the legislation that included it. I’m sick of trying to fathom Manchin’s mind or motives but senate Democrats think he’s sincere about tax reform. In a Monday interview on a West Virginia radio station, Manchin pointedly said that ensuring people pay “their fair share” of taxes is the main reason he’s come this far in negotiations. “You have a chance to fix the tax code that makes it fair and equitable.”

Well, if Democrats are willing to take another stab at tax reform, I’ve got just the candidate: Get rid of the “carried interest” loophole that lets private equity managers – among the wealthiest people in America – pay a tax rate lower than most Americans. The “carried interest” loophole is huge, and it’s a pure scam. Private equity managers get this tax break even though they invest other peoples’ money. They don’t risk a penny of their own.

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all promised to get rid of it. They didn’t.

Hell, even Donald Trump promised to get rid of it. He didn’t, either. “I don’t know what happened,” said Larry Kudlow, the conservative economist who crafted Trump’s tax plan. “I don’t know how that thing survived,” he said, adding, “I’m sure the lobbying was intense.”

You’d think that the carried interest loophole would be high on the Democrats’ list of revenue-raisers. After all, closing it could raise $180 billion over the next decade from among the richest Americans. That’s $180 billion that could go toward supporting vulnerable Americans and investing in America’s future.

Think again. The loophole – which treats the earnings of private equity and hedge-fund managers as capital gains, taxed at a top rate of just 20 percent, instead of personal income, whose top tax rate is 37 percent – remains as big as ever. Bigger.

Astonishingly, some influential Democrats, such as House Ways and Means Committee chair Richard Neal, defend the loophole. They say closing it would hobble the private equity industry, and, by extension, the US economy.

This is pure rubbish. In fact, private equity firms generate huge social costs. They buy companies they see as ripe for “turnarounds” – a polite way of saying that once they buy these companies they’ll cut wages, outsource jobs, strip assets, and then resell what’s left, often laden with debt.

Look no further than the strike by Alabama’s Warrior Met Coal mineworkers that’s been underway since April 1st. Warrior Met is owned by a group of private equity firms led by New York-based Apollo Global Management. Mineworkers gave up their pension plan, retiree health care and wages to make Warrior Met’s mines mines profitable, as Apollo and other private equity investors siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves in special cash dividends.

Since the pandemic began, private equity has been using the flood of cheap money to buy companies at a record pace, and then squeeze them (and their workers) dry. 2021 has been private equity’s biggest ever — reaching a record $1.1 trillion in deals.

So why are Democrats subsidizing private equity’s predatory behavior with this tax loophole? How did the loophole survive the Clinton and Obama administrations when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress? Why isn’t it even on the current list of tax reforms Democrats went to use to pay for the Build Back Better package, if they can resurrect it in January?

What’s the dirty secret?

“This is a loophole that absolutely should be closed,” said Biden adviser Jared Bernstein. But “when you go up to Capitol Hill and you start negotiating on taxes, there are more lobbyists in this town on taxes than there are members of Congress.”

Last year 4,108 individual lobbyists formally registered to lobby Congress and the executive branch on taxes. The private equity industry alone has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to congressional campaigns – $600 million over the past decade, according to a New York Times analysis earlier this year.

But here’s the thing. Most of these campaign contributions (bribes) have gone to Democrats. Nearly 60 percent of campaign donations from partners in the private equity industry during the 2020 election went to Democratic candidates for federal office. During the 2020 election, Biden’s presidential campaign received over $3 million from people working in private equity and related investment funds, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Biden was the top recipient of campaign money from this industry.

The dirty secret is Democrats have depended on campaign funding from private-equity partners — hugely wealthy people who are shafting workers across the land. Back in 2010, some courageous House Democrats squeaked through a tax plan that closed the loophole, but Democrats who controlled the Senate wouldn’t go along. Senator Charles Schumer was among those who argued against closing it. The United States, he said, “should not do anything” to “make it easier for capital and ideas to flow to London or anywhere else.” Oh, please. As if Wall Street needed billions in annual bribes to stay put.

When I publicly criticized Schumer for this, he explained to me that he didn’t think it fair to close the loophole for private equity and hedge fund partners but to leave it in place for other partnerships, such as housing developers.

Well, one person’s view of fairness may differ from another’s. But I don’t think there’s any question that the carried interest loophole is unfair to everyone except the fabulously rich who benefit from it.

Democrats must close this loophole. Now.

Your thoughts?

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James O'Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

New York Times Must Surrender Project Veritas Memos, Judge Rules
Associated Press
Excerpt: "A New York judge has upheld an order preventing the New York Times from publishing documents between conservative group Project Veritas and its lawyer and ruled that the newspaper must immediately relinquish confidential legal memos it obtained."

Conservative group accused newspaper of violating attorney-client privilege after legal memos were obtained

A New York judge has upheld an order preventing the New York Times from publishing documents between conservative group Project Veritas and its lawyer and ruled that the newspaper must immediately relinquish confidential legal memos it obtained.

The decision Thursday by state supreme court justice Charles D Wood in Westchester county, released Friday, comes in a defamation lawsuit Project Veritas filed against the Times in 2020.

Months after the lawsuit was filed, the newspaper reported that the justice department was investigating Project Veritas in connection with the theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter.

In that story, the Times quoted the memos, leading Project Veritas to accuse the newspaper of violating attorney-client privilege.

Wood upheld his earlier order preventing the Times from further publishing the memos, and also ruled that the newspaper must turn over physical copies of the documents and destroy electronic versions.

The newspaper reported it would appeal the ruling and seek a stay in the meantime.

Publisher AG Sulzberger decried the ruling as an attack of press freedoms and alarming for “anyone concerned about the dangers of government overreach into what the public can and cannot know.” He also said it risked exposing sources.

“In defiance of law settled in the Pentagon Papers case, this judge has barred The Times from publishing information about a prominent and influential organization that was obtained legally in the ordinary course of reporting,” Sulzberger said in a statement reported by the Times that also asserted there was no precedent for Wood’s decision.

Project Veritas bills itself as a watchdog, often of media. It’s known for using hidden cameras and hiding identities to try to ensnare journalists in embarrassing conversations and to reveal supposed liberal bias.

In a statement Friday, Project Veritas lawyer Elizabeth Locke hailed the ruling as “a victory for the first amendment for all journalists and affirms the sanctity of the attorney-client relationship”.

Wood denied that the order endangered press freedoms, writing in his ruling that “steadfast fidelity to, and vigilance in protecting first amendment freedoms” can’t infringe on the fundamental rights of attorney-client privilege or privacy.

He wrote that while aspects of Project Veritas, including its journalistic methods, may be of public interest, its attorney-client communications are not.

News organizations, including the Associated Press, supported the Times and asked the court not to impose what they called an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech.

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January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol. (photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP

New January 6 Video Shows Three Hours of Violent and Chaotic Assault on Police
Holmes Lybrand and Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN
Excerpt: "The Justice Department this week released a three-hour video of a battle between rioters and the police at the US Capitol Building on January 6 where rioters brandished weapons, officers were viciously beaten, and a member of the mob died on Capitol steps." 

Three Hours Of U.S. Capitol Surveillance Video at the Tunnel from Jan. 6, 2021

The Justice Department this week released a three-hour video of a battle between rioters and the police at the US Capitol Building on January 6 where rioters brandished weapons, officers were viciously beaten, and a member of the mob died on Capitol steps.

The assault on the Lower West Terrace was one of the most violent confrontations between Capitol Police and the crowd. Officers held the line until the building was cleared without letting rioters inside. Some officers have since said they did not know the Capitol had already been breached in other areas.

The video, taken from a Capitol security camera, does not have sound. It starts as officers retreat, helping each other as they stumble inside and washing their eyes out with water from chemical spray. Rioters crowd in behind them, coordinate efforts to attack and push through in infamous moments that have haunted the public, and officers, ever since.

The Justice Department released the videos after CNN and other outlets sued for access. It is the longest video from the riot released by the government thus far.

The assault

Once rioters invaded the platform built for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, every officer on it retreated into the tunnel to make their stand, shooting projectiles at rioters as they begin to enter. Members of the crowd climbed on top of each other, swinging fists and poles at the police. Brawls broke out throughout the assault, with rioters punching and kicking at officers on the front line.

Inside the tunnel, rioters pushed police further back, jabbing at them with flag poles and hitting them with a baton, spraying pepper spray, taking riot shields and crushing an officer in a door all while banging against the walls and cheering as they filmed the assault on their phones.

Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone was pulled out of the police line and into the crowd by a rioter who had his arm around his neck. The video shows Fanone eventually falling down and disappearing into the mass of rioters, where he said he was tased in the neck, beaten with a flagpole and heard rioters screaming "kill him with his own gun." Fanone said he suffered a heart attack and fell unconscious during the attack.

Police were able to push the rioters to the edge of the tunnel's entrance over half an hour into the assault, using pepper spray and their batons against the crowd. Still, after a long standoff with police, the rioters began a second attack on the line of officers.

At the entrance of the tunnel, rioter and QAnon supporter Rosanne Boyland lay on the ground. She had died of an accidental overdose, according to DC's chief medical examiner. Heeding her friends' call for help, prosecutors say two officers waded into the crowd to help Boyland.

The two officers were knocked down and dragged into the mob where they were viciously beaten with an upside-down American flag and other weapons. The attack landed one officer in the hospital with staples in his head to stop the bleeding, and the other with injuries to his face and shoulder according to court documents.

Weapons used by rioters

In the grueling attack, rioters not only used weapons but also whatever they could get their hands on to attack the police, jabbing them with metal poles, throwing furniture and an audio speaker, spraying a fire extinguisher and pepper spray, using crutches to hit the police, and assaulting the officers with fists and feet.

The rioters also used items taken from the police, including riot shields which they continued to pass up their ranks to push against the officers, and batons which they assaulted police with. At one point in the video, a person can be seen even throwing a firework at the line of officers.

Arrests

Prosecutors have arrested and charged dozens of rioters for their part in the grisly battle inside the Lower West Terrace tunnel.

Robert Morss, who prosecutors allege planned to start his own militia, is being held in jail until he faces trial after a judge slammed him for using his training as an Army Ranger to help organize and lead the mob inside the tunnel. Morss is charged with eight other men, including Patrick McCaughey, who was captured in a viral video crushing Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges in a door, and Federico Klein, a former Trump State Department official. All nine have pleaded not guilty.

Albuquerque Head, who allegedly dragged Fanone out into the crowd, has also been charged in the attack. So has Daniel Rodriguez, who prosecutors say tased Fanone in the neck. They, too, have pleaded not guilty.

Jeffrey Sabol, Jack Whitton and Ronald McAbee are part of an indictment with six other rioters who allegedly worked together to drag officers into the crowd. Whitton later boasted to friends, saying that "I fed him to the people," referring to the officer, according to court filings. They haven't yet entered a formal plea.

Two of the defendants who were part of the tunnel scene have already been sentenced. Devlyn Thompson, who admitted to throwing a speaker at police officers and hitting an officer in the hand with a baton, was sentenced to nearly four years in jail. Robert Palmer, who used a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole to attack police, was sentenced to more than five years in prison. Both pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon.

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Demonstrators holding signs protest outside Long Beach Convention Center to urge the release of immigrant children from ICE detention centers in Long Beach, California, on May 8. (photo: Ringo Chiu/AFP/Getty Images)

It's Only a Matter of Time Before Omicron Spreads Through Immigration Detention
Nicole Narea, Vox
Narea writes: "Immigrants in detention have been at heightened risk throughout the pandemic. They have been confined to environments where social distancing is impossible, at times without adequate prevention and sanitation measures and with limited access to vaccines and information about them."

Immigrants in ICE custody are already at high risk

Immigrants in detention have been at heightened risk throughout the pandemic. They have been confined to environments where social distancing is impossible, at times without adequate prevention and sanitation measures and with limited access to vaccines and information about them.

Now they’re even more vulnerable as the highly transmissible omicron has become the most common coronavirus variant in the US — and advocates say it’s another factor that adds to the already compelling case for releasing them from detention.

Since the outset of the pandemic, more than 31,000 cases of Covid-19 have been reported at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, with an infection rate more than three times as high as the overall US infection rate. Cases peaked in May 2021 at around 2,000 cases at a given time and have since declined to just under 300 active cases among 21,000 people in detention as of December 20. Some of the worst outbreaks have occurred in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia.

An ICE spokesperson told Vox that as of December 19, a total of 46,772 people in detention have received Covid-19 vaccinations. But it’s not clear what share of the detained population over time that number represents given that people are constantly being booked in and released. It’s also not clear what kind of vaccine those people have received and whether they have received one or two doses or a booster shot. (ICE does not release that information publicly and did not respond to a request for that data.) That makes it hard to measure the efficacy of the agency’s vaccination campaign.

Absent an aggressive vaccination and booster campaign and efforts to reduce the population in immigration detention, it’s only a matter of time before omicron spreads through ICE facilities.

“So many of the people who are being held are people who do not pose threats to their communities, were detained for nonviolent crimes, who have a lot of community support, who have all the kinds of mitigating factors that the Biden administration has said should be included in assessments around release,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, a senior campaign organizer with the immigrant rights organization Mijente. “With the surge of omicron, these mitigating factors should be weighed even more.”

ICE hasn’t had a coordinated national vaccination campaign

The ICE spokesperson said the agency provides information in numerous languages about the vaccine to people in detention during the intake process and prior to vaccination. There are also educational posters displayed in different languages around the facilities, they said.

“US Immigration and Customs Enforcement remains committed to applying CDC guidance and providing vaccine education that ensures those in our care and custody can make an informed choice during this global pandemic,” they added.

But lawyers representing immigrants in detention say that, in practice, access to vaccination and educational programs around the vaccine have varied widely across detention centers in the absence of a coordinated campaign from ICE headquarters. Some deliver presentations on the vaccines and have a doctor on-site to answer questions about them. Others print out flyers and others hand out copies of the fine-print medication package insert, which can be difficult for people to read if they don’t know English.

“We’ve litigated in dozens of detention facilities across the country. And it almost seems like each detention facility is coming up with their own educational materials and protocols for people in detention,” said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project.

It seems that vaccine access has improved since July, when some detention centers weren’t offering vaccination at all, Cho said. But even some medically vulnerable immigrants have fallen through the cracks.

That includes Israel Arrascue, a detainee at the Northwest Detention Center outside of Seattle. Gonzalez, who has been working with Arrascue’s family to push for his release, said that he has chronic asthma and has developed other health risk factors during his two years in detention, including prediabetes, high blood pressure, and hypertension. He did not receive the vaccine and contracted Covid-19 earlier this year, likely from a guard in the detention facility who refused to be vaccinated and tested positive. He has since suffered post-coronavirus complications, including gallstones, which required him to be hospitalized.

Access to booster shots also remains limited, even if a detained person affirmatively requests it. Cho said that in a recent NGO debrief with ICE and the staff of its health corps, an official admitted that the agency had no nationwide plan to identify detained people who are eligible for boosters, to offer boosters to all detainees, or to educate them about boosters.

That’s especially concerning given that ICE has relied heavily on the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is significantly less effective than the two-dose vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. As of October 21, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started recommending booster shots for all people who received the J&J vaccine just two months after the initial shot, compared to six months for the other vaccines. That means there are likely many detainees who are eligible for a booster but may never have been offered one.

Cho said that in some facilities, detainees have reported asking for boosters, but they have been told that none are available or they would have to wait until a certain number of people requested them in order for them to be administered. Others have not responded with a plan to administer them at all. And some detainees don’t even know what a booster shot is or why they should get it.

“ICE has no coordinated strategy to ensure that detained people can receive COVID-19 booster shots, despite urgent need and ample notice,” the ACLU wrote in a letter to ICE on December 15. “ICE’s inadequate provision of COVID-19 vaccines, including its clear failure to administer booster doses, endangers the health and safety of detained people, in continued violation of their constitutional rights.”

Advocates are demanding that the Biden administration release more immigrants

The population of immigrants in detention has grown about 45 percent since President Joe Biden took office. That has made it difficult for detention centers to enforce social distancing measures. And until every immigrant in detention who wants the vaccine and a booster can get it, they will be at risk.

The ICE spokesperson said that the agency continues to evaluate its detained population based on the CDC’s guidance for people who might be at higher risk for severe illness from Covid-19 to determine whether they should be released. The agency has also recently unveiled new immigration enforcement priorities that focus on detaining people who pose a threat to “national security, public safety, and border security.”

Those new priorities outline a slew of mitigating factors that might justify an immigrant’s release, including whether they have lived in the US for a long time, whether they have health conditions requiring treatment, and the potential impact on their family in the US. But in practice, few have been released from detention under the policy so far.

In Arrascue’s case, he committed a nonviolent crime, suggesting that he isn’t a risk to public safety, and was sentenced to serve two months. He was then transferred to ICE custody to await deportation proceedings, where his family, including his teenage daughter, has not been allowed to visit him for two years due to the pandemic. Despite all of that and his myriad health risks, ICE denied his request for release on December 10.

At the same time, the Biden administration continues to fight a court order that required it to release detainees at high risk of complications from Covid-19, suggesting that it has no intention of releasing immigrants en masse. In fact, it has recently opened a new 1,800-bed facility in Moshannon, Pennsylvania, and intends to expand capacity at its Folkston ICE Processing Center in southern Georgia.

“The truth is, there are many opportunities for [Biden] to release people, but instead, they’re really doubling down on detention right now,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, which advocates for the abolition of immigration detention. “They have full discretion to release all of these individuals.”

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Wally Korona and Gail Korona join protesters in April, in Great Falls, Mont., objecting to a health-care system's requirement that workers get coronavirus shots. (photo: Nora Mabie/Great Falls Tribune/USA Today)

Anger Over Mask Mandates, Other COVID Rules, Spurs States to Curb Power of Public Health Officials
Amy Goldstein, The Washington Post
Goldstein writes: "Under a new law in Ohio - one of at least 19 states this year that have restricted state or local authorities from safeguarding public health amid the coronavirus pandemic - Franklin County's health commissioner Joe Mazzola can no longer intervene."

Republican lawmakers pass laws to restrict the power of health authorities to require masks, promote vaccinations and take other steps to protect the public health.

At the entrance to the Lowe’s in a central Ohio strip mall, a bright blue-and-white sign tells customers that, under local ordinances, they must wear a face covering inside. Next door, at Hale’s Ales & Kitchen, a sign asks customers to please be patient with a staff shortage — with no mention of masks.

The city line between Columbus and suburban Hilliard crosses right through the strip mall, Mill Run Square. In Columbus, where the Lowe’s Home Improvement Store lies, the city council early in the coronavirus pandemic created a mask requirement that remains in place. In Hilliard, where Hales is located, the city council has not imposed a mask rule, despite entreaties from the top county health official as coronavirus cases spiked.

Under a new law in Ohio — one of at least 19 states this year that have restricted state or local authorities from safeguarding public health amid the coronavirus pandemic — Franklin County’s health commissioner Joe Mazzola can no longer intervene. The county health department was stripped of its power to compel people to wear masks even as the omicron variant fuels a fifth coronavirus surge in the United States.

“We’ve not been able to put in place the policy that would protect our community,” Mazzola said.

The number of states that have passed laws similar to Ohio’s is proliferating fast, from eight identified in one study in May to more than double that many as of last month, according to an analysis by Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Research. And around the country, many more measures are being debated or being prepared for legislative sessions to start early in the new year.

These laws — the work of Republican legislators — inhibit health officers’ ability to require masks, promote vaccinations or take other steps, such as closing or limiting the number of patrons in restaurants, bars and other indoor public settings. Often, the measures shift those decisions from health experts to elected officials at a time when such coronavirus-fighting strategies have become politically radioactive.

A new Indiana law gives city councils and county commissions power to overrule local health officials if their efforts to tame the pandemic are more stringent than rules in effect statewide. Tennessee lawmakers have taken away health officials’ ability to decide whether public schools should be closed in an emergency, giving that authority to school boards while also allowing the governor to order all schools to teach students in person.

And in Arkansas, a statute forbids any state or local official from compelling masks. As the delta variant was racing around in August, the state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, said he regretted the measure and summoned legislators into a special session to rethink it. The law stayed in place.

Conservatives frame this wave of legislating as a matter of individual liberties. Ohio state Sen. Terry Johnson (R), one of the main sponsors of that state’s new law, said last spring that its purpose is “restoring reasonable checks and balances” and “giving the people of Ohio a voice in matters of public health.”

Over the decades, critics have sought to persuade lawmakers to soften or remove safety measures, such as tobacco regulations, or requirements to wear seat belts or motorcycle helmets.

“But for them to go after the basis of public health authority is pretty new,” said Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

Health officials say the new laws, targeted at coronavirus-fighting strategies, often carry unintended consequences stretching far beyond the pandemic to thwart health departments'’ longtime roles, such as maintaining food safety.

The Ohio law, Senate Bill 22, slows health department’s ability to shut down a restaurant to protect customers from a foodborne disease outbreak, several health commissioners there said. Officials now can issue an order only after a person who ate there gets a documented diagnosis of such an illness — not simply after health inspectors discover unsanitary conditions.

Researchers and health officials also predict such laws will get in the way of dealing with future health crises of unforeseen origin. But as the coronavirus pandemic persists, with omicron having arrived as the most transmissible variant so far, the laws’ impact already is clear.

In May, Montana, which has several new statutes narrowing health officials’ powers, became the first state to prohibit discrimination based on vaccination status. It applies to any vaccine, not just shots to protect against the coronavirus. It means that employers may ask staff members whether they have been immunized against the virus, but they cannot punish or lay off employees who refuse to disclose their vaccination status or to get the shots. It makes an exception for nursing homes — but not for hospitals or clinics.

When the law took effect May 7, most Montana hospitals were watching the pace of the vaccine rollout and debating whether they needed to make shots essential for their workers. But just east of the Rocky Mountains, Benefis Health System, with two hospitals in Great Falls, had sent a companywide email in April announcing that, unless they had a medical or religious reason, all employees had to receive at least one shot by May 1.

Community members staged protests. With the law imminent, Benefis backed off its mandate, according to health-care experts in the state. Benefis declined to comment on its decision.

For all 62 hospitals in the state, the law creates a bind, according to Rich Rasmussen, president of the Montana Hospital Association.

The state’s restrictions collide with what the federal government is ordering hospitals to do. The Department of Health and Human Services created a rule that hospitals and other health facilities with patients insured through Medicare or Medicaid must require their employees to have had at least a first coronavirus shot by Dec. 5.

“Hospitals were moving forward with their compliance” with the federal rule, Rasmussen said, because they feared jeopardizing $2.1 billion that flows into the state in Medicare and Medicaid payments, and most hospitals “felt a federal requirement trumped state law.”

A standoff has been averted for now, because two federal courts in November temporarily blocked the HHS requirement as part of lawsuits objecting to the federal rule. Meanwhile, a health system, a few doctors’ practices, several patients and the Montana Medical Association have filed their own lawsuit trying to restore the ability of hospitals and other health providers to compel workers to be vaccinated.

Montana’s hospitals argue they must be able to provide safe environments for their workers and patients.

“If you are providing care to neonates, you want to ensure everyone … is vaccinated,” Rasmussen said.

Many Montana employers hold a different view.

Nick Checota, a restaurant owner and music promoter who runs KettleHouse Amphitheater, a 4,500-seat outdoor venue on a river bank near Missoula, said his concert policy is to encourage patrons to wear masks and to get vaccinated or tested before attending an event. It is not required. A few bands have canceled because of the lack of vaccine verification, Checota said.

But he said, “If I’d asked my staff [to be vaccinated], half my employees would have quit. … Individual rights in Montana are very important to people.”

The political moves against vaccine requirements are spreading. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) in November signed a law that forbids employers from requiring workers, job applicants or customers to prove they have been vaccinated. Six days later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed four bills that prohibit employers and educational institutions from requiring workers or students to be vaccinated against the coronavirus and removes the state health officer’s ability to order vaccinations in a public health emergency.

In Ohio, House Republicans last month passed a bill that would block employers, schools and colleges from requiring workers and students to get vaccinated if they object for “reasons of personal conscience.” Some Republicans in the state Senate are reticent, contending that businesses should be allowed to decide on vaccine policies for themselves.

Senate Bill 22, the Buckeye State’s law in effect since June, splintered the party, pitting lawmakers against Ohio’s GOP governor Mike DeWine. A year ago, DeWine vetoed another bill that would have limited the state’s coronavirus-fighting powers by handing lawmakers power to stop a governor’s public health order and tightly limiting the state health department’s ability to impose quarantines.

The bill contains those features and added restrictions on local health departments. In March, DeWine vetoed that bill, too, saying it “strikes at the heart of local health departments’ ability to move quickly to protect the public from the most serious emergencies Ohio could face.”

This time, the legislature overrode the governor’s veto on S.B. 22 the following day.

Since the law took effect, health commissioners around the state said they often have felt thwarted.

In Franklin County, which includes Hilliard, the local board of health dates to 1919, the time of a global flu pandemic that killed millions. In July 2020, as the coronavirus spread, the board ordered people to wear masks indoors, except at home. It lifted the rule the following May, weeks before the state law took effect and shortly after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said people who were fully vaccinated no longer needed to wear a mask.

By late summer, cases were surging again.

“We wanted to be able to put a masking requirement in place for our jurisdictions,” said Mazzola, the Franklin County health commissioner, who works for the board.

Under the new law, only local governments can make that decision. The Franklin health district covers 14 cities, 17 townships and 10 villages. “We called on our city managers, city councils, mayors,” Mazzola said. Two of the cities, Bexley and Whitehall, reinstated mask rules. The others did not. The villages and most of the townships do not have authority to create such rules. Four townships do; they did not require masks.

“That’s really an unfortunate outcome here,” Mazzola said. “It creates mixed messaging.”

The new law also means the Franklin County health department no longer can create uniform rules for all school systems within its area.

When the school year opened, after a year of classes mostly online, 5 of the 17 districts required masks for students and teachers in every grade, according to Ayaz Hyder, a researcher in Ohio State University’s College of Public Health who has been tracking the pandemic in nearby public schools. The first weeks of the year, the districts with universal masking had on average significantly fewer cases of the coronavirus than the rest, Hyder found.

At Hale’s Ales & Kitchen, just over the Hilliard line where there is no mask requirement, patrons are asked to wear a face covering voluntarily if they haven’t been vaccinated, workers there said. Chris Hale, the owner, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Even when Ohio’s elected municipal officials have stepped in to adopt public health strategies of their own, controversies sometimes have swirled.

In August, the village of Gambier, home to Kenyon College, approved a temporary mask requirement for public buildings, including schools, with a $25 fine for violators. The county sheriff posted on his Facebook page that he had spoken with the mayor “and informed him that deputies will not be citing anyone for violations.”

Sheriff David Shaffer’s Facebook announcement drew more than 700 replies, mirroring the fevered views that divide the nation over public health during the pandemic.

“So … you are elected to decide which law to enforce?” one woman wrote.

Many praised the sheriff. “The more you protect our God-given freedoms,” one man wrote, “the greater my respect for you. … Please continue to defy tyrants who are trying to destroy our freedom.”

Such sentiment — and the Ohio law it yielded — leave the state’s health officials feeling impotent as each pandemic wave arrives.

In September, Jack Pepper, administrator of the Athens City-County Health Department, worried as his southeastern Ohio jurisdiction, which contains both historical Ohio University and rural poverty, suffered the largest surge in coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths of the pandemic so far.

“It would have been nice,” Pepper said, if the department could have limited the number of patrons in restaurants, as it had when establishments reopened after a pandemic shutdown early on. “Those powers are all gone.”

“In a perfect world,” Pepper said, “we would be able to do what we think is best, but that’s not our reality. So we deal with the hand we’ve been dealt.”

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Smoke and flames billow from vehicles in Myanmar's Hpruso township on Friday. Government troops rounded up villagers, fatally shot more than 30 and set the bodies on fire, a witness and other reports said Saturday. (photo: KNDF/AP)

Two Save the Children Humanitarians Missing in Myanmar After Christmas Eve Massacre
Joseph Choi, The Hill
Choi writes: "Two staff members of the Save the Children humanitarian organization have gone missing following a massacre of nearly 40 people in Eastern Myanmar by the Burmese military on Christmas Eve."

Two staff members of the Save the Children humanitarian organization have gone missing following a massacre of nearly 40 people in Eastern Myanmar by the Burmese military on Christmas Eve.

Myanmar's military is reported to have stopped, attacked and burned three vehicles in the country's eastern Kayah State, killing 38 people, including women and children.

Save the Children said in a statement that their two staff members who were returning from conducting a humanitarian response, are believed to have been "caught up in the incident."

"We have confirmation that their private vehicle was attacked and burned out. The military reportedly forced people from their cars, arrested some, killed others and burned their bodies," said the organization.

Due to the incident, Save the Children said it will be suspending operations in Kayah Chin as well parts of Magway and Kayin, though the group said it remained "committed" to helping Myanmar's children.

“Save the Children condemns this attack as a breach of International Humanitarian Law. We are horrified at the violence carried out against innocent civilians and our staff, who are dedicated humanitarians, supporting millions of children in need across Myanmar. Investigations into the nature of the incident are continuing but attacks against aid workers cannot be tolerated," said the organization.

The military junta claimed that the vehicles failed to stop for inspection as ordered and “terrorists” among them began shooting, causing the military to return fire The New York Times reported. The military did not make mention of burning the cars.

In a statement on Twitter, the U.S. Embassy to Burma wrote, "We are appalled by this barbaric attack in Kayah state that killed at least 35 civilians, including women and children. We will continue to press for accountability for the perpetrators of the ongoing campaign of violence against the people of Burma."

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Wolf in greater Yellowstone. (photo: Franz Camenzind/CounterPunch)

What Is a Wilderness Without Its Wolves?
Franz Camenzind, CounterPunch
Camenzind writes: "For millennia, wolves have occupied nearly all the lands now designated as Wilderness in the western US, with the exception of coastal California."

For millennia, wolves have occupied nearly all the lands now designated as Wilderness in the western US, with the exception of coastal California. Yet today, fewer than two score of the approximately 540 Wildernesses west of the 100th meridian (not including Alaska’s 48) can claim some number of wolves as residents and only a dozen or so harbor wolves in numbers sufficient to be considered sustainable—in either the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Central Idaho Wildlands or Montana’s Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. Arguably, the long-term sustainability of wolves in other Wilderness areas is at risk due to the limited security provided by those smaller, often isolated landscapes.

The Wilderness Act defines Wilderness as a place where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by humankind, retains its primeval character and where natural conditions are preserved. Simply stated, Wilderness is meant to exist with minimal human interference. Yet within the vast majority of Wilderness areas, the wolf, the apex species with profound ecosystem influence, is now absent—an absence due entirely to the relentless killing by humankind.

We need look no farther than Yellowstone National Park to witness the influence wolves have on an ecosystem. The park’s wolves were exterminated by the early 1900s, ostensibly to protect the park’s favored elk herds. What followed was not surprising—an overabundance of elk which led to deleterious impacts to vegetation, particularly lower elevation riparian and willow communities.

Since the reintroduction of wolves to the park in the mid-1990s, elk numbers have dropped to levels most ecologists agree resemble something near carrying capacity. Similarly, park wolf numbers stabilized around 100, after initial highs of 150-170. With the wolf’s return, the park ecosystem is showing signs of reaching a dynamic equilibrium beneficial to all components. It’s not an exaggeration to say that wolves were instrumental in returning the park’s wildlands nearer to their primeval conditions.

Wolves hold apex status, in part, because of their far-ranging hunting behavior. Yellowstone-area wolf packs hunt in territories ranging from 185-310 square miles. Besides being smaller, the Yellowstone elk herd is more dispersed and spends less time in the lower elevation meadows and riparian-willow communities.

Most ecologists agree that the wolf’s collective impact on elk is contributing to the resurgence of the willow communities, which in turn is witnessing an increase in avian biodiversity and density. The revitalization of Yellowstone’s northern range willow communities has also enabled an increase in the beaver population, leading to positive changes to stream ecology, thus benefitting aquatic invertebrates and the fisheries.

Many of the ecological changes brought about by the wolf’s return may take years if not decades to recognize and fully understand. But one thing is clear, today’s Yellowstone and the Wildernesses harboring robust wolf populations more closely resemble their primeval character than those lacking wolves. Wolves may just be nature’s best wilderness stewards.

Three states now account for the majority of the west’s wolves: Idaho (1,556), Montana (1,220) and Wyoming (347). Another 351 are tallied for Washington (178) and Oregon (173). Mexican Gray Wolves occur in two states: New Mexico (114) and Arizona (72). Combined, approximately 3,660 wolves currently reside west of the 100th meridian—a number that pales to the 250,000 to 2 million estimated to have resided in the entire United States before the European invasion. However, the current numbers are better than the few dozen residing in northwest Montana three decades ago, which were a result of wolves immigrating from Canada.

Today’s bad news is that wolves in Idaho and Montana are once again facing the vigilante actions of the 1800s. Both state legislatures recently passed draconian legislation with the stated objective of reducing wolf numbers to near 150—the number at which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) will take over wolf management as per the states’ wolf management agreements in effect since Endangered Species Act protections were taken away from wolves.

The new legislation authorizes the state commissions to allow wolf-killing by pretty much any means imaginable: the use of traps and snares, unlimited quotas, extended hunting and trapping seasons, and in Idaho, night time hunting, aerial gunning and killing pups in dens. Idaho also designated $200,000 dollars to “cover expenses incurred” by private individuals while killing wolves—essentially imposing a bounty on wolves.

Idaho’s and Montana’s aggressive wolf-killing legislation has been temporarily dampened a bit by the states’ wildlife commissions which have some leeway when setting annual wolf hunting and trapping regulations. For instance, this season, Montana is limiting the open-ended quotas written into their legislation. But the intent and goals remain unchanged—it may just take a few more years to achieve those goals. Ironically, that means more wolves will be killed because each year the survivors will produce young, thus replenishing their numbers, resulting in “a need” to kill more wolves to reach the 150 goal.

State wildlife agencies manage wolves by the numbers, ignoring the fact that wolves are one of the most social species on the planet, and function and survive not as individuals, but as members of highly structured packs. Consequently, intense, random killing can cause packs to break up, resulting in diminished hunting efficiency and pushing wolves toward easier prey, such as livestock.

Today, wolves and the wilderness ecosystems they inhabit are imminently threatened by these irresponsible state efforts to kill upwards of 90 percent of their wolf populations, including within Wilderness. A weakened or removed apex species inevitably results in a weakened ecological system. If this barbaric killing is allowed to proceed, ecosystem function and wilderness protection will be pushed back decades.

Wilderness Watch continues to fight for Wilderness and its wolves. On December 6, Wilderness Watch and a dozen allies filed a lawsuit and a motion for a temporary restraining order/preliminary injunction against the State of Idaho over its barbaric new wolf-killing laws. This followed a June 2021 Notice of Intent to sue Idaho and Montana for their new anti-wolf statues. We’ve petitioned the US Department of Agriculture to promulgate rules or issue closure orders preventing certain killing methods, hired killers, and paying bounties in Wilderness. Wilderness Watch also joined a petition authored by Western Watersheds Project to relist wolves under the Endangered Species Act in light of the new, aggressive wolf-killing statutes. In response, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it will undertake a status review of the gray wolf over the next 12 months.

A Wilderness denied of its wolves is a wounded Wilderness. If wolves can’t be allowed live in Wilderness, where can they live? Wilderness Watch will continue to do all it can to protect this critical, symbiotic relationship and the ecological integrity of Wilderness itself.

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