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26 May 22
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The legal battle over the gravel route could gut an environmental law that the 39th president called one of his highest achievements.
Now, the dispute is boiling over. And none other than former President Jimmy Carter, 97, has weighed in.
Residents of King Cove, and political leaders in the state, who argue that the road is needed to ensure that villagers can get emergency medical care, see the potential for a long-sought victory in a recent federal appeals court ruling that upheld a Trump-era land deal that would allow the project to move forward.
George Floyd artwork is seen on East 12th Street in Downtown Manhattan, New York City. (photo: AP)
Despite his death galvanizing nationwide racial justice protests, law enforcement continues to brutalize Black folks the same way as they ever did.
Darnella Frazier, who was just 17 years old at the time, captured the ordeal on her cameraphone and it immediately went viral on social media. It also galvanized the nation into action. Millions of demonstrators took to the streets—across the country as well as the world—to protest a stark reality that Black Americans have always known: we die at the hands of cops at higher rates and always for no reason.
Despite the breakthrough surrounding public consciousness, Black people are still being murdered on camera by cops with no end in sight.
Calls to defund the police led Minneapolis City Council members to announcing tentative plans to replace their local department, though voters rejected the ballot measure. No-knock warrants were banned in Florida, Oregon, Connecticut and Virginia while other states severely limited how they could be used.
A total of 17 states, including Minnesota, enacted legislation to ban or restrict chokeholds. Yesterday, President Biden signed an executive order designed to reform federal police practices and establish a national database of police misconduct. However, past tools that have been implemented—such as body cameras—do nothing to prevent cops from killing Black people.
“I know progress can be slow and frustrating and there’s a concern that the reckoning on race inspired two years ago is beginning to fade,” Biden said. “This is a call to action based on a basic truth: public trust, as any cop will tell you, is the foundation of public safety. Without trust, the population doesn’t contribute, doesn’t cooperate.”
What Biden has failed to address is that there is no fixing a historically racist and corrupt institution like law enforcement. That real action from Congress would be way more effective in addressing America’s policing crisis. That countless Black people continue to be murdered at the hands of cops and have rarely been held accountable.
Chauvin wound up receiving 22.5 years in prison for Floyd’s death and undoubtedly that sentence was an indirect result of public outrage. His punishment won’t bring Floyd back nor undo the trauma his loved ones—and Black people everywhere—have suffered.
As the Biden administration insists it’s making progress when it comes to how they treat Black folks, the ones they have murdered after the Floyd protests stand in contrast to these erroneous claims. Daunte Wright, Amir Locke, Jim Rogers, Patrick Lyoya, Tracy Gaeta and numerous other innocent victims lost their lives at the hands of racist police officers; officers who continue to face no repercussions for their heinous actions.
The legacy of George Floyd is a complex one. Two years later, not only has this country failed to honor his memory—it disrespects it by pretending to change a system that profits off the bodies of Black people.
Flowers and candles are placed outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Wednesday, May 25, 2022, to honor the victims killed in Tuesday's shooting at the school. (photo: Jae C. Hong/AP)
Javier Cazares, the father of fourth grader Jacklyn Cazares, who died in the attack, said he and other bystanders considered charging into the school themselves to get their kids.
Since Tuesday’s massacre, which left 19 children and two teachers dead, conflicting narratives have emerged about law enforcement’s response.
Javier Cazares, the father of fourth grader Jacklyn Cazares, who died in the attack, said he ran to the school after learning of the shooting and saw some officers still outside the building.
Upset that authorities did not appear to be moving into the building, Cazares said he and other bystanders wanted to charge into the school themselves.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to do,” he said to The Associated Press and later confirmed with NBC News.
“More could have been done,” Cazares added. “They were unprepared.”
Video footage from outside the school Tuesday appears to show distressed parents and locals reacting to news of the shooting.
One woman is heard yelling: “Get in! Get in! What is the f——— deal?”
“They’re all in there, the cops aren’t doing s--- except standing outside,” a man is heard saying. “You know they’re little kids, right? Little kids, they don’t know how to defend themselves.”
It’s not clear when the video was filmed or whether officers were inside the building at the time.
Robb Elementary serves second through fourth grade students in the small town of Uvalde, Texas, about 75 miles from the Mexico border, home to a large Latino community.
Another video appears to show multiple parents outside the school, some yelling with armed officers in military fatigues in front of them.
Witness Juan Carranza, 24, told The Associated Press that women by the school shouted, “Go in there! Go in there,” at officers after the attack began. He did not see those officers go in, he said.
State and federal law enforcement officials said Thursday they don’t have a timeline yet on the precise sequence of events from the moment the gunman crashed his grandmother’s vehicle until he was ultimately fatally shot by a Border Patrol officer.
Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw said in a news conference Wednesday that the shooter was at the school for up to an hour before law enforcement breached the classroom.
“It’s going to be within, like 40 minutes within an hour,” McCraw said.
“The bottom line is that law enforcement was there,” he continued. “They did engage immediately. They did contain him in the classroom. They put a tactical stack together in a very orderly way and of course breached and assaulted the individual.”
Uvalde City Councilmember Everardo Zamora told NBC’s “TODAY” show Thursday that while people outside accused police of inaction, officers were already in the building.
Zamora said he arrived at the school around 11:45 a.m. and already saw numerous officers and Border Patrol agents trying to push people back and prevent them from entering the building.
“This whole place was full of police officers,” he said.
“They were already in there. I seen them running in there," Zamora added.
NBC News reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety overnight seeking clarification on the timeline and comment on criticism over law enforcement’s initial response to the shooting.
In the Tuesday attack, gunman Salvador Ramos, 18, allegedly shot his grandmother, got in a car that crashed into a ditch by Robb Elementary and went inside the school with an AR-15 style long rifle, officials said Wednesday.
As he made his way to the west side of the campus, an officer with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District “engaged” him, but it’s unclear what that interaction was, McCraw said Wednesday.
“Gunfire was not exchanged” and “the subject was able to make it into the school,” McCraw said. It’s not clear why a school resource officer didn’t open fire.
Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Lt. Chris Olivarez said on CNN’s “New Day” Thursday that the gunman did exchange gunfire with two police officers who arrived at the scene. Both of those officers were shot.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that the gunman entered the school through a back door, walked down two short hallways and came into two adjoining classrooms where he locked the door and opened fire.
Officers from multiple units and agencies — including local police and a tactical team from U.S. Customs and Border Protection — arrived at the scene but couldn’t enter the classroom.
The door to the classroom finally was opened when the principal produced a master key, state and federal law enforcement officials said.
It’s unclear why officers couldn’t break down the door or how much time it took before they got inside the classroom.
The shooter was ultimately killed when members of a CBP tactical team entered the room and shot him.
Those who were killed and hurt were all in one classroom, Olivarez told CNN.
Chance Aguirre, 9, a third grade student at Robb Elementary recounted how he and fellow students hid in the cafeteria when they heard shots fired.
“Everybody was scared. We were all panicking because we didn’t know what was really happening,” he said in an account filmed by NBC affiliate WOAI of San Antonio.
He described seeing what felt like “thousands of police and border patrol” entering the cafeteria while he and others were hiding behind a stage in the room. “We had to leave the school,” he said.
Police have not shared a motive in the attack and said the gunman had no known history of mental illness or criminal history.
However, Abbott revealed he shared three warnings on Facebook shortly before the shooting. The warnings that were sent in a Facebook message before the shooting weren’t posted publicly — they were sent in private one-to-one messages discovered after the shooting, Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in a tweet.
The shooter had purchased guns and 375 rounds of ammunition just days after his 18th birthday, McCraw said.
The investigation into the shooting, the worst since Sandy Hook in 2012 in Newton, Connecticut, is ongoing.
On Thursday, the Uvalde Leader-News, a local newspaper, published a harrowing front page: an almost entirely black sheet save for the date “May 24, 2022” to mark the day 21 lives were lost in the school shooting.
Uvalde Justice of the Peace Eulalio Diaz said on MSNBC Thursday afternoon that “all 21 victims will be back in Uvalde this afternoon, back with their families, back where they belong,” a sign the identification process is wrapping up.
"Of course, it doesn’t stop," he continued. "Because at that point the families have to make arrangements with the funeral homes, and the grieving process continues."
In addition to the 21 fatal victims, 17 others were injured.
Dr. Lillian Liao, a pediatric trauma medical director at University Hospital in San Antonio, described treating four victims: three students and the gunman’s 66-year-old grandmother, who he shot before the school massacre.
“Broadly speaking, we were treating destructive wounds, and what that means is that there were large areas of tissue missing from the body, and they required emergency surgery because there was significant blood loss,” Liao told CNN.
Even in the wake of tragedy, there is little respite from gun threats.
Police in the Dallas suburb of Richardson found a pistol and a replica AR-15 in a teen’s car parked outside a high school Wednesday. That teen was arrested and charged with unlawful carrying of weapons in a weapon-free school zone, a felony, according to the Richardson Police Department.
Plaintiffs in the Juliana v. United States lawsuit attend court hearing in June 2019. (photo: Robin Loznak/AP)
A vital effort to establish a legal right to a living planet could soon move forward — but the Biden administration is trying to stop it.
If and when the case moves forward, however, it faces a major obstacle: President Joe Biden’s Justice Department.
The lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was brought by 21 young plaintiffs in 2015 and seeks to establish a federal, constitutional right to a livable planet. If the case is successful, any federal policies that enable more fossil fuel development could be challenged as unconstitutional.
But the Obama and Trump administrations both vehemently fought the lawsuit, and now those close to the case say that Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicated it will also use every procedural tool at its disposal to prevent the lawsuit from ever getting a trial.
“I have asked [them] very directly, if we win this motion, and we can move forward with the case, do you intend to go to trial?” Julia Olson, the lead plaintiff’s lawyer, told The Lever. “Their response has always been something along the lines of, ‘It is our position that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction and that this case should never go to trial.’”
Juliana v. United States was ambitious from the start. The plaintiffs are asking a federal court system, stacked with right-wing judges backed by the fossil fuel industry, to enshrine a constitutional right to a livable climate. But the plaintiffs point to what they’ve pulled off thus far as evidence it’s achievable.
For example, Oregon District Court Judge Ann Aiken wrote in a procedural ruling on the case in 2016, “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” That was the first time a federal U.S. judge declared that such a constitutional right existed.
The case has widespread support from public officials: Last year, six state attorneys general filed an amicus brief in support of the case, and 48 congresspeople wrote to the Biden Justice Department in support of the plaintiffs. The matter is also beginning to capture public attention; the lawsuit is the subject of a newly released Netflix documentary, “YOUTH v GOV”.
After the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case in 2020 because it concluded the plaintiffs lacked standing, the Juliana plaintiffs revised their complaint. Now, parties are waiting on a ruling from Aiken about whether the revised complaint addresses the Ninth Circuit Court’s concerns — a ruling that the plaintiffs’ lawyers expect will be favorable, allowing the case to again proceed.
But these same lawyers say they expect the Biden administration to fight them every step of the way, just like his presidential predecessors.
“There was zero shift when Biden took office, zero shift from the Trump administration,” said Olson.
Developments like this have been eye-opening for the young plaintiffs involved — such as Nathan Baring of Fairbanks, Alaska, who joined the lawsuit when he was 15 years old. Baring, now 22 and recently graduated from college in Minnesota, said his participation in the case “helped me grow up really quickly” — and not necessarily in a good way.
“I’ve realized climate change isn’t a partisan issue — I don’t mean that in a singsongy, everyone is supporting it way,” he told The Lever. “I mean the exact opposite.” Watching President Barack Obama, then President Donald Trump, and now Biden attempt to crush the lawsuit taught Baring a valuable lesson: “Just because a Democrat is in office, doesn’t mean that we suddenly need to stop fighting,” he said. “I stopped putting a kind of blind faith in the party label.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
On The Shadow Docket
In 2015, the young Juliana plaintiffs, with the support of the environmental non-profit Our Children's Trust, sued the Obama administration for pursuing policies that advanced fossil fuel expansion while knowing those policies threatened the habitability of the planet.
“For over fifty years, the United States of America has known that Carbon Dioxide (‘CO2’) pollution from burning fossil fuels was causing global warming and dangerous climate change, and that continuing to burn fossil fuels would destabilize the climate system on which present and future generations of our nation depend for their wellbeing and survival,” the original Juliana complaint began. “Defendants also knew the harmful impacts of their actions would significantly endanger Plaintiffs. Despite this knowledge, Defendants continued their policies and practices of allowing the exploitation of fossil fuels.”
Over the course of the next six years, the Obama and Trump administrations fought tooth and nail to delay the case and block it from ever going to trial.
After the case was filed in a federal court in Eugene, Oregon, Obama’s DOJ asked the court to dismiss the case. But in 2016, Aiken denied the government’s request, noting, “To hold otherwise would be to say that the Constitution affords no protection against a government’s knowing decision to poison the air its citizens breathe or the water its citizens drink.”
When Trump took office, his Justice Department repeatedly appealed Aiken’s ruling to the federal circuit courts and the Supreme Court — which handled those appeals on its notorious shadow docket.
The Supreme Court uses the shadow docket for supposed emergency actions, such as death penalty cases, so the matters can avoid the lengthy briefing and public hearing processes of typical Supreme Court cases. Opinions on shadow docket actions are not published, and the justices’ votes are usually usually not made public. Over the past few years, the court has also leaned on the shadow docket to quietly stop climate policy from taking effect — including Obama’s signature environmental legislation, the Clean Power Plan.
But the Juliana case stands out even among climate litigation: It has faced six rulings on the shadow docket — more than any other federal lawsuit. Those behind the lawsuit say this development illustrates the fossil fuel industry’s capture of American politics.
“ The U.S. Solicitor General and U.S. Department of Justice have together authorized what appears to be the most exceptional of legal tactics more often in Juliana v. U.S. than in any other case in history,” said Olson. “They have authorized the filing of an apparently unprecedented six petitions for writ of mandamus in Juliana v. U.S., to keep the 21 youth plaintiffs’ evidence of our government’s unconstitutional complicity in causing the climate crisis from ever seeing the light of day.”
The Juliana plaintiffs hoped that with Trump out of the picture, the lawsuit might finally see the light of day. But instead they found that during settlement negotiations last fall, the Biden administration was just as stubborn in its approach to the case.
“After months of good-faith efforts on the part of the youth plaintiffs to meet with representatives of the Biden Administration authorized to reach a meaningful settlement, the plaintiffs saw no reason to continue to pursue settlement discussions until the decision-makers for the federal defendants come to the settlement table in good faith,” Olson’s co-counsel, Phillip Gregory, told The Lever.
Now they are awaiting a ruling from Aiken on their motion to proceed to trial.
What The Government Knew
While there has been a substantial uptick in climate-related litigation over the past five years, the Juliana case is different from other U.S. climate lawsuits in at least two substantial ways.
First, while most climate-related litigation targets the fossil fuel industry for misleading the public or causing irreversible harm, this case names the federal government as the perpetrator. (Of course, fossil fuel industry influence plays a key role — just four oil companies spent nearly $375 million lobbying the federal government in the past decade.)
In particular, according to the suit, the federal government has limited the due process rights of its citizens by subsidizing and passing regulations to enable fossil fuel expansion for decades, all while knowing about the potentially catastrophic consequences of that development.
Evidence of what the federal government has known about climate change for the past five decades is detailed in a legal brief written by Gus Speth, an environmental lawyer who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council and, before that, led the Council on Environmental Quality under President Jimmy Carter.
Speth’s brief is littered with examples of government and independent scientific reports, dating back from before the Carter administration, detailing the evidence that burning fossil fuels was contributing to global warming and, if not stopped, would have catastrophic consequences.
For example, President Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued two reports on global warming caused by burning fossil fuels. One of the reports — titled “Can We Delay A Greenhouse Warming?” — predicted “an increase in temperatures of 2 degrees celsius by 2040, a temperature increase that, in EPA’s assessment, was guaranteed to produce substantial climatic consequences, including disastrous flooding,” according to Speth’s brief. That report attributed most of the warming to burning fossil fuels, and suggested ending coal use by the year 2000.
Reagan, of course, didn’t make much of this warning. His administration worked to dismantle the federal government's regulatory authority over such matters, including slashing and burning environmental laws and cutting funding for Carter’s solar energy program. But it wasn’t just Reaganites who ignored the warnings of scientists and continued to exacerbate the problem.
“Until Biden, every Democratic administration — not to mention the Republican ones — was enthusiastic about fossil fuels,” Speth told The Lever. “We should never think that during those 40 years, from 1980 to 2020, that the Democrats were on the right track in terms of getting out of the fossil fuel business.”
Speth pointed out that Carter had a renewable energy goal and spoke about the need for the U.S. to transition away from fossil fuels to achieve energy independence amid the 1979 oil crisis. Now, more than 40 years later, observers are saying the same thing in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has similarly caused a massive spike in energy prices.
In The Public Trust
The second way the Juliana case stands out is that the plaintiffs are arguing that the federal government’s refusal to address global warming is in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Most climate cases instead argue that environmental threats violate particular legal statutes, such as the Clean Air Act or Endangered Species Act.
The plaintiffs’ unique approach is based on the idea that the government has a more general duty to protect natural resources — a concept that rests on legal principles developed by Mary Wood, a professor at the University of Oregon law school.
Wood has argued that the government has an obligation to ensure a livable planet because of the “public trust doctrine,” a common-law principle that the U.S. Supreme Court declared exists at the state level in a seminal 1892 case involving the Illinois Central Railroad company. The public trust doctrine stipulates that the government is the steward of the nation’s natural resources, upon which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness depend.
Invoking the public trust doctrine in this case is a reflection of the gravity of the climate disaster, said Wood.
“There’s no way statutory law alone can solve this climate crisis,” Wood told The Lever. “They’re too narrow. They could do something if they were enforced, but the administration has not enforced them well over time.”
Instead, according to Wood, enshrining the public trust doctrine in environmental case law could form a constitutional basis for requiring the government to rapidly reduce carbon emissions.
As Wood noted in a journal article on the matter, “In this framework, survival resources remain quintessential public property belonging to posterity, and government’s clear responsibility is to manage such ecological wealth strictly for the endurance of society itself, for the benefit of both present and future citizens — not for the advantage of private parties or profiteers who may seek to despoil the trust and appropriate it for their own purposes.”
Baring, the young plaintiff from Fairbanks, is already seeing the impacts of his government violating that public trust. He explained that the Chinook winds, which carry warm air from the mainland United States up north through Canada and Alaska, have become more destructive due to climate change, and are increasingly wreaking havoc on his hometown. This winter, the winds caused such dramatic temperature swings in Alaska that the state Department of Transportation referred to the event as “Icemageddon.”
“The temperature can go from below zero to above freezing in a day, and then it will rain, and refreeze overnight,” he said. “There will usually be wind accompanying it, and when the trees are already weighed down by snow, all it needs is a 40 mile-per-hour wind and then trees fall on power lines and roads are impassable. Roofs cave in because of the weight.”
When asked about the future — the “posterity” that Wood deploys in her legal arguments — Baring shifted the conversation back to the present. He graduated college earlier this month, and is returning to Alaska to continue the climate fight.
“There’s so much dualism, especially in my generation, because we don’t have very much power and we are watching everything be gambled away,” he said. “But I always come back to this moment and think, ‘Well, what’s my obligation to change the trajectory, right now?’ This is our generation’s work to do.”
'Medicaid provided invaluable coverage to individuals during the pandemic.' (photo: Patrick T. Fallon/Getty)
An estimated 5.3 million to 14.2 million could lose Medicaid coverage when the public health emergency ends in July
According to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, an estimated 5.3 million to 14.2 million could lose their Medicaid coverage when the Covid-19 public health emergency ends on 15 July if it is not extended.
The analysts cited the wide range due to uncertainty on how states will respond to the end of continuous enrollment and how many people will lose coverage as a result. Medicaid enrollment is estimated to reach 110.2 million people by the end of fiscal year 2022, with enrollment expected to decline significantly when continuous enrollment ends.
Dylan Brown of New Jersey is disabled and relies on Medicaid for a home aide he requires around the clock to be able to get out of bed, dress and feed himself. He constantly worries about losing his Medicaid and Social Security disability insurance due to income and asset eligibility requirements and is very concerned about losing Medicaid when continuous enrollment ends.
“As I’ve been learning, trying to maintain my eligibility, you get a different story every time and you just have to hope one of them is right. And I’ve sort of been learning, none of them are really right,” said Brown.
Without Medicaid, he would have to rely on his parents, who work full-time, to provide the care he needs and pay out of pocket for care to the extent his family could afford it. These options, Brown argued, aren’t feasible as he is planning to start law school this fall at Rutgers University, and his parents shouldn’t have to uproot their lives to help him function, which is the responsibility of Medicaid.
“There shouldn’t be a cutoff date. There’s no reasonable argument for not giving disabled people the care they need to survive,” added Brown. “Regardless of what you’re feeling on whether people should have free healthcare, the disabled need it. There are no alternatives for us. It’s Medicaid or bust, and when the Medicaid rules are this convoluted and hard to keep track of, it almost feels like a full time job just keeping my benefits.”
During the pandemic, the federal government required states to continuously enroll Medicaid recipients into the program, providing $100.4 bn in new funds to cover the costs of doing so, halting coverage gaps and loss of eligibility for those who rely on healthcare coverage through Medicaid.
The current pandemic health emergency declaration is set to expire in mid-July. It is expected to be extended again, but an extension date has yet to be set by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
“Medicaid provided invaluable coverage to individuals during the pandemic. And there’s evidence that it helped insulate people from loss of coverage that is associated with job losses, especially in the early stages of the pandemic,” said Dr Eric T Roberts, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh. “Now, we face this unwinding of those provisions and a lot of confusion to beneficiaries and the public about how individuals will navigate that process and the schedule on which they will be required to do so. I think the great concern is that people lose their coverage without really knowing it, until they need it.”
Roberts said policymakers need to address these problems, as Medicaid determination and redetermination is complex already. Those complexities are magnified when states have to start conducting those determinations on such a large scale without the proper administrative and navigational assistance and resources in place.
“There is already a significant amount of administrative complexity to navigate Medicaid from the beneficiaries’ perspective and that can uniquely disadvantage people who have greater difficulty just navigating the healthcare system in general, the most vulnerable,” added Roberts.
Federal government subsidies to make healthcare plans more affordable on the insurance marketplace are expected to end on 31 December 2022, making health insurance plans more expensive, possibbly resulting in more Americans losing health insurance coverage because they can’t afford it.
Zachary Fusfeld of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a PhD candidate in epidemiology at Drexel University, is anticipating the loss of his Medicaid coverage when continuous enrollment ends, because his university stipend increase will put him over the income limit.
A type one diabetic who suffers from other illnesses, Fusfeld said he will have to rely on his student healthcare and pay out of pocket for copays on medications, medical supplies, and doctor visits when his Medicaid coverage ends later this year, the costs of which are not affordable and not covered by his pay increase.
He recently required surgery on his ankle and is worried about affording the physical therapy he requires, though he noted there are many people who are facing the loss of Medicaid and don’t have any sort of supplemental insurance coverage as he does.
“I’m really worried that I’m just not going to be able to properly manage my health and life in a way that I can stay as healthy as I need to be,” said Fusfeld.
Chris Bergh of St Louis, Missouri, relies on Social Security disability insurance for income and Medicaid for medical coverage. He’s concerned about the risk of losing medical coverage through Medicaid when the pandemic emergency is lifted.
“I’m at risk of losing coverage because I lost track of a piece of mail and the instructions in the letter were unclear about how I was supposed to proceed,” said Bergh.
He has repeatedly attempted to call Medicaid’s service hotline, but hasn’t been able to get through to speak to an actual person. Without Medicaid, he wouldn’t be able to see his doctors, afford his prescription medicine, or get dental care.
“I think they make this system harder than it has to be, in the hopes of weeding people out, just like other public assistance programs,” added Bergh. “I’m on social security so I have a fixed income and don’t make enough to cover the out of pocket cost of these things and still be able to eat and do other things.”
Displaced people in a refugee camp in Bamako. (photo: Andy Spyra/Der Spiegel)
Moscow has become deeply involved in Mali, with its notoriously brutal Wagner Group showing little signs of restraint. The country is collapsing and the people live in fear. Meanwhile, Germany's military may soon follow the French out of the country.
Ousman Diallo is a cowherd, a slender 50-year-old and the father of seven children. He is sitting in a courtyard in Bamako, the capital of Mali, as he tells the story of those horrific days. By the end of those five days between the 27th and the 31st of March, more than 300 people will be dead, many of them civilians – shot, executed. It will become the largest massacre of the Malian war, which has been raging in the country for a decade.
Diallo says that hundreds of people were streaming to the market on that Sunday to stock up on supplies for the nightly breaking of the fast. Villagers, farmers, men, women and children from Moura and the surrounding villages. Among them were, of course, also jihadis. Moura is essentially in the hands of Islamist fighters linked to the terrorist group al-Qaida. They have been collecting taxes, enforcing the Shariah and terrorizing the population for quite some time.
The helicopters arrived around 10 a.m., stirring up clouds of dust. It wasn’t uncommon for them to fly over the town on the way to other destinations, but this time, they hovered above the rooftops of Moura. "People were afraid,” says Diallo. And what happened next, he says, continues to haunt his dreams.
Four of the helicopters landed, with soldiers from the Malian army fanning out, accompanied by white, Russian-speaking troops, according to accounts from eyewitnesses and statements given to Human Rights Watch. High-ranking French military officers in Bamako confirmed to DER SPIEGEL that the Russians were members of the Wagner Group, the mercenary unit with close ties to the Kremlin – a force, founded by the Russian oligarch and Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, which has been deployed in eastern Ukraine, Syria, Libya and Mali, and which is feared for its brutality. Two helicopters, Diallo recalls, circled above the buildings like vultures. At times, the thunderous roar of their rotors drowned out the dry crackling of machine-gun fire.
Eyewitnesses say the Russians spread through the alleys of Moura with soldiers from the Malian army, hunting down jihadis. Restraint was apparently not a priority, and numerous civilians died in the hail of bullets. Both the Malian army and the mercenaries are well-known for crimes against civilians. Diplomats believe that the Wagner Group has around 1,000 fighters in the country. They sleep in police stations and elsewhere, and wear uniforms bearing no national flag. It has been reported, citing U.S. sources, that the Wagner Group is being paid $10 million per month for its presence in Mali.
What took place in Moura in late March could offer a glimpse into the future of Mali, and perhaps even of the entire region: The battles between regular troops and foreign mercenaries on the one side, and jihadis, gangs and militias on the other, have become increasingly intense. They leave behind traumatized civilians who often have no other choice than to flee. Moscow, by contrast, seems to be on track to inflict significant damage to Europe in West Africa at relatively low cost – humiliating France, Germany and their partners.
The war in Mali, a country that is almost three-and-a-half times the size of Germany and has a population of 20 million, began in 2012. That year, the Tuareg, who live in the desert, rose up against the central government in a fragile alliance with Islamist groups, overrunning broad swaths of northern Mali and spreading terror. In early 2013, France, which formerly controlled the territory as a colony, intervened at the request of Malian officials. Paris sent in troops who then pushed back the rebels and, following year, dispatched up to 5,100 troops to the Sahel as part of an anti-terrorism operation called Barkhane. The United Nations, meanwhile, introduced MINUSMA, a peacekeeping mission, in 2013, initially with a mandate for 12,600 "blue helmets” to be stationed in the country.
The German military, known as the Bundeswehr, also joined the mission in Mali and there are currently 1,027 German soldiers present in the north of the country, with the cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz resolving this month to increase the Bundeswehr presence to 1,400 troops – despite the escalating violence. But neither the Germans and the French, nor the UN peacekeepers, have been able to prevent the Islamists from once again going on the advance.
The government in Bamako has lost control of roughly two-thirds of the country and jihadis and gangs are now able to terrorize the population virtually at will. The violence has also spilled over into neighboring countries, particularly Burkina Faso and Niger. According to research conducted by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, an NGO, more than 23,500 people are thought to have been killed in the conflict between 2015 and February of this year, with 10,200 of those deaths taking place in Mali.
But the jihadis are only part of the problem. Because the state has pulled back from large areas of the country, residents have founded hundreds of self-defense militias. And because the Islamists primarily obtain new recruits from the Fulani people, some of these self-defense groups have essentially become ethnic militias. As a result, this war has also become a bloody conflict between the Fulani and other ethnic groups. All of this has been magnified by climate change and the reduction in the amount of fertile land in the region that has resulted.
The government’s weakness is both a cause and consequence of the conflict. Many Malians see their state as corrupt and view its institutions with deep distrust. The state also tends to people’s basic needs in fewer and fewer regions of the country.
In Moura, where the Russian soldiers hired by the government landed in late March, panic broke out after the first shots were fired. Hundreds tried to flee, but many were simply mowed down. Ousman Diallo says that he ran into his home and locked himself inside with his wife and children as the massacre started outside.
At some point, he recalls, there was silence. Diallo’s wife was crying and his children whimpering. "Are we all going to die? Are we all going to be killed?” his wife asked him over and over again. They hid indoors for two days before Diallo heard a distorted announcement over a loudspeaker: Those remaining in their homes, the voice said, would be treated as enemies.
At around 7 a.m., Diallo stepped out of his door, joining other frightened men in long robes standing in front of their homes. The soldiers herded them to the banks of the river to the east of the village. For five minutes, Diallo said, he walked past dead bodies lining the path for five minutes. He says he assumed that he was on the way to his own execution.
Hundreds of men were standing on the banks of the river. Diallo watched as soldiers selected some individuals and took them in small groups behind a low hill. He then heard gunshots. Those who disappeared behind the hill never returned. "I was under shock and just stared at the ground,” he says. Eyewitnesses later told Human Rights Watch of smoke rising from a site where the Russians and their allies likely burned corpses. Three mass graves were reportedly excavated as the killing continued. Only after several hours did the soldiers return to tell the men that they need not worry. "We’re only killing the jihadis and their allies.”
But Diallo knew that wasn’t true. Innocent men were also executed, he says, adding that he knew some of the men who disappeared behind the hill – and they weren’t jihadis, he says. "They were simple herdsmen. But what should I have said? Everyone was afraid for his own life.” The men were only allowed to return to the village five days after the arrival of the military.
A high-ranking European military commander in Bamako says that the Russian definition of who counts as a jihadi is extremely vague. "Sometimes, pantlegs that stop above the ankle suffices as an indication.” As a result, numerous innocents have paid for the war against the jihadis with their lives.
Mali is continuing to disintegrate before the eyes of the world. In May 2021, coup leader Assimi Goïta, who received military training in Germany and elsewhere, himself installed as the country’s president. Under his leadership, the relationship with France worsened. After the military junta hired mercenaries from the Wagner Group, Paris resolved to end its mission in the country, with current plans calling for the last French soldier to vacate by September. Elections are allegedly to be held within five years at the latest. Journalists have been expelled or are no longer allowed into the country.
The situation also isn’t improving for Bundeswehr troops in the country. In recent years, French soldiers have prevented attacks on the camp in Gao where the Germans are based almost every single night. Without protection from France, the mission will become riskier. According to a Bundeswehr risk analysis from February, the security situation is expected to worsen rapidly. The analysis determined that the Malian army will not be able to maintain pressure on the Islamists on its own. And the German mission could even come to an end this fall. The new operational mandate notes that the Bundeswehr mission could be adjusted following the French withdrawal if an acceptable security plan doesn’t materialize.
For France, the withdrawal is a defeat that has been coming for some time. The relationship between Paris and Bamako has been growing more difficult for years, with many politicians and activists in Mali, and most of the Malian population, blaming France for the failure of their government and turning it into a scapegoat for most of what goes wrong in the country. The French have repeatedly been accused of arrogance and of patronizing local partners. The president, Assimi Goïta, is considered a critic of the former colonial power, which is one reason many people like him. The information war that Moscow is waging against the West in Mali also appears to be helping him.
"Positioning yourself against France violates all logic. France wants us to be able to lead normal lives once again,” says Mogazi Samake, an opposition politician. He says that if Mali opposes France, it will find itself isolated, and that the junta’s only goal is hanging onto power. The Wagner Group, he contends, has "no real mission besides plundering the country.”
The Wagner Group’s approach hasn’t just been on display in Moura, but also further to the west, in Diabaly. According to European military leaders, the Russians first surrounded the town to search for Islamists, then began torturing, interrogating and executing people. "European partners impose conditions. The Russians don’t,” says a European diplomat. Which makes them a convenient partner for military leaders and dictators. Samake, the opposition politician, believes "the Russians don’t care about Africa. All they want is to embarrass the West.”
Leaders in the capital of Bamako are more than happy to ignore their brutality. The leadership of Yerowolo, a popular movement with close ties to the junta, repeats what the junta has long been claiming: "Wagner isn’t in Mali.” They only admit the presence of Russian "military trainers.” Yerewolo supporters essentially act as the civilian foot soldiers of the military junta and the movement can reportedly mobilize hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in a short amount of time. Yerewolo stands primarily for two things: hatred of the French and affection for Russia. European military leaders and diplomats believe that the movement is supported with a fair amount of cash directly from the Russian Embassy. Its leaders, who like to portray themselves as anti-corruption fighters on the side of the people have, say European leaders, grown quite wealthy of late.
The movement also enthusiastically indulges in conspiracy theories. According to one narrative, France instigated the conflict as an excuse to invade. Another one blames the conflict between herders and farmers in the country on French soldiers, who allegedly steal cattle to incite conflict. Such conspiracy theories are part of an information war. The state-owned media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik have become well established in West Africa: Some 622 African news outlets rely on the Kremlin mouthpieces, and 37 of those are active in Mali. Several Russian outlets also now have French language channels that allow them to reach as many people in Africa as possible.
As in the Central African Republic, Russia uses local media outlets in Mali to expand its influence. Since it became known in September 2021 that the Wagner Group was negotiating with the Malian state, many newsrooms and news portals have adopted a clearly pro-Russian tone and are further spreading the messages delivered by Russia Today and Sputnik. Moscow is apparently also paying off opinion leaders to help expand Russian influence in Africa.
Last October, Maliactu, a Malian website, published an interview with Alexander Ivanov, a representative of the Russian "specialists” active in the Central African Republic. "We are the target of an information war because we are destroying the neocolonial system,” Ivanov said. "We will continue to help those who need us.” He then praised the "capabilities” of the Wagner Group and condemned France because it "isn’t interested in the development of national armies.” Russia has apparently delivered six military helicopters to Mali since October, along with other weapons.
On a hot afternoon in late April, around 100 people – regional representatives and followers of the Yerewolo Movement – are gathered in a Bamako courtyard. They are holding signs demanding an end to the "French genocide” in their country. Yerewolo leaders are sitting on a stage and say they have an important announcement to make.
Just a few days prior to the gathering, videos and photos appeared on Twitter allegedly showing a mass grave near a former French military base in Gossi. The images show the bodies of around a dozen people, someone having provisionally covered them with sand. The men on the stage say that the images are proof of yet another atrocity committed by the French.
But there are significant doubts as to whether French troops are behind the killings. DER SPIEGEL was able to view drone footage from the French army showing what appear to be Wagner Group mercenaries burying the bodies in the sand. A high-ranking French military officer says that the bodies very likely belong to people killed by Wagner troops and that they then buried the remains in an attempt to cast blame on the French.
The bodies likely come from the village of Hombori, located southwest of Gossi. Just a few days before the video was taken, at least 18 people were allegedly killed there in a firefight after a Russian mercenary had apparently lost his life after a mine exploded. In response, the Wagner Group had some 600 people rounded up and detained, says the high-ranking military official, with 50 of them never to be seen again. The official says that they are relatively certain that some of them ended up buried in the sand near Gossi.
In Bamako, the people start chanting "We are the people!” and "France get out!” The leaders onstage also say that the UN peacekeepers must leave the country. Later, one of the Yerewolo men compares the former colonial power to the AIDS virus. "As long as it is in the body, nothing works. When it is gone, all is well again.”
It is an event right out of the populist textbook. And it comes as no surprise that Yerewolo leaders then demand that the country pull out of ECOWAS, the West African economic alliance, which imposed sanctions on Mali following the putsch. Doing so would be yet another serious blow to the country’s economy.
"Things are going to get worse,” a French military official tells DER SPIEGEL in Bamako. "But we will no longer be there as a scapegoat. At some point the people will likely rebel against Russia.” He also believes that the Wagner troops will continue to kill innocents on their hunt for Islamists – intentionally. "They pin responsibility for terrorism on the population.” He says that neither the mercenaries nor Moscow are very interested in Mali.
Russia, the military leader says, is primarily interested in unleashing as much chaos with as little effort as possible – and to cause as much trouble for the West as it can. And the way things are currently looking, the strategy has proven successful.
Methane flares near a well in the Bakken Oil Field. (photo: Orjan F. Ellingvag/Getty)
The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, outlined that short- and long-term actions must address both carbon and non-carbon emissions to prevent catastrophic warming.
The researchers used climate models to project global warming consequences with only decarbonization methods and found that a focus solely on carbon emissions actually led to an increase in warming. According to the study, a combination of emissions reduction strategies would keep warming below 2°C, while decarbonization only would lead to warming above 2.0°C by 2045.
This is not the first study to identify short-lived climate pollutants as a major problem. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2018 report also noted non-carbon dioxide emissions as a contributor to warming.
“Non-CO2 emissions contribute to peak warming and thus affect the remaining carbon budget. The evolution of methane and sulphur dioxide emissions strongly influences the chances of limiting warming to 1.5°C,” the report explained. “In the near-term, a weakening of aerosol cooling would add to future warming, but can be tempered by reductions in methane emissions.”
A more recent report from the IPCC was less clear on the importance of reducing short-lived climate pollutants, focusing more on long-term warming and carbon emissions, despite rapid short-term warming influenced heavily by non-carbon sources. The study authors want to draw more attention to both short- and long-term warming as well as both decarbonization efforts and mitigation tactics for other greenhouse gases.
“If you’re going to pass one and a half degrees in 10 years, and then you are going to pass two degrees in about 25 years, that’s what we need to focus on,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, study co-author and an atmospheric and climate sciences professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as reported by Inside Climate News. “We need to cut the short-lived pollutants so that there are no short-term catastrophes in the next 25 years, without losing track of the long term.”
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