11 June 22
We Do Not Need A Windfall, But We Desperately Need a Budget
RSN runs on a fraction of what it takes to run the major corporate newsrooms. We do on a shoe string what majors require hundreds of millions to achieve.
We can do great things with a modest budget. But without it we cannot function.
Need some assistance, ASAP.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
11 June 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
“Jared helped create what then morphed into the Rudy clown show,” one source tells Rolling Stone
Nowadays, as Kushner seeks investments for his firm and attempts to launder his image, the former senior White House aide would like everyone in the public and the press to believe he had nothing to do with the January 6 insurrection or Team Trump’s most scandalous efforts to overthrow the American democratic order. However, there is one problem: Kushner absolutely was intimately involved with Trump’s scheme to overturn President Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election. It’s just that he bailed on the mission early to save himself.
According to four people familiar with the matter, in the week following Election Day in early November of that year, Kushner took charge in overseeing the development of plans to keep Trump in office — Kushner just wasn’t publicly ostentatious about it in the way Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others were. During that first week, Kushner repeatedly met with Trump and other high-ranking aides to the then-president to discuss and map out possible strategies for multi-pronged legal battles and a scorched-earth messaging war against the victorious Biden campaign, the knowledgeable sources tell Rolling Stone.
Despite all the strong evidence to the contrary, Kushner told Trump that there could still be a path for the then-president in a number of critical states, including Arizona, that had already been called for Biden. In those early days of the scheme to overturn the election, two of the sources say, Kushner also personally encouraged Trump to fight on and ignore people who were saying it was over, and to stick to the burgeoning plans and court challenges spearheaded by the 2020 campaign attorneys and senior staff. Kushner was, of course, in the room with these fellow Trump lieutenants when the plans were first being crafted. (Axios reported this at the time as the trusted son-in-law urging Trump to explore and pursue “legal remedies” to the election results.)
Earlier this week, The New York Times published an article titled, “How Jared Kushner Washed His Hands of Donald Trump Before Jan. 6” — renewing questions of just how complicit Kushner was in his father-in-law’s months-long attempted coup d’état.
“Jared was directly involved,” one of these sources, a former senior Trump aide who worked on the effort to nullify the election outcome, said. “There was a [brief] window…when it seemed like he was positioning himself to be the Jim Baker of this fight … It didn’t last long. He backed away from it, but he was there and got his hands dirty like everyone else did.” (Baker, a towering figure in the Republican Party, helmed the legal team for George W. Bush during the chaotic Florida recount that ultimately handed Bush the presidency.)
“Jared helped create what then morphed into the Rudy clown show,” the source added.
Rolling Stone’s calls and messages to Kushner were not returned on Thursday. But five days after Election Day 2020, and the day after major outlets had already called the election for Biden, Trump adviser Jason Miller told The Daily Beast: “Jared has been more hardcore in fighting back on this than anybody.”
Regardless of the depths of Kushner’s participation at that time, the four sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes details, broadly agree that by the second or third week of Trump’s anti-democratic crusade, Kushner’s involvement had mostly, if not wholly, evaporated. Throughout the entirety of the Trump presidency, Kushner had a reputation — one that was a reliable, recurring source of much derision and inside-humor within the upper ranks of the administration — for suddenly vanishing from a major policy or political initiative when the going got tough or the public-relations baggage swelled too large. Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly, for one, bitterly viewed Kushner and his wife and fellow senior adviser Ivanka Trump as annoying dilettantes.
And as the Giuliani-led antics and conspiracy-theory-mongering grew so outrageous and embarrassing — including a mid-November 2020 press conference during which Giuliani’s hair dye appeared to melt off his head, and MAGA lawyer Sidney Powell went as far as to implicate the long-dead Hugo Chavez in the fictitious 2020 “FRAUD” conspiracy — to some of the self-aware denizens of Trumpland, Kushner saw his cue to quietly exit. He, of course, continued to appear at least superficially supportive of his father-in-law’s mission, and refused to speak out about the doomed effort. Kushner, despite some pleading by his friends for him to do something to talk Trump down from his disastrous and eventually violent attempt to stay in power, didn’t even lift a finger to try to play the allegedly moderating role in the West Wing that he for years falsely cultivated a reputation for assuming.
In a New York Times piece published Wednesday, the paper reports, “While the president spent the hours and days after the polls closed complaining about imagined fraud in battleground states and plotting a strategy to hold on to power, his daughter and son-in-law were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency.” Certain corridors of Trumpworld didn’t take kindly to the piece.
“If the plan had worked, and if Pence had done what the [former] president wanted him to do, Jared would be jumping up and down … or calling reporters to take credit for being the man behind it all [and] the guy who made it all happen,” says a former senior Trump administration official who was present for the tumultuous presidential transition. “Come on. Spare me.”
As for U.S. lawmakers and staffers investigating the deadly Capitol riot that resulted from Trump’s efforts, the January 6th committee has actively sought information related to both Jared and Ivanka since at least January, and requested that the National Archives turn over all White House documents and communications from the day of the attack relating to the couple, among other Trump aides. Kushner met with the committee for a lengthy interview in late March, a conversation described by Democratic members of the panel as “helpful” and “useful” in subsequent media interviews. Ivanka appeared for an interview with the committee days later.
Indeed, the House panel investigating Trump and the Capitol assault hopes to use Kushner’s own words, and video of his interview with the committee, against his own dad-in-law. On Thursday night, during the primetime inaugural public hearing of the committee, the assembled lawmakers aired a previously unreleased clip of Kushner telling investigators that he felt the resignation threats during that time from then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and others were merely “whining.” Not long after that video aired, The New York Times reported that “Mr. Kushner’s words enraged Mr. Cipollone’s former colleagues, many of whom traded messages as they complained to reporters and one another as the hearing went on that the former president’s son-in-law was ‘arrogant.’”
Since leaving office in January, Kushner has kept a low profile and launched a new investment firm, Affinity Partners, but the fund has once again landed him in the crosshairs of congressional investigators. In April, the House Oversight committee demanded documents from Kushner and his firm as part of what it said was an investigation into whether Kushner improperly secured a $2 billion dollar investment for the fund from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman based on his former role in government.
Gun law advocates participate in a rally to protest gun violence. (photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Protesters will be participating in more than 450 rallies across the country Saturday in an effort to advance "common-sense national and state gun safety restrictions," organizers said.
Protesters are turning out to more than 450 rallies nationwide, with the largest gathering taking place in Washington D.C., which started at noon.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser drew loud cheers from the crowd as she called for common sense gun laws, including mandatory background checks and a ban on assault rifles.
"We don't have to live like this," she said, adding that people in other countries "don't live like this."
The rallies were organized by March For Our Lives, a youth-driven organization first created by students who survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school mass shooting in 2018.
In Parkland, Florida, where the movement began, hundreds of demonstrators had gathered outside the Pine Trails Park Amphitheater Saturday morning to demand background checks on all gun sales, the implementation of "red-flag" laws and raising the minimum age to buy semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.
As gun restrictions talks remain ongoing in Capitol Hill, the House passed a so-called "red-flag" bill Thursday that would allow a judge to take firearms away from a person who poses an imminent danger to themselves or others. The legislation, which drew five Republican votes, is viewed as having a greater chance than some of the other legislation of advancing in the evenly split Senate.
On Wednesday, the House also passed a series of new gun measures, including raising the minimum age to buy semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. That legislative package is all but guaranteed to fail in the upper chamber due to Republican opposition.
“We need to put aside our politics and save our kids and loved ones from this senseless and horrific violence before it impacts them,” David Hogg, a 2018 graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the cofounder of March for Our Lives, said in a statement ahead of the rallies.
According to Serena Rodrigues, a national coordinator for March For Our Lives, the organization participated in 71 meetings with elected officials on Capitol Hill this past week.
“I feel confident that we’ll get something probably like universal background checks," she told NBC News. "But we’ll keep pushing for more."
Since March for Our Lives last organized nationwide protests in 2018, mass shooting have become increasingly more common.
At least 254 mass shootings have taken place in the U.S. so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. These include the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings.
"We’re coming out of Covid and people are trying to go back to normal, get back into schools and into work, but I think as a society right now, we’re realizing that this is not the normal we want to go back to," Rodrigues said.
In Buffalo, a white gunman killed 10 people and wounded three other in a local supermarket on May 14 in a shooting authorities deemed as a "racially motivated, hate crime."
Garnell Whitfield Jr. whose 86-year-old mother, Ruth, was gunned down during that attack, said he was at the D.C. protest to demand sensible gun reform.
“We hear a lot about prayer and prayer is wonderful,” he said on stage in front of a crowd of several hundred people. “But prayer requires action. You pray and then you get up and walk.”
Ten days after the Buffalo shooting, 19 children, mostly fourth graders, and two teachers were killed by a gunman who entered an elementary school in Uvalde on May 24.
The President of March For Our Lives in Parkland, Zoe Weissman, told MSNBC she was rehearsing for a play when she heard about the tragedy at Uvalde.
The 16-year-old survivor of the Parkland shooting recalled feeling devastated by the news, saying she will continue fighting against gun violence to prevent more children from being killed and from living with the life-long trauma that comes with surviving a mass shooting.
In 2020, guns became the leading cause of death among young people ages 1 to 19 in the U.S. than vehicle crashes, drugs overdoses or cancer.
Zoe Touray, who survived a shooting at the Oxford High School in suburban Detroit nearly seven months ago, showed up to the rally in Washington hopeful that this time something will be done to save more lives.
“I wasn’t old enough to remember the last march. I probably was in middle school," Touray said. "So, to be able to see it all come to fruition in person, it gave me so much more optimism.”
Women watch and embrace each other as bodies are exhumed from a mass grave and inspected by the authorities for possible war crimes in Bucha. (photo: Laurel Chor/SOPA Images/Sipa USA)
The United Nations is demanding an independent investigation into charges of rape and sexual assault committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. We speak with Pramila Patten, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, who is just back from Ukraine and told the Security Council Monday about multiple shocking reports of rape and assault — all of which Russia has since denied. “We are dealing with a crime which is chronically underreported,” says Patten, who emphasized the need to establish safe spaces for victims to come forward and ensure no perpetrators be granted amnesty through a potential ceasefire or peace agreement. We also speak with Oksana Pokalchuk, executive director of Amnesty International Ukraine, whose organization is investigating the alleged war crimes.
PRAMILA PATTEN: We have all heard the accounts of horrific acts of sexual violence, reports of gang rape, rape in front of family members, sexual assault at gunpoint, women who have become pregnant as a result of rape, as well as the reports of refugee women and children being exploited by traffickers and predators who view this turmoil not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to abuse the vulnerable. …
We have debunked the insidious myth that sexual violence in conflict is inevitable. Now we must demonstrate, through proactive protection and empowerment efforts, that it is indeed preventable.
It is time to move from best intentions to best practice to catch the women and girls who may otherwise fall through our safety nets. Let us not forget that while the eyes of the world are on the Ukrainian women and girls who are caught in the crossfire, who are living in terror in occupied territories, and who have been deported or forced to flee their homes and homeland, they are looking to us. We must not and cannot fail them.
AMY GOODMAN: Russia has rejected the accusations that its troops committed sexual violence in Ukraine. This is Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N.
VASSILY NEBENZIA: [translated] The ratcheting up of accusations of Russian service personnel committing crimes of a sexual nature since the very beginning of our special military operation in Ukraine has become a favorite tactic of the Kyiv regime and our Western colleagues. We all recall how in the Ukrainian and Western media, and also in this room, our soldiers were repeatedly accused of sexual violence with reference to certain reports containing allegedly reliable data. However, no evidence was provided.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by two guests. Pramila Patten, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, she recently returned from Ukraine. Also with us, Oksana Pokalchuk, she is executive director of Amnesty International Ukraine. She’s been investigating war crimes by Russian forces since the full-scale invasion began at the end of February.
Pramila Patten, let’s begin with you. You’re just off your address to the U.N. Security Council. Talk about what you found in Ukraine.
PRAMILA PATTEN: Well, you will all recall that it was only a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that the first reports of sexual violence began to surface. And as the conflict passes the 100-day mark, unfortunately, we continue to receive reports of sexual violence.
I was in Ukraine from the 1st to the 5th of May, and I also went to Poland and Moldova. I did not meet with victims of sexual violence in Ukraine — I was in Lviv and Kyiv — for obvious reasons: security. But I met with civil society organizations who were frontline service providers who have engaged with victims. I also met with families of victims. And, of course, I met with government officials and signed a cooperation agreement.
But what I can tell you is that the reports — credible reports — from civil society organizations, but also from government officials, like the Office of the Prosecutor General or the vice prime minister, Olha Stefanishyna, with whom I signed the framework of cooperation, shared a lot of information with me about brutal sexual violence being committed, significantly against women and girls, but also against men and boys.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Pramila, could you talk about the fact that, as many have pointed out, the number of sexual — incidents of sexual violence is likely massively underreported? Because a representative of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund, for example, said that sexual violence, in particular, is a hidden crime, because many women and girls will likely never come forward and report what’s happened.
PRAMILA PATTEN: You are absolutely right. And that’s why I didn’t wait for accurate bookkeeping, hard data, to react. And that’s why I went to Ukraine, because we are dealing with a crime which is chronically underreported. And that’s my concern. And for me, going to Ukraine was to send a strong message, especially to victims, to urge them to break the silence, because their silence is the perpetrators’ license to rape.
And as of the 3rd of June, only 124 reports of sexual violence are verifiable, are of a verifiable nature, and are being looked into by the human rights monitoring of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. And that verification process is ongoing. And you can imagine that we — due to security and access constraints, the verification process is taking time. But in 102 cases, perpetrators are reported to be Russian Armed Forces, and two cases from Russian-affiliated groups.
But, for sure, that we are only dealing with the tip of the iceberg. And this is why I signed the framework of cooperation and discussed with the government in Ukraine, but also in Moldova and Poland as refugee-receiving countries, the need to establish safe spaces which will be conducive — to provide a conducive environment for the victims to report, because due to stigma and a host of reasons, this crime is very much invisible.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I’d like to bring in Oksana Pokalchuk, a representative — you are the executive director of Amnesty international Ukraine. Your organization and you, yourself, have been carrying out an investigation on possible war crimes, including sexual violence, but broader war crimes, in and around the area of the capital Kyiv. Could you tell us what you’ve found?
OKSANA POKALCHUK: Yeah, sure. So, the pattern of crimes committed by Russian forces in the Kyiv region — but not only, of course — that we have documented includes both unlawful attacks and willful killings of civilians. So, we have to face it that a lot of killings, and most of them, were just apparently extrajudicial executions. So it was a straight will to kill people there.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And explain the areas you were in. Where all did Amnesty conduct investigations of this nature?
OKSANA POKALCHUK: Sure. Our last report was about the Kyiv region. So, we were in different areas around Kyiv and which were in occupation for more than two months. So it was Borodyanka, Bucha, Hostomel, Stoyanka and many, many other cities and villages around Kyiv. So, for example, in Borodyanka, we found at least 40 civilians were killed in disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks which devastated an entire neighborhood and left thousands — really, thousands — of people homeless. So, in Bucha, for example, we documented 22 cases of unlawful killings by Russian forces. And yeah, as I said before, most of them were apparent extrajudicial executions.
AMY GOODMAN: And how do you respond, Oksana Pokalchuk, to Russia saying you haven’t provided the evidence?
OKSANA POKALCHUK: Well, how I would respond? We have evidences. And as far as I know, there are a couple of — there are a couple of cases that are already under the investigation by Ukrainian authorities — if you’re talking about sexual violence, of course, because it’s much more when we talk about other war crimes. But when we come back to the sexual violence, as far as I know, it’s a couple of cases are under the investigation. So I hope that soon we will see open and transparent court proceedings on the matter and it will be [inaudible] bring to justice.
AMY GOODMAN: Pramila Patten, I wanted to ask you about the whole debate within Ukraine about how explicit to be. And you, I’m sure, have dealt with this around the world. I mean, there’s been the firing of a human rights official in Ukraine for being extremely explicit about the rape of children. And there’s a whole discussion within the human rights and journalistic community in Ukraine. Can you talk about how to talk about this?
PRAMILA PATTEN: Well, this is one of the areas where my office and the United Nations system will be providing support to the Ukrainian government. And that’s part of the framework of cooperation, which I have signed, that is providing support in the area of justice and accountability.
We are dealing with a very sensitive issue. And we know why victims do not come forward to report, and one of the reasons being the retraumatization and the revictimization. And there are guiding principles on how to engage with victims, on how to document evidence and how to investigate. And one of the fundamental principles is the “do no harm” principle, which is extremely important.
And this is precisely why I will be deploying, following the framework of cooperation that I signed on the 3rd of May — will deploy staff with expertise on sexual violence documentation, investigation, prosecution. They will be embedded not only in the Office of the High Commissioner’s human rights monitoring team but also in the Office of the Prosecutor General to support the investigation, to support the documentation, to support the collection of evidence before the evidence trail goes cold. This is crucial. There will be no justice if that stage goes wrong.
And we have seen a lot in the past, whether it is in Iraq or with the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar, who have been interviewed, for example, over 15 times, with all the inconsistency that comes along, then making cases untenable in a court of law. So, we want to reverse that culture of impunity into a culture of justice and accountability. We have to get it right. And I’m very encouraged by the multiplicity of efforts to bolster justice, to bolster accountability.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Pramila, could you say — you’ve said explicitly that any peace agreement, whenever it comes, should state explicitly that there will be no amnesty for perpetrators of sexual violence. Could you explain why you think sexual violence should be treated differently from other war crimes, and in what instances amnesty has been granted in areas of conflict where sexual violence has been prevalent?
PRAMILA PATTEN: Well, history has taught us that during multiple peace negotiations, the first item that has been on the negotiation table — where, of course, women are conspicuously lacking — the question of amnesty for crimes of sexual violence has always been on the table. And there are contexts where the option was women or peace. And as usual, women get sacrificed.
So, I am very encouraged by the fact that the Ukrainian government was very receptive to my suggestion of this area of priority, this pillar in the framework of cooperation be included, that in the event of any ceasefire agreement or peace agreement, that there will be specific provisions to ensure that there is no amnesty for sexual violence crimes, because war have limits, and international humanitarian law makes it very clear. And sexual violence can never be excused, can never be amnestied. And we have a solid normative framework with resolutions of the Security Council on the question of amnesty.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Oksana, there have been, of course, as you know, accusations of alleged war crimes — although, of course, much fewer in number — by Ukrainian forces. What do you know about those allegations? And what have you found in your investigations, alleged war crimes by, of course, Russian forces, but also Ukrainian forces?
OKSANA POKALCHUK: We are now in a situation when a lot of territories where allegedly some war crimes were committed or are now committing, they are under occupation. So, we need to wait for the moment where we, as Amnesty, will be, and, of course, Ukrainian and international investigators will be able to reach this area and to do investigation on the ground, because without being on the ground, without collecting proper evidences, it is impossible to say about war crimes. I mean, we can’t — in my opinion, we can’t presume it.
Of course, there are no war where there are one party of the war would be — I don’t know — will not violate international humanitarian law, and another part will. Of course, we have to face that, of course, Ukrainian army — I mean, we will find these evidences. But so far, we don’t have enough evidences to talk about it in legal terms. So we have to wait for liberation of occupied territories, come to the territory and just gather information, gather evidences there.
AMY GOODMAN: Pramila Patten, as we wrap up, Ukraine was already one of the leading countries in Europe when it came to human trafficking. You also have addressed this issue. If you can describe what you saw and how this issue should be addressed?
PRAMILA PATTEN: Well, with the displacement of close to 14 million people in the past hundred days, mostly women and children, with 6.8 million of women and children, mainly, having fled across borders, what I see is a human trafficking crisis within a humanitarian crisis. And human trafficking is not a separate issue. It is a symptom of a refugee crisis that breeds the exact conditions that human traffickers prey upon: economic impoverishment and a lack of better options. And we know from 2014, even in Ukraine and in the region, how human trafficking thrives. And human trafficking is one of the most serious organized crimes of the day, transcending cultures, geography and time. And we also know that for predators and human traffickers, war is not a tragedy, it is an opportunity.
What I saw in both Moldova and Poland, where I visited reception centers, is that the majority of the refugees are living with host communities. And there are grave security and protection concerns in both countries. These reception centers are run by volunteers, with only a bare-bone presence of the United Nations agencies. There is a complete lack of oversight in terms of accommodation offers by private citizens, a lack of oversight of transportation arrangements. These are really serious concerns. The reception centers, although the premises have been offered by the local government, they are being run by a multiplicity of actors volunteering to provide services. And from what I saw, they have little or no training or experience in supporting victims, victims of trafficking or persons at risk of trafficking.
And what is also clear, in all fairness, is that these refugee-receiving countries are overwhelmed. And they urgently need support to be able to allocate sufficient resources to support the responses, given that even service providers and NGOs have limited capacity to sustain an adequate and safe level of response.
So, I think what is needed, what is critical, is that the international community mobilize to ensure that effective protection systems are in place in all transit and destination countries and at all border crossings. And given the challenges of this transnational organized crime, as well as the very complex nature and multiple dimensions of human trafficking, the response requires an integrated and holistic response, a concerted cross-border response by humanitarian partners, law enforcement agencies, border forces, immigration officials and political leaders. On Monday, when I briefed the Security Council, I urged for a regional European compact to be led by the European Council. And I have the firm conviction that this is what is required at this point in time.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Pramila Patten, we want to thank you for being with us, U.N. special rapporteur on sexual violence in conflict, and Oksana Pokalchuk, executive director of Amnesty International in Ukraine.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent instructs asylum-seeking migrants as they line up along the border wall after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico on a raft, in Penitas, Texas. (photo: Adrees Latif/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: Study Finds Supreme Court
on Far Right of American Public
U.S. citizen Robert Boule is the owner of the “Smuggler’s Inn” in Blaine, Washington — a town near the Canadian border. The Smuggler’s Inn has long been known to law enforcement as a potential site of illegal border crossings. As the Court mentioned in a footnote in its decision, Boule was recently convicted in Canadian court for engaging in human trafficking after pleading guilty to trafficking 11 Afghanis and Syrians into Canada. Boule has also worked as an informant for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The claims Boule sought to bring against the federal government stemmed from an altercation between U.S. Border Patrol agent Erik Egbert and Boule in 2014. Egbert had heard that a suspicious guest was due to fly in from Turkey and check into the Smuggler’s Inn. Egbert, who did not have a warrant, drove to the inn and waited.
When the guest arrived, Egbert entered Boule’s private driveway and attempted an interception. Boule asked Egbert to leave, but Ebert refused, and the confrontation became physical. Boule refused to move away from Egbert’s car, and Egbert grabbed him and pushed him onto the ground.
Egbert ultimately concluded that the guest was lawfully present in the United States. Boule, however, complained about Egbert’s actions to a supervisor and later sought medical attention for back injuries he said he suffered as a result of the incident. Egbert then allegedly retaliated against Boule in a number of ways, including calling the Internal Revenue Service and asking the agency to perform a tax audit on Boule. According to Boule, compliance with the audit cost him $5,000 in accounting fees, and the audit itself yielded no evidence of wrongdoing on Boule’s part.
Boule waged a federal lawsuit claiming that Egbert violated both his Fourth and First Amendment rights. The claims, known as “Bivens claims,” are federal analogs to a 42 U.S. Code § 1983 civil rights action against state actors. They require that a plaintiff either assert an established set of rights that were violated — or that a court allow an “extension” of allowable Bivens claims. The name of these claims is derived from the 1971 SCOTUS case Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, in which SCOTUS found an implied cause of action against federal officials who violate constitutional rights.
Justice Clarence Thomas began the Court’s 17-page opinion by reminding readers that the high court has consistently (indeed, 11 times over the past 42 years) declined to extend Bivens. Primarily, Thomas and the majority rested their holding on the special nature of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents’ work. The Court reasoned that because CBP handles cases involving national security risks, Egbert’s actions fall outside the scope of Bivens‘ reach.
Thomas included the photo below in his opinion to underscore his observation that “any person could easily enter the United States or Canada through or near Boule’s property.” The justice expounded on the inn’s history of cross-border smuggling of everything from people to myriad drugs to money to “items of significance to criminal organizations.”
Thomas, clearly no fan of Boule’s, detailed, “Ever the entrepreneur, Boule saw his relationship with Border Patrol as a business opportunity.” According to Thomas, Boule would host unlawful entrants at his inn, then charge for shuttle service as he drove them around while simultaneously informing Border Patrol about anyone of interest.
Thomas explained the incident between Boule and Egbert as a tale born of good law enforcement. When Boule told Border Patrol about a Turkish national, “Agent Egbert grew suspicious, as he could think of ‘no legitimate reason a person would travel from Turkey to stay at a rundown bed-and-breakfast on the border in Blaine.'” Thomas included the photo below of the accommodations at the Smuggler’s Inn to emphasize the reasonableness of Egbert’s suspicion.
Thomas then warned against judiciary overreach. Allowing Bivens actions in new categories should be a “disfavored judicial activity,” Thomas said, and argued that Congress is the appropriate entity to do so. The justice held fast to his message of judicial restraint, and wrote, “Congress is better positioned to create remedies in the border-security context, and the Government already has provided alternative remedies that protect plaintiffs like Boule.”
Thomas rejected the claim that Egbert’s actions as a CBP agent should be treated the same as any other law enforcement officer. Rather, Thomas reasoned, CBP’s work has national security implications, rendering its officers’ actions distinct from those of a typical police officer. Thomas wrote at length about the recent Hernandez case, in which SCOTUS similarly refused to extend the right to file a Bivens action to the parents of a Mexican child fatally shot by CBP at the U.S.-Mexico border; the ruling in the Boule case, said Thomas, should fall in line with the one in Hernandez.
The majority’s second bit of reasoning—that a Bivens action simply isn’t needed in this case—had been anticipated by Boule’s counsel. Boule’s argument was that the grievance process within CBP is inadequate, because it does not allow him to participate as a party. Thomas dismissed this point out of hand, and wrote, “we have never held that a Bivens alternative must afford rights to participation or appeal.” Rather, Thomas said, the goal is simply to deter unconstitutional acts of individual officers. “So long as Congress or the Executive has created a remedial process that it finds sufficient to secure an adequate level of deterrence, the courts cannot second-guess that calibration by superimposing a Bivens remedy,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas also rejected Boule’s claim of a Bivens action based on deprivation of First Amendment rights. His reasoning was much the same as it was for Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim:
Now presented with the question whether to extend Bivens to this context, we hold that there is no Bivens action for First Amendment retaliation. There are many reasons to think that Congress, not the courts, is better suited to authorize such a damages remedy.
Justice Neil Gorsuch penned his own brief concurrence, in which he stressed the importance of separation of powers and called out the Bivens case itself for being “a misstep.” Gorsuch wrote that he “struggle[s] to see how [the Boule] facts differ[] meaningfully from those in Bivens itself,” given that both raise constitutional violations committed by federal law enforcement officers. To Thomas’ point that CBP’s work raises unique immigration concerns, Gorsuch asked: “But why does that matter?”
Gorsuch pushed the majority’s analysis a step farther, and argued that if the analysis applicable to new Bivens actions always requires a contest of courts versus Congress, then Congress will always win. Therefore, wrote Gorsuch, “In fairness to future litigants and our lower court colleagues, we should not hold out that kind of false hope, and in the process invite still more ‘protracted litigation destined to yield nothing.'”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a partial dissent which was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor wrote that Wednesday’s decision in Boule, combined with recent precedent, enables SCOTUS to “close the door” not just to Boule’s claim, but also “to others that fall squarely within Bivens‘ ambit.”
Although Sotomayor agreed with the decision to reject Boule’s First Amendment claim, she would have allowed Boule’s action to proceed on his Fourth Amendment claim. Sotomayor’s take on the incident between Boule and Egbert was that it looked a lot like the facts of Bivens itself:
Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim does not arise in a new context. Bivens itself involved a U.S. citizen bringing a Fourth Amendment claim against individual, rank-and-file federal law enforcement officers who allegedly violated his constitutional rights within the United States by entering his property without a warrant and using excessive force. Those are precisely the facts of Boule’s complaint.
The only difference, argued Sotomayor, was that the offending officers worked for different federal agencies.
The dissenting justice, however, did find significant differences between the recent Hernandez case (on which the majority relied in its reasoning) and the Boule case. “This case […] does not present an ‘international incident’ that might affect diplomatic relations, unlike the cross-border killing of a foreign-national child,” Sotomayor wrote. She continued to explain that while some CBP agents—like those involved in the Hernandez case—are stationed at the border to prevent illegal entry, “Agent Egbert was not ‘attempting to prevent illegal entry’ or otherwise engaged in activities with a ‘strong connection to national security.'”
Sotomayor had harsh words for the majority’s analysis, which she said was “selectively quoting our precedents and presenting its newly announced standard as if it were always the rule.” She dismissed Thomas’ claims of national security interests afoot as “sheer hyperbole,” and noted that what was central to the Boule case was “physical assault by a federal officer against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.”
As for Congress’ role, Sotomayor was satisfied that Congress has spoken, in that it set out the rules for how immigration officers must act.
“Mere proximity to a border, in other words, did not give Agent Egbert greater license to enter Boule’s property,” she wrote, “Nor does it diminish or call into question the remedies for constitutional violations that a plaintiff may pursue, particularly where, as here, an agent unquestionably was not acting “for the purpose of patrolling the border to prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States.”
Sotomayor argued that the SCOTUS decision will put many at risk of rights violations by unscrupulous law enforcement officers.
“The consequences of the Court’s drive-by, categorical assertion will be severe,” she warned. “Absent intervention by Congress, CBP agents are now absolutely immunized from liability in any Bivens action for damages, no matter how egregious the misconduct or resultant injury.”
Sotomayor also had words of guidance for the lower courts. Despite what she called the Court’s “thinly veil[ed]… disapproval” of Bivens—and despite the Boule decision making it “harder for plaintiffs to bring a successful Bivens claim”—the justice insisted “the lower courts should not read it to render Bivens a dead letter.”
The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. (photo: CNN)
The deceit and lies and cover-ups of the worst moments in post-9/11 history have created an endless stage of hypocrisy for all the world to see.
The official explanation that the government has maintained for 16 years this week is an unbelievable version of events that has been ripped apart in later reporting. The Navy says the men killed themselves by hanging, in separate nonadjoining cells, in the same way, at the same time, under video surveillance, with no guards noticing and no prisoners calling for the guards to intervene. They tell us that each of the men had bound their wrists and ankles with fabric and shoved fabric down their own throats — and then ask us to believe that they hung themselves.
Despite explosive reporting by Scott Horton for Harper’s Magazine in which multiple sources, including Hickman, refuted the official narrative and gave evidence that a cover-up had taken place, no independent official investigation of the incident was ordered. The Department of Justice, asked to look into the Navy’s unbelievable explanation of events, eventually reviewed the allegations of cover-up and found “no evidence of wrongdoing.”
This disturbing episode quickly turned unspeakably dark: Independent autopsies ordered by the families of the dead were useless since the bodies, which showed signs of torture, had been sent home with missing parts. The men’s throats — the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the thyroid cartilage — had been removed. Even after this shocking finding, the door was closed; there would be no investigations. Hickman went on to publish a book titled “Murder at Camp Delta.”
For the American public, the loss of three unknown “terrorists” to suicide at Guantánamo prison was a passing story, if it registered at all, in the endless news cycle of America’s “war on terror.” But for Mansoor Adayfi, an innocent Yemeni man trapped in Guantánamo, it was the night everything changed. He knew the three men, he told The Intercept. They had protested together, gone on hunger strike together, put themselves through hell to demand basic rights and human decency.
In his memoir, “Don’t Forget Us Here,” Adayfi lays out his own account of that summer night. Mere hours after the men died, a devastated Adayfi was interrogated and beaten over the incident. Former detainees Mohamedou Slahi and Ahmed Errachidi said in an interview that their cells, even in solitary confinement, were searched that night. The dead men — Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, 37; Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, 30; and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, 22 — all of whom had been held without charge, were attacked by the camp commander. “They are smart, they are creative, they are committed,” Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. said. “They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Angry guards and interrogators, embarrassed by the event, embarked on a monthslong crackdown.
“Nothing made sense,” Adayfi writes. “None of the brothers had talked about suicide. None of us had. We had just survived the hunger strike together. Conditions at the camp had gotten better, and we were preparing to strike again for even more changes.”
In “Murder at Camp Delta,” Hickman writes that none of his guards who had a clear view of the camp and the medical clinic saw any detainees moved from their cells to the clinic. Hickman himself watched the white van return to camp and drive directly to the clinic, though he was unable to see what was unloaded from the van because his view was blocked. Two guards who had unobstructed views of the walkways connecting the clinic with the cellblocks confirmed to Horton that they had seen no prisoners taken there from the cells.
Hickman and Adayfi remain steadfast in the conclusion that it was impossible that these men died by suicide in their cells. “This was murder,” Hickman said. “I think about it every single day.”
Adayfi explains that he and his “brothers,” fellow detainees, always did everything in their power to prevent a suicide from occurring. “I can’t say exactly what happened,” he told me. “Somehow, they were killed.”
Additional mysterious deaths followed over the years. In all, nine detainees have died at the prison. Allegations of cover-ups emerged, but the deaths remained shrouded in secrecy.
With few exceptions, no one really cared. Even the preposterous story put forward about these “suicides” failed to shock the public into condemning the ongoing travesty of justice that Guantánamo represents. The narrative that these men did something terrible and deserved to be imprisoned for it defines the very nature of the post-9/11 response. It doesn’t matter that the original accusations against many of them were flimsy and easily disproved. Due process and the presumption of innocence, the defining values of the American ideal of justice, would be forever denied them. The vague language of “enemy combatants” and “terrorists” dehumanized men across the Middle East to the point at which the U.S. was able to commit profound abuses of human rights with impunity and public support.
Americans were convinced in the years after 9/11 that the men locked in Guantánamo — or being killed in drone strikes abroad or tortured in CIA black sites — were sworn enemies of the United States who deserved to die before they could cause more senseless death. And so the atrocities followed, committed over multiple administrations on a global battlefield where U.S. forces played judge, jury, and executioner against “terrorists” and “enemy combatants” who also happened to be farmers, taxi drivers, mothers, and children, producing an unbearable human toll exposed only by painstaking reporting.
Renewing calls for justice for the men who died at Guantánamo feels like an exercise in futility, yet those permanently maimed by Guantánamo refuse to stop seeking justice. “I would like to see the people that were behind it held responsible, but it’s never gonna happen,” Hickman says. “I think it was murder, and it should never go away. It should be investigated until it’s solved.”
The deceit and lies and cover-ups of the worst moments in post-9/11 history have created an endless stage of hypocrisy for all the world to see.
Ahmed Errachidi, a Moroccan chef wrongly imprisoned for years at Guantánamo, said that the longer the injustice at the detention camp continues, the more damage it does to the “reputation and the legacy of American culture, American principles, and American morals.” He called for former Guantánamo detainees to be allowed to finally testify before Congress and for victims of CIA torture to be allowed to take the American government to court. “You are a nation who stands for freedom, rule of law, human rights,” he said. “The whole world is watching.”
Women protest outside a courtroom in San Salvador, demanding the government free women prisoners who are serving 30-year prison sentences for having an abortion. (photo: Salvador Melendez/AP)
The nightmare that followed is common in El Salvador, a heavily Catholic country where abortion is banned under all circumstances and even women who suffer miscarriages and stillbirths are sometimes accused of killing their babies and sentenced to years or even decades in prison.
When Vásquez regained consciousness, she had lost her nearly full-term fetus. Instead of an ambulance, officers drove her in the bed of a pickup through heavy rain to a police station. There she was arrested on suspicion of violating El Salvador’s abortion law, one of the world’s strictest. Fearing she could die, authorities eventually rushed her to a hospital, where she was chained by her left foot to a gurney. She was prosecuted, convicted and given 30 years in prison for aggravated homicide.
“This is the reality that we have lived, and I am not alone,” said Vásquez, who ended up serving more than 10 years for what she has always said was a stillbirth. “Any woman who arrives to jail accused of having an abortion is seen as the most evil, heartless being.”
“From the moment we get pregnant, we become incubators,” said Vásquez, who was freed in 2018 after her sentence was commuted. “We lose our rights because the only possibility that we have of a life is taking care of the product inside us. It’s violence against us.”
Abortion rights activists say the law has led to widespread human rights violations against Salvadoran women and should serve as a cautionary tale for the United States, where more than 20 states are expected to ban abortion if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling in the coming weeks.
Some states may retain exceptions for cases such as rape or incest, but others are likely to have none save for a threat to a pregnant woman’s life. That would mean some rape victims may be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term and obstetric emergencies could be mistaken for intentional abortions, according to Catalina Martínez Coral, Latin America and Caribbean director for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights.
“These states are going to live similar situations that women are living in El Salvador,” Martínez Coral said.
Some anti-abortion leaders in the U.S. say they oppose prosecuting women who have abortions, but others think differently. Louisiana legislators unsuccessfully pushed a bill this year that would have allowed such prosecutions, for example, and Tom Ascol, a top contender to become the Southern Baptist Convention’s next president, favors classifying the procedure as homicide.
Women used to be able to seek abortions in cases of risk to their life, severe fetal malformations incompatible with life, or rape in El Salvador, a country of 6.5 million people nestled between Guatemala and Honduras along Central America’s Pacific Coast.
But that ended in the late 1990s with a law championed by anti-abortion activists, conservative lawmakers and the Catholic Church, followed by a constitutional amendment defining life as starting at conception.
Today it is one of four countries in the Western Hemisphere with total bans — but it stands out for its aggressive prosecutions. While abortion carries a two- to eight-year prison sentence, dozens of women have, like Vásquez, been convicted of aggravated homicide, punishable by 30 years behind bars.
Overall, El Salvador has prosecuted at least 181 women who experienced obstetric emergencies in the past two decades, according to the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, which has been working to win freedom for such women since 2009. At least 65 imprisoned women have been released with the help of the organization and its allies.
“Everywhere in the world it’s understood that there are pregnancy losses for natural reasons. ... Here, that’s punished,” said Morena Herrera, the nonprofit’s director.
El Salvador expects doctors and nurses to report suspected abortions under threat of prosecution, so women who show up at hospitals following miscarriages or botched abortions are sometimes turned over for investigation.
Prosecution and punishment overwhelmingly fall on poor, young women who lack sufficient access to medical services and cannot afford to travel overseas for an abortion or pay for good legal defense if they run afoul of the law. Sometimes they are victims of rape, in a country with a high incidence of that crime.
One such woman, Imelda, was repeatedly raped from age 8 to 18 by her mother’s partner and became pregnant by him. In 2017 she unexpectedly gave birth to the baby in a latrine and then lost consciousness. The child survived, but Imelda was accused of attempted murder due to the circumstances of the birth.
She was freed from prison in 2018 after a court determined that she had not tried to kill her baby.
Imelda firmly believes that a woman should not be forced to carry to term a fetus conceived by rape. Since her release she has been studying to become a nurse and hopes to set an example to medical providers by treating patients in similar situations better than she was.
“What young girl is going to want to be a mother? They’re innocent,” Imelda said. “What they really want is to play, to study. I’ve always wanted to study, not be a mother.”
The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted; The AP is identifying Imelda only by her first name.
Another woman, Karen, was 21 and pregnant when she fainted alone in her grandmother’s home. She woke up handcuffed to a hospital gurney and lost the pregnancy. A police interrogation led to an aggravated homicide conviction in 2015 and a 30-year prison sentence.
“They told me that I was a murderer and that I was going to pay for what I had done,” she said, “that I was going to rot in jail.”
In prison, other inmates told Karen she didn’t deserve to live. She spent seven years locked up, drawing strength from her son and belief in her innocence, and was released in December.
Like some other women interviewed by AP, Karen shared her story and agreed to be photographed on condition her full name not be disclosed out of concerns over privacy, possible reprisals and societal stigma over abortion.
Today Karen tries to make up for lost time by playing soccer with her 14-year-old son and cooking his favorite meals, refried beans and fried plantains. She holds onto her Catholic faith but has grown disenchanted by some of the church’s positions, including its staunch opposition to abortion.
“If it was up to them, we shouldn’t have been freed,” Karen said. “We should still be paying a sentence for a crime that we committed, according to society and the church.”
The Catholic Church and the growing number of evangelical churches have vast influence in the overwhelmingly Christian country, where some lawmakers cited Scripture last year as they voted to uphold the abortion ban.
In his office in El Salvador’s congress, lawmaker Guillermo Gallegos maintains what he calls his altar — a wooden table with an open Bible; images of Jesus that he got on a trip to Russia; a plastic bottle filled with water blessed by Pope Francis during a visit to the Vatican; a statue of the Virgin Mary; and a silver one of Moses holding the Ten Commandments.
In an interview, Gallegos said allowing abortion would countermand deeply held beliefs among a large majority in El Salvador.
“There is no valid reason why abortion can be decriminalized in our country,” Gallegos said. “There are strong movements in the country in favor of abortion for some reasons, but fortunately that has not been able to prosper here in the parliament, where the decision would have to be made.”
“Approving abortion, well, that would go against our faith,” he added.
The Vatican has long been strenuously opposed to abortion, and that hasn’t changed under Francis. The pontiff has repeatedly denounced it as evidence of “throwaway culture,” and in 2019 he asked at a Catholic-sponsored conference, “Is it licit to hire a hitman to resolve a problem?”
After celebrating Mass on a recent morning at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in the Salvadoran capital, San Salvador, Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez praised Francis’ views and echoed his theme of abortion as a violent act.
“We live in a culture of death,” the cardinal told the AP, saying it “leads us to a total disaster.”
Anti-abortion activists say that women sharing their stories did kill their babies and that their arguments are led by abortion-rights nonprofits to try to ease the law. Local anti-abortion groups did not respond to interview requests or declined to talk to the AP.
El Salvador’s health minister declined to comment via a spokesperson for the presidency, who also said no other government officials would be available for interviews.
With Roe v. Wade in jeopardy in the United States, Latin American abortion rights activists who once looked to their northern neighbor as a model have shifted their sights elsewhere to countries such as Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, which have loosened restrictions in recent years under pressure from women’s movements pushing the issue through the courts.
The Center for Reproductive Rights was one of several organizations that litigated and lobbied for decriminalizing abortion up to 24 weeks in Colombia. It is now working to preserve Roe.
“We hope that this green wave is also going to inspire our sisters in the United States,” Martínez Coral said, referring to the colorful handkerchiefs worn at demonstrations by supporters of abortion rights in the region. “It needs to be protected everywhere.”
Jocelyn Viterna, a Harvard University sociologist, has reviewed court documents from dozens of cases in which Salvadoran women were convicted of pregnancy-related homicide.
“If this plays out the way it does in El Salvador, in the United States women who have naturally occurring miscarriages may much more frequently be under suspicion for abortion,” Viterna said. “We may be asking, ‘Did they take a pill? Did they drink too much when they shouldn’t? What leads you to lose that child?’”
Herrera, of the Citizen Group, agreed with U.S. activists’ fears that their country may see a disproportionate impact among women of color and low-income women if Roe disappears — similar to the ban’s effect in El Salvador, where it has upended poor families.
Jesús, 22, was 8 years old when his mother was arrested in 2008 after losing her pregnancy. He and his 5-year-old brother were left in the care of their grandparents, subsistence farmers. The boys’ mother, who in court proceedings was identified only as Manuela, succumbed to cancer in 2010 while serving a 30-year sentence.
“Death,” Jesús said. “That’s what the state of El Salvador caused when it sentenced my mom — it killed her and sentenced her children to a bad life.”
Tormented for years by the accusations against his mother, he finally found some closure last November when the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that El Salvador had violated her rights.
The court found that Manuela’s lost pregnancy was due to a complication known as preeclampsia and that health care workers wrongly prioritized reporting her to authorities instead of treating her health situation. It ordered the government to pay damages to her two boys.
Tapping his feet nervously during an interview, Jesús said he decided to tell their story in hopes that other children won’t have to face the same suffering: “My mom’s name is a memory that will never fade.” Vásquez also grew up poor in rural El Salvador, helping her parents farm before moving to the capital as a teen. She entered prison at age 24. Having attended school through just the fourth grade, she earned her high school degree behind bars and became a de facto spokesperson for others serving time.
When she was released in 2018, she vowed to fight to free other women and help them transition to new lives. Today she has become the public face of the abortion rights movement in El Salvador, traveling nationwide to meet with women in similar cases and recruit them to join her group, Mujeres Libres — Spanish for “free women.” Its motto: Don’t let this history repeat itself.
Inside a loaned home that the group helped repair, Mujeres Libres holds theater performances, music lessons for their children and workshops on how to run small businesses. The walls are decorated with a photo of Nelson Mandela and pictures of the women from their time in incarceration.
“The pain of one woman is every woman’s pain,” said Vásquez, who was awarded a human rights and democracy prize by Sweden in 2018. She recently graduated from college with a degree in communications and was featured in a documentary.
The group attracts women like Mariana López, 40, who was also imprisoned after losing a pregnancy in 2000 and served 17 years. Back on the outside, she joined Mujeres Libres and took out a loan to become a baker, a childhood dream.
“Teodora has had the greatest struggle, because she’s the one who has had enough courage to stand up to others,” López said.
Her 7-year-old daughter takes music lessons at the home with other children, and they live off sales of the baguettes that López bakes before dawn in her humble home about two hours from San Salvador.
“Perhaps we could have had the courage, but we needed someone to give us a little push,” López said, adding, “Now we feel a bit better, maybe even happy, because we can share with each other in another stage of life — in freedom.”
Another woman, Cindy, was imprisoned in 2014 after having a stillbirth in a shopping mall bathroom. At the time she had a 4-year-old son, Justin, and was studying tourism and English. Parenting and her education were put on hold, and it was four years before she was able to see Justin again.
“What I reflect on the most is the losses. ... The total loss of all family, homes, houses, studies, work, children. Everything is lost,” Cindy said. “What makes you think the most is how are you going to start over? How are you going to recover time with your family?”
Now 30 and out of prison, she has to travel to a judicial office in the capital every month to sign her parole papers. She and Justin live with her parents, and she’s back in school. She makes and sells piñatas to get by, and crafted one for her son’s birthday in the form of a dinosaur — he wants to become a paleontologist.
They dream of traveling abroad together: “To forget everything,” Cindy said, “to start again in a new place.”
Vásquez said she is heartened by the children of the women, who tell her they will carry on her legacy long after she’s gone.
“It gets my hopes up because I really think that these processes must start when we’re young,” Vásquez said. “So the message … especially for mothers worldwide should be: Teach your girls to know their rights now, so that they will be able to defend human rights.
“It’s really important to try to change El Salvador,” she continued, “so our history doesn’t get repeated elsewhere and by future generations.”
The number of monarch butterflies migrating to California spiked this winter after years of historic lows. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
New research found that a successful summer breeding season can help make up for losses over the winter, alarming conservationists and causing concern about the insects' future.
A study published Friday in the journal Global Change Biology found that monarch populations in some parts of North America in the summer are actually increasing, which may be helping to offset well-documented declines attributed to the insects’ winter migration and environmental threats.
"There's this perception out there that monarch populations are in dire trouble, but we found that's not at all the case," Andy Davis, an assistant research scientist at the University of Georgia's Odum School of Ecology and one of the study's authors, said in a statement.
The research, based on observations collected from 1993 to 2018, is potentially good news for the overall health of monarch butterflies, but the findings are likely to be controversial among conservationists who have spent years drawing attention to the plight of monarchs and their dwindling winter colonies.
There are two types of migratory monarchs in North America: the Eastern monarch butterflies and the Western monarch butterflies.
Eastern monarchs typically breed over the summer across a wide swath of the United States and Canada east of the Rocky Mountains. The insects then travel south to overwinter in parts of central Mexico. Western monarchs usually spend the summers breeding within a much narrower corridor, in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state. These insects typically overwinter along the California coast, at sites stretching from Marin County in the north to Baja California.
Both populations have seen steep declines in their winter colonies in recent decades, owing in part to the overuse of pesticides, habitat loss from agriculture and urban development, and climate change.
The new study found, however, that a successful summer breeding season can help make up for losses over the winter.
"A single female can lay 500 eggs, so they're capable of rebounding tremendously, given the right resources," Davis said in the statement. "What that means is that the winter colony declines are almost like a red herring. They're not really representative of the entire species' population, and they're kind of misleading."
The researchers found an overall increase in monarch abundance, relative to other butterflies observed at various sites around the country, of about 1.4 percent per year, according to the study.
The population increases were not uniform across breeding sites. While upticks were detected in the Northwest, Southeast and Upper Midwest, declines were seen across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, southern Wisconsin and parts of the Northeast, the researchers reported.
The study was based on more than 135,000 observations gathered by citizen scientists for the North American Butterfly Association. The data, collected over a two-day period every summer from 1993 to 2018, documented sightings of monarchs and other butterfly species.
The findings could help provide a more complete understanding of how monarchs and other insect populations are faring in North America, said William Snyder, an entomologist at the University of Georgia and a co-author of the study.
"There's this idea out there about an insect apocalypse — all the insects are going to be lost," Snyder said in a statement. "But it's just not that simple."
Special Coverage: Ukraine, A Historic Resistance
READ MORE
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.