02 December 21
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The duo slithered into the Louis Vuitton show on Tuesday.
And for the past 10 months, save for some presumably orchestrated photo-ops, they mostly have. But for people who clearly view themselves as royalty, not being able to attend society gatherings obviously chafes. With the one-year anniversary of that pesky little attack on democracy coming up, they apparently think enough time has passed that their association with one of the worst days in U.S. history is but a distant memory, and it’s now appropriate to slither back onto the scene, as they did Tuesday night.
On Tuesday evening in Miami, the couple made their first major red-carpet appearance since they closed out respective tenures as part of Donald Trump’s White House team by stepping out at the Louis Vuitton show. The Hollywood Reporter spotted the couple mingling during the preshow reception and noticed they had reserved seats in the front row, which also hosted a number of A-listers and boldfaced names like Kim Kardashian West, Kanye West (who now goes by Ye), Pharrell Williams, Bella Hadid, and more. The Louis Vuitton presentation, which coincides with Art Basel, is especially high-profile because it comes two days after the death of Virgil Abloh, the celebrated designer and artistic director for the brand’s menswear collection. According to the luxury house, tonight’s show, “Virgil Was Here,” was presented in “loving memory” of Abloh, paying “tribute to the life and legacy of a creative genius” while also unveiling his designs for the Spring-Summer 2022 collection. Rappers Kid Cudi, Offset, and Quavo were among the models.
It’s not the first time the Trump and Vuitton worlds have collided. In October 2019, Donald and Ivanka Trump flew to Texas for a ribbon-cutting ceremony alongside Bernard Arnault, founder and chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The ceremony unveiled a new Louis Vuitton workshop in a rural area not far from Fort Worth. According to The New York Times, Arnault made a point to separate politics from their luxury fashion business by saying, “I am not here to judge his types of policies. I have no political role. I am a business person. I try to tell him what I think for the success of the economy of the country, and the success of what we are doing.”
In a New York Times report last November, fashion designer Batsheva Hay predicted it would be tough for the couple to make fashion a part of any social outings. “The fashion world is pretty ready to shun her,” Hay told reporter Ginia Bellafante. “No one is going to lend Ivanka clothing—she’ll have to buy it covertly at retail.”
The apparent longtime friendliness with Arnault, combined with this being Florida, and not, say, New York City, where the Trump name is near-universally loathed, seemingly made the event a relatively safe space for the couple; it does not appear that they had champagne thrown in their faces or their clothes spattered with paint intended as a stand-in for the blood of the Americans who died of COVID on Donald (and Jared’s) watch. But it definitely sounds as though many people would prefer they go back into hiding!
“These fascist collaborators should be made to feel unwelcome everywhere they go,” one Twitter user wrote in response to the news. “Do not normalize,” said journalist Kim Masters. “Louis Vuitton giving Ivanka and Jared front-row seats to a show commemorating the late Virgil Abloh is just too much,” tweeted The Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern. “I would prefer they stayed in hiding for the rest of their lives. Sick of looking at either one of them,” said another commentator.
In other Javanka news, The New York Times reported on Friday that Kushner’s Saudi ass-kissing and murder-excusing may soon pay off in the form of a very large check for his new investment firm. Also this weekend, former Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen told Meet The Press that New York prosecutors, who have already indicted the ex-president’s business, are likely turning to the family now. “They are going after Donald. They’re going after Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, a whole slew of individuals,” he predicted.
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An emboldened religious right wants the public to pay for its schools.
“In the 19th century, Maine’s public schools expelled students for adhering to their faith,” they claim, citing one example of a Catholic student expelled for not completing lessons off a Protestant bible. Now, according to the brief, Maine is committing a similarly repugnant sin against religious people by refusing to pay state residents’ tuition at private religious schools.
Under this reasoning, there is no relevant difference between denying a public education to a Catholic student and refusing to pay for private religious education. “The times are different,” the plaintiffs’ brief claims, “but the result is the same: denial of educational opportunity through religious discrimination.”
Carson, in other words, represents a significant escalation in the war over whether the government can enact policies of which religious people — and religious conservatives on the Supreme Court — disapprove. It moves the battleground from whether religious conservatives can seek exemptions from individual laws to whether they can also demand that the public actively fund their faith.
Typically, the Court’s “religious liberty” docket involves laws and policies that prohibit religious parties from acting in a way they believe is consistent with their faith. A church wishes to hold a crowded service, for example, in violation of a public health order limiting the number of people who can gather at one time during a pandemic. Or, an employer wishes to provide its employees with a health plan that excludes birth control in violation of a federal regulation requiring the insurance to cover contraceptive care.
But Carson is not like these cases. It claims the state of Maine must spend existing tax revenue from its secular residents to pay the private school tuition of some religious students. No one in Maine is prohibited from sending their children to a religious private school. The plaintiffs in Carson already send at least one child to such schools. The question is whether the Constitution requires the government — and, by extension, anyone who pays taxes to that government — to subsidize religious education.
Notably, the state could also wind up having to pay for hate speech in the process. According to Maine’s brief, both of the plaintiff families in Carson want the state to pay for tuition at schools that discriminate against LGBTQ students and teachers. One of those schools allegedly requires teachers to sign an employment agreement stating that “the Bible says that ‘God recognize[s] homosexuals and other deviants as perverted’” and that “[s]uch deviation from Scriptural standards is grounds for termination.’”
To be fair, Carson also involves Maine’s fairly unusual public school vouchers program, so it’s unclear what immediate impact a victory for the plaintiffs in this case would have in other states. Although much of Maine operates ordinary public schools run by local school districts, some students — predominantly those who live in sparsely populated areas where there is no local school — are not assigned to a particular school. Instead, the state offers to pay the private school tuition of those nearly 5,000 students, who would otherwise have no access to a free education.
Only “nonsectarian” schools are eligible for this subsidy. Parents can still choose to send their children to an institution that seeks to inculcate those children into a particular religious faith, but they won’t receive state funds to do so.
Nevertheless, the plaintiffs in Carson claim Maine is constitutionally obligated to subsidize religious education, at least so long as it provides similar funds for secular private education.
It’s the sort of argument that would have had little chance of prevailing until fairly recently, but that is likely to prevail in a Supreme Court dominated by conservative Republicans who are quite sympathetic to the religious right.
Just last year, the Court took a significant step toward tearing down the distinction between laws that impose unwanted obligations on people of faith and laws that merely deny taxpayer dollars to religious institutions. In a worst-case scenario for the separation of church and state, Carson could obliterate that distinction.
How we got to the point where the Carson plaintiffs’ arguments are taken seriously
At the outset, the plaintiffs’ main argument in Carson seeks to push the Roberts Court’s growing deference to religion to a new level, further divorcing it from the text of the Constitution itself. The bulk of their brief argues that Maine’s system violates the Constitution’s free exercise clause, which generally bans laws “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion.
The key word here is “prohibiting.” Again, no one in Maine is prohibited from doing anything because of the state’s decision to pay tuition at only some private schools. Both of the plaintiff families in Carson currently send children to religious private schools that are ineligible for subsidies. The only question in Carson is whether Maine must use tax dollars to pay for this religious education.
Barely two decades ago, there was a serious constitutional debate about whether states are even permitted to fund religious education. As established in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), longstanding precedent holds that “no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.” In 2002, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris asked the court to consider a school voucher program that primarily benefited religious schools. Though a majority of the Court abandoned Everson’s strict approach in this case, four justices dissented and would have applied the stricter rule.
Yet even after Zelman, the Court largely viewed the question of whether to subsidize religious education as a matter within lawmakers’ discretion.
Until the Roberts Court.
Most notably, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), the Court held that states must subsidize religiously affiliated schools under certain circumstances. Espinoza held that a state may not deny a subsidy to a religious institution “simply because of what it is” — that is, simply because the institution identifies with a particular faith.
But Espinoza also maintained a distinction between religious “status” and religious “use,” which is particularly relevant to the Carson case now before the Court.
Suppose, for example, a state provides grants to help set up food banks and soup kitchens. If a church wishes to set up a soup kitchen and is otherwise eligible for the grant, it can’t be denied the grant solely because it is a religious institution. Its “status” as a Christian-affiliated entity is not a valid basis to deny a grant under Espinoza.
Now imagine a slightly different church, that wishes to use the state-funded grant to purchase Bibles that will be distributed to people at the soup kitchen. In this scenario, the church is no longer just providing a secular service, food for the hungry. It’s providing an inherently religious service, the distribution of a holy text. This kind of inherently religious activity is what the Court meant by religious “use,” and Espinoza suggests states may still be allowed to deny funding to such activities — even if they can’t deny funding to religious institutions that qualify for subsidies funding secular activity.
And this distinction between religious “status” and religious “use” is now front and center in the Carson case.
The radicalism of the plaintiffs’ arguments in Carson
Although the tuition program at the heart of the Carson case predates Espinoza, it might as well have been designed specifically to survive judicial review after that decision. As the state explains in its brief, Maine determines whether a particular school is “sectarian,” and therefore ineligible for state subsidies, by asking if it “promotes the faith or belief system with which it is associated and/or presents the material taught through the lens of this faith.”
Although “affiliation or association with a church or religious institution is one potential indicator of a sectarian school,” this factor does not determine whether a school is classified as “sectarian.” Rather, the question is “what the school teaches through its curriculum and related activities, and how the material is presented.”
Under Espinoza’s framework, in other words, Carson is a case about religious “use.”
Nevertheless, the plaintiffs seek an expansion of Espinoza, claiming that policies which require religious families to “choose between their religious beliefs and receiving a government benefit” are unconstitutional — and that Maine’s tuition program forces these families to choose between “their right to tuition assistance or their right to freely exercise their religion.”
It’s a deeply radical argument, if taken to its logical end point. This case involves an unusual school voucher program that applies only to a small minority of Maine’s children — mostly students in very rural areas where it is not cost-efficient for the state to operate a public school. But if the Constitution does not permit states to force families to choose between receiving a free education and a religious one, then any public school system is potentially at risk.
Again, the plaintiffs’ argument is that the government cannot require a religious family to “choose between their religious beliefs and receiving a government benefit.” But traditional public education, where students are assigned to a government-run school that offers a free education, is a government benefit. All families that send their children to private, religious schools choose to forgo a free public education. So, if the plaintiffs are correct that families cannot be forced to make this choice, the entire public education system may be required to pay for private tuition at religious schools.
It’s not at all clear that the Court will be willing to go that far. Indeed, in Espinoza, Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion appeared to anticipate this problem, and he attempted to nip it in the bud. “A State need not subsidize private education,” Roberts wrote in Espinoza, “but once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools” because of their religious status.
But Espinoza was also a 5-4 decision, before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death gave Republican appointees a supermajority on the Court. And, while Roberts is quite conservative, he’s the least conservative member of the Court’s six-justice Republican majority. Conservative litigants no longer need Roberts’s vote to prevail, and it is unclear whether Roberts’s five more conservative colleagues agree with him that “a State need not subsidize private education.”
Even if they do agree with Roberts in principle, it’s hard to draw a principled line between a school voucher program that excludes religious education and a traditional public school system that excludes religious education. In the likely event the Carson plaintiffs prevail before the Supreme Court, it is probably inevitable that someone in a traditional public school district will file a new lawsuit claiming they are also entitled to have their private school tuition paid for by their state’s taxpayers.
Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman processes ballots in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., on November 4, 2020. (photo: Brandon Bell/Reuters)
The defamation suit against The Gateway Pundit was filed Thursday by Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a voter registration officer in the Fulton County elections office, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who was a temp worker for the 2020 election. The women were featured in a Reuters report published Wednesday on their ordeal.
The lawsuit names the Pundit, its founder and editor Jim Hoft, and his brother, writer Joe Hoft. It alleges they repeatedly published demonstrably false claims that portrayed the women as “traitors” who conspired to “steal the presidential election in Georgia.”
A lawyer for Jim Hoft and The Gateway Pundit did not immediately respond to a comment request Thursday morning. Joe Hoft did not respond to a comment request.
The lawsuit, filed in St. Louis Circuit Court, alleges that the Pundit’s “lies” about Freeman and Moss “devastated” their reputations and “instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety.” the suit says. Freeman went into hiding.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, revolves around false allegations first raised by a volunteer Trump campaign attorney at a Dec. 3 hearing of Georgia state legislators. Freeman and Moss worked in heavily Democratic Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, where a strong showing by Democrat Joe Biden helped give him a narrow Georgia victory.
Trump, a Republican, and his surrogates falsely alleged that Freeman and Moss pulled “suitcases” full of fake ballots for Biden and processed them late at night on Election Day, Nov. 3, after most poll workers and election observers left.
State officials including Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger quickly and forcefully debunked the allegations, explaining that the “suitcases” were standard ballot containers and the votes were properly counted under the watch of an independent monitor and a state investigator.
The Gateway Pundit covered the false allegations in multiple stories, including one that identified Freeman by name with the headline: “What’s Up, Ruby? Crooked Operative Filmed Pulling Out Suitcases of Ballots in Georgia IS IDENTIFIED.” The Pundit identified Moss in another story.
The Pundit stories continued through the summer, even as multiple audits and reviews confirmed the accuracy of Fulton County’s vote results.
“I couldn't have imagined the lies that The Gateway Pundit would tell about me, pushing people to harass me and my family and to threaten us with violence,” Freeman said in a statement issued by her lawyers.
Protesters demonstrated against gerrymandering during a rally in front of the Supreme Court in 2017. (photo: Tom Brenner/The New York Times)
Republicans in Ohio recently enacted new maps that would give them a supermajority in the state legislature – completely ignoring reforms that prevent this
Over the last few months, we’ve seen lawmakers in several states draw new, distorted political districts that entrench their political power for the next decade. Republicans are carving up Texas, North Carolina and Georgia to hold on to their majorities. Democrats have the power to draw maps in far fewer places, but they’ve also shown a willingness to use it where they have it, in places like Illinois and Maryland.
But something uniquely disturbing is happening in Ohio.
Republicans control the legislature there and recently enacted new maps that would give them a supermajority in the state legislature and allow them to hold on to at least 12 of the state’s 15 congressional seats. It’s an advantage that doesn’t reflect how politically competitive Ohio is: Donald Trump won the state in 2020 with 53% of the vote.
What’s worse is that Ohio voters have specifically enacted reforms in recent years that were supposed to prevent this kind of manipulation. Republicans have completely ignored them. It underscores how challenging it is for reformers to wrest mapmaking power from politicians.
“It’s incredibly difficult to get folks to say, ‘OK, we’re just gonna do this fairly after years and years and decades and decades of crafting districts that favor one political party,’” Catherine Turcer, the executive director of the Ohio chapter of Common Cause, a government watchdog group that backed the reforms, told me earlier this year. “I did not envision this being as shady.”
In 2015 and 2018, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved two separate constitutional amendments that were meant to make mapmaking fairer. The 2015 amendment dealt with drawing state legislative districts and gave a seven-person panel, comprised of elected officials from both parties, power to draw districts. If the panel couldn’t agree on new maps, they would only be in effect for four years, as opposed to the usual 10.
The 2018 amendment laid out a slightly different process for drawing congressional districts, but the overall idea was the same. Both reforms also said districts could not unfairly favor or disfavor a political party.
Something started to seem amiss earlier this fall when the panel got to work trying to create the new state legislative districts. The two top Republicans in the legislature wound up drawing the maps in secret, shutting their fellow GOP members out of the process. After reaching an impasse with Democrats, Republicans on the panel approved a plan that gives the GOP a majority in the state legislature for the next four years.
When it came time to draw congressional maps, things did not go much better. The panel barely even attempted to fulfill its mission, kicking mapmaking power back to the state legislature. Lawmakers there quickly enacted the congressional plan that benefits the GOP for the next four years.
The new map benefits the GOP by cracking Democratic-heavy Hamilton county, home of Cincinnati, into three different congressional districts, noted the Cook Political Report. It also transforms a district in northern Ohio, currently represented by Democrat Marcy Kaptur, the longest serving woman in Congress, from one Joe Biden carried by 19 points in 2020 to one Trump would have carried by 5 points.
The maps already face several lawsuits, and their fate will ultimately be decided by the Ohio supreme court. Republicans have a 4-3 advantage on the court, though one of the GOP justices is considered a swing vote. We’ll soon see if voter-approved reforms will be completely defanged.
Former U.S. border patrol chief Rodney Scott testified that he didn't believe he was making a rape threat when he told a retired female agent to 'lean back, close your eyes and just enjoy the show.' (photo: Carolyn Van gluten/Getty)
“Maybe you were the one person in the world that’s never heard of ‘lie back and take it’ as referring to rape,” the judge said.
Rodney Scott was hauled into court in November after former Border Patrol agent Jenn Budd, an outspoken critic of sexual assault within the agency, sought a restraining order against him over his September Twitter post. In court, Scott declared that he was referring to Budd’s “active imagination” when he wrote those 10 words.
That assertion met with disbelief from San Diego Superior Court Judge Robert Longstreth, who described Scott’s comment as a “classic” rape threat.
“Maybe you were the one person in the world that’s never heard of ‘lie back and take it’ as referring to rape,” Longstreth said, according to the court transcript reviewed by VICE World News, adding that Scott’s remarks were particularly troubling given the Border Patrol’s reputation for sexism and misogyny.
Scott was head of the Border Patrol until August, when he was pushed out by the Biden administration. He joined a conservative think tank in Texas.
The exchange shed light on what critics have said is a toxic culture within the agency, underscored by the 2019 revelation of a secret Facebook group where Border Patrol agents posted racist and sexist comments. They joked about migrants dying and shared an illustration depicting Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez having oral sex with a detained migrant.
Scott, a member of the group who was the section chief in San Diego at the time, said then that the group allowed him to communicate with other agents and “know what the workforce is talking about.” He later told investigators that he saw questionable content on two occasions but “did not think those instances rose to the level of reportable misconduct.”
The argument over Scott’s message to Budd started with a tweet he wrote urging voters to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “If U believe in transparency … truth U need to vote YES on the recall,” he wrote. Newsom survived the Sept. 14 recall vote.
Budd responded, writing: “You are a traitor to the oath you took,” and linked to an article from the Intercept about Border Patrol agents beating a migrant to death.
Scott replied to Budd’s comment: “So what was for breakfast? I investigated all your allegations. Not a crumb of evidence could be found to support any of them. But I did find out a lot about you. Lean back, close your eyes and just enjoy the show.” His comment generated outrage on social media.
Scott testified in court that he was referring to Budd’s allegations about high-level corruption and a culture of rape within the Border Patrol — claims, he said, that are unfounded. “Lean back, close your eyes,” he said, was a “specific reference to me believing that she has a very active imagination.”
“I never in a million years envisioned it being read any differently,” added Scott, who represented himself at the Nov. 18 hearing.
Scott said he asked “a lot of people” about the tweet after he was condemned for posting it, including 10 to 20 female Border Patrol agents, and they didn’t perceive it as referring to rape.
“You need to get out more, sir,” the judge responded. “You need to get a broader group of people than who you are referring to. You need to, you know, be a little bit more aware, especially in a context where you knew this was an issue with the Border Patrol.”
The judge said the fact that so many people in the Border Patrol don’t realize the comment is inappropriate or know the connotation “shows us there is a cultural problem” within the agency.
At least three current and former Border Patrol agents are facing rape allegations in Arizona. In 2019, Senior Border Patrol agent Gus Zamora was charged with sexually assaulting a lower-ranking female agent. He’s pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for trial in June 2022. Arizona police also arrested Border Patrol agent Steven Holmes in 2019 and accused him of raping multiple women over seven years. He’s pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for next March. Retired Arizona Border Patrol agent John Daly was arrested this year for a series of sexual assaults extending back to 1999. A trial date hasn’t been set in his case.
Former President Donald Trump appointed Scott to lead the U.S. Border Patrol in January 2020, despite concerns about his involvement in the Facebook group.
An ardent defender of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, Scott was a polarizing figure. Among other things, he was in charge when agents fired tear gas into Mexico at migrants trying to cross into the U.S. in November 2018. As chief, he actively campaigned for Trump’s reelection. After President Joe Biden won, he refused to follow a directive to stop using the phrase “illegal alien” to refer to undocumented immigrants.
Budd joined the Border Patrol in 1995. During her training in Georgia, she said she was raped by a classmate, an allegation she first made publicly in 2017. Scott said he was aware of her accusation. She said she wanted to go to the police but her instructors told her not to. She stayed with the Border Patrol for another six years.
“If [Scott] can get away and thinks it’s funny with making what is a well-known rape threat to a former agent who is vocal about her past and what happened to her in the Border Patrol, then perhaps any one of these agents might seem to think it’s OK to make a threat too, or to take action,” Budd testified.
In addition to seeking a restraining order, Budd asked the judge to order Scott to remove the tweet and issue a written apology to her.
The judge said he found Scott’s account of his Twitter message “hard to believe,” but that his comments don’t rise to the level of a “credible threat of violence.”
“Do we just live in a world where people are in so much of their universe that it just never crosses their mind that this would be a bad thing? I don’t know,” the judge said. “Can I say by clear and convincing evidence that he deliberately used that choice of words to invoke trauma in somebody that he knew was a rape victim…. I just don’t know if I’m there yet.”
The judge declined to force Scott to issue an apology or delete his tweet. Scott said he would be “taking it down no matter what.” As of Thursday, it remains up.
Budd told VICE World News that she believed the judge acted fairly. “I accept his decision. I appreciated the opportunity to tell my story and show how the Border Patrol continues to promote and protect their rape culture at the highest levels.”
VICE World News reached out to Scott on Twitter and through the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he is a senior fellow, but he didn’t respond.
The report alleges Israeli officials pledged to probe the army's open-fire practices, but failed to question anyone involved in writing or implementing the policies. (photo: Mohammed al-Hajjar/MEE)
Report says Israel deliberately failed to probe actions of its forces over two-year protests during which hundreds were killed
The protest campaign called for an end to the blockade on Gaza, imposed by Israel and Egypt in 2007, and for Palestinian refugees' right of return to the lands that their families fled or were forced out of during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli response - sometimes with live fire - was lethal, leading to the deaths of more than 250 people and tens of thousands of wounds, according to the UN.
The report, entitled “Unwilling and Unable: Israel’s Whitewashed Investigations of the Great March of Return Protests,” was compiled and released by the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza and B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group.
It details how the military implemented an illegal policy of using live fire, mostly carried out by snipers, against unarmed protestors.
At the time, frontline doctors told Middle East Eye the snipers had intentionally maimed protesters, creating a generation of young people with disabilities and overwhelming the territory's already crippled medical system.
Researchers said Israeli officials had pledged to investigate the open-fire practices in response to international pressure, but failed to question anyone involved in writing or implementing the policies.
Raji Sourani, PCHR’s executive director, said during a news conference on Thursday that the researchers had been working on the report for more than a year, interviewing witnesses and gathering information on the impact of the open-fire policy.
“They shot [the] handicapped, they shot children, young, old, [in order] to kill or to paralyse and amputate any parts of the body,” he said.
Others killed in the protests included medics and journalists.
Terrorist status
Instead of focusing on the implementation of the open-fire policies, according to the report, Israeli investigators focused on specific killings deemed “exceptional”.
This meant the military did not conduct factual reviews of killings if the target was deemed a “terrorist”, though the state has not explained how it determines that status.
The report says that even in cases investigated by the military there was little accountability.
During the media briefing, B’Tselem research director Yael Stein pointed to the killing of 15-year-old Haitham Khalil Mohammed al-Jamal in June 2018.
The Israeli military convicted the soldier who shot Jamal on a plea deal after he admitted to opening fire without approval from superiors. The soldier received a one-month sentence of military labour.
Stein said the case was “indicative” of how Israel “never actually intends to do anything”.
Cyclist's leg amputated
Alaa al-Dali is a cyclist who was 21 when he went to the Great Return March on 30 March, 2018 - the very first day of the protests.
Dali, who told Middle East Eye that he attended the protest wearing his athletic uniform representing Palestine, was shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper. His leg then had to be amputated, destroying his ambition to compete in international competitions.
According to Stein, 150 people in Gaza had limbs amputated as a result of Isareli fire during the protests.
Dali said several human rights organisations have reached out to him to research his case, and a lawyer contacted him to say that the Israeli military was claiming he was shot by Hamas and not by Isareli snipers.
“It was really sad, depressing,” he said of losing his leg. “But I’ve thankfully recovered well. I received support from my family and friends, they encouraged me to get up and move. I started riding a bicycle with only one leg, and I began thinking how to create a team for Palestinian parapalegic cyclists and to seek international recognition for that team.”
Dali managed to create the team, the Birds of Gaza. They are now training for international championships.
'Clear lie'
During Thursday’s briefing, Sourani said that Israel's military tried to put a stop to the protests quickly after they began in March 2018.
“The first reaction by the Israeli army was very clear and flagrant,” Sourani explained, summarising the findings of the report. “[Israel] said, ‘We are not going to allow that.’... they deployed snipers all over the border of the Gaza Strip.”
B’Tselem spokesperson Dror Sadot told MEE the report was compiled by gathering on the ground research, asking the Israeli army for data on the shootings, and specific questions about its various military investigations, as well as cross-checking against previously published reports.
The report outlines how the Israeli military defended its practices during the protests in Israel’s High Court of Justice by arguing that Israeli lives were in danger - a claim Stein dismissed as a “clear lie.”
“The open-fire regulations permit use of live fire solely for countering violent riots that pose a clear and immediate danger to IDF (Israeli army) troops or to Israeli civilians,” the state told high court justices in 2018.
Throughout the two years, one Israeli soldier was wounded and one was killed - both months after the protests began.
“Well-armoured security forces continued to use lethal fire against protestors on the other side of the fence who posed no real danger,” researchers write in the report.
'You have to actually investigate'
The document's title refers to a specific aim of B’Tselem and PCHR.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) steps in to investigate when states are “unwilling or unable” to do so themselves. The report makes that case against the Israeli government.
The ICC formally opened an investigation into Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinians territories in March 2021, following six years of the court compiling evidence on potential war crimes in the region.
A month later, Israeli officials announced they would not cooperate with the process.
Sourani, who is a lawyer, said the investigation had survived several attempts by the administration of former US president Donald Trump and Israeli officials to derail the process, and he is hopeful that it will complete its mission.
“The only thing Israel did in response to the [Palestinian casualty] numbers and the international criticism was to say we’re opening an investigation,” Stein said during the news conference.
“The thing is, it’s not enough to say you’re investigating, you have to actually investigate. And this is something Israel did not do.”
Asked during the briefing whether B’Tselem and PCHR had sent their findings to the Israeli military, Stein said the military would be aware of it through public record and had their own communication channels to reply.
Cargo vessels share space with oil platforms before heading into the Los Angeles-Long Beach port on Oct. 5. (photo: Eugene Garcia/AP)
Democrats might be able to halt most new offshore oil and gas drilling
A slew of climate provisions in Democrats' roughly $2 trillion social spending bill face an uncertain future in the Senate. But there's one big exception: limits on offshore oil and gas drilling.
Democrats, aides and environmentalists feel confident that the prevention of oil and gas drilling in most U.S. waters will survive scrutiny in the Senate, including from key centrist Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).
Under the version of the Build Back Better Act that passed the House last month, new offshore drilling would be permanently prohibited in three major regions: the Atlantic, the Pacific and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Other policies aimed at limiting oil and gas development have inspired fierce partisan divides on Capitol Hill. But coastal lawmakers of both parties have rallied around preventing drilling off their coastlines. For instance, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) earlier this year introduced the "American Shores Protection Act," which would codify a temporary moratorium on drilling off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
Meanwhile, Manchin has not publicly expressed concerns about the offshore drilling provision — a sharp contrast to his outspoken opposition to a tax credit for union-made electric vehicles, among other things.
“Let's put it this way: I don't know anyone that represents a coastal district or a coastal state that wants more offshore drilling. So I feel there's reason for confidence that this will happen," Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a member of the Natural Resources Committee, which wrote the drilling provision, told The Climate 202.
Diane Hoskins, a campaign director at Oceana, an ocean conservation group, similarly expressed optimism. "Given the bipartisan nature of the support for this provision, the economic benefits of this provision, and the president's commitment to addressing the climate crisis, I'm very hopeful," she said.
Hoskins said a recent oil spill off the coast of Southern California demonstrated the economic damage that offshore pipeline leaks can cause to the tourism, fishing and recreation industries. The spill of roughly 25,000 gallons closed beaches and fisheries for weeks.
Hoskins also pointed to a recent analysis from Oceana, which found that permanent offshore drilling protections for all unleased federal waters could prevent more than 19 billion tons of planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions and more than $720 billion in damage to people, property and the environment.
Industry opposition
Still, the U.S. oil and gas industry has expressed serious concerns about the limitations on offshore drilling.
In a letter to Manchin yesterday, industry groups took issue with the offshore drilling provision and other policies that they said would stifle domestic energy production.
- "Such impacts on domestic production threaten to result in greater reliance on foreign production from nations with weaker environmental standards as compared to production from U.S. federal waters and comparable regions onshore," the groups wrote.
- The letter was signed by industry heavyweights including the American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the National Ocean Industries Association.
The Build Back Better Act “taxes American energy, restricts access to our own resources and advances the same type of 'import-more-oil' strategy that this administration has been promoting as a solution," API President Mike Sommers previously said in a statement.
Huffman said that while the fossil fuel industry has clout in Washington, he does not expect its concerns to derail the provisions.
"I think we've got to sleep with one eye open when it comes to anything opposed by the fossil fuel industry," he said. "But we have talked quite a bit with the Senate at every step of this process. So I think we're cautiously hopeful that this holds together."
Sam Runyon, a spokeswoman for Manchin, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Manchin-Murkowski dynamic
The House version of the bill would also repeal a provision in Republicans' 2017 tax law that opened up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to onshore oil and gas drilling.
That effort could test Manchin's close relationship with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has championed drilling in the refuge, saying it can be done safely.
But a House Democratic staffer expressed confidence that Manchin would not come out against the ANWR provision. The staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment of the situation, noted that the Congressional Budget Office has helped Democrats' economic case for the provision.
- In 2017, the CBO projected that Republicans' tax law allowing leasing in ANWR would raise $2 billion.
- But more recently, the CBO estimated that Democrats' plan to block drilling in the refuge would cost only $35 million.
👑 Royalty reform: The bill would also increase the onshore royalty rate — the percentage of profits that fossil fuel developers must pay to the federal government in exchange for drilling on public lands — from 12.5 percent to 18.75 percent.
That provision could get a boost from a recent Interior Department report, which recommended raising the royalty rate to be more in line with the rates charged by most states and private landowners.
Asked yesterday whether he supported royalty hikes, Manchin told reporters: "I think adjustments need to be made. I’ve always thought adjustments need to be made."
On the Hill
Democrats are still haggling over an electric vehicle subsidy
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who helped craft an extra $4,500 tax credit for purchasers of union-made electric vehicles, said Wednesday that Senate Democrats were “still negotiating” over the provision amid Manchin's opposition.
“At this point, I'm not sure where this is going to land,” Stabenow told reporters.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) told reporters yesterday that beyond Manchin's concerns, there are some divisions among House Democrats regarding the bonus EV tax credit.
“In our own Democratic caucus, there's a divergence of opinion on that,” Neal said, although he declined to offer specific details.
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who served as chief of staff of President Barack Obama’s task force that bailed out the auto industry, told The Climate 202 yesterday that the subsidy is a “red line" for her.
“I voted on what we voted on in the House," she said, “and I don't want it to come back any different.”
House transportation chair Peter DeFazio will retire
Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, announced Wednesday that he intends to retire at the end of his term. DeFazio, 74, previously served as the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, and he was often highly critical of GOP colleagues whom he felt ignored the threat of climate change.
DeFazio’s seat representing Oregon’s 4th Congressional District is expected to remain in Democratic control, The Post’s Mariana Alfaro, Michael Laris and Marianna Sotomayor report.
Pressure points
The U.S. is the world’s leading contributor to plastic waste
The United States is deluging the world with plastic waste and needs a national strategy to combat the issue, according to a congressionally mandated study from the National Academy of Sciences, The Post’s Tik Root reports.
“The developing plastic waste crisis has been building for decades,” the study said. “The success of the 20th century miracle invention of plastics has also produced a global scale deluge of plastic waste seemingly everywhere we look.”
The study found that the United States produced 42 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2016 — almost twice as much as China and more than the entire European Union.
Biden is tasking the National Space Council to focus on climate change
The Biden administration yesterday released a new framework for future civil, commercial and military space activities ahead of a meeting of the National Space Council, which is chaired by Vice President Harris. The document emphasizes the importance of using satellites to collect data on how climate change is affecting the Earth.
“Data collected from space helps us improve national preparedness and reduce the impacts of extreme weather, natural disasters and climate change in a manner that better addresses the needs of vulnerable communities,” the framework states.
Extreme events
California could be the first state in the nation to rank heat waves
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and other delegates will formally introduce legislation to rate and name heat waves in Los Angeles in January. The initiative, which is being backed by the nonprofit Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, is aimed at reducing fatalities from the most lethal weather phenomenon, The Post’s Kasha Patel reports.
While the concept is similar to the rating of hurricanes, the category system for heat waves will focus on their projected impact on public health, rather than on meteorology, and the rankings will be tied to concrete government responses. A category 3 designation, the most severe, could trigger the opening of municipal pools and air-conditioned shelters, as well as bans on utility cut-offs and door-to-door checks on the elderly.
Global climate
Climate change is not the main cause of Madagascar's food crisis
The United Nations has blamed climate change for a severe drought that has devastated crops in Madagascar, leaving millions of people facing food insecurity. But new research published Wednesday found that other factors have had a bigger impact on the food crisis, including poverty, natural weather variability and the coronavirus pandemic, The Post's Rachel Pannett reports.
Viral
We were surprised to learn about a new “coal” flavor of Sour Patch Kids. The description on Amazon promises that it tastes like black raspberry and makes a good stocking stuffer for those on the “naughty” list.
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