Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
FUNDING DRIVE, KEEP RSN ALIVE! Come on Reader Supporters we are counting on your support! Some Readers have already stepped up. A big thank you to those that have. Still a long way to make the budget. A donation is all it takes. Jump in and help out. Please, and thank you! In Solidarity.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News
Sure, I'll make a donation!
Robert Reich | COVID Is Facing a Resurgence in the US, and So Is Trumpian Politics
Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Reich writes: "After a moment of hope, much is sliding backwards. It's not Biden's fault; it's Trump's legacy."
espair is worse after hope is briefly ignited. I don’t know about you, but I was elated earlier this spring when it seemed as if Trump and Covid were gone, and Biden seemed surprisingly able and willing to get the nation rapidly back on track.
Now much is sliding backwards. It’s not Biden’s fault; it’s Trump’s legacy.
The new Delta strain of the virus requires, according to the CDC, that we go back to wearing masks inside in public places where the virus is surging, even if we’re fully inoculated.
This would be nothing more than a small disappointment and inconvenience were it not for Republicans using it as another opportunity to politicize public health.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy responded to the new CDC recommendation with the kind of unhinged hyperbole Trumpers have perfected. “The threat of bringing masks back is not a decision based on science, but a decision conjured up by liberal government officials who want to continue to live in a perpetual pandemic state,” he said.
Republican politicizing of public health will get worse if the Delta variant continues to surge. At some point vaccines will have to be mandated because being inoculated is not solely a matter of personal choice. Herd immunity is a common good. If infections mount, that common good can be achieved only if nearly everyone is vaccinated.
But those eager to exploit the virus’s resurgence – the know-nothings, Trump wannabes, vilely ambitious political upcomers, Tucker Carlsons and similarly cynical entertainers – are already howling about “personal freedom” threatened by “socialism.”
The investigation into the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January is further evidence of how far the Republican party has descended into opportunistic treachery.
We need to know what happened and why if we are to have half a chance of avoiding a repeat. Just as with the history of systemic discrimination and brutality against Black people in America – which Republicans are calling “critical race theory” and trying to ban from classrooms – the truth shapes our responses to the future.
Here again, the dispiriting aspect of the present moment is Republican denial and obfuscation.
As Officer Michael Fanone – who suffered traumatic brain injury when rioters attacked him during the assault on the Capitol – testified yesterday at the start of the hearings: “What makes the struggle harder and more painful is to know so many of my fellow citizens – including so many of the people I put my life at risk to defend – are downplaying or outright denying what happened.”
With the exception of Representative Liz Cheney – whom I never expected to hold up as a model of integrity – Republicans are eager to divert the public’s attention. Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik declared at a press conference on Tuesday that “Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility, as speaker of the House, for the tragedy that occurred on January 6.”
This is absurd on its face. The Speaker of the House shares responsibility for Capitol security with the Senate majority leader, who at the time of the attack was Mitch McConnell. If Pelosi was negligent – and there’s zero evidence she was – McConnell was as well.
Stefanik and other Republican leaders don’t want the public to know about Republican members of Congress who were almost certainly involved in the travesty, either directly or indirectly. The list includes Representatives Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Andrew Biggs and McCarthy himself. Senator Josh Hawley also seems to have been in the know, given his fist-salute to the rioters.
And then there’s Trump himself, cheerleader and ringleader.
All should be subpoenaed. All, presumably, will fight the subpoenas in court.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to stage rallies for his avid followers as he did last weekend in Phoenix, where he declared, “Our nation is up against the most sinister forces … This nation does not belong to them, this nation belongs to you.”
Wrong. America belongs to all of us. And we all have a responsibility to protect its public health and its democratic institutions. The real sinister force is the Trump Republicans’ cynical exploitation of lies and anti-scientific rubbish to divide and divert us.
Months ago, it seemed as if this darkness was behind us. It is not.
READ MORE
Suzanne Del Rosario visits the memorial to Michael Brown in Ferguson, March 14, 2015. (photo: Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Police Shootings Continue Daily, Despite a Pandemic, Protests and Pushes for Reform
Mark Berman, Julie Tate and Jennifer Jenkins, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "In the United States, fatal shootings by police are both rare and constant."
Since 2015, police have fatally shot more than 6,400 people
n Oct. 27, an Uber driver in Pompano Beach, Fla., reported that he had been carjacked. A passenger attacked him, slashing his hand with a knife and stealing his Mercedes-Benz, the driver said.
The driver had left his cellphone in the car, and police tracked it into Palm Beach County. Sheriff’s deputies found the vehicle and 20-year-old Ryan Fallo. He ignored commands to drop the knife and approached them, the sheriff’s office said, and they shot and killed him. The shooting was later ruled justified.
The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office released a photo of a knife with what appeared to be blood on the blade and handle. But it did not release the names of the two deputies involved. Instead, it kept their identities confidential under a Florida law billed as a way to protect crime victims. On paperwork invoking the law, both deputies signed their names in the space marked “Signature of Victim.”
“I don’t know why they’re claiming themselves as potential victims ... He posed no threat. He didn’t have a gun,” said Ryan Fallo’s father, Larry. “I just think it’s concerning when they pull up the blue shield and hide behind it.”
The two Palm Beach deputies are not alone in using the law to shield their identities after shooting and killing someone. It’s a new twist in the otherwise unchanging landscape of fatal police shootings, which have continued daily despite a pandemic, protests and pushes for reform.
The Washington Post began tracking fatal shootings by on-duty police officers in 2015, the year after a White officer in Ferguson, Mo., shot and killed a Black 18-year old. Over the past six years, officers have fatally shot more than 6,400 people, an average of nearly a thousand a year, or almost three each day. The yearly toll even reached a new high of 1,021 fatal shootings in 2020. Midway through this year, fatal police shootings are down compared with the same period last year. They have fluctuated month to month since the project began, ending near 1,000 annually.
Since Ferguson, departments across the country have taken steps toward reform, but these efforts have been inconsistent and incomplete. Most police departments still do not use body cameras. Experts in law enforcement and criminal justice say there have not been the large-scale policy or legal shifts that might reduce uses of force. And sending mental health teams in response to people in crisis, alongside or instead of armed officers, remains the exception.
The fatal shootings range from what experts describe as the unavoidable — including officers coming under gunfire — to a handful that prosecutors consider criminal. Most of those killed have been armed. Nearly every shooting has been ruled justified. But observers and experts contend many could have been averted with less-aggressive tactics.
American policing is not set up for across-the-board shifts, experts said, given that there are more than 15,000 local police and sheriff’s departments, each with its own policies, practices and training.
“There’s enormous inertia to the police practices that lead to shooting,” said Richard Berk, a professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania. “Whatever’s driving police shootings probably changes gradually.”
Efforts to change policing are also complicated by the politics of reform, with those on the left blaming overly aggressive policing and systemic racism, and those on the right arguing that unjustified police shootings are rare and not motivated by bias.
Police patrol a nation awash with firearms, and researchers have found higher rates of fatal shootings by officers in states where gun ownership is higher. Countries where police kill fewer people tend to have fewer guns.
In the United States, fatal shootings by police are both rare and constant. Tens of millions of people cross paths with police each year, and most of those encounters end without the use of force.
"The vast majority of those fatal shootings are lawful, righteous shootings,” said Daniel Oates, a former police chief in Miami Beach, Aurora, Colo., and Ann Arbor, Mich.
But, he said, “a percentage of them are bad training, bad policy, bad day by the cop, not performing at their best.” Prosecutors charged more officers for on-duty shootings in 2020 in comparison with 2019. Still, Oates said that despite the fusillade of criticism, policing has improved significantly.
“The narrative of the last year has been that ‘Oh my God, police are wildly out of control,’ ” Oates said. “That’s not true. If you tracked that [fatal shooting] data from 30, 40 years ago, I’m sure the numbers would be much, much, much, much higher. There’s been a reform movement around the use of force in American policing.”
The New York City Police Department, where Oates once worked, publishes annual reports on its officers’ uses of force. In the early 1970s, officers in the country’s biggest local police force shot and killed dozens of people each year. By the 2010s, the number was in the single digits in many years.
Nationwide data, however, are incomplete. Between 1976 and 2015, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program recorded no more than 460 fatal shootings by police in any single year. The Post’s database, launched in 2015, has found more than double that number every year. The FBI’s long-promised new program meant to fill the gaps is voluntary — and still incomplete.
Shielding the shooters
In some cases, the only surviving witnesses are the officers involved. Despite a push since 2015 for police body cameras and the periodic emergence of surveillance footage or bystander cellphone video, more than 80 percent of fatal police shootings still were not filmed, according to The Post’s database.
Some fatal shootings draw intense scrutiny of police actions that might otherwise escape notice. After Louisville police killed Breonna Taylor in March 2020, the uproar led to reforms.
But few cases become national news. When police in Springfield, Ore., shot and killed a 32-year-old named Chase Brooks the day after Taylor was killed, his death received little notice outside the area. “He’s not on the news every day like everybody else has been,” Karen Brooks said about her son.
Police and other officials often cite ongoing investigations, exemptions in public records laws or other restrictions in declining to release information, documents or footage after shootings. A Post investigation found that in 2015, departments withheld the names of officers in about 1 in 5 fatal shootings.
In Florida, some departments have gone a step further and are now turning to the use of Marsy’s Law to shield their officers’ names. This law, which voters passed in 2018, says victims of crimes can ask authorities to keep private “information or records that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family.” More than a dozen states, including Kentucky, have adopted similar measures. The deputies in Palm Beach County both invoked it after Fallo’s death last year.
The top prosecutor in Palm Beach County declined to file charges in the killing. In a letter in May, State Attorney Dave Aronberg said a police dashboard camera filmed the deputies “unsuccessfully pleading with Fallo to surrender peacefully” and drop the knife, and that a bystander’s cellphone footage showed Fallo moving toward the deputies. Fallo raised the knife “and began to make a lunging motion towards the officers,” who then shot him, Aronberg wrote.
The secrecy measure in Florida has generated controversy. An investigation by ProPublica and USA Today last year found that sheriff’s offices there routinely shielded the names of officers who “used force that resulted in a civilian’s injury.”
It also has led to a court battle. Two police officers in Tallahassee shot and killed people in separate incidents last year, and city officials intended to name the officers, but a police union fought that in court. An appeals court sided with the officers, and the case is pending before the Florida Supreme Court.
These cases are stark examples of a pattern that experts say persists nationwide: After police kill someone, they also often shape what the public learns about the killing.
“They write the reports, they give the statements, and other people’s accounts are not taken seriously,” said Philip Stinson, a criminology professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Sometimes, Stinson said, video evidence will disprove an officer’s statement or the police account. In Minneapolis, police put out a statement after George Floyd died on May 25, 2020, saying he “physically resisted officers” before “suffering medical distress.” The emergence of a bystander’s cellphone video showing Derek Chauvin pinning Floyd under his knee portrayed a far different reality.
“But in most of these cases,” Stinson said, “police still own the narrative.”
A disparity in deadly force
Two weeks after Floyd was filmed gasping for air, an officer in Atlanta shot a 27-year-old Black man in the back, killing him during a confrontation at a Wendy’s restaurant.
Officers at the scene were responding to a complaint about a man asleep in a car at a drive-through when they encountered Rayshard Brooks. He failed a field sobriety test, grabbed a Taser from an officer and ran, pointing it at the officer who shot him, officials said. This shooting, coming amid nationwide protests, spurred a new wave of public anger, and the Atlanta police chief resigned.
Since The Post began tracking cases, Black people have been shot and killed at higher rates than White people.
White people are 60 percent of the American population and have accounted for 45 percent of those fatally shot by police. Black people are 13 percent of the population but have been 23 percent of those shot and killed by police. (In about 1 in 10 cases, The Post has not been able to determine the race of the person killed by police.)
In a 2016 report, the Center for Policing Equity, a research group, studied use-of-force data — from fatal police shootings to physical encounters — for a dozen police departments and found stark racial disparities. The report found that the average use-of-force rate for Black people was 2.5 times higher than the overall rate and 3.6 times the rate for White people.
Racial disparities persist because they are part of the larger, systemic issues that play out in policing, said Justin Nix, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
“We have very clear evidence that these disparities are real,” he said.
“Black and Hispanic people are killed at higher rates by way of their being stopped at higher rates,” Nix said. “And part of what explains their being stopped at higher rates is geographically where they live is historically where crime has clustered, where poverty has clustered, where opportunity isn’t as great.”
But the debate about what role bias might play persists. “It’s much harder to parse out how much of that disparity is attributable to bias on the part of officers, whether it’s explicit or implicit,” Nix said.
Most of the people — 58 percent — shot and killed by police since 2015 were armed with guns, according to The Post’s database. And 15 percent were armed with knives, the database shows.
Research has revealed a link between fatal police shootings and how saturated a region is with guns. Nationwide, there are more than 700,000 local law enforcement officers, and experts say there could be between 300 million and 400 million guns.
Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, examined fatal police shootings that The Post tracked between 2015 and 2018. In an article published last year, Nagin wrote that he had found “a pronounced, highly significant association between” police shootings in a state and the prevalence of guns in that state.
He calculated the rate of gun ownership in each state by studying Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tallies of suicides by firearm and an estimate of households where adults are thought to have guns. The higher the rate of gun ownership, the more likely it was police would encounter people “armed or suspected to be armed, which in turn results in a greater frequency of police using fatal force,” he wrote. The connection was particularly pronounced in states such as Oklahoma, Alaska, New Mexico and Arizona.
“If there’s more guns around, then there’s going to be more encounters between police and citizens with guns,” Nagin said in an interview. “And that’s a deadly recipe. ... If you’re in a place with more guns, you’re going to be more leery about the possibility that the person is armed.”
‘People who are in crisis’
Year after year, numerous police shootings have followed two types of police-civilian encounters: reports of people in the throes of mental health crises and domestic violence.
On May 26, 2020, the day after Floyd’s death, officers in Lansing, Mich., shot and killed 37-year-old Jason Gallegos. Officials said later that Gallegos had struggled with mental illness, as did nearly 1,500 other people shot and killed by police since 2015 — more than 1 in 5 people shot by officers over that period.
In Lansing, police were called to the apartment where Gallegos lived after he accidentally fired a gun, argued with his mother and grabbed her wrist, according to a review by the Michigan attorney general’s office. His mother told a police negotiator that Gallegos was on medication for “many mental illnesses,” according to the review.
After police coaxed him outside, Gallegos came with a shotgun and shot an officer in the leg, the review said. Six officers fired at Gallegos, killing him. The attorney general’s office said the officers acted lawfully.
“There was no opportunity to use de-escalation techniques,” an assistant attorney general wrote. “The officers had no choice but to fire to eliminate the threat.”
In some cases, experts say, people pose undeniable, deadly threats. But in others, they said, mental health professionals could help keep tensions down — particularly when people are a threat only to themselves and the arrival of armed officers may cause an escalation.
These types of cases have fueled a push to let mental health professionals, rather than armed officers, respond to certain calls. Eugene, Ore., has had such a program for years. San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have started similar efforts. Experts say these efforts — if widely adopted — could avert some shootings.
Last year, the sheriff’s office in Orange County, Fla., launched a pilot program dispatching behavioral-health clinicians alongside deputies. Clinicians are “in a better position to help people who are in crisis,” Sheriff John Mina said in a video announcing the program.
Domestic violence is another kind of crisis that police are often called to investigate. Since 2015, more than 1,000 people have been killed by police after calls about domestic disturbances.
In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, nearly 1 in 5 fatal shootings by police followed such calls, slightly up from the previous year and the most in any single year since The Post began tracking fatal police shootings.
On May 28, 2020, with the country gripped by unrest over policing in Minneapolis and beyond, officers in Ogden, Utah, responded to a 911 call from a woman who had fled her home, saying her husband had assaulted and threatened to kill her.
Two officers in Ogden, which is north of Salt Lake City, headed to the house, along with two state probation and parole agents who happened to be in the area.
One of the officers, Nathan Lyday, spoke to the man through a glass storm door, according to an account from Weber County Attorney Christopher F. Allred. The man in the house — later identified by officials as John Coleman — was “uncooperative and confrontational,” shutting the door on Lyday, the prosecutor wrote.
The 24-year-old officer, holding a notebook and pen, turned to speak to another officer and Coleman shot him in the head, Allred wrote, killing him instantly.
Lyday “had no opportunity to react,” Allred concluded. The Ogden police chief said the officer was “felled by the forces of evil.” Other officers returned fire, and one of them shot Coleman in the head.
Lyday was one of 48 police officers fatally shot in the line of duty in 2020, and he was among nine killed while responding to domestic-violence calls, according to the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund. Since 2000, an average of six officers have been killed per year in these circumstances, according to the group’s data.
Domestic violence calls are “volatile, unpredictable” situations for police, said Jacinta Gau, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida. “When officers arrive on scene ... there’s so much anger.”
Coleman’s wife, who asked not to be identified because of the trauma, said she had endured years of emotional abuse and controlling behavior that “spiraled out of control.”
On the day of the shooting, she fled their home — “bloody, my head was busted open” — and went to her former workplace to get a phone. She found out that her husband and a police officer were dead only when authorities tracked her down.
She and their children feel no anger at police for shooting Coleman, something they told the officer who fired the fatal shot. “There was no other way to deal with the situation,” she said.
She said she feels only guilt about what happened that day.
“We just unleashed that on the world,” she said. “It was our problem, and we were taking care of it and holding it together, and it just, it spilled over.”
‘He could’ve retreated’
Hannah Fizer was driving to her overnight shift at a convenience store on June 13, 2020, when a sheriff’s deputy pulled her over in Sedalia, a small city in western Missouri.
The deputy, who said she was speeding and ran a red light, stood by the window of Fizer’s silver Hyundai Elantra for a few minutes. Then, as recorded on nearby surveillance video, he took aim and shot Fizer, killing the 25-year old. The deputy said Fizer had ignored his commands, claimed to have a gun and threatened to shoot him.
Fizer’s killing led to no criminal charges. A special prosecutor concluded that the shooting was justified because the evidence supported the deputy’s claim that he feared for his safety. But the prosecutor also said the deputy could have just backed away.
“It could’ve been avoided by the exercise of what I think [are] good police tactics and judgment,” Stephen P. Sokoloff, the special prosecutor, said in an interview. “There are a number of these I’ve seen where, yeah, were they legally justified? Yes. Were they necessary? No.”
Sokoloff said the deputy could have waited for the arrival of the backup he had called.
“He could’ve retreated. She wasn’t able to go any place. … He could’ve let things simmer a little bit down,” said Sokoloff, general counsel for the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services.
Sokoloff said Fizer could be heard over the deputy’s radio dispatch yelling at him and was seen in video footage bending down in her car and rising back up. No gun was found in her car.
“I don’t doubt for one second she was speeding,” John Fizer, her father, said in an interview. “Because she was late for work a little bit. ... I don’t doubt that he pulled her over for good reason. But he did everything wrong from that moment on.”
Fizer’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the deputy, Jordan Schutte. An attorney for Schutte declined to comment for this story, writing in a court filing that the officer had “acted with objective reasonableness under the circumstances.”
Experts contend that such cases show some shootings as preventable with de-escalation training and crisis intervention. In June, the New York City police announced plans to retrain their 36,000 officers to reduce the use of force.
But retraining police nationwide is a massive undertaking, the scale of it reflected in the patterns documented by The Post since the beginning of 2015: More than 2,600 departments were involved in the more than 6,400 fatal shootings. In more than 1,600 of these shootings, it was the only time since 2015 an officer in a department had fatally shot someone.
Ronald L. Davis, a former police chief and ex-director of the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services office, said the goal should be less use of deadly force overall, “not just unjustified uses of deadly force.”
The unchanging pace of fatal shootings after high-profile police killings last year also “debunks the myth of police reform affecting officers’ safety, that officers were hesitating” amid scrutiny and criticism, Davis said in an interview before President Biden nominated him in March to lead the U.S. Marshals Service.
“If you pointed your firearm because it was necessary,” Davis said, “you’re not going to be thinking about some lawsuit or complaints.”
In Atlanta, after Rayshard Brooks was killed, the officer who shot him became one of the relatively few charged with murder for shooting someone while on duty. Prosecutors said Brooks had posed no threat to Garrett Rolfe, the officer. Attorneys for Rolfe said that the shooting was justified and that the officer had acted reasonably. The case is pending.
Rolfe was one of 16 officers charged with murder or manslaughter last year for on-duty shootings, up from 12 a year earlier, according to Stinson, the Bowling Green professor, who tracks cases of officers charged with crimes.
Prosecutors also charged more officers for these shootings after Ferguson. In 2015, the first full year after Ferguson, 18 officers were charged for shootings, the most in any year since Stinson started tracking in 2005. But conviction rates have remained largely unchanged in the years before and after Ferguson.
These criminal cases are difficult for prosecutors to win, and most officers who are charged walk free or are convicted on lesser charges, a pattern that experts attribute to the trust jurors and judges have in police, and the law remaining squarely on their side.
Legally, the use of deadly force has been guided by the Supreme Court’s 1989 decision in Graham v. Connor, which said an officer’s actions must be judged against what a reasonable officer would do in the same situation. Some officials have pushed to adopt a tougher standard, which California did in 2019.
“The vast majority of these shootings are justified under the current law,” Stinson said.
READ MORE
Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democratic representative of Texas, is arrested as she participates in a voting rights demonstration in Washington, D.C. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
Sheila Jackson Lee Is Third Black Lawmaker to Be Arrested During Voting Rights Protests
Maanvi Singh, Guardian UK
Singh writes: "Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democratic representative of Texas, was arrested in Washington, D.C., on Thursday while protesting lawmakers' delay in passing legislation to protect voting rights."
Congress members Joyce Beatty and Hank Johnson were previously arrested for participating in separate demonstrations
heila Jackson Lee, a Democratic representative of Texas, was arrested in Washington DC on Thursday while protesting lawmakers’ delay in passing legislation to protect voting rights, becoming the third member of the Congressional Black Caucus to be arrested for civil disobedience in recent weeks.
Jackson Lee was arrested while participating in a demonstration outside the Hart Senate office building.
“Any action that is a peaceful action of civil disobedience is worthy and more, to push all of us to do better,” Jackson said of her arrest in a video later posted to Twitter.
“Once again we see a Black woman at the forefront of defending our civil rights and leading the fight to save our fragile democracy,” said Odus Evbagharu, chair of the Harris county Democratic party, in a statement. “Congresswoman Lee understands we are at a pivotal moment in the history of our nation, where our sacred right to vote is under grave threat. She recognizes that we all must take action to protect this right.”
Representatives Joyce Beatty of Ohio and Hank Johnson of Georgia were also arrested this month for participating in voting rights demonstrations.
Jackson Lee’s arrest came after a House committee hearing with Democratic lawmakers from Texas, who recently staged a high profile walkout from the state legislature in order to prevent Republicans from passing restrictive new voting laws.
Texas is already one of the hardest places to vote in the US. Democrat in the state say the proposed laws would make it even harder and further disenfranchise Black and minority voters, by imposing ID requirements on mail-in ballots and banning 24-hour and drive-through voting.
Democrats are working on a revised voting rights bill, after Republicans blocked consideration of a more sweeping proposal last month. The proposed For the People Act failed in an evenly-split Senate along party lines.
Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia who voted to open debate on the For the People Act despite qualms about some provisions, has offered a scaled-back framework for voting rights legislation. Aspects of his proposal are likely to be incorporated into the Democrats’ revision.
But with Republicans opposed to most of the reforms Democrats want to see, it’s unclear how lawmakers will pass federal voting rights protection while the filibuster – the Senate’s 60-vote supermajority requirement – stands. Voting rights activists have urged Democrats to kill the filibuster and pass legislation quickly as Republicans around the country work to pass voting restrictions.
READ MORE
Johnson & Johnson is facing tens of thousands of lawsuits over claims that its talcum-based products caused users to develop cancer. The company says its powder products are safe. (photo: Frederic J. Brown/Getty)
Johnson & Johnson Targeted Black Women With Products Linked to Cancer, Lawsuit Says
Joe Hernandez, NPR
Hernandez writes: "Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson marketed its talcum-based powder products specifically to Black women despite evidence showing the products cause cancer, a new lawsuit alleges."
The complaint, filed by the National Council of Negro Women, asserts that the New Jersey-based drug company made Black women a "central part" of its business strategy but failed to warn them about the potential dangers of the powder products it was selling.
"This company, through its words and images, told Black women that we were offensive in our natural state and needed to use their products to stay fresh," said Janice Mathis, executive director of the National Council of Negro Women, in a statement.
"Generations of Black women believed them and made it our daily practice to use their products in ways that put us at risk of cancer — and we taught our daughters to do the same. Shame on Johnson and Johnson," she said.
The lawsuit is the latest in a wave of litigation against Johnson & Johnson over allegations that its talcum products, such as baby powder, have caused users to develop illnesses including ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. The company is facing more than 25,000 lawsuits related to the products and has set aside nearly $4 billion to fight the legal battles, according to The New York Times.
Johnson & Johnson has long maintained that its talcum-based products are safe and do not cause cancer. Last year, following a string of costly legal settlements, it stopped selling talcum products in the U.S. and Canada.
In a statement provided to NPR, the company denied the allegation that it singled out Black women as part of a marketing campaign driven by "bad intentions."
"The accusations being made against our company are false, and the idea that our Company would purposefully and systematically target a community with bad intentions is unreasonable and absurd," the statement read. "Johnson's Baby Powder is safe, and our campaigns are multicultural and inclusive."
According to the lawsuit, an internal presentation from 2006 suggested that Johnson & Johnson market its powder products, which had been lagging in sales, toward "high propensity consumers" such as Black women. Data showed that 60% of Black women were using baby powder at that time, compared with just 30% of the overall population.
Johnson & Johnson later hired a firm that handed out 100,000 gift bags containing powder products at churches and other locations in Chicago, launched a radio campaign in the Southern U.S. targeting "curvy southern women" and considered signing Patti LaBelle or Aretha Franklin as a spokesperson, among other efforts, the suit says.
The council, which said that a "large proportion" of its members used Johnson & Johnson powder products and that "many have developed ovarian cancer as a result," hopes a court will force the company to inform the Black women who were the targets of its marketing efforts about the possible dangers of using the company's powder products.
READ MORE
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)
Sanders Says He Has 50 Votes Needed to Pass a Broad Budget Plan
Erik Wasson and Laura Litvan, Bloomberg
Excerpt: "Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders said he has the votes to pass a broad budget resolution next week, a key step in enacting President Joe Biden's economic agenda."
enate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders said he has the votes to pass a broad budget resolution next week, a key step in enacting President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.
The Vermont independent’s comments mean all 50 senators who caucus with Democrats are onboard with passing a resolution that could lead to follow-on legislation totaling $3.5 trillion to address priorities such as climate change, the tax code, health care, and immigration.
The budget package has been linked to a bipartisan infrastructure bill totaling $550 billion that the Senate could pass in the coming days.
“It is my absolute conviction that you’re not going to have a bipartisan bill unless you have a reconciliation bill of $3.5 trillion,” Sanders told reporters. “The working families of this country, the children of this country, the elderly people of this country deserve to have their needs met, and we intend to do just that.”
Sanders’ comments came just hours after Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, said she wouldn’t support spending $3.5 trillion on the package, potentially complicating her party’s efforts.
Sinema, a first-term moderate who sometimes breaks with her party’s leaders, said she wants to move ahead with a fiscal blueprint to kick-start the process using Senate rules that can short-circuit a Republican filibuster.
Yet she asserted that her vote on the larger legislation hinges on the outcome of negotiations on its size.
“I have also made clear that while I will support beginning this process, I do not support a bill that costs $3.5 trillion,” she said in a statement, which was reported earlier by the Arizona Republic. “In the coming months, I will work in good faith to develop this legislation with my colleagues and the administration to strengthen Arizona’s economy and help Arizona’s everyday families get ahead.”
In a Senate split 50-50 between the two parties, her position underscores the delicate balancing act ahead for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as he tries to push through core elements of Biden’s agenda and other policies congressional Democrats seek, including an expansion of Medicare.
Any Democratic senator can upset the perfect party unity required to pass the plan, but both Sinema and another independent-minded moderate, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, are getting particular attention.
Sinema didn’t make clear just how much smaller a package must be to ultimately get her support.
Her bold early move came the same day she is in the spotlight over the infrastructure bill she negotiated along with GOP Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.
John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate Republicans’ vote-counting whip, told reporters that he has been urging Sinema to take a stand on the size of the economic package, adding that more Republicans might back the infrastructure plan after seeing her tap the brakes on spending elsewhere.
But a top House progressive, who wants a much larger economic package, sharply criticized Sinema’s announcement on the heels of the related infrastructure deal.
“Good luck tanking your own party’s investment on childcare, climate action, and infrastructure while presuming you’ll survive a 3 vote House margin - especially after choosing to exclude members of color from negotiations and calling that a ‘bipartisan accomplishment,’” tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.
Sanders, a key ally of Ocasio-Cortez and other House progressives, will likely be pivotal in getting them behind both the infrastructure deal and the budget package.
“At the end of the day two pieces of legislation -- a bipartisan bill and the budget reconciliation bill -- have got to pass the Senate and the House,” Sanders said.
READ MORE
President Biden. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
Congress Tried to Force Trump to End the Yemen War. Now They'll Have to Do the Same With Biden.
Sarah Lazare, In These Times
Lazare writes: "Activists say it's not enough to trust Biden's promises to end U.S. support for the war: Congress must compel him."
emen is in a catastrophic state,” says Kawthar Abdullah, an organizer with the Yemeni Alliance Committee. “I have family there. Every day when I call and talk to them, the reality on the ground is far worse than it is ever portrayed.”
Abdullah, who is based in New York, is part of a network of grassroots organizers across the country calling on Congress to force an end to U.S. participation in the Saudi-led war, using the same War Powers Resolution vetoed by former President Trump in 2019. These organizers are asking lawmakers to go head to head with the Biden administration, which announced in February it was halting U.S. support for “offensive operations” but, nearly six months later, has failed to fully extricate itself from the military intervention.
As ongoing Saudi-led airstrikes collide with a worsening Covid-19 crisis, organizers like Abdullah are rallying in the streets and marching to lawmakers’ offices, demanding they use their power to stop all U.S. participation in the violence, as well as the Saudi-led naval blockade that is choking off fuel supplies, spiking food costs, and contributing to power outages at hospitals. Some activists have even gone on hunger strike to demand material relief from what is widely considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“It’s imperative that a War Powers Resolution is introduced and passed under a Biden administration,” says Abdullah. “So many lives are at stake here.”
Organizers are up against an administration that has not been forthcoming about what it’s doing on the ground. The Biden administration’s February announcement was met with much fanfare. But public details on what constituted “offensive operations,” and what exactly an end to the U.S. role would look like, were vague from the outset. The Biden administration has since avoided providing details about what American withdrawal looks like.
There are signs that the United States remains enmeshed in that war. In June, Elias Yousif of the Center for International Policy published a briefing which found that the United States has stopped providing some forms of assistance: mid-air refueling of aircraft, intelligence and surveillance used to identify bomb targets, and arms transfers for fixed-wing aircraft used to carry out bombings. But other forms of assistance continue.
“The U.S. continues to provide maintenance and sustainment assistance to the Royal Saudi Air Forces (RSAF),” notes Yousif, “a function that is essential to keeping Saudi aircraft flying.” Meanwhile, the United States has not put a stop to other arms transfers. “This could include munitions used by attack helicopters, artillery, and armored vehicles,” notes Yousif. The United States is also providing ships and training to the Royal Saudi Naval Forces, which is leading the blockade of Yemen, although the role of the United States in enforcing this blockade is unclear.
On July 16, a coordinated day of action saw protests in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. calling for a new aggressive effort to end the war. Activists hand-delivered letters to members of Congress who are in positions of power, or have historically led on efforts to end the war, among them Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.) and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D‑N.Y.), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
These activists say that, with Democrats in control of the House, Senate and White House, there is no reason this war should continue a moment longer. “If Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress wanted to end this war, they could do it today,” Paul Shannon, founder of the Raytheon Antiwar Campaign, said in a press statement.
Since Biden made the announcement in February, some members of Congress have spoken out. Later the same month, 41 members of Congress called for transparency on U.S. involvement in the war. In April, 76 members of Congress released a letter calling on the Biden administration to demand an end to the blockade. And in May, 16 members of Congress signed another letter, led by Sen. Warren, calling on the Biden administration to “use all tools to end Saudi Coalition’s blockade of Yemen.”
But activists say they don’t want members of Congress to merely ask: They want them to legislate, like they did under President Trump. During Trump’s tenure, members of Congress led multiple efforts to invoke the 1973 War Powers Act — passed in the aftermath of the Vietnam war — to force an end to the U.S. role in the Yemen war. The Act says that Congress can compel a president to withdraw from a conflict if Congress has not formally declared or authorized the war (which the United States did not in Yemen’s case).
“U.S. involvement in this war was illegal when it began under the Obama administration, illegal when it continued through Trump’s presidency, and illegal now during Biden’s presidency,” Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni-American organizer and a board member of advocacy organization Just Foreign Policy, tells In These Times. Democrats should not rely on “Biden’s promises to end this illegal and inhumane war,” she argues. (Disclosure: Al-Adeimi is a contributor to In These Times.)
The leaders of the Trump-era War Powers Resolution — Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Chris Murphy and Rep. Ro Khanna — have so far declined to take similar action under Biden. But there are indicators the leadership could come from elsewhere.
On a July 27 call with the anti-war organization CODEPINK, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D‑Wash.) mentioned a possible threat of a Yemen War Powers Resolution in the context of a previous Congressional Progressive Caucus fight to structure the rules at the beginning of the new Congress. “If the administration were not to do what we think is necessary to stop the blockade in Yemen, as an example, we would then be able to bring up a privileged War Powers Resolution for a vote,” said Jayapal, who is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). The remarks followed a classified briefing earlier on July 27 attended by several members of the CPC and Sen. Warren. Among them was Rep. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.), who took to Twitter to speak out against the Saudi-led blockade.
Activists, some of whom are watching their family and loved ones back in Yemen suffer under harrowing conditions, want lawmakers to take action soon — and aggressively. This means mustering the political will to confront a Democratic administration. Abdullah argues that the suffering of Yemenis should not only be invoked when it’s politically expedient: “We can’t just be tokenized depending on the political weather at the moment.”
Some are eyeing other legislative avenues, including an amendment to the Appropriations Act, introduced by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D‑Mich.), that would prohibit U.S. support for the Saudi-led blockade of Yemen, and an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, cutting off supplies to the Saudi-led coalition.
Hassan El-Tayyab, lead lobbyist on Middle East policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, told In These Times that any measure to curb U.S. involvement in the Yemen War is a step forward. “Congress needs to step in and take legislative action. They have a number of tools they can use to cut off ongoing U.S. complicity, including in a must-pass NDAA, appropriations bill, and even a new War Powers Resolution,” he said. “They should consider all options when trying to end U.S. complicity.”
Numerous activists told In These Times that, of all the tools lawmakers could wield, a War Powers Resolution would be most impactful by far. “The blockade, which seems to be contingent on continued U.S. support, is the biggest driver of the calamity in Yemen — which was the broadest humanitarian crisis prior to Covid, and which has of course been exacerbated by the pandemic,” David Segal, executive director of the online advocacy organization Demand Progress, tells In These Times.
“War Powers Resolutions remain the most potent tool for forcing the administration to address this,” he adds, “because from a procedural vantage the process of securing a vote floor vote is easier than with other vehicles, and WPRs can’t be filibustered in the Senate.”
Al-Adeimi agrees. “Measures in the NDAA are not sufficient to protect Yemenis from U.S. attacks. If these measures go through, they will likely only last for one year. It’s also arguably unethical to advocate for measures in an inflated war budget that should be drastically cut, not supported. The WPR, on the other hand, can be invoked any time by any member of Congress, brought to debate without delays, and once it’s made into federal law, cannot easily be revoked by subsequent executive powers by this administration and beyond. Given Biden’s public statements about ending U.S. support for the war, he will also not likely veto it should it pass through Congress.”
In the meantime, says Abdullah, “the blockade is affecting every other aspect of life. There is a fuel shortage, no fuel for hospitals, lack of access to water.”
“It is very, very important,” she adds, “for a War Powers Resolution to be introduced and passed under the Biden administration, under a Democratic administration.”
READ MORE
Biden should reject the infrastructure plan written by Exxon and invest in saving the climate instead. (photo: Getty)
Biden Should Reject the Infrastructure Plan Written by Exxon and Invest in Saving the Climate Instead
Basav Sen, MarketWatch
Sen writes: "As disaster after disaster unfolds, any plan that doesn't tackle the climate crisis with urgency isn't worth taking seriously."
he Pacific Northwest is still reeling from a punishing heat wave that cracked roads, melted power cables, and killed hundreds. Wildfires from the heat destroyed an entire village in British Columbia and are now raging out of control in parts of Oregon and California.
Elsewhere, devastating floods have struck China and Germany, prolonged droughts are plaguing Southern Africa, and wildfires are raging across Siberia.
These aren’t freak events. They’re a grim portent of what the future could look like if we don’t heed scientists’ warnings and treat the climate crisis as the emergency that it is—starting with the federal infrastructure plan.
Not a serious plan
Any plan that doesn’t lay the groundwork for tackling the climate crisis with urgency isn’t worth taking seriously. Unfortunately, measured this way, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan now before the Senate is not a serious plan.
In his $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, President Joe Biden had proposed investing $100 billion in renewable energy generation (paired with an energy efficiency and clean electricity standard), $85 billion in mass transit, and $174 billion in vehicle electrification.
The American Jobs Plan fell far short of the scale that grass-roots coalitions like the Green New Deal Network wanted, but it was a start. The bipartisan compromise takes that already compromised plan and cuts it further to make it completely pointless.
The bipartisan plan cuts Biden’s proposed mass transit funding by 44%. It cuts vehicle electrification funding by a stunning 91%. And it cuts renewable energy by 100%—right on down to $0.
In the face of such an obvious crisis, how could these senators get it so wrong? Part of the answer, simply, is money.
Recently, Exxon Mobil XOM, -2.57% lobbyists were caught on video bragging about stripping renewable energy from the infrastructure proposal and turning the package into a “highway bill”—with $109 billion for the highway infrastructure that perpetuates the captive market for Exxon’s products.
On MarketWatch: Exxon disavows lobbyist remarks dismissing oil giant’s climate stance
The lobbyists revealed that they specifically targeted 11 senators for lobbying—including several Democrats who signed on to the bipartisan deal.
They backed that lobbying with plenty of campaign cash—a total of $333,000 from Exxon and its hired guns over the last decade to just the six Democrats that Exxon targeted. So it was for a very good reason that the bipartisan deal has been ridiculed on social media as the #ExxonPlan.
Few details of second package
Of course, the bipartisan plan is supposed to be just a first step for the Democrats’ infrastructure ambitions. Democrats plan to follow it with another $3.5 trillion package they plan to pass through reconciliation, bypassing the GOP filibuster.
That $3.5 trillion plan takes steps in the right direction. It includes proposals for a standard to require 80% clean electricity by 2030, among other hopeful signs. But details matter a lot in energy policy, and we don’t have too many details yet.
It remains to be seen whether the standard for 80% “clean” electricity will build up truly renewable energy, such as wind and solar, or motivate dangerous, polluting false solutions like nuclear energy or continued fossil-fuel use with carbon capture and storage.
And while the time horizon for the budget deal ends with 2030, the imperative to get to 100% clean electricity and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector by then should be nonnegotiable.
Political cowardice
Meanwhile, there has been some worrying backtracking by the White House on the reconciliation package.
The administration has suggested it won’t support any more funding in the reconciliation bill for items already funded by the bipartisan deal. This includes mass transit and vehicle electrification, both critical to tackling the climate crisis—and both areas where the bipartisan deal cuts funding to unacceptably low levels.
This is nothing short of political cowardice. It’s an exercise in futility as well, since even the bipartisan bill faces a rocky road in the Senate.
In a hopeful development, a growing number of progressive House members are expressing frustration with the bipartisan Senate negotiations, both in private and at a public rally. Hopefully they can use their political leverage to ensure that we get a just infrastructure bill.
But ultimately, a lot depends on Biden.
Biden can continue down the dangerous road of pursuing “bipartisanship.” Or he can reverse course and tell the “Exxon 11” and their colleagues that the bipartisan deal is a nonstarter. Instead, he must demand a plan that actually addresses today’s crises with just solutions.
READ MORE
Contribute to RSN
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
Update My Monthly Donation
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
