25 September 20
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25 September 20
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I’M GIVING MY $ TO ‘X-CANDIDATE’ CAN’T HELP RSN!? - We are getting a couple of these comments a day right now. Sure some of these candidates really do need contributions. I personally give to a number of campaigns. Not huge amounts but I help with what I can. Do not forget RSN! The information we publish daily helps the very same candidates and we do it 24x7x365, year in and year out. We are in actual trouble on donations. Help! / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News
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Charles Pierce | The President Has Announced His Intention to Stage a Coup
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "And he has made whoever he nominates to the Supreme Court an accomplice in that effort."
And he has made whoever he nominates to the Supreme Court an accomplice in that effort.
he story of the day was the president*'s becoming his own Reichstag Fire on Wednesday. He was asked (repeatedly) whether or not he would peaceably leave office if he loses. For the benefit of future fugitive underground historians, here's the money shot.
"Well, we're going to have to see what happens...You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very ... there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control."
But there's another bit of presidential musing* that seems to me to be just as alarming and certainly as significant.
“I think this will end up in the Supreme Court and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices, and I think the system’s going to go very quickly...I think this scam that the Democrats are pulling, it’s a scam, this scam will be before the United States Supreme Court and I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation. Just in case it would be more political than it should be, I think it’s very important to have a ninth judge.”
In a truly ethical system of politics, this would put every judge under consideration to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in an impossible situation. The president* who will appoint one of them has said clearly that he expects to have a safe one in the bag when and if he fights the election results all the way up to the Supreme Court. And I will make the Toby Ziegler Wager—all the money in my pockets against all the money in Judge Whoever's pockets—that he already has asked his prospective justices for the same thing he asked the hapless James Comey in their private dinner meeting: loyalty.
Now, it's one ongoing serious problem that the Republican Party has set up an entire mechanism by which a Justice David Souter can never happen again, and that the mechanism all but guarantees that the judges it produces will rule along party lines. That's a problem will have to be dealt with over the next several decades. But this is different by an order of magnitude from making sure that your judges will rule a certain way on environmental regulations. This is the president* telling you in advance that he expects you to violate your oath on an existential question regarding the survival of the republic.
How can anyone possibly take that job under those circumstances? At the very least, wouldn't your professional ethics require that you announce that you will be recusing yourself from any decisions regarding the election to avoid even the appearance of a quid pro quo? And, even if the president* hinted at such an arrangement during your job interviews, isn't it your obligation as a citizen to inform your fellow citizens that these kind of shenanigans are underway? Isn't that information the country needs to know prior to electing its next president*? Isn't all this what anyone committed to an independent judiciary would do? For that matter, isn't that what a truly independent Supreme Court would do?
The president* has announced his intention to stage a coup. Judge Amy? Judge Barbara? Chief Justice Umpire? Got anything you'd like to add?
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U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
The USPS Claimed It Can't Restore Hundreds of Mail Sorting Machines Because It 'Dismantled' Them
Tyler Sonnemaker, Business Insider
Sonnemaker writes: "The US Postal Service and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told a federal judge Wednesday that the agency couldn't follow his order requiring it to restore hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines ahead of the November elections because it had already taken some of them apart."
In a court filing, Trump administration lawyers argued that Judge Stanley Bastian of the Washington Eastern District Court state should amend a nationwide injunction he issued last week requiring the USPS to reverse those and other changes, arguing it could only restore "machines that were disconnected, but not dismantled."
"Dismantled machines 'are generally dissembled for their usable parts, with such parts being removed to maintain or enhance other machines.' It is therefore not possible to return such machines to service," the USPS argued.
The USPS also claimed the decommissioned machines wouldn't prevent it from counting mail-in ballots because it has "more than sufficient capacity to process current and anticipated mail volumes with the existing machine fleet."
The USPS has removed 711 machines this year, according to testimony and documents submitted to a New York federal court — nearly twice as many as the 388 machines it averaged annually between 2015 and 2019.
Democratic attorneys general from 14 states sued the USPS and President Donald Trump last month after DeJoy made the controversial and sweeping cost-cutting changes, alleging that it was part of a deliberate effort to undermine the election, citing Trump's repeated admissions that he wants to financially hamstring the USPS to sabotage mail-in voting.
Judge Bastian agreed, calling DeJoy's moves "voter disenfranchisement" in last week's injunction, and requiring the agency to reverse its decisions to decommission mail sorting machines, leave mail behind, eliminate overtime, remove mailboxes, and reduce operating hours.
Bastian concluded that DeJoy's cost-cutting changes were "an intentional effort on the part the current Administration to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections, especially given that 72% of the decommissioned high-speed mail sorting machines that were decommissioned were located in counties where Hillary Clinton receive the most votes in 2016."
The USPS has become a major flashpoint in the upcoming elections as millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail due to health risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic, leaving the agency to play a crucial role in delivering those ballots.
DeJoy, a major Republican donor and close Trump ally appointed by the president to lead the USPS, has come under fire over the cost-cutting measures. DeJoy faced a grilling from lawmakers last month who claimed the changes could cause delays in delivering ballots.
Trump has frequently claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting is linked with widespread voter fraud. Experts have repeatedly debunked those claims, and top Republicans have worried that his attacks on mail-in voting could cost their party the election.
Two additional lawsuits have been filed against DeJoy and the USPS, one by a group of attorneys general from New York state, New Jersey, Hawaii, New York City, and San Francisco, and another from a separate group of attorneys general from Pennsylvania, California, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.
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Protesters light candles and lay flowers outside the federal courthouse in remembrance of Breonna Taylor in Seattle, Washington. (photo: Karen Ducey/Shutterstock)
ALSO SEE: Kentucky Lawmaker Who Proposed "Breonna's Law" to End No-Knock Warrants
Statewide Arrested at Louisville Protest
Louisville Protesters March for Second Night After Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Decision
Chloe Atkins and Dennis Romero, NBC News
Excerpt: "Hundreds of demonstrators gathered downtown on Thursday night, a day after two police officers were shot during protests against a grand jury's decision not to file charges in the killing of Breonna Taylor."
An armed group of people said they were in the protest zone to protect businesses from potential vandalism.
undreds of demonstrators gathered downtown on Thursday night, a day after two police officers were shot during protests against a grand jury’s decision not to file charges in the killing of Breonna Taylor.
After months of demands by people across the country for police accountability, demonstrators spilled into the streets to voice their support for Taylor's memory and for her grieving family.
Some called for Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron to release all the evidence in the case while others carried “Black Lives Matter” and “United Not Divided” signs and questioned whether justice would ever be served in Louisville, Kentucky.
In the early evening, demonstrators blocked an intersection and chanted, "Whose streets? Our streets."
Hundreds of protesters swelled into the area. They were joined by a group of 30 armed people who said they showed up to protect businesses from possible vandalism.
By the city's 9 p.m. curfew a group of demonstrators sought shelter outside a church, where a woman with a megaphone said, "Stay on the church property. They are opening the sanctuary. We are safe here."
A protester holding burning sage meandered through the group.
Police had the area surrounded, and some of the remaining demonstrators on the streets were placed under arrest. Chemical agents were deployed, an unlawful assembly was declared and stragglers were encouraged to go home or face being locked up.
Later in the evening, an officer and a protester shook hands on a deal to let the demonstrators exit the church property without being arrested.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer on Thursday extended the 9 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. curfew through the weekend. Roadblocks and barricades remained in place downtown.
Following protests in Kansas City, Missouri, on Wednesday night, Gov. Mike Parson activated the National Guard. Police in Oakland, California, said in a statement that they "will continue to facilitate safe places & spaces for demonstrations."
In Louisville, the grand jury’s decision announced Wednesday drew sharp criticism from protesters and local activists who had called for three officers involved in the violence at Taylor's home to be charged in her death.
Brett Hankison was the only officer involved in the early morning raid on Taylor's Louisville apartment who was charged, but not in her death. He is accused of first-degree wanton endangerment. Det. Myles Cosgrove, the officer whose rounds killed Taylor, according to the indictment, was not charged.
Taylor, 26, an emergency medical technician, was fatally shot in her home on March 13 after Louisville police officers executed a no-knock warrant to search for drugs or cash in connection with an investigation involving her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, a convicted drug dealer.
Glover had been using Taylor’s address to receive packages, according to authorities.
Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was with her when officers arrived at the door, told police the officers did not identify themselves. Worried as they pounded on the door, he said, he fired off one round from a gun he was licensed to have. It injured one officer, and police returned fire, killing Taylor and shooting up a neighbor's apartment.
During protests Wednesday night, two Louisville police officers were shot while responding to a report of a large crowd and gunfire. Larynzo Johnson, 26, was charged with two counts of assault on a police officer and 14 counts of wanton endangerment of a police officer.
Louisville police arrested 127 people during protests Wednesday.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, walks out of the U.S. Capitol and heads for a news conference, Sept. 22, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Memo Laying Out Supreme Court Delay Tactics Circulates Among Senate Democrats
Ryan Grim, The Intercept
Excerpt: "A new memo spells out the myriad options available to Sen. Chuck Schumer to delay confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice."
s Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer faces increasing pressure from Democrats around the country to use every tool at his disposal to oppose the Republican effort to push through a Supreme Court nominee before the election, one question has bedeviled activists: What exactly is possible?
A memo circulating on Capitol Hill, put together by several people with knowledge of congressional procedure and obtained by The Intercept, lays out some of the options that could be available to Schumer even in the face of a determined Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Senators looking to obstruct in the Senate have a dizzying array of opportunities, but a majority leader with 50 votes, plus a tie-breaking vice president, also has an extraordinary amount of power in the upper chamber. Elements of the memo were first published earlier Thursday by the Daily Poster.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., put together a similar document as Republicans were working to block the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010.
Dozens of Indivisible chapters recently sent Schumer a letter demanding he do everything in his power to block McConnell and President Donald Trump from filling the seat left vacant by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death last week before a new president is sworn in. On Sunday evening, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, appearing alongside Schumer at a press conference, urged him to do the same.
Trump has pledged to nominate a new justice by Saturday, and McConnell has vowed to move quickly forward on the nomination.
The memo does not claim that victory would be guaranteed by engaging in these dilatory tactics, but lays out why the scenario is different than the confirmations of Neil Gorsuch or Brett Kavanaugh, both of which came long before the presidential election. The memo:
Re: Safeguarding the Court
Democrats must act to delay action by Leader McConnell to fill Justice Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat. Denying action before the election could markedly increase the probability that the results of the election would change the vote in the Senate and thereby allow for the seating of a more progressive Justice. Failing that, moving forward with confirmation during a lame duck session, if consent of the governed had been denied, would buttress the case for structural Court reform.
Moreover, much of the broad electorate will want to see Congressional Democrats fighting to protect the Court and their Constitutional rights. Mere capitulation to what Washington insiders see as the inevitable will be viewed by many as abandonment of the Democratic base and could undermine enthusiasm.
At least two contextual considerations make the current circumstance more favorable to the use of dilatory tactics than were the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh confirmations, both of which took place during the 115th Congress: 1) The electorate might vote to change control of the Senate and/or the White House in a matter of weeks and 2) Democrats control the House of Representatives, which can play a part in compelling certain action in the Senate.
Engaging in such dilatory tactics would also likely force McConnell to keep the entire Republican Conference in the vicinity of the Senate, in order to maintain a quorum and to win various votes. This might become increasingly untenable because up to a dozen sitting Republicans are defending their seats in close races and will want to return home to campaign — including to participate in debates and other events they will be loath to miss.
As a threshold matter, the Congressional Democrats must enter a war-room posture and convene a group of the people most knowledgeable of Senate (and House) procedure who can work together and be mutually generative of relevant tactical ideas.
Suggestions contained herein, even if all acted upon in good faith, might not be dispositive of the outcome of the confirmation process — but we have reason to believe that not all potential options have been thoroughly explored.
Actions Congressional Democrats should consider include the following — but what follows is far from exhaustive. We do not purport to have considered every possibility, and this document intentionally omits discussion of certain creative tactics that rely upon the element of surprise.
Exercising Rights To Delay Senate Action Generally
Speaking at Length — In the absence of a unanimous consent agreement governing time to debate or cloture, a Senator who gets recognized to speak can speak at length.
Objecting to Routine Consent Agreements — Any Senator may object to routine unanimous consent agreements, such as those to adjourn, to recess, to approve the Journal, or to dispense with the Morning Hour. Forcing roll-call votes on routine motions to adjourn or recess would require Senators to come to the Capitol and also prevent the Senate from taking other action during the time that it would take for Senators to come to vote.
New Legislative Day — If the Senate adjourns without a unanimous consent agreement providing for the handling of routine business at the beginning of a new legislative day, a new legislative day starts with the morning hour, a 2-hour period with a number of required procedures. As part of the morning hour, any Senator could make a non-debatable motion to proceed to an item on the Senate calendar.
Objecting to Lifting Quorum Calls — Any Senator can object to unanimous consent to lifting a quorum call, forcing a recorded vote that would require Senators to come to the Capitol and also prevent the Senate from taking other action during the time it takes for Senators to come to vote.
Motions to Adjourn and Recess — Any Senator can move to adjourn, to adjourn to a day certain, or to take a recess. All of these motions take precedence over a motion to proceed to the consideration of a nomination. Senators could make a series of motions of this sort to force roll-call votes.
Layover Requirements — Senators can raise points of order if measures have not lain over sufficiently under Rule XIV or XVII.
Raising Points of Order — Any Senator who gets recognized by the Presiding Officer can raise a point of order making a procedural objection. Once the Presiding Officer rules, a Senator can appeal the ruling of the Chair, and Senators can demand a roll-call vote. One could imagine an extremely large number of procedural questions on which to vote.
Filing Cloture — If the Senate is not governed by a unanimous consent agreement or post cloture, a Senator who got recognized could move to proceed to a measure or series of measures and file cloture on the motion(s) to proceed. Two days later, the Senate would be required to vote on the cloture motion(s). The number of these motions is limited only by the number of items on the calendar.
Fast-Track Vehicles — Several fast-track statutes, including the Congressional Budget Act, the Congressional Review Act, the War Powers Act, and the Arms Export Control Act, give any Senator the right to move to proceed to a vehicle and force a roll-call vote and sometimes a period of debate. For example, any Senator could submit a concurrent resolution on the budget, and by precedent, if action has not yet been taken on a budget resolution for the coming fiscal year, then the resolution would be immediately placed on the calendar. Once on the calendar, any Senator could move to proceed to the resolution, forcing a roll-call vote on the motion to proceed. Meanwhile, resolutions of disapproval under the CRA can be petitioned out of committee with 30 signatures after 20 calendar days. Such measures could be filed en masse now.
Utilizing Rule XIV — Any Senator can have any legislative measure placed on the calendar in two legislative days under Rule XIV. Leader Schumer could ask every Democratic Senator to introduce bills on their favorite subjects en masse and seek to put them on the calendar via rule XIV. Once they were on the calendar two legislative days later, if Schumer could get the floor, he could move to proceed to each in turn, file cloture, withdraw his motion to proceed, move to another, file cloture, withdraw his motion to proceed, and continue to repeat, stacking up an almost endless series of votes on motions to invoke cloture on motions to proceed to Democratic priorities, until the Majority Leader shut the Senate down.
To prevent this strategy, the Majority Leader would have to keep the Senate locked down post cloture at all times and prevent the Democratic Leader from getting recognition, or continue to recess the Senate to prevent there ever being another legislative day. If the Majority Leader did the latter, the Democratic leader could still file serial motions to proceed to bills already on the calendar, so long as he could gain recognition to make the motions. This strategy requires there being an opportunity for motions to be made.
House Measures Requiring Senate Action
Impeachment — If the House of Representatives exercised its impeachment power, then the rules of the Senate require the Senate to immediately address that matter.
Amendments Between Houses — If the House of Representatives passed amendments to Senate-passed bills now pending in the House and sent those over to the Senate, those messages between Houses would be privileged in the Senate. Thus, in the absence of cloture or a unanimous consent agreement governing the Senate floor, a Senator could ask that such a message be laid before the Senate and make motions in connection with the message that would require immediate roll-call votes or offer a motion to concur (or concur with an amendment) and file cloture, once again forcing a roll-call vote after two days.
Short-Term Funding — The House of Representatives could insist on very short-term funding measures until the Leadership of both Houses came to agreement on proceedings for the balance of the year. Short-term funding measures would then require more-frequent roll-call votes.
War Powers Resolutions — Generally, within a certain number of days, the Senate has to take up WPRs or any Senator can move to proceed.
There are likely additional measures available that, if passed by the House, would demand action in the Senate.
Exercising Rights in the Judiciary Committee
Time for Review and Hearing — The Judiciary Committee customarily takes time to review the record of Supreme Court nominees. Democrats should demand that the Committee take this time before a hearing commences.
Objecting to Committees Meeting — Any Senator can object to unanimous consent for committees to meet more than two hours after the Senate convenes on a day in which the Senate is in session.
Full Hearings — Democratic Members of the Judiciary Committee could try to continue the proceedings of any hearing that the Chairman calls.
Hold Over Committee Action — Under Judiciary Committee rule I, paragraph 3, “At the request of any member . . . a . . . nomination on the agenda of the Committee may be held over until the next meeting of the Committee or for one week, whichever occurs later.” A Democratic Senator on the Judiciary Committee should demand that the nomination be held over for the week.
Denying a Quorum — Republicans need to produce the presence of a quorum of Judiciary Committee Senators to report out the nomination. Democrats might choose not to help produce the necessary Senators.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Bloomberg)
Bernie Sanders: Trump Is Ready "to Undermine American Democracy in Order to Stay in Power"
Grace Segers, CBS News
Segers writes: "Senator Bernie Sanders argued in an impassioned speech Thursday that President Trump's refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power is a threat to American democracy."
"What I am going to talk about is something that, in my wildest dreams, I never thought I would be discussing," Sanders said. "And that is the need to make certain that the president of the United States, if he loses this election, will abide by the will of the voters and leave office peacefully."
"This is not just an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy – and democracy must win," Sanders said in an address at George Washington University. He referred to Mr. Trump as a "pathological liar" with "strong authoritarian tendencies," and accused him of being "prepared to undermine American democracy in order to stay in power."
On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump declined to commit to a peaceful transition of power if Biden wins the election in November. Sanders also quoted Mr. Trump's remarks at the Republican National Convention last month, in which he declared that "the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election."
"I think it is terribly important that we actually listen to, and take seriously, what Donald Trump is saying," Sanders said. "There is nothing in our Constitution or in our laws that give Donald Trump the privilege of deciding whether or not he will step aside if he loses. In the United States, the president does not determine who can or cannot vote and what ballots will be counted."
He went on to criticize Mr. Trump for continuing "to be obsessed with the belief that there is massive voter fraud in this country," even though instances of voter fraud are extremely rare. The president has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud, even as he urges supporters to vote by mail in critical swing states like Florida.
"Trump's strategy to delegitimize this election and to stay in office if he loses is not complicated. Finding himself behind in many polls, he is attempting massive voter suppression," Sanders said. "He and his Republican colleagues are doing everything they can to make it harder and harder for people to vote. In addition, he is sowing the seeds of chaos, confusion and conspiracy theories by casting doubt on the integrity of this election and, if he loses, justifying why he should remain in office."
Sanders noted that this election will see an influx of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic, and brought up a scenario under which Mr. Trump could claim victory on election night before all the mail-in ballots are counted.
He also worries that states controlled by Republican legislatures will ignore election results "because of false accusations of voter fraud," and predicted that if this happened, "the legislature itself will use its power to appoint electors pledged to vote for Trump, overriding the will of the people."
"And, in the midst of all of this, with the death of Justice Ginsburg, Trump is attempting to push through a Supreme Court Justice who may very well cast a vote in a case that will determine the outcome of this election," Sanders continued. There are enough Republican senators who have said they would vote to confirm Mr. Trump's nominee to the court before the election, despite Democrats' argument that the vacancy has opened so close to November 3 that it should be the winner of the election who selects the next justice.
Sanders suggested some measures to ensure the fairness of the election, endorsing a proposal by former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to create a nonpartisan commission to oversee the election. He also called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to hold more hearings on election security, and urged his Republican colleagues in the Senate to "stop the hypocrisy."
He also said that "it is absolutely imperative that we have, by far, the largest voter turnout in American history and that people vote as early as possible."
"As someone who is strongly supporting Joe Biden, let's be clear: A landslide victory for Biden will make it virtually impossible for Trump to deny the results and is our best means for defending democracy," Sanders said. He also called on states to begin counting mail-in votes ahead of Election Day, and for Congress and state legislatures to hold hearings "to explain to the public how the Election Day process and the days that follow will be handled."
"The American people, no matter what their political persuasion, must make it clear that American democracy will not be destroyed,' Sanders said. "Regardless of what Donald Trump wants, the American people will preserve democracy in our country."
In an exclusive interview with CBS News' Cara Korte after the speech, Sanders said that he worries "very much" about violence and chaos in this country after the election.
"Sorry, too many people fought and died to defend democracy to allow him to destroy it," Sanders said about the president potentially not accepting the results of the election. "If he wins, he wins. But if he loses, he is going to leave office because we are going to defend American democracy."
When asked if he was in consultation with Biden campaign on the issue of a power transition, Sanders said simply that he has "spoken" to the Biden camp about it.
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Cameroon soldiers trained by the U.S. have committed a number of atrocities. (photo: Zoohra Bensemra/Reuters)
US-Trained Forces Are Raping Women in Cameroon - and Rebels Are Beheading Them
Philip Obaji Jr., The Daily Beast
Obaji writes: "Lucy was contemplating closing early for the day when soldiers - believed to be from the Cameroon government's notorious Rapid Intervention Battalion - stormed her shop in the northwestern Cameroon town of Bamenda at the end of August and dragged her outside."
Women are being sexually abused by elite Israeli-led army forces in Cameroon—and brutally slaughtered by Anglophone rebels on the other side of the country’s civil conflict.
ucy was contemplating closing early for the day when soldiers—believed to be from the Cameroon government’s notorious Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR)—stormed her shop in the northwestern Cameroon town of Bamenda at the end of August, dragged her outside, asked her to take off the shirt she was wearing, and forced her to sit on the bare ground for hours.
“When I asked them what I had done wrong, one of them gave me a terrible slap and began to kick me all over my body,” Lucy, who sells foodstuffs close to a market in Bamenda, told The Daily Beast via telephone. “I thought the soldiers were going to kill me.”
On the same day Lucy was brutalized by government forces in Bamenda, about 80 other women—mostly traders at the local food market—were detained at a police station for three days, many of them beaten and wounded by soldiers who were searching for English-speaking separatists following the killing of a police officer days before.
“The soldiers entered the food market unannounced and began to forcefully remove everybody to the mobile police station,” said Lucy, who wanted to be identified by just her first name. “They looted and destroyed shops and ordered every woman to sit on the ground. The weather was so hot and some women collapsed as a result of the heat.”
Scores of women have been assaulted and abused by both Cameroonian government forces and English-speaking separatists in the northwest and southwest Anglophone parts of Cameroon since violence erupted in the two regions, along the long Nigerian border, more than three years ago.
Reports of sexual violence against women have grown in recent months, mostly perpetrated by BIR soldiers who’ve received lots of financial support from the United States in recent years. Last year, Human Rights Watch documented how two BIR soldiers raped a 22-year-old mother in the northwest and how a 23-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl in the same home were raped in front of two children by three BIR soldiers who accused them of hiding separatists. Women have also been assaulted while fleeing from their communities.
“Soldiers stopped us as we were heading to the [Nigerian] border and forced us to take off our clothes,” a 17-year-girl, who fled the Cameroonian town of Akwaya with her 25-year-old sister to the Ogoja refugee settlement in Nigeria, told The Daily Beast. “They began to touch our private parts and were about to rape us when they heard gunshots, which made them leave us and run away.”
In recent years, the Cameroonian military—including the BIR—has relied heavily on the U.S. for funding. Since 2014, America has given more than $220 million to Cameroon in security assistance—including $700,000 spent so far this year on assisting the country’s military and police.
Created in 2001 by the Cameroonian government to tackle armed bandits on its northern border with Chad and Nigeria and its eastern border with the Central African Republic, the BIR soon began to stray from its original mission—allegedly committing a number of human-rights atrocities including extrajudicial killing of civilians suspected to work for Boko Haram militants in northern Cameroon.The elite army unit, which is better trained and equipped than the regular Cameroonian army, is overseen by retired Israeli officers who report directly to President Paul Biya. These officers were recently accused of living extravagantly. One of them was reported to have bought properties worth about $32 million in New York and Los Angeles, and spent his holidays in luxury resorts in the Bahamas, costing $20,000 per night.
But the rapid reaction force isn’t the only group that has targeted women and girls in western Cameroon. Armed separatists have assaulted and murdered women amid intensifying violence and growing calls for secession of the northwest and southwest regions.
In an astonishing video widely shared on social media last month, three suspected separatist fighters in the southwestern town of Muyuka were seen beating and dragging a woman whom the government later identified as Confort Tumassang, a 35-year-old mother of four. Her hands were tied behind her back and Tumassang, who was accused of collaborating with the military, could be heard in the clip begging for mercy. She was then beheaded and her body abandoned in the street. The incident, which occurred on Aug. 11, came during the same period that reports of sexual assault perpetrated by separatists on women in Anglophone communities began to grow.
“My 17-year-old cousin was raped by two rebels on her way to the market." Helen, a 25-year-old hairdresser in Muyuka, told The Daily Beast via telephone. “They beat her up and threatened to kill her before eventually raping her.”
Rape has become one of the most common forms of violence against women in the conflict in the western Cameroon. A study last year by the Rural Women Center for Education and Development, a Cameroonian non-profit group, revealed that at least 300 school-age girls from the northwest region became pregnant after being raped by suspected separatist fighters or government soldiers, and that many victims terminated their pregnancies with unsafe or crude abortions. Following the revelation, Cameroon government officials noted that the actual number could be much higher, as many girls involved in the practice do so in hiding.
“It is obviously clear that rape has become a weapon of war in the conflict in western Cameroon,” Eno Edet, a human rights lawyer and advocate in Cross River State—which is hosting the vast majority of Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria—told The Daily Beast. “There are dozens of Cameroonian girls in refugee settlements here in Cross River with stories of sexual assault perpetrated by separatists or government forces back in their country.”
Cameroon’s western regions descended into conflict in 2016 when the government repressed peaceful protests by English speakers against perceived marginalization. It turned into a full war when separatists declared western Cameroon an independent nation in October 2017. Over 3,000 civilian deaths have been recorded, along with dozens of soldiers killed by separatists. More than 700,000 Anglophone Cameroonians have been displaced during the crisis, and at least 52,000 people are currently taking refuge in Nigeria.
As The Daily Beast previously reported, Anglophones make up about 20 percent of Cameroon’s population of 26 million. In February 1961, the United Nations organized a referendum in which English-speaking Cameroonians, then under British rule, voted to rejoin Francophone Cameroon. Both merged on Oct. 1, 1961, and inherited a constitution which recognized the country as a federation of two states with “the same status.” But not long after the reunification, things began to change. Then-President Ahmadou Ahidjo, a Francophone, replaced the two federal states with six regions. He appointed federal inspectors of each region and gave them more power than locally elected politicians. Ahidjo followed up by discarding the currency used by the Anglophones. He refused to recognize Cameroon’s membership of the Commonwealth, and he abolished federalism altogether through a national referendum.
Incumbent President Paul Biya, also a Francophone, succeeded Ahidjo in November 1982 and began to introduce policies similar to that of his predecessor. In 1983, he split the Anglophone region into the Northwest and Southwest provinces. A year later he changed the country’s official name to the Republic of Cameroon, as it was known as when it was a Francophone territory, and removed the second star from the flag that had stood as a representation of the Anglophone region.
Many prominent figures in Cameroon’s western region from time to time condemned the policies of the Biya administration as they affect the western region, but when the government went ahead to appoint French-speaking magistrates in Anglophone courts, many believed he had gone too far.
Unfortunately, the conflict that followed has crippled social amenities and left much of the Anglophone region in ruins. But it is the frequent targeting of women and girls by major players in the war that leaves many in English-speaking communities worried.
“We are living in fear because women are becoming victims of rape every day,” said Helen, the hairdresser in Muyuka. “The other day, it was my cousin [who was raped]. Tomorrow, it could be another innocent woman. No woman is safe here.”
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Windmills in the Mojave Desert outside of Lancaster, California. (photo: Getty)
Hannah Murphy | Will We Be Able to Reverse Trump's Climate Damage?
Hannah Murphy, Rolling Stone
Murphy writes: "As we stumble ever closer to the collapse of ice sheets, oceans and forests, the range of meaningful action we could take narrows."
What Joe Biden would need to do starting from Day One to correct the course of U.S. climate policy
hen he talks about the Trump administration, David Doniger likes to say: “Imagine where we’d be if they knew what they were doing.” The climate lawyer and senior advisor to the NRDC Action Fund spends his days defending the environment from the U.S. government, and for the past three and a half years, that’s meant a front-row seat to the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on any regulation that’s meant to slow the climate crisis.
But it’s also been a window into the hasty, sloppy, and legally dubious ways that they’ve gone about it. “One of the hallmarks of this administration is how incompetently they’re doing this,” says Doniger. “It shows up in how slowly they’ve been able to work, and how flimsy their legal rationales are.” Almost all of Trump’s attempts at deregulation — some 100 rules that he’s tried to eliminate or weaken — are being challenged in court, and environmentalists are steadily winning. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, the Trump administration has lost 69 of the 83 legal challenges it’s faced in its deregulatory blitz.
“We were saved by their incompetence,” says Andrew Wetzler, from the NRDC Action Fund, mainly by their failure to follow basic rule-making procedures. They rushed through the process, often shortening or entirely skipping over the required 60 days for public comment, which provided a clear opening for their rule changes to be challenged in court. The administration’s ineptitude has given environmentalists hope that if Trump loses the election, the policy impact of his unrelenting pro-fossil fuel agenda could ultimately be short-lived. “If he’s a one-term wonder,” says Doniger, “the biggest consequence of the Trump administration may just turn out to be lost time.”
But time, at this hour of the climate fight, might be our most precious resource. As we stumble ever closer to the collapse of ice sheets, oceans and forests, the range of meaningful action we could take narrows. There is now believed to be more carbon dioxide in the air than any time in the last 3 million years. Our oceans are on track by the end of this century to become more acidic than they’ve been in some 15 million years — when they were enduring a major extinction event. Those oceans are also rising steadily enough to threaten the homes of 150 million people in the next three decades. “We lost years at a critical time,” says Wetzler. “We’re on the precipice of a number of climate and biological tipping points.” And, he says, we won’t fully understand the impact of that loss for years.
If Biden wins in November, environmentalists say, his administration would have a slim window of opportunity to get our agencies back on track to meet the enormity of the climate crisis. “It means being aggressive from day one,” says Brett Hartl from the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund. “And not futzing around — knowing what you’re going to do and implementing it immediately.”
Making up for the lost time won’t be easy. Despite his slap-dash approach, Trump still managed to scramble the trajectory of American climate policy, creating a tangle of legal fights that will have to be cleared up for U.S. climate policy to move forward. And he left almost no part of our environmental regulatory structure untouched — greenlighting fossil fuel infrastructure like the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines, setting us back on emission-reduction goals by reversing the Clean Power Plan and higher fuel-efficiency standards, and gutting the federal agencies that should be at the helm of our climate response.
So how difficult will it be to unscramble this mess? It would have to happen in three parts, environmentalists say, and all three would have to start on day one. First, Biden would have a powerful arsenal of executive tools available to him — if he chooses to use them. A coalition of over 500 environmental groups has already assembled a plan for how he could effectively jumpstart our fight against the climate crisis using executive powers, which would avoid both going through Congress and the lengthy federal rule-making process.
Using executive power, Biden could declare a national climate emergency. It wouldn’t just send an important message to Americans — and the rest of the world — that we’re taking the climate crisis seriously; it would give the administration the power to mobilize the government on a massive scale, like ordering the Secretary of Defense to redirect military spending toward the rapid development of clean energy.
Biden could also immediately order federal agencies to reverse the climate rollbacks Trump introduced through executive order — like allowing oil and gas companies to side-step state approval — and start issuing his own. Most urgently, Biden would have the power to keep more fossil fuels in the ground: He could direct the Secretary of the Interior to halt oil-and-gas leasing and fracking on federal lands, reinstitute the ban on exporting crude oil, and order all federal agencies to deny permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure, like pipelines, storage facilities, and refineries.
He’d also be able to change the ways that money moves through the energy sector. He could prohibit the U.S. government from financing fossil fuel programs overseas and end all Department of Energy loans for fossil fuels stateside, while also requiring the Federal Reserve to manage climate risks — forcing it to acknowledge the current and future impact of climate change on our economy.
Many of these tools were already available in the Obama era, but the administration chose not to use them. For example, “the Clean Air Act is actually quite clear that you have the authority to set national ambient air quality standards,” says Hartl. “It would have been incredibly bold, and it actually wouldn’t have had the problems that the Clean Power Plan had. They could have really moved the needle on greenhouse gases in a very, very powerful way.” But, Hartl says, the Obama administration shied away from these kinds of actions for fear of political consequences.
Biden would face a very different national landscape. At the beginning of this year, two thirds of American adults said that protecting the environment should be a top priority of the federal government, up from only 30 percent at the beginning of Obama’s first term. In a poll last week, likely Democratic voters ranked climate change as the most important issue to them in this election, and Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, has found that talking about climate change could actually help persuade voters who are on the fence to vote for a Democrat. All of this is to say, a Biden administration could have an unprecedented political mandate to take action on the climate crisis.
In addition to issuing executive orders, beginning on day one Biden would also need to start the process of unwinding the deregulation efforts that Trump carried out through the federal rule-making process — like rollbacks on the Endangered Species Act and fuel-emissions standards — and writing new ones to take their place. Environmentalists are confident that a new administration could systematically undo each rollback, but that process could take two years, according to Hartl.
And the Biden administration would need to learn from Trump’s mistakes. Legal challenges from the industries that these regulations impact — the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association — are inevitable, “so you have to go in and be prepared to defend it the first time,” says Hartl. That means following the process to the letter: establishing rules with legal backing from legislation like the Clean Air and Clean Water acts; opening the rule up to public comment; and then presenting a final rule that can stand up in court. Unlike Trump’s deregulation efforts, which were fighting against decades of environmental legislation, the law would be on Biden’s side. “The reality is that when Congress passed these laws,” says Hartl, “they were designed to make the environment better.”
Finally, Biden would have to start hiring like mad. Over the past four years, Trump’s EPA and Interior Department have hemorrhaged talent. The Bureau of Land Management moved the majority of its staff out of Washington, D.C., leading some 70 percent of that staff to resign, and the EPA is nearly as small as it was during the Nixon era, when the EPA was founded. “That pattern, in the most extreme way, is mirrored throughout the environmental agencies,” says Wetzler. “There’s been a real brain drain of people who can’t stand in an agency and support the agenda under the Trump administration, and we’ll have to put back the pieces of very demoralized, and in some cases broken agencies.”
But from those ashes, Biden could build a coalition of climate advocates across his Cabinet. His transition team, and the 4,000 people they appoint, are arguably more influential than any campaign promises he could make. “Personnel is policy,” says Jamal Raad, co-founder and campaign director for Evergreen Action, founded by former staffers of Gov. Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign. “We need to choose regulators that have a climate lens,” and that lens doesn’t end at the EPA — it can reach the Department of Agriculture, where we have to reimagine our food production to work with our changing climate, or the Treasury, where regulators could interpret the Dodd-Frank consumer protection act to include climate risks. And within the White House, Raad says, Biden could create a National Climate Council that’s equivalent to the National Economic Council. “There needs to be a plan to reorient the federal government so that climate is a lens in all decision making.”
Heading into the general election, pressure from the left wing of the party shaped Biden’s $2 trillion climate plan, which is “a green new deal in all but name,” wrote activist and journalist Julian Brave NoiseCat. “It’s the most progressive, forward-leaning environmental plan that any candidate for president has ever released,” says Wetzler of the NRDC Action Fund. “It would represent incredible progress.” And while the Biden campaign hasn’t laid out a timetable for the plan, “the Biden team has been signaling their prioritization of climate by making it central to their economic recovery plans,” says Raad. “I think that folks should be cautiously optimistic — but vigilant — on the prospect of climate being a priority early in the first term.”
Of course, this all hinges on what happens in November. And if Trump is re-elected, his administration would have the chance to establish a legacy of more than just incompetence and squandered time. Four more years of Donald Trump being in charge of the environment could permanently alter the American landscape.
In some cases, it would give the Trump administration time to fight back against the legal challenges they face, leaning on courts that they’ve stacked with anti-environmental judges. And damage could be done that will be near impossible to undo — rules can be changed, but mines can’t be unmined. The Trump administration has pursued the largest rollback of federally protected land in U.S. history. Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, for example, which Trump shrunk by 85 percent in 2017, is in the crosshairs of uranium developers. Trump’s move has been mired in lawsuits, but a second term could give them the time to untangle them, and hand the land over to the uranium lobbyists.
Likewise, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was just approved in August, leaving little time for leasing, let alone actual development, before Inauguration Day. But if Trump wins, those leases are likely to move forward, as will the roads, pipelines, and oil rigs that come with them, doing permanent damage to a vital and fragile ecosystem. “Over time you’re looking at millions and millions of acres of fossil fuel leasing,” says Hartl from the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund. “And eventually, once you get to the point where they’re actually putting drills in the ground, it’s very hard to undo that. You’re locking in a tremendous amount of fossil fuel infrastructure.”
Trump’s influence on the Supreme Court looms heavily for the environment as well. With Trump already raring to appoint a new justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a second term is likely to offer him a fourth Supreme Court appointment, which would mean the highest court would house seven Republican-appointed justices. When you’re suing over environmental issues, the court’s make-up can be the difference between having your day in court, and not. “For example, there’s a general judicial doctrine called ‘standing,’ or your ability to go to court to pursue your aggrieved interests,” explains Hartl. “Conservative judges want to narrow who has standing as much as possible, because that limits access to the courts. When you’re fighting for the environment, and your interest is protecting an endangered species or the atmosphere or the water, they’ve already made it hard for us to go to court, to have standing. And they can narrow it even further so that we don’t even have recourse. Our ability to just fight for the environment is at stake.”
The climate movement has never been more clear on what it is fighting for and what it needs to do, and finally has a presidential candidate who is signaling some willingness to do it. The prescription is fairly simple: Stop burning fossil fuels so we can begin drawing down the carbon in the atmosphere that’s overheating our planet and disrupting the systems that have supported life on Earth as we know it. The president has a lot of power to take that action, and we have no time to lose. “It’s true that we have 30 years [before an irreversible climate collapse], but when you act on that 30-year scale really affects how radically you have to act,” says Wetzler. “If you think about where the United States was at the beginning of the Trump administration — and where the world was, in terms of taking climate change seriously — it’s a huge, squandered opportunity.” This November, we can choose to act, and set ourselves back on course. “If this is a one-time, Black Swan event, we’re probably going to recover as a nation,” says Doniger. “This is the project of the century.”
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