12 June 21
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12 June 21
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Reader Supported News
The Democratic Senators Hiding Behind Joe Manchin
Sam Brodey, The Daily Beast
Brodey writes: "It was March 5, right before the Senate's doomed vote to raise the minimum wage to $15, and, as usual, Sen. Joe Manchin was the center of attention."
Manchin has long been a “heat shield” for fellow moderates on the thorniest topics, including the filibuster. He still is, but cracks are beginning to show.
t was March 5, right before the Senate’s doomed vote to raise the minimum wage to $15, and, as usual, Sen. Joe Manchin was the center of attention.
But there was no need for reporters to swarm the West Virginia moderate. On that day, he was far from the only Democrat who’d give the thumbs-down to a progressive priority. Seven other Democratic senators would vote the same way—and draw far less recognition or criticism.
That tally surprised observers outside the U.S. Capitol building, but few within it.
Manchin may find himself nationally relevant, and widely loathed on the left, for his willingness to buck mainstream positions within the Democratic Party. But over the years, Senate insiders have developed a view that on the toughest and thorniest issues, Manchin isn’t only speaking for himself; there’s usually a handful of senators who agree with him, quietly, and are happy to let him take the heat.
Which senators are counted within this category changes based on the issue or vote at hand. The minimum wage vote provided a rare, clear look at how Manchin can be a tip of a Senate Democratic iceberg on a key issue.
But exactly who’s aligned with him, even discreetly, on another consequential question—whether to end the legislative filibuster—is less clear. Only one other Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), has been as strident about keeping the Senate’s 60-vote threshold as Manchin. A handful of others, such as Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH), have sounded concerned notes or have avoided answering the question entirely.
Some Democrats look at that and argue that Manchin, who has defiantly insisted he will not gut the filibuster under any circumstances, is publicly voicing concerns that this group agrees with privately.
"There are other Democratic members who share his reservations about eliminating the filibuster,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who strongly differs with Manchin on the issue. “Perhaps they're less outspoken, and perhaps less vehement."
Even staunch progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), desperate to see the filibuster go, understand that Manchin isn’t alone in his support for a 60-vote threshold.
“It’s something of a symbiotic relationship,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “There are certainly more senators with reservations about the filibuster that are giving Manchin steam to stay firm. But I have also heard from colleagues that none of those other senators want to play Manchin’s role.”
Ocasio-Cortez continued that, if Manchin or Sinema folded, she believed those other senators would come around to eliminating the filibuster as well. “That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be pressed for their position and offer clarity to their constituents, though,” she said of the senators letting Manchin do the talking. “People deserve to know with clarity where their elected representation stands on the filibuster.”
Among those whose job it is to influence lawmakers, it’s widely understood that Manchin is almost never on an island. When Manchin speaks, said one lobbyist for a major D.C. firm, “everyone’s ears perk up.”
“He represents not just a significant swing vote,” this lobbyist said. “He represents a handful of the party.”
There is also a belief among both Democrats and Republicans that Manchin’s current status as a black hole of left-wing outrage and media attention spares these other senators from the same treatment. A Democratic aide told The Daily Beast in a May story on Manchin that a lot of members are “happy Joe Manchin is the tip of the spear, getting shot at every day. Seven or eight of them stand behind him.”
A former colleague of Manchin’s, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), put it another way recently. “He is the heat shield for other members of the Senate that also are reluctant to blow up the protections the minority has from stopping bad stuff the other party wants,” she said on MSNBC on Tuesday.
That heat shield is especially valuable for senators facing tough elections in 2022. Take, for instance, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH). She voted with Manchin on the minimum wage and has been publicly cool toward ending the filibuster. And yet, the Beltway hardly hinges on her every word. Far from the dozen reporters that encircle Manchin in the Capitol hallways, Hassan glides through the Senate basement without any reporters trailing her—and she’s hardly ever a target of the left’s Twitter scorn.
But the GOP’s embrace of 2020 election conspiracies and measures to curtail voting access is forcing a change in this dynamic. Sen. Angus King (I-ME), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, had been seen as quietly aligned with Manchin on the filibuster. However, when The Daily Beast asked King on Tuesday if Manchin reflected the views of a broader group of senators, he responded by reiterating his reluctance to break the 60-vote threshold.
“But I’m very worried about voting rights,” King added. “And if it's a question of voting rights versus a Senate rule, democracy wins, for me.”
That qualification, which Manchin has not made, may leave him increasingly alone within the caucus, no longer the bellwether of colleagues who might have nodded approvingly with every quote or interview in which he punctures the dreams of the party base. But the strength of his objections to ending the filibuster or supporting S.1, Democrats’ marquee election reform bill, have some in the party convinced more than ever he’s not freelancing.
“I’m fully bought into the idea that he’s just a proxy for, like, five or six other senators who feel the same way,” said a Democratic source, expressing the frustration of many in the party.
Like many tricky bits of Hill conventional wisdom, it’s hard to get senators talking on the record about the theory of a Manchin shadow caucus. Several Democrats declined to talk about it when approached by The Daily Beast. Asked if Manchin reflected the views of others in the caucus, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the party’s second-in-command, offered a short answer: “I don’t know.”
King only slightly expanded on that answer when asked the same question. “I don't know, because I don’t know what other people feel,” he said, noting that Sinema was also quite vocal with her concerns about the filibuster. “I think there are others as well.”
Indeed, Sinema is a major exception. She’s hardly quiet about her views, and is beginning to approach Manchin levels of notoriety in the Democratic base for her willingness to disappoint them. The Arizona Democrat is far more press-averse than her colleague from West Virginia, but when she does speak, she tends to have the same effect.
A comment Sinema gave in April, for example, continues to fuel outraged tweets from liberal commentators as the GOP filibusters the party’s agenda. “When you have a place that’s broken and not working, and many would say that’s the Senate today, I don’t think the solution is to erode the rules,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “I think the solution is for senators to change their behavior and begin to work together, which is what the country wants us to do.”
Sinema is also considered closest to Manchin in another way: Many Democrats feel they are equally committed to the filibuster in a way that others are not. "Other senators might be behind Manchin and Sinema, but if they budge on the filibuster, they’re all going with them,” said a former aide to a moderate Democratic senator. “None of them are going to be the last ones standing."
A handful of roll call votes this year shows how the scrutiny on Manchin or Sinema can obscure broader shared sentiments in the caucus. In March, the six Democrats who joined Manchin and Sinema in voting against a $15 minimum wage were Sens. King, Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Chris Coons (D-DE), Tom Carper (D-DE), and Jon Tester (D-MT).
As Democrats worked to pass their $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, Republicans forced dozens of symbolic votes designed to put vulnerable Democrats in tough political positions. Manchin had company on a few. A slightly different group of seven joined Manchin in voting for a GOP resolution to block stimulus checks from going to undocumented immigrants: Sens. Sinema, Hassan, Tester, Kelly, Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), and Gary Peters (D-MI). All did ultimately vote to strip that resolution from the final bill.
But it’s the issues where no votes have yet been cast—election reform and the filibuster—where there’s growing interest in who may be drafting in Manchin’s wake.
A handful of Democratic senators have simply skirted the question of whether to change the 60-vote threshold in order to enact the party’s agenda. Most are up for re-election in 2022 and are navigating tricky balancing acts in their home states, where a Manchin-style stiff-arming of the left could spell trouble in a primary, but where moderation has been a winning general election strategy.
Kelly, who was elected in 2020 and faces Arizona voters again next year, has not said definitively what his stance on the filibuster is, telling reporters this week that he would “evaluate any change to our rules, regardless of what they are, based on what's in the best interest of Arizona, and the best interest of our country."
Hassan, a top target for Republicans looking to flip a Democratic seat, has said she has “concerns” about getting rid of the 60-vote threshold. Shaheen, who won re-election in 2020, has previously said the filibuster should be reformed, but has quietly avoided taking a hard line since Democrats took the Senate and White House in January.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), also a GOP target in 2022, has embraced a middle ground that Manchin himself has opened the door to: supporting the “talking filibuster,” a proposal to make filibustering more painful by requiring senators to fill up debate time with actual debate.
Meanwhile, S.1—the bill that many Democrats believe is worth breaking or changing the filibuster rule to pass—does not have Manchin’s support. He announced on Sunday that he will vote no on the legislation, sparking yet another round of Manchin-inspired groans on the left. But privately, some of his colleagues are said to be uneasy with the bill, Politico reported on Tuesday. And by zooming in on the bill’s parts, it’s clear Manchin is not isolated in his misgivings.
Take statehood for the District of Columbia, which is touched on in S.1. Manchin was the first Democrat to come out against a separate statehood bill, S.51, which now has 46 Democratic co-sponsors. The holdouts are Manchin, Kelly, Sinema, and King.
Among those pushing for passage of S.1 or an end to the filibuster, there’s a sense that the tide is shifting away from Manchin. King is not the only moderate to say recently that he’d jettison the filibuster if it meant protecting voting rights. Tester, a friend and ally of Manchin’s, has done the same.
On Wednesday, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) gave an interview to the Washington Post in which she expressed reluctance toward ending the filibuster—though afterward, her office clarified that she’d support taking that step if it meant passing S.1.
Many of these questions are set to come to a head this summer, when the Senate will vote on the sweeping voting package.
"There’s a few members who have been quiet on this,” said Eli Zupnick, a former Senate aide who’s now spokesperson for the anti-filibuster group Fix Our Senate. “The assumption and hope is they’d be on board where the caucus lands when push comes to shove.”
Roll call votes will put those senators who are less eager than Manchin for the attention, and the scrutiny, closer to the spotlight. As will continued discussion of the West Virginia senator’s “heat shield” status.
For now, though, a dozen or more reporters routinely swarm Manchin on his way to the Senate floor each day, while simpatico low-key lawmakers slip by. Republican onlookers—who might like to see a little more scrutiny on them—have no choice but to shrug.
“I suspect, both on the rules issue, and a lot of the legislative issues, that it's more than just Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO). “But they've been willing to stand up and take a position.”
Merrick Garland. (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Getty Images)
Merrick Garland Unveils Plan B for Protecting Voting Rights
Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
Kilgore writes: "Even if, as appears more likely every day, Congress does nothing in 2021 to strengthen federal voting-rights laws, stronger enforcement of existing laws by the U.S. Department of Justice would be far better than nothing."
READ MORE
Darnella Frazier. (photo: PEN America)
Darnella Frazier Wins Pulitzer Prize for George Floyd Video
Summer Lin, Idaho Statesman
Lin writes: "Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed the death of George Floyd in May 2020, has been awarded a special Pulitzer Prize, the board announced Friday."
READ MORE
Immigrant children in a detention center. (photo: Ross D. Franklin)
Biden's Task Force Identified More Than 3,900 Immigrant Children Who Were Separated From Their Families Under Trump
Adolfo Flores, BuzzFeed
Flores writes: "The Biden administration has identified 3,913 children who were separated from their parents at the southern border as a result of Trump's zero tolerance policy as efforts to reunite them ramp up."
READ MORE
Judge Amy Coney Barrett talks with Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during her ceremonial swearing-in ceremony to be a U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice. (photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Christian Group Tied to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Faces Reckoning Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations
Beth Reinhard and Alice Crites, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "In December, Katie Logan called the police in this Minneapolis suburb to unearth a buried secret: Her high school physics teacher had sexually assaulted her two decades earlier, she said."
n December, Katie Logan called the police in this Minneapolis suburb to unearth a buried secret: Her high school physics teacher had sexually assaulted her two decades earlier, she said. She was 17 and had just graduated from a school run by a small Christian group called People of Praise. He was 35 at the time, a widely admired teacher and girls’ basketball coach who lived in a People of Praise home for celibate men.
Logan told police she reported the June 2001 incident to a dean at the school five years after it happened. Police records show the dean believed Logan and relayed the complaint to at least one other senior school official.
But the teacher, Dave Beskar, remained at Trinity School at River Ridge until 2011, when he was hired to lead a charter school in Arizona. In 2015, he returned to the Minneapolis area to become headmaster of another Christian school. Beskar denies that any inappropriate sexual activity took place.
“People of Praise leaders failed me,” Logan, 37, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “I think they wanted to protect themselves more than they wanted to protect me and other girls.”
Logan was encouraged to go to police by a founder of “PoP Survivors,” a Facebook group formed last fall after the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, who has deep roots in People of Praise and who served on the board of its schools years after Beskar left. Barrett’s ascendancy to the nation’s highest court has forced a painful reckoning in People of Praise, an insular Christian community that emphasizes traditional gender roles. The former members are now demanding that the group acknowledge their suffering and that it mishandled complaints, prompting People of Praise to hire two law firms to investigate allegations of abuse.
The Post interviewed nine people in the Facebook group — all but one of them women — who said they were sexually abused as children, as well as another man who says he was physically abused. In four of those cases, the people said the alleged abuse was reported to community leaders. Logan gave The Post recorded statements and other documents from the police investigation of her complaint.
In response to questions from The Post, Craig Lent, chairman of the religious group’s board of governors, said that the lawyers’ findings will be reviewed by a People of Praise committee of men and women and that “appropriate action” will be taken.
Lent declined in a written statement to respond to specific questions about Logan’s allegation but acknowledged the “serious questions that it raises.” He declined to say how many claims are being investigated.
“People of Praise has always put the safety of children far above any reputational concerns,” said Lent, who is also chairman of the board overseeing three Trinity Schools campuses for middle and high school students — in the Minneapolis area, South Bend, Ind., and Falls Church, Va.
People of Praise grew out of the charismatic Christian movement of the early 1970s, which adopted practices described in the New Testament of the Bible, including speaking in tongues, the use of prophecy and faith healing. The group says it has 1,700 members across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
Barrett, who was raised in a People of Praise community in Louisiana, has long been active in the branch in the South Bend area, where she was a student at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett lived for a time with People of Praise co-founder Kevin Ranaghan and his wife, Dorothy, Dorothy Ranaghan has confirmed. A People of Praise 2010 directory shows Barrett served as a “handmaid,” a key female adviser to another female member. Barrett served on the Trinity Schools board, whose members must belong to People of Praise, from 2015 to 2017.
Barrett was not asked about People of Praise during her confirmation to the Supreme Court. At her 2017 Senate confirmation hearing for a federal appeals court, she said she would not put her religious beliefs before the rule of law. “It’s never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they derive from faith or anywhere else, on the law,” she said.
The #MeToo movement took off that same year, as waves of women increasingly accused powerful men of sexual misconduct. The upheaval reached People of Praise last September, as Barrett was being prominently mentioned for a spot on the Supreme Court. Some former members said they worried that her involvement in the community that failed to protect them might color her views on gender equity and sexual misconduct.
“I am not questioning whether she is a brilliant legal mind,” said one former member, Sarah Mitchell Kuehl. “It’s more her association with this repressive organization that worries me and how it will impact her ability to be impartial knowing what I grew up with and the mind-set.”
Kuehl said she was molested as a young child by a man who was staying with her family in the Minneapolis area in the late 1970s. They were members of Servants of the Light, a charismatic Christian group that merged with People of Praise in the early 1980s. Both groups’ practices include communal living, in which single people often live “in household” with families, and families often reside in clusters.
For years, Kuehl despaired as the man, Gary McAlpin, married, fathered children and participated in People of Praise religious and social gatherings. Her parents raised alarms with People of Praise leaders starting in the late 1980s, according to letters reviewed by The Post.
Kuehl filed a civil claim against McAlpin when she was 17 in 1990. The following year, in a psychological assessment required as part of an agreement to settle the case, he acknowledged abusing a minor in the 1970s roughly 20 times. The assessment, which Kuehl provided to The Post, recommended that McAlpin receive treatment for pedophilia.
Kuehl said McAlpin left the community after refusing the recommended treatment. McAlpin did not respond to messages seeking comment. Lent did not respond to questions about how People of Praise handled the allegation, but said the incidents occurred before the two Christian groups merged.
In 2019, when Kuehl’s parents asked to be “released” from their commitment to People of Praise because of the way it handled their daughter’s allegation, Lent suggested such abuse was rare. “It may help you to know that I am unaware of any comparable abuse by a household member ever occurring in the People of Praise community,” Lent wrote her parents. “That is certainly not to say it could not happen, or that there might be situations unknown to me.”
Kuehl, now 48, believed People of Praise needed to do more to accept responsibility. Barrett’s rising profile prompted her to write to Lent in September and accuse People of Praise of allowing McAlpin to remain in the community after her parents reported the matter to leadership. Kuehl also told her story to the Guardian.
Lent responded that People of Praise took her concerns seriously and had hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to investigate. As other former members spoke up, including Logan, another large firm, Lathrop GPM, was hired to look into abuse claims more broadly.
The private Facebook group was created in October by Kuehl’s former Trinity classmate Rebecca Grundhofer, who told The Post she was molested as a child by an older boy when their families lived together. Three dozen people who grew up in the branches in the Minneapolis area and South Bend have joined the Facebook group.
Several people in the group — including Logan, Kuehl and Grundhofer — have spoken extensively with the lawyers hired by People of Praise. They and others in the group, though, question how determined People of Praise is to find former members who say they were victimized and to hold abusers — and those who mishandled their complaints — to account.
“I am still waiting for them to acknowledge that they didn’t act when they should have acted, but instead they give excuses like ‘people don’t recall the details,’ or ‘it was so long ago,’ or ‘how the organization handled abuse was different back then.’ ” Kuehl said in an interview. “What about saying, ‘We failed to act. People were hurt.’ ”
Among those in the Facebook group is Kevin Connolly, 37, the brother of People of Praise’s chief spokesman. Connolly said his father was violent and once kicked him in the face when he was 10, leaving him with a black eye.
His father and brother did not return messages from The Post. His mother, who is now divorced but remains in the community, said she knows her son Kevin to “be a person of integrity.”
Connolly said he was raised to stay silent and to forgive rather than accuse, a sentiment shared by others in the Facebook group. “It eventually just became less painful to speak out than to not,” said Connolly, a psychology professor in Philadelphia who sought advice on the group’s behalf from nationally known advocates for sexual abuse survivors.
Women in the Facebook group recalled childhood warnings from parents and teachers that wearing revealing clothing would tempt the opposite sex. They were responsible for warding off sexual advances from men, the women said they were told.
“For so long, I felt like I did something wrong, and that I should be embarrassed and ashamed,” said Grundhofer, 47, who only recently told her parents she was molested around age 4, when her family belonged to Servants of the Light. They joined People of Praise a few years later. “I finally realized I didn’t do anything wrong.”
People of Praise is led by an all-male board of governors. Younger adults are assigned a “head” of the same sex to guide them on spiritual and secular matters. Husbands typically take over as heads of their wives; wives do not become heads for their husbands.
An article in the summer 2015 issue of People of Praise’s magazine, based on a speech given years earlier by Jeanne DeCelles, wife of co-founder Paul DeCelles, advised wives to verbalize to their husbands a “commitment to submission” and to “make it a joy for him to head you.”
Asked about the way People of Praise treats female members, Lent said: “Men and women share a fundamental equality as bearers of God’s image and sons and daughters of God.”
‘Inappropriate pattern of behavior’
Inspired by Kuehl, Logan called her hometown police department on New Year’s Eve 2020. Logan’s account to police matched what later she told The Post:
She said that, as a student at Trinity School at River Ridge, she had a crush on Beskar. Two weeks after she graduated, he showed up at her house while her parents were out of town. She was 17 at the time, records show.
Logan answered the door in a Wonder Woman T-shirt and ripped jeans. Beskar said he needed to use the family’s computer, and did so for several hours. Then they sat on the porch, drank beer and talked. Logan felt flattered by the attention.
Beskar came back to the next day and used the computer again. But this time he sat down next to her on the couch, pressed against her and unbuttoned her pants, she said. He inserted his finger into her vagina, she alleged.
She said she was in shock for maybe a minute, then said something like, “Okay, I think that’s enough.” She said she tried to minimize the awkwardness of the moment and get him out of the house.
In hindsight, she believed Beskar had groomed her for years, becoming close to her family and having dinner at her house several times. “Boundaries just get broken down,” she told police.
Over the next couple of years, Logan told two close friends and her parents. They all confirmed to both The Post and the police that Logan had told them about the incident with Beskar.
Beskar did not respond to phone messages from The Post. He asked a reporter who came to his home to leave.
“Nothing physical ever happened between Katie and I,” Beskar told police on Feb. 25, according to an audio recording of his interview. “I want to be just really clear about that. Nothing sexual.”
Logan said that in 2006 she called the school’s highest-ranking woman, Dean of Girls Penny Arndt, and told her about Beskar.
Arndt did not respond to messages from The Post seeking comment.
Arndt, who recently retired, told police she believed that the call was made a year or two later and that Logan said she was 18 at the time of the incident. “He put his hands down the front of her pants, and then she said no,” Arndt said, recounting the call. She added, “I took her at her word.”
Arndt told police that another female student said Beskar made her uncomfortable but that she dismissed that complaint, saying “teenagers and tears kind of go hand in hand.” Arndt noted that she technically reported to Beskar, who was then an associate headmaster.
Arndt told police she relayed Logan’s accusation to the president of the Trinity Schools board at the time, Kerry Koller. She said she didn’t know what, if any, action Koller took. He died last year.
Arndt said that in 2009 she reported the allegation to new headmaster Jon Balsbaugh “so that it didn’t fall by the wayside because Dave was still there,” according to an audio recording of her police interview.
Balsbaugh told police that he did not learn of Logan’s complaint until Beskar had left the school in 2011. Balsbaugh said that after the parent of a basketball player complained that Beskar made girls on the team uncomfortable, he asked Arndt if she of knew of any other concerns about the coach. She told him about Logan, he said.
Balsbaugh told police he thought Logan was 18 at the time of the “inappropriate advances” and that therefore no crime had occurred.
The parent’s concern is mentioned in an “internal confidential report” Balsbaugh compiled after Beskar’s departure, which police obtained through a search warrant. The Post obtained the undated report and other documents from Beskar’s personnel file.
Balsbaugh wrote that he told the parent that players should come talk to him about their concerns. He dropped the matter when none did.
Balsbaugh wrote that, after Beskar left the school, he learned of three other allegations — the report does not name the women — that the teacher made female students uncomfortable.
“In none of these incidents does Mr. Beskar appear to have acted illegally, though this does seem to be an inappropriate pattern of behavior in a person with responsibility for the care of students,” Balsbaugh wrote.
Arndt and Balsbaugh also mentioned to police their concerns about Beskar’s relationship with a former student who was 22 years younger than him. She became his assistant basketball coach after her graduation. They married in 2014.
She did not respond to messages from The Post.
The Arizona charter school organization that hired Beskar in 2011 to create new schools never asked for his employment record, Balsbaugh told police. Great Hearts Academies, based in Phoenix, declined to comment.
In a statement to The Post, Balsbaugh, now president of the Trinity Schools board, said: “Trinity School takes the well-being of students under our care very seriously. We are grieved that Ms. Logan or any student would have had to shoulder the burden of the experience she relates.”
Police also interviewed Joel Kibler, who served on the board of governors until last year and is the president of the group of celibate men, the Brotherhood. He told police that after Beskar moved to Arizona three female students and a mother of two daughters said the teacher had made them feel uncomfortable. “He was one of the most widely respected people in the People of Praise group. People looked up to him," Kibler said, adding later, “I was surprised, but I had no reason to doubt these girls."
Kibler told The Post in a statement that he reported the complaints to the school, deeming it “a Trinity school matter to handle.”
When police asked Beskar if he had ever been confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct by a school, he said, “No, never,” according to a recording of the interview. Beskar’s personnel file contains no indication that school officials ever spoke to him about alleged misconduct or urged him to leave. On the contrary, it shows officials expressed alarm about Beskar breaking his contract midyear to leave for Arizona.
Police in Eden Prairie recommended charging Beskar with a felony, criminal sexual conduct in the third degree, in which a victim between 16 and 18 years old is penetrated by an older authority figure, records show.
Prosecutors in surrounding Hennepin County decided they could not charge Beskar. The law in 2001 did not consider a former teacher an authority figure. The statute of limitations at that time also precluded filing charges today, said Chuck Laszewski, a spokesman for the Hennepin County attorney’s office.
“We were looking hard for a way to bring a prosecution,” he said. “We found her very credible.”
‘Very strict code’
In recent months, Logan has been torn between feelings of betrayal by People of Praise leadership and gratitude for members who have long supported her mother during chronic illnesses. A measure of vindication arrived in late May when Chesterton Academy of the Twin Cities, the school where Beskar has been headmaster since 2015, announced that he was taking an indefinite leave of absence because of an allegation of misconduct that occurred two decades ago. The school had been recently informed about Logan’s allegation.
Lathrop GPM attorney Robin Maynard, a former sex crimes prosecutor leading the People of Praise investigation, was present for the police department’s interviews with community leaders. In a private conversation with the police detective after Balsbaugh’s interview, the tape still running, Maynard described the challenge of rooting out wrongdoing in the tightly knit Christian community.
“They have a very strict code about gossip and about ever saying bad about somebody,” Maynard said, according to an audio file obtained by The Post. “One thing I found is that it’s a little hard to drag information out because they are very conscientious.”
Asked about Maynard’s remark, Lent said: “People of Praise believes it is entirely appropriate and necessary to disclose information about abuse and serious misconduct to appropriate authorities in our community and in broader society, for the sake of protecting children and others. Such responsible reporting in no way constitutes gossip.”
In an email to The Post, Maynard declined to comment on her statement about the difficulty of investigating People of Praise.
Israeli soldiers stand guard as Palestinian demonstrators gather during a protest against Israeli settlements in Beita town near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. (photo: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)
Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Teen at Occupied West Bank Protest
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "A Palestinian teenager has been killed by Israeli fire during confrontations between protesters and Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian authorities said."
Mohammed Hamayel, 15, was killed during a weekly protest in the occupied West Bank village of Beita against illegal Jewish settlement.
Palestinian teenager has been killed by Israeli fire during confrontations between protesters and Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian authorities said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Friday that “Mohammad Said Hamayel, 15, died in confrontations” with Israeli forces near Beita, south of Nablus, where dozens of Palestinians demonstrated against the expansion of a nearby illegal Jewish settlement at the expense of their land.
The Ministry of Health of Palestine said six others had been wounded by gunfire.
The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, reported that Israeli troops fired live rounds, tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets at the demonstrators. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Hamayel is the eighth Palestinian child to be killed by Israeli forces this year and the third in Beita, which has witnessed protests in recent months after Israeli settlers built an outpost on the village’s Mount Sabih.
The livelihoods of at least 17 Palestinian families – more than 100 people – are threatened as they depend on harvesting their olives on land they have owned for generations.
In another protest in the village of Kufr Qaddoum, an eight-month-old baby suffered tear gas inhalation after Israeli forces targeted the family home of Loay Samir. Another 10-year-old child was wounded in the leg with a rubber-coated steel bullet.
Murad Shteiwi, the media coordinator for Kufr Qaddoum, said the Israeli army stormed the village under a heavy cover of live bullets, adding that that they raided the homes of the Palestinian residents, climbed their roofs and used them as military barracks for their snipers.
Villages in the West Bank often hold Friday demonstrations against land confiscation, house demolitions and Israeli settlements deemed illegal under international law. Israeli forces usually respond to the protests with disproportionate violence.
Some 475,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank, home to more than 2.8 million Palestinians.
On Thursday, Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinians, including two security officers, in a shoot-out that erupted in the town of Jenin during what appeared to be an Israeli arrest raid overnight.
A diver swims through bleached coral. (photo: AMCS)
Climate and Nature Crises: Solve Both or Solve Neither, Experts Say
Damian Carrington, Guardian UK
Carrington writes: "Humanity must solve the climate and nature crises together or solve neither, according to a report from 50 of the world's leading scientists."
Restoring nature boosts biodiversity and ecosystems that can rapidly and cheaply absorb carbon emissions
umanity must solve the climate and nature crises together or solve neither, according to a report from 50 of the world’s leading scientists.
Global heating and the destruction of wildlife is wreaking increasing damage on the natural world, which humanity depends on for food, water and clean air. Many of the human activities causing the crises are the same and the scientists said increased use of nature as a solution was vital.
The devastation of forests, peatlands, mangroves and other ecosystems has decimated wildlife populations and released huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Rising temperatures and extreme weather are, in turn increasingly damaging biodiversity.
But restoring and protecting nature boosts biodiversity and the ecosystems that can rapidly and cheaply absorb carbon again, the researchers said. While this is crucial, the scientists emphasise that rapid cuts in fossil fuel burning is also essential to ending the climate emergency.
They also warned against action on one crisis inadvertently aggravating the other, such as creating monoculture tree plantations that store carbon but are wildlife deserts and more vulnerable to extreme weather.
“It is clear that we cannot solve [the global biodiversity and climate crises] in isolation – we either solve both or we solve neither,” said Sveinung Rotevatn, Norway’s climate and environment minister.
The peer-reviewed report was produced by the world’s leading biodiversity and climate experts, who were convened by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, both which report to the world’s political leaders.
The report identified actions to simultaneously fight the climate and nature crises, including expanding nature reserves and restoring – or halting the loss of – ecosystems rich in species and carbon, such as forests, natural grasslands and kelp forests.
“It’s very disturbing to see the impacts over recent years,” said Prof Alex David Rogers, of conservation group REV Ocean and the University of Oxford, and a report author. “Between 1970 and 2000, mangrove forests have lost about 40% of their cover and salt marshes an estimated 60%. We’ve also lost half of coral cover since Victorian times.”
Food systems cause a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, and more sustainable farming is another important action, helped by the ending of destructive subsidies and rich nations eating less meat and cutting food waste.
“Animal agriculture not only emits 10 to 100 times more greenhouse gases per unit product than plant-based foods, they also use 10 to 100 times more land,” said Prof Pete Smith, of the University of Aberdeen. “So more plant-based diets would mean more environmentally friendly farming and then there would be more land on which to apply nature-based solutions.”
The scientists also warned against actions that tackled one crisis but worsened the other. “When I went for a walk in a plantation forest in England, it was sterile. It was a single, non-native species of tree,” said Prof Camille Parmesan, of the University of Plymouth. “There was nothing else there, no insects, no birds, no undergrowth. You might as well have built a concrete building.”
Past tree planting on carbon-rich peatlands that had never been forested was another example, said Smith. “That was an epic fail for the climate and for biodiversity.”
Planting very large areas with single crops to burn for energy was also problematic, even if the CO2 was captured and buried, Smith said: “To get the billions of tonnes of carbon removal that has been proposed in some scenarios for global stabilisation of climate, you would need thousands of millions of hectares – an area twice the size of India.”
Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems was the fastest and cheapest way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, the scientists said. Cutting fossil fuel emissions was essential, but not enough at this point in the climate crisis, said Parmesan. “We cannot avoid dangerous climate change without soaking up some of the carbon that we’ve already put into the atmosphere and the best way to suck up carbon is using the power of plants,” she said.
“The science of restoration of ecosystems has really blossomed over the last 40 years. We are now able to efficiently and effectively restore complex systems, tropical rainforest, coastal wetlands, kelp forests and seagrass meadows, natural American prairie, and UK meadows back to their near historical diversity.”
Prof Mark Maslin, of University College London, said the report was seminal: “The science is very clear that climate change and biodiversity are inseparable. To stabilise climate change we need massive rewilding and reforestation.”
The UK environment minister, Zac Goldsmith, said: “This is an absolutely critical year for nature and climate. With the UN biodiversity [and climate summits], we have an opportunity and responsibility to put the world on a path to recovery. This hugely valuable report makes it clear that addressing biodiversity loss and climate change together offers our best chance of doing so.”
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