17 December 20
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11 days of fundraising and we are barely scratching the surface, that’s obviously not going to keep the process going. A few people are starting to help, Thank You! However many, many more people are not yet helping. That’s why this is taking so long.
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Marc Ash
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16 December 20
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Jesse Jackson | Georgia and Its Long History of Voter Suppression
Jesse Jackson, The Chicago Sun-Times
Excerpt: "Voters purged are likely to be 'young voters, voters of lower income and citizens of racial groups that have been denied their sacred right to vote in the past,' a report from the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union states."
ow that Donald Trump’s baseless lies about voter fraud have been summarily dismissed by the courts, perhaps some attention can be paid to the true threat to free and fair elections: systemic and massive voter suppression.
Voter suppression, not voter fraud, could have critically important effects in Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will determine which party controls the majority in the U.S. Senate.
In Georgia, voting rights groups, including the Rainbow Push Coalition and the Black Votes Matter Fund, have filed a lawsuit challenging the wrongful purge of nearly 200,000 voters from the voting rolls over the last two years. They are seeking, with the aid of counsel provided by the National Bar Association, injunctive relief to reinstate these voters prior to the Jan. 5 Senate runoff races.
As a September report from the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union states, the voters purged are likely to be “young voters, voters of lower income and citizens of racial groups that have been denied their sacred right to vote in the past.”
With Republicans in control of the state, it isn’t surprising that these are voters who are likely to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Nor is it surprising that the state chose not to use a licensee of the U.S. Postal Service — as required by law — to carry out the mailing designed to confirm that the voters were no longer at the address. Instead, it was done by a one-person firm located in Nebraska.
An independent analysis of over 300,000 voters purged from the rolls after 2018 showed that over 60% wrongfully lost their right to vote because of an incorrect assumption that they had changed their address. Too often, these voters never discover they have been purged until the time to vote, when it is too late.
The ACLU and Greg Palast, the independent investigator who discovered the wrongful purges, tried repeatedly to get the Georgia secretary of state to agree to meet to review the proof of unjustified purges. After receiving no reply, voting rights groups decided they had no choice but to file the lawsuit.
Georgia has a long history of voter suppression, dating back to the post-Civil War period when the Ku Klux Klan used widespread violence to intimidate Black and Republican voters in order to re-establish white supremacy. Georgia was one of the states that perfected Jim Crow laws to limit Black votes. Now, as Rev. William Barber II notes, “Jim Crow did not retire; he went to law school and launched a second career. Meet James Crow, Esquire.”
Georgia has employed all of the modern techniques of voter suppression. It has closed polling places disproportionately in areas of Black concentration, forcing voters to wait in lines for hours to cast a vote. It has repeatedly purged the voting rolls, striking far more voters off than the average state across the country. It required “exact match” voter signatures on registrations, with up to 80% of those disqualified people of color (a lawsuit brought that ploy largely to an end in 2019). When Republicans assumed total control of the state in 2010, the resulting gerrymandering was, as Rep. John Lewis stated, “an affront to the spirit and the letter of the Voting Rights Act.”
What has been happening in Georgia has been happening in states under Republican control across the country. Increasingly a minority party in a diverse and young nation, Republicans have been perfecting ways to gain power without capturing a majority of the votes.
In Georgia, a hearing on the lawsuit — backed by a record of independent and authoritative expert analysis of the voters purged from the rolls — was slated for Dec. 10. Hopefully, this injustice can be corrected before the runoff in January.
Donald Trump’s false claims about voter fraud have captured the front pages and immediate attention of courts across the land. Ironically, the authoritative challenge to brazen voter suppression has received far less attention.
In Georgia and elsewhere, it will take constant attention, citizen mobilization and litigation to challenge the increasingly sophisticated efforts to suppress the vote.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, right, stands onstage with former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner before speaking at a campaign event in North Charleston, SC, Feb. 26, 2020. (photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)
Nina Turner Launches Bid for Congress, Pledging “No Honeymoon” for Biden Administration
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Nina Turner is running for Congress. The former Ohio state senator became a national figure as one of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ most visible allies."
MY GOODMAN: Nina Turner is running for Congress. The former Ohio state senator became a national figure as one of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ most visible allies, in his 2020 campaign, national co-chair. On Tuesday, she announced she’s now launching her own campaign.NINA TURNER: Today, I am announcing my candidacy for Congress for the 11th Congressional District of Ohio.
AMY GOODMAN: Nina Turner is running to fill a seat left open by Congressmember Marcia Fudge, who was tapped by the Biden administration to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Turner is now the third candidate to announce their candidacy in the 11th District, following Cuyahoga councilwoman, County Democratic Party Chair Shontel Brown and former Ohio State Senator Jeff Johnson.
Bernie Sanders, California Congressmember Ro Khanna, Congresswoman-elect from Missouri Cori Bush have all lined up to endorse Nina Turner’s campaign. If elected, she’ll join the growing progressive wing of the Democratic Party in Congress, which has been putting pressure on other lawmakers to pass a second coronavirus stimulus package amidst the largest spike in COVID infections since the start of the pandemic. The relief package currently being considered does not include direct COVID relief payments for American families, despite a surge in unemployment and evictions by the end of the month.
Nina Turner’s platform includes direct COVID relief payments, Medicare for All, free college and a $15-an-hour minimum wage. She has also been a vocal part of the movement to hold President-elect Joe Biden accountable to the grassroots organizers and communities that helped elect him.
Nina Turner narrated a video released today titled “No Honeymoon”.
NEWS ANCHOR: CNN projects Joseph R. Biden Jr. is elected the 46th president of the United States.
NINA TURNER: “No honeymoon.” What do we mean by that? We mean that we the people hold the power, that we must continue to fight for what is just, right and good, and fight against what is not just, right and good. We mean that we must have solidarity and commitment, one to another. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. What do we mean by that? That as long as there are injustices, we will continue to fight. What do we mean by that? We know that when everyday people put a little extra on their ordinary, extraordinary things happen.
ACTIVIST: The pressure on Biden starts now! We are holding him accountable because we got him elected!
NINA TURNER: We mean we will continue to pursue those things that lift and edify, and we will reject those things that do not. We mean that we will not be seduced by smiles. We need action, and we need it right now. We will not relent. And that’s what we mean when we say “no honeymoon.”
AMY GOODMAN: “No Honeymoon” was produced by RootsAction. Nina Turner’s campaign announcement comes as Biden announced more Cabinet picks Tuesday. Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg will be nominated to be secretary of transportation. Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has been tapped to be secretary of energy. Politico reports Biden has quietly expanded his transition team to include veterans from Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, Facebook and Google.
Well, for more on the Cabinet, coronavirus relief and her run for Congress, Nina Turner joins us now from Cleveland, Ohio.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, former state legislator Nina Turner. Can you talk about why you have thrown your hat in the ring?
NINA TURNER: Well, this moment calls for that. I mean, this is my home. I am a daughter of Cleveland. I’ve lived in the 11th Congressional District, served in this district as a councilwoman, as a state senator, as you have laid out. I was the Democratic nominee for secretary of state in 2014, fighting against one of the worst secretaries of state in this country. All that I have done heretofore has been because of my love for my community and my love for this nation, to stand up and make sure that people understand that they deserve better than what they have been getting.
I definitely congratulate Congresswoman Marcia Fudge for being tapped for the secretary of HUD position. There has not been a Black woman, I believe, in that position in over 40 years. And the greater Cleveland area has a lot to be proud of. The state of Ohio has a lot to be proud of.
But I’m running in service of the people. And we need more, not just bold voices, but people who will take action and will be fearless when it comes to standing up for what is just, for what is right and for what is good. So, in your title, Amy — and to Juan, good morning — Democracy Now!, we need this type of leadership right now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Nina Turner, do you expect much pushback from the Democratic establishment or possible even competitors on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party? There’s been some talk that Dennis Kucinich, who had been toying with a possibility of running for mayor of Cleveland again, may also consider running for this seat, as well?
NINA TURNER: Yes, that is true. The more, the merrier. I mean, this is what democracy is all about. People should be able to run. You know, I don’t come from the school that tries to push people out of an election —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the key policies that you would —
NINA TURNER: — within the Democratic Party all over the country, that’s been —
AMY GOODMAN: We’re having a little bit of a video stutter here, so sometimes you break up, Nina. Go ahead, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I was just going to ask: In terms of some of the key policies that you would run as the plank of your campaign, could you talk about those?
NINA TURNER: Yes, $15-an-hour minimum wage, a living wage, people deserve that. It is immoral how the working class of this nation, from all backgrounds, have steadily not — their wages have not kept pace with inflation. And so, we have to, especially, Juan — even before the pandemic, but especially now, how are people going to survive? And if you can’t even survive, you will never get to thrive.
COVID relief, absolutely. It is immoral — and that is for both sides of the Congress and the current president — that there has not been a second stimulus package for the American people that contains direct payment. That is a must. It is a necessity; it’s not a luxury. And we need to follow the lead of other industrialized nations who have set in place — either folks get checks on a regular basis and/or helping the businesses that employ them be able to [inaudible]. It is a shame that this hegemon nation has not done that heretofore. And we all should be ashamed.
AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked about the COVID relief package during an Instagram Live video last week. This is what she said.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: What Mitch McConnell said is that we want to give big corporations total immunity for five years from COVID-related lawsuits. Now, if we do that, if we accept that for a one-time $1,200 check or a super short expansion of unemployment insurance, the deal is, is that you’re going to end up behind, because you may get one $1,200 check, on one hand, but you also may also get a multimillion-dollar hospital bill, with no recourse and no ability to protect yourself from a negligent corporation or employer. And so, that’s not worth it, right? Your check is not worth your life.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that is New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A bipartisan group of senators introduced a COVID relief bill Monday that does not include direct cash payments. It does include a so-called liability shield for businesses, which Republicans secured in exchange for agreeing to approve funding for local and state governments. Bernie Sanders says he will not support a bill that includes this corporate liability shield. You have Congress, that has a majority of members who are millionaires, saying no to, at this point, a COVID stimulus, though McConnell now says he will move forward, though he’s absolutely insisting on this shield for corporations. Talk about the significance of this, and what exactly you want to see in a stimulus package.
NINA TURNER: I definitely, Amy, want to see a guaranteed basic income, not a one check. You know, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is absolutely correct: That one-time check does nothing, even if it was in there. We need guaranteed basic income, especially for the magnitude of this particular crisis.
Amy and Juan, it shows a heartlessness. If you want to talk about a shield for businesses, what about the shield for the American people? What about the shield for folks who are facing eviction? What about the shield for people who go to bed hungry every night? What about the shield for the homeless? This is a heartless way to do the people’s business, their bidding. And the American people are going to have to stand up and say, in the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” How heartless do you have to be to care more about industry and corporations than you do about the everyday people of this nation, Amy? It cannot — this cannot continue.
And the healthcare portion of it, absolutely right, we need Medicare for All right now. We needed it before the pandemic. We especially need it right now. And we know that millions, almost 14, 15 million people, have lost their “employer-sponsored,” air-quote, healthcare, on top of the millions of people, almost 97 million or so people, who were already uninsured or underinsured. This is a crisis of epic proportions. It was a crisis before the COVID, and it is especially a crisis right now. And it cannot be tolerated. It cannot stand. And we’ve got to fight.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Nina Turner, the latest reports coming out of Washington last night were suggesting that the compromise effort would separate this stimulus into two bills: one that would include the federal aid to cities and states and the liability shield for corporations, and a separate one that would deal with assistance to ordinary Americans. Admittedly, it would only have $300 in additional unemployment benefits instead of the $600 from last time, but it would include some rental assistance and some food assistance. Do you think it’s advisable, if you were in Congress right now, to go ahead and pass the bigger bill and then wait until the new Congress comes in, in January, to decide on the liability shield and the municipal assistance?
NINA TURNER: Well, they shouldn’t be connecting that liability shield to the municipal assistance. You know, as a state senator, I had to deal often with cuts to local government. And to put those two things together, Juan, we know exactly why they’re doing it. They’re playing games with the American people. You know, this is a complicated issue. I believe firmly that we’ve got to — we have to get the checks. The $300 is certainly not enough at all. As a matter of fact, we’re going backwards and not going forward.
And we’ve got to awaken the sleeping giants in this country, Juan. It’s unacceptable. The American people — and I know COVID is out there, and I don’t want anybody to get COVID, but we’ve got to stand up strong. And we’ve got to find a way to make it known that this kind of throwing crumbs, if you will, will not be tolerated.
We need a social contract. That is our money, Juan and Amy. Our money. And I want the American people to understand that you’ve got people in the Congress, in both chambers, who are playing games with our money. That money should be given back to the American people that fund — that fund — this nation, period. So, it just cannot be accepted.
AMY GOODMAN: This is former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaking to MSNBC about the incoming Biden administration’s Cabinet.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I’ve seen some good appointments, people that I like, I think people who are really, really smart, experienced. But I have not seen people from the progressive movement per se in that Cabinet.
AMY GOODMAN: So, there is Bernie Sanders — you were co-chair of his national campaign — looking for progressive representation at the Cabinet level. He was pushing, apparently, very hard for labor secretary. Any word if that is going to happen, Nina Turner? And then if you can respond to Joe Biden saying — you know, pushing people to back off before the January 5th runoff election, senatorial races, in Georgia, that will determine the balance of the Senate? You just narrated that film that says “no honeymoon.” So, first, what would a Bernie Sanders as labor secretary mean? And are you satisfied with the Cabinet so far?
NINA TURNER: Having Senator Sanders as labor secretary would change everything. As we know, the senator has always been committed to the house of labor. Even in this last presidential run, when the Walmart workers could have picked from any of the 25 or so candidates running on the Democratic side, they chose Senator Bernie Sanders to come to that meeting of stakeholders and represent them. He has been on the streets with the house of labor. So, not just in the House of Representatives, and now the Senate, talking about it, he has been on the streets with the workers. He is the ultimate champion of the workers. And so, his vision for labor, the $15-an-hour minimum wage, making sure people have a right to form a union, you name it, he’s been there. He would be an extraordinary labor secretary.
In terms of the Cabinet picks so far, I mean, yes, I certainly agree with the senator: There have not been a lot of progressives put up thus far. We’ve got to do better. I mean, I would love to see stratification economist Dr. Darrick Hamilton, you know, Dr. Debra Furr-Holden, people like Michael Render, aka Killer Mike. Oh my god, what kind of Cabinet would that be! Certainly members of Congress, like Congresswoman Barbara Lee or Congresswoman Karen Bass. Those are the other types of people that they should be looking at to put in that Cabinet so that he has a robust — people in there with a robust commitment, who will not flinch, to lead and to serve, but to clearly be on the side of the poor, the working poor and the barely middle class in this country. That is what we need, Amy. And I don’t see that thus far.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the issue of immigration. We’re seeing reports now of a increasing surge of migrants coming to the Mexican border, trying to cross the Mexican border. Obviously, there have been a few major hurricanes in Central America that have devastated huge portions of Central America. What kind of advice or pressure would you put on President Biden at this point as to what he should do in terms of immigration — reversing the immigration policies of President Trump, especially given the fact that we may be facing a new surge of migrants at the border?
NINA TURNER: Yeah, absolutely, Juan. So, that’s job number one. Whatever he could do via executive order to overturn or — yeah, overturn or reverse, rather, what President Trump has done in his heartless administration should be done. And then, beyond that, we have to deal with the global — the climate crisis, that in many ways is driving this. There’s a push-and-pull factor that happens when you have this kind of disruption. So, whether it’s famine, whether it is the weather — you know, hurricanes, tornadoes — you’re going to have people all over the world who need relief.
And so, in that particular case, the president-elect needs to bring together world leaders so that we can deal with this issue. Climate crisis and immigration, on whole, we can deal with as a world, because we, the United States, should certainly be one of the many leaders — not the only one, but one of the many leaders — that deals with these types of complex issues that impact the everyday lives of our sisters and brothers all over the world. We should do that as a collective, as a coalition. That is how we’re going to build the type of strength that we need, not only in our country, but in the world.
You know, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “What happens to one directly happens to us all indirectly.” And the COVID virus has certainly shown that. The pandemic has shown that. And the climate crisis that we have, that is driving most of this, not all of it, has shown that, as well. And so it needs a world — a national and a worldwide response.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And speaking of the COVID crisis that you mentioned, the reports in The New York Times today say that the wealthy nations of the world have basically been locking up the supplies of vaccines that are coming out right now to deal with the pandemic, says Canada has already locked five — the ability to — contracts to inoculate their people five times over their population; the United States, three times over its population; the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, the nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America, very few of them have been able to obtain supplies of the vaccine until possibly 2022. Could you talk about the inequity here of who’s going to be getting this vaccine, or these vaccines?
NINA TURNER: It is the height of inequity. But it is a formula that has been carried out throughout the history of this world: You leave the Black and Brown nations in peril, vulnerable, and nations that are primarily white or European, they get to lock it up.
That cannot stand, either, because, again, the connection — we are certainly citizens of our respective nations, but we’re also citizens of the world. And another example of what affects one directly affects us all indirectly is called a pandemic for a reason. And so, world leaders to be — that’s a level of selfishness that will impact everybody. So, we can run, but we can’t hide. So, those nations that have locked up the vaccine in that way may think what they’re doing is OK and good for their citizens, but ultimately it is not, because the pandemic has shown very clearly that there is no border when it comes to something of this magnitude.
It’s the wrong thing to do, Juan, and it must be — we’ve got to stand up against that, as well. We can’t accept that. So, the nations of Canada and the United States and others, that can’t sit well with us.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Nina Turner, in 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann shot Tamir Rice within two seconds of arriving at a park where he was playing with a pellet gun. He was 12 years old. When Tamir’s 14-year-old sister rushed to her brother’s side, they tackled her to the ground, handcuffed her and put her in their cruiser. Tamir Rice died the next day. Neither officer was indicted.
Very quietly, in October, the Trump administration ended a civil rights investigation into the police killing of Rice. The New York Times reports the Justice Department ignored pleas by career prosecutors to open a grand jury probe into Rice’s killing for more than two years before denying the request in 2019.
Nina Turner, we went with you in 2016 during the Democratic National Convention in Cleveland to that park, and you showed us where Tamir Rice was shot by police. If you could, finally, talk about the issue of defunding the police, and also the fact that Joe Biden says no to defunding the police and no to Medicare for All?
NINA TURNER: Well, Amy, the Medicare for All is totally unacceptable in every way. I know some folks don’t want to use the term “defund the police,” but we have a crisis in this country that is a long time in the making. None of this stuff happened overnight.
And, Amy, you’re absolutely right. I mean, I know my face cannot be seen right now, but, yes, you and I were at that park. You know, I was in the last term of my Senate term in 2014 when that happened. It was in November. And I called then-Governor John Kasich. And I didn’t call him as a state senator; I called him as a Black mother and American. I think I shared some of this with you, Amy. And I said, “Governor, we’ve got to do something. We cannot let folks explode in this state, and they have every reason to do so. We’ve got to let them know that we hear their cries. What happened to Tamir Rice could have happened to my son, to any other Black mother’s or Black father’s son. And it cannot stand at all. I mean, we have to do something.”
And to his credit, he did. And that is how we were able to launch the Task Force on Community-Police Relations and, for the first time in the history of our state, to have standards by which law enforcement agencies have to abide by and have the community be able to judge them and critique whether or not they are answering to those standards.
Amy, a crisis in this nation a long time coming, generationally, the way that police and then other law enforcement agencies were set in this country, never to really protect and serve the Black community, but rather to be there to lord over the Black community, historically. And that is embedded in the DNA of this country.
And let me say this, because my husband is a retired police officer, our son is in law enforcement right now, so I get this in a very unique way, both warning and understanding that the really very real dangers of being out there to try to protect and serve, those that have the mindset to do so, and then understanding that both of my Black men have been racially profiled throughout their life. We have got to, as a nation, rethink policing in this country. We have got to put the requisite resources in mental health, the requisite resources in education, the requisite resources in making sure that people have a job, the requisite resources in making sure that people can live in safe communities. We need to overhaul the entire system. It’s not just what happens in policing; it is what happens with judges and prosecutors. It is the entire system. Some people may call that “defund the police.” The more important aspect here is that we must totally reform — and some people would say “transform” — and destroy and rebuild the way that the legal system works in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Nina Turner, we’re going to have to leave it there, but we expect to be talking to you soon in the future, candidate for Ohio’s 11th congressional seat, announced yesterday. She’s former national co-chair of the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, former Ohio state senator.
CNN's Omar Jimenez was arrested by state police while reporting live on air Friday morning. (photo: CNN)
New Report: A Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the US This Year
Freedom of the Press Foundation
Excerpt: "Today, Freedom of the Press Foundation is releasing a report on the unprecedented number of journalists arrested in the United States this year."
Based on the comprehensive data compiled by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation and Committee to Protect Journalists, our new report shows that there have been at least 117 verified cases of a journalist being arrested or detained on the job in the United States in 2020. The Tracker is also still investigating more than a dozen additional reports of arrests or detentions.
The numbers are staggering. Arrests of journalists skyrocketed by more than 1200% in comparison to 2019. In just one week, from May 29 - June 4, more reporters were arrested in the U.S. than in the previous three years combined. Arrests occurred in more than two dozen cities across the country. And more than 36% of the arrests were accompanied by an assault: journalists were beaten, hit with rubber bullets or other projectiles or covered in chemical agents, like tear gas or pepper spray.
The vast majority of these arrests occurred while journalists were documenting the historic, nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd and in support of Black Lives Matter.
“This report shows an unprecedented press freedom crisis engulfing the United States,” said Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm. “Journalists should not have to worry about being arrested for doing their job, yet across the country police have disregarded their rights on a staggering scale. Despite scores of illegal arrests and assaults on journalists doing their jobs, we know of no police officer who has been criminally charged for these shocking violations of constitutional rights. We hope this report will spur local, state and federal officials to act.”
People in Paris gather in support of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in 2015. (photo: Olivier Ortelpa)
Charlie Hebdo Trial: French Court Convicts 14 Over 2015 Terror Attacks
Kim Willsher, Guardian UK
Willsher writes: "A court in France has convicted 14 people in relation to the January 2015 terror attacks in Paris on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket."
Defendants found guilty on range of charges from membership of criminal network to complicity in attacks
A total of 17 people were murdered across three days in a series of attacks that horrified the nation. All three assailants were killed in shootouts with the police, leaving only accomplices to face trial.
The defendants were found guilty on different charges, ranging from membership of a criminal network to complicity in the attacks. Terrorism-related charges were dropped for several of the defendants who were found guilty of lesser crimes.
Ali Riza Polat, who was described as a “linchpin” in the organisation of the attacks, was found guilty of complicity by helping the gunmen obtain weapons and ammunition.
The verdicts were announced by Régis de Jorna, the president of the special assize court panel of five judges, after a hearing lasting 54 days that put 11 people in the dock and tried three in their absence.
At 11.30am on 7 January 2015, brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi forced their way into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris’s central 11th arrondissement.
They killed nine newspaper staff, as well as a building maintenance worker and a police officer. As they fled to a getaway vehicle, they stopped to kill a second police officer who was lying injured on the pavement. In a chilling scene captured on video, one of the brothers, hooded and dressed in black, strolled up to Ahmed Merabet and shot him at close range. Then they disappeared.
On Thursday 8 January, while a major manhunt continued for the Kouachi brothers, Amédy Coulibaly, 32, who later expressed his allegiance to Islamic State, shot Clarissa Jean-Philippe, a trainee municipal police officer.
On the following day, shortly after the brothers were discovered holed up in a printing works north of Paris, Coulibaly stormed the Hyper Cacher supermarket, killing four Jewish people and taking other staff and shoppers hostage. All three terrorists were killed in shootouts with police in the hours that followed.
De Jorna said Coulibaly had relied on “a circle of trusted individuals”, among them Polat. Sentencing Polat to 30 years in prison, De Jorna described him as a “longstanding friend” of the supermarket gunman.
Polat had played a “particularly active and transversal” role in that circle and had given Coulibaly “logistical help”, De Jorna said. He added the judges believed Polat knew of Coulibaly’s “ideological” jihadist commitment and therefore what he intended to do.
Hayat Boumeddiene, 32, the former partner of Coulibaly, was one of the three suspects tried in absentia. Boumeddiene was found guilty of financing terrorism and belonging to a criminal terrorist network and also sentenced to 30 years. She is thought to be alive and on the run from an international arrest warrant in Syria, where she joined Isis.
Mohamed, 33, and Mehdi Belhoucine, 29, who also left France after the attacks and are thought to have died fighting with Isis in Syria, were also on trial in their absence. Mohamed Belhoucine was convicted of complicity in the attacks sentenced to life in prison.
Three of the remaining accused were found guilty of “association with terrorist criminals” and given sentences ranging from 13 to 20 years. Seven others were convicted of the lesser offence of “associating with criminals”, ruling out their association with terrorism, and sentenced to between four and 10 years.
The Charlie Hebdo attack took place on the day of its first weekly editorial meeting of the new year. The paper had moved to its second-floor offices in rue Nicolas Appert after its previous premises was gutted in a firebomb attack in 2011 after a decision to publish controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The decision to reprint the caricatures – viewed as a defence of free speech by some and a provocation by others – still has repercussions today, seen most recently in the murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist terrorist in October 2020.
The attacks triggered an outpouring of international support for France as the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag spread online. World leaders gathered in Paris to march alongside the then president, François Hollande. But more horror was to come.
Ten months later, in November 2015, another group of terrorists launched a wave of shootings and suicide bombings in the city, killing 130 people, many of them gunned down at the Bataclan venue while enjoying a concert.
Since September this year, the suspects in the January attacks have been on trial amid extreme security at a new courthouse on the outskirts of Paris. The proceedings were the first to be filmed for “historical record”.
The court heard from 144 witnesses, 14 experts and 200 interested parties, mainly friends and relatives of the victims, some of whose testimony reduced many in the packed courtroom to silence and tears.
Day after day, the statements made by those who survived and the loved ones of those who did not, made grim listening. Often those standing to testify stopped and paused, seemingly lost for words: the voices of the living punctuated by the silence of the dead or the agony of the dying.
Recounting the events of 7 January 2015, when he lost colleagues and friends, Laurent Sourisseau, known as Riss, who now runs Charlie Hebdo, recalled the moment he thought he would die.
“I waited my turn. Often one asks oneself how one will die. Me, I was going to die here, on the ground at Charlie Hebdo, at my newspaper. The shooting continued. I asked myself if I was going to get a bullet in the head, in the lungs, I was counting the seconds because I said every second that passes could be my last,” he told the court.
“Then it finished, not a sound, a total terrible silence.” Around him were bodies. “I didn’t want to see that. A few minutes before they were all there, all living. I made an effort not to look at the scene … I started to feel pain.”
Zarie Sibony, 28, a Hyper Cacher cashier at the time of the attack, gave a chilling account of how Coulibaly launched into an antisemitic diatribe during the four-hour siege of the supermarket, and how he asked her and other hostages if he should “finish off” her colleague Yohan Cohen, 20, who lay in agony on the floor. Annoyed by the young man’s moaning in pain, Coulibaly shot and killed him anyway.
Simon Fieschi, Charlie Hebdo’s webmaster, was the first person shot by the Kouachis. Five years on he is still in almost constant pain. Fieschi spent eight months in hospital and then years in physiotherapy, but said he still has to work at overcoming physical paralysis and debilitating fatigue. “I hear us described as those who escaped,” he told the court. “I don’t feel like that. To my knowledge, none of those who was there that day escaped what happened.”
Merabet’s three sisters told how his killing had shattered their family and their lives, and there was silence as his partner, Morgane, addressed the accused. “I’ve lost everything. My life as a woman, my hopes, but I stand here facing you. I am standing and you will not have my hatred or my forgiveness,” she said.
Medical tragedies have mounted in jails ill-equipped to care for women. (photo: Just One Film/Getty)
As More Women Fill America's Jails, Medical Tragedies Mount
Peter Eisler, Linda So, Jason Szep and Grant Smith, Reuters
Excerpt: "The female population in U.S. jails has risen as the male population has declined. Many women enter jails suffering mental health crises and addictions, and sometimes pregnant. Yet local lockups are ill-equipped to handle this growing population pool."
y the time anyone at the Milwaukee County Jail noticed Shade Swayzer had given birth alone in a filthy cell, her baby was dead.
Swayzer had arrived a week earlier, on July 6, 2016, picked up after a dispute with a hotel clerk and charged with disorderly conduct and a parole violation from an old burglary conviction. She was clearly pregnant, just a few weeks from her due date, and police had her evaluated at a hospital before bringing her to jail. The fetus was deemed active and healthy, and Swayzer cleared for detention.
Swayzer, who had documented diagnoses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, told a jail nurse she’d stopped taking her medication, fearing it might harm her baby, court filings show. She refused examination by a jail physician and was assigned to the closely monitored “Special Needs Unit” with instructions for daily medical checks.
But within 48 hours, she was moved. That unit had only three cells for women, versus at least 13 for men, and the jail needed her cell for another female inmate who was suicidal. Swayzer landed in an isolation cell with no video coverage.
Five days later, an officer making rounds noticed Swayzer wearing no pants and acting “bizarre,” sitting on a mattress folded against the wall, bedding bunched beside her. The guard didn’t know Swayzer was pregnant – it wasn’t in her custody notes – and moved on. Later, the guard passed again and smelled a “funk,” according to investigation reports. Returning after her rounds for a closer look, she saw blood on Swayzer’s mattress and called for help.
Just after 6 a.m., nurses found Swayzer on her side, umbilical cord attached to the newborn. Swayzer cradled the child in a blanket. There was blood everywhere, feces on the mattress, empty meal containers scattered about, court testimony showed. “Don’t hurt my baby,” she said.
Laliah Swayzer, just under six pounds and already named by her mother, was dead. Her tragedy is part of a little-noticed confluence of trends behind bars.
The number of women held in America’s jails has risen more than 20% over the past decade, to an average of more than 115,000 inmates a day. And more and more are arriving in need of medical attention or with debilitating health conditions that strain the capacity of lockups typically designed for men. Thousands arrive pregnant each year. Most suffer from mental illness – at far higher rates than their male counterparts – and they’re more likely to experience drug and alcohol addiction.
As more women land in America’s local jails, more are dying there, too.
Reuters, analyzing data it obtained from more than 500 U.S. jails, documented 914 deaths of female inmates in those facilities from 2008 to 2019. In a three-year stretch from 2008 to 2010, 171 women died in the jails surveyed. From 2017 to 2019, the number rose to 287 dead, amid a spike in drug and alcohol deaths across U.S. society.
The casualties disproportionately affect Black women. Blacks comprise less than 14% of the U.S. population, but at least 24% of the 914 female victims identified by Reuters were Black. Information on race was unavailable for about 5% of female victims.
Seventy percent of the women who died over the 12-year period – at least 639 inmates – were awaiting trial, unconvicted and presumed innocent of the charges they faced. The death toll doesn’t include a category of collateral fatalities: their infant children.
The female inmate population has risen even as the male population declined, Reuters found, and many women struggle to afford bail, which can lead to longer jail stays.
“These women are showing up with needs, imminent needs, usually during a period of crisis and with trauma,” said Jessica Stroop, a correctional consultant with The Moss Group and former researcher specializing in female inmates at the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. “It puts a massive strain on the jails.”
Jails “need to have gender-responsive programs and staff and training and facilities,” Stroop said. Instead, “women often get treated as a bolt-on” in jails “designed for men.”
Jailers have been slow to adapt their medical programs, staffing models and housing strategies to accommodate the demographic shift, say experts. The Milwaukee jail, which had few cells set aside for women in need, has been under court supervision since 2001 due to repeated findings of inadequate healthcare; the sheriff’s office did not reply to five interview requests and a lawyer representing the county declined comment.
The influx of women in jails “poses significant challenges, because there are limited resources,” said David Mahoney, the sheriff in Dane County, Wisconsin, who is also president of the National Sheriffs’ Association. The prevalence of addictions, mental illness and pregnancy “is a strain” requiring more personnel, housing and medications, he said.
In the 500-plus jails surveyed by Reuters, deaths of women from the acute effects of drugs and alcohol, including overdoses and withdrawal, have climbed substantially.
From 2008 to 2016, at least 12% of female inmate deaths were attributed to drugs or alcohol, double the rate for men. From 2017 to 2019, at least 24% of female deaths were linked to drugs or alcohol, again double the rate for men. Cause of death findings were unknown in 6% to 12% of cases in those periods.
Nearly 70% of female jail inmates suffer mental health disorders, versus just over 40% of male inmates, a 2017 U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics study found.
The first time Jennifer Casey Norred tried to hang herself in her cell, jailers at Florida’s Leon County Detention Facility responded by strapping her in a restraint chair.
Over the next 24 hours, she cried, screamed and struggled until exhaustion silenced her. Norred, 36, appeared to suffer a seizure and urinated on herself, jail records show.
Norred had battled schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. When using her medications, she was full of energy, cooking meals for her mother’s book club, or visiting her grandmother in an assisted living facility.
“She was happy, healthy, and productive,” said Elizabeth Frederick, her mother.
When in the throes of mental illness, the popular waitress was tormented by sleep-deprived paranoia.
Her obsessive behavior led to aggravated stalking charges and landed her in jail on April 2, 2017. During her three months behind bars, she grew agitated, argued with inmates and told staff she didn’t need her medication. A psychologist deemed her incompetent for trial and recommended a mental health facility. A judge eventually agreed.
Before she could be transferred, Norred hanged herself.
“What she needed was intensive psychiatric treatment, not a restraint chair,” said James Cook, an attorney representing the family in an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit against the sheriff’s office and Corizon Health Inc, the jail’s healthcare provider.
In court filings, the Leon County sheriff and Corizon denied wrongdoing. Corizon told Reuters that while Norred’s suicide was “tragic,” the company provided care “consistent with best practices and national standards.” The sheriff’s office declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
Dangerous detox
The opioid crisis has deepened the risk for women behind bars. Drug and alcohol overdoses, frequently involving opioids, have emerged as the single biggest factor behind the rise in female inmate deaths. As the epidemic ravaged Ohio, 35-year-old Brittany Rae Schlarb was among the casualties.
Schlarb’s life took a hard turn at age 21. Diagnosed with anxiety disorder three years earlier, the hair stylist turned to cocaine, methamphetamines and other drugs and, in time, lost custody of her three kids. At the age of 28, she cleaned up, fell in love, got her kids back and earned an associate’s degree in marketing.
“Brittany had dreams of one day opening and running her own salon,” Deborah Schlarb, her mother, said in a previously unreported affidavit.
Then in 2011, a truck sped through a red light and slammed into Schlarb’s car, severely injuring her. Surgeons screwed a rod into her arm “that caused her pain all the time,” said her mother. Prescribed an opioid medication, her addiction returned. She moved on to fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, and to heroin. On June 21, 2018, police found her with meth and heroin in a restaurant parking lot.
“It was senseless what happened to her. If she’d only been put on an IV, she’d be alive today.”
PAINFUL PROCESS: Brittany Rae Schlarb in a happier time. In jail, she underwent a wrenching detox before her death. REUTERS/Schlarb Family Handout
The Summit County Jail in the city of Akron booked her into a medical infirmary for observation as she began to detox in her cell, a painful process that can include diarrhea, insomnia, hallucinations and dehydration. The National Commission on Correctional Health Care, an industry body that provides voluntary health standards for jails, recommends jails medically assist inmates going through detox. Some prescribe the drugs methadone and suboxone to reduce cravings and prevent withdrawal symptoms. Some inmates receive intravenous fluids.
Over four days of vomiting and dizziness, Schlarb’s only treatment amounted to suggestions she drink more water, according to a medical examiner investigation and her family attorneys.
Rail-thin, she rapidly deteriorated. By 9 p.m. on June 25, 2018, she was found face down in her cell, unconscious and covered in vomit, the medical examiner reported. “Her body was the color of a pickled egg, a reddish purple,” reported Tina Hamrick, who was an inmate in the next cell. An autopsy found Schlarb died of “dehydration due to complication of methamphetamine detoxification in custody.”
Her family threatened to sue the jail and its private medical contractor, Advanced Correctional Healthcare Inc, for knowingly providing inadequate care. The case settled for $625,000 before it went to court, county documents show.
Three addiction specialists expressed surprise Schlarb was offered just water. Withdrawal treatments should be “highly individualized” for underlying health conditions, said Joseph Lee, a medical director at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. “Detox can be very straightforward but it can also be incredibly nuanced and complicated.”
Advanced Correctional Healthcare denied wrongdoing but declined to comment on the specifics of the case. The jail also declined to comment on Schlarb’s case but said all inmates were screened for medical issues and those going through withdrawal had their vitals regularly checked. Five months after Schlarb’s death, it switched medical contractors, but did not respond to questions about the change.
“It was senseless what happened to her. All they had to do was take her to the hospital,” Schlarb’s mother, Deborah, said in an interview. “If she’d only been put on an IV, she’d be alive today.”
Pregnancy worries
At America’s 3,000-plus jails, thousands of women arrive pregnant every year, a situation that can imperil mother and child.
Data on pregnant women in jails is scant or dated. Studies reviewed by Reuters have estimated that from 3% to 5% of female inmates are pregnant when they arrive.
Without data, “you can only make assumptions,” said Carolyn Sufrin, an assistant professor in gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Reuters has filled some of that data void by examining public records, media reports and academic research. Reporters identified at least 65 cases from 2010 to 2019 in which female inmates suffered serious pregnancy-related complications, including miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, placental abruptions, stillbirths, and newborn or maternal deaths.
There are no national standards that all jails must meet for handling pregnant inmates.
Sufrin, who started a women’s health clinic at the San Francisco County Jail, led a study examining pregnancy outcomes for incarcerated women and found that the quality of care varies widely. Some jails provide comprehensive care with routine checkups and nutritional services. Others, understaffed, provide dangerously inadequate care.
In a jail, where women aren’t free to call a doctor or go to the hospital on their own, requests for medical attention can be ignored or overlooked.
Meagan Deadrich was 26 weeks pregnant when she was booked into the Salt Lake County Metro Jail on Valentine’s Day 2018 for violating her probation by not checking in with probation officials on a prior shoplifting case and misdemeanor drug charge. Within days, she had contractions and began bleeding two days later. Deadrich, then 34, said a nurse assured her the bleeding was normal. The mother of four said she knew otherwise.
A week later, when the bleeding wouldn’t stop, Deadrich begged for help. A nurse evaluated her on March 1 but she never saw a doctor, jail records produced in litigation show. Four days later, “I couldn’t feel my baby move,” Deadrich told Reuters. “If they would’ve sent me to the hospital sooner, my baby would’ve been fine.”
That afternoon, a physician assistant in the jail’s women’s clinic failed to detect a fetal heartbeat, her lawsuit alleged. Deadrich pleaded to go to the emergency room, but instead was returned to her cell.
That night, at about 10 p.m., she was handcuffed and driven to the hospital, where a doctor told her the baby was dead. “I was heartbroken,” she said.
She was diagnosed with placenta previa, a life-threatening condition in which the placenta covers the cervix and can lead to bleeding and complications during pregnancy and delivery. She underwent a c-section and a hysterectomy to remove her uterus. Deadrich can no longer have children.
When she awoke from the procedure, shackled to her bed, she asked to hold her baby and say goodbye. A deputy standing guard would only unshackle one hand, she said. “She was beautiful,” said Deadrich, sobbing. “She had a full head of black hair.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists condemns the use of restraints on incarcerated women during pregnancy and postpartum recovery, except for those who pose a risk of escape or harm. The group also recommends pregnant inmates have 24-hour access to obstetric visits. Deadrich says she didn’t have that.
She sued the county, sheriff and jail, alleging they violated her constitutional rights by failing to provide proper medical care. The sheriff’s office denied that her rights were violated or that its staff contributed to her injuries or the baby’s death. The case is ongoing.
Reuters identified 52 inmate deaths in the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s two jails from 2009 to 2019, or 2.2 deaths per 1,000 inmates – above average among the 500-plus big jails it surveyed. Nineteen of those deaths were women. The jail said it strives to provide quality care to all inmates.
When Shade Swayzer arrived at the Milwaukee County Jail, the medical and mental health directors saw her pregnancy and mental illness as a risky mix, lawsuit testimony shows. But their plan to address those risks collapsed in less than 24 hours.
“We wanted to make sure that we kept an eye on her,” Dr. Karen Ronquillo-Horton, the medical director, testified in the Swayzer family’s wrongful death suit. “I had concerns about her baby.”
Ronquillo-Horton directed that Swayzer be housed in the jail’s Special Needs Unit, where two officers provide continuous supervision and cells allow clear views of inmates. The doctor ordered regular prenatal exams and daily checks of the mother’s and baby’s vital signs.
But when a corrections supervisor needed one of the unit’s three female cells for someone else, Swayzer was moved out. The supervisor later testified that he checked with the inmate classification desk and found that Swayzer’s housing specifications card listed no restrictions. But a classification officer insisted in a deposition that the card noted the order to house her in Special Needs.
Exactly who erred was never determined; an investigator later acknowledged in court testimony that one of the officers probably was lying. In any event, Swayzer was removed from the Special Needs Unit. Isolated in a general population cell, she was surly and uncooperative. After three days, the jail’s nurse midwife, Katherine Meine, asked if she could do an exam. Swayzer told her to “fuck off,” Meine later testified, and said she was “fine” and could feel the baby moving.
While Swayzer’s mental illness was well documented, she had not been deemed incompetent, so she had a right to refuse treatment. In response to her lawsuit, the sheriff’s office said it met its obligation to provide medical care, saying she was monitored and showed no outward signs of distress. Another defendant, Armor Health, the contractor that provided the jail’s medical care and staffing, told Reuters in a statement that “no member of our team played a role in the tragic loss of the infant.”
Meine was concerned by Swayzer’s refusal of treatment, she later testified. It had been nearly a week since Swayzer’s last exam, including any check of the baby’s heartbeat.
The nurse midwife filed an urgent request to have Swayzer sent back to the hospital where she’d gotten prenatal care before her arrest, hoping Swayzer might agree to the plan. The request was approved, and an appointment sought at the hospital.
Two nights later, with the appointment still unscheduled, the duty officer noticed Swayzer acting “weird,” but she later testified that the inmate never mentioned any concerns. Swayzer, in her own sworn statement, said she told the officer, “I’m hemorrhaging and I’m having contractions” and called for help when she delivered the baby.
The medical examiner was unable to determine an official time or cause of death for the child. In her ongoing lawsuit against the sheriff and jail staff, Swayzer testified the baby was born alive and cried weakly as she tried to breastfeed her, before going silent. Expert defense witnesses contend the baby was stillborn, likely killed by a lung infection 24-36 hours before birth.
“Nobody is competent to have a baby by themselves in a cell, whether or not you’re medically trained, not medically trained, having mental health issues, not having mental health issues,” midwife Meine testified. “Nobody wants to have a baby in the jail.”
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo (center) at a Paris council meeting in July after winning reelection. (photo: Thibault Camus/AP)
City of Paris Is Fined 90,000 Euros for Naming Too Many Women to Senior Positions
Laurel Wamsley, NPR
Wamsley writes: "The city of Paris has been fined 90,000 euros for an unusual infraction: It appointed too many women to senior positions in the government."
In 2018, 11 women and five men became senior officials. That meant 69% of the appointments were women — in violation of a rule that dictated at least 40% of government positions should go to people of each gender.
In remarks on Tuesday to the capital's governing body, Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she would deliver the check to the Ministry of Public Service herself — along with the women in her government.
"So there will be many of us," she said.
Since 2019, French law provides a waiver to the 40% rule if the new hires do not lead to an overall gender imbalance, Le Monde explains. That's the case for the city of Paris, according to the newspaper: Women still make up just 47% of senior executives on its government. And female city officials are paid 6% less than their male counterparts.
But the rule change comes too late to avoid the fine.
"It is paradoxical to blame us for appointments that make it possible to catch up on the backlog we had," Antoine Guillou, the mayor's deputy in charge of human resources, told Le Monde.
Hidalgo, a member of the Socialist party who was first elected mayor in 2014 and was reelected this year, says the aim is to resolve an existing imbalance toward men.
"Yes, we must promote women with determination and vigor, because the delay everywhere in France is still very great," she told the Paris Council. "So yes, to promote and one day achieve parity, we must speed up the tempo and ensure that in the nominations there are more women than men."
"In Paris, we are doing everything to make it a success, and I am very, very proud of a large team of women and men who carry together this fight for equality," Hidalgo added.
Amélie de Montchalin, France's Minister of Public Service, lamented the fine and called the provision "absurd."
Minks at a farm in Bording, Denmark, where all minks must be culled due to a government order on November 7. (photo: Ole Jensen/Getty)
A Wild Mink in Utah Has Covid-19. Veterinarians Fear This Is Just the Beginning.
Brian Resnick, Vox
Resnick writes: "It started in nature. A coronavirus that originated in bats has wound up in humans, causing the Covid-19 pandemic. And it can go back to nature."
Which animals can catch Covid-19, which can’t — and why it matters.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus can jump again, from humans, back into animals, back into wildlife, where it can wait, mutate, and change. Perhaps, years from now, it can infect people again.
“If we’re careful — and we’re lucky — there won’t be a wildlife population that becomes infected and becomes an established reservoir that can also infect people,” Sarah Olson, associate director of the health program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, says. “If it does, then we’ve got a long-term issue here, where this virus has the potential to be with us for millennia. And millennia is a long time. The risk may be small, but the consequences are huge.”
Our luck may soon be tested. On December 13, the US Department of Agriculture reported that a wild mink in Utah tested positive for the coronavirus.
“To our knowledge, this is the first free-ranging, native wild animal confirmed with SARS-CoV-2,” the National Veterinary Services Laboratories reported. A genetic analysis of the virus suggested the wild mink picked it up from a nearby mink farm, perhaps via wastewater runoff from the farm.
No other species surrounding the farm were found to be infected, though, and there’s no evidence that Covid-19 is spreading between wild mink. One possibility is the wild mink could have just picked it up from the farm, and has not spread it since.
Another possibility: We haven’t yet detected a bigger outbreak. “This is potentially going to be a more widespread problem in wild mink,” says Stephanie Seifert, a researcher at Washington State University’s school for global animal health. It’s “very unlikely they swabbed the only wild mink with SARS-CoV-2.”
Mink are just one species. There’s no comprehensive analysis of all the animals in the world, whether or not they can get Covid-19 and spread it among themselves, and potentially to other wildlife. The virus can be establishing copies of itself in nature right now, and we would have no real-time way of knowing.
The light at the end of the tunnel for the pandemic is growing brighter, however. Safe, effective vaccines are now starting to be distributed in the US. But the eventual end of the pandemic will likely not mean the end of SARS-CoV-2. It may still sporadically, or more regularly — no one really knows — infect animals and wildlife across the world.
In the right animal host, the virus could lurk for years before an opportune moment to jump back into humans. Over that time, the virus could change a bit, mutating into a form that could evade the current vaccines.
Several species have been infected so far: cats, dogs, lions, tigers, pumas, mink, and, most recently, snow leopards. More species have been shown, in lab studies, to be vulnerable to infection.
But scientists are still investigating: How many more animals could potentially catch SARS-CoV-2 and what will it mean for the course of the pandemic, and, for the health of wildlife?
To avoid the worst, scientists and veterinarians need to know which animals SARS-CoV-2 could potentially infect, and figure out the chances of the virus jumping from humans to the animals, and back to humans again.
Many different types of animals can catch Covid-19
Scientists already know of many types of animals that can catch SARS-CoV-2. They know it because the virus originated in the animal world — likely in bats. And they also know it because they’ve seen several species of animals get infected.
Early on in the pandemic, tigers at the Bronx zoo got sick (three of them had a cough) with the virus. Veterinarians have since found signs of Covid-19 infections in some of the animals that humans spend the most time with.
Jonathan Runstadler, a veterinarian at Tufts University, is running a surveillance study of animals that come in for treatment at the school’s veterinary clinic. So far, they’re finding “a few percent of those domestic pet dogs and cats are developing antibodies to this SARS-CoV-2 virus,” Runstadler says, meaning their bodies have encountered the infection and mounted an immune response.
“It is unknown where the infection or virus they responded to came from,” he says, but the “highest likelihood” scenario was that it came from human household members. Overall, he says it’s not a lot of animals getting infected, but it’s clear that dogs and cats can, in some instances, be infected with the virus.
Cats seem to be more susceptible than dogs, overall (though the cats themselves don’t seem to get very sick). Dogs are a highly diverse species. “So it’s possible that there may be specific breeds or types of dogs that are more susceptible, we don’t really know,” Siefert says.
Other animals have been shown to be much more susceptible not just to infection, but to severe disease and even death. In Denmark, authorities ordered the culling of millions of captive mink after outbreaks occurred on hundreds of farms.
The concern wasn’t just that the virus was spreading among the mink, making them sick, making their breathing difficult, and killing many. It was that the virus had jumped from the mink, and then back into people, with some genetic changes to the virus’s spike protein, which the virus uses to enter cells.
“If the virus does begin circulating in a new species, the results will really be unpredictable,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security, says. The virus is constantly mutating, changing in subtle ways. When it enters a new species, that species’ immune system make it so a significantly altered strain of the virus emerges. “The real question is whether it will change in a way that is more or less detrimental to the human population,” she says.
Currently, there’s no clear evidence that the genetic changes that occurred on the mink farm would make the virus more likely to evade a person’s immune system, or diminish the efficacy of a vaccine. But Denmark’s health authorities didn’t want to risk it. So they ordered the culling of all the mink. (Denmark’s health minister who made the decision has since resigned.)
The mink were a bit of a ticking time bomb: The virus spreads easily among mink in farms because they are kept in close quarters (the same ease of transmission happens among humans in close quarters).
Researchers are trying to figure out which animals could spread the virus from humans back to wildlife
It’s relatively easy to keep track of the virus in farmed animals. Their health is regularly monitored. Farmers notice when mink start dying. But what happens if the virus gets into an animal that spreads the virus asymptomatically, or gets into wildlife, which is harder to track?
Once a disease establishes itself in wildlife, Olson says “it’s just exponentially harder to control. I mean, you can barely get people to take vaccines. Imagine wildlife. You just have very limited options.”
The USDA maintains there “is currently no evidence” that the virus has established itself in wild mink populations near the farm where it was found. “It is important that surveillance in wildlife around infected mink farms continue, to identify if the virus enters local wildlife populations,” USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spokesperson said in a statement to Vox.
Researchers can’t study every animal species on Earth and test whether it can carry SARS-CoV-2. They’re focusing their research on animals that could act as conduits between humans and wildlife.
Anna Fagre, a veterinarian and microbiology researcher at Colorado State University, is doing this research on deer mice. In a lab study, Fagre and colleagues revealed that deer mice can contract the virus and spread it among other deer mice.
Deer mice animals are common in rural areas. “We see them, if staying in like cabins in the woods, [deer] mice are going to set up shop there,” Fagre says. Deer mice are known to occasionally spread other viruses, and they exist at the interface between human dwelling and the broader natural world. They could be a conduit ferrying SARS-CoV-2 from humans to other wildlife.
In her lab, “we were able to inoculate and infect these deer mice, and they actually did transmit the virus to other mice they were housed with,” Fagre says. They experienced subtle symptoms like losing a bit of weight and they “get a little bit quiet,” she says (quieter than, um, a mouse). Then, a few days later, they recover. That subtle illness might make it hard to realize if there are, suddenly, a lot of deer mice with the virus. Plus, these are not captive animals. If a viral mutation emerged among them, it would be discovered much later than what occurred in the mink.
“When this preprint [study] came out,” she says, “some people were like, ‘Oh my god, this is so scary: deer mice! We’ll never get rid of the virus if deer mice become infected.’”
For Fagre, her results aren’t a reason to panic. It was just a lab study. The results don’t mean there are deer mice running around rural areas with the virus. They also don’t mean the mice will become a source of future infection for humans.
“There are so many different steps the virus would have to take to spill back from humans into deer mice, and then circulate in deer mice, and then be transmitted back from deer mice into humans,” she says. “I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. It certainly could. Cross-species transmission is what led to the Covid-19 pandemic.” The research helps scientists be vigilant. “It’s important to be aware,” she says.
Rare human-to-animal-to-human jumps could have huge consequences
Being aware of which animals can be infected with the virus helps researchers ask new questions, too. House cats of all sorts seem to be susceptible to the virus. “I live in kind of a rural area of eastern Washington and I’ve actually caught deer mice in my house,” Seifert says. “So I’m like, can my cat, if he kills deer mice, can my cat contract SARS-CoV-2? I don’t know.”
That is unclear. Also unclear: if there are circumstances where a cat could pass the virus to a human. It’s possible, but it has yet to be seen.
“We know that in experimental studies that this can go from cat to cat,” Danielle Adney, a veterinarian-researcher working with the National Institutes of Health, says. “In the real world, it really seems like every animal that’s been reported has a pretty clear link to an infected human. So this is still a pandemic that’s driven almost exclusively by human-to-human contact.”
(Pet owners don’t have to be wary of their cats infecting them. That said: A few of the veterinarians said their colleagues need to be really careful and wear good personal protective equipment and N95 masks when working on cats — particularly if they’re doing dental work.)
But we know that rare events can have devastating consequences. It was rare for SARS-CoV-2 to jump from bats to humans. “I’m very worried about cats,” Rasmussen says. “There’s a lot of feral cats out there in the world. There’s also a lot of people who have outdoor cats that may or may not interact with other feral cats or other outdoor cats. And then if those cats are coming back, and like snuggling with their owners, that’s a potential source for the virus to spill over for future ... introductions into the human population.”
She’s not saying this will happen, or that it’s currently happening. She’s saying it’s something to monitor. Because “if it [the virus] got into something like cats, and became widespread among cats, that would be a huge problem in terms of being able to control it long-term.”
It’s still unknown which species ferried the coronavirus from bats to humans in Wuhan, China. It could have been bats, but it could have been another species. Perhaps a similar species is found in other parts of the world and can carry the virus back and forth between humans and animals.
In the near-term, vaccines will help avoid the virus jumping back from animals to humans. But 10, 20 years from now, how many people will still be vaccinated and immune to Covid-19? No one knows. Thinking about Covid-19 in animals is to think about the bigger picture, to think on a longer timeline. Covid-19 could essentially hide in animals for years, waiting, subtly mutating and changing, before making a jump back into humans.
What’s hard about this topic is all the (literal) moving, crawling, trotting, scampering pieces: There are so many species, interacting with us in so many ways, interacting with other members of their own species in so many ways, interacting with other species in so many ways. In that sense, studying Covid-19 in animals is an opportunity to better understand the complicated ways diseases spread from animals to humans, and back again. That could help keep SARS-CoV-2 at bay, but it could also help prevent future pandemics.
The research on Covid-19 and animals has uncovered some good news, too.
“Luckily, ducks and chickens and pigs have all been shown not to be susceptible, in laboratory studies, and cows have really low susceptibility,” Fagre says. That means that the situation that happened on mink farms is unlikely to occur on farms where these more common animals are raised as livestock.
It’s not just about human health, but animal health as well
Veterinarians can think of a lot of potentially scary scenarios here. Not all of them are scary in terms of human health, but for animal health, too.
Scientists have conducted broad surveys of animal biology, noting which animals have a cellular receptor similar to the ACE-2 receptor in humans. This is a protein found on the surface of many human cells that the virus uses as a front door to start hijacking the cell and replicating within it.
At the top of the list of potentially most at-risk animals are some of the most critically endangered species on the planet, and some of our closest genetic relatives in the natural world.
At the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, veterinarian and conservationist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is concerned about a potential outbreak among the park’s 460 mountain gorillas, which represent nearly half of all mountain gorillas left in the wild.
Gorillas share 98.4 percent of their DNA with humans. They have a similar immune system, and have similar cellular proteins through which SARS-CoV-2 enters to infect the body. If one of these precious few gorillas got infected, Kalema-Zikusoka worries they would get sick and die. Worse, the disease could spread rapidly among them.
“They don’t know how to social distance,” Kalema-Zikusoka says. Likewise, there’s no putting a mask on a 300-plus-pound wild gorilla. “They’re always grooming each other, they’re always moving together as a group. So if one of them gets Covid-19, it’s very easy for the rest of them to get it.”
The virus, she says, plainly “is a threat to the gorillas,” as well as to chimpanzees and orangutans, which also share an overwhelming amount of DNA with humans. It’s not easy to treat a wild gorilla if it gets sick. And if one does, she says, the plan is to quarantine potentially exposed gorillas via 24-hour monitoring by park workers in the forest.
“You can’t provide the same level of intensive treatment to a wild gorilla as you would a human being, who you can put in a hospital ward, put on a ventilator for days and days,” she says. Instead, they would try to treat the gorillas in their own habitat, shooting pharmaceutical-loaded darts at the animals, if need be.
“The best we can do,” she adds, “is teach people to social distance from them.” Since the pandemic began, all people visiting the gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda must wear masks, they must get their temperatures checked, and they must stay 10 meters (32 feet) away from the animals.
Just as Covid-19 threatens gorilla conservation in Uganda, in North America, researchers are worried about bats. In recent years, millions of North American bats have died of a fungal disease called white nose syndrome. The pandemic threatens bats, for one, because it has basically shut down research on live bats. There’s fear that humans could give the bats the virus, and start an outbreak among them. “We don’t know if that can happen and which species that can happen in,” Siefert says. But considering how this virus likely originated in bats, scientists don’t want to risk it.
There’s no knowing what SARS-CoV-2 would do to bats in North America, or which species it could infect. Perhaps more would get sick and die. If infected, North American bats could become a reservoir species for SARS-CoV-2, a potential source of the virus for other wildlife, and down the line, for more human infections.
All of the veterinarians I spoke to stressed: Whatever is happening with Covid-19 in animals right now, it’s not as critical, or dire, as the situation in humans. It makes obvious sense that there are more resources currently going into tracking the spread among people, than tracking the spread among animals.
“Thousands of people are dying every day from this virus,” Fagre says. “Everyone’s first priority isn’t screening a bunch of wild rodents to see if they’ve been exposed.”
But down the line, perhaps we should prioritize them. Covid-19 is leaving a lot of shadow imprints on the world. It has upended lives and industries. But it’s also potentially burrowing itself back into nature, where it will wait. This virus came from nature, and it may very well return there. Scientists ought to track it as it does.
“This isn’t going to be the last spillover event,” Olson says, where a virus jumps from animals to humans. “We owe it to future generations to get our act together here.”
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