10 February 21
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09 February 21
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Why Trump Isn't Being Charged With Treason
David S. Cohen, Rolling Stone
Cohen writes: "Here we go again! After having two presidential impeachment trials in the United States' first 231 years, the Senate is now about to start its second trial of Donald Trump in just over 12 months."
A law professor answers the big questions about Trump’s second time on trial
ere we go again! After having two presidential impeachment trials in the United States’ first 231 years, the Senate is now about to start its second trial of Donald Trump in just over 12 months.
While we all developed great expertise from taking the 2020 class Trump Impeachment 101, there are all sorts of new issues for the 2021 version of the course. So let’s do a lightning round of the major constitutional issues that you need to know to be an expert and impress your friends at your next Zoom happy hour.
Donald Trump is no longer President. Can there be an impeachment trial after he’s left office?
This one is straightforward: Yes, he can be tried after he’s left office. The Constitution makes this eminently clear by the use of the word “all” in this sentence: “The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.” There is no equivocation in that sentence. President Trump was properly impeached by the House because he was the President at the time of impeachment. Thus, the Senate can try this impeachment. Any interpretation of the Constitution claiming that the Senate cannot try this impeachment reads the word “all” out of the Constitution.
Anyone arguing against trying Donald Trump now also ignores constitutional history. In 1876, the Senate tried former Secretary of War William Belknap after he resigned his office. Belknap argued that he couldn’t be tried because he was no longer in office, but the Senate rejected this argument. Belknap was ultimately acquitted, but the precedent was set that an official no longer in office can be tried by the Senate.
Why wasn’t Donald Trump charged with treason?
The allegation here is that the Donald Trump incited an insurrection against the United States government. That sure sounds like treason! However, the Constitution defines one crime (the rest come from federal or state statutes) and that crime is treason. It is strictly defined as follows: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.”
This is where a lot of disagreement emerges. Some scholars think that this clause requires helping a foreign enemy, so that there is no way what happened on January 6th could be considered treason. Others think domestic insurrection might also qualify, but one problem is an 1851 precedent that indicates that there needs to be an intent to overthrow the government to prove treason. Were the rioters at the Capitol trying to actually overthrow the government? Or were they merely trying to disrupt a government function? All of this gets very complicated and would almost definitely bog down the trial, which is probably why the House impeachment team decided not to bring a specific treason charge and instead relied on the catch-all “high crimes and misdemeanors” charge. That’s a much safer bet.
Does the First Amendment prohibit holding Trump accountable for his insurrectionist speech?
Trump’s lawyers are going to argue that the First Amendment protects him from being held accountable for his actions. After all, he himself didn’t storm the Capitol; he used his words to incite others to do so. There are indeed a small number of legal scholars who believe that the First Amendment protects President Trump; however, a bipartisan group of almost 150 lawyers and scholars circulated an open letter last week explaining why the First Amendment has no applicability here. (Full disclosure: I signed the letter.)
The basic argument is twofold. First, impeachment is a completely different penalty than a criminal law or a civil lawsuit. In fact, most of the things officials would be impeached for will be their speech — orders to another official, statements about policy, interactions with foreign officers. They aren’t being thrown in jail, which would violate the First Amendment. Instead, they would be removed from office and/or disqualified from further office. This is not what the First Amendment is about. Second, incitement to violence has always been exempt from the First Amendment. It’s not the same, but it’s along the lines of the idea behind the classic “screaming ‘fire’ in a crowded theater without justification” example. Some speech can be punished, and incitement to violence is one such example.
Can Trump be disqualified from office by majority vote?
Yes . . . but no. The Constitution is clear that it requires two-thirds of present Senators to vote for a conviction. Disqualification is covered in a different clause of the Constitution which says that judgments in impeachment trials “shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”
What history and agreed-upon interpretation tells us is that there are two separate votes. At a minimum, there needs to be a two-thirds vote to convict. Then, after the conviction, there can be a simple majority vote to disqualify from future office. Thus, it is correct that a simple majority is required to disqualify Trump from ever holding office again, but that is only after the much higher hurdle of a two-thirds conviction.
Can Trump be forced to be a witness in the trial?
If Trump were President, there would be a very serious question of constitutional law in having the Senate force the President to testify. If the Senate needed Presidential records at trial, there would be similar serious constitutional issues. However, at this point in time, Trump is a private citizen, and the Senate is not asking for any Presidential records. Thus, these serious constitutional issues just aren’t in play.
The Fifth Amendment also doesn’t help Trump here. Normally, criminal defendants don’t have to take the stand at their own trials. But by its text, the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment only applies to criminal trials, which an impeachment trial is not. Not only does the Fifth Amendment not give him cover from testifying, but he also can’t take advantage of the court-made Fifth Amendment rule that refusal to testify cannot be used against you.
The House impeachment managers asked Trump to appear at the trial, and he responded that he would not do so voluntarily. If the Senate wants to subpoena him to force him to appear, it could. However, the chances of this are slim because Trump would probably fight the subpoena, which could extensively prolong matters.
Here’s the constitutional bottom line: this post-Presidency trial is constitutional; a treason charge would be very complicated which is why it isn’t being brought; the First Amendment doesn’t stop Trump from being tried; he can be disqualified from office by majority vote but only after a two-thirds conviction; and he can be forced to testify (but probably won’t be).
If you’ve got all this, you’ve passed this year’s course, Trump Impeachment 102.
Brad Raffensperger. (photo: Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg)
Trump Is One Step Closer to a Possible Criminal Case for That Georgia Phone Call
Greg Walters, VICE
Walters writes: "Former President Trump's infamous Georgia phone call is coming back to haunt him."
The Georgia secretary of state’s office has launched an investigation into Trump’s notorious call where he pressured local election officials to help reverse his defeat.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office has launched an investigation into Trump’s notorious call to local election officials in early January, during which Trump pressured them to help reverse his defeat.
The probe presents the absurd vision of the Georgia secretary of state investigating a phone call to … the Georgia secretary of state. But the formal launch of an investigation is also potentially very bad news for Trump: It brings the matter one step closer to the local criminal prosecutor’s office.
Investigators’ findings will be presented to the state’s election board, which will then decide whether to formally refer the matter to the local district attorney’s office or the state attorney general’s office for potential prosecution.
The office’s investigation is technically “fact-finding and administrative in nature,” Walter Jones, a spokesman for the Georgia secretary of state, told VICE News Monday evening. “Any further legal efforts will be left to the attorney general.”
Legal experts have said Trump may have broken both federal and state criminal statutes when he hectored and berated Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to allow Trump to win the state in an early January phone call. Trump also incessantly repeated groundless conspiracy theories, railed about dead people voting, and switched between cajoling, begging, and threatening.
The call was tape-recorded and then leaked to the media, including the Washington Post.
“All I want to do is this,” Trump told Raffensperger. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.”
Legal analysts have pointed to a state law against knowingly soliciting election fraud, saying Trump may have crossed the line. But a Trump spokesman insisted the call was absolutely appropriate.
“There was nothing improper or untoward about a scheduled call between President Trump, Secretary Raffensperger, and lawyers on both sides,” Jason Miller, a Trump senior advisor, told The New York Times. “If Mr. Raffensperger didn’t want to receive calls about the election, he shouldn’t have run for secretary of state.”
The state election board that will make the decision about whether to refer the matter to prosecutors is led by Raffensperger as chairman and includes two Republicans and two Democrats. It’s unclear whether Raffensperger might decide to recuse himself from the final vote as a witness.
A local prosecutor’s office is taking the phone call “seriously as a potential case,” as it considers election fraud charges against Trump, an unnamed source told CNN. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to make a public announcement on the case, one way or another, sometime this month, CNN reported the source saying.
In January, one member of the state election board called for Trump to be investigated for potentially violating state laws, including the statute barring conspiracy to commit election fraud.
David Worley, a local Georgia Democrat on the board, sent a letter to other members asking for an investigation.
“To say that I am troubled by President Trump's attempt to manipulate the votes of Georgians would be an understatement,” Worley wrote.
“Among our responsibilities is to determine whether probable cause exists to refer potential civil and criminal violations of the Code to the Georgia Attorney General and local District Attorneys.”
The investigation led by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has spanned more than two years, and its focus has shifted over time. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
As Impeachment Begins, New York Accelerates Probes of Trump's Property Dealings
Jason Szep, Joseph Tanfani and Peter Eisler, Reuters
Excerpt: "As former U.S. President Donald Trump goes to trial this week in the Senate on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, criminal and civil investigations into his businesses are accelerating in New York."
Manhattan prosecutors probing Trump’s real-estate business for possible insurance and tax fraud have stepped up witness interviews in recent months and hired forensic accountants, four people familiar with the criminal probe told Reuters. A separate state attorney general’s civil probe into whether the business falsely reported property values got a boost on Jan. 29, when a New York Supreme Court judge ordered the Trump Organization to turn over documents.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision is expected soon on whether Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr can obtain eight years of Trump’s tax records and other financial information from accounting firm Mazars. Two people familiar with the district attorney’s criminal probe expect the court to act this month.
Both the district attorney and the attorney general are focused in part on whether Trump’s businesses improperly falsified values on real-estate assets to secure tax breaks, loans or other benefits.
Trump’s tax returns could provide compelling evidence in the criminal probe if they differ significantly from other financial statements reported by the Trump business, said Daniel Horwitz, a white-collar defense lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor. But in addition to records, he said, prosecutors will likely need witnesses who could “testify about false documents and why they were falsified.”
Lawyers for the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. The Trump Organization has denied in court filings that the company falsified property values, and has rejected other allegations being investigated by Manhattan District Attorney Vance and New York State Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump’s lawyers have tried to block the disclosure of his tax records by appealing the Manhattan district attorney’s request to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lower courts rejected an argument by Trump’s attorney that the request amounted to political “harassment.” Trump’s team has requested a stay of the Supreme Court proceedings. The high court normally acts quickly on such “emergency applications,” but Trump’s request has been pending since October. Another ruling in favor of the district attorney would clear the way for prosecutors to access the tax and financial records.
The Manhattan district attorney said in an August filing that the office is investigating “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct” at the Trump Organization. In a September filing, he said “mountainous” misconduct allegations could justify a grand jury probe into possible tax fraud, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. James’ office has filed a civil lawsuit to compel the Trump Organization to produce documents but has not alleged any crimes.
A spokesperson for Vance declined to comment. A spokesman for James’ office said the Trump Organization has turned over all the documents that prosecutors sought but declined to comment further on the inquiry.
The investigations face challenges. The Manhattan district attorney may struggle to prove that inaccurate property estimates amount to fraud because the standards for valuing properties vary, legal experts say. Such appraisals are also typically performed by outside parties, potentially putting distance between any controversial valuations and Trump’s businesses.
“There’s a lot of expertise to hide behind,” said Joshua Levine, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York who now specializes in white-collar criminal and regulatory law in private practice.
PROBE OF NEW YORK MANSION
Court records show that the two investigations, while separate, do overlap. Both the district attorney and the attorney general, for instance, are examining how the Trump Organization and its agents assessed the value of Seven Springs, a 212-acre estate north of Manhattan that Trump purchased in 1995. Trump’s company has said the century-old, 50,000-square-foot mansion was used as a Trump family retreat.
Trump’s ambitions to build a championship golf course there were derailed by local opposition, and he shelved another plan to build luxury homes. But the property did become a vehicle for a tax break, according to property records and court filings. In 2015, he signed a conservation easement - an agreement not to develop the property - covering 158 acres.
The attorney general’s office said in a court filing that an appraiser hired by Trump before the conservation agreement set the property’s value at $56.5 million and the easement’s value at $21.1 million - an amount Trump claimed as an income tax deduction.
The attorney general’s office, in an August court filing, said it was investigating whether the assessment was “improperly inflated” to increase the tax benefit. In filings, prosecutors cited emails from Trump Organization representatives to the appraisers arguing for a higher valuation.
The Manhattan district attorney is investigating Trump’s handling of the same property. Vance’s office in December subpoenaed the three towns that cover parts of the Seven Springs property, seeking tax assessments, financial statements, conservation easements and Trump’s development proposals.
Trump has claimed a vastly higher value on Seven Springs in other documents. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, while testifying in a February 2019 congressional hearing, provided a 2012 financial statement from the Trump Organization that valued Seven Springs at $291 million. Cohen testified that the statement intended to portray Trump as richer than he really was to insurance companies - in an effort to secure lower premiums - as well as to journalists.
Cohen also said the Trump Organization provided the statement to Deutsche Bank AG - the company’s biggest creditor - during Trump’s failed attempt in 2014 to buy the Buffalo Bills, a professional football team. Federal law makes it a crime to provide false statements to banks.
Both the Manhattan district attorney and the state attorney general subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in 2019, according to three bank sources. One attorney general’s subpoena sought information on the financing of four Trump Organization property projects and his Buffalo Bills bid. Another, from the district attorney, requested financial statements in support of various loan applications, the sources said. In recent months, Manhattan investigators have spoken to a number of staff at Deutsche Bank, the three sources said.
Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Both the district attorney and the attorney general are also looking at 40 Wall Street, a Trump Organization skyscraper in Lower Manhattan, according to the state attorney general’s court filings and people familiar with Vance’s investigation. The attorney general’s office is examining financial statements submitted by the Trump Organization to banks in connection with loans for the building, according to court filings.
TAX BREAKS ON L.A. GOLF COURSE
The attorney general is looking into additional deals, court documents show, including whether Trump failed to pay taxes on debt that was forgiven in connection to a loan restructuring for the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. Prosecutors have said in court records that the Trump Organization had refused to produce documents to determine whether it declared that money as income in its tax filings, as usually required by law.
Attorney General James also is also examining another Trump conservation tax break, this one for his Trump National Golf Club near Los Angeles. Trump bought the cliff-top course in 2002, after its 18th hole collapsed into the ocean, and invested heavily to rebuild it.
In December 2014, Trump signed an agreement that granted a conservation easement over 11.5 acres of the course. An appraisal ordered by Trump valued the property at $107 million, setting the easement’s value at $25 million, James’ office said in court filings. That valuation is high compared to the metrics usually used to value golf properties, real-estate experts said.
BURDEN OF PROOF
For the Manhattan district attorney, proving in court that Trump or other company officials intended to commit a crime will be “particularly hard,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who teaches legal ethics and criminal law at New York Law School.
Prosecutors in corporate fraud cases, she said, often rely on a combination of direct evidence - such as incriminating witnesses, video, emails or text messages - and circumstantial evidence, such as tax records or other financial documents. They use such records, she said, often to point out where a company veered from common industry practice.
To look for anomalies among property deals, Vance’s office has retained forensic accounting specialists from Washington-based FTI Consulting Inc, a person familiar with the investigation said. An FTI spokesman declined to comment.
A key challenge for the investigators, Roiphe said, is that industry standards for real estate valuations can be flexible.
“It’s kind of common practice that you need to be a little bit loose with valuations,” she said. “So, to say this was done with a purpose - with the intent to defraud - will be challenging.”
Dr. Scott W. Atlas. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/NYT)
Trump Team Suppressed COVID Tests, Weakened CDC Guidance to Protect President: Report
Barbie Latza Nadeau, The Daily Beast
Nadeau writes: "Startling documents released Monday point to heavy-handed interference by top Trump administration officials last summer to downplay the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, through suppressed testing results and altered guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on reopening businesses and schools."
New documents from a House investigation point to more political interference from a Trump adviser notorious for his “We want them infected” advice to top HHS officials.
The documents are the result of a House Oversight investigation launched in September into reports of efforts by Trump political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services to interfere with guidance issued by CDC in order to keep businesses open, even though evidence proved it could cost American lives.
The select subcommittee in charge of the investigation said Monday that it found that HHS officials sought to suppress accurate scientific information they felt could be “use[d] against the president,” according to the documents. They also found that Trump appointees with limited scientific experience “attempted to alter or block at least 13 CDC reports related to the virus.”
Those altered reports are said to have produced a false sense of security pushed by the CDC that allowed businesses and some schools to open, made people feel secure in public places, and downplayed the importance of wearing a mask.
According to one of the documents released, the Trump administration changed the guidance for the “explicit purpose of reducing testing and allowing the virus to spread while quickly reopening the economy.”
On Sept. 11, 2020, for example, top Trump HHS adviser Paul Alexander emailed senior COVID Task Force adviser Scott Atlas about a forthcoming CDC report on deaths in young people, which Alexander claimed that, despite being true, was “very duplicitous to damage the administration.” He tried to engage Atlas to help “craft an op-ed .. disputing the reporting for on face value, it is meant to mislead,” according to the documents.
In the email, which is part of the cache of documents released Monday, Alexander warned, “The timing of this is meant to interfere with school re-opening and we need to get something out fast to preempt this in the next day or so and I can work with you on it.”
Alexander became the focus of public outrage in December when internal emails emerged showing he was pushing top Trump health officials to adopt a “herd immunity” strategy for the U.S. “There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,” his letter to Trump HHS public-affairs adviser Michael Caputo read. “Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk…. so we use them to develop herd… we want them infected….”
Alexander left HHS in mid-September after reports emerged about his attempts to alter the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports.
The new internal emails referred to Monday, according to Oversight Chairman Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), show how the Trump administration took steps to end testing of “asymptomatic infections in low-risk people” because these tests were causing infected people to quarantine, which HHS’ Alexander complained was “preventing the workforce from working” and would not allow schools and colleges to “optimally reopen.”
The documents show how Alexander pressured Food and Drug Administration officials to go so far as to quickly approve emergency use of convalescent plasma as treatment, even advising them to disregard concerns from National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins and Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Anthony Fauci, instead accusing the NIH of “stepping out of their lane.”
Another email from the Select Subcommittee last summer to Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary Alex Azar concerning Trump’s instruction to “slow the testing down” went unanswered. A short time later, the CDC issued guidance in direct contradiction to scientific evidence advising against testing asymptomatic people who had been exposed to COVID-19 positive people.
At the time, the subcommittee says it “raised serious concerns about the change,” noting that it was “reportedly pursuant to instructions ‘coming from the top down.’”
Still, Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS Brett Giroir “flatly denied any political involvement in the decision,” and claimed that “the new guidelines are a CDC action.”
New York governor Andrew Cuomo. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
New York Moves a Step Closer to Decriminalizing Sex Work
Bryce Covert, The Appeal
Covert writes: "Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a bill that repeals a decades-old statute that advocates say disproportionately targeted trans people who are simply walking or standing on the street."
After organizing to repeal the “walking while trans” ban, advocates in the state—and around the country—are looking ahead to the next fight.
The legislation also automatically seals any previous arrest records under the statute.
“It’s a beginning of a new era,” said TS Candii, executive director of Black Trans Nation and a Black trans woman who has likened the statute—often called the “walking while trans” ban—to stop and frisk, the NYPD tactic of randomly stopping pedestrians to look for guns that disproportionately targeted Black and Latinx people.
The repeal of the 1976 law, which was ostensibly meant to target those “loitering for the purpose of engaging in a prostitution offense,” comes at a time when similar laws are being rolled back across the country. The Seattle City Council unanimously repealed a similar “prostitution loitering” law in June, and California lawmakers are considering pushing for a similar repeal this year. Activists have also started organizing against similar statutes in Atlanta, Chicago, and New Orleans.
Next, advocates in New York plan to move forward on efforts to make it the first state to decriminalize sex work. (A bill introduced in 2019 never advanced.) They’ll also advocate for a bill that would vacate sex work-related convictions from people’s records, and push to defund the NYPD’s vice unit. And they’ll have to compete with a bill in the state legislature that decriminalizes sex workers while still cracking down on their clients, a model that advocates argue won’t protect them.
“We know we’re going to win because we have a majority” of the public’s support, Candii said. A 2019 national poll of registered voters shows a majority of voters support decriminalizing sex work.
The “walking while trans” statute repeal and sex work decriminalization legislation both stem from a growing movement for sex workers’ rights across the U.S. The same year the decriminalization bill was introduced in New York, another was introduced in Washington, D.C. In the recent election, a number of Democratic presidential candidates embraced the idea of decriminalizing sex work.
Although the “walking while trans” statute was intended to target sex workers, its vagueness allowed police to harass trans people of color, advocates say. A 2016 civil rights class-action lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society alleged that 85 percent of people arrested under the statute were Black or Latinx, and that women had been arrested for “wearing a ‘short dress,’ ‘a skirt and high heels,’ ‘tight black pants,’ or ‘a black dress.’”
Those arrests and charges can make it more difficult to get government benefits or even employment, Candii said. “It leaves them more vulnerable.”
A surge of protests in New York after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, including a 15,000-person rally for Black trans lives last summer, helped bolster the movement to repeal the law. But reform has been a long time coming, the result of years of organizing and activism by Candii and others.
The law was passed when New York was trying to clean up its image and clear out Times Square, a popular area for sex work. Candii said the law was used again in the 1990s against LGBTQ youth of color to push them out of gentrifying neighborhoods like the West Village. “It has been affecting my community for 44 years now,” said Bianey Garcia, an organizer with Make the Road NY and a trans woman.
The Legal Aid Society sued over the law in the late 1970s. Organizations like Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment, or FIERCE, later started working against it. The law, Candii said, was “like old milk in a refrigerator.”
The movement picked up in 2018, the year that Congress passed two bills—Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act or FOSTA, and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act or SESTA—that sex workers say put them in danger because they led to the shutdown of personals sections.
“That really reenergized the sex worker community,” said Jared Trujillo, policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union and a former sex worker.
Advocates thought they had enough support to repeal the ban last spring, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, disrupting the legislative session. The repeal bill was never brought to the floor.
Still, Trujillo said, the Black and Latinx trans women leading the movement “made sure that they were not erased and that their issues mattered.”
“We kept doing things to make sure that the momentum didn’t die and this is something you couldn’t ignore,” Trujillo said.
Activists started “bird dogging” lawmakers, driving up to scheduled events and jumping out in front of the cameras to confront them about where they stood on the legislation, Candii said. “We had to meet them in the streets,” she said, showing them there would be “consequences” if they didn’t support it. They held lobbying meetings with lawmakers and weekly phone and text banks.
A key ingredient to their success was people sharing stories of their experiences with police harassment under the law. “Hearing about the true human cost to having the statute on the books really made a difference,” Trujillo said.
Still, “it was very hard for them to speak about this,” Candii said of trans people who were harassed or arrested. “To have to relive it, and relive those experiences, was traumatizing.” She also struggled when she spoke in public. “I was always nervous, my stomach was always flipping and flopping,” she said.
But the personal accounts made the issue urgent. “Sharing those experiences of how the NYPD stopped us, arrested us just for expressing ourselves, was very crucial,” said Garcia. “We just want to walk free through our neighborhoods, we want to go out and have dinner with our boyfriends or partners without there being arrests.”
Both Garcia and Candii say they have been harassed or even assaulted by police for being trans.
When Garcia was 18, she said, plainclothes police officers appeared suddenly from an unmarked van as she and her boyfriend made their way home from a bar. Garcia said they pushed her into a wall, emptied the contents of her purse onto the ground, and accused her of engaging in sex work. (Garcia had taken some free condoms from the bar before leaving.) The officers arrested her and she spent the rest of the day in jail, she said.
It was the first time she was arrested. “Because of my gender expression, the NYPD can arrest me just for being me, for being trans,” Garcia said. “I was so scared, so frustrated. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.” As an immigrant, she was afraid she would be deported.
Candii recalled leaving a shelter one day, when a police car rolled up beside her. The officer gave her two options, she said: become an informant or perform oral sex on the officer. She did the latter and avoided arrest, she said, but “the trauma, it’s still there.”
Now the repeal of the loitering law makes advocates optimistic that they have built the skills and connections they’ll need to finally decriminalize sex work. “You don’t really see a lot of laws passed that really prioritize trans folks,” Trujillo pointed out. “People who have traditionally not always seen themselves in politics, it lets them know how much political power they have. … It makes you feel like the wind is at your back.”
A group of children on their home's rooftop in Petare, Venezuela, Dec. 20, 2021. (photo: EFE)
US Sanctions Caused Thousands of Deaths in Venezuela, US Government Accountability Office Says
teleSUR
Excerpt: "U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) acknowledged that U.S. sanctions on Venezuela have killed tens of thousands of people and harmed the country's economy, especially by depressing its oil production."
Venezuelan economy's performance has declined steadily for almost a decade since the imposition of U.S. sanctions in 2015.
In a new report, GAO also recalled that the sanctions imposed on the country under former Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s administrations are also hindering U.S.-backed humanitarian aid to Venezuela.
The report “offers more evidence that the unilateral and illegal U.S. sanctions are a punishment against the Venezuelan people and they should be ended immediately,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said.
GAO noted that the financial sanctions imposed on Venezuela since 2015 led to a drop in oil production of 797 tons per day, which at current oil prices would represent US$16.9 billion per year in foregone oil revenues.
“This drop means fewer imports, including of food, medicines, medical equipment, and other health-related necessities,” Weisbrot added.
President Joe Biden ordered a review of U.S. economic sanctions on countries such as Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba to determine their humanitarian impact.
“This is positive. However, there is not much to assess. There is no reason to allow this crime from the Trump administration to continue,” the expert recalled.
A mining facility at Cadomin, Alberta. The province has a long history of coal mining. (photo: Brent Beach/Alamy)
'This Land Feeds Our Souls': The Battle to Save the Rockies From Big Coal
Leyland Cecco, Guardian UK
Cecco writes: "To the east of the Bluebird Valley ranch, the grasslands of the Canadian prairies extend beyond the horizon. To the west, the fields rise, and then sharply erupt into the Rocky Mountains."
Growing opposition to the lifting of mining protections in Alberta has forced the Canadian province to backtrack
Cattle graze the 3,600 hectares (9,000 acres) of the Bluebird, an hour south-west of Calgary, and on hot summer days rancher Jolayne Gardner’s children jump into the chilly waters of a creek that threads the rolling hills.
“This land feeds our souls,” says Gardner. “But realistically, what happens here also impacts over a million people and their water supply.”
For months, the Gardners and other ranchers in southern Alberta had been living in fear that the land around them would be transformed into opencast coalmines after rules protecting the wilderness were abruptly rescinded last year.
While there is a long history of coalmining in the mountainous regions of the province, no new mines have been built since 1974. But with the change in policy, drill sites and nearly 70km of new exploration roads through critical wildlife habitats were given the go-ahead on once-protected land, pitting the community against mining companies and a local government keen to extract the land’s resources.
Ranchers and environmentalists in the area first started sounding the alarm over the summer, circulating petitions and creating Facebook groups to raise awareness. Those efforts received a substantial boost in January after the country singing star Corb Lund, a chronicler of Alberta’s farming and ranching culture, voiced his concerns.
“My understanding is that you can have either coalmining or clean water, but you can’t have both,” he told his fans in a video posted to social media on 12 January, titled Mountains Not Mines.
Lund, who has released 11 albums, has long worried that the unique landscape of southern Alberta would be developed by industry.
“This is my prairie, this is my home / I’ll make my stand here and I’ll die alone / They can drill, they can mine o’er my smoldering bones / ’Cause this is my prairie, this is my home,” he wrote 15 years ago in the song This Is My Prairie.
Lund’s post was viewed nearly half a million times as outrage rippled throughout the province. Other singers, including Paul Brandt, Terri Clark, Jann Arden and kd lang, also expressed frustration over the Alberta government’s decision to change its policy on coalmining. More than 100,000 people signed a number of petitions to halt the sale of coal leases and thousands of letters were sent to political leaders, a groundswell of opposition that caught the government of Alberta by surprise.
Last month, amid the growing backlash, Alberta’s energy minister, Sonya Savage, announced that a recent sale of 11 coal leases in December would be cancelled. Then, on Monday, she said that the 1976 coal mining policy would be reinstated. “Albertans have spoken loud and clear and we have heard them,” she said in a statement. People power had prevailed.
How the fight began
For nearly half a century, Alberta’s rugged landscape had been protected by its coal policy, which barred exploration and mining in wilderness areas. In May, however, as oil prices plunged and the province’s economic outlook darkened, Alberta’s energy minister reversed the longstanding regulation, calling it an “outdated” policy and promising to attract new investment to the province.
The largest change was to “category 2” lands, which were once protected owing to their ecological sensitivity. Under the new policy, large swaths of what was formerly classed as category 2 land could be leased by coal companies for exploration.
The Alberta government’s decision, posted on its website the afternoon before a long weekend as the coronavirus reached the peak of its first wave, was criticised by many.
“If the government is so excited about this, why did we have to hear about it this way?” Gardner says, recalling the moment she heard of the change. “There are so many things to be proud of in this province. Open-pit coalmining is not one of them.”
After ending the coal policy, the Alberta government went on to sell leases covering nearly 2,000 hectares to Australian mining companies including Atrum Coal and Montem Resources.
The Alberta government argued that opening up new coalmines would create jobs in a province heavily reliant on the unpredictable fortunes of the oil industry. In 2017, the Alberta government collected C$15.7m (£8.9m) in coal royalties – a figure that would increase significantly with new mining projects. In struggling areas such as Crowsnest Pass, mining jobs would be a boon to the community’s grim economic circumstances.
But to create surface mines, the companies would have to blast the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, scraping into the debris for valuable coal seams. The slopes are home to forests of lodgepole pine, balsam and spruce and are a critical habitat for vulnerable grizzly bears and caribou.
There was also concern that mountain streams could become contaminated with selenium, a common byproduct of coalmining. Home to threatened cutthroat trout, those waters eventually feed three main rivers: the Red Deer, the South Saskatchewan and, most critically, the Oldman. All of southern Alberta, as well as neighbouring Saskatchewan, relies on the health of those rivers for drinking and irrigation.
Despite Monday’s announcement that the Alberta government would reinstate the coal policy and consult with the public as it develops new guidelines, six previously approved exploration projects can still move ahead, including the Grassy Mountain mine, a proposal that predates the policy change.
“On the face of it, today’s announcement may look like the government is trying to do something to halt coal development. But that’s that not the case,” says Cam Gardner, Joylane’s husband and a local councillor. “Even though the policy is back in place, for anyone interested in stopping the damage, nothing has changed. People are seeing through this move.”
Conservation groups were also cautious in welcoming the announcement. “We have serious concerns about the six projects that are still allowed to conduct exploration activities,” Christopher Smith of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society said in a statement. “Exploration activities cause great damage to our lands and waters. There are currently hundreds of new drill sites and hundreds of kilometres of new roads that are a direct result of the removal of the coal policy. Allowing these activities to continue is not appropriate.”
The long road ahead
As a province rich in oil, natural gas and coal, Alberta is no stranger to energy protests. In recent years, the governing United Conservative Party has cast protesters as part of a foreign-funded cabal “fuelling the anti-Alberta energy campaign” and spent millions on a “war room” to counter opposition to pipeline projects.
“In the past, it’s been easy for the government to write off environmental protesters as tree-hugging hippies,” says Dave Clark, an avid hiker from Edmonton. “But these are Albertans of all political stripes who are fighting against coalmining. And this is what I think the government is worried about.”
Clark helps run Protect Alberta’s Rockies and Headwaters, a Facebook group with about 25,000 members. “I’ve never seen so many people rally around a cause like this,” he says.
For Indigenous people in the area, the battle to preserve the land represents the latest front in a long and seemingly endless war.
“The land is woven into the fabric of our culture and our identity. Every aspect of our lives is connected to the land,” says Latasha Calf Robe, a community organiser with the Blood Tribe. “And all of that is at risk of disappearing. You can’t rebuild a mountain.”
In recent weeks, she has been educating community members in the broader Blackfoot Confederacy about the environmental risks of coalmining. Despite growing community opposition, the Blood Tribe’s chief and councillors had voiced their support for the Grassy Mountain project.
“By protecting treaty rights, we are protecting the land, we are protecting the mountains, we are protecting the wildlife,” she says. “Because these fights never end. If it’s coalmines one day, it’s pipelines the next day, and then it’s logging.”
Even with the victory, the Gardners see a long fight ahead to ensure full protection of the land around them.
“My husband and I always say this is the fight of our lives. I don’t want this for my grandchildren,” says Jolayne. “If enough people know what’s at stake and what it means to lose, I think that we’ll win.”
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