30 May 22
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This Memorial Day, we should rededicate ourselves to fighting the horrors of war. So here’s a 1916 Eugene Debs piece, never before republished, about why internationalism is at the heart of socialist politics.
“In 1916, with World War I raging, socialist leader Eugene V. Debs wrote a short piece condemning the nationalism that had thrown soldiers into trench warfare and machine-gun slaughter.
Debs’s article appeared in the January 1916 issue of the National Rip-Saw, a mass-circulation socialist newspaper based in St Louis. The United States still hadn’t entered the war, and Debs wanted to keep it that way. He reminded his US comrades of their duty to oppose the conflict — the fetid fruit of the ruling class — and excoriated the many European socialists who had fallen in line behind their nations’ leaders.
'True socialists,'' Debs wrote, 'cannot at the same time be nationalists, militarists and capitalist ‘patriots.’ . . . The self-called socialists who are nationalists first and who set the ‘fatherland’ of their masters above the whole earth and above all the workers of the world are not socialists at all but either mild and harmless capitalist reformers and stool pigeons or traitors to the cause.'
Strong words. But this Memorial Day, it’s a reminder that the best way to honor those killed in war is to fight the ruling-class forces that repeatedly send soldiers off to die.”
Karl Marx, founder of the modern socialist movement, based his whole theory upon the internationality of the working class and called upon the workers of all countries to unite in the struggle for their emancipation.
Before the war broke out in Europe there was no question about the international character of the socialist movement, but when the tocsin sounded, international obligation was swept away, or forgotten, and in the frenzy aroused by the military clackers, thousands of socialist party members became the intensest of nationalists and “patriots,” utterly denying their international principles and obligations and turning traitors to the movement to which they had solemnly pledged their honor and their lives.
If the international socialist movement is to be organized on a bedrock foundation, if it is to endure in the future, instead of collapsing as in the past; if, in a word, it is to give expression and direction to the social revolution, it can only be by a rigid observance of the fundamental principles of internationalism and upon the sound basis of the class struggle.
True socialists cannot at the same time be nationalists, militarists, and capitalist “patriots.” They are either one or the other; they cannot be both. The self-called socialists who are nationalists first and who set the “fatherland” of their masters above the whole earth and above all the workers of the world are not socialists at all but either mild and harmless capitalist reformers and stool pigeons or traitors to the cause.
THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT IF IT STANDS AT ALL MUST STAND UNFLINCHINGLY AND UNCOMPROMISINGLY FOR SOCIALIST INTERNATIONALISM VERSUS CAPITALIST NATIONALISM!
Upon that rock it can stand against the world; upon that rock it can withstand the shock of war, and all the powers of capitalism and hell cannot prevail against it.
We must get rid of nationalism, militarism, and the kind of “patriotism” which is responsible for the socialists of Europe now drenching the soil of the “fatherland” of their masters with the blood of comrades, and we must beware lest nationalism get a foothold in the party here in the United States, for as certain as it does, the party will go the way of the socialist parties of the old world which have been all but destroyed by its vicious and disrupting influence.
A Convention goer checks DDM4 carbine at the143rd NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 25, 2014. (Photo: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)
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as He Visits Uvalde Memorial
Daniel Defense, the company that made the gun used by the Robb Elementary shooter, has been handed over 100 federal contracts.
Yet, his call stands in tension with the U.S. role in global arms purchases. The military that Biden oversees is reliant on a weapons industry that overlaps with the domestic gun industry and, in some cases, these industries are one and the same — a reality put horrifically on display in Uvalde.
Daniel Defense Inc. is a Georgia-based company that manufactured the DDM4 Rifle used by Salvador Ramos to carry out the mass shooting at Robb Elementary. Earlier this year, the company struck a contract for up to $9.1 million with the Pentagon. The deal was announced March 23 for the production of 11.5” and 14.5” cold hammer-forged barrels for the Upper Receiver Group – Improved.” This product refers to barrels that are used for rifles. The upper receiver is what contains the bolt, which is where the rifle cartridge sits.
The company has received more than 100 federal contracts, and even a few loans, a search through a government spending tracker shows. As the New York Times noted May 26, this includes a pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program loan of $3.1 million. The contracts date back to at least 2008, when the government spending tracker was created, and most were made with the Department of Defense, but others with the Departments of Justice (U.S. Marshall Service), Homeland Security, State, and Interior.
Daniel Defense prides itself on making assault rifles, including those used by civilians. The company calls itself “one of the most recognizable brands in the firearms world, consisting of the world’s finest AR15-style rifles, pistols, bolt-action rifles, and accessories for civilian, law enforcement, and military customers.”
These are exactly the kinds of weapons that Democrats concerned about the proliferation of assault rifles say they want to regulate.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D‑N.Y.) recently gave the green light to Democrats to push for a bipartisan piece of gun legislation following the Memorial Day recess, after slamming the Republican Party on Wednesday for its “obeisance to the NRA.”
But the solutions offered up by Democratic politicians tend to focus on consumers — background checks, no-buy lists and increased criminal penalties — rather than on weapons manufacturers, even though it is the gun industry that has the power, is producing the lethal arms and is profiting from their sale.
In light of the shooting in Texas, some anti-war activists are asking whether the U.S. government’s entanglement with the global arms industry affects politicians’ willingness to go after domestic manufacturers.
As Erik Sperling, the executive director for Just Foreign Policy, an anti-war organization, put it to In These Times, “It’s hard to envision how one could meaningfully curtail the political influence of the gun industry while simultaneously maintaining a foreign policy that promotes their profit and power.”
The United States is home to the largest weapons industry in the world, with all top five global weapons companies based in the country, and these companies boast a small army of lobbyists in Washington.
“The gun industry and the big contractors like Lockheed Martin that dominate the global trade are somewhat separate,” explains Quincy Institute senior research fellow William Hartung. But, as is the case with Daniel Defense, some companies do business both globally and domestically.
And there are signs that the U.S. military’s heavy reliance on the arms industry has, in the past, played a role in hedging against measures that target the domestic gun industry. In 2005, the Republican-controlled Congress gave a big victory to the gun industry when it passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that protects firearms makers and dealers from nearly all liability lawsuits. The law, which was signed by President George W. Bush, was actively supported by the gun industry.
The Department of Defense also overtly supported the measure at the time, arguing to the Senate that the legislation “would help safeguard our national security by limiting unnecessary lawsuits against an industry that plays a critical role in meeting the procurement needs of our men and women in uniform.” According to reporting from the New York Times, this support from the Pentagon gave a “boost” to the measure.
This law is still in effect today, and plays a considerable role in protecting gun manufacturers — as well as dealers and trade associations — from consequences for their marketing practices. Unlike the tobacco and car industries, where lawsuits have helped improve safety protections, the gun industry is untouchable by most liability lawsuits. According to the corporate watchdog organization Public Citizen, “Never before or since has Congress afforded an entire industry with blanket immunity from civil lawsuits.”
This collaboration goes both ways. The National Rifle Association, which is an advocacy and lobbying organization for the gun industry, has also supported efforts to roll back protections for civilians globally. In May 2019, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) celebrated then-president Donald Trump’s “unsigning” of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which Trump announced at the NRA’s annual convention. (The United States had signed the treaty in 2013 but hadn’t ratified it.)
This treaty, which has been in effect since 2014, was the first global effort to regulate the international trade of arms, from rifles to fighter jets to warships, and was supposed to make sure that weapons do not end up in the hands of rights abusers or in areas of extreme conflict, though it has no enforcement mechanism. Critics at the time warned that the unsigning of the accord would put more civilians at risk.
According to Hartung, the NRA’s opposition to this treaty dates to before the accord’s existence. “Going all the way back to 2001, the UN was working on regulating small arms, because they were fuel for a lot of the worst conflicts in the world that had the most casualties,” he tells In These Times. “Through a series of UN meetings where they started the process that would lead to the arms treaty, you would have NRA representatives walking the halls with representatives of gun companies trying to make the case for deregulation.”
“Their argument was that regulating guns globally threatens gun ownership domestically,” explains Hartung. “And many companies are global exporters, so they want to keep that as unregulated as possible.”
The NRA’s ILA appeared to confirm Hartung’s narrative when it cheered Trump’s 2019 unsigning the UN Arms Trade Treaty, proclaiming that he had defeated “the most comprehensive effort towards international gun control.” Notably, President Biden still has not returned the United States to the treaty, even though this would be a simple, administrative act that would not require Congress.
Leading Democrats, furthermore, have not highlighted the global arms proliferation of some of the companies, like Daniel Defense, that produce guns for domestic sale.
Some critics argue that politicians cannot effectively demand to curb the influence of the gun lobby domestically while supporting arms proliferation abroad, because the industry — and its associated violence — spans both spheres.
Khury Petersen-Smith, the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank, told In These Times, “The U.S. manufactures and sells more weapons than any other country. It invests in developing the most lethal weapons in the world, in using them to arm its military, its police, and its allies, and it makes those weapons extremely available to its own population. That is the landscape in which this young person accessed these weapons, and horrors like this massacre are part of that same landscape.”
Russian troops stand in a street as people take part in a rally against the Russian occupation in Kherson on March 14. (photo: Olexandr Chornyi/AP)
The occupation has lasted in the city of Kherson, the only provincial capital that has fallen to Russians, since the beginning of March. Moscow has forcefully installed an occupation government there, which recently appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to join Russia. Many fear Russia intends to hold a rigged referendum to annex the region or create a people’s republic. On May 25, the Russian leader signed a decree offering fast-track Russian citizenship to residents of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, a worrying sign of what is to come.
It is hard to understand from afar what life is like for locals in Kherson — but whatever I hear is alarming. While many citizens have left, some remain. A survey from April found that 39 percent of Ukrainians believed leaving their home during wartime was wrong and unacceptable. An additional 35 percent did not want to leave their loved ones. Among them are almost all my relatives.
“We live in a different reality,” a relative told me when I finally managed to get through in late April. She sends me pictures of bullet holes in her house and gate. She has been told Russians can listen to conversations on the phone.
Though Kherson did not suffer as much shelling or bombing as some other regions, Russians still proved they did not care about civilian infrastructure, destroying a school and the biggest mall and shelling some residential areas. They brutally killed Ukrainians fighting as part of territorial defense units. Then they systematically intimidated locals by detaining the most active residents, robbing the homes of local activists, and kidnapping local politicians and journalists.
“Kherson has said its word,” says my relative, obliquely referring to the protests that citizens organized against Russian soldiers and tanks at the beginning of occupation. Initially, Russian troops turned away; then they used stun grenades and bullets against the crowd.
If the city survived, albeit deserted, some villages in the region were simply wiped out. This includes both my grandmothers’ houses in the village where I took my first steps, ate cherries in the summer and read all the books from the local village library. Another relative hid with some locals in the basement of the kindergarten. After a direct hit by a shell on the building, he finally left the village at the end of April.
I worry for the safety of my loved ones constantly — and this is not just about fighting and shelling. Because they are the occupying power, Russian soldiers would not face accountability for sexual violence, even though there have been many reports of rape in the region. Since the first days of the occupation, women and girls have shared news about such cases on their social networks. It is impossible to verify the reports, but many women are terrified.
And even that form of information-sharing could be blocked. The occupation government has announced that social media platforms might be shut down — as has been done in Russia — to restrict information not controlled by the Kremlin. Russian propaganda is already pouring out of television in the Kherson region, and Russians are trying to introduce the ruble in some towns.
The occupation government installed by Russia is full of disreputable figures who do not represent the views of most Ukrainians. Blogger Kirill Stremousov, who was active in anti-vaccination protests, is now deputy head of the Kherson civil-military administration. The newly appointed head of the Kherson administration, Vladimir Saldo, has been investigated by Ukraine’s Security Service for allegedly cooperating with the KGB successor FSB (though he was not charged) and was supportive of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Not all of the collaborators are outsiders: In April, President Volodymyr Zelensky stripped the former head of the Kherson security service of his general rank, calling him a traitor. Indeed, a sense of betrayal has haunted Kherson residents since the first days of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
In Russia and in the occupied territories of Ukraine, people are living in a state-imposed reality that is becoming even more surreal than that of Soviet-era communism. New generations are growing up educated in increasingly rigid narratives of obedience and hopelessness. I never imagined I would have to worry about this happening in my hometown.
Now, as I wait every day for information from my relatives, I implore the world: Do not believe Moscow’s lies about occupied towns and regions such as Kherson. Do not forget those living under occupation, waiting for freedom under silence, secrecy and fear.
Progressives see a pattern in how party leaders and center-left groups are targeting their candidates in primaries. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
House leaders’ support for Henry Cuellar over Jessica Cisneros in Texas elections has left progressives seething
But as progressives wait to see who will win the runoff race, they cannot help but think of what might have been if House Democratic leaders had not come to Cuellar’s assistance. Cuellar secured the endorsements of the top three House Democrats, and the congressman’s campaign was also propped up by millions of dollars in super Pac spending aimed at attacking Cisneros.
Progressives complain that House leaders’ intervention in primaries like Cuellar’s is making it harder for their candidates to succeed and they worry about the repercussions of the party embracing centrist candidates with controversial stances on issues like abortion rights and gun control.
The potential victory of Cuellar last week, who has previously received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, is all the more painful for progressives given the recent mass shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The massacre, which unfolded roughly 100 miles away from Cuellar’s district, claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.
With a margin this small, it’s clear that a pro-choice, anti-NRA Democrat could have easily won if it was not for the full-throated support of Speaker Pelosi and the party establishment in Washington for anti-choice, pro-NRA Henry Cuellar. Hours after the shooting last Tuesday, progressives watched with dismay as Cuellar crept ahead of Cisneros in the vote count.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vented her frustration at House leaders for aiding Cuellar, attacking her colleague’s policy positions and his potential involvement in an FBI investigation. (Cuellar’s home and campaign office were raided in January, but the congressman has denied wrongdoing, and his attorney claimed he was not the target of an investigation.)
“On the day of a mass shooting and weeks after news of Roe, Democratic party leadership rallied for a pro-NRA, anti-choice incumbent under investigation in a close primary. Robocalls, fundraisers, all of it,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter. “Accountability isn’t partisan. This was an utter failure of leadership.”
Progressives see a pattern in how party leaders and center-left groups are targeting their candidates in primaries. In Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district, super Pacs spent millions trying to prevent the nomination of state representative Summer Lee, although the progressive lawmaker ultimately won her primary. Democratic congressman Kurt Schrader, who had attracted criticism for blocking key parts of Joe Biden’s agenda, still won the president’s endorsement and secured the backing of House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Schrader officially lost his primary to progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner on Friday.
Progressives argue that Cisneros would have easily cruised to victory as well if the Democratic establishment, particularly House leaders, had not invested so heavily to assist Cuellar. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election, House speaker Nancy Pelosi recorded a robocall for Cuellar, while majority whip Jim Clyburn traveled to Texas to campaign alongside his colleague. Clyburn’s trip to campaign for Cuellar, who does not support abortion rights, came two days after the supreme court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade was leaked to the public.
“With a margin this small, it’s clear that a pro-choice, anti-NRA Democrat could have easily won if it wasn’t for the full-throated support of Speaker Pelosi and the party establishment in Washington for anti-choice, pro-NRA Henry Cuellar,” said Waleed Shahid, communications director for the progressive group Justice Democrats. “Why is all of Democratic party leadership more heavily focused on defeating an anti-NRA, pro-choice Democrat than defeating Republicans in the midterms?”
But allies of Pelosi and Clyburn see nothing nefarious in their actions to help candidates like Cuellar, given that endorsing incumbents has long been a standard practice for party leaders.
Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist who serves as a senior adviser to the DCCC, said House leaders’ strategy was practical as the party attempts to hold onto its narrow majority in the chamber. Republicans only need to flip a handful of seats to regain control of the House, and they are heavily favored to do so, given historical trends and Biden’s underwater approval rating.
“At the end of the day, it’s about 218. That’s the number of votes needed on any given day to get anything done,” Seawright said. “This is all about preserving and keeping the majority.”
The shifting politics of Cuellar’s district also adds more complexity to the race.
Texas’s 28th congressional district, which covers the eastern outskirts of San Antonio and stretches down to the US-Mexican border, was previously considered a Democratic stronghold. But the district has become more conservative in recent years, and election forecasters consider it to be a toss-up race for November. With a difficult general election ahead, some Democrats say a more conservative member of the party like Cuellar, who has held the seat since 2005, may have a better chance at winning.
“Mr Cuellar has been re-elected on many occasions in that district,” Seawright said. “And I think that means that the voters of that district – Democrats, Republicans [and] independents alike – have made a decision that he is a person they want representing the interests in Washington.”
But supporters of Cisneros’s campaign take issue with that argument.
Ezra Oliff-Lieberman, the electoral organizer in Texas-28 for the climate group Sunrise Movement, said Cisneros would be the stronger candidate in the general election because of her ability to energize and mobilize young voters. Since Sunrise endorsed Cisneros last year, the group has made more than 700,000 calls to support her campaign.
“We were knocking doors in 100-degree Texas heat because we are excited about and inspired by the vision that Jessica is fighting for that says we don’t have to live in fear of gun violence, that we can have freedom to make decisions about our own bodies,” Oliff-Lieberman said.
Looking ahead to the general election, Oliff-Lieberman added, “It’s going to be hard, and we need a grassroots base to win. And I think Democratic leadership is squandering any hope of us winning by alienating young people.”
Oliff-Lieberman noted that young voters helped elect Biden and secure the party’s majorities in Congress, and he accused House Democratic leaders of ignoring the needs of a key constituency.
“It’s so abundantly clear what young people want and how Democratic leadership is willing to do the exact opposite,” he said. “I feel really angry that we have put so much into fighting for a better world and to try to put a stop to so many of the crises that we’re facing. And it feels like the people who are standing in the way of that are people who supposedly are on our side.”
Oliff-Lieberman and Cisernos’s other supporters have said they will fight to get every vote counted in Texas-28, expressing hope that Cuellar can still be defeated. But regardless of the outcome in Texas, progressives are encouraged by the victories they have already seen in primaries this year with candidates like Lee and McLeod-Skinner. They are ready to keep up the fight, even if Democratic leaders attempt to stand in their way.
“If anything, I think this primary season so far is just emboldening our movement to build more power, to keep going to get stronger,” Oliff-Lieberman said. “And we know that the establishment is scared.”
An officer at Eyman Prison monitors death row, in Florence, Arizona. (photo: Q.Sakamak/Redux)
How the Supreme Court expanded the most important law you’ve never heard of.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court told Arizona prisoner Barry Jones that even though four federal judges agreed he may well be innocent of the 1994 murder that sent him to death row, the high court couldn’t overturn his conviction or stop Arizona from executing him. (Jones had argued he was hindered by poor lawyering at multiple stages of his case.)
In a 6-3 decision on Monday, in a case titled Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, the conservative justices said they couldn’t do anything about it, because of one wonky law passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by then-President Bill Clinton. Misleadingly called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the law was created during the tough-on-crime ‘90s, to keep violent prisoners from getting released on what politicians called technicalities. But now, experts say the law actually keeps innocent people in prison on technicalities — and most of the cases it affects have nothing to do with terrorism or capital punishment.
In these cases, the importance of finality outweighs any claims the prisoners might make, the court’s conservative majority said. “Serial relitigation of final convictions undermines the finality that ‘is essential to both the retributive and deterrent functions of criminal law,’” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote.
While many judges and prosecutors complain about the length of the appeals process, these days there are few defenders of the 1996 law — other than state attorneys general who prosecute appeals in federal courts. “Lots of people are stuck,” said Christina Mathieson, director of the National Habeas Institute, which advocates for prisoners in these cases. “The gates to the federal courts are closed.”
Here are five things you should know about the law known as AEDPA (“ed-puh”):
1. It was created after the Oklahoma City bombing.
The idea that federal courts could provide state prisoners with an added layer of protection from state government overreach dates back to the founding of our country. The framers envisioned federal judges as a safeguard to ensure rogue states weren’t ignoring the U.S. Constitution.
But in the 1990s, with crime rates and death penalty approval ratings both at historic highs, a small but vocal minority of Republicans had had enough of what they saw as prisoners filing endless, frivolous appeals that deprived victims of the finality they deserved. They wanted to set stricter filing deadlines, narrow the claims state prisoners could ask federal judges to review, and limit the power of federal judges to overturn state convictions.
When Timothy McVeigh bombed a U.S. federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, Republicans had recently swept the midterm elections, and Clinton saw an opportunity to work with incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich on a tough-on-crime initiative. The “Effective Death Penalty Act” — part of Gingrich’s legislative agenda — was rolled into Clinton’s Antiterrorism Act. The newly-created AEDPA passed both the House and Senate by wide margins, even as then-Senator Joe Biden sought, unsuccessfully, to hold back some of the law’s more onerous provisions, warning that it would keep innocent people in prison — though he ended up voting for it anyway.
2. The law makes it harder for many prisoners to win appeals.
Understanding why this is true requires a bit of background on how appeals work. Most criminal cases — more than 95% — go through state courts. But if someone wants to keep fighting their conviction, they can take the case to federal court.
But the 1996 law made it a lot harder to do that, adding complex technical restrictions for both prisoners and judges — changes that Brian Stull, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, likened to “chutes and ladders and Byzantine procedures that a prisoner has to navigate.”
As a result, far fewer prisoners were able to get federal courts to consider — much less agree with — their claims of prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate lawyering, and other problems with their trials. In 2009, one study found that before the 1996 law, between half and two-thirds of state prisoners sentenced to death had their arguments vindicated in federal court. Afterward, that number fell to 12%.
3. The law was intended to speed up death row appeals, but failed.
Before the 1996 legislation took effect, people in prison didn’t have an exact deadline for how long they could wait to bring their claims to federal court, according to Rob Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center.
“You just couldn’t unreasonably delay,” he said.
But now, prisoners have just one year to prepare and file their federal appeals. If that sounds like a long time, remember that death penalty cases often require intense investigations to track down witnesses and uncover new evidence. As a result, prisoners regularly lose their one shot at a federal appeal just because the clock has run out.
A Marshall Project investigation in 2014 found that 80 death row prisoners had missed the one-year deadline and their chance at an appeal in federal court — sometimes by just a single day — due to mailing or filing mishaps.
Despite the problems the one-year deadline can cause, it’s failed to correct the problem it aimed to solve: The average time between sentencing and execution has doubled since AEDPA passed.
4. It doesn’t just affect terrorism and death penalty cases.
The name “Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’ is a bit of a misnomer. Although the law affects both terrorism and death penalty cases, it also affects other criminal appeals, including everything from drug crimes to murder. By some estimates, more than 99% of prisoners affected by AEDPA have not been convicted of terrorism or sentenced to death.
In part, the law’s effect is so broad because of the long-standing lack of investment in indigent defense — when poor defendants are provided lawyers. Public defenders are generally “under-qualified, under-compensated, and under-resourced,” says Christina Swarns, Executive Director of the Innocence Project. This makes it hard for them to put up a vigorous defense at trial or on appeal, which requires tracking down witnesses, gathering documents and consulting experts. This lack of investment, in turn, makes mistakes and oversights more likely.
“There is no fair fight at the front end,” Swarns said. “For this demand for finality to have integrity, we have to make damn sure what we’re doing on the front end is working. And we know it is not.”
5. It makes federal courts less powerful.
AEDPA changed the balance of power in criminal appeals. Federal judges can no longer overturn state court decisions — even those that violate federal law — except in very narrow circumstances.
“If you’re a federal judge, you can’t disagree or overrule an obviously wrong ruling in state court simply because it wasn’t wrong enough,” says George Kendall, a death penalty attorney who has argued before the Supreme Court.
In the case the Supreme Court decided this week, a second man, David Martinez Ramirez, argued that the state of Arizona violated his Constitutional right to an effective lawyer when they assigned him an attorney who failed to look into the developmental delays and egregious abuse he suffered as a child — evidence a competent attorney would have used to persuade the jury that he deserved life in prison instead of death. An appeals court agreed Arizona violated the Sixth Amendment by appointing an attorney who admitted she was not “prepared to handle ‘the representation of someone as mentally disturbed as … Ramirez.’”
Still, the Supreme Court said his death sentence should stand because he didn’t follow the correct procedure in filing his appeals.
People vote at a polling station in Bogota during the Colombian presidential election, on May 29, 2022. (photo: CNN)
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Populist Head for June Runoff
With 98% of the votes counted, early results showed left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro with just over 40% of the votes, the populist former mayor of Bucaramanga Rodolfo Hernandez with 28%, and right-wing candidate Federico "Fico" Gutierrez with 23%.
Petro and Hernandez are now expected to face each other during a second round of voting on June 19th.
Polls closed late on Sunday with no major reports of violence or unrest.
"We have one of the oldest democracies in this hemisphere. We have one of the most solid democracies and it becomes solid because every four years we make an orderly transition," outgoing president Ivan Duque said on Sunday.
The vote took place in one of the most turbulent times in Colombia's modern history, with the country plagued by the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, social unrest and a deteriorating security situation.
Duque's own approval rating is currently at a low, with his tenure marred by his administration's handling of police conduct, inequality, and clashes between organized criminal groups.
Popular discontent has placed the left in sight of the presidency for the first time in the country's history. Still, the preliminary results represent of a setback for the 62-year-old Petro -- a former guerrilla fighter and mayor of Bogota -- who had been widely regarded as a leading candidate.
If elected next month, Petro would become Colombia's first leftist leader; his running mate Francia Marquez would also become the first Afro-Colombian to hold executive powers. Petro has proposed a radical overhaul of the country's economy to combat one of the highest inequality rates in the world.
Meanwhile Hernandez, 77, has appealed to centrist voters with a unique social-media campaign. The self-proclaimed "King of TikTok" declined to participate in several televised debates and gave few interviews to foreign outlets -- although he did appear on CNN, wearing his pajamas, saying that he was a "man of the people."
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tours the New London State Pier facility on May 20 to view progress on a hub for the offshore wind power industry in New London, Conn. (photo: Jennifer McDermott/AP)
The Gulf Coast's long reign as a hub for oil and gas production could help it secure a lead role in generating wind electricity and green hydrogen. But it will face some big obstacles — including cost.
The Gulf of Mexico has spent eight decades as one of the nation’s prime petroleum hubs, home to thousands of rigs, platforms and other structures that drill, store and ship fossil fuels. Now the Biden administration is reviewing 30 million acres of Gulf waters near Texas and Louisiana for potential wind turbines — a development that could dovetail with proposals to generate other clean energy sources, such as hydrogen.
Climate change isn’t the only reason to bring wind power to the Gulf, said former Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who unsuccessfully tried to launch the world’s largest offshore wind farm in the area nearly two decades ago — even prematurely proclaiming in 2006 that “the wind rush is on.”
“We still need alternative and renewable energy because [oil and gas] are a finite commodity,” Patterson said in an April interview. “We ain’t making anymore. Not fast enough anyway.”
Patterson, who calls himself a “drill, baby, drill” guy, added: “How long will the oil and gas last? I don’t know. Is it 50 years or 500 years? I don’t know. But at some point, it goes away.”
Patterson’s effort awarded two multimillion-dollar wind power leases off the Texas coast, but the projects never materialized after falling natural gas prices undermined their economics. Instead, the wind industry remained onshore to the vast open stretches of west Texas and the state’s Panhandle.
Challenges to potential Gulf wind projects persist, including the region’s frequent hurricanes and billions of migratory birds. The area’s typical wind speeds are also lower than those of the Atlantic Coast, the biggest haven for U.S. offshore wind projects.
But as East Coast states jockey to attract offshore wind developers and the jobs the new industry promises, Gulf proponents believe their region is ready to join the green push. The wind projects would help meet President Joe Biden’s goal of building 30 gigawatts of wind power capacity by 2030 — enough power for more than 10 million homes.
The federal agency tasked with planning and leasing offshore energy projects, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, outlined a schedule last year for seven offshore wind auctions across the country by 2025 — including in the Gulf of Mexico, with Texas and Louisiana as the states with the region’s highest wind capacity.
The Gulf Coast also has another advantage, BOEM Director Amanda Lefton said: companies and workers with decades of experience in producing energy offshore.
“We have a really mature base for energy. We’ve got the know-how,” Lefton said. “The people, the companies, the manufacturers that know how to do [Outer Continental Shelf] energy development are in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Her agency is expected to complete a draft environmental assessment this summer on how leasing would affect the Gulf.
The wind projects will also offer a test for the Biden administration’s pledges to guide a “just transition” away from the fossil fuel industry and to create a unionized workforce to build the clean energy economy. It will give oil and gas workers an up-close look at the kind of “good-paying” jobs the administration has often promised.
“When workers hear ‘just transition,’ I think they hear ‘We’re having a fancy funeral,’” said Rick Levy, president of the Texas AFL-CIO labor union. But he said this moment in history offers an opening “to make sure that when we set these offshore wind and other technologies on their course, that workers are able to share in the benefits.”
A ready-made workforce
Though the Gulf’s waters haven’t sprouted any wind turbines yet, leaders in Louisiana and Texas note that their companies have been critical to the early offshore wind projects along the East Coast.
Take the nation’s first U.S. commercial offshore wind farm, the Block Island project off Rhode Island, which began commercial operation in 2016: Gulf Island Fabrication, a shipyard in Houma, La., built that project’s turbine foundations. New Orleans’ LM Wind Power did its blade testing and design, and the Gulf region’s Keystone Engineering designed its four-pile jacket substructures.
In Brownsville, Texas, the marine shipbuilding firm Keppel AmFELS is helping construct the first offshore wind turbine installation vessel that can comply with the Jones Act, which requires goods transported between ports be carried on U.S.-flagged ships. Houston-based NOV, formerly National Oilwell Varco, designed the vessel.
Hayes Framme, government relations manager for North America at Danish wind giant Ørsted, said the Gulf’s existing oil and gas infrastructure represents “a historic expertise.”
“That really provides an advantage for the Gulf of Mexico when you think about shaving the learning curve and the cost curve for deploying offshore wind,” Framme said.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited the LM turbine facility on Tuesday, when she touted the role Louisiana can play in manufacturing and deploying offshore wind technology.
“We want to support the workers who have for 100 years powered this nation, and we want them to power this nation for the next 100 years while we power them with clean energy,” Granholm told reporters. “If we’ve learned anything from [Vladimir] Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the volatility of the fossil fuel markets globally, it’s that ultimately we do want to transition to clean, home-grown American energy.”
The Gulf Coast’s long experience with oil and gas can also help make its offshore wind projects more cost effective.
“The welding, the servicing, the engineering — it’s all easily translatable,” said Michael Hecht, the president and CEO of Greater New Orleans, an economic development group representing the region.
Hecht said jobs in the Gulf’s traditional oil and gas industry have declined during the past decade, creating a sense of urgency to make a transition that allows people to retain their skills.
The U.S. will need more than 2,100 wind turbines, at least 2,100 foundations, more than 11,000 kilometers of cables and five wind turbine installation vessels to achieve its offshore wind energy target while cutting reliance on offshore wind components from Europe and Asia, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory said in a study released in March.
That’s where the Gulf of Mexico is particularly well situated, said Hecht. “The real sweet spot over time is not looking for gold but selling the shovels to the gold miners by being the supply chain for offshore wind, like we are for Block Island,” he added.
In a 2020 analysis, NREL examined the potential of a 600-megawatt offshore wind project in Texas’ Port Arthur with a commercial operation date of 2030. It found that such a project could support about 4,470 jobs and $445 million in gross domestic product during construction, and an ongoing 150 jobs and $14 million annually from operations and maintenance labor, materials and services.
A recent report from the American Clean Power Association also said an offshore wind lease auction in the Gulf could generate as much as $114.7 million in revenue.
“One of the things that makes the Gulf area attractive is the fact that you’ve got a workforce that is accustomed to working on rigs in the ocean,” said Dennis Arriola, the CEO of the renewable energy company Avangrid. “It’s not like you have to build an industry. What you have to do here is basically help an existing industry evolve.”
The hydrogen connection
Gulf wind projects would also provide new opportunities for producing hydrogen — a fuel whose demand is expected to surge amid the search for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industries such as long-haul trucking, fertilizer manufacturing and aviation.
The U.S. produces about 10 million metric tons of hydrogen each year, most of which is produced from natural gas. But wind could aid efforts to produce so-called green hydrogen, by providing the electricity needed to separate the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in water. The Gulf could use wind turbines to generate that power, then use its vast array of pipelines to move the hydrogen to where it’s needed.
“With the Gulf of Mexico being an oil and gas region, there’s a lot of talk about other potential technological opportunities,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents domestic offshore oil, gas and wind industries. “You could have situations where offshore wind plays a role in providing power generation for a project that is producing hydrogen. Because that region has infrastructure for oil and gas, you’ll have a lot of rights of way already in place.”
James Cotter, general manager of offshore wind in the Americas at Shell, said the offshore wind industry in the Gulf would start from day one with an eye toward integrating other technologies.
“I don’t think you’ll see offshore wind farms that are ‘just an offshore wind farm plugged into the grid, thank you very much,’” he said. “I think what you’re seeing in the Gulf of Mexico is a blend of technologies.”
Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas announced in March that they intend to apply as a unit for funding from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law to establish a regional clean hydrogen hub. Congress included $8 billion in the bill for at least four new hydrogen hubs around the country to expand the use of clean hydrogen in the industrial sector.
As part of the states’ announcement, they highlighted the ready availability of hydrogen for demonstration in the region and the existing pipeline infrastructure that runs from Oklahoma through Arkansas to the Gulf.
Hecht, from Greater New Orleans, said the states hope to use the infrastructure money to “begin the case of green hydrogen,” while lowering the cost per kilogram. “We have this massive customer base that can pay for green hydrogen at scale, which will help bring down the per unit cost,” he said.
“There has been a ton of innovation in energy development in the Gulf states over the last decade,” Hecht added. “This is, in my mind, the next frontier — the next emerging market that we can all look toward.”
Offshore obstacles
A more daunting roadblock could be economics: Offshore wind projects are costly, which could prove most problematic for a state like Louisiana where electricity prices are low compared with the East Coast.
“In the Northeast, they have higher electricity rates, so they bring on expensive wind-generated electricity, and it doesn’t bump the rates as much,” said Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy.
The state is an industrial base, which has created “pretty low electricity rates,” Cassidy added. “That would change should we begin to rely heavily upon offshore wind.”
Already, other states are contending with the high price tags associated with offshore wind development. The Virginia attorney general’s office recently warned that a proposed offshore wind farm off its coast would have capital costs about two to three times the cost of solar resources and pose “significant risks” to customers.
The 2020 NREL study indicated that offshore wind projects in certain areas of the Gulf of Mexico could achieve economic viability after 2030.
Still, wind projects in much of the Atlantic Coast have purchase agreements in place with power customers — something the Gulf Coast is still working on.
A lease sale in the New York Bight earlier this year — the first offshore wind leases that the Biden administration offered — raked in more than $4 billion, shattering records. The leases will help meet New York state’s mandated target of 9 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2035 and New Jersey’s target of 7.5 gigawatts of offshore wind by the same year.
In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has set a goal of adding 5 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035. Edwards also launched a task force last year to coordinate commercial wind leasing proposals in federal waters off Louisiana’s coast.
“What makes Louisiana’s plan special, and the most attainable in my opinion, is that instead of working against oil and gas companies, we are working with them,” Edwards said in his March State of the State address. “In this state, that will look like offshore oil platforms and wind turbines side by side.”
Texas, however, is not pursuing offshore wind to the same extent, which is a hurdle for the industry, said Luke Metzger, the executive director of the environmental advocacy group Environment Texas. That’s even though a recent report from the group’s Research and Policy Center found that offshore wind could provide Texas with 166 percent of its electricity needs.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates Texas’ electrical grid, declined a request for an interview but said it does not choose or recommend sites for generation resources, which are instead decisions made by individual companies.
Entergy — the New Orleans-based energy company that distributes electricity across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — also hasn’t announced any commitments to buy wind power from the Gulf.
“Right now, solar is more cost competitive for customers and available in our system,” said Elizabeth Adams, vice president of Entergy’s enterprise planning. “But we do see wind and we are evaluating offshore wind as part of that wind portfolio, as an important part of a diverse portfolio as we get a decade or so out.”
She added that government support — including specific targets or tax incentives for certain technologies — can affect the cost for customers and allow Entergy to accelerate adding various technologies.
James Martin, the CEO of Gulf Wind Technology, a Louisiana-based company focused on improving the economics of wind farms, said he sometimes worries about whether offshore wind in the U.S. will receive adequate research and worker training money.
But even the challenges facing offshore wind present an opportunity to work closely with the oil and gas sector, he added.
“These are all really important for the oil and gas workforce to see and actually demystify wind because there’s a lot of feeling that it’s trying to replace oil and gas,” he said. “And it absolutely isn’t. It’s just another energy source.”
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