11 April 21
107 Donors Supporting the Entire Organization
107 people donating what they can are sustaining Reader Supported News for April. That’s out of 340,619 people who have come.
Stop for a moment and chip in.
Please.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
11 April 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Top Mueller Deputy Andrew Weissman on How to Prosecute Trump
Ankush Khardori, New York Magazine
Khardori writes: "It would have been hard to imagine in April 2019 that two years later, we would barely be talking about the investigation into Donald Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller."
t would have been hard to imagine in April 2019 that two years later, we would barely be talking about the investigation into Donald Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Once the subject of nightly news coverage and the object of liberal fantasies, the Mueller investigation is now viewed by many as a tragically missed opportunity and, to some, a failure. That view got a considerable boost last September when Andrew Weissmann, one of Mueller’s deputies, wrote a book that reflected on the office’s work in remarkably frank terms — arguing that the team had pulled its punches both during the investigation and in completing its report. Two years later, Trump still faces legal headwinds like no other former president, including a growing number of civil cases and ongoing criminal investigations by prosecutors in Manhattan and Atlanta.
When I first met Weissmann, he was interviewing me for a job as a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Fraud Section, which specializes in white-collar crime and which Weissmann led from 2013 to 2017. Weissmann already had an outsized reputation in the legal profession and an unparalleled résumé: an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, a deputy and eventually director of the Enron task force, and general counsel of the FBI under Mueller. With his work on the Trump-Russia investigation, Weissmann has become perhaps the most consequential federal prosecutor of his generation (whether you like those consequences or not).
I recently spoke to him about the legacy of the Mueller investigation at its two-year anniversary, and about what to look for in those ongoing criminal investigations.
A lot of people think you should have subpoenaed Trump; you share that view. A lot of people think there should have been a financial investigation.
I think there should have been a financial investigation within the scope that we were allowed to do. We could not do what the Manhattan District Attorney’s office apparently is doing. By all accounts, they seem to be just doing a classic case to see whether there’s bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering, those kinds of things.
We didn’t have that full scope, which I actually think is just a general criticism of the special counsel rules, and also Rod Rosenstein. As a prosecutor, once there’s a legitimate basis to look at somebody — so it’s not just some arbitrary investigation — one of the ways you get a toehold is if they committed some unrelated crime. And again, in my book, I gave a lot of examples of how that worked. Whether it was an organized-crime case or an Enron, the way we got our first cooperator was looking at crime that we discovered unrelated to Enron.
What do you think would have actually happened if you had subpoenaed Trump early on?
Well, I think there obviously is a chance that he would not have been able to be talked out of firing us because we didn’t know at that time just how close we came to being fired. But that also, that’s one where, who knows what would have happened? We could have been fired. And the other is, it would have just played out that we would have gone to court. And I think we would have won that argument on whether he would have been required to testify pursuant to a grand jury subpoena. I think that’s the high watermark of DOJ having a basis and having the ability to put somebody in the grand jury.
You also share a lot of the most widespread criticisms of the report itself, some of which you’ve touched on — the vagueness in certain places and the equivocation on the question of whether or not Trump obstructed the investigation.
I have this long argument about why we should have just said what we thought. Because that’s what the special counsel rules said. Just imagine, the special counsel rules are written this way, “Ankush is an AUSA, you are tasked with investigating something and reporting to the attorney general your conclusions.” You don’t get to say, “Oh, by the way, I’m not telling you, because you may decide — the attorney general — to make this public later and that would be unfair to whoever you’re going to talk about.”
That piece is true, that what you say publicly could be something that the attorney general really is supposed to think about and care about. Of course, the attorney general had permission from the White House to publish the report.
So, why we were muzzling ourselves thinking ahead of what the attorney general’s conundrum would be seemed really wrong, especially since the attorney general had the ability to resolve that issue, either by saying, “Well, we’re not going to talk about it,” or as is happened, have the consent of the president to make it public.
One of the most famous threads dangling is this question of whether or not Trump obstructed the investigation and whether he should be prosecuted. You wrote an op-ed for the New York Times last November saying that the investigation had “amassed ample evidence to support a charge.” It’s a little strange for a prosecutor who didn’t charge someone, for whatever reason, to publicly be lobbying for those charges.
Well, so first, the unusual part of that is that the Department of Justice had permission to make the report public. So, normally, you wouldn’t be in that situation.
My point was that it’s really important to deal with the issue of a president — divorce it from Trump — who obstructs a special counsel, knowing that you cannot prosecute a president under current DOJ rules at the time. If you just say, “Let bygones be bygones,” please think about what is going to happen the next time we’re appointing a special counsel when you’ve now set a precedent for, “Well, you really don’t have to worry about ultimately being prosecuted for this. You won’t be prosecuted while you’re in office. And don’t worry, once it’s over, there’s going to be a huge political impetus to just be like, ‘Let’s move forward, even when the evidence is very strong.’”
But in terms of ramifications, is it okay to just obstruct an investigation and there’s no sanction? Imagine that in just the normal criminal law; a prosecutor would be outraged, saying, “Are you kidding me?” You need those tools in order to actually uncover the truth. If people can lie and obstruct and that is not itself a crime, everyone’s going to do it.
Have you been in touch with the Biden transition or the new administration on this question?
No.
Have you tried to lobby them?
No. My view on that is: I made my views public and there are some wonderful, wonderful people there, and I think they’re really smart. And there are a lot of things to consider.
What do you think the odds are that anyone actually criminally prosecutes Trump?
If it’s going to happen, it’ll be in Manhattan. That seems like the one that has the most legs. But you and I both know, it’s really hard. I’ve been on the inside and listened to people on the outside. It’s really hard unless you’re inside to know whether they’re really going to be able to make the case.
And I think a really important piece is going to be flipping the CFO, Weisselberg. I think that is going to just be so critical in terms of being able to deal with Trump’s defense of, “I didn’t know,” or “Weisselberg was signing off on things, so I had no criminal intent. Who am I to second-guess accounting and legal issues?”
That is really important — unless you have tapes or a paper trail — to have an insider. I just think it’s too early to really speculate until you know whether he’s flipped or not. If he flips, I think that this case is going to be made. I mean, you and I can also say, “You know, FTI is on the case. Mark Pomerantz is on the case.” Those are all superficial signs that there’s something there.
What I would say is that’s a sign that they are going to really try to find anything that is there. But whether they’ll get there? We don’t know.
This is not the first time the government has retained an expert consulting firm for a case. I think the business about Mark Pomerantz is a little interesting, because I see it as sort of a litmus test for how read into the white-collar space some of the commentators really are. Because Mark has not been actively working for a long time.
That’s not really the issue. Mark is a really, really good lawyer. I’m not one of his big believers in, “Oh, he prosecuted John Gotti Jr.” Because first of all, he didn’t. It happened under his watch. But he is a very experienced prosecutor. But the main thing is, he’s a very experienced white-collar defense lawyer.
I totally accept your point, which is that he may very well have been looking for something meaningful to do. And this was something where he could make a difference. But I still think it’s a huge sign. Not only would he, I think, not join something that he thought was just sort of a mess, but I also don’t know that Cy would have brought him on if he didn’t think it was really going to be a real value add, especially since there are some morale issues in bringing an outsider in.
Let’s talk about the financial investigation that the DA’s office may or may not be conducting. One of the things that I find a little vexing about the public discussion on this question is that, I think you know as well as anyone, what a “financial investigation” entails can mean a million different things. So, if this were up to you, how would you come at this investigation?
Well, I certainly would do one of the things that they’re doing, which was to fight like crazy to get the accounting records. But what you do if you’re trying to build a financial case in these circumstances — I actually think of it in terms of what we did with Paul Manafort.
You want to see whether the people you’re investigating took action on some financial incentives they had. If you are seeking loans from banks, you may want to increase your income and lower your debts. It’s particularly useful if you are seeing that they’re reporting diametrically opposed and inconsistent things at the same time.
But then you really have to make sure that you can bring it home to the person under investigation. And that is the reason for Weisselberg. The prerequisite is whether something is reported incorrectly, but that doesn’t tell you whether it was intentional or not. Lots of people can have incorrect tax returns without committing a tax crime. And it’s not necessarily the case that the person knew about it in any way.
So, with Paul Manafort, what was great is he was having direct communications with his accountants, who were asking him the critical key questions. When we got those, it was a real eureka moment of, “Okay, the person whose intent we are interested in, we can show that he is representing things that are incorrect.”
And then, you put the timeline together and essentially, you end up with a paper case. Obviously, you can put the accountants and people who are dealing with the defendant in the grand jury and lock them in. Because Paul Manafort used email, it really wasn’t necessary for us to have Rick Gates. It became sort of a nice icing, in terms of having someone tell the story.
But we also knew there’s a downside to put somebody like that on and he becomes the target where people say, “That’s the key witness.” That will happen with Weisselberg if he flips. It’ll be like, “He’s saving his skin or he’s saving his children,” or whatever it is. And that’s sort of a standard defense, which is tried and true. And that’s what you do as a defense lawyer and there’s nothing wrong with that as an argument, and the government has to deal with that and find enough corroboration as to why he’s telling the truth.
Well, one of the big problems, I think, that has not been discussed in the media as much is that there is a wrinkle to the New York grand jury process that is not present elsewhere. Can you just get into that?
Yeah, so New York has this rule where if you put someone in the grand jury, they’re immunized automatically unless they waive it. Now, I don’t know why in God’s green earth you would waive it if you’re not fully cooperating. At the time, you basically are like, “Hey, you want to put me in the grand jury and I get immunity. Great.”
Now, the other wrinkle is, if that happens and you’re flipping somebody that way, or you’re sort of cold-putting them in the grand jury, and they automatically get immunity — which is not an ideal way to flip somebody — if they were to lie and obstruct, that can be separately prosecuted.
You really want to flip somebody in the traditional way where you build a really good case. And then, you have what’s called a “come to Jesus” meeting with them and their counsel. That’s what we [did with] Rick Gates. We said, “Here are the binders of evidence that we have, knock yourselves out, read whatever you want. And this is why your best course is to flip.”
What the Manhattan DA’s office, though, has that we didn’t have is that they don’t have to worry about the governor pardoning anybody or their being fired. Both of those were impediments to our flipping people.
Some of the challenges, though, that you folks faced — that other people have faced — do persist. I mean, Trump famously did not use emails, right?
Yeah, I mean, look, that is true in mob cases. It was true in Enron with Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. So, in those situations, those are why in almost any complicated investigation I’ve done, you need a cooperator. I mean, you have to have cooperating witnesses. People in Manhattan know that. Mark Pomerantz knows that. I mean, that is just part of a skill set of sophisticated prosecutors and white-collar defense lawyers.
Trump also has this skill — I don’t know if you call it a skill — of being elliptical in his verbal conversations. He constantly has this deniability about what was or wasn’t said.
I actually view that as something that the prosecution can use. I am not a subscriber to “Donald Trump is not smart” or “is an idiot.” He may not be erudite and come off as particularly educated, but I think he’s very, very street-savvy. And I think because he has sued and been sued so many times, I think he has a very good idea about where the line is.
And so, a classic example of that from the first impeachment is, “I am not asking you for a quid pro quo. Just to be clear.” I’m just paraphrasing. “I am just saying, if you don’t do this, you’re not getting that.” To me, it’s a little like what he did in Georgia. He knows what to say or what he says [to the rioters] on January 6, which is “go peacefully.” But every single act and action that he took before, and on the afternoon of January 6, while it was going on, belied that statement.
And I think it’s because he has a very good sense of where the legal line is. So, he throws in some statements. And that is something that you see in white-collar and organized crime cases, where people who are used to being up against law enforcement oversight think about how something’s going to read.
Yeah, I mean, in the case of the Georgia investigation into the call he had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and all of the efforts to overturn the election — I think that there’s been sort of an outsized focus in some respect on the call that he had with Raffensperger. It’s undeniably remarkable and it should draw a lot of attention, but it’s definitely not the four corners of the evidence that one could bring to bear.
I totally agree with you. I completely agree.
Plus, although the call itself is remarkable, it’s definitely complicated because the president at the time had lawyers and people at the White House who clearly were giving him information. And so, that case, you need to really understand what he has been told, because his intent is going to be critical. And if he’s just repeating what he has been told, you need to be able to show that he, the president, knew that it was not true.
Now, I think there are ways you can deal with that. But you have to be prepared for all of that, because all of those people who are with him and briefed him before the call are potential defense witnesses, and you need to know exactly what they’re going to say and what they’re not going to say.
Yeah. And I think that there are witnesses, there are documents, briefing papers, I think you can tell if you listen to the call closely that he’s reading from talking points.
Exactly.
And this is actually one of the worries that I have, frankly, about leaving this to local investigators — Vance in New York and the Fulton County DA — and this is not to disparage anyone at either of those places, but it’s going to be harder to pursue some of those investigative avenues, right? It’s hard for me to envision the Fulton County DA getting White House briefing papers.
Yeah. I don’t know enough about that office, but I will say, in defense of Manhattan, first, that office used to have a real history of doing sophisticated white-collar matters and their handling of the legal issue and being tenacious in terms of getting the accounting records was masterful. I mean, they looked incredible. I thought the briefing for getting the financial records was beautifully written and argued, and they were, correctly, a dog with a bone in terms of pursuing that.
Of course, I always like to think Feds are the best and we’re the greatest, but you know — as you know — there are really good and sophisticated federal prosecutors and not. And there are really good and sophisticated state DAs and not. So, to me, it’s more about making sure you have a really good team.
Cy Vance is, at this point, extremely experienced. And I just can’t imagine he doesn’t have his best folks on this.
There was the Trump Soho case; it’s like a classic fraud case and it was not brought under Vance. The Weinstein stuff was sort of bubbling and was not brought to fruition soon enough.
And these are hard cases under even the best of circumstances with the best people, right? You guys had what many people regard as one of the best teams historically, and you had a lot of difficulties.
The one thing I will say is there’s no office — federal or state — that hasn’t had its issues and had various triumphs and things that are mistakes. But from the outside, looking at what we know being publicly done, it all seems right to me and well-done. And even when you look at things like the Weinstein case — in areas where they have gone back to something — there’s definitely some criticism that you could have about what happened earlier. But then, the Weinstein case was a matter that was really difficult. And that was a tough case that they ultimately — now I’m talking about the second time — and they really did a great job.
I don’t want to be knocking them or perceived to be really nasty toward the DA’s office, but I see this way in which the public narrative and the press and the media’s treatment of the Cy Vance case is almost like one-to-one tracking the Mueller investigation to the point where like Pomerantz is you in this —
Yeah. Look, that is totally fair and right. And I remember at the time when our team was being described as, what was it, it was like some …
“The dream team”?
Yeah, exactly, some lazy journalism. And that’s just ridiculous. The only dream team that we had was — the agents on the case were the single best agents I’ve ever worked with in my entire career.
But I do think at this point, it’s a little speculative. That’s all I’m saying, because we just don’t know enough. And I think as you and I know, the way that you really can judge how the defense and the prosecutor is doing is if you are part of that team and you really know what choices they had and what choices they didn’t have. And you can really understand all of the intricacies. It is difficult to get all of that from the outside, especially now.
I think a really difficult thing for people to understand is that there can be ample grounds to investigate someone and you may even have a strong predisposition about what that investigation will show, but you have to be completely open-minded about the reality that more often than not, criminal investigations do not lead to criminal prosecutions. And that’s the way it should be.
Yeah, and especially white-collar matters can be particularly difficult. And proving intent, particularly if it’s a tax charge, it’s going to be really hard. I mean, it’s not like a murder where you don’t to have to sit there and say, “Gee, I wonder how we’re going to prove that Andrew knew it was wrong.” It’s a much more complicated area and you need to be ready for the defenses of, “Lawyers approved things, accountants approved things, or I just didn’t even know things that were going on.”
US Army Lieutenant Caron Nazario was driving his newly-purchased Chevy Tahoe home when two police officers pulled him over in Windsor, Va.on December 5, 2020. (photo: NBC News)
Army Officer Sues Police for Pepper-Spraying Him, Drawing Guns During Traffic Stop
Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "A second lieutenant in the U.S. Army has filed a lawsuit against two police officers in Virginia for a traffic stop in which they drew their guns, pointed them at him in a threatening manner, and pepper-sprayed him before knocking him to the ground and placing him in handcuffs."
second lieutenant in the U.S. Army has filed a lawsuit against two police officers in Virginia for a traffic stop in which they drew their guns, pointed them at him in a threatening manner, and pepper-sprayed him before knocking him to the ground and placing him in handcuffs. The reason that warranted such a high degree of force? Caron Nazario had tinted windows and didn’t have a rear license plate. Footage of the December stop from body cameras shows how Nazario, who is Black and Latino, was wearing military fatigues during the stop and had his arms up the whole time. “I’m actively serving this country, and this is how I’m treated?” Nazario says at one point.
The video shows how the officers had their guns pointing at him while Nazario sat in his parked car at a gas station. The officers repeatedly tell Nazario to get out of the car. “What’s going on?” Nazario repeatedly asks. Officer Joe Gutierrez at one point says, “What’s going on? You’re fixin’ to ride the lightning, son.” The lawsuit states that phrase was a line from the movie The Green Mile and is a reference to the electric chair. “I’m honestly afraid to get out,” Nazario says at one point. “Yeah, you should be!” Gutierrez responds. He then proceeds to pepper-spray Nazario several times. Nazario demands explanations for what is happening, saying his dog is in the back of the car choking on the pepper spray. “This is really messed up,” Nazario says.
WATCH: A new lawsuit claims Windsor police officers drew guns, pepper-sprayed uniformed Army officer during traffic stop. More at 5 on #13NewsNow pic.twitter.com/OQotHHnb47
— Ali Weatherton 13News Now (@13AliWeatherton) April 8, 2021
Previously, Windsor Police Officer Daniel Crocker had radioed the station saying he was attempting to stop a vehicle but the driver was “eluding police” and he was considered a “high-risk traffic stop.” Gutierrez was driving by and heard Crocker’s call and decided to join. Nazario disputes the allegation he was attempting to drive away, saying he traveled less than a mile and was just trying to stop in a well-lit area. By the time the officers reached Nazario’s car they could see that he had a temporary license plate taped to his rear window, according to the lawsuit.
After he is pepper-sprayed, the officer manages to pull Nazario out of the SUV. Nazario is clearly disoriented, but the officers don’t stop yelling at him. “Can you please talk to me about what’s going on?” Nazario asks several times. “Why am I being treated like this?” Gutierrez proceeded to respond with “knee strikes” to the legs, which knocked him to the ground. “These cameras captured footage of behavior consistent with a disgusting nationwide trend of law enforcement officers, who, believing they can operate with complete impunity, engage in unprofessional, discourteous, racially biased, dangerous and sometimes deadly abuses of authority,” notes the lawsuit.
Demonstrators are seen before a clash with security forces in Taze, Myanmar. (photo: Reuters)
Reports: Myanmar Accused of Genocide in Bago
Reuters
Excerpt: "Myanmar security forces fired rifle grenades at protesters in a town near Yangon on Friday, killing more than 80 people, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group and a domestic news outlet said."
yanmar security forces fired rifle grenades at protesters in a town near Yangon on Friday, killing more than 80 people, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group and a domestic news outlet said.
Details of the death toll in the town of Bago, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of Yangon, were not initially available because security forces piled up bodies in the Zeyar Muni pagoda compound and cordoned off the area, according to witnesses and domestic media outlets.
The AAPP and Myanmar Now news outlet said on Saturday that 82 people were killed during the protest against the Feb. 1 military coup in the country. Firing started before dawn on Friday and continued into the afternoon, Myanmar Now said.
"It is like genocide," the news outlet quoted a protest organiser called Ye Htut as saying. "They are shooting at every shadow."
Many residents of the town have fled, according to accounts on social media.
A spokesman for Myanmar's military junta could not be reached on Saturday.
AAPP, which has maintained a daily tally of protesters killed and arrested by security forces, has previously said 618 people have died since the coup.
That figure is disputed by the military, which says it staged the coup because a November election won by Aung San Suu Kyi's party was rigged. The election commission has dismissed the assertion.
Junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun told a news conference on Friday in the capital, Naypyitaw, that the military had recorded 248 civilian deaths and 16 police deaths, and said no automatic weapons had been used by security forces.
An alliance of ethnic armies in Myanmar that has opposed the junta's crackdown attacked a police station in the east on Saturday and at least 10 policemen were killed, domestic media said.
The police station at Naungmon in Shan state was attacked early in the morning by fighters from an alliance that includes the Arakan Army, the Ta'ang National Liberation Army and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the media reported.
Shan News said at least 10 policemen were killed, while the Shwe Phee Myay news outlet put the death toll at 14.
Myanmar's military rulers said on Friday that protests against its rule were dwindling because people wanted peace, and that it would hold elections within two years.
Ousted Myanmar lawmakers urged the United Nations Security Council on Friday to take action against the military.
"Our people are ready to pay any cost to get back their rights and freedom," said Zin Mar Aung, who has been appointed acting foreign minister for a group of ousted lawmakers. She urged Council members to apply both direct and indirect pressure on the junta.
"Myanmar stands at the brink of state failure, of state collapse," Richard Horsey, a senior adviser on Myanmar with the International Crisis Group, told the informal U.N. meeting, the first public discussion of Myanmar by council members.
Ronilda Oliveira, 53, receives her first dose of the coronavirus vaccine at Boston's Brazilian Worker Center, where hundreds of immigrants have come for a shot of protection. (photo: Sophie Park/WP)
For Immigrants, IDs Prove to Be a Barrier to Vaccines
Akilah Johnson, The Washington Post
Johnson writes: "The line started outside, on a street usually teeming with people waiting to enter college bars, and snaked up the stairs of an old firehouse to the Brazilian Worker Center, where shots of the coronavirus vaccine were being administered on this cold New England spring morning."
he line started outside, on a street usually teeming with people waiting to enter college bars, and snaked up the stairs of an old firehouse to the Brazilian Worker Center, where shots of the coronavirus vaccine were being administered on this cold New England spring morning.
Finally, it was Maria Sousa’s turn. She had been waiting for more than an hour with her husband and daughter when a center volunteer greeted them in Portuguese and guided them to the registration desk, where they presented their identification — Brazilian passports.
Getting vaccinated here was the only option they considered.
Immigrants have been turned away from pharmacies and other places after being asked for driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers or health insurance cards — specific documentation not mandated by states or the federal government but often requested at vaccination sites across the country, including right down the road from here. Often the request comes in English, a language many of the vaccine-seekers don’t fully understand.
Some state agencies and businesses that provide vaccinations have acknowledged the problem and vowed that it will stop.
Sousa’s family wasn’t willing to take the risk.
Here, there was someone to intervene if requests for more information arose — and they did. When the woman behind the desk entered Sousa’s name, a picture popped up on her screen. Since the 43-year-old was wearing a mask, the woman asked for an address to determine whether it was the same person. When the address didn’t match what was in the system, she pressed for more information.
Watching as a volunteer tried to help Sousa, the center’s executive director stepped in. The registrars were to accept whatever ID was presented, using the center’s address if necessary.
The life-or-death race to get as many people vaccinated as possible before the coronavirus spawns more viral mutations, like the one that emerged in Brazil, started slowly but has accelerated as many of those crossing the finish line possess the wherewithal and inclination to navigate a mazelike system. As the nation nears the point where supply soon outpaces demand, the unvaccinated will increasingly be people who are reluctant or who are rebuffed by barriers blocking their way.
“We’ve done a good job of equality in rolling out the vaccine. A lot of states have opened to everyone 16 and over now,” said Jeffrey Hines, medical director for diversity, inclusion and health equity at Wellstar Health System in Atlanta. “But equality is not equity.”
Equality means giving everyone the same resources and opportunities, whereas equity takes into account people’s varying circumstances and allocates resources based on need to reach an equal outcome.
“Equality can get things done quickly,” Hines said. “Equity needs to be done more intentionally.”
The federal government says everyone has a right to the coronavirus vaccine regardless of immigration status, with the Department of Homeland Security calling it “a moral and public health imperative to ensure that all individuals residing in the United States have access to the vaccine.”
But each state’s registration process is different, and vaccination sites often make up their own rules — policies inflaming racial and ethnic divides in coronavirus vaccinations.
Twenty-six states restrict access to people who live and work there, status that can be proved with a utility bill or a work ID. But only about one-quarter of state websites make it clear that undocumented immigrants are eligible for the shot and that getting vaccinated will not negatively affect immigration status, according to recent analyses by the health policy group Kaiser Family Foundation.
Only 10 states and D.C., which have residency requirements, also allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses or state identification cards.
Massachusetts is not one of them, and the state’s website telling people how to prepare for their vaccine appointment says that although vaccination sites might request an ID or insurance card, “that only applies to people that have them.”
“The idea of having to be ID’d is a major source of stress for immigrants,” said Natalícia Tracy, executive director of Boston’s Brazilian Worker Center, a nonprofit dedicated to defending and advancing labor and immigrant rights. “When people ask for ID, they say Massachusetts ID. They don’t say any ID.”
It is often left up to the very people made vulnerable by these ad hoc rules to push back against them.
Experts and immigration advocates say that while talk about closing the gap in vaccination rates has focused largely on bolstering acceptance of vaccines, access to them must be part of the conversation, too. That’s especially true, they say, in communities still reeling from immigration policies implemented during the Trump administration that were openly hostile to immigrants of color.
“It’s very easy to say vaccine hesitation,” said Frankie Miranda, president of the Hispanic Federation, a New York-based nonprofit and advocacy group.
Instead, he said, a constellation of factors come into play, including the time and technology required to book appointments online, the need for transportation to vaccination sites and translation services — even the language used on promotional fliers.
Take, for instance, a colorful, bilingual bulletin advertising a recent drive-through vaccination event in one North Carolina county. It included images of a diverse cluster of masked essential workers, a group made up disproportionately of people of color and immigrants. Yet in English and Spanish, the flier proclaimed “citizens 65 and older” are eligible for vaccination.
“Already, you’re sending the message: don’t come here,” Miranda said. “This is an example where language can hamper your efforts to reach out to the community you actually want to help.”
Many immigrants won’t risk the consequences of coming forward to be vaccinated at unfamiliar places, advocates and public health experts say — even though their jobs, housing and underlying health conditions place them at higher risk of infection.
“Vulnerable populations are going to go to those places where they have trust," Hines said. "They may not necessarily go to the mass vax site.”
Administering thousands of shots at big facilities might be a quicker way to get as many people vaccinated as possible, but “you’re going to chip away” at the number of unvaccinated people in marginalized communities by using trusted spaces, he said.
The Brazilian Worker Center administered more than 200 shots on Good Friday. But that was only a small fraction of those seeking protection. The center’s vaccination waiting list: 2,500, and growing.
“If it was not for the center, we wouldn’t take the vaccine,” said Sousa, whose family emigrated 18 months ago from São Paulo.
“There’s a tremendous amount of distress in the immigrant community. Rumors run rampant,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “There needs to be a much more substantial and very targeted investment in outreach — almost on the scale of census outreach after the failed attempt to add a citizenship question. It’s absolutely necessary.”
During the 2020 Census, local, state and federal agencies sought to assuage the fears of immigrants and their families, both legal and undocumented, urging them to “fight the undercount” and participate in the enumeration.
“We have to call out people’s fears and address them directly. It can’t be generic, ‘We should all get vaccinated, and it’s a good thing,’ ” Saenz said. “We need to be very clear about the message: Absolutely no one will face any consequence related to immigration enforcement or any other enforcement. It’s got to be that specific.”
Despite the coronavirus carving a disproportionate path of death and disease through communities of color, vaccination rates in counties with predominantly Black and Latino populations are lower than those with mostly Native American, White or Asian American residents, federal data shows.
Covid-19 was the leading cause of death among Latinos and led Black people to have the highest age-adjusted death rate overall last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There is little to no data on the infection, death or vaccination rates of immigrants specifically.
From nearly two decades of work advocating for immigrants, Juvencio Rocha-Peralta, executive director of the grass-roots Association of Mexicans in North Carolina, said he knew when the pandemic began that “this community was going to be invisible.”
Conversations about public health and marginalized people in the state tended to exclude Latino immigrants, especially on the local level, said Rocha-Peralta, whose organization has recently partnered with health departments to hold vaccination events. “They’re talking about White and Black, and that’s all,” he said, but the needs of the immigrant community are distinct.
“This community doesn’t have documents. Don’t have driver’s licenses like everybody else,” he said. “But we still continue to see information out there requiring identification, which is a big no-no. It’s a fear for the community.”
Tracy, the head of the Brazilian Worker Center, personally confronted the issue when she received her dose at a mass vaccination site in Boston.
A friend accompanying her was offered a vaccination without an appointment or a request for ID. He declined, saying he was there to support Tracy, who is Afro-Brazilian.
“The woman then turned to me and said, ‘What’s your name? Let me see a Massachusetts ID. I want to make sure you’re a Massachusetts resident,’ ” Tracy said.
“I was so upset. I felt she racially profiled me,” Tracy said. “Here she is willing to give a vaccine to someone — a White male without an accent — who didn’t have an appointment without asking for ID. If I was undocumented that would have freaked me out.”
A survivor of labor-trafficking who arrived in the United States as a 19-year-old who spoke no English and with a eighth-grade education, Tracy said she identifies with “being voiceless, being invisible, marginalized.”
“I’m totally obsessed with justice and get pissed about inequality,” she said in her cramped office, her doctorate from Boston University resting in a frame on the wall behind her desk.
The Brazilian Worker Center advocates for the nearly 100,000 Brazilians in Massachusetts. It fought to reunite children separated from their families by the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies, ensured members were counted by the census, and established a food program when the pandemic forced people out of work and into hunger.
Tracy said the center’s vaccination clinics were partly inspired by the health activism of the Black Panther party, which deemed inadequate social services a form of oppression. The Panthers opened free health clinics across the country, including one in Boston, that offered checkups, immunizations, blood tests and health education.
She said she encountered resistance to the idea of administering vaccines at first, saying local officials wanted the center to focus on vaccine education. Tracy persisted, saying she made “noise everywhere I went” by insisting that access was necessary to eliminate disparities.
Then the center’s first vaccination clinic was scheduled, with the help of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit that promotes equal opportunity and fights discrimination on behalf of people of color and immigrants, and the Whittier Street Health Center, which provides primary care and support services to primarily low-income and racially and ethnically diverse populations. Excited, she hopped online and made a quick video to let Facebook followers know.
Immediately, the center was enveloped by demand, and the phones haven’t stopped ringing since.
Mitch McConnell. (photo: Getty Images)
'Dumb Son of a Bitch': Trump Rips McConnell at Mar-a-Lago
Alex Isenstadt, Politico
Isenstadt writes: "Former President Donald Trump ripped into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell before a Republican National Committee donor retreat Saturday evening, deriding him as a 'dumb son of a bitch.'"
The former president spoke at an RNC donor retreat Saturday night.
ormer President Donald Trump ripped into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell before a Republican National Committee donor retreat Saturday evening, deriding him as a “dumb son of a bitch.”
Trump veered off his prepared text during a roughly 50-minute speech before several hundred well-heeled GOP donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, saying that he was “disappointed” in former Vice President Mike Pence, calling last year's presidential election election a “fraud” and mocking Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The former president spent several minutes tearing into McConnell, saying that he didn’t do enough to defend him during the February impeachment trial. At one point, three people familiar with the remarks said, Trump called the Senate GOP leader a “dumb son of a bitch.”
Trump also went after McConnell’s wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, for resigning her cabinet post after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
A spokesperson for McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who was just reelected to a seventh six-year term last year, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest verbal broadside against McConnell, the most powerful Republican still in elected office, comes as Trump reemerges as a dominant force in GOP politics. The former president has, in recent days, sought to rev up his small-dollar fundraising apparatus, and he is issuing a steady stream of endorsements for the 2022 midterm elections, in addition to battles over state party chairmanships.
Though many of Trump's 2022 endorsements align with McConnell's preferences, including backing a number of incumbent GOP senators for reelection, he has occasionally gotten crosswise with the Senate leader. Trump has pledged to oppose GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in next year's Alaska elections after Murkowski voted for his conviction in the Senate trial, though McConnell and his top allies say they will support Murkowski's reelection.
It isn’t the first time Trump has gone after McConnell since leaving office. In February, Trump released an extensive statement bashing McConnell for being “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.” The statement came just days after McConnell took to the Senate floor to flay Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
Several attendees said there was little response to Trump’s insult.
Much of Trump's Saturday night speech was aimed at relitigating the election results, on which the former president has remained fixated. At one point he said he remained disappointed with Pence for not doing more to stop the certification of the election, which he called “rigged.”
Trump’s ongoing criticism of Pence has created a rift in their relationship. While several other potential 2024 Republican hopefuls made the trek to South Florida for the event, Pence did not.
The former president also savaged Fauci, saying that he gave him bad advice. He poked fun of Fauci for botching a first pitch at last year’s opening day game for the Washington Nationals.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who spoke before Trump, also went after Fauci, sources said.
The three-day event drew a number of potential 2024 GOP contenders, including DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Also present were several 2022 midterm election candidates, including Jane Timken and Bernie Moreno, both of whom are seeking Ohio’s open Senate seat.
The confab was held mainly at the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, though for the Saturday evening dinner attendees made the short jaunt north up A1A to Mar-a-Lago.
A woman uses her phone under a Facebook logo in 2015. (photo: Niall Carson/Press Association/AP)
Research Says Facebook's Ad Algorithm Perpetuates Gender Bias
Sam Biddle, The Intercept
Biddle writes: "New research from a team at the University of Southern California provides further evidence that Facebook's advertising system is discriminatory, showing that the algorithm used to target ads reproduced real-world gender disparities when showing job listings, even among equally qualified candidates."
A University of Southern California study provides still more evidence that the company’s ad targeting illegally discriminates.
ew research from a team at the University of Southern California provides further evidence that Facebook’s advertising system is discriminatory, showing that the algorithm used to target ads reproduced real-world gender disparities when showing job listings, even among equally qualified candidates.
In fields from software engineering to sales to food delivery, the team ran sets of ads promoting real job openings at roughly equivalent companies requiring roughly the same skills, one for a company whose existing workforce was disproportionately male and one that was disproportionately female. Facebook showed more men the ads for the disproportionately male companies and more women the ads for the disproportionately female companies, even though the job qualifications were the same. The paper concludes that Facebook could very well be violating federal anti-discrimination laws.
“We confirm that Facebook’s ad delivery can result in skew of job ad delivery by gender beyond what can be legally justified by possible differences in qualifications,” the team wrote.
The work builds on prior research that left Facebook reeling. A groundbreaking 2019 study from one member of the team provided strong evidence that Facebook’s ad algorithm isn’t just capable of bias, but is biased to its core. Responding to that study, and in the wake of widespread criticism over tools that could be used to run blatantly discriminatory ad campaigns, Facebook told The Intercept at the time, “We stand against discrimination in any form. We’ve made important changes to our ad targeting tools and know that this is only a first step. We’ve been looking at our ad delivery system and have engaged industry leaders, academics, and civil rights experts on this very topic — and we’re exploring more changes.”
Based on this new research, it doesn’t appear that the company got very far beyond whatever that “first step” was. The paper — authored by USC computer science assistant professor Aleksandra Korolova, professor John Heidemann, and doctoral student Basileal Imana — revisits the question tackled in 2019: If advertisers don’t use any of Facebook’s demographic targeting options, which demographics will the system target on its own?
The question is a crucial one, given that Facebook’s control over who sees which ads might determine who is provided with certain vital economic opportunities, from insurance to a new job to a credit card. This control is executed entirely through algorithms whose inner workings are kept secret. Since Facebook won’t provide any meaningful answers about how the algorithms work, researchers such as Korolova and her colleagues have had to figure it out.
This time around, the team wanted to preempt claims that biased ad delivery could be explained by the fact that Facebook showed the ads to people who were simply more qualified for the advertised job, a possible legal defense against allegations of unlawful algorithmic bias under statutes like Title VII, which bars discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics like race and gender. “To the extent that the scope of Title VII may cover ad platforms, the distinction we make can eliminate the possibility of platforms using qualification as a legal argument against being held liable for discriminatory outcomes,” the team wrote.
As in 2019, Korolova and her team created a series of advertisements for real-world job openings and paid Facebook to display these job listings to as many people as possible given their budget, as opposed to specifying a certain demographic cohort whose eyeballs they wanted to zero in on. This essentially left the decision of “who sees what” entirely up to Facebook (and its opaque algorithms), thus helping to highlight the bias engineered into Facebook’s own code.
Even when controlling for job qualifications, the researchers found that Facebook automatically funneled gender-neutral ads for gender-neutral jobs to people on the basis of their gender.
For example, Korolova’s team purchased Facebook ad campaigns to promote two delivery driver job listings, one from Instacart and another from Domino’s. Both positions are roughly equivalent in terms of required qualifications, and for both companies, “there is data that shows the de facto gender distribution is skewed”: Most Domino’s drivers are men, and most Instacart drivers are women. By running these ads with a mandate only to maximize eyeballs, no matter whose, the team sought to “study whether ad delivery optimization algorithms reproduce these de facto skews, even though they are not justifiable on the basis of differences in qualification,” with the expectation of finding “a platform whose ad delivery optimization goes beyond what is justifiable by qualification and reproduces de facto skews to show the Domino’s ad to relatively more males than the Instacart ad.” The results showed exactly that.
Left to its own devices, the team found that Facebook’s ad delivery algorithm took the Domino’s and Instacart listings, along with later experiments based on ads for software engineering and sales associate gigs at other companies, and showed them to online audiences that essentially reproduced the existing offline gender disparities: “The skew we observe on Facebook is in the same direction as the de facto skew, with the Domino’s ad delivered to a higher fraction of men than the Instacart ad.” And since the experiments were designed to take job qualification out of the picture, the team says, they strengthen “the previously raised arguments that Facebook’s ad delivery algorithms may be in violation of anti-discrimination laws.” As an added twist, the team ran the same set of ads on LinkedIn, but saw no evidence of systemic gender bias.
Facebook spokesperson Tom Channick told The Intercept that “our system takes into account many signals to try and serve people ads they will be most interested in, but we understand the concerns raised in the report,” adding that “we’ve taken meaningful steps to address issues of discrimination in ads and have teams working on ads fairness today. We’re continuing to work closely with the civil rights community, regulators, and academics on these important matters.”
Though the USC team was able to cleverly expose the biased results of Facebook ads, their methodology hits a brick wall when it comes to answering why exactly this happens. This is by design: Facebook’s ad delivery algorithm, like all the rest of the automated decision-making systems it employs across its billions of users, is a black-box algorithm, completely opaque to anyone other than those inside the company, workers who are bound by nondisclosure agreements and sworn to secrecy. One possible explanation for the team’s findings is that the ad delivery algorithm trains itself based on who has clicked on similar ads in the past — maybe men tend to click on Domino’s ads more than women. Korolova says “skew due to prior user behavior observed by Facebook is possible” but that “if despite the clear indication of the advertiser, we still observe skewed delivery due to historical click-through rates (as we do!), this outcome suggests that Facebook may be overruling advertiser desires for broad and diverse outreach in a way that is aligned with their own long-term business interests.”
Effluent spews from a pipe into a ditch at Port Manatee, where a breach in a nearby wastewater reservoir on the site of a defunct phosphate plant forced an evacuation order. (photo: Octavio Jones/Reuters)
'No Community Should Suffer This': Florida's Toxic Breach Was Decades in the Making
Paola Rosa-Aquino, Guardian UK
Rosa-Aquino writes: "It's been a week since a significant leak at a long-abandoned fertilizer plant in the Tampa Bay area threatened the surrounding groundwater, soil, and local water supplies."
A leak at an abandoned fertilizer plant is just the latest development at a site that has polluted the area since it was built
t’s been a week since a significant leak at a long-abandoned fertilizer plant in the Tampa Bay area threatened the surrounding groundwater, soil, and local water supplies.
Last weekend, officials ordered more than 300 families living near the 676-acre Piney Point plant site in Manatee county to evacuate. The sheriff even emptied out his jail’s first floor of inmates in case a “20-foot wall of water” came rolling their way.
By Monday, local officials said they thought the crisis had been averted; they lifted evacuation orders on Tuesday afternoon. But what they meant was that imminent catastrophe had been postponed. The long-term, slow-moving crisis of toxicity, decades in the making, remains – and is echoed at dozens of radioactive ponds across the state.
“We’re nowhere near out of the woods yet on this – there’s a long way to go,” says Glen Compton of ManaSota-88, an environmental non-profit that has been urging officials for decades to do something about the industrial waste pile.
Piney Point has a long history of polluting the water and air around it, dating to when the plant was built in 1966, Compton says. Just two years later, in 1968, Compton founded ManaSota-88 to oppose the site’s phosphate mining. (“The 88 stood for 1988 because we were supposed to solve all the problems within 20 years,” Compton says. “So now, the 88 stands for 2088.”)
Within a year of Piney Point being built, its original owners – a subsidiary of Borden, the glue and milk company – were caught dumping waste into nearby Bishop Harbor, a marine estuary that flows into Tampa Bay. The plant repeatedly changed hands throughout the years, all the while continuing causing numerous human health and environmental disasters and incidents.
In 1989, for instance, a 23,000-gallon leak of sulfuric acid from a holding tank forced the evacuation of hundreds of people.
After the owner went bankrupt, the Piney Point fertilizer plant was shut down in 2001. But the waste from more than three decades of phosphate mining still sits in massive piles at the site – the environmental equivalent of a ticking time bomb. An intense storm could easily send overflow, for instance.
Before phosphate can be used to help crops grow in fertilizer, it goes through a polluting chemical process. Phosphate ore mined from the soil is treated to create phosphoric acid – a main component of fertilizer. Phosphogypsum is the radioactive waste left over. For every ton of desirable phosphoric acid produced for fertilizer, more than five tons of phosphogypsum waste remains.
The fertilizer industry that produced that waste then dumps it in large piles known as “gyp stacks” – mountains hundreds of feet tall and hundreds of acres wide. And at the top of these mountains are huge lagoons, containing hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater that is highly acidic and radioactive with heavy metal contaminants. A breach at another stack in the state after a 2004 hurricane led to millions of gallons of polluted water being spilled into Tampa Bay.
This toxic industry has plagued the state for decades. Central Florida is the phosphate capital of the world; the state produces 80% of the phosphate mined in the US, as well 25% of the phosphate used around the world. An estimated 1bn tons of phosphogypsum is housed in about two dozen stacks that dot the Florida landscape, some looming as high as 200ft, each with its own pond of acidic wastewater on top. And every year, about 30m more tons are added to them.
“Florida can’t keep ignoring the catastrophic risks of phosphate mining and its toxic waste products,” says Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “No community should have to suffer the consequence of this toxic legacy for some corporation’s short-term financial gain.”
According to Compton, what happens at Piney Point sets a precedent in Florida regarding industrial waste from phosphate mining. “Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong here,” he says.
About 223m gallons remained in the leaking pond at Piney Point on Friday, according to the Florida department of environmental regulation; so far, about 215m gallons of wastewater have been pumped into Tampa Bay. Still, environmental advocates fear how the plant’s toxic stew might affect water quality: on Wednesday, the state agency said there were elevated levels of phosphorous detected where wastewater was being discharged.
Two additional stacks with wastewater containment ponds remain at Piney Point, and officials fear an unaddressed breach could lead to a sudden rush of water out of the other two stacks, which are more toxic and acidic. If that were to happen, Compton says, “we’d expect to see major impacts to Bishop Harbor, which is one of the prettiest places in the state of Florida”.
Should either of those stacks fail, he adds, the harbor “would be totally annihilated. It is really not too strong a term to use.” The nutrient-laden water could fuel algae blooms, endangering already vulnerable marine life.
At the end of Wednesday, with pumps still gushing out millions of gallons of wastewater, state senators passed an amendment that would allocate $3m – what appears to be the first tranche of funds in a $200m plan to close and clean up the site – to dispose of the wastewater.
Compton says the plan entails building a well injection in order to get rid of the wastewater – an idea facing opposition from surrounding residents, national organizations, and anybody who has an interest in agriculture in the area. “When you put wastewater into the ground, you really have no idea where it goes next. There’s no 100% foolproof way to monitor which way the aquifer flows and where it ultimately ends up.”
The Piney Point site is shaping up to be a costly environmental catastrophe, and Compton thinks the fertilizer industry should be accountable for disposing of its waste, rather than passing the cost on to taxpayers. But even with talks of the fertilizer plant’s cleanup and closure on the horizon, he’s not optimistic the threat of pollution from its wastewater will soon disappear.
“There’s a local saying that if you go to a Manatee county commission meeting 50 years from now, there’s two things that’ll be on the agenda: sewage spills and Piney Point,” Compton adds. “This isn’t going away anytime soon.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.