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"Own the Libs" Is Gradually Morphing Into "Kill the Libs"
Christina Cauterucci, Slate
Cauterucci writes: "A governing ethos that once boiled down to 'troll the libs' is steadily escalating toward 'kill the libs.'"
And far from just a GOP slogan, it’s becoming actual policy.
f Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gets his way, people who merely attend a protest that results in property damage will be prosecuted for felonies. Yelling at someone in a restaurant as part of such a protest will be a criminal offense. And a driver who kills demonstrators with his car will not be liable for their deaths, as long as he is “fleeing for safety from a mob.”
These are just a few of the policies proposed by DeSantis in a package meant to chill dissent and punish those in the streets demanding an end to racist police violence. Republican leaders in the Florida Legislature have promised to file the bill in 2021. By introducing it now, DeSantis clearly hopes to rile up Trump’s base in Florida, one of the most crucial swing states, with fears of black-clad cabals rampaging through their gated communities. But the specifics of the proposal are worth close consideration, because it represents a rising consensus among conservative leaders under Donald Trump: A governing ethos that once boiled down to “troll the libs” is steadily escalating toward “kill the libs.”
As my colleague Tom Scocca observed one year ago, Trump was elected as the ultimate expression of a political party more concerned with taunting and obstructing its opposition than with any specific governing agenda. Others have noted that, for decades, the driving principle behind the Republican project has been the conviction that people of color and their political allies are undeserving of full participation in American democracy. The push to shield those who murder protesters with their cars from criminal or civil liability, which Republican legislators have attempted to do in at least eight states, is a particularly gruesome offshoot of these two philosophies. It’s also not solving any problematic gap in the legal sphere: Property damage is already a criminal offense; self-defense is already an accepted legal defense for causing others harm. DeSantis and his peers are simply trying to create space within the law—or the perception of it—for their political supporters to kill their political opponents.
A few years ago, after Black Lives Matter demonstrators staged protests on highways and demonstrators blocked roads at Standing Rock, Republicans around the country proposed protections for people who drove their cars through crowds of protesters. James Alex Fields Jr., who killed Heather Heyer at a Charlottesville, Virginia, Unite the Right rally in 2017, may have been emboldened by these bills: According to a civil suit, before Fields drove his car into a crowd of demonstrators, one of the rally’s organizers falsely claimed that “driving over protesters blocking roadways isn’t an offense,” pointing to states that had considered such bills.
This hideous tactic of suppressing political dissent is spreading. This year, in the months since protests first erupted around the country after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in May, two people have been killed by drivers who drove their cars through demonstrations. Dozens more have been hit. At one June protest in Memphis, Tennessee, two separate drivers, both of whom appear to have exhibited animosity toward protesters on social media, hit demonstrators within the span of one hour. The Sioux Rapids, Iowa, police chief called protesters “road bumps.” The Auxvasse, Missouri, police chief posted on Facebook, of protesters blocking roads, “You deserve to be run over. That will help cleanup the gene pool.”) Officers in several other states have endorsed using cars to murder protesters.
Instead of taking action to quell this type of violence at protests, Trump and his supporters are attempting to incite more violence, and create more victims. After Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who traveled from his home in Illinois to fight protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killed two demonstrators with a military-style firearm he was not legally permitted to carry, Trump called it an “interesting situation” that looked justifiable. Rittenhouse “was trying to get away from them,” Trump said, of the victims. “[Rittenhouse] would have been—probably would have been killed.” That’s certainly a possibility, but instead, he killed two people.
As more Republicans spoke up about Rittenhouse, the rhetoric they used shifted from simple defense to full-on admiration. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said Rittenhouse’s victims were killed because the governor of Wisconsin didn’t accept Trump’s offer to send the National Guard to Kenosha. This lead people to “believe they’ve got to protect their own property and take matters into their own hands.” CNN’s Dana Bash asked him multiple times whether he condemned the shootings. All he’d say was “it’s a tragedy.” Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has actually praised Rittenhouse for his “incredible restraint and presence and situational awareness.” Again, he killed two people.
In the popular conservative imagination, Rittenhouse has become more than just a teen who did something regrettable in the process of defending himself. By killing two protesters at a protest for Black lives, he became a righteous crusader for the Americans who really matter. Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Rittenhouse “had to maintain order when no one else would.” Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi called him “a little boy out there trying to protect his community” and “mitigate the chaos out there.” Conservative writer Rod Dreher maintains that “Rittenhouse did no wrong”—he was ridding Kenosha of “the enemy of civilization,” the people “vandalizing, burning, and looting.” Trump supporters have called him a “hero” and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support his legal defense.
This applause for the killing of the right’s political nemeses is everywhere these days, popping up wherever the GOP can be found. It was there in one of Trump’s first tweets about the George Floyd protests: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” It was at the Republican National Convention, which honored Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a random St. Louis couple who earned a moment of fame for threatening protesters with guns, as esteemed representatives of the party. It’s in ads for Republicans like Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, whose recent TV spot suggests she’ll “eliminate the liberal scribes,” and QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, who posted a photo of herself brandishing an assault rifle next to images of Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib. “Squad’s worst nightmare,” it read.
The rhetoric is repulsive. But the GOP’s kill-the-libs ethos is not limited to violent rhetoric. It’s becoming policy. And I don’t just mean DeSantis’ bill—indifference to American death, as long as the Americans dying are liberals, is one of the many horrors we’ve been forced to witness this year. From the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump has explicitly, shamelessly hastened the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans living in blue states, then smirked as they perished. Every step of the administration’s pandemic response has been undergirded by the assumption that it’s fine for the president’s putative opponents to die. In March, the federal government shorted several blue states on the protective equipment and ventilators they’d requested from the national stockpile (while furnishing GOP-led Florida, which carries the most electoral votes of any swing state, with far more supplies than it needed at the time). One public health expert involved in the White House’s coronavirus task force told Vanity Fair that “the political folks” on the team dismissed the idea of producing a national pandemic response plan once it appeared that the virus “was going to be relegated to Democratic states.” According to a “senior administration official” who spoke to the Washington Post, it took evidence that COVID-19 was killing “our people” in red states and would probably start killing more people in swing states to get Trump to care about stopping the spread of the virus. Trump has also publicly argued against coronavirus-related relief bills because he believes they’d help blue states more than red states.
These have always been the stakes of politics: When lawmakers block Medicaid expansion, slash funding for affordable housing, bow to police unions, or redistribute wealth from the bottom to the top, they’re expressing their beliefs about who deserves to live and who deserves to die, whose lives matter and whose lives don’t. The pandemic and the national uprising for racial justice are slightly new terrains, but the stakes haven’t changed. The quiet part is just getting louder.
Earlier this month, the president encouraged his supporters to stop counting the people who’ve died in blue states as part of the official U.S. COVID-19 death toll. “If you take the blue states out … we’re really at a very low level,” he said. It was as if their deaths, which resulted from his politicized negligence, were no loss at all.
Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC director, at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Sept. 16. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/AFP/Getty Images)
CDC Director Overheard Blasting Trump Health Adviser: 'Everything He Says Is False'
Monica Alba, NBC News
Alba writes: "The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has grown increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump, pushed by a new member of his coronavirus task force, is sharing incorrect information about the pandemic with the public."
CDC Director Robert Redfield took aim at Covid-19 task force member Scott Atlas, telling a colleague in an overheard call that "everything he says is false."
Dr. Robert Redfield, who leads the CDC, suggested in a conversation with a colleague Friday that Dr. Scott Atlas is arming Trump with misleading data about a range of issues, including questioning the efficacy of masks, whether young people are susceptible to the virus and the potential benefits of herd immunity.
"Everything he says is false," Redfield said during a phone call made in public on a commercial airline and overheard by NBC News.
Redfield acknowledged after the flight from Atlanta to Washington that he was speaking about Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no background in infectious diseases or public health. Atlas was brought on to the White House task force in August.
Redfield testified before Congress this month that he suspects that a face covering could protect him from Covid-19 better than any future vaccine. Most public health officials share the view that masks are essential to stopping the spread of the virus. Still, Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on how useful wearing them may be.
"If every one of us did it, this pandemic would be over in eight to 12 weeks," Redfield said before offering a stark warning that contradicted the president's assertion that the country is "rounding the corner" on the pandemic.
"We're nowhere near the end," Redfield said.
In an email, a CDC spokesman said: "NBC News is reporting one side of a private phone conversation by CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield that was overheard on a plane from Atlanta Hartsfield airport. Dr. Redfield was having a private discussion regarding a number of points he has made publicly about Covid-19."
Before he joined the task force, Atlas was a frequent guest on Fox News, where he pushed to reopen the country and espoused views that more closely align with Trump's opinions during the health crisis. Since his addition to the task force, Atlas has become the medical expert who spends the most time with the president, and his profile has been elevated in recent weeks by his appearing in the White House briefing room when Trump speaks with reporters.
Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who attended near-daily briefings with the president alongside Redfield in the spring, have, at times, voiced their disagreements with Atlas as the number of coronavirus cases has surged, climbing by 22 percent in the last two weeks, according to data reviewed by NBC News. Two dozen states reported higher numbers than during the previous seven-day period. More than 204,000 people have died of the virus in the United States, with 7 million infected so far.
There is a concern among Redfield and others that Atlas continually briefs the president and misrepresents what other health experts have said in sworn testimony, according to a member of the task force.
Asked to respond to Redfield's comments, Atlas said in a statement: "Everything I have said is directly from the data and the science. It echoes what is said by many of the top medical scientists in the world, including those at Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford."
A White House official responded by saying the president "consults with many experts both inside and outside of the federal government, who sometimes disagree with one another."
"He then makes policy decisions based on all of the information to save lives and safely reopen the country," the official said, adding that "everyone, including the president, recommends wearing a mask when you cannot social distance."
Fauci and Birx declined to comment.
When the president said last week that the virus affects "virtually nobody" who is young, members of the task force, including Redfield, rejected the statement as false.
"It's not true," Redfield said in an interview. "We know that the infection is very common. We know the highest-risk group right now is 18 to 25." Redfield pointed out, however, that the president is correct in noting that mortality rates are quite low in that age group.
But "when certain other people suggest that this virus doesn't affect children," Redfield added, "they're not correct."
About a quarter of new infections right now are in people 18 to 25 years old, according to a CDC spokesman, and while they likely will not die from the coronavirus, they can easily infect older or ailing populations who are more vulnerable.
And when Redfield testified last week that 90 percent of Americans remain susceptible to the coronavirus, Atlas directly contradicted him and claimed that he had "misstated" that fact under oath. Atlas argued that Redfield was using "old" data, even though Redfield cited information from July and August when answering lawmakers' questions on Capitol Hill.
The CDC has yet to release that information publicly, but it says it will do so soon.
"The virus is likely going to continue to infect people for the foreseeable future until a vaccine is administered widely in the U.S., starting with the first doses being available in 2020 and more widely available in the second and third quarter of 2021," an agency spokesman said.
When Atlas was pressed about why Americans should listen to him instead of health experts' sworn testimony, he told NBC News' Peter Alexander: "You're supposed to believe the science, and I'm telling you the science."
It was not the first time that the president or his advisers have dismissed testimony by Redfield.
After Redfield predicted that most Americans won't receive a vaccine until the middle of 2021, Trump accused him of being mistaken and "confused." Redfield maintains that there is no distance between him and the president, but he stands by his assertion that most of the public won't receive the vaccine until the second or third quarter of next year because vulnerable populations will be prioritized and it will take significant time to roll out shots to everyone.
Atlas has made his feelings about the public health experts leading the coronavirus response widely known, occasionally accusing them of withholding "all the knowledge that we have."
"The data is out there, and we don't all have to be paralyzed with fear," Atlas said Thursday on Fox News. "We have to do very, very diligent protection of the people who are vulnerable, and those are usually older people with other comorbidities, and we need to open, because we know the harms of not opening."
Atlas has repeatedly advocated for schools to open fully, and he has urged the president to push the same stance. And while he has privately embraced the option of adopting a herd immunity strategy, according to a member of the task force, Atlas told reporters in a briefing last week that he has "never advocated a herd immunity strategy."
Trump himself presented it as a possibility in a town hall gathering this month, misstating it as "herd mentality." He suggested it after having falsely claimed that the virus would "go away without the vaccine," and he cited Atlas as someone who agrees with him that the U.S. is turning the page on the pandemic, despite Fauci's rejection of the rosy messaging.
"Well, I mean, but a lot of people do agree with me," Trump said. "You look at Scott Atlas, you look at some of the other doctors that are highly — from Stanford. Look at some of the other doctors. They think maybe we could have done that from the beginning."
Michael Ronnell Williams. (photo: Des Moines Register/USA Today)
4 People Have Been Charged After a Black Man's Body Was Found Burning in an Iowa Ditch
Ashley Collman, Business Insider
Collman writes: "Four people were charged on Tuesday in connection with the killing of a Black man in rural Iowa whose body was found burning in a ditch last week."
Michael Ronnell Williams was found dead in a ditch in Grinnell on September 16.
Steven Vogel, 31, who authorities said was an acquaintance of Williams, was charged with first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse, the Iowa Department of Public Safety said on Tuesday.
Julia Cox, 55, Roy Lee Garner, 57, and Cody Johnson, 29, were charged with abuse of a corpse and accessory after the fact. Cox and Garner face an additional charge of destruction of evidence.
Though all four suspects are white and Williams was Black, the police said at a press conference on Tuesday that there was no evidence to suggest that Williams' killing was motivated by race, according to The Register.
Authorities did not say what prompted Williams' killing.
Vogel's arrest affidavit said a witness told the police that Vogel had strangled Williams four days before his body was found.
The affidavit said another witness told investigators they'd heard that Vogel kept Williams' body for several days in the basement of the home where he lives with Cox and Garner.
The affidavit said Johnson told authorities that Vogel had tried to get his help in moving the body on September 13 but that they were unable to do so.
The scene near where Williams' body was found on September 16.
Cox and Garner told investigators that on September 16 they helped Vogel dispose of a long, wrapped-up object — Garner said it was wrapped in a rug, while Cox said it was wrapped in a blanket, the affidavit said.
They said that afterward they dropped Vogel at his sister's house, then went to a rural area where they disposed of the remaining items in Garner's vehicle, including bleach bottles and rubber gloves, the affidavit said.
The police's Tuesday press conference was held with the NAACP's Iowa-Nebraska chapter, whose president, Betty Andrews, said she had seen the evidence and agreed that the killing didn't appear to be motivated by race, according to The Register.
"Given that the current climate where racial justice is on the front burner for so many ... we understand the fear this kind of incident evokes," Andrews said.
Protestors outside the Irwin County Detention Center. (photo: Antonio De Loera-Brust/Office of Congressman Joaquin Castro/BuzzFeed)
Women Detained by ICE Told Members of Congress About Undergoing Unwanted Medical Procedures
Adolfo Flores, BuzzFeed
Flores writes: "Members of Congress who visited immigrants detained by federal authorities at a facility that has come under fire following allegations of unwanted gynecological procedures heard firsthand accounts on Saturday from women who said they were coerced or had unwanted medical treatment."
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and House Judiciary Committee were among those who toured and spoke with immigrants detained at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, including a woman who asked them to read her medical file and explain what she had been injected with.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, said that during the visit she spoke with women, four of which said they had unwanted procedures they felt they were forced to undergo, otherwise it would result in them receiving a contraceptive injection without being told of the side effects. On a call with reporters, Jayapal said she has now spoken to eight women who say they had been subjected to forced unnecessary procedures — some of which have resulted in full or partial sterilization — or procedures without their consent or full knowledge.
"This is clearly an epidemic within Irwin County Detention Center we believe is tied to the for-profit nature of these procedures," Jayapal said. "One woman said she was treated like an animal, all described being shackled and coming out bleeding."
The Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, has come under intense scrutiny following allegations that a gynecologist had performed unwanted hysterectomies on ICE detainees. There has, however, been no evidence to support the accusations of mass sterilizations on immigrants at the ICE detention center.
Ken Cuccinelli, the second in command at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, on Thursday said that over the course of four years, two hysterectomies were performed at the Irwin County Hospital near the facility. Cuccinelli said after seeing the reports he immediately dispatched a team of people outside of ICE to review records at the facility, which is separate from an investigation being carried out by DHS's Office of Inspector General.
Still, several people have since come forward to accuse Mahendra Amin of conducting other gynecological procedures on women without their consent.
BuzzFeed News has spoken to four women or their attorneys who allege Amin conducted medical procedures on them without revealing or fully explaining what he planned to do. This, they and their lawyers say, meant the women did not give consent.
Experts said that in order for women to consent they have to be fully informed of the procedure.
The allegations against Amin came after a whistleblower — Dawn Wooten, who worked as a nurse at the detention center — filed a complaint with the DHS's Office of Inspector General. Wooten, whose complaint primarily focused on medical care and COVID-19 testing, also alleged that unwanted hysterectomies were being performed on immigrant women. Wooten didn’t name the doctor — but soon after, Amin’s name was made public by advocates and attorneys.
California Rep. Raul Ruiz, also a Democrat, said all procedures done without someone's consent should be investigated, not just hysterectomies.
"They should be considered because of the potential and the risks of causing infertility, scarring, further complications, further pain," Ruiz told reporters. "The point here is if you are going to take a blade to a woman's body, then you need to have informed consent otherwise it is an assault to that woman."
The Irwin County Detention Center, despite attempts in recent days to paint over mold and swap out moldy shower curtains, was not complying with national standards for public health, which, Ruiz said, was particularly concerning during the coronavirus pandemic.
Women had one disposable mask to use for months and were only given a new one the day before their visit, Ruiz said.
Rep. Nanette Barragán, also a Democrat from California, said the women they met were crying and asked for help. Some of them said women would return to the ICE detention center after undergoing a gynecological procedure in pain, crying, and would later develop an infection.
One woman with an infection in her belly button that had turned navy blue was released from Irwin County Detention Center days before the congressional delegation arrived, which Barragán believes ICE did to avoid scrutiny.
Another woman asked Barragán to read her medical files and explain what the injection she received was and what it was for. Barragán said the woman bled for 42 days afterward and experienced pain from the injection she received after refusing to undergo a dilation and curettage procedure with Amin.
Barragán said she also spoke with a woman who said she received a Pap smear with dirty equipment and later developed an infection. Many of the women were afraid of speaking out, fearing retaliation.
"They were called criminals. They were calling them cockroaches and mistreated," Barragán said. "We're treating them like animals. You can see the impact on their health and mental health."
Jacob Blake in his hospital bed. (photo: CNN)
Kenosha Officer Claims He Thought Jacob Blake Was Trying to Abduct Child
Associated Press
Excerpt: "The Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times last month told investigators he thought Blake was trying to abduct one of his own children and opened fire because Blake started turning toward the officer while holding a knife, the officer's lawyer contends."
Officer who shot Blake in the back seven times told investigators he thought Blake was trying to take one of his own children
Blake was paralyzed from the waist down.
In a summer marked by nationwide protests over police brutality and racism, the shooting of a Black man by a white officer sparked outrage and led to several nights of protests and unrest, including a night in which authorities say a 17-year-old who came to Kenosha from Illinois shot and killed two protesters and wounded a third.
Brendan Matthews, the attorney for Officer Rusten Sheskey and the Kenosha police union, told CNN that when Sheskey arrived at the scene on 23 August in response to a call from a woman who said Blake was at her home and shouldn’t be there, he heard a woman say: “He’s got my kid. He’s got my keys.”
Sheskey saw Blake put a child in the SUV as he arrived but didn’t know two other children were also in the back seat, Matthews said. He said Sheskey told investigators he opened fire because Blake “held a knife in his hand and twisted his body toward” the officer, and that he didn’t stop until he determined Blake “no longer posed an imminent threat”.
Matthews said if Sheskey had allowed Blake to leave and something happened to the child, “the question would have been ‘Why didn’t you do something?’”
Cellphone video shows Sheskey and another officer follow Blake with their guns drawn as he walks around the front of the parked SUV, opens the driver’s side door and lean into the vehicle. Sheskey then opens fire.
Ben Crump, an attorney for Blake’s family, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. He previously said Blake was only trying to break up a domestic dispute and did nothing to provoke police, adding that witnesses didn’t see him with a knife.
Blake’s uncle Justin Blake said on Saturday the allegation that Blake was attempting to kidnap his own child was false, the Kenosha News reported.
“That’s ridiculous,” Justin Blake said. “It’s gaslighting. Outright lies.”
The bystander who recorded the shooting, 22-year-old Raysean White, said he saw Blake scuffling with three officers and heard them yell: “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” White said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands.
The Wisconsin department of justice, leading the investigation, said a knife was found in the vehicle, but didn’t say if Blake had been holding it or if police knew it was there before Sheskey shot him.
In a statement released by Matthews on behalf of the police union, the lawyer said Blake was armed with a knife but officers didn’t see it until Blake reached the passenger side of the vehicle.
The mother of the three children, who called police, filed a complaint against Blake that led to felony charges accusing him of sexually assaulting a woman in May.
Blake, who was wanted on a warrant for those charges when police arrived at the scene, pleaded not guilty earlier this month via video from from his hospital bed. A trial date was set for 9 November.
Sheskey and the other two officers who were at the scene were placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
Maria Telumbre, center, holding a poster with the image of her missing son, Christian Alfonso Rodriguez, in Mexico City in 2014. (photo: Marco Ugarte/AP)
Mexico: Authorities to Issue Arrest Warrants for Military Personnel Involved in Ayotzinapa Disappearances
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed on Saturday that in the coming days the authorities will issue arrest warrants against military personnel involved in the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students."
From March to date, 34 new people related to the disappearance of the 43 students have been arrested.
"I offer my apology, and offer an apology on behalf of the state because we are facing a great injustice committed by the Mexican state, it is a matter of the state, and that is why now the government has to repair the damage and has to clarify what happened, and he has to deliver good accounts, there has to be justice and that is our commitment," López Obrador said during a meeting with the families at the National Palace.
The Undersecretary of Humans Rights Alejandro Encinas reported that from March to date, 34 new people related to the students' disappearance have been arrested, including members of criminal groups, police officers, and agents of the Public Ministry.
"Report six years after the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, from the National Palace."
Furthermore, the Ministry of Public Defense has handed over information on the 27th and 35th Battalions in Iguala, Guerrero, and its possible participation in the Ayotzinapa students' case. Since the investigations began, a total of 80 arrests have been carried out.
The authorities also apologized for the decisions of some judges to release alleged criminals related to the disappearance of the 43 students. This considering that the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa case has concluded that the so-called “historical truth” was built by hiding information during the previous administration.
Moreover, the Mexican President guaranteed that if the participation of the military is verified, there will be "zero impunity" with them.
Sharks off the coast of the Galapagos Islands. (photo: Rhett Butler/Mongabay
Shark Fin Trafficking Ring Busted as Trade Ban Comes Into Effect in Florida
Ashoka Mukpo, Mongabay
Mukpo writes: "U.S. authorities say they've broken up a conspiracy to traffic shark fins in and out of Florida by a company based in California, where their sale and export is banned by law."
In an indictment released Sept. 4 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia, prosecutors allege that 12 people took part in a national smuggling operation that falsified documents and committed wire fraud to hide the fact that a Florida-based shark fin exporter was operating out of California.
The 37-page indictment was unveiled just weeks before Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Kristin Jacobs Ocean Conservation Act, which bans shark fins harvested abroad from being imported into the state. The bill, named after a local lawmaker who died of cancer earlier this year, carves out exceptions for some licensed traders and is a result of years of contentious political wrangling between ocean conservationists and Florida’s fishing industry
According to the conservation NGO WildAid, fins from as many as 73 million sharks a year wind up in pricey bowls of soup — a delicacy in East Asia that can cost hundreds of dollars per serving.
Six federal law enforcement agencies were involved in building the case, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Prosecutors say the charges are a milestone in efforts to combat illegal shark fin trafficking in the U.S.
“United with our partner agencies, we have shut down an operation that fed a seemingly insatiable overseas appetite for illegally traded wildlife, and seized ill-gotten assets derived from that despicable criminal enterprise,” U.S. Attorney Bobby Christine said in a press release.
A years-long investigation leads to 12 arrests
According to agents with the USFWS, the case is part of a broader effort to disrupt wildlife trafficking networks working inside and outside of U.S. borders. The agency has similar powers to the FBI and DEA, and in recent years it’s started to take on increasingly complex investigations that can span multiple countries.
“About five years ago, we started noticing a significant trend in shark fin shipments either arriving here in the United States or transiting through by air cargo or other methods,” Tim Santel, a special agent with the USFWS, told Mongabay. “And that really raised some concerns for us as far as the vast amount that was being traded.”
Agents began investigating a Florida-based company called Phoenix Fisheries, Inc., owned by Mark Leon Harrison, 59, whom the indictment describes as an importer of shark fins from Mexico and elsewhere en route to Hong Kong.
While federal law makes it illegal to cut the fins off sharks and throw their bodies back into the ocean before bringing the fins to shore, individual states have wide leeway to decide whether or not fishing businesses can harvest fins from dead sharks at a dock or import them from overseas. Until recently, Florida’s laws permitted the import and sale of shark fins, provided traders were following the rules.
California, however, took a different tack. In 2011, the state passed a strict ban on the sale, purchase, and possession of shark fins, so when USFWS agents discovered connections between Phoenix Fisheries and a California-based company called Serendipity Solutions, LLC, it raised red flags.
The indictment accuses Serendipity Solutions of secretly directing the operations of Phoenix Fisheries from across the country and hiding payments in third-party accounts in order to circumvent California’s ban. Phoenix Fisheries is said to have exported 5,670 kilograms (12,500 pounds) of shark fins to Hong Kong in two shipments in 2016 and 2017 with a total declared value of $223,565.
As USFWS investigators surveilled the two companies and set up meetings between their owners and undercover agents, they say they also uncovered evidence of money laundering and marijuana trafficking.
“It started off as a wildlife case, but as we’ve often said, wildlife trafficking is interconnected in these transnational organizations along with narcotics, drugs, and human trafficking,” Santel said. “They’re all interrelated.”
After the charges were unsealed, federal agents arrested 12 people and carried out 22 search warrants across the country, seizing nearly $8 million in assets. They also confiscated 18 bladders from the endangered Totoaba fish (Totoaba macdonaldi), another East Asian delicacy, worth tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram.
Bruce Harvey, an Atlanta-based attorney for Terry Xing Zhao Wu, 45, who is alleged to have operated Serendipity Solutions out of his home in Burlingame, California, said it was too early to issue a statement about the case. But in an email to Mongabay, he pointed out that removing and selling fins from sharks isn’t necessarily illegal in Florida.
“Regardless of what one may think of the practice of shark finning itself, it is a legal activity, subject to both Federal and State regulation and licensing,” he wrote. “It is our understanding that any activity that occurred in this case was undertaken by duly licensed and approved operators.”
Bans gain steam in the U.S., but disputes linger over their effectiveness
The charges against Wu and his associates point to murky waters in state and federal regulations on the shark fin trade. Notably absent from the indictment are any specific charges for violating federal or state wildlife laws – instead, they include allegations of wire and mail fraud, drug trafficking, and money laundering. While those are more serious charges, they reflect the fact that until recently in Florida it was not illegal to import and export shark fins from overseas.
“During our operation, my agents probably dealt with or at least observed and documented somewhere in the neighborhood of 33 tons of shark fins,” special agent David Hubbard told Mongabay. According to Hubbard, agents generally have to go undercover to determine whether a trader is sourcing and handling the fins legally or not.
“There’s hundreds and hundreds of other businesses that were probably operating, so who knows what the real number is,” he added.
Because of its key position in the global shipping economy, the U.S. often serves as a waypoint for hauls of shark fins collected from Latin American and Caribbean waters before they are shipped to buyers abroad.
Now, Florida joins California as one of 15 U.S. states to pass a strict ban on the sale and possession of shark fins, which advocates say will keep those shipments out of ports in the state. But the shark finning industry has proved notoriously adaptable; Florida became a transit hub for fins partially because states like California and Texas implemented bans of their own, with at least some portion of the trade likely to now shift to neighboring states.
And by carving out loopholes for licensed traders to continue selling fins for now, some advocates say Florida’s ban didn’t go far enough. Without tough federal legislation that bans the possession and sale of shark fins across the country, they say determined smugglers will just do what Serendipity Solutions is accused of and hide their involvement in out-of-state transactions.
“This case makes clear that statewide bans on the sale and trade of shark fins, while a step in the right direction, leave holes in the system that perpetrators can and do exploit,” said Ariana Spawn, federal policy manager for the conservation NGO Oceana. “That’s why we need to put an end to the shark fin trade in the United States once and for all by passing the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act in the Senate.”
In late 2019, that act passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a 3-1 margin. A companion bill is under consideration by the U.S. Senate.
The fishing industry has lobbied hard against state and federal bans, saying they hurt small businesses and don’t make much of a dent in the global shark fin trade. The National Marine Fisheries Service agrees. According to the federal agency, the U.S. only exports around 1% of the world’s shark fins, and blanket bans don’t help manage shark populations.
Some conservationists say they aren’t all wrong. While the cruel practice of removing a shark’s fins and leaving it to drown in the ocean looms large in the public consciousness, it’s not the primary threat to global shark populations. Demand for shark fin soup has been declining in China, and in an interview with Mongabay, shark conservation expert David Schiffman said that the focus on fins is misguided, with bans like the one in Florida overshadowing more effective approaches to protecting sharks from being overfished.
For the USFWS, though, the calculation is simple: If the laws are on the books, they’ll try to enforce them.
“We’re going after these criminal organizations the same way we’ve gone after others involved in illegal activities,” Hubbard said. “And we’re using the full resources of the U.S. government to hold them accountable.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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