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Stephen Miller Is Waging War on Biden for Discriminating Against White People
Greg Walters, VICE
Walters writes: "Stephen Miller is waging legal war against President Joe Biden in the name of fighting alleged racial discrimination against white people. And he's doing it while still reportedly drawing a sizable government salary."
And, yes, you’re still paying his salary.
tephen Miller is waging legal war against President Joe Biden in the name of fighting alleged racial discrimination against white people. And he’s doing it while still reportedly drawing a sizable government salary.
The onetime White House adviser notorious for driving Former President Trump’s hardline anti-immigration agenda is behind two legal challenges against the Biden administration alleging anti-discrimination against white people in multibillion-dollar pandemic economic recovery programs.
He’s already won an early courtroom victory in Texas, and legal experts say his team has a shot at further success in the federal courts, including possibly the Supreme Court, which has moved to the right after Trump appointed three conservative justices.
“From a legal point of view, these are not totally crackpot lawsuits,” said Steven Schwinn, an expert on Constitutional law at The University of Illinois Chicago John Marshall Law School. “I think the plaintiffs here do have a serious argument, especially if the cases were to go to the Supreme Court.”
The lawsuits represent a new front in Miller’s long running and controversial push for nativist policies. As an advisor in Trump’s White House, Miller earned notoriety as a chief architect of Trump’s infamous Muslim travel ban, efforts to reduce the number of incoming refugees, and forced family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Miller isn’t a lawyer. But the lawsuits have been joined by the group he assembled called America First Legal, which Miller has said aims to hem in the Biden administration wherever it sees an opportunity. Miller told The Wall Street Journal he was inspired by the legal resistance to the Trump administration’s policies thrown up by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the Trump administration 413 times.
Miller’s lawsuits have argued that COVID relief packages passed as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and designed to prioritize women and historically marginalized groups, unfairly disenfranchise white people.
One legal challenge takes aim at roughly $5 billion set aside for debt relief, grants and training for Black farmers and other “socially disadvantaged” groups.
Advocates for Black farmers have called the program a much-needed step aimed at countering over a century of racist treatment by the government and private lenders, which discriminated against Black farmers, effectively forcing many off their land.
But Miller’s AFL filed a lawsuit on behalf of Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller, in his capacity as a private citizen and farmer, in late April. The suit argues that excluding white farmers from the funds aimed at “socially disadvantaged” groups represents a racial exclusion that is “patently unconstitutional.”
If the court doesn't agree, ”then it should at the very least declare that the phrase 'socially disadvantaged group' must be construed, as a matter of statutory interpretation, to include ethnic groups of all types that have been subjected to racial and ethnic prejudice, including (but not limited to) Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, and eastern Europeans."
Another legal assault takes aim at the $29 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which prioritizes applications from women, veterans and “socially and economically disadvantaged” applicants during its first three weeks of implementation, from May 3 to May 24.
Filed on behalf of Philip Greer, the white male owner of Greer’s Ranch Café, the lawsuit succeeded in winning a temporary restraining order from Judge Reed O’Connor, an appointee of former GOP President George W. Bush in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas.
“The evidence submitted by plaintiffs indicates that the entire $28.6 billion in the Restaurant Revitalization Fund may be depleted before plaintiffs’ application can be considered for relief under the program,” O’Connor wrote. The judge ordered the SBA to consider Greer’s application.
Greer’s attorneys filed a notice of dismissal for their own case on Wednesday for reasons that were not immediately clear. An email to AFL seeking comment for this story wasn’t returned. Outside lawyers, however, speculated that the move might be a temporary, technical, procedural maneuver ahead of the court-ordered hearing scheduled for Monday, May 24, and that the suit could be refiled. The SBA declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Margaret Russell, an expert on Constitutional law and civil rights at California’s Santa Clara University, said the restaurant suit looks like an attempt to get higher courts to overturn previous rulings concerning protections for historically disadvantaged groups.
“I think there’s an effort to erase race and gender from equal protection rulings in the Supreme Court,” Russell said. “This is a planned effort to introduce lawsuits that, if they do make the circuit court and Supreme Court, try to overturn earlier precedent.”
Miller’s legal war on the administration is all the more remarkable in that he’s reportedly still drawing a government paycheck.
While his tenure in the White House ended in January, he’s set to continue receiving a taxpayer-funded salary through July, when the formal presidential transition period ends, Business Insider reported earlier this month, citing documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Miller remained on Trump's post-presidential transition staff, earning an annualized salary of $160,000, Business Insider reported.
A demonstration was held for Ronald Greene, who died in police custody in Louisiana in 2019, at the March on Washington in 2020. (photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
"Brutal and Gratuitous": Family of Ronald Greene Demands Justice After Video Shows Deadly Traffic Stop
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "New bodycam footage is raising more questions about the deadly arrest of a Black man, Ronald Greene, in Louisiana during a 2019 traffic stop in the city of Monroe."
ew bodycam footage is raising more questions about the deadly arrest of a Black man, Ronald Greene, in Louisiana during a 2019 traffic stop in the city of Monroe. Family members said police originally told them Greene died in a car accident, but the Associated Press obtained video of Louisiana state troopers electrocuting, beating and dragging Greene. Greene’s family has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit, and Greene’s death is also being federally investigated. Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney representing the family of Ronald Greene, says the family had to fight for a year and a half before being allowed to view police video of Greene’s death, which revealed “the full extent of just how brutal and gratuitous” the violence was. “We’re looking for criminal charges to move forward against these officers at the state level and at the federal level.”
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. We’re going to turn now to what’s taking place — a warning to our audience: This story contains disturbing footage of police violence.
New bodycam footage is raising more questions about the deadly arrest of a Black man in Louisiana two years ago. It was May 10th, 2019. The Associated Press first obtained video of Louisiana state troopers electrocuting, beating and dragging Ronald Greene during a traffic stop after a high-speed chase in the city of Monroe. Family members said police originally told them Greene died in a car accident. They made no mention of the officers using force.
Well, last week, the Associated Press released portions of a 46-minute video that showed two troopers shocking Greene with a stun gun through his car window, then dragging him out of his car on the side of a dark rural road as Greene tells them, quote, “Officer, I am scared. I’m your brother. I’m scared.” One of the officers puts Greene in a chokehold and punches him in the face, while another can be heard calling him a “stupid MFer” — using the full words. Greene was shocked again, tased again, while lying on the ground in handcuffs and ordered to stay on his stomach as he desperately tried to roll over.
Again, a warning to our viewers: This clip from the video is disturbing.
KORY YORK: Lay on your belly! Lay on your belly!
RONALD GREENE: Yes, sir! OK, OK, sir.
KORY YORK: You better lay on your [bleep] belly like I told you to!
RONALD GREENE: OK! Yes, sir!
KORY YORK: Do you understand?
RONALD GREENE: Yes, sir! [screaming]
KORY YORK: Yeah!
AMY GOODMAN: After the officers beat Ronald Greene, the AP reports they left him unattended, face down, for more than nine minutes as officers refused to render aid, instead washing blood off their own hands and faces. Greene arrived dead at the local hospital with two Taser prongs in his back. Again, police initially told Greene’s family he died in a car crash. A recently released coroner’s report says his head injuries and the way he was restrained were factors in his death.
Ronald Greene was 49 years old and worked as a barber. He had recently gone into remission after battling cancer for two years and was reportedly on his way to meet his wife in Florida when he was stopped by the Louisiana State Police troopers. Greene’s family has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit, and his death is now being investigated by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana and the FBI.
On Friday, Louisiana State Police released more bodycam videos from the arrest of Ronald Greene. The Louisiana state troopers in the deadly arrest were all part of Troop F, all of them white. Trooper Kory York, who is seen on video dragging Greene by the shackles on his ankles, even though Greene is not resisting, got a 50-hour suspension and has returned to active duty. Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, who’s heard in the video saying he, quote, “beat the ever-living f— out of” Greene, later died in a car crash, hours after he learned he would be fired for his actions. Trooper Dakota DeMoss has since been arrested in connection with a separate allegation of excessive force while handcuffing a motorist. Lawyers for Greene’s family have also called for the arrest of officer Floyd McElroy.
This is the mother of Ronald Greene, Mona Hardin, speaking to CNN.
MONA HARDIN: The state of Louisiana has no credibility. They’re an organized crime ring that’s gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years. You can see this time and time again. The murder of my son, you can just see it, from the very beginning to end. It implicates those who are on there, and then some. And it’s just like Mr. Merritt said. You know, they have no credibility. They continue to try to shy away from, and shine the light on other issues that has nothing to do with my son’s murder. I’m disgusted. … I just haven’t grieved. And I haven’t even screamed. I haven’t cried. And they have — there’s no empathy for how they do another human being, and they let the families continue to suffer.
AMY GOODMAN: These latest revelations about the case of Ronald Greene come just days before the first anniversary of the killing of George Floyd, May 25th, 2020, when police officer Derek Chauvin murdered Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds during an arrest in Minneapolis. George Floyd’s family and activists are calling for today to be a day of action, a day to urge federal lawmakers to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The push is part of a week-long series of events organized to honor the life and legacy of George Floyd.
For more, we’re joined by Lee Merritt, civil rights attorney representing the family of Ronald Greene, also part of the legal team for the family of George Floyd, as well as for the families of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Lee. I want to start with the latest revelations in the Ronald Greene case. Again, he was killed two years ago, but it was just this week that first AP released video footage and then the Louisiana State Police released footage. But talk about this case, what the family understood at the time, this cancer survivor, and what they know now.
LEE MERRITT: Well, the family was told initially that Ron had died in a car accident. It took just a mild bit of investigation to discover that was true. The family demanded to see his body. And his body was covered in not only dirt and blood, but bruises from his head and from the injuries that he had sustained during the beating, with no real narrative to explain it. The medical examiner was not given the proper narrative about what happened on the side of the road, and that video was obscured.
It took about a year and a half before the family was finally allowed to see the video this past September. And then we realized, you know, the full extent of just how brutal and gratuitous the violence that was directed at him was. But by that time, the Louisiana State Police apparatus had already meted out its punishment, which was that 50-hour suspension for one officer, Kory York, and one termination for Chris Hollingsworth, who went on to die in a single car accident the same day he was terminated.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, when people saw this AP footage — I mean, obviously, the parallels are horrific. Talk about Troop F, the calling for its dismantling, this group that stopped him. I mean, they stopped him for an unspecified traffic violation. He sped away. They went after him. And then, when they got him, he kept saying, “I am afraid.”
LEE MERRITT: I appreciate that you took your time to lay out the names of the officers. One officer that you left out — it was in a very important clip for us — was the video, bodycam footage of Lieutenant John Cleary, because he’s the supervisor who came to the scene after these officers from Troop F, specifically Kory York, Chris Hollingsworth and Dakota DeMoss, had already set upon Ronald. And when Lieutenant Cleary arrived to the scene, these men were still actively engaged in torturing a then-handcuffed and hogtied Ronald Greene. They were still apparently spraying him with pepper spray, mocking him in the process. You could hear them saying things like “Yeah, it hurts, doesn’t it?” And Lieutenant Cleary approved their actions. He ratified their actions on behalf of the Louisiana State Police.
It’s so important that that supervisor came to the scene, observed everything that was going on, and gave everyone an “attaboy,” because it reveals that this was in fact not only the culture, but the de facto policy for the Louisiana State Police. And it’s an open policy that we all know. When we’re honest with ourselves, we know that when a Black man runs from police in places like Louisiana, you can expect a gratuitous beatdown. And although it’s not the official policy, that supervisor’s response to it taking place, and then the cover-up that took place for the next two years, but for the AP leak, is evidence that this is accepted culture in the state of Louisiana.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re calling for the arrest of Kory York, John Cleary, Dakota DeMoss?
LEE MERRITT: We’re calling for those arrests, and we think that there should be both state and federal charges. The Union Parish district attorney, who is responsible for reviewing the case, he said he immediately observed that this was a criminal matter that should be referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. And he was right. These were clear civil rights violations, constitutional violations for Ronald Greene, and not only by the officers on the scene, but by the cover-up, the supervisors who facilitated the behavior. But there still remains Louisiana state codes, Louisiana Constitution and protections for citizens, like Ronald Greene, and there must be accountability at a state level, as well — not either/or, but both. And so we’re looking for criminal charges to move forward against these officers at the state level and at the federal level.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your conversation with John Belton, the district attorney for the 3rd Judicial District in Louisiana.
LEE MERRITT: So, Mr. Belton was — he had the concern that by presenting this case to a Union Parish grand jury at the time the Trump administration was still in office, that it would be unlikely that a very conservative sort of jury pool would return an indictment against these officers. More importantly, these officers were involved in other cases in his jurisdiction as witnesses, as investigators, as reporters. So there’s a conflict in the Union Parish district — or, I should say, yeah, Union Parish, for these officers. So, it would be appropriate, we believe, for Mr. Belton to recuse himself — that’s what we ask that he do — and that a special prosecutor be allowed to pursue state charges.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, the history of the Louisiana governor?
LEE MERRITT: Yeah. So, the Louisiana governor, it’s important to know that although he’s a Democratic governor and, you know, has made —
AMY GOODMAN: This is John Bel Edwards.
LEE MERRITT: Yeah, John Bel Edwards, who’s paid lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement, for the students at places like Louisiana State University. His father is a sheriff. His grandfather was a sheriff. He signed in the Blue Lives Matter legislation that made it a hate crime to target police officers in Louisiana. And his actions have shown that he’s willing to go to bat for law enforcement but has failed to take concrete steps to really remedy very real issues of violence, mass incarceration and systemic racism within the Louisiana State Police Department.
So, again, he’s moved towards the Black community with lip service, especially over the last year, but in terms of tangible, concrete results, we’ve seen very little. And we’re looking for specific actions in this case, including him instructing the attorney general to vigorously prosecute these men for the local state charges, and participating fully with a federal review of his state police — not only this troop, but the culture within the Louisiana State Troopers Office generally.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how racism has shaped law enforcement, particularly in the South? You have talked about the origin of the slave patrols.
LEE MERRITT: I’m sorry. I missed the question.
AMY GOODMAN: Oh, the issue of how racism has shaped law —
LEE MERRITT: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: — and influenced law enforcement.
LEE MERRITT: Sure. And I don’t think I’ve seen a more graphic example of the continuation of the slave culture than this scene. It invokes the images of slave catchers hunting down a runaway slave. And it’s really from that spring that this culture drew from. You had to punish runaway slaves in places like Louisiana, if they ran, to send an example to other enslaved persons that they’re not allowed to run, or they would receive this kind of violence. That culture, that training is still alive and well today, in a way that I think a lot of Americans will find very off-putting, but it hasn’t gone anywhere in the hundreds of years that this culture has set in.
AMY GOODMAN: That whole issue of, in fact, Ronald Greene being hogtied. We see, in this video that was released by AP, one of those police officers — you can tell us his name — who puts his knee on his back — and again, the parallels with George Floyd. In this case, though, he was just left to die for nine minutes while they washed his blood off of them.
LEE MERRITT: And it’s so important to note that even after this video has come out, the Louisiana State Police has described the incident as “awful but lawful.” They don’t have any shame in what we’re watching there. They’re ashamed that we all have to watch it, but they don’t believe that the use of force was gratuitous. They believe that because of Ronald Greene’s — according to their own statements, because of Ronald Greene’s failure to immediately pull his car over, that the subsequent violent acts, the repeated tasing, the torture, despite him being handcuffed and fully compliant, was appropriate. And that is the kind of thing that still goes on in the Louisiana State Troopers Office.
So it’s important that as we start to push towards remedy, that first everyone involved in this attack and the cover-up is held criminally accountable, but there must be a pattern and practice review of that entire policing apparatus. If the culture and the de facto policies and procedures are constitutionally violative, then we must take affirmative steps — actual actions — to ensure the safety of Black and Brown Louisianans.
AMY GOODMAN: Again, this Troop F, of its 66 Troop F members, just six are Black. The area they patrol is 40% African American?
LEE MERRITT: Yeah, that’s correct. And this troop is notorious for brutality in the region. The officers who were involved in this violence went on, after the death of Ronald Greene, to participate in the brutalization, and even death, of other members of the Louisiana community. You mentioned in your opening that one of the officers, Dakota DeMoss, is facing criminal charges, but not as it relates to the murder of Ronald Greene or even the aggravated assault of Ronald Greene, but for a completely separate incident. That is also true of Chris Hollingsworth. Before he passed away, it was discovered that he had other incidents of violence attached to him that the leadership structure in Louisiana helped to cover up for.
I think in the coming days and weeks we’re going to find a litany of violence and cover-up and corruption within the Louisiana State Police Department. And it’s important that we don’t turn our heads away. But the same way that the community focused on accountability for George Floyd, we need to hone in and focus on accountability for Ronald Greene and a restructuring of the legal — law enforcement system in Louisiana.
Rep. Jody Hice is challenging Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
They Tried to Overturn the 2020 Election. Now They Want to Run the Next One.
Zach Montellaro, POLITICO
Montellaro writes: "Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden's election win are launching campaigns to become their states' top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, 'ends justify the means' candidates taking big roles in running the vote."
Trump supporters who back his claim that the 2020 vote was rigged are running to become the top election officials in key states.
epublicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, “ends justify the means” candidates taking big roles in running the vote.
The candidates include Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the top proponents of the conspiracy-tinged vote audit in Arizona’s largest county; Nevada’s Jim Marchant, who sued to have his 5-point congressional loss last year overturned; and Michigan’s Kristina Karamo, who made dozens of appearances in conservative media to claim fraud in the election.
Now, they are running for secretary of state in key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — and who wins the White House in 2024. Their candidacies come with former President Donald Trump still fixated on spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, insisting he won and lying about widespread and systemic fraud. Each of their states has swung between the two parties over the last decade, though it is too early to tell how competitive their elections will be.
The campaigns set up the possibility that politicians who have taken steps to undermine faith in the American democratic system could soon be the ones running it.
“Someone who is running for an election administration position, whose focus is not the rule of law but instead ‘the ends justifies the means,’ that’s very dangerous in a democracy,” said Bill Gates, the Republican vice chair of the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County, Ariz. “This is someone who is trying to tear at the foundations of democracy.”
The secretary of state campaigns will also be tests of how deeply rooted Trump’s lies about the election are in the Republican base. Sixty-four percent of Republican-leaning voters in a recent CNN poll said they did not believe Biden won enough votes legitimately to win the presidency.
Hice and Marchant are running to replace sitting Republican secretaries of state, while Finchem and Karamo are seeking the GOP nomination in states with Democratic incumbents. None of the four campaigns responded to interview requests.
Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state in Kentucky, said there are “two ways to look” at the risk posed by the campaigns: “There’s a symbolic risk, and then there’s … functional risk.”
Grayson noted that, depending on the state, secretaries of state often play ministerial roles in election certification and vote counting, with more direct oversight of the process falling to local county and city election clerks. That means that functional risk of electing pro-Trump election truthers as secretaries of state could be lower than many perceive.
But the symbolic risk could be much higher. “Any secretary of state who is a chief elections official is going to have a megaphone and a media platform during the election,” Grayson said. “A lot of the power is the perception of power, or that megaphone.”
As candidates and officials, the quartet of Republicans have used their megaphones to promote claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Finchem, the Arizona state representative, has been a major proponent of the audit of the results in Maricopa County. The Republican-run state Senate is running the process in the state’s largest county, which Biden narrowly won. The audit has been a lightning rod, attracting heavy criticism from GOP officials in Maricopa County who say the auditors are doing shoddy, conspiracy-fueled work — but nevertheless building up hope among Trump supporters who believe that he won the election.
Finchem appeared on the Twitch stream of Redpill78 — which The New York Times reported promotes the QAnon conspiracy theory — earlier this month, and said he has talked to Trump about the 2020 election. The mainstream media “keep[s] using this term ‘baseless,’” Finchem said on the Redpill show. “I hate to break the news to you, but just in case you news people haven’t been paying attention, there’s a lot of evidence that’s already out there. … We’ve got the proof, we’ve got the receipts,” he continued, calling the press a “propaganda machine.”
His appearance on the show was first reported by the Arizona Mirror, which also previously reported that Finchem had marched to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Finchem has also frequently promoted claims of fraud on social media. “They ‘won’ by cheating, now they want to make cheating legal. WTH this Stalinization of America has to come to an end,” he wrote on Parler, the social media site popular on the right. Former Vice President Mike Pence “now cares about election integrity? This reveals that he must acknowledge that there was fraud,” he wrote on Gab, another site that caters to the far-right.
Last week, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors — which includes Gates and is controlled 4-1 by Republicans — lashed out at the Arizona state Senate over the audit, calling it a sham that has “rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists.” The supervisors were flanked at a press conference by various county officials, including Sheriff Paul Penzone, a Democrat, and Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who was recently elected the county’s chief elections officer.
Unprompted, Richer closed the press conference by tearing into Finchem, mocking the false conspiracy theories that voting machinery from the company Dominion Voting Systems was used to change election results.
“Mark Finchem is running for secretary of state. Process that,” he said. “If the election was completely fraudulent, as he says, why would you run for secretary of state? What, do you think Dominion is going to rig it in your favor this time?”
“Why are you running if you do not believe in these elections?” he closed. “I would suggest that his actions speak a lot louder than his words.”
In a subsequent interview with POLITICO, Richer analogized it to “revealed preference,” an economics theory: “All these people, their true preferences and their true beliefs regarding the election system are more readily determined by their actions, which is to continue to run,” he said, suggesting that if people really thought it was rigged, they wouldn’t bother to run.
When asked whether he was considering a run for secretary of state in 2022, Richer quickly and flatly gave a one-word answer: “No.”
The most prominent candidate in the group is likely Hice, who is challenging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican whom Trump has repeatedly attacked for defending the 2020 election as free and fair.
In a recent letter circulated to conservatives in Georgia and obtained by The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Hice wrote that the election was full of “systemic voting irregularities and fraud,” and that he was running “to stop Democrats before they rig and ruin our democracy forever.”
He is running his campaign with Trump’s endorsement: “Jody will stop the Fraud and get honesty into our Elections!” Trump proclaimed the day Hice launched his campaign. Raffensperger is facing significant anger within his own party, but he recently reaffirmed that he would run again.
“The danger is you’re lying to either yourself or to millions of people when you try to run for these large, statewide elected offices,” Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, said of the false electoral fraud claims.
Duncan, a vocal critic of Trump and other Republicans who push the election fraud myth, recently announced he would not seek reelection and instead focus on his “GOP 2.0” initiative. He said a fixation on it will only hurt Republicans in the long term.
“There is a vacuum of leadership, and folks wanting to put themselves into even higher leadership positions, continuing to carry on with the lies and misinformation, continues to create an even bigger vacuum around our party,” he said.
Duncan, who was in Washington D.C. last week to take meetings about GOP 2.0 (he declined to say with whom) said he believed the party would come around: “They’re just going to get tired of losing. They’re going to get tired of running people out there that just are unelectable.”
Then-Vice President Joe Biden poses for a photo with Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, former Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina and former Salvadoran president Salvador Sánchez Cerén. (photo: In These Times)
The Real Root Cause of Central American Migration
Amelia Frank-Vitale and Lauren Heidbrink, In These Times
Excerpt: "If the Biden administration is committed to aiding the region, it must first acknowledge the destructive role of U.S. interventionism."
exico, Honduras and Guatemala are deploying 18,500 troops to stem migration from Central America to the United States as part of a deal the Biden administration announced April 12. In the words of the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, the agreement will “make it more difficult to make the journey.” It comes on the heels of the United States pledging $4 billion in development aid to address the “root causes” of this migration.
This type of approach, which ties aid to securitization, has long enjoyed bipartisan support. It has also long failed to achieve the desired aim of reducing migration by reducing poverty. If President Joe Biden hopes to avoid replicating these failures, he must acknowledge that U.S. policy itself is one of those “root causes” of migration — and then adopt a fundamentally new approach to development aid.
As researchers of Central American migration, we have seen firsthand how ineffective “development” is in addressing the needs of local communities. Frequently, aid comes with ideological strings that hinder, rather than support, local efforts to reduce poverty, corruption and insecurity. In Guatemala and Honduras, where we conduct our research, this aid is often siphoned off to subcontractors and organizations with little on-the-ground knowledge, or used to bolster military training and equipment. Not infrequently, that money finds its way directly into the hands of the same predatory elites decried by the United States as responsible for the region’s instability.
Truly addressing the root causes of migration will be a decades-long endeavor, but it must begin with the United States owning up to its complicity in creating the very conditions it now seeks to remedy — and its sordid history of undermining democratically elected governments to advance U.S. business interests. Most recently in Honduras, for example, the United States backed a 2009 coup and then, in 2017, validated the clearly fraudulent re-election “victory” of the enormously unpopular Juan Orlando Hernández. By supporting Hernández, the United States continues to undermine Honduran efforts to enact local change. The ongoing situation continues to motivate many Hondurans to seek safety and opportunity outside of their country.
Taking responsibility for the violence it has inflicted on the region also means the United States must re-examine unequal trade agreements that privilege U.S. financial interests over the well-being of Central Americans.
The Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement — made by the United States, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic — has created a boom of extractive megaprojects that includes multinational mining, hydroelectric plants and African palm oil production. Rather than foster economic development, these projects actually displace communities, contaminate agricultural land and waterways, and exacerbate social inequality. This kind of exploitation speaks to larger trends in development: for every $1 the Global South receives in so-called aid from the Global North, it loses $14 through unequal economic exchanges.
Meanwhile, government corruption is so widespread in Central America that it’s now functionally part of the operating system. Biden says he aims to bypass corrupt governments and channel aid directly to nongovernmental and community organizations, but he is hardly the first president to pursue such a strategy. Instead of mitigating the worst conditions, outside actors like the United States exacerbate them, co-opting grassroots associations and making them less responsive to local needs through a process known as “NGO-ization.”
Even if these nongovernmental organizations were more attuned to their communities, placing government functions into private hands— while simultaneously supporting, funding and training security forces under the guise of “development” — does little to address the urgency of long-term structural reform.
The Biden administration cannot simply wish away the damage inflicted by decades of U.S. interventionist policy. If it is interested in pursuing holistic solutions, the U.S. has an obligation to listen to local communities and to pursue local strategies. In Honduras, for example, this would mean investing heavily in public education and healthcare rather than privatizing these sectors, as at least one powerful USAID-funded NGO has recommended.
The United States has a debt to pay to Central America; any plan to improve the material conditions of those endeavoring to emigrate must start with repayment for what has been extracted. Development aid essentially operates under the logic of “teach a man to fish,” to (in this case) “learn” from the United States how to be less corrupt, less volatile and more democratic. But Central Americans do not need to be “taught to fish.” They need the United States and the predatory elites it has enabled to stop plundering and poisoning the waterways.
New proposals for aid must reflect a new commitment to local priorities and shared transparency — and provide a mechanism to hold the United States accountable. Corruption can only be addressed by strengthening public institutions, not undercutting them. As climate change and the fallout of the pandemic upend the region, the Biden administration must ask itself whether it’s willing to break with the legacy of U.S. imperialism. Any other approach will ensure future generations continue to seek refuge elsewhere.
The Biden administration in January limited federal offices to 25 percent capacity, a policy expected to change next month. (photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Biden Administration Moves Toward Making the Pandemic Work-From-Home Experiment Permanent for Many Federal Workers
Lisa Rein, The Washington Post
Rein writes: "As the Biden administration contemplates how to return the massive federal workforce to the office, government officials are moving to make a pandemic experiment permanent by allowing more employees than ever to work from home - a sweeping cultural change that would have been unthinkable a year ago."
The shift across the government, whose details are still being finalized, comes after the risk-averse federal bureaucracy had fallen behind private companies when it came to embracing telework — a posture driven by a perception that employees would slack off unless they were tethered to their office cubicles. That position hardened during the Trump administration, which dialed back work-from-home programs that had slowly expanded during the Obama era.
But the coronavirus crisis — and a new president eager to rebuild the trust of federal workers who had been attacked by former president Donald Trump as “the swamp” — has convinced the country’s largest employer that in many departments, employees can serve the public just as well from home, officials said.
Notice of the change is expected in June, when the administration is set to release long-awaited guidance to agencies about when and how many federal employees can return to the office — likely in hybrid workplaces that combine in-person and at-home options, according to officials and memos obtained by The Washington Post. The bulletin is expected to address remote work policies in the immediate and long term.
“We anticipate this guidance will leave room for decision-making at departments and agencies, to provide maximum flexibility for defining work requirements to meet mission and workforce needs,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because plans have not yet been finalized.
Some agencies have already made it clear they intend to give both current staff and new hires the option to continue to work away from the office.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced at his first town hall with employees in March that the department will allow telework as much as four days a week, expanded use of virtual and remote duty stations and more flexible schedules in its post-pandemic workplace. The department had been the first under Trump to slash what had been a robust telework program established during President Barack Obama’s second term.
“This will allow us to recruit and retain the absolute best talent, which will make USDA an employer of choice,” spokesman Matt Herrick said. Requests for continued telework are the “number one question employees ask,” he said.
How much other federal employees will be able to work from home will be up to individual agencies and is likely to vary widely depending on employee needs, manager preferences and the department’s mission, officials said. Many jobs — such as screening air travelers, building sorties for bombers and serving veterans in hospitals — do not lend themselves to remote work.
Still, a broader endorsement of a work-from-home culture by the Biden administration would have far-reaching implications for the 2.1 million federal employees around the country, as well as the vast federal contracting workforce, which could follow suit.
Like private-sector employees, federal workers had to quickly adjust to makeshift home offices during the public health crisis. Agencies scrambled to get equipment to staff members who had never worked outside the office — including, for example, customer service agents at the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration, and employees who process benefit claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The share of the workforce teleworking every day rose from 3 percent before the pandemic to 59 percent at its peak last year, according to a recently released survey of federal workers.
The move proved highly popular. Employees gave the flexibility high marks in the workforce survey, and many managers concluded that productivity didn’t suffer.
“I’m old school, and I’m still prejudiced against it, but I’ve evolved,” said Ann Stefanek, who supervises a team of 14 public affairs officers at the Pentagon for the Air Force. “I have some really good people who have busted their butts in the pandemic. If they tell me they need to work from home one day a week, I should listen to that.”
Facing competition for new talent from private companies that are collapsing bricks-and-mortar operations in favor of virtual offices, the Biden administration is encouraging agencies to imagine their post-pandemic workplaces and who will occupy them.
Managers are surveying their employees for their preferences. Among the possibilities: Opening job vacancies to applicants living anywhere in the country, who might work and even manage staffs thousands of miles away from their home offices in Washington.
“Collectively, the federal government has an opportunity for a ‘leap frog’ moment to shape the future of work,” Susan Gough, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, the largest federal agency, said in an email.
Before the pandemic, about 11 percent of civilian and active-duty Pentagon employees did some of their jobs from home, a share that rose to 75 percent at one point last year, Gough said.
“The cultural barriers to telework have essentially collapsed [with the pandemic],” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D), whose Northern Virginia district includes tens of thousands of federal employees and contractors. “The younger generation demands it.”
Still, a permanent shift away from the office or to a long-distance location poses some singular challenges for the federal government, experts on the federal workforce say.
The federal real estate footprint, reduced under the Obama and Trump administrations to save money, could continue to shrink. Agencies will also have to wrestle with how to track performance, whether to continue paying premiums for those living in expensive cities and how to be fair to those working in jobs that do not qualify for remote work.
Higher-paid employees in policy, regulatory, research and other roles have traditionally enjoyed more telework privileges than lower-paid ones whose government jobs often require face-to-face interaction. And with the government offering a far more diverse set of occupations than most private companies, a push for a permanent shift could raise sensitive issues.
“It’s going to give some employees a sense that there are haves and have-nots,” said Jeff Neal, a former personnel chief at the Department of Homeland Security and founder of the blog ChiefHRO.com.
“Someone commuting to an aircraft plant will think, ‘You get to sit home in your bunny slippers working at your computer, while I’m stuck in traffic on my commute,’ ” Neal said.
Dave Cann, director of organizing for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, said there is an openness to negotiating conditions such as equipment and supplies, the number of telework days allowed and notice of home visits from managers.
“These are not the things that would be obstacles,” he said. “The union is a willing partner.”
The long-term changes are being contemplated even as federal employees wait to hear what immediately awaits them in the workplace.
The Biden administration in January established a maximum telework policy for federal offices — with the exception of jobs that cannot be done remotely — with no more than 25 percent capacity. The White House does not plan to bring back a full complement of staff until July.
The cautious approach has led to sharp criticism from members of Congress, who say the public still faces indefensible delays to face-to-face service at the IRS, the Social Security Administration and other agencies.
“It is time to begin transitioning to the workplace,” Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on government operations, wrote last week to the government’s acting personnel chief.
Pointing to rising vaccination rates, declining covid-19 cases and newly optional mask policies in federal buildings, Hice wrote that “prolonging arrangements taken in an exigent situation is not a permanent solution.” He cited other “serious concerns” about the push for fully remote workplaces that don’t have daily direct contact with the public.
The pressure to see federal employees back in the office underscores the limitations of the rapid shift home forced by the pandemic.
Some federal workers who now work remotely cannot fully perform their duties, some lawmakers have complained — saying their constituents still cannot get through to a live IRS representative on the phone because a limited number of employees are reporting to the office. The volume of calls has exploded and the phone staff is also opening huge piles of mail from taxpayers that accumulated when the agency was closed.
“My offices are open so they can serve our constituents,” said Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), “but my constituents are calling the IRS and they can’t get anyone on the phone in the name of the pandemic.” He has asked the Biden administration to explain why federal offices in states with low transmission rates remain closed.
“Our state agencies are open,” Waltz said. “Our schools are open. We’re asking federal agencies, ‘Serve the folks you’re supposed to serve.’ ”
The White House said that while federal offices are limited to 25 percent occupancy, agencies can be granted exceptions for mission-critical activities.
Mark Hinkle, a Social Security Administration spokesman, said in an email that the agency is “carefully and incrementally increasing the number of employees working in our local field offices” to help whittle down workloads and is beginning to increase in-office appointments.
There’s also bipartisan concern about thin in-person staffing levels at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, an arm of the National Archives that provides veterans with vital paper records they need to obtain benefits, access to health care and burials at veterans cemeteries.
Pandemic staff absences have created a backlog of close to half a million service requests that must be processed by hand.
“This staff should be pushed to the front of the line [for vaccinations] and sent back to work,” said Rep. Mike Bost (Ill.), the top Republican on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, who is part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers pressing the National Archives for answers. “What is the hold up?”
John Valceanu, a National Archives spokesman, said the records center is following federal guidelines on in-person work and has already recalled more than half its staff to the office.
The center is processing more than 10,000 requests a week from the public and another 7,000 from VA and other agencies within two or three work days, he said.
Despite the challenges, a broad rethinking of the federal workplace to include remote and virtual options brings big positives, economists and personnel experts say, by appealing to younger workers in particular and helping employers expand their talent pool.
“Telework leads to better hiring, because there are positions that are tied to geography unnecessarily,” said Chad Hooper, national president of the Professional Managers Association, which represents thousands of IRS managers and advises the agency on operations and policy.
“There are support and operations roles that don’t impact the public,” Hooper said. “We want the best candidates to fill those roles.”
Other proponents say a more distributed workforce outside Washington could satisfy skeptical conservatives, many of whom supported the move of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management and two economic research offices at the Agriculture Department out of Washington in the Trump administration.
“It means your job no longer has to be in D.C.,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, an online site for hiring freelancers and a leading voice on remote work. “Spreading people out will make federal employees accessible to everyone.”
Sasha Johnson. (photo: TTIP/Facebook)
Top British Black Lives Matter Organizer Shot in Head After Alleged Death Threats
Jamie Ross, The Daily Beast
Ross writes: "Sasha Johnson, 27, sustained her injuries at a London house party in the early hours of Sunday morning after allegedly receiving a number of threats to her life."
ne of Britain’s most well-known Black Lives Matter activists is fighting for her life in a hospital after being shot in the head at a London house party.
Sasha Johnson, 27, became a familiar face as an organizer and speaker at the anti-racism demonstrations that spread from the United States to Britain last summer. The political group she co-founded, the Taking the Initiative Party, said in a statement that Johnson was shot early Sunday morning, and said the attack came after “numerous death threats” against her—although police say they have no evidence of a credible threat.
“Sasha has always been actively fighting for Black people and the injustices that surround the Black community, as well as being both a member of BLM and a member of Taking the Initiative Party’s Executive Leadership Committee,” said the TTIP statement. “Sasha is also a mother of three and a strong, powerful voice for our people and our community.”
In a Sunday night statement, London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed that a 27-year-old woman was in a “critical condition” at a hospital after a shooting at a south London house party, but added: “At this stage, there is nothing to suggest that she was the subject of a targeted attack or that she had received any credible threats against her prior to this incident.”
Imarn Atyon, one of Johnson’s friends and a fellow BLM activist, appeared to support that theory, telling BBC News that that her friend had been caught up in random gun violence, and saying that she believed the incident was “more related to rival gangs as opposed to her activism.”
Ayton went on to say: “There was a rival gang that may have heard about someone being in that party that they didn’t feel quite comfortable with or trusted and so they resorted to driving past and shooting into the garden, and one of those shots obviously hit Sasha Johnson. But I don’t believe she was the intended victim.” Ayton also said that Johnson has undergone successful surgery since the Sunday morning shooting.
Black Lives Matter U.K. paid tribute to Johnson in a statement on Sunday, writing: “We are saddened to hear that Sasha Johnson is fighting for her life after a critical wound and following numerous death threats. While Sasha wasn't part of our organization, she impressively founded a new Black led political party and was dedicated to resist anti-Black racism. Any attempt to intimidate or silence her, is an attack on all of us.”
TTIP said a vigil will be held for Johnson outside Kings College hospital in London later on Monday, writing in an announcement: “Let’s show our support and stand against senseless violence!”
As of Monday morning, no arrests have been made.
Sand mining. (photo: Guillermo Legaria/AFP/Getty Images)
How Sand Mining Could Destabilize the World
Dharna Noor, Gizmodo
Noor writes: "The world consumes gargantuan quantities of sand for all kinds of things, which along with related materials like gravel and crushed rock, accounts for 85% of all mineral extraction on Earth. A new study details the massive environmental toll it takes-and how we can fix it."
he world consumes gargantuan quantities of sand for all kinds of things, which along with related materials like gravel and crushed rock, accounts for 85% of all mineral extraction on Earth. A new study details the massive environmental toll it takes—and how we can fix it.
The new study, published in One Earth on Friday, looks at the world’s extensive sand supply chain. The authors, who come from hard and social science backgrounds, employed a buzzy, holistic framework called telecoupling, which allowed them to look at the interaction between socioeconomic and environmental factors.
“We take a broad look at the physical and socio-environmental dimensions of sand supply networks—linking extraction, logistics, distribution, economics, policy—to gain an understanding of the stresses on both nature and people,” research associate Aurora Torres at Michigan State University’s fisheries and wildlife school and lead author of the study, wrote in an email.
She noted the world uses “around 50 billion tons of sand, gravel, and crushed rock to produce concrete for our houses and to build roads and infrastructure.” But sand is also a source of other essential products, including refining quartz sand to make silica that goes into everything from windows to vaccine vials to microprocessors that power our laptops and solar panels. Some kinds of sand are also used in fracking to hold open cracks deep underground to pull out fossil fuels.
Since sand supply is poorly regulated and managed, there’s not much data on all that activity, so we don’t have exact numbers on how much of it we use. But what is clear is that demand for sand for all these uses is increasing rapidly, which is creating huge problems. In fact, over the next 30 years, eight cities the size of New York will be built each year, the study says.
“Sand and gravel are the world’s most extracted solid materials by mass and their annual consumption is predicted to double by 2060,” said Torres. “This situation is putting pressure on threatened ecosystems, triggering social conflicts, and fueling concerns over sand shortages.”
Increasing extraction, the authors write, will make these issues all the more severe and lead them to compound. For instance, the study says, sand can lead to riverbed collapse and erosion in coastal communities. That means affected populations in places like India and Vietnam may be pushed to migrate inland toward cities, which could in turn lead to increased demand for sand for development. This very process played out in 2016 after Cyclone Winston hit Fiji, according to the study.
Environmental stress from sand mining can also increase the risk of conflict and economic peril. Sand mining has triggered land grabs in places like Singapore. And throughout Southeast Asia, sand smuggling is a dangerous black market. Dangerous sand mining gangs have depleted enough sand to cause 24 Indonesian islands to disappear as a result of erosion. Again, this can all force people to flee to cities, increasing sand demand.
Decreasing the global use of sand is also an important climate mitigation strategy, the study says, because sand is most often used to create carbon-intensive products like cement.
“Urban population growth and associated infrastructure development may claim the entire carbon budget of a 2 degree Celsius [3.6 degree Fahrenheit] warming limit by mid-century,” the authors write. They go on to note that if developing countries’ building stock reaches levels of developed ones, producing raw materials alone would eat up anywhere from 35% to 60% of the carbon budget.
To mitigate all these issues, the authors say, we should more carefully monitor and manage our sand resources. One key strategy is to use alternatives when possible. For instance, sand can be artificially created by crushing rock, which can be far more sustainable. The authors note that this fake sand is already a major export commodity for some countries, especially Norway, and a major source of sand for construction in the U.S. and China.
Recycling could also ward off our sand crises. For instance, when new buildings replace demolished ones, governments could require construction companies to process and reuse the rubble instead of laying new concrete. More sustainable alternatives to sand-based construction materials, including hempcrete and sustainably sourced timber, could also play a role. All this will require some serious regulation—it won’t happen if it’s left up to market forces, because concrete is currently quite cheap to produce despite its environmental toll.
This should all be coupled with attempts to lessen demand overall. For instance, developers should be encouraged to construct buildings that will last a long time and reduce the unnecessary overuse of sand.
“If we continue increasing our consumption of sand, that will not only cause significant impacts from mining in terms of destroying ecosystems, compromising the supply of ecosystem services, and triggering social unrest,” said Torres. The world could also simply run out of sand to use. There’s an incomprehensible amount of it on the planet—some 7.5 quintillion grains—and yet we’re still facing a shortage. We can’t allow ourselves to fall into a sand trap.
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