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Andy Borowitz | Elise Stefanik Replaces Ivanka as Trump's Daughter
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "Consolidating her position as America's foremost Trump loyalist, Representative Elise Stefanik stunned political insiders on Wednesday by replacing Ivanka Trump as one of the former President's daughters."
READ MORE
Demonstrators stand outside the Georgia Capitol in opposition to House Bill 531 in Atlanta on March 8. HB 531 restricts early voting hours, removes drop boxes and requires the use of a government ID when voting by mail. (photo: Megan Varner/Getty)
Congress Prepares for Battle Over Massive Voting Rights Bill
Sahil Kapur and Jane C. Timm, NBC News
Excerpt: "Congress is preparing for a heated battle over the way Americans vote, with the two parties set to clash over proposed federal election standards and Republican-led state restrictions."
Progressives say the survival of the republic depends on the legislation. Republicans call it a partisan power grab.
At issue is the fate of the House-passed For the People Act that would remake American elections from start to finish. It would force states to offer at least 15 days of early voting, universal access to mail-in voting and same-day registration for federal races. It'd make Election Day a national holiday, too.
The divisions between the two parties are sharp. President Joe Biden and Democrats say federal intervention is needed to stop Republicans from reviving racist Jim Crow-style restrictions that make it harder for minorities to vote. Republicans say Democrats are executing a power grab to remove necessary protections on the voting process and usurp authority from states.
Where they agree: This is about the future of democracy.
The fight is sure to touch raw nerves in a country that saw its Capitol attacked just months ago by a mob of former President Donald Trump's supporters, who were egged on by groundless claims that rampant fraud had stolen the election from their candidate.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has promised a Senate vote on the House bill after the committee process, along with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that empowers the federal government to review discriminatory voting laws.
"This Senate will once again be the forum where civil rights is debated and historic action is taken to secure them for all Americans," Schumer said in a letter to senators. "Each of these bills will receive full consideration in committee and eventually on the Senate floor."
The bill, known as H.R.1 and S.1, got a hearing Wednesday in the Senate Rules Committee that featured rare sparring on the panel between Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaling the commitment on each side to their irreconcilable positions.
McConnell criticized the bill as "a grab-bag of changes" that go beyond voting rights. He highlighted a provision to restructure the Federal Election Commission, calling it a ploy to make it more partisan. He called the campaign finance restrictions an assault on free speech and a gift to "cancel culture."
The S.1 bill is highly unlikely to win the minimum 10 Republicans needed to break a filibuster. And Democrats have yet to unify their 50-member caucus to secure a majority.
The fight
Some progressives believe they can make the voting rights bills a rallying cry to gut the 60-vote threshold, which Biden expressed openness to supporting on Thursday.
Democratic senators and progressives say now is the time to fight.
“The choice is the republic or the filibuster — there is no third option,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, a national network of progressive activists. “We are at an inflection point in American history. Down one path is a Trump-inspired white plutocracy, and down the other is a representative democracy.”
Levin said he will consider it a "personal, organizational and movement-wide failure of historic, catastrophic proportions" if the voting rights bills, along with making Washington, D.C., a state, don't pass this year.
Senate Republicans have made clear they intend to push back hard.
“If they want a fight, they're going to get a fight,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in an interview, calling the legislation an “incredibly radical power grab” by Democrats.
“It's an existential threat, I think, to our election system and to our democracy,” said Cornyn, a close ally of McConnell, also an ardent opponent of the bill. “Basically what they want to do is install a permanent partisan advantage and run all the elections out of Washington, D.C., and eliminate ballot integrity measures like voter ID.”
Speaking with "Fox News Sunday," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden is "absolutely open" to working with Republicans on voting rights legislation.
"If Republicans want to come to the table [and] have a discussion about what kind of package they can support to make voting more easy, easier and more accessible, the president is absolutely open to having that discussion," she said.
'Key problems'
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 3 Democrat, said the For the People Act is "essential to making sure our democracy stays a democracy" and added she'll consider exemptions to the filibuster to pass it.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., raised the issue of voting rights and the filibuster hurdle with Biden during a private Democratic meeting recently, and the president "indicated he was open to a discussion about filibuster reform," said an aide familiar with the conversation.
The tension was evident Thursday when Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a restrictive package of new election laws in the newly competitive battleground state that helped elect Biden and hand Democrats control of the Senate.
Kemp used the moment to slam the For the People Act as an “unconstitutional power grab.”
“The contrast could not be clearer,” he said, touting a bill that would add additional ID requirements to mail-in ballots, give the state legislature more power over county-run elections and even make it illegal to bring food to voters standing in line to cast a ballot.
Biden called the Georgia bill "sick" and "un-American,” promising to work to “figure out how to pass the legislation passed by the House.”
"I am convinced that we’ll be able to stop this because it is the most pernicious thing. This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle," Biden told reporters.
Georgia is not alone.
There are more than 250 restrictive election laws under consideration in 43 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, and experts believe the vast majority of the restrictions would be thwarted by the House's bill.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is a notable holdout on the For the People Act.
He endorsed provisions in the bill to expand ballot access, including the guarantee of 15 days of early voting. But he said there are "legitimate concerns" about whether some jurisdictions, particularly rural areas, can implement parts of the law. He also called for a bipartisan bill to mitigate America's "declining trust in the government and each other."
"That trust will continue to diminish unless we, as members of Congress, transcend partisanship to strengthen our democracy by protecting voting rights, implementing common sense election security reforms and making our campaign finance system more transparent," Manchin said.
Lobbying efforts
The ad wars are just beginning.
End Citizens United and the affiliated Let America Vote Action Fund have joined the National Democratic Redistricting Committee to launch a $30 million advocacy campaign. Two-thirds will go toward television and digital ads. The other $10 million will be used to try to generate public support by hiring 50 staffers across Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Maine, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Those groups are leading a coalition that includes the labor union Communications Workers of America, anti-gun-violence group Brady and government watchdog group Common Cause. Since mid-February, the coalition says it's sent more than 2.3 million texts, phoned more than 120,000 voters and called Senate offices more than 38,000 times.
The Working Families Party told NBC News it launched a six-figure digital ad buy this week to attack 10 Republicans who voted against the bill in the House — many of them pointedly in states with moderate Democratic senators.
“Look, if we can have Operation Warp Speed for vaccines, we can move at a brisk pace for the health of the body politic, for the health of our democracy,” said Norman Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador and chair of nonpartisan Voter Protection Program, a group advocating for the bill.
Conservative groups are firing back with lobbying muscle of their own.
At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, last month, conservative speakers celebrated fraud claims and railed against the bill, urging attendees to call their lawmakers about it. Trump called it a "monster" that "must be stopped" in his keynote.
The American Conservative Union Foundation has launched the Center to Protect Elections, which is mobilizing voters against the bill.
"We need bipartisan, common-sense solutions to strengthen our voting system, but H.R.1 is not the answer," Alfredo Ortiz, head of the conservative Job Creators Network, said in a statement. "This is a time of choosing for ‘centrist’ Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema."
Attorney Chance Lynch speaks during a press conference outside the Pasqoutank County Public Safety building in Elizabeth City, Tuesday, May 11, 2021, after family of Andrew Brown Jr. viewed about 20 minutes of video from the police shooting death of Brown in April. (photo: Travis Long/News Observer)
Footage Shows Andrew Brown Was 'Ambushed' by Deputies Firing Repeatedly, Lawyer Says
Josh Shaffer, The News and Observer
Shaffer writes: "Andrew Brown Jr. was 'ambushed' in his Elizabeth City driveway with his hands on the wheel of his car, dying in a hail of bullets without threatening the sheriff's deputies who fired them, his attorney said Tuesday after viewing additional body camera footage."
Attorney Chance Lynch watched 20 minutes of footage — from five body cameras and a dashboard camera — with Brown family members. He disputed the district attorney’s prior account of Brown striking deputies with his vehicle. Instead, Brown backed up and turned away from them as deputies “opened up,” Lynch said.
“There were so many shots that we had difficulty in counting the number,” Lynch said.
Brown’s family and lawyers arrived at the Pasquotank County sheriff’s office Tuesday to view the longer but still heavily redacted video of his death. Until Tuesday, family members had only seen about 20 seconds of body camera footage.
The footage from body cameras included audio, and Lynch said deputies were yelling so loud Brown could not have understood them.
“You could see both hands,” Lynch said of Brown. “We could clearly see both hands.”
‘What’s in the dark is going to come to the light’
Lynch emphasized that Brown’s car did not move until the first shot was fired.
Attorney Bakari Sellers said he has asked that District Attorney Andrew Womble recuse himself, but his requests have gone unanswered. He said Womble has an “incestuous” relationship with sheriff’s deputies, working with them every day with his office inside theirs.
In calling for more video footage to be released, Lynch, a former assistant district attorney said he has never seen a situation in which a potential defendant gets to choose what evidence is shown.
Shouts and chants of “Say his name” came during the emotional 30-minute press conference. Some attending cried hearing the news.
Brown’s son, Khalil Ferebee, said he learned only a few more details Tuesday than he saw in the 20-second clip that some family members saw last month.
“He did nothing wrong at all,” Ferebee said. “What’s in the dark is going to come to the light.”
‘What are they hiding?’
Lynch said he believes the deputies’ footage shows their criminal liability.
None of the officers were standing near the car when it backed up, he said, and one of them appeared to reach out to it.
At the second shot, he said, Brown accelerated and lost control of the car when it crossed the yard.
Lynch and Brown’s sons who watched Tuesday said they counted six bullet holes in the passenger side of the vehicle and at least six in the back.
“At no point did we see Mr. Brown pose a threat to the law enforcement officers that were there,” Lynch said.
Asked about Womble’s description of Brown “making contact” with deputies with the car, Sellers called it inaccurate.
“What I have trouble explaining today is why you have killers in Pasquotank County that’s not in jail today,” attorney Harry Daniels said.
The Rev. William Barber II, speaking outside the sheriff’s office on Tuesday, said the family should be able to see unredacted footage.
“This is cruel and unusual punishment,” Barber said. “What are they hiding? What do they have to hide? To kill a young man, driving away, with a back shot and then to hide the tape.”
Protesters vow to be peaceful but loud
After the attorneys spoke, about 50 protesters marched down busy Ehringhaus Street in Elizabeth City, their route almost nightly since Brown’s death. They vowed to remain peaceful but loud.
Children passing in their parents’ car poked their heads through the sun roof and joined the chant, “Take that badge off!”
Brown, 42, died of a gunshot wound to the head on April 21 as deputies arrived at his home to serve search and arrest warrants based on a yearlong drug investigation.
Neighbors reported seeing deputies open fire on Brown’s car as he fled, shooting out the back window, and a family commissioned autopsy found a “kill shot” to the back of his head, according to attorney Ben Crump.
The family has since sought access to all deputies’ body-cam footage and dashboard camera video.
A Superior Court judge denied media requests for the release, and the Pasquotank sheriff’s office also sought permission to show video publicly. State law permits this only with a judge’s ruling, which the county commissioners have sought to change.
Some bipartisan support for wider access rules is also rising in the General Assembly.
Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten placed seven officers on administrative leave after Brown was shot and killed.
The incident happened less than 24 hours after Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, was convicted of the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man.
Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. (photo: Getty)
How Palm Beach Is Preparing for a Possible Trump Indictment
Tara Palmeri, Ryan Lizza, Rachael Bade and Eugene Daniels, POLITICO
Excerpt: "Law enforcement officials in Palm Beach County, Fla., have actively prepared for the possibility that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance could indict former President Donald Trump while he's at Mar-a-Lago, according to two high-ranking county officials involved in planning sessions."
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Texas has seen more state prisoners die with the new coronavirus than any other state prison system in America. (photo: Jennifer Whitney/The Texas Tribune)
"Mass Supervision": How Restrictive Probation and Parole Systems Land People Behind Bars for Decades
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "When we talk about probation and parole, that is the streamline to mass incarceration."
n Pennsylvania, more than half of incarcerated people are jailed due to probation violations. We speak with formerly incarcerated activist LaTonya Myers, who says probation and parole, rather than being a stepping stone to freedom, act as a “streamline to mass incarceration,” with punitive rules landing people back behind bars for minor violations. Myers helps people arrested navigate the bail review system as support coordinator with the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund and is featured in the new PBS documentary series “Philly D.A.” about Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s attempts to reform the criminal justice system. “We just want a part of the American dream,” says Myers. “But it hasn’t been American dream for us. It’s American nightmare.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
The fourth episode of Philly D.A. focuses on probation and parole. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner refers to it as, quote, “mass supervision, the evil twin of mass incarceration.” The episode tells the story of LaTonya Myers, a formerly incarcerated person who becomes an activist who helps people who are arrested with navigating the bail review system. In this clip, Myers addresses a Pennsylvania state Senate hearing on probation reform.
LATONYA MYERS: Within the last 18 months, I was able to start school, start community college — I apologize, I’m a little nervous. But I was able to find my voice and become an advocate, to be a part of the solution and not the problem.
I think when it comes to true probation reform, we have to start with the reform of the culture in the probation department. I mean, the culture in the probation department is not one that’s encouraging. It’s not empowerment. When I got on probation, all I was told was I have to come in here weekly and report. I was looked at as high risk because of an algorithm that, no matter what I accomplished, ’til 2027, it would never change.
That is a meaningless, endless cycle, a cycle of trauma, a cycle of pain, and some of the effects can be irreversible. We just want to give a true, fair second chance, not a second-class citizen, but a fair second chance, to prove ourselves and to build our communities up. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from Philly D.A. of activist LaTonya Myers testifying about probation reform. This is another clip featuring LaTonya.
LATONYA MYERS: I’m getting ready to go to the probation office. Impression is everything, because all they know is what they’re reading on that paper. She don’t know who I am for real. So, got to make a good impression. She got my life in her hands. I make the wrong impression, she might make the wrong decision or the wrong assumption, you know? A relationship, you can walk away. You can’t walk away from this.
It was a couple days after my 12th birthday. I woke up that morning, and my mom’s boyfriend had took her bed and dragged it all the way down the steps. He was out of control. I thought that I could protect my mom. And I picked up like an air freshener can, and I hit him with it. He went to a payphone, called the police. When I seen the cops, I thought that they would understand what was going on. I was charged with aggravated assault in the first degree.
That was the first time I ever was in jail. For three days, I didn’t know where my mom was at. I didn’t know if any of my family knew where I was at. I was just there. And it was so hard. Finally, my lawyer pulled me to the side, and she says, “Your grandmom’s here. You take this probation, you go home with your grandmother today, or go back to jail for another 10 days and fight this case.” I just wanted to go home with my grandma.
I’m 29, and that first felony from when I was 12 years old is what get brings up, time and time again, my only felony on my record, that I shouldn’t even have.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s LaTonya Myers in Philly D.A., the PBS series that’s airing now. LaTonya joins us now. She is support coordinator for the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, also the founder of the organization Above All Odds. Still with us, Nicole Salazar, co-creator of the PBS series Philly D.A.
LaTonya, welcome to Democracy Now! The figures are absolutely astounding. You have Philadelphia as the second most supervised state in the country after Georgia. New York has 12,000 people under probation and parole. It’s six times larger than Philadelphia. Philadelphia has 40,000 people under probation and parole. Your story tells the story of what so many people are going through. If you can take us from those clips to why you became an activist on this issue, why you think it is a critical civil rights issue in this country right now?
LATONYA MYERS: First, I just want to say thank you all so much for allowing me to be on this segment today and talk about these issues that impact us so greatly.
When we talk about probation and parole, that is the streamline to mass incarceration. And the reason I was inspired in being an advocate, I found my purpose through my pain. You know, I was arrested. I didn’t know what advocate or activist was until I started to voice — raise the voices of our concerns and learned that it was a community of organizers, it was a community of people that understood that and explained to me that this was systematically happening on purpose. So I just wanted to lift up those voices of those that wasn’t being heard, to let people know that we’re closest to the problem, so we’re closest to the solution. We don’t — no longer will allow anyone to tell us that, you know, we can’t and won’t change, if given the opportunity, nor conform to the negative stigmas that’s attached to us as returning citizens. So, this work has became my life and my purpose, to help others.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, LaTonya, a lot of people are not aware how the parole and probation system works in terms of mass incarceration. In Pennsylvania, more than half of the people admitted into the prison system are as a result of violations of probation or parole? What’s been done to attempt to reform that system?
LATONYA MYERS: So, there have been many attempts, you know, statewide attempts, bipartisan efforts. I know that the Defenders Association of Philadelphia has filed 1,700 early termination petitions, 85 of them — 85% of them which has been individuals have been granted early termination. But this is on a case-by-case basis. You know, we need something more robust, more statewide, on caps. In Philadelphia, a judge can sentence you until you cease to live on this Earth to be on probation and parole, 20- and 30-plus-year sentences for probation and parole. And I think that needs to stop.
So, I am happy to hear the efforts that the Defenders Association is doing, but particularly the efforts that grassroot organizations and impacted people are doing to let individuals know that we want to be a part of this conversation. We need to be a part of this change. We need to allow people to know that our narrative, of what it is. We just want to be citizens. We want to be heard. We want to be uplifted. We want to be supported and endorsed like everyone else, in order for us to be successful, that we need people’s support and understanding that we just want a part of the American dream. But it hasn’t been American dream for us; it’s American nightmare.
AMY GOODMAN: Nicole Salazar, in the film, Larry Krasner says one in 14 African American Philadelphians are under probation or parole. And the significance of what not only the DA’s Office is doing, but trying to pressure judges?
NICOLE SALAZAR: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think probation and parole is one of those areas where you really see how the DA has a lot of discretion and a lot of power, but also a lot of limits on what they can do.
So, one of the main drivers of excessive supervision in Pennsylvania is actually state law, sentencing laws, that are formulated in such a way that you have basically a minimum and a maximum. So, you can be sentenced to a five-to-10-year sentence in Pennsylvania, whereas in another state you might be able to get a flat four-year sentence, four years in prison, and maybe some probation on top of that. But in Pennsylvania, because it’s always in this formulation of X to 2X, you automatically — you know, if you’re released after your minimum of 10 years, you’re going to then serve that same amount on parole, so that would be 10 years in prison, 10 years on parole, then possibly plus an additional probation sentence on top of that. So that’s sort of baked into Pennsylvania law, and so that’s something that, you know, on a local county level in Philadelphia, you cannot change.
But what they do have discretion over is more of the probation tail that is assigned. And they’ve made efforts — what you see in the film is basically a two-pronged effort of what they’re trying to do. One is for cases going forward, that they’re trying to limit overall supervision, so parole plus probation, to three years for felony cases and an average of 18 for misdemeanor cases. And so, they have a tremendous amount of discretion there, because, you know, nationally, 95% of all criminal cases are resolved through negotiated pleas. And so, a negotiated plea basically means the prosecutor and the defense attorney come together with a proposed sentence that they then present to the judge. And for the most part, judges will accept those pleas, because if they didn’t, if every case had to go to trial — and you hear this in the film, and people say it all the time — you know, the system would literally collapse if all of those cases, thousands of cases coming through the system every year, that are being handled by 60-odd judges in Philadelphia — if they all went to trial, the system would collapse. And so, there’s a lot of pressure on the judges to accept those negotiated pleas. So, that’s kind of where that discretionary power really comes into play.
But the other part of what they’re trying to do — and this is where you see a lot of pushback from the judges in the film — is that they would like to, on a large scale, revisit so many of those 40,000 people who are on probation or parole in Philadelphia who are doing well, and, like LaTonya was saying, have them terminated early from that probation. And here’s where you really sort of need cooperation between the judges and the DA’s office and the public defender’s office, because what they were hoping to do was sort of look on sort of like a broad data scale and see: How many people do we have on probation? How well are they doing? Are there people that, you know, just with the signing of a pen — where we could sign the forms and get a lot of people off probation at once?
But what you see, basically, is that the judiciary does not want to move that quickly. They still are, many of them, very married to sort of this idea that being on probation is actually pro-public safety, even though there’s a lot of compelling evidence that actually shows why actually being on probation can be criminogenic just because of all of the hurdles that are put before somebody to be on probation and still be able to maintain other aspects of their life, their job, their family. And so, you see in the film that the judiciary is not really ready to take this step. They’re not able to do it on a broad scale. You know, there was hope at some point that even LaTonya’s case might possibly be included in sort of these mass petitions they were trying to do. But that doesn’t go forward. And there are, I think, nine judges, at the time of the end of that episode, who do say, “OK, we’re going to do some mass early terminations just in terms of our individual lists.” And that process is still ongoing, but it wasn’t as robust a process as they were hoping for.
AMY GOODMAN: LaTonya, if you can talk about your own organization, [Above] All Odds, and what you’re hoping to see right now, and if a progressive DA, like Larry Krasner, who’s up for reelection, really does make a difference in Philadelphia? What does it look like to you, working with so many people on probation and parole who are captured by the system?
LATONYA MYERS: Well, I just want to say thank you for that question, and I think when Nicole brought up a good point. All through this episode, you hear the judges saying, “We don’t want them to break the system. They’re going to break the system.” Well, the system needs to be broken and abolished in order to restore and heal our community, because it’s breaking us apart. It’s tearing our families apart.
And, you know, I just hope that our community continues to be civically engaged. I hope that people look at this film and be inspired to know that they can, too, advocate. They can go to their local representatives. They can advocate for themselves in a courtroom. We have to know that we have the power to uplift the voices that make the impact that we need. You know, we have to depend and understand that we are the force that makes the power. We can’t put it in one person’s hand. But what we can do is make sure that our voices are heard and our narratives are correct. And that is that we want to bring hope and healing back into our community, not any harm.
So, I just want to say thank you to all the people that was able to support me in the community, and I want others to support other people. And I wanted my organization to be able to support people to have those resources, to have that community impact. When people go in those courtrooms alone, they don’t have to do it alone. You know, we have a community of people that can correct this narrative that’s trying to get depicted on us to keep us entangled, further entangled, into the system. So, I just thank, you know, the film crew and everyone for allowing me to have this opportunity to inspire. I want individuals that’s held on probation and parole to stay strong, to understand that you can get off, that we are fighting, that you are not your worst mistake. If I did it, you can do it.
Any support that I had, I want people to be able to galvanize the support around individuals that’s currently going through it. We have people that have, you know, lost their life, lost their job, lost family members, while we’re slowly waiting for the system to turn, change and be more compassionate and uplifting. They spent $344 million on incarcerated individuals in Pennsylvania for technical violations, that they didn’t even catch a case. If we take a percentage of that and reinvest it into addressing the issues as to why individuals can’t make it to their probation appointment on time — why is it hard for them to find housing, when it’s discriminated — when they’re discriminated on housing applications for employment? If they can’t — if they’re boxed out of opportunities to climb in careers, if they’re boxed out of opportunities to live in better neighborhoods, or even boxed out of opportunities to get Pell Grants to go back to school, how can they really think, you know, we’re going to be able, if we’re not really able to be amongst our communities with the same resources, with the same opportunities as others?
Right now in Philadelphia, the commissioner is requesting $750 million for the police budget, $750 million that right now she’s testifying and asking our City Council to allot this for the budget. There’s not a percentage — how much is it going to take for us as a community to reinvest into the problem and not locking us up? You know? And that’s what we just ask for as a community, for people to allow us to be in these spaces and talk about the resources that we need and that’s most helpful.
And I want individuals to be uplifted, specifically individuals that’s people of color and the LGBT community. I want them to know that we exist, you know, that we are fighting and that you are heard and that you’re not alone and that you can do the same thing that I did with the community’s support. And let’s keep focused on civic engagement and individuals finding their voices and sitting at the table of power and speaking truth to that power.
AMY GOODMAN: LaTonya Myers, I want to thank you so much for being with us, formerly incarcerated person who became an activist to support others going through the system, support coordinator with the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, founder of the organization Above All Odds. And thanks to Nicole Salazar, co-creator of the PBS series Philly D.A.
When we come back, we look at how DA Larry Krasner faces reelection next week in Philadelphia’s Democratic primary. Stay with us.
British American television anchor Mehdi Hasan and Egyptian American journalist Ayman Mohyeldin. (photo: The Daily Beast)
Mehdi Hasan and Ayman Mohyeldin Are Doing Something Radical for Cable TV: Presenting the Palestinian Side
Lloyd Grove and Maxwell Tani, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "British American television anchor Mehdi Hasan, who hosts an eponymous Sunday night program on MSNBC and a weeknight show on NBC's streaming Peacock Network, has spent the past several days challenging the U.S.-media status quo by doing something practically unheard of on an American television outlet."
Much of the American television news coverage of the ongoing violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip has followed a familiar, decades-old format—with two major exceptions.
ritish American television anchor Mehdi Hasan, who hosts an eponymous Sunday night program on MSNBC and a weeknight show on NBC’s streaming Peacock Network, has spent the past several days challenging the U.S.-media status quo by doing something practically unheard of on an American television outlet.
So has Egyptian American journalist Ayman Mohyeldin, the anchor of a weekday afternoon show on MSNBC.
Covering the increasingly lethal exchange of rockets and bombs between Hamas militants in Gaza and the Israeli Defense Force—which as of Wednesday night had killed an estimated 65 Palestinians, including 16 children, and seven Jewish Israelis, including a 5-year-old child—Hasan and Mohyeldin are devoting substantial airtime to the Palestinian point of view.
Their portrayal of the conflict—which has included sympathetic interviews with Gaza residents and contentious, occasionally acrimonious debates with Israeli officials—has prompted cheers among some within the network who have been pleased to see MSNBC elevate voices seemingly skeptical of Israeli military force. But it has also rankled some American supporters of the Israeli government, while prompting some eye-rolling among a few of their NBC colleagues.
On Wednesday, for instance, conservative journalist Seth Mandel, executive editor of the right-leaning Washington Examiner newspaper, accused Mohyeldin in a tweet of “denying Israel’s existence” because of the anchor’s aggressive grilling of embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev.
An MSNBC spokesperson said Hasan and Mohyeldin were unavailable for comment.
The Oxford-educated Hasan, who has been steeped in the conflicts of the Middle East as a sharp-edged opinion journalist for the past two decades, and the hard-charging Mohyeldin, who spent two years living in Gaza as a correspondent for Al Jazeera English, have been attempting to provide the sort of context that is uncommon among their broadcast peers.
“Just a reminder the Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn’t begin when western media decide to start covering it,” Mohydelin tweeted this past Monday as hundreds of rockets from Gaza began to fly into Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and other Israeli cities. The violence was sparked last Friday as Israeli authorities moved to evict Palestinians from their homes to accommodate Jewish settlers in the predominantly Arab Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and IDF soldiers lobbed tear gas into East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, where fasting worshippers were celebrating Ramadan.
“Don’t forget the pretext and the context to understanding what is happening tonight,” Mohyeldin continued, adding the hashtags #gaza #Jerusalem #SheikhJarrah #israel #Palestine.
On Wednesday he posted an emotional plea on Instagram for Gazan civilians being bombed out of their houses by Israeli airstrikes.
Like Mohyeldin, Hasan—whose much smaller Peacock Network streaming audience is not publicly measured—has stopped short of criticizing colleagues directly. But in a monologue on Monday, he complained that framing the escalating violence as a “clash”—the description numerous anchors and correspondents have used over the past week—is woefully mischaracterizing the situation.
“The fundamental unavoidable reality at the heart of this conflict is there is an asymmetry of power here,” he said. “One side is the occupier. The other side is occupied. And media coverage, political commentary, international interventions that don’t reflect this fact... are all, I’m sorry to say, part of the problem.”
Indeed, much of the American television news coverage of the ongoing violence in the Middle East has followed a familiar, decades-old format regarding the Jewish state and the Palestinians: Anchors on cable and the nightly news networks seldom stray from placing blame on “both sides,” while the on-the-ground correspondents have leaned heavily on information about the escalating violence shared by Israel’s military and other government authorities.
Mohyeldin has dedicated large chunks of his show over the past week to the outburst of violence, placing heavy emphasis on the Palestinian experience while other cable news programs have flicked at the conflict briefly. On Tuesday, his interview with Palestinian activist Mohammed el-Kurd, along with a second one on CNN, went viral as el-Kurd described how his family was being forced out of their longtime home by Israeli authorities, whom he accused of “ethnic cleansing.”
On Wednesday, Mohyeldin featured Gaza-based political science professor Mukhemir Abu Sada, who described the dire conditions on the ground. Mohyeldin, along with NBC’s newly named (but still London-based) Jerusalem correspondent, Raf Sanchez, gave airtime to critics of Big Tech censorship of some Palestinian posts on Twitter and Instagram (restrictions both companies claimed were accidental).
On Wednesday night’s installment of his Peacock Network show, meanwhile, the left-leaning Hasan presented a nine minute-long segment—an eternity on American television—featuring an interview with a jittery Palestinian cultural official in Gaza City, as several loud bangs punctuated the conversation.
“We are living under heavy airstrikes in the last 48 hours,” Fadi Abu Shammala, the executive director of the General Union of Cultural Centers in Gaza, told Hasan as a thunderous clap interrupted their exchange. “So you are hearing now the bombing. They are bombing now during this interview. This is the sound that we are used to hear[ing].”
Just before Shammala came on camera, Hasan had criticized American television writ large (and arguably his own employer) for focusing on Gaza only when Hamas starts launching missiles. He noted that the Gaza strip—despite an Israeli withdrawal in 2005—is still blockaded at its borders and on its coast, with Israel severely restricting Gaza’s fishing rights. Thus it’s a disaster economically, with more than half the population living in poverty. “Back in 2010, former British Conservative prime minister David Cameron even described Gaza as an open prison camp,” Hasan said.
While most cable news guests largely abstain from placing blame on particular actors over the past several days, the airwaves have had their fair share of vocal supporters of the Israeli military action in Gaza. Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, used his interview on Jake Tapper’s CNN show to call out the Palestinian militants, while on Brian Williams’ MSNBC show, former CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash praised Israel’s military response to Hamas’ attacks, expressing frustration with Hamas rocket attacks that disrupted Israelis’ dinner plans, while failing to note similar disruptions caused by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
“No country in the world could survive air raid sirens all night and people running into bomb shelters during the dinner hour,” he said. “This is not what a civilized society should have to put up with, and I think it’s right tonight for the United States to stand with its ally Israel.”
James Zogby, longtime president of the Washington, D.C.-based Arab-American Institute, offered praise for Hasan and Mohyeldin, singling them out as bright spots in a predictable yet, in Zogby’s view, misleading portrayal of events.
“What you have here are two very qualified, very skillful, really smart people who are incidentally of Arab or, in Mehdi’s case, Muslim background, and they’re just doing the job they’re supposed to do,” Zogby told The Daily Beast.
But he doubted that their unorthodox approach will have much influence on American television news writ large, despite the fact that recent public opinion polling, such as a Gallup Poll released in March, suggest that Americans, especially younger Americans, are slightly less likely to support an aggressive Israel while warming to the plight of Palestinians.
“It is not a question of policy so much as it is the fact that, like politicians, TV journalists are uninformed,” Zogby said. “I can write a book and a half about TV journalists getting it wrong on the Middle East and never being held accountable for it. It’s not so much of bias as it is that media people who know [domestic] politics, and are very keen about challenging candidates on issues, just don’t know enough to do that. So they end up reporting what the company line is.”
A menacing face chainsawed into the stump of a poached Douglas fir not far from the Mount Prevost Main Line logging road on Vancouver Island, Canada. (photo: Larry Pynn/The Guardian UK)
Chainsaw Massacre: Tree Poaching Hits Canada Amid Lumber Shortage
Leyland Cecco, Guardian UK
Cecco writes: "As lumber prices across the continent soar - prompting a flurry of memes and conspiracy theories - ecosystems full of valuable old growth trees have increasingly become a target for poachers."
Officials on Vancouver Island say at least 100 trees have been illegally chopped down, leaving one stump with a face carved into it
wo tree stumps signaled to Larry Pynn that something was wrong.
Jutting from a mossy forest floor in western Canada, the fresh stumps were the final remnants of two western red cedars that had been chopped down by chainsaw. Nearby, a set of deep tire tracks ran for nearly a kilometer in the mud before terminating at the main road.
“I immediately suspected that this is the work of poachers,” said Pynn, a journalist who lives nearby. “These are clearly valuable trees and they were likely cut because of that.”
Since January, local officials on central Vancouver Island say at least 100 trees have been illegally chopped down. As lumber prices across the continent soar – prompting a flurry of memes and conspiracy theories – ecosystems full of valuable old growth trees have increasingly become a target for poachers.
The section of forest Pynn found the stumps in is part of a municipally owned 5,000 hectare swath of woods known locally as Six Mountains. The area, popular with hikers and mountain bikers, is also home to the endangered coastal Douglas fir ecosystem, which is on the verge of vanishing after centuries of logging and urban development.
Days after discovering the two stumps, Pynn spotted more trees in another section of the municipal forest reserve that had suffered a similar fate – and a menacing face carved into one of the stumps.
The first trees he spotted in the forest were probably worth close to C$1,000 ($824) each for the raw wood. But the current fine for removing wood from the forest stands at C$200.
“It’s the same fine if you litter – there’s no deterrence,” said Pynn.
Poaching isn’t new to the area, but the scope and frequency have worsened in recent months, says Shaun Mason, a forester with the municipality.
While Douglas fir are often taken as firewood, he speculates poachers could be targeting cedar because of high lumber prices, which have nearly tripled over the last year – but has no firm evidence.
Timber marking systems are widely used to track the provenance of wood – and as a rule, mills won’t accept timber that hasn’t been marked. If the wood is milled down into boards, tracing its origins is nearly impossible.
“It’d be illegal, but if someone had a sawmill set up on their property and someone said, ‘Hey, I could get some cedar, would you mill it for me? You know, obviously, it’s not on the up and up, but it definitely could take place,” said Mason.
The poachers have used a number of tricks to hide their work, including placing moss over fresh stumps and covering tracks of their vehicles into the forest. Pynn suspects the culprits are operating under the cover of darkness.
The brazen thefts have left residents outraged and some have suggested banding together to patrol the area at night – a move Pynn says is probably too risky.
“I’m not sure it’s a great idea for people to be out in these areas at three in the morning,” he says.
In response to the thefts, the municipality has put up new signage, is patrolling the area daily and is looking at how to increase fines and installing video surveillance. Police have also been made aware of the issue. In recent weeks, the municipality has received dozens of tips from residents.
While the spike in poaching has centred on the small municipal reserve, Mason says the issue is probably far more widespread on Vancouver Island.
“It’s happening all over the place. We just happen to have un-gated, unfettered access, not that far from a main road or highway,” he said. “So we tend to be the easiest targets.”
For Jens Wieting of British Columbia’s Sierra Club, the spate of felled trees speaks to a broader crisis within the province. He points out that on Vancouver Island, the scale of legal old-growth logging still far outstrips recent poaching. If governments want to shift behaviour, far steeper fines are needed, he says.
“Maybe, with a change in perspective, people who might be tempted to make an extra buck by poaching trees won’t do it because they get a sense that it would be wrong – and that the consequences could be bigger and more serious.”
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