14 November 20
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14 November 20
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Here Are 277 Policies That Biden Can Enact on Day One - Without Congress
Max Moran, Guardian UK
Moran writes: "On 8 July, the Joe Biden campaign published the results of its unity taskforces with the former Bernie Sanders campaign in a 110-page document of policy recommendations."
Moderate and progressive Democrats broadly agree on all of these policies. Biden has no excuse not to enact them
n 8 July, the Joe Biden campaign published the results of its unity taskforces with the former Bernie Sanders campaign in a 110-page document of policy recommendations. Though Biden has not committed to enacting the policies recommended by the taskforces, they represent a clear vision for what a Biden presidency might look like.
While each taskforce proposed new legislation to achieve its goals, you can also read the document with an eye toward what a Biden administration could accomplish on day one, without having to go near Congress. To that end, we found 277 policies that are clearly within the executive branch’s power to immediately pursue, at least in part.
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On their own, none of these 277 policies will fully solve any of the interlinked crises we now face. But they can go a significant way toward immediate harm reduction. Some can even solve longstanding problems, simply by enforcing or fully implementing laws already on the books.
Perhaps most important, all of these policies are ideas that leaders in the moderate and progressive wings of the party broadly agree on, and that Biden should have no excuse not to enact, save for his own policy preferences. There is no hiding behind Congress on these topics. In Biden’s first hundred days, we should expect him to have made significant progress on many, if not all, of these proposals. Those which he does not adopt and pursue vigorously will speak to his nature as a president.
Not all of the proposals are new ideas. In fact, 48 are simply calls to roll back Trump-era policies, or to reinstate Obama-era rules and committees that Trump ended or disbanded. Any remotely competent Democrat ought to be able to implement these immediately, no matter what their particular policy vision.
Of those 48 Trump policies that the document calls to roll back, 28 are shifts in immigration policy. The overrepresentation of immigration issues speaks to the extent and the horror of Trump and Stephen Miller’s xenophobic project.
Each of the six unity taskforces proposed executive branch policies. From most to least, the issue areas were:
- Immigration (79 policies)
- Climate change (56 policies)
- The economy (55 policies)
- Education (39 policies)
- Criminal justice (36 policies)
- Healthcare (27 policies)
Some policies come from simply exerting the legal discretion at the administration’s disposal. What if instead of facilitating the Golden Age of White-Collar Crime, Biden’s attorney general prosecuted big oil for pollution law violations, and “aggressively pursued” employers who steal wages, break labor law, misclassify workers or cheat on their taxes? What if they descheduled marijuana and directed federal drug authorities not to pursue marijuana cases? What if the Department of Justice restarted Obama-era “pattern or practice” investigations into racist police departments, then broadened the practice to look at prosecutors and other criminal justice actors? Each of these policies is in the unity document.
While the Biden camp isn’t ready to embrace blanket federal student loan forgiveness, the document does call for pausing interest and monthly billing on those earning less than $25,000, forgiving debts of the permanently disabled and forgiving students exploited by predatory schools. It also finally sets clear rules for automatic enrollment in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and strongly hints at ending the federal government’s contract with Navient.
That brings us to federal contracting powers. The document calls for a “Buy Clean” program to mandate the government buy clean energy produced with high labor standards. It also calls for across-the-board prioritization of contracts with small businesses owned by women, veterans and people of color. Those owners better take care of their workers, though, since Biden can require labor law compliance be taken into account in any federal-contracting decision (which somehow wasn’t a factor already). Plus, he can bar any company that outsources jobs, busts unions or doesn’t provide a $15-per-hour minimum wage from doing any business at all with the federal government.
But most exciting for some is the evidence that Democrats are dusting off their copies of the American legal code and looking for forgotten powers already on the books. Antitrust enforcement has gone from a non-issue to a central plank: the taskforce calls for a full review of Trump-era mergers and acquisitions, and to take action on those that caused “harm to workers, raised prices, exacerbated racial inequality or reduced competition”. That’s a direct call for antitrust to break out of the shackles of the consumer welfare standard.
The unity taskforce also wants public data on police use of force data which the Department of Justice is supposed to gather anyway, but never actually has. Perhaps that will change soon. Multiple taskforces also called for aggressive enforcement of the Americans With Disabilities Act; many activists have reflected in recent days on how its promises were never fully realized, and some Democrats seem to be listening.
Of course, there’s also discrimination within the federal bureaucracy itself. The Department of Agriculture’s horrific civil rights record has been the subject of investigations and hearings since at least 1999. The taskforce document lays out a series of thoughtful reforms to USDA, from greater independence for the Civil Rights Division to reforming a credentialing process that has barred farmers of color from passing on their property.
We predict that these agencies and departments will be most involved in enacting the 277 policies (from most to least):
- Department of Homeland Security (59 policies)
- Department of Justice (56 policies)
- Executive Office of the President (37 policies)
- Department of Labor (26 policies)
- Department of State (21 policies)
- Department of Energy (17 policies)
- Department of Agriculture (15 policies)
- Department of Housing and Urban Development (13 policies)
- Environmental Protection Agency (13 policies)
As the Biden transition team begins sending “beachheads” into the agencies, and wannabe appointees jostle for influence, we hope that this quick guide will help a would-be Biden administration’s leaders to mentally organize for the task ahead. There is an overwhelming amount of Trumpian corruption to be swept out, and we face so many overlapping existential threats that there’s no time to delay. The Biden transition must prepare as much as it can in advance to enact sweeping policy changes come inauguration day.
A patient hospitalized with COVID-19. (photo: BioSpace)
The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Entering a Dangerous New Chapter
Will Stone, NPR
Stone writes: "It's hard to overstate how much the U.S. coronavirus outbreak has deteriorated this past week, with each day ushering in new, disturbing records."
On Thursday, there were more than 150,000 new infections. It was only last week that the U.S. reached a record of more than 100,000 infections in a single day for the first time ever.
"This is the worst the pandemic has been," says Dr. Preeti Malani, Chief Health Officer in the Divisions of Infectious Diseases and Geriatric Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Daily cases have gone up more than 70% nationwide, since the beginning of November. Another way to put it: one in every 378 people in the U.S. tested positive for COVID-19 over the past week.
"You have the entire country seeing surges and you're seeing it in rural areas and in urban areas. It's a reflection of the fact that COVID is so widespread."
While the week brought some promising news about a potential vaccine, there are dark months ahead of the country, as people spend more time indoors and travel for the holidays.
"This is a really dangerous time," says Malani, who is also a fellow with the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "It's not too late. We can still turn things around, but it's going to require a big effort."
Here are some of the big takeaways from the week in COVID-19:
1. Hospitals have never been so full
Across the country, more than 67,000 COVID-19 patients are now hospitalized. Compare that to the spring and summer peaks, when hospitalizations leveled off at close to 60,000 patients. Experts say there is no indication that the current trend will slow down. In fact, quite the opposite. Given the record-setting growth of cases, it's likely that hospitalizations will pick up speed in the coming weeks, as some patients end up seriously ill.
The Midwest and the South (including Texas) account for more than two-thirds of all COVID-19 hospitalizations. Earlier surges were concentrated in a few places, but this fall spike is hitting lots of states all at once. From Utah to Wisconsin to Iowa, hospitals are warning that the situation is not sustainable if the volume of new patients doesn't slow down. An NPR analysis found at least 18 states have crossed into a dangerous zone where their hospitals could be at risk of reaching capacity, which could eventually require extreme measures like rationing care.
2. Parts of Midwest and the West are 'at the breaking point'
For months, the virus has pummeled the Midwest. There are no signs that is subsiding. In fact, new daily cases have more than doubled over the past two weeks in that region, which is made up of 12 states. Illinois has added far more cases over the past week than any other state — 80,000, which is almost twice as many as California.
The Dakotas, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska have the highest rate of infections per capita in the U.S. Wisconsin is now averaging more cases a day than New York City did at the height of its outbreak.
In the West, Utah is setting new records in cases as the state's governor says, "We're at the breaking point." Parts of Texas, in particular El Paso, are in crisis and carting in mobile morgues because of rising deaths. Montana is reeling after months of rising case counts, and doctors are warning the region is on the "brink of disaster."
3. States tiptoe toward new restrictions, but gaping holes remain
From Iowa to Connecticut, state leaders have started tightening restrictions and rolling back their reopening plans. Parts of California have stopped all indoor dining, including San Francisco. Minnesota has told restaurants to stop in-person service at 10 pm, saying that infections spread the most quickly later in the evening.
Indiana is putting caps on gathering sizes, limiting them to 25 people in the hardest hit counties (though religious services are exempted). Meanwhile, New York has put in place a nightly curfew for indoor dining, gyms and bars. In Illinois, state leaders have warned a shutdown could be on the way; Chicago has issued a stay-at-home advisory, although it's unclear how that will be enforced.
Some states are taking things further: On Friday, New Mexico announced a stay-at-home order that will take effect next week and non-essential businesses will close in person service. Oregon's governor made a similar decision.
Public health experts caution that states need consistent policies, instead of a patchwork of restrictions that only chip away at certain high-risk settings. As Anne Rimoin of UCLA told NPR recently: "This is a hard moment where we don't necessarily get to have our cake and eat it too. You want to have bars open, then you might not be able to have schools open. You want to not wear a mask, you're going to see more COVID."
4. New mask mandates — kinda?
Some state leaders that resisted mandating mask use are starting to bend, but experts say these new measures don't go far enough.
Utah's Republican governor issued a statewide mask mandate. Iowa's Governor Kim Reynolds has implemented a limited mask requirement, mostly aimed at large gatherings. Nebraska's new mandate also only requires people to wear a mask when they spend an average of 15 minutes together and are within six feet of each other.
And there are quite a few states that don't have a sweeping statewide mask mandate. And even those that do, compliance and enforcement are issues.
"We need to make mask-wearing obligatory and put a lot of stress once again on not having group assemblies of any kind," says Dr. William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
5. After a long plateau, deaths are now going up
Since the summer, one of the few hopeful developments has been that fewer people are dying. That trend is shifting now. After averaging below 900 since Sept. 1, average daily deaths broke above 1,000 this week. Daily deaths have increased about 23% over the past week. The current average is still about half of what the U.S recorded during the spring peak, but public health experts caution that deaths lag behind hospitalizations by a few weeks.
The latest prediction from the modeling group at the University of Washington predicts that more than 2,000 people will die each day from COVID-19 by mid January, and that the total U.S death toll will reach about 440,000 by March. The modelers say that changes in behavior could still prevent that from happening.
6. Even East and West coast states, that had kept cases low, are heading into trouble
Parts of the country that kept the virus in check for months are starting to see growth. Look at the Northeast, where daily cases have close to doubled over the past two weeks. New Jersey and Massachusetts are still averaging about half as many cases a day as hard-hit states like Minnesota and Michigan.
On the opposite side of the country, in Washington state, cases have more than doubled since the beginning of November. Oregon is not far behind. California is a bit more mixed. The per-capita rate remains lower than almost any other state, but there are pockets of alarming growth, particularly in the San Francisco Bay area and around San Diego.
7. Rural and suburban counties outpace metro counties in per capita infections
The pandemic was slow in reaching rural America, but it's hold hasn't loosened since getting to those communities. The rate of infections in the most rural counties remains higher than anywhere else and well-above the large urban areas. Much of the stress on hospitals in parts of the Midwest like Michigan, Kansas and Utah comes from rural areas, which rely on transferring patients in need of care to the metro areas. "In Michigan, a lot of the new cases are coming from the west side of the state and from less populated areas,"says Dr. Malani.
In the Dakotas, the numbers are nothing short of staggering. One in 1,629 residents of South Dakota is hospitalized for COVID-19, the highest per capita rates in the country. The mortality rate in rural communities is also higher than urban areas. Public health experts say there are similar patterns with other public health crises, like HIV. It can take longer to reach rural America, but once there it's harder to root out the problem.
8. Long-term care facilities are getting hammered again
More than 40% of all COVID-19 deaths are linked to long-term care facilities. These populations are exceptionally vulnerable because of their age and how easily an outbreak can balloon in congregate living situations. There were horrifying examples of the coronavirus tearing through nursing homes earlier in the pandemic. Now, the COVID Tracking Project finds that cases are again surging in these facilities, with more than 24,000 cases in these facilities last week. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas account for about one third of all nursing home deaths this week.
Behind the scenes of 'The Five' on Fox News. (photo: Fox New
Trump's War on Fox News and the Future of Right-Wing Media
Sean Illing, Vox
Illing writes: "What's the future of conservative media after Trump?"
CNN’s Brian Stelter on the conservative backlash against Fox News, the rise of Newsmax, and the bottomless appetite for right-wing propaganda.
For as long as most of us can remember, Fox News has been at the center of the right-wing media world. It’s hard to imagine that changing anytime soon, but there are early signs that a shake-up is afoot.
As a recent Washington Post story explained, the “long love affair between Fox News and Trump may be over,” mostly because the network hasn’t categorically embraced his false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election. To be clear, much of the network’s coverage is still Trump-friendly, particularly its primetime lineup that has given oxygen to the baseless narrative that the election was stolen.
But there have been notable moments when some of the network’s journalists have challenged this storyline and inflamed the diehards. In the past week alone, hundreds of thousands of viewers have flocked to Newsmax, a new and decidedly more right-wing channel, looking for more biased coverage. For now, it’s too soon to say whether this trend will continue.
If a sizable share of Fox’s audience, which is basically Trump’s base at this point, does revolt against the network, where would they go? What other networks might challenge Fox for supremacy on the right? And how would that change the broader media landscape?
Brian Stelter is a longtime media reporter and the host of CNN’s Reliable Sources. He’s also the author of Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth. I reached out to him to talk about where Fox might go after Trump and if he thinks the internal struggles at the network are reaching a boiling point. We also discuss whether Trump will launch his own right-wing media empire after he leaves office.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing
Has Trump changed conservative media in any significant way?
Brian Stelter
When you say conservative media, I think of a human body, with Fox News as the beating heart, but there are many other parts of conservative media as well. That body is complicated, right? There are some aspects of conservative media that are reality-based, and then there are resentment sites and full-blown conspiracy sites.
But if we’re talking about pro-Trump media, then that’s the big shift we’ve seen. Obviously there was no pro-Trump media before he ran for office, and now there’s a vibrant pro-Trump media that exists in opposition to the rest of the media. And this has evolved over the last few years, and it has hardened and become more loyal and more insular.
Sean Illing
Well, it may be too much to say that Trump has been a tipping point for right-wing media, but his audacity has really dialed everything up in a way that forced everyone who supports him in the press to go all-in.
Brian Stelter
Yeah, but this may have been the direction that conservative media was already heading in, and Trump just sped up the travel. Certainly, I think Tucker Carlson’s famous call to arms, at [the 2009] CPAC, urging conservative media to do more reporting and to strengthen newsrooms — so much of that has been left by the wayside. That call has been forgotten. It’s now entirely about whether you’re with Trump or against him. Were we always heading in that direction? Maybe. I don’t know. I have a hard time remembering the pre-Trump years now.
Sean Illing
People like you focus a lot on the media institutions — what they’re doing or not doing — but I wonder about the demand side of this. Audiences, especially on the right, have come to expect a certain style of journalism, which is all about affirmation and drama and high-stakes cultural conflict. Even Fox has lost some ability to control their own product because their consumers are demanding less news and more propaganda. The Trump years have definitely accelerated this dynamic.
Brian Stelter
In general, I think that’s right. There are obvious exceptions, but in reporting my book Hoax, staffers at Fox kept pointing to the audience as the overriding issue. I wrote toward the end of the book that the audience had been radicalized, and the anchors did whatever they could to keep up with their viewers’ demands for propaganda.
Again, there are exceptions to that rule, but it’s clear that Fox’s audience, at least the extremely online audience, will not tolerate any dissent. I don’t remember that in the Obama years. I’m sure it existed to some degree, but I’ve had many staffers at Fox tell me that their audience has been radicalized much more in the Trump years. In fact, I remember one veteran staffer said, “I feel like Fox is being held hostage by its audience.” I get that that implies that the network is the victim, and not the cause of this information environment, but that word “hostage” kept coming up in my reporting.
So I think you’re right — there’s a demand issue here. There are so many examples of Trump skeptics in Fox who felt they had to get aboard the train. For some it took longer than others, but it was about how, not whether, the hosts jumped on the bandwagon, because they could see that there was no market incentive for them to remain anti-Trump.
Sean Illing
What even is Fox at this point? I mean, the center has kind of held up over the last couple weeks, but only barely and probably not for long.
Brian Stelter
I think of Fox as many things in one. It is a news operation. It is a propaganda operation. It is a virtual community. It is all these things at the same time, and the news side has been shrinking and the propaganda side has been growing.
I’m not sure if “tug-of-war” is the best way to describe what’s happened the past week at Fox. There is this dynamic where daytime Fox shows are calling Biden the president-elect, but many Fox nighttime shows undermine that very description. So you’ve even got opinion shows like Fox & Friends acknowledging the direction this is headed, and yet other shows are trying to destroy the Biden presidency before it begins.
What does that add up to in the minds of the viewers? Well, it adds up to this complicated place, and some Fox viewers are resisting right now and turning to places like Newsmax or OAN [One America News] instead, because their coverage is more satisfyingly pro-Trump.
Sean Illing
That’s a big question now, right? Is the Fox base revolting, or are they just throwing a tantrum?
Brian Stelter
There are signs of revolt, but it’s hard to tell. As we’re talking now, I’m pulling up Monday’s cable news ratings. Before the election, I would look at Newsmax’s ratings and chuckle. Sean Spicer has a show over there and he would get 40,000 or 50,000 viewers a night, which isn’t even enough to fill a football stadium.
But I’m looking at Monday night’s ratings now and he had 600,000 viewers, and the next show had 800,000 on Newsmax, and the next show had 600,000. I hadn’t looked at the spreadsheet until now, but I’m gobsmacked. These shows are up 500 to 1,000 percent from their pre-election averages.
Now, obviously, ratings are up across the board because it’s an election, but something’s happening on the right. All of these networks are still small compared to Fox, and it’s not close, and yet there’s a real audience shift underway. Fox’s numbers right now are basically flat compared to what they normally are.
Is this temporary or permanent? I have no idea. It’s too soon to say, but it does seem that Fox has alienated part of its base.
Sean Illing
Is it conceivable that one of these Fox competitors, like Newsmax or OAN, eventually supplants Fox News as the tone-setter on the right, especially if these outlets are even less constrained by journalistic standards?
Brian Stelter
It’s a real risk to Fox’s bottom line in a way that it was not two weeks ago. In the last year or so, when I asked Fox staffers about OAN or Newsmax, the response was usually laughter and mockery. These channels barely registered on the Nielsen ratings.
The difference now is that we’re in a post-Biden-election world and some Fox viewers feel betrayed by the network. They feel betrayed by Fox’s reporting, by Fox’s reality-based observation that Biden is the president-elect, and so maybe for the first time some Fox viewers will finally flip their cable dial to another channel.
Sean Illing
What are you hearing now from all your sources over at Fox? Is there a civil war going on inside the building?
Brian Stelter
It’s really hard to know what’s happening inside these companies right now because of the pandemic — most people aren’t at the office talking to each other. But that said, I think there are different constituency groups within Fox News. There are journalists who have felt suffocated by the Trump years. There are executives who are focused on the profits. There are opinion hosts and commentators and producers who are focused on advancing the agenda. There are definitely internal skirmishes between the hardcore partisans and the journalists, and we see this playing out in front of the cameras.
Fox, as a business, makes billions of dollars in profit and it has to be somewhat reality-based. I know that some folks don’t believe it when I say that, but in order to appeal to advertisers and strike deals with cable operators, they cannot put on a broadcast that says Biden lost. There are just certain tenets of reality that can’t be denied, but that creates tension with some of these right-wing commentators who are under pressure from their audiences to deny reality.
Sean Illing
I’m not sure they can maintain this tension between reality and unreality. A recent poll shows that 70 percent of Republicans think the election was stolen — 70 percent! That’s a crazy number, Brian, and Fox, to keep its customers happy, will have to indulge that fantasy moving forward.
But even as I say that now, I realize I’m probably underestimating the extent to which Fox has always done this and there’s no reason why they can’t keep doing it.
Brian Stelter
My impression this week is that they are taking Trump’s lawsuits a lot more seriously than other media outlets. They are leaning heavily into the possibility of mass voter fraud, where none exists. They are bringing on so-called whistleblowers who imply that [the election] was rigged, while also covering the transition.
I mean, I have a hard time even describing this, because it makes no sense when I say it out loud, but it’s true. It’s what they’re doing. They are covering Biden, the president-elect, in one breath, and then they are imagining voter fraud in the next breath. And remember, Fox is a collection of shows that barely talk to each other. There’s some cross-pollination, but most of the opinion shows have awesome autonomy. News anchors like Neil Cavuto will keep doing reality-based journalism, and Sean Hannity or Mark Levin will keep doing what they do.
I’d also say that Fox’s brand has been built on the years when it is against Democrats, and they’re pretty open about this. This is not something they hide from. It’s something they acknowledge to advertisers. It’s something they sell to cable operators. They are the voice of the opposition, and you cannot drop Fox from your cable lineup because the audience will rebel, because Fox is the only voice of the opposition. That’s always been the brand.
My working theory before the election was that Fox will have four very profitable years as the preeminent anti-Biden channel. The question now is, will enough Fox viewers feel betrayed and look elsewhere?
Sean Illing
All good points, and maybe the operation keeps humming along like it always has, but for all the demand reasons we discussed earlier, I think they’re going to have to keep dialing it up and up and up.
Brian Stelter
Neil Cavuto has 1.5 million viewers at 4 pm, because Fox’s viewers generally don’t want to hear him report the news. Then at 5 pm, the ratings shoot up to 3 million viewers with the show The Five, which is a pro-Trump talk show with one liberal. The audience doubles when the opinion guys come on, and then the audience turns away for a while and comes back in massive numbers for Tucker Carlson.
So the trends are obvious. Fox sees these numbers every day. They know exactly what their audience wants. This is why they keep pushing in a Trumpier and Trumpier direction. There’s no reason to think this will change.
Sean Illing
Before you go, I have to ask you about the possibility of Trump launching his own TV network to counter Fox. This is something people have speculated about for years — do you buy it at all?
Brian Stelter
I don’t buy Trump TV because of my belief that Fox is bigger than Trump, and because of my knowledge that launching a network from scratch is incredibly difficult and almost impossible in the year 2020. There are some caveats to that, and some reasons why I could be wrong. Fox seems to have a stranglehold on Trump’s audience, so maybe Trump ends up with a show on Fox. He bitterly tweets against Fox from time to time, but he cares deeply about the programming. He’s obsessed with the programming, and he has lots of friends there.
I’ll put it this way: Why would Trump try to build and open his own mall when there’s a hyper-successful mall right across the street and he could have prime real estate right inside it? Why not go where the shoppers already are?
Sean Illing
Because he loves to put his name on shit! Fox News will always be Fox News, but Trump TV — that’s the good stuff, baby.
Brian Stelter
It’s possible that Newsmax or OAN would give him what he wants and put his name on the network, but those channels have a lot less distribution than Fox News. Even though Newsmax is doing really well right now, they are not available in nearly as many homes. Which gets to the root of why it’ll be so hard to launch a network. Cable and satellite operators are not in the business of adding channels right now. They’re in the business of subtracting channels. They want to be carrying fewer channels, as the cable business goes through this really tumultuous period.
Would a channel from a former president be appealing? Maybe to some operators in some red states, but I think it would be very hard to get Comcast or AT&T or Charter to carry a new Trump-branded channel, especially knowing how more than half the country would react to the existence of that channel.
It also costs an enormous amount of money; you’d have to have programming, you’d have to have producers. There are all these challenges associated with launching a channel from scratch, but putting his name on something that already exists would be way easier.
He could also turn the Trump campaign webcasts into a streaming platform and ask people to sign up. Could he go the Netflix route? He might actually make a lot more money trying to get people to sign up for his streaming platform than he would with a traditional cable or satellite channel.
All of this takes an enormous amount of work. Does he want to put in the effort? Honestly, if I wanted to launch Trump TV and I just lost an election, I would be out there on camera every day after the election. But we’ve barely seen him for a week.
An immigrant detention center. (photo: ABC
ICE Is Trying to Deport Immigrant Women Who Witnessed Alleged Misconduct by a Gynecologist, Attorneys Say
Adolfo Flores, BuzzFeed
Flores writes: "Attorneys and advocates working with immigrant women who allege they underwent overly aggressive, unwanted, or medically unnecessary gynecological procedures in ICE detention said federal investigators are excluding witnesses and setting them up to be deported."
ttorneys and advocates working with immigrant women who allege they underwent overly aggressive, unwanted, or medically unnecessary gynecological procedures in ICE detention said federal investigators are excluding witnesses and setting them up to be deported.
The number of immigrant women who allege they underwent nonconsensual or medically unnecessary gynecological procedures at the hands of Mahendra Amin while detained at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, has grown to at least 43. Of those, 17 women remain detained and only one has received a request by federal investigators to be interviewed, according to Caitlin Lowell, a law student at Columbia Law School's Immigrants’ Rights Clinic who is working with this group of detainees.
Seven of the 17 women are set to be deported by ICE in the next two weeks without speaking with investigators, Lowell said.
"It's as if ICE is trying to clear house before the new administration comes in by deporting as many of these witnesses as soon as possible," Lowell told BuzzFeed News. "At a bare minimum, any woman ICE has a record showing they received medical care by Dr. Amin and are alleging nonconsent or medically unnecessary surgeries or procedures should be interviewed, and that hasn’t happened.”
In a statement, ICE said any implication that the federal immigration enforcement agency has been attempting to impede the investigation by conducting deportations of those being interviewed is "completely false.”
But that leaves out women who attorneys said were victims of the gynecologist who have not been interviewed or who the Justice Department may choose to not interview, Lowell said.
The current setup, Lowell said, allows the federal government, which is investigating allegations of abuse done to women while under its care, to deport potential witnesses.
Since the whistleblower complaint that included allegations about unwanted gynecological procedures was filed with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) in September, at least six women who allege they were victims of Amin have been deported, according to Lowell. Four spoke briefly with the Justice Department and two did not.
One woman, Lowell said, had her deportation hold removed right after she conducted one interview with investigators during which she didn't go over everything. The woman had a second interview Tuesday, but Lowell was told her deportation is still scheduled for an unknown date.
In a statement, ICE said it was fully cooperating with the investigation being conducted by DHS OIG and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
"ICE has been notifying the DHS OIG...about any planned transfers or removals of Irwin detainees who were former patients of Dr. Amin, and is fully supporting the efforts by both the DHS OIG and DOJ Civil Rights Division," a spokesperson for the federal agency said.
Amin has denied the allegations through his attorney and did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
BuzzFeed News previously reported on women who said Amin conducted medical procedures on them without their consent.
Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School's Immigrants’ Rights Clinic who is working with women at the Irwin County Detention Center, said the deportations and attempted removals make it less likely victims and witnesses will want to cooperate with investigators because they fear retaliation.
Earlier this month, the Intercept reported that Alma Bowman — an ICE detainee who has been a key witness for lawyers and journalists of Amin performing the allegedly unnecessary or overly aggressive procedures — was nearly deported.
VICE News also reported that another potential witness in the investigation into Amin was almost deported last week until Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, intervened.
Not only should the women not be deported, Mukherjee said, but the government should also give those who participate in the investigation a document they need to apply for a special visa for victims of crimes in exchange for providing information against Amin. The "U visa" gives undocumented immigrants who report crimes and work with law enforcement a path to permanent residency.
In order to apply for the visa, immigrants must obtain certification from law enforcement that they've been helpful to authorities in prosecuting their abuser.
Mukherjee said lawyers have asked the federal government repeatedly for law enforcement certifications for the women who are cooperating in the investigation, but they haven't received them.
While the certification that would allow them to start the process for the "U visa" doesn't guarantee protection from deportation, it's more than the women currently have.
"It's really appalling," Mukherjee told BuzzFeed News. "They're scared of retaliation, they've seen what's happened to other women. And when they're coming forward, the investigators will not provide them with protection. It's outrageous."
Yanira — a 36-year-old Mexican woman who asked only to be referred to by her first name for privacy reasons — said she was scheduled to be deported on Monday morning, a few days after federal investigators were notified that she and 16 other women currently in ICE detention underwent nonconsensual and physically aggressive gynecological procedures performed by Amin.
She was on a tarmac about to be put on a flight when her deportation was prevented by her Columbia legal team, stopping her from returning to a country she hasn't been to since she was 3.
Yanira had been transferred from jail to ICE detention on Dec. 26, 2019, after pleading guilty to a minor drug charge. Before the transfer, she had undergone a hysterectomy procedure and soon began suffering from hot flashes and fatigue. She put in a request for medicine to control her symptoms.
The first time she saw Amin was on Feb. 6, 2020, according to court documents. Amin told that her wanted to perform a vaginal ultrasound. Afterward, Amin put several gloved fingers inside of her vagina. It felt too deep and caused her burning pain, she said. BuzzFeed News reviewed medical files that confirm Amin conducted an ultrasound that day.
Yanira said she repeatedly said "no," but that Amin didn't stop. For two days after the examination, Yanira said she bled and had discharge. She was in pain for seven days and had to take painkillers.
On Sept. 8, 2020, Yanira saw Amin again for a refill for the medication he prescribed her previously. A nurse told Yanira she needed to have a Pap smear and told her to undress. The Pap smear was painful. Afterward, as Yanira was cleaning herself up, she noticed she was bleeding and said Amin didn't put lubricant on the metal device used to open her vagina.
"It broke through the skin a bit and rubbed it raw. The force he used in it was just shoving it up in there and was why I felt so sore and so swollen," Yanira told BuzzFeed News.
Yanira said she bled for about two days after and was in pain for about a week. She said she had to take ibuprofen she bought from the commissary to lessen the pain.
"I want to speak with investigators because I don't believe the way we were treated was right and ICE needs to learn how to give us proper treatment," Yanira said. "We're human beings with feelings, with families we care about. We are not animals."
Not only does Yanira hope to speak with investigators but also hopes she will be released into the US in order to see her 11-year-old daughter who has developed depression and anxiety attacks since her mom was imprisoned.
Yanira has a hearing on Friday before a federal judge who will hear arguments on the temporary restraining order her legal team filed to stop her deportation. The lawsuit said Yanira has a First Amendment right to speak with investigators about the abuse she suffered at the hands of ICE and its contractors.
"If I were to get deported, I don't think I would be able to speak to investigators about what happened and tell people how this doctor actually mistreated me," she said.
Police officers face off with Black Lives Matter protesters. (photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
After a Summer of Protest, Americans Voted for Police Reform
Mark Berman and Tom Jackman, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Americans took to the streets for extended demonstrations this summer to protest police violence and racial injustice. Then, on Election Day, they took to the voting booth to endorse criminal justice and policing reforms."
With a wave of votes across the country, Americans backed a string of measures increasing police oversight, elected reform-minded prosecutors, loosened drug laws and passed other proposals rethinking key elements of law enforcement and justice in their communities.
These votes, taken together, signal that after a summer of protest brought renewed scrutiny to the justice system, many Americans were open to rethinking how it functions — particularly on the state and local level, where policies have a stark impact on how people interact with the justice system.
“It was a pretty good day for meaningful change in criminal justice reform,” said Ronald Wright, a law professor at Wake Forest University and a criminal justice expert. “The priorities I was watching didn’t win everywhere, but they won a lot more than they lost.”
George Floyd’s death in May set off a wave of protests decrying policing tactics. Five months later, voters in several cities — including some that experienced significant demonstrations — approved measures that would increase how local police departments are scrutinized and investigated.
Voters in Oakland, Calif., moved to create an inspector general’s office outside the police force to review officer misconduct. In Columbus, Ohio, voters passed an amendment creating a civilian police review board and an inspector general. San Diegans supported replacing a police review board with a commission that would have subpoena power and the authority to investigate police misconduct.
These votes were not exclusively in big cities. In Kyle, Tex., outside Austin, voters overwhelmingly passed a proposition requiring police policies to be reviewed by the city council and put under a committee’s oversight.
In Philadelphia, which was rocked before the election by demonstrations and looting after a police shooting, voters decisively supported ballot questions calling for the city’s police “to end the practice of unconstitutional stop and frisk” and another supporting a police oversight commission.
These proposals have not passed without controversy. A ballot measure creating a police oversight board in Portland, Ore., which has had protests nearly every night for months, passed with about 4 in 5 voters backing it. The union representing Portland police officers denounced it as “flawed” and filed a grievance, arguing that the city must negotiate changes to discipline with them first.
Voters in several places supported loosening drug laws. Oregon voters backed a ballot measure decriminalizing small amounts of drugs including cocaine and heroin. Four states — New Jersey, Arizona, Montana and South Dakota — legalized recreational marijuana. Voters in Mississippi legalized it for medical use.
In some places, voters took aim at other elements of law enforcement. San Francisco voters chose to ditch a city charter requirement that the police department maintain a certain number of officers, replacing it with regular reviews of its staffing levels.
In King County, Wash., home to Seattle — which saw extensive protests this summer and the brief creation of an autonomous, police-free zone — voters backed amendments making sheriff an appointed, rather than elected, position, and letting the county council dictate his or her duties.
The reform efforts were not a uniform success, falling short in many places. Voters in California rejected a proposition to eliminate cash bail. Oklahoma voters rejected a measure that would have blocked increased sentences for prior convictions in some cases.
Many conservative sheriffs also easily won reelection. In Pinellas County, Fla., Democrats raised large amounts of money to unseat incumbent Republican Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, but he was reelected with more than 60 percent of the vote, according to Jonathan Thompson, executive director of the National Sheriffs Association.
“People are very loath to trust their leaders,” Thompson said, “until they show them repeatedly they can do their job. That weighed in favor of incumbents in a lot of places.”
Thompson said he felt the “law-and-order” trend has regrouped with an eye toward, “Are we doing it right?”
Voters in Oakland County, Mich., reelected their conservative sheriff. They also brought a reform-minded prosecutor into office, part of a recent trend of people running to serve as district attorneys on platforms of reducing or eliminating cash bail, cutting down on marijuana prosecutions and opposing death sentences.
These officials, often called “progressive prosecutors,” have won office across the country in recent years, drawing sharp pushback from the Trump administration, police unions and some colleagues who denounce their policies.
In perhaps the most closely-watched district attorney’s race, the reformer George Gascón won in Los Angeles County, taking over the largest prosecutor’s office in the country.
Gascón was one of at least 22 reform prosecutors elected last week in places including Orlando, Tucson, and Portland. Several races are still not called.
Reform supporters were heartened by incumbent prosecutors — including Kim Foxx in Chicago and Mark Gonzalez in Corpus Christi, Tex. — who were reelected despite heavy opposition and criticism they had drawn in some cases.
“That people watched how these prosecutors worked and saw what they can do, and then voted for four more years — it’s important,” Larry Krasner, the progressive Philadelphia district attorney, said in an interview. “This is not just about the people who are getting elected, there is a grass-roots movement that is national.”
Krasner said opposition to mass incarceration has driven much of the support for reform prosecutors, particularly in urban areas. But he said it was “really exciting and heartening” that reformers were winning in more diverse and smaller locations, pointing to the San Luis Valley of Colorado and four small counties in Georgia. Among the winners in the latter was Keith Higgins of Brunswick, who unseated incumbent district attorney Jackie Johnson after she faced criticism for her handling of the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery by three White men in February.
“It’s huge,” said Miriam Krinsky of Fair and Just Prosecution, which supports reform prosecutors. Many, she said, were elected in 2016 and reelected this year. “Communities want to see a different vision for our justice system and they want to see police held accountable.”
These new prosecutors have pledged significant changes, including promising to abandon cash bail or drug distribution charges.
“These are messages,” Krinsky said, “that four or five years ago would not have been part of the conversation.”
Some reform-minded challengers fell short against incumbents, including in Cincinnati; Charleston, S.C.; Topeka, Kan.; and Maricopa County, Ariz. But overall, it was “clear that criminal justice reform won up and down the ballot,” said José Garza, the district attorney-elect of Travis County, Tex., which includes Austin.
“Here in Texas it’s happening because, for decades, regular people, people of color, working people, have been organizing, raising these issues, lifting up the inequality that exists in our system,” he said in an interview. “Making clear the status quo has not been making us safer.”
Garza said he would try to end cash bail and pledged not to prosecute drug distribution of a gram or less, regardless of the substance, because dealers of such small amounts are usually only users. He also vowed to change how the office approaches police misconduct, because he said it erodes trust in the legal system.
“All of this is with an eye toward what keeps our community more safe,” he said.
While some of these reform measures and candidates fell short, the overall outcomes across the country suggested a greater openness to other approaches toward criminal justice and law enforcement than the long-typical tough-on-crime stance, said Wright, the law professor.
“What it means is there’s a wider range of possibilities now,” he said. “For a long time, we had a very narrow band of possible outcomes that were politically viable. Everybody was running — just everybody, local, state, national — was running as hard as they could in one direction, which was, how much can we devote to prison and how many years of prison time can we use.”
This year’s votes, he said, show there is clearly room for more “experimentation with other strategies on public safety.”
A march in Mexico City on the anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. (photo: Keith Dannemiller)
Mexico: Key Military Official Arrested Over Disappeared Students in Ayotzinapa
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Captain José Martínez Crespo, accused of organized crime, homicide, and forced disappearance, is the first detainee in a military prison for the case of the 43 education students of Ayotzinapa, who disappeared in 2014 in Mexico."
The second captain in command of the infantry, José Martínez Crespo, has been admitted to the 1-A military field prison.
According to the Mexican press, the Federal Military Judicial Police this week filled out an arrest warrant against Crespo. So far, the information about his case has not been officially communicated.
Martínez Crespo was one of the commanders of the 27th Infantry Battalion that participated in the events of the night of September 26 and the morning of September 27, 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero.
"Mexican authorities detained Captain José Martínez Crespo; the first military officer arrested for his links to the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa."
Captain Crespo" was identified by Sidronio Casarrubias, the alleged criminal leader of the region where the 43 young men of Ayotzinapa disappeared.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured on September 26, the sixth anniversary of the students' disappearance, that arrest warrants had already been issued for military personnel who participated in the disappearances in the Ayotzinapa case.
A diver works in the golden kelp forest off the coast of Tristan da Cunha Island. (photo: Roger Horrocks/National Geographic)
New Atlantic Marine Sanctuary Will Be One of World's Largest
Sarah Gibbens, National Geographic
Gibbens writes: "The waters around one of the world's most remote inhabited islands, in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, are set to become the fourth largest completely protected marine area in the world, and the largest in the Atlantic."
Whales, sharks, seals, tens of millions of seabirds, and just under 300 humans inhabit the small islands that make up Tristan da Cunha.
Tristan da Cunha, a British territory, is 2,300 miles east of South America and 1,600 miles west of South Africa. To reach it requires a seven-day boat trip from South Africa, and once you’re there, “you feel so much like you’re at the edge of the world,” says Jonathan Hall, the head of the U.K. overseas territory unit at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
Now, this four-island archipelago will be the site of a marine sanctuary that spans 265,347 square miles, making it almost three times larger than the United Kingdom. Announced today by the Tristan da Cunha government, 90 percent of the waters around the island chain will become a “no-take zone” in which fishing, mining, and other extractive activities are banned.
Not only will this help bolster a small lobster fishery outside the sanctuary, say conservationists, but also it will protect foraging grounds for the tens of millions of seabirds that roost on the islands, such as yellow-nosed albatross and rockhopper penguins, and habitat for seals, sharks, and whales.
The new protected area will join the U.K.’s Blue Belt Programme, which, as of today, safeguards 2.7 million square miles of marine ecosystems around the world. The new sanctuary is the result of a collaboration between the Tristan da Cunha and U.K. governments, and a number of other conservation groups, including RSPB, which has worked in the region for 20 years, and the National Geographic’s Society's Pristine Seas initiative.
The Edinburgh of the Seven Seas
In a 2014 article that appeared in the now shuttered U.S. edition of National Geographic Traveler magazine, writer Andy Isaacson described Tristan da Cunha—or simply Tristan, as it’s often called—as a mix between Scotland and California’s Big Sur.
Jutting from this main island is an active volcano that’s capped with snow in the winter and marked by steep cliffs where albatross build their nests. Along the beaches are colonies of seals and penguins, and just offshore lie golden kelp forests. Only one tree species exists on the island, phylica arborea, or “the island tree.”
About 245 people of Scottish, American, Dutch, and Italian heritage live in Tristan’s only village, called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas.
First discovered by Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha in 1506, the island wasn’t inhabited until 1816, when a British garrison was stationed there to prevent the French from rescuing exiled emperor Napoleon from St. Helena Island, 1,343 miles north.
The descendants of those British sailors and a smattering of others over the years populate the island, keeping sheep, growing potatoes, and fishing for lobster.
While humans are scarce, wildlife is abundant on Tristan da Cunha, with seabird populations numbering in the tens of millions.
Every evening on the island, “the air just looks like it’s black with smoke as birds descend,” says Hall. “The scale of life is just so amazing.”
During a 2017 expedition to research the archipelago, scientists from National Geographic Pristine Seas also discovered a large population of migratory blue sharks, a species that’s heavily overfished for their fins.
“This is a place that has a unique ecosystem that is found nowhere else,” says National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala. It’s the only region for thousands of miles with coastal ecosystems like kelp forests, he notes, and it’s a critical nursery for blue sharks.
Benefits from marine protection
As remote as it is, Tristan da Cunha is not without its conservation threats. Invasive mice, brought by passing ships, kill about two million birds a year. The first eradication program will take place in 2021.
Offshore, RSPB’s Hall says the region has seen illegal fishing vessels. Tristan da Cunha’s residents operate a lobster fishery that’s certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. The new marine reserve excludes the designated fishing zones just offshore several islands. Inside the marine reserve, no fishing will be permitted.
A 2017 report by Pristine Seas used satellite data to track fishing vessels in the area from 2014 to 2016. A majority of the 253 vessels logged appeared to be passing through, but 11 showed activity consistent with fishing. Industrial fishing can lead to seabirds, sharks, and other important species inadvertently caught in nets or on fishing lines.
Under the protection of the U.K.’s Blue Belt Programme, Tristan da Cunha will receive more resources for patrolling its waters for illegal fishing activity, says Hall.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are seen by experts as a conservation silver bullet. A study published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences further corroborated established scientific evidence that MPAs worldwide protect food supplies by producing larger catch yields. Fisheries that are left undisturbed can produce a “spillover” effect in which an abundance of fish from a protected area “spill over” into fishing hotspots. Expanding the current network of protected areas by just 5 percent, the study found, could boost global fish catch by at least 20 percent.
“The increasing demand for seafood from an increasing and burgeoning human population, in addition to the expected negative impacts of climate change on many fisheries, elevates the need for managing and protecting fish stocks well,” says Reniel Cabral, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the study’s authors.
More to do
Around 8 percent of the world’s oceans are designated as MPAs, but only 2.6 percent are totally off limits to fishing.
The National Geographic Society’s Campaign for Nature Initiative has called for 30 percent of the ocean to be protected, a figure their research shows would allow ecosystems to provide benefits like ample fish stocks. Safeguarding that much of the ocean, they say, will also help protect critically endangered species from extinction.
“We have 10 years to protect 30 percent of the ocean if we want to stop the extinction of species,” says Sala.
He says these protected areas must be in large pristine areas like the waters around Tristan, but he notes that the world needs a larger number of small MPAs in parts of the world with more active commercial fisheries, like the U.S. and Meditteranean.
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